Sidetracks - January 20, 2022

[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. You can also support us on Patreon.

Anna

1. I found this essay on the history of wuxia interesting and informative!

2. Met Publications has bunch of cool books and articles many of which you can download for free! Fellow Chinese History enthusiasts be sure to check out the “Asain Art, China” category.

KJ

3. YouTuber Strange Æons, who often posts about Tumblr culture, recently shared this interesting deep dive on the history and influence of the Tumblr account Just Girly Things. I was active on Tumblr at the time the "Just XXX Things" blog format was popular, but they weren't the kind of content I followed myself, so I enjoyed a more in-depth look into a culture I had been only peripherally aware of.

4. The DreamWidth community snowflake_challenge is running its annual event right now. I've only actively participated once, but I always look forward to seeing other people's posts about it appear in my feed. One common refrain around this time is bemoaning the lack of active fandom community on DW, but rarely does it go farther than that. So I appreciate ysabetwordsmith's post with concrete suggestions on helping build the fannish community you want to see. Not every idea is actionable by every person, and there are a few things I disagree with (specifically the overly simplistic discussion of "cancel culture"), but I still found it a solid list. I hope it inspires some people to become more active -- including me!

5. This Tor.com article on the backlash to how Susan was depicted in the last Narnia book is from May 2021, but I hadn't seen it before. An excellent essay, sympathetic to both fans of Susan and to C.S. Lewis.

6. Also from May: "I Insist You Play Mass Effect as a Woman", an article extolling the virtues of Jennifer Hale's voice acting in the video game trilogy. The author is one hundred percent correct, by the way. Mark Meer, who plays dude!Shepard, is fine, but Hale's performance is transcendent.

7. SFF columnist Jason Sanford shared this article on the difference between criticism and abuse on December 31, at a time when a number of controversies were swirling. Again, I don't agree with everything here, but overall it struck a chord. Includes links to a number of Twitter threads and other articles sharing related (but not always identical) perspectives.

8. To close on a positive note: NPR critic Linda Holmes's annual 50 Wonderful Things list always brightens my day.

Renay

9. I meant to write a review of A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, but then...I did not. But this review really captured my feelings about it.

10. Do you like reading about fandoms? Do you like learning the source of memes? Well, this essay, The Origins of Lil Meow Meow, combines both these things and it's absolutely bonkers. The Internet and celebrity culture creates the weirdest cultural touchstones.

11. CW: child abuse. In Ministry of Violence, Tal Lavin looks at corporal punishment in the evangelical community. I admit I have only read part one so far—I was too upset to finish it immediately and will have to go back. If you've been abused in this way it's a profoundly triggering piece. The first part was so revealing about the ways a few monstrous people sought to profit off the desire of parents to be "good" parents and "good" Christians. My parents weren't overly religious and were part of the Silent Generation—I was a very late in life kid for them—so they missed being caught up in a lot of this toxicity. However, my father still was raised under the same "spare the rod" mentality. One of my earliest memories of him is him threatening to hit me. I have plenty of others where there were no threats. Switches, belts, pieces of wood, flyswatters—anything would work to reach the promised land of obedience. I cannot imagine the trauma this author sifted through to put this piece together. American society and American Christianity in particular is so profoundly broken.