Sidetracks - February 14th, 2016

[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.

Clare

➝ This 12 minute special effects reel for Agent Carter is really interesting, because the vast majority of the special effects utilized on the show are used to bring the setting to life. And then they break down an explosion layer by layer, which is super cool.

➝ French artist Thirsty Bstrd mashed up Star Wars with Back to the Future in a series of images, and it’s, obviously great. (Luke’s horror at Anakin’s dumb padawan haircut is BRILLIANT.)

➝ Aw yeah! Archie’s Jughead Jones is now canonically asexual.

➝ Afro-Scottish actress Eunice Olemide spoke a little about her role in Rogue One. I consider it the mildest of spoilers, but I am now even more excited for Rogue One.

➝ Bryan Fuller is showrunning the next Star Trek television series. SCREAM!

➝ Amblin Entertainment is courting Ava DuVernay and Lupita Nyong’o for their upcoming sci-fi film Intelligent Life. Man, I would love it if they could swing that…

➝ This breakdown of how Harry Potter reflects the experience of PTSD is really interesting.

Jodie

➝ Lolita Chakribati, author of new play Red Velvet, talks about her history with UK theatre, and illuminates some of theatre's current problems. I'm going to see Red Velvet this week, and I'm pretty excited.

➝ Astronaut, Tim Peake posted this beautiful picture he took of a Saturday night in London.

➝ My Year of Watching Only Women on Netflix outlines a practical way to introduce more women into your TV schedule. I like that the author lists the media they tried as well as media they loved. Even though my tastes and comfort levels are clearly different from the author's in some places, it's nice to have a big list of female focused media to explore.

➝ The UK is hosting The Bare Lit Festival, a festival for chromatic writers, and Zen Cho's going to be there!

KJ

➝ Hugo Nomination Season has begun, which means it's time for me to get serious about my short fiction reading. I have a terrible confession to make: I'm not really a short fiction reader (except for fanfic), so I read almost no short fiction during the rest of the year. Which means that my first step is collecting rec lists and eligibility posts for novellas, novelettes, and short stories. Two that I'm reading my way through right now: The 2016 Hugo Long List: Part 1, Fiction on Nerds of a Feather and forestofglory's recommendation list.

➝ I'll probably also take a look at the Locus Recommended Reading list, but Natalie Luhrs presented a really excellent statistical analysis of the list since 2011 in terms of race and gender representation. Spoiler alert: it's not looking good. In particular, Luhrs found that individual white authors and male authors are more likely to have multiple books and stories listed, while female authors, non-binary authors, and authors of color are much more likely to only appear once. I've found this to hold true almost every time I've done breakdowns of best-of lists by author gender, including once for a list presented by Locus, so I'm not too surprised.

➝ Foz Meadows wrote this absolutely fantastic essay about identity and oppression in the Dragon Age games. I found myself nodding along pretty much the entire time I was reading. Lots and lots of spoilers.

➝ Fellow obsessives may remember that Peggy Carter had two brief appearances in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. One of them is an excerpt from an interview that's playing in the Smithsonian Exhibit. It turns out they recorded a longer interview. You can watch the whole thing here.

➝ The Getty Museum (thegetty) shared with us the real reason for the season: selected artworks for Superb Owl Sunday.

Susan

➝ Not only is The Dark Tower confirmed, but they cast Idris Elba as Roland Deschain! I really don't want to get my hopes up about this (part of me can't believe it at all), but oh god if this is real then I am so excited!

➝ This is an old post that got re-linked to me recently: N. K. Jemisin on why magic doesn't have to obey Clark's Law. I really like this, because I admit it: I am the trash that glosses over your well-thought through and detailed descriptions of how your magic/science works, and this is a nice articulation of why authors might choose not to build into it that thoroughly.

➝ John Boyega talking about BB-8 is the most precious thing.

Comments

[jb_slasher]

This breakdown of how Harry Potter reflects the experience of PTSD is really interesting.

This link refers to the Intelligent Life news?

[forestofglory]

Thanks for including my rec list. Hope you are finding some stories you like.

[owlmoose]

Thank you for putting it together! :) And yes, definitely -- the first Rose Lemberg story in particular (haven't gotten to the second yet, but I expect I'll enjoy it as well; I'm really interested in that universe and want to look for more), and the Laurie Tom story, too.

[forestofglory]

I'm always happy when people like stories I rec.

Rose Lemberg has a page about the Birdverse with links at http://roselemberg.net/?page_id=319

[readingtheend.pip.verisignlabs.com]

John Boyega is a damn delight. Watching him bye-Felicia all the people on Twitter who wanted to nyeh-nyeh about why isn't there a White History Month was my favorite day.