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This week we are looking at the film Paradise Hills and Level 16 both films are set at dystopian finishing schools where being the perfect girl is the goal. These young women are trapped in the trappings of femininity and sacrificed in the pursuit of an apparent notion of female perfection. We discuss this in relation to a recent TIME article that argues that women's genre filmmaking is “about women’s deepest anxieties”. Content warning: discussion of rape culture and violence against women.

Guest Katie Heffner is a PhD student at the University of Kent, supervised by Prof. Charlotte Sleigh, researching women’s participation in fandom in the early 20th century. She received a Masters in Library and Information Science with a concentration on digital archives at the University of Iowa in 2019. Her honors thesis for her Bachelors degree in English Literature explores how fandom practices such as fanzines can be used within classrooms.

The sea merges myth and science - both a source of deep fear (and thus myth) and massive rewards (and thus science). In SF the oceans can be a space of imagined futures, a frontier, and a dangerous yet bountiful environment. We noticed a trend in the women directed movies we have been watching that focus around the theme of the sea and water, so this episode explores the sea in women made SF and the mythic connection between science, the sea, and female experiences.

We take a break from film to gab about our favorite women-created SF TV (which, given how short the list is, is all of them): Emergence, Vagrant Queen, Sense8, Killjoys!, Westworld, and Altered Carbon, with a little Roswell, iZombie, Russian Doll, Jessica Jones, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

What is SF? Why "SF" and not "scifi"? In this episode we follow up on the ideas from the opening episode as we debate what really qualifies as science fiction. We also discuss our first three watch party movies: Welcome II the Terrordome (dir. Ngozi Onwurah, 1993), Tank Girl (dir. Rachel Talalay, 1995), and Évolution (dir. Lucile Hadzihalilovic, 2015).

In our inaugural episode, we introduce you to us as your hosts, and the project itself: where it came from, what it is, and where we expect it to go.  Intro/Outro music: Inspire Glitches (2017) by Yuriy Shishlov (CC-BY-NC-SA) Hosts: Amy Chambers (@amycchambers), Lyle Skains (@lskains/@wonderboxpub)