digitalmarketingin

[crimson-amarone]

Fancasting for a Trigun live-action tv series/movie!! I know we got just Trigun Stampede, but we can’t let Cowboy Bebop get a live action and not Trigun right??

For all my selections I would say about 75-80% are actors I have seen in one or more of their most well known roles. For anyone else I narrowed down to 2-4 options and I did extra research into their filmography, interviews to hear their voices and general vibe, etc. And I also looked at what kind of roles they trended towards—sci-fi/fantasy and superhero media giving them bonus points.

See below for info about the actors and my runner up choices for each character. I included tidbits like their age, height, and notable roles.

For Vash and Knives I wanted to first look for real life identical twins. After some research, I believe I found a fitting pair. Cole and Dylan Sprouse, best know for their childhood roles in the Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Although I don’t think I knew their adult roles as well as their Zack and Cody days, that real twin dynamic just adds that extra layer.

Of the two, I found Cole having a softer look, and lately it appears he’s been going with black hair which seemed fitting if we think about black-haired Vash at the end of TriMax. Dylan’s look has just that different sharpness and edginess that I slotted him to Knives.

Ruby Cruz (Kit Tanthalos, Disney+’s Willow) is a very talented young woman and recently made a feature length movie debut as Hazel Callahan in Bottoms (2023) and will be starring in an upcoming rom-com The Threesome. (See notes about edit below.)

Milly was a tricky one for me. I have a couple of runners up below. My current pick is Mina Sundwall, especially for her role as Penny Robinson in Netflix’s space family drama Lost in Space.

Although I’m on board with the HC that Wolfwood is Latinx, I had to go with famous werewolf Jacob Black from Twilight, Taylor Lautner. I got a couple other choices below too.

Liam Hemsworth (or Chris idkkkk). Nuff said?

Rem was a bit hard to choose. I had to go with Candice Patton as a personal big fan of her role as Iris West in The Flash as a DC fan. She has just the right oh-crap-I-have-kids-I-am-not-prepared-at-all motherly acting vibe down pat that is essential for Rem.

Despite the fact that Christopher Daniel Barnes is always smiling in photos, his breath of filmography makes him such a good fit for wise Drunkle Roberto.

Being so effing hyped about Nicholas playing Lex Luthor in Superman Legacies (2025) he has the perfect mix of heroic and villain roles for Legato’s psychotic righteousness. And he’s already had blue hair (and fur all over his whole body) as Hank “Beast” McCoy, c’mon too easy.

Zazie Beetz… that couldn’t have been a coincidence? Like Studio Orange must have know about this actress when they worked on the Beast’s revamped design. For a second option I’d probably pick a child/adolescent actor but Zazie can pretty much take whatever form they want, so why not both? Edit: I’m going with Scarlett (Trixie from Lucifer). Very very talent young woman. She’s funny, smart, sassy.

Role: Vash the Stampede

Actor: Cole Sprouse

Age: 31

Height: 6’0”

Best known role: Cody Martin ( The Suite Life of Zack & Cody)

Runner-up Actor: Mason Dye (Jason Carver, Stranger Things)

———

Role: Millions Knives

Actor: Dylan Sprouse

Age: 31

Height: 6’0”

Best known role: Zack Martin ( The Suite Life of Zack & Cody)

Runner-up Actor: Christopher Lowell (Sebastian “Bash” Howard, GLOW and Jess, How I Met Your Father)

———

Role: Meryl Stryfe

Actor: Ruby Cruz

Age: 23

Height: 5’3”

Best known role: (Kit Tanthalos, Disney+’s Willow)

Edit: I swapped Ruby Cruz in for Bex as I learned how far along Bex was in their gender journey. As much as I respect Bex’s journey and the gender representation is important, I still want to pick someone I feel leans more feminine for Meryl.

Runner-up Actor: tbd, maybe Christine Lee or Ana Yi Puig

———

Role: Nicholas D. Wolfwood

Actor: Taylor Lautner

Age: 32

Height: 5’8”

Best known role: Jacob Black (Twilight movies)

Runner-up Actor: David Castro (Raphael Santiago, Freeform’s Shadowhunters)

———

Role: Roberto De Niro

Actor: Christopher Daniel Barnes

Age: 51

Height: 5’11”

Best known role: Spiderman (Spider-Man 90s), Prince Eric (The Little Mermaid 89)

Runner-up Actor: Edgar Ramirez (Bourne Ultimatum 2007, Carlos the Jackal, HBO’s The Undoing)

———

Role: Milly Thompson

Actor: Mina Sundwall

Age: 22

Height: 5’6”

Best known role: Penny Robinson (Lost in Space, 2018)

Runner-up Actors: Liana Liberato, Kennedy McGann, Ellie Gall, Luna Wedler

———

Role: Rem Saverem

Actor: Candice Patton

Age: 35

Height: 5’4”

Best known role: Iris West (CW’s The Flash)

Runner-up Actor: Lyrica Okano (Nico Minoru, Hulu’s Runaways)

———

Role: Legato Bluesummers

Actor: Nicholas Hoult

Age: 34

Height: 6’3”

Best known role: Nux (Mad Max Fury Road), Hank “Beast” McKoy (X-Men movies), Lex Luthor (Superman Legacies, 2025)

Runner-up Actors:

2. Samuel Larson (Joe Hart, Glee) 3. Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers, Stranger Things) or 4. Brenton Twaites (Dick Grayson aka Nightwing, DC’s Titans)

[jayne-hecate-writer]

Thoughts on the His Dark Materials TV show

Warning Major Spoilers ahead... If you have not yet read the fabulous books or watched the entirety of the story through the long form TV series entitled 'His Dark Materials' or even the film called The Golden Compass, then bare in mind that this discussion might well spoil your enjoyment of Philip Pullman's masterpiece of fiction. I am going to try to take a major dive into the story and offer my critique, which given that I know very little about the critical theory of literature or even how to spell Asriel, might be a bit of a trial!

Still here? OK then, here is my hand, let's take a trip together into the worlds of Dæmons and Dust. From the outset, I cannot promise an impartial review of these works because I absolutely adore them. I may struggle with aspects of them because of the deep emotional scars they touch in my soul, but I continue to love both the books and the person that is Lyra and Pan. I read the books at least once per year and even though I know full well what the Amber Spyglass book is going to do, I always cry at the end because it is so beautifully heart breaking. The books are written for a younger audience than your horrifyingly close to fifty year old reporter and are based upon the work Paradise Lost, by John Milton, which I will admit to you now, I have never read. Maybe that is a task I can try to undertake this year? Hmmm, as if I had not already set myself enough tasks that I am going to struggle to achieve this year!

In 2007, Hollywood released the film, The Golden Compass, the first attempt to bring the story of His Dark Materials to the flickering screen. The first confusion for me was to rename the story from Northern Lights, or His Dark Materials, into The Golden Compass, however there are several reasons for why this was done, some of which include a reference to the original inspiring work of Paradise Lost. However, the film flopped, losing money and support of a wider audience, largely due to the fact that they tried to cram so much into the film from what is a pretty huge book. A young girl called Dakota Blue Richards was cast to play Lyra and she gave us a wonderful, believable representation of Lyra, which is remarkable when one considers what she was given to work with. Sadly this is a comment that can be made for the entire cast of the film to be honest, but the rest of the production was a shocking mess, with often incoherent scenes that rushed past in a blur with little time to digest the events of the book. It was a triumph in that it was even made at all, given the resistance and interference of the studio and even the religious intolerant who claimed the book to be blasphemous (rather proving the point of the book while they did it!). Basically, the cast and crew never had a chance and it was deeply saddening to see the resultant, utterly beautiful looking, film fail. No matter what, I will always be grateful to the crew and cast who tried so hard to make what was probably an impossible dream come true. What good can be taken from the films though is the wonderful portrayal of Mrs Coulter by Nicole Kidman (a person who has in the past had dealings with horrendous theocratic organisations. However, that is a story best left to others to tell.) and Lord Asriel as played by the future Bond, Daniel Craig. Both of them gave wonderful performances and gave Dakota Blue Richards the perfect parents to play Lyra against.

These books are huge and deeply immersive which is one of the problems facing those trying to turn them into other forms of entertainment. I have listened to the Radio play that aired on the BBC a few years ago and enjoyed it to some degree, but again it was limited by the time it had to tell the story. If you are clever with the internet and don't mind listening to a play, this can still be found on line, albeit with some slightly naughty Detective skills. If you want a hint... Try looking for the Internet Archive. Who knows what you will find?

In 2017, the first of The Book of Dust was released by Pullman. Like many of you, I always find that the end of the Amber Spyglass leaves a hurt feeling of grief in the chest when the last page in turned. Yes, some short stories have been released by Pullman, in particular Lyra's Oxford does go into some small detail of her life post His Dark Materials, but this new trilogy promised further adventures for our beloved Lyra. What we got however was thus far something of a mixed bag, with La Belle Sauvage being more of a prequel that fills out the story of Lyra's birth with details of the great flood and goes on to explains how a young Malcolm Polstead and, his often enemy, Alice come to care for the infant Lyra. Along the way they encounter agents working against the Magisterium (the theocratic rulers of Lyra's world), faeries and other complicated beings all of whom have an interest in young Lyra. It was an adventurous enough read, but it did not really fulfil that desire to discover more about Lyra and her adventures after her return to Oxford.

Two years later in 2019 (just before the world went tits up with covid!), Pullman released the second in the Book of Dust trilogy, The Secret Commonwealth. It was from the outset, a deeply disturbing book and anyone hoping to find a happy and peaceful Lyra and Pan, were instead given a broken and severely depressed Lyra, who continually argues with Pan, right up until in a silent mood, he leaves her. As I was reading this, I had not long finished a course of therapy that had helped me come to terms with my own past and mental health, so seeing Lyra and Pan as wounded as they were carried a lot of extra grief that I could understand. I knew what it felt like to be at war with oneself and I could feel both of their pain in the difficult story. This was a more mature story than Northern Lights or even The Amber Spyglass, as such the themes were more mature and darker. It is a sad fact that young people suffer, often undiagnosed, with mental health problems and this book does not shy away from this fact, no matter how painful it can be. Desperate to see Lyra and Pan come back together as a whole person once again, I sped through the book, missing the finer detail and at the end was left heart broken and hanging onto a cliff with less hope than my favourite cartoon Coyote!

With my second reading of the book, I went more slowly and absorbed the prose and its meaning. I followed Lyra as she travelled, following her heart trying to locate Pan and meeting people along the way who had also lost or even due to horendous poverty, sold their Dæmons. The lore of the Dæmon has changed with this book. The bond can be broken, when not fully severed and a replacement can be found. If there is a sadder parable of our money obsessed society, then I am yet to read it. Hidden deep within the despair of Lyra and Pan, there is a beauty in the world and towards the end, we see Pan helping a child who has suffered a terrible loss. The child in the book is named after one of the victims of the Grenfell fire in London and in many ways, this is a beautiful eulogy to her.

As heart breaking as the book is, it continues to bring a taste of blood to the mouth as Lyra goes from place to place searching for Pan. The worst part of this journey is no doubt when Lyra is sexually assaulted on a train, by soldiers who have no respect for a woman, let alone a woman without a Dæmon. If you did not cry reading this book, then you are a stronger reader than I because I cried several times during both my first and second reads of this book. You may ask why, but the reason is simple, Lyra is our beloved heroine. She may have started out as a deceitful, unwashed brat, but she ended the story with a broken heart, but somehow still full of love and wisdom. In some regards, it is hard to correlate the exhausted, heart worn but hopeful Lyra of the Amber Spyglass with that of the closed off, angry Lyra of the Secret Commonwealth. Yet given the political nature of these books, I am sure that even the most disinterested of readers can feel the depth of despair for our modern times ringing like a funeral bell through out the prose. It has been nearly four years since we were left wondering if Lyra and Pan would reconcile and every day when I look up at my copies of these books, I feel a little pain in my heart.

So it was that in 2019, the BBC and HBO released their attempt to put His Dark Materials onto the big screen, well the big TV screen in my home anyway, with eight weekly episodes of the first book, cleverly combined with aspects of the second so that the meeting of Lyra and Will happened sooner than we would otherwise have got. Now it is cards on the table time and I have to be honest here. I did not go willingly into the show. I had a sore heart from the film and I desperately did not want to witness another botched attempt or see another young Lyra broken by process of telling her story. This time Lyra was portrayed by a young Dafne Keen, whose father portrayed the undeniably vile, Father MacPhail. I did not want to get my hopes up and was promptly treated to some things that as a dedicated reader of the books, I found strange or in some cases not fully truthful to the letter of the book. However I persevered and struggled through some aspects of the series such as the Gyptian culture which was explored far more visibly and audiably than I was expecting and come the end, I was left with mixed feelings. Dafne Keen is undoubtedly a very good Lyra, within what her script gives her. Amir Willson makes an interesting Will and seeing him as mixed race makes him a far more interesting person and does give an extra depth to some of his Mother's suffering. But it did not have the Lyra and Will I wanted. There was also the concerns over how they were going to film some of the later scenes, because as actors, both of them were still children when filming the series.

Series two came upon us quickly enough and was one episode short of the first series (or season for those of an American culture), but given the source material, some of which had already been covered in series one, this was not a surprise and it gave us again a few changes and differences. As with series one it was hard to fault the choices, given how hard it must be to make a show about something as expansive as war with God across the multiverse! I purchased the two seasons on DVD as soon as they became available (something that DisneyPlus really needs to think about for those of us with incomplete Clone Wars DVD sets!) and binge watched them through, enjoying them more and more with each viewing. I understood the changes and why they had been made, the show was utterly beautiful and the sets used were fantastic. The Dæmons were beautifully animated, with puppets used on set to make the interactions with their people more believable. Pan was wonderful, the Golden Monkey terrifying and Stelmaria was beautiful. I was at peace with the series and I was looking forwards to the third and final season.

The third season seemed to hit the airwaves almost unannounced. It almost felt as if the BBC were somehow ashamed of their beautiful series. I have been following Pullman for some time on Farcebook and the only update I saw from him was an advert for a re-release of the original trilogy and then an actual paper version of 'The Collectors', a short story about a very curious pair of artefacts from Lyra's world. I caught episode one and instantly felt the bad taste in my mouth of wrongness. Changes yet again, Mrs Coultier was hiding in a cottage on the coast and not a cave in the Himalayas. The young child who helps her was deaf and not Asian. Will did not meet the scary paedophile priest... Actually, that was probably a good thing! Asriel was jetting about gathering troops, rather than them answering his call to arms. All of these changes probably made the show easier to follow if you have not read the books, but as a close to obsessive reader of the books, some of the changes felt wrong.

However the BBC in their wisdom put the entire series on their i-Player service and I was able to sit through a couple of episodes, rather than wait weeks at a time to get where I wanted to be. (Again, Disney, I know why you do it, but one episode a week... Really?) The misery of Solstice, Christmas, Yule or whatever we choose to call this time of year, got in the way and despite having the joy of my friends around me, His Dark Materials got put to one side until I had a quiet day to go through it. That was when I caught the flu and lost my voice. Even as I type this, I am still not able to talk above a whisper and trying to do so, seems to make things worse. Getting old sucks.

So sat in bed, unable to speak, sick with a winter cold, I started to watch episodes three to eight and it was traumatic. There was a lot of changes and again I understand why some of them were done, because not every viewer will have torn the books apart the way I have over the years. However, enough remained the same that I could still follow the story and I did wonder at some of the changes made, until you think about how much visual effects cost and what the budget would have been for this whole show.

The actor Simone Kirby, portraying Mary Malone, was perfect and she has been since she first appeared in the series, so much so that I completely believed that she was Mary. Yet when it came to her major discoveries about Dust and the importance of the Mulefa and their world, so much was cut away, it was almost like a crude orchidectomy done with rusty scissors! Mary meets and then spends time with Atal, her friend among the Mulefa. They share time together, chat about the nature of life, the universe and everything... Sorry, wrong book. But Mary and Atal are important, it is together that the pair of them help Mary find the answer to Sraf, first in seeing Sraf and then in discovering why the trees are dying because of a lack of Sraf. Mary as the serpent must have knowledge to share with Eve, yet the time allotted to her on screen meant that a great deal of her story was trimmed away or flashed over in seconds and we never got to know Atal, one of the truly beautiful souls of the story.

The end of the second series left us with Mrs Coulter taking Lyra away in a trunk on a ship. Will had found and then lost his father while Lee Scorsby had died defending the very same man. We find Mrs Coulter hiding in her little house, Will arrives, they talk. He rescues Lyra during a raid by the Magisterium and while cutting an exit, the subtle knife breaks as Lyra's Mother pushes him to think of his own lost parent back in the human world. It is different enough to grind my gears, but close enough to keep me watching. The calls of Roger are hinted at, but never really clear and it is with some surprise that Lyra announces her quest to enter the world of the dead to find Roger to apologise for his death. Again we have the strange arguments between Lyra and Will, a conflict that never happened in the books. They believe in each other and as they journey, they are falling in love, not overcoming each other. These slightly argumentative scenes felt like sand in a gear box, things work, but you know damage is being done. Iorek agrees to mend the subtle knife, but the discussion between him and Will is almost nonexistant. The warning about the nature of the knife had none of the brevity that it has in the book, but the reforging of the blade was at least a pretty moment. The biggest problem though was that it was horribly rushed and yet they filled in the episodes with stuff that we did not need to see. Why did we need to see Asriel gathering an army... of mainly one man who he took an eternity to persuade, when in the book he raises his call to arms and they simply come. At the cost of important detail, they gave us chaff.

The land of the dead was bleak, sad and grim. Again there were differences, but until the boatman, nothing of consequence. Lyra meets her death, Pan is scared and Will remains stoic. That moment on the boat though, the first heart break between Pan and Lyra when she is told that Pan cannot enter the land of the dead. That was there, but the boatman was more human, which in some ways gave it a softer edge. Making the boatman a well dressed man in his early sixties took away the fear of the cloaked Charon, the creature that may have been a man, but could have been something far more aged and far, far worse. The betrayal of self as Pan is ripped from her soul and Will loses the Dæmon he never knew he had, is still heart breaking, but where in the book time is given to Pan attempting to keep Lyra with him, making her sacrifice all the more important, the show quickly edits past it. Again, time, technical effects and expense cannot compete with the imagery of a few words in a book. To even come close to the scope and the detail of the book, the show needed at least ten hour long episodes per book and a budget of billions. Such things were never going to be possible, so instead we can only be grateful for what we got and the river crossing was still heart breaking as Will and Lyra clung together in agony.

The land of the dead was truly haunting, the sad broken spirits of those trapped there, taunted and berated for every terrible thing they had done, by the impossibly ancient Harpies. The term Harpy comes from ancient Greek and Roman myths, being a form that is half woman and half bird. Basically a bird with the torso and face of a woman. What was presented here was so much more creepy, a scaly filthy tortoise like winged creature filled with hatred and bile. The scene of Lyra telling tall tales was cut for time, but we can assume that she had by this time learned that lying was bad for them. We did have some moments of true horror as she is forced to confront her loss of Pan and the awful fact that there is truly no way out of the land of the dead. The book makes a deliberate choice to have the spirits unable to touch, embrace or hug. Yet again, the horror of finance raised its head and we see actors with grey scale make up and lots of red eye shadow hugging Lyra. As lovely as it was to see Lyra reunited with Roger, the subtle difference gave this a more bleak, angry feel than the loss and love of the book. The difficulty for the production team was also the casting of children for the roles of er... children. Roger has clearly grown up and his buck toothed smile of a ten year old boy has been replaced by the teenage cool of a lad who is nearly a full grown man. They did as well as they could within the budget and Roger was there. Death has clearly broken his voice and made him a foot taller though!

The weaponisation of Mrs Coulter against Lyra, using the tuft of hair she took from Lyra's head was terrifying. Having written out some of the more helpful moments of the book, such as the Galivespians, the energy bomb was never not going to explode. Within the constraints of the TV show, they did it very well and the chasm that opens is destructive in ways that I never connected in the book. The Dæmon that flies above the opening and is sucked down, causing the death of Queen Ruta Skadi was tragic. She did not so much die as simply fall into nothingness and cease to exist. It was utterly brutal. The spectres raided the camp of Asriel and the defence against them was to have Mrs Coulter who had escaped once again from the Magisterium, having come and gone like a welcome guest between camps. In a moment of pure film magic, Ruth Wilson raised her hands and gave the spectres a force shove that Clone Wars ere Obi-Wan would have been proud of. The result was that the entire army of spectres evaporated, never to be seen again. Once again this must come down to cost. The spectres were beautiful in their oil like liquidity. Animating an army of them, fighting see through ghosts who have no Dæmon would have run into the millions of Dollars. So I forgive them for their use of the force, even if for a brief moment, Mrs Coulter became a Jedi!

The fight with Metatron, AKA the Regent of the Clouded Mountain, ruling in the name of the Authority was fabulous. The deception by Mrs Coulter was a dark moment in the book, but she carries it well, hiding what little goodness she has left to fool not a God, but a man who lusts after her. The fight in the show was almost as brutal, Asriel is not as broken as he should be, but with the love of his life, Mrs Coulter, they both drag the Regent into the abyss. As with Ruta Skadi, this is not death but something far, far worse. This of course leads to Lyra and Will finding the casket that contains the withered remains of the authority. In the book it is stated that cutting him free of his prison is an act of kindness for a being so ruined by age as to be insensible. With his atoms reaching the gentle air currents, the Authority is gone forever, along with his regent.

At this moment in the book, the two children find their lost Dæmons and Will cuts through into the world of the Mulefa, grabbing a Dæmon each, they jump through. It is at this moment that they realise that Will has grabbed Pan and Lyra has taken Will's unnamed Dæmon. The thrill of excitement, of something beautiful between them hits them both hard as Will seals the window after himself.

In the series, things are done differently and Will tells the Dæmons to jump through and they will follow on later. Sure enough a short while later they do jump through, but only after Lyra witnesses the death of the Mother, as the Golden Monkey turns to particles. I do not know why they felt that Lyra needed that moment of finality, because in some regards it felt cruel. Once in the world of the Mulefa, there is still a mild hostility between Lyra and Will. They have been through so much together, but do not have that trust of each other yet, which seems strange and almost heretical compared to the book. Their love does grow, but only after a few misjudged moments between them. The book explains that from the moment Mary finds them, she can see the love, the powerful bond between them. She knows that they must heal and save the worlds so does her job, she plays the serpent teaching them about growing up, finding a meaning in life and love. Again there was a slight change in the series from the book, but for me this one worked far better. Mary recalls how she knew that she could not be a Nun any more and it was when a woman showed her an act of love by passing her a simple sweet. This was a moment that awoke something in Mary and it is implied that Mary investigated this attraction. In the book, the tempter was a man and to be honest as a rainbow person, who knows how the Church at large feels about people like me, making Mary a lesbian or at least not fully heterosexual was the right move.

With rather a lot of narrative exposition, Lyra and Will learn that they must not only return to their own worlds, they cannot create new windows and all of the old ones must be sealed to prevent the loss of Dust into the endless void. In the book, Pan lets out a howl of pain that frightens small animals in their holes for ever. Defeated at last, Lyra cries, comforted only by the one soul who can do so, but who she must lose forever. The TV show does allow this to play out and it is painful to watch. The acting of Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson was superb and I genuinely believed their tears as my heart was broken.

The insight of Pullman when he wrote this scene is not to be underestimated. Lyra and Will are forced apart, their sacrifice is explicit. They could stay in the world of each other, but to do so is to lose health and to die, leaving one with the unbearable horror of watching their love die. Leaving the window open will bring an end to Dust and everyone dies. They sacrifice their love for each other to save those who inhabit every realm, including the world of the dead, for every soul that has ever existed can be free from the horror of purgatory and they do so, while their own hearts are torn apart.

Whenever I read the Amber Spyglass, I need a moment of silence when the last page is turned. It feels somehow reverential, as if I too have lost a part of my heart and the grief I feel is very real. It stirs in me every loss I have felt throughout my life, whether that be of parents, lovers, mentors or friends. Every fibre of pain is stirred, every wound cleaned out and shown love. There is however one loss that I dread with all of my being, a loss so great that every person in love fears it. Yet as Maarva Carassi Andor states so bravely to her Son (in the fantastic Disney Plus Series Andor), “that's just love.”

The themes of the book are truly epic, especially for a book aimed at youthful readers. The contemporaries of the time were the likes of Harry Potter, which I am sure touched some people's hearts. Like His Dark Materials, Potter was accused of turning children away from faith, but if it ever did, it was not through clever writing. With His Dark Materials, Pullman asks the young readers to question why they must bow down to theocracy. He tells them to give thought to dogmatic faith and he gives them a parable with which they can understand how religion can destroy love and hope and understanding. The big theme of the Magisterium is how they want to stifle conscious thought. When it takes the Vatican four hundred years to apologise for the destruction of a man who put forward the idea that the Earth is not the centre of the solar system, we can see where the ideas of a toxic theocratic system comes from. With every Holy War, with every hypocritical theologian and with every repressed adherent to religious law, we can see Pullman's point. His Dark Materials is a story of young people on an adventure, but it is also a story about the importance of innocence not corrupted by dogma, just as it is a story about fighting for the liberty to think for oneself. It is my firm belief that Pullman's work is an important piece of youth literature, it is also more than that and is worthy of the awards it has won. The TV show may not have stuck rigidly to the book, but the message remains the same and that is the important part. So I applaud the series, I think that it achieved great things and it did this despite the corruption that killed its big screen predecessor.

As for the cast of the TV series, not one of them did anything less than their best. The budget and the time constraints are nothing compared to the importance of the message and for that reverential quiet that we needed when the final titles stopped rolling. It genuinely took me almost an hour before I was capable of speech. My eyes were raw with tears and my heart ached as I lay in the arms of my wife, knowing that we are both mortal and one day, we to will enter the land of the dead. Thankfully, we know how to find our way to the exit. Thank you Lyra and William. Also thank you Philip Pullman for a piece of work that speaks directly to my heart.

[percervall]

can I send you a playlist of three songs and you tell me which player/driver the playlist reminds you of? 🤭

love of my life - harry styles

sobrio - maluma

francesca - hozier

You can always ask for a list babe 🥰

love of my life - this is somehow both Daniel and Carlos. It's reminding me of someone who's been in a long term relationship but somehow it just didn't work out, you drifted apart because of the relationship being mainly long distance (this is the Daniel aspect), but it also makes me think of being in a relationship with someone who just takes you and your love for granted, someone who doesn't realise what they had until it's too late which to me is Carlos.

sobrio - you know I have a soft spot for Maluma. This man will always be Rodrigo De Paul coded, and this is no different. Him being so scared to be open and honest with you about his feelings and so he doesn't tell you how much he loves you. And then once you've had enough of him shutting you out, you try to move on, but then he calls you out of the blue. You can tell he's had far too much to drink but he confesses it all: how he loves you and needs you, how you deserve the world and that he was an asshole for treating you anything other than like the princess you are; that he would do anything to get another chance. And you still love him, but you also wonder how much of this he will remember when he wakes up tomorrow morning.

francesca - this one reminds me of the mamma Mia fic universe and that’s all I will say on that 🙊 (can we also just take a moment to appreciate Hozier's gut wrenching delivery of the line "I'd tell them put me back in it" and the way the music swells after the final chorus (I think, the part where he sings "heaven is not fit to house a love like you and I") is the perfect representation of the storm that is keeping Francesca and her lover apart in their circle of hell for all of eternity? Because oh my god????)

[wrestlingisfake]

I'm still catching up on the whole Big Swole/Tony Khan thing. (If you are too, I recommend this weekend's Grapsody podcast.) But here's what I gotta say about improving diversity in a pro wrestling roster.

It's never going to be enough to just have members of a marginalized group on the show. You have to push some of them too. Not all of them, of course, and not simply for being members of a marginalized group, because that would feel artificial and phony. But you also can't just recruit them and then wait and see if any of them get over on their own.

Now, that goes against a deeply-ingrained mindset in pro wrestling that wrestlers has to earn their spots through personal improvement of their craft. Fans and insiders alike want to believe pro wrestling is (or should be) a meritocracy--if not in winning real contests, then at least in earning the starring roles. We celebrate the performers who appear to "do the work" to get where they are, and complain about performers who seem to benefit from unearned shortcuts. And since that controversy often involves white men (e.g., "Daniel Bryan is too good to be jobbing to the Miz"), we can tell ourselves this mentality is totally fair, and has nothing to do with diversity or representation.

As such, there is resistance to the idea that pro wrestling can just make more Black main-eventers at will, because it's fake and the promoters can put the championships on anybody they want. I myself have resisted that idea. I'd prefer to see Black wrestlers getting a "rise to the top" saga like Bret Hart, as opposed to winning a raffle like Ron Simmons or cashing in a briefcase like Big E. AEW cannot suddenly put the world title on Scorpio Sky and expect it to mean as much as the three-year build for Hangman Page. However, the Page storyline is a perfect demonstration that you can do that sort of push with just about anybody.

There was no reason to think, when AEW launched, that Hangman had to be a world champion. He didn't come in with the cachet of Chris Jericho, Jon Moxley, or Kenny Omega. But they knew they had to make a guy, so they picked him. I don't mean to minimize Page's part in making the push work, because once they handed him the ball he still had to run with it, and if he had fumbled they would have gone with someone else. The point, though, is that they took a chance on him to become more than he had appeared to be. You can take that exact same chance with someone that isn't a white man.

Ideally a promotion like AEW should have several up-and-coming wrestlers in "sagas" like Hangman's. Not all of them will culminate in a world title run, but you keep several key names in play in case your blue chipper flops, or a dark horse becomes a breakout hit. This is where you want your representation to be--not in squash matches on Elevation, but in key long-term storylines setting up the new main characters on the show. And this is where AEW struggles, with diversity in general and Black representation in particular.

The only excuse AEW has for this is that many of their Black wrestlers are "not ready" to be prominently featured on Dynamite and Rampage, whereas they've got a glut of white men who've had tons of experience on the big stage. I bought that when Private Party was just starting out, but it's a lot harder to swallow now that AEW has got Lio Rush, Lee Moriarty, and Jay Lethal, and none of them are doing anything. Stuff like that can't change if your mentality is to just push the people who are "all elite" enough.

[booksonablog]

Robby Keene Headcanon

Request: May I request Dating headcanon about Robby Keene with a Fem s/o? Pls🥺 (P.O.C. reader 4c hair type, appreciation/being attracted to skin color, comfort from racist)

Author’s Note: This may be my first headcanon, as I’m not too positive of the difference, but I swear I did my research, Enjoy! Also I got too excited so I’m sorry if it seems like the ramblings of a lunatic

Dating Robby Keene Would Include:

Lots of intimate connection

Whether it was small things like hand holding, playing with each other’s hair or sitting together in solitude, he truly enjoyed connecting with you

You can expect lots of hair playing

He  loved the small curls of your hair. He’d admire it any chance he got, but he’d love to twirl each individual thread between his fingers.

Sometimes when you were tired, you’d lay your head in his lap and you’d find his hand tangled in your hair. Even in mid-conversation with someone else, he’d still be caught twisting a curl around his finger

He’d slip flowers into your hair when the two of you would lay in the grass on a picnic at the park

Once, he asked you to teach him to do your hair. You admired his curiosity and gladly showed him a few hairstyles you often did with your hair. He’d pay attention with a focused eye and when it was his turn he was very careful. He wasn’t great with it at first, your hair popping out on one side, but he’d eventually grasp the concept, he was persistent. You’d end up throwing on a movie as you sat on the ground between his legs - he’d have your hair in his hands, his tongue sticking out. He was so happy once he accomplished at least two styles as good as you’d do them. There are at least 50 photos in the album he’s dedicated to you that are just you showing off how perfectly he did your hair.

He’d let you play with his hair and braid it

He comforted you when you were upset & he was always there when you needed him

If you needed help with homework, or needed a study buddy, he was already offering his assistance, and he was very good at it. He remained focused, no funny business, always made sure you 100% understood the material before moving on, and he’d only ask for kisses in exchange.

Asks you randomly what things make you happy, when you ask him why he asked he said he’s making a list of what to do when you’re sad

He followed the handy little list he made ahead of time

He even created a “Happy Box” of some of those things on that list for the occasions when he wasn’t available

As soon as he was available he’d be ready with open arms

He’d pull you to his chest and let you cry till & if you were comfortable enough to tell him what was wrong

He’d plant soft kisses on the inside of your palm after wiping the tears off your face

He’d stay with you for as long as you’d allow him, during this time he’d tell you to get cozy as he’d run to the store to get both of you some candy & you’d have a netflix night

He’d teach you everything he’s been learning from Daniel

Hanging out with the Larusso’s at their pool

He admired how your skin glistened in the sun & how every color suited you so perfectly

The Larussos loved you - who wouldn’t!?

When you weren’t around, Sam would whisper to him how perfect you were for him, that he was even happier than when her dad took him in

You’d encourage him to make amends with his dad. He’d be hesitant but he listened to your reasoning and he trusted what you had to say

Which led him to finally responding to Johnny’s request on taking him out to dinner. They actually had a great time! They laughed, they cried, and they spoke about you. Johnny was happy to see his son happy.

They started to get along so well that Johnny wanted to meet you!

When Robby told you this, you immediately felt the rush of nerves erupting in your stomach, though he assured you that you’d be okay

Johnny took the two of you out to the same arcade he used to hangout at. Afterwards he took you guys out for milkshakes.

When Robby had excused himself to the bathroom, Johnny had thanked you for bringing the two of them together. You saw him get a little emotional, even you got a little teary eyed. You kept the moment as a secret between the two of you 

Going to the skate park together

You knew Robby was no quitter as he tried time and time again to accomplish this one obstacle in particular

The two of you celebrated once he did - his fists up with a grin as you’d run up to him, he’d pick you up and spin you around, the two of you giggling

Unfortunately, when you tried the obstacle you ended up with a cut knee

Not so unfortunately for you, he’d carry you to the nearest bench where he’d bandage you up. He’d place a kiss on top of the band-aid, winking up at you.

Sometimes you would text him in the middle of class, “Wish you were here 🥺” and he’d reply with, “Right outside 😘”

He’d wait for you outside of school, sometimes with your favorite treat

Once in a blue moon, he’d sneak into the lunchroom at your school & kept you company during lunch

In the times when he couldn’t visit, you’d find funny little notes from him hidden away in your backpack

Having a lazy day together

The two of you resting on a hammock: you - sound asleep on his chest while his foot hangs off the side, gently rocking it back and forth

He snuck you out some nights to go stare at the stars 

Sharing a dessert at a local diner

Walking down the shore, eating ice cream and watching the sunset together

The two of you would receive stares of disapproval when you would hold hands - he would pause, hold your face in his hands & plant a breathless kiss

He enjoyed seeing you in your space, the expression when you thought no one was watching, to him, that was true beauty

Purchased flowers for you just because

Makeout sessions in places where it was just the two of you

Will look out for your well being, not just because you’re dating but because he truly cared about you

“Did you get home okay”

“Be safe”

The two of you actually met by him pretending to be your boyfriend when he watched as someone had been following you

Will speak up if he thinks you’re being unsafe

Being complimented as the cutest couple

Hope you guys enjoyed this one! I love Robby and I think he is a sweet little puppy with good intentions, so this was fun to write. Additionally, I really appreciate the request for a p.o.c. reader. I myself have encountered imagines where the reader is described with blonde hair and blue eyes, and while there is nothing wrong with a person that fits that description, I have to pause my reading and adjust the words in my head to suit what I look like (I myself am a p.o.c. reader.) I try to write my imagines with the reader in mind, trying to keep little to no description of the reader so the person reading can easily imagine themselves into the story. With that being said, I was elated writing this prompt, I don’t think people understand how important representation in writing is (mind you I am still learning.)

Requests are always open! 💕

Tags:

@ceooflovingpizza​

[leiteemanuelle79]

Color theory in the Karate Kid Universe

What the colors say about each character, and what will be Hawk's next hair color?

So, as Eli "shed his loser skin", and grew a mohawk, there was a significant change in the character, obviously the colors wouldn't be random, the character may not have a clue, but today I'm gonna walk you through what I think could be the meaning behind all this. Before we get into Hawk, we gotta go way back to 1984, and start this with the fisrt Karate Kid movie.

Red v.s. Blue

These two colors are very strong in the franchise, and we'll start by the fisrt time we see Daniel LaRusso, he's wearing a blue shirt, which means he is not trying to show power or strength, in fact he never wanted to be there so he doesn't care.

That day he goes to the beach, wearing the same clothe, but he meets Ali and when he changes, he's wearing red, to look strong for her and make a presence (by the way, I don't think the characteres actually chose the colors to say something, I think that the people who work with the art and clothes of the movie did, but just so it's easier, we're gonna assume that the characters did.). Someone else is also in red: Johnny Lawrence. He gets into the fight and loses. The next day he's wearing red again, this time to show power and resistence. Even though the shirt has some blue in it, it's mainly red. That day in school, he gets into a little fight and comes out as the wrong guy A couple days later, he tells his mom about his interest in karate (to get revenge as he assumed later to Mr. Miyagi), he's once again wearing red, and he sees Johnny in the dojo, later that night, the cobras make him fall down the mountain with his bike. So basically, so far we have the dynamic of, wearing red, and getting your ass kicked.

After that, he goes to a phase that he wears colors like Mr. Myiagi does, which are brown-ish, yellow-ish, basically what I think they mean, is that you don't want to be noticed or you don't want to show off.

Later in the story, in the Halloween dance, the shower costume Daniel is wearing is red, but there's something very interesting about it, inside he's wearing a blue shirt, the mirror scene is the perfect representation of that, when he has the shower opend he's vulnarable, and he's afraid, but when he closes it he feels powerful enough to make Johnny wet, as he runs and the showers opens, he starts losing the courage, until the shower falls, all the red is gone, he's not feeling cool, he's terrified, and he gets his ass kicked, so now we know, blue means weak, or at least that's what he thought.

After Mr. Miyagi accepts having him as a student, and asks for Kreese to pohibt his students to hurt Daniel, he feels weak, but also he's not afraid to show it, because he knows he won't get hurt. So he pretty much only wears blue.

Untill the day he had a date with Ali, and wanted to show off, because when he went on a date with her for the first time, he was wearing blue and her rich parents saw the sittuation of his mom's car, so he felt embarrassed. He tries red, but guess what? It doesn't go well.

After that Daniel carries wearing pretty much only blue, and Johnny red, as we can see in episode 9, season 1 of cobra kai, "Different but same" and in episode 2 of season 3 "Nature vs. Nurture", with the only difference being that the colors get even stronger in the second one, while in the first they both had shades of grey.

Black v.s. White

The next super import colors are black and white. Their head bands are the perfect example of this, because Johnny's is black, and Daniel's is white and blue also their gi are colored with these two extremely contrastant colors, but I think that there are a lot more sutil ways in which both show and movie show this contrast. If you take a look at the photos that daniel is wearing red, there's always some white in it, and pretty much all the time Johnny has some sort of black in him, like in the club day, where he's wears more neutral colors to blend in the crowd, he even wears a shade of blue to look like a nice person to Ali, but if you look closely, you'll see the tie is black.

There's a very interesting analogy to that in Cobra Kai, when Miguel is trying to find Johnny good clothes to take pictures, he finds a bunch of white shirts, but we never see Johnny wearing them, so I guess that's a metaphore to the good he has inside.

But there's another image that I think is the perfect representation of that, see, the only place Johnny wears white is at the dojo, and I believe that is, because the only person that Lawrence fears/respects is his sensei, the only one in the room that wears black. This single frame says so much about the caracters:

There we see Mr. Myiagi and Daniel almost out of the frame, they're being repressed by the whole dojo. Kreese sees Miyagi as a small old man, and that is showed in this frame too, by his position, Mr. Miyagi though looks at Kreese in the eye, fearless, but Daniel is really scared, wearing blue and he can't look at anyone's eyes, while Johnny assumed the "pronto" position as all the other students, like an army. About the clothing now, as I mentioned, Kreese is the only one wearing black, because one, black means bad and dark, which he surely is, and two, he likes feeling like the strongest man, and black causes fear in the students. Johnny is all in white showing visually what Mr. Miyagi said: "There's no such thing as a bad student..." Here, Johnny is just another student, a good one following orders, but both head band and belt are black, showing the influence Kreese has on him, it's almost as if the black was a stain caused by Kreese in Johnny's good heart. It's interesting that Johnny holds the red flag, we know that there's a white one too, but since nothing is random as I mentioned, him holding the red one means that he'll always have violence with him, that he carries that. And Mr. Miyagi is as always wearing the same color palette, not showing anything.

Next post I'm gonna get into the new generation and how they show themselves with their clothes based on this.

[mfalsomni]

No Time To Die (2021)

It has taken me ten days to write this because I couldn't stop crying every time I thought about the film. But here it is, my probably bad review on my favourite Bond film.

To start, I was amazed and incredibly happy at seeing a Bond that really feels —and is not a misogynistic asshole. The character evolves throughout more than 2 hours to reach an incredible yet devastating ending I still haven't got over of. To be honest, every main character felt incredibly well written in its own way. Back to what I was saying, seeing Bond feel and hurt like a human —in contraposition to the classic "perfect manly man" he usually portrays— is incredible.

On to other characters, women in this film felt perfectly written to me. None of them is there to have the minimum representation, neither is written in a stereotypical manner —which is sad to celebrate, but I'm happy about it.

The story develops smoothly into something I couldn't predict at all, but that felt like the perfect ending. Every little detail since the beginning makes that ending even better than it already would be by itself.

Regarding music, it's composed by Hans Zimmer, I loved every second of it. The opening sequence was incredible —it was nice that it didn't revolve around naked women as the tradition follows—, Billie's voice really matched the vibe and lyrics. Actually, I didn't expect it to fit the context so well, but it did amazingly.

Now some random things I don't know where to put (before I start crying again). I will never be over how good Daniel Craig looks in those tick deep blue turtleneck sweaters they always make him wear for infiltration scenes... (Btw if anyone knows where to get one like those kindly tell me). Also, the classic cars are so pretty I want to scream!! And the Italian village they visit at the introduction... It was so beautiful, I loved that part of the movie.

SPOILER ZONE

It really hurts me to see Daniel Craig go as James Bond. It was time, and this was an incredible way to do so, but it hurt me too much. He's the Bond I've grown with (Casino Royale was released when I was only 4) and seeing him go feels —for some reason— like saying goodbye to an old friend. This is probably why seeing him watch on that island and saying goodbye hit me so hard... To me, he will always be the best James Bond that has been.

END OF SPOILER ZONE

In conclusion: this film was incredible and I cannot wait to watch it again, and again, and again. I enjoyed every minute of it, and I really wish I could watch it for the first time again. Watched on October 10th 2021.

[princelymlm]

Gotta Be LGBT+

This is a list of just some of the LGBT+ content out there. Anything on this list was contains LGBT+ characters or was made by LGBT+ creators. All entries on this list were sent in by followers and have not been confirmed by the mod. (Entries with ‘rep not given’ next to them mean that the suggestion did not include what kind of representation is in the content)

Put everything under the cut since this list started getting really long

Books/Comics

They Both Die At The End - Adam Silvera (mlm)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire-Saénz (mlm)

Symptoms of Being Human (genderfluid)

Lily and Dunkin - Donna Gephart (trans/trans woman)

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo - Taylor Jenkins Reid (wlw/bi)

The Gentleman’s Guide To Vice and Virtue - Mackenzie Lee (mlm/gay/bi)

Been Here All Along - Sandy Hall (gay/bi)

History Is All You Left Me - Adam Silvera (mlm/gay)

Blue Is The Warmest Color - Julie Maroh (wlw/bi/lesbian)

Mask of Shadows - Linsey Miller (bi/genderfluid)

Once and Future - Cori McCarthy (wlw/mlm/gay/bi/nonbinary)

Simon vs the Homosapiens Agenda - Beck Albertalli (mlm/gay)

Leah on the Offbeat - Becky Albertalli (wlw/bi)

Grasshopper Jungle - Andrew Smith (questioning/mlm)

The Rest of Us Just Live Here - Patrick Ness (mlm/gay)

Flying Tips For Flightless Birds - Kelly McCaughrain (mlm/gay)

I’ll Give You The Sun - Jandy Nelson (mlm)

Point Pleasant - Jen Archer Wood (mlm) 

True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - Gerard Way (mlm/wlw)

The Wayfarers Series - Becky Chambers (wlw/aro/trans man/nonbinary/genderfluid)

Vesuvius Club - Mark Gatiss (bi)

The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller (mlm)

Radio Silence - Alice Oseman (bi/mlm/demi/gay/pan/wlw/lesbian)

Of Fire and Stars - Audrey Coulthurst (wlw/lesbian)

Magnus Chase Series - Rick Riordan (genderfluid)

Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan (gay)

This Is Kind of An Epic Love Story - Kheyrn Callender (mlm/wlw)

Gracefully Grayson - Ami Polonsky (trans woman)

If I Was Your Girl - Meredith Russon (trans woman)

Call Me By Your Name - Andre Aciman (mlm)

Red, White, and Royal Blue - Casey McQuinston (mlm)

I Wish You All The Best - Mason Deaver (nonbinary)

Dreadnaught + Sovereign - April Daniels (wlw/trans woman)

The Art of Being Normal - Lisa Williamson (trans)

The Gone Series - Michael Grant (mlm/wlw)

One Of Us Is Lying - Karen McManus (mlm)

Six Of Crows - Leigh Bardugo (mlm)

Crooked Kingdom - Leigh Bardugo (rep not given)

The Last Sun - Author Not Provided (rep not given)

Romeo and/or Juliet - Ryan North (rep not given)

American Gods - Neil Gaiman (mlm/gay/bi) 

The Mage Wars Series - Mercedes Lackey (gay)

Scott Pilgrim vs The World - Bryan Lee O’Malley (mlm/gay/wlw)

Boyfriends With Girlfriends - Alex Sánchez (mlm/wlw/bi/gay)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson - David Levithan & John Green (mlm)

This Is Where It Ends -Marieke Nijkamp (lesbian/wlw)

Carry On - Rainbow Rowell (mlm)

Stranger Than Fanfiction - Chris Colfer (mlm/trans man/gay)

The Reader Trilogy (The Reader, The Speaker, The Storyteller) - Traci Chee (mlm/wlw/nonbinary)

I Was Born For This - Alice Oseman (trans)

Heartstopper - Alice Oseman (mlm)

The Broken Earth Trilogy - MK Jemisin (trans woman/poly/pan/mlm

A Boy Worth Knowing - Jennifer Cosgrove (mlm/bi/gay)

The Rifter - Author Not Provided (mlm)

Snapdragon - Author Not Provided (wlw/ trans woman)

The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon (wlw/lesbian/mlm/gay)

Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters (wlw/lesbian)

Fingersmith - Sarah Waters (wlw/lesbian)

The Paying Guests - Sarah Waters (wlw/lesbian)

I Am J - Cris Beam (trans man)

Little And Lion - Brandy Colbert (bi)

Autoboyography - Christina Lauren (bi)

Felix Ever After - Kacen Callender (trans)

Birthday - Meredith Russo (trans)

Stay Gold - Tobly McSmith (trans)

You Should See Me In A Crown - Leah Johnson (lesbian)

Girls of Paper and Fire - Natasha Ngan (lesbian)

The Henna Wars - Adiba Jaigirdar (lesbian)

Let's Talk About Love - Claire Kann (ace)

The Lady's Guide To Petticoats and Piracy - Mackenzi Lee (ace/aro)

The Vanishers' Place - Aliette De Bodard (wlw)

Ash - Malinda Lo (wlw/bi)

The Little Homo Sapiens Scientist - S. L. Huang (wlw)

Everfair - Nisi Shawl (wlw)

Dread Nation: Risse Up - Justina Ireland (wlw/bi/ace)

The Gilda Stories - Jewelle Gomez (wlw/lesbian)

The True Queen - Zen Cho (wlw)

The Devourers - Indra Das (genderfluid/bi)

We Set The Dark On Fire - Tehlor Kay Mejia (wlw)

Smoketown - Tenea D. Johnson (wlw/lesbian)

Falling In Love With Hominids - Nalo Hopkinson (wlw)

The Fox’s Tower and Other Tales - Yoon Ha Lee (nonbinary)

Her Body and Other Parties - Carmen Maria Machado (wlw)

Beneath the Citadel - Destiny Soria (mlm/gay/bi/ace)

Witchmark - C.L Polk (mlm/gay)

The Prey of Gods - Nicky Drayden (trans/bi)

An Unkindness of Ghosts - Rivers Solomon (wlw/trans/nonbinary/intersex)

The Root - Na’amen Gobert Tilahun (mlm/gay)

Gods & Monsters: Snake Eyes - Hillary Monohan (wlw)

Labyrinth Lost - Zoraida Cordova (wlw/bi)

The Winged Histories - Sofia Samatar (wlw)

The Weight of Stars - K. Ancrum (wlw)

Huntress - Malinda Lo (wlw)

Will Do Magic For Small Change - Andrea Hairston (bi/pan/nonbinary)

The Last Chronomancer - Reilyn J Hardy (aro/ace/genderfluid/lesbian)

A Taste of Honey - Kai Ashante Wilson (mlm/bi)

Deadline - Stephanie Ahn (wlw/lesbian)

The Read Threads of Fortune - JY Yang (wlw/bi)

Not Your Sidekick - C.B. Lee (wlw/bi)

Timekeeper - Tara Sim (mlm)

Ascension - Jacqueline Koyangi (wlw)

When The Moon Was Ours - Anna-Marie McLemore (trans)

Amberlough - Lara Elena Donnelly (mlm/gay)

The Perfect Assassin - K.A Doore (gay/ace/mlm)

Afterparty - Daryl Gregory (wlw/lesbian)

Borderline - Mishell Baker (wlw/bi)

The Cloud Roads - Martha Wells (bi)

An Accident of Stars - Foz Meadows (wlw/bi/aro/trans)

The Last 8 - Laura Pohl (aro/bi)

Failure to Communicate - Kaia Sonderby (wlw/bi)

The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling (wlw)

The Wrong Stars - Tim Pratt (wlw)

Full Fathom Five - Max Gladstone (trans)

A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine (wlw)

Silver In the Wood - Emily Tesh (mlm)

The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie (mlm/bi/trans)

Ariah - B.R. Sanders (mlm/bi/nonbinary)

The Raven and the Reindeer - T. Kingfisher (wlw)

Planetfall - Emma Newman (bi)

Black Wings Beating - Alex London (ace/gay/mlm)

The Scorpion Rule - Erin Bow (bi)

Inkmistress - Audrey Coulthurst (bi)

Into the Drowning Deep - Mira Grant (wlw/bi/lesbian)

Vengeful - V.E Schwab (ace)

Blackfish City - Sam J Miller (nonbinary)

Daughter of Mystery - Heather Rose Jones (wlw/lesbian)

Stranger Grace - Tessa Gratton (bi/pan)

The Brilliant Death - Amy Rose Capetta (nonbinary)

Chameleon Moon - RoAnna Sylver (wlw/trans/ace)

19 Love Stories - David Levithan (trans/queer)

It’s Not Like It’s A Secret - Author Not Given (wlw)

Picture Us In The Light - Author Not Given (mlm)

Two Can Keep A Secret - Author Not Given (mlm/bi)

Death Sets Sail - Author Not Given (wlw)

Becoming Dinah - Author Not Given (rep not provided)

Witch Wolf series - Winter Pennington (wlw, lesbian, bisexual)

Underrealm series - Garrett Robinson (wlw, mlm, nonbinary, trans man trans woman, trans, pansexual, bisexual)

A Cloak of Red - Brenna Gawain (wlw, lesbian)

 Blood Canticles - Naomi Clark (wlw)

Podcasts

Welcome to Night Vale (mlm/gay/wlw/nonbinary)

Dreamboy (mlm/gay)

Alice Isn’t Dead (wlw/lesbian)

The Penumbra Podcast (mlm/bi/genderfluid/nonbinary)

My Favorite Podcast (trans men)

Within the Wires (wlw)

The Adventure Zone (mlm/wlw/trans/gnc/nonbinary)

Limetown (wlw/lesbian)

Getting Curious With Jonathan Van Ness (nblm/nonbinary)

Friends at the Table (mlm/wlw/nonbinary)

LezHangOut (wlw)

Bright Sessions (mlm/demi/ace)

Queer As Fact (historical lgbt)

History Is Gay (historical lgbt)

Always Here (historical lgbt)

And That’s Why We Drink (nonbinary)

Magnus Archives (mlm/ace)

The Two Princes (mlm/gay/bi)

Girl-ish (trans women)

The Bright Sessions (gay/ace)

TV Shows/Movies/ETC

One Day At A Time (Remake) (wlw/lesbian/nonbinary)

Love, Simon (mlm/gay)

A Single Man (mlm/gay)

Brokeback Mountain (mlm/gay)

In The Flesh (mlm/gay)

Weekend (mlm)

RWBY (wlw/trans)

Jessica Jones (wlw/lesbian)

Critical Role (mlm/gay/bi/wlw/lesbian/nonbinary/genderfluid)

Pose (trans women/gay)

Schitt’s Creek (pan/mlm)

White Collar (wlw)

Lucifer (bi)

Umbrella Academy (mlm/wlw)

Call Me By Your Name (mlm)

Brooklyn Nine Nine (mlm/gay/bi)

Steven Universe (nonbinary)

Sailor Moon (wlw)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer (wlw)

Sense8 (mlm/gay/wlw/lesbian/trans woman)

Doom Patrol (?/rep not given)

Good Omens (nonbinary)

Gentleman Jack (wlw)

American Gods (mlm/gay/bi/two-spirit)

Orange Is The New Black (wlw/trans)

Blue Is The Warmest Color (wlw)

Shameless (mlm/trans)

Euphoria (wlw/trans woman)

Modern Family (mlm/gay)

Daisy Brown ARG (wlw/lesbian)

Deadpool (pan)

Deadpool 2 (pan/wlw)

Alex Strangelove (mlm/gay)

Wynonna Earp (lesbian/gay/wlw)

She-Ra (wlw/mlm/gay/bi/lesbian/nonbinary/trans man)

SKAM (rep not provided)

Gotham (bi)

The Haunting of Hill House (wlw)

The Haunting of Bly Manor (wlw)

Kipo and the Wonderbeasts (mlm/gay/nonbinary)

Billie and Emma (wlw)

Carmen & Lola (wlw)

Carol (wlw)

Disobedience (wlw)

Elisa & Marcela (wlw)

Good Manners (wlw)

The Handmaiden (wlw)

Heart Beat Loud (wlw)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (wlw)

Rafiki (wlw)

Stranger Things (wlw)

Handsome Devil (mlm)

Pride (wlw/mlm)

Musicals

The Prom (wlw/lesbian)

Be More Chill (mlm/bi)

Fun Home (wlw)

Spring Awakening (mlm)

A New Brain (mlm)

Falsettos (mlm/wlw)

Rent (mlm/wlw)

Firebringer (wlw/bi)

A Very Potter Musical (mlm/gay)

The Guy Who Didn’t Like Musicals (wlw)

Bare: A Pop Opera (mlm)

Everybody’s Talking About Jaime (mlm/gay)

Yank! The Musical (mlm)

Octet (wlw)

Ghost Quartet (wlw)

Spies Are Forever (mlm/gay)

Willow: A New Musical (wlw)

Over And Out: A New Musical (nblw/nonbinary)

Video Games

Fallout: New Vegas (mlm/gay/wlw/lesbian)

When The Night Comes (mlm/nonbinary)

The Arcana (nonbinary)

Dream Daddy (mlm/gay/bi/pan/trans)

Dragon Age (mlm/wlw/gay/lesbian/trans/pan/bi)

Smile For Me (wlw)

Undertale (trans/nonbinary/wlw/mlm)

Monster Prom (nonbinary)

Cookie Run (nonbinary/mlm/wlw/bi/pan)

The Missing (wlw/trans woman)

Fable 2 & 3 (wlw/mlm)

Borderlands 2 (mlm/wlw/bi/gay/lesbian)

Gone Home (wlw)

Prey (wlw)

Dishonored 2 (nonbinary/wlw)

Deus Ex Mankind Divided System Rift (rep not given)

Assassins Creed Series (mlm/wlw/gay/lesbian/trans)

The Last of Us (wlw/lesbian) 

Mass Effect Series (mlm/wlw/gay/lesbian/bi)

Life Is Strange (wlw)

Overwatch (mlm/gay/wlw/lesbian)

Animal Crossing (pan)

Night In The Woods (pan/mlm/trans woman)

The Elder Scrolls (trans/wlw/lesbian)

Dreamfall Chapters (mlm/gay)

Dishonored: Death of the Outsider (wlw)

In the Outer Worlds (wlw/ace)

Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (mlm/wlw)

Fallout 4 (wlw/mlm)

Hades (mlm/bi)

Obviously this list is far from complete so feel free to add to it or let me know of anything else and I’ll edit the post to add it as long as you include the category it belongs to! Be sure to include what representation it has though otherwise I can’t add it!

[sciencespies]

Amazing New Photos Give A Stunning Glimpse Into The Hidden World of Tiny Things

https://sciencespies.com/nature/amazing-new-photos-give-a-stunning-glimpse-into-the-hidden-world-of-tiny-things/

Amazing New Photos Give A Stunning Glimpse Into The Hidden World of Tiny Things

The natural world holds beauty even at a microscopic scale, and each year, Nikon’s Small World photo competition opens our eyes to a whole new realm of diminutive detail.

In its 47th year, the contest continues to celebrate the intricacies of nature and the artistry of careful microscopic investigation.

Whether it be a kaleidoscopic slice of meteorite or the translucent head of a tick, the tessellated eye of a horsefly or the web of cracks across a single grain of rice, this year’s winners, honorable mentions, and images of distinction are here to give us a glimpse into the unseen.

The first place prize goes to Jason Kirk from the Baylor College of Medicine, who used a custom-made microscope system to capture 200 individual images of a southern live oak leaf, which he then combined to create a single stunning image.

The result is a color-edited mosaic of the leaf’s most essential structures, including deep purple pores, snaking cyan vessels, and white trichomes (fine outgrowths that protect against extreme weather).

“The lighting side of it was complicated,” explains Kirk.

“Microscope objectives are small and have a very shallow depth of focus. I couldn’t just stick a giant light next to the microscope and have the lighting be directional. It would be like trying to light the head of a pin with a light source that’s the size of your head. Nearly impossible.” 

Trichome (white appendages) and stomata (purple pores) on a southern live oak leaf. (Jason Kirk)

Second place is taken by neuroscientists Esmeralda Paric and Holly Stefen from Australia, who snapped a constellation of 300,000 networking neurons, split into two populations.

Over time, both networks have grown together via a bridge of axons. Immunostained, the connection creates a gorgeous overall gradient, glowing from orange to green with pockets of blue dotted throughout.

A microfluidic device of neurons in two isolated populations. (Esmeralda Paric and Holly Stefen)

Third place, by Nassau Community College’s Frank Reiser, zooms out much further to capture the left side of an individual hog louse, which is a species of lice known as Haematopinus suis among scientists.

The partial body, including a claw and hind leg, are reminiscent of a crab, but of course, these fellas are small enough to crawl on single strands of your hair. Within, a winding pathway of bronchial tubes can be seen, which carry oxygen from limb to limb.

Rear leg, claw, and respiratory trachea of a louse (Haematopinus suis). (Frank Reiser)

Sixth and seventh place were both snapped up by scientists from the same institution – Ohio State University – which is quite the achievement given almost 1,900 images were submitted from all around the world for consideration.

The sixth place winner looks almost like a Pollock painting. The splattering of white lines is a three-dimensional representation of the twisting blood vessels found in an adult mouse brain.

It was submitted by neuroscientist Andrea Tedeschi, who has perfected a technique that allows every single blood vessel in the brain, right down to the finest capillaries, to be imaged.

The exquisite detail is particularly useful for research on strokes, spinal cord injuries, and brain trauma more generally, which can all disrupt the structure and function of blood vessels in the brain.

“We tend to think neurons and neuronal circuits are the most complex structure, but in reality, if you superimpose the images, you can understand that brain vasculature is as complex as the neuron architecture,” says Tedeschi.

“If you want to find where a disease is starting, you need access to the structure so you can understand the fine details you might overlook.”

3D vasculature of an adult mouse brain (somatosensory cortex). (Andrea Tedeschi)

The seventh place winner was captured at the same level of magnification as sixth place, but instead of focusing on the brain of a mouse, Ohio state researchers Tong Zhang and Paul Stoodley centered their attention on the head of a tick.

The advanced color scheme they used paints a beautiful picture, which gradually unfolds each and every anatomical layer of the tick’s blood-sucking mouth as you trace it with your eyes.

“The image was striking, and the autofluorescence color scheme made the mouth region pop up from the entire image,” says Zhang. “You can see fine details in the tick’s head, and especially its mouth region, with inverted arrow-like structures. It’s a good example of nature’s smart designs.”

Head of a tick. (Tong Zhang and Paul Stoodley)

The judges this year clearly had their work cut out for them. Some of the honorable mentions and the images of distinction are enough to make your jaw drop.

Take, for instance, this glowing, golden portrait of a 40-million-year-old gnat, trapped in Baltic amber:

40-million-year-old gnat in Baltic amber. (Levon Biss)

Or this extreme close-up of a midge, whose feathery antennae stand out in crisp contrast to the black background. 

Midge (Chironomidae diptera). (Erick Francisco Mesén)

Some of the images submitted were the fruits of hard scientific labor. Others came from professional photographers or amateur microscope enthusiasts with a love for tiny, beautiful things.

One of the most mesmerizing honorable mentions was taken by photographer Oliver Dum, who likes to focus on the microscopic world.

His award-winning close-up in this case belongs to the compound eye of a horsefly. At such close proximity, each light-sensitive hexagon can be made out, and each combines to create an unbelievably perfect pattern, blown up at times by what look like droplets of water.

Eye of a horsefly. (Tabanus sudeticus). (Oliver Dum)

Other images that were submitted answered questions we never even thought we had. Like: Is a single grain of rice really as smooth as it looks to us?

​​Cracks in a grain of rice. (Roni Hendrawan)

Or: What did Nemo look like as an embryo?

Clownfish (Amphiprion percula) embryos in several developmental stages. (Daniel Knop)

Not all the photos considered were of earthly subjects, either. One out-of-this-world image shows a stained-glass slice of meteorite under the microscope.

Thin slice of a meteorite. (Don Komarechka)

Perhaps the most grounding image shared by the Nikon judges depicts a single grain of pollen, balanced on a petal, at risk of being blown away.

Pollen grain on a crocus flower petal. (Charles B. Krebs)

Just as star-gazing can keep our perspective on a universe much larger than ourselves, looking at images of the microscopic world like this one can remind us of the hidden foundation on which we all ultimately float.

The winners of the competition can be found here.

#Nature

[burlveneer-music]

XIXA - Genesis - southwestern gothic rock + cumbia with some gnarly electronic breaks; an amazing fusion of styles

The New Southwest is a raw, mystical place. A land of sun-bleached rock and crusty, windswept desert blues. Magick runs deep in the earth here; a sense of the macabre too. Scoundrels and coyotes roam free, howling at the moon, as a seductive, psychedelic rhythm echoes over the horizon. XIXA, Tucson’s dark, dusty gothic overlords, have their genesis here; it has nurtured them, and it is home. It’s also the setting for Genesis, the new album that sees the band return triumphantly to their roots, and give voice to their most primal instincts. By turns trippy and devilish, like a jam band getting high on Diá de Los Muertos, XIXA have always been uniquely attuned to the desert and their Latin influences. Combining gritty guitars, the bumping grind of Peruvian chicha, and dark, swirling psych-rock into a mesmerizing stew, the guitar-slinging six-piece have spent years exploring this sonic territory.

Genesis is a visceral listen, and very much formed by aesthetics. For its art, XIXA collaborated with celebrated fellow Tucsonan and longtime friend Daniel Martin Diaz on an illustration entitled “The Metaphysical Universe,” together creating the perfect visual representation of the themes explored on Genesis and the balance of darkness and beauty. Diaz’s work blends together ideas of Christian mythology like renewal and ascension, sciences like astronomy and anatomy, secret masonic symbols, a fair dose of hocus-pocus and war-of-the-worlds science fiction into a style all his own. The album is also transportive; entire worlds can be painted with Lopez and Sullivan’s voices and lyrical content. Edgar Allan Poe, 70s Spaghetti Westerns, and Narco cumbia are all influences. So too are chicha legends Los Shapis. A sense of foreboding hangs over the ten tracks, of danger foretold. All of this lends the music a more somber mood and gives it an edge, as if some unseen menace lurks in the shadows. But these songs also represent something else. They are the distillation of everything that makes XIXA who they are, and their most complete work to date. Rhythmically complex, and laced with timeless melodies, Genesis is by turns catchy, mysterious, and intense. Sullivan sings like Leonard Cohen re-imagined as a desert outlaw, and many tracks have a widescreen, cinematic feel – like Ennio Morricone infused with an inky gothic horror.

[peoplelikegames]

Steam Games Festival: I played so many demos. My thoughts...

I spent a few days playing as many of these demos as I could and wrote down some rough impressions.

Black Book (Morteshka): Heavily atmospheric and steeped in Slavic mythology. You play as a Slavic woman named Vasilisa, attempting to bring back her husband, who has committed suicide, back from hell in an effort to save him from the eternal damnation that their religion believes befell those who commit suicide. She becomes a witch after venturing through the gates of hell and back. The gameplay takes several different forms, depending on what you’re doing. It’s got some point-and-click adventure game elements during the more exploration focused scenes. Sometimes you’ll find herbs that can be used as items later during combat. The combat plays out like Slay the Spire and other deck builder games of the ilk, with the key exception of the spell slots. Instead of the standard 3 energy system restricting card usage each turn, here you have 3 slots that can be filled with spells that correspond with the slot type. You have 2 Order slots (big spells) and 1 Key slot (little spells) you can fill each turn. It’s a small twist to the formula that opens up a lot of interesting possibilities and combinations. In between fights and the point-and-click scenes you’ll get to interact with people you meet along the path to your destination and make choices that effect the story and your character. Vasalisa’s journey looks bleak and full of death, and I’m interested to see where it goes.

AK-Xolotl (Daniel Piqueras Constantin): Fast paced, adorable and aggressive top down shooter. Very simple gameplay of shooting down waves of enemies picking up weapons and items that drop when they die. Feels great to play. Good movement, good dash, not much else to ask for. Really quick and snappy shooting and simple gameplay loop me keeps playing again and again just to get a higher score and see what new stuff it has to throw at me. It’s got really cute pixelated graphics and lots of forest critters with guns. The game also features an absolutely filthy death metal track that’s a perfect representation of how aggressive the game really is. Just a really quick and dirty time that definitely makes me want to see the finished product. Also, I love the lil axolotl guy.

Despot’s Game (Konfa Games): Rogue-like dungeon crawler where you control a mob of humans. It’s a pretty cool and complicated battle system my only problem is I can’t help but feel like I don’t have enough control on the outcome of the fights. It’s almost a little like Totally Accurate Battle Simulator in that way. Basically, your run begins with you purchasing a bunch of little humans and different weapons to give to those little humans which will give them a class. Give a little guy a medkit and now he’s a healer, give someone a gun and they’re a shooter now. Humans with classes have special abilities they can activate when there are enough classes of that type on the field. Like an Auto Chess (Auto Battler?) game, if you have, say, 2 or 3 Fencers on the board, your fencers will now have access to their special ability, a dodge roll. Position your people in what you hope is a tactical formation and start heading for the dungeon exit. Most rooms consist of a fight, which plays out automatically. When you press go on a fight, your troops and the enemies will all start fighting until only one side remains. This is where the game loses me a little bit as it’s unclear how much of a difference positioning makes or what more I should be doing to change the outcome. Did I win this time because that unit was farther up than last time, or did the AI just play it out slightly differently that skewed in my favor? I can’t tell if the changes I’m making are actually making a tactical difference, or if the AI routines are just clashing with slightly varying results each time. You’re gonna lose units a lot but they are pretty disposable, with frequent shops for buying reinforcements or new gear. And every unit contributes to your mob’s total hunger meter, which deplete with every new room you enter. You have to buy food to feed your troops to keep them from losing effectiveness. Bigger team=greater food consumption. Gotta find a balance with your money and spending it on new units, new weapons, and food. I really wanted to like this game more because I really dig the hook of building up a mob of little guys with cools powers and I like the unit synergy system as well, but the perceived lack of control over how the fights play out and the game’s edgy humor ultimately pushed me away.

Dead Estate (Milkbar Lads): Fairly generic zombie shooter rogue-like (there’s gonna be a lot of rogue-likes). Your standard twin-stick kind of shooting you’d find in the Binding of Isaac or Enter the Gungeon, except here you can jump, adding some verticality. Explore each room, kill the zombies, find the key and then find the elevator to the next floor. Sometimes you find a new gun or shop along the way. The movement feels pretty slow and the rooms feel small. Too many times would I walk into a room, fight three of the same zombie then walk int next room just to see two more of that same zombie. Too many times did I have to walk back across a whole level at a snail’s pace. Needs more enemy variety and to move a little quicker. The shooting is a little better, I like how the game makes its weapons feel distinct by how much it kick it has. More powerful weapons will push you back with each shot. Unloading the mini gun felt chaotic and rumbly that make you slide back and wiggle in a fun way. You can usually kill most enemies before they’re even able to do anything makes them unique, rendering most enemies the same “zombie that walk towards you for second before you finish them off.” Didn’t really draw me in or entice me to see what I might encounter on higher floors.

Foregone (big blue studio): This one feels a little like a watered down Dead Cells at first, AT FIRST. It’s a little slower and less snappy but it’s still very fun. Plus it’s more of a linear 2d action platformer with lots of loot. I like the loot aspect here quite a bit; watching a bunch of currency fly out of enemies is satisfying in a “headshot kill in Destiny kinda way.” Just a bunch of fun particles and a frequent gear drop that has you constantly popping open your inventory to equip your new gear and make those numbers go up. If that’s your kind of fun, you can definitely find it here. Lots of weapon variety on show here and most, if not all, of them feel unique. Just wish the combat was little tighter, which since this is a demo, I assume will come in due time. The game could also do a better job of informing the player that they’re taking damage, which made it difficult to hone the timing on the dash to avoid taking damage. And I’m hoping the environments of the full game become a little more diverse and sprawling, right now it feels like it’s mostly individual rooms/levels of engagement at a time. Excited to see how the full release pans out.

Tunche (LEAP Game Studios): Immediately drawn in here by the beautiful hand drawn art style. It’s a brawler roguelike and if you know what those two words mean in the context of video games, that’s all you really need to know. The brawler combat is what it is, very combo and juggle heavy, enemies that take dozens of hits to kill, fairly bland and just flat land environments. Walk forward until you’re stopped, fight a bunch of waves of enemies, rinse and repeat. Except this time you occasionally get upgrades after finishing rooms like “chance for attacks to cause burn” and “chance to regain health on hit,” your standard rougelike fare. With the territory comes the roguelike difficulty, and this game is plenty tough with the amount of enemies it throws at you and how limited your health pool can be. All of the art and the animations are what really shine here, and if you’re into that brawler style combat, this seems like a pretty good one of those.

Power of Ten (Pew Times Three): Next up we have a top-down space shooter roguelike. I like the minimalistic pixel art style in this one. It helps with atmosphere and you making you feel like a small ship in a large system. Your goal is to power planetary shields on inhabited planets throughout the system by gathering resources from asteroids. While you’re hunting asteroids, pirate ships will randomly attack a planet, pulling you away from resource gathering into a space dogfight against the pirates. That push and pull of gathering resources to fuel a planets shields while simultaneously protecting the planets whose shields are not yet charged is the core loop here that I really like. Conveying solid, core gameplay loop that’s engaging is exactly what you want to get across in a demo, and they definitely deliver that here.

Jelly is Sticky (Lunarch Studios): A lovely, casual sokoban puzzle game. Sliding around and rearranging cubes of jelly into oblong structures to match highlighted areas within a given space. You��ll encounter jellies of different qualities along the way, all with their own quirks around how they like to stick. I really like the non-linear structure in the over world, letting you navigate around between levels from all of the jelly-archetypes at any time. Solving sets of levels will unlock jelly in the over world you can stick to and rearrange to give you access to further levels gated behind walls and other triggers. It’s an appreciated extra layer of depth you don’t expect from a puzzle game that could have very well presented it’s levels in an ordered, level-select screen.

Potion Craft (niceplay games): In this game you play as a budding alchemist trying to make your mark on the world in your newly acquired (stolen possibly?) alchemy shop. Its an alchemist simulator. It’s presented in an “alchemy text book diagram-style” that’s immediately endearing. Every day, you collect ingredients like herbs and fungi from your garden and then it’s time to open shop. Customers come and share their plight, asking for potions of different types. They’ll offer different prices for potions of different potency which you haggle up further (or lower, if you mess up) through a simple timing mini game. The actually potion making is puzzling and unique, if not occasionally limiting. Ingredients you add to the cauldron determine a path that the potion icon in the center will follow across a fog covered map. Add more ingredients to add length and direction to the path, trying to build the path in a specific way that will lead to a “?” destination marked on the map. Name the potion, choose a bottle and label, and brew it. You’ll learn what it does, and can save the recipe for easy use again later. The only downside is how limited the ingredients are makes it very punishing when experimentation results in failure, all those ingredients are just lost. It seems like the game really wants you to just fill the orders at hand instead of blindly exploring into the fog to see what weird stuff comes up, which is my favorite thing to do so far. This is still easily one of my favorite demos of the bunch and has to be seen for oneself.

Aeon Drive Prologue (2awesome studio): This is definitely one of the ones I wanted to like more than I did. A self proclaimed “speedrun action platformer” and it demands that go fast. Very short 2d platformer levels with an ever ticking clock. If the timer reaches zero before you reach the exit, you fail the level. Consumables lined throughout the level can be used to add more time to your clock. This game is very punishing, one hit from anything, from enemy to stage hazard, will cause you to fail and restart. Very quick movement and a focus on chaining together different moves to find different paths through the level. There seemed to be benefits like special collectibles for taking more inventive, alternative paths, but the ticking clock really kept me tunnel-visioned on the most clear cut route through the level, meaning I only ever small a very tiny portion of each one. I’m not the type of person to butt my head against how to pull some crazy route as opposed to the clearly laid out one in front of me. Unfortunately, that clearly laid path just isn’t very fun to take. There’s also a dagger you can throw and teleport to, which I found difficult to aim and not as fun to use as it sounds. There is definitely something here, it’s just ultimately not for me.

Medievalien (dOOb games srl): Action RPG roguelike in a medieval world that has been invaded by aliens. You play an amnesiac protagonist trying to undo the calamity through repeated attempts from within a magical (or scientific?) time loop. Commence genre mashup. Nothing particularly stands out here. Two weapon slots and two throwables slots, lots of different items to fill them. Your weapons consist of bows, crossbows, and staves, and the throwables are bombs of varying elemental effect. It’s fun to play but fairly middling. The low poly art style doesn’t do anything for me and the soundtrack was forgettable. Still, if you’re like me and enjoy ARPGs and roguelike, it does the thing well enough to scratch the itch.

Minute of Islands (Studio Fizbin): Right out of the gate this 2d narrative platformer hits you with gorgeous hand-drawn art. A poisoned, decaying world that is beautifully drawn and animated. I’m gonna day this is not the best demo. The pace is very slow and the objectives are linear and don’t even register as puzzles. This game calls itself a puzzle platformer yet there were no puzzles to be found in this demo. I’m assuming the demo is trying to preserve story details so it starts at the beginning and only gives you a small slice from there. So maybe the game introduces more puzzle elements later in the game. But what’s left in the demo is not very compelling to play. The impressively detailed environments and atmosphere are only driving forces so far. But extremely strong forces at that.

Alekon (The Alekon Company): This feels like spiritual follow up to Pokemon Snap in all of the best ways. In its most basic form, the game plays exactly like Pokémon Snap, but builds on the nearly 30 year old classic in several key ways. Creatures in this game are called “Fictions” and whenever you take a picture of a new fiction, the creature also appears back in the game’s hub world. Once back in the hub world, you can talk to the fictions who have moved in and they’ll give you small quests to do that’ll usually reward you with key game features, like a zoom function for the camera. There’s a great feature that involves capturing photos of a fiction in all of its potential poses, which will unlock the ability to “see through the eyes of the fiction.” So when you’re looking through the album of your saved pictures, you can apply a fiction filter to see the image as a particular fiction would see if through their own eyes. Also, once you’ve unlocked all of the different routes in a specific biome, you gain the ability to “wander.” Wandering is free from the rails of the standard routes and allows to explore every inch of the biome and find other fictions that were previously hidden. It’s also a great space to snag that perfect picture of a fiction you couldn’t get while riding the rails. The creatures themselves are kind of hit or miss so far in their design. Sometimes it’s literally just a seal, sometimes it’s a ridiculous alien thing, but it seems like the personalities of the fictions are what makes them unique. Even though I didn’t care for the designs, I found myself endeared toward the creatures once I found them back in the hub and helped them with their troubles. There’s some good writing in these bits that really helps sell me on these creatures. Lots to love here if you’re into games about snapping pics of critters and throwing donuts.

Eat’n Eaten (Gaëtan Benoit): A cartoony tower defense game with bug plants. Bugs that grow from plants. It has a really fun and easy to understand “food chain management” system for building up units. It almost feels like it was designed to translate easily to touchscreens for mobile devices. Your soil has 100% nutrients, plants grow and feed off nutrients, plants grow apples which you can pick who will then become your units. When an apple dies it’s corpse returns nutrients to the soil and it’ll drop a seed that will grow into a new plant. If you don’t pick the apples off the plant long enough for them to consume extra nutrients, the apples will become a caterpillar. Pick the caterpillar off the plant and now you have a more offensive unit, who needs to eat apples to survive. The game only builds on the loop from there; the way bugs will level up into new or stronger forms after eating enough fruit, or how the game will add spiders to your team who will then need to eat caterpillars to survive. Manage this whole food chain to keep a steady supply and distribution of units against waves of enemies. I don’t know if that seems confusing when put into word like that but it’s really quick and simple to pick up they way it is presented. It can definitely get a little frantic at times but that’s when the game is at it’s most fun.

Dorfromantik (Toukana Interactive): Chill, colorful, tile placement puzzle game about building a village landscape. You start with a deck of 85 hexagonal tiles, and it doesn’t end until all the tiles have been placed. You’re placing tiles with the intent to line up as many like edges between adjacent tiles, making longer and longer networks of landscapes of matching type. The way the scoring works and how the game conforms matching sides together does a good job of making the best place to put your tile one that not only scores well but also looks good in the context of the interconnected village landscape you are ultimately trying to craft. I would kill for this game on Switch.

Unsouled (Megusta Game): An isometric pixelates dark souls-style action game. Described as an “ultra-brutal” game with “fast-paced and savagely rewarding combat,” Unsouled comes exactly as advertised. The combat in this game is very difficult and I am simply not the person to conquer it. It’s really fast paced yet proper movement and combat requires consistent timing and punished button mashing. Every thing you do has to be deliberate and calculated as it’s easy to lose control of the battlefield very quickly. Even just a few enemies can be dangerous as they all can dodge and block and roll just like you. The game is unafraid to put the pressure on and throw ten enemies at you all at once engaging from different ranges. The game demands that intimately learn the combat systems if you want to keep your stamina and health high in the heat of combat. I’d bet that if you’re a fan of Dark Souls or souls-like games, this game has all that difficulty but a different pace of combat that doesn’t feel derivative.

Rogue Invader (Squishy Games): Immediately I love the look of this game. It’s got this old school 1-bit black and white look to it. It also opens up with a fully animated and voice acted cutscene. The game is actually pretty difficult. It’s a side scrolling shooter where you’re part of an army in invading an alien planet one soldier at a time. You’re also managing weapon heat and breakage, and carry weight effecting run speed. Each soldier gets body armor and a pistol but you can equip them with a rifle and helmet from your armory. Which you’ll definitely want to do considering you die in one shot if hit in the head. When you’re soldier dies, they lose the gear you equipped them with and the new soldier needs to be equipped with whatever you can craft in the forge. This is where I ran into issues with hardy ever having enough materials to craft a helmet, go into a mission and die early to a single stray bullet to the head, and subsequently not earn enough materials to make a helmet. The evasive controls like jumping, running, rolling and taking cover all felt clunky in my hands, add that to fact that bullets often just miss even if you’re aiming right on an enemy, and it made for a pretty unsatisfying game to play.

Devastator (Radiangames): How is this not just Geometry Wars? Because this shit is just geometry wars. Fortunately, Geometry Wars slaps so this game is still pretty fun. But just go play Geometry Wars. There, I mentioned a different game like five times more than the game this was supposed to be about.

ANVIL (Action Square): Co-op top down shooter roguelike with space marines. It’s like a run-based Starship Troopers game. It’s pretty great. The three characters unlocked in the demo all have different weapons and abilities resulting in very distinct play styles between classes. There’s a fairly simple loop to each floor: search the floor for the boss, along the way areas will be filled with enemies, who’ll drop money, which can be used to buy passive upgrades from chests found throughout the floor. The upgrade system allows you stack multiple of the same upgrade for increased effect. Lots of variety in the enemy type really keeps you on your toes. Unsurprisingly, it just feels good to mow down mobs of space bugs.

Orbital Bullet (SmokeStab): A 360 degree shooter platformer. It’s a really cool gimmick actually, you move in 2d but in ring around a 3D space. It’s makes for some cool looking environments and depth from having inner and outer rings you can switch between. Really fast and arcade-y feeling. Snappy movement and gunplay. There’s seems to be a lot offered here among different weapons, in-run upgrades and meta upgrades that persist between runs. Which makes this a roguelite, as opposed to roguelike, which I tend to prefer. I like having something upgrade outside of my runs to make me feel stronger or different going into the next run. The games has a sort of ancient alien aesthetic, it feels industrial and monolithic. The bursts of neon in the walls, enemies, and weapons really pop among the ruins of the stone temple. Watching your weapons’ shot glide along the curve of the world is an effective visual as well. Just because I clearly like to compare to games so much, this game feels a lot like Resogun meets Downwell, and that’s just fantastic.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Greg Lobanov): A colorful and cartoony adventure game about painting that takes a small but welcomed bullet hell turn. You play as a cute little pup that claims the power of The Brush after it’s wielder (and your master) disappears along with all of the color in the world. Searching for cause and hopefully the solution, you embark on a journey to repaint the world and make your mark as the new wielder. Once you pick up that brush you can start coloring in literally everything in the world. It’s fun and charming the whole way through. You can help the townsfolk bring color back into the lives and color in their houses to their satisfaction. Use the paint to navigate the world by growing and shrinking plants by erasing/coloring them. The demo is a little thin but definitely makes me interested to see what fun stuff the game has in store for these paint mechanics.

Genesis Noir (Feral Cat Den): Okay this game was a trip. I barely have any idea what I just played but I know I really liked what was happening. It’s a heavily stylized point and click adventure game where it feels like you exist within an improvisational Jazz album. Train tracks becoming notes on a cello. Getting into a cosmic jazz-off that plays like a game of Simon and ends with your opponent on the wrong end of a mob hit. I think? Honestly this game is so trippy it was difficult to keep track of what was going on. And occasionally it was a little ambiguous as to how you’re supposed to proceed, which lead some random click and dragging around the screen until something clicks. It actually seems like it could turn out to be a really good example of a story and experience that can really only be through video games. Not quite an animated film, not quite a comic book or visual novel, but instead a fantastical, interactive amalgamation of many things. Whatever this thing may be defined as, it’s something unique and special.

[thereadingchallengechallenge]

🔎YA Under the Radar Part 2🔍

In December 2018, I put together a list of books that I’d read and loved which had less than 10,000 ratings on Goodreads. In March, I added a few more titles to the list and went to do the same today only to find I had a very long list of underrated books to share with you all. So was born Part 2! 

They’re all YA and as of October 2nd, had less than 10,000 ratings on Goodreads. Some series do have one or two books over that threshold but if the sequels were all under, I included them. It was interesting to see again that most titles were from the UK or Australia and that there were several returning authors with lots of books on both lists. 

Feel free to add your own under the radar reads, just be sure to check they meet that ratings requirement 😊 I’ve also add some emojis to denote LGBT+ (🏳️‍🌈) or disability (♿️) representation!

Begin, End, Begin anthology by Danielle Binks 🏳️‍🌈♿️

Proud anthology by Juno Dawson 🏳️‍🌈

Kindred anthology by Michael Earp 🏳️‍🌈♿️

All Out anthology by Saundra Mitchell 🏳️‍🌈♿️

Goodbye Perfect by Sara Barnard 

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust 🏳️‍🌈

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake 🏳️‍🌈

Night Swimming by Steph Bowe 🏳️‍🌈

Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman 

Summer Bird Blue by Akemi Dawn Bowman 🏳️‍🌈

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan 🏳️‍🌈

Devil’s Ballast by Meg Caddy (US release in 2020) 🏳️‍🌈

Girlhood by Cat Clarke 🏳️‍🌈

The Season of You and Me by Robin Constantine ♿️

Toffee by Sarah Crossan

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver 🏳️‍🌈 

The Boy Who Steals Houses by CG Drews ♿️

On the Edge of Gone by Corinne Duyvis 🏳️‍🌈♿️

Highway Bodies by Alison Evans 🏳️‍🌈♿️

The Rosewood Chronicles by Connie Glynn 🏳️‍🌈♿️

Get It Together, Delilah by Erin Gough 🏳️‍🌈

Fateful by Claudia Gray

The Mermaid by Christina Henry

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry ♿️

Freeks by Amanda Hocking

The Starlight Watchmaker by Lauren James 

The Quiet at the End of the World by Lauren James 🏳️‍🌈

Girl in the Window by Penny Joelson ♿️

The Secret Science of Magic by Melissa Keil 

Life in Outer Space by Melissa Keil 

Darius the Great is Not Okay by Adib Khorram ♿️

Everything All At Once by Katrina Leno 

Summer of Salt by Katrina Leno 🏳️‍🌈

Wide Awake by David Levithan 🏳️‍🌈

Valentine trilogy by Jodi McAlister 

People Like Us by Dana Mele 🏳️‍🌈

Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy 🏳️‍🌈

Before I Let Go by Marieke Nijkamp 🏳️‍🌈♿️

Heartstopper series by Alice Oseman 🏳️‍🌈

Fairytale Retellings series by Jackson Pearce 

The Fall of Butterflies by Andrea Portes

Birthday by Meredith Russo 🏳️‍🌈

Hello, Goodbye and Everything in Between by Jennifer E Smith 

You Are Here by Jennifer E Smith 

the Between duology by April Genevieve Tucholke 

The Price Guide to the Occult by Leslye Walton ♿️

Everything I’ve Never Said by Samantha Wheeler ♿️

The Brightsiders by Jen Wilde 🏳️‍🌈

Going Off-Script by Jen Wilde 🏳️‍🌈

Pink by Lili Wilkinson 🏳️‍🌈

[speedyseastars]

Ranking F1 2021 Liveries

Decided leave this until after testing because the cars look best on track. So here is my opinion of the liveries, testing results are being disregarded. The bonus points do not count towards the score.

Alpine: 1000/10 Bonus Points: 0 because I only like the livery Alpine is the hot girl. The blue chrome is so bright, so beautiful, so stunning. I am in love with this car. Dare I say it she is sexy. I am in love with this car. Yeah she’s kind of ‘fat’ but just look at her... she’s pretty. This is how you do a flag livery.

Mclaren: 11/10 Bonus Points: 5 for the launch, 3 for Daniel, 4 for Lando 2020 livery but improved slightly. There is nothing about this livery that I dislike, I like all of it. The orange sparks joy, the rainbow sparks joy, in a world of cars that all look very similar this bright livery stands out and makes me happy. The blue is a beautiful shade, sponsor logos are well placed, no matter the tyre type they look good with the car. It’s perfect.

Red Bull: 10/10 Bonus Points: -1 for using the 2020 car, -1 for no camobull The RBR livery is iconic, they make matte paint work, and I will never complain about them not changing the livery. That being said I miss the days when they did camobull liveries just for a bit of fun. I do not see the point in them changing the livery when it is so timeless and recognisable, maintaining a brand and being easily identifiable is important.

Aston Martin: 8/10 Bonus Points: 5 for Seb and Lance Classy, elegant, sexy. The pink and green work so well together, it has a modern interior design feel to it. I had higher expectations for something less simple but I do love the car a lot already. That being said I think it’s got too much blue undertones, at times it looks more sea green than racing green.

Williams: 7/10 Bonus Points: 3 because someone hacked their app (sad) Why don’t people like this? It’s fun and different. If there wasn’t so many other blue cars it would stand out. ‘Video game livery’ and??? it look good why does it matter if it looks pullled from F1 2020, we are in the age of gaming embrace it.

Mercedes: 6/10 Bonus Points: 20 million for Sir Lewis Downgrade from last year but still so fucking hot. The AMG thing is a bit messy but I get it (everyone except me and Valtteri seems to forget it’s Mercedes AMG) HOWEVER that does not excuse it being ugly, the rear end of the car is just not a good look. The car is so shiny you could use it as a mirror so they do redeem themselves.

Alpha Tauri: 6/10 Bonus Points: 5 for Yuki (short representation!) Serious downgrade from last year. Really do think the blue and white should swap places. It’s not ugly, just a bit disappointing. My opinion changed over testing, the livery is nice it just looked really bad in the launch but I still like last year’s design more and it’s just in that weird space of ;could be better but I like it’ now so maybe it’ll grow on me throughout the season. And I still kind of miss the bright and shiny Toro Rosso.

Alfa Romeo: 6/10 Bonus Points: 0 because I forget they exist Did I forget they even had a car launch? Yes. The car is very nice, but in certain lights the red just looks really weird. Did anyone tell them you can’t read the numbers at certain angles where the number should be readable?

Ferrari: 5/10 Bonus Points: 10 for Charles and Carlos Bright green on a red car... okay Ferrari you got people talking about your ‘totally not tobacco’ sponsor but it messes with my eyes when I look at it. The gradient on the rear is pretty, but I feel it’s too sudden it needs to be dragged out more. That being said it’s a very lovely colour oh no ferrari is making me like red. Yes the photo is different I wanted to use a Charles photo and I liked this one.

Haas: 0/10 Bonus Points:  10 for Mick (he deserves better this is unfair), -1000000 for everything else The design itself is not that bad. Simple and vintage. But the symbolism of the livery, it’s just a glaring reminder of what the team has become, of the fact that you know who is driving that car. I actually feel so bad for Mick and hope he gets out of there soon. Also how is it allowed to have Russian flags everywhere? No photo because I can’t bring myself to look at the car without crying.

[bookswritinghappiness]

Title: Recommended for You • Author: Laura Silverman • Number of Pages: 272 • Rating: 4/5 Published: September 1, 2020 • Read: August 8, 2020 - August 17, 2020

Official Description: To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before meets You’ve Got Mail in this charming and hilarious rom-com following two teen booksellers whose rivalry is taken to the next level as they compete for the top bookseller bonus. Shoshanna Greenberg loves working at Once Upon, her favorite local bookstore. And with her moms fighting at home and her beloved car teetering on the brink of death, the store has become a welcome escape. When her boss announces a holiday bonus to the person who sells the most books, Shoshanna sees an opportunity to at least fix her car, if none of her other problems. The only person standing in her way? New hire Jake Kaplan. Jake is an affront to everything Shoshanna stands for. He doesn’t even read! But somehow his sales start to rival hers. Jake may be cute (really cute), and he may be an eligible Jewish single (hard to find south of Atlanta), but he’s also the enemy, and Shoshanna is ready to take him down. But as the competition intensifies, Jake and Shoshanna grow closer and realize they might be more on the same page than either expects…

Author Bio: Laura Silverman is an author and editor currently living in Brooklyn, New York. She earned her MFA in writing for children at the New School. Her books include Girl Out of Water, You Asked for Perfect, It’s a Whole Spiel, and Recommended for You. Girl Out of Water was a Junior Library Guild Selection. You can contact Laura on Twitter @LJSilverman1 or through her website LauraSilvermanWrites.com.

My Review: I received a digital ARC of this book from Simon and Schuster as part of my participation in this blog tour in exchange for an honest review.

I found out about Recommended for You a few months ago, and when I saw the description and the words “rom-com,” “teen booksellers,” and “Jewish,” I immediately was beyond excited for this book, and that excitement only intensified when I was invited to be a part of this blog tour and got to read the book early!! I rarely get the opportunity to read rom-coms about two Jewish characters, so the fact that this book even exists means the absolute world to me.

I’ve never worked at a bookstore myself but I’ve always thought it would be at least a little bit fun, so I loved living vicariously through Shoshanna and her job at Once Upon. Seeing her get a little too excited about her favorite books (relatable) and then have a moment of “what do you mean you don’t read?!” when she finds out that Jake doesn’t read for fun (also relatable) was such a perfect introduction to her character and her relationship with Jake. Enemies to lovers has been one of my favorite tropes since I read Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston earlier this year, so following Shoshanna as she hate-crushes on Jake while competing with him for the prize money was such a blast. Speaking of Jake, Jake is such a Nice Jewish Boy (or as my friends and I say, NJB), and he’s such a wonderful love interest. I won’t spoil anything, of course, but the baking scenes with him and Shoshanna were some of my favorites.

I think my favorite thing about this book is how casual all of the representation in this book is. There’s the obvious one, of course, and the one that’s the most relatable to me: the Jewish representation! Reading a book set in the wintertime with a main character that talks about her excitement for dreidels and latkes instead of Christmas lights and candy canes meant the world to me. And not only does she talk about Hanukkah, the phrase “oy vey” (along with other Yiddish words and phrases) shows up multiple times in her internal narration and in her dialogue, and she even refers to herself as a Nice Jewish Girl (which is an actual phrase my friends and I use)! A lot of Shoshanna’s character feels so true to my own life, which I don’t take for granted, nor do I take for granted the fact that there are multiple Jewish characters in this book. Authentic Jewish main characters (and characters in general) are rare in media overall and especially so in YA novels, and I hope that I’ll see more Jewish representation like this in the future. But I’m not just talking about the Jewish representation. Multiple significant supporting characters in this book are members of the LGBT+ community, including Shoshanna’s parents, and their identities are treated with respect and are just a small part of these characters’ personalities. Myra, the owner of the bookstore where Shoshanna works, uses a power wheelchair, and her character’s role in the story has nothing to do with that particular part of her life. Daniel, Shoshanna’s “work husband” as she calls him, is Black, and just happens to be Black; it’s an important aspect of his character, but not the only one. All of the representation in the book is written this way, and it’s so lovely to see.

Honestly, my only objection while reading this book involved Shoshanna’s motivation behind a pivotal decision she makes involving one of her friends. I’m not going to go into detail in order to avoid spoilers, but I felt that her thought process behind it was a bit of a stretch.

Overall, though, Recommended for You feels like a heartwarming Hallmark Christmas movie in book form, or at least what I imagine Hallmark Christmas movies are like — I’ve never actually seen one! If they are anything like this book, though, I definitely should marathon them all this holiday season. In all seriousness, Recommended for You had me smiling like an idiot the entire time I was reading, just like all of my favorite rom-com books and movies do. I absolutely loved reading this book, and I highly recommend you all check out it now that it’s finally published : )

Recommended for You on Goodreads This Review on Goodreads My Goodreads

Laura Silverman’s Website Laura Silverman’s Twitter

[sheikah]

Lol idk why my ask got cut but I was going to ask what you think of the rest of the grishaverse cast

Oh! I’m really excited about the cast I’ve seen so far :D

Jessie Mei Li is insanely adorable and I love her for Alina! I was really excited to discover Alina is half Shu and it’s nice to see some representation with her casting in keeping with that. 

I think Freddy Carter, just from the little bit we’ve seen of his personality, will be perfect for Kaz. But his appearance? No so much. Not to be controversial but I actually think Archie Renaux looks more like Kaz with his dark eyes and short, dark hair.  Freddy looks more like Mal with his brown hair and blue eyes. But I Leigh has seemed extremely excited and approving about all of the cast so I trust that they were chosen for the roles they were given for a reason, and I’m not really that bothered about the appearance differences. I don’t think I’ll care once the show starts, I just think it’s kinda funny that the two of them seem like they should swap for their characters haha. 

Amita Suman is literally exactly how I picture Inej in every way and I think she’s perfect. I wish we got to see more photos of her with Freddy because I want a Kanej preview 👀

Kit Young’s sass in their little announcement video was so on point, he’s going to be an amazing Jesper imo.

Calahan Skogman is super attractive lol, and he and Danielle Galligan are basically attached at the hip so I think they’re really going to pop onscreen as Matthias and Nina ❤️ I do kinda wish they’d picked a slightly bigger girl to play Nina based on how I envisioned her from book descriptions but I’m going to reserve my judgments because Danielle’s enthusiasm is so cute and infectious. 

And lastly I think Suyaja Dasgupta was an excellent choice for Zoya because she’s just SO BEAUTIFUL and breathtaking and has the exact sort of look I associate with Zoya. 

So far mostly everyone I’ve interacted with has been supportive of the cast choices and I think that’s great. I’m really looking forward to it and just wish we could get a release date already!

[roidespd-blog]

Chapter Sixteen : THE QUEER KING RECOMMENDS

The Queer King recommends THE DEATH AND LIFE OF MARSHA P. JOHNSON (2017) No one knows what really happened to activist and trans pioneer Marsha P. Johnson the night she died. People still trying to understand. Why do you need to see it ? Marsha P. Johnson is an icon and learning about her is learning about Stonewall and our culture.

The Queer King recommends FAGGOTS, Larry Kramer (1978) Fred Lemish, looking for love, gravitates in a New York City full of glory holes, BDSM, orgies and becomes disillusioned along the way. Why do you need to read it ? It’s Kramer’s first novel. It’s ruff. His writing doesn’t shy away from the reality of gay life and he does not take any prisoners alive. A must read.

The Queer King recommends TANGERINE, Sean Baker (2015) On Christmas Eve, Sin-Dee discovers her pimp boyfriend has been cheating on her. With her friend Alexandra, she goes searching for him Why do you need to see it ? Shot on an IPhone for a ridiculous amount of money, this dramedy puts trans women up front with incredible narrative audacity.

The Queer King recommends A LITTLE LIFE, Hanya Yanagihara (2015) Jude, Willem, JB & Malcolm are best friends living in New York City. From college to middle-age, with most focus on Jude, you will learn to care for them like no other fictional characters before. Why do you need to read it ? I can’t stress this enough. This novel is extraordinary. 18 months later, I’m still not over it. It will break your heart.

The Queer King Recommends PLEASE LIKE ME, Josh Thomas (2013–2016) Josh discovers he’s gay, putting a spin in the lives of his girlfriend, his lazy best friend, his newly-wed dad and his depressed mother. Why do you need to see it ? This Australian comedy achieves in tone and heart what Looking never could. And also, there’s Arnold. Oh, Arnold.

The Queer King Recommends HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH, John Cameron Mitchell (2001) Hedwig, an East German gender queer rock singer, is waiting for her operation that will get rid of the one-inch mound of flesh between her legs. Why do you need to see it ? Poignant, full of incredible tunes and an extraordinary performance from writer-director JCM. Sugar Daddy, Bring it Home.

The Queer King Recommends THE PRINCE OF SALT/CAROL, Patricia Highsmith (1952) Young Therese meets Carol, an rich older woman. The “friendship” that will follow will change her life forever. Why do you need to read it ? An unprecedented feat in literature, a lesbian love story in which the protagonists are not punished in the end. The movie adaptation by Todd Haynes is also a must-see.

The Queer King Recommends 120 BATTEMENTS PAR MINUTE, Robin Campillo (2017) France, 1990s. Act Up. The AIDS Epidemic. Love. Revolution. Why do you need to see it ? To remember what happened. It’s earth-shattering. Silence = Death. What are you waiting for ? Go see it, now !

The Queer King Recommends ONE DAY AT A TIME (2017–2019) A family of hispanic descent tries to survive in today’s America. Why do you need to see it ? For the greatest coming-out storyline on television. So perfect. Bring the show back!

The Queer King Recommends GIOVANNI’S ROOM, James Baldwin (1956) David, a young american who lived in Paris, remembers his complex relationships with the men in his life, particularly a bartender named Giovanni. Why do you need to read it ? Top-3 greatest gay novel of all-time. The first time I read it, I couldn’t finish it. I read the last 30 pages 4 years later. It’s THAT powerful.

The Queer King Recommends A VERY ENGLISH SCANDAL , Stephen Frears. (2018) Three-part miniseries about the Jeremy Thorpe Scandal. Why do you need to see it ? Three words. Whishaw. Davies. Frears. Funny as fuck. I’m starting a Ben Whishaw fanclub BTW.

The Queer King recommends THE ADVENTURES OF PRISCILLA, QUEEN OF THE DESERT, Stephan Elliott (1994) Three drag queens take a road trip across Australia to get to a paid-job. Why do you need to see it ? One of the rare 90s positive representation of LGBT+ people, it’s funny, gorgeous looking. A classic. PS The soundtrack is IN-CRE-DI-BLE.

The Queer King recommends JUST KIDS, Patti Smith (2010) The chronicles of a love story beyond societal restrictions between Patti Smith and revolutionary artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Why do you need to read it ? Aside from the historical accuracy of the 60/70s, you explore what it feels like to really love someone. And Mapplethorpe is a fascinating man. I cried multiple times.

The Queer King recommends THE X PORTOFLIO , Robert Mapplethorpe (1978) A series of photographs that shade a light on homosexual practices (most of them extremes). Why do you need to see it ? A lot of Mapplethorpe’s work is great, but this is beyond. Not for the sensible soul. Hardcore.

The Queer King recommends SHORTBUS, John Cameron Mitchell (2006) An extremely diverse group of people are desperately trying to connect in a vibrant New York City. Why do you need to see it ? That little miracle isn’t shy about sex. ALL kinds of sex. It’s very much like a Robert Altman movie, if Robert Altman shot a lot of oral sex in his career.

The Queer King recommends LESS, Andrew Sean Greer (2018) As his 50th birthday is coming up, writer Andrew Less is traveling around the world to avoid going to his ex’s wedding. Why do you need to read it ? For the exploration of a gay man’s psyché while his youth and opportunities are behind him. As a gay man, it made me sad. Then it gave me hope. Also now, I want a blue suit.

The Queer King recommends CLOSET MONSTER, Stephen Dunn (2015) 18-year old Oscar tries to figure out his sexuality and face his childhood demons Why do you need to see it ? The Buffy references and great acting. Duh.

The Queer King recommends THE WAY HE LOOKS, Daniel Ribeiro (2014) Blind high school student Leo meets new classmate Gabriel. He starts developing romantic feelings towards him. Why do you need to see it ? Desires and self-realization are themes very well exploited in this movie. The two main actors are phenomenal. I almost wished I was 16 again (but not really).

The Queer King recommends WHEN WE RISE, Cleve Jones (2016) A complete memoir about the journey of activist Cleve Jones, following into the path of Harvey Milk to keep fighting for LGBTQ+ rights and against the AIDS Epidemic. Why do you need to read it ? An in depth look at life at the fore front of activism, with gorgeous interludes of romance, sex and heartbreaks.

The Queer King recommends KILLING EVE, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (2018-present) MI:5 Eve Polastri’s pursuit of International killer Villanelle. Why do you need to see it ? Because lesbian desires are still mostly unseen on mainstream, award-winning programs. It’s very, very, very good.

The Queer King recommends ZIGGY, STARDUST & ME, James Brandon (2019) 1973. Jonathan meets Web. He’s not supposed to. He needs to change. Sweet Ziggy won’t help him now. Why do you need to read it ? It’s not out until August (but I have a proof copy). It’s not great literature (it’s YA after all) but it did fill my heart with feelings of love and hope. Everything Bowie is good for the soul anyway.

The Queer King recommends PRIDE, Stephen Boresford (2014) 1984, Brittain. A strike is breaking the country apart. Lesbians & Gays decide to give their support to the miners. Why do you need to see it ? Because it’s still rare to see a funny movie about gay people which is not condescending.

The Queer King recommends ANGELS IN AMERICA, Tony Kushner (1991–1993) A complex, metaphorical examination of American life, the AIDS epidemic and homosexuality in the 80s. Why do you need to read it ? The writing is glorious, full with incredible characters. A very sensitive approach of flaws in the human spirit. It’s epic.

The Queer King recommends LE ROSE ET LE NOIR , Frédéric Martel (1996) Everything that happened to the Queer community in France from 1968 until the arrival of the PACS. Why do you need to read it ? Information is key. You won’t get a deeper source of information.

The Queer King recommends LILTING, Hong Khaou (2014) A mother tries to understand who her son was after his death, co-existing with his grieving lover. Why do you need to see it ? A story of death, acceptance and race, Lilting is a delicate piece of filmmaking. And again, Ben Whishaw. Goddamn Ben Whishaw.

The Queer King recommends MOONLIGHT, Barry Jenkins (2016) The youth, teenage years and adult life of a black gay man struggling with his identity. Why do you need to see it ? Black gay men are not a common subject. It won Best Picture at the Oscars. Fucking Amazing.

The Queer King recommends POSE (2018-present) The tribulations of gay and transgender characters in the ball scene of the late 80s. Why do you need to see it ? The first of its kind — where representation is limitless, it’s an homage to a fabulous and terrible time in LGBTQ+’s life. As I said in a previous article, it’s essential.