Jennessa Hester 🍒
LightNews LightNews
banner
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Jennessa Hester 🍒
@cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
2.3K followers 1K following 560 posts
lambda poetry fellow, fawc scholar 👸 disney and nintendo studies 🏰 edits at IHLR, JCMS 📝 perpetually sleepy 💤 she/her 🏳️‍⚧️

jennessahester.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
after @chenchenwrites.bsky.social:

www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/160539...
Zohran Mamdani-style ad reading "i love you to the moon & not back, let’s not come back"
November 9, 2025 at 9:50 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Read poetry, despite despite despite
Zohran Mamdani-style ad reading "Hope is the thing with feathers."
November 9, 2025 at 9:38 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
So Disney Studies (@disnet.bsky.social) friends, which of us is going to write the paper on Zohran Mamdani x Queen of Katwe?
Theatrical poster for QUEEN OF KATWE. Photo of Young Cardamom & HAB.
November 5, 2025 at 3:12 AM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Tonight is an UNAMBIGUOUS correction of the national moment.

Among other things, it demonstrates that STANDING UP FOR TRANS PEOPLE is morally AND politically correct ✊🏳️‍⚧️
Photo of Zohran Mamdani with text reading "Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race." Photo of Abigail Spanberger with text reading "Democrat Abigail Spanberger wins Va. governor's race."
November 5, 2025 at 2:41 AM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Me preparing my guest lecture on the Disney princesses, which I'll give to some lovely graduate students today ❤️
Screencapture from TANGLED depicting Rapunzel on a bed reading books.
October 16, 2025 at 5:05 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Not according to the official Xbox website.

I actually didn't know this was an Asus product until your comment, when I had to look it up to see if I somehow missed it.

This naming convention seems like the latest of Microsoft's many, many recent failures.
Screenshot of the Xbox website advertising the ROG Xbox Ally.
October 16, 2025 at 4:30 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
My partner asked one of her online friends what they think I look like, based solely on how she has talked about me over the past several years...and this is the image they sent 🙃
Illustration of a chibi mouse girl eating cheese.
October 13, 2025 at 6:33 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Grateful to guest lecture on the Disney Silver Age today to a group of lovely undergraduates ✨
Title slide for a PowerPoint presentation on "The Silver Age: Understanding Disney from 1950-1967."
October 1, 2025 at 5:00 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
My partner got me the sweetest little Ragatha doll for my birthday 💕💕
A plush doll of the character Ragatha from THE AMAZING DIGITAL CIRCUS.
September 26, 2025 at 8:00 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Disney really put the same dang villain in two movies, named them the same dang thing (Ratcliffe and Ratigan), and just hoped nobody would notice.
Image of Governor Ratcliffe from POCAHONTAS showing off a sparkly gold suit jacket. Image of Professor Ratigan from THE GREAT MOUSE DETECTIVE showing off a sleek black and red suit jacket.
September 2, 2025 at 2:52 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Apparently, Democrats are trying to foster their own version of dark money propaganda to compete with the fascist right—

—and the influencers they reached out to responded with a Newsies reference 👀

archive.is/RadZa#select...
Passage from the article reading: “Should we send a joint email (with all of our email addresses) … or, are we just going to send things separately and hope they change everything for everyone?” Laurenzo, a nonbinary creator in Columbus, Ohio, with over 884,000 TikTok followers, asked the group. Some joked about collective bargaining. “Any Newsies fans here?” Eliza Orlins, a public defender and reality TV star known for her appearances on Survivor, posted in the group. “‘We’re a union just by sayin’ so!’”
August 28, 2025 at 2:42 AM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
I've seen a lot of really weird takes about THE LITTLE MERMAID.

However, "Ariel is bad because she illegally immigrated to the surface world" might be a new low 🤦‍♀️
Letterboxd review of The Little Mermaid (1989) The Little Mermaid is by far the most overrated movie I've ever seen. I don't see how anybody can see Ariel's actions and think she's a role model for young girls. She's a selfish, ungrateful, spoiled brat whose actions nearly got all of her friends and family killed, yet she's rewarded for it by getting romantically involved with some boring dude who she only just met. Ariel gave up her ENTIRE FAMILY, everybody she ever knew, the whole ocean, and a life of luxury and comfort for a chance to illegally immigrate and insert herself into a foreign culture she knows nothing about. That would be like if I booked a flight to Japan tomorrow without taking anything with me. It's a TERRIBLE idea, and I shouldn't have to explain why. Ariel did NOT deserve the sheer dumb luck she got for the choices she made. If she was in our world, she would have been robbed, assaulted, or worse within days, and she doesn't do or have anything to defend or protect herself whatsoever! Is this the kind of lesson we should be teaching? That's why I despise The Little Mermaid, and I personally consider it the most overrated movie of all time. The music slapped though.
August 24, 2025 at 4:50 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
It's not every weekend you get to see multiple cartoons in the theater 💕
Theatrical poster for NE ZHA 2. Theatrical poster for KPOP DEMON HUNTERS.
August 23, 2025 at 2:33 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Google's AI is so inconceivably bad that it saw a book chapter I wrote *ABOUT RACISM* and credited it to *JIM CROW.*
Google Scholar listing that reads "No-body Like U," by J Crows, from The Cultural Legacy of Disney: A Century of Magic, 2024.
August 20, 2025 at 2:36 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Sakurai is every academic right now 🫠
August 19, 2025 at 5:45 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
A new Eclipse set after almost nine years??

Streaming services must be bombing across the board.
Cover art for Eclipse Series 47: Abbas Kiarostami—Early Shorts and Features.
August 18, 2025 at 6:25 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
my gay dads 💕
Screencap depicting Baloo the bear and Bagheera the panther from THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967).
August 12, 2025 at 7:21 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
My main takeaway from FREAKIER FRIDAY is that life is worse now.
Poster for the film FREAKIER FRIDAY.
August 9, 2025 at 1:09 AM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
For Freakier Friday, I'm BEGGING Disney to release the full version of Anna Coleman's essay from the original.

I NEED to know her unabridged, preposterous thoughts on the "American classic" 1984.
A screencap from the film FREAKY FRIDAY (2003) depicting Anna Coleman's essay on the novel 1984. It got an F for being "PREPOSTEROUS!"
August 7, 2025 at 4:06 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
So grateful to have two new poems out in the 2024 Emerge Anthology.

Here's one of them ✨
Poem by Jennessa Hester "droplets of kerosene" trickle down onto the pond creating rainbows that ripple through the flesh of the water the boys spray the fluid in arcs, setting it to blaze with a long-range lighter instead of cooking, scouts burn the air and gaze in awe of how dangerous their bodies can be with the right tools a boy's flesh becomes fire for the world to put out the pond drinks down the oil just as it does the scouts' urine as they try to ignite that, too i fix my eyes on the water, watching as it ripples and distorts, making rainbows out of lighter fluid and little boy piss Cover of the 2024 Lambda Literary Emerge Anthology. Edited by monét cooper. Foreword by Roger Q. Mason.
August 6, 2025 at 6:43 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
We wrapped up my Women Writers class this week with Maya Angelou!

Our focus was on the occasion of the poem, so we compared her inaugural piece with "Still I Rise."

So grateful for my students, who did an incredible job this semester with some very heady, very challenging material ❤️
A photo of Maya Angelou in front of a blank wall. She is wearing a black, long sleeve top and a long pearl necklace.
August 5, 2025 at 11:19 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
I grew up on these streets.
Screenshot from Spiral Mountain, the opening level of BANJO-KAZOOIE.
August 2, 2025 at 12:48 AM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
This week in Women Writers, we focused on abolitionist and Womanist poets!

My students picked Lucille Clifton and Nina Simone to discuss, and they did a wonderful job using their words to navigate Black womanhood 💖

(Sadly, we didn't have time for their other pick, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper 😭)
Photo of Nina Simon posing in front of a brick wall. She is wearing a loosely knit top and bright hoop earrings. Photo of Lucille Clifton sitting in a plush chair. She is draped in a dark black outfit and is wearing several necklaces. Her head is haloed with bright light.
July 29, 2025 at 4:42 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Every time I watch Dumbo, I always think to myself "maybe this time they won't make fun of his ears."

They always do, but I still hold on to some hope 💖
Screencap from DUMBO (1941) depicting the little elephant Jumbo Jr. peeking out from behind his mother's leg.
July 28, 2025 at 5:48 PM
cherrypoppunk.bsky.social
Sapphic poetry week in my Women Writers course!

So impressed by my students, who had some really insightful interpretations of Chappell Roan and Audre Lorde's work 😊
Photo of Chappell Roan. She is wearing extensive drag makeup and has her hair kept up by star clips. Photo of Audre Lorde. She is wearing a striped white shirt and is leaning casually against a wall.
July 23, 2025 at 4:42 PM