#being a tween/teen and figuring out the world around you is hard enough without the low empathy and adhd and autism

[neurotypical-sonic]

need to sleep but can't stop thinking about low empathy sonic, especially when he was younger. he finishes up a fight with eggman, sends him running, but the town eggman was attacking took heavy damage. people are scared and crying, theres rubble in the streets, houses are ruined. but eggman's gone now, his robots arent attacking anymore. houses can be rebuilt, and it's not like people don't have anywhere to stay, they're already setting up the town hall as an emergency shelter/accommodation for those who can't live in their houses until they've been fixed. why are people still upset? they shouldn't be upset, everything's okay now. maybe it's just the adrenalin rush, emotions still high from the fight. whatever, they'll be fine. he waves off the mayor asking him if he's gonna stay in town and and runs off to find his next adventure

[starryviolentine]

Color Me Blue (That’s Me Without You): A Pre-Apocalypse Story

Part 1 (here)

Part 2/10: Therissa

There are a lot of things at this miserable boarding school that Therissa hates, and having to get out of bed before noon is one of them. For some reason, her body betrays her this morning and causes her to wake during actual a.m. hours, which is a complete waste of the fact that she has no classes, no plans, and, above all, no early bird Brody to disturb her from her slumber at some ungodly hour. But even though being awake right now is totally stupid, Therissa sits at her desk getting ready for the day in spite of it all. The contents of her cosmetic box litter her desktop, which is covered in smudges of eyeliner and streaks of colored nail polish like some sort of grungy, mixed-media masterpiece.

The seventeen-year-old is leaning close to her mini mirror as she skillfully applies her signature black-on-black liner and mascara combo, all while reveling in the peace and quiet. Therissa can basically count on one hand the number of times she’s been in her bedroom without at least one of her roommates around. She’s just starting to enjoy this rare, blissful moment of alone time when the bedroom door opens and a familiar, twiggy blonde comes traipsing in.

Violet. Her littlest roommate… in both age and size. Kind of emotionally closed off, but still strangely sensitive. The same dumb kid who ran away in the rain and nearly died of hypothermia. The one and only. To this day, Therissa still doesn’t know why Violet was sent to Ericson’s. She’s never talked about it, at least not out loud in a place where Therissa could overhear. Maybe not at all. It’s not really a topic most kids want to talk about in the first place, so Therissa hasn’t asked. With Brody, she didn’t exactly have to. In the first week of living together it was already pretty clear that the poor kid had some sort of anxiety issues. When it comes to Violet, though, Therissa is stumped. It’s like another one of those unsolvable mysteries of life. Who stole the Hope Diamond? Where is Amelia Earhart? Why was Violet sent to Ericson’s?

“Oh. You’re up.”

Therissa gives Violet a look through the mirror. “’Good morning’ to you, too.”

Violet kicks off her shoes at the foot of her bed, hoists herself into her bunk, then flops face-down onto her mattress. It gives the teen some serious deja vu.  

“Here we go again…” Therissa mumbles under her breath. She quickly adds the finishing touches to her eye makeup before turning around to look at her roommate. “Well? What’s up with you this morning?”

“Why are you even awake?” Violet dodges the question with another question, a technique that she often uses whenever she wants to avoid talking about something. “You’re never up before it’s practically dinner time.”

“You know what they say, Blondie. ‘Seize the day’ or some shit.”

Violet is quiet for a few moments but then rolls over to peek at Therissa through the rails of her bunk. “So… do you, like, have stuff to do today?”

If Therissa didn’t know any better, she’d say that Violet sounds like she doesn’t want her to have any plans. Like she’s hoping that she’ll stay and keep her company. Therissa hides her smirk by shoving her face back in front of her mirror and putting on a second layer of lipstick.

It’s been several weeks since that day Violet “disappeared” and Therissa teamed up with Brody to find her. She never would have guessed that doing so would change her relationship with her two younger roommates as much as it did. Brody and Violet seem to trust her more, and they even feel comfortable coming up to talk to her whenever they’re in their bedroom at the same time. And, okay, Therissa has to admit that she maybe, kind of, sort of enjoys their company, too… even though they can still be dopey, annoying, and not to mention embarrassing. Every time Therissa walks into the shared bathroom in the mornings and Brody’s at the sink brushing her teeth, the younger girl will give her a toothpasty grin and a wave without a care in the world that there are witnesses around. And just the other day, Therissa was coming back from afternoon classes and happened to pass by Violet, who not only hurried to catch up, but then proceeded to walk side by side with her all the way through the busy residence hall.

In any case, Therissa still finds it hard to believe that she can tolerate the little twerps now. She must be going soft. Gross. But just because they’re cool with each other now doesn’t mean that they have to be nice all of the time. What fun would it be if she didn’t lovingly tease Brody or playfully push Violet’s buttons every now and again? She has to keep things interesting. Besides, Therissa wouldn’t ever be able to forgive herself if she let things get too sappy.  

That’s why she’s about to mess with Violet a little. All in good fun, of course.

“Actually, yeah,” answers Therissa, making sure that she sounds as nonchalant as possible. She runs her fingers through her hair, gives her reflection one final once-over and then grabs her jacket off the back of her chair to give the impression that she’s got somewhere else to be. “My sister’s coming to save me from this hellhole and I’m gonna spend the weekend at her place.”

Therissa is met with complete silence and it takes all she has not to burst out laughing. Instead of putting her jacket on, she turns around, bunches it into a ball and hurls it up into her roommate’s bunk.

“Hey!” cries Violet. There’s some muffled sputtering as the girl pushes herself upright and tears the garment from her head. She huffily swipes messy strands of hair out of her eyes and mouth, then glares down at Therissa.

The look on Violet’s face is priceless and it sends Therissa over the edge. The teen laughs so hard and for so long that it starts to sound more like a cackle. It takes a while before Therissa calms down enough to speak again. “Yeah, as if,” she scoffs, shaking her head. “She’s got a baby now and, I don’t know about you, but I’d rather down an entire bottle of sulphuric acid from Mad Stanley’s lab than have to listen to that thing cry all day.”

Therissa reaches over the rails to smooth out Violet’s long locks, but the tween frowns and pulls back, swatting her away. “Stop.”

The smirk on Therissa’s face turns playful. “Don’t get your flower print undies in a bunch. I’m not going anywhere.��

Violet growls and slams herself back down on her bed, abruptly turning to face the wall. She curls into herself, cheeks heating up, and fights the urge to bury her head under her pillow. “You said you weren’t gonna talk about that anymore.”

“Okay, okay. I won’t.”

There are still audible traces of laughter in her roommate’s voice and Violet huffs again. “I’m serious!”

“Look, you don’t have to be embarrassed. I honestly couldn’t care less what your underw-”

“THERISSA!”

“All right, chill.” Holding her hands up in surrender, Therissa figures that she’d better change the subject before Violet freaks out even more. “Anyway, from the way that you’ve just been lying around since you got back, I take it you don’t have any plans for today either.”

“No. This place sucks,” Violet grumbles. “There’s nothing to do.”

Chuckling, Therissa returns to her side of the room and sinks back into her chair. “Can’t argue with that. Well, you have fun up there. I’m gonna do my own thing down here. Cool?”

The response she gets is more of a halfhearted grunt rather than actual words, but Therissa lets it slide. Good enough. Back at her desk, the teen pushes some clutter aside and unpacks her collection of nail polish. Her last coat is majorly chipped, and the color has grown out beyond what slapping on another layer of polish would fix anyway. It’s about time that she redoes them. At least now she has something on her to-do list for the day.

She can’t say the same for her roommate, though.

Anyway, Therissa’s pretty sure that she knows what the matter is. Violet has a tendency to get sulky like this whenever a certain someone isn’t here. A couple of months ago, Therissa wouldn’t have cared. Honestly, she probably would’ve just rolled her eyes and told Violet to get over it.

It’s funny how much things can change.

For the first time ever, Therissa sort of wishes Brody was back, too… if only just so Violet would stop looking so damn sad.

[erinptah]

The Secret Commonwealth review: It was...pretty underwhelming, mostly

Finally got the audiobook of The Secret Commonwealth checked out from my local library!

(Here’s my review of its predecessor, La Belle Sauvage, if you want to start there.)

It’s 20 hours long. Whoof.

As for the contents…look, it was well-written prose. I didn’t get bored while listening. (Rereading that last review, I realized I’d written the same thing about the previous book, too.) But in retrospect, there sure was not a lot that happened in those 20 hours. Some notable action bits, in between a lot of padding.

And my reactions mostly consist of…complaints. Not “this is hideous, time to ragequit the series, this is an unqualified anti-rec” complaints, more a low-level churn of frustration.

(There’s one scene I know has made someone else outright refuse to read it, though, and I think it’s totally reasonable. More on that later.)

So I’m gonna try to unpack a bunch of it here. Hopefully in enough detail that, if you haven’t read it yet (and don’t mind spoilers), it can help you make an informed decision about whether it’s worth spending 20 hours of your life on.

Spoilers start here!

The Story

We open with Lyra as a 20-year-old student at St. Sophia’s, a women’s college in Oxford. She’s made some kinda-friends, including former booty calls that she’s still on good terms with, but she’s badly estranged from Pantalaimon.

Their rift is exacerbated by a couple of books she’s read that are popular with young intellectuals lately. One is a philosophy book, one is a novel, both of them seem broadly Ayn Randian in the sense that “teens/college kids get really into these books and decide it’s smart and fashionable to adopt their moral framework, ignoring both the logical failures and the ways in which this turns you into a horrible person.”

She’s been staying at Jordan between semesters, but political drama forces her to move, and that’s when Oakley Street swoops in to make contact. They’re the secret Magisterum-thwarting spy organization that Hannah Relf worked for in La Belle Sauvage. Employees now include Alice Lonsdale and Malcolm Polstead, who fill Lyra in on the events of the previous book.

Lyra crashes at Malcolm’s parents’ inn for a bit, but her fighting with Pan gets so bad that he takes off, leaving a note. He’s going to confront one of the authors of the fashionable/terrible books — who lives in Germany, so this could take a while.

Since Lyra can’t just hang around and go through the motions of a normal life while her daemon is visibly missing, she takes off too. First on a detour to the Gyptians, then on a sorta meandering cross-continental journey of her own.

Along the way, both Lyra and Pan keep uncovering new details about this ongoing side plot:

It turns out there’s a place, I think somewhere in the Middle East, where daemons can’t go — same as the area in the North that witches use for separation ordeals. If a human crosses that area, they arrive at the growing-place of a type of rose that won’t grow properly anywhere else, whose oil has the same effect as the seed-pod sap used by Mary Malone in the mulefa world — you can use it to make a Dust-viewing lens.

This rose oil can also be used to make all kinds of super-cool products, like the World’s Best Perfume and the World’s Best Rosewater, so it’s valuable for lots of reasons. But a few researchers have caught on to the Dust-viewing power, and the Magisterium has caught on that some dangerous research is happening with roses, so they’ve started destroying every rosebush they can find in the general region — wreaking havoc with the global economy in the process.

(They’re also trying to convince the general population that God Says Roses Are Immoral now. If this book had come out 5 years ago, I could’ve made some great connections with “there’s widespread successful Magisterium propaganda about how nobody should like or respect the work of botanists.”)

And there’s a related plot where Lyra’s uncle (she actually has one! Mrs. Coulter had a brother!) is playing a long game to re-consolidate as much Magisterium power as possible under a single individual. It gets us some good dramatic sequences…which I feel no need to break down here, because they’re exactly the ones you would imagine, with exactly the outcome you’re already expecting.

One of Uncle Wannabe-Pope’s employees is Bonneville Junior, the son of the miniboss from La Belle Sauvage. He’s a trained alethiometrist, but is more interested in his personal vendetta against Lyra than his actual job. Takes after Dad in that he’s not very deep or complex, just a straightforward fun-to-hate villain.

Pan eventually makes his way to the Terrible Author’s home, where he discovers that things are weird and creepy, but not very specific. Doesn’t achieve anything in particular, either. Disheartened, he sets off for the Region of the Weird Roses, with the idea he’ll meet Lyra there.

Lyra, meanwhile, has a notebook they recovered from an explorer who went to the Region of the Weird Roses. It includes a list of other (non-witch) people across the world who’ve been separated, because apparently they’re more common than you’d think, and have a secret support network. So she visits a few of these people along her trip, with an endgame goal of Weird Roseville.

Malcolm also makes his own journey toward Weird Roseville. I think it was part of an Oakley Street investigation into “what does the Magisterium have against roses these days?” In the middle of it, Bonneville Junior confronts him (Junior is having trouble finding Lyra, but has a secondary vendetta against Malcolm for killing his dad, so this is almost as good). Malcolm talks him down.

At last Lyra, Pan, and Junior all hit the same “creepy deserted town in the general area of Weird Roseville.” But none of them manage to interact before the book ends.

…In my LBS review, I said it had serious middle-of-the-trilogy syndrome, a whole lot of setup for no payoff. TSC spends very little time following up on any of it. To be fair, the Original Trilogy has happened in the meantime and this book also tries to address some of the events from that, but the vast bulk of it is even more setup for no payoff.

Complaints, Broadly Organized By Theme, In Loosely Chronological Order

Lyra at St. Sophia’s:

I really like how the opening sequence involves Lyra noticing a friend is in distress and helping her out! (Friend’s dad is in the rose-using business, and his company is going under.) And then…that’s the last we see of any connections with female friends her own age. In the entire book.

One of the Terrible Rationalist Books is spreading the idea that “daemons are a collective hallucination.” This is not a “rational” idea in this world! It would be like saying that faces are a collective hallucination!

And Lyra is the least likely person in this world to buy into it, because she’s visited a world without visible daemons, and got empirical proof (via Will’s and John Parry’s separation ordeals) that even under those conditions, they still exist!

I can appreciate the idea of Lyra and Pan being traumatized and scarred and having trouble, but this, specifically, is a nonsensical thing for them to argue over.

The book also gestures (not very hard, thankfully) toward the idea that Lyra is doubting the existence of magic in general. Which, again, is the equivalent of someone from our world deciding it’s rational to doubt the existence of weather.

Also, it seems like Lyra/Pan haven’t had any contact with witch society through these years. Why not? If anyone’s going to have sympathy and understanding and support groups for their separation-related trauma, it’s the culture where every single member formally goes through the same thing! And I’m sure Serafina would be delighted to see them! But they don’t even consider the idea.

Lyra and Malcolm:

Yes, they’re being telegraphed as a future couple, and yes, it’s just as creepy and unappealing as the internet has been saying.

And, look, I’m not going to say “20-year-old Lyra is too young to date anyone she wants.” Not after we got through all of Original Flavor HDM without saying “12-year-old Lyra is too young to go on an interdimensional journey with no adult supervision and save the multiverse.”

But he was one of her teachers when she was 16, and his POV includes remembering how he had to actively shut down sexual interest in her then, and here in the present Lyra still thinks of him as kind of a distant authority figure, and that’s weird, okay?

They only have a couple days’ worth of actual interaction before being apart for the rest of the book. That’s not enough time to believably develop their dynamic into something believably-potentially-romantic. So the narrative doesn’t try.

…but it still has multiple people ask Malcolm if he’s in love with Lyra afterward.

The foreshadowing on Lyra’s side is all in how she keeps thinking about how similar he is to Will. (Cat daemon, killed someone when he was a tween, etc.) Because that’s what we all want for Lyra’s romantic future, a knockoff Will-substitute, amirite?

Separately: Malcolm and friends tell Lyra the whole backstory about the magical boat trip from La Belle Sauvage, but it doesn’t seem like she tells them anything about “that time I went on an interdimensional journey, built a group of allies from multiple worlds and species including literal angels, killed God, and permanently rewrote the nature of death.” I feel like that should’ve come up!

General daemon stuff:

There’s a moment in the early chapters when Pan, wandering alone at night, considers eating some small critter (the kind that an ordinary pine marten would eat). It’s not like he’s going through a species-identity crisis, either. It’s just written as…a thing a daemon might do. So that’s weird.

In the original series, daemon separation is a major, improbable ordeal. Under normal circumstances, a human and a daemon being dragged apart past their distance limit will just kill them. At Bolvangar they figured out a severance method that would leave you physically functional, but dead inside. Witch-style separation only happens at this special daemon-repelling place in the North (you don’t have to be a witch to use it, see John Parry, but they usually don’t tell non-witches it exists), or on the shores of the World of the Dead. So far, so good.

In this series, we find out that there’s another place on this Earth with the same daemon-repelling properties. It’s also remote and isolated and associated with Cool Weird Stuff (the cities in the Northern Lights vs. the Dust-revealing roses). Again, so far, so good.

…And then we find out that random people can just kinda do a separation ordeal anywhere. Okay, it already happened to Malcolm in La Belle Sauvage, but now it’s all over the place. Lyra keeps spotting people on the street without daemons! Pan teams up with a kid who got dragged apart from her daemon in a shipwreck, and it didn’t kill them! It’s too easy. It’s unsatisfying. It undercuts so much of the monumental feeling separation had in the original trilogy.

It also makes it even weirder that nobody was able to hook Lyra and Pan up with a support group. Oakley Street couldn’t suss it out? Her friends among the Gyptians couldn’t catch an underground rumor and pass it on?

Related: when we saw daemonless kids in The Golden Compass, they were treated like horror-movie monsters. Like zombies, ghosts, bodies walking around without heads. But when people clock Lyra as being daemonless here, they treat it like it’s something immoral. Like she’s walking around topless and needs to cover it up.

There’s just a general pattern of rewriting HDM’s established rules about daemons, and not for the better.

And speaking of rewriting established rules…general alethiometer stuff:

There is a New Method for reading the alethiometer. It involves pointing all three hands at the same symbol, which already seems like a gimmick, not a useful way to frame a question.

And somehow, that gets you the answers in the form of…magic visions. No intuition or interpretation needed! The sights and sounds just get funneled directly into your brain!

The reason this isn’t a Plot-Breaking Hack is because it makes the user super-queasy. You can only use it when you’re in a position to be sick afterward, and people would rather not use it at all.

Lyra spends most of the story with the alethiometer, and without all the symbology books that go with it. She avoids using the New Method because of the nausea, but she also avoids using the Classic Method, on the grounds that it apparently can’t get her anything without the books.

She’s been studying these books for years now! Couldn’t she at least try to read it, and make her best guess at the interpretation? Maybe sometimes she gets it right, maybe sometimes she’s wrong and things go sideways and she realizes in hindsight which of the symbols she misread, maybe sometimes she gives up and gets depressed and puts it away without drawing a conclusion at all…but nope, she just flat-out doesn’t interact with it.

Midway through the book, Lyra gets a tipoff about a kind of truth-reading cards. That’s fine; we know there are other methods of truth-reading in the multiverse, including the I Ching and Mary Malone’s computer. Makes sense as a new tidbit of worldbuilding.

But towards the end of the story, someone helpfully gifts Lyra a deck of the cards. And she spends some time trying to infer answers from how the pretty pictures on the cards fit together. More time than she spends trying to infer answers from how the pretty pictures on the alethiometer fit together.

The alethiometer didn’t need a New Method or a total replacement in the narrative…but apparently it’s getting them.

And what was the point of Lyra dedicating herself to studying those symbols, for years, if she can get better and more-accurate data from a set of symbols she’d never seen before until this week?

Pan’s international voyage:

This all started when Pan got the idea that Terrible Author had “put a spell on Lyra and stolen her imagination.” Which sounds like a figure of speech at first, but no, apparently Pan thinks this guy is literally magic.

And yet, somehow, not magic enough to be dangerous, even for a single lone daemon whose only plan is “confront him directly and demand that he fix it”?

Most of the trip is uneventful, since it’s a long string of Pan successfully keeping out-of-sight.

There’s one clever part where, once he’s in Terrible Author’s hometown, he finds a school for the blind to ask for information. That way he can say “my girl is totally standing right over there, don’t worry about it, now, any chance you know where Terrible Author lives?”

…of course, the first person he asks has exactly the right answer and is happy to share. Convenient, that.

As mentioned, Terrible Author’s setup is suitably creepy and off-putting, but Pan doesn’t figure out anything about why. Doesn’t investigate. Didn’t come up with any kind of plan beforehand about how to coax Terrible Author into undoing his evil spell. Pan just confronts him, demands he fix Lyra, realizes this hasn’t fixed Lyra, and leaves.

There’s a bombshell much later on when Lyra finds out that Terrible Author is separated! And, although there’s a daemon who hangs around with him, they don’t actually belong to each other! This is fascinating and disturbing and would’ve been so much more satisfying if, you know, Pan had figured this out and was actively trying to bring the information to Lyra. Or, heck, if anything had been done with it at all.

Shortly afterward, Pan runs into this girl who just happens to be separated from her daemon, and is available and happy to team up with Pan, so they can head off to Weird Roseville together. Convenient. Again.

Lyra’s Bogus Journey:

Lyra has a much harder time staying out of sight than Pan, so she gets a lot more interaction along her trip.

Most of it is a long string of the same convenient “running into people who are helpful and friendly and have exactly the information she needs to move the plot along.” (More details on that below.)

When this happened in the original trilogy, it was the alethiometer deus-ex-machining her in the right direction, which worked! But here it seems to keep happening by accident. (She brings the alethiometer, but, as mentioned, she doesn’t use it.)

The Conveniently Helpful People also keep telling her (with minimal prompting, and what seems like total honesty?) whole backstories. All of which are more interesting than the actual narrative she’s going through.

They also occasionally mention God/the Authority, and Lyra doesn’t have much of a reaction. I wish, just once, she had snapped “it doesn’t matter what the Authority thinks! Or rather, what he used to think, since my boyfriend and I killed him when we were 12!”

The convenience also could’ve worked if Oakley Street agents were being cool and clever and actively tracking her journey in order to help. She does run into a few of them, but that seems to be by accident too.

And it could’ve worked if there was other magic steering her along — she keeps dropping the phrase “the secret commonwealth,” meaning the world’s hidden population of faeries and other supernatural creatures — but as of the end of the book, none of Lyra’s friendly helpers have been revealed to be anything other than human. (Some are modified in exotic ways, but they were human to start with, at least.)

Even farther towards the end of the book, after this long string of people being Conveniently Helpful For No Reason, she ends up in a train car with…and I wish I was making this up…a bunch of soldiers who are Inconveniently Attempted Rapists For No Reason.

That record-scratch moment your brain just did? That’s how it feels in the book, too. The attack comes out of nowhere, there’s suddenly a big action sequence with Lyra fighting back, their CO shows up and makes them let her go, and then she leaves the train and heads almost directly to the next bunch of Conveniently Helpful People.

If anyone wants more detailed spoilers, either to be prepared before reaching the scene or to decide whether you’ll read it at all, let me know.

To be blunt about one thing: from the in-scene descriptions I would’ve said none of these guys actually managed to get their dicks out, but a few days later we get the book’s first and only reference to Lyra having periods. And she doesn’t think “oh, thank republic-of-heavens, I’m not pregnant,” which suggests she knew it wasn’t a risk, but the whole Narrative Reason you write that in after an assault scene is because someone is afraid it’s a risk, so, what are you even doing, Pullman??

Okay, switching tracks.

Some of the people Lyra encounters, usually with personal stories that are way more interesting, and I wish they’d been [part of] the actual main plot:

A guy who meets her at a train station, says he has a friend who needs her help, leads her out into a maze of city streets where she explicitly thinks about how risky this is because she’s totally lost…but she does the mission and it’s fine and he leads her right back to the train station afterward.

The friend is a human who’s been modified by “a magician” to be some kind of fire-elemental person, and wants Lyra to help find his daemon, who was modified into a water-elemental form — a mermaid! This is cool and fascinating and scary and raises so many questions —

— and they get killed immediately after Lyra reunites them, and we never find out anything more about it.

The killer is the magician, who had been holding the water-sprite daemon captive. (And is possibly also the guy’s father? Finally, someone who can beat Marisa and Asriel in a “Bad Parenting Juice” drinking contest.) Which, again, is fascinating and evocative — how do you become a magician? Or are they born, like the witches? How many are there? What kinds of things are they doing in the world? —

— yeah, we don’t find out anything about that either.

Murderous Magician Dad just gives Lyra some helpful plot information, then sends her and the train-station guy off on their way.

A couple of guys who intervene when Lyra is being harassed at a bar.

They steer her outside, she’s prepared for a fight, but they hold up their hands and say they’re friendly, and also, they noticed someone steal the alethiometer bag off her earlier, so here, would she like it back?

They give her some helpful rumors, too. Don’t remember which specific ones, but they lead her to the next plot point.

A rich elderly princess who’s on the Daemonless International Support Group list, because her daemon fell in love (!) with another woman (!!) and eventually ran off with her (!!!).

Lyra thinks to herself that she’s seen other situations where a daemon and their human have different feelings about a romance. Just thinks it in passing, and then it’s gone. I want to see these situations! I want on-page exploration of multiple ways they can work! How do they correspond to the feelings of people in worlds where all the daemons are internal?

As for the princess, I already knew it was going to be a big scandal — two human women in that day and age could never be a couple, at least not in public, and A Literal Princess is a very public figure —

but then, in spite of the scandal, the princess moves in with the woman! And they travel together, they work together, they share a bed, she explains to Lyra that she played the role so thoroughly she made herself fall in love with the woman!

…and then it falls apart for some reason, and the princess leaves, but her daemon insists on staying. So that’s how they get separated. Deliberately walking away from each other.

There’s a brief reference to the idea of him wishing he was the other woman’s daemon, instead of the princess’s. How does that work? How do you get so disconnected from yourself, and in such a skewed partial-match with someone else, that you end up with that kind of yearning?

In case you can’t tell, I want to read this novel. I would trade the entirety of The Secret Commonwealth for this novel. No question, hands down.

Instead: Princess says “if you run into my daemon, tell him I’d like to see him again before we die?” Lyra says “sure, can do, thanks for the brunch.” And then, you guessed it, that whole scene is over and done with and we never get any follow-up on it again.

A pair of agents from Oakley Street, who say “hey, Lyra, have you considered using some basic disguise techniques, like dyeing your hair and wearing glasses?”

And then they give her a lovely haircut and a dye job and a spare pair of fake glasses.

This isn’t anywhere near the beginning of Lyra’s journey, by the way! This is more than 80% of the way through the book. There’s no special reason she needs it more after this point.

It’s like Pullman suddenly realized a disguise might help, wrote the scene at the point he had reached, and then never went back and edited to put it in a more meaningful location.

The stranger on a train who shows Lyra the deck of “exactly the same as an alethiometer” cards, gives her a demonstration of how to use them, and then leaves the whole deck behind for her to keep.

A married couple who don’t share any languages in common with Lyra, and don’t seem to have a lot of money…but feed her and let her stay at their house overnight, for free, even daemonless as she is. They also give her a free niqab so she can move around less conspicuously (she’s still injured from the fight with the soldiers).

A priest who invites her into his church, isn’t bothered when she takes off the niqab, helps treat her injuries, and gives her a motherlode of useful details about highly-illegal dealings he’s not even supposed to know about, but will unveil to this total stranger who just wandered in, because she needs them for the next plot point.

This when Lyra finds out that someone in this region has resurrected the Bolvangar method. But this time they aren’t kidnapping random children for it. No, they’re paying for it. If you’re poor enough, and desperate enough, and can’t spare any more kidneys, these people will buy your daemon to sell on the black market.

The city has a whole secret underclass of illegally-severed people working in the sewers.

Meanwhile, rich people who’ve been deserted by their daemons can purchase a stand-in. This is what Terrible Author did. Of course, it’s not a true replacement, but the dealers boast about their ability to make an excellent match.

There are also people who buy separated daemons for other scientific/experimental purposes. Details left to our imaginations.

This is a horrifying sinister mindblowing discovery, as much of a bombshell as the original Bolvangar was. I mean, it would’ve hit harder if Lyra had uncovered it by spying, or tricking someone into revealing the information, or anything more elaborate than “asking straightforward sorta-related questions and getting this whole sordid story infodumped by the first guy she asked,” but it’s still big.

So it’s gonna shake things up something fierce, right? Maybe Lyra won’t go full-on “calling in the cavalry to tear the place down” until Book 3, but this would be her new “stepping through the doorway into the sky” moment — where the horror of what she’s learned galvanizes her into making a pivotal decision, where she starts laying the groundwork for the revolution —

— no, of course not, this is where she starts going around to the hideouts of various undercover daemon-sellers and asking if they can help her find Pan.

Come on.

And this brings us to the end of the book. One of the black-market daemon-sellers guides Lyra to the creepy abandoned town where the final scene takes place.

In these last moments, the audience (but not Lyra) finds out that this guy has ulterior motives. Which would make it the first time in the whole book when “Lyra or Pan takes a Conveniently Helpful Person at face value with total credulity” turns out to be a bad idea.

(And, I mean, he’s a black-market daemon-seller. If anyone on that list was obviously an unethical scumball who shouldn’t be counted on….!)

Finally, a few things that don’t fit into any neat lists, but annoyed me enough to mention:

1) People curse in this book. Which is notable because they didn’t in HDM, and it wasn’t just the adults watching their mouths around tween Lyra — we got plenty of scenes that only had people like Mrs. Coulter and Lord Asriel in them. Those two would definitely be dropping f-bombs if it was a routine part of their world’s language, and this book reveals that it is.

So every time it happens it breaks your immersion, pointedly reminding you “this isn’t a real world, it’s a fake story where the author can switch the profanity-filter on and off at will.” Does it enhance the narrative in a way that’s worth the tradeoff? I don’t think so.

2) Before I read the book, I’d heard vague spoilers about “a character with a mermaid daemon,” and figured it was someone from a cool magical species — hopefully more expansion/exploration on the fairy from La Belle Sauvage whose daemon appeared to be “a whole flock of butterflies.”

But no, it’s a magically-modified human. His situation doesn’t get explored that deeply before he dies, or connect with anything else in the story. The fairy, meanwhile, does get mentioned when Malcolm tells Lyra about meeting her, but she doesn’t reappear or get any kind of follow-up.

In spite of the title, the only explicit appearance of any members of the “secret commonwealth” is some little glowing spirits, basically wights, that Lyra watches over the side of a gyptian boat one time.

3) There’s a scene where a bunch of people gather in a meeting hall to protest the Magisterium sabotaging their various rose-related livelihoods. A couple Magisterium reps are there. Malcolm is also there, and his POV basically goes “huh, looks like all the exits have gotten the doors shut. And barred. And suddenly they each have an armed Magisterium agent standing in front of them. That’s weird. Gonna keep quietly observing to find out what happens next.”

This guy is supposed to be a cool experienced anti-Magisterium spy! This is basically a giant neon sign flashing COMING UP NEXT: MASSACRE! (It is not a misdirect, either.)

And Malcolm sees it, but doesn’t read it, or take any action to try to subvert it, or even move to defend himself — it’s just like any cheesy horror movie where the audience is shouting LOOK BEHIND YOU at the unwitting character who’s about to get murdered.

Wrap-Up Thoughts

Whatever happens in the final volume of this trilogy, it might reveal things that redeem some of the problems in this book. But I’ll be honest, I’m not holding my breath.

And when I think about reveals that would address these problems, everything I come up with is stuff that should’ve just been in this book.

For example: let’s say the Fair Folk are directly involved after all, intervening to steer Lyra and Pan down the most convenient paths. In particular, the guy on the train who only appears long enough to give Lyra a set of alethiometry cards + a tutorial on how to use them — I really want him to be Fae. It’s so contrived and random if he’s not.

But the readers should know about it! Back in HDM, we would get scenes about the plans and activities of all the other factions at work. It might take a while to discover the exact details of (for example) the witches’ ultimate goal that Lyra was part of, but we knew they had a goal, and were supporting her in service of it. If the Secret Commonwealth is actively involved in the plot, we should’ve gotten that by now.

Semi-related: I feel like, if the rest of the book was better, then I’d have no trouble explaining a lot of the Lyra-specific issues as “she’s super-depressed, not in a place to make great choices or take a lot of decisive action.”

But it’s not like she’s drifting around in a trauma fog that hampers her ability to get things done. Her journey, while not perfect or threat-free, still comes together with improbable smoothness — as if the writing hasn’t noticed that she’s not being proactive and prescient and well-coordinated and overall super-competent about it. Meanwhile, other characters are underwhelming in the same way. (Looking at you, Malcolm “I Can’t Believe It’s Now a Bloodbath” Polstead.)

So it doesn’t seem like a conscious narrative choice to write Lyra this way. It just seems consistent with the complaints I have about everything else in the writing.

…let’s be honest, I’m almost certainly gonna read the third book anyway. I’m enough of a completist that it’ll bother me not to, I don’t have a lot of hard-stop dealbreakers that would make me bow out anyway, and, well, I do a lot of work that requires time-passing listening material. The Secret Commonwealth is nowhere near the most-frustrating audio I’ve used to fill that time.

But it hasn’t left me excited or optimistic or Shivering With Anticipation, either.

Mostly I just anticipate getting some useful stuff done while I listen, and then having a final set of reactions to work through in another one of these posts.

[asinfulpagan]

Do I Exist?

Do I Exist???

*This is a work of fiction, yet it’s also a work of truth.*

Do I Really Exist?

Being gay at any age I would imagine is a hard thing to do. From as far back as I can remember, I remember my older cousins, uncles and even my dad talking about “homos” and “fags” I wished so much I could scream into their ears, QUIT HURTING ME! Instead I listened, and then lost. I lost my spirit of living; then lost myself. Now, I have lost my soul. I remember during a cub scouts trip when I was about 10, another kid called this black boy a “nigger” I don’t know why I did it, but I beat the hell out of the kid who called him that. I guess somewhere; somehow, I too had already grown too familiar with hatred. But that’s for later anyways. I am writing this short story too simply try and inspire others. To save those like myself before they too must ask, Do I Really Exist?

Can this life be reality?

I went to church most of my childhood, until the preacher man told me God didn't want me. I see kids today and wonder if I was ever really that innocent. Now I sit, beaten down by pain. I always thought life was wonderful and miraculous experience. As a kid I dreamed of being a doctor. I wanted to go to Africa and cure AIDS. I wanted to be the man who a difference in the lives of everyone he touched. I wanted to be respected, I wanted to be loved, and I wanted to be accepted. Now I know none of these are possible. Not for someone like myself. Can this life be reality?

Of course it is, but why?

Obviously this reality is true. I know that the preacher man says God allows suffering because he allows freewill. God, what I wouldn’t give to have the freewill to stand up and declare “I EXIST! QUIT HURTING ME!” Yet I cannot. I cannot hurt my family by telling them. I couldn’t stand the idea of my own dad telling me I am not his. The preacher man already told me that my spiritual father disowned me. I could not handle my flesh father disowning me too. A boy needs at least one dad don’t he? Someone famous said once, “We suffer to learn” I should be a college professor on loneliness. So, can this life be reality? Of course it is, but why?

Why must I pay for sins uncommitted?

I have probably known I was gay since I was about six years old. I remember just a simple and innocent acknowledgement. It was never in words or thoughts, just in action. Where boys were running from the girls with cooties I was chasing the girls to play. Where the boys played sports, I was talking to the girls. Maybe people thought I would be a ladies man. Rock Hudson again I guess. My being gay has so little to do with a physical desire, and so much more to do with an emotional necessity. It is not from downstairs that I think, but from behind my heart. Yet, God has already abandoned me. My family has spent years making sure I know what they think. I have no guy friends, because they seem to think I will turn them gay somehow. I wish it where that easy to show others what pain my broken heart shields. Gay for a day, maybe then some of this world of pain would subside. Maybe then even God would reconsider me. Why must I pay for sins uncommitted?

How did I get infected with homosexuality?

Throughout my short life I have tried time and again to figure out what made me gay. As an early tween I thought it was something I was over-eating or maybe the old joke is true, it’s in the water. Yet, why am I the only one affected by this disease? I know others on the planet exist with this same condition, yet it seems they weren’t coming to help me. I was on my own in a world that wanted me to go away.

As an early teenager I tried to remember if anyone had ever hurt me. I read somewhere that sexual abuse is why people are gay. No such luck, I was perhaps psychologically and spiritually tortured, but none of this could be the cause of my infection. Now I fear the worst, it’s not a disease, which means there is no cure.

With the lack of a specific event, thought or emotional deficiency in which I made the choice of being Gay, I can only assume that I was born this way.

If God does not make mistakes, how can I be gay?

I always thought babies where pure and innocent. Yet this baby grew into a kid who was not wanted. Then a tween that was too scared to find himself. So I became a teen with only so many options. I know I was born this way. I know I was taught not to be who I am. I know I tried to change from being this evil entity to what the world wanted of me. Oh how I tried so desperately, but now I know I was born this way. Yet If God does not make mistakes, how can I be gay?

By the time I was 13 I had experienced others hatred.

Besides protecting the dignity of that little boy in cub scouts, I have had hundreds of run-ins within my short life. As a kid I would hear other boys calling anyone they didn’t like a “fag” I was grateful it wasn’t me they were talking about, yet I was ashamed I wasn’t the gay super-hero I had always dreamed would come and rescue me. I guess the gay super-hero doesn’t exist. I wonder if heroes exist at all. How could they with the pain we all suffer? Whose soul is strong enough to really fight this kind of a battle? Not mine, that’s for sure.

Even today I cannot understand the pain that people afflict onto each other. All I scream and cry out for is love. Maybe that’s what we all cry out for. Maybe the lack of a response to our cries is where the pain comes from. I still believe in God, even if he doesn’t want me too. Today I prayed that someone would answer the next kids cry.

I remember as a kid, I was sitting with my parents in the living room. They were watching the news, while I played with a deck of cards. Then the news story broke; the story that forever changed me; the story that made me afraid to go to sleep, yet afraid to wake up. Mathew Shepard had been beaten then crucified. I guess the preacher man wasn’t lying after all. Jesus died for your sins but not mine. For mine, we must all be crucified physically, spiritually or emotionally. For sins like mine, we must atone ourselves for no church will offer a God that allowed his son to die for me.

By the time I was 13 I had experienced others hatred. Now, at 16, I must atone for my sins. I have suffered two of the three punishments I must in order for God to forgive me. The only one left is physical. I hope God finds I have paid enough for this unnatural sin. Now that I think about it, it has been other people’s hatred that has allowed me to even experience my own self-hatred. Turns out I can beat myself up better than ten gay bashers ever could.

By 15 I had already lost three teeth because of hatred.

Around the age of 13 I also made another mistake. I told the one guy friend I had, that I was gay. The next day after school, two of his friends hit me in the face with a big board until a tooth fell out and blood covered my face. That was when my crucifixion began. I only wish it wasn’t as slow as it has been. Over the next two years I lost a couple more teeth to rumors. Each time I lost a tooth, I thought of Mathew Shepard. I would wonder if this was it. If this time it wouldn’t be just some blood and teeth, but that I too could stop suffering. My face hurt a lot, my mouth looked like I had been hit by a car, and my soul had already died. Where once a soul lived now only the darkness of self-hatred can thrive.

Now, at 16, I am beaten down.

My mouth still isn’t completely healed. I don’t know if that one tooth will ever come back, and the signs of a tortured life show all over my body. Old broken bones that never healed right show their distress. I never told my parents about my fights, so they assumed I was a clumsy kid. How could I ask for a doctor when I would have to explain why I needed one? Besides allowing me to pay for my sins, the physical pain also allowed me to remember that I am subhuman. It is best to remember that when being a deviant like myself. God demands I remember that. I will never gain his forgiveness if I think my sins are as natural as everyone else’s. I have been beaten down in so many painful ways. I have paid for my sin for as long as I can. Now, at 16, I am beaten down.

So, I shall pay my final price.

A life that once held so much potential has been traded for a life of sacrifices. Even sitting here, I still haven’t the courage to tell anyone else that I am gay. It was never the physical pain or death that I feared. It was always the loss of my family’s love that scared me into a slow and silent death. I wish the old tale were true and love could be blind. Then my family and God wouldn’t hate what I am so much. Life though, has proved that love is not blind. The world has taught me what suffering is, and God taught me that all sins are not forgiven. The bible says “if a man also lies with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them. Mathew Shepard was the reality of this message from God. My life has been spent living the message of God it seems. I will not fail him; I will fulfill his desires for me. Then, maybe, he will at least allow me to sleep outside the gates of Heaven.

My life.

My life has so very little meaning left in it. It really isn’t a life as much as it’s a purgatory. An event that was designed just for me to pay back to God what I had cheated him of. He created me to be a good person and to help those in need. Instead I threw it all away by being gay. For this one sin, no amount of retribution will save my soul. That’s OK though, my soul left me a long time ago anyways. As if it too where ashamed of me. My life hasn’t been a life since I was a toddler. All the time since then has been my suffering. How I wish I could have been given a chance to do something with My life.

Do I exist?

To a world that wishes people like myself didn’t exist I say have patience. You are slowly killing us without even having to use a weapon. You go to our schools and lecture the next generation on the abomination of homosexuality. You get laws written to ensure gays will never be anything but subhuman. You even manage to make sure the Boy Scouts will eliminate any kid that walks my path. You have ensured no compassion for an entire minority.

Do I Exist?

Yes!

Do you care?

I wish someone would have or even could now; then I wouldn’t be writing my on suicide letter. As in life, this too is done alone. They say in your final moments you will experience the love of God as your beacon of light to go towards. I still don’t feel the presence of God.

***********

Robert

*This is a work of fiction designed to help open the hearts and minds of those who desire it. Every year more and more gay or lesbian teenagers feel the suffering offered in this story.

don’t be afraid that your life will end, be afraid that it will never begin.

(c) Copyright 2007-20011 www.Facebook.com/commanderchase

*** I want to thank whoever pointed out to me that every reason given in this letter has been fixed in our society

this was an old piece of mine written more than 15 years ago I'm glad to see that change comes pretty quick.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

20 Reasons you should love Spider-Girl!

Happy May Day one and all. Since this day shares a name with a certain daughter of our friendly neighbourhood wall-crawler (and because this year marked her 20th anniversary) we’re going to list of 20 reasons you should love Spider-Girl!

No deep dive analysis I am afraid and these are in no particular order.

Without further adieu...

Longest running female Marvel hero with her own series

In a day and age when much discussion is devoted to female characters in leading roles Spider-Girl was something of a trail blazer, though she gets far too little credit for it.

Spider-Girl was (and still is to my understanding) the longest running female Marvel character to have her own solo-series; at least without any re-launches.

This feat is even more impressive considering Spider-Girl was an out-of-continuity series which usually do not sell as easily as titles within the mainstream 616 universe.

Her costume

When discussing Spider-Man’s costumes thought inevitably drifts to Spider-Man’s original red and blue outfit or his black and white one. However the third horse in the race is the 1996 costume created by Ben Reilly and thus lovingly nicknamed the ‘Spider-Ben’ outfit.

It is simply a brilliant and beautiful design succeeding in evoking something unique and yet distinctly ‘Spider-Man’.

Whilst anyone coming to the black costume completely cold and with no context could be forgiven for mistaking it for an entirely different character (as Ron Frenz did way back in the early 1980s), nobody could look at Mayday’s costume and not   realize it has something to do with Spider-Man.

Shifting around elements of the classic costume Mayday’s outfit succeeds in maintaining a balance of primary colours (as the best superhero costumes do) and making her distinct from any artistic angle.

The costume also (according to superstar artist Sal Buscema) in fact works more effectively on Mayday’s feminine form than on the typical male superhero body build.

Her other costumes

The beauty of Spider-Man’s black costume lies in its simplicity. However this doesn’t mean it is above being redesigned and around 20 years after its debut one of the key architects in its introduction (Ron Frenz) did just that when he created a black costume for Mayday.

Much like her red and blue outfit, her own black costume succeeds in being unique but retaining most of the strong visual elements that made her Dad’s counterpart outfit a hit. Sleek, simple and using white/silver in moderation to create a stark contrast this is probably Mayday’s most out and out badass look.

But Mr. Frenz had one more trick up his sleeve. In 2015 as part of the Secret Wars mega event Marvel was involved with Ron Frenz took to redesigning Mayday’s costume once again. Her previous appearance in Spider-Verse had controversially seen her hang up her original costume in favour of wearing one of her father’s old suits.

Quite apart from how the costume simply didn’t work as effectively on the Mayday’s female figure compared to Spider-Man’s, fans didn’t take kindly to the change. Apparently neither did Mayday’s co-creators Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz and so we wound up with yet another costume that combined elements of Peter Parker and Ben Reilly’s costumes together to create something once again familiar yet ultimately unique.

Whilst most Spider-Girl fans would’ve preferred a return to her classic look the costume unto itself has been acknowledged as a beautiful design.

A true all ages book

The majority of Spider-Girl’s run played out in a day and age when the content of comic books was going down an allegedly more ‘realistic and mature’ direction.

Titles such as the Ultimate Universe line, though paying lip service to being aimed at younger readers, were far from being for all ages. This was very much true of Marvel and DC as a whole throughout the 2000s and early 2010s.

Spider-Girl was a brave exception to this trend, actively engaging in sophisticated and at times challenging stories that nevertheless presented events in a way that tweens, teens and adults could enjoy.

Survival of cancellations

Infamously Spider-Girl lived under a near perennial threat of cancellation.

But Mayday’s fans were both too smart and too in love with her stories to let her go under.

Repeatedly they exploited their knowledge of the pre-ordering system LCSs use and saved Mayday’s series from cancellation.

No comic book has ever defied expectations and escaped cancellation more times than Spider-Girl.

Tackled tough and relevant subject matters in a frank, mature and realistic way without being grim dark

As I mentioned above, Spider-Girl was an all ages book but that didn’t mean it stayed away from tough subjects. 

More than once Spider-Girl used mutants to discuss bigotry and prejudice. 

Issue #26 of Mayday’s first series was a vital turning point for the narrative and it fundamentally hinged upon addressing issues related to suicide and the vicious cycle of abuse that can exist within families. 

Multiple subplots touched upon women being physically and emotionally abused, to the point where the topic was brought up in the very issue where Mayday celebrated being the longest running female Marvel character. This is best exemplified in Spider-Girl #89 which has one of the most uncomfortably realistic pages in a comic book I have ever read. 

Perhaps most audaciously one issue dedicated an entire scene to talking fairly frankly about the topic of abortion and making the characters’ stances on the issue very clear. What is perhaps even more impressive is that this was the second  time that writer Tom DeFalco had dared touch that subject within a Spider title. 

Regardless of what your personal views are on that or on any of the topics above, the sheer guts of the creative team to ‘go there’ must be admired and respected.

Consistent art that also has amazing action sequences!

Spider-Girl has been drawn by several artists across the years but the two most dominant ones are Pat Oliffe and Ron Frenz.

Whilst both artists evolved their styles across the run of the series there was enough relative consistency that the book rarely felt alienating to long time readers.

And it helped that both artists’ styles are just beautiful.

Oliffe leans more towards illustration and makes the characters seem realistic and yet fluid at the same time.

Frenz is more of a cartoonist and yet his art is not usually overly stylized and manages to retain the iconic features of each character he draws. His rendition of Mary Jane for example could never be mistaken for any given typically attractive redhead, it looks distinctly like Mary Jane evoking Romita Senior’s design for her.

Not only are each artist great in their character work but in their raw sequential storytelling craftsmanship. Nowhere is this more evident than in their well paced, cleverly choreographed and all round dynamic action sequences. At the time the stories were published (and even today) you’d have been hard pressed to find any action sequences in Marvel or DC that could rival those of Spider-Girl’s. 

Continuity porn and fan service done right

Dan Slott’s run on Spider-Man has in the past been criticised of indulging in ‘continuity porn’. That is to say utilizing or referencing past continuity excessively to the point where it either takes you out of a story or outright undermines a story itself.

 Spider-Girl demonstrates how continuity and fan service can be done well given the right context. There are in fact probably a million times more continuity references and examples of fan service within Spider-Girl’s whole run than in Slott’s collective Spider-Man bibliography.

The difference though is that the continuity Spider-Girl first and foremost concerns itself with involves organically building upon previously established events, whether it’s from its own series, Spider-Man’s wider history or Marvel lore in general.

Case in point Spider-Girl’s debut storyline hinges upon continuity surrounding the DeMatteis/Buscema run of Spectacular Spider-Man as it shows us Harry Osborn’s son following in his father and grandfather’s footsteps by becoming the new Green Goblin. He is even arrested in a scene that is framed near identically to a scene of Harry being arrested in Spectacular Spider-Man #189, whilst singing a variation of the 1960s Spider-Man theme song no less. Furthermore the climax of the issue takes place at the site of Gwen Stacy’s death, which happened in another Goblin story and Mayday’s first words as Spider-Girl are also her mother’s famous first words from ASM #42.

We are talking layers and layers of continuity here. But it never goes to the point of alienating readers, being obnoxious or hurting the stories.

The most significant and obvious ways in which the story (and any Spider-Girl story) utilizes continuity is the way continuity is supposed to function. That is to say it provides good world building and verisimilitude for the story and characters so that they can grow and react to events (and their repercussions) in much the same real people react to events in their lives day-to-day. 

And the other references found in the story are subtle enough to not alienate new or casual fans, but still provide a fun nod for those in the know. Critically though for those in the know such references never grow obnoxious because they serve legitimate story purposes as well.

Every time in a Spider-Girl story where Mayday or Normie say, do or are simply drawn in a way that references old stories starring their family members it is touching upon the fundamental themes of family and legacy that define the series. It creates a subtext that spells out how they are the inheritors of their families’ respective legacies and have their ancestors’ traits within them.

 And this is just me looking at one   story. 

You could make a whole series dedicated to just spotting various continuity Easter Eggs scattered throughout the series.

Revived the Hobgoblin

Remember back in 2010 when Dan Slott launched the Big Time era and there was a lot of chatter about the apparent return of the Hobgoblin?

The reason for the chatter was due to Hobgoblin being a major league bad guy during the iconic Roger Stern run of Amazing Spider-Man and his return marking the first time he’d be appearing in well over a decade.

Well guess what? Spider-Girl had Slott beat.

During the build up to her 100th issue the Hobgoblin was dusted off by DeFalco and Frenz (who used the character extensively during their own iconic run on ASM in the 1980s) and reintroduced in all his glory, proving to be one of Mayday’s most formidable foes.

For many Spider-Girl fans Hobgoblin was actually an even more effective villain for Mayday than he ever was for her father, owing much to the gap in their respective experience levels.

It might have happened outside the mainstream Marvel Universe but for many people at the time (and I’d bet many people who read through Big Time) this was the true return of the Hobgoblin.

And a more magnificent comeback you couldn’t have asked for.  

The best symbiote character ever!

Symbiotes have traditionally been divisive within Spider-Man fandom, with seemingly few readers neutral on them. More often than not you either love them or you passionately despise them with the rage of a thousand burning suns.

Much of the latter point of view is owed to a perception (right or wrong as it may be) that the symbiotes are shallow and one note characters that emphasise style over substance.

To such detractors I present for you April Parker, a.k.a. Mayhem!

She is a clone of Mayday (or is she?) who also has DNA from the Venom symbiote granting her both the spider powers of Peter Parker and the symbiotes metamorphic abilities.

Putting aside the clever word play going on with her names, Mayhem has genuine substance to her character. She struggles with issues of identity desperately wanting to legitimize herself as the ‘real’ Spider-Girl as opposed to a clone and also make good as a superhero in her own right, but much like Venom (albeit far more successfully) her approach to crime fighting involves a desire to use lethal force in direct opposition to Mayday’s philosophies.

Her relationship with Mayday is beautiful in its complexity and contradictions. She views May as a usurper of the life that rightfully belongs to her and competes to outdo her in and out of their costumed lives; hence naming herself April, because it comes before May. But she nevertheless cares for May as a sister and can become violent when believing her to be threatened or harmed.

The dynamic between the two also ties into themes and relationships from the Clone Saga, as Mayhem is a combination of all three of Peter’s clones (Spidercide, Kaine and Ben Reilly) and his relationships with each of them has commonalities with Mayday’s and April’s relationship.

 And on top of all that...she just looks drop dead cool. 

Organic continuation of canon stories

Spider-Man is fundamentally about responsibility and there is no greater responsibility than family. This has been a hallmark of the series since literally Peter Parker’s first appearance.

Whilst Spider-Man’s series (when done right) emphasises family as part of the broader theme of responsibility, Spider-Girl flips the script and instead makes family and the related theme of legacy the primary point of the character and her adventures.

Thematically this makes Spider-Girl an organic continuation of Spider-Man’s story but more than this the nuts and bolts of the series and the universe built around it honestly feel totally believable as a continuation of the Marvel universe, or at least as it existed circa 1998.

All the child and teen heroes of the regular Marvel universe grew up to become the main heroes of Spider-Girl’s day and the surviving old guard adopted mentorship and commander roles within the superhero community.

As for Peter Parker and Mary Jane, if you took them circa 1998, gave them a baby and cut to 15 years later they’d be near identical to their Spider-Girl counterparts.

Various subplots within Spider-Girl also follow through on being an organic continuation of the Marvel universe of the later 1990s. One of her villains, the Black Tarantula, was last seen in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man as a young boy fleeing the influence of his father who wished to make him the new Black Tarantula. John Jameson and Ashley Kafka who were seen dating in the 1990s are shown as married in the world of Spider-Girl. Johnny Storm is the leader of the Fantastic Five which includes a grown up Franklin Richards. Normie Osborn becomes consumed by his family’s legacy of evil and becomes the Green Goblin, etc.

A robust rogue’s gallery

I admit it. Spider-Girl has neither the best nor the most original villains out there.

But I will say this...she at least has  a rogue’s gallery.

In all honestly think about just how many superheroes out there honestly couldn’t say as much. Maybe they have 5 or so villains to call their own and be reliable sources of conflict but by and large try naming 6 villains Carol Danvers has consistently had personal one-on-one encounters with across the decades...besides Moonstone or Doctor Minerva.

Try doing the same for the Black Panther when you exclude Klaw and Killmonger.

You’d not run into such a problem with Mayday though

Super villains are vitally important  to a superhero series and having some to call your own that you can definitively say are your  rogue’s gallery is something to be proud and protective of. As Geoff Johns proved on his run on the Flash, villains are what you make of them. So even if Mayday doesn’t have the best rogue’s gallery she at least had the scope to never run out of opponents to challenge her and rivalries to explore.

Additionally, what made her rogue’s gallery special was it’s healthy mix of relatively original foes, her own spins on classic Spidey enemies and a handful of Spidey’s old foes (for example Hobgoblin).This created a robust villain pool from which to draw stories from as they allowed the creative team to explore similar power sets from a different point of view, pit a Spider character against a whole new type of opponent or explore Mayday and a villain’s identity via contrasting her battles with her fathers’.

It gave the Venom symbiote a character arc

In 1984 Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz introduced the world to what would later be revealed as the Venom symbiote. Though they weren’t involved in every step of its consequent development in their own little universe they gave the symbiote a poignant death scene that totally re-contextualized its older appearances, granting it emotional layers, sympathy and a beautiful character arc. Oh and it was also the first ever example I know of where the symbiote was referred to as female.

It inspired things in the 616 universe and MCU

Much like the return of the Hobgoblin the MC2 universe both pioneered ideas later repeated in the mainstream 616 Marvel universe and also directly inspired concepts later introduced within it as well as the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

These include: making Cassie Lang a superhero called Stinger, giving Jessica Drew a son called Gerald, giving Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne a daughter named Hope, introducing a villain team named the Savage Six, making the Venom symbiote female, granting the symbiote to a supporting cast member and making them a hero, introducing an A.I. Iron Man suit programmed with Tony Stark’s brain patterns, giving Wolverine a daughter, and other stuff I am sure I am forgetting.

It could make lemonade out of terrible lemons

Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz were nothing if not inventive problem solvers during their time on Spider-Girl. In particular they had a knack for making something worthwhile out of a bad situation.

In the 1990s a new female version of Doctor Octopus was introduced and roundly lambasted by the fan base faithful. Was this criticism unfair? Maybe...then again her plans did almost exclusively revolve around nonsense involving virtual reality.

Nevertheless the Spider-Girl creative team dusted off the character and introduced her afresh, doing away with her old schemes and playing her as a more straightforward and down to Earth villain who could easily overpower Mayday. Though she had but a few appearances it ultimately redeemed her character.

More significantly though when Dan Slott as part of Spider-Verse controversially killed off Mayday’s father and established her as now wearing his old costume DeFalco and Frenz decided to do a follow up story that believably and touchingly showcased Mayday’s grieving process and moving on.

Though most were unhappy with the situation that existed they nevertheless respected and appreciated the creative teams’ never flagging efforts to serve the character. 

Actually involved the parents instead of killing them off as would be the cliché

Many critics and readers have praised Kamala Khan and other recent superheroes for subverting the typical superhero clichés of having dead parents. 

However Spider-Girl is a precursor to many of these modern series. In fact as mentioned above her parents being recurring characters was essentially the wholesale point of the series.

And they weren’t just there as background characters either.

Through subplots such as their new baby and accepting April Parker into their family Peter and Mary Jane were given subplots of their own that were organically woven into the wider fabric of Mayday’s life.

Whilst Peter would on occasion suit up and go into action as Spider-Man, act as a mentor and dispense fatherly advice when necessary, MJ got to be a counterpoint to Peter and had two issues focussing almost exclusively upon her character.

Mayday was a brilliant fusion of her parents

 Speaking of her parents, one of the charms of Mayday’s character was how believable she was as the child of Peter and  Mary Jane.

This is evident from her very first appearance.

Like her mother Mayday is very popular and on the higher echelons of the high school social ladder. And yet she is scientifically inclined and friends with the ‘nerds’ as well as the ‘jocks’.

She has Peter’s hair and eye colour and sense of guilt, but her mother’s facial features and outgoing personality.

In a very real sense she is the embodiment of both of her parents’ best qualities.

The first ever digital Marvel series

Not much to say about this one.

Marvel Unlimited is huge now but once upon a time in the earliest days of its predecessor service Spider-Girl blazed the trail as the first and to y knowledge only digital Marvel series.

It was an all-ages female led comic book series at a time when none of those things were strong sellers 

In addition to being an all-ages female led book, Spider-Girl deserves major, major credit for existing as those things within a marketplace actively hostile to them.

These days as much as digital series or female led books might struggle it must be said the playing field is far kinder to such books than it was in the late 1990s and throughout the 2000s.

Outside of some big names like Batgirl or Wonder Woman making a female led book an ongoing success was a profound uphill struggle doomed to fail as Marvel and DC were far less open to the idea that there was an untapped market of female fans, let alone a notable segment of their existing fan bases that were female. In truth there is a case for neither company having figured how to exploit those facts in the near decade since. The point is that female led books were a rarity and expected to fail more often than not. And yet Spider-Girl tried and succeeded in spite of that.

The same was very much true of an all-ages book. Though these had arguably better success in the 2000s then female led books they were still books that lived on borrowed time and yet despite being able to ‘course correct’ this fact the creative team stuck to their principles and resolutely refused to fall in line with the sensibilities of most of other comics of the day which were almost outright rejecting the idea of younger audiences.

The ultimate Spider-Man legacy character

Take your Miles Morales and your Miguel O’Hara’s and go home kids, because Mayday is without a doubt the  greatest legacy character Peter Parker could ever ask for.

What makes Mayday so brilliant in this regard is that because she is Peter’s daughter isn’t just a legacy to Spider-Man but to Peter Parker too.

This provides a totally realistic justification for why she shares so many similarities with him and yet because she’s been raised differently and has her mother’s influence in her too she can zig where Peter zagged.

When she does act like her Dad (or her Mom for that matter) it is satisfying to the readers because we see her parent(s) in her. It’s a little bit like if you have an old friend and then see them in their children and how they act. Because we love Spider-Man, we love seeing Mayday honour his heroic legacy as well as just be like  our old friend in her general personality.

And when she does act differently to how we’d expect Peter to behave, it brilliantly helps shine a light upon who Peter himself is as a character because we are so intimately familiar with who he is. At the same time it subtly clues us into what Peter is like as a parent as he had a hand in shaping Mayday to be the kind of person who’d act in those different ways he would have in similar situations.

This is beautifully demonstrated in Mayday’s debut story where she doesn’t need tragedy to drill the old great power/great responsibility lesson into her head. In fact she doesn’t need to be taught that lesson at all. She intuitively knows it because her Dad made sure  she grasped it better than he did at her age. 

Then you have her costume. It is of course Ben Reilly’s old Spider-Man suit and as such was conveniently custom built to work as evoking Spider-Man’s look whilst being its own thing. Which is exactly  what you want out of a legacy character. Something unique that nevertheless honours and reminds you of the original.

The fact that it is also Ben’s design enables Mayday to serve as a dual legacy to both her father and her Uncle Ben.

And there you have it. 20 reasons you should love Mayday. Now head over to Marvel Unlimited and check out her adventures!

[gayphoenixforce]

Uhh i wrote a short fic about Gabby and Laura Kinney and being disabled and what powers mean etc. Basically, Gabby loses her healing factor but her inability to feel pain is a real condition people struggle with. The snikt sisters are awesome and there’s loads of cameos

“Gabby, are you bleeding?”

It was early morning in the Kinney apartment. Gabby’s eyes peeked open, groggy from sleep.

“What d’you mean m’bleedin…” she mumbled, slowly beginning to wake up. Laura’s face was now clear in Gabby’s vision, and so too was the concern. Gabby’s big sister didn’t get scared - she was the freaking Wolverine - so the concern traveled quickly to Gabby. Now very awake, she began to scan herself for the blood source. Not feeling pain meant sometimes not knowing about an injury right away, but handy healing powers made it more of a nuisance than a reason to be afraid.

It was her left hand. The skin around the fingernail on her ring finger had been picked off, probably in her sleep. It was bleeding just enough to have smeared onto both of her hands, but thankfully not the pillow. It wasn’t something that should have made Laura concerned.

Then it dawned on her. Gabby realized that the amount of blood was not consistent with how much should have come out before her healing factor clotted, and eventually erased, the wound. In fact, the finger was still trickling a bit of blood. Something was wrong - Gabby’s healing factor had vanished in the night.

Dr. Hank McCoy spun around on his stool to face the Kinney sisters in his lab. Reading from a printout he said, “It appears that Miss Gabby has had her X-gene turned off. It’s still present in the DNA, but the gene itself is dormant now. She’s just a normal pre-teen girl.”

Gabby protested, “But I didn’t feel it! I can’t not be a mutant any more, I still don’t feel pain! Tell him Laura, I’m still an X-Man.”

Dr. McCoy sighed, taking off his glasses. “Gabby, Laura, you must understand. Gabby’s mutation was identical to yours and Logan’s Laura. She had an advanced healing factor and some heightened senses. The inability to feel pain is a condition entirely human.

“It is a syndrome called CIPA, which stands for ‘Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis’. It is very rare, but it results in the carrier being incapable of feeling pain. While that may be a superpower to a clone of Wolverines, it is actually very dangerous for humans. You see, Gabby’s healing factor was what was allowing her to lead a normal life. Superhero training gave her the strict regimen that fulfilled the non-violent aspects of the condition.”

Laura interrupted, “What does that mean? Gabby just needs to be extra careful about fights now, like a regular person, right?”

“Unfortunately,” Hank continued, “it’s not so simple. People with CIPA don’t just not feel the pain of a stubbed toe or a broken wrist. They also don’t feel hunger pangs or the urge to use the bathroom. This can cause severe malnutrition and dehydration as well as embarrassing accidents. Not to mention their difficulties with temperature regulation. They can’t tell if they are too hot or too cold, so they can be more susceptible to heat stroke or hypothermia.”

Gabby had completely shut down as Hank spoke. Laura did her best to provide some comfort with a hand on her shoulder, but it seemed brooding was also a family trait. Dr. McCoy gave the sisters some materials about the condition, as well a watch with built in timers for food and bathroom breaks. And because it was X-Men tech, it could also alert Gabby if her temperature was too high or low. Laura could tell Gabby was devastated by the diagnosis. Hank had no clue why her X-gene had turned off, or if there was a way to turn it back on. While they adjusted to the news, Laura was able to convince Gabby to take a break from being Wolverine and Honey Badger. Jean understood (because of course a telepath with motherly tendencies does) and told them to take all the time they needed.

It had been a week since Gabby had lost her powers. They were adjusting to the new schedule Gabby had to keep, from the watch’s chiming reminders to regular injury checks to make sure Gabby hadn’t hurt herself without noticing. Laura was doing her best to keep things normal for her little sister, but there was nothing normal about this. Worse, Laura could tell Gabby could see the worry on her face. She’d gone from coolest big sister ever to worrying mother hen in a week! Something had to be done. Laura may have been keeping her sister safe from physical danger, but Gabby’s hurt was on the inside, and she had never seen the girl so down. Claiming it was an emergency mission, Laura left the apartment to hatch a plan to cheer Gabby up.

All of the X-Men were sad to hear the news about Gabby. She was a ray of sunshine with claws. So when Laura came to the mansion with a mission to brighten her spirits, everyone was all in. Kurt suggested that Jean could do a telepathic version of a Danger Room session with Gabby, so she could still have a thrill without risk of getting hurt. Laura thought that might just make her even worse when the session ended.

Remy thought that a planned heist would lift anyone’s spirits, and he would have convinced Laura if the responsible adults (aka everyone but Remy and Jubilee) hadn’t stepped in to remind them that robbery was still definitely a crime. Forge suggested she take up a hobby like Lego or robotics (and even offered to teach her some basics). Storm offered to take Gabby flying. At one point, Rogue thought she might be able to temporarily give Gabby her powers by taking Laura’s and giving them to Gabby, but that felt cruel. Eventually, Laura had to leave to get back to Gabby, and she was still 0 for 10 on ideas to cheer up her little sister.

--

Stopping in a bakery in Hell’s Kitchen, Laura heard some crashes in an alleyway across the street. Dropping off her fresh pastries and her civilian clothes, Laura dashed to the source of the noise. A mugger had a young woman pinned to a wall. With a snikt, Wolverine let her presence known. But before the mugger could even look at her, an arrow smacked him in the head, knocking him to the ground. The woman ran away, grateful for once for New York’s endless supply of masked heroes.

Hopping down from his fire escape perch, the mystery hero revealed himself. “Woah! Wolverine? You handle muggers now? I mean I know Hell’s Kitchen already has Daredevil for the big name villains, but I figured the little guys were still fair game…” Hawkeye, aka Clint Barton, rambled as he retrieved his arrow from the mugger’s unconscious noggin.

Laura took off her mask, “I’m not a regular here. I was buying pastries for my little sister. Heard the noise from the scuffle. Sorry to uh, cramp your style, or whatever.”

Clint laughed, “Haha, wow! Wolverine shops at Daredevil’s Food Cake? And also doesn’t know how to use slang despite being a young person.”

“I was raised in a murder lab,” she replied with a roll of her eyes, “And the pastries are for my sister. They’re her favorite and I’ve got to cheer her up somehow.”

Clint recognized the concern in Laura’s voice and stopped his chuckling. Emotions weren’t exactly his strong suit, but he was always ok at least at being a friend. So he asked, “Why’s she need cheering up? Isn’t she a tween hero? Badger or something, right? Small-verine? What can bring a kid like that down?”

“Losing her powers, for one,” Laura said. She explained the situation to Hawkeye. He was a surprisingly good listener, at least, he looked like he was being a good listener. When she finished explaining, Clint scratched his head.

“Well, life-altering disabilities can definitely have that effect. Being deaf makes it hard sometimes. I’ll know I missed something important someone said. Movies are nearly impossible to watch, and closed captions are usually pretty awful. It can feel like the world is leaving you out. Like life’s a lunch table, and you can’t sit there,” he said, not really looking at Laura, but getting lost in his own memory somewhat. “She just needs time to adjust. And maybe some people who know what she’s going through? Even rare diseases have Facebook groups now, so it would probably be pretty easy to find some people for her to talk with.”

“What about you?” Laura asked, “Could you come talk to her? I know it isn’t the same thing, but I think you could help her more than me or any of the other X-Men right now.”

Clint was shocked. Him? Being helpful in a non-arrow related situation? But then he remembered what it was like, meeting other disabled people for the first time. Seeing them as a thriving community, a table he could sit at. How could he refuse?

--

Clint’s visit was a smashing success, and not just because he managed to knock over a lamp when retelling a story about disability rights activists. Gabby had some of her usual confidence back, and she was excited to meet other people living like her. Hawkeye had even promised to get her and Laura in touch with other disabled heroes, like Daredevil, Cypher, and Bucky Barnes.

Gabby wasn’t going to be exactly the same as she was before her powers went away, but no one really stays the same forever. Together, with her sister’s help, Gabby was able to find a new place for herself, not as Honey Badger, but as Gabby Kinney. She got involved with a children’s disability rights group, and was a hero, just not the kind she’d been before.

[ashafriesen]

Expert roundup

Christina Nicholson – Christina All Day 

Every ten-year-old girl is different and likes different things. Here, in my house, it’s arts and crafts. Any kind of creative gift like this is a gift that keeps on giving because it keeps her busy and is something she can use repeatedly.

Some of these gifts include colorful rubber bands and beads used to make bracelets, canvases with paints, activity books with crayons and markers, and even educational workbooks are a hit in my house.

In addition to creative gifts, games are popular because we have a big family to play games with. We also have some fun cooking and baking tools like kids measuring cups and spoons as well as cute aprons and chef’s hats to help in the kitchen.

Again, I think the best gifts are those that can be used to entertain, especially now during COVID-19 while we’re spending a lot of time at home.

Rebecca Smith – I Always Believed In Futures

I think the best gift for a ten-year-old girl right now has to be a book, especially something like Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World, a great look at women in our history or a kid’s classic series such as the Harry Potter series.

With the world ever-changing, it is important to help our kids learn about the world around us as it is right now and the history of great people who have been. I find that young children love books and as they get older, their appetite for reading increases.

As they become pre-teens, they develop even more of a thirst for learning, and nonfiction books such as the one I mentioned above seem increasingly popular, selling out across the world.

The reason I think this is a great gift is that it will last the test of time – she can constantly go back to it over and over again as the years progress. Better still, it isn’t made of plastic and doesn’t need batteries which a lot of toys and products for ten-year-olds do.

Far too often, a girl of that age will end up with a lot of toys that are either not age-appropriate or require an obscene amount of batteries or power.

Erica Schmidt Jabali – I Spy Fabulous

There are so many great gifts for tween girls, but they can all start to look the same. That’s why I created an empowering coloring book and journal for the tween girls in my life. You Are Enough has 55 pages of encouraging quotes, coloring pages, journal prompts, doodle pages, and more, to lift up the young girls in our life.

With powerful messages like, “You CAN do hard things!” and quotes from thought leaders like Michelle Obama, Amelia Earhart, Oprah, and many more, this is a journal designed to give them the boost and make them feel as strong, smart and beautiful as they are.

Plus, with plenty of space to dream, vent, doodle, and draw, this book will be the stress and anxiety reliever they need, too. Pair this journal with a pack of fun pens, coloring pencils or markers and let her creativity run wild.

Plus, you can grab the book and a pack of pencils for around $20, making it a very affordable option for the young girls in your life. It’s a jungle out there. Give your favorite girls the gift of a safe space to be built up and share their feelings.

Allie Edwards – The Perfect Pregnancy Plan

For any 10-year-old girl that is interested in animals and or nature a photograph loaded encyclopedia especially about her favorite animals is a wonderful gift.

It’s great to be able to get something that is educational but fun at the same time. There are so many beautiful encyclopedias about whatever topic your 10-year-old girl is interested in these days.

Just this year we got my daughter an encyclopedia of cat breeds, and encyclopedia of dog breeds, a bug-o-pedia, and one of rocks and minerals!

So I suppose you don’t even have to keep the topic to animals if there is a great encyclopedia available about another of her interests.

Because we don’t need them to look up information anymore, thanks to Google, encyclopedias have taken on a whole new life from the boring ones that we, as moms, can picture from our childhoods that took up an entire shelf in our houses and at the libraries.

Encyclopedias nowadays are focused on a particular interest, loaded with pictures, and put together in a very captivating way. Broaden your 10-year-old girls’ knowledge by fostering some of her interests.

It’s amazing how much more a kid will learn and study just on their own accord when it’s something they are passionate about.

Lauren Tingley – Simply-Well-Balanced

As a mother of a 10-year-old girl and child development professional, I know that it’s important for girls this age to feel confident, empowered, and strong.

As they enter their tween years they will face a lot of pressure from peers and from themselves. That’s why it’s important to build up their sense of self and help them to develop a strong identity as soon as possible.

I always recommend The Confidence Code for Girls as one of the best gifts you could give a 10-year-old girl. It’s a New York Times Bestseller.

It’s an interactive book with fun quizzes, comic strips, and stories from real girls that will encourage your daughter to become her most confident, amazing self.

Abbie Alter – Plano Moms

I have a 10-year-old daughter and recently gifted her a Kindle Unlimited subscription, so she can download books to her iPad (and read using the Kindle app).

A 6-month deal is currently less than $50, and $10 per month thereafter. They also offer a 30-day free trial which gives the chance to really try it out at no risk. The alternative to this type of subscription is to download each book separately (the cost adds up quickly!).

I have an app that checks what she is using and how much time is being spent on different activities online.

So, when YouTube Kids and Roblox time is restricted, she can read a number of different books without trips to the library to pick up books curbside.

There are thousands of amazing kids’ books. I spotted Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and so many more.

If your 10 years old prefers to listen, they also have a great selection of books that they can listen to on the Audible app too. This is helpful on long car journeys or road trips, where we can listen to books together to pass the time!

Melinda Ashley – Unfrazzled Mama

Ten-year-old girls are hard to buy gifts for because they’re in a period of such transition. They’re no longer interested in the “kiddish” toys that they may have enjoyed a year or two ago, but may not yet be mature enough for the products geared towards teenagers.

Though this age is tricky, you can never go wrong with a good book! Books make great gifts for a preteen girl because it doesn’t matter if they’re totally into hair and makeup or still love to play with their stuffed animals.

There’s a good book out there for everyone. I love to give books as gifts because they provide hours of screen-free entertainment, and they are relatively clutter-free as well!

My top pick for a gift for a ten-year-old girl would be a book subscription from a company like My First Reading Club or Reading Bug Books. What’s better than new, age-appropriate books arriving in the mail every month?

The great news for the gift-giver is that you don’t have to try to figure out what books she enjoys. The curators of these subscription boxes know what kids like and do the work for you. With fantastic books arriving each month, it’s practically a guarantee that the recipient of your gift will find at least one book or two that she loves!

A book subscription is a gift a young girl can look forward to receiving and enjoy for months to come!

Barbara Nevers – NeoLittle

Ten-year-old girls are on the stage of great curiosity. They can understand a lot of things already, and are keen to discover everything that they can see. They are also starting to play a lot with other children and are learning how to adapt to different kinds of environments.

As for me, here are three of the best gifts that I would like my ten-year-old girl to receive: 1. Walkie Chalk Stand Up Sidewalk Chalk Holder. This is great for outdoor activities. They can draw a lot of things on the road, and play with their playmates outside.

This chalk holder will also make you join them and not worry about back pains. This can also develop their physical and writing skills while playing.

2. Books about Family and Friendship. Since they can understand most of the things happening around them during this age, you can start giving them good books to read. This can help them to acknowledge and appreciate different relationships in her life.

3. A set of Coloring Materials / Gel pens For them, these will be one of the coolest gifts ever! They will get giddy and excited about coloring, drawing, and sketching. This will help them develop their creativity and express their feelings through art.

Jo Middleton – Slummy Single Mummy

I’ve actually just bought a birthday gift for my niece – ‘Escape This Book! Titantic’

It’s a bit like a classic choose your own adventure book, which I absolutely used to love as a child, with a bit of escape room thrown in!

As well as just solving puzzles, there are interactive activities to complete like doodling and drawing elements, and it would be perfect for taking on trips or holidays as it’s so lightweight and doesn’t need any extra pieces or batteries.

I’m a sucker for a mystery myself and I love that I can nurture this same love in her.

Claire Thrifty – Thrify Parent

Our gift idea for a ten-year-old girl is SmartLab Squishy Human Body Model.

It’s not your standard ‘girls toy’ but for those girls that don’t want to be a Princess or dress like a unicorn (not that there’s anything wrong with unicorns or princesses!), this is great.

It’s fun, educational, affordable and it teaches them something (the kids’ parents will love you!).

No batteries required, this 12″ model comes with 21 removable bones and organs, that then have to be reassembled in the correct order.

It’s a terrific gift for a budding young doctor or surgeon – or just a girl that loves science, biology, and finding out how stuff works!

Evan Porter – Dad Fixes Everything

We desperately need to encourage more young girls to get involved in STEM fields. In my opinion, the best gift for a 10-year-old girl would be one that helps her learn skills like coding, engineering, or science.

I love play robots like the Wonder Workshop Dash Robot that allow kids to program their own commands and functions.

It comes ready to use right out of the box and girls can work their way up using different apps to enable basic behaviors all the way up to more advanced sequences, depending on their age and how quickly they pick up the programming language.

This robot (and others like it) are used in schools all over the country to introduce kids to science, engineering, and coding — and they work so well because they’re actually fun to play with!

This toy comes with a rechargeable internal battery so kids can use it again and again and again.

It’s an awesome first step for girls that will give them the confidence to keep pursuing STEM as they grow into middle school and beyond.

Balint Horvath – Project Father

Well, as you know, just a few days ago a historic event happened: SpaceX and NASA launched astronauts to the ISS. This is a major event that sparks the curiosity of not only many adults, but also children. It’s easy to see that almost all children are fascinated by the night sky and at some point, many of us wanted to be astronauts.

It’s a shame that at some point during a girl’s development, her attention shifts to activities that are supposed to be reserved for girls only. They play with dolls, they want to help mummy cook. That’s all nice, but what about science or engineering fields where there’s a severe lack of women?

My recommendation for a gift for a 10-year-old girl is this toy. It includes 4 women astronauts, showing girls that their dreams can become true even if they are girls. Not only boys can dream big. Needless to say, since it’s a LEGO toy, it offers other benefits, too which boosts kids’ creativity.

Leisa Papa – Little Kids Business

If you have a ten-year-old girl’s birthday on the horizon you will know that every girl is different however most have one thing in common and that is the love of creating music.

What better way to give the gift of music and enable your child to create learn along the way. Smartivity Mechanical Xylofun Music Fun – Let’s make music is one of the coolest and latest S.T.E.M toys.

Affordably priced, with learning based on a D.I.Y. kit, your child can create their very own music for every ear. This gift includes all the elements required to build a music machine, including pegs for arranging and rearranging notes.

Once assembled, children learn about music notations and can compose their own tunes by placing the pegs in different slots.

For those a little nervous, there are easy to read instructions for composing two simple tunes to allow children to explore the magical and wonderful world of music.

For Ages: 8 years and older, this gift will take approximately 90 min to build with no batteries required. With the ability to develop unlimited Analytical, Creative, Motor and Practical Skills, children will love to actually compose their own music tunes on something they made. Show and tell is going to be exciting.

Denise Lisi DeRosa – Cyber Sensible

Get Girls Tech!

More and more our lives, relationships, knowledge, education, and careers are centered around technological literacy so I say, get the girls some tech!

My suggestion is to start with video games. This may seem counter-intuitive given that much of our discussions about technology center around screen time overuse concerns and gaming addiction.

So, why am I suggesting video games? Studies have shown that girls’ interest in STEM diminishes due to the lack of digital products marketed specifically to girls.

We need to make sure that girls are provided the same on-ramps to the tech industry as boys. This starts with games that are created with girls in mind.

For 10-year-old girls, I suggest the Nintendo Switch. There are a number of games that can be played together with family or friends and several titles are geared toward girls.

In addition to popular games like Animal Crossing, Minecraft, Super Mario Party or Pokemon are titles like Just Dance, The Legend of Zelda, Gris, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and Ori and the Blind Forest.

If we encourage girls to enjoy tech when they are young, maybe they’ll become the powerful tech leaders of tomorrow.

Mikaela Walker – Orlando Parents Magazine

The best gift for a 10-year-old girl is a Nintendo Switch Lite (my daughter will be getting one for her birthday). At this age, girls seem to have grown out of pretty much everything except electronics, so a Nintendo Switch Lite is a perfect choice, as she will still be delighted with it, but it is much cheaper than a tablet or a computer.

She will be able to take the Switch Lite in the car with her on longer car rides or on road trips. This will keep her fully occupied so that the travel time will fly by. Parents will no longer hear the dreaded words of I am bored and how much longer until we get there.

The Nintendo Switch Lite is also perfect for taking along on plane rides, as it is compact and won’t take up too much space in a carry-on. Your daughter won’t care how long your layover is or how the flight takes as she will have something to entertain her.

Claudie Pomares – Mendability

The best gift for today’s ten-year-old girl is a smartphone without a plan but with Facetime style apps.

Ten-year-olds do not yet have a clear sense of identity and they define their universe by parents’ approval and peers’ acceptance. They are not anxious to grow older and mimic the look and behaviour of adults which is still too confusing and beyond their psychological horizons.

They surrender to cravings, only exercise if their lives depend on it and are happy in their temporary cocoon.

The magic of childhood which gave life to dolls and plush toys is fading rapidly and they rarely find interest in what demands steady focus or effort.

The first feminine trait to blossom in ten-year-olds is the imperative need for unending chatter with other little girls, nose-to-nose, joy to joy, jumping from whispers to shouts in an adorable frenzie.

Little girls of today only envy one thing their older siblings possess: a phone which opens wide the wonders of timeless and location free conversations with all their best friends.

They will become egocentric teenagers soon enough. It is best to provide a phone early, at an age when they still can be taught about the safe use of the inernet.

Christina Cay – C’MON MAMA

For a 10-year-old girl, the best gift is one that gives her a sense of autonomy. Ten years old is a key age in terms of overflowing curiosity & the desire for some level of independence.

Her own digital camera is one of the best gifts you could give a 10-year-old girl! It is something she can easily learn to operate on her own, it fosters exploration, and it will enable her to share how she sees the world with others.

A digital camera is also a “nice” gift that will make her feel special & important, and a gift like that will encourage her to take care of her things. She will also learn to make sure it is charged before she intends to use it, which further teaches personal responsibility.

But the bottom line is—she’ll love it.

Bonus points if you throw in a tiny photo printer she can keep in her room & operate independently so she can print her favorite snapshots on demand. We used to decorate our walls with posters—how about decorating her wall with pictures & portraits she took herself?

We often say if only we could see the world through a child’s eyes. Let’s give them the tools to show us.

Jane Wilson – Modern Housewives

In my opinion, the perfect gift for a 10 years old girl, is an Instax Mini 9 Instant Camera. It’s a great gift because it’s cool and classical at the same time.

It’s not a digital camera, but the pictures get developed instantly, which is pretty awesome and impressive.

She can run around, make memories, and get cool images she can later on present as cards or just glue them to a notebook or anything else she likes.

These cameras also come in many nice and vivid colours, like flamingo pink or lime green. You can see the product here.

Tracy Murdock – Your Twin Mom

A camera would be a fun gift for a ten-year-old girl.

She could take photos of nature or family. She could create a collage of pictures. She could add pictures to a journal to create a story.

She could set up a photoshoot with her favorite dolls dressed up. She could create a keepsake journal of fun memories with her family that summer.

She could take pictures of animals she observes and adds them to a science journal with animal reports.

Lauren Schmitz – The Simple Homeschooler

We are actually celebrating a birthday for my oldest daughter very soon, so I have been doing a lot of gift shopping lately.

I think the best gift you can give a 10-year-old girl is lego sets. They are an incredible screen-free way to get your girl thinking, building, and creating!

There are endless options to pick from – your daughter could build a palace, a treehouse, or a rocket ship! She will be amazed at what she is capable of building by just following the step by step directions.

Once she has put her lego set together, she can display it – or more likely, take it apart and make something completely different!

She is challenging herself, learning so much, taking pride in her work, and having so much fun!

Definitely a win-win!

Dave Pedley – Your Cub

Finding good gifts for a 10-year-old girl can be challenging, it’s that in-between stage where they’re “leaving” childhood and entering the tricky pre-teen years.

They’re probably seeking more independence than usual and forming their specific tastes and styles.

Personally, I love crafting kits. These kits come in a variety of ways and you’re sure to find an option suitable for the girl you’re gifting… it’s a great activity that doesn’t involve the screen, she can get her friends involved and you have an end-product that serves as a great memory.

Dhanya – Parenting Passage

I believe that gifts for children should have an educational aspect as well as being fun. The best gifts are those that allow children to apply knowledge learned in school to real-life activities that they enjoy.

At 10 years old a child can be enrolled into a PADI Scuba Diver certification course. At school, they will be starting to learn about biology, physics, and the environment. During the course, they will cover all these subjects and put them into practical use in the water hopefully seeing Nemo at the same time!

The course has 3 parts:

– 3 Knowledge Development Sections (eLearning, independent study or in a classroom) to understand basic principles of scuba diving

– 3 Confined Water Dives to learn basic scuba skills which can be done in the pool or in swimming pool-like conditions

– 2 Open Water Dives to use the skills and knowledge to learn and explore the underwater world.

The Open Water dives can be completed on holiday in warm water within a year of passing the first 2 parts. This really is a sport that keeps families holidaying and taking breaks together for years and spans generations.

Shannon Serpette – Mom Loves Best

I’d recommend a Razor A Kick scooter for a 10-year-old girl. My daughter got so much use out of her scooter at that age. Whenever she’d want to go to a friend’s house, she’d hop on her scooter and get there faster.

You don’t need any batteries for this product, and there are several color choices. If your daughter doesn’t like pink, she can opt for other less-girly colors.

They are much more affordable than bikes, less intimidating for kids to try, and they take up far less storage room.

Also, it’s a gift that will help kids stay active and keep those unwanted pounds off. It’s a good exercise for kids, and it can help teach your child how to ride a bike when all else fails.

After a year of riding her scooter, my daughter, who had never learned how to ride a bike, hopped right on a bike and was able to ride it with no problems.

Katie Green – Green Active Family

To me, the best gift for a pre-teen girl is one that’s going to get her away from screen time and outside to enjoy sunny, active days.

To this end, I’d recommend an age-appropriate kick scooter that’s going to grow with her throughout her teen years, too. Scooters are a great gift because they can be used independently or with friends.

They’re a good option for encouraging an active lifestyle on days when friends aren’t around to hang out. She’ll also be able to scoot with friends, either by sharing her own scooter or with friends who have their own.

Scooters are also super practical for getting to and from school and after school activities – doubly so for parents who might be concerned about germs spreading via a school bus. Just double-check your school’s policy before bringing the scooter for the first time.

When shopping for a scooter for a 10-year-old-girl, look for a model that’s going to last a few years, at minimum. Most pre-teen and teen scooters will be suitable, in terms of weight and height, so look for something with good reviews in relation to the price point.

Personally, I like Lascoota’s teen scooter. Despite the name, it’s suitable from ages 8 and up. The handlebar is height adjustable, so this scooter should last well into her teen years.

Joel Flynn – Gentleman Zone

Girls are very tricky at this age. Dolls and construction playsets won’t work on your typical 10-year old.

In their heads, they see themselves as “almost teens” and you just can’t argue with their logic.

If the kid is into sports, your best bet is going to be a skateboard or bicycle.

If she is on the artistic side, a secret diary or a fancy fashion coloring book is the way to go.

Also, a pet is always a good alternative – there isn’t a kid on this planet that won’t be happy with a hamster.

Whatever you do, DO NOT buy her a stuffed animal – you won’t hear the end of it.

Scarlet Paolicchi – Family Focus Blog

I would say that the best gift for a ten-year-old is one that encourages her interests. This lets her know that you pay attention to what interests her and that you value her thoughts and feelings.

So if you notice she is quite the reader, some nicely bound copies of books in the genre she enjoys would be perfect.

If you notice she is a writer, a pretty journal and some fancy calligraphy pens may be just the ticket.

If you have a budding scientist on your hands, a telescope, chemistry kit, or crystal making kit may be perfect for her.

If you don’t know the girl well enough to know her interests, I would suggest a craft kit a great all-purpose gift. Crafts are great for encouraging creativity and can be personalized by the girl to suit her style.

They also involve a lot of elements that are great for children, following directions, often learning new skills, problem-solving, and more.

There are all kinds of fun craft kits available or you could even create your own if you have a particular ability you’d like to share such as jewelry making, crocheting, etc. A craft gift is a great experience gift that they then get to keep as decoration.

Pinky McKay

I bought my granddaughter a sewing machine for her 10th birthday, she had been sewing with me when she visited, asking to sew every time she stayed overnight.

She had started making dolls clothes, scrunchies, a reusable bag and a baby carrier for her dolls, we have drafted patterns together, she has learned how to create and follow a pattern, use various seams eg french seams when she made her doll’s pants.

A sewing machine is a vehicle to encourage creativity, confidence, self-sufficiency, and self-esteem as the ten-year-old learns useful, practical life skills.

Erum Zehra – Muslim Moms

I recommend these card games as gifts for ten-year-old girls.

Mad Dragon: An Anger Control Card Game

Young children often have trouble understanding their feelings and emotions and what causes them. This makes it harder for parents to understand and deal with them as well. These card games help children understand emotions, express them and communicate them while playing a game with their parents.

This results in a therapeutic experience for both the parent and the child and they are able to understand each other better and communicate better.

Helen Wills – Actually Mummy

I would say every 10-year-old girl loves glitter! And as girls around this age are starting to become interested in making their own fashion statements, experimenting with face glitter and gems is a wonderful way to let them unleash their creativity.

These Gypsy Shrine face jewels are fun for tween girls who want to dress up for a party, or for creating ‘looks’ on a sleepover. They can go for the full face or hair-parting glitter look, or just use a crystal teardrop for a bit of dazzle. They stick really well and come off with normal makeup remover.

I don’t think parents should be worried about their daughters experimenting with makeup at this age either.

My own daughter became very interested in makeup techniques from YouTube tutorials and started appearing with beautiful eye makeup that was totally beyond her years.

I worried for a long time, but eventually, she stopped, and now at 15 goes for a very natural look.

My point is, it’s just creativity – basically colouring and craft for older girls! Let them enjoy creating fun looks for parties with glitter and gems, and they will love you for it.

Samantha Radford – Evidence-based Mommy

My daughter loves figures from the Schleich Bayala set. These beautifully crafted figurines include elves, unicorns, mermaids… everything from a little girl’s fantasy world! These realistic toys contain a lot of detail, making them super fun to play with.

The Glittering Flower House (with a stable for the horses) comes with a tiny kitchen, a dining area, and more. In addition, you can buy several separately sold unicorns, elves, and dragons to build a whole universe.

The best part about the Bayala set is how it inspires imaginative play. I love listening to the adventures my daughters come up with while playing with their unicorns and fairies. The girls have the fairies cook, ride their unicorns (each fairy and unicorn pair have magnets to make sure they stay together during play).

Schleich toys are beautifully made. My daughter knows that these figures are special toys and takes care of them.

And if your daughter isn’t into unicorns and fantasy, Schleich also offers other playsets – including all sorts of animals, dinosaurs, horse stable sets… There are a lot of options out of this company.

In a world where most toys are electronic and we’re pushing kids to grow up faster and faster, I love that these toys don’t require batteries, just creativity. They’re a great way to get your kids playing and actually enjoying childhood.

Christopher Byrne – The Toy Guy

Tie-Dye is back in a big way. Major designers like Prada and Burberry have been showing the treatment on the runway.

It was featured in a huge Project Runway episode earlier this year.

10-Year-Old girls are aware of fashion in the larger culture, and, of course, want to be cool.

Highly recommended for the opportunity for creativity and self-expression, plus the fun of wearing (or sharing) something you made yourself.

Plus, this combines creativity, fashion, sharing, and social play (Probably just within the family for now.)

This is very easy to use. Tie up the fabric (like a t-shirt up to a Men’s L) put it in the spherical container. Mix up the dyes. Turn the crank, and squirt in the dyes from the one-direction openings, which means NO MESS.

Easy to rinse, wash, wear, and share.

You can make multiple designs with the materials provided, and the instructions show kids how to tie up their fabrics for optimal results.

Plus, it’s a great value at $19.99.

The only drawback: It’s selling out as fast as they can get it in stock! Truly one of the hottest toys for the first half of the year.

Oh, and boys can play, too!

Available at Target, Walmart, and Amazon.

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Expert roundup

Christina Nicholson – Christina All Day 

Every ten-year-old girl is different and likes different things. Here, in my house, it’s arts and crafts. Any kind of creative gift like this is a gift that keeps on giving because it keeps her busy and is something she can use repeatedly.

Some of these gifts include colorful rubber bands and beads used to make bracelets, canvases with paints, activity books with crayons and markers, and even educational workbooks are a hit in my house.

In addition to creative gifts, games are popular because we have a big family to play games with. We also have some fun cooking and baking tools like kids measuring cups and spoons as well as cute aprons and chef’s hats to help in the kitchen.

Again, I think the best gifts are those that can be used to entertain, especially now during COVID-19 while we’re spending a lot of time at home.

Rebecca Smith – I Always Believed In Futures

I think the best gift for a ten-year-old girl right now has to be a book, especially something like Fantastically Great Women Who Changed The World, a great look at women in our history or a kid’s classic series such as the Harry Potter series.

With the world ever-changing, it is important to help our kids learn about the world around us as it is right now and the history of great people who have been. I find that young children love books and as they get older, their appetite for reading increases.

As they become pre-teens, they develop even more of a thirst for learning, and nonfiction books such as the one I mentioned above seem increasingly popular, selling out across the world.

The reason I think this is a great gift is that it will last the test of time – she can constantly go back to it over and over again as the years progress. Better still, it isn’t made of plastic and doesn’t need batteries which a lot of toys and products for ten-year-olds do.

Far too often, a girl of that age will end up with a lot of toys that are either not age-appropriate or require an obscene amount of batteries or power.

Erica Schmidt Jabali – I Spy Fabulous

There are so many great gifts for tween girls, but they can all start to look the same. That’s why I created an empowering coloring book and journal for the tween girls in my life. You Are Enough has 55 pages of encouraging quotes, coloring pages, journal prompts, doodle pages, and more, to lift up the young girls in our life.

With powerful messages like, “You CAN do hard things!” and quotes from thought leaders like Michelle Obama, Amelia Earhart, Oprah, and many more, this is a journal designed to give them the boost and make them feel as strong, smart and beautiful as they are.

Plus, with plenty of space to dream, vent, doodle, and draw, this book will be the stress and anxiety reliever they need, too. Pair this journal with a pack of fun pens, coloring pencils or markers and let her creativity run wild.

Plus, you can grab the book and a pack of pencils for around $20, making it a very affordable option for the young girls in your life. It’s a jungle out there. Give your favorite girls the gift of a safe space to be built up and share their feelings.

Allie Edwards – The Perfect Pregnancy Plan

For any 10-year-old girl that is interested in animals and or nature a photograph loaded encyclopedia especially about her favorite animals is a wonderful gift.

It’s great to be able to get something that is educational but fun at the same time. There are so many beautiful encyclopedias about whatever topic your 10-year-old girl is interested in these days.

Just this year we got my daughter an encyclopedia of cat breeds, and encyclopedia of dog breeds, a bug-o-pedia, and one of rocks and minerals!

So I suppose you don’t even have to keep the topic to animals if there is a great encyclopedia available about another of her interests.

Because we don’t need them to look up information anymore, thanks to Google, encyclopedias have taken on a whole new life from the boring ones that we, as moms, can picture from our childhoods that took up an entire shelf in our houses and at the libraries.

Encyclopedias nowadays are focused on a particular interest, loaded with pictures, and put together in a very captivating way. Broaden your 10-year-old girls’ knowledge by fostering some of her interests.

It’s amazing how much more a kid will learn and study just on their own accord when it’s something they are passionate about.

Lauren Tingley – Simply-Well-Balanced

As a mother of a 10-year-old girl and child development professional, I know that it’s important for girls this age to feel confident, empowered, and strong.

As they enter their tween years they will face a lot of pressure from peers and from themselves. That’s why it’s important to build up their sense of self and help them to develop a strong identity as soon as possible.

I always recommend The Confidence Code for Girls as one of the best gifts you could give a 10-year-old girl. It’s a New York Times Bestseller.

It’s an interactive book with fun quizzes, comic strips, and stories from real girls that will encourage your daughter to become her most confident, amazing self.

Abbie Alter – Plano Moms

I have a 10-year-old daughter and recently gifted her a Kindle Unlimited subscription, so she can download books to her iPad (and read using the Kindle app).

A 6-month deal is currently less than $50, and $10 per month thereafter. They also offer a 30-day free trial which gives the chance to really try it out at no risk. The alternative to this type of subscription is to download each book separately (the cost adds up quickly!).

I have an app that checks what she is using and how much time is being spent on different activities online.

So, when YouTube Kids and Roblox time is restricted, she can read a number of different books without trips to the library to pick up books curbside.

There are thousands of amazing kids’ books. I spotted Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, Fantastic Beasts and so many more.

If your 10 years old prefers to listen, they also have a great selection of books that they can listen to on the Audible app too. This is helpful on long car journeys or road trips, where we can listen to books together to pass the time!

Melinda Ashley – Unfrazzled Mama

Ten-year-old girls are hard to buy gifts for because they’re in a period of such transition. They’re no longer interested in the “kiddish” toys that they may have enjoyed a year or two ago, but may not yet be mature enough for the products geared towards teenagers.

Though this age is tricky, you can never go wrong with a good book! Books make great gifts for a preteen girl because it doesn’t matter if they’re totally into hair and makeup or still love to play with their stuffed animals.

There’s a good book out there for everyone. I love to give books as gifts because they provide hours of screen-free entertainment, and they are relatively clutter-free as well!

My top pick for a gift for a ten-year-old girl would be a book subscription from a company like My First Reading Club or Reading Bug Books. What’s better than new, age-appropriate books arriving in the mail every month?

The great news for the gift-giver is that you don’t have to try to figure out what books she enjoys. The curators of these subscription boxes know what kids like and do the work for you. With fantastic books arriving each month, it’s practically a guarantee that the recipient of your gift will find at least one book or two that she loves!

A book subscription is a gift a young girl can look forward to receiving and enjoy for months to come!

Barbara Nevers – NeoLittle

Ten-year-old girls are on the stage of great curiosity. They can understand a lot of things already, and are keen to discover everything that they can see. They are also starting to play a lot with other children and are learning how to adapt to different kinds of environments.

As for me, here are three of the best gifts that I would like my ten-year-old girl to receive: 1. Walkie Chalk Stand Up Sidewalk Chalk Holder. This is great for outdoor activities. They can draw a lot of things on the road, and play with their playmates outside.

This chalk holder will also make you join them and not worry about back pains. This can also develop their physical and writing skills while playing.

2. Books about Family and Friendship. Since they can understand most of the things happening around them during this age, you can start giving them good books to read. This can help them to acknowledge and appreciate different relationships in her life.

3. A set of Coloring Materials / Gel pens For them, these will be one of the coolest gifts ever! They will get giddy and excited about coloring, drawing, and sketching. This will help them develop their creativity and express their feelings through art.

Jo Middleton – Slummy Single Mummy

I’ve actually just bought a birthday gift for my niece – ‘Escape This Book! Titantic’

It’s a bit like a classic choose your own adventure book, which I absolutely used to love as a child, with a bit of escape room thrown in!

As well as just solving puzzles, there are interactive activities to complete like doodling and drawing elements, and it would be perfect for taking on trips or holidays as it’s so lightweight and doesn’t need any extra pieces or batteries.

I’m a sucker for a mystery myself and I love that I can nurture this same love in her.

Claire Thrifty – Thrify Parent

Our gift idea for a ten-year-old girl is SmartLab Squishy Human Body Model.

It’s not your standard ‘girls toy’ but for those girls that don’t want to be a Princess or dress like a unicorn (not that there’s anything wrong with unicorns or princesses!), this is great.

It’s fun, educational, affordable and it teaches them something (the kids’ parents will love you!).

No batteries required, this 12″ model comes with 21 removable bones and organs, that then have to be reassembled in the correct order.

It’s a terrific gift for a budding young doctor or surgeon – or just a girl that loves science, biology, and finding out how stuff works!

Evan Porter – Dad Fixes Everything

We desperately need to encourage more young girls to get involved in STEM fields. In my opinion, the best gift for a 10-year-old girl would be one that helps her learn skills like coding, engineering, or science.

I love play robots like the Wonder Workshop Dash Robot that allow kids to program their own commands and functions.

It comes ready to use right out of the box and girls can work their way up using different apps to enable basic behaviors all the way up to more advanced sequences, depending on their age and how quickly they pick up the programming language.

This robot (and others like it) are used in schools all over the country to introduce kids to science, engineering, and coding — and they work so well because they’re actually fun to play with!

This toy comes with a rechargeable internal battery so kids can use it again and again and again.

It’s an awesome first step for girls that will give them the confidence to keep pursuing STEM as they grow into middle school and beyond.

Balint Horvath – Project Father

Well, as you know, just a few days ago a historic event happened: SpaceX and NASA launched astronauts to the ISS. This is a major event that sparks the curiosity of not only many adults, but also children. It’s easy to see that almost all children are fascinated by the night sky and at some point, many of us wanted to be astronauts.

It’s a shame that at some point during a girl’s development, her attention shifts to activities that are supposed to be reserved for girls only. They play with dolls, they want to help mummy cook. That’s all nice, but what about science or engineering fields where there’s a severe lack of women?

My recommendation for a gift for a 10-year-old girl is this toy. It includes 4 women astronauts, showing girls that their dreams can become true even if they are girls. Not only boys can dream big. Needless to say, since it’s a LEGO toy, it offers other benefits, too which boosts kids’ creativity.

Leisa Papa – Little Kids Business

If you have a ten-year-old girl’s birthday on the horizon you will know that every girl is different however most have one thing in common and that is the love of creating music.

What better way to give the gift of music and enable your child to create learn along the way. Smartivity Mechanical Xylofun Music Fun – Let’s make music is one of the coolest and latest S.T.E.M toys.

Affordably priced, with learning based on a D.I.Y. kit, your child can create their very own music for every ear. This gift includes all the elements required to build a music machine, including pegs for arranging and rearranging notes.

Once assembled, children learn about music notations and can compose their own tunes by placing the pegs in different slots.

For those a little nervous, there are easy to read instructions for composing two simple tunes to allow children to explore the magical and wonderful world of music.

For Ages: 8 years and older, this gift will take approximately 90 min to build with no batteries required. With the ability to develop unlimited Analytical, Creative, Motor and Practical Skills, children will love to actually compose their own music tunes on something they made. Show and tell is going to be exciting.

Denise Lisi DeRosa – Cyber Sensible

Get Girls Tech!

More and more our lives, relationships, knowledge, education, and careers are centered around technological literacy so I say, get the girls some tech!

My suggestion is to start with video games. This may seem counter-intuitive given that much of our discussions about technology center around screen time overuse concerns and gaming addiction.

So, why am I suggesting video games? Studies have shown that girls’ interest in STEM diminishes due to the lack of digital products marketed specifically to girls.

We need to make sure that girls are provided the same on-ramps to the tech industry as boys. This starts with games that are created with girls in mind.

For 10-year-old girls, I suggest the Nintendo Switch. There are a number of games that can be played together with family or friends and several titles are geared toward girls.

In addition to popular games like Animal Crossing, Minecraft, Super Mario Party or Pokemon are titles like Just Dance, The Legend of Zelda, Gris, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, and Ori and the Blind Forest.

If we encourage girls to enjoy tech when they are young, maybe they’ll become the powerful tech leaders of tomorrow.

Mikaela Walker – Orlando Parents Magazine

The best gift for a 10-year-old girl is a Nintendo Switch Lite (my daughter will be getting one for her birthday). At this age, girls seem to have grown out of pretty much everything except electronics, so a Nintendo Switch Lite is a perfect choice, as she will still be delighted with it, but it is much cheaper than a tablet or a computer.

She will be able to take the Switch Lite in the car with her on longer car rides or on road trips. This will keep her fully occupied so that the travel time will fly by. Parents will no longer hear the dreaded words of I am bored and how much longer until we get there.

The Nintendo Switch Lite is also perfect for taking along on plane rides, as it is compact and won’t take up too much space in a carry-on. Your daughter won’t care how long your layover is or how the flight takes as she will have something to entertain her.

Claudie Pomares – Mendability

The best gift for today’s ten-year-old girl is a smartphone without a plan but with Facetime style apps.

Ten-year-olds do not yet have a clear sense of identity and they define their universe by parents’ approval and peers’ acceptance. They are not anxious to grow older and mimic the look and behaviour of adults which is still too confusing and beyond their psychological horizons.

They surrender to cravings, only exercise if their lives depend on it and are happy in their temporary cocoon.

The magic of childhood which gave life to dolls and plush toys is fading rapidly and they rarely find interest in what demands steady focus or effort.

The first feminine trait to blossom in ten-year-olds is the imperative need for unending chatter with other little girls, nose-to-nose, joy to joy, jumping from whispers to shouts in an adorable frenzie.

Little girls of today only envy one thing their older siblings possess: a phone which opens wide the wonders of timeless and location free conversations with all their best friends.

They will become egocentric teenagers soon enough. It is best to provide a phone early, at an age when they still can be taught about the safe use of the inernet.

Christina Cay – C’MON MAMA

For a 10-year-old girl, the best gift is one that gives her a sense of autonomy. Ten years old is a key age in terms of overflowing curiosity & the desire for some level of independence.

Her own digital camera is one of the best gifts you could give a 10-year-old girl! It is something she can easily learn to operate on her own, it fosters exploration, and it will enable her to share how she sees the world with others.

A digital camera is also a “nice” gift that will make her feel special & important, and a gift like that will encourage her to take care of her things. She will also learn to make sure it is charged before she intends to use it, which further teaches personal responsibility.

But the bottom line is—she’ll love it.

Bonus points if you throw in a tiny photo printer she can keep in her room & operate independently so she can print her favorite snapshots on demand. We used to decorate our walls with posters—how about decorating her wall with pictures & portraits she took herself?

We often say if only we could see the world through a child’s eyes. Let’s give them the tools to show us.

Jane Wilson – Modern Housewives

In my opinion, the perfect gift for a 10 years old girl, is an Instax Mini 9 Instant Camera. It’s a great gift because it’s cool and classical at the same time.

It’s not a digital camera, but the pictures get developed instantly, which is pretty awesome and impressive.

She can run around, make memories, and get cool images she can later on present as cards or just glue them to a notebook or anything else she likes.

These cameras also come in many nice and vivid colours, like flamingo pink or lime green. You can see the product here.

Tracy Murdock – Your Twin Mom

A camera would be a fun gift for a ten-year-old girl.

She could take photos of nature or family. She could create a collage of pictures. She could add pictures to a journal to create a story.

She could set up a photoshoot with her favorite dolls dressed up. She could create a keepsake journal of fun memories with her family that summer.

She could take pictures of animals she observes and adds them to a science journal with animal reports.

Lauren Schmitz – The Simple Homeschooler

We are actually celebrating a birthday for my oldest daughter very soon, so I have been doing a lot of gift shopping lately.

I think the best gift you can give a 10-year-old girl is lego sets. They are an incredible screen-free way to get your girl thinking, building, and creating!

There are endless options to pick from – your daughter could build a palace, a treehouse, or a rocket ship! She will be amazed at what she is capable of building by just following the step by step directions.

Once she has put her lego set together, she can display it – or more likely, take it apart and make something completely different!

She is challenging herself, learning so much, taking pride in her work, and having so much fun!

Definitely a win-win!

Dave Pedley – Your Cub

Finding good gifts for a 10-year-old girl can be challenging, it’s that in-between stage where they’re “leaving” childhood and entering the tricky pre-teen years.

They’re probably seeking more independence than usual and forming their specific tastes and styles.

Personally, I love crafting kits. These kits come in a variety of ways and you’re sure to find an option suitable for the girl you’re gifting… it’s a great activity that doesn’t involve the screen, she can get her friends involved and you have an end-product that serves as a great memory.

Dhanya – Parenting Passage

I believe that gifts for children should have an educational aspect as well as being fun. The best gifts are those that allow children to apply knowledge learned in school to real-life activities that they enjoy.

At 10 years old a child can be enrolled into a PADI Scuba Diver certification course. At school, they will be starting to learn about biology, physics, and the environment. During the course, they will cover all these subjects and put them into practical use in the water hopefully seeing Nemo at the same time!

The course has 3 parts:

– 3 Knowledge Development Sections (eLearning, independent study or in a classroom) to understand basic principles of scuba diving

– 3 Confined Water Dives to learn basic scuba skills which can be done in the pool or in swimming pool-like conditions

– 2 Open Water Dives to use the skills and knowledge to learn and explore the underwater world.

The Open Water dives can be completed on holiday in warm water within a year of passing the first 2 parts. This really is a sport that keeps families holidaying and taking breaks together for years and spans generations.

Shannon Serpette – Mom Loves Best

I’d recommend a Razor A Kick scooter for a 10-year-old girl. My daughter got so much use out of her scooter at that age. Whenever she’d want to go to a friend’s house, she’d hop on her scooter and get there faster.

You don’t need any batteries for this product, and there are several color choices. If your daughter doesn’t like pink, she can opt for other less-girly colors.

They are much more affordable than bikes, less intimidating for kids to try, and they take up far less storage room.

Also, it’s a gift that will help kids stay active and keep those unwanted pounds off. It’s a good exercise for kids, and it can help teach your child how to ride a bike when all else fails.

After a year of riding her scooter, my daughter, who had never learned how to ride a bike, hopped right on a bike and was able to ride it with no problems.

Katie Green – Green Active Family

To me, the best gift for a pre-teen girl is one that’s going to get her away from screen time and outside to enjoy sunny, active days.

To this end, I’d recommend an age-appropriate kick scooter that’s going to grow with her throughout her teen years, too. Scooters are a great gift because they can be used independently or with friends.

They’re a good option for encouraging an active lifestyle on days when friends aren’t around to hang out. She’ll also be able to scoot with friends, either by sharing her own scooter or with friends who have their own.

Scooters are also super practical for getting to and from school and after school activities – doubly so for parents who might be concerned about germs spreading via a school bus. Just double-check your school’s policy before bringing the scooter for the first time.

When shopping for a scooter for a 10-year-old-girl, look for a model that’s going to last a few years, at minimum. Most pre-teen and teen scooters will be suitable, in terms of weight and height, so look for something with good reviews in relation to the price point.

Personally, I like Lascoota’s teen scooter. Despite the name, it’s suitable from ages 8 and up. The handlebar is height adjustable, so this scooter should last well into her teen years.

Joel Flynn – Gentleman Zone

Girls are very tricky at this age. Dolls and construction playsets won’t work on your typical 10-year old.

In their heads, they see themselves as “almost teens” and you just can’t argue with their logic.

If the kid is into sports, your best bet is going to be a skateboard or bicycle.

If she is on the artistic side, a secret diary or a fancy fashion coloring book is the way to go.

Also, a pet is always a good alternative – there isn’t a kid on this planet that won’t be happy with a hamster.

Whatever you do, DO NOT buy her a stuffed animal – you won’t hear the end of it.

Scarlet Paolicchi – Family Focus Blog

I would say that the best gift for a ten-year-old is one that encourages her interests. This lets her know that you pay attention to what interests her and that you value her thoughts and feelings.

So if you notice she is quite the reader, some nicely bound copies of books in the genre she enjoys would be perfect.

If you notice she is a writer, a pretty journal and some fancy calligraphy pens may be just the ticket.

If you have a budding scientist on your hands, a telescope, chemistry kit, or crystal making kit may be perfect for her.

If you don’t know the girl well enough to know her interests, I would suggest a craft kit a great all-purpose gift. Crafts are great for encouraging creativity and can be personalized by the girl to suit her style.

They also involve a lot of elements that are great for children, following directions, often learning new skills, problem-solving, and more.

There are all kinds of fun craft kits available or you could even create your own if you have a particular ability you’d like to share such as jewelry making, crocheting, etc. A craft gift is a great experience gift that they then get to keep as decoration.

Pinky McKay

I bought my granddaughter a sewing machine for her 10th birthday, she had been sewing with me when she visited, asking to sew every time she stayed overnight.

She had started making dolls clothes, scrunchies, a reusable bag and a baby carrier for her dolls, we have drafted patterns together, she has learned how to create and follow a pattern, use various seams eg french seams when she made her doll’s pants.

A sewing machine is a vehicle to encourage creativity, confidence, self-sufficiency, and self-esteem as the ten-year-old learns useful, practical life skills.

Erum Zehra – Muslim Moms

I recommend these card games as gifts for ten-year-old girls.

Mad Dragon: An Anger Control Card Game

Young children often have trouble understanding their feelings and emotions and what causes them. This makes it harder for parents to understand and deal with them as well. These card games help children understand emotions, express them and communicate them while playing a game with their parents.

This results in a therapeutic experience for both the parent and the child and they are able to understand each other better and communicate better.

Helen Wills – Actually Mummy

I would say every 10-year-old girl loves glitter! And as girls around this age are starting to become interested in making their own fashion statements, experimenting with face glitter and gems is a wonderful way to let them unleash their creativity.

These Gypsy Shrine face jewels are fun for tween girls who want to dress up for a party, or for creating ‘looks’ on a sleepover. They can go for the full face or hair-parting glitter look, or just use a crystal teardrop for a bit of dazzle. They stick really well and come off with normal makeup remover.

I don’t think parents should be worried about their daughters experimenting with makeup at this age either.

My own daughter became very interested in makeup techniques from YouTube tutorials and started appearing with beautiful eye makeup that was totally beyond her years.

I worried for a long time, but eventually, she stopped, and now at 15 goes for a very natural look.

My point is, it’s just creativity – basically colouring and craft for older girls! Let them enjoy creating fun looks for parties with glitter and gems, and they will love you for it.

Samantha Radford – Evidence-based Mommy

My daughter loves figures from the Schleich Bayala set. These beautifully crafted figurines include elves, unicorns, mermaids… everything from a little girl’s fantasy world! These realistic toys contain a lot of detail, making them super fun to play with.

The Glittering Flower House (with a stable for the horses) comes with a tiny kitchen, a dining area, and more. In addition, you can buy several separately sold unicorns, elves, and dragons to build a whole universe.

The best part about the Bayala set is how it inspires imaginative play. I love listening to the adventures my daughters come up with while playing with their unicorns and fairies. The girls have the fairies cook, ride their unicorns (each fairy and unicorn pair have magnets to make sure they stay together during play).

Schleich toys are beautifully made. My daughter knows that these figures are special toys and takes care of them.

And if your daughter isn’t into unicorns and fantasy, Schleich also offers other playsets – including all sorts of animals, dinosaurs, horse stable sets… There are a lot of options out of this company.

In a world where most toys are electronic and we’re pushing kids to grow up faster and faster, I love that these toys don’t require batteries, just creativity. They’re a great way to get your kids playing and actually enjoying childhood.

Christopher Byrne – The Toy Guy

Tie-Dye is back in a big way. Major designers like Prada and Burberry have been showing the treatment on the runway.

It was featured in a huge Project Runway episode earlier this year.

10-Year-Old girls are aware of fashion in the larger culture, and, of course, want to be cool.

Highly recommended for the opportunity for creativity and self-expression, plus the fun of wearing (or sharing) something you made yourself.

Plus, this combines creativity, fashion, sharing, and social play (Probably just within the family for now.)

This is very easy to use. Tie up the fabric (like a t-shirt up to a Men’s L) put it in the spherical container. Mix up the dyes. Turn the crank, and squirt in the dyes from the one-direction openings, which means NO MESS.

Easy to rinse, wash, wear, and share.

You can make multiple designs with the materials provided, and the instructions show kids how to tie up their fabrics for optimal results.

Plus, it’s a great value at $19.99.

The only drawback: It’s selling out as fast as they can get it in stock! Truly one of the hottest toys for the first half of the year.

Oh, and boys can play, too!

Available at Target, Walmart, and Amazon.

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