I could just not tell you what I read/watched in 2023, but I already had a bunch of this drafted and it never made it to publication, so I’m posting two years worth of things I read and watched and listened to. This has turned into a straight up list and it is not comprehensive. Hopefully in 2025 I can just give you a review of the top handful that stuck with me.
Work and Life Review 2024
Nothing motivates me more than opening this blog and seeing it’s been a year since I posted anything. This is pretty alarming. I’ve thought of so many things I wanted to write and apparently never brought any of them here. I’ll add it to my New Year’s Resolution to write here more next year, even if it’s only a few times. I’ve got some fun adventures planned so some journalling will probably be good for me.
I do always post around this time of year while I consolidate my thoughts on the year prior and shift my focus to the one ahead. I’m probably not the only one who sees the hot steaming pile of bullshit that lies ahead in 2025, but the only way out is through. I have to be strong and thrive and help to get us through until the next fight. I know it’s easier said than done, but the only way to guarantee the bad guys win is for the good guys to give up. So don’t give up.
So What Did You Do This Year, Dawn?
According to my invoices, I worked on 69 books! It may be off and I did tweak the number slightly to make sure it was a funny one, but I definitely worked on 69 books, and some pieces only published online. Last year I evidently worked on 45.
Work Credits for 2023
I really feel like, when it came to work, I was all over the place this year. That said, proofreading and copy editing appears to be a good fit for me, so I imagine I’ll cultivate that into growth in 2024. Here’s hoping I keep up with work during a deluge of layoffs and downsizing all over the place.
Last year’s list was more impressive thanks to being a full-timer for half the year, but trust me when I say this year’s list it more happy and healthy. 2024 will be about learning for real how much I need to get by, and seizing my free time for me. Work smarter, not harder!
67 Let’s Read Carmilla Like a Fujoshi III (End!)
We got a big-ass snowfall here the other day so I guess that means it’s Christmas season on top of the general SAD of winter. I don’t want to work, I just want to curl up in blankets and read books and play video games.
Anyway, here’s the rest of Carmilla.
66 Let’s Read Carmilla Like a Fujoshi II
Shit is about to get spicy.
65 Let’s Read Carmilla Like a Fujoshi I
So I’ve started reading Something in the Blood by David J. Skal, which is a very good biography of Bram Stoker. (By the way: I tried to sign up to be an Amazon associate so I could make some cash on linking these books but they canned me when no one bought anything so I dunno. Buy local!) It’s actually terribly engrossing and the author is a gay man himself, interested in that aspect of Stoker’s life. I’ll do a brief overview of the book when I’m done. We can do a chronological walk through Stoker’s life with Oscar Wilde and Henry Irving.
Before that though, the next chapter of Reading the Vampire is about Carmilla. I’ve already read the chapter but before I write about it I thought we should read Carmilla itself as a perverted little family.
I do have a little story about Carmilla. I’ve never read it, but my surrogate father—who I’ve mentioned before now—once came to me to ask if I’d heard of it. He knew I was a lesbian and we had been trading books and recommendations back and forth. I told him I’d heard of Carmilla and I hadn’t read it. We agreed to read it at the same time and he confessed he would feel less embarrassed to read a book about lesbian vampires if he was doing it with me. Dude had a lot of weird unexamined homophobia but I suspect in this case that he wasn’t sure whether to expect it to be sexy lesbian pornography or what. I’m not sure he read it before he passed away last year, so this one’s for you, Tony.
The author of Carmilla, Sheridan Le Fanu, was an Irish man, and we know for sure that Stoker read his work, although according to Skal, we don’t know when he may have read Carmilla, only that he probably did read it because Dracula exists. Makes me desperately want a pretty volume of all of his stories, though Carmilla appears to be the only one of his works to survive in regular publication, thanks to Dracula. It’s a novella, so longer than your average short story, but it’s quite dense to summarize so I think we might have to do it in three parts or so.
I got a hard copy for my personal nerdy library, but if you like you can read it for free on Project Gutenberg here. I’ll be grabbing quoted text from there.
Let’s go!
64 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — The End (of Dracula Daily)
Here we are at the end! Seven years later! What is our harem up to?
63 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — Death in the Harem
Here we are on the precipice! I’m writing this later than intended and I’m tired but I want to do it live.
62 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — Van Helsing’s Inappropriate Boners
It’s November 5th and even though I knew we were nearing the end, I find it still catching up to me. The finale is tomorrow, and the epilogue comes on the 7th. So for the next three days I’ll be updating daily to keep up with it.
I believe I’ve said it a few times already but just to leave it at the top: the end of Dracula isn’t the end of Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi. I’ve started a bunch of shit that I plan to finish so we all leave here fully informed on the horny history of Dracula and Stoker. I have Reading the Vampire and a few essays lying around to get through yet. I’ve been working on those. I guess 2023 is just going to be my Dracula year. I’m hoping it doesn’t bleed too much into 2024.
Away we go.
61 Let’s Read Dracula Like a Fujoshi — Van Helsing Writes Like He Talks
I’ve been reading my other Dracula books for content once we get to the finale. I hope you look forward to me never shutting up about Dracula ever. I have a bit of an inferiority complex I guess and I feel like if I’m going to be able to really draw this whole Let’s Read together I still have some homework to do.