Twine | unfridged

Nov 01 2013

Weekend Reading List: Costumes, Classics, Queerbaiting

Wesley Morris’s piece on Grantland starts out as a review of 12 Years a Slave that slowly weaves itself into a discussion about slavery narratives and the need to refocus these stories on black experience, not white guilt.
In a ranking of twenty classic YA heroines, who comes out on top? The answer may surprise you. [Flavorwire]
The New York Times, despite a ludicrous headline, has a thoughtful read on the need for media representation for women computer scientists and hackers.
While we’re on the subject of hackers, this dude challenged hackers to infiltrate his life. I know that this is real-life stuff, but I kept getting very Oryx and Crake vibes. Maybe it was the lingo. [PandoDaily]
GEORGE TAKEI READS SULU/CHEKOV SLASH. GEORGE TAKEI READS SULU/CHEKOV SLASH. [Watch What Happens Live After Show]
Xiangjun Shi’s short film, “Why Do I Study Physics?” is beautiful, thoughtful, and well worth the 3:14 (get it?) it takes to watch.
The US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association is partnering with the kids show Octonauts in an effort to raise awareness about ocean exploration. How very Magic School Bus. [Salon]
OFFICIAL HALLOWEEN PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Please do not dress up in a racist costume. Just don’t. Use your imagination and find something else. There’s a whole lot of literature on the subject, but it’s worth revisiting this Native Appropriations piece.
Do you love Disney villains and musicals? Then “The Spell Block Tango” is definitely for you.
When I wrote about queer representation in the Star Trek universe a little while ago, it started a pretty great Facebook conversation about whether shows acknowledging queer shipping without going further was progressive or queerbaiting. Bitch magazine has a pretty good followup to the topic.
Kotaku uses a Twine game about consensual kink to take a look at torture in video games more generally.
Via Buzzfeed, Cosmo sex tips, as told by Gollum. Terrifying, slightly NSFW, flawless.

Top image: “Evil Flush,” by Jesús Alfonso Sánchez

Tagged 12 Years a Slave, Bitch, Buzzfeed, Cosmo, Disney, Flavorwire, George Takei, Gollum, Grantland, hacking, Hikaru Sulu, Jesús Alfonso Sánchez, kink, Kotaku, Magic School Bus, Native Appropriations, New York Times, NOAA, Octonauts, Oryx and Crake, Pavel Chekov, queerbaiting, Salon, Spell Block Tango, Star Trek, Twine, Wesley Morris, What Happens Live after show, Why Do I Study Physics, Xiangjun Shi, YA

Oct 04 2013

Weekend Reading List: STEM fields and self-promotion

HarrietTheIdol

First up is a piece that Becky Chambers wrote over at the Mary Sue about escapism, particularly in the form of video games, as a form of self-care. It’s something that’s very close to my heart, and a terrific read.
The Babysitter’s Club was a major part of my childhood (and together with Animorphs and Animal Ark completes the trifecta of kids’ series with a gazillion books that somehow were always present in your school library), and the Frisky has a roundup of the seven most scandalous moments in the series (spoiler: they’re not that scandalous).
On the subject of young adult literature, Buzzfeed has a list of great fashions from all your childhood books (if you were a late-nineties bookworm, that is). I still dress like Harriet the Spy, surprising no one.
Autostraddle has a great series on queer issues in STEM fields, and this instalment, about neurobiologist Ben Barres and his fight against sexism and heterosexism in academia, is a really great place to start.
Also about STEM fields, the New York Times has a really excellent, in depth article about the issues still plaguing women in physics. I cannot recommend it enough.
My Father’s Long, Long Legs is a Twine (text-based) game by Michael Lutz. It’s creepy and well-written, and doesn’t take long to play through. I’m a huge fan of the creativity that can stem from such basic game mechanics, and I don’t think it will be long before more Twine games get some mainstream play.
A trans* journalist was humiliated at Eurogamer Expo by a presenter hired for the event. Kotaku ran a story about it, but then she got a whole lot more hate. Can we please be better as a community?
Here’s a kitten brought back to life by a firefighter. [Most Watched Today]
And texts from a cat. [Sad and Useless]
How Many Earths? is a really cool interactive site that shows you how many potentially habitable, Earth-like planets there may be, based on the data gathered by the Kepler space telescope. [New Scientist]
These are genderbent couples from Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin, and they are glorious. [The Art of Doro]
“Confessions of a Snow Queen” is a beautiful piece (prefaced by a powerful poem) about the fetishization of white bodies in queer spaces, and the need to examine the white privilege present in dating. It’s a really thoughtful exploration of racial fetishes, and something everyone should think about. [Queer Libido]
And finally, I had a lot of fun at Montreal Comic Con, but I also wrote about the local artists and how they fit in (or don’t) to this huge, increasingly mainstream event. It’s over at Maisonneuve‘s website if that’s the sort of thing you’re interested in.

Tagged Aladdin, Animal Ark, Animorphs, Autostraddle, Becky Chambers, Ben Barres, Buzzfeed, Cat, Eurogamer Expo, Harriet the Spy, How Many Earths?, Kepler telescope, Kotaku, Maisonneuve, Michael Lutz, Montreal comic con, Most Watched Today, My Father's Long Long Legs, New Scientist, New York Times, Queer Libido, Sad and Useless, Sleeping Beauty, STEM, The Babysitter's Club, The Frisky, The Little Mermaid, The Mary Sue, Twine

Sep 13 2013

Weekend Reading List: Subverted damsels and DC stupidity

Legend of Korra season two premieres today! At 7pm! Here is a trailer to get you properly excited.
Please for the love of god read Princess Princess, a 44-page webcomic about, well, a princess saving another princess.
The Mary Sue has a great review of The Gamers: Hands of Fate, a movie about a collectible card game tournament that is delightful. It’s the third instalment of what is now a trilogy, though the other two films (Dorkness Rising and JourneyQuest) focus on RPGs. I loved it a lot for its geekiness (I may or may not have watched all three in one day) but also because Hands of Fate deals with geek misogyny in a really refreshing way. Watch it here!
Assassin’s Creed: Liberation is being revamped for Xbox, Playstation and PC, and will be available next year. Main character Aveline de Grandpré (holy intersections Batman! A woman of colour!) was originally the star of some downloadable content for Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag, before becoming the protagonist of Liberation. The problem was that Liberation was only available on the PS Vita, and was barely marketed. So it’s amazing that fans managed to show enough support to compel Ubisoft to rerelease the game on more popular platforms, and with additional content. And here’s an interview with Jill Murray, who worked on both titles, where she talks about scriptwriting for games. [The Mary Sue/The Border House]
This week I’ve somehow found my way back to some older articles that are still very relevant, chief among them Polygon’s feature on queer indie games. They go into a lot of detail about everything from the history of queer games to the Twine subculture. It’s really great.
Another oldie but goodie is this piece on the history of women warriors. It’s a beautifully written article that challenges the idea that women are always either the victims or the spoils of war. There is also a llama analogy. [A Dribble of Ink]
You didn’t think I wouldn’t mention Batwomangate, did you? Of course not. DC has had a bad time of it this past little while. And by “bad” I mean “it doesn’t seem like anyone over there has two braincells to rub together.” First, the writers of Batwoman left the company, citing constant editorial changes and DC’s unwillingness to let Batwoman marry Maggie Sawyer (despite two separate proposals) as the reason for their departure. Publisher Dan DiDio tried to backpedal, but io9 lays out exactly why his excuses are rubbish. Second, the company announced a contest in which one lucky artist will win a job at DC by drawing supervillain Harley Quinn essentially killing herself by sitting naked in a bathtub surrounded by electric appliances (happy National Suicide Prevention Week, by the way). Head over to the Daily Dot for more details. ThinkProgress has a good breakdown of how tone-deaf these decisions make DC look, and Bitch also reminds us about a recent incident at FanExpo, and the sore spot that is DC’s hiring of Orson Scott Card. There’s a reason that Has DC Comics Done Something Stupid Today is a website that exists.

Tagged A Dribble of Ink, Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed Black Flag, Assassin's Creed Liberation, Avatar, Batgirl, Batgirlgate, Bitch, DC Comics, Has DC Comics Done Something Stupid Today, io9, Jill Murray, Legend of Korra, Polygon, Princess Princess, The Border House, The Daily Dot, The Gamers, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, The Gamers: Hands of Fate, The Gamers: JourneyQuest, The Mary Sue, ThinkProgress, Twine, Ubisoft

unfridged

feminism and fantasy, science fiction and sexism

Tag Archives: Twine

Weekend Reading List: Costumes, Classics, Queerbaiting

Weekend Reading List: STEM fields and self-promotion

Weekend Reading List: Subverted damsels and DC stupidity