We wrap up our series on A League of Their Own this week by discussing romance!

Erin gives us a rundown on the documentary A Secret Love, which chronicles the real-life love story of Rockford Peach Terry Donahue and her lifelong partner Patricia Henschel. Then Rhonda deep-dives into the reference made to Pride and Prejudice in the first episode of the show, and how this reference foreshadows or contextualizes the romance storylines.

Further Reading:

We also found this article on parallels with another literary reference, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Follow on Insta and join us next week for Rhonda's Birthday Bonus!

We're continuing our discussion of A League of Their Own with a look inside the real All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL) and a few of the real women who played in the league over its 12 seasons. We also analyze how accurately the movie and TV series portrayed the realities of the league.

Check out our recommended reading list below for our sources and further background on the history.

Recommended Reading:

This 2018 perspec-flash-women-baseball-wrigley-0624-20180612-story.html">Chicago Tribune article offers lots of valuable background

The Hidden Queer History Behind A League of Their Own

Official League profile of the Rockford Peaches

Rockford Peaches official website

LA Times profile of Maybelle Blair

Follow us on Instagram for our current read-and-watch recommendations.

It's officially baseball season and we're celebrating with a deep dive into the 2022 Amazon original series A League of Their Own, and the 1992 movie that inspired it! We open it up with a look at our first experiences with both the film and the series, and then do an overview of what we plan to explore in more depth this month.

Topics include the true history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League and the real Rockford Peaches, as well as the real-life queer love stories that may have inspired the TV show's romance, plus how references to literary classics like Pride and Prejudice and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn offer parallels to the story, and more.

We also take the quiz to find out which character we are, which you can take here.

Follow along this month and join us on Instagram for some sporadic bonus content.

This week we're very excited to welcome our guest Natania Barron, author of the Arthurian-based Queens of Fate trilogy, to talk about the film The Green Knight, the character of Gawain and his many iterations, nerdy medievalist Easter eggs, the enduring and transcending relevance of Arthuriana, and so much more!

Find Natania and her books on her website and follow her on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram. Her book Queen of None is still available from some sources, but it will be re-released along with its sequel, Queen of Fury, early next year.

This week in our discussion of The Green Knight, we look into readership and audience reception of the source text, the film, and other recent fantasy fiction. Medieval readers (or listeners) of Sir Gawain's story would have understood references and symbols in the text that many modern readers and viewers miss--what are some of these references?

We also talk about the persistent myth that everyone in Medieval Europe was white, and how this racist myth has affected modern audiences' perceptions of the film's casting choices. This leads into current broader popular culture discussions around the casting of actors of color in other fantasy media, such as House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power.

Further Reading:

Crash course on the source text

L.A. Times reviews of the film

How Gawain's race affects the film

An interview with "Medieval POC"

Race and Worldbuilding in Fantasy

And follow us on Instagram.

We're very excited to be diving in to the 2021 film The Green Knight this month, as well as the 14th century English epic poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight on which the film is based. As an introduction to this series, we discuss our overview thoughts on the movie, plus our experiences with the source text, as well as Arthurian legends in general. 

We also do our usual "table of contents," giving you a taste of the topics we plan to talk about this month. Things like:

• the positioning of the text among its medieval contemporaries vs. how we view the text and film as a modern audience
• attitudes toward sex and sexuality in both medieval and modern contexts
• current pop culture works of fantasy fiction in which we see echoes of the same medievalist themes, like Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and, yes, Star Wars
• how beautiful Dev Patel is

Plus, we are going to have a guest this month, and it's a good one! You'll definitely want to tune in for that. Or maybe not, I don't know, I don't know your life.

Go follow us on Instagram if you want very sporadic updates and random thoughts.

Wrapping up our series on To All The Boys, we look at how psychology and long distances affect the relationships in the films as well as in real life.  Erin of course dips into her psychology expertise to talk about the vulnerability cycle in relationships, and how we see this play out especially in Lara Jean and Peter's story. And Rhonda breaks down some of the locations used in the films, from the Pacific Northwest, to Seoul, to NYC, looking at how setting informs the characters and story.

Further Reading: 

Cycle.pdf%20">The Vulnerability Cycle in human relationships

Filming locations in the movies

This week in our To All the Boys discussion, we look at how ideas and themes in the films are reflected in the real world. We research some other works and the life of Jenny Han, author of the books the films are based on, as well as how the idea of "soulmates" is expressed in literature and pop culture, especially teen romcoms. How have Han's experiences shaped her stories, and her role in the adaptations of her stories, and how has the idea of one perfect soul mate for everyone impacted how we view romance and romantic stories?

Further reading:

Interview with Jenny Han about her role as showrunner on The Summer I Turned Pretty

A Brief History of Soul Mates in literature and culture

Love letters and romance novels are two of the most prominent genres of writing that inform our cultural ideas about love and romance, and both feature prominently in To All the Boys. Lara Jean is an avid romance reader, and even has fantasies inspired by common romance novel tropes, and of course the entire premise of the first book and movie revolves around Lara Jean's love letters. 

This week we dive into both of these forms of writing, the history behind them, how society has viewed them (and those who read and write these genres), and how we see these attitudes reflected and subverted in To All the Boys. It's a perfect discussion for Valentine's (or Galentine's) Day!

Further reading:

History of Love Letters

Why we love the fake dating trope

Follow us on Instagram for some very well-planned and relevant content.

All February long we're talking about our favorite Netflix teen romcom movie series, To All the Boys I've Loved Before (sorry, Kissing Booth)! In part one we talk about our initial experiences with the movies, the source of comfort they were during quarantine, and get into the topics we plan to discuss in more depth throughout the month. Themes include:

• the history of love letters
• romance novels and romance readers
• self-efficacy in teen romance
• and more!

We also decided to take our customary quiz early, and this one tells us which To All the Boys boy is our soulmate. You can take it along with us here.