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britpicker · 6 years

Note

Can you make a post on popular vacation spots in the UK? Not for people outside Europe, but Europeans traveling within the country? Thanks so much. Your blog is seriously intriguing and helpful!

Oooh this is a fun one! Gosh. Okay, I’ve not travelled much in the UK but I’ll try my best.

Seaside Towns

Brighton

Brighton is on the south coast of England, and it’s about an hour’s train journey from London. It has a pebbled beach and a vibrant nightlife. It is known for its huge LGBT+ community. Here’s an interesting section from its Wikipedia article:

Brighton has recorded LGBT history in the city since the 19th century. Many men were initially drawn to Brighton by the enormous numbers of soldiers garrisoned in the town during the Napoleonic Wars. Evidence suggests that a floating population and good transport links with London helped its reputation as a place for the LGBT community. By the 1930s, Brighton started to flourish as a gay destination and many gay and lesbian pubs started to establish themselves. During the Second World War, Brighton was filled with soldiers. Women and men in the forces who were away from home meeting other lesbians and gay people for the first time in their lives also heard about Brighton and its special pleasures and helped turn it into a gay destination in the post-war years.

Brighton is a cute little town and an attractive day-out sort of destination for Londoners. when it’s hot, the beaches become absolutely rammed.

Blackpool

Blackpool a the day-trip destination for places such as Manchester, but when I was younger it was a great location for a holiday of a few days. It lies on the North-West coast, and is known for being very tacky. There is a big theme park there, named the Pleasure Beach, and its famous rollercoaster, the Big One (formerly known as Pepsi Max Big One), was the tallest rollercoaster in the world when it opened in 1994, standing at 213ft. It remains the tallest rollercoaster in the UK.

It remains a fairly good theme park, however the town has gone downhill and lost the charm of its heyday. The promenade is full of tacky tourist shops and amusement arcades, and a lot of businesses have shut up shop. Blackpool still has its draws. The Blackpool Tower is the town’s main landmark, was built in the image of the Eiffel Tower and is a big tourist attraction. It houses entertainment venues, the Tower Circus, and even the Tower Ballroom, which has hosted televised shows from BBC’s Strictly Come Dancing, and you may also have seen it in the Jennifer Lopez/Richard Gere film Shall We Dance.

Blackpool has a ton of history, but I feel like it’s being left behind. I would go there on occasion, if only for the nostalgia. Despite all of this, it remains the UK’s favourite seaside resort, one that most British people have probably visited in their lifetimes (particularly people from the North)

Bournemouth

Bournemouth is far less of a tourist trap than the previous two, located on the south coast, west of Brighton. There isn’t a whole lot to say about Bournemouth, but I wanted to include something a bit less touristy and this was also a location on the list of the UK’s favourite seaside resorts. It’s a calmer seaside town, associated less with partying and more with gardens to explore.

Parts of Dunkirk were filmed in nearby Swanage, a Victorian seaside town.

Also nearby, just incidentally, is a three chalk rock formation called Old Harry Rocks.

We have a postcard displaying a map of the area in our toilet (don’t ask) and every time I see the name Old Harry Rocks, I giggle. I found it especially amusing when I was writing my old Larry fic, Lightning Strikes Twice.

Other seaside towns/resorts to consider: Dover, Southend, Hastings, Scarborough/Bridlington.

Country Breaks

The Cotswolds

The Cotswolds covers an area of almost 800 square miles, running through five counties in the centre of England, slightly south-west. The area was deemed an Area Of Outstanding Natural Beauty in 1966. Being such a large area, there are so many choices of accomodation or things to do. The area is known for its rolling hills but, containing so many villages, there’s far more to do than enjoying the scenery or going off on walks. Quaint pubs or tea rooms, hiking trails, wildlife parks, horseriding… sounds like a dream for a calm, relaxing getaway.

Peak district

The Peak District covers a huge area too, crossing borders of several counties. A bit further north than the Cotswolds, it is mostly in Derbyshire but spreads out into Manchester, Cheshire, Yorkshire and Staffordshire also.

Like the Cotswolds, the Peak District is known for its views and villages, but in addition there are theme parks (the little village of Alton in Staffordshire is home to one of the UK’s big theme parks, Alton Towers) caves, castles, museums… another solid choice for a relaxing getaway, but there’s probably more to do than in the Cotswolds.

Other country breaks to consider: Forest of Dean (of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows fame), Lake District, Dartmoor, Isle of Skye (of SOTT mv fame), Cornwall, Bath

City Breaks

London

Ah, London! If you’re not from the UK, you’ve probably yearned to come here. A bustling metropolis with a population of eight million. London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It is dripping in ancient history and if you look for it, you’ll never stop learning new things about London, from Jack the Ripper to the Plague to the Great Fire of London.

I’m not sure what to say about London that you probably don’t already know. It’s probably the kind of place someone from elsewhere in the UK might come for the day or for the weekend. As a tourist, there are endless amounts of things to see. Big Ben/Houses of Parliament, the London Eye, Buckingham Palace… we have galleries, we have a history museum, a science museum, a war museum, a childhood museum… the list goes on.

My guide to London Living and Working Locations might help if your character isn’t from London but is visiting. In terms of affordable hotels/air B&Bs, the living section probably still applies.

Manchester

Manchester is another major UK city, however the population is only half a million. Manchester a city filled with heart, with a proud history. It’s a modern and trendy location, restaurants, cinemas, bars abound. The music scene is rich, producting Oasis, Take That, the Stone Roses, Davy Jones. One of the UK’s best-loved soap operas, Coronation Street, is set in Manchester and of course, the home of Manchester United, Old Trafford is a big draw.

Other city breaks to consider: Liverpool, Cambridge, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Belfast

This post is by no means extensive and the examples given are based around my own knowledge and interests. I have personally visited all of the seaside towns, none of the country break locations, and just Manchester from the city break locations (but I’ve lived in London my whole life)

Give them a Google and explore! If anyone has any specific questions or needs help Googling (that’s a thing, I promise. I can help you with terms haha) let me know!

#Anonymous #KK chat #gosh now i wanna go on a country break #they feel so romantic to me #esp if you find like #a cottage to rent with like a fireplace #uk breaks #uk holidays #also like can you believe #the day you sent this #i was like everyone send me anons im bored #and then it took me like ten days to answer this?

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cowboyjen68 · 6 years

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Given the topic of labels lately, what labels make you personally proud or personally uncomfortable? Do you think age plays a role in what people are comfortable or uneasy identifying as?

First, I do think age can have a lot to do with labels. It can be what was popular or comfortable when you came out, or just the ID that fit you best as you were forming your sense of self. I often see a “rub” between generations as to labels people love, are okay or or absolutely hate. Sometimes the meaning has just changes, the English language is like that, but it only changes to those who do not have experience or memory for the origin of the word, or its common connotations from before they were around. My older lesbians friends (this is a generalization, because there can be factors besides age, much prefer lesbian and not ever queer. They much prefer the spelling of woman to be without the “man” or “men”. SO there are various ways to spell it. They also are very connected to “butch” and “femme” IF they fit within one of those categories and they take it pretty seriously. It is a source of pride and connection for them. My older gay male friends (meaning my contemporaries or older) also prefer Gay over queer most of the time. They do use some of the terminology such as “twink” or “top” and “bottom” but it almost seems like they are not super serious.. more in a gently teasing way when interacting with each other.

Now about me… disclaimer.. this is just me, my opinions and my feelings and connections and experiences with language. I have a degree in English but NOT gender studies (my minor is religion and philosophy). So I do find our language amazing and important. I also know it can be personal and i do not like to police anyone’s language that they use for themselves, whether I like it or not. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth. When I feel like someone is using a label that is important to me, and I think they use it wrong either on themselves or towards me I repeat to myself, people are more important than the words.

One more thing. I do believe labels are important, at least at certain times in life, maybe always for some. It helps us identify our community with in our community. It helps us find mentors within that ID that look like we look, or will look when we get older. It helps people to know they are not alone, that there are others who feel the same way and that they are not wrong about how they feel or want to look, just because society tells them they can’t possibly be what they know they are:

Ok Me

I love Lesbian. I love all the power it holds. It’s very meaning of women who love women. That is me. I always use it. I don’t mind “gay” but if Identifying myself I will always chose lesbian. Sometimes I make the challenge to say it in conversation at least one a day just because I am so proud.

Female and woman. These are also important to me. I align my gender with with physical sex and I love them both. My parents were pretty good about not gendering anything for the most part (I mean it was the 70′s it was fairly common to not over gender clothes and toys etc) I never played with dolls or liked dresses. Growing up I was not afraid of those things I align with my femaleness, such as my hips, vagina and breasts. Those “parts” are my experience being female and while they are not perfect and of course when I was younger I was not fond of them (since they were never the cultural ideal), As i aged I grew to love them and appreciate them. Part of that was I realized how much I loved them on the women I was attracted to and the overwhelming sentiment was that they were shocked someone thought they were lovely. I don’t hold a grasp on these terms so tightly that I mind if they have grown to encompass more that a “woman born with a vagina” . These are not my terms to define, but I am proud of what I connect with to feel like a woman and I encourage others to search and see what connects them to the ID.

There was a bar in Iowa CIty when I was in my early drinking days. It was my “home” as i came out. A very good friend painted a mural on the back wall that said “Are You Queer?” on it. I own the rights to it, he left them to me when he passed away. I have thought or re releasing the art for shirts. I am at a bit of a crossroads. I love the art. And I never was attached to the word “queer”. I usually thing of it as a gay man’s term but now I hear it more often as a way women define themselves. I think it works fine for other. It is not for me. I will always default to lesbian. Queer is too broad of a stroke for my comfort. But I will be releasing the shirts, and in fact did a trial run to raise money for an LGBTQIA Youth Club. I will put a photo of the graphic on my blog some day. I love it because Dan painted it at a time when “queer” was a bold statement and it was HUGE! And because my memory of that bar helping me find myself is sentimental and rich with experiences that make me me.

Butch: Okay.. I just LOVE THIS ONE> IT is ME..It is just ME> As soon as someone called me Butch… i fell in love with it. I was already the very definition of it, I just didn’t know it was a “thing”. Once my older lesbian friends (many fall somewhere on the butch to soft butch spectrum) started to teach me the ropes... the butch nod, that it is okay to shop in the men’s department. Suspenders are always in fashion, my cowboy hat was okay with them and everyone who didn’t like it could “piss off” as one 70 year old once put it. They taught me that butches can be scared of snakes, and change the oil or go to Jiffy Lube. Butches could hate sports and love to camp or vice versa. That we are varied and diverse, but there are in tangible things that we recognize in each other and don’t doubt my instincts. Soft butch actually fits me a little better 75 percent of the time. Just depends on what I am doing or, how butch I look up against the women I am hanging out with.

Terms I am not comfortable with. I get “him’ and “ sir” a lot and it is okay with me. Usually is a snap call based on a sudden glance or look in my direction. I almost always correct it but in a kind way. After the third or 4th correction, I just let it go. Not that big of deal. I would never use them on purpose. I don’t like to be referred to as cis gendered. That is just a personal preference. I know the meaning and I know the reasons and history. I teach about it when I speak. For some reason it strikes me as more information than anyone needs about me in general. If someone uses it about me, I totally let it go. It is fine. I just never use it on myself. And close friends know I prefer they not use it when describing me. I don’t use gnc, even thought technically that could apply. Mostly because I DO consider by dress and hair and butchness to be ALL female. I am just as much a woman in grubby work over alls with short hair as I would be with long hair and makeup (cultural gender stereotype) so I don’t really see myself as non conforming. I am conforming, to what I, as a woman, like to look like. There you go. Took me two days and saving it as a draft several time but I got ‘er done. Thank you for the ask/prompt.

#butch #soft butch

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curly-q-reviews · 5 years

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FLIX FROM THE NET

Bird Box, 2018 (dir. Susanne Bier)

SPOILER WARNING THERE WILL BE SPOILERS DONT READ IF U HAVENT SEEN IT YET AND WANT TO

[TW: SUICIDE, MURDER, VIOLENCE, BLOOD, GORE]

well fuck its been a while!! happy new year y’all hope u had a Fun and Safe time!!! i for one was at a party where we started playing Shrek at exactly 10:39 PM to see if Smash Mouth’s hit song I’m a Believer started playing right at midnight and to my utter disbelief and elation it did!!! move over times square ball drop a new arbitrary way of celebrating the start of a new calendar year is here and it involves a large green monster with a scottish accent who really loves his onions (#me am i right ladies)

WELL ANYWAY heres a fun new series ive been thinking of starting cause ya girl watches a lot of netflix movies and has many opinions about them. i think i’ll do a separate post about the whole Netflix Original Film trend in general and how its changed the film industry at a later date but since i just watched the above movie not too long ago i wanted to get all my thoughts out there right fuckin now!!

netflix is without a doubt the OG king of streaming services, they were really the first to get the ball rolling and then dozens of other companies scrambled to latch onto this money train while it was rolling on the tracks full steam (or should i say.... stream EL;KGHS;EKFSH; please end me) ahead. it started out as a rental subscription service where u could pick out three movies at a time to rent and then they were sent to u in the mail (like blockbuster but now you never have to leave your house ever again to get that sweet sweet rental content). and then the decision was made to actually start online streaming, no physical DVD’s required! ISNT TECHNOLOGY GREAT

well whoooo boy this shit swept the nation, people couldnt get enough of such a convenient and relatively affordable service and netflix started really raking in the dough. and at some point they got rich enough to say “hey fuck it!!! lets make our own movies baby!!!!” and here we are now with Netflix Original Movies and TV Shows, which means a new player has entered the movie game in a very novel and innovative way. why pay money for a movie ticket and leave your house to go to a theater when cool new movies are being released on a subscription service u already own to watch movies you already know and enjoy? and then u can sit butt-ass naked in ur bedroom alone stuffing ur face with cheese puffs like an insatiable cheddar beast and see something new and fun and interesting

ok so. Bird Box. here we have a movie based off of a book (so i guess this also counts as a Book Movies review but I DIGRESS) starring hollywood powerhouse sandra bullock, featuring Supreme Lesbian Overlord Sarah Paulson and Resident Crazy Old Man John Malkovich, directed by a relatively unknown but competent female filmmaker Susanne Bier (who also directed Things We Lost in the Fire in 2007, a moving drama starring Halle Berry). this one definitely has a lot of proimse compared to what netflix has offered so far in terms of their original movies (im gonna get into Dumplin’ at a later date cause jesus christ what a mess) and i went in with pretty high expectations

did it deliver??? well uuhhhh yeah sort of i guess!! we got some pretty strong performances from our leading lady bullock who really does deliver it every time, a few strong supporting roles like newcomer Trevante Rhodes of Moonlight fame (his energy on screen is just so compelling and soothing), not overly obnoxious child actors which is really all u can ask for, and overall a solid story.

now heres where i gotta say that i couldnt help comparing this film to another movie of its kind, directed by the notorious M. Night Shyamalan. y’all remember The Happening? cause i remember The Happening. i remember that it was total shit and that the twist was that it was the fucking plants making everyone kill themselves. the PLANTS. and i also remember mark wahlbergs dumb-ass confused face that he used in every single shot no matter the context, im AMAZED i remember zoe deschanel in this movie cause she may as well have been one of the killer plants with how little she emoted, and i remember mark wahlberg yelling at a fake office ficus and apparently i was supposed to be scared while watching this clusterfuck.

the way that this movie was described to me by friends who had seen it before me was basically that Bird Box is a slightly better The Happening, and no truer words have ever been spoken. we basically have the same premise going on here: unknown force is causing people to off themselves, our lead(s) have to try and find a way to escape this unknown force without even knowing what it really is, and theres some sort of “sanctuary” they gotta try and get to (which is a common plot point in really all apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic films). now whereas The Happening’s rules for this scenario make entirely no fucking sense (how in the fuck are u supposed to be able to out-run WIND???), Bird Box has some rules for dealing with this Unknown Thing that make slightly more sense. when u open ur eyes while outside, the chance of the Thing making u kill urself in some horrific way is extremely high, so wear a blindfold when ur outside and keep all windows covered when ur inside. makes sense! thats something i can believe and get behind which makes me more immersed in the story!

unfortunately like The Happening there are still some little things that kinda dont make much sense and take u out of it. apparently some people when they see this unknown entity dont wanna die, but instead find it absolutely beautiful, which makes them want to make everyone else look at it to see how beautiful it is. and its insinuated that these people are mentally ill or have some sort of psychiatric issue. i get that this adds more stakes to the situation and ups the ante, but it doesnt really sit well with me that once again, mentally ill people are the villains in a horror-type story. and i also dont really understand why theyd then wanna go around and make other people see the thing?? unless the thing has them in a mind-control state or something and is making them do its bidding but that seems kind of a weird thing for an all-powerful evil formless entity to do.

and that leads me to the next issue i have with Bird Box. if ur gonna have an apocalyptic scenario where people do something as serious as kill themselves due to an unknown cause, it almost seems a little cliche and cheesy to have it be some sort of mythical celestial god-like or demon-like entity thats doing the damage. i actually really liked where The Happening was going with its source of all the chaos being something naturally made, like the Earth deploying some sort of self-preservation mechanism or something. the idea of that to me is actually loads more frightening than some invisible boogeyman that u cant look at. and then Shamalamadingdong had to go and make it stupid by saying that it was fucking plants trying to kill people by releasing pheromones or some shit. like why cant we have the best of both of these?? something naturally-occuring that maybe has even happened before in the planets history (maybe it wasnt a meteor that killed off the dinosaurs after all??), that isnt FUCKING PLANTS, and that doesnt do cheesy shit like make ur eyes turn grey and bloodshot and like whisper to u telling u to take ur blindfold off (i swear that happens multiple times it was pretty silly)

thats another thing, this movie’s tone is all over the place. there are some moments where a more light-hearted tone is needed to break up the tension, for sure, but it almost as if the writing and dialogue werent really taking this serious of a story as seriously as they should have. weirdly placed jokes are all over the place, there were some moments where the dialogue made me cringe cause it was so awkward. bullock’s character gets to have some good breakdown moments which help bring the tone to the level of somberness and despair it should be at, but all the other supporting characters dont really get the same space to process whats happening to them, so it kinda comes off like they arent really affected by, say, their wife throwing herself into a burning car right in front of their very eyes.

overall i’d still say this is a worthwhile watch, especially considering its a netflix movie. if you’ve ever wanted to see a not-as-horrible version of The Happening that has some deeper metaphorical stuff going on about motherhood and family and shit than this is for you. the production value is overall pretty solid (though when it comes to cinematography i actually prefer The Happening from an artistic standpoint) and sandra bullock knocks it out of the park. go check it out if this seems like something thats up ur alley!!

ok bye for now hopefully it doesnt take me six months to write another review but we’ll see!! my brain is a mystery and time is an illusion HAPPY 20-BI-TEEN Y’ALL

#curly q reviews #bird box #netflix #book movies #flix from the net #the happening #m night shyamalan #sandra bullock #sarah paulson #john malkovich #trevante rhodes #horror #thriller #movies #films #netflix original movies

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wedontcareaboutyourbinary · 6 years

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comphet is a lesbian exclusive term. other sexualities can use coercive heterosexuality though. but no one except lesbians can use comphet, that term is very important in lesbian culture and other sexualities do not have the same relationship to it.i just wanted to let you know that it's not appropriate to use compulsory heterosexuality as a term if you're not a lesbian and it's also rude to associate that term with TERFs as saying that implies all lesbians are TERFs when that is not the case.

this is the same anon who just sent an ask on comphet) also i’d like to point out i’m not a lesbian (i’m a gay trans guy) so take what i said with a grain of salt. i don’t intend to talk over lesbians, i just wanted to make that known. also if you’re not a lesbian and youve felt pressured by heterosexual society to be het youre probably experiencing some form of internalized homo/pan/biphobia

“comphet is a lesbian exclusive term. other sexualities can use coercive heterosexuality though” in spite of your attempt to not talk over lesbians, I can assure you that, as was pointed out in the posts on this subject, coercive heterosexuality is literally just an alternative term to comp het to distance it from terf associations.

I got both the fact that “comp het” has terf origins and that “coercive hete” is the alternative to distance it from those origins from literal, actual lesbians like in this post, as well as the fact I have the ability to google. Adrienne Rich was the coiner of the term, and the fact that she was transmisogynistic has been pointed out multiple times.

I don’t think I or anyone else on this blog would ever say that it’s good to be wary of lesbians. All non-straight, non-cis identities, but lesbians especially, have a strong history of being painted as predatory, and therefore it’s entirely reasonable for someone to wonder if, when someone is wary of lesbians, if it might be motivated by lesbophobia. However, never once have I or any other mods claimed otherwise.

So, short version: Saying “compulsory heterosexuality” was coined by someone who was a TERF or at the very minimum found their ideology acceptable is historically accurate (and if you’re saying pointing out any TERF influence ever is lesbophobia, then consider you may possibly need to re-prioritize here), and coercive heterosexuality is literally an alternative to compulsory heterosexuality. Seriously. That’s the only way I’ve ever seen it be used. So if you’re saying “one term is used for lesbians, the other is for other people!” Your entire argument is kind of standing on a weak knee already.

In this post, what was being discussed was primarily the phenomenon grouped under coercive heterosexuality, and the fact that while these phenomenon are typically framed as being almost lesbian-exclusive, that someone can still experience the effects of heterosexism grouped under coercive het, and it be due to another orientation they experience; that extremely similar effects of coercive het manifest in people who aren’t straight but who also aren’t lesbians. I never outright advocated for other people to start using the term- I think heterosexism functions fine.

But one is left to wonder that, if those phenomenon can be experienced by other people, why is it just the term itself that others aren’t allowed to use? From what I can find, “compulsory heterosexuality” has also been talked about in relation to gay men and other non-lesbian identities since at least 2003 in Academia, perhaps longer in casual contexts. I’ve also found actual lesbians speak on the topic, primarily about how coercive het affects bi women by googling and using tumblr’s tags function (one of the posts explicitly mentions bi women, the other is in the bi tag so i’m left to assume it’s meant to include bi women as well). So there’s that.

This was me explaining and interpreting another post another mod reblogged at request. That person does not have an about so I cannot check to see, but for now I’m going to operate under the assumption that if they were making a post on intersectionality and how the term “comp het” ignores it, that they are a part of groups that have a right to speak on that intersectionality.

(Of course, the lesbian community is not a monolith of thought. Not everyone is going to agree with every point on this post, but, it’s clear that from the sources cited here, and what I’ve been able to find, what the blog has stated aren’t some new fangled attempt to steal lesbian terminology, and rather the things discussed on here have been around for quite awhile, and have also been pointed out by lesbians, which is the group that primarily uses the term “comp het” or “coercive het”)

Sidenote: Please be aware that speaking authoritatively on a subject and then tossing in one “take this with a grain of salt” does not negate the fact that you’re still trying to speak authoritatively on the subject. Sources are always suggested when you send an ask like this (unless you are drawing off of personal experience with a term, experience, etc. to make your argument in a conversation where yours is relevant, because there are some conversations in which personal experience and perspective can be highly important).

-Mod Sully

#Anonymous

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joyofcrime-elinorhigh · 5 years

Text

2017 Year in REVIEW: Part 2

Hello everybody, my name is JoyofCrimeArt and welcome to the final week of Deviant-cember! It's been fun ride, but it's time to wrap up 2017. And I'm doing by going over all the major animated series/animation related news that came out this year, ranking the shows from best to worse, and deciding which animation network "won" the year. If you haven't seen part one yet I suggest you check it out before continuing this part, 2017 Year in REVIEW: Part 1 But for those of you who have seen the first part, let's just jump back into things. Teen Titans Go! had another miniseries this year as a follow up to Island Adventures. This time, based off the episode "40% 40% 20%." one of the most popular episodes of the series. And to celebrate this event Cartoon Network decided to have a marathon airing nothing but Teen Titans Go! and the newly premiered O.K. For an entire week! I'm starting to feel numb to this. This is the "Night Begins To Shine" Miniseries, how was it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGIe8d9w8O4

Now before I get into this, I do feel like I need to briefly go over my opinion on the episode "40% 40% 20%" since that's the episode that this miniseries is directly based on. And my opinion on it is pretty much the same as everybody else's. The episode is great, and shows that Teen Titans Go! can be genuinely good when it wants to be. The episode featured a stylish art style, a story that focused on abstract visual storytelling, and a really catchy song. The episode isn't without it's faults, but it is one of the best Teen Titans Go! episodes, in my opinion. So how did this sequel do? Well let's start with the positives. The visuals in the music word are still really good, capturing the 80's aesthetic perfectly. It honestly reminds me a lot of Moonbeam City. Anybody remember Moonbeam City? No, oh. Okay... The covers of the song "Night Begins to Shine" by Fall Out Boys, CeeLo Green, and Puffy Ami Yumi were also neat to hear. Especially Puffy Ami Yumi, it was a nice throw back to the old show having them preform. However, I do wish that more time where devoted to these covers. However, the special does have it's fault. One problem, surprisingly, is that the special focuses too much on story. Complex stories are not Teen Titans Go's! strong suit. Part of the reason why "40% 40% 20%" worked so well was because of it's simplicity. It focused less on story and more on visuals and atmosphere. But by trying to stretch the story out to an hour, and giving the music world this whole backstory it takes away that simplicity. Also we spend a lot of time in the real world, away from the psychedelic visuals that we all came for. And while "Night Begin's To Shine," plus the new song they make are both extremely catchy, they aren't enough to fill up an entire hour. And since all the covers are all shoved in at the end, the song kinda get's old after a while. And visually they don't really do much new with the music world that wasn't done in the first episode. However, I don't want to be to hard on the episode, because unlike a lot of other episodes, you can really feel the passion that went into it. It feels like the people behind TTG were really trying to make something epic. And while I don't think it entirely works one hundred percent of the time, I do give them an A for effort. The special is better than Island Adventure from a technical standpoint, but it doesn't have the "so bad it's good" element that Island Adventure had. So it's kinda up to you're own personal preference to figure out which mini-series is more enjoyable. But that's not all CN did, as like I said before, It wasn't just a Teen Titans Go! marathon, but also a marathon for there new show "OK KO: Let's Be Heroes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWyHZQARrnM

OK KO: Let's Be Heroes, created by Ian Jones-Quartey, follows the adventures of KO, a young optimistic kid who work's at a mall plaza. The twist however being that it's set in a world with the rules and logic of a shonen anime or a beat-em-up video game, and by working at the plaza he'll be able to fulfill his dream of becoming a hero. Already the show has a lot of promise with it's premise alone, but how does it succeed in terms of execution? Let's start with the characters. They're all pretty good for the most part. KO is a very likable character very reminiscent of the young hot blooded shonen protagonist that he is inspired by. Enid works well as the straight woman- But not to straight, ammiright!? Up top!

Oh man, we got ourselves a sad lonely lesbian up in in this hiz-ous! Quick, Somebody give this show an Emmy! Also I'd like to give special mention to Lord Boxman and his robot children, who are my personal favorite characters. Imagine Megaman's Dr. Willy and his robot masters crossed with Team Rocket from the Pokemon anime. The only character who I'm not super crazy about is Rad. He's not awful or anything, but his obnoxious personality can definitely become overbearing at points. Also his entire character arc is pretty much just Lars' character arc from Steven Universe, only not as well done. But he doesn't ruin the show for me or anything. The animation for the show is kinda hit or miss. The show has a very sketchy art style that people seem to either love or hate. Personally, it's not really something I gravitate to. Though I do admire that it has an art style that looks different from the traditional "CN" art style that we've seen so much of the last couple of years and also do like how it has a kinda "middle school doodle" aesthetic to it. It's not a bad art style, just not really my thing. However, what is a bigger problem is the consistency of the characters designs. And thus we enter the online debate that's been haunting the animation community have been having since Ren and Stimpy came out in the nineties. Is off model animation ugly or expressive? I feel like it can work in some cases, but I don't think it works here. Characters look off model so much that it just comes off as sloppy. Which is a shame because if we're talking just about the actual movement this has some of the most fluid animation that I've seen in any Cartoon Network series. I also have a bit of the problem with the writing. I don't know what tone this show is trying to go for. Half the time it seems like it's trying to be this super silly cartoon while the other half of the time it tries to be a serious lore show and it doesn't gel well. The comedic elements mix well with the lore, like having the big season one mystery revolve around a falling sandwich. I just couldn't find myself caring about it all. Also the shows main evil shadowy figure pulling the strings name is Shadowy Figure. I'm sorry I can't take this villain seriously. Coupled with some episodes with some really hammered in morals and a odd amount of gimmicky episodes, the show ends up feeling like a jumble of interesting yet disconnected ideas without any clear cohesion. But is the show bad? No. What I think saves the show is the characters. They are genuinely likable and I like just seeing how they interact with each other. It's defiantly an improvement over there last couple of shows (Ben 10, Mighty Magiswords, Powerpuff Girls,) but I don't think it lives up to some of there other modern classics (Like Steven Universe, Adventure Time, or We Bare Bears.) OK KO is Okay...KO. The unwatch button is down there. I completely understand. Meanwhile Disney decided to get into the reboot game with Ducktales 2017. And can i just say that I genuinely think that if they didn't use the old theme song everybody would hate this show. Like they could keep everything else the exact same, but if they cut the theme song down to say thirty seconds like most cartoons now of days people would hate this as much as they hate the Powerpuff Girls reboot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKSU82afy1w

Well the show doesn't have any of the original voice actor and the creator's different, so the show must be awful right guys? Okay cool, done. Next show- No, obviously I'm kidding. Let's talk about Ducktales 2017. No need to spend to much time on the plot, cause it's Ducktales. You all know the story. Three trouble making young ducks move in with there rich adventure loving Uncle Scrooge, and shenanigans ensue. They solve mysteries, rewrite histories ect. Disney hyped this show to hell, and even aired the hour long series premiere TWENTY FOUR TIMES IN A ROW! I really wanna know, was there anybody who watched ALL twenty four showings back to back to back? I mean someone must of, right? Now I don't know much about Ducktales. It was WAY before my time, though from what I can gather this is a pretty good series in terms of it being a reboot. It isn't just adapting the old show. It's combining elements of the old show, the comics, and new ideas and that's honestly the best way to go about a reboot in my personal opinion. I'm glad they just make it a rehash with all the still living cast members returning, and a ton of wink and nod references to the old show that new fans won't understand. I give the show a lot of props for that. I also want to praise the shows beautiful art style. I love how it looks like a comic book, not only calling back the series roots, but also giving it a unique visual identity. The show is also really funny, having a very clever wit mixed with a very comically exaggerated world. The world feels very comic book-y and has a real sense of fun to it. It's cool seeing all the creative shrines and temples that exist in this world, just waiting to be explored. The characters range in quality, though that may not be the shows fault as episodes are being aired out of order, and as such the amount of attention given to each cast member is not equal. But I won't hold that against the show. However, the show is far from perfect. It suffers a bit from what I call Milo's Murphy's Law syndrome. As in, the show is great on it's own but is so similar to what came before that it takes away some of the enjoyment. "But JoyofCrimeArt" I hear you saying "I thought you said that this show wasn't rehashing the original Ducktales cartoon." And it's not. It's rehashing Gravity Falls. Okay, maybe "rehash" is a strong word, but It's hard to not notice the similarities. I don't know if this show is borrowing from Gravity Falls or if Gravity Falls was actually just a ripping off the original Ducktales and it just took me five years to realize it, but just take a look at the similarities.

We got a group of tween age twins/triplets-

-who move in with there miserly jerk with a heart of gold great uncle.

And a socially awkward spunky girl with a grappling hook-

-Who are trying to solve a mystery involving a missing personal. All without letting the miserly uncle know what's going on.

With the miserly uncles dim witted older assistant-

-and a cool "older sister" like role model along for the ride.

With an antagonist who is a rival businessmen to the miserly uncle. Seriously, it's pretty blatant. And to be fair it's not an exact rip-off or anything. Some things are executed differently. The world and comedy of Ducktales is definitely a lot more cartoon-y and over the top than Gravity Falls. And there are elements in one but not the other for sure. But there are definite parallels, and judging by the marketing Disney is doing for this show it seems pretty clear that they want this to be their "new Gravity Falls." It's not that the show is bad per say, but it's hard for me to not compare it to Gravity Falls, and I'm sorry but Gravity Falls is definitely the better of the two series. In fact you could say that this show is basically...

Also can I just say that I don't give a crap about this shows lore. Like, at all. They try to do the big overarching mystery thing and I am just not invested at all. I like shows with lore, I really do, but this is far from a new concept at this point and if you're going to do it now you got to add something new to it But this is just the same beats. And I could be wrong, but I feel like I know exactly where it's going. Without going into to many specifics there's a character who mysteriously disappeared, and it looks like they did something really bad before disappearing. But I know their's going to be some explanation given to make their actions justifiable because I know they wouldn't make this character a bad guy. Their's another character who their playing up as working for the villain, but I know their going to give this character a redemption arc because that's what all lore shows like this do. Their doing that thing where they're solving this mystery but they don't want anybody to know about it, without any real reason why other than just the "we can't trust anybody" crap. Character's keep secrets from each other just so there can be more mystery. These tropes were new and innovated when shows like Gravity Falls and Steven Universe came out.. but that was a while ago and we've had a lot of mystery shows since then we've seen all these story beats in those shows, and nothing new is brought to the table. So yeah, I can't say that I love this show as much as most people. But that doesn't mean I hate it. Their are things I do really like about it. Like the humor, the cartoon-y atmosphere and the art style. But it is a shame when the mystery, the thing that's suppose to be the most enticing, ends up being the shows weakest element. I think if this show came out a couple years ago. before so may cartoons followed this kind of formula, I would of liked it a lot better. But hey, at least it's better than Marvel's Spider-Man. Ha-ha! Segway!

Yeah...this show doesn't really have a theme song... Now it's hard to talk about Marvel's Spider-Man without talking about the previous Disney XD Spider-Man series, Ultimate Spider-Man. I only watched a little over one season of USM before I dropped the series because honestly, it wasn't very good in my opinion. The whole show felt like it was made by a committee featuring dumbed down writing, obvious cross promotion to other Marvel properties, and a Spider-Man who came across less like a nerdy genius and more like an arrogant buffoon. So when this series was announced, with official press statements referring to it to a "back to basics" approach to the franchise, I was hopeful. How did the show turn out? Well...it's better than Ultimate. I think.... Honestly it seems odd that they cancelled Ultimate Spider-Man for this because the series feels like it has most of the problems that Ultimate Spider-Man had. Just slightly less so. The writing still feels dumbed down, but slightly less dumbed down. The series is less focused on cross promotion and mostly features Spider-Man characters, which is a plus as I though that Ultimate Spider-Man was a bit too "Marvel Universe Centrict." But that still hasn't stopped the show from already having an episode where Spider-Man meets Iron Man, and another episode where he meets the Hulk. IN THE FIRST FOURTEEN EPISODES. This version of Spider-Man is more of a nerd which is good, but they messed it up by going in the opposite direction by making him TOO MUCH of a nerd, with him constantly talking about how awesome science is at every possible opportunity. Also the animation of this show is really bad. Nothing is shaded properly, and it's very distracting. The only thing that I really like about this show is Norman Osborn. He's voiced by Josh Keaton, who played Spider-Man in the Spectacular Spider-Man and I was shocked to see how well is was able to pull off such an opposite character. He's just as petty and cartoonishly conniving as Norman Osborn should be. But other than that, the show doesn't have much to offer. It's clearly made for really little kids, and their isn't really much for adults. It's that bland kind of bad, where it feels like there just wasn't much passion put into this. I'm sure that's not true but that's how it feels. Speaking of reboots of 80's properties, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012 aired it's final episode after five seasons and over one hundred episodes. Now like I said in part one, I've only seen the first two seasons of this show, so I don't know how good the last three seasons where, but I'm glad that the show got a good run. From what I saw, it was a pretty great show. However what does annoy me is that Nickelodeon moved it to Nicktoons with only TEN EPISODES LEFT! Like really Nick? You couldn't just air the last ten? Meanwhile at Netflix, not satisfied with just one anime-esq cartoon project they decided to make another. This is...(sigh) This is Neo Yokio. Or, another installment in my side series series, (Oh, the Cringe!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLNRZ_1WyzM

Neo Yokio, created by Ezra Koenig and starring Jaden Smith was a show that was originally pitched to the Fox ADHD block, but ended up in a state of development limbo after said block got canned. But someone at Netflix decided that this show was something that the world desperately needed and decided to pick it up themselves. The series stars Kaz Kaan, the most popular bachelor in the entire city of Neo Yokio. He's you're average millionaire celebrity dealing with all the first world problems that a millionaire celebrity have to deal with. But he's also a demon hunter...and..and...and... Jaden Smith is younger than I am. How come he has his own anime?! I want my own anime! Come on Netflix, pick up "Average Spirit Warrior" please! This show is odd. Not just odd, it's an odd kind of odd that's hard to explain. I don't know what this show wants to be, and so I don't know how to judge it. Sometimes it seems like it's trying to be an action show. Other times it seems like it's trying to be a straight forward comedy. OTHER other times it seems like it's trying to be parody of anime. And other other OTHER times it feels like it's trying to be a serious show about social issues like the wealth gap and the gender spectrum?! Is there just some rule in the Netflix contracts that says that every Netflix show has to tackle gender identity, regardless of it it fits the series or not? Is that why Bill Nye's show had a rap about a vagina? Is that why? It has a real adult swim vibe, like they bought the rights to some obscure early 2000's anime and decided to make there own dub. The animation even has the quality to it to, with lots of really bad lip syncing. The show's art is also not that great, looking like it's ten years older than it actually is. The show varies in quality from so bad it's good, to actually pretty dull. Unlike other over the top weird anime Neo Yokio has a very slow pace, which makes everything feel at lot more mundane. Also Kaz is a very hard character to relate to because he is so rich and so oblivious to the world around him. Though the show does definitely have it's stand out moments. The show is so bizarre that there are plenty of funny "WTF" style moments, like the running gag with the Big Toblerone bar and some of Jaden Smiths bizarre spiritual-isms. Jaden Smith, while pretty monotone as a voice actor, did surprise me a couple of times with some okay comedic timing believe it or not. The show also has some interesting world building that I wished they elaborated more on. There's sort of this alternate history element to this world's history that result in a lot of creative idea. It's a world with no 9/11, the Soviets are still around, Japan and Italy are somehow one nation... You know I bet if your reading this without watching the show first I sound like a raving lunatic. WHY IS EZRA KOENIG MAKING AN ANIME? He's primarily a INDIE GUITARIST! Do I recommend watching it? Ehh, I can say that I have never seen a show quite like it...I'd say watch the trailer. It's a good representation of the show, and if you find that trailer "funny bad" then you'll probably get a kick out of this show. If not, then you can skip it. Overall, to me at least, the show just didn't have much synergy... But hey, don't say you love the anime if you haven't read the manga...

And Teen Titans Go! is getting a movie and wait...what? NEXT JULY!? Shouldn't there be like a...trailer or something out then?! I mean Spider-Verse has a trailer and that's not coming out till December! But hey..."In general, if a traditionally animated film comes out in theaters I'll see it just to support the medium." Right? I mean that's what I said in the last part...rIgHt?1 Now all the stuff that I've previously mentioned we're all fine, but none of it was grabbing the cartoon community attention to much. Ducktales came the closest, but with Rick and Morty Season three about to end there needed to be another show to be the new big thing. Then...Big Mouth Happened. Or...another installment in my newly booming side series (Oh, the Cringe!) REAL WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK! For Real.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8DlpO5UOnI

Now when I decided to watch this show in preparation for this review, I thought that I was going to be the only person in the cartoon community to really talk about it. I thought that this show would like "Legend of Chamberlain Heights" or "TripTank." An awful show, but a show that would fly under the radar just because of how "generically awful" it would be. That's why I was suprised when this show became the biggest hot topic in our community,and a widely debated topic at that. For real, I haven't seen a show this polarizing in a long time. People like Mr. Enter and I Hate Everything say that the show is awful, and one of the first cartoons ever, bordering child porn in terms of the content that the series shows. Other's like PhantomStrider on the other hand found the series to be a smart and deep dive into the lives of prepubescent adolescents and tackling the topic well. Which side do I land on? Ehh, somewhere in the middle I guess. I'll start with the pros of the show first. The show's biggest strength it's relatability. Being a show that tackles puberty it is almost impossible for you to not relate to this show on some level. This does help ground the world and get you into the characters easier because you see yourself in their shoes. The characters are fairly good for the most part, with Andrew being the most stand out character out of the main four kids. This I think was what surprised me the most, as most of these shows tend to make the characters assholes for the sake of being assholes but they stay mostly likable. Though the best character overall to me personally is The Ghost of Duke Ellington played by Jordan Peele. His performance is just so over the top and it's just such a random idea for a character that I can't help but kinda like it. Also there's this one gym coach character who I feel like I should be more annoyed by, but I kinda end up really liking. Though that might be just because he reminds me of Coach Z from Homestar Runner.

I show also covers a lot of topics that aren't covered in a lot of other shows, and covers them well. There is actual thought put into it. Honestly I think this show would be a good one to show somebody who is in puberty, as it gives a lot of informative info out in a much more personal way then most sex ed videos do. The internal continuity of the world is very hey wire. Sometimes people can see the hormone monsters, sometimes they can't. Sometimes they have the ability to effect the world around them, while other times it's kept ambiguous to weather or not they even are real, or just figments of the characters imagination. But I also don't think that it's really the point of the show. I think it's just whatever is funnier in the moment. There's a fluidness to the reality. However, there are definitely some problems with the show. Whenever the humor is trying to be crass or offensive the jokes tend to land a lot less. The show can end up becomes genuinely uncomfortable, and there were a lot of moments where I did end up changing tabs while watching. Being on Netflix they are able to get away with a lot, including showing full uncensored penis, vagina's, semen, and more. Often times involving the kids, and there is a real creep factor to it. I know the shows about puberty and that's the subject matter, but I feel like this is a rare case where "show don't tell" doesn't apply to storytelling. This is the shows biggest issue, and it's hard to ignore cause it's in almost every episode. The shows art style also isn't the best. It has this "Family Guy meets Klasky Csupo" look to it. And those are to properties that aren't most well regarded for there animation. Overall I can say that I did enjoy the show more than I was expecting to. Though keep in mind my expectations were "Brickleberry." I think the show is more good than bad though, with the comedy and the likable characters being the saving grace. But if you don't like ugly animation or gross out, then just pull out now. Meanwhile in the real world McDonalds released the "Mulan Schezwan Sauce" to the public for one day only. All in honor of a Rick and Mortyjoke from the first episode of season three. Fan's rioted as there was not enough supply to meet demand, leading to the story getting national coverage from major news outlets. Honestly, I have nothing to add to this, I just think it's funny. But forget about joy, it's time to become suddenly all serious and depressing! As the #MeToo movement happened several animators where accused of sexual misconduct. Some of the names of those accused include Loud House creator Chris Savino and Head of Pixar and Disney animation John Lassenter. I do want you to keep in mind though that these are just accusations. It seems like lately when a celebrity is accused of something like this people always decide that their guilty until proven innocent. Because they don't want to come off as victim shaming. However that doesn't mean they didn't do it either...yeah I have nothing else to really say here. Chris Savino was fired and John Lassenter was put on a six month leave, with rumors saying he'll be fired afterwards. Um...there's no non awkward way to segway out of this topic is there? Crap. Um, anyway Teen Titans Go! had there 200th episode. And guess how they celebrated. Go ahead, just make an educated guess. Well if you said an almost four day Teen Titans Go! marathon over Thanksgiving weekend, then you'd be right!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_7MWNWJReqU

Okay well, at least this one was actually celebrating something! So there's that at least!

Meanwhile the same night Nickelodeon premiered "Hey Arnold! The Jungle Movie." The finale thirteen years in the making.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfSPjRoQjCk

He's got a journal and a long lost relative. Y'know what that means, it's time for some LORE! Now, I've never really watched Hey Arnold before, outside of a few episodes- JESUS CHRIST! WHAT HAVE YOU SEEN?! -But despite that, I did find myself enjoying this movie more than I thought I would. The movie is fairly stand alone, and for the most part can be enjoyed without prior knowledge of the show. The biggest strength of the film is the cast, who are genuinely likable, and the comedy which is genuinely funny. I also like how the movie does have a bit of a darker approach to it. It's not Samurai Jack dark or anything, but the villain is genuinely threatening and there are some actual onscreen deaths. It's not bloody or anything, but it's pretty intense for Nickelodeon. This really gives the movie a since of stakes and danger that I really enjoyed. It earns the PG rating. There are some problems though in terms of the story telling. There are some forced conflicts that seem like they're just there to be there. Also the movie is actually pretty confusing in terms of what is magic and what isn't to the point where I'm still not one hundred percent sure if the ancient prophecy was true or not. Maybe I missed something, but it seems kinda muddled. Also the villain, while threatening, isn't very interesting. He's just the cliche "want's money" villain, with nothing making him really stand out. But most of these problems aren't TOO glaring and I was able to enjoy the film regardless. And if I enjoyed it then I'm sure people who actually watched Hey! Arnold probably loved it. And I'm glad that the fans finally got a proper ending after all this time. Unfortunately, despite trending on twitter the movies actual ratings were not very good, getting a 1.7 million across three networks. That might sound okay, but it only barely beat out The Loud House episode that aired right before and that only aired on one network. Even Teen Titans Go! 200th episode, which airs on a much less popular network, was only a couple thousand views less than it. I'm torn, because on one hand I liked the movie and wished it did better, knowing how long the creator and fans were waiting for it. On the other hand, I'm hoping that this might help Nickelodeon get out of their "90's kids phase" that they seem to be in. i mean there's Hey! Arnold, Invader Zim, Rocko. All these announced revivals really makes it feels like there kinda having a mid life crisis. And while there nineties shows where great, I think they need to acknowledge that it wasn't there only good period. If there's something to take away from this, it's that as much as you hear people talk about how much better things were better in the nineties, these people are the minority. Most of the people who watch these channels are kids, and kids don't care about old nineties and two thousands shows they've never heard of. They care about what's on now. Also, while this news effects much more than just animation, Disney bought most of Fox's entertainments rights for fifty two billion dollars. Which is an amount of money that I cannot even begin the fathom. That's enough money to buy everybody in the world five large McDonald's Soda. And that includes like new born babies and stuff. (Alternatively, that might be enough for about three Schezwan Sauce packets.) In terms of animation, that means Disney now owns The Simpsons, Family Guy, Bob's Burgers, Archer, All the Ice Age and Rio movies, Allen Frickin' Gregory. I'm honestly a bit worried about this. Disney is become more and more powerful, and I feel it's only a matter of time till they monopolize entertainment. I'm also worried how this will effect other TV channels. For example, if Disney wanted could they pull all the Fox shows off of adult swim, or TBS? Only time will tell, as this deal will take about a year to really go into effect, but hopefully our new mouse overlord will be merciful. And to cap of f the year, Cartoon Network decided to celebrate Christmas by having an EIGHT DAY LONG TEEN TITANS GO! MARATHON! (with two episodes of Steven Universe sprinkled in.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc7hwNB4Cv4

Now I know what you're probably thinking. "Wait, if they just passed two hundred episodes, then doesn't that mean they only have enough episodes for about two days?' Well normally yes, but even though there's only enough episodes that last two days, through a miracle it was able to last for eight nights. And that's why we celebrate Hanukkah. For real though, I try to defend Cartoon Network, but this is just too far! We had JUST gotten a multi-day Teen Titans Go! marathon literally a month ago! While annoying, at least I understand that one. It was for there two hundredth episode. It's a big milestone that should be celebrated. But this is just Christmas! Cause who wants to watch Christmas specials on Christmas right?! And it's not just Teen Titans Go!, I'd be upset regardless of the show. As of the time of this being posted it's still going on. And it's not just CN. Nickelodeon had a last minute schedule change replacing several of there Christmas specials with Spongebob and Loud House reruns. Not all there specials though, and it was only for one day, so it's far less egregious. But it shows that when one channel falls they can all be effected. Ugh! Yeah, I hate to end on that note, but honestly I'm just happy that I didn't end on sexual harassment, which was a real concern at one point. 2017 was a wild ride for the animation community, and I'm glad you came along with me on this look back through it all. Now, it's time to rank the shows. Keep in mind though that this is just my personal opinion. Also I'm not very good at these list things, and my opinion tends to change all the time. This is more of just a "for fun" thing. Let's do this. 9. Bunsen is a Beast 8. Castlevania 7. Marvel's Spider-Man 6. Ben 10 5. Neo Yokio 4. Big Mouth 3. (TIE) OK KO: Let's Be Heroes and Ducktales 2017 2. Hanizuki: Full of Treasures 1. Samurai Jack Season Five Though that's just my opinions now. Who knows how they might change in the future. And keep in mind that there were a lot of shows that I didn't see or talk about that came out this year. Like these... (Apollo Gauntlet, Big Hero 6: the Series, Billy Dilly's Super Duper Subterranean Summer, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Danger and Egg, Dorthy and the Wizard of Oz, Hotel Transylvania: The Series, Legend Quest, Mysticons, Niko and the Sword of Light, Sex Swings, Strech Armstrong and the Flex Fighters, Tangled the Series, Tarantula, Tarzan and Jane, Tender Touches, The Jellies, The Magic School Bus Rides Again, Unikitty, Vampirina, Wacky Races 2017, Welcome to the Wayne, Wishfart) As for the grade, last year got a B-. Good, but could use improvement. This year...honestly I have to give a C. Just...average. Even not counting the shows I talked about this year there were several shows that I watched, intending to put into this review, that I ended up cutting cause I had nothing to really say on them. And honestly, even shows like Ducktales and OK KO, which are pretty high on my list have their problems. But I acknowledge that every year's quality won't be exactly even, so I'm not going to panic just yet. I still have high hopes for 2018. Now for the network that "won" this year. BTW since this is a new segment, I'll announce the winner for 2016 too. Last year I would say that Nickelodeon "won" the year for their success with The Loud House and for getting Spongebob out of it's seasonal rot. I've never seen the public opinion of a network to change so quickly. As for this year, I will say that the winner was Netflix, for really proving that their committing to animation. In addition to having the most shows I talked about this year (3/10) they also had other series that I didn't mention like Strech Armstrong Magic School Bus. Not to mention new seasons of Bojack, F is for Family, Voltron, Trollhunters and more. Sure not every show they had was great, but it shows initiative, and shows that they are a worthy contender in landscape of animation. So that was 2017 year in review. While not the best year, it did have it's some very memorable series and moments. And I can't wait to see what 2018 has in store for the world of animation. What did you think of any of the shows or stories that I talked about today? Are there any that I missed? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comment down bellow. I'd love to hear them. Please fav, follow, and comment and have a great year. See ya in 2018! (I do not own any of the images or videos in this review all credit goes to there original owners.)

https://www.deviantart.com/joyofcrimeart/journal/2017-Year-in-REVIEW-Part-2-722602821 DA Link

#Ducktales #Neo Yokio #OK KO #review #ok ko let's be heroes

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arielmagicesi · 7 years

Text

all-girl trc intro post

the only men who exist in this world are everyone’s terrible dads/tree dads, Jesse Dittley, Glendower, Whelk, and various background characters. obviously like the world is populated with men and women and nonbinary people and whatever but like, for our main cast, ALL WOMEN. maybe some nonbinary women too. like my gf Blue

here’s an intro to all of these women:

Blue Sargent: the original, the one and only, in canon she really is the one and only. she identifies as nonbinary and fluctuates between she/her and they/them pronouns. also she’s explicitly a woman of color. hairstyle ranges from completely shaven to messy bob haircut filled with hair-clips. bi but female-favoring. denim jacket and patches aesthetic. intersectional feminist who feels exhausted and stifled by her shitty school and town. loves her family a lot. makes friends with women and girls for real and has a bunch of Internet friends who yell about, idk, anarchy. she came out as bi and nonbinary pretty young because she was always encouraged to research feminism and shit and so her family was like “yeah cool awesome!”

in regards to magic shit: loves trees and environmentalism; when she finds out she’s a tree-light she’s thrilled and uses it to do forest shit. contacts Neeve at a young age and learns more about her mirror powers and amplifier powers and writes slam poems and makes bad art about the implications of woman as reflector. she was always told that when she kissed her true love, THEY would die- not “he.” this was slightly disappointing but she got through it by doing lots of stuff that she thought would make herself unappealing, like wearing garbage clothes and not doing any makeup or whatever [which was her kind of style anyway]. too bad that appealed exactly to her future gf...

Jane Gansey: a trans girl and lesbian, neither of which was approved of by her WASP family. she got stung by bees at age ten and believed that the woman’s voice she heard telling her she would live because of Glendower was proof that she was fated to find Glendower’s tomb and wake him. She ran away at age twelve and caused a huge stir when she used her bank account to go to England to meet with the professor, Dr. Ramona Malory, who she’d been chatting with online. Malory let Gansey live with her while things were sorted with the Gansey family, who were terrified about the scandal, and finally they came to terms with their daughter being a girl and allowed her to start taking puberty blockers and start transitioning. At fourteen, she left home again to travel the world in search of Glendower and finally made it to Henrietta.

She enrolled in the all-girls school, Aglionby, halfway through freshman year of high school, and used her trademark Gansey charm to make friends. Being a history nerd and well kind of a nerd about everything to do with the humanities, she had an easy time in school. But she dealt with constant panic attacks, anxiety, insomnia, horrible guilt, etc, on her own, until she met her best friend...

Rose Lynch: butch dirt lesbian who had a tough time coming to terms with uh everything. she grew up on a farm with her older sister, Diana, who was always the perfectionist, but Rose was the favorite child. she dreamt her younger sister Madeline when she was three, and always dealt with the ugly repercussions of the powers she inherited from her father Niall. the Lynch children were told to keep everything secret, and Rose especially was taught to repress everything. that came in handy not only with her dreaming powers, but with how she felt about girls. She wasn’t fond of girly stuff, but that was OK, because she lived on a farm, and wore overalls and plaids and messed around in dirt and hay since childhood.

When her father died and her mother fell into a coma and the Lynch sisters were cast out of their home, she fell into a deep depression and started coping by shaving all her hair off, listening to shitty EDM, street racing, and drinking excessively. She also had a self-harm habit. She’d made friends with Jane Gansey a few months before Niall’s death, so she moved into her weird-ass factory house. She and Gansey spent a lot of late nights talking about their feelings, or avoiding their feelings, or yelling at each other, but they loved each other a lot. when their sophomore year started, they were joined by a new girl that Gansey latched on to...

Adele [Addy] Parrish: she grew up in a trailer park, like in the books, and is more or less the same except for what changes by being a girl: like that she faces more sexism, that she’s seen as a disappointment for not being pretty enough, and that certain stuff about abuse/classism she faced was gendered, i don’t think it’s my place to get into what ways because i’m not really an abuse survivor. Anyway she spent all of her life dealing with lots of horrible shit, and coped by burying herself in books and studies and work and telling herself that she could leave this place by merit of her brain.

When she finally managed to get herself into Aglionby, at the start of tenth grade, she joined a lot of student clubs for stuff to put on her college applications, and met Gansey through them. She was pretty in awe of Gansey and fell a little in love with her, intrigued by the Glendower project, and willing to put up with shit from Rose if it meant being friends with Gansey. Much later, she and the others met Blue at Nino’s and Addy tried to invite her over to hang out with them, Gansey messing it up somehow, and then Addy went after her later to apologize and Blue, overly charmed, asked her out. Addy was like, “oh, uh... wait, you can do that, to another girl,” and Blue was like, “yeah sure [but I can’t kiss you but I’m not gonna tell you that because needless conflict]” and Addy was like, “oh. nice. good.”

Anyway the point is both Addy and Blue are bi and sort of awkwardly work it out together and then the relationship develops a lot of issues, similarly to in the books, and they break up, just in time for Cabeswater to unleash magic-forest hell on poor Addy who was just trying to make connections at Gansey’s fancy Washington party. also if it isn’t clear she’s clearly my favorite

Noa Czerny: always a weird, genderfluid skater, fond of early pop punk bands and bad 90s trends. and arts & crafts. until they were murdered by asshole “friend” Barrington Whelk, who went to Aglionby’s brother school... idk some other rich-people name... and made friends with Noa at a dance party or something. they would hang out, and Noa had bad self-esteem so they just hung on to Whelk’s every word, and eventually got sacrificed. they came back as a ghost and warned Gansey, in a gentle voice, on the ley line about Glendower when she was ten. then casually hung around Aglionby and Nino’s and sort of made their way into the group via ghost magic, and slipped from time as a final sacrifice. seriously about as sad as the books

Hannah Cheng: raised by Seondeok, she learned to love and hate herself at the same time- both being told of her potential to be amazing, while it was made clear her mother saw her as a tool a lot of the time. She hated the magical artifacts industry from a young age and, shortly after being kidnapped, spent a lot of time holding onto silence and safe spaces as a way to deal. Then she grew into using humor and apathy as a coping mechanism, and became fond of dark jokes and terrible pop culture references balanced chaotically. When Seondeok sent her to Aglionby, she gathered friends pretty quickly through the handful of students of color and kept them through astonishing bursts of kindness and general charisma. She was always comfortable with casually flirting with her girl friends because, well, she was pansexual and didn’t see any reason to hide it, but when she met Jane Gansey, she saw a lot of herself in her- scared and charming and smart and, somewhere in there, a genuine heart reaching for the stars.

#tw mental illness #tw abuse #tw alcoholism #tw self harm #yiiikes these books really are something actually #tw kidnapping??#trc

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if-only-angels-could-prevail · 7 years

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here’s my LONG ASS POST where i talk about my favorite movies of the year!* i included 11 favorites, 6 alternate choices, a list of my favorite performances, and a list of my favorite music in these movies.

*in this case, “year” means “awards season”

THE BEST ONES (11 picks because I couldn’t narrow it down to 10)

20th Century Women

After Mike Mills’ masterful ode to fatherhood in Beginners (a movie that changed my life as much as any movie ever has), he matches his predecessor and then some with 20th Century Women. This is a brilliant, moving, and funny rumination on womanhood and motherhood, on what it means to be a woman, and even an examination of what feminism means in America’s constantly-changing cultural landscape. Partly based on Mike Mills’ own childhood, he described the movie as a love letter to the women who raised him, and the affection and honesty is on full display. It examines three very different women, played by three wonderful actresses, and their effect on the adolescent Jamie, Mills’ own self-insert. It’s timely, political, charming, and full of stunningly relevant dialogue about gender conformity and what it entails. This is a movie about womanhood, for everyone.

American Honey

This is a movie best described by contradictions. It’s intimate and it’s epic, it’s dreamlike and it’s realistic, it’s devastating and emotionally fulfilling. There is very little story to speak of--Star is an 18-year-old woman who joins a ragtag group of young people who sell magazines across the country. The whole movie is meandering, but Andrea Arnold (a brilliant director, also check out Fish Tank) fills this simplistic storyline with so many quiet observations and confrontations that by the end, one feels both completely full and all the more curious. It is contemporary filmmaking at its most poetic and immediate.

Arrival

This is a movie that will leave (or rather, has left) everyone talking, which is exactly my type of science fiction. It’s a quiet testament to critical thought and language, and how thrilling it can be. My only quibble is that as wonderful as Amy Adams was (and she really was pitch-perfect), I think I might have enjoyed it more with unknown faces playing these characters. But that’s not the point. The point is there was one single moment--literally down to the very second--immediately before the end credits rolled when the entire movie clicked for me, and I was overjoyed. Such moments are extremely rare in film, and I can only hope other audiences experience (or did experience) the same ecstatic epiphany that I did in that final moment.

The Handmaiden

A Korean gothic lesbian revenge story. I was sold as soon as I heard the description. This movie reminded me of all the most exciting plot-twisty mind-bending Hollywood creations (Gone Girl came to mind a lot), but the thrills were propelled even further by the sheer visual panache and gorgeous design work that are sometimes lacking in said genre. The acting was extraordinary as well. Another movie that’s probably best knowing very little about before you see it. It’s thrilling, violent, beautiful, and passionate storytelling.

Hell or High Water

I’m slightly biased because I love the idea of the contemporary western (True Grit and The Homesman are two of my recent favorites), and this is a prime example of old-fashioned western filmmaking with a strong contemporary sensibility. Like 20th Century Women, it seems to exist in multiple generations, and even as the characters talk about something completely unrelated, I was acutely aware of the divide, of the fascinating visual contradictions. To me, this cultural conversation was the underlying force behind the way this old-hat story was told. But don’t get me wrong: this is a pitch-perfect screenplay, possibly the best of the year. And the cast is insanely good.

Hidden Figures

I wanted to stand up and cheer at multiple points. I teared up during at least five different scenes. This is Hollywood filmmaking at its most shamelessly crowd-pleasing, and I ate it all up. I think when you have a story as worth telling as this one, a little crowd-pleasing is earned. It’s entertaining from beginning to end, and its cultural imprint (highest-grossing of all the best picture Oscar nominees) will be empowering from years to come.

Jackie

The best biopics are about more than one person. The best biopics both relate someone’s story with accuracy and use their story to confront the audience with their own selves. This is exactly what Jackie does: it’s an unsettling movie that gets under your skin, asking questions about celebrity, about luxury, about culture, about womanhood, all the while offering a stunning character portrait of one woman. This isn’t just a history lesson: this is a confrontational masterpiece, using this figurehead as a lens to examine our own selves. Jackie Kennedy passed away when I was less than a year old, but by the end of this movie, I felt like I knew her, and I felt like I knew myself better than I had before.

Lemonade

Beyonce casually reinventing the movie musical genre. Lemonade celebrates black femininity in a revelatory and empowering way. And yet, speaking as a white boy, it can be adored by anyone with an appreciation for aesthetic beauty, and anyone who loves music. (Seriously. Amazing music.) Like some other movies on this list, the narrative is thin, but it’s thematically tight, gripping, and always exuberant to watch. It will move anyone who’s struggled through an adult relationship, and even those who haven’t will feel privileged to watch this raw and emotionally naked portrait. It also proves that movie musicals need not be nostalgic fluff pieces (*cough*)--they can be current, they can be iconic, they can be culturally relevant, they can be hot-blooded, angry, sensitive, thrilling, poetic, feminist, and last but not least, unapologetically and exuberantly black.

Miss Sloane

I’m biased because I love Jessica Chastain. But his movie delivered. It’s about a fast-talking political lobbyist and how she navigates the political sphere, confronting her coworkers, her enemies, the law, and (most significantly) her own conscience. Its conversations are timely, as one would expect. But I found it most interesting as a contemporary morality play. Like Jackie, Miss Sloane is a character study which isn’t content being a mere character study--it confronts the audience on well-worn but ever-timely questions of how we define morality, happiness, and success. Some of the dialogue comes across as cheesy faux-Aaron Sorkin, which has drawn some criticism. The critics are right, but I ate it all up. This movie is more entertaining than any movie about a political lobbyist has any right to be, and even when it veers toward the unbelievable, it’s an awesome ride.

Moonlight

If I keep going back to the phrase “visual poetry,” it’s because this year in movies was an embarrassment of riches in that regard, Moonlight being a prime example. Every shot, every frame, felt so vital, deliberate, and beautiful. Moonlight is many things--a careful rumination on masculinity, a testament to parenthood, an artfully-crafted coming-of-age movie--but above all else, it’s a love story. A black gay love story, told with sincerity and a lot of heart. Quietly groundbreaking and cathartic.

Silence

Is it too bold to suggest this could be Scorsese’s masterpiece? It’s certainly among his most ambitious. And it’s painstakingly crafted, and dramatically tight. Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver (both acting up a storm) play 17th-century Jesuit priests who experience extended religious oppression in their efforts to spread Christianity throughout Japan. I know that sounds boring. But Silence is a force of nature, jaw-droppingly epic in scope. And yet for all its hugeness, for all its passion and melodrama, there is a stinging intimacy throughout that keeps one caring for these characters as if they’re longtime friends or brothers. And like every good period drama, it feels achingly contemporary, and the story feels heartbreakingly current. It’s a behemoth of a movie that my own paltry superlatives can hardly scratch the surface of, but trust me: it’s incredible.

ALTERNATES

Allied

Great old-fashioned filmmaking without pandering to nostalgia. It’s an extremely handsome movie, and it’s dramatically taut, but the story still manages to defy your expectations at every turn. Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard are wonderful movie stars, perfectly cast in this old-fashioned yarn. I wish it had managed to find more of an audience, because it’s top-tier Hollywood storytelling.

Fences

Fences is indisputably a great play, so even a version that feels like a self-conscious adaptation is still going to be awfully good. Viola Davis is perfect, as we all know. Denzel Washington's performance felt too big for my taste, as if he didn’t do much in terms of translating his performance from stage to film, but obviously he’s a wonderful actor and charismatic as hell. Since not everyone can see Fences onstage, this movie is a damn good substitute.

Hail, Caesar!

The Coen brothers are likely my favorite movie directors working today--their last three movies in particular have all been extraordinary (A Serious Man, True Grit, Inside Llewyn Davis). Hail, Caesar! seems like an unusual next step for them, going back to some of their zanier antics, with a loving tribute to old Hollywood. But this isn’t cheap nostalgia--this is a deliciously original story, full of wacky surprises, a LOT of kooky characters, and some completely unexpected gags. It’s pure entertainment, if you’re buckled up for a lot of weirdness.

The Jungle Book

Another “pure entertainment” entry. I was awed by this live-action remake of the Disney classic. The artistry in the CGI was mind-blowing, and it had such an awesome power on the big screen. The classic story was told with care and economy, but the design and visual beauty was the main draw. And I always support unprompted musical numbers in non-musical movies.

Kubo and the Two Strings

Beautiful, beautiful designs, and a wonderfully original and twisty story. In retrospect, I wasn’t sold on all the plot elements, and the mostly-white cast playing Japanese characters seemed indelicate for several reasons. But it was visually stunning, the music was gorgeous, and the story was laudably original and full of imagination.

The Lobster

What makes dystopian stories so appealing is they offer the audience a lens to look at their own society through a foreign and fictional concept. The Lobster is a great example, offering a look at society’s expectations for how we treat romance and sex. The script starts to verge toward too much concept at points, but I found it compensated for its heavy plot turns with a treasure trove of wry observations. The acting and the execution is good, but in this instance, the script is the main draw, and one that left me thinking long after I had finished.

INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCES I LOVED

Annette Bening and Greta Gerwig in 20th Century Women

Amy Adams in Arrival and Nocturnal Animals (despite my quibble about casting movie stars in Arrival, she delivered a brilliant performance)

Viola Davis in Fences

Kim Min-hee and Kim Tae-ri in The Handmaiden

The always-brilliant Jeff Bridges in Hell or High Water

The entire cast of Hidden Figures

Natalie Portman in Jackie

Beyonce in Lemonade

Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga in Loving

Michelle Williams in Manchester By The Sea

Jessica Chastain in Miss Sloane

Ashton Sanders, Andre Holland, Jharrel Jerome, Naomie Harris, and Mahershala Ali in Moonlight

Nathan Lane in No Pay, Nudity

Andrew Garfield in Silence

Paul Dano in Swiss Army Man

MUSIC I LOVED

Hail, Caesar!

Hidden Figures

Jackie

The Jungle Book

Kubo and the Two Strings

La La Land

Lemonade

Moana

Moonlight

Silence

Swiss Army Man

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birdlord · 7 years

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Every Book I Read in 2016

Here’s a list of the books I finished in 2016! By the way, keeping a list like this WILL make you disinclined to start books and not finish them...when I was going through my notes to write these up, I found one or two that I didn’t manage to finish, but otherwise I finished ‘em all! Asterisks mark re-reads (though there’s only one this year!). Here’s last year’s list.

01 * Anne’s House of Dreams; Lucy Maud Montgomery - There are plenty of unlikely plot points in LMM’s books, but this one really takes the cake (SPOILER ALERT): woman marries a man out of blackmail, he disappears at sea, returns brain damaged, gets trepanned in Montreal, and turns out to be his own cousin. WHAT IS THAT EVEN, LUCY

02 Kindred; Octavia E. Butler - Oh just your typical sci-fi time travel slavery story! A thoughtful gloss on the idea that time travel is a white-man’s game (since any other type of person is likely to be disregarded, or killed, or put in jail in an earlier time period in the West) & complicating any modern person’s idea that if they were put in a difficult situation in the past, they’d certainly be able to get out of it easily, with their superior knowledge. I just came across a graphic novel version in a bookshop today, so check that out too if you’re more inclined towards a graphic interpretation.

03 The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society; Annie Barrows & Mary Anne Shaffer - I read this without much prior knowledge, so I was surprised to find that this book with a cutesy title was in fact an epistolary novel about the German occupation of the Channel Islands, and as such is fairly intense (though still imbued with cheery, stiff-upper-lippishness).

04 The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Clash of Two Cultures; Anne Fadiman - This is perhaps the first work of medical anthropology I’ve ever read, and it was eye-opening. It’s not that I didn’t know that western medicine doesn’t easily leap cultures, doesn’t cross cultural barriers in spite of our own belief in its efficacy. But knowing this abstractly is a different experience than seeing it laid out bare, in the body of a Hmong child in California, born with epilepsy.

05 Rain: A Natural and Cultural History; Cynthia Barrett - Two great tidbits from this book: 1) witch-hunts in Europe coincided with the worst years of the Little Ice Age, since witches were presumed to be affecting the weather. 2) Settlement of the Great Plains in the 1870s was brought on by mistaking weather (some wet years) for climate (arid with occasional wet periods).

06 In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex; Nathaniel Philbrick - This is the “real story” that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick. Or, a 2000 nonfiction history of that story, anyhow. Interesting narrative but I found it somewhat weakly-written - Philbrick weirdly (for a book about ships) consistently confuses the meaning of ship tonnage, which is a measure of volume, not mass. What a nit to pick, but here we are. The film version has some seriously bad CGI and added lots of stuff to juice the drama.

07 The State We’re In; Ann Beattie - A book of linked short stories, all set in Maine. I don’t know that I would have noticed that they were all in Maine if I hadn’t read it on the dust jacket, as it’s not really a set of stories where, like the setting is a character, or what have you. Not that I need everyone to be wearing a lobster as a hat, but the connection felt a bit weak.

08 Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Structure; Alastair Gordon - a book about the design of airports, from their earliest incarnations until the milennium. There’s some great material in here about airports and american imperialism in central and south america, under the auspices of Pan Am. Unfortunately I read the un-updated version, so it didn’t cover much in terms of the way airports have physically been changed since 9/11. I want THAT book.

09 The Argonauts; Maggie Nelson - This is probably the best piece of “confessional writing” I’ve ever read. It’s shot through with theory in a way that’s really invigorating, but is at the same time extremely personal and revealing, with thoughtful perspective on radically and motherhood, producing and reproducing.

10 A Bell for Adano; John Keene - More WWII occupation, but this time from the occupiers’ POV. An American major is assigned to administer a city in Italy, and decides to return their church bell to them. Hijinks, stereotypes, bureaucracy and some good ol’ American stick-to-itiveness ensue.

11 The Fly Trap; Fredrik Sjoberg - ostensibly a book about an entomologist who lives on an island in Sweden, it’s really a collection of digressions on summer, a fellow entomologist, travel, and collecting as avocation and vocation.

12 Spill Simmer Falter Wither; Sara Baume - the story of a man, and a dog, and the four seasons that they spend together; a year of increasing dread and discomfort. Exceedingly well-described, just thinking about this again months later has put me right back in a slightly damp Irish seaside town, full of prying watching eyes.

13 How to Watch a Movie; David Thomson - Often more of a biography of a film critic than a book teaching the reader “how to watch a movie”. He might well have called it “How to Watch a Movie Like Me, and Also Be Me, I’m Great”. I did appreciate the comparison of cuts in a film to periods after a sentence - a way of adding rhythm to a scene just as one adds it to a paragraph.

14 Mislaid; Nell Zink - A lesbian woman in 1966 in becomes enamoured of a gay professor at her college, marries him, has some babies, and leaves him a decade later. She and her daughter take to the south and live as African Americans, leading to some identity-politics hullabaloo and a pretty nonsensical over the top ending. Zink is poking at her readers, hoping they’ll feel uncomfortable.

15 Station Eleven; Emily St John Mandel - A lifetime of having Can-con thrust on me leaves me with the sense of vague embarrassment when a book is set in Canada. It feels specific where Americanness feels general, universal. Silly, I know. My desire to see an author’s description of how civilization collapses is ultimately well-satisfied in this book, though it takes a long time for the book to get there.

16 First Bite: How we Learn to Eat; Bee Wilson - A look at how we (and our families, friends, and cultures at large) shape our food preferences. Wilson takes us through her own past of disordered eating, and learning to feed picky children, all the while consulting with neuroscientists and nutritionists for backup. The overall message is about the possibility of change; even bad habits can be altered, even those learned as a wee babby.

17 The Slave Ship: A Human History; Marcus Rediker - This was an amazing, absorbing read, using the slave ship as a site to examine the slave trade in general, its innovations and consequences. Reducer points out that it’s only on the ship that Africans forged a collective sense of africanness, since they would have come from different linguistic and familial groups. It’s the shipboard life that allows the categories of “black” for the diverse enslaved people, and “white” for the multiethnic and multilingual crews to be created.

18 The Devil’s Picnic: Travels Through the Underworld of Food and Drink; Taras Grescoe - This guy is like a low-rent Canadian ersatz Bourdain. Blecch.

19 On Looking: A Walker’s Guide to the Art of Observation; Alexandra Horowitz - Horowitz takes the same walk with 11 different experts, in the hopes of learning or noticing something different every time. Perhaps because of being harnessed to this conceit, she often takes on the pose of a naif, which can strike the reader as a bit rich given that she’s got a PhD in psychology and works on animal behaviour. Is this the editorial hand, making sure the science doesn’t get to be too much?

20 Counternarratives; John Keene - Engrossing short stories (some longer than others, perhaps novella-length?) placed in various north and south american colonial contexts. Each is expanded from a short historical documents (e.g. newspaper announcements) and provides enough background to understand the subjects as complex people in their own rights.

21 An Age of License; Lucy Knisley - All of her books are pretty open, emotionally-speaking, but this one feels especially nakedly exposed. Her feelings will seem familiar to anyone who has gone through a big breakup, then made some assorted attempts to get their shit together. Not everyone gets to do that while on an expenses-paid European book tour, but there you are.

22 Something New; Lucy Knisley - Knisley made her name in graphic travelogues like the one above, but her more recent books concentrate on more conventional life milestones: marriage, pregnancy, motherhood. I read this book about wedding planning while planning my own, in summer 2016. While the problems I encountered were different than hers, I did actually find it useful (and yeah, I made sure that I read it in time for it to come in handy!).

23 Midnight’s Children; Salman Rushdie - This book made me wish for a great documentary (or something?) about India just after independence - I think there was loads of nuance that I didn’t capture at all due to my own ignorance. I found myself distracted frequently while reading this, which is especially bad since the book’s narrator is careening around constantly, breaking narrative rules all over the place. So beware losing focus, or you may be lost for some pages. I appreciated Rushdie’s description of the family’s privilege - our hero doesn’t describe his family as wealthy, and it’s easy to lose that fact until the moment of child-swapping. Or rather, returning?

24 Love & Other Ways of Dying; Michael Paterniti - A collection of harrowing essays, which – before you read the copyright page, which obviously everyone does, right? – you’d be right to assume that they were written for men’s magazines.

25 One Perfect Day: The Selling of the American Wedding; Rebecca Mead - Besides the graphic novel above, this is the only book about weddings I read whilst planning one. And it’s a polemic against the wedding-industrial complex that 1) felt considerably out-of-date 9 years after publication and 2) espoused ideas that I was already in the bag for. So, ok but not ground-shaking.

26 Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic Disaster; Steven Biel - Though I read the un-updated version of this book, there were a couple of takes that I found interesting here that I hadn’t come across before. Firstly, post-disaster narratives tended to cast Titanic as a moment of per-WWI loss of innocence, but this is overblown, since there was lots of unrest already in 1912 (e.g. extensive strikes during King George V’s coronation summer in 1911 which threatened starvation, suffragist demonstrations. And secondly, the idea of muscular Anglo-Saxon protestant manhood was reaffirmed culturally after the sinking, contrasting their nobility to emotion (perish the thought!) and violence from “latins” and other foreigners.

27 American Youth; Phil LaMarche - A slight little book about gun violence in New England, in which a fatherless (part-time, anyway) boy falls in with a group of conservative teen wingnuts, the sort who would now be recruiting on Reddit instead of at the high school cafeteria. Angsty and pretty much resolutionless, so a fine representation of the experience of adolescence.

28 A Severed Head; Iris Murdoch - Expect the sort of soap-opera plotting typical of Murdoch. Set in London during the choking post-war fog, which reasserts itself over and over. I’ve been hit over the head with her brilliance in the past (The Black Prince, sigh), and this one didn’t pull that particular trick, but I did enjoy it.

29 Their Eyes Were Watching God; Zora Neale Hurston - Janie talks her way through the American south, attaching herself to various places and people until she finds herself, finally, reasonably content. I thought it was interesting that her ability or inability (willingness or unwillingness) to bear children isn’t an issue in any of her relationships. I realize that this is a low bar to clear, but yeah, I’m happy when women aren’t reduced to their decisions about children.

30 A Burglar’s Guide to the City; Geoff Manaugh - Manaugh sees cities (and architecture) in a way that most people don’t, and in this case he’s taking on the mantle of the law-breaker, the intruder. The book combines tales of epic burglaries involving tunnelling & hiding, LAPD helicopter ride-alongs, lock picking seminars, and tidbits about the securitization of the city. E.g. did you know that Paris’ nickname The City of Light came originally from its streetlights, which were installed on police orders?

31 Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure; Ingrid Burrington - Look, I know you need an excuse to look at your city through different eyes. And here it is! Obviously some of this is NY-specific, but having the ability to see the physical traces of the internet’s infrastructure is a great superpower to have.

32 Pond; Claire-Louise Bennett - lacking a thread of narrative through the entire book, it’s uncertain whether the best way to read this is as a novel, or as a series of short stories with the same protagonist. A woman lives in an Irish cottage, and equally divides her time musing about her surroundings and her own mental state. A quote I liked: “Then it occurred to me that perhaps I’d been terrified for longer than all day, and had rather mixed feelings upon realizing that - I wasn’t much keen on the idea that I’d been terrified for years, but it seemed possible”

33 Anne of Tim Hortons: Globalization and the Reshaping of Atlantic-Canadian Literature; Hab Wylie - This book looks a literature that acknowledges the Atlantic provinces as a contemporary space, rather than as a place frozen in time, and set outside the forces of globalization and finance. That latter notion is shorthanded as “the folk”, eg “The Folk paradigm is complicit in the colonial tactic of constructing the land as unoccupied, because it cultivates the impression that the Folk have always belonged here”

34 February; Lisa Moore - Inspired by the above, I picked up this one from the library. It covers the story of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig that sank with all aboard off the coast of Newfoundland in 1982, and its long-term consequences for a particular family. I found the interlocking timelines to be pretty effective, and the emotional fallout from the disaster is handled with the appropriate weight and solemnity.

35 Combat Ready Kitchen: How the US Military Shapes the Way You Eat; Anastacia Marx de Salcedo - Once you find out how much military logistics affects the way the civilian world fabricates, ships and even eats, it’s hard not to want to dig in a bit further. This is the story of how military rations became industrial foods. Interestingly, where the “clean-eating” food world might expect the author to reject the convenience foods whose history she’s tracing here, she takes a far more pragmatic approach. I was a bit less fascinated by the specific scientific advancements, and wish more time had been spent on the history.

36 Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture; Jon Savage - A long monograph on adolescence prior to the creation (and cultural ascension) of the teenager in the post-WWII era. Naturally, no matter what the surrounding historical events, there’s always a generational divide between the young and their parents, and Savage plots that rift over and over again, from the 1890s to the 1940s. Sadly his research is restricted to Western Europe and North America only, I’d like to see something similar that has a broader scope (though I’m sure one of the prerequisites of a teen culture is some amount of surplus time, resources, etc which are certainly not available prior to the achievement of some serious development).

37 Our Young Man; Edmund White - A slim little thing (I’m sure all it ever snacks on is plain air-popped popcorn) with allusions to Oscar Wilde, and barely a place towards the AIDS crisis. A change of perspective in the final third was much appreciated, though the new protagonist is scarcely less self-obsessed than the first.

38 When God was a Rabbit; Sarah Winman - I felt a bit like this book’s reach exceeded its grasp. It felt more like a homey, British ensemble dramedy than the lofty Literature it presents itself to be. I was, however, with it until world events (I’ll keep it spoiler-free for y’all) crash into the narrative in a clumsy and un-earned fashion.

39 The Sport of Kings; CE Morgan - A huge, and wide-ranging tale about lineage, blood, wealth and slavery in Kentucky, with a thin veneer of horses to help the whole thing go down a bit easier. Both massively compelling and by times stomach-turning, this is book can be a rough read. I could see a tilt into High Melodrama appearing in the final quarter or so, and I wished mightily that it wouldn’t go where I thought it was going…..but it did.

40 The End of Average; Todd Rose - I was hoping for an interesting history of the science of averages, and/or the idea of designing for “the average human” and that’s what I got in the first third or so. Then the book devolves (or evolves, I guess, depending on your perspective) into a gung-ho self-help book about bootstrapping your way to the top, even if you’ve been disregarded your whole life. Meh.

2016 by the Numbers

Read on a screen 1

Read on paper ALL THE REST :):)

Book Club Reads 4 (our club met 7 times this year, but 3 of those book I’d finished in 2015)

Graphic Novels 2

Fiction 19

Nonfiction 21

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elusianknight · 7 years

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Can you recommend any good tv series, movies, games, books (anything) that has happy lesbians with happy endings? :>

Ooooh okay!I don't watch many movies, but one that comes to mind is Carol ( (2015) dir. Todd Haynes lmao). It has a happy ending, no one dies, it's Very Gay and honestly #aesthetic. Books: like, anything by Malinda Lo, she's a lesbian Asian YA author who writes great books! Ash is my favorite, it's like a lesbian retelling of Cinderella but I hesitate to reduce it to such simple terms. Huntress is a prequel to that in the same world but centuries before. She has another series called Adaptation but I haven't read it, but I'm sure it's good. Bi protag with a lady love interest I think?Wildthorn by Jane Eagland is also very good! Again I think it qualifies as YA but honestly it has rather dark themes. Takes place in Victorian England where our dear protag is wrongly thrown in an insane asylum. It is very gay, and ends very happily, much more so than you'd expect from such a dramatic, dark premise!Sword of the Guardian by Merry Shannon was fun to read, too. I'm a sucker for medieval fantasy of any kind so if it had lesbians, I'm frickin there. MC is a butch lady who masquerades as a dude and ends up as a princess's bodyguard. They fall in love and there is drama. But an ultimately happy end! Not YA, by the way. Also, the writing and world building is not the best, but even a writing snob like me really enjoyed it. The Thousand Names is another amazing book! It is the first book of the Shadow Campaigns series, and of the two protags, one of them is a (freaking delightful) lesbian named Winter Ihernglass (what a cool name, right?). It's an incredibly well-written fantasy setting with rich worldbuilding, magic, and also guns... It's amazing. The story keeps you on the edge of your seat, through fierce battles as well as politics. The other main character is also very likable. Also, though the series hasn't ended yet, Winter has had like 783 Prime Death Opportunities™ and yet she's still alive and well, so like, yay for (dare I say it?) plot armor. Lesbians don't get that very often lol.Games: Dragon Age is what first comes to mind here. Fun little story: I bought DA2 when I was like 13 or so and my baby gay self was absolutely in love with the adorable bi elf Merrill, but yanno... I was still Totally Straight™. Anyway, don't start with the second game in the series, because nothing will make any goddamn sense. Start with...Dragon Age: Origins- the first of the Dragon Age games, and personally my favorite. In all three games, you make your own player character however you like, and there are multiple romance options. In DAO, your female romance option as a lady is Leliana, a charming bisexual bard who is just A+ and my favorite character of the whole damn series. The game itself is great and while you CAN net yourself a tragic ending, you have to do very specific things to get there--as in, a happy ending is VERY achievable. I have only ever gotten some ultra gay happily ever afters. Dragon Age 2 has two awesome bi ladies to romance (the aforementioned Merrill and the amazing pirate queen Isabela). People rag on the game a lot but like, don't worry, it's not as bad as anyone says it is. It has its flaws, but it tells a good story with great characters. Dragon Age Inquisition is the latest installment of the series and has, as your available female romance options as a female main character, a brilliant bi lady named Josephine who is your amazingly skilled chief diplomat, and a delightful lesbian named Sera who I love with all my little gay heart tbh. This game has a LOT to do in it, and as for the endings, some Drama™ happens but as for your relationship, they will remain happily together. The lady main character and Sera even get... gasp... MARRIED. Yup, that's right, you get a Big Lesbian Wedding. It's fucking awesome. Also, Sera ends up with a cute girlfriend if you're not in a relationship with her so like... The lesbians are always happy. And Josephine's romance is really cute! I know I mentioned Sera more bc I've romanced her more, but seriously Josie is like a Disney princess. You literally participate in a duel to win her affections until she stops you mid duel because she's afraid of her love getting hurt. It's so fluffy and cute omg.If you've been following me tho, all that dragon age stuff is probably old news lmao. So here are some more games!Mass Effect: another Bioware game, your main character can be gay! Though there is a lot of Dramu and World Shattering Stuff and the ending is not exactly happy, so I can't really add it to the list. But you can be gay and happy throughout the series. It's just hard to get a good ending, and even the happiest ending is ambiguous. Dragon's Dogma: this is one of my favorite games ever. It's so much fun, another medieval ish fantasy RPG, but the gameplay is amazing. There's a romance system that isn't very in depth, but still relevant to the story, and there are no restrictions based on gender, so you can be a gallant lady knight and rescue the damsel in distress and also smooch her if you're so inclined. The whole game has about 0 differences based on gender do honestly that's pretty cool. As for endings, you can get a happy ending with your character and their love interest. You can also get some not-so-happy endings but it's all based on player choice.Life is Strange is another game whose ending isn't all that happy, but the two main characters, based on player choice, can be in a relationship (implied enough that it IS canon) and both live. There is a shit ton of drama and trigger warnings tho. But really it is an amazing game.In the same vein of Dragon's Dogma, there's Skyrim, where like you can kinda do whatever you want in the game, and one of those things is that you can marry characters regardless of gender. There are some characters who you can't marry because of plot or whatever (in Dragon's Dogma there are only... 3 characters you can't romance iirc whereas there are more in Skyrim) but yeah, you can still be a big ol lesbian. I have never finished Skyrim bc like, again, you kinda just do whatever you want, but the ending is kinda inconsequential in that you can keep doing whatever you want after the main plot is over. So yeah, never ending lesbians. Sweet.I should honestly be able to think of more examples but for the moment I'm having trouble D: @soothinghymn @orlesianwardens what gay games am I forgetting hereTV Shows: I'm not a big TV show watcher here, but there are some good shows w lesbians. Steven Universe comes to mind. Yes it's a kids show, but it is a damn good one. There's drama but it's also very feel-good, and one of the characters is literally a lesbian mad up of two smaller lesbians who are madly in love with each other. Like, shit, that's just awesome.I'm a dork so I'll also give you anime recs, so in that regard I'd recommend Shuumatsu no Izetta/Izetta the Last Witch. It's kind of a spoiler that they get a happy ending, but hey, whatever, they do. The main couple doesn't kiss or anything but it is HEAVILY IMPLIED and there are no other love interests for the characters and they share an amazing bond and just love each other so much, it's great. The show is sliiiightly violent and takes place in like an AU of WW2 which is weird (one of the characters, Izetta, is a witch, so it's like an ~alternate history~ situation where a witch is involved in the war) but the show is still very enjoyable, great soundtrack too.Madoka Magica is kinda iffy, bc while it's my favorite anime of all freakin time, the show has a bittersweet ending. It is relatively happy? And kinda sad? The show is filled with tragedy, but I guess that's kinda the point. And then the follow-up movie is more despair, so... yeah, probably doesn't count as happy.A notable mention is Yuri On Ice, also. It doesn't involve lesbians, but the main couple is gay and they ultimately have a happy ending. There's some inevitable drama but the show is about ice-skating, so while it may seem like the world is sometimes ending, everything turns out okay in the end and no one, like, dies or anything.Anyway, I can't think of much else at the moment, but feel free to ask for more! Maybe I'll be able to come up with more examples later lol.

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whisperinghostie · 6 years

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Therapy Is Weird Part 1

The main reason I decided to start this blog is because my therapist knows I love writing. She had been having me go in once every week from the start of June to around the end of September, now it’s only once every two or three weeks. We’ll call her W for the sake of anonymity. She’s definitely unlike any other therapist I’d ever been to and that’s certainly a good thing. W is not my first therapist and, since I plan to move out of state in the coming years, she definitely won’t be my last. My history with therapy has certainly been a tumultuous one.

I don’t want to go into my life story in just one post since it’s pretty long and strange, especially when I’m hoping to expand upon it little by little in various posts. The most I’ll talk about in this post is my last few years of high school and the time afterwards.

It probably will sound like a presumptuous or weird thing to say, but for some reason people who are unfortunate are drawn to me. My friend group at the time consisted of “delinquents”, but who were really just people dealing with a lot of negativity. Most of them were either abused at home for one reason or another (most of my friends were queer), came from broken families, or were very poor. As a result, they sold drugs to support their family or ran in gangs, but no one was ever cruel to me or pressured me to do anything. If anything, when I came out about not being straight (at the time I thought I was a lesbian) and talked about my depression, they tried to help the best they could. Sometimes it was not always in the best ways.

Before I had told anyone about any of that, I had taken to burning my legs with a lighter. As a kid, it didn’t feel like I was actually hurting myself because I was not cutting my arms like someone who “really” self-harmed. It also helped me hide the scars because I refused to wear anything other than pants. Still, I was curious about the sensation of cutting and part of me felt like I was faking if I didn’t “do it right”. I lied to a friend that I was being threatened and, without a second thought, she gave me a ceramic blade and a razor. Looking back on it now, she wanted to protect me so I can’t blame her for forgetting about my depression or even not really considering it. And, as we went to a public school that was barely a step below a private school, she knew from experience that the teachers would not take anyone who wasn’t top of the class seriously. So I took the blades, intent on using them that night, but I never did.

It was a conflicting emotion, knowing subconsciously that I WAS harming myself with the lighter, but also feeling like I was a fake if I wasn’t cutting, but ALSO terrified of “actually” self-harming with a blade. Instead, the blades stayed in my purse and I forgot about them. Unfortunately, it bit me in the ass later.

The school I used to go to had an area outside the cafeteria where you could hide under the building. Sometimes one or two people would skip to go down there and smoke, but there was a time when at least a dozen kids decided to hang out down there as well. Obviously, we all got caught, me with a cigarette in one hand and a spray can for tagging in the other. As a result, everyone got marched down to the office. Honestly, with such a pristine image, I’m still shocked it never made the paper that over ten kids were caught skipping and smoking weed and cigarettes. The conspiracy theorist in me believes they hushed it up with all the money the school gets from the rich kids who go there, but that’s a story for another time.

It was mortifying sitting in the office. Despite my behaviour, I was a top student and most definitely an insufferable teacher’s pet. So, when the school police officer called my name into the principal’s office, I could have died right there. The sensation sitting in the small room with the principal who had given me awards across the way from me and a police officer glaring at me was heavy. When the officer demanded to search my bag for illicit material, I handed it to him without question. Even if I had known my rights back then, the fear inside of me was too much to bear.

The principal began scolding me, demanding why I was hanging out with my friends when I had such a bright future ahead of me. He went on and on about how they were ruining my life and that he would be forced to expel me because of my illegal behaviours. It was then that the officer pushed his way into the conversation and help my razor blade up to my face. “Are you cutting yourself?” he demanded. My heart sank into my belly and, even though I hadn’t been, I nodded yes because I had certainly wanted to and I knew about my burning.

Of course he found my ceramic and my stash of cigarettes and my lighter, too, but he kept eyeing my razor. It felt like the tone of the room had changed when he held it out for the principal to examine. “Are you depressed?” It was such a blunt question and I felt ashamed when I nodded. I don’t remember what was said at that point, only that they talked to each other and sent me out to wait for my parents. The look on my parents’ faces was horrible and they said nothing as they waited for all of us to go into the office together.

The principal and the officer relayed what happened to my parents, saying a group of kids were found skipping and doing drugs. The one thing I don’t recall is if they mentioned that I had been smoking and tagging the school. Looking back, they might have worried I was being abused at home and that it might be worsened if my parents found out. Instead, the officer held up the razor and proclaimed that I had been cutting and confessed to having depression. The principal said he would be willing to suspend me instead of expel me if I went to therapy in the time I was out of school. He said it was because I was, otherwise, a good student, but the cynical part of me feels like he didn’t want the idea that someone was self-harming to become public knowledge. Sure, he could have been compassionate with me, but if that was the reason why I was given a lighter sentence, it made no sense to me that people who were “more” depressed than me DID get expelled.

Regardless, my parents were shocked, but they, of course, agreed to the terms. My father was military so if I caused trouble, he could have potentially face issues at work. I don’t know if the principal had said that I needed to be “better” before coming back, but the thought that that needed to happen was seared into my brain.

It was difficult to leave the office with my parents, not because I felt shame in walking in front of my peers out of the building, but because I was terrified at what my parents would say to me when we were alone.

#tw self harm #drug mention #depression #anxiety #therapy #tw abuse #tw child abuse

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mmbookreviews · 7 years

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What This Tumblr Is For

Hello there, fellow readers of m/m novels. I’ve been reading a lot lately, and many of my favorite authors have let me down at the same time that some RL friends have roundly criticized my faves while reccing dreadful books that no one with sense or eyes could possibly like. ;D All of this inspires me to finally make a blog of honest reviews.

Why this blog: As we all know, the m/m book landscape is littered with self-published and small press books with a dubious grasp of English, no grasp at all of punctuation, bizarre plots that stop in the middle, and improbable anatomy. Most Goodreads reviews sound like they were written by the author’s friends. Most sites that let you search for m/m content make it hard to search for both m/m and some other genre, or they only recommend the same five most popular books, or they don’t clearly explain what genre something is. At the same time, my standards are not high, and I often just want something trope-y to read that I haven’t already reread fifty times.

Long ago, I used to read movie reviews in our local paper. They were always bullshit, but they were written by the same idiot with bad taste, and the flavor of their dislike always told me exactly what I would like about a movie. The things that bother me may not be the things that bother you, but having reviews from the same source with the same taste is invaluable. Hence this blog.

Below is some tl;dr about what types of books I’ll be reviewing.

I welcome recs and sufficiently entertaining anti-recs. Let me know if there’s a classic or a turkey I should review.

What is “m/m”: The most concise definition of “m/m” is:

Kind of like slash fanfic, but original.

These books sound like slash because they are intended as romance novels or because they are sff with gay relationships written by women or by people coming out of slash fandom. The audience that consumes these books is mostly women. Men do write in this field, but they are less successful--which is a source of misogynist rhetoric, butthurt whining, and people lying about their identities.

I’m making this distinction because Tumblr sometimes has trouble with it in ways that attack women but that also belittle and ignore gay men’s history and the history of queer literature, gay and otherwise.

“M/M” books primarily come from small contemporary presses like Riptide or are self-published ebooks. These are usually explicitly marketed as gay romance novels, even in the case of long series of detective stories where the primary couple has resolved their relationship problems a book or two into the series. Some are marketed as other genres (mystery novels, thrillers, sci-fi, fantasy, horror) but still feature a gay protagonist who falls in love.

Older books that fall into this genre are things like Swordspoint: i.e. genre fiction with major gay romances, written by women, most of them former slash fanfiction writers, and consumed by other women with the same tastes and background. I know a couple of queer guys for whom woobie yaoi cliche Vanyel Ashkevron was a lifesaver back when he was the first positive portrayal of a gay man you were likely to run across by accident in a Middle America bookstore, but overall, Mercedes Lackey’s gay characters have been part of a slash fanfic type tradition more than a gay literature type tradition.

What is Gay Lit (and gay genre fiction): Gay literature used to mostly come from gay presses and was written by cis gay men for an audience of cis gay men. Things have diversified in recent years.

Typical themes have been the trauma of being in the closet, coming out stories, and slice of life depictions of the gay community in a particular place and time. Typically, these books are more political and less happy than current m/m romance. The big focus is a gay identity, not the progression of a specific romantic relationship. Many of them are also trying to be Serious Literature, and as such have a different style of prose from genre fiction. (It can be florid or wannabe Hemingway, but it’s all trying for a more overt authorial Voice, while genre fiction typically tries to keep the prose out of the way of the plot. It’s a different aesthetic and you know it when you see it.)

By the 90s, there was more of a sense of solidarity between different queer identities, and the same presses might be publishing the works of trans authors and putting gay and lesbian literature together. However, it would be a mistake to think that gay lit throughout its history has been about “mlm” since much of it was actively hostile to bisexual men or ignored both them and trans gay men. I don’t like the term ‘mlm’, and I don’t like tumblr’s use of it to push an “I’m not like the other slash fans” agenda.

Books from 90s and pre-90s gay presses that had strong genre plots and a central romance with a happy ending often prove to be slash zine fic by female authors with the character names changed. Today, the same authors wouldn’t bother with this kind of gay press: they’d go straight to an erotica/romance press or self-publish. (Though, obviously, their ability to get published by gay presses shows that there’s overlap in tastes. I assume those presses thought that gay men would also enjoy these stories. There are certainly gay men who now turn to m/m romance novels to satisfy tastes gay presses aren’t catering to.)

Gay mystery novels by men have been and still are more common than gay sff/horror/paranormal by men. A prototypical 90s/00s example would be about an “everyman” in the person of a jerkass twink who spends all day at the gym, whining about how he isn’t physically perfect enough to steal his rich friend’s hot model boyfriend. He would still manage to have casual sex with half of the other characters but end up alone for the sequel where he’d do it all again. There’s a 99% chance this sort of book will be set in Provincetown or some other real world gay mecca and at least a 50% chance that every single female character is a shrieking harpy.

These books are clearly intended for an audience of cis gay men embedded in a particular kind of contemporary US cis gay men’s culture. They also feature much more casual sex and cheating and way less serious emotion than m/m romance novel readers typically enjoy. A m/m historical might have a loving description of absinthe use, but a contemporary m/m rarely has a banal and realistic description of poppers and gay clubs. The mystery plots aren’t bad in gay mystery novels from gay presses, but I often find the characters unlikable and the sex and romance unsatisfying. The last time I saw this category of book seriously recced to slash fans was before ebook publishing took off. Back then, you bought what paperbacks you could and hoped there was something enjoyable in there.

The bottom line is: If you want books that treat queer identities realistically, politically, and/or depressingly, there are plenty. They’re not marketed as romance novels and they don’t come from the same presses or authors as romance novels. Genre fiction by and for gay men also exists. A lot of it isn’t appealing to a typical slash fan or m/m reader.

I wish that the parts of tumblr with a yen for these genres would seek them out instead of being upset that slash fanfiction or m/m paranormal romance novels fail to scratch the same itch. Or if all of the above fail to satisfy, I at least wish people wouldn’t blame it on the existence of female readers of m/m.

I might review a few pieces of gay lit or a few gay mystery novels if I happen to reread them or if they’re awful in a funny way or they have an unusually strong romance, but I find most of this stuff irrelevant to "m/m” as a contemporary marketing category.

What else I’ll review: Anything I think is relevant to a m/m reader, pretty much, whether that’s the occasional m/m/f book I run across or a m/f or f/f side story to a major m/m series or some particularly good piece of nonfiction a m/m series used as research material.

#what is this blog

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