Sidetracks - September 22, 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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➝ I recently finished Lock In, John Scalzi's new novel. I liked it a lot and thought there were things really worthy of discussion happening in the novel along the lines of disability, politics, race, and gender. It's already been snapped up for television (which intrigues me). One of the big spoilers is going around since Scalzi finally addressed it on Tor.com. owlmoose wrote about it last week in Reader Assumptions, Lock In, and the Status Quo. In the context of ongoing discussions in the SF community about worldbuilding, that's fascinating. Warning that her essay does give it away, so maybe read the book first, if you care! :)

➝ Via umadoshi, DVD: "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" by princessofgeeks contains some interesting observations about the film I didn't notice on my three viewings. The more people talk about this thing the more I love it so much. Such a smart and well done piece of media!

➝ Gilmore Girls will be streaming on Netflix, although only for the US. STILL THOUGH. Now I can fill a huge hole in my pop culture knowledge.

➝ such_heights asked for book recs and got lots of suggestions in response. My poor reading list.

➝ Via next_to_normal, Robert Downey, Jr shares his feelings about cheeseburgers, which are pretty similar to my feelings about cheeseburgers. This video just made me crack up, I don't know why, but since it made me happy, I'll share!

➝ Check out this awesome post by emilianadarling about Transformative Works and Cultures and also, Fanlore! \o/

➝ Doing Battle with the Little Hater was really timely, because I've been feeling pretty blocked lately re: all kinds of writing. It pairs well with this permission slip from ursulavernon.

➝ My Least Favorite Trope by matociquala is wonderful (and I'm super late, as per usual, and everyone's seen it already).

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➝ This quote from Your Lifetsyle Has Already Been Designed has been going around Tumblr:

But the 8-hour workday is too profitable for big business, not because of the amount of work people get done in eight hours (the average office worker gets less than three hours of actual work done in 8 hours) but because it makes for such a purchase-happy public. Keeping free time scarce means people pay a lot more for convenience, gratification, and any other relief they can buy. It keeps them watching television, and its commercials. It keeps them unambitious outside of work.

We’ve been led into a culture that has been engineered to leave us tired, hungry for indulgence, willing to pay a lot for convenience and entertainment, and most importantly, vaguely dissatisfied with our lives so that we continue wanting things we don’t have. We buy so much because it always seems like something is still missing.

If you've been working an office job for a while this essay won't tell you anything new, but it will at least remind you that someone with a platform understands the glaring problem of your working week.

➝ Patrick Spaet's "So, What Do You Do?" is another decent piece about the problems of our current work culture, if you can get past Spaet's idea that capitalism is collapsing:

Probably no other sentence comes up at a party as often as: “So, what do you do?” There is an unspoken question behind this: “Are you useful?” Work determines our social status: tell me what your job is—and I’ll tell you who you are.

➝ What's Up With That: Why It's So Hard to Catch Your Own Typos. Science says I'm not stupid.

➝ At The Huffington Post Sonia Kamal lists 50 Novels By Women Writers On Conflict, Displacement And Resilience.

➝ The Daily Dot led me to Aims, 'multifandom fanvid concept album' using Vienna Tang's music. Aims contains some of my favourite vids and there are a few more I want to explore soon (there's a Thor vid!).

➝ Maggie Siefvater posted Artist & Thief (an excerpt from my SCBWI keynote for those who weren’t there) which gives a really interesting insight into how she creates characters (and how Adam Parrish came to exist).

➝ You could read that article while sipping on this fan made cocktail recipie for a Gansey's Pig.

➝ Tade Thompson has put together a series of blog posts for SFF writers about creating characters with mental illness. Start with Mental Illness Primer for Speculative Fiction Writers 1: Why Should I Care?

➝ Jenny McPhee reviews Dangerous Women, the anthology George R. R. Martin recently edited, at Bookslut. I've been wary of this project, but now I think I might give it a go.

➝ And to finish let's have some smart thought about Joss Whedon, female characters and the female gaze. I would very much like to talk about the idea that some characteristics are commonly accepted as attractive to women, in '(romantic comedies, chick lit, anything in which Hugh Grant appears)' but not by the man on the street or by some male creators. Is Richard Curtis just a very powerful UK outlier, or is there more to explore here?

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Gilmore Girls! Thank you for the heads up. I need to watch it, too. :)

Jennifer | Book Den

[renay]

I predict we're both going to have ENDLESS FEELINGS.

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

Well that is extremely awesome of John Scalzi. I am digging that whole idea.

Have you seriously never seen Gilmore Girls? Can I warn you ahead of time that the characters in it are not, like, the absolute best at conflict resolution? Just be aware of that going in. I love that show! I have every intention of watching every episode of it once it's on streaming. But conflict resolution, the characters aren't great at it. Also, as Vulture pointed out, nobody on Gilmore Girls kisses normal. Don't know why. They just don't, and Rory is terrible at giving hugs.

[renay]

I know! I'm really curious about how it's going to change the discussion of the book. It's neat!

I have seen maybe five episodes total of Gilmore Girls, and they were all out of order and made very little sense, but I really liked the character dynamics between Rory and the grandparents. Also, I can probably survive the lack of conflict resolution. After all, I made it through nine seasons of Dean "I'm an Abusive Asshole Who Can't Deal With My Failings" Winchester. Nothing can be worse than Dean Winchester, not even Rory Gilmore.