#any time they want to start giving content for 2024 it would be greatly appreciated!!

[mayasdeluca]

Highlights of 2023 → Danielle and Stefania

[mazerunnersecretsanta]

IT’S TIME FOR TMR SECRET SANTA 2024!!

Welcome, one and all, to TMR Secret Santa 2024!

Last year, our sixth!!! tmrss, was festive and fantastic, and we're looking forward to another year of yet more creative, new tmr content!🥳

You may be familiar with Secret Santas and how they work but, just in case, here is what will be happening:

Sign up for the Secret Santa by filling out our sign-up form. The information you give us in your sign-up form will be the deciding factor in the gift you’re going to create and the gift you’re going to receive, so please make sure you read and fill it in carefully! Please note this event is 16+. (You can specify three wishes, favourite characters and ships etc. - or any that you don’t want to be featured in your gift, or that you don’t want to include in the gift you make.)

You will then be matched with a giftee, for whom you will create your gift, according to their own Secret Santa wishes :))

Once you have finished making your gift, you will submit it to us via email or, if necessary, via a file sharing platform. More detailed information about submissions will be provided later :) It is very important that you submit your gifts by the 8th December. Christmas is a busy time for us all, and the tmrss elves need enough time to set everything up for the Grand Gift Reveal 🎁🥳

We will post all the gifts on this blog during the week running between Christmas Day (25th Dec) and New Year’s Eve (31st Dec), for your recipient (and for the fandom) to enjoy. Have fun perusing all the beautiful new content and, if you like, making your guesses, but please maintain secrecy, that’s part of the fun!🕵️

The big Secret Santa reveal will take place on 13th Jan, when we will post a list of all the Santas involved and tell you who created which gift.

After that, you’re free to post the gift you created anywhere else (your own tumblr etc.).

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Now, we all love a good deadline, so here is the timeline for the Secret Santa:

5th September - Signups are now open!

19th September - Signups close

5th October - Secret Santa assignments sent out

8th December - Gifts due in

25th December - Gifts start being posted on our blog

13th January - the Big Secret Santa Reveal!

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We’re so excited for our seventh(!) tmrss! We’d love to see our fandom come together for another year to spread joy during the festive period 🎄 🎁

So please sign up, share, reblog, tell your friends – however you can, and spread the word! Let’s show tmr some love!

If you want to be a part of the exchange, but are unsure whether you’ll be able to commit, then there are options to become either a Pinch Hitter (someone who makes a gift, possibly at short notice, if a santa drops out or is otherwise unable to complete their gift) or a Beta Reader - details about this can be found here.

If you would like to put your name forward as a Beta Reader this year - something that we always greatly appreciate - please indicate this on your sign-up form, or email us at mazerunnersecretsanta@ outlook.com

You can find more details, as well as the rules and guidelines, in the top bar on our main blog page, and make sure to follow us so you can keep up to date with all the latest news and announcements.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions! 🧝‍♀️🎄

Enjoyyyyy!!!!

Dreams and Bridge 🎅🎁

[mediaevalmusereads]

Bury Your Gays. By Chuck Tingle. Nightfire, 2024.

Rating: 3/5 stars

Genre: horror

Series: N/A

Summary: Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he's pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―"for the algorithm"―Misha discovers that it's not that simple.

As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what's right―before it's too late.

***Full review below.***

CONTENT WARNINGS: blood, disturbing imagery, homophobia, body horror, torture

OVERVIEW: Right off the bat, I want to say that I admire Chuck Tingle greatly and love his warm, heartfelt presence online. I also love that he writes queer horror. I just think that his writing style is not for me. While I am interested in the themes Tingle explores in both Camp Damascus and Bury Your Gays, I just ultimately didn't vibe with his prose too much. Your mileage may vary, so if you like queer horror, I suggest giving this book a try yourself.

WRITING: Tingle creates some very evocative images but unfortunately, I felt like his prose leaned too heavily on telling as opposed to showing. While I understand that telling vs showing is a balance, I felt like the scales were tipped in telling's favor, and as a result, I had a hard time experiencing things with our characters.

I also think the beginning of this book was a bit slow. I understand what Tingle was trying to set up, but I didn't feel like things really started to pick up until perhaps the halfway point. Maybe it's because of the prose style, but I just didn't feel like Tingle was building up any sense of real dread that I would expect from a horror story.

Still, credit where credit is due. I was really interested in the way Tingle explored things like rainbow capitalism, queer trauma, the rise of AI, and so forth. He had a lot of important things to say, and I think he integrated them into his story in very compelling ways.

PLOT: The plot of this book follows Misha Byrne, a writer for a studio in LA who is told that he must kill off two queer characters in the TV show he works on. When Misha is hesitant, he notices strange things start to happen around him - things that bring up his own past traumas and anxieties and make them real.

I enjoyed the premise of this book in part because it explored the ways in which corporations exploit queer trauma for profit. It was very clear that Tingle was interested in the way media and capitalism do a disservice to queer characters and queer talent, and I thought it was clever how Tingle also managed to weave in criticisms of things like AI and algorithms.

I do think, however, that the narrative could have been a bit tighter. Some parts of the story seemed to meander a bit and some scenes I think could have been shortened or eliminated altogether in order to keep the momentum going.

TL;DR: Bury Your Gays has a lot of important things to say about queerness and media as well as capitalism and technology, but the prose makes it difficult to emotionally connect with the characters.

CHARACTERS: Misha, our POV protagonist, is compelling on paper, but I found it a bit difficult to connect with him due to the prose style. Misha has a lot of anxiety about being semi-closeted and writing his feelings into his scripts, and in theory, that's a fantastic basis for a protagonist. Unfortunately, I just didn't feel like I was being invited to experience things along with Misha; I was being told a lot, but I always felt somewhat held at arm's length.

Zeke, Misha's boyfriend, seems sweet and supportive, but he didn't have much to do. I understand some tension was introduced by having Zeke be hurt by Misha's shame and by putting Zeke in some danger, but Zeke didn't have much of an arc of his own.

Tara, the head of IT at the studio and Misha's best friend, is quite loud and eccentric. While I appreciated the ace representation, Tara was a little much for me, and despite her role towards the end, she also could have been a little more agentive throughout the story.

I do wish Tingle had built up the relationship between Misha and Jack more as well as Misha and his high school friends. We're told a few times about Misha's feelings for them, but I think Tingle could have done more to help us feel connection so that their arcs felt more consequential.