Inspector Spacetime as Meta

Does anyone else feel like Inspector Spacetime is one the best sporking of Doctor Who that's ever come down the pike?

Inspector Spacetime Confessions on Tumblr reads like the greatest commentary on Doctor Who's source material *and* fandom.

I'm just really blown away by how smart the commentary has been, and how seemingly in on the joke the creators of Community are with it.

It's like this perfect storm of amazingness.

Full. Body. Eyeroll.

So there's been a lovely kerfuffle going on this week, the simple summary of which is, Can you be a hot girl and a nerd?

Leaving aside the irritating use of "girl" to describe adult women, I haven't really had any commentary other than a side-eye.

I finally figured out my response, left as a comment on the above linked post.

Here it is. Ready?

If you can’t be a hot girl and a nerd, what the hell have my best girl friends and I been doing since childhood?

Sheesh.

That’s really all I have to say on the subject, with a healthy punctuation of a full-body eyeroll.

There you go. There's my soundbite.

A Love Letter to Someone Else

Spoilers for Scott Pilgrim vs the World

Tonight I saw Scott Pilgrim for a second time.

When I came out of it on Saturday, I was filled with OMG THAT WAS AWESOME. Tonight? Not so much.

Tonight I realized that regardless of all the references I caught, squees over the perfect casting, covetousness over various costume pieces and accessories...this movie wasn't written for me.

In fact, I am merely a coathanger to the plot of that love letter. I'm not an active participant--and neither was Ramona Flowers.

This movie (and the comic) was, quite literally, a story about how a woman's past just about killed the guy interested in her.

Josh, very astutely, compared this story to High Fidelity, noting that they were similar tales of different stages in "mens' lives."

Both sources are excellent, innovative, and honestly new takes on a yawn-inducingly tired story. One that, again, has nothing to do with me.

While she had a bit more "there" there in the comic, Ramona Flowers is nothing more than a Manic Pixie Dream Girl. No amount of hair color shifts, pithy one-liners, or awesome fight skills make up a character. Shit, even Knives had more character development than she did. (I'm referring solely to the movie, here. The Knives plot was resolved far sooner in the comic.)

I guess, in the end, I feel very hurt that a movie I was told was for me, wasn't for me at all. And in fact, doesn't regard me at all.

I'm not saying the movie was bad. My qualms aside, it truly was a hat tip to almost every subculture to which I hold a membership. Edgar Wright once again proved his brilliance.

I just wish...the love had been more inclusive.

Whoa!

I hadn't heard of Cowboys and Aliens until just now, but oh my god, this image is amazing:

YES. THIS.

From today's Fandom Secrets:



I'm not going to SDCC this year, but please, someone, ANYONE make this happen!!!!

Awwww!

Kevin Smith talks to Natalie, the woman who got fat-shamed on his second flight. Smodcast here.

It's so cute. I want them to be bffs.

Whoops

John Barrowman is taking part in the Children in Need auctions.

Hey, Beeb.

That's not an American Flag.

FYI.

THE BIG NEWS

Several weeks ago, Valerie D'Orazio, the Occasional Superheroine herself, emailed me offering me an exciting position with Friends of Lulu.

I am pleased to announce that I am now the Convention Director for Friends of Lulu!

For those of you not familiar with it, Friends of Lulu is a national nonprofit organization whose purpose is to promote and encourage female readership and participation in the comic book industry.

I am thrilled to have been asked to work with such a fantastic organization.

Expect to see me at the FoL table at a convention near you!

Cool Trivia Of The Day...

Thanks to Tom Spurgeon, I just found out that my father went to the same high school as Will Eisner.

Of course, my dad was there about thirteen years later, but still. That's awesome.

Happy Birthday, Charles Brownstein!

My convention attendance this weekend is still up in the air.

I am attending a music festival in New Jersey tomorrow, and with the 91 degree weather forecast, it's anyone's guess what sort of shape I'll be in on Sunday.

That said, I'm going to try to make an appearance at both Big Apple Con and MoCCA, because there will be people at both I'd like to see. (Malcolm McDowell at BAC, and most specifically Randall Monroe at MoCCA.)

HOWEVER!

I will be attending Charles Brownstein's birthday party tonight.

I hope everyone has a great weekend, and remember, whether you're on a corn field in New Jersey, or the sweltering heat of the Puck Building, DRINK LOTS OF WATER!

Let's keep fan heat stroke to an absolute minimum!

Go Go Tron Racer!

Having seen the new Speed Racer trailer, I find I'm compelled to ask the following question:

Is this a remake of Speed Racer, or Tron?

Milo Ventimiglia Is Dangerous With An Easel

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was when I got to meet Milo Ventimiglia. Of course, in true Stapler fashion, it happened in an...odd way...



He was lovely afterwards, however, and apologized to my friend and me. And then he took a picture with me!

COMIC CON AHOY!

Soon, it will be out the door with me!

If you see a 5' brunette with a red stapler tote bag, hey! That'll be me!

Feel free to say hi. :)

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

A friend of mine whose blog I read linked to this article. I don't think I have ever been so appalled by someone who, initially, I would want to agree with.

I was almost willing to go along with the essayist's ideas until she started saying Joss Whedon rapes his wife. Yes, she really said that. And not just once, but several times, both in her essay, and in the comments.

"Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Joss uses his own wife in this way," from the essay.

"I feel awful for Joss Whedon's wife. From what I've read about him and the interviews I've watched, I'm fairly certain that he rapes his wife and abuses her in various other ways." from this comment

These are the most tasteless, baseless, unnecessary statements ever put in an essay. If she was so bent on focusing on the pilot episode--something she asserts in the comments, why throw that in there? It is an ad hominem attack, even ignoring how inappropriate it is.

"What the fuck is this feminist man trying to say about women here? A black woman calling a white man ‘sir’. A white male captain who abuses and silences his female crew, with no consequences. The women are HAPPY to be abused. They enjoy it. What does this say about women, Joss? What does this say about you? Do you tell your wife to shut up? Do you threaten to duct tape her mouth? Lock her in the bedroom? Is this funny to you, Joss? Because it sure as fuck ain’t funny to me."

If I tilt my head to the right and squint a little, I can see her argument about the racist and sexist take on the Mal/Zoe/Wash thing, as well as the Kaylee thing. But just because I can see it, doesn't mean I agree with it. At no point in the series or the movie, do I get the impression Zoe would put up with an ounce of disrespect from either man, directed at her or anyone else.

I find it very disingenuous that the essayist totally glosses over the fact that the reason Zoe is "violent," and the reason she calls Mal "sir," is because she is a soldier. During the war and on Serenity, Mal is her superior. These facts have nothing to do with his maleness or her skin color.

Lastly, I found her take on Inara and the Companions thoroughly repugnant. She went past hating sex work, and straight to hating sex workers, which is really unconscionable. According to her profile, all comments to her journal which are pro-porn or pro-prostitution will be immediately deleted. Likewise, she says in a later comment, "I would argue that most 'sex' between men and women, in the contemporary 'sex-positive', pornographic, male-supremacist culture, is rape."

This kind of radicalism completely ignores the real world. Yes, there are men who rape. Yes, there are men who emotionally leech from the women around them. Yes, there are men who oppress, and hate, and restrict. But not all men do. Moreover, not all men do so out of an inherent misogyny, but because of an indoctrinated cultural setting that can be unlearned.

I don't believe this woman can conceptualize a man striving to reframe his world view.

Ironically enough, from everything I know of him, that is exactly what Joss Whedon tries to do. Whatever this woman's interpretation of the Whedonverse is, the fact is, he has written the majority of the strong female characters that have graced the small screen in the last fifteen years. This is a man who, whatever of his she may disagree with, consistently proved that a show with a female lead could have staying power. Whatever critiques someone may have about his reliance on archetypes, I never felt for a second that he didn't try to set those same archetypes on their ears.

Joss Whedon is a man who has done everything in his power to present strong, intelligent female lead characters, and to support the female characters of other creators. To call him a misogynist--not even going near the other accusations laid at his feet--is grossly innaccurate.

A phallus is not automatically a weapon. The act of sex is not automatically an act of violence. Context is everything. If you go looking for misogyny, in any and all works, you will find it. But don't go marking things as misogynist that aren't.

And for the love of all that's holy, don't go around saying someone rapes their wife because you disagree with them. That's just not okay.

Assigning Our Icons

Can we please remove Wonder Woman as the poster girl for feminism? (link via The Beat)

No wait, hear me out.

Wonder Woman is an AWESOME icon.

She's a great GLBT icon. She's a great Poly icon. She's a great BDSM icon.

But when her raison d'etre is female superiority, she's not a great feminist icon.

To be fair, great strides have been made in recent years to make Wonder Woman more about equality than superiority. But then, I've never made any attempts to hide who my vote is for...



Seriously, everything of Power Girl I've read involves her:

-kicking ass
-trying to be taken seriously (often while kicking ass)
-trying to set herself apart from her famous cousins (sometimes while kicking ass)
-trying to define herself as her own person, separate from her cousins and her boobs

And the thing about her boobs? Totally a joke started by the artists in the 1970s. I kind of love that.

Praise the Lord and Pass the Parsnips!!!

Remember that post I made talking about the endings of series and how they can go wrong?

Terry Moore posted a piece of art that makes it all better. In terms of Strangers in Paradise, anyway.

Thank you, Terry. Was that so difficult? ;)

(Seriously, it's gorgeous, and brings more closure than babies and closing the door to the fourth wall ever could.)

Beauty Is The Geek

Burlesque revival: more nerdy than sexy?

Awesome article.

This totally hits on a part of burlesque (and my job) that I can't always put directly into words.

There's a palpable difference between "empowerful" things like pole dancing classes and The Pussycat Dolls, and burlesque (and my job).

It's tough to find that line, but again: this article hits it on the head. There's an intelligence and a storytelling to burlesque that is omnipresent. And, most of all, a lot of burlesque is women-run. Men are involved, but they're not running the shows, as it were.

Mr. Fantastic

I didn't catch this gentleman's name, as he was off for a night with his buddies.


9th Avenue, in the 50s

He looked pretty fantastic!

(x-posted from We Are All Nerds)

We Are All Nerds

We are currently witnessing a paradigm shift.

Comic book movies are breaking box office records.

Science Fiction and Speculative Fiction are becoming more and more popular.

Fashion trends have otherwise stylish people wearing the shirt you threw out fifteen years ago.

The Geek are truly Inheriting The Earth.

And I plan on documenting it.

Every non-geeky person I see reading a comic book, a science fiction or fantasy novel, wearing a genre t-shirt, or sporting any other trapping of a geek, I will photograph and publish here. (With their permission, of course!)

I give you J, my first example...


23rd St, 8/29/07

This has been simultaneously posted at the official We Are All Nerds blog!

LOL

Stolen from The Beat, who stole it from Len Wein...

How to stop Stan Lee in his tracks in one easy lesson...