Star Trek: Discovery: Off to a Strong Start

(via Fortune)

If there was one show I had been looking forward to this year, it was Star Trek: Discovery. Sadly, I won’t be able to watch the rest of the season until it makes its way to Netflix or DVD, but I did catch the pilot, and I was extremely happy with what I saw. The Star Trek television shows have in the past proven themselves to be more than capable of giving us a diverse cast with thoughtful character development. As a new first for this universe, we’ve got a woman of color as a lead in our new series, and she’s kicking ass.

Web Crush Wednesdays: Women of Xal

I won’t lie to you, readers: I’ve been excited to write this Web Crush for a while now. Strong as my love is for dating sims, I’ll be the first to admit that the setups usually draw from the same pool. School romances with various magical trappings; the new woman in a business where all her other co-workers are men: the tropes are familiar and comfortable, but sometimes we all need a little spice in our lives. A little something to shake things up. So today I present to you a dating sim that breaks out of the more typical shoujo romance mold and thrusts you into a world of corporate intrigue where romance may be the last thing on your mind.

Rogue One: Many Bothans Died to Bring Us This Movie

“So this proves that, if you whine about a plot hole enough, Lucasfilm will eventually make a movie to fill it,” my friend said to me as the Rogue One credits began to roll. She had a point; while Rogue One was an enjoyable movie, if asked what it added to the franchise, the only hard and fast answer is “an explanation as to why the Empire’s superweapon had such an easily exploitable weak spot”. Ultimately, while Rogue One was a good movie with many strong emotional beats, it never quite made it to great.

Spoilers for everything below the jump!

There Are No Women of Color in the Galaxy?

Readers, life is great! The Rogue One trailer was cool, Captain America: Civil War was awesome, and there is a brand new set of Splatoon based Amiibo. Included are a set of the Squid Sisters who are very adorable, and a recolor set of the original girl, squid, and boy. Imagine my excitement when I saw that the new palette for the boy was a Black Inkling! I was incredibly hyped. But then as I looked back at the girl Inkling, I made an unfortunate observation: there is a striking lack of women of color in a lot of our media.

Trailer Tuesdays: Star Wars: Rogue One

It’s been ten or so days since the trailer for Rogue One first dropped, which means I’ve had time to cycle through a full circuit of emotions.

Star Wars: Shattered Empire Continues to Fight the Good Fight

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m nothing these days if not Star Wars trash, and I’m especially obsessed with one Poe Dameron. When I heard that his family’s backstory was featured in the prequel/tie-in comic Star Wars: Shattered Empire, it was a matter of course to pick it up and check it out. What I found inside was three parts awesome tie-in story, two parts giant question mark.

Spoilers for the whole comic below.

The Need for Women and People of Color Coding

With February ending, Black History Month is also coming to an end. But March brings us Women’s History Month! Like a broken record, I’ll say, representation matters. (The changing of these months, though, should remind us to keep intersectionality in mind as well.) This repeated mantra may feel a bit stale without a solution to the question: how can we get better representation in our games and media? One answer would be to diversify the creative forces. Today, I want to talk about some of the efforts to improve this deficiency.

via Code Liberation

Fanfiction Fridays: No Kidding by Curious

I don’t usually read fanfic on tumblr.  I don’t usually stick with fanfic that have a lot of spelling and grammar whoopses. And I am so happy I got over these two peeves and finished ‘No Kidding’, a BBC Sherlock fic about Sergeant Donovan.

The summary, well, sums it up way better than I could:

“Sergeant Sally Donovan will: defend her bisexuality, become a cop, punch people, move house, get a promotion, save Sherlock Holmes, throw a party, buy a cat, play the harmonica, go on bad dates, attend a wedding, attend a funeral, meet Irene Adler, get laid, and get shit done. Like a boss.“

I loved this fic for a number of reasons.

First of all, there is barely any good femslash to begin with, compared to the number of good slashfics out there.

Second of all, the fic deals well with Sally both discovering and refusing to let people erase or fetishize her bisexuality, which is awesome.

Third of all, it’s nice to have a look into the background of Donovan’s character, since in the show she’s portrayed as someone for the audience to hate blindly because she hates Sherlock. Getting into Sally’s head, we see both that yes, if you knew Sherlock in the real world you’d probably hate him too, and that actually, Donovan has her own reasons for disliking him.

Fourthly, this fic is rife with original characters, but they’re interesting and well fleshed out, and thanks to them the fic passes The Bechdel Test!

Finally, hooray for a fic where the main character is a queer woman of color instead of a white dude!

Check out ‘No Kidding’ here!