E.R. Fightmaster brings a queer, parasocial love story to life

What’s not to love about E.R. Fightmaster? From the moment we saw them on Hulu’s Shrill, and of course, on ABC’s Grey’s Anatomy, we were hooked.

They’ve got it all—they’re unassumingly sexy, totally disarming, and their voice, well, that’s how we knew we absolutely had to work with them. They collaborated with us to bring our new series, "Plus One," to life. The first episode of the three-part series drops on Sunday, May 29, with a new episode dropping every Sunday through June 12.

In "Plus One," Fightmaster stars as Jay—a charming, playful barista. When one of their regulars, Eva, jokes about needing a date for her friend’s wedding to make her ex jealous, Jay eagerly volunteers. But when they actually start catching feelings for each other, the weekend takes an unexpected turn.

Fightmaster has been part of the development of "Plus One" every step of the way. Their character has been informed by their lived experience—which allows us to lean into the parasocial relationships fans already have with them in a way traditional media hasn’t figured out how to capture yet.

“Plus One” is also an homage to the playful intimacy and spontaneity that permeate queer relationships. Queer content has been part of Dipsea from the beginning, but we’re so excited to launch our first queer celebrity series—especially one that centers non-binary folks and queer women.

In advance of their series release, we talked to Fightmaster about their collaboration with Dipsea. Here’s what they had to say:

What made you want to create this series with Dipsea?

Well, I’m a Women and Gender Studies major and a raging feminist, and when I met with the team at Dipsea and they described the mission of centering the ways not-male-people feel pleasure, I felt extremely passionate about it right away.

And, if we can get people horny in unconventional ways, that's always my goal.

What does the media get wrong about sex and relationships, in your opinion?

I think a lot of our understanding of sex and relationships are developed through cis male wants and needs and their gaze and view of the world. So, when we de-center their gaze, we actually have this entire world of creativity that hasn’t been fully explored yet. And I think Dipsea is doing that.

Why is this series meaningful to you, as an actor and as a co-producer?

I loved the premise for this series, and I think the writer did such a great job. I love the idea of the face that we give to the world, this outward-facing projection of self, and how intimate it is when you take off that armor. And, you know, share the little creature inside with somebody else.

I think that intimacy is inherently sexy. So, especially as someone who spends a lot of time publicly facing, it felt nice to get to act out sharing that vulnerability with someone else.

Can you talk a little bit about how your own life and personal experiences informed the creation of the character of Jay?

Well, I definitely have a lot of parasocial relationships. That’s absolutely true, but I also really love weddings. I just think weddings are kind of naturally… Actually, I don't know how it is for the bride and bride, groom and groom, or whatever and whatever, but it's a horny experience to go to a wedding.

Everybody's in love. Everybody's friends and family from both sides of these people's lives are coming together. So a whole room is just all this, like, beautiful connected energy. And then to go there with a stranger and not know anyone and just witness all this raw love? It’s very kinky to me.

What themes were you most excited to touch on in this series?

You know what? I’m a really horny person. I've built an entire career off being horny. I’m really excited to explore that in this series.

What was I excited about outside of being horny?

You know what's wrong with me? My brain is like, ‘Uh.. when I got to talk about the thighs.’ .

This also fits into the hornyverse. It’s horny adjacent. But, one of the things that I liked about this series, and I liked about collaborating with the team, was focusing on hands and moments with hands.

This is no disrespect to strap-ons and whatever else we're playing with, but I find so much true tenderness and passion and feeling comes from the hands. They are these incredible multipurpose tools that we get to feel every sensation of while they work. And so, Plus One, for me, is an ode to hands.

How was this project different from your other acting projects?

I think there's something so intimate about this process, even down to the way that you are controlling your own breath. You're having this intimate experience with the self, of checking in with your body, listening to your own voice, and listening to the sounds you make. And you are acting out these sounds by imagining this moment.

And so it's this private moment inside of a little sound box where you're letting your brain kind of unselfconsciously explore what sex sounds like and feels like to you. And so, I think checking in with those sensations during this process was very calming to me in a way that I didn't expect.

What does creating more open dialogue about healthy sexuality mean to you?

One of the things that I like about Dipsea as a whole is that the team seems to be exploring options. It's all of these options about what makes you feel connected between your brain and your body. And I think a lot of times in other forms of erotica, once again, we've centered the cis-hetero male gaze so much that sometimes it even bleeds into queer spaces, and Dipsea doesn't feel like that to me.

We're told from the time that we are little that cis men are more visual, and so all erotica has to be eye-catching. To completely take out the visual components and create something that is just you and your brain, so you are centering your experience, you are centering this super intimacy with your brain, and you are doing it, in my opinion, in an inherently queer way, because you're subverting a norm and then you are centering a queer story—that to me is this beautiful cross-section of all of the goals that we should try to accomplish in creating something that's for queer people in order to deliver queer pleasure.

Anything else to add?

Something that I am intrigued by, and I’d like to know, is how my erotica is made and how the people that are making this erotica feel during the process. How are they protected? How are they celebrated? How do they feel comfortable enough to get to this place?

And I will say that one of the things I really like about Dipsea is that the whole process seems very focused on making sure that we are constantly checking in with each other. The voice actor and the team, the actor slash co-producer, and the writers slash producers. It's this constant process of consent that I think helps everyone to relax over the course of the project.

And so, you are listening to an actor who is feeling very safe and who is feeling very engaged. And if there was ever a moment where that disengagement happened, we've been working with each other in such a, like, a lovely consensual, creative way that I think we would feel it. And I don't think listeners will feel that in "Plus One."