The latest episode of Our Opinions Are Correct is about queer horror...It's a scary time for LGBTQIA+ folks — and many of us are seeking out queer horror stories to help us get through it! To find out why, we talk to @drchucktingle, author of the upcoming Bury Your Gays. Plus what makes a soundtrack scary?

Wonderful launch event for @drchucktingle with Sarah Gailey at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego! The excellent Dr. Tingle had prepared a PowerPoint for the occasion that included dating profiles for classic slasher movie slashers and a quiz called three tingles and a lie! Looking forward to reading Camp Damascus!

P.S. my @mayakern Luna moth skirt got many compliments and I felt so fancy and put together despite getting sweaty and having atrocious hunching posture in this photo

Having recently finished Camp Damascus by tumblr's own Chuck Tingle I am:

a) genuinely astounded the poignancy of the writing (honestly, egg on my face for that one - while I haven't engaged with much of Chuck's work, what little I have read has been grounded in the kind of unabashed self-awareness that permeates impactful writing), and

b) desperately curious about the upbringing/life experiences that enabled him to write so authentically about the way your brain works when steeped in a Particular Brand of Christianity*, but also

c) determined not to engage in parasocial curiosity about an author who's entire Thing™ (aside from being pounded in the butt) is being completely anonymous in all of his professional appearances

Basically uhh... go read Camp Damascus if you're in any way interested in horror and/or stories about dealing with homophobia and religious trauma**

*which I can attest to because it was 40% "oof, I remember doing/thinking like that" and 60% "oh yeah, a friend definitely confided me about doing/thinking that"

**but also check for trigger warnings - can't think well enough to come up with them on my own but some heavy religious shit/homophobia and also body-horror stuff happens. I mean, people quoting obscure bible verses as a debate tactic was the closest thing to a trigger for me so, y'know. My trigger-identifying skills are questionable.

So I saw Suzume, and the realization I just had hit me like a brick. Suzume... like... it's a Tingler!! It's as if @drchucktingle sat down and decided to make an anime.

"Sitted on the Butt by a Sentient Bishounen Chair."

Love IS real.

my dad’s name is Luke, my mum’s name is Lisa and my middle name is Rose.

my dad’s name is Luke, my mum’s name is Lisa, and my middle name is Rose.

my dad’s name is Luke, my mum’s name is Lisa and my middle name is Rose.

Also, I just read all of the most excellent novel Camp Damascus by @drchucktingle in less than 24 hours. It’s difficult to say this, but it was better than I expected (I have read a lot of Dr Chucks stories and am familiar with his way - I have high expectations. He is a very good writer.)

As for Camp Damascus it was delicious and yummy and made my brain scream. It also proves that it’s actually very easy to write interesting and compelling autistic characters, Rose is the Best. (My autism has blessed me with an excellent memory and callback/pattern recognition. I loved the Peter Pan theming as a way of showing Rose’s internal journey and progress in her relationship with herself.)

Excellent novel, I will probably reread it soon. But for now it goes back to its place on my shelf next to Straight, as they both patiently wait to be joined by Bury Your Gays.

After detailed Lip Analysis, I have concluded that Dr Chuck Tingle and Andrew Hussie are one and the same, and that Tingle is just Hussie in a bad disguise. I refuse to elaborate.

I'm only about a chapter into Camp Damascus by @drchucktingle and I already feel seen. It's kind of overwhelming just how seen I feel from just the first chapter!

I am about one third of the way into Camp Damascus and I feel so goddamned seen. As a neurodivergent Queer girl from Montana, as the survivor of an especially heinous and weird sect of Christianity, as a child whose sin and salvation was curiosity, as someone who had to survive all her frameworks crumbling under the weight of their untruths, I feel so goddamned fucking SEEN

And to know that I can trust @drchucktingle to tell this kind of story, to acknowledge all the ways my growing up was a kind of horror story, to scare and unsettle me and do it in a way that honors his Queer protagonist and all of us who were once in her shoes? You better fucking believe that this proves love.

"You seem to know what you're talking about, so have an offer l'd like you to consider," Ally starts. "Through my own current program, I'm eligible to sign up ten other recruiters under what's called a multi-level model."

Cracking up brb

I can't get up the courage to send an ask off anon, but I hope you had a good day today and also who's your current favorite character?

Currently as of this moment it's Rose Darling, the protagonist of Camp Damscus which I am currently reading because she is just SOO 😩👌

Neurodivergent queen, making note cards with fun facts for small talk at parties, very obviously gay and shoving it down, I'm only a quarter of the way thru the book but I hope she gets out of her weird christian cult town fingies crossed for my girlie ❤️

Day 35: Angry Man Pounded By The Fear Of His Latent Gayness Over A Dinosaur Transitioning Into A Unicorn

I love how much contempt for its characters this tingler starts off with. We have the iconic man/woman couple who are always the subject of conservative boomer humor about relationships, the emotionally unavailable man and his overbearing shrill wife, who don't even like each other, let alone love or show any attraction to each other. It feels like a caricature but it actually makes more sense when the man turns out to not actually be attracted to women, honestly.

This tingler aged... interestingly. The protagonist's crisis of sexuality is brought on by his attraction to Bort Jenkins, a unicorn athlete and reality TV star who was born as a dinosaur and recently transitioned to a unicorn. Clearly a stand-in for Caitlyn Jenner. (If my rudimentary research is correct, Bort's resemblance to her deadname is because this was written in that specific time period where she had come out as trans, but not publicly revealed her name yet.) She's a controversial figure for many reasons that I'm not going to get into now, but this comes from a time when people were pretty much just laser-focused on the trans thing. Bort isn't really a character who does anything in this story anyway, more of a news item for characters to discuss.

Another present day context that really changes how I read this story is the conservative furry panic of the past few years. Yes, the "if people can identify as other genders, what if they start identifying as ANIMALS?" dumbfuck made-up problem is much older, but it's really having a moment now. This story was an absurd concept when it was written but now we have real elected officials in the USA freaking out over the idea of people "identifying as" different species, bringing this story a whole lot closer to realism than anyone would've expected in 2015. To me, the message of this one feels closer to the conservative furry strawman than it does to real trans issues, especially with the whole "you're gay regardless of whether you're into human, unicorn or dinosaur men" thing; we're dealing with an issue of species transition where gender is static. (Truth be told, I don't think it was the best move to make a comparison to a real-life trans woman and make this point in association because I've seen how people misinterpret such things... but I'm sure Tingler readers in particular understand the abstraction and that this isn't applicable directly to the real person) I feel like a version of this story could be written today with the message of "what if the conservative strawman version of the furry fandom was real and not just a way of targeting queer people without saying you're targeting queer people? Would it really be that bad or even different of a world to live in?"

I'm interested to see how Dr. Tingle tackles trans issues in the future. Despite a couple things that read as dated to me I see a good foundation here from someone who is still working through his own feelings about gender identity. I know that future tinglers will have explicitly trans characters and the perspective of a trans author who has explored and introspected on his own gender identity more thoroughly.

(Also there's a tingleverse connection in this one: mention of the "first human player in the UFL" refers to the events of "Pounded By The Gay Unicorn Football Squad")

me after one good day

I perform two public services in this world. I make moderately short people feel tall, and I evangelize to people who only know Chuck Tingle as an internet meme that his work is unironically good.

“Dr Smith’s writhing is fairly stream of consciousness, documenting a scribbled impression of each session and marking a date at the top to keep things orderly. That’s all well and good for a therapist, but within seconds of reading through the freehand pages it becomes clear something unusual is going on.

These notes seem deeply preoccupied with my connection to the church, rather than any internal connection to myself. Dr Smith also appears completely unaware of my place on the autism spectrum.

My conscious mind was ignorant to the fact that I’m gay, but even I knew I was autistic.”

Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle