Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 24

Wormsday Worm: Arc 3: Agitation + Interlude 3

In which Taylor goes to the beach, tries a negotiation, and visits a bank.

This is the discussion post for Arc 3 of Worm, by Wildbow. Any and all comments welcome! Spoilers for events later than this arc must be encoded via rot13.com. Spoilers for this arc should not be encoded.

Want to jump in?

1. Read it online. If this makes your eyes bleed...

2. Email me at Rphoenix2 @ gmail and I'll send you an epub. If you do this, please pay Wildbow something via his PayPal or Patreon. This is not an offer with an expiration date - I'll send it along any time.

This is a fun arc. There's a little bullying right at the start but that's it THANK GOD, then some getting-to-know-you fun and games, interesting worldbuilding tidbits, and a really fun action arc.

I love Taylor making the crab dance. I don't recall her doing much with crustaceans in the rest of the book, which is too bad. Her theory that her power works on anything with a sufficiently simple brain is interesting and probably correct.

Spoilers! (  Read more...  )

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The Dollhouse Murders, by Betty Ren Wright

An excellent middle-grade supernatural mystery about family, friendship, and ghosts.

Twelve-year-old Amy is unhappy about always having to babysit her developmentally disabled eleven-year-old sister Louann, which means she doesn't get any alone time with her own friends. (It also means Louann doesn't get to have her own friends, though this isn't something Amy realizes yet.)

After a last-straw incident, Amy ends up staying over with her aunt Clare so she and Louann can get a break from each other for a little while. Amy and Aunt Clare have barely met, as Aunt Clare only recently moved into the neighborhood to stay at the previously vacant old family house until she gets a new job and can move back to the city. To Amy's delight, there's a dollhouse in the attic which is a perfect replica of the old house - complete with dolls of her deceased grandparents, Aunt Clare as a teenager, and Amy's father as a little boy.

Aunt Clare hates the dollhouse to the point where she doesn't even want to talk about it. The other thing no one in the family wants to talk about? What exactly happened to their grandparents. This gets extra awkward when Amy realizes that the dolls seem to be moving around by themselves...

A fast-paced, fun, spooky book with good family dynamics. Louann and Amy's relationship is central to the book, as is the dysfunctional position their parents have put them in by infantilizing Louann and not letting either her or Amy have their own independent lives. The mystery of what's going on with the dollhouse and why goes some way toward explaining why their parents are like that, and a long way toward explaining why Aunt Clare is the way she is. More importantly, it catalyzes a positive change in Amy and Louann's relationship, as well as their individual relationships with other people, when the two of them first have to function separately for the first time in their lives, then have to figure out the haunted dollhouse together.

This is not a "disabled people are magical" book - Louann and Amy have different strengths that help them deal with the supernatural, without that trope coming into play at all. The book does contain depictions of ableism but they're not endorsed by the author.

Thanks, mildred_of_midgard !

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On a Wing and a Prayer: Interviews with Airline Disaster Survivors, by Malcolm MacPherson

A collection of interviews with plane crash survivors (both crew and passengers), plus some excerpts from cockpit recorders. The interviews are excerpts from the ones the NTSB does as part of its investigations. There's no way I wasn't going to like this book... right?

Surprise, surprise. It's almost willfully disappointing.

How, you are probably wondering, could this go wrong? What possible choices could an editor make to create a boring oral history of plane crashes?

The main issue is a near-total lack of context. Each chapter is a set of extracts from interviews of survivors of a particular crash. There's an opening paragraph that says more-or-less what happened in the crash, but they're along the lines of "Flight 182 departing from Houston to Miami crashed while taking off. Three of the 102 passengers were killed." There's not enough details given in advance to understand what exactly happened during the crash, and there's no explanatory material other than that. He doesn't say what caused the crash - ever!

The excerpts are broken up into more-or-less chronological order, so you might get a bit of a flight attendant and a bit of a passenger saying what happened before the crash, then they come back later to give accounts of what happened during. There may be as many as ten or twelve different people appearing in a single chapter, with each of them getting 1 - 5 segments of an interview. But MacPherson doesn't name the passengers (sometimes, apparently at random, he doesn't name the crew either), but rather gives them random anonymous headings like "male, seat 23" or "female, age 45" or just "male passenger" so it's impossible to keep track of who is who. He's not even consistent within the same chapter/crash at identifying them by seat number, age, gender, or all of the above!

Seat number IDs are not helpful as there's no diagrams.

There are excerpts of cockpit transcripts, but with no context and editing applied apparently at random, they're almost impossible to follow. I strongly suspect that MacPherson didn't understand enough about the subject to know what was and wasn't relevant, so just threw in a couple pages with no idea how they related to the incident at hand.

It's difficult and at times impossible to tell what's actually going on in any given crash as there's no context, no care is given to selecting excerpts for clarity, and most of the passengers had no idea what was going on at the time.

There's no follow-up whatsoever. In multiple chapters, unnamed people say things like "And then I realized that I couldn't see my husband" and you never learn whether the husband survived or not.

I have read a lot of plane crash books and while this is not the worst, it takes the prize for biggest waste of potential.

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Dear Fic in a Box Creator

My AO3 name is Edonohana. Thank you for creating for me!

If you have any questions, please ask the mods to check with me. If there is any issue with the mods feeling that your story for me doesn't fit my requirements, please point them to this letter and ask them to check with me first, rather than rejecting the story without checking with me.

I am a very easy recipient and will be delighted with whatever you make for me. I have no special requirements beyond what's specifically stated in my DNWs. I'm fine with all POVs (i.e., first, second, third), tenses, ratings, lengths, etc. I enjoy both shipfic and gen. I am fine with sex if it suits the story, or no sex if that suits the story.

General Likes: Hurt-comfort, action/adventure, domestic life, survival situations, mysterious alien technology, worldbuilding, evocative descriptions, camaraderie, loyalty, trauma recovery, learning to love again or trust again or enjoy life again, difficult choices, miniature things, food, and animals.

Art-specific likes: I like watercolors, bold graphics, Tarot cards, comics, pin-ups, characters in pretty/cozy environments, battle poses, and Art Nouveau. You can never go wrong by posing a character using their powers or with an adorable kitten/tiny dragon/pegasus/etc or with their signature weapon/airplane/etc.

I have requested some of these canons before. All prompts in previous exchanges are still valid and welcomed. You can find them by clicking on the "fic exchange letter" tag.

Length opt-in: 300 minimum words for all fics. I genuinely enjoy very short stories as well as longer ones, and am particularly fond of short horror.

Worldbuilding Requests: Don't worry about failing to fulfill the "worldbuilding" aspect of the prompt - it would be almost impossible for you to do that by accident.

I consider a worldbuilding story to be one which explores the world/setting of the canon. This could involve exploring a corner of the world we don't see much in canon, getting into more detail on a part of the world we do see a lot of in canon, making some interesting custom or culture or place a big part of the story, or simply telling a story which includes vivid and atmospheric details of the world. 

Where I've requested worldbuilding, I really love the world and want to see more of it. However, I do want an actual story with characters, not something like a travel guide or an encyclopedia article. 

You can use either original or canon characters. I've noted canon-specific preferences about this in the sections on the individual canons.

(  General DNW  )

(  Biggles - W. E. Johns  )

(  Children of Time Series - Adrian Tchaikovsky  )

(  Dark Tower - King  )

(  Dragonriders of Pern - Anne McCaffrey  )

(  Parahumans - Wildbow  )

(  Piranesi - Susanna Clarke  )

(  Revelator - Daryl Gregory  )

(  The Stand - Stephen King  )

(  Worrals - W. E. Johns  )

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Wormsday Worm: Arc 2: Insinuation + Interlude 2

In which Taylor attends a computer class, makes some new friends, and meets three darling dogs.

This is the discussion post for Arc 2 of Worm, by Wildbow. Any and all comments welcome! Spoilers for events later than this arc must be encoded via rot13.com. Spoilers for this arc should not be encoded.

Want to jump in?

1. Read it online. If this makes your eyes bleed...

2. Email me at Rphoenix2 @ gmail and I'll send you an epub. If you do this, please pay Wildbow something via his PayPal or Patreon. This is not an offer with an expiration date - I'll send it along any time.

Spoilers! (  Read more...  )

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Mostly Magic, by Ruth Chew

Two Brooklyn kids meet a friendly plumber and a black-and-white cat, find a set of unusual magical items - a folding ladder and a pencil - and use them to have adventures. The ladder can transport them to other places (conveniently, it shrinks when folded), and whatever the pencil writes becomes reality for the thing it's written on - so you can write "sardine" on a banana peel to feed a cat (but you need to write "canned" if you don't want it to be alive), or 3" on your arm to shrink yourself to the size of a mouse (not wise when you're around a cat).

Ruth Chew's books are the ultimate in translating childhood imaginary games into fantasy books, as far as I'm concerned. They take me straight back to the good parts of my pre-internet childhood, when I imagined walking around on the ceiling, shrinking to explore my house or garden at mouse-size, or being able to conjure up a box of my favorite cookies. In her books, kids get to do exactly that. They have just enough danger and tension to be exciting, but the overall atmosphere is curiosity, adventure, exploration, and delight.

My favorite part of this one is when the mouse-sized kids dive into the neighbor's aquarium and explore it. The illustration is incredibly charming.

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Available on Kindle as part of this collection:

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Blue Goes to Obedience School: a Protection, Inc: Defenders short story

I wrote a short story featuring Blue, Merlin's pet bugbear. You can read it for free on the Zoe website: Blue Goes to Obedience School

“MERLIN!”

Merlin had heard his first name yelled in all-caps by a whole lot of people, from his mom in her parrot form to an auctioneer announcing that he’d won an antique cuckoo clock with a pop-out pterodactyl instead of a cuckoo to a lion shifter having a snit fit (but not by his drill sergeant, who had yelled “MERRICK!” instead.) But no one could yell “MERLIN!” quite like his now-actually-a-teammate, Carter Howe.

What about by me? demanded his inner raptor. I yell in all-caps. MERLIN, MERLIN, MERLIN, MERLIN—

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Wormsday Worm: Arc 1: Gestation + Interlude 1

In which Taylor has a fun day at school, works on an art project with her classmates, and meets some people in the neighborhood.

This is the discussion post for Arc 1 of Worm, by Wildbow. Any and all comments welcome! Spoilers for events later than this arc must be encoded via rot13.com. Spoilers for this arc should not be encoded.

Want to jump in?

1. Read it online. If this makes your eyes bleed...

2. Email me at Rphoenix2 @ gmail and I'll send you an epub. If you do this, please pay Wildbow something via his PayPal or Patreon. This is not an offer with an expiration date - I'll send it along any time.

Spoilers! (  Read more...  )

comments

Paradise: One Town's Struggle to Survive an American Wildfire & Fire in Paradise: American Tragedy

Two nonfiction books on the 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed the California town of Paradise and killed 86 people. It was caused by negligence by the power company PG&E, which failed to maintain power lines and poles that were almost 100 years old and overdue for maintenance by about 20 years.

The Camp Fire began when an ancient hook snapped, releasing a power line which set a fire in an extremely remote area in the California mountains. Fire crews were alerted almost immediately, but were unable to get to it due to narrow mountainous roads and high winds; by the time it started spreading, it went out of control almost immediately.

Paradise was one of the few California towns that had an actual evacuation plan. It was divided into evacuation zones so it could be evacuated in an orderly fashion, and had a system for warning residents via their cell phones. Unfortunately, none of this worked. The cell phone system was voluntary and very few residents signed up for it, and when alerts were sent out the system crashed and only about 10% of all residents got them. The evacuation zone system didn't work as no one got the alerts, and the fire was so huge that the entire town needed to be evacuated all at once. There was only one way out, and it got jammed almost immediately. All things considered, it was lucky more people didn't die.

The books are divided between the wider picture and accounts of some specific Paradise residents, including a woman who'd just given birth by Caesarean to a preemie and ended up being driven around and around in circles by a random hospital employee, a retired firefighter who jumps back into action, the town mayor who nearly stays behind, a man and his seven-year-old daughter, a woman whose father runs back into their burning house, and the dispatcher who makes a snap decision to evacuate the entire town without waiting for orders to do so.

I'm always fascinated by different accounts of the same event. My absolute favorite in that vein is the plethora of books on the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, as it was a very time-limited event involving a relatively small number of people of which a disproportionate number of them wrote books about it, and the books are extremely different from each other.

These books about the Paradise fire are pretty similar. Both are by journalists, both take similar approaches to the story, both have similar virtues (interesting and exciting story) and similar flaws (could have been better at explaining exactly how the fire spread; we didn't need to know what everyone's family did for the last three generations). I suspect that in a month or so, I won't be able to remember what was in which book. I liked Lizzie Johnson's better but it's marginal.

I knew PG&E was terrible but I hadn't realized that in addition to multiple fires caused by their extreme negligence followed by attempts at covering it up, they were also responsible for a pipeline explosion that killed eight people in 2010, AND the Erin Brockovich case in which they dumped toxic waste into a town's water supply. They were sued over the Paradise fire, fined a pittance which they passed on to their captive customers in increased costs, and went bankrupt, but still control a lot of California's power and show no signs of changing their ways.

To this day, most California towns have no evacuation plan and many of the ones that do have one refuse to disclose what it is, citing security concerns.

The county also did not provide the evacuation plan for the communities of Lake Arrowhead, Crestline [where I live] and Running Springs — three communities where at least 95% of residents live in very high hazard areas for wildfires.

El Dorado County officials also initially refused to release information about evacuation plans that would cover Pollock Pines, one of the 15 largest communities in the state where more than 95% of residents live in a very high hazard zone for wildfire.

"I confirmed with the [lieutenant] for our [emergency services] division that we do not release our emergency plan, for obvious security reasons," wrote El Dorado County Sheriff's Sgt. Anthony Prencipe, in an email response. He did not elaborate on those reasons.

Then, in response to a Public Records Act request, the county provided one page from its emergency operations plan that refers to evacuations. Three paragraphs on that page were blacked out.

So for supposedly for fear of some random bad actor waiting for a fire to start and then using their knowledge of the evacuation plan to try to sabotage it, the inhabitants of the towns are left with no idea whatsoever of what they're supposed to do in case of wildfire. More likely, the towns either have no plan or their plan is grossly inadequate, and the supposed security concerns are just an excuse.

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Tropical Storm Hilary and others

I got a lot of rain, but no flooding and no wind damage that I can see. The chickens are in 7th heaven, bustling around the run and pecking at all the debris - I killed two birds with one stone (SORRY CHOOKIES) and dumped all the leaf litter and PINE NEEBLES I'd been raking up to create a wildfire defensible space into their coop to raise the floor level in case of flooding.

Forest Falls and Seven Oaks, small communities northeast of me, got slammed with flooding and mud slides. Some people had to get rescued from trees!

I'm having an annoyingly hard time keeping up with natural disaster news, including in my own backyard. Twitter used to be the absolute best source for breaking news, but not anymore THANKS ELXN. Does anyone have any recommendations for 1) breaking news of disasters in general with up-to-the-minute updates, 2) any sources with good followup? Particularly looking for either good updates or in-depth coverage on the Maui and Northwest Territories fires.

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