Fixation Friday

Oh hey wow a week has gone by! Let's talk about this week in the life of a writer.

Writing Like A Girl

This week I wrote one of the longest articles I've ever written, "Nancy Wheeler’s Unpopular Feminism In ‘Stranger Things 2’". By the time it was done is about the length of a 10 page paper using college formatting. I wrote the article originally as a response to another post on the website "Vice".
I remember very distinctly during my interview with Kotaku explaining that I was not a feminist writer.  I didn’t want to consistently answer the question ‘what does it feel like to be a girl in the gaming industry?’ Of course, part of the reason for that reluctance is that it feels horrible.  At the time, I was nervous that I would be pigeonholed into writing from a specific perspective—and not even a perspective that I found particularly important at the time.

Good. Hide in shame, kid.

When I was still in high school I thought that feminism ruined a lot of things and I complained about being politically correct. My college roommate, however, was a philosophy major, and she focused on feminism and gender studies. Sarah did not go easy on me.  She would correct my speech whenever I used terms like "gay or retarded" to mean stupid (yep I was one of those people), and instead of resisting this extracurricular education, I began changing my tune.  Sarah and I ended up best friends and we lived together for all four years of college.
This week both feature articles I wrote were about representation of women in media—the first regarding what we’re willing to forgive for male characters vs. female characters, and the second about sexual assault in television.  In fact these days, it is very rare that I write an article without some mention of feminism.  Thanks Sarah!

Thor: Ragnarok

We went and saw Thor last week. I don't even know what to say. I laughed so hard I couldn't breathe.If you haven't seen it yet, do the thing. I felt like this through the whole thing: 

The first Thor is still one of the prettiest movies I've ever seen. Ragnarok was stunning in an entirely different way. Excellent addition to the MCU, and I'll probably write more as I process the movie in more than just a shouty, happy-to-be-here way.

Physical Therapy

I explained last week that I have started using speech recognition software because of my carpal tunnel and tendinitis. This week I got to start physical therapy for those problems. Growing up I was very reluctant to take myself to the hospital, or even let others take me. That’s probably why I’ve had carpal tunnel since I was in high school. My doctor gave me a brace my junior year, but I never wore it. So here I am, doing heat and ice therapy in addition to exercises at least twice a week. I really enjoy it for now as it feels like an active solution to my injuries rather than a passive way of stopping my range of motion.

Disney Ride-thru Videos

Sometimes I get homesick for Disney World. That has been happening more often lately as my sister is working there and sometimes sends pictures and videos. I love seeing her enjoy her time visiting the Parks pretty much every day, you know, when she isn’t working in one of them.

When I get this feeling, I go online and look up videos that people made while riding my favorite attractions. It sounds counterintuitive, like not being there and seeing what it’s like would make it worse. But this has worked for me for quite some time now. I especially like watching videos from holiday events, or when the work lights are on, or when people walk through the ride because it broke down. Do you have any weird habits like this?

Shakespeare Out Loud

I've been reading The Winter's Tale this week--which I have never read before. I have always struggled with Shakespeare and I'm not sure why that is. But I find that reading it out loud helps me with comprehension, so that's how I've been getting through the book. When I took a Shakespeare class in college, I rented these professionally done films from the library and read along with the movie, but my local library doesn't have the same extensive Shakespeare collection that Goucher did, so I sit on my couch all day and read the same section until I know I understood it. It's a tedious way to read, but it's working!

What were you fixated on this week? Let me know in the comments below.