Reading

shitposting: personal scariness rating of genius fictional characters

Look, my country is messed up so have some salutary shitposting while I attempt to cope with health/life/everything.

No particular order, define "best" as you please - I mean "somewhat plausible-sounding-ish and fun to read about."

Rated from VERY SCARY, Scary, unconcerned in terms of, hrm, threat level.

Baru Cormorant from Seth Dickinson's books: Scary.
High INT, low WIS. Scary, but doesn't achieve VERY SCARY due to too many emotional vulnerabilities.

Hanse Davion and Ulric Kerensky from BattleTech. I just don't want to be in the same universe they're scary. I'm MORE scared of Hanse Davion than Thrawn because I get the possibly illusory sense that Thrawn is civilized as a default and the vibe I get from Hanse Davion is that civilization, cruelty, courtesy are all just tools, he will do whatever it fucking takes to burn you to the ground if that's the way to win.

Hanse Davion: VERY SCARY
Ulric Kerensky: Scary, but also, clanner honor.

Ari I and II from CJ Cherryh's Cyteen: SCARIEST.
Justin: unconcerned, honestly, give him research funding and pizza and Grant and he's happy, he'll leave you be.

Conrad Mazian from Downbelow Station: Scary and they lucked out he was undone.

Flamme from Frieren: SCARIEST. I almost rate her

Scary not because she's not a terrifying genius but because she has ironclad ethics. Probably the single person on this list I'm MOST afraid of except she's also UNAMBIGUOUSLY GOOD. So she's a rarity: a female chessmaster (or anyway, they're incredibly rare in English-language USAn sf/f) and unambiguously a "good guy."

Lelouch Lamperouge from Code Geass: Scary. Possibly shading into SCARIEST if you add the mind control, but make Nunally cry and he segfaults.

Vladilena Milizé from 86, and how. Scary.

Thrawn: ???
Thrawn from Star Wars Extended Universe is frequently cited but I bought the Timothy Zahn book where he first? appears? extendedly? as a military? genius? for Kindle and I refuse to use Kindle anymore so I'm going to have to suck it up and buy a print copy if I can even remember the title. Anyway, I haven't read books with Thrawn doing stuff so I can't comment further.

Lord Vetinari from Terry Pratchett's Discworld: SCARIEST.
Doesn't generally come up in these discussions because bureaucracy is "boring" and Vetinari wasn't a main character in any of the Discworld books I read. (I binged them for a couple months twenty years ago, then never went back, sorry.) He's a fucking EFFECTIVE BUREAUCRAT. I don't mess with those.

Maomao from Apothecary Diaries. Unconcerned ONLY because she's easily bribed with bezoars. :3

Miles Vorkosigan: Scary.
Honestly one of the most plausible military geniuses BUT ALSO a disaster for all his subordinates. I don't want to be within a galaxy radius of him.

Hiruma from Eyeshield 21. Unconcerned mainly because I don't have ANY involvement in Japanese high school instantiations of American football and FORTUNATELY his domain of interest is VERY SPECIALIZED. :)

Both Seondeok and Misil from The Great Queen Seondeok: Scary to Unconcerned.

Laurent from C. S. Pacat's Captive Prince books. Unconcerned mainly because Good But Not Nice.

Red from The Blacklist: Scary by way of UNHINGED.

Lady Char from Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury: Scary. Sorry, I can't focus my eyes enough to dig her name out of the walls of text on various wikis. :]

Beth Harmon from The Queen's Gambit. So very unconcerned. I'm not a chess player. I don't have anything to worry about.

Ikari Gendou from Neon Genesis Evangelion: SCARIEST and also worst dad of the millennium.

Ted Lasso and Keely (sp?) from Ted Lasso: unconcerned, but could well become Scary in an AU. Somewhat uncommon double example of people who are brilliant socially AS WELL AS being good people; Ted Lasso or Keely with that skillset using their powers for EVIL would become horror rapidly.

Asshole Protagonists from K. J. Parker's books are generally Scary. Asshole Genius is pretty much the shtick.

That Guy from The Usual Suspects. Probably SCARIEST but I haven't watched that movie in two decades.

There are going to be comicverse examples that I'm just not familiar enough with to comment further. /o\ Or multiple characters from Re: Zero but thinking about details is too traumatic (complimentary).

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hxx: comics

a comic exists

Proof copies.

Candle Arc #1 comic proof copies

Meanwhile, I've obtained a secondhand wide-format color printer locally so we'll see how setup goes.

ETA: Wide-format printer (up to 13"x19") is go! (See comments for test printouts.) I'm currently (still) setting up via Ka-Blam + Indyplanet for print on demand because I refuse to deal with fulfillment because my health is f*cked, but for DIY home zines + comics for friends & family or or prototypes or for selling locally, this should be more than sufficient.

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media,
movies

Tron, Again

Apparently the latest TRON movie is bombing at the box office and with reviewers. Not really a surprise, I guess. Movie attendance in August, September, and October is always low, and producers schedule crappy movies to open during those months. Why take up valuable blockbuster weekend space in November and December for a dud? Tron was doomed before it even opened.

I have to say that the trailer woke in me no interest in seeing the show, despite the fact that I'm usually first in line for a big SF movie. I'm not even sure why this film was made. Tron was an early 1980s hit video game, and the first movie was made in 1982 hoping to capitalize on the game's success. It was a crappy movie and it failed. Then, more than 25 years later, they tried again. This one didn't have the video game behind it--no one had played Tron in decades, and anyone under the age of 30 had never heard of it. Not that it would have mattered. The movie was awful anyway, and it bombed. Now, after 15 more years, they're trying AGAIN. Bomb, for the same reasons.

The problem is that there's no good way to make a Tron movie. The concept of the game is ridiculous, even silly. Blowing it up onto a huge screen with advanced CGI doesn't improve the concept one bit.

It always amazes me how the institution that's intelligent enough to create brilliant works of entertaining art can be stupid enough to make a third movie out of a property that already bombed twice, with the three movies spaced decades apart. I suppose I'm easily amazed.

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COVID Booster Achievement UNLOCKED

I love my state.

I just walked into CVS, asked for the booster, and got it. No fuss, no cost.

Of course, now the RFK, Jr. is trying to take the aluminium out of vaccines, I kind of think I should just walk in every day and ask 'em what they've got for me and just take it. Hopefully, at some point the booster will show up on Docket, the vaccine tracker app that I downloaded. Also, I hope that at some point Wisconsin will join the states that are reporting and I can see all the things I had as a child.

Anyway, how are you?

I never ended up writing up my Wednesday reading blog so I will tell you about my feelings about How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu which I listened to via audiobook. This was another book that felt to me like mainstream fiction masquerading as science fiction. It was BETTER at being science fiction than, say, Station Eleven, by which I mean that the future seemed slightly more thought out/plausible. Although, like all of these fake SF books (and I shouldn't call them that, but they're lit fic SF, not SF SF), the SF elements were entirely backdrop to the emotional stuff--and then there were the occasional suspender snapping moments, like the weird place people seemed to go when they were in a disease induced coma.

So, the plot, simply, was: "I want to write about COVID without writing about COVID, so how about a plague that comes from a melting permafrost that is actually far more deadly?" And, then Nagamatsu wrote a bunch of vignettes about death, dying, and grief with vaguely science fictional settings, like the Disney World death park, where parents would take terminally ill children to give them one last happy day before murdering them on a rollercoaster. I mean, this was a tough book to get through? But, there was a lot that I ended up finding compelling because this is one of the few books we have that address our collective trauma over COVID. There is literally a couple in one of the chapter vignettes which is comprised of an EMT worker and a pathologist and it's about how, really, this is the worst timeline for both their jobs and it f*cks them up in different ways.

( Spoiler for the end of How High We Go in the Dark )
The book I'm listening to now is Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson, which is 100% a Murderbot fanfic, again, masquerading as lit fic. The schtick here is that robots now live among us, but really don't. (This is clearly the Preservation side of things, where people sort of accept that robots are human-like, but also treat them as disposable, etc.) Robots now do the jobs no one wants--in the protag's case, it's dentistry. They are programmed to be perfectly pleasant enough and human enough, but have a definite termination date. This robot wakes up one morning with an error, it has spontaneously generated the number of teeth, on average, it will clean/care for until its retirement (which in this case is PERMANENT retirement, not freedom from service.) And the number is counting down with every new day. The robot immediately requests to have a hard reboot, but the error isn't considered significant enough to warrant a memory wipe. I've only just started this novel, but it's clear that this is an exploration of mortality and community--as the robot isn't supposed to have feelings, but it's clearly developing them.

I've been sticking with it, because who doesn't love a Murderbot fanfic?

Up at the cabin, I also read a bunch of manga. Probably nothing to really write home about, however? (As always, I am keeping tabs over at Mangakast--https://mangakast.wordpress.com/-- if you do want ot know the details.) The guy who wrote that weird little second chances manga, Hirayasumi, that I loved has (or had, I don't actually know which came first off the top of my head) another short series about two aliens who come to Earth on an invasion scouting mission, but decide (as one does) that Earth is kind of too cool to try to oppress called Tokyo Alien Bros. Although, interestingly--and I'm not sure I've seen this really dealt with in another manga--one of the aliens decides it would be fun to be the other gender for a day, nearly gets raped, and has a profound change of heart about the goodness of humankind. What is notable about this, is that previously this particular character was the playboy of the two brothers and was kind of a love 'em and leave 'em sort. So, it's shockingly self-reflective for this kind of humor manga, actually? I am very on the fence about whether I liked Tokyo Alien Bros because, where Hirayasumi has this lovely, slow pace, Tokyo Alien Bros is kind of all over the place.

Otherwise, I've been catching up with the anime that they made of The Summer Hikaru Died, which is a weird combination of horror and gay romance. The anime is now past where I've read in the manga and I'm getting the vibe that maybe part of the tension in the story is that the not-Hikaru character, the guy who loves the monster that returned in Hikaru's body--his dad might be gay, too? Which... would be kind of a cool twist because it would explain why the main character is so gloomy and depressed. It seems like maybe the family is split/not split. Dad has taken a job as a lumberjack and that keeps him away from home a lot, and mom is clearly DONE with dad on some level, but this is a small, SMALL village and so they aren't broken u/separated. And, it's been a weird thing in the background that I'd been reading as "oh, an affair," but after a scene from last night's episode, I'm thinking, "OH! A gay affair!"

Anyway, I'm probably wrong. But, it will be interesting to see if they go there.

I should probably read the manga again and see if I can suss it out. It looks like the manga is maybe still ongoing, though.

So, yeah. I'm about to head into my writers' group Zoom. Tonight is Pendragons (not Wyrdsmiths.) Pendragons is a group I started during the pandemic and includes folks from all over the country. When Laurie Winter was still in Montana, I think we had all the continental US time zones covered, which is kind of cool.

K. Goodnight. Hope you have a good one.

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King of Ashes, by S. A. Cosby: DNF

Roman left the family business, a crematory, and its town to become an accountant to the rich and famous. His sister now runs the crematory with their father, while their younger brother Dante stays on the rolls but his actual profession is being a drug addict and ne'er do well. When the kids were teenagers, their mother vanished. Their father is widely suspected of having murdered his wife and cremated his body, but no proof was ever found. When the book opens, Roman hears that his father is in the hospital, victim of a suspicious accident. He heads home to visit his father and help out his sister. Naturally, he immediately gets embroiled in trouble.

I've loved or liked all of Cosby's previous books and was very excited for this one - especially given the crematory setting. (Cosby himself ran a funeral home with his wife.) Unfortunately, I did not like or feel connected to any of the characters in this one, and so I didn't care what happened to them. Cosby's characters are typically criminals who do bad things, but in his other books, I understand the reasons they are who they are and like them even if I wouldn't want to meet them in real life. But in this one, fairly early on, Roman - who I already didn't feel connected to - commits an act of horrifying cruelty that seems completely unmotivated.

( Read more... )

It's possible that this is explained later, and my guess is that the explanation is "Roman is actually a sadistic sociopath," but I lost all interest in him at that point, and DNF'd the book as I no longer wanted to read about him, none of the other characters interested me either, and the sadistic sociopath explanation doesn't help. I heard an interview with Cosby where he talks about wanting to write a classic tragedy with a very bad protagonist a la Macbeth, which makes his intention make more sense to me, but it doesn't make me want to return to the book.

Cosby is a great author but this book was a miss for me. I HIGHLY recommend Blacktop Wasteland and Razorblade Tears for very well-written books where bad people do bad things that are very motivated, and you can't help rooting for them to succeed. I recommend All Sinners Bleed for a well-written book about a good guy fighting both crime and legal bad things. I recommend My Darkest Prayer for a fun, OTT thriller with a very Marty Stu protagonist. I don't recommend this.

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hxx: ninefox comic

[art] NSFW: A Binary Dilemma

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

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Location: New Digs

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Midweek stuff

Despite my ongoing daily frustrations at the Day Job, I will at least be proud of the fact that I'm doing pretty good with working on Theadia! I still have a long way to go, but this current go-round is looking a hell of a lot better than I'd hoped. I'm hoping I'll be close to done by the end of the year, or early into the next, depending on how much more work I need to do. There's the final chapters to write, and the 'WRITE THIS LATER' scenes to write.

That, and I've been doing some thinking about what other creative outlets I want to work in in the next few months. More on that soon...

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yuletide

My favorite winter holiday is upon us!

Yuletide signups are open!

Here's the tagset showing what's eligible to request and offer.

What intrigues you in the tag set? And who plans to participate this year?

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en passant

Still recovering from recent/ongoing health stuff but:

Resumed work on Candle Arc #2 (comic) pursuant to continued 2D animation preproduction, since the comics double as partial storyboards. I just processed the Ninefox Gambit: Prelude: Cheris #1 (comic) files for eventual print-on-demand as well, but it's on the website as well.

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fic exchange letter

Dear Yuletide Writer,

Thank you for writing for me! If you have any questions, please check with the mods. I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you write for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, story lengths, etc.

My AO3 name is Edonohana. I am open to treats. Very open. I love them.

This year I have gone for a slate of obscure-even-for-Yuletide canons plus a few less obscure canons with obscure-even-for-Yuletide characters. Some of my prompts are longer than others, but I want everything equally.

I like hurt-comfort, action/adventure, horror, domestic life, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, difficult choices, survival situations, mysterious places and weird alien technology, food, plants, animals, landscape, X-Men type powers, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, miniature things or beings, magic, strange rituals, unknowable things, epistolary fiction, found footage/art/creepy movies/etc, canon divergence AUs anf alternate versions of characters. I particularly love deadly/horrifying yet weirdly beautiful settings, especially if there's elements of space/time/reality warping as well. And many other things, too, of course! That list is just in case something sparks an idea.

( General DNWs )

( Crossroad - Barbara Hambly )

( Earthsea - Ursula K. Le Guin )

( Fire Dancer Series - Ann Maxwell )

( Ki and Vandien Quartet - Megan Lindholm )

( The Last Hot Time - John M. Ford )

( Lyra - Patricia Wrede )

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Into the Raging Sea: 33 Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro, by Rachel Slade

This is an outstanding work of narrative nonfiction about the sinking of the merchant marine ship El Faro, with no survivors, on October 1, 2015. As far as anyone could tell initially, the captain inexplicably sailed the ship straight into the eye of Hurricane Joaquin, which he definitely knew was there.

Then the black box got retrieved. It had the complete audio recordings of everything that happened on the ship for 26 hours before it sank, right up to its final moments. Rachel Slade, a journalist, used the complete audio plus in-depth interviews with everyone who could possibly have any light to shed on the matter to write the book. She not only gives an analysis of what happened and why, she covers all the surrounding circumstances that led to it. It's an outstanding work of nonfiction disaster reporting that often reads like a suspense novel, it will teach you a lot about many things, and it will make you very angry.

The culprit, essentially, was capitalism. A company called TOTE took over the original company that owned the ship and put a business bro who knew nothing about shipping in charge. He fired a bunch of people at random on the theory that there were too many employees, and slashed maintenance because it was expensive. Everyone who was experienced, skilled, and not desperate who hadn't already been fired quit, leaving only people who were inexperienced, unskilled, undesirable for other reasons, desperate, or in low-level positions where they had no influence on general operations, on a ship in serious need of repairs and upgrades. TOTE put enormous pressure on the captain to get the ship to its destination on time, no matter what, to save money. Finally, there were multiple sources for weather reports, the one which was most current was more complicated to use, and not everyone understood that the other source could be nine hours behind.

The captain had been investigated for sexual harassment, had a history of poor judgment calls, and had the social skills of Captain Ahab; because of this, he knew he was on thin ice and if he got fired from the El Faro, he might not get another job as captain. The second mate was a young woman trying to make it in a men's world who had reported him for harassing her, and dealt by avoiding him as much as possible. The entire crew was operating under a system where the captain was basically God. The only way to contact the outside world, like if for instance a crew member wanted to report that the captain was set on sailing them into a hurricane, was a satellite phone that only the captain had access to.

Basically everyone but the captain was worried they'd sail into the hurricane, the captain was worried he'd get fired if he took the long way around to avoid the hurricane and didn't realize that his weather reports were not up to date, everyone was tiptoeing around or avoiding the captain because he was a giant asshole who was also the God-King, and no one had any way to overrule or go around him.

The culture of "never question the captain even if he's obviously wrong" has caused a number of plane crashes, and the aviation world responded by instituting a system of training to teach crew members to speak up forcefully if they think the captain is making a mistake, complete with exactly how to phrase it. If you're interested in this, it's called Cockpit/Crew Resource Management (CRM); the podcast "Black Box Down" has a number of episodes involving it.

CRM would have been helpful for the El Faro, as would giving the crew private access to the satellite phone or some other way of reporting on the captain. And, of course, so would not allowing companies to put workers in extremely unsafe conditions. Regulations are written in blood. Worse, the blood can spill and nothing gets written at all.

An excellent book. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in disasters, survival, or the failure mode of capitalism.

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Upcoming Gig (November 2)

While I was at Gaylaxicon, an email went out form Cole Sarar (she/they) who runs Sci-Fi Reading Hour desperately looking for any author who might be up for a performance in early November. I checked my calendar right away because I really enjoyed

naomikritzer 's performance last year. I wrote about this here, but this is the gig where Cole pairs a musician and an author together. In Naomi's case, it was like getting to watch a radio play because the musician had the ability to do sound effects and she had reworked the piece so that Cole and she could share the narrative.

At any rate, ever since then, I've been thinking about what of mine might work for something like this. I don't write a lot of short stories, though I have written some. The short stories I have written don't tend to get very broad distribution (by which I mean, I have yet to truly break into any kind of traditional short story market. The one I did get in in the 1990s? SF AGE? Now defunct.) A few years ago, I wrote something for one of

rachelmanija 's projects that I really loved. It was about a supervillain trying to adopt a cat. It's very silly and tonally and conceptually, the complete opposite of

naomikritzer 's "A Year Without Sunshine," so I had no idea if that would appeal to Cole. But, I was recently reminded at Diversicon that one of my strengths is humor. I decided to take a chance and I sent that along with a note that said, "You're probably already booked, but in case not, I'm up for it, and here's the piece I'm considering performing."

I don't know if I was, in fact, the only one to reply or if my being ready with a specific piece made me more appealing than any others who jumped in, but I got the gig.

I will, of course, be reminding you as this gets closer, but for your records here's the pertenent information: the performance will be Sunday, November 2 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl & Theater (https://www.bryantlakebowl.com/). Doors open at 6 pm and the show starts at 7 pm. There will be a post-show interview with both the writer and the musician at 8:00 pm. Cost is $10 in advance and $15 at the door*. (Braynt-Lake Bowl has its November calendar up, but this show isn't, for obvious reasons, up yet.)

Also, my co-performer will be the lovely and talented Scott Keever who says this about himself: Scott Keever is an award-winning guitarist and composer from Minneapolis. He has specialized in solo guitar, primarily fingerstyle, utilizing resophonic, classical, jazz and folk guitar sounds in his explorations while also focusing on Celtic and Eastern European styles. His stylistic range can be heard on his solo albums "Solo Guitar: Vol. 1" (2018) and “Solo Guitar: Vol. 2” (2022) (both available on Spotify and Apple Music) As well as being a solo performer, Scott plays guitar, Bulgarian tambura and oud for Orkestar Bez Ime (OBI), an award-winning Twin Cities band that specializes in Balkan dance music. He is also currently a member of chamber pop group Follow The Firefly and has recently worked with Ukrainian Village Band. He has been a long-time musician and performer in the local Minnesota theater scene and has appeared in productions with Brave New Workshop, Flying Foot Forum, Walking Shadow Theater, Ethnic Dance Theater, O’Shea Irish Dance and Table Salt Productions. He has also composed music for short films, documentaries, theater, radio and podcasts.

If that sweetens the deal for you. Please come if you're interested, yada yada, but what I really wanted to tell you about was the rehearsal yesterday morning.

Our schedules are such that all of us were available in the morning. We met at Cole's South Minneapolis house at 10:00 am.

It is always a challenge for me to navigate Minneapolis. When I first moved to the Cities, I lived in Minneapolis, but now, after decades of living in St. Paul, I find that whatever fey creatures rule the leylines of Minneapolis have rejected me. GPS mostly helps? It still managed to lie to me about which side of the street Cole's house was on so I spent several confused minutes trying to decide whether or not we were actually supposed to meet at the taco shop at the corner, or what. But, thanks to my chronic fear of being late, I had plenty of time to figure it out and managed to arrive nearly precisely on time.

Cole's house is a typical Minneapolis two-story affair. (How do I describe this to out-of-towners? A lot of our houses in the Twin Cities are older, at least by Midwestern standards, so I'd guess this was a Craftsman era house--early 1900s.) Cole did not offer the full house tour, but I was immediately at home to see a dining room table full of art supplies and other child-friendly detrius. It was a lovely, lived-in house. We chatted about this and that while waiting for Scott to arrive. Cole's ethnic heritage is Turkish and so she offered Turkish tea. I've had (and loved) Turkish coffee, but I was very intregued by Turkish tea, so I said yes immediately. During that conversation I learned that their father immigrated from Istanbul, but never became a US Citizen. We spent some time trying to decide if that made her a first generation immigrant or second. We settled on one and a half, which I found amusing.

Scott arrived in an extroverted, (likely) undiagnosed ADHD clamor. I, of course, liked him immediately. But, between Scott and I, thoughtful Cole had a tendency to get left behind as conversation lept from subject to subject without even a pause for a breath. I spend at least part of the time pausing Scott to make sure Cole--OUR ACTUAL HOST--was included.

I'm pretty sure that Cole hoped for this rehersal to be no more than an hour and a half, but we ended up going three hours.

Whew.

The way this show works Cole will also read something, so we started by listening to their story. They had sent us something ahead of time, but as Scott and I sat on the floor listening it was very clear that what she sent was NOT this story. After it was over we had a laugh because Cole had been saying that the piece they wrote "matched" mine in tone, but what we'd gotten in the email was so much DARKER that I spent some time thinking, "Wow, well maybe humor wasn't as self-evident as I thought?" But, no, it was just a clerical error. Cole had accidentally sent us the piece that had gone with the previous month's show!

I read my piece and then we spent a little time trying to figure out the order if the show, who would read first, etc. That's all still up in the air, and I don't think it really much matters. I think Cole's piece is longer than mine, but we need to fill an hour one way or the other.

Then, somehow, the conversation got on Neil Gaiman and that whole horror show and I discovered I have a ton of friends in common with Scott thanks to his association with Cat's Laughing and the general Venn Diagram of nerds, music, and Renaissance Festival.

It was a good time, but ran late and so then I made a tactical financial error by suggesting to Mason that we hit his favorite Korean fried chicken place for lunch. We had a great time and great food, but this--it turned out--was not the time of the month to splurge. Money is a huge argument in my household and so the rest of the evening was not nearly as fun as how the day started.

Captialism, man. I could really do without it.

=====

*If you're local and want to go but can't afford it, let me know. I have two comp tickets as part of the package. My wife never attends my readings and my son will be out of town, and I hate to waste these.

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Sleeping Giants, by Sylvain Neuvel

This book contains several elements which I like very much: it's epistolatory, it has mysterious ancient sophisticated machinery, and it involves very big size differences. I love miniature things and people, but I also love giants and giant things. This novel is entirely in the form of interviews, and it begins with a young girl walking in the woods who falls into a sinkhole, and lands in the palm of a GIANT HAND. (I can't believe that image isn't on the cover, because it's so striking and is also by far the best part of the book.) The gigantic hand is metal, and it turns out that there are pieces of a complete ancient giant robot scattered all over the world! What happens when the whole giant robot is assembled?

It turns out that what happens is yet another example of a great idea making a bad book, largely - AGAIN - by failing to engage with the premise! WHY IS THIS SO COMMON????

To be fair, this book has many bad elements which do not involve failing to lean into its premise.

The entire book consists of interviews by an unnamed, very mysterious person with near-infinite money and power. He is hiring people to locate the robot parts, assemble them, and pilot it. He also conducts personal interviews with them in which he pries into their love lives in a bizarrely personal manner. It's clearly because the author wanted to have a love story (he shouldn't have, it's terrible) and figured this was the only way to do it and keep the format, but it makes no sense. The interviewers do object to this line of questioning, but not in the way that I kept wanting them to, which would have been along the lines of "Don't you have anything better to do than get wank material from your employees? Drop it, or I'll go to HR."

The girl who fell into the hand grows up to be a physicist who gets hired to... I forget what exactly, but it didn't make much sense even when I was reading it. Anyway, she's on the project. There's also a badass female helicopter pilot, and a male linguist to translate the mysterious giant robot inscriptions. All these people are the biggest geniuses ever but are also total idiots. All the women are incredibly "man writing women."

Most annoyingly, the robot does not seem to be sentient, does not communicate, does not have a personality, and only walks for like 30 seconds once.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

I feel stupider for having read this book.

It's a trilogy but even people who liked the first book say the returns steadily diminish.

I normally don't think it's cool to criticize people's appearances, but in this case, this dude chose to go with this supremely tryhard author photo.

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crafts: spinning

emotional support spinning: cotton

Cotton handspun single from combed top, a "completed" bobbin. I'm spinning threadweight so I don't...feel the need to "fill" the bobbin even halfway (for a planned 2-ply).

I do think I'd probably have a more pleasant time spinning cotton and silk if I had a dedicated treadle wheel for them, someday; but the wheel I own works. :3

(The background art on the wall is a poster of Wonder Woman artwork by Nen Chang.)

Current Mood: relaxed
Current Location: New Digs

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Meanwhile...

On the non-Day-Job front, we spent most of today up in Petaluma, visiting the in-laws. A and I were getting rid of a smallish freezer (about the size of one of those dorm fridges you're not supposed to have in a dorm) that we figured they'd like to have so we made a day of it by visiting to drop it off and then go out to brunch. Said brunch was QUITE tasty at a family restaurant that looked to be quite the destination for the post-church crowd on Sundays. I ended up getting the chorizo hash which was extremely filling and very generous.

But that's not all! I had another reason to be up there, and that was to sell off three of the acoustic guitars I've had for the last several years that have been gathering more dust than play. [These are the guitars that were in front of the window at our old place, and when the cats saw birds out said window they would get all excited and their tails would hit the guitar necks, letting out an amusing twang.] I got about what I'd expected from the exchange, and this is a REALLY good guitar store that would fix them up and sell them off relatively quick.

All in all it was a very nice and warm day, and the traffic was surprisingly not at all stressful. I was worried I'd be a bit exhausted but so far I'm not doing too bad. [That's another story entirely...I've been feeling exhausted for the last few weeks, most likely due to Work Stuff, to the point where maybe I should see a doctor. It's probably nothing, but it wouldn't hurt considering I'm getting old and not running on all cylinders like I used to.]

Anyhoo...I have a few days off this week, so I'm going to spend those days enjoying myself and getting things done.

Entry tags:

Up at the Cabin, Quilt Show Edition

Image: Buckeye butterfly

My family and I are up at our friends' cabin for the weekend.

These are the friends of ours who have a lovely place with a natural shoreline (which they planted and meticulously mantain) on Crooked Lake in Siren, Wisconsin. At the far end of their property there is what I believe is a "smooth aster" (the native version of a purple aster.) It has attracted so many butterflies this year, it's not even funny. We've seen the buckeye pictured above as well as a painted lady, a clouded sulpher, and (and this might sound strange,) my favorite, this chonk of a moth, the corn ear worm moth.

Yep, total pest. Turns into chonk floof, baby mothra.

The dock is all pulled in, of course, so we've been amusing ourselves in other ways. In the nearby town of Weber, there is a quilt show. Ihave reported on this event in the past. It's very small town, in the best way? We're talking about tables set up in the local high school, staffed by little old ladies and a (bad) taco bar serving food for $5.00 in the cafeteria. The whole event kind of smells like Oretaga taco seasoning, but there are rows and rows of quilts with "artist statements" like, "I thought this pattern would be fun to try. WRONG. So I put it in craft jail for a few years, but this year decided to finish it. So here it is. Enjoy." These ladies (and some gents) really don't mince words when it comes to their quilts. Another one read, "Not much to say. Just need to use up my scraps." Then it will look like this:

yellow quilt, Weber 2025

Image: complex, bright yellow quilt.

Mason and I then went for a drive to check out Clam Dam, which, frankly, is the best name for any dam, anywhere as far as I'm concerned.

So far, a nice, chill vacation. Just what we needed post-Gaylaxicon.

How about you all? Up to anything fun?

Entry tags:

politics

Pay Stoppage

Okay, amateur pundits, you need to stop with this one.

Whenever the government closes down, the amateur pundits trot out, "Congress should have their pay suspended. That'll make them pass a budget!", as if this idea were innovative or clever.

Please stop.

First, it's never, ever going to happen. Congress would have to pass a law requiring it, and they simply won't. End of story. So there's no point in pushing the idea.

Second, amateur pundits have been trotting this idea out for decades. It's neither innovative nor clever. In fact, we're tired of hearing about it.

Third, the vast majority of Congress wouldn't miss a couple-three paychecks anyway. The threat of withholding funds from them isn't a threat.

So please stop with this one. It's a waste.

Entry tags:

Hospice Volunteering Meeting

This morning was my meet-up with Ashley, the hospice volunteer coordinator. We met at my favorite coffee shop, Claddagh, on West 7th. The meeting was half paperwork, half get-to-know you interview.

I guess the things of interest are these: I found out that a lot of people never make it through training. They start reading/viewing (most of it is online videos) the material and decide that hospice work is not for them. I told Ashley that could very well be me. I have no idea where I’m going to fall in all this. This did not faze her. Apparently, that reaction is common enough that they don’t even start processing the paperwork until you make it through everything online. Smart.

One of other things I found sort of fascinating is that I’ll need a couple of references. People who are willing to vouch for me. I think a lot of people use co-workers because she noted to me, specifically, that they could both be personal. Also? Drug and health tests/screening. Including, she said apologetically, marijuana. I laughed because a more teetotal person than me you will rarely find. They can ask me to pee in a cup and do a deep background check, but they can no longer legally ask if I’m up on my COVID and flu shots. How screwed up is that? Apparently, you can volunteer your immunization records at least. That one was a head shaker. You’d think that of all organizations that could require people be up on their vaccines are places that work with end of life. How rude would it be to pass on COVID to someone already dying? Make someone extra miserable on the way out. WTF. Worst timeline.

The materials have arrived in my in-box. I’m looking forward to checking them out, but I have to wait for a little while. I’m actually composing this off-line because Mason is taking the last portion of his LSAT right now, the dreaded essay. Cross your fingers for him. His score will determine a lot of his choices for law school.

Also, we're headed up to our frends Ger & Barb's cabin for the weekend. There's a quilt show in the nearby town of Weber that we're excited to see again. Should be a relaxing weekend.

If I don't write again for a while, I hope you all have a good weekend, too! Any fun plans?

===

EDITED TO ADD: As I am posting, I'm obviously back online. I'm going to go peek at the info now!

Entry tags:

Reading Wednesday and Final Con Report

Last night, Shawn had a volunteer gig at the Ramsey County Library in Shoreview. As longtime readers know, my wife really doesn't like to drive. She's licensed, but she's generally a nervous and timid driver. On top of that, Shawn has some PTSD from an accident that happened while she was pregnant with Mason. Thus she mostly avoids driving, outside of emergencies (though she did some while I was in DC at Capclave. Go, Shawn!)

Anyway, what this means that I tagged along to the event as taxi driver. Shawn was in her meeting with the Friends for an hour... and I was left alone like a kid in a candy store.

I brought home eleven manga. Like, my bag was literally stuffed with books.

I finished one already: Two Guys at the Vet Clinic / Doubutsu Byouin no Ofutari-san by Sinonome. It's a boys' love/yaoi about a one-sided crush between a veterinarian and his boss. I'd say it's nothing to write home about, but I'll end up writing all about it over on my manga review site which you can check out if that sort of stuff interests you: https://mangakast.wordpress.com/

Okay, onward!

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Gaylaxicon, SUNDAY

There are a couple of things that I forgot to talk about on Saturday. One of the coolest things that happened on Saturday is that at the Murderbot panel I ran into a polycule that I'd met at the last ConFABulous. I instantly recognized them because they all wear matching rainbow masks, but also they're half the age of most of the people at our con. Plus, I feel like I would recognize them anywhere they all (there are at least four members of this polycule) because they played in a last minute Thirsty Sword Lesbians game that I threw together last ConFABulous when it was revealed to me that one of their number had come all the way from Chicago JUST to try playing this game (and when they arrived the sign-up was filled.) I still use a term that one of the players came up with for the future social media, which is "Blab" (as a Twitter/Insta/Facebook stand in.)

Anyway, I gave them my contact info and I hope they actually reach out. Three of the four are local and so they invited me to possibly come run a game with them at some point. I hope they actually do reach out. I liked the four of them quite a lot.

So that was really cool. Plus, I finally got to meet

pameladean 's partner Cameron. She was deep in discussion with my friend Rachel Gold and their partner(? friend?) Stephanie, so I think we exchanged nothing more than a confused back and forth (because Rachel bought a copy of Cameron's book for me, but it wasn't clear who was paying and if the book had gone to me or Rachel.) Still, it was nice. I'm only sorry that Cameron wasn't feeling up for being on more panels. I would have loved to have showcased her and her work more. ConFABulous is less of the kind of con where writers go, but maybe since she'll have a new book out maybe we could consider if she'd make a good GoH (again, if she's up for such a thing.) ConFABulous really doesn't do GoHs, but at least Cameron is local so it's not like it would cost the con a lot.

Sunday, of course, is generally the low key day at most conventions. Anywhere else people are hungover, etc. I, myself, was crispy. That midnight performance meant I got only five hours of sleep. So, I was definitely feeling "Sunday at the Con" in a very traditional way.

I put several "not to miss" panels on early, in the hopes of catching any folks who weren't conned out by that point. I really wanted to catch "Problematic Favs" at 10:30 AM, because it was a panel that David Lenander suggested and I had initially resisted writing up, in part because Greg Ketter was a GoH. Greg, for those of you who aren't from the Twin Cities and/or don't know, runs Dreamhaven Books & Comics. Dreamhaven was the literal mailing address for Neil Gaiman for many, many years--so much so that the Minnesota Book Awards assumed that Neil actually lived in Minneapolis (he didn't, at the time he was living in Wisconsin, which disqualified him for the award and I was at leat partly responsible for making that clear to the MN Book Awards folks. That, however, is a story for another time.) Lisa Freitag, Greg's wife, had told me at some point that Greg is still very much in denial and won't talk about Neil. So, I started to self-censor myself/the convention, but then I thought, "No. That's not cool." David L. clearly really needed to process some of this stuff, so probably that means a lot of our local community does, too. Also, so many of us in the fannish queer community, particularly trans folks, are still pissed at the active harm that JKR continues to do. So, I decided, no, let's have at it. But, to make it work, I had put

naomikritzer in charge because I know that Naomi has the skillset (and the wherewithal) to actually shout someone down and cut off the ramblers--which a lot of people (including myself) often THINK they have, but which Naomi has actively demonstrated on other panels I've seen her on.

Turns out this was a good choice.

Most of the discussion was high level--there were some real, meaningful confessions and feeling and advice, but, inevitably, someone wants to relitigate this or that. Naomi just wasn't having it. In fact, at one point the person she had to actively cut off was David L., and I'm not sure I'd've been able to do that since he's an actual friend of mine (and Naomi's, to be fair. Also, I hope David is okay and knows it was done out of love.) We also had another guy, who I later found out was also disruptive in the "Superman is WOKE and other Media Malarky" panel, who was apparently wandering back and forth between the two panels demanding to be caught up on what he'd missed while listening to the other one.

Maybe not the best start to Sunday, but you can't say it wasn't high energy! *makes awkward face*

Post that start to the day, a bunch of us hung around and debreifed in the little lounge area behind registration. This is where I got a chance to talk to one of our special guests, Blue Delliquanti (https://www.bluedelliquanti.com/ <--if you are at all a fan of graphic novels and don't know their work, here's my recommendation: GO READ THEM NOW.) It was from Blue and Lee Brontide, however, that I found out that that one guy was bothering both panels. Apparently, the only panel that went off without a hitch during the first hour was "Gay Vikings," which is only hilarious because I heard from both Dax and Eleanor Arnason that they felt unprepared. Adam Stemple who moderated the panel said that they were both so knowledgable and prepared it was almost ridiculously smart. I'm sort of sad that I coudn't be in three places at once.

I conspired with

tallgeese to blow off my final panel of the con, "Ask a GM" in order to finish the Star Trek session we started on Saturday. This was another one of those probably-not-a-good-adult-decision moment for me, but I tried to mitigate it by warning Don K., one of my co-panelist that I was intending not to be there. I totally got the Disapproving Dad look from him, which normally I can't withstand, but the truth was I was so exhausted at this point I would not have made a good panelist. I probably should have explained it that way, but I didn't. Now I have to live with my guilt.

And while that sounds flippant, I do actually feel a guilty even now. I'd put myself on that panel so that there would be a woman GM to represent. I also know that several people were curious what I might have to say about GMing, so I feel like I let them down.

But, God got me. I was, in fact, punished for my sins.

I decided to try to play a new character at the Star Trek game (a Vulcan doctor) and there was so little for the Chief Medical Officer to do in the third act of that game, that I literally threw her on a grenade at the end of the game just TO HAVE SOMETHING TO DO.

Despite that, I'd say it was, generally, a really good convention. It helps that I was able to recruit so many skilled panelists. However, I think that, should we do a Gaylaxicon again (and if I lose my mind an volunteer for the programming committee again) I would do a few things differently.

Three tracks of programming was a bit ambitious, I think. I mean, you can't know how many attendees you're going to get, but three tracks is probably best for conventions that are regularly pulling THOUSANDS, rather than hundreds, especially since our crowd was also dipursed into two tracks of gaming as well. So, we essentially had five tracks of programming (if you count the games) and that just split the numbers too much. So, even the most popular panels weren't filling the rooms as much as I'd've liked. Maybe two tracks going forward? Two + gaming, at any rate.
The other really big mistake of mine was my assumption that someone else would've alerted Dreamhaven to the names of our attending professionals. I heard through the grapevine that JM Lee left the convention early (and irritated) because he discovered that none of his books were available in the dealer's room. I will make it a point to--as EARLY as possible--start feeding any book dealers a list of people's books to have on hand and/or alerting authors that they should bring their own books to sell at the signing tables. Joey (JM) was a really early recruit of mine (and he's trad published), so I can see why he was shocked not to see any of this books available. I will complain here, only breifly, that Greg is terrible about answering emails (as is Lisa). I would have had to make a regular DRIVE to Dreamhaven to physically talk to someone in the store, but I should have done it, anyway.
Then, obviously, as much previously discussed, I think the new rule going forward (again, if there is a forward) is no paneling after 7:00 pm. We just don't stay up that late. People can find their own fun the games room if they're late nighters, I guess. Midnight slash panel? Nope, "After dinner hour slash," is more like it.
Plan an actual lunch break for panelists. That way there's no way to accidentally (which I did to both Haddayr and Naomi) book someone over a period when they should go get a food. I had initially thought that the hotel restaurant would mitigate this since we had half hour passing time between panels, but it turned out they were closed at a time when someone could have popped down and grabbed a sandwich to go or whatever.
People really liked that half-hour passing time, though. So, that's a keeper.

Obviously, there were a number of things that I heard compliments about, regarding programming. Adam could not get over the quality of the topics and how amazing his fellow panelists were. I got this note from a lot of people, actually, so that made me feel pretty good. The other comment I heard a lot was that people were having trouble deciding among the topics in any given hour because they were all interesting. Again, I'll take that as a win, actually (though you could read it another way, I suppose. Depending on your preference for these kinds of conventions. There are people who like one-track paneling for a reason.)

I don't know a lot about how the other departments did. Obviously, I participated in gaming, which, for me went well. I think the banquet was, at least, a financial success. There were a ton of people there. I talked about some of the issues with the comedy show, but comedy is always a weird one for conventions as far as I'm concerned since, as I noted, humor can so easily fall flat with us neuro-spicy nerd types. The dealer's room seemed full and active, which is good, though

tallgeese noted with some shock that we didn't seem to have a single vendor selling dice. Two of the community tables were perpetually empty: the Dungeons, Dragons & Drinks folks seemed to only show up long enough to refresh their free dice packages and Free Mom Hugs seemed entirely AWOL every time I passed their table, which was kind of weird. Possibly both groups thought we were a bigger con? I don't know what happened there.

But, yeah, otherwise, I felt it went off well.

Entry tags:

cycling

cycling: stupid bike

Yesterday the chain fell off my bike again (it does this all the time) and today it's clonking and chonking and clicking as I cycle. I know it's a cheap bike, for Christ's sake, but how hard is it for a cheap bike to do its damn job. I guess I'm bringing it back to the shop to see if they can figure it out, but this is really frustrating

What's even more frustrating is that most of the time the place behind a gate and under a roof isn't easily available at work when I arrive, so I don't even WANT a nicer bike because this one is likely to end up in the rain and possibly stolen. I just want my cheap bike to WORK.