28. Gay Horror

Snarky Opener (0:00)

The only thing scarier than dealing with straight people is how bad some of these gay horror movies are.

Episode Introduction (0:28)

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay. I'm Rob Loveless and today, I am a non-jaded gay because full moon energy, baby.

So, as of recording this, the full moon was the other day. I'm sure you've probably seen this online. But, you know, people put out their crystals and their tarot cards whenever there's a full moon.

Something about the full moon, it's supposed to, you know, re-energize and recharge all that stuff.

And I've also seen that some people put out water because supposedly the full moon recharges water, and then you drink it and you get, you know, positive energy, whatever.

And I've done it a few times in the past. I mean, in my opinion, it's a no-harm, no-foul situation. Like, if I put the water out and the moon re-energizes it, and I feel great when I drink it, great.

That's awesome. I could use that in my life.

But if I put it out and it does nothing, well, at the very least, I mean, I have a chilled glass of water in the morning.

So, with this full moon, put out the crystals, put out the tarot cards, and I put out four water bottles, and my entire Brita tank because I need all the positive energy I can get.

And I'm not messing around with this full moon. So, I'm just living that full moon life.

And I mean, it's still been a bit of a rough week, but I'd like to think that the full moon water is helping me out.

Queer Horror (1:32) 

Anyway, I am very excited today. We have a very special Halloween episode. Today, we are going to be talking about gay horror.

And I'm especially excited about this topic because I love Halloween, I love horror movies, and the past few spooky seasons, I've been trying to find more gay horror movies, and there's not a ton.

And you know, obviously, we've seen a rise in LGBTQ+ representation in film these days, but surprisingly, there are actually some gay elements in older scary movies.

Now, according to some sources, horror has always been rooted in queerness.

So, we're going to explore that concept, talk about the history of gay horror, and review some gay horror movies.

But before we do you know the drill. Let's pull our tarot.

Tarot (2:09) 

Woo hoo. It must be full moon energy because we pulled a Major Arcana card.

The card for this episode is Justice, and it's number 11 in the tarot.

So according to numerology, you know, when we have double digits, we add them together. So, one plus one equals two, and two is tied to duality, partnership, choice.

It's also tied to the High Priestess, which is the number two card in the Major Arcana. And when we pull this card, it's really tied to, you know, truth and finding balance and harmony.

And basically, it's an indication that anything negative going on in our lives, anything that might be unsettling, whether it's something, you know, traditionally tied to the Justice card, such as, you know, a legal matter, or if we're having some, you know, stress in our lives with maybe work or a relationship.

Basically, this card is reassuring us that we're doing everything in our power and we're on the right path. You know, we need to trust our intuition and that we know how to take care of ourselves through the situation so that we can see a positive outcome on the other side.

It's also encouraging us to have a sense of compassion and understanding in situations so that we're not coming off as arrogant or too, you know, hot-headed or anything like that.

Because while we can trust our own intuition, we do need to make sure that we're still being fair.

So, we need to really kind of separate intuition from ego and make sure that while we're working for the outcomes we want to achieve, we need to be fair in our pursuit of them.

And we need to be aware of the impact that our choices will have on others. You know, again, like we talked in numerology, this card is tied to making a choice.

And we need to be mindful of the choices we make and the impact they have on those around us. We definitely want to work and make sure that we're taking care of ourselves, but we can't be reckless or selfish in our choices either.

And I'm just gonna say it upfront. I have no idea how I'm going to be tying that into the episode, but you know what I have the next however long this episode recording is going to be to figure it out, so we'll do the best we can anyway, gay horror.

Let's go.

The History of Horror (3:48)

So, you know, I love to start most episodes with a little general history lesson, and that's what we're going to do today. So, let's take a look at when exactly the horror genre was founded.

Well, according to Britannica, Horace Walpole invented the horror literary genre.

He published the novel at the Castle of Otranto in, wait for it, 1764, which some say is the first horror story as a legitimate literary form.

Just over 50 years later, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley introduced pseudoscience into the horror genre in her 1818 novel, Frankenstein.

And as the 1800s progressed, German storyteller E.T.A. Hoffman and the American author you all know and love Edgar Allen Poe, they began adding elements of reason and madness into their own works.

And all the scary elements in their horror stories held psychological symbolism, which brought the horror genre to a new level. Also in the 19th century, there was a heavy Gothic influence in horror.

And according to ThoughtCo, gothic fiction is defined as writing that employs dark and picturesque scenery, startling and melodramatic narrative devices, and an overall atmosphere of exoticism, mystery, fear, and dread.

And we see this Gothic influence in novels like Sheridan Le Fanu’s The House by the Churchyard, Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone, and of course Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

And then throughout the 1900s, we see elements of science fiction and fantasy incorporated into the horror genre.

So, with all that being said, where exactly do the gays come in? I mean, sure, more recently, we have gay characters in horror movies, but if you think back to some staple horror classics, do you remember anything gay about them?

Are you wondering if you blinked and maybe missed a gay kiss in Freddy vs Jason?

What kind of faggot runs around in a Christmas sweater?

And I'm just gonna say it if you know, you know. But no, you didn't miss a gay kiss.

But the history of horror is queer because of the multiple layers of the horror genre.

Homoeroticism & The Gothic Unspeakable (5:34)

So according to WhatToWatch.com, horror movies have always served as a vehicle for emotional exploration, political commentary, as well as analyzing our relationship with mortality and the unknown.

In their 2021 article, The History of Horror is Gay, WhatToWatch.com claims that the Castle of Otranto is dripping in homoeroticism.

So full disclosure, I never read this book, but here's the plot summary according to the back of the book. Manfred, the prince of Otranto is keen to secure the castle for his descendants in the face of a mysterious curse.

At the beginning of the work, Manfred's son, Conrad, is crushed to death by an enormous helmet on the morning of his wedding to the beautiful princess Isabella.

Faced with the extinction of his line, Manfred vows to divorce his wife and marry the terrified Isabella himself.

Now, according to some studies, one of the core themes of this novel is the fear of the exposure of a secret.

And while homosexuality isn't explicitly discussed in the book, some critics find the relationships and behaviors between the male characters to adhere to the concept of the gothic unspeakable.

And this term was coined by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in her 1985 book Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire.

So, homosexuality was first recognized in the 18th century, and with the establishment of the term, social tensions arose.

And these social tensions then trickled into novels, specifically in the form of fears of sexuality and the struggle for sexual expression.

So, Sedgwick terms this emerging homoeroticism as the gothic unspeakable, which is reflected through the depiction of male class and male sexuality.

Gothic Authors’ Sexualities Impacted Their Writing (7:03)

And interestingly enough, Horace Walpole was accused of being effeminate.

In a 2001 article published in Gothic Studies, Max Fincher says that while there is no concrete evidence of Walpole being gay, analysts have reviewed his letters and found that he had developed strong intimate relationships with men that can only be described as romantic and therefore homoerotic in nature.

Say it with me. Cake boy.

Furthermore, in the 2007 book Queering Gothic in the Romantic Age, Fincher wrote that Manfred, the main character of the Castle of Otranto, is preoccupied with the threats of his identity being discovered in a way that parallels the fear of homoerotic desire being discovered.

He also argues that the misogyny in the novel is an attempt to project manliness, overcompensating for the author's or character's fears of queerness or weakness.

And because of these fears, the book presents non-heteronormative behavior as being quote-unquote unnatural and demonic.

Additionally, the sexualities of other Gothic authors such as Matthew Lewis, William Thomas Beckford, and Francis Lathom also came under question.

Now, Beckford was bisexual, and it has been debated that Lewis and Lathom were gay. And back to the WhatToWatch.com article, their sexualities impacted their writing.

While you may not see the words gay or homosexual in their books, they expressed them in more acceptable forms, using what James Jenkins of Valancourt Books describes as "a medium of a transgressive genre like horror fiction."

And that's exactly how queerness is rooted in horror. Through layered themes that parallel the gay experience.

Horror Has Always Been Queer (8:27)

In a 2021 Dread Central article, author Chad Collins wrote this really great statement:

"Horror is not becoming colloquially woke. It is merely giving face and identity to what has always been bubbling under the surface. If the genre is a witch's cauldron next to Tannis root and eye of a newt is bonafide queerness."

And while the queer themes are there, Collins asserts that the horror genre decenters sexuality and identity, so that they are simultaneously queer and not.

Here's another quote:

"The hegemony is so resilient and pernicious that queerness coexists alongside a more conservative, ostensibly safer reading of the given media text. What is queer is also packaged in congruence with enduring social norms. What is queer must also be straight."

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (9:08)

Let's take a look at Frankenstein as an example.

Well, first off, before we get to that, let's talk about the author, Mary Shelley. She was just 20 years old when she published the book.

But more interesting than that is the fact that she supposedly lost her virginity next to her mother's grave and that she kept her husband's calcified heart with her after his death. Freaky.

So, there's some spooky shenanigans for you. But getting back to the queerness, there is speculation that she was also bisexual.

After her husband's death, she apparently turned to women for sex and love. In fact, in a letter to her friend Edward Trelawny, she wrote:

"I was so ready to give myself away and being afraid of men, I was apt to get tousy-mousy for women."

Now, I tried to find what tousy-mousy means, but I couldn't find much from credible sources. One article claims it's slang for the vagina and vulva, and another says it's synonymous with tussled.

But assuming this is an admission to her being bisexual, it frames Frankenstein in an interesting light, since the Frankenstein monster is a tortured creature with the inability to truly love.

So maybe this work was Shelley's expression of her own repressed feelings. And I'm sure you could see the queer theme there.

It's coded, but it's commercial, so those heteros who aren't looking for it can choose to ignore it. But for the LGBTQ+ community, the theme may resonate with them differently.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (10:22)

And in 1872 Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu pushed the envelope by publishing the Gothic novella Carmilla.

Although it wasn't the first vampire story, it was actually published 26 years before Dracula. And supposedly it was the inspiration for Bram Stoker's novel.

And basically, Carmilla is a story about a female vampire, charming young girls in the daytime hours and then draining the life out of them.

Lesbian. We're all thinking it, aren't we?

It's written in first person, and the narrator, Lucy, is a lonely teenage girl living in Austria. And as you can imagine, Lucy meets and befriends Carmilla, who turns out to be a vampire. And let's just say they were close friends.

Here's a few interesting passages from it:

"I took her hand as I spoke. I was a little shy, as lonely people are, but the situation made me eloquent, and even bold. She pressed my hand, she laid hers upon it, and her eyes glowed, as, looking hastily into mine, she smiled again, and blushed.”

And another:

“Sometimes after an hour of apathy, my strange and beautiful companion would take my hand and hold it with a fond pressure, renewed again and again; blushing softly, gazing in my face with languid and burning eyes, and breathing so fast that her dress rose and fell with the tumultuous respiration.

It was like the ardor of a lover; it embarrassed me; it was hateful and yet over-powering; and with gloating eyes, she drew me to her, and her hot lips traveled along my cheek in kisses; and she would whisper, almost in sobs, “You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one forever.” Then she had thrown herself back in her chair, with her small hands over her eyes, leaving me trembling.”

Anyway, a male protector eventually hunts down and kills Carmilla.

And as Alice Burton of BookRiot.com puts it:

“The reader feels an intense sympathy for her, despite talk of her being a monster. Reading between the lines of Laura’s narrative is almost unnecessary. You can feel the weight of the paternalistic 19th century on her as she talks about feeling “embarrassed” and “even frightened” when Carmilla professes her love.”

Bram Stoker (12:12)

And while we're on the topic of vampires, there is speculation over Bram Stoker's own sexuality.

So apparently Stoker was very private. There are no photos of him and his wife together. And supposedly they ceased having marital relations early on.

And he was friends with Oscar Wilde, who was gay but closeted. And he was also a big fan of the American poet Walt Whitman, whose own sexuality was under question.

And he wrote some letters to his idol. Here's a quick excerpt:

“How sweet a thing it is for a strong healthy man with a woman’s eye and a child’s wishes to feel that he can speak to a man who can be if he wishes father, and brother and wife to his soul.

I don’t think you will laugh, Walt Whitman, nor despise me, but at all events, I thank you for all the love and sympathy you have given me in common with my kind.”

He also wrote:

“I only hope that we may sometimes meet and I shall be able perhaps to say what I cannot write.”

And that leads us to gay horror movies.

Queer Horror Cinema in Old Hollywood (13:02)

So, you may be familiar with the 1922 silent film, Nosferatu, which is an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of Dracula.

It's directed by F.W. Murnau, who was a closeted gay man, and some accounts claim he moved from Germany to Hollywood later in life solely for the purpose of being able to live openly.

James Whale, the director of the 1931 film, Frankenstein was also openly gay. And he went on to direct Bride of Frankenstein in 1935 which is considered to have gay subtext and elements of campiness.

In the film, the antagonist, Dr Septimus Pretorius is widely believed to be gay, and supposedly, Whale told the actor to betray the character as gay, having him exhibit stereotypical mannerisms of a gay man at the time.

Now, while there were homosexual elements in these films, it wasn't necessarily socially acceptable.

The Motion Picture Production Code (13:47)

In fact, from 1934 to 1968 the Motion Picture Production Code was applied to most motion pictures.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, this set of industry guidelines for self-censorship formally legislated homosexuality out of existence in Hollywood.

And even though there was this governance in place, movies still pushed the envelope. And there are two horror movies in particular that really challenged this.

The first in 1936 is Dracula's Daughter. And basically, just to sum it up, it's about a woman who seeks the assistance of a psychologist to cure her of her quote-unquote, unnatural urges and tendencies of seducing female victims, stripping them down, admiring their bodies, and then draining the life force out of them.

The second is 1963's The Haunting, which is based on the 1959 novel, The Haunting of Hill House.

And you may recognize this name. There was the adaptation The Haunting in 1999 I believe, with Owen Wilson, which was a bomb. And then in 2018, they did the series on Netflix, The Haunting of Hill House, which was really good.

But going back to the original movie in 1963, the main character, Theodora, is a lesbian, which is subtly mentioned in the novel, but the film really plays it out.

And the portrayal of Theodora as lesbian in the movie is notable because it's one of the few Hollywood motion pictures of its day to depict a lesbian as feminine and not predatory.

And if you watched the 2018 Netflix adaptation, I'm sure you know that the character of Theodora is a lesbian in it.

And I watched both these movies. I will say Dracula's Daughter, I don't know if it was boring or old, but I, it did not keep my attention through it. I was like, half an hour in, and I was just on my phone.

I was bored. But if you like classic horror movies, it might be a good watch.

And same thing, I watched The Haunting and it was fine. They definitely alluded heavily to her being a lesbian.

You know, she and the other woman were walking around the house, and the woman was saying something that, you know, the two of them were going to be close.

And keep in mind, they were strangers at the, at that time, they had just met each other. But the one woman's like, oh, we're going to be close.

And then Theodore goes, like sisters, in kind of a sensual way, if you will.

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (15:39)

Anyway, another example of gay subtext in more modern horror movies is 1985's A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge.

Specifically, there's one scene where Freddy Krueger, he has Jesse, who's a guy, and runs his finger blades over Jesse's face and brushes the hair from his eyes, and says:

"I need you, Jesse. We got special work to do here you and me. You've got the body; I've got the brain."

And apparently, the scene is actually toned down compared to what the original plan was, because Freddie was originally going to put his blades inside Jesse's mouth during that line. Kinky.

In his book, Welcome to Our Nightmares: Behind the Scenes with Today's Horror Actors, author Jason Norman elaborates on this homoerotic subtext.

Here's a quick passage:

"The film suggested an undertone of homosexuality, starting with the protagonist's gender-neutral name. Jesse's rarely fully clothed. He and a tormentor have a sweaty wrestling match.

His coach, clad in leather, basically hits on him in a gay bar, then gets killed by Freddy, including a bare-ass spanking. Freddy emerges from Jesse's stomach in the same forced-birth technique that made the Alien films legendary."

And before I put these show notes together, I had never seen the movie, but you can bet I rushed to watch it after, and it is hella gay.

But in all seriousness, this brings us to an interesting realization.

Villainizing Flamboyancy (17:12)

In most of those horror stories and movies we talked about, the queer-coded character tends to be the antagonist. And this isn't just limited to the horror genre.

You know, there's been lots of discussions recently on how Disney Villains seem to be queer-coded since a lot of them have flamboyant characteristics.

And while they're iconic, we know that they're the bad guys. And regarding the horror genre, screenwriter Alyson Richards had an interesting quote about this.

And full disclosure, her quote reveals some spoilers for a couple horror movies, so you've been warned.

“I remember watching High Tension, which is great, [but] at the end, the big twist, is, like, crazy lesbian! And then there was another movie called What Keeps You Alive — really solid film, but the twist was one of the women in the relationship is actually a killer! I was finding that queer characters in horror, and particularly women, had two destinations. It was either getting murdered or being the psychotic killer."

And this realization actually led Richards to write the indie horror film The Retreat, which is about a lesbian couple who book a weekend trip to a cabin in the woods, only to be abducted and tortured by a mysterious figure who live streams gruesome killings of gay people on the internet for profit.

Modern Queer Representation in Horror (18:12)

And more recently, there has been a rise in horror movies that don't adhere to the stereotypical depictions of queer characters. And here's a few of them:

Knife + Heart

This movie takes place in Paris during the summer of 1979. Anne is a producer of cheap gay porn. When Lois, her editor and companion, leaves her, she attempts to get her back by making a more ambitious film with the flamboyant Archibald.

And the lead character is loosely based on Anne-Marie Tensi, a female producer who specialized in gay pornography and was active in France in the 1970s and 1980s.

The next is Freaky

This film centers on a teenage girl who unintentionally switches bodies with a middle-aged male serial killer. It's written by two openly gay screenwriters and deals with gender-bending without stigmatizing the characters for their otherness.

There's also the Fear Street Trilogy on Netflix

And these movies are actually based on the RL Stein series of the same name. And in this, a group of teenagers take on an evil force that's plagued their notorious town for centuries. And the protagonist is a lesbian.

And I really like this whole trilogy. It was pretty good.

The Hypochondriac

It's actually a biopic about me. Just kidding. No.

It's about a gay potter whose life devolves into chaos as he loses function of his body while being haunted by the physical manifestation of his childhood trauma

They/Them

This movie follows a group of LGBTQ teens who are targeted by a masked killer while attending a conversion camp. And all that sounds really scary, but unfortunately, I heard the reviews for this were pretty bad, which is disappointing. I mean, I'll still watch it, but we'll see.

And most recently, there is the movie Swallowed

Which you can guess what that's about. Just kidding. It's about two former childhood friends who must survive a horrific night in a backwards hell of drugs, bugs, and obsessive intimacy.

So, you can really see the shift in queer coding to openly gay characters over the years, but gay themes have always existed in horror.

Queer-Coded Horror Movies (19:52)

And to round out the episode, here's the list of gay horror movies I pulled from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb that you should watch this Halloween.

And I'll just say up front, I watched a good number of these, and some of them are not that good, but here they are.

Hellraiser (1987)

On the surface, it may not seem queer, but there's a lot of BDSM themes within it, which, I guess. I was trying to understand the queer subtext.

According to some accounts, they're saying that because of the time this movie was made in the, you know, 1987 it's from, a lot of the BDSM scene at that time was pretty much more so confined to the LGBTQ+ community.

And the movie also ties together a lot of themes of pain and pleasure combined. Really an uncomfortable watch.

They did just do a reboot, actually this year, and one of the main characters is gay, and he and his boyfriend are featured pretty heavily in it.

I definitely like the remake better. I thought it was a little bit more cohesive than the original, but still kind of a weird movie. So, watch it if you want to, but don't watch if you have a sensitive stomach.

There is The Covenant

Which is basically like a male version of The Craft, except not good. Unfortunately, Chase Crawford couldn't even redeem this movie.

But it's basically about, like, four high school warlocks. There's a couple shirtless scenes, you know. There's swimming matches and all that.

And there is one interesting scene where the main character and the antagonist are fighting each other, and the antagonist has him on the ground, and then, like, I don't know if it's on the lips or the cheek, but like, gives him a quick peck, and he's like, love you, brother.

So, kind of an interesting dynamic there. I don't know.

Otto or Up with Dead People from 2008

It's about a gay zombie. I watched five minutes and hated it and turned it off so that one wouldn't really recommend.

Jennifer's Body with Megan Fox

Lez be honest here, anything with Megan Fox is not going to be known for great acting. But the movie was a lot of fun.

Super campy, really, a throwback to the 2009 emo days from high school. Special place in my heart. Interesting storyline, interesting dynamic. I liked it. I would recommend it.

Stranger By the Lake in 2013

This one doesn't have as much of a Halloween feel to it, because it takes place in, I think, the summertime in France. And just prepare, there's a lot of peen in this.

There's, you know, these guys hanging out at this cruising spot, in I think the 80s or 90s, fully nude everywhere. And the main character witnesses the guy he has a crush on killing somebody, you know, drowning him in the lake.

And yet he continues to date him for the rest of the movie. So, I guess that really is just kind of a testament to the gays liking bad boys. But let's get some self-esteem, shall we?

There is The Rift from 2017

This is, I believe, Swedish, so you're gonna have to read subtitles if you watch this. Interesting concept. Didn't love the movie, though.

Basically, it's these two men, they used to date and they had broken up, but the one is having some mental health struggles, and he lives kind of like remotely in a cabin during the winter time. I think it's like his parents' cabin or whatever.

So, the ex-boyfriend goes out to stay with him because he's concerned about him, and they start noticing some weird things going on. But it never, I don't know, just it never really landed for me.

There was, it wasn't like a serial killer movie or anything like that. It was just a lot of weirdness and not super cohesive. So not a bad watch, but, you know, kind of fell flat for me.

The Top 100 Gay Horror Films on IMDb (22:49)

We also have The Top 100 Gay Horror Films on IMDb. And they definitely use this term loosely, because a lot of these were stinkers.

So, the first one I watched was Hellbent from 2004

A group of gay guys decide to party at the Halloween Festival, and a serial killer comes to, you know, slay them all and slay Daddy. I mean, killer looked hot, but it was very stereotypical. Very 2004 metrosexual. Just not great, but it was so bad, it was good. So, I mean, it's a fun watch.

The next one, Kissing Darkness

It has a 3.2 rating on IMDb, and that is generous. Brett Corrigan, the porn star, is in it. And it's not a porn film, but I mean, the acting is just as bad as a porn film.

Literally, this group of guys decide to skip LA Pride and go to a cabin in the woods for the weekend, and they get haunted by a witch.

And one of the guys is straight and doesn't like the idea that he's hanging out with all these gay guys, but within the first 30 seconds of the film, he takes off his shirt in front of in front of them.

And it's just, it's so bad. I mean. I watched this first followed by The Covenant, so it made The Covenant seem like a better movie. But both are not great.

There is the Pit and the Pendulum

Which is based off of an Edgar Allan Poe story. But it was not good. I fell asleep during it.

Like, this group of, like, college co-eds goes to this quote-unquote castle, which really is just like a regular house in a nice suburban neighborhood.

And the woman there, her father, was some psychiatrist, I think, who had, like, done some, like, terrible experiments, and she's trying to put his practice into good use.

But there's just a lot of weirdness going on, and, like, a lot of underlying homoeroticism, even though most of the guys are straight.

And then all of a sudden, the two girls start making out with each other, and the one girl suddenly forgets that she's concerned about her boyfriend who went missing and she was crying about before. And it's just a really weird concept.

And I fell asleep at the end of it, and I'm glad I did because that was like an hour and a half of my life I will never get back.

And lastly, I did not watch this one. It sounds like an interesting storyline, except for the fact that it is a porn parody.

It's called The Hole.

It is a parody of The Ring, except seven days after you watch the videotape, you turn gay. And again, sounds like a fun, like, scary movie type of concept, but literally, it says right here in the description, porn parody.

And it's also an hour and 50 minutes long, like how? I don't understand, but there you have it. I'll put the links to both these articles, the Rotten Tomatoes and the IMDB one in the show notes.

So, if you want to catch up on some gay horror movies, to get into the mood, and I mean the Halloween mood, not that mood, you could definitely do that and check it out.

Episode Closing (25:11)

And again, connecting it back to the tarot. You know, it's asking us to think about the choices we make and the impact it has on others.

And I think, you know, to tie it back to that, think about the choices you make when you choose movies because some of these are not good.

And it will have a negative impact on your life, in the sense that you will not get back that hour and a half. Really disappointing.

But you know, as always, trust yourself, trust your intuition. Know that if there's any tough times on the horizon, you can move forward with that. It will be working out in your favor.

You just need to trust your own actions and make sure that you're being fair in your choices. And I think, you know, going back to queer horror in all seriousness, it kind of shows that, you know, working through the tough times to get to things working in your favor.

We've come a long way from where horror had to be queer-coded so that you really had to look for it to know it was there to now having mainstream representation in movies, even if they're not always the best.

So, we've come a long way. Things are working out in our favor. Hopefully, you know, that the Justice card will help carry us into November, and it'll be a good month ahead.

And if you want some authentic gay representation, don't forget, my book Eleftheria is out. You can get it on Amazon.

Perfect for spooky season. There's supernatural murder mystery, there's gay, there's Greek mythology, there's scary. It's everything you could want. There's a shirtless guy on the cover.

Go buy it right now. Thank you.

Connect with A Jaded Gay (26:25)

And as always, thank you for listening.

Please remember to rate, review, subscribe. You can also send me a message rob@ajadedgay.com.

You can follow the podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter @ajadedgaypod.

You can follow me Rob Loveless on Instagram @rob_loveless, or on Twitter @robjloveless.

And remember every day is all we have, so you gotta make your own happiness.

Mmm-bye.

Outtake (27:15)

Well, according to Britannica, Horace Walpole invented the horror litera...invented the horror. Horror.

I really need to work on enunciating that, otherwise, it sounds like I'm saying whore.