Creepy Children’s Programming Reviews: #SHERA AND THE PRINCESSES OF POWER

On November 26, 2018November 25, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting, Television4 Comments

Y’all.

I had He-Man toys as a kid. I grew up in the eighties; it was inevitable. I didn’t really pay a hell of a lot of attention to She-Ra because … well, I was a boy. And She-Ra was for girls. I also watched the He-Man cartoon, and I have very detailed memories of being very angry with WGN because at some point or another they chose to commit the cardinal sin of pre-empting an episode of He-Man with a Cubs game.

I don’t think I ever watched the She-Ra cartoon. I remember that she said “For the honor of Greyskull” instead of “By the power of Greyskull,” but I think that’s cultural osmosis and not an actual memory. I could not have told you the names of a single member of her supporting cast prior to this week.

Honestly, I only decided to watch the show because it seemed to be pissing off a bunch of whiny manbaby manchildren, and I like it when those people’s feelings are hurt. If that makes me a bad person, I can live with it.

I probably shouldn’t even make this part of the CCPR series, y’all, because I loved every second of this show. The three of us watched the first two episodes together and we had to force our son to go to bed at his bedtime because he wanted to stay up and watch more. We watched the other eleven episodes in two big gulps over the next couple of days. This is absolutely 100% unequivocally the best show I’ve ever done one of these pieces on, and I’m only not calling it my favorite animated series of all time because I feel like the second I hit Publish on this piece I’ll remember what my favorite animated series really is and I’ll feel dumb.

I’m not gonna lie: a large portion of my affection for this show is somewhat political. I love what this show is as much as how it is what it is. But before I get into that, I want to be super clear about something: the show is hilarious and touching and action-packed and the voice acting is superb and even before we get into any of the representation issues it’s a great show. My son loved it so much that he’s created his own characters inspired by the show and he’s been drawing comic books about them and creating statues of them in Minecraft all day. My son does not love the show because of politics. My son loves the show because it’s awesome.

To wit: when She-Ra first turns Swift Wind, her horse, into a … pegacorn? Unisus? Rainbow horned wing-beast thing, the horse’s reaction to its new wings and horn had all three of us laughing so hard we could barely breathe. Sea Hawk’s insistence on setting his ships on fire was a running joke that never got any less funny. The relationship between She-Ra and Catra– an invention of the new series, from my understanding– is complex and heartbreaking, especially for a show where friendship is such an important theme, and it feels real. Adora’s fish-out-of-water reaction to … well, virtually everything after leaving the Horde is great. I love even the minor characters, with Mermista, Entrapta and Scorpia being particular favorites. The animation style, which got a lot of unnecessary abuse, is exactly appropriate for the show, and the facial expressions are worthy of The Amazing World of Gumball. It’s phenomenal, all the way through.

But yeah. Let’s talk about the cast. This is what She-Ra’s cast of characters used to look like:

I mean, the two on the outside are both purple…

This is what the cast of the new show looks like:

So straight off the jump we’re in a better place here. The cast of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power is deliberately and intentionally diverse, both in the appearances of the characters and the actual voice cast. Glimmer is actually kinda chubby, and Spinnerella is flat-out fat,and it’s never once remarked upon by any of the characters. That’s just what they look like. It’s heavy on women characters, as a show with the words Princesses of Power might be expected to be, but it’s not just a palette swap with typical cartoons, where the women have less agency and less characterization. Bow may be the only male of the three principals with Adora and Glimmer, but he’s a solid character on his own right and his relationship with Sea Hawk is hilarious.

(A moment, please, to just appreciate the He-Man style of naming characters. This show features a sorceress character called Castaspella, mercifully called “Casta” most of the time, and a character who throws nets whose name is Netossa. And in case “Netossa” is too subtle for you, she actually explains it onscreen. The character named Perfuma is once represented by some random object while the group is making a plan and she insists on being represented by a perfume bottle. The names are ridiculous.)

And, oh, guys, it’s so gay. So very very very very very very very gay.

This show is so gay it makes Queer Eye look like 19 Kids and Counting.

Bow wears a midriff with a heart on it. At one point he needs to wear a tuxedo for a ball. His tuxedo has a cummerbund on it. He tears off the cummerbund so he can continue to rock his abs in his formalwear at the ball. Which he attends with a girl, but oh my God his reaction when he realizes Sea Hawk is there.

The bad guys are literally wiped away by a giant rainbow wave of love in the final episode.

Spoiler alert, I guess. I mean, if you didn’t know the good guys win at the end of the season. You probably coulda guessed.

Oh, and the goddamn horse ends up being a socialist.

You need to watch this show. If that means you need to get Netflix, do it. It’s great. I can’t wait for the second season. Neither can my seven-year-old son. If my recommendation doesn’t work for you, take his.

REBLOG: Open Letter to My Fellow Geeks, by Kate Chaplin

On July 19, 2016July 19, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

I met Kate at Starbase Indy last year– we were booth buddies. You need to read this.

Kate Chaplin

My Fellow Geeks,

We need to have a conversation.

Growing up in the 1980’s geeks and nerds were not popular at school, in film, or in pop culture. Films like Revenge of the Nerds and Weird Science showed geeks and nerds as outcasts, misunderstood and perpetually destined to live in mom’s basement and make robot women.

Steadfastly, we found heroes in our nerdom. Characters we could relate to whether geeky like Val Kilmer in Real Genius, heroic like Superman, or business savvy like Steve Jobs. We found a kinship with them, many times alone, sometimes with a few trusted friends.

We dreamed of the day we’d be accepted. When it would be okay to love comics, video games and sci-fi. When the bullying would stop. But something happened…

Geek culture became pop culture. Geeks became celebrities in the mainstream. Our beloved comics, books and video games became box office summer…

View original post 1,085 more words

On reading and books and 2016

On December 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading1 Comment

51yHchbYJTL._SX373_BO1,204,203,200_ A couple of things: first, The Sanctum of the Sphere is free today at Amazon. Have some other e-reader? Email me or leave a comment (you have to provide an email address for that anyway) and ask for a copy for whatever your device is. No problem!

Second: my Top 10 New(*) Books I Read in 2015 post is coming soon. Previous editions are here and here. I’m probably going to wait until after Christmas, but since I’m into my mostly-annual Lord of the Rings reread and therefore nothing on it is likely to change, if I end up with nothing to say sometime this week I’ll get it done earlier. One way or another, coming soon.

Third: I’ve read 99 books in 2015 so far, and it’ll probably be 101-102 by the end of the year. 37% of those books were by women or people of color. I’ve been interested in increasing the number of books by women/POC that I’m reading, mostly as a way to find new authors, and I’ve been going back and forth on how exactly I was going to do that, from “I will read no books by cishet white men during X months in 2016” to trying to set an arbitrary number, and now I think I’ve come up with a slightly softer method: I’m going to double that percentage in 2016. Slightly more than that, actually, as my goal for this next year will be that 75% of the books I read will be by women or people of color. I think white gay or trans men will probably count too, but as I don’t intend to do research into the sexual presentation/orientation of the writers I read, unless I somehow already know someone is gay I don’t think it’s going to add too many books to the total.

Probably easier to just say I’m limiting cishet white guys to 25% of my reading and leave it at that. The main reason I’m not doing a blanket ban, either for all or part of the year, is that I follow a fair number of indie authors, and I don’t feel like carving out an exception so that I can read Book 5 of The Yellow Hoods when it comes out. Easier to just say “I’m going to double how many I read” and leave it at that.

New books only, by the way. Rereads aren’t counting toward the total.

Do you have any reading goals for next year?

While I’m lecturing all the white people…

On November 7, 2015November 7, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

Had this conversation on Facebook yesterday, regarding this story, in my Bruce Banner alter ego, which is why it’s all censored to hell. I’m in blue and she, a former student, is in black. This is why representation is important, guys. This is why #weneeddiversebooks is important. Right here:

Screen_Shot_2015-11-07_at_7_38_20_AM

Just sayin’. And now I gotta find a way for Jayashree to survive that fight. 🙂

On #WeNeedDiverseBooks, chicken, and Lent

On March 16, 2015March 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics, Reading7 Comments

Got into an interesting conversation on Twitter tonight (I’m writing this Sunday night to pop on Monday morning) and I feel the need to expand on my thoughts a little bit without the restriction of 140 characters, especially since the thread quickly expanded to include four different Twitter handles, and actually talking got kinda difficult quickly.

You can hit up my Twitter stream if you want all the details, but this is the Tweet that caught my attention. I’m stripping the username out of it because the guy was being reasonable and polite the whole time and I’m not writing this to dump on him– plus, again, my Twitter feed is literally to the right of this post anyway if you want to go looking.

The original post was a question:

My only question to you two is this: is it wrong to discriminate against authors based on gender and race?

A bit of background is perhaps necessary: While I am not completely certain where the hashtag campaign originated, it blew up right around the time this article by K. T. Bradford was published at XOJane. The headline for the article really tells you everything you need to know: I Challenge You to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for One Year.

A couple things on that.

1) I am a white, straight, cis male author.
2) I like it when people read my books. I like it more when they read my books via sending me money for them.
3) You should absolutely do this challenge if you’re remotely interested in it, even though it means you won’t be reading any of my books for a year. Although you could decide to start it in May, right after you finish reading The Sanctum of the Sphere.

Is it wrong to discriminate against authors based on gender and race?

Yes. Discrimination is wrong.

However, and this is real goddamn important: DECIDING TO NOT READ SOMEONE’S WORK IS NOT DISCRIMINATING AGAINST THEM. That’s first and foremost. Absolutely nogoddamnbody anywhere owes an author a read of their books. I don’t owe it to anyone to read their books. None of you owe it to me to read my books unless you are my momma or my wife, and even they probably don’t really have to if they don’t want to. As a reader, in order to read your books I have to invest both a) my money and b) my time, which is far more valuable to me. You are not entitled to either of those things.

As a writer, I am similarly not entitled to either of those things from my readers. It takes a special kind of blindness to one’s own privilege to see “I don’t want to give you my money or my time” and interpret it as discrimination. That is not remotely what that word means and you absolutely cannot even begin to think that way unless you believe (and you may not even realize you believe it) that you are somehow entitled to the time and money of other people. It’s simply not true at all.

Furthermore: nowhere does K.T. Bradford say you should never read books by white, straight, cis male authors again. She explicitly challenges her readers to stop reading writers of that persuasion for a year. Even if you could claim discrimination if someone was trying to talk people out of buying your work based on some immutable physical characteristic of yours, your already-bad-and-wrong case gets even weaker when the time-limited aspect is added in. This is not, to use a food metaphor, never eat a cheeseburger again. This is try some goddamn chicken once in a while.

This is, in fact, basically the book version of Lent. A lot of y’all are Christians, right? So maybe you gave up something for Lent. It’s ludicrous to decree that you are discriminating against gambling, or chocolate, or Coke Zero or masturbation or whatever by giving it up for a few months. You’re denying yourself something you like, yes, and maybe a really good candy bar might debut during that forty days or however long Lent is, but it’ll still be there after Lent. And maybe in the meantime you’ll have discovered that you really enjoy playing handball instead of gambling, or eating roasted brussels sprouts instead of chocolate, or vodka instead of Coke Zero, or self-flagellation instead of masturbating. Once Lent is over, you can go right back to those other things– only now you’ve discovered all this other stuff that you like too! Maybe you’ll discover something you liked even more than chocolate!

How would you have known that if you never tried?

Now, all that said: I am not participating in this challenge. I already try to keep an eye out for writers of color and women writers, and if I remember right three of my four top books for the last two years were not by white males, so I’m clearly doing something right. I bought Django Wexler’s first book at least partially because I assumed that being named Django meant he was black, and I still think he’s cheating. I am, in fact, reading The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison right now, and I’m about halfway through it and it’s spectacular. Do I say this so that you’ll give me a cookie? No. I say this to point out that by looking out for the occasional Saladin Ahmed or Helene Wecker or Bill Campbell or Nnedi Okorafor or Ann Leckie or whoever, I’m already getting cookies. And cookies are delicious and you should eat more of them, even if it means that sometimes you’re too full for yet another baked potato.

Hmm.

I may, at some point in this post, have overmixed a metaphor.

tl;dr: Quit being silly, white guys.

10 awesome fictional females

On July 25, 2014July 25, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized23 Comments

I think I’ve stolen this idea from someone, but I’ve been kicking it around in my head for over a month now and have completely lost where it came from. Despite thinking about it for a month, I’m still pretty sure I’ve forgotten about someone.

This list is in no particular order.

1. Leia Organa, STAR WARS

This will surprise no one, and shouldn’t. And no, not because of the slave bikini. Okay, maybe a little because of the slave bikini. Honestly, the Leia of the later Star Wars books has always been more interesting to me than the Leia of the movies, because they move away from “Princess” Leia and more into “uber-competent intergalactic diplomat, badass Jedi grandmother Leia” who is way more interesting. Rhundi from The Benevolence Chronicles is at least a little bit based on this later Leia, although Rhundi is less of a politician than Leia is.

2. Ellen Ripley, ALIEN franchise

Also from the “should surprise no one” category, and in fact the first name I came up with when writing this. Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley should have killed the idea that women can’t carry action films stone cold goddamned dead after Aliens. She was even good in the bad Alien franchise movies.

Honorable mention here goes to Dana Barrett from Ghostbusters, which is actually my favorite movie with Sigourney Weaver in it, and Gwen DiMarco from Galaxy Quest, which is probably Weaver’s most underrated role. But Ripley is easily her most iconic and her best role, and certainly her best character.

3. Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER

Yes, both of them; my blog post and I get to set the rules. Truth be told I think I prefer Willow slightly to Buffy; the character has a more interesting arc over the course of the show (and the episode pictured in the picture here was at least a minor part of the evolution of that character arc) but they both belong together. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is my favorite television series of all time, basically, right up there with M*A*S*H, and I miss the hell out of it. I’ve never been able to get into the comics or the books, both of which are still coming out, at least partially because I hated Angel so much toward the end and I refuse to admit that anyone from that show is still alive. But it wouldn’t take much to get me to read more about Buffy or Willow.

4. Zoe Washburne, FIREFLY

Do you know what the definition of a hero is? Someone who gets other people killed. You can look it up later.

Why not, stick with the Whedonverse for number four. I love all of the characters in Firefly, but Zoe was the glue that held the rest of the cast together, and I wish to hell she’d gotten her own TV series somehow. Or a movie. Or anything, really. Where she brings Wash back from the dead with the sheer power of her own awesomeness, because I’m still pissed off that Wash is dead. If I ever meet Joss Whedon I’m going to hug him and then punch him in the mouth and tell him that was for Wash, and then while his security guys are hauling me away and beating me up I’m going to try and kick him and tell him that was for Tara from Buffy.

Joss is a dick, is what I’m getting at here, but Zoe was an amazing character and I wish I’d had more chances to see more of her.

5. Pepper Potts, IRON MAN

Little-known fact: for most of the existence of the character, Pepper Potts and Tony Stark were not an item. In fact, over the 40-some-odd years since the character debuted (created by Stan Lee, by the way) she has spent almost all but the last seven or eight married to someone else. Pepper was always interesting to me because she was immune to Tony’s bullshit; the womanizing aspects of the Stark character just bounced off of her. Pepper was what kept Stark Industries moving when Tony was either off fighting bad guys or just being a drunken idiot, and when she finally got her own armor for a little while (I’m actually not sure if the Rescue persona is still a thing; I don’t think it really is) it felt like something the character had earned. (Incidentally, random Iron Man note: they’re making a big deal about Thor becoming a woman and Captain America being a black guy; Iron Man has already been a woman and a black guy and he did both in the eighties. So they’re making him an asshole instead. Sigh.)

6. Monica Rambeau/Captain Marvel/Spectrum/Whatever (Marvel comics)

Monica Rambeau doesn’t get enough credit. Hell, Monica Rambeau can’t even keep a proper superhero name. She’s been one of the umpteen Captains Marvel, she was… Photon, for a while, I think? and now she’s Spectrum. Here’s what you need to know about her: She has led the Avengers. You know how they complain about there not being enough women and people of color in comic books and in comic book movies? Monica Rambeau led the goddamn Avengers. And not the cheap-ass West Coast or Great Lakes offshoot teams. (I kid. I love the Whackos unreservedly.) No, she was in charge of the honest-to-goodness Actual East Coast God Damn Avengers, and she should have had three movies by now.

Okay, choosing a panel from Nextwave was probably kinda disrespectful, but god I laughed like an asshole when I first read that comic.

7. Éowyn, THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

“I am no man.”

Understand something: I have read The Lord of the Rings at least once a year since I was in second grade. I have the inscription on the ring tattooed on my left leg. I have bits of the book memorized. And the one thing that the movies did not get to fuck up was Éowyn’s reveal in The Return of the King. I was terrified going in that they were going to give that scene to Arwen, since they’d made such a big deal of pumping up her role in the rest of the movies. I would have burned down the goddamn theater.

Took down the Witch King. By her damn self. Badass.

Éowyn maybe should be higher on the list.

8. Arya Stark, A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

I’ve been rreeeaallll vocal about my unhappiness with the later A Song of Ice and Fire books, right? And I’m not happy with them. Not at all. ASoIaF has degenerated more severely than any other mega-series I can remember reading, and as a lifelong science fiction and fantasy fan I have read a lot of them.

Finding out what happens with Arya– and maybe, maybe Tyrion, although absolutely nothing remotely interesting happened with him in the last book– is one of the very few things still keeping me invested in this series. It is entirely possible that when The Winds of Winter finally comes out in 2028 that I will just read the Arya chapters and then give the book to my wife.

Maisie Williams is pretty fucking awesome, too.

9. Lyra Silvertongue, HIS DARK MATERIALS

This is fan art, I think; I decided that since the His Dark materials movie series so seriously screwed up the books (unavoidable, unfortunately, if they wanted it to sell any tickets– and they still didn’t sell any tickets) I needed to find a picture of Lyra that wasn’t from the movie. The interesting thing is I’m not sure how to talk about her other than to say that you need to read the Dark Materials books right now so that you can learn about Lyra and how awesome she is. I love these books unreservedly; a snippet from the third one was actually read at my wedding, and I keep trying to come up with a way to make a good tattoo out of a compass, a knife, and a spyglass.

10. Hermione Granger, HARRY POTTER

Hermione was the best thing about the Harry Potter books. Everyone knows that, right?

Okay, good.

Honorable Mentions: Scarlett O’Hara (GONE WITH THE WIND), Katniss Everdeen (THE HUNGER GAMES,) Lady Polgara (THE BELGARIAD), She-Hulk (Marvel Comics), Barbara Gordon (DC Comics), Mara Jade Skywalker (STAR WARS), and no doubt any number of others I’m forgetting.

Review: THE BONE FLOWER THRONE

On May 24, 2014May 24, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews6 Comments

#WeNeedDiverseBooks and a few other related hashtags have been trending on Twitter lately among the circle of people I follow; mostly writers. The impression that I’ve gotten is that the hashtag is primarily directed at literature for very young readers and pre-readers, but there’s no reason it has to be; all segments of literature benefit from diversity– diversity of authors, diversity of publishers, and diversity of subject material.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you T. L. Morganfield’s The Bone Flower Throne, the only book I have ever read set in tenth-century Mexico. And not for lack of trying– this book was a blind order based on a Big Idea piece at Scalzi’s blog, so it was ordered based on the setting, the cover, and a maybe 500-word introductory piece by the author.

Check this one out, folks. The Bone Flower Throne is on my shortlist for best books of the year right now; it’s got it all– compelling characters, a fantastic setting, interesting villains, errythang. I’m generally not a huge fan of historical fiction but when I like it I tend to like it a lot; Morganfield either did an immense amount of research into Toltec society or did a magnificent job faking it, which for my purposes is functionally the same thing. There are two more books coming in the series and they’ll be day-one orders when they show up.

My only complaint is not really a complaint, more of a warning: names in this book tend to be… tricky. To start, most of the characters have two or three of ’em: an Aztec name (such as Quetzalpetlatl or Topiltzin), a translated name (Little Reed or Smoking Mirror) and sometimes they have nicknames or ceremonial names or their names change at pivotal parts in the story. It means that keeping track of everybody can be more than a little bit challenging at times, especially since the Aztec names are all going to be long and complicated and hard to pronounce for a lot of people. Also, to keep you from needing Wikipedia: a tlaxcalli is a tortilla. 🙂

Five stars. Check it out.

Grab-baggery

On April 24, 2014April 25, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Teaching, Writing3 Comments

If you follow science fiction or fantasy literature at all, you may be aware of the current kerfluffle over the Hugo awards. Or perhaps kerfluffles, as there appear to be more than one.

“Kerfluffle” is a fun word, and I feel like it should have a more fun plural. I think I’ll nominate kerfluffen.

Anyway. I almost got a supporting membership to WorldCon, which allows you to vote in the current year and nominate in the next year, last year. The current unpleasantness oddly intensified my desire to be part of it– funny, that– and I shelled out my 25 euros yesterday (this year’s WorldCon is in London) to buy a supporting membership so that I can get the nomination packet and I can vote.

Note the price is in euros. My card was declined. “Oh, right,” I thought; “my silly little local bank probably doesn’t wanna buy shit what’s in Europe with my debit card.” So I switched cards and bought it with another card. No biggie.

Until I got the call this afternoon that they’d detected fraudulent activity on my card and were considering putting a hold on future transactions unless I called them and straightened shit out.

Which I just did, dutifully. I appreciate the service; I normally don’t buy shit from London in non-Americadollars and I’m good with my bank noticing and sending up a trial balloon when I do. So I called the number and got a computer asking me to verify certain recent transactions. I confirmed that the Europe charge was me and then they asked me about the (also online, but not in Europe) charge for the book cover, which I bought the same night.

And got the name of the company wrong. Which… huh. I was literally sitting in front of my computer looking at my bank website so I noticed it.

Is this, like, a gotcha or something? The name they gave me was close to the actual company name but it wasn’t exactly right. Am I supposed to say no right now?

I thought about it and said that, no, I hadn’t authorized that charge.

Hint: don’t do that.

They dumped me to a person who was not terribly convinced that I was who I said I was. And it took several more minutes of talking and cajoling before I managed to convince him that 1) Yes, I was me; 2) Yes, I’d authorized the charge in London; 3) yes, I’d also authorized the charge to the book cover folks, but that they’d fucked up the name of the company and that was why I’d said no, and not because a book-cover company representative was, like, holding a gun to my head for my seventy bucks or anything like that.

Sigh.

Yesterday’s fun was the ISTEP Practice Test. Which is nearly an hour of kids sitting in front of computers and having standardized instructions read at them, for stuff they’ve already done and know how to do. They have to have taken the practice test to be eligible for the actual ISTEP next week. Non-negotiable. And I had to be the asshole reading the instructions. I’ll let you imagine just how good seventh and eighth graders are at sitting quietly listening to an hour of instructions about something that is already insanely boring. I’ll also let you imagine how patient I was with their bullshit by, say, the third time I’d wasted an entire two-period block of class time (the week before ISTEP, mind you) on meaningless nonsense.

And then I’ll let you imagine the fucking internet going out for half an hour during the second test.

I’m expecting next week to be a horrorshow again, just like last year. But we’ll see.

On the writing end of things, I’m completing two stories right now and strongly considering massive revisions to BA #5, which you guys have already seen. The version on the website is admittedly first-draft (if you pay close attention, one character’s name changes partway through, and I think at least one temporally impossible thing happens) and wanted an editing pass anyway, but I’m thinking about some fairly major character-level revisions here. Most of it came from reading the piece Scalzi linked to above that referenced the “Diversity Era” of science fiction. The Benevolence Archives are basically a male buddy story, and are wanting for some gender diversity at the very least. (There has been only one human character in any of the stories, and his race wasn’t specified, so right now I’m not so concerned about racial diversity.) One of the stories you haven’t seen is entirely about Rhundi, but she doesn’t have quite the pull that the two main dudes have. So I want to work on that a little bit. Fun stuff. I like it when I’m actually writing.