#fireblooms

Happy Latine Heritage Month! We’re celebrating as we do with books by Latine authors, mostly starring Latine main characters, and if you want even more recs, check out past years’ posts! Middle Grade It’s All or Nothing, Vale by Andrea Beatriz Arango All these months of staring at the wall? All these months of feeling weak? It’s ending— I’m going back to fencing. And then it’ll be like nothing…

An absorbing speculative Queer romance, set in a town that uses technology to prevent hate speech and bullying. From the LAMBDA Award-winning author of The Grief Keeper.

When seventeen-year-old Sebastian agrees to come to New Gault to care for his absent and abusive mother after her cancer diagnosis, he is not prepared for the strange new community that awaits him or the distressing state he finds his mother in. He tries to help, but despite being ill, her tongue is as sharp as ever, finding all Sebas’s tender places. But he promised his Abuela he'd try to make this work.

Unfortunately trying also means attending TECH, New Gault’s high school. His first day, he’s assigned to enthusiastic TECH student ambassador, Lu, who introduces him to all TECH can offer—a safe space, free from bullying. But all this safety and technology comes with a catch—not only do you have to watch what you say, but you have to stay within a strict word limit. Sebas declines. To him New Gault feels more like the Stepford Wives than freedom.

For Lu, who suffers from anxiety and has a history of being bullied, TECH is a lifeline somewhere they can be safe. They can’t understand why Sebas would refuse. When Sebas rejects TECH, it feels as if he’s rejecting Lu.

But when Sebas learns if he doesn’t accept the TECH phone and abide by the rules, his mother will be denied cancer treatment, he changes his tune. Slowly, Lu and Sebas form a friendship that morphs into something more, but the closer they get, the more Sebas challenges Lu's beliefs about TECH and what it means to be safe. Meanwhile, Sebas contemplates how to forgive his dying mother for being no mother at all.

Middle Grade A Little Too Haunted by Justine Pucella Winans The only thing worse than having ghost hunters for parents is having fake ghost hunters for parents. Luna Catalano would know. Her moms are haunted house flippers who use their home reno skills and pretend psychic powers to turn spooky old houses into ghost-free modern homes. Not only does their job require the family to move all the…

Hee, no, of course I don’t mind!

If I could go back and talk to my high school self, my advice would be to try harder. Laziness has always been my Achilles’ heel, and while as an adult I’m getting a lot better at working around and through it, when I look back at my high school years I cringe realizing how much I could have achieved if I had put effort into literally anything. I was what you might call a “coaster”. I gave up on anything that looked like it was going to require more than the minimum amount of effort, and one of the only genuine regrets I have in my life is that I didn’t take advantage of the many opportunities that were offered to me, just out of sheer laziness!

[hollow laughter]

THIS IS NOTHING COMPARED TO LAST SEMESTER, or indeed large chunks of undergrad, I TELL YOU WHAT. By comparison this is a walk in the park. As to how I managed last semester…uh, I still really don’t know, but APPARENTLY IT HAPPENED. IT’S ALL KIND OF A BLUR. I KNOW I DEFINITELY WROTE 30 PAGES IN 9 HOURS AT ONE POINT BUT I DON’T REALLY KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED OR WHAT I SAID. I GOT AN A THO SO #JOKES

Thank you so much! I had a terrible day yesterday, and I can’t tell you how much better this made me feel. I really appreciate you sharing this with me, as well as your generous support and encouragement. :D

chilldermass  said: Nice! I also really like those mugs.

OH YES, GO FOR THE EASY ONES.

Fashion and performative femininity

oh god, for this one I feel like I’d have a much larger epic rant if I were less tired (HA, WHAT A JOKE, WHEN AM I EVER NOT TIRED). (also I recognize this is going to come off as terribly binaristic/not particularly nb-friendly, but such is the society we live in blargh)

Sooooooo when it comes to femininity in our culture there’s kind of the double-bind were what has been arbitarily designated as “masculine” is considered superior to what has been arbitrarily designated as “feminine” and we should make efforts to resist this masculine-as-superior-feminine-as-inferior bullshit.

BUT we must also keep in mind COMPULSORY FEMININITY where yes, women may be thought of as “shallow” for putting efforts into maintaining femininity, but it is still EXPECTED given the various punishments subtle and overt for women who fail to perform a certain level of femininity (or, perish the thought, are PURPOSEFULLY BUTCH). (it’s also important to keep in my how my race/whiteness is affecting my perspective on this because it’s a much different matter for women of color and such)

My own feelings are conflicted. I spent the last week wearing skirts/dresses for THREE DAYS IN A ROW because it was too damn hot. It was more comfortable than pants due to the weather (99% of the time I am far more comfortable wearing pants), but I still couldn’t shake this feeling that I was betraying my own preferences, given that most of my fashion choices are an effort to resist that compulsory femininity.

(I also have a strong reaction whenever people tell me that it’s “flattering” when I wear a skirt or they refer to something I’m wearing as “feminine” in a positive fashion, and to be fair I do like a lot of shirts with frills. But I’m always inwardly pissed when that happens and make an effort to “butch it up” the next day)

(I feel like it’s also worth mentioning that when I was in theater I was NEVER the traditional female lead/ingenue type. I always referred to myself as a “character actor” and one of my “types” was “ambiguous gender/sexuality” which probably surprises most of you zero percent, I feel like that plays a part in this somehow.)

Basically, I would LOVE to say that everyone can just dress to their own personal style and it’s no one’s business, but SOCIETY and WE DON’T LIVE IN A VACUUM and all that. IT’S COMPLICATED, BASICALLY.

For myself, it all comes down to, I love the look of pretty dresses and skirts on other people more than wearing them myself (even though I do enjoy them very rarely), and would generally prefer to fashion myself after a “Princely Woman” from a shoujo anime (and I often get compliments from other women on my appearance, which makes me happy, and couldn’t give less of a shit if men “approve” of my appearance).

And then VIDEO GAMES.

I ENJOY MANY VIDEO GAMES.

Obviously there are issues with the industry and the so-called “gamer culture” but yeah, I love me some video games (even when I’m NOT ALWAYS GOOD AT THEM). Most often they’re just fun, a way to have fun with friends (like Mario Kart) or to relax after a long day (playing Donkey Kong Country on my SNES as a kid, or that year I was really into Animal Crossing: New Leaf).

I must say though, and I am far from an expert of Video Game Studies, there is something special about video games as a form of media. During depressive/unemployed periods of my life, playing video games helped me feel like I was achieving something or working towards something concrete in my life. For a few years in my life, Kingdom Hearts helped me patch up and maintain a friendship that had been rocky and I still have a lot of treasured memories of that. There really is something to be said for feeling ACTUALLY INVOLVED in a story, and dang when a video game soundtrack connects with you it can bring up POWERFUL AND VERY SPECIFIC EMOTIONS (that might just be me).

Honestly I’m not even going to TRY to fit Ace Attorney into this because THAT IS JUST A WHOLE OTHER CATEGORY FOR ME AT THIS POINT. I’ll say at least this: if nothing else THOSE are some video games to have a marked effect on my life.