rounding up the links

You know it says a lot about everything that Y: The Last Man is often held up as a comic that does awesome shit about gender. It doesn’t.

The reason for all this is pretty simple. It’s an authorial fiat to make Yorick the Most Important Person on Earth. The gendercide could have taken a much more believable form, say, an actual plague, but this would not serve the same narrative purposes. If a virus or bacterium were responsible, it would take time (years) for the world’s population to fully succumb; and even then, there’s always the possibility of other male survivors, quarantined somewhere. If Yorick were spared due to a genetic immunity to the plague, then it would stretch the imagination for him to be the only one. Have you read I Am Legend (no, not the movie)? Don’t worry, neither has Brian K. Vaughan. Likewise if the gendercide were eugenics-based, Children of Men-style; Yorick would have the rest of his generation, at least, to keep him company. But this way, it’s Yorick and only Yorick. He must be humanity’s last hope from the beginning; even the possibility of other male survivors would undermine his specialness (if you doubt that Yorick is Vaughan’s thinly-veiled self-insert, consider that he is an English major who enjoys making jokes about grammar, and is protected by a secret agent bodyguard who is secretly in love with him). And make no mistake, Yorick is special. He is the savior of the human race. It makes no difference whether it’s ultimately his penis or his pet monkey that makes him special; a geeky, aw-shucks Anti-Sue like Yorick is still a Mary Sue.

Unprevailing reviewed The Name of the Wind.

Once the street orphan plot no longer becomes necessary to Rothfuss, Kvothe leaves this life with ridiculous ease. Now it’s off to the cleverly named “University” to become Kvothe-cum-Harry Potter. Indeed, this section is much like a Harry Potter for adults neckbeards–without the benefit of the whimsy or any strong female characters. Kvothe is an orphan, hated by some teachers and beloved by others. He becomes friends all-too-quickly with a couple misfits. He has a rival of noble birth. He gets himself into mischief. He is brilliant in all his endeavors but stymied by the ladies. On that point: women exist as mere curiosities for the sausage fest. Ah, the male gaze.

I still think the title is an elaborate way to say “fart.” I mean, really now.

I had a run-in with Fadzlishah Johanabas, a “doctor” who claims to work with and help abuse survivors but who thinks telling people who disagree with them that they must’ve had a damaged childhood is an awesome tactic. See Storify here. Trigger warnings abound! Man also believes anti-white racism, misandry and heterophobia are real things. Note that I do not want to speak for abuse survivors, and if I’ve done or said anything wrong, call me the fuck out.

A lesbian journalist who loves Ender’s Game interviewed Orson Scott Card. Yeah, pretty much.

Literacy Privilege: How I Learned to Check Mine blah blah blah whatever. It’s obvious concerns about imperialism etc come to the poster as an afterthought and she still doesn’t really get what imperialism has to do with anything. She’s an American and an Anglophone. How did you guess?

“Ghost Stories”: The ubiquitous anti-feminism of young adult romances is from someone who did a shitload of YA ghostwriting, which explains a LOT about that genre, doesn’t it.

I view the genre with an insider’s perspective: I paid my way through university by ghostwriting YA romances for various publishing houses. It was an easy job at first: padding chapter word counts through the judicious use of erotic ekphrasis, mentally calculating how many pennies each adjective added to my bank account: (“His rippling, supple muscular chest, shimmering in the bright sunlight. His smooth, almost preternaturally marble-white skin…”). Yet, after over twenty such books – each written to my employers’ chapter-by-chapter outlines – I began to feel increasingly uneasy about the message such tropes send to the genre’s young, largely female readership.

Drew C of Ferretbrain reviewed Farming Simulator 2013 seriously. It sounds kind of fun, actually.

Slash fandom is pretty hilarious.

Here’s the kicker… Neither of us is a Sherlock/John shipper. We both see Sherlock and John as two men who have a very unique and incredibly strong friendship. Here’s the irony: I have been called a homophobe for not shipping Sherlock and John. I received hate messages in my (now deleted) Sherlock blog when I answered ‘do you ship Johnlock?’ with the single word ‘no’. It was oddly amusing: “Homophobe”, “die cis scum!”, “go kill yourself”, “you must be a lonely, fat, hag”.

The poster’s an old gay dude and while queer people can internalize homophobia, I’m gonna go on a limb and say that not participating in slash bullshit isn’t an expression of that. Also, what does “die cis scum” have to do with anything? Aren’t the actors and the characters, like, cis males?

Posted by acrackedmoon on March 14, 2013

http://requireshate.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/rounding-up-the-links/