May 2022 Update (Patreon)

As you likely noticed if you follow my tumblr closely, my article for Anime Feminist finally got published!  It's called "I Can't Wait Around Anymore: Civilian Women's Agency in My Hero Academia versus Fullmetal Alchemist" , based off that one tumblr post. I think, in addition to expressing my disappointment with how some aspects of MHA were handled, I was able to hit on why Winry resonates (with me at least) so much at the end. 

I was a little worried about backlash from previous experiences with FMA fandom, but thankfully it got a good response and I cracked 100 followers on my twitter, which I think brings me a little closer to where I was before I had to restart my account. Caitlin Glass, Winry's English dub voice actor, even liked the tweet about it!

I continue to watch way too much anime this season, but I'm enjoying all of it! Birdie Wing is so weird, y'all. What a show to exist. Someone has a cyborg arm in this golf girls story, that's all I'll say. But now I'm watching the final season of Better Call Saul which is good as always, I finally started Russian Doll and am really enjoying it, and I've been watching The Demon Girl Next Door on and off, which is a decent cozy comedy with gay undertones (a demon girl is going after a semi-retired magical girl, except she's harmless and nice and sucks at everything. Meanwhile the magical girl is just a jock who recognizes this so-called rival is a silly goose and ends up being friends with her). I also actually finished Princess Connect! Re: Dive, which as I've mentioned on tumblr is a surprisingly wholesome isekai show that, unlike others in the genre, actually focuses on the girls while letting the male character largely exist in the background and just be chill. It's fanservicey with some truly terrible outfits, but it's got some good animation and is just some good fun.

Have determined with the Wayward Children series that the backstory books are okay and I still love the concept, but I find the interactions between the characters are way too one-note and hyper-repetitive whenever there's a bunch of them together. I really enjoyed One Last Stop  though. It's a full on cheesy, cheesy romance but actually laser-targeted directly at my weaknesses for once (which include cool butch lesbians, yes) and was just a fun time. Malice was a little disappointing as a gay Sleeping Beauty hero/villain romance retelling, because the main character doesn't even have a whole lot of agency in her turn to villainy at the end so it felt kinda pointless (the spindle felt REALLY forced in there, and I really thought Aurora doing the sleeping thing would be a consequence of something actually bad the main character did, because she did do bad things involving a sleeping curse, but no) , but I still liked it well enough I'll probably read the sequel. 

Reading The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and the Genius Young Lady, (yes I did copy and paste that title) which has way too many poorly paced exposition dumps but I do enjoy the concept and a lot of aspects of the main character, so I'll truck on (it's about a girl who was reincarnated into a European Royalty type magical world with no magical abilities, starts inventing all this magical  tech, boldy declares that she isn't getting married unless it's to a woman because that's what she likes, and gets involved with a shy noble girl her brother screwed over). I accidentally got the manga alongside the light novel, and the manga has better pacing, but presents the main character as more pervy and aggressive, so I'm not sure I like it better. 

As far as writing, I spent most of the month working on a short story, so I won't bother to clock my word count for my novel. I had a break from my main job but still spent most of it working on this and other job stuff, and was a little torn if I should be instead of working on my novel...so I hope it gets accepted to the anthology. But even if it doesn't, I think it turned out to be a solid story, so I'll try not to regret too much. If it doesn't get accepted, I'll post the whole thing here, if it does, I'll post a preview later down the line. 

I went to Iowa to see my grandmother, who's my last surviving grandparent. It was nice to see her, but yeah, it meant the break wasn't much of a break. My goal to myself this summer is to finish the second draft of my novel. We'll see how that goes!