change the pear vol. 33 12 Nov 2025

hi! it's been a minute. october was, as it always tends to be, a weird month for me, so get ready to learn what havoc was wreaked on my psyche this time around! the weather has reflected that down here; lots of temperature fluctuations and storms, while today it's been sunny, windy, rainy and hailing one after the other.

on repeat

i get in the car, i put on music and then hana turns to me and goes, “sorry, what playlist is this?” knowing full well the answer is “the fanmix i’ve made to accompany my deranged reading material” (more on this later). anyway the two themes are: loverboy radio, and “divorce, babe”.

currently watching

the celebrity traitors, of course!!! i wasn’t expecting to love this as much as i did. i mean, we all know i love the traitors, but i always felt that part of the fun was that it stars a collection of random british people who had (with a few notable exceptions) never met each other before. and yet i have been charmed by the celebs… i love how the archetypes and patterns that are fallen into are pretty much the same as the other seasons, even if they believe themselves to be above that; i also love that we get to see a bit more of a traitor alliance, because backstabbing each other wouldn’t really give anyone an advantage seeing as the money isn’t going to them; i love how it’s a bit more irreverent and they genuinely seem to be having a lot of fun. no tears at breakfast, no nonsense cliques and silly bitching. we thank the lord! alan carr is an utter and complete delight who has made me laugh without fail every episode (the last one where he said “i’m doing all the traitors’ dirty work for them, just put me up in the turret with a hoover” KILLED me), but i have also been won over by joe marler… sir your expressive face, unending exasperation and camp gestures have charmed me!!! one episode left to go and it remains to be seen if cat and alan can pull it off or if joe and nick’s tactic of keeping their enemies close will prevail.

last seen

arenike recently recommended the film mattias & maxime, directed by xavier dolan, and i watched it yesterday during a rainy spring afternoon. i find it really hard to watch movies a lot of the time—everyone’s probably sick of hearing this from me, but it’s just not a format that i gravitate towards. so me being able to sit down and watch a two hour movie by myself is a rare occasion. part of the reason i found it so easy to lose myself in this one has to do with the film itself: its pacing, how beautifully and carefully it is shot. and part of the reason is that it’s about two of my favourite things: insane yearning and toxic repression! matthias and maxime are childhood friends from montreal who get roped into starring in their friend’s teenage sister’s short film. the scene she wants them to film? a kiss. they film it while their friends pass around a bong and muse on whether they made out in high school or not (max says yes, matt apparently does not remember it).

matt immediately begins to spiral out following the kiss, while max doesn’t seem to be as affected by it—perhaps because he’s a little more in touch with his sexuality and feelings than matt is, perhaps because he’s preoccupied with his imminent move to australia and passing on his guardianship over his mother to his aunt while he’s away. as the film progresses, we observe that matt and max clearly come from very different socio-economic backgrounds, highlighted most plainly when matt and his girlfriend and another friend are at a gathering with their rich, frivolous mothers, who speak about max in hushed tones (“what a hard life”), clearly pitying him even as they express care.

matt continues to crash out, avoiding max and their friends while also fantasising that random people on the street are max, zoning out while his girlfriend entertains, dissociating at work and not chasing the promotion offered to him; max fights with his mother, punching a mirror after she tries to manipulate him into giving her money, and unsuccessfully tries to reach out to his brother. the tension that matt is unable to conceal builds through an awkward final goodbye dinner for max (matt is late and fumbles his farewell speech) and a party afterwards at one of their friend’s houses (which matt tries to avoid going to).

i loved the wider friendship here: the layers of machismo and teasing and silliness, their routines and memories and favourite games, the way they interact with each other’s parents—it all makes the world feel lived in. matt acts like a total dick at the party, then finally finds max alone in the back room. it’s a kiss scene of all time, i’m happy to report: matt kissing max’s bloody knuckles, tenderly mouthing over his birthmark, max’s nod of desperate wanting. delicious!!! i’ll take five more, thanks, except we only get ONE because matt leaves the room, refuses to take max up on his offer to delay his flight so they can spend the weekend together and talk, and max packs up his life for australia. in the process he learns that matt has actually tried to sabotage his move by not passing on a recommendation letter than max needs. and then… it ends with matt waiting on the street outside max’s apartment as max is about to go to the airport. crying screaming throwing up etc.

ticks all the boxes for me: a fantastic soundtrack, meditative shots of scenery and on public transport, truly insane levels of yearning, gay people (+ friends) being deranged. highly recommend!

reading

haha. well. at the beginning of october i watched the trailer for heated rivalry (thanks kat for sharing) and since then i have gone completely and utterly berserk. first things first: i read the book that the show is based on (by rachel reid) and i had a fantastic time. is it good? no. but why must a book be “good”? is it not enough to see a submissive prettyboy hate how much he loves to be topped by a big sexy russian bear? unfortunately, the other five books in the series are also not good but in the bad way, not the fun deranged way, but i was deep in some sort of psychosis by that point so i did read all of them. however, i don’t have anything nice to say so let’s move on.

a while ago (when i last entered romance novel psychosis) shireen sent me three epubs of taylor fitzpatrick’s between the teeth, which i hadn’t read until now, but i promptly devoured them, and then went on to read (almost) everything she’s ever published online. the state of hysteria i am in over these stories cannot be understated. every time i talk about them i can HEAR my voice raising in pitch and my words coming out twice as fast as usual. i would love to write in depth about them here, but i know myself and i could probably write about 3,000 words so i’ll spare you. (but my DMs are always open.)

i will say that what i love most about her writing is the god-tier characterisation she is capable of. these people feel real, by which i mean: deeply flawed yet trying their best to do better. sometimes that process is agonisingly slow, sometimes we are mired in the muck and debris of these characters blowing up their own lives for a long time. the humanity and grace that she affords them mean that this is deeply affecting; even more so when they eventually begin to climb out of the hole. i wish i could put into words how exactly that humanity and grace is given—the closest i can get is to say that she cares so deeply about her characters, and she puts a lot of thought into understanding who they are and why they do things, which is always conveyed in the narrative and means we as readers also begin to understand these people, even if their personalities and reactions and responses are very different to our own.

anyway. if you would perhaps be interested in any of the following:

autistic meanie becomes a Real Boy through the transformative power of love and friendship
loverboy of the century struggles with his sexuality while falling head over heels in love with a judgemental bitch
knucklehead with missing teeth discovers he is functionally married to his fellow knucklehead teammate
unmedicated adhd cannonball careens into the life of an uptight autiste. what happens next will shock you
toxic exes in a psychological torture vortex

then boy do i have a story for you. once again, my DMs are open!!!

miscellaneous

seeing whales (!!!) with bee. jumping in the cold cold pacific. discovering that they and hana have the same taste in comfort youtube videos (the autism4autism jumped out). cooking a feast to celebrate mid-autumn festival. hot pot with ping. sima and babak graduating us to the “cool friends” barbecue. hana crying with laughter over this. messaging arenike with every thought about the aforementioned toxic exes. exchanging voice notes with elete about our respective Emotional Support Gay Men. walking at mulligan’s flat with weggs. ping showing me the peaceful lookout over the lake near our department. watching glee with amy. trick-or-treating with ash and morgan around the neighbourhood. marjory and kostas’ beautiful wedding. alfie finally winning me over to the 911 side in exchange for reading my hockey boys. messaging shannon and kallie about shane and ilya. doing battle with the squaredle every day. learning about the existence of the iguana rosada. this yusuf komunyakaa poem. this e.e. cummings poem. this leila chatti poem. these frank bidart excerpts. how can we lose when we’re so sincere?

🍐 thank you for reading. i'll see you soon.