Dobes Zone

 I'd reviewed this series briefly on my Letterboxd already, but I wanted to talk a little more in depth about the show.         In late 00's (or perhaps it was 2010?) a couple fansubbed episodes of Stop! Hibari-kun popped up on Youtube. I'd discovered them quite accidentally, I think via someone on twitter mentioning the show, and right then and there I was hooked. At that time, I wasn't really encountering a lot of trans media and hadn't yet started to think of myself as trans, but it definitely caught my interest. Sadly, it was only a few episodes and the updates stopped. I'd also found the manga, but it was also in a state of only partial fan translation. Flash forward to the present day, where I was happy to learn that not only was a full fansub completed, but the whole series is now available in a good crisp quality. It looks gorgeous and I'm so glad this odd little slice of queer anime history has been preserved. I'd love for there to be an offici...

       Octavia E Butler really is one of those authors whose work is impossible to put down once you pick it up. I read Fledgling as part of my book club (a special benefit for those supporting the excellent Girls Guts Giallo Patreon ) and it was almost impossible to not zoom through the book in a couple evenings. World building and exposition in sci fi and fantasy stories can really be make or break with how they're handled, and even quite skilled authors can lose me a little when they get lost in the reeds dumping a ton of info about the politics, culture, etc about a fictional world or people. A lot of the brilliance of Fledgling is how effortlessly Butler leads us into the world of vampires and making things like their customs, their biology (and even court proceedings) unfold in a way that's natural and riveting for the reader. Her style is sharp, precise and highly digestible while dealing with difficult concepts that have multiple interconnecting layers. ...

       My choice to read Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner started with my desire to re-read The Fall of the Kings, a book that I happened to pick up randomly at a book outlet when I was maybe 12 or 13. At this same outlet I'd also picked up Katie Waitman's The Merro Tree as well as The Essential Bordertown: A Traveler's Guide to the Edge of Faerie- a collection of short stories about the human world and the elfin world connecting. At this age I was totally rabid for anything SF/F and often brought home huge hauls of books from library book sales, where you could fill a bag for a couple dollars on the final days of the sale. It should probably surprise no one that a lot of my experiences with these books were formative and were some of my earliest experiences with queerness. Generally I was reading books that were only aimed at adults for the most part since I didn't really *do* YA except when I was quite little- barring some obvious furry bait choices like Redwall. The F...

     Mild spoilers ahead. More focused on themes than plot beats or infodumps about the characters though.        It's been too long since I've written a book review and I wanted to get in depth about an interesting book from a contemporary author. Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin is a book that takes on the tired trope of "what if only women survived an apocalyptic event" and revitalizes it with a transgender perspective. Considering that there were recent attempts to make a TV series out of Y The Last Man , a story which trots out this premise about "biological" sex that's been fucking tired since the 70s, it feels very necessary to have a trans take on the subject. I find too with a lot of SF/F (which is often adjacent or overlapping with horror) that a lot has absolutely regressed in the contemporary despite claiming some very by-the-numbers elements of progressiveness.      And I should note, regarding the 70's, James Tiptree Jr...

 2021 was a bad year in a lot of ways but it was a stellar year for me in terms of watching new films (or at least films that were new to me). I spent a lot more time doing solo watches as well as hosting movie streams over discord with a fun and friendly group of folks who share my passion for weirdo cinema. I'll admit that this year was not particularly one where I watched a ton of current releases but I'm hoping to catch up soon- still need to see Titane, Benedetta, tons of other stuff. So here in no particular ranking or order are a bunch of my faves from this year. I'm also listing at the end the movies I didn't enjoy. I'm not including short films on this list either but might consider making another post about favorite shorts by theme. You can also check out my letterboxd to see all the stuff I watched in 2021 and years prior. My Faves viewed in 2021 1) Shirley (2020) I started my year off strong by catching a digital screening of Shirley (paired with Leigh...

      Yayyyyy! Murders!  I generally do not like sharing openly about my interest in true crime stories and history- I don't want people to get the wrong idea, nor do I want to attract the wrong kind of audience to myself. That's because I feel like there's a handful of distinct outcomes for people who get deeply invested in learning about the material, and it ties into some serious issues we're experiencing in the digital age.  If you're like me, your curiosity leads you to learn about how much of violent crime is connected to inherent societal injustice. Serial killers get to prey on people largely due to police incompetence and the fact that they often choose victims that "won't be missed". Victims are in impoverished areas, they're sex workers, drug addicts, gay, trans, people of color, Native Americans, homeless, etc (and any combination and intersection of these things). There's a term for this- The Less Dead, because they're not view...