Analysis: A year and a half of Shakesqueer

I’ve been on quite the journey since I started writing this blog. When I started, I had just turned 22 and I’d been engaged for an entire year, but I was still living in my mother’s house. Now, here I am living with my fiance, and our cats, having been at my retail job for a year. If you’ve been here throughout all of that, very little of that or if this is your first trip here… thank you.

In celebration of our time together, and because I like sorting things, I thought it might be of interest to somebody to see some blog statistics. This has been a time consuming effort, not made any easier by my continuous upload schedule which then also has to be taken into account. So without any further ado, I give you… DATA.

LONGEST REVIEWS:

1- Cats (2019) [1612 words]

2- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies [1443 words]

3- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey [1281 words]

4- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [1274 words]

5- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King [1224 words]

This list did not come as a surprise to me. It would make sense that the longest films I have reviewed would end up having the most to write about. In the case of Cats (2019) it is, I believe, a case of passion on my part. At just under 2 hours, it is far from the length of LOTR, but the decisions made during the production of this movie are truly baffling. My confusion was at an all time high, and when I write from a place of emotion, it is difficult to stop. What I find most interesting about this list is that the second film in each of the Middle Earth trilogies doesn’t make the cut. This actually aligns with my ranking of the entire saga, where I have these films as the least good in their respective trilogies.

SHORTEST REVIEWS

1- Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith [266 words]

2- Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace [277 words]

3- Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones [294 words]

4- Star Wars Episode 6: Return of the Jedi [325 words]

5- Pride [379 words]

In a highly un-shocking turn of events, my earliest reviews end up being the shortest. I initially wrote my reviews for the Star Wars saga in 2015 on Tumblr, and even adding to them 4 years later, I couldn’t pad them out all that much. The interesting part here is that both A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back fail to appear on this list, but at 390 and 459 words respectively, they were close. Perhaps the most noticeable piece on here is Pride, which was the first review of a queer film that I did. Carol, I Love you Phillip Morris, and Love Simon all run slightly short as well with 491, 535 and 493 words respectively. I’m still figuring out how to write for queer films because, of all the films I watch, they are the most important. You’ll find that I actually spend most of my time in those reviews writing about how they made me feel as opposed to the production of the films themselves.

LONGEST EDITORIALS

1- Superhero Rights: The Collection [6540 words]

2- The TROS Defense [3066 words]

3- Disney Minus [1776 words]

I remain immensely proud of these 3 pieces and stand by everything I said in the latter 2. I have put 3 editorials instead of 5 because there are so many fewer of them than there are reviews. In fact, I have only published 13 editorials in total, only one of which (Growing up on the MCU) was under 500 words. Superhero Rights came about for 2 reasons. Firstly, my family is not as versed in the lore of film companies as I am and I felt like I could at least try to bring them up to speed (because of course the tides have shifted again since its release). The second was that I have a real love for history and nothing fascinates me more than a good story. I was already interested in researching this history for my own purposes before realising, like many creators, that I might as well make some content out of it.

SHORTEST EDITORIALS

1- Suit Up: In defense of Comic Book Accuracy [561 words]

2- Remakes and Retribution [664 words]

3- Franchising [790 words]

Once again, we find my earliest work in this field to be the shortest. There is, I think, no better testament to how much my writing skills have improved than by comparing these lists. I used to worry that all of my pieces would fall short of what I wanted, but now most of them reach at least 1,000 words. Since I find this paragraph falling short, it is perhaps time that I admitted something to you… many of my editorials aren’t actually editorials. By definition, an editorial is an opinion piece, but I found myself unsure what to call these pieces that I had written. It was in this moment that my mind was cast back to the earlier days of The Nostalgia Critic and his editorials. It may not be accurate, but it’s about the only thing that I could find that fit so it stuck.

WORD COUNTS

Reviews- 60,366 words

Editorials- 22,371 words

Lists- 2,668 words

Total- 85, 405 words

UNDER 500 WORDS

Reviews- 10

Editorials- 1

Lists- 2

Total- 13

BETWEEN 500 AND 1000 WORDS

Reviews- 46

Editorials- 5

Lists- 3

Total- 54

OVER 1000 WORDS

Reviews- 19

Editorials- 8

Lists- 0

Total- 27

NUMBER OF PIECES WRITTEN

Reviews- 75

Editorials- 14

Lists- 5

Total- 94

PIECES THAT LAND PERFECTLY ON A 10

A Bug’s Life [660 words]

Brave [880 words]

Doctor Who Series 1 [670 words]

Independence Day [710 words]

Lilo and Stitch [710 words]

Monty Python and the Holy Grail [460 words]

Scooby Doo (2002) [1,200 words]

Shin Godzilla [1,130 words]

Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope [390 words]

Star Wars Episode 9: The Rise of Skywalker [1,090 words]

Franchising [790 words]

Superhero Rights: The Collection [6,540 words]

Shakesqueer: The Early Years [1,270 words]

PIECES WITH ONLY ONE NUMBER

The Matrix Reloaded [777 words]

Ranked: The Star Wars Saga [444 words]

There is something particularly pleasing about these. It could be the euphoria of achieving this without even trying. It could be because 777 is so close to 666 and Neo is a Christlike character. It could be because Star Wars as a franchise started with Episode 4.

Going forward to aim to keep a better catalogue of what I’ve written and, perhaps, if the mood strikes me I may do this again some day. Until then, thanks for taking an interest.