The 2021 Biggest and Best Roundup of Me-ness!

   Well, invisible internet friends! Another year draws to a close, which means it’s time again for the annual roundup of What I’ve Been Thinking About This Year, As Told Through Events That Happened and Media I Consumed and Sometimes Created! I ask ye kindly to read or at least skim through this beast of a thing to make me feel interesting, and to please leave a comment— here, on Facebook, on Twitter, wherever— so that I know you did, because my love language is External Validation. Actually that’s Words of Affirmation, but let’s be honest, it’s really External Validation. Anyway, we begin as is often our wont with:

Real Life Stuff

 Life Events In Mostly Chronological Order

 1. In March, while the library was in another period of Curbside Only Services, I was weeding the juvenile nonfiction section with the aid of a rolling stool— for sitting, not standing— but nonetheless I SAT on it wrong, it shot out from under me, throwing me backward into the bookshelves where I conked my head and got a concussion. So whoo, me.

 2. So, like, I’m enough of an out of shape klutz that I don’t need to take any MORE avoidable risks with my health, so as soon as we each were able to— the youngest turned 12 just days before vaccines opened for 12yos!— we all got vaccinated against Covid-19, and just in time, because I surely would not have felt comfortable with the next item on this list if we hadn’t been:

 3. In June we drove down to Jacksonville, FL, home of the immortal Jason Mendoza, to visit with my sister-in-law and her family. The little cousins loved the big cousins something fierce. We took some hikes, went to the beach and got really really sunburnt, and took a day trip a little further south to see the Daytona Speedway— which turned out to be interesting even for the non-car-people among us, but was heaven for Sam— and St. Augustine, which I enjoyed more than the rest of my family, although we all enjoyed Cousteau’s, a waffles-and-ice-cream place.

 4. Then in August we FINALLY went camping again after two years missing it, to Gettysburg. We took lots of tours, which reminded me of my dad, who used to be able to GIVE most of those tours by heart— except for the Ghost Tour, which I’d never done before, and proved to be really interesting!

 5. But generally, health around here kind of sucks, mental health particularly. Maddie’s anxiety is at crisis levels but it’s hard to get help when EVERYONE is stressed and all the potential resources have enough else to be dealing with, anyway. Which includes me. Honestly, I could use some help. But so could EVERYONE, so how can I even ask? But maybe being stressed is why Maddie and I have both been the ones in this household to get Breakthrough Covid… TWICE. At least, assumed twice. The first time, in October, I tested positive and Maddie tested negative, although we had the exact same symptoms. The second time, this past WEEK, MADDIE tested positive and I tested negative, although Maddie is much sicker than I am. But NEITHER of us got as sick as we COULD have gotten, because VACCINES DO WORK, DANGIT— maybe they didn’t stop us getting sick, but they DID stop us getting BADLY sick. In fact if this WASN’T a pandemic, none of my symptoms either time might have even convinced me to call off work, that’s how mild they were. Maddie’s current bout is definitely miserable sounding, at least, but no worse than a bad cold. GET VACCINATED.

  

Christmas

 This is usually the portion of the roundup where I go into everyone’s Christmas Loot for the year, but nothing’s jumping out as particularly exciting. I’ve gotten lots of nice sweaters. I made clothes for people, as usual, too, including a wolf hoodie for Maddie, and then I had a lot of faux-wolf-fur left over so I made another for little cousin Max, so that Max can wear his wolf suit and make mischief of one kind and another (Max really is a wild thing, it’s very appropriate). He looks pretty cute in it, according to the picture I was sent, because while we were supposed to have Christmas with J’s side of the family on Monday, by then Maddie had already tested positive, and although Max is a wild thing, he is too little to be vaccinated and he has asthma, too, so we couldn’t risk it. My family, on the other hand, was supposed to get together on Christmas Eve, but even before Maddie got sick, my sister postponed that one because, although SHE felt fine, there had just been a massive Covid outbreak at her workplace. She never did test positive, herself, but it turned out to be for the best since Maddie ended up getting sick the day before Christmas Eve! So as of this writing, we have not yet had Christmas with the Matviyas. But we WILL! It’s only been postponed! We’re getting the full twelve days and more out of this Christmas, I tell you!

  Library Happenings

Stuff that Happened With the Library, Besides Me Bumping My Head, In Not Exactly Chronological Order:

 1. At the beginning of the year we were in Curbside mode, which meant no in-person programs, which meant still lots of video programs! I don’t know if I mentioned last year that the children’s department was switching off Saturday video storytimes, too? Anyway, that was how I squeezed in my annual Mock Caldecott, through my January “Saturday Family Storytime” slot. I only got three responses, including my own, but that was enough to name a clear winner (The Oldest Student, see below for more reviewiness) AND a clear Honor book (We Are Water Protectors, which of course went on to win the REAL Caldecott and which I reviewed in LAST year’s roundup. Oh yeah, and I did use it for Mundo later, but in March, not April, for "World Water Day").

List within a list: My Top Only 5 Saturday Family story time videos!

1. Mock Caldecott 
2. Happy Birthday Fred Rogers! 
3. World Whale Day  These last three are kind of tied for third place, but the Whale one got two Likes on YouTube…
4. Earth Haiku  …The Haiku one Like…
5. Pets  …and this one no Likes EVEN THOUGH IT’S QUITE NICE ENOUGH THANKS, so I’ll just let the discerning public put them in this order, here.

 2. I also took the Bedtime Stories video for the Spring season, then Anne took it over in June, but she left in October so now I’m doing Bedtime Stories again. Here’s a link to the entire Bedtime Stories playlist, because none of them are sticking out enough for me to pick my top five.

3. But in June, the library opened up to limited in-person services again, and most earth-shakingly, the whole Childrens/YA Department moved downstairs to the main floor. YA got tagged onto the end of the Adult books, and Children’s moved into the downstairs meeting room. The idea is of course to save money by only having the upstairs open for special occasions— now EVERYTHING is a meeting room— and because we’ve been short-staffed, we don’t have to worry about staffing upstairs, or just one person being upstairs alone which is a safety concern (and I’m worried my concussion might have had something to do with pounding that line of thinking in, because I HAD been up there alone and it WAS just luck that someone else happened to come up within minutes for me to say “help” to). Our director did her best to spin this as a positive move, but after half a year I’m still convinced it sucks. Teens no longer have their safe hangout space (not that indoor hangout spaces are currently safe at all, but POST-pandemic!), and small children don’t have the same freedom to be kids (ie, loud), butted right up next to the quiet grownup library like this. And there’s no more play area, which has disappointed many a group of young visitors and their harried grownups— which, again, is understandable in a pandemic, but AFTER??? And most selfishly, I used to RULE the upstairs. I knew where everything was and what to do in every situation and ALL THE BOOKS— but now I’m in the Grownup section, because there’s no reference desk in the new children’s room, and yes I get to help people with children’s stuff occasionally but I mostly have to do grownup stuff which is NOT my area of expertise, and I STILL don’t know where everything is (not book-wise, I know where the books are; but like, where-is-the-masking-tape-stored-wise) or all the grownup desk policies after half a year and I JUST MISS having a whole children’s library, OKAY?

 4. In person programs also returned, though during the summer we had the benefit of doing them all outside. “Outside,” though, was a park ten minutes away. This wasn’t a problem for the Summer Quest camp so much, because it’s a big enough deal that people sought it out, but I supposedly had an evening storytime at the park this summer, too. No one EVER came. I couldn’t even get rare passers-by to come. But come fall, we’re back indoors, in the now wide-open upstairs “meeting rooms,” in which I took up Yoga Storytime on Monday mornings again, and started a Thursday morning storytime that our director really wanted to be INTERACTIVE!!! and Ms Barb and I were like Isn’t that what we already DO? but anyhoo so I put together a booklist that really leaned INTO interactiveness and for about a month I did that and it was great fun, but then we had like a mass exodus of staff and no longer had enough staff to HAVE Thursday story times, so that was that.

 5. I also staffed two EVENT programs this fall for which I got to dress in costume. Wait, THREE event programs, but I reused the first costume for the second. Fan Fest, our library Not-ComiCon, came back, and I made an awesome Squirrel Girl costume, and manned a Shrinky-Dink making room. Then I wore Squirrel Girl again for our Halloween walk-through trick-or-treat. Then we had storytime with Mrs. Claus, and guess who was Mrs. Claus! (sorry, no pic). Fun stuff. But is it a coincidence that BOTH my bouts of breakthrough Covid set in within a week of both Fan Fest and Mrs. Claus’s storytime? HMMMMM.

 

And most importantly, library-relatedly:

 Top 5 Mundo Monday Episodes!

I thought maybe I’d do a top 10 for Mundo since I love them all so much, but it turned out there were exactly five in the Must Include category before I got into a much murkier which-ones-are-REALLY-the-best next five, so top 5 is what you get. I mean, watch all of them, I worked really hard, but here’s the cream of the crop:

 1. "Everybody Counts"  As soon as I started flipping through this wild Norwegian “counting book” I knew I needed to use it on Mundo, but how? It’s a complicated seek-and-find you can study for hours? That didn’t stop me giving at least an OVERVIEW (for half an hour) of how it works! It’s super fun, and now you need to find the book yourself so you can find all the secrets and hidden storylines and so forth!

2. "Dayenu!"  This was pure joy to make. I THINK I’d heard this traditional Passover song before, but I had to look it up first— whew, good thing I didn’t have to do it ALL in Hebrew!— but then I got the hang of it and learned to harmonize with myself (and WHY the heck did I give Mundo such a high-pitched voice!) and it’s just a very joyful video, you should watch it just to smile.

3. "Black History Month"  The endpapers of today’s book, Carter Reads the Newspaper, are stuffed full with Black historical icons, and librarian that I am, I felt compelled to identify every one and tie them— when possible— to at least one other book we have in the library. SO many great stories! You will learn (just hints of) so much!

4. "Celebrate Your Name"  When you grow up in the 1980s with a name like “Amy Matviya”— a first name second only to “Jennifer” in commonness, a last name unpronounceable by pretty much everyone you meet— you have a lot of feelings about names. When I found out “Celebrate Your Name Week” exists, I KNEW it had to be a Mundo episode, with Alma and Your Name Is a Song being such perfect stories for it. AND THEN, someone took out Your Name is a Song and KEPT IT OVERDUE! “Celebrate Your Name Week” was technically long gone by the time I got my hands on it, but I made this video anyway, because NAMES!

5. "Going to School"  Mundo went to once a month in the fall, and the videos were allowed to be longer, too (”Everybody Counts” and “Black History Month” were outliers in the earlier part of the year because I JUST COULDN’T HELP IT), so I got to use more books. My First Day had JUST arrived and I stole it before it even finished going through processing, because it was such a perfect opener. Then I found This Is the Way We Go To School which was PERFECT, thematically, but it was also thirty years old, and I could already see at first glance-through that some of it was out of date (THERE WAS STILL A USSR!), so I ended up doing a lot of research so I could annotate with updated information and that was very interesting!

 So we’re not doing Mundo anymore in the coming year, because it takes up too much time now that we’re back to in-person services AND short-staffed, but honestly, I wonder if this might not be my calling? Sharing stories through education and puppetry? I mean my whole working for Sesame Street obsession paired with my story obsession? I was listening to Matt Vogel’s Below the Frame podcast (which I mentioned last year) a few weeks back and, you know, a lot of his guests do several different things for Sesame Street and/or whatever, most commonly puppeteers AND writers, and one of them a few weeks ago said something like, “Well, I had experience writing for puppets,” and I was like THAT’S A THING!?! I now have experience writing for puppets! And truly I’m only middling at puppeteering and video editing and acting on camera, but if I could get a real job WRITING something like Mundo Monday, I mean, that’s what I’m aiming for, isn’t it? 

 But in the meantime, speaking of sharing stories:

  Media Reviews

BOOKS:

Top 5 2021 Picture Books

1. My First Day, by Phung Nguyen Quang and Huynh Kim Lien. I bought this Vietnamese book with the thought of possibly using it for Mundo, and it really did come right on time and was PERFECT for opening the “Going to School” episode. I love how the whole journey is told through school metaphors, even though it doesn’t explicitly SAY that’s where he’s going until he gets there. I love the pictures so animated and flowing!

2. The Rock from the Sky, written and illustrated by Jon Klassen. Have I mentioned lately that I love Jon Klassen? I love Jon Klassen. I love the way his seemingly simple illustrations have such hilarious expression. I love the dry, absurdist humor. I love that his vision exists in the world.    

3. Milo Imagines the World, written by Matt de la Pena, illustrated by Christian Robinson. Have you seen that Christian Robinson has designed a whole line of kids decor and junk for Target this year?  That’s awesome. Christian Robinson needs to be all mainstream like that. I meant to use this for Mundo sometime, but never got the chance.

4. Wonder Walkers, written and illustrated by Micha Archer. This would have been a perfect book to use at my outdoor summer storytime, if anyone had shown up. I probably like this best of all Archer’s books I’ve seen. A lot of them seem too sentimental to me, but the level of, well, wonder in this one is just right.

5. The Octopus Escapes, written by Maile Meloy, illustrated by Felicita Sala. I brought this to Florida to read to J's nephews. They ARE like escaping octopuses.     

 

Top 5 2020 Picture Books I Crammed in January In Prep For the Mock Caldecott even though it was just a video this year                              

1. In a Jar, written and illustrated by Deborah Marcero. I love this delightful friendship fantasy so much— I mean described like that you already know it’s my sort of book: Delightful. Friendship. Fantasy! I stubbornly dragged a box of jars (and this book) to the park story time every week hoping someone would show and we could make Memory Jars together.

2. If You Come to Earth, written and illustrated by Sophie Blackall. She may already be a multiple Caldecott-er, but I’m not really a huge Blackall fan generally. THIS book, though, is epic! It’s basically a letter to potential alien visitors about what to expect from our weird human society, and it’s ironic that THIS one isn’t one of her winners, because the pictures do a LOT.    

3. The Old Truck, by Jarrett and Jerome Pumphrey. I mistakenly judged this by its cover until multiple mock Caldecott lists made me open it! The artwork is actually made with handmade stamps, which is kind of mindblowing when you see it. And the story itself is beautifully circular between a girl and the truck.

4. The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read, written by Rita Lorraine Hubbard, illustrated by Oge Mora. I love Oge Mora so much, the marvelous things she does with collage! This as I said WON our Mock Caldecott, and I don’t know how much that has to do with my glowing description in the video. I mean I tried to be balanced about every book and what was Caldecott-worthy about it, but it’s possible I wasn’t ENTIRELY objective in my enthusiasm!   

5. Honeybee: the busy life of Apis Mellifera, written by Candace Fleming, illustrated by Eric Rohmann. No shade to him but I actually liked the words better than the pictures in this Mock Caldecott hopeful— they caught the FEEL of bee life! It’s the sort of nonfiction that reminds you that just because something is factual doesn’t mean it can’t be art.                                   

 

Top 5 Older than 2021 (and some might be 2020 but I didn’t read them for the Mock Caldecott) Picture Books I First Read This Year

1. Everybody Counts: A Counting Story from 0 to 7.5 Billion, written and illustrated by Kristin Roskifte. This book is just mindboggling. And hilarious. It starts out looking so simple and then you start to see how it all intersects, and HOW many stories are playing out in the background, and even when you turn to the so-called “Answers” page it gives you even MORE to discover. I have scanned and studied each page for that Mundo episode and I’m still certain I’ve missed a lot.

2. Tiny Feet Between the Mountains, written and illustrated by Hanna Cha. Actually, I’m almost certain I read this last year but forgot to put it on the spreadsheet, so it didn’t make last year’s roundup. Which is WRONG because it's delightful and definitely one of my recent favorites! I read it in my “Not So Scary Scary Beasts” Mundo episode, which was definitely a contender in the possible top ten Mundo episodes, along with The Girl and the Wolf which just missed making THIS list, but hah I just snuck it in now, look at that.    

3. The Boring Book, by Shinsuke Yoshitake. This isn’t actually a boring book, although it might be mistaken for such at first glance since it’s a little wordier than most modern American picture books (this is from Japan. I’ve got a lot of imports in these lists today! So far we’ve had Vietnam, Norway, and Japan. We’ve got Canada, Australia, and the UK coming up, too, but I guess those don’t count so much since they didn’t have to be translated!). It’s subversive. I cackled aloud sometimes. I read it in a Bedtime Stories video to allegedly put my audience to sleep.     

4. My bed: enchanting ways to fall asleep around the world, by Rebecca Bond, illustrated by Salley Mavor. Speaking of which, this was actually the FIRST book I read for Bedtime Stories. I was kind of channelling Mundo into it since it’s a Mundo-like subject in a bedtime book. I am most taken not with the words, though, as much as the very pretty handsewn models that make up the illustrations.

5. What's My Superpower? By Aviaq Johnston, illustrated by Tim Mack. Here’s the Canadian one— Inuk, specifically. I have used so many books from this publisher, Inhabit Media, which specializes in Inuit authors and storytellers, in my Mundo vids. This one isn’t, like, an Inuit folktale or anything though, it’s a modern story that just happens to take place in an Inuit community— but I still finally found a place for it in my “You Matter” Mundo episode! I love me a super-positive character that’s written in a fun way— Janet from The Good Place? SQUIRREL GIRL? Which, speaking of which, positivity IS really Squirrel Girl's true superpower, what she actually uses to defeat bad guys, so maybe this story’s heroine isn’t so far from being a superhero after all.

 

Top 5 Longer than Picture Books of 2021

 1. The Stolen Prince of Cloudburst, by Jaclyn Moriarty (and this is the Australian one). I am convinced more all the time that Jaclyn Moriarty is a kindred spirit and also totally has ADHD. That’s part of where that comes from, of course. I feel like she really ought to be my best friend. The latest Kingdoms and Empires book to hit American shores (there’s apparently a newer one out in Australia ALREADY though!), and it’s as unexpected as all the rest, making me laugh and cry in equal measure.

2. Amari and the Night Brothers, by B.B Alston. This was sold to me as “A Wrinkle In Time meets Men in Black,” and I can see both influences. It also feels a lot like those certain boy wizard books in tone, and will most definitely appeal to fans of the same. Honestly, it just feels like a Classic, and I feel like I’ve been TRYING to get everybody at the library to try it without success, which is wrong, because it NEEDS to be a story every fantasy-loving kid reads!          

3. Broken (in the best possible way), by Jenny Lawson. Somebody snuck a grownup book in here! But who isn’t a fan of Jenny and her equally-ADHD twistedness, though ADHD is the least of her issues…which of course is the point of the book, finding humor in even the darkest places. I laughed out loud more at this one than I had at Furiously Happy, but not quite as much as Let’s Pretend This Never Happened— but that’s still an awful lot!

4. City of the Plague God, by Sarwat Chadda. There’s a last-minute author’s note at the beginning saying we totally didn’t mean to release this book about a supernatural pandemic during an actual pandemic, but, um, here it is? And okay, the real-life parallels occasionally inspired shrieking in my audience! And the magical plague-ending was far too good to be true! But this was a fun read regardless, full of cool Mesopotamian myth and creative twists-- you just have to imagine it happening in a parallel universe that hasn’t gone through the past two years. Note: his sequel, which is something about a Chaos God, is still set for upcoming release and I’m like, Can you just, maybe, NOT? Just in case??

5. Kiki Kallira Breaks a Kingdom, by Sangu Mandanna. The last import on the list, the UK one. It involves Indian mythology, but being that we’ve been reading all the Aru Shah books (the latest of which JUST missed this list), that feels more familiar than the Britishness does! Unfortunately the MOST familiar thing about this book is that it’s about a young artist with severe anxiety, like someone else I know. But it’s delightful fun nonetheless, except for ONE particular loss that made Maddie up and say, “Okay, I don’t like this book anymore!” No really, it’s good.        

 

Top 10 Longer than Picture Books Older Than 2021 I First Read In 2021, because the last six are pretty much tied for fifth place.

1. Little Leaders: Bold Women in Black History, written and illustrated by Vashti Harrison. It’s a collection of one-page biographies, written on a simple reading level and each illustrated with rather chibi-esque portraits, which is why it’s mindblowing how much genuinely fascinating information she managed to cram into each one. I was just looking up a few of the people for my Black History Month video (see above) and got sucked in. I kept saying WHOA! and REALLY? I need to get the rest of the series now.

2. Tristan Strong Destroys the World, by Kwame Mbalia. Loved it maybe more than the first one. Also cried again. The power of STORIES!!! And there’s still Gum Baby!

3. The Witch's Boy, by Kelly Barnhill. For some reason we had two copies of this at the library— I think I bought it twice by accident— and in the process of moving everything downstairs I had to weed one copy out, and since it seemed like something my kids might like I kept it for myself. Then promptly forgot I’d done so until we needed a new book days before my next library shift, and then it was like, Oh, hey, look at this! A unique sort of fantasy, and some of the imagery still pops into my head without prompting months later.     

4. Ghosts of Greenglass House, by Kate Milford. Maddie brought the first book up in conversation right at the beginning of Advent, and I went, hey, there’s other books in that series, and the sequel takes place at Christmas, too, want me to pick it up for us? That was a yes. So we read it this past month by our tree, and I kept seeing stuff about the Waits everywhere, and it was great fun, possibly even more than the first one?

5. When You Trap a Tiger, by Tae Keller. I was all Hey kids, let’s read the Newbery winner, it’s a fantasy for once! It’s actually more magic realism than fantasy, but I for one really appreciated that the tiger WAS real (though a ghost), not just a dream or hallucination, at least.  

6. The Ambrose Deception, by Emily Ecton. One of Maddie’s online friends recommended this, so Maddie was like, Hey, can we read this book? And I was like, I’m pretty sure we have that at the library, I’ll bring it home. And it’s a lot of fun, a quirky, Westing Game-like puzzle mystery. It really should get more attention!

7-9. The Kane Chronicles, by Rick Riordan. What? A Riordan series we hadn’t yet read? We quickly fixed that once Maddie got the whole series as a birthday gift. Or Christmas gift. Some kind of gift? Must have been birthday, because we were reading one of them on the Jacksonville trip in June. Anyway, that’s beside the point. I went in afraid these would feel formulaic— Percy Jackson but with EGYPTIAN gods!— but he really did shake things up enough that it felt exciting and new and just as much fun as his other books.

10. Solutions and Other Problems, by Allie Brosh. Another grownup book! Which is also another humorous memoir from an ADHD woman with mental health issues! This one was somehow both simultaneously funnier and sadder than Hyperbole and a Half was— she was clearly writing out of a very dark time, but found the humor in it nonetheless. And the funny bits were REALLY wheeze-inducing funny.     

 

Top 3 Rereading Experiences, because although I’ve reread many books for storytime, none of them are sticking out, so I’ll just go with what I reread with MY kids:

The Dark is Rising series, starting with The Dark Is Rising, because we actually started it at the end of last year and it’s another Christmas-set book. I forgot how trippy some of these books get! Love it. And I don’t get why The Grey King won the Newbery because it’s actually the most boring book in the series. Silver on the Tree is wild, though. That one should have won instead. Yes I know it doesn’t work that way.

Nation by Terry Pratchett. Okay, I remembered objectively that this was a great book, but when I read it again to the kids? OH, this IS a GREAT book. Intense and devastating yet humorous and hopeful. This was the only book on this year’s BookRiot spreadsheet that I gave a full five-star rating to. I’m stingy that way. But books don’t get much better than this!

 The Graveyard Book, which I think we started during our first covid isolation when I couldn’t go out and GET a book so I checked what was available on Libby that they might like? And it was Halloweeny, too!

 

 MOVING VISUAL MEDIA

 I had to make a spreadsheet to figure out how to sort these! There was overlap between movies and series, not enough “returning favorites” to make that a separate category; I thought of splitting them by streaming service but Disney+ dominated and we got ONE count em ONE DVD out of the library… anyway I’m going to go with “Movie,” “Limited Series”— for multipart movies and series that aren’t coming in multiple seasons; and “Series,” because that seemed to work out most evenly, giving lists of five that weren’t unfairly excluding anything super important.

 

Movies

1. Tick Tick Boom (Netflix)—  Confession: I never got into Rent. It hit just as I was getting OUT of my Broadway Musicals Phase. So I didn’t go into this with any preconceived feelings toward Jonathan Larson, it just seemed interesting. And I unabashedly loved it. I loved the storytelling of it— the narration stringing together the scenes acting it out; I loved the music— better than anything from Rent, I thought actually (*gasp*); I laughed and cried! I’m kind of freaked out that he wrote about feeling like a time bomb was ticking down in his brain and that actually turned out to be basically true! It was wonderful, I definitely recommend checking this one out.

2. Muppets Most Wanted (Disney+)— I never got around to actually seeing this when it was new, which I feel mildly guilty about because apparently that was a common thing and the movie bombed at the box office even though it is both objectively and subjectively better than The Muppets 2011 was. It was delightful, hilarious, and actually focused more on the Muppets than on the humans, yay.

3. Captain Marvel (Disney+)— I forget what I was doing when I went through catching up a bunch of Marvel movies on Disney+ that I’d missed. It turned out I enjoyed this one the most— I honestly thought I’d be into the Ant Man movies but they ended up getting kicked off this list by Encanto this week because the only really memorable part of them was Luis— yeah, he really is the best and should narrate everything— but when I went from them to Captain Marvel something switched in my head and went, “Yeah, this is more like it.” And I don’t know why! It just gelled more for me! Also, Coulson was in it. I miss him. Is this the first year in a long while I haven’t had a season of Agents of SHIELD in this roundup? But oddly, both this and the Ant Man movies both filled in backstory I was missing when I watched WandaVision (see below), AND ended up adding detail to a fanfic I would start writing even later in the year (see belower). Turns out the Marvel parts of that story would be influenced most by Agent Carter, Ant Man, and Captain Marvel. Who knew.

4. The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part (the library)— it’s weird how long it takes to get around to something when it isn’t on your streaming services. Sam has been saying, “Why haven’t we watched the 2nd Lego Movie yet?” for YEARS. Or, since whenever this came out. I FINALLY brought it home from the library one day and we FINALLY sat and watched it and it’s ALMOST as good as the first one. Also the mom is played by the Judge from The Good Place, which totally went right over the kids’ heads.

5. Encanto (Disney+)— Maddie had seen bits and pieces of things online, so when we found ourselves stuck at home on Christmas Eve and decided to watch a movie, Maddie demanded this one! It was fun and visually stunning, though maybe not the most memorable of recent Disney movies on the whole. But we enjoyed it a lot, and Maddie is obsessed. 

 

Limited Series

1. Get Back (Disney+)—You’d think Beatles things wouldn’t excite me any more. I’ve seen it all, I know it all? But there was stuff in this that felt new anyway! And it was great just to sit there being there with them! And funny to watch them just working out songs that I have so memorized, like, how do they not know the words to this one? Oh because they HAVEN’T WRITTEN THEM YET. And I kind of dug having so many other non-Beatlemaniacs getting into this at the same time. This guy came into the library, rough-looking older man who doesn’t know how to wear a mask correctly, but he checked out the companion book to this special and I said, “Oh, I was just watching that before I came here today!” and we got into an enthusiastic discussion about it— who would have thought we’d have anything to talk about? 

2. WandaVision (Disney+)— Oh yeah, my kind of TV show. If anything I wanted it to be WEIRDER (I am a Legion fan, after all). But the way they played with genre and format for the sake of telling a particular story was totally awesome. And I loved the eerie theme music at the end so much I’d sit and watch the whole credits every time even though they were really long— besides, I was never ready for the episode to be over!

3. McCartney 321 (Hulu)— Speaking of which, when this ended I also went “that’s all? No, I want more! So what if it’s just my favorite composer talking about his songs, he has A LOT MORE SONGS STILL!” I read a review that said, “This is for the real music/Beatle/McCartney nerds out there,” and I was like, “Whelp, that’s ME!”

4. Over the Garden Wall (Hulu)— No wait, this we definitely watched in place of our evening read-aloud during the covid quarantine in October, the nights my voice was too scratchy to read. I was like, “I’ve always heard this was good and perfect for Halloween-time,” but I must say I didn’t know what we were getting into. It was very funny and very weird, and Sam’s review sums it up best: “I have no idea what the freak I just watched, but I loved it!”

5. Marvel’s 616 (Disney+)— I was just looking for something short to fill a bit of time and found this series of documentaries. I was thoroughly sucked in in just the first minute about Japanese Spider-Man (and laughed a lot). Each “episode” is totally different in style and some are more compelling than others, but on the whole they were fascinating and fun.

 

Series

1. Only Murders In the Building (Hulu)—I binged this on the October covid sit-in, too, just for me. My mom is always asking what I’ve watched good recently and I’m always like, I don’t know, but I saw this and was like MOM! You would totally love this one! It is a humorous mystery starring some of your favorite actors! It’s on Hulu though! And I’m not entirely sure my mom totally understands what Hulu IS? Anyway, side note: the actress who plays Jan looks EXACTLY LIKE JASON’S AUNT BUT BLONDE. I was going nuts trying to figure out why she looked so familiar, and felt even more nuts when I looked at IMDB and there was NOTHING there that I would have seen enough to inspire THIS level of familiarity, and then it hit me! And we’ve now got their Christmas picture hanging up and every time I see it I’m like “OMG it’s Jan from Only Murders oh wait that’s still just Aunt Lynnie.”

2. Loki (Disney+)— This is the first and so far only MCU show I’ve watched with my kids! Maddie pointed out how awesome the title fonts were every time! They’re familiar with Loki mainly from the Magnus Chase books, and that was apparently enough to appreciate the MCU version. It really was a delightfully fun show. And we are all team Alligator Loki. And Mobius better get his jet ski next season.

3. The Mysterious Benedict Society (Disney+)— Speaking of books and my kids, I asked them some months back what their favorite thing we read together was that was NOT Harry Potter or Lemony Snicket or Rick Riordan, and I was surprised and delighted that this was the immediate answer. Such that when they saw ads for this D+ series they were messaging them back and forth to each other and not even remembering to include ME in the excitement until later! I am surprised that this series got almost NO buzz— I heard about it when my kids told me, which was the day before the first episode aired— but it was really good! And almost surprisingly true to the book! The casting of the kids was EXCELLENT (though I never quite adjusted to Constance’s accent— and I understand WHY they couldn’t actually cast her to age but still that would have been fun) and everyone else was pretty good too. I wanted more to a certain reunion at the end, but that part makes me inordinately sappy anyway. I assume next season will be the next book!

4. The Babysitters Club (Netflix)— Whereas each season of this is several books and seems all too short! I’m still impressed with how they managed to update storylines while keeping it feeling absolutely true to the originals, to the point where you forget what did and did not actually happen in the books! But I can’t believe they killed off [redacted] BETWEEN SEASONS! I was like WAIT, he’s just GONE??? He was barely THERE!

5. Breeders (Hulu)—Probably because they jumped ahead a few years and the kids are closer in age to my own, a lot in this season hit a little too painfully close to home, so the drama outweighed the comedy for me! I mean I cried more than I laughed and this is supposed to be a(n admittedly dark) comedy, but it was in a good way? But speaking of great casting of kids, I could have sworn the kids from last season just supernaturally matured extra fast instead of that they just cast older kids, because MAN. Those ARE the same kids, just with different names. And they aged really fast.

 Honorable Mention: I put a lot of CrashCourse (YouTube) on while I was sewing this year. Psychology, Philosophy, all the Literatures, History, Film, Geography, Intellectual Property… uh, yeah. A LOT of CrashCourse. Because it’s halfway between a podcast and a thing you have to WATCH, so it’s good for sewing.

 

The Podcasts, by the way

My favorite podcasts are still Fuse 8 and Kate, Movin’ Right Along, and Below the Frame, but the podcasts I added to my rotation this year are:

Muppeturgy, an analysis of each episode of The Muppet Show by Real Theater People. I tend to glom onto Muppet podcasts, don’t I. The Movin’ Right Along folks do other podcasts in shorter seasons, too, that I like— I particularly enjoyed To Introduce Our Guest Star earlier this year.

The Secrets of Story Podcast, run by Fuse 8’s husband Matt and author James Kennedy, who mostly argue with each other, which can sometimes get annoying, but other times they do make funny or rather brilliant observations about story structure. The episode that likened sucking an audience into a story to recruiting them into a cult was particularly wild.

 
Other Stuff I Wrote

My Single Solitary 2021 GeekMom Article

"Speak Up for the Freedom to Read!" Nothing like the combination of being angry AND knowledgeable to break ones article-writing block. I am still so bothered by how much power totalitarians are gaining simply because the rest of us are just too dang tired to fight back. Book banning is at least something I feel competent enough to keep speaking up against.

 

The Grand Total of my 2021 DreamWidth Posts

Both of them (not counting last year’s Annual Roundup, which was actually posted January 1st) are actually about the same subject as this portion of the roundup:

"I Wish I Had a Critique Group. Too Bad I Have Nothing to Critique,"  was actually more about feeling lonely for creative companionship than particular writing, but

"Unfinished Stories and Other Notes of Scatterbrained Life" goes into quite a lot of what I’m going to write updated notes about from here on in in this section:

 

The Top (all) 10 Fanfics and Related Stuff Published in 2021

On the other hand, I DID write a lot of fic this year. These are in order of how badly I want you to read them. Read them, please do, and leave me comments! I’m needy like that!

 1. “Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks Against the Fourth Grade” (Legion (TV)) --  I will keep harping on this one because it is objectively one of my MOST FAVORITES and yet SOMEHOW has gotten the least number of hits of any of my fics except my latest (see below). And you don’t even need to know anything about the show to appreciate it! It’s just a sweet middle grade story about a new kid with ADHD trying to make friends with the class weirdo with ASD and they end up bonding over the HUGE SECRETS they both are harboring! How can you not love it? Please shower love over my favorite story, please?

 2. “Tesseract” (Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Marvel Cinematic Universe) -- Now, this may soon become my favorite of my own fanfics, and it is the newest so that could account for it having currently the least number of hits, but on the other hand it is NOT a cult fandom but two rather big ones so why HASN’T it gotten many hits, but on the other other hand, I admit this is only the first of several chapters and perhaps people don’t want to be left hanging, although of course it is backstory and everyone who knows the original story (one half at least) knows where it’s going. ANYWAY, so when two of your favorite stories both incorporate the same not-exactly-common concept into their story lines, you end up making up headcanons like “It was totally SHIELD that hired Mr-Dr. Murry to study the Tesseract,” and maybe you don’t automatically start writing a story for the headcanon, but a couple months ago I said, “Hey, why DON’T I write a story for that headcanon?” and it’s really fun and I can’t wait to post ie finish the rest of it because Chapter 3 has already made me cry several times, it’s great! So check out Chapter One and tell me how excited YOU are for me to finish the rest, too, because that will give me more incentive to overcome my executive function disorder!

 3. “A Strictly Scholarly Collaboration: the Original Romance of the Mind” (Legion (TV)) --  Another one that MAY be fanfic for a cult TV show but it can totally stand alone for people who don't know the show, as a bantery college romance with psychic shenanigans! In which the hero is the ADHD kid from story #1, all grown up and rakish! But you don’t even need to read that one first! Although you should have since I told you to read it! And then you can read:

 4. Or 3.5 “Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks and the Strictly Scholarly Collaboration” (Legion (TV)) --  …because it’s basically bonus scenes for #3, that place it into the universe of #1, ie, the universe where Cary and Oliver became friends in elementary school and so would already be besties when Melanie eventually came into their lives! It doesn’t QUITE stand alone, as it basically dovetails into #3, and assumes SOME basic understanding of Cary and Kerry’s relationship, but you’ll have that since you’ve already read #1!

 5. “Two (or Three) Mutant Freaks and the Adolescent Melodrama” (Legion (TV))--  Or maybe you’ve even read this one, which takes place BEFORE that in the Childhood Friends AU, Cary and Oliver’s high school years! It’s also kind of my treatise on asexuality through fiction! This also has the highest ratio of kudos to hits of all my fics so you know at least other people think it’s a good one!

 6. “Exploration of the Astral Plane: An Immersive, Multidimensional Study, by Cary Loudermilk, PhD, and Oliver Anthony Bird.” (Legion (TV)) --  Okay, this one DOES assume previous knowledge of the characters, but only what you would have already gleaned from reading #1, 3, 4, and 5. It directly leads INTO show canon events, but still 20 years before the show actually takes place, so all the prerequisite you need is in what I already told you to read, and it’s worth it because this is delightful and stuffed FULL of psychic shenanigans! On the negative side, things ARE about to go bad from a fictional standpoint, and from a real life standpoint I’ve been kind of STUCK on the next chapter for… many months now. Which is surely frustrating if you really want to get INTO the story!

 7. “The Invitation: an epilogue” (Howl's Moving Castle - All Media Types) --  This is lower in the list because it’s quietly becoming my most popular fic, kudos-wise (just one short of my Endgame fic already!) (WAIT, last minute update! Another kudos just came in today! It’s now TIED with Endgame!), so it doesn't really need extra advertising, but still pretty high because anything Diana Wynne Jones is wonderful and, dare I say, there’s a REASON for all the kudos? This takes place mere minutes after the end of the book— so you do need to have read the book— and yes, I honestly believe Howl and Sophie decided to get married immediately, for all the reasons Howl ends up listing in this story but ALSO because he knows in his heart this is the best way to keep him from slithering out of it at the last minute!

8. “The Puppy-Fly Effect” (Back to the Future (Movies)) --  Yes, and this is only lower in the list because it’s the first fic I’ve posted this year, which increases the likelihood that you’ve already read it! It’s another headcanon backstory! I suppose it’s mostly still understandable if you haven’t seen Back to the Future, but who hasn’t seen Back to the Future?! If you haven’t, go fix that first, THEN read my stories!

 9. “The Fall of [Spoilers Redacted]: a Freestyle Ballad by Lester “Apollo” Papadopoulos” (The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan) --  This is my attempt at writing a proper funeral ballad! I don’t know why I thought I could, but it was sure fun trying! And it’s not ACTUALLY that bad— some of it is even pretty good! As for whether you need to have previous knowledge of the books, hmm, well it definitely has SPOILERS for the first three books of The Trials of Apollo because it’s basically a RECAP of the first three books of The Trials of Apollo, so basically it’ll TELL you the story you’re not reading? Although there are also more than a few vague lines that are basically inside JOKES if you’ve read the books. So, I guess that’s why I haven’t listed this one higher. I don't know whether or not you had to have read the books before. And I'm also self-conscious of my poetic abilities. Although proud of them at the same time.

 10. “Rewind” (Original Work) --  Now technically I should have listed this one at the top, because it requires no previous fandom knowledge AT ALL since it’s an entirely original story! But I’m also less attached to it that way, since the characters— well, the main character doesn’t even have a name! It’s more of a plot-based writing exercise than a character-based one. I signed up for a fic writing challenge— such a challenge was how I got into fanfic in the first place— though this one is only tangentially related to fandoms— it hearkened back to a challenge the Inklings had once given each other. The challenge was that you have to explore a theme from a Christian worldview— mine is mostly about Humility (”Let go and let God” was my basis) with a touch of Stewardship and Grace— through a particular genre category— as Team Tolkien I had to do either High Fantasy or Time Travel, and I went with Time Travel, because it’s curiously a theme that shows up a lot in my fic! It’s much more PLOTTED OUT than I usually write stories, because it had to be, so, it’s pretty cool, you should check it out, even if I did list it last! This is still the list of TOP ten stories, even if there WERE only ten!

  

This Year’s Works In Progress:

 Obviously, the end of “Exploration of the Astral Plane” and most of “Tesseract.” I’ve got a few more Legion one-shots, too, with a small one that takes place in between seasons 2 and 3 that is almost complete.

 All the DWJ fanfic reading—see below-- inspired me to write my own headcanon crossover between HMC and Chrestomanci, in which Chrestomanci strongly suggests that Cat take on Morgan Jenkins-Pendragon as an apprentice. I don’t have much, but what I have is kind of perfect. I want to reread some more Chrestomanci to get me back in the voices, though!

 I’ve also made an attempt to wrangle my long and complex Ghosts I Have Been headcanons into a simple fic. Written in first person voices of hundred-year-past young adults in Missouri. Really have to do some rereading to make sure THOSE voices are right, too, before I share!

  

The Top 10 FanFics I READ

I guess this actually belongs up in the Media Review section, except it’s so closely tied to my writing fanfic. Usually, to find fics, I’d just click on the fandom name on one of my own fics and see what showed up that was interesting, which is why most of these are from fandoms I have fics in. But reading fanfic in general is something I’ve definitely done more of this year than I ever have before. Here’s the ten that, when I looked back through my AO3 history, stuck out as most memorable (in a good way). 

 I am not sure what order to put these in so let me split it up by fandom?

 I probably read the most in the various Diana Wynne Jones fandoms, which often cross over:

 “Little Saucepan,” by Batastrophe, a work both funny and touching in which Howl takes Sophie and Morgan to a real Welsh rugby match.

 “In Which Sophie Questions Howl's Hobbies,” by HannaM-- This has no right to work so well. It’s a meta crack fic in which Howl writes fanfic and somehow it’s both ridiculous and PERFECTLY PLAUSIBLE.

 “a map of those who used to live here,” by Pieandsouffle-- Lovely HMC backstory of how Michael came to be Howl’s apprentice. It may never be finished, but what is there is wonderful, so I hope it will be someday!

 “A Tale of Too Many Worlds,” by Rhymer23 --a Howl’s Moving Castle/Chrestomanci crossover that manages to be epic, in character, funny, and moving all at once.

 “Letters between the Related Worlds,” by Maman --  Another, much simpler HMC/Chrestomanci crossover told as a series of notes between the characters. I commented that I just wanted the letters to keep going!

There’s not enough Legion TV fic, especially fic that actually deals with MY favorite characters (Summerland Generation One! The Birds and Loudermilks! The ones that were created especially for the show and so don’t appear in the comics and that’s sad!), and when you take out sex-heavy fic there’s even less, but here are three I really loved this year:

 “Phenomena,” by Thornvale -- The most surreal and confusing yet gripping and in-character Legion fic I’ve read. And actually starring Summerland Generation One, for once! I LIKE when people put this much effort into Legion backstory!

 “Enter the Maze,” by Hexiva  -- Lovely surreal and twisty little brainwarp that also contains a bit of Oliver being delightful! YAY! Sometimes fics based at the time of the show DO feature delightful Oliverness!

 “When My Fist Clenches, Crack It Open,” (specifically chapter 187) by Versaphile -- Okay, while Versaphile is my #1 fic-writing cheerleader and I like to support what they do, I will admit this is an insanely long fic and I don’t expect you to read it unless you’re a Legion fanatic or someone who really wished Season Three could have just been David getting the therapy he really needed; BUT I have to shout out to this chapter, chapter 187, which is not only intense and surreal and amazing, it also uses one of my favorite picture books as a really appropriate basis, and it is absolutely the best thing I read in fanfic this year!

 It occurs to me that MOST Legion fic writers actually write fics that are surreal and trippy like the show, while here I am writing middle grade about people making friends. OH WELL, such am I.

 I have read bunches of Trials of Apollo fic, including some ongoing ones that are STILL ongoing, but only one made this top ten when I set out to pull the BEST ones out:

 “see you yesterday,” by JustMcShane -- Lovely post-series adventure for Apollo and Meg, that manages to bring in more and different mythology!

 And occasionally, through clicking on other users and such, I do end up reading fics in fandoms I HAVEN’T written for. I have no idea how I stumbled on this one now, but it IS probably my favorite of those I found:

 “Happily Ever After,” by PenguinsOnJumpers  --They haven’t finished with part “After” yet, but the first two parts are a rather brilliant mashup in which the Marauders of Harry Potter backstory find themselves in The Good Place as run by Michael and Janet. It really works and will satisfy fans of both properties!

And I think that's it! That's all I have to round up this year! And I'm actually publishing it IN 2021 this year! Normally we'd be watching a movie as a family at this time, but Maddie claims not to want to. Sam and his dad and I did have a family Mario Kart match or two this evening, which I was very bad at but was fun. There's still three more hours of 2021 and maybe we'll find something else holiday-esque to do, but for now, I will just publish this and say See you next year! like I'm being clever and all.

Oh yeah, and again, I'd REALLY LOVE for you to comment on something in this post!