What’s up with this month?
Oh, Witch Hat Atelier, my beloved. I don’t think there’s been a manga series that I’ve ever read this slowly, frankly – the illustrations are just so gorgeous that I find myself spending twice as long on each page just looking. Witch Hat is about power, who should hold it and who they are responsible to, and I am continually impressed by how seriously it is interested in really interrogating that premise. Is this a comic about girls solving magical problems through the power of friendship? Yes. It’s also about systemic ableism, dogmatic adherence to tradition, and the real and true consequences of a world where anyone could set off a nuclear level event at any time, forever.
Hard Boiled rules.
As you can tell from these monthly wrap-ups, my main media consumption tends to be along genre lines, particularly science fiction and horror. I’ve only recently (read: the past year or two) begun to dip my toes into romance, and discovered a world of new tropes and archetypes that I just find absolutely delightful. I read Reclaimed by Seth Haddon, first recommended by Carter Kalchik in one of his videos, in maybe 48 hours – this is not a perfect book by any means (I think the lead’s self-loathing started to wear thin about halfway through, so by the end it was really grinding my gears), but it’s such a fun ride from beginning to end and the world Haddon sets up is compelling enough that I immediately went and bought the other two in the series. It’s great! And just look at that cover!
What else have we been doing?
Metal gear solid Delta: snake eater
2025
pokopia
2026
Mother mary
2026
pub walks with bill bailey
Channel 4
mexican gothic
Silia Moreno-Garcia
an unkindness of ghosts
Rivers Solomon
The Fifth Element
1997
wayward
2025
what else?
- Books
- This Conversation is Being Recorded (Poetry)
- The Life of the Party is Harder to Find Until You’re the Last One Around (Poetry)
- TV
- Taskmaster (on my money, series 13 is one of the best I’ve watched so far)
- The Flyers
- My relationship with sports is very much that of a fair-weather fan. Not so much due to lack of interest, but more that I find myself getting carried away so quickly whenever I do start getting interested. My roommate is a lifelong Flyer’s fan, so I found myself watching a lot of games this month. I like hockey! Ton of fun to watch…that said, at one notable point during the Flyer v. Penguins series, I found my set thinking with complete sincerity: “if I set myself on fire, do we think it would help The Boys play better?” They were immediately absolutely shellacked by the Hurricanes, so…maybe it could have helped…
What’s on deck?
After three years in my current place (and almost a decade of living with other people), I am moving the first weekend in May. It’s been a bittersweet transition in many ways, but this month has been basically dominated by packing and logistics without much room for anything else. In fact, I look at the above and I’m frankly shocked I managed to do so much! My brain is full of uHaul rentals and apartment tours and throwing things into boxes, so the excitement of living on my own for the first time hasn’t had time to sink in. That said, I have some intentions for what I’ll be doing when I get solo control of my TV.
Gabie Martin 
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