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Weekend Reading List: New year, new list, new hope

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2016 had to get one last jab in, taking away our beloved Carrie Fisher. The Mary Sue pays tribute. The Cut gives us fifteen of her best quotes. The Rolling Stone looks back on how she championed mental health issues. We all miss her.
You need to listen to 1999 David Bowie talk about the potential of the internet. [io9]
I’ll be honest, I only discovered Sevdaliza’s music by going down the rabbit hole of YouTube recommended videos. But I’m so glad she’s in my life now, with her videos that spin dark fairytales out of hellbeast femmes fatales and gynoid royalty fantasies.
“Sex magic: how to cast spells with your orgasms.” [Broadly]
Afropunk’s compiled a mindblowing list of 10 black cosplayers who killed it last year.
Go look at Amber Thomas’s amazing interactive breakdown of gender equality in the dialogue of 2016’s highest grossing films.
I am very excited about XX, the women-created horror film anthology. Annie Clark (aka St Vincent) is just one of the hugely talented directors contributing. [Little White Lies]
On a similar note, Agnieszka Smoczynska’s The Lure, a film about man-eating, singing mermaids, is out soon. It looks like good fun. [IndieWire]
“We are in the era of the black geek.” [Afropunk]
io9 has a nice piece of writing on superheroes, real life heroes, and teaching children bravery.
Comic Katie Goodman’s song on Alien and inspirational women is very funny.
“The speculative dread of Black Mirror.” [The New Yorker]
The complex interplay between gender and AI is a topic that’s gaining ever-increasing popularity (and relevance) as we continue pushing the capabilities of chatbots, androids, and digital assistants. The New Yorker has an excellent piece on the perils of writing gender into chatbots, and a recent episode of Bitch magazine’s podcast charts the gynoid from Metropolis to Westworld, and beyond.
I CANNOT believe that I forgot to mention that I spoke to Becky Chambers about her novel, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, for the Mary Sue! It was a great experience, and you can read the interview here.

Monthly Reading List III

“They are no men: Tolkien’s 6 most badass forgotten ladies.” [The Mary Sue]
Here’s a recap of a “geeks and kink” panel that was held at Emerald City Comic Con. [The Mary Sue]
Okay okay okay just listen to the abstract of this Nature article: “Emerging evidence indicates that dragons can no longer be dismissed as creatures of legend and fantasy, and that anthropogenic effects on the world’s climate may inadvertently be paving the way for the resurgence of these beasts.” What.
I haven’t read the amazing science fiction and social justice anthology Octavia’s Brood yet, but I so want to. [Boing Boing]
Bitch has a cool interview with the anthology’s editor, Walidah Imarisha.
Look there’s a wee little comic about representation, and it manages to combine Star Trek, Buffy, and Steven Universe. [The Nib]
In rage-inducing news, the Hugo awards kind of got co-opted by this small group of right wing expletives. So that’s fun. [Salon]
George R. R. Martin was not pleased about this. At all. [The Guardian]
Orphan Black’s Tatiana Maslany as every emoji. [Autostraddle]
“How I became a video game feminist.” [PBS Game/Show]
Have you read Jillian Tamaki’s SuperMutant Magic Academy? Go read Jillian Tamaki’s SuperMutant Magic Academy. Then read this interview, for more info on comics, mutants, and why Canada is awesome. [Bitch]
“The definitive timeline of Marvel’s ‘Black Widow’ movie [that hasn’t been made yet].” [MTV]
So the press tour for Avengers: Age of Ultron was kind of a shit show, with Jeremy Renner and Chris Evans slut shaming Black Widow. [The Daily Beast]
IndieWire published an open letter to Joss Whedon from a “disappointed feminist fan” about the many ways Age of Ultron fell short.
Styleite has a cool list of comic heroines who can teach you about being a badass. I bet you you can’t guess who’s included.
The Mary Sue has a thoughtful piece on cosplaying while black.
Inside Amy Schumer has an excellent skit called “A Very Realistic Military Game.” It’s incredibly on point, but also a little hard to watch, so trigger warning for discussions of rape in the military.
Whoopi Goldberg was interviewed by My Drunk Kitchen‘s Hannah Hart and it was glorious.
Everyone is losing their collective shit over Mad Max: Fury Road, with Buzzfeed calling it a “feminist playbook for surviving dystopia.”
Okay, so let’s tackle Game of Thrones, shall we? It’s getting harder and harder for many fans to both watch and defend the show. It seems the writers and show runners care little about showing violence toward women in a sensitive light, and the problem only seems to be getting worse. Vanity Fair came out strongly against the treatment of Sansa Stark, the Mary Sue has made an editorial decision to no longer cover the show on their website, and Bitch discusses the post-colonial politics of the show thus far.
As a palate cleanser, Matthew Lewis (Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies) showed rather a lot in a recent magazine photo shoot, and J. K. Rowling had an adorable mom reaction to it. [The Mary Sue]

Top image by alphatrashking.tumblr.com.

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Weekend Reading List: New year, new list, new hope

Monthly Reading List III