#this man plays only gays who end tragically and have problematic boyfriend

[hypo-critic-al]

Frankenstein: A New Musical

Composer: Mark Baron

Text&Lyrics: Jeffrey Jackson

Director: Bill Fennelly

Premiere: November 1st 2007, 37 Arts Off-Broadway

———

Hunter Foster as Victor Frankenstein

Steve Blanchard as Creature

Christiane Noll as Elizabeth Lavenza

Jim Stanek as Henry Clerval

Mandy Bruno as Justine Moritz

Eric Michael Gillett as Alphonse Frankenstein

Becky Barta as Caroline Frankenstein

Struan Erienborn as Young Victor Frankenstein/William Frankenstein

Aaron Serotsky as Robert Walton

[casually-slips-into-coma]

An Essay (sort of) Explaining the Many Grievances I Have With Debbie Gallagher

Once again, Debbie is the fucking worst.

I’ve been wanting to write out my feelings towards her character for a fucking minute now just so that I have a full concise list. Now, I can talk about how Debbie has a constant need for attention, or how her character has become someone unrecognizable in the past few seasons, or how she’s a terrible mother, but what I really want to focus on is the center of my issues with her: her sexuality. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about to be a homophobic rant or anything. I just think her queer development has been written terribly and that should be addressed.

Too often I see people praising queer characters or relationships based solely on the fact that they are queer, and as a member of the community, I get it. I am also starved for representation. This, however, does not mean I’m going to settle for annoying, poorly written characters.

Why Make Debbie Queer?

The first thing I want to address is why suddenly develop a WLW storyline for her. Given that Debbie started as a little girl on the show, this gives the writers a lot of opportunity to give a character like that interesting storylines because she does not yet have a solid personality. It gives writers the liberty to take her story anywhere they want to without the constraints of established character because she, as a person, is still developing into adulthood. The show runners unfortunately dropped the ball with this.

From season 4 and onwards was when Debbie began showing interest in dating, sex, and romance having just turned the corner to puberty. From then up until season 9, she has shown exclusive interest in men. It isn’t until Alex the welder that Debbie deviates from this path. Alex is portrayed as a stud who confuses Debbie. I am inclined to believe that Debbie was originally attracted to her because she was masculine and therefore close enough to the people Debbie had previous experience with.

This arc was treated very much as Debbie experimenting with her sexuality, something that Alex also ends up realizing after Debbie tells her that having sex with a girl is “not that bad” and “like having sex with yourself” (S9E4). Once this storyline wrapped up (with Debbie shouting “you make me want cock again”) the writers powered through, adamant about Debbie now being a lesbian.

I have two theories as to why they’ve been fighting so hard for her queerness.

1) This was around the time that Cam was leaving Shameless. This obviously didn’t end up happening, but I was under the impression that the writers were freaking out at losing their token gay character and needed to fill that position. When Cam ended up staying, they were stuck with a queer Debbie storyline and decided to just go with it.

2) Shameless was planning on doing a WLW storyline regardless of Cam’s choice to leave and were originally going to give it to Fiona and her lesbian tenant that she had a close relationship and a lot of chemistry with, but Emmy Rossum wanted to move on from Shameless, and so they pivoted and gave the arc to Debbie, a character that was not supposed to be moved in that direction and so her new sexuality seemingly came out of nowhere. Fiona as a bisexual character would have made sense. Debbie still does not.

Shameless’s Awkward Relationship With Bisexuality

One of the biggest issues I have with Debbie is her insistence on being a lesbian. Lesbianism doesn’t come out of nowhere. Bisexuality, however, can. When you grow up being told that you are supposed to feel attraction to men, and you genuinely do feel attraction to men (which Debbie has expressed in past seasons/episodes) it’s easy to ignore your attraction to women and write it off as something that either isn’t a big deal, or something that isn’t there. It’s a lot more confusing than being strictly at one end of the spectrum. It would have been so much more believable if they had simply made Debbie bisexual. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t because the show has a history with bi erasure.

Bisexuality has been treated badly all throughout Shameless, used as a vengeful plot device back in the earlier seasons where Monica was only ever with women when unmedicated. Then in Season 7 when Ian’s boyfriend Caleb cheated on him with a woman (enforcing the stereotype of bisexuals being unfaithful) Ian, possibly acting out of anger or ignorance, said things like “only women are bisexual. When a man says he’s bisexual he’s really just gay”. The only semi positive bisexual representation on the show was Svetlana and Vee when they were in a poly relationship with Kev (though I also think that storyline wasn’t handled as well as it could’ve been).

This fight against the bisexual label in media is not a new one but it is also a harmful stance to take when writing a sexually fluid character. Debbie declaring that she is, in fact, a lesbian after waxing poetic about how Matty had a big dick and Derek had a great body and knew what he was doing is not the way to go. 

You could argue that Debbie, like many other queer women, is an unfortunate victim of compulsory heterosexuality, but frankly I don’t think the writers are well versed enough in queer theory for that to be a possibility.

Debbie as The White Feminist

Debbie is the pinnacle of white feminism. It’s an unfortunate thought that has occurred to me a few times throughout the show. She talks a big game as a man hater and someone after the equal treatment of women but she herself participates in a lot of problematic and anti feminist behavior.

For one, she r*ped Matty back in season 5 when he was blacked out and unconscious. This was a point in the story that was glossed over and one where she suffered no repercussions other than Matty no longer wanting to be around her. It was explained in the show that Debbie didn’t realize what she did was wrong until after she was explicitly told so because she was maybe 14 when it happened (not 100% on the age Shameless is very inconsistent about timelines). It was treated as somewhat of a punchline, something that Shameless has unfortunately done more than once when referring to male sexual assault (Mickey’s r*pe, Liam in season 10 ((i think??)) and in this latest season, Carl) but that is a different topic. 

There was also the time in which she lied to her boyfriend about being on birth control so she could trap him into a relationship with pregnancy (which also counts as r*pe!!) Good on Derek for getting out of that.

Debbie has also been pro-life in the past. Now I understand this was when Fiona was pressuring her into aborting her pregnancy, and as a pro choicer myself, I believe that Debbie was fully in her right to have bodily autonomy and go through with the pregnancy. This isn’t where the issue lies. It’s when Fiona finds out that she too is pregnant and tells Debbie that she wants an abortion that Debbie accuses her of “killing her baby”. Again, her behavior could be explained by her age given that Debbie was still a young teen during this time.

When her actions as a White Feminist become less excusable is mostly in the latest season. Her relationship with Sandy is one that I’m not really happy with because Debbie doesn’t deserve her.

Recently, it has been revealed that Sandy is actually married to a man and has a son. It’s explained that she was basically married off against her will at the age of 15 to a man twice her age. This implies that the product of the marriage, her son, was most likely conceived through dubious consent (or worse) at the hands of an adult when she was just a kid. Just because Debbie thinks that Sandy’s husband “seems nice” does not give her the right to try and make a victim of grooming feel bad about not wanting to be with her abuser. While I understand that Sandy’s son has no fault in how he came into the world, I’m still gonna side with Sandy when it comes to having to take care of a child she didn’t want and who is most likely a source of trauma for her. It’s not difficult to sympathize with Sandy and see that she’s clearly gone through something fucked up and Debbie, despite claiming to love and support her, AND despite her dumb white feminist arc about wanting equal pay and all that jazz, turns her back on the girls supporting girls aspect of feminism.

This isn’t even mentioning how shitty it was to just leave Franny by herself and assume that one of her siblings would take her to school and pick her up and stuff as if they don’t all have separate lives. She talks a lot about being a good mother but decided to “let off some steam” by fucking off to a gay bar to get loaded on coke and fuck a gay man (which wtf thats not a thing that really happens with casual coke but whatever I guess). Once she realized she fucked up, instead of taking responsibility she decided to paint herself as the victim as well as spew offensive bullshit about how she “probably has AIDS now” because of her sexual encounter with a gay man. No lesbian in their right fucking mind would ever say that because as members of the LGBTQ+ community, you are at least a tiny bit informed as to how devastating and tragic the AIDS crisis was for queer people.

(I also have an issue with how Debbie capitalized on her felony as a sex offender and her sexuality to start her Hot Lesbian Convict business but I think that’s enough said.)

Blame the writers

The show got almost an entirely new cast of writers after season 7 which is why the show feels more like a sitcom with low stakes and no consequences rather than a drama, but if there is a queer writer on the team it’s not very evident. Even the better half of the queer relationship story, Ian and Mickey, I don’t feel has really been done justice since the change in writers. It’s just become painfully obvious that the actress is a straight girl playing a gay character (not to mention I have never seen any chemistry between her and all of her female love interests). I don’t fault Emma Kenney (the actress) for this. I actually really like her as a person and I like the videos she makes about the cast and such, and I think she does her best with the script she’s given. My complaints with Debbie are targeted entirely towards the writers.

This brings me to my final point. I need them to let Debbie be alone. Her whole thing for the second half of the season has been that she clearly has abandonment issues and is afraid of being alone. It’s why she’s so adamant about keeping the house and fighting with Lip about it (I’m actually on Debbie’s side for that one but that’s besides the point). They had her and Sandy break up which leaves Debbie to spiral further into her loneliness. From a writing point of view, it makes sense to take this opportunity to give her an arc in which she can overcome that and feel comfortable with herself so that she can move on as an adult instead of jumping into a new relationship. This is especially true since this is quite literally the last season ever of the show and any character development needs to be wrapped up. Introducing a new character out of nowhere does not give the viewers enough time to actually get invested in the new relationship. It’s also unfair to Debbie’s character because her arc is going to feel incomplete.

Anyway,,,,,,uuuhhhhh,,,,,feel free to add on if u want lmao

[magdaclaire]

The Merchant of Venice is one of the only Shakespearean stories I know well and love, please talk about it!!

Antonio is the gayest bitch I know, and I know Mercutio and Benvolio Montague. I got a very similar ask from the lovely Laura @stvles-stilinski

I’ll begin this with the fact that this play is a Big callout for antisemitism in Italy, and so every character who isn’t a Jew is antisemitic and thus inherently Flawed. I’m not talking about their antisemitism because, if I don’t say they’re Jewish, assume they’re antisemitic. 

Merchant of Venice Casting Call: 

ANTONIO, THE MERCHANT OF VENICE: A man so in love with his best friend that he was willing to give up everything he had for Bassanio to be happy. I’m reading over the Sparknotes to review the characters before I start just spewin gay shit, and they describe Antonio as inexplicably melancholy, like his gay ass ain’t got gay depression. Antonio is deeply in love with Bassanio and that is the cause to all of desperation and sadness, and Bassanio takes full advantage of his lovestruck friend. Antonio says in the beginning of the play that his problem is love sickness, so he knows just how deep he is. He knows just how heartbroken he should be, and he signs a loan for Bassanio to court the woman of his dreams anyway. He signs a potentially lethal loan because Bassanio needs this. He’s willing to do anything Bassanio needs, and that might have been the death of him. He almost dies at Shylock’s hand, and that’s exactly what makes Bassanio realise he loves him too. 

PORTIA: The OG cool wife. OG knife wife. OG strong, powerful Shakespearean woman. Rich as all hell. For the newly initiated, Portia was bound by her father’s will to marry the man to guess the correct casket with her picture in it, even if she fell in love with another. She fell for Bassanio nearly on first sight, and when he was the one to guess the casket correctly, she fell for him all over again. When Bassanio went back to save his best friend, his Antonio, from having to pay back the loan that would have been paid back in his flesh, Portia secretly followed after him and posed as a law clerk. She saved Antonio’s life when he almost got stabbed and then in an actual legal battle, and swindled her new man while doing it. Also, she told Antonio to come live with them after this all went down, and she totally wanted Bassanio to fuck Antonio on the side, no big deal here. Portia was the best. 

BASSANIO: This fucker. Tragic bisexual. Somebody come get your mans. Useless. Can’t run a business, can’t take care of his man, can’t get a lady on his own, can’t do jackshit, yet still ends up with a Rich Knife Wife and a Business Boyfriend. Honestly, fuck Bassanio. But, he makes Antonio and Portia happy, so I guess he can stay. Kinda dumb, but still cute.

NERISSA AND GRATIANO: Portia’s lady in waiting and Bassanio’s friend, respectively. They’re that couple that’s constantly talking shit to each other and then you are sure they’re gonna fuck in the back of the club. Grat is the Most Antisemitic and has no problem vocalizing it. The problematic straight couple. 

LORENZO AND JESSICA: Lenny is a pal of Bassanio and Antonio while Jessica is Shylock’s daughter, and they are the purest couple in this bitch. Jessica has to give up Judaism to be with Lorenzo, but she’s okay with that because it also means giving up her ridiculously controlling father. She hawks her mom’s ring to pay for their shenanigans and Shylock later totally freaks and anyway, Jessica is a badass bitch and Lorenzo is completely correct for being in love with her, because bitch me too. Probably swingers. 

SHYLOCK: Probably was the cause of the invention of the phrase “you must be fun at parties.” Dealt with antisemitism by jipping every Christian man he could. Honestly deserved better. I’m sorry that antisemitism made you into a bad person, Shylock. Gave Antonio the loan for Bassanio’s adventure money, but he named a pound of Antonio’s flesh as the collateral, which Antonio’s lowkey depressed ass agreed to. Me Too. 

[ace-trainer-risu]

Why do you hate bosie douglas?

Oh man bout to lay down some Oscar Wilde Discourse!

Just kidding. Sort of?

Anyway, the short answer would be that I really, really love Oscar Wilde. He’s definitely one of my favorite authors/artists/historical figures ever. He was an amazing and incredibly influential figure who lived a tragic life and died way too young, and Bosie (aka Lord Alfred Douglas, for those unfamiliar with his nickname) was not the only person responsible for the tragedy of Oscar’s life, but he undeniably played a role in it. And I just, I really can’t forgive him for that.

The long answer is…

Well, okay, so at my university, English majors had to take a senior thesis class, which was basically just a seminar where you studied one topic really in depth. I took mine on Oscar Wilde, and it was an amazing class, so I really know a lot about him and have read a lot of his writings. 

I never know what is and isn’t common knowledge about Wilde since I know a lot about him, but for those who don’t really know him, the basic story is that Wilde was a popular and scandalous Victorian author and playwright. He popularized various fashionable movements like aestheticism and dandyism. It was kind of an open secret that he was carrying out affairs with men. He had an affair with a younger man named Lord Alfred Douglas, AKA Bosie, who was a wealthy aristocrat from the Queensbury family. In the late 1890s, at the height of Wilde’s playwriting popularity, Wilde was embroiled in a series of trials that ultimately led to him being jailed for four years hard labor for gross indecency (essentially for having sex with men). Upon getting out, Wilde emigrated to France, where he died shortly after at the age of 46. 

This is not the point of this post, but I highly recommend reading him. The Picture of Dorian Gray is obviously his most famous work, and it’s really beautiful and weird and fucked up and super gay. The Importance of Being Earnest is one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, and it’s also so influential of a work that it’s really hard to see how influential it is, because of course lots of things are like Earnest, except they’re like that because of Earnest. But what I would really recommend to first time Wilde readers is “The Happy Prince” which is a beautiful and heartbreaking little fairy tale that he wrote. He was a hugely influential author on modernism, post modernism, comedy, playwriting, etc. 

This is tumblr so I feel strangely compelled to defend my love for him, so, yes, Oscar Wilde is #problematic fave. He practically invented being a problematic fave. I can almost guarantee that young Victorian ladies were fanning themselves and sighing over how much they loved his plays but it was too bad he was so scandalous and their mama wouldn’t let them go see him lecture. I am Aware. I could cheerfully list his myriad sins. But for pretty much all of them, I can think of mitigating factors. I will settle for saying that it’s essentially unfair for a modern, Western person to judge the sexual lives of queer* people in the past. They lived in a completely different culture from us, and many of them were simply doing the best they could under difficult, painful circumstances. It’s important to remember that legal, socially accepted same sex relationships are a very recent invention in the west. If Oscar Wilde cheated on his wife and turned to sex workers, well, what the hell else was he going to do? It’s probably worthwhile to note that by all accounts, he always treated his wife and sex workers very decently and generously. 

(*Queer is an anachronistic term. I am aware. However, it’s a little tedious to write out “same sex attracted people” every time. In my opinion, queer is the modern term that most closely matches the way that Oscar Wilde wrote about sexuality. So that’s what I’m going to use.) 

Despite his flaws, Wilde also did a lot of amazing stuff. He was, by most accounts, incredibly generous and kind. He was funny and witty. He was good to his children. My friends, we probably wouldn’t look at pretty pictures and write #aesthetic if it were not for Oscar Wilde. He modernized play writing. He was a socialist!!! He was a feminist!! He hated corsets!! He wrote out like a fifty page essay that was basically his headcanons about how Shakespeare was bi and hooking up with his one of his actors who was named Willie Hughes. He wrote kinda bad poetry (which I personally like). He lowkey had a feud with Henry James. He was a Fashion Icon who loved having his photo taken. If you or someone you love has ever worn a tux you can thank Wilde for helping popularize them. And, in my opinion most importantly, he was constantly thinking and writing (subtextually) about how to revolutionize cultural thought about sexuality and male identity. To call Oscar Wilde “gay” or “homosexual” is really a simplification of how he thought about sexuality. In fact, he explicitly objected to being called homosexual (altho it’s important to remember that was a much more stigmatizing term at the time than it is now!). Oscar Wilde, instead, was interested in a forming a world in which, basically, everyone could be themselves and could express themselves freely through art and sex. He wanted people to be able to freely love each other without being slapped with some fixed, restrictive label. Like, you guys, do u ever cry b/c Oscar Wilde just wanted the world to be beautiful and queer and free and for everyone to be gay and happy and make art BECAUSE I DO 

And, like, okay. Bosie had a hard life too. I get that! His father has gotta be on the list of like Top Ten Biggest Assholes In History. As much as I dislike Bosie, multiply that by like ten hundred and that’s how I feel about fuckboy Marquis of Queenbury. I know I made that post about traveling back in time to punch Bosie; well, the only reason I don’t wanna punch his dad is b/c his dad like literally invented (a form of) boxing and I’m very small. I am Positive I could take Bosie in a fight, and I am positive his black hole of a father could take me. Also it was probably not easy to be a trailblazing twink in the 1890s (altho like John Gray managed it without being a literal piece of shit so……..). To be serious, Bosie clearly had a lot of rough stuff in his life. But, you know, so do lots of people. And I know I was just saying it’s hard to judge historical figures for their sex lives, but I’m judging Bosie for his behavior, not his sex. So, with all the context out of the way, here’s why I hate Bosie:

a) His poetry is like the soppiest shit ever. 

b) He was extremely emotionally manipulative and possibly abusive toward Oscar Wilde. I know it seems kind of weird, because our cultural mindset for abusive relationship is big beefy guy beating his small, helpless wife. And Bosie and Oscar are both men, and Oscar was older and physically larger (did you know that he was like six foot? I hadn’t known that.). But there’s a lot of fucked up stories about their relationship. They were very on again off again, with Oscar frequently being the one to end things, and there are reports of Bosie going to extreme ends to get them back together, including threatening to kill himself. One story, which is hilarious with the distance of time but would have surely been dreadful when it happened, is that one time when they broke up, Bosie sent Oscar a nine. page. telegraph. NINE PAGES! For those of you who don’t know, telegraphs back then charged by the word. That’s like sending your boyfriend nine pages worth of texts, except you send each word individually and you know for a fact he’s out of data for the month. Also some poor individual had to type it all out for you. And yes, Wilde was the one to pay, because you could send telegraphs collect. And this despite the fact that Bosie was very well off, whereas Wilde, who was rather extravagant in his pursuit of dat aesthetic lifestyle, was usually tight on money. There’s also a rather horrible story about a time where Bosie fell ill and Wilde tenderly nursed him back to health, and then when Bosie recovered and Wilde caught his illness and fell sick himself, Bosie verbally abused him and left him alone to suffer. What I’m saying is, it was not a healthy relationship and Bosie did not treat Wilde well.

c) It’s basically inarguable that Bosie played a significant role in Wilde’s trial. Again, I’m not saying it’s just his fault, because it wasn’t. But things would have gone down massively differently without Bosie…or they might not have gone down at all. (Do u ever cry b/c maybe Wilde didn’t have to die at 46 and maybe if he hadn’t queer rights would be years, decades ahead of where they are now I mean I’m not saying definitely, I’m just saying m a y b e???)Queensbury family dynamics were a highly complex thing. It’s probably significant that somewhat before the trial, Bosie’s older brother died under controversial circumstances. The official story was it was a hunting accident, but the gossip of the day was that he killed himself because he was having an affair with another man. This was a serious blow to Bosie’s father, so when his youngest son, with whom he’d always had a contentious relationship, started publicly cavorting with a man rumored to be up to some real scandalous shit, the Marquis of Queensbury was not happy. At one point he even physically threatened Wilde’s life. But Wilde, at least at first, genuinely tried to calm things down. He repeatedly advised Bosie to make up with his father; instead, Bosie continued to provoke him. Eventually, Queensbury left a note for Wilde at a club accusing him of being a sodomite (basically the Victorian equivalent of calling someone the f-slur). And this is where things get really messed up. All of Wilde’s friends advised him to just leave things alone, not make things messy. Bosie, in contrast, advised Wilde to sue his father for libel. So, like, quick note about the legal ramifications of this: basically, libel is only illegal if it’s not true. Thus, all Queensbury’s lawyers had to do was prove that Wilde was having sex with men, which they were able to do, because, you know, he was totally having sex with men. I mean, it was wildly foolish of Wilde to sue for libel when he knew it was not libel! Why would Bosie push him into that?And that wasn’t the end of it, because the Labouchere Amendment made it illegal for two men to have sex, even in the privacy of their own homes. So, because Queensbury’s lawyers could prove that Wilde was engaging in gross indecency, he was able to be charged. The libel trial ruined Wilde’s social standing; the second trial ruined him legally. Oh, and the costs of the trial also bankrupted him! Things then get slightly more horrible, because, for a person of Wilde’s fame and status, the police basically gave you a warning period. There was a time frame in which he could have fled the country, and extradition treaties were not really a thing then, so although he would have been ruined and unable to return to England, he wouldn’t have been arrested. All of his friends advised him to flee, but he didn’t. And no one really knows why, although if you ask me, it’s because a) he was basically an extremely self destructive person, and b) I think it’s probably unimaginably heart breaking to have your entire society turn on you and paint you as a monster and pervert, and maybe at a certain point you lose the will to fight, and c) Oscar Wilde wanted everything to be beautiful and like art, like a story, and I wonder if he didn’t feel that this was how the story of his life was “supposed” to go. But that’s really just my theory.And so Oscar Wilde was sent to jail for 4 years hard labor, and by all accounts his heart and his health were broken. He lived in France for a few years, but he never wrote anything again other than the Ballad of Reading Gaol (“Each man kills the thing he loves”… I’m looking at YOU Bosie), and then he died, still quite young, and not of syphilis despite what certain supposedly reputable biographies try and tell you.And none of that had to happen. None of that would have happened if it weren’t for Bosie. He shouldn’t have pushed his father to attack Oscar, and he certainly shouldn’t have pushed Oscar into the libel trial. Oscar Wilde himself wrote that he felt as if Bosie threw him and his father at each other, as if he was trying to destroy both of them. And then after the trial, he basically abandoned Wilde. I believe he only visited him in jail once. Why would you do that? Why would you try and destroy the person you supposedly love, the person that loves you? I just can’t understand or forgive that. I know I joke around a lot in this post but what happened to Wilde honestly makes me so sad. It breaks my heart. He was a beautiful person who wanted to make the world beautiful and full of love and art, and the person he loved tried to destroy him. And really, the inexcusable straw for me is that later in life Bosie wrote some piece of shit biography in which he denied that he and Wilde were ever lovers and painted Wilde as some sort of monster and pervert. No one fucking asked you, Bosie. 

So yes, that’s why I fucking hate Bosie, and that’s my Oscar Wilde Discourse™. 

[patheticphallacy]

Another month, another wrap up.

My second year of University is finished, basically. I’ve submitted my dissertation proposal, am in the middle of all my essays due end of April/early May, and have a new flat for third year.

How time flies!

And I’m 20 in two months! Yay! Exciting stuff!

READING WRAP UP

After the Rain by Jun Mayuzuki [3.75 stars; I have a review for this one, it has it’s issues but I’m hoping it’ll improve as the series goes on]

The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne [4 stars; A.A. Milne came in to my house and purposefully ripped my heart out of my chest from beyond the grave]

RWBY Volume 1: Red Like Roses by Various [3 stars; this has some ISSUES I’ve had with other RT productions, I still love it despite myself tho ]

The Isle of Pines by Henry Neville [1 star; A lot of uhhhh incest in this one]

I Hear the Sunspot by Yuki Fumino [3 stars; this one was quite disappointing, in all honesty, although it is still a cute read!]

Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare [3 stars; this is my first Shakespeare of the year as I work my towards reading all his plays by 25! I was confused at moments, but the reveals were so satisfying, although the ending….]

Sweet Blue Flowers by Takako Shimura [4.5 stars; this is the lesbian manga I’ve been waiting for all my life, everyone! I wasn’t living until I read this]

My Immortal by Tara [1 star; thank you to my friend Zara for finally getting me to read all of this finally!]

The Man in the Moone by Francis Godwin [1 star; this was boring as HECK]

Belinda Blinked 1 by Rocky Flintstone [1 star; FINALLY finished the first part of the My Dad Wrote a Porno podcast, so I’m marking this one as read]

Labyrinth Coronation #9, #10, #11 by Simon Spurrier [4 stars- nearly at the end now! I’ll miss this series, honestly, it’s been consistently great and it’s been so entertaining]

Sparrowhawk #3 and #4 by Delilah S Dawson [3 stars; not a spectacular series, but only one issue left, so I may as well finish it when #5 comes out!]

The Unsound by Cullen Bunn [4.5 stars; this is very disturbing and graphic in terms of self harm and gore, but I loved it? Apparently my brand is loving all the bizarre and gorey comic series people HATE]

Saban’s Go Go Power Rangers #15-17 by Ryan Parrott [3 stars; would consider giving these issues 4 stars purely for Skull and Kimberly, and also Bulk for how cute he was protecting Skull’s heart from being broken]

The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata [3.5 stars; a difficult one to rate, as I loved the first half, but once these characters realise they like each other/the one Mariana Zapata Sex Scene happens that is part of her brand, I just get tired and feel like she should have ended it 50 pages before]

On the Death of Peter Stubbe by Scott Wolf [1.5 stars; read this bad boy for Uni and it was actually bizarre]

The Last of August by Brittany Cavallaro [3 stars; I was… very disappointed with this one. The ending was very rushed and confusing, I had to go back and re-read to understand what had happened, but I still love the characters and look forward to reading book 3 in April]

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare [3.5 stars; this was a laugh and would have been rated higher, if not for that whole final scene that just felt like Shakespeare was STRETCHING]

Book Scavenger by Jennifer Chambliss Bertman [4 stars; this is SUCH a good first book in a middle grade series that follows a girl who goes on a scavenger hunt after the creator of the hunt is hospitalised! It sounds darker than it is, I swear]

Kulti by Mariana Zapata [3.5 stars; THIS COULD HAVE BEEN A WHOLE ASS 5 STARS  FOR PLOT if Mariana didn’t insist on ending it the way she did, and also didn’t use lesbophobic slurs and weird possessive undertones between the MC and the LI as well as so much girl and slut shaming like… Winnipeg definitely wasn’t this bad]

The Woods Volume 4 by James Tynion IV (4 stars; this series is finally starting to improve for me and I’m so happy!)

Neverworld Wake by Marisha Pessl (5 stars; I loved this book so so much I’m so glad I finally finished it after 2 months of having it on hold)

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne (3 stars; I didn’t really enjoy this much as expected, it definitely has issues that I’m surprised aren’t discussed more like how violent their relationship is before sex ? The MC genuinely thinks she’s going to get murdered by the LI at first)

The Walking Dead Volume 1 by Robert Kirkman (3.5 stars; after putting this down before I’m so happy I ended up enjoying it!)

Wait For It by Mariana Zapata (3 stars; in terms of more problematic material, this is definitely Zapata’s best. I do still think she has pacing issues though, and her sex scenes are so badly written I cringe every time I read one)

Sunstone Volume 1 by Stjepan Šejić (4 stars; another really great read; the art is beautiful, characters are so fleshed out already, and I can’t wait to see where their relationship goes!)

AND MY APRIL TBR JAR PICK ISSSSSS……………………………………….

IT ONLY HAPPENS IN THE MOVIES by Holly Bourne! One of the picks Annie made for me in my ‘Best Friend picks my TBR’ post!

ESSAYS/ARTICLES I READ THIS MONTH

Chubby Rat Gets Stuck in a Manhole: this is the only piece of literature that has ever mattered to me

Authors voice alarm after sharp drop in sales of YA fiction: a very solemn and worrying piece, but I’m hoping the conversation this brought up will continue and this is something UKYA publishers and readers alike can work on to improve the sales and keep YA sales in the UK alive!

When words fail: A possible interpretation of Isabella’s silence in Measure for Measure: This is a response to Isabella’s silence at the end of Measure for Measure, which I read this month. I think it has a tragic ending for Isabella, honestly, and this is a really great interpretation of that scene

The Gay Love Stories of Moomin and the Queer Radicality of Tove Jansson: I can’t be the only person to have noticed the sudden influx of Moomin hype on Twitter, and I am digging it. Reading this is fascinating, and I think it’s incredible how much of Jansson’s life and experience as a queer woman can be seen in Moomin!

Openly gay pro strongman Rob Kearney marries his boyfriend: I will love and support gay athletes till the day I die. This article is so cute.

The Night Country: Melissa Albert previews her next Hazel Wood novel: The Hazel Wood was one of my favourite novels of 2018, so the sequel coming out so quickly is an absolute treat. This has the cover release- American, unfortunately, so I still have no clue what the UK cover will bring- but it does have the first chapter! I love and adore Sophia Snow and I cannot wait to have a new book girlfriend!

TV SHOWS/MOVIES/VIDEOS I WATCHED

Ryan Hollinger’s video on the horror of Coraline. Coraline is one of my favourite animated films, I’ve watched it so many times, and I love seeing people’s analysis of it!

I went on a bit of a Ryan Hollinger kick this month and also watched his Texas Chainsaw Massacre video where he analyses the presence of daylight in the film, unconventional in the horror genre

Karate Chopsticks plays a lot of Professor Layton games, so when I have some downtime where I just want to relax I’ve been watching him!

I watched a video on How Guillermo del Toro deals with trauma in his films that I found fascinating! It specifically talks about The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth 

With my friend Zara, I started the K-Drama BOYS OVER FLOWERS, which I’m honestly loving. It has some issues, but it’s basically a staple k-drama and I’m loving watching it and talking about it with her

MUSIC I’VE BEEN ENJOYING

Sucker by Jonas Brothers [I never really cared about these guys coming back but I’m glad they did, this is a really neat song]

SOS by Jonas Brothers

Big Time Rush by Big Time Rush [a TUNE]

Just in general I’ve really been enjoying The Band CAMINO, my favourite song by them is definitely Daphne Blue!

REVIEWS I POSTED

In Other Lands

Heartstopper

Starry Eyes

Four Film Reviews: The Village, Holes, Stardust, 13 Going on 30

Netflix Thriller Reviews

Three Manga Reviews: After the Rain Vol 1, RWBY Vol 1, Sweet Blue Flowers

OTHER POSTS I MADE

Music Monday: Music I’ve Listened to Lately

Graphic Recommendations #1: Contemporary 

Top Ten Tuesday: Standalones that Need a Sequel

Top Ten Tuesday: My Best Friend Picks My Spring TBR!

Top Ten Tuesday: Books that Should be Podcasts

Currently Reading #1

My Study Positive April Announcement!

March Wrap Up & April TBR Jar Pick Another month, another wrap up. My second year of University is finished, basically. I've submitted my dissertation proposal, am in the middle of all my essays due end of April/early May, and have a new flat for third year.