Hello, new people!

[dolorosa_12]

The recent friending meme inspired me to finally do something I've been meaning to do for years: create a sticky introduction post for my Dreamwidth, rather than repeatedly introducing myself every time I add a bunch of new people.

I'm looking forward to getting to know everyone I met through the friending meme. To get things started off, consider this post a place where you can ask me anything that takes your fancy. (This doesn't just go for new subscribers: anyone subscribed to me should feel free to ask questions as well!)

So, hello!

Comments

[sophia_sol]

Hello! I just read through your new introduction post and was delighted by some of the books you listed in your fandoms. Spinning Silver! The Pagan Chronicles! A Memory Called Empire!!! Also: one of my long-standing interests is in folktales, fairy tales, and mythology. So I guess my rather open-ended question is, tell me more about any of that?

[dolorosa_12]

Wow, that's a lot of stuff to talk about! To keep this reply within a reasonable number of words, I'm going to try to limit what I say about each book to a handful of sentences, but am happy to elaborate further.

Spinning Silver: I just really, really, really love Miryam. I love how her skills (thrift, bargaining, mercantile abilities) are made heroic, so that they resonate like the acts of a fairytale or folklore heroine. On a broader level, I really appreciate how the book itself is an act of reclamation (by a Jewish author) of really terrible, longstanding antisemitic tropes, taking things that have been truly damaging throughout history, and making them a story of family, community, and survival.

Pagan Chronicles: To be honest, I think it was this series that gave me my love of a) found families and b) hurt/comfort. I adore Pagan and Babylonne (and to a lesser extent Isidore and Roland) beyond all reason, and I love that the entire series is basically a family saga of dispossessed, traumatised orphans finding home, family, and purpose in each other. As an immigrant, Pagan's experiences of building a successful (and intellectually enriching) life outside the country of his birth really resonate with me. I also love the compassion and generosity of spirit with which the series is written: the characters have endless empathy for human frailty, and for the compromises people are forced to make when they are weak, and at the mercy of the powerful. But they also have a clear-eyed, unforgiving contempt for the abuses of power perpetuated by those in authority, and I really, really, appreciate that.

A Memory Called Empire: I could say so, so much about this series, but in short, it hits me right in the depths of my immigrant heart. I wrote a bit about it in a recent post: this story just gets what it is to leave your home, to put down roots elsewhere while knowing doing so is fraught with difficulty, and to love the literature and pop culture of a hegemonic culture with the awareness that this love is tinged with a kind of complicity.

As to folktales, fairytales, and mythology: I'm more familiar with those from Britain and Ireland, and in general I find myself drawn to stories that are about women, transformations, and reclamations of self (so things like swan-maidens and selkies). I also like stories that deal with journeys to otherworlds, or underworlds, and mortal characters having to remember various rules to help them survive such journeys, and return home. I also really, really like stories which hinge on names, bargains, truths, half-truths, and circumlocution.

Please feel free to talk to me about any of the books/etc that you've asked me about! I'm astonished in particular to find someone who's read the Pagan Chronicles — that's incredibly rare, in my experience, and I'm delighted!

[sophia_sol]

Hah, oops, I meant my question to be "choose amongst these topics for one to talk about" but I'm not sad to hear all about all of these! :D

Spinning Silver: yessss, Miryem is SO great! I love all the women in that book though, and how all of them get to be heroic in their own ways with their own varying skillsets, many of which are not traditionally heroic. And the way Novik built on and recontextualized the fairy tale tropes she was drawing from is so great.

Pagan Chronicles: I've always been a big fan of found families, so that's absolutely what drew me to the Pagan Chronicles as well! I also love its approach to history: not romanticising the past the way some historical fiction authors like to, but also not pretending that it was grim and awful all the way down either. And it's clear the author has done her research; all the earthy details make the world of the past feel so real. I loved Pagan's relationship with Roland, how much they work to take care of each other and how much they don't understand each other despite how much they care. And I loved loved loved Babylonne; I wish Babylonne and Pagan could have met!

A Memory Called Empire: actually possibly one of my favourite books I've ever read, it's absolutely brilliant and I love everything about it, including but not limited to the stuff you say. My book review of it was ~1700 words and even then I felt like I hadn't managed to mention everything I loved so much about it. It was just so good. I can't wait till the sequel comes out!

Folk tales, fairy tales, & mythology: When I was a kid this was basically my main obsession so I have read a whole lot, but my adult knowledge coming from like, reputable sources, is a bit thinner. I did write my undergrad thesis about the Thousand and One Nights, and still have a great deal of fondness for that group of stories particularly. Overall though I love how traditional stories can give you a glimpse into what was important for the people who told the tale. I'm also drawn particularly to stories about women; for me it's part of my interest in stories that feature things that the traditional 19th century educated white male folklorist would have not found worthwhile. I particularly love stories about women who dress up as men and are better at being men than all the real men! (this is perhaps not surprising given that I am nonbinary trans :P)

[chestnut_pod]

Hello! Thank you for making this place for us to greet you!

I also very much enjoyed reading your intro post. How exciting in particular to know someone else who loved Katherine Arden's Winternight trilogy so much -- I have not been able to find anyone else to talk with about those books, and I'd love to do so with you.

As for questions, I have two. The first is related to your interest in the Cirque du Soleil -- do you enjoy other forms of artistic sport or motion-based art, like dance or figure skating or gymnastics? How did you come to be interested in this troupe in particular?

And secondly, I sometimes feel a bit odd about jumping in on new DW friends' personal posts, feeling that I don't know them well enough to comment on their writing about their lives. (I am aware that this is perhaps my social anxiety intruding onto the internet, but it never seems to hurt to be careful!) How do you feel about such new acquaintances remarking on personal posts?

[dolorosa_12]

Hello, it's wonderful to meet you, especially given you are a fellow Winternight fan! I'm always happy to discuss that series — and in fact I'm about to embark on a reread, as the depths of December seemed the appropriate time of year to do so. What do you like most about the trilogy?

In terms of your questions, I'll answer the second one first. It's so considerate of you to ask this question, and I can definitely relate! I am very, very happy for new acquaintances to comment on personal posts: my general attitude is that this is how such new acquaintances get to know each other. Everyone obviously has their own boundaries and sense of how they want to manage their own online spaces, but when it comes to me, my feeling is that my posts are public for a reason: anyone who can view them is welcome to comment, if they feel they want to. When it comes to access-locked personal posts, my feeling, again, is that if I've granted someone access to those posts, they are welcome to comment, if they feel they want to. If I don't want comment or discussion on a particular topic, I'll either refrain from posting about it altogether, or disable comments.

In other words, please feel that you are completely welcome to comment to your heart's content on any personal post of mine!

Regarding Cirque du Soleil and other artistic sport, I am an ex-gymnast (I did gymnastics for ten years, and participated in competitions at state and national level within Australia), and this left me with a lifelong interest in gymnastics. I don't follow it in a fannish sense, but I enjoy watching competitions and keep vaguely up-to-date with developments in the sport. I'm not particularly involved in other competitive sports like ice-skating (I like doing ice-skating myself recreationally, but don't deliberately seek out competitions to watch). When it comes to dance, I'll happily watch performances, but it's not something I would typically seek out.

Cirque du Soleil has been a lifelong love: I first watched a performance of their show Le Cirque Réinventé as a toddler in the 1980s, and grew up watching every show that toured my country. It was a shared obsession with my younger sister: we watched shows on TV years before they toured our country (so we knew all the acts and scores by heart and had strong opinions about which were our favourites), we bought CDs, and we even did circus summer school as a result of our love of Cirque du Soleil. (We mostly learnt how to do very basic adagio acrobatics, and I also learnt some aerial acrobatics.) I even ended up working for Cirque du Soleil's show Varekai at one point (not as a performer, just selling food at the concession stand).

Obviously I recognise that although Cirque started out as something quite different and revolutionary in the circus scene, over the years they basically became formulaic and corporate, but I have so much love for their earlier performances that I still feel deeply affectionate towards them and hope they're able to survive the huge challenges that the pandemic has caused.

Are you also interested in sports/performing arts like gymnastics, dance, ice skating or circus?

[lyr]

I'm not new, but I've always wondered what it was about academia that didn't work for you. (I ask as someone who stayed in it, but with some mixed feelings and a bit of eyerolling at conferences sometimes.)

[dolorosa_12]

For me, the main issue was the effects of working in academia on my quality of life. I was not keen to move into a field where (at least in one's early career) jobs are usually temporary, there's a requirement to move from place to place (i.e. from postdoc to postdoc position), and there's no guarantee of any permanence at the end of it. My impression from watching friends go into the academic job market was that the whole thing was a bit of a lottery. I wasn't prepared to spend potentially two years underemployed, barely getting by on a tiny amount of money, to compete for a dwindling handful of full-time, permanent academic jobs.

It also seemed to me that a lot of academic jobs seemed to have a blurring of the boundaries between personal and work time, rather than clearly defined work which could be completed by the end of the working day, or left behind at the office. I realised I didn't enjoy the ongoing, open-ended nature of research, and much preferred teaching — but most good academic jobs are not teaching-only (and indeed teaching-only jobs tend to be the worst paid and most insecure in academia).

I have friends who have published multiple books, journal articles in prestigious journals, and have an excellent record in terms of outreach, teaching, and getting grants — and yet they're still in temporary positions, and have been so for years. I was never prepared to live with that degree of uncertainty and risk, and ultimately that was the reason I concluded that academia was not going to suit me.

[lyr]

I get that. I've been working in academia since 2008, and I'm still temporary and sometimes underemployed. That's partly because I've always opted for teaching-focused positions. I admit that it's super frustrating.