Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 29

an eel and a pineapple rind

Two exciting things!

First, Strange Horizons is doing a special issue featuring Southeast Asian writers, and on Twitter they mentioned especially that they'd love to get someone from Timor-Leste. So on Facebook I posted about that and one of my acquaintances from when I went there in 2013 messaged me! He wanted details, and he said he'd try writing something if I could help him translate it. I said yes! And the other day he sent me a 3,500 word story. And now I'm working on translating it!

I can't...

Laloran Justisa, a story arc in screenshots

I finished watching Laloran Justisa yesterday--I'll miss it so much; I loved it. There were a few series-long story arcs to wrap up, the most moving being the story of the main character Rosa's missing older sister. In Episode 1 Rosa and her mother are sitting in a church, remembering Adelina, who was stolen away by the Indonesians during the occupation. This happened a *lot*. They are looking at a photo from Rosa's baptism.

( the rest of the story )

Super happy ending.

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finished the Stephen King novel

The last third was definitely the weakest: a big infodump about the shadowy Final Boss (basically Rupert Murdoch). Apparently when you want to indicate that someone's a real-life monster, you make them a pedophile ... Well what that got me thinking about was how a lot of evil in life isn't about what acts a person gets up to with their own hands (or dick), but what they permit or cause to happen by the power they hold. The generalissimos and presidents and supreme autarchs of the world. Putin ma...

Wednesday reading.... Stephen King?!

For once I can make a reading post on a Wednesday, remarkable.

My ESL tutee is a Stephen King fan, and to practice her English, she bought the most recent (or must at least be close to the most recent) Stephen King book, called Billy Summers. I've never read **any** Stephen King--not anything--but of course I know him from reputation and from books and stories of his that have turned into movies. Anyway, I bought the ebook of this so I could read along with her, ask reading comprehension questio...

The Phoenix Feather Quartet

Once there was a bodyguard who was like a brother to the impetuous imperial prince he was sworn to protect. The prince fell for a breathtakingly beautiful but entirely unworldly-wise young aristocrat from a scholarly family, but when she rejected him, he turned vindictive and ordered the bodyguard to kill her. But the bodyguard had himself fallen in love with the young woman, and she with him, so they fled to the far ends of the empire. The prince--who became emperor--holds an undying grudge.

Thi...

Null States, an appreciation

Null States is the second book in Malka Older’s Centenal cycle, following on Infomocracy and preceding State Tectonics.

( Big fat long entry about this big fat book I loved )

Muse upon it, friends!

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Samba da Utopia, by Jonathan Silva and Ceumar

I found this song, Samba da Utopia, while wandering through YouTube. The composer's video is here , but there are many, many other videos by cover singers--like this one , which I almost like better. The words and tune are simple and the message is a good one (aside from the minor detail that I don't believe in utopias)--I really like it!




PS, I don't actually know what makes a samba a samba--I should find out.

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frogs in ice melt

Wakanomori and I went walking with a friend at the Quabbin Reservoir, and we came to a little pool that was alive with frogs, swimming around in the melting water above the ice still covering the pool. Amazing! Aren't they cold blooded? But they didn't seem to mind the icewater--they swam powerful breaststrokes this way and that in the three inches of water above the ice.

Wakanomori took this video. You have to turn the sound up very high in order to hear them, probably. Unfortunately, no closeu...

question, and what I'm up to

The ninja girl has a question about Patricia Wrede's Enchanted Forest series. I read some books in the series and enjoyed them, but I have a notoriously bad memory, and I didn't read all of them, so I'm putting the question to you.

The magician character [quick Google search... ], Mendanbar: the ninja girl remembers an occasion where he (or possibly someone else??) creates a duplicate person/doppelgänger of someone, using magic. Does anyone remember such a thing? And if so, can you situate that p...

the proper use of a knife

On Thursday I sat in on a workshop critiquing some recent papers relating to Timorese culture. (It's one true blessing to come out of this pandemic: people from all over the world can meet and talk with ease via Zoom: participants were in Japan, India, Brazil, Timor-Leste, Canada, and the United States, and I, a non-academic, was allowed to audit.) All of the papers sounded fascinating (the one that critiqued NGO activity as, in some regards, a continuation of colonialism had me nodding like a b...