Last week, my mom wrote a long post about feminism and other topics, and there was one part in particular that struck me. She wrote about beliefs about female equality in Soviet Union (and post-Soviet Russia - because cultural mores don't change overnight). For the sake of all the non-Russian speakers reading this, I'm going to translate the ( Read more... )

I picked up Tall Dark and Dead by Tate Hallaway on an impulse. I was visiting the fiction floor of the main branch of the Chicago Public Library when I saw it on the book stand labeled something along the lines of "Interesting Books That You Aren't Reading." A goth girl on the cover, drawn in a cartoony style? A summary promising romance and ( Read more... )

Since Wendesday, the American comic book fandom has been at an uproar over the first issue of DC Comics Red Hood and the Outlaws series. The comic featured Starfire, a character who's been part of various versions of Teen Titans/New Titans/The Titans team. If non-comic fan know this character at all, they'd probably recognize her from Teen Titans ( Read more... )

In something that's kind of related to my previous post, Amy Angelwings wrote a thoughtful essay on the common depictions of female superheroes and how they relate to a whole host of very disturbing fetishes that all have something to do with capturing, humiliating and abusing powerful women.

I've been a comic book fan for several years, and, ( Read more... )

A fandom_wank post led me to a review of a horrible, horrible 1980s romance novel.

Now, when I say "horrible" I am not talking about quality. I am talking about content. I am talking about a story with an utterly loathsome, creepy stalker and abuser of a protagonist who, quite inexplicably, is supposed to be a sympathetic here.

Read all about it at ( Read more... )