Congratulations to Erika Ensign (@hollygodarkly) & Steven Schapansky (@legopolis) who are in LA for the Gallifrey One convention and just announced they got married! Complete with a Lego re-enactment for those who weren’t there… adorable, guys.
(I love how many cute couples there are in Doctor Who fandom)
In other news, I spent a week tweeting as @WeTasmania. You can check out my week via Storify, the application that makes Twitter a little bit more archivable.
I also announced that I was running for Overseas Regional Director in the SFWA, which isn’t linkable because the election stuff pretty much all happens in closed forums. If you are a member of SFWA I’d really appreciate you checking out my platform statement and voting in the elections this year.
But what has everyone else been talking about this week?
Speaking of Erika, there’s a new episode of Verity out this week, discussing the Ninth Doctor – and which story most represents his brief run in the role. I really enjoyed listening to this one, and the strong debate as to whether the Doctor can ever be sexual or a romantic hero, what the Ninth Doctor’s relationship with Rose really was, and why it took a space station and/or a Dalek to convince us that the Doctor really, really was back this time.
My favourite Doctor Who thing this week was however this post about the Other Eleven Doctors, which posits an alternate history in which the Doctor was always a woman. The choices for the old Doctors in particular made me squee, as my knowledge of obscure British film came to the fore, and I love the way this was presented as a continuum and fully fledged history, from Joyce Grenfell all the way through to Miranda Hart. Inspector Spacetime, eat your heart out! (I’ve actually said that twice this week, the other time being while explaining the Doctor Whooves fandom phenomemon on Twitter)
I fell in love with this Cracked post on Six Ridiculous Myths about The Middle Ages That Everyone Believes. Ah, everyone, you are responsible for so much misinformation.
I’ve linked to the topic before, but this new article about Janet Stephens, the hairdresser who took on the task of figuring out how to replicate Ancient Roman hairstyles and blew academia out of the water with her discoveries, is much more detailed and comprehensive. She would totally be a footnote in my PhD thesis if she had done this ten years earlier…
Hoyden about Town introduced me to another corner of history I knew nothing about: Margaret Macdonald and Marion Mahony, artists who have been reclaimed for their own work as opposed to their earlier historical classification as the wives and helpmeets of famous artists…
Aliette de Bodard reviews Seraphina, with particular reference to mixed race characters in fantasy fiction.
Liz Bourke looks at the problematic use of the term ‘bastards’ in fantasy fiction descriptions.
Charles Tan talks about The Best Intentions, about how you get ‘get it wrong’ even while trying really hard on the social justice front, and that it’s okay to get it wrong as long as you stay open minded about what you’re fighting for.
N.K. Jemisin talks about Orcs in fantasy and why she doesn’t plan to include them in her own work.
Culturally Disoriented on Boys Don’t Read Girl Books And Other Lies Society Told Me.
Marvel is doing so much better than DC right now when it comes to female led books – and its attitude towards female readers. So many new and exciting titles, some of them even involving female creators!
A really interesting look at crossplay and what it’s for, from the perspective of a male cosplayer who decided to take on the task of Slave Leo, the male equivalent (not parody) of Slave Leia.