Just a Sci-Fi Kid Like Me

I made a thing for work! (It was hard.) (I'll say serious things later, when I have spoons.)

I was a guest speaker on several episodes of Sci-Fi Lab to talk with DJ and Harper about the history of fandom with my friend and colleague Karen Viars. Much fun was had!

Episode 6: Fandom, pt.1: The Beginning:



Episode 7: Fandom pt.2 The Wrath of Mod:



Episode 8: Fandom pt.3 Curative Robots vs. Transformative Pirates



Episode 9: Fandom pt.4 Follow the Bouncing Disclaimer:

(Also, I hope we get a better acronym soon. DIS? I got nothin'.)

(A plotbunny I would like to do something with, but, you know, stupid real life.)

Inspired by this vimeo of John Boyega on Shakespeare's audiences:

BBC Shakespeare: About Shakespeare - Audience & Social Attitudes from Somethin' Else on Vimeo.

But like so it's 1593ish and Finn is a country boy with a Puritanical family but then one day there are traveling players in town and he realizes 1) here's an opportunity to leave this life that's killing him, 2) he now wants to be a player more than anything, 3) he might be in love with lead actor Poe Dameron. And so because reasons the other players leave for London first but Poe is still in town, it turns out he's ALSO AN INTELLIGENCER FOR THE QUEEN OMG, he has a mission to go talk to someone about those Irish rebels blahblah IT TURNS OUT FINN KNOWS THE WAY TO SOMEPLACE, and in the meantime Poe teaches him some acting tricks so they can make their daily bread, but they get ambushed, it's all tragic, but Finn makes his way to London by himself!!!

And on the way he runs into a boy named Rey, they both get to London, it's amazing, they've never seen so many people in their lives, holy cow. So they make it to the theater and guess what POE IS THERE HE'S ALIVE, he's awesome, Marlowe hates him because he's so awesome, anyway, so they are at the theater and now they have jobs--which is usually holding horses outside and other things, maybe Finn's parents were weavers or leatherworkers, he can also fix costumes and stuff. Anyway so one day someone gets sick or something so Finn gets to play, like Petruchio to Poe's Kate, it's great. Also also it eventually comes out of course that Rey is a girl pretending to be a boy, HER VIOLA IS THE BEST VIOLA LET ME TELL YOU.

Other things that happen: Poe is in on Marlowe's death (Marlowe is an asshole, it's not sad), Shakespeare writes Othello for Finn and Rey plays Desi and Poe plays Iago THE THREE OF THEM ARE INCREDIBLE IF THEY HAD ACTING AWARDS BACK THEN THEY WOULD ALL WIN. Somehow Finn comes across his family again and acknowledges he has to be who he is and that is an actor and also bi and he owns it. Queen Elizabeth is obvs Leia and Luke is kind of John Dee and Essex is also somehow Han Solo, whatever, it works in my mind.

*waves* I am so discombobulated this Fall. My summer was ridiculous and Fall is not any less so. ANYWAY. Stuff to share:

"The misogyny towards fanfiction: she, her, hers" by Nandhini Narayanan

I am concerned about this social inclination to dismiss or trivialize fanfic works. The implication is that something written by women and read majorly by women is somehow less important and unworthy of respect. There was a loud and angry twitter campaign a while ago called #fakegeekgirls. The premise was that several women were attending comic conventions in costumes in order to “seem nerdy and pick up the interest of men.” Female cosplayers were specifically picked on and accused that they were dressing up to get attention. Yes, I saved up for weeks, tailored my own spandex outfit and took a nine hour flight to trap you in my romantic clutches, dear stranger. ...

Consider how, by trivializing and marginalizing an entire body of work as unimportant, we are not paying attention to the trends that are manifesting in fanfiction. Think about the profound space fanfiction provides for representation of minority communities. Canonical books, comics and TV shows revolve around the white male. Fanfiction provides the space for a gay Clark Kent, a genderqueer Sherlock Holmes, a lesbian Nancy Drew or an asexual Harry Potter. Most mainstream blogs are cis-gender owned, but Tumblr has more out and proud gender-queer writers in fandoms than any other social media site.

A short, superficial piece, but it's a relief to have someone somewhere calling these shenanigans what they are.

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PBS Idea Channel gets it Absolutely Right about Trigger Warnings in the Classroom:



My favorite quote is "Academic trigger warnings aren't a shield or armor, they are a horn announcing the charge is coming." Yes. This.

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I got a paper on recovering the history of women in the book trades accepted into next year's ASECS conference, which is back-to-back with PCA. This is only the second book history paper I've had accepted and the first one in the US, so I feel very happy (and relieved) about it.

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Other news: I've joined a local writing group with some of the cool Tolkien people I met back in April, and we're meeting for the first time in a couple of weeks. I'm also very excited about that, though I haven't written anything creative in way too long. (I feel like a slacker, while fully aware that I have, in the past month, sent off two sets of book chapter revisions, finished half of a book chapter, and revised two outlines.) Because I like books on writing, I started reading The Maeve Binchy Writers' Club this afternoon to start thinking. That totally counts, right?

Because I can't embed, here's a link.

Via The Mary Sue.

“Nerds don’t have a problem with women,” said host Larry Wilmore, “they have a problem with change.” He then asked the panelists if the whiny manbabies of the internet are racist, sexist, or just gross gatekeeping nerds, to which Amanat replied, “All of the above.” Killin’ it.

Sooo PBS has a webshow that sometimes talks about fic and pop culture? Whaaaaaat?



Bonus, "How Sherlock Paved the Way to FSoG":

via The Mary Sue.

We in the book community are in the middle of a sustained conversation about diversity. We talk about our need for diverse books with diverse characters written by diverse writers. I wholeheartedly agree.

But I have noticed an undercurrent of fear in many of our discussions. We’re afraid of writing characters different from ourselves because we’re afraid of getting it wrong. We’re afraid of what the Internet might say.

This fear can be a good thing if it drives us to do our homework, to be meticulous in our cultural research. But this fear crosses the line when we become so intimidated that we quietly make choices against stepping out of our own identities

And let’s say you do your best. You put in all the effort you can. But then when your book comes out, the Internet gets angry. You slowly realize that, for once, the Internet might be right. You made a cultural misstep. If this happens, take comfort in the fact that even flawed characters can inspire. Apologize if necessary, resolve to do better, and move on.

I wish this is something more creative writing teachers would bring up.

Megan Beech's spoken word ode:



See also, Mary Beard, Troll Slayer.

Appearing on television made Beard famous in the U.K., but what has made her even more famous has been the suggestion, put forward by certain male observers, that she is too old or unprepossessing to be on television at all. A. A. Gill, the television critic for the Sunday Times, greeted her Pompeii series by remarking, “Beard coos over corpses’ teeth without apparently noticing she is wearing them. . . . From behind she is 16; from the front, 60. The hair is a disaster, the outfit an embarrassment.” Gill dismissed “Meet the Romans” by declaring that Beard “should be kept away from cameras altogether.”

After a “Question Time” appearance in the Midlands, in which Beard argued that recent immigrants were not a burden on the local economy, she was repeatedly vilified on an Internet message board. One user described her as “a vile, spiteful excuse for a woman, who eats too much cabbage and has cheese straws for teeth.” (British comments sections can seem to be haunted by the ghost of Roald Dahl.) Less creatively, another commenter posted a doctored photograph in which an image of a woman’s genitals was superimposed over Beard’s face.

There is an injunction among users of social media that one should not pay attention to online detractors. There is even a Twitter account, @AvoidComments, which issues monitory statements: “You wouldn’t listen to someone named Bonerman26 in real life. Don’t read the comments.” Beard argues, instead, that comments sections expose attitudes that have long remained concealed in places like locker rooms and bars. Bonerman26 exists; his vileness should be contended with. In this spirit, she posted the image of herself-as-genitalia on her blog—it was surely the first time that the T.L.S. site might have needed a Not Safe for Work warning—and suggested possible responses for her supporters to take, such as flooding the offending message board with Latin poetry. The story made international news, and the message board soon shut down. ...

In another highly publicized incident, Beard retweeted a message that she had received from a twenty-year-old university student: “You filthy old slut. I bet your vagina is disgusting.” One of Beard’s followers offered to inform the student’s mother of his online behavior; meanwhile, he apologized. Beard’s object is not simply to embarrass offenders; it is to educate women. Before social media, she argues, it was possible for young women like those she teaches at Cambridge to enjoy the benefits of feminist advances without even being aware of the battles fought on their behalf, and to imagine that such attitudes are a thing of the past. Beard says, “Most of my students would have denied, I think, that there was still a major current of misogyny in Western culture.”