Sarcasm is an adjusted stress reaction.

attackfish tagged me for this meme, and it is EXCELLENT, except I'm way too lazy to do the bit where I make up 10 new questions and tag more people.

1. Favorite place.

I am fond of libraries, book stores and my house, but choosing one specific favourite is HARD.

2. Favorite fanwork you made.

By a very long margin, "The Princess of the Dragon Flats". I mean, I know everyone goes for the one they did most recently, but I was really happy with the way it turned out. My previous longer fics have always dragged in the middle, and while the pace slows at a couple of points, I don't think this actually drags.

Additionally, I've been getting lovely feedback praising my attention to the tropes and nuances of noir and hardboiled detective fiction. This is especially great because my research consisted of: (1) reading a lot of Raymond Chandler in my early teen; and (2) reading a bunch of essays about features common to the less well-known hardboiled detectives. (Which is how I discovered that a considerable portion of such characters have disabilities as a result of WW1. This cemented my plan to make it a story about Lin without her bending, permanently as far as she can see, and also The Thing That Happens At The End.)

(I did just re-read some Chandler while plotting out the possible-sequel-if-I-ever-have-time, and realised that I did make one genre/setting booboo -- Chandler's detectives drive everywhere, and the car is really important to every aspect of the plot and setting. Whereas I have Lin driving very little, and the plot actually depends somewhat on Republic City's public transport systems. Oooops.)

3. Classical novel you wish you never read.

I can't think of any classical novels I regret reading, but I do wish I could wipe my memory and read Pride and Prejudice for the first time again. I was given an abridged and bowdlerised copy when I was about seven, and I've often wondered what it would be like to read the original and not know how it ended.

4. First fandom.

Officially Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I was engaging in fannish behaviour about kids shows and my mother's soap operas for as long as I can remember.

5. Do you collect anything? If so, what?

Postcards? Here in Australia -- this may be universal, IDK -- cafes have stands of free postcards, some of which carry stylish advertising and some of which are art prints. I have a whole box of them, along with the many, many postcards I buy whenever I'm in a museum or art gallery store. One of my vague plans for this weekend is to actually put them on my wall.

6. Favorite book/movie/tv show/whatever you never managed to be fannish for.

There are lots of things I love without feeling fannish, but I guess the big one is the Marvel Movieverse? I like it, I have lots of opinions about it, I very occasionally read fic, but I've never felt compelled to make anything myself, and I often Tumblr save it just because I get tired of the same faces.

7. Favorite season of the year

Spring and autumn!

8. Mountains, or ocean?

Ocean. It's probably an Australian thing, but I don't like living more than an hour's drive from a large body of water.

9. Has there ever been a book/movie/tv show/whatever that was so bad you couldn't stop watching?

The Last Airbender. Man, that was so bad, but it was like a scab I couldn't stop picking. I couldn't seem to stop myself from first ~acquiring it, and then torturing myself by skipping through scenes. (It didn't help that I have a longstanding crush on Dev Patel, and he and Sean Toub were actually doing decent work with terrible writing.)

Finally I persuaded weaverandom to come over and watch it with me, but that kind of backfired, because she was driving, so we couldn't drink. We made it nearly all the way through, but then Yue said, "We need to show the Fire Nation that we believe in our beliefs," and the DVD player just went, "Yeah, nuh" and died.

(Speaking of Yue, Seychelle Gabriel also worked very hard at not being terrible, and it's really depressing how the few actors of colour were so much more talented than the white kids playing whitewashed characters.)

10. Ice cream, cake, or pie?

This is a big call, but while I was in Canada, I came to the conclusion that pie is the best dessert there is.

Of course, then I found out I'm gluten-intolerant, and I've yet to find a GF pie that isn't terrible, but I still stand by my assertion.

And I'm having some feels. (They don't get to be feelings until I can articulate them a bit better.)

If you're interested, I wrote a slightly spoilery account of my reaction over at my shipping Tumblr.

I like this meme a lot, I just don't do it very much because I have enough trouble making time for my monthly round up of books!

What are you reading now?

Re-reading The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner.  violetisblue mentioned buying a copy, and I was overcome with the desire to read the whole series again.

I appreciate how Gen is, as Ambiades puts it, "not exactly stalwart".  He's a great big whinger, and as much as I cringe a bit, I also like that he has no intention of being the Stoic, Brooding Hero. 

I missed the actual get-together, but I put The Thief in my RL book club's hat, and no one liked it.  *shakes head*

What did you just finish reading?

1.  Avatar: the Last Airbender - The Search (part 1) -- actually, I cracked and read a scan last week, but I finally managed to buy the last copy in Melbourne last night, and it turned out the scan had missed a bunch of pages, so there was stuff I hadn't read yet!  IT WAS VERY EXCITING.

Basically, after I read the scan last week, I had feels-related insomnia, and then I had FEELS all the way from Tokyo to Melbourne.  Feels, not feelings, because they weren't articulate enough for that ings.  Mostly they are Ursa feels, but also Zuko and Azula feels, and my usual vague desire to set Ozai on fire.  Although I really like the way Gene Luen Yang writes Ozai and fleshes him out without softening him, like the secret chamber that's full of artifacts from other cultures.  If it was Iroh, you'd think he was interested and wanted to learn, but because it's Ozai, it's more like a serial killer's souvenirs, only his victims are entire cultures. 

I haven't sought out the general fannish reaction, because unjapanologist said it was stupid, and I have enough problems with Doctor Who fandom at the moment.  Remind me to make a post about how not liking a writer's tropes doesn't mean it's okay to decide he's a paedophile. 

2.  Doctor Who/Star Trek: The Next Generation - Assimilation2 -- I accidentally bought volume 2 instead of volume 1, 'cos I'm an idiot.  But I read half of volume 1, so I knew that the Borg and the Cybermen had formed an alliance, and the TARDIS had turned up on the Enterprise-D for wacky crossover shenanigans. 

I found the writing pretty clunky and exposition-heavy -- I strongly feel that if the heart of the TARDIS inhabits Data, that should be a crowning moment of awesome, not an afterthought -- and there was this weird thing where Starfleet officers addressed Amy as "Miss Pond" if she was on her own, but Amy-and-Rory were "Mr and Mrs Williams".  Which mostly takes me back to the time in 2000 when I caused great offence on a mailing list by suggesting that women would have stopped automatically taking their husband's names by the 24th century. 

On the other hand, the art -- hand-painted, although some of the photo references were a bit too identifiable -- was amazing, and completely justified the purchase.  And I would happily buy some of the covers as posters.

What do you expect to read next?

The next three Queen's Thief books, and then I have some more Japanese crime fiction to read.  I didn't love The Devotion of Suspect X, but I'm optimistic!

This week, at the behest of suburbannoir, I started watching Breaking Bad.  (We have a thing where I watch one of her favourite shows, she watches one of mine, etc.  Last year I watched The Wire for her, and she watched Babylon 5 for me.  SHUT UP, THEY ARE TOTALLY COMPARABLE.)

Anyway, I'm only four episodes in, but it's the internet, I've seen pictures from future seasons and whatnot, and I already know that Skyler is the very worst character in the history of storytelling (on account of how she's a woman, and has opinions, and expects to be treated with respect, as far as I can tell), and according to The Guardian, the whole show shamefully appropriates the drug culture of people of colour (and only PoC) and turns it into a white middle class fantasy, and worse, isn't even an accurate depiction of the meth industry! 

(Which I can vouch for.  I've transcribed cases involving meth cooks and users, and either way, the transcript tends to come out looking like this:

SUSPECT:   ...(INAUDIBLE)... fuckin' ...(INAUDIBLE)... cuntin' ...(INAUDIBLE)... fuck - - -

And let me tell you, I am SHOCKED and APPALLED that television, of all media, would enhance the truth.)

The actual point, however, of this post is this:



Yep. Good luck getting that one out of your head!  And don't do meth.  It's legit nasty.

I got the BEST white_lotus assignment. I've been walking around for a week or so thinking, "Man, there really needs to be more [INSERT THING HERE]. Why doesn't that happen, except for [INSERT REASONS WHY FANDOM OVERLOOKS AWESOME WOMEN]? Oh wow, I have actual ideas! I could write that if I had ANY TIME EVER! I shouldn't commit myself to anything new when white_lotus is coming up and I have a fic to edit and a WiP to complete, and also a novel. Oh well!"

And then my assignment came, and it was all, "Oh, Liz, you should totally write [INSERT THING HERE]! It's so great, Liz. You're so great."

(That last bit probably didn't actually happen.)

Now I get to write [INSERT THING HERE]! ...just as soon as I get my Christmas parcels mailed (LAST MINUTE EXPRESS!), and my new computer system sorted (WINDOWS 8, YOU ARE PRETTY, BUT YOU ARE DUMB) and my 40 gig of music put in order. Oh yeah, that involves figuring out iTunes 11. What the hell, Apple, what the hell?

WHITE LOTUS AW YIIIIIEAH.

Is not yet released in Australia (which is weird, since the first two came out bang on time), but there are scans here. And I'm in the minority, though with rather good company, since I agree with Racebending that that was pretty great. In fact, their review is pretty much my thoughts all over, especially their framing of the Gaang as former child soldiers. It covers pretty heavy ground for a comic aimed at children and skewed slightly younger than the series itself, and does it quite well. Naturally, therefore, fandom hates it and is calling for Gene Luen Yang to be fired/assaulted/etc.

(Tumblr, man.)

( Spoilery stuff about Zuko and Mai; TL;DR everyone is wrong. )

Have reservations re Azula, though; terajk more or less sums up my feelings in general about disability in AtLA and Azula in particular.

A Certain Justice - P D James
The Killing - series 1 and 2: the best of the blog - The Guardian
Death in Holy Orders - P D James
The Murder Room - P D James
A Brief History of Montmaray - Michelle Cooper
The FitzOsbornes in Exile - Michelle Cooper
The FitzOsbornes at War - Michelle Cooper
Among Others - Jo Walton
Fields of Gold - Rachel Swirsky
Messy - Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan
Feed - M T Anderson
Avatar: the Last Airbender - The Promise (part 2) - Gene Luen Yang

Pretty much a mixed bag, but you've already heard my feelings about Among Others!

Definitely the highlight of the month was the Montmaray trilogy by Michelle Cooper. Like Among Others, it's historical fiction written as the diary of a teenage girl. Unlike Among Others, it's actually convincing, which is odd when you consider that the Montmaray trilogy is basically an Enid Blyton adventure with more social realism and gay people. Montmaray is a tiny fictional island kingdom roughly between England and Spain, and as the story opens it has less than ten inhabitants: the royal family and their four servants. Then there are Nazis! And everyone evacuates, and the self-sufficient, rather rough and tumble royals have to assimilate into upper-class English society! Even though the eldest princess is a socialist bluestocking who gets into fights with Oswald Mosley, and the crown prince is gay, and the middle princess is a sweet, clever girl who learned all the right lessons from Machiavelli, and the youngest is a semi-literate tomboy!

I kept reading along, going, "THIS SHOULD BE TERRIBLE! WHY IS IT SO GOOD?" (and it's true that the superficial terribleness of it all kept me from reading it for a couple of years), but I think it works because the main characters are so down to earth and funny, and also, in a world where the Mitford family exists, a ragtag group of minor royals stumbling through the Season and getting into fights with the Windsors seems fairly plausible. I didn't think the mood could be sustained through WW2, and it's true that I kept having to put The FitzOsbornes At War down while I had a little cry, but the story and the ending were very satisfying.

(I should also mention that Cooper is an Australian author, and now I totally have to read her other YA novel, The Rage of Sheep, but also the Montmaray books are available from the Kindle store now, and are being released in hardcopy in the American market with very pretty Cecil Beaton-style covers.)

Other than that, I really enjoyed Messy, which is the follow-up to last year's Spoiled, and has slightly less nutritional value than the chocolate-with-pop-rocks-and-jelly-beans on my desk, but it's terribly fun to read and makes me think of a contemporary Daria.

And, just to go for the minority opinion, I really enjoyed part 2 of "The Promise". ( Spoilers! )

My new favourite review ever, for "Bent", the commentfic where Long Feng brainwashes Azula into domestic marital bliss with the Earth King:

So much better than cannon!

Yes, heaven knows brainwashing and underaged non-consensual marriage is MUCH better than mental illness!

On the other hand, there's also the review that wonders how this could even happen, unless Azula were somehow brainwashed...