A Soft Reset
I’m angry. As I sort through my feelings about the election results and what the next 4+ years could look like, I’m driven at turns to grief, fear, and even despair, but the most prevalent emotion is anger.
Lachrista Greco summed this up much more eloquently than I ever could in her newsletter “Rage & Softness” (which I highly recommend) and I feel that there’s very little I can add to the ongoing conversation about how we got here and why. I don’t fault anyone for taking whatever time they need to process the results, their feelings about them, and how their life and the lives of their loved ones will be impacted (or already are being impacted).
Unfortunately, electoral politics can’t save us. They were never going to save us. That isn’t to say don’t vote—please vote if you’re able, especially in local elections—but don’t make voting your only means of doing the work. Civic education in the U.S. is primarily focused on voting, despite mass disenfranchisement making it all but completely inaccessible to a huge swath of the population. Community-building and mutual aid between and during elections has to be our focus as we fight for collective liberation. Anything else leaves the most vulnerable among us at increasing risk of state-sanctioned violence.
Since the onset of the pandemic, I’ve been particularly horrified by the lack of care we show each other. Often through mistakes and missteps of varying degrees, I’ve learned a lot about how to show up for my community and truly benefit those more marginalized than me. I intend to keep showing up, learning, educating, and most of all, fighting.
I also intend to keep finding joy and sharing it when and where possible. Now more than ever, we have to celebrate. We have to take comfort.
In solidarity,
Samantha
Here’s what you may have missed:
Books I Read (and Loved) in Summer 2024: Nine books I enjoyed in June, July, and August 2024.
Dragon Age: I've Waited a Decade to Romance Scout Harding: Scout Lace Harding is a romanceable companion in Dragon Age: The Veilguard and the series’s first dwarf romance. I’ve been waiting.
Game Thoughts: Love, Ghostie: Sweet and simple matchmaking sim Love, Ghostie from Janbeh Games offers dozens of possibilities—and tons to collect.
My Favorite 2024 Wholesome Games Steam Celebration Demos: I played as many Wholesome Games demos as I could during the 2024 Steam Celebration. These are my six favorites.
Game Thoughts: The Crush House: Devolver Digital’s The Crush House is a unique management sim, but its mechanics don’t support the advertised gameplay experience.
For my debut at Yes! Magazine, I interviewed rare disease patients about becoming their own experts and advocates, how the medical system fails them, and the kinds of care networks we need to build moving forward.
I played Dragon Age: The Veilguard early (!!!) and reviewed it (spoiler-free!) for The Mary Sue, then wrote about creating a fat character, why Taash’s storyline impacted me so much, and which returning characters made me cry the most. Watch for spoilers in the latter three pieces and look for more Veilguard coverage from me soon!
Also for The Mary Sue, I reviewed Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara, which I found disturbing but not overproduced, and Empire Waist, which is the movie I needed as a fat teenager.
For The Beat, I interviewed Pathways: The Chronicles of Tuvana creator Elaine Tipping about adapting the fantasy webcomic for print and why the story is so special to them.
The majority of my recent reads are for work, classes, or my thesis, and I feel like there are 10+ on my proverbial “reading” shelf. Here are a few from this fall that stand out:
Nonfiction
The Cost of Living: A Working Autobiography by Deborah Levy
Ongoingness: The End of a Diary by Sarah Manguso
Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery by Annie Liontas
Fiction
Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma
Hybrid
West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal
Haymarket Books is offering 10 FREE “Ebooks for Getting Free” until 11/22 including work by Angela Y. Davis, Rebecca Solnit, and more. Grab yours here. The publisher has also marked ALL of its ebooks 80% off until 11/15, meaning you can get any title for $2.
AK Press is offering 6 FREE ebooks for a limited time including work by adrienne maree brown and Andrea J. Ritchie. Grab yours here.
If you have the means to donate e-SIMs to Gazans and want art from the Cartoonist Cooperative for your support, click here.
Disabled activist and writer Tinu Abayomi-Paul passed away in September and the campaign to support her family in the wake of her passing is sitting at approximately 74% completion. If you have the means, please consider donating.
Jezebel’s Susan Rinkunas published a comprehensive guide for where to donate to support abortion access, which includes helping people pay for healthcare and not get arrested for seeking it.
Elizabeth Warren wrote a decent op-ed for TIME about the election results and what the Democrats need to do next.
Sonali Kolhatkar at Yes! Magazine explores how to craft a democracy that truly supports its most marginalized citizens. This feature is stunning. Please prioritize reading it, especially if you’re feeling despondent or hopeless.
The Flytrap’s free article for November is from Katelyn Burns about the absurd and demoralizing length of the U.S. election cycle and how we desperately need to shorten it for everyone’s sake.
Rowan Ellis just released an excellent video essay, “The Subversive Magic of the Queer Witch,” that explores the trope, its prevalence, and its history. I’ve watched and bookmarked it for later reference.
If you haven’t seen Chappell Roan perform “Pink Pony Club” on SNL and get perhaps the loudest audience participation the show has featured in years and you need a little joy, I highly recommend it.
Suzy Exposito (one of my favorite music journalists) profiled Kesha for Elle and interviewed her about how she plans to upend the entire industry so what happened to her never happens to anyone else. It’s a stellar read.
Brittany Spanos profiled Chappell Roan’s incredible rise to pop superstardom and how it’s impacted her for Rolling Stone in September, and it’s still one of my favorite reads of the year.
The Walrus ran an excerpt from Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper about the Moleskine, its history, and its specific appeal to a voracious and dedicated fanbase, of which I’ve been part for at least a decade.
Snaggle tooth. That’s all.
Publish Her Anthology: Dear Body
My essay “Fat Is a Descriptive Word” is published in Publish Her Anthology: Dear Body! 🎉
Dear Body features work from 30 authors exploring what it means to them to live in their bodies. Publish Her Press is putting 100 percent of the proceeds from anthology sales toward program grants and publishing services for underrepresented women authors.
The Cyclista Zine Collection
My 2019 essay “Becoming a Cyclist As a Fat, Queer Woman Radicalized Me” from Cyclista Zine #1: Our Bikes, Our Spaces is included in The Cyclista Zine Collection! 🎉
The Cyclista Zine Collection anthologizes the first 10 issues of zinester Christina Torres’s collaborative zine project, with each issue comprising one chapter of the book.
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