Holidays 2020!

 Alright well this year has been hard enough without prolonging it, so I'm taking the next two weeks off to rest and recover. The end of the year is an arbitrary time point to mark endings and beginnings, but it'll be some well-deserved time off for me that I don't want to cut into too much. Hope your end of year plans are similarly restorative and I'll write more in 2021!

This Is Beautiful: The Poets are Gathering

 The latest album from saxophonist Benjamin Boone is "The Poets are Gathering," a powerful album that uses both poetry and jazz to explore and respond to current issues, particularly racism. This album pairs poets reading their work with jazz musicians creating accompaniment. The two art forms grew and developed together, so this is a really cool way to bring them back together.

I really enjoy how each piece is so perfectly suited to the poem thematically. Many of them speak about painful subjects and are atonal and dissonant as a result, but there are also very loving poems that are beautiful and gently read over piano. For a bunch of them, the music fits so well that it ends up sounding like a pop or a rap song instead of spoken word.

My favorite tracks include the title track, "The Poets are Gathering," as well as a few others. The titular song starts off as a march as the author reads a call to the poets. It then builds an grows until the poet is basically singing a wordless song as the instruments improvise in the background. The tension here is almost palpable as it grows in intensity. Another excellent song is "Deconstruction of Idols" which almost sounds purely improvised at the beginning, until about halfway through, when what sounds like a big band takes over. After that it sounds like a swing song! Finally there is also "Truths" which is a gorgeous, melodic piece that is a joy to listen to. I'd recommend the whole album honestly, all of them are wonderful. What a great way to merge art forms and comment on the current climate.

Asexual and Dancing

 I have some thoughts that I need to just get off of my chest. I'm just so frustrated about the dance world in general, and my experience as an asexual dancer in particular. I've been dancing since I was 5 years old, it's been a part of my life since I was young, and I have been a part of dance groups all through college and even after that. I was on the exec board for my group in college. I'm currently in grad school and am still dancing and choreographing. I've been doing this, I've been doing this seriously, for most of my life. And I still feel like an alien in dance spaces, primarily due to my sexuality.

It's not that other dancers make comments about it or are aphobic, it is more that so much of dance is directed towards being sexual and being seen as a sexual object. That impulse drives so much of how dancers move and express themselves, that when someone comes along who moves and expresses themselves differently it doesn't register as "good dancing."

All of the dance groups that I have been a part of have been non-audition based. I've tried to get into audition based dance groups, I spent a lot of time in undergrad doing that. And I gave it another whirl when I started grad school. I have always felt uncomfortable in auditions for very many reasons that I will not get into here, but a lot of my discomfort has to do with what is asked of the auditionees. Many dance auditions (in my experience) consist of a segment where those auditioning are asked to basically strut across the floor to demonstrate their self-expression. Which isn't a bad idea in and of itself, it is a cool way to try and see the individuality of the dancers. But it always turns into "who has the best sexy walk." I don't have a sexy walk, I have no interest in developing a sexy walk, I end up skipping across the floor or doing a really bad imitation of said sexy walk. This has yet to earn me a callback.

And this is not seen solely in auditions, if you look at any professional dance company the vast majority of their pieces have to do with sex. I am specifically thinking of Paul Taylor's work, I watched some of the movie, "Dancemaker," that showcases his work and was astonished how much was about sex and relationships. There was one segment where he explicitly said "this isn't about love, it is a dance about sex."

There is nothing wrong with dancing about sex and sexuality, there definitely is a place for those works. The problem is that the dance world is now so saturated with sex that there is no room for anyone who wants to create art that is not about those things.

Dance needs to expand its vocabulary beyond just what is considered "sexually desirable." This will lead to more variety in dance pieces, and as a result create more interesting art. Not only that, but it will also lead to more diverse dancers feeling included within this space. Dancers who do not want to constantly be exhibiting themselves as sexual objects have a place within the dance world as well, it is time that we were more welcoming of them.

This Is Beautiful: Snow

 We just had the first real snow with it sticking and everything on the ground for a bit. It was beautiful walking around in it the very few times that I had to go outside. It brought back some very powerful memories of undergrad and walking to class in the middle of the snow. I thought that this was interesting because I don't usually get a sense of a very powerful flashback from visual cues. Usually for me it's auditory or certain smells. Maybe because with snow it's visual and the temperature and sense of direction from the walking that does it. Either way, I love the snow. I'm so glad that it's kind of winter already, I think it's gorgeous and it makes me pretty happy.

Coming Out

 So this past week Elliot Page, the acclaimed actor, came out as transgender. Which was huge for visibility for the LGBTQ+ community, they're very well known and star in "Umbrella Academy", a Netflix series that has really taken off.

What has been the best part of watching this has been how accepting everyone has been. Major news articles do not always get the terminology right, but you can tell that there has been a real effort. And many websites were very quick to change their pronouns on their sites to match what Elliot uses. I really haven't seen much transphobia or backlash against them. Which is honestly incredible. You would think that with a high-profile trans individual all of the transphobes would come out to gawk or whatever.

It gives me a lot of hope for the future seeing these reactions. Especially since Elliot came out as non-binary masculine which is not a very common gender identity.

Good job this week humanity. I actually have some hope for once.

This Is Beautiful: TWEWY Sequel!

 Alright the thing that is making my life right now is the fact that right before Thanksgiving, a sequel was finally announced for The World Ends With You (TWEWY). I've written about TWEWY before (here, here, and here), I think it was one of my first "This Is Beautiful" posts back in the day (also here). I'm honestly just shook. I cannot believe that we are getting a sequel finally. I've been waiting for this for literally a decade and it is here.

This was such a formative game for me. I played it for the first time back in eighth grade and its message about opening up to people had a big impact on me. I'm not totally sure why, it definitely wasn't like I was living in a lil hole and not talking to people, but I think watching these likable characters go from being sad and lonely to opening up and persevering forced me to reflect it back onto my life and what changes I could make. Not to mention that the world building, graphics, music, and mechanics were all incredible and addictive.

I hope this game is good and has the same impact on me that the original did. I hope that this isn't a huge letdown because honestly I need a win right now and therefore I am all in on this hype. I sure hope that this doesn't let me down because I am soooo excited!

The Is Beautiful: Spinning Fire

 In person activities have more or less ceased around here, but right before we went into the next phase of the lockdown I managed to get Photonix together to spin fire. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I'd look it up on YouTube because any attempt for me to describe it here would not do it justice. 

Spinning fire is one of the most empowering things I have ever done. You feel like a fire bender out on the field with these flames whipping around you. It is definitely terrifying the first couple of times, but after a while you get used to it and gain confidence from what you are able to do.

I have missed spinning fire so much recently. I was spoiled in undergrad where I could spin fire every Friday, now I'm lucky to spin fire once a semester. I love and miss it so much.

“Sister Outsider” by Audre Lorde

I’m a little embarrassed to say that this is the first book at I have read by Lorde. I know her poetry from coming across various pieces over the years, but I only recently finally got my hands on one of her books. She is such an amazing writer, whether it is poetry or prose. What I love about this collection is how well it embodies the title. “Sister” as in writing from one women to another, and “Outsider” as in writing as a Black women to a mostly white audience.

I am amazed how much of her writing is still relevant to today. Her “Open Letter to Mary Daly” could have been written today to any white feminist ignoring the voices of people of color. And of course her essay “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House” is always timely and important. I had read it before, separately, and posted it online during the BLM riots this summer. The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. People have to riot for change now! The bulk of the essay is about how we have internalized the master’s tools, and that is actually the most difficult one to dismantle though. This aspect also gets forgotten a lot by people who haven’t read the whole thing, and it is important. We need to constantly be examining ourselves and analyzing whether we are speaking from an oppressed state or a liberated one.

Other notable chapters include “Poetry is Not a Luxury” which makes a really good case for how poetry is primarily from the working class. Therefore looking down on poetry rather than prose is a form of classism. I had never thought of it that way, but yeah, having the time to write during a break on scraps of paper means that by necessity it will be poetry rather than prose.

I also quite appreciated the chapter on the erotic as power. Having just finished Ace, which makes a similar point, seeing that parallels here is interesting. The origins of the term “erotic” refer not to sexual content but to anything with intense emotion behind it. That means that there is inherent power in the erotic that has been suppressed by labelling it as sexual and therefore inappropriate. Women in particular tend to be oppressed in this way and restricted by limiting their use of the erotic. I found it fascinating that these two writers took the same term and made very similar points about it, even though it was directed at two separate communities.

Lorde is an incredible writer who can speak to so many different experiences. Black, lesbian, female, she is more than the sum of all these parts in her life and her writing. Now more than ever we need to listen to people at these intersections and understand how their identities connect.

This Is Beautiful: My Ace Journey

The main point of this post is to announce that I finally put together an asexuality tag for this blog. I don't know why it took me this long since I've been posting about it for over 5 years now. I suspect that I initially didn't want to make a big deal of it, but here we are and I'm still making a big deal out of it. 

It's really interesting going back and reading my early posts. My original post about coming out is from March 1st, 2015. The writing isn't super so I'm not linking to it, but it's very easy to search for it. And it's strange to see how my priorities haven't changed so much. I talked a lot about awareness, and not understanding crushes. Both things that I am still working on. I also have a couple posts lamenting that asexuals are rarely included in popular discourse about the LGBTQ+ community, which still sometimes happens. 

I don't think I would love going back to my previous self, I have a feeling that I'd think that she's an idiot, but it's interesting to take a glimpse every once in a while. Just to see how much I've grown. I would never have guessed back then just how invested in the community that I would become. Or maybe I actually would have seen this coming, I knew that those were my people almost instantly. It's hard to tell now, since hindsight is 20/20.

Regardless, this identity has been a large part of my life for over 5 years now, and it's safe to say that it will stay a part of it for a while longer.

“Bad Feminist” by Roxane Gay

This was my first time reading a whole book by Roxane Gay. I already suspected that I would like it since I’ve read her articles and essays before, but I really appreciated being able to take a deep dive into her mind this this.

While the essays in this book range from her life to pop culture, the main topic is about the title, Bad Feminist. To Gay, a feminist in this day and age has turned into a certain sort of person and a certain sort of woman. Feminists are supposed to be militant, angry, and strictly independent. You are either someone who falls into this category and is a feminist, or you are not.

Gay is not this kind of feminist, and she acknowledges this. In fact she wholeheartedly embraces it. She knows that the fact that she wants a family and kids seems “un-feminist” and that a number of her ideas outlined in these essays are “not feminist.” But she’s discussing them and explaining her opinions anyways. I think that this acknowledgment makes her work all the more engaging because, honestly, who is a “good feminist” these days? And more importantly, if you are a “good feminist” are you a good person? Not to say that you can’t be both, but in my experience the people I meet who are stereotypical feminists are usually following this image because they think that’s what they’re supposed to do, not because that’s who they really are. Which is fine, and sometimes is necessary in order to discover who you are, but a lot of these people seem to lose touch with their own opinions along the way.

Most valuable, to me, were her thoughts on race. She discusses numerous times how media portrays Black people primarily as slaves or servants, when really all she wants is a movie about happy Black people. And this dearth of material then leads to them accepting anything that comes their way, even if it isn’t good. Which can be said of many marginalized communities, but it is most striking for the Black community. Also I know I do not see reviews of movies featuring Black actors that are written by a Black author very often, so I quite appreciated those essays.

In short, I thought this was an excellent book. Gay is welcoming and approachable and explains all of her ideas so well. You can’t help but agree with her nearly every step of the way, and relate to her experiences of trying to make it as a Black, female author in a white male world. White people need to step it up as allies in order to make this world a more welcoming place to people of other races.

This Is Beautiful: Voting

 I sure hope any Americans reading this voted this past Tuesday. This election sucked a LOT, the least of which being the wait for votes to be counted now. And one of the things that this has made so clear is that a lot of red states are red because of voter suppression. Georgia and Pennsylvania only flipped to blue because of black voters. Maybe the rest would be blue too if everyone could easily vote without getting harassed. 

Anyways, we have a ways to go I know, but it's nice that there is a slightly more positive change on the horizon. Biden has a lot of issues, and the US has a lot of issues as a country, but this administration will be so much better for everyone than the alternative.

“Upside Down” by N.R. Walker

To celebrate Ace Week I read a book featuring not just one but TWO asexual characters! Upside Down is the story of Jordan, an Australian man who is just coming to terms with the fact that he might be asexual. When he realizes that the cute guy he has been admiring on the bus runs the Ace/Aro Support Group in his neighborhood, he starts to befriend him. The two start dating not long after that as they start to realize that they have been looking for someone like them.

So to start off with, this book is super cute. Jordan and Hennessey (bus boy) are adorable together. And seeing a depiction of two ace men is wonderful. Jordan in general is a wonderful character as a nerdy bookworm who has a tendency to nervously talk when he gets anxious, which is usually when he’s around Hennessey. Additionally the two guys have a colorful cast of friends including Jordan’s best friend Merry and his roommate Angus. Both friends serve as foils for Jordan at points in the book.

Another great part of the book is that Angus has an ongoing relationship with a couple throughout the book. By the end it is practically a marriage between three people, and seeing a poly relationship so positively is wonderful.

One thing I did not love though is that by the end of the book every single character is in a relationship. I figured that since it is a book about asexuality, one of the characters had to end up single and happy. Merry even goes on a rant about it at some point. But in the end she is paired up with a character we never meet, and everyone else is already in a relationship. I get that it is a romance novel, but could we not pair characters together without a reason?

Similarly, it just felt like the book revolved around Jordan and Hennessey’s relationship a little too much. They have multiple Ace/Aro Support Meetings revolve around their relationship problems which just seems like a waste of everyone else’s time to me. Plus there is a bus crew who start to eavesdrop on their conversations everyday which screams CREEPY to me. But it’s a romance book. So I should relax.

Finally only other thing I want to say is that with the chapters flipping between Jordan and Hennessey’s narration, I found it really hard to tell the two apart at points. Especially when they’re talking about their previous relationship troubles and things like that. Could not tell you who was who.

But I can see how this book does great things for asexual visibility. Jordan’s journey is very clearly portrayed and explained through these Support Meetings, and it shows that you can be in a happy, healthy relationship even if you’re asexual. I bet a lot of readers gain hope from this story. So my issues are most likely more with romance as a genre rather than specifically this book. It is definitely worth the read.

This Is Beautiful: ASHG

 So this past week was not only Ace Week but also my first American Society for Human Genetics (ASHG) meeting. ASHG is a week-long conference of genetics researchers from all over the world. Since there's a whole pandemic going on, the meeting was virtual. So it was a week of being able to stream talks and panels while participating in the chat and discussing cool genetics topics. 

It definitely wasn't the same as being in person, that's for sure, but it was nice. I still feel as though I learned a lot (may have found the saturation point even). And it made for a nice change of pace. One of my lab mates gave a 15-minute presentation on her work, I sure hope that I can contribute like that sometime soon! Hopefully in person too.

“Suicide by Ghost” by Rose Sinclair

 The latest installment from the Great Ace Digital Book Box arrived just in time for Ace Week for me! It’s a novella written by the founder of Fuck Yeah Asexual. Heads up that it does not include suicide, but it does have discussions about homophobia and transphobia.

So the characters are not asexual, but the main character is a trans man who basically takes a gay boy and a gay girl under his wing as he travels around ghost hunting. It’s a very cute found family story. My only spot of critique is that there doesn’t seem to be any overarching plot line? There was a really interesting section where the main character suspects that the young boy is haunted by his future self, a really neat idea, but it didn’t build up to anything. It felt like the book didn’t know whether it was a single book or several episodes about their lives and fell short of both.

Having said that, it’s a quick read, there are some really interesting conversations about ghosts and religion, it does deliver within its page span. If you got it for free (as I did) then it is certainly worth that read. Support ace authors!

This Is Beautiful: "Generations" by Will Butler

 I know Will Butler primarily as one of the members of Arcade Fire, but recently I've been getting more into his solo albums. After hearing "Anna" ages ago, I figured that this was a musician to watch. His third solo album dropped back in September, and I finally gave it a listen.

I really dug this whole album. It opens with "Outta Here" which builds up from nothing into lyrics that sing about how he (Butler) is getting out of here, he's done and is moving on. It's an awesome opener. From there the rest of the record showcases the diverse sounds that Butler can produce. He goes from punk to folk to church music easily, and in a way that makes it fun. "Bethlehem" could easily have been written by the Talking Heads back in the 80s, while "Surrender" sounds like it's straight from the 60s. I have to wonder if calling the album "Generations" was a nod to all his influences...

It also strikes me how he's able to make songs about some really dark subjects but make them fun and upbeat. "Not Gonna Die" is probably the best example where the lyrics are about death and various ways to die, but it still sounds so upbeat in a way that you can't help but sing along to. "Promised" is similar where it's about being betrayed by a lover but it's one heck of a bop. It really speaks to Butler's talent that he's able to sustain both feelings in such a way where you know that the song is about dark themes but you also enjoy listening to him talk about it. It isn't like say "Blurred Lines" where you feel bad to enjoy the song, you're just struck by the dissonance going on between the emotions that the words hold and the emotions that your body is feeling.

The last song in particular is one that really leaves me with some mixed emotions. The lyrics start off as being about George Washington having slaves, and from there it takes a more autobiographical turn. But the chorus says "it's fine, you've got me this time/I am yours, but/you'll always be mine/together, 'til the end of time." I'm not totally sure what aspect is fine. I think my best guess is that, yeah we have our demons, we all have our skeletons in the closet and regrets. But it's fine. You have your demons, and they have you, until the end of time. It's about being able to accept yourself as you are, not as you'd like to be. Which is pretty neat. Not totally sure why the slavery was necessary to throw in, but there you have it.

Making music right now seems on the one hand super difficult, and on the other might be pretty easy since not much else is happening. Regardless, I'm glad that artists as talented and varied as Butler are continuing to release their sounds into the world.

“Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Society, and the Meaning of Sex” by Angela Chen

I talked about this earlier this month, but I’ve spent the past couple of weeks reading through Ace and responding to it as I go. Now that I’ve finished the book and Ace Week is here, I figured that I should give a more formal review of the reading experience.

Let me just say: wow this book was amazing. Having spent several years in the ace community and reading about it, I thought that I would not learn a ton from the book, maybe just see the same ideas presented in a different way. I sure was wrong. Every single chapter was written so incredibly well, and with new ideas presented all the time that seemed to flip everything about sex and relationships on its head.

A running theme throughout the book is how language shapes our experience. The way we discuss relationships changes how we perceive them and what we expect out of them. How we navigate describing our identity comes to shape who we are. Our use of the word “erotic” is now entirely sexual when originally, it just meant anything pleasurable. Chen goes through these instances as they appear and picks them apart to question them. She flips several concepts on their heads in the process, for me the most impactful one was about consent. Consent is far more nuanced than a simple yes/no, yet no one ever talks about it as such. What if we restructured those ideas? Would we possibly be better at communicating then? Probably.

Stand out chapters were (all of them tbh) the chapter on compulsory asexuality, race and asexuality, disability and medicalization, romance, and consent. Which I know is just about half the book but they were all really good and each deserves to be highlighted.

I also particularly enjoyed how Chen does not shy away from talking about her own experience. We hear about a number of previous boyfriends as well as her current one. And about her own experience with her sexuality, how she discovered asexuality and learned to accept it. It definitely brought humanity and personality to the book, as well as complementing all of the interviews she quotes from with different experiences from many people. Primarily this is a book about people, and they all shine through, including the author.

This book was incredible, I hope that there are more like it in time. We definitely need more people to be writing, thinking, and studying asexuality if we want it to be more accepted.

This Is Beautiful: Ace Week

 So this post is going up the Wednesday before Asexual Awareness Week which this year is Oct. 25-31. I'm so excited and hype for this! AAW has always been a week that I love to celebrate, I originally came out during AAW back in 2015, happy 5 years of being out to me. 

This year I'm running a social event for aces/aros at my university, and I think I'm going to try and get some ace friends together separately. It just seems like a good excuse to make people hang out with me. Which I love doing these days since we're in the virtual realm.

Recently, Michigan became the fourth state to recognize Ace Week (behind Washington, California, and Pennsylvania) which makes this year super special! I can't believe how much progress has been made for ace visibility, and how far we can go for next year.

I feel like this past year I've developed more of an ace community which is lovely. 2019 was hard and I found a lot of solace in asexual pride, and I'm glad that I've started to give back more frequently.

Have a happy Ace Week!

“Through the Moon” by Peter Wartman and Xanthe Bouma

I needed a bit of a break from Ace and the heavy stuff that comes with examining your identity, so I finally got around to reading Through the Moon. This is a graphic novel that accompanies the Netflix animated series “The Dragon Prince.” The events of Through the Moon take place in between season 3 (which is out now) and season 4 (which is not out yet, ugh). I absolutely adored “The Dragon Prince” and I write specifically about the show here.

So the biggest weakness of Through the Moon is also its greatest strength. The book really only functions as a small tidbit to hold us all over until the next season. It is pretty short, only took me an hour or so to get through, and I doubt that newcomers to the franchise would be drawn in by this. Not much background is given about the characters or to the situation that they are in, so you would have to be familiar with the story already. Having said all that, honestly diving straight into the story is all I wanted and needed out of this book. I doubt many people would be reading it if they don’t know the show.

The art in general I thought paled in comparison to the tv show. There are some pages that are quite lovely, but the show is so vibrant and colorful while the images here can seem muted. There also in general seemed to be less detail in these images. It all still looks great, don’t get me wrong, I just in general think that the art of the show is higher quality.

Not much can be said right now since season 4 is not out yet, but I would guess that understanding the events of Through the Moon are going to be quite important. The book talks a lot about how depressed Rayla is without knowing what happened to her parents or to Runaan, and how she thinks Viren is still alive when everyone else has accepted him to be dead. It gives a very different tone from the end of season 3, and sets things up for season 4 very well. It will be interesting to see how they summarize this story up for those who watch the show but did not read this.

This Is Beautiful: Irl Music Rehearsals

As you all know, I have been very opposed to opening up universities this fall. It's stupid and clearly a money grab. That isn't what this post is about. This is about how I signed up to play in a chamber group this fall in person and it has brought so much happiness into my life and reminded me how much I love playing again.

Let me be clear: I am still hoping the school gets shut down. I think that the reopening plan has been horrible. Having said that, the music professors have clearly done their work in making this class safe for participants. We have PPE specific to our instruments (so I have a bag that I have shoved my saxophone into to cover up the disease holes) that has been backed up by studies. Rehearsals are shortened so that the air can circulate and things like that. So yes school sucks but this class is okay.

The last time I played with musicians around me and a conductor in front of me was in March. Since then I have been playing, but it has consisted of me recording myself and sending that in for someone else to mix. I was playing in a vacuum, then shooting it out over the internet and hoping someone did something with it. 

With a conductor, making music is much more of a process. You work together to make a final project and improve as an ensemble. It still requires independent practice, but each rehearsal puts you back together to see how the whole group has changed.

Also just hearing the sound come from all around you is so powerful. It feels like you're a part of something, that you're creating something collaboratively. It's so much better than just hearing yourself or hearing yourself and a recording.

I love playing music so much. I can't believe that I went about six months without it. Even though this might be short-lived, I'm so glad that I'm able to play in person again.

Ongoing Thoughts on "Ace" by Angela Chen

 Let me first say that I am LOVING the experience of reading Ace by Angela Chen. I am finished with the first two parts of the book and honestly have nothing but good things to say about it. I adore the topics that she covers and how she treats them, and what topics she combines with what.

In particular I adored the second chapter. This chapter is primarily about language and the power of words. She starts the chapter by discussing how language shapes the way we interpret the world and our experiences. Things and sensations that we have words for become more apparent, while those we do not stay invisible. And this is the struggle with asexuality, where because it is defined by a lack of attraction, it is initially invisible to those who don’t know what to look for.

In this situation, the internet has become a great distributor of knowledge and way to introduce people to asexuality. Which is so very true, many aces I know found out about the term through the internet and sites like this exact one. But as a result it is seen as some recent phenomena, when in reality aces have existed forever. It just is only recently that we have disseminated the knowledge of asexuality to many people. Words are powerful, and in this case they can shape the community and what it looks like.

I love what she has to say about labels though. Asexuals get made fun of for all their microlabels, how they categorize all these different forms of attraction. (Of course, these distinctions affect allos as well, they just never have to grapple with the contradictions within themselves and therefore to them the differences don’t exist.) Chen makes the point that these labels ideally should function more as descriptors rather than categories of people. This is so great to me, that way you can try on different labels without worrying about it, and it would be so easy to change between them. Too frequently we fall into thinking about them as permanent categories, rather than the much more transient adjectives they should be.

The chapter closes with the idea that sexuality is fluid and constantly changing. Identity as a whole is like this, but particularly sexual orientation. Our sexuality is shaped by our culture and background, as well as our mental health, and age and how we grow. It is not a constant but an ever-shifting variable. Our language can and should reflect this as well. Another point towards seeing labels as descriptors.

Additionally, to go off on a personal note, the fluidity of sexuality means that there will never be a genetic basis of sexuality. For some reason, scientists really like to hypothesize about the existence of a gay gene. Since I’m a genetics researcher, sometimes people ask me about this as well. I don’t want there to EVER be a gay gene or an ace gene. First of all, sexuality is much more complicated than that. It changes based on what you know about sexuality, the environment you are raised in, your mood. It changes based on just what label you find useful at the time. Something that complicated will never be determined by a single gene. And even if there was one, once we have a gay gene we can diagnose being gay. And that means we can determine definitively who is queer and who is not. Hello gatekeeping. Anyone can pick up any label at any given time, for any reason. It is not anyone’s place to determine who gets to identify as what. Definitely not on the basis of genes.

I am surprised though that she hasn’t talked about how a lot of asexuals feel “broken” yet. This doesn’t come up in her chapter on compulsory sexuality, or the chapter on disability and sickness. Maybe it’ll come up in a later chapter, but this experience is like an undercurrent through all of these chapters. It’s definitely there, just not overtly discussed.

When you’re saturated with content saying that you must be sexual in order to function, and when you live in a society that medicalizes disinterest in sex, it is extremely easy to feel as though there is something wrong with you. There are statements from people that Chen talked to saying that they ordered blood tests to make sure there wasn’t anything wrong. But none of them say that they felt broken until finding out about asexuality and accepting themselves as they are. Sure we get there via different means, Chen still discusses the benefits of identifying as ace and accepting yourself, but this specific path isn’t present.

It seems odd to me that such a common experience doesn’t have a place in this book. So many aces I know of have used that exact term and described more or less this exact thought process. Not everyone goes through this, absolutely, but it is pretty common. Tackling it head on would be the most intuitive way to debunk this idea.

Maybe it just didn’t fit into the stories that Chen wanted to tell, I don’t know. Maybe this idea isn’t that important to anyone else. But it’s important to me. I feel as though a part of the experience of growing up ace is missing from the book without it.

This Is Beautiful: Fall

 Fall came upon us really quickly over here in Michigan. I feel like over the course of a couple days it went from being so warm and spring-like to suddenly getting cold. But that's okay, because it's still warm enough to be outside! Lots of cute fall things to do.

I think the best part of fall is the apple cider and the apple cider donuts. You just can't beat a really good donut that also tastes like apples. It is my favorite fall food, and I will not back down on that. The pandemic means that I really don't want to do a lot of typical fall activities, but I am still so down to consume the cider and donuts.

And it's a good excuse to get out of the house! Find some donuts! What an adventure. 

"Ace" by Angela Chen (on Twitter!)

 So to celebrate the lead up to Asexual Awareness Week at the end of October, I am reading through Ace by Angela Chen and tweeting about it non-stop over on my Twitter. You can find my profile over at https://twitter.com/ChrisprCas9 and I've already started with the first couple of chapters. So far it is an amazing read!

Ace is a book examining asexuality from a critical lens. It is beginner friendly, but also has enough analysis to teach something to those who know a lot about the ace community already. It looks at what asexuality says about societal norms, sexual desire, feminism, and of course sex. Chen is an asexual journalist who spent ages interviewing other asexuals for this book, and she has clearly done her research.

I will definitely make a post on here once I have finished the book, but if you want a look at the process, hop on over to my Twitter account!

This Is Beautiful: Fanny

I cannot believe I have never heard of the band Fanny before. Fanny is a rock band consisting entirely of women from the 70s. In fact, it is the first all girl rock band. And they are queer and women of color. It really does not get much better than that.

I found this band through the podcast "Lost Notes" from an episode they did on the band in their second season. It's an amazing episode, it goes through the history of the band and how they had fans like David Bowie and Paul McCartney. 

I've been listening to their music non-stop all week, I think they sound amazing. And the fact that the music is all written and performed by a bunch of badass women makes it even better. Their sound is not super unique, they sound a lot like any other 70s rock band, but I sure haven't heard that sound with a female vocalist before. 

Personally I've been in a bit of a rut recently, and getting out of my routine and listening to new music always helps me. So give them a listen if you need something new to knock you our of a rut.

“How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi

 Similar to how all white people are reading White Fragility, this book has also seen a resurgence due to the Black Lives Matter movement gaining traction. Having just finished, let me just say: this book is powerful. Kendi combines anecdotes from his life with principles about racism versus antiracist, and narrates the story of how he has grown as an antiracist while influencing our growth and introducing the reader to similar ideas. It is a really compelling way to lead us all to the same conclusion while also meeting the reader where they are at and not talking down to them.

I think the most powerful story in this book comes at the end, when Kendi discusses his family’s struggles with cancer. How his wife was diagnosed with breast cancer, and his mother then had a similar diagnosis. How he went on to develop colon cancer and battled that while writing this book. This text is far from a cancer memoir, but his use of interweaving cancer as a physical disease with racism as a mental disease in America is incredibly powerful. What was particularly interesting to me is that earlier in the book he questions another academic using the metaphor of racism as a disease. And here he has changed his mind and now actively describes it as a cancer.

Activists tend to shy away from times when they might have been wrong or have had to change their minds about a topic. Not Kendi. He actively embraces his younger self who unknowingly harbored racist ideas. In showing how his thoughts have changed over time, it causes the reader to also look inward and examine their past or current racist thoughts. The reality is that we have all had them. We all live in a racist society and we have been marinating in these ideas for our entire lives. There is no need to try and hide it from ourselves, instead we should be more like Kendi and examine why we thought this and why it is incorrect. Only then can we work towards creating an anti-racist society.

This book has been a resounding success, and it is known as that for a reason. Kendi gently takes the reader’s hand and guides them through both his journey and their own to becoming an anti-racist. It makes this book ideal for individuals who want to get started examining the racism in their lives, as well as those who have been fighting it for years. We all fall somewhere within Kendi’s life and can learn from his story. Now more than ever it is important that we understand and make use of these learning opportunities and fight to make the world a more anti-racist place.

This Is Beautiful: The Strike

 Now that the strike is over I can write about it a little bit more. I was not super involved, mainly picked up picketing shifts when I could, but it was still a powerful movement to be involved in.

Seeing how the graduate students came together to support a common cause was really incredible. I do not usually feel that connected to the rest of the students since this school is so big, but this brought us together. It felt like we could all talk about and connect over this is nothing else. No matter what we studied, this was something we cared about.

I am pretty disappointed with how it ended, basically with the school threatening to dissolve the union and forcing us to accept their offer. Sure the offer is better than the first one they offered, but it is not great. It just feels like a disappointing ending to a movement that had to much potential.

Still, that does not negate everything that we did over the week of the strike. We made our voices heard and our position clear. We spread the word about our position to the community and were joined by so many people. And we showed that students at this university take care of each other and look after each other.

Unfortunately this is just the way change tends to happen. Excruciatingly slowly. And we don't have the time for that. But it is part of activism that we will have to accept for now.

Dancing at Home

 This is nothing new for me, but I decided to write about it.

So because of lockdown I have started having to take dance classes from my tiny kitchen. And it's really strange. I have yet to get over how strange it is. Something is just very out of place about dancing in the middle of my kitchen.

Ballet started as the dance of the gods originally. It is very formal, every part of your body must be controlled and mastered in order to create a specific shape. It's an art form passed down over years of teaching and performance. 

And now I'm doing it in the middle of my dirty, cluttered kitchen. It wasn't so bad over the summer when I wasn't part of a formal class so I could wear shorts and a tank top. Now I'm dancing in full ballet regalia (think tights, leotard, and hair in a bun) in my dirty, cluttered kitchen. Great.

This pandemic has forced us in a lot of ways to do activities in different locations. Usually in our own homes. We have to take these fancy techniques and bring them into the mundane. It creates a certain cognitive dissonance. Now our houses aren't just where we live and come back to at night, it's a dance studio, workout room, office, and bedroom. 

I should really clean my kitchen.

Campus Strike

 Look, this week has been rough, I'm just going to take off a week from writing here. The graduate students, residential life, some faculty, and numerous others have been striking all week at my university to protest the reopening plan as well as many other things. It's just been exhausting since I've been doing my best to support the strike and I don't really have the energy right now. 

Support people working to improve conditions. Striking and making your voice heard is beautiful. That's all I got right now.

This Is Beautiful: Community

 This week was the first meeting for a couple of orgs that I'm in, and even though they were virtual, it was really nice to see people again. I think I forgot how much energy I tend to pick up from other people around me, and how invigorating that can be. It's got me all pumped up for the start of the semester! I'm starting to feel excited about coming up with events to host and things to do. We might be stuck being virtual, but there's still friends to make and things to do. It'll be okay. :) 

“Utopia Avenue” by David Mitchell

I do not care about the rest of 2020, we got a new book from David Mitchell this year and that makes up for it to me. Mitchell is one of my favorite authors, and reading his works were formative for me in college. And this book does not disappoint.

I cannot help but feel as though this book was written specifically for me. Utopia Avenue chronicles the experiences of four musicians in England in the 60s as they come together to form a band and make music together. There is Elf, already an established folk singer in her own right; Jasper, a guitar wizard if a bit eccentric; Griff, a jazz drummer; and Dean, a bassist who recently got evicted from his apartment and has nothing else going for him. It is a recipe for success!

Knowing Mitchell, the narration is not as straightforward as it seems. Each chapter features a different member of the band’s voice, but observant readers will notice that it follows the tracks of the band’s albums. Each song has a specific songwriter, who narrates the chapter in the story of the band pertaining to that song. It’s a really neat structure that compliments the story of the band without getting toooooo out there and weird.

What I continue to appreciate more and more about Mitchell’s writings are how he will bring back characters that he loved to write about and expand his universe. Fans of Michell’s work will recognize a number of them (Jasper de Zoet is probably the most obvious one) including the beloved Marinus as well as one of my favorite characters from Cloud Atlas. And even if readers are unfamiliar with his works, that does not detract from the book at all. Everything necessary is explained in the plot, and in fact even builds off of previous books they appeared in.

I do not want to spoil one of the best additions to the book, but I absolutely loved the development of Elf and her sexuality. Mildly alluded to early on in the book, it becomes official when she begins to date Luisa, a reporter who might be familiar to some. I was nervous about this direction, seeing as how men writing queer female relationships has not always been respectful. But Mitchell treats the subject with grace and respect. There’s a segment on labels that so nicely captures how it feels to have your identity turned upside down by how you feel about someone. I was pleasantly surprised for sure, and I definitely wish that more male writers took a leaf out of his book.

Utopia Avenue is one of the best books that I have read in a while. It does not shy away from discussing esoteric subjects like how music can make you feel while also chronicling the mundane interactions between friends. Plenty of people claim the music of the 60s as an inspiration, but few are able to portray it in a fresh light like Mitchell can.

This Is Beautiful: Soup

 It's one of those weeks. I just feel like a great thing about virtual classes is that I can stay home and eat whatever I want without worrying about transporting the food around. So it's been a lot of soup for me. Comfort food time. I don't even care that it's so hot out or anything, this stuff is good and I'm eating it, back off.

Schools Reopening

 I've been holding off on this, but I have several feelings about what is clearly going on here.

As someone in academia, specifically a graduate student, I've seen the response of schools to COVID since the beginning. I'll be honest, I didn't take the disease seriously until maybe the beginning of the summer or so. But I got on board, and honestly the response of schools who had MONTHS to come up with a fall reopening plan is atrocious.

Schools are saying that there is no way to regulate students and are putting the burden on them to self-regulate, and to regulate each other. The institution that I'm at is about to stick a ton of students in a dorm without regular testing and is telling them to be careful with their social lives. Ok literally the school tweeted saying that 25 person parties are fine but 26 is too many. Which really is only going to fan the flames of the frats that are already partying. All of the responsibility is going on the students while the administration takes up none of it.

Public health measures are being actively ignored. The way you monitor large populations like this is with universal testing. As far as I can tell, very few schools are actually doing this. Whether or not it is safe to carry on without this has yet to really be studied. But hey, let's do it anyways. And while we're at it, let's stick students into crowded dorms. The number one factor for an outbreak is the density of the population. Dorms are going to be a hotbed of virus activity.

And I think it's important to note that this is going to disproportionately affect some students more than others. We already know that COVID disproportionately affects minority communities, which is just going to carry over to the students. Additionally there will be low-income students or students with unstable housing that have nowhere else to go should the school close. Which will inevitably happen, it's just a matter of time. Not to mention the fact that professors and graduate student instructors are bearing the brunt of this by being required to teach in person in some places. Seriously, everyone is protesting the plan because they don't feel safe here, and no one is listening. We're throwing those that we should be protecting directly under the bus.

All of this for what? Money clearly. The school doesn't want students to transfer and wants that sweet sweet room and board moolah. This is why we are reopening, this is why minimal resources are being put into keeping people safe. And the worst thing is that those who could pressure the school, namely those students paying room and board, have the least incentive to do so. They just want to go back to school because they miss their friends. Which is entirely understandable. But if more of them decided to put the safety of everyone ahead of their own social lives, we could maybe get some improvements around here. Unlikely to happen, seeing as how this would have happened already if it could, but I can dream.

I feel really let down here. I would transfer if I was not stuck. I would do anything else if I could. But I'm a grad student and while I'm supporting those protesting as much as I can, there isn't much more that I can do. This is going to be a rough fall and I really hope that schools shut down ASAP.

This Is Beautiful: Yoga

 I don't know guys, this past week has been rough, I'm not digging too much going on right now. Still playing "Changeling" but I wrote about that last week. And I'm reading Utopia Avenue, but I'm probably going to write an actual post about that later on. And I've started watching "Adventure Time," but I've yet to really get into it.

One thing that has been nice though is I discovered a new yoga channel, Yoga with Kassandra. She has a ton of different playlists based on length and types of yoga. I'm particularly into the Vin to Yin yoga, this is a class that starts with dynamic vinyasa yoga for strength, and ends with stable yin yoga for stretching. It's a nice mix of both types and it feels good to get both types of flow in a single session.

Hopefully things pick up next week, but also I'm starting classes soon so that's unlikely. We'll see.

“The Philosopher Queens” edited by Rebecca Buxton and Lisa Whiting

 I found this book through Unbound, a website where you can donate to books you would like to read and support their publishing. I saw the title and thought this project sounded incredible, and something absolutely worth having in the literary world. It is super expensive to get a book published, I would encourage people to check out Unbound (regardless of whether or not you live in the UK) and support similar projects.

If someone were to ask you to name a philosopher, everyone would probably name the same couple of people. There are Plato and Aristotle as the ancient philosophers, and then possibly Kant and Nietzsche for the more recent ones. Notice what all of these names have in common? They are all male! Philosophy is incredibly male dominated, with female philosophers throughout history and in modern times often overlooked in favor of their male counterparts. This book aims to change that.

Each chapter of The Philosopher Queens gives a brief overview of a female philosopher’s life and works. I was very impressed with how much information the authors could pack into just the space of a few pages. It feels as though you have a sense of the world that these women lived in, as well as what they thought about. The summaries are excellent and very easy to read, and they name drop all of the philosopher’s major works for further reading.

The authors also clearly highlight a diverse group of women, not just the white upper-class ones that are usually highlighted in “feminist philosophy” courses. There are Asian, African, Islamic, and a whole host of other nationalities highlighted in these chapters. The authors also do not shy away from holding past philosophers accountable to their ideas. Hannah Arendt is a commonly known female philosopher who wrote about WWII and is still relevant today but has a history of racism and racist ideas. This is all brought up and grappled with, as much as it can be in such a short summary.

This is not your typical philosophy textbook with lots of jargon and unreadable sentences. The editors knew what they were doing and made this accessible to everyone. And with the equal parts of history and philosophy, there is plenty to learn about. I hope to eventually make my way through more writings by these lady philosophers, I know that there are plenty I have yet to study.

This Is Beautiful: Changeling

 This is another game I've been playing recently. It's a visual novel telling the story of a girl whose family returns to a town that they used to live in. When they originally lived there, she went missing twice which sparked rumors about her and her family, so returning here means facing the family's past. Which is not the most fun seeing as how her twin brother seems to hate her for what happened. It only gets worse when they finally move in.

At their new school, you meet Ally, who's an old friend of the family, and plenty of male characters to romance. Ally figures out that the narrator is surrounded by Faerie power, and invites her to join the club of other high schoolers that are similar. There it is revealed that Ally herself is a witch, and other students are vampires, werewolves, and Faeries as well. The story consists of the main character exploring her past and her powers while getting to know this new world and new friends.

I wasn't super into this game at first. The character design is pretty distinctive and I didn't really vibe with it at first. Not to mention that the majority of the cast is these male characters who I wasn't super into. But over time, you discover more about the characters and realize that they're more than the tropes that they are presented as. Which is actually pretty on brand for how I feel about romancing men in general. And the integration of fantasy elements with modern day high schoolers is pretty fun at times. It reminds me of a lot of YA fantasy novels I liked back in the day.

Overall the game has something like six different characters to romance, each with multiple endings. This means that I'm probably going to be playing for a while. I'm looking forward to exploring this world with Faeries and other mystical creatures, as well as resolving who the protagonist is and what secrets her past hold.

“Turn to Paige Never” by Adam Knave

 This is the latest installment of the Great Ace Digital BookBox! I really enjoyed this book, I thought it was a really interesting and fun adventure story, equal parts fantasy and sci-fi. The characters are delightful, and the whole world being built is complex yet manageable.

This story follows Paige Never, a woman known for travelling the globe and helping out people in need from supernatural forces. She is about to give up that life when she is found by Anders, a young man attempting to locate Paige and learn from her. Paige saved Anders when he was a kid, and ever since then he has wanted to follow in her footsteps. Grudgingly, Paige lets him tag along on a couple of her adventures as they investigate a group of people trying to assassinate her and muck up the Earth. This leads them to Paige’s home in another dimension and back again, with Anders learning and Paige falling back in love with her profession the whole time.

The true highlight of this book is Paige herself. A sassy badass, she is always quick to dole out impressive lines to the bad guys and do incredible things. Her main powers are in manipulating the energy around her, whether with her body or her reliable pair of WarBoots. It is sad to say, I didn’t realize until we were a couple chapters in that Paige was a woman since she was written in such a cool, smooth way. But I am so so glad that her character exists.

Beyond that, the world created in this story is incredible. I felt as though I was learning along with Anders, and that constantly new facts and organizations would be cropping up. Paige explains them all, to both Anders and the reader, in a very understandable way. Having the two of them constantly talking through their plans and especially having Anders as a stand-in for the audience definitely helped a lot, but it never takes you out of the story. Every explanation is presented in a quirky way, whether it is Paige talking about giraffes and their necks in a way that demonstrates what is wrong with the world or breaking down some basic physics to explain her job.

And the representation! Anders reveals himself to be asexual and aromantic, about the same time that Paige is shown to have dated other women. Having a duo like that is so refreshing, because it means that there is no way that they would fall for each other and thus completely side-steps all of the disgusting Bond tropes. The two of them become incredibly close friends, with Paige learning to be grateful for Anders’ questions and his company.

I adored reading this book, and I would strongly recommend it for all that are interested! In fact I would be picking up a sequel, but there does not appear to be any at this time. Paige’s world sounds incredible, and I would gladly read several more books on this sassy, smart duo any time.

This Is Beautiful: Ice Cream

As surreal as it is to walk around town with everyone wearing masks, it is nice to get out and about every once in a while. A friend of mine took me out to grab ice cream spontaneously and it was a good time. Of course it was overcrowded and there were a couple of idiots, but sometimes the benefit of doing these things can outweigh the risks. (And I did say "sometimes" there.)

I don't know, it just gets lonely when you are inside all the time. And talking to people virtually does not really capture it. And even better is when you have a common activity, like eating ice cream, to focus on. It is something that I have missed a lot, and I'm not an extrovert at all. Somehow I just miss people and being around strangers anyways.

It is important to remember to take breaks and eat ice cream with friends! Just remember to be safe while you do it.

Schools This Fall

As someone at an academic institution, I am really disappointed with the way schools are planning for the fall semester. Specifically colleges and universities, although I know that high schools aren't exactly doing super either. 

I thought that due to parental complaints schools would go online as much as possible and keep the students at home. Unfortunately I was incredibly wrong. Schools have decided to protect their own interests and let students back on campus and into crowded dorms, just so that they can make money. All of that room and board isn't cheap after all.

To top it off, schools have minimal plans for keeping the students safe. The most that I have seen is that masks are required and that students must self-quarantine for two weeks prior to returning to campus. Masks are good, rest is entirely suspect and definitely not enough to keep anyone from getting COVID. There is no way to make sure that students are actually self-quarantining before arriving on campus. And then once students are on campus, they can leave whenever they want and go to restaurants and bars and pick up COVID there. 

Not to mention that there is no way to prevent an outbreak in a dorm. Bathrooms are shared, bedrooms are shared, and there is a very high population density there. Anyone who has been in a dorm knows that colds and viruses spread around seasonally, there is no way to keep social distancing in that environment. All it takes is one person making a questionable decision and giving the coronavirus to the entire dorm population.

What this is doing is setting up the schools to blame the students when things inevitably go wrong and there's an outbreak on campus. Schools are demanding that students step up and ensure their own and everyone else's safety. It is not that they are immature and incapable of doing that, it is the lack of a safety net. Any group of individuals in that situation is bound to fail. We are seeing professional sports athletes fail at this in their bubbles, a group of young adults does not stand a chance.

This blatant protection of a school's own interests at the expense of its students' safety is honestly incredibly gross. It makes me ashamed to be a part of this school since, even though as a grad student I do not pay for tuition, just be being here is me lending them my support. And it isn't going to change unless there is an uproar from students or their parents, or the more likely situation, until there is the inevitable outbreak in a dorm that lands students and teachers in the hospital.

This Is Beautiful: Secret Little Haven

Over prelims I started a game called "Secret Little Haven." It's about a trans girl discovering herself and her identity through the internet and fandom life in the late 90s. I'm not super far into it, but I can already tell that I am going to enjoy this.

The main pull for me is the gaming format. Your computer screen essentially becomes the main character's, Alex, as she navigates the internet. You can go through her files and play minigames or write fanfiction in a word processer, and peruse an online forum through the internet. There's even a control terminal you can input lines into! It is a really cool way to incorporate creativity into a storyline and to get to know a character.

And there's the story itself about finding yourself and how interacting with different people can facilitate that. I am not very far in, but seeing the internet as a community for Alex and how she can explore the world, find people to connect with, and discover herself is really sweet. It all revolves around this magical girl show that Alex is a fan of, there are explanations online but I don't quite understand the plot. But that's fine.

I'm excited to finish it, other reviews online have said that it is super powerful and emotional. We'll just see where Alex goes from here.

Prelims

Not so much of a post, more of a life update, but I'm in grad school and I have a prelim exam on Monday so I am swamped right now. For those that don't know, a prelim exam is basically an entrance exam for your chosen grad school program. After a year or two of classes, you (theoretically) absorb all of this information and then have to demonstrate to a committee that you know enough in order to formally enter your graduate program. It is a kinda weird system, pretty antiquated as well, but it is what you have to do. And it might be one of the most stressful parts of grad school.

The specifics of the exam vary from program to program, for mine we propose a thesis project and submit a one-page summary of our goals and plan, then we present the project to a committee of four members of the department. During the presentation, the committee members are going to try and ascertain the limits of our knowledge to make sure that we know enough to enter the program. So there is definitely a lot of stress and pressure riding on this.

My proposal involves examining gene regulation within different cell states. So plenty of studies look at gene regulation within different cell types, but not many look at gene regulation in different stimulatory states. I want to amass a dataset on pancreatic beta cells in different states and see if that can give insight into type 2 diabetes. And of course it is a lot more involved than that, but that's the gist.

So no real post this week, but I just got a shipment of books in so I'm looking forward to writing about those soon!

This Is Beautiful: Carillon Music

So this past week I noticed that the school was doing a free carillon concert series so I went to the first one and dragged a friend with me. It was a nice time! Since carillon is basically an organ that's hooked up to big ol church bells instead of pipes it has to be performed in a bell tower which means that the audience is outside just by necessity. So we sat on the grass and lounged around and listened to some pretty bells.

I'm not expert on carillon music, but to be honest it was really nice to just be experiencing a live concert instead of a stream or the same album on repeat or whatever. And I just think the bells sound really cool. You can play modern music or classical pieces and they all sound pretty.

Getting outside! Listening to music! Seeing people from a distance! All good things.

“Let’s Talk About Love” by Claire Kann

I have been meaning to read this book for ages now, and I finally got around to it. It was worth every page, I really connected to the characters and the text on a pretty deep level. This book is about a biromantic asexual Black woman, Alice, who just got out of a relationship with Margot, her old roommate and good friend. As she’s reeling from this, she meets Takumi, an Asian man she works with at the local library and pretty much falls for him head over heels. The book describes her coming to terms with her asexuality, and what that means for her relationship with Takumi.

Representation is just so incredibly important. I’m a biromantic ace as well, and to be honest I don’t think I’ve read a book that centers on another bi ace before. Because there really aren’t that many out there! But I literally saw myself in almost every single one of Alice’s thoughts and experiences. I often forget just how impactful it can be to identify with a character through a part of you that isn’t normally portrayed in media. For me, it was incredible. And having the added layer of seeing what it’s like for a Black woman was awesome as well, because there’s a number of struggles we share. And a whole bunch we don’t, like her relationship with her hair and microaggressions from the people around her. Just seeing her react to these situations made me more aware of the Black experience and things that I have seen with my peers and completely missed before.

My one issue with this book involved Alice’s relationship with her two best friends: Feenie and Ryan. The two of them are dating and getting married soon, and Alice gets into a fight with the two of them because they left to go have sex at a party, Alice then got harassed by some guy, and Alice ended up leaving the party to hang out with Takumi. Feenie took it personally because she felt entitled to alone time with her boyfriend and thought Alice was replacing her, and Alice didn’t want to back down because she continually feels like a third wheel around them. But the argument ended with Alice admitting to making things all about her and apologizing, while Feenie got off with a “guess I do that too.” And they resolved to work on their communication issues. Which bothered me a lot at the time, I don’t think Feenie actually earned that reconciliation. Alice was put into danger and had every right to leave that party because she was abandoned, and Feenie being unable to see that and insisting that she could have alone time with her partner because their relationship is “more important” is ridiculous. I’m not totally sure what the author was going for there, but at least it ended with the two of them wanting to work on communicating, which is something everyone should work on to be honest.

That’s a very small complaint though, given how much I adored the experience of reading this book. It’s so rare to see asexuals being the main character of a story, and to see them going through accepting their identity and navigating relationships. I hope that there’s more of these in the works, because having had this reminder of how much I love reading about asexuals, I’m going to try and find more.

This Is Beautiful: Night in the Woods

I'm chugging along this list of random free games that I have, and a friend happened to recommend "Night in the Woods" to me, having seen it on the list. So I popped it open. It's a really cool game, it follows Mae who just dropped out of college and moved back to her hometown. She reconnects with her high school friend Gregg, her childhood friend Bea, and also the rest of the people in town. Over the course of the fall, she thinks there's something paranormal going on, during Harfest (the small town version of Halloween) she sees someone or something kidnap a kid. She and her friends investigate to see what's at the bottom of this.

The basic mechanics of the game is you explore the town and interact with what you can each game day. Most characters say something different every day, and it's fun to see what ledge or power line you can jump up on from one day to the next. The more you explore, the more you learn about the town and its history.

What I think is pretty cool about this game is that it clearly has a well-thought out plot without ever being pretentious, and I think the meaning at the end is certainly up for debate. But as the janitor says at the end, sometimes big events don't teach you anything, but they make you something. And you just have to wait and see what happens with that.

One of the major themes is the meaning humans put into the world around them, and how fragile that can be. Mae reveals that when she was in high school she beat a random guy because she lost the meaning in the world around her. Everything went from being people and places that she knew to just being shapes. Similarly, Angus (Gregg's boyfriend) talks to Mae about the stars and about how he doesn't believe that there's a whale in the sky, but he believes in the person who saw this pattern of stars and called it a whale. And Mae has multiple discussions with the town pastor about God and belief and what good it does someone. My personal interpretation is that there is no ultimate meaning to us and what we do, but we give it meaning by seeking a pattern, declaring that meaning for ourselves. And there's still worth in that, or nothing would matter and we'd go around destroying everything. But that could just be that I'm on a metamodernist kick so I see a lot of art through that lens.

Regardless of what you pull from it, this is a neat game that was a lot of fun to play. The mechanics are simple, and the storyline definitely pulls you in. Would highly recommend!

“Hello World” by Rose Sinclair and Alexandra Tauber

This is the most recent book from the Great Ace DigitalBook Box! It’s a neat one, this story’s about Scott a hacker who is looking for his sister. Thing is, she’s been taken by a company called UltSyn, who enlists humans only to wipe their memories and turn them into computers. In order to find out more about where his sibling went, he kidnaps one of these human computers (called HIDs) named Sonia. Sonia and Scott end up becoming friends, and then fall in love. They team up with another hacktivist group in their quest to take UltSyn down.

Now I didn’t love this book at first. I thought Scott was a bit of an asshole and didn’t really care for him, but Sonia was intriguing. So I kept reading, and as you learn more about Scott and his quest for his sister you learn to care more about him. By the end when it is revealed (very casually) that Scott is asexual, I was pretty happy with it. Asexuals are usually depicted as cold and calculating, but having an ace at the center of an action story was pretty cool. And letting us get to know him first was definitely a good call. He is also portrayed as a full character without his asexuality, there’s nothing really in the book to indicate his sexual orientation other than that is how he identifies. I quite liked this, since it meant that it wasn’t a big deal and it wasn’t the center of his character.

A major theme of the book is smashing binaries. Interestingly, there aren’t any prominent gender non-conforming characters, which I think would have been an excellent addition. It almost feels missing without it. But the main binary being addressed is that between human and machine. Sonia is referred to as a computer at first, but grows into her humanness as she regains more of her memories. A similar parallel happens with Scott, initially he seems distant but also grows into his emotions. He has a close relationship with the technology around him, his computer Hallie basically counts as a character, but his distinction as a human is also never really challenged. It’s a cool conceit for a book, but I would have liked to see these ideas played with more.

It is a neat book, some cool ideas and characters within it. Give it a read if you like action or science fiction, it’s sure to open some doors to ideas. I just wish that it stepped through the door a little further.

This Is Beautiful: Wherever I Go I Want to Leave

I posted about this band/project way back in October, but Love Fame Tragedy has finally released its first album! It's called "Wherever I Go I Want to Leave" and it is excellent.

Many of the songs were released in advance as hype got built up for the project in general, but over half of it is new stuff. My favorites of the new songs are probably "5150" and "Everything Affects Me Now." But honestly I'm just so happy to have new music to listen to.

Yo find that stuff on Spotify or wherever you listen (I personally ordered a CD I was so excited for this) and give it a listen because I'll be jamming all week.

Rewatching Steven Universe

I decided that for my next tv adventure I would rewatch "Steven Universe" which is a children's cartoon from Cartoon Network. It recently ended its run, although when I say that I am definitely including the movie and "Steven Universe Future" which was an epilogue season of sorts.

I've been meaning to rewatch this show for a while actually, when it was on air the episodes came out so sporadically that it was hard to keep track of what was happening sometimes. I was hoping that doing a rewatch all at once would help to connect some of the dots that I might have missed the first time around.

For those who might be unfamiliar with this show, "Steven Universe" is about a young boy, Steven, who's the son of a human and a gem from outer space. Basically the gems are a race of aliens that are humanoid in form, but their essence consists of a gem located somewhere on their body. This gem gives them special powers and abilities that humans don't have. The gems are ancient and historically have gone around and colonized different planets to mine them for more gems. But a rebel group on Earth called the Crystal Gems drove them off. Steven's mom was the leader of these gems, but she gave up her form to bring Steven into this world. The show follows Steven as he navigates these two parts of his identity.

First of all, rewatching it has been a pretty emotional experience for me. This show was my favorite for a while, and I got a lot of my friends into watching it as well. So it was pretty surreal to go back and relive those experiences again. I rarely rewatch tv shows since I don't watch much tv so just going back to the beginning was a time.

I also had forgotten just how weird the beginning was. There's an episode where parts of Steven's body become cats. Like lumps of cat all over his body. I vaguely remember my first time around thinking that was the strangest thing I've ever seen, but I had also forgotten completely about the Frybo episode where the mascot of a local french fry stand (called Frybo) comes to life. That was a time. And there's a crossover episode with "Uncle Grandpa" and I would LOVE to delete that episode from history it's so strange and out of place.

But past the first half of the first season, it actually comes into its own pretty quickly. I forgot how soon characters like Lapis and Peridot are introduced, probably because 10 minute episodes go really fast when you're binge watching.

Beyond that, it's really nice to see how all the relationships work in a more streamlined fashion. Peridot's arc I remember as being super annoying, but I had an appreciation for her the second time around. And the fandom has a tendency to hate on the episodes focusing on the townie human characters, but I liked seeing Lars and Sadie's growth over time. (I still can't stand Lars until the end but that's fine.)

The real highlight is appreciating how far ahead the writers were thinking with plot lines. Details from early episodes frequently pop up later. There's a secret that one of the characters is magically bound to not reveal, and every time it comes up you can see her in the background covering her mouth, starting from the second season or so onwards. Or the scar on Sadie's cheek in all the episodes after she fights a big magic fish that I didn't notice until recently. It's pretty incredible to spot these details once you know what's coming in the show.

I'm pretty grateful for this opportunity to go back to this show, since as I've talked about here, I rarely revisit media. It's something I probably should do more often, but it just takes up so much time. But I'm very glad I was able to do it with this show!

This Is Beautiful: Arcade Spirits

As I discussed last week, I've got this bundle of games that I've been going through and fortunately one of the first ones I picked up was "Arcade Spirits." This is a visual novel and a dating sim where you play as someone (completely customizable) who has had a string of bad luck and depression. Until they get a job working at an arcade that is. The job and the coworkers end up being exactly what they need, and you can choose to find romance along the way, or you can not! Either way.

What first drew me in when I popped the game open was the aesthetic. With a name like "Arcade Spirits," it does conjure up a specific vibe. The text boxes are neon, and the sound effects range from 8-bit to your in game phone yelling "Hey! Listen!" Many references to real life video games and pop culture. It's like Ready Player One but done right!

The best aspect of the game is probably the mechanics. It is basically a choose-your-own-adventure, but different personality traits are assigned to different responses. So the game is analyzing your choices as you go, and this impacts things like the final boss battle as well as what in-game characters you get along best with. It's a really cool idea for a visual novel, and makes it much more personal as well.

The story is wonderful, it's serious and hilarious and actually has themes in it?? A central idea is the balance of your dreams on one side, and the reality of the world in the other. Like one character says, "life is a series of trade offs" where you need to know when to compromise and when to stay true. And also, what you decide to compromise on is a better indicator of your character than whether or not you compromise. Which also speaks towards the game's mechanics. You have to choose which characters to spend time with, and what personality traits suit you best. You can't go for max stats for everything since you literally have to pick one!

Finally the characters are what really make the game. I think almost half of the ones you can romance are people of color, and since it's a dating sim, of course everyone's gay. There's even a character who's super endearing but unsure of her gender and who she is. Having unlocked all the endings, each of them are super compelling and very distinct. Having said that, I also found that the game did an excellent job of predicting who I would find most compelling through that personality analysis. I was primarily Kindly, and definitely matched the best with Naomi (basically the game version of me lol) and Percy (I want him to adopt me).

"Arcade Spirits" is pretty cheap on Steam, and I cannot recommend this enough. It is definitely one of the best visual novels that I have played, and I'm in a bit of a visual novel phase right now. Apparently there's a sequel in the works and I couldn't be more excited!

“White Fragility” by Robin Diangelo

So yes like every other white person have been reading this book. And I’m not totally sure what to say other than if you are white you do, in fact, need to read this and you need to hear what Diangelo has to say. I don’t really care whether you think this applies to you or not (actually if you resist I know it does for sure lol) you just need to read it.

There’s a number of other books that I’ve read on race and diversity, but this book articulates a number of concepts really clearly and succinctly. This makes it a pretty quick read, but I constantly was thinking “that’s such an important concept, I need to write it down or start taking notes.” Her discussion about how white supremacy has socialized white people to think that they don’t have race and that racists are fundamentally bad people is particularly excellent. And makes for a very compelling case why we ALL need to constantly work on ourselves.

I really dug the last chapter though. This is when she goes over what we need to do after reading this book. Because that is where the real work begins, you cannot just read something and expect to become a perfect human overnight. Diangelo here tells us to think about what we can do about our own white fragility. Have we bothered educating ourselves on racism? Do we have diverse friends? Do we call out other white people when they do problematic things?

I also really appreciated how she added an anecdote about someone calling her out on a statement that she made and her reaction to the feedback. It not only gives a model for people to receive similar feedback, but demonstrates that even the author of this book has things to work on and strive towards. Becoming aware of the problem is step 1, the next (and hardest, and longest) step is to work on fixing the problem for the rest of our lives.

Being aware of our tendencies when it comes to race is a long and hard road. But it is one that we all must take. This book is a great first step if you need that extra nudge.

This Is Beautiful: Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality

So unfortunately my Switch gave up and died in the middle of last week lol. Of course this happens to me. But it's ok! My friend told me about itch.io's "Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality." This is a bundle of SO MANY great games that you could get access to! The link to this is here.

This is a really important cause, and you get a ton of stuff out of it. Of course every dollar counts when it comes to donating to important causes, but since they are way beyond their goal and I think there's more impactful ways to donate I'm going to focus on the games.

The thing about this bundle is that I found it at an A+ time because I needed something else to do. And there are SO MANY GAMES in this package! Many of these I would never have played otherwise. There's story driven games, adventure games, shooting games, puzzle games, dating games, just about anything you'd want to play. It's a really cool way to expose yourself to different forms of storytelling and different ways to game.

The bundle ended a while ago, but you can still search the games to find cool ones to buy. Not quite the same, but you should still support independent game makers.

“Sidekicks” by P.K. Gardner

This is the final book in the Enemies Trilogy (parts one and two here). I tried not to spoil things in the part two review, but I am just going to go for it here. So read the books if you have a stake in this, they aren’t very long, but you have been warned.

Walk a Mile ends with Alex Manners dying inside Malcolm Quick’s body. Mal is left stranded in Alex’s body with no way of getting his best friend or his original body back. Since then, Dodger (a psychic superhero) has been orchestrating a series of replacement Good Guy’s, to replace Alex. Mal is the obvious choice, but he refuses to take up the mantle that belonged to his friend. When Sidekicks begins, Cliff Awesome is the current Good Guy, with Ajax Gadzinski (son of Indestructoman) as his sidekick the Private.

This doesn’t last very long, Cliff gets murdered in a mugging gone wrong and a vacancy is left in the ranks of the supers. Ajax wants to quit out of self-preservation, and Mal is still in a depressive state after the loss of Alex. Meanwhile, Dodger has gone missing. Unbeknownst to the other supers, he’s somehow gotten himself trapped in a parallel universe. One where a lot of supers are still alive, and his counterpart is already dead. Alex killed him when he turned out to be a supervillain. Additionally, back in his home universe Mal swears that he’s been seeing Alex turn up out of nowhere. Mal starts trying to figure out a way to get his friend back, while Ajax seeks revenge for his. Clearly this is someone’s origin story in the works. But you’re left guessing as to whose it is until the end.

The beautiful thing about this entire series is that it all anchors on a friendship. The only couple that makes it through the book is Xavier and Kyle, also supers and enemies that decide to retire together. Mal and Alex’s relationship is reinforced time and time again by how the two meet in different universes but still feel the same connection.

Which only makes it sadder that Mal in the original universe is left alone, without an Alex. And what I really like about this book is that it isn’t about how Mal gets Alex back, it’s about how Mal learns to carry on without him. It’s really a fantastic story about coping with grief and loss. Mal learns to have faith in himself without needing his friend by his side.

Beyond that, it is also really nice to see Ajax take on a larger role. He’s been a minor character of each story, and it is great to see him also come into his own. Which makes this “origin story” thing work really well since it could just as easily apply to Ajax.

Finally I thought this was a really cool take on the “parallel universes” trope. Similar to Walk a Mile, P.K. takes a very common sci-fi trope and puts a unique twist on it. The result is familiar to fans of the genre, but also still engaging. Makes me wish that there was more to the series, but this is also a spectacular way to end it.

If you haven’t started the series yet, I really strongly recommend it. The first one is free on Kindle, and the rest are both so good they make the (rather cheap) price worth it. A great way to spend quarantine!

This Is Beautiful: Small Town Protests

Okay so I know across the country there are plenty of protests that have turned into riots with police tear gassing innocent people and really scary stuff. I don't want to talk about that, I'm going to primarily be speaking about a protest that I went to in my smallish town. It was still supported by people affiliated with Black Lives Matter, and everything about it was very kosher and peaceful.

Maybe it's that I've been starved for interactions with other people, but there seemed to be a real camaraderie and certain sort of togetherness at this march. Sure I definitely experienced that at bigger protests like the ones I went to in DC, but this one felt particularly close. It was hot and I was sweaty and wanted to leave, but I didn't, primarily because I wanted to hang in there and see the dance party after the march and what these people would do.

Possibly it's due to the smaller size, possibly it's because I haven't seen a big group of people in forever. But I really appreciated and enjoyed the energy at this march, I'm so glad that I went.

Black Ballerinas

LET'S DISCUSS BLACK BALLERINAS SHALL WE?

The ballet world (and the dance world more broadly) has been very slow to accept black dancers. Dance companies were entirely segregated until the 50s, and further progress has been slow at best. Black ballet dancers have been asked to use "white-face" to lighten their skin and fit in with the rest of the cast, and tights/shoes/wigs are not made for people with darker skin. Pointe shoes particularly have traditionally only been made with pink satin, meaning that black dancers have to buy a tube of foundation and coat their shoes with it in order to get a color that matches their skin.

Bloch announced yesterday (!!!) that it would start manufacturing pointe shoes in darker colors, article about this here: https://footwearnews.com/…/bloch-pointe-shoes-darker-shade…/

Misty Copeland was made the first African American Female Principal Dancer with American Ballet Theater in 2015 (ONLY 5 YEARS AGO) and is still referred to as a "diversity hire" at times. Often, dance companies will hire black dancers but will not give them leading roles due to the image of a "light-skinned" ballerina being so persistent in people's minds. Dance companies like Alvin Ailey that feature black dancers and choreographers have done incredible things for the world of dance! But we need progress beyond this to fully integrate the dance world.

And of course this all intersects with class segregation in dance. Dance classes are expensive and need to be taken early and often in order to become a professional dancer. Shoes, outfits, and dancer equipment are all expensive as well. The time requirement to drive kids to dance classes and rehearsals can also be a huge burden on families. The result is that most (if not all) professional dancers come from upper class backgrounds.

I know I'm friends with people more involved in the ballet world than I am, so please add things if I left something out! And similarly if you know about about black dancers in other forms of dance. I don't know much beyond ballet, but tap was pioneered by black dancers and comes from a rich culture of black rhythms and music that musicians still pull from today. And then there's ballroom, modern, jazz, etc...

Further reading:

https://daily.jstor.org/the-history-of-african-american-ca…/
Good overview of the history of black ballerinas.

https://www.theguardian.com/…/2…/sep/04/black-ballet-dancers
Statistics on present day dance companies.

https://mistycopeland.com/
Misty Copeland's website.

https://www.alvinailey.org/
Alvin Ailey's website.

https://www.dancespirit.com/support-black-dance-community-2…
A more general article, but has a list of black dancers/companies to support towards the end.