Sidetracks - August 26, 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.

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➝ Recently on Lady Business! Ana reviewed How to Suppress Women's Writing, then teamed up with Jodie to talk about "Burning Girls" by Veronica Schanoes. I weeped over Guardians of the Galaxy, some random awards were announced, I posted recs, reviewed Kameron Hurley's essay collection, and then Kameron Hurley herself (The Mirror Empire is out RIGHT NOW!) dropped by with Gender, Family, Nookie: The Speculative Frontier. Basically, we've had a busy two weeks. GO US.

➝ Woman writes a script that goes on to become summer juggernaut film, everyone else is quick to note that it changed, okay! It changed a lot. What woman?

➝ Another great Guardians recap by likeadeuce.

➝ A History Lesson From the Captain America Fandom which is a fascinating hole to go down, full of amazing links. I do find it a little unfortunate that the article linked to commentary about one of the links instead of the actual link, Steve Rogers' 1930s/1940s neighbourhood by thingswithwings, which I still love. FANDOM POWER.

➝ via metanews — From Kevin's Feige's Emporium of Disingenuous Commentary: Why Marvel Isn’t Doing A Female-Led Movie (yet)

➝ A different perspective on Lucy, concerning entertainment value.

➝ An older article about Peggy Carter and her one-shot, which I really liked for the way it talks about dealing with our history through fantasy narratives.

➝ Get off your butts, editors! (Unless you're already off your butts. In that case, it's fine.)

➝ Fantastic Breasts and Where To Find Them which went around all week, and which I watched without a trigger warning for sexual assault. Oops.

➝ Georgia Football Player Joins A Book Club With Some Very Nice Ladies — I'm not going to lie, I was biting my thumb through the end of this because it's so fucking cute. It makes me want my own book club. :(

➝ This kid has a cookie company and a sweet style. Tooth-rottingly adorable.

➝ The Genre Fountain by Robert Jackson Bennett, who has a book coming out soon with an interesting premise (disclaimer: it's apparently not about stairs).

➝ Our very own Ana went to Loncon and wrote about her experience!

➝ kate_nepveu has tons of great write-ups about Loncon

➝ There Should Be No More Back-to-Back US Worldcons. Ever. — Given that I'm American, I am less severe than Jonathan is about back-to-back US Worldcons. But surely there's some mechanism that could encourage location diversity so more than two consecutive US Worldcons in a row is an outlier rather than the norm? If US Worldcons are a "safe" option because there are fans here that know how to run them, are there not ways for new chairs in non-US locations to work with previous chairs in US locations to share experience, knowledge, and resources to make having more non-US Worldcons a thing? I share this opinion having never attended a convention.

➝ So, You Want to Vote on Worldcon Location? Yay! — this is helpful but I still find the site selection process utterly confusing. I really want to support Helsinki! I AM STILL NOT SURE HOW. This is the next thing that needs to be pulled out of the dark ages and updated to be more accessible.

➝ via Cora, #HugoAwards 2014: A bit more detail and Breaking Down the Hugos: Careful Like, if you like stats and nerdery about the Hugos.

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➝ “I’ve never really thought about it”: librarians’ attitudes to the provision of LGBT-related fiction to children and young people in English public libraries is excellent and well worth reading. Once again we come back to how the status quo isn't neutral.

➝ I've been following the news from Ferguson and listening and trying to learn. A few links I found useful: Ferguson: The signal it sends about America, Say What?: On Speechlessness, Racism and Respectability in #Ferguson, and #Ferguson - How We Got Here (a reading list by Left Bank Books).

➝ Dolls or Action Figures? Hints or Hacks? Inspiration or FanFic? is a great piece by Liz Burns about gendered language.

➝ I loved this essay by Nina LaCour (whose Everything Leads To You made me really happy):

Because when I think about a love story, I think of how seeing Kristyn walk into a classroom felt like catching a glimpse of a beautiful future. Of driving back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge, from my place to her place, the music on loud, the windows rolled down. Of planning a road trip before we’d even kissed. Of kissing for the first time while holding a map of America, daring to imagine that our lives together could be just as expansive.

Because, since the beginning, it was meant to be a simple love story. A yes-there-are-gay-people-everywhere story. A yes-we-hold-hands-in-public story.
Because when I was nineteen and falling in love, “sin” was a word that didn’t occur to me.

➝ Just in case anyone other than me somehow managed to miss this, Frankenstein, MD (a genderbent webseries adaptation of Frankenstein by Pemberley Digital) has started :D

➝ Jessica Tripler lists the Top 10 Literary References in Friday Night Lights.

➝ Some statistics about gender balance at UK Music festivals this summer.

➝ And on a somewhat related note, I'll end with a song:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

I was thinking that perhaps from now on I could end my section of Sidetracks with a video by a female musician or woman-fronted band. Y/N?

Comments

[renay]

Ana: you TOTALLY SHOULD link to music at the end of every Sidetracks, because then at the end of the year we'll have our very own soundtrack. That would be super cool. :)

And thanks for the link to Liz's piece!

[coalescent]

I really want to support Helsinki! I AM STILL NOT SURE HOW.

My understanding is:

1) Buy a supporting membership to Sasquan (and if possible buy it now, because it's currently $40 and the first of several rate rises will kick in on 1 September).

2) Wait until Sasquan announces that site selection voting is open (probably June or July next year).

3) If they enable online voting: pay the site selection fee and vote!

4) If they do not enable online voting: pay the site selection fee, print the form, vote and post it to the convention (OR find someone to courier it direct to Sasquan).

5) Vote by ranking the available options, just as in the Hugos.

6) That's it.

7) Well, actually, that's not it, because the act of voting means you will automatically get a supporting membership in whichever convention wins. So if DC beats Helsinki, you will have a supporting membership in the DC convention. This, of course, means that when 2017 came around you will be all set up to vote on the 2019 Dublin bid!

8) The site selection voting fee is never (so far as I've seen) higher than the cost of a supporting membership. So in theory, although you pay double to get started in the voting process (supporting membership + voting fee in the same year), after that just continually voting is the cheapest way to remain involved in the Hugos...

[susanhatedliterature.net]

oh, everybody vote for Dublin in 2019, cause that's only an hour from me! (self plea ends here)

[susanhatedliterature.net]

err, selfISH plea, obviously :)
I knew there was a reason for previewing comments, she said, hitting post not preview.

[renay]

If you went to the Dublin Worldcon, I could live VICARIOUSLY THROUGH YOU. *plots*

[renay]

re: #1: is Sasquan really going to raise the Supporting membership above $40 again? HAVE WE ALL LEARNED NOTHING? Or is there a chance it will stay at $40?

I think I have a grasp on it now. Helsinki has confused me by having multiple options that don't specifically fit into these directions, though. (Pre-opposing?)

[coalescent]

is Sasquan really going to raise the Supporting membership above $40 again?

To be fair, I don't actually know -- there probably is a chance it will stay at $40. It probably depends how many members they think they're going to get vs how much budget they need.

(Pre-opposing?)

Ah, I see! Basically none of those options has anything to do with voting for the bid, they are essentially charitable donations to the bid so that they can put on a strong campaign -- a) giving them more funds, and b) demonstrating strength of support for the bid (and thus creating a front-runner status, we hope). But yeah, that's all money for the bid, not for site selection.

If you are a pre-supporter and don't vote in site selection, but they win anyway, you probably get a discounted rate when converting to a proper membership (either supporting or full).

"Pre-opposing" is an in-joke, the idea being that you're willing to pay them money not to bid, but actually they'll be taking your money anyway. :-)

[renay]

In-jokes. MY NEMESIS. This fandom, you're all a bunch of comedians. :P

[bookgazing]

Totally missed that Frankenstein, MD had started. So much to catch up on!

[marenfuga]

Fantastic Breasts and Where to Find Them is the BEST THING EVER. I mean, it made me cry, and it sure needs a big trigger warning, 'cause... yep. BUT. SO GOOD.

YES to the music videos! (Also, Neko Case, yay!) And thanks for the Frankenstein, MD reminder :)

[renay]

Yeah, when I got to the first slaughterhouse line, I was done. SO good.

[owlmoose]

Love the Liz Burns article. I'm a fan of Lev Grossman's Magicians books (still reading the new one), and although I wouldn't call them Harry Potter/Narnia crossover fic at all, the influence of both worlds on his story is obvious. I tend to think that the distinction people draw there there is more literary bias than gender-based, but it's still a really interesting point.

[renay]

I think it's probably time for me to read the books in order to be able to make my own determination. Although I've only ever read two Narnia books, so I'm not sure I'd catch everything.

[susanhatedliterature.net]

I currently have many many tabs open (lots of reading prompted by this post) but wanted to say thanks for the link before I get lost in www'land

[renay]

Good luck out there. ;)

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

You absolutely need to end every post with a lady musician or a female-fronted band. Let's make it happen.

Everything in Ferguson has just been awful. It hurts my heart to read about it day after day. I do not understand how so many people can be so ignorant of their own country's history and how viciously racist our government institutions have been and (in many cases) still are. This isn't just me saying it! Extensive research shows this to be true! I am just reminded again and again of another layer of privilege that I have -- that my parents talked to me about structures of prejudice and where I fit into that and how I should behave around issues of power and privilege. And at the same time, even though I know that is a privilege of my life and is not something that everyone in America was born with, I am still SO ANGRY at the ignorance I keep seeing.

SORRY. Rant over.

[renay]

Rant away any time. I +1 this entire paragraph.

[theliteraryomnivore.wordpress.com]

Lovely as always, friends.

And yes, end Sidetracks with music! I would love some LB-inspired playlists to rock out to.

[bookgazing]

Adding a vote for this :)