Elizabeth/Lidabet

Imzy

2016-09-01T21:13:08Z

I've been terrible about posting here, so I don't know if I'll be better elsewhere either, but like a lot of people, I have an imzy now: https://www.imzy.com/opusculasedfera

Say hello if you have an imzy too, and if you don't, I have a whole bunch of invites that I'm happy to hand out to whoever wants one.

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-07-11T11:37:00

2014-07-11T16:03:48Z

I wrote some fic because this video was too batshit to go without. (I know, somewhat belated, but that's just how I am. I.e. slow.)
i can feel it in my bone(r)s (1732 words) by opusculasedfera
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Gabriel Landeskog/Ryan Nugent-Hopkins
Characters: Gabriel Landeskog, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Nathan MacKinnon
Summary:Gabe's clandestine motel room sex kink never actually stops being ridiculous.

Also I've been showing Aria Due South, which is a fun rewatch. I'd forgotten what a different show it was in S1 and 2. Additionally, two random things I've noticed: has Jonathan Toews secretly been attempting to base his career on Mark Smithbauer? You know, what with the coming from the frozen north to bring hope to Chicago's shitty hockey team, and also the inability to not check small children to the ice in order to WIN FOREVER? Granted, he's yet to take money to throw a game, but he has taken all of their money in order to play, and he's definitely there on the stupidly playing through injuries front.

Secondly, and less amusingly, the Inuit stories are increasingly frustrating now that I know something about First Nations storytelling traditions and it's not just that it's sort of awkward that the writers made things up and presented them as First Nations wisdom, but also you're not supposed to tell these things without giving names of either who told you them or who's in them (unless asked not to) and it's just weird as hell because it goes against everything Fraser is supposed to be that he doesn't. Obviously, the answer is that the writers didn't give a shit, but it's now really jarring to me. :/

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-06-01T08:03:00

2014-06-01T12:55:41Z

No disappointment like discovering a new volume by an author you admire and then realising it's actually just a bizarre reorganisation of some of their previous work. I know why the publishers do this, but why on earth do libraries fall for it? I'm not even talking about publishing selections from an author's massive, hundreds of pages long corpus, which is perfectly logical, but making selections from two already quite short volumes, or even publishing something as selections from a single volume, which was already only about 200 pages long and has now been cut to the much more reasonable...150 pages. Don't the libraries have something better to spend their (as they keep reminding us) extremely limited budgets on, when they already own copies of every single word in this new volume, in formats that are no less convenient for even the average reader? Or at least hint in the description that it is, in fact, selections from this other book, so we don't waste your money ferrying the volume between libraries for me to find that out for myself.

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-05-18T08:43:00

2014-05-18T12:43:24Z

Absolutely loved Nicola Griffith's Hild. The beginning of a set of novels about the Abbess Hilda of Whitby, what we get here is Hild as a child who is supposed to be a seer, knows she is not, and nevertheless learns to give useful political advice to her uncle, one of many infighting kings in 7th century England. The politics are impressively drawn, as is the point of view, which remains firmly planted in space and time. Even when she's observing nature with pin-point accuracy and coming to conclusions that feel scientific, her frame of reference is still limited. She's not stupid, she never seems stupid, but she's working things out from first principles, it's not a surprise she only gets so far. Griffith is also very good at making sure that Hild isn't uniquely special in her ability to observe. She sees a little more than many because she has the time and inclination, but a large part of her skill is gathering information and putting it together: it's not that other people can't see, it's that they don't have the larger picture.

The thing I loved most was how much work we get to see everyone do. Women spin and weave constantly because it takes a long damn time to make anything. Hild is a seer and this means she has some different duties, but she also does all of the chores that women did in her period because royalty here still doesn't mean rich enough to do no work, it just means you don't have to do the very worst work. Designing your own weaving patterns is the fun part, and Hild knows that, even though she's also allowed to have moments when she's bored by textiles or doesn't feel like it right then. The other people around her are also allowed to have complicated feelings about work, while still knowing that work is important to keep everything from falling down! Gosh!

It's a fun read too, not just a Worthy Tome of historical accuracy about medieval work practice. Politics are going DOWN and because this is the 7th century, they're going down with some violence, and also some rapidly shifting allegiances. In some ways, I kept thinking that this is the kind of book GRRM thinks he's writing, with the complicated politics and the refusal to make a ballad out of the unpleasant task of cutting someone's throat, except that Hild doesn't just make the most unpleasant thing happen every single time there's a choice to be made, because people are assholes, but they aren't actually mustache-twirlingly evil. Also Hild knows she has no magical powers and is sighingly resigned to turning political philosophy into prophecy in a deeply endearing way. I'm looking forward to the next book tremendously.

I've also been enjoying the hell out of Allan Berubé's sadly small amount of historical writing (Coming Out Under Fire, which is USian queer people in WWII, and My Desire for History, which is collected essays) though he may have ruined me for more academic queer history. He has so many feelings! Which seems like a rude thing to say because his intellectual rigour is fantastic, and his research is thorough! But he's not trying to be the kind of formal writer who hides their perspective and it's really nice to hear about how much he cares about queer and labour history! It's not even that he talks a lot about his feelings on a personal level, but it's so obvious, even when he is writing about military policy, that he has an emotional attachment to the idea of queer communities, that it makes history written by people who are at pains to hide that attachment feel lacking.

I don't precisely mean to criticise people who are presumably attempting to get their work taken seriously by editors and academics who don't feel as I do, and it's not that they're being at all offensive, or that their rigour is substandard. These are not bad books. But Berubé did such a fantastic job of centering people in his analysis that it no longer seems adequate to begin with medicalised discussion of homophobia disassociated from even the people who propagated it. It just seems depressing to read now because I've had such a clear and well-presented example of how it could be done differently. Historians don't have to have affection for their subjects in all cases, but damnit, if we're going to get so many awkward biographers crushes on the deeply unappealing, then I want a whole team of Berubés with their affection and charm, and am terribly sad that he's dead and we will have no more of his incredibly compelling work.

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-04-21T16:18:00

2014-04-22T01:11:26Z

The trouble with things getting very busy in a tedious work and family medical issues way is that when you return, you have zero interesting things to say to fandom and posting continues to not happen. I was doing sort of well with trying not to forget DW/LJ beforehand! Bah.

I did get my hands on Pratchett's Raising Steam which...it's a Discworld novel. If you like those, you've probably already decided to read this one. If you haven't read any, don't start here, it's basically "I like trains and here are many characters I hope you're already attached to." I am, in fact, attached to many of them, so I won't deny that I enjoyed that bit, but otherwise, it's a little flat, though perhaps less so if you're already as devoted to trains as he clearly is.

However, let us discuss the strange things he's decided to do with gender lately. So at the end of Raising Steam the Low King of the dwarfs announces that he is in fact a she and would like to be publically female and more femme than the average dwarf, everyone better recognise and stop disrespecting their mothers.

Three cheers for personal expression and all that, but essentially this is an unpleasant retcon of what started as a firmly gender neutral dwarf society that didn't do femininity in a modern human way, but also didn't regard things WE think of as masculine as gendered in any way. They didn't do frills not because frills were girly, but because frills weren't dwarfish. There's a parallel you could do there WITH gender expression, but instead he decided to tie a love of frill and sparkle to genitalia and have all the dwarves who decide that they enjoy femininity also possess vaginas. For starters, if nothing else, I refuse point-blank to believe a group of people that obsessed with gold and gems have no appreciation for sparkle on a wider cultural level. Furthermore, let's just not associate particular visuals with vaginas, shall we?

Obviously, he's been doing this for a while, ever since he introduced Cheery Littlebottom and her desire for a more femme style of dwarf attire. We know dwarf culture mostly doesn't do that, but some dwarfs have decided that they like it and it's contentious. So far, kind of awkward, but not too awful. But this speech makes the connection between biological femaleness and disrespect explicit! So, uh, hurrah for now making things gross. We apparently can't have dwarves who don't care what's under the beard and chainmail so long as there's a beard and chainmail, we have to have dwarves who care desperately, but assume it's a penis, so it's all right. This is not how we continue the metaphor!!! (I'm not even getting into trans questions because there is so little room for them in this narrative, despite it being entirely about gender presentation and how it relates to biology, lolsob.)

Which all reminds me that I was also rereading I Shall Wear Midnight, which has a much lighter touch and a sharper eye for gender relations (presumably because he isn't attempting to create a new set, but is instead replicating a set of stereotypes about northern England that seem more or less accurate to me, based on things I've read by women living in the area, but I'm perfectly willing to take a grain of salt over), but then another curiously thudding ending. Tiffany spends all of ISWM thinking about what it means to be a witch and essentially comes to the conclusion that it's a female job because it largely consists of doing the tedious caretaking things that other people don't want to do and even the fraction of magic it involves is also usually based on cleaning up other people's messes. It's nuanced and sensitive and acknowledges that being the person who will do the boring and unpleasant parts of clearing up after the sick are important to keeping things going. So far, so good. But then he ends with Tiffany meeting a young man who is her equal in intelligence (something she's failed to find at all in her tiny village) and setting him up as...the village doctor.

Now, the village in question certainly needed a doctor. But it drastically undermines the point of the rest of the book that people who do unpleasant work that needs doing are not only not helped, they're reviled for it. It's not that doctors never do unpleasant work, but being a doctor is to be lauded for it, and it's certainly a profession with an implied staff to do the dull bits, even if that staff is the patient's family in a rural setting. The book spent the whole time more or less saying that what Tiffany needed was someone else around to share the job of cutting the toenails of the arthritic when no one else is prepared to do it because there are a lot of toenails and only one of her and it's not fun, and then makes her give up the one person who was prepared to back her up (though, again, we only see him back her up when it's dramatic and magical, even if they are still people who do dramatic, magical things in a very practical way) for the benefit of the village.

I just want to know: did he write a book about how a woman constantly puts other people's needs first to her own detriment (as fucking symbolised by the fucking MAGICAL SPIRIT OF WITCH-HUNTS AND KILLING WOMEN WHO ARE A BIT WEIRD) and then end with her putting collective needs first? Especially when her needs and the collective needs didn't HAVE to be at odds and she could in fact have apprentices or social work committees or something like that as well as a local doctor. Or, for fuck's sake, at least an acknowledgement that she hasn't really improved her own life except in as much as she managed not to be murdered by the witch-murderers.

Overall, between I Shall Wear Midnight and Raising Steam, one comes to the depression conclusion that Pratchett can see problems with a clear eye, but is entirely confused when it comes to imagining solutions, which makes me worry that he is somehow managing to describe the problems in question in this much detail while not noticing just what the problems are. It's a bit terrifying. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked, but his prior vagueness about dwarf gender roles made it so much easier to think of them as entirely gender neutral, and it's annoying to realise that was apparently only because he was so ignorant of that as an option, he didn't bother to say it wasn't true. Sigh.

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-03-19T17:05:00

2014-03-19T23:36:40Z

Oh, Brooklyn Nine-Nine! You were doing so well! I was just having a conversation about how easy it would be for you to fix your minor flaws and you do this!

Nooooot happy with a plot explicitly contrasting Peralta doing something actively dangerous and being rewarded for it with a plot about Santiago doing something super normal and having actual negative consequences.

I get that this is a sitcom and I don't have a problem with Peralta's plotline in that regard, because sure, why not, he solves a crime while high out of his mind on sleep-dep, it was funny. But I do have a problem when it's slapped up against Santiago's relatively unexaggerated "told ridiculous lie to boss because of scheduling conflicts between work and planned excursion with boyfriend" plot. Fake dental emergency countered by promise to take her personally to see the dentist? Very sitcom! But not the bit where she confesses the lie to Holt while in the dentist's chair and is then told that she has to have dental surgery anyway because it turns out she did have cavities and she'd caused them herself. That just seems like punishment to me, which is gross, because it didn't even go anywhere! She just...had her cavities filled, which sucked a normal amount. Either ramp it up to eleven until it gets funny again, or don't go there!

It makes it particularly unpleasant to me because she's so damn desperate for Holt's approval. It's weird that the narrative is so unimpressed by this and always wants her to be humiliated in front of him for it, when Peralta has literally called him "Dad," plus he is consistently presented as an excellent cop and human being, and exactly the kind of person whose good opinion is worth having. It just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Even if Holt is clearly not holding grudges at the end and doesn't mind giving Santiago time off when she doesn't lie about the reason, it doesn't make up for the weirdness of the narrative here.

I'd also rather if we didn't get that plotline at the exact time that Peralta's is being fuelled by his resentment that she has a not-him boyfriend because it pretty much feels like the narrative is punishing her for that too.

Hopefully the show will move on from this soon because it's been better than this in the past so we know it can do it. Just stick to your secret precinct bathrooms and people having drinks together adorably!

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-03-15T18:06:00

2014-03-15T22:06:20Z

I watched all the Brooklyn Nine-Nine that exists so far in about two days, so it's that kind of good. I am interested in the fact that it doesn't hit my giant embarrassment squick anything like as badly as it could have, despite being the story of a bunch of people who are very, very interested in embarrassing each other. This confuses me! Even Benton Fraser's refusal to be embarrassed by anything he did didn't always prevent me from cringing on his behalf! But everyone is so good at taking on the embarrassment, clearly hating it, and then moving the fuck on while actively demonstrating that there aren't consequences beyond people being a pain in the ass.

On a more general note, as everyone has already said, the show does a good job having a decently diverse bunch of cops who generally don't get to do horrifically illegal things on a whim. Being too cool for paperwork is an issue that fucks you over, even if paperwork is boring. You have to do just as many extremely boring cases as you do exciting ones, and it's all important work.

I could do with less Peralta, it's definitely not deconstructing the white cisdude=protagonist trope anything like as well as Community does, but at least there's a reasonable amount of screentime for all the other characters, who I mostly adore. I still think he wins just a smidge too often to get away with the shit he pulls, but at least he does get called out sometimes. Everyone else is pretty delightful (or if they're awful, usually the writers clearly agree), which does make up for it some.

I don't know if I could be fannish about it, but I could do with a regular 20mins of fluffy tv that generally doesn't make me angry.

Finished Dawn French's memoir, Dear Fatty*. Not a surprise that she's funny and charming and delightful, but I was particularly struck by her ability to tell funny stories about inexperienced sex had with entirely the wrong person in a way that was both humourous and not so caught up in making it funny that it sounds like she's never had mutually enjoyable sex in her life, which is an astonishingly rare skill in published autobiographical writing, for reasons I've never been able to fathom. Of course, there are also lots of fantastic showbiz stories and amusing family ones (and some sad family ones, told affectingly), and in general, recommended.

*Fatty=Jennifer Saunders, her comedy partner, and is an affectionate and consensual nickname. Not a book at all about weight issues, if that's a concern for you!

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-03-03T19:10:00

2014-03-04T00:19:41Z

A Good Head on His Shoulders and a Terrible Fucking Plan Anyway (2286 words) by opusculasedfera
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Michael Del Zotto/Steven Stamkos
Summary: It's hard to offer to blow a guy to take his mind off things when he won't admit that they're on his mind in the first place.

Wrote some reality-ignoring Olympics break fluff. The real question is, can I call it hurt/comfort? It was trying to be! They just failed miserably, in an entirely lulzy, non-angst way. Which matches up really well with all the other tropes I've started for trope-bingo that are mostly people failing to live up to the trope! The question is, could I do a full bingo of people failing to trope or would it be a handful of random fics, as per usual? Otoh, does that matter?

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-03-02T08:41:00

2014-03-02T16:16:30Z

I really wanted to make a nice rec post about Max Gladstone because I enjoyed his Three Parts Dead a lot, but I don't think Two Serpents Rise lives up to it. This isn't an anti-rec, but the first book was so good at building up this world of complicated magical/religious politics, magical essence as currency, corporate magic, gargoyles and social revolution (with multiple female protagonists to boot!) that it was a bit of a let down that the second book, set in a completely different city with different protagonists more or less felt the same as the other one, despite the first city being something more like fantasy!modern-Europe and this one being supposed to be fantasy!Aztec. There were some things that worked, like the local sports teams playing what were clear descendants of Aztec ball games, but the feel of the city suffered a lot in comparison to his first book because it was so similar so I'd seen it all done before. Sense of place isn't always the most important thing in a book, but it is a little bit important when it's a book about people running around trying to keep a city going, and when, for example, your cool magical gambling system seems to be used to play very typical European card games, you've missed a trick. There's a point to be made about colonialism if you're talking South American civilisation analogues, but I don't think he made it very clearly, and these were clearly flourishing Aztec-analogues who happened to have made European-analogue contact some time ago, not built off the current South American situation, so either colonialism didn't happen, or you actually have to explain why it turned out differently here. (It's secondary world fantasy, not an alternate universe, I should note, but nevertheless.)

Some of the issues, not Gladstone's fault. I assume he had nothing whatsoever to do with the pale guy on his book cover when he does describe the protagonist consistently as dark-skinned. On the other hand, I think it would have helped some if the fantasy!Aztec-ish protagonist wasn't called Caleb for no discernible reason, especially when it was something of a plot point that his father was a bit of a traditionalist. I mean, someone please correct me if this is in fact a false cognate, but I kept wondering why he had a Christian Biblical name.

Also, while I appreciate that the protagonist's best friend was a lesbian, probably you don't need to be quite so heavy-handed in how often she explicitly reminds him, especially when her girlfriend shows up a fair bit as a far more subtle hint, and especially when it turns out that we were being reminded eighteen thousand times so that in the end someone can attempt to ritually sacrifice her to the gods because lesbian sex doesn't count so she's technically a virgin????? Because FUCK. THAT. NOISE. I don't care that this was the opinion of one of the villains of the piece when it was clear that the objections of the heroes were entirely about murder being bad and not that being BULLSHIT.

The first one I still like a lot, and I will probably read whatever he writes next, but it's a shame that this one wasn't quite as good when city politics over religion and the water supply with both considered equally important is so exactly my kind of thing. MORE URBAN PLANNING, LESS DADDY ISSUES, PLEASE.

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-02-26T13:33:00

2014-02-26T18:39:04Z

Just discovered that gmail has been helpfully marking lj comments as spam for no reason I can discern. >:( I'm letting the conversations in question lie as it has been a few months for most of them, but this is a general apology to anyone who thought I was ignoring them: sorry about that, I didn't see it.

Ridiculously, gmail has never once marked actual spam comments on my lj as spam email, but apparently long threads containing full paragraphs and complete sentences, it hates?

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-02-25T18:08:00

2014-02-25T23:46:01Z

Why does everyone keep bringing up the fact that pseudophedrine can be cooked down into meth when they talk about Olympic athletes not being able to take it? A) Nicklas Backstrom didn't test positive for meth. B) Meth doesn't make you extra good at sports, so probably athletes are just taking pseudophedrine straight if they are taking it, instead of doing a bunch of chemistry first.

This is a perfectly reasonable thing to bring up if we're discussing why it's a controlled substance in general, but it doesn't actually make anyone's use of allergy medication more suspicious. He's not also running a meth ring, guys! Even if he was, it wouldn't actually make him ineligible to win a medal under the doping rules! (Any other rules, I'm not touching, but he's not running a meth lab, so it doesn't matter.)

...probably I should have some other takeaway from the Olympics than this, but not really, except for being angry on PK Subban's behalf. Also I want fic, but I think everyone knows that, so you should just talk to me about it already. ;)

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-02-04T13:53:00

2014-02-04T18:59:50Z

Edmonton, Apparently, Is (3831 words) by opusculasedfera
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Jordan Eberle/Taylor Hall
Series: Part 2 of Some kind of Ontario STD
Summary: More genderswap, in the interests of what I am choosing to call fairness.

Also, let us all begin planning the Olympics porn, as increasing numbers of photos come out of the single beds and multiple roommate arrangements, ditto hints at roommate combinations. Pretty much all I want out of the Olympics is unexpected ships, honestly. Well, and good narrative. I'm not very good at patriotism.

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Community S5E4+5

2014-01-24T14:47:16Z

I was going to make a post about being undecided about this season, but then episode five happened.

I've been feeling like the plots were not as good as the jokes this season, which is not what Community's usually like at all, but this episode actually drew everything together again! A school-wide game of Hot Lava was a really nice change from paintball, but with the same cheerful gung-ho approach to imaginary worlds and ludicrous alliances. It's not total novelty anymore, but they did fun things with the post-apocalypse jokes. It worked for me. It still felt fun, not forced or mean-spirited.

This is the Abed I feel like the show's been missing, where he's unusual and he does sometimes have difficulty responding to things, but he's actually managed to reach his 20s so he's not incapacitated by everything. He's allowed to be sad and ridiculous and have poor coping mechanisms and still be a good friend, and it's not presented as part of the problem that his friends help him cope.

Also, this is the degree of love I want from Community, where we can both acknowledge that Britta shouting at everyone to grieve better is annoying and unproductive, but she's trying super hard and she really wants everyone to be happy. I'm not a hugely schmaltzy person, but the hugs at the end were super good for me and I really love when this show remembers that everyone is friends and has different relationships with each other, no one is just acquaintances who happen to have a lot of mutual pals, even if everyone isn't precisely equally close.

On a similar note, I appreciate that Annie and Jeff got to team up without the episode being in any way about their friendship and especially not about their sexual tension.

Episode four...okay, but I wasn't as in love. I feel like we've covered so many of those personality flaws before that I didn't really need another episode of people discussing them rather than them playing out in an actual situation. Otoh, I get that it was mainly intended to set up Troy's departure, which went well.

I don't know what the show is going to be like without Troy, but I am more optimistic now about the next episode even so.

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oops

2014-01-20T23:38:24Z

I have succumbed to the allure of a trope bingo card.

wingfic	fork in the road	virginfic	au: romance novel	poor communication skills
mind control	hurt / comfort	time travel	futurefic	indecent proposal
bets / wagers	snowed in	FREE ★ SPACE	curtainfic	rites of passage / coming of age
soul bonding / soulmates	au: alternate professions	au: space	holidayfic	telepathy / mindmeld
bodyswap	handcuffed / bound together	deathfic	language and translation	first time / last time

Somehow I'm not sure I need pushing to write more wingfic, but everyone should come try to convince me to write things/discuss my options!

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-01-15T16:20:00

2014-01-15T22:09:58Z

"One should not enlarge on one's animals - but I thought you might like to know what a charming pair [of cats] attend us."
-Sylvia Townsend Warner to William Maxwell

The life philosophy of the internet, is it not? Particularly when you know it comes at the end of a lengthy letter detailing her cats' charms: one of many in this small volume. I have been reading Warner and Maxwell's letters (the collection is The Element of Lavishness, edited by Michael Steinman) and they are most delightful. Literary - they began to correspond when he was editing her short stories in the New Yorker - but also a record of a warm and loving friendship. The writing is beautiful and they're funny and charming and just a joy to read. Much admiration to the editor because there must have been quantities of stuff cut out (they wrote constantly between 1938 and 1978 and yet the book is barely 350 pages, and no one could have achieved that degree of quality unceasingly, surely?) and it still feels like a smooth narrative without gaps. They talk about books and major political events of the period and family life, and it is all immensely enjoyable. Highly recommended.

And I wrote some fic:
Basic Lagomorph Persuasion (2892 words) by opusculasedfera
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Beau Bennett/Robert Bortuzzo
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Crossdressing, Halloween
Summary: Robert's life is very difficult and this outfit doesn't even fucking fit. Because there wasn't nearly enough porn about their halloween costumes.

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opusculasedfera @ 2014-01-14T09:24:00

2014-01-14T16:32:09Z

I love pissy and inaccurate marginal annotations in library books. This one has angrily crossed out the "state" in "state school" to write "provincial", which is a sort of correct as the school in question is in Ontario, but the author is from the UK, is writing for a UK audience, and clearly means "government-run, i.e. not privately owned." GOOD JOB, ANNOTATOR.

Less inaccurate, but equally endearing are the people who correct typos in library books. It's just so entirely futile and certainly doesn't improve the look of the thing, and we never seem to be talking about misprints that entirely change the meaning of a sentence, but a 'the' transposed to 'teh' which, honestly, I am just as likely to miss entirely as the copyeditor did if you don't draw attention to it with your pen scribbles.

(Underlining and highlighting in public books on the other hand is a social evil, and I will have no truck with it.)

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Community S5E3

2014-01-12T03:29:14Z

Cautiously pleased with this week's Community!

I can maybe accept this level of Jeff being a teacher and things not being the same! It makes me hopeful that they do care more about shenanigans than tragedy, which is what I require.

I really like that Neil does radio and still plays D&D and has quietly become a recurring character with his own shit going on. Garrett is...interesting? I'm not sure how to feel about his character because he is kind of a stereotype of hapless fat nerd with asthma. But then his complete and total haplessness almost transcends that? "Et tu, pencil!" is a fabulous line, and it's not like inability to deal with folders is part of the trope? On the other hand, he hasn't really gotten anything to do that isn't be ridiculous ever.

Pierce's death just didn't work: you can't do "sudden revelation of faked death!" and "we're supposed to be sad about another death!" in the same episode, also I basically hadn't noticed that Pierce wasn't around because he was a terrible character. But at least it didn't work while still trying, and wasn't actively contradictory to established characterisation.

Annie/Jeff is still only acceptable if the show stays firmly on the THIS IS CREEPY side of the line, so they get a raised eyebrow from me for how far they went this episode, but they didn't actually cross it yet and still seem aware that there's a difference between attraction existing and attraction being good to

Abed's intense support of Troy was super adorable. I love how it works both as ludicrous and tropey and as Abed letting Troy deal with things in his own way, and I love that Abed would probably appreciate both of those aspects of it equally.

I need this plotline to not wrap up with "lols, sexual harrassment," but it does still have a chance! This is how I want the Dean's inner struggle between principle/love of the group and external pressures of the school and so on to go! Where he tries, and sometimes gives in to his baser nature, but trying is still an important thing! Also him trying to get the secretary to trace the call when she knows that caller id is a thing was beautiful.

Definitely feeling better about everything than I was!

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this has been a pointless post

2014-01-11T03:13:17Z

How is it that after two days of sitting down to write this tropey porn, I have instead achieved only <2.5k of lead-in that wants to have issues in it?

Also way to not write the other porn that you wrote a bunch of lead-in to already.

On the other hand, the co-written WIP is now over 100k so everyone had better be really into Shea Weber's ridiculous feelings, I guess.

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Community S5E1 and 2

2014-01-07T03:07:29Z

I don't know how I feel about the latest episodes of Community. For me, Community works best when it's about a real community college, even a surreal one. One that has ridiculous classes because there's a mandate to try and boost enrollment and someone said "sailing!" and someone else said "Who's the Boss!" but those are still real classes where someone is trying to teach you something about media and tv via outdated sitcoms. I like a lot of the character changes they've done - Troy and Abed moving in together and adding Annie, Jeff having to adjust to not being a wealthy lawyer, Shirley actually moving toward her dream, for just a few - but I feel like the show is at its worst when it doesn't want to be about a community college (which is of course a different thing than being a community college that is additionally an extremely serious Pillowfort Battlefield, or Law and Order spoof.) Also, there's a difference between being aware that your college lacks prestige and funding while containing messes and bad paperwork, and a school actually being a nonsense.

The point of the darkest timelines was that that kind of overblown drama is laughable: why would you make the everything failed version the primary timeline? It's not that it was a terrible two episodes, it's just that it felt a little cruel. Of course Britta would say that being a bartender was like being a modern day therapist and that's silly, but also being a bartender is not the worst job in the world ever, so why act like it's appalling and sucks your brain our your ear? We already did the plot where Abed's films are not always works of genius, only that time it didn't act like he'll never be able to make anything good as a result. Either move everyone out of Greendale and on with their lives, or keep writing a school story, but don't give everyone a moved on life that sucks hard enough that they need to come back. It just felt forced, and ruined all the things that were actually good jokes in the episode! The Dean was great! Of course he would learn Excel 'helpfully' and want to talk about it! Of course he would sing sad French songs to himself! Of course Annie would try to teach a class herself if she thought the prof was doing a bad job!

Hopefully the rest of the season moves away from that set up a bit. I like that Community is willing to be unflinching about people's flaws, but that's a totally different kind of joke from terrible things just happening to everyone, and it would be nice to see that again.

What do you guys think?

Also, entirely unrelatedly, I wrote a thing:
Congrats on Your Everything (Not You, Jeff) (2359 words) by opusculasedfera
Fandom: Hockey RPF
Rating: Explicit
Relationships: Elias Lindholm/Ryan Murphy/Jeff Skinner
Summary: Porn, set after the Canes' Dec 6th game against the Sharks.

comments

opusculasedfera @ 2014-01-05T07:36:00

2014-01-05T13:29:11Z

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

Happy New Year!

2014-01-01T15:16:05Z

I was thinking about doing a New Year's meme, but none of the ones I've seen so far have appealed, so have my booklist for 2013 instead.

Books:
1. Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art Out of Desperate Times - Susan Quinn
2. A Face Like Glass - Frances Hardinge
3. 22 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism - Ha-Joon Chang
4. The Library at Night - Alberto Manguel
5. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference - Cordelia Fine
6. The Kingdom of Gods - N.K. Jemisin
7. Histoire de la Cuisine Familiale du Quebec: ses origines autochtones et europeennes - Michel Lambert
8. Page - Tamora Pierce
9. The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien
10. My House Has Two Doors - Han Suyin
11. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America - Thomas King
12. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman
13. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism - Ha-Joon Chang
14. Les hockeyeurs assassines: Essai sur l'histoire du hockey 1870-2002 - Michel-Wilbrod Bujold
15. The Most Beautiful House in the World - Witold Rybczynski
16. The Pirate Queen: In Search of Grace O'Malley and Other Legendary Women of the Sea - Barbara Sjoholm
17. Squire - Tamora Pierce
18. Let's Pretend This Never Happened: (A Mostly True Memoir) - Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess)
19. The Long Earth - Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter
20. Don't Care High - Gordon Korman
21. The TWinkie Squad - Gordon Korman
22. The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern
23. Ancestors: The Loving Family in Old Europe - Steven Ozment
24. The Maker's Mask - Ankaret Wells
25. Is There a Nutmeg in the House - Elizabeth David
26. Spiderweb for Two: A Melendy Maze - Elizabeth Enright
27. Makeshift Metropolis: Ideas About Cities - Witold Rybczynski
28. Lady Knight - Tamora Pierce
29. Toilet: Public Restrooms and the Politics of Sharing - ed. Harvey Molotech and Laura Noren
30. The Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones
31. Selling the Dream: How Hockey Parents and Their Kids Are Paying the Price for Our National Obsession - Ken Campbell and Jim Parcels
32. Le Frisson de l'Emeute: Violences Urbaines et Banlieues - Sebastian Roche
33. Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell
34. One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screw - Witold Rybczynski
35. Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America - Barbara Ehrenreich
36. Lucy Maud Montgomery: The Gift of Wings - Mary Henley Rubio
37. The Look of Architecture - Witold Rybczynski
38. Fire in the Mist - Holly Lisle
39. Monstrous Regiment - Terry Pratchett
40. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation - Lisbet Koerner
41. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America - Barbara Ehrenreich
42. Where the Wind Goes: Moments from my Life - Dr. Mae Jemison
43. Divided Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia - Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth
44. Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy - Barbara Ehrenreich
45. This Land is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation - Barbara Ehrenreich
46. On Nous Appelait les Sauvages: Souvenirs et espoirs d'un chef hereditaire algonquin - Dominique Rankin (ed. Marie-Josee Tardif)
47. Reversed Gaze: An African Ethnography of American Anthropology - Mwenda Ntarangwi
48. Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden - Diane Ackerman
49. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact - Vine Deloria, Jr.
50. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
51. Home: A Short History of an Idea - Witold Rybczynski
52. Waiting for the Weekend - Witold Rybczynski
53. The Secret of Platform 13 - Eva Ibbotson
54. The Snarling Citizen - Barbara Ehrenreich
55. Wind, Sand and Stars - Antoine de Saint Exupery
56. A Gift of a Garden: or Some Flowers Remembered - Beverley Nichols
57. Les Canadiens: a play - Rick Salutin
58. Floating Gold: A Natural (and Unnatural) History of Ambergris - Christopher Kemp
59. L'autre face du hockey: Derriere le NHL: le monde - Georges Schwartz
60. Soul Music - Terry Pratchett
61. Objectivity - Lorrain Daston and Peter Galison
62. No Coins, Please - Gordon Korman
63. Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labour War - Thomas G. Andrews
64. Unfamiliar Fishes - Sarah Vowell
65. Prater Violet - Christopher Isherwood
66. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto - Vine Deloria, Jr.
67. A Semester in the Life of a Garbage Bag - Gordon Korman
68. The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord
69. Spadina Avenue- Rosemary Donegan
70. The House on the Borderland - William Hope Hodgson
71. Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti - Genevieve Valentine
72. The Science of Discworld II: The Globe - Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, and Jack Cohen
73. Sorry, I Don't Speak French: Ou pourquoi quarante ans de politiques linguistiques au Canada n'ont rien regle...ou presque - Graham Fraser
74. Globalisation, Economic Development and the Role of the State - Ha-Joon Chang
75. The C.A. Lejeune Film Reader - ed. Anthony Lejeune
76. Four Lectures on Shakespeare - Ellen Terry
77. Colour: Travels Through the Paintbox- Victoria Finlay
78. I Want to Go Home - Gordon Korman
79. The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York - Deborah Blum
80. Backing into Forward - Jules Feiffer
81. Your Movie Sucks - Roger Ebert
82. The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom - Barbara Smith
83. Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo - Hayden Herrera
84. Woman's Consciousness, Man's World - Sheila Rowbotham
85. The Adventures of Alyx - Joanna Russ
86. The Labyrinth - Catherynne M. Valente
87. Yume no Hon: The Book of Dreams - Catherynne M. Valente
88. The Grass-Cutting Sword - Catherynne M. Valente
89. Under in the Mere - Catherynne M. Valente
90. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J.K. Rowling
91. Pendular Motion - Morgan Bauman
92. Reflections: On the Magic of Writing - Diana Wynne Jones
93. City Life: Urban Expectations in a New World - Witold Rybczynski
94. Laxdaela Saga - trad., trans. Magnus Magnusson and Hermann Palsson
95. Beware the Fish - Gordon Korman
96. The Alchemy of Stone - Ekaterina Sedia
97. The Truth - Terry Pratchett
98. A Barrel of Laughs, A Vale of Tears - Jules Feiffer
99. The Man in the Ceiling - Jules Feiffer
100. American Fried - Calvin Trillin
101. The Book of Atrix Wolfe - Patricia A. McKillip
102. The View from Saturday - E.L. Konigsburg
103. Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism - Joseph Heath
104. When You Reach Me - Rebecca Stead
105. Alice, Let's Eat - Calvin Trillin
106. From the Mixed-up Files Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler - E.L. Konigsburg
107. An Artificial Night - Seanan McGuire
108. Third Helpings - Calvin Trillin
109. When They Severed Earth From Sky: How the Human Mind Shapes Myth - Elizabeth Wayland Barber, and Paul T. Barber
110. Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran - Fatemeh Keshavarz
111. Dodger - Terry Pratchett
112. Liar & Spy - Rebecca Stead
113. No Such Thing as Ghosts - Ursula Vernon
114. Mending the Moon - Susan Palwick
115. The Arab Table: Recipes and Culinary Traditions - May S. Bsisu
116. The Sidney Effect: Competitive Youth Hockey and Fantasy Relationships - Matthew John Ross Theoret
117. Mistress Pat - L.M. Montgomery
118. Late Eclipses - Seanan McGuire
119. When Fairies Go Bad - Ursula Vernon
120. How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming - Mike Brown
121. Travels with Alice - Calvin Trillin
122. Selling “The Next One”: Corporate Nationalism and the Production of
Sidney Crosby - Darron Bunt
123. Revenge of the Horned Bunnies - Ursula Vernon
124. Flying in Place - Susan Palwick
125. The Lair of the Bat Monster - Ursula Vernon
126. Queen Victoria's Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy - ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
127. One Salt Sea - Seanan McGuire
128. Frederica - Georgette Heyer
129. The Mummies of Urumchi - Elizabeth Wayland Barber
130. Nightmare of the Iguana - Ursula Vernon
131. Cheaper By the Dozen - Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
132. The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance - Elizabeth Wayland Barber
133. Why We Get Fat and What to Do About It - Gary Taubes
134. Belles on Their Toes - Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
135. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i - Haunani-Kay Trask
136. The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov, trans. Richard Pevlar and Larissa Pevlar
137. Moose Meat and Wild Rice - Basil Johnston
138. Victor Hugo: A Biography - Graham Robb
139. Family Man - Calvin Trillin
140. Some Great Idea: Good Neighbourhoods, Crazy Politics and the Invention of Toronto - Edward Keenan
141. Attack of the Ninja Frogs - Ursula Vernon
142. Oh Canada! Oh Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country - Mordicai Richler
143. A Geography of Blood: Unearthing Memory from the Prairie Landscape - Candace Savage
144. Making Gay History: The Half-Century Fight for Lesbian and Gay Equal Rights - ed. Eric Marcus
145. A Whale for the Killing - Farley Mowat
146. Canada North - Farley Mowat
147. Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years: Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times - Elizabeth Wayland Barber
148. Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality - Paul Barber
149. The Dog Who Wouldn't Be - Farley Mowat
150. Curse of the Were-Weiner - Ursula Vernon
151. Outside the Gates - Molly Gloss
152. Otherwise - Farley Mowat
153. The Hawkwood War - Ankaret Wells
154. The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
155. Working With Wool: A Coast Salish Legacy and the Cowichan Sweater - Sylvia Olsen
156. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller - Carlo Ginzberg, trans. John and Anne Tedeschi
157. The Delighted States: A Book of Novel, Romances, and Their Unknown Translators, Containing Ten Languages, Set on Four Continents, and Accompanied by Maps, Portraits, Squiggles, Illustrations, and a Variety of Helpful Indexes - Adam Thirlwell
158. The Necessary Beggar - Susan Palwick
159. Aux pays des merveilles: Essai sur les mythes politiques quebecoises - Andre Pratt
160. The Death and Life of Great American Cities - Jane Jacobs
161. The Hopes of Snakes & Other Tales from the Urban Landscape - Lisa Couturier
162. The Walkable City: From Haussmann's Boulevards to Jane Jacobs' Streets and Beyond - Mary Sonderstrom
163. Persuasion - Jane Austen
164. Stranger at the Wedding - Barbara Hambly
165. The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England's Most Notorious Queen - Susan Borda
166. First Light - Rebecca Stead
167. The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You - S. Bear Bergman
168. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction - Kodwo Eshun
169. Something Wicked This Way Comes - Ray Bradbury
170. Butch is a Noun - S. Bear Bergman
171. The Economy of Cities - Jane Jacobs
172. The Power of Why - Amanda Lang
173. Shatterglass - Tamora Pierce
174. The Culture of Knitting - Joanne Turney
175. Handbook for Dragon Slayers - Merrie Haskell
176. The Medium is the Massage - Marshall McLuhan and Quentin Fiore
177. Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation - Kate Bornstein and S. Bear Bergman
178. Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease - Gary Taubes
179. Dark Age Ahead - Jane Jacobs
180. The Story of Mary MacLane - Mary MacLane
181. My Friend Annabel Lee - Mary MacLane
182. Cocaine Blues - Kerry Greenwood
183. Flying Too High - Kerry Greenwood
184. Cities and the Wealth of Nations: Principles of Economic Life - Jane Jacobs
185. Stonehenge: A New Understanding - Mike Parker Pearson
186. Murder on the Ballarat Train - Kerry Greenwood
187. Mike and Psmith - P.G. Wodehouse
188. Conversation with Octavia Butler - ed. Consuela Francis
189. The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy - ed. Leonard S. Marcus
190. India: From Midnight to the Millenium - Shashi Tharoor
191. The Green Mill Murder - Kerry Greenwood
192. Vertes Annees: ou la vie d'une ecologiste pas comme les autres - Tzeporah Berman with Mark Leiren-Young, trans. Daniel Poliquin
193. The Dustbin of History - Griel Marcus
194. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body - Susan Bordo
195. The Witch Family - Eleanor Estes
196. Illness as Metaphor - Susan Sontag
197. Aids and Its Metaphors - Susan Sontag
198. The Nature of Economies - Jane Jacobs
199. Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing and Politics - Hanif Kureishi
200. Blood and Circuses - Kerry Greenwood
201. The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next - Lee Smolin
202. Her Royal Spyness - Rhys Bowen
203. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History - Sidney W. Mintz
204. A Natural History of Dragons: A Memoir by Lady Trent - Marie Brennan
205. What We See: Advancing the Observations of Jane Jacobs - ed. Stephen A. Goldsmith and Lynne Elizabeth
206. The Question of Separatism: Quebec and the Struggle over Sovereignty - Jane Jacobs
207. The Drowning City - Amanda Downum
208. The Word and the Bomb - Hanif Kureishi
209. Better to Have Loved: The Life of Judith Merril - Judith Merril, ed. Emily Pohl-Weary
210. Darkest Light - Hiromi Goto
211. City of Laughter: Sex and Satire in Eighteenth-Century London - Vic Gatrell
212. Hons and Rebels - Jessica Mitford
213. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America - Melissa V. Harris-Perry
214. Le Quebec mis en echec: La discrimination envers les Quebecois dans la LNH - Bob Sirois
215. The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Great Epic of Gilgamesh - David Damrosch
216. From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism - Patricia Hill Collins
217. Raging Robots and Unruly Uncles - Margaret Mahy
218. Pale Blue Dot: Visions of the Human Future in Space - Carl Sagan
219. All Our Pretty Songs - Sarah McCarry
220. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
221. Chorus of Mushrooms - Hiromi Goto
222. Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks - Keith Houston
223. Yours, Plum: The Letters of P.G. Wodehouse - ed. Frances Donaldson
224. The Boys of Summer - Roger Kahn
225. One Day I Will Write About This Place - Binyavanga Wainaina
226. Black Wine - Candace Jane Dorsey
227. The Mirror Prince - Violet Malan
228. Psmith, Journalist - P.G. Wodehouse
229. River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West - Rebecca Solnit
230. Systems of Survival : A Dialogue on the Moran Foundations of Commerce and Politics - Jane Jacobs
231. Learning in Depth: A Simple Innovation That Can Transform Schooling - Kieran Egan
232. L'Ordre de Jacques Cartier: Une societe secrete pour les Canadiens francais catholiques 1926-1965 - Denise Robillard
233. The Autobiography of doña Catalina de Erauso - ed. Joaquin Maria de Ferrer, trans. Dan Harvey Pedrick
234. Exploring Diabetes with Owls - David Sedaris
235. The Sense and Sensibility Screenplay & Diaries - Emma Thompson
236. Blood, Marriage, Wine and Glitter - S. Bear Bergman
237. Hellspark - Janet Kagan
238. Brokedown Palace - Steven Brust
239. War for the Oaks - Emma Bull
240. Homer Price - Robert McCloskey
241. Centerburg Tales: More Adventures of Homer Price - Robert McCloskey
242. City of Fire - Laurence Yep
243. Dandelion Wine - Ray Bradbury
244. Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness - ed. Rebecca Walker
245. Murder Must Advertise - Dorothy L. Sayers
246. Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks - Ken Jennings
247. Keeping Up Appearances: Fashion and Class Between the Wars - Catherine Horwood
248. The Water of Possibility - Hiromi Goto
249. Toward the African Revolution - Frantz Fanon, trans. Haakon Chevalier
250. How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason in Everyday Life - Thomas Gilovich
251. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice - bell hooks
252. Josephine Baker contr Hitler: La Star Noire de La France Libre - Charles Onana
253. Battle Magic - Tamora Pierce
254. The Lady Queen: The Notorious Reign of Joanna I, Queen of Naples, Jerusalem, and Sicily - Nancy Goldstone
255. City of Ice - Laurence Yep
256. Ashes of Honour - Seanan McGuire
257. The Tarantula in My Purse: and 172 Other Wild Pets - Jean Craighead George
258. Fighting for Life - S. Josephine Baker
259. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography - Zora Neale Hurston
260. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down - Joan Morgan
261. Double Cross: The True Story of the D-Day Spies - Ben MacIntyre
262. Chimes at Midnight - Seanan McGuire
263. Jill the Reckless - P.G. Wodehouse
264. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid - Bill Bryson
265. Banishing the Beast: Feminism, Sex and Morality - Lucy Bland
266. Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter - Carmen Aguirre
267. City of Death - Laurence Yep
268. The Kappa Child - Hiromi Goto
269. England At Large - Ethel Mannin

Comics:
1. Honour Among Punks: The Complete Baker Street Graphic Novel - Guy Davis and Gary Reed
2. French Milk - Lucy Knisley
3. Hereville: How Mirka Got Her Sword - Barry Deutsch
4. Bloom County: The Complete Library: Volume One: 1980-1982 - Berkeley Breathed
5. Relish: My Life in the Kitchen - Lucy Knisley
6. You're On Your Own, Snoopy - Charles M. Schultz
7. Charlie Brown and Snoopy - Charles M. Schultz
8. For the Love of Peanuts - Charles M. Schultz

Manga:
1. Kamikaze Girls - Novala Takemoto and Yukio Kanesada
2. All My Darling Daughters - Fumi Yoshinaga
3. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 1 - Asa Higuchi
4. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 2 - Asa Higuchi
5. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 3 - Asa Higuchi
6. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 4 - Asa Higuchi
7. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 5 - Asa Higuchi
8. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 6 - Asa Higuchi
9. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 7 - Asa Higuchi
10. Ookiku Furikabutte: Volume 8 - Asa Higuchi

Fewer than last year, which feels odd, though I suppose I also started doing a lot more fiction writing this year, which sort of makes up for it, or is at least interestingly different. Need to step up with the French though.

I almost didn't make 50books_poc this year, but pulled it out in the end. Next year I'm aiming for not reading ALL THE SHORT STORIES in the final week of December, but at least my streak isn't broken! (Four years! I don't know if it's really doing anything, but better than not doing, I suppose. And I have read lots of lovely things.)

1. 22 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism - Ha-Joon Chang
2. The Kingdom of Gods - N.K. Jemisin
3. "Paper Menagerie" - Ken Liu
4. My House Has Two Doors - Han Suyin
5. The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America - Thomas King
6. Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism - Ha-Joon Chang
7. Seven Star Drum - Zen Cho
8. The Four Generations of Chang E - Zen Cho
9. The Guest - Zen Cho
10. Prudence and the Dragon - Zen Cho
11. The Perseverance of Angela’s Past Life - Zen Cho
12. Outliers: The Story of Success - Malcolm Gladwell
13. Where the Wind Goes: Moments from my Life - Dr. Mae Jemison
14. On Nous Appelait les Sauvages: Souvenirs et espoirs d'un chef hereditaire algonquin - Dominique Rankin (ed. Marie-Josee Tardif)
15. Reversed Gaze: An African Ethnography of American Anthropology - Mwenda Ntarangwi
16. Red Earth, White Lies: Native Americans and the Myth of Scientific Fact - Vine Deloria, Jr.
17. Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto - Vine Deloria, Jr.
18. The Best of All Possible Worlds - Karen Lord
19. Globalisation, Economic Development and the Role of the State - Ha-Joon Chang
20. The Truth that Never Hurts: Writings on Race, Gender, and Freedom - Barbara Smith
21. Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran - Fatemeh Keshavarz
22. The Arab Table: Recipes and Culinary Traditions - May S. Bsisu
23. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai'i - Haunani-Kay Trask
24. Moose Meat and Wild Rice - Basil Johnston
25. More Brilliant than the Sun: Adventures in Sonic Fiction - Kodwo Eshun
26. Conversation with Octavia Butler - ed. Consuela Francis
27. India: From Midnight to the Millenium - Shashi Tharoor
28. Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing and Politics - Hanif Kureishi
29. The Word and the Bomb - Hanif Kureishi
30. Darkest Light - Hiromi Goto
31. Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America - Melissa V. Harris-Perry
32. From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism - Patricia Hill Collins
33. Chorus of Mushrooms - Hiromi Goto
34. One Day I Will Write About This Place - Binyavanga Wainaina
35. City of Fire - Laurence Yep
36. Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness - ed. Rebecca Walker
37. The Water of Possibility - Hiromi Goto
38. Toward the African Revolution - Frantz Fanon, trans. Haakon Chevalier
39. Writing Beyond Race: Living Theory and Practice - bell hooks
40. Josephine Baker contr Hitler: La Star Noire de La France Libre - Charles Onana
41. City of Ice - Laurence Yep
42. Dust Tracks on a Road: An Autobiography - Zora Neale Hurston
43. When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip-Hop Feminist Breaks It Down - Joan Morgan
44. Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter - Carmen Aguirre
45. City of Death - Laurence Yep
46. The Kappa Child - Hiromi Goto
47. Time Considered As a Helix of Semi-Precious Stones - Samuel R. Delany
48. High Weir - Samuel R. Delany
49. Speech Sounds - Octavia E. Butler
50. Amnesty - Octavia E. Butler

And I still can't believe that the Canes actually won after I abandoned them to go out last night, so let us consider it an omen for the new year or something pleasantly manufactured like that. May have to download it, I'm sure Tripp lost his shit over Sasha's goal and he was already loopy enough early on. John, in case you missed it, is apparently Mr. Bubbles and Tripp had far too many details on his bathing habits available off the top of his head. ;) In other hockey news of last night, I managed to have a conversation at the party with someone who thought Phil Kessel was a goalie, which is a good trick in Toronto, I think. Otoh, the party was graced by the host's giant Bruins flag decor, so Toronto: hockey diverse is perhaps the message. (He's from Ottawa, technically, which I don't think makes any more sense of it.) I still don't know how to talk hockey with non-fannish types, but the alcohol helps.

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opusculasedfera @ 2013-12-21T16:34:00

2013-12-22T01:57:52Z

So, I was writing a gushy post about how adorable Tripp and John were last night, what with Tripp's birthday, and his surprise cake, and his totally baffling attempt to talk about some random staff members while some different staff members waved a cake in his face and tried to make him blow out candles, and John looked on fondly forever. But I was also watching tonight's game, and Tripp started telling adorable stories about the Canes' Cup run, and how he wept when they won, and it reminded me all over again me exactly why I like him so much. He's not just a font of baffling and adorable flirting/bizarre stories/Czech fetishes. He's also so good at being a serious homer without actually being gross about it. He can make it abundantly clear that he is cheering for the Canes without saying anything bad about the other team! And he can WEEP AT THEIR CUP WIN, and also acknowledge on camera that they did actually commit that penalty, the refs are being fair, he just wishes they wouldn't do those things.

Not that I don't also ship Tripp and John a lot, because I REALLY DO, and they've clearly worked some shit out because John ~no longer says good night in the elevator on road trips~ (literally something they said during a broadcast) and there's been a lot of flirting, but ugh, they're so good at their jobs, and it just makes me happy.

(...and now my DW can match my twitter, where I'm pretty sure fully half my tweets are Tripp related. He's just so great!)

Also, people should come talk to me about fics that should exist because all mine are slightly stalled and I want something to think about. What things do you want to pop into existence? Not that I promise to write anything, but we can commiserate together.

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opusculasedfera @ 2013-12-16T13:26:00

2013-12-16T19:53:46Z

Beginning to bake things to give away this Christmas, and spending a lot of time being unnecessarily judgemental online recipe websites. Fudge recipes are the worst offender. I have no problem with people altering recipes to suit dietary restrictions, but why would you bother to make a frozen slush of spinach and banana and pretend that it was fudge? Just make a fruit ice and be done with it. Or apple sauce mixed with peanut butter. If you want to put that on a sandwich, have fun, but why pretend that it is fudge, a dish made from the interaction of sugar and dairy to create something that isn't quite caramel, but isn't totally unlike it? I just want to be able to filter out all the people who get all self-righteous about cutting the sugar out of things that are literally made of sugar.*

Also, what on earth is the point of making things eggnog flavoured? Especially cake. Eggnog tastes like milk and eggs and both those things are already in cake recipes! I can't imagine that adding heavily preserved eggs and milk would make any particular difference to a batter, unless what you were missing was the taste of those preserved chemicals. Just flavour things with nutmeg and be happy. Nutmeg is delicious and can be enjoyed outside of eggnog, I promise.

*(Actual diabetics have my sympathy, these people are clearly not diabetics, or are going to be very sad ones when they realise that the maple syrup they believe to be a magical panacea is actually made of sucrose.)

In less grumpy news, I watched Pitch Perfect, which is as delightfully femslashy as everyone said, but also, why did no one tell me that the love interest is totally a Manic Pixie Dream Guy? Because he really is. He shows up, and is wacky at the protagonist, and tells her to have more emotions, and then she wins him back at the end by being very good at the thing she was always very good at which he did not actively help her with at all (you could maybe count him as a muse, but only in the most inactive sense), and totally not saying sorry! He is way less important to her narrative than music and her (all female) musical partners. I was kind of sorry her final mashup wasn't all ladies, because that would have been more thematically consistent, but it was definitely worthwhile fluff that was actually as lady-centric as it claimed to be!

Also Princess Monster Truck has been going around again, and I hope she brings you as much joy as she does me.

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Fringe Exchange Reveals!

2013-12-10T18:15:19Z

Today is the day of fringe_exchange reveals! And if you haven't read all the excellent fics (and the one vid!) from that exchange yet, you should go do it.

I wrote a disgraceful charm (1007 words) for wendelah1
Fandom: Fringe
Relationships: Olivia Dunham/Esther Figglesworth
Summary:Two dames, an insufficient number of guns, and some bad jokes. A Brown Betty fic.

Thanks to maleyka and vampirespider for gently separating me from my adverbs and other betaing. Also thanks to mistfarer for helping me title this, even though I wouldn't let her read it because she hasn't seen the episode yet. (Ilu!)

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"Battle Magic" by Tamora Pierce

2013-12-08T20:28:33Z

This is Rosethorn's book, for those of you for whom such a thing would be a joy and a delight. It's also Evvy's book, and Briar obviously is in it and has POV bits, but it's the book where Rosethorn gets to have an arc.

Also the book where it is 100% on the page confirmed that she and Lark are both lovers and happily non-monogamous, which was obvious before, but is nice to have confirmed anyhow, especially in a YA book.

We also actually get some depth on what it means that some of the Emelan characters are religious dedicates and what that means to them personally rather than it simply being an alternative schooling system, which was nice! So Rosethorn gets that, and a little more family backstory and, basically, ROSETHORN. She's the best. I'm happy to have read her book.

It's not the most focused Tamora Pierce book, I think because it starts out as one of the books where her primary characters go somewhere and shit's going to hell and they have to fight a war to fix it, but she was really trying hard NOT to make it white-saviour-y this time, so the arc is less focused. On the other hand, I was delighted that she clearly is thinking about these tropes and trying to avoid those criticisms this time. From where I'm standing she did a pretty good job, though I'd welcome dissent if people saw problematic things in it.

This is the book of that war Briar and Rosethorn and Evvy fought in fantasy!China and fantasy!Tibet (it's better world-building than that, but also, it's totally fantasy!China and fantasy!Tibet, even if it's well done) that was giving them PTSD in The Will of the Empress. So they go to these places and piss off the Emperor of Yanjing, and then have to escape him and get caught up in the fight to defend Gyongxe, and lots of things happen and Pierce is still very good at writing clear battle scenes, but it's the story of how the war happened to them, rather than the story of how they saved fantasy!Tibet. They really don't save fantasy!Tibet. They're not irrelevant to the fighting, but fantasy!Tibet saves itself. (I keep repeating this, because I'm so pleased by it, and I really wasn't sure where this book was going when I started it.)

The difficulty is, this makes the action and emotional arcs not line up as perfectly. The emotional arc is about who you are and what you do and how you live with things, but the action arc is very definitely about, y'know, the invasion, and who wins. But, at the end of the day, I was pretty pleased with getting a lot more Rosethorn and Evvy, and the battles are very good, they're just not the same kind of emotionally cathartic.

And Gyongxe is very cool. The bits about Evvy communing with mountains, and Rosethorn with the Living Circle treasures were very good. It's not the best Pierce book, but it's still excellent and highly recommended.

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