Tag Archives: resources

Apr
3

Gender in Comic Books

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I put this out on Facebook yesterday, but for anyone who may have missed it, there’s a free online class on Canvas Network dealing with Gender in Comic Books.  It’s put out by Ball State University, and it just started yesterday, so you still have time to enroll and check it out.  It’s a 6 week MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) – which means there’s about 7k people in it, but there’s a lot of good discussions going on. Once a week there’s a live chat with various comic book creators. (Including Gail Simone on week 4, so yowza!) Also cool? The required reading is comics- which Comixology is offering a discount on, even if you *aren’t* taking the class, so worth checking out anyway. Seeing as gender portrayals in comics and video games is one of my current hot buttons, it only made sense to sign up. I know… Read more
Aug
24

Slang a Lang a Ding Dong

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Seeing as I’m home with a sick kid today, just a quick post about another writing resource dealing with language.  It’s very similar to the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, but in some ways it’s much better laid out. DotVT is essentially just that – a dictionary, which makes it a little hard if you’re looking for something specific. Slang Down the Ages is actually set up in chapters. There’s the usual suspects, dealing with sex, male and female body parts, bodily functions and insults – but there’s also some great stuff about different types of food, speech, clothing, death and some of the more common types of jobs (including prostitution). Now, a small word of warning – there are several chapters dealing with different ethnic groups and sexual orientations. A lot of it is offensive to the more modern day sensibilities – although I suppose that’s pretty much the point when it… Read more
Aug
18

Pratts & LadyBirds: Thieves Cant and Other Bits of Userful Terminology

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 Just a little nod in the direction of a great resource for world-building and historical accuracy. If you’re don’t own this book and you write Steam Punk, Historical fiction, Time-travel, Fantasy, whatever  – you totally should. Essentially it’s a compilation of slang used by actual people, back in the day – circa 1790 to 1820. You’ll find bits of peasant cant, Romany and just the conversational words used by the average everyday Joe of the moment. And yes, some of the words *are* vulgar, but it’s just so interesting to see the history of the English language and how much of it is still used today (and with the same connotations.) The beauty of it is that the book was actually written in 1811, so copyrights don’t really apply. You can find it over at the Gutenberg Project for a quick look through electronically, or buy one of the many… Read more