litreat xavier's

  The Queerness of Silence: What Isn’t Said in Literature Silence has always surrounded queerness. At times it has been imposed, like a silence born of punishment and fear, and at other times it has been chosen to conceal love in a language that only some will recognise. In literature, queerness often lives between the words, where desire and intimacy exist but cannot always be expressed. To understand this silence is to understand both the pain of being erased and the strength to survive. The Renaissance highlights how queer desire was written in the shadows, being rarely permitted to step into the light. Shakespeare’s sonnets to the ‘Fair Youth’ brim with passion, admiration, and longing, and their intimacy exceeds the boundaries of mere poetic flattery. Was this simply the language of friendship, or was it Shakespeare’s carefully coded declaration of love? Christopher Marlowe’s homoerotic undertones suggest a world where desire slipped into verse even when the stage demanded dis...

  On Control Do you absolutely hate it when a new season of your favorite show comes out and you see a reel with spoilers? Or when you’re reading a popular murder mystery and your friend tells you who the killer is? Yeah - well, we’re not the same. It's an unpopular and slightly controversial opinion, but I do the exact opposite. I look up spoilers. I read up on the plot of the murder mystery before putting a film on. I google who the murderer is before I finish the book, I just really prefer…knowing everything. I like being aware and informed of every single thing ahead of time. For me, everything that I watch, read, and do is a puzzle that I need to know the answers to before I even begin. For the longest time, almost everyone who saw me do this would make fun of me, saying, “Where’s the fun in getting spoilers?” and I totally understand. I never had an explanation for this except that I would really not feel okay if I didn’t know everything that’s about to happen. I brought this...