its a penn name, fam

Hey there, I’m Geena. I’m a Black freelance writer and English tutor, working to revise and publish her first novel. Please consider supporting my work @ geeenawrites.com.

[geenawrites]

GeenaWrites

Commissions, reviews, essays, and original fiction.

Carrd Profile has been updated and modified to highlight current works and previous article series.

[geenawrites]

Bisexuality and the Hostility of Inner Communities

In which I existentialize about bisexuality, community, and the self.

"What could Bisexual media look like unharried by the peanut gallery of biphobia and monosexism? What kinds of stories or elements of identity and history could be explored without the ‘conversations’ becoming about illegitimacy."

[geenawrites]

Given the nature of this industry, someone (1) leaked that episode as a fair warning to Black/Brown viewers about what was going to happen since Anderson and co. could do nothing except be coy about it, which is optimistic; (2) leaked the episode to get the critical viewers out of the way for the weekend-weekday reactions, which is more likely; or (3) the Paramount+ hacker/leaker strikes again.

I may be giving folk too much credit in either case.

[geenawrites]

‘The Vampire Lestat’ and The Bones of It All

Woe is Lestat, for Lestat is woe and not much else.

"Lestat wants to build the kind of empathy Vampire created for a character like Louis, but fundamentally lacked a supporting cast that would push-and-pull against Lestat. Everyone in his flashbacks is either yelling at him or explaining things to him. It’s incredibly different from watching Louis’s relationships with his family crumble, his relationship with Lestat and Claudia begin, or how he gradually loses his mortal life in isolation to Lestat. The audience for Louis is also not likely to empathize with a character who became Louis’s jailer."

[geenawrites]

'Enola Holmes 3' and the Tepid Condemnation of the British Empire

[Originally posted on Letterbox 7/3/2026]

I can't shake the feeling that Enola Holmes 3's preoccupation with marriage has more to do with the actress (Millie Bobby Brown) than something that works for the Enola character or as a sequel/story itself. The series' preoccupation with Tewkesbury was always something I felt was going to bite it in the ass, and it certainly has with this film. 

Because as a point of conflict? Her want to be a career detective versus a victim of class politics and tradwife values, "Will Enola Holmes get married?" isn't a compelling question. But to that end, why does Enola feel the need to "compromise" with polite society when she's spent two movies doing the opposite? What has changed since the second film that gives her this impression? Because, from her argument with Sherlock, she's primarily preoccupied with helping Tewksbury make a name for himself as a progressive.

There was potential in the familial angst between Sherlock and Enola over her marriage. Certainly, something I would've loved to have seen expanded upon in their dynamic beyond the setup that concludes with Sherlock telling her she is "enough" to carry the Holmes name, regardless of her marriage to Tewksbury. That she is more than the names she takes.

Why does Sherlock feel his sister is selling herself under the river with this marriage? What would the inclusion of someone like Mycroft Holmes (who all but ceased to exist after the first film) complicate things if he felt differently and encouraged the marriage? I would've even appreciated some conflict with her mother about it instead of the usual quirky Laissez-faire. But, no. The conclusion the film makes is that Enola chooses marriage because she wants Tewksbury and that should be enough.

Secondly? As an attempt to make some kind of commentary on the persistence of the colonialism and racism of the British Empire, Enola Holmes was always going to be toothless. 

Holmes is a lot of things, but anti-colonial is not one of them. Especially since its primary preoccupation is about coddling the neoliberal sensibilities of its lead characters, beneficiaries of imperialism (Enola, Sherlock and Tewkesbury), elevated above crimes committed by their forefathers. And, as usual, characters with a particularly 'anti-imperial' bend to their arcs are villainous in some way as to blunt the sentiment. 

Moriarty as someone who hates empire but is ultimately self-serving isn't a negative per se, but the why and how she is always makes this kind of story smell of ulterior motives. The wrathful performance from actress Sharon Duncan-Brewster or the particular characterization of Moriarty also makes me squint.

Comparatively, Natalie Dormer's Jamie Moriarty (Elementary, CBS) is as vicious as she is manipulative, yet she's never frothing at the mouth. Why is this particular Moriarty acting like this? In the previous film, she was spiteful but quite enjoyed the tit-for-tat with the Holmes family. 

What about her relationship with the Holmes siblings changed since her arrest that would make her this vengeful? Sherlock's bend from calm, and controlled to wanting to murder Moriarty just doesn't land. The film itself never really solid he was in any peril he couldn't get out of, and Tewksbury's mom really isn't much of a justification either.

Like, her characterization here is just questionable. If the point was truly about her resentment of how colonizers benefit from the exploitation of people like her (Black, Jamacian, etc) or the people in Malta, without necessarily being righteous about it, was there a better way of doing that without resorting to the end result? I think there was, and it would've been time better spent in the film building on Enola/Moriarty versus the YA romance and marriage between Enola and Tewksbury.

That said, Moriarty was a perfectly serviceable antagonist as a follow-up to the second film.

[greatrunner]

Running the Gauntlet: 'Monarch Legacy of Monsters' (s2)

When season two was announced and I saw Kong being featured prominently in the trailers, I figured this would be closer to the spirit of Skull Island or GVK in terms of who the star monster would be. But like the first season, the budget limits how long the Titans will be on screen, and in the end, Kong is largely treated like an afterthought and Godzilla kinda shows up for a couple minutes and vanishes because of contractual obligations in Japan.

That said, I actually enjoyed this season up to episode five. True to streaming shows, a lot of things fall apart in the last few episodes. But I think the pacing was better this season, and there wasn't an attempt to replicate the look and feel of G14 like with S1 (which is always a plus).

Some performances from the cast are better than others (Kurt Russell, for example, is just playing himself.) I've never been one to moan about the mere presence of human characters like most G-Fans are wont to do, but I think the lack of a need for set-up (at least in the fashion of S1) freed the cast up to actually give far more varied performances than last time.

Things I liked about S2

Keiko lived. Of the flashback cast, she really turned out to be the stronger character, even when the writers were far more interested in the woes of Bill and Shaw Jr. My preference would be for her to be an old lady rather than a model-like young woman, but it is what it is.

Barbra Holland. She might be my favorite human antagonist in the MonsterVerse after Alan Jonah. Sharp, to the point about her opportunism, convinced of her own delusions, and enjoying every minute of it.

The "kid" characters grew on me. I legitimately couldn't stand Cate, Kentaro, or Mateo in S1 (I really don't like S1 outside of the flashback narrative), but the writing for this season actually gave them something to do besides snipe at each other and count the ways in which Hiroshi sucked.

Mateo telling Cate, "Yes, our current situation is definitely your fault. But what are you going to do about it?" It's one of the few instances in the show where the writing actually seemed genuinely confrontational with its characters. Cate owning up to it made it better, honestly.

It largely abandoned the LOST format of storytelling and stayed grounded in one story thread.

Pulgasari reference in the first episode. That was nice.

The very obvious attempt to remake the Shibuya Attack sequence from Gamera 3: Revenge of Iris in Kentaro's nightmare. Toho never being able to top Heisei Gamera, just imitate it, tickles me greatly.

I liked Hiroshi's storyline in S2, minus killing him. I preferred getting to know his character outside of Cate and Kentaro's perspectives.

Kong. Of the two major monsters in the MonsterVerse, I feel like Kong not being limited by Toho's micromanaging means he's had the opportunity to be a far more interesting Titan than Godzilla. I want more Kong adventures, preferably with Jia. I can live without seeing Godzilla for the foreseeable future.

Amber Midthunder showing up was a lovely surprise. Took me a minute to figure out it was her.

Cliff Curtis as an Apex henchman was a lot of fun. The way he communicated the character's underhandedness with his delivery made me want more of him.

Hiroshi telling Keiko that her actions drove his father away, and that was something she'd have to live with, like he lived with the contempt of his kids.

Things I didn't like about S2

Tim. I'll articulate later, but I truly, genuinely, hate this character.

Killing Natalia Verdugo to elevate that loser Tim to a leadership position. I've never seen such a succinct manifestation of mediocrity and falling up the ladder for a white male character in a show.

Killing Hiroshi Randa. The moment they no longer needed him for the infidelity subplot(s), they just killed him instead of building on his character and his relationships with his family.

The Hollow Earth entry points as time travel. It's just not an interesting narrative device, and more to the point, it convolutes what is an otherwise simple plot device for Kong, Jia, and the Iwi.

The way the show Others non-Western locales, specifically regarding their minor characters and redshirts. The problem with a show doing a Shadow Over Innsmouth send-up is Lovecraftian shit gets real racist, real fast (which it did).

It's clearly writing right up to the edge of the films (KSI, G14, KOTM, GVK) and trying to write around them, if not over them.

Giving Walter Simmons an OC-esque adopted trust fund baby was certainly a choice, esp when Barbra Holland was already fulfilling the role Simmons Daughter #2 had. She felt like a less interesting version of the daughter from GVK, whose loyalty to her father meant she agreed with Simmons' entire ethos of Human Supremacy. Wanting to control the Titans or exterminate them if he couldn't.

S2 apparently takes place two years after S1 (2015), so like 2017/2018, but Rodan is already out and about before KOTM? Get to fuck.

The way Houston Brooks has been completely vanished from the Bill Randa/Skull Island/Hollow Earth narratives. Not even a mention or foreshadowing of his relationship with Rand, or his Hollow Earth theory by the time he becomes a professor. No, I will not shut up about this.

Everyone coming up with a version of Emma and Mark Russell's ORCA gadget.

Shaw Sr. being alive at all.

Everyone going along with Cate and Keiko's assumption that he survived in the Hollow Earth.

Shaw doesn't really bring anything to the show after S1 that wasn't better served in a flashback, or giving that screentime to Keiko and Hiroshi.

Keiko writing some romantic missive to Shaw Jr., and then later telling Cate, "it was never like that with Shaw." Okay, sure, Nancy Wheeler. You were literally arguing otherwise to your son in an earlier episode.

Kentaro's storyline feels very much like they don't know what to do with his character now that they've given Cate so much narrative real estate.

Godzilla being back in play in Toho's films likely means MonsterVerse Godzilla is basically going to be a glorified cameo character in any future MV media.

Titan X (Co-Cai). As an antagonist, she felt like a victim of the show's budget and too much like an attempt to replicate King Ghidorah/Monster Zero, but "not evil". It seemed quite clear to me she was protecting her own/child, but the show's deliberate effort to conceal this meant I was waiting for the characters to catch up. (It took them until the eighth episode.)

I truly think keeping Shaw Sr. in the present-day narrative hindered what could've been time better spent on the development of the Randa/Muira relationship between Keiko, Hiroshi, Cate, and Kentaro.

On top of streaming shows being more plot-over-character, so much of the show being dedicated to litigating Old Man Shaw only heightened this problem. Knowing he is a permanent fixture in the show probably means I won't check in on the third season. None of the conclusions the finale reached interested me much either.

The newer characters (Midthunder's) or the insistence to keep the more superfluous ones (Tim, Reddick) only added to the problems the Randa/Muira family experienced as characters.

[geenawrites]

The Case of Elmwood Ranch (July 15th 2026)

"A legacy paranormal investigator, a loner horse rancher, and a haunted house." (I swear the synopsis was longer than this?)

Never heard of Deanna Grey (Amazon profile), but this one has been popping up (a lot) in my social media feed since I started looking for "Books with [Black] Bisexual Protagonists". They've got a few books under their name, primarily "rivals-to-lovers" YA plots.

Elmwood Ranch one is being advertised as an "Adult Book" (but I've also seen the Fetch term "New Adult" being used liberally with her YA books). I'm more of an "Existential Relationship" reader, but I hope it does something interesting with the paranormal angle.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Baltimore

[geenawrites]

'The Materialists' and Projection of the Audience

[originally posted on letterboxd]

Throughout the promotion for Celine Song's The Materialists, A24 and the industry media kept calling this film a "romantic comedy" or declaring, "romcoms are back." It left me perpetually confused because none of the trailers communicated that. And, so far as I know, comedy (be it slapstick or camp) was not Song's wheelhouse. Past Lives was as dramatic as a drama could get, and one that felt genuinely invested in the lives of its characters. That said, the genre prescription got no pushback from Song herself.

Regarding the film, Materialists is not a comedy. Lighthearted sometimes, sure, but that seems reserved for mocking the absurdity of 40-to-50-something [balding] men chasing the skirts of young women decades their juniors, body shaming and sneering at women in or above their age wheelhouse. If Lucy's role as matchmaker does anything for the film's narrative, it highlights the artificiality and entitlement that surrounds dating across gender. Which is nothing if not a consequence of the deluge of romantic comedies and reality television's shallow definitions of 'romance' and the exploitation of emotionally vulnerable people who've bought into the con.

There's a pretty tense subplot regarding a client of Lucy's who gets sexually assaulted on a date. It highlights the dangers of the online dating or the matchmaking scene and really seems to be the only time the story is about who Lucy is as a character and what she does.

While the people at her job shrug it off as one of the unfortunate perils of the job, Lucy internalizes and questions her so-called skills. How she spoke to this woman, how she woe'd that she was just 'average' and seemed eager to shuffle her off to the next guy. It all comes to a head when she tries to apologize to her ex-client (after stalking her) and gets dismissed as a pimp. It felt like the only genuine part of the story that felt like it had something to say about her social climbing and her judgmental behavior. Had she become too dispassionate about her job, was she missing warning signs?

The film isn't a deconstruction or critique of the dating scene, the romantic drama or even the romcom. Song mostly plays it straight. A romantic drama that feels antique --- out of time. As her job recedes into the background, the focus becomes Lucy's love-life. Not necessarily about which guy she ends up choosing (that's certainly how the general audience took it, though), but how she can make peace with her fear of poverty and reevaluate her lack of self-worth.

If you look at the John/Harry subplot like "Betty or Veronica?", then there is so little time spent on John or Harry versus Lucy's exploits as a matchmaker and the problems that come with said job, that the question doesn't feel earned or all that interesting.

Chemistry-wise, nothing really stands out as dynamic between Dakota Johnson, Pascal and Evans. Certainly not like it did during their press tour. The jump from Harry's flirtation with Lucy to wanting to marry her is abrupt. His insecurities about his former height and what he did to win affection from women are equally out-of-place as someone who isn't her client.

John's struggles as an impoverished stage actor and server with roommates hardly feel like something worth condemning him for, or a character flaw. In the context of a "love-triangle", there isn't one. That she ends up with John over Harry seems beside the point.

(And in a world where private equity is devouring everything, it's incredibly baffling to read shallow takes about why Lucy should've ended up with the rich guy purely because John was "broke.")

Materialists wants to be about Lucy, her emotional guardedness as a woman who gives sound advice she doesn't follow, or is quick to reduce a person down to surface details. It's just really clumsy getting there.

Song doesn't seem able to tackle poverty and the issues it causes in people's relationships. Most of the talk about money issues barely scratches past the surface, brushed aside from the aesthetics of hasty romances. Lucy's job and romantic exploits, her fears, don't come together to make an interesting story about how people maintain love in the face of encroaching capitalism eating away at their quality of life.

It's not a terrible movie, but it could've used a little more time in the pot.

[creatingblackcharacters]

I have a mutual aid link I want to share: https://chuffed.org/project/174716-buttercup-and-partner-are-facing-financial-housing-and-medical-instability

There's more information within the link, but the short version is that buttercup, artist and creator of the comic "UM", needs financial assistance in order to keep them and their partner housed and fed.

If you're able to share this on your blog, that would be a big help.

Thank you for all that you do & have a wonderful rest of your day!

Buttercup and Partner are Facing Financial, Housing, and Medical Instability

WHO WE ARE

[pastperfectcontinuous]

I want you to write for pleasure—to play. Just listen to the sounds and rhythms of the sentences you write and play with them, like a kid with a kazoo. This isn’t “free writing,” but it’s similar in that you’re relaxing control: you’re encouraging the words themselves—the sounds of them, the beats and echoes—to lead you on. For the moment, forget all the good advice that says good style is invisible, good art conceals art. Show off! Use the whole orchestra our wonderful language offers us! Write it for children, if that’s the way you can give yourself permission to do it. Write it for your ancestors. Use any narrating voice you like. If you’re familiar with a dialect or accent, use it instead of vanilla English. Be very noisy, or be hushed. Try to reproduce the action in the jerky or flowing movement of the words. Make what happens happen in the sounds of the words, the rhythms of the sentences. Have fun, cut loose, play around, repeat, invent, feel free.

Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering The Craft

[geenawrites]

Buttercup and Partner are Facing Financial, Housing, and Medical Instability

WHO WE ARE

Hey, guys, some friends of mine are in need of support. They're dealing with some serious housing and job instability.

They've raised $391 out of $5,000. Please consider showing them some love.

[geenawrites]

A Grassroots Group Helped Expose a Maryland ICE Detention Facility. Officials Didn't Invite Them to the Table.

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore's office promised a local advocacy group a seat at Monday's ICE facility roundtable with U.S. Rep. April McClain Del

"[...]When commenters pressed for the full invite list, Keller said she didn’t know who had been invited or why, and that she had only been trying to save people the inconvenience of showing up to a closed meeting. Shortly before the roundtable, McClain Delaney posted on Facebook that she and Moore would be meeting with "faith leaders, small businesses, and nonprofits" to hear their concerns — the first public confirmation of who had been invited. The description was notably narrower than the "community leaders" framing used in earlier public communications about the event, and made no mention of grassroots organizing groups or which organizations had been excluded."

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Brooklyn, NYC

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

Dwight Hawkins: Another execution by Baltimore police – Struggle – La Lucha

Dwight Hawkins was killed by Baltimore Police on Tuesday, Feb. 24, while leaving a bar he frequented. Justice for Dwight Hawkins! The Baltim

By Colby Byrd

The Baltimore police department has executed another Black man. The Black community could not even close out Black History Month here in Baltimore without a reminder of the ever-present oppressive and deadly system we exist in. 

Dwight Hawkins was killed by Baltimore Police on Tuesday, Feb. 24, while leaving a bar he frequented. The police instigated the stop, escalated the situation and executed Dwight Hawkins with 16 shots to the back. The mainstream media has been quick to highlight the past of Mr. Hawkins, in an attempt to justify his blatant public execution at the hands of the Baltimore Pig Department. 

[geenawrites]

Y'all, I promise you can write about the things you like without qualifying every sentence about it with "masterfully written", "masterpiece", "the greatest [blank] of all time", and "iconic".

[papasmoke]

[peak-widow]

[image description: "Early on, Ta-Nehisi Coates observed, "We are at a moment right bow where people are asking themselves why can’t the Democratic Party defend this assault on democracy... and I would submit to you that if you can’t draw the line at genocide, you probably can’t draw the line at democracy."]