unfridged

Hey cuties, happy Valentine’s day!

• The Eagle Huntress is a documentary that did very well at Sundance, and is all about a teenaged Mongolian girl who hunts on horseback with a golden eagle, flying in the face of 2000 years of tradition. And because I am a hip young person on the internet: #squadgoals. [NPR]
• Here are the Myers-Briggs personality types for 202 literary characters. It has confirmed that I am basically Galadriel so you can all feel free to bow down whenever. [BookRiot]
• Artist Toby Allen has imagined a whole slew of mental illnesses as monsters, and the art is stupendously pretty (not to mention informative). [zestydoesthings.com]
• A whole bunch of witch stuff!
  • Cute webcomic called Balderdash! all about magic and witches and baking! I should probably do a whole Hitchhiker’s Guide post about witch-themed webcomics, there are certainly enough of them.
  • If you’re in New York you should definitely head over to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They’re hosting a witch-themed film festival from February 16 to 29.
  • As it turns out, the site of most of the executions during the Salem witch trials is now a Walgreen’s parking lot. [Atlas Obscura]
  • “Reasons I would not have been burned as a witch in the early modern era no matter what I would like to believe about myself and would have in fact been among the witch-burners” [The Toast]
• 100 years of zombie design in pop culture!
• Richard Dawkins said some dumb things about feminism and online harassment (again) and personal goddess Lindy West very ably called him out on it. [We Hunted the Mammoth]
• Brian Kesinger puts some very cute Force Awakens/Calvin and Hobbes art on his instagram.
• Hollywood is really bad at portraying pregnant women, even great movies like Fury Road. [Longreads]
• Jughead from the Archie comics is canonically asexual, and I just realized that I had always assumed that anyway. [Vulture]
• “Rat Queens and the power of female friendship.” [Bitch]
• “The struggle and triumphs of black cosplay.” <– there are some great pictures with this one. [Kotaku]
• Steven Universe fan artist Zamii has been the target of a whole bunch of harassment, ostensibly as a defence of body positivity. People seem to think that she slimmed down some of the characters too much in her illustrations, and it’s super disappointing that this kind of bullying happens, especially under the guise of inclusivity, especially in a fandom like Steven Universe‘s. [Fusion]
• “What magical girls taught me about being queer.” [The Mary Sue]
• Cameroon-based Kiro’o Games is central Africa’s first video game studio, producing games that focus on African folklore. [Good Black News]
• And to wrap things up, JK Rowling published a bunch of new writing on Pottermore. Of special interest is information about various magical schools around the world, including Uganda, Japan, and Brazil. Originally, however, Rowling didn’t specify that Uagadou was Ugandan, which earned her some criticism (she later updated the post). The Washington Post defended the decision, stating that unlike Europe, pre-colonial Africa didn’t have clearly-defined and highly-contested state lines, and that a wizarding school would likely be pan-African. But Swarthmore College history professor Timothy Burke pokes some enormous holes in that line of reasoning, both by giving some excellent information on the political history of sub-Saharan Africa, including the fact that there was quite a lot of competition over land and resources, and by pointing out the complete lack of acknowledgement of European colonization and slave trade, and the effects it could have had on magical education.

Top image from Balderdash!