Let’s real talk: it’s tough being a woman of color. You sit at the intersection of both race and gender, and it’s an ongoing process of negotiating those identities and accepting that both parts can work to disadvantage you in different ways. When it comes to representation in film and TV, it often means having…
Mental Health and Superheroes: The Problem with Labeling Sacrifice as Suicide
Content warning: This article discusses mental health, suicide, and depression. We, the fans, love our fandoms, so much that it’s possible for us to lose sight of the societal and personal impacts of our critical analyses. The past year has been a Thunderdome of fans who like or dislike the approach to characters they love. We’ve…
Stardew Valley: The Political Hotel California of Games
Welcome to An Adventure in Small Games, a monthly series focused on games that cost less than $20, ideally less than $10. In this series, Eve Golden Woods will focus on the indie game and what it has to offer the world of gaming. There will be spoilers. This month Eve takes a look at Stardew Valley.
High Holiday Unhoarding: Spring Cleaning for Passover
It was just Passover, and while other Jews cleansed their houses of bread crumbs, I began to cleanse my life, starting with my room. It’s spring, the standard time for cleaning, and never before has it been so essential that I start taking cleaning seriously.
When Romance Comics Hated Women
When I was a teenager and first reading poetry, I inherited (basically stole) my mum’s copy of The Penguin Book of Love Poetry. It’s from the 1970s, has her name written in the front in blue pen, and the cover focuses on a detail from Bronzino’s Allegory with Venus and Cupid. Here’s a photo of…
Supermoms: Martyred, Fridged, Forgotten
Mother’s Day is a day we celebrate the woman (or women) in our lives that fulfill the role of “mother.” Mothers—the good and the bad ones—are an important part of our lives. Moms that worry about what media teaches their children, what superheroes are really super, and so much more. Mothers are important; their absence…
Iron Woman: Natasha Stark, Earth-3490, and the Case for Canon Genderswaps
One of my favorite things about the clamor of excitement surrounding any new comic-related movie is that every time a new film is released, more and more of my friends get interested in reading the comics a movie is based on. Captain America: Civil War is no exception to this, and Marvel’s first Civil War…
Amanda Waller & Laurel Lance: Dead and Disrespected On Arrow
CW’s Arrow is no stranger to killing characters, particularly female characters. Since Arrow’s inception, the show has prided itself on taking cues from Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight franchise, and portrayed a gritter side of Green Arrow mythology and canon. Arrow gave fans a fraught view of Oliver Queen as a man who struggled with PTSD…
Udon a Bad Thing: Frank Cho, Anuses, and Visual Impact
Much like many other areas of culture, monthly direct-market comic books are an industry, a scene, which is largely hostile to women even now, a place where harm is produced and reproduced, and objections are seen as shrill lies told for cheap thrills. I know it’s dull, but let’s talk about Frank Cho.
Fainted When She Saw My Body: Social Construction of Monstrousness in Saga
What is a monster? The easy answer is an “unnatural” being—your zombies, ghosts, or vampires. Stories from Frankenstein to The Walking Dead showcase the idea that humans can become monstrous through action, perhaps even more monstrous than the undead. Critics like David J. Skal and Stephen King argue that fictional monsters are metaphors, vehicles to…
Casually Sidestepping Toxicity: Sex Without Monogamy
We’ve all been lied to about sex. This is pretty obvious: anyone who has been sexually active even once knows that the general, socially-approved narrative of what sex is and what sex should be like is, if not a flat-out lie, at least a glossy, gorgeous fiction. As we grow up and get thrown into…
If It Fits: Shoes, Sex, and Eroticised Withdrawal in Okazaki Mari’s “&”
Okazaki Mari’s romance comic “&” is about romance as a connection that springs from sensual experience. Its heroine, Kaoru, works in a hospital and is attempting to build her own business as a nail technician in her own time, and at the site of each job, she has a suitor.