These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: October/November
I don't want to write. There doesn't seem to be anything worth saying right now, and if there is, I don't feel like I'm the person to say it. My mental health hasn't been as bad as it is this month in a very long time and I'm finding myself ill-equipped to deal with it, and now it seems that my physical health is also rapidly declining. I'm in pain and the world is in pain and what good are words, really, against everything that's piling up around them? What good are words when no matter what I write, things are still exactly the same afterward?
So I don't want to write, but I'm going to. I'm going to give you this, inadequate and half-formed and forced as it might be, because some of you are paying for it and you deserve to get what you pay for. I'm also going to do it because I know that the voice in my head that says it's all pointless, writing and speaking and living and breathing, is the voice that those in power want to strengthen. It's how they want me to feel. It's how they want all of us to feel. If we lose our voices and our will to live, to fight, to make things even the slightest bit better for ourselves and for each other, then they've won, and winning is what matters more than anything to them. Crushing us under their boot heels is what winning looks like to them and I won't give them that. They don't get to take away words from me, the one thing I have.
This is not to say that media recommendations are revolutionary. This newsletter and newsletters like it aren't going to save anyone. They aren't going to bend the moral arc any farther toward justice. But it's all I can do right now, and recommending media to people is my love language, and I do think love can save us. Not on its own, not without action behind it, but it can. Maybe writing this won't change things in any meaningful way, but maybe one person will find one new thing they love and that one new thing will keep them going just a little bit longer, and if that's a possibility, then it's worth putting it out there.
So, let me tell you about the things I've loved over the past couple of months, starting with podcasts because everything for me is centered around podcasts. I discovered Two Dykes and a Mic sometime during the summer, thanks to an episode of Horror Queers with Rachel Scanlon on it, and last month I was finally able to start supporting their Patreon, which unlocked a ton of extra episodes for me. And thank God, because I've needed those episodes. They're so funny and mostly so light-hearted and so silly, and the friendship between Rachel and McKenzie is so strong and warm and you can really feel how much they like talking to each other. They have great chemistry and they're a joy to listen to, and they also have on amazing queer guests. I discovered Burning by Lauren Jauregui from this podcast, and it was a huge win for my sapphic playlist. And the same part of me that gravitates to reality dating shows loves to hear horror stories about bad dating app experiences, so their Bumble fumbles segment really appeals to me specifically.
I have also been enjoying Girl, That's Scary quite a lot, another discovery from Horror Queers, so shout out to them too. I love a horror movie recap podcast, and Jazz and Kat are incredibly entertaining to listen to even when I don't entirely agree with their verdicts. Similar to Rachel and McKenzie from Two Dykes and a Mic, they're two friends who really seem to enjoy hanging out with each other, and they play well off of each other's energy and their discussions are so lively and funny. I've loved their Creep episode, their Unfriended episode, their Torn Hearts Episode, and their Cabin in the Woods episode, and I'm looking forward to hearing so many more. I'm thrilled in particular that they have a recent episode about Longlegs with Tananarive Due, who wrote one of my favorite horror novels of all time, The Good House.
If you haven't read Don't Let the Forest In by C.G. Drews yet, and if you like any of the things I like, you absolutely must. It's such a beautifully written book about queerness and complicated sibling relationships and boarding school, and there's a lot of nature-related body horror and meditations on art and the act of creating, and there's asexual representation and there are some nasty little mini fairy tales within the book and I just really, really loved it. I guess it could be classified as dark academia, but I don't fully understand that term and it's not something I specifically seek out, so I can't speak on it much. It's very melodramatic and angsty, which I say as a compliment, not an insult. Sometimes being a teenager is like that. Sometimes being an adult is, too. And I grew up on fanfiction, so I live for heaping helpings of angst.
I've been trying to finish Evil on Paramount Plus for over two years now, and every time, I get to a particular episode in season 2 which is mostly silent and I give up. It has audio description, so that's not the issue, there's just something about it that doesn't work for my brain. But I finally conquered it last month and I've been plowing through it ever since. I'm still not finished, but I'm getting closer to season 4, the final season, and I'll be sad when it ends. It's an extremely weird and wonderful show about occult horror blended with psychological horror, and it has one of my favorite villains in all of television, and everything the three main characters grapple with is so compelling to me. It's an interesting mix of self-serious and playful and I'm such a fan of everything it's doing. Stephen King is correct to yell about it's cancelation on Twitter. We deserve more of it.
On an entirely different note, I watched Nobody Wants This on Netflix earlier this month and what a delight. I know there have been criticisms of its portrayal of Jewish women, and I'm not the person to speak on that, but I do understand where it comes from and I want to acknowledge that I'm aware of it. I just...the chemistry between Adam Brody and Kristen Bell is potent and all the humor landed for me and I'm obsessed with Timothy Simons's character, and it was such a necessary bit of fluffy feel good nonsense in the midst of all the awful that's been happening this month. I would watch Adam Brody do just about anything, probably, and I want more seasons of him and Kristen Bell trying to make it work despite their faith differences.
Lastly, because I don't have any new music to recommend this time, may I recommend to you the practice of buying yourself a little treat? Little is the operative word here, for me, because I will buy myself endless big treats if I don't control myself. I got groceries last week, and in my order I included some strawberry jam and a single bar of sea salt dark chocolate, and both of these things have immeasurably improved my life. It might seem silly, but having a small thing to look forward to at the end of the day, or when waking up in the morning, makes a difference when it feels like nothing else matters. Having domestic comforts is important to me because I spend so much of my time in my house, especially now, and having some of those comforts be food-related is important to me because I struggle hugely with preparing food and eating food and everything related to my kitchen.
That's all I've got. I hope it's enough. I hope you're all holding on, holding strong. I hope you have some things in your lives that make you feel like existing for another day is worth it, however small and seemingly inconsequential they might be. I hope this newsletter landing in your inboxes, or appearing on your screen when you click a link, provides you with a smile and a fleeting moment of warmth. I'm still out here writing and you're still out there reading, and as long as we remember that, as long as these tenuous connections remain, there's still a reason to keep going. We're each other's reason even if nothing else is. People matter. Loving people and showing up for people matters. Doing the hard work to insure that we all stay alive, and maybe one day even thrive, matters.
And you know what? Recommending media matters, because it's a way of saying I'm still in the world, I'm still finding things to love, and I want to share those things with you because you're also still in the world trying to find things to love.
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