Hello, friends! Since it’s now been six whole months since the last This Week in Words and since that really is rather stretching the title’s credulity, I feel a rebranding coming on. What has previously been known as TWiW shall now become… Linkfest! It’s effectively the same exact thing, except I no longer have to feel guilty every time I miss a week. It also means I don’t have to keep qualifying when I link an old article. Linkfest is non-specific about its remit.
Anyway, heads up, ’cause Linkfest is coming to rock your world and blow your mind with some really very interesting outside content.
4 Things No One Tells You About Having OCD – Cracked.com. A great, heartfelt article by the fantastic Mara Wilson on the realities of actually having Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, rather than the popular usage of invoking it to describe being bothered by small, specific things. If you’re wary of Cracked, don’t worry in this instance.
Why I Stay Closeted in Asia – BuzzFeed. A pseudonymous article about why coming out, whilst often presented by the queer mainstream as a necessary step on the road to accepting yourself, isn’t so simple for those with family in Asia.
We Need More Mary Sues – Feminist Fiction. A short essay taking on the concept of the ‘Mary Sue’ in genre entertainment – a female character deemed by the audience ‘too cool’ and therefore bad – and the double standard applied thereby to male and female characters. Was James Bond a Mary Sue?
Diversity in children’s books: colouring in required – The Guardian. Alison Flood writes about the lack of diversity in children’s books in the UK, why representation is important, and what is being done to remedy the situation by presses like Tamarind Books.
Love (& Marriage?) – jasikanicole.com. Jasika Nicole, who you ought to know as Astrid Farnsworth from Fringe, in a blog post about her wedding to her now-wife Claire. Impossibly lovely – guaranteed to make you smile.
What Londoners Say Vs. What They Mean – BuzzFeed. One for the Londoners only, perhaps. This list manages to be at once both a wry love letter to London and a cry for help, not to mention frighteningly accurate.
23 Obscure Dirty Words to Broaden Your Erotic Vocabulary – Nerve. From ‘priapic’ to ‘steatopygous’, you’re sure to find a word or two you’ve never met before in this fun list.
“Porn Studies” Is Fucking Rad – Autostraddle. The first peer-reviewed academic journal about porn launched recently – here’s Autostraddle’s Carolyn on the debate around it, and why it’s awesome.
Why you should hate the creative writing establishment (…as if you needed any more reasons) – blotter-paper.com. R. H. Kanakia on the ways in which the creative writing establishment and, concomitantly, the literary establishment, is kept inaccessible to the non-privileged, and the heavily-guarded divide between literary and genre fiction.
‘And They Tortured Me’ by Enoh Meyomesse – English PEN. Finally, a translation by Laura Hargreaves from the French of imprisoned Cameroonian poet Enoh Meyomesse’s poem ‘et ils m’ont torturé’.