delphipsmith | Entries tagged with women being awesome

In case you hadn't heard, Archive of Our Own (or AO3 to those of us who know and love her) has been nominated for a HUGO AWARD. Oh nothing, only the most prestigious SF award out there, I mean HOLY COW REALLY?!

This is so cool, y'all.

Slate has a great piece on why the nomination is a big deal, not just for AO3 and for fan culture but specifically for women in fandom/tech. I am gobsmacked with delight.

Many thanks to

squibstress for posting about this and totally making my night :)

How am I? jubilant

snapecase continues to post, with some truly excellent contributions this year. if you need a little more Snape in your life (and who doesn't??), be sure to check it out.

HoggyWartyXmas and sshg_giftfest have ended and reveals are up, so I can now own up to having written the following:

Dreams of Time, Time of Dreams (LJ) (AO3) - They see each other, but through a glass darkly; will they ever see one another face to face? (SS/HG)

For Goodness Snake (LJ) (AO3) - Hermione takes on not one but two new positions at Hogwarts. Severus is not at all convinced that it’s a good idea. (SS/HG)

Silent Night (LJ) (AO3) - When Poppy insists that Minerva take a little time on her own in Scotland over Christmas, memories and regrets about a certain colleague threaten to make it anything but a happy holiday. (SS/MM)

I enjoy all three of these fests so much -- the quality is always top-notch, and the community of creators and readers is always so active. Everyone comments, talks about what they like, encourages each other, and generally has an excellent time :)

How am I? rejuvenated

We saw A Wrinkle in Time today. Visually it was gorgeous, and it definitely had the bones and the heart of the original book. I loved the girl who played Meg, the family dynamics were well done (her missing her father, acting out at school because of cruel comments, etc.), and the positive message for young girls was clear and uplifting (if a wee bit heavy-handed for adult viewers). I also liked the way they worked in the larger message about the many different ways that The Black Thing can affect people (fear, anger, cruelty, etc.), even to the point of showing that the girl who bullies Meg is dealing with her own issues, and a tentative move towards friendship.

On the other hand, they changed a few things for no discernible reason (e.g. instead of the winged horse we get a weird leaf-creature, and Camazotz is a weird hallucinatory kind of place, less cold war and more LSD). The storyline/script was a bit of a mess: erratically paced, oversimplified (for example, Meg's math and physics gifts are underplayed), and too many things glossed over or info-dumped instead of organically revealed. I wanted to like it much more than I did; on balance I have to say that it was just OK. I think perhaps it's aimed at viewers around age ten, vs tweens.

On the letters front, I got a real letter in the mail -- you know, the kind with multiple pages and coherent thoughts and everything! As a bonus, it was sealed as shown below :) Now I love getting letters, and it happens so seldom these days that I was enormously pleased/excited to receive it. I will be writing back. One is never too old for a pen pal, is one?

(click to embiggen)

How am I? energetic

We went out for dinner with some friends last night (mmmm, seared ahi tuna...) and while yakking about this and that, B. pointed out something I'd never noticed before. Not one of the Disney princesses has a mother. She said that that's why, in the new live-action Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, they added a sort of "vision" of the past where Belle has a chance to see her mother and learn what happened to her.

Of course, given that the Disney princess stories generally draw on fairy tales, and girls don't often have mothers in the fairy tales either, perhaps it's not so weird. But even the non-fairy tale ones -- Ariel (The Little Mermaid), Pocahontas, Jasmine (Aladdin), Elsa and Anna (Frozen) -- don't have mothers.

The only two exceptions I could think of are Merida (the red-haired Irish girl who wins her own hand at the archery tournament) and Mulan (the Chinese girl who learns fighting from her father and goes off to war). So basically the only ones that have mothers are the ones who apparently don't need mothers because they're off doing "boy" things.

Isn't that weird?

How am I? contemplative

These women. Fabulous.

Watch on YouTube

How am I? determined

...is all the women's marches, not just in the U.S. but around the world. Amsterdam, Oslo, Helsinki, Bogota, Nairobi, Madrid, Marseilles, London. Truly heartwarming to see so many people (both men and women!) in some many places, speaking out against the stated policies of the current administration.

Also: THANK YOU so much to my lovely flisties who gifted me with virtual prezzies and LJ account extensions! You are lovely and I smooch you all :)

Also also: We saw Rogue One today and LOVED it. More on that tomorrow...

How am I? hopeful

Hillary Clinton lost and Leonard Cohen died. Saturday Night Live managed to combine acknowledgement of both in an unusually sober and remarkably beautiful opening to their show on Nov 12th. Lovely.

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How am I? melancholy

Dorothy Thompson, suffragette, radio broadcaster, and war correspondent, was the first American journalist to be expelled from Germany for questioning Hitler. I recently ran across a couple of quotes by her that I really like. Both seem rather apt, the first one due to the current state of journalism with its non-substantive coverage of news and its mindless rush towards infotainment, the second due to the insistence of a certain political party to poke their noses into people's sex lives and bedrooms.

No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument [of] the Incorporated National Will. ... When our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him, nor will they call him "Fuhrer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of "O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!"

-- 1935, quoted in Watchdogs of Democracy? : The Waning Washington Press Corps and How it Has Failed the Public (2006) by Helen Thomas, p. 172

I know now that there are things for which I am prepared to die. I am willing to die for political freedom; for the right to give my loyalty to ideals above a nation and above a class; for the right to teach my child what I think to be the truth; for the right to explore such knowledge as my brains can penetrate; for the right to love where my mind and heart admire, without reference to some dictator’s code to tell me what the national canons on the matter are; for the right to work with others of like mind; for a society that seems to me becoming to the dignity of the human race. I shall pick no fight, nor seek to impose by force these standards on others. But let it be clear. If the fight comes unsolicited, I am not willing to die meekly, to surrender without effort. And that being so, am I still a pacifist?

-- 1937, "Dilemma of a Pacifist"

On a lighter (I guess) note, apparently the most frequent UK Google search AFTER the Brexit vote was, "What is the EU?" Probably should have done that googling BEFORE voting, guys.

How am I? pensive

Anita Brookner has died. The first thing of hers that I read was Hotel du Lac, a battered copy found on a bookshelf in a bed-and-breakfast in Germany; twenty-five years later it remains one of my favorite books. Her finely crafted novels, with their precision of description and compactness of focus, are like medieval miniatures. I'm sad there will be no more from her.

How am I? melancholy

I just learned that Tanith Lee died late last month. She has always been one of my favorite authors, and I'm so sorry she's gone. I bought her Red as Blood: Tales from the Sisters Grimmer from the Science Fiction Book Club (remember that?) decades ago; it was my first encounter with fairy tale reimaginings and engendered a lifelong love of that genre. I also loved her Birthgrave series -- dark, weird, sword-and-sorcery + psychological myth-making -- and The Silver Metal Lover.

Her official website displays a single quote, red lettering on black:

Though we come and go, and pass into the shadows, where we leave
behind us stories told – on paper, on the wings of butterflies, on the
wind, on the hearts of others – there we are remembered, there we work
magic and great change, passing on the fire like a torch, forever
and forever. Till the sky falls, and all things are flawless and need
no words at all.

RIP, Tanith.