August 2023 Monthly Update (Patreon)

This month I had my birthday and went to see Wicked! It was a lot of fun. I also saw Blue Beetle and Porco Rosso in theaters. My partner made me this!

The end of the month has been tough, partly because of some temporary meds I took had a serious depression side effect I didn't know about.

But I must soldier on. I've been reading a lot the past few weeks! I finished Otherside Picnic Vol 8 and it was so good, nearly everything I wanted. I want to write a full review/breakdown when I feel a bit better, but in the meantime here's a short, mildly spoiler-y one:

Show-stopping. Spectacular. Incredible. I loved  the exploration of how love, sex, and romance are so different for  different people and it's impossible to put it in neat boxes. The  acknowledgement of asexuality in the beginning made my heart sing and it  just got better from there.Sorawo admitting she doesn't hate  kissing but doesn't crave it and having such a hard time navigating the  different labels society puts on romance/love was so relatable. Sorawo  and Toriko having a frank but messy conversation about their relationship was just so perfect.(Also Toriko researching child  abuse trying to understand Sorawo? Bring up the Red Person? Sorawo being  in denial as always? Felt so validated over everything I wrote in my  article.)And that absolutely bonkers, wonderful finale. I think  this pretty much seals Otherside Picnic as my favorite yuri series  outside Utena, and one of my favorite stories in general.

Meanwhile, I have a much less favorable review of Medusa's Sisters, which I got surprisingly far with before having to stop. You might have seen some of this review on Tumblr:

I have to say, "Athena cursed Medusa and her sisters because she's a mean lesbian who's afraid of Zeus's homophobia, so she punishes her gf  for being raped by making it so she turns in men to stone, classic  manhating lesbian move" sure is a way to add extra layers of ick to  Ovid's version of the Medusa myth, and i didn't know it was even  possible to make that worse! I have no idea why you'd want to do that,  though. That's a DNF. If you really wanted to do a 'lesbian is  tragically wronged by a goddess because of Zeus and his lesbophobia'  story Callisto is RIGHT THERE. but I guess she doesn't have brand  recognition.It was also interesting on how this story insisted  on combining the whole 'medusa and her sisters were born gorgons' with  'Ovid rape origin', even though they're fundamentally incompatible,  because it had to be as tragic as possible I guess.

To be honest, I knew it was a risk picking a random Greek mythology retelling from the library, as on reflection I think the only ones I've really adored as novels are like...Madeline Miller's stuff. I keep looking for her, but all the people hopping on the trend trying to be her aren't cutting it. I guess that one Medusa YA picturebook was all right, but that's about it.

But I read some good books beforehand! Queer Ducks (And Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality is a really good book about all the gayness, biness and transness in the animal kingdom! I learned a lot! It's super fun and accessible! I'm always impressed by the strong bi4bi bonds of bonobos, they are truly living the dream. Vera Wong's Unsolicited Advice for Murderers has a fun main character (a Chinese grandmother who insists on solving a murder) but the other characters and their relationships were kinda bland. It's still a nice cozy read.

Yellowface was good but it actually stressed me out because I'm on the verge of trying to pitch my book and it reminded me of all the online pressure and potential drama an author must face even if they get big. Even though I hadn't plagiarized, I felt like maybe I too would never be able to come up with any other ideas! I almost didn't finish it because it was getting in my head so much but I had only ten pages left, so I managed.

Speaking of my book, I sent my proofread draft to a beta reader, but felt bad it was 115,000+ words and have been trying to trim it down ever since- down to 107,134 currently, but think I might have to make some other changes.

Mangawise and gnwise, I've been sort of overindulging myself. I caught up Yuri Espoir, an interesting little drama about a girl who's coping with being a lesbian who's being made to enter an arranged marriage with a man by making up yuri stories about every pair of girls she sees...then the narrative contrasts her narrative with snippets of those girls' REAL romance/relationship. I liked the first two volumes a lot, but things are getting a bit shaky with 3 and 4....

The Magic Fish by Trung Le Nguyen (known as trungles on tumblr!) is an absolutely gorgeous graphic novel than incorporates fairy tales into the journey of a young boy trying to navigate his queerness and experience as Vietnamese-American. I wholeheartedly recommend it, it's so good.

I also read The Summer Hikaru Died (combines BL with horror, really striking illustrations) and Goodbye Eri (definitely Fujimoto indulging his love of movies and weird girls, pretty good). You've probably noticed I've been enjoying My Adventures with Superman on my blog, and I checked out the YA graphic novel Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story because of some research related to a post about the show- it was nice and I think would really appeal to the kid needing a strong story about combating racism, thought didn't feel super grounded in the DC Universe.

TV-wise, I finished Maria the Virgin Witch, an enjoyable anime about a witch who decides to stop wars during the (alternate history) Hundred Years War and clashes with Heaven as a result- it goes after Catholic dogma and purity politics a bit. I also watched Good Omens Season 2- it was fun, though it seems to mostly be set-up.

That's about it for this month, and I hope things smooth out for me a little in the coming week.