Beyond Selidor

Again, I've elected to roll the current snowflake_challenge prompt into today's open thread, since it's a fun prompting question:

Share a favourite piece of original canon (a show, a specific TV episode, a storyline, a book or series, a scene from a movie, etc) and explain why you love it so much.



I always feel a bit weird doing these, because all my fandoms of the heart are fandoms-of-one, the sorts of things that I'd be lucky to get given as gifts for Yuletide, and they have potentially offputting elements (teenage protagonists, a writing style people will either love or hate, divisive relationship dynamics, and so on). So I can talk about why I love them forever, but assume that no one will take me up on the recommendation, or not be hooked by the same things that first hooked me. A lot of these canons are things that I've loved unstintingly for three decades; they're a part of me — they've seeped into my bones, into the story I tell about myself.

I've written a lot of primers/manifestos/gushing walls of emotion over the years!

( I've gathered a bunch behind the cut )

What about you? Feel free to link back to your own posts if you've already answered this prompt for Snowflake.

The current snowflake_challenge is one that I always find incredibly stressful: I don't really collect fannish merch (other than ... physical books? Dreamwidth icons?), and I'm completely incapable of taking decent photos of anything that isn't a) a tree or b) a body of water.



So, with that disclaimer out of the way, here is the prompt:

In your own space, post the results of your fandom scavenger hunt. earch in your current space, whether brick-and-mortar or digital. Post a picture or description of something that is or represents:

1. A favorite character
2. Something that makes you laugh
3. A bookshelf
4. A game or hobby you enjoy
5. Something you find comforting
6. A TV show or movie you hope more people will watch
7. A piece of clothing you love
8. A thing from an old fandom
9. A thing from a new fandom

My photos can be found on Instagram. Edited to add that the bad-quality photos were stressing me out so much that I deleted the whole photoset from Instagram, so the link here will no longer work. The descriptions of the photos remain below.

I have merged several categories.

1. A favourite character — Noviana Una from Sophia McDougall's Romanitas trilogy. This is the back of a t shirt which is possibly the only piece of fannish merch I own, a quote from McDougall's book referencing Una. (A picture McDougall drew of her own character, plus this quote, forms my default Dreamwidth icon.)

2. and 3. Something that makes me laugh + a bookshelf — a small portion of the Terry Pratchett section of our bookshelves. This is only a small portion of our collection as a whole — my copies are all still at my mum's place in Australia, and many of Matthias's copies are still in Germany. At some point, we will have all the copies in the one place and may have to discard the duplicates.

4. and 5. A game or hobby I enjoy + something I find comforting — swimming swimming swimming. I am, as I have said many times, half woman half ocean. Swimming is the only thing that stills the sea inside.

6. A TV show or movie I wish more people would watch — Babylon Berlin

7. A thing from an old fandom — the final lines of Northern Lights, the first book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. This isn't my oldest fandom, but it was my first experience of fandom as an online community, and the HDM forum I joined still remains my gold standard for online fannish spaces. It was the perfect welcome and introduction to fandom-as-shared activity.

8. A thing from a new fandom — the extant books from Pat Barker's Briseis-centric Iliad retelling trilogy.

I read three more short stories yesterday. All are free and online at the Tor.com website.

( Short fiction )

I'm kind of delightedly amused that yesterday, on the tenth anniversary of Ed Balls Day, the New York Times wrote an in-depth article about this meme that will not die. I'm even more delightedly amused that, as per Yvette Cooper, he apparently made a cake to commemorate this important moment of internet history.

Today is the penultimate day of the thirty-day book meme:

29. A book that led you home

( My answer )

( The last day )

Thirty Day Book Meme Day 2: Best bargain.

This was a tricky one, as I've not only bought lots of books at discounted prices over the years, but also spent a decade working as a book reviewer, which meant that I was both given books for free, and paid money to talk about them. So obviously all the books I reviewed during that time were, in some sense, a bargain. For this reason, I've chosen to interpret this question as asking not just which book I got for the cheapest price, but how much it gave back to me in terms of meaning, rereads, and enjoyment.

When interpreted in this way, the answer can be no other than Romanitas by McDougallSophia. My editor was in the habit of going through the haul of books sent to the newspaper by various publishers, allocating some to the reviewers who covered that particular genre, and leaving out the rest in the staff tearoom for anyone to take. Romanitas fell in that latter category — my editor didn't think it looked good enough to review, so it was left out for anyone to claim for free. I read the book cover summary — a dystopian setting where the Roman Empire never fell, but rather spread to encompass most of the world — and read the first chapter (the funeral of the Emperor's brother and sister-in-law from the perspective of their grieving teenage son, awkward at the media circus surrounding his life and lonely against the weight of his own imperial inheritance), and then the second (a furious escaped slave fights for her life and that of her condemned prisoner brother), and realised I was hopelessly hooked. (It was also the first time I really understood shipping, because my first reaction, upon being introduced to the two point-of-view characters in those opening chapters, was 'I adore you both. Now kiss.')

I ended up devouring the book, and went on to review both its follow ups (thus acquiring them for free from the publisher as well), writing most of the fanfic on Ao3 that exists for this series (I think the other stuff was written for me as a Yuletide gift), and even ending up as something of a friend of the author, on the strength of being basically the only person who ever talked about these books online. (longvision is my long-defunct Romanitas trilogy fanblog, which I set up shortly after reading the first book.)

Noviana Una, the escaped slave character, ended up being my second favourite fictional character of all time — she's the person in my default icon, and I rather daggily had a T shirt printed with the words that are the title of this blog post, so as you can see I'm a hopeless obsessive about this series, and about this character in particular.

In other words, in terms of what this book — and series — has given me over the past twelve years, it was far and away the best bargain I've ever acquired!

( The other days )

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.

Well, it's been a while.

Chinelo Onwualu talks race, speculative fiction, and Afro SF.

Sophia McDougall's new book Space Hostages is out! I have my copy ready to read on my upcoming holiday! There is a book trailer, tumblr post and author interview!

Rather than linking to individual stories and essays, I'd like to simply direct you all to the latest issue of Uncanny Magazine. I've thoroughly enjoyed everything in it so far, in particular E Lily Yu's short story and Natalie Luhrs' column.

Two tables of contents for what look to be excellent anthologies:

To Shape the Dark (ed. Athena Andreadis).

Apex Book of World SF 4 (ed. Mahvesh Murad)

Here are two great Storifies on dealing with rejection, from authors Nalo Hopkinson and Elizabeth Bear, Rachel Manija Brown, Aliette de Bodard, Tobias Buckell, John Chu, Shveta Thakrar, Beth Bernobich, Jeremiah Tolbert and others. Rochita Loenen-Ruiz made both Storifies.

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz has revamped her books blog. The first post is a guest post by editor Didi Chanoch, talking about a new press he's launching.

This is a great interview with Aliette de Bodard.

I really appreciated this column by Renay about gatekeeping, fannish history and the SF 'canon'.

I also appreciated this interview with Kate Elliott.

I also loved Athena Andreadis' thoughts on Mad Max: Fury Road.

More on Fury Road: No Award's guide to Australian slang. That blog is a national treasure.

I hope you are all feeling wonderful.

So. Lots of stuff to get through this week, as my corner of the internet has been particularly full of people doing wonderful, clever and awesome things.

Rochita Loenen-Ruiz had a busy week. Here's Rochita on the uses of anger, her new short story, and being interviewed for Lightspeed magazine's author spotlight.

Catherine Lundoff has had so many submissions to her 'Older Women in SFF' recommendations post that she's had to split it into two. Part one, part two.

I really liked this review of Zen Cho's writing by Naomi Novik.

This review by Sarah Mesle of the most recent episode of Game of Thrones made a lot of points I've been struggling to articulate. Content note for discussion of violence, abuse and rape.

I really appreciated this thoughtful post by Tade Thompson on safety, community and dissent.

Natalie Luhrs makes some really important points here:

This is part of the ongoing conversation about the importance of different voices in our community. About making space for people who have been told–explicitly and implicitly–that what they have to say isn’t worthwhile and that they need to sit down and listen and that someday, maybe, they’ll be allowed to speak.

This list of Best Young Australian novelists looks great, and reflects the Australia that I grew up in. Congratulations to all the winners!

I have to admit that the #hometovote hashtag has been making me cry.

I wrote two longish posts this week. One is over at Wordpress: a review of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. The other is here at Dreamwidth/LJ, and is a primer to Sophia McDougall's Romanitas trilogy.

My mother is a radio journalist. Her programme this week is on Eurovision, and you can listen to it here (not geoblocked). There are additional features . I am an unashamed Eurovision fan, and as you can see, it runs in the family.

Texts from Hieronymous Bosch made me laugh and laugh.

Happy Friday, everyone.

Let us not talk of the UK election results - I have no words. Instead, let's talk about something much more pleasant: the return of my weekly linkposts!

Unlike the rest of my corner of the internet, I didn't have a massive problem with Avengers: Age of Ultron. Sophia McDougall and Sonya Taaffe probably get closest to articulating my own feelings on the subject.

Joyce Chng, David Anthony Durham and Kari Sperring (moderated by Vanessa Rose Phin) have some interesting things to say on 'Representing Marginalized Voices in Historical Fiction and Fantasy', at Strange Horizons.

Athena Andreadis talks about the uses and misuses of cultural traumas (in this case, her own, Greek culture) in fiction.

Aliette de Bodard talks about Dorothy Dunnett at Fantasy Book Cafe.

'For the Gardener's Daughter is a fabulous poem by Alyssa Wong, published in Uncanny Magazine.

On Sophie Masson's blog, Adele Geras talks about retelling fairytales.

One of my friends and former academic colleagues has started a blog looking at popular representations of monsters.

The History Girls is not a new blog, but it is new to me. It's the work of a group of women who are historical fiction writers.

Today is pretty grim, so I will leave you with footage of a koala roaming around a rural Victorian hospital.

This week's linkpost is up a bit early, and contains many fabulous things.

I'm a huge fan of Sophia McDougall's review of Birdman: over at Strange Horizons. In it, she compares the film to Boris Johnson. It's an apt comparison.

Here's a great interview with Samantha Shannon. 'Cities are made of narrative' indeed.

Aliette de Bodard's description of her subconscious as a library is a fabulous metaphor, and one that I might steal myself!

There's a great set of guest posts over at Ladybusiness on 'What books are on your auto-recommend list?' (For the record, mine are the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman, the Pagan Chronicles series by Catherine Jinks, Space Demons, Skymaze, Shinkei and Galax Arena by Gillian Rubinstein, Parkland, Earthsong, Fire Dancer and The Beast of Heaven by Victor Kelleher, the Romanitas trilogy by Sophia McDougall and the Crossroads trilogy by Kate Elliott.)

Episode 4 of Fangirl Happy Hour is up. This week Ana and Renay are talking Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear, Jupiter Ascending and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.. I'm not quite as critical of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they are, while I think there's room for difference of opinion about the feminism of Jupiter Ascending, but as always, I appreciate their thoughts.

The first few guest posts about representation and diversity are up on Jim C. Hines' blog.

Shannon Hale talks about gender segregation at readings she's done at schools. It's heartbreaking.

I thoroughly enjoyed this article by Robert Macfarlane about language and landscape. Beautiful stuff.

I really liked the recent BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall. This interview by Julia Raeside of Claire Foy, who played Anne Boleyn, goes a long way towards explaining why.

For reasons that will soon become apparent, although I can't provide a link to it, the #readingAuthorName hashtag on Twitter has been a powerful and positive movement. It works like this: think of an author whose works moved you and shaped you into the person you are. Tweet about it. Add the hashtag #readingAuthorName (obviously replacing AuthorName for the author's actual name). Feel happy.

This weekend, the weather suddenly turned summery (or at least what passes for summery in the south-east of England). I think I was more excited about the fact that I'd be able to dry laundry in the courtyard instead of in the house than the fact that I would be able to ditch my winter clothes. I've since done two loads of laundry, and I find the sight of sheets waving gently in the breeze oddly comforting.

Yesterday I went with my friend and former sort-of-housemate J2* to a buffet lunch at Pembroke College. It's an annual event to which all the people who supervise (i.e. provide the one-on-one tutorials that are the main part of the teaching method at Oxbridge) students from Pembroke are invited. J2 invited me as her guest, and when we arrived we discovered that another friend of ours, M, had also been invited. The meal began with sparkling wine in what I think was the college's senior combination room, and then we were treated to a three-course buffet in the hall. We sat next to a very bitter physicist who spent the whole meal complaining about how academia has changed in the past twenty years (the short version: too much admin), and an interesting woman who taught Arabic language and Middle Eastern history. She bemoaned the fact that interest in her subject area only spikes when something terrible happens in the Arab and Islamic world.

After the lunch, the three of us went to a pub that lets people take drinks outside into the park near the mill pond, and we sat on a wall, surrounded by hundreds of other people who clearly had the same idea. All in all, it was a really fabulous day.

Today I've just been lounging around at home. Matthias is working in one of his library jobs, but will be back in about an hour, at which point we'll have a late lunch. This evening I've got yoga, but other than that, I don't plan on leaving the house. I've been - rather decadently - drinking white wine in the sun and reading novels. At some point I'll probably post some reviews of them, but for now, I plan to relax.

I'll leave you with a few links to stuff that's been making me happy today.

First, sophiamcdougall's newest book, a children's science-fiction work called Mars Evacuees, is about to be published. She's got a couple of excerpts here and here. The second link includes a bunch of other stuff, all of which is worth reading, especially her article in the New Statesman about the gender disparity in book shop displays.

This review of the recent TV series of Dracula, posted in ladybusiness, is making me rethink my decision to avoid the show. I find Jonathan Rhys Meyers almost unbearable to watch, and that is why I originally chose to give the show a miss, but if anyone who has watched it has an opinion, feel free to weigh in and convince me one way or the other.

Fantasy author Saladin Ahmed has started a really cool side project, tweeting the Husain Haddawy translation of the Arabian Nights.

I'll leave you with some music. Yesterday, in honour of International Women's Day, I posted a bunch of feminist music on Tumblr. Assume a broad definition of the word 'feminism' here that has room for Christine Anu singind about migration and identity, Lucinda Williams singing about loss and grief, and Ciscandra Nostalghia demanding listeners worship her.

I'm really into the music of The Daysleepers at the moment. This album and this album are simply fabulous. They sound like summer in Sydney - all diving under waves and bobbing out beyond the breakers, the glare of the asphalt hurting your eyes, jacaranda trees, standing on a roof and watching the fireworks on New Year's Eve, mangoes, cherries and grilled fish and sparkling wine - in a way that I cannot properly articulate. Just gorgeous.

Finally, Matthias and I watched the last stage of Melodifestivalen for the first time this year. We both would've been much happier if Alcazar had won.



Seriously, is that not the most Eurovision song ever?

___________________
*By which I mean that she lived in a sharehouse with my partner Matthias during the year I lived in Germany, so she was my housemate whenever I visited him.