Queerly Recommended

A cliffhanger is resolved! Kris has turned in the ending for her book. Fingers crossed that her editor loves it. 

This week, Kris and Tara do some deep dives. They discuss the horrors depicted in the new docuseries Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets. It’s (hopefully) balanced by Tara’s recommendation of the week, The Ultimatum: Queer Love, and all the speculation, gasps and laughter it’s brought. Tara and Kris get into all the show's drama, so if you haven't watched yet and want to avoid spoilers, stop at 48:30.

Content warnings:

• Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets: Child abuse, religious trauma, sexual abuse (11:45 - 20:45)
• The Ultimatum: Queer Love: Narcissism and domestic violence 56:04 - 103:43

Official Recommendations

From Kris: The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone (Netflix) 

This week, Kris recommends the Netflix documentary, The Dreamlife of Georgie Stone. It tracks the story of one transgender teen in Australia as she challenges the laws, affirms her gender, and becomes the adult she always wanted to be. Kris says this is something "everyone, straight or queer, should watch." 

From Tara: The Ultimatum: Queer Love (Netflix)

A first for Tara, this week she recommends a reality series: Netflix’s The Ultimatum: Queer Love. Five couples are stuck between 'will they or won’t they,' when it comes to getting hitched and they’ve decided to seek trial by television show, instead of pursuing couples counselling. It thrills us, it confuses us, it makes us laugh, but most importantly, according to Tara, "it demands to be discussed with as many people as possible."

Works/People Discussed

• Shiny Happy People: Duggar Family Secrets (Amazon Prime)
• Alone, Season Ten (The History Channel)
• Fast X (2023)
• Silo (Apple TV+)
• Ted Lasso, Season Three (Apple TV+)
• RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars, Season 8 (Paramount+)
• Diablo 4 (Blizzard Entertainment)
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023)
• I Like To Watch with Trixie and Katya - Drag Queens Trixie & Katya React to The Ultimatum: Queer Love (Youtube)

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As loyal listeners know, Queerly Recommended tends to get recorded on Sundays in the middle of the day. It’s a great time to record. There’s no rush or hurry. There’s plenty of time to make notes. It’s ideal. But, sometimes the ideal is impossible.

So, sometimes we record on Monday. You know about our Monday sessions. They’re a bit…different. Well, listeners, welcome to Tuesday! Kris is drinking something called Lemonade and Lavender and Tara is hung over from a provincial election. And that’s before we get to the recommendations.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Queer Eye, season 7 (Netflix)

This week, Kris recommends the seventh season of Netflix’s hit reality makeover show, Queer Eye. Do we need to describe this? As Kris herself says, you already know what this is. That first episode might be a bit rocky, but the boys and Jonathan are back and ready to deliver.

From Tara: Hannah Gadsby’s Something Special (Netflix)

And from Tara, we have Hannah Gadsby’s new Netflix comedy special Something Special. Tara adores Gadsby, from the huge mark they made on the comedy world with Nanette (which she describes as "an experience"), to the strong follow-up Douglas. Tara loves Gadsby's intelligence, the structure they bring to their work, and the precision. She also discovers that it’s really hard to review comedy.

Works/People Discussed

• John Edward, psychic medium
• Jeopardy! Masters (ABC)
• The Ultimatum: Queer Love (Netflix)
• Survivor (CBS)
• RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars, Season 8 (Paramount+)
• Mean Girls (2004)
• The Princess Diaries (2001)
• Sister Act (1992)
• The Final Table (Netflix)

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Greetings, stranger! Have you heard tell of this new literary hero? This publishing world pugilist? His very words conjure riches. Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood is his name.

Would you like to hear more? Well then, come. Sit! Warm yourself by the fire and listen for a spell. It’s a tale as old as time. A story of anime and sapphic science fiction and…the internet!

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Queen Charlotte (Netflix)

This week, Kris recommends Queen Charlotte, the prequel to creator Shonda Rimes’ Bridgerton. The main plot revolves around Queen Charlotte’s rise to power from a young age, and while that "would be interesting enough," according to Kris, the real gem of the piece is the relationship between the royalty’s secretaries, Brimsley and Reynolds. You know Kris doesn’t recommend anything without chemistry, and these two have it.

From Tara: How to Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Some of us are called. Others are chosen. In Tara’s case, she was reminded this week, due to the Bigolas Dickolas Wolfwood of it all, that one of her favourite books of all time still exists. How to Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is a short novel told in the correspondence of two agents on opposing sides of a millenia-spanning Time War. Through these letters, they fall in love and have to decide if their love means more to them than the cause they’ve dedicated their existence to.

Works/People Discussed

• We’re Here (HBO) - Congrats on the Peabody win, We're Here team!!!
• Age of Pleasure by Janelle Monáe
• This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
• Jeopardy! Masters (ABC)
• Air (2023)
• Fear the Walking Dead (AMC)
• RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, Season Eight (Paramount+)
• RuPaul's Drag Race: Untucked (MTV)
• Queer Eye, Season Seven (Netflix)
• Strange World (2022)
• Loop Hero (Windows, macOS, Linux, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Series X/S)

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Time comes for all of us. Well, most of us. We’re not sure about Kris.

This week, we’re out of listener questions and our home lives are… steady? What’s another word for steady? Boring? Uneventful? Regardless, no questions and no personal updates means this episode is a little shorter than usual.

Kris talks about the difficulties of watching Euphoria as an adult. Tara suffers alone in the desert of RuPaul's Drag Race as she's dying for All Stars 8 to begin.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Anything’s Possible

This week, Kris recommends the Billy Porter-directed film, Anything’s Possible (2022). It’s billed as a Gen-Z, coming-of-age movie about a confident trans girl and the boy who decides to make his move in the last year of high school.

From Tara: My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame

My Brother’s Husband by Gengoroh Tagame is a manga series about a single dad and his daughter in Tokyo, who are visited by the husband of the father's recently deceased twin brother. It explores casual homophobia as a cultural norm in Japan and shows a different, more connected sense of what family can be when we challenge the idea of "should".

Works/People Discussed

• Sweet Tooth (Netflix)
• Euphoria (HBO)
• Survivor (CBS)
• RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, Season Eight (Paramount+)
• The Mandalorian (Disney+)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (2023)
• Hum Tum (2004)
• Tom of Finland, artist

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This week, we start off by celebrating the Peabody Award nomination for our fave reality documentary show, We’re Here (HBO Max). The show is doing important work and more people need to hear it! From there, things devolve pretty rapidly. It’s a MERS (Monday Evening Recording Sesh), people. You’ve been warned.

Kris answers a listener’s question about Tara. Tara gives us her thoughts on the wrap up of this bumpy season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. And despite being an avowed non-spoiler person, Kris runs us through the movie 65, which is about future soldiers… in the past… fighting dinosaurs… and there’s an asteroid. Buckle up, buttercups. We’re going to space!

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Three Months 

This week, Kris brings us the film Three Months (2022). It's about a young gay man finally getting out of high school and into the wider world, only to find out he might have been exposed to HIV. While waiting the three months to learn his test results, various aspects of his life, his future and his past are challenged.

From Tara: Workhorse Queen

Workhorse Queen (2021) is Tara’s pick this week. It’s a documentary tracking Ed Popil, telemarketing center manager by day and drag queen extraordinaire, Mrs. Kasha Davis, by brunch. It follows the life and career of MKD, exploring the space between those who make it onto RuPaul’s Drag Race and the many, many others who are doing the damn thing day in and day out, without the same accolades or followers. It's a great one.

Works/People Discussed

• We’re Here (HBO)
• Catfish: The TV Show (MTV)
• 65 (2023)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• The Mandalorian (Disney+)
• Octopath Traveller 2 (Nintendo Switch)

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This week, Tara comes to us from her sickbed. She’s down with Covid and wants us all to stay home when we think we have a cold, because sometimes it's not "just a cold." Kris reveals the classic literary novel she hates and shots are fired at baseball. A listener question also sends them deep down the rabbit hole of their reading and writing histories.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Shrinking (Apple TV+)

This week, Kris brings us the television series Shrinking. The story follows a therapist dealing with the tragic loss of his partner, as he decides to take a new approach of giving brutal honesty to his clients.

From Tara: Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Gender Queer is an autobiographical graphic novel from Maia Kobabe. It dives deep into the experience of growing up with gender dysphoria (and euphoria), asexuality and transness as a nonbinary person. Although this powerful, honest memoir doesn’t end neatly, it gives vital perspective to an identity and experience we need to support and protect now more than ever.

Works/People Discussed

• Faith, Hope and Carnage by Nick Cave and Seán O’Hagan
• The Trixie Belden books by Julie Campbell Tatham
• The Bobbsey Twins books by Laura Lee Hope (pseudonym)
• The Baby-Sitters Club novels by Ann M. Martin
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
• The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
• Barney’s Version by Mordecai Richler
• Jane Rule, author
• And Playing the Role of Herself by K. E. Lane
• Hoosier Daddy by Ann McMan and Salem West
• The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya
• Flowers in the Attic by V. C. Andrews
• Rage of Angels by Sidney Sheldon
• Lord of the Flies by William Golding
• Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
• Danielle Steel, author
• LaVyrle Spencer, author
• Stephen King, author
• Ted Lasso, Season Three (Apple TV+)
• American Idol (Fox)
• Alaska Daily (ABC)
• RuPaul’s Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• Next in Fashion (Netflix)
• Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011)
• Suited (2016)
• The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

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Come and celebrate with us as Tara announces her new job. Also, Kris finally reveals her age for all of you playing at home.

We get advice on book hangovers. The two try to separate the art from the artist with the third season of Ted Lasso (it’s hard, y’all). Then Tara describes her new adventure into the world of Bollywood and Indian cinema.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Meeting Millie by Clare Ashton

A lot of the early scuttlebutt on this book was around its tagline and the reaction to it. “Can two women, one gay and one straight, be friends forever or does sex get in the way?” It hit a lot of readers and writers the wrong way, but the positive is that Meeting Millie is a great book! Kris adored this past-present, friends-to-lovers romance that just makes you feel good. Check it out.

From Tara: A New Life and She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki 

Tara has two recommendations this week. The first is a very short video game by Angela He called A New Life, which puts the player in control of a relationship between two women and its possible beginnings, middles and ends. It’s a bittersweet game, because isn’t love just a (hopefully) really long walk to a sad ending? A New Life is beautiful, short, and worth your time.

Tara’s second recommendation is the manga She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki is. As Tara says, it's "just what it says on the tin." One woman loves to cook, one woman loves to eat, and between the two a relationship begins. It’s a gentle, lovely, wonderful warm hug of a book, which you might need after playing A New Life.

Works/People Discussed

• The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Ted Lasso, Season Three (Apple+)
• Alaska Daily (ABC)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• The Romantics (Netflix)
• 3 Idiots (2009)
• Bittersweet by Susan Cain

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You want to know the easiest way to turn Kris and Tara into perpetual recommendation machines? Just ask them to pick one of something. Works every time, including this episode, where we get not just one but two questions asking for their favourite thing. Look at the works discussed list! The first ten are from the first ten minutes!

Official Recommendation

From Kris: Wolf Pack

This week, Kris recommends the Paramount+ teen drama series, Wolf Pack. In the wake of a sudden wildfire, two teenagers encounter a supernatural creature that changes them and their lives forever.

The only thing Kris doesn’t like about this show is that the town seems to be simultaneously too big to be a town (is it a city?) and too remote to be anything else. She loved everything else. Check it out.

From Tara: I Can’t Believe I Slept With You!

Listen. LISTEN. The premise for Tara’s recommendation is super sketchy. She admits that. It’s a love story that starts off with a landlady asking for sex from her female tenant in lieu of payment. But it’s okay, actually, because all is not as it initially appears to be! No, seriously.

I Can’t Believe I Slept With You! by Miyako Miyahara is a sapphic manga series that starts shaky but ends wonderfully. It’s tender, it’s sweet, it deals with complicated feelings, and has a twist that recontextualizes everything. And that hand holding scene! *swoon*

Works/People Discussed

• Truth and Measure and Above All Things by Roslyn Sinclair
• The Delicate Things We Make by Milena McKay
• The Headmistress by Milena McKay
• Kiss the Girl by Melissa Brayden
• The Red Files by Lee Winter
• Honor Series by Radclyffe
• And Playing the Role of Herself by K. E. Lane
• All That Matters by Susan X. Meagher
• Temptation by Kris Bryant
• Not Guilty by Brit Ryder
• Forget Me Not by Kris Bryant
• Music and the Mirror by Lola Keeley
• The Fixer and Chaos Agent by Lee Winter
• Veronica Mars (Warner Bros. and Hulu)
• 1923 (Paramount+)
• The Perfect Match (Netflix)
• The Mole (Netflix)
• RuPaul's Drag Race, Season Fifteen (MTV)
• People Change by Vivek Shraya
• The Subtweet by Vivek Shraya
• I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya
• White Women by Regina Jackson and Saira Rao

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Tara unveils a brand new hobby and Kris does an endzone dance to celebrate the Kansas City Chiefs’s Super Bowl win. Then they get down to business (serious face). No, for real.

Okay, fine. There's lots of laughing in this one. We hope you have as much listening as we did recording this one.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Ghosts (CBS)

This week, Kris recommends the American TV series Ghosts. Sam and Jay think they’ve won big by inheriting a country house. Unfortunately the tenants are still around…and they're GHOSTS! After a near death experience that allows Sam to see the ghosts, the living and the dead start to get to know each other and work out centuries-old drama. Sounds like a lot of fun.

From Tara: Dating Amber (2020)

Tara brings the Irish film Dating Amber (2020) to the table this week. In the podcast, she calls it a platonic romance with two queer kids, Eddie and Amber, who pretend to be dating to escape harassment from their peers about their sexualities. What neither expects is a friendship that pushes them along their respective paths of self-discovery.

Works/People Discussed

• Your Place or Mine (2023)
• 1923 (Paramount+)
• Wolf Pack (Paramount+)
• The Last of Us (HBO)
• RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 15 (MTV)
• Cunk on Earth (Netflix)
• These Thin Lines by Milena McKay

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What do Kris and Tara talk about off-mic? Vegetables! On-mic, they continue to discuss vegetables, sports, Japanese shows with no angst and tons of food, as well as taking the temperature of the latest season of Drag Race (tepid so far?).

With that out of the way, the two dive into THAT EPISODE of THAT SHOW (The Last of Us) and Lee Winter's impossible task of rehabilitating one of her worst villains.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: The Last of Us

Kris comes to us from the post-apocalypse, bearing strawberries of content! The Last of Us (HBO Max) is an adaptation of the PlayStation video game and it currently has a Game of Thrones-like grip on media right now.

It’s the story of a fungal infection that destroys the world and a hardened man tasked with transporting the only living person to resist the infection across America. And that living person? She’s a mouthy 14 year old queer girl.

From Tara: The Villains Series by Lee Winter (The Fixer and Chaos Agent)

Lee Winter never meant to explore the love life and redemption of her villain from The Red Files, but Tara's grateful she did. In this duology (The Fixer and Chaos Agent), Winter asks tangled, thorny, interesting questions about redemption and accountability, while delivering a delicious slow burn romance. Tara loved it.

Works/People Discussed

• Jeopardy!
• History of the World: Part II (Hulu)
• Dear Edward (Apple TV+)
• RuPaul's Drag Race Season 15 (MTV)
• The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House (Netflix)

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This week, Kris and Tara are thrilled to welcome two very special guests to the podcast. All the way from We’re Here Season 2, we have Shangela’s drag daughter Amy Rambow and Amy’s son Alex.

If you’ve listened to the podcast before, you know we have a special place in our hearts for We’re Here. In this time of increased radicalization and targeting of queer people, We’re Here is one of the most important shows on TV, documenting these shifts, while keeping its message of love front and center.

Official Recommendations

From Amy:

• Project Contrast
• Unfollow: A Memoir of Loving and Leaving the Westboro Baptist Church by Megan Phelps-Roper

From Alex:

• Bloom by Kevin Panetta
• Heartstopper, book series by Alice Oseman

Follow Amy & Alex

Follow Amy:

• Instagram
• Facebook
• Twitter

Follow Alex on Tiktok

Follow Watertown Love

• Instagram
• Facebook

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Kris and Tara are back from break with an extra long episode. We’ve got listener questions this week and it’s all about reintroductions. Who are we? What are we like? What are we doing on this podcast? Questions are answered!

Kris’s new book, Catch, is also out! She discusses reviews and her thoughts on first and third person perspective bias. And, Kris and Tara check in on how their dogs are doing. Kris found something that wasn’t a walnut. Tara felt deep inter-species empathy for her puppy. Also, Tara queerly recommends taking time off work.

Welcome to the new year, folks. We’re going places.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: The Inspection (2022)

This week, Kris recommends The Inspection, a film written and directed by Elegance Bratton. It's based on his own real-life experiences as a young man facing homophobia at home and in a Marines boot camp as he struggles to make something of his life.

From Tara: Rational Creatures

Tara’s big recommendation this week is Rational Creatures, a web series that retells Jane Austen’s Persuasion in the modern day. Tara loves herself some queering of Austen (remember her love of last year, Fire Island?) and this series is one she couldn’t put down.

Works/People Discussed

• The Fixer (The Villains Series #1) by Lee Winter
• The Red Files (On the Record Book 1) by Lee Winter
• Close to Home by Rachel Spangler
• Married At First Sight, Season 10 (Lifetime)
• The Sopranos (HBO)
• Bird Box (Netflix)
• Pentiment (Xbox, Microsoft))
• Tara’s Drag Race Minute
• Validate (Steam, itchio, Nintendo, Xbox)
• The Hot Ones
• Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Nintendo)
• Lizzie Bennet Diaries

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No new episode this week because the holidays borked our recording timing.

But! We don't want to leave you totally hanging, so here are our top 5 most downloaded episodes of 2022. If you haven't listened to any of them yet, you should check them out!

1. Mistaking Access for Permission: in this regular episode, we have a segment with sapphic romance superstar author Jae and Sarah Wendell, Smart Bitches Trashy Books co-founder, talking about the all-too prevalent problem of readers sexually harassing authors
2. Milena McKay (and Tara) loves Truth and Measure: what happens when an author and a critic get together to talk about one of their most beloved fanfics turned published novels? SO MUCH SQUEEING.
3. It’s Radclyffe!: this year, we celebrated Pride by talking to lesfic powerhouse Radclyffe about writing and publishing lesbian fiction, why lesbian fiction has always been political, and more
4. Melissa Brayden Has Not Been Frugal With Her Jewels: we rang in Valentine's Day with one of the queens of sapphic romance, comparing our fave fictional couples, kisses, and romances that we love to reread
5. Remember Who the Fuck You Are, with Catie Randazzo & J Chong: we fell in love with the reality cooking competition show The Big Brunch and were delighted to catch up with two of our favourite chefs from the show. Catie and J talk about what it's like representing their communities and answer the all-important question of what kind of bread they think the show's judges are

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We made it to the end of the year! Not just us here at Queerly Recommended, but you did too! Good for you and good for us. To celebrate, Kris is releasing her latest book, Catch.

In this last episode of the year (also the 50th regular episode — can you even?), Tara and Kris deep dive into the importance of We’re Here (HBO Max), the different ways gingerbread houses can work into a romance, and their recent awesome bonus pod with chefs Catie Randazzo and J Chong from The Big Brunch. Happy Holidays, y’all!

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Under the Christmas Tree (2021)

This week, Kris checks out Under the Christmas Tree,  Lifetime’s first movie centering a lesbian couple. It’s sweet. It’s gentle. It’s the story of one woman looking for a tree for her boss and finding it in another woman’s yard.

Of course, that’s not all she finds. It’s love. They find love in the yard. Both of them. The tree was a distraction.

From Tara: The Christmas Catch by Clare Lydon

Tara describes this book as Planes, Trains and Automobiles meets two lesbians who grew up around each other, one of whom had a massive childhood crush on the other. Clare Lydon specializes in lesbian romcoms and this one is a delight, where two women must travel to get to their Christmas plans by any means necessary…all the while falling in love along the way.

Works/People Discussed

• The Big Brunch (HBO Max)
• The White Lotus (HBO)
• Wednesday (Netflix)
• L Word: Generation Q (Showtime)
• Avatar (2009)
• Drink Masters (Netflix)
• We’re Here: Season Three (HBO)
• The Christmas Setup (2020)

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This week, Tara (Butter Tart) Scott and Kris (Midwest Biscuit) Bryant sit down with chefs Catie Randazzo and J Chong from the hit cooking competition reality show, The Big Brunch. They talk about what it was like representing their communities, how real the camaraderie was on the show, family meals, and, most importantly, what kind of bread they think the judges are.

If you think Catie and J were great on the show, wait until you hear them on this episode.

Follow Catie on Instagram: @chefcatierandazzo
Follow J on Instagram: @jchong_eats

Catie’s recommendations

Sort Of (HBO Max)
Willow (Disney+)

J’s recommendations

Bound (1996)
We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle

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The holiday season is upon us and Kris and Tara come bearing gifts…of recommendations! Seriously, they had to make room this week to fit everything in.

Kris regales us with the end of The Walking Dead and the Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. Tara talks about The Big Brunch (yes, again) and Canada’s own Ryan Reynolds.

There’s a bunch of other good stuff before a dive deep into the recommendations. Keep warm, friends. Stay bright.

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Christmas Mouse by Rachel Spangler

It might be tempting to think a story like Christmas Mouse would be easy to write, but it's actually the simple ones that are the toughest to pull off. This city mouse/country mouse romance, with two love interests competing over their perfect visions of Christmas, charms, delights, and warms the heart this holiday season.

From Tara: Season of Love by Helena Greer

Some books can scare us by how well tailored they are to our specific loves and interests. This is true for Tara and her recommendation, Season of Love. Tara declares this a perfect book and it includes one of her favourite characters of all time, who starts the book dead (ends it dead, too). The writing captivated Tara in how well it balances humour with heart. Content warnings: abusive parent, alcoholism (self and parents), grief, and death.

Works/People Discussed

• The Walking Dead (AMC)
• Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions (2022) (CBS)
• Manifest (NBC)
• Spirited (2022)
• Ryan Reynolds' Governor General Award Video
• The Big Brunch (HBO Max)
• RuPaul's Drag Race UK (BBC)
• Canada’s Drag Race: Canada Vs. The World (Crave)
• We’re Here Season Three (HBO)
• The Great Canadian Baking Show (CBC)
• Andor (Disney+)
• Rogue One (2016)

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Roslyn Sinclair has committed high crimes against readers' productivity and we are here for it!

This episode, Tara is joined by f/f romance author Milena McKay. They gathered to sit in gratitude and fangirl about one of their favourite stories of all time. It began as a Devil Wears Prada fanfic and ended up being rewritten and published as its own original work. Yes, it’s Truth and Measure season, baby!

Referred to by Lee Winter as "The Lesfic Bible," Truth and Measure has impacted the lesfic scene in profound ways. Tara and Milena discuss the book's history, including how the #MeToo movement impacted the changes from fic to published work, and all the things the love about both versions. Get ready for major geeking out, friends.

Works/People Discussed

• Truth and Measure, fic version, and all its associated short stories (Archive of Our Own)
• Truth and Measure & Above All Things by Roslyn Sinclair (Ylva Publishing)
• The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
• Not Everyone & Pure Shores (Archive of Our Own)
• The X Ingredient, fic version (Archive of Our Own)
• The X Ingredient by Roslyn Sinclair (Ylva Publishing)
• The Music and the Mirror by Lola Keeley (Ylva Publishing)
• Once Upon A Time (ABC)
• The Delicate Things We Make, fic version (Archive of Our Own)
• The Delicate Things We Make by Milena McKay
• The Headmistress by Milena McKay
• The Brutal Truth by Lee Winter (Ylva Publishing)

Preorder Milena McKay's next book, These Thin Lines!

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Are things coming to an end? Nobody knows. Kris and Tara are taking things one step at a time by talking about the (possible?) end of Twitter and what that means for QR going forward (subscribe to our newsletter!).

They move on to talk season finales on tv, finales that aren’t finales, finales that are…something else? Fin-allez?

Official Recommendations

From Kris: Life Partners (2014)

Have you heard about the one about the two girls? One’s straight, one’s queer. They’re the best of friends until…the straight one gets into a relationship. You see where this is going, don’t you? The love triangle. The learning that the two friends have been in love the whole time. Classic, right? Actually, not so much.

The movie Life Partners deals with the more complicated (and more common) situation where you have to manage the different relationships in your life and the tension that can cause. It’s fun. It’s cute. You’re going to have a good time.

From Tara: The Big Brunch (HBO Max)

The Big Brunch is Dan Levy’s big project following Schitt’s Creek. It’s a reality cooking show that follows the line of The Great British Baking Show or The Great Canadian Baking Show (which Levy hosted the first two seasons of) where the focus is on the people, the personalities, and not the drama.

Works/People Discussed

• The Handmaid’s Tale - Season Five (Hulu)
• The Great British Baking Show (BBC)
• The Walking Dead (AMC)
• The Good Place (NBC)
• Scrubs (NBC/ABC)
• Down to Earth with Zac Efron (Netflix)
• RuPaul's Drag Race UK
• Legendary (HBO Max)
• What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat by Aubrey Gordon
• Maintenance Phase (Podcast)
• Rest is Resistance by Tricia Hersey
• Tricia Hersey on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast
• The Great Canadian Baking Show (CBC)
• Schitt’s Creek (CBC)

Support & follow the show

• Buy us a Ko-fi
• Sign up for our newsletter
• Twitter: @queerlyrec
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Kris is back with a new book on the horizon and a contest is coming, so stay tuned. Tara is on vacation and loving it.

They talk about the faux pas that was GBBO's Mexican Week, plus what they love and don’t love about reality shows. We have fun here.

If you enjoy this episode, please consider buying Kris & Tara a Ko-fi!

Official Recommendations

This week, Kris recommends the m/m film Bros (2022). While it might be best known as the first gay romantic comedy released by a major studio that features an openly LGBTQ+ principal cast, Kris is delighted that it's also delightfully written and takes place in the queer scene of NYC. You should check it out!

And Tara's recommending reality TV, with the vogueing competition show Legendary (HBO Max). Each week, ballroom houses battle down for the chance to win $100,000. It’s fun, informative, and Tara cannot stop talking about it.

Works/People Discussed

• Love is Blind: Season Three (Netflix)
• Southbound and Down by KB Draper
• House of the Dragon (HBO)
• Survivor (CBS)
• Great British Baking Show (BBC Productions)
• Drag Race UK (BBC)
• Wig (2019)
• Paris is Burning (1990)

This is the problem with recommendations: when you love ’em, you can’t stop talking about ’em.  Thanks to her recommendation in the last episode, Amanda returns to dish and deep dive into Yuri on Ice! Tara devoured the m/m figuring skating romance anime series in a weekend, and this whole episode is dedicated to geeking out about the things they loved about it (and one or two things they didn’t).

If you enjoy this episode, please consider buying Kris & Tara a Ko-fi!

Other works discussed:

• Steven Universe (Cartoon Network)
• She-Ra: Princess of Power (Dreamworks)
• The Owl House (Disney)
• Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Fire Island (2022)

Amanda's Yuri on Ice! fanfic recommendations

• The airplane fic she mentioned - Same universe, alternate getting-together
• Pre-canon, identity porn, identity reveal, alternate getting together
• During the "summer of mutual pining," ie when Viktor was training Yuri in Hasetsu - Dreamy, short
• Viktor is a single-dad to a younger Yuri Plisetsky

Listen to the episode