K Tempest Tumbles
I have a non-Tumblr blog and that's where the majority of my long-form posts go. This blog is for my more fannish activities, link sharing, and squeeness.
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Doctor Who “stained glass” prints by Mandie Manzano
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High-speed photographs of ink mixing with water by Alberto Seveso
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Ravens! Via yukadelavega: Raven smootchies.
Source: Canislupuscorax & DeeOtter
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Meet: Kerream Jones
Although the term “Starving Artist” does not apply to the Painter, Kerream Jones, the hunger of the...
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by Priscilla.
Hey nerds, I suggest getting your hands on the latest New Yorker—it’s the science fiction issue! Not all of it is available online unless you’re a subscriber, so you may want to get it from the library (or borrow it from your highfalutin’ friends).
The high points: Junot Díaz’s creepy apocalypse “Monstro” (which I really hope is part of a larger work), Jennifer Egan’s “Black Box”, Colson Whitehead’s loving tribute to sci-fi B-movies, Ursula K. LeGuin’s recollection of starting out as an sf writer when a female byline was simply too shocking to print.
The low points: Margaret Atwood’s essay (of course), Emily Nussbaum’s article on Doctor Who—for the love of God, she’s only seen Moffat’s run, and seems to believe the Doctor’s name is “Doctor Who”. Noob. They should have gotten ktempest.
Either that or ANYONE published in Chicks Dig Time Lords. The book won a Hugo, for God’s sake. Couldn’t someone at the New Yorker at least made a cursory search to find a person familiar with the show and had written an academic essay about it?
I refuse to buy this issue on principle!
Most fantasy maps are really, really horrible. Here’s some of the worst offenders:
Eragon-world: The At Least One of Everything Fantasy Map.
Goodkind-land: The All the Borders Perfectly Follow Geographic Features Fantasy Map.
Kushiel-world: The Not Trying Hard Just Like Earth Fantasy Map.
Middle-Earth: The God Made It Fantasy Map.
Narnia: The Inconsistent Travel Distance Fantasy Map.
Valdemar: The Place Names Sound Really Made Up Fantasy Map.
Westeros: The Conveniently Paper-Shaped Continent Fantasy Map.
Randland: The Copying Stupid Things Tolkien Did Fantasy Map.
The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms: The Fantasy Maps Are Mainstream Fantasy Map.
- OK i hate fantasy maps
- i will literally check the book and put it back if it has a map
- but still
- a hundred thousand fucking kingdoms
- and you don’t include a map?
- OH COME ON
- if you had to make up a hundred thousand country names to put on the map
- maybe you’d rethink the title of the book
- HMMMMMMMMMM?
Ahahaha okay, now I finally understand why 1000K is on this list, because it doesn’t have a map.
But aren’t most epic fantasy maps there because the characters travel to places on the map a lot and thus you kind of want to see their path? In 1000K the main character comes from Darre an there’s mention of it, but all of the main action takes place in Sky, so why do we need a map of the rest of the world?
But also: hehehehe y’all are funny.
Fatihah Iman takes Saladin Ahmed to task for his portrayal of women characters in Throne of the Crescent Moon:
Saladin Ahmed’s debut sword-n-sorcery fantasy novel has come in for some criticism from feminist quarters, some of which I have seen and some of which I have not. Ahmed has engaged with this debate to an extent, and in a comment on a blog post from earlier this year asked:“Is there a problem, for instance, with not passing the Bechdel Test if one is depicting a world where women’s power is most obviously wielded via intermediary men…?”
Throne of the Crescent Moon is based on Arab/Muslim history and culture – as contrasted with Fantasy Medieval Europe, which is the usual fantasy setting. So the characters Ahmed is talking about here are the fantasy world analogues of Arabs/Muslims, and the world itself is a fantasy version of Arabic/Islamic settings. As a Muslim woman, I would dispute the assertion that “women’s power is most obviously wielded via intermediary men.” And to answer the question: yes, there is a problem if your story about Arab/Muslim women doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.
Because if you’re writing women based in an Arab or Islamic tradition, it should be EASIER to pass the Bechdel Test, not harder…
