HIV stigma is a very sensitive and delicate topic but, experiencing it firsthand, in real life we have decided to face it with irony when possible.
Our fiction, mainly oriented towards crime stories due to our reading preferences, is inspired by several HIV-positive characters found in books and TV movies.
Fan fiction model
While watching a movie or reading a books, you often realize that characters you love do not end up as you expected, so you feel disappointed by their original stories.
The “Fan Fiction” model was born for this purpose: newsgroups, forum, social networks contain various communities where any TV series or movie followers can exchange fantasy stories involving their favorite characters – most famous portal about this topic is fanfiction.net.
Our first idea was to publish fan fictions set into our fantasy “positive world” but how to explain the reversed world including HIV virus as a human’s friend, without running the risk of misunderstandings or, worse, moderators’ deletion? We soon gave it up, preferring to use our own web site where we can have full control on everything.
Real stories and inspirations
There are many people living with HIV, or who died for AIDS-related complications, who have inspired us to write our stories or have been examples on how to be active against stigma:
- Freddie Mercury, just mentioning him is enough to understand how important he’s been for us. Fantasy world’s HIV comes from him. In reality he died, but what about Positive World? No spoilers, but if HIV loves music it’s thanks to Freddie.
- Alison “Ali” Gertz: the first white, hetero woman to become an AIDS activist in 1989 – she was diagnosed late as doctors didn’t consider she belonged to “a vulnerable group”. She died in 1992. In the Positive World, she inspires the character Alison “Ali” Grant.
- Greta Thunberg: activist for climate change. Nothing to do with HIV, but we have a Greta in the Positive World too.
Characters inspired by movies and TV
Unfortunately we must replace some characters on this English blog, as many movies we took our inspiration from, are just in Italian but our fantasy allows us to invent and change anyone any time so we report just the ones from international movies who gave us some ideas.
We also have to admit that consideration for HIV-related topic is stronger outside of our country; plenty of American tv series and movies deal with this subject through different stories involving crime, love, sex, several backgrounds never explored in Italian plots where they mostly talk about fear, crime and death.
For our country’s TV producers and writers, love stories rarely have a happy ending whenever HIV is involved and they mostly concern a negative woman who saves the poor, “corrupted” HIV positive man from drugs or any other difficult situation.
Here are some movies characters we took inspiration from:
- Anthony Flynn: originally coming from “Queer As Folks” USA, season 4, episodes 9 and 10. He wants to get HIV from Benjamin Bruckner, a teacher. Ben obviously rejects him. Positive World: Anthony is a newbie writer who wants to obtain the virus, but his teacher says everyone must earn and deserve it!
- Benjamin Bruckner: originally one main character of Queer As Folks USA, he’s a teacher; he lives with HIV, gets married and adopts an HIV positive teenager together with his husband. Positive World: Benjamin is the Creative Writing course’s teacher. He has the virus but only the most clever negative writer can be upgraded by him.
- Joleen: the original character is the little girl Joleen Dahlberg from “The Day After” movie, concerning nuclear apocalypse. Positive World: Joleen, known as ChaserJolly, wants the virus but there’s an important reason why no one wants to upgrade her.
- Evelyn Sloan: originally dr. Sloane, coming from “Law and Order special victims unit”, a doctor who works on infectious disease giving particular attention to a very lethal HIV strain. Positive World: Evelyn Sloan is an internationally famous researcher, the first one who managed to make HIV virus talk. Together with her husband Kevin Brown, she adopted an HIV positive little girl.
- Hunter: originally he’s the teenager adopted by Benjamin Bruckner and his husband, in Queer As Folks USA TV series. Positive World: he wants to become an actor and to pay his courses he must work as a waiter. He’s angry to the world and no one manages to calm him down, including his virus.
- Kelly Hunter: no tv series has a character with this name but she’s inspired by an HIV negative girl (Callie Leeson) who fell in love with Hunter, the HIV positive teenager in Queer As Folks USA series. In Positive World Kelly is Joleen’s mother and works as a tattoo artist.
- Tatiana: original character from the “E.R.” 90s medical drama, is a Russian little girl who was abandoned in hospital and rescued by a nurse who attempted to adopt her, without success. In the Positive World Tatiana has become an adult, adopted by dr. Evelyn Sloan and police agent Kevin Brown. Everyone lied about her past and with her HIV’s help Tatiana will discover she’s never been the unlucky orphan girl she always thought to be.
These are not the only character appearing in our stories, we have invented many, many others.