Sidetracks - June 17, 2014

[helloladies]

Sidetracks is a collaborative project featuring various essays, videos, reviews, or other Internet content that we want to share with each other. All past and current links for the Sidetracks project can be found in our Sidetracks tag.

---

➝ Literary and Critical Theory are for Everybody: 101. Things that would have been handy for me to have in 2011.

➝ Interesting idea about a Women's Speculative Fiction prize. An award seems like tons of work, though, even if you defray the cost with digital copies of work. It's a really nice idea, though! Things I might now have the time to do but definitely not the money/skills, alas. *g*

➝ Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, something I recently re-read, has had rights acquired. Could be interesting, as long as they don't make it suck!

➝ Awesome discussion of Feed by Mira Grant, Chapters 1 - 6! aftertheendtimes seems like a great community if you're a fan of the series. YOU CAN READ THE COMMENTS. #novelty

➝ Let's talk about fanfic by seanan_mcguire. I always love reading about creators coming out in support of fanwork. :D

➝ Via Mieneke, I learned that Tansy Rayner Roberts is writing a gender-swapped space opera remix of The Three Musketeers. EVERYONE READ IT IMMEDIATELY. :D :D :D

➝ Memory wrote a great entry about her experience with the Hugo Awards process this year. I like how she calls it "urging". I would tag this "dubcon" myself. :P

➝ Ana reviews Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue. You'd think she'd trust us by now. :P

---

(Slander and lies! Of course I trust my LB partners implicitly.)

➝ I screamed internally when I heard there was a new blog at The Nation about "the intersection of feminism and economics". And then I read the first post, and it was everything I hoped for and more. Just one of several bits I really liked:

A business model that relies on suppressed wages at the female-dominated front lines of the growing low-wage economy and soaring pay in the white male-dominated C-suites will not be feminist when a woman breaks through as a CEO.

➝ Teresa wrote a very thoughtful post about the role of the critic and the dubious assumptions about readers that permeate all the reader shaming we've been seeing lately:

So I circle back to asking myself what the role of a critic is, and I continue to agree with Tom that a good critic shows me something I wouldn’t see on my own. Alternatively, a critic will help me see what a book is like so I can decide on my own whether I want to read it. A critic saying a book is good or bad is rarely enough to sway me. I want more. I want critics to understand the many ways a book can be good or bad and the many reasons people read. What does this book offer? Where does it fall short? What’s interesting about it? That’s different from good or bad, and it’s far more helpful.

➝ "Homeless spikes" are apparently now a thing. I just...ugh.

➝ Erin Bow on why she writes for children. And Gwenda Bond gives us Ten Reasons To Read YA (No Matter What Age You Are).

➝ At The History Girls, Frances Hardinge talks about the history of wristwatches and its connection with WW1 and the disruption of gender roles.

➝ Lastly, Sarah McCarry lists Four Fairytale Retellings Off the Beaten Path.

---

➝ Kameron Hurley is releasing "We Have Always Fought": Essays on Craft, Fiction and Fandom, a collection of her essays. I love Hurley's non-fiction and urge you to try her essays out if you haven't already. The collection is offered free until August 17th, 2014.

➝ PACIFIC RIM 2 SCRIPT ABSOLUTELY IN THE WORKS!!

"I don’t have the money, but I’m proceeding like it is happening," he said with a laugh, adding that he hopes to tackle the sequel after producing his next project.

Del Toro also revealed that the script, as it stands now, includes the characters Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam) and Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi) — and the story will follow the events of the first movie.

"Some people were wondering if we were going to do the prequel. I was never interested in doing that first wave of invasion," del Toro said. "I’m going for very new, very crazy ideas on the second one, which are very different from the first one — but you will get really great spectacle."

➝ Fox Meadows had a short Tumblr rant about creators who hate the concept of fanwork and it made me so happy.

➝ And to finish, an "exercise video" involving a tiny puppy.