Gone Home

This is a guest post by fandom correspondent LM, author of The Lobster Dance, a blog about about geekery, Japan, and gender, and I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog with a lot of fandom cakes and gender analysis of food marketing. Find her work on Comparative Geeks here.
My younger sister and I used to play Nintendo together as kids, and now that we’re adults, we can play games together on Steam even though we  don’t live in the same time zone anymore.

When I joined Steam, the first game she sent me was Gone Home, a game about sisters. You’re Kaitlin “Katie” Greenbriar, the older sister, who arrives back in Oregon after a year abroad in Europe to discover the lights are on but nobody’s home at her parents’ house–and there’s a mysterious note from her younger sister on the door.

(Mild spoilers ensue.)

Did I Build This Ship to Wreck? Part 2

Source [Image of Oscar the Grouch holding a sign that says “I heart Trash”]

Or, “Why is Florence + the Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful the soundtrack to my trash ship?” a guest post in two parts by fandom correspondent LM, author of The Lobster Dance, a blog about geekery, Japan, and gender, and of I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog with a lot of fandom cakes and gender analysis of food marketing. Find her work on Comparative Geeks here.

Part 1 here.

Read about Hannibal (TV series) here. Major spoilers for Hannibal, seasons 1, 2, and the first half of 3. Content warning: Some images contain blood but I’ve tried to keep the gore level to a minimum. There are descriptions of violence, murder, and abusive relationships. This is the worst ship ever. The worst.

The relationship between Hannibal Lecter and Will Graham (“Hannigram”) is objectively one of the the trashiest trash-ships to have ever sailed, but it’s so compelling, dear readers. Here we have two extremely intelligent people manipulating each other, possibly to death, and enjoying it; since several of the How Blue songs discuss emotional abuse, destructive behavior, and even, well, murder, it’s a good fit. And hey, Bryan Fuller ships it, too.

Did I Build This Ship to Wreck? Part 1

Source [Image of Oscar the Grouch holding a sign that says “I heart trash.”]

Or, “Why is Florence + the Machine’s How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful the soundtrack to my trash ship?” a guest post by fandom correspondent LM, author of The Lobster Dance, a blog about about geekery, Japan, and gender, and I’ll Make It Myself!, a blog with a lot of fandom cakes and gender analysis of food marketing. Find her work on Comparative Geeks here.

Spoilers for X-Men First Class (major), X-Men Days of Future Past (moderate), NBC Hannibal (mild), and Battlestar Galactica (mild). Contains gifs; discussions of music and films featuring abusive relationships, alcohol abuse, and moderate violence; links to music videos with disturbing imagery of the same nature. I’m sure that Florence Welch actually wrote her music about her experiences and not about fandom, but seriously, have you seen the X-Men prequels? Or NBC Hannibal? Do you see?

There appears to be no one definition of a trash ship*, so my definition is a ‘ship that you know is objectively bad, either because the characters bring out the worst in each other or because one of the characters is literally a cannibal serial killer (or somesuch). Cherik (Charles Xavier/Erik Lensherr)? Trash ship. Starbuck/Apollo? Trash Battlestar. Hannigram (Hannibal Lecter/Will Graham)? Trash spiral-galaxy.

And yet, they’re strangely compelling: in the case of both Cherik and Hannigram, you have two gifted but flawed (some more than others) people drawn together because of outsider statuses and who bounce between love and hate, collaboration and war, admiration and loathing. That kind of relationship is what How Big depicts: it’s a literary, intellectual break-up album about being in relationship where the narrator and the narrator’s partner both hurt and abuse each other–and sometimes kind of like it. These are songs of revenge, angst, lost chances, doomed love, blinding hatred, and obsession.

Guest Post: Friendship to the Max! Lumberjanes

Via Boom Studios

Guest post by Leah, who writes at  The Lobster Dance, a blog about gender and media (and often Japan) and I’ll Make It Myself!, a food blog about gender, geekery, and sometimes cannibal jokes. Find her work on Comparative Geeks here.

Lumberjanes

Created by Shannon Watters, Grace Ellis & Noelle Stevenson. Illustrated by Brooke Allen (vol. 1-8) & Carolyn Nowak (vol. 11-). Colors by Maarta Laiho. Letters by Aubrey Aliese.

This review has one mild spoiler, but if you’re like me, it’ll make you want to read the series more!

You’re in a quiet theater, watching the previews for the latest action ensemble movie. Out of the silence you hear it–

But what if they were all women?

Eat. Prey. Love?: NBC’s Hannibal

Guest post by Leah, who writes at I’ll Make It Myself!, a food blog about gender, geekery, and vegetable alternatives to humans; and The Lobster Dance, a blog about Japan, gender, media, and culture.

[breaks into your house] YO LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HANNIBAL. Via Hanigrahmy

Warning: spoilers will be very mild and images will be safe for work, but there’s some discussion of gore, violence, and sexual harassment.

Thanks to the wonders of video-on-demand services, I don’t often watch TV shows when they air, but every Saturday morning I launch myself out of bed to watch Hannibal over my morning coffee. I am not a Silence of the Lambs fan.

This is my design.