Georgina

eponymous @ 2015-06-01T00:52:00

2015-05-31T14:52:39Z

Praise Jupiter, I’ve finally finished a story in this lovely little fandom.

Brass
Jupiter Ascending, Jupiter/Caine

Jupiter’s having trouble accessing Seraphi’s space bucks, so Caine takes a second job on Earth.

A story brought to you by the letters M and M and the number Channing Tatum’s hips.

Yes, this is the Jupiter Ascending story I started because I was blocked on the Jupiter Ascending story I started because I was blocked on my Jupiter Ascending story. But I actually finished this one, so progress!

eponymous @ 2015-05-02T17:26:00

2015-05-02T07:26:39Z

Hey, it's a list of things.

- I gave in and got a tumblr, because nobody's talking about Jupiter Ascending meta here and I want to talk about Jupiter Ascending meta, or at least read some Jupiter Ascending meta and not respond because tumblr is as confusing as all get-out. Also, I want to talk about how adorable Jupiter and Caine are together and how sad I am there will be no sequels and look, this fandom is so many new things for me, FPF and shipping het and delightful canon femdom* all. I've become surprisingly fond of het the last couple of months -- after I ran out of JA stories (which happened fast, the fandom is small), I watched Pacific Rim and then spent a couple of weeks obsessively reading a lot of Mako/Raleigh. Sometime we need to talk about how fanon moves through a fandom, because I'm watching it happening in a small way in Jupiter Ascending (and it clearly happened in a big way in Pacific Rim, what with the near-universal beliefs that Raleigh Becket loves giving head and being pegged**) and it fascinates me.

- You know the number one piece of popslash fanon I remember to this day? Fred Durst, bad in bed.

- Oh, and my tumblr is here. If you have one, friends, please let me know.

- I wrote a little 450-word Jupiter/Caine story based on some pictures, which is here on tumblr or here on Ao3.

- The story in which Caine Wise accidentally becomes a stripper is about to go to the lovely Ro for betaing, so depending how many things I need to fix, it might go up next week. I seriously can't type that description without laughing.

- Watching videos on youtube of men giving women lapdances is so awkward. (It's funny how strong my urge is to mention here that I was watching them for research purposes. Like, writing sexy things? Great! Watching sexy things? Ooh, better make sure nobody thinks you're a perv.) Is it just because things don't really line up usefully the way they do when the sexes are reversed? Is it because the guys always look self-conscious? Is it my own hang-ups?

- Watching videos of Magic Mike is much less awkward, assuming you watch the ones that cut all the angsty plot and just focus on the sexy dancing.

- Apparently what I needed to find Channing Tatum attractive was wolf ears and subservience, with a side-order of Dear god, his hips.

Hope you're well!

(*Femdom is an awful word, it sounds like a prophylactic***.)

(**Pegging, also an awful word***.)

(***Actually, you know what the problem is? Neither word sounds sexy. Sexy things should have sexy names. Another disappointing word in that regard: cunnilingus.)

eponymous @ 2015-04-28T16:17:00

2015-04-28T06:17:02Z

...I'm pretty sure I've finally finished the first draft of something.

Not the serious Jupiter Ascending story. Not the goofy Jupiter Ascending/Leverage crossover.

15k of Caine Wise accidentally becoming a stripper. I don't know, friends. I just don't know.

eponymous @ 2015-03-31T20:17:00

2015-03-31T09:17:32Z

So the Backstreet documentary finally came out here this weekend and we rounded up a small fangirl posse to go and see it. Super-glad I’d allowed myself to be spoiled beforehand, because I think I would’ve been wrecked by all the personal stuff if I hadn’t had the chance to mentally prepare myself first.

Or, as I said: I’d been planning on watching it at home so I could cry there.

Lou Perlman's gameroom with the movie screen and the video games and the original Darth Vadar helmet totally sounded like a paedophile's lair, and that was before Howie mentioned that they used to watch porn there together. (Which is, I understand, something that paedophiles actually do: have kids watch porn with them as a way of raising the idea of sexual contact.) Lou was such a big part of the documentary that I kept expecting them to bring up the sexual abuse accusations made by Rich Cronin of LFO, not to mention Jane Carter’s insinuations. I guess I can see why they didn't want to touch on it, but at the same time, it felt like a big piece of the puzzle was missing.

Also, Nick's so disturbed by Lou's house he doesn't even want to go inside, Brian talks about how upset he is that Lou never made things right with him, and Howie casually wanders around taking photos on his phone like it’s nothing. I like Howie well enough, but what I realised after watching this documentary is that what I really like is Howie’s friendships with the other boys.*

* Especially Nick during the B & B tour.**

** When they were totally hooking up.***

*** It’s funny, we were talking afterwards about One Direction and it was mentioned that today's Larry tinhatters are basically yesterday's Domlijah tinhatters with the secret clothing messages and the evil management stuff and I thought, Ho, Ho, yes, fans are totally insane, but I will always believe there was something going on between Nick and Howie during the B & B tour. Perhaps it was just Nick intensely latching onto Howie in a post-Brian’s-marriage world, but perhaps it wasn’t. My tinhat has sparkles and a propeller on top, it's really pretty.

High school tours! So much wonderful old footage. I wonder if some of those girls will see themselves and laugh.

I could’ve watched hours of them writing songs in the London flat. So many hours. Also, I’d love to see more footage of the five of them living there, Brian making breakfast and bringing Nick his tea, all of them hanging around the kitchen island eating, because I imagine there’s actually very few times in their lives when it’s just the five of them and nobody else.

Brian makes excellent scrambled eggs. I wish I could get mine that fluffy.

Brian’s vocal issues were tough to watch. I suspected something had been wrong for a while, because I saw all four shows on their 2006 Australian tour and Brian was note-perfect throughout, and that was definitely not the case during NKOTBSB. But just when I thought the movie had dealt with them and ow ow Brian and okay, we’re past that, they came back in that massive fight between Nick and Brian.

Let’s talk about the fight, because I have so many thoughts.

1 :: Nick and Brian fight like brothers, which is to say: dirty and right for the jugular.

2 :: Brian, who’s spent the whole film doing things like saying “crap” and then apologising, says “fucking” several times.

3 :: Nick says he’s worried about Brian’s vocals, and Brian snaps something back about how he can worry about his own solos now he doesn’t have to worry about carrying Nick’s. What’s he referring to there? Was it when Nick was heavily using alcohol/drugs?

4 :: Nick also says he’s not frightened of Brian any more in a way that suggests that Brian was being aggressive towards him at some point in the past. Perhaps also related to the alcohol/drugs period? Because Nick seemed to adore Brian when he was younger.

5 :: Kevin the peacemaker was awesome. I can’t remember his exact words, but something about, Let’s talk from a place of love, because of course. Aww, Kevin.

6 :: The whole time Nick was yelling, all I could think was that he just wanted somebody to validate his existence.

7 :: Nick actually has a really good point to make — he feels they should be more involved in what’s going on with Brian’s voice instead of just hearing Brian’s working on it — but it gets lost in all the pent-up frustrations.

8 :: Nick says he always saw Brian and himself as the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of the group and that’s pretty sweet, but it kind of relegates the rest of Backstreet to supporting players, no?

Like I said: so many thoughts! I want a dozen dvd commentaries just on that scene, one from the perspective of each person who was in the room.

The documentary mentioned AJ's rehab (and I will never tire of hearing how Kevin kicked the door down), but I was surprised they didn't go into what I would probably dramatically call The Downfall of the Backstreet Boys. I still remember being at work and watching the other four boys talking on TRL on a tiny grainy video window and Nick with the broken hand and the crying and Howie calling him Nicky and none of that was there. They ended up finishing the tour after AJ came back from rehab, but they were clearly Really Fucking Tired of each other by the end of it. AJ relapsed and Nick was alone for the first time in his adult life and drank too much and got into some bar fights and Brian and Kevin went to home to be with their families and Nick tried to heal himself by making a solo album, and then then the entire band, including Nick, sued the record company for letting Nick make that solo album, and it was mess mess mess all the way down.

I’m probably more curious abut that period than the early years, honestly, because band origins are kind of like that Tolstoy quote about happy families. It’s when bands break apart that so much interesting stuff happens.

Brian really is winning, isn’t he? He’s such a charming guy and I always felt bad he got painted by some parts of fandom as an upright stick-in-the-mud.

Goofy AJ is still goofy. And should never tell the story about the shotglass again.

Kevin was the most insightful of the interviewees. Also, he might be the only man in existence who can pull off that fedora-style hat he was wearing. It really suits him.

Howie was… there. I enjoyed his zinger about AJ thinking he was a rockstar, not in a boyband, but I think the only personal thing Howie said during the entire documentary was that it was hard for him not getting solos. C’mon. I wouldn't be spilling my guts in a doco either, but once you've agreed to do it, commit!

I’m glad Nick’s doing better, sober, settled down, but he’s still so broken, isn’t he? Those damn parents of his.

Also, Bob and Jane used to shoot guns out the window when they were fighting? Bloody hell. How terrified those kids must’ve been.

Even as I felt it was time for Backstreet to let their bitterness about ’N Sync go, this was also the first time I really understood why they seemed so betrayed by Lou creating ’N Sync to begin with. They worked for years trying to make it in the US, realised they were going against the prevailing musical trends (grunge, etc), went to Germany, found producers to work with, found European success. Then Lou used all the knowledge and connections he’d gained to build ’N Sync and push them back into the US market, where they they promptly became bigger than Backstreet were. (Though Backstreet were always more popular globally.) So, yeah. I finally get it! But it’s probably time to realise that you won, boys.

I loved Kevin’s comment that Lou had “made them in our image”, which is both supremely creepy and a wonderful way of putting it. Very Biblical.

There’s a lot to be said about the way we make our own myths. We do it on a personal level, constantly editing our stories and memories of ourselves to fit in line with how we believe we are, and celebrities do it on a professional level, often with a dedicated team of PR flacks at their backs. This movie feels so personal in places, that Nick and Brian fight, Nick at his school, Brian dealing with his vocal issues, Kevin's father's death, and yet: the boys were producers. So presumably it doesn’t show anything they didn’t approve. If you’re Nick and you’re watching the rough cut of the film and there’s the moment you were dreading, the moment in which you basically break open in front of the cameras — and I do think that fight with Brian was much more of a breakdown than the crying at the elementary school, for all that it’s couched in anger — what makes you go, yeah, sure, let’s include that? I don’t know, but I really want to know.

I also would’ve liked to see a lot more about the fact that this album was a comeback for them, a chance to do it their way, write their own songs, finance their own recordings. Were they scared they’d fail and prove all those critics right who’ve been saying for twenty years that they’re just prettyboys who don’t play their own instruments? The film ends on a positive note, showing footage of the 20th Anniversary Tour, but I wonder how differently it would've been shaped if the album/tour had bombed.

Also, nothing about NKOTBSB and how that hit single and successful tour helped make them relevant again, setting them up for the success they’re having now?

Afterwards, they showed the live acoustic set that was performed in London at the premiere. Nopseud, Pen and Ephemera: I looked for you! I didn't find you, but I’d be surprised if you aren’t in the footage; there’s a lot of audience shots.

They still make Howie say the cheesiest lines, don’t they? Or perhaps he says them because he doesn’t have anything else interesting to say. Brian sounded good in places, kind of strained in others. I was impressed Nick did the high “Don’t want to hear you saaaaaay” part of the bridge in I Want It That Way, because I don't think I've ever heard him do that live before. The harmonies sounded good and I would totally be up for Kevin's suggestion that they do a live acoustic show of their next album and broadcast it around the world.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. I’m glad we went to watch it in the theatre so we could hang around afterwards and do some fannish post-show analysis. I miss that kind of thing!

Back in the day, some of us local fans used to get together on weekends and watch hours of footage that people from overseas had kindly sent us on video tape and squee and make in-jokes and really, as much as I love Backstreet — and I love Backstreet a lot — what I love more is how many lovely people pop fandom brought into my life. Some I’m still in contact with, and some have faded away, but the memories are still there. It was a really good community for me at a time when a lot of other things were going badly. Pop fandom is also where I learnt to write, how to critique my own work and critique others, and if I’m ever successful with my storytelling, it will be because of my time reading and writing and conversing with you all. I'm feeling the love right now. <3

eponymous @ 2015-03-13T00:56:00

2015-03-12T13:56:08Z

“So you’re a space princess,” Nate says. His voice sounds kind of dubious, because: space princess.

“Oh my god,” Hardison whispers. “Like Leia!”

Jupiter points at him. “The answer to your next question is no.”

“You don’t know what my next question is,” Hardison says.

“No, fanboy, I do not own a space princess slave outfit.”

“…lucky guess,” Hardison mumbles.

So this is apparently happening: a Jupiter Ascending/Leverage crossover that I started today because my serious (so serious) Jupiter Ascending story is kicking my ass.

I'm not sure who else is writing JA, but if you'd like to chat and hash out plots and whatnot, I would totally love to do that with you. (:

It's been a strange couple of weeks. Soon after I said I felt far from fandom, I fell into a new one. I haven't felt this way for a very long time; probably not since popslash, actually.

I'm not sure how long it's going to last, but the ride is pleasant and you can't beat the view.

Lovely fanart by Strannaya Anna.

eponymous @ 2015-03-04T00:52:00

2015-03-03T13:52:31Z

Jupiter Ascending is kind of a mess. Dropped plot threads, shaky worldbuiding, leaden dialogue, and fight scenes so frantic it's hard to tell which side you should be cheering for. And yet. And yet...!

It was described to me as being A Sci-Fi Film For Girls and it really, really is. Even through that lens, it's not perfect; the film may be named after Mila Kunis' Jupiter but Channing Tatum's Caine gets more development, more fellating by other characters (seriously so much fellating) and the end sequence is Caine having cool fights and flying cool planes as Jupiter, you know, runs down some hallways and stuff. But the female gaze is super strong and it's all kind of cheesy fun, except not quite as cheesy as I want it to be -- it'd work a lot better if it felt as though everyone involved was approaching this as a light-hearted romp and not giving speeches like they're in a high school drama club. Remember how Joss Whedon mocked Halle Berry's "You know what happens when a toad gets hit by lightning?" line reading in X-Men? The entire film is like that line, personified.

I've never found Channing Tatum particularly attractive, but let's just say he's doing it for me here. (Really doing it for me here.) There's nothing like a shirtless, eyelinered, pointy-eared man caressing some futuristic weapons as he soaks in his manpain.

Yes, pointy-eared because Caine is half-man, half-wolf. And also half-albino for reasons that are never explained. Nor do they explain what "half-albino" actually means, though if I were going to take a stab at it, I'm guessing that in the sequel (which presumably won't happen now the movie is flopping), it turns out the other half-men, half-wolves have dark skin. Why does that matter? Who knows! Apparently the original cut was three and a half hours long. I hope they release it on dvd so we can find out the answers to the 90% of the questions the movie asks and never answers because it'd rather show us another ten-minute fight sequence instead.

...and yet ever since I saw it a few days ago, I've become slightly obsessed. Here, have some links!

Jupiter Ascending is the Sci-Fi Movie Women Were Waiting For
(Donna Dickens at HitFix)

Here's The Thing About Jupiter Ascending
(Rave Sashayed on Tumblr)

Both of which get what so many mainstream critics did not: this is not necessarily a film for you, dudes.

Movie Yelling with Mallory and Shrill: Jupiter Ascending
(Mallory Ortberg at The Toast)

Long and a bit hard to read the way it's formatted, but it discusses many of the same issues I had with the film, and also one thing I hadn't considered: the film's weird relationship with homosexuality. Like a lot of films these days, it acknowledges the inherent homoeroticism in hyper-masculine men doing hyper-masculine things (Sean Bean's daughter calls Sean and Channing beating each other up their "mating ritual") and yet there's literally ten seconds of LGBT content in the entire film when a prissy helper droid who's been coded as gay in a way that's not offensive, but isn't exactly modern, throws shade at another gay-coded prissy helper droid. And that's it. Just as I'm surprised when female filmmakers create films with little feminist content, I'm surprised a trans filmmaker would make a film that presents every character as cis and every sexual encounter as hetero. Even the floaty space orgy is one guy and a bunch of girls.

Jupiter Ascending
(Abigail Nassbaum at Asking The Wrong Questions)

A long discussion of relationship between this and The Wachowski's best-known film, The Matrix, and why Jupiter Ascending isn't as good. I frequently love Abigail Nassbaum's writing and agree with just about everything she says here.

Brilliant recap of the film in dialogue form.
(Skygiants on Dreamwidth)

And there's fic, my friends! Fic with more twisted relationships than you can poke a stick at, and also way better dialogue. Recs to come when I've finished working though Ao3.

One to start:

Sirius Ascending by Aeolian
(Jupiter/Caine)
Billed as The post-credit scene you can't take your kids to see and indeed it is; this is what I walked out of the cinema wanting.

(Although it does have unexpected knotting, a kink I've never really gotten. It makes sense in this context, and it's very briefly mentioned, but, yeah.)

I'm now writing my own JA story and I find myself thinking about it from the other side, like maybe the hookers at the brothel your Legion-brothers take you to give you side-eye because nobody wants to have to deal with an hour of that. In other words, I find myself having Questions About Knotting (Fictitious Half-Human Half-Wolf Style), and it's not really something I can look up on Wikipedia.

eponymous @ 2015-02-15T20:44:00

2015-02-15T09:44:15Z

I really enjoyed reading everybody’s year-end round-up posts, and seeing my flist return to life!

So I wrote one myself, and now, six weeks later, am getting around to posting it. Seems about right.

A random assortment of things I did this year:

Took some writing classes from one of my very favourite authors, which was an incredible experience, although also kind of a struggle and messed my head up for a while.

Saw Tori Amos twice. Once with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra at the Opera House, which was lush and dramatic and wonderful (though it did feel under-rehearsed in places) and once at her solo request show at the much smaller Sydney Recital Hall. Despite being a fan for twenty years, it was the first time I’d seen her live, and she’s incredible: energetic, charismatic, and an amazing musician. The encore of her solo show turned into a dance party, and it was such a joyous experience being in a crowd who really loved their performer and a performer who loved them back.

On the way to the Opera House show with Meelie, I said, “If she plays Baker, Baker, I’ll probably burst into tears. That was the soundtrack to so many bad decisions in my mid-twenties,” but in fact it was during A Sorta Fairytale at the request show that I ended up with tears streaming quietly down my cheeks and could not make them stop. Many thanks to the woman in the next seat who quietly offered me a tissue.

I think the only movies I saw all year were Veronica Mars and Gone Girl (and I wanted to see Boyhood but it came and went so fast here). It feels as though nobody’s making the kind of movies I want to see any more, or perhaps I’m getting too old to want to watch the kind of movies I used to. One thing I do know is that I don’t give a damn about white male superheroes saving the world. Make a Birds of Prey movie and then we’ll talk.

To compensate for my lack of movies, I seem to have watched a lot of television. More on that in another post.

Favourite album of the year: Taylor Swift’s 1989. I’ve always liked the idea of Taylor Swift (young woman writing about her experiences, awesome!) more than the reality of most of her songs, but this album hits my sweet spot with its ‘80s beats and clever lyrics. The other album I listened to a lot this year was Tori Amos’ American Doll Posse (2007), which may have edged out Scarlet’s Walk (2002) as my favourite post-millennial Tori album. Little Earthquakes and Under the Pink are still the best, though.

I played several hundred boardgames.

I read some books, but nothing that really knocked my socks off. My favourites were probably Alphabetical by Michael Rosen, a very readable history of each letter of the alphabet, and Eleanor & Park, a YA novel by Rainbow Rowell. I also enjoyed many of the digressions about mathematics, cryptography and marketing in Scarlett Thomas’s PopCo, but found the over-reaching story a little bit silly. Or perhaps it just hasn’t aged well?

I bought a dining table and a new sofa and some chairs and a rug and finally feel like I’m living like an adult.

Somehow, without really meaning to, I deepened a bunch of friendships, went to a wedding and a baby shower, and felt more connected to other people than I have in a long time. That was nice.

Conversely, I felt very far from fandom. I’ve never really found anything that captured my attention the way popslash did, and yet I’m not even reading that right now; I haven’t read 2014’s Make the Yuletide Gay stories or 2013’s either. I told myself I’d read Yuletide this year and got through about five stories, though I do have to say that if you liked the Brother Cadfael novels, A Flourish of Gold by thelittlestbird is a wonderfully delightful coda to the series.

In the second half of the year, I wrote nothing at all… until I dug out my ridiculously long juni story in December. I’ve been writing it in Scrivener, which lets you do snapshots (perfect for me, the endless tinkerer), and it’s funny looking at them and seeing every snapshot is between late November and early January for the last four years. Apparently I get bored every January 5th and go do something else.

I didn’t think I was becoming a better writer, but I have re-written half a dozen scenes I knew had problems but hadn’t been able to fix, so maybe I am, who knows? And now I’m trying to wrangle the plot together and work out the ending. I seem to hit the wall around the three-quarters mark of every story, though this story is a bit different for me in that the three-quarters mark is 70k rather than 7k.

So maybe I’ll finish that one this year.

In conclusion: Have some Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars, live on Saturday Night Live. I really do miss watching five grown men dance in unison, and Mars is giving me some serious Live at MSG-era Timberlake vibes. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they’re both calling back to an earlier era.

Cheers.

eponymous @ 2013-12-05T23:43:00

2013-12-05T12:43:11Z

Five months of pop culture, GO!

Orange is the New Black uses a typical protagonist (white, blonde, privileged) to tell stories about a bunch of non-typical characters (women of colour, bisexual/lesbian women, and a trans woman). The more I think about the season’s climax, the more I think it does the series a disservice, but the show as a whole is well worth watching.

Graceland took a nice cast (Aaron Tveit! Daniel Sunjata! A bunch of other people who are not white and/or male!) and squandered it away with stupid storytelling and cheap T & A.

Arrow is way better than you might expect, if your expectations are mine and you’re not really into superheroes. Good characters, good storytelling. The biggest problem is the female lead, who is both badly conceptualised and poorly acted, but there’s a bunch of other women who are awesome, including a blonde, glasses-wearing, delightfully awkward hacker girl.

You do need to get through the first half-dozen episodes, which are the very definition of patchy. Around episode three, I thought, “You know, this writing is pretty good,” after a particularly nice bit of dialogue; literally thirty seconds later, somebody infodumped with, “Have you forgotten your brother died doing [plot thing]?” (To which I would’ve loved it if the responding character had said, “OMG! I had forgotten!”) But there’s a lot more good than bad here, and I love that they’re trying to build a larger world and not just do monster of the week episodes. It actually reminds me quite a bit of Buffy — not as witty, not as clever, but possibly better acted.

Does Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. get any better? Even my love of Ming-Na Wen and hackers couldn’t keep me interested.

The Bling Ring (non-fiction book) is fascinating. The Bling Ring (Sofia Coppola movie) is stylish but empty. The Bling Ring (Lifetime movie) is surprisingly not horrible, but nobody would call it good. Somebody’s going to tell the definitive fictional representation of this story, I hope, but neither of these are it.

Before Midnight was a huge disappointment, with uneven storytelling, terrible pacing, and a male lead who’s never called on his crappy behaviour. Before Sunset is one of my favourite movies, which made this one all the more frustrating. I cannot understand how this film is topping so many end-of-year Best Of lists, and nobody was primed to love it more than me.

Enchanted is a lovely twist on the Disney princess story, and Amy Adams is so winning. I’d forgotten how much I liked it.

You’ll notice there’s hardly any books mentioned above. That’s because I ended up somewhat impulsively becoming a student again, so everything I’ve been reading the last four months has been assigned. I’m studying novel writing, which has been exhilarating and wonderful and terrifying all at once. Exhilarating and wonderful are probably self-evident; terrifying because it feels like this might be my now or never moment. I’ve always had problems with plotting, and have hundreds of thousands of words of mess to prove it. If I cannot learn how to do it even when I’m taking an entire course dedicated to it, I fear I never will.

eponymous @ 2013-09-19T23:49:00

2013-09-19T13:49:59Z

I have stuff to talk about. I really should talk about it sometime.

But for now! Does anybody have a recommendation for a one-off mail forwarding service from the UK? I'd like to buy a small box boardgame from France via amazon.co.uk's online marketplace, and they're quoting me £56 to send it to Australia, which seems kind of insane when it's only £12 to send it the UK and I know from buying stuff on eBay that postage from the UK to Australia would probably less than £20.

I remember there used to be bit of a cottage industry of women who would do this for a reasonable fee if you wanted to buy clothing or make-up or whatever that you couldn't get in your country, but the one I could recall the name of has closed up shop. Has anybody used anyone, or have any tips?

eponymous @ 2013-07-15T16:50:00

2013-07-15T06:50:36Z

In which I watch things.

Much Ado About Nothing

I loved this. It has its flaws, of course, some of which are inherent to the original play and some of which are introduced, but I enjoyed the humanity and the sweetness it brought to what is, I suspect, my favourite Shakespeare. I had several conversations with people in the days prior that went almost exactly the same way -- "I want to see it, but I really don't know about Amy Acker as Beatrice…" -- and that's something I feared, too, especially since Emma Thompson steals the show in Kenneth Branagh's version. But not to fear! She was great, especially at the dramatic parts, and although less sharp than most productions I've seen, I wasn't bothered by it. (Indeed, I have sometimes thought Beatrice can be a little one-note with the sarcasm. Acker's portrayal had a nice amount of nuance.) Alexis Denisof was delightful as Benedict, particularly at the physical comedy, and everyone else was pretty much fantastic. Even Nathan Fillion was perfectly cast as Dogberry, using his hammy acting to portray the hammiest of characters. The only real let-down for me was Jillian Morgese as Hero. It's a pretty blank role to begin with, but she didn't do a lot with the scenes she had.

(Is it too much to expect some tears in the wedding scene? I want tears, damn it!)

Interesting change that worked: Making Conrade a woman, even if sometimes the actors seemed unsure what to do with the resultant pronouns. I'm pretty sure she was referred to both 'he' and 'she' at some point.

Interesting change that did not work: Having Don John and company initially brought to the house in zip-strips (those modern plastic handcuffs). It didn't make a whole lot of sense given that Don John walks around the house freely throughout the course of the play and easily gets away when he needs to.

Interesting change I was neutral about: Giving Beatrice and Benedict a one-night-stand backstory. It fits with the play (there's a series of lines that seem to refer to a past affair) but I don't know that it added much. Or rather, I wish it could've added more. There's a nice sense that could be drawn from the idea of them having a one-night-stand but being unable to express their love for one another, but it couldn't really be explored within the play the way that it's written.

Though I had walking out of the theatre: This four-hundred-year-old play that pivots around a woman's virginity is still more feminist than most Hollywood films today.

I also enjoyed the light, jazzy feel of the music, which apparently was largely composed by Joss Whedon. Is there nothing that man can't do? For comparison, the song Sigh No More (which Shakespeare wrote the lyrics for) from the Branagh version and the Whedon version.

A Courtship of Rivals: Magic & Bird

In the late 1970s, the NBA was floundering, and even college basketball games were receiving higher ratings. Then along came a couple of young men who would become two of the greatest players the game had ever seen, Ervin "Magic" Johnson and Larry Bird, and the fact that they were so different was just icing on the narrative cake. Magic was African-American, gregarious and beloved. Bird was white, introverted, and kind of a dick. Together, they were rivals: for the NCAA final their senior year of college, for NBA rookie of the year, and then they met each other five times in the NBA finals. They were the story that pulled the NBA into mainstream media attention.

(Remember the Nike commercial This Is Where It Starts? Magic and Bird were basically like that, though they probably made fewer fuck-me eyes at each other.)

Still, goodness is this slashy. I mean, really, really slashy. By the last fifteen minutes, the producers aren't pretending they're making anything other than a love story. It's a nice little documentary and you could to worse things than watch it sometime. (Snakes, say. Anything involving snakes would be worse.)

Available on YouTube.

Jock Strap Cowboys

I'm just going to leave this here.

May - June Reading

2013-07-07T02:38:30Z

I have lots to write about regarding London, but first, some book reviews!

(Also, my book review post for March - April seems to have vanished, which is very weird.)

Crazy for You by Jennifer Crusie
The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead
The Princess Bride by William Goldman
Collision Course by KA Mitchell
No Souvenirs by KA Mitchell
But My Boyfriend Is by KA Mitchell
The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook by Joyce Lankester Brisley
More Milly-Molly-Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart

Crazy for You by Jennifer Crusie
(Romance)

Before I found fandom, Jennifer Crusie was my comfort reading. I've read all her novels multiple times, and some many multiple times. In the last decade or so, she's switched to co-writing, and unfortunately none of those books have had the same spark for me.

(Fascinating post at Crusie's blog on why she switched; basically, she hit menopause and it changed her brain chemistry.)

I got to thinking about this book because I had a discussion elsewhere about working class heroes in romances, and after calling Nick the mechanic "stupid hot", I started to wonder if I'd still find him so and if the book would live up to my memories of it.

Yeah, it's still great.

Quinn is a high school art teacher who wants to make a change in her life. Just a small one. But changes have a way of rippling outwards, and soon she's breaking off her engagement, buying a house, and trying new things. New things like Nick.

I remember reading on Crusie's site years go that the reason she wrote this novel was women are often considered to be the wallpaper in other people's lives, the context against which others get to change, and she wanted to write a story where the woman got to do that. I really like the way she extends this change to the other female characters -- once Quinn starts changing, everybody else looks at their lives and says, you know, maybe it's safe for me to change a little, too. This is a very smooth, readable novel in the Crusie way, and can easily be read as a bubbly romance, but there's quite a lot of interesting stuff underneath about gender relations and women's roles and the myriad of ways, many of them quite subtle, that women are encouraged to subsume themselves for others.

All of which is to say: god, I miss Crusie when she was writing like this. (Recommended)

The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett
(Non-fiction)

John Charles Gilkey likes rare books, but he can't afford them. So he steals them, usually with bad cheques or stolen credit card numbers.

Like many non-fiction books, this was an article that's been expanded into a book-length work, and though it's not as padded as The Island of Lost Maps (which I reviewed last time), Hoover Bartlett does struggle to fill the pages. Gilkey steals books, a bookseller named Ken Sanders tracks him down with some fairly basic detective work, and Gilkey goes to jail for a while -- only to get out and begin stealing again.

The insights into the rare book world are interesting, though they've been done better. (Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World by Lawrence and Nancy Goldman springs to mind.) The narrative runs out of puff in the last third, as Hoover Bartlett, having found Gilkey a dream subject, starts to have some pangs that she's giving too much page space and attention to an amoral man. Something to think about before you write a book about somebody, perhaps.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
(Non-fiction)

Now this is how you do non-fiction.

In 1951 in Virginia, a poor black woman named Henrietta Lacks developed a particularly aggressive form of cervical cancer. Before she died, and without her permission, her doctor took sample cells. He was working on cultivating cells in laboratory conditions to assist with medical research, and Lacks' cells, unlike every other cell they'd tried to grow, didn't die after a couple of days in a test tube. In fact, they thrived. HeLa cells, as they became known, have been used to test almost every major medical breakthrough of the last half-century: the vaccine for polio, cancer and AIDS treatments, gene treatments, even allergy tests.

Meanwhile, Henrietta Lacks' family went through one struggle after another. They didn't find out for twenty years that cells from their mother were still alive, let alone being sold, and after they did, doctors found yet more ways to take advantage of them. Even today, companies make millions of dollars from HeLa cells (a single vial goes for over $200) and the Lacks family receives nothing.

This book touches on so many issues: race and poverty, the paternal nature of healthcare, the ownership of our own bodies. And it's so well done, so respectful of the story of not only Henrietta Lacks but her surviving family, and so carefully explained so even the science-challenged like me can get it. This is the kind of non-fiction you want to shove into the hands of total strangers and say, "Hey, read this!"

Hey, read this. (Recommended)

What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
(Essays)

Malcolm Gladwell's natural home is the long essay, and this book collects nineteen of his pieces that first appeared in the pages of The New Yorker. As with all collections, there's a couple of duds, but there's so many great essays on such a wide range of subjects: hair dye, advertising and feminism; why there's dozens of types of mustard but only one type of ketchup; Ron Popeil and the rise of the informercial; solving homelessness; and, possibly my favourite, a truly fascinating look at John Rock, the creator of The Pill, who was a devout Catholic. (Recommended)

Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead
(Young adult (Children's?))

When twelve-year-old Georges' father loses his job, Georges and his family move from their home into an apartment. There, Georges meets Safer, a boy about his age who has a Spy Club.

Like Stead's last novel, the acclaimed When You Reach Me, Liar & Spy climaxes with all its threads coming together in a rush of a-ha!, but it works less effectively here. There's no real mystery to be solved, and the narrative tricks Stead has to use to make the ending work left me feeling a bit cheated.

I do very much enjoy the way she writes, though.

The Princess Bride by William Goldman
(Fantasy)

Another re-read, and yeah, this is still fantastic, though I'd forgotten about the casual homophobic slur near the beginning. Though I can reluctantly understand why it got through in 1973, I cannot begin to understand why it wasn't edited out of the 25th Anniversary Edition (1999) I happened to pick up whilst travelling.

I'm not sure I like this novel better than the movie, which is close to perfection (and Goldman's fantastically dry dialogue begs to be spoken aloud), but it's still really bloody good. (Recommended)

Collision Course by KA Mitchell
No Souvenirs by KA Mitchell
But My Boyfriend Is by KA Mitchell
(M/m romance)

Books two, three and four in a loose series of m/m romances. The first two were re-reads, after Ro got me thinking about them again recently.

KA Mitchell is one of the better m/m writers I've found. Her prose is really solid (not just "good for m/m" but good, period), her dialogue is witty, her sex scenes are hot, and many of her books have multiracial characters. But something starts to wear after a while: most of her plots follow the same pattern of two guys hooking up even though they strongly dislike each other in some way, and then the issue is suddenly resolved and everybody's happy. This worked for for me in Collision Course, where the leads are delightfully fucked-up, and in No Souvenirs, where the leads are super smart and also fucked-up but in a different way. But I couldn't finish But My Boyfriend Is, in which the characters are fucked-up in a way I find a little off-putting. I don't mind Oh No I'm Gay angst, but when you're getting off with a guy at a hospital whilst your twin brother is being checked over after a bashing, maybe it's time to face facts.

First two are recommended.

The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook by Joyce Lankester Brisley
More Milly-Molly-Mandy by Joyce Lankester Brisley
(Children's)

I had three or four of my mother's old Milly-Molly-Mandy books when I was growing up, so when I stumbled across these hardback omnibuses recently, I snatched them up. Such charming stories, charmingly told, though often (grown-up me notices) with a heavy-handed moral centre.

Unfortunately, these are not complete. There's at least one story missing that I remember, one about M-M-M and Uncle growing a very large pumpkin for some kind of fair. (Recommended)

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E. Lockhart
(Young adult)

In between her freshman and sophomore years, Frankie Landau-Banks blossoms, “all while sitting quietly in a suburban hammock, reading the short stories of Dorothy Parker and drinking lemonade". When she returns to her prep school, her new looks catch the eye of Matthew, one of the senior boys, and she gets drawn into his circle of friends. She also discovers they're members of the same secret society her father was, The Loyal Order of the Basset Hounds, which is only open to boys. Not at all gruntled by this, Frankie becomes a member in her own way: by faking an online identity and using it to twist the organisation inside out.

Frankie makes this novel. She's feminist, thoughtful, nuanced, complex, and has agency in spades. She's the complete opposite of somebody like Bella Swan. The closest similarity I can think of is actually an adult book, Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, although this definitely has more of a YA feel.

It's also a novel that doesn't shy away from the complexities of teenage girl life. It is harder if you're not willing to be a doormat to your boyfriend. Maybe the perfect guy really isn't out there for you, at least not right now. Maybe you will have to choose between being true to yourself and getting what you want. And the ending has an honesty to it that I just wasn't expecting.

Really, this is just awesome. (Recommended)

March - April Reading

2013-05-10T12:43:57Z

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
Dairy Queen by Catherine Gilbert Murdock
The Boyfriend Thief by Shana Norris
Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
(SF)

It's 2044, and the world's in pretty rough shape. Like many people, eighteen-year-old Wade Watts spends most of his time in OASIS, a virtual reality programme that's kind of like Second Life ramped up to 11. When the creator of OASIS dies, he leaves his vast fortune and control of the virtual world to whoever can find three keys he hid inside OASIS -- keys that are protected by riddles that draw on the creator's 1980s childhood.

After five years, it looks like the riddles might never be solved. And then Wade Watts finds the first key.

Despite the SF trappings, this is very much a fantasy novel in structure. There's the orphan hero, an outcast of his people, who goes on a quest. There's the capital E, no-room-for-doubt, be-evil-now!-ask-me-how Evil Villains. There's the smart love interest. There's the plucky friends. Nothing that happens is a surprise, even the thing near the end that's clearly meant to be a surprise. But the novel is so inventive and so lovingly built around 1980s references that I found myself charmed, even as I never felt a rush to finish it because I knew exactly how the story would go. (Recommended)

Dairy Queen
(Contemporary YA)

DJ grew up on a dairy farm with her two older brothers, both of whom are football stars, and her weird younger brother who barely speaks. So when her father's sidelined by a hip replacement, it falls to DJ to take over running things. She also ends up agreeing, though some forgivable plot machinations, to help train the talented but lazy quarterback of a rival high school. Over a summer, DJ discovers that she's been so busy putting everybody else first that she's got a few desires of her own to explore -- like romance, and also an urge to play football herself.

DJ is a warm, funny, realistic protagonist, and this was such an enjoyable YA novel for me. Everybody is flawed, especially DJ's parents, who have become so used to her picking up the slack that they lean on her too much. (Not addressed but often at the forefront of my mind: the way women are generally expected to sacrifice themselves for the good of others.) There's also an unexpected lesbian subplot involving a secondary character, but I could take or leave it -- though the fact that it's so unremarkable is perhaps a testament to how far LGBT characters have come. (Recommended.)

The Boyfriend Thief by Shana Norris
(Contemporary YA)

Norris is a published YA author (Troy High) who's switched to self-publishing.

Ostensibly about a teenage girl named Avery and her ex-best friend blackmailing her into stealing her boyfriend (…it kind of makes sense in context), it's really about Avery dealing with her mother's abandonment of their middle class family by becoming controlling and slightly OCD. I liked the concept but could never get into the execution, which varies between lighter-than-air fluff and heavy-handed character beats that don't have the emotional scaffolding to support them. And everybody articulates what they're feeling so well, and can analyse the roots of their own behaviour so accurately, that their interactions never feel real.

(Also, as a side note, I'm tired of reading contemporary YA novels where the characters bond over their love for some obscure band. It's such lazy shorthand for "Hey, this person is cool and individual", especially when there's nothing else about the character to suggest they wouldn't be listening to the same Top 40 stuff as everybody else. See also: any teenage character whose favourite novel is Catcher in the Rye.)

Notes on a Scandal by Zoë Heller
(Literature)

Barbara is a spinster teacher at a comprehensive school in England. She's petty, combative and classist, but quick to judge others for being the same -- which also probably explains why she's friendless. So she jumps at the chance to get close to Sheba Hart, the wispy new art teacher. When Sheba tells Barbara that she's having an affair with one of her students, Barbara uses the situation to twist and manipulate Sheba for her own ends.

I was going to call Barbara an unreliable narrator, but that's not quite right. Through her chatty first-person prose, she acts like she's being both honest and self-flagellating as she tells the tale of what happened between Sheba and her student, but really, she's utterly self-deluded and minimising. It's quite an authorial feat and I enjoyed the novel more for that than for the tale itself, which is kind of banal -- purposefully so, I think. (Recommended)

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann
(Mystery)

In the Irish village of Glenkill, some sheep awaken to find their shepherd murdered with a spade through his chest. George, the shepherd, used to read aloud to his flock, and the sheep have heard enough mysteries to know what they must do: solve the murder! The flock includes Miss Maple*, the smartest sheep in Ireland and possibly the world, Mopple the memory sheep, and Othello, a black sheep with a cruel circus past.

Despite the description, this is not a children's book and is actually a quite dark in places. The language is often interesting, and the author does an excellent job between balancing sheep-like behaviour and thought patterns and the fact that, well, they're sheep solving a mystery. (Recommended)

(*Which I constantly read as Miss Marple. I assumed it was deliberate, but the novel is translated from German so perhaps not.)

Shakespeare by Bill Bryson
(Non-fiction)

I've stopped reading Bryson's autobiographical books, but this book reaffirmed for me that I really do enjoy Bryson's non-autobiographical writing, which is lively, entertaining, and flows as smooth as butter.

This is a very slim volume, something Bryson cheekily acknowledges in the introduction and explains away by saying, well, we know nothing about Shakespeare. Which is true! Almost the entire book is about what people have written about Shakespeare and why they were probably wrong, thought we can't say for sure because verifiable facts are so thin on the ground. There's whole decades when historians don't know where Shakespeare lived, or who he lived with; they cannot even say with any certainty what order his plays were written in or what years they were first performed. It's also amazing to think that, but not for the work of two of Shakespeare's friends in gathering a large portion of his work together after his death (the famed First Folio), we probably would've lost most of his plays, as they were considered the disposable cheap entertainment of the day.

Not a particularly taxing book, but an enjoyable one to breeze through in an afternoon. (Recommended)

The Island of Lost Maps: A True Story of Cartographic Crime by Miles Harvey
(Non-fiction)

In 1995, Gilbert Bland was caught slicing maps out of antique books at a library run by Johns Hopkins University. Though he talked his way out of of being charged, it soon came to light that this was far from a one-off incident; Bland had been systematically visiting rare book collections, accessing them with fake names and credentials, and plundering their treasures. In the space of a couple of years, he stole over two hundred maps worth about half a million dollars and irreplaceably damaged some of the rarest books in the world. The most amazing part was that most of the libraries didn't even realise they'd been robbed.
I first read about Bland in Miles Harvey's article, Mr Bland's Evil Plot to Control the World. This book is the expansion of that story.

Well, supposedly.

Turns out there's not a whole lot more to say about the situation, so Harvey pads in all directions: irrelevant interviews, fanciful segments written from the perspectives of ghosts and historical figures, and, most frustratingly, himself. Right after the exciting opening, in which Bland is caught, the author stops the tale to share thirteen pages of how he (the author) got into maps as a young boy, and that pattern repeats throughout the book. Dude, you're just not that interesting. In what is perhaps the book's most awkward sequence, Harvey compares himself directly with Bland, coming up with things like their family lives (Harvey: two supportive parents, Bland: broken home) and the fact that Harvey is an extrovert and Bland is not.

Harvey spends some time with Graham Arader, one of the preeminent map dealers in the world and quite a character. That part is enjoyable, as is the related discussion about the rise of map collecting/speculation and its impact on both dealers and libraries. But apart from that, and a brief interview with the FBI agent tasked with trying to work out who all those recovered maps belong to, there's just not enough here to justify wading through 350 pages.

But I do recommend the magazine article, which is great.

Come Out and Play

2013-05-01T15:40:24Z

Yesterday, Jason Collins became the first male athlete in one of the four major American sports to come out. He did so via this excellent piece in Sports Illustrated: Why NBA center Jason Collins is coming out now.

I'm a 34-year-old NBA center. I'm black. And I'm gay.

I didn't set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I'm happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn't the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, "I'm different." If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I'm raising my hand.

The article is written in the first person and covers a wider range of topics than you tend to see in coming out pieces. Highly recommended you read the whole thing for gems such as this:

I realized I needed to go public when Joe Kennedy, my old roommate at Stanford and now a Massachusetts congressman, told me he had just marched in Boston's 2012 Gay Pride Parade. I'm seldom jealous of others, but hearing what Joe had done filled me with envy. I was proud of him for participating but angry that as a closeted gay man I couldn't even cheer my straight friend on as a spectator. If I'd been questioned, I would have concocted half truths. What a shame to have to lie at a celebration of pride. I want to do the right thing and not hide anymore. I want to march for tolerance, acceptance and understanding. I want to take a stand and say, "Me, too."

and

My one small gesture of solidarity was to wear jersey number 98 with the Celtics and then the Wizards. The number has great significance to the gay community. One of the most notorious antigay hate crimes occurred in 1998. Matthew Shepard, a University of Wyoming student, was kidnapped, tortured and lashed to a prairie fence. He died five days after he was finally found. That same year the Trevor Project was founded. This amazing organization provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention to kids struggling with their sexual identity. Trust me, I know that struggle. I've struggled with some insane logic. When I put on my jersey I was making a statement to myself, my family and my friends.

Behind the cut, some (okay, many) further articles I enjoyed reading.

The story behind Jason Collins' story: The interview (Sports Illustrated)

…Collins had simply grown tired. Tired of being alone; tired of coming home to an empty house; tired of relying on Shadow, his German shepherd, for company; tired of watching friends and family members find spouses and become parents; tired of telling lies and half-truths -- "cover stories like a CIA spy," he says with his distinctive cackle -- to conceal that he's gay. He was also tired of ... being tired. For most of his life, he's had trouble sleeping, which he attributes to struggles with his sexuality.

Reactions

Jarron Collins: I've never been more proud of my brother (Sports Illustrated)

As kids we were always pushing each other, whether it was for good grades or for possession of the remote control. As NBA players we both wanted to be stronger, so each summer we would have a "liftoff" to see who could put up more weight.

Today, Jason has taken a huge weight off his shoulders. And I've never been more proud of him.

Jason Collins overwhelmed by enormous support for his announcement (Sports Illustrated)

The phone number came up on Collins' caller ID as UNKNOWN. "Normally, I would have ignored the call," he recalled, "but something told me I should accept this one." When he did, a female voice said: "Jason, this is the White House. Can you hold for the president?"

Martina Navratilova: Jason Collins a 'game-changer' (Sports Illustrated)

Collins has led the way to freedom. Yes, freedom -- because that closet is completely and utterly suffocating. It's only when you come out that you can breathe properly. It's only when you come out that you can be exactly who you are. Collins' action will save lives. This is no exaggeration: Fully one third of suicides among teenagers occur because of their sexuality. Collins will truly affect lives, too. Millions of kids will see that it is OK to be gay. No need for shame, no need for embarrassment, no need for hiding.

(I was a kid when Navratilova came out, and don't remember many of the specifics. Sports Illustrated, which really hit this story out of the park (dunked it through the hoop? no, that's just not the same) reminds us just how groundbreaking she was.)

The meaning of Jason Collins' coming out (Outsports)

My dad was a local hero, able to hit his elbow on the rim at a time when dunking was against the rules. I was supposed to follow in his footsteps, but on the first day of basketball tryouts in junior high school, I had an all-consuming feeling that I just didn't belong. There's no doubt in my mind that being gay, just struggling with my sexuality and being teased for it by the other boys, kept me off the basketball court. Like many LGBT youth, I opted for individual sports -- track & field and cross-country -- instead.

Thanks to Collins, the young ones in Pee-Wee football today won't know a world without an openly gay male pro athlete.

SI also put put together an extensive list of reactions from fellow basketball players, athletes, and others celebrities. I particularly love the quote from Charles Barkley on TNT: "This was a great day for the NBA." Chuck's been supporting gay athletes for a while; he was one of those who spoke out against Tim Hardaway's homophobic comments in 2007. (A nice coda: according to the Wikipedia article, Hardaway called Collins to support him. People, they do change!)

Collins' act wows victim's parents (FOXSports)

“It made me cry,” Judy Shepard [said]. “It was really quite a tribute, and I was very honored. And I know Matt would be thrilled.”

Doc Rivers hopes Jason Collins' revelation is a turning point for NBA (Sports Illustrated)

"I never thought it was going to be an issue," he said. "I thought it would eventually happen, and people would talk about it for awhile, and then it would go away. I'm really proud of Jason. He still can play. He'll be active in our league, I hope, and we can get by this -- get past this. I think it would be terrific for the league. More than anything, it would just be terrific for mankind, my gosh."

Jason Collins and the pride of identity (TrueHoop)

We shouldn’t wait for everyone to be ready before we create the environment for a guy like Collins to thrive -- we should get ready.

The Modest Heroism of Jason Collins (New Republic)

Collins's is not the [Jackie] Robinson-esque heroism available only to the incredible people among us. His is the everyday-type heroism that we all can learn from.

Collins' Progress (Sports on Earth)

The big news earlier today was not that Jason Collins, veteran NBA center, had announced that he was gay in a gripping essay in Sports Illustrated. The big news was what happened next.

That's to say: Nothing.

(That article's a little rose-coloured, unfortunately. I haven't seen anybody within the NBA saying anything negative, but there's definitely been blowback from outside. I was particularly frustrated to read that ESPN gave their analyst Chris Broussard airtime to talk about how Collins is "walking in open rebellion to God and to Jesus Christ". Kelly Dwyer at Ball Don't Lie, who's rapidly becoming one of my favourite NBA writers for his clear, thoughtful takes, points out a few flaws in Broussard's arguments and discusses whether they have a place on sports tv.)

Media

Jason Collins talks with Bill Simmons of Grantland on the BS Report (podcast). I haven't listened to this yet, but the podcast Simmons did with Phoenix Suns President Rick Welts when he came out in 2011 was very good.

Bits & Pieces

Collins is currently a free agent and might not play next year -- not because he's gay (hopefully), but because he's a journeyman player reaching the end of his career. Nate Silver runs the numbers. I really hope somebody hires him. You know who loves signing veteran players who get hurt half-way through the season and then retire? The Knicks!

Metta World Peace compared Collins coming out to him wearing a Cookie Monster t-shirt. Of course he did.

NHL player Chris Kluwe has been speaking loudly (and brilliantly and NSFWingly) for gay rights for the last few years. In what I think is a timing of co-incidence, Huff Post just published a piece with him answering the question: "Why do you speak out in support of the gay community?"

Brittney Griner, this year's #1 WNBA draft pick, came out a couple of weeks ago in a markledly more casual fashion. Of course, female pro athletes have been coming out for decades, but the difference is striking.

Happy day!

eponymous @ 2013-03-20T23:26:00

2013-03-20T12:25:59Z

Tonight I went to see the first two episodes of Top of the Lake at the cinema, followed by a Q & A with the creators/writers Jane Campion and Gerard Lee. Top of the Lake is a miniseries set in New Zealand about a twelve year old pregnant girl who goes missing, and what I saw was fantastic. It looked absolutely stunning on the big screen, too.

The Q & A afterwards was a bit less than I was hoping, though Gerard Lee is wonderfully droll and Jane Campion is, you know, Jane Campion. But I think they were stymied by the fact that we had only seen a part of the series, so it was difficult for them to talk about the work as a whole. Apparently they showed the whole thing (six hours) at Sundance, which I would have happily sat though. Maybe with a bathroom break or two.

If you've seen the first two episodes (which just aired on the Sundance channel in the US, so they are, shall we say, around the internet), we could talk about them. (:

eponymous @ 2013-03-14T09:40:00

2013-03-13T22:40:10Z

A couple of weeks ago, Alasen and I finished our re-watching of the first season of Veronica Mars. So good, we said. So sad there was only one season, we said*. What a pity that movie that Rob Thomas talked about never got off the ground, we said.

Well. The Veronica Mars Movie Project on Kickstarter.

They're asking for $2 million. In between the time I woke up and now (about an hour), it's gone from $1.2 to $1.6, and it's only the first day. Veronica! Keith! Logan! Mac! Wallace! Weevil! Dick! And... Piz. Whatever.

I love this bit from the faq:

Q: Veronica better end up with Logan, Rob. She just better.

A: That's not a question.

Q: We're just saying...

A: I hear you. Remember it's noir. There aren't a lot of happy endings.

Q: Noir, my ass. We've waited a long time for this.

A: (Busily reworking super-grim ending.)

I really hope they open up the physical rewards to overseas so I can throw some money at them. Please, Rob Thomas! Take my money. It may be plastic and brightly-coloured, but it's still worth something, I promise.

So excited.

*Really there was only one season I don't know what you're talking about.

January - February Reading

2013-03-04T02:45:38Z

Something I've been meaning to do for a while, and was finally inspired to get off my rear and finish thanks to some discussion on Saturday at the Sydney Slashers Who Meet So Frequently the Bar Staff Knows Our Orders gathering.

Herein, thoughts on

Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season by David Shields
The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd
Hate List by Jennifer Brown
When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
The Basketball Jones by E. Lynn Harris

(Livejournal now does this weird thing with blockquotes, making them grey and italicised. I threw some inline css in to try to override that; hope it works.)

Black Planet: Facing Race During an NBA Season by David Shields
(Non-fiction)

A university professor takes a year off to follow and write about the Seattle Sonics' 1994-1995 season.

I wasn't sure how much I would get out of a book so dated, but I enjoyed this not only as a exploration of race in the NBA, but as a historical document of sorts. When Shields was writing, the NBA was a place where black men generated most of the money but white men had all the power. Though some things have changed -- there's a black owner now (Michael Jordan) and probably a dozen or more black head coaches -- many things haven't.

(And goodness, do I wish this had been written a decade later. I'd love to see Shields' take on Malice at the Palace, the massive fines and suspensions, the league outlawing "hip hop" clothing, all that. Which was again white men telling black men how to behave, and moreover, that a culture largely originated by black men was unacceptable.)

The book is also a testament to being a fan. Shields becomes obsessed with the team and the players in a way many of us are familiar with (be it sports teams or musicians), and he unflinchingly writes about the stupid things he does, the way he starts to over-identify with some of the players, imagines their sex lives as compared to his, has an awkward fan encounter with one of them because the player means a lot to Shields but Shields means nothing to him, that kind of thing. Also, sports are described as men building cathedrals to themselves using other men's bodies, which is an image I love.

There's definitely times when it gets a little eye-rolly -- one of Sheilds' black students even says, You know, everything's not always about race -- but in a way, that's kind of the point. Although everything isn't about race, we often like to pretend that nothing's about race. Shields has a way of cutting through all of that.

But for somebody who's achingly aware of racism, he has an unfortunate a blind spot when it comes to gender relations. One of the repeated themes in the book is the way that fans are overly familiar with sportsmen to put them in their place and undercut the power they have over us; Shields repeatedly does the same thing to a female Sonics exec who won't give him the access he wants without seemingly being aware of the parallels. Also, there's a random, offensive comparison of a female sideline reporter to a hooker. Shields seems to at least realise this is problematic, as he tacks on that his wife thought the same thing as some kind of justification, but you know what's even better to do when you have problematic thoughts about a professional woman who's just trying to do her job? Don't put them in your damn book.

I'm not sure whether I'd recommend this, given its datedness, but I'm glad I read it.

The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd
(Contemporary gay YA)

Dade lives in a small midwestern American town where nothing much happens. It's the summer in between high school and college, and that means hanging around, drinking a lot, and having sex with his closeted non-boyfriend who won't even kiss him. The plot is fairly standard coming of age/coming out stuff, but what lifts it above the pack is the precise, careful writing, the observant tone, and the very nicely-drawn characters. I particularly enjoyed Dade's mother, a woman struggling with her own issues but trying her best. She's one of the better portrayals of an adult that I've read in YA.

There are a couple of blips. There's an odd, slightly supernatural subplot that goes nowhere, and the ending feels a little off, both in the heavy way that it's foreshadowed and because it's such a contrast to the small-stakes feel of the rest of the novel. I tend to dislike big dramatic endings, though -- I suspect it might not bother other readers so much. (Recommended)

Hate List by Jennifer Brown
(Contemporary YA)

Five months ago, Valerie's boyfriend Nick killed six students and a teacher before killing himself. Valerie was wounded trying to stop him, saving many lives, but it also turns out that several of her actions were inadvertent catalysts for the shootings. So is Valerie a hero or a villain? Can she be bits of both at once? Though the novel does show the shooting (in a horrifying but non-gratuitous manner), it's mostly concerned with the aftermath, and how Valerie, some of the wounded students, and those who lost their good friends deal with moving on.

It's a testament to Brown's skill that a novel that could go wrong in so many ways does so many things right. The sheer banality of the ways that Nick and Valerie are bullied catches in your throat because we've all been there, unfairly singled out, treated cruelly for no other reason than to amuse somebody else, and we've all felt that white hot flash of anger. We never took the steps Nick did, but I think what this story does brilliantly is make us understand his actions even as it never tries to justify them. Nick is not a one-dimensional character. He's troubled, to be sure, and it's somewhat implied that he's high at the time of the shootings, but in many ways he's just another outcast teenager trying to deal with life as best he can. This may be the novel's greatest strength -- its willingness to delve into Nick's character and come up with answers that are a lot more than just pop-psychology soundbites, ready for CNN.

I have to mention the character names. Nick's surname is Levil (ugh), Valerie's surname is Leftman (because she was left behind by Nick), the psychiatrist Valerie sees is named Hieler (healer) and the principal's name is something like Angermann. I found this incredibly distracting. An author's note at the end says Brown chose obvious names because she didn't like being asked to analyse characters' names when she studied books in high school, and whilst I agree that's generally kind of stupid, I don't know that populating a serious, realistic story with cartoonish names was the answer.

But this is a pretty great novel on a difficult subject, and I imagine it would be especially good for teens. (Recommended)

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead
(YA mystery/SFish)

A slim novel about a twelve-year-old girl in the late 1970s who starts receiving notes from somebody who appears to be from the future. This is both a gentle mystery and a love note to childhood, with all its simplicities and complexities.

Readers may piece together the mystery before it's revealed, but I don't think that's the point. It's definitely something you read for the journey, not the destination. (Recommended)

The Basketball Jones by E. Lynn Harris
(Contemporary gay lit)

A novel about a bisexual basketball player (oh my god, yes) that contains no actual basketball (wait, what?). Drayton Jones plays for the Hornets, but it's clear that team was chosen because Harris wanted to set his story in post-Katrina New Orleans. Otherwise, Dray could be a footballer or a hockey player or a professional lacrosse player for all that it's relevant to the plot. So that's disappointment #1.

Our hero is AJ Richardson (the lovechild of… no, wait, that's one of my stories) and he and Dray have been in love for seven years. Dray gives AJ everything he wants, monetary-wise, but he won't come out. Dray decides he has to get married for appearances, and that sends AJ on a long, spiralling quest to decide whether his self-worth can handle being not only a basketball player's secret gay lover, but a married basketball player's secret gay lover. Especially when Dray's wife Judi falls pregnant.

All the female characters are either the protagonist's saintly mother or gold-digging whores. Judi is an awful person (of course) who only married Dray for his money (of course) and is cheating on him (of course). "She doesn't love Dray like I love him," AJ thinks, as he sits in his fancy house with his fancy moisturisers and his fancy clothes and his fancy luggage, all of which Dray's money paid for. In a more self-aware novel, I'd think the author was trying to draw parallels between Judi and AJ, to show they're more alike than different. But this is not a self-aware novel by any means.

There's also a ridiculous blackmail subplot, which AJ never tells Dray about, because every time Dray comes around AJ is so overwhelmed with the need to enjoy his "ten and a half inches of Mississippi pride" that talking seems unimportant. Nevermind that Dray will get outed. Nevermind that somebody close to him is feeding the blackmailer personal information. Nothing else matters when there's sexin' to be had!

I did not think much of this novel.

But it wasn't written for me, and that's probably something that should be acknowledged. There's a reason I haven't read Twilight, after all.

eponymous @ 2013-02-28T23:29:00

2013-02-28T12:29:22Z

Would anybody in Sydney be interested in starting a writers' group? I have some ideas about the format, but they're very flexible. All I know for sure is that I'd like to get together on a semi-regular basis and hopefully inspire each other to create wonderful, lovely things.

If you might be interested, please let me know and we can chat. (:

eponymous @ 2013-01-03T15:10:00

2013-01-03T04:10:26Z

So I opened up the sesa stories this year, clicked on a title that looked interesting, and this was the first line I read:

Lance once slept with a guy with an orange dick.

Oh, popslash. Never change.

For what's now a small fandom, there were a lot of really enjoyable stories this year. Also: superpowers. Many, many superpowers.

Recs!

An Extra-Ordinary (Love) Life (Justin/Nick)
After the Avengers save Manhattan, S.H.I.E.L.D. decides to unmask a couple of their other Genetically Enhanced Humans. Nick Carter is Buzzkill, a guy with some kind of electro-bolt powers. Justin is his handler, with a secret or two of his own. Lance is a snarky S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

It's one of my favourite kinds of juni, with Nick all good-hearted and earnest and a little overly-emotional at times, and Justin is smart and together but also kind of overwhelmed by the Nick, because, well. Nick. Plus misunderstandings and witty banter and sexy bits and yay!

Neither Rain nor Snow (Chris/JC)
On Chris' thirtieth birthday, he starts to turn invisible. This is one of those slightly wacky stories that popslash does so well; their lives were so crazy that turning invisible barely seems like a deviation from the norm. And it's told in the most enjoyable JC voice I've read in ages. So many great lines I could quote half the story, but I particularly liked this:

Lance loved planning parties, probably because it combined his two greatest passions: sweaty, writhing bodies and organization.

Tell me that's not fabulous. The whole story is like that, one clever little observation after another snuck into the prose. Loved it.

With a Sprinkle of Fairy Dust and a Slap on the Butt (JC/Lance)
Set in a world where JC chose dancing instead of music (so he's basically Wade) and Tony Lucca joined 'N Sync. I love how everything flows out from this, changes big and small, often without the story making a big deal about it -- like Britney and Justin still being together and raising a brood of kids. Flips between 1998 and 2008, when Lance is on Dancing With the Stars and JC is a judge. I imagine I would've enjoyed this even more had I seen Lance's appearances on the show, as there appears to be a lot of in-jokes/references, but it's still very readable without that knowledge. Also, the dialogue is terrific.

From the Ashes (AJ/Brian)
This year's big, sprawling AU featuring all the guys from both bands and then some. Everybody has superpowers, but not the explosions-and-spandex kind; things are more subtle and intriguing than that. Also, great Brian voice and a delightful Britney cameo.

It can be really hard to slash Brian convincingly, but this story does it well. I love how Brian he feels whilst still being believably gay.

Orange is the Happiest Colour (Lance/Chris)
Lance sleeps with a guy with an orange dick.

Welcome Home, You (no pairing, really)
A sweet little story about Kevin coming back to the band. The rest of them welcome him, but Brian has a few things he has to get off his chest.

Believe It Or Not (Chris/Howie)
Chris is convinced the Backstreet Boys are spies. Or superheroes! Or aliens! He's wrong, but not by much.

Thank you to the anonymous person for the gingerbread man gift. Happy tasty holidays to you, too!

eponymous @ 2012-12-02T23:32:00

2012-12-02T12:32:16Z

We went to see a preview Pitch Perfect last night. Sometimes you just want a light-hearted, charmingly good time at the cinema, and this definitely hit the spot. (Except for the vomit jokes, eww.) There was a perfunctory romance but the real focus of the film was the relationships between the female characters, which is always nice to watch.

When I went to imdb to look up the names of a couple of the secondary characters, I saw that Cynthia Rose was played by Ester Dean. I didn't recognise her, because I've never seen a picture of her before, but her name was familiar to me because of this terrific New Yorker article: The Song Machine. Ester Dean is one of the most successful songwriters of the last few years. She's written songs for artists like Rihanna, Nicki Minaj (including Super Bass), Katy Perry (including Firework) and half of Christina Aguilera's album Bionic.

It makes the moment during the riff-off when Cynthia Rose sings Rihanna's S & M a pretty cute in-joke, as Ester Dean wrote that, too. Do check out the article if you have any interest in modern pop music; it's a great read.

(Full list of songs written by Ester Dean at Wikipedia.)

Meelie and I were talking afterwards about the audition that Beca does with the cup. I think that may have been inspired by the Swedish group Erato, who do a lovely cover of Robyn's Call Your Girlfriend with yoghurt tubs.

Also, people watching Nashville might enjoy this cover of the Erato cover by Lennon and Maisy Stella, who play Connie Britton's daughters in the show.

And if you're watching Nashville, let me know! Because I have nobody to talk with it about. It's such a vexing show in many ways, but there's so much potential, too. I would watch Connie Britton reading the phonebook, so.

Now, off to see if there's any good Pitch Perfect stories on Ao3. I can't be the only person who thought Beca/Chloe was going to be canon after that shower scene, surely.

eponymous @ 2012-11-29T19:40:00

2012-11-29T08:40:25Z

Thanks again to everyone who advised me on my new laptop decision back in June. I ended up getting the 13" MacBook Air with extra ram, which has been perfect for me. Yay!

Now I have another decision that you may be able to help me with, because apparently all I talk about these days is Nick Carter and Apple.*

(*Wouldn't that be the best tumblr ever? I was just catching up on my rss feeds, and thinking about the fact that the breakdown of my feeds is approximately one third Nick and Backstreet tumblrs, one third tech news with a heavy Apple slant, and one third misc, including NBA, design blogs, a couple of curvy fashion blogs, and cute pictures of cute animals being cute. If somebody made a tumblr that was, like, info on the new iPad combined with photographs of Nick Carter in tight t-shirts, think how much time I would save reading every day.)

So my mother has decided she wants an iPad--

Why do you want an iPad? I said.
I just thought it might be nice, she said.

--so she's going to take my iPad 2 and I'll get a new one. But I can't decide whether to get an iPad or an iPad Mini. I mostly use my iPad for reading (rss feeds, longform articles, books) and for games.

I've played with the iPad Mini in the Apple Store a couple of times. I like the weight, and it seems to be a good size for reading, and I also think the size means I would carry it around more. My current iPad is just a bit too heavy to take everywhere, and also, it doesn't always fit in my purse. But I don't know how good games would be on the Mini, and I imagine reading magazines would be less pleasant, too. Also, the Mini doesn't have retina, but neither does my current iPad.

If you have a Mini, how do you find it? Any other factors I should be considering?

Thanks!

eponymous @ 2012-11-26T23:40:00

2012-11-26T12:40:42Z

Hello! You're looking very pretty today.

Since I'm not doing sesa this year, I'm cheerfully volunteering to be a beta or idea-bouncer-offer. I might also be able to beta Yuletide stories, depending on the fandom and the kind of feedback you're after. Feel free to leave me a message and we can chat.

Elsewhere, my juni story is going in circles. Oh Justin, how you annoy me, even fictitiously.

eponymous @ 2012-11-06T02:23:00

2012-11-05T15:23:03Z

Late last year, I started thinking about Nick and Justin.

Then I started thinking about a story I tried to write in 2003 about the year Justin turned thirty. Which would've been last year. I went back and read the beginning, which had been horribly jossed by reality -- unless Justin's released four solo albums and is married to Alicia Keys, and Backstreet broke up after the Black & Blue tour -- but the main idea, that Justin had it all and was still incredibly unhappy, still resonated with me, even though I hadn't been following his career except for the things you cannot possibly escape because he's Justin Timberlake, superstar.

In fact, I really only knew four things about canon from the last few years:

a) Backstreet were still together and touring with NKOTB.
b) Nick had gotten healthy, though I didn't know why.
c) Justin was focused on acting and got snippy when asked about his music.
d) Justin and Jessica broke up.

So it turns out, I only knew three and a half things about canon.

Then I started jotting down notes, and notes turned into scenes, and I still had no idea about canon so I was making up things left and right. I also couldn't work out how to get to the ending. But I was just so pleased to be writing again. It was about that time that I decided I should research some stuff so it all wouldn't be totally ridiculous, and it was when I was searching for something else entirely that I discovered that Justin and Jessica had not only gotten back together, they'd gotten engaged.

Sigh.

I mean, happy for you dude and all that, but: sigh.

I've never been a real stickler for canon, if a story needs something changed to make it work better, but an engagement's a little large to ignore and I couldn't work out the best way around it. So the story's sat on my hard drive for the last ten months, gathering virtual dust.

All of which is a long way of saying that I've decided to finish it anyway. Since I'm not doing sesa this year, it'll be my own little sesa or something. The Juni Sesa! Participants: me!

To that end, I have a couple of questions that I would love answers to.

1 :: Anybody have a good theory (or even a bad theory) as to why Justin, maker of two critically- and commercially-successful albums, isn't making music any more? I fudged my way around this when I was first writing but it's become more and more of a problem.

2 :: I came across an interview Nick did with the Advocate where he said, "Honestly, I have so many gay friends, family members who are gay…" That's got to be a reference to one of the sibs, right? Do we know which one? I arbitrarily decided it was Angel and wrote her into the story, but I'm still curious.

3 :: Does Nick not drink at all these days? Or just in moderation?

Thank you! And Nick and Justin will thank you, too! Or they will, once they stop doing dirty things in Justin's hallway. Since I don't know what in the world I'm doing with this story, they've been stuck there for months.

eponymous @ 2012-10-31T09:16:00

2012-10-30T22:16:59Z

Sydneysiders! Pen (pensnest) will be in town this weekend. I haven't heard from Mel as to whether the Sydney Slashers' monthly event is officially on, but Pen and I will be there anyway. Please come along so she's not stuck talking to me all afternoon. (:

Sanctuary Hotel from 3pm.

eponymous @ 2012-09-02T21:47:00

2012-09-02T11:47:07Z

A couple of months ago, at the Sydney Slashers Who Talk Very Loudly In a Bar gathering, SQ and Alasen and I spent an enjoyable while talking about LGBT YA. SQ just posted a list of reviews here, and it reminded me that I was keeping a little text file with LGBT YA reviews in it a couple of years ago. So I dug it out and cleaned it up and thought I might post it.

Herein, potted reviews of

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan
Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
Naomi & Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan
Rainbow Boys, Rainbow High and Rainbow Road by Alex Sanchez
Getting It by Alex Sanchez
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron
My Heartbeat by Garrett Freymann-Weyr
Gravity by Leanne Lieberman
New Boy by William Sutcliffe
Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger
Ash by Malinda Lo
A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner
Hero by Perry Moore

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

A slightly fantastical story about a boy who's out and proud in a town that doesn't care about sexuality. It seems downright mean to be critical of his novel, which was unique when it was published in 2003 and is still unique today, like BE EVEN MORE GROUNDBREAKING, PLEASE, but once you get beyond the premise, it's a fairly standard, well, boy meets boy story. But it's so charmingly told that I didn't care. (Recommended)

Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan

A story about two guys named Will Grayson who meet through chance. John Green writes one WG in regular type, and David Levithan writes the other entirely in lowercase (not a fan). Like Boy Meets Boy, this story has a slight sense of unreality about it -- the major plot concerns Tiny Cooper, a gay high schooler, writing a musical about his life and staging it -- but the characters are more dimensional here, and the prose richer. A very enjoyable read. (Recommended)

Naomi & Ely's No Kiss List by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

Ely, out and proud, kisses his best friend Naomi's boyfriend. Nice premise that's let down by Naomi, a self-absorbed brat whom everyone inexplicably loves and indulges instead of telling her to grow the hell up. Also: pictograms.

Rainbow Boys, Rainbow High and Rainbow Road by Alex Sanchez

It's hard to believe the last of these was published only a few years before Naomi & Ely, as they feel like completely different generations of gay YA lit. The RB series is a straightforward and earnest exploration of gay teen life through the eyes of closeted jock Jason, average guy Kyle, and flamboyantly out Nelson: youth meetings, Gay-Straight Alliances, first boyfriends, first sex, coming out. How much you enjoy them will depend almost entirely on where you are in your life, I think. LGBT and questioning teens, as well as curious straight ones, will find they're some of the better examples of the coming out genre. The rest of us might prefer something with a bit more verve.

See also Geography Club by Brent Hartinger, another novel that covers much the same ground.

Getting It by Alex Sanchez

Straight-boy Carlos asks Sal, the school's resident gay guy, to help him dress better and get the girl. The plot is cute, but around half-way through I realised that Sal is basically the gay version of a Magical Negro. He exists only to help the straight protagonist achieve his goals, and constantly puts his own life and boyfriend on hold to do so. Which reflects the source material, I suppose (the novel appears to be inspired by Queer Eye for the Straight Guy) but makes for a fairly unsatisfying LGBT read.

Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You by Peter Cameron

James is on the cusp of adulthood, mindlessly working in a gallery, hip-deep in ennui. The prose is literary and engaging, and kept me reading even though the plot managed to hit two of my No, Thank You buttons: the main character talking endlessly to his shrink and casual references to 9/11. This wasn't the book for me but I'd definitely read more by Cameron. (Recommended, if my No, Thank You buttons aren't yours)

My Heartbeat by Garrett Freymann-Weyr

Fourteen-year-old Ellen starts to wonder whether her older brother Linc and his best friend James are a couple. By page twenty, I was sure I knew where the storyline was going. I was wrong. This is an amazing, honest novella about sexuality and fluidity, about finding yourself and defining yourself, and it includes one of the best portrayals of bisexuality I've read. Ellen is such a thoughtful narrator that it was a bit tough to believe she was fourteen at times. But it's all so well done and so beautifully written that I want to buy my own copy just so I can hug it tight. (Recommended)

Gravity by Leanne Lieberman

Ellie fears she might not be straight. She's also an Orthodox Jew. Lindsay is not, and with her skinny body, big breasts, long blonde hair, devil-may-care attitude and flirtations with lesbianism, it's impossible not to see her as Lindsay Lohan. Gravity is a quiet, slow-moving novel that doesn't quite pay off in the end, because Ellie solves her major problem by deciding not to solve it at all. But it's sweet and thoughtful and I'd mostly recommend it except that I've since read some reviews at GoodReads and other places that say that Lieberman got various things wrong in her portrayal of Orthodox Judaism. So I don't know.

New Boy by William Sutcliffe

Mark is drawn to Barry, the hot new boy at his fancy British public (read: private) school, but that doesn't make him gay, does it?

If you think the novel will answer this, the central question for several hundred pages, you'd be mistaken. It ends so abruptly and so unsatisfyingly that I actually peered at the binding of my copy, trying to work out if the last few pages had fallen out. Mark starts the novel as a jerk, but we assume that's because he's deeply confused; he ends the novel as a jerk and we assume it's because… well, no, we really don't know. Is he still deeply confused? In denial? Or is he not gay, and also not a very nice person? If the author knows, he isn't telling.

The novel also has a lot of observations about Jews vs Catholics and class differences in the UK that I think are meant to be oh-so-honest but mostly felt like cheap shots.

Almost Like Being in Love by Steve Kluger

Told epistolary style, which is not my favourite type of writing, though the author does it well. The bigger problem turned out to be the characters, especially the popular high-school jock who develops feelings for a male classmate and has no personal trauma about it at all. In 1978. Throw in the fact that the jock falls in love with a nerd and the novel felt uncomfortably like authorial wish fulfillment. (Didn't finish.)

Ash by Malinda Lo

A loose retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist. The prose is lush and dreamy, and the fairytales/myths that weave through the story are lovely. But the storyline tends to drift around, and the love triangle puts Ash between an intriguing and possibly magical young man and a fairly bland young woman. I spent half the novel trying to work out complex plans for the male love interest to really be female after all (she was cursed! it's a glamour for protection!) but no, Ash really does end up with the less interesting interest. A disappointing novel -- all the more so because Lo's clearly got talent.

A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner

Firstly, I heart the title and wish I could steal it.

You know how sometimes you read a novel that you feel you should've loved because it ticks so many of your boxes? This is that novel for me. It has sprightly prose, witty dialogue, a thoughtful heroine, lesbian romance, and musicals. Plus a dead best friend, and you know I'm a sucker for those. But this novel, told in two timelines (and with flashbacks to two more) never quite came together. I would've enjoyed reading the story of Cass going on the road trip she and Julia had planned -- though now she's on a bicycle and taking Julia's ashes in a tupperware container. And I would've enjoyed reading the story of Julia's friends putting on the musical she was writing right before she died, Totally Sweet Ninja Death Squad, and Cass dealing with the return of Heather, a former mean girl who's had some revelations of her own. But intertwined together, it felt like both stories got short-changed, and neither romance had the space to develop as it could've.

Hero by Perry Moore

Moore, a Hollywood producer sick the portrayal of gay characters in comics, wrote a list inspired by Gail Simone's Women in Refrigerators where he outlined all the ways that LGBT characters have been killed, maimed and de-gayed: Who Cares About the Death of a Gay Superhero Anyway?: A history of gays in comic books. He also wrote this novel.

Though I enjoy superhero tropes, I felt the story didn't do much with them beyond putting them on in the page. I got distracted part-way through reading and never went back. (Didn't finish.)

I'm always interested in more good LGBT YA recs if anybody has any.

Incidentally, I borrowed about two-thirds of these from my local library system. Whoever's in charge of buying YA novels on Sydney's north shore: kudos to you, my friend.

eponymous @ 2012-07-01T16:04:00

2012-07-01T06:04:42Z

If you asked to be on the novel filter, you should be able to see my first post now. If not, please let me know!

(Not sure what I'm talking about? Details here.)

Otherwise, I've got nothing except Brian and his family with One Direction. Baylee's still a cutie, I see.