Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

Star Trek: Starfleet Academy is REALLY good

Thu, 08 Jan 2026 22:50:44 GMT

Thanks to my podcasting co-host's connections, we got screeners for the first six episodes, and here is my low-spoiler review as per the rules of the embargo.

TL;DR it has a huge heart, and a series about rebuilding democracy and the infrastructure of a functional society in the wake of imperial decay and environmental devastation is exactly what the world needs right now. It overtly follows in the footsteps of Prodigy, as a jumping in point for a young new fan, and the relationship between Holly Hunter as the Academy chancellor and Sandro Rosta as a new cadet who is skeptical of Starfleet and the Federation (and with good reason!) is a real gift.

I'm reluctant to commit to this, because recency bias is a thing, but it's absolutely my favourite live-action series of the streaming era (and you guys will recall that I loved Discovery and wrote a lot of fic for it!), and I think it's very possible I love it more than Voyager. Certainly it has the best opening six episodes of any Trek bar TOS.

comments

Please recommend books about the French Revolution

Sat, 13 Dec 2025 22:44:15 GMT

I started playing Assassin's Creed: Unity and realised that I know almost nothing about the French Revolution. We did study it in grade 10, but I missed a lot of time due to a never-identified virus -- I was out for most of the American Revolution and all of the French, and mostly passed the class because I knew more about the Chinese Communist Revolution than my teacher. (It's not her fault, she was an art teacher who was roped in to teach history for ... reasons which I'm sure made sense at the time.)

Anyway, I've decided to fill the gap in my knowledge. I started out by trying to listen to The Rest Is History, a podcast my mum recommended, but the hosts are two English men, and they spend a weird amount of time comparing Marie Antoinette to Meghan Markle, but in a derogatory "maybe we should decapitate the Duchess of Sussex" way that I did not care for.

Then I read The French Revolution by Christopher Hibbert, which I think is from 1980. It was a solemn, dispassionate accounting of events and personalities, but didn't get into the question of, for example, why the Parisian mob went from zero to heads on pikes in the storming of the Bastille.

I've requested an inter-library loan for Citizens by Simon Schama, which I've seen recommended a lot, but I would also be eager to read a history that's not ... British? Because the British, for understandable reasons (I guess) weren't really down with the beheading of the monarch and the end of the monarchy (even though they did it first), and I feel like a pro-aristocratic bias has pervaded a lot of what I've encountered. And obviously the Terror was bad, but, like, maybe Robespierre was an asexual smol bean who was a convenient scapegoat! I'm open to the possibility!

I am open to suggestions, is what I'm saying.

comments

My life in music

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 22:39:11 GMT

When I have disposable income, I spend it on concert tickets.

So back in January I went to see Irish country-pop singer CMAT live. My friends and I were the oldest people in the room and we all got covid, and it was absolutely worth it. In terms of "best gigs I've been to", I'd put it on par with Florence + the Machine as The Actual Best, only at a fraction of the scale and price.

Her new album came out at the end of August, and I have an embarrassing number of feelings about the title track. Embarrassing because I was a fully grown adult and also Australian when the Celtic Tiger collapsed, but growing up in suburbia and feeling like your whole generation has been fucked over by neoliberalism is A Mood.

She's touring early next year, and I have tickets secured and a note in my planner to get a covid booster three weeks before the date.

( This got long and has more embeds, so... )

comments

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season 3

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 23:39:20 GMT

So I've been a SNW skeptic since it was first announced, and have never been impressed by the show. But I've gotta say, I've seen six episodes of the third season, thanks to screeners, and we are so far yet to hit a good episode. We have, however, hit several repetitive m/f relationships, multiple love triangles, weirdly a lot of antisemitic subtext, and the decidedly bad look of Pike trying to stop his girlfriend from consenting to life-saving medical treatment.

Mostly I think this is because Akiva Goldsman is a hack who doesn't understand Star Trek or subtext, but also I wonder how much is because the seasons are being filmed back-to-back, and so there's no opportunity to see and respond to criticism. Ironically I think part of Discovery's problem was that it was too responsive to fandom, but Goldsman can't be left alone to pursue his creative vision because he doesn't really have one.

Anyway, at this point I'm only watching because I have a podcast, and also out of a sick eagerness to see if Pike will have to murder his girlfriend and have manpain about it, or if she'll sacrifice her life to save him.

(I've seen people theorise that the problems this season are due to the show pivoting in a more conservative direction to appease Skydance, and I am sorry to say that these scripts predate the 2023 strikes. Like, there was time for the writers to go back and think, "Oh, there's some dodgy stuff here, we should fix that!")

comments

To the surprise of everyone, especially myself, I really like the Murderbot adaptation so far!

Sat, 17 May 2025 23:53:13 GMT

You can read my thoughts (along with spoilery stuff for TLoU and Andor) in my newsletter, but to save you scrolling past a lot of spoilers for other things, I'll also pop them here.

( Here's a cut! )

comments

Harvey

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 06:16:10 GMT

We said goodbye to Harvey today. It was very peaceful and very quick. He has been slowing down for a few months, but on Tuesday he was normal and on Wednesday morning he stopped eating. We took him to the emergency vet yesterday, who warned us there was no hope. He had declined even between then and going to our regular vet this afternoon, but I'm confident he wasn't in any pain or discomfort.

He was a terrible cat, and I miss him

comments

Murderbot (AppleTV+ 2025)

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 22:38:33 GMT

The trailer for the Murderbot TV series is out, and I'll be honest: it gives me the ick. Like, I've blocklisted the word "Murderbot" on my social media, blocked Martha Wells so I don't see her promotional posts in my timelines, and I'm thinking of giving my books away.

Which is absolutely an overreaction, so I'm sitting on my hands for now, but it has powerful "we have completely captured everything you imagined, except it's white, cis, male and incredibly cheap looking".

AppleTV+ generally produces quite decent-to-good sci-fi, so I assume this will be watchable, but so far it looks generic and boring.

Semi-related, but I did wind up creating a little newsletter where I talk about the TV I've been watching, with an option for other media as the mood strikes me. I have 16 subscribers! You could be the 17th!

comments

Home from hospital

Fri, 21 Mar 2025 23:04:28 GMT

The surgery went well; the surgeon says the inside of my ankle turned out to be worse than expected, but not difficult to fix. I'm in a cast with no weight-bearing for two weeks, which I knew in advance but did not anticipate how hard it would be.

I bought a knee scooter off Facebook Marketplace a couple of weeks ago, but it's not so helpful for getting around tight spaces, like the walk from my bed to the bathroom. The hospital physio set me up with a zimmer frame and taught me to use it, and the hospital has given me a free 30-day loaner frame. (I cannot rate the public health system highly enough. They do so much with so few resources. Support Medicare! Aggressively!)

Because I am clumsy, yesterday afternoon I hit a raised tile with the toes of my good foot and broke one of them. This is actually almost as annoying as the ankle, but will heal faster. I gave it ice and have buddy taped it, which helps.

I set up my bed to be a comfort/recovery station before I left for hospital; naturally that has not lasted. I think I had trouble regulating my temperature overnight, I really thrashed around and messed my blankets up.

I was concerned about pain management, but so far it's great -- I was sent home with five mild opioids, took one last night, but otherwise Panadol has been enough. I'm to take one aspirin a day for six weeks so I don't get blood clots, and cannot restart my arthritis meds for another week. I can resume the Wegovy whenever, but don't feel up to giving myself an injection today.

Next to my broken toe, my biggest annoyance is that last week I bought a remote-controlled bluetooth curtain opener/closer. My bedroom faces west, and it's awkward to get to the curtains. It was my biggest indulgence as I prepared for surgery. Got home yesterday and found that it has disconnected itself and needs to be re-added to the app, which involves climbing up to hold a button. Not gonna happen. My curtains stay closed. This is an extremely petty problem, but it's nevertheless irritating.

comments

Disconnected (severed?) Severance thoughts

Sat, 01 Mar 2025 01:21:49 GMT

( Spoilers for episode 207 )

Would it be weird to create a weekly newsletter covering things I'm watching and reading? I know that's what Dreamwidth is for, but I like the idea of aggressively putting it in people's inboxes. I could do both. I absolutely have time and energy to commit to a new project.

comments

One week in on Wegovy

Wed, 12 Feb 2025 00:33:55 GMT

( More weight talk )

comments

Adventures in Wegovy

Sat, 08 Feb 2025 03:18:08 GMT

( Weight loss, obvs )

comments

2024 reading round-up

Thu, 02 Jan 2025 22:13:45 GMT

Round-ups from previous years: 2021, 2022, 2023

This year I kept a media-tracking spreadsheet in Google Docs, and also a paper reading journal. Which sounds extremely wanky, because it is, but I enjoyed the tactile aspect of creating layouts, pasting print-outs of covers, and keeping track of things in handwriting. Also I got to use stickers. Here are a couple of sample pages:

I've already started a fresh journal for 2025, this time in a small ring binder to avoid certain annoying problems, ie, the build-up of thickness from pasting the covers into the same spot over and over again.

Okay, the stats.

Total books logged: 138 (the secret to my success: sprained ankle, broken ankle, covid, ongoing ankle problems and plantar fasciitis have made it more likely that I will stay in the office and read at lunch instead of taking a walk)
DNFs: I didn't keep close track, but a standout is a YA quartet I abandoned 20% into the third book

By target audience (age)

Adult - 86
Children - 1
Young Adult - 42
Middle Grade - 9

And my favourite category, by genre and audience

Contemporary (adult): 7
Contemporary (YA): 10
Contemporary (middle grade): 2

What's great about "contemporary" is that it's really a setting, not a genre -- so these 19 books encompassed everything from Māori literary fiction to two books which are arguably thrillers and now I'm wondering if I hit the wrong option in the dropdown menu.

Fantasy: (adult): 8
Fantasy (YA): 11
Fantasy (middle grade): 4

Other than Christelle Dabos, I only read three YA fantasy novels from authors who were new to me -- and two were the quartet I wound up DNFing in book 3. (Respectfully, I think that if you are writing for young adults, you should not have more graphic on-page rape than George R. R. Martin.) It feels like the bubble has truly burst.

Contemporary mystery and thriller

Adult: 17
YA: 10

It feels like exciting things are happening in the contemp mystery genre right now, especially YA. Especially if, like me, you don't draw too much of a distinction between a "mystery" and a "thriller".

Science fiction

Adult: 6
YA: 6

Again, I feel like the YA SF bubble has burst, largely under the weight of too many Hunger Games imitations. Or maybe it just seems that way because I reread the Hunger Games novels.

Adult SF is where I found most of my DNFs this year, as I tried and failed to read more indie SF.

Non-fiction: 35

History was the winner here in terms of numbers, but for quality, I read a bunch of books about organisational and corporate shenanigans at Boeing, NASA, Twitter and Qantas, and those were the standouts.

Author stats

Australian authors: 18% - this is much lower than in previous years, but I made up for it by reading more widely throughout the world, with more books by New Zealanders and Nigerians, and what I think must be the first YA novel I've read by an Argentinian
Authors of colour: 26% - down from last year's 29%, and doing even worse in terms of "30% feels like equality if you're not marginalised"
Women: 67%, I do NOT need to make a deliberate effort to read books by women. Also three were books by trans women, and I need a better way of tracking that than putting an asterisk in the gender box in my reading journal
Trans and non-binary authors: 4%

The really nerdy stats

Library loans: 73% - I tracked spending for the first time this year, and spent a total of $479 on books, plus US$50 for my Queens Library membership.
Ebooks: 76% of my reading was ebooks, plus I read one (1) audiobook. Which is a format I do not care for, but it was the only way to get Black Against Empire from the library. (A stranger on Bsky tried to neg me by saying it's weird that I would have preferred to skim the chapters on Marxist theory, and I'm sorry, I think finding Marxist theory boring is a pretty common position.)

TV stats

For the first time, I tracked TV watching via spreadsheet. I can't tell you down to the minute how many hours of TV I watched, but I watched 69 different series (nice), most in English and most made in the United States.

( Every book I read in 2024 )

( Every TV series watched in 2024 )

comments

The end of year fandom meme

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 22:55:02 GMT

1. Your main fandom of the year?

Still Star Trek, my friends. It doesn't deserve my love, but it has it.

2. Your favorite film watched this year?

Dune Part Two. I really appreciated how it delved deep into the stuff that Lynch's film had to skip: Paul's rise as a ~~terrorist~~ freedom fighter, the Bene Gesserit's plans, Jessica's manipulations. It wasn't a perfect film, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

3. Your favorite book read this year?

I'll get to my annual book post in a few days, but roughly by category:

Contemporary mystery: Listen for the Lie by Amy Tintera. The murder of the heroine's best friend is the subject of a true crime podcast, and after all these years, she is still the number one suspect in the eyes of the world.

YA: The Fire Keeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley. A thriller set in the Indigenous community of Michigan.

Non-Fiction: Flying Blind: The 737-Max Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison, Challenger: A true story of heroism and disaster on the edge of space by Adam Higginbotham, and Character Limit: How Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by Kate Conger and Ryan Mac. These books have a lot in common, starting with "actually, this is sort of Ronald Reagan's fault".

4. Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

The Great Impersonator by Halsey. I was only peripherally aware of Halsey as a performer, but I heard she had an album coming out where she paid tribute to a lot of iconic acts, including PJ Harvey, Tori Amos and Bjork. As someone who was a teenager in the '90s, I was intrigued. I expected a cover album, but instead it's a series of pastiches as Halsey draws on her inspirations as she writes about being treated for leukemia and the possibility of dying young.

Not every homage is effective, but it's overall a really strong album, and it really spoke to me as I dealt with my own health issues.

5. Your favorite TV show of the year?

Star Trek: Prodigy, my beloved. After season 1, I was going around saying it's the objectively best Star Trek since DS9; after season 2, other people were saying it as well. And they were correct. I know it's heavily pushed in fandom as "Star Trek: Janeway" or a sequel to Voyager, and it is that, but I think that does a disservice to a series which very much stands on its own, and understands that obscure references and fan service are meaningless unless you're also telling a good story that's about the new characters.

6. Your favorite online community of the year?

I'm in a Discord community that started as a space for fans of Admiral Cornwell, and now we just mostly hang out and chill.

7. Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

I belatedly learned there's a new TV adaptation of PD James's Adam Dalgliesh mysteries, with three seasons of six episodes each, and I love the choices it makes. The books spanned the 1960s to the early 2000s, but Dalgliesh concentrates the stories in the 1970s, with the crumbling of the social contract and Thatcher slouching towards Downing Street.

I think it's fair -- if not overly generous -- to say that James was a reactionary and rather conservative author, and the TV series makes a lot of choices she would have utterly hated: lots of characters of colour, overt queerness where she used subtext (and a strong air of distaste), emphasis on Dalgliesh as a man who is accepted by establishment figures because he is white and educated, but who holds himself at a distance.

The best choice it makes is casting a mixed race actress as Kate Miskin. Kate is introduced in the later books as a working class cop with a chip on her shoulder about her education, because she feels her schools spent too much time teaching that racism is bad, rather than actually educating her. Obviously this is James's bugbear. When I last reread the books, in the mid-2000s, I was like, "Either Kate is incredibly racist, or she is Black and didn't need to be told that racism is bad." And so I headcanoned her as Black. Clearly the people behind the TV series felt the same way, and the writing is nuanced enough that this doesn't feel like simple colourblind casting with no eye to subtext.

The downside is that now I ship Kate/Dalgliesh, even though the series has made it clear it's not going there in any meaningful way. Such is life.

Bonus entry: Dune: Prophecy. I do not know if it is actually good -- the first act of the first episode is actively bad -- but it spoke to me on a profound level even before a stout, middle-aged woman was Touched By Destiny.

8. Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

The fifth and final season of Star Trek: Lower Decks. I very quickly went from "it's a shame Lower Decks was cancelled, but five seasons is a good run" to "Lower Decks should have been cancelled sooner, actually." Season five felt formless and half-baked. Mariner barely had an arc; Tendi was out of character; Rutherford was hardly in it at all. Only Boimler got coherent and consistent character development, and it was predictable at every turn. It was giving burnout in a really sad way. Fortunately the coda to the final episode was so delightful that it almost made up for everything which had gone before, so Lower Decks didn't go out on a wholly sour note for me.

9. Your fandom boyfriend of the year?

If you are in fandom long enough, a Callum Keith Rennie character will be assigned to you.

I know some people were miffed that Discovery introduced a new white man in its final season, gave him a lot of screen time and fans went gaga for it. And I totally get that. I am not proud of who I became when Rayner turned up.

But Discovery needed him. I know I always rail against fans who can't tell the difference between a found family and a cult, but the Discovery crew are absolutely a cult, and the show really benefited from having a guy walk in and go, "Oh no, all this emotional honesty and openness and mutual respect is freaking me out. Please don't make me open up to you. I will completely support you, but I will be a grumpy bastard while I do it."

And he's a fantastic foil for Michael, given that he's where she was in season 1: demoted, roiling with trauma and anger and desperation to please. I don't precisely ship Michael/Rayner, but I absolutely believe he is in love with her. I feel like if we had gotten a sixth season, we would have gotten a lot more stuff about the Breen, Rayner's trauma, and probably more Primarch Tahal. (Speaking of people I definitely don't ship Rayner with, but actually I do.)

Bonus boyfriend: Chakotay, but only in the Prodigy episodes where he's bearded and has his forearms out.

Look, the animators knew what they were doing. Does he look like Robert Beltran? Uh, no. Do I care? Also no.

I have to give Prodigy props overall for taking Voyager's worst character and making him complex and compelling, but they really missed a trick when they let him shave and put a proper shirt on.

Honorary mentions: Lucanis, Daniel Dae Kim as Fire Lord Ozai.

10. Your fandom girlfriend of the year?

Give it up for Valya and Tula Harkonnen!

Yes, they're running a eugenics cult, they've killed a lot of people, they have lied and manipulated and don't intend to stop until they've engineered themselves a Timothée Chalamet. But have you considered: I love them.

11. Your biggest squee moment of the year?

Rayner takes the chair. Michael Burnham gets her happy ending. The announcement that Tilly will be a recurring character in Starfleet Academy. Wesley Crusher in Prodigy.

12. The most missed of your old fandoms?

Sometimes I look in on Doctor Who and miss feeling excited about it. I assume that day will come again, but these things are cyclical.

13. The fandom you haven't tried yet, but want to?

I bought Fallout 4 for Xbox two years ago, and I still haven't cracked it open!

14. Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

This is going to be my entire personality for the foreseeable future and I will not apologise.

comments

Drive-by podcast rec: No Gods No Mayors

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 21:37:17 GMT

In which three friends (two trans women and the cis man they lovingly bully) sit down to talk about every mayor ever.

I got into it via their episode on Darryn Lyons, former mayor of Geelong (accurately described in the episode as Australia's New Jersey), then listened to their episodes on Rudy Giuliani and Rob Ford, and then signed up to their Patreon for the second halves of their episodes on Giuliani and Ford. (I do not love this release model, but at the same time, the paywalled episodes are EXTREMELY worth it. I've linked straight to the Patreon, not least because they don't seem to have a website beyond it, and linking to an RSS feed is annoying.)

As a person who enjoys politics, petty corruption and shenanigans, this is very much the podcast for me; the running gag about Rob Ford being the Kwizatz Haderach of bad mayors makes me think it is also the podcast for sabotabby. I'm going through the backlog, and next after Boris Johnson is Eric Adams, and my. body. is. ready.

comments

I got a bad grade in ankle

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 21:44:01 GMT

Hey, remember how I sprained my ankle on Easter Sunday, and then slipped over and broke the same ankle a few weeks later?

That's the sort of thing that makes doctors sit up and take notice, so I was given a referral for an MRI ("only" $350!) and an appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon in October.

I went into the surgeon appointment expecting that I would have to advocate for myself -- I even made a little resume for my ankle, highlighting its main achievements and key medical history. The surgeon did find this somewhat useful, but as far as he was concerned, there was no question that I require reconstruction surgery. His findings:

ligament damage
cartilage damage
synovial fluid leakage
probably tiny fragments of bone floating around which are too small for the MRI to detect, but which may explain the clicking feeling inside my ankle when I move it

So I'm now on the waiting list for surgery, which I am assured is less than six months. It will entail:

an overnight stay in hospital
2-3 small incisions
the surgeon will repair my ligament, smooth the joint and clear out any debris, and will also add an extra redundant ligament ("I am going to treat you like an athlete," he said, which is very funny because there is no one less athletic than me) (it only later occurred to me that I should have asked more questions about this extra ligament, like where does it come from, what is it made of, and is it likely to need replacement)
two weeks with no weight-bearing whatsoever; I don't know if I'll be in a cast or a boot for this period
four to six weeks in a boot
six months wearing a lace-up brace and doing physio

I should get at least a month's notice of my surgery date, so I've given work a heads-up that this is going to happen. And now I wait, but I'm bad at waiting, so instead I'm making a list of things I need to organise:

pyjamas (seasonally appropriate so no point buying them now) (I have this thing where I order a new set of PJs every time I hurt my ankle, and so arguably I don't need more, but two weeks in bed...)
do I need to take my CPAP to the hospital
can I take Moopsy to the hospital for emotional support
organise knee scooter hire in advance
organise easy/frozen meals
I don't need a Stanley keg for my room so that I always have ice water on hand ... do I? (no)
books
video games
this is going to be a great time to catch up on 26 seasons of SVU
investigate shoes I can wear with a lace-up brace, because my feet are delicate flowers and for some reason the brace + sneaker combo is very painful
I fear I may end up wearing Crocs for six months
shower chair or stool for bathing

In the meantime, the surgeon would like me to do non-weight-bearing exercise for strength and flexibility, and to lose weight if possible. He particularly recommended Pilates as a solution to my OTHER foot problem (plantar fasciitis), and he was right, 30 minutes of reformer pilates did more for that problem than the podiatrist-recommended calf stretches I've been doing all year. Otherwise, I'm on the stationary bike. Did you know the Amazon Prime app lets you download stuff and watch it ad-free, even if your subscription level normally has ads? One episode of SVU makes for a pretty solid workout.

comments

Anyway, I've been reading books

Sat, 10 Aug 2024 01:51:14 GMT

I actually just finished my 86th book of the year, which sounds impressive until you remember that a few months ago I sprained my ankle, and then I broke it, and then I got covid. I had a lot of time to lie around reading, is what I'm saying.

Anyway, I fell out of the habit of talking about my books here, because I already keep a spreadsheet and a paper reading journal, but here are some highlights, and also lights.

We Didn't Think It Through by Gary Lonesborough

Lonesborough is a gay Aboriginal man who writes YA about Aboriginal boys being complicated and messy and screwing up. He's a super important voice in local YA, and one who is actually read by teens. This is his second book, about a boy who steals the local white bully's car and goes for a joyride that ends up with the hero in juvie. How do you come of age and become a man when you're in prison? And what kind of man will you be?

I enjoyed this a lot, but -- as someone who is on the record as being against verse novels and against the causes of verse novels -- I think it needed more poetry. The protagonist is very much steeped in hip hop (he listens to Kendrick, as opposed to the white bully, who turns out to be a secret Bieber fan; if this book had been written just a year later, I think Bieber would have been swapped for Drake) and the classic Aboriginal folk and country music that his family listens to; a youth worker in prison turns him onto poetry. It's pretty clear that the publisher couldn't get the rights to quote the poems that become important to the hero, which is a real shame, but also I would have appreciated more of the hero's own poetic voice.

The F Team by Rawah Arja

You know how I'm always complaining that current YA doesn't give its characters space to be messy or hold bad opinions without stopping to reassure the reader that it's okay, they'll learn better? This book does not have that problem. I wanted to gently take the hero and his friends aside and go, "Boys, I'm gonna need you to be less antisemitic." Which kind of goes with the territory when you're reading a book about a group of Lebanese-Australian yoofs and their misadventures as they try -- initially half-heartedly -- to save their school (which is a real school, and its Wikipedia page is a trip) from closure.

When I was very small, my family lived in Sydney for a few years, and my class at my first school was almost 2/3 Lebanese-Australians. So I picked this up on a whim at the library, skimmed a few pages and was immediately transported back to my youth -- Arja has a great ear for dialogue and subtle class differences, as the boys come in contact with the more privileged boys of the Shire, and also earn the respect of the local teenage girls. It's a sports book in the most classic sense, but very enjoyable. And yes, the boys do learn to be less antisemitic as they help their new Jewish frenemy deal with the death of his father.

Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

Climbing Mount Everest seems to be a bad idea and no one should do it. But this was incredibly compelling, and I understand why it's a classic.

Flying Blind: The 737-MAX Tragedy and the Fall of Boeing by Peter Robison

I'm slightly ashamed of reading about air disasters the same way I'm slightly ashamed of listening to true crime podcasts, although at least no one has decided that all plane nerds are sending love letters to Boeing. (Probably because the stereotypical plane nerd is a bloke, although the world's leading air disaster blogger is a trans woman.)

Anyway, I also love a business disaster, and obviously Boeing provides both in spades. This was very interesting, very humane, not too heavy on the physics, and I kind of wish I hadn't read it a few weeks before I'm due to fly to New Zealand on a Boeing 737.

The entire Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins

I don't think I've reread the first trilogy since Mockingjay came out, and it holds up really well -- although it has a lot more telling-not-showing than current YA, which has massively ballooned in size since the 2010s. Overall my opinions of the books are unchanged since my first read (Mockingjay in particular needed extra time for revisions, and I salute Collins for extracting herself from the "put out a book a year" treadmill, which obviously doesn't suit her writing), but I was struck by how perception of Katniss as a character has drifted away from the actual content of the books. I see a lot of people talk about her as a straightforward Strong Female Character, where it would be more accurate to say that each book leaves her progressively more broken and traumatised. Like, she spends two-thirds of Mockingjay passively watching and/or having trauma naps because she cannot cope with reality. Which doesn't make for compelling reading, but also isn't the uncomplicated heroine behaviour some readers complain of.

Anyway, I learned in the course of my reread that Collins lives in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, and suddenly her urge to keep returning to this universe made sense.

The Firekeeper's Daughter and Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley

Two historical novels (one set in the 1990s, the other in 2014, I'm sorry, let's all take a moment to feel old) about teenage First Nations girls in Michigan. They're connected -- the heroine of the second is the niece of the first book's narrator -- and really amazing. Probably my favourite reads of 2024 so far. Both are essentially YA crime novels, but the first book deals with drugs, and in particular the impact of meth; the second deals with stolen First Nations artefacts and bodies.

The big trigger warning is that the first book includes a sexual assault on the heroine. It's rough! But also earned? I tore through these books in a couple of days, and at this point will read anything Boulley puts out.

comments

AO3 meme

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 22:57:54 GMT

I nicked this from beatrice_otter!

1. What rating do you write most of your fics under?

General Audiences by a long shot ... but I have a second account for anything rated E. Which isn't much, but I split it out a few years ago on account of being An Aspiring Author Of Works For Young Readers, and will at some stage get around to archive-locking those fics.

2. What are your top three fandoms?

Doctor Who
Legend of Korra
Avatar: the Last Airbender

This may come as a surprise to the people who know me as A Star Trek Person, but quite a lot of my Discovery fics are over on the other account. Discovery, at 17 fics, is tied with Harry Potter in fourth place -- and I think I've actually written more HP fics, I just stopped importing them to AO3 because *waves hands at JKR ruining everything*
3. What is the top character you write about?

Super embarrassing, turns out it's the Tenth Doctor. But that's because I tended to ship him with female characters I was obsessed with, so let me note that Lin Beifong and Romana are tied for second place, and then Martha Jones and Katrina Cornwell are tied for third.

(I do not ship Lin or Katrina with the Tenth Doctor, I think they'd both very quickly get fed up with him.)

4. What are the top three pairings you write about?

Okay, this one shocked me.

Mai/Zuko (that makes sense! I wrote a lot for those two!)
Lin Beifong/Tenzin (sure!)
Sherlock Holmes/Mary Russell (this is embarrassing)

Because I tend to fixate on a character and then multiship them, my pairing stats tend to be a bit more diffuse than character stats.
5. What are the top three additional tags?

Crack (does anyone else feel like the use of "crack" to denote silly, non-canonical or absurd pairings or fics might be racially insensitive? Or am I wrong in thinking its origins lie in "this is so silly, I may as well have been smoking crack when I wrote it"?)
Canon Character of Colour (thank you, Avatarverse)
Post-Canon

6. Did any of this surprise you?

Yeah, a male character as my number one most-tagged? Genuinely shocking, and I think I need to write two more Lin Beifong fics so she can take first place.

Actually, if I combined Romanas and included, say, Romana regenerations I made up myself, she's probably safely in the number one spot. BUT NOT OFFICIALLY. So embarrassing.

comments

Finished Star Trek: Prodigy!

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 01:49:09 GMT

I really hate the binge model for things I care about -- the last quarter of the season blurred together, and I'm very glad I'll be rewatching more slowly for Antimatter Pod.

My spoiler-free review is that Prodigy has gone from "the best Trek since DS9" to "the best Trek", but in a way which doesn't negate anything that has come before it. It's standing on the shoulders of giants, and also Star Trek: Picard.

( Spoilers for all 20 episodes behind the cut )

comments

Star Trek: Prodigy is a gift for me personally

Tue, 02 Jul 2024 23:49:45 GMT

( Spoilers for season 2 through to episode 11 )

comments

Anyway, I've been writing fic

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 23:21:20 GMT

So first of all, I am a very simple woman. You give me a grumpy man in a Starfleet uniform roughly a generation older than everyone else, looking at his colleagues and going, "These people have taken their trauma and used it to become more emotionally honest, vulnerable and compassionate people? Sounds fake, can't relate, do not ask me about my feelings" and I will claim him for myself.

Commander Rayner even has the advantage of being actual canon, not just a character I created by extrapolating from the evil mirror universe version we got on screen.

Since Rayner has no canonical love interest, and I can't ship him with Holly Hunter's Starfleet Academy character until she has a name, I had to make my own fun.

Jet Lag (1798 words) by LizBee
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Katrina Cornwell/Rayner
Characters: Katrina Cornwell, Rayner (Star Trek)
Additional Tags: let's pretend Kat was saved in 'Face the Strange' and handwave the physics
Series: Part 1 of 32nd Century Kat

Summary: Kat has been in the 32nd century for ten hours, and she hasn't slept in 900 years. Commander Rayner makes another connection.

Interstitials (760 words) by LizBee
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Katrina Cornwell/Rayner
Characters: Rayner (Star Trek), Katrina Cornwell
Additional Tags: Missing Scenes, Trauma, characters denying until their dying breath that they have trauma
Series: Part 2 of 32nd Century Kat

Summary: Adding some Kat/Rayner missing scenes to a couple of Discovery episodes; or, Rayner does not want to talk about his trauma.

3AM (1903 words) by LizBee
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Star Trek: Discovery
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Katrina Cornwell/Rayner
Characters: Rayner (Star Trek), Katrina Cornwell
Additional Tags: lightly spoilery for the finale, no one in this fic is wearing pants
Series: Part 3 of 32nd Century Kat

Summary: Rayner is haunted by the past. Some conversations are easier to have in the dark

comments

I LIVE

Thu, 06 Jun 2024 04:14:31 GMT

So first of all, if you have a choice about getting covid while already dealing with a broken ankle, I recommend not doing that.

But if you're going to ignore step one, I suggest not going from "I feel a bit tired and rundown" to "I am highly symptomatic and dying" overnight while interstate on a work trip.

For the record, I did a test before I flew home and it was negative, and I was fully be-masked at all times. I thought I just had a mild cold until I re-tested a few hours later when I arrived home. (New conspiracy theory: airport covid tests always come up negative to prevent panic.)

This all happened a month ago; I was only sick for a few days -- highly rate the XBB1.55 vaccine -- and honestly, the extra rest was probably good for my ankle, which is recovering nicely. The main effect has been a flare-up of all my arthritis and general inflammatory issues, so I'm on steroids and steadily eating my way through the universe like a Very Hungry Caterpillar. Suffice to say I've been too busy feeling sorry for myself to keep Dreamwidth updated. But! I've been working very hard on the exercises I was given in physiotherapy, and I can now stand on my bad foot for 30 seconds without falling over!

I've also been maintaining a ~~normal~~ baseline level of obsession with Star Trek: Discovery in its final season, and thinking about Callum Keith Rennie's character like it's my full-time job. If you are in fandom long enough, a CKR character will be assigned to you. I'm not quite ready to start a BSG rewatch, but that's in part because I started watching SVU when I was sick, and I've got, like, 25 seasons of that ahead of me.

comments

Babel by R. F. Kuang

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 01:34:11 GMT

Five days ago, I posted this to Facebook:

'I started Babel by R. F. Kuang yesterday at lunchtime, and I'm now 53% through. It's a 600-page ebook, but I literally could not put it down. I had my iPad propped up on the vanity as I brushed my teeth last night.

HOWEVER. It is possible that is ... I won't say "bad", in fact I think it's very good, but is it maybe a bit overrated? Not as groundbreaking as it's made out to be?

This might just be that I'm a Humanities person and a lot of science fiction and fantasy readers are STEM people. So a book goes, "Hey, did you know the British Empire was bad? HUGE IF TRUE," and that's not really news to me. Like when the MINDBLOWING REVOLUTIONARY CONCEPT of Ancillary Justice was "maybe imperialism is problematic". Guys, I've read Tacitus.

Which is not to say Kuang's worldbuilding and depiction of the British Empire using limited magical resources to consolidate power is bad. I think everything involving translation is brilliant, and she must have done a massive amount of research into a wide range of languages, not to mention linguistic theory. THAT is genuinely remarkable, and I'm deeply impressed by Kuang's imagination.

But there's also sloppiness, and ... I dunno. The book opens with an incredibly defensive foreword by Kuang, defending her right as an American to write about Oxford and highlighting certain ahistorical choices she made. As it happens, "Americans romanticise Oxbridge" is one of the literary genres I despise, which is why I'm only NOW reading Babel, and it's probably unfair of me to complain about such anachronisms as "upperclassman" sneaking in.

I think I'm within my rights, though, to complain about the contemporary dialogue. "I'll bite," says one character, who later goes on to say, "Sometimes, things that are [incredibly specific description] ... are bad." I didn't know they had Tumblr in the 1830s, but here we are.

And the defensiveness of the foreword carries over into the narrative, as if Kuang expects her audience to disagree that racism is bad. The didactic tone is perfect for a book set in the 1830s, but no one likes being scolded.

Having said all this, there's a very, very big space between "this book is outstanding" and "this book is bad, actually". I think Babel is very good, and I'm definitely interested in reading Kuang's fantasy Opium Wars/Chinese Revolution trilogy. But I feel like Babel is more of a B-plus than an A.

(To address the elephant in the room: it is frankly ABSURD that the Hugos Committee decided to toady to the CCP by rendering Babel ineligible for, you know, reasons. Setting aside the ethical issues, Babel's view of history is pretty compatible with the current version favoured by the CCP.)

(One of my friends was like, "Isn't it enough that you can't put it down? Do you need to make a judgement on whether or not it's good or bad?" Look, I have never NOT made a judgement in my life, I'm not starting now!)'

If I were a reviewer scoring Babel, at that 53% point, I'd have given it three and a half to four stars.

Unfortunately, I went on to keep reading, and it comes down to two stars. I second everything in this review, and also note that "the Black woman suffers and suffers and suffers but is also the glue that holds everyone together" is a very specific racial stereotype, and Kuang revels in it.

HOWEVER. I had nothing else to read, but I kept going. I figured I'd finish it on the train home on Thursday evening ... until I slipped on a bit of uneven pavement outside the train station and broke my ankle.

Now, I thought it was sprained. I had suffered a very mild sprain of that ankle ten days earlier, and I thought, "Oh no, this is so embarrassing. I should get an X-ray in case it's an avulsion fracture." And then I hobbled to the train platform (about 500m) and onto the train, and spent 40 minutes blasting music and trying not to cry. Then we pulled into my station and I hobbled another 700m to the urgent care next to the station.

That was all very hard. But I have a high pain threshold. So I collapsed into a chair and waited for triage and pulled out my book.

Spoilers, but Babel has a Tragic Ending. (It's Profound.) And I'm a sucker, so I cried, even though I was also thinking, "This is so manipulative and also not very good."

Have you ever cried in an urgent care? Just like that, the triage nurse cut her break short, gave me a wheelchair, and ensured I was seen quickly. I still had to wait overnight for x-rays, which was a horrible and painful night, but the x-rays the next morning showed a clear fibula fracture, and then the urgent care gave me oxycontin. (Which I haven't needed, but it's nice to be taken seriously.) And now I'm in a moon boot for four to six weeks, not allowed to drive, and peacefully rereading some books that won't let me down.

comments

Some professional writing

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 01:19:07 GMT

Usually I have opinions about Star Trek and fandom for free, but when my friend Alex invited me to contribute to her new journal and offered to pay me, I said yes, and proceeded to go on a very long rant about bigotry among Trekkies. Then I went back and cut some of the more vibes-based tangents, double checked all my sources, and here we are:

The Diversity Paradox - Star Trek, Star Trek fandom, and the limits of fandom as progressivism

If I may toot my own horn a little louder, I'm particularly proud of this section:

You might say, “Don’t read the comments.” And that’s fair—but fandom is the comments section.

We’re all here because we looked at a creative work and went, “I love that/I hate that/I have complex feelings I need to explore/I need to know what happens next and I want to discuss all the possibilities/I need to find out minute details about every single starship that appeared on screen/I will actually die if these fictional characters don’t kiss/a combination of some or all of these feelings.” Fandom is more than the act of consumption. Fandom is in the creation that follows, whether that’s through a fan fiction or art, or reviews, or essays, or the conversations between strangers that take place online.

In “Balance of Terror”, Kirk tells a prejudiced crewman to keep his bigotry in his quarters. It’s a snappy line that fits neatly into a single animated gif, so it’s frequently rolled out by fans as a “solution” to the problem of bigotry in fandom. But very few people identify as a bigot, especially in Star Trek fandom. Karen Q. Fangirl isn’t going, “I have a terrible problem with misogynoir, I really hate Black women,” she’s saying, “Look, I just think Michael Burnham and Raffi Musiker and Beckett Mariner don’t belong in Starfleet.” Just as her mother, thirty years ago, complained that Benjamin Sisko was there to serve political correctness, and anyway, isn’t he just too angry to be a good leader? And just as her grandmother wrote Kirk/Spock stories in which Uhura simply did not appear.

“Don’t read the comments/don’t engage with the bigots/keep your bigotry in your quarters” just cedes the room to the noisiest and worst people in fandom. As a solution to the problem, it’s as intellectually and morally lazy as the multiple episodes of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds which posit that the torture of children of colour is a necessary sacrifice to maintain a thriving utopia.

comments

Star Trek: Discovery eps 5.01 and 5.02

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 20:56:19 GMT

Disappointed as I was when it was announced that Discovery would end with season 5, I'm eight eps into Star Trek: Voyager's sixth season for my blog (only the premiere has actually been posted so far, because I like to have a cushion), and maybe we're better off letting Discovery end before it gets as stale and tired as Voyager was by this stage. There's a lot to be said for short seasons in terms of how they don't leave cast and crew visibly burned out and over it.

Anyway, these are just some freeform notes which I shall attempt to express more coherently when I record the podcast tomorrow.

( Spoilers for 'Red Directive' and 'Under the Twin Moons' )

comments

Star Trek: Discovery season 5 poster icons

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 23:01:31 GMT

Paramount dropped four new posters to promote Disco's fifth and final (sob) season, and I love them so much, it was suddenly 2008 and I had to make DW icons, if only because it's shocking that I don't already have a Captain Burnham icon.

(The problem with 100x100 icons these days is that screens are so large and the icons are so small.)

Anyway, I just threw these into Canva and moved them around, so feel free to make other changes if your heart desires.

comments