The Culture Channel

I'd post a Wednesday reading list, but then I'd have to admit to how many truly dreadful romance novels I read and how often I listen to the same handful of audiobooks over and over. Instead, I'll spare you the Lora Leigh (ever wanted to read badly written het A/B/O fic? She has a whole 20+ book series), murder mysteries, and Harlequin Historicals and give themed recs instead. I'm linking to the Brooklyn Public Library's page for each book rather than Amazon because a) that's where I read them all, and b) fuck Jeff Bezos.

Today's Theme: Evolution & Paleontology
HARD MODE: NO DINOSAURS OR FOSSIL HOMINIDS

Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species by Sean B. Carroll
Great overview of some of the biggest discoveries in evolutionary science & paleontology, with short biographical sketches of the people who made them. This is written for general audiences, so you don't need any previous knowledge about biology or evolutionary science to follow along.

Life Ascending - The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution by Nick Lane
Most of which took place long before dinosaurs, or even vertebrates, existed. Lane discusses a number of evolutionary leaps that were paradigm-changing (photosynthesis in plants, the origins of sensory organs, sexual reproduction, the transition from bacterial RNA to nuclear DNA), but which don't get nearly as much media attention as the origin of humans or the emergence of tetrapods onto land.

The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life by Nick Lane
If you enjoyed the previous book and want a more in-depth look at the biochemical theories surrounding the origin of complex life and the evolution of eukaryotes. This is all single-celled organisms and DNA-from-RNA and "let's speculate about what life was like back when we were all bacteria clustered around hydrothermal vents" kind of stuff.

Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters by Donald R. Prothero
This book might as well be subtitled Evolution: Why Creationists are Really Freakin' Stupid, and I love it for that. The only part better than the author's constant dragging on creationists is the part on invertebrate paleontology where I learned that arthopods are descended from unsegmented worms while molluscs are descended from segmented one, which is pretty much the opposite of what you'd expect and therefore cool.

When Life Nearly Died by Michael J. Benton
Who doesn't love the End Permian Extinction Event? Usually over-looked in favor of it's more famous End-Cretaceous/K-T Boundary Event/Flaming Asteroid Death From Above younger sibling, this grand-daddy of all extinction events is fascinating in its own right. It's certainly my favorite time that life on earth nearly died (accompanying controversial opinion: the BBC's Walking With Monsters is better than Walking With Dinosaurs).

Resurrecting the Shark by Susan Ewing
Fossils sharks can get weird as fuck, and Helicoprion, or as I like to call it, the Whorl-Toothed Fossil Shark (or WTF Shark) was about as weird as they came. Generations of paleontologists have wondered why the hell its teeth grew in a giant spiral like that and WTF it used them for. Now, you can read the results of their headscratching and boggle/wonder as well.

There is an official at the NYC Department of Buildings whose last name is Nimrod.

No, seriously, Nimrod, spelled just like that.

And they work for the DOB.

This is even better than filing purchase orders for JohnKat Windows and Doors (I don't even ship John/Karkat, but it amuses me every time) or getting emails from real estate agent Jessica Jones, because for once everyone else in the office is also snickering.

Because I've been considering doing this, and talking about it, and I need to just stop being afraid and post it. I'll just pre-emptively tag this with "they should have left me in the ice," shall I?

If the mods at linkspam get ahold of this and feel that it's derailing, I ask that it NOT BE LINKED IN THAT CASE because that would only enhance any derailing effect.

Currently, everyone's discussing the ever-widening definition-creep of derailing, and before that, they/we were all talking about misogyny in slash. Unless we consider "slashers: there's something wrong with them" to be the general point of the discussion, with detours into "bisexual slashers: they're all liars, and even if they aren't their sexuality doesn't matter, and if they try to say it does, that's derailing," we've drifted away from the original topic of "slash and m/m romance: some of it has harmful stereotypes in it."

Since I don't think I can contribute in any meaningful way to the derailing debate, and since I've read at least three rounds of "slasher misogyny" debates over the past nine years, I'd like to get back to the original topic for a while.

Some fiction has homophobic or heterosexist stereotypes in it.

( And I'd like to discuss what those can be/are, and if there are any books we feel are particularly good or bad at avoiding them )


*I'd like to limit this to published books, because the conversation began with criticisms specific to the m/m publishing industry and their depiction of gay and bisexual men. I think that fanfiction and slash are a different conversation that it would also be useful to have, but I'd prefer to let someone else host that.

This post is mirrored on LJ

Somebody's already claimed the Snow Queen on the cap_ironman fairytale drabble post, but since I got the plotbunny and wrote the outline a year ago and wrote the first two segments this morning before I realized that we were supposed to sign up for things, I'm posting it anyway. But here, instead of on the comm. I'll link if she says I can share the prompt.

Edit: Since not everyone's as familiar with the original text of the Snow Queen as I had blythely assumed, a belated heads up that some of this is paraphrased from Hans Christian Andersen's original, and several lines are direct quotations.

( Story the first: A Mirror of Steel )

( Story the second: A Soldier & a Smith )

Story the Third: At the Library of the Young Woman Who Understood Witchcraft

Two exam questions down, three to go, so have some pointless cuteness with mini!Tony. Brainsorming credit goes to seanchai

( First crushes can be so cute... when they don't grow up to be sociopathic business tycoons who want to kill you )