Watching: Story From North America

Last night before I was deciding to go to bed, my boyfriend decided to send me a lot of love through sharing a bunch of YouTube videos with me. Just as I had watched a good amount and was about to say goodnight he sent me one last short one, “Story From North America” and I decided alright just one more and I watched it. It was so beautiful and unique. The imagery is creepy and a little scary for those scared of spiders, but the message it gave was a beautiful one. I adored watching this.

Here is a link to “Story From North America”

Something I loved about this too was that my boyfriend hates spiders, but he also shared an appreciation for this story and the message that life even arachnid life is precious. Also, that this was a way that I have thought so many times before especially when I was a kid. Bugs our living creatures too and how would I like it if a hand came from the sky and squished me? Especially when I was minding my own business? It’s definitely not a happy thought, yet it’s what we do to bugs all the time.

But, I can also think of times where infestation happens and it is important to remove and kill bugs that as making a home in your house when their numbers could do harm to you. But as far as a single spider here and there they are actually good because they’ll eat the other bugs naturally. Safely putting them outside to just be is most of the time a good idea.

What I also loved about this is that its told in song form and the lyrics are pretty catchy. I’ve only watched it twice through and the lyrics are already sticking with me enough to quote a bit from the song. It’s in a style of music that reminds me of a children’s song. Repetitive to drive home the message and also to convey the overall feelings and tones of various parts of the song.

God, I highly recommend watching this. It’s only 4 minutes and it’s so damn good. So thought provoking and the imagery is incredible. I won’t get over the way she conveys the boys anger with his rapid movement it’s such a neat moment. This is truly art.

Places to donate to Trans communities:

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The Trevor Project

Transgender Law Center 

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Link to a video to watch if you can’t donate!

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Monstress Volume 3: A Review

Monstress Volume 3 by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda

My Rating: 5 stars!!!

Cover Rating: 10/10 of course! The cover art for all of these are perfection! I love them! They make my jaw drop to the floor in awe!

Publisher: Image Comics

Publish Date: September 11th, 2018

Number of Pages: 168

Received: Amazon purchase

Purchase: Amazon

Synopsis: Maika has spent most of her life learning how to fight, but how will she fare when the only way to save her life…is to make friends?

Opening Sentence: “Maika.” “Shut up, Tuya.”

Musings:

Every single review I write for another volume in this series is full of pure joy. That’s what reading Monstress is for me pure joy.

I am absolutely obsessed with each of these comics as I read them. Every single one is wonderful! The art absolutely incredible. The story amazing!

What I Loved:

Every single thing! At times it’s funny and at times it’s so intense I want to eat it all up. It is always beautiful! The story is amazing. The interludes of history are amazing! It’s all so amazing!

Professor Tam Tam! My heart every-time I get a history lesson from the adorable Professor Tam Tam! It overflows with joy even with the darkness of the history. The contrast of adorable and dark is something I can’t get enough of.

The epicness of this volume! There was a battle I couldn’t get enough of. It took me in and entranced me completely. It was phenomenal in every way.

The subtle betrayal aspect mixed with a bigger betrayal! I think I often get so into the art with these volumes that I don’t ever talk much about the story itself which is phenomenal! But the way the themes weave together so beautifully was wonderful! I’m so obsessed with these volumes.

I connect and care for all the characters! I love everyone that’s in this book. Good or evil they are so gloriously written and I just love everyone here. So damn good!

The cat race in general. I adore cats in general, but this hard-edge cat race is amazing in every way. They aren’t to be messed with. I can obsess about the cuteness all I want, but they are incredibly callous at times and they fight for their own whatever the cost. I have a huge sense of respect for them.

All in all:

I adore this series in every way. Each and every volume is incredible. I’ll never get enough of it.

About the Author 

New York Times bestselling and award-winning writer Marjorie Liu is best known for her fiction and comic books. She teaches comic book writing at MIT, and she leads a class on Popular Fiction at the Voices of Our Nation (VONA) workshop.

Ms. Liu was born in Philadelphia, and has lived in numerous cities in the Midwest, as well as Beijing and Shanghai. Prior to writing full-time, she was a lawyer. She currently resides in Boston.

About the Artist 

Sana Takeda is based in Japan and is best known in the United States for working with Marjorie Liu, most recently on their hit fantasy series MONSTRESS.

THANK YOU ALL FOR READING! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below! 

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My Boo: A Webtoon to Cry About

Something I adore reading are webtoons. For those of you who are new to them they are web comics created by independent artists to read completely for free. One of my absolute favorites that is actually completed is ‘My Boo’.

It’s fairly short in the scheme of how webtoons typically go. However if by the end you don’t find yourself in tears I’m sorry to say, but you might actually be a robot. I have nothing against robots they are pretty cool. I imagine most of them don’t have tear ducts. I’m sure even a robot would feel the affect of this webtoon.

The writing and the art together are GORGEOUS! It’s a beautiful webtoon. This is a story that made me think about love differently. To think about how I would feel if I only had the shortest amount of time with my loved one. Or how temporary life is. I can’t expect for sure that nothing will ever happen to me or to him. So, the person I love most in the world, I’m hellbent on giving my all to him.

Wow.. I didn’t expect it, but I have tears. I guess the thought of something happening was a bit much for me. It’s a bit hard to think about. But that is the reality of this webtoon. In My Boo these two beautiful souls love each other and have some of the best times, but Yuri and her beloved could never touch. They fell for each other and they would never touch. Not for one singular moment.

They laugh together. They can pretend at touching, but they cannot ever actually touch. If that’s not a powerful version of a long-distance relationship that technically is very much not long-distance I don’t know what is. The best part is the build up to them falling for each other. The writing is absolutely fantastic. Yuri’s past makes her pretend she doesn’t even see her ghost roommate. Even when he was being annoying as hell.

It’s such a simple story, but calling it simple feels wrong. I felt every word of it deeply. From, how Yuri made her decisions about accepting him in her life. To the actual relationship. To the very end. Reading this is like having a hand hold your heart and having it give a painful squeeze, but you hope, you hope for them to touch. For them to be able to have each other, but to the very end you start to loose hope and it’s a tragedy.

It’s one of those stories that makes you think about life and life decisions, but instead of it making me feel like letting go.. it makes me want to hold on. To love the person I love and damn the consequences. Because, why should two people who love each other have to let each other go? Love is the most beautiful emotion you could feel for someone. If you have it and it’s right and it’s good then why should you have to let go of it?

In this story there are reasons. In this story things get hard. In this story I became a mess. My Boo is beautiful. It’s tragic. It’s painful. But it is also full of a beautiful love. I hope everyone takes the time to read it. It’s a story I will never forget.

Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments below.

-Till next time!

The Wendy Project: A Review

The Wendy Project by Osborne Fish

My Rating: 4 stars to the right and straight on till morning… 

Publisher: Papercutz

Publish Date: July 18th, 2017

Recieved: Netgalley provided an e-arc copy in exchange for an honest review. 

Pre-Order: Amazon

Synopsis: 

16-year-old Wendy Davies crashes her car into a lake on a late summer night in New England with her two younger brothers in the backseat. When she wakes in the hospital, she is told that her youngest brother, Michael, is dead. Wendy — a once rational teenager – shocks her family by insisting that Michael is alive and in the custody of a mysterious flying boy. Placed in a new school, Wendy negotiates fantasy and reality as students and adults around her resemble characters from Neverland. Given a sketchbook by her therapist, Wendy starts to draw. But is The Wendy Project merely her safe space, or a portal between worlds?

Musings: 

Ok… first of all a Peter Pan retelling in Graphic novel format!?! Pure Gold! The second I saw this on Netgalley I had to request it, and you have to know their were a lot of girlish screams involved upon being approved. 

This Graphic novel is extremely gorgeous! The artwork is beautiful with a gray-scale for the real world and a bright watercolor deliciousness for how Wendy herself starts to see it. I loved the contrast of color and light and dark mixed together and told a story all of its own. It was striking to see who brightly Pan’s characters were painted and how beautifully it all went together. The artwork was an A++! 

The story itself honestly got to me. Wendy’s fight with her family and everyone else that her baby brother was still alive tugged at my heart. In many ways I wanted more of the drama and the tragedy of that sort of loss and even more backlash at Wendy’s conviction that her brother is alive. In fact I wanted more of this story in general at 92 pages it is far too short for a book this good. I wanted to live in it longer and to really bask in all the Neverland glory! 

All and all this story is glorious and the lost girl of my heart shines with this books existance. All I can say is that “The Wendy Project” is stunning and I will be wanting more of it and more from Osborne for a very long time. 

Here We Are: Feminism For The Real World: A Review

Here We Are Feminism For The Real World edited by Kelly Jensen

My Rating: 5 Feminist Stars! 

Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers

Published: January 24, 2017

Recieved: A personalized signed copy from the editor Kelly Jensen via a Giveaway. 

Purchase: Amazon / Barnes & Noble / Book Depository

LET’S GET THE FEMINIST PARTY STARTED! 
Have you ever wanted to be a superheroine? Join a fandom? Create the perfect empowering playlist? Understand exactly what it means to be a feminist in the twenty-first century? You’ve come to the right place. 
Forty-four writers, dancers, actors, and artists contribute essays, lists, poems, comics, and illustrations about everything from body positivity to romance to gender identity to intersectionality to the greatest girl friendships in fiction. Together, they share diverse perspectives on and insights into what feminism means and what it looks like. Come on in, turn the pages, and be inspired to find your own path to feminism by the awesome individuals in Here We Are. 
Welcome to one of the most life-changing parties around!

Musings: 

Wow was this a powerful book. Some of it was affirming the beliefs I already had. However, all of them were stories that had an affect on my heart. Yet there were a select few that moved me to tears and outrage and those were the ones that changed me. 

The first essay to make me cry was The Big Blue Ocean and My Big Fat Body by Angie ManFredi (who is now my new hero). It brought to mind my most deep seated insicurity the size of my body and smashed everything I had thought to be true about it. Angie’s message was incredibly positive yet I felt myself go through a shock as I read her words. Basically she goes on to say that she spent so much time in her life to get to a point where she realized that fat is a word that was neither good nor bad but simply described how her body was made. She has a lot of fat on her body so when she describes herself she uses that word because as ugly as society has made that word for her it is simply a state of being. Instead of being ugly fat becomes neutral even normal striped away of all negative connotations and the change in how the word is seen is how she learned to be comfortable in her own skin. I am not comfortable in my own skin. I’m 5’6 and around 156 pounds and while I’m not terribly large there are times where I look at myself in the mirror and I am disgusted. This essay made me cry because as much as I don’t like to think about how negatively I see myself I know that I need to work to see myself in a better life. To look at my generous behind and my not so flat stomach and say I am confident and beautiful because I am me. I define who I am and how I choose to see myself. I may have fat, but that fat is neither good nor bad but just is. If I want to feel beautiful then I must believe I am beautiful now and love the body that has carried me through my 18 years (the same body that will carry me through the rest of my life) to love that body and take care of it. Through all this thought I sobbed, because I haven’t been good to my body and because I have thought so negitively about my life and for all the pain I’ve caused myself through the years and all the times I’ve tried something on I thought was pretty and looked myself in the mirror and thought that it could never look pretty on me. I cried and new armor formed from those tears. 

I was outraged when I learned about a practice in some countries and cultures called FGM or Female Genital Mutliation. Where a female is mutilated so she could never feel pleasure during sex (sentencing the woman to a lifetime of painful sex) to be seen as more attractive and “pure” to a future husband. I had no idea that this was a thing and I am deeply hurt by it. I can’t imagine what that must be like. To be made into an instrument for a man to strum while you are in pain all the while with no remorse. This is a torture that breaks my heart. 

Then there was a piece by a Muslim women who said that she could never be seen as a feminist (although she considered herself a feminist) because of her culture and her hijab. It was at her words I was crying again, because it pointed out the flaws of a movement meant to raise up equality no matter who you are or what you believe and this women is cast out because her religion makes it so she could never be accepted as a “true feminist” and then I was angry crying again. 

So here and now I will declare myself feminist. A feminist who accepts everyone as equal regardless of color of skin, belief, sexuality, gender, or any other bias society creates. All people were created to be equal and all deserve equal rights. As an intersectional feminist I believe that all our fights are valid and that we must be aware of how we act and how we choose to raise up some people but shame others. To be aware to create change and to fight the dam good fight. 

Thank you all for reading! I hope you enjoyed this review! Let me know your thoughts down in the comments. I hope for all of you to read this book and to continue fighting for your beliefs. 

-Till next time!