Confession: Apart from the RIP Challenge, there’s nothing about Halloween that I enjoy. I don’t eat candy anymore, and having to put together a costume stresses me out horribly. So none of these links have anything to do with Halloween! Down with Halloween!
Oh, except for this one: Lory of Emerald City Book Review is kicking off an awesome new blogging event, Witch Week! This year, we’re celebrating the inventor of Witch Week (the week between Halloween and Guy Fawkes Day) with a week-long appreciation of Diana Wynne Jones. Lory will be hosting guest posts from me and a number of awesome fellow bloggers, and we’ll be doing a readalong of Witch Week as well. Don’t forget to join in! It’s going to be awesome!
Slate has a new podcast called Working that’s about people’s jobs and how they do their jobs. I have no proof of this, but I theorize that Slate invented this podcast just to make me happy, since this is exactly in line with my interests. Thanks, Slate! You’re a doll!
Pixar’s rules for storytelling remain excellent.
This article about the American diner made me terribly homesick for my favorite New York diner, Tom’s. Next time I go to New York I shall eat at Tom’s twice.
“I’m pregnant so why can’t I tell you?”: A piece about the silence around miscarriages.
Alyssa Rosenberg wrote an excellent article about how Gone Girl and 50 Shades of Grey are both basically stories about women who make their lovers change completely while they do not change at all. Reading this I thought: “Wait, they stop having kinky sex in the second and third 50 Shades books? Then what are people reading for?” If you know the answer to that question, please tell me in the comments. It’s definitely not the scintillating dialogue; I have read excerpts.
Speaking of fan fiction, here’s Elizabeth Minkel — a writer I’m swiftly growing fond of, over at the New Statesman — tsking over Benedict Cumberbatch’s snotty remarks about Watson/Sherlock slashfic. I tsk over that too, Elizabeth Minkel!
Vulture, as usual, is doing the important investigative work of our time: If you recreated the cast of Friends in The Sims and then took away their bathroom, who would be the first to pee on the floor? In gifs. I sent this to some of my friends along with some nostalgic comments on the fun of murdering Sims, and they clearly thought that I was a psychopath. Please back me up: Half of the fun of the Sims is killing off your Sims in inventive ways. Right?
A marker of mourning: On the occasion of an exhibit at the Met, the New Republic makes the case that we should bring back mourning attire. I am so on board with this (like, as an optional but accepted and widely known thing).
In praise of the feminism of Veronica Mars.
A snotty review of Chuck Palahniuk’s newest book, Beautiful You. I don’t think anyone should dedicate themselves full-time to writing negative reviews or anything, but the occasional nasty review can make a girl’s heart sing.
Interesting: Liberal cities tend to have more intense income inequality.
The whole mess with Jian Gomeshi is ongoing. I found this post particularly enlightening, because my own experience of creepers is that oftentimes everyone knows. Not necessarily that they’re a rapist or an abuser, but everyone knows that they push boundaries and make people uncomfortable. When I was in high school, I don’t think I had even finished the orientation events before I knew exactly who the creepy art and math teachers were that I should not be alone with. Word spreads.