Best of the Business: Highlights of 2011-2020

[helloladies]

2020 has involved a lot of looking back on the decade, and it's no different over here in Lady Business Towers. Lady Business started in March 2011, and since then we've added new editors, seen old editors go on to shiny new projects, and won two Hugos! To mark the occasion, we've gone through all 1180 of our posts to highlight our favourites.

Thank you for being part of the Lady Business community. Whether you've been with us since the beginning or just found us today, we appreciate you and hope to see you in 2030 for the next round-up of a decade!

Ana

➝ (500) Days of Summer — This is the first post of Ana's that I thought of when Susan mentioned creating a 'Favs of' collection for the decade even though this film was kind of a downer for Ana. It's just a really smart look at the film's problems, and a passionate description of frustration with something that could have been good. — Jodie

➝ A Matter of Communication — As a typical co-operative communicator I found Ana's look at how women who use this kind of communication style are damned twice over really interesting. I think it's a really important post for me to keep in mind now because the discourse has really come back around on this issue. — Jodie

➝ How To Suppress Women's Writing — A very strong review from Ana on one of her specialities - feminist non-fiction. I think this is especially, um, special to me because How To Suppress Women's Writing meant so much to all three of the first LB editors. — Jodie

Anna

➝ The Vorkosigan Saga in 5 Books Co-writing this with Ira was so much fun! I enjoyed talking to them about this series that we both love, and really digging into some of the things we love about it: The characters, the different kinds of stories and the overall arc of the series. It was fun to share our different approaches to showing all of those things to a new reader.

➝ The State of "The State of Short SFF" Short fiction has never gotten the kind of buzz novels get, not even in this era of amazing free online stories. In this piece I talked a bit about why that is and also about the importance of criticism other than formal reviews. Since I wrote this I’ve seen more people posting regular short fiction recommendations and I think that’s a wonderful thing for the field!

➝ Short & Sweet Roundtable Discussion: Short Fiction Reading Habits I wanted to talk more about the different ways that people engage with short fiction so I got a bunch of smart people together to talk about how they read. This piece also has some useful advice if you’d like to get into reading short fiction yourself.

➝ Where Have All the SFF Moms Gone? It turns out I have a lot of feelings about mothers or the lack there of in in SFF. It was important me to write about that lack and how it affects me.

➝ Short & Sweet: Comforting Stories The world has been a hard place to be in last time and sometimes the best way to deal with that is to read something comforting. I put together this list comforting short SFF and I’ve come back to it many times when world events have gotten me down.

➝ Pals for Robots This is my personal favorite of all the rec list I’ve written for Lady Business. I love all the stores reced here, and writing this list made me realise my favorite robot stories aren’t ones about what it means to be a person, instead they are stories about what it means to be part of a community.

➝ On Not Reading Short Fiction This my most recent piece for Lady Business, where I talked about my recent struggles with reading as much short SFF as was used to and my need for cosy stories. I’m still thinking a lot about what I wrote here and how its important that both stories that image a better word and stories that look at the hard parts of the world exist.

Clare

➝ A History of Western Media Fandom This was my first guest post for Lady Business, before I came onboard as an editor. I love doing deep dives into fandom history and coming out with an incredible story (while also making it clear that it’s just one angle out of infinity). By now, it’s six years out of date, but I still occasionally refer back to this.

➝ Ewan McGregor's Stupid Beautiful Face: A History of Han/Luke and Star Wars Slash Speaking of fandom history… I was not a Star Wars kid growing up (I didn’t even see the movies until I was 14), but The Force Awakens changed my life. It put me in contact with other local Star Wars fans, a move that put me into the friendships and circles I percolate and circulate in to this day, and it sharpened my focus when it came to fandom history. I’d always wondered why Han/Luke seemed so vanishingly small compared to the other classic Star Wars slash ships. The answer taught me a lot about not only the Star Wars’s fandom’s history, but about how corporations interact with fandoms--useful stuff at the dawn of corporations realizing they could capitalize on fandom, for better and for worse.

➝ Nerd Adventures: Star Wars and the Power of Costume My Nerd Adventures features were short-lived, as I left Lady Business a little after starting them, but this is my absolute favorite. When I was growing up, I had very limited access to cons and other geeky events, and I take special delight in attending them now. I braved some truly terrible New York weather with a friend of mine to check out this exhibit, and it gave me a newfound appreciation for the prequels.

Ira

➝ It's Time for a Hugo Award for Games - All Games
This is one of the biggest things I've ever done: a full-fledged campaign to create a Hugo Award category for games. While the post that went up at Lady Business is a brief pitch, the real work I did is this enormous report, clocking in at over 60 pages of arguments and examples, with an additional 40-odd pages of appendices and a spreadsheet of roughly 400 games that could have been Hugo contenders. The campaign continues: you can follow it at www.gameshugo.com. It's currently part of the remit of the Hugo Study Committee, where I'm chairing the subcommittee on this subject, and I'm hoping to bring it before the Business Meeting the CoNZealand Worldcon this year.

➝ Gender Discrimination in SFF Awards
Haha it's almost like I am known for taking on enormous projects hahahaha. This was my first project for Lady Business as a staff editor rather than a guest contributor, and I couldn't have done it without owlmoose and renay. There's a lot — a lot a lot — I would do differently now, but I still think it was a worthy project. And don't look at me like that, I am definitely not thinking of redoing it from the ground up with actual protagonist counts and a better gender system, definitely not... >.>

➝ The Fantasy of Orderly Grief: GRIS and The Haunting of Hill House
I guess another trademark of mine is taking two apparently very disparate pieces of media and writing about them together. As I've continued writing critique, analysis, and other nonfiction, I've really tried to rein in my tl;dr tendencies and try to build cohesive pieces with flow and something concrete to say. I think this was a good effort in that direction, and also a chance to recommend two things I really love.

➝ My Hot Take on "The Good Place": Jason is TOO GOOD FOR TAHANI
SPEAKING of tl;dr this is me at my teal deeriest. An impassioned defence of Jason Mendoza at a time when it felt like few recognized his merits as a character and as a person. I'm very glad to see Jason getting the love he deserves these days, and also glad to see how I've gotten better at condensing my ideas since then. This essay came up both times I've been on The Good Place-related panels; I seem to be known forevermore as "the Jason person" when it comes time to discuss this show.

➝ Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith -- Poor Treatment of: Women, Bisexuality, and Giant Insects
One of my earliest pieces, and I still like it! I really really did not like this book, and I think I managed to articulate why and make my case well. And I will never, ever, ever be over how many times this book used the phrase "it made me horny."

➝ "I'm going to break its heart" - Transistor Review
I had an absolute BLAST doing this co-review with spindizzy! I think we had really smart things to say about this game and I still look back on this post as a favourite, both in process and in product. It gave me a chance to talk about women's pain and women's silence, as well as beautiful art and beautifully articulated body language; meaning made in gesture. Just really some of my favourite stuff to talk about.

➝ Quick Hits with Ira: "Black Panther" literally is "Iron Man" except SO MUCH BETTER
Ah, the days when I thought of 1.8K words as a "quick hit." I do think this was a bit of a turning point for me when I realized I could convey a complete and interesting argument in a much more reasonable number of words. At the time, I was trying to meet posting goals and knew I needed to just get something done and out the door, and I think pushing myself like that just turned out really well both for this post and for my development as a writer. Also I am just 100% right about these movies >.>

➝ Quick Hit: "A Wrinkle in Time," Black Femininity, and the Invisible Made Visible
If the preceding Black Panther post was a proof of concept, this was me understanding that it wasn't a fluke. I want to post with this frequency and quality again, and that's my goal for 2020!

➝ What's a Word Worth? - How Words Mean (Peircian Semiotics #1)
➝ What's a Word Worth? - The Trichotomy Tango (Peircian Semiotics #2)
➝ What's a Word Worth? - Cleaning Up the Logic (Piercian Semiotics #3)
➝ What's a Word Worth? - Finally, How Metaphors Work (Piercian Semiotics #4)
I am always thrilled to talk about semiotics and the mechanics of meaning-making. I've been thinking about this a lot with respect to my own writing: what imagery I use and why it works, how to capture and sustain a mood. While I didn't accomplish the subsidiary goal of posting about the use of language in every book I read, I'm still glad to have spread knowledge of Piercian semiotics and be able to build on it now.

➝ WisCon 42 Panel Writeups: "Get Out" and Black Horror
➝ WisCon 42 Panel Writeups: "Redemption And Revenge: Antiheroines And Villainesses Taking Control"
➝ WisCon 42 Panel Writeups: "Positive Representations of Masculinity"
Finally, my still-incomplete series of WisCon 42 panel writeups. While the series is not complete, I still hope to keep working through my notes and continue sharing the experience of these wonderful panels. I'm thrilled to be co-chairing the con this year and look forward to seeing many of you there!

Jenny

➝ Sailing the High Squees — Jenny and Jodie are both fantastically smart humans, and getting to see them talking history, anti-colonialism, and pirates in their Black Sails recap is excellent. Come to hear Jenny preaching the gospel of Captain Flint Is A Beautiful Sea Angel, stay for the historical sources and terrible puns! — Susan

➝ Superwomen: Gender, Power and Representation by Carolyn Cocca — Jenny sits down with a history of female superheroes! She contextualises everything so well, not just culturally for each character, but also situating the discussions in their fannish context as well! It's fascinating. — Susan

➝ Bad Nuns and Good Science — Jenny is the friend of the Business that I turn to whenever someone needs a non-fiction rec, and this post is a stellar example of why. Whether you want history, feminist lenses on science, innovations in technology, or just bizarre stories about nuns, she's got you covered. — Susan

Jodie

➝ The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley — My relationship with Kameron Hurley's work feels inextricably tied to my time at Lady Business. Seeing the gut-punching pieces, many of which I'd originally read when they appeared on her blog, bound into a real life book was emotional, and I think my review reflects that strength of emotion while also digging into what makes Hurley's essays work structurally.

➝ "Short Business: The Cure by Malinda Lo — Malinda Lo provided me with the perfect opportunity to go back into my vampire feels when she wrote her short story "The Cure". This post illustrates what I love to do with my longer writing about short fiction - closely examine elements of a small piece to bring out their full meaning to me. In case it hasn't been clear over the year I'm generally all about the small scale rather than the epic.

➝ Storm: Thief. Goddess. Headmistress. Queen. — As is again illustrated by this post on the short-lived Storm comics run where I spend a lot of time looking at the cover image of a trade. It was so satisfying to see Storm get her own, new comic spotlight, and I loved writing this post about a heroine I'd been into for years. (On an unrelated note, don't you think now would be a great time for a new Storm comic?)

➝ Survival Is Insufficient — My essay comparing the apocalypses of Station Eleven and The Ship (because how could we have a 'Favs of' post for LB without mentioning Station Eleven?

➝ Review: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee — I'll be honest, I'm including this because I'm just really proud I managed to write a coherent review of such a complex book. Through writing that review I found a way to understand and love Ninefox Gambit even more than I did when I finished my first starstruck read through. The way writing reviews can crack open a piece of media, and show you more about your relationship with them, is kind of the bonus of writing about anything for me.

➝ In The Land of Gods and Monsters: UnREAL Series One — I have spent a lot of time writing about my love for terrible female characters on TV (usually in shows no one cares about now), but I think this might be my mini-masterwork on a subject very dear to me. I hear UnREAL unravelled badly in its second series though so this is not a recommendation to watch the entire thing.

➝ Co Review: 'Railsea' - China Mieville — Some of my favourite times at LB have been spent doing co-reviews! I so enjoyed the time Maree and I spent reading and talking about Mieville's books back in the day.

➝ Co-Review: Orphan Black (S1) — Speaking of which, I had a great time watching and reviewing Orphan Black with Ana way back when. Ana and I did a lot of co-reviews, and it was a close toss up between including this, the Avatar post we made for Renay's birthday, or our Parks and Rec post, but I ended up picking this one because Orphan Black was one of the few fandoms I ever wrote fanfic for, and it still has a really special place in my media history.

➝ Sailing the High Squees - Black Sails, Episode 1 — I feel it would be remiss of me not to include the recent Black Sails recaps Jenny and I have been doing, even though I am being the slowest project participant ever. Jenny is teaching me so much about pirates and criticism and looking at TV, and it is a privilege to be watching this show with such a knowledgeable, committed fan.

➝ Lady Business HQ — Finishing up on a fun note, I'm still pretty proud of having created this post of images about what Lady Business HQ might look like as a surprise for Renay and Ana. I think a physical LB HQ would look very different now, but I think we can all agree the libraries, the cats and the ponies would still appear.

KJ

➝ The Tyranny of "Do It Yourself" — The first real essay I wrote as an official editor (rather than a guest post), and on a topic that I find forever timely and relevant. I still find myself sharing the link whenever the issue comes up. I wrote pieces of this in LJ comments and Twitter threads over the years, so it was probably high time for me to pull all my thoughts on the topic together in one place.

➝ Star Trek: Into Copyright Battles — As a librarian, the issues of copyright, fanwork, and fair use are of endless interest to me, and I enjoyed putting my knowledge in these areas to use (as well as getting to do a little research).

➝ Putting the World in Worldcon — Speaking of research… most of the projects I did for ladybusiness before I was an editor involved playing with data and charts (justira's Gender Discrimination in SFF Awards, the Coverage of Women project). So when it occurred to me to wonder whether international Worldcon bids were more or less successful than United States bids, and the answer wasn't readily available, it was more-or-less obvious that I would tackle it myself. I found the results really interesting, and worthy of continued discussion.

➝ In Defense of Final Fantasy X-2 — This guest post was expanded and updated from a post in my journal several years prior. I appreciated the opportunity to share my thoughts on a game that I love, and find to be (often unfairly, although not always) maligned.

➝ Cold Steel by Kate Elliott — This co-review with renay was great fun to write and I'm so happy to have had the opportunity to share it as a guest.

Renay

➝ One of the favorite projects I did (old enough now that all its images are broken and I don't have time right this moment to fix them) is Coverage of Women on SF/F Blogs, for 2011, 2012, and 2013. Mostly because I learned a lot from Ana about researching and ethical uses of data (very handy), but also because I like to think it made the community more aware of how we were erasing women writers (and if we were erasing them, who ELSE was getting erased?). Oh, younger Renay! So idealistic! However, I am impressed how far fandom has come on gender—these tiny projects would seem wholly out of place in today's discourse (and rightly so), but whew did they tick people off at the time. LOOK AT FANDOM, GROWING UP AND LEARNING ABOUT THE GENDER SPECTRUM. But it also makes me kind of sad. Blogs were cool, y'all! They were!

➝ I co-reviewed The Carhullan Army/Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall with Jodie. I still think about this book and the how our discussion deepened my understanding of narrative/framing.

➝ Once upon a time, I wrote for Strange Horizons. That only happened, I suspect, because of Hugo Thoughts and Friendly Fan Space, which niallharrison saw. He promptly plucked me from obscurity and gave me a regular column in a very important SFF magazine??? Okay, Niall, sure. XD This post was where past me must have been having a GREAT brain day to feel not-anxious enough to have a teeny tiny disagreement with Scott Lynch and then write about it. Imagining myself doing this today: ha ha, no. Thanks, I hate it. brb walking into the ocean. Younger me was somehow braver than Present Me. Imagining writing something like this today about a male professional makes me want to hurl. But 2013 me did it and the post isn't even that bad. And I still agree with myself: we all need to be more patient with each other.

➝ I had so many feelings about Warchild by Karin Lowachee when I wrote my review. I wanted to write something that encompassed my feelings about the book and I'm not sure I accomplished it but I sure did give it my all.

➝ If you ever had any doubts Lady Business was always meant for Book Discourse and Feels, where we could express ourselves in whatever way we wanted with however many words we wanted, with NO LIMITS, my review of The Whitefire Crossing by Courtney Schafer would disabuse you of all of them. This is largely why I'll never review books professionally: I use writing about the books to work out my feelings about the book. I definitely did that here and I'm still impressed with myself, years later.

➝ It sucks we only got one season of Sleepy Hollow, but what a great pilot, which I wrote about in The Adventures of Abbie Mills (and Sidekick), and had a blast.

Susan

➝ Library Wars: Love & War Volume 1 — This was the first "proper" review I wrote for Lady Business, and it's still probably the most personal review I've written. I adore Library Wars as a series, and getting to talk about how much it meant to me still brings me joy even today.

➝ Red, Green, Blue — Mass Effect is one of my favourite scifi series, and I was so excited when I got invited to capslock about WHY IT IS AMAZING as a guest post! Yes, it's at least partially my fault that Mass Effect happened to renay, you're all welcome.

➝ I'm Going To Break Its Heart — This was a post that I co-wrote with Ira, and I am so proud of it! We covered so much – representation, audience expectations, expressing character without words, semiotics, heartbreak – and it turned out even better than I'd hoped! It was genuinely a privilege to get to write this with Ira.

➝ The history of the world begins in ice: Cold Magic — There was so much going on in Cold Magic, but I got to cover all of the history, alternative history, family drama, and intelligent dinosaurs in one handy post! This was my first Kate Elliott book, and in this crowd that is definitely worthy of marking.

➝ "Let's go see some dead people" — Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service — Genuinely this was a review that I've been meaning to write since I first joined Lady Business, and I finally did it! Anthology horror with mysteries and political commentary are where I live, and this is pretty much the example I hold all other anthology horror/mysteries to, so I'm happy to bring it to Lady Business!

➝ Fish. Gate. River. Storm." — In the Vanisher's Palace by Aliette de Bodard — I had a lot of feelings about the worldbuilding of In the Vanisher's Palace, because it turned so many of the tropes about post-apocalyptic worlds on their head by actually having people trying to fix what is broken! But I'm highlighting it because I had a lot of fun finding posts about the world building and the use of language, and I loved sharing that.

➝ "The Treasure of a Thousand Years" — The Seven Princes and the Thousand Year Labyrinth — This post is on here because it is genuinely one of my favourites. It's me laying my id out, with full awareness of all of the flaws in The Seven Princes and the Thousand Year Labyrinth, and it still makes me smile.

Guest posts

➝ Myth and Deconstruction in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles — One of my favourite guest posts from long, long ago by super fan and vidder chalia. I really loved her passion for particular series and characters, and her in depth essays about female characters. Which brings us to…

➝ You're A Wonder, Wonder Woman and Wonder Woman: What One Does When Faced With the Truth" — A set of Wonder Woman posts by chaila that I couldn't stand to separate. The first was written way before the film, as an introduction to Diana and her various incarnations in canon, and the second was after the glorious large-screen appearance of Wonder Woman; a film I am sometimes still convinced was just a mass hallucination. How did we get SO lucky? Both posts are smart, detailed, and full of fannish delight. I highly encourage you to check out all chaila's guest posts at LB. — Jodie

➝ On Cassandra Pentaghast's Sexuality and Why Bioware Need to Do Better by captainraz — captainraz, one of my favourite queer butch humans, wrote about Bioware, LGBTQA+ representation, and one of her favourite butch characters. I think this is a really fair look at Cassandra's romance, and I would like to co-sign this petition for more queer butch women in media, thank you. — Susan

Guest Post: Carol In Charge — I loved Memory's expertise and passion about comics, and was so excited to welcome her to do a post on Carol Danvers, aka Captain Marvel, for one of our theme weeks. I think this deserves another airing for anyone who enjoyed the film. (I'd also just really like to use this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed guest posts to our theme weeks - there are so many smart posts in the tags for those weeks and you should check them out). — Jodie

Guest Post: Slivers of Another World by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Guest Post: Gender, Family & Nookie: The Speculative Frontier — Feels a little bit braggy to include these, but remember the time two of my favourite authors wrote guest posts for LB?? It was pretty great. — Jodie

Comments

[goodbyebird]

brb re-reading all these excellent posts! ❤️❤️❤️ (yay for mentioning chaila's posts. TSCC and a duo of Wonder Woman posts?? YES PLS. (can you believe we're getting a second WW movie? IN A FEW MONTHS gaah )

It really is such a shame we only ever got one season of Sleepy Hollow *nodnod*

[dolorosa_12]

Wow, ten years! Congratulations, and thank you for posting this excellent round up. I've been reading through the links here over the course of the weekend, and it's been great to revisit posts that now make much more sense in context (I'm currently watching Black Sails for the first time, so the recap posts are particularly appreciated at this moment).