All of this to say, please be gentle with yourself if you’re having a hard time right now. Here are some links!

Gabrielle Bellot writes about her long affection for Ms. Marvel and what Kamala Khan’s struggles have meant for her as an adult. (link)

What does it mean to write trauma well? (link)

“From the use of solitary confinement, which amounts to torture, to the punitive charges for phone calls, every aspect of the American system, major or minor, seems to be motivated not by the desire to prevent crime or to rehabilitate prisoners, but by the impulse to inflict spectacular, exemplary pain for the satisfaction of a general public that derives a furtive pleasure from its proximity to suffering.” Hari Kunzru on mass incarceration. (link)

Mara Wilson discusses The Narrative and the reasons Britney Spears never had a chance. (link) Also: Britney Spears is not in control of her image, and she never has been. (link)

Another excellent piece in Stitch’s series on fandom for Teen Vogue! (link)

Not seeing herself in the world of Lord of the Rings, Namina Forna decided to create her own. (link)

Arcadia is a perfect play, and that is the end of the matter. (link)

Variety reported on the sets of Joss Whedon’s shows and what the atmosphere was like. (Not good at all.) (link)

“The love-hate relationship with the musical form that made Dolly possible is a reflection of the push-pull of Southern culture for non-Southerners. They may hate country music but they have a ceaseless appetite for its white escapism — sonic, visual, and embodied.” Tressie McMillan Cottom on Dolly Parton. (link)

On the rightwing attack on trans women and girls in sports. (link)

“She was a shiny button.” Kelly Marie Tran deserves better and always did. But she’s succeeding in spite of the haters. (link)

I caught up on WandaVision and I liked it a lot! Except for that I was/am very mad that Monica Rambeau didn’t have more to do, considering that she’s the most beautiful human in the whole world. Here are some links about that:

• The puzzle box format that TV viewers have come to expect does a disservice to the emotional storytelling in WandaVision. (link)
• “WandaVision was always telling us what type of show it was. There was no greater mystery to figure out, no big puzzle that really even needed to be solved. All we had to do was sit back and tune in.” Carly Lane on the finale. (link)
• “Once we have found our way past so much grief, after so many spent and destructive illusions, what do we want? Who else can we try to be?” (link)

Having a bionic arm isn’t all it’s cracked up to be; or, a very useful article that all Stucky fanfic writers should take into account going forward. (link)

“White feminism has always been exclusionary.” Koa Beck discusses the archival records that show the history of white (and cis, and straight) feminists excluding all other voices. (link)

I only care what Black women have to say about the Oprah interview, so here’s a few:

• The hostility and trolling that Meghan Markle has faced is a pure example of misogynoir, and we shouldn’t look away. (link)
• “[Oprah is] something of an emissary, a reactive translator of emotion, a master weaver, pulling disparate revelations into a collective portrait that colonizes the mind.” (link)
• “I’ve rarely heard white friends discuss their parallel experiences of first realizing their privilege.” Salamishah Tillet on Harry’s racial awakening. (link)

Phew, this is an article about cops who danced with protestors at a Black Lives Matter event and then stormed the capitol. (link) SORRY THE LAST LINK WAS SO SAD.

The post Quarantinaversary: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

Quillette is bad and people who write for it should feel bad.

We do not know what Baby Yoda’s first words are going to be, but we should not assume he will talk like Grown Yoda.

The BBC endeavors to identify some of the bookish trends of the last decade. I particularly like the first one.

This Arielle Gordon piece on a music fandom (fandom?)’s teen girl message board is… it’s a lot.

Fast Color is the small superhero movie we need. I am unbelievably excited for this movie to come out on DVD so I can watch it. Gugu Mbathu-Raw is gorgeous and great and should be in everything.

“I sit and ask myself: Does anyone else in this room know Jane Austen is… white? Do they even know they are all white?” I feel genuinely fortunate to have studied Mansfield Park in a class that was specifically devoted to Literature of Empire, because I think it made me more aware of like, what the fuck is going on in the background of a lot of these white classics (slavery! empire!), but anyway, this Marcos Gonsalez piece is about experiencing the white literary canon as a person of color, and it’s excellent.

Here is a weird and slightly surrealist piece about what the internet does to us all. (It’s surrealist because it’s so fucking real. What is this world.)

The worldbuilding of the A Christmas Prince franchise has… raised some questions.

Are brands ever just doing the right thing because it’s the right thing?

TIL Lurlene McDaniel was inspired to write all her tragic books after her son was diagnosed with NOT KIDDING juvenile diabetes.

Cancel culture isn’t a real thing: By the numbers.

“I’m pretty behind on every single geek franchise out there.” Keidra Chaney, formerly of The Learned Fangirl, considers herself geek-adjacent these days. Lightly geeky.

Here’s what your phone is really doing when you do those autocomplete memes.

“Ultimately the commercial kind of seems like the brother and sister are going to have sex. That’s why we’re talking, right?” A very blessed oral history of that Folgers coffee ad.

The memes that defined the 2010s.

Common Sense Media and their ratings system are enormously comforting for parents. Here’s what’s behind them!

Ruth Wilson left The Affair under mysterious circumstances. Now it appears that it may be down to the show pressuring her to do nude scenes well past her comfort level.

“This year I picked up a pastime I thought was reserved for white people: fighting with my family about their terrible politics.” Scaachi Koul on talking to her family about Kashmir.

This Jia Tolentino essay on Cats is broadly excellent but you WILL have to live with the knowledge that Known Racist and Anti-Semite TS Eliot and Entire Fascist Ezra Pound used to write to each other “in black dialect for fun.”

Kelly Marie Tran and Naomi Ackie have such a beautiful friendship, I adore them, I want them to be in a buddy cop movie together. A buddy cop franchise!

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

The post Somehow Only One Link about Cats: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Kelly Marie Tran in Buzzfeed. Kelly Marie Tran in EW. Kelly Marie Tran sorting Star Wars characters into Hogwarts houses, an activity she’s so pumped to do. And lest we forget, here’s John Boyega’s last-year enthusiasm for her, bless his heart.

Okay, good. We are all happy now, about Kelly Marie Tran. Now back to dismantling the patriarchy. (PS Kelly Marie Tran being in Star Wars is also dismantling the patriarchy, thanks Kelly Marie Tran, we owe you.)

“Many men will absorb the lessons of late 2017 to be not about the threat they’ve posed to women but about the threat that women pose to them.” Rebecca Traister on all this sexual assault business.

Love this interview with Roxane Gay.

Comedians have to get over themselves, says Drew Magary. And he attacks that awful trope of shitty, offensive comedians being truth-tellers, THANK CHRIST.

How Get Out inspired a UCLA course on horror and racism. Get Out is a movie I have seen, and it is very frightening and has lots of creepy, clever little Easter eggs for, like, critical race theory nerds. (I’m kidding.) (Sort of.)

The movie was better: AV Club has a round-up of movies that out-awesomed the books they were based on. I ardently cosign The Princess Bride in particular.

The New York Times published a puff piece about how nice and normal Nazis can be. This is only surprising to people who don’t realize how normal racism has always been.

A NOAH’S ARK REPLICA. I have nothing further to add. It is a REPLICA of Noah’s ARK that you can VISIT AND TOUR.

What would make Matt Lauer’s apology less infuriating?

20 Authors I Don’t Have to Read Because I Dated Men for Years. Bahahah this is gold and not just because she calls Kurt Vonnegut the manic pixie dream girl of American literature.

There was this mind-numbingly stupid article at Slate about how this one lady ended up marrying her boss so we better watch out lest the #MeToo moment GO TOO FAR. Here is a good response.

Happy weekend! Go watch the Star Wars trailer a dozen more times. You’ve earned it.

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