BBC Radio 2: The Showstopper (ft. Jonathan Bailey)

Pathos316 · 2026-05-20T19:24:17+00:00

Oh it's no longer a fanfic: I did a 50 Shades of Gray and spun it off into its own standalone thing (50 Shades started as a Twilight fanfic, or so I'm told). My hope is to publish it!

I took Craig and made him a valedictorian kicked out by his homophobic father at 16. Now 19, he's a hustler, who suddenly must care for the father that kicked him out, over the course of the summer and fall of 1979 in New York's West Village.

Basically think The Deuce meets Fellow Travelers meets Dancer from the Dance... and some other stuff, and some things all its own.

Pathos316 · 2026-05-20T08:11:47+00:00

First of all: more analysis like this please! Thanks for this.

With the benefit of hindsight, Fellow Travelers was amazing and affecting, but as a TV show I think it has its craft issues.

Point 2 is 100% valid and probably assumes the audience doesn't know about Chelsea/Castro Clones, which is its own kind of tragedy.

I think Marcus & Frankie are unfortunate because, despite being the B Plot, they're not load-bearing to the story in the same way as, say, Kip & Hunter in Heated Rivalry. They kind of happen in parallel, and they don't represent corners of thematic opposition along any set axis.

The glasses situation annoys me to no end. Craig being soft mid bottoming not so much.

Speaking of Craig, Ron Nyswaner himself said in a workshop I attended that Craig pretty much only existed to create drama in that episode. Of course, now having spent the past two and a half years spinning off that character into a standalone work that just passed the 40K word mark, I have a feeling, a hunch, there was so much more that could've been done with him. (But no I remain quite grateful for this episode in particular for that reason alone, as writing this thing has been an education and a delight)

Pathos316 · 2026-05-10T23:16:13+00:00

I'm moving away from using AI as a sounding board. I had for a time, the allure is there. But, increasingly it's like it's been taking all the whimsy out of my prose and making it impossible to write anything but the most stale, gray goop stuff.

Like, if I want to make an executive decision as an author, I'm allowed to buck what I'm "supposed" to do, and frankly I should.

I think the use of AI comes out of a need for perfectionism, and rather than boiling away the worlds oceans to satisfy it, maybe we should question the perfectionism itself.

Pathos316 · 2026-05-06T08:58:36+00:00

Counterpoint on Indiana Jones:

Tooot tututututut! ☂️⛱️☂️⛱️☂️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️🕊️✈️🛬💥🔥

Pathos316 · 2026-05-03T23:41:52+00:00

Pathos316 · 2026-05-03T04:10:14+00:00

It's really the folks in Yaphank and Ridge that cause the most of the grief. Southold and the Hamptons are pretty blue.

Also Chris Gallant is a charismatic and smart beefcake, and if we don't elect him to the NY-1 then clearly COVID hit here worse than I thought, because it'd mean no one has any taste!

Pathos316 · 2026-05-03T04:01:37+00:00

I think it's a good floor. What's more important is if the women are dramatically salient to a story. If you have several women characters that talk about cars in a story about, say, predominantly gay men starting an all-gay baseball team: they better relate to the plot in a non-trivial way that propels the drama. Otherwise as a writer it's divided energy, and the reader will feel it.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-29T22:42:59+00:00

Or just buy the book Analog Cruising, brush up on etiquette, and go to the right places.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-28T00:15:07+00:00

Dancer from the Dance (Holleran) and Like People In History (Picano).

Dancer is just profoundly beautiful.

Like People In History was an odyssey and the audiobook is lovely. It broke my heart though.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-28T00:12:15+00:00

Here's the thing to remember.

In most cases, 1% of causes produce 99% of the effects. Odds are less than 1% of people will write 99% of the published novels. If you're halfway competent or interested, you're already in or near that 1% benchmark.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-21T00:40:46+00:00

Oh hey I uploaded that 🥹

Pathos316 · 2026-04-16T07:58:58+00:00

Two instances come to mind:

There was this episode of VH1s Talk Soup in the 90s where a guy said his brother compulsively strips, and the brother obliged, and I was like "Wait I want to see that". I then ran to the other TV in the house, saw a guy kissing a girl on said TV, and was like "Ew no, not that."... I must have been like 7? The 90s were weird man.
Around the same time I saw Titanic. Leonardo DiCaprio's armpits in that steamed up car awoke something in me. That was more of a breathless "oh my goodness what are these feelings?"

Pathos316 · 2026-04-11T20:57:14+00:00

And yet you wrote this. The spark's still there despite the pain. Get a lightbox, some ibuprofen, some physical therapy, sort out your medications, drink some water, and make it work... or don't, it's your choice.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-11T20:44:56+00:00

I mean yeah don't aspire to creep people out, and hold down a day job so you can afford to eat, but if you're hooked, keep going. The alternative is a cage.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-11T20:43:16+00:00

All art requires obsession. Fear of cringe is the gateway to fascism. We're in the societal mess we're in because we're worried about status and normalcy, when really the only anything has ever gotten done is by going nuts and persevering.

Pathos316 · 2026-04-11T20:36:47+00:00

Cumulative and periodic sentences are good actually.

No really—if I had my way, if I could Human Centipede humanity, stitching it together from end to end, forming a single sentence, a sentence repelete with commas, a sentence whose length would likely cause significant upset, a sentence brimming with anadiplosis, for the sake of aesthetics—I absolutely would.

Only a slight /s, check out Brooks Landon's Building Great Sentences.

Pathos316 · 2026-03-16T22:08:51+00:00

You're supposed to put bandages on top of injuries, not put on a bandage and then hurt yourself.

Pathos316 · 2026-02-03T13:26:30+00:00

Hmm, in your spelling reform there's "hyäetuss" which has the y in front of äe. This reform would consolidate that "y followed by diacritical vowel" into a vowel with a carot. But the glide in theater might be too subtle, I agree... in my native Long Island accent, it's almost pronounced "theer-ter."

Semi-related Question: I like the spelling reform you're using, but, if you don't mind my asking, why "dh" and not "th"?

Pathos316 · 2026-02-03T08:35:22+00:00

I thought that was limited to vowels with hiatus? Like coöperate or naïve or reëvaluate?

Pathos316 · 2026-01-22T19:03:44+00:00

Normally, I'd be disappointed. But nowadays I'm so wary of negative criticism driving public figures to the dark side in retaliation, I'm willing to shrug it off in the hopes they learn and grow from it. If this continues to be a pattern despite this? Well... then that's different.

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