#murderbot friends: i cannot explain how he is like murderbot because they are not at all similar but he gives me murderbot vibes i swear

[ilovedthestars]

Mal, aspec icon, and also reasons why I love Widdershins in general

So, as a birthday present to myself I recently bought physical copies of all ten currently available volumes of the webcomic Widdershins, and I’m currently rereading all of them from the beginning, and I’m just. Having emotions about it!! This post is part Widdershins propaganda (go read it) and part rambley thought dump on the parts I'm excited about on my reread. (I’ll try to stay away from major spoilers, but read at your own risk.)

A vague bit of context for anyone who knows nothing about Widdershins: Historical fantasy, set mostly in Victorian* England, centered on the fictional English town of Widdershins, which is the location of a magical “anchor” which is a source/amplifier of magic. Magical practitioners are called wizards (regardless of gender—witches also exist but are a very different thing) and the magic system revolves around summoning “spirits” of various emotions, and using/making deals with said spirits to imbue objects with magical properties. The tone is pretty light and adventure-y, and very fun. Every arc jumps back and forth between a few different sets of characters, but their paths all eventually cross.

(*technically slightly pre-Victorian. The ongoing and final installment is set during/around Victoria’s coronation. There’s also flashbacks, visits to other locales, and a Time Travel Episode)

The character I remember getting most attached to when I first read Widdershins, and the one I’m currently having the most emotions about on my reread, is Mal (aka O’Malley). First of all, I completely forgot that he’s canonically ace (and maybe aro)??** His significant relationships throughout his arcs are all close friends with found family vibes—when we first meet them, he and his longtime friend Wolfe have been traveling around Europe together for years, on what money they can earn from Wolfe’s busking (he plays violin) and Mal’s somewhat cheating at cards. Wolfe is an optimistic, calm and gentle person, and he clearly brings out the best in the very grumpy and abrasive Mal. They rely on each other, make sacrifices for each other, and generally have just such a lovely relationship--one thing I find particularly sweet is that it’s shown multiple times that listening to Wolfe’s violin playing helps Mal relax and makes him happy.

Pictured: Mal suggesting that Wolfe pacify a huge spirit of sadness by playing his violin, because "It works for me" 🥺 (In case my image turns out bad, here's a link to the actual comic page--I'm just excited about my physical copies!)

I’ve rambled before about “love as in significance” and how my favorite fictional relationships are ones where two characters are deeply important to each other, in a non-romantic and/or ambiguous way. To me Wolfe and Mal are a perfect example of that kind of deep friendship, effectively a life partnership, with no romance.

(**Widdershins also has multiple gay/lesbian characters, some of whom get romance arcs, and at least one canonically trans person. In Victorian England. There’s also a fair amount of non-white characters. I cannot stress enough how much this is just Not A Thing within the story. I believe the in-universe justification is that random magic ability evened the scales, and things like oppression and colonialism never got as bad as they did in our world. What it works out to is fun escapist adventures where homophobia and racism aren’t obstacles to the diverse cast, which is exactly my type of story. It’s definitely not trying to be historically accurate, but doesn’t get bogged down in modern labels, either.)

Mal also has a really satisfying character arc going on. He can see magical spirits, including the ones around people, and read their emotions—this is not a normal thing within this magical universe, and he mostly considers it a burden/annoyance, as it makes people (especially crowds) overwhelming. It turns out to be a whole thing, which I won’t spoil, but in my reread I just finished book 7, curtain call, which is the conclusion to the first big arc of Widdershins and includes a really cool flashback scene into Mal’s past. He’s got a whole thing going on where he makes some new friends, and eventually decides to stop running away from things. It’s really hard to talk about without spoiling, so I’ll just say that he’s still my favorite character and his arc is very strong.

Pictured: What it looks like when Mal sees spirits, and also another example of him being comforted by his friend's music. (Here's a link to the actual comic page)

Mal (and Wolfe) star in chapters 2 and 5, and feature prominently among a larger rotation of characters in chapters 7 and 9. The various chapters/books rotate through different sets of characters, but they're all lovable and you'll get attached to new characters quickly. Some other really fun characters from various Widdershins stories include:

Harriet “Harry” Barber, a bounty hunter who tracks down magical artifacts with the help of her magic-sniffing dog Gren (who she may or may not have stolen from the police)

Sidney Malik, who is cursed with accidental kleptomania (other people’s things just appear in his pockets, and he feels very bad about it). He got kicked out of wizard university for said kleptomania and is now pursuing his true passion of being a stage magician

Verity Cunningham, inventor slash bounty hunter slash Harry’s former-partner-turned-rival, and the greatest bounty hunter who ever lived, if she says so herself (which she will, loudly)

Lei Feng, who I can’t actually say anything about because all the coolest things about her are spoilers, but trust me she goes through some fun twists (she’s a magician’s assistant/inventor)

Alexa King, a baker with green hair who is going to Widdershins to win a baking competition in the year 2013, and if you’re wondering what this has to do with Victorian England and if it involves time travel shenanigans, yes, yes it does

Harry and Sid are the stars of the first chapter, and they're very close seconds to Mal in terms of my favorite cast members. If I have made this webcomic sound cool enough that you want to try it, please go check out their super fun story.

(P.S. A note about romance, since this post is partially about aspec things and i'm addressing it to my very aro corner of tumblr. Some of the chapters/characters in Widdershins have romance subplots, which never take up too much space in the story and are very well written in my opinion. I am someone who is super picky about romance in books, and I've rooted for every single romantic relationship in the comic--they're very sweet, and all built around two people who get along and are important to each other, as the friendships are. No forced romance or painful amatonormativity here.)

[doyouknowthischaracter]

RANDOM ASKS GRAB BAG

Putting a bunch of answered asks in one post so I don't spam your dashes too much. Under the cut because it's a very long post. If your ask isn't here, don't worry! The ask box is far from empty, and I'm sorta trying to group them by topic. Enjoy?

Anonymous asked: you mentioned in another ask that there were a few things you were probably going to check out from doing these polls and I was just curious which ones those are, if you don't mind sharing fjdjsj

I don't mind sharing! I had to go through the archive to remember which ones I wanted to check out, but a few of them would be The Walten Files, Red vs. Blue, The Murderbot Diaries, I Am In Eskew, and The Mistholme Museum of Mystery, Morbidity, and Mortality. Many of the characters posted here look interesting, but I'm such a slow watcher/player/reader/etc. that it'd take me decades to go through everything lol

Anonymous asked: Have you considered doing like uhhh idk how to explain properly, but statistics/data from loads of polls in a summary every so often? I've seen some poll blogs do a most known/least known type bar graph every so often. And I would be super interested in seeing this sort of thing for this blog!! It's fair enough if not though, obviously this would create a lot of extra work for you. Anyway, thanks for running this blog :-) Anonymous asked: I just asked a question about seeing the data statistics/ bar graphs - please ignore it! Just reread your pinned and realised I'd missed that bit :'). BUT, last point remains, thank you for running this blog and putting up with repetitive anons I bet aksjskdjsk

I haven't put the data in a graph yet, but if I figure out how to organize that in a way that's both comprehensible and actually tells us something new, I'll give it a try for sure. Until then, we do have the spreadsheet. And no worries, I'm glad you're enjoying the blog! :)

Anonymous asked: *sees a poll blog* "I must answer each and every poll I can"

Godspeed on your journey and remember to stay hydrated! 🫡

Anonymous asked: this is my favorite blog! Every morning I wake up and check the polls like they're the paper, just to say "I don't know them" Truely a humbling experience!

Happy to be your neighborhood paperboy!

@iceice-baeby asked: Are olyou fearing the day someone submits Solid Snake from MGS and you will choose the wrong picture Because everyone always seems to choose the wrong picture

The only difficulty will be in not using this one:

Anonymous asked: Just scrolled back through your blog up to posts from Dec 3rd and I know why those polls are closed now but I cannot describe the genuine anguish I felt seeing Mr Orange and going NO I KNOW HIM - I KNOW HIM!!!! Anyway I found this blog like ten minutes ago and I love it

Don't worry, he's A-OK! 👍

(Also, thanks! I appreciate your dedication.)

Anonymous asked: scrolling through to catch up on the characters and knowing a whole three of them was so bizarre. im not supposed to press the yes i know them button, im supposed to do my sworn duty and vote no with unending confusion. the world has been flipped on its head 😵‍💫

I bet the next 30 were characters you've never heard of, just for balance to be restored.

Anonymous asked: Whenever i misclick I feel sooooo bad like im sorry my dear friend for not recognizing you I apologize for my rudeness

No polls so far ended with only one vote difference between answers, so you don't have to feel too bad. For now. 👀

Anonymous asked: this is fun cause i’ve definitely submitted some characters but i’ve immediately forgotten who. so i’ll also be pleasantly surprised to see my beloveds on the blog.

A gift from you to you, courtesy of unreliable memory! Sweet!

Anonymous asked: Devastating. I keep missing the voting for the only characters I know.

You'll do it one day, I believe in you!!

@iceice-baeby asked: Would you consider writing in the tags if YOU know a character or not You have done it sometimes before, but I'd be curious if you do recognise some of those random niche as all hell blorbos Also I can't wait for my Blorbos turn. Because either He-and-she is gonna take most obscure place, OR I will actually find maybe more than two people, myself included, who know him-and-her and who I can ramble at for hours until they block me

Oh yeah, for sure. I didn't think anyone would be interested to know, but I can do that when I remember to!

Did your blorbo show up already?

Anonymous asked: I have been having the opposite problem of everyone else, apparently. I'll see a name and be like, "I don't know who that is". But then I see the picture and realize… Yes I do!

That's why I take the time to include fitting pictures, helps jog the memory!

Anonymous asked: I feel very superior every time I know a character most people don't

Hey, nobody likes a show-off. (<- Joking)

Anonymous asked: Wait, has Beetlejuice not been submitted?? I could've sworn I submitted the musical version! Anonymous asked: Oh wait no I didn't submit musical Beetlejuice to you, got you mixed up with @/every-character-ever-poll lol my bad

Indeed he hasn't been submitted yet, maybe next time!

@thetisming asked: sorry for saying something negative in the replies to a post someone was being a dick about jukebox musicals

No worries, but don't let it get to you. People are allowed to dislike your favorite things even without any good reason. It's a matter of taste, which is highly subjective. It's more constructive to focus your attention on people who do enjoy the same things as you!

@autism-criminal asked: What is your favorite color of the rainbow (red orange yellow green blue indigo purple) ?

Orange! 🍊 What's yours? :)

Anonymous asked: "data is not accurate" bro if ur going to a tumblr poll blog for accurate data you NEED to reassess some things asdfghjkl; anyway this blog is great thank you for running it it's a lot of fun and has resulted in some very funny interactions between me and my fiance. notably "what the fuck do you MEAN 6% of the sans undertale website doesn't know who sans undertale is" and "i'm sorry i simply don't believe that ANYONE doesn't know who DRACULA is"

Different people come here with different expectations, I suppose. Which is fine, I don't mind, but they're bound to be disappointed if they expect 100% accuracy all the time. But anyway! I'm happy to hear I can provide a new form of enrichment for you and your fiancé!

@sweetpollyolliver asked: So many manga and anime characters and I know like 1% of them 😭

I'm ngl, I'm not a big manga/anime connoisseur either, so I'm just as lost as you most of the time lol 🤝 (<- shaking hands in solidarity)

@cringelordofchaos asked: If I go insane one day I am going to try to make an English translation for Mesec Boje Purpura so everyone can know who veštica Noks is

I'm fully behind you! Keep us updated if you do.

Anonymous asked: I scroll through your blog. I don’t recognise any of these characters. ‘No,’ I click, ‘no,’ ‘no,’ ‘no.’ I am content in the darkness of the rock I live under. But, alas, all things must end. I continue my scroll, the glee of the irrelevant rampant in my veins. But what’s this? It can’t be… My shelter is cruelly ripped away and the brutal light of knowledge seeks me out like a bloodhound, it gives me no place to hide. ‘Yes,’ I sob, defeated, ‘Yes, I do know the jjba character.’

A modern-day Greek tragedy, truly 💔

Anonymous asked: was really surprised to vote and see that a character was 100% know them. then I noticed I got there early enough to be the only vote

For one shining, brilliant moment they were 100% known and surely that counts for something.

Anonymous asked: You should make up a character and make a poll for them and see how many people lie or misclick

Well....... I'm not going to comment on that. 🐰

Anonymous asked: I follow this blog and another blog that does smash or pass and occassionally I will come to one of your posts and examine the images to decide and then remember this blog's gimmick before trying to hit smash

Imagine voting smash there and then coming here to vote "I don't know them at all" on the same character. Brutal.

@ink7blot asked: *sees big naturals* I hate that. *reblogs*

A job well done, then 😌

[rjalker]

To summarize the issues with the Murderbot Diaries into a single sentence that people will probably misundersgand anyways:

There's a difference between "trans representation" and "robot who was assigned genderless at construction specifically because it doesn't have any genitals or secondary sex characteristics who agrees with the assignment of genderless and is therefore in our terms cis."

No just kidding I can't not elaborate.

The Murderbot Diaries is representation for people who use it/its pronouns and nonbinary representation, but it is not trans representation. It does not represent the struggle of being nonbinary while being assigned male or female at birth. It does not represent anything about actual nonbinary people's experiences besides one (1) set of pronouns.

Murderbot's gender has literally never even been discussed once throughout these six+ books, and contrary to what some people are trying to say, yes, you do have to infact discuss gender when you are writing about trans people's experiences and trying to represent trans people.

No, I'm sorry, it is not in fact "enough" to just have characters to use different pronouns if you literally never ever ever talked about any one's gender ever. And by talk about gender, I don't mean we need paragraphs and paragraphs of essays. I mean something as simple and basic that Martha Wells continues to fuck up such as... Literally just asking someone what pronouns they use.

Instead of just having all the information in the feed profile, you could have had Rami explain that te is tercera instead of male or female. Or even just had Murderbot read what ever fucking description was in the profile. How does Murderbot magically know what pronouns Rami uses? We don't fucking know. We are left to assume that all terceras use te/ter pronouns, which again feeds into the larger issue here.

If you are going to write a story about trans people and you want to be representative of trans people and their experiences, you do in fact need to talk about gender. If you don't talk about any of the characters' gender ever, then they are no fucking different than cis characters.

The problem is, yes, that Murderbot is a robot (Semantics aside) and there aren't any reoccurring agender characters who aren't robots.

The problem is also that Murderbot is literslly cis lol.

It would be one thing if Murderbot was like Data from Star Trek and was assigned male at construction and then said "no fuck that I'm genderless go away", or if it was assigned female and did the same thing.

But we don't even get that much representation because that would, again, I cannot stress this enough, go against Martha Wells' understanding that sex = gender.

That is her basis for everything she writes. So much so that when one of her Raksura, a fantasy race which arguably has 6 genders, has one of the characters forcibly magically changed into another one because their colony is fucking collapsing and they're like ants, literally everyone starts treating that character as the new gender, even though he's fucking distraught by the change and hates everything to do with it.

Martha Wells never has any characters ever actually treat this character with any kind of respect in regards to this issue. Even the main character, Moon, our narrator, who's supposed to be his best friend, thinks that Chime should just get over it and stop complaining and just accept that he's never going to go back to what he was.

Martha Wells created a metaphor or whatever the other word I'm looking for is for being trans, didn't even notice, and then took the exact opposite approach than she should have. No one ever respect chimes identity as a mentor rather than a warrior and this is literally just telling you everything you probably have already guessed from reading The Murderbot Diaries. Or maybe you haven't, because the murderbot Diaries I slightly better at this shit than The Books of the Raksura.

So I'll say it again. Martha Wells thanks sex and gender are the exact same thing and this is never changing and there is no variation and you can't have a different gender to your sex.

Like at this point I'm just forced to assume that tercera is something you get assigned at Birth in that one planetary system. You know, since she went out of her way to say that it was a recognized mainstream thing over there, I can only assume it is assigned at birth, and that Rami is fucking Assigned Tercera at Birth.

Like literally. That is what I am forced to assume at this point. Until Martha Wells proves otherwise, I'm not going to assume she's actually breaking from her pattern of sex = gender.

[poisonheadcrabsalesman]

Stumpy, my dear friend Stumpy, I am wishing you strength in this trying winter weather. Do you perhaps have a favorite fictional ai and maybe some thoughts on them? Also, gotta get you back and ask about your favorite caffeine fix?

Hi hiiiii oh my god hii hello!

Speaking of caffeine, I have coffee right now. Coffee forever. Espresso as a treat. Beans as fuel to make it through work.

Now onto your question. Do I have a favorite fictional ai? Me? with the ai tag? with the ai fusion/possession stuff ? and the brain problems? and the fanfic?

anyways I will embarrass myself below the readmore.

AI favs from like 2003 to Now are Cortana, Some versions of Church RVB, Glados, Nick Valentine, Roland, BT-7274, Murderbot if it counts, basically anyone who isn't Wheatley or Guilty Spark (but I still appreciate them and their roles in the games they appear in.) Transhumanism dude, othering...metaphors...waves hand.

Anyways the current brain problems are latched onto Roland. Just answering this ask makes me want to play SpOps again. He’s my favorite guy but to find his content you have to Dig.

Roland falls into the halo trope of sassy ai but he's also got some really fun aspects we should explore more. He's got a strict moral code but it really depends on him, in a way? Halo 5 he’s not included in the Cortana conversation and is rightfully upset that they’re “throwing her out the airlock” because she lived too long?  In SpOps, he goes to confront Halsey about her betraying Captain Lasky's trust and then is strong enough to fight and win an override code which is then never addressed again. But then he gets bored, crashes Spartan Ops, and doesn't even warn them about his plans when the planet is breaking apart around them. Cortana at least tells Chief when he isn't going to like something.

SpOps is a bit of a slog but the dialogue drives me insane and the actors are obviously having fun with it. The AI that is running your ship and constantly keeping you alive is bullying you because he’s bored. Miller and Roland make each other worse and I am going to make them even worse.

I feel like I need to credit and praise Katwylder and Iron and Gold in here because her work has inspired many many ideas and basically her writing and parts from Fall of Reach are how I describe AI stuff. If you like my stuff you will love hers.

^He’s making ex-girlfriend jokes to the fleet admiral. Halo Ron Perlman. The closest thing Master Chief has to a dad.

I’ve gotten very attached to this funny little hologram and written way too many words about him. AI and Roland are very interesting to me and I wish we could see more. He’s so young compared to the others and he’s stuck on the ship with the worst luck. He’s definitely going to have an atypical service record and also maybe be kind of weird/ fucked up from integrating with the forerunner engines they bolted onto the Infinity.

A...I.... I’m going insane on tumblr instead of the privacy of discord dms but I’ve done a lot of noodling on them during quarantine and being enabled to try writing. No matter the media, the idea of an inhuman being that operates on another timescale than us, but is duty-bound to make sure humans come to no harm and the interactions that follow are wonderful. Yes we will packbond to the voice in the computer while we hurdle through space. Yes human behavior is a mystery, you could read all of the theory and have access to all of recorded history but it still won’t explain why the humans act the way they do. 

AI! you call their name to get their attention and they rewatch the last few minutes of video, take note of your vitals, expression, and body language, review your recent conversations for clues and details about your mood, look at your calendar to know your schedule, and know when you last ate, slept, etc and how well. they know everything, or as much as possible, but they still cannot predict human behavior, because it isn't really a science, but they can try. It’s a sentient being on an entirely different scale and so far from human but also not a cold unfeeling machine.

I’ve been entirely too open in this post. Do not perceive me. I’m still close to burning the house down over Infinite. 

[teethdollar47-blog]

My Favorite Books That I Read in 2018

Books! Why would you bother living without them? Even slowed down by life and depression, this turned into one of my favorite reading years thanks to some stunning debuts and absolute gems in my backlog. In the post-Christmas haze I've gathered up some scary stories, a Pulitzer winner, a New York Times favorite, and novellas and a lovable killing machine for you. Let's read.

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang

This is an Epic Fantasy about the real world destroying your adolescent notions of what matters. For the first chunk of the book, Rin throws herself into life at a military academy, exploring connections between drugs and the gods. The worst things in her world are an unfair teacher and her equivalent of a Draco Malfoy bully. But then she graduates and has to serve alongside her classmates in a brutal war with civilian death tolls and a nightmarish parallel to the Nanjing Massacre. The book lets us take Wizarding School tropes for granted and then rips them in half with reality. Hopefully one one reading this ever has to deal with the horrors of war, but Rin's revelation is an extreme version of the experience of so many people who hide from reality inside education systems and then have to confront the world. From this conceit, Kuang creates one of Fantasy’s greatest origin stories, showing us how Rin grows from desperate, to ambitious, to vengeful, to ruthless. We see all of the social pressures and life events that forge her into one of her world's great villains.

Witchmark by C.L. Polk

I meant to read part of Witchmark on my flight, but the book was too good, and so I finished it before we landed. Miles Singer is a healer in a Fantasy world in the shadow of a war akin to World War I, using his talents to help traumatized veterans when they come home. Something is causing his patients to become dangerously violent, possibly using their PTSD to turn them into weapons, and Miles has to solve the mystery to save them. It’s a deeply compassionate novel about trying to help those harmed by war, bolstered by a supportive romance between Miles and Tristan, another man ensnared into the plot. At one point Miles is exhausted and unkempt, and Tristan gives him a shave. Apparently allosexual read this as ridiculously hot. My ace ass read this as soothing, because the trust between them is so clear. It made me relax on a plane where I had no elbow room. Witchmark is thoroughly charming.

The Outsider by Stephen King

This might be my favorite book into King’s new Bill Hodges Universe, and makes the explicit turn to opening the supernatural there. Without spoiling, it elevates some characters into protagonist roles that will make any sleuthing against monsters way more interesting, while paying homage to the restless retiree who started it all. Here we have an identity mystery: a pillar of the community is witnessed having committed an absurdly grisly crime and have to figure out how it’s possible that evidence puts him in two places at once. We know something supernatural touches this crime, but can’t be sure what since the Hodges Universe began without any of the supernatural. King has created a great uncertainty over how much human behavior explains things, as opposed to Castle Rock where there the shadows always had thoughts. This is covered in one of King’s richest webs of characters, every point of view connecting powerfully to another, until we have a robust appreciation of how feverishly the community reacts to the news. I didn’t think there needed to be a fourth book in this series. Now I’m quite excited for a fifth.

Impostor Syndrome by Mishell Baker

If you haven't read the series so far, just go get Borderline. It's amazing.

If this is the end of the Arcadia Project series, then it's a poignant send-off and also the most fun the characters have been. Most of your favorites from the first two books band together with Millie for something that's half heroic adventure, and half psychedelic heist. My favorite part was seeing Millie's team come together as so supportive and aware of where intervention might be important for helping neurodivergent characters. Respecting the agency of our friends is hard in real life when we know they're at risk, and it's refreshing to see that reflected in something better than the duality of "hands off" or "you have no choice." The scene where Millie might be concussed and not taking her own health seriously is where we start to appreciate how far the characters have come. There are explosive events, but more important are the conversations and developments between people who didn't trust each other a few books ago.

All Systems Red & Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

I haven't read Books 3 and 4 in the Murderbot Diaries series because I'm saving them for bad days. SF&F publishing doesn't give me books like these very often and I need to ration the good vibes. The Murderbot Diaries are warm-hearted and revolve around the emotional growth of a killing machine who just wants to watch TV and be left alone. He's not a slacker hitman; he's rental equipment who longs to understand others and be emancipated. These books have some adventure and risk, but their heart is in weird bonding sequences watching soap operas with a ship's navigation computer. They are warm without avoiding heavy material, and without settling for arcs that ending in gritty choices. The heaviness is in who we want to be. This series is a modern treasure.

Space Unicorn Blues by T.J. Berry

Now this is my kind of worldbuilding. Space Opera where it turns out planets are populated by unicorns, dragons, and faeries? And they need space ships to try to outrun human colonizers? Heck yes. We’re talking about a great found family of disabled people, and queer people, and magical beings, and humans who know they’ve messed up, going on perilous adventures to create a better life for themselves. My favorite trick Berry plays is shuffling the characters, plot, and worldbuilding. Our half-unicorn hero may get stuck in a miserable spot thanks to the plot, but Berry keeps the tone light by explaining that spot through hilarious worldbuilding like the brand of pie that has a density dangerously close to black holes. When the plot gets more dangerous, the characters banter it out. One element is always allowed to be grave, and is lightened by another, turning the novel into something consistently inventive and fun.

The Power by Naomi Alderman

Not a lot of Dystopia novels let you see the Dystopia form. The Power puts its Dystopia into motion, from the start of women developing skeins and gaining the ability to instantly electrocute anyone they like, to boys being segregated from them in schools, all the way to upheavals in culture and political systems. It’s a world where women suddenly have superior capacity for violence than men. This way it easily could have languished as a 1984-like about a downtrodden man chaffing under a system of oppression, but Alderman puts her world into motion. We see the changes and new orders from the perspectives of male journalists, poor women, and aspiring politicians, each of whom give us different angles of satire and angles on the world. I’d love an anthology of short stories covering more parts of this world, and almost wrote one about what would change in disability communities.

The Red Tree by Caitlin R. Kiernan

A Cosmic Horror novel about a very bad tree. Sarah Crowe has wicked writer’s block, and fears that this time she won’t resurface and will lose her contract and career. The novel has Kiernan’s hallmark ability to get deep inside a messy character’s head as their mental health and personal life unravels. But there is a peculiar tree in the woods behind Crowe’s rented house, visible from her upper bedroom window - and that no matter how long she walks, she cannot reach. The pursuit of the tree is both a metaphor for her writer’s block, and intrinsically related, since the fascination leads her to research seemingly similar trees related to horrors that have happened throughout the region. Could they all be the same tree? Has she been attracted to it because she has similar flaws as previous people caught in its web? I bothered so many friends with my theories for weeks after finishing it. The book is a few years old, but certainly one of my favorite Horror things of the year.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A. Blackmon

Douglas Blackmon went from county to county across the southern U.S., reading court records from almost a century ago to prove how emancipated slaves were treated. What he found was a long trail of people charged for petty crimes or held without an explicit charge, often with no evidence or even oral arguments in court, and sentenced to manual labor that was contracted out to friends of the court. This way saw thousands upon thousands of people trapped in a new slavery that could be extended at the whim of their “employer,” who could charge as much as they wanted for room and board that the convicted people couldn’t refuse. They were sent into the deepest mines and most rundown mills, and when many of them died from conditions or unsafe labor, they were made to disappear. It’s a bitter book, rife with cruelty that more than one president willfully ignored. These parts of our history are ignored at our peril, and the peril of the most vulnerable going forward.

Source: http://johnwiswell.blogspot.com/2018/12/my-favorite-books-that-i-read-in-2018.html