I empathised deeply with this post about the solitary existence of writers and the way we need our people around us to keep us sane, and professional.

As part of the ongoing excellent advocacy work coming out of the #AWW challenge, here’s a list of Australian women writers of Asian heritage to help you include some diversity in your choices.

The Australian government is running an online survey about our opinions on gay marriage. So far the interim response is pretty depressing (running at only a bit over 30% saying YES GAY MARRIAGE) but it’s not based on very many people’s opinions. So if you’re Australian, go, take five minutes and register your own thoughts on the issue.

Alisa Krasnostein, Cheryl Morgan, Lynne M Thomas and many other smart people share their opinions on awards in the latest SF Mind Meld.

One of my favourite Tor.com posts this week – Redskirts looks at some of the portrayals of women among the traditional ‘redshirt’ junior-Starfleet-person-of-the-week tradition in the original Star Trek.

The new Doctor Who companion has been announced and we still know very little about her – Ritch Ludlow asks some questions about fan response to Amy Pond and considers what kind of standards might be applied to this new character.

Oooh, another great one from Tor.com! Comic artist Faith Erin Hicks whose work I really enjoyed on ‘Friends With Boys’ has drawn a personal response to The Hunger Games as a popular story, drawing upon her family experience (as the daughter of a Vietnam veteran). I love to see the comics form used to tell powerful memoir and this brief piece is very compelling.

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Raeli watched part of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (Gene Wilder, not Johnny Depp) courtesy of my Dad the other day, and has managed to get herself well and truly traumatised about the fate of Violet Beauregarde (SPOILER, she turns into a giant blueberry). Nightmares and all. As with the similarly traumatic puppet show incident we now refer to as The Tiddilik Disaster (frog drinks all the water in the world), she has been dealing with her fear by asking me to tell her the story that scared her, over and over again (only leaving out the scary parts).

It’s surprisingly sophisticated, the way she chooses to face her fears like that. I’ve seen her do this with movies, too, being worried or scared by something adult in them, but coming back the next day and asking to see it again. She was terrified by Spirited Away the first time (and I don’ t blame her) but now it’s one of her favourite movies.

So yes, many spare moments & chores over the last several days have been enlivened by me having to recite from memory the plot of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Good thing it wasn’t the Twits or something, at least I remember a lot of this one! At one point I explained to Raeli about how that episode of Futurama she’s seen approximately a gazillion times, when Fry and the others visit the Slurm Factory, is actually a pastiche of the Willy Wonka movie. I pointed out the similarity in the river scene, the Oompa-Loompas, and Wonka’s costume. She nodded in a vaguely patronising “yes I see this is interesting to you, Mummy” way, and I dropped the subject.

But I remember the first time she saw that episode of Futurama, I thought “Oh here we go, seeing the pastiche before the source material…” Because that pretty much sums up my childhood.

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