Tor.com has the full text of my speech at the World Fantasy Awards banquet. Below is an excerpt:
Weird Tales had women poets, a woman editor named Dorothy McIlwraith, women readers who had their letters printed in the magazine. There were women writing for other pulps, for the earlier Dime Novels, lots of them. Including African American Pauline Hopkins, whose fantasy adventure novel appeared in a magazine in 1903.
These women were there, they existed. Everybody knew that, up until somehow they didn’t. We know there were LGBT and non-binary pulp writers, too, but their identities are hidden by time and the protective anonymity of pseudonyms.
Secrets are about suppression, and history is often suppressed by violence, obscured by cultural appropriation, or deliberately destroyed or altered by colonization, in a lingering kind of cultural gaslighting. Wikipedia defines “secret history” as a revisionist interpretation of either fictional or real history which is claimed to have been deliberately suppressed, forgotten, or ignored by established scholars.
That’s what I think of when I hear the words “secret histories.” Histories kept intentionally secret and histories that were quietly allowed to fade away.
If there is only one thing you read today - read this.
“Lovely,” they would say, and sometimes they wanted to take me home and admire me in private. Before I got involved with godlings, I would let them, if I felt lonely enough. “You’re beautiful, Oree,” they would whisper as they positioned and posed and polished me. “If only–”
I never asked them to complete this sentence. I knew what they almost said: if only you didn’t have those eyes.
–The Broken Kingdoms, N. K. Jemisin
Don’t tell me I never reblogged this?! Apparently I didn’t. Still love it.
Leading landscape photographers Diane Cook and Len Jenshel present Wise Trees—a stunning photography book containing more than 50 historical trees with remarkable stories from around the world.
Supported by grants from the Expedition Council of the National Geographic Society, Cook and Jenshel spent two years traveling to fifty-nine sites across five continents to photograph some of the world’s most historic and inspirational trees. Trees, they tell us, can live without us, but we cannot live without them. Not only do trees provide us with the oxygen we breathe, food gathered from their branches, and wood for both fuel and shelter, but they have been essential to the spiritual and cultural life of civilizations around the world.
spookphantom asked: Crack AU where Anakin can all of a sudden hear the background music that we all hear. Those pleasant chats with Palpy become a lot more ominous. Though Anakin admits that the fights have become a lot more epic. Thoughts?
And okay, my first though was “and the galaxy was saved because even Anakin Skywalker would struggle to keep trusting Palpatine with that music playing in the background”
Anakin think he’s gone COMPLETELY insane (maybe he’s finally been electrocuted too many times and its fried his brain). He doesn’t tell anyone though because he can still fight just fine just… everything is a lot more musical. He doesn’t want to be thought crazy and taken off the front lines.
Once he figures out what the various musical cues mean he actually finds them useful in figuring out how dangerous a situation is. Also battles are so much cooler now and boring landscapes are slightly less boring because at least now they have mood music. Yep, he can live with this.
(Although he is always confused why the ominousness that is The Imperial March starts playing at some of his decisions)
*cracks up*
Anakin: I’m so worried about something. I should probably keep my feelings to myself and attempt to solve my problems by working with Palpatine. He seems like he has my best interests at heart.
Music: DUN DUN DUN, DUN DA-DUN, DUN DA-DUN!
Anakin: [pauses] [looks around] Uh…OK. I mean, I’ll…go talk to Obi-Wan?
Music: [hopeful woodwind instruments]
Anakin: …and be open and honest about my life and what is bothering me, and try to work out a non-violent resolution to my problems?
The Force: Son, please… Guess I’m gonna enable the hints menu.
THE HINTS MENU. *dies*
Maybe Obi-Wan hears the music, too, and then the day is saved.
Obi-Wan: [walking away] Welp, guess it’s off to kill Grievous I’m sure Anakin will be fi –
Music: [Duel of the Fates]
Obi-Wan: OMG not this shit again [runs back down the hall towards Anakin]
Anakin: [running back towards Obi-Wan] Obi-Wan I just heard that Ominous Music again and also I secretly married Padme and she’s pregnant and I haven’t slept in 6 days and I keep thinking she’s going to die and I AM FREAKING THE FUCK OUT and if you leave I will 100% end up killing everyone and –
Obi-Wan: – oh my God! OK…it’s OK, I heard my own ominous music a second ago when I was getting ready to leave and so I won’t and we’ll fix th –
Anakin: – I heard mine when I thought about maybe talking to the Chancellor instead of y–
Palpatine: [sidling up behind them smugly] Everything all right, gentlemen?
Music: [scary ass music from the opera scene]
Anakin and Obi-Wan: AHHHH
I randomly thought of this post again today and it made me laugh
For the record in that last line I always pictured them clinging to each other in fear like Shaggy and Scooby:
I attended The Illustration Master Class this year. This was my final image. The assignment I took was a book cover for the third installment of the Binti series by Nnedi Okorafor. The entire experience was a blast and I recommend it for anyone wanting to improve as an illustrator.
"There’s a phrase, “sitzfleisch”, which means just plain sitting on your ass and getting it done. Just showing up for work. My uncle Raphael was a painter, and he used to say, “If the muse is late for work, start without her”. You have to be there. You have to be there, and do it, and grind it out, even when it is grinding and you know you’re probably going to rewrite all this tomorrow."
Watching this (and fearing broken ankles with each loop) I can’t helping thinking about that old quote Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, except backwards and in high heels.
But no, if you watch closely you’ll see she doesn’t even step on the last chair. That means she had to trust that fucker to lift her gently to the ground while he was spinning down onto that chair. That takes major guts. I’d be pissing myself and fearing a broken neck if I were in her place. Kudos to her.
Okay so this is true, but a tiny part of a wider truth.
Ginger Rogers was a FUCKING BADASS. Ignore for a sec the rampant sexism in Hollywood (they once bleached her hair blonde in wardrobe without telling her beforehand), the fact that she fought her whole career against typecasting and stereotyping from fellow actors (Katharine Hepburn famously said of the Astaire/Rogers partnership “she gave him sex. He gave her class” ) for starting out in musicals, and went on to have a career lasting over fifty years, winning a Best Actress Oscar (Kitty Foyle, 1940). But… JUST focusing on the Astaire movies…
Not only did she dance “backwards” in high heels, the dances were a task in themselves. Astaire was an absolute perfectionist and choreographed for himself, so as a younger, less experienced dancer Rogers came in at a disadvantage and worked her ass off to match him.
Then there’s the filming complications… these numbers were filmed in ONE TAKE. So one thing goes wrong and you have to start over. Maybe you make a mistake or maybe your dress flies up because…
Ginger had to contend with her wardrobe. Dancing in heels is the norm at this time, but dancing in a dress designed for cinema cameras… not so much. They were heavy, embellished, uncomfortable, restrictive and cumbersome and essentially a third member of the dance, strapped to the body of one partner.Not only did she have to dance and look good, she had to control the dress too!
Take this routine from Swing Time… (it gets going proper at 1:30ish)
This dress has weights, YES WEIGHTS, sewn in to the hem to make it fly out and create a visual effect. So it’s heavy, it hurts if it hits you, and your partner gets mad if it hits him. So you gotta control it.
Well it turns out all these factors on this set, this particular day aren’t going so well. So you’re doing take after take, here’s no labour laws, so at 4am after 18 hours you’re still going, even though part of the routine requires you to spin up those curved stairs with no rail at high speed….
Okay so now back to those high heels. In Ginger’s autobiography she vividly remembers this night as the night she bled though her shoes. They did so many takes, her feet blistered, bled, and the white satin high heels she was wearing finished he night pink because they were literally full of blood. And still they keep shooting. She keeps dancing.
The take they use in the film is the last. Early hours. Bloody feet. And she spins, acts and bosses out until that last second. Because she was that professional, talented and bloody minded. This is the last set of spins…
So I say once again. Ginger Rogers was a badass.
She did everything Fred Astaire did backwards, in high heels, wearing a 20 pound dress, exhausted, injured and standing in a pool of her own blood. And watching her perform, you would never know.
Spent the weekend at Castle Gaiman relaxing gloriously and working on a Top Sekret art project. This is not the Top Sekret art project; this is Neil on a trampoline.
For my birthday this year, my husband purchased a week of personal training at the local health club. Although I am still in great shape since being a high school football cheerleader, I decided it would be a good idea to go ahead and give it a try.
