Links: Indie Publishing, Karate, & Politics

We’re back from RT! I’m sure we’re all a little sleepy and playing catch up. For those who attended the convention, it was really lovely meeting all of you. For those who didn’t, we hope you can make a future convention because it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

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Publishers Weekly had an interesting write up on how women are dominating the indie publishing world:

Some women PW spoke with said they felt they had to start their own businesses because they didn’t see an opportunity to rise up the ranks in the companies where they worked, both inside and outside of publishing. Rhonda Hughes, founder of Print Vision and Hawthorne Books, remembers when she was 27, working as a sales rep for an overseas print broker, whose owner she approached about being a partner. He told her he’d consider it; yet soon after, he brought in a young man and made him partner. “I realized then that it was just not going to happen. So I went to Oahu, sat on the beach, and came up with this business called Print Vision, which I still own. I left because I realized I wouldn’t get what I wanted unless I left and did it myself. The same thing with publishing: I realized I could move to New York and be an assistant editor and get paid nothing and be really poor, which I didn’t want to do, or I could do this on my own.”

Of course, some facets of publishing are still very white, but here’s hoping we see more growth soon!

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The A.V. Club mentions YouTuber Jonathan McIntosh’s Born Sexy Yesterday phenomenon, in which women in scifi are beautiful, but often have the minds of children:

Using numerous examples from movies like Tron: Legacy, The Fifth Element, Splash, Enchanted, Forbidden Planet (and pretty much any other sci-fi film from the ’50s), the video outlines how these characters cater to a male fantasy of innocence and sexual purity, the kind that places the man in a place of power to represent “the ultimate teacher-student dynamic.” By being the only man in the lives of these women, the protagonists of these films “automatically become the most extraordinary man” in her life. The video also explores how the trope functions when the gender roles are reversed or when both genders find themselves in a similar state of “innocence.”

It’s a fascinating and infuriating video.

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Stacey Abrams is a Democrat and the minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives. She’s a romance novelist and is officially running for governor! The L.A. Times has a pretty good profile on Abrams. We wish her the best of luck on her gubernatorial run!

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Thanks to Reader Lace for sending us this link, on how to do karate in Victorian dress. Here’s what Lace said:

By Marie Brennan, who writes the Lady Trent Victorian fantasy series. A fascinating breakdown of which elements cause the most problems, and which karate styles would be more compatible with appropriate attire.

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Don’t forget to share what super cool things you’ve seen, read, or listened to this week! And if you have anything you think we’d like to post on a future Wednesday Links, send it my way!