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I finished the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler recently and I found it a really easy and engaging read. Not sure how much of that has to do with my interest in the story concept and how much is to do with the writing style, but I just breezed through it.

The Oankali are so fascinating in the contradictions they embody. They judge humanity as needing to have our autonomy stripped from us because they believe us to be inherently hierarchical. Eventually it's shown that the Oankali don't have any leaders and make political decisions via consensus. I really enjoyed seeing how their political process works. They do a sort of mind meld where they are still distinct entities but are able to very directly interface with each other to make decisions.

I love the detailed worldbuilding in this series.
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Reading the Lilith's Brood trilogy by Octavia Butler. Still working my way through this trilogy, but I've finished the first book and I just think it's such a powerful statement about social dynamics on both a personal and societal level.

One of the consistent themes of Lilith's Brood is that there's a difference between loving someone and respecting them. The Oankali love humans. They don't respect them. And this story shows the horror of that lack of respect, the horror of giving help that the person being helped did not consent to.
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To each their own but personally I do not have to like the protagonist as a person to appreciate or even enjoy a story. Have read many novels I cherish where I'd love to shove the protag into a woodchipper. Sometimes the author even does this sort of thing intentionally.
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Does anyone know of any novels that take place in fictional anarchist and/or communist societies (besides Ursula K Le Guin or Star Trek, since I already know about those)? Doesn't have to be depicted as a utopia, but cannot be a dystopia. Should contain some sort of worldbuilding, but doesn't need to be sci-fi or fantasy or  contain any other speculative elements.
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A little over halfway through the novel now. So one thing you get to see in the Dispossessed is people both living in and arguing for different political and economic systems. Which despite the didacticism, is still a nice change of pace from most science fiction, which usually keeps such concerns secondary or else in line with government propaganda.  This can be unintentional at times, but regardless of the intention, it tends to promote uncritical acceptance of our unimaginably violent status quo. The Dispossessed doesn't do this. It might seem strange that I consider the didacticism a negative quality given my interest in the political and economic themes--however I disagree that such ideas need to be presented in a dry or didactic way. I think if one wants to primarily teach, nonfiction is a much better medium for that. I feel stories are better at spurring us to ask better questions than they are at giving us answers to those questions.
 

Read more... )

 

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So I recently finished Several People are Typing by Calvin Kasulke which was recced to me by [personal profile] tobermoriansass quite a while back, if my memory can be believed.

The story starts off with the protagonist, Gerald, accidentally uploading himself into a company slack channel. Things only get more bizarre from there. Gerald has a serious problem, but he may as well get some extra work done in the meantime.

There's a promotion at stake, after all.

I spent probably about 80% of this breezy novella laughing. This hilarious corporate horror story ruminates on work and capitalism through the lens of a Slack chat.

This is not a real review as I'd like to do, but I just wanted to get a few quick thoughts out on this story.
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So, by my calculations, I am now about 55% through Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor. I can't recall any nonfiction book I've read so quickly and so sequentially. While I've read a number of nonfiction books with rapt attention, it's not my habit to read them cover to cover as I would a novel but rather to skim to parts that seem relevant to my situation or are of particular interest to me. I've also read plenty of nonfiction books that presented ideas I found valuable, but that felt like they were padded with unnecessary additions merely to make them 'book-length'.

But every part of this book felt relevant to the main points Taylor is discussing. She expertly links personal anecdotes, history, and current events with philosophy and activism.  Throughout the book, she touches on a many different ideas and perspectives, showing their connections and similarities as well as their tensions and differences. I wasn't sure what to expect going into this book--while I very much believe that problems in this world  are interlinked in ways that defy neat boxes and categorizations, I also think discussion of those complicated intersections can be difficult.  I worried the book might be full of superficial connections or long meandering narratives that I would struggle to follow, as has been a frequent issue I've encountered with books on topics like this, topics that sounded promising but highly ambitious.

But every piece of this book is deeply connected, both to her central thesis and each other, in a web of incredible intricacy. The philosophy she presents considers a multiplicity of different perspectives both within and outside of the animal rights and disability movements and examines how they intersect or conflict. She tells the story of her own life and the lives of others and each time stops to consider what these stories might tell us and how they might inform our activism.  She patiently lingers on ideas to explore them and consider their many and multifaceted implications.

I'd definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in better understanding disability or animal rights activism.  I also think it's just really well-written?  Anyway it managed to hold my rather fickle attention so I consider that alone impressive.  Tastes and experiences differ greatly, so I'm sure not everyone would get the same things out of this book that I did, but I think there's a lot of value here. As I said, I'm not yet finished with this book, but the first half alone made this text more than worth my time.

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Yesterday I started reading Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation by Sunaura Taylor.
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So, recently I read Animal Liberation by Peter Singer. What astounds me is that, despite the fact that I've fully despised this guy for years before I read this book (so much so that I got into an argument with another vegan when they recommended it), the actual text itself managed, if anything, to make me loathe him even more.

Despite what I knew about Singer going in, I was nonetheless surprised that his position, as stated in this text, is very clearly one of *animal welfarism*, not animal rights. This can be seen in such statements as:

"In keeping with the reasons given there, I do not, on balance, object to free-range egg production."

Animal Liberation (2015 Edition) by Peter Singer, Ch 4 Becoming A Vegetarian

This statement not only ignores the often less than cozy realities behind the 'free range' label, but ignores the fact that artificial selection has produced the chickens' prolific egg-laying entirely for the benefit of humans, and at great cost in overall health and happiness to the birds themselves.

While he does not spend (much) time criticizing vegans, he also focuses almost entirely on reform of an irretrievably broken capitalist system that serves neither human nor non-human animals. This is unsurprising because Singer is one of the few beneficiaries of that system. He seems to have very little actual understanding of the human social justice movements he casually brings up in the most clumsy, insulting, and ineffectual ways.

What surprised me is how little of the book is devoted to actual *philosophy*. To be sure, Singer stops after lengthy exposition of facts to occasionally muse on the meaning of it all, but he devotes little more time to this than any average news expose might. Excuse me if I thought a philosopher might spend more time actually philosophizing.

I guess you really can't criticize something until you've read it. I mean, I was right, Singer is not a vegan, but this book also does not advocate for veganism. Also I've read more thoughtful philosophy on Twitter, a social media site I have numerous philosophical objections to and do not use.

And that's my review of this book!
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The problem with being a Palpatine fan is that most of the 10,175 AO3 fanfics with him in the tags aren't really about him, as is clear from their tags and/or summaries. So they either:

* don't mention the character at all or only mention him briefly in the story(and no, I don't want to comb through the ridiculous number of fics about Anakin and Obi-Wan to try to find the .02 percent that Palpatine actually has a significant role in).

* interpret the character in a way I am either excessively bored by or exceedingly loathe (usually both). While I understand entirely why some people might find it cathartic for their fave to drop-kick Palpatine out of his 19,678 story Coruscant office window, I am just not interested in reading the 19,678th iteration of that.

I'm actually fine with stories where Palpatine is not the main protagonist but still a significant character interpreted in a way I can find enjoyable or interesting. I'm writing a story like that myself (Cut Strings), and have read a number of stories that also fall under this category. Angles I can find interesting for Palpatine include:

* He is a major or main antagonist

* Redemption arc (these are honestly very rare for him)

* Lampooning the character via traits actually depicted for him in the canon.

* Headcanons or character changes that nevertheless do not completely dispose of the canon for Palpatine or the situation surrounding him. Preferably the author will still be able to demonstrate that they are familiar with and appreciate at least some significant portion of the canon for this character. If this connection does not exist in the work, I will consider the Palpatine in the story as essentially an OC, and am unlikely to be interested. While I like many OCs in fanfic, and can even enjoy them in and of themselves, I prefer the author not try to pass them off as a canon character.
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I feel like I have read and watched a much larger amount of things recommended by people I know on social media than I have people I know in person.  Part of it might be a matter of taste in that people I know in person may not share the same tastes that I do.  But as I've read and watched things that are quite outside of what I typically read or watch due to such recommendations or positive reviews on social media, I think there is more to it than that.

I think the multimedia and persistent format of social media makes it easier for people to show and discuss things that appeal to them about a given work, and also make it easier for me to absorb this information.
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I'm reading an academic resource on moral relativism and wow this stuff is really complicated.  From this I surmise that I am a descriptive relativist, which is to say I believe different people and groups hold different moral beliefs.  No position on the many other types of relativism listed here as that is a lot of reading I have not done, but yeah, I think different people subscribe to different ethical systems, and that we don't, at the core, all share the same beliefs.  This can be seen in such experiences as Someone is Wrong on the Internet.

Decisions

Feb. 23rd, 2022 01:21 am
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I feel like I should post something that doesn't require any strong emotions to process.  I don't much care for 'good news' because frankly that kind of thing never makes me feel better anyway, but I don't want to constantly be thinking about every bad thing, whether real or imagined, either.

I wonder what the most ridiculously self-indulgent thing for me to do right now would be?  I hate that the answer might be 'chop vegetables' because I could use some more home-cooked food and eating that *would* be self indulgent, but that's definitely not the most self-indulgent thing I could do in the short term, lol.  And I do still have food that doesn't require chopping anything.

I'm thinking maybe some combination of read/watch a video/eat something easy to prepare.
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I finished Revenant Gun.  Kujen is my favorite.  Probably due to my fondness of mad scientist villains who want to be immortal.  Also because I enjoy characters who have a sense of style.  And because I love villains who are clearly enjoying themselves while being unaplogetically ruthless.  

I think this trilogy does a good job with its reveals.  There are usually multiple plot-related reveals in this book and in the larger series, and I appreciate the way they're constructed to both illuminate details about the worldbuilding and function as satisfying twists and turns.

This series is quite consistent in its style and quality, so I think whatever a person's opinion of the first two novels are will likely transfer over to this one as well.  That was certainly my experience.  I enjoyed the fantastical math/science/engineering aspect and how that was employed throughout the series.

I feel the second half of the novel is where it really picks up for me--the first half is a bit slow for my taste.  I'm a very impatient person so this is something that makes a significant difference to me.  Though I've still read much slower novels.

I would have liked for a certain plot thread to have received more attention.  I'll have to see if maybe there's a satisfactory conclusion for that one in Glass Cannon.

Anyway, those are a few of my thoughts about this novel.

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My quest to collect the Star Wars trivia has led me to finish Jedi Apprentice Book 1 - The Rising Force by Dave Wolverton. This is a pre-prequels series about Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon Jinn. This book was published in 1999, which places it among the earliest set of materials based on the prequels, and it's a young-readers series.
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When an author deals you emotional damage because they don't know what they are doing: Terrible

When an author deals you emotional damage because they know exactly what they are doing: Wonderful

Reviews

Oct. 17th, 2021 03:57 pm
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I'd love to be better at reviewing works.  It is just an enormous effort for me to say *anything* about the things I read or watch, and I rarely feel that I'm able to convey even a fraction of my thoughts on such things.  Of course, I have this problem in other areas too, but this is one of the places this issue bothers me the most in.  I'm also, as I am in other areas, really inconsistent about how much or how well I can convey my thoughts in this area, and that perpetually annoys me.
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Guess who finished Yoda: Dark Rendezvous?  I've been meaning to read this book for a long time, but other tasks, and other books, kept intervening.  My story research tends to be a big motivator for reading things, though, and I've been trying to research Dooku for Heart of Shadow,  so I finally got around to it.

This book ripped my heart out and stomped on it.  10/10 would recommend.

A big problem that prequel stories can have is to just serve as a sort of filler exposition.  Let us explain in stultifying detail how we got from point A to point C. There is no emotion, there is boredom. 

But this story understands that expositional specifics cannot drive a prequel.   There are two angles to approach such a story: to introduce an element whose outcome cannot be predicted from the start of the story, and to explore the emotional angle of the events.  This story does both, and does them expertly.  Furthermore, it connects its OC characters to the canon characters thematically.

This story also understands what the Star Wars prequels, specifically, are about.  It understands that a tragedy is not simply an account of bad things happening, and not a matter of mere body count.  We know exactly which characters can die within this story, and which cannot.  But death is not the only tragedy that can befall a character.

While Yoda is the title character, the story is as much about Dooku as it is about him.  And it is specifically about the relationship between these two characters, though it also deftly explores the relationships between other characters as well.  I loved seeing the flashbacks between them from when Dooku was a youngling and Padawan, as well Yoda and Dooku's tense meeting near the end of the story.

Also, this quote killed me:

"Every Jedi is a child his parents decided he could live without."

I've seen this quote many times, but I never knew it was from this novel, or that it was Dooku who said it!

The portrayal of Ventress here is one of my absolute favorites, partly for agreeing with some of my own major headcanons of the character and also because of how much insight we get into both her past and her relationship to Dooku.

I really enjoyed the Jedi in this story, quite in contrast to how I feel about them in works like Light of the Jedi, or in every tiresome fandom meta that tries to minimize or scrub away their flaws.  It seems to be a trend that I like the Jedi best in the stories that seem to best understand the motivations of their enemies. 

Theres also some quite interesting political references here regarding not only the Jedi, but the Republic as well.  The Chancellor Palpatine Spaceport scene comes to mind.

In summary, Sean Stewart wrote a straight-up Shakespearean tragedy for Dooku and Yoda, with no shortage of worldbuilding or lightsaber battles, either.  This is absolutely one of the best Star Wars novels I have ever read.
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One of the things that I find very intriguing about the third Darth Bane novel is an aspect that some people would probably be inclined to find senseless or pointless but that I think was really a quite unusual and thoughtful narrative choice.  I actually unintentionally came up with a completely AU ending while I was reading the story which I also think would have worked well, but I was fascinated by how the story took me by surprise while being completely unsurprising in its resolution.
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