Felicia day’s autobiography: the ultimate nerd role model

This book was remarkable. I said it. Favourite book so far this year. It managed to capture the essence of Felicia day in writing form, the sort of book you’d read in her voice. It talked about her exploits as a home-schooled kid in the south and her tussle with being a child prodigy alongside her professional and virtual life in an honest tone without sounding too forced or melodramatic. Her writing is fun to consume and personally responsible for my late nights spent desperate to get to the end of the chapter if it kills me.

I managed to empathise with her narration, getting genuinely nervous about her ill fortune and impressed/excited with her victories to the point where I subjected my family and friends into conversations about a book they haven’t even read because I needed to vent the roller-coaster of emotions she sent the reader through. Her writing manages to allow her audience to view the world through the lens she viewed it, in a way that even her best videos couldn't. Even her anxiety comes through in her writing as she references her various spirit animals (the majority of which being prey.)

I found the chapter about her experiences with comic con and Gamergate to be particularly insightful and the perfect proof that her life is a pendulum of extremes swaying from an army a swooning fans getting her name tattooed over their body to video game addiction and her details being released into the abyss for anyone to find. In conclusion this book is a wild ride, clear your evenings and grab a bookmark ASAP.

Side note: if Felicia sees this then please help a fella out and share it with your fan base. it would mean a lot to me, as a creator who started from scratch in the early 2000s you know how hard it is to get a fan base without selling your soul to Satan.

Deadpool: a violent, sexy, funny masterpiece

I’ve just witnesses the marvel that is Deadpool. After dozens of trailers for assorted teen movies each featuring cheesy 80s tunes the rude, crude and misconstrued masterpiece struck the big screen like a meteor, with it’s tongue and cheek dialog, tarentino-esque violence, and gripping storyline DC have a lot of competition.

Actress Morena Baccarin managed to pull of the performance as a flirtatious ex-prostitute girlfriend Vanessa which is the polar opposite of her usual role as the innocent and pure Dr Tomkinson from Gotham proving she is a jack of all trades. Ed Skrein managed to muster the sadism and accent of his character as the British supervillain Ajax (AKA Francis) who reminded me of Spike from Buffy. Finally Ryan Renolds managed to capture the essence of the character that is Deadpool right off the bat with his gallows humour and in-your-face attitude to life leaving the audience hungry for more.

The combination of grit and wit left the plot dramatic and the humour poignant without taking away from the depressing moments, the plot humanised Deadpool just enough to encourage sympathy without making the movie and it’s cartoonish violence depressing. It hit on serious subjects such as cancer doubling them with fourth wall breaks and moments that will leave you yelling at the screen in iritation for him to “JUST KISS THE GIRL!”

Of course no Deadpool movie would be complete without sexual innuendo, bisexuality, pop culture references and the breaking of whatever shards of the fourth wall remain from the last time he visited. This movie is no exception with all of these things from the get-go and so much more, there are Xmen, explosions and steamy sex scenes.

In conclusion if you want a film with the humour of Paul, the swordsmanship and violence of Kill Bill and the timing of Borat then this is the film for you. The only question I’m left with is will DC’s Suicide squad manage to compete for the fiction crown? Only time will tell.

privilege

I live a pretty good life, I'm young, able bodied, middle class, white and male with no mental health issues and lots of supportive friends/family which basically means I won the situational lottery. So I can't argue that I'm a high authority on this topic, but here are my 2 cent.

I dislike the concept of privilege, because I feel my ascribed status makes me ordinary, just another white kid who achieves because society's golden light hit him. It feels as if it's saying my achievements are less real and my problems are less valid than those identical problems on a minority. As if I'm destined to mediocrity because I haven't needed to overcome a great crisis.

It also creates the problematic view that the lives of women/people of colour are inherently worse due to their position in society, which is a false assumption. I understand that these people go through hardships in day to day life such as a lack of role models in the media (how many black lead characters can you name? What about Asian leads? Leads with disability?) And that they do have hurdles to overcome, but perpetuating an "us and them" culture antagonises people who haven't done anything wrong.

But I digress, perhaps my disapproval is due to my view of the world, I have never seen how the other half live and until a "freaky Friday"situation occurs I can't. I'd be interested in hearing other arguments, let's open a conversation. 

Until then check out some of my other work