Sidetracks - October 20, 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

➝ I haven’t seen much of Lindsay Ellis since her Nostalgia Chick days, but I was delighted to see that her new series, Loose Canon, took a look at media depictions of Hillary Clinton over the course of her career. It’s a fascinating look into recent history and how people have responded to Hillary’s power in that time.

➝ Themyscira and Wonder Woman are queer, deal with it.

➝ Here’s Anne Helen Petersen on the Brangelina break-up, expertly using that as a reason to examine Jolie’s control over her image.

➝ Soulbound is a handcrafted jewelry line by Kelly Zogheb inspired by video games. The line ranges from one-of-a-kind pieces to very high-end pieces to brass pendants modeled after low-poly models of the Nintendo 64 era. There’s jewelry inspired by Animal Crossing, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, My Little Pony, Steven Universe and Pokemon. I am accordingly in love and I also wish that the Terrible Fate pendant wasn’t sold out. Alas!

Renay

➝ The white flight of Derek Black — This was fascinating, but the most striking thing for me is that he was able to pull himself out of this mostly on his own. It's hard to leave abusive environments like this.

➝ The Luke Cage Syllabus: A Breakdown of all the Black Literature Featured in Netflix’s Luke Cage — who doesn't love a great reading list?

➝ Hillary Clinton on cat gifs. THUMBS UP.

Book Acquisitions

Added TBR: Empress of a Thousand Skies by Rhoda Belleza, Mirage by Somaiya Daud, The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden, The Tetris Effect: The Game that Hypnotized the World by Dan Ackerman, The Glass Universe by Dava Sobel, When the Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore, Car Country: An Environmental History by Christopher W. Wells, Crafting Dynamic Dialogue by Cheryl St.John

Susan

➝ Postmodern Jukebox do a lot of covers in different genres to the original song, and they are super great. Bonus: makes most pop songs sound infinitely more like a James Bond theme song! My favourites:

• Seven Nation Army (Vintage New Orleans Dirge) ft. Haley Reinhart
• Dark Horse (Gothic R&B/James Bond style) ft. Ashley Stroud
• Blank Space (Vintage Cabaret) ft. Ariana Savalas
• Toxic (Vintage 1930s Torch Song) ft. Melinda Doolittle
• Gangsta's Paradise (Vintage 1920s Al Capone Style) ft. Robyn Adele Anderson
• Bad Romance (Vintage 1920s Gatsby Style) ft. Ariana Savalas & Sarah Reich

➝ The Reluctant Memoirist by Suki Kim — I am so pissed for this author, because she has been treated shittily coming and going! Who looks at an in-depth piece of investigative journalism and goes "yes, we are going to sell this as a memoir! Those audiences are exactly the same!" The level of disrespect in that – for the author and her book – is mindblowing.

➝ Why I don't want to be a queer book detective anymore (Although I still want to be Harriet the Spy — I linked to a Book Riot piece on how to be a queer book detective not too long ago (and that does actually sound like a story I would read, someone give me that), and look! Here is the flip side! The author talks about how we can do the work of tracking down all of these hidden queer-coded books (where any suggestion that the characters might not be cis/het is glossed over to appeal to presumbly a straight het audience), but we shouldn't have to. I understand this frustration, and I feel like I should pass this link to Ira to help fan their revolutionary fire.