Anna Wilson

This Friday: attend in person at U of T, or virtually via Zoom. Reserve your spot now! www.medieval.utoronto.ca/events/siobh...

Who's that guy?!

I'm not saying there's anything WRONG with weird horse stuff, I'm just saying, none of Maas's teenage girl protagonists have to explain to their lovers that their sex education came from being telepathically bonded to an extremely horny sentient horse.

I wish people hand-wringing about 'romantasy' would read some feminist YA fantasy from the 80s. I'm rereading Mercedes Lackey's early novels and they are a) as sexually explicit as ACOTAR, b) far less thoughtful about things like consent and boundaries, and c) so much more into weird horse stuff.

What a delight!

The Portal is Closed

I literally burst out laughing at my desk, so it still works

Academics see the worde TTRPG and thynke "tenure track roleplayinge game"?

That's great!

But the circumstances of the industry (and editor biases) have shut out knowledgable voices. So much "fandom coverage" now feels like reinventing a very basic wheel; I feel like my and my peers' work is being actively erased. Fandom *should* be covered—but you need to know what you're talking about.

English Debates TL; DR Is it important to read long texts? All the way to the end? .. . . Join us for a debate on the culture of reading with English professors Maurice Lee (Overwhelmed) and Deidre Lynch (Loving Literature) February 25th,5 p.m. Fong Auditorium, Boylston Hall, Series curated by Martin Puchner

Boston-area pals, the time you're saving tonight by NOT watching the SOTU & catching up on your reading instead, you can expend tomorrow by coming to this fun event:
5 p.m., Fong Auditorium, Harvard campus; Maurice Lee & me talking about TL;DR & why no matter what there will always be more to read.

Clowns
Jokers
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you

Thread.

How We Love: Exploring the spicy, imaginative world of romance fanfiction Three fanfiction experts give their insight into the the social, collaborative, imaginative community of writers and stories.

I was recently on the radio to talk about fanfiction with the brilliant @prof-anne.bsky.social & @dylanthyme.bsky.social, and I'm *so* pleased with how this conversation turned out. It's rare that you can get a lot of the nuances of fic into an ostensibly 101 conversation—and in under half an hour!

finally. this is what the internet was meant for.

Ahh, yeah. Could you reject the idea of favorites altogether?

It's like reading Lady Chatterley's Lover and realizing it's mostly about the coal mines!

Yes usually, but I don't read that much outside of work at the moment tbh - 6yo eats the time - and I tend to read a few works by the same author at a time, so there aren't too many names to remember.

J read it a couple of years ago and described it to me as she went, and it was so totally different from the pop culture idea of it that I'd absorbed that I was fascinated. Like Phantom of the Opera.

*exists, not exits. Although, you know, a lot of that book does exit.

Please report back whether we do in fact have a block of wood that someone stuck a label on claiming it was part of Caxton's house.

Honestly, the only people I know who like Wuthering Heights non-professionally are people who read it when they were 14 and remember a different version of it than the book that exits, so I wholly support this film version and plan to see it and enjoy it and never read the book.

While the movie looks abysmal, I actually do think Fennell's stated approach to adaptation—capturing the ~vibes~ of her experience reading the book when she was 14—is v interesting in the way it *does* connect to actual fic practices. But the context of the work matters, and flattening that sucks.

idk idk I just think calling this massively mainstream $80 million-budget film "fanfiction" (uh sorry, "fan fiction") does a disservice to people in fic communities. Actually reading this review, I understand the author wasn't using it as a pejorative—but I don't think that makes it better.

Screenshot of an article headline: Red rubric: HEIGHTS AND LOWS Black title:Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights Is Fan Fiction

Can confirm that even when people think they're being *positive* about fanfiction with this shit, I still continue to become the joker.

What?! I cannot believe we have this.

I always tell them that my favorite author is whoever I am having the most fun reading at the moment outside of work, because the authors I work on I have a different kind of relationship with than 'favorite', then I always name a genre fiction writer. Lately it's T Kingfisher.

Big props to Shiamin Kwa and Wilt Idema, editors of Mulan: Five Versions of a Classic Chinese Legend, for describing a legend* in which two doomed lovers transform into butterflies as "together forever in lepidopterous love".

*not Mulan, a different story

LRT: every so often I come across students with learned behaviours that make me wonder about their other teachers. I've had students email me from the ER with concussion or a high fever say they promise they'll be in class and can they have 1 day for the assignment? oh my GOD child just go to bed!

Everyone giggling about this, but in my experience students with complicated lives NEVER ask for anything like the amount of time you'd be willing to give them. "Just two more days, please," she says, which means she'll write that assignment in Olympic Village, between days of competition.