Lavie Tidhar has ANGERED THE STEAMPUNK HORDES. This is awesome. From the email some whiny crybaby sent his publisher:
[his tweet that "steampunk is fascism for nice people] this has (quite rightly) deeply angered and upset a vast majority of the Steampunk community in the UK, Europe and North America.
From his “A Lexicon of Steam Literature of the Third Reich”:
‘Look out!’ shouted Brunhilda. Her long blonde hair whipped in the wind as she clung for dear life to the underside of the mighty airship The Iron Chancellor. Rising ahead was the black airship King David, a dark oppressive presence in the skies. Its mighty guns were aimed at the Iron Chancellor. ‘We will not be defeated by a devolved race!’ cried Brunhilda’s companion, Conrad Bosch, the famed explorer and engineer. ‘Take my hand!’
Francis Lam and Eddie Huang consider “Is it fair for chefs to cook other cultures’ food?” with a focus, of course, on white chefs cooking (and being celebrated for “doing it right”) cuisines from POC cultures.
Jennifer duBois on Writing Across Gender.
I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has.
I find the hedging “oh, of course women also do this to men too” irritating, but welp.
Rochita Loenen-Ruiz has a new story out! “Song of the Body Cartographer” is lovely and sad.
You’re Killing Me reviews urban fantasy/paranormal romance. Specifically I liked how they covered Patricia Briggs’ bullshit-a-thon with an eye out for the evo-psych werewolf claptrap.
The US is doing it usual thing. Fuck yeah USA.
Emil Söderman
/ June 25, 2012Eh… I tend to dislike simply labelling every problematic thing “fascism”. Victorian England wasn’t interwar Italy, in all sorts of ways.
I also note that Wilhelmine Germany would be the second, and not first, Reich, which would be the loose equivalent.
Cyna (@endless_run)
/ June 26, 2012:DDD Thanks for the plug. It’s truly special, the way hatred for Briggs’ awful, awful series can bring people together~
braak
/ June 26, 2012As a general rule when it comes to Steampunk, I feel like if you’re into it for a reason beyond, “Wouldn’t it be cool if more people wore waistcoats and tophats?”, you’re probably taking it a little too seriously.
Captain Falcon (@psychoxnino)
/ June 27, 2012From the article about food:
“I think I’m so disenfranchised that I don’t want to be American anymore. It’s a club I’m tired of trying to get into. I’d rather drink at a Karaoke bar. But, I know deep down, I am American. I go to China or Taiwan and people fight me on basketball courts because I play like an American. That’s what makes this so shitty for us. We have no home.”
Well that made me kinda emo. And the facebook comments following that article are really predictable, especially if you take a note of who is saying what and to whom.
A lot of people I know have this obsession with the food network these days, which is a TV channel solely devoted to food. Asian ingredients and dishes show up a lot, in spite of the fact that I don’t think there are any big name Asian chefs doing cooking shows at the moment. If I walk into a Panda Express, I have to laugh at myself, turn it into a joke. The same with P.F. Chang’s. I was once served a dish called “Bokchoy Bowl” that had no bokchoy in it. Sometimes it’s like a white American chef can make some tofu and put it on a square plate with some garnish and it’s somehow elevated above that dingy hole in the wall place in Chinatown serving fish ball soup and 75 cent fried drumsticks, the one that’s got a B rating from the health department and yet no one gives a fuck and eats there anyways. I once saw a group of white people sit down at a table at a Chinese restaurant (a Chinese restaurant with actual Chinese people eating there). And then I saw them all get up and walk out the door. Must have been that they took a look at the menu and got spooked (was it the black fungus?).
I could just go on and on about food. Somewhat unrelated, but I once saw a white customer in line at the cafeteria where a Hispanic cook was making her burrito. She said to him, “Wow, you’re so good at that. Everything stays neatly wrapped inside like it’s supposed to.” He just smiled and nodded politely.
Then she said, “Must be in your genes.”
I dropped my plate of salad and started cleaning out my ears because, clearly, I must have misheard, because no one with an ounce of sense would say something like that… But judging by the awkward smile on the cook’s face, she totally did.
angelrenoir
/ July 11, 2012That food article for some reason reminds me of the Battle Royale vs Hunger Games kerfuffle. I don’t particularly like either series, but I did think Hunger Games is a bit too similar to Battle Royale for its own good. Makes me wonder if all those articles saying that the author of Hunger Games was lying when she said she never heard of Battle Royale.