Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
I spend most of my time admiring and appreciating Joss Whedon’s writing skills. His feminism I can take or leave, but he’s very talented in the dialogue department: he understands why people like each other, why they love each other. He understands why they care and which parts of a story display humanity. He makes…
Some time in the middle of Avengers: Age of Ultron, I came to terms with the fact that there will never be any more decent Marvel movies. In fact, there can’t be. Some of what I have to say is going to read as genre snobbery. So let me get this out of the way:…
Social Sharing Toolkit v2.2 If you are a white man and you think you do not own one of these books, try looking under your bed, it’s probably there. 1. Shogun, James Clavell 2. Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut 3. A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole 4. Infinite Jest, David Foster Wallace 5. A collection of…
When a retro cartoon/toy property aimed at boys gets the big screen treatment, the studios spend hundreds of millions of dollars bringing that property to life; just look at the budgets for projects like Transformers, G.I. Joe, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Those movies might not be critically loved, or even always loved by the fans…
This image is included in a $7.5 million defamation lawsuit against Rolling Stone. U-Va. associate dean Nicole Eramo argues that an image from the Cavalier Daily student newspaper (left) was turned into an illustration in Rolling Stone (right) that portrayed her as villainous. The original image was of her speaking to U-Va. students in a…
Photo Credit Marvel Entertainment In October, Marvel Comics introduced readers to a new hero: a female Thor. Since then, the identity of the woman wielding Thor’s mighty hammer has been a secret. But that ends on Wednesday when issue No. 8 of the Thor series, written by Jason Aaron and illustrated by Russell Dauterman, goes…
For every 100 black women not in jail, there are only 83 black men. The remaining men – 1.5 million of them – are, in a sense, missing. Among cities with sizable black populations, the largest single gap is in Ferguson, Mo. North Charleston, S.C., has a gap larger than 75 percent of cities. This…
Look at these angry tweets sent to the director and screenwriter Joss Whedon, the man behind both Avengers movies, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a host of other beloved geek properties. @josswhedon OINK OINK YOU MISOGYNIST PIG — dickwing (@achiIIcs) May 4, 2015 I’m so glad @josswhedon won’t be around to fuck up avengers anymore….
The history of Marvel Merchandise’s long, confusing and mostly terrible history with Black Widow’s presence on toy shelves is exactly that: long, confusing, and mostly terrible. But never fear, true believers — somehow toy-based representation of Black Widow can get even worse! Wait, what? Remember that shot of Natasha riding her motorbike out of the…
Every jobs report there remains a cohort of people who say, “There’s still no evidence of wage growth, and plenty of evidence that lots of labor slack remains.” It’s based primarily on these three charts. 1) Average Hourly Earnings (I prefer to use the series with production and nonsupervisory employees since the data goes back farther):…