This article is also available on my Medium.
Amongst the many good things about Jessica Best’s writing, such as her gripping plots and banter that genuinely makes me laugh, I love how she writes lyrics for diegetic music in her shows.
Sisyphus, set down your stone
You don’t have to go it alone
They would start a war for poison
Just to burn it in the sky
You know it’s to make some noise and
Raise the banner high, banner high
The song is on theme the show it’s written for ‒ and it’s the Keep It Steady credits music for that reason ‒ but it also feels like the songwriter is a character in their own right, not the Voice of God. For the show, it sounds like the environmentalist punk anthem for protesters against the Iraq War in the early 2000s. It sounds like something the protagonists, queer teens in a terrible high school in the mid-aughts, would listen to on repeat to keep hope. I know I do.
Being queer feels like my continued existence is a Sisyphean challenge. For every win, our rights are attacked anew. Even now, during Pride Month, there are growing threats.
In Germany, where I live at present, the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) gained in numbers just this month at the European election. This is despite the anti-AfD protests that have been taking place all over Germany since an article in mid-January came out about a conference the previous month where AfD members, Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU/CSU) members and neo-Nazis were in attendance. The failure of these protests to impact these parties’ growing strength was no surprise to anyone, and they embolden the bigots.
In Berlin, my own city, I’ve heard about bigoted attacks, harassment and property damage at least five times a week in the past month. In Naarm, my other home, the police still have no second thoughts about utilising pepper spray on anyone counter-protesting transphobes.
When I ranted about this to someone, they replied that of course, that’s to be expected when you’re counter-protesting. A counter-protest is not registered; a protest is. Because these protests aren’t transphobic, they’re about supporting women. Because their concerns about men using trans rights to endanger the safety of women are valid, of course.
Definitely not a wolf whistle about queer people being sexual predators, no, and about trans women not being ‘real’ women and everyone else being confused, not at all.
That’s how it starts. Then it’s about drag queens sexualising children (these aren’t the only instances, just the first I found on DuckDuckGo). Then it’s about books that aren’t appropriate for children, a trend that began in the US and is spreading across the world like a disease. Now it’s about a queer youth event being an opportunity for teens to ‘flaunt’ their sexuality.
All of these things are deeply personal to me, but that last one especially. As a queer teen, I would attend Minus18 events to meet other kids like me, to escape from my issues. I went to the Minus18 Queer Formal in 2019 because I didn’t feel accepted at my school’s formal. I was isolated from all my peers, especially my friends, and the academic stress my teachers were putting on us caused me to have panic attacks every assembly.
Instead of forking out over $100 (although my school’s a government school, the special events are allowed to come at extortionate costs) for an event I wouldn’t feel welcome at, I bought a $10 ticket to the Queer Formal at the St Kilda Town Hall. I bought a skirt from an op shop and borrowed some additional clothes and boots from a friend, at whose place I also got ready (they liked putting makeup on me). We went to St Kilda together, hung out with some nice folks, got glitter all over us, enjoyed the free pizza and drinks. We danced to Taxi 66, DJ Gay Dad, Sienna Rose, Sarah Lambourne, Electric Fields; we cheered at basically everything Zodiac said.
The idea that my joy, when I was having such a difficult time, would lead to such hate now hurts. The idea that you’d want to take such joy from kids like me… it is unbearable to think about.
In times like these, queer kids need to be able to find that joy. Because they are in as much danger as they ever were.
In times like these, the right defines itself by attacking the very existence of queer people. In times like these, being queer is a politically radical, fringe idea. In times like these, the centre believes compromise is the way forward. In doing so, our very existence is compromised.
Hate speech is reframed as ‘controversial’, not dangerous. Protecting queerness is ‘contentious’ and ‘under criticism’. The media, which typically decides against discriminatory language, quotes harmful rhetoric verbatim rather than simply paraphrasing, thus platforming harmful views and exposing queer people to harm.
Make no mistake, this endangers queer kids. Their parents may not be accepting of queer people, even their own children’s queerness. Their teachers may hold queerphobic views, even discriminating against their own queer students. Their peers, exposed to queerphobic views, feel entitled to pick on queer kids, to harass them, even to beat them up.
It’s what killed Nox Benedict. It’s what killed Brianna Ghey. Every year, the list of queer kids who will not grow old grows, having lost their lives at the hands of others or taken their own lives.
But, as Michael Leali writes, ‘[t]hat is one of the many reasons I will never stop telling [queer stories], nor will I stop fighting for all children to have equal access to them. My earnest hope is to spare queer young people as much pain as possible as they discover and celebrate all that they are.’
If you can’t already tell, I was very grateful for the work of Alice Oseman when I was a teen. Radio Silence was the first story where I heard my own voice in a character’s inner monologue, in the way they saw the world. I also understood the struggles the characters were going through, because I was going through them myself. Solitaire somehow made even mundane things seem dramatic; Loveless felt like the aroace Fangirl coming-of-age story I had always wanted.
The webcomic Heartstopper, a prequel to Solitaire, never failed to make me laugh. I would grab the graphic novels to while away hours when I needed a pick-me-up.
The story covers important themes, of course; every queer character experiences queerphobia, protagonist Charlie struggles with an eating disorder as a result of OCD that occasionally leads him to self-harm (especially discussed in Solitaire), he goes through a toxic relationship, the teens have lived through grief and familial issues and are all at different stages of coming to terms with their sexuality.
But despite their issues, these queer kids all have each other. Not just in their romantic relationships, but also with their friend group. When things get hard, the people in their life are there to help, to support, to distract from the hard things.
On stories closer to home, I’m very hopeful for Briar Rolfe’s upcoming graphic novel Get Your Story Straight. Personally, I’m delighted by fake dating tropes. This review of the movie adaptation of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before explains the appeal well: ‘It grants audiences all the satisfaction of seeing the central couple in an established, domestic relationship, but it doesn’t deflate the will they/won’t they tension because you are always waiting for the two fake lovers to realize that they’re actually really in love. It’s a trope that lends itself equally well to both fluff and angst.’
In this day and age, fake dating tropes deserve to be explored through a lens beyond gay characters using straight leads as beards. Trying out relationships without the pressure of an actual relationship and figuring out your sexual or romantic orientation. Or, as in the case of Get Your Story Straight, to run a marriage con on bigots.
I’m even more excited to see a queer story set in Naarm during the time when I was growing up. I was seventeen during the Marriage Equality plebiscite, unable to vote but being constantly centred in ‘Think of the children!’ arguments by people who never considered the impact their hateful campaign was having on vulnerable queer people. This was a year after the federal government dropped funding for the queer-focused anti-bullying programme Safe Schools.
Whilst I was lucky to go to school in an electorate with the third-strongest ‘Yes’ vote, many of my queer friends were not. Teens today will know how the ‘No’ campaign has evolved into the debate around religious exemptions of the Sex Discrimination Act.
Rolfe promises prospective readers a story about the very real dangers queer people still face in this day and age, and about living in defiance in those dangers.
Even if we can’t protect queer youth from everything, we can still give them some light. We can give them prisms to shine that light through, to cast rainbows on the darkness.
Queer adults, too, can find joy in these stories. Not just young adults like me, who grew up during the plebiscite, or young adults like Get Your Story Straight’s protagonist Henry, a nineteen-year-old living in a sharehouse in Naarm, but any queer adult in need of a story about growing up queer. Especially queer adults who never had that experience, whether they grew up closeted or didn’t realise they were queer until later in life.
For millennial queer adults, Keep It Steady recaptures growing up queer in the mid-aughts, or may at least rewrite that experience to be more pleasant.
Keep It Steady begins in after-school detention at Columbus High School in late 2005. Zach (Ashton Reid/Matthew Sabido), our teen protagonist, is no stranger to this form of academic discipline. Gabe (Chris Rivera) is new to it as well as the school in general. He loves to try his best in class and to get involved in his school community. The conservative outrage and apathy he meets at CHS comes at a shock to him. Zach, a burnout known amongst his classmates for getting high, seems as disinterested as everyone else. But, for reasons Zach doesn’t understand himself, Gabe makes an impression on him. So much so that when Gabe starts a Social Justice Club at CHS, Zach decides to show up at meetings.
Of course, it would be too much to expect Zach to start doing anything immediately. Zach’s cynicism comes from a history of anxiety, bullying and isolation that taught him not caring was the best defence mechanism.
There are only two things he seems to care about at all: art and his best friend, Tori (Ishani Kanetkar). When Tori’s home life gets worse than his might be, his door is open for her and her little brother, Cody (Greg Vinciguerra). She, meanwhile, always has an attentive ear for him. For all their sniping, the two of them know they are the only person the other can ever rely on.
TORI:
One day, Zach! I leave you alone for one day and this is what you do?ZACH:
Okay, in my defense, it didn’t seem like a good idea even while it was happening?TORI:
How do these things happen to you? And like, why?
But despite everything, Zach finds himself bonding with the other club members. His in with the club, Leslie (Paige Alena), is his note-passing partner in World Mythology class. He and Krista (Regina Renée Russell) were in Drama Club in middle school together. In Consumer Economics, he and Andy (Perseus Rebelo) throw Super Balls back-and-forth, and with Andy comes Ponni (Sophia Babai); the two of them are a package deal.
So when Gabe asks Zach to pretend to date him to take heat away from Leslie ‒ who is constantly bullied for looking like a lesbian ‒ and Krista ‒ who wants to ask Leslie to prom ‒ Zach surprises everyone, including himself, when he agrees.
Again, no surprises for the audience. Zach can see the injustices of the world even without Gabe’s help; unlike Gabe, the prospect of doing something and caring even more feels unbearable. But he’s empathetic to other people’s pain, and if he can do something to make it better, he will. Gabe, meanwhile, can see clearly how the injustices of the world affect his own life, but struggles to handle it on his own.
Because even if physical violence is rare, verbal jabs are juvenile and any slurs used are fairly tame (with more serious incidents taking place off-screen), combined together they make an ordinary high school traumatic. Nice kids are just as likely to see queerness as something bad as the bullies. Teachers may not say anything, but they will selectively pull up queer students and ignore any issues those students might come to them with. Or, despite having clear rules to enforce when it comes to bullying, they just don’t know how to handle it. As queer kids themselves ‒ Zach is a closeted bi and Gabe is homoromantic grey-ace (does Best have a pattern of writing bi-ace lead couples?) assumed to be gay by his classmates ‒ Zach and Gabe are always on the lookout for threats, day in, day out.
This enrages Gabe. Moreover, he feels responsible for his friends, who look to him as a leader. But everything he does, he hits brick wall after brick wall. Approaching Zach is his last resort. If he can’t diffuse the situation, he’s going to blow it up instead.
ZACH:
It must be nice, to be so sure. About anything.GABE:
It’s horrible. (beat) No, a lot of the time it’s not. But I know it could be better, and I can’t make them listen. I can’t make them take me seriously. And I keep thinking, ‘There’s got to be some way I could get through to them’ and I keep trying, because I can’t not, but—ZACH:
Okay, you’re right.
Maybe approaching Zach was planned out in detail. Maybe it was wishful thinking. Whatever the case, Gabe couldn’t know what would happen next.
I’ll be the first to admit I was already hooked on the show when I heard ‘fake dating’ (‘social justice kissing on the lips’ T-shirts when?) But what kept me going, and the reason why I’m recommending Keep It Steady alongside Heartstopper and Get Your Story Straight is because of the way these stories add levity to heavy topics. After all, pretending to date someone to fight bigotry is a wild, ridiculous idea. But the joke is on the bigots.
ZACH:
On some level, the bastards have already won. A hundred accumulated memories, parents and teachers: ‘Ignore them, Zach. They only want a reaction.’ Well screw that, I think. Let’s give them a reaction.
Further, these stories are about solidarity. Beyond queerness, Zach has mental health issues; Ponni is disabled and Gabe, Krista, Ponni and Andy are PoC. Tori, meanwhile, will always have Zach’s back. The kids have teachers they can turn to, from teachers inclined to be lenient with Zach because they know he’s going through tough times to teachers who support the Social Justice Club. And as this motley group of teens gets a reputation for standing against the injustices at their school, other kids approach them looking for help.
Bigots will isolate vulnerable people to take them down (as is the case with trans people right now). We fight them by holding together. We fight each other’s battles.
Sisyphus, lay down your load
You have walked a hardened higher road
We are standing here beside you
We will bear the weight and grin
When you need it we’ll remind you
When the void calls don’t give in, don’t give in
Thank you and have a great day, Columbus High!
You can listen to Keep It Steady via the show’s website or your podcatcher of choice.
If you’re interested in more queer YA literature, Jessica Best’s debut novel Stars, Hide Your Fires is out on 11 July. Get your copy from your local bookstore or library; ask them to order it if they don’t have it in stock.
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