Internet Readalong

[effex]

My laptop died in the middle of organizing Friday's link spam, which was exciting. It needs a new battery, which has been sent away for, and my internet presence will be a little sporadic in the meantime (...okay, so I still have my work computer, my home desktop system, and my ipod. But it's just not the same!).

This is abbreviated and not nearly everything I wanted to post but. I suspect it would have been kind of overwhelming and also overly cranky, so. Links!

* An update and comprehensive timeline on the Neil Gaiman thing by Deb over at American Indians in Children's Literature.

* And while we're talking about fail and references to Native Americans, did you know James Cameron is... I don't even know what to call him. Aside from an ignorant, appropriative douchebag. Who thinks that if the Lakota had only fought harder when they were 'asked to displace' they wouldn't have all these problems now. The Lakota.

And a couple more while we're on the theme:

* LINKAGE: The Feather In Your “Native” Cap on Threadbared: In the last few weeks, several writers have tackled the concatenation of concerns surrounding “native appropriations” in so-called hipster fashions.

* Feminist Intersection: On hipsters/hippies and Native culture on Racialiciious

* Feathers and Fashion: Native American is in Style on Sociological Images

* deepad posts an Open Letter to Charlie Tan (his response and her response to his response linked at the end): I do not understand how you can consider writers to be a proletariat worthy of defending against the elite excesses of their readers. Racefail was primarily about the impact of books on readers and how we saw the world, whether we aspired to write ourselves or not. Critiquing a book's faults because we find it hurtful, offensive, unresearched or otherwise lacking in craftsmanship is something we do in our free time, without payment, out of a sense of community with others who may have struggled against the same issues. To demand that such criticism place the needs of supporting authors above our own needs as readers devalues us.

* antumbral has a good summery of what, exactly, LJ is doing to your outbound links and why you should be upset about it.

* Relatedly, stepps has posted the amazingly comprehensive What to do with Dreamwidth: a list of tutorials and information

And finally, Roger Ebert vs Every Video Game Ever:

* Last year, Kellee Santiago gave a TedTalk at TEDxUSC about how of course video games are an art form (or capable of being an art form), can we please move this discussion forward?

* On April 16th, Roger Ebert posted Video games can never be art in response.

* Kellee Santiago replied with My Response To Roger Ebert, Video Game Skeptic

* Penny Arcade has an excellent summery of the whole thing here.

Okay, finally x2 via rm:

Deb Mensinger needs a new liver, because hers has been destroyed by a genetic form of porphyria. The hope is that Deb's brother will be able to be the live donor (livers are awesome that way). However, Deb's brother lives on the opposite coast and is uninsured, which means there are a lot of expenses involved in all of this that Deb's insurance won't pick up.

So a fandom auction is stepping in to help Deb, her wife (Laurie J. Marks, author of the Elemental Logic series, the Children of the Triad series, The Watcher's Mask, and Dancing Jack, and guest of honor at WisCon 31) and her brother. The auction will open for bidding on May 1, but right now we need people to offer things to bid on! Please visit debsliverlovers to offer items to bid on, and please help spread the word. Thank you!

Nothing to add, except that Laurie J. Marks' Elemental Logic series is fantastic and I suspect her other writing is too.

Comments

[zanzando]

*opens new tabs*

Also lawwwwl Roger Ebert. I'm still a fan of his, but that was just crap.
I find it endlessly funny that he replied to "He's too old to understand." with "They're too young to truly comprehend art.", both of which are extremely specious arguments.
But this is the kind of thing where I'm not up in arms but rather "Eh, thanks for the laugh, mate" about it. *shrugs*
I even considered his underlying argument, but saying that it never *could* be art is ignorant.

[effex]

Yeah, it's nothing to angst over - not even Ebert is gonna win this fight (because he is wrong, wrong, wrong).

[elspethdixon]

I don't even play video games, but I don't know how someone could look at the visuals for some of them and see anything but art. Does it somehow not count because it's CGI instead of hand-drawn animation or film?

I've been trying to get my hands on Mark's Fire Logic for ages, but my local bookstore doesn't ever have it in stock. They did once, and I looked at the cover (which I later found out was white-washed) and thought "generic ancient-European-setting fantasy" and put it back on the shelf. Then I kicked myself repeated when I found out it had LGBT content, went back, and discovered that someone else had bought it.

[effex]

Man, I do not even know - I mean, it's a medium. How can you write of an entire medium? That be like writing off books, or comics, or, idk, ceramics.

Fire Logic is one of my favorite books and, yeah, the entire series is ridiculously hard to physically track down. I picked up Fire Logic and Earth Logic (the second in hardback) at a second hand shop and I'm pretty sure Water Logic is only available over the internet. It's worth it, though!