Valerie Anne

Newsletter

Wild nights - Wild nights! is my weekly newsletter about media, nostalgia, and more. Visit valerieanne.substack.com for the best visual experience.

Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Six Months of Movies || Midyear Media Mayhem, 2026

I hope you’ve come to this place for magic, because it’s MOVIE TIME.But first, some movie math. I have watched 27 movies so far this year, which I think is a record low since I started doing Media Mayhem. In my defense, I’ve been doing a lot of big TV binges, so I haven’t been in a movie mood as much. But I will also be adding in some movies I watched at the end of the year, in the span of 2025 after I published my movie Media Mayhem but before the new year, which WOULD technically bring the num...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

My Top 3 Favorite Video Games of 2026 (So Far)

Today I am here to talk to you about my Top 3 favorite video games I’ve played so far this year. If you have been paying attention at all, two of the games on this list will not come as a surprise to you. The third was harder to pick but I feel good about my final choice.For the newbies, this is how today’s list will work: These reviews will be longer and more in depth and less spoiler-conscious than the blurbs in the full list that went out on Tuesday. I won’t spoil major endings or any plot tw...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

My Year (So Far) In Video Games || Mid-Year Media Mayhem, 2026

Hello! It’s officially time for :trumpet noises: Media Mayhem: Midyear Edition!A brief refresher for anyone who has joined us since December: During Media Mayhem, I take the entire month to talk about all the media I’ve consumed in the past six months and give a spoiler-light, mini-review of it, including but not limited to how gay it is. Each week is a different category, with regular newsletters going out every Tuesday, and then paid newsletters going out every Friday where I choose my FAVORIT...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Comfort vs Competency

Somehow, some way, it is the end of May, and I have been plugging away on my Mid-Year Media Mayhem project, which kicks off NEXT WEEK. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about what types of TV shows I tend to enjoy more than others, and what I mean when I say I have a “comfort show” that might be different than how other people mean it.I listen to Amy Poehler’s podcast Good Hang, and she talks a lot about comfort shows and how her show Parks & Rec is that for a lot of people. But she also sometimes...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

An Early Pride Story

Since pride month is just around the corner, and June will be a Media Mayhem month here at Wild nights - Wild nights!, I have decided to tell you a gay story a little early. After all, every month is pride month when you’re gay all year round.I was 13 when I first realized I was...not straight. There were plenty of hints and clues and suspicions before that, but I remember the moment I knew it for sure, on the dinner cruise during my 8th grade trip to Washington DC when I saw my friend dancing w...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

The Music and the Mirror

I used to be a dancer.I started when I was only two or three, in the kind of dance class where mostly it’s pliés and jumping and walking through hula hoops. In my first recital I was a “dancing poodle” whose “fur” was made of tulle and sequins. It was pretty darn cute.I don’t remember a time in my childhood before dancing. As far as I could tell, I was born a dancer. Dance class was something I attended before I ever step foot inside a school, my dance instructors the first teachers I ever had....
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

On Insecurities

You think more about your biggest insecurity than anyone else does.It’s one of those things we intellectually probably know is true but is hard to internalize. I’m not the first person to say this, it’s not the first time you’ve heard it. I actually remember the first time I realized it in a small way, even though knowing it did little to help at the time. I was in high school and it was peak hormonal insanity and the buzzy thoughts were at their buzziest, and I remember walking down a crowded h...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Journey to the Past

I think I had dinner in a wormhole this weekend.Let me set the scene. My dad and I traveled to Virginia this weekend on one of our musical road trips. Since it was a longer drive than usual, we left on Friday instead of Saturday and got to our motel around 10pm. Over 8 hours in the car for me, over 12 for my dad, we were exhausted but we hadn’t had dinner yet so we wanted to find somewhere close and easy to eat. There were a few places that would be open past midnight, and the closest one was ca...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Poetry Corner

This week, we are once again diving into the archives to something I have written long ago, but today instead of an essay or a D&D character backstory, it is a poem I wrote in high school. I used to love writing goofy poems, poems that often lacked depth, because I just really enjoyed the challenge of fitting words into a syllabic rhyming pattern. I have lots of them in random journals from various points in my life, and I’ve shared one I wrote about popcorn before. But every once in a while I w...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

A Ten-Star Experience

A few weeks ago, I had the absolute pleasure of experiencing something that hasn’t happened to me in a very, VERY long time: I read two five-star books in a row. I don’t know how I got so lucky! I definitely wasn’t expecting one of them to be a five-star book for me specifically, but it surprisingly was.When it comes to reviewing books, I have grown a little stingy with my five-star ratings in my old age. Which is funny, because I’m pretty generous in general with my stars; I have HATED a book a...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Live From Radio City Music Hall

If I told you I’ve been on stage at Radio City Music Hall, I would not be lying.It would be a disingenuous way to present that information, but it would technically be the truth. It was one of the many surprising perks of going to college in New York City. My full university graduation was at the new Yankee Stadium, but I had a smaller graduation ceremony for just the school of education and communications I was part of that took place in Radio City Music Hall, so I got to walk across the stage...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Outdoorsy vs Outsidey

I am not an outdoorsy person. Growing up, the most outdoorsy thing I did consisted of camping and canoeing in Maine for one long weekend every summer. And as much as I enjoyed singing Just Around the Riverbend as we glided down the Saco River, I did not love camping. In fact, in my most petulant teenage year, I made my dad stay with me in a motel nearby for the sleeping portion of the evening.I was born and raised a city mouse, what can I say. Not to mention I’m allergic to most things “outdoors...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Friends for a Moment

This weekend, I went to a bar in Manhattan with some friends that has live piano performances. In the past when we’ve been there, it was dueling pianos, but that day it was just a solo woman taking requests and cracking jokes. She did some impressive work, including sight-reading a song from Mean Girls the musical and Golden from K-Pop Demon Hunters, all while teasing people in the crowd, especially harping on our table since we had two birthdays at it. She gave most of us nicknames (not me thou...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Sister of the Groom

This past Friday, my little brother got married. Of course, as the older sister, I will always say he’s my “little” brother, but the truth is he’s almost a foot taller than me and also a full-grown man in his 30s. And I’m very proud of the man he has grown up to be! I, of course, already knew that he and his now-wife were amazing, but nothing proved it more than being at their wedding surrounded by the people in their inner circles and how wonderful they all were. I spent the day with bridesmai...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Hacking My Brain

I have long since accepted that my brain does not work like other people’s. I think in some ways I’ve known it since grade school, when I preferred reading during free play over playing with toys. Or when other kids came to me for help with their homework or understanding a lesson, but I was teased for not knowing cool trends or fashion or having crushes on the right people. When I couldn’t focus in or study for boring history classes but I could ace an English essay I wrote over my lunch period...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?

This past week I rewatched the first season of the show Paradise (because it’s great and also because season two started this week) and there’s a character who talks about selling a patent (or something like it) and essentially becoming a billionaire overnight. I have been especially stressed about money lately because I’m in between freelance contracts at my non-Autostraddle job and despite applying to 10+ jobs a week that I am overqualified for, I have gotten zero responses because people are...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Love, Actually

I used to have big feelings about Valentine’s Day. For a while it made me sad, then it made me angry, then sad again. Eventually I came to appreciate it while not participating in it, or doing “Galentines” or some such nonsense. This year, I felt completely apathetic toward it. I didn’t spare a single emotion for the holiday, and in fact 100% forgot it was Valentine’s Day on Saturday until the afternoon. I spent the day doing some much overdue cleaning in my bedroom and binging TV shows and play...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Thank You for the Music

I heard a song the other day that I hadn’t heard in a long time, and I was instantly transported back in time, and I was once again struck by the power music holds. For me, and surely plenty others, music is laced into my very being, and tugging at certain cords (or chords, as it were) can bring up certain moments, places, feelings, people. Sometimes it’s just a general vibe, sometimes it’s as specific as a street corner, and some songs are stronger than others. So today, I’m going to give you s...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Career Fair

I have once again been on the hunt for jobs. Freelance jobs, part-time jobs, basically anything. One of the companies I have freelance copy editing contracts from is starting to pick up again so hopefully that will fill my time, but in the interim I have discovered that no one wants to hire real human writers anymore. I don’t (and won’t) use AI and somehow that has disqualified me for many, many positions that come up in my search. After one day of particularly disheartening searching, I decided...
Wild nights - Wild nights! •

Words of Snow and Ice

I don’t need to tell you that things are bleak right now. Every time you open social media or turn on the news or read a headline, it’s more bad news. We’re only a year into this presidency and things are unfathomably bad already. Especially with the recent uptick in ICE raids, an unnecessary evil by an unnecessary force spreading fear and committing violence for violence sake. They’re not actually trying to get criminals off the street. That was never the point of ICE. Fear is the point. It’s h...
Load More Articles