One problem with grad school is that there’s only so much I can do to get my academic and nerdy interests to collide. As a full-time grad student and a freelance, my output here has plummeted because I’m busy trying to get my assignments in and not mess up at work.

But I am always thinking of things I can write for you all and so right now, there are some things that are definitely on the menu for upcoming months.

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First:

After thinking it over and getting feedback from my followers on twitter, I’ve decided to start working on a blog series about women of color in Marvel’s live action properties.

As I was setting the outline for a post about how Luke Cage shows Black women as viable love interests and people worthy of protection and care, I realized that I don’t really see people talking about the women of color in these franchises. They don’t get meta on the scale of white characters and often times, the only people you see talking about female characters of color are themselves women of color.

I’ve seen articles and essay series in other fandoms looking at women in different nerdy franchises (like Sarah Gailey’s Women of Harry Potter series), but the series the writers focus on either tend to either have zero women of color in major roles or well… don’t get the focus if they are present.

I decided to try my hand at talking about women of color in Marvel’s live action properties because I don’t think that they do get the love and focus that they deserve.

Steve and Tony had nerds around the world writing lengthy think-pieces about how intimate and deep their “friendship” turned beef totally was and every time Marvel casts a white woman in the MCU, we’re forced to hear about how empowering she is for all of us forever. (Looking at you folks out here still claiming that a Black Widow movie starring whitewashing queen ScarJo will be the ultimate feminist film.)

I wanted to write about the women of color in these films and television shows that I adore and would fight the world over so… that’s exactly what I’m doing.

The first installment of this essay series will be up on Patreon by the end of the month and — thanks in part to this Festivid video — will center Luke Cage’s Claire Temple. If things go well (and they should because I have an outline and all of Daredevil S1 cued up on Netflix), this should be up for Patrons by next weekend.

I’m also still working on posts about the prevalence of “slave fic” as a genre in M/M fiction, a Tokyo Ghoul post for an awesome website, a couple of personal essays on evolving as a person in fandom, and a Doctor Strange essay about emotional labor gone unrewarded.  There’s other stuff on the table too but they’re currently still being fleshed out.

Next.

New installments of “The Great Big Anita Blake Reread” and “Urban Fantasy 101 are in progress.

I’m about 1400 words into my critical recap of The Laughing Corpse and I’m working on sticking to my outline because there’s a lot to cover in the book. Not sure when this will be done but I’ll try and get it out as soon as possible.

Same goes for the next Urban Fantasy 101 installment. I started to write about sexual assault as damn near a rite of passage in the genre and how it could be handled better because assault is an unfortunate and common reality. Using it to “toughen up” characters or shame them isn’t fair to readers of any gender.

And then I read Delilah S. Dawson’s piece for Uncanny Magazine (“I Have Never Not Been an Object“) and I hit a hard wall. The piece made me rethink about how I was writing and how my usual “I don’t enjoy reading this and there’s a problem here” approach won’t necessarily work because I run the risk of dismissing people’s experiences in a way that I don’t think is a possibility when talking about what I usually do.

So I’m maybe going to put a pin in what I was originally going to talk about and instead write a different installment about consent as a whole (consent issues, mating,  how consent needs to be more of a thing in urban fantasy series in general, positive examples of how to have your characters consent to a variety of situations without “breaking the mood”).

That should be out on Patreon by the beginning of March!

Lastly.

I’m working on stuff in terms of fiction, but I am a super slow writer when it comes to fiction because I need to get my language down just right and I worry.

Right now though, here’s what you absolutely can expect for me at some point in the coming months:

• “The Carnival That Comes After” with Dirty Birds Press
• “Breaking and Entering” (this is contingent on when my darling artist finishes the last sketch but the story is basically done and I just keep poking at it in the meanwhile)
• The first part of a Paranormal Erotica Story that’s going to be Patreon-only. I’m like 2/3 of the way through writing the first draft now and it’s so good omfg.
• A SECRET PROJECT that I’ll talk more about once it’s complete and submitted

Other things that I’m working on (but that won’t be finished any time soon) are:

• The sequel to “Breaking and Entering”
• A sequel to my take on Red Riding Hood called “This Beauty, This Beast”
• Some more Comet City stories with Viper
• Queer and fluffy paranormal romance stories set an alternate Earth
• Queer polyamorous

And as always, there will be plenty of book reviews and snarky posts about fandom. I’m honestly tempted to do a post about how the Voltron Legendary Defenders fandom is terrifying and has the potential to be dangerous, but I think… maybe I’ll put a pin in that because it’s one of the biggest discourse sources on Tumblr and I’m not in the mood to argue about what I’ve seen.

What’s coming literally this week on this blog are:

• A review of Cassandra Khaw’s gloriously gory “Rupert Wong and the Ends of the Earth”
• An audio post answering some questions about race and racism in fandom from a tumblr post a few weeks ago (I just need to freaking do the audio adjustment for my headset)
• A piece of Femslash February flash fiction about a werewolf and her girlfriend

Thank you all for putting up with me, supporting me, and reading my work!

❤