Where I protest SOPA by "stealing" Other's content

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Many bloggers, and several big websites, are blocking their sites today in protest of the SOPA and PIPA bills which would allow Internet censorship in the US. As a non-US resident I'm not sure how such a bill would affect me or my blog, but the idea of it is still abhorrent to me and so is worth talking about.

For specific reasons why the SOPA and PIPA bills should not be passed, watch this video. Though Jennie Lawson had me at "...it would be like a never ending visit from your parents..for the rest of your life." Yikes! Now that's scary.

 If you are a US citizen and want to help put a stop to the SOPA bill you can sign this petition.
 
And in further protest against SOPA, today I am only going to post content stolen from other blogs. So there! (and this has nothing to do with the fact that I don't have any reviews prepared)

So on with the show....

Last week Jim Hines published an amusing post in which he photographed himself imitating the poses of the heroine's featured on several Urban fantasy covers, with some ridiculous, and painful, results.

Jim's conclusion: 

My sense is that most of these covers are supposed to convey strong, sexy heroines, but these are not poses that suggest strength. You can’t fight from these stances. I could barely even walk.

Anna at Genre Reviews, takes this idea a bit further by posing in the same poses as Jim, as well as imitating the poses of some of Urban Fantasy's male protagonists, and comparing the two.

Anna's conclusion:

Men's poses emphasize strength, capability, perhaps with a bit of mystery. They follow the body's natural lines and actually look like something a real person would do. Women's poses emphasize sexy sexy dangerous sex and most vary from awkward to painful to impossible. What puzzles me most about this is that studies show the vast majority of people who read novels with female protagonists are, in fact, female. Unless they're going for a very specific demographic, marketing assumes we're all cisgendered, so why are we using the cover art to objectify characters we're supposed to identify with? Posing like a pin-up is not the only way to be attractive, and twisting your body to the point of OW robs us of anything beyond "T&A." The men's poses are dynamic and interesting, implying the male characters inside are, too. So what are we saying about our female characters?

While I had often been bothered by the suggestive way women on urban fantasy covers are usually portrayed I never payed much attention to their poses, or how they differ from those of the male models, so these two posts were really eye-opening.

And over at Geek Tyrant I found this beautiful and poignant short CGI animated steampunk film by Colorbleed Studios.

Consurgo from Colorbleed Studios on Vimeo.

Why or why didn't he get out of the street? *sigh*