can we talk about bertie and gracie for a second? because those two are a POWER COUPLE. i love them. they are too cute. LOOK AT THEM

ok but… this picture is more important than anything in my life right now to me.

I got it. Why don't we go down to the train station, pay off the porters, have them tell us the name of everybody who came into the station yesterday with the name that starts with S! Or... Excuse me, dear. I have a better idea.

Hello, fruits! This March we are running a fanwork event to shine the spotlight on Max and her community. The prompts are loose suggestions—we just hope you will take this opportunity to focus your love, time, and effort and Max and characters from her half of the story. Go forth and create !!!

Tag your works with #marchmaxness23 or #maxmadness23 and we will share and save them here!

im obsessed with uncle bertie. he’s such a handsome guy.

one thing i love in aloto is how we see, from episode 1, max apologizing to her friends and family when she’s out of line. to me, it makes the moments when max doesn’t apologize for herself even more meaningful. the best example i can think of is how she apologizes to bert for hurting his feelings. but then, when he asks why she isn’t wearing the suit jacket he made, she unapologetically tells him that she’s wearing it the way that feels right to her. max just can’t help but own who she is, good and bad, even when she’s uncertain...and i love that about her!!!!

alright more aloto thoughts:

thinking a lot about the role of mothers and motherhood in a league of their own and specifically how max and carson each negotiate their mothers’ and families’ legacies.

max sees the life that her mother has planned for her - the church, the salon, the entrepreneurial spirit, and the sense of pragmatism - and feels a mixed sense of fear, anger, confused gratitude, guilt, and ultimately rejection and invisibility.

and then bert shows her this entirely different life that is possible, with these shadows and edges that remind her of her mother but a warmth and comfort that she’s always craved. and, bert shows her this previously unfathomable life lived with true authenticity.

carson fears, deep down, that her destiny might be to follow in her mother’s footsteps - to run away and to destroy her husband in the process. but in some ways, i have wondered if she was also a possibility model - even if it ruined her family, she knew it was an option to run.

and her resistance to the idea of becoming a mother was so subversive in its own right, even before greta changed her world. within the box of being a small-town housewife in idaho in the late 30s/early 40s, that must be among the most radical things one can do.

and then you have maybelle, a mother and in many ways a mother to the peaches, but also ally to her queer teammates perhaps without truly knowing it. and clance, who clearly admires toni and sees her as a lighthouse as she prepares navigates marriage and pregnancy.

and you have edgar, who deeply respects his wife and also adores his daughter, caught in the middle of these two powerful women and trying to sort out who he is going to be for each of them as they navigate their dynamic. and carson’s father, who is merely absent.

anyway i love queering family and parenthood and i can’t wait to see where these themes go next in this story.

what's better than this? guys being dudes

This man is a very talented dancer. Also some real ALOTO Uncle vibes

uncle bert and aunt gracie are such well developed characters! i love them so much. they are such a gorgeous couple and you can see their love for each other on screen so clearly. the way that they take care of max too! the haircut scene! my heart melts every time they’re on screen.

Queer TV

This is a strange time to be writing an editorial on queer representation. While the past year has seen an incredible uptick in queer stories being told with humor and heart on the small screen, 2022 has seen a record high of 238 proposed anti-LGBTQIA+ bills in the US—nearly half of them targeting trans folks. Representation is important, though, and demand for more queer stories is growing (and, to some degree, being met), with a lot of good books and comics making it to our screens. With that in mind, think of this as your selective chronological tour of all the times we won in the TV landscape of the last year (October 2021–October 2022).

Our dataset year started off with the much-awaited adaptation of Robert Jordan’s fantasy epic, Wheel of Time. With such extensive source material (15 books if you count the prequel, which is where the seeds of the sapphic storyline in Rafe Judkins’ adaptation are to be found), the viewership, generally speaking, was divided into book fans and show-only fans, and both camps shitposted and meme’d and reviewed with abandon. 

The biggest queer-centric show we saw in the last year was the adaptation of @aliceoseman’s comic Heartstopper (@heartstoppercomic). Co-created by Alice Oseman themself, this adaptation was very sensitive to the much-loved source material. And, being native to Tumblr, these characters were bound to be welcomed with open arms when they hit the screen in an ebullient explosion of queer joy. 

A run-down of the past year would be incomplete without the incredible queerdos of the Revenge who swashbuckled their way into our hearts. We’re referring, of course, to Our Flag Means Death’s Gentleman Pirate and his merry band of (living-wage-paid, no less!) shipmates. Your favorites included genderqueer Jim ‘not-a-fucking-mermaid’ Jimenez and Oluwande, Lucius Sprigg and Black Peter, Frenchie who just hates cats, and The Swede, who keeps his heart but loses his teeth. Then, of course, we have Blackbeard himself, or simply Ed, who is struggling with his identity (villain or softboi).

Based on the story by @veschwab and produced by @belletristbooks, First Kill was another adaptation that fans of vampire stories got very excited about. Add to that the fact that this was very much a sapphic enemies-to-lovers scenario between hunter Calliope and young vampire Juliette, and the pre-show excitement was palpable. The post-season disappointment even more so as fans turned to their dashes to vent about the lack of good lesbian and wlw representation in 2022’s TV landscape.

Where the cancelation of First Kill left us reeling, the Rockford Peaches from A League of Our Own came in clutch and soothed our sapphic souls. You love the show which you affectionately shortened, in good old Tumblr fashion, to a silly little acronym: aloto. Whether you’re in it for the gal pal aesthetics, the butch energy, or Uncle Bert, or some good old fashioned baller drama, there truly was something for all of your wlw whimsies here. Let’s go, Peaches!

@neilgaiman’s The Sandman series finally came out to much acclaim, and came out so gay that armchair reviewers of the homophobic sort really struggled to wrap their minds around quite how gay it is. We got pansexual serial killing Corinthian! Pansexual, demon-hunting, women-kissing Johanna Constantine! Some very loaded moments between Morpheus and Hob Gadlin! This is what dreams are made of (sort of)!

This whole list would be nothing, nada, a crumb of zilch whizzing around a black hole, if it weren’t for the writers who created many of these stories in the first place. So thank you to them. And to you, Tumblr, for celebrating the good and standing up for each other through another year. Here’s to a kinder 2023. 

The ALOTO news are making me really sad.

I’m not even sure I’m happy with 5 episodes? Like what are they gonna do in 5 episodes? This is barely enough time to like reunite Gretson? To see Max play professional baseball?

And what about the rest of the characters? There are so many excellent side characters in this show that I wonder what they’re gonna do with all of them in just 5 episodes.

Also there were so many cliffhangers/half told stories… what are they gonna do with them? How did Charlie react to that kiss? Will Clance be able to tell Guy she’s pregnant? Will Greta and Carson reunite? Will we learn more about Lupe’s daughter? Will she tell Jess? What’s up with Shirley? How was her off season back home? Are Esther and Max going steady? Will we see Vi and Eddie again? What about Uncle Bert?

and another thing about aloto

the importance of hair and the hair journeys that carson but mostly max go through is so important to me. gender expression through hair is shown as not frivolous or girly but integral to self actualization

the intimacy of greta cutting carson’s hair. carson telling lupe she doesn’t think she looks that different after the haircut and lupe telling her she does. jess only being shown with her hair down once in a scene that shows her extreme discomfort with it and then only ever having it back in a braid from then on out.

max asking if she could pass as a man if she cut all her hair off at the beginning of the show, then very clearly burying that thought deep down when shit started getting real for her. max freaking out after seeing uncle bert for the first time and running to her mom’s salon to get her hair straightened and styled more feminine. later, uncle bert being the one to cut it short in the way that suits her best, and even then it taking a bit longer for max to learn to wear her hair confidently.

and especially seeing the black hair salon as simultaneously a safe space for max as a black woman but also a representation of being forced to fit gender and sexuality norms that she cannot as a queer woman… so nuanced so well done so honestly written

Aloto fic ideas I probably won't have time to write but really want to:

1. In 1962, The Peaches, Max, Clance, Uncle Bert, etc, react to the decriminalization of homosexuality in Illinois.

2. Greta never returned to the peaches bc her career in New York took off like a rocket. Carson remains with the Peaches as catcher/coach. They meet again after the league folds in 1954.

3. One night, a tipsy Jo asks Maybelle to dance. A conversation about friendship and acceptance occurs, but Maybelle is holding back feelings that are getting too big to contain.

4. OC story about a newly traded player taking Jo' s place in the new season being met with some mistrust and stiffness from the others. Fish out of water has to try and make friends with new teammates (who are missing Jo) after failing to mesh with her previous team.

Max Madness: Week 1

Romantic relationships! Do you like Max/Esther? Clance/Guy? Toni/Edgar? Bert/Gracie? Some other pairing you see coming out of left field? Now's the time to celebrate them and share the love!