dolorosa_12 | Entries tagged with amal el-mohtar

This Saturday, the sky unfolded in a curve of clear blue, dotted with fluffy clouds and lit with golden light, and I felt no irritation at having woken at 5.30am for no reason. I hung the laundry outside, then headed off for my usual two hours of classes at the gym, and then into Cambridge to get my hair cut, as mentioned in my previous post, and to refill all my spice jars at the organic food shop that does refills. I was happy to be able to bypass the centre of town; both the hairdresser and the organic shop are in clusters of shops in mainly residential areas, as opposed to the chaotic historic centre, which is always heaving with tourists on the weekend.

Today has been colder and more grey, although there were still pockets of sunshine; Matthias and I walked along the river past all the houseboats (one of which was home to one of the biggest, fluffiest dogs I've ever seen, lounging on the deck like a placid white rug), then up into the market, where we bought fresh pasta for lunch. It was still pretty cold when sitting still, so we basically stayed out long enough to finish eating, then headed home. Now we're both curled up in our armchairs in the living room, reading and resting and generally gathering our breath before the new working week.

This week I reread a truly ridiculous number of 1990s Australian YA novels, about which I won't bore you (if you're truly interested in the full list you can see them at my Goodreads account), as well as a fantastic pair of novellas.

The first was The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar, a writer I've always felt was criminally underrated. Rather than try to sum up my own thoughts, I'm just going to link to this interview Samatar gave at the time of the book's publication, which gives a clear idea of what it's about and her intentions in writing it. In general, I've been spending a lot of time with Samatar and her thoughts, working my way through the conversations and essays linked on her website. I remember reading this piece from 2017 when she left social media entirely; returning to it in 2025 I'm struck even more forcefully by her perception and foresight.

The second novella, The River Has Roots is described as a novel by its author Amal El-Mohtar, but given the print edition only runs to 110 pages or so, with lots of illustrations, I really don't feel that's entirely accurate. This is a book that I knew would be incredibly Relevant to My Interests on the strength of its description (a retelling and reclamation of the Two Sisters strand of folk songs), an impression that was confirmed when I actually read the book. It's hard to think of another instance in which so many of my favourite things are all pressed together within the covers of a single slim book: reclaimed, female-centric folk tales, weird bargains with supernatural beings, fairy otherworlds lying beside and above and underneath and within our own world, magic that is also song and is also riddles and is also language, and stories that put relationships between sisters, and relationships between women and bodies of water at their heart. I loved it to bits, and you couldn't have written anything more closely to my own specifications for the perfect story if you'd tried.

Beyond books, it's been a weekend for films. On Friday night, I watched the Netflix documentary about Avicii, whose story was the typical music industry tragedy: an immensely talented individual, thrust into international superstardom (and astronomical financial success) at a very young age, unable to cope with it, given zero help from management or record label (since what he needed, of course, was to pause working and pause touring, and everyone was making too much money from his output to risk putting a stop to it), turning to the inevitable alcoholism and opioid addiction to keep going, until he couldn't keep going any more. The arc of such stories is, of course, more obvious in hindsight.

Finally, last night Matthias and I watched Benedetta, an extremely male-gazey French-language film about lesbian nuns, and the turmoil and drama of life in their convent during a period when the bubonic plague was at its height. The film was allegedly drawing on real historical events and figures, but if so I can only assume it took great poetic license. I'm not sure I'd recommend it.

And that's been the shape of my weekend so far.

I have, as usual, too many tabs open, so this post is an attempt to close them. I'm sharing a bunch of links, some for stuff on Dreamwidth, some elsewhere.

I appreciated this interview with Kate Elliott setting out the changes she's witnessed in the publishing industry across the three decades she's been a professional author.

I missed it this year (I don't like to start these kinds of things midway through), but the June Something is a fun set of posting prompts that I've been enjoying reading when they pop up in my feed, so I'll share the details in case anyone is interested.

sunshine_challenge is coming up for another year. I've taken part in the past, and may do so this year, although the timing coincides with my mum's annual visit. In any case, you can see all the prompts at the comm.

A couple of generous offers, spotted via various posts on my feed:

petra and others have offered to pay the OTW membership fees for anyone who isn't financially able to do so but would like to vote in the upcoming OTW Board elections. Details here.

theladyscribe is running a raffle to pay for a paid Dreamwidth account for the winner (or for someone else on the winner's behalf). Details here; the raffle closes on 24th June.

Finally, an old post by Amal El-Mohtar, a sort of unpacking of her thought processes behind her review of The Traitor Baru Cormorant (but really the thought processes that inform her entire way of engaging with works of fiction):

I’ve been watching conversations emerging — mostly on Twitter, mostly subtweeting, mostly in fits and starts — trying to categorize responses to the book according to some sort of ticky-box taxonomy of readers. I find this utterly repellent. Some people will suggest that only queer people have problems with the book, ergo it must write queer people’s lives poorly; others will counter with “well, Amal liked the book,” as if that could be the last word on the subject; still others will try to parse whether it’s my Brownness or my Queerness that has shaped my response, in pursuit of some sort of One True Response to the book.

[...]

But please, leave off trying to sort responses based on people’s identities. All that does is make queer people who disliked the book afraid of speaking up, queer people who did like the book worried about whether or not they’re sufficiently queer for the conversation, ad nauseum, ad infinitum. As if consensus is the default not to be deviated from instead of a thing that sometimes happens. There is no One True Opinion to be had. There’s only the one that’s right for you.

I don't share all of Amal El-Mohtar's marginalisations and identities, I've not read the book in question, but the things she articulates in that post get to the heart of the ways I try to approach fiction (orignal and transformative), and the conversations, people and communities that form around these works of fiction. I guess that's why the post has stayed with me all these years, and why it's something to which I keep returning.

This week’s prompt is brought to you by the utterly surreal situation surrounding This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s co-written novella.

Everything about this story is such an utter delight. A fan of the Trigun reboot posted a throwaway recommendation on Twitter for the novella (published four years ago), and somehow this led to the book climbing until it was (last time I checked), the current third-highest-selling book on Amazon. Not third-highest science fiction book, or third-highest epistolary LGBTQ time-travel spy romance novella, or any other such niche categorisation: third-highest-selling of ALL books on Amazon. There are now multiple think pieces and articles about the whole thing, of which this interview is just one example. The producer of the anime whose fan launched this massive uptick in sales has now announced an intention to read the book. The authors are going to watch the anime.

The fact that the recommendation that kicked all this off came from a Twitter user who goes by the name of ‘bigolas dickolas wolfwood’ is just the icing on the very surreal cake. It reminds me of what I loved about the internet when I first became part of online communities: just a bunch of strangers enthusing earnestly and sincerely about the things they found interesting, or the things that brought them joy, making connections with each other.

So my question is this: do you have any similar moments of joyful, surreal internet serendipity — in which a bunch of seemingly unconnected things collided with one another in such a way that something wonderful happened?

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm subscribed to Amal El-Mohtar's newsletter, and her most recent post viewable online here is a perfect encapsulation of why. It reminds me of the things I miss about the old internet: the lack of urgency, the lack of immediacy, and the sense that posts can be public and personal, but only on the writer's own terms, with each writer feeling comfortable in setting their own boundaries, letting longform posts come only when thoughts are fully considered and developed, rather than feeling an expectation to think all thoughts out loud, in real time, in public. Back when most of professional (and aspiring professional) publishing was on LJ, I remember Amal's LJ having this same quality, so I'm glad she's bringing it back to her newsletters.

Snowflake Challenge promotional banner featuring an image of a coffee cup and saucer on a sheet with a blanket and baby’s breath and a layer of snowflakes. Text: Snowflake Challenge January 1-31.

This leads nicely into my final

snowflake_challenge post for 2022:

In your own space, create your own challenge.

My challenge is not something that can be completed in a single post or a single day, and it's sparked in part by Amal's newsletter, and in part by comments and posts I've seen during the whole

snowflake_challenge lamenting the decline in longform blogging, and the general lack of fannish activity in spaces like Dreamwidth. The challenge is: be the change you want to see. I'm not asking people to post or comment here every day, or to write 1000-word posts when all you feel like writing is 100. But I'm saying that if you want to spend more time on slower-moving platforms, make a conscious decision to do so. Comment on a post every so often rather than scrolling on by. If you created a new fanwork, share a link on Dreamwidth as well as on Twitter. Do whatever tiny things you need to make building a community here something habitual. I don't need you to tell me you've done it, and I don't need this to involve daily wordcounts, frequency of posting, or any other measurable statistic — do what feels best for you.

I will certainly be sticking to this!

[W]e are bound in memory and lineage even when we can't see it or know it or feel it – can't know every person who felt the strings of themselves resonate in sympathy with those colours, can't reach out to or touch them. Except, sometimes, when we open books, and find our hearts beating inside them, naked and vulnerable, singing of aches, of blessed unrest, of queer divine dissatisfaction. We open books and find that people loved as we love; women spoke as we speak. The sun sank every night and dissolved into rivers and oceans and the eyes of dreaming children, and it rose again as it rises again, missing no part of itself.

Amal El-Mohtar, 'The Blessed Unrest of Women Talking'

Every so often, I read something and it is as if the author has reached into my heart and unlocked my own words, and this post is one of those times. I feel seen, in the most earnest sense.

It's Friday evening, it is pouring with rain, and I've got the next two weeks off as annual leave, so I am very happy!

Before I dive into the final two questions on the fandom meme, I want to share a link to an SFF author panel that I shared yesterday, but which may have been missed given it was a long post about lots of other stuff.

The panel is a 'salon' with Malka Older, Annalee Newitz, Arkady Martine, Amal El-Mohtar, Karen Lord and Katie Mack. It ranges in topic from climate change, bureaucracy, regulation, the internet, privacy, and more. I could watch many of these people just read the phone book, so listening to them just revel in each other's words was wonderful (and honestly, what Amal El-Mohtar says around 30-32 minutes in just crystalised a lot of things that I've long been feeling and had never been able to articulate).

You can watch it here.

On to the questions!

( Days 19-20 )

I've been promising to do a Day in the Life post for most of the pandemic, but what finally prompted me to do so was the prospect of life — as I've known it since March 2020 — being on the verge of changing a bit. Yesterday, I had a meeting with my two managers, where they told me that I would begin a partial return to the office in July. So far it's only going to be one day a week.

Therefore, I felt I needed to record an average working-from-home-in-lockdown day for posterity.

The post is text only, but I've been doing a parallel photo post over on Instagram, and I've saved the whole lot as a Highlight, but I'm not sure people without Instagram accounts will be able to view it.

( Lockdown librarianing behind the cut )

Today is, apparently, all about the online author events. Having watched the recording of Roshani Chokshi's Instagram Live event last night, I'm now alerted to the fact that Zen Cho is doing a similar event in about half an hour today. Since this will fall right at the start of my working day, I'm also going to watch it later, and will update this post with the link to the recording so you can all do the same. [Updated to add the link to the recording.]

I will, however, be able to watch Amal El-Mohtar's keynote speech at Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations live on Youtube this afternoon, as it's due to stream at 5pm British Summer Time, which is exactly when I stop work. This may be of interest to some of you as well — check what time it is in your timezone, or come back to the same link to watch asynchronously, as it will be available for a little while afterwards. El-Mohtar is a great public speaker — she's brilliant whether in a podcast, a panel, a kaffeeklatsch, or doing a keynote address, so I highly recommend this event.

Reading-wise, I've been firmly ensconced in Egypt these past few days, with P. Djèlí Clark's short story 'The Angel of Khan el-Khalili' (about feminism, justice, and the workers' movement (including a scenario evocative of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire), set against a version of 20th-century Egypt where steampunk automata are part of every home, and angels and djinn talk to people who dare to seek them out), and then Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw, a work of historical children's fiction that I read after

lirazel used it as the answer to one of the thirty-day book meme prompts. I think if I'd read this as a child, as

lirazel did, I would have enjoyed it uncritically. However, while I love the overall story and setting (a teenage girl, enslaved and chafing against her situation, winds up working as a spy and embroiled in the dangerous politics of ancient Egypt in the time of Hatshepsut), the book is very much of its time, with some very unfortunate 1950s implications which soured things a bit for my twenty-first century eyes.

Onwards to the last book meme prompt:

30. A book you detest that people are surprised by

( My answer )

And that's the final post in my series of answers to a great set of questions about books and reading. I've really enjoyed answering them, and I'm happy that I managed to do this across every single day of April without any gaps!

I'll leave you with some photos and a video of the beautiful blossoms in our garden! Have a great weekend!.

I've spent a lot of today in the garden. Matthias and I have now filled two out of the four vegetable patches — with seeds for parnsips, beetroot, and romanesco cauliflower. The other two beds will be seeded in May with peas, butternut pumpkin, and zucchini. I've also transferred a lot of the windowsill seedlings into the outdoor container garden.

The whole place is in full bloom.

I've finished up one book this weekend so far — Seven Devils, a feminist space opera by Laura Lam and Elizabeth May. The two authors describe it as being like 'Fury Road in space,' although it felt more Firefly-esque from my perspective. It was a fun, solid book with a group of found family resistance fighters trying to overthrow an evil empire, but it was enjoyable rather than groundbreaking.

On to the book meme, which asks for:

18. A book that went after its premise like an explosion

( My answer )

( The other days )

It was warm, it was sunny, the farmers market in the centre of town was flooded with far too many people, but I can't bring myself to get too worked up about it because I just feel so relaxed and happy. We flung open the curtains, and filled the house with flowers.

I come bearing a few links.

The more observant among you may have noticed that I no longer live in Cambridge. This is (sadly) a product of the ridiculous housing market in this part of the world. When Matthias and I decided we wanted to buy a house, we basically had the option of either living on the very outskirts of Cambridge in what would probably be a house needing a lot of work, and have to spend hours every day commuting by (slow, unreliable) bus into work, or moving to one of the surrounding villages on the trainline and buying a much nicer house that would not need to be gutted and renovated from the ground up. Add to that the fact that both of our workplaces are basically not going to return us to full-time work in the office even after the pandemic is over, and the decision was obvious. We moved to Ely, which is fifteen minutes away from Cambridge on the train. While I miss some things about living in Cambridge, it was definitely the right decision.

All that by way of preamble to say that the house was finally in a presentable enough state for me to do a photo tour. I've posted three batches of photos over on Instagram at

ronnidolorosa. Batch one, batch two, batch three.

Also via Instagram, a link to a wonderful photo essay (in a rather pretentious travel magazine) about the gorgeous ocean baths of Sydney. I miss the sea — and specifically the Sydney sea — so much!

Via a convoluted sequence of links in Dreamwidth, I stumbled upon this Tumblr post, which argues something I've long been struggling to articulate — my frustration and discomfort with anti-intellectualism on the left. It comes from a different place to the right-wing equivalent, but it's just as misinformed and damaging. It being a Tumblr post, I find it a touch on the polemical side, but it summarises a lot of things I've long felt, and gave me a satisfying jolt of recognition.

I also particularly enjoyed Amal El-Mohtar's newsletter this week, not least because the ritual she describes (Friday evening walks, take-away, and WandaVision) closely resembles my own Saturday evening pandemic ritual (take-away, and films), and because she is so overwhelmed with love for WandaVision, like me.

Edited to add the link to the first trailer for the Grishaverse Netflix show! In terms of the original books I only really love the Six of Crows duology (the ending of the original trilogy makes me incredibly angry, and the new series mainly focuses on characters in whom I'm not hugely interested), but the trailer is reminding me of all my intense Darklina feelings (because of course I've never met a heroine/villain ship I didn't like), and I'm very much looking forward to the series!

Watch on YouTube

I hope your Saturdays have been filled with light, both physical and metaphorical.

Today started with a muddy walk to Grantchester and back — we discovered a new farm in the village with a field full of alpacas! — followed by crepes for breakfast. It's been pouring with rain all day, and so it was certainly no hardship to stay indoors, keeping warm and dry. I've spent most of the time alternating between watching biathlon on TV, and finishing up a third Yuletide treat. I had thought that I'd only be able to make three contributions to this year's collection (I felt I'd run out of time to write anything more), and then suddenly I had another browse through the app, and two more ideas for fic fell into my lap. I have not attempted to write the second of these two, but I'm wondering if I'll be able to manage it by the end of next week (the collection closes on Friday). I have a goal each year in terms of numbers of individual treats I write, and in terms of a minimum total wordcount written across all my Yuletide fics, and this helps keep me focused. We'll see.

Matthias has finished up work for the year, but I've got five more days: next week, and keeping the motivation going is getting very hard. Thankfully it's a fairly light teaching load, although I do also need to write the abstracts of three journal articles that my colleague and I need to submit by the end of December.

As for reading, I've finished one book and one novella. The novella, 'Brambles', is a prequel to Intisar Khanani's Goose Girl retelling, Thorn. I really loved the latter, but felt the novella didn't add much to the story — it simply provided further details for a specific element of the heroine's and villain's backstories.

The book, The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart, is the first in a fantasy series set in a world whose culture and setting resemble those of historical China. I enjoyed the worldbuilding, thought that the multiple points of view worked really well, but couldn't figure out if it was aimed at an adult or YA readership. The characters were certainly all adults (I think the youngest was in her early twenties), but they reacted and behaved in ways that felt more like teenagers. I find this happens fairly regularly in a lot of genre fiction, and I'm not entirely sure whether it's intentional on the part of the authors, editors, and publishers.

I know there are a lot of people in my Dreamwidth circle who enjoy the fiction of Amal El-Mohtar, Arkady Martine, or both, and so I hope some of you will appreciate this recording of a discussion between the two of them for the Brooklyn Book Festival. I had initially signed up for the live event, but then realised it was going to happen at 1am in my timezone, which was pushing things a bit. I was therefore really happy to see that they'd made the recording available. I love the fiction of both authors, but I also find them to be really excellent public speakers (the kaffeeklatch with Amal, where I sat around a table with her and about nine other people, and she answered all our individual questions, was one of the highlights of last year's Worldcon in Dublin for me). Their discussion ranged from empire, exile, and borderlands to cities, academia, and f/f fiction about antagonists falling in love with each other. It was wonderful! (The only thing that rendered Martine less than perfect in my eyes is the fact that she doesn't like London!)

Watch on YouTube

Now I'm sitting here with tea, and panettone. The Christmas lights are on, and everything is cozy and warm.

I'm on the mailing lists of several authors, and, for the most part, what they tend to write about is upcoming publications, awards, convention appearances and readings, and things like that. Publicity, essentially. Occasionally you get other stuff — giveaways and competitions, scatterings of other interests (Aliette de Bodard writes about recipes and fountain pens, Kate Elliott writes about her dog, and outrigger canoeing, and so on). But what you don't get is the sort of long-form blogging and essays that you used to be able to read, back when all these people were on Livejournal: deep insights into their lives outside their work. (This should not be interpreted as a complaint. People are free to write and manage their online presence in whatever way they see fit.)

There is, however, one exception: Amal El-Mohtar. Her mailing list is an utter delight, and I'm frequently nodding along at the things she writes. Her most recent post (available here) is a case in point:

I tried to be honest with myself about what I wanted, what I was looking for. I thought, with sudden and profound clarity, that I wanted to be both surprised and affirmed. It’s the reason all those Instagram filters that tell you what Pokémon or Pixar character or font you are are so popular, the reason personality quizzes flourished on Livejournal and before that. We know who we are, broadly speaking, but we’d all love the gift of a new self that feels more, that tells us a true secret about ourselves, one that we’re proud and delighted to share. There’s a kind of divination in that, too: you know who you are, but here’s who you could be, the seeds of that self already rooting in you, sprouting.

Surprised and affirmed. Exactly so.

[If you also want to sign up for Amal's mailing list, you can do so via the large Subscribe button that is in the top right-hand corner of the above linked post. There's a free and a paid option.]

This was the last full day of the convention, and it was a really packed one! As always, panel titles and descriptions are in plain text, with my remarks in italics.

( Two panels, a kaffeeklatsch, a meet-up, and the Hugo Awards ceremony )

After the ceremony, Matthias and I headed back to the hotel room, where it took me a very long time to come down from the high.

This is my second post recapping my experiences of attending my first ever Worldcon. As before, I will post panel descriptions in plain text, and a few sentences summarising my own impressions in italics afterwards.

( Panels on space opera, grappling with the post-colonial in SFF, and Tolkien, plus a reading by Kate Elliott and a fountain pen meet-up hosted by Aliette de Bodard )

I promised to mention the thing with Kate Elliott. She and I have known each other for a long time online, chatting occasionally on Twitter, where we are mutual followers, but I never take that as a guarantee that authors know who I am or think of me as a friend. However, when I was queuing to go into her reading, she saw my name badge, and immediately told me how much a book review I had written more than ten years ago meant to her. She told me it was one of the few reviews she'd read that got what she was trying to do with the book/series in question, and one of the few that ever applied a higher level of depth and complexity to its analysis of her work. She still remembered it, and that I was the one who wrote it, years later. I have to admit that this made me quite emotional and overwhelmed! I wrote a Twitter thread about the whole thing here.

The linkpost is early this week, as I'm going to be absolutely flat out all afternoon, and then away on various workshops and conferences. Oh, the glamorous librarian life!

I'll start with a few reviews and posts about books I loved, or books I'm very much looking forward to reading:

A joint review of Space Hostages by Sophia McDougall, at Booksmugglers.

Amal El-Mohtar reviews Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho.

Zen Cho chats with Mahvesh Murad about the book.

She talks more about the book here.

Cindy Pon talks about her new book, Serpentine.

SFF in Conversation is one of my favourite columns at Booksmugglers. In it, various groups of writers sit down to discuss topics that are important to them. The most recent features Aliette de Bodard, Zen Cho, Kate Elliott, Cindy Pon, and Tade Thompson, and I highly recommend it.

This is the first part of a BBC radio programme about British folklore, monsters, and the landscape.

The reviews continue to pour in a Those Who Run With Wolves. Recent reviewers have been Leticia Lara, Athena Andreadis, and Aliette de Bodard.

Ghostwords has returned with a vengeance! The latest post sports a cornucopia of links, leading the reader off on an internet treasure hunt.

I very much appreciated this post on No Award about Indigenous (and other) seasonal calendars.

In case you missed it, I reviewed Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard, and The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine. I loved them all.

Men Wearing A Military Helmet and Nothing Else in Western Art History: The Toast is a gift.

I hope your weekends are filled with as much fun stuff and opportunities for learning as mine will be.

Current Music: Prototype - Sound Piercing
Crossposts: http://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/217978.html

I was going to devote this week's post to the Hugo Awards situation, but to be honest, I thought better of it. Why waste my energy on the emotionally draining behaviour of a bunch of immature, selfish, cruel, destructive people? I'd rather talk about people who build, create, nurture and share.

At Safe, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz talks about words, actions, and using power for good. It's a post filled with hope and compassion. (Content note for discussion of abusive behaviour.)

Rochita's post refers to this one by Laura Mixon, which comes with a similar content note.

I absolutely adore M Sereno's poetry. Her latest, 'The Eaters, published in Uncanny Magazine, is gorgeous. Amal El-Mohtar reads it aloud here.

BBC Radio 4 is doing a programme featuring extensive interviews with Ursula Le Guin, Ursula Le Guin at 85.

Short stories I read and enjoyed this week include 'Monkey King, Faerie Queen' by Zen Cho (published at Kaleidotrope) and 'Ambergris, or the Sea-Sacrifice' by Rhonda Eikamp (published at Lackington's, illustrated by Likhain).

Over at SF Signal, authors pay tribute to Terry Pratchett and Leonard Nimoy.

Ken Liu discusses his new novel The Grace of Kings at SF Signal.

This round-up post at Ladybusiness has some fabulous short story recommendations.

It's always disorienting for me to see real-life friends and former academic colleagues getting discussed in SF publications.

This is the most Cambridge story ever.

Please spend your weekends being lovely to each other.

Current Mood: loved
Crossposts: http://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/212613.html

Welcome to what I hope will become a regular feature here: weekly posts of links to wonderful things. There are no criteria for inclusion: the links will just be things that have caught my eye in any given week, but I'm trying to focus on positive and/or thought-provoking material from a diverse range of perspectives. This is all part of my goal of collaborative and community-building writing for this year.

It was a great week for SFF podcasts. I particularly enjoyed Amal El-Mohtar and Natalie Luhrs on Rocket Talk with Justin Landon, talking about all things blogging and reviewing.

Fangirl Happy Hour is a new project by Ana of The Book Smugglers and Renay of Ladybusiness. Their second podcast is on sex and romance in science fiction, nominations for the Hugo Awards and The Very Best of Kate Elliott (which has rocketed to the top of my wishlist).

Renay also wrote a fabulous, heartfelt post about being betrayed by stories that the rest of your community has universally praised. Read the comments too.

A. Merc Rustad's short story 'How To Become A Robot In 12 Easy Steps' is something I didn't realise I'd been wanting until now. Almost anything I could say here will be a spoiler, but I feel I should provide a content warning for depictions of depression.

Amal El-Mohtar's short story 'The Truth About Owls' hurt my heart in the best possible way.

No Award is not a new blog, but it is new to me, and is a breath of fresh air. I'm often frustrated by the US-centrism of the online conversation on media and social justice, so I'm thrilled to find a blog by a pair of Australians tackling these issues from an Australian perspective.

Finally, I really appreciated Foz Meadows' epic blog post on Teen Wolf. I don't agree with all her conclusions, but I am particularly happy about her comments on Scott McCall, whose gentleness, kindness and adoration of powerful women goes against all the usual stereotypes about boys raised by single mothers.

I hope you all have fabulous weekends. Since Eurovision is officially upon us, why not generate your own Eurovision song title?

This is a mirror of a post on my Wordpress blog. You can comment here or there.

Current Music: Florence + the Machine - Cosmic Love (Seven Lions remix)
Crossposts: http://dolorosa-12.livejournal.com/207781.html

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What is water but a voice?
Rainy morning linkpost
Friday open thread: internet serendipity
By the potted plant with the weird artsy couches
That sunset-stirred pang
The last two fandom meme questions
A day in the (lockdown) life
Scattering links and flowers
Team Garden
Sunny Saturday linkpost
We came down from the north, blue hands and a torch
The beat of her wings
Worldcon 2019: Day 4
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Beyond Selidor

A song with a mission

Entries tagged with amal el-mohtar

What is water but a voice?

Rainy morning linkpost

Friday open thread: internet serendipity

By the potted plant with the weird artsy couches

That sunset-stirred pang

The last two fandom meme questions

A day in the (lockdown) life

Scattering links and flowers

Team Garden

Sunny Saturday linkpost

We came down from the north, blue hands and a torch

The beat of her wings

Worldcon 2019: Day 4

Worldcon 2019: Day 2

Meet her at the linkpost parade

All is full of linkpost

Linkpost makes the world go 'round