† ETERNALPORCELAINDOLL †

Warning: this story as well as my review contain the topic of rape. Please proceed at your own caution! For full trigger warnings check the end of my review. For the perpetrator, rape lasts just a matter of minutes. For the victim, it never stops.  What makes a man? What makes a community stand with someone no matter what? What makes a community? Beartown, a small town somewhere in the woods with its hay days long past, is a community ruled by one thing: ice hockey. Everything comes back to that sport. One's friends and acquaintances, your social standing, the hopes for the town's future. So when someone from their up and coming junior team does something to threaten what people want this town to be, alliances are built and things are brought to light about Beartown. Most of us probably heard of football players who did a rape and got away with it even though the evidence spoke against them. This book highlights stories like this by pointing out how the way masculin...

As every year, the city of Leipzig, Germany, turned black again on the Pentecost weekend. All the shops pull out the few black things they have and showcase them in their windows, the restaurants create special "gothic" dishes (especially beloved is the black ice cream), and even some tourists from around the federal state and sometimes the rest of Germany come to see what still is a "strange" spectacle for many people: the wider Goth subculture travelling to the city to experience music, culture and other art of various kinds while seeing their friends again. For me, it was my second WGT and again I loved every second of it. I enjoy being around people like and similar to me, finally being able to wear what I can't necessarily wear most of the time, and finally not feeling like I'm in the minority. Usually as someone from the wider subculture it's not easy to exist without being treated as something weird but when you are around so many people who sha...