Book Review: Unashamed, A Coming-out guide for LGBTQ Christians By: Amber Cantorna

This book is a must have resource for LGBTQIA Christians to have before they come out to their friends and family!

Amber Cantorna goes through different steps to help a person know if it's a good idea to come out to people.

The Things pointed out in this book will be a life saving resource for many LGBT People of faith! 

Also if you are in a position to help people who what to come out, this book is a great tool to help you give well thought out advice to help it go as well as it can! 

Must read!

 

Book Review: CINDERELLA IS DEAD. By Kalynn Bayron

 

Genre: Fantasy/ Fairy tale. Queer Scale: Flaming Enjoyment level: Fantastic.

Cinderella is dead is a wonderfully crafted Fantasy book! Using the backdrop of the fairy tale Cinderella to weave a new story, while deconstructing how we think of the classic fairy tale was a brilliant move by the author! 

Also making the main Character a POC is a wonderful move! So many stories just assume everyone is white, and it was wonderful that the main character was not white! 

The wlw Romance was perfect! It built super well, and was very satisfying! 

The story wonderfully flowed and I didn't see the twist coming at all! Such a delight!

If you love queer fantasy, this is the book for you! 

More about the story following:

In the book, the fairy tale story of Cinderella is used to subjugate women in the city where Prince Charming once lived. The king requires women to dress up like Cinderella did and go to an annual ball where they get chosen by the men of the land. Failure to get chosen after 3 balls, results in you being a 'forfeit'. However the story of cinderella has clearly been twisted and used as propaganda  (for reasons you learn about). 

It’s worse for Sophia (the main character) because... 

she only likes women! So it’s 

way more awful of a prospect to get forced into a mixed marriage (not that a forced marriage is good for anyone)!

She slowly meets different characters that move her towards making change in the land.

For example:  

The descendant of one of the stepsisters 

and the fairy godmother (who’s actually a witch) 

There’s so many magical mysteries and just plain history that she has to uncover in her desire to change the rules of the kingdom! 

Super delightful and well worth the read! 

Graphic Novel Queer Book Review: Always Human by Ari North

THIS BOOK IS SO CUTE! It is a wonderfully Queer WLW love story! 

It's full of Nonbinary, Queer, Gay, Ace representation! Its a wonderful LGBTQIA+ comic book! 

And the art work is gorgeous! 

I took a picture of a random page to show how beautiful it is, and it's like this through out the whole book! 

I'm not going to do any spoiling for this one, just go get a copy! It's so worth it! The romance is wonderful, the story is real, and the representation is amazing, what else do you need?? 

Go buy it!

 

Queer Review: Book: If I Was Your Girl By: Meredith Russo

 Note: there have been many abuse allegations that have been raised against this author, I'm not deleting this post, due to it not being confirmed. however here's a link for you to decide TW: Abuse

(Spoiler Free) Review: 

Great High school Romance book following a Transgender Girl. Are you curious about the ( fictionalized ) mindset and life of a Trans-woman? This book is a great perspective! Written by a Transwoman it's a great dive into the fears and concerns of a Trans person navigating life! 

(Spoliers) 

The main character (Amanda) was attacked at her previous school where she started her transition. So she moves to live with her father to be able to finish school as a girl (who she is) without people knowing anything about her past (so she can just live through high school). She meets and develops friendships with different people throughout the book. But the most impactful and scary is a boy (Grant) who she (and he) develops feelings for over the course of the book. Obviously many of the concerns she has about this are if he finds out she's trans, what will he do, will he love her still? Due to telling a friend her secret, and it getting out we get to find out what happens if everyone finds out! 

IT's a brutal scary section of writing when a Transphobic football player attacks her after finding out. Luckily most of her friends have come to love her for who she is and after working through all of her own emotions (being attacked again) she decides to finish school with her friends and Grant. 

This was a wonderful book! If you don't have Trans friends and want to get into the mind of a Transgirl this is a good start. If you want a wonderful high school romance story this is also the book for you. I highly recommend! 

Review: Book: The Abyss Surrounds Us by :Emily Skrutskie

 Today marks the start of my doing book reviews! (and maybe a revival of my use of this site)! 

                    (non spoiler) Review:

This was an interesting book! If you like Alternate Future Earth, Pirates, Sea Monsters, Female Protagonists, and WLW undertones this book is for you! For an author's first outing this is a very exciting well written book! I would recommend with one caveat, the setting confused me (more in spoilers) and so it took me a hot minute to get into the actual story. But once the story got going I was hooked and finished it in a couple days. 

(SPOILERS) Review: 

This book starts with a confusing setting, first it's earth, but in the future where the oceans have swallowed most of the land masses (though a map in the front seems to not agree with this) this has forced many governments to break into smaller countries (? not clear) and due to a huge amount of resources now being transported via water (like where did air travel go? IDK there are a type of helicopter in the book so I really don't know) an organization creates giant Sea Monsters that protect boats they imprint to. Why are big expensive monsters something governments fund over bigger weapons, idk but it's just what happened apparently. This setting made it hard to get into this book. Like why didn't the author just make up a new planet/world to have this book set in? The book barely mentions 'earth' other than to use where the main character Cassandra is from as a sort of slur by the pirates. Again once you get over the setting and just let it go, the story is super interesting. Readers follow Cass who has been training with her particular monster and is ready to go on her first mission to protect a ship. The first conflict she encounters is that her beast seems to be getting sick! Right about when her beast is least capable from this sickness is when pirates attack! Cass doesn't really know what to do due to her beast being almost dead, so in her confusion, she gets captured, her beast is killed and her ship is sunk. 

She spends the rest of the book a captive on this new pirate ship. where she feels forced to raise a Sea monster (that pirates have mysteriously acquired)  She is guarded by swift, a girl whom you find is only a pirate out of the need to feed her family, so it probably isn't Stockholm Syndrome (maybe??) when both girls start to have feelings for each other. Fair warning for anyone looking for a fast WLW romance, this isn't that. It's a slow (and feels mostly appropriate) build to their relationship being more than just captor/guard. Eventually people find out she didn't die during her mission and people come to rescue her, but as a prisoner of a pirate ship with a sea monster, she's forced to destroy her rescuers... many different times! The book ends with her realizing she cannot be saved (due to what she's done) and because of her love for Swift, she asks to join the pirate crew. 

This book ended with me wanting more, and surprise, there is a sequel! And I will be picking it up at some point, because I want more of Swift and Cass as equals and ready for love! lol 

Worth picking up? yeah, just don't spend a lot of time on the weird setting! 

ComicCon!

So I have cosplayed for awhile now, but I had never made it to...
a COMIC CON!

free comic book day this year 3rd place cosplay contest!

First the costume:

So backstory, recently Marvel comics started up the Exiles comic again. Originally Blink picked up a team and travelled the multiverse fixing various problems (pretty cool right?) that run ended and then recently the display a cover that had blink and mystery silhouettes; these were revealed slowly and as it turned out one of them was a Sarah Connor esc version of Ms Marvel!

I thought it was so cool looking that I had to do a cosplay as her!

She has a big gun (which why does everyone in the Marvel universe who goes to the future have a giant gun?) and I wanted to make it and everything else for the con!

So I built this gun that is more than half as big as I am, updated my Ms. Marvel armband and bought a jacket and pants to match (I know lame should have made it!!) and we went to the Motor City ComicCon in Novi!

The Con:

 I saw Bombshell Mera! She made her fabric!!?! so cool

The dragon won the cosplay contest! 

 The baby wanted to touch bell's hand!

 Wrong optimus, but super cool anyway, plus the work put into that! woot woot!

 It should be noted that cosplayers are the best and super excited to have their pictures taken!

 Old rex!

It was so much fun!

Tara Strong broke her foot so she signed stuff and sent it instead of herself! So sweet (but get better!) and we got a free signature!!?

We 'saw' Summer Glau (we didn't have time to see her see her but still super cool)!

The cosplay contest was exciting and fun, though I'm pretty sure I dashed on stage and off before I knew what I had done! Ha!

But I have to say one of my highlights was seeing a Ms. Marvel cosplay in person. Honestly (besides my own versions of her), this was my first time seeing anyone cosplay as her. I hadn't realized how much that meant to me until after I didn't get a picture with her :(  (um twice I might add)

The more I thought about it the more I realized that I got to see my favorite comic book hero in person and it was just amazing! 

Kamala Khan is such a great hero and I love almost everything about her, and seeing her in person was like being a kid again! 

So thanks to that cosplayer for being amazing!

All in all it was a great time, and I even got to be in an interview!

It was a super great experience that I am excited to repeat in the future!

 

Gladiator Sandals

So I don't have any cosplay (per say) or finished Doll armor (though some is in process), BUT!

I Did decide to make a pair of shoes for myself.
So between the Cosplay and doll cosplay (?), I've learned a lot about making things. One of the big things I didn't do with the Wonder Woman costume was use patterns. ALWAYS USE PATTERNS!!!!!
I watched some Evil Ted Smith videos, where he talked about pattern making. I applied this knowledge to the doll making that I've been doing, but had yet to do it for me! So I foiled up my leg and duct taped it, till I almost couldn't walk. Using a sharpie I figured out where I wanted all the lines...

I used the above picture for referencing approximately what I wanted to make. I wanted it all to mostly be one piece so I didn't make different strips. It worked out pretty good!
I transferred half of the leg pattern to paper (so it will be the same on both sides)

As you can see in the picture I did end up with two pieces, one that was the full foot and half the leg. I did the full foot because the foot has such a drastic angle change vs the leg. This pattern allowed me to trace it all out onto my fabric (Jo-Ann's).
I did this 4 times for both pieces! Lot of work...

Here you can see that I have assembled most of the pieces and was adding the zipper up the back! The zipper runs from the heal to the top (making it easy to get in and out while keeping the whole thing tight to my leg).
then I had to make the sole.
I used EVA Foam, and a top piece of the fabric. I layered the ends of the leg and foot pieces under the fabric and above the foam.
Gluing it all together I now had a shoe!
I painted a little, but need to do a bit more where the white backside of the fabric shows in spots.

I was really happy and even had someone ask where I bought them! SWEET!

Turned out pretty good! REMEMBER ALWAYS USE PATTERNS!!!
Thanks again for reading!