Links for Friday
* I'm currently sitting on the Raksura novel for a few days, hoping some beta readers have time to read it and give me feedback.
* It rained everywhere in the state over the past few days except our block. The rain literally -- literally -- stopped a hundred yards down the street. At one point all you could see on the weather radar was green and yellow except for the white spot that was our house.
links
* N.K. Jemisin: Time to pick a side.
I mention all these seemingly disparate things because they’re not disparate at all. These events are reflective of massive societal transformations taking place right now, all over the world. This transformation is more than just demographic. We’re seeing growing challenges to hierarchies, to orthodoxies, to every level of "the way it’s always been done".
* New Stateman: I hate strong female characters
No one ever asks if a male character is "strong". Nor if he's "feisty," or "kick-ass" come to that.
The obvious thing to say here is that this is because he's assumed to be "strong" by default. Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she's anomalous. "Don't worry!" that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero's love interest is an SFC. "Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can't do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face."
This article makes a huge number of good points. And the passage above makes me think of how a reader called Tremaine Valiarde from the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy "weak" because she couldn't fight like Xena. Because directly causing or subtly influencing most of the action in the books, including controlling through one method or another every vehicle she travels in, is "weak."
* Salon: Women’s free speech is under attack: The threats and trolling women receive online silence them just as effectively as any censorship
* It rained everywhere in the state over the past few days except our block. The rain literally -- literally -- stopped a hundred yards down the street. At one point all you could see on the weather radar was green and yellow except for the white spot that was our house.
links
* N.K. Jemisin: Time to pick a side.
I mention all these seemingly disparate things because they’re not disparate at all. These events are reflective of massive societal transformations taking place right now, all over the world. This transformation is more than just demographic. We’re seeing growing challenges to hierarchies, to orthodoxies, to every level of "the way it’s always been done".
* New Stateman: I hate strong female characters
No one ever asks if a male character is "strong". Nor if he's "feisty," or "kick-ass" come to that.
The obvious thing to say here is that this is because he's assumed to be "strong" by default. Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she's anomalous. "Don't worry!" that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero's love interest is an SFC. "Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can't do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face."
This article makes a huge number of good points. And the passage above makes me think of how a reader called Tremaine Valiarde from the Fall of Ile-Rien trilogy "weak" because she couldn't fight like Xena. Because directly causing or subtly influencing most of the action in the books, including controlling through one method or another every vehicle she travels in, is "weak."
* Salon: Women’s free speech is under attack: The threats and trolling women receive online silence them just as effectively as any censorship
No comments have been added yet.
