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[personal profile] labingi
I have started some book recommendations lists at Bookshop.org. I currently have lists for:

* Genre fiction I love for character and relationship depth.
* Genre fiction I love for being thought provoking.
* Ecological genre fiction recommendations.

So far, these lists include my old standby titles, but I'm hoping to expand them (as I'm hoping to actually get back into reading again!).
labingi: (Default)
[personal profile] labingi
Continuing to take some moments off from living through fascism to fangirl over Arcane, I want to discuss Arcane’s worldbuilding around gender. (Of possible interest to [personal profile] inhiding.) It does the common fantasy trope of presenting what would logically be a patriarchy as essentially gender egalitarian, but it is uncommon in doing a fairly good job selling it; at least, I buy it enough to suspend my disbelief, which is a high compliment. Possible spoilers for S1 and S2 behind the cut; warning for talk about violence and sexual violence.Read more... )
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[personal profile] labingi
Note: This post is about the work, not the author. The author is relevant to the work, but this post is about something other than his actions and their gender implications in the work. I mostly discuss the show but reference the graphic novels. I like the show overall a lot and will discuss that more in another post; this one is just about race.

As was typical of the 1990s, the Sandman graphic novels are pretty white. For their time, they’re not clueless about showing racial diversity, but their handling of race needed updating for the show. Unfortunately, the show’s attempts to be anti-racist strike me as simplistic. Their approach is to take several characters who were white and cast them with Black people. That’s it; that’s the whole approach. This misses two crucial points about race:

1) There are more races than white and Black.

2) Systemic white supremacy is not just about centering white people; it’s about centering white culture.

General Spoilers for Season 2 and the graphic novel equivalent followRead more... )