Queerics Giveaway Questions

So earlier this month, I learned about Queerics from one of my LJ friends and I was very impressed. I don't think people realize that queer music and queer people in the music industry runs much deeper than just 'It's Raining Men' or songs that seem gay, but are really just encouraging the Girls Gone Wild stereotype (Katy Perry, I'm looking at you). Keep it up guys!

Anyway, they're having a giveaway, but today is the last day to enter, so do it quick! I couldn't pick just one to answer though! Instead, you get four!

What band or musician do you most wish was queer?

I cannot tell a lie... I sometimes wish that Butch Walker was queer, but he's extremely close for a straight man. He gets lovey dovey with his band members and there are some days he looks like he could pass as a lesbian. Still, he's straight! I guess I wish he was queer because his music helped me when I was facing off with my own sexuality and it would just be the ultimate icing on the cake if a song like 'Mixtape' was really about a boy. Hell, I'd even take gay from the waist up or the "sexuality is only skin deep" thing he wrote in the liner notes of Math and Other Problems!

Still, even if he isn't queer, I'd love to have him as an ally. 'Paid To Get Excited' has the best commentary I've ever heard on Christians who condemn gay people and in one of the earliest Marvelous 3 songs titled 'Katrina', he sings as a homophobic guy named Randy who's being stalked by a lesbian and at the very end, he pipes in as himself and goes "I hope she beat the shit out of you, you homophobic fuck." And this was in 1997! I love him so fucking much.

If you were to create the ultimate queer 4-piece band, which musicians would you choose? Why?

Okay, this was kind of hard, but I think I got it...

Jake Shears - Vox: I'll admit, I have a girl crushing on a gay boy crush on Jake Shears. He just so adorable and I love the shit he writes.

Amanda Palmer - Piano, Vox: Amanda is just awesome. I forgot about her for awhile and just recently rediscovered her awesomeness. She kicks ass at everything she does and I think her chaotic piano would be a great compliment to Jake's lyrics. (And on a slightly unrelated note, her boyfriend Neil Gaiman created pretty much my favorite transgendered character ever. ilu Wanda Mann)

Kaki King - Guitar, Vox: When I first heard 'Bari Improv' in August Rush, I was in love with Kaki King and her style of guitar playing. It's chaotic, rhythmic and amazing. Plus the fact she's cute, has a soft and pretty voice and a lesbian doesn't hurt either. I don't know how it would compliment Amanda and Jake. It would either be a clusterfuck or EXTREMELY AWESOME!

Peaches - Everything else: Peaches is Peaches, man. I don't think I need to explain WHY she needs to finish this clusterfuck off. And no, that wasn't a double entendre (unless you want it to be).

What's the most awesome thing you've ever heard a musician say about his or her sexuality?

That award goes to Billie Joe Armstrong. He said this to The Advocate in 1995 when he was asked about his bisexuality.

"I think I've always been bisexual. I mean, it's something that I've always been interested in. I think people are born bisexual, and it's just that our parents and society kind of veer us off into this feeling of 'Oh, I can't.' They say it's taboo. It's ingrained in our heads that it's bad, when it's not bad at all. It's a very beautiful thing."

I remember seeing that quote when I was really starting to question and it made so much sense to me. Even if I did identify as straight, I'd still agree with him. We all have our queer tendencies and it's nothing to be ashamed of.

What would be on YOUR Pride month mixtape?

It's not so much a mixtape, but a mix cd. Or a playlist. Whatever.

1.) 'Paid To Get Excited' by Butch Walker and the Let's-Go-Out-Tonites!

I actually used "Be free to love the ones you love" on my Prop 8 protest sign.

2.) 'Coming Clean' by Green Day

For every kid stuck in the closet or struggling with their families.

3.) 'My Generation' by The Who

Not necessarily a queer song, but definitely fits our generation.

4.) 'Boys Wanna Be Her' by Peaches

Again...Peaches...I don't have to explain it.

5.) 'Kiss' by Prince

Prince is sort of an anomaly. He's probably the only straight man who can wear the clothes he does AND heels and be considered sexy. Then there's the misconstrued comments on his beliefs versus homosexuality, but I kind of toss that out the window when I realize NO ONE WRITES A SONG ABOUT SEX IN GENERAL BETTER THAN PRINCE! And 'Kiss' is a perfectly great example of that. Gay, straight, black or white, we all just want your extra time and your kiss.

6.) 'Magic Dance' by David Bowie

Mmm...David Bowie. Mmmm...David Bowie as Jareth the Goblin King. Flamboyant, yet the desire of every young girl in the late 1980s.

7.) 'I'm Gay' by Bowling For Soup

The title can be easily misconstrued. It's actually a very happy song about being...well...happy! But as Jared says in the song, it's perfectly fine to be a happy individual and this is the perfect time to be happy with who you are.

8.) 'Centerfold' by Pink

I also want Pink to be my straight ally. She's such a fucking badass.

9.) 'Shores Of California' by The Dresden Dolls

'Sex Changes' probably would have been a better song, but it wouldn't have flowed right. But I think what's in this song can apply to anyone. Plus, the video has Amanda making out with Kelly. You can't beat that.

10.) 'Did Ya' by BoA

Okay, this is mostly for the fact that BoA played San Francisco Pride this year, but she's still an amazing performer and 'Did Ya' is a very danceable number.

11.) 'Androgyny' by Garbage

Shirley Manson was one of the many factors that made me realize I was bi.

12.) 'Girl' by Robots In Disguise

This song always makes me feel empowered. I love Dee and Sue.

13.) 'Fall Out Gloria' by Mighty Mike

It's 'This Ain't A Scene, It's An Arms Race' set to 'I Will Survive'. You can't get much gayer than that.

14.) 'I Need A Girl Who Knows A Map' by Kaki King

It's actually an instrumental song, but it's gorgeous and the mix wouldn't feel right without Kaki on it.

15.) 'Caught A Lite Sneeze' by Voltaire

This is actually a cover of a Tori Amos song, but Voltaire doesn't change the lyrics. He still goes "Boys on my left side, boys on my right side, boys in the middle..." Plus, Voltaire himself is queer! Okay, I've never actually confirmed this outside of his facebook (he lists being interested in both men and women), but even if he's not explicitly open about it, it's still kind of obvious.

16.) 'Everybody Wants The Same Thing' by Scissor Sisters

Sing us out, Sisters!

The Buffy Reboot and Why Stephanie Meyer Is To Blame

Whether you’re a Joss Whedon fan or not, you’ve probably heard about the Buffy The Vampire Slayer reboot that has been proposed by Fran Rubel Kuzui, her husband Kaz, and Roy Lee and Doug Davison of Vertigo Entertainment. If you are a Joss fan, you’ve probably already had a moment of rage upon learning that Joss would not be involved and would essentially be a reboot of the movie. Meaning that everything that made Buffy a great series would be disregarded and tossed out the window. And if you’re not a Joss fan, you probably know one anyway.

Why though? Why reboot a franchise that’s barely seventeen years old (twelve if you completely discount the movie) and still has a continuing canon? Especially when you consider the fact you can’t use the time travel excuse like Star Trek did.

To put it simply, it’s Stephanie Meyer’s fault.

Now, it’s probably not a good idea to lay blame on one author who’s not directly involved in this trainwreck waiting to happen, but let’s think about it. Before the 1990s, vampires were almost exclusive to the horror genre, with the most notable being Count Orlock from Nosferatu and Dracula from almost everything ever. There were exceptions of course with the soap opera Dark Shadows being one of the first examples of having a vampire not be portrayed as an outright monster. This was followed up by the publication of Interview With A Vampire in 1976 and the movie version in 1994. Around the same time of the movie, the first of the ongoing Anita Blake series was published and only three years later, Buffy The Vampire Slayer began its first season on The WB. While the 90s did have a vampire craze, at least you could still consider them vampires. They had fangs, they sucked blood and a lot of the time, they were assholes who loved to fuck around with humans. Say what you want about the ensouled Angel from the Buffy franchise, but you have to admit that when he was Angelus, he was frightening. Even The X-Files had their own vampire episode around this time titled “Bad Blood” and it actually stuck to a lot of original vampire mythos, including a lack of fangs and an OCD tendency to count and collect objects that are thrown at them (The Count on Sesame Street suddenly makes more sense, huh?). After Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel ended though, it seemed like that craze was over. And if that didn’t kill it, Queen of the Damned surely did.

Not to say that Vampires were completely gone from media, they just weren’t in the spotlight as much. There was still books and a few series floating around in the anime world such as Hellsing, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (one of my personal favorite anime movies) and Blood: The Last Vampire. There was also Van Helsing, but why mention it anyway?

But then, it went bad.

In 2005, Twilight was published. I admit that I read it in 2007 after I finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Watchmen, but at the time, I had only come across two people who had read it: one of my cousins (who had suggested it to me) and a girl who was in a production of The Music Man that I was on tech crew for. I guess it was growing in popularity, but it wasn’t everywhere.

I’m not sure when it exploded, but suddenly in the beginning of 2008, it was creeping up everywhere. I don’t know if it was because of the movie or the publishing industry looking for a new franchise to boast after the end of Harry Potter. Possibly both. Either way, vampires were becoming a big deal again. Well, if you want to call the vampires in Twilight actual vampires. Last time I checked, no previous folklore had vampires that sparkled when they stepped out into the sunlight and had various special abilities that made the Cullen family a brooding, extremely lame version of the X-Men.

The series isn’t about these Vampires In Name Only though. It’s about the “ordinary” girl named Bella Swan (what about that description doesn’t scream Mary Sue?) and how she falls “in love” with Edward Cullen, who is constantly described as perfect, but seems to lack an actual personality. There’s also stuff about werewolves and vampires who want to eat Bella, but any attempt at a halfway decent story is lost because Meyer pretty much wrote out her wet dream.

That’s right...this whole damn franchise that has an army of batshit insane teenage girls who think a man who sparkles, has no personality, and has many traits that point to being an abusive spouse is the perfect man based this all on a dream she had about a “girl” (read: herself) who was in a meadow with a man who sparkles. Everything else was just pulled out of her ass.

So with one popular franchise that people seem to be buying, here comes other people trying to cash in. Every trip to the bookstore includes a stand of supernatural books that are trying to appeal to those who love Twilight, The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels by Charlaine Harris was turned into True Blood, and The CW will be premiering The Vampire Diaries in the fall.

Which brings us back to our possible Buffy The Vampire Slayer reboot. Why be so cynical about it and call it an attempt to cash in on this new vampire craze that started because of those damn sparkly vampires?

Well, first off, Joss isn’t involved. Considering the fact he’s still involved in the series in the case of the Season 8 comics, leaving Joss and his crew out on something Buffy related seems kind of farfetched.

Secondly, it’s a franchise where a reboot would seem kind of illogical. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a fairly young franchise with a creator who’s still alive and still involved in the creative process when it comes to the comics and the franchise itself hasn’t suffered some terrible fate that would be cause for a reboot. Say what you will about Chris Nolan’s Batman movies, but they certainly make up for the pain and suffering that was Joel Schumacher. And whether you liked it or not, the new Star Trek film has certainly breathed new life into a long running franchise that has been suffering for many years now. The equation doesn’t really add up with Buffy though and it really doesn’t add up when you take into account that none of the characters from the TV series would be in it. C’mon people! It was the supporting cast who made that show! I honestly can’t name one person I know who says that Buffy Summers is their favorite character!

Finally, they’ve basically admitted that they’re trying to cash in! Just read these two quote and tell me that it’s not an admittance of “Hey! People like vampires again! Let’s get some of that money!”

"Everything has its moment. Every movie takes on a life at some point, and this seems like the moment to do this." -Fran Rubel Kuzui

"Now seems like the right time. Studios are looking for a franchise and vampires are relevant again." -Roy Lee

The reaction has been less than stellar. Most Whedon fans (including myself) are pissed off at the concept and has met some curious stares from people involved with the series. Tony Head said that a reboot would be like “watching a car wreck”, Tim Minear responded to the original Whedonesque post with “Unthinkable” and while Joss has been rather kind about this proposal, he says that he feels “a great sense of amusement at the concept.”

So yes. Thank you, Stephanie Meyer. Thank you for creating a godawful series that gets teenaged girls riled up and execs seeing more ways they can line their pockets. Because of you, we now have to suffer a possible new franchise that will probably lose the whole understanding of the original. Because of you, Whedon fans have more studio bullshit to rage at. As if we didn’t have enough. Seriously, it’s getting kind of ridiculous now.

Knowing Whedon fans though, selective amnesia is already in place. Much like the original Buffy movie, season five of Buffy, Alien: Resurrection, and, in select cases, Wash’s death at the end of Serenity, the reboot will be nothing but a bad dream to the Whedonverse and they will take comfort in remembering the fact that if they have power in numbers. If they can crash the server for the Dr. Horrible website and the Fox phone lines, they can sure as Hell make sure that none of their money goes towards the reboot.