It's a Jumble

Yuri on Ice saved 2016. Yuri on Ice saved me.          Again and again across the Internet, I’ve seen variations on the phrases above. If you didn’t already know, Yuri on Ice is an anime that exploded into popularity this past fall, attracting a global audience and the attention of many people who don’t usually watch anime. On Twitter, it was the most talked-about fall anime by a huge margin . The airing of the finale apparently crashed the servers of the anime streaming site Crunchyroll .  Not since Attack on Titan have I seen a new anime with such cross-over buzz, and the two shows could hardly be more different . Attack on Titan was a grim, gory, almost unrelentingly dark action-thriller about teen soldiers battling man-eating giants. Yuri on Ice is a heartwarming, tender and uplifting sports anime about love and male figure skating. Yuri on Ice saved 2016             --Twitt...

Like many writers I know, I have been struggling with fiction writing this past week. I fear that my stories are self-indulgent drivel. Worse, I fear that stories in general are useless—or rather, that the only stories that have an effect in this world are broad propaganda which foment rage, divide us, and blind us. I say this even as I acknowledge that I’ve turned to literature for comfort. I’ve been reading poetry. I see beauty in art. But. . . but I wonder how much it matters. My reading picks this month were all chosen before the U.S. presidential election. They are beautiful stories and essays. Some of them are very dark. Some are hopeful. Some ring not only with defiance, but with ferocious burn-the-world-down rage that resonates uncomfortably with me at this moment, when I think that the politics of nihilism have brought my country to this point. I’m sharing these stories, though. Even if I can’t write myself, I can boost other voices. I don’t know what good a ...

The sun is shining, the world has not yet ended, and I have a free morning to write this. I’m late with my bimonthly list of short fiction recs, but let’s go, shall we? Stories About Family Our relationships with our birth families are often the most fraught of all—these ties we did not choose and cannot sever. The stories that have hit hardest for me of late are the ones that look at these bonds. My Grandmother’s Bones  by S.L. Huang at Daily Science Fiction So much conveyed in such a short flash piece. The gaps between generations, the disappointments and distance and love that endures despite it all. This story is spare, understated, and devastating. I did not know the Chinese term, haau , before I read this, but I think I understand it just a little, now. Of all the “family” stories I’ve picked this month, it’s the one that I most personally connect with. Some Breakable Things by Cassandra Khaw in the The Dark Like Huang’s story above, Khaw’s is als...

On turning 40 and things I've seen and read: Fate/Zero, A Visit from the Goon Squad, The Magicians. Ways to make yourself melancholy during these gorgeous autumn days.  It’s two months before I turn 40. But I’ve been mourning the end of my thirties for the last year. 40 is when you have to recognize, finally, that there are doors you’ve passed which will never open to you; there are paths which are forever blocked. “ Way leads on to way,” as the poet said , and you will never find your way back to that turning point in the golden wood. Of course, I’ve been realizing this throughout my thirties. It’s just that the finality of that number, “40”—the thudding close of a decade—has a new hardness that drives the point home. One of the things I’ve been thinking about lately is failure, and of how it is not something talked about in our world. All our cultural narratives are of success. We tell our children that they can do anything, as long as they work hard enough and believ...