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Jim Hines looks at some of the responses to his ‘posing like the uncomfortable ladies on cover art’ project and talks about why it is important.
Verity! Podcast has a new episode out, A Perfect Ten? – I’m not in this one and listened with great interest as Deb, Erika, Liz and Lynne debated which Tenth Doctor story was most representative of his era. The School Reunion episode spurred passionate debate in particular, though I felt Erika made a very coherent argument for “Journey’s End” – I’ll be adding my Two Cents on the Verity blog this week. It’s also worth listening to for the discussion about the ‘fake geek girl’ and ‘Tennant fangirl’ putdowns that can happen in our fandom as well as ALL fandoms, and why the attitude that you are entitled to judge other people’s fannish love is so very toxic.
A companion post to the new Verity! episode, Things We Like – the Allons-y Edition, provides links to some fun and delightful fanworks from the era that brought such explosively enthusiastic fan love to Doctor Who. Some old favourites in there, go check it out!
In other ‘our Verity’ news, some casting for the exciting dramatisation of the creation of Doctor Who has been announced, including Jessica Raine from Call the Midwife as dynamo producer Verity Lambert, and David Bradley (Filch from Harry Potter) as William Hartnell. No word yet on who will be rocking Ian and Barbara’s matching cardigans as William Russell and Jaqueline Hill.
I can’t get out of my head the idea that this will actually be a pilot for a The Thick of It style TV series, which will shadow the behind the scenes story of a year of Doctor Who each season, taking us up to at least The War Games. This is probably not true.
Elsewhere, Lynne Thomas writes a heartfelt piece about wheelchair accessibility in public libraries, and the very real effect of this on families. Her story about the magical experience of Disneyland (because of not even having to think about wheelchair accessibility due to excellent modern design) really kicked me in the gut.
Amy Landisman discusses what kids are learning from Minecraft, citing the many educational qualities of the game, and discussing the Swedish school that decided to make it compulsory. It’s always a Swedish school! My 8 year old is thoroughly into the ‘non survival’ version of the game and I am very impressed with what it demonstrates about her budding engineering skills, so it’s nice (especially at the end of a cranky school holidays) to see such an able defence of some screen time for youngsters.
Mary Robinette Kowal launches another “month of letters” today (being the first of February) and ohhh, I was so very tempted to play. It’s a gorgeous idea but I slapped myself upside the head for thinking about it. Maybe next year. TOO BUSY, BOOK TO PROMOTE, STORIES TO WRITE, LIVING TO EARN.
If anyone wants to write me a letter, though, I will totally write them back. Possibly next year, but you can’t have everything!
Mary Beard, awesome classicist and blogger, faced some extremely ugly online abuse over the last week and a half or so. She responded first with humour and then, after the campaign against her became far more vile and despicable, with righteous anger. The whole ‘don’t feed the trolls’ mentality of ducking and covering has led to a whole lot of terrible behaviour going unchallenged and uncommented upon, so it’s very courageous of her to revoice some of the gross things said about her in order to draw attention to the fact that this is the sort of thing that often drives women away from making political or public commentary, or participating in online culture.
Meanwhile, Sarah Rees Brennan has a glorious, angry piece up on Tumblr about the mocking of Jane Austen fans, and the general cultural concept that anything hugely popular among women is somehow suspicious rather than ENDORSED.
Maggie Stiefvater writes about literary rape, and the repeated use of this as a ‘worst thing that can happen to a woman’ trope, while male characters get a greater variety of worst things that can happen to them, usually based on their personality.
A great article on the Huffington Post about a man buying ‘boy’ underwear for his daughter, and his frustration at the narrow range of heroes promoted to girls as compared to boys.
Jessica White catalogues the great round ups of reviews from the Australian Women Writers Reading Challenge.
Getting back to Doctor Who (what, were we away?) Erika Ensign has a fun if alarming theory about the TARDIS as a maternal mastermind.
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted this one before but I was reminded of it and, well. It bears repeating!