Sideways

When I picked up a pinch-hit for @admiraltypress in this year's @renegadepublishing typeset exchange, and saw this SVSS fic on the list, it was JUST a few days after one of my fellow Renegade discord members has shared some really great public domain illustrations, and I knew exactly what I wanted to use for this one. I'm pretty happy with how the bamboo theme turned out!

Regardless of the Hardships is a canonverse AU where Shen Yuan transmigrated into the body of Mu Qingfang, peak lord of Qian Cao peak, instead. I've only read a smattering of SVSS fic so far, and this slow-burn was a fun one to dive into!

And my favourite silly little detail in all of my recent typesets is the post-it note on the summary page, pulled from the tags. (I'd stuck it in on a whim right before I closed the file to go off and do other things, and promptly forgot all about it. When I came back and saw it again, I was entertained all out of proportion to the situation. Sometimes I'm easily amused.)

Narrator:

Wilson Cruz became the first out actor playing an out series regular on network television.

Wilson Cruz:

I really believed it would be more powerful if young people understood the person playing that role stood behind that story. But when we made the pilot in 1993, ABC didn't pick it up. So we went through a whole year where we were put on hold. I made a pact that if we got picked up that I would come out to my parents. We got picked up, and I told my mom first. It went okay. I told my dad, and my dad threw me out of the house. We had about three months before we started to go into production on the series. And between my car and, um, some friends' couches, I made it through three months. And when I told Winnie my story, she decided that that was also gonna happen to Rickie on My So-Called Life.

Winnie Holzman:

I was starting to feel this sense of responsibility toward just expressing what I understood was really some young gay people's experiences in life. I mean, obviously not all, but, unfortunately, too many.

Wilson Cruz:

So Christmas of '93 I tell my father, and we stopped speaking. And in December of '94, the episode in which Rickie is thrown out of his house airs. Ten, fifteen minutes pass, and my phone rings. And it's my dad. And, uh...he says, "You know, I think it's about time we talked."

There is not a day that goes by that I don't get a message from somebody who says their life was changed because of Rickie. And I wonder sometimes, you know, how many fathers turned to their sons or daughters and said, "I think it's time for us to talk."

That's the power of TV.