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Author: Amanda Hudgins

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Four people in casual clothing stand in a hallway, two of them have guns drawn and pointed out of frame.

Ultra-Long

By Amanda Hudgins • December 31st, 2021

Long fanworks are interesting both for their clear amount of dedication to the craft and how much of an outlier they actually are.

A set of five pictures showing the covers for Winter's Orbit, Silent Reading, Love or Hate, Lost in Never Woods and Nothing but Blackened Teeth

I read over 100 books in 2021 and here are the 30 best

By Amanda Hudgins • December 22nd, 2021

What I’m going to do here is talk about the best books I read in 2021.

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Soulmate Goose of Enforcement

By Amanda Hudgins • December 1st, 2021

Geese exist to cause trouble. And honk. Or perhaps, help someone find the love of their life.

On a wooden surface sits a copy of Eric LaRocca's book Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and a Starbucks drink, viewed from above.

100 books in a year

By Amanda Hudgins • October 22nd, 2021

There are a few things no one actually wants to hear about: your dreams, your diet, and how many books you’ve read this year.

A close up of the cover art from Nghi Vo's The Chosen and the Beautiful featuring a young Vietnamese woman with a stylish 20's bob looking down.

more genre fiction by people who aren’t cis white dudes

By Amanda Hudgins • October 15th, 2021

it seems very odd that we associate science fiction with near identical looking white guys when the first science fiction novel was written by a goth teenage girl who lost her virginity on her mothers’ grave.

a brightly colorful daruma doll with eyes stapled open, in front of a chalkboard. Bright red marbles are around him as if shot up in the air.

1000 words on As the Gods Will

By Amanda Hudgins • August 17th, 2021

As the Gods Will is a very gif-able film.

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Colonel Sebastian Moran

By Amanda Hudgins • August 5th, 2021

The man who wasn’t there

Chinese lyrical dancer Gai Gai stands in the middle of a brightly lit room full of dancers, her arms posed in front of her body.

1600 words on Street Dance of China

By Amanda Hudgins • August 3rd, 2021

Street Dance of China Season 3 starts with a two minute cinematic about isolation and community, at once apocalyptic and familiar

A woman and her daughter, clinging to her shoulder, looking up at something off screen on a wooded beach.

sinning with old

By Amanda Hudgins • July 28th, 2021

Old is a weird movie in that it invites thought and immediately falls apart if you think about it too hard.

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A photograph of sliced lemons and limes.

Lemon and Lime

By Amanda Hudgins • July 6th, 2021

A journey to the citrus grove scale of fanfic tags.

A detail shot from Xiran Jay Zhao's book Iron Widow showing a black armor clad woman with her hair in an elaborate updo posing in front of images of flames

#AsianReadathon 2021

By Amanda Hudgins • May 31st, 2021

This year, I decided to once again participate in #AsianReadathon, an event run by YouTuber withCindy focused on getting participants to read books written by Asian authors.

Two covers from two different kpop novels: XOXO by Axie Oh, showing a young Asian woman held in the arms of a young Asian man on a city street, and the Comeback by Lyn Ashwood and Rachel Rose, which shows a bunch of boys from the boys from the back wearing casual clothing.

about 3000 words on K-pop novels

By Amanda Hudgins • April 14th, 2021

Despite these books having so little to do with each other – they vary wildly in terms of audience, genre, and quality – they have so much in common.

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A word cloud of tags to describe Sheriff Stilinski.

Sheriff Stilinski’s Name is John

By Amanda Hudgins • March 25th, 2021

Stiles Stilinski’s name is definitely, unambiguously John. OK?

In a field of bifurcated blue is the cover for Jim Davidson's book The Next Everest, which has a picture of the mountain itself.

2600 words on the next everest

By Amanda Hudgins • March 15th, 2021

When Davidson brings up the idea of returning to the mountain to his wife he writes: “how unlike other husbands, I didn’t spend money on boats, motorcycles or fancy cars” as though there is anything more midlife crisis than spending over $50,000 on the chance to die on a very tall mountain.

A detail from the cover art for The Valley and the Flood: A womans face in profile, the sun beaming down on it. in her blue hair is the remains of a town.

The Valley and the Flood Review

By Amanda Hudgins • March 8th, 2021

The novel The Valley and the Flood is Welcome to Nightvale meets Kentucky Route Zero meets Big Fish.

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A painting where a woman is attempting to escape the charm of a man.

Regency Era AU

By Amanda Hudgins • March 3rd, 2021

At somepoint, it is always Omegaverse, isn’t it?

A piano with two small children looking at it. This is a still from Little Nightmares II.

Little Nightmares II and the Case of Weak Imagery

By Amanda Hudgins • February 15th, 2021

Not every game has to say something with its imagery, but it’s clear that Little Nightmares II wants desperately to be saying something.

Two star filled silhouettes with text between that reads "one match light up an empire"

Winter’s Orbit, Fireheart Tiger, and the Empire

By Amanda Hudgins • February 5th, 2021

I started reading Aliette de Bodard’s Fireheart Tiger around the same time as I started finishing Everina Maxwell’s Winter’s Orbit and found overlap in both the temporal and literal sense.

the cover art for Everybody Has a Podcast Except You

Everybody Has a Podcast (Except You) Review

By Amanda Hudgins • January 25th, 2021

Advice books need to hit a sweet spot of giving the right amount of advice for the audience of course, but again I’m not sure who Everybody Has a Podcast is for.

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Rarepairs

By Amanda Hudgins • January 5th, 2021

Their pairing often isn’t just not canon – it’s so far off the beaten path that other writers maybe don’t even see it themselves…

cover art for When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain by Nghi Vo

When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain

By Amanda Hudgins • December 7th, 2020

A sequel to Nghi Vo’s also fantastic Empress of Salt and Fortune, When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain is a story about oral history and mythmaking.

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Tagging

By Amanda Hudgins • December 3rd, 2020

Tagging fics is both a conversation and a function in fanfiction.

The cover for Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline

2800 words on Ready Player Two

By Amanda Hudgins • November 30th, 2020

The weirdest thing about Ready Player Two is that it decides to confront the criticisms of Ready Player One head on in the least effective way you could imagine.

a mans face made of leaves and branches. This is a detail shot of the cover art from Emily Tesh's Silver in the Wood.

genre fiction by people who aren’t cis white dudes

By Amanda Hudgins • November 25th, 2020

Every few years there’s a push for people to read more books by writers who are not white or writers who are not male or writers who are not cis-gendered or Western.

A wolfs eyes looking straight to camera.

Strong Openers

By Amanda Hudgins • November 17th, 2020

A good opening line is like the sound of opening a can of soda on a hot day, it’s a promise of things to come.

liberals in new york won’t stop texting me about amy mcgrath

By Amanda Hudgins • October 29th, 2020

Next time, if you want to get involved in an election in my state, it would help if you learned something about it first.

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Niche Interests

By Amanda Hudgins • September 25th, 2020

“Sometimes, in fiction, you write about your experience so vividly, so precisely, that it could not have come from anyone but you.”

promotional image for the webtoon Love or Hate featuring the three main characters in an erotic embrace.

Digital Fuckery: The Monetization of WebToons

By Amanda Hudgins • September 2nd, 2020

These systems are designed to keep the reader in place, to keep them reading as long as possible and on the same sites, spending currency in the same place.

Midnight Sun is a Mistake

By Amanda Hudgins • August 17th, 2020

Midnight Sun, the 2020 follow-up to the Twilight series, was a mistake.

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Quarantine Fics

By Amanda Hudgins • August 10th, 2020

When the entire world is on lockdown, even alternate universes start hitting closer to home.

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No Beta We Die Like Men

By Amanda Hudgins • July 8th, 2020

Readers never know what they’re going to get with this tag. It may be a warning, but it’s not always deserved.

art of a man in black with a flute and a man in white with a chinese zither. official art from Mo Dao Zu Shi

I Did an Asian Readathon and Whoops Now I’m Into MDZS

By Amanda Hudgins • June 15th, 2020

This year for May, I decided to participate in #AsianReadathon, a reading event sponsored by the only booktuber I follow readwithcindy.

An image of Donald Glover from the This Is America music video, hands outstretched as if holding a gun.

The Sound of Protest (And What Happens if TikTok Disables it)

By Amanda Hudgins • June 4th, 2020

We lose a lot in silence. TikTok’s preferred method of dealing with copyright violations is to simply remove the offending audio altogether, leaving the video behind as a kind of digital tombstone.

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Expectations

By Amanda Hudgins • May 11th, 2020

There’s a different expectation in books versus fanfiction; one predicated on tags and warnings.

Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman sit in an old North England kitchen, resting casually. This is a still from Practical Magic.

In the Business of Adaptation

By Amanda Hudgins • April 13th, 2020

A faithfulness to a format that is no longer consistent with the product that you’re making is worshiping at the ground of a false idol.

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RPF

By Amanda Hudgins • April 13th, 2020

Bring Real Person Fanfiction onto The Graham Norton Show, cowards.

A skull on its side with text that reads "Cold Case Files"

True Crime for Beginners

By Amanda Hudgins • March 23rd, 2020

I’ve got a reputation. Let me put it to work for you. There’s a lot to true crime, and if you’re truly interested there’s some good stuff out there. ACAB, let’s watch some true crime!

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When Fanon Eclipses Canon

By Amanda Hudgins • March 10th, 2020

How a Canadian TV show from the ’90s lives on in alternative universe fanfiction.

Robert Downey Jr facing a gorilla.

Dolittle Makes You Think About Rectal Surgery

By Amanda Hudgins • February 24th, 2020

The most interesting thing about Dolittle is probably that I spent a half hour trying to find the right words to describe emptying a dragons colon of armor before settling on “transanal extraction.”

Harley Quinn with a caution tape jacket raising her arms

The Emancipation of Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad

By Amanda Hudgins • February 17th, 2020

Birds of Prey is the equivalent of an exorcism of Suicide Squad, the bloated carcass of FYE excess that DC had pulled into a back alley to die.

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