Beyond Selidor

I'm feeling pretty run down in both mind and body, but poking my head back into Dreamwidth and seeing so much activity is lifting my spirits. I'm very pleased, in particular, to see so much love for Andor in my circle — I thought the finale was amazing, and it's honestly pretty close to being my favourite Star Wars anything, film or TV show.

I did at least manage to finish another book — Elektra (Jennifer Saint). As you can probably tell from the title, it's another Greek myth retelling, in this case of the horrific, multigenerational family tragedy of the house of Atreus. It's told from three perspectives — Clytemnestra, Cassandra, and the titular Elektra — and like most retellings of Greek myth from the perspective of female characters, its emphasis is on the utter ruin and trauma done to those without power (women, children, enslaved people) by those who wield power in a violent honour culture. It was a pretty good example of the type.

I tried to lift my mood a bit by making a dent in my to-read list, placing holds on books in the library, and using up some of a gift voucher to buy a couple of other books on the list. I'm looking forward to getting stuck into Aliette de Bodard's latest space opera, in particular!

And that's about it, for now.

After yesterday's post, Matthias and I ended up taking advantage of the sunshine to do a new walk — a huge loop that took us along the river in the other direction, and back through town. The whole thing was about 4km, and we saw cows by the cathedral, and a hedgehog wandering along the road (it was an empty road, and went into the undergrowth shortly after I took the photo).

This morning I've been doing meal prep for next week, while listening to old Massive Attack albums and just marvelling at how incredibly good it is. I want to just submerge myself in the lyrics for days.

Here's today's book meme prompt:

25. A book that answered a question you never asked

( My answer )

( The other days )

I've spent most of today at an online conference about teaching and learning in higher education, and tonight Matthias and I are going to attend an online event with Maria Dahvana Headley talking about her Beowulf translation, so it's a bit of a screen-heavy day.

As a result, I'm going to keep today's post fairly brief, and hold off on responding to various comments on older posts until tomorrow. But I will do today's book meme prompt, which asks for:

19. A book that started a pilgrimage

( My answer )

( The other days )

I was watching a documentary about Australian film last night, and George Miller appeared on the screen, and I was overcome with emotion all over again. I made Matthias pause the show, because I had to give words to what I was feeling: this overflow of relief and gratitude and astonishment that this white, boomer male filmmaker had understood, and depicted — mainly without words — how angry so many women are all the time,* and why we are angry.

(Incidentally, I met George Miller, decades ago when I was a teenager at some New Year's Eve party in Sydney hosted by one of my mother's friends. And there were moments of connection like that throughout the documentary, whenever various talking heads appeared: Sigrid Thornton, who once overheard my mother, sister and me talking loudly in English, with Australian accents, in a clothes shop in Paris, and advised me as to which winter coat I should buy out of the two over which I'd been deliberating. Gillian Armstrong, whose daughter? stepdaughter? was at school with my sister. Paul Mercurio, who danced with my aunt back when she was a professional dancer. Said aunt is now an economics lecturer. I don't move in particularly exalted circles. It's just that the arts/media/journalism circle in Australia is extremely small, and was even smaller and more incestuous when my parents and their generation were establishing their careers.)

*I mean, when I say 'all the time,' I don't mean I'm brimming with rage constantly, but it's buried there, and can be summoned at a moment's notice by a news item, an interaction, an anecdote by one of my younger sisters, friends, or a stranger, and back it comes.

I suspect this is going to be my best Yuletide ever in terms of sheer wordcount. In terms of the reception of my various fics, who knows? But I'm definitely writing freely and easily, with a lot of ideas for further treats to write. So far, I've finished my main assignment, and one treat, and I've written about half of a second treat. I have ideas for at least three more fics, and my aim is that at least one of them would be a treat for the main collection. I suspect the other two are going to be right on the borderline of the 1000-word lower limit, so I will probably post them in the Madness collection, just to be safe. If they tip over 1000 words I'll reassess the situation.

My aim, every Yuletide, is to write at least four things for the main collection, and to comment on at least 50 works across the main collection, and Madness (including, obviously my own gift!), so it looks like I'm on track for the first goal at least! I hope everyone else is having similar luck with the writing process.

Via snickfic, I spotted a cool looking December gift exchange called in_a_peartree. The exchange, as the name suggests, requires participants to post their 'trees' (with requests), and other participants can fulfil them. So it's along the lines of Fandom Stocking, rather than Yuletide — with participants choosing for fill requests, rather than being assigned a recipient. I'm thinking of signing up. If it sounds interesting to you, check it out:





in_a_peartree


Reading wise, this week has been all about non-fiction: The Castle on Sunset by Shawn Levy, which is the history of Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, a hotel whose story is rife with melodramatic and bizarre celebrity events, and which in some way seems to mirror the story of Hollywood itself, and Jia Tolentino's collection of essays, Trick Mirror. The latter ranges in subject from contemporary feminism (especially its frustrating tendency to focus on the achievements of individual women at the expense of the collective experiences of women across the world, which leads to a very individualistic feminism in which, at worst, no choices of an individual woman can ever be questioned) to American fascination with scam artists (Fyre Festival, Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, and so on). I enjoyed it, although I think I had read many of the essays online previously, so not much of the book was new to me.

I'll leave you with a trio of links.

This post from the archives of the A Softer World webcomic came floating back across my Twitter feed at some point, like a punch in the heart (especially the alt text).

Matthias and I very much enjoyed the kitchen takeover by maozalonim at thirstyandhungrycambridge this weekend. Here's a photoset.

My writing soundtrack this weekend was various albums by The Glitch Mob, which reminded me how much I loved the following song:



Creepy and ethereal and haunting — just the way I like it.

The colder weather seems to have done wonders for my writing productivity: I've finished my Yuletide assignment, and made a good start on a second treat. That wasn't all the writing I got done over the weekend — I also found the time to write a longish review on two Iliad retellings and Emily Wilson's Odyssey translation. You can find the review here on Wordpress, but here's a brief excerpt:

I never had much interest in the long recitations of characters’ ancestry, names of warriors killed on the battlefield, wooden horses or lucky arrows shot through vulnerable heels. Instead, I focused on the story that whispered in the margins: the calamity of war to the women and children it made most vulnerable, the ways such women coped with the ever-present threat of male violence, and the simmering presence of this violence even in ostensible peacetime, in spaces where women were surrounded by their own families. I sought out retellings of the Iliad that brought this story to the fore.

I should note that because the two retellings focus on the character of Briseis, the review involves discussion of rape and slavery, so consider this a content warning. I also get pretty ranty about The Song of Achilles, so if anyone feels like venting with me about that book, feel free to join in in the comments (and if you like it ... I'm sorry).

Also over on Wordpress, I reviewed Aliette de Bodard's In the Vanishers' Palace, a Beauty and the Beast story where both characters are female and the Beast is a dragon. You can read that review here.

This being an Aliette de Bodard story, there are all the familiar and fabulous features that I’ve come to expect in her work: loving and mouth-watering descriptions of food and cooking, a refusal to flinch away from the devastating effects of empire and colonialism, and an intricate exploration of the different ways survival can look. This last is crucial, and resonates deeply with me. De Bodard rejects an individualistic interpretation of heroism, where a lone, special individual bravely solves the world’s problems alone. Instead, courage in her writing is all about (inter)dependence and community building — the little acts that forge and strengthen networks, reinforce familial and non-familial bonds, and the way that sometimes merely surviving and helping others survive is its own victory.

I'm now taking a break from all that writing with a bit of reading. I've just finished Leah Cypress's 'Timshala', the last in the Book Smugglers' 2018 series of short stories on the theme of 'awakenings', and I definitely think it was the best of the bunch. Their short story series tend to be pretty hit and miss with me, but this one — part Ancient Egypt-inspired death cult with religious controversies and political intrigue, part exploration of determinism and free will — was excellent. It's available to read for free online here.

Having finished 'Timshala', I've now moved on to Girls of Paper and Fire, a novel by Natasha Ngan which I've wanted to read since I first saw Samantha Shannon posting on Instagram about reading an ARC of the book. This was months and months ago, and I'm glad to finally have a copy in my hands. I think I'll curl up in my wing chair and read it, watching the sun go down and the darkness fall through the garden window.

This week's post goes from the sublime to the ridiculous (but mainly focuses on the sublime).

To start off, an absolutely fabulous roundtable on diversity. The participants are Aliette de Bodard, Zen Cho, M Sereno, Bogi Takács and JY Yang, moderated by Charles Tan.

Over at Ladybusiness, Renay has created a fabulous summer (or winter) reading recommendation list.

On a sadder note, Tanith Lee has died. Athena Andreadis has written a lovely tribute. Sophia McDougall shared an old anecdote about meeting Lee.

There are a lot of new updates at Where Ghostwords Dwell.

Sophia McDougall has posted an excerpt of Space Hostages, which will be published really soon.

You can enter a giveaway to win an ARC of House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard here.

I saw Mad Max: Fury Road this week and absolutely adored it. (If I had endless money and more time on my hands, I would have seen it at least five more times since Tuesday.) This essay by Tansy Rayner Roberts goes a long way towards explaining why.

I found this post by Kaye Wierzbicki over at The Toast very moving. (Content note: discussion of abortion.)

This is the last week of A Softer World and I am really not okay. This and this are probably my favourite recent comics of theirs.

Natalie Luhrs is reading what looks to be a terrible book for a good cause. I encourage everyone who has the ability to donate. I will be donating to an equivalent UK-based charity.

This post's title comes from my favourite Eurovision song this year, which didn't win. This did not bother me in the slightest.

Day Thirty: Whatever you’d like!

Today, I'd like to close off this meme with a recommendation. If you like stories about women, if you like to focus on relationships between girls and women that are collaborative and compassionate, rather than antagonistic and competitive, if you are sick of the way fandom (and the world at large) elevates individual women by tearing other women down, go to ladybusiness. There you will find excellent commentary, so many book, TV show and film recommendations that you won't know what to buy next, and a welcoming, friendly community. They also run a sideblog on Tumblr called thefriendshipzone, which focuses on instances of female friendship.

Honestly, ladybusiness was my find of the year. I am so happy it exists. When I am talking about women's stories, and about feminism, that is what I mean.

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy two days ago, and, a couple of quibbles with certain narrative choices aside, thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't really have much to say on the matter, but my friends jimtheviking and shinyshoeshaveyouseenmymoves have been having a very interesting conversation about it which I felt was worth sharing. Expect spoilers for the whole film.

This review of The Magicians by Lev Grossman by Choire Sicha doesn't really make me want to read the series, but makes a couple of points about writing women in fantasy literature that really resonate with me:

“When I was writing the story in 1969, I knew of no women heroes of heroic fantasy since those in the works of Ariosto and Tasso in the Renaissance. … The women warriors of current fantasy epics,” Le Guin wrote in an afterword of The Tombs of Atuan, “look less like women than like boys in women's bodies in men's armor.” Instead, Le Guin wouldn't play make-believe, and her women were sometimes vulnerable, including physically. She refused to write wish fulfillment, even the wish fulfillment many of us crave.

The first time I read the Earthsea quartet (as it was then), the stories of Tenar and Tehanu resonated with me in a way that was powerful and profound. I was fourteen or fifteen years old, and I think it was the first time I'd read stories that gave me a glimpse of how terrifying it was going to be to be a woman. They are not easy or comforting stories, and they showed a world that I was about to enter and told me truths I had at that point only dimly understood.

Here is a post at The Toast by Morgan Leigh Davies about attending the Marvel panel at SDCC. It made me deeply grateful that my fannish interest lies in characters and not actors.

This post by Mallory Ortberg at The Toast is deeply hilarious:

Far be it from me to criticize the tactics of modern union organizers, but frankly I think the world was a better place when tradesmen organized to agitate for their rights in the workplace and practice esoteric mind-controlling spells at the same time.

The Society of the Horseman’s Word was a fraternal secret society that operated in Scotland from the eighteenth through to the twentieth century. Its members were drawn from those who worked with horses, including horse trainers, blacksmiths and ploughmen, and involved the teaching of magical rituals designed to provide the practitioner with the ability to control both horses and women.

(As an aside, if you're not reading The Toast, you're missing out.)

Samantha Shannon has some good news. Her Bone Season series was intended as a seven-book series, but Bloomsbury had initially only committed to publishing three. But now they've gone ahead and confirmed that they will publish all seven. Samantha is awesome, as is the series, so I am thrilled.

Speaking of The Bone Season, I made a Warden/Paige fanmix on 8tracks. I go into more detail about the reasons behind my choice of songs here.

The PreschoolGems Twitter account is one of the most fabulous things ever to exist on the internet.

This particular A Softer World gives me life.

I've been really busy lately, which is why I haven't posted for ages and ages. I have two very good excuses, however:

1. My PhD viva is in just a week. I'm actually feeling quite calm about it, which surprises me, but I seem to have given myself the attitude that there is nothing I can do now to change how the viva goes - as the examiners already have my thesis and I can't alter it - so I might as well not worry. I imagine I'll be a nervous wreck next Monday, though.

2. I have a new job! It's only temporary and part-time, but it is in another academic library in Cambridge, it's a step up from my current library job* (I'm learning how to catalogue, and my job title is library assistant rather than library invigilator) and it's come along at a really good time, as I don't get money from my PhD scholarship funding body any more and was really worried about what I was going to do for money. So far I'm really liking it, although it's very different to my other library job, and I've had to cut back my hours there, which is sad as I really love working there.

I have a bunch of links, although I must admit that some of them are very old and you're likely to have encountered them already. These are more for personal reference so that I can find them again, and close some tabs on my laptop and iPad. The first, however, is a link to my latest post on my review blog. It's mainly a review of Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone, but also talks more broadly about the (published and unpublished) wish-fulfillment fantasies of teenage girls and whether such things are valuable or dangerous (or both, or neither).

As someone who wrote a story about her book boyfriend being in love with her idealised character, I have a lot of sympathy for teenage (and not-so-teenage) wish-fulfillment fantasies depicting their protagonists being pursued by a multitude of love interests. It’s a powerful trope for girls who may be feeling unlovable or simply baffled at how to have romantic relationships. However, this desire to be desired should not be portrayed at the expense of functional friendships among teenage girls. Portraying all female relationships as inherently competitive and antagonistic creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in the real world whereby girls and women view all other girls and women with suspicion, undermining one another instead of supporting each other.

The Dreamwidth community ladybusiness is not new, but it is new to me, and I point it out here to those of you who are interested in reading (or participating in) thoughtful discussion about female characters in a variety of media. There are podcasts, linkspams and lengthy meta posts. At some point when I have more time, I'm going to read through all the archives. I recommend it highly.

Speaking of podcasts, this speech by Maciej Cegłowsk, the creator of Pinboard, about fandom is thoughtful and well worth a listen. It's an old link, and I can't remember where I saw it first, but if you haven't heard it yet I would encourage you to do so.

This link is more for my own future reference, and I haven't actually read through all its content yet. It's a series of posts on Making Light about dysfunctional families, and looks as if it will be really interesting. I'm saving it for after the viva.

On a related note, this post about so-called 'Ask Culture and Guess Culture' had me nodding my head a lot. I don't know if there's any data to back up its assertions, but I can certainly recognise elements of this phenomenon in my own life.

In some families, you grow up with the expectation that it’s OK to ask for anything at all, but you gotta realize you might get no for an answer. This is Ask Culture.

In Guess Culture, you avoid putting a request into words unless you’re pretty sure the answer will be yes. Guess Culture depends on a tight net of shared expectations. A key skill is putting out delicate feelers. If you do this with enough subtlety, you won’t even have to make the request directly; you’ll get an offer. Even then, the offer may be genuine or pro forma; it takes yet more skill and delicacy to discern whether you should accept.

All kinds of problems spring up around the edges. If you’re a Guess Culture person — and you obviously are — then unwelcome requests from Ask Culture people seem presumptuous and out of line, and you’re likely to feel angry, uncomfortable, and manipulated.

If you’re an Ask Culture person, Guess Culture behavior can seem incomprehensible, inconsistent, and rife with passive aggression.

Obviously she’s an Ask and you’re a Guess. (I’m a Guess too. Let me tell you, it’s great for, say, reading nuanced and subtle novels; not so great for, say, dating and getting raises.)

Thing is, Guess behaviors only work among a subset of other Guess people — ones who share a fairly specific set of expectations and signalling techniques. The farther you get from your own family and friends and subculture, the more you’ll have to embrace Ask behavior. Otherwise you’ll spend your life in a cloud of mild outrage at (pace Moomin fans) the Cluelessness of Everyone.

I am definitely from a Guess Culture family (you were never supposed to ask for things unless they were the right things, the things that people would say yes to, and there were so many subtle ways to hint at what you wanted to ask, figure out whether the answer would be yes or not, or, from the other side, hint at whether or not you were going to say yes; it was considered indescribably selfish and rude to state preferences for e.g. food or drink options at other people's houses (the only acceptable answers were 'whatever everyone else is having' or 'whatever is already open'); and so on). My partner is very much of the Ask Culture school. It's easier now that we've been together for years, but at the beginning of our relationship (and indeed, in many other of my romantic and friendship relationships) I used to work myself up into a hysterical level of anxiety whenever I was required to ask for anything directly or given options to state a preference (because the asker wasn't hinting properly about what answer they wanted from me!). I'm told that this has the potential to come across as being very passive-aggressive, and if it's true that it is some sort of culture clash, a lot of things about my interactions with other people make a whole lot more sense!

Tumblr user thefrenemy posted this great defence of the selfie.

I hate with a boiling passion 99% of all of these photos, all of these memories of my life documented on film. Every time I get a notification on my Facebook saying that somebody added a picture of me, I get an actual nervous feeling in my stomach. Like, oh great, let me take some time out of my day to analyze my body and feel like shit about myself! I check the picture. I get taken out of the wonderful moment it was taken in to nitpick my flaws. Ew, I hate my face. Ew, I hate my tummy. Ew, my arms. Ew, ew, ew.

[...]

I think I look like a goddess in my selfies. I think I look like Dolly Parton, a witch, and pretty much every street blogger rolled into one. They make me feel absolutely fabulous and alive and gorgeous. I rarely feel this way and when I do, it’s because it’s exactly how I want to look for me. It’s exactly the way I’ve always wanted to look and felt I could look without all that loud noise about how I should look better. It is the evidence, the proof positive, that there are moments we can feel and look fan-fucking-tastic in our own eyes. That alone is worth its weight in gold.

I have nothing to add.

As a final link, have John Scalzi's predictions for the Oscars. He's not always right, but his reasoning is always pretty solid and I appreciate that he predicts what he thinks what will win as well as stating what he thinks should win.

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*Although it actually pays less, which is a pain.