Sithel

Ancillary Justice was one of those books with a really cool idea, and elegant execution of that idea. The plot itself I found to be lackluster, but the telling of it exceedingly well done.

In particular, I like that through relentless use of particular language, with the exception of one character, I didn't know the gender of pretty much anyone. And I was pleased at how that let me turn the story around in my head and see how layering different assumptions on changed the subtext.

The main character, having multiple constituents for part of the book, also was present in multiple scenes at once. This multiple presence was handled very well: both readable and conveying a sense of being many places with many things going on. It had an interesting additional effect of keeping you constantly on edge, much like those films where four camera feeds are juxtaposed and you're constantly switching between the scenes, wanting to know what the next piece is in each. Definitely takes some energy, but is novel.

Unfortunately, the rapid perspective switching and quantum descriptions were taken a bit far, and I failed to get a particularly strong sense that anyone was acting on motivations that were tangible. Too little was stated concretely and too oft-repeated, making it feel like I was supposed to take it on faith rather than empathize. Empathy and anger were emotions supposedly driving actions, but I didn't quite see it. Some of this can be chalked up to a non-human narrator utilizing delightfully precise descriptions (so and so thought about it for six seconds and then...), but I found it off-putting the sheer number of emotional reactions were 'anger' in a way that was not actually angry.

Perhaps a closer reading would have led to a deeper pattern emerging, but the upshot was that the plot necessitated essentially nothing changing (and some rather fuzzy and boring plot devices were used to get there). There was a vaguely happy and completely unsatisfying ending. I think I was hoping for some lurk/counter-lurk brilliance, a la 'Deepness in the Sky', but had instead the requisite shootout and everyone-lives result, without getting into the further implications of what such technology might do. That said, I appreciated that the author had a clear sense of how institutions operate, and how power and individual choice interact.

Overall, I recommend reading and definitely want to thank for recommending it to me. It was well worth it for the gender neutrality alone, and the fun way that plays with your perceptions of characters.

Seriously, no disrespect to Tom Hardy but every Mad Max: Fury Road trailer I watch my eyes focus squarely on Charlize Theron. And my god, that arm is gorgeous.

(via Spinoff)

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The fifth installment in the “100 Years of Hair and Makeup” series is here, and this time Cut Video and model Reyna Marquez are taking a time-lapsed look at Mexico’s mainstream fashion from the past 100 years. Want more history lessons from Cut Video? You can also check out their videos on the hair and makeup of Iran and North and South Korea.

(via Neatorama)

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A new Attack on Titan trailer surfaced on YouTube this week, providing an exciting new peek over the wall at the movie and its striking visual style.

Don’t pretend you didn’t see this titanic trailer coming. It was posted to YouTube earlier this week, and it features the eponymous Colossal Titan, as well as most of the Survey Corps in what looks to be the training sequence from the first few episodes of the series. Teasers at the brutal character deaths that seem to pepper a lot of the show are also featured.

Looks like there’s plenty of destruction, yelling, saluting, and dystopia to go around. Oh, and blood. There will be blood.

(via Daily Dot)

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Kung Fury is grade A, 100% pure 1980s movie nonsense, so of course it had to come with its own ’80s-inspired hit song: “True Survivor.” And of course David Hasselhoff had to sing it and star in its absurd music video. And of course he had to ride a T-Rex.

Yes, everything made this little sense in the ’80s, and it was glorious. More like this, please.

(via Our Friend Glen Tickle)

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This piece was originally posted on Cinefeels and has been republished here with permission.

Well.

There was no Cabbage Man.

But I’ll deal.

I’m going to have to wait until near the end of this recap to freak out about Azula.

But I’ll deal.

Avatar is over.

But I’ll deal.

Sozin’s Comet, Part 1: The Phoenix King

With Katara finally forgiving Zuko for his villainous past two episodes ago, the final rift between the members of the gaang has finally been healed. But there’s one major thing they still need to work on: communication.

Zuko: Why didn’t you tell me you decided to attack my father AFTER the comet?
Aang: Why didn’t YOU tell ME your father was planning to use the comet’s power to raze the Earth Kingdom to the ground?!

You’re both grounded!

We see in a flashback that Fire Lord Ozai has reached peak dickery, as he decided in that war council meeting Zuko was invited to that the only way they can defeat the Earth Kingdom is to completely destroy it, like Sozin destroyed the Air Nomads. (Even better: Zuko is the one who kindasorta accidentally suggested it to him when he said the Earth Kingdom was strong and would never stop resisting as long as they still had hope. “Ya Dun Fucked Up, Zuko,” Part 587/590.) Zuko wanted to speak out against the plan, but didn’t, the reverse of that other war council meeting he attended. His shame at being the sort of person who would go along with injustice what prompted him to leave his family and join the Avatar. By extension, we’re seeing Zuko finally realize that he did the right thing in speaking out in that council meeting when he was younger, and that–this is a really huge deal for Zuko–his father was wrong to banish him and wrong to say he’d lost his honor.

Now Aang, who’s been chilling his heels on Ember Island, actually does have to fight Ozai in three days. The part that really sucks (aside from all of it) is that, despite the arguments of his more practical-minded friends, Aang doesn’t think he’ll be able to kill Ozai. Hell, he can’t even kill the Melon Lord:

That night, Katara digs up what she thinks is a drawing of baby Zuko they can all LOL at, but instead it’s of young Ozai, whom Zuko rightfully refers to in this scene as “the worst father in the history of fathers.” Denethor, you’ve been beat. Again.

Aang’s pissed that his friends are so blasé about killing Ozai and so unwilling to understand the extent to which he very, very much feels that killing anyone, no matter how much of a d-bag they are, is wrong. He wanders off by himself and eventually falls asleep, after which he’s drawn in by a mysterious wooded island that’s appeared off the coast.

The next morning, the rest of the gaang discovers that Aang is missing. Sokka and Zuko argue about where he might have gone until Kat”Get Shit Done”ara (hey, it’s tough when people only have one name) suggests they just split up and find the guy, for pete’s sake.

Sokka flies around the island on Appa, Suki and Katara check out the town, and Toph insists on partnering with Zuko. (In doing so, she betrays a crush in addition to the one she has/had on Sokka. Damn, the girl cannot get noticed. It’s OK, Toph. Some of your descendants are in Korra, so you get busy eventually.) Hey, everyone else got a life-changing field trip with him! Unfortunately, she tries to play the “I had a shitty childhood” game, which is not one you’re going to win when you play against Zuko.

Zuko, being the resident expert at Aang-hunting, takes the lead, and the group heads off to the Earth Kingdom, where they meet up with June the bounty hunter from “Bato of the Water Tribe.” She’s the first “blast from the past” character we’ll be seeing, and praise be to Jesus, she’s still kicking Ryu from Street Fighter‘s ass.

Near the end of this episode, we check in with my Queen, Azula, who’s told by Ozai that she won’t be joining him when he attacks the Fire Nation. Her response is “Fuck no, you are not treating me like Zuko right now.” Ozai placates her by saying holding down the fort is an important job, plus she’ll be the new Fire Lord, because he’s crowning himself the Phoenix King. And he totally is treating her like Zuko, by the way. A Zuko whom he doesn’t hate, but still. Azula being Fire Lord doesn’t mean anything if Ozai’s still around. And maaaaaybe him ordering her to stay behind is a decision borne 100% of military necessity and not of the fact that Azula’s been getting more and more unbalanced… but I don’ think so. Look at her eyes when he tells her looking after the (practically empty) Fire Nation HQ is a very special job only she can do:

He knows she’s slipping. She knows, on some level, that she’s lost his approval. This won’t be good.

Sozin’s Comet, Part 2: The Old Masters

June and her pet mole… thing… are unable to find Aang, because, as June helpfully explains, “he doesn’t exist.” She is, however, able to track down Uncle Iroh, whom we will be seeing, heck yes! It’s played as a joke that Zuko literally kept one of uncle’s sweaty old sandals around, but it hurts me in my soul, just like 95% of everything involving Zuko does.

June gets the gaang to the walls of Ba Sing Se and then skips out, being replaced by four other characters from previous episodes: Pakku (the waterbending master whom Katara taught a lesson about THE PATRIARCHY); Piandao, Sokka’s swordfighting Mr. Miyagi; Jeong Jeong, Aang’s first firebending teacher from “The Deserter“; and Bumi, who took advantage of the eclipse to recapture Omashu from the Fire Nation. He also, along with Iroh, makes up the core membership of the Uncomfortably Buff Senior Citizens Brigade.

Glad to see you back, bro.

The four men are members of the White Lotus serving under the Grand Lotus, Uncle Iroh. Though Zuko wants to see his Uncle Again, he’s also scared to, because he thinks the way he turned his back on Iroh in favor of Ozai made Iroh hate him.

Let me repeat that for the benefit of those who have not yet been rendered unable to feel emotions by Zuko’s existence: Zuko legitimately believes that Iroh–who’s always been there for him, who loves him, who is the closest thing he has to a real father–WILL. HATE. HIM.

FfffffuuuuUUCK THAT.

Instead, when the reunion takes place, Iroh cuts off Zuko’s tearful apologies by pulling him into a bear hug. He explains that he was never mad at Zuko, only sad that he lost his way. There’s crying. There’s hugging. Like Zuko confronting Ozai, it is everything I wanted.

Meanwhile, Aang wakes up on the mysterious island having no clue where he is. As always, when there’s Avatar shit that needs solving, he calls upon Roku, who, as always, gives him cryptic advice before winking out of existence like a less helpful, Asian Obi-Wan Kenobi. “I have no clue where you are, and I can’t tell you anything constructive, but… you have all the answers inside of you, I guess? I have a date in five. Good luck.”

Following Roku’s sorta-advice, Aang calls upon the spirits of past Avatars–Kyoshi, a chill surfer dude named Kuruk whose wife was killed by Koh the Face Stealer (hey, I remember that!), and an Air Nomad named Yang Chen. The conversation goes something like this:

Aang: Everybody expects me to kill Ozai, but I don’t know if I can.
Kyoshi: IDK what to tell you, man. You gotta do what you gotta do.
Aang: Wait what. There has to be another way!
Kuruk: Nah. I totally wish I’d killed Koh.
Aang: But all life is precious!
Yang Chen: Nut up or shut up.

Aang doesn’t have much time to be distressed about his past lives telling him he has no choice but to abandon his fluffy bunny principles and get with the killing, because he realizes that the wooded island he’s on is actually the shell of a giant lionturtle. Good to know Morla the Aged One is still getting work after The Neverending Story.

Morla tells him something cryptic and whammies him in the head with a bright green light that will probably be important later.

Back at what Bumi calls “old people camp,” Zuko tries to convince Iroh to fight the Father Fire Lord and take his place, but Iroh refuses, because then history would see the battle as yet more Fire Nation family drama. Aang, wherever he is, is the only one who can fight Ozai. And Zuko is the only one who can become the next Fire Lord, as only someone with “unquestionable honor” can restore the honor of the Fire Nation.

UNQUESTIONABLE.

Zuko hitches a ride on a giant eel hound to the Fire Nation so he’ll be on-deck to assume the throne once Ozai kicks it. Going with him is Katara, who after the last two seasons is more than ready to kick Azula’s ass. Sokka, Toph, and Suki will go try and intercept Ozai’s fleet before it can make the Earth Kingdom…

Then BAM. COMET.

Halfway through the recap. DANCE BREAK.

Sozin’s Comet, Part 3: Into the Inferno

We start with Azula continuing her swift slide to insanity: She banishes a servant because one of her cherries accidentally had a pit in it and, as she explains, she could have DIIIIEEEEDDDDDD. Later, she sends for the Dai Lee and flips because it takes them five minutes to get to her, which also means she, the new Fire Lord, could have DIIIIIEEEEEDDDDDDDDDD. You’re banished. They’re banished. One of the old ladies is banished. EVERYONE IS BANISHED.

Sokka, Suki, and Toph are a smidge too late to stop the Fire Nation’s airships from taking off, but Toph just shrugs and says “I got this,” asking Sokka and Suki where one of the ships is so she can use her earthbending to launch them onto it. This is my favorite Toph moment from the finale, because she can’t see the ships. A) That speaks to the trust Toph has for her friends, which makes me all warm and fuzzy when you consider how “I’m tough, I can do everything by myself!” she was when she first joined the gaang, anbd B) even though she trusts Sokka and Suki, she is still without hesitation hurling herself into a void that she cannot see.

Toph, my child, I will miss you.

The badass doesn’t end there: Toph bends herself a rough suit of armor and charges through the control room wrecking shit. Doing much better than Han Solo did over the PA (“we’re all fine here, now. How are you?), Sokka manages to trick the ship’s crew into standing over a hatch, which is then opened, ejecting them into the ocean.

(I actually felt really sad for the guy who was so happy when he thought the Captain remembered his birthday. Nope. Sorry. Your ship just got hijacked. No validation or birthday cake for you.)

While the White Lotus, led by Uncle Iroh, singlehandedly fights the Fire Nation forces in Ba Sing Se, Aang finally confronts Fire Lord Ozai, who has begun using the power of the comet to raze the Earth Kingdom. Aang tries his whole “we can all be peaceful!” schtick, but fuck if Ozai’s going to be beaten by a 12-year-old, so he has a quick costume change and starts zooming around with his jetpack OF FIRE.

With Ozai and Aang fighting, it’s up to Sokka, Suki, and Toph to take down the other ships before they can burninate the Earth Kingdom. They do this by ramming their ship into the other ships, which is NOT SAFE AT ALL and has the side effect of separating Sokka and Toph from Suki. Man, this show reeeeally likes to make us think Suki is dead.

Azula finds that dismissing her entire staff because she’s paranoid about them betraying her (Mae and Ty Lee’s defection fucked her up big-time) maaaaaybe wasn’t the best decision in the long run, at least as far as her hair is concerned. But hey–maybe the chunky, uneven bang look + crazy eyes will be the next big thing! She also hallucinates seeing her mother (relevant quote from “The Beach”: “My own mother thought I was a monster. She was right, of course, but it still hurt.”), who tells her that she loves her, which causes Azula to break down into angry, frustrated tears.

Then it’s time for Azula’s coronation, which is gatecrashed by Zuko and Katara. Azula puts a halt on the proceedings to challenge her brother to an Agni Kai over who gets to be the Fire Lord, because her decision-making it shit now. (Remember when Zuko challenged Azula to a duel, and Azula was like “But that would be stupid of me–I am here to get shit done, not to engage in petty drama.” Those were good times.) Katara tries to convince Zuko not to accept her challenge, as it’s clear that she’s just trying to separate them, but Zuko argues that he knows he can beat her, and if he does, she won’t be able to hurt anyone else.

I could spend paragraphs saying how awesome their Agni Kai is, or I could just post the video so you can all watch it again:

That music. Damn. It’s the best fight scene this show has ever done.

The Agni Kai is intercut with Ozai and Aang fighting. Both pairs are evenly matched at first; Aang even gets the upper hand when he redirects Ozai’s lighting as Zuko taught him, but instead of throwing the bolt back at Ozai and ending the fight right there, Aang’s unable to kill Ozai and shoots the lighting bolt off to the side. Zuko looks like he’s going to win, too, but then Azula sees Katara standing off to the side and sends a blast of lightning at her. (Guess Katara was right, huh?) Zuko runs to block it and gets fried. Both Aang and Zuko end this episode in a pretty bad place: Aang hiding inside a ball of rock that Ozai’s fireblasting, Zuko twitching on the ground like a frog.

EVERYBODY’S ABOUT TO DIE.

Sozin’s Comet, Part 4: Avatar Aang

…but they do not die. No one dies in the season finale, thank you God. Aang’s all FUCK THIS and airbends himself out the the rock, but he ends up getting stabbed in back and goes full Avatar State. Ozai doesn’t stand a chance.

Sokka and Toph manage to play dominoes with the Fire Nation airships, taking them out of commission, though they end up dangling off the edge of one of the ships, surrounded by guards. It looks like they’re going to die, but then Suki (who’s managed to commandeer a ship off-screen) shows up to save them. I was a little frustrated at the way Suki’s been sidelined during the finale, to be honest, but after all she’s not a main character, and Toph and Sokka are. And when she does pop her head back into the narrative, there’s a good 70/30 chance that it’s  because her boyfriend needs rescuing, and I dig that.

Speaking of men who need rescuing: after two seasons, Katara has had E-FUCKING-NOUGH of Azula’s bullshit.

Katara and Azula: THE REMATCH. Azula anticipates Tumblr trends by a good couple of years when she calls Katara a “filthy peasant.” Katara wins the fight by trapping them both in ice, melting the water around her, and chaining the still-frozen Azula to a sewer grate. Azula immobilized, Katara goes to heal Zuko, and the pair of them look at Azula with pity as she finally breaks down. This is the last time we see her.

Ok.

I just.

AHHHHHH.

I love Azula. I love Azula because she’s evil. If you’ve been reading these recaps, you know that. I love female villains. But God damn if I don’t pity her now, too. Not in a woobie “Loki’s just misunderstood!” sort of way. But. Azula’s fourteen. She’s a child. And her childhood was influenced by some seriously fucked-up circumstances courtesy of Ozai, just like Zuko’s was. I’m not using the fact that Ozai is a manipulative, abusive (emotionally, physically, and psychologically) father to justify Azula’s actions. Zuko undeniably had a much harder time of things than Azula, and he went up against some extreme challenges to get on the right moral path.

But this final scene  does, I think, turn Azula into a tragic figure in addition to a villainous one. It made me realize I’d been looking at her all wrong. I thought of her as a miniature version of Ozai, but that’s not entirely correct. A miniature version of Ozai is what she desperately wanted to be, but she could never quite get there. It’s what she had to be, or else in her mind she was just as weak, as stupid, as worthy of her father’s hatred as Zuko. Mai and Ty Lee’s betrayal flipped a switch in her head and tapped into a long-held fear that people would turn against her, that fear of her wouldn’t be able to keep them loyal to her, because she’s not as powerful, as worthy, as GOOD as her father. She felt the same pressure Zuko did, only that pressure manifested in a different way, and she responded to it in a worse way. Knowing where she ends up, a few Azula lines from earlier in the finale–“You can’t treat me like Zuko” and “He thinks I can’t handle the responsibility of being the Fire Lord, but I will be the greatest leader in Fire Nation history”–are heartbreaking.

Because if people don’t fear her–if her father doesn’t respect her–if she doesn’t win every fight–then what does she have?

Nothing.

And that’s a hell of a burden for, again, a fourteen-year-old to have.

We don’t see here what happens to her after she’s defeated, though I assume the post-show comics address it. Given my love for evil Azula, I never ever thought I’d say this, but I kind of want her to get a redemption arc where she gets the chance to atone for her past behavior (which, after all, is a big thing in the ATLAverse). I just feel so bad for her.

Let’s have a toast for my favorite ATLA character. May she play unusually aggressive beach volleyball for the rest of her days.

Aang catches Ozai and is about to kill him but comes out of Avatar state at the last minute, which must have taken some serious willpower. He uses the power Morla the Aged One gave him to permanently remove Ozai’s firebending ability, which is a bit of a pat resolution to the “should I kill Ozai?” dilemma, but still an appropriate one. Having its lead kill someone would’ve been a little dark even for Avatar. And the visuals are great. The whole thing relates to the origins of the Avatar–that they used to bend energy, not elements. I don’t even know, man. I’m still internally flipping out over Azlua. Aang goes back into Avatar mode and puts out the fires Ozai started. Ozai and Azula are defeated. The White Lotus has taken back Ba Sing Se. Sozin’s Comet has passed.

At this point I’m thinking, holy shit, there are nine minutes left, something’s going to happen, everything cannot possibly be over, but it is. We end the show with nine minutes of the good guys being  happy, which I for one really needed.

Zuko is reunited with Mai, who was released from prison by her Warden uncle. She warns him not to ever break up with her again, and they hug. Katara and Sokka are reunited with their father, who against all odds actually survived the show. (I’m used to Game of Thrones-level death counts, OK?) We find out that Ty Lee has joined the Kyoshi Warriors, a prospect that has Sokka genuinely frightened. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Zuko and Aang have the following exchange:

Zuko: I can’t believe a year ago my purpose in life was hunting you down, and now…
Aang: And now we’re friends.
Zuko: Yeah… we are friends.

And I cried.

At Zuko’s coronation, which people from all nations attend, Zuko gives it up for the Avatar, the real MVP of the day. Aang stands before a cheering crowd, his crippling guilt about past failures to live up to his destiny finally put to rest. He did save the world. And now he and Zuko are going to work together to make it better.

A newly crowned Fire Lord Zuko visits his Ozai in prison, where he tells his father that being banished was the best thing that ever happened to him, because it set him on the right path. At long last, Zuko doesn’t seem scared of his abusive father. He’s finally free. He, like Aang, is happy with himself and what he’s achieved. And oh by the way, jackass, WHERE’S MY MOM?!

(I know that the search for Zuko’s mother is what [some of?] the post-series comics are about, and I am really glad they set that up in the finale. It would’ve felt weird if it looked like Zuko just forgot about her after the big reveal in “The Boiling Rock, Part 2.″)

We end the show with everyone happy and peaceful in Ba Sing Se: Zuko serves Iroh tea, Sokka paints a(n awful) group painting, and Aang and Katara kiss on the balcony in front of a setting sun.

It’s been good times, people. Stay flamin’. Check back for my review of the movie, which I am putting myself through for some reason. Perhaps because I am a masochist. And after that: Korra recaps!

Rebecca (@RebeccaPahle) used to work for The Mary Sue before she cruelly abandoned them for Film Journal International, where she is currently the Assistant Editor. Still, she couldn’t stop doing Avatar recaps. Rebecca also writes for Pajiba and Phactual in addition to her personal website, Cinefeels.

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So I was accepted to Sheridan Animation ?!?!

I’m still processing it, so in the meantime I’m posting my portfolio here in case any of you following me are in any way in/applying to/interested in the program and want to see. My score was 3.89/4 ;u;

Half of it’s up there, and the rest of it is under the cut~

Hand drawings:

Household objects:

Room drawings:

Storyboard:

Personal artworks:

Prototipo de los nuevos hipster-vasos del Starbucks.

[Vídeo]

4gifs:

Now they have our technology. [video]

Dear Data is a project between two pen pals that catalogs various aspects of their lives into themed graphic charts that they send to one another through the mail. Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec map their similarities and differences of experience via creative chart creation and then mail them to each other. It's a brilliant project. You can view their weekly deliveries here. What an interesting new solution to the "What do I say to my pen pal" conundrum. A special thanks to my friend and pen pal, Katy K., for the tip off about this project.

This afternoon George R.R. Martin took to his Livejournal to address a growing controversy that, although seemingly niche even relative to the already niche world of geekdom, is indicative of a problem in Internet culture overall. And yes, ‘gate’ is unfortunately an applicable term here.

The last thing I want to do… the last thing I need to do… is get involved in the firestorm of controversy that has sprung up around this year’s Hugo ballot.

[...] this is a nasty, nasty fight, and anyone who speaks up, on either side of this, risks being savaged. It is no fun being savaged. It raises one’s blood pressure, and brings out the urge to savage back.

A wiser man would probably just keep quiet, and let this storm pass him by.

But no… that’s the path of cowardice. Much as I do not relish what is to come, I have been a part of science fiction fandom most of my life, and the Hugo Awards and worldcon are very important to me, and I cannot and will not stand by and keep silent while they are under attack.

The Hugos are a set of prestigious science fiction and fantasy prizes awarded annually to finalists determined by Worldcon members (anyone who paid $40 to attend a Worldcon event in 2014, 2015 or 2016 was eligible to participate in this year’s nomination process). Whereas last year’s Hugos recognized a diverse pool of new voices like Ann Leckie, Kameron Hurley, and John Chu, the 2015 ballot revealed last Saturday shows the unfortunate impact of the “Sad Puppies,” a Gamergate-affiliated group fronted by authors Brad R. Torgerson and Larry Correia.

Here’s Torgerson on the Sad Puppies’ gripe with modern sci-fi:

A few decades ago, if you saw a lovely spaceship on a book cover, with a gorgeous planet in the background, you could be pretty sure you were going to get a rousing space adventure featuring starships and distant, amazing worlds. If you saw a barbarian swinging an axe? You were going to get a rousing fantasy epic with broad-chested heroes who slay monsters, and run off with beautiful women.

[But now] The book has a spaceship on the cover, but is it really going to be a story about space exploration and pioneering derring-do? Or is the story merely about racial prejudice and exploitation…A planet, framed by a galactic backdrop. Could it be an actual bona fide space opera? Heroes and princesses and laser blasters? No, wait. It’s about sexism and the oppression of women.Finally, a book with a painting of a person wearing a mechanized suit of armor! Holding a rifle! War story ahoy! Nope, wait. It’s actually about gay and transgender issues.

The Sick Puppies also have their very own spin-off group (The Rabid Puppies, natch) led by Gamergater Vox Day, who argues both “campaigns” are “striking back against the left-wing control freaks who have subjected science fiction to ideological control for two decades and are now attempting to do the same thing in the game industry.”

By saturating polls with a ballot set by Corriea, the Puppies found a legal and (technically speaking) above-board way to ensure that this year’s nominees reflected their politics. Salon’s Arthur Chu describes this time-honored Internet practice as “freeping.” In an apparent congratulatory nod to last year’s “The Fappening,” Correia calls it “the slate-ening.” George R.R. Martin doesn’t care what it’s called:

Call it block voting. Call it ballot stuffing. Call it gaming the system. There’s truth to all of those characterizations.

You can’t call it cheating, though. It was all within the rules.

But many things can be legal, and still bad… and this is one of those, from where I sit.

Strong words from a man who has great influence in the geek community, to be sure.

Thanks to the organized efforts of Correia, Vox and other Puppies, this year’s nominations are a tragic affair; according to The Daily Dot, “three of the five Best Novel nominees come from the Sad Puppies list, while the Best Novella shortlist is identical to Vox Day’s own recommendations—including three separate nominations for works by John C. Wright, an author notorious for his homophobic views.” (Wright infamously called the Legend of Korra creators “disgusting, limp, soulless sacks of filth” for writing a romantic relationship between two women. Charming.)

Thankfully Martin isn’t the only author speaking up about this year’s ballot and what it represents for the Hugo Awards and nerd culture overall; Slate writes that Deirdre Saoirse Moen, Matthew Surridge, Kameron Hurley and others have addressed the controversy. And although this is hardly the first time a Hugos ballot has been legally but not-quite-ethically influenced, it’s hard not to see the Puppies as reflective of a specific and growing trend.

The members and language shared between Gamergate, the Puppies, and Reddit users who profited from last year’s nude picture leak indicate that a “protest” like freeping this year’s Hugo Awards isn’t actually about addressing some imagined “ideological stranglehold” that women and historically othered audiences have on genre writing, but about misogyny, racism, and fear of the LGBTQ+ spectrum.

If you’re a “well-meaning” Puppy convinced the movement is somehow about sci-fi martyrs reclaiming a suffocated art form, now might be the time to take a good, long look at your associates. (Here, why not start with this piece on Vox’s blog questioning women’s right to vote?)

Martin has said he intends to address the controversy further, and we will be sure to update our audience on any developments.

(via Daily Dot, Slate and Salon)

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Shortly after moving to California, I attended a New Years’ Eve party in a mansion somewhere northeast of Berkeley. I didn’t know any of the people who were throwing the party (though many of them would later become my close friends), and I’d never been at a party in a mansion before. Or any New Years Eve party that didn’t include my parents, actually. I made the best of weird circumstances by eating an entire orange in one bite, which is my Party Trick.

My Party Trick.

Someone at the event asked me where I was from. “New England,’ I said, keeping it general. I was born at Hartford Hospital in Connecticut, spent college in New Hampshire, and spent many of my summers working at a summer camp in Massachusetts for girls with diabetes. I’d been living away from my hometown for a pretty long while, but California was the first time I’d done it in a state where people called highways “freeways.”

“I can tell,” the guy said.

“How?” I asked.

“You talk really fast,” he said.

Growing up in Connecticut, I’d never really thought of myself as a “New Englander.” My parents were both kids from Chicago who went to college in New York, and they’ve spent close to three decades maintaining a kind of mental self-separation from the people in their new home-state. Some of that rubbed off on me. I’d just grown up thinking of myself as a Generic White Girl who happened to be living in New England.

But moving to California showed me that I really was a “New Englander,” whatever the hell that means. (It probably means that I should be living in a slowly-flooding pit filled with bears and pumpkins and Yankee Candles at the end of a gravel driveway somewhere just outside Boston.)

I’ll be honest: I really, really dislike California. It wouldn’t be too much of a dramatic exaggeration to claim that living here is like scraping my nails very quietly along a chalkboard every moment of every day. I’ve spent the past several years trying to articulate what exactly it is about California that is so wrong and fucked up, but I’ve had to admit, in the end, that California isn’t really fucked up at all.

It just doesn’t have enough trees.

And the highways are too wide, and the people here are flaky as shit, and there are too many people, and it doesn’t rain often enough, and because no snow falls and no trees change and no rivers of migrating birds follow the highway in the fall, it feels like time isn’t passing. And the towns don’t have centers, and everything is built flat on the ground instead of vertically with second floors and basements, and I haven’t seen a proper 24-hour diner in forever, and when you drive from one town to another, they just sort of bleed together with no trees or empty space in between. There is no Edge Of Town. And all the buildings are simultaneously too new and too run-down– everything looks like it was built in the 70s and hit by a zombie apocalypse in the 80s. And there’s a drought. Why the fuck would anyone put a huge chunk of the country’s agricultural industry in a fucking desert? Who does that? Why does anyone even live here?

My dad used to text me pictures of bears. My mom once called me to complain that a black bear had appeared in my back yard and that my dad standing ten feet away from it, taking pictures. Now, there are some mitigating factors here: the bear was in a tree, and the tree was growing out of a disused canal behind my house. There are all sorts of snakes and foxes and turkeys and opossums in the dry canal, and bears use it as a highway. When they climb up the trees next to the steep wall of the canal behind my house, they can be ten or twenty feet away from our fence, level to our eyes, while still being on the other side of the fence and also up in the top of a tree. But the point is that my dad was standing next to a bear and taking pictures of it.

The latest communique from my dad

When I moved to the Bay Area, everyone I knew was talking about how glad they were to live so close to nature. Meanwhile, I was getting bear texts from my dad. “You people are fucking deluded,” I once ranted to a friend.  “You do not live in nature. You live in an urban scab that happens to be a day-trip drive from a national park.”

The fault was mine. I lacked proper California sympathy. Fact is, southern and central California are completely reasonable places that exist in this universe, and there just aren’t any Real Trees here. But there are a lot of people, and a ton of cars, and I just have to Deal With It. I am used to certain things and a certain way of living, and the things I am used to are not universal. I am not a Generic White Girl. I am a white girl from Connecticut, and I grew up next to a giant empty canal filled with spiders and snakes and red-tailed hawks that used to eat crows outside the windows of our living room. In many places in New England, you can live in a place like that and drive (or walk!) five minutes to a Starbucks and a Stop & Shop. Most places in California? No such luck.

I didn’t find California culture anywhere near as hard to adjust to. I’ve heard stories about people moving from California to the east coast and feeling a deep, unsettling dismay at the way we behave over there, but I think being an east coast asshole has given me an inherent advantage in my transition. I am guarded and quiet in public and kind of mean. I put a high priority on getting things done as quickly as possible. I show up everywhere incredibly early and hide it by parking five blocks away and reading my email in my car. I am the first person to arrive to any party, even if I am late. I am way more aggressively practical than I ever realized before I moved out here. Is this because I’m a New Englander, or because I’m just a highly practical asshole? No clue. But we have a reputation for this kind of shit, so sure, I’ll live it up.

I used to have a silly story I’d tell about the difference between east coast and Californian personalities. I’m not sure how closely I stand by it anymore, but I’ll share it with you now:

Imagine you’re at a party. You’re talking to someone you’ve never met before. He says, “Yeah, I’m a huge biker. I’m really really into biking.” Now, if you’re in New England, you can safely assume that this means your new friend bikes a lot. He probably has a real expensive bike, and he bikes to work every day, and owns one of those biking leotards, and he wears those death-trap shoes that you clip onto the bike because you want to die. But if you’re in California, and someone at a party tells you, “Yeah, I’m a huge biker, I’m really into biking,” you can make no such assumption! Does this person even own a bike? Do they bike once a month? Maybe they just bought a bike. Maybe they just spend a lot of time in bike stores. Maybe they used to be on a competitive bike-racing team in college, but lost a foot in a tragic accident, and now they just bike in their dreams. In California, everything’s up in the air.

I’ve heard people say that they want to move to California to live the “Cali life,” but I’m pretty sure there is no Cali life. There are just a lot of people here doing pretty much whatever they want, all the time, for whatever reason, whatever. I think this article about Los Angeles describes it best:

No matter what you do in L.A., your behavior is appropriate for the city. Los Angeles has no assumed correct mode of use. You can have fake breasts and drive a Ford Mustang – or you can grow a beard, weigh 300 pounds, and read Christian science fiction novels. Either way, you’re fine: that’s just how it works…

…L.A. is the apocalypse: it’s you and a bunch of parking lots. No one’s going to save you; no one’s looking out for you. It’s the only city I know where that’s the explicit premise of living there – that’s the deal you make when you move to L.A.

…And I don’t just mean that Los Angeles is some friendly bastion of cultural diversity and so we should celebrate it on that level and be done with it; I mean that Los Angeles is the confrontation with the void. It is the void.

This observation is more true in a general sense about the entirety of California than it isn’t. When the east coast was settled, it was settled by frightened European religious fundamentalists who cared quite a lot about inherited status and who were constantly being menaced by bears and the weather. There’s a humility and guardedness to New England towns– a close gathering around the central green, three-story houses with basements so you can store all the things you’d need for an apocalypse, only three or four kinds of churches. Only three or four kinds of people.

But by the time Americans got to California, we were proud and arrogant jerks. We just jizzed concrete over the entire landscape and marched around like we owned the place. Why bother building a second story on a house when you can build another one next to it, and another, and another? Why bother making a place livable and kind if it looks cooler and makes more money as a concrete iron maiden?

Sure, California has Google and Hollywood. But Silicon Valley is really and truly the most fucked-up place I have ever seen in my entire life, and Hollywood is basically just a gigantic heap of useless trash. (And I often have a hard time parking there.)

Okay. Here’s the rundown. New England pros:

• Weather
• My family
• Trees
• Roads are occasionally empty
• People tell the truth, walk quickly, and get things done
• You can pick your own pumpkin

New England cons:

• Often boring
• Too white
• No good Mexican food
• My job isn’t there

And California pros:

• Diversity
• Better food
• Actual jobs
• My job, specifically

California cons:

• You are living in the void
• Everything here was built by a charming asshole
• You will never be menaced by a bear

INJECT THIS MOVIE DIRECTLY INTO MY VEINS PLEASE.

Ok, like, I didn’t think I could be more pumped for Mad Max: Fury Road. I was so, so wrong.

I will say this, however: Thanks to this new trailer, I’m super concerned over how George Miller is going to handle those obviously enslaved women. It’s clear badass Charlize Theron helps them escape, but at least one of them is wearing a chastity belt so the implications are certainly there (not to mention the characters are collectively known as “The Wives”). Please don’t ruin what otherwise looks like an epic ball of epicness.

(via /Film)

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Thank-you to Tumblr artist Sully for this gorgeous reminder that mermaids shouldn’t just represent one particular culture, era or race–the sea has hot crustacean bands and diversity.

(via Boing Boing)

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It was first period at Mission High, and Aimee Menne moved among rows of 21 tired students at Mission High who are working on a program developed out of UC Berkeley meant to introduce beginners to computer science. The game is based on the familiar Hangman but requires students to think logically through a coding process, serving as a precursor to much of computer science including HTML5 and Linux.

“When they give a letter, where is it stored?” Menne asks two young, male students who seemed anxious. “I know you both know this.”

Menne woke up at 5 a.m. on a recent Thursday to get in a few hours of work before heading to Mission High to help teach the school’s only computer science class. Menne is not a teacher but, rather, a project manager for Blackstone Technology Group, a software company based in downtown San Francisco.

She is one of the three tech workers at Mission High and one of the 14 total tech workers who volunteer in San Francisco public schools as part of the Technology Education and Literacy in Schools (TEALS) program, which launched in San Francisco last school year and serves five high schools: Balboa, Mission, International Studies Academy, Wallenberg, and Lincoln.

The class, one of the first of its kind at Mission, has students at all different skill levels when it comes to computer science. Some are hard at work at their game, others become distracted easily.

“Please get off Youtube,” Menne told a group of boys when she spotted them straying.

Menne said the diversity of skill levels presents the greatest challenge. While the class has mostly juniors and seniors, there are some freshman and sophomores present, as well as special education students.

“Some catch on quickly, and some are struggling,” she said. “This class has so many levels to it.”.

This becomes immediately clear during class. Some students move swiftly through the  assignments while others surf the web, talk with classmates, or stare blankly ahead, occasionally typing in lines of code.

TEALS started with one man deciding to stop in to volunteer in a computer science class at a Seattle public high school on his way to work in 2009. Kevin Wang, who was working as an engineer at Microsoft and has a master’s degree in education from Harvard, impressed the executives at Microsoft when they heard about his extracurricular work. The company decided to fund the program, name it Technology Education and Literacy in Schools, and had Wang run it full time.
Since 2009, TEALS has expanded across the nation, reaching California three years ago. Since then, the program has seen a statewide expansion from one to 33 schools. This year alone, the program will reach a minimum of 1, 242 students in districts as diverse as San Jose Unified, Oakland Unified, Los Angeles Unified, among others.

The volunteers work with students and the assigned teacher to build both parties’ skills. The idea is that the teacher – in Mission High’s case, a teacher trained in arts – becomes proficient enough to eventually teach the class alone.

Menne, 30, moved to San Francisco a year ago and heard about the TEALS program when someone in her “Women Who Code” iOS development group announced the volunteer opportunity.

“I thought this would be a good indication if I should pursue education in my later career goals,” she said.

The other two volunteers at Mission, both female, work at Dropbox and Microsoft.

Vichi Jagannathan, the regional TEALS program volunteer coordinator said that the intent was to have four volunteers per school for this year. They came up short on that goal and have three per school. With the expansion of the program next year, TEALS is in the process of trying to recruit 16 new volunteers to make their number 30.

That’s tougher than it would seem.

“In San Francisco, we rarely have volunteers from the same company,” Jagannathan continued. “A lot of companies want to engage but haven’t heard of the opportunity.”

Despite the shortage , San Francisco has other obvious benefits for young students wanting to enter the tech industry as so many of these companies are right in their backyards.

Lisa Liang and Sally U, both seniors at Mission, sat together and chatted while working on their independent projects. U, who was working on a graphic design project, decided to take the class because she has already taken all the available arts classes. Liang had a free period.

A card for Dropbox gets passed around, and the two girls sign it. The class had recently taken a field trip to the company’s downtown office.

“It was so chill,” Liang said, trying to maintain her nonchalance but it was clear she was impressed.

Then there are students like Evan Grandvoinet, a tall sophomore dressed in his Junior Varsity baseball jersey. Far along in the coding of his hangman game, he talked about how he wants to go into mechanical engineering. Like many schools in the country, Mission High doesn’t offer such opportunities. Even now, he’s more advanced in computer science than seniors in the class and requires very little attention from Menne.

“They should move away from snap and towards HTML because that’s what coding really is,” Grandvoinet said.

He hopes there will be more advanced classes next year.

Wait, what?? A were-unicorn??

Artist and illustrator Helen Ahpornsiri creates incredible pressed fern illustrations from her studio in East Sussex. Tiny bits of stems and leaves are arranged on paper to create butterflies, dragonflies, and birds scarcely larger than a coin. Many of her pieces are available as prints on Etsy (along with a few originals), and you can also follow her on Instagram. (via The Kid Should See This)

Girl gets a note reading “I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER”. She’s relieved someone is finally reading her tumblr. #VeryRealisticYA

— TheBloggess (@TheBloggess) March 29, 2015

I spent my youth (and spend my present) reading as much YA as I can get my hands on. Some of it is more relatable than others, and some of it is relatable in sneaky ways despite it being set in worlds that do not exist outside its pages (or its big screen adaptations). All of it matters and all of it means something. But #VeryRealisticYA does something cool, too: It shows snippets of what the lives of actual real life young people often looks like, and that matters and means something too. Plus it’s pretty funny.    

Nerdy girl is paired in school project with bad boy. She does all the work and they never speak again. #VeryRealisticYA — Janine Mimi De Jesus (@LoveJanineMimi) March 29, 2015

There are teenagers outside of North America. They have feelings & wants too. #VeryRealisticYA

— Sara Farizan (@SaraFarizan) March 29, 2015

Girl finds out boy from class has been sneaking into her room to “watch her sleep.” She’s terrified. Presses charges. #VeryRealisticYA — Kody Keplinger (@Kody_Keplinger) March 29, 2015

Girl graduates high school without having had a boyfriend, but has still managed to have an active social life. #VeryRealisticYA

— annie cardi (@anniecardi) March 29, 2015

First kiss is awkward and forgettable, has no bearing on the quality or length of the ensuing relationship #VeryRealisticYA — Maisha (@maishaparadox) March 29, 2015

Watches reruns of “Boy Meets World”. That’s it. #VeryRealisticYA

— Alec (@alecwriter120) March 29, 2015

Girls watch The Craft together, eat chocolate graham crackers, enjoy each other’s company, and have a nice, respectful time #VeryRealisticYA — Michaela Grant (@MichaelaBGrant) March 29, 2015

“Sorry, I can’t get a ride.” #VeryRealisticYA

— Xan Abbasi (@nightscrabbler) March 29, 2015

Shy girl has crush on shy boy. They never speak. #VeryRealisticYA — Joanna Rast (@FancyArentWe) March 29, 2015

A teen protagonist who isn’t white, heterosexual, or/and cisgendered #VeryRealisticYA

— 　 　　❀❁❀꓆ (@lunafreyanox) March 29, 2015

Main character scrolls through Twitter for several hours. Literally nothing else happens. #VeryRealisticYA — John Hansen (@ABoredAuthor) March 29, 2015

Instead of deciding to save the world, the heroine decides to binge watch something on Netflix. #VeryRealisticYA

— Jon (@ScottReadsIt) March 29, 2015

Oh, and oof:

She is a special, gifted child. She grows up full of self-loathing and impossible expectations. #VeryRealisticYA — Mara Wilson (@MaraWritesStuff) March 29, 2015

You can (and should!) see more over at io9 and on Twitter. And as io9 noted, the hashtag was created by a young YA writer, whom you can find here.

(via io9)
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Legolas/Katniss/Hawkeye/[Insert your favorite archer here] eat your heart out, Dolly Shivani Cherukuri has arrived.

Who is Cherukuri? She’s a little girl in India who straight-up shattered a national archery record before she’d even turned three. According to The Telegraph she is the youngest Indian to ever score more than 200 points in the event — and more than that, she scored 388 points.

Sadly the video below has no sound, but it show you Cherukuri in action. And if you’re wondering how this teeny-tiny child is already so accomplished: Aside from the talent there’s the fact that she comes from a family of archers, her father running an archer academy. And she trains for two-to-three hours a day. As her father, Cherukuri Satyanarayana, put it:

You can’t put too much pressure on children, they can be trained for a maximum of two or three hours a day,” he explained. “But Dolly comes from a family of archers so she’s capable of a lot.

Here’s to hoping she enjoys it all as much as we enjoy watching her do it.

And I know this record-breaking happened pretty recently, but my main question is how this hasn’t been turned into a major animated feature yet.

(via Jezebel)
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Could the Mission District’s troubling traffic safety record be the fault of misunderstandings? Of a sort, yes and now the Mission Economic Development Agency, known as MEDA, is teaming up with public health officials and the SFMTA to sort them out at the local level.

Education and community outreach are the priorities, said Avni Desai,  who is spearheading MEDA’s effort.  Many unsafe situations arise from misunderstandings or simple ignorance of the rules.

One classic example is pedestrian right-of-way in crosswalks.  “As soon as you get your big toe in the intersection, you own that crosswalk,” a traffic enforcement officer explained in January to a roomful of community members.

All too often, however, pedestrians are even unclear about what constitutes a crosswalk, said John Knox White, a transportation planner in the SFMTA’s Sustainable Streets program.

“Whether there’s paint on the ground or not, all intersections are crosswalks and pedestrians have right of way there,” said Knox White.

Simply put, as long as you’re crossing from one sidewalk corner to the other, not diagonally, you’re in a crosswalk. Some 41 percent of collisions citywide involve a pedestrian in a crosswalk.

“That’s a high number of collisions that happen in a place where the pedestrian really should have the right of way,” said Knox White.

Since the beginning of the year, a three-year-old has been struck in a crosswalk, a major accident occurred on South Van Ness, a cyclist was struck and killed, a taxi and Uber crashed, and a car and Muni bus crashed.  And those are just the Mission traffic horror stories we’ve heard about.

That means the city is far from its goal, known as Vision Zero, to reduce traffic deaths and injuries to zero by 2024.

Another common misconception, as Mission Local learned last year, is how to make right turns. Friction often develops between drivers and cyclists at intersections when both assume cars should steer clear of the bike lane until the absolute last moment before making a right turn.  Wrong.  Cars are supposed to treat the bike lane as a real lane, and merge into it before the intersection.  This avoids catching cyclists in a “right hook” as they turn across them.

There’s also often a cultural or language barrier. Desai said non-native English speakers or those who exclusively speak another language can easily get confused by unclear signage, complicated pedestrian reroutes, or citywide outreach attempts. That may be part of the reason why English learners are particularly vulnerable to traffic injuries.

On the enforcement end of the efforts, the city is asking police to “focus on the five,” meaning to ensure that at least half of their traffic citations are for the five most dangerous traffic behaviors.

All five are driver violations: Speeding, running a red light, failing to yield to a pedestrian in a crosswalk, failing to yield while making a left or U turn, and failure to stop at a stop sign limit line.

Only 19 percent of Mission Station’s traffic citations were for “Focus on the Five” violations in 2014, slightly lower than the department wide average but still better than a few other stations.

The city’s roads have absorbed a population increase of about 65,000 people in the last ten years according to census data. Surprisingly, car registration is on the rise, but fewer people are choosing to drive for their daily commute. In the Mission from 2000 to 2012, car ownership increased 27%, according to Planning Department numbers provided for the Mission Public Life Plan. The explosion of ridesharing services, as well as increased MUNI and bike ridership, may have also contributed to an environment in which everyone seems to feel squeezed off the road, particularly in the Mission.

Four streets in the Mission recently made it on to the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s list of worst roads for unsafe parking practices — Valencia Street claimed the dubious prize of being the overall worst. The problems? Ridesharing services and taxis improperly using the bike lane to load and unload passengers, double parked delivery vehicles, private shuttle buses, and construction zones.

Nonetheless, walking is still the riskiest mode of transportation in San Francisco — or at least, the one with the highest death rate. Nine motorists were killed in San Francisco last year; 17 pedestrians died, compared with only 4 cyclists. Driving has the second worst death rate, though between 2006 and 2010 more people in cars than people on foot or biking suffered injuries in general. In both metrics, cyclists come off the best.

As a result of the complex nature of San Francisco traffic, tempers can rise quickly in any discussion of the topic. Desai and Knox White, however, caution that they’re not out to point fingers at any particular group. They both reiterated a popular reprise among traffic safety educators: almost nobody exclusively uses one mode of transportation, so there’s no point in dividing people into camps of “cyclists” “pedestrians” and “drivers.”

Instead, the goal is prevention. Desai calls it making accidents “more forgiving,” or less likely to kill or maim those involves. That means promoting infrastructural and design changes that slow vehicles down and are clear to pedestrians. It also means promoting better traffic safety knowledge.

MEDA’s program, launched in December of last year, hinges on a group of women called promotoras, women well-respected in the community who are comfortable in their social circles’ native languages and know those they’re trying to reach. The promotoras have been around for years, promoting awareness about a variety of public health concerns. But now, they go to their church meetings, school assemblies, nonprofit events, even laundromats to preach the gospel of traffic safety.

The promotoras also listen to the people they educate, and their reports have resulted in a list of specific needs expressed by the community.

The most prominent, Desai said, is better lighting at night. Residents are also hoping for protected bike lanes, bus bulb outs, and longer crosswalk times. Seniors are among the most at-risk for traffic injuries, and usually require more time to make it across the street at large intersections.

Meanwhile, some already proposed improvements are being eyed with skepticism by the community, including the Muni Forward program. Desai said residents worry that the bus lines, which run along the Mission’s highest-injury traffic corridor, will start traveling at higher speeds when certain stops are eliminated. And the soon to-be-nixed stops are right near important services they access.

Looking ahead, Desai said MEDA will need to find a better strategy to reach men, a group the promotoras have less access to, and might work toward a collaboration with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to widen its scope from pedestrians and transit riders to include cyclists. But for now, the goal remains the same: Focus on ground-up, grassroots education and information-gathering to figure out what the community needs.

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I give it 3 Dinklage mullets out of 5. How are you guys feeling about our first real look at Pixels?

(via /Film)

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Cut Video has previously showcased 100 years’ worth of Iranian and African-American women’s fashion, and now model Tiffany and the team are taking a decade-by-decade look at the makeup and hairstyles of North and South Korea.

Cut Video also offers some historical context for the different decades’ looks:

What would you like to see Cut Video look at next?

(via LaughingSquid)

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