Say it in Red | Episode 25: Butterfly Soup

Say It In Red

Strike! You're out! Because you were too flustered talking to your crush in class and now everyone at baseball club knows you're gay!
This week, Sara and Runa experience the unbridled joy, the tumultuous ups and downs of high school baseball for a group of queer Asian-American kids living in Northern California - In short, playing through Butterfly Soup. While one of our hosts knows a fair amount about baseball and the other knows almost nothing (though a fair amount about Blaseball), Butterfly Soup is full of extremely relatable and at times painfully familiar experiences. As we follow a group of awkward teens navigating high school in 2008, we shift through the perspectives of Diya, Min Seo, Akarsha, and Noelle to see how each of them is dealing with the stress of life, parental expectations, trying to sort out their sexuality, and also oh my god where did you get that knife put that down!?
Butterfly Soup (2017) by Brianna Lei is an amazing, concentrated hit of dopamine paired with a postcard from your high school self, all wrapped up in a perfect pastel color scheme and paired with a recorder cover of My Heart Will Go On. Set largely in the fall of 2008 in Oakley, California, the story follows four girls through their awkward and anxiety-filled daily lives. Filled with a pitch perfect balance of humor and poignancy and set against the backdrop of the political news of the late 00's as gay marriage rights were heavily embattled on the local and national stage, Butterfly Soup is an amazing experience that works both as a timeless coming-of-age story and an excellent period piece capturing the experience of a queer Asian-American teen growing up when Proposition 8 and the San Francisco marriages were in the headlines.
As the story kicks off, we first meet Diya: a tall, strong, and athletic girl who's also timid and bad at interacting with just about everyone in most circumstances. She opens up more easily to her friends though, especially Min Seo, who she's known since childhood. Min Seo is short, rowdy, aggressive to the point of violence, charmingly over-confident at times, and completely smitten with Diya. Early on, however, Min Seo's parents move away to Florida and she and Diya are separated - just before they part, though, they promise to keep playing baseball so that they can one day be reunited on the field.
Back in high school, in 2008, Diya meets up with her friend Akarsha, who is an endearing memelord wearing an iconic 90's windbreaker, and then later with Noelle, a girl who tries to be strict and rational but often fails miserably as she gets drawn into bickering with Akarsha or supporting everyone's antics. Their daily lives are stressful but routine for a time, until two major events shift the trajectory of Diya's life: A baseball club starts recruiting at school, and then at this baseball club meeting she reunites with Min Seo. Oh also she realizes about this time that she's a Lesbian, which is just one more thing to figure out as she tries to make it through the year.
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