It is a festive time and the Linkpost is BACK

Been a bit of a gap with the linkposts lately, while the ed got a new job and we all remembered about mince pies coming back on sale.

Let us fix that for you now.

• “History needs to stop being used as an excuse in the fantasy stories of TV, film, and video games that are, in general, male-dominated whether they’re history-based or not.” Word. Dan Wohl at The Mary Sue: Is ‘historical accuracy’ a good defence of patriarchal societies in fantasy fiction?
• “…this notion that History Is Authentically Sexist… what do you mean when you say ‘history?’ History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.” Tansy Rayner Roberts follows the Mary Sue’s post over on Tor: Historically authentic sexism in fantasy. Let’s unpack that.
• “The so-called middle ground that’s supposed to prevent disunity always ends up excluding women in an attempt to keep those who want to restrict their ministry happy. And funnily enough, this doesn’t exactly instill in women a sense of unity and grace. It makes some of them feel as if they can’t do what they feel called to do, what they are gifted to do.” A thoughtful set of reflections from Hannah Mudge: Bristol Christian Union and the ‘ban’ on women speakers.

• And finally…

• “Announcing Valentin & The Widow, a free weekly audio book series! It’s a globe-trotting 1920s adventure about plucky English aristocrat Eleanora Rosewood, brawny Russian sailor Sacha Valentin, and their fight against a secret organisation that seeks to oppress the weak and destroy the different.” We are listening to this with interest – it’s written by Andrew Wheeler, who among many other things penned the No More Mutants columns on inclusion and geek culture over on Bleeding Cool, which we linked from this site a while ago. Plus, “courageous women! Sexy men!”. How often do you hear anything advertised with the words in that order? (The second instalment just came out.)