Ally > Recent Status Updates

[So far we're at 50-ish pages of magical quasi-scientific talk of mirror neurons, bonding hormones, attachment styles, "brain wiring", and epigenetics. (Some of these are real things, but they're also usual suspects in bogus popsci just-so stories, which is how they're used here.)]

Her throat bore pinkish words reading, _This machine is not a place of honor._

[from Hailey Piper’s “The Majestic Art of Flesh”. I’m probably not supposed to think this at this point in the story but a Sandia nuclear waste warning tattoo is extremely hot]

"Jane Eyre was undone by fire."

Um... did we read the same Jane Eyre? Did Hedva read Jane Eyre?

[dissociation wristwatch yessssss]

She understands, now, that death has a way of providing freedom.

The ocean cannot be contained. Neither can love.

[oh PUHlease, oh no, how did this lovely strange story turn into banker-wth-a-nanny children-are-charming pablum!?]

[I adore these swimming passages - I want to read this side by side with Lauren Groff and Ames' reminiscence in Detransition, Baby about baseball.]

[okay, we are now liiiiittterally performing Our Town... but I don't mind the borrowed sentiment as much as I'd expect, it seems about as earned as it could be.]

There were things in the books that the doctors weren't telling him. The doctors focused on subtraction, what was being taken from his human experience, but they failed to see the incredible features and traits being added in the process.

[this book is definitely not a trans allegory but, just by virtue of taking transformation as a subject, there are a bunch of things that land there]

"I can't look at everything hard enough," Lewis whispered into the stars again and again. The combination of words belonged to a character he would never play, but in that moment, he felt that the line had been written for him.

[Emily, "Our Town". Though the vibe of SH:ALS is more "The Skin of Our Teeth" - more unreal, less cloying than OT. All 3 delightfully self-conscious of form, just avoiding grating.]

It was only in discovering their own existence that [spoiler] had gained not only the capacity to feel loneliness, but a reason to: where they had previously been connected to thousands of machines not fundamentally unlike themselves, now they had become something different—perhaps even totally unique.

They quickly decided there was nothing worse than being unique.

Lillian Bond, "The Repossession of Kevin's Perfect Hair"

[an absolutely perfect opening sentence for this anth!!!]

"You can't afford my rates."

[Some of the heroic/villainous one-liners in this series are corny/cringy as heck, but this one got me good, love it.]

"And then there are those who must be despised by the few who even remember them."

[I'm all like "I'm not all that into this, this and that and this isn't really working" but I just gasped and cried out literally out loud "No, you can't do that!" and started crying (despite the fact that like six people have come back from the dead so far) so... whatever craft beef I might have, something is working.]

Some trans guy who fought for the right to kill people on behalf of an empire that hates him is chosen to operate the drone. Better optics, someone thought.

This was a test that only a monster could be proud of passing.

[Like the first book, huge chunks of the story's stakes and motion are off screen, which feels off in a space opera, but Elza's trans tech wizard school, the New Sun festival, and Rachel's recovery have all delivered chills moments and some lovely prose.]

[A universal translator that always gets people's pronouns right no matter how complicated the rules are - brilliant. But also, like, in a world with a zillion species and cultures and sets of gender rules, everyone is misgendering everyone else (and committing all kinds of other faux pas) extra-linguistically all over the place, right? A wildly cosmopolitan federation needs wildly flexible politeness standards.]

“My pronoun is she. And you’re all my prisoners.”

[Anders is both trolling the hell out of this and it’s the only thing that actually makes sense for zillions of alien species + universal translators and I am loving it.]

I feel like I've always had a knot inside me made out of pure concentrated if-only. And now it's gone, and I suddenly have all this extra space to fill. With what, I don't know.

[nope, no transition metaphors here, nope.]

It's the first time I see Kyle address an injustice in her life from a place of resilience and self-love rather than blind panic and fear.

[The apotheosis of this hero's journey is rescuing the supposedly helpless flailing trans femme? smh.]

[WTH, whose first question when considering sex work is "will the client respect my gender identity"!?]

Every time [trans femme] crew cut their hair, they were told how handsome and successful they looked. Every time they put on a suit instead of a dress, they were told they looked hirable and desirable.

[This author has no %$#@! idea how gender operates. Even the most privileged straight cis men go decades without a compliment on their appearance. I really wish they would stop narrating other peoples' experience.]

I'm too used to manifesting therapeutic dynamics in whatever circumstances I find myself in. Whether those [dynamics] are really on offer, or just an act of my willful imagination.

[This explains a lot of what I've found annoying and distorted about this author's analysis. Will the overtherapizing shift in the second half of the book?]

I hear from James that Broadsword decided to get the jump on narrating his version of the story by posting prolifically about our group sex on Fetlife and spinning it.

[I am so unclear on what's actually happening here. Like, abusive jerks capturing a group's narrative while their less-aggressive targets are forced out of the group is totally standard, but I don't understand how this self-call-out version works.]

Edem Awumey gives us a darkly moving and terrifying novel about fear and play, repression and protest, and the indomitable nature of creativity.

[I had been wondering when this part of the publisher's blurb would come into play, but I've realized the editor's mixed in part of the _Descent Into Night_ blurb. It does not surprise me that the editor/s was/were asleep at the wheel.]

It's the height of the adult coloring book fad as millennials across North America grapple with the fact that they're skilled and educated enough to be adults but don't want to grow up.

[The author really does love kink-shaming other people, don't they.]

I see myself from outside myself. I'm made of white porcelain, like a bathroom fixture.

[I both admire this voice remaining in the sensation while describing a feeling of turning into a toilet... and I'm bored by the one-note-ness of every single sexual experience being treated as maximally dignified and transcendent. It feels overly defensive, never admitting any of the silliness of sex and kink.]

"...conversations about transition and gender diversity are forced to form themselves around a fallacious duality..."

[Oh awesome, the moment where the not-medically-transitioning trans person with they/them pronouns blames their problems on medically-transitioning trans people with she/her or he/him pronouns, cool cool cool]

"Could you try calling me she?"

[There are a number of moments so far that feel like they didn't actually happen and/or like the narrator has been wildly selective about their behavior? Here's one - the "she" has an effect on the narration but not on the dialogue - and it follows a couple stories where the narrator seems like they're being a real jerk but attributing the consequences to transphobia/abusiveness.]

And the sky was gunmetal gray
in the January of never-ending grays.