Rachel Manija Brown's Blog, page 55
April 28, 2022
The Mosquito that Drank the Universe
I had a dream last night, and I wrote it into a story. All you need to know about the fandom is that the tall man (pictured in my icon) is the personification and ruler of dreams.
Sandman - Neil Gaiman. 718 words.
The tall man paused when he reached me, and looked directly at me with eyes like galaxies.
“No, dreamer,” he said in a voice like black velvet and waterfalls. “This wine is not for you.”
The Mosquito that Drank the Universe
comments
Sandman - Neil Gaiman. 718 words.
The tall man paused when he reached me, and looked directly at me with eyes like galaxies.
“No, dreamer,” he said in a voice like black velvet and waterfalls. “This wine is not for you.”
The Mosquito that Drank the Universe
comments
April 27, 2022
Fandom Auction for Ukraine
Sunflower Auction.
I will be offering one (1) fic of minimum 1000 words. I will also be offering one or more (1+) book review. That is, I will do more than one if more than one person places what I consider to be a sufficiently high bid.
Since I have flaked on auctions before like fifteen years ago YES I STILL FEEL GUILTY I will place a deadline upon deliverance.
Go sign up, or bookmark to bid!
comments
I will be offering one (1) fic of minimum 1000 words. I will also be offering one or more (1+) book review. That is, I will do more than one if more than one person places what I consider to be a sufficiently high bid.
Since I have flaked on auctions before like fifteen years ago YES I STILL FEEL GUILTY I will place a deadline upon deliverance.
Go sign up, or bookmark to bid!
comments
The Bright Sessions: A Rant
You can read this without being spoiled for more than the first few episodes by not clicking on the cut tags. Cut tags are spoilery through S4 E7.
Dr. Bright is a therapist who treats atypicals (people with powers). They are not known to the general public, but a secret sinister organization, the AM, studies them.
At the start, she has four clients we follow. Caleb is a sweet teenage empath who's struggling to not get overwhelmed by other people's emotions and who has a sweet romance with another boy at his school, Adam, who is not atypical. Sam is a young woman who time-travels when she gets anxious. Chloe is a college-age woman who is an extremely strong receptive telepath.
( Read more... )
We learn early on that Dr. Bright has a secret agenda and wants to use her clients' powers for her own purposes. This is actually not my beef with the show or its portrayal of therapy. Obviously, it's unethical but the show knows it is and this is discussed a lot. Her clients learn what she's doing and why fairly early, and because she does have sympathetic motives they stick with her.
( Read more... )
Chloe, the telepath, I think is incapable of tuning out other people's thoughts. (This isn't 100% clear but it seems like it.) If she attends a therapy session, she can/will read Dr. Bright's mind. That means that she knows everything Dr. Bright knows, including everything Dr. Bright's other clients tell her. She routinely blurts out stuff other clients told Dr. Bright to different clients of Dr. Bright. Effectively, no one can have any secrets or privacy around Chloe, not just because she knows things, but because she will tell everything she knows to everyone.
(Dr. Bright's clients all end up meeting each other, which sets up its own set of ethical issues which I'll get to shortly.)
If I was Dr. Bright dealing with this genuinely fascinating problem in a therapy ethics, there are multiple possible ways to deal with this. The best way would be to only see Chloe over the phone. Another might be, since my clients all know each other anyway and know this is happening, to ask them, privately and individually and after discussing it, whether they consent to Chloe knowing everything they tell me. If even one person says no, then all of Chloe's sessions happen over the phone, permanently.
If I was the writer of this podcast, I would make clear is whether Chloe is literally incapable of shutting up about other people's secrets, whether she can but it's difficult for her for whatever reason, or whether she just doesn't want to or get why this upsets people.
Why this is happening makes a huge difference! Especially since Dr. Bright is literally there to help people control their powers. If Chloe is incapable of shutting up and her other clients don't consent to having her blurt out everything they tell Dr. Bright, then all her sessions need to happen by phone so she can't read Dr. Bright's mind. If it's difficult for her not to blurt, then Dr. Bright should be helping her with this. If she just doesn't think it's a problem and so refuses to stop, she should be booted as a client.
In the show, the why is not made clear but it seems like it's difficult for her not to blurt and she doesn't want to stop. (At one point she complains how haaaaard and saaaaad it is for her to be expected to keep other people's secrets.) Whatever the reason, everyone keeps telling Chloe not to blurt out their secrets to third parties and Dr. Bright keeps complaining that the whole situation is unethical, but no one ever boots Chloe out of their life or asks Dr. Bright to only see her by phone or do anything about it. Chloe is portrayed as a sweet cinnamon roll too good for this world, but in real life, she would be murdered so fast.
Any time someone brings up Chloe blurting out everything other clients told Dr. Bright to third parties, Chloe or someone else points out that Dr. Bright was also unethical. ONE PERSON BEING UNETHICAL DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OKAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO BE UNETHICAL. ALSO, CHLOE, SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE SOMEONE SHOVES YOU OFF A CLIFF.
This brings me to my biggest single problem with the show: almost everyone in it is from the Crab Nebula. (On FFA, "from the Crab Nebula" is shorthand for "person operating off of an incredibly strange set of assumptions about life/human beings/everything.") The particular quadrant of the Crab Nebula is, I think, young people on Tumblr.
( Read more... )
Almost everyone's values and ethics and reactions are skewed from how humans normally are, and they're all skewed in the same weird directions.
( Read more... )
People keep defending the evil lab with "but they do some good work," which is true, but WHO THE FUCK CARES WHEN THEY'RE ALSO IMPRISONING AND TORTURING PEOPLE WHO SOMETIMES DIE AS A RESULT? The evil lab people say they don't kill anyone on purpose and their experiments aren't meant to kill anyone, which appears to be true, but WHO CARES! They literally grab atypicals off the street, lock them up, and do experiments on them and sometimes they die! Not killing them on purpose doesn't make that better!
As of season four, everyone knows they still have atypicals locked up and experimented on, but no one is doing anything to break them loose and they're still half-heartedly defending the AM as "they do some bad things and some good things, it's complicated." NO IT ISN"T!
And that's not all! There is SO MUCH Crab Nebula reasoning!
A telepath constantly blurting out your secrets to third parties? Worth resignedly bitching about but not worth doing anything about.
A time-traveler using her ability to spy on the evil organization kidnapping, experimenting on, and sometimes killing atypicals? BAD. INVASION OF PRIVACY.
A therapist telling one of their clients something another client told them in therapy? Unethical enough to literally say "So much for ethics!" in a "Oh well, can't be helped" manner.
A violent sociopath is seriously injured when attempting to kidnap your friend? TERRIBLE. THE WORST.
Guiltily not caring if that sociopath dies? TERRIBLE. THE WORST. (No one ever wishes him dead without feeling guilty about wishing harm on another human being. I wish people harm all the time because they're harming other people, and I feel no guilt about it, and those aren't even people who threatened to murder someone I loved!)
Using the word "rape" or "sexual assault?" Apparently so horrifying that it can't be done, even when people are explicitly talking about it, such as exchanges like this:
Character A: "Did he... do anything to you? You know, when he kidnapped you and you spent all that time together, I mean I don't know his sexual orientation but, well...?"
Kidnapped Character: "No! Absolutely not! Nothing of the kind happened."
YOU CAN SAY SEXUAL ASSAULT, THESE ARE ADULT CHARACTERS ON AN ADULT SHOW DEALING WITH TRAUMA.
( Read more... )
There's this weird prudishness and naivete going on, which is especially weird given that the show deals very openly and explicitly about topics like trauma, mental illness, and sexual orientation. This juxtaposition feels very Tumblr teenager to me.
AND ALSO, when you have a situation where your clients end up all knowing each other and hanging out together, one's telepathic and two are empathic, and they don't have any real therapy options other than you, stop wringing your hands about the unethical lack of privacy and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
It's actually a very interesting problem in therapeutic ethics. The most relevant ethical frameworks I can think of come from group therapy and situations in which dual relationships and clients knowing each other is unavoidable, such as being a therapist in a hospital or in a very small town where you're the only one.
The solution that comes to my mind is to get everyone's input, first individually and then (if they all want) in a group setting. You could decide that within the group, you don't have secrets, but you cannot reveal anything from within the group to anyone outside of the group.
And this is just touching the surface! There's so much more, like why the fuck Dr. Bright wouldn't tell a client that the organization she's involved with KIDNAPS AND EXPERIMENTS ON PEOPLE LIKE HER when there is literally no reason not to tell her other than that-- HER STATED REASON FOR NOT DISCLOSING THIS - is that the organization doesn't always do this and is sometimes helpful WHEN IT DOESN'T DECIDE TO KIDNAP AND EXPERIMENT ON YOU WHAT THE ACTUAL CRAB NEBULA FUCK.
[image error]
comments
Dr. Bright is a therapist who treats atypicals (people with powers). They are not known to the general public, but a secret sinister organization, the AM, studies them.
At the start, she has four clients we follow. Caleb is a sweet teenage empath who's struggling to not get overwhelmed by other people's emotions and who has a sweet romance with another boy at his school, Adam, who is not atypical. Sam is a young woman who time-travels when she gets anxious. Chloe is a college-age woman who is an extremely strong receptive telepath.
( Read more... )
We learn early on that Dr. Bright has a secret agenda and wants to use her clients' powers for her own purposes. This is actually not my beef with the show or its portrayal of therapy. Obviously, it's unethical but the show knows it is and this is discussed a lot. Her clients learn what she's doing and why fairly early, and because she does have sympathetic motives they stick with her.
( Read more... )
Chloe, the telepath, I think is incapable of tuning out other people's thoughts. (This isn't 100% clear but it seems like it.) If she attends a therapy session, she can/will read Dr. Bright's mind. That means that she knows everything Dr. Bright knows, including everything Dr. Bright's other clients tell her. She routinely blurts out stuff other clients told Dr. Bright to different clients of Dr. Bright. Effectively, no one can have any secrets or privacy around Chloe, not just because she knows things, but because she will tell everything she knows to everyone.
(Dr. Bright's clients all end up meeting each other, which sets up its own set of ethical issues which I'll get to shortly.)
If I was Dr. Bright dealing with this genuinely fascinating problem in a therapy ethics, there are multiple possible ways to deal with this. The best way would be to only see Chloe over the phone. Another might be, since my clients all know each other anyway and know this is happening, to ask them, privately and individually and after discussing it, whether they consent to Chloe knowing everything they tell me. If even one person says no, then all of Chloe's sessions happen over the phone, permanently.
If I was the writer of this podcast, I would make clear is whether Chloe is literally incapable of shutting up about other people's secrets, whether she can but it's difficult for her for whatever reason, or whether she just doesn't want to or get why this upsets people.
Why this is happening makes a huge difference! Especially since Dr. Bright is literally there to help people control their powers. If Chloe is incapable of shutting up and her other clients don't consent to having her blurt out everything they tell Dr. Bright, then all her sessions need to happen by phone so she can't read Dr. Bright's mind. If it's difficult for her not to blurt, then Dr. Bright should be helping her with this. If she just doesn't think it's a problem and so refuses to stop, she should be booted as a client.
In the show, the why is not made clear but it seems like it's difficult for her not to blurt and she doesn't want to stop. (At one point she complains how haaaaard and saaaaad it is for her to be expected to keep other people's secrets.) Whatever the reason, everyone keeps telling Chloe not to blurt out their secrets to third parties and Dr. Bright keeps complaining that the whole situation is unethical, but no one ever boots Chloe out of their life or asks Dr. Bright to only see her by phone or do anything about it. Chloe is portrayed as a sweet cinnamon roll too good for this world, but in real life, she would be murdered so fast.
Any time someone brings up Chloe blurting out everything other clients told Dr. Bright to third parties, Chloe or someone else points out that Dr. Bright was also unethical. ONE PERSON BEING UNETHICAL DOES NOT MEAN IT'S OKAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO BE UNETHICAL. ALSO, CHLOE, SHUT THE FUCK UP BEFORE SOMEONE SHOVES YOU OFF A CLIFF.
This brings me to my biggest single problem with the show: almost everyone in it is from the Crab Nebula. (On FFA, "from the Crab Nebula" is shorthand for "person operating off of an incredibly strange set of assumptions about life/human beings/everything.") The particular quadrant of the Crab Nebula is, I think, young people on Tumblr.
( Read more... )
Almost everyone's values and ethics and reactions are skewed from how humans normally are, and they're all skewed in the same weird directions.
( Read more... )
People keep defending the evil lab with "but they do some good work," which is true, but WHO THE FUCK CARES WHEN THEY'RE ALSO IMPRISONING AND TORTURING PEOPLE WHO SOMETIMES DIE AS A RESULT? The evil lab people say they don't kill anyone on purpose and their experiments aren't meant to kill anyone, which appears to be true, but WHO CARES! They literally grab atypicals off the street, lock them up, and do experiments on them and sometimes they die! Not killing them on purpose doesn't make that better!
As of season four, everyone knows they still have atypicals locked up and experimented on, but no one is doing anything to break them loose and they're still half-heartedly defending the AM as "they do some bad things and some good things, it's complicated." NO IT ISN"T!
And that's not all! There is SO MUCH Crab Nebula reasoning!
A telepath constantly blurting out your secrets to third parties? Worth resignedly bitching about but not worth doing anything about.
A time-traveler using her ability to spy on the evil organization kidnapping, experimenting on, and sometimes killing atypicals? BAD. INVASION OF PRIVACY.
A therapist telling one of their clients something another client told them in therapy? Unethical enough to literally say "So much for ethics!" in a "Oh well, can't be helped" manner.
A violent sociopath is seriously injured when attempting to kidnap your friend? TERRIBLE. THE WORST.
Guiltily not caring if that sociopath dies? TERRIBLE. THE WORST. (No one ever wishes him dead without feeling guilty about wishing harm on another human being. I wish people harm all the time because they're harming other people, and I feel no guilt about it, and those aren't even people who threatened to murder someone I loved!)
Using the word "rape" or "sexual assault?" Apparently so horrifying that it can't be done, even when people are explicitly talking about it, such as exchanges like this:
Character A: "Did he... do anything to you? You know, when he kidnapped you and you spent all that time together, I mean I don't know his sexual orientation but, well...?"
Kidnapped Character: "No! Absolutely not! Nothing of the kind happened."
YOU CAN SAY SEXUAL ASSAULT, THESE ARE ADULT CHARACTERS ON AN ADULT SHOW DEALING WITH TRAUMA.
( Read more... )
There's this weird prudishness and naivete going on, which is especially weird given that the show deals very openly and explicitly about topics like trauma, mental illness, and sexual orientation. This juxtaposition feels very Tumblr teenager to me.
AND ALSO, when you have a situation where your clients end up all knowing each other and hanging out together, one's telepathic and two are empathic, and they don't have any real therapy options other than you, stop wringing your hands about the unethical lack of privacy and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
It's actually a very interesting problem in therapeutic ethics. The most relevant ethical frameworks I can think of come from group therapy and situations in which dual relationships and clients knowing each other is unavoidable, such as being a therapist in a hospital or in a very small town where you're the only one.
The solution that comes to my mind is to get everyone's input, first individually and then (if they all want) in a group setting. You could decide that within the group, you don't have secrets, but you cannot reveal anything from within the group to anyone outside of the group.
And this is just touching the surface! There's so much more, like why the fuck Dr. Bright wouldn't tell a client that the organization she's involved with KIDNAPS AND EXPERIMENTS ON PEOPLE LIKE HER when there is literally no reason not to tell her other than that-- HER STATED REASON FOR NOT DISCLOSING THIS - is that the organization doesn't always do this and is sometimes helpful WHEN IT DOESN'T DECIDE TO KIDNAP AND EXPERIMENT ON YOU WHAT THE ACTUAL CRAB NEBULA FUCK.
[image error]
comments
April 26, 2022
The Bright Sessions
Does anyone else listen to this?
It's a fiction podcast by Lauren Shippen about a psychologist who provides therapy for people with psychic powers (atypicals).
Things I normally can't deal with at all:
1) Fiction podcasts. I often can't tell the voices apart, and I generally find them annoying and hard to follow.
2) Fiction about therapists. They are invariably unethical, which is annoying because come the fuck on, this is not such a boring job that the only way to make it interesting is to have them be unethical. More often than not, they have sex with their clients, which ties with pedophilia and bodily waste stuff for my number one squick.
And even if they're not unethical and don't fuck their patients, they're generally bad at therapy, or they don't actually show much of the therapy and what they do show is 90% the client screaming at the therapist, or the entire therapy conceit is just a framework for the clients to talk about their lives, which is fine but they might as well be talking to a bartender.
However, I tried the first episode because I'm doing daily physical therapy for my wrist (Dequervains synovitis, thanks ivy!) and was bored. It was surprisingly listenable (normally I nope out of fiction podcasts within three minutes) and I am now partway into season four.
Why I am still listening:
33% it's entertaining.
33% hate-listening for bad therapy and bad ethics/boggling at "What planet are these characters from?! Who thinks this way?!"
33% I got extremely invested in a certain relationship - if you've listened to the show, I'm curious if you can guess which one.
1% like I said, lots of daily PT.
Before I post a long rant, mostly about "Who thinks this way?!" and "Why don't you stop saying 'Oh dear, this is terribly unethical' and try to come up with an actual goddamn solution to the ethical problem?!", I'm curious if anyone else is familiar with the show.
[image error]
comments
It's a fiction podcast by Lauren Shippen about a psychologist who provides therapy for people with psychic powers (atypicals).
Things I normally can't deal with at all:
1) Fiction podcasts. I often can't tell the voices apart, and I generally find them annoying and hard to follow.
2) Fiction about therapists. They are invariably unethical, which is annoying because come the fuck on, this is not such a boring job that the only way to make it interesting is to have them be unethical. More often than not, they have sex with their clients, which ties with pedophilia and bodily waste stuff for my number one squick.
And even if they're not unethical and don't fuck their patients, they're generally bad at therapy, or they don't actually show much of the therapy and what they do show is 90% the client screaming at the therapist, or the entire therapy conceit is just a framework for the clients to talk about their lives, which is fine but they might as well be talking to a bartender.
However, I tried the first episode because I'm doing daily physical therapy for my wrist (Dequervains synovitis, thanks ivy!) and was bored. It was surprisingly listenable (normally I nope out of fiction podcasts within three minutes) and I am now partway into season four.
Why I am still listening:
33% it's entertaining.
33% hate-listening for bad therapy and bad ethics/boggling at "What planet are these characters from?! Who thinks this way?!"
33% I got extremely invested in a certain relationship - if you've listened to the show, I'm curious if you can guess which one.
1% like I said, lots of daily PT.
Before I post a long rant, mostly about "Who thinks this way?!" and "Why don't you stop saying 'Oh dear, this is terribly unethical' and try to come up with an actual goddamn solution to the ethical problem?!", I'm curious if anyone else is familiar with the show.
[image error]
comments
April 25, 2022
A Court of Thorns and Roses, by Sarah J. Maas
This book is a smash hit and I wanted to see why.
Chapter One explains a lot of the reason why. It opens with the heroine, Feyre perched in a tree with a bow, desperately hoping to kill a deer because it's the dead of winter and she's the sole breadwinner for her useless family who used to be rich but have fallen on hard times and will starve without it.
She spots a deer, but it's being stalked by a wolf so huge it must be Fae. The Fee have left the human realm, but are separated in this location by a penetrable wall. The Fae murdered and enslaved humans before the land was divided between them due to a Treaty stating that no human can kill a Fae except in self-defense. But Feyre needs the deer and she hates the Fae, who prey on humans, so she shoots the wolf dead with an arrow of ash and iron, then skins it to sell the pelt and lugs the deer home. Her family (useless disabled dad; useless featherbrained sister; mean sister) is totally ungrateful.
You're probably getting the picture of how incredibly iddy and tropey this is, but let me walk you through a little more.
Then! A Fae beast whose description sounds exactly like the Beast in the Disney cartoon shows up. He menaces the family, causing everyone to cower but Feyre, who fights him. He's showed up because she murdered his friend (the wolf) and now she has a choice: cake or death!
That is, she must choose between going with him to live in Faerieland forever, or being murdered on the spot. After a lot of angsting, she chooses to go.
On her way out, her father begs her forgiveness and literally says, "You were too good for us!"
In Faerie, she finds that the Beast is also a really hot High Fae man named Tamlin who is unfailingly nice to her. She must live in his lavish mansion with its beautiful garden (albeit haunted by dangerous evil fairies on occasion) and his really hot High Fae friend Lucien who is snarky and interestingly scarred. Everyone wears cool masquerade masks. Feyre is given a beautiful room, a maid, lavish meals and clothes, told that her family is well-cared for, and basically given everything she could possibly desire.
Let's have a trope check!
Heroine: a cross between Katniss Everdeen (bow, hunting, family breadwinner), Cinderella (terrible sisters, dead mother, worked to death by ungrateful family), Beauty (her name is a version of Fair, her situation is pure "Beauty and the Beast") and Janet (she's in a romantic situation with a guy named Tamlin who's being oppressed by an evil Fae queen.) She's competent (well, at hunting anyway), talented (she's a painter), tough, brave, beautiful, spunky, and has a cool name. (Feyre is pronounced Fay-ruh, as is slipped into narration.)
Fairytale motifs: "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Tam Lin," ( Read more... ).
Iddy tropes: Where do I even start. This book is nothing but id. Lots of lush, evocative descriptions of fairies and magic. Multiple hot guys who are all into her and have angst. Heroine is pampered and given everything she wants. Danger, secrets, and mysteries. Your terrible family realizes how badly they were treating you and that you're too good for them and apologize. Everything is awesomely angsty, awesomely terrible, or just plain awesome - sometimes all at once, like when Feyre is cursed with a permanent mark... which looks like a very beautiful elbow-length lace glove with intricate flower patterns.
In short, this book goes all-out on "Unappreciated, unhappy girl is taken away from her terrible home and brought to a gorgeous, cool, dangerous new place where she is given everything she could ever want, her skills are needed, she has hot men in love with her, and she finds a place, a purpose, and love."
The worldbuilding is lavish and lush and totally uninterested in actual logic. For instance, Feyre says that humans no longer have Gods or celebrate holidays ever since the Fae left, which would have fascinating implications if it was the kind of book where that sort of thing is meant to be a dangling clue rather than a "my human life was so terrible that holidays are literally banned." Later she mentions that they do celebrate Summer Solstice, but it's not a cool celebration like they have in Faerie. Let's just say this is a not a book for you if you like your fantasy worlds to have plausible economic systems.
Speaking of lack of logic, Feyre has some Too Stupid To Live moments, such as when she's warned that she'll be in danger if she leaves her room due to a magic sex ritual happening outside, and she decides based on very little evidence that it must be over and wanders out for a midnight snack.
That aside, the first half had a lot of elements that normally appeal to me, but was hampered by me not liking Feyre. Right at the beginning, she hated or disdained everyone, and even though her family clearly deserved it, it meant that until she started warming up to the Fae characters, we never got to see her interact with anyone she liked. Her purpose was to protect her family, but since she had literally nothing good to say about any of them ever, it felt shoehorned in for the sake of the plot rather than organic from her character.
Katniss loved Prim, Menolly loved Petiron even before she loved her fire lizards, and Bella loved her father, but Feyre doesn't even like anyone until about a third of the way into the book. I realized while reading this that I need a character to either love someone, have some kind of intense purpose that makes sense for their character, or have a very appealing narrative voice for me to be invested in them as a character.
And then we hit the second half, which is where I went from enjoying the aesthetic and balls-to-the-walls-ness of it, to getting actually invested. The second half has a number of twists, which are not shocking per se but are interesting and fun.
( Read more... )
I think how much you're likely to enjoy this book largely depends on how much you're in the mood for lush fairytale retellings with some cool original touches, which run entirely on id and Rule of Cool. I spent a highly enjoyable afternoon reading it on the sofa and have already launched into book two.
Content notes: For Reasons (one plot-related, one magic whammy) which are that the author is into it, both potential love interests have scenes where they non-consensually kiss or touch the heroine. Torture. A man gets shot while in wolf form.
[image error]
comments
Chapter One explains a lot of the reason why. It opens with the heroine, Feyre perched in a tree with a bow, desperately hoping to kill a deer because it's the dead of winter and she's the sole breadwinner for her useless family who used to be rich but have fallen on hard times and will starve without it.
She spots a deer, but it's being stalked by a wolf so huge it must be Fae. The Fee have left the human realm, but are separated in this location by a penetrable wall. The Fae murdered and enslaved humans before the land was divided between them due to a Treaty stating that no human can kill a Fae except in self-defense. But Feyre needs the deer and she hates the Fae, who prey on humans, so she shoots the wolf dead with an arrow of ash and iron, then skins it to sell the pelt and lugs the deer home. Her family (useless disabled dad; useless featherbrained sister; mean sister) is totally ungrateful.
You're probably getting the picture of how incredibly iddy and tropey this is, but let me walk you through a little more.
Then! A Fae beast whose description sounds exactly like the Beast in the Disney cartoon shows up. He menaces the family, causing everyone to cower but Feyre, who fights him. He's showed up because she murdered his friend (the wolf) and now she has a choice: cake or death!
That is, she must choose between going with him to live in Faerieland forever, or being murdered on the spot. After a lot of angsting, she chooses to go.
On her way out, her father begs her forgiveness and literally says, "You were too good for us!"
In Faerie, she finds that the Beast is also a really hot High Fae man named Tamlin who is unfailingly nice to her. She must live in his lavish mansion with its beautiful garden (albeit haunted by dangerous evil fairies on occasion) and his really hot High Fae friend Lucien who is snarky and interestingly scarred. Everyone wears cool masquerade masks. Feyre is given a beautiful room, a maid, lavish meals and clothes, told that her family is well-cared for, and basically given everything she could possibly desire.
Let's have a trope check!
Heroine: a cross between Katniss Everdeen (bow, hunting, family breadwinner), Cinderella (terrible sisters, dead mother, worked to death by ungrateful family), Beauty (her name is a version of Fair, her situation is pure "Beauty and the Beast") and Janet (she's in a romantic situation with a guy named Tamlin who's being oppressed by an evil Fae queen.) She's competent (well, at hunting anyway), talented (she's a painter), tough, brave, beautiful, spunky, and has a cool name. (Feyre is pronounced Fay-ruh, as is slipped into narration.)
Fairytale motifs: "Cinderella," "Beauty and the Beast," "Tam Lin," ( Read more... ).
Iddy tropes: Where do I even start. This book is nothing but id. Lots of lush, evocative descriptions of fairies and magic. Multiple hot guys who are all into her and have angst. Heroine is pampered and given everything she wants. Danger, secrets, and mysteries. Your terrible family realizes how badly they were treating you and that you're too good for them and apologize. Everything is awesomely angsty, awesomely terrible, or just plain awesome - sometimes all at once, like when Feyre is cursed with a permanent mark... which looks like a very beautiful elbow-length lace glove with intricate flower patterns.
In short, this book goes all-out on "Unappreciated, unhappy girl is taken away from her terrible home and brought to a gorgeous, cool, dangerous new place where she is given everything she could ever want, her skills are needed, she has hot men in love with her, and she finds a place, a purpose, and love."
The worldbuilding is lavish and lush and totally uninterested in actual logic. For instance, Feyre says that humans no longer have Gods or celebrate holidays ever since the Fae left, which would have fascinating implications if it was the kind of book where that sort of thing is meant to be a dangling clue rather than a "my human life was so terrible that holidays are literally banned." Later she mentions that they do celebrate Summer Solstice, but it's not a cool celebration like they have in Faerie. Let's just say this is a not a book for you if you like your fantasy worlds to have plausible economic systems.
Speaking of lack of logic, Feyre has some Too Stupid To Live moments, such as when she's warned that she'll be in danger if she leaves her room due to a magic sex ritual happening outside, and she decides based on very little evidence that it must be over and wanders out for a midnight snack.
That aside, the first half had a lot of elements that normally appeal to me, but was hampered by me not liking Feyre. Right at the beginning, she hated or disdained everyone, and even though her family clearly deserved it, it meant that until she started warming up to the Fae characters, we never got to see her interact with anyone she liked. Her purpose was to protect her family, but since she had literally nothing good to say about any of them ever, it felt shoehorned in for the sake of the plot rather than organic from her character.
Katniss loved Prim, Menolly loved Petiron even before she loved her fire lizards, and Bella loved her father, but Feyre doesn't even like anyone until about a third of the way into the book. I realized while reading this that I need a character to either love someone, have some kind of intense purpose that makes sense for their character, or have a very appealing narrative voice for me to be invested in them as a character.
And then we hit the second half, which is where I went from enjoying the aesthetic and balls-to-the-walls-ness of it, to getting actually invested. The second half has a number of twists, which are not shocking per se but are interesting and fun.
( Read more... )
I think how much you're likely to enjoy this book largely depends on how much you're in the mood for lush fairytale retellings with some cool original touches, which run entirely on id and Rule of Cool. I spent a highly enjoyable afternoon reading it on the sofa and have already launched into book two.
Content notes: For Reasons (one plot-related, one magic whammy) which are that the author is into it, both potential love interests have scenes where they non-consensually kiss or touch the heroine. Torture. A man gets shot while in wolf form.
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Stripped by the Bush: Vengeful Blackberry Exacts Noncon Public Striptease From Hapless Gardener!
So my blackberry bush just forced me to take off my shirt AND BRA within full view of my neighbor's house.
I was working away at the tangle, and finally decided to do something I've been previously avoiding, which was to cut down a really big cane when I couldn't see what was on the other end. It was blocking basically everything. I crossed my fingers I wasn't murdering half the patch, and snipped. But when I attempted to tie up the part of it I'd left, I got yanked backwards.
This isn't that unusual as the thorns are huge. I twisted around to untangle myself, and found that I'd been caught, not by a thorn, but by one of the trellis wires. It had somehow tied itself around part of my shirt and bra, and was so taut I couldn't even tell exactly how it was doing it, let alone untangle it. I couldn't cut the wire as it was supporting multiple brambles.
I finally had to take off my shirt and bra and untangle myself in broad daylight, easily visible from both the road and the neighbor's backyard which he commonly frequents, naked from the waist up.
I don't think any human saw me, but I swear that blackberry was laughing.
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I was working away at the tangle, and finally decided to do something I've been previously avoiding, which was to cut down a really big cane when I couldn't see what was on the other end. It was blocking basically everything. I crossed my fingers I wasn't murdering half the patch, and snipped. But when I attempted to tie up the part of it I'd left, I got yanked backwards.
This isn't that unusual as the thorns are huge. I twisted around to untangle myself, and found that I'd been caught, not by a thorn, but by one of the trellis wires. It had somehow tied itself around part of my shirt and bra, and was so taut I couldn't even tell exactly how it was doing it, let alone untangle it. I couldn't cut the wire as it was supporting multiple brambles.
I finally had to take off my shirt and bra and untangle myself in broad daylight, easily visible from both the road and the neighbor's backyard which he commonly frequents, naked from the waist up.
I don't think any human saw me, but I swear that blackberry was laughing.
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April 23, 2022
Berry Madness
When my last Native Foods Nursery order arrives and is planted, I will have nine types of berries growing on my land: strawberries, blackberries (wild), raspberries (wild and cultivated), blueberries, golden currants, salmonberries, thimbleberries, salal berries, and honeyberries/haskaps.
I have never tried the latter five - please comment if you have! - and in fact only learned about them on the website. But since I've only ever encountered one berry I really dislike, I have high hopes. Except for the salal berries, which are mostly for the birds.)
View Poll: #26912
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I have never tried the latter five - please comment if you have! - and in fact only learned about them on the website. But since I've only ever encountered one berry I really dislike, I have high hopes. Except for the salal berries, which are mostly for the birds.)
View Poll: #26912
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April 22, 2022
Everyday Monet, by Eileen Bordman
Impressionism is my favorite art style, but Monet is not my favorite Impressionist. (My favorite Impressionist is Renoir, and my favorite artist in any style is Andy Goldsworthy.) But Monet created my single favorite work of visual art. It's not one of his paintings. It's his garden at Giverny.
When I saw this book on Kindle deal I grabbed it, as my perfunctory skim of the blurb made me think it was an analysis of the principles and execution of his garden, and how they might be applied to your garden.
So my reaction to this book is at least 50% my own fault, as that's only about 5% of the book. The book is about how to bring aspects of Monet's work and life into your own life. However, the other 50% of my annoyance with this book is how laughably surface-level its ideas are.
It suggests having a picnic with bread and cheese, because Monet liked bread and cheese. It shows a photo of Monet's kitchen with copper pans hanging up, and says you could hang up some copper pans in your kitchen. It says Monet liked Japanese prints, so you could also hang up a Japanese print. It repeatedly suggests that if you want to bring some Monet vibes into your life, you could try hanging a Monet print in your house NO SHIT SHERLOCK WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT.
It commits this sentence:
One of the most special features of color is that we actually experience colors, and they can have a direct effect on our mood and our preferences.
ONE OF THE MOST SPECIAL FEATURES OF COLOR IS THAT WE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCE COLORS.
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However, this did lead me to poke around and see if there were any books that were actually about stuff like Monet's use of color and seasonality in his garden and how those general principles might be applied, and it looks like there is so I will get that book.
Of course I'm not remotely planning to recreate Monet's garden, but I'm looking for principles like the one useful thing I did get out of this book, which was that he planted low, white-blooming flowers around tall, bright ones to get a shimmering effect. And also, analyzing a really great work of art is always interesting and always helpful, even if you're not going for that exact aesthetic or those exact methods and media.
I would really love a koi pond with water lilies though. Maybe a very small one someday.
[image error]
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When I saw this book on Kindle deal I grabbed it, as my perfunctory skim of the blurb made me think it was an analysis of the principles and execution of his garden, and how they might be applied to your garden.
So my reaction to this book is at least 50% my own fault, as that's only about 5% of the book. The book is about how to bring aspects of Monet's work and life into your own life. However, the other 50% of my annoyance with this book is how laughably surface-level its ideas are.
It suggests having a picnic with bread and cheese, because Monet liked bread and cheese. It shows a photo of Monet's kitchen with copper pans hanging up, and says you could hang up some copper pans in your kitchen. It says Monet liked Japanese prints, so you could also hang up a Japanese print. It repeatedly suggests that if you want to bring some Monet vibes into your life, you could try hanging a Monet print in your house NO SHIT SHERLOCK WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT OF THAT.
It commits this sentence:
One of the most special features of color is that we actually experience colors, and they can have a direct effect on our mood and our preferences.
ONE OF THE MOST SPECIAL FEATURES OF COLOR IS THAT WE ACTUALLY EXPERIENCE COLORS.
[image error]
However, this did lead me to poke around and see if there were any books that were actually about stuff like Monet's use of color and seasonality in his garden and how those general principles might be applied, and it looks like there is so I will get that book.
Of course I'm not remotely planning to recreate Monet's garden, but I'm looking for principles like the one useful thing I did get out of this book, which was that he planted low, white-blooming flowers around tall, bright ones to get a shimmering effect. And also, analyzing a really great work of art is always interesting and always helpful, even if you're not going for that exact aesthetic or those exact methods and media.
I would really love a koi pond with water lilies though. Maybe a very small one someday.
[image error]
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April 21, 2022
Socks: Threat or Menace?
I recently googled to try to figure out if I was allergic to my new socks. (Yes, even after several washes.)
Causes of itching on the soles of the feet, according to Dr. Google:
1. Diabetes
2. Cancer.
3. Kidney Disease.
4. Biliary Cirrhosis.
5. Cancer.
6. Athlete's Foot.
7. Cancer.
42. Sock Allergy.
I drank nothing but celery juice for a week stopped wearing those socks and my diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, biliary cirrhosis, cancer, athlete's foot, and cancer was CURED!
I think I'll write a book.
View Poll: #26908
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Causes of itching on the soles of the feet, according to Dr. Google:
1. Diabetes
2. Cancer.
3. Kidney Disease.
4. Biliary Cirrhosis.
5. Cancer.
6. Athlete's Foot.
7. Cancer.
42. Sock Allergy.
I drank nothing but celery juice for a week stopped wearing those socks and my diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, biliary cirrhosis, cancer, athlete's foot, and cancer was CURED!
I think I'll write a book.
View Poll: #26908
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April 17, 2022
Afterparty, by Daryl Gregory
In a near-future Toronto, five people in a pharmaceutical startup, including the married couple Lyda and Mikaela, invent a drug meant to treat schizophrenia. Instead, small doses give you the feeling of being in touch with a loving God. Large doses give you a permanent hallucination of some kind of divine being and the emotional conviction that it's real, even if you logically understand that it's just a hallucination. A very bad night at the startup leaves one founder jailed for murder, one a recluse, Mikaela dead, and her wife Lyda in a mental hospital with a hallucinatory guardian angel.
Years later, the story begins. Lyda, still in the hospital, learns that a new drug that makes you experience God has hit the streets. Horrified at the thought that the drug that killed her wife and ruined her life is getting released into the world, she extracts herself from the hospital and goes on a quest to find its source and stop it.
Lyda is accompanied by a friend she met at the hospital and rescued from a guy who thought he was a hyena (it's a long story) and a sometime lover she also met at the hospital, a former CIA agent who used a drug that helps you see patterns in large masses of information, which made her permanently paranoid. And of course Doctor Gloria, her very own imaginary angel, is always with her. And so begins a madcap quest involving smart drugs, a hit man with a ranch of miniature bison in his living room, criminals and drug dealers of assorted cultures and class levels, ex-gangster priests, and a whole lot of Gods.
This is the sort of book I normally don't like. It's extremely gonzo, and it hits three of my least favorite book tropes: God, psychedelic drugs, and drugs that make you experience God. (These aren't squicks, they're just elements that are very commonly written in a boring and/or facile manner.) However, I loved Gregory's Revelator and really liked We Are All Completely Fine, so I checked it out and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
Gregory's wife is a therapist, and you can tell. Despite the weird events, wacky tone, and near-future setting, there's a baseline of realism about things like how mental hospitals function, what it's like to have a mental illness or be addicted to drugs, and how psychiatric medication works. Even the original intent of the drug and how it ended up makes sense.
Lyda is angry, prickly, and fires off hostile wisecracks to avoid painful emotional entanglements; she's not conventionally likable, but I liked her a lot. Doctor Gloria is a great character, and the question of whether the God drug might be causing or enabling something real ended up being a lot more complex and interesting than I expected. There's also a character who appears late, a girl with imaginary friends who I absolutely loved. The characters all have their own lives and motivations, even the minor ones and the hallucinatory ones, which makes the world feel very lived-in
Content notes: Non-graphic death of miniature bison (BOO, I loved the teeny living room bison), non-graphic allusions to child abuse, violence, torture, SO MANY DRUGS, atheist rants, religious rants, and a multiracial/multi-sexual orientation cast in which basically everyone is a criminal or drug dealer or addict or mentally ill or some combination of the above.
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Years later, the story begins. Lyda, still in the hospital, learns that a new drug that makes you experience God has hit the streets. Horrified at the thought that the drug that killed her wife and ruined her life is getting released into the world, she extracts herself from the hospital and goes on a quest to find its source and stop it.
Lyda is accompanied by a friend she met at the hospital and rescued from a guy who thought he was a hyena (it's a long story) and a sometime lover she also met at the hospital, a former CIA agent who used a drug that helps you see patterns in large masses of information, which made her permanently paranoid. And of course Doctor Gloria, her very own imaginary angel, is always with her. And so begins a madcap quest involving smart drugs, a hit man with a ranch of miniature bison in his living room, criminals and drug dealers of assorted cultures and class levels, ex-gangster priests, and a whole lot of Gods.
This is the sort of book I normally don't like. It's extremely gonzo, and it hits three of my least favorite book tropes: God, psychedelic drugs, and drugs that make you experience God. (These aren't squicks, they're just elements that are very commonly written in a boring and/or facile manner.) However, I loved Gregory's Revelator and really liked We Are All Completely Fine, so I checked it out and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it.
Gregory's wife is a therapist, and you can tell. Despite the weird events, wacky tone, and near-future setting, there's a baseline of realism about things like how mental hospitals function, what it's like to have a mental illness or be addicted to drugs, and how psychiatric medication works. Even the original intent of the drug and how it ended up makes sense.
Lyda is angry, prickly, and fires off hostile wisecracks to avoid painful emotional entanglements; she's not conventionally likable, but I liked her a lot. Doctor Gloria is a great character, and the question of whether the God drug might be causing or enabling something real ended up being a lot more complex and interesting than I expected. There's also a character who appears late, a girl with imaginary friends who I absolutely loved. The characters all have their own lives and motivations, even the minor ones and the hallucinatory ones, which makes the world feel very lived-in
Content notes: Non-graphic death of miniature bison (BOO, I loved the teeny living room bison), non-graphic allusions to child abuse, violence, torture, SO MANY DRUGS, atheist rants, religious rants, and a multiracial/multi-sexual orientation cast in which basically everyone is a criminal or drug dealer or addict or mentally ill or some combination of the above.
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