Adventures Elsewhere – April and May 2016

[helloladies]

Adventures Elsewhere collects our reviews, guest posts, articles, and other content we've spread across the Internet recently! See what we've been up in our other projects. :D

Ira

➝ I worked as part of a project called Your Book List Will Be Graded, wherein we look at book lists people put out and break down the numbers for how many are by white/POC authors, how many are by men/women/nonbinary, and what the protagonist gender breakdown is. So far, we have graded four lists:

• 17 Science Fiction Books that Changed the Genre Forever, Grade: D
• Sleeping Giants Author Sylvain Neuvel Shares 10 SF Novels with Serious Science, Grade: D-
• 100 Must-Read Sci-fi Fantasy Novels by Female Authors, Grade: A
• Around the World in 18 Science Fiction And Fantasy Novels, Grade: B

KJ

April was a quiet month for me, writing-wise — I spent most of my time working on a long story which is still quite a ways from postable — but I did share my thoughts on the 2016 Hugo finalists. (This entry was written and posted before Black Gate withdrew from consideration and Lady Business took its place on the list, and is in no way an official statement coming from my position as an editor — these are my opinions as an individual fan and Hugo voter.)

I did a bit more in May: my reaction shot to Captain America: Civil War, followed by a CA:CW linkspam a few days later (significant spoilers at both links), and a brief rant about Tumblr's poor security and customer service practices. I also wrote up my experiences at WisCon (which was a great time! I highly recommend this con to all of our readers; I expect to go back next year and will try to actually plan a meet-up this time): pre-con, Day One, Day Two, Day Three, and Day Four. Finally, I posted one fic: Chain of Command, an Alistair/f!Aeducan story for areyougame.

Renay

➝ Ana and I released just two episodes of Fangirl Happy Hour with each other in April due to a hiatus. One of them is us being mad/apathetic about the Hugo Awards and the other one has a trigger warning, so uh. April was sure A Month, all right. Then KJ was kind enough to come on the podcast with me to talk about Black Wolves!

• Episode #41, "Group Hugs!" — hiatus talk, plus a Q&A featuring US.
• Episode #42, "2016 Awards Season: Hugo Awards" — ;________________;


• Episode #43, "Team #BlackWolves" — me celebrating Black Wolves and KJ agreeing wholeheartedly. Definite spoilers.

➝ I reviewed The Vagrant by Peter Newman for B&N.

Susan

I got back into the habit of writing reaction shots of movies as I watched them last month, which I haven't done in years.

• Reaction Shot: Civil War — Apparently I had 4299 words in me about the new Civil War film! Please bear in mind there are unmarked spoilers, capslock and keysmash in that post! (4,299 words)


• Reaction Shot: X-Men First Class and X-Men Days of Future Past (Or, SUPER HET: the road trip) — A friend and I (with occasional commentary from my housemate and my spousal unit as they wandered through) watched the two newest X-Men movies to prepare for X-Men Apocalypse coming out on the eighteenth! Our conclusion was the queerbaiting was strong with this one, but it's got enough of the things we like (including but not limited to well-choreographed violence, creative uses of superpowers, Ellen Page, and attractive people speaking multiple languages) to cancel out the things we don't (NOTPs, terrible pick-up lines, terrible cast choices that are technically spoilers.) (5,474 words)


• Reaction Shot: X-Men Apocalypse — I apparently had A Lot To Say about this movie... Although most of it seems to be me lying on the floor to shriek about the female characters and all of my feelings. TL;DR it had solid character work and less sensible plot, but it's an X-Men movie so I wasn't watching it for the plot in the first place. (9,364 words)

And of course the inevitable fanworks:

• A semi-long term Legend of the Five Rings game I'm in finished at the end of April, and to mark the occasion I, uh, baked L5R themed cakes for everyone in the party? I forgot the writing icing I needed so there's one cake on each plate that I think could have ended better, but I am so proud of how these turned out!


• Jan's Favourite Selfies (of the first week, anyway) - It's hard to choose her favourites when she takes so many, but she manages. (Avengers Academy, 284 words)


• Getting Ahead of Yourself — Tony arguing with Captain America wasn't the problem; Tony would argue with a wall if he had to. (Avengers Academy, 362 words)


• Life Insurance — Nate is always really upfront about who inherits when he inevitable gets himself killed. (Uncharted, 247 words)


• Why Not You — He'd never noticed Enchantress trying out her powers on Loki. (Avengers Academy, 303 words)


• Requires: 13 old postcards — Beware of Asgardians bearing gifts. (Avengers Academy, 359 words.)