It’s October, the scariest time of year… thesis finishing time! Oh, and Halloween I guess. It’s not a super big deal over here, which is mostly a shame because our retailers skip straight to Christmas. Come on dudes, it’s not even November… I can feel the mounting stress of retail employees on the breeze with the jingling of bells.
In any case, it’s been another busy and exciting month of writing and editing and proofreading, and watching bucketloads of anime to empty my brain in the in-between moments. A charming yet rowdy cat has also joined the household; I am still trying to teach him that computer keyboards are not a place to sit and that feet are not things to nibble on.
On the blog this month:
Baccano! Vol. 2: All Aboard, We’re Going to Hell (in which a whole new madcap band of immortals, gangsters, and immortal gangsters fight over a train)
Oh Riverdale, You Beautiful Neon-Lit Garbage Fire (in which I lament the death of coherence and my interest in a show that started out with such promise, but in the end essentially served to remind me why I don’t watch a lot of American live-action TV anymore)
On Lady Geek Girl and Friends:
Asexual Awareness Week: Two YA Novels with Complex, Geeky, Lovable Demi Protagonists (in which I tell the world about my beautiful children Darcy Patel and Aled Last, in honour of Asexual Awareness Week)
What are we reading this month?
It was anime premiere season again (already? God, it feels like the summer previews were only the other day) which means it was premiere blogging season. Notoriously bad as I am at keeping up with shows week-by-week (or rather, I’m just so much better at watching stuff when I have a pile of episodes to get sucked into, rather than bite-sized amounts), there are actually enough simulcasts piquing my interest this time round that I’ve re-subscribed to Crunchyroll. Multiple paid subscriptions! How extravagant!! At least, until you consider how much content you’re getting access to for the cost of maybe half a DVD. We really are living in a golden age.
Anyway, I said all that last time, so let’s move onto the other internet discussions that captured my interest this month:
That time the Guardians of the Galaxy fought Cú Chulainn and found the Book of Kells – while researching contemporary adaptations of the Ulster Cycle and its characters, I found a report on a particularly wild Marvel comics arc from the ‘90s where… well, the title says it all. It was the most baffling and entertaining way that research could have gone
The Real-Life Importance of Happy Endings for Queer Characters – a wonderfully written examination of tropes and history and how they affect the way LGBTQ+ folks see themselves
Brainiacs Need Useless Girls: Analysis of the Popular Romantic Trope – exactly what it says on the tin, looking at manga and drama as particularly bad perpetrators of this gendered setup
Gallery of the Unknowns – for the art history lovers amoung you, a blog that specialises in paintings with some degree of mystery to them, be it work by an unknown artist, portraits of unknown sitters, or artworks that just kind of showed up at the back of an auction house somewhere and may or may not be worth millions
My Girlfriend is a ShoBitch and What We Teach Teen Girls About Sex – this anime has by far the most skeezy and bizarre title of the season, but in amongst its horny-and-corny-comedy premise is some important commentary on the expectations media feeds teenagers about sexuality
A thread about Death of the Author as it relates to marginalised communities – a Twitter series about authorial intent vs audience seeing themselves in a work of fiction, and how underrepresented groups have trained themselves to hunt for subtext
Made in Abyss: A History of Going Down – still haven’t been able to watch this show, but the meta on it continues to be great. This post examines Made in Abyss in the context of a long history of stories about worlds beneath the world and what that represents to the human psyche
The New Inquiry issue on fanfiction – contains some great quotes and insight about fanfic and fan creations as criticism
Summer Anime Overview: ReCreators – an analysis of where ReCreators went so wrong with its potentially fascinating premise, mostly in the realm of picking the wrong protagonist for the job
The Failed Feminism of 18if – yet more great analysis of a show I did not watch, in this case discussing how this dreamworld-hopping fantasy anime shoots itself in the foot by setting out to tell stories about women overcoming patriarchal pressures and then… having all those stories revolve around the main male character?
Now alas, I have no new podcasts to show off this month. But I have been having a wonderful time with Our Fake History again, especially the “Was there a real Trojan War?” series (which has been very useful prep for a certain retelling of The Iliad that you will probably see reviewed here soon-ish) and the two-parter on the bizarre life and death of Rasputin.
Since people enjoyed the Wham Bam Thank You Ma’am clip I posted way back when (a.k.a. The Period Rap), I thought I’d take this chance to instead showcase some more indie Australian comedy (which is, come to think of it, most of the live-action TV I’ve been watching these days. That, and endless rewatches of Arrested Development).
Without further ado, Get Krackin: in which the ladies of The Katering Show (a web series that shouldn’t be region-locked, if you’re craving more of them) expand from making fun of cooking shows to making fun of breakfast talk shows, with a healthy dose of pseudo-science trend-shaming (my housemates and I had seen an ad telling us how great tumeric was that very day, and we Just Lost It when this came on):
And with that, I sign off for the month. Take care everyone!
The Afictionado 