Best. Leeloo. Costume. EVER.
Okay, yes, this is problematic because it’s turning a woman into a dog but it also makes a totally ridiculous costume look even more ridiculous.
- Escapism in Historical Romance Lots of food for thought here. I enjoy the “hero with daddy issues + unfettered by social constraints heroine” as much as the next person, but I also do like my books to be more complicated than that–because life is more complicated than that.
- And another one from Wonk-O-Mance because it made me laugh and laugh and laugh (I would link to everything there if I could): Jondalar, Father of the Alphahole Jean Auel’s books were smutty books I could get away with reading because they were “educational” (they appeared on the list of acceptable book report books in my 9th grade science class; don’t ask me why we had to write book reports for science class, I haven’t yet figured that out). Also, let me send you all to read one of my very favorite fanfics: Simmering. Ayla invents sliced bread. It is amazingness.
- On Sagan “If you wish to talk about what Carl Sagan means to science fiction, you must first invent the universe.”
- Black Women in Speculative Fiction Does what the link says–it’s a great overview of a lot of great writers. I’ve seen this attributed to Chesya Burke on Twitter, but a bit of investigation reveals that this is a class project inspired by Burke’s recent short story collection, Let’s Play White.
- “Fake” Nerd Girls, “Whores”, and Sexism Oh yes. THIS AGAIN. Also: Nick Mamatas reads the comments so you don’t have to (bless you, Nick).
- Five Things Academic Writers Can Learn from Genre Fiction Writers I’d also say that these are also things that anyone who has a hard time writing can use (I count myself among that group).
- YA Fiction and the Many Possibilities of Manhood Great blog post from Malinda Lo about manhood and gender fluidity.
- Predators, the GOP, and you A truly magnificent rant from N.K. Jemisin on politics and the American media machine.
- What living in South Africa taught me about racism in America Lots of great–and absolutely true–points here.
- How the Oxford University Press decided Word of the Year
- Reading on a Kindle is not the same as reading a book Published in an internet magazine. I know that I read more books and read more widely with my Kindle than I did before I had an e-reader. When can we stop fetishizing the book-as-object already? I mean really.
- The Gendering of Anger, Vice, & Violence
On some level, the cultural derision of female anger as hysteria seemingly stems from a belief in female physical impotence: if verbal disagreements are seen as either analogues for or precursors to physical altercations, then our tacit assumption of female weakness serves to characterise female anger as being somehow disembodied; as though our implied inability to (if necessary) take things outside means that our anger can never be physically felt, and is therefore inadequate when contrasted with proper, red-blooded, bodily male anger.
