Emily Asher Perrin’s Tor.com piece on identifying with uncool characters spoke to my nerdy, rule-abiding heart.

Akwaeke Emezi talks about finding a path to a truer identity, through Nigerian spiritual beliefs and Western surgeries.

This interview with Jia Tolentino reminds me of so many reasons why I dig her. If you’re not familiar with her work, familiarize yourself! She’s got a book coming out!

Gabrielle Bellot writes brilliantly and eloquently on the colonial thinking that produces remarks about shithole countries, and how every country has “a grandeur in spirit worth fighting for.”

A defense of Book Five Capslock Harry.

Millennial culture is this Twitter thread. (Major spoilers for Star Wars: The Last Jedi contained herein.)

Amal El-Mohtar is taking over for NK Jemisin writing an SFF column for the New York Times Book Review. Two excellent reviewers for an excellent column! What a world!

Some elements of the trailer for The Shape of Water made me suspicious, and I decided not to see it. Elsa Sjunneson-Henry (who did see it) explores the film’s failures of disability representation. (One amazingly easy improvement would have been to cast a disabled actress in the main role.)

On good guys and bad guys and how old-time stories didn’t really have them.

“While men weren’t looking, women built a genre that tackles love, sex, pleasure, class, money, feminism, masculinity, and equality.” Romance novels! (With lots of my fave romance authors being quoted, so hooray for that too.)

Mimi Mondal offers a brief history of South Asian science fiction and fantasy.

The grand jury prize at Sundance this year went to a YA adaptation, The Miseducation of Cameron Post. Woot!

A twitter thread about how to fight in a dress.

One of my 2018 goals is to read more SFF short fiction. Luckily, I have the writers at Lady Business backing me up, including this MASSIVE post of 2017 favorites. What a time to be alive.

Rebecca Traister is so sensible, even when she’s talking about Katie Roiphe who I find to be mostly nonsense.

This interview with the guy who gets Super Bowl halftime shows on the field in LITERALLY SIX MINUTES is really fascinating from a process perspective.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends, and if you’re a Mardi Gras celebrator, have a wonderful Mardi Gras!

The post Too Sleepy to Think of a Title for My Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Happy about:

DOUG JONES WON ALABAMA. DOUG JONES WON ALABAMA. I’m so happy for the Dem voters in Alabama, who have worked hard and who deeply deserve this. White liberals, especially in the South, should remember this victory and spend as much time as we can in 2018 working to support and empower black voters. White Democratic candidates everywhere should remember this and work to achieve policy goals that will benefit black Americans. I MEAN THEY SHOULD REALLY BE DOING THAT ANYWAY.

Charmed by:

As was the case with The Force Awakens, the new cast this time around have been on an absolute charm offensive. Kelly Marie Tran seems like a treasure, as I have said before. Here is a series of pictures where she sees someone cosplaying as her character. It’s dusty in here but I’m fine.

Also charmed by:

This excerpt from a Harry Potter book written by predictive text. It’s hard to pick a favorite part, but it’s gotta be one of the Ron sentences. However, “‘I’m Harry Potter,’ Harry began yelling. ‘The dark arts better be worried, oh boy!'” is p. good too.

Link up your somethings below!

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How to be an author on social media.

David Brooks wrote an insane article claiming that cultural barriers are more significant than structural ones, and also ?sandwiches are confusing to uneducated people? look I don’t even know. Anyway, this response about faking it is really good.

Some Spiderman comics to read now that you’ve seen and loved Spiderman: Homecoming.

Lindy West asks: Will men stick up for me?

“We can love a thing and still critique it. In fact, that’s the only way to really love a thing.” Daniel Jose Older on the whiteness of book publishing and how to change it.

Just some solid gold internet content right here.

Okay, I guess in addition to Serena Williams and Pete Sampras, Andy Murray can take up residence in the smallish tennis player corner of my heart. This is nice.

Tony Kushner is writing a Donald Trump play. I should have seen this coming. I can’t wait for it to come out, you know, twenty years from now.

The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler turns fifty.

I have been hearing about this webseries adaptation of Middlemarch QUITE A LOT lately, and although I have been burned by some non-LBD webserieses before, I’m inclined to give love a chance. This decision is in no way influenced by the fact that I’ve recently convinced two friends to watch Lizzie Bennet Diaries and am working on a third. (One of them is sending me text updates and it’s magical.)

The brilliant Clare McBride offers an overview of furry history over at Syfy Wire.

And something really marvelous to end on: The Millions has released their second half of 2017 book preview. HEAVEN.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends! Watch the Wrinkle in Time trailer as many times as you need to: You deserve it.

The post Rewatching the Wrinkle in Time Trailer: A Links Round-Up appeared first on Reading the End.

Maddy Myers is great, y’all. Here she is on on-screen queer kisses over at The Mary Sue.

Y’all, you guys, hey everyone, guess what! England is about to get the FIRST EVER Kurdish novel to be translated into English. How cool! How good for the Kurds! I hope it publishes in the US also!

This Natalie Luhrs piece for Uncanny Magazine unpacks what’s so great about romance novels — among other things, it’s that romance takes emotional growth really seriously.

This Sarah Jeong article about the Star Wars prequels makes a pretty good case for its conclusion:

I guess what I’m saying is, maybe if the Galactic Senate hadn’t defunded Planned Parenthood, the Republic wouldn’t have succumbed to an evil fascist dictatorship.

Speaking of Star Wars, I never do this, but I loved this Bodhi Rook-centric fic so much that I’m sharing it here. Even if you don’t read a lot of fanfic, read this one. It’s superb. Hat tip to Rukmini Pande for the rec.

Some book adaptations coming to TV this year. GET PSYCHED.

The Millions has released their glorious, glorious 2017 book preview (through June). TBR lists beware!

Your reminder that writing white supremacy into disciplines of folklore and medievalism was a major strategy of the Nazi regime. (Or: on white nationalism in medieval studies.)

The world has been feeling more than ever like hot garbage this month, but I also read this Twitter thread about C.S. Lewis and Susan, and it meant the world to me. Cf: this excellent point.

I hope you all have an exceptionally fortunate Friday the 13th! If you need something to give you a little boost, maybe try the new Netflix Series of Unfortunate Events, which looks really fun.

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On competing for the one single diversity spot in the writers’ room: Aisha Harris writes about the unbearable whiteness of TV writers’ rooms.

Nobody could be more excited about the new Star Wars trailer than stars John Boyega and Daisy Ridley.

Recovering the history of years in slavery, and the story of a forgotten forced deportation: An article that opens with an oddly upsetting anecdote.

New details emerge about that Harry Potter play! (It’s not a prequel, it’s a sequel! Joke’s on you, prequel-wanters! You’ll never ever learn more about the Marauders.)

“Jenny, shut up about Hamilton already, Gahd!” NEVER.

Kelly Sue DeConnick spoke with Alyssa Rosenberg about her comic Bitch Planet, and predictably, she has lots of interesting things to say. In particular, she notes that comics do a thing where “they will set up something to be deliberately salacious, and then pretend to have some ethical structure around it.” YEP. The interview is in two parts, here and here.

Are you excited for Jessica Jones? Or do you wish her backstory didn’t have to be so rapey? Or both?

South By canceled a panel about harassment in gaming because they’re afraid of getting harassed. Caroline Linders, one of the organizers of the panel, has a good rundown of what happened. BuzzFeed has withdrawn participation from the festival in protest. SXSW appears to be in damage control mode, but as of today, no final decisions appear to have been made.

The post Why can’t you shut up about Hamilton?: A links round-up appeared first on Reading the End.

The short history of spoiler warnings.

You should just assume that I’m going to link to everything Elizabeth Minkel ever writes. Here she is talking about the gendered reaction to responses to Zayn Malik’s departure from One Direction vs. responses to Jeremy Clarkson’s departure from Top Gear.

Foz Meadows, being typically fascinating about the way gifs are changing critical discourse. She does seem to think that academic journals are profit-making beasts. Are they? I do not know. I have only worked on the books and online side of academic publishing, where we are all broke and well-intentioned.

Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak, and Courtney Summers, author of All the Rage, are in conversation at Book Riot about stories of sexual assault. It’s really good.

Pop culture genius Adam Sternbergh invents the term “purge-watching” for when you’re watching a show unlovingly just so you can have it off your docket. This is a term we needed. Well-played, sir.

There is an open-access journal called Neo-Victorian Studies, and that’s pretty much all I did on Tuesday.

Ta-Nehisi Coates fears that the movies have ruined X-Men (I know, dude), but he’s got a lot of other thoughts on the rise of superheroes.

What it’s like to be a first-generation scholarship student at an Ivy League.

Oh, you may have missed it, but there’s a new Star Wars teaser. It ends by trying to make every Star Wars fan in the whole world cry. But my heart is made of stone.

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