I haven’t watched Jupiter Ascending, but I have been fascinated by the meta commentary around about whether it’s a bad film or not, and whether it’s an anti-feminist film or not, and so on.
The Fangirl Happy Hour reviewed it very positively and got into some fantastic meta about what the film does well, while still (and this is crucial) not necessarily being a good film. Renay’s rant on agency and how a perceived lack of it is used too often to dismiss female-centred stories is a masterwork of criticism that she’s obviously been building up to for some time and everyone should listen to it.
I’d like to add this Tumblr post which explains how Jupiter Ascending is being criticised for failing to meet the requirements for a Chosen Hero narrative, when in fact it is a Secret Princess story, and that has different narrative beats.
Then we have Kate Elliott at Tor.com, being brilliant about Writing Female Characters as Human Beings – with an articulate, point by point exploration of how writers can do better at this particular skill, should they aspire to do so. She also talks about agency, and how there are different kinds of agency in real life as in stories. The article is full of practical advice and while some of the comments are frustrating, many of them add thoughtful layers to the conversation as a whole.
Random Alex and I (and many other interesting people) took part in a recent MindMeld on which standalone books we would like to have sequels.
Apart from that, nothing at all has happened this week except that the Silent Producer and I got to the end of Friday Night Lights and we are now BEREFT beyond the telling of it. Seriously, the house has gone into mourning. It wouldn’t be quite so bad, but we’re only half a season away from being done with Leverage too and then I think we honestly will just take to our beds in misery for like, a week.
My only consolation is that when Tyra finally got out of that town and went to college, she was obviously recruited by SHIELD. Agents of SHIELD is honestly so much more interesting with that particular headcanon 