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books

Weekend reading (etc.)

I've started reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 by Hunter S. Thompson - a 1973 book about the 1972 election - which is fascinating (and frequently jarring) as a snapshot of a particular time and place, but also has more than passing contemporary resonance. Have also learned more than expected about the 1972 Super Bowl.

In non-book media consumption, I finally got around to watching Hazbin Hotel, an adult animation show that can be not wholly inaccurately described as "an edgy Hot Topic version of The Good Place." A friend recommended it a while back as something I'd enjoy, and I dismissed this at the time because I was vaguely aware of its Tumblr fandom in a "distant shark fin" sort of way and, relatedly, under the impression that it was a kid's show; turns out it is very much not a kid's show, and also that it is mildly annoying to be proven wrong. (Mortifying ordeal of being known, etc.) So I've been enjoying that and its spin-off, Helluva Boss, about the workplace and romantic shenanigans of a trio of demon assassins.

Entry tags:

Reading Frenzy Reboot Part Whatever

A lot of reading I did this summer was for class, but I also managed to read a bunch of other stuff.

I read Shakespeare's 3 Roman plays, as mentioned in the last Reading Frenzy Post, this year's choices for Shakespeare Summer: Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. The first two were re-reads for me; the last was a first-time read. I'd seen Antony and Cleopatra performed, but had not actually read it, so this was a first-time read for me on that. The choice of these plays for this summer were spot on, and the specific timing of Coriolanus for Pride Month was *chef's kiss*.

News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media by Juan González and Joseph Torres: this was the recommended book for the Race, Media, and International Affairs 101 class that I talked about briefly here, and select chapters were used in the class. I highly recommend this book (and the class has been excellent, too -- it goes through the end of August). The ebook is nearly 500 pages and thoroughly researched. It's a great and informative read and provides a solid primer of the background of media and its development in the U.S., how it was influential in pushing colonialism, shaped attitudes toward race and perpetuated stereotypes, often fomented violence; as well as exploring the history and information that was suppressed, and events that were all but erased. And it gives homage to the legacies, sometimes limited, of foreign-language press in the U.S., including Spanish-language papers, Chinese-language papers, etc., as well as non-white journalists and writers, many who are not remembered.

Dracula My Love by Syrie James: Dracula told from Mina Harker's point of view. I was not as thrilled with this as I expected to be. The beginning was interesting, but as it went on it felt too long -- though it's possible that it felt that way to me because I already knew the twists and turns of the plot. It wasn't a terrible read, but I just came away from the book feeling meh about it.

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford: This book was so good. Told from the point of view of Henry Lee, a Chinese-American who grew up in Seattle's Chinatown during World War II, the book opens in 1986 at the Panama Hotel, once a part of Seattle's Japantown and now re-opened under new ownership after being boarded up for decades. The new owner of the hotel has discovered a basement full of belongings of Japanese families who were sent to internment camps during World War II and left their belongings that they couldn't take for safekeeping. Henry is part of the crowd that witnesses the owner announcing what she found and displaying one of the items she found. The novel then moves back and forth between 1942, detailing the bonding and blooming friendship forged between Henry and Keiko Okabe, a Japanese schoolmate whose family is eventually evacuated to an internment camp, and 1986 and the Panama Hotel, where Henry gets permission to explore the basement and search for Keiko's family's belongings. It's a beautiful story, beautifully written, and really worth reading.

( this is getting long so putting the rest under a cut )

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(no subject)

Once upon a time, I read Exiled from Camelot, the novel-length Sir Kay angstfic by Cherith Baldry that Phyllis Ann Kar politely called 'one of the half-best Arthurian novels that I have yet read,' and then launched it off to Be Experienced by

osprey_archer and

troisoiseaux.

Now my sins have come back upon me sevenfold, or perhaps even fifteenfold:

troisoiseaux has discovered that, not content with the amount of hurt and comfort that she inflicted upon Kay in exiled from Camelot, Cherith Baldry has written No Less than Fifteen Sad Kay Fanfics and collected them in a volume called The Last Knight of Camelot: The Chronicles of Sir Kay.

This book has now made its way from

troisoiseaux via

osprey_archer on to me, along with numerous annotations --

osprey_archer has suggested 'drink!' every time Baldry mentions Kay's 'hawk's face,' which I have not done, as I think this would kill me -- to which I have duly added in my turn. I am proud to tell you that I was taking notes and Kay only experiences agonized manly tears nine times in the volume. That means that there are at least six whole stories where Kay manages not to burst into tears at all! And we're very proud of him for that!

The thesis of The Last Knight of Camelot seems to be that Kay is in unrequited love with Arthur; Gawain and Gareth are both in unrequited love with Kay; and everyone else is mean to Kay, all the time, for no reason.

troisoiseaux and

osprey_archer in their posts have both pulled out this quote which I also feel I am duty-bound to do:

"Lord of my heart, my mind, my life. All that I'll ever be. All I'll ever want.”

He had never revealed so much before.

Arthur leant towards him; there was love in his face, and wonder and compassion too, and Kay knew, his knowledge piercing like an arrow into his inmost spirit, that his love, this single-minded devotion that could fill his life and be poured out and yet never exhausted, was not returned. Arthur loved him, but not like that.

He could not help shrinking back a little.

However, I also must provide the additional context that this tender moment is immediately interrupted by the ARRIVAL OF MORGAUSE, TO SEDUCE ARTHUR, TO MAKE MORDRED, leading me to believe that Baldry is suggesting that if Kay had instead seized the chance to confidently make out with Arthur at this time, the entire doom of Camelot might have been averted. Alas! instead, Arthur dismisses Kay to go hang out with Morgause, it all goes south, Arthur blames Kay for Some Reason, and Kay spends a week on his knees in the courtyard going on hunger strike for Arthur's forgiveness until he collapses on the cobblestones and wakes up to a repentant Arthur tenderly feeding him warm milk.

If the stories in this volume are any judge, this is a pretty normal week for Kay. I also want to shout out

- the one where Lancelot and Gaheris set up a Fake Adventure for Kay to prove his courage, which destroys Kay emotionally, and kitchen-boy-squire Gareth runs after him and tries to swear loyalty to him and ask Kay to knight him, but Kay is like "you cannot AFFORD to have Kay as a friend >:(( for your knightly reputation >:(((" and Gareth shouts "you can't make me your enemy!!" and then Lancelot finds them arguing and is like 'wow, Kay is abusing this poor kitchen boy' and sweeps the lovelorn Gareth away, leaving Kay's reputation worse than before
- the one where Arthur gets kidnapped by an evil sorcerer who demands Excalibur as Arthur's ransom, and then Kay decides to try and trick the evil sorcerer with a Fake Excalibur even though Lancelot is like 'FAKE Excalibur? that's a LIE and DISHONORABLE,' and then Kay rescues Arthur from being magic-brainwashed by pure power of [brotherly?] love, and as soon as their tender embrace is over Arthur is like 'wait! you brought a FAKE Excalibur? that's a LIE and DISHONORABLE'
- the one where Kay is accused of rape as a Ploy to Discredit Arthur and has to go through a trial by ordeal where he walks over hot coals while on the verge of death from other injuries and Gawain flings himself into the fire to rescue him but it turns out it's fine because Kay is So Extremely Innocent of the Crime that they both end up clinging together bathed in golden light that heals their injuries

Again: FIFTEEN of these. Baldry is truly living her bliss and I honestly cannot but respect it. The book is going to make its way back from here whence it came, but if anyone else is really feeling a shortage of Kay Agonies in their life, let me know; I'm sure an additional stop would be welcomed as long as whoever gets it pays the annotation tax.

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Recent(ish) theater

Saw Signature Theatre's production of Play On!, a Twelfth Night-inspired musical set in 1930s Harlem and featuring the music of Duke Ellington— I really enjoyed this! It isn't a one-to-one adaptation of Twelfth Night: there's no Sebastian or second-act twin shenanigans, just aspiring songwriter Viola disguising herself as "Vy-Man" so her music will be taken seriously, so Olivia - here Lady Liv, an Ella Fitzgerald-esque singer and muse to pining band leader Duke (Orsino) - ends up with the Malvolio character - her manager, Rev - after his disastrous attempt to win her over via his makeover as a "hip cat" makes them realize they both want someone who sees and accepts their real self; the show consolidates other characters (Sir Toby and Sir Andrew became one character, Sweets, married to Lady Liv's dresser Mary) and adds a love interest for tap-dancing man-about-town Jester (Feste), apparently mostly so Sweets and Jester could bring the house down with a performance of "Rocks In My Bed" as a sloppy-night-at-the-bar lament after both screwing up their respective relationships. The theater space was rearranged to feel like its Jazz Age nightclub setting, with the audience seated at tables around the stage - the aforementioned "Rocks In My Bed" scene started with the actors plopping down at a table and singing their woes directly to a delightfully game audience member, who nodded along sympathetically - and the band played from the on-stage balcony.

This is actually the second Twelfth Night I've seen this year— it seems to be having A Moment?? There was a reading with an entirely trans and non-binary cast for London Pride earlier this year, and NYC's Shakespeare in the Park is currently doing it (which a friend of a friend saw and I'm so jealous, because it has an INCREDIBLY stacked cast: Lupita Nyong'o! Sandra Oh! Peter Dinklage!), and I think it's also on at the Globe right now??? Anyway, back in May, I saw the Folger Theatre's Twelfth Night, a gleefully queer, raunchy, also semi-musical production featuring a non-binary actor as Orsino, the Sebastian-and-Antonio storyline played as expressly romantic, and fight scenes with sex toys instead of swords; Malvolio's cross-gartered makeover took him from Tim Curry in Clue to Tim Curry in Rocky Horror.

Current Location: Washington
Current Music: Shepherd Moons (Enya)

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TOS fanon is weird but some is a lot weirder than others

I think perhaps the most purely "wait, what" fanon to me (even surpassing Kirk Drift in strangeness, though much less annoying) is this rough scenario that I've probably seen dozens of times at this point:

1. Spock and Kirk are either already together but there's some uncertainty about where they stand with each other, or it's unrequited-but-not-really pining or whatever. Regardless, Spock does something that is pretty understandably upsetting or hurtful in the context of their relationship.

2. Kirk is privately upset and vents to McCoy about [thing].

3. McCoy upbraids him for being insufficiently understanding of where Spock is, or might be, coming from and for being immature enough to sit around being upset instead of handling the communication in his relationship with Spock.

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

personal

(no subject)

okay so school began on Wednesday and is going as reasonably as can be expected for both kids and maybe more details later but mostly I am writing this to say that for the three days school has been in session E has been talking up Blood on the Clocktower to anyone who will listen, and (with some parental assistance in texting other parents (1)) tonight, Saturday, there were until now NINE kids (not counting E, who is leading the game) in our house. (Now there are eight, see next paragraph.) Apparently E's drive to play BotC is so strong that it plowed right through both of our anxieties about hosting what is basically a math club party.

fortified with pizza and a ton of snacks as well as cookies E made, these kids have now enthusiatically agreed to play their THIRD game of BotC (well, one kid left, he seemed to really enjoy the first two games, but he is an introvert and I think he got tired of peopling) so I would say it has been a resounding success?? like what even happened here??

although who knows whether the parents will let their kids come again, in the parental texts I mentioned a couple of hours and it will probably end up being about 4 hours total lol. fortunately it is the first weekend of school so no one has a ton of commitments yet

note for myself: for this number of kids, each game has been taking about an hour (E is unsurprisingly a very good game runner ("Storyteller") who keeps them on time), but it took probably half an hour to leisurely go through the rules and answer the plethora of questions, and two kids were half an hour late

(1) apparently it's OK to text or email kids that one has talked to, but weird when one hasn't talked to them in a long time, like over the summer. but it's okay if your mom texts their mom

Entry tags:

type: promotion: sale

[Sale Promotion] Humble Bundle of Murderbot and some other Martha Wells books

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/martha-wells-murderbot-and-more-tor-books

All in epub form.

The OTW's 2024 Annual Report is Now Available

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32571

We are pleased to publish the OTW's 2024 Annual Report, available in PDF and HTML formats. The report provides a letter from our Board of Directors, a summary of our activities during the past year, and our financial statements for 2024. Some highlights from 2024 include finishing the update to AO3's Terms of Service, creating a new committee (and 2 new subcommittees!), as well as starting work on the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap.

You can access the 2024 report, and all earlier years, on the Reports and Governing Documents page of the OTW website. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32571

The OTW’s 2024 Annual Report is Now Available

Posted by Caitlynne

https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otws-2024-annual-report-is-now-available/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=266897

We are pleased to publish the OTW’s 2024 Annual Report, available in PDF and HTML formats. The report provides a letter from our Board of Directors, a summary of our activities during the past year, and our financial statements for 2024. Some highlights from 2024 include finishing the update to AO3’s Terms of Service, creating a new committee (and 2 new subcommittees!), as well as starting work on the OTW Organizational Culture Roadmap.

You can access the 2024 report, and all earlier years, on the Reports and Governing Documents page of the OTW website. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otws-2024-annual-report-is-now-available/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=266897

Entry tags:

(no subject)

genarti and I both recently read Leonora Carrington's 1974 surrealist novel The Hearing Trumpet, about a selectively deaf old lady whose unappreciative relatives put her into an old age home, where ( various increasingly weird things happen, cut in case you want to go in unspoiled )

Beth found the pace and tone of plotting very Joan Aiken-ish and I have to admit I agree with her.

BETH: But I understand that The Hearing Trumpet is like this because Carrington was a surrealist. Is it possible that Joan Aiken was also a surrealist this whole time and we've simply not been looking at her work through the right lens?
ME: I don't think her life landed her in quite the right set of circumstances to be a surrealist properly ... I think she was a little too young when the movement was kicking off .... but I do think that perhaps she believed in their beliefs even if she didn't know it ....

Anyway, The Hearing Trumpet is in some ways has elements of a classically seventies feminist text -- she wrote it while deeply involved in Mexico's 1970s women's liberation movement, and the whole occultist nun -> holy grail -> icepocalypse plot has a lot of Sacred Sexy Goddess Repressed By The Evil And Prudish Christian Church running through it -- but Marian Leatherby's robust and and opinionated ninety-year-old voice is so charmingly unflappable that the experience is never in the least bit predictable or cliche. My favorite character is Marian's best friend Carmella, who kicks off the book by giving mostly-deaf Marian the hearing trumpet that allows her to [selectively] understand the things that are going on around her. Carmella plays the role often seen in children's books of Friend Who Is Constantly Gloriously Catastrophizing About How Dramatic A Situation Will Be And How They Will Heroically Rescue You From It (and then I will smuggle you a secret letter and tunnel into the old-age home in order to avoid the dozens of police dogs! etc. etc.) which is even funnier when the things that are actually happening are even weirder and more dramatic than anything Carmella predicts, just in a slightly different genre, and then funnier again when Carmella shows up towards the end of the book perfectly suited to surviving the Even Newer, Weirder, and More Dramatic Situations that have Arisen.

The end-note explains that Carrington based Carmella on her friend Remedios Varo, a detail I include as a treat for the Varo-heads but also as an illustration of how much the novel builds itself on the connections between weird women who survive a largely-incomprehensible world by being largely incomprehensible themselves. Carrington herself was in her late fifties when she wrote this book, but she too lived into her nineties; her Wikipedia article describes her in its header as "one of the last surviving participants in the Surrealist movement of the 1930s." It's hard not to inscribe that back into the text in some way, which is of course an impossible reading, but one does like to imagine the ninety-year-old Carrington with just as much presence as the ninety-year-old Marian.

Entry tags:

type: promotion: sale

[Sale Promotion] Narratess's Indie Sale — Fantasy, SciFi and Horror (23-25 August)

From August 23-25, Narratess is hosting an Indie Book Sale featuring HUNDREDS of fantasy, sci fi and horror titles!

Every book will be $2 OR LESS and there are also bundles on itch.io.

Browse the sale at https://indiebook.sale

Entry tags:

community: thursday recs

Thursday Recs

You know what time it is? Thursday Recs time!

Do you have a rec for this week? Just reply to this post with something queer or queer-adjacent (such as, soap made by a queer person that isn't necessarily queer themed) that you'd, well, recommend. Self-recs are welcome, as are recs for fandom-related content!

Or have you tried something that's been recced here? Do you have your own report to share about it? I'd love to hear about it!

Entry tags:

all for the game

All For The Game: KevJean Rec List

I'm starting a Rarepair Recs series of posts (for ships with less than 250 complete works on AO3 using the otp:true filter) and I have shared a rec list on my journal with several works for KevJean (Kevin Day/Jean Moreau) to get it started. I encourage more people to make their Rarepair Recs!

Fandom: All for the Game
Relationship: Kevin/Jean
Medium: art, fic

See the rec list at my journal.

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Community Recs Post!

Every Thursday, we have a community post, just like this one, where you can drop a rec or five in the comments.

This works great if you only have one rec and don't want to make a whole post for it, or if you don't have a DW account, or if you're shy. ;)

(But don't forget: you can deffo make posts of your own seven days a week. ;D!)

So what cool fics/podfics/fancrafts/fanvids/fanart/other kinds of fanworks have we discovered this week? Drop it in the comments below. Anon comment is enabled.

BTW, AI fanworks are not eligible for reccing at recthething. If you aware that a fanwork is AI-generated, please do not rec it here.

AO3 Celebrates 9 Million Registered Users

Posted by an

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-celebrates-9-million-registered-users/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=266633

What is better than having eight million passionate, dedicated users? Having nine million, of course! That’s right, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) has recently reached nine million registered users! Thanks a million (or rather, nine million!) to every member of our community for making this success possible.

Some of you have likely noticed that AO3 is occasionally—and temporarily—unavailable due to site maintenance. However, if you prepare yourself in advance, you don’t need to be deprived of content!

The best way to prepare yourself for maintenance (both scheduled and unscheduled) is to download works in advance to tide you over until the site is accessible again. You can find instructions on how to download content from AO3 in our FAQs! Works are downloadable in several formats — AZW3, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and HTML — letting you enjoy reading across devices: desktop, mobile devices, or even eReaders. Whether the site is temporarily down or you’re offline, having works downloaded means that you can always enjoy your favorite works!

Once again, thank you for your continued support of AO3 and for helping us grow each and every day. We look forward to celebrating many more achievements with you in the future!

https://www.transformativeworks.org/ao3-celebrates-9-million-registered-users/

https://www.transformativeworks.org/?p=266633

AO3 Celebrates 9 Million Registered Users

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32441

Nine Million Users

What is better than having eight million passionate, dedicated users? Having nine million, of course! That's right, the Archive of Our Own (AO3) has recently reached nine million registered users! Thanks a million (or rather, nine million!) to every member of our community for making this success possible.

Some of you have likely noticed that AO3 is occasionally—and temporarily— unavailable due to site maintenance. However, if you prepare yourself in advance, you don't need to be deprived of content!

The best way to prepare yourself for maintenance (both scheduled and unscheduled) is to download works in advance to tide you over until the site is accessible again. You can find instructions on how to download content from AO3 in our FAQs! Works are downloadable in several formats — AZW3, EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and HTML — letting you enjoy reading across devices: desktop, mobile devices, or even eReaders. Whether the site is temporarily down or you're offline, having works downloaded means that you can always enjoy your favorite works!

Once again, thank you for your continued support of AO3 and for helping us grow each and every day. We look forward to celebrating many more achievements with you in the future!

https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/32441

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I could make a non-film post, but will I?

If I post these perfunctory thoughts from films I watched months ago, then maybe soon I will be free ... jk, I have so many more films that I’ve watched this year. And it’s currently the film festival. Last year I only went to one thing due to work circumstances, so I am making up for that this year 😤

( Zinda )

( The Iron-Fisted Monk )

( Red + Red 2 )

( Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai )

( Holy Virgin vs the Evil Dead )

( Suspiria )

( Companion )

( Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning )

Entry tags:

what are you playing wednesday

What Are You Playing Wednesday

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Entry tags:

Four Days Without Internet

Our internet melted down

For real.

melted recycling bin

Image: melted recylcing bin

Our neighbors one block over and one street down had a garage fire that melted a lot of stuff, including the overhead internet cable.

Why is your internet overhead, Lyda? The short answer is that our neighborhood is dense, old (as in the age of the houses and buildings) and poor. For whatever reason, the cable/internet providers aren't interested in burying our lines. They might be now? But, from what I could tell from watching their workers, they just restrung the cable, so, no, not so much.

I'd ask if you missed me while I was away, but I've been away from DW longer for much less exciting reasons. I was telling a friend today that the weirdest part of not having the internet was that I still had my phone and its data. So, I had all the WORST parts of the internet--the ability to doomscroll, waste time, etc.--and no ability to do the things that feel far more productive: write my novel, attend Zoom meetings easily, do my committee work, etc.

Stupid.

But at least it's back!

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type: meme

RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

What are you reading (or not reading)?

Also reminding people about the 2025 October Review-a-Thon!