Ask Me Anything #5
Celebrating five years of the newsletter by answering your questions
This is the Sunday Edition of Paging Dr. Lesbian. If you like this type of thing, subscribe, and share it with your friends. Upgrade your subscription for more, including weekly dispatches from the lesbian internet, monthly playlists, and a free sticker.
Welcome to 2026! To celebrate the new year, I’ve conducted an AMA (Ask Me Anything). I started this newsletter in January of 2021, and this AMA is also a celebration of five years of Paging Dr. Lesbian. I’m not very good at picking favorites, and I don’t like talking about myself much, so think of this as my gift to you for all your support, whether you’ve been a subscriber for years or just a few weeks. I’m happy to respond to your questions, comments, or concerns any day of the year, but I thought I’d take this opportunity to let you, the readers, drive the conversation. Happy New Year!
What’s your favorite tree and why?
I have tattoos of trees on both of my arms. A beautiful live oak tree, and a Douglas fir. Those are two favorites, and they remind me of places I like/have lived. I also love cedar trees, in large part because of their lovely smell. I love the colors of the northern red oak outside my window in the fall. I loved Fern Gully as a child, and I think that sparked my love of trees and wanting to protect them from the evil humans who want to destroy them.
What’s the best gay bar you’ve ever been to?
I loved the lesbian-owned queer bar Cheer Up Charlies in Austin, but there has been a lot of drama recently involving the management, so I feel I can no longer stan. Wildrose in Seattle is a cute spot. I haven’t made it to any of the lesbian bars in New York, sadly!
What do you think is the best coming out scene in a movie or tv show?
I wrote an article about this. I still love the moment where Willow comes out to Buffy on Buffy the Vampire Slayer – simple, but impactful. Love Alex on Supergirl and don’t even talk to me about Santana on Glee.
What’s dr lesbian’s vision for this newsletter in 2026?
More writing that excites me! I love doing interviews, but those tend to get the least engagement out of anything I write, so I may re-evaluate the frequency/format of those pieces. I’d love to attend a film festival and get y’all the inside scoop. I love doing book and movie recs, and I know you all like those as well. I also enjoy doing series or pieces that connect to things I’ve written about before — that continuity is fun. I’m interested in discovering more ways to engage readers with the work I publish here.
To be transparent, I’m always thinking of how I can convert more readers into paying subscribers. The more income I can make from this newsletter, the more central it can become to my writing/working life, and I really love writing this for you all. If there are any perks that you would be interested in, let me know! I’m also open to suggestions for topics to write about as well.
Worst shows/films you’ve seen because they had queer women in them
Oh god, so many. I don’t think they’re bad, necessarily, but I’ve watched a bunch of truncated episodes of soaps for their lesbian storylines. Here’s a big one: the terribly-named TV series Gypsy, in which Naomi Watts plays a therapist who begins sleeping with the girlfriend of one of her clients. It’s so bad! I feel like we all experienced a collective psychosis when that show got its fifteen minutes of Netflix fame. When it comes to TV, I don’t have a lot of patience for things being shitty. I would say The L Word is probabaly 50% brilliant and 50% terrible, if I’m being honest.
I can think of more examples on the movie front. According to Letterboxd, I have seen 163 lesbian films, which, by my standards, means lesbians or queer women are central to the plot. A lot of these aren’t good! Some of the worst I’ve seen are: When Night Is Falling, which I know some people think is a classic but I hate, A New York Christmas Wedding, Along Came Wanda, More Beautiful for Having Been Broken, and the lesbian vampire Romeo and Juliet story, With A Kiss I Die. Sometimes I find bad lesbian movies entertaining, but certain ones are hard to get through.
Which fruit do you think is the most lesbian?
I feel like the boys have claimed peaches because of Call Me By Your Name. I’m gonna say figs. They are extremely versatile in terms of consumption/cooking, can survive in arid environments, have a tough skin to protect themselves but are sweet inside, have red/pink/purple coloring a lá the lesbian flag, and have a bit of an erotic look to them. Figs were also common in ancient Greece, so you know our girl Sappho must have been eating them. My verdict on this matter is final.
What was your favorite show this year and why was it heated rivalry?
This question finally inspired me to start watching Heated Rivalry, but I haven’t watched past the 2nd episode. I just don’t care enough, sorry! It’s too fanfic-y for my taste (though I love fanfiction, don’t get me wrong). I can’t believe the hot Russian guy is actually from Texas.
My personal favorite show from 2025 was probably The Pitt. I also loved the December treat that was Pluribus. I’ve been having a great time with Brilliant Minds as well, but I prefer Season 1 to Season 2, because there is a storyline this season that I just can’t stand. I remain a devoted fan of Elsbeth, which frequently makes me laugh out loud.
How pretty is your girlfriend?
Prettier than all the paintings in the Louvre. I have no idea who asked this question.
What sapphic celebrities are you shipping for 2026?
Melissa King and Padma Lakshmi, of course. Post-divorce Nicole Kidman and any woman, but I fear she’s 100% straight. Angelina Jolie and a woman. Gillian Anderson and a woman. Angelina Jolie and Gillian Anderson? My third eye is open.
What inspired you to start this publication?
I began Paging Dr. Lesbian in January of 2021, along with many other people who started Substacks during COVID. I was nannying at the time and hadn’t started making money from writing yet, and I wanted a creative outlet. I’m pretty good at self-discipline and thought it would be a fun way to create a writing schedule for myself and gain some traction in journalism.
Have you ever thought about writing a book?
Yes. I have a book proposal of non-fiction essays based on this newsletter and my previous work in academia. If there are any agents out there who want to represent me — my pager is on.
Lesbian fujoshis!!! I am one and constantly confused how and why
I had to look this one up. For the uninitiated, fujoshis are fans of “boys’ love” (or BL) content, which is media that depicts relationships between men or boys, originating in Japan. Much of this content is made by and/or for women, and fujoshis, which refers specifically to women fans of BL, translates to “rotten woman/girl.” Yaoi is another term that refers to m/m romance in Asian media. There’s also “girls’ love,” often referred to as yuri, which I’ve seen applied to broad swaths of media. From my minimal knowledge of yuri, there seems to be several popular series coming out of Thailand right now.
As to your question of lesbian fujoshis, that’s an interesting concept. Women have been writing stories about queer men, both in and outside of Asia, for a long time, and it’s a widespread practice on AO3. Per the previous question about Heated Rivarly, the book it’s based on was written by a woman (I’m not sure of her orientation), and I know a lot of women watch the show. (I kind of see it as the boy version of Hunting Wives, if I’m being honest.) Queer women and non-binary folks consuming media about queer men written by women is such an interesting phenomenon, and I don’t have a specific answer to your question, and am certainly not here to yuck your yum. I do sometimes wonder about the intent of BL/mlm writers, and where these stories exist on the spectrum between fetishization and authenticity, which I’ll admit is a totally arbitrary spectrum that I just made up. I’m sure I’m thinking about this too hard, but that’s just what I do. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic in the comments below. Is Anne Rice a fujoshi?
Are there any big differences between Austin and Seattle lesbian culture?
Austin is interesting because it’s a pretty queer-friendly city with a supposedly large LGBTQ population, but it doesn’t have any lesbian bars. Though they are certainly around, this community can be hard to find, and it feels somewhat fragmented in terms of social geography. I also mainly stayed in my grad school bubble, which, to be fair, was very gay. I did encounter some interesting DIY pop-up lesbian events during my last couple years in Austin, and that made me think about the ephemerality of lesbian and queer spaces. Austin has some of the friendliness associated with southern hospitality, but not as much as you might expect. So many people living there now are transplants, and I’m sure this has changed the local culture.
My experience with Seattle is different because I grew up here, and I’ve been more intentional about seeking out queer community since I moved back. (I’m sure some of what I’ve found in Seattle in the last year also exists in Austin.) First of all, I live in Seattle’s gayborhood, so I see gay people everywhere I go — the community feels more centralized in that way. We also have a lesbian bar here, and while lesbians congregate elsewhere, it does operate as a sort of watering hole of sorts.
Seattle is famous for the so-called “Seattle freeze,” which is the idea that it’s hard to make friends here because people aren’t very friendly. I can’t totally speak to that as a local, but I think if you seek out community, you can find it. There are many queer people in this city actively carving out open, friendly queer community in ways that contradict the Seattle freeze. I play on a queer kickball team that functions as a huge source of community and friendship for many people, and there are a number of folks in the city who organize monthly sapphic events with the intention of bringing people together. I’ve found that there are a lot of proactive lesbian and queer folks in this city looking to provide the community that I know many people seek.
What’s your Taco Bell order?
I grew up in an anti-fast-food household and have only had Taco Bell maybe 5 or 6 times in my life, so I don’t have a go-to. But I have been to the Taco Bell Cantina on the Las Vegas Strip (I was there doing gay research), and I ordered a steak quesadilla. There was a DJ on the second floor, and I could hear a bachelorette party getting lit directly above me as I ate my solo dinner.
We need a fig emoji