Our weekly recap highlighting the best feature stories from around the internet.
Photo: Facebook / Red Peak NZ Flag
Red Peak Was Always A Middle Class Gang-Patch – by Oliver Chan, Fine Tooth Column
“If we are genuine about our social media promotion of Red Peak for the greater good, we cannot assume that our ideas are superior. If we merely engage with those inside our bubble, ideas like Red Peak are merely middle class gang patches for our own social media brands rather than visual symbols that represent everyone.”
An Unbelievable Story Of Rape – by Ken Armstrong and T. Christian Miller, The Marshall Project
“She was 18 years old, charged with a gross misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail. Rarely do misdemeanors draw notice … but her misdemeanor had made the news, and made her an object of curiosity or, worse, scorn. It had cost her the newfound independence she was savoring after a life in foster homes. It had cost her sense of worth. Each ring of the phone seemed to announce another friendship, lost.”
What Would Cool Jesus Do? – by Taffy Brodesser-Akner, GQ
“The music of Hillsong is a catalog of Selena Gomez-grade ballads, with melodies that all resemble one another, pleasingly, like spa music. They call to mind deeply sincere love songs, if it were appropriate to put phrases like my savior on that cursed tree and furious love laid waste to my sin and suffered violence healed my blindness and facedown where mercy finds me first in a love song. Tonally and tunefully, it’s a Jonas Brothers song. Lyrically, it’s a hymn, and yet the singing is hot-breathed and sexy-close into microphones. It made my body feel confused.”
Unknown Mortal Orchestra – by Henry Oliver, Metro
“I still consider myself to be some weird product of Flying Nun Records and the Helen Clark government — the class of K’ Rd 2003 … I still think that I’m some product of Chris Knox’s view of record-making. That stays as something that I’m tying all these influences to.”
How The Phantom Menace Inspired a Generation of LGBT Youth – by Diana Tourjee and Mitchell Sunderland, Broadly
“In the face of mainstream condemnation, many gay and transgender people adore The Phantom Menace. When Episode I debuted in 1999, critics and fans lambasted it. Hostel director Eli Roth said it was "more like A Bug's Life than Star Wars," and a critic for the Hollywood Reporter wrote that the film "vacillates between ponderous solemnity and a distressing tendency towards silly shtick." An entire generation of gay and trans youth, on the other hand, disagreed with the general dismissal of Lucas' return to their fathers' beloved scifi saga.”
The Perils of Reporting on Mental Health – by Jess McAllen, The Spinoff
“Nothing is worse than thinking you are getting a juicy story before having it fall flat. Sometimes you just have to let the story go. Or, better yet, analyse why you thought there was a story there to begin with.”