Teacher, artist, and queer badass Lanni Maszerowski (they/them) joins host Emily Hessney Lynch for a fun book chat about Baby Blue by Bim Eriksson. Baby Blue is a queer, dystopian graphic novel about a fascist state that polices negative emotions and one twenty-something girls' journey to find her people and a place to belong. We found the novel surprisingly campy (the Peacekeepers are basically a deranged swim team!) and loved the surreal, unsettling, minimalist-but-also-maximalist art style. We discuss what aspects of the book seem strikingly, horrifyingly similar to our current society, how there's nothing wrong with mispronouncing a word because you've only read it, and the importance of weird art by real humans. At the end of the episode, we share our recommendations for more queer, dystopian reads, and some other wholesome (or unhinged) queer books you might enjoy!

Note: Our discussion is spoiler free until 23:35. If you'd like to skip the spoilers, fast forward to 36:13, where we share our book recommendations.

Links:

• Browse Lanni's joyful, colorful pins, prints, stickers, apparel, and more on their shop.
• Baby Blue official playlist
• If you'd like to get a card from the Queer Liberation Library, you can do so here.
• Check out Lanni's Instagram for more of their art, educational content, and book recommendations.
• Follow Emily on Instagram and check out her business, Serve Me the Sky Digital, if you need a social media strategist, speaker, or writer!

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Baby Blue by Bim Eriksson
• Hum by Helen Phillips
• All of Us Murderers by KJ Charles
• Lanni's recommendations: Boys Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky; On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden; Be Kind My Neighbor by Yugo Limbo
• Emily's recommendations: The Thick and The Lean by Chana Porter; Tell Me Yours I'll Tell You Mine by Kristina Ten (and check out her episode of the podcast here!); Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata; Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah; The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa; Parable of the Sower graphic novel; Animal Farm graphic novel; The Handmaid's Tale graphic novel; Bunny & We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad; Shapes of Love by LV Peñalba; Railed: A Why Cho-Cho-Choose Romance by Zane E. Stori

To support the show, leave us a one-time (or recurring!) tip. We'll send you a sticker to say thanks!

We're a proud member of the Lunchador Podcast Network. Our logo is by Tenderchomps Art.

Mentioned in this episode:

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One thing about me as a reader is after I've read something, it basically all leaves my brain immediately.

It's wild. I think you and I both read so much that I'd be like, I loved that book. What happened?

Right? Right!

Who were the characters?

Every book club meeting, I'm like, okay, the main character's name was. Let's look in the book.

Hello, and welcome to It's A Lot, a podcast about things that are a lot. Normally I'd be reading a long introduction about empathy and honest conversations, but tonight we're just here to have fun and talk about a book.

So I'm your host, Emily Hessney Lynch, and guest tonight is Lonnie Maszerowski. Welcome, Lanni.

Hi. Thanks so much for having me.

I'm excited we're going to be telling all of you about Baby Blue by Bim Eriksson. But first, I want to do a little more intro of Lanni.

Can you tell our listeners a little bit about who you are, kind of your day job, your art, all that good stuff?

Well, my name is Lanni. I use they/them pronouns. I am an elementary school teacher by day and I say by night. I am an artist and, and an illustrator.

I make a lot of bright and colorful art, a lot of content about things I'm passionate about. Queer liberation, disability rights, books, education, all that sort of stuff.

And if you see Protect trans Kids stickers on cars around town, those are probably from Lanni.

Yeah, and T shirts and all kinds of cool merch.

I'll make sure to put your stuff in the show notes so people can find it.

Appreciate you. Thank you.

What kind of books do you usually read, Lanni?

I am almost exclusively reading queer books. I do dabble in some. Okay, so mostly it was romance, queer romance.

When I, like got back into reading as an adult and now I feel like I'm kind of like burn out by romance. I feel like it's gotten very repetitive. There's a lot of awesome queer romances out there.

Most of the stuff I've been reading and we've talked about before is like the Regency era stuff, like the modern times are making me too depressed, I guess. So I've actually been reading a lot of horror and speculative fiction instead of and that's kind of what drew me to this book.

So that was pretty awesome.

I feel like this was right up both of our alleys. Baby Blue.

I do read a lot of graphic novels. So the list you sent me originally had a lot of books that I'd already read, which were awesome.

But it was cool to see something new and unique that I hadn't known much about before.

That was one of our criteria, right? We both wanted to read something new to us.

Yes. Yep.

So let's talk about how we picked this book. What was it that drew us to Baby Blue?

Well, for me, I had seen it on Instagram. Always people are doing like book roundups and stuff.

So there was a queer graphic novel roundup that I had like saved that had the book on it and it mentioned it was like dystopian, which is kind of what I've been into with the horror and the speculative fiction. So I was like, that's going to be a winner for me.

The cover is really eye catching too. Let's describe it for our listeners. What does the cover look like?

Okay, so first of all, it's shiny, like a beautiful Pokemon card. I got the ebook, so I was bummed. And then I came in person right now and saw, and it's gorgeous. It's got a character on the front.

We don't see a face, it's blank. Some sort of orientation on the head. I thought it was bunny ears at first, but I think it's like a stylized bow. But it's just.

It's kind of like campy and minimalist, but also like maximalist at the same time.

And the figure is very androgynous too. Like, it's really hard to tell is this man or a woman or like, is this some person with a cigarette?

It seems that they're smoking and yeah, very shiny. So very eye catching cover. It almost looks like an album cover or something.

It does. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, totally.

But that definitely caught my eye in the dystopian thriller aspect. And then I'll go ahead and I'll just read from the jacket the description of the book so people have a sense of what we're going to be talking about.

So "in the not so distant future, 20 something Betty lives in a fascistic society that menacingly polices mental health. When she's caught crying in public, the peacekeepers take her to an Orwellian health facility to control her emotions.

There she meets the defiant Berina, who opens her eyes to an alternative reality, the Resistance.

If Betty can navigate a rollicking underworld where all manner of queerness is celebrated, she just might have a chance to strike back against the regime. Deliciously twisted, fiercely contemporary, and backed by a Swedish pop soundtrack, this is a dynamic graphic novel debut by Bim Erickson.

A vital manifesto about the need to express your unique identity in a chillingly conformist world."

I just love blurbs. They work so hard to condense the whole thing into a paragraph. And they do such a good job. I thought that was a really good blurb.

Yeah, I feel like that does not misrepresent it at all

I forgot there was a playlist that goes along with this book. I never gave it a listen.

I need to find an actual playlist. There were so many song lyrics referenced.

There is a playlist! I was on Goodreads and people mentioned the playlist.

Okay, I need to find the playlist. That sounds awesome because I don't know if I could quite pick out what the songs were. Did you notice?

No.

Of them.

That was. It was too subtle for me.

I was like, oh, that sounds like a banger. I'm sure this is a great song, but I have no idea what it is.

Yeah, no, if we had more time, we could totally do that.

Would you say the book lived up to your expectations? Like, what were you thinking it would be like going into it?

So that's kind of funny because when I read the description from the roundup post that I mentioned, I was thinking it as more like a very dark story. And then paired with, you know, the graphic novel format, I was like, that sounds really cool.

But the topic, I guess, in general was dark, but it was presented in a way that was not. Not light, but kind of. Actually there's a lot of camp in it. So I think that made it a little more hopeful.

Definitely doesn't have an ending, obviously, and we'll talk about it, that, like, everything's gonna be better, but there's some hope to it.

What would you describe as campy about it?

Oh, well, the art style. The. Just like the whole fact that these. These people are just. If you.

Okay, this is going to be hard to describe because the graphic element of this story is so important to the story. It's not just the text, which is obvious, it's a graphic novel, but, like, the art style in this. In this graphic novel is very unique.

And the way the characters are presented is. Is very specific. And that really portrays a lot about kind of the content and the feelings of it.

I read a lot of YA graphic novels and I know you do too, and I feel like a lot of them have similar art styles where it's kind of like a warm color palette and it feels very happy. And I mean, that's what sells right now. And this is like. So, like, not you. We're calling it maximalist, but it's also a muted color palette. It's like blues and whites and not.

Almost, which kind of fits with the medical side of things and, you know, the policing. But at the same time, you're right. There's this. I'm gonna say that word again, maximalist quality to it.

There's some elements, too, that are, like, almost surrealist seeming. Because you're like, is this really happening?

Like, I just flipped open to the scene where she's, like, at the bar with the guy who kind of picks her up at the plant shop. This isn't really a spoiler. I think it happens early enough that I'll talk about it.

But he is kissing her after, like, encouraging her to do some drugs that she didn't really want to do, but she's trying to be fun. And her. There's just like. I don't know if it's hair or noodles streaming out of her face. And she's like, no, I don't want to.

And, like, all of this stuff is coming off her.

But you're like, is this, like, a metaphor? Is it real?

Yeah. Like, I could see that's exactly how she felt in the moment.

And, like, how do you describe that in words, but also, like, what is literally happening? I don't know. Right.

You and your book club kind of introduced me to surrealism. I hadn't read a lot of it before we met, and the more I see it, I'm like, oh, it's not just, like, doing it to be weird.

Which is kind of what I thought at first. I was like, oh, but that. Especially that scene that you just pointed out. You really feel it by looking at it.

Because when you think about it, emotions do have, like, a visual accompaniment to them. I'm sure we can talk about, like, the masks that the. What do we want to call them? Not revolutionists.

Queer friends. The underground.

The Underground folks.

The Resistors. Yeah, the Resistors.

That's the R word I was looking for. Resistors.

I don't know what you call them.

They were these. These masks that are almost surreal in a way, because at first I didn't really get that it was a mask.

I thought it was just the way that the characters were drawn.

I thought Berina was literally a bunny. Like a bunny human.

And I was like, cool.

I love bunnies.

But then I started to realize, oh, it's like visual metaphor for masking your emotions. It's also a way to protect your identity, that you have the anonymity.

The other thing with Barina when she takes off the mask, I thought that was so interesting. Like seeing her hair spill out of it. I'm like, how does that fit under the bunny mask?

Right. And then you're like oh. And that's when I started thinking it was more of a metaphor for a mask.

But it fits because the whole story's about how emotions are dangerous and they're what's. The government is worried that the emotions are what's ruining our society.

And no one can see your expression with the mask.

Exactly. So you don't know if you're happy or sad. And so it's not just a way to be discreet, but it's protecting you from all that.

And the fear of surveillance technology also reminded me of the book, hum, we read with book club.

Yes, yes.

The Helen Phillips books. The premise of that book is this woman has had her face like surgically altered to avoid detection by surveillance technology.

And she later finds out that that was a test to see how fast it could overcome that and identify her again.

I know the speculative stuff, the. What's it called when it's like, you know, this is what the future is going to be like.

It's prescient.

Is that how you say that word?

I think so.

All this time I've been calling it prescient, but it's one of those words where I've just read it.

I'd be wrong too.

Prescient is how I've always said it. Yeah.

As a kid I said albeit all-bite. Until an English teacher told me it was all-be-it. I was like, huh.

I would always been told to like. Mispronouncing a word because you only read it is like totally fine.

Yeah.

Because it just shows that you read a lot.

It was like all the American kids saying Hermione wrong. When Harry Potter first started getting popular, like no one knew how to say it until the movies came out.

Yeah.

Are there any particular like panels or visual moments in the book that really stood out to you?

I would say just like first, I guess it would be like the, I'm gonna call it like a Dollhouse aspect to the whole thing. Very like toy, like, like almost like Barbies, but. But not.

I really like that it feels as you're reading it's like everything feels a little off, but like in a way that kind of like presses on you a little bit. The limited color palette we talked about. I really like that. I think it makes it look so different than a lot of stuff that's out right now.

And I'm Trying to think if there's like, a specific image. Was there one for you?

I was thinking of when they eventually go to the little, like, hideout in the woods and they go into, like, a suitcase.

Yes.

And they go underground and through a tunnel. And then they come up and they go through, like, the mouth of a clown or something that was wild and come out. And I was just like, what? What?

Yeah.

Why is this, like, circus stuff in the middle of the woods? Like, I don't know.

I totally forgot about that. That's a really good one.

And there's never any more context or explanation given for that either.

There's.

I also was like, the suitcase didn't seem that far away from the clown. Like, what was the point of going underground for like, 50 yards or something? But just. It was really cool.

Yeah.

And then, like, inside the house, it almost seemed like a mansion. I don't know how big it was, but there's like a lot of cool art on the walls and plants and it's just like, very much a vibe. Yeah.

Cool. Queer hangout.

Yeah. I wanna live there!

Any queer person would want to be there. Exactly.

There are a lot of cool scenes. Like when two of the girls are playing tennis in their masks and stuff.

Yes. And you're like, why are they playing tennis? Who cares? They're just doing something awesome. I'm like, scrolling through.

I don't like ebooks that much, especially for a graphic novel.

Like, I think I read the one that you're going to mention later, the neighbor one, on my phone. And I kept having to zoom in to read all the panels.

And then I would zoom in and be like, oh, dear God, what's that?

You zoomed into the wrong spot. I'm trying to buy less books, but when I need a book really quick. Libby is just so helpful, especially when.

You can get so many holds of so many different cards. Right. If we want to have a tangent and tell our listeners how to do that.

Yeah. So Emily taught me how to get, like, all these different library cards.

And now I have library cards for Buffalo and New York City and Queens and Brooklyn.

And, like, I can take out so many books, which is great because as a person who works from like 7am usually to 7pm I can never go to the library except on Saturdays. So it's been really nice to have access to library books at a time where I am available.

And anyone who doesn't have the Queer Liberation Library, that's also a really good resource.

They have such good books.

And then it's nice because I don't have to like go through the filters and click LGBTQ, because that's what I click literally every time I'm on Libby, because I just know all the books are queer, which is awesome.

And then if listeners are not in New York State, you can get library cards to libraries in states and places you don't live in. Sometimes they charge a little bit of money for that.

I think New York City, either Brooklyn or NYPL, like any teenager in the country, can get a digital library card because they know the access is being cut off for people in so many places. So if you want to digitally read queer books, you can do that.

That's awesome. That's good to know.

Let's talk about the Peacekeepers outfits. So who are the Peacekeepers? Let's explain that concept first.

Well, so the whole idea of the book is like the government has basically outlawed emotions. So you mentioned that she's caught like crying in public and then she's brought to this basically hospital and given a treatment.

The Peacekeepers, though, they're wearing the strangest outfits. They're dressed like an insane swim team. Do they have goggles on? Am I remembering that correctly?

They do have goggles on. It's so perplexing. And I think they all wear skirts.

Yeah. Which is awesome. That makes me think of Star Trek.

And like swim caps.

Yeah. Okay, so it is like a deranged swim team.

Yeah.

In Star Trek, which is supposed to take place in the future, people of all genders wear skirts. Not a lot of them, but there's been some episodes where male presenting people were wearing skirts. And I always loved that growing up.

So I think it's awesome that every, every Peacekeeper is just cool. It's so interesting that they're the cops

and the social norm is like a little gender bent that these people can all wear skirts and it doesn't matter what their gender is. But at the same time, like any non conforming people are also like singled out and sent to treatment. So very interesting.

It's funny because like the, the way they're presented is almost like in a funny way, but at the same time they're such creepy, like unsettling people when you think about it. So that's kind of interesting. Double look at them.

Yeah. Another interesting thing about the art style is that a lot of the characters have very tiny heads on very large bodies.

And I didn't know what to make of that choice either.

So I was. When I read books with my students, a lot of times they will bring up like the illustration style, they'd be like, why do they draw like that?

And I always say every artist has their own personal style and this is the artist's style. But at the same time I'm like, I have no idea. That's just how they draw it.

So I am curious because I don't know any of this author's other like art projects or if any other books or anything. So I'm not sure if this is like a common style for them or obviously. Was that like an intentional choice?

Yeah, I assumed it was her style.

But I also wonder if it's something about like they don't want the citizens to have many thoughts in their heads and they're trying to minimize your emotions. So it's like a tiny head and you're just a body moving through space. I don't know.

That's an interesting thought.

Literally just popped into my head. So it could be totally wrong.

Who knows?

Well, we can talk a little bit about like the treatment and other things and then maybe we'll get into more spoilery territory. So we'll will. Will be spoiler free right now. But let's talk about the treatment that happens in the hospital or the facility.

What do they actually do to people who are brought in there?

Well, they're like hooked up to an IV and you're thinking they're probably getting like, I don't know, like lithium or something. Something heavy that's like whacking them out. Because when they're hooked up, they like have no consciousness within what's going on around them.

But then I totally forgot that that baby was like, what's her name before she changes it?

Betty.

Betty!

Betty is like immune almost.

Yeah, she. She knows what's going on still. And that's kind of like what triggers the, the escape and all of that.

I didn't really consider the fact that she was immune to it. I wonder what that was about.

The explanation for how the treatment works. They explained that it's basically like a chemical non permanent lobotomy.

Botomy. Yes, I totally forgot about that.

Which is terrifying because you're not really consenting to go into the hospital in the first place. They just see you, like literally.

We can talk about a moment that happens very early in the book and I guess this would be a content warning as well for suicide. But her friend steps in front of a train, dies, and then she's crying and that's. They start menacing her.

And I think it's later that she gets taken in. I don't Think she gets taken in right in that moment?

No. They like filed a report or something. Yeah.

For like non normal behavior or something when she's like crying when someone just died in front of her who she cared about like. crazy. And then she gets taken in. She has the drip given to her. And later Berina explains you're the chemical. Non permanent lobotomy.

She says "the drip anesthetizes the nerve cells between the upper right part of the frontal lobe and the rest of the brain to suppress our negative emotions."

So that just made me think of Alan Turing and his. He had a forced chemical castration and that idea that like, because he was gay, he was a danger to society, so this was the punishment.

So there's definitely a parallel there, I think.

Yeah. And it seems like some of this stuff is so farfetched, perhaps, that the government would do it, but also.

But forced chemical castration, that seems pretty farfetched.

And forced sterilizations have happened in history as well. Like there is definitely precedent for it. It's not that crazy to think it could happen.

That was kind of my thought, like reading this entire book, like when the prime minister is giving his talk, like he's talking like he cares about these people, it's like every time a legislator talks about how, like they're just trying to protect kids from transgenderism, like they. They frame everything as protection instead of like control or punishment. And that's what kind of freaks me out the most, I think.

And they're actually like fearmongering about something no one needs to be protected from.

Right.

Yeah. That prime minister speech was like so well done. I wasn't expecting to get something like that in this story.

I thought it was just gonna be about Betty and her life. So I had bookmarked that to talk about too.

Yeah.

He talks about how a few years ago, "it was popular within a certain political camp to paint Sweden as a society in flames." We didn't talk about how. This is a Swedish author, so this is in translation. It's her first book translated to English.

The Prime Minister says "there was talk of anti democratic forces, mass unemployment, declining academic outcomes. That was a false image, a narrative spread by our political opponents." Have we heard that before?

So real.

And they go on to talk about the people are watching it and saying, oh, he silences all of his opponents, like, this is just the way it goes. And he says that we have tougher political leadership now.

So Swedes are the strongest, most capable people in the world, but we need to be guided, just like all People, it's just.

It's just. Okay, So I don't really know anything about Sweden. I'm not really up on a lot of political stuff outside of the US and countries we work a lot with.

It's such a very ethnocentric country to begin with.

I know now I feel awful, but I don't really know. I know that in that area of Europe, it is definitely safer to be queer than a lot of like, especially like the United States right now.

But I don't know specifics about it. So this has kind of made me want to learn more about that. Are they dealing with similar issues that the United States is in regards to government?

I know, like, all the Scandinavian countries are always on indexes of the happiest countries in the world too. You think like, oh, things are great over there. But I know that, like, these far right ideas have been on the rise all across the world, so.

And I feel like. And maybe that's ethnocentric, but I feel like a lot of the things that happen in the United States impact the queer people and all minority groups, really, in the rest of the world, just because we have so much power and control.

I think another interesting part of the Prime Minister's speech, he goes on to say, is that "bad fruit can grow even on healthy branches, and we must ensure that the rot doesn't spread." Yeah, I feel like that's such common language. Like, I think of it as something like pastors say about queer kids at the church or something.

Really? Okay.

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like I've heard it in a lot of different places that. Does it remind you of anything in particular?

Like, just the idea that there's things about, you know, being queer or trans that aren't human nature that, you know, when you talk about, like conversion camps and like, you know, even just like not conversion counseling, but like anti queer counseling, there's probably a name for it, like family. Some. I don't know, they probably have some.

Fucked up family therapy.

Yeah, there we go. I was trying to think of something that sounds positive, but we know it's not, but I don't know what they would call it.

I think in that vein, the Prime Minister goes on to say, "they can't expect the same civil rights as good citizens."

Oh, my God, that part made me like.

And all the resistance girls are like, all we want is to exist. Which sounds like queer people and trans people in America right now. Like, you're literally not asking for anything special.

You're not doing anything wrong. Like, you're not a bad citizen. You're just a person alive.

Yeah.

Leave me alone. Yeah, it's wild.

That really. That really hits. Yeah.

Let's maybe get into some spoiler territory. Absolutely. Is there anything in particular you want to talk about in the spoiler territory?

The spoiler territory? I mean, I obviously want to talk about, like, the ending. Just the fact that it's very open ended. Not open ended, but, like, there's a.

There's a lot that could happen after it and the author doesn't make that clear. And I kind of like that because I feel like it could have gone down like a very, like, everything's fucked route.

Yeah.

Or everything's gonna be great route. And instead it went like, okay, we got some work to do now.

Right.

Which is kind of like where we're at anyways. So I like. I like that they made that choice instead of going down something more simple. I.

Right, let's rewind a little and give a little bit of, like, basic plot summary for anyone who Maybe people are just reading it and need a refresher or they haven't read it and they just want to hear about it. So Betty is our main character, like we talked about. She gets brought in, gets the IV drip for her emotions that she's been expressing.

There's a scene where she goes out with a guy that we mentioned that kisses her without her consent. And that's when she meets Barina, who's one of the other main characters and wears the bunny mask.

And Berina saves her from the guy who's such a dick.

Yes.

At first I was like, are we supposed to like him? Because one of his texts was like, "I won't take no for an answer."

As soon as I read that, I was like, oh good, we don't like him. because I don't want him around.

No. Yeah, he was creepy. But then she meets Barina and Barina takes her away from there. She's kind of making a scene after having done the drugs.

And then Berina takes her. Do you want to jump in and explain?

I takes her to the bomb hideout and then she gets introduced to all of the other kind of like, they're not all like big characters, but the other characters that we're going to meet kind of learns more about. Well, at first she's very in the dark about, like, what they are doing, has no idea what's going on. They're not giving her any information.

We can tell that something is going on, but we're not really? Sure. And then we find out. Wait, what happens in between finding out? The big reveal.

They play. She meets the girls when they play tennis. They watch the Prime Minister on tv.

Okay.

So they go to that, like, bar and she finds out.

Yeah, at the bar. So she learns that Berina is.

There are two reveals. Basically. There's two reveals. Well, there's. Berina is a bounty hunter.

A bounty hunter. I was gonna say a serial killer, but you're right. Bounty hunter was the correct word.

That would have been an even more. That would have been exciting twist.

That's another book that we read. Yeah, she's a bounty hunter hunting Peacekeepers. And it's one of those things where I'm like, okay, that's pretty cool.

And then they clarify that. It's like we hit them and we kidnap them and we don't always kill them and we don't like killing them. Yeah.

And Betty's kind of like, oh, that's kind of wild. I think she's okay with it in the end.

I think it seems like they're trying to be like, well, we don't kill people and we're not happy about it. So she's like, oh, okay, that's fine.

If she's actually, like, killing people and enjoying it, I feel like she would have been a little more freaked out. But she was pretty much just embracing it.

No. And I kind of thought at that moment, I was like, oh, this is going to go down a very dark route. But it didn't.

Yeah.

Wait, what was the second reveal?

The second reveal? Guernica is the person who sends her out on a mission. Berina. That night. She's like, you have to prove you're still dedicated.

You haven't gone bounty hunting in a few nights. So she goes bounty hunting and Betty is all alone. Or Baby. Because she kind of changes her name once she's there.

And then she finds out that they were spying on her apartment.

Oh, right. Okay.

Because when they meet in the little clinic, she gets the little box with something in it from Berina. And what's in the box?

Yes.

A creepy eyeball.

Creepy eyeball. Which she puts in the creepy doll head.

Yes. That she really wanted for a long time for some reason. Right.

What's in the box?!

Oh, yes.

Okay. I totally forgot about that.

Yeah. And then the eyeball was spying on her in her home. So she's freaked out and mad and she runs away.

Thank you.

Yes. So the plot can happen.

One thing about me as a reader is after I've read something, basically all leaves my brain immediately.

No, it's wild. I think you and I both read so much that I loved that book. What happened?

Right, right.

Who were the characters?

Every book meeting, I'm like, okay, the main character's name was. Let's look in the book.

I've recommended all of us. Murderers by kj, Charles to so many people. And whenever someone reads it and texts me about it, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm so glad you loved it.

What happened? What was your favorite part? I have no idea. Yeah, yeah, that's about it.

But yes, you're right. That is a big reveal too. Two big reveals.

So she ends up in the facility again, finds out a whole lot of things about. They're like overdosing people in their treatment. People are dying, right? Yeah. So the government is killing queer people reading the book right now.

There you go.

Yes.

Yeah. So in the end, what happens?

She runs away with them and they save her, right? Yeah, she's gonna. And I assume she's gonna like join in the bounty hunting now.

Yeah. Well, I was gonna have us explain the rescue.

Oh, okay. You explain the rescue. I will listen carefully.

She had the eyeball with her. She could bring two personal items.

Right.

When the Peacekeepers brought her in. And she has the eyeball and it's recording everything there. So she gets footage of everything.

She's letting them know what's going on. Yes.

So they are able to. Berina comes in to rescue her and she's like, you rescued me? Because they've fallen in love by this point, which we also forgot to mention.

The other two show up. Obvious. Yes. The other two show up and then they're like, yay. And they're just like boom, boom, boom, taking out all the Peacekeepers.

And then there's this like badass moment where the head of the little gang is Hazel. And Hazel had been like, we gotta clear out our hideout. She's gonna rat us out. We gotta protect ourselves.

And it's like, oh, man, she doesn't care about Baby at all. And then she comes in at the very end with like huge gun blazing.

And it's like she looks so badass. Yes.

Yeah. It was a very exciting moment.

Okay. Wow. Thank you for reliving all that for me.

Yes. And then, yeah, they ride off into the sunset. Very open endedly.

Yes. Rat a tat tat. Sorry, I'm reading. there's a great.

Here's a page with all the Peacekeepers in their skirts and swim caps and goggles all waiting to take them on I feel like so many characters did not wear pants in this book. Why does no one wear pants?

Okay, so I saw you write that in the outline, and I was like. The way I saw it was. And maybe when I mentioned, like, there's a large camp aspect to this, I saw that as part of it.

When you think of, like, drag queens and they take off the beautiful long skirt and they're wearing, like, a leotard underneath, that was kind of my. Look at it. Or just the fact that, like, queer people are really hot and don't need to wear pants. Either one of those. Yeah.

A lot of, like, curvy people with tiny heads and.

Right.

Yeah. It's like, oh, legs for days.

Yes, it's true.

I did not quite get at the end why Hazel is the one who gives us the name of the novel. She says, "welcome to the resistance, Baby Blue."

So I read that as, like, kind of, like, commentary on the whole emotion thing, like, having the blues, like, baby blue. Kind of, like a riff on that.

Because she's kind of struggled with depression, it seems like, for most of her life.

Yes. Yeah, that's what that was kind of my thought.

I was like, is it because the art is blue? Oh, I don't know.

I'm trying to think what else it could be. My mom used to call my eyes my baby blues, but I don't think that has anything to do with it. There was an eyeball involved.

There was. They both lose an eye from the treatment, too. Like, all the side effects of it. That was crazy.

That's all right. They looked very cool with just one eye.

I was a little hung up on, like, some of the world building with the bounty hunters because they mentioned that, like, no one has income if you're living off the grid. But the bounty hunters are paid for their work by Guernica, and Guernica owns the bar, so she's making money from the bar.

But how do people buy the food and drink at the bar?

I feel as though you are looking too deeply into this, but I would say so. There's, like, some sort of bartering economy going on in here.

That's what I was wondering. Because they really don't seem to be, like, struggling to live their life off the grid.

I mean, when people talk about, like, people finding, like, queer homesteads and stuff, there's not a lot of money going on there. It's all, you know, you do what you need to do. You help others when you need to. So it could just be, like, people are eaten.

Food that's just available to them.

Is there anything more you like, wanted from the book at the end or that you wish it, like, expanded on or did differently?

Basically every graphic novel, I'm like, there's not enough. But I can't imagine a graphic novel that would be long enough to tell the length of a story. You know, regular novel would.

There's always going to be questions. There's always going to be parts that are kind of skipped over too quickly.

I feel like there could have been a whole nother act of the bounty hunting stuff. But I think considering the length of it, I only read it on ebook. So in person it's even larger of a book than I was expecting.

I guess you can't really put all that in there. So I wouldn't say anything's like missing, but I'd always wish for more.

I do like, kind of want more of the ending and what's gonna happen to them. Like, I feel like it could have a movie adaptation or a TV series spin off or something.

Like, if it was a series, you could see all their adventures, like fighting fascism.

It would totally work as a series, I think.

Yeah. I don't know if she plans to like, do anything more with it.

I struggle a bit with sequels for stories like this because I feel like the way they're created was very intentional. But again, if the author really feels a connection to the characters and they want to write more, I think that's always an awesome thing to happen.

But I'd never be like petitioning for a sequel or anything.

I was going to say the only other critique I have is I think the explanations of fascism in some of the pages are very like, simple fascism 101. Like, Baby didn't know anything about it. She was like completely oblivious. And Berina's like, so this is how a fascist state works.

And it was like, okay, this is.

So something was a little like, I don't know, like, not like blatant, but like very obvious that they're pushing that towards you. You know, some metaphors can be more hidden, but that one was a little more obvious.

But I think you'd be surprised the people that truly don't understand what fascism really is.

Yeah. And I think she has grown up on all the government propaganda and seemed pretty sheltered. So I guess if she had no exposure to other ideas.

I don't know where her parents were or anything. It's never really mentioned for Baby.

I don't know, like ages or anything. It's very ambiguous.

Yeah. Because we Get Berina's backstory about, like, her mom dying when she was a teenager and her dad being kind of a jerk, but that's about it. Mm.

What did you love about the book overall?

For me, I think it'd be a mix between the art style, just the way it was portrayed visually, and just the message that, like, queer people are badass and aren't here to be controlled and just we're messy and chaotic and no one's gonna stop us, I guess.

Yeah, I love that. And the art style is just so unique, too.

Like, I don't know if I'd want to hang a panel of this up on my wall or anything, because it's kind of disconcerting. Pretty wild stuff. It was pretty cool to see the playlist. We didn't talk about the music much, but I loved how music was kind of interwoven into it.

And early on in the book, she gets the ipod from.

I know.

I don't know who that guy was, really. Is that ever. Did you have any conclusions about the guy who told her he was, like, stepping down?

Oh, I thought it was just something from work I didn't really think about.

I kind of thought he was monitoring her at first, but it's not really explained, like, what the connection maybe was. I don't know.

I'm not sure.

It might have just been a random guy who always came in where she worked, but he gives her the ipod that's full of all this forbidden music, and she starts listening to it and, like, connecting it and feeling it really deeply. And it's, like, sad songs and things that you are not allowed to listen to.

Band music.

Yeah. And I guess a lot of it is Swedish pop music, too. So we'll have to find the playlist, and I'll link it in the show notes into it. That was cool.

Sometimes when books come with, like, a playlist, I'm so tempted to listen to it while I read, but I cannot multitask in that way with the double.

Words, if there's words in the song. And, yeah, it's hard, but I know.

Some authors, like, do that on purpose because, like, that's the intention. But it's not the easiest for some.

Some neurodivergent folks. Let's talk about some recommendations for other similar books. If it's, like, queer dystopian or just queer books that we love.

What do you recommend to people?

So I grabbed three I graphic novels specifically because I wanted to kind of connect to that. One that I read recently was called Boys Weekend. I did not write down any of the authors for these because I never remember authors.

But it is a satirical horror graphic novel. It's dystopian as well. And there's a trans woman. She's going on vacation. Vacation, actually. No, it's like a. It's a bachelor party.

That's why it's called Boys Weekend. And it's for, like, her best friend when she was younger, before she transitioned. And they still kind of see her as that guy from college.

And it gets really weird and dark and it's got a lot of humor and, you know, it talks about masculinity and gender and just like that feeling of, like, looking back at the old version of yourself and, like, wondering, why the hell did you make those decisions? Why were you friends with these guys? That kind of thing. So I picked that because it's got similar dystopian vibes and horror kind of aspects to it.

This Baby Blue didn't have really horror aspect to it, but just the kind of unsettling aspect.

It was marketed as a thriller, too, and I don't know if it was quite a thriller.

Yeah.

Mildly thrilling.

Mildly. Yes.

Boys Weekend sounds really good. I'll have to check that out.

Yeah, I have a copy if you want to borrow it.

Cool.

Another queer graphic novel that I really love that's also kind of, like, speculative, is On a Sunbeam. Did you read that one?

No.

Oh, it's incredible. It's sapphic. It takes place in space. It's sci fi. It's really beautiful. It's all about found family.

They are a crew on a spaceship that rebuilds space stations, I think, and it flashes back to relationships in the past. And it's really long, which I really appreciated because I like when a story can be fleshed out as much as possible.

And it's all about, like, finding your people. So that's more of, like, a very beautiful story.

Is that one more uplifting?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yes. So a vibe more that matches more of the ending of this book, I would say. And then my most controversial pick, which.

Controversial among the two of us.

And Emily, you hated it, which is totally fine to have a different taste in books.

Although Lanni does not Give anything below 4 stars on Goodreads either.

I don't. I don't. Because I have a lot of empathy for people that spend a lot of time writing. And I.

That's very kind of you.

I want them to know that I appreciate their efforts, even if I didn't love it. Although this year, I did start doing on Storygraph 4.75 and 4.5s, even a 4.25. So that's a big step for me. But anyways, so I really like this one.

It's set in the 70s, and it's, like, about a traveling musician. Everyone in the story is transgender. It's very unsettling. The main character is a relationship with this man made of cloth. He's the neighbor. Mr.

Neighbor or something like that. And then it gets really unsettling the more you read. And there's, like, cult aspect to it.

Like, the musician man's also an egg, right?

Oh, yes. An egg that keeps breaking and then. Yeah.

And, like, rotting at one point.

That keeps rotting and then, like, being reborn.

Normal stuff. Very.

There's a lot of, like, deep metaphors around, like, being transgender. And that's kind of the whole. The whole purpose of the cult is to, like. Actually, I don't want to give that away.

But the purpose of the cult is related to being transgender. But there are tentacle appendages, and I think that's what I was going to say. Yes, for you.

Warning. Tentacle penis. Yeah. No, I just didn't see that coming at all. And there is also a lot of goo. Like, there are sex scenes very. With tentacle penis.

With lots of goo.

Very body horror. Yeah.

Yeah. I enjoy reading body horror. I read plenty of sex scenes, but seeing an illustration of it was, like, a bit much for me.

See, for me, I was just like, oh.

And I was zooming in on my phone screen. Like, what? Oh, I feel like, luckily my child was asleep and not looking at it with me.

There you go. I feel like, for me, reading without the images is a lot more visceral because my mind is filling in some weird gaps.

But with a cartoon image, I'm like, oh, it's just a drawing. But I can see how you would. Depends on how you look at that.

I rarely listen to romance novels on audiobook, and I did that with one recently and was, like, walking around my neighborhood while, like, a very steamy sex scene was going on. And I was, like, awful. Don't look at me. I'm not reading about oral sex.

Right.

Right in my ears right now.

I always get served, like, reels where people are listening to books like that while doing the dishes, and they're Like, I shouldn't be doing the dishes right now. I don't do audiobooks. I don't. I think it's like an autism thing. I cannot sit or be adhd.

I cannot sit and listen to a story without the visual aspect to it. That's why I don't listen to podcasts either, because I need. I do watch some podcasts on YouTube, though.

I need to see the person when they're speaking.

That's fair.

So audiobooks are really hard for me. I only listen to them when I am on a long drive.

I do more nonfiction audio. Like, nonfiction audiobooks usually go better for me than fiction.

Yeah.

I feel like you don't have to picture stuff as much.

Well, people always talk about, like, how as soon as you get distracted by something, you have to, like, rewind and figure out where you were. I'm like, that sounds hard.

Yeah.

I can't even do that when I'm watching a YouTube video. I'm sitting right there. I can't figure out where I lost interest in it.

Yeah, it is tricky. I had a bunch of stuff that I wrote down that I don't even know how much they all fit into the theme of the book.

I read your list. It's incredible.

It's very. All over the place.

We read a lot of these together!

Yeah. I don't know if I'll go over all of them right now, but some that are in the kind of intersection of, like, dystopian or speculative and also queer.

One is the Thick and the Lean by Chana Porter, which we did with our book club.

Yes.

And that one was really fun. It was, like, very kind of timely feeling with a lot of really interesting themes.

But the main point is that abstaining from food brings you closer to God. And it's like, holy to avoid eating. And you also like having sex brings you closer to God.

So it's not taboo to, like, have sex in public with whoever you want, but it is taboo to, like, eat a cheeseburger.

Yeah.

So the anti. Dr. Kellogg.

Yes, exactly.

So that. That's a wild ride. Tell me yours, I'll tell you mine. You

You have to recommend it on every recommendation list!

She was on the podcast.Yes. And she came to our book club as well. She's lovely.

But there are a lot of, like, dystopian capitalist hellscape stories where, you know, the medical industrial complex is being terrible or there's, like, fascistic governments. So that's a good one. Have you read Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata? Have you read Anything by her?

I don't think so.

Oh, my gosh. I feel like she'd be extremely up your alley. It's very weird.

That's my favorite thing right now.

Japanese author. Everything's in translation. Earthlings is probably her most famous one, where the main character thinks she's an alien, and that one's really good.

But Vanishing World's...

Oh, that was a different book.

That was like, Earthlings has a hedgehog on the cover.

It was a different Book where the character thought she was an alien and she was, like, faxing the homeworld or something. I forget what it was. It was another queer book.

Vanishing World, I think is controversial because of the ending, which I will not spoil here.

Controversial ending? yes!

The main premise of the book is that no one has sex anymore to. In general or to get pregnant. You get pregnant through, like, IVF instead.

I think if I'm remembering it correctly, because I read it a while ago and we forget books. But you don't have sex for fun. And you, like, having sex through.

Or, like, getting pregnant through procreation is, like, really taboo, and people think it's gross. So the main character was, like, actually conceived by her parents, and she's like "Good God, how could you do that?"

And she's, like, horrified as a kid, but then she gets really into sex as an adult and loves to have sex. And the other thing that's cool about this book is, like, it's also very accepted to be in love with and have sex with fictional characters.

Whether that's, like, just in your mind or you go on dates with them and people have, like, cards with their image on it, like boys from shows or something. And you can have lovers outside of your marriage. And then within marriage, you're not like, you.

Sex doesn't happen at home, doesn't happen with your spouse. You only have sex with people outside of the home because it's, like, unclean.

Gotcha.

Or most people just abstain completely.

All right.

And then there's this, like, gated community, experimental city where everyone raises children collectively. So people are, like, chosen to be impregnated. You have the baby and then just give them up. And everyone living there is a parent.

And everyone is called, like, the children are called kodama san, which I think just means child. And they all call all the people mama, even the men.

Okay.

And, like, it's an m-preg book, if you're familiar.

Yeah.

So her husband, they move to this town. He is the one who ends up getting chosen to get inseminated.

And he has like an artificial belly and ends up being the first man to birth a real child.

Look at that.

Yeah, so that, that one's a wild ride. And she's, like, very mentally unwell and like.

What's this one called?

Vanishing World.

All right, I'll give it a read.

Yeah. Chain Gang All-Stars is.

That was a badass book.

Yes. Very well known, very dystopian. Nana Kwame, Adjei-Brenyah, who went to Syracuse University. Shout out, Syracuse, upstate New York.

That one is about, like the prison industrial complex. And it's very dark, but very well done and will probably make you cry.

Yes. And it will feel very real too.

Yes, definitely.

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa is another one in translation where, like, words are disappearing from the world and people are forgetting the words and what they mean. Oh, it's really interesting. That has a very open ended.

I feel like ending is doing that to us.

A couple graphic novels. There's a graphic novel for Parable of the Sower, which is.

There is?!

Yes. It's really good. Yeah. And I think they did the sequel as well.

But it's very well done and a lot of people are probably familiar with that book already. But it's very prescient and definitely worth reading. Animal Farm has a graphic novel that's also really good.

Oh, I wanted to mention the Handmaid's Tale also has a graphic novel.

I did read that from the library.

It is good.

It was good.

My list goes on and on. I'll just skip to some of the totally different vibe ones. I have Bunny and We love you, Bunny, both by Mona Awad.

Wait, how'd you connect that one?

Mostly because of Berina's Bunny mask.

Okay, I love that!

but it's, like, about feeling like an outsider and, like, you don't fit in, so it kind of fits. And then did you end up reading we love you, Bunny?

No, it's in my stack of probably 50 books that I bought that I haven't read yet.

Some people who love Bunny despise it. I thought it was really fun. It's written from the perspective of the first Bunny ever, Aerius. And he, like the first Bunny that turns into a man.

Yeah.

And he is queer and he just writes in this, like, delightfully unhinged voice for most of the book.

Maybe that'll be up next then.

Also, totally different vibe.

Shapes of Love by LV Penalba is about an ace pop star who is, like, fake dating her high school boy because her label thinks that, like, she'll have more Fans. If she's, like, straight. That one's a really fun read. I think I'll stop there because my list is so long.

Unless you want me to mention the last one I put on the list.

I think you should.

I almost thought this should be a podcast book club if people just want to laugh a lot. I received an arc of a book called Railed: A Why Choo Choo Choose Romance.

I still can't get over that.

Yes, it was about a train-sexual woman who was turned on by trains. And the trains are basically transformers who drive around as trains, but also can shape shift into humans.

Were they aliens?

They were aliens. Okay, that's a spoiler. But they're also polyamorous.

There's, like, a girl train, a guy train, and a non binary train, and they all really enjoy this one woman who really loves riding trains. So check that one out if you want something queer and wholesome.

The name of the author again?

Unhinged! Zane E. Stori.

Wow. What a name to be named that you have to write.

I'm sure it's a pen name.

I know it's a pen name, Emily. As soon as I said it, I realized you were gonna think I was being serious. Well, there's a soundboard. Oh, yeah. Wow.

Do you think you would ever try your hand at creating a graphic novel or doing comics or anything?

Okay. So I used to do a lot of art classes at the Memorial Art Gallery, the workshop, as a kid.

And I did do, like, months of comic classes when I was, like, 12. They're all about rabbits. All my characters are bunnies. So maybe you can do the graphic novel for bunnies. Yeah, so I was really into that.

The illustrations I do right now are. I feel like I don't really have any inspiration to become a more capable illustrator. So that's not something that's ever in my future.

I think it's so cool, though. Every patreon that I'm on is for, like, an illustrator. I think what they do is amazing.

They create stories out of nothing, and I think that's really awesome. Definitely not something in my wheelhouse, but I greatly admire that.

We need more of it in the AI Era because I feel like so much slop is being churned out, and we need, like, real artists making actual human art. That's weird. Like, this book, I feel like, could not have been AI Generated.

No, no, not at all. And not in that style. That is everywhere. Like, my kids are basically 100% graphic novel readers.

They read very little non Graphic novels at this point, and they all have the same art style. And when I see something that's not in that style and I buy it, they don't. They're not as likely to pick it up.

I want them to have cool, weird art to look at. But I understand why the publishers are pushing that, because that's selling. So it's like a catch 22. Yeah.

I just saw a video the other day about children's books all having, like, the same five styles of illustration and how you need to expose kids to, like, weird art, too, because the weird books, like, do resonate with kids and some of them do gravitate towards those.

And I feel like the message around a book with weird art style is going to be so useful to a kid because it's not going to be like, we should all be friends, like every other book seems to be. It's going to be like, yeah, you're a weird guy.

And sometimes it's shitty. Sometimes, so sometimes it's cool.

Exactly, exactly. So the kind of more messy things is what I think a lot of kids need to see.

Do you have any final thoughts to close out Pride Month? Anything for the people.

Just, like, the idea of, like, refusing to make yourself smaller or quieter or more palatable, I guess, like, we were just talking about. More convenient, I would say, like, in the novel, like, things are going to be dark, but there's. There's hope at the end.

I don't think I have, like, young, young listeners of this podcast, but I hope, like, the younger generation can, like, lean into their own weirdness and not feel like you have to be just like everybody else. Because I feel like conformity is even more on the rise. And that's, like, not what we need. Just be you.

We have a poster in my classroom that says, read books. Is it stay kind and be weird or some order about like that. And when the kids come in, they're like, oh, be weird. I'm weird.

I'm like, yeah, you're weird. And that's why you're such a cool kid. Yeah. So I really try to play push that. That word, even, like, it's cool to be weird.

Embrace the weird.

Embrace the weird. Exactly.

I love it. Well, thanks so much for joining me, Lanni. This was really fun.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me on.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchador podcast network.

If you have a tentacle appendage, you might appreciate the Swedish phrase, vist hattar man biksor. Don't you hate pants?