u/Demetan2016

I was a very shy boy, and Xena became a little world I could disappear into. Things at home were difficult sometimes, so I taped every episode on VHS and watched them until I nearly knew them by heart. I made up whole adventures between episodes, filled notebooks with fan fiction, and—yes—had a huge crush on Gabrielle.

There was something I loved in every season: S1’s “The Greater Good” and “Callisto”; S2’s “The Quest”; S3’s “The Bitter Suite”; S4’s “The Ides of March”; S5’s “Chakram” and the wonderfully eerie “Them Bones, Them Bones”; and S6’s “When Fates Collide.” I even have a soft spot for the delightful weirdness of “Married with Fishsticks.”

For some people, they’re just episodes. For me, they’re the glow of a TV in a dark room, the whirr of a VCR, and a place where I could feel brave, hopeful, and less alone. Xena and Gabrielle meant more to me than I could have said then.

How about you folks?

I’ve been seriously questioning whether I might be queer, and I think part of what makes this confusing is the difference between my actual relationship history and my inner life.

My real romantic life has largely been centered around women. I’ve loved women, had serious relationships with women, built a family, and I know that my attraction and emotional connection to women are real. That part of my life doesn’t feel imaginary or like something I was simply pretending to do.

And that’s one of the strongest things that makes me wonder whether I’m simply a straight cis man who happens to have a complicated relationship with masculinity and a very strong connection to queer culture.

But then there are men.

My relationship to men feels much harder for me to understand.

I don’t have the same clear relationship history with men that I have with women, so I don’t have a neat answer I can point to and say, “There, that proves it.”

And I think that uncertainty is part of what keeps the question alive.

I find myself wondering where the line is between noticing men, admiring men, wanting closeness or emotional intimacy with men, identifying with certain men, and actually being attracted to them.

Sometimes I honestly don’t know.

I also wonder how much traditional masculinity has affected my ability to even recognize certain feelings. Men are generally taught to put very specific boundaries around affection, admiration, tenderness, physical closeness, vulnerability, even beauty. So if you’ve spent most of your life assuming you’re straight, how do you know whether something you feel toward another man is friendship, admiration, identification, attraction, or some mixture of all of them?

With women, things have always seemed much easier for me to categorize.

With men, they feel murkier.

What makes me think I might be queer

I have an unusually strong emotional connection to queer people and queer stories. It often feels less like observing another community from the outside and more like recognizing something.

Stories about people discovering themselves later in life, questioning gender roles, rejecting the identity they were expected to have, or finally allowing themselves to ask forbidden questions can hit me extremely hard.

There are moments when seeing queer people live openly gives me this strange feeling of relief or longing that I have difficulty explaining.

Not necessarily, “I want exactly what they have.”

More like:

“Why does this feel so familiar?”

I’m also realizing that I may have spent a lot of my life interpreting myself through very conventional categories: man, straight, relationships with women, father, etc.

Those things may all be genuinely true.

But I’m starting to wonder whether they necessarily tell the whole story.

Because bisexuality exists. Queerness doesn’t require your attraction to men and women to be identical. It doesn’t require a 50/50 split. And having genuinely loved women obviously wouldn’t disprove being bi or queer.

What makes me think I might NOT be queer

The biggest reason is also pretty straightforward:

Maybe I really am attracted to women and simply don't experience meaningful romantic or sexual attraction toward men.

My history with women is real.

And I don’t want to reinterpret every emotionally intense feeling I have toward men as hidden sexuality just because I’ve started questioning myself.

Men can love other men deeply without wanting them sexually.

Men can think other men are beautiful.

Men can desperately want male friendship, tenderness, validation, intimacy, or acceptance.

A man can hate restrictive masculinity without being queer.

And a straight cis man can feel profoundly at home around queer people because queer culture gives him permission to be softer, stranger, more emotional, less traditionally masculine, or simply more himself.

That possibility makes sense to me too.

The same goes for my connection to women. I sometimes wonder about the difference between attraction to women, admiration of women, and identification with women. Those feelings can overlap without necessarily saying anything definitive about gender identity.

So I’m stuck between two interpretations of essentially the same life.

One says:

“You’re a straight cis man who loves women, doesn’t fit traditional masculinity very well, and feels unusually comfortable in queer spaces.”

The other says:

“You’ve spent most of your life understanding yourself as straight because your relationships were with women, but there may be another part of your sexuality or gender that you never gave yourself permission to explore.”

I genuinely don’t know which one is closer to the truth.

And strangely, I don’t think I want someone to simply tell me “you’re queer” or “you’re straight.”

I’m more interested in hearing from people — especially people who figured this out later in adulthood.

If you had a long history of genuine relationships with the opposite sex, how did you eventually realize that there was also something queer about you?

And if you questioned for a long time and eventually concluded that you weren’t queer, I’d actually really like to hear that side too.

How did you learn to tell the difference between attraction, admiration, identification, emotional intimacy, and simply wanting permission to be yourself?

I’ve been building a big ’80s playlist and fell down a Parachute Club rabbit hole. “Rise Up” is obviously an all-timer, but it made me go back to the albums too: “At the Feet of the Moon” and “Sexual Intelligence,” then “Love Is Fire” and “Love and Compassion” from Small Victories.

What I love is the mix of huge pop hooks, new-wave dance rhythms and that warm Caribbean/percussion influence. It feels joyful, sensual and socially open without ever sounding like generic ’80s pop. Lorraine Segato gives it so much personality.

Does anyone else here love them beyond “Rise Up”? Which album, deep cut or live performance would you recommend to someone getting into them?

https://preview.redd.it/ufy4ls52c3oh1.jpg?width=517&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a4bf64dc93d40c678d274d10abdfa51c997e2cb7

I’ve been thinking about Janet Jackson’s Control (1986) and Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) compared with Michael Jackson’s Bad (1987) and Dangerous (1991).

Michael obviously had the bigger global impact and some of the most iconic singles of all time, but if we judge them strictly as albums, I’m starting to wonder whether Janet’s records are actually stronger.

Control feels incredibly focused, with a very clear identity and almost no wasted space. And Rhythm Nation 1814 might be even more impressive: conceptually coherent, socially ambitious, rhythmically innovative, and remarkably consistent from beginning to end.

By comparison, Bad has enormous highs, but does it work as cohesively as Rhythm Nation? And while Dangerous is adventurous and influential, I sometimes feel that it’s more uneven than either of Janet’s albums.

So my question is:

Would you rank Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 above Bad and Dangerous purely as albums, separate from sales, fame, music videos, and Michael Jackson’s cultural stature?

I’d especially be interested in hearing comparisons involving songwriting, production, sequencing, consistency, innovation, and how well each album has aged.

Look, I'm not gonna pretend this movie is some hidden masterpiece. The plot's a mess, the pacing drags in the middle, and there are weird tonal shifts that make you wonder what the hell happened in the editing room. I get why people dismiss it.

But I genuinely love this film, and I think there's something real here worth talking about.

First, the nostalgia thing—yeah, it gets me. I grew up with that 80s optimism, that specific feeling that superhero stories could just be good without needing to be dark or cynical or constantly "deconstructed." There's something about watching Supergirl now that hits different because of that era, you know? It feels like watching someone actually believe in the goodness of the character, and that belief matters.

But it's not just nostalgia. Helen Slater is genuinely great here. She brings this warmth and earnestness to Kara that feels real—not campy, not ironic, just... sincere. When she's figuring out Earth, learning about humans, it's charming because Slater actually plays it with care. She makes you believe that Kara cares about people. That matters.

The film's aesthetic is solid too. The design work, the color palette, the way they visualized Krypton—it's all done with actual thought. You can feel the craft underneath the rough edges.

Is it flawed? Absolutely. Do I wish the screenplay had another pass? For sure. But there's something honest about this movie that I keep coming back to. It's not trying to be anything other than what it is: a sincere attempt to tell a Supergirl story with respect for the character.

Maybe that's enough. Maybe earnestness counts for something, even when the execution's imperfect.

I just got back from seeing Supergirl, and I honestly don't understand why it's been so divisive.

To me, this wasn't just another superhero movie. It felt like a melancholic sci-fi western about grief, hope, and finding a reason to keep going. The relationship between Kara and Ruthye completely carried the film, and Milly Alcock gave a performance that felt vulnerable, fierce, and deeply human.

I also loved how visually unique it was. At times it reminded me of Mad Max, classic westerns, and old-school science fiction, yet it still felt unmistakably like Supergirl. The score, the atmosphere, Krypto, the strange planets, the quieter emotional moments... all of it stayed with me long after the credits rolled.

Maybe I connected with it because I wasn't looking for another world-ending spectacle. I was looking for a story about a person carrying unimaginable loss and still choosing compassion.

For me, this is easily one of my favorite DC films in years. It made me order Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow the moment I got home.

I'd genuinely love to hear from other people who connected with it the same way I did. I feel like this movie deserves more love than it's getting. 💙

Je recherche cette série, elle a été réalisé pour Radio Canada dans les années 80. Elle avait comme sujet le quotidien de familles québécoises durant la 2e guerre mondiale. Merci.

I’m 46 and I have to admit I didn’t really know Olivia Rodrigo besides the obvious hits.I grew up with The Cure, 80s alternative, new wave, all that stuff… so I wasn’t expecting much.But I finally listened to the whole album and wow.

It’s honestly the best album I’ve heard this year. What got me isn’t just that the songs are catchy. It’s the emotions. The anger, the sadness, the vulnerability, and the way she just puts everything out there.

Different generation, different sound, but the feeling is there.

I’m just happy music can still surprise me at 46.

I was wondering how other Xennials feel about Michael Jackson today.

I’ll start by saying that I love his music. I grew up with him like so many people from our generation. His songs were everywhere and he was honestly one of my childhood idols. I still think his music is incredible.

But I also have to admit that it feels different now. I have two kids who are young teenagers and they both became fans of Michael Jackson. Their friends love him too, especially with all the renewed attention around him lately.

Because of that I felt I had to have a real conversation with them about the allegations and everything surrounding him. Not to tell them they can’t enjoy the music, but because I don’t think you can ignore that part of the story either.

The thing I find difficult sometimes is seeing some fans defend absolutely everything. Even if someone believes Michael was innocent, the idea of an adult with that level of fame and power sleeping in the same bed as children close to him is still something I think we can recognize as troubling. There are questions about boundaries and power dynamics there, regardless of what he personally believed his intentions were.

It’s strange because the music is still part of my life and my memories, but it’s impossible for me to see everything exactly the same way I did when I was a kid.

I’m curious how other people from our generation feel about him now.

The older I get, the more I weirdly love the Friday the 13th movies. I honestly expected the opposite. I thought they’d feel dumber or emptier with age, but somehow the first four especially hit me harder now than when I was young.

There’s this almost nihilistic atmosphere hanging over them. The darkness, the isolation, the feeling that nobody is really safe or protected. But at the same time, there’s always this tiny little light trying to survive inside all that gloom. Amy Steel in Part 2 embodies that perfectly to me. She feels human, vulnerable, warm, intelligent… like an actual person trapped inside this cold nightmare.

The older I get, the more the series feels sad, autumnal, lonely, and strangely beautiful instead of just “fun slashers.” Am I the only one who feels this way?