5 Easy Ways To Find Diverse Summer Reading For Kids

Photo courtesy of The Book Trust via Creative Commons

If you're a parent, caregiver for kids, youth activity leader, or tutor, then you know that Summer vacation for kids usually come with some required reading over the summer, too. As a conscientious caregiver, finding diverse stories to share with kids can seem difficult. But it doesn't have to be. Writing for Huffpost, Nancy Traversy, Co-Founder of Barefoot Books shares a few tips.  For example, don't just stick with stuff you remember from when you were a kid! Branch out a bit:

[T]here are many other exceptional books out there that represent a wide range of experiences. To find them, look for book awards lists that honor creators of specific identities and backgrounds and best-of-class publishing. For example, the Coretta Scott King Award honors African-American authors and illustrators, while the Stonewall Awardcelebrates books with positive LGBTQ representation and the Foreword INDIES Book Awards recognizes the best of independent, innovative publishing. Share these stories with your children, and you’ll not only keep their book diet diverse - you’ll also inspire them with some of the very best children’s literature available.

Another great, and overlooked resource? Your local librarians:

Ask them to recommend books by a wide range of authors and illustrators that are appropriate for your child’s reading level. Many libraries run free literacy programs over the summer, so ask them if they have events or activities that feature diverse books. Your librarians may also be able to point you to local readings and events that celebrate authors and illustrators from a range of cultures or religions. Borrow as many diverse books as you can carry and encourage your child to read them all.

There are three more tips Travesy gives that are simple, effective and easy to start doing right now, so go read the article to get the rest!

Readers, do you have any tips you'd like to share? Post 'em in the comments below!

Announcing BLERD CITY Con

Via Black Girl Nerds, the following awesome announcement:

WHAT:
The first annual BLERD CITY Con will hit New York City’s historic neighborhood and Silicon Valley East, DUMBO (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.) Saturday, July 29 and Sunday, July 30, 2017.

BLERD CITY’s mission is to provide the Black community with substantial connections to talented and cutting-edge professionals in the craft of positive image making. BLERD CITY comes from Black + Nerd = Blerd, a conference dedicated to showcasing the complexity and multi-dimension of NERDiness through Art, Science, Film, Literature, and Technology.  The conference includes panels, workshops, film screenings, and a marketplace. The BLERD CITY marketplace will feature a mixture of curated gaming and comic books, and a children’s area for science and technology exploration.

BLERD CITY panels and workshops announced so far include: Women In Comics, Martial Arts and the Urban Landscape, Afropast and Afrofuture, Cosplay Interaction, SciFi/Fantasy/Horror Film Screenings, an L.A. Banks Tribute and more. Guests announced include:Tim Fielder, graphic artist, cartoonist, and animator, Afrofuturism The Next Generation; Nicole Franklin, CBS Sunday Morning Daytime Entertainment Emmy® Award winning editor, filmmaker, and co-producer and co-moderator of the weekly Monday night Twitter series #BlerdDating, Warrington Hudlin, and Regine Sawyer.

WHERE:

The Dumbo Spot, 160 Water Street​
Green Desk, 155 Water Street
Creative Chaos, 28 Jay Street
Automatic Studios, 52 Bridge Street
Brooklyn Bridge Park’s Empire Fulton Ferry (Near Main Street)

Visit the official website for more information about BLERD CITY or to register for the convention.

Looking For Group: Gamers of Color Sticking Together

Image description: A tweet from twitter user sourcedumal that reads "when
there are 47 long flowing hair options in character creator but 3 natural hair
options: afros, cornrows, dreads. And they all look terrible."

Writing for Endgadget, Jessica Condit gave us "Gaming While Black: From Casual Racism to Cautious Optimism", and detailed how many gamers of color have either banded together or not engaged in voice chat just to be able to keep enjoying a hobby and form of entertainment important to them because social pressures and racial harassment follow them everywhere:

“The stories Allen could tell probably wouldn't surprise Dr. Kishonna Gray. Dr. Gray is an Assistant Professor at Eastern Kentucky University's School of Justice Studies, and the founder and director of EKU's Critical Gaming Lab, a hub for researching the immersive online environments within console gaming. She studies gaming and harassment from the player's point of view. "Most gamers of color have isolated themselves into private parties, private chats, or just don't engage verbally at all," Dr. Gray said. "And that's sad because they can't take full advantage of the gaming experience that they paid for. So what's happening is a virtual ghettoization of minority gamers. [...] Because a person's identity is automatically revealed when a person speaks, they are targeted. I call it linguistic profiling. As soon as someone hears how you sound, they engage in this practice. They hear how you sound and react based on that. So a lot of black gamers are called derogatory terms because of how they sound. They don't have to do anything but sound black."”

While thre are still some that would cling to the dismissive response of video games and online game not being a part of the real world, Dr. Gray disagrees:

"Gaming culture is a direct reflection of our society," she said. "The only reason racism and sexism run rampant in gaming is because racism and sexism run rampant in society. But in physical spaces, mostly, it's not overt. It's subtle. It's covert. So, yes, these issues manifest in a similar manner in gaming, but I contend that they present themselves worse. It's not subtle. It's in-your-face racism. A black person may not be called a [n word] to their face, but they can almost guarantee it will happen in virtuality."

Although the article was written in 2015, not much has changed. The entire article is a fascinating read, so go read the whole thing.

Listen Up: Open Ended

Opened Ended is a weekly podcast hosted by best friends Cher Vincent and James T. Green. Every week, they take a deep dive into the latest technology and computer news, best practices in programming code. But they don't just focus on gadgets and shiny tech in the tech sector, they discuss everything coding to code-switching to gender.

Even though they're best friends, Cher and James don't always agree, and there can be plenty of spirited but respectful debate, which makes for an interesting listen.

Follow them via the Open ended web archive or via iOS on iTunes.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Marvel vs. Limits of Diverse Representation

I've written before on the numerous times Marvel comics has tried and failed to grasp just how diversity works. Seriously, just search the marvel tag. However,  the example that sticks out for writer Paige Allen isn't Marvel's continuing mishandling of Captain America. Nor is it Marvel's VP of Sales blaming attempts at diverse casts of superheroes for hurting sales. According to Allen, the most egregious example is the writing of Marvel's Invincible Iron Man. Penned by Brian Michael Bendis, Invincible  that introduced the world to a new Iron Man – a young black teen by the name of Riri Williams. Writing for Geeks of Color, Allen points out that "...some fans were skeptical of Bendis writing the experiences of a young black girl, especially since Marvel had no black women writers on its staff when the series was first announced."

Bendis has also written also wrote about another black teen assuming the mantle of of Marvel franchise powerhouse-- Miles Morales as Spider-Man. Bendis has also talked about the research he's done as an author and the perspective that raising two of his adopted African-American children have given him. Allen points that while Bendis is able to write about the challenges and loss Riri Williams faces as a black girl, his knowledge is reflected in a very narrow focus of the Black experience:

Unfortunately, this knowledge is the overall problem Bendis has in his depiction of Riri Williams. He knows about black pain and the various micro- and macro- aggressions that black people face every day, especially during these particularly fraught times of racial hostility... Basically, Bendis is like your white classmate that took one Africana class and now believes himself to be the purveyor of all knowledge on black life. However, because he acquired his knowledge as an outsider to the culture, the only way he really knows how to depict blackness is through identifiable aspects of The Struggle – all the negative social realities of being black that you see reported on TV, lambasted on Twitter, and through quickly cruising through activist circles in search of easily transferable knowledge about racism without any nuanced understanding of how black people deal with it.

This came to a head when scans from a page of Invincible Iron Man #8 appeared online recently, where it shows Williams in class trying to actively seek out marginalization as a motivator.

Allen reflected:

Never in my wildest nightmares would I imagine a black child seeking out racism to fight against in the pursuit of their dreams. Racism isn’t a Sailor Moon villain that waits for us to level up before trying to kick our ass; we are always aware of it and are always affected by it, but one of the best traits that black people have is our ability to bypass that negativity and live our lives despite it, not to specifically spite it.

This isn't the first time Bendis' writing for a black character has been criticized. The Nerdist pointed out that Bendis and other white writers writing characters of color often come off as tone-deaf and run the risk of alienating the very fans they want to recruit.

As I wrote in an earlier post, the real key is to actually hire diverse creators to write diverse casts. Otherwise we're just slapping a Band-Aid on the issue:

Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why should worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.

2017 Game Devs of Color Expo in NYC This Week

After a successful inaugural event last year, the Games Devs of Color Expo returns to New York City this year on June 24th. Createdby developer and industry vet Catt Small, the Game Devs of Color Expo lets people of color in the games industry network with each other, present their work in a professional space, and get feedback directly from consumers. The GDoCExpo will take place at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a historic venue that can hold up to 700 people. To keep the expo accessible, student and low-income attendee tickets are $5 while general tickets are $20.

In addition to game demos and exhibitions, GDoC Expo is hosting five educational talks about game development and four panels about various parts of the game development process. In a win for accessibility, all talks and panels will be live-captioned, and the entire event event is wheelchair-accessible. There are 31 free to play games and game demos at the Expo, as well as several "micro talk" 10 minute presentations, industry development panels, and an evening after party at Babycastles gallery.

Listen Up: Fresh Out of Tokens

Fresh Out of Tokens is a bi-weekly podcast that recently celebrated its 2 year anniversary. Hosted by David & Tanya, the podcast focuses on addressing issues of diversity, inclusion, intersectionality and feminism in video games. Tanya and David are lifelong video game enthusiasts, and this podcast is obviously a labor of love. They bring their combined experience and insight to a podcast that has already featured some intense discussions and amazing guest interviews. They're not afraid to ask difficult questions of interview subject or do deep dives into the culture surrounding video game development and video game fandom and culture.

You can follow along via the Fresh out of Tokens  simplcast site, or on iTunes via iOS. 

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Listen Up: The Black Geeks Podcast

The Black Geeks website has a companion podcast and it works in concert with the website to report on news geek culture art large from a Black perspective. The Black Geeks lend collective decades' worth of knowledge and passion for all things geeky with the mission to "uplift diverse voices and perspectives into everyday conversations".

Follow along on iOS via iTunes or on soundcloud.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Listen Up: Kugali

Kugali, the companion podcast to the website with the same name, is hosted by four Nigerian men that have been scattered across the globe due to circumstance but happily come together on the podcast to to showcase and discuss television shows, games, comics, animated features and movies created by both Africans and people of African descent in the diaspora as well as anime and pop culture abroad. It's been running since 2015, and the podcast have over 3 seasons so far.

You can listen in on iOS or Google Play or via the podcast section of the Kugali website.

Listen Up is an ongoing series devoted to shining a spotlight on podcasts by diverse creators. You can check out all the podcasts previously featured here. If you have a podcast you'd like to recommend, post it in the comments or email me at shawnstruck at gmail dot com.

Black, Queer & In Love: "Bingo Love" Comic Coming Soon

Black queer romance is not a common sight in comics.  Tee Franklin, a black queer disabled comic book writer, has set to change that with her graphic novel "Bingo Love". "Bingo Love" centers on two teenage girls, Hazel and Mari, who meet when their grandmothers bring them along to a church bingo night. They become best friends in the 1960s, then fall in love, and then are forbidden to see each other by their families. Over the next couple of decades decades, the two friends reconnect and become closer as they get older.

In an interview with The Root, Franklin said that she felt this graphic novel was important because “...very rarely do we see queer people, women of color and elderly people in comics, so I knew I was taking a risk, but it’s been well worth it,People need to see that you can be LGBTQ and have a partner for life. We are all worthy of that happy ending, too.”

Some of her own life served as inspiration for the characters' struggles. Franklin explains that she was "...once married to a man and wasn’t fully out to my extended family until very recently. I definitely understand that there are black LGBTQ people out there like Hazel and Mari who feel that they have to hide their true selves from the world because of how society views them. I wanted to tell that story.”

Franklin is no stranger to boosting Black-creator comics, as she is the creator of the #BlackComicsMonth hashtag, but she was still overjoyed to see her work supported. "Bingo Love" was successfully crowd-funded via Kickstarter in March and is currently available for pre-order.

"Bingo Love" is written by Tee Franklin and drawn by Jenn St-Onge ("Jem and the Misfits", "Steven Universe", "Rick and Morty") and the art is gorgeous. Here's an a page:

To get the latest news and pre-order the graphic novel, you can visit the "Bingo Love" website.

Writing Diverse Characters & The Fear Of Doing It Wrong

Prolific author and blogger s.e. smith recently wrote about his thoughts about white people writing diverse characters and settings (smith is white himself), and it's pretty relevant right now. There have been increasing calls for more diverse representation in media. As smith points out, though, that push comes with a fear that many white authors are reluctant to discuss: the fear of getting it wrong, and the fear of being widely criticized. Could that be attributed to a sudden influx of angry fans? Smith says those discussions aren't really anything new:

One consequence of more open discussion about diversity is that nondiverse creators are forced to see that discussion. It’s not like diverse readers and creators just now started criticising works that have huge problems. Rather, those conversations were happening, often in the open, and no one cared or paid attention. Now, there’s enough momentum that they become highly visible, that it’s no longer possible to be insulated from them. Some nondiverse creators appear to be operating under the impression that there’s an army of mean people gearing up to descend on whatever they write to shred it to pieces as soon as it hits the shelves — or before. Often, that comes from a defensive position, because it hurts to hear that you did something wrong, or that something you worked on for months or years has major problems, and the instinctive reaction is to lash out to neutralize the criticism so you can go on with your life.

Smith goes into the difference between the fear of doing it wrong, and the fear of how you'll be perceived, and offers some pretty good advice. Another excellent resource are the annual "Writing The Other" workshops and classes offered by authors Nisi Shawl and K. Tempest Bradford.

Hollywood Still Way Behind LGBT & Racial Representation

Description: Screenshot from GLAAD study that reads: Transgender
representation was merely one character in "Zoolander 2". The
character, played by Bennedict Cumberbatch, was used as the punchline
to a joke.

Two years ago, GLAAD released a video titled "Hollywood Must Do Better" that  was basically a supercut of the most egregious anti-LGBT moments from major Hollywood films from the past few years. It was a companion piece to studies the group releases every year that rate major Hollywood films on a "social responsibility index" that looks at the representation of racial minorities as well as LGBT characters. "Moonlight" won an Oscar this year, so that must mean things are pretty great now, right?

Wrong. As this year's study shows, Hollywood is still way behind when it comes represention people that aren't white, straight, or male. in a study of 125 major film releases from major film studios, only 23 films included LGBT-identifying characters. That's just 18 percent.

Of those 22 films, 19 had a gay male character. Lesbian characters went from 23% in 2015 to 35% in 2016. 3 films had a bi character. Transgender representation in major Hollywood films last here clocked in at exactly one: a character played by a cis male actor as the butt of a transphobic joke.

Racial diversity in onscreen characters declined as well. From the LGBT characters of the last year, 48 of them were white (69%), nine were Black/African American (13%), four were Asian/Pacific Islander (6%) and one character was Latinx. Eight LGBT characters were identified as non-human.

The study also outlines a great thumbnail guide in looking at LGBT characters in films called the Vito Russo Test. A  film passes the Vito Russo test if:

• The film contains a character that is identifiably lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender.
• That character must not be solely or predominantly defined by their sexual orientation or gender identity (i.e. they are comprised of the same sort of unique character traits commonly used to differentiate straight/non-transgender characters from one another).
• The LGBT character must be tied into the plot in such a way that their removal would have a significant effect, meaning they are not there to simply provide colorful commentary, paint urban authenticity, or (perhaps most commonly) set up a punchline. The character must matter.

Similar to the Bechdel Test, it's a fairly low bar to clear. Sadly, even the above reasonable standards aren't met by most films. As the study says:

Only 8 of the 22 (36%) inclusive major studio films passed the Vito Russo Test this year, the lowest percent­age in this study’s history, compared to 11 of 20 (55%) inclusive films released in 2014, 7 of 17 (41%) in 2013, and 6 out of 14 (43%) inclusive films released in 2012. This is a significant drop from the previous year when just over half of the inclusive films passed. There is clearly much room for industry improvement. More films need to include substantial LGBT characters that pass this simple test.

Why Are There No Black Family Emojis?

First created by Shigetaka Kurita in 1999, emojis have come a long way. From little unicode-based pictures and ideograms used by a savvy few to what looks to be a thoroughly forgettable animated movie and novelty pillows shaped like cartoon poop, emoji are used millions of times a day. Once broad-based support was added for emojis in 2015, the use of emojis have almost become a language in and of themselves.

Since there are a lot people emojis, there has been a lot of controversy over representation and what is seen as the default. For example, "Family" emojis at first didn't depict same-sex couples, and after outcry and discussion, these options were added to the Unicode standard. It makes sense, after all. If there's a way to show a person, you'd like that person to look like you, right?

So why aren't there options to make black family emojis? Jeremy Burge, writing for emojipedia says:

[O]ther emojis all have a choice of skin tones. Why not the families? The answer is that black family emojis are already possible. Unicode supports the sequences required to make emoji families with any combination of people or skin tones.
In 2016, Microsoft used these ZWJ sequences to create white families, black families, and all kinds of variations in between in an update to Windows 10.

When Unicode 8.0 was rolled out in 2015, in addition to adding in stuff like a taco emoji🌮 , the standards group also added in a way to give the human emojis human skin tones in the following ranges: 🏻 🏼 🏽 🏾 🏿.

However, there is currently no way to apply these to the family emoji-- either as a whole or for individual family members. Instead, the family emojis are displayed according to one standard- that the skin tones be rendered in pure yellow. Superficially it might make sense-- after all the smiley face is the same yellow. However, that sort of falls apart after even some cursory consideration, because whiteness is usually taken as the default, even with the "cartoonish" yellow. Look no further than the Simpsons! And as emojipedia pointed out on twitter:

Desire for black family emojis may illustrate that default-yellow is not being perceived as neutral or “non-human” https://t.co/x1aT0ZcXN9 pic.twitter.com/2gAr40PLyt

— Emojipedia 📙 (@Emojipedia) April 7, 2017

Over 35 percent of Americans identify as a race other than white and while they can text a single emoji that closely resembles their skin color, they can't use it for couple or family.I don't know about you but "it's so hard" isn't an acceptable answer for not including black families, and it seems more like an excuse that reeks of 💩.

GamerGate's Lasting Effects & How To Fight Back

As the widespread use of the Internet took off in the late '90s and early 2000s, gamers started to form communities. With those communities were norms and rules both written and unwritten than began to coalesce with what those communities did and did not find acceptable. These were mostly-male dominated spaces, with the norms and rules functioning as gate-keeping tactics-- first to keep out those that might have reminded the gate-keepers of bullies, but expanded to be anyone that could be treated as an outsider or an other. This was especially true for women and other minorities. Trash talking was sen as "part of the game", even when it led to rape jokes and threats, for example.

Harassment of women and the marginalized in gaming communities in specific and online in general didn't beging with GamerGate. GamerGate just gave a collective name to what had been lurking under the surface of gaming culture for a long time. It just was now too big to willfully ignore. As I wrote last year, the more virulent influence of GamerGaters seemed prime to make hardcore gamers the new conservative reactionaries-- and this was before Trump was elected on a wave of dank 4chan memes, racism, and twitter rants.

Writing for Bitch Media, Sam Riedel reflects on the 3rd anniversary of the beginning of the GamerGate movement. She also talks about the effect it's had on her as a gamer, and the frustration that many companies that pride themselves on building gaming communities still stand by and don't seem to do much in her essay "No Girls Allowed: The Lasting Rules of GamerGate and Toxic Misogyny":

[Many of the PAX East] show’s panels that touched on harassment and abuse did so in a way that was only marginally helpful.. The Diverse Gaming Coalition held a panel on stopping online bullying, and concluded that “fixing” people who want to cause harm “is our goal” but is “not realistic,” ending 20 minutes early after focusing primarily on hawking T-shirts and signing up new partners. 

The It Gets Better Project’s panel immediately followed and was even more frustrating... When asked what should be done to fight this abuse, panelist Leslie Pirritano recommended that victims reach out to the Online SOS Network—but when it came to reducing instances of harassment, the It Gets Better panel could only spout platitudes; Huertas referenced Game of Thrones’ Tyrian Lannister, saying victims should “wear [their abuse] like armor.” 

Most disappointingly, it doesn’t seem like community managers... seem that concerned with ending the problem. At a panel entitled “Community Management 101”... Devin Connors of game studio Psyonix said CMs can try to “remold their behavior” but should try not to engage. That sort of corporate non-answer, which prioritizes companies over lives, is especially distressing when you consider that Connors is in charge of maintaining the Rocket League community as Corsair Media’s Global Social Media and Community Manager.

As Riedel points out, women play games just as much as men, but cis men hold the majority of jobs in gaming.

Take a look at the numbers: Even though Pew Research Center finds that women play games just as much as men, and "There are no differences by race or ethnicity in who plays video games," the International Game Developers Association reports that over 75% of those working in the games industry are straight, white cisgender men... gaming culture as a whole is still nightmarishly toxic for people who aren't cisgender men, and even for some who are.

This circles back to my earlier posts on diversity in the tech sector. Those in positions of power need to prioritize marginalized voices, and that means hiring more women and people of color and LGBT+ people-- not just as token hires but with real responsibility, As for those not in hiring positions, but positions of societal power, we need to prioritize amplify marginalized voices instead of talking over them, and when they talk, we NEED to listen.

No More Excuses: 1,000 Women & Non Binary Folks Who Can Speak At Your Next Tech Conference

Last year, I wrote how despite the tech sector paying lip service to the idea of addressing diversity in its leadership or workforce, large companies and influential tech conferences are still big on talk and short on action.

For example, this exchange between tech writer Matt Andrews and EdgeConf's Andrew Betts on every single speaker being male:

@mattpointblank inexcusable is pretty strong. I don't feel need to defend this, but am happy with our process.

— Andrew Betts (@triblondon) January 3, 2013

When men in charge of tech conferences aren't being defensive, they're being straight up lazy, because finding women doing interesting work in tech is sssooooo hhhaaaarrrd, you guys!

No, seriously, someone said that.

Mike Kuniavsky the lead behind the "Sketching in Hardware" conference actually said in an interview that it's "…often much harder to identify the women who are doing interesting work than the men".

Melanie Ehrenkranz, a tech reporter with Mic.com, put out a call for anyone who was

• willing to speak at a tech conference
• doing interesting work in the tech sector, and 
• was not a cis man

In just under a day, she had a list of 1,000 recommended names, which you can see for yourself here.

Okay, so now there's a list of speakers in tech. That's all we need now, right? Wrong. A list of women and nonbinary people that can speak on stage is just the first step. As Ehrenkranz said, the point is not for men in tech to have a list of people to tokenize;

"We also have to disrupt the idea that the only thing minorities are qualified to speak on is being a minority. The tech experts listed here are more than tokens — they're authorities in their fields. Individuals from underrepresented groups shouldn't have to tediously compile lists and shout into the Twittersphere that they are here, they are experts and they want to speak. Panel organizers need to make a more concerted effort to diversify their experts. Male panelists need to look at their fellow panelists and, if they notice it's exclusively white men, make space for more voices.  

We're not always going to do the work for you."

Note: Originally the title of this post inadvertently didn't mention non-binary people. I have since corrected it.

Captain Kirk: How Pop Culture & Toxic Masculinity Got It Wrong

Kirk:"Leave any bigotry in your quarters. There's
no room for it on the bridge."

The popular collective image of Captain Kirk from the original Star Trek series is that of a brash, impulsive captain who charges in first and asks questions later. Pop culture would have it that Capt. Kirk was also a serial womanizer, bedding alien women across the galaxy.

Popular culture has it completely wrong.

Writing for Strange Horizions, Erin Horakova penned an essay entitled "Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift" that looks at just why it's important that these notions be debunked and the conclusions people can draw from them be deconstructed. For example, there's a lot of toxic ideas about what it means to be "macho" if you buy into the "Kirk was a womanizer" narrative:

If your vision of masculinity cannot distinguish between choosing to have sex and situations of dubious consent incurred in the line of duty, it is deeply toxic. You are insisting that men are hyper-sexual, unemotional, and can never be taken advantage of (lest they cease to be strong, compelling men due to their ever having displayed vulnerability)... These misreadings are supported by a subterranean network of ideas about masculinity, pop culture, and the past that consistently reinforce them, hitting refresh on these dank memes. I don’t think all the connections have been made here, and all the implications unfolded.

Horakova outlines many instances of what she calls "Kirk Drift"-- the difference between what people think Capt Kirk did and Star Trek portrayed, and what actually aired. How these misconceptions not only inform the average person's idea of what Star Trek was, but what the reboot thinks Star Trek should be, How the ideas trickle down, changing and erasing everything from science fiction's attitudes to concepts of what it means to be a man to expressions of Jewish masculinity. Why should we care? hhhh makes the case thusly:

All texts run the danger, even if they’ve worked hard to be progressive, or if they yield easily to positive interpretations, of being “rewritten” in the world and even in our minds. In relation to her own work, novelist Dr. Nnedi Okorafor says that “what I really want to discuss is the whitewashing battle in many readers' minds. The one that turns characters white upon reading them so the reader is more comfortable.” Her work, like all work that comes from a place of or offers any potential for alterity, is at risk of being “colonised” by conservative narrative reclamations operating via the mechanism of mismemory. It is not enough for a text to be progressive; its memory must also be defended against this decay.

The entire essay is well-written, thoroughly sourced and a fascinating read. Grab the whole article here.

Black Materia: Awesome Take On Final Fantasy VII's Cast

Image Description: Cloud Strife from Final
Fantasy VII drawn as a black male with
blond locs. Part of a fan art series by artist Nikolas
Draper-Ivey

Recently, comic artist and illustrator Nikolas Draper-Ivey had enough with random haters online. As he tells it:

...[S]ome people on my page had a problem with me drawing black people because I, a black man, was drawing far too many of them (and not as stereotypes or tropes) when I’m known for having diverse character designs in the first place. 

 I literally got asked, “Do you ever draw white people?” And “You only draw black guys. Why?” In the same morning and I’m like, “Oh so this is a PROBLEM now?” Anyone that has seen my work knows that I draw people from all over. 

...if me drawing people of color as characters and not stereotypes and over used tropes offends you, then get ready to hate my black ass then, because I’m not about to sit by and let us not be represented in a respectful, uplifting and positive light anymore...

Rather than letting the haters get him down, though, he used all that salt to work on some truly awesome fan art and give his take on the main cast of the Squaresoft RPG Final Fantasy VII. Why'd he chose that game? As Draper-Ivey put it, "I specifically chose FFVII because it’s already a diverse cast and to Square Enix’s credit, you could literally tell the same story with these designs."

Those designs are amazing. His work in the superhero genre was already pretty impressive, and seeing his take on a JRPG classic is awesome. He takes the source material and puts his own well-illustrated spin on it. You can see his art of Cloud Strife above, but I was also wowed by his fan art of FFVII's main villain, Sephiroth. Check it out:

You can check out his other FFVII fan art here, his fan art of FFXV's Noctis here, and feast on his deviantart gallery here.

Marvel Retcons All of World War II, Capt America Always Evil

Cover to Secret Empire #0. Art by Mark Brooks.

The latest ridiculous twist in the saga of Captain America penned by Nick Spencer has outdone all of Spencer's other "shocking" twists in both the breadth of its foolishness and its lack of respect for an iconic character's legacy.

First, a quick recap.

Last summer, comics fandom and the wider media fandom at large was shocked when Captain America, Marvel's staunch defender of liberty uttered the line "Hail Hydra", revealing himself as having been allied with the evil Hydra organization all along-- a group that in the Marvel universe originated with Nazi Germany, the very foes Captain America was supposed to have fought against! It seemed like a crass twist and super inconsistent with the character's real-world origins and legacy. Captain America was created by two Jewish creators, Jack Kirby and Joe Simon. Captain America was born s wish fulfillment, to have an all-American hero punch Hitler and fight Nazis even before the US was involved in World War 2. Nick Spencer, the writer for that arc as well as the ongoing Sam Falcon, Captain America title promised all would be revealed in due time.

"Captain America wasn't brainwashed," Nick Spencer said. He also said that the Cap that declared "Hail Hydra" wasn't an alien body double or a robot duplicate. It was the actual Steve Rogers, the real Captain America had done this. But be patient, Spencer urged. It would all make sense. Recently it was revealed that the pieces of the Cosmic Cube- an artifact powerful enough to rewrite reality itself- had somehow taken the form of Kobi, a small naive child unaware of the reality-altering powers she had within her. Kobi, in turn, influenced by the super-villian Red Skull-- Captain America's longtime Nazi arch-nemesis since World War II. It was the Red Skull who influenced Kobi to give Captain America the memories of being a Hydra sleeper agent. So, see, it wasn't technically brainwashing, right?

That's not the most foolish part. See, as asinine as that revelation was, that gives you the hope that Captain America still had some good in him, right? That even though at this point Captain America has sold out the Earth to invading aliens, allied himself with super powered Nazis and was setting himself up to become dictator for life of the United States, that there was maybe still some good in him somewhere. The Marvel Universe had a glimmer of hope.

With the release of Secret Empire #0 two days ago, Nick Spencer reveals his biggest, most asinine twist yet: The Allies actually lost World War II and used the Cosmic Cube to re-write reality so that the Nazis were defeated and Captain America was the world-saving good guy. In the Marvel Universe, Germany was actually the winner, and always was. Steve Rogers really was an agent for Hydra all along, and those memories added by Red Skull were actually restoring Captain America to his "true self", Spencer ret-conned actual world history to take a symbol of the US created by two Jewish men during World War II and said nope, Captain America was supposed to really be an evil bad guy and it was only a reality-rewrite that made him good.

This is especially egregious tone-deafness because two days ago-- April 19th-- was the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the largest Jewish revolt during World War II, and also has the distinction of being the first urban uprising against the Nazis that happened in Nazi-occupied Europe.The Nazis attempted to completely wipe out the Jews living in Warsaw on the eve of Passover. Instead, the Jews held out against occupied forces for nearly a month, using whatever they had on hand to fight back. Their bravery inspired Jews across Europe, including those already in the camps, to organize and revolt.

In fact, that's another odd thing about the whole "Allies used the Cosmic Cube to re-write history so the Nazis would lose instead of win like they were supposed to"-- why didn't the Allies cosmically re-write it so that the Holocaust never happened?

Marvel is doubling down on the doubling down, too, rebranding its websites with Hydra iconography, and even asking brick and mortar comic book shops to have employees wear Hydra t-shirts this month.

We've also been asked to change our store logos to Hydra symbols. My staff are LGBTQ, Jewish, or both. We are no longer hand-selling Marvel. https://t.co/gQnBfBZC8L

— Glamour Toad 🌈🐸🌈 (@NickiColey) April 20, 2017

Nick Spencer took to twitter with all the class you'd expect:

Haters upon seeing the advance reviews for SECRET EMPIRE 0 pic.twitter.com/lFU0RStBd6

— Nick Spencer (@nickspencer) March 23, 2017

Then again, for a dude making his living writing super heroes, Nick Spencer doesn't seem to have the greatest grasp of them. Like when he rushed to twitter to give his hot take on Nazis getting punched in public:

@nickspencer Nick....you just described what a superhero is.

— ANTHONY OLIVEIRA (@meakoopa) April 17, 2017

Last week, I talked about how Marvel's VP of Sales tried to blame "diversity" for poor comic book sales, and how that assertion is utter bullshit. itch.io user spacetwinks was pretty pissed off about that assertion too, and put together a thorough and damning analysis and response, as described thus:

This did not sit well with others, the idea that retailers and Marvel would blame these books for low sales - and it didn't sit well with me, either. So I've hunkered down and put in the hours researching sales data reaching back over a decade in Marvel, and looked for what could possibly be the true culprit in their sales problems.
"Shut The Fuck Up, Marvel" is a nearly 30k long essay, a spiritual sequel to The Problems With Comics, a deep dive into the true issues with Marvel's economics and business - and how an obsession with short term profit, the constant renumbering and relaunches and events, all compounded by a complete inability to understand basic marketing techniques or outside audiences, has absolutely destroyed the sales stability of many of their former best selling books, all as they condescend to those who criticize them on their stories, or on how they try to sell comics.

It's offered as a pay what you want download, and is a very insightful read. I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Update: Wow, this post is starting to blow up! My hosting is getting slammed! So if you liked this article and want to see more, you can help support it by pledging a buck or more to my Patreon or by tossing some spare change in the virtual tip jar to the right. Thanks!

Marvel Comics Exec Says "Diversity" Is Why Sales Are Down

David Gabriel, Marvel Comics' Vice President of Sales spoke at a recent retailer summit and said that "...people didn’t want any more diversity. They didn’t want female characters out there," and that "Any character that was diverse, any character that was new, our female characters, anything that was not a core Marvel character, people were turning their nose up [at]."

This contrasts with the experience of one retailer who spoke with ICv2 on the first day of the retailer summit who said a more diverse cast of characters were helping bring new customers to his store. The latest iteration of Ms. Marvel, which has Muslima teenager Khamala Khan taking up the title role, was nominated for a Hugo Award this year. In a detailed post on CBR.com that did some serious number crunching of Marvel Comics' sales for the past year, Charles Paul Hoffman wrote:

Just to be clear, “diversity” has very little to do with the drop in sales in Marvel’s top 10 books. Only three (“The Mighty Thor,” “Invincible Iron Man” and “Black Panther”) can be considered “diverse,” in that they star a lead character who is a woman or a person of color. The rest are series starring white male heroes or teams made up predominantly of white male heroes. These are Marvel’s traditional A-list heroes, being written and drawn by A-list writers and artists (almost all of whom are themselves white men), and yet they are floundering... 

While Marvel has admittedly had some misses among its “diverse” titles, it has also had some genuine hits. “The Mighty Thor” remains Marvel’s No. 2=selling ongoing superhero series. “Black Panther” has been a solid hit as well, selling enough single issues to be in Marvel’s top 10, and enough trades to make the bestseller lists. “Invincible Iron Man” (starring Riri Williams) is also in the top 10, showing very little attrition from writer Brian Micahel Bendis’ pre-“Civil War II” series. “Spider-Man” is close behind, selling about 5,000 more copies than Miles Morales’ pre-“Secret Wars” series.”Spider-Gwen” and “All-New Wolverine” are also both doing well, with more than 29,000 copies sold in February for both titles. And then there’s “Ms. Marvel” and “The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl,” two series whose trades have also made the bestsellers lists. 

Having dug into the data, it’s become clear that diversity is not hurting Marvel. The truth is, Marvel’s “diverse” titles actually sell decently. 

So if Marvel's more diverse offerings are actually selling decently, bringing in newer clintele and winning awards... then what's up with declining sales? Professionals and fans on twitter have a few ideas:

An idiotic conclusion, @Marvel. I stopped buying your books because of the high price & event fatigue not diversity. https://t.co/uysUOwOBkh

— Anthony John Agnello (@ajohnagnello) March 31, 2017

Marvel thinks diversity is ruining their sales? Idk, MAYBE turning Captain America, a worldwide symbol, into a nazi has something to do

— ㅤmanu (@gecrgeblagden) April 2, 2017

Other industry analyses have pointed out stumbling blocks that Marvel has seemed to put in its own way, like trying to make its Inhumans line-up replace the X-Men series while X-Men hemorrhages sales and the Inhumans branding repeats many of the same mistakes of the X-Men before them. The Nerdist has an excellent take-down of how diverse casts written by the same ol' roster of white men leads to a lot of tone-deaf bullcrap that can end up alienating readers old AND new:

When Brian Michael Bendis writes Miles Morales as being upset with a fan who mentions his black heritage, or when Nick Spencer has Sam Wilson apologize to Steve Rogers for any activism-fueled anger he may have displayed in the past, it comes off as tone-deaf and leaves readers understandably less than thrilled. The same comic features multi-ethnic villains who are parodies of the “Social Justice Warrior” stereotype, who shout phrases like “You should be an ally, not helping to defend oppression culture!” and “Consider this your trigger warning!” as they throw grenades at Sam... 
Let’s also remember SHIELD #8 (2015), written by Mark Waid, where a black woman viewing her young son’s corpse remarks, “He was no angel“—the same phrase used to vindicate Michael Brown’s murder.

G. Williow Wilson, the lead behind the currently Hugo-nominated Ms. Marvel points out a few things about authenticity, new audiences, changing markets and industry expectations:

What I didn’t realize was that the anxieties felt by young Muslims are also felt by young Mormons, evangelicals, orthodox Jews, and others. A h-u-g-e reason Ms Marvel has struck the chord it has is because it deals with the role of traditionalist faith in the context of social justice, and there was–apparently–an untapped audience of people from a wide variety of faith backgrounds who were eager for a story like this... Diversity as a form of performative guilt doesn’t work. Let’s scrap the word diversity entirely and replace it with authenticity and realism. This is not a new world. This is the world... 

Never try to be the next whoever. Be the first and only you. People smell BS a mile away. 

The direct market and the book market have diverged. Never the twain shall meet. We need to accept this and move on, and market accordingly.

That last point is something important to remember as far as sales. The relaunched Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur (which I covered here back in 2015) only sells a few thousand issues a month... but its trade paperbacks and graphic novel collections sells like hotcakes to little kids via Scholastic Book Fairs. The market is changing, how comics are sold are changing, and the audience is changing. As Alex Brown puts it on Tor.com:

Blaming readers for not buying diverse comics despite the clamor for more is a false narrative. Many of the fans attracted to “diverse” titles are newbies and engage in comics very differently from longtime fans. For a variety of reasons, they tend to wait for the trades or buy digital issues rather than print. The latter is especially true for young adults who generally share digital (and yes, often pirated) issues. Yet the comics industry derives all of its value from how many print issues Diamond Distributors shipped to stores, not from how many issues, trades, or digital copies were actually purchased by readers. Every comics publisher is struggling to walk that customer-centric tightrope, but only Marvel is dumb enough to shoot themselves in the foot, then blame the rope for their fall.

Looking at a diversity initiative as the beginning and end of what's needed to help improve the state of comics is short-sighted and wrong-headed. Instead of just having the same white men tell stories with some characters of color here and there, there should be structure in place for minority writers and artists and creators to tell the stories they want to a mainstream audience. Diversity as the final and only goal is a hollow act that does nothing but reinforce whiteness and the status quo as the default. That's not the world we live in, so why so worlds we get to make up have to be that way? Free your mind, and the audience will follow.

Empowering Roles With Dice Rolls: D&D, Women & Feminism

Rat Queens fan art. Illustration courtesy of nebezial at nebezial.deviantart.com

The notion of women finding empowerment through media and entertainment isn’t new, but the way a new generation of women are finding it through D&D has been.

As Canadian author and movie critic Tina Hassannia started playing Dungeons & Dragons and was surprised to find it an extremely empowering experience. She wrote in a National Post article that “Nerd culture, of which I count myself a member, has long been dominated by men, but playing D&D left me feeling empowered in a way that watching Beyoncé videos never has. Instead of looking up to a role model, the game prompted me to discover the badass warrior within.”

Jen Luneau, writing for The Mary Sue, talks about how being in an all-women D&D group has been fun and empowering for her because she gets to decide what it means for her: "Because we’re surrounded by other women, we’re OK. Because we’re taking a traditionally male-dominated thing and making it whatever the hell we want it to be, we’re OK. And because the six of us have created a safe environment where we can be ourselves, I can’t wait until our next meeting."

One great ongoing look at women exploring D&D and other tabletop systems is She's A Geek. The latest episode goes over The Witch Is Dead and regularly covers campaigns, post-mortems and all sorts of great gaming discussion. Check it out!