veronica (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aberration) wrote2020-12-12 04:38 pm
aberration) wrote2020-12-12 04:38 pm
together they possessed a miracle
So... varadia and I got married this afternoon! And therefore got to tick 'zoom wedding' off our 2020 pandemic bingo? >_> But yes for real we had our very brief official thing over zoom and uploaded the completed license to city hall, so it's all done and we're married. So yep, fyi!
and um, now on to your regularly scheduled post –
Monsters, Inc. (2001) ★★★1/2
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) ★★★1/2
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) ★★★1/2
The Terminator (1984) ★★★1/2
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) ★★★
Paprika (2006) ★★★★
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) ★★1/2
Lilo & Stitch (2002) ★★★1/2
The Queen (2006) ★★★
The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special (2020) ★★★
Over the Moon (2020) ★★★1/2
Happiest Season (2020) ★★
A Christmas Prince (2017) ★★
Mulan (2020) ★1/2
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018) ★★
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby (2019) ★★
And we have also watched a bunch of TV, like –
This is very visually beautiful and technically well made, and it was certainly easy to zip through on a Sunday afternoon. There were also a lot of really nice performances, in particular Marielle Heller as the main character's adoptive mother, who is just – overall a very impressive person! (I do feel bad for Thomas Sangster here doing his best Timothy Olyphant and my perpetual inability to internalize that he is not in fact still 12). I did ultimately feel though that the story just became too pat for me – like, there's nothing at all wrong with an Inspirational Sports Story (which this basically is), but I felt sort of like it was also pretending it wasn't that, and. It is that.
There was also some very… obviously men wrote and directed this aspects to it. Beth's reaction to getting her first period seemed a little over the top for someone who grew up in an orphanage for girls and had wise older friend who definitely would have talked to her about that. While the story is theoretically about Beth as a woman rising through the very male-dominated ranks of chess, it generally depicts sexism as something that melts away once you prove yourself. Oh, Beth, you are good at chess, now it's okay that you're a girl. Like once she's a pretty established player the closest we see to any lingering sexism is some opponents still being upset about losing to her, and one comment about her being "too glamorous" which is pretty typical fictional insulted-for-being-pretty. And the idea that People Won't Be Sexist To You If You Actually Are Good Enough is honestly pretty pernicious.
And I didn't super love that her sleeping with a woman was sort of the indicator of Beth hitting rock bottom.
Also I know this is me and like, I'm not going to get what I want on this for a while but I would like, at some point, a different approach to the addiction narrative.
And after watching season 3 of The Crown when it came out because Olivia Colman, we watched season 4 and are now watching the first two seasons. And most of the result has been me even more learning what made up nonsense the monarchy is. Lynne did at one point wonder aloud if the British royal family is especially dramatic or just the most high profile royal family and some Wikipedia searches taught me… it's the latter! Where is the Netflix drama about the royal family of Monaco, I'm saying.
And I've read some books, including the Frozen AU fanfiction book Conceal, Don't Feel which I read because… it was free. Disney has a line of what are essentially AU fanfiction books like "what if Sleeping Beauty never woke up" or "what if Wendy visited Neverland with Captain Hook" or increasingly more random "what if the Enchantress who cursed the Beast had been Belle's mother"? Anyway, this AU difference was that Elsa and Anna had been raised separately and didn't know they were sisters, and the result was basically the Frozen movie but more convoluted and without that big twist. So, I'm glad it was free. I kind of liked getting the different points of view, but you know. Also a thing I can get from fanfiction.
And I also read Kindred by Octavia Butler.
So this is a great book and obviously one where others have or can speak on it much more knowledgeably and ably than I can. So I'm not going to go into the book as a whole, but I did want to mention one aspect I was… surprised by? Or at least spent a lot of the book thinking might go a different way, and that was Dana's relationship with Kevin.
I went into reading this I think knowing or at least having it somewhere in my mind that Dana is married to a white man and that matters when she's traveling to the past. I came I guess expecting to some degree what transpired, that Kevin's access to whiteness already has consequences for his and Dana's relationship, and those consequences are magnified when they're transported to 1815 Maryland. What I didn't know was where that would ultimately end, and I think I maybe kind of thought it would break their relationship, but that doesn't actually seem to happen. While this and other factors (like Kevin being trapped alone in the past for several years) certainly strain their relationship, they end the book together.
Throughout the book Butler seems to make a point of drawing parallels between Kevin and Rufus, which again made me question whether Dana's relationship with Kevin could survive this, but I ultimately came down on the idea that these parallels worked to emphasize Rufus as irredeemably brutal and cruel, even as Dana spends most of the book having more complicated feelings toward him. Which, nothing Rufus does ever really earns that – it can be easy to want to sympathize with someone we've known as a child, who maybe had some other potential, but Rufus consistently makes choices that align him with white repression and violence, without exception. Dana (and maybe by extension the reader) have complicated feelings toward him out of necessity, because his survival is necessary for her own, and really almost the moment that's no longer true, she can finally have clarity.
And by comparison Kevin, who has his own internalized racism and sexism (at the part where Dana describes how he'd get her to do his typing for him there was this moment where I was thinking 'was that less of a jackass move in 1979???') does make different choices, in that we learn at one point that while trapped in the past he helped escaping slaves, at personal risk to himself. But, correctly, we don't see this, it's just mentioned and I think made clear from the narrative that we're supposed to take this as true. Because it's not about Kevin's narrative, but about confirming Dana's actions toward Rufus. Rufus had the agency to make different choices, it's not inevitable that white people perpetuate oppression and violence, and it being a choice makes Rufus in particular all the more accountable to it. I don't know that I was happy for Dana when she finally stabbed him to death but it did feel cathartic.
Anyway, I guess knowing what I did about Dana and Kevin's relationship going in, on the other side of it I was impressed with how candidly Butler wrote the relationship and made an important reference point for the book's themes while still feeling like a relationship between two people and not just a thematic point. I think.
I also read The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin, which I really liked a lot, I loved the worldbuilding in particular, but I think I'll hold out on writing about until I've read the second book.
And what, I finished my fish nun/bird fic! (aka most recent in my fic series about women characters in Star Wars)
The Salt & the Shadow (4028 words) by Ria Talla (ronia)
Fandom: Star Wars – All Media Types, Star Wars: Sequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: None
Characters: Alcida-Auka, Terna-Gentu
Additional Tags: Planet Ahch-To (Star Wars), Lanai (Star Wars), The Force, The Dark Side of the Force (Star Wars), The Light Side of the Force (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Nuns, Force Philosophy (Star Wars), Mentioned Luke Skywalker, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Summary: Alcida Auka, Resistance Era/Post-The Last Jedi
Because it was only the Sisters who were made for the Shadow. That was their pride, and so with it they sought the humility of simple work in their lives, to sweep the paths that others walked, cook their meals and light their hearths.
Even as the most recent Outsider had refused much of their work, collecting his own food and cleaning his own hut. He had even begun to pick up their words, to thank them, to ask them questions, to weave kind phrases. It hadn't surprised Mother that some of her younger Daughters thought to share the Shadow with him. Yet she had no need to forbid it, as even these Daughters knew that they could not.
Okay, basically I went very much off my in own direction with these creatures from The Last Jedi, including taking the opportunity to develop an alternative view of the Force for them. So they're Caretakers but you know, also their own thing.
The Song in the Soil - Aayla Secura, 3116 words, pre-Prequel Trilogy, a story from Aayla's mmm unorthodox training with Quinlan Vos
The Night Shift - Ackmena, 4845 words, mid-Original Trilogy, a night in that infamous Mos Eisley cantina
Tipping Point, Adi Gallia, 3301 words, mid-Phantom Menace, Adi Gallia advises Chancellor Valorum during the Naboo crisis
Kitchen Woman - Unnamed/Aesori Tarven, 7672 words, Original Trilogy, a backstory for Armitage Hux's mother, a "kitchen woman" in an Imperial Academy
The Cave - Ahsoka Tano, 10001 words, post-Star Wars Rebels, Ahsoka deals with the fallout of her time on Malachor
The Only Man Who Can Save You - Aiolin Astarte, 6348 words, pre-Original Trilogy, Aiolin and her twin brother are collected by Dr. Cylo
But I've decided to no longer do this by strict alphabetical order because adj;asdjfkja;sfd, so instead I'm going to switch between a choosing a character I already have an idea for, and choosing a character with my random number generator app. I'm doing the former first, so the next fic will be about the Naboo handmaiden Sabé.
I'm also about to finish Shadowfall so I can write about that soon! I'd also like to do a review of Jedi Fallen Order at some point but I got into a thing where I was writing out the entire plot of the game and now it's seven pages long and I -___-. I just know a lot of people won't play the game but I think it's a great Star Wars story and so would like to share it with those who don't want to fighty fight a billion giant frog monsters and stormtroopers. And someday I will also review the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Cookbook, but there are a few things I want to make. Maybe shaak roast for Christmas dinner?
varadia and I got married this afternoon! And therefore got to tick 'zoom wedding' off our 2020 pandemic bingo? >_> But yes for real we had our very brief official thing over zoom and uploaded the completed license to city hall, so it's all done and we're married. So yep, fyi!and um, now on to your regularly scheduled post –
Monsters, Inc. (2001) ★★★1/2
Terminator: Dark Fate (2019) ★★★1/2
Kiki's Delivery Service (1989) ★★★1/2
The Terminator (1984) ★★★1/2
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) ★★★
Paprika (2006) ★★★★
Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) ★★1/2
Lilo & Stitch (2002) ★★★1/2
The Queen (2006) ★★★
The Lego Star Wars Holiday Special (2020) ★★★
Over the Moon (2020) ★★★1/2
Happiest Season (2020) ★★
A Christmas Prince (2017) ★★
Mulan (2020) ★1/2
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Wedding (2018) ★★
A Christmas Prince: The Royal Baby (2019) ★★
And we have also watched a bunch of TV, like –
This is very visually beautiful and technically well made, and it was certainly easy to zip through on a Sunday afternoon. There were also a lot of really nice performances, in particular Marielle Heller as the main character's adoptive mother, who is just – overall a very impressive person! (I do feel bad for Thomas Sangster here doing his best Timothy Olyphant and my perpetual inability to internalize that he is not in fact still 12). I did ultimately feel though that the story just became too pat for me – like, there's nothing at all wrong with an Inspirational Sports Story (which this basically is), but I felt sort of like it was also pretending it wasn't that, and. It is that.
There was also some very… obviously men wrote and directed this aspects to it. Beth's reaction to getting her first period seemed a little over the top for someone who grew up in an orphanage for girls and had wise older friend who definitely would have talked to her about that. While the story is theoretically about Beth as a woman rising through the very male-dominated ranks of chess, it generally depicts sexism as something that melts away once you prove yourself. Oh, Beth, you are good at chess, now it's okay that you're a girl. Like once she's a pretty established player the closest we see to any lingering sexism is some opponents still being upset about losing to her, and one comment about her being "too glamorous" which is pretty typical fictional insulted-for-being-pretty. And the idea that People Won't Be Sexist To You If You Actually Are Good Enough is honestly pretty pernicious.
And I didn't super love that her sleeping with a woman was sort of the indicator of Beth hitting rock bottom.
Also I know this is me and like, I'm not going to get what I want on this for a while but I would like, at some point, a different approach to the addiction narrative.
And after watching season 3 of The Crown when it came out because Olivia Colman, we watched season 4 and are now watching the first two seasons. And most of the result has been me even more learning what made up nonsense the monarchy is. Lynne did at one point wonder aloud if the British royal family is especially dramatic or just the most high profile royal family and some Wikipedia searches taught me… it's the latter! Where is the Netflix drama about the royal family of Monaco, I'm saying.
And I've read some books, including the Frozen AU fanfiction book Conceal, Don't Feel which I read because… it was free. Disney has a line of what are essentially AU fanfiction books like "what if Sleeping Beauty never woke up" or "what if Wendy visited Neverland with Captain Hook" or increasingly more random "what if the Enchantress who cursed the Beast had been Belle's mother"? Anyway, this AU difference was that Elsa and Anna had been raised separately and didn't know they were sisters, and the result was basically the Frozen movie but more convoluted and without that big twist. So, I'm glad it was free. I kind of liked getting the different points of view, but you know. Also a thing I can get from fanfiction.
And I also read Kindred by Octavia Butler.
So this is a great book and obviously one where others have or can speak on it much more knowledgeably and ably than I can. So I'm not going to go into the book as a whole, but I did want to mention one aspect I was… surprised by? Or at least spent a lot of the book thinking might go a different way, and that was Dana's relationship with Kevin.
I went into reading this I think knowing or at least having it somewhere in my mind that Dana is married to a white man and that matters when she's traveling to the past. I came I guess expecting to some degree what transpired, that Kevin's access to whiteness already has consequences for his and Dana's relationship, and those consequences are magnified when they're transported to 1815 Maryland. What I didn't know was where that would ultimately end, and I think I maybe kind of thought it would break their relationship, but that doesn't actually seem to happen. While this and other factors (like Kevin being trapped alone in the past for several years) certainly strain their relationship, they end the book together.
Throughout the book Butler seems to make a point of drawing parallels between Kevin and Rufus, which again made me question whether Dana's relationship with Kevin could survive this, but I ultimately came down on the idea that these parallels worked to emphasize Rufus as irredeemably brutal and cruel, even as Dana spends most of the book having more complicated feelings toward him. Which, nothing Rufus does ever really earns that – it can be easy to want to sympathize with someone we've known as a child, who maybe had some other potential, but Rufus consistently makes choices that align him with white repression and violence, without exception. Dana (and maybe by extension the reader) have complicated feelings toward him out of necessity, because his survival is necessary for her own, and really almost the moment that's no longer true, she can finally have clarity.
And by comparison Kevin, who has his own internalized racism and sexism (at the part where Dana describes how he'd get her to do his typing for him there was this moment where I was thinking 'was that less of a jackass move in 1979???') does make different choices, in that we learn at one point that while trapped in the past he helped escaping slaves, at personal risk to himself. But, correctly, we don't see this, it's just mentioned and I think made clear from the narrative that we're supposed to take this as true. Because it's not about Kevin's narrative, but about confirming Dana's actions toward Rufus. Rufus had the agency to make different choices, it's not inevitable that white people perpetuate oppression and violence, and it being a choice makes Rufus in particular all the more accountable to it. I don't know that I was happy for Dana when she finally stabbed him to death but it did feel cathartic.
Anyway, I guess knowing what I did about Dana and Kevin's relationship going in, on the other side of it I was impressed with how candidly Butler wrote the relationship and made an important reference point for the book's themes while still feeling like a relationship between two people and not just a thematic point. I think.
I also read The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin, which I really liked a lot, I loved the worldbuilding in particular, but I think I'll hold out on writing about until I've read the second book.
And what, I finished my fish nun/bird fic! (aka most recent in my fic series about women characters in Star Wars)
The Salt & the Shadow (4028 words) by Ria Talla (ronia)
Fandom: Star Wars – All Media Types, Star Wars: Sequel Trilogy
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: None
Characters: Alcida-Auka, Terna-Gentu
Additional Tags: Planet Ahch-To (Star Wars), Lanai (Star Wars), The Force, The Dark Side of the Force (Star Wars), The Light Side of the Force (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Nuns, Force Philosophy (Star Wars), Mentioned Luke Skywalker, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Summary: Alcida Auka, Resistance Era/Post-The Last Jedi
Because it was only the Sisters who were made for the Shadow. That was their pride, and so with it they sought the humility of simple work in their lives, to sweep the paths that others walked, cook their meals and light their hearths.
Even as the most recent Outsider had refused much of their work, collecting his own food and cleaning his own hut. He had even begun to pick up their words, to thank them, to ask them questions, to weave kind phrases. It hadn't surprised Mother that some of her younger Daughters thought to share the Shadow with him. Yet she had no need to forbid it, as even these Daughters knew that they could not.
Okay, basically I went very much off my in own direction with these creatures from The Last Jedi, including taking the opportunity to develop an alternative view of the Force for them. So they're Caretakers but you know, also their own thing.
The Song in the Soil - Aayla Secura, 3116 words, pre-Prequel Trilogy, a story from Aayla's mmm unorthodox training with Quinlan Vos
The Night Shift - Ackmena, 4845 words, mid-Original Trilogy, a night in that infamous Mos Eisley cantina
Tipping Point, Adi Gallia, 3301 words, mid-Phantom Menace, Adi Gallia advises Chancellor Valorum during the Naboo crisis
Kitchen Woman - Unnamed/Aesori Tarven, 7672 words, Original Trilogy, a backstory for Armitage Hux's mother, a "kitchen woman" in an Imperial Academy
The Cave - Ahsoka Tano, 10001 words, post-Star Wars Rebels, Ahsoka deals with the fallout of her time on Malachor
The Only Man Who Can Save You - Aiolin Astarte, 6348 words, pre-Original Trilogy, Aiolin and her twin brother are collected by Dr. Cylo
But I've decided to no longer do this by strict alphabetical order because adj;asdjfkja;sfd, so instead I'm going to switch between a choosing a character I already have an idea for, and choosing a character with my random number generator app. I'm doing the former first, so the next fic will be about the Naboo handmaiden Sabé.
I'm also about to finish Shadowfall so I can write about that soon! I'd also like to do a review of Jedi Fallen Order at some point but I got into a thing where I was writing out the entire plot of the game and now it's seven pages long and I -___-. I just know a lot of people won't play the game but I think it's a great Star Wars story and so would like to share it with those who don't want to fighty fight a billion giant frog monsters and stormtroopers. And someday I will also review the Star Wars Galaxy's Edge Cookbook, but there are a few things I want to make. Maybe shaak roast for Christmas dinner?
no subject
no subject
And this does give me more impetus to get my Jedi Fallen Order thoughts up because I'd love to share the story but definitely get not wanting to have to play through the game. Thanks!
no subject
I don't have anything to say at this juncture either until you've finished the second book in the Killing Moon duology (I had to refer back to my book post and it's all about the second one) but I do remember the worldbuilding in that series as phenomenal.
no subject