My “weekend” is during the week, which has been throwing me off from my old schedule. Also throwing me off: being sick (well, at least it wasn’t allergies!) and visiting Fort Collins. But I’m adapting! While touring the New Belgium Brewery, I discovered sour beer, and spent the drive home (the next day!) grooving to Janelle Monáe’s new album, The Electric Lady. I read X-Men: First Class, Don’t Stop Believin’, and Tessa Masterson Will Go to Prom this week.
Links
There’s going to be a new Sarah Waters next year! I didn’t even know, I feel like a bad blogger and bookseller.
tumblr has appointed Nathan Stewart-Jarrett Newt Scamander in the new Harry Potter film. Your move, WB.
Elementary’s costume designer talks shopping for Joan Watson. I find contemporary costume design almost as interesting as historical or fantastical costume design, since it’s pulling pieces with a character in mind. That’s my own approach to style. (It’s Annie Lennox’s “Little Bird” video up in my head, sartorially speaking.) Anyways, Joan shops at Zara which means we should get totally get married so our Zara pieces can live together in harmony.
Saturday Night Live’s Cecily Strong will be co-anchoring Weekend Update with Seth Meyers and presumably take over the desk after his departure later this year. I love Strong to pieces and she’s perfect for this. (I’d also vote for Nasim Pedrad to be her co-anchor, because Pedrad’s “patiently and condescendingly explaining herself to morons” voice is perfect.) Also, she will do true justice to “Really?!?!” when it inevitably comes.
While I have been having loads of fun hating Wesley on Star Trek: The Next Generation, I find it really sweet and inspiring that Wil Wheaton is such a good sport about it. This post, where a fan brings him one of Wesley’s infamous sweaters at a signing, is a nice moment.
There’s going to be a musical adaptation of Fun Home! Alison Bechdel approves, so I think we’re in good hands.
Iggy Pop will be voicing the Caterpillar in Once Upon a Time in Wonderland. I have really no idea what I’m supposed to do with this information other than transmit it.
Preteen girl seeks funding for her homegrown horror film. As a horror weinie, I can’t even look at that trailer, but supporting the next generation of genre fans and creators is always important!
Malinda Lo crunches the diversity numbers for the last three years of the American Library Association’s Best Fiction for Young Adults list. The results are, unsurprisingly, pretty beige.
Twelve Years a Slave is starting to get very positive buzz. I can’t wait to see it.
Christopher Bird at MightyGodKing ranks the Disney Renaissance films, and puts Mulan in a context I’ve never thought of before.
Shanley explains the proper approach to take when “Finding Out You’re a Sexist, Misogynistic, Homophobic, Classist, Racist Asshole and Hypocrite.” One very important point she makes is that everybody who is trying to rise above these oppressive systems still mess up. I feel like a lot of people are scared away from fighting against this behavior because they see it in themselves, but that’s the point. To think something horrible is not the problem—to act upon it instead of examining why you might be thinking something like that is the problem.
The Toast reminds us that Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman totally did it.
George Takei has created his own YouTube webseries/talk show hybrid, Takei’s Take. It’s like hanging out with your awesome grandpa who really doesn’t like William Shatner.
This quote from Valerie Saiving’s The Human Situation: A Feminine View is a very interesting take on the origin of gender roles. Essentially, a daughter understands, from her infant relationship with her mother, that she, one day, will become a “mother” (an adult woman) because her body will simply move forward in that direction. A son, however, must define himself against his mother, and Saiving argues that this need to define against is the source of masculine anxiety and femmephobia.
Showtime’s upcoming Penny Dreadful is a Victorian London-set drama that will feature many classic horror characters. Timothy Dalton will be involved. My heart soars.
This one-page comic is the absolute best response for DC’s call to draw Harley Quinn, a bathtub, and a toaster. This comic is also a good choice.
“Ugh, don’t you have something more important to worry about?” is a very frustrating phrase. tumblr user cuteosphere reminds us that all victories, even small ones, are important.
ABC is considering a Peggy Carter-led spin-off of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. POUND. THE. ALARM.
And Ruth Negga is joining the original show. I loved her in Breakfast on Pluto, so I’m excited to see her join the Marvel universe.
While I do not regret pounding this week’s alarm for Peggy Carter, Disney has announced that ABC will see a miniseries focused on their own version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s Esmeralda—the Roma, snarky, and justice-minded version. This could go really well or really poorly.
At the Toast, Morgan Davies offers up a history of slash that gets at its complex core:
Like most things, fandom and fanfiction are neither inherently good nor bad; they simply are. In many ways the communal vibe of fandom writing spaces is warm, encouraging, and rewarding; fanfiction’s general refusal to play by the rules of capitalism can be refreshing, rendering it a form of pure play and expression rather than work. From another angle, though, the tendency of young women writers to funnel their efforts into this sphere can be seen as a preemptive act of isolation, of self-protection, of avoidance of the much more brutal world of publishing.
A collaborative workshop produced hypothetical profiles of Londoners in 2023. Tim Maughan at Medium wrote a short piece about the day of one profile, a nineteen year old woman who is “zero hours.” She works retail but has to bid on every shift she gets against all comers. It’s spare, disturbing, and well worth a read.
Acqusitions
Purchased: None
Added: Throne of Glass by Sarah J. Mass (via ads on Tor.com)
The Literary Omnivore 
THEY DID NOT. THEY DID NOT. THEY DID NOT. Ugh. They so did not. They so absolutely did not. Gross. They did not. NOW I KNOW why everyone has been asking me this week if Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde had sex, it is because of this Toast article! This Toast article is why! NONSENSE. NONSENSE I SAY. I hate Walt Whitman and I love Oscar Wilde and I will not have this.
I’m excited about Cecily Strong though. She’s good stuff.
These are just the facts, Jenny. 😀
Oh, Cecily Strong. I can just picture the raised/quirked eyebrow at stupid politicians.