Chronicles of a Fake Geek Girl, Part Three

[rynling]

The essay on FFVI was accepted without revision to Kill Screen, and I got paid $50.

I just submitted the fourth round of edits on the Bowser essay, which was only nine hundred words to begin with, and got paid nothing. Academic publishing is such ridiculous bullshit.

After Aonuma's recent "Link can't be a girl" nonsense, I wrote a thousand-word essay about a popular feminist Zelda fan comic hosted on Tumblr. I thought the piece would be perfect fit for a specific column run by The Mary Sue, so I submitted it to them. In response, they said that The Legend of Zelda is not relevant to their readers and that they strongly disagree with the idea that fans have agency to challenge problematic media.

Some you win, some you lose, and some make you want to burn cities to the ground.

Comments

[lassarina]

O_o

o_O

what the everloving crispy fuck, The Mary Sue. YOU LITERALLY HAVE PUBLISHED FAN CHALLENGES TO PROBLEMATIC MEDIA BEFORE I'VE READ IT.

(Icon aimed at them)

I'm sorry for that and for academia, but yay for $50!

[rynling]

Yeah... to be honest, I was at a loss for how to respond. Something the editor said to me was that the artist's recent incorporation of sexual abuse into the story was a romanticzation of rape culture, and I couldn't help but reply with a quote from the artist saying that she explicitly included a discussion of sexual abuse in her comic in order to deromanticize rape culture. I know arguing with an editor never works, but...

...but I think The Mary Sue can be super radical in its feminism sometimes, especially when it comes to video games. And honestly I don't blame them, even though I disagree with them sometimes.

I know that the editors at FemHype will read the entire piece instead of just the pitch, so I think I'm going to sit on the essay for a day or two, see how I feel, and then try to get in touch with them.

[lassarina]

Radical but not always intersectional. :/

I hope the pitch is successful!