redrikki

Mama's got her grove back! After months of struggling to string two words together, I managed to write five fics, that's right, five, in three different fandoms. This COVID thing really thew me for a loop. I was floundering a little bit anyway since the death of my father and most recent hyperfixation, but the isolation was really getting to me. Then I attended a webinar on documenting the current COVID crisis and launched the COVID Memory Project at the historical society where I work. I've been driving around the county taking pictures of signs. I've interviewed over a dozen people about their experiences. Not only has it gotten me out of the house, it's allowed me to feel less helpless. I'm taking control of the narrative and it has helped more than I ever imagined.

Anyway, on to the writing round-up portion of our post.

Agent Carter

All the World's a Stage - Dottie had cleared out all her belongings except for the dead body under her bed and Angie was starting to wonder if she actually knew anyone as well as she thought she did. She knew she wasn’t the best actress in New York, but she was starting to think she hadn’t even been the best one in the building. (Angie Martinelli, Peggy Carter)

Batwoman (TV)

Trapped in the Closet - Kate was never afraid to come out to her father, but she is now. Episode tag to the season 1 finale. (Kate Kane, Mary Hamilton, Luke Fox)

Black Lightning (TV)

Maybe Baby - "Ever think about what kind of power's you and Grace's kids would have?" Jen asked, raising possibilities Anissa had never considered before. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi, Jennifer Pierce)

Sleeping Beauty - Grace had been in coma for over a month now, but Anissa still couldn't help thinking each visit that this would be the one where she woke up. Maybe today it would be. (Anissa Pierce/Grace Choi)

Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts

The Hero Was You - Benson likes Troy and Troy likes Benson. Great! Now all Benson has to do is figure out what to do about it. (Benson/Troy)

Wow, all that content was super gay. Kind of fitting for Pride Month, I guess. 

I signed up for the Eat, Drink & Make Merry exchange, so that will be my next project. I also signed up for femslashficlets folktales tropes challenge, so expect more wlw content down the road. Feel free to suggest a pairing and I may even feel motivated to write it now that my crops have been watered and my depression has cleared up. 

Today was our local second annual women's march. We hold it on Sunday after the big ones so there's a) free downtown parking and b) an opportunity for people to attend more than one march over the course of the weekend. I'm on the planning committee, and the last few weeks have been pretty hectic. In addition to today's march, we've held various events throughout the year about women's history/issues to keep the momentum going. Last Sunday was a lecture about the history of protest art. On Tuesday, we hosted a documentary about Black power activist Grace Lee Boggs. On Saturday was the opening of the art exhibit Empower 2020 at the local community arts space. It's really been quite a ride.

We had six speakers today on topics including civic engagement, economic justice, environmental justice, reproductive rights, racial justice, and LGBTQ rights. All of the speakers were good and some were rather fiery. Only one of them actually stuck to the 3 minute time limit, but no one froze to death listening, so we'll call it a win. The last speaker, Jamie, was especially impressive. At fifteen, they're a hell of a lot more passionate and articulate than I remember being at that age.

My job for the year was to manage our website and knit so many pussy hats. At the actual event, T.C. and I recorded for posterity. He handled the speakers, while I got B-roll of the crowd. I wish we had some numbers on that. It was somewhere between 100 and 200 for certain, but beyond that, I couldn't tell you. After the speeches, we marched from Wisner Park to Cowles Hall at the college where there was tabling, bathrooms, and a warm place to sit. 

I don't know if we're doing it again next year. The turnout was down a bit as they have been everywhere and people may feel differently about it when Elizabeth Warren is president. I guess we'll see. 

Just remember to vote like lives depend on it because they do!

Today is my birthday. I spent it in a pleasantly low key way.

Last night and today I marathoned the latest season of Anne With An E. I'm not really sure how I feel about it. I did spend the first half of the season crying though. ( spoilers )

In the evening, I had dinner with friends at the local Indian restaurant. My friends are babies when it comes to spice, but we found stuff they could eat. I really love the local place. Not only is the food good, the owners have the habit of throwing things in on the house. Tonight, we got free pakoras and kheer. I am so very full right now.

Happy New Year everybody! We made it! Let's make 2020 a good one, or at least better than last year.

In 2019, I wrote 30 stories in 13 fandoms, 6 of which I'd never written in before. I'll be posting a list after I get back from this party I'm going to in an hour.

I've got a bunch of new year's resolutions for 2020. Here are the relevant ones.

1. Submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known by regularly posting here about more than just my latest writing projects. 

2. Read at least one book a month and do a full review of it here. 

3. Find a new hyperfixation. Ever since Star Wars and I broke up, I've been listless and drifting. I've flirted with a few new fandoms and even hooked up briefly with some of my old ones. Oh, please, world wide media, send me a fandom I can really obsess over for at least a few months.

I've got a few more resolutions like get the broken windows in my house fixed and buy a ticket to visit my mom in Florida, but that's all pretty boring stuff. Last year I resolved to visit my friends in Denmark and install a ceiling fan in my bathroom and I accomplished both. Go me! I think I also resolved last year to be better about posting here and that didn't happen, so well, we'll see how it goes this year, I guess. 

This was a fund week and by fun I mean crazy stressful. My cat, Cumulus, went into renal failure over the weekend, so there was a lot of running around trying to get him treatment. He's on the mend, thank goodness, but it hasn't been fun for either of us. I should be able to take him home tomorrow.

On to Wednesday reading stuff.

What I just finished

The Power by Naomi Alderman. My co-worker gave me this book after reading it herself and instructed me to pass it on. I'm tentatively planning on giving it to my mom over Thanksgiving. Apparently Barack Obama was a big fan, and it's not hard to see why. The basic premise is that an old chemical agent has given women and girls electrical powers and the world goes somewhat crazy as a result. Angry, women, sick of being under men's boots for so long, push back in a big way. Angry, frightened men react with violence disturbingly similar to real-life white supremacists fearing their inevitable loss of privilege and power. Plus, there's new lady cults, meme culture, unscrupulous politicians, and a clock ticking down to Cataclysm.

In many ways, this is an uncomfortable book. Part of it is the sobering mirror to look into aspect. The novel's framing device is a series of letters between the fictional author, Neil, and his editor, Naomi. It's clear that their world is basically a gender flipped version of our own, but it's explicitly portrayed as a dystopia. Our world is a dystopia, but it's one we're accustomed to and thus are less horrified by. At the same time, the entire plot of the story is basically the worst nightmare of anyone who screamed feminazi. Is this how women would react if we had power? Is this how I would react?  Can we get away from basing our society on the threat of violence?

What I'm reading now

Terrier by Tamora Pierce. I've loved Tamora Pierce since Alanna: The First Adventure, but it took me forever to get around to this. It's less an adventure story and more a murder mystery, but I'm enjoying it so far. I was struck by how casually corrupt all the police are. They collect protection money, or Happy Bags, as explicit policy, everyone takes bribes (including our Hero and her training officers), and no one wants to investigate the murder of a child because everyone hate's his great-grandpa. I would love a crossover where Sam Vimes sets them straight.

Just finished reading

In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez. The book is a highly fictionalized account of the real-life Dominican revolutionaries Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal, who were assassinated by the Trujillo regime on November 25, 1960. Each chapter was told from a different sister's POV, including the sole surviving sister, Dedé. Each sister had a unique voice with their chapters being written in distinct ways. Maria Teresa's chapters, for example, are always diary entries, while Minerva's are the only ones in first person. I don't know how accurate to life the portrayals are, but I liked the way the author examined the things that could lead otherwise ordinary women towards revolution. They each had very different reasons for getting involved and had different things they were willing to do or not do for the cause, themselves, and the family.

It all seemed frighteningly timely. A month or so back, I had a conversation with my mom about how when if things get bad we're going to need people willing to get arrested and give up their livelihoods and lives to resist. Right now, I'm involved in organizing the local women's march and donating to certain causes, but I don't know if I have the courage to do that harder work.

Case in point. Last week I read the New York Times Magazine's 1619 Project about the long-reaching effects of slavery on American economy, politics, and society. If you haven't read it, I urge you to follow the link and do so. Anyway, every week a staff member from at our historical society writes a blog post on a local history topic and I chose to look at the effects of slavery on New York State and our county. It turns out, we know the names of several former slave-owning families, some of whom still have descendants still living in the area. The original last sentence of the blog mentioned that that family was still around, and still wealthy and powerful. The problem is, they're also one of our institution's biggest financial donors. My boss asked me to tone down the last sentence before allowing me to post it and I did. Right call? Wrong call? I still can't decide, but it doesn't give me much hope for my ability to speak truth to power.

What I'm Reading Next
 
No idea. I have a stack of Smithsonian magazines I probably should get around to, but also a whole lot of library book sale books. Decision, decisions.

My mom is gone off to spend a week with my sister and I'm back on the internet. It was really good to see her again. We had a lot of fun visiting some local museums, eating at local restaurants, and just tooling around. I think I managed to ruin museums for her forever, but, if I have to suffer, then so does she. I've been working at a museum for just over 10 years now, and I've developed THOUGHTS and OPINIONS about object labels, fonts, and layout that sometimes make it hard to appreciate the actual content of exhibits because I'm so focused on the craftsmanship. I'm supposed to be reading about Glen Curtiss and his airplane designs, but instead I'm like "this font needs to be bigger for and should have serifs to make it easier to read."

We also watched a lot of TV. Like, a lot. Not only did we watch Stranger Things 3, Umbrella Academy, Russian Doll, and 2 seasons of Queer Eye, we also watched a couple of movies including Into the Spiderverse, Otherhood, and Always Be My Maybe. I really enjoyed that last one and I usually don't enjoy romantic comedies. It helped that this one was actually, you know, funny with witty dialog and douchebag Keanu Reeves. My mom really enjoyed Into the Spiderverse and was charmed by Queer Eye. It basically became our go-to comfort show every time we turned on the news and learned about a new mass shooting. Yay America!

Each time my mom visits, she ends up helping me furnish a room. At the end of the month, my new couch and loveseat should arrive. In the meantime, we found the perfect area rug on Saturday, and it looks so good there. Pretty soon I'll have a house that looks like a real adult person lives there.

This weekend, was our town's annual street painting festival. It's spread out over two days and three nights. During the daylight, artists paint cool stuff in the middle of the street while bands local and dance troops perform at the various band stands. In the evening, they have concerts by touring bands. It's how I got introduced to Town Pants, a Canadian band who used to do it every year. I think they're too good for us now or something. Anyway, this year it was insanely hot and I think the attendance was down. Still, the artwork was lovely. Makes me wish I hadn't forgotten my camera.

When I wasn't sweating my ass off at the street painting festival, I speed-watched through season two of Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in an effort to finish it off before my free Prime membership expired. It's still a fun show with some great comic beats and screw-ball plot lines, but I didn't enjoy it quite as much as season one. It hit my embarrassment squick hard at several points (Mary's wedding. ::Cringe::), and soured me on some characters I'd really enjoyed in season one (looking at you, Abe). Still, I loved what they did for Rose and the elder Maisels. Like, Shirley and Moshe are genuinely nuts, but hilariously and repeatably so. That whole squirreling packets of money everywhere thing? Carrying emergency food in your purse? Not trusting banks and fretting about impending financial disasters? Shades of my grandparents. The only thing missing was calling up friends to sob hysterically about how all the wonderful things in your life will inevitably go wrong.

My Prime membership expires today, so it will be back to Nexflix like a peasant. I heard a new season of Queer Eye dropped. So I'll probably be watching that next instead of the half-dozen shows I started and never finished. Will Netflix ever advertise their shows? Is the new Veronica Mars worth getting Hulu for?

Monday night was our last Talmud study group until after Yom Kippur. I've never considered myself to be particularly religious, but I'm really glad my friend got me into Talmud study. It's a fun intellectual exercise and it's a pretty interesting group of people who come. Plus, I'm learning a lot about my cultural heritage that I missed out on as a kid. This Monday we read Maimonedes' writings on the saying of blessings. Apparently, if you run into someone you haven't seen in 6 months, the appropriate response is "blessed be he who revives the dead." Is that not the most passive-aggressive Jewish mother thing you've ever heard?

Last night at our women's march planning meeting, I volunteered to make pink pussy hats to sell for fundraising. I've already made three, but I best get knitting. I also volunteered to manage our website and sponsor at least two tie-in events at the museum where I work because I am a crazy person. At least I managed not to volunteer to be in charge of making sure the sidewalks are clear.

On to Wednesday reading!


What I just finished

Smithsonian magazine, June 2019. The big articles for this month were on the 1969 moon landings, deep sea exploration, and artist Francisco Toledo. The moon landing was my favorite. It explained the politics and technology which made the whole thing possible. Apparently, the space program was so unpopular with politicians, the public, and the scientific community, we probably wouldn't have gone if Kennedy hadn't been assasinated. Crazy.

Supersons vol.3 "Parent Trap." I understand that people who grew up in original flavor Talia hate what has been done to her character, but I really like the way this dealt with parental abuse. Jon's unwavering support for Damian as he dealt with his mom's mind games really helped sell me on their friendship. I should probably track down volume 2 since I seem to be missing it.

What I'm reading nextby

No idea. I just got a bunch of 20% off coupons form Barnes & Noble, so it will probably be something new instead of something from my back log.

 Happy LGBTQA+ Awareness Month. As an asexual, I suppose I'm technically covered by that, but I never really felt part of the community, despite having a bunch of queer friends in high school and college. I think part of the problem is that I came to the identity so late in life. 

I always knew I was odd when it came to romance and attraction. "Hot" people didn't do much for me and stories where otherwise reasonable people just have to have sex seemed like the dumbest thing. All my friends were dating and having sex in high school. I dated a guy because my sister said I should and insisted on setting us up. We went to the movies once and talked a lot on the phone. I think we may have even held hands. He wanted more and we broke up. I didn't feel like I was missing anything except that people kept telling me I was. In college, my mom fretted I wouldn't find a husband if I wouldn't put myself out there. In my late 20s, I tried on-line dating because that's what your supposed to do, but I never clicked with anyone. I was in my 30s when a guy friend suggested that, since we were already hanging out and going out to dinner all the time, we should add kissing to the mix. I figured I might as well and it was a fucking nightmare.

Don't get me wrong. My ex was a good guy and we had fun doing the same stuff we'd always done. We hiked, we watched TV, we built a bookshelf together, and kept up our weekly dinner dates. It was just that every kiss was beyond uncomfortable and he kept pressuring me for sex. It soon became clear that he was way more into me than I was into him and I felt guilty, like I wasn't living up to my end of the girlfriend bargain. It was clear I either had to break up with him or give him what he wanted. I was stressed out and anxious and growing resentful. After a series of tear-filled conversations with my mom and several female friends where I received some really contradictory advice, I was no closer to a solution.  

Tumblr's ace discourse saved me from making what would have probably been the worst mistake of my life. I had never even heard the term asexual before, but it fit like literally nothing ever had. It also gave me the ultimate it's-not-you-it's-me when I broke up with the ex in a way that allowed us to stay friends. It allowed me to stop trying to force myself to be something I'm not.

Actually, you know that stuff I said about not really feeling like part of the LGBTQA+ community? Maybe I am. Just a very specific segment of it full of people I've never actually met. Still, I can't help be grateful to them for introducing me to myself. I hope we can help you find yourself too.