Are You My Mother?: A Comic Drama by Alison Bechdel

Rating: ★★★☆☆

As an autobiographical sequel to Fun Home, Bechdel’s approach to analysing her relationship with her mother couldn’t be more different to how she examined the one with her father. If you have a problem with dry psychoanalysis, then you may struggle with Are You My Mother?

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 2: Fandemonium by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Waste of paper. No, that’s not right. That’s offensive to the artists as the illustrations were brilliant, but there may as well have been no words. Seriously. Very little happens. At least very little that makes sense or contributes to plot progression. Only the last few pages have any real meaning with a humdinger of a cliffhanger that leaves you with multiple questions and countless theories.

SPOILERS AHEAD.

The Wicked + The Divine, Vol. 1: The Faust Act by Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie

Rating:

What kind of teenager are you that you don’t have Class A drugs to hand? Hmm? Has The Daily Mail been lying to me?
Lucifer

Every 90 years twelve gods from multiple pantheons are reincarnated in young people to live for two years. The gods reincarnated are different each time and don’t necessarily live out the full two years, as the opening pages can attest with only four gods left at the end of the last cycle in 1923, skulls perched in the empty seats. Ananke is their guardian, goddess of fate, necessity and destiny. She’s their protector, but also their judge, jury and, if necessary, their executioner.

And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson & Peter Parnell

Rating:

I chose this for Banned Books Week but I couldn’t wait any longer to read it.

Disappointingly my library copy came with a warning slapped on the cover. What’s to be frightened about with ‘same sex families’?

LonCon3 #16: Welcome to Clone Club

Panellists: Tracy Berg, Jo Hacker, Jeanne Gomoll, Moira O’Keeffe, Sunil Patel

Orphan Black is one of the most critically-acclaimed and fannishly-popular SF TV series to debut in the last few years, and is notable both for being a strongly feminist narrative and for sticking (more or less, so far) to a plausible depiction of biological sciences. In the season one finale, the two themes are linked: “We have to control our biology”, one of the clone-sisters asserts. Bearing this imperative in mind, how do the show’s feminism and science interact and inform one another? How successful is the show at balancing commercial and political narrative goals?

WARNING: Spoilers!

LonCon3 #15: Beyond Bechdel (feminism)

Panellists: Kate Heartfield, Kate Elliott, Jed Hartman, Julia Rios, JY Yang

The “Bechdel test” for female representation in films is now widely known. To pass it a film should contain two named female characters who have a conversation about something other than a man. In recent years, similar tests have been proposed for other under-represented groups, including the Mako Mori test for characters of colour, and the Russo test for queer characters. What are the strengths and weaknesses of such tests? How do they affect our viewing choices? And what does the popularity of such tests say about how popular media are being received and discussed?

LonCon3 #5: Reimagining Families – where’s the diversity?

Panellists: Jed Hartman, David D Levine, Rosanne Rabinowitz, Laura Lam, Cherry Potts (moderator)

In a 2013 column for Tor.com, Alex Dally MacFarlane called for a greater diversity in the way SF and fantasy represent families, pointing out that in the real world, “People of all sexualities and genders join together in twos, threes, or more. Family-strong friendships, auntie networks, global families… The ways we live together are endless.” Which stories centre non-normative family structures? What are the challenges of doing this in an SF context, and what are the advantages? How does representing a wider range of family types change the stories that are told?