New Years Special: Reflecting on a Year of Your Blogs Part 2

Welcome to a special week-long New Year’s celebration celebrating YOU! This week, I’m sharing a year of my favorite blogs written by the WordPress community. If you missed Day 1, be sure to check it out (Day 1 contains a more thorough explanation of this festive special)!

Today, we’re continuing the fun with February and March. Keep an eye out for more posts throughout the week. I hope that you enjoy reading these as much as I did!

 

February

 

1. If you’ve ever blogged about a series or game, read a fanfic, or enjoyed fanart, you are no stranger to fan culture. Fanfic Magazine‘s Malory Beazley shares thoughts on fan culture in Writing Magic: Politicizing Fan Culture. In this post, she talks about the ways that fans take ownership of fandoms, creating original works that incorporate social issues, complex theories, and new identities into the source content. In this way, fans are able to use pop culture content in order to explore important topics from our world.

 

2. Every medium and genre has a history, some more extensive than others. Arcadia Pod‘s Stephen K. breaks into the roller coaster history of the anime genre in The Return of Classic Anime?. Stephen elaborates on past highs and lows of the anime market and fandom, and delves into the trouble of fairweather anime fans of the 2000s who didn’t want anything to do with classic anime.

 

3. I’ve always loved a good analysis that transforms a story and makes me think about it differently. Tim Rattray offers an excellent example at Thoughts that Move in the post A modern contextualization of Serial Experiments Lain. In the post, Tim connects the 1998 anime Serial Experiments Lain to today’s tech-heavy society. Like Lain, people today spend a lot of time building our identities through the internet, some to the extend of personal detriment.

 

March

 

1. Open world gaming fans enjoyed several major releases this year, including the launches of Horizon Zero Dawn and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Both games received high praises, and I rather enjoyed reading LightningEllen’s experiences of playing both games at once in The Adventures of Aloy & Link: Part I – Finding Balance. While reading, I couldn’t imagine playing both of these amazing games at once, and enjoyed the resulting complications that LightningEllen describes.(If you enjoy this post, consider giving another fantastic LightingEllen post a read: Have I Really Learned Anything From Blogging?)

 

2. I always admire posts where people open up about their mental health, discussing not only the complications that they experience, but also solutions that they’ve found work for them. In 3 Lessons I Learned From Having Panic Attacks, Windy City Wardrobe‘s DĀSHA discusses her experiences with panic attacks and describes ways that she handles or prevents them. I’ve never been big on fashion blogs, but I always appreciate her posts because she often writes about body positivity, inclusivity in the media, self-acceptance, and her own blogging experiences.

 

 

Do you have a favorite blog that you’ve written or read from February or March? I invite you to share it in the comments! I’m always excited to read new posts.

And as always, if you have a literary device you want to know more about, or a game, comic, show, or movie that you want to see make an appearance on the blog, leave a shout-out in the comments!

 

 

 

*Featured Image retrieved from http://www.localbozo.com/2010/12/new-years-eve-dos-and-donts/