Back from long radio silence, I'm almost about to be able to go back to reviews again soon. Things are going off to the publisher this next month, and I will be able to sleep the blissful sleep of the published-but-not-yet-savaged-by-critics. I look forward to that day, when I can work on the Cole book to my heart's content.
In the meantime, I have only snips and clips of time - not enough to get through a book or do a thorough review, but enough to make things better around here. I've been keeping the Progress Page up to date with new releases (oh my goodness, you have NO IDEA how excited I am about these new books from Sarah Fine!), and I even started up a Tumblr account because I have been having way too much fun stalking the Phantom fan community over there (but don't get all excited about following me - I am just as bad at updating over there as I am here).
My biggest project, though, is to clean up around here, and by clean up I mean edit a lot of old reviews. I've been working on this project for seven years, and during that time I've grown a lot as a person; I've learned new things, become aware of more issues in the world around me, and realized that life is a process of both learning good new things and unlearning bad old ones. The wee baby me who was fresh out of undergrad when she began this had good intentions, but she didn't always do a great job of carrying them out, so it's up to (slightly) more adult me to do that now.
So, I'll be working on editing old reviews for a number of things. I'll be trying to remove unintentionally sexist objections (oh man, you all know I love Christine but many years ago there was some pretty sad internalized badness that comes out in a review once in a while), jokes that I now recognize are harmful rather than funny, and my pretty rampant use of ableist terms. I hope there aren't too many of them, but I know I've seen some going over old reviews, and I know you all have, too. There's also been some fantastic fan research in the past few years into the origins of Leroux's story and inspirations, and this'll give me a chance to make a note here and there if need be!
In the meantime, thanks to all of you for sticking with me in spite of my blunders, and for being an awesome, fun, and supportive community. You rock.
Back to your regularly scheduled Phantom holiday extravaganzas, whatever they might be!
I put "worst Phantom holiday gif" into Google and this is what I got. Glorious.
