Happy Things for Unhappy Days
Want to know what cool stuff I’ve been doing that’s getting me through the 2020 garbage fire? See below for eleven things I like a lot. I almost weeded one out, because ten is such a nice round number, but then I was like, fuck it. The world has been shit-tastic for a while now, and the more happy things the better.
Oh, and because marketing is unfortunately a part of my job and stuff, uh, buy my new book, I guess? Publisher’s Weekly liked it? It’s about bandmates who are all lusty for each other but never talked about it because words are hard? Also it includes a lady who is fed up with that BS? I dunno. I kinda feel like if you were gonna buy it you would’ve by now, but maybe that’s not how marketing works? Just in case, I’m gonna put a link to the book’s page so you can find out more, but don’t feel pressured to use it. This Is Not the End.
And now I feel like a door-to-door salesperson holding stuff hostage until you watch my pitch.
Uh… let’s get back to our regular scheduled programming. And so, in no particular order:
Beach Too Sandy, Water Too Wet: This is a weekly podcast by two siblings who read nasty, real-life reviews. But they do it with very dramatic music in very dramatic ways, and it essentially turns the entitled whining of mean idiots into high comedy. It’s hilarious, the siblings are charming and kind, and it reminds us all not to take the little things so seriously that our frustrations turn us into ogres. You can get it on pretty much any podcast platform.
Fast Colors: this is kind of a superhero movie, but it has nothing in common with the flashy stuff from the MCU. It’s a quieter, more character-based movie where the superpowers involved are metaphors for the power Black women have struggled to access throughout history. It’s intense and complex and lovely. I was sleep deprived, stressed out about work, and fiddling with my phone when I started it, and before it had been on for ten minutes, I was completely absorbed. Weeks later, I’m still thinking about it, and it gives me a complicated-but-warm feeling every time.
Lindsay Ellis: this YouTuber offers up video essays about a wide array of subjects. She’s hilarious, dry, and her critical thinking skills about story and characterization are impressive. Watching her work her way through the logic of how something works narratively (for good or ill) is like watching a master juggler. It’s inspiring, and it reminds me of the some of the chats we’d have in workshop while I was getting my MFA. Her video about why women are often paired with beasts in fiction (a la Beauty and the Beast or The Shape of Water) was fascinating. She has like four(!) videos about why the Hobbit movies were kind of a mess. Also she delves into the tiny circle of weirdness that is alpha and omega romance and the bizarre collection of lawsuits within it. She was targeted by a crazy-pants writer for talking about the whole situation, and her response was essentially BRING IT. She’s a badass. She’s a beacon of reason and dry humor and decency. I love her.
Gifted: this is my new bad day movie. I have a collection of them—movies that accept sadness or frustration as a part of life (thus validating my feelings) but which are ultimately uplifting. The one I pick at any given time depends on what I’m struggling with. For writing, I pick Stranger Than Fiction. I watch 50/50 on days when my chronic illness has me wanting to punch something. And Gifted has become the one I watch when I’m struggling with humanity’s inevitable decline into nihilism (wow, that got dark. Apologies. I should probably watch this movie again later). It’s about a flawed, grumpus uncle doing his best for his orphaned, gifted niece and this is probably my favorite non-Captain America Chris Evans movie. Which is saying something, because I’m a big fan of some of the smaller movies in his oeuvre. (Snowpiercer, for example. Definitely see that one too. And at least consider Sunshine, which you may or may not want to see. That’s a scifi movie that I absolutely love but which a lot of people profoundly Do Not Love. I like movies that’ll sacrifice logic and coherent plot points to make angsty, thematic arguments about hubris and faith vs science, but I’m aware I might be in the minority there. To each her own.) Anyway, I’ve watched Gifted multiple times during the mess of 2020, and I have a feeling I’ll be watching it a bunch in 2021 too. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. Depending on what you’re going through, it might make you ugly cry, but you’ll feel better afterward, I swear. I’d link to the trailer but it gives away far more than I like to see in a trailer personally, and I don’t want to contribute to that kind of nonsense.
The niece in question. She’s a tiny little anger ball. It’s adorable.
Scarlett Peckham, Talia Hibbert and Tessa Dare: Gosh, a romance writer likes romance. Stop the presses. But all three of these women consistently deliver flawless escapes from a toxic reality by offering up wonderful characters and plenty of fun drama. Favorites for each: The Lord I Left by Peckham, A Girl Like Her by Hibbert, and The Duchess Deal by Dare. Feel free to share your faves with me. I always need new reading material.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake: I don’t know how many of you are into video games, but if you’ve ever been tempted to try one, this is a good one to start with. The story is epic, the combat is seriously fun, and there’s a special difficulty setting for the newbies that makes it way easier to keep track of all the buttons. Your main character is Cloud Strife, an emo mercenary with a sword the size of table top and hair that defies gravity. He’s kind of an asshole, he’s terrified of girls, and he enjoys killing monsters in his spare time. He takes a job with some ecoterrorists to make a quick buck and accidentally uncovers a plot that forces him to step up and save the day while confronting his inner demons and a mysterious man from his past who keeps whispering his name in a bedroom voice. This game is the definition of “The real treasure was the friends we made along the way,” because Cloud slowly thaws in the presence of awesome secondary characters who are all better people than him. There’s enough raw flirtation in the dialogue and plot that you can ship pretty much anybody with anybody. In case you’re curious, I’m all about Cloud/Aerith (she’s the kind of lady who likes unironic high fives and isn’t shy about demanding them, and because he’s too cool for school, this gives him actual physical pain. It’s hilarious.). Also, this game is unapologetically super gay in places, and I’m 100% here for it.
Look at this emo boy. Who gets off a train like that? Why is his sword that big? Why is his hair like that? No one knows. The game doesn’t answer any of these questions because it doesn’t care about physics. It only cares about AWESOME.
FilmJoy: A YouTube channel with a guy named Mikey, who (almost) always makes videos where he explores what makes his favorite movies awesome. He’s sort of the antithesis of Cinema Sins. He leaves you loving a movie more than you did when you got there, and a few times he’s gotten me to give a movie I didn’t like a second chance. He has a ton of content, most notably his Movies with Mikey series, where he focuses on one movie at a time and just breaks down awesome stuff that you probably didn’t notice before. It’s inherently positive shit delivered in a tone that veers wildly from reverent to hilariously irreverent and back again in 3.5 seconds and it makes me happy. Here’s where he talks about how The Cabin in the Woods is even more subversive than you think (video includes massive, major spoilers, and don’t you dare ruin your own experience of that fantastic movie by clicking if you haven’t seen it yet. Also, why haven’t you seen it yet?).
Marvel Puzzle Quest: This free mobile game is my healthiest addiction. I’ve been playing it for at least an hour a day for over a year and I’m not even close to bored. It’s a match-3 game, but it’s the most complex one I’ve ever played. For each battle, you put together a three member team from the characters in your roster, each of whom comes with powers that change the gameplay in unique ways. For example, Black Widow stuns enemies and steals their ammo. Storm strikes with lightning, exploding a bunch of random tiles. Nick Fury has a power that lets him call in the Avengers on his behalf. It’s updated regularly with new versions of characters so it never gets old. And as you collect more characters and upgrade their powers, you can put together teams with characters that synergize in cool ways. There are alliances you can join if you’re a joiner, but it’s not necessary to talk to a single other human being if you don’t want to, bless your introverted little heart. It’s so much damn fun and it’s entirely free-to-win. You can unlock every single aspect of the game without spending a dime. Watch the ludicrously melodramatic (and slightly outdated) trailer here.
Hockey is back. Fucking finally. If you love this sport as much as I do, you already know why it’s awesome. If you don’t, maybe you should give it a try. It’s the best sport, in my humble opinion, not least of which because it’s basically a soap opera on ice. You have heroes and villains and rivalries and fights and hurt feelings and friendships and even romance. Well, kissing. Well, licking. Actually, it was kind of gross and intrusive, because Brad Marchand definitely did not have Leo Komarov’s consent to lick his face. That was villainous. Marchand is villainous. He’s sort of awesome off the ice—an LGBTQ ally and all-around hilarious shit-talker, but on the ice he’s a villainous little rat who licks people. Don’t root for the Bruins if you can help it. And if you already root for the Bruins: why is Marchand licking people when he could be scoring goals? He’s really good at scoring goals. Tell him not to lick people, okay?
The Magnus Archives: I hesitated to put this one in here, because even though I have ravenously listened to every single episode of this podcast during quarantine, it’s kind of EMOTIONALLY A LOT in its own way. So listener discretion and all that is advised. Magnus is a serialized horror fiction podcast narrated by our hero, Jonathan Sims, a cranky, fastidious, accidentally-eldritch librarian with a deeply sexy voice who has just taken a job as Head Archivist at a mysterious academic place that sort of researches paranormal…stuff? What seems at first to be a random collection of short horror stories morphs into a crazy-huge mythological frightmare of epic proportions. And that would be awesome enough except that the story is also about Jon’s cuddly, flailing, hapless assistant researcher, Martin. Martin is wildly in love with his boss, not that Jon has ever bothered to notice. There’s serious pining here, guys. So much pining there should be a forest. Martin’s struggle to love Jon from afar is definitely in the backseat to the horror and apocalypse stuff for most of the podcast, but if you enjoy tortured pining and maybe-sorta-possibly-requited-love, this is your port of harbor. Also featuring creepy tunnels, too many spiders, diverse representation of all sorts, lots of whump delivered to our poor archivist who is TRYING SO HARD, evil clowns, possessed tables, and somebody prying a bone out of their own arm. Gak. But Martin and Jon are the emotional throughline to this story and you will root for them so hard. The podcast is wrapping up the last season soon so I can’t promise a happy ending. But I do promise thrills and a couple of lonely people searching for something meaningful together. You can get it anywhere you get podcasts or on Youtube.
Stardew Valley: In this absorbing video game, you’re a little 8-bit looking guy and you inherit a farm from your grandpa. But it’s in bad shape, so you have to give up your corporate job and move to this little town and rebuild it. On the surface that maybe seems silly and simple. But man, is it deep and complex and awesome. You plant parsnips and delve into the mines for materials and raise cows and chickens and goats and make your own beer and artisan cheeses and help forest sprites and meet the villagers, some of whom are single and looking for love. You can get married and have kids and kill monsters and the game’s available on pretty much every platform for a reason: it’s the most soothing, wholesome, creative shit you’ll find in gaming right now. Get it. Get it now. Watch the trailer.
Did I mention you can go fishing? I should’ve. It’s way more fun in Stardew than it is in real life, too!
Well, there it is. Hopefully at least one of these things will make you happy, at least for a brief span of time. Go forth and try new things! And if you’re already into one of these, comment so I can squee back at you!