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Reviews

Fluid Sexuality in ‘Striking Vipers’

If you’ve seen the new season of Black Mirror, you’ll have seen the show’s heavily lauded first episode, “Striking Vipers”. And boy, was it a real doozy – from its strong cast, unpredictability, and the way it tackled certain societal topics, it has easily become one of my favourite episodes. Warning: Major spoilers for Black Mirror‘s “Striking Vipers” below (S5E1). Read at your own risk. The episode begins with two people, Danny (Anthony Mackie) and Theo (Nicole Beharie). They seem to be strangers at the bar at a busy club, only to reveal a few moments later that they were…

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TV Shows

The Importance of Queerness in ‘Sex Education’

Netflix released an original series called Sex Education, which premiered in January 2019. I’ll admit, though I used to love seeing what new additions Netflix had, they’ve come to the point where they’re pumping out so much new material that it’s hard to decipher which one is worth watching. Upon seeing the title Sex Education, I assumed the show would be another denomination of other Netflix series’ like Lovesick, Easy, or Love. And don’t get me wrong: the shows I just listed are amazing. However, it’s just another case of ‘the more the shows, the harder it is to have…

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Books

Seeds of Dissolution by William C. Tracy Book Review

Happy Pride Month! For many countries around the world (namely Western ones), June is Pride month—a month of recognition, and in the recent decades a celebration, of the rights and equality of all members of the LGBTQ+ community. It is no revelation that to many, literature is a form of escape from reality. And in the case of the LGBTQ+ community, it has similarly been turned to as a source of validation. Literature featuring homosexual characters is not as new as some may think, with evidence of same-sex relationships being hinted at, or even described, in as early as the…

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Reviews

Game of Thrones: Final Season Review

Foreshadowing Isn’t Character Development (And Here’s Why) WARNING: There are major spoilers for Game of Thrones, Seasons 1 through 8 including the series finale, below. Read at your own risk. Seriously, stop reading now if you aren’t up to date on the show. Let me start by saying that Game of Thrones has been a show that I have fiercely loved since the very beginning. Though I must admit that the first five or six episodes were overwhelming for a newcomer, it was precisely the moment that Eddard Stark got his head chopped off (RIP Ned) that I was in…

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Reflections

A.I. in Sci-Fi

Book Review: Lexi Author: Heidi J. Hewett       Rating: 4/5      ASIN: B07KT8TDXY I have always wanted to branch out into reading more sci-fi books. It’s a genre that, for some reason, has never been at the top of my list, but one that has always intrigued me – and Heidi J. Hewett’s Lexi was a great, albeit new age, introduction into this world. The book centres on a robotics engineer named John Michael Kirkpatrick, whose father is famous in the robotics world. John Michael and his team have perfected a female robot called LX8000, who is “built to mimic humans”. However,…

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TV Shows

‘Comeback’ Television

Cobra Kai Season 1 When I first saw the trailer for Cobra Kai, distributed by YouTube Premium, my first reaction was shock. It’s been 34 years since the first Karate Kid film, an 80s classic both in style and content. It’s one of those classics that you can offhandedly reference, and almost everyone will understand what you’re referencing (particularly the name Mr. Miyagi, and the phrase “wax on wax off”). I was interested to see how this would go – and interested to see that television series are actively picking up on narratives from the past and canonizing it, even…

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