Loading: Hot Challengers Summer
Welcome back to The Monthly Hoot: Witch, Please Productions' Newsletter!
Hey lovely people!
I think every month so far this year I’ve opened our newsletter with a comment about the weather. Boring of me, but frankly I need all the warmth and sun I can get. I’m just a lizard chilling on the rock of life. I hope it’s warm where you are, too.
I’m in a period of working in publishing that is, as the poets say, hell, so I’ve been self-soothing with lots of thinking about Challengers, texting Coach about Challengers, and saying “this is just like in Challengers” whenever anything at all happens. If you’ve seen it, let me know which fruity little white boy is your favorite in the comments (I’m writing this at 9 pm, which, as devoted listeners know, is my bedtime, so I apologize for being uncouth).
Okay, enough of that.*
<3,
Gaby, Hannah, Marcelle, Coach, and Zoe
*not really
Material Girls went on spring break! It was all very girls in bikinis, boys doin’ the twist (one of my favorite episodes of Gilmore Girls ever, fyi). While Material Girls was away, Gender Playground and Making Worlds hopped into your feeds.
In this unlocked episode of Making Worlds, Hannah talks with scholars (and friends) Lucia Lorenzi (she/they), and Clare Mulcahy (she/her) about Dimension 20! They explore the intimacy of collaborative world-making and the magical possibilities of pretending together. Then Lucia and Clare share what they take from Dimension 20 into their own lives. It’s a heartfelt discussion between three friends who really love Dimension 20, so get cozy and enjoy!
Next, we released an episode of Gender Playground on the main feed! This episode begins with an anecdote from Marcelle about the discomfort she feels labelling her daughter Billie as trans, given Billie started using she/her pronouns soon after becoming verbal. Together, Marcelle and Raimi think through the shortcomings and utility of labels, gender as a social construct, and the importance of affirming the gender and gender expression of people of all ages. Raimi then explains “transition” as an umbrella term that includes a range of actions pertaining to internal, social, legal and physical changes and choices folks may make. Marcelle asks some questions and there’s a fair amount of giggling!
DID YOU KNOW? At our $10+ tiers we host bi-monthly watch-alongs on Discord! If you join today, you can hang out with Marcelle and Hannah as they watch The Princess Bride!
We’re gathering at 11 PST/12 MT/1 CST/2 pm ET on Saturday, May 18th!
Marcelle and Hannah basically talk over the film (you can mute them if you want…) and we all chat through messages and it’s simply always a hoot and a half.
Gender Playground’s sixth episode comes out tomorrow! We’re so excited for you to hear it. For that episode, Marcelle and Raimi were joined by Reese Carr, Gender Playground’s incredible Associate Producer without whom we would not be able to make the show. You’ll learn more about them in tomorrow’s episode, but until then, we thought we would introduce you real quick!
This is Reese. They are a Ph.D. candidate in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto and their work focuses on queer and trans kinship, reproductive politics, the ethics of care, and family abolition. So fucking cool, right?? They’re also an avid reader, a gardener, a potter, a dog-lover and an all-around cutie patootie.
It’s time for me to recommend some reads!
For Jack (there are a couple Jacks, this is for the Jack who said their most recent favorite read was The Reanimator’s Heart): You mentioned you like queer romance in a sci-fi setting—boy do I have the book for you. The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer is a YA sci-fi romance that definitely reads more adult. It’s a little sad, a LOT twisty, and there’s a beautiful queer romance at its beating heart.
For Lorraine: *chanting* speculative litfic, speculative litfic! If I love one genre the most, it’s speculative litfic. I’m recommending Open Throat by Henry Hoke, which is written from the perspective of a queer, hungry mountain lion who lives up by the Hollywood sign. Stay with me! It’s a gut punch of a story that manages to combine tenderness with savagery in only 156 pages, and I found it to be incredibly moving.
For Grace: I also love books with Flannery O’Connor vibes that are a little haunted, and I also love body horror in my reading, so I have to recommend Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo. I LOVE this book, as a Southern queer myself, and I’m going to share the blurb from my shelf-talker at my old bookstore below:
Sweaty, blistering, and more than a little bit queer, Lee Mandelo's debut is Southern gothic for a new audience. Summer Sons is an exploration of masculinity and repression, the darkness of academia, and generational trauma; a number of heavy themes that Mandelo explores with nuance and expertise. A novel perfect for people who love the atmosphere of a Flannery O'Connor short story and wish Maggie Stiefvater's "Raven Cycle" quartet had more car chases and bad choices.
So, okay, remember how I said I couldn’t think about anything but Challengers? The theme of this playlist is “sluts playing tennis” and I’ll say everyone delivered in a big way. And that’s that on that.
Get your playlist on Spotify here or Apple Music here.
Have a topic you want us to tackle? Feel free to submit to this form!
Something else you want us to know? You can always email us at ohwitchplease@gmail.com.
Want to talk to us all the time? Join our $30 Patreon tier and find us on Slack, where we live.
Want to sponsor an episode of Gender Playground? Learn more here!
Have a strongly worded comment about this newsletter? You can now reply right on Substack and we’ll be able to see it and even reply! Just be nice to us.
You can also leave us a review for Material Girls or Gender Playground on Apple Podcasts! We love that. Thank you podprofesh for your review of Gender Playground!
LOVE girls5eva, my brain dj has been playing tiny butts forever on repeat for days and is taking no requests