Recent Entries

(no subject)

Hello! I am gently breaking out this Dreamwidth as a place to post bits and pieces of fic that don't belong elsewhere.

So for Filthy Friday, ( a non-filth, aborted start to a certain fic. Untamed fandom, Xiyao. )

on family separation

cw us politics

I read this today, and it basically made me cry at the office. I know that the cruelty is the point, and the fuckers in the Administration have said as much OUT FUCKING LOUD, but it fucking boggles me how these ostensibly pro-life people can be like this. How cruel do you have to be to intentionally attempt to separate a mother and her newborn baby? How cruel do you have to be to keep her from seeing the woman who will take care of her days old baby?

A newborn baby is one of the most helpless things you'll ever see. They have weird squashy faces, helpless little uncoordinated limbs, and they're fucking terrible at everything -- they're terrible at breathing, they're terrible at eating, they're terrible at pooping. They can't lift their heads. They can't support their own weight. Their heads are weirdly soft. In fact, they can't even cry that effectively, and spend most of their waking time, which amounts to like, four hours a day or so, being upset that they're outside the womb. For a long fucking time, really, the only thing a newborn will look at for any amount is a human face -- sit down and pretend you're holding a baby in your arms, as if you were breastfeeding it and folded around it the way that mothers tend to hold their newborn babies, and you'll find that you're probably, without thinking about it, holding the pretend-baby roughly 12 inches away from your face.

Non-coincidentally, that's about as far as a newborn baby can see with any degree of clarity.

That 12 inches is a newborn baby's whole visual world. That's all they're really set up to see, all they're really set up to care about, even more than food, even more than warmth -- they'll struggle to eat, and they'll wriggle out of warm blankets, but come into their visual field, and they lock onto you like a heatseeking missile. One of the strongest directives for a newborn is to look for, to learn, to bond with the face of someone who will love them and protect them and hold them and stay with them.

And now this fucking American government is trying to take these tiny, helpless creatures away from their mothers, and putting them into the hands of strangers who may lie in order to adopt the kids without any right to do so, and I have to think about the babies because thinking about the mothers makes me almost hysterical.

...

After getting upset in the office, I shut off my emotions like I'm trained to do, worked until the normal time, went home, got my kid dinner, got my kid a bath, got my kid into bed, dealt with the usual ration of shit from the kid in connection with all of this, then sat down at the computer and spent a shitload of money at BPAL before realizing that the only reason I spent the money was because I was still really fucking upset about, like, everything, including the fact that Louisiana is about to pass a fetal heartbeat bill, too -- so I went and donated a roughly equivalent shitload to a legal nonprofit that helps migrants being held in the detention center closest to me. Shamefully, it's only about sixty miles away, and has a well-earned reputation for brutality.

Fuck every single one of these heinous fuckers.

Also, it would've been a lot cheaper for me tonight if I'd realized how upset I was. But uh, I guess I've got some big containers of perfume coming?

avengers endgame

6th and Williams

1400-ish words. Steve/Peggy. Avengers Endgame spoilers.

...

So I guess my thing? or whatever? now is that I watch a Marvel movie, and write one (1) fic about it, and then don't do anything until I watch my next Marvel movie.

Which, frankly, is something I'm cool with because I thought I was basically done with fic forever after finishing that absurd Pacific Rim proof of concept/late night e-mail exchange and turned into the equivalent, no joke, of a 300 page novel. Especially because I watched Black Panther like six times, but still couldn't manage to write fic even though I spent months staggering around town, thinking about Killmonger. But then I wrote fic about Kingpin! And here I am with a Endgame fic! And now I am maybe thinking about trying to write Freya fic, because you can't show a mother onscreen being cool and calm and talking about the line of witches she comes and not, like, make me want to write 3,000 words.

( Thoughts on Endgame. )

(no subject)

Extraordinary Progress
Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse
1,986 words

Luck is on her side.

...

WHICH IS TO SAY, HOLY SHIT I WROTE A FIC AND LIKED IT ENOUGH TO POST IT. It's been about 16 months since I've written fic that ended up getting posted in some way, which is probably the longest drought of my entire adult life since I was, like, 13 and discovered the Internet through dial-up. When I finished This Is A Happy Ending in 2017, I was pretty convinced it would be the last fic I'd ever, ever write. And in the past 16 months or so, I haven't really even felt moved to write fic.

And of course, it's me writing a pretentious numbered grimdark AU murder fic about a lovely, heartfelt, charming movie pitched at kids that I absolutely and completely adored for what it was.

But we all know how I love alternate universes. And cruelty. And people doing terrible things to get their loved ones back.

(no subject)

HOLY SHIT MY READING LIST IS MORE ACTIVE NOW

...

Clockwork Boys, Book 1
THe Wonder Engine, Book 2

Which is to say that I'm not sure the plot entirely holds together, but I tore through the first book and half of the second in a single day, and finished the second at work. There's a part where Raleigh-the-fallen-paladin is mending Mako-the-forger's shirts with tiny, even stitches. There's another part where he helps her take on and put off her boots, kneeling in front of her each time. She is complicated, and it's a fundamental feature that he isn't, except for the part where he got possessed by a demon and murdered almost a dozen people. And they may find redemption in each other.

If that's your shit, this is your shit.

Add in Chuck as an asshole assassin who has history with Mako, a version of Hermann Gottlieb who is only 19 and brilliant and sheltered, and lots of snarky banter, and I'm very pleased. There are also sentient badger-type creatures with a complex caste system and motives of their own, and well, there's a betrayal-ish at the end that makes me sigh with happiness, and emotional brutality in the beginning that also makes me sigh with happiness, and throw in a dose of T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon being a big ol' SJW, I'm practically lighting a cigarette and stretching out in bed and not even feeling guilty about how much I enjoyed this, the multiple POV's notwithstanding. I may have read the first book and a half in the course of a single day, and then finished the second while at work. That basically only happens to me with books like Wolf Hall (my all-time favorite) and NK Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy (which rewrote the scope of what I thought fantasy could do).

If you'd like something fluffier, this is a lot of fun and hits similar notes, though the half-serious, half-joking way the main character considers suicide may be triggering to some. But it's a story told with a light touch, and well, when I got to this one part where she ran into the super-hot order of demon-slaying paladins, I may have been like, 'SHIT I WISH THERE WERE MORE ABOUT THE PALADINS' and lo and behold, I found the Clockwork duology on Amazon, and it was probably the best money I spent at Christmas.*

* Actually, that's a lie. The best money I spent at Christmas was for my new and incredibly silly hobby of making plants out of crepe paper, but that's for another post, which I'll hopefully be doing more regularly.

(no subject)

An Inauthentic Instapot Recipe for Kimchi-jjigae, on a Day of Politics-Related Despair

1.75-ish pounds of country-style pork ribs, bone in*
2 large onions, chopped roughly**
1 small spoonful from the Additional Animal Fat jar***
1 32 ounce container of kimchi that sat neglected and half-forgotten your fridge for 5+ months
1 big-ish spoonful of gochujang
2 big-ish spoonfuls of brown or rock sugar
1/2 pound fresh shitake mushrooms, caps separated from stems****
1/2 cup mirin
1 package silken tofu
1 Instapot
Cooking oil

1. Set Instapot to higher saute setting. Brown the ribs for flavor. Specifically, add two or three big glugs of cooking oil, wait till the oil is somewhat warm, and then, put the ribs in, meat side down, and let sit, unmolested. At first, the ribs will slide around freely in the oil. Then, as they cook, they'll go through a period of sticking, and you'll go through a period of questioning all your life choices in not getting a non-stick instapot. But keep the faith! Wait another couple minutes, and the the ribs will brown, and release! Once you get to that stage, remove from the pot and set aside.

2. Cook onions in Instapot until they're somewhat soft. Like the browning of the ribs, this is just to build flavor, so don't worry about it.

3. Put pork back into pot. Stir in mushrooms, Additional Animal Fat, gochujang, mirin, sugar, and everything in the kimchi jar. Add sriracha if you regret only putting one spoonful of gochujang in.

4. Place lid on Instapot, lock, and cook for 30 minutes on high pressure.

5. Make rice.

6. Natural release for five minutes, then speed-release the rest of the way. When you unlock the lid, it will be a pungent, molten-red concoction that bubbles like the antechamber of hell, and makes your (white) husband go T_T how much gochujang did you put in T_T, and at that point, you tell him that you only put in one big spoonful of it, and forget to tell about the Sriracha you swirled in after the fact.

7. Open package of silken tofu, and cut into slices of at least half an inch thick, and fan out on surface of stew.

8. Put Instapot on saute setting, high, and ignore for 20 minutes while putting toddler to bed.

9. Eat, and accept grudging admiration of husband who acknowledges that it is actually the perfect level of spiciness and that a bowl of bracing, salty-and-sour-and-spicy defiantly-not-white-American food is a good thing to eat on the gray, wet, terrible day on which Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the United States Supreme Court.

* Traditionally, kimchi jjigae is made with pork belly, but the Wegmans did not have pork belly. What the ever-loving fuck, right? So I picked the fattiest package of country ribs that I could find, and supplemented with fat from the Additional Animal Fat Jar.

** As you might guess, the traditional version of this includes garlic, and a lot of it, but I made this with the original intention of sharing with a friend who has a bad reaction to garlic, but not onions.

*** We have a jar in the fridge full of animal fat that gets poured off from roasts or frying meat. We're not paleo. I do it because I'm cheap; Mr. Rhod does it because he likes root vegetables roasted with animal fat.

**** I slice the caps only, and while most recipes call for you to discard the stems, I am cheap and delighted by gristle textures, include the mushroom stems for extra chew. However, I leave them whole so that my WHAT YOU DON'T ENJOY EATING LIKE AN OGRE??? husband can pick them out and give them to me.)

on skin care.

LISTEN OKAY I'VE READ SOME BOOKS I'LL POST ABOUT THEM SOME OF THEM WERE MINDBENDINGLY GOOD BUT I JUST WANNA TALK ABOUT THE STUFF I'M DOING TO MY FACE NOW. BECAUSE I'M KINDA PROUD ABOUT FINALLY DOING SOMETHING AND GETTING SOMETHING THAT WORKS FOR ME.

( Face stuff. )

On Amy Tan and Diana Gabaldon.

on brandon sanderson and the mistborn trilogy

1. The Shadow Isle by Katharine Kerr
2. Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
3. The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
4. A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
5. Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith.
7. The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson
8. The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson
9. The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson

I mean, in a lot of ways, the Mistborn series is the exact opposite of the Harry Potter books.

Because boy, if you're looking for a well-thought out, cohesive system of magic with a well-thought out, well-paced plot that was clearly not just, like, stitched together under deadline, Sanderson delivers and then some. The system of magic might, in fact, be unique among all the other fantasy that I've read, and the way he teaches it to you is pretty darn good. And the opening third of the first book is actually genuinely good -- I read it on a cross-country flight, figuring I'd read about 30 minutes worth, get motion sick as I do, and then nap the rest of the way to San Francisco. But I ended up reading in burning fury for the next four hours because I liked the system of magic he was building, and the internal moral compass of the world. Early on, there are some nice subversions of standard high-fantasy oppressed people tropes, and in the final act, there are some truly, truly lovely reveals that are genuinely delightful.

On the other hand, holy shit, guys. He is the worst at making you love a character.

HE IS SO

FUCKING B A D.

It's stunning. Like, one of the main characters of the three-book series is a hard-souled teenage murder-girl who grows up in an abusive environment on the streets and gains immense destructive superhuman powers, and you think I would go to town on that shit, just pull up my chair to the table and whip out my knife and fork and dig in, but lord, no. She has this grand love affair, but Sanderson never really gets into the push and the pull and feelings. Sure, he'll talk about Vin feels emotionally conflicted, but he never makes you feel it. He never makes you laugh. He never makes you cry. I'd argue that the only character that comes closest to being alive for the reader actually dies halfway through the first book -- and granted, I understand why he did that, and it was a super-interesting narrative choice that upends expectations in a more subtle and interesting way than, say, GRRM executing Ned Stark. But guys, the writing in the first book is just barely passable, like, the fucking Mendoza line of fantasy writing, and in the first part of the second book, it's FUCKING TRAGIC.

Like, Sanderson wants to set up this ~~~~ love triangle ~~~~~ between the main lady character and these two other characters who are half-brothers, and when he tries to describe Vin's angst and feelings of being torn between them, it's exactly as bullshit as you think it is. Everybody's emotional state gets spelled out in black and white text, and there's no subtlety or grace or life or humor or actual, real emotional connection to the characters. You get more of an emotional connection to Neville Longbottom in one frickin' visit to his parents at St. Mungo's than you do in TWO FUCKING THOUSAND PAGES OF VIN. The tiny glimpse of Knockturne Alley that you get in the first Harry Potter book is single-handedly more evocative and interesting than the entirety of Luthadel that you get in TWO FUCKING THOUSAND PAGES.

Then again, with JKR, the characters were engaging, and there was grace and life and humor, and if you didn't end up being charmed at some point by the books and the littlepuns and the jokes, you probably aren't human, but my God, where the fuck did we end up???? WHAT IS THIS THE LAST BOOK IS NOT ACTUALLY ABOUT HORCRUXES???? TEN THOUSAND YEARS OF FAFFING ABOUT IN THE WILDERNESS IN A TENT????

Also, somebody fucking tell Sazed about oral sex. For a dude who supposedly knows everything and has all the details of all the religions stored in metal minds, I guess he never fucking ran into a religion that talked about going down on a woman????????????????????????????????????????????????

on red lipstick.

A ranking of bright red liquid lipsticks that I own:

1. Nars PowerMatte, Starwoman
2. Kat Von D, Outlaw
3. Beauty Bakerie, Cranberry Stiletto

Which is to say that these are all infinitely more fit for my purposes than the DHC or tube lipstick I grew up watching my mother use, where it's off and on my teeth in under 15 minutes, or where I don't want to eat or drink anything because it'll take the lip color off. If I'm going to wear a big vibrant fun red lip, I want to be able to, y'know, actually have fun with it on, right? Without worrying it'll come off on every water glass and pastry, right?

In that respect, Beauty Bakerie hits it the fuck out of the park. There is zeeeeeeeero transfer with that bad boy. None. Like, eat a floating island with concomittant custard and press your mouth with a full-on white napkin and see n o t h i n g. Not even a speck of red. The downside is that it's pretty drying, that it's fucking balls to get off the mouth at the end of the day, and worst of all, the formula is super-thin, which means that a klutz-hander like me always has problems, because I can't get it on in a single layer. I have to go back and patch it up and smooth out lines, which leaves me with bits that are darker and bits that are lighter. In nail polish terms, we'd say it was bad at leveling, and on the mouth, it's not a great look. It also dries down to a somewhat darker red than I'd like.

The liquid in the Kat Von D, on the other hand, goes on like a dream. It self-levels beautifully and has aaaaaaaaaaalmost the same level of staying power as the Beauty Bakerie, but comes off a lot more easily. It gets dinged because the application wand is awkwardly long and not quite as nicely shaped as the other two lipsticks on the list (there's a reason why the Kat Von D Glimmerveils have a much shorter application wand), and because if you do eat something like a super-buttery pastry and drink tea, you'll end up with ye olde butthole mouth, which is when the lipstick wears away in the ring where your mouth is wettest, but stays at the edges and, y'know. I'd suggest googling "butthole lips", but you'll end up with a lot of pictures of Donald Trump.

NARS Powermatte is, I think, my favorite right now. Yeah, it does have the most transfer of the three, and it takes BALLS LONG TO DRY. On the other hand, the applicator may be my platonic ideal of a liquid lipstick applicator, it goes on like a dream and doesn't feel drying at all, and since it's both a stain and a liquid lipstick, when it does come off, it comes off evenly, so I didn't get butthole lips, even when I put it through basically the lipstick version of the Inquisition -- a four hour appearance at a gala* during which I ate passed hors d'oevures and a four course dinner that was really actually six courses, as the last two courses of which were really four courses (cheese AND salad, omelette norvegienn AND petits fours) and the first course of which was freaking lobster thermidor, served in lobster bisque that you fucking better believe I mopped up with the entire mini-baguette it came with.

End of the night, I still had enough pigment left over that when I smooched Mr. Rhod on the shoulder, I left a big ol' mark. So the good! And also the bad! Though I'm trying to resist buying more NARS Power Matte because they're no longer cruelty-free.

* My life is not that fancy. Except when it is!

on writing, photography, and books.

Guys! I've been writing again! I managed 742, count 'em, 742 words on a fic this week because Mr. Rhod went to his table-top gaming session, and I'd finally figured out how to tackle this section I've been stuck on for MONTHS, and well, I finally wrote it. It felt like pulling teeth, and now that I'm going back and reading the 100K+ words I've already read, I'm not sure it's as good as what I wrote before?

But by God, writing is literally nothing but putting one word down, and then putting another word after that, and then a word after that, and there is nobody who is going to write this fucking trainwreck except for me. So we're going to forge ahead. I think I have another 3,000-4,000 words to write, and then I think I can put this monstrosity to bed.

...

In no particular order, since it's been a while:

I shot a friend's wedding! I wasn't as good as a professional, but I did a decent job -- the only egregious fuckup was that I got the white balance wrong on some pretty key family group shots, and since I shot in JPG rather than RAW, it meant the software white balance correction wasn't as good as it would have been. But other than that, I did pretty well, and the bride was happy, and I feel like I really pushed my camera body to the limit of what it could do. Like, I have camera body that was released moer than a decade ago, and the main issue I ran into was that the ISO performance was limited, even on the goooooooooooooooorgeous 20-70mm 2.8 lens that I rented.
I wore lipstick in public! I've never really worn much makeup in my life, mostly because I spent a lot of time as a teenager feeling emotionally crushed by my father/society's demands about how cis women should perform femininity, so I came to being performatively femme late, you know? But I realized that there some really WEIRD perfumes, and then I found out that nail polish could be GLITTERY, and around the time everything went to shit in 2015, I was starting to poke around wearing makeup on my face. And when I went back to work after giving birth, I had some pretty significant gray undertones, and had giant fucking bags under my eyes, so I started wearing a little concealer, and a little low-key lipstick. And then I realized that they made the lipstick of my girly girly girly seven year old glitterface dreams. And then I realized that I actually liked the way that super-vivid lipstick looks. And then I fell down a hole that involved a lot of expensive purchases at Sephora.

But I've mostly been wearing my super-vivid lipstick at night -- work has been super busy, and I end up working after dinner for two or three hours. So to make work a little more """fun""", and to also keep myself from eating out of boredom, I'd put on some Bite Prismatic in the BALLER FUCK YOU IN THE EYE GOLD and do documents. When it came time to shoot the wedding mentioned up above, I tried to put on some of my big shiny vivid lipstick, but chickened the fuck out and ended up scrubbing my lips off, like, twice, in the bathroom, which is no joke if you've seen what it takes to get Kat Von D liquid lipstick off.

Worry not, though, friends! This past weekend, I wore Beauty Bakerie's Cranberry Stiletto Lip Whip to take the kiddo to the museum, and it lasted through the eating of one grasy-ass danish, a lot of tea, some cheese, and almonds, which isn't bad at all. And the world did not end.
My sister used all the data allocation for the family plan, and I have been without cell data for LIKE LITERALLY ELEVEN DAYS including at WORK BECAUSE OUR BUILDING HAS METAL FRAMES AROUND THE DOORS and the WIFI DOES NOT PENETRATE NITO THEM and IT IS AWFUL. But our long family nightmare is at an end soon because our data allocation renews tomorrow. Hurray!
Books!

1. The Shadow Isle by Katharine Kerr
2. Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
3. The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
4. A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny
5. Precious and Grace by Alexander McCall Smith
6. The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith.

Ladies No. 1 Detective Agency is the first and best and most beautiful cozy mystery series, and I will fight everyone about this. I'm saving the books to savor because the author is balls old, and who knows which one will be the last one? And every time I get disappointed by another series (I'm lookin' at you, Inspector Gamache, which I gave ANOTHER shot again, but I just who gives a fuckkkkkkkk), I go back to it for comfort and joy. And it helps that my library has all of them in Kindle to lend.

50 Books: Books 1-4.

With a goal of reading 50 new-to-me books this year, here are my books finished so far in FY 2017-2018*:

1. The Shadow Isle by Katharine Kerr
2. Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan
3. The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch
4. A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

* FY is a lot easier for me, because the end of the calendar year is usually a complete and utter disaster due to all the bankers wanting to book deals so that they can show up on the next bonus check.

...

( The Shadow Isle by Katharine Kerr. )

( Rich People Problems by Kevin Kwan. )

( The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch )

( Fatal Grace by Louise Penny )

doo doo doo do doooooooooooooooooo

Spotify likes to do auto-generated playlists -- like, it'll pull tracks that you have on various playlists and group them into pop themed playlists and rock-themed playlists and classic music or whatever. But they've recently started doing ones based on tracks you've listend to a lot at various times, and uh.

GUESS WHAT I LISTENED TO THE PACIFIC RIM THEME A LOT FOUR SUMMERS AGO GUESS WHAT IT STILL MAKES ME FEEL LIKE I COULD STAB A KAIJU IN THE FACE WITH A 50 FOOT CHAIN SWORD GUESS WHAT I STILL LOVE MAKO GUESS WHAT

...

Recently worked my way through all three books of Diana Wynne John's "Howl's Moving Castle" series, and they're as charming as advertised -- magic cats! Sisterhood! Babies! Domestic housekeeping being valued and not denigrated! The intro to the first book is one of the most effective openings that I've ever read in the genre of updated fairytales, because it's clean and tight and shows such awareness of the form, while also making smart, focused tweaks.

On the other hand, who gives a fuck about Howl? As usual, I'm apparently in the minority on this, because there's a bit at the end of one of the books where Jones mentions how many girls show up at readings with crushes on Howl, whereas I'm just ????????????????????????? WHAT IS THERE TO LIKE ????????????? SOPHIE WHAT DO U SEE IN HIM??????????????

I told Mr. Rhod this, along with the bit from Wikipedia about Howl being an interpretation of the Byronic hero ideal, and he started to laugh at how I was surprised at not liking Howl. Because it's completely true -- Howl, and his flashy, dramatic ways and inability to commit and unwillingness to take responsibility are things that actively repel me. I'm too old for that shit, and like, there's a bit in Howl's Moving Castle about him throwing a temper tantrum in the course of days-long sulk, and causing the whole house to be covered in green goo that Sophie has to work herself to the bone cleaning up, right?

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooope.

Thoughts on a re-read of The Hanging Tree.

( Spoilers, of course. )

On Wonder Woman

( Spoilers ahoy! )

a stew for when it's cold and you're sad and tired

A Stew For When It's Cold and You're Sad and Tired

1 32 ounce container of kimchi, cheap as you please
2-3 pounds meaty pork neck bones

Dump kimchi (including all brine in the container) and pork in stovetop pressure cooker. Seal. Cook on high pressure for 35 minutes. Eat over rice.

...

A Stew For When It's Cold and You're Sad and Tired, But Are Feeling A Little More Capable

1/2 white onion, cut in half and with papery bits peeled, but otherwise whole
1 soup carrot, broken in half
1 32 ounce container of kimchi, cheap as you please
2-3 pounds meaty pork neck bones
1 pound crimini mushrooms, whole
6 cloves garlic (peeled, but otherwise whole)
1 thumb-length nob of ginger (cut in half, unpeeled)
2 pieces of rock sugar, just slightly smaller than your thumb
1 package powdered gelatine
cheap-ass fish sauce
soy sauce

Put first two incredients in bottom of stovetop pressure cooker, and saute for 30 minutes while you remove snot from the nose of a shrieking toddler and then get him ready for bed while he shoots you baleful, recriminating looks before finally forgiving you when he gets to suck on his pacifier. Come downstairs, and toss all other into the stovetop pressure cooker. Cook for 35 minutes. Fish out the onion and carrot, because they have given it their all and have turned into pulp.

Eat over rice, or alternatively, fish out the neck bones, pick off the meat beacuse your husband doesn't like gristly bits, toss in a pound of short ribs cut into the individual ribs, and cook on high for 12 minutes while you have a proper Chinese munch on the neck bones.

...

( On politics and the personal. )

LADIES LADIES LADIES EVERYWHERE

I've been saving Goldenhand by Garth Nix for a week when work was hectic. That week has finally come (and boy has it ever), but at least I have Goldenhand to buttress me. I have quibbles with the writing, but I have quibbles with pretty much all writing*, and this is just so, so, so wonderful.

Like, one of my absolute favorite things about Garth Nix is that he's actually a dude who can write and does write really interesting, really absorbing women characters. A woman is the main character of each of the first two novels in the Old Kingdom series**, and while the third one was more of an ensemble piece that still had a lot of really awesome ladies, a couple of the (absolutely delightful) short stories that have come out were dude-centered. So in Goldenhand it feels like Nix has decided to personally make it up to me with the first scenes being:

1. Two lady necromancers hangin' out and dispatchin' some fucking zombies
2. While discussing their nemesis, who is also a lady necromancer
3. Cut to two guards on duty, the experienced, sensible, older one of whom turns out to be a lady
4. And while they're on duty, somebody rocks up and is like YO I HAVE A MESSAGE FOR THAT ALL-LADY, NON-WHITE PROPHETESS GROUP OF RENOWN AND FAME
5. And it turns out this messenger is also a lady
6. And she's gonna be a main character of the book.
7. Cut to lady hawkmaster who dispatches a little girl messenger
8. To summon one of the aforementioned lady necromancers and the woman who basically rules the kingdom while her parents are away

I LOVE IT.

* An actual conversation in our household last week involved me, explaining to Mr. Rhod at great length, why I refused to read Giraffe's Can't Dance to our pre-verbal, just-shy-of-a year kid because not only do I dislike how it references various savannah animals as being jungle ones, and how sloppy it generally is with language in order to get a rhyme, but I also object to how it treats Africa as a single country, how Africa has a jungle, etc. Simultaneously, I get annoyed by A is for Activist because I disapprove of its unorthodox capitalization style, which Mr. Rhod points out is just them being an alphabet book and capitalizing on each page all words that start with the designated letter for that page. The only books, by the way, that meet my exacting requirements: King Baby by Kate Beaton, and The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. Everything else we have can go get FUCKED.

** The first half of Lirael was some of the most INTENSE ASS wish-fulfillment reading I have ever done in my life. Like, I can't remember reading anything ever as a kid that made me feel so INTENSELY and so DEEPLY and so PROFOUNDLY that here was a book that had a version of me in it who was having ADVENTURES IN A LIBRARY and LITTLE CLOCKWORK MICE and a DISREPUTABLE DOG WHO LOVED ME and and and.

(no subject)

Apropos of nothing but five (!) years on Tumblr, I have to say that it's kiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinda delightful to come back to a more journal-y format. Tumblr feels a lot like San Diego Comic Con in all of its glory and all of its misery.

Like, there are so many pretty things to look at! So many text posts to read! A never-ending torrent of multimedia content, along thousands and thousands of strangers, with hundreds of people at any given time standing and holding forth and waving their arms and loudly expressing themselves, and sure you can meet your friends behind the Marvel booth, and it's so so so nice to see all these people who are also interested in something similar, but oh God, it's so loud, and most of these people are so wrong, and is it really worth fighting through all those crowds????

In contrast, when I posted to DW yesterday, old fandom friends, some of whom I haven't connected with in years, showed up to drop me a kind comment and welcome me back around. Some people that I had an acquaintanceship with on Tumblr came by, too. People talked to each other. People talked to me. It was kinda like propping the garden gate open, y'know? So that anybody who wanted to could come by for a cup of tea and a chat in the nice, cozy kitchen. It was so nice, too, going and looking at the recent posts page and being able to catch up on what people that I liked and knew had been doing since the last time we talked -- and not just doing, of course, but also what they had been thinking and reading and doing and feeling. You can pick that up from reblogs, and there were always tags and the occasional personal text posts, but reading people's DW posts really feels like getting to hear one-on-one from them.

It's a very different way of being in fandom, I think. God knows we managed to make it wanky back in the day, and I'm sure things'll change if more fandom people end up on DW, but for now, I'm really glad to back on DW. The garden gate is open! I have thoughts on meatballs!

Entry tags:

(no subject)

Meatballs By Somebody Whose Mother Was Too Chinese to Make Meatballs But Who Really Loves Meatballs

( A recipe. )

...

( Which is to say that we've been watching Big Little Lies for the past two weeks, and some thoughts. )

Crossposts: http://quigonejinn.livejournal.com/219104.html

(no subject)

Which is to say that I've pretty much laid down the DW in favor of tumblr, where WIP and other things that'll never entirely be done are posted under this tag.

Finished fic is generally archived on AO3 now, where there are fifteen fics (plus or minus margin of error eleventy billion) fics that weren't posted to here. It's mostly shorter MCU pieces with one long Tony/Pepper dubcon/noncon mirrorverse AU express, and a handful of Teen Wolf.