The Skellingcorner

aslongasitsfiction asked:

My book group and I would love to read the style of your books for our Halloween-themed reading assignment next month. However, we are committed to only reading books by POC Women this year - any suggestions???

neil-gaiman answered:

How cool. Well, let’s suggest a few:

Nnedi Okorafor is wonderful. Her book Who Fears Death is stunning.

Nalo Hopkinson is one of my favourite authors. Brown Girl in the Ring, Midnight Robber, Skin Folk (short stories), The Salt Roads and other remarkable books are out there waiting for you. (Nalo was also a huge support for me when I wrote Anansi Boys, reading it, guiding, and working with me on the Caribbean dialogue.)

N.K. Jemisen is a powerful and brilliant author. Her new novel, The City We Became, is a glorious fantasy about the personifications of cities, and Lovecraftian abominations with Lovecraftian tendencies.

That’s a start. There are many other excellent writers out there waiting for you, like Octavia Butler and Tananarive Due. Go and explore.

generalgrievousdatingsim

i can’t talk shit about the pirates of the caribbean films as if elizabeth swann becoming pirate king didn’t hand my entire ass to me and make me the gay i am today

generalgrievousdatingsim

these 2 looks basically defined my sexuality and i’m not afraid to admit it

generalgrievousdatingsim

things pirates of the caribbean got right:

1. will and elizabeth’s love story

2. elizabeth becoming pirate king

3. avoiding sexualizing elizabeth or the other female pirate characters in the first 3 films by allowing them to wear period-accurate pirate outfits that aren’t tailored to be revealing and impractical for ‘sex appeal’ just because they’re women

4. hans zimmer’s entire score but especially the iconic ‘he’s a pirate’ main theme

prismatic-bell

5. When the movie came out, morally-gray characters like Jack were actually not really a thing yet in pop culture, and it’s not Pirates’ fault that there are a ton of stupid shitty copycats out there.

6. I run a corseting panel at cons and literally use Elizabeth’s lace-up scene as a video clip of what historical corseting was actually like, because the only thing they got wrong in this scene is that tightlacing wouldn’t be a thing for about another 200 years (and you couldn’t tightlace with the corset style Elizabeth is wearing anyway). It’s one of the most accurate corseting scenes I’ve ever seen.

7. Will’s hat.

8. That scene with all the pirates on the gallows where that little boy starts singing Hoist the Colours? Yeah, that’s fucking legendary. The rest of AWE was kind of a trash fire, but that scene gave me goosebumps.

9. There’s this great shot in the first one where they really drive home the class differences inherent in this time period by having the governor talking about progress and civilization to Elizabeth in their carriage, and then they cut to a shot outside the carriage where a beggar gets splashed by mud from the wheel. It’s a perfect way to underline that everything is not, in fact, a nice little upper-class fairytale, and to give some weight to Will’s storyline, because he has a lot more in common with that beggar than with the governor.

10. For its time, the CGI was fucking amazing.

11. And let’s not forget the work of the makeup department, which had to actually invent new ways of putting on makeup for this movie.

12. The governor’s death scene. Holy shit.

13. They could have gone with a Jack/Will/Elizabeth love triangle, but they didn’t. There are some hints Jack is in love (or at least in lust) with Elizabeth, but he recognizes that she loves Will, and that’s that.

14. You’ve got to admit that wedding was unique.

math-is-magic

15. The introduction of fantasy elements to historical fiction outside of Tolkein-esque fantasy, and how it contributed to and expanded the Fantasy Media boom we’re still enjoying today.

paddysnuffles

1. They had a woman of colour play a goddess.

2. They had a woman pirate right in the first film, when the tradition is to only show male ones (hell, the PotC ride at Disney had a wench auction scene until recently). And it was a female pirate of colour at that!

3. Elizabeth may not have known how to fight in the first film, but she wasn’t helpless either. Her first instinct was to fight, but she also had the brains to recognize when it was best to hide instead. Plus when given the chance she stabbed Barbosa that one time.

4. Elizabeth’s lack of fighting ability was not simply because she was a woman, it was clear it was due to her societal circumstances, since we saw other women of different socioeconomic backgrounds being able to fight (and when given the opportunity to learn Elizabeth took to fighting like a duck on water).

5. The Hoist the Colours scene where we see pirates of multiple ethnicities and their varying flags, reminding us that pirates came in all shapes and sizes and weren’t just white men.

6. One of the Pirate Lords being yet ANOTHER woman of colour. She may not have had much of a speaking role if memory serves, but even her presence is already a big deal.

7. The pirates accepting their King is a woman without much fuss.

chubbyooo

Pirates is amazing I will not here a bad word

Davy Jones CGI is legendary and a ton better than some of the stuff done today 😄

the-unnecessary-commentary

I’m pretty sure that female Chinese pirate was a nod to a real, documented female pirate king who was Chinese and had a whole fleet of ships at her disposal but I can’t remember her name rn

kintatsujo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ching_Shih

real-jaune-isms

My favorite part about the Bretheren Court voting wasn’t that they were against Elizabeth for becoming King as a woman and newcomer. They were pissed at Jack for being a chaotic neutral who broke the decades long tradition of an egotistical stalemate by voting for someone besides himself.

Also, the deleted scenes from Black Pearl and At World’s End that divulge more of Jack’s troubled past, like how he was branded as a pirate by the East Indian Trading Company because he stole a ship full of slaves and freed them.

cardsonthemartyn

Aaaaand for anyone interested, Jack’s back story with the EITC and Cutler Beckett is expanded on in the book The Price of Freedom. It also gives the details of his debt with Davy Jones, and how the Black Pearl became the fastest ship in the Caribbean.

The Skellingcorner

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

🦢 Wearing is caring. 🦢