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It’s May, the winding down of Spring and the eventual heat of Summer coming in to play and I had a wonderful week with my loved ones.

We cavorted, we kahooted, we traipsed through dust and merriment.

A smile hardly ever left my face and it’s only now, thinking back on these wonderful memories with people I care about and who care about me that I did the most cardinal sin of all:

I forgot to tell them I love them.

So don’t forget to tell those people in your life— the friends, the lovers, the cheerleaders of existence, how much they mean to you.

If you really want to be a better friend like I am always striving to do with my own, try to be like A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh.

He always extends grace and kindness and love to his friends, no matter what. He is gentleness and happiness wrapped in a crop top, no jeans.

He is everything we should strive to be.

So if you’re ever feeling down on yourself and want to step up your friendship game, just think:

“What would Pooh do?”

There’s a lot of music out there that asks you to believe. There’s that classic Sailor Moon song The Power of Love that asks you to believe in love, the I Believe song from “Book of Mormon,” R. Kelly’s (do we still like R. Kelly?) classic I Believe I Can Fly.

Needless to say, believing in anything is almost the entire battle. It gets you started on the journey and it keeps you going when you feel like you can’t go on. That’s what believing in yourself really allows you to do. When all the world looks down their nose at you, your own self-belief really locks you in and keeps you grounded.

But if I’ve learned anything from the movie “Hoppers,” it’s that sometimes you have to believe in others. Even if they’ve hurt you and proven your expectations/assumptions true, you have to hold onto the belief that there is and always will be good in others.

Believe in yourself? Sure. Easy. Elementary. Done.

Believe in others? Harder to do. Almost impossible. Bad experiences.

But believing in others takes so much responsibility off your shoulders. You don’t have to do it alone, and yeah you’re going to be disappointed at some point or maybe at every point because people are programmed to antagonize you specifically. But you can’t stop hoping that those around you will also rise to the occasion.

It’s that aggressive optimism that we really need to nurture in this day and age.

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I have an irrational but pressing love for little woodland creatures (perhaps because of the Nara deer, perhaps because of Bambi, perhaps because of Totoro; who knows for sure what pieces of media have shaped and informed the identity I’ve decided to present to you folk online) and Daniel Chong’s “Hoppers” definitely made me add several adorable animal friends to the inexhaustive list of things or people I would take a bullet to the humerus for.

Number one on that list: beavers. Cuter than capybaras. Actually useful as capstone creatures to ecological systems. Great, spanking webbed tails. Adorable.

Another addition to that list: Diane (Vanessa Bayer) the Shark and only Diane from the shark genus because she made me cackle so hard in the theater when she was defying gravity.

Also that lizard thing that aggressively hits the lizard emoji on Mabel’s (Piper Curda) phone. Its eyes pointing into two separate directions really looked into my soul and bonded me forever to the green guy (I understand why Geico is such a popular car insurance now).

I would die for these animals.

Out of context, these animal descriptors are wild and make no sense, but I think that’s fitting because that is indicative of this movie as a whole. Not that that was a bad thing! I came to watch this movie because I wanted to be entertained and I was absolutely entertained.

Did it feel like the kid’s version of “The Matrix” but with cuter animals and less intense fight scenes? Maybe.

Narratively, “Hoppers” has a clear throughline story: Mabel wants to stop the construction of some funky looking highway because it’s ruining the environment, and Mayor Jerry (Jon Hamm) doesn’t care. Or rather, he cares about the election and people’s wants and that is his priority.

The way Mabel goes about pushing her agenda is aggressive, ineffective, and most disappointing of all, selfish. She stages one-woman protests, sit-ins, one-dimensional debates; the whole shebang of a Social Justice Warrior playing the game solo and while it’s funny when we see her montage of silly fights with Jerry, it’s actually...sad.

Mabel loves animals. She loves them so much to the point that she has no real friends. She’s basically estranged from her mother. Everyone at university thinks she’s a weirdo. But she finds solace in her animal friends. That’s beautiful and depressing. And makes her desperation to save the animals that much more sad.

Yes, she cares deeply about the environment and shares a kinship with all the life there, but in reality she is afraid of moving on. The pond she is specifically protecting was where she and her grandmother (Karen Huie) would spend countless summer days studying the animals, basking in the sunlight, and helping the little ecosystem flourish where they could.

Mabel is terrified of losing those precious memories with her grandmother. It’s the only place she’s felt at home and it’s the last place she truly felt at peace with the one person who ever really loved her.

She cannot lose that.

But in order to grow, she must.

The way Mabel holds onto this pond and these memories is toxic and dangerous. She puts herself into harm’s way more than once for the grand dream of protecting the pond and this scared, childlike version of herself that still lives at the pond. In her memories. In the future she is holding onto like fog spilling out from a semi-broken haze machine at the local haunted house.

Obviously this is an analogy for the destruction of nature at the macro-level. It’s quite literally one of the main themes of this movie: we should protect nature by foregoing immediate gratification and unnecessary human-made construction. Tying Mabel’s identity and goals to this pond does two things relatively well or relatively poorly depending on how you perceive it:

1. Over-simplify but make palatable the call to action about protecting the environment.

2. Infantilize the audience by spoon feeding them, multiple times throughout the film, about how to feel about nature and what we should take away from it.

It’s a plea to save the world, one pocket of nature at a time.

It’s a question of is this enough to really save anyone.

It’s an attempt to give us a solution to a problem that we have full control over.

As a movie, this is fun and fine enough. As a call to action, it is something that feels a little heavy-handed.

Yet as we witness a main character who distinctly suffers from Main Character Syndrome, her character arc is something to be appreciated.

It’s a fall from grace, it’s a too-late realization, it’s being told that you really are too much to handle because your selfish actions are negatively impacting all those around you.

Like many a hero, we don’t want her to stumble and fail— but there is a unique beauty to serving an audience an unlikeable hero where her tragic flaw is also her only discernible heroic trait.

Mabel is lonesome and headstrong and devastatingly passionate. Her lack of community is highlighted by her interactions with her human and her animal peers; Mabel wants to help, but will ultimately do things that serve only herself.

That is the tragedy we experience as the audience since she builds herself up as this green protester fighting the good fight for the greater environment. When push finally comes to shove and she herself must change or ruin the communities that have allowed her in, she does not change.

In fact, she doubles down and creates infinitely more problems for all those she is “helping.”

As low as Mabel sinks, she has the opportunity to change. And she does. It takes losing everything for her to realize that maybe her way of doing things isn’t always right. And perhaps trusting others enough to help out, is okay.

And maybe that believing that other people, though they may hurt you, do not do so with intention. We have to try believing in the best of people, because that’s how we will ever get the chance to move mountains.

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It’s very easy to hate the mornings. The way you’re ripped from sleep and forced to march to the beat of a capitalism drum— very not fun, especially if you do that 5 out of 7 days of the week. That’s a little loco mi amigo.

And as much as I hate mornings, because I am very much a night owl and I very much hiss at the sight of sunlight, I enjoy the calmness right before daybreak.

Those few minutes where all the world is asleep, the pregnant inky blackness of the night is just about to burst into the hazy gray of dawn and you feel so so blissfully alone because you are aware of how the world is going to come abuzzing.

I’m not saying you should get up before dawn to enjoy a respite from human interaction nor am I saying you should just stay up all night until you hit the AM hours.

But I do think you should enjoy your mornings.

Even if it’s because of the silliest of things, you deserve that much.

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Finding time to hang out with adult friends is hard.

Like, unnecessarily hard, but it’s a mix up of multiple differing schedules, work timelines, and social calendars so honestly having and maintaining any sort of friendship past the formative school years is a damnable miracle.

It’s effort. It’s time. It’s compromise to meet at an ungodly hour of the week because that’s when the kids are off at grandma’s and (almost) everyone in the groupchat has at least an hour and a half free to catch up over a rushed ragu.

It’s a curious thing, these adult friendships. Because you have to really want it and you have to really work at it. People are annoying, but they can be a special kind of annoying to you and that’s called love.

If we can’t even squeeze in an hour for a rushed dinner, I’m willing to do the mundane with you. I’m not (that) desperate. I’m just practical.

Let’s grab coffee at the same place on the way to work so we can cross paths in line and smile giddily at each other and wave like kindergartners.

Let’s go grocery shopping and bemoan the soaring price of milk and eggs and contemplate different brands of dish soap.

Let’s tidy your house together and go our separate ways once more pressing things arise (e.g. child pickup or dry cleaning drop off or stove timer going off).

I’m down to enjoy life in all it’s mundanity with you!

We can make it fun~

And if it’s not fun, then maybe we can make it a little less stressful if we do it together :)

After scouring the internet for all of five minutes, I have compiled my Reddit, Wikipedia, and Medium knowledge to explain in excruciatingly pathetic detail, my hot take on Twin Flames in Tatsuki Fujimoto’s comic and movie of the same name “Look Back.”

So what the Pinterest girlies have informed me and the Facebook mom support groups have gathered is that a Twin Flame is a toxic little bitch. However, Aletheia Luna, one of the quote unquote founders of this ideology from way back in 2011 said that “Your twin flame, or twin soul, is a person with whom you are destined to feel connected on a physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual level. A twin flame is a person who’s your friend, lover, and teacher in this life.”

Working on that definition and that definition alone brings me back to Fujimoto’s slick and evocative “Look Back.”

“Look Back” follows the outgoing and tenacious Fujino and her recluse friend Kyomoto as they make comics together and work hard to create art.

That’s basically it. That’s the logline, the basic gist of the movie, everything you need to know about them and what they are doing throughout the entirety of the film. There aren’t character arcs per se, no resounding conflict drawn from disbelievers or internal insecurities. They are rock-solid characters in who they are: Fujino plows forward and Kyomoto would rather stay home. In fact, these characteristics manifest and are even exacerbated once they meet, but it somehow brings out the best in both of them.

Fujino meets Kyomoto on happenstance and they begin a lifelong journey of creating manga together. They push each other to be better artists, they help each other out, they work together. They are one and the same, what Luna would call mirrored souls meeting and immediately being drawn together to elevate and create.

SOME CRITICS (not me) would argue that they are not lovers. And I agree, BUT ONLY in the sense that romance would have been too paltry a word for what they had going on. There was definitely chemistry. Biting jealousy crowded beneath pulsing pride and adoration. They were each other’s inciting incident on their creative journies and they rode through it together, bettering the other and picking up the slack where the other was weak.

They were children when they met and their time was tragically cut short, but that kind of influence changes a life forever. And to look back on that time, all the beautiful colors and times and experiences, to relive it but differently, and to still somehow meet if all the road marks in the timeline changed, to me, is a sign of true love.

Their story is a sonnet to the creative journey. Their struggles and eventual triumphs sugarcoat the relationship they cultivate over their years of working together. In classic Fujimoto fashion (what can you expect? The man wrote “Chainsaw Man”), we are hit with the agony of the human condition we can never escape, even in media: loss.

What I find fascinating about this one-shot comic turned movie is how succinctly it captures the idea of loss. The big “what if we never met?” or “how do I go on without you?” because each of those questions involves a loss in some way, the former of a relationship that could have been, the latter of a relationship having already passed.

We live through Fujino’s and Kyomoto’s meeting and watch them grow as artists. They get better as artists and they grow closer and they strive for more. Together. Once Kyomoto is viciously ripped out of Fujino’s life, Fujino is adrift. Fujino feels at fault for bringing Kyomoto out of her house, forcing her way into the Kyomoto’s life and somehow leading her to her early death.

The guilt is heavy, but is something only the survivors of trauma really feel when everything in the universe aligns to go wrong.

Fujino is not at fault. Not even in the slightest. It was a freak accident involving a blunt weapon, but Fujino felt the blame for setting up Kyomoto on a lifelong path of betterment. If she hadn’t pushed Kyomoto out of her comfort zone, if she hadn’t asked Kyomoto to make comics with her, if she hadn’t inspired Kyomoto to become a better artist, then Kyomoto would not have been where she was when the axe finally fell.

Their lives were so intertwined, set up on the same artistic path, that Fujino felt all of the blame fall on her shoulders.

One has to ask: when Fujino visits Kyomoto’s house after the funeral, is she there for nostalgia or for reparations?

In her moment of weakness and, of course, anger, she draws a small 4-panel comic of Kyomoto staying home on the day they met and surviving the freak accident. She loses the slip of paper under Kyomoto’s door and sits to wallow in her grief.

We follow that slip of paper under Kyomoto’s door.

We see a hand reach for it and we see the face of a young Kyomoto: still a recluse, still sheltered, still afraid. She hears a loud bang and instead of running outside to see what it was, where she and Fujino would have originally met, she stays put.

In other words, she stays safe in this timeline because she and Fujino never meet and she never gets up the courage to leave her room.

[This idea is kind of trippy, but the movie does it so well, it is so flawlessly excuted this transition to a different past, I beg you to watch it.]

But they’re Twin Flames remember?

Fujino and Kyomoto will forever be drawn to each other, no matter what happens.

So in this timeline, the day Kyomoto should die by a freak accident, is instead the day she meets Fujino and is reborn. They start again. They promise to start making art together. They cannot be kept apart. In any reality, they are meant to meet and they will create together.

Too bad this never actually happens. The reality we are brought back to is one where Fujino and Kyomoto met as children, and one of them met an early Grim Reaper. Their time together ran its course, but it did so with all the love and care only youth can give us.

Fujino wants to look back forever. She wants to hold onto the past and the memories with Kyomoto, write up stories where she has a happily ever after perhaps. We get a beautiful sequence of their childhood together and it is colorful and happy and such a bright spot after witnessing the devastating tragedy of their interwined fates.

After one last look, at the past that could have been, at the room they first met in, Fujino moves forward, walking through snowbanks with purpose in her step, much like when she was a child trekking along the same rice paddies and streets to get to Kyomoto’s house.

Fujino tapes up Kyomoto’s last comic on her window where she works and the final 6 minutes of the film is a timelapse of Fujino working doggedly from dawn to night.

She doesn’t look back at us once, not even when she finally leaves after working all day, faceless to us the audience.

But that’s okay, because she doesn’t need to look back anymore. Now, after looking back once and experiencing all the what-ifs, reminiscing on what she had, heartbroken over what she has lost, she has to move forward.

In the Ancient Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus is tasked with saving his loved one Eurydice from the pits of Hades, and he is allowed to do so if, on their ascent, he does not look back once. If he looks back, she’ll be swallowed by Tartarus and taken back to Hades and he will have lost her forever.

It should have been an easy task for him. Put one foot in front of the other. Keep moving forward. Trust that your lover is by your side and that you will make it out together.

No matter what iteration. No matter how the bread is sliced. No matter how many times the tale gets told.

Orpheus always looks back.

Maybe it’s one of his failings or another trick of the god of the underworld, whispering insecurities that finally convinces Orpheus to look back near the end of his journey.

I think it was an accident. It was a habit. To look back at your loved one is only natural.

To look back is the greatest form of love.

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I’ve learned so much from “Avatar: The Last Airbender” and I find myself, in my adulthood, constantly going back to this comfort show of my childhood. So many lessons and virtues packaged into bite-size episodes on a cable TV network that made sense then and absolutely ring true now.

One of the lessons I think about often, is that in order to get what we want, we have to do the hard thing.

For Aang it was defeating Firelord Ozai. For Zuko, it was regaining his honor. For Sokka, it was revenge against the Fire Nation (probably. I’m not really sure where Sokka stands on this revenge thing since he was such a comedic guy, but I still love him as a character).

Hard, almost impossible goals. Definitely possible, and achievable by the end of the series, but it got me thinking about how that applies to real life.

Their success didn’t happen overnight. It was progress that furthered every day of their one-year journey together. Practice and training and movement through life on the lam.

Aang looked at his goal and did small, actionable things during their travel to the Fire Nation in order to achieve that goal. Of course, he was backed into a corner and was basically the chosen one and didn’t have a choice about this goal, but I think one of the best things is that he did it.

But it wasn’t in the way everyone thought he would do it.

Aang pushed through the rigor of training and meditation on having to kill the Firelord (a big moral and ethical quandary for a 12 year old for sure) and found that he could complete his goal, without murder.

And that’s the thing!

The more you work towards your goal, the more you work on yourselves and the more you learn what you can and can’t do. You learn if you actually even want this goal, you learn if you have the skills to complete it, perhaps even completing it differently than the norm.

If you never do the hard work to better yourself (in whatever sense that is; exercising, becoming a better artist, writing, etc.), how will you know if you can change the outcome? You haven’t even made it there yet!

Don’t allow yourself to accept complacency in your life. Comfort is one thing, but doing the hard things unlocks doors for you.

Doing the hard thing makes you realize that you can actually do the hard thing.

That applies to everything.

Good luck!

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I’m not usually a fan of sequels and I’m not usually a fan of horror films but I will say I was a (semi) fan of these movies.

That’s something!

It’s gory and unsettling, but the concept is fun. Lots of Satan references and entire conceptual story tentpoles built on that so in the light of Easter, maybe don’t bring this movie out during Sunday dinner.

The premise of signing a contract with the devil, modified to be a family curse/blessing, with all the sacrifices and lengthy contractual footnotes, is fun so long as you don’t take a look at how perfectly it reflects our real world:

How many people sell their soul for a slice of fame? How many sell their privacy and their happiness for unimaginable wealth? What is a contract with the devil when you already embody his cruelty?

All relevant questions racing through my brain, but none as important as the thesis of this film: what is family?

As silly and Satanic and bloody as this movie is, the emotional anchor that justifies the death, that rationalizes the protagonist’s body count, is her family. Estranged and unwilling as Faith MacCaullay (Kathryn Newton) is to be dragged along her older sister Grace’s (Samara Weaving) troubles, there is undeniable angst and love between them.

It drags through their family history a little bit, rehashes some childhood drama, and they trauma bond through the blood on their faces and the weapons in their hands so they come together stronger than before.

Which is beautiful because that bond creates their tragic flaw. As indifferent as they pretend to be to each other, we know that they love each other. Call it their sisterly bond, one that we see early on as mentioned by one of their kidnappers, Faith will do anything to protect her little sister.

She’ll risk death and a lifetime of fanatical servitude if it means that her sister will be able to walk free.

The first movie is Grace desperately wanting a family, finding that and having it ripped away. This second movie is Grace reuniting with her only living family member that she actually cares about and refusing, tooth and nail, to give her up.

That’s character growth. Across two movies no less. The arc is real and rivals the Romans.

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There is a beautiful foil in the terrible Danforth twins Ursula (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Titus (Shawn Hatosy) where they have each other’s back, only so far as they can serve the other. Titus commits the Mark of Cain (woohoo another biblical reference. Honestly, if I knew the Bible better, I’d probably be able to pick up more of the allegories but I only got so far as Genesis) because he is insane and violent and the stark difference in his sibling bond and the MacCaullay’s is Grand Canyon worthy.

Every family that participates in the Satanic games is a beacon to the MacCaullay sisters of what not to be. The families are cruel and vicious and bloodthirsty. They revel in the killing and they greed after the promise of riches and power being the head of this Satanic religion. Another contrast to the MacCaullays and their desire to be rid of all this bloodshed and evil.

The MacCaullay sisters are the most grounded people in this film, despite their insecurities and past shared traumas. We root for them because everyone else is varying degrees of crazy and ridiculous.

But we also see them as the underdogs, the people raging against the machine of billionaires who face no consequences with enough wealth to save the world but only enough humanity to care about themselves.

They manage to take down, in chaotic and brutal efficiency, this entire infested, corrupted, and cruel system by their own hand. Bloodied and beaten and almost subjugated, they manage to hold true to their selves and come out on top.

What a nice story. To know that the good guys win. And that the obvious billionaire villains get their just dessert.

We love to see that actions have consequences and good triumphs. If only in movies.

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I hope that you’re proud of yourself.

I mean that in the most positive, actual, and real way possible.

Why reserve pride for special occasions? Every day is a new adventure and sometimes it’s hard to get up in the morning. Why shouldn’t we be proud of ourselves for doing our best and achieving our small goals? Every accomplishment you do is worth celebrating. Why not appreciate all the things you are doing? Because life is short enough as it is and if you don’t recognize how far you’ve come, you might not accept the success when it comes to you.

Be proud.

Of all the big and the little things you do.

You are worth celebrating :)

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This is what California has felt like this past week.

And unfortunately, this version of SpongeBob is how I was for much of last week.

I usually like to think I’m the more whimsical side of the Bob de Sponge, but I was an anxious and dehydrated mess because I underestimated how much water loss a body can incur when you’re doing nothing, but the environmental temperature hits triple digits.

Remember to hydrate or die-drate.

I learned that slogan from working at Disneyland.

If you haven’t seen this absolute gem of an Oscar award winner in the year of our lord and savior Jiminy Cricket, please for the love that is all holy, please do. The music that came out of it, the complex and beautiful characters, the memes— I’d actually be really impressed if you haven’t seen this movie yet. It rode the top of Netflix’s movie list for 15 straight weeks and it has graced so many professional sports stadiums as their golden voices rang out over thousands of fans.

It has infiltrated the zeitgeist in such a short time in a way that anime has been doing for the past decade, and I love that overall for animation as a medium. With the rise of AI (we don’t support that over here), the trend towards 3D animation and departure from hand drawn, and the general disdain for animation as a “children’s genre,” animation has been in a weird elevated limbo of appealed disregard: people like to enjoy it but will not acknowledge it as a filmmaking art form.

The dialogue online and the overall perception of animation deserves better treatment in filmmaking circles, in my humble opinion.

And one of the ways to combat these negative perceptions is through outstanding work like Maggie Kang and Chris Appelhans’ “K-Pop Demon Hunters” (KPDH). It’s funny, it’s refreshing, and it feels genuine. The themes of identity and belonging are universal and heartfelt, but the vehicle that it does it in is wholly unique and hopping on the trend(?) that is K-Pop and anime.

Am I a little tired of bean mouths, round character designs and the Pixar Story Method? Perhaps a little. These of the Big 5 animation studios found a tried and true method and they will be dead before they stop utilizing it. Or maybe they’ll lose enough money to realize that people actually want complex and fresh narratives packaged in the form of animation that is authentic and emotional. Hear that folks? Your dollar speaks for you!

As much as I love and adore Disney and Pixar films, their recent lineups these past few years have left much to be desired. Beautiful, it is. Well-thought out? Narratively sound? Perhaps not. I know I’m no longer the target audience for most of their films, but seeing as they are a legacy brand that has grown up with a generation of kids who are now adults who are bringing their spawn to these movies, the seemingly lack of thought and disappointing heroism is a stark contrast to how films were made and intellectualized in the 90s to now.

Part of it is the aesthetic choice, which, you know what, to each their own. I might like sunflowers but you might hate them because your ex told you they were her favorite. Who knows.

Yet I can no longer differentiate the stylistic choices between a Disney and a Pixar film. Maybe it was their merger in the ‘10s, but there is no distinct style to let audiences know this is one or the other, yet they always make sure to brand as one or the other (Think: “Pixar, presented by The Walt Disney Studios” or “Marvel in Collaboration with yadda yadda yadda”). It’s all CalArts defined shapes and when one art institute, much like media outlets, control the entire output of content/media creation, it is never a good thing for the masses. Monopolies are bad. Just like the fucking Monopoly game.

Get me on that goddamn boardwalk and your little die cast rubber duck will be embedded in the wall.

No hate to you. Just the game.

KPDH makes bold visual choices. The colors pop, the characters are long and fluid and sexy (in a very unbiased and very platonic, artistic way), and they aren’t afraid to push the animation, the medium people oft say “anything you can imagine, you can do in animation.”

[Of course animation has its limitations, like money, resources, skilled artists, time. But literally if you can dream it, you can do it. Hashtag that.]

Also the people at Sony Pictures Animation (studio that made KPDH) aren’t afraid to be silly, and when you get to make movies for a living, I appreciate and vibe so hard with that. Some of the faces and scenes from KPDH are silly. Jinu’s cat/tiger thing is silly. His crow is silly. A character with well-defined ab musculature is called Abby; that is silly. They have so many moments that are just silly and fun in this film and it absolutely deserved to win Oscar for Best Animation Feature. Because while it was entertaining for kids with the music and epic fight scenes and kiddish humor, it was entertaining for their adult parents with the music and epic fight scenes and teasing adult humor.

Perhaps more important than its entertainment value was its second use as a vehicle for representation. EJae, Audrey Nuna, and REI AMI are stars in their own right, but being the singing voices behind the ficitonal K-Pop girl group HUNTR/X has catapulted them into SNL and Academy Award performances. We get an all-star cast with Ahn Hyo-seop, Ken Jeong, SungWon Cho, Daniel Day Kim, Lea Salonga, Yunjin Kim, and Lee Byung-hun.

An Asian cast represented by Asian talent telling a very Asian story. There are scenes ripped straight out of a K-Drama and eccentricities that you’d only see in Japanese anime but are plainly showcased in this film. The attention to detail and acceptance of anime and K-Pop here, which used to get people bullied, are now being celebrated. For young Asian Americans, this is huge. Seeing yourself on the screen, no matter how quirky or outlandish, as heroes and villains, proves to the youth that they belong and they can be the heroes of their own journey.

And just like any good film, even though this is packaged with an Asian cast and Korean hangul about a Korean musical girl group that moonlights as demon hunters, the themes are universal.

You don’t have to be Korean or in a girl group or a demon hunter to understand the very human and very real emotional stakes at play.

The writers (Danya Jimenez, Hannah McMechan, and Maggie Kang) and directors Kang and Appelhans did a fantastic job of weaving Korean girl group culture with heart-shattering themes of identity and family.

You meet Rumi (voiced by Arden Cho and singing voice by EJAE), Mira (voiced by May Hong and singing voice by Audrey Nuna), and Zoey (voiced by Ji-young Yoo and singing voice by REI AMI) and are immediately enamored with them. Their personalities are so distinct but they pair well with each other. The trio jumps out of a plane while singing a vibrant and powerful song that establishes who they are and what they are doing in one of the best examples of exposition I have ever seen.

They are superstars. But they also have a part-time gig as demon hunters. Classic superhero with hidden identities and trying not to be discovered, but KPDH strays from that easy storyline and does a deep dive into who we really are and how that shapes us.

Mulan is the it-girl when it comes to female Asian leads in western media. She prototyped the dilemma for American audiences with honor and family and responsibility to that. In every sense of the word, Mulan is a hero.

Rumi is the antithesis of that. Not on the surface, but with who she is and where she comes from. She is all the ideals you’d expect from a good, Asian daughter: independent, respectful, resourceful, determined. But at her core, she is half human and half demon. No matter what Rumi does, she is still a product of those two entities clashing, and they absolutely cannot coexist. That internal conflict drives the narrative with the full-force of a rocket manned by a dog.

Rumi believes that if she and her friends manage to strengthen the Honmoon (a barrier protecting the human world from the demon world), then her demon patterns will disappear. Why she believes that, who knows. I think Celine (Yunjin Kim), Rumi’s adopted mother, beat that belief into her with all the hope in the world but no actual science backing. [“Boohoo this is a movie about demons and magic swords and K-Pop what does science have to do with it” and to those critics, you’re right, there is no science, just vibes BUT YOU HAVE TO ADMIT, pinning your entire life’s silver lining on just vibes is never a good thing.]

Rumi is a demon hunter. As the title of the movie suggests. She is placed in the unique position of needing to eradicate demons, but being one herself. Her late mother and her adopted family are all demon hunters. They are all working to eradicate demons…like herself. What a lie to live. A duplicity that can only be tamped down so long before something inside you cracks and you can no longer live a half truth.

Rumi is desperate to seal the Honmoon, but her demon side gets stronger the weaker the Honmoon gets and it becomes progressively harder for Rumi to do her part-time-demon-hunter-slaying while she’s trying to figure herself out.

Sound familiar? Strip away the powers, the fancy hairs, and the demons. Rumi is just trying to find herself and her identity beyond the expectations of her family while still staying true to her own self. Whatever that means.

The respect she has for her demon hunting culture, the honor she wants to bring to her found family, but most of all the saving grace of hiding her inherent inherited darkness by “doing the right thing” that everyone expects of her, destroys Rumi mentally and spiritually.

Rumi is desperate to live up to everyone’s expectations, but with who she is and her demon heritage, she cannot.

This is the plight of Asian Americans. Repackaged with glitz and glam, but fundamentally and emotionally the same thing. We want to belong so badly, but we straddle two worlds with being an Asian in America, a liminal space that has often said we do not belong to either and so this third one gets created to house us.

As the firstborn child of immigrants, how do you honor where your parents came from while still assimilating to a new world order? How do you deal with the inevitable disappointment of not living up to each and every single one of your family’s expectations? If you strip away all these identifiers, who are you and why are you doing the things you are doing?

Rumi deals with all of these questions on the superstar stage. And she has an answer.

Acceptance.

There are things she cannot change, like her demon patterns or who her parents were. But instead of falling to the darkness and the temptation of the demon world, Rumi rises above and finds her own path, a middle path, a version of existence that she exists in because she creates it.

There is a song and dance about self-love in here, about belonging and finding the people who accept you for you.

But at the end of the day, it really only comes down to you. Your voice. What you are willing to accept and protect and be a part of.

You have to accept yourself, broken pieces and all.

Had to shout out my boys in their comeback album ARIRANG. I love BTS. They did their military service in South Korea and are back together producing music and winning hearts. Just dropped today. I’ve only listened to a few songs but I am HOOKED.

If you’re on the hunt for queer, black joy excelling in predominantly white spaces, look no further than Awkward Virgo TV’s “The Comic Shop.” Honestly, it’s everything you’d see in a comic book shop, with the well-informed shopkeepers, the overzealous D&D nerd, and beautiful art from all the creative works housed within their four walls.

We follow Stephanie (Cheyenne Ewulu) and her ragtag team of employees as they try to keep their comic book shop from shuttering its doors while sharing their love for an industry and space that has not been welcoming to folks who look like them. We get the oblivious but big-hearted Keith (Zeno Robinson), the ditzy but excitable Dominique (Shanae Cole), and the eccentric but passionate Connor (Grayson Niles).

It’s listed as a workplace comedy, but I’d argue that it’s really a found family comedy. All the characters are fantastically different from each other, Stephanie and Keith, and then Dominique and Connor foiling each other nicely. They are each other’s family, with shared interests and “I-may-want-to-kill-you-with-a-bread-knife-but-I-will-give-you-my-kidney-if-you-need-it” vibes. It’s so family coded. Do they get at each other’s throats?

Yes.

Is it funny?

Also yes.

Will a fistfight happen in the middle of the comic shop? Most likely not, but we’ve gotten close and I live for that tension. It’s not sexual. It’s violent. Me like.

It’s such a small space that they occupy, but they utilize it well and that lends itself to a very personal feel; we get the classic zooms to character reactions and cutaways to their single-head interviews, but the tightness of the location adds to their emotional closeness. We feel very included, almost to the point that it feels like eavesdropping, and there are so many shots framing three characters: two in heated conversation in the foreground and then one semi-blurred out in the background reacting like they’re watching a telenovela, often framed by the conversation so it feels like we are also there listening in at an actual comic book store.

It’s so personable. And they look at you like “Can you believe the bs this bitch just said?” and I’m nodding along responding like they can actually get my reaction.

They deal with property damage, theft, and all the bells and whistles a struggling brick and mortar shop deals with in this digital day and age.

Each episode is about 15 minutes long and the first season is only six episodes and ends on a cliffhanger. I’m devastated I wasn’t able to watch this as it was coming out to really get in the feels and engage in the comment section discourse, but I was able to binge it all in a night and that was pretty dope.

Narratively, I would compare this to a slice-of-life anime. Each episode almost stands alone and has a distinct conflict in each one, the main through line being the desperation to make rent. A tried and true goal for many a sitcom character, but one that is exacerbated by Stephanie’s mom (Nene Nwoko) undermining her daughter’s attempts to run a business as absurd (to her) as comics and by the fact that they are a tad bit incompetent at running a business period. They get better at making sales, but their revenue is shaky and their plans on making it for each month scratch an anxiety I know all too well living in the overpriced cesspool that is LA.

I love that this is an indie comic shop succeeding (because who hasn’t dreamed of quitting their 9-5 to open a coffee shop or a bookstore???) and I absolutely love that the people running it are people of color and more or less queer (uhmm more representation please!). Seeing them succeeding, in the comic shop but also as an independently funded webseries is inspirational.

Yes the #OscarsSoWhite, but that doesn’t have to extend to what we create and consume.

There is a racial divide that the media refuses to talk about, that we have to acknowledge in our art. Even if “The Comic Shop” doesn’t delve deeply into the weeds of Hollywood and the escapism it indirectly provides, it is in direct opposition to the LA Industrial Complex and I love that for them.

Made by people of color (not AI), for people of color, backed by a robust community with hundreds of thousands of views marking this as a phenomenal success, this show is everything Hollywood is not and that is a good thing. It shows that you can create grounded, wholesome, and quality art. It shows you can have POC leads and entertainment at a fraction of a blockbuster billing. It shows that storytelling is alive and thriving, just not in the golden streaming services you’d expect it to come from.

More than anything, this webseries shows us that people want authentic art.

Do you know how many days it took them to reach and exceed their goal of $160,000 on Kickstarter?

35 days.

And they managed to exceed that goal, finishing their funding period at $207, 175.

Check Out Their Kickstarter!

People want to support indie creatives putting culture and community first. People want these authentic stories and homebrewed comedy that isn’t dictated by executive red tape and corporate mismanagement. People want to be entertained.

So here’s a link to the pilot episode so you can be just that~

As I was listening to the Christian radio station during my atrociously long commutes, they mentioned something along the lines of simple being good enough. From one non-practicing religious person to another, it was a surprisingly grounded and wholesome message.

Not that most of their messages aren’t good. They ask for money a lot (and in this economy, I can’t blame them), but they sound very wholesome. Their whole thing is being kind and helping other peoples which, shocker, is more in line with the gospel according to the limited bible readings I’ve done.

ANYWAYS

They told their listeners to take a moment and look at their lives; what they have, what they want, what they are doing. And to realize that that is enough. You don’t need millions of dollars or a mansion on the beach to be happy. It’s the simple things that bring us the most unbridled joy and happiness.

It’s fine to just be happy. Happy where you’re at in life. Happy with what you’ve accomplished. Happy.

I know we have this hustle culture in America that pits us against each other and forces us to grind our bones to dust in the pursuit of capitalism freedom (spoiler: there is no capitalism freedom), but we don’t need to do that all the time. We get to choose what we do, and sometimes, choosing to be happy is enough.

I miss Friends. My friends, the TV show “Friends,” just people with similar interests, determined to meet up and socialize no matter what.

I can easily text them or ring them up, but it’s not the same as getting a coffee and chitting the chat for hours until the barista harrumphs at us to get out of the establishment. We’re all spread out across the world at this point and while social media can bring us together, it also makes that nostalgia hit a little harder on dark days.

I think that’s what we’re missing in this day and age. It is the camaraderie from knowing that these goobers will be there to witness your shenanigans no matter what, and they might even partake if they so choose.

Friendships are so underrated. A good one will survive the winters with you. A great one will welcome you back home, no matter how long it’s been, and offer you your favorite drink of choice. And if they get it wrong, then it’ll just be another joke to add to your growing list of inside funnies.

Finding that community as an adult is hard. Unreasonably so, and horrendously so (might I add) in Los Angeles. It feels like this city has too much botox to ever smile at you genuinely.

The trying is also terrifying. What do you mean I have to talk to strangers and hope that they’re not a serial killer? What do you mean I have to bare my soul to someone and hope that they’ll do it back and we can engage in somewhat moist text conversations?

Despite all those fears, I think it’s a worthwhile investment. Find your people. You have to. They make all the mundane things worth it, and they make the burden of living that much more bearable.

Your community will be there to hold you up when you can’t take another beating from the world. Your community will share your dreams and cheer you on when you can’t even face yourself in the mirror. Your community will be the best thing you ever choose to make for yourself and that is worth celebrating today.

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Sometimes I look at where I am in life and realize it is vastly different from where I wanted to be when I was 8. It’s not bad, but it’s not the stick-figure-mansion I imagined I’d be living in by the time I’m almost 30.

And along the way I realized that a lot of what I wanted changed. That’s to be expected because 8 year olds have no concept of time or money, but those big DREAMS with the capital letters and the stars in the sky changed little by little as reality crept in and life proved to be a little more difficult.

I still have dreams. Ambitions, aspirations, hopes, and desires. They’re more grounded and I can make more sense of them in my adulthood. I have silly dreams and big dreams and smoked-crack-on-a-pipe dreams that I’m still chipping away at every day. While living in a bouncy house is unrealistic and potentially catastrophic, getting to live in my own apartment on my own dime was a once a dream and is now my reality :)

But sometimes I think we get so attached to what a dream is, what it could represent if we pursued it and got everything we ever wished for, that sometimes we forget that dreaming is a lot of work that doesn’t really accomplish anything.

Dreams are so nebulous.

They change as we grow, and I think it’s important to remember that sometimes, dreams can just stay dreams.

By all means, follow them. Follow your dreams to the end of the rainbow and see what will be waiting for you at the end.

But don’t be discouraged if your dream changes. You change. You have every right to look at what you want and then decide to not want it anymore. As we get older, maybe it’s to start a family, settle down. Maybe it’s to leave your job and travel the world. Maybe it’s to be able to get up every morning and make yourself a cup of coffee.

There’s power in that.

Dreams follow a timeline— your timeline. The pursuit of a dream is always and no matter what, a worthy adventure. You don’t need a big dream to fend off naysayers or to convince yourself that your potential is lying dormant just until you make your dream come true. It’s the journey that matters. You matter. However you want to pursue your dreams, it will always be important because you deem it important.

Even if it changes on the daily. Even if your dreams are small. It doesn’t have to stay tethered to big, life-changing events.

It’s a privilege to be able to dream at all. To dream a little every day.

Now that’s what we need a little more of in our lives.

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I watched this movie 3 times by accident and it was quite entertaining every single time but you better hold onto your bucket hats because this is one of my favorite genres that seems to get an unhealthy amount of flack: a romcom.

Boy do I love a good romcom. In a day and age where gritty, realistic love is applauded onscreen and steamy smut is the norm— a silly, emotional romcom is one of my favorite things to consume. No shame to the gritty, realistic love or steamy smut scenes that I know my book girlies all love, but I’m a prude.

“The Wrong Paris” follows Dawn (Miranda Cosgrove) as she attempts to win the grand prize of a dating reality TV show so she can pursue an arts education in the actual Paris, France, but what she doesn’t count on is actually falling in love with the very eligible and very charming cowboy bachelor Trey McAllen (Pierson Fode).

If you devour reality dating shows like water to a dying man in the desert, this movie is for you. It’s fun, it’s flirty, it absolutely captures the essence of what reality TV is.

(So I’ve been told. I don’t actually watch reality TV, but my friends were squealing about tricks and silly things the characters did that parodied their favorite dating shows.)

This Netflix film is well shot, favoring lenses that fish-eyed at the edges and give this magical, soft kind of blooming to their scenes. It’s a nice look, but it got distracting enough that my marketing brother commented on it as well. It played well into the story, the tale of romance and accidental meetings and love that conquers all, but it is laid on with a heavy hand and is perhaps over-utilized.

Everyone is obviously beautiful because the main selling point of this movie is that it satirizes reality TV and the romances that get fabricated from those veins of entertainment, but I’m not complaining. Watching our cowboy bachelor ride into their first meet and greet on a dashing stallion and then have a random 2-minute montage of him washing said horse while shirtless made most of us ovulate.

The movie plays to that reality TV humor well. The camera crew and producers of the dating show are active characters that Dawn and the rest of the suitors interact with. We see the grips and PAs and how they sneak around, and we also see how they are just as entertaining as the people on-camera in this fictional show.

In general, this movie recognizes tropes in the reality TV genre and bends Dawn around them, barely navigating the hell that is dating for the camera. She actively tries to avoid falling into these well laid tropes: eating on camera, shit talking the bachelor, trying to get kicked off the show so she can take her appearance fee and jet.

All of which our leading man finds absolutely endearing. Sparks fly, wits get jabbed, and both Dawn and Trey are already in love before the second act is done.

Which throws a wrench into Dawn’s plans obviously.

She needs to leave to attend an art academy. She needs the money from the show to attend said academy. She is stuck at a crossroads of following her dreams or following her heart and by Jesus is it spicy (not in a sexual kind of way. Like a mental kind of way).

This is the kind of romance I want to see on my timeline. A falling in love, a falling out, and a happy ending. It’s a tried and true formula, but one that I will never get sick of because a romcom is meant to showcase big feelings and how good life can be. It’s as if you asked “What if everything fell into place?

“What if I really fell in love?

“What if things worked out?”

And we see how exciting that life could be if only we allowed ourselves the chance to try.

If you think about romcoms as just romantic comedies, fluff meant to laugh at and feel feels, then sure. It did it’s job. It is an entertaining movie.

But if we think of movies as opportunities for lives we could live, to experience and learn from and to ask “why not?” then romcoms prove that love, the beautiful kind that warms you and holds you and promises a gentle future, is real.

I think it stands to reason that we are all creatures that seek community and comfort in being accepted but today I raise you the opportunity to be weird! (within reason of course, but the variance is wide and you’d have to do something particularly outstanding to be “too” weird. Which, I guess, is also sort of impressive in its own way)

Whatever you fear being too weird or too much or too unusual, you should definitely do. Especially if the main thing holding you back is the fear of being disliked. Don’t be too concerned with the fleeting ideal of normalcy. Nobody is really as normal as we pretend to be online.

So if you’re worried about being too out-there or strange, don’t. All the great conquerors of history and interesting folks that changed the world were weird little freaks in their own way so don’t worry~

You’re in good company.

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Laughter is the best medicine. And being surprised into laughter is one of the best feelings in the world! I lost count of how many times I burst into laughter at the most inopportune times as the characters on stage hashed out their silly little lives about deceit, love, and murder.

Just when you think things can’t get any more convoluted and ridiculous, things get more convoluted and ridiculous.

Without revealing too much (because if you can see it at the Torrance Theatre Company this month, please do yourself a favor and go! Almost all the shows are sold out and it’s getting dicier by the day if you’ll be able to snag a few tickets!), just know that this play is all about love affairs. So many affairs. It would be scummy if it wasn’t so funny.

Their reactions to said affairs and their reasons for doing so, how they present themselves, and all their ridiculous declarations of ardent affection, add to the uproarious comedy that hides the true thematic line in it all: women empowerment and independence.

How did they squeeze that bit of theming in all the comedy? It’s honestly so subtle: a small line of dialogue here, an offhand comment about the mother that is never shown, scorned wives awkwardly supporting the other woman— and we finish with the best possible ending for our dubious heroine, Sylvia (Alyssa Berkowitz).

Sylvia has a mad affair with Beau (Allen Barstow) and decides to spill the tea and let her husband Clark (Charlie Lindberg) know about it. What begins as a truth trail turns into truth bombs as Sylvia learns more about her lover and her husband in ways she did not expect nor could ever fathom.

The soup gets thicker as more characters waltz into their quaint little cottage, what was once their secret getaway, now a monstrous bowl of spilled secrets, each one topping each other in ever more layers like a mysterious seven layer bean dip. We somehow meet Beau’s wife Marjorie (Maureen Lenker), another woman in Dierdre (Kat Kimball), and the mysterious Richard (Ted Coonradt) to add to the shenanigans.

As a stationary stage, the production design, the props, the overall aesthetic feels like a character itself, the name of the play lending itself heavily to that personification. My friend and I could not get over the beautiful wallpaper and all the miscellaneous props that added so much charm and humor to the play.

You enter and the first thing you notice is how close the audience seats ride to the stage and then all the 1920s lingerie littered in the weirdest places. Which, to be fair, I’ve never had an illicit love affair with my dearly beloved and felt ravenous lust as to toss my undergarments every which way and I take that as a personal failure.

The music and sound effects are charitably littered throughout and provide a soft ambience to the beautiful nonsense of the performances, and the comedic use of alcohol and cigarettes (taboo, I know) had me cracking up.

Also the fooooood. They had actual food that Marjorie was snacking on that looked delightful and also inspired me to buy from their snack bar out front during the cliffhanger intermission. They served tea to each other frequently (or colored water. I don’t know how props work) which was fitting for the English countryside we were supposedly transported to.

And their accents?

Honestly fantastic. Beau had me believing he was ripped straight out of an English talkie with his pants still off and then speaking to him after the play, I was shocked at how different he sounded. Which, yes, is all part of being an actor but sometimes I am shocked at the complete difference between reality and the characters they portray.

Do I condone cheating? Absolutely not. It’s a terrible thing to do to someone you supposedly love, and in the wake of Valentine’s Day, it feels like an absurdist take on polyamory. But ask me if I condone comedic cheating in a fictional realm meant to explore what love, independence, and happiness means ESPECIALLY as a woman?

Then yeah. I suppose it’s okay.

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I’m trying something new out.

I often get trapped inside my own head about the silliest of things and sometimes I need a reminder that everything’s going to be fine.

So this series called “Touch Grass Tuesdays” will mostly be motivational things and feels-good propaganda to—you guessed it—make you feel good.

That’s my hope at least.

How bout that Bad Bunny performance at the Superbowl? “Love is stronger than hate.” I like that. Especially in this day and age. Especially when you look in the mirror and see yourself, doing the best you can and facing this life with all your nickels in your pockets weighing you down.

Be kind to yourself. If you’re a creative or not, you deserve a moment to relax, to breathe, and to enjoy this life that we have. Take yourself out for a coffee (or maybe a tea if that floats your boat).

Buy the extra cheese. Smile at yourself in the mirror. Compliment yourself as often as you can because damn. You are doing the thing! And that is amazing :)

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So if you’re plugged into any part of the sports world you will know that Bad Bunny is going to be performing at the halftime show of the Superbowl THIS WEEKEND, spring training for baseball is happening this month along with the World Baseball Classic in March and fans are salivating ready for the summer of hit-ball-base-run, and the 2026 winter Olympics is starting literally today in Milano Cortina. Very cool right? Even though the world is on fire and no one is safe, at least we have our sports!

Which isn’t to say I don’t like sports or that I’m not grateful, because I work in sports! I have to be plugged in and see what is happening to who and what the standings are but it is an ominous disconnect to care so much for…entertainment within the sports world while the reality of our existence is much darker and much more sinister than any fictious fascism could have prepared us for.

One of my favorite directors I work with would always tell us that we are entertainment; we are meant to provide a good time. Also that we’re not saving lives (when tensions run high and mistakes are made during live broadcasts) and that since we aren’t saving lives, we should enjoy what we are doing.

And I apply that mentality to every aspect of my creative endeavors: I am not saving lives. At least, not in the typical sense where I give you medicine and you feel better. I like to think that even though what I do is fun and entertainment heavy, it is something that makes someone’s day better, and that is worthwhile.

We saw a lot of that narrative play out during the 2020 pandemic years, where people leaned heavily on their found community through TV shows and streaming and found solace in those stories. It was universally connecting us because we, for a brief moment in this era of social media and content, were all watching the same things. The entertainment provided by comfort movies and newfound shows did so much for people’s mental health and enjoyment of life in general and we seem to have forgotten the heart within that art with the rise of AI.

But I digress.

I’m here to talk about sports. Yaaay.

More importantly I’m here to talk to you about a sports TV show (not an anime for once, shocker) that is gay as hell and why you should absolutely watch it.

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Book Adaptations

From my limited research online and having not yet read this book (it’s on my TBR but I have so many things on that list it’s almost like a virtual graveyard at this point), it seems like the fans are happy. The book to TV show adaptation is being well-received (shockingly) since most of those ilk tend to flop and die, but Director Jacob Tierney has done the impossible: satiated voracious smutty book readers with his take on their beloved characters.

Book adaptations are popular. Book adaptations come with a fanbase built in and a million and one contrasting expectations to live up to. Book adaptations can make or break a franchise.

“Heated Rivalry” has done something multi-million dollar movies and TV shows haven’t been able to successfully do on a shoestring budget of roughly $11 million Canadian dollaroos and that is something to talk about.

Fans of the book are satisfied and excited. A new crowd of fans of the show will now buy Rachel Reid’s book in droves (preferably from small bookshops like this one if you can!) and show their support for this kind of work. People are being united by the simple act of smut and love.

Isn’t that just beautiful?

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Hockey Boys

Listen. I love a good hockey rumble as much as the next gal, but there is a gross sense of toxic masculinity that permeates everything about this sport that is hard to ignore, especially when you’re in the thick of it.

Jockeying, rough-housing, violence. It’s all packaged neatly in their padded equipment and rulebooks and if you don’t like “boys being boys” then I have some news for you. It is a rough sport. It’s bloody and aggressive but absolutely amazing.

How fast these guys skate from one side of the rink to the other.

The hand-eye coordination as they bat a puck the size of a cookie to teammates.

The ferocious way they play every single game to the last second because in their world, this is all that matters and you can feel that fiery desire to win.

Hockey boys can be nice boys off the ice. I’ve filmed a few players and they’re fine. A little awkward and uncomfortable to be followed around with a camera (at the end of the day, athletes just want to play their sport, to hell with the press and the fanfare), but generally cool dudes.

There is that rugged persona they try to show off because this is a rough sport and any weakness that can be exploited mentally, emotionally, or physically will be done.

To that effect, hockey boys are always expected to perform at the height of masculinity.

That is the setting we find ourselves in when we first step onto the ice in “Heated Rivalry.” An aggressive sport played by aggressive men. It’s all fun and games, until you realize you have to play into the aggression no matter what. That the aggression is part of the game— the name-calling, the shoving, and the fights are all part of a game and to not play would be an impossible act.

To oppose that aggression would be a concession and the only reasonable concession would be to stop playing. But that’s not a success. There is no pride in running away from a sport you love and have built your entire life on. And so players stay silent and complicit, and, more importantly, they can stay hockey boys.

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LGBTQ+ Representation

Without getting too caught up with spoilers, I will say this is an enemies-to-lovers, forbidden romance story that begins with the most toxic as fuck relationship that develops into the most wholesome bullshit.

Take that. In whatever sense you will.

Being gay/queer in this series is such a major plot point, is so important to the narrative, that tying these hockey players to it, feels dismissive. Yet it is realistically how hockey players, if they are gay, would feel about coming out in such a testosterone fueled sport.

At first I was hesitant to like this show because it highlights the deceit, the lies Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozanov (Connor Storrie) have to dance around in order to stay safe and secure in their chosen sport with their chosen loves. Of course that’s not the only thing they’re doing (playing hockey games, winning championships, training, and enjoying their lives outside of the sport), but it is a big chunk of it since it’s such a huge part of their identity they have to hide. This show’s romance is aggressive and sometimes toxic, yet it beautifully mirrors the development of their relationship throughout their decade of knowing each other, as they slowly but surely realize what love means to them.

I was hesitant to support a queer relationship that was purely physical and could set a bad example for up and coming youth.

And yet I judged it too soon.

They may start out with the worst of intentions, but like all good stories, they grow. They develop as characters and develop their feelings and develop into a love that has weathered the seasons and can flourish through more.

I am tired of LGBTQ+ stories having being gay be the most interesting thing about the characters. Here, the characters are nuanced and unique and trying. There’s so much bad and toxicity they have to square off against, but they have each other. They have a “happy ending” and in a media landscape that is overrun with gritty realism, having a queer story have hopeful and joyful love is a beautiful choice to have made.

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Here’s the other sports related Substacks I’ve written over the years!