Parry Glasspool: Naked and Proud on Hollyoaks

Parry Glasspool has been making his mark on the British stage in comedies and dramas of gay interest:

Proud (2012): Lewis, an 18-year old Olympic boxing hopeful with a 40-ish boyfriend who comes out to his homophobic coach at a birthday party thrown by his parents (bottom photo).

Festen (2012): Christian, a boy who accuses his father of sexual abuse while everyone is gathered for a family dinner.

The Pillowman (2013): Ariel, survivor of a child murderer.

What the Butler Saw (2013): Nick, who is having an affair with Mrs. Prentice, and spends about half the production fully nude.

The 21 year old actor, who graduated from the University of West London in 2013, has also done some tv commercials and music videos, and he's a gifted gymnast.  This is a really difficult stunt.

He recently landed a role on Hollyoaks Later, the edgier, "sexier" spin-off of the long-running teen soap.  He plays Harry, estranged son of main character Tony Thompson, who joins his father for a wedding in Spain and becomes involved in a feud with a mysterious stranger.

There have been gay characters on Hollyoaks Later throughout its six-year history.  Maybe Harry is another.

Elfquest

When I was an undergrad at Augustana College in the early 1980s, the Bookstore Gang was all wild over Elfquest, a comic book series created by Richard and Wendy Pini in 1978, and still going on in various incarnations.  It is popular for cosplay today.

Combining heroic fantasy with science fiction, it was set on an alien planet with two moons, where spacefaring Elves settled thousands of years ago.  They now co-exist, sort of, with tribes of evil Trolls, insect-like Preservers, and humans.

The main character in the beginning was a Wolfrider Elf named Cutter, son of tribal chiefs Bearclaw and Joyleaf, who must lead his people to safety when their home is destroyed.  He also finds a "Partner in Recognition" in Letah of the Sun Folk,   Later other characters took center stage, a cast of thousands in stories extending over tens of thousands of years.  It became very complicated, and I lost track.

All of the Elves were drawn as pretty and androgynous -- you could distinguish the men only by their bare chests, with the muscular pecs of teen idols.  And they had sex a lot -- a tumble on the grass at the drop of a kilt became a mainstay of the series.  But, at least in the comics I read in college, all of the tumbling and romance were strictly heterosexual.

I hear that some later storylines included same-sex romances, and Wendy Pini stated that "all of the Elves are bisexual."  But Augustana, they only contributed to the erasure of gay people from the world.