Yesterday ended up being a totally unproductive day for me in general, at least in terms of reading and writing and so on. Instead of working on stuff, I ended up driving a very nice older man to his neighborhood on the other side of the city after he was abandoned on this side of town by his son, which ate up most of the afternoon. After that, I had to run a few errands and stuff, which left me, frankly, too worn out to do much by the time I got home. Today has been a little better, but not by too much.

The biggest news of the week, perhaps, has been J.K. Rowling’s continued expansion of her wizarding world. She just can’t leave well enough alone, and her History of Magic in North America is a disaster in basically every possible way. Native Appropriations has a good breakdown of some of the most offensive aspects of Rowling’s piss poor research, and N.K. Jemisin has some great suggestions for ways in which it could have been great.

The winners of this year’s Kitschies were announced.

My favorite good news of the week is that Into the Badlands has been renewed for a second season that will start in 2017. I had gotten really concerned with the lack of official announcement, but it was one of my favorite new shows last year so I can deal with having to wait almost a full year for new episodes.

There’s finally a proper trailer for Game of Thrones season six, which I have mixed feelings about.

On the one hand, season five was so very, very bad. I was ready to give up on it by the end. On the other hand, I can’t wait to see how D&D fuck up this year. What else am I going to write 3-5k words a week about for a couple months in the spring?

Winter is Coming has a thorough recap of what we can actually see in this trailer. And Fandom Following has some additional ideas on what we can expect from season six based on what the trailer holds.

And, bonus! Fandom Following also has thoughts on what a D&D adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing would look like. I ugly laughed.

Sofia Samatar’s The Winged Histories is coming out on Tuesday, and she’s been interviewed at Weird Sister and on Midnight in Karachi in the last week.

Fantastic Stories published a Crash Course in the History of Black Science Fiction.

A few weeks ago, Mythcreants gave us Five Signs Your Story is Sexist, and this week they published Five More Signs Your Story is Sexist.

Feminist Fiction is late to the Fury Road party, but this piece–Is Mad Max: Fury Road too feminist to be feminist?–is a must-read.

Charles Stross gives us Towards a Taxonomy of Cliches in Space Opera. It’s a good start.

Finally, Peter McLean has a great post on Blackgate on Why We Shouldn’t Hunt the Trope to Extinction. It’s a little bit of a solution in search of a problem, but he brings up some good points that touch on some of the common misconceptions about tropes and the ways they should be analyzed.

[Header image is Sir Terry Pratchett with a pig.]