books, politics, fandom, chatter!
Monday, 29 August 2011 01:21![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
extemporally1. So, we had an election! Another one, I mean. Unfortunately the dude I didn't want to get elected got elected, instead of the awesome progressive dude (yeah, they're all dudes) who said stuff about how he supported equal rights for LGBT people, women and racial minorities and also spoke out against the Internal Security Act. Well I guess that's... life? I stayed up till 1.30 AM or something RIDICULOUS last night, but they were recounting the votes (it was a really thin margin) and the result only came out at 3.
I mean, given that Singapore runs on the British parliamentary system electing a President is basically sort of like electing a figurehead monarch, but still. I would enjoy a figurehead monarch who says stuff about how he would have "no discrimination". >:(
2. I watched the new Doctor Who! I... am really massively uncomfortable with the reduction of Hitler to some cheap punchline; the themes Steven Moffat threw up were kind of interesting ("Time travel has responsibilities" - and how do you punish dead people?) but treated kind of shoddily, I thought. I liked Mels, who was badass but suffered from way too little screentime, and I was totally slow in that I didn't get that she was River Song until she got shot. Also, huge props to Alex Kingston for hitting the notes of "young and brainwashed and manic but still River Song" just right. Every so often I kind of want to watch her episodes in reverse.
Because I am dead in the soul, I did not actually enjoy watching the Doctor stagger around being incapacitated. Still love Amy, but also still massively discomfited (I am probably just going to use this phrase over and over again for things I can't articulate so well) by the way a lot of fandom seems to give Steven Moffat a pass on his ladyissues (River Song: "I'm gonna weigh myself!" O HELL NO) by virtue of the fact that he's not RTD. (I mean - I actually do think that RTD isn't given enough credit for writing awesome women, despite his numerous other failings in that same respect.)
3. I realise this will not be a super big deal to those of you who churn out 100,000 word epics on a regular basis, but the Oxford AU is currently at 27,000 words and thus not just one of the longest things I've ever written, but the longest thing, period. It's been... interesting. Admittedly a lot of that story is "banter and they do some stuff, idk, and are really busy and also I try to fit in lots of random people including Matt Smith and Karen Gillan" which results in me not really being able to control the timeline as much as I'd like, but!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
oddishly has been a BRILLIANT cheerleader and a brilliant beta and lets me email her with stuff like, "tense changes augh" and "yay 23,000 words!!!" She is PRETTY GREAT, if you didn't know.
4. Other fannish shenanigans I've been getting up to lately: notficced about a Jesse/Andrew/Emma threesome. Sadly, I'm probably not going to be able to write it out to my satisfaction, but like I said here, I kind of really enjoy thinking about the private-public intersection of a poly relationship, especially given that they're all famous. How would you even present or hide that from the world? etc.
5. Also, I just bookmarked this interview of Emma Stone, which is really interesting and also essential, I find, in the sense that when you enter a given fandom it's always really hard to find a stock narrative for female characters, especially in RPF. I mean, Jesse Eisenberg is obviously "neurotic cat lady trapped in a Hollywood actor's body", A. Garfield (much love to him) is, "manic dude who is socially capable yet somehow in love with Jesse", and Emma is... "bright and chirpy and also hilarious". ??? I don't know. Anyway:
6. I also just got an iPhone! I kind of need ideas for what kinds of Apps I should have - my mother wants me to get Viber, and I have a vague inkling that Whatsapp is The thing to have, but beyond that I have absolutely no idea. Does anyone feel like sharing?
7. I have not been reading, or reviewing, books to any degree of consistency lately. Have a couple of rushed reviews:
Weetzie Bat,
Witch Baby,
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys,
Missing Angel Juan, &
Baby Be-Bop, by Francesca Lia Block.
Francesca Lia Block writes well but not in any sense of the word substantially (I'm sorry if this seems a harsh judgment! in my head this seems the best way to articulate it); it makes me wonder what her poetry would be like if she wrote it. I especially enjoyed Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby; Cherokee was kind of underwhelming which was kind of a disappointment.
(This is the part where I diverge into a whole thing where I've been following the (renewed) fandom debates over the currency of the term "strong female characters"; and I think it rings through in a lot of ways in the sense that they're always kind of feisty, outspoken, etc etc in that way. And obviously there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Can I just say though - as someone who was the exact opposite of that growing up it sure would have been refreshing and important to read stories about quiet girls, lazy girls, girls who are stupid in some way or another while being brilliant in others - etc. To me Cherokee kind of just hits the spot in the sense that she's this quiet, ordinary girl living in an absolutely bonkers sort of family and has to deal with an attention-grabbing half-sister, but FLB kind of let me down in the sense that I didn't feel like she lived up to her narrative potential.)
... anyway. Again, I have no soul but I remember finding the premise of Missing Angel Juan impossibily cheesy, and Baby Be-Bop was kind of amazing because of Dirk. The end.
Bloomability, by Sharon Creech | Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall In Love, by Maryrose Wood | High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby | Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, by Leslie T. Chang | The Boy Next Door, by Irene Sabatini | Singapore Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the 21st Century, edited by William S.W. Lim, Sharon Siddique, & Tan Dan Feng | The Frenzy, by Francesca Lia Block | Goodnight Mister Tom, by Michelle Magorian | The Spirit Catches You And Then You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman | Saraswati Park, by Anjali Joseph | Eston, by Stella Kon | Rape: A Love Story, by Joyce Carol Oates | Rice Bowl, by Suchen Christine Lim | The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell | Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan | Miss Seetoh in the World, by Catherine Lim | Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee | Jointly & Severably, by Eleanor Wong | Wills & Secession, by Eleanor Wong | Mergers & Accusations, by Eleanor Wong | GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singaporean Poetry & Prose, edited by Ng Yi-Sheng | Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier | Gone Case, by Dave Chua | Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell | The Waters & the Wild, by Francesca Lia Block | Growing Up: Getting Along in the Sixties, by Tisa Ng | Oreo, by Fran Ross | Caucasia, by Danzy Senna | Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, by Owen Jones | Racism: A Very Short Introduction | Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter | Feminism: A Very Short Introduction, by Margaret Waters | A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin | Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean | Sons of the Yellow Emperor, by Lynn Pan | Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People, by Katharine Quarmby | Tipping The Velvet, by Sarah Waters | Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro | The Lantern Bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Silver Branch, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli | Brick Lane, by Monica Ali | The Savage Detectives, by Robert Bolano | Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell | Cat On A Hot-Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams | Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson | The Moon By Night, by Madeleine L'Engle | To Live, by Yu Hua | Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer | The Next Competitor, by K.P. Kincaid | Raffles Place Ragtime, by Phillip Jeyaretnam | Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, by Frances Mayes | Mao's Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin | Marie, Dancing, by Carolyn Meyer | Man Walks Into A Room, by Nicole Krauss | How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby
I mean, given that Singapore runs on the British parliamentary system electing a President is basically sort of like electing a figurehead monarch, but still. I would enjoy a figurehead monarch who says stuff about how he would have "no discrimination". >:(
2. I watched the new Doctor Who! I... am really massively uncomfortable with the reduction of Hitler to some cheap punchline; the themes Steven Moffat threw up were kind of interesting ("Time travel has responsibilities" - and how do you punish dead people?) but treated kind of shoddily, I thought. I liked Mels, who was badass but suffered from way too little screentime, and I was totally slow in that I didn't get that she was River Song until she got shot. Also, huge props to Alex Kingston for hitting the notes of "young and brainwashed and manic but still River Song" just right. Every so often I kind of want to watch her episodes in reverse.
Because I am dead in the soul, I did not actually enjoy watching the Doctor stagger around being incapacitated. Still love Amy, but also still massively discomfited (I am probably just going to use this phrase over and over again for things I can't articulate so well) by the way a lot of fandom seems to give Steven Moffat a pass on his ladyissues (River Song: "I'm gonna weigh myself!" O HELL NO) by virtue of the fact that he's not RTD. (I mean - I actually do think that RTD isn't given enough credit for writing awesome women, despite his numerous other failings in that same respect.)
3. I realise this will not be a super big deal to those of you who churn out 100,000 word epics on a regular basis, but the Oxford AU is currently at 27,000 words and thus not just one of the longest things I've ever written, but the longest thing, period. It's been... interesting. Admittedly a lot of that story is "banter and they do some stuff, idk, and are really busy and also I try to fit in lots of random people including Matt Smith and Karen Gillan" which results in me not really being able to control the timeline as much as I'd like, but!
oddishly has been a BRILLIANT cheerleader and a brilliant beta and lets me email her with stuff like, "tense changes augh" and "yay 23,000 words!!!" She is PRETTY GREAT, if you didn't know.4. Other fannish shenanigans I've been getting up to lately: notficced about a Jesse/Andrew/Emma threesome. Sadly, I'm probably not going to be able to write it out to my satisfaction, but like I said here, I kind of really enjoy thinking about the private-public intersection of a poly relationship, especially given that they're all famous. How would you even present or hide that from the world? etc.
5. Also, I just bookmarked this interview of Emma Stone, which is really interesting and also essential, I find, in the sense that when you enter a given fandom it's always really hard to find a stock narrative for female characters, especially in RPF. I mean, Jesse Eisenberg is obviously "neurotic cat lady trapped in a Hollywood actor's body", A. Garfield (much love to him) is, "manic dude who is socially capable yet somehow in love with Jesse", and Emma is... "bright and chirpy and also hilarious". ??? I don't know. Anyway:
“Do you know Jesse Eisenberg and I both had our first panic attack at 8?” she says. “We found that out on ‘Zombieland’ and bonded immediately. But yeah, I had separation anxiety, I worried my house was going to burn down, I was wringing my hands all the time, and so my parents took me to a therapist. And so I was figuring things out and something happened where I just thought, okay, all right, I want to act.”
6. I also just got an iPhone! I kind of need ideas for what kinds of Apps I should have - my mother wants me to get Viber, and I have a vague inkling that Whatsapp is The thing to have, but beyond that I have absolutely no idea. Does anyone feel like sharing?
7. I have not been reading, or reviewing, books to any degree of consistency lately. Have a couple of rushed reviews:
Weetzie Bat,
Witch Baby,
Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys,
Missing Angel Juan, &
Baby Be-Bop, by Francesca Lia Block.
Francesca Lia Block writes well but not in any sense of the word substantially (I'm sorry if this seems a harsh judgment! in my head this seems the best way to articulate it); it makes me wonder what her poetry would be like if she wrote it. I especially enjoyed Weetzie Bat and Witch Baby; Cherokee was kind of underwhelming which was kind of a disappointment.
(This is the part where I diverge into a whole thing where I've been following the (renewed) fandom debates over the currency of the term "strong female characters"; and I think it rings through in a lot of ways in the sense that they're always kind of feisty, outspoken, etc etc in that way. And obviously there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Can I just say though - as someone who was the exact opposite of that growing up it sure would have been refreshing and important to read stories about quiet girls, lazy girls, girls who are stupid in some way or another while being brilliant in others - etc. To me Cherokee kind of just hits the spot in the sense that she's this quiet, ordinary girl living in an absolutely bonkers sort of family and has to deal with an attention-grabbing half-sister, but FLB kind of let me down in the sense that I didn't feel like she lived up to her narrative potential.)
... anyway. Again, I have no soul but I remember finding the premise of Missing Angel Juan impossibily cheesy, and Baby Be-Bop was kind of amazing because of Dirk. The end.
Bloomability, by Sharon Creech | Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall In Love, by Maryrose Wood | High Fidelity, by Nick Hornby | Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China, by Leslie T. Chang | The Boy Next Door, by Irene Sabatini | Singapore Shifting Boundaries: Social Change in the 21st Century, edited by William S.W. Lim, Sharon Siddique, & Tan Dan Feng | The Frenzy, by Francesca Lia Block | Goodnight Mister Tom, by Michelle Magorian | The Spirit Catches You And Then You Fall Down, by Anne Fadiman | Saraswati Park, by Anjali Joseph | Eston, by Stella Kon | Rape: A Love Story, by Joyce Carol Oates | Rice Bowl, by Suchen Christine Lim | The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell | Renaissance Singapore? Economy, Culture, and Politics, edited by Kenneth Paul Tan | Miss Seetoh in the World, by Catherine Lim | Free Food for Millionaires, by Min Jin Lee | Jointly & Severably, by Eleanor Wong | Wills & Secession, by Eleanor Wong | Mergers & Accusations, by Eleanor Wong | GASPP: A Gay Anthology of Singaporean Poetry & Prose, edited by Ng Yi-Sheng | Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier | Gone Case, by Dave Chua | Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell | The Waters & the Wild, by Francesca Lia Block | Growing Up: Getting Along in the Sixties, by Tisa Ng | Oreo, by Fran Ross | Caucasia, by Danzy Senna | Chavs: The Demonisation of the Working Class, by Owen Jones | Racism: A Very Short Introduction | Modern China: A Very Short Introduction, by Rana Mitter | Feminism: A Very Short Introduction, by Margaret Waters | A Game of Thrones, by George R. R. Martin | Tam Lin, by Pamela Dean | Sons of the Yellow Emperor, by Lynn Pan | Scapegoat: Why We Are Failing Disabled People, by Katharine Quarmby | Tipping The Velvet, by Sarah Waters | Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro | The Lantern Bearers, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Silver Branch, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Eagle of the Ninth, by Rosemary Sutcliff | The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald, edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli | Brick Lane, by Monica Ali | The Savage Detectives, by Robert Bolano | Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell | Cat On A Hot-Tin Roof, by Tennessee Williams | Flapper: A Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz | Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson | The Moon By Night, by Madeleine L'Engle | To Live, by Yu Hua | Into The Wild, by Jon Krakauer | The Next Competitor, by K.P. Kincaid | Raffles Place Ragtime, by Phillip Jeyaretnam | Bella Tuscany: The Sweet Life in Italy, by Frances Mayes | Mao's Last Dancer, by Li Cunxin | Marie, Dancing, by Carolyn Meyer | Man Walks Into A Room, by Nicole Krauss | How To Be Good, by Nick Hornby
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 17:33 (UTC)(And re: feisty/quiet girls: YES. I love strong female characters and it'd be nice to read something where the author realises that you don't have to be outspoken and out-going to be strong.)
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 17:51 (UTC)Won't lie, the app I use most on my iPhone is the Starbucks card. Oh, and I play Bejeweled about 9 hours a day.
I loved feisty girls when I was a teen, and was always excited to read one but I also loved smart and nerdy and competent, which is the "strong female character" type in most of my favorite books.
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 18:02 (UTC)(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 18:06 (UTC)Word and word! I kept WTF-ing at the introduction of this Mels character at this stage of s6 and then she regenerated and I went 'ooooooh!'. Alex Kingston blows my mind.
Other fannish shenanigans I've been getting up to lately: notficced about a Jesse/Andrew/Emma threesome.
Feel free to notfic about them any.time!
Brb reading that Emma Stone interview.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 19:37 (UTC)Yes, yes, yes, this a million times over.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 22:05 (UTC)She is PRETTY GREAT, if you didn't know.
NO U. And on a related note: duuuuuude, I have been busybusy the past couple of days but tomorrow is my penultimate shift at work; if you want to send me what you have up to now then I will continue the rest of that sort-of beta that I started, on Tuesday morning? :D? (A MUTUAL RECOGNITION OF ERROR <3<3<3<3<3)
a lot of fandom seems to give Steven Moffat a pass on his ladyissues (River Song: "I'm gonna weigh myself!" O HELL NO)
YES. YESYES. In particular to the first part about Steven Moffat's get out of jail free card, but also, that stupid line about weighing herself, what the even actual what >:(
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Sunday, 28 August 2011 23:17 (UTC)But overall I enjoyed the episode, yay for big reveals!
(no subject)
From:(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: Wednesday, 31 August 2011 22:13 (UTC)Ugh THIS. Seriously, I couldn't put into words why even the mentioning of the episode title way back when it was mentioned at the beginning of the hiatus bothered me SO MUCH, but that is exactly it. Oh Moffat, why must you complicate my love for DW so?
(no subject)
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