(no subject)

[opusculasedfera]

I've been listening to more podcasts recently, and I like the idea of the You Are Not So Smart one, but also I want a rule (in life, not just in podcasts) that if you are studying something anti-social that people do, you have to study the effects. Not just the specific instant responses, but long term effects. Hopefully this would prevent people like David Buss from genuinely saying, in response to a question about warning signs of jealousy that people can look for, "well, if you're being abused, you're in more danger of being murdered by your partner." I do believe that he doesn't think doing terrible things out of jealousy is good, but it's kind of astonishing to me that he can study this and genuinely think being cut off from your social circles or "having your self-esteem lowered" are just warning signs for murder rather than actual abuse in their own right with massive consequences, and it skeeves me the fuck out about his research if he can do this much work on abuse and not know this. THIS IS WHY NO ONE LIKES EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGISTS, BRO.


I am, however, enjoying Amanda Downum's Necromancer Chronicles very much. A+ lots of queer relationships! Well integrated socially too: it's not just one queer couple and a lot of talking about how no one minds, there are lots of past and present queer couples, and people discuss operas featuring a variety of different relationships. And trans* characters! Also LOVE TRIANGLE THAT ACTUALLY BECOMES A THREESOME. Or at least, some form of three way relationship, it's not really clear how the sex is going to go down. Specifically, there's a prince with a political marriage and a mistress, the wife and the mistress end up in love and the dude goes "welp, guess I can't really judge that, I also think you both are hot?" and they all live semi-happily ever after!

Only downside is, the relationship between the two women (one of whom is trans and one is cis, which was also great) was 900000x more well drawn than either of their relationships with the dude. I have to say, this is a bit of a problem with all the het in Downum. She's not bad at friends who casually fuck, but whenever straight people are supposed to be madly in love, everything else about the relationship gets a bit drowned out in unspecific love talk. They clearly have very deep feelings, but they're all basically the same feelings, even when she does try to make the situations different. Fortunately, the two women's relationship is GREAT and they actually get to spend time together and learn to love each other and have things to say to each other and deal with the fact that their situation is super weird.

Plus complicated politics and magic and people who actually feel like they have long histories, not just in their most deep and serious relationships, but equally in people they've known casually for ages, or unimportant shit they've done, and that kind of thing. Highly recommended.

Comments

[everbright]

Oooo, I put the first book of that on hold, since it looks interesting form a plot perspective too (I love politics! in my stories.)

[opusculasedfera]

It is super delightful! This entry was actually mostly about the second one (which I failed to mention anywhere within it because I'm absentminded...), but I definitely enjoyed the first one too! Downum writes great politics. I love how she writes lots of factions, and actual dissent and conflicting interests within factions.