Sidetracks - January 10, 2018

[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. For more links and commentary you can follow us on Twitter, Tumblr. You can also support us on Patreon.

KJ

1. Lindsey Ellis's video on death of the author goes into the history of "death of the author" as a literary concept and questions how useful a concept it is in the age of the Internet and authorial branding. I also enjoyed this related semi-response from John Scazli.

2. Spider-Man: Into the Spiderverse was not only a great movie (imho), it was a tremendous artistic achievement. This Polygon article talks about some of the animation challenges and includes gorgeous concept and process art.

3. 100 SF/F Books You Should Consider Reading continues James Nicholl's tradition of putting together great rec lists.

4. Linda Holmes shares her annual list of 50 great things from the previous year.

Renay

SFF & fandom
5. Elizabeth gives out some urban fantasy recs and space opera recs

6. One of my favorite podcasts, until the weird and abortive ending, The Black Tapes, may be developed into a TV show. On one hand: could be interesting. On the other: so much of the charm was the audio format, so...I reserve judgment until it's more certain and casting is complete because they're going to have to discover casting magic to make fans like me happy, especially re: Richard.

7. Care Bears is getting another reboot. The art style is very cute but the voices are all wrong.

8. Vulture's Best SFF of 2018 is surprisingly more diverse than I expected! Good work, Mainstream Venue.

9. 2018 Best of from The Book Smugglers!

10. Ana from The Book Smugglers reviews The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee.

11. Smugglers' Radar is back!

12. The SyFy Fangrrls chose their favorite comics of 2018.

13. Lynn lists her favorite reads of 2018.

14. coolcurrybooks shared a list of favorite 2018 SF. I'm super curious to see all the books cropping up on lists multiple times.

15. Kristen from Fantasy Book Cafe has 2018 favorites and 2019 anticipated.

16. Everyone will have seen this already but in case you haven't: NEW MURDERBOT STORY!!!!!

Would you like some Anticipated Book lists from Booktube?

17. 2019 anticipated reads from Shades_Orange, with a follow-up focusing on a handful of nine books.

18. January - March anticipated reads from anoutlawlife!

19. January - March anticipated reads from ClaireRousseau!

20. January - February & March - April anticipated reads from kittygbooks!

21. January - March anticipated reads from Books_Pieces!

(Sorry not sorry.)

22. Episode #22 of Our Opinions Are Correct is out!

23. Episode #91 of Fansplaining, with guest Casey Fiesler!

24. Episode #112 of Reading the End Bookcast, co-hosted by our own lovely columnist, Jenny!

25. A.C. Wise recs a lot of short fiction, but here's a list of longer fiction, too.

26. Interview with Tasha Suri and then a author spotlight. She wrote Empire of Sand, which I've heard great things about and have on my TBR!

27. Review of How Long 'til Black Future Month? by N.K. Jemisin from kore.

28. NPR interview with N.K. Jemisin!

29. Lots of excellent commentary from Nnedi Okorafor in this interview.

30. There's a GoFundMe to send girls to see Captain Marvel. I am HYPE for this film and can't wait for the entire world to see it.

31. Sam Jackson staying on in the MCU as Nick Fury, news I am very excited for because I love him.

Other stuff
32. I didn't have a comic about fencing on my TBR, except now, thanks to Claire, I do.

33. Vulture's list of some of the best podcast episodes of 2018 had several surprises to me, because I've been so out of the loop. Like, did I just forget John Green had another podcast???

34. Two roundups from Paper Cat Press: December 15 & January 4.

35. A review of Sadie by Courtney Summers, which takes on perspectives of girls and women in true crime podcasting.

36. An engineer had a package stolen and got the best revenge imaginable.

37. A female anglerfish, complete with male attached—very cool and apparently hard to find footage.

38. I am SO happy for all the former felons in Florida—they can vote again. I'm just straight up wholesale against people losing their right to vote in any circumstance. I caught a lot of hell for that last year even in progressive circles, but our prisons are awful and the people in them have no real way to advocate for themselves, so the least they can do is keep their right to vote and vote where they live. Suddenly those people have leverage and filling up prisons doesn't look so great, does it? People told me, well, they screwed up and are stripped of those privileges! And that's some straight up garbage given how corrupt, racist, and broken our criminal justice system is, without even getting into the privilege versus rights conversation. If prison is meant to be "restorative", then why isn't voting, a way of participating in and investing emotionally in a community, valued for people in prisons? I have some guesses. Anyway, prisons are garbage and people being stripped of their voting rights even after they get out of prison is bigoted, thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

Susan

39. I found out that one of my favourite characters from Fate/Zero is getting a spin-off series where he's apparently being a magical detective! I am equal parts confused and excited, because I have no idea why this is a thing, but I want it!

40. This article on "How Millennials became the burnout generation felt equal parts relatable and like I'd been called out. It's a relief to know that the things that I've been struggling with are things that other people have been struggling with, but there's not a lot of hope to be found here.

41. It also reminded me that this piece on how laziness does not exist was something that I read when in peak "The only thing wrong with me is that I'm lazy" mode. This didn't cure that, but it's good to have new tools to use to interrogate the struggles I have.