Wayward & Mister Magic

I recently watched Wayward, with Mae Martin as a disgraced police officer and Toni Collette as the leader of a cult disguised as a youth rehabilitation camp. It's an eight episode miniseries on Netflix.

In real life, Mae Martin, who is queer and uses they/them, was a "troubled youth" who was thrown out of their own family home at age 16. Some of their other experiences are fictionalized in their other show, Feel Good, which is about addiction and family and digesting your past with gallows humor.

I liked the show, I think the ending is somewhat divisive so your mileage may vary there, but Martin is great and I'd follow them into almost any project for at least an episode.

Was reminded of it while browsing back through stuff I've highlighted in books. Kiersten White's 2023 novel Mister Magic also has a character who was sent to, in his case, conversion therapy camp. (Wayward's camp is pointedly not a queer conversion camp.) The soliloquy on this is harrowing, here's just one portion:

"You give up. You finally admit that the people who are supposed to love you will do anything to keep you in line. Will let anyone do anything to you if it means you stop fucking up their lives. And you don’t forget that lesson, don’t forget how it felt to stand in your dirty boxers, begging for clothes, while your family slept comfortably hundreds of miles away. Not when you go home, not when you go to college, not when you go to law school. Not when you marry the woman they chose for you, do the job they chose for you, pose and smile for the photo ops they chose for you. You never forget the lesson that they would rather destroy you than let you inconvenience them.”

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