I’m back, baby. (As you can see, I’ve been Very Busy and taking the hiatus was 101% a good idea)
On the blog:
Queer Allegory and Queer Actuality in Every Heart a Doorway – a recording of the conference presentation I gave in September, featuring queer reading strategies, genre studies, and a gay cat.
Man of Medan: All we Have to Fear is Fear Itself (and the Ocean) – a review (split into spoiler-free and spoilery parts) of a new interactive ghost story by the makers of Until Dawn.
Queer YA Mini-Reviews: Portraits, Premonitions, and Pink Hair – reviews and recs, starring I Wish You All the Best, In the Way of All Flesh, and The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burgers in Los Angeles).
BONUS: my presentation on playing with tropes in Life is Strange and Until Dawn is now published as a journal paper! It’s free to read (woo! Accessible academia!) here!
Web content aplenty:
Olly “Philosophy Tube” Thorn’s latest video is a musical about queer theory and the strange politics of language that doubles as a coming out announcement, and yes, it’s exactly as fascinating, enlightening, and emotional as that sounds. It spoke to me quite personally and made me both laugh and tear up a little, as well as very nicely summing up some complex concepts like “queer time” and the evolution of terms and theories.
It’s always a good time to remember Ghost Stories – but how exactly did this legendary, meme-tastic dub come to be? This video goes through it in detail, including an interview with the scriptwriter who so famously Went Off.
I’ve been having a lot of fun with Dominic Noble’s ‘Lost in Adaptation’ series – there are a lot of neat individual episodes, but I’m going to shine a particular light on the multi-part deep dive he does into the Scott Pilgrim comics. It did a great job of reminding me what I loved about the two different works, and articulating how the comics and the movie diverge to be two quite thematically different stories.
And, at the risk of linking to every single new Lindsay Ellis video, this one is a really eloquent look at the performative progressive thread running through – and sometimes informing the creation of – a lot of the live-action Disney remakes.
Writing Romance for Asexual and Aromantic Readers – author Rosiee Thor lays out some guidelines for romance writers who want to untie their stories from some of the traditional assumptions about love and sex, making them more hospitable to readers who Just Aren’t As Into That but still enjoy the genre.
Queer Identity, Mental Health and Finding Connections with In the Way of All Flesh – hey, you know this book! I just reviewed it! In this post, the author talks The Sapphic Book Club through her process and how she set out to write a mentally ill lesbian protagonist whose mental illness and lesbian identity weren’t tied up in one another.
Indigenous Teens are Using TikTok to Call Out Racism in Australia – TikTok is a platform that fosters a consistently baffling meme culture, but it’s good to see it’s also potentially a force for good… as well as an outlet for frustration through good old dark humour.
Siren Seeking Sailor – a great, poetic piece on The Asexual that’s both neat metaphor and neat writing from the perspective of a famous “monster”.
And it’s new anime time again! As always, give AniFem’s thoughts a look.
Bonus fun: this little animation Jess made of one of my protagonists! No one will be meeting her for a while (least of all because she’s not from the book I’m supposed to be writing, you know, for work. Oops) but I want to show her off!
And that wraps us up for the month! I plan to be to back to my regular schedule now, so I will be seeing you soon with more Hashtag Content. Take care, everyone!
The Afictionado 
Reblogged this on Love and Justice and commented:
The Afictionado was nice enough to give my book a review and also link to my article on mental illness! Check this post for those goodies and a lot of other great stuff, both my her and people around the net!