LHF 2.1: "Homecoming Costumes"

In which Anneka and Will put on very silly clothes, which somehow has to do with going home. 

Twilight, the wish fulfillment

Several weeks before Breaking Dawn crawls out of the coffin [August 2, baayyyyybeeee!], New York Times columnist Gail Collins examines the appeal of the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer. Jessica Valenti and Courtney Martin, both of Feministing, a blog I check frequently, provide input. Valenti and Martin observe that lusty and repressed Edward represents a chaste and non-threatening affection, sexually speaking. [We won't address the fact that his emotionally manipulative and controlling acts make him a prime example of an abusive personality.] His cuddly sexlessness represents one extreme that today's teen girls are pulled toward. 

Courtney Martin, the author of “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters,” spends a lot of time on college campuses and says students seem to be torn between anonymous sex and monogamy — “either hooking up with no expectations or you’re basically married. You stay home and watch movies.” 

The implication is that a balance should be struck, that young women who are growing up and exploring their sexuality should not be bound to emotionally involving but sexless chastity or anonymous, promiscuous activity without emotional connection. Ideally, these young women should find sexual identities that incorporate both human drives to be understood and get laid. The Twilight series, with its extreme insistence on sexual repression, does no justice to the variety of human experience. And this is only one of the reasons it's so bad.

Late to the game about the racist New Yorker cover

This is what I have to say about the racist, sexist New Yorker cover portraying Barack and Michelle Obama as militant Islamic [?] terrorists: 

1. It's only satire if it's obvious to intelligent, discerning viewers that it's satire. Intelligent, discerning viewers at Feministing and Michelle Obama Watch [and other blogs rounded up by MOW] do not, at the very least, think it's obvious. If it's satire, then it's bad satire. It hits the rim of the SATIRE basket and falls into the trash heap.

2. Privileged people hardly ever make innocent fun of people who do not have a certain privilege. Whatever its actual editorial make-up, the New Yorker represents dead white male power; so the cover represents dead white male power making fun of African-American people. Since dead white male power and all those who support it have a long, sordid history of making fun of African-American people, this cover joins that tradition of sexist, racist bigotry.

I E-mailed the New Yorker and the cartoonist [Barry Blitt] with the above message, which will do exactly shit.

EDIT: HAH! Blitt's mailbox is full. Looks like he's being roundly criticized [and probably praised from some quarters] by many others.

Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior, Oracle's Queen -- all by Lynn Flewelling

The Bone Doll's Twin, Hidden Warrior and Oracle's Queen, all by Lynn Flewelling, have an unusual premise for your standard Training of the Fantasy Prince trilogy. Prince in question is actually a princess who, through the help of necromancy suffered shortly after birth, has appropriated the body and likeness of her dead twin brother.

( Critical details within. )

On the level of an adventure fantasy, this trilogy works well. High points include universally appealing characters and an appealingly matter-of-fact treatment of both magic and ghosts. As a ghost story and/or a transgender story, the trilogy, for all its interest in matters ghostly and transgender, doesn't do so well. While making central the subjects of spirits and transgender identity, Flewelling ultimately uses them as unusual, skillfully rendered, but uninsightful, plot points. Good fantasy.