Sidetracks - April 22, 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.

Ira

➝ Check out this cool but kind of depressing list of movies that should have been about girls falling in love. I've seen and loved all of them, and after seeing them all lined up next to each other I wonder if the reason I liked them so much was because of the strong female friendships.

➝ This series of tweets by Guillermo del Toro is a great short rant about the need for women's stories that aren't het love stories, with bonus fanart!

➝ So there was a publicity photo revealing some characters/costumes from the Wonder Woman movie and surprise surprise, the armour is totally ridiculous. And then the post turned into a detailed historical discussion of Amazons and pants, full of awesome information about Ancient Greece. I love when nerds on tumblr come out of the woodwork with fascinating information about science or history or linguistics or whatever, and this is one of the best such posts I've seen.

➝ Here is an article about a church in England that offers second baptisms for transgender Christians!

➝ This is an awesome photoset of a gorgeous lady wearing a beard. I love genderfuckery like this, and the beard is even accessorized! So awesome.

KJ

➝ Spoilers for various TV shows, particularly the S3 Sleepy Hollow finale. Like a lot of folks, I enjoyed the first season of Sleepy Hollow a whole lot (it was ridiculous, but it was my kind of ridiculous), found the second season significantly weaker, and hadn't yet gotten around to watching the third season because I'd heard such mixed things about it. Now I feel totally justified in my decision. There's a lot of excellent articles around the web about the totally misguided choice to kill off the show's co-lead character, Abbie Mills, and how it fits a long-time pattern of TV shows killing characters of marginalized identities. Some links: Variety discusses the "anyone can die" trope and explains why it's basically not true; What TV Networks Still Don't Understand About Fandom includes a lot of good perspective about how fandom operates outside of canon; Monique Jones explains How Sleepy Hollow Single-Handedly Destroyed Their Own Show.

➝ Agents of SHIELD's Chloe Bennet, who plays Daisy Johnson, gets real about changing her professional name (from Chloe Wang) and representation in Hollywood and the MCU.

➝ Looks like the BBC will take another shot at adapting His Dark Materials for the screen, in this case a TV series. Let's hope they do better than the feature film.

➝ I really enjoyed this essay by Mark Oshiro (of Mark Reads/Mark Watches) on the blurring lines between fan and professional.

➝ Dr. Nerdlove explains why Captain America is a great example of non-toxic masculinity. If you ever wondered why Cap is my favorite superhero forever, read this and learn. (Pairs nicely with the review of Batman v. Superman review shared by Susan, below.)

Susan

➝ These underwater scenes are really cool and atmospheric! I love the lighting and the colours in these, they feel really peaceful.

➝ Cut & Paste did a recommendation post full of magical girl zines!

➝ I haven't seen Batman v. Superman because I... Couldn't get past how little joy there was in the trailer? But this is an article that I've enjoyed from Abigail Nussbaum looking at Batman v. Superman as a sterling example of toxic masculinity and depression.

And yet the more I thought about this scene, the less it seemed to me like yet another unintentionally hilarious instance of Snyder and his writers mistaking gloom for substance, and the more it just seemed sad. As in: depressed. As in: Jonathan Kent clearly suffered from serious, lifelong depression [...] and dealing with that, and with the poisonous worldview that he promulgated as a father, is coloring every one of Clark's choices as an adult and a superhero.

Comments

[dhampyresa]

I've heard the news about Abbie's death several times and every time I go HOW DARE YOU but fuck that noise. (I watched S1 of Sleepy Hollow, was going to watch S2 but the friends who'd gotten me into S1 didn't seem to enjoy it anymore.)