Today we are going to address a little pet peeve (or I should say I big pet peeve) of mine and how awesome people like Laci Green are trying fix this problem. So this week’s Web Crush is Sex Positive with Laci Green!
So I’m something of an… abnormal person who still sits down with the (hard copy) newspaper every day and reads the funnies. So sue me. Over my many years of reading the funnies, I’ve noticed more and more of them trying to appeal to an older audience. Funky Winkerbean had one of its main characters die of cancer several years ago, for example. However, a comic that has always stayed true to itself is Family Circus. Although to be honest, I have always found Family Circus to be hit or miss, and more often than not a miss. It’s not cute enough to be cutesy-wootsy and not funny enough to be actually funny. And because it has been going on for so long, I feel some of its jokes have gotten stale.
The Dysfunctional Family Circus made me truly realize what was really lacking from Family Circus—some grasp of reality. Not to say that this web comic is in any shape or form remotely realistic. It’s just such a polar opposite of Family Circus and in this day and age, I feel that more people find dysfunctional homes easier to relate to than those perfect ones with the white picket fences.
The Dysfunctional Family Circus is simply a web comic version of Family Circus, but all of the captions are changed to be more mature (and most times raunchier). This blog had me laughing out loud. If you add some of the TV show Shameless to Family Circus, you get this web comic. There aren’t that many posts and it will honestly take you fifteen minutes or less to see all of them. Below are some of my favorites, but The Dysfunctional Family Circus is definitely worth your time!
It seems like I’m always late to the party with these things. That is to say, this is another webcrush that has reached its end of its regularly scheduled life.
With the birth of the internet, fans of certain things were finally able to congregate together and support each other though more organized gathering places such as forums, chat rooms, and writing hubs like Archive of Our Own and Fanfiction.net. Needless to say, thanks to places like this, fanfiction became one of the most numerous, and infamous, mediums on the web. Being a fanfiction author myself, there’s nothing I like better than seeing other people’s takes on characters and the plethora of creative ideas that weave themselves through the authors words. AUs, family problems, medical issues: I love all of them. Yet sometimes when I finally put pen to paper myself I face a very serious issue: I have no fucking clue what to write about. That’s where this site comes in.
Perhaps it’s a little bit catered to my endlessly shipping heart, but the Imagine Your OTP Tumblr has provided me with more prompts and more bursts of creativity than anything else has in a long while. As advertised in the title, this Tumblr offers a large array of reader-submitted prompts with a theoretical pairing (or OT3, depending on the prompt) being placed in a number of situations. Yet, perhaps contrary to what one would guess, not all the prompts are romantic and not all the prompts hold a Disney style ending. The prompts can range from simple scenarios such as “Person A and Person B are treasure hunters” or “live in an apartment together and Person A hates Person B’s cat” to more involved ones containing socio-political intrigue. And for every “Person A has an awesome time with Person B” there’s a “Person A ends up killing / dying with Person B” to follow it up. As to be expected though, many of the prompts are romantic in nature varying from adorable fluff to NSFW smut, but luckily all the posts are tagged for your convenience so you can merely skip these if they’re not your cup of tea.
Strangely Accurate
Imagine Your OTP is, at its core, a distillation of the larger fanfiction sites, or writing sites in general, where only the most basic of ideas are being shared with not attempt at convincing anyone that certain characters need to take the anonymous roles of A and B (or even C). Even if you’re not using it to stoke a writing muse, it’s still plenty fun just to browse through, to see all the different and creative ideas that have be submitted over time. Hopefully though, if you’re going through a rough patch in your writing or it simply feels like there’s too much and nothing at all to write about, this site can help you out the way it has helped me in the past.
Young adult literature is just about my favorite genre to read, but YA has a complicated relationship with diversity. Although the number of stories on the market celebrating people who don’t meet the white-straight-cis-abled norm is increasing, they are still a significant minority, and often don’t get the press or love that other books get. Book covers get whitewashed, and authors are still questioned about whether their minority characters are ‘realistic’ in their storylines. That’s where Diversity in YA comes in.
From DiYA’s tumblr:
Diversity in YA was founded in 2011 by YA authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo as a website and book tour. While the tour is over, we’ve revived the website as a tumblr! We celebrate young adult books about all kinds of diversity, from race to sexual orientation to gender identity and disability. We hope you’ll enjoy celebrating them with us.
Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon are excellent and talented writers in their own right and their stories are filled with diverse and interesting characters. It’s great to see that they’re also taking the initiative to celebrate other stories like their own.
The DiYA tumblr features a variety of content. Sometimes they recommend upcoming books that feature diverse characters. Sometimes they have interviews with authors who are of color or are GSM or disabled, or whose stories include such characters. And sometimes they just moderate discussions about topics like “Dismantling White as the Default” and “Beyond Diversity 101: On Bisexual Characters and YA Literature”, just to list two examples. They are pretty new on tumblr, as their description points out—they’ve only got about fifteen pages of content so far—but they’ve recommended dozens of books that I would probably have otherwise not heard about, and they are contributing to an important discussion in the literary world just by existing at all. Give their tumblr a look-see and let me know if you try any of the books they’ve featured!
So, I guess Game of Thrones is pretty cool or whatever.
Okay, okay, fine. I love Game of Thrones. I love all the drama, all the dismemberments, all the scenery, and of course, all the fantastic characters. What I love most about it though, is the richness of its universe. It’s clear that there are hundreds of houses the audience may never know about or lands that may never be visited within the story that the audience is allowed to view, but it’s clear that they all play a role in things like how a character may strategize their tactics for battle or how they may choose their allies. While the show does a rather good job at giving the audience information on Houses, lands, and other such things that directly affect the main players, sadly there are many things that are resigned to staying questions in the viewer’s mind.
A good example of this: the other day I was talking to my girlfriend about the late King Robert’s rebellion and his relations to the Starks. Now, as someone who hasn’t read the books and doesn’t really have any plans to in the future, I know that Robert was in love with Ned Stark’s sister and eventually took the throne from the mad king, Aerys Targaryen. Little did I know all the extra delicious tidbits that had been left out of the show—no doubt due to time constraints—that she had only been too glad to tell me. Such as there being certain other, juicer elements at play during Robert’s rebellion (of course, when playing the game of thrones, nothing is ever as it seems). So while the show is wonderful, those of us who aren’t taking the literary pilgrimage presented by George R.R. Martin are dreadfully out of the loop on some things.
Though today’s webcrush may not fill this information gap entirely, it certainly is a great start. Today, I bring you youtuber gameofthronesfan94 and their stash of videos on the mythos of Westeros.
As much as some of us fans want to read the novels, we just don’t have enough time or the will to sit through those bricks (I proudly place myself in the latter category), especially not with all the ‘glowing’ reviews of Martin’s writing style. So, stumbling upon a channel with lore that I can watch, or at least listen to while I’m doing other things—guess what I’m doing right now?—is a godsend for me. Not only is the lore interesting, but I love the fact that these history lessons are given by the characters that know them best. A study on the Targaryens is given by the little shit Viserys and likewise the history of House Greyjoy is presented by the Greyjoy children. (And since I love House Tyrell, I’ll give you a snippet from them. Biases, ho!)
So, if you find your knowledge of the kingdoms of Westeros a little lacking but simply don’t have the energy to get into the books, I’d highly recommend taking a look at these videos. Now if you excuse me, I’m going to get back to my regularly scheduled sobbing over Theon.
Amy Poehler is an American actress, comedian, producer, writer, and feminist. She is the current star of the excellent show Parks and Recreation, and is close friends with Tina Fey.
Amy Poehler has always been one of my heroes, but recently APerigren introduced me to her YouTube show Smart Girls, a show that interviews women who accomplish amazing things and who have a wide array of interests. Smart Girls truly shows how diverse and talented women and girls are.
The motto of Smart Girls is: Change the World by Being Yourself.
Smart Girls teaches girls to be themselves but still provides guidance to them by showing them fun, creative, strong women for them to emulate. Their mission statement explains:
Here at Smart Girls, we believe that the cultivation of the authentic self is very important. We also believe that guidance is helpful as we try to find our way to ourselves. We hope to be of help in the exploration and discovery process.
This is where you might learn about something you would like to experience. You might learn about a woman you’d like to emulate. You might learn a new perspective or an unfamiliar custom or a new way to talk to yourself about something.
It is our hope that you will learn more about your truest self. (source)
The result is an awesome web series that truly exemplifies how intelligent girls are and how many great female role models there are out there.
One of my favorite videos is an interview with a seven year old feminist, which is just beautiful and ridiculously cute.
There are so many other amazing videos and stories from Smart Girls that are just amazing. Please check them out.
Check out the Smart Girls website and Youtube channel.
We all have those video games whose soundtrack we can never get out of our heads. Whether it be the captivating wind instruments from the lost woods in Ocarina of Time or the simple 8-bit earworm that never dies from Tetris I think that it can be agreed on that music has the capacity to not only set video games on different levels of greatness, but to make a game truly timeless. Today’s Web Crush explores the true impact of these memorable tunes on this generation’s composers.
I actually stumbled upon this site a very, very long time ago while looking for remixes of the ‘Serenade of Water’ from Ocarina of Time. Although my tastes in music have shifted from that time—I’m all about the Gerudo Valley these days—I’m still continuously impressed by the quantity and quality of tracks that find their way onto Overclocked Remix (shorthand: OC Remix). In fact, the rate that it has expanded in my nearing eight years of knowing of its existence is somewhere between startling and inspiring.
In terms of ‘startling’, I’m scolding myself for even thinking that. Looking at some of the more popular acts within the video game community, there’s a very strong group that utilize these games if not in name, but in samples and riffs within their own tracks. A good example of this is The Protomen, whose name is not only based on a character from the Mega Man series of games, and whose music takes cues from the plot of the games as well. Also, it seems now more than ever we have a large group of gamers that are endlessly yearning for satiation to their hunger for nostalgia. We have shirts in Hot Topic that feature 8-bit characters, at cons there are tournaments for older games like Pokémon Stadium and Goldeneye—although to consider the N64 era as nostalgic as say, the SNES, makes me feel really old—so to think that music wouldn’t also try to cash in on these trends is rather shortsighted of myself.
Luckily, at OC Remix you won’t have to “cash in” on anything as all the music is free for download. All of their music is neatly organized and easy to find. While you may not find a track for every game you’re looking for—I was a touch disappointed to find they didn’t have any Ganbare Goemon remixes—they’ll no doubt have at least one track that catches your eye. Or ear, rather.
I ordered this one!
I wrote another web crush ages ago about a nerdy t-shirt site called TeeFury, and I’ve got another one shirt site for you today called Tee Turtle.
Tee Turtle is a somewhat similar site, but what I like better about this one is that it has a set of shirts that are available every day by the same person (I assume the host of the site) and has a weekly guest designer. What it lacks for in variation it makes up for in consistency. In recent days, TeeFury has been putting up some real stinkers (in my opinion). And I love all of the Tee Turtle shirts. All of them. And while they cost five to ten dollars more on Tee Turtle, I’d rather pay the couple dollars more for a shirt I like more.
I love the drawing style on all of the shirts, and I love all of the subtlety and wit in many of them. I’m the type of person who prefers my nerd shirts subtle, so I appreciate what the artist in question, RamyB, is doing.
So if you are interested in some (more) wares, go check out Tee Turtle!
All right, so I’m incredibly late to the party, but let’s talk about The Lizzie Bennet Diaries! This webseries is a fantastic adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice into modern times. Think something along the lines of the BBC’s Sherlock, but with a much more relatable lead character.
Lizzie Bennet is a 24-year-old grad student studying mass communications, and she and her best friend Charlotte Lu set out to do a series of vlogs about Lizzie’s life as part of a class project. And so begins their webseries, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. As Pride and Prejudice’s main plot arc was the marriage of each of its female characters, modernizing this classic means that the creators had to carefully consider how to keep each plot point, as marriage is now not the be-all end-all for women who want to get ahead in life.
Perhaps this is a little cliché—or perhaps it was just inevitable, I haven’t yet decided— but the time has come to pay partial homage to one of the most, if not the most popular internet sites for nerdy introspection on various media outlets. To get technical, I suppose it would be a partial-partial homage. If you are familiar with the site ‘That Guy With the Glasses’, then I’m quite sure you’re aware of Lindsay Ellis, more commonly known as The Nostalgia Chick. Today’s web crush is from her own site, Chez Apocalypse which leads us to this startling conclusion: Lady Geek Girl and Friends needs more gay.
Honestly, before I watched this video, I had nothing outside of a vague idea of the entire Chez Apocalypse line-up (despite watching a hefty portion of them on TGWTG). So, I guess thanks to my undying love of analysis on every nook and cranny of Disney movies I’ve been exposed to the wonderful Rantasmo. It’s disappointing that I’ve never even so much have heard of the series before especially considering how wonderful the title is and that he’s been putting out episodes for almost three years.
His series ‘Needs More Gay’ explores the effect the gay community has had on various media—the results sometimes being just as favorable as unfavorable—and in turn how some of those outlets have affected the said community at large. He also discusses how, while more out in the open, the LGBT* community is still not exactly being given a fair shake at exposure, especially when most of said exposure is being done through subversive means.
I have to be honest, this section of social justice is certainly not one I’m as well versed in as I would like or probably should be. What Rantasmo does in comparison to some other commenters on the web is initiate a dialogue that is simple to understand and doesn’t go on for terribly long. Clocking in at around four minutes each, his videos are a lovely and pithy way to get your feet wet in the vast sea of LGBT* discussion. Also, in true TGWTG style, he manages to insert humor into his videos so it doesn’t seem like you’re taking that media class that you scheduled at eight in the morning for some reason (it seemed like a good idea at the time). Plus the topics that he chooses to cover have a nice range from the more obvious topics—see: Lady Gaga—to lesser discussed topics such as television horror shows.
So if you have time, of which I’m sure you have at least four minutes to spare, I’d check out one of his videos. I’ll post one of my favorites below. (Okay, so it might be the newest video posted, but I think it’s a really interesting look at one of the movies I wanted to see but never got to.) And who knows, you might just find that you yourself just might need more gay.
