I’m off to Capclave today! Yay!

• Cat Valente on Childhood and Growing Up
• Removing the Shade: Barriers of Multicultural Romances Awkward title aside, this post raises a lot of good issues about why white readers are often reluctant to read romances with heroines of color. I know that I’m among that group because the types of romances I like to read–historicals–tend to not have heroines of color. I need to rectify that.
• What Women Want (In Female Video Game Protagonists) I love that Kate Beaton cartoon so much. “NO TIME FOR FEELINGS. TIME TO KICK ASS”, indeed.
• Mandatory Retirement: Putting Tired Romance Tropes Out to Pasture “Every other genre offers escapist reads without requiring a full-body immersion into a protagonist. Readers can empathize with aliens, and harpies, and PTSD-addled aristocratic detectives—it is so impossible to empathize with a woman who thinks red hair is hot? Or to share and live vicariously through the experience of a heroine finding her soul mate—even if her soul mate comes with a little flub? And when you think about it, paranormal romances from writers like Charlaine Harris and Lora Leigh are full of heroes that, while yummy on the page, most women would cross continents to avoid if they met in real life.”
• Being Mean to Fat People is Pointless: A Good Old-Fashioned Plea for Civility This is a few months old, but still worth reading. I suspect the comments are a cesspool, though, so read those at your own risk.
• Hey Author, I Don’t Want to Be Your “Customer” This is a great post about author responses to reviewers and the (real and perceived) power imbalances between the two groups. As someone who used to review books professionally and is now firmly in the book blogger category, I feel really strongly about this: reviews are for readers. Authors looking for criticism have a lot of places they can go to get it, readers have to more or less rely on each other for recommendations since there are very few outlets that publish reviews with the intention of providing a service to readers (as opposed to librarians, booksellers, or as promotion).
• Entitlement is One Thing, Attempted Public Shaming is Another Or: “Don’t you know who I am?” on the part of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist. Or something.
• Finally, here’s a great My Little Pony fanvid about conventions: