nevanna | Entries tagged with tuesday top five

Here are some things that I want to do before the summer is over, most of which I have not done yet.

1. Spend some time on a beach

2. Have a picnic in a park

3. Bake a pie with fruit from a farmer’s market (or blueberries from my recent blueberry picking trip with my mom)

4. Attend at least one of the outdoor movie screenings in and around the Boston area

5. Visit the Somerville Flea

Perhaps some of my friends would like to do one or more of those things with me! (Even if you don't help me make the pie, you can still eat some of it.)

When listing five of the authors whom I most admired in the early years of the X-Men movie fandom - the ones whose work I am most likely to recommend to viewers experiencing those first movies for the first time - I ended up sourcing some links from fanfiction.net and LiveJournal, because some of these authors had their Moments before AO3 became the fandom hub that it is today. Also, I'm referring to all of these authors by the gender pronouns that they used when I knew them; if anybody has more recent information, please feel free to share it.

1. Andraste

Andraste’s love for and fascination with Charles Xavier – not as a saint or a monster but as a well-intentioned, flawed individual – captured my attention even when I still thought I hated that character. She’s written in both the movieverse and the comicverse, but my favorite of her works will always be “Ten Thousand Candles,” a character study of Charles after the events of X2.

2. Minisinoo

I talked about Min’s An Accidental Interception of Fate in a previous TT5 entry, as an example of what make her writing exceptional. (I will refrain from making the obvious “X” puns. You’re welcome.) Her characters and their world feel multidimensional and immediate, whether she’s writing high drama and action (which find their way into Accidental Interception, as well as Climb the Wind, Special, and Grail), or slice-of-life vignettes like “Of Teletubbies and Mutants on Saturday Mornings.” The latter is not only funny and sweet, but also stands as an interesting time capsule of fannish attitudes toward queer interpretations of characters.

3. Penknife

(Most of this author’s work is locked to AO3 users, so you need to have an account and be logged in if you want to read it.)

All of Penknife’s fic is wonderful, but I am usually most likely to recommend “Children’s Crusade” and “Twenty Random Facts about Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters.” (Are “Twenty Random Facts” fanfics still a thing? I’ve always liked that format.) Both works – like Min’s – portray daily life at Xavier’s School in really compelling, believable ways. She’s another one of the writers who made me appreciate Charles as a character (and Charles/Erik as a pairing) more than I might have otherwise.

4. Sionnain

Sionnain sold me on Magneto/Rogue, a pairing that I would never have considered if we hadn’t gotten to know each other. When I watched X-Men ’97, in which that pairing is very much canon, I hoped that she felt some lingering sense of vindication.

5. Trismegistus/Vagabond Sal

Eighteen-year-old Nevanna was absolutely stunned by this author’s command of descriptive language and dialogue, which I might have tried – with varying degrees of success – to emulate. Of the stories that I’ve been able to find, Wayward, which was actually co-written, was the first one that I remember reading; Infinite Regress was the most intellectually engaging and made the most intriguing use of a character from the comics, and Caducity (to which I should add a content warning for physical and mental decline due to illness) show how skilled and inventive Trismegistus could be when writing telepathy.

What are some of the most memorable stories from your early days in fandom?

Here are five books about young writers that I loved when I was a young writer - and reader - myself.

1. Seven-Day Magic (1962) by Edward Eager

On a routine trip to the local library, five children discover a mysterious book that can transport them to other times and worlds, as long as their chosen destinations are somehow connected to literature.

My mom read this book aloud to me (along with its predecessor, Half Magic) when I was around seven or eight years old and already just as invested in fictional worlds as the main characters. They might have, in fact, been the first explicitly genre-savvy characters I ever encountered. (“The best kind of magic book… is when it’s about ordinary people like us, and then something happens and it’s magic.”) In what is both the funniest and the creepiest chapter, a disagreement causes Barnaby, the resident “person with ideas,” to split off from the rest of the group and seek refuge in a story that he’s been secretly writing (and in his dashing fantasy persona, “Barnaby the Wanderer”). However, he nearly loses himself to an eerie corner of the world that he’s imagined until his friends show up to rescue him. I’m making that sound like the climax of a story about how Imagination Is Bad And Dangerous, Actually… but I don’t think that’s the message that this book, or even that particular section, is sending. Instead, Seven-Day Magic is about how powerful and transformative stories and imagination can be, even when they lead us to unexpected places that we shouldn’t have to face alone.

2. Daphne’s Book (1983) by Mary Downing Hahn

Speaking of messages about the role of fantasy in children’s lives: some years ago,

rachelmanija wrote a couple of thoughtful posts about middle-grade “problem novels” that used make-believe as a plot device:

The basic plot is that Protagonist Kid meets a kid (Tragic Kid) who claims that magic (elves, etc) is real. The kids do magic spells, make elf homes, etc. Protagonist Kid usually isn't sure that the magic is real, but wants to believe that it is. At the end it is revealed that magic is definitely not real, there are no elves, and Tragic Kid was making it all up to cover up for the fact that their father is abusive/their mother is an addict/they have no parents and are living alone/etc. Protagonist Kid is sadder but wiser.

I thought about those tropes when I was trying to write a summary of Daphne's Book, which does contain some of them, up to a point. Seventh-grader Jessica is paired with the class outcast in a storybook-writing contest, and their collaboration evolves into a genuine friendship that is jeopardized by revelations about Daphne’s unsustainable home life. However, Hahn ends her story on a more hopeful note than most of the books that Rachel references in her discussion, and Jessica and Daphne’s creativity is ultimately rewarded, not punished. There’s a lot of joy in the scenes where they’re plotting out their story together and sometimes even role-playing the characters, and the final pages reaffirm how important and even life-saving that shared imaginative space was to them.

3. The Girl in the Box (1987) by Ouida Sebestyen

The victim of a random abduction, sixteen-year-old Jackie struggles to hold onto her sanity with the help of a conveniently available typewriter, on which she touch-types journal entries, pieces of fiction, and letters to her loved ones.

Gabrielle Moss’s Paperback Crush – a book that I’ve referenced in a couple of previous TT5 entries – describes Sebestyen’s novel as:

...a Voltron made of the culture’s grimmest beliefs about child abduction. All the essentials are there: a kidnapping that occurs while the child is innocently walking through the streets of her hometown; a hideous and insensible crime that pushes the limits of human understanding; an ambiguous ending that implies but never states that the heroine is dead. No wonder so many of this book’s GoodReads reviews are written by adult women who are still traumatized by having read this in middle school.

I’m including The Girl In The Box on this list, not because I found the story that Jackie was writing to be particularly compelling (it mostly consisted of teenage drama, implied to have been inspired by a falling-out that she had with her friends), but because I’m absolutely one of the adult women that Moss describes. Even though I didn’t talk about my reading experience on GoodReads, I vividly remember bursting into hysterical tears when I read Jackie’s farewell letter to her parents, possibly causing my own parents – not for the first time – to wonder what I’d been reading that upset me so much.

4. Libby On Wednesday (1990) by Zilpha Keatley Snyder

After years of home-schooling with her eccentric relatives, Libby attends public school for the first time, and has trouble fitting in until she starts meeting regularly with a group of fellow student writers.

Snyder dedicated Libby On Wednesday to readers who told her, “I write, too.” Like Daphne’s Book, it veers at one point into “Problem Novel” territory, involving the abuse that one member of the group is facing at home. However, most of the plot focuses on the kids getting to know each other, reading their work out loud, and talking about storytelling. (I learned the phrase “constructive criticism” from this novel.) I loved every glimpse into every character’s creative process, and I enjoyed reading about Libby’s quirky household almost as much.

5. Three Lives to Live (1992) by Anne Lindbergh

Assigned to write her life story as a school project, Garet finds herself chronicling the unexpected appearance of a girl named Daisy who tumbles into her basement from an old-fashioned laundry chute. Her grandmother (and guardian) encourages the girls to present themselves as identical twins, but Garet suspects that the woman who raised her might know more than she’s telling.

Lindbergh’s novel takes the form of Garet’s autobiography, and there’s a lot of metatextual fun to be had amidst the weird setup, weirder reveals, and the thematic explorations of sibling rivalry, identity, predestination, and the malleable nature of time. Garet’s straightforward narration occasionally takes a left turn into experiments with more stylized writing, and she devotes several hilarious pages to the advantages and drawbacks of overly descriptive dialogue attribution. I can also probably blame this book for my onetime fascination with soap operas as a cultural institution.

What are some of your favorite stories about stories? Do you identify particularly strongly with any writers in fiction?

I don’t remember when and how I first learned that the Indigo Girls were queer icons, but it was sometime after I first started listening to their music (and before I had more than the slightest hint that I myself might not be straight). They were, first and foremost, the group who performed some of the songs that Older Sister taught me, and whose CDs kept us, Younger Sister, and sometimes our parents company on road trips. At some point, I also started associating their lyrics with some of the stories that I was working on at the time, or that we were working on together (a habit that continued once I entered online fandom and started using lyrics to title my fics). Much later, I also learned that Amy Ray and Emily Saliers were and are involved in activism for a variety of causes, including queer rights. And my family and I were lucky enough to see the group in concert in 2004.

At first, I thought about creating a list of my top five Indigo Girls songs, but I think that would be prohibitively challenging: there are just too many of them! Instead, here are my favorite tracks from their first five albums – the ones that helped to form the soundtrack of my childhood.

1. “Strange Fire” (Strange Fire, 1987)

I first heard this song on the concert album 1200 Curfews. I remember reading somewhere – maybe in the liner notes for that CD, maybe from a fan – that Amy wrote this song about her relationship with the Christian Church, but I don’t think that interpretation is necessary in order to appreciate the powerful lyrics, the melody, or the way that the harmonies build throughout.

2. “Secure Yourself” (Indigo Girls, 1989)

I think that this is one of the songs that I learned from Older Sister before I heard the recorded version. The final line, “Now we all are chosen ones,” resonated deeply with me as a young, socially awkward reader and storyteller who had tired very quickly of Chosen One stories. (“Closer to Fine,” which opens the same album, is probably more well-known, definitely more fun to sing, and I love that one, too. I just don’t love it in the same way.)

3. “Hand Me Downs” (Nomads Indians Saints, 1990)

No question about this one. The urgency and background drumbeat that kicks in on “...and you’ve become the saint somehow” makes me catch my breath every time.

4. “Ghost” (Rites of Passage, 1992)

Or, as my mom calls it almost every time she brings it up, “that one about the Mississippi being mighty.” (“Galileo” and “Love Will “Come To You” are also strong contenders from the same album.)

5. “Dead Man’s Hill” (Swamp Ophelia, 1994)

Swamp Ophelia has such a strong concentration of songs that I absolutely adore, that my choice is almost random, based on what I’ve been listening to the most recently.

If you’re an Indigo Girls fan, what are some of your favorites? Whether you are or not, do you recall any songs that captured your heart or imagination before you knew who originally performed them? What are they?

Here are five of my favorite Young Adult books with queer protagonists to be published within the last ten years. I am very lucky to live in a world where I had a hard time choosing.

1. Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera (2016)

After coming out to her close-knit Puerto Rican family, Juliet travels across the country for an internship with a feminist writer whom she idolizes, leading to a transformative summer that shatters some of her illusions but gives her a better understanding of her own identity, creativity, and strength.

As far as this book is concerned, I echo pretty much everything that

skygiants said in this 2017 review. Juliet is a wonderful narrator, and her experiences with white hippie feminism and with the kindred spirits that she finds among her fellow queers of color read as very authentic even to someone with only secondhand understanding of a lot of those communities and philosophies. Rivera is just that good at conjuring settings and subcultures. I love how complicated all of the relationships in this book are, and the sense of possibility with which the story ultimately leaves both heroine and audience.

2. Sawkill Girls by Claire Legrand (2018)

Young women have been vanishing from the island of Sawkill Rock for many years. Zoey’s best friend was one of them. New girl Marion’s sister might be next. Popular Val and her family have played their own horrifying role in the disappearances. But these three girls, working together despite their pain and secrets and distrust, might be the only ones who can stop them.

The only speculative fiction work on this list, Sawkill Girls is a wonderfully atmospheric horror story with memorably complex relationships between the three main characters. Zoey’s asexuality is only one of the reasons why she feels like a perpetual outsider, while the attraction between Marion and Val is shadowed by Val’s connection to the island’s supernatural secrets. If you like scary stories set in close-knit communities, and books about super-powered teen girls who fight evil forces, you might want to give this one a try.

3. Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli (2023)

A chronic people-pleaser, Imogen often finds herself scrambling to be the perfect straight ally to her queer sister and closest friends, even when her efforts (such as the time that she spends online, reading strangers’ arguments in order to figure out whether she’s “allowed” to enjoy a movie like But I’m A Cheerleader) cause her excessive amounts of stress. When a college visit leads to an unexpected flirtation with another girl, Imogen has to overcome her insecurities for a chance at real happiness, not only with Tessa but with herself.

I liked Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda and Leah on the Offbeat, but Imogen’s journey resonated with me even more deeply as someone who still second-guesses her own identity – and tends to interpret online discourse in the most self-critical way possible – even in adulthood. Also, the dialogue and characterizations pop off the page, and Imogen’s relationships with her family and friends are given as much weight and texture as the romance. (I also found her yearning for inclusion in a potential friend group to be Extremely Relatable Content.) In particular, her longtime friend turned antagonist, Gretchen, could come across as a mean-spirited caricature of a smug Tumblr-poisoned social justice warrior, but Albertalli is careful to present valid reasons for why Gretchen is the way she that she is, and also why she and Imogen have remained friends up until this point, without suggesting that Imogen owes her forgiveness.

At the time of writing, I’ve just finished reading the new companion novel, Amelia, If Only, and I am happy to report that it is equally delightful.

4. Emmett by L.C. Rosen (2023)

Emmett isn’t interested in a romantic relationship before he turns twenty-five (and has convinced himself that his reluctance has nothing to do with the fear of having his heart broken), but that won’t stop him from trying to find a boyfriend for Harrison, his friend and occasional hookup. What begins as a matchmaking mission, with all of the humor and angst and misunderstanding that implies, leads Emmett to question what he really wants and what he’s willing to risk for love.

Having never read Jane Austen’s Emma (or seen Clueless), I still enjoyed this modern take on the story, although if you’re not interested in reading about relationship drama among glaringly privileged teens, this might not be the book for you. Emmett might be insufferable, but the narrative recognizes that he’s insufferable, and his character arc involves a reconciliation between the “nice” persona that he projects and the genuinely kind and decent man that he’s capable of becoming. The slow-burn romance is lovely, and will probably appeal to readers who enjoy watching a protagonist slowly figure out what they themselves have known for many chapters, but – similarly to Imogen – I was equally charmed by the relationships among Emmett’s social circle, as well as his loving but fraught relationship with his father and their close bond with his late mother’s best friends. It’s the kind of intertwined family experience that I remember very fondly from my own formative years.

5. The No-Girlfriend Rule by Christen Randall (2024)

When Hollis’s boyfriend excludes her from his ~~Dungeons & Dragons~~ Secrets & Sorcery campaign, she joins a diverse all-girl gaming group in order to experience the activity that means so much to him and his friends. She doesn’t expect to find true friends of her own, to enjoy the love story that develops between her paladin character and Aini’s bard, or to discover a spark between herself and Aini outside their imaginary world.

I’ve never gotten involved in tabletop role-playing, but I’ve done some LARP, and dabbled in online role-play, and I have friends with plenty of experience in all three. Randall fully captures the creative and emotional synergy and excitement that friends can create when they’re telling a story together (and the confusion that can arise when the lines blur between in-character and out-of-character relationships). It’s aspirational in all the best ways.

I went strawberry picking over the weekend with my family. Here are some of my potential plans for the berries that I carted back to Boston.

1. Oatmeal topping! I did this yesterday and today. Tomorrow, I might mix in some banana and/or peanut butter as well.

2. Lemonade flavoring!

3. Cupcakes! I am thinking of filling the cakes with lemon curd that I made a few weeks ago, and using the strawberries to flavor the icing.

4. Bread pudding!

5. PIES. Maybe I'll combine the strawberries with peaches or rhubarb.

Do you like strawberries? What are some of your favorite ways to use them?

Pride Month has begun, so I’m here to share some of my favorite queer characters from (live action) television.

1. Tara Maclay (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Although it’s easy to dismiss Tara as “only” a love interest for Willow (who is also a great character!), there’s a lot to love and admire about her in her own right: she’s brave and wise and compassionate, and her story beautifully demonstrates the show’s enduring theme of found family. I am one of many, many fans who wish that she’d survived the series, and I was thrilled to recognize both the deliberate use of her name and a cameo appearance by Amber Benson in the recent horror movie I Saw The TV Glow. Tara was also the focus of a tie-in prequel that was published a couple of years ago, although I haven’t read it.

2. Jack Harkness (Doctor Who/Torchwood)

I was delighted by Jack from the very first time that I saw him in “The Empty Child.”

andrastewhite once pointed out, in a LiveJournal/Dreamwidth post that I can no longer find, that although charming rogues with hearts of gold have never been a rarity in science fiction, Jack stood out as a Doctor Who companion in particular because of his previous experience traveling the universe, and, of course, his uninhibited sexuality. I adored his relationships with the Doctor and Rose. And although the writing on Torchwood was often extremely uneven and sometimes seemed to be coasting on the memorable elements of other shows, Jack’s protective love for his team was always a joy to watch, and the devotion between him and Ianto was a noteworthy step forward for sci-fi action media (even if, like Willow and Tara’s story, it ended tragically).

3. Miranda Callendar (Jekyll)

Steven Moffat has (and deserves) a dubious track record when it comes to writing female characters, but I think he did a decent job with the ladies of Jekyll. Miranda – a private detective who becomes entangled in the drama between the modern-day Jekyll and Hyde – is smart and stubborn and resourceful and funny, and her bond with her wife and business partner, Min, is clear in every scene. I would watch an entire show about the two of them as supernatural investigators.

4. Eric Effiong (Sex Education)

Eric is one of the most lovable characters in a varied and engaging cast. He could have been nothing more than a fabulous accessory to his (sometimes insufferable) straight white best friend’s storyline, but increasingly layered writing and Ncuti Gatwa’s remarkable performance allow him to transcend that stereotype magnificently. I like that Eric is mostly secure in his identity and aesthetic when the story starts, but – like any teenager – he’s on a journey to figure out who he wants and what kind of person he wants to be, and his sexuality and religion and family and friendships all play significant and interconnected parts in that journey.

5. Theodora Crain (The Haunting of Hill House)

I have yet to read Shirley Jackson’s original novel, but when I watched Mike Flanagan’s screen adaptation (which I understand is very different from the source material), I remarked to a couple of my friends, “of course the damaged psychic lady is my favorite.” I love Theo’s snark, the contrast between her accomplished professional identity and her messy personal issues, her determination to help children who have been harmed, and the way that she both fears and yearns for intimacy. I was so happy for her at the end of the series.

Honorable mentions: Nomi Marks and Amanita Caplan (Sense8), Anissa Pierce (Black Lightning), Sara Lance (Legends of Tomorrow)

I haven't finished watching any of those shows yet but I love these characters based on what I've seen!

“Guilty pleasure” can be a loaded term, especially when it comes to media consumption. When compiling this list, I avoided titles that fell into the following categories.

A. The pleasure of the book is “guilty” because I am not its target audience (children or young adults).
B. The pleasure of the book is “guilty” because I am its target audience and we’re socially conditioned to think of fiction marketed toward women as frivolous.
C. The book was good but the author Did A Problematic Thing (or was Insufficiently Marginalized to tell the story they were telling). Those conversations aren’t without value, but I’m much more interested in discussing the actual text.

Instead, I decided to look at titles that I enjoy even though I disagree with something fundamental about the creative choices that went into them.

( Some examples! )

Inspired by one of my favorite podcasts (This Ends At Prom) celebrating “May-usical Month,” I decided to list my top five songs from live-action musicals. Perhaps sacrilegiously, I haven’t necessarily seen all of the shows in question – although I have a lot of respect for musical theater as a medium, much of my understanding comes from cultural or social osmosis – but I like the songs on their own.

1. “Nobody’s Side” (Chess)

My summer camp staged Chess during my last year, and while I thought that the story was pretty interesting, it was the music that especially stuck in my memory, especially this number. Not only is it lyrically and musically compelling, but it has some strong fandom associations for me, including the use of one line to title a crossover fic (“No Contract Truly Signed”) in a series that preoccupied me for the better part of a year.

2. “Confrontation” (Jekyll & Hyde)

I’ve seen this musical on stage, as well as a recording of the David Hasselhoff production, but I primarily associate this particular song with my friend Brad at karaoke gatherings.

3. “For Good” (Wicked)

My initial connection with this song – which has made me teary-eyed more than one time – was likewise through fandom: a friend of mine connected it strongly to the Ninth Doctor/Jack/Rose OT3 in Doctor Who, and when we listened to it together, I agreed. It also inspired Nancy Werlin’s Extraordinary, a YA novel about faeries, Jewish history, and teen girl friendships, that I quite like (it’s technically the middle part of a trilogy but can stand on its own).

4. “Wait For It” (Hamilton)

By the time I got around to watching Hamilton on Disney+, both the fannish hype and the fannish discourse had been raging for years. I don’t have a position on whether this musical is an artistic triumph or problematic trash, but I like a lot of the songs, and “Wait For It” is probably the one I enjoy listening to the most.

5. “This Is Me” (The Greatest Showman)

I have only the vaguest idea of what this musical is about, but “This Is Me” (or, rather, the cover by MALINDA) is in my rotation of songs to play when I need a self-esteem boost.

These are five of the books or series that were foundational to my mind control obsession.

1. The Witch Herself (1978) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

The subject line of this post is from a song that recurs throughout Naylor’s “Witch” books.

I discussed this series last year, during Spooky Season, but I chose to single out this particular book (the third out of six) because it’s the one in which protagonist Lynn’s best friend, Mouse, declares her intention to be a hypnotist. After minimal study, she can put people in trances, control their actions, and access repressed memories. She also communicates with Lynn’s internal shadow self; it’s suggested that everybody has one, and that some witches - as well as an amateur hypnotist, apparently - can control these aspects of their victims by learning their secret names. (That part was, for better or for worse, also tremendously fascinating to me as a young reader.)

Mouse’s hypnotism is not part of the latter three books, in a series that is generally very smart about continuity and callbacks. The possible Watsonian reason is that she’s understandably frightened of her own power, but to the best of my recollection, it’s never even mentioned again.

2. The Ghastly Glasses (1985) by Beatrice Gormley

A psychic researcher posing as an optometrist gives young Andrea a pair of glasses that allows her to change people’s personalities when she looks through them.

This book is the sequel to Mail-Order Wings, which I haven’t read, but works pretty well as a stand-alone. It has a solid “be careful what you wish for” message and a very funny ending that would probably please cat lovers. I remember stealing one of its plot threads (minus the glasses) for my own long-ago attempt at a Psychic Kid story, about which I can unfortunately remember very little now.

3. Animorphs (1996-2001) by K.A. Applegate

Most of my peers probably at least know the hook for this series (written by spouses Katherine Applegate and Michael Grant, along with a team of ghostwriters): five kids are given the power to transform into animals in order to fight an invasion by parasitic mind-controlling aliens. Although I never actually finished reading all the books, they were overwhelmingly formative for me while I was following them, and the horror of Yeerk infestation – both from the inside, when it happens to the team leader at one point, and from the outside – was a huge part of the reason why.

4. Extreme Zone (1997-1998) by M.C. Sumner

When her father’s secret scientific research leads to his disappearance from the military base where they live, Harley teams up with Noah, a classmate suffering from nightmares of what might be an alien abduction, to investigate.

There are satisfying amounts of mind control in this series, but it also contains: conspiracies, astral projection, interdimensional travel, clairvoyant visions, cults, shapeshifting, genetic engineering and other forms of Weird Science, and lots of questions that – even though the story seems to come to some sort of conclusion in its eight-book run – are never really resolved. Given the time frame of its publication, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was partly inspired by The X-Files. And unlike Animorphs, which is a generation-defining phenomenon, I have never met another person who’s read Extreme Zone. It doesn’t fall into the category of “do I remember reading this or did I hallucinate it?” that happens sometimes with childhood favorites – you can find and buy copies online, and I held onto my own collection – but some elements of the story, which are both surreal and specific, as well as its relative obscurity and the fact that I was only ever able to find most of the books exclusively at one independent bookstore in upstate New York, make me feel like a lot of adults probably do when processing those half-formed memories of nostalgic media.

5. Daughters of the Moon (2000-2007) by Lynne Ewing

Four (later, five) teenage girls use their supernatural powers to fight a demon and its human (and not-quite-human) thralls.

As a teenager, I already recognized that these books were kind of awkwardly written, not to mention morally uneven when it came to excusable applications of mind control (it was okay when the good guys did it!), and I didn’t care. As I wrote on Tumblr some years ago, the series scratched my itch for sensual descriptions of psychic contact as well as an enemies-to-lovers romance with a tormented immortal bad boy. Even then, I knew what I liked.

(Yes, I know that it's actually Wednesday.)

I don’t consider myself a Disney Adult™ (I think that requires a bit more commitment to a lifestyle that simply does not interest me) but I am apparently an adult with some strong feelings about Disney’s animated musicals. When I talk about my five favorites, I am not ignoring arguments about how some of those movies portray the cultures in which they take place, but I don’t think I’m in a position to wade into that discourse.

1. Beauty and the Beast (1991)

I’m not interested in debating whether the central relationship in this movie promotes abuse or Stockholm Syndrome – critics can read it that way if they want to, but it’s far from the only valid interpretation, and emphatically not one with which I agree. For me, the story is about two outcasts finding common ground in an intolerant society (as a tiny bookish weirdo, of course I identified with Belle, though I’d be happy to just be friends with the Beast and hang out in his library). Also, Gaston – the embodiment of toxic masculinity and dangerous charisma – remains incredibly relevant in his villainy.

2. Aladdin (1992)

I saw Aladdin three times in the movie theater and countless times on home video, and none of my present-day criticisms undo my joyful memories of the characters, the songs, and, yes, the mind-controlling villain. (I also remember enjoying the direct-to-video sequels quite a bit, although my primary reaction to The Return of Jafar was “needs more hypnotism.”)

3. Mulan (1998)

I don’t know if it’s my place to discuss, not only the depiction of ancient China, but also the possible trans subtext in this movie, though I remember reading some interesting meta on Ye Olde LiveJournal about how it deals with gender, including the beginnings of romantic tension between Mulan and Shang before he knows her true identity. Since I grew up reading Tamora Pierce’s Song of the Lioness series to pieces, of course I was thrilled by a movie about a young woman who disguises herself as a man in order to fight.

4. Moana (2016)

This is the first of two entries on this list that impressed me as a grown-up viewer. The visuals are gorgeous, the story is very solid, and I will happily listen to some of the songs independently of the movie itself.

5. Encanto (2021)

I looked forward to this movie as soon as I knew the premise, and I was pleasantly surprised when Mirabel didn’t miraculously gain magical powers of her own over the course of the story. She and her family are all sympathetic characters, the tension and love between them are believable, and the soundtrack is another one that I enjoy listening to on its own.

Please feel free to comment with your own Disney Feelings!

Last June, I listed my top five bookstores in the Boston area (including Brookline Booksmith, which I had a great time visiting for Independent Bookstore Day). The ones on this list are a little bit (or a lot) more far-flung, but I have fond memories of all of them. At the time of writing, all five are still open for business.

1. Heartleaf Books (Providence, RI)

A new favorite with an amazing mission and an adorable resident feline!

2. Oblong Books (Millerton, NY)

Although Oblong opened a second branch in the Hudson Valley in 2001, the original store, located just a few minutes away from the house where I grew up, was one of my favorite places to hang out as a young person. Children’s and YA books (along with toys and games) were on the bottom floor, adult books were located upstairs (I hung out pretty much exclusively in the SFF section), and the music section was one floor above that. Although I used to bemoan the fact that the nearest large chain bookstore was at least an hour away from my hometown, I now recognize that Oblong might not have survived until the present day if a Barnes & Noble had opened anywhere nearby.

3. Shakespeare and Company (Paris, France)

I wrote an essay about Shakespeare and Company for a Travel Writing class in university, and I probably still have a copy somewhere. The store is a cultural institution, and from the first time I stepped inside, I was enthralled by its history, including the writers and wanderers who spent the night there in exchange for some assistance with the store’s operations and a contribution to its archive of personal stories.

4. Uncle Hugo’s Science Fiction Bookstore (Minneapolis, MN)

I only visited this store once, when I was living in the Twin Cities for a couple of months in 2006, but I’m glad that it and its counterpart, Uncle Edgar’s Mystery Bookstore, existed and still exist today. Perhaps someday I’ll go back.

5. TIED: The Bookloft and Yellow House Books (Great Barrington, MA)

These are two other favorites from my youth! Yellow House helped to feed my childhood Baby-Sitters Club obsession, and I found a copy of Yarrow - which became my favorite non-Newford Charles de Lint title - at The Bookloft.

It's almost farmer's market season in my part of the world! Here are some of the fruits and veggies that I'm looking forward to buying this summer.

1. Berries! Raspberries are probably my very favorite, but I also love blueberries, blackberries, strawberries… I put them in oatmeal and sometimes in pies or muffins.

2. Peaches! They’re also great in cereal and pies, sometimes in combination with any of the berries.

3. Asparagus! I occasionally roast it to toss with pasta but use it more often in a stir fry.

4. Red and green peppers! These are also fine stir-fry or curry ingredients, though I also like to mix them into other rice dishes: with coconut and chili and lime, or with cheese and salsa and chicken.

5. Diva cucumbers! Those are the tiny seedless ones. Last summer, I sliced one up to include in my lunch at least once a week; alternatively, they’re another great addition to cold rice dishes (I add shredded carrots, soy sauce, sesame seeds, and some kind of protein).

I had a mostly pleasant, sometimes challenging, weekend with my family. At least once, as it often does, our conversation turned to shared formative media. This inspired the following list of movies that my sisters and I, and sometimes our parents, enjoyed together and often quoted when I was growing up.

1. Harvey (1950)

This black-and-white classic, in which Jimmy Stewart’s best friend is a giant white rabbit that almost nobody else can see, was an old favorite of my parents’; they showed it to my sisters and me when I was a young teenager, and it’s been a family viewing standard many times since. Every once in a while, something will prompt one of us to exclaim, “Doctor, that is not my mother!” or remark, “You can be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. For years, I was smart, and I recommend pleasant.”

2. The Hobbit (1977)

The Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit might have been one of the first movies that I ever watched, when I was a toddler and Older Sister was seven or eight. (Around the same time, I named one of my stuffed animals “Bilbo.”) Since then, she’s read the book to me, and I’ve read it on my own, and I still think the movie does an amazing job of bringing the characters and songs to life.

3. Unico in the Island of Magic (1983)

Recently, I summed up this one to my housemates as follows: “early anime adventure in which an adorable baby unicorn tries to stop an evil wizard from turning people and animals into living puppets.” Someone in my family almost certainly picked up the VHS at an independent video store in our hometown, and the genuinely terrifying villain obviously wasn’t a deal-breaker for me or my sisters.

4. The Princess Bride (1987)

You know it, you love it. The Princess Bride was another go-to viewing choice for my family, and remains one of the rare adaptations that I enjoy more than the source material. Although Goldman’s novel is clever and inventive, it’s tonally very different from the movie, which blends humor and sincerity in a way that I overwhelmingly prefer. I fully admit to having been the obnoxious kid who could – and often did – quote some of the scenes from memory. (Or sometimes I’d just let out a snarl when someone said, “Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.”)

5. Hackers (1995)

This is another one that means more to my sisters and me than to our parents, which is understandable, since it is so very ’90s. During one of our many viewings, as we watched colorfully dressed high school students (played by visibly older actors) rollerblade to secret gatherings where they pooled their “elite” computer knowledge, Older Sister said, “Wasn’t there a time when we thought this was what teenage life would be like, if only we could find it?” There absolutely was. Honestly, I could not tell you whether the technology makes any sense at all, and I’ve been known to forget the plot from one viewing to the next, but the characters and the humor and the aesthetics are, well, hard-coded into my memory.

I’ve been thinking about fictional depictions of Grim Futures lately, for absolutely no reason at all, why do you ask? Here are five pieces of dystopian fiction that made an impression on me when I was younger (long before The Hunger Games or the subsequent “YA dystopia boom”).

( How post-apocalyptic! )

Have you read any of these books? Did any fictional visions of a Grim Future make an impression on you when you were younger?

I don’t like April Fool’s Day, but I do like stories about scams and hoaxes. Here are five of my… well, “favorite” is a loaded word when talking about some of this subject matter. People were definitely or very likely hurt in all of these cases. People died in connection with some of them. I am not trying to make light of those tragedies when I say that I am fascinated by these accounts… but then again, maybe that’s how all the True Crime Girlies excuse their obsessions.

Anyway. Here are five scams or hoaxes that I find myself thinking and talking about a lot.

1. Beatrice Sparks’s Teen Diary Empire

I already alluded, in a previous entry, to the intersection of books like Go Ask Alice and Jay’s Journal with the War on Drugs and the Satanic Panic. I would still recommend Rick Emerson’s Unmask Alice to anyone who’s interested in those topics, or remembers picking up the supposed “diaries” of “real anonymous teenagers” from their local bookstore or school library.

2. MsScribe’s Fandom Social Climbing

MsScribe was a fanfic writer and LiveJournal blogger in the Harry Potter fandom of the early 2000s, who employed sockpuppets, weaponized existing ship wars, and almost certainly embellished the truth about her personal life, to gain sympathy and favor from the “Inner Circle” of popular fangirls. Part of why her actions remain a compelling and enduring part of fandom history was the deftness with which she understood and manipulated the expectations, grudges, rivalries, and allegiances of her community. In addition to the Fanlore article and the archived version of Charlotte Lennox’s “Unauthorized Fandom Biography,” you can watch Strange Aeons’ video on the topic if the audiovisual format is your preferred one.

3. Thanfiction’s Hobbit and Wizard Cults… And Beyond

I think that there are two reasons why I closely followed the fandom exploits of Andy “Thanfiction” Blake (as recounted primarily by his former partner, Abbey, and by The Tea Blogger, who has spent years building a massive timeline of Blake’s online activity), and they’re only tangentially related to his phony celebrity connections or attempts to scam people out of their money (and it’s been speculated that financial benefit was never even his primary objective anyway). The first reason is that I understand, on a very personal level, how the narrative that he offered his closest followers – including his supposed ability to “channel” characters from Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, as well as his own OCs – might have been appealing. I’ve talked about fictional characters and worlds in some of the same ways that he did, and so have a few of my friends, but none of us have ever started a cult about it.

Secondly, Blake’s years on Tumblr, in which he often posted about Supernatural and current events (and appeared to over-identify with fictional characters but didn’t necessarily “channel” any), offer another example of how a bad actor can manipulate the norms of a subculture – in his case, the trappings of social justice and the revisionist version of his own mental illness and trauma history – to gain attention and power over others. The use of Tumblr (and other online platforms) for activism or for bonding over shared experiences is not an inherently bad thing, but I’ve long been skeptical of the social expectations that can develop in those environments and their vulnerability to exploitation.

4. TIED: Amanda Riley’s and Belle Gibson’s Fake Cancer Diagnoses

As far as I know, these two cases are unconnected, but they’re similarly horrifying when one considers how brazenly each woman took advantage of a religious community (in Riley’s case) and the already problematic world of complementary medicine and “wellness” trends (in Gibson’s), benefiting both financially and emotionally from their lies, at least for a time. Riley’s crimes are covered in a podcast called Scamanda; my primary understanding of Gibson’s story comes from a recent Netflix dramatization, Apple Cider Vinegar, but it’s based on a nonfiction book that I’ve requested from the library and am looking forward to reading.

5. Lani Sarem’s Attempted Bestseller List Coup

Handbook for Mortals – an awkwardly written “urban fantasy, paranormal romance” complete with a love triangle – appeared at the top of the Young Adult New York Times bestseller list in August 2017 despite nobody in the YA writing and publishing community ever having heard of it or its author before. It remained there for less than a day while booksellers and journalists pieced together writer Lani Sarem’s plan to buy her way into fame (and hopefully the production of a movie franchise). Although this scheme didn’t arise in transformative fandom, it’s come up in fandom history conversations because of a brief rumor that Sarem was secretly the author of infamous badfic My Immortal. There’s no evidence that this was the case, and part of me hopes that that particular mystery is never solved.

Are there any scams or hoaxes – within or outside of fandom – that have captured your attention?

I recently finished watching Young Justice with my long-distance friend Artie. I’d seen all four seasons before (the two that originally aired on Cartoon Network and the two that became available after the show was revived for streaming), but the series was new to them. Despite some long-standing criticisms – particularly of where the show directed its violence once it was no longer bound by network standards – YJ remains one of my favorite pieces of superhero media ever, and I’m so glad that my friend enjoyed it, too.

Here are the five things that I love most about this show, in no particular order.

1. “Every conceivable method of mind control”

I used this phrase as a subject line for a previous TT5 entry, but I appreciate it so much that I’m inflicting it on you again. Several key plotlines in YJ center around telepathy or mind control – that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to show it to Artie in the first place – and hit a lot of our favorite related tropes along the way. “Somebody or something took over my mind and I can’t remember what happened.” “I have to watch my body attack my friends against my will.” “Someone I loved meddled with my memories and now I can’t trust them.” “I hurt someone with my psychic powers and now I can’t trust myself.” And so on.

However, I didn’t feel like these tropes overcrowded or cheapened the story, the way that I often did in – for instance – The Vampire Diaries. I haven’t picked apart all the reasons for this distinction, but I think that YJ valued its characters’ agency a lot more, even when it was frequently compromised, and its mind control almost always had consequences, whether our heroes or their enemies were using it, instead of functioning as a way to avoid consequences as it often was on TVD.

2. Setup and payoff

Speaking of mind control: in one early episode, a villain taunts one of the heroes with what seems at first to be just an insulting nickname but, at the end of the season, turns out to activate the person on the receiving end as a sleeper agent. That’s just one example of this show’s commitment to the long game, and the agility with which the creators navigate multiple storylines and eventually tie them together seems like a superpower in and of itself.

3. Clever use of in-universe pop culture

One member of the Team relied on a sitcom to shape her identity in a similar way to what we’d later see on WandaVision… and I liked WandaVision, but I love the use of this idea on YJ at least much, if not more. The (fictional) sitcom is an affectionate send-up of the genre, and its theme song is an earworm, as is the jingle for the “Reach” commercials in the following season. And the the third-season episode “Nightmare Monkeys” integrates pre-existing in-universe entertainment with shoutouts to previous DC animated projects, in a silly, sinister, and surreal dreamscape sequence.

4. Mental health representation

This element might be hit-or-miss for some viewers, but I think that requiring teenage superheroes (and, it’s later established, adult members of the Justice League as well) to engage in counseling sessions with a team therapist is a great idea both for and within the story, and leads to some really important character moments. And although some characters’ struggles with depression and PTSD teeter on the edge of after-special territory, they’re written with a lot of sympathy for everyone involved, and the writers are careful to emphasize that although therapy and peer support can be extremely beneficial, they’re not immediate magical fix-its.

5. Teamwork makes the dream work!

The characters and their relationships grow and develop organically over time; the writers put a lot of care into depicting how our heroes’ strengths and weaknesses affect each mission and their interpersonal story beats, and showing that they’re the most successful when they communicate and collaborate with each other.

Also, you’ll find plenty of super-powered found family shenanigans throughout all four seasons, whether or not everybody is literally living at their headquarters together.

Inevitably, my friends’ and my fannish interests and participation don’t always line up completely. I like to think that we can still support and even vicariously enjoy some of each other’s fandom obsessions… or, at least, I try to offer them that support, to the best of my ability, because I’d like them to do the same for me, to the best of theirs. Here are five fandoms to which I would consider myself “adjacent” even though I’ve never created any fic for them (which is how I personally define participation, for these purposes, though that’s obviously not a universal metric).

1. Star Trek: Voyager

I’ve actually seen a scattering of Star Trek episodes, across several eras, because I know so many dedicated fans, though I’ve never sat down and watched any series from the beginning. And, of course, I love any and all stories about the franchise’s place in overall fandom history. But one of my closest friends in college was especially fond of Voyager and showed some of our social circle a sampling of episodes; we shared an appreciation for the episode “Meld,” and I fangirled intensely over the descriptions of telepathic contact in the fic that she wrote as a result. Although that experience was only one tiny facet of a very long friendship that incorporated several fannish obsessions – shared and otherwise – it was an early sign that we interacted with stories in very similar ways, and when she confessed that Brad Dourif’s character was “eating her brain,” I understood exactly what she meant.

If anybody is wondering whether she also showed me and our other friends “Threshold,” she absolutely did.

2. Kingdom Hearts

I am not a video game person and never have been. I heard enough about Kingdom Hearts, from my two best friends at the time (one of whom was the Voyager fan that I mentioned above) to recognize the parts of the story that would likely appeal to me (possession! hidden memories! dual identities! an elaborate media crossover not unlike the ones that I scribbled on every available scrap of paper as a young teenager!). If it had been in any other format, I might have been right there with them. I did read some of the manga, just to gain some understanding of what they were talking about, and could probably pick out Sora, Riku, Kari, and Axel from a lineup, although I am led to understand that at least one of them has a metaphysical doppelganger. Or three.

3. Les Miserables

My high school choir practiced a medley from Les Mis when I was a freshman (I don’t remember whether or not we actually performed it), and the theater department at my summer camp staged the musical during my last year, but there were probably a few years in between when I had no idea what the story was about, beyond the general historical setting. If that.

Around the time that the 2012 movie was released, my then-housemate showed me a recording of the 25th Anniversary stage production and read me enough passages from the original novel to convince me of Enjolras and Grantaire’s tragic love. I enjoy reading what other people have to say about all of the characters – but especially those two – even if I have yet to tackle the book or develop any particular desire to write about them myself.

4. Glee

I’ve seen the first season and part of the second, I’ve liked some of the songs, and I’ve watched Mic the Snare’s outstanding video essay more than once. My impression of Glee is that it offered compelling characters who were often frustratingly underserved by the plot, which created plenty of space for transformative fanworks, including crossovers. Thus, about a decade ago, I spent a lot of time talking with my friend D – who was more invested in the show than I was – about AUs in which Kurt Hummel was (variously! not all at once!) a vampire, a magic user, and a mutant with psychic empathy powers.

5. Supernatural

It’s difficult to be involved in modern fandom and be entirely ignorant of this show, and I’ve enjoyed fanfic and meta about it despite only having seen a relatively small number of episodes, many of which I experienced alongside my dear friend Elle (who gave me permission to identify her in this post). I’ve happily beta read some of her fic, and since the final seasons of SPN and The Magnus Archives happened at roughly the same time, we shared some of the joys and frustrations and worries that came from witnessing the end of an ongoing, episodic story in real time. I might never commit to watching all or even most of SPN from the beginning, and I’ll probably never adore it like she does, but I love her love for it. Anyone who thinks it’s a cool and fun hobby to sneer at fans of the Winchester brothers can take it somewhere else.

On March 11, 2020, I was informed via email that the school where I worked (one of my three part-time or on-call jobs at the time) would be closed for the next few days for an intensive cleaning, which would hopefully slow the spread of the “coronavirus” that I’d been hearing about for the past few weeks. The building remained closed for over a year. Some of the days that followed were stressful and frightening, but I am fortunate in that plenty of other moments weren’t.

Here are some memories that I associate the most strongly with my everyday life (and only my everyday life, which I am not comparing to anyone else’s) during the COVID-19 lockdown.

( Five moments, with visual evidence )

Here are my top five heroines from the fantasy books of my youth. Some of the stories in question contain noticeable "Not Like Other Girls" messaging, at least up to a point, because that is what appealed to me when I first read them.

1. Eilonwy from the Chronicles of Prydain (1964-1968) by Lloyd Alexander

My mom read these books aloud to my sister and me when we were little, and I loved how outspoken and determined Eilonwy was, how she told off our hero Taran whenever he dismissed her or took himself too seriously, and how she chose to go on adventures even when instructed to stay behind. As an adult, I can look more critically at the third book in the series, in which she spent most of the story kidnapped and mind-controlled, as well as her decision to give up her magical powers in order to marry Taran at the end of the series. However, for a female character written by a male author in the 1960s, Eilonwy still had impressive amounts of agency and personality, and set undeniable standards for me as a young reader of the genre.

2. Alanna of Trebond from the Song of the Lioness Quartet (1983-1988) by Tamora Pierce

Pierce’s first fantasy series is also her most uneven: the pacing of the first two books (each of which speeds through four years) is disorienting, and the white-savior themes of the third installment are deeply uncomfortable from a twenty-first-century perspective. There’s still a lot to love and admire about Alanna and her adventures, including how hard she had to work in order to become both a skilled fighter and a skilled healer, and her commitment to trusting her instincts when nobody else at the royal court realized that Duke Roger was dangerous. Although Alanna was gifted with magical powers and the favor of the gods (and a talking cat, and a mystical sword, and a divinely created necklace, and…), many of her limitations and her aspirational traits (including her stubbornness, which was both!) were very human. I also love that she turned up in later Tortall series, showing that her story didn’t end when she defeated the Big Bad and found true love.

3. Cimorene from the Enchanted Forest Chronicles (1985-1993) by Patricia C. Wrede

Like Eilonwy and Alanna, Princess Cimorene chafed against the expectations of her family and society… but she also rebelled against the expectations of her narrative role – an idea that I hadn’t yet seen another story explore when I first entered the fractured fairy-tale world of Dealing With Dragons – and found a new home with a community that recognized and appreciated her intelligence, curiosity, and cooking abilities.

4. Lyra Belacqua from The Golden Compass (1995) by Philip Pullman

I only named the first book in the trilogy because it’s the one I’ve reread the most and for which I have the fondest feelings. I will always be here for Lyra’s scrappy ingenuity and her ability to find and fight for unlikely friends and allies.

5. Ella of Frell from Ella Enchanted (1997) by Gail Carson Levine

Ella’s struggle to navigate and ultimately undo her lifelong “gift” of obedience, as she realized how profoundly it threatened to destroy everything she loved, has remained funny, heartbreaking, inventive, and uplifting no matter how many times I’ve revisited it. The plot beats of a familiar fairy tale provide an enjoyable foundation, but Levine’s own additions (Ella’s skill with languages, the various magical beings that she met on her road trip, her correspondence with Prince Charmont, and the horrifying ease with which her free will was compromised) make the story truly memorable. I had a very snobby “the book was better” reaction to the movie upon my first and only viewing, and I don’t think I’ll ever completely reverse my opinion, but I did appreciate Laura Crone’s attempt at a nuanced analysis in her video essay from a couple of years ago.

If you grew up reading fantasy, who were some of your favorite characters?

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Nevanna

July 2025

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Page Summary

Tuesday Top Five: Summer Bucket List
Tuesday Top Five: Formative Fanfiction, Now With More Mutants
Tuesday Top Five: "I write, too."
Tuesday Top Five: "Love that never grows tired"
Tuesday Top Five: Pride on the Pages
Tuesday Top Five: This Is A Strobbery!
Tuesday Top Five: Small Screen Pride
Tuesday Top Five: Guilty Pleasure Books
Tuesday Top Five: A Whole Song and Dance
Tuesday Top Five: "I shall have you in my power."
Tuesday Top Five: Disneyfied
Tuesday Top Five: Bookstores Beyond Boston
Tuesday Top Five: "And on that farm..."
Tuesday Top Five: Movie Memories
Tuesday Top Five: "Another shocking glimpse into our scary spooky no-good future..."
Tuesday Top Five: Fooled
Tuesday Top Five: "Why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?"
Tuesday Top Five: Fandom Adjacent
Tuesday Top Five: These Uncertain Times
Tuesday Top Five: "Well, I'm not a proper princess, then."

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Nevanna's Forest of Stories

Entries tagged with tuesday top five

Tuesday Top Five: Summer Bucket List

Tuesday Top Five: Formative Fanfiction, Now With More Mutants

Tuesday Top Five: "I write, too."

Tuesday Top Five: "Love that never grows tired"

Tuesday Top Five: Pride on the Pages

Tuesday Top Five: This Is A Strobbery!

Tuesday Top Five: Small Screen Pride

Tuesday Top Five: Guilty Pleasure Books

Tuesday Top Five: A Whole Song and Dance

Tuesday Top Five: "I shall have you in my power."

Tuesday Top Five: Disneyfied

Tuesday Top Five: Bookstores Beyond Boston

Tuesday Top Five: "And on that farm..."

Tuesday Top Five: Movie Memories

Tuesday Top Five: "Another shocking glimpse into our scary spooky no-good future..."

Tuesday Top Five: Fooled

Tuesday Top Five: "Why isn't anyone ever just whelmed?"

Tuesday Top Five: Fandom Adjacent

Tuesday Top Five: These Uncertain Times

Tuesday Top Five: "Well, I'm not a proper princess, then."