We Are Not Alone (Breakfast Club) (Patreon)

I had this dream the other day that I was Alison, the day after the events of The Breakfast Club. I just ran up to Claire in the hall and kissed her. Kapow, total euphoria.

It’s interesting to me that the longer I am on E, the stronger my attraction to girls gets, and the more vivid my memories of how I felt about girls when I hit puberty become. I loved girls love stories, often found myself shipping the girls in stories I liked. I never felt like I was a boy in love with girls - the way boys acted towards girls in romances or movies just didn’t feel right. It was like a script I had to follow, not how I wanted to be. But girls who loved one another, that felt natural.

Go figure.

Anyway, I love this movie, like most folks. Alison and Brian are the two I always identified with. I watched it recently with my two partners, and man, it hits so much different after coming out. There’s so much queer subtext if you’re eyes open. I imagine, were it to be reshot today, it would be explicitly so. (Bender and Andrew are eyefucking from like the first shot, it’s ridiculous.)

If you’re having a hard day, I really recommend “When You Grow Up, Your Heart Dies” by GUNSHIP. It uses that line from the movie as a launching point for a really inspiring song that helps me find the light when it’s dark. As a kid, that line was the one that made me sob - I already felt like my parents’ had died, and I was hellbent on preventing that same loss in me.

Frankly, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for that line, I think. It gave me a mantra, y’know? “I care.”

I do, too. I care. A lot. I’d rather have my body destroyed a thousand times than let my heart die.

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Some BTS stuff: I’ve started drawing in grayscale first again. I find that the process of watching the image emerge, a little at a time, is a lot more entrancing to my brain. I slip into flow and just stay there, excited, involved, motivated. I have a lot to learn about how to transition to color from there without losing a lot of time, but it feels good to know how I “like” to draw. So here’s that early draft:

Ok. This bit of self-indulgence given its due, time to dig back into the commission backlog mines…