Maybe I’m just not using my own feed reader (NetNewsWire) correctly, but while I get to read the initial post of the hundred-plus blogs I follow, I only see the comments that are already there when I read the post. I don’t have any good way to keep track of comments and participate in the resulting discussions. This I would like to fix.

Has somebody done this already, or is there some way to jigger an existing feed reader to do this?

I think it’s a safe bet that the Disney princesses will be invading our house. Luckily, they will be joined by Princess Fiona and Eve, and I’m led to believe that the direct-to-video princess sequels feature princess that, you know, do something rather than wait to be saved and have their value as chattel confirmed by the stature of the prince who saves them. So we won’t be wholly inundated with, ah, less-than-optimal role models. We already have a copy of Coraline and the Song of the Lioness just waiting for when Squish can read, as well. We’re looking forward and being proactive, but there’s still, and probably always will be, a part of me that worries about what media the little one consumes.

Because I am who I am, this line of thinking immediately veers into “well, I should write and self-publish the sort of stuff I want to read to my kids” which is, somewhat amusingly, not a wholly ridiculous notion. It would be trivial to take any given fairy-tale and gender-swap every character in it, for instance, although I don’t know how useful it would be to commodify the prince instead of commodifying the princess. A little more work, and I might consider some sort of stand-alone “modern fairy tale” with male and female characters who are, you know, characters, and not prizes to be won. A whole lot more work, and I could figure out how to write “The Real Story of Cinderella” which interleaves with the traditional one, telling about all her off-camera hijinx where she was, you know, a character and not a prize to be won.

Of course, there are obstacles to such a venture — I wish I could do my own art, but I really can’t. And it’s not like I need another project on my plate. We’re going to have a baby, for cryin out loud, I’m going to be busy, and starting projects I don’t finish drives me craaaaazy. Still and all, it’s one of those ideas that just floats there in the back of my mind, haunting me with the possibility of doing something kinda neat…