raven | Reading

In the gym today, someone was playing music loud enough I could hear it even with my headphones on and a podcast going, and when I turned to her to make a comment about how the Great Big Sea cover of "It's the End of the World as We Know It" managed to be even faster than the original, she did as fake a smile as I've ever seen. Just her lips. Nothing in her eyes.

I'd expected as much, honestly. I'm not at all surprised, except for how she was surprised - but I keep thinking that if she hadn't wanted someone to talk to her about the music, she wouldn't have been playing it so loud.

What's particularly odd is that she was the second person I had a baffling encounter with in that gym: before she arrived, someone quite a bit younger was in there, and I tried to make small talk about her tattoos. She didn't recognize the pigeon's scientific name of columba livia, and when I asked her about a skeletal hand giving a "rock on" horn sign, she didn't know how to take my observation that the slightly exaggerated proportions made me think it was a hand from another primate.

On the plus side, as she lived in Utah for five months, she knew about the radiation survivors - though as she said she was there for "treatment" I don't think she had a particularly enjoyable time there.

Current Mood: confused
Current Music: Suburban War - Arcade Fire

musesfool

I realize I owe replies to comments and I will get to that. Work has just been eating my brain lately and not leaving much leftover.

In the meantime, I bring you two cool links:

- the Superman trailer which looks so good (I also ordered this adorable Superman dress for Baby Miss L); and

- this interview with John DeMarisco, who directs Mets games for SNY (and a cool behind the scenes video here).

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Current Mood: drained
Current Music: Plush - Stone Temple Pilots

isis

Because I was going to do this yesterday, but time is soup.

What I've recently finished reading:

I went back to the Nantucket Trilogy and read the last book, On the Oceans of Eternity by S. M. Stirling, which yay, did deliver on the exploration of the American continent which I complained about in my review of #2. But I think these books could have done with some rearrangement and editing and maybe being four books instead of three, because this was a (virtual) doorstopper, and it still felt as though a few of the threads came to abrupt ends. I mean, I liked it overall, though I did skim battle battle battle battle. And the characterization is pretty minimal - none of these characters are particularly compelling, or distinctive other than by tricks of locution, and the Evil people are Evil and the Good people are Good and Good wins yay. But the characterization of the situation is pretty good, the whole "modern people dropped in the Bronze Age" thing is just great, even if it does strain belief that they have enough intellectual resources and physical skills to make a go of it.

What I've recently listened to:

I recently found out that an acquaintance of mine, a neurologist, started a podcast late last year, and as I wanted to listen to something while running that wasn't politics for a change I picked out an episode from February (there are only nine episodes) that sounded interesting. Stranger Tongues, Stranger Tides is about communication between humans and non-humans; it starts with his own experiences with a scrub jay in his back yard, and moves on to discussions of experiments in communicating with animals, and attempts to communicate with his autistic son, and eventually communication with (possible) aliens and "AI" LLMs.

I really enjoyed it, and I think that if you liked Ed Yong's An Immense World and/or Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series (and especially if you read my post from 2023 about Ezra Klein's interview with Tchaikovsky and their discussion of how his work is an exploration of personhood and AI) you may too. The entire podcast series is available at https://www.significant-podcast.com/ but I just typed Significant into my podcast app and found it that way. I plan on listening to the rest!

troyswann

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petra

The Ithaca Statement on Bisexuality, 1972 made me cry in the good way.

\o/ I appreciate the long-ago Quakers who said, "Actually, bisexuals are valid and get erased by the binary."

In related news, Tumblr has thoughts on the definition of bisexual and pansexual ~~but not really~~.

Current Mood: pretty and witty and not gay
Current Music: And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight

runpunkrun

A City on Mars: Can we settle space, should we settle space, and have we really thought this through?, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith:

The answer is no, by the way. And you can tell that really bums out the Weinersmiths, both of them huge space nerds. They take a serious look at what it would take to establish a permanent settlement in orbit, on the Moon, or on Mars, taking into account human biology and psychology, our current technology, and, crucially, space law.

SPAAAAACE LAWWWW. That was probably my favorite part because it was a totally new field for me and is something we could, and should, adapt to address modern concerns. The Weinersmiths examine international laws and extrapolate how they might set precedence for creating new laws to govern the use and development of space resources, and how they might facilitate—or prevent—settlements or nation building in space. Weirdly, despite their unrelentingly skeptical view of the possibility of settling space, and their opening argument that people are going to people no matter where they are, the Weinersmiths blithely just assume that employers are going to ship their new employees out to space for free, never once raising the threat of indentured servitude, which seems much more likely to me. Instead they treat prospective space colonies as analogous to company towns....except for how you can't leave and someone has to pay for your air. Seems like an area ripe for exploitation. Which they do cover with regards to housing and food and the ability to unionize, but not, you know, human trafficking.

The playful tone and dry humor make this book go down easy, but due to the nature of their argument it has a defensive tone—especially the extensive introduction where they're just like "first of all, no, and for the following reasons"—and I found it a bit draining as it is, in effect, a serious answer to a question no serious person is asking. Of course we can't colonize space right now. We probably won't be able to do it twenty or thirty years from now, which is when Elon Musk predicts a city on Mars with a population of "~1 million." See what I mean about serious people?

I read this not to be convinced of anything, but to gather some science facts to go with my science fiction, and I have done so. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm gonna go read a book with spaceships. Pew pew.

Contains: More Elon Musk than you want; animal experimentation in the name of science; discussions of space cannibalism; ableism and eugenics.

Also: Zach's illustrations are cute and informative in an XKCD sort of way, but not at their best in ebook form, and also speaking of ebooks, the many, many footnotes (end notes, technically) are in a smaller font than the rest of the book which is ridiculous and unnecessary and not something you can fix without also making the body text enormous. What the hell, Cora Wigen. Though Wigen, who adapted this for ebook, did surround the footnote asterisks with square brackets, making them larger targets and improving the chance you'll actually reach the footnote and not just turn the page or bring up a menu or highlight the text. It should be industry standard, but so far the only other place I've seen it is in the Emily Wilde series.

mific in

fancake

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis/Stargate SG1
Characters/Pairings: John Sheppard/Rodney McKay, Teyla Emmagan, Ronon Dex, Elizabeth Weir, Radek Zelenka, Carson Beckett, Jack O'Neill, Daniel Jackson, San Carter, Teal'c, Caroline Lam, Hank Landry
Rating: Teen
Length: 20,335
Content Notes: Disability due to aging, anger, grief and loss.
Creator Links: respoftw on AO3
Themes: Angst with a happy ending, Established relationship, Hurt/comfort, AU: canon divergence

Summary: A canon divergent AU after 'Common Ground'
“We just don’t have the resources or the facilities to care for him here. I wish that circumstances were different, you have no idea how much I wish that, but the fact remains. My medical recommendation is for us to send him back to Earth.”

Rodney refuses to leave John behind.

Reccer's Notes: In this story, John isn't given back his years after they were taken from him in Common Ground by Todd the Wraith, so he's very old and frail. Elizabeth and the Atlantis expedition are shocked when, after they decide to send John back to Earth for care and treatment (and to die), Rodney resigns and goes with him. However, the first obstacle to that is of course John, who half kills himself angrily rejecting Rodney and telling him he doesn't want him to come. The story is about the struggle they both face with John so frail, scared and ashamed, and Rodney, trying to cope while grieving and exhausted - and not too physically well himself. SG1 rally around to help, as do Teyla and Ronon back in Pegasus, and, well, this is the angst with a happy ending tag, after all. An at-times gruelling, but sometimes funny and overall heartwarming read, with great characterisation.

Fanwork Links: Grow Old Without You

skygiants

While on the topic of Genre Mystery I also want to write up Nev Marsh's Murder in Old Bombay, a book marketed and titled as mystery-qua-mystery that I do not think really succeeds as either a mystery or a romance. However! It absolutely nails it as a kind of genre that we don't have as much anymore as a genre but that I really unironically love: picaresque adventure through a richly-realized historical milieu in which our protagonist happens by chance to stumble into, across, around, and through various significant events.

(I said this to

genarti, and she said, 'that kind of book absolutely does still exist,' and okay, true, yes, it does, but it doesn't exist as Genre! it gets published as Literary Fiction and does not proliferate in mass-market paperback and mass-market paperback is where I want to be looking for it.)

Murder in Old Bombay is set in 1892 and focuses on Number One Sherlock Holmes Fan Captain Jim Agnihotri, an Anglo-Indian Orphan of Mysterious Parentage who while convalescing in hospital becomes obsessed with the unsolved murders of two local Parsi women -- a new bride and her teenaged sister-in-law -- who fell dramatically out of a clock tower to their deaths.

Having left the British Army, and finding himself somewhat at loose ends, Captain Jim goes to write an article about the murder and soon finds himself engaged as private detective to the grieving family. In the course of trying to solve the mystery, he falls in love with the whole family -- including and especially but not exclusively the Spirited Young Socialite Daughter -- and also wanders all around India bumping into various Battles, Political Intrigues and High-Tension Situations.

Why do I say the mystery does not work? Well, this is the author's first book, and you can sort of tell in the way the actual clues to the mystery become assembled: a lot of, 'oh, I picked up this piece of paper! conveniently it tells me exactly what I need to know!' and 'I went to the this location and the first person I saw happened to be the person I was looking for, and we fell immediately into conversation and he told me everything!' You know, you can see the strings.

Why do I say the romance does not work? Well, it's the most by-the-numbers relationship in the book ... Diana has exactly all the virtues that you'd expect of a Spirited Young Parsi Socialite from 1892 written in 2020, and lacks all of the vices that you'd expect likewise. Jim thinks she's the bees' knees, but alas! he is a poor army captain of mysterious parentage and class and community divide them. Every time they even come close to actually talking about their different beliefs and prejudices the book immediately pulls back and goes Look! she's so Spirited! It's fine.

However, the portrait of place and time is so rich and fun -- Nev Marsh talks a bit in the afterword about how much the central family and community in question draws on her own family history, and she is clearly having a wonderful time doing it. The setting feels confident in a way that plot doesn't quite, and the setting is unusual and interesting enough to find in an English-language mystery that this goes a long way for me. And, structurally, although the twists involving the Mystery were rarely satisfying to me, I loved it every time historical events came crashing into the plot and forced Captain Jim to stop worrying about the mystery for a few chapters and have some Historical Adventure instead. My favorite portion of the book is the middle part, which he spends collecting a small orphanage's worth of lost children and then is so sad when it turns out most of them do have living parents and he has to give them back. I'm also sad that you had to give the orphans back, Captain Jim.

chestnut_pod

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Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Salvage - Jenny Sturgeon

settiai

In tonight's game, ( the rest under a cut for those who don't care. )

And that's where we left off.

Current Mood: sleepy

celli

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sineala

What I Just Finished Reading

Nothing, but I had a migraine all week.

What I'm Reading Now

Comics Wednesday!

( Doctor Strange of Asgard #3, One World Under Doom #4, Thunderbolts Doomstrike #4, Ultimate Black Panther #16,Ultimate X-Men #15 )

What I'm Reading Next

I should probably start on the Hugo nominees. I am not sure if I will have the brain to do so.

Current Mood: tired

pauraque

John Green wants you to know three things:

1. Today, in 2025, the infectious disease that kills the most people worldwide is tuberculosis.
2. Tuberculosis has been curable since the 1950s.
3. The fact that over one million people are dying of this disease every year is a reflection of our collective choices, and if we start making different choices we can save their lives.

Tuberculosis has been part of human life for thousands of years at least, and this book describes how the ebb and flow of its prevalence and deadliness has tracked the changing course of human society, and how our attitudes toward it have in turn changed. The increased population densities of the industrial revolution created ideal conditions for TB to spread, ravaging all classes of society, including the elite. This may have contributed to the bizarre 19th century romanticization of "consumption" as a mark of the sensitive genius, the tragic poetic soul; TB's characteristic symptoms of pallor and bodily wasting were reimagined as delicate, waifish beauty.

But as the germ theory of disease became mainstream and antibiotics made effective treatment possible, romantic "consumption" turned into stigmatized tuberculosis, associated not with an artistic disposition but with poverty. It has become primarily a disease of the global south, where due to systemic inequities in health access, millions of people continue to die of TB today who could be cured by a course of the right antibiotics. Tuberculosis thrives where we do not bother to stop it.

Intertwined through this narrative is the story of Henry Reider, a 17-year-old TB patient who Green befriended in Sierra Leone. Henry puts a human face on a disease that most of us in rich countries no longer see in our daily lives, powerfully illustrating Green's point that we will change our priorities "only when we see one another in our full humanity, not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world."

This is not a comprehensive treatment of the history and science of TB, nor of global health policy—the book is only 200 pages long, after all—but more of a high-level overview with pointers to further reading and calls to action. If you've followed Green on YouTube over the past few years as he's gotten involved in health advocacy (and become obsessed with weird tuberculosis-related history facts) I don't think anything in this book will be new to you! But it is good to have it all in one clear and persuasive volume with a popular author's name on the cover to get the message out to as many people as possible. I think it's extremely admirable that he's using his platform and his novelist's flair for a turn of phrase to bring attention to these issues, and I hope it moves the needle.

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: sad

princessofgeeks

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Current Mood: sleepy

osprey_archer

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Another Newbery book! Hildegarde Swift’s Little Blacknose: The Story of a Pioneer, a slender novel told from the point of view of the first railway engine on an American line. Black Beauty for trains! I enjoyed the black and white illustrations by Lynd Ward.

I also read Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Treasures of Weatherby, which I approached with the trepidation befitting a late Snyder, but actually I mostly enjoyed it. Like The Headless Cupid, The Trespassers, The Velvet Room, and various other Snyder books, this features a large old house, the largest and most gothic of all Snyder’s large old houses, as this one features an overgrown garden and an impenetrable yew maze and a cast of genteelly decaying family members.

Bored out of his skull, Harleigh the Fourth goes for a walk in the overgrown garden, where he meets a girl named Allegra who claims she flew over the tall and unscalable wrought iron fence. Harleigh insists he doesn’t believe it (maybe he believes it) and the two of them strike up a friendship.

Enchanting in that particular Snyder way right up until the last couple of chapters, at which point I get the impression that Snyder ran out of word count and rushed to wrap everything up and explain it all. Oh well. Endings are generally not her strong suit, and up till then the book is a lot of fun.

What I’m Reading Now

I enjoyed Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism so much that I toodled right along to Smee’s The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, where I instantly hit a wall in the first section, in which Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon careen joylessly through a series of airless mid-twentieth-century love affairs. (Although really one should call them sex affairs as love is rarely involved.)

They are having as much sex as John Le Carre characters (lots) and getting the same amount of actual happiness out of it (none) and why. Why. Why are they doing this to themselves! You just imagine them in a rare moment of sobriety puzzling over the fact that, even they do whatever they want whenever they want to, somehow they are miserable? Then they wash the thought away with a shot of gin and toddle off to their next mind-numbing affair.

It’s so miserable to read about and must have been absolutely ghastly to live.

Also hit a wall on Our Mutual Friend because I so intensely dislike Eugene Wrayburn for his refusal to promise that he’s not going to ruin my girl Lizzie Hexam. I don’t think he IS going to ruin Lizzie but I hate him anyway, because he either wants to keep the option open just in case, or else feels that Lizzie’s brother is too far beneath his notice to deserve a promise.

I could probably get past this if I hadn’t hit a wall on the book overall. Maybe I should set it aside for now and give it another go in a few years.

What I Plan to Read Next

Upon finishing Little Blacknose, I am TEN BOOKS away from finishing the Newbery project, but I have hit a tiny mental wall so I am taking a break for a bit to read other things.

neveryourgirl in

little_details

Hi everyone,

MCU fanfic writer here! I need some advice on bruises and non-serious gym injuries/injuries from sparring or the like. Especially people with medical and/or martial arts backgrounds, please weigh in!

Character context: two non-superpowered hero characters (think Hawkeye or Black Widow), both are women, the injured character is in her early to mid-20s and has trained in different martial arts since she was a preteen

Scene context: It's basically a sex scene. Character A and B are long-distance and haven't seen each other in a while. Character A pulls up the other’s shirt and finds a fading bruise on her stomach. Character A asks about it. Character B replies that it’s a gym injury, because she got distracted during a kickboxing class. (The distraction was that she kept remembering a sex dream from the night before.) The moment is supposed to function as a brief interruption. It's basically 'not a big deal,' because they are both used to worse injuries, but it still makes character A pause, because like, Babe, why do you have a bruise I don't know about?

Injury details I've included: I described the bruise as “fading” and a “yellow-green mark.” It “hurt like a bitch” the first few days, but she can barely feel it now.

Timeframe-wise, I’m thinking the injury happened maybe two weeks ago, but I could change that. It’s not actually mentioned on page.

I have a feeling some of my details might be off? I did look up the different visual stages of bruises healing, but I have zero medical background, and all I know about kickboxing I learned from my google research.

So, my questions now are:

1. Does this injury make sense within the martial arts/kickboxing context? Is the bruising and pain level realistic? Or am I over- or underestimating it?

2. Does the timeframe make sense?

3. Would what I imagine as a kick to the stomach leave a bruise like that without causing more serious damage? Like, would the force necessary to leave a bruise also cause other injuries?

If this combo of injury and cause of injury doesn’t work, I’d also love to hear alternative suggestions if you have any!

Of course, this is Marvel, so there’s some major leeway since we repeatedly see characters without superpowers be kicked or fall from questionable heights and get back up again. But I really like to have my medical facts be as accurate as possible. (And if I feel the need to deviate, I at least want to know the factual realities I’m intentionally deviating from.)

luminousdaze in

iconthat

Challenge 194 is now closed. I'll have the voting up very soon & I will try to get some kind of MerMay themed challenge up before it's over.
But, if you like drawing, Challenge #70 - Mermay & Marine is open now over at the drawing challenge community

drawesome.

aurumcalendula

Love Between Fairy and Devil, Vol. 1 by Jiu Lu Fei Xiang (translated by Yu):

( Read more... )

Kei × Yaku: Bound by Law 6 by Kaoruhara Yoshie (translated by Leo McDonagh):

( Read more... )

Star Trek Discovery and the Female Gothic: Tell Fear No by Carey Millsap-Spears:

( Read more... )

musesfool

So I did watch the last couple of episodes of Elsbeth and enjoyed them a lot. ( spoilers )

Mets have won 2 ugly games from the Pirates. Let's hope they take the third one tomorrow, too. And the Knicks! Wow!

*

Current Mood: okay
Current Music: Mets post game show

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raven

raven@ao3

March 2025

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Page Summary

hannah - Jump the fence.
musesfool - and i feel that so much depends on the weather
isis - thursday reads and things
troyswann - The Last of Us, a Review
petra - US Politics: Queer history
runpunkrun - A City on Mars, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith
mific in fancake - SGA/SG1: Grow Old Without You by respoftw
skygiants - (no subject)
chestnut_pod - Wednesday reading
settiai - Aurendor D&D: Summary for 5/14 Game
celli - new BTS fic: sentinel/guide speed dating 1/4
sineala - Wednesday Reading Meme
pauraque - Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (2025)
princessofgeeks - state of the princess, CW: tl;dr
princessofgeeks - my brain I don't even
osprey_archer - Wednesday Reading Meme
neveryourgirl in little_details - Bruises sustained while kickboxing: pain level, realistic causes, healing time
luminousdaze in iconthat - challenge closed ⌛
aurumcalendula - Recent Reading
musesfool - sinking away from him

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Resources: Am i brave enough?

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philosophy supernatural nude

still crazy after all these years

Reading

Jump the fence.

and i feel that so much depends on the weather

thursday reads and things

The Last of Us, a Review

US Politics: Queer history

A City on Mars, by Kelly and Zach Weinersmith

SGA/SG1: Grow Old Without You by respoftw

(no subject)

Wednesday reading

Aurendor D&D: Summary for 5/14 Game

new BTS fic: sentinel/guide speed dating 1/4

Wednesday Reading Meme

Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green (2025)

state of the princess, CW: tl;dr

my brain I don't even

Wednesday Reading Meme

Bruises sustained while kickboxing: pain level, realistic causes, healing time

challenge closed ⌛

Recent Reading

sinking away from him

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March 2025

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