Pop Culture Fix: Ilene Chaiken Aided By Marina After Crashing Her Car Outside The Planet and Other Inspirational Tales

Welcome to your fresh pop culture fix, a weekly bucket of stories direct from boi scouts to your doorstop, in a variety of enchanting flavors.


The L Word Creator Ilene Chaiken Opens Up About Her ‘First Romance’, a story she says will be familiar to L Word fans because it’s also Jenny’s story. It’s a trip I promise:

Grey’s Anatomy Actress Sara Ramirez: Why I Came Out as Bisexual ( (After My Character Did!)

… Although Transparent has put out a few audition sides for its next season, none of which provide any evidence regarding whether or not Tambor is going to be replaced by a new actor, The Hollywood Reporter reports that ‘Transparent’ is Unlikely to Air This Year in Wake of Jeffrey Tambor Exit and, indeed indeedy, “it remains unclear if Amazon plans to recast the character — the series in the past had taken heat for not casting a trans actress for the role — or write out the center of the series.” Production is scheduled to start in December, putting Season Five on the slate for 2019, not 2018 as originally intended.

… On the bright side, this new trailer for Vida makes it explicitly clear what was implicitly clear in the last trailer — the mother whose death is the impetus for the lead sisters’ reunion was indeed married to a butch lesbian played by non-binary actor Ser Anzoategui. Vida will be screening at SXSW this weekend and I am jealous of everybody who gets to see it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0ttPSaqhF0

…Here is Heather and I talking about how “Take My Wife” Season Two Is Everything And Everyone You Love 

….Dyke Central’ Director Florencia Manovil Wants You To Watch More Queer TV

Manovil’s show follows three queer women of color, who live together in a Bay Area home they lovingly call “Dyke Central”: the warm, adventurous Gin (Giovannie Espiritu), the playful Fabi (Carla Pauli), and the somber, reserved Alex (Tai Rockett). The supporting cast is similarly diverse: Gin’s friend Tom identifies as trans, as does her co-worker; none of the characters are white or heterosexual.

Beth Ditto On Turning Real Heartbreak Into “Fake Sugar” 

Where the Hell Is My Lola Bunny Merch? | The Mary Sue

The ’90s were filled with girl characters who were very much still a male idea of an “empowered” female character, but that doesn’t mean those characters didn’t have worth or importance to those who watched them. Lola Bunny was designed fit a certain idea of attractiveness and fill a far less than perfect role, but that doesn’t have to negate her accomplishments, especially when her appearance is not the most important thing about her. Even now, too many people joke about how no one watches the WNBA and throw around lesbian comments as insults. Besides Love and Basketball, how many movies have you seen that depict female basketball players in a positive way?

Lee Pace Is Not Your LGBTQIA+ Spokesperson – But, it turns out that he is queer! This matters to me because I fell in love with Halt and Catch Fire last year.

SXSW 2018: 12 Must-See Films at This Year’s Festival | IndieWire Includes “Wild Nights With Emily, starring Molly Shannon as reclusive poet Emily Dickinson and explores her lifelong romantic relationship with a woman.

41 Of The Most Badass Black Women Who Have Graced Your TV Screens Over The Years

Carrie-Anne Moss On Humanizing The Impenetrable Jeri Hogarth

Thor: Ragnarok has cut an explicitly bisexual scene from its DVD release 

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Riese

Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3266 articles for us.

17 Comments

  1. I looked it up, but I didn’t see anywhere in the Indiewire article that says the character is trans. In fact the article says the niece is a tomboy. Which is correct?

    • maybe they edited the article? i was directly quoting it above, like directly quoting it. i’ll check and report back.

    • looks like they changed “trans” to “tomboy.” somebody must have corrected them.

      • Oh, now I am curious to know if the character is trans, or tomboy or even queer. I was kind of hoping queer tomboy trans woman.

  2. Ok, so crazy theory. Could it possible be that Ilene Chaiken was punishing her Marina and it all went out of hands and straight to hell and now she’s punishing all of us by proxy?

    • Spoiler alert: She’s also punishing herself by killing her younger self (Jenny) and making the primary suspect her older self (Bette). I feel like there was a LOT of stuff there to sort through in therapy, maybe, instead of inflicting it on all of us.

      • Maybe Ilene Chaiken’s only relationship with therapy were some Sigmund Freud’s readings and his gigantic “love” for women, in general, and lesbians, in particular. It’s been said that some readings, when you’re young, can really determined your views.

  3. Nothing and no one could have prepared me for how Ilene Chaiken pronounces “barista.”

  4. Saturday I’m going go do bisexual things to the Valkyrie sigil from the movie because we can’t even get the tiniest bit of bisexual representation from Marvel.

    Not even trashfire bisexual representation of the best trashfire bisexual character ever on the Jenny to actually useful yet fun character scale.

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