PEN15 and Me: Reflections on Shame, Empathy, and Being a 13-Year-Old Girl

October 3, 2020 Kelli

PEN15 is a comedy series on Hulu co-created by Maya Erskine, Anna Konkle, and Sam Zvibleman. The series follows fictionalized versions of the creators as 7th graders in the year 2000, and it is cringe comedy at its finest (and most unbearable). The show’s cringiest weapons are its stars: Erskine and Konkle, two women in their 30s acting as 13-year-old versions of themselves alongside an ensemble of literal 13-year-olds. It covers a wide range of classic coming-of-age tropes, and uses a combination of humor, surreality, and surprising poignancy to dig deep into some of the less-explored subjects of teen girlhood: cultural identity, masturbation, and doing whippets in some girl’s garage, just to name a few.

This show is not for the faint of heart when it comes to second-hand embarrassment. Few entries in the cringe comedy canon are quite as piercing as this show, and unless you are ready to open yourself up to intense feelings of empathy-fueled shame, steer clear. The reaction this show provokes in me is strongly tied to my own experiences, so I thought it might be fun to sort through some of them and figure out what it is about PEN15 that has lodged it so sharply into my heart.

10 Weeks of Spooktober: Antebellum (Week 5 of 10)

September 29, 2020 Emily

Well, well, well. I’m a liar. I said I was going to be on time with my next Spooktober: 2 Spook 2 Tober post, but you know what? It’s 2020, and there are no rules, so these are just going up when they go up. Deal with it.

Today, in week 5 of Spooktober (3 days late), we’re going to take a look at Antebellum, the movie that everyone wanted to see because it stars Janelle Monae and was advertised as being from the producers of Us and Get Out. Producers. Not director. Not writer. That should be the first red flag here.

The posters also featured the tagline “If it chooses you, nothing can save you,” which is creepy, sure. But what does that mean? I’ll get to it at the end of this post. Spoilers to follow. But honestly, if you’ve seen the trailer, you know what happens. It’s already been spoiled. More on that too. Here we go.

Making the Old New: A Spoiler-Free Review of Raised by Wolves

September 24, 2020 Mary

Father and Mother in their barren wasteland of a home.

Ridley Scott has had a lasting impact on science fiction in film, so much so that when we see androids or aliens on screen, our minds immediately wander to Alien, or even the less appreciated Prometheus. As the director for the first episode of HBOMax’s new show Raised By Wolves, Scott reintroduces us to some of his most classic themes: the meaning of humanity, the probability of life on other planets, and the horror of existence in an undeveloped, expansive new world. That being said, Scott didn’t create Raised By Wolves (though he does serve as an executive producer for the series). Instead, that credit goes to Aaron Guzikowski. Guzikowski has created a world in which the main ideas of Scott’s career can flourish and be explored with unbelievable depth—in a way that could never happen in a single film.

10 Weeks of Spooktober: The Owners (Week 4 of 10)

September 23, 2020 Emily

I’m finally back with more Spooktober. Yes, I know this is really late. The last one was early. This one is late. It’s 2020. There are no rules anymore.

Anyway, this time I’m reviewing the film The Owners, which is a new horror/thriller film starring Maisie Williams, and since that’s this movie’s only claim to fame, she’s front and center in all of the posters. To be fair, she is a main character in this story, so it’s not totally off base. But when a movie advertises its star this much rather than its plot… you do have to wonder.

And wonder I did. And then I watched it.

Coincidence Island: The Guest List by Lucy Foley

September 22, 2020 Susan

I love murder mystery novels, so when I kept seeing The Guest List by Lucy Foley pop up all over Bookstagram, I was excited to check out a new author. Foley's books have been compared to Ruth Ware's, and because I liked a few of Ware's novels, I had high hopes for The Guest List. Unfortunately, I walked away quite disappointed.

Othersode #45: Waiting for the Other Maggot to Drop / I'm Thinking of Ending Things

September 21, 2020 The Squad

Click through for summary, table of contents, and show notes!

Queer Girl Book Club: The Color Purple

September 16, 2020 Kelli & Emily

Kelli: It is September, and time for our second ever Queer Book Club meeting!

Emily: How fun. It's officially a thing now because we've done it two times.

Kelli: Yay us!

Kelli: So, the point of doing this club is to expose ourselves to more queer lit. I feel like I have a lot of catching up to do in terms of queer literature, and while I am obviously into reading more recent stuff (like we did for our last post), I also wanted to take this opportunity to fill in a very important blind spot for myself: The Color Purple by Alice Walker.

Not only had I never read The Color Purple, but I also had no idea that it was even queer. I knew it was a huge touchstone of Black literature as well as southern literature, but that was the extent of my knowledge of the book. Then Emily told me I should read it, with the caveat that it is epistolary, a word I just had to look up how to spell.

Emily: Haha. Yes, Kelli famously hates epistolary novels.

Spoilers to follow for this book from 1982.

YA Book Club: Dear Martin by Nic Stone

September 12, 2020 Mary & Emily

Mary: Dear Martin is the 2017 debut of Nic Stone, who has since had a pretty successful career in YA lit. Stone is about to release the sequel to Dear Martin, Dear Justyce, and I’m personally really hyped about it.

Dear Martin follows Justyce McAllister as he’s mistakenly arrested––violently––then left with a lot of confusion and emotion over the arrest. Justyce undertakes a personal growth project by writing letters to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (the titular Martin). Through his letters, he investigates racial prejudice in his Georgia prep school, as well as the country at large.

I don’t want to say what I most want to say just yet because, well, it’s a pretty big spoiler. The book takes a turn partway through and becomes kind of intense. So consider this a ~spoiler warning.~

10 Weeks of Spooktober: The Babysitter: Killer Queen (Week 3 of 10)

September 11, 2020 Emily

Hi friends. For this next installment of 10 Weeks of Spooktober: 2 Spook 2 Tober, we’ve got another sequel. It’s not that I’m attempting to do a bunch of sequels for the sophomore run of this blog. It’s just sort of turning out that way.

Anyhow, this week, we’re looking at the new Netflix film The Babysitter: Killer Queen, which apparently is the “long awaited” sequel to The Babysitter, starring Samara Weaving, whom I loved in Ready or Not, the movie I covered for the FIRST EVER Spooktober post. So basically she’s legendary. Do you see how I’m creating my own Spooktober mythology here? Spooktober is undeniable.

The reason I put “long awaited” in quotes is because… was anyone really awaiting this movie? Apparently when this sequel was announced people were excited? But I have to say I watched The Babysitter when it first came out, and I don’t remember being very impressed. Honestly, I don’t remember ANYTHING about it. I had to look through this blog to make sure I hadn’t covered it already. It left such a non-impression on me I couldn’t even remember if I had or hadn’t written about this movie franchise before.

So did this HIGHLY ANTICIPATED sequel live up to the non-hype?