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Month of Joy: Pop Culture by Tansy Rayner Roberts

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So this is soppy, but something that brings me great joy year after year is sharing favourite pop culture, new and old, with my kids. I now have a 9-year-old and a nearly 14-year-old, and sharing stories or music or TV shows is one of the things that keeps us talking, spending time together, giving us something in common. It makes me happy. You can’t put a price on actually understanding what it is your teenager is flailing about, whether it be something you both hate-watched for pure rage (Paramount Heathers, I’m looking at you) or a beloved classic of modern television that has sparked some seriously intense conversations about relationships, mental illness and musical tastes (Crazy-Ex Girlfriend, we will miss you when you’re gone). While I’ve never quite managed to read enough of the web comic Gunnerkrigg Court to understand my teen’s ongoing love for the series, at least we have a mutual appreciation for Check! Please.

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Month of Joy: Gender Diverse Pronouns by Cameron Coulter

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Gender diverse pronouns bring me joy. What are gender diverse pronouns? In short, they’re all the alternatives to she and he (for people—I’m not counting “it”). In the introduction to Capricious Issue 9: Gender Diverse Pronouns, editor A.C. Buchanan writes that gender diverse pronouns include “singular they, neopronouns, and pronoun sets of the authors’ invention.” What’s a neopronoun? Often, people use the term neopronoun to refer to gender neutral pronouns that can be used instead of singular they. I’m borrowing A.C. Buchanan’s term for this post because it’s broad, encompassing singular they, other gender neutral pronouns, and even pronouns which signify a gender identity beyond femininity or masculinity. All of these things—all of these gender diverse pronouns—bring me great joy. I love singular they pronouns. I love gender neutral neopronouns. I love invented pronouns which signify nonbinary genders. I love stories that feature characters—and societies—that use gender diverse pronouns, whether it’s singular they or entirely new pronouns that signify entirely new genders. These stories normalize diverse pronouns and gender identities, which is good and necessary work because people with diverse pronouns and gender identities are all around us.

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Month of Joy: Fate/Grand Order by Chrysoula Tzavelas

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I thought hard about what I wanted to write about for the Month of Joy but eventually I knew what it had to be: the game called Fate/Grand Order. It’s a little silly, it’s a little weird, but oh my gosh, especially right now as the first major story arc closes out, it brings me so MUCH joy. Fate/Grand Order is nominally a mobile game from the Fate franchise. You know, that Japanese thing where King Arthur is a girl and very few of the characters are original? Perhaps when you first heard of it, like me, you rolled your eyes, completely uninterested in yet another bizarre Japanese harem idea. I totally did that! 

Mary Anne Mohanraj - Dried Marigold Petals
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Month of Joy: Maker Space by Mary Anne Mohanraj

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There was a moment in grad school. Kevin and I had split up and I was desperately broken-hearted. I’d been getting up at 4 a.m. every morning to an alarm because it was the best time for me to concentrate, when the world was dark and still, writing by the light of a candle. I’d gotten about halfway through drafting Bodies in Motion at that point; I had been working so hard, for so long. I loved the book, but I was otherwise very tired and very sad. I cried all the time. There came a day when I just couldn’t stare at the computer screen any longer. I found myself — and I honestly don’t even remember making the decision to go — at the art store, ringing up $200 of supplies (money I didn’t really have, but I just didn’t care). I came home and I made things — candles and collages mostly. They weren’t very good but I needed to do something that wasn’t just brain work, that didn’t require so much deliberate thought. I needed to use my hands. It helped. (My mother still has the candle I made her that year. She thinks it is too pretty to light it.)

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Month of Joy: It’s a Mad Mad Mad World by Paul Weimer

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The year was 1963. Producer and Directer Stanley Kramer, producer and director of acclaimed movies like Judgement at Nuremberg, The Defiant Ones and High Noon, decided that he was going to create an epic comedy. What is an epic comedy, might you ask? Get together as many of the comedy-minded actors  of the era and previous era as well, and throw them into a large-scale chase across California, all of them seeking a lost stolen fortune that is hidden underneath a “Big W”. What is a “Big W?” Therein lies the question.

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Month of Joy: Putting Ink to Paper by Keith Manuel

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Last year I got into fountain pens in a big way. I liked the idea of escaping from the rapid pace of modern communication, just for a few minutes. I bought a Pilot Metropolitan online and got to work leaking ink everywhere and abusing the pen’s poor nib. Little had I known that I took my first step into a larger world. The fountain pen is an elegant tool, and it took time to appreciate that. (I found some good YouTube tutorials.) I began outlining my writing with the fountain pen. I began taking notes during business meetings. I began buying fountain pens as gifts for college graduates. I scrounged for old writing ink bottles in old boxes and at the backs of filing cabinets, like a post-apocalyptic wastelander who finally has time to write their memoirs (TwilightZone.GIF), but in time those ran out. I sought out ink in second-hand stores before accepting that in order to pursue this hobby further I would need to buy my supplies online, receiving a receipt by email and tracking the order with my smartphone.

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