Tansy Rayner Roberts's Blog, page 115
April 22, 2012
Towers for Princesses
One of the books I most want to get my hands on right now is Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth, a historical retelling of the Rapunzel myth. Sean interviewed Kate for Galactic Chat (which was down for a while this weekend for reasons that make us very cranky with Podbean).
Meanwhile, Rowena Cory Daniells hosts a guest post with Kate talking about the history behind the fairy tale that inspired Bitter Greens:
It feels like Rapunzel has been in my life a lot recently! Raeli adores the movie Tangled, which she saw at the cinema with friends, so I haven’t seen it yet. But I have read the book of the film many times, and played through the pretty awesome Wii game with her so much that it feels like I’ve seen the movie itself. I kind of want to see it now, just to compare! (but the game is most excellent)
I’ve also been dying to catch up with Princeless, an indie comic about a princess who decides to rescue her sisters from a variety of towers instead of waiting for some prince to do it for them. I first heard about it on the 3 Chicks Review Comics podcast, and then noticed it had been nominated for an Eisner. It’s not out in trade quite yet though, and I couldn’t quite bear to get single issues after so nicely escaping that particular rat run. Today though I was excited to see that Issue 1 is available to read free on Bleeding Cool.
So now I have auditioned it enough to know that yes it is awesome in many ways, including a funny script, a snarky protagonist of colour who defies gender roles, some sensible body types, a great dragon, and a bunch of meta which interrogates the problematic traditions of fairy tales. Princess Adrienne’s not Rapunzel, but she’s dealing with a bunch of the same issues. I’ll be first in line to buy it in trade when it comes out! And I might buy a copy for my seven-year-old too, if she’s lucky…
April 21, 2012
Lizzie Bennet’s Webcam & the Mancake Medical Student
I have fallen completely for this cute web video series – and so have a whole bunch of other people! There are only four vids so far but I am assuming that the whole story of Pride and Prejudice is going to be retold. And I do love a new version of Pride and Prejudice…
April 19, 2012
Friday Links Buys Quite a Lot of Books Actually
10 good reasons not to feel guilty about reducing book buying in 2012
Is it me, or are these weeks coming around REALLY FAST? 2012 is prancing by, and what do I have to show for it? Well OK, one published novel, four completed short stories, a novel in progress that seems to be working and a handful of awards nominations, but apart from that??The soccer season has started, and for once I’m not talking about Arsenal, which has been elating and frustrating me in equal measure since last September, but about young Raeli, kicking off for another season, this time in the Under 7′s. The good news is, her spikes still fit, which was something of a relief because I don’t have the cash to buy her new ones.
In the mean time, I have LINKS for you.
My honey sent me an email this week saying ‘you are a superhero’. Which, OBVIOUSLY. But it turned out he was referring to this, an article about how curating the internet is becoming more and more important, and the people who do this work are, well, superheroes. I have to say, I like the term ‘curators’ as it feels a lot less elitist than ‘gatekeepers’. Though of course, ‘doorbitch’ is still my favourite. HEAR ME, INTERNET? I AM YOUR DOORBITCH.
At the Intergalactic Academy, a great post by Phoebe about a current trend to discredit/challenge the genre credentials of teen dystopia novels because they also have romance in them and thus might SNEAKILY be contaminated with girl germs. Only, of course, she says it better or I wouldn’t be linking to her. I know we don’t read the comments but some important discussion did happen in these – in particular, addressing one of Phoebe’s key points about how you probably shouldn’t be refiling these books as ‘romance’ without knowing something about the romance genre, and it’s actually a bit more complicated than “I SUSPECT THIS IS A KISSING BOOK!”
Sarah Rees Brennan MARPLES UP with a great Sleuth Thursday post, this one about, of course, the one and only Miss Marple. K and I are going to have to read our Agatha Christies a lot faster, because I am now officially craving some serious Marpling. MARPLE IS NOW A VERB, LIVE WITH IT.
Maureen Johnson attempts to explain what the current Amazon vs Apple (and other publishers) court case is really all about. As might be expected, she’s more entertaining than all the online newspapers rolled up and smoked.
Teresa Jusino posts about geek girls, “geek girls” and gamer girls. Damn those girl germs, they get everywhere, don’t they? In particular, she points to a number of male geek celebrities and how their geekdom is celebrated, not questioned and challenged in minute detail.
The Mary Sue announces that it turns out, creating a great actiony cartoon with a female lead is not all that offputting to boys. I haven’t even seen this thing yet and I can TELL that Korra rules, purely from Tumblr. So glad that many people agree.
This post, The Shame Game, about being overweight and a gamer (girl) and the massive double standard that exists in the general perception of gamers who are fat vs. gamers who are not fat (which sadly is pretty similar to the double standard that exists IN THE WORLD about people based on their weight) is actually a lot more inspiring than the first half of this sentence makes it sound. Because it’s about being true to yourself and not letting the shit get to you. And cosplaying whoever the hell you want to.
I am sad to discover that many people are dismissing and getting angry about the upcoming series Elementary before it has even screened – and that a lot of that anger has moved very quickly from defensiveness of their beloved Sherlock to some quite nasty and offensive opinions orbiting the casting of Lucy Liu as Joan Watson. Strangely, instead of accepting this casting as an interesting and innovative way of reinterpreting the classic story differently, many people are quick to call it homophobic (?) and a betrayal of canon (??). I am reminded of the wave of hatred surrounding the genderbending casting of Katee Sackoff as Starbuck, which lasted right up until fandom actually watched the show for five minutes, realised she was awesome, and pretended the whole thing never happened.
Anyway, the casting of Lucy Liu as Watson shouldn’t need to be defended, but it does apparently, and here’s a fantastic post which does exactly that. I rolled my eyes with everyone else at the idea that the US were doing their own modern Sherlock, because COME ON, and that casting a woman of colour in the role of Watson was the only thing that made me think it might actually be INTERESTING. Also she wears coats beautifully, and that’s basically what you need in a Watson.
Speaking of people being arses on the internet, Emily Asher-Perrin has written a snarky and heartfelt post pleading with Hollywood media to stop using THAT PIC of women (the butt shot) and the comments are… yikes. Wow. I don’t know why I expect Tor’s readership to be progressive (though frankly I expect that of everything on my RSS feed, and am often disappointed) but I found it both interesting and confronting how many men felt the need to explain to Emily that she is wrong, that she is too outraged or angry, and that their right to be sexually excited by movie posters is more important than any harm it might do. Sadly a whole bunch of women jumped in also to assure everyone that they are not offended by butts. Emily has been a champion, dealing calmly with wave after wave of entitlement.
The repeated use of the word ‘outrage’ in the comments (ie saying that Emily’s outrage is unwarranted) is what I found particularly interesting, because I didn’t read the post as being particularly angry at all. There’s hardly any exclamation marks! And even if she was outraged (rather than world-weary and sarcastic about a repeated patten she doesn’t like) why are so many people keen to tell her that it’s not acceptable? I often don’t agree with people, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to dictate to them how THEY should feel.
So all that is pretty depressing, let’s find a few inspiring posts to finish up with!
Sean the Blogonaut (who I’m starting to think needs an ‘awesome’ somewhere in his string of names, has written a guest post over at the AWW blog about his ongoing journey in raising his own consciousness, after discovering to his alarm that he was a lot more subconciously skewed towards reading male writers than he had imagined. Oh, and he’s completed the Aus Women Writers Reading Challenge, yay Sean!
The Mary Sue reports on a gender mishap on the internet, where an enthusiastic comic artist produced a comic that he thought was funny, but misrepresented female gamers and their experience quite badly. Women complained, he realised he was wrong, and he apologised graciously. JOB DONE. This is a lesson in how to do it, people.
N.K. Jemisin writes a post about her own sexism (cos we all have it, people, to lesser or greater degrees!) and how her early love of SF and Fantasy was guided by an ingrained idea of ‘girl stuff’ being lesser.
April 18, 2012
Elsewhere on the Internet: First Novels, Lady Novelists & Wooden Brides
Margery Allingham, at work
The article on gender, genre, publishing & ME in yesterday’s Hobart Mercury is now up electronically. Admire my library, cos it doesn’t always look quite that tidy. Cough. Thanks to Rebecca Fitzgibbon (@becfitzgibbon) for the article, it’s lovely to see some coverage of fantasy-relevant topics (not to mention feminism, gosh!) in our local paper. Bec has been writing some great pieces on culture in recent months, so it’s worth keeping an eye out for her byline.I linked to this once already but I think it bears repeating: I appear on Jim C Hines’ blog, talking about my first novel publication.
Over on Doctor Her I finished up my series (for now at least) looking at Domesticating the Doctor with Marrying the Ponds.
A half-worked-out story idea about the concept of “lady novelists” and some mad Google fu led to my creation of this Pinterest board: Lady Novelists. I started out looking at 1920′s-1930′s era of women and then went a bit off book to add all kinds of people. I became fascinated with the images that came up for searches of particular authors – and when I only chose one picture to represent each (occasionally I picked a couple) I tried very much to find pictures that showed them at work – at the typewriter, holding books or public speaking. I was quite selective, trying not to automatically pic the most glamorous or smiley picture, but one that represented that writer’s personality. Except Nancy Mitford, of course, for who the glam pictures are just so calculated! And of course, some of them like Margaret Mitchell are glamorous while working. I also tried not to automatically go for an image of the author in her early career when I could put in a picture of a more interesting older woman. Miles Franklin, for instance, is so often depicted as a very young woman rather than the adorable dotty lady she seems to have become in later life.
I also took some new Deepings Dolls pictures that I’ll be putting up over the next week or two. Since my library was all clean and tidy from my photographer visit (heh) I used it as the base for this series of pictures, playing with books themselves as backgrounds. In this case, for Reader, I Married Him I used my aged and beloved copy of Jane Eyre (hate the novel, love the book) as a backdrop for a fake wedding album for a very happy example of our ‘nostalgia bride and groom.
In Which My Mum Is Proud and My Armchair Looks AWESOME
My library (with me in it) was a centrefold in today’s Hobart Mercury, along with a great article by Bec Fitzgibbon on genre, gender and publishing. Is gender equality the next big thing in literature?
This pic courtesy of @beesncheese who achieved something I never have, by capturing a picture of my mother smiling at the camera, rather than diving behind the nearest rosebush to avoid it. All my other pics of her smiling have only been achieved by the judicious application of grandchildren and stealth.
April 17, 2012
Book Karma and the Dread To Be Read Shelf
Enid Blyton, Queen of Books
Since Alisa is making book confessions over at her blog, it’s probably time that I made some of my own.It’s the National Year of Reading here in Australia, and my one big reading challenge to myself is to buy fewer books. Which is quite a confronting thing to talk about publicly, because, well, I do rather spend a lot of my time online convincing other people to buy books, even if only a minority of them turn out to be my own. I am a book pusher. Listeners of Galactic Suburbia know this to be true!
But my teetering To Read bookcase is currently unsustainable, and my quest this year is to bring my book purchases (which are still flying on my pre-children reading abilities) more closely in line with how many books I am capable of reading. So for the National Year of Reading, I’m trying to read the books I ALREADY HAVE.
So my system is that I am only allowed to buy one book for every three that I read, and two of those three have to be from the physical To Read shelf as opposed to, say, my whopping bag of Agatha Christies, or my books for research shelf, or something from my greater library, or actual library books. I first stated these intentions here.
How am I doing, three months in? Not as well as I’d secretly hoped. Accidentally buying a pack of three Agatha Christies in the post office back in January did rather send the system into a tailspin which took some time to recover from.
I have restrained my book purchasing in 2012 to 9 books (not counting graphic novels, which I don’t have trouble reading through quickly, and Kindle books, because storage is not an issue there, and audio books because, audio books). But I only have one book purchase ‘banked’ (as in I can buy one more without reading any) and the list of books I desperately want is growing and becoming more urgent as new releases pour out of the world. I WANT the new Holly Black and the new Alison Bechdel, and a bunch of anthologies, and the new Cassandra Clare, and the next Kate Elliot (because OMG) and the new novelisation of Shada, and a bunch of Bernice Summerfields, and and and… And apparently I can’t restrict myself to last year’s books because I want to be the person reading the BRAND NEW SHINY and telling you all about it before you’ve heard about it. Sigh.
So thank goodness for my system, because it does check me and make sure that I only buy the books that I desperately, desperately want, instead of the ones I quite want. When I need a book for research I check the library system BEFORE going to buy straight away. And I do now seriously think ‘will I want to keep, lend, reread this book’ before every hard copy purchase, which is probably good for me. The house has not yet burst with books like that time in the Goodies that foam poured out of all the windows.
But…
I feel guilty about it. Even though my book purchases are still quite high compared to many people, and my quest to read books I already own seems a reasonable one, I feel guilty talking about it publicly because, well. Surely if I slow down on my book purchases, I can’t expect other people to buy my book? It feels like I might be messing with book karma. Though that does raise the disturbing possibility that somehow I have been buying books madly and compulsively for the last decade as some form of complicated and expensive magic spell that would likewise encourage people to buy my book in the same fashion. Which seems unlikely. I didn’t even have books AVAILABLE to buy during my book buying peak. And if I was doing that for that reason, even subconsciously… well, all the more reason to buy my books thoughtfully.
Sure, I want to earn a living at this, but I don’t want my books to be languishing on people’s To Read Shelves of Doom because they bought them in haste! Some of the happiest feedback I have received from people is the last year is when they tell me they are RE-READING my books. I have so little time to read, re-reading is one of my high end pure luxuries, and for people to devote that kind of luxury attention to my books makes me giddy and delighted.
The moral of the story is that I need to budget more actual time towards reading. Which I already knew. And possibly that I overthink everything, even my reading habits. THIS IS ALSO NOT NEWS TO ME.
So for this year, the National Year of Reading, I’m going to try to read what I have, and be very selective about what I buy. Because, as it turns out, while newly minted books are fresh and exciting, it’s also pretty damn special to read a fabulous book that was published one or two or five or ten years ago and to think ‘OMG, why did I wait so long?’
April 16, 2012
Snogging Superheroes Is Not Compulsory
The Thor movie made me think. Yes, really!
It’s a fun popcorn flick, with a charismatic lead, some witticisms, and fun supporting characters. What it doesn’t have is a convincing romance. Natalie Portman and Chris Hemsworth have plenty of romantic chemistry with various characters in the movie, but not with each other. So making romance a primary motivation for either of them is unconvincing, to say the least.
Likewise, Thor’s godly buddies ramble around the movie, in a generally supportive way, and near the end, one of them confesses love for him. Surprise, it’s Sif, goddess of war, the only female member of the gang. Her romantic interest in Thor adds absolutely nothing to the story, and makes her about 200% less interesting.
Meanwhile, Kat Dennings’ cute as a button sidekick character (yes, the lead female character gets a female sidekick, like I said, the movie doesn’t suck!) gets most of the best lines, is fun and entertaining on screen in her limited role, and doesn’t have to kiss anyone. Her character emerges with the best integrity, apart from Frigga (Rene Russo) who is rather awesome, but also Thor’s Mum, therefore does not have to be hot for him.
Contractually Obliged to Kiss
All this made me think. Because I’m a fan of romance, kissing and smut, on general principles. I do tend to think that throwing those things into the mix often makes the story more interesting. But here’s the thing… sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it just makes things weird. And I find myself noticing more and more when snogging, for instance, is thrown into a story that isn’t asking to be kissed.There’s an assumption, I think, that all the shooty bang explodey gosh wow punching people and general banter in action movies is all for the men, and the snoggery is for the ladies who have come along to the movies with their blokes, so they don’t get bored. Which is… well, for a start, it’s a very old fashioned view of who goes to the movies and why. But it gets particularly interesting, when you find yourself, as a woman watching action movies, complaining that the kiss got in the way of the story.
Kissing is fine, it’s bad kissing I object to.
And I suspect that many women, like me, don’t require a romantic subplot for an action movie to be appealing. Going to an action movie for the romance is kind of like going to a pizza restaurant because you like its chairs. I suspect that a big reason why test audiences etc. have told Hollywood over the years that action movies need romance for women to care about them is because IT’S THE ONLY WAY WE GET WOMEN IN THE STORY AT ALL. And yes, there are a handful of exceptions to that rule, but only a handful.
Guess Which One of Us Is Good At Our Job?
The Green Lantern movie, which was generally pretty awful, included a subplot about a great female pilot who had a snarky sense of humour, was in a difficult position trying to run her father’s aeronautics company and not being taken seriously, and had sacrificed her brilliant flying skills in order to don a business suit and do the right thing. She’s better at her job than all the male pilots, and they refuse to take her seriously Unfortunately, because the story had decided she was the love interest, once all that was established, all she got to do was roll her eyes at Ryan Reynolds and wear cute dresses, which… WHAT A WASTE.(she did however get to participate in the only awesome 30 seconds of the film, where he turns up on her balcony playing the Mysterious Stranger and she laughs at him because “I’ve known you all my life, I’ve seen you naked, you think I’m not going to recognise you because you’re wearing a tiny mask?”)
Too often, female characters are in the movie because of romantic subplot, to give the male protagonist something to fight for, something to get angry about, or someone to feel superior to despite being lesser than her in every way (I am looking at you again, Green Lantern). Sometimes this works – the love interest in Captain America is cute and sweet, but the only reason she’s there is to fall in love with Cap and for him to lose her. That’s okay, because the story works as a credible romance. It doesn’t matter how tired the trope is, if it works on screen. That’s how tropes become tropes.
But it’s quite nice to have a variety of tropes, if you see a lot of movies, otherwise you start yawning and checking your email, which is apparently not advisable in cinemas because people might throw popcorn at you. What would be REALLY nice is if we got a different range of things for women to do in action and particularly (as they are the hot thing right now and I want to like them more than I do) superhero movies.
It’s sad that, as a female superhero fan, I get so much more satisfaction from the animated series and movies (designed for children!) which explore the genre. The creators of Teen Titans, Justice League Unlimited, the Animated Batman series, and the various animated Avengers and X-Men cartoons, are far more female-positive and balanced than the Hollywood movie versions of often the same characters.
For a start, they usually have multiple women in their super teams as a matter of course, the benefit of which is that you don’t have 100% of your female castmembers shagging and/or sighing romantically over one of the male leads. You also have so many more well rounded, interesting female characters (again, usually more than one) who contribute something substantial to the story, and get to do the cool blowing stuff up things AS WELL as the men.
Comics are not always great at this. The recent Justice League reboot featured Green Lantern (yes, him again) greeting Wonder Woman (who didn’t turn up at all for a couple of issues) with the ever so charming line, “Dibs.” But for all the bad treatment of women in comics, it’s getting better. Meanwhile, in movies, it’s getting worse.
And cartoons are all “we figured all this out twenty years ago, where are the rest of you??”
The thing about the Thor movie is that, all the women in it already had a reason to be there. This is called plot. Jane and Sif’s behaviour would not be changed one inch if neither of them were in love with Thor, and the lack of the sighing/snogging scenes would have freed up like 30 seconds extra to show us Thor rolling around in the mud some more. Which is, um, possibly of GREATER interest to many female members of the audience.
I’m not calling for a ban on kissing in movies or anything like that. I’m all for the romance and the sexytimes in stories. (heh if you have read my books you might well be adding an “AND HOW” at this point) I love the way that sex, romance and even the odd bit of snoggery can reveal new layers and depths to characters. But so often in action movies, there isn’t time to reveal layers or depths, and it’s all about the shiny bright lights and the banter. In which case, imposing a romance on the story is going to take time away from necessary plot… whereas merely factoring in a few cool female characters to drive said plot might be just as useful in making your movie seem worthwhile to the women who buy movie tickets. And, shock, maybe some of the men too.
Wouldn’t it be cool if we had a superhero movie or two which included women NOT because of how they felt about the male lead, but because they had a job to do? Apparently the upcoming Avengers movie has two, Black Widow & SHIELD Agent Maria Hill. Only one officially counts as a superhero according to the posters, though, and she’s also the one who was introduced to the Marvel Movies Universe as “the love interest” in an Iron Man movie. (remind me, did they actually shack up together in Iron Man 2? I can’t remember for the life of me, but I do remember how much ‘ooh romance, love interest, GIRL, tight costume’ was emphasised in the promotion leading up to the movie, which seems tacky since he has obviously been married to Pepper Potts for a decade)
Can we get through a whole Joss Whedon movie without Maria Hill kissing anyone? Or at least, kissing anyone in order to promote THEIR story? Do we need a new variation of the Bechdel Test, to see how many women in action/superhero movies are given functions beyond kissing the hero?
In a hypothetical universe where we are allowed to play mad science social experiments with Hollywood, if a rule was set that for a whole year there was to be no depiction of romance, kissing or sex in any movie, would we suddenly see a greater and more interesting range of narrative roles for women on screen? Or would women simply vanish from movies altogether?
April 12, 2012
April 11, 2012
Elsewhere on the Internet: gothic men and time ladies
I reviewed Kirstyn McDermott's debut novel Madigan Mine at the Australian Women Writers Challenge blog, with particular reference to how clever she is, and my new appreciation of gothic tropes. I have kind of missed writing book reviews, maybe I should do more of it instead of saving it up to blather once a fortnight on Galactic Suburbia.
Kirstyn liked my review! Always a relief when I think I'm spotting something clever and turn out to be right.
Over at Doctor Her, I interview Lynne M Thomas and Deborah Stanish about Chicks Dig Time Lords and the series of books it developed into. Chicks Dig Comics is out this week, people! And it's wonderful!
Galactic Suburbia Episode 57 Show Notes
You can check out the new Galactic Suburbia episode on our website or at iTunes. You'll notice we were really subtle about the Hugo nomination, because we didn't want to be tacky.
In which this Hugo nominated podcast is Hugo nominated and discusses the Hugo nominations while being Hugo nominated. Also, the internet is full of things. Some of those things discuss gender, feminism and equality, some have wide ranging implications for the future of SF awards, and some of them are nominated for Hugos.
Hunger Games Hunger Games Hunger Games
Build up to make a hit
The reviews are in:
Topless Robot
Forbes
Our Alisa
But in the real world, the character Katniss Everdeen faces an even greater challenge: Proving that pop culture will embrace a heroine capable of holding her own with the big boys.
It's a battle fought on two fronts. First, The Hunger Games must bring in the kind of box office numbers that prove to Hollywood that a film led by a young female heroine who's not cast as a sex symbol can bring in audiences. And second, for Katniss to truly triumph, she must embody the type of female heroine — smart, tough, compassionate — that has been sorely lacking in the popular culture landscape for so very long.
The Clarke Award Shortlist:
Christopher Priest's original post
Cat Valente responds:
"Because let's be honest, I couldn't get away with it. If I posted that shit? I'd never hear the end of what a bitch I am."
And further she responds
Outer Alliance discussion on Gay YA Dystopia & Paolo Bacigalupi
Qld Premier cancels Premiers Literary Award
"Before the election, the LNP pledged to cut government "waste" as part of its efforts to offer cost-of-living relief to Queenslanders."
Response of Queensland Writers Centre
The Fake Geek Girl at the Mary Sue
Kate Elliott on the portrayal of women in pain & fear
Ashley Judd on the media's attitude to women and their bodies
Valente on the war against women in the real world
Tehani on Aurealis Awards stats, gender
BSFA stuff – Actual winners
The first post that raised the problems with the ceremony.
A response (there for historical sake, though I think since at least partly recanted)
how the Tweets saw it
Cheryl's take
EDIT: Since recording, the BSFA have issued a full and unreserved apology, along with an explanation of why it took them so long to respond. That's how to do it, folks!
Jim Hines works through his privileged dumbassery
Kirstyn McDermott works through whether her feminism is good enough
Vote for Sean the Blogonaut for NAFF
What Culture Have we Consumed?
Alex: Monstrous Regiment, Terry Pratchett; Showtime, Narrelle M Harris, Woman on the Edge of Time, Marge Piercy; 2312, Kim Stanley Robinson; The State of the Art, Iain M Banks
Tansy: So Silver Bright, Lisa Mantchev; Kat, Incorrigible, by Stephanie Burgis; Cold Magic, Kate Elliott
Alisa: The Hunger Games (movie and books), The Readers (podcast)
Please send feedback to us at galacticsuburbia@gmail.com, follow us on Twitter at @galacticsuburbs,, check out Galactic Suburbia Podcast on Facebook and don't forget to leave a review on iTunes if you love us!
