shark_hat | Reading

This was one of those weeks when several things come along making demands upon one's time and energies and while some of this might be considered to be what one has let oneself in for -

- really could have done without all of it having expectations of me Doing Something with a fair degree of expedition, even if some of this was pressure I was putting on myself.

It was really just as well that I found that the rescheduled postponed seminar - which I learnt about very late in the day - was already booked up so I couldn't get to it.

Not the week to have been smitten with a little story idea that I'd like to work on.

james_davis_nicoll

Four books unjustly doomed by circumstances beyond their creators' control.

Publishing Nightmares and Stories of Authorial Woe

the_comfortable_courtesan

The wombatt is always a favourite here, and today is its World Day: we commend the endeavours of the Wombat Awareness Organisation in providing, as 'twere, an almshouse for elderly marsupials.

***

Your amanuensis is also pleas'd to announce the forthcoming publickation of Consequences: Unexpected Events (Clorinda Cathcart's Circle, #26) on 30th October:

The election is concluded, to a rather unsatisfactory result, Society returns to somewhat more of its normal round. Belated summer house parties take place. Unexpected upheavals occur. Clorinda and her circle prepare for the return to Town. Certain plans already devized are put into motion.

james_davis_nicoll

The June 2021 Yellow King RPG Bundle featuring .PDF ebooks of the surreal supernatural tabletop game The Yellow King from Pelgrane Press.

Bundle of Holding: Yellow King RPG (from 2021)

james_davis_nicoll

A seeming nobody discovers that he is more than a mere pawn.

King’s Blood Four (True Game, volume 1) by Sheri S. Tepper

rionaleonhart

There was a cheap front-row ticket available for The Play That Goes Wrong on Saturday.

I cannot do this, I thought. I saw this play less than a week ago. I cannot possibly afford to get into the habit of seeing this play every week.

So I did the sensible, responsible thing: I begged my housemates to buy the ticket instead, so I wouldn't be able to. Tem picked it up, went to the show and had a good time! I enjoyed hearing about xyr experiences afterwards.

Tem had brought a feathery crow-shaped handbag to the theatre. There's a bit before the show begins where the character of Trevor asks the audience whether they've seen a dog, Winston, who's expected to star in the play. Apparently, the exchange between Trevor and Tem went something like this:

Tem: Is the dog still missing?
Trevor: (pointing at Tem's crow bag) What's that?
Tem: It's a crow! Her name's Lenore.
Trevor: That's brilliant, that is.
Tem: Maybe she could play the dog?
Trevor: She could be the understudy? Maybe you could voice her. Can you bark?

When Tem was telling us about this:

Tem: So I started barking, right there in the theatre. Which is not something I usually do.
(Rei starts snickering.)
Rei: You did petplay with Trevor.
Tem: I... yes, I suppose I did do petplay with Trevor. I barked in front of a theatre of people just because a man asked me to. (pointing aggressively at me) Put that on your Dreamwidth, Riona.

Afterwards, both Robert's actor and Trevor agreed that, if they'd used Tem's crow in place of the missing dog, it would have saved the play.

A small child in Tem's front row apparently took the missing dog VERY SERIOUSLY. She checked under everyone's seats and asked, 'Has anyone checked backstage?' When she asked Chris how the search for the dog was going, his response was 'The dog's lost? Oh, Christ.'

The same child also very sincerely asked 'Are you okay?' whenever someone was hurt in the play. Which is cute! Although it does sound like she had a very concerning afternoon at the theatre.

After Tem had regaled us with xyr theatrical adventures:

Me: By the way, I'm going to be out on Wednesday evening.
Tem: Oh, what are you doing?
Me: N-normal things.
(pause)
Tem: Are you going to The Play That Goes Wrong again?
Me: ...maybe.
Tem: Riona! I went to the theatre so you wouldn't have to, and then I came back to find you'd bought more theatre tickets while I was at the theatre! So there was no point to it at all! Why did I even go to the theatre? Just to 'have a good time'??

So, yes, I went to see The Play That Goes Wrong for the fourth time yesterday. I'm an embarrassment.

I'd brought a friend of mine, Fedz, who was seeing the show for the first time. 'This is incredibly stupid,' he commented in the interval, 'and I love it.'

( The Play That Goes Wrong, 21 October 2026. )

I thought at first, getting into a theatre fandom, that I was lucky to live in London. I have now realised that it is, in fact, a curse. The Play That Goes Wrong is on almost every day! Counting matinées, I could see this play up to eight times per week! It would bankrupt me, obviously, but it is tantalisingly possible.

oursin

Happy birthday,

catdraco and

gryphynshadow!

dine

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sartorias

Well, I tried to upload, without success. a couple of short vids of autumnal colors glowing in the afternoon sun.

Tooo bad I'm all thumbs, as the colors are glorious. Boston was so good to me on this likely last visit, now that I've retired from VP. The weather was perfect, I had great food (I really was plunked into the middle of the prime restaurant area) and in two days I hiked over ten miles--a lot for this old bod. Especially over rough brick sidewalk obviously quite old. In fact the sidewalks were interesting, clearly reworked in patches over the years. Everything was wonderful, including the lovely garden at Old West Church, where I met a writing colleague.

Now trying to catch up on all the things!

oursin

What I read

Well, mostly it was that book on the Huxleys, which was heavily weighted towards TH ('Darwin's bulldog', though Bashford massively nuances his relationship with Charlie and his ideas) and Julian, with supporting intermittent appearances by other members of the family. It was thematic, and did a lot of chronological back and forthing, and maybe I would have liked a bit more about relationships, including with people outside the kinship group, I was frankly boggling at certain archives which had not been consulted wot wot wot and characters who did not feature. Also I'm not sure the Penguin p/b was the ideal physical reading experience....

Then I took a break by reading Robert B Parker, Painted Ladies (Spenser, #38) (2010)

On the go

And then I moved on to Sarah B Rodriguez, The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation (2020). She touched on this very gruesome and depressing episode towards the end of her earlier work on Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment (2014). While Burt did accept the role of the clitoris in female sexual pleasure, he thought there was a design flaw in the female genitalia and performed surgery on the vulval area (often without the woman's knowledge in the course of other operations) (as well as vaginal tightening procedures). He thought this would promote sexual harmony in marriage (in a very male-dominated model) and in fact it caused massive suffering.

I am having to take breaks - between the accounts of his activities and the women's experiences, the state of the medical profession's inability/reluctance to do anything is cringe-making, though, historian of medicine remarks, the professional omerta of code of silence and cover-up, not exactly unprecedented and unknown.

So I have been going back to Points of Departure.

Up next

Really must get to Dawn's Left Hand. And the latest Literary Review is not going to read itself.

pauraque

I think I'm going to have to start putting fewer episodes in these posts because I ramble on too long about them. I'm starting to remember more as our rewatch continues, though it's still very fragmentary.

As always, spoilers abound.

2x10 Sanctuary

Some aliens who have been persecuted by the Dominion come through the wormhole and want to move 3 million of their people onto Bajor because they think a prophecy foretold it, but the Bajoran government says no because they can't even sustain themselves as it is. The writers are trying to do an immigration allegory, but it doesn't work because given the facts as presented in the episode, the Bajoran government is 100% right and the immigrant stand-ins are 100% wrong. There is no reason for them to come to Bajor specifically other than the prophecy (the Federation is offering them a whole other planet to go to instead!) and Bajor is in the middle of a famine and cannot absorb the population increase. But it gets worse: the aliens are "matriarchal" which in this case means the women are in charge because the men are stupid, aggressive, and useless. These people would be disruptive on Bajor. We can see they're disruptive on DS9 already! The ending is written like we're supposed to think the Bajorans are being unfair, but nothing in the story supports that. The lead alien lays a huge dramatic guilt trip on Kira for the "betrayal" of not making the Bajor resettlement happen, but 1) Kira absolutely does not have the authority to do that and 2) you've known each other for what, two days??

Similarly to how "Melora" is a story written by people who know they're supposed to sympathize with disabled people but have no idea how, this is a story written by people who know they're supposed to sympathize with immigrants but haven't unlearned the stereotypes so they end up reinforcing them instead, making their immigrant stand-ins entitled, unreasonable, socially regressive, and impossible to care about.

2x11 Rivals

Oh, oh, I remember this episode! I'm not sure why I have such a clear memory of it since it isn't notable or important, but as soon as each scene started I knew what was going to happen in it. It's about an El-Aurian conman who starts a casino rivaling Quark's with a game that he doesn't realize warps probability throughout the station. This collides with another plotline about O'Brien and Bashir having a Space Racquetball rivalry and Quark twisting their arms into playing a grudge match with part of the betting profits going to Bajoran orphans. Quark literally asks them to "think of the children!" a few years before The Simpsons popularized the catchphrase, which amused me. I like this episode, it's low-stakes and kind of silly but I was entertained.

2x12 The Alternate

I remember this episode mostly because years later an online friend posted a huge rant about how much she hated it. It's the one where Dr. Mora, the Bajoran scientist who "was assigned to" (i.e. experimented on) Odo shows up trying to get Odo to come back to the lab. It's an allegory for an abusive parent trying to force their way back into their grown child's life; Mora is overbearing, condescending, and treats Odo like a little kid. When Odo says no to coming back, Mora escalates to manipulative threats, claiming that without Mora's protection Odo will end up "in a zoo!" Jesus Christ. Rene Auberjonois does such a convincing job of portraying the humiliation of a grown child in this situation that it's hard to watch. The speculative element is that Odo's compartmentalized rage causes him to periodically involuntarily shapeshift into a "monster" that attacks Mora, which is entirely understandable.

The part my friend hated (and I agree) was the ending, where Mora kind of vaguely apologizes and Odo immediately agrees to rebuild a relationship. This ending sucks because it undermines everything else the episode is doing, and sends the message that all a boundary-trampling abuser has to do is offer a half-assed "sorry" and that's enough. The entire concept of the story is that Odo couldn't express his anger in words, which is why the shapeshifting thing was happening. So the only sensible conclusion would be for him to be like, now I'm going to say what I couldn't say before: get out of my life and STAY OUT! The wishy-washy pulled punch makes the whole thing fall apart.

One thing I did enjoy about this episode was the use of iron filings and a magnet to depict a morphing alien substance, clearly reflecting the amount of budget they had left after doing the CGI.

2x13 Armageddon Game

Bashir and O'Brien help some formerly-warring aliens destroy their last stockpile of bioweapons, not realizing that the aliens intend to also murder them because now they know too much about the bioweapons and they think killing everyone with that knowledge is the only way to guarantee peace. But they don't want to start a war with the Federation that they couldn't possibly win, so their plan is to falsify the security footage to make it look like an accident. Of course, Bashir and O'Brien escape and the aliens go scrambling to find and kill them.

This is another episode that I remember only for a misguided ending that undermines the story. While in hiding, they're talking about relationships and O'Brien argues for the value of a committed partner, a perspective that is endorsed by the plot turn that Keiko realizes the security footage is fake because it shows Miles drinking coffee and he never drinks coffee in the afternoon. So she saves the day because she knows her partner so well, see? Except the episode ends with Keiko telling Miles this, and he's like, well actually, sometimes I do drink coffee in the afternoon. Ha ha! A hilarious joke! Which switches the message from "a devoted partner can save your life" to "Keiko doesn't know anything, she just got REALLY lucky." Even as a kid I could identify this as a questionable writing choice.

Bonus episode: TNG 1x14 Angel One

sdk remarked that "Sanctuary"'s portrayal of matriarchy was a worse version of TNG's "Angel One," an episode I hadn't seen in a long time, so I watched it later. This is my hot take: "Angel One" is actually a decent episode, especially by TNG S1 standards. The plot has to do with some humans who got stranded on a matriarchal planet where men are oppressed. The alien government wants to get rid of them because they're advocating for gender equality, but the humans don't want to leave and give up the fight, risking execution for their beliefs. If you look past the awkward 1988-ness of the presentation (I guess they called the planet Angel One because Planet Of The Twinks And Amazons was taken), the core of this episode gets the most important point right: On this planet men are unjustly oppressed—they're not actually inferior! The audience knows Riker is smart and competent, so when Mistress Whoever treats him with condescension and is surprised he's not an idiot, it's clear that she's blinkered by her prejudice. Whereas "Sanctuary" never challenges the aliens' misandry or sees it as a problem.

My favorite moment in "Angel One", though, is when the matriarchs resist Data's help because he's a man, and he's like "I'm actually not a man, I'm an android that's just built to look like a man," and they're like, oh, that's okay then. I really wish TNG had been more consistent about this and more interested in how Data perceives gender and constructs his own gender identity. Of course he famously allowed Lal to choose her sex, but I wanted so much more android gender identity content.

james_davis_nicoll

Aimi and her pals' investigation of untoward, otherworldly goings-on leaves the survivors with a better idea of the scale of the catastrophe bearing down on Earth.

Wakusei Closet, volume 2 by Tsubana

oursin

Happy birthday,

adore!

dine

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james_davis_nicoll

The accusation came after Prime Minister Carney visited his home province and urged Albertans to vote to “stay in Canada,” an act which the US government is calling “a deliberate attack on U.S. interests.”

I should clarify that the Beaverton is a parody site.

oursin

It was not actually raining, just very grey and gloomy and damp, so I went out for my usual post-prandial walk.

And in the pocket park behind the house there were several people doing purposeful-looking gardening-type things, and I remembered that the other day I had seen a notice about volunteer wildlife gardening sessions, and maybe this was one of them happening.

I was not tempted at all to join in, or indeed to approach too closely, and proceeded on my way to the other park, where I observed several groups of tinies with accompanying grownups about some sort of nature study or some such - maybe it was Forest School day or something, although they did seem very little kids.

But honestly not the day for going out and relishing the beauties of rus in urbe and getting in touch with the healing powers of naychur - about halfway through my stroll it came on to rain.

james_davis_nicoll

A castaway on an alien world discovers the local culture has changed dramatically in the thirty years since humans last visited Toka.

Heroes Are Made by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson

sartorias

Spark Royal is another post-war story, focusing on David, one of Detlev's boys, and now a man in his early thirties. He never intended to run an academy, studying ancient magic but fell into it as support for Adam. But after fifteen years, Adam has come into his own, leaving David at loose ends.

He offers to run a scouting mission into the Fal Valley, notorious for its duel-or-die swashbucklers, brigands, and traders who can't agree on much of anything, including whether the powerful king of Enaeran-Adrani, Macael Elsarion, is offering helpful aid or trying to conquer them by stealth.

David ends up with a Cause. And a very powerful enemy. And no desire to be pushed into kingship just because it's traditional . . .Annnnd there's romance.

I really appreciate it if potential readers choose Book View Cafe, which supports the entire coop, as well as better royalties than at the big platforms. Also available from : Kindle | Kobo | B&N | Apple | It's available in print at Amazon, B&N, IngramSpark, (and very soon--like, days-- from BookVault, a printer out of the UK, which means it will be available to readers outside of the US for very reasonable shipping).

dine

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sartorias

When I began to write, the sun was going down and I heard a young man's voice singing vespers. The liturgy echoed between buildings in an ethereal way, so ancient the melodic line has slowly polished itself like pebbles between sand and sea.

I found a store that only sells Japanese food and drink items and snacks. Some packages had no English, but I was able to puzzle out the main idea as Kanji are close to Hanzi in most regards, and ad language is simple enough for kids to parse (and pay).

Today I meandered most of the freedom trail, breaking off to explore historical sites, and used book stores, to get lost, finally to sit and rest my arthritic carcass and watch the endless fascination of other lives. Met and scritched a bumper crop of three dogs, all of whom appreciated my fingernails.

Some more rambles tomorrow, and to meet a VP friend (I feel confident that I am not being presumptuous when I say friend, though I am increasingly cautious about my clueless assumptions) and maybe Beacon Hill?

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shark_hat

June 2023

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Page Summary

oursin - Everything happening at once
james_davis_nicoll - Publishing Nightmares and Stories of Authorial Woe
the_comfortable_courtesan - A day for the Wombatt, and an announcement
james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: Yellow King RPG (from 2021)
james_davis_nicoll - King’s Blood Four (True Game, volume 1) by Sheri S. Tepper
rionaleonhart - I Need To Stop Idly Checking Ticket Listings.
oursin - (no subject)
dine - ‘google’ is not a synonym for ‘research’.
sartorias - Westward I go
oursin - Wednesday's walk was not rained on, but was very chilly
pauraque - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 2 [part 2]
james_davis_nicoll - Wakusei Closet, volume 2 by Tsubana
oursin - (no subject)
dine - some people feel the rain; others just get wet
james_davis_nicoll - U.S. government accuses Canada of meddling in Alberta referendum
oursin - Not really the day for frolicing in nature
james_davis_nicoll - Heroes Are Made by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson
sartorias - Book Release--SPARK ROYAL
dine - if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning
sartorias - Rambling in Boston

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Page generated Oct. 22nd, 2026 05:48 pm

The Braineater Gazette & Clarion

incorporating Shark Journal and Millinery Monthly

Reading

Everything happening at once

Publishing Nightmares and Stories of Authorial Woe

A day for the Wombatt, and an announcement

Bundle of Holding: Yellow King RPG (from 2021)

King’s Blood Four (True Game, volume 1) by Sheri S. Tepper

I Need To Stop Idly Checking Ticket Listings.

(no subject)

‘google’ is not a synonym for ‘research’.

Westward I go

Wednesday's walk was not rained on, but was very chilly

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, season 2 [part 2]

Wakusei Closet, volume 2 by Tsubana

(no subject)

some people feel the rain; others just get wet

U.S. government accuses Canada of meddling in Alberta referendum

Not really the day for frolicing in nature

Heroes Are Made by Poul Anderson & Gordon R. Dickson

Book Release--SPARK ROYAL

if you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to be a horrible warning

Rambling in Boston

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June 2023

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