Batlinks (Whitewashing is Bad, Game of Thrones is Funny, and More!)

Disgustingly pretty painting of Sherlock's Molly Hooper by Alice X. Zhang. Check out her store here.

Well, I’ve now seen The Dark Knight Rises, and while you’re totally getting a full review/rave on Monday, for now let me just say that it was awesome, precisely what I wanted, and that I now feel a bit smug about predicting some stuff correctly.

But enough about me.

Happy Saturday, folks! Let’s all take a deep breath and have a nice lemonade or something as we chill out from the week. Oh, and have some links. Feel free to post your own stuff or anything you think we missed in the comments below!

1. In obviously-Batman-comes-first news, way back in November last year, Cody over at Cracked! made some pretty accurate predictions about TheDark Knight Rises. I’m not saying he’s a wizard or anything (we can’t prove it), but I am saying he’s spent more of his life on this than I have, and that’s saying something. (Don’t read if you don’t want spoilers). Also, have two different reviews, one from Women in Hollywood and one from Slate explaining why Catwoman was the best part of TDKR. Which she was.

2. In pee-your-pants-funny news, Katrina Lumsden has possibly the best review of Fifty Shades of Grey ever up on goodreads. Like, seriously. It’s hilarious. She goes on to review the other two books as well, and all of her reviews are insightful, funny, and full of incredibly appropriate gifs. Check it out here.

3. In hmm-never-thought-about-that news, writer-director-actress Zoe Kazan has fired back at societal disapproval of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl phenomenon, by pointing out that categorizing women this way is actually really sexist. Now, I come down more on the “male fantasy of what a girlfriend should be” side and I think that MPDGs are pretty sexist, but I see her point, and it’s cool to get another opinion sometimes. Check it out here.

4. In excuse-me-while-I-self-promote news, the Feminist Odyssey Blog Carnival has carried on into its second month (you may recognize this as the thing advertised in my sidebar). The theme this month was Women in Movies, so obviously I contributed. You can check out my stuff, and all the other awesome articles here. Next month we’re doing Women in Education, so I’ll keep you posted!

5. In guess-I-can’t-hate-her-anymore news, author Cassandra Clare has spoken out against whitewashing in cinema, and especially against it in relation to the movie adaptation of her book, The Mortal Instruments. Which is awesome. Seriously. I mean, I always kind of resented Ms. Clare because she got me kicked off fanfiction.net when I was fourteen for “plagiarizing” her (complete crap), but I guess we all have to grow up sometimes. So, Cassie, I’m sorry. Good job on being awesome.

6. In not-sure-about-this news, the LA Times one, apparently has a blog about comic books which makes me wonder what that’s not my job, and two, this week that blog looked at discrimination against women in the comics industry. Except by “looks at”, I apparently mean “tries to debunk”, which is a little weird. According to the article, it’s easier than ever for a woman to break into comics (which I believe) and that we should all stop talking about it like it’s a thing (which we shouldn’t). I don’t know. Check it out here and let me know what you think in the comments below.

7. Finally, in best-ever news, The Key of Awesome is a youtube channel that parodies pop songs by making them into something else. Sometimes it’s a commentary on the song or video or artist, othertimes it’s just funny. In this case, Maroon 5’s “Payphone” has been rewritten to be about Game of Thrones. Worth it.

So, that’s it for this week. Check in with Crossover Appeal on Sunday at 6pm PDT/9pm EDT, when we’ll be talking about Batman in an episode with all of the spoilers. See you on Monday!