Links and updatery
Feb. 10th, 2019 04:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolorosa_12Firstly, and most importantly, firstaudrina is hosting a multifandom friending meme. If you're interested in participating, follow the link below:
multifandom friending meme
A few people have added me as a result of the meme, and rather than doing an entirely new introduction post, I'll point you towards my most recent one, done in January after my post-reveals Yuletide friending meme. Feel free to ask me anything about stuff I brought up in that post.
I'd also like to put in another plug for![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
waybackexchange, a fic and art exchange for fandoms older than ten years. Nominations will open in a couple of days' time, and in the meantime, the mod is going through a review period where you can make the case for borderline canons (such as works older than ten years which have been adapted more recently, or canons with various continuities, such as comics). Given most of my favourite canons are old, this is definitely the exchange for me, and I'm looking forward to taking part!
A couple of interesting links: a podcast with S.A. Chakraborty, in which she talks about some of the inspirations and influences on her Daevabad series, and, viafalena, an absolutely spot on essay by an Irish migrant in London, venting her frustrations with what it's like to experience Brexit as an EU migrant in the UK. It finally made me realise why I get so frustrated with the well-meaning 'at least you can still leave if you want to,' that a subset of Remain-voting, left-leaning British people tend to spout at EU migrants: it's the left-wing version of the far-right 'go back where you come from': both imply that we migrants feel no connection or sense of permanence in the places to which we've migrated. If we don't feel a connection, it's not really our home, is it, and leaving would be painless and easy. That's the implication, and it's staggeringly cruel in its thoughtlessness and lack of empathy. (NB: I'm not an EU migrant — I'm from Australia — but I'm married to one and have a lot of friends who are.)
The last link I think I saw viaumadoshi but I can't be one hundred per cent sure. In any case, it's a history of the origins, mistakes, and lessons learnt from Livejournal, and it interviews several former employees, including Brad, who founded LJ, and Denise, who went on to create Dreamwidth.
This weekend has been pretty busy (at least by my standards). On Saturday Matthias and I went to the AGM of the regional branch of our professional body, feeling we ought to show our faces. We went on after that to our favourite wine/craft beer bar for a few drinks and dinner from the Greek food truck that was serving gyros outside. The bar has a different food truck every night, and word had clearly got out among the local Greek community networks: I think, other than the bar staff, Matthias and I were the only non-Greek people in the venue, which made me super happy. We returned home fairly early, and spent the evening watching staple movies of our respective adolescent sleepover nights: in my case, that meant The Craft, which was yet another example of that strange mid-to-late-'90s pop cultural phenomenon in which witchcraft was portrayed as a vehicle of teenage girl empowerment. It's not exactly a subtle film, but it was quite fun to watch with nostalgia goggles on.
Today we finally tackled the random boxes and suitcases that we kind of shoved under our bed when we moved into this house in 2012 and never looked at again: the decluttering revealed lots of useful stationery, two bedside lamps, and a whole bunch of Matthias's old student ID cards. I ducked into town for about an hour to have coffee with![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
MissHoijer, who was visiting from London, and then returned. The evening has been spent cooking: I have an absolutely massive pork shoulder slow-roasting in the oven on a bed of tomato, chorizo and haricot beans, which will be served with homemade aioli. It's a slow meal to prepare, but will hopefully be worth it.
You might have noticed that after my flurry of posting about books read in January, my reading has slowed to a crawl. I can't say I've read anything that's blown my mind: I read a theological history of Judaism in the centuries on either side of the BCE/CE dividing line, as well as early Christianity. While many of its specifics were new to me, its overall argument was not (to sum up: Judaism was in a great deal of flux during this time, and Christianity, when it emerged, was in no means contrary to Judaism at that point because at that time there were several competing understandings of what Judaism was, and basically religions are fluid, evolving things that change to address the concerns of the times), so it didn't exactly blow my mind. I guess it would do if you had a much more rigid understanding of religion, maybe? The other book I've read so far this month, The Pale Queen's Courtyard by Marcin Wrona, is historical-ish fantasy set in an alternative version of ancient Babylon, with fake fantasy Babylonians, Persians and I guess Egyptians. Matthias and I have been on the lookout for books set in this region (not so much Egypt, as it's fairly well served), but there seems to be a real dearth. I found this novel frustrating: flimsy characterisation, cartoonish female characters, and an anachronistic understanding of religion which the author admits in his afterword he added for a sense of conflict. Basically his 'Persian' characters try to impose their religion on others and stamp out the worship of a particular goddess, but in pre-monotheistic times (and even afterwards), peoples might decide to worship a single god, or that other nations' gods were weak or evil, but they generally accepted that other pantheons existed. As I say, the book was frustrating.
I'll wrap this post up here, as it's a bit of a mishmash, but as always, I'm keen to hear what you're reading, watching, cooking and so on. How have your weekends been? And, new people adding me from the friending meme, feel free to ask me anything about stuff raised in my intro post.
firstaudrina is hosting a multifandom friending meme. If you're interested in participating, follow the link below:multifandom friending meme
A few people have added me as a result of the meme, and rather than doing an entirely new introduction post, I'll point you towards my most recent one, done in January after my post-reveals Yuletide friending meme. Feel free to ask me anything about stuff I brought up in that post.
I'd also like to put in another plug for
waybackexchange, a fic and art exchange for fandoms older than ten years. Nominations will open in a couple of days' time, and in the meantime, the mod is going through a review period where you can make the case for borderline canons (such as works older than ten years which have been adapted more recently, or canons with various continuities, such as comics). Given most of my favourite canons are old, this is definitely the exchange for me, and I'm looking forward to taking part!A couple of interesting links: a podcast with S.A. Chakraborty, in which she talks about some of the inspirations and influences on her Daevabad series, and, via
falena, an absolutely spot on essay by an Irish migrant in London, venting her frustrations with what it's like to experience Brexit as an EU migrant in the UK. It finally made me realise why I get so frustrated with the well-meaning 'at least you can still leave if you want to,' that a subset of Remain-voting, left-leaning British people tend to spout at EU migrants: it's the left-wing version of the far-right 'go back where you come from': both imply that we migrants feel no connection or sense of permanence in the places to which we've migrated. If we don't feel a connection, it's not really our home, is it, and leaving would be painless and easy. That's the implication, and it's staggeringly cruel in its thoughtlessness and lack of empathy. (NB: I'm not an EU migrant — I'm from Australia — but I'm married to one and have a lot of friends who are.) The last link I think I saw via
umadoshi but I can't be one hundred per cent sure. In any case, it's a history of the origins, mistakes, and lessons learnt from Livejournal, and it interviews several former employees, including Brad, who founded LJ, and Denise, who went on to create Dreamwidth.This weekend has been pretty busy (at least by my standards). On Saturday Matthias and I went to the AGM of the regional branch of our professional body, feeling we ought to show our faces. We went on after that to our favourite wine/craft beer bar for a few drinks and dinner from the Greek food truck that was serving gyros outside. The bar has a different food truck every night, and word had clearly got out among the local Greek community networks: I think, other than the bar staff, Matthias and I were the only non-Greek people in the venue, which made me super happy. We returned home fairly early, and spent the evening watching staple movies of our respective adolescent sleepover nights: in my case, that meant The Craft, which was yet another example of that strange mid-to-late-'90s pop cultural phenomenon in which witchcraft was portrayed as a vehicle of teenage girl empowerment. It's not exactly a subtle film, but it was quite fun to watch with nostalgia goggles on.
Today we finally tackled the random boxes and suitcases that we kind of shoved under our bed when we moved into this house in 2012 and never looked at again: the decluttering revealed lots of useful stationery, two bedside lamps, and a whole bunch of Matthias's old student ID cards. I ducked into town for about an hour to have coffee with
You might have noticed that after my flurry of posting about books read in January, my reading has slowed to a crawl. I can't say I've read anything that's blown my mind: I read a theological history of Judaism in the centuries on either side of the BCE/CE dividing line, as well as early Christianity. While many of its specifics were new to me, its overall argument was not (to sum up: Judaism was in a great deal of flux during this time, and Christianity, when it emerged, was in no means contrary to Judaism at that point because at that time there were several competing understandings of what Judaism was, and basically religions are fluid, evolving things that change to address the concerns of the times), so it didn't exactly blow my mind. I guess it would do if you had a much more rigid understanding of religion, maybe? The other book I've read so far this month, The Pale Queen's Courtyard by Marcin Wrona, is historical-ish fantasy set in an alternative version of ancient Babylon, with fake fantasy Babylonians, Persians and I guess Egyptians. Matthias and I have been on the lookout for books set in this region (not so much Egypt, as it's fairly well served), but there seems to be a real dearth. I found this novel frustrating: flimsy characterisation, cartoonish female characters, and an anachronistic understanding of religion which the author admits in his afterword he added for a sense of conflict. Basically his 'Persian' characters try to impose their religion on others and stamp out the worship of a particular goddess, but in pre-monotheistic times (and even afterwards), peoples might decide to worship a single god, or that other nations' gods were weak or evil, but they generally accepted that other pantheons existed. As I say, the book was frustrating.
I'll wrap this post up here, as it's a bit of a mishmash, but as always, I'm keen to hear what you're reading, watching, cooking and so on. How have your weekends been? And, new people adding me from the friending meme, feel free to ask me anything about stuff raised in my intro post.
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Date: 2019-02-10 06:29 pm (UTC)I've also been sewing. I'm working on a quilt and I spent some time this morning tracing a pattern for shirt I'm going to make for my kid.
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Date: 2019-02-11 04:37 pm (UTC)Glad you were able to take advantage of the miserable weather with reading and sewing.
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Date: 2019-02-10 08:32 pm (UTC)Very keen to read about your reading and library-ing!
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Date: 2019-02-11 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-10 09:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-11 04:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-13 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-02-14 05:28 pm (UTC)