So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

Dearest readers,

Thank you for your patience as we’ve been on hiatus. As you may know, this blog is a labor of love off of which none of us have ever made a cent. Unfortunately, for that very reason, it’s also become a burden on us as writers, admins, and editors. As our lives have changed—and they have significantly over the last seven(!) years!—it’s become more difficult to keep up with the writing, editing, and posting schedule we set for ourselves.

We spent a long time working on trying to find a model that worked better for us and our authors—this hiatus was meant to be over in January! But ultimately we came to the conclusion we were trying to avoid: we can no longer maintain both this site and keep up with the rest of our personal and professional commitments and our own mental health. And so we’ve made a very difficult decision: to close down Lady Geek Girl & Friends for good.

We’re leaving the website available for readers—just because we won’t be creating more content, doesn’t mean we want readers to lose access to the thousands of posts we’re so proud of! That said, we have turned off the ability to comment on posts older than fourteen days—which, now, is all of them but this one—as we previously moderated comments individually and will no longer be actively doing so.

We would not have been the site we grew into without you all, dearest readers. From those of you who started as readers and eventually wrote for us, to those who left heartfelt comments, to those who just perused the site occasionally, you’re what kept us going for so long. Thank you for your attention over the years! We wish you all the best, and hope you feel the same way towards us.

With love,
Lady Geek Girl and Friends

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ICYMI: We’re Taking A Break

Lovely readers,

You may have noticed that we haven’t been posting as much recently. We’ve never been quiet about the fact that this is an all-volunteer blog run in our free time, and while we love it, it’s been a hell of a year and this thing we love has started to be a bit of a drain.

So, as we mentioned at the beginning of Ace’s last post, we’re taking a slightly longer hiatus than our usual beginning-of-the-month week off so that we can recharge, reevaluate, and hopefully come back stronger in the new year. We’re so grateful to all of our readers for their support, and we hope you’ll come back to hang with us again in 2018.

Love from all of us,

Lady Geek Girl and Friends

Lady Geek Girl & Friends’ Best of the Blog Mondays

We’re still on hiatus until tomorrow. Happy New Year, everyone, and we’ll be back soon!

Magical Mondays: Sleeping Beauty, Fairy Tales, and Inserting Magic Into Magic-less Narratives. Here, Luce explores the hows and whys of magic becoming part of fairy tales.

[Fairy] tales used to be dark, moralistic stories to teach people lessons, yet as time went on, people decided that fairy tales ought to entertain children as well as educate them—they weren’t meant to please ancestors of Hannibal fans. Throughout these versions, themes of rape, adultery, and cannibalism were gradually erased from the overall plot, leaving a sanitized version behind. To fill in the blanks with respect to the characters, numerous writers used magic instead. Evil fairy solves all your problems, right? Then the king doesn’t commit adultery and the queen isn’t a heinously one-dimension villain and the princess isn’t raped, but just kissed without her consent, which is… better.

Magical Mondays: The Mundane and the Magical in Welcome to Night Vale. Earlier this year, Lady Geek Girl talked about magical realism in Welcome to Night Vale.

Welcome to Night Vale makes the magical mundane and the mundane magical by drawing our attention to something weird and magical, but then focusing on the mundane aspect of the event so that we cannot escape or ignore it. The magical element essentially acts as a big blinking sign pointing to the mundane and inescapable element.

Lady Geek Girl & Friends’ Best of the Blog Sundays

We’re still on hiatus until January 6^th. Happy New Year, everyone, and we’ll be back soon!

Oh, My Pop Culture Unchristianity: Sandman’s Humanizing Subversion of Common Christian Tropes. Syng illustrates how Sandman plays with common Christian tropes.

An imperfect God is easier to believe in. Just as a mystical pregnancy that doesn’t result in special children (because statistically, so few people are likely to become Great; why should children of mystical pregnancies be any different from typical humans?), and the death of a son of god being much more personal than a momentous world-saving act is easier to believe in.

Oh, My Pop Culture Religion: Religious Practice in the Potterverse. Stinekey speculates on how magic and religion work in the Potterverse.

However, there are a few canonical instances where wizards do actually practice (Christian) religion in the series. St. Mungo’s, the wizarding hospital, is actually named for a real saint. St. Mungo, also known as St. Kentigern, was a Christian missionary who performed miracles and founded the city of Glasgow. The Fat Friar is the ghost of Hufflepuff House and was a monk in his former life.

Lady Geek Girl & Friends’ Best of the Blog Saturdays

We’re still on hiatus until January 6^th. Happy New Year, everyone, and we’ll be back soon!

Sexualized Saturdays: A Genderqueer Take on Slash Fanfiction. Pan reflects on their experience with slash fanfiction.

As a genderqueer person I’m fairly certain that my own experience with slash fanfiction differs somewhat from the norm. Only recently have I begun reflecting on how formative both writing and reading fanfiction was at a time in my life when I felt isolated and frustrated by my own seemingly incongruous feelings. Knowing now that there are a surprising number of people for whom the gender binary doesn’t hold true, I like to think that for some small portion of the fan community fanfiction has been an important tool for self-discovery, as it was for me.

Sexualized Saturdays: Teen Wolf and the Turmoils of Male Puberty. Pisces talks about how the cis male werewolf experience is analogous to the cis male puberty experience.

Lycanthropy also serves as a metaphor for the inherent state of physical transition and transformation that is a defining part of puberty. For most able-bodied, non-chronically ill people, puberty is the first time we actively feel out of control of our bodies (potty training notwithstanding). The changes are sudden, violent, bizarre; simple changes in height are nothing compared to the fundamental, irreversible changes to the character and nature of our bodies that happen during puberty. It’s rooted in the same basis that makes all body horror so terrifying—the involuntary changing of and lack of control over the body.

Lady Geek Girl & Friends’ Best of the Blog Fridays

We’re still on hiatus until January 6th. Happy New Year, everyone, and we’ll be back soon!

Fanfiction Fridays: seperis’s Reboot Series. Saika urges us to read a fic with awesome lady Vulcans, slash, and space pirates.

The other major part of this series is the real reason I wanted to rec this work. The sequel to You’ll Get There in the End is called War Games, and where the previous work was all about the Kirk/Spock relationship and sex and romance, the sequel is in essence a rollicking space pirate adventure story.

Fanfiction Fridays: The Serendipity Gospels by urbanAnchorite and schellibie. Rin introduces us to an epic Homestuck fanfic.

Howdy, readers! How would you like an adventure story for today? A story full of intrigue and political plots? A story that’s almost as confusing as the canon it comes from? Then grab a seat and get ready to hear about the most intense Homestuck fanfic I’ve ever read.

Lady Geek Girl & Friends’ Best of the Blog Thursdays

Hello, readers, we here at LGG&F have an announcement to make. Starting off 2015, we are taking a short break and will be on a hiatus for a couple days. We will return with new content January 6^th, but until then, we’re reblogging some of our favorite posts for your enjoyment. Happy New Year, and we’ll be back soon! And also, if you like what we do here and are interested in joining the LGG&F team, don’t forget to check out our Careers page and drop us a line!

Theatre Thursdays: How I Learned Representation Matters. Fiyero discovers the importance of representation through musicals.

In the Heights tells the stories of multiple people living in the NYC barrio of Washington Heights. The music, composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, is known for being one of the first hip-hop scores to find some success on Broadway. The production is also known for having a predominantly Latino cast and this is what really spoke to me.

Theatre Thursdays: Sex Work as Portrayed in Musicals. Saika takes a look at stigmatized sex workers through the lens of musicals.

As with many other forms of media, prostitution is shown as pretty much the lowest possible rung a woman can reach. Sometimes it’s used as a code word that means ‘she has a tragic backstory’; sometimes it’s used to show just how low she has been brought. Either way, if you’re a sex worker in a musical, odds are you’re gonna have a bad time.