Why I Haven’t Spoken About Keep Faith

 When I was 8 I chose what is probably the gayest religion there is. I chose to believe in literal flaming bisexual Apollo and family. I was previously semi-roman catholic/ of catholic decent. My mum didn’t really push me into religion, she didn’t even go to holiday mass, just occasionally prayed in the church alone. I was in a christian after school program that occasionally read from the bible but was mostly there to entertain us while out parents were at work. I’m not entirely sure why I stopped going, maybe I just got bored with it, and soon after found the greek history that spoke to me.

 Christianity and other monotheistic religions came to terrify me. I learned of missionaries and the erasure of Native American cultures. I watched the Catholic Boat South Park episode where the adults are trying to figure out whether or not the boys were molested and did not understand what molestation was. 

 So I was wary when, 12 years after my first identity crisis, Gabriela asked me to feature Keep Faith, a queer anthology centered around the faith of queers. She assured me that faith was a broad term and most of the stories aren’t extremely religious.  

And for the most, part it’s true! Of the three stories I read. Two and  a half. 

 For the first story, there was a trigger warning for “cissexism,” and while I know that Cis means not trans &/or nonbinary, and “ism” means prejudice, it didn’t hit me that the narrator doesn’t believe in nonbinary people for a minute into reading it. There’s a nonbinary child and nonbinary mentor, and I was really excited to see two nonbinary people, but the cis mother narrating it was really self-centered and cissexist, saying having an enby child was a burden and didn’t need the added stress of having an enby government official over.

So that was DNF’d. The author is a trans nonbinary person eirself, and I believe that eir was doing eir best, but it was personally triggering for me. 

The story was set in a world where spies are transformed into plants, the mother being one of them. Due to a war and government backlogging, she’s stuck as a plant for weeks, so the government sends a translator (the nonbinary mentor) to assist with communication. 

The second story, Bigger Than Us, is about a mage about to enlist in mage army and has to tell her girlfriend the news. It’s dull and peaceful, a clean break from the previous story. There’s nothing overly special about it, except for the peacefulness of it all.

Droplets of Starlight started nicely. A pretty girl danced in the rain as her friend watches from her house. Then it gave her the “terrible boyfriend” trope, which I despise. 

Keep Faith is a queer anthology that asks what faith is when a lot of religions reject queer people. The stories range from being queer not being a problem to being a capital offence. When a girl comes out as bisexual to her family, her mom says “A god who hates  their worshippers happiness is no god of ours.” That mom is #goals. 

 There are some good things about this, but it is a sensitive topic. Not just faith specifically, but family acceptance or nonacceptance. I think it was a bad idea to put the cissexist story first because it is so unbelievably unaccepting. 

I think I might try skimming the rest of the stories, but I want to be in a better headspace. I encourage you to try it if you aren’t triggered by this and want to understand the play between faith and queerness better. 

What does faith and queerness mean to you? 

Join The Club!

Good evening, heroes, villains, and morally grey characters! I have exciting news!

*Drumroll please* 

 

I have a patreon!  You can either join Read This Book! where you get to choose a book for me to read and review or join Queer Stories To Tell In The Dark, where you get to read an exclusive short story and get a shout-out! Like this special guy: 

Darth Vader is a little known second-in-command for the galactic cult, Empire. He has a deep, commanding voice that will sooth you as he force chokes you to death. He was also my first husband, before he tragically succumbed to the call of Light. Let’s honour his memory and embrace the Dark Side every day!

 I know I don’t usually talk about these fandoms here, but I am a massive nerd and I cannot possibly talk about everything I love.

A short story will go up every third week of the month, I am aiming for fridays but I’m not sure what my school schedule will look like yet, so it cold be any day of the week. If you haven’t already, read Bits Of Flesh  for a taste. 

I hope you decide to join! It will be a big help for me financially and I will write things you’ll enjoy. 

https://www.patreon.com/TanyascreamsQR

 

Dean Schrödinger

I haven’t met him, at least not as the Dean. Could be a her, but Schrödinger’s always portrayed as a guy.

He’s thinking whether or not to kill me. Whether or not to keep me sane. Maybe he’s already decided, but he’s not allowed to say until later. Maybe i’m already dead.

I’m in a box. I’m not in a box. I’m in a jawlike box with two doors where the lips would be. I entered through one alive and wait to exit alive or dead- unless Schrödinger himself dies, leaving no record of my fate.

The mouth is full of me and it sickens me. I don’t like being eaten, but not eaten. It’s a double locked mouth, with the only key in Schrödingers’ pocket.

 My key is lost amongst tens of thousands of other keys. Some are bigger. Some are more colorful. Some of them will look ghastly to the Dean, some of them beautiful. The ghastly ones he throws to his underlings, who quickly unlock exits marked DEAD and kill their respective cats.  The beautiful ones he unlocks himself. For the beautiful ones he unlocks ALIVE.

 I’ve been told that I might appear a bit ghastly to the Dean. His or her identity remains unknown, so there’s no way to tell until one of the doors are unlocked.

 As for my ghastly appearance, I’d enjoy the death of one or two, oh, wait, fourteen people. That makes me seem a little homicidal at first. And last, if you don’t stick around.

 But I so want to live. I can’t measure myself precisely, but I enlarged myself to be as big as possible without destroying myself. I still fall on the smaller side due to certain restrictions, but I didn’t stay as small as I was at my making.

 The small, ghastly me wants to live so that I can give those without a Schrödinger’s chance a way to thrive. So that they can live without fear of this society. I want to live because I desperately desire to rise the voiceless above us.

  If you see Dean Schrödinger, please tell him to let me live.

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 I wrote this while waiting for college acceptance/rejection letters. I didn’t get into my original first choice, but as I became more accepting of other colleges, I realised I got into the best fit. It’s unexpected and far away, providing experiences I wasn’t aware of, and that’s what makes one a great writer; unexpected experiences. 

p.s, Benedict Cumberbatch