Hannah Hart’s “Hello Harto” Tour

About a year ago (wow, I can’t believe it’s been that long!) I talked about Hannah Hart in a Web Crush and since that time I have grown from simply crushing on this wonderful young woman to full on loving her. Yes, I am a Hartosexual, and I’m clearly not the only one, because Hannah is taking her show on the road!

When Hannah first proposed her tour, she started an Indiegogo campaign to raise money to fund it. I had every intention of making a post here about it to help spread the word a little, but it turned out that I didn’t have to. Why? Because Hannah reached her goal of $50,000 in less than 24 hours. I literally didn’t have time to make a post about her campaign before the Hartosexuals of the world swooped in and saved the day, making her campaign one of the most successful in Indiegogo history and reaching more than four times the original goal. Hannah’s response to the success was touching:

Because Hannah is such a loving person, her tour is going to focus on charity. In each city she visits, rather than doing a typical “Meet & Greet” event, she will be volunteering at a local non-profit organization where fans can pledge to spend their time volunteering with her. She will also be filming episodes of her web series “My Drunk Kitchen” in fans’ kitchens throughout the tour.

I don’t know about you, but I really find Hannah very inspiring. For one thing, she is one of the success stories that really shows the power of the internet to connect people and move them. We aren’t just schlubs who sit in basements watching cat videos and ranting anonymously about whatever irritates us, we are people who have found a community and connection with people spread far across the world that we often have difficulty finding in person.

In addition to this somewhat intangible success, Hannah is taking that community out into the “real” world and doing good. This humanitarian effort, combined with her own personal brand of entertainment, helps so many people, from the organizations she assists to her fans who get to be a part of something bigger than themselves. If you’re a fan, or even if you just want to be part of a group of people trying to make a difference, I encourage you to check out her tour site to see when she’ll be near you and pledge to take part in the activity she has planned for your area.

Come on, Rushers. Don’t be that fandom.

This week it was announced that Big Time Rush will be touring the US with fellow Nickelodeon star Victoria Justice this summer. Good news, right? That’s what I thought at least, but the reaction of my fellow Rushers has been less than positive.

Now, there have been times when I’ve kind of shaken my head at this fandom, but the only time I’m truly disappointed in it is when a girl has anything to do with the boys. That’s when the unabashed hate comes out and I just have to plead with my fellow Rushers to stop insulting any woman who comes into contact with the members of the band.

[For the remainder of this article I will use the word "you" to address the fans to whom I must speak. If you, dear reader, are not a person who has ever insulted a woman who was linked with your favorite celebrity, then my use of the word isn't actually directed to you, but if you are, then maybe you need to hear what I'm about to say, whether you're a Rusher or not.]

Not cool, KCA’s. Not cool.

And no, I’m actually not talking about the way you snubbed your own performers despite them winning the popular vote; I’ll go be butthurt about that elsewhere. What I’m talking about here is the way you brushed off the category of Favorite Female Butt-kicker but made the award for Favorite Male Butt-kicker the climax of the evening.

“Oh BTW, she’s also like a butt-kicker or something, lol, no1curr”

The KCA’s or the Kids’ Choice Awards aired last night and obviously I watched because I’m an adult who just happens to take his youth entertainment very seriously. I don’t think this comes as a surprise to anyone who’s read my articles. One of the categories for this year’s event was “Favorite Butt-kicker” for actors who played action roles in the past year. The award was divided, as almost every title in an awards show is, into male and female categories. Within the first half hour of the ceremony Kristen Stewart won the “Favorite Movie Actress” award, and as she made her way to the stage for her acceptance speech a voice-over announced that she also won the Female Butt-kicker award.

I’m not even sure this announcement was audible to the award crowd as Kristen made no mention of it in her acceptance speech and was presented with only one award when she took the stage. The announcement was perfunctory and gave no fanfare to the actress who made the achievement nor were any of the other nominees shown or even mentioned. No implication that this award was important or noteworthy was made, but I understood. They have a running time they must adhere to and award shows do this kind of thing all the time to save a few minutes. No big deal.

Until it came time for the Male Butt-kicker category. Then suddenly it was a big deal.

For the remaining hour of the program the host, Josh Duhamel, hyped up the Male Butt-kicker award (or simply “The Butt-kicker Award”, as it kept being called for the rest of the night) showing clips from each nominated actor in action, leading up to the most elaborate reveal of the evening in which Dwayne Johnson was announced as The Butt-kicker of the Year in the show’s climax.

Part of the climactic celebration announcing the Male Butt-kicker

The fact that the action/adventure male was so celebrated and so central to the evening while its female equivalent was brushed under the rug and forgotten was disgusting and unacceptable. It’s bad enough when programs aimed at adults do sexist things like this, but when it’s a program aimed at children which has the opportunity (and, I would argue, the responsibility) to celebrate, empower, and educate their audience, it becomes downright wrong. Nickelodeon had a chance to show that boys and girls can both be heroes, can both fight against evil, and can both be honored for it—but instead they chose to celebrate these qualities in men while all-but-ignoring them in women. The snub that these powerful female characters and the actresses playing them got on Saturday night was abominable.

Shame on you, Nickelodeon. Shame.

So You Want To Read Comic Books 2.0: Try 700 #1s For Free!

Want to try your hand at reading comics, but don’t know what characters to read about or what stories you’ll like? If you don’t want to spend money finding out, then you should check out digital comic book shop Comixology before Tuesday morning!

At their SXSW panel this weekend, Marvel and Comixology announced that they were joining forces to offer 700 different first issues and first appearances of different heroes for free. This includes some of LGG&F’s favorites like Captain Marvel and Hawkeye as well as other popular titles. They’re sorted into neat little sections, but there’s a nifty little “Add all to cart” button in the corner of each section. I’mma be honest: I just went through and clicked that over and over. I may never actually sit down and read all 700, but I’m not going to say no to free comics.

Comixology is, in general, an awesome site for first time comics readers—it often has sales or giveaways of certain books, it is a way to get a hold of single issues that may be out of print, and, once you have an account, you can take your whole collection with you wherever you go. This is a really great deal that they’re offering, and as long as you don’t mind e-comics instead of paper comics, you really can’t lose. Here’s that link again: go get free stuff!

ETA: The site’s been glitchy with traffic all day, but if you have the Comixology app on your phone, you can download them there with no problem!

Con Etiquette (Connecticut, if you will)

Lady Bacula: After another excellent con and our hectic lives (hopefully) being a little less crazy, Lady Saika and I decided to bring you a lovely guide to Con Etiquette, a small state in New England with a lot of wealthy people and home to Yale University.

Lady Saika: We have a lot of cons under our belts, and we see people engaging in the same annoying behaviors time and time again. This kind of stuff can range from mildly annoying to con-ruining for the people around you. We’ve painstakingly considered the most obnoxious con behaviors we’ve encountered and made you a list of what to do and not do at a convention.

• Don’t ask for someone’s picture while they are eating or in the bathroom.
• Do not stop walking in the middle of hallway or stairwell. Move over to the side.
• Also, do not stop at the top or bottom of a stair case/escalator.
• Do not ask for someone’s picture in any of the above locations.
• Never say anything bad about other people and/or their costumes. People come to cons to get away from the judgmental jerks in real life. Cosplayers have varying degrees of money and time and skill to put into their costumes, and they wouldn’t be wearing it out if they weren’t proud of it. Don’t be a dick.
• Shower so that you don’t smell like con. Believe us, it’s a smell that you would prefer not to smell. Because it is a smelly smell that smells smelly.
• Ask before you take a picture. 99.999% of cosplayers want you to take their picture because it makes them feel like the work they put into their costume is validated. Ask first, and you’ll get a nice pose instead of a blurry and candid sniped picture.
• Absolutely ask before you hug, touch, glomp, etc. Just because con-goers are fellow fans doesn’t mean that consent is irrelevant.
• Don’t complain about people in costumes that aren’t relevant to the con theme. I’m looking at you, people who complain about Homestucks. Everyone at the con paid the same registration price to be there, and it’s none of your biz what they dress up as once they’re inside.
• Do be aware of your surroundings. Cons tend to be very crowded, and if your costume or prop is big and unwieldy then make sure you remember that you’re occupying more space than usual. You can’t expect others to watch out for the long hem on your dress.
• If you are cosplaying as a specific character (ex. Vegeta) who has a Funny Thing They Do (for Vegeta, responding “IT’S OVER 9000” when asked what the scouter says about his power level), expect to be asked about it. If you do not want to be asked about it, do not cosplay as that character. Nothing is worse than a grumpy con-goer.

Lady Bacula: We hope that some of these are rather self-explanatory. And in a perfect world, some of these wouldn’t even be an issue in the first place. However, our world is not perfect and so we need to put these guidelines on the internet.

Anyone have any other guidelines that we missed? Leave them in the comments!

Sexualized Saturdays: The Over-Sexualized Teenage Girl

So back during college, I found myself replaying Final Fantasy XIII while my roommate’s friends were over. And to my everlasting annoyance, these twenty-some-year-old men felt the need to fake orgasm and talk nonstop about all the nasty things they wanted to do to Vanille, whom everyone thought was fifteen, based solely on the fact that she has “perky boobs.” And according to them, her voice sounds as if she’s in the middle of an orgasm too, apparently. They treated Vanille as if she was no longer a character, but as a sex object whose sole purpose was to please them.

I didn’t have a lot of fun playing that day.

But this experience does bring to mind something that should be addressed. While Vanille is actually at least nineteen, I believe, and video games and plenty of other mediums tend to objectify grown women to titillate male audiences, many things in geekdom tend to do the same with underage girls as well. And even more surprisingly, not many people seem to have problems with this.

Switched at Birth

Switched at Birth is one of those shows that I initially wrote off but ended up loving once I gave it a chance. As you can probably guess from the title, the show is about characters who were switched at birth. Of course, the characters find out about their switch and drama ensues. This show airs on ABC Family, which hasn’t produced entertainment of particularly high quality as of late, so I was very skeptical when this show premiered.  I know the ~drama~ this channel likes to pump into its shows at the expense of character and story development, and the premise of this show set itself up for dramatic dramatized drama in spades.

I am glad to report that this show is actually fantastically written and, while it does dip itself into soap opera territory with certain plot elements, it is overall a very smart show.

The two girls switched are named Daphne and Bay. Bay (the brunette in the above image) is raised by the wealthy Kennish family consisting of Kathryn, John, and older brother Toby while Daphne (the redhead) loses her hearing as a child and is raised by a single mother named Regina Vasquez, whose estranged husband Angelo was absent for most of Daphne’s adolescence. The show explores some really intricate themes but especially the ideas of who these girls are, who they would have been, and which (if either) is who they are supposed to be.

Thank You for All Your Hard Work!

Well, as you may have noticed if you’re one of our long-time followers, today we got a new banner. It took a lot of effort on my part and the part of two other people. Getting this banner together ended up being no easy feat, and we went through numerous versions before we ended up with what you see.

So we here at Lady Geek Girl and Friends would like to personally thank stew0001 and Lady Geek Girl’s Sister for all the hard work they went through to get us our banner. It looks amazing and we couldn’t have done it without either of you. We appreciate all the time you two have spent helping our blog grow and sticking with us for as long as you have.

Thank you.

Sexualized Saturdays: “Straight guys don’t do that!”

I’m sure our readers know that I am a big fan of Big Time Rush, but you may not know that I am also a fan of Supernatural. In fact, I was the one to tell Ladies Geek Girl and Saika about the show in the first place and encourage them to watch it, so…

I’m not very active in the SPN fandom anymore, though, because my work schedule makes it difficult to keep up with the show, which is why I don’t really post about it. (I am watching the anime version right now though, so expect a post or two about that once I finish the series) Back when the show started, however, I followed the fandom pretty closely through LiveJournal and forums (these were pre-tumblr days folks!) so I was very aware of the shipping and all that in the fandom. One of the things I noticed that irked me, which I’ve also noticed in the BTR fandom, was that any time Sam and Dean (or Jared and Jensen, for that matter) showed affection or concern for one another everyone jumped all over it as being proof that they were gay for each other.

Why does this bother me? Well, for one, I related strongly to the family dynamic in Supernatural. I saw myself in Sam so much and the relationships he had with Dean and John hit really close to home with my own relationships with my brother and father. It was wonderful to see them try, fail, try again, make headway, etc. in their relationships with one another and the strength of familial love between them reminded me of my own and gave me hope that no matter what troubles may exist in my own family we could get through them because we loved each other.

Then I went online and that love was turned from something purely familial into something lustful and I was made to feel uncomfortable and confused. Why did it seem no one could believe that these men loved each other as father and son, brother and brother? Why did any sign of affection have to be turned into something romantic or sexual? One of the phrases I saw thrown around a lot in the SPN fandom and even more so in the BTR fandom is “Straight guys don’t do that.”

And any time I see that phrase, or some variation thereof, I want to ask “Says who?”

James Gunn Apologizes, Promises to Do Better in the Future

It’s been a tumultuous past two days here at LGG&F since I reported on the awful and since-deleted ‘50 Superheroes You Most Want To Have Sex With’ written by Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn. Petitions to roust him from the director’s chair were started, several major internet news outlets reported on the post in question, and a number of major industry players chimed in to denounce what he wrote. However, it has come to my attention that Gunn has formally apologized for said post, and it would be unfair of me to not hook you up with the deets. Here is the full text of the apology, from his Facebook page:

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny. In rereading it over the past day I don’t think it’s funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I’m sorry and regret making them at all.

People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page and other mediums know that I’m an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian community, women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said. We’re all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I’m learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all – James

This is a very nice apology, and it sounds sincere. I am happy that he has responded to the outcry in a thoughtful manner, and that he admits that what was apparently actually intended as satire was bad and not funny at all.

I am not going to say his slate is wiped clean, and I’m still concerned about the GotG movie (call it once bitten, twice shy). If he really wants to do right by female and queer Marvel fans and characters, he has a responsibility to walk his talk and show us that he is not, in fact, a sexist or homophobic jerk by respecting and positively representing the characters of every gender, sexuality, and race that appear in the movie.

(Via ThinkProgress)