Still on break. Having fun playing Final Fantasy XI. While I’m gone, you can check out this post by Tamora pierce.

Here’s an excerpt:

[…] But honestly, why is it strange to like to write for girls?

Aren’t they worth it? Look at them on the soccer field, or bent over a book. Watch them in the mall, looking at music or clothes, or at home or in gym, practicing headstands and somersaults. Do you see them in class, getting all fired up about injustice, or in a club, dancing to set the world on fire? Do you see them bent over sketch pads or lap tops, working away, or read their internet posts, where being unseen sets them free to say what they think? They’re a more tremendous resource than oil or water, and they are trashed, ignored, lectured, talked down to, shoved aside, told they’re hos/sluts/technoignoramuses, tied up and abused in games/movies/comics/television, handed diets until they collapse from the weight of them–and yet they are still thinking, still active, still passionate, still idealists. They are world-beaters.

Why aren’t more people writing for them, and I mean “for”, as in, in ways that makes them feel like what they are: a powerful force. People who make a difference. Not toys, not negligible quantities to be shoved aside every time people get their panties in a bunch about boys, but serious players on the world stage. Serious contributors to everyone’s lives.

(I’ll be away for the next few days at Fan Expo Canada in Toronto. If anyone else will be there and wants to meet up, drop me a line. As far as I know, Harlan Ellison won’t be there.)

Dora has written a great post on the subject of Ellison’s behavior at the Hugo Awards. If you haven’t read it already, stop reading this and go read that one first.

She linked to Ellison’s apology, which was the sort of non-apology I’ve gotten used to hearing from public figures when they don’t understand that they did anything wrong.

Read the rest…

[First a big shout-out to Tekanji, Lake Desire and Shrub.com for giving me the chance to guest blog! My name is Luke and I rushed this post out to press once I read jdpbookworm’s great post below that I think is a good branch-off point. I warn, however, that this post is a real behemoth in length. The more I went back to it, the more I added on so you might want to pack a ham-sandwich before diving in or something. Anyways, i’d love to get your feedback, thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc.]

Pimp Your/My Oppression

We’ve all seen them.

It’s some night-owl hour and in-between reruns of Roseanne and ElimiDate you see for 30 seconds the uniquely American bazaar of young, thin, often blonde women with flowing hair and large breasts: In some form, you see “The Yes Girls.”

All-too-discreetly advertising itself as none other than a phone-sex line for men where young women dressed (or undressed, for that matter) in lace and satin seductively grasp their phones, bodies supine with eyes gazed towards the camera whispering lines of “We always say ‘yes’” like they know exactly what customers of the phone-sex line would want to hear in some meta-rape fantasy sort of way.

Read the rest…

1. What was your reaction when you saw this cover?
2. Are you familiar with the New Yorker and its covers? Do you think that influenced your reaction? If so, how?
3. After further reflection, did you see something different than your first reaction, or did the details of the picture just reinforce your original idea?
4. Please share any other thoughts on this cover that you may have.

I’m not going to get into my own opinion of it yet because I want your honest reaction not influenced by what I think. So, readers, I urge you to look at the picture and then comment without reading other comments or visiting the original post. Of course, if you want to make a second comment for after you’ve seen other people’s opinions, I think that would be awesome, too.

Via Alas, a Blog.

Note: This article was originally written on November 01, 2005 as a Shrub.com Article. In my process of switching all articles over to this blog, I will be reposting old entries. What follows is in its original form without any editing.

While in the midst of writing my Girls and Game Ads series, I found myself going off on a tangent on the depiction of women in the fantasy genre and how it helped lead to the rise of the “girl power” paradigm we find deeply enmeshed in current Western pop-culture. While the whole “chicks in chainmail” deal was already being challenged by fresh authors and ideas by the time I got into fantasy, it remains an important part of the genre’s history. It is this idea that I will be addressing in this article.

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So, I’ve been reading Elizabeth Kerner’s Song in the Silence series (or maybe it’s better called The Tale of Lanen Kaelar) because I picked up the next (last?) installment of it just recently. Just a warning, I talk in as vague terms as possible, but there are potential spoilers for both Kerner’s series and the manga Marmalade Boy. I’ve made it through the second book and I’m finally starting on the new one, so I’m excited to see how it goes. My main beef with the series, and it’s a small one at that, was that the whole “mating for life” the dragons did and the “ordained by the gods” love that the main characters had always struck me as a bit cheesy.

Fast forward to today, where I’m reading through an LJ post on BDSM spawned by a thread on Alas. What does BDSM have to do with Kerner’s books? Well, not much, although the thought of kinky dragons brings a smile to my lips. In the course of the debate one commenter, skelkins, was talking about the importance of human interaction, and how communication is just as inherent as power dynamics but is not eroticized: “In fact, there’s this weird cliche of romantic fiction that relies for its effect on audience consensus that communication itself is somehow inherently…anti-sexy?” And that got me thinking about the romance in the fiction I’ve read, and the way Kerner has treated it in her series.

Read the rest…