Fangirls Around the Web: February 28, 2013
Let’s start off this edition of Fangirls Around the Web with some congratulatory shout-outs. Bravo to Danica Patrick, the first woman to win the pole in a NASCAR race – and at the Daytona 500, no less. She ran a great race, leading a lap and finishing in the top ten. Why is this important? Four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon’s daughter Ella asked to pose for a picture with Danica after her pole win. From the USA Today article “Danica Patrick teaches Jeff Gordon’s daughter a lesson,” his daughter “hadn’t even realized girls could grow up to be race car drivers until Patrick came along.”
At the season finale screening of The Clone Wars at Lucasfilm last Friday, Bonnie Burton was honored as the first woman inducted into Dave Filoni’s Wolfpack. Well deserved!
Congratulations to my friend and fellow Jaina Solo fangirl Shea Standefer for being selected as one of the artists at this summer’s Star Wars Celebration Europe convention. Shea also deserves kudos for her fabulous post on Facebook about being a “late bloomer” and giving encouragement to so many other girls who feel that way about themselves sometimes.
In other Star Wars news, Ashley Eckstein did an interview about geek chic, and Amy Ratcliffe blogs about Jennifer Landa’s custom geeky jewelry.
TheMarySue recently featured two interesting articles about videogames. Becky Chambers wrote an interesting piece titled “Academic Study Examines The Link Between Gender Cues and In-Game Harassment.” And Susana Polo discusses controversial comments about female characters by the art director for Gears of War.
In the world of comics, the article by Alison Flood at The Guardian, “Comic-book superheroine Cat aims to see off gender stereotypes,” is worth the read. So is the piece by Andrew Wheeler at Comics Alliance titled “Mutant Women of Earth: How Chris Claremont Reinvented the Female Superhero.”
Meredith Woerner at i09 explains why “The Beautiful Creatures authors give us the rules for creating a believable fantasy.”
From Bloomberg Businessweek, a fascinating article For LEGO, Pink is the New Black about the tremendous success of a new product line designed for girls. I found this part especially intriguing:
Lego Friends became the company’s fourth-bestselling line in only its first year (behind Star Wars, Ninjago, and Lego CITY, and surpassing superheroes), helping the company record the best financial results in its 81-year history, with a 25 percent increase in revenue globally (to $4.04 billion). Moreover, Lego Friends’ performance has silenced any remaining naysayers within Lego who doubted the brand could appeal equally to both genders.
Finally, while promoting her friend (and Wonder Woman fan) Beyonce’s documentary, Oprah mentioned this Brene Brown TED talk on vulnerability. The entire talk is definitely worth watching for how it relates to life and storytelling.
Tricia Barr took her understanding of brand management and marketing, mixed it with a love of genre storytelling, and added a dash of social media flare to create FANgirl Blog, where she discusses Star Wars, fandom, and strong female characters. She also writes about Star Wars for Random House’s science fiction and fantasy blog Suvudu.com and for Star Wars Insider magazine.
In her spare time, Tricia puts the finishing touches on her first novel, Wynde. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
For updates on all things FANgirl follow @FANgirlcantina on Twitter or like FANgirl Zone on Facebook.
Tricia Barr's novel, Wynde, won the 2014 Independent Publisher Book Award Gold Medal for Best Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror Ebook. She was also part of Silence in the Library's successful all-female creator science fiction and fantasy anthology Athena's Daughters, which is available now. For excerpts and tales of her adventures in creating a fictional universe, hop over to TriciaBarr.com.
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