Sidetracks - March 30, 2013

[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.

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➝ slashreport did a really interesting episode on The Fourth Wall from a fannish (well, slash fan, anyway) perspective. However, there's a lots to think about even outside that context. :)

➝ In other podcast news, I have started following some new ones! For Books' Sake, thanks to a rec from Cheryl Morgan, Geek's Guide to the Galaxy, and The Skiffy and Fanty Show.

➝ Of booksellers, big and small… sums up a lot of thoughts I've had over the years during all the various slapfights.

➝ An Observation by Melissa McEwan:

Frustration is not anger. (Although it certainly has the capacity to morph into anger, or coexist with it.) Frustration is "a feeling of dissatisfaction, often accompanied by anxiety or depression, resulting from unfulfilled needs or unresolved problems."

That is the thing I am feeling when I am most likely to be called angry. Overwhelming dissatisfaction as a result of the cyclical and systemic lack of being heard, respected, treated as an equal.

➝ The Problem with Sisters Red which I tried to read and failed at, never getting to the parts that this review discusses. This doesn't specifically spoil the book and is a fantastic deconstruction. The thing we have to remember as readers and writers and creators of culture, is that even when we desperately want it to, intent doesn't matter. Not even when you capslock it on a review to defend yourself.

➝ A long time ago after I had left book blogging (again) and was posting reviews at my personal journal someone commented and asked me "Why don't you start another blog? Why did you ever stop? You're doing the same thing here; why pretend like there's not a community?" It was anonymous, so it was screened, and I stared at it for a long time wondering if I should answer, and if I did, how (I never did). How do you explain something that's just a feeling of being unsafe and judged and shamed? How do you explain a feeling about words people use, not all the time, in ways that trip you up and blindside you? Maybe if you're a fan of Margo Lanagan's Tender Morsels, and read some of the reviews of that book by the women and men in the YA book blogging community, you know what I mean. For all that the community is made up of tons of women, they don't seem to like other women or girls much when it comes time to read and evaluate a story about sex or sexuality.

Although Jodie links to this below, I want to repeat her recommendation. Sarah McCarry at The Rejectionist wrote an essay, Trigger Warning. It is worth your time. The reviews she saw were not the same as the reviews I saw. Years sit between then and now, and I've never read the book she cites. It makes me think of so many things, too, that I've seen: Final Fantasy VIII and defending Rinoa Heartilly on a loop against "bad characterization" that was suspiciously gendered; watching girls and women devalue and insult women characters while trying to slash two dudes; it's not something that's specific to any one community. I know, because I know so many people who value and respect YA featuring girls and women, that these are only small pockets of an otherwise great group. But like any microaggression, sometimes it's too much. Sometimes you just can't anymore. I looked up some of the reviews Sarah quoted and now wish I hadn't. The more things change.

I said long ago, that for a community that purported to care so deeply about the written word, they were awfully careless with the words they chose to use when discussing stories.

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➝ In ‘Trigger Warning’ The Rejectionist talks about reviewer responses to a female character who has a lot of sex and is at times sexually assaulted, in the context of the Steubenville case.

➝ Malinda Lo has written a response to concerns that ‘Two Boys Kissing’ is an example of the white, male part of the LGBTQ community getting all the support, attention and praise. Lots of practical ideas about Leviathan’s place in the industry (and I’d add that his work as a publisher probably had a big part to play in this cover too).

I know someone somewhere also brought up how the cover may make this book inaccessible to LGBTQ readers who live in repressive communities, which shed a whole new light (for me, the privileged straight girl) on how the vague packaging of some LGBTQ books might actually allow LGBTQ readers to safely read books about their community.

➝ Ant and Dec re-create ‘Let’s Get Ready to Rumble’, possibly one of the worst pop songs of the 90s, just for laughs.

I love how much effort they put into just re-doing a terrible song for fun on their own show, like they know it’s goofy but they still want to do the best job possible. And I thought the result was hilarious, but you probably need a lot of Ant and Dec context to get laughing.

Comments

[theliteraryomnivore.wordpress.com]

Oh my good Lord, Pearce actually went and tried to defend herself by claiming it wasn't her intent? That's hysterical. The Jenny's Library review will be incredibly useful for a project Jodie and I are thinking about, thanks for the link.

I said long ago, that for a community that purported to care so deeply about the written word, they were awfully careless with the words they chose to use when discussing stories.

Heartbreaking. Thank you for sharing that.

[jerkface]

Re: Of booksellers, big and small...

Thank you so much for posting that link. Growing up in FuckingNowheresville, Pennsylvania, the only bookstore within 50 miles was a Borders. When it went under, we had to turn to online retailers and big box stores to get books, otherwise there would be nothing to read! Heck, my hometown didn't even have a library.

Now I live in Chicago and the nearest bookstore is Women & Children First, which, despite being a wonderful independent retailer (because fuck yeah feminist bookstore), still has a heartbreakingly small sci-fi/fantasy section—though this is probably due to the fact that the current state of the sci-fi/fantasy genre(s) doesn't always offer much in the way of feminist literature. Sometimes you still have to turn to the internet to find what you're looking for, and it sucks when people look down on you for that.

[bookgazing]

Some people just don't get that not everyone lives in communities that encourage indie bookstores. I think that comes out of having lit communities that are largely based in major cities which have a lot of choice when it comes to book buying. I can't imagine for example Tindal Street being like 'buy indie' because they're based in the West Midlands and it would be like telling someone in the desert to run a bath.