#trans james wilson is real to me

[that-anxious-enby]

Im very normal about him.

[ao3feed-stevebucky]

dear fellow traveler

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/nHypQWf

by inkymaws

Captain America: Civil War rewrite with the addition of an OC that came to be when I randomly remembered that werewolves were just a thing that existed in the context of Marvel (ily jack russell). Title is from a Sea Wolf song :]

Words: 510, Chapters: 1/?, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of inky cinematic universe

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Marvel

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: M/M, Multi, Other

Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Original Characters, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Tony Stark, Clint Barton, Wanda Maximoff

Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson

Additional Tags: Rating May Change, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, i just pick what's real to me and then start making shit up, Dehumanization, Queer Themes, Trans Steve Rogers

read it on the AO3 at https://ift.tt/nHypQWf

[twinkubus]

I would love some book recs! especially queer literary fiction!

Amazing!! I would love to share :) Also responding @ anon who asked for my trans book recs. This is for you too!

Since this is so long it'll probably get cut off on the dashboard, tl;dr there will be 1) list of trans-authored books and 2) a list where I talk about queer authors more generally (which includes some trans people that don't have trans characters in their books (yet)).

Trans Books by Trans Authors

Sketchtasy by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

Nevada by Imogen Binnie 

The Pervert by Remy Boydell (graphic novel)

X by Davey Davis

Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman

Transmuted by Eve Harms

Future Feeling by Joss Lake 

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor 

Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K Jarboe

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones by Torrey Peters

The Masker by Torrey Peters

Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) by Hazel Jane Plante

A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett

A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett

Little Fish by Casey Plett

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars by Kai Cheng Thom

The Black Emerald by Jeanne Thornton

Summer Fun by Jeanne Thornton 

Small Beauty by jia qing wilson-yang

The above are all trans-authored books that have trans characters in them. They are mostly lit fic with a few dips into genre here and there. I have bolded some of my faves!

For queer book recs/authors more generally,

Poppy Z. Brite, the pen name of Billy Martin, who is gay and trans. He has some great 90s horror novels, in particular Exquisite Corpse, a gay serial killer thriller/romance.

Dennis Cooper, writes gay "extremist" fiction, my fave of which is The Sluts, which takes place entirely on an early 2000s gay escort forum.

Shola Von Reinhold, another trans author, wrote one of my fave books I've read this year, LOTE, which is textually extremely transgender, but I don't think explicitly "labels" the mc as trans, so I'm putting it in this list. I usually use 'dark academia' as a pejorative but this would be dark academia in the best sense of the word. Involves lots of research into weird stuff, hyperfixations, and very little academia.

Brontez Purnell writes lit fic about black gay men, and has another one of my fave books, Since I Laid My Burden Down, as well as probably the best title in this list: Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger. Those were both smallish press releases, I believe, but he's gotten more attention recently via his FSG short story anthology, 100 Boyfriends.

Sarah Schulman. If you are on Tumblr hopefully you already know about her. If you haven't read any of her fiction, I'd recommend Rat Bohemia, Empathy, and People In Trouble (this is the book Rent was based off of).

Brandon Taylor is very popular on twitter but I feel like I haven't seen much about him on tumblr. I really liked his debut novel Real Life, which follows a gay black postgrad student in a midwestern PhD program full of mostly white people. He also has an anthology, Filthy Animals, full of linked stories that take place in a similar setting.

James Baldwin. Another classic author. If you haven't read Giovanni's Room, go read it.

Carmen Maria Machado has a stunning memoir, In The Dream House, about lesbian domestic violence. She also writes speculative fiction stories, some can be found in the collection Her Body and Other Parties.

Eric LaRocca is gay horror's current darling due to his breakout hit Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke, about an online long-distance lesbian d/s relationship. He's been pumping out the books recently, all with great titles and covers.

Jean Kyoung Fraiser released a debut last year that was in my top faves as well, Pizza Girl, a coming-of-age story about a just-married and recently pregnant 18 year-old who works (you guessed it) as a pizza delivery girl, and develops a crush on an older woman, one of her customers.

Venita Blackburn wrote How to Wrestle a Girl, a black lesbian coming-of-age short story anthology. Also a recent release. I really loved the writing in this one.

...Okay, I think that's most of the big hitters for me at least! Going to give a few honorary mentions: Love in the Big City by Sang Young Park, translated from Korean, about the life of a young gay man in Seoul. Also anything by Joe Koch, who writes horror, nothing specifically gay/trans that I have read yet, but The Wingspan of Severed Hands is really beautiful stylistically.

And just one more, since it's October: The Route of Ice and Salt by Jose Luis Zarate, published in the 90s and translated from Spanish, a gay reimagining of Dracula's sea voyage to England.

[devitalise]

hello miss imo 💞 can you let the good people (me, first and foremost) in on your july reads & perhaps even a mid-year reading wrap up (fav so far + most disappointing 🧮)

hello hi 🤭😁 i got the app so i can sprinkle in emojis (it always starts unironic but apple kind of did something). ok so:

july wrap up:

a room with a view by e. m. forster: 3/5. went right back to edwardian era fiction in my attempt to be more Rounded 🧘🏾‍♀️ cute romantic read right on the cusp in terms of language of the time wouldn’t go older than this.

tell me i’m worthless by alison rumfitt: 5/5. i’ve spent the year trying to read horror, and then i read what is now my favourite horror book. trans characters, haunted house, actually scary and menacing? cracked it. one of my top of the year. visceral reading experience. (cw: fascism, transphobia, antisemitism, sexual assault)

real life by brandon taylor: 4/5. love this style of prose. very intimate, tender and quiet read that was introspective without being boring. think this is a debut too? impressive. (cw: sexual assault)

my brilliant friend by elena ferrante: 3/5. lovely prose, very absorbing. first in a series so not completely blown by the narrative, but i suspect every look on white female friendship has referred back to this. (cw: sexual assault)

seven days in june by tia williams: 5/5. 😁😁😁😁 LOVE. one of the most convincing romance books i’ve read in a while. so real and raw—unflinching. just yeah 🥰🤭 (cw: chronic illness, drug use and addiction, alcoholism)

the republic of false truths by alaa al aswany: 3.5/5. this is like a fictionalised retelling of very real events in egypt. appreciate for having expanded my worldview, not sure it stands as a work of fiction on its own. decent. (cw: sexual assault)

giovanni’s room by james baldwin: 3/5. classics girlies HATE me i’m sorry! 😟 the strength of the writing did not meet the narrative for me at all. didn’t emotionally connect but will try another baldwin book i swear

the man who watched the trains go by by georges simenon: 4/5. 1930s thriller spanning several european cities? sign me up. such a well constructed story

2022 mid year check in:

ok so i’m gonna talk about the books i’ve been talking about since i’ve read them 🤭😋🫣. open water by caleb azumah nelson always in my mind whenever i read 2nd person it sticks with me. also: transcendent kingdom by yaa gyasi 🥰🥰 top 2 of the year for me

disappointments… most notable my year of rest and relaxation. mexican gothic was clunky. the other black girl 🤨😐

i’ve read 170 books so far this year so i can absolutely go on but 🤭 i’ll go back to what i’m currently reading which is mouth to mouth by antoine wilson

[zedecksiew]

Sentimental thoughts about the OSR

OSR -- Old School Renaissance? Revival? A style of making and playing games, where the focus is on the experience of shared imagined space, not narrative plots or arcs.

A style fostered by a community.

That community was ugly. Many alt-right-leaning white dudes. It sheltered abusers, like Zak S -- a person who, to my shame, I'd been a fan of.

That community was good. Many key figures were queer / trans. More so (to my impression) than any other RPG community (even other indie groups). Non-white folks, like me.

The popular TTRPG eye remembers the OSR for its ugliness, not its inclusivity. Probably because the assholes were loud. And because the non-white / cis / het-ness of folks was rarely advertised as a community selling-point: "Look at how diverse we are!"

The latter aspect made me feel welcomed. My work -- entirely informed by my SEA context, as it's always been -- got attention based on its merit, not its topicality.

+

The OSR as I joined it was based on blogs, and on G+. When G+ was shut down, the community had a diaspora.

You hear about BOSR (British OSR), or NOSR / NuSR. You used to hear about SWORDDREAM? I think FKR (the Free Kriegsspiel Revival) is an offshoot of the old community? There are a million Discord channels. Questing Beast, on Youtube.

The blogs are still going strong.

I can't keep track of all the places folks have ended up. I do feel bad about that -- that I'm less community-oriented, that I work more in isolation, now. I squat Twitter mostly. Twitter is not a good place for a creative community.

But it is what it is.

+

An article Ewan Wilson was writing about the OSR got spiked at Polygon. I was one of the folks he emailed questions to.

Ewan's questions prompted this bout of sentimentality, I guess?

Here are bits from email I wrote him, in reply:

+

The OSR scene began on blogs? That's certainly how I discovered it. I can actually remember the specific post that hooked me:

Patrick Stuart / False Machine, reading James C Scott's "The Art Of Not Being Governed" -- a history of the Zomia region of mainland Southeast Asia, a place of fluid cultures and peoples that have traditionally resisted the settled states surrounding it -- riffing on the historical information in Scott's book, spinning them into RPG campaign ideas.

+

A facet of the OSR scene is its willingness to use popular rulesets as a shared language.

Dungeons & Dragons (tm) not as a WOTC corporate property, but D&D as a community vernacular. (And D&D is just one example.)

Folks like Emmy Allen and Luka Rejec have talked about this quite eloquently, I think?

I think the OSR prioritises making stuff for games rather than crafting the bestest, most elegantly-designed game possible. If you are stuck arguing about which language works best for poetry, you'll never get to the point where you actually start making and sharing verse.

+

I associate the OSR style with possibility, too. I'm not sure why.

Mainstream WOTC D&D is trapped in a self-referential loop, recycling its own Forgotten Realms-adjacent tropes. Then you have the vast forest of licensed RPGs: "Alien: The RPG", "Avatar: The RPG"; "[Insert Popular Nerd IP Here]: The RPG".

Many indie-RPG communities prize genre-emulation -- here's a game where you can mimic the narrative shape of a slasher film; an urban-fantasy novel; Legend of Zelda.

Not that there is anything wrong with this. But if emulation is where you start and end you doom RPGs to a secondary role -- forever in the shadow of other arts.

For sure the OSR has its pop-culture and games-media touchstones; the scene loves to riff on metal album covers and Dark Souls a lot.

But I'd argue that -- relative to other RPG subcommunities, in my experience -- OSR creators are willing to push further down the rabbit-holes of their particular obsessions more often.

So, yes: Dark Souls and metal music. But also references weirder, personal, and as-yet-untapped: Zomia, punk zines, walks in backyard forests, Birkenhead folklore, the Permian Period, Moebius, East Malaysian myth --

Composted together to the point they become game things utterly unlike anything else, and the stories / experiences you can have in those game things you can have nowhere else.

+

The blogs are still going strong.

Today I was reading this series of posts, a theory-based critique at D&D, the OSR, and games design in general:

"the goal of what we call "old-school play" is not to create a story but to traverse a fantastic space guided by desire, such that any story which emerges is incidental and retrospective (much like stories that emerge from 'real life'). edwards prescribes that the goal of play is to create a story, elevates this prescription into a truth about play as such, and then claims that players who do not play with this aim actually fail to meet this aim because they are mentally damaged. perhaps this can be remedied by playing the correct game, or maybe not, but regardless the implication is that by playing the correct game, one can avoid brain damage.

my take is to not let salespeople convince you that you must buy their products to be politically or mentally correct, and on the flip side do not entitle yourself to the enjoyment of other people."

Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4. All four are worth reading.

Today I was also reading the very first OSR blogpost I ever read, about Zomia. It is still as good as it was, six years ago:

"The Lisu, aside from insisting that they kill assertive chiefs, have a radically abbreviated oral history. "Lisu forgetting, Jonsson claims, "is as active as Lua and Mien remembrance." he implies that the Lisu chose to have virtually no history and that the effect of this choice was to "leave no space for the active role of supra-household structures, such as villages or village clusters in ritual life, social organizations, or the mobilisation of peoples attention, labour or resources."

18 Radically forgetting tribes. How far can you push that? Ancestor free tribes, then further away, one-year tribes, then in the reaches of the deeps, the one-day, impossible even to understand as they remember only for one day.

Patrick's blog turned 10 this week.

The blogs are still going strong.

[byesexualsatan]

OTPS/SHIP LIST

i feel like you get to know people better when you know what they ship so... here’s a list of my past & current ships ?? im bored, can u tell?

also if u know me, ignore this ty 

MILEVEN aka LITERAL KIDS PLS😭

mike wheeler and eleven/jane hopper from stranger things

otp in late 2017

personal hcs: they’re queer/bi. 

eleven def uses they/them pronouns

tbh i prefer byler and elmax now

background ships i like: joyce/hopper, jonathan/nancy... steve being bi and robin being the iconic lesbian that she is

DAMONA aka simonte

... simona and dante from the argentinian series simona

LMAO this one is from when i thought i was straight

otp in 2018

uhh bi dante and pan simona bc why not

literally forgot they existed until now

please don’t bully me

i truly thought i was straight

background ships: marisiena, junior/ailín

i was one of THE FOUNDERS of this ship istg... i was THERE when we were deciding the ship name (i voted for simonte but damona won smh)

SIMBAR aka bi awakening 

simón and ambar from the disney tv show soy luna 

yeah... sorry

otp in mid 2018

they’re gay!!! 

bi she/they punk ambar yesyesyes

totally forgot about them but they’re sexc af

so glad they were endgame

background ships: idk but luna is pan 

STEVEBUCKY aka stucky aka the end of the line

so... steve rogers (captain america) and bucky barnes (the winter soldier) 

otp in late 2018/early 2019? 

personal hcs: trans steve, bi bucky 

favourite fanfic trope: found family, high school smau

fuck endgame, all my homies hate endgame

background ships i like: thorbruce, scotthope, nat/sharon

im with u til the end of the line, pal :c

PERALTIAGO aka jamy 

jake peralta and amy santiago from brooklyn nine nine

started shipping them in 2018/2019 (i have no idea)

personal hcs: bi jake

favourite fanfic trope: casefics, pretend marriage 

(THEY’RE FUCKING MARRIED WITH CHILD NOW,,, BUT IN THOSE FICS IT WASN’T REAL YET)

background ships i like: gina and rosa, holt and kevin

PETERMJ aka spideychelle

peter parker (spider-man) and michelle mj jones !!1! from the mcu

otp in 2019

personal hcs: they’re both bi, mj is demisexual too

he/they & she/they solidarity

... trans/demiboy peter and demigirl mj🥺 

fav fanfic trope: school trip to stark tower, meeting the parents/avengers, smau 

obviously let’s ignore infinity war and endgame

background ships i like: ironstrange, pepperony, shuri/any woman

THORBRUCE aka gammahammer aka gays in space

thor odinson and bruce banner (hulk) from the mcu

started shipping them in 2019

personal hcs: thor also likes women

they both use they/them and neopronouns too 

fav fanfic trope: university au, smau, no civil war, no infinity war

this one is from my stan twitter era

background ships: stucky, tony/strange, nat/sharon, scotthope

CARMUEL aka spanish sexiest couple

carla rosón and samuel garcía from élite

otp in late 2019

...they’re bi. bc yes. and he/they samuel. 

she/vers carla sounds very sexc to me

i ‘shipped’ them in s1 simply bc they were both very hot and when it became canon in s2 i SCREAMED

deserved so much better.

INEFFABLE HUSBANDS aka i almost forgot about this one, sorry

crowley and aziraphale from good omens

uhh started shipping them in 2019/2020 ?

bi genderfluid crowley, non-binary aziraphale

idk they’re being anyways

fav trope: raising children!! confusing ppl bc crowley is sometimes a snake!!

background ships: uhh anathema & newton ig?

WOLFSTAR aka the one true way (and... puppies, too??)

sirius black and remus lupin from the harry potter saga

otp since 2020 (thank u, @aretheygayvideos​)

personal hcs: he/they gay sirius, he/they bi remus 

also love nonbinary remus and genderqueer sirius

fav fanfic trope: getting together !!!! FLUFF!!!!

background ships i like: jegulus, regulus/barty jr, dorlene, jily

VILLANEVE aka murdering wlw

villanelle and eve polastri from killing eve

s.s.t in 2020

she/they bisexual villanelle and pansexual eve

fav fanfic trope: flower/coffee shop :)

ty tumblr for spaming my dashboard when s3 came out bc that forced me to watch it to understand all the posts

sandra oh is the love of my life

ANDERPERRY aka this one is for the depressed dark academia folk

neil perry and todd anderson from dead poets society 

started shipping them in 2020

personal hcs: nonbinary neil, trans todd, both gay/androsexual

demiboy/nonbinary todd has a special place in my heart

fav fanfic trope: ALIVE!NEIL, roommates

background ships i like: charlie/knox, meeks/pitts

ZUKKA aka my favourite blue/red gays

sokka and zuko from avatar the last airbender < 3

started shipping them in 2020

personal hcs: gay zuko, genderfluid and bisexual sokka

sokka has adhd !! zuko is autistic !

favourite fanfic trope: fake dating

background ships i like: suki/yue*, ty lee/azula/mai, kataang

* please go check out s4pphos’ ig edit of them 

CASMUND aka royal pirate gays !!

caspian x and edmund pevensie from the chronicles of narnia

started shipping them in dec. 2020

personal hcs: bi caspian, mlm edmund 

love bisexual and nonbinary edmund too bc 👉projecting👈

fav fanfic trope: just. the plot of the movies but gay.

background ships: the dawn treader (ha-ha, get it? bc ship? im so funny)

tbh i don’t REALLY ship them that hard i just hate caspian/susan lmao

(susan is a lesbian)

BELLARKE aka m/f sexual tension™

bellamy blake and clarke griffin from the 100

started shipping them in 2021

personal hcs: she/they/xe bi clarke, he/ze omni bellamy

favourite fanfic trope: single parent bellamy, modern au (college, roommates)

i saw 2 seasons with my mom and then moved so,,, fuck i gotta finish it

EXTRAS

the “i don’t really ship them but if they’re together it’s better”

ty lee and mai

john watson and sherlock holmes

suki and yue

regulus black and james potter

azula and katara

regulus black and barty crouch jr

bugs bunny and daffy duck

emma and mr knightley

carol danvers and maria rambeau 

valkyrie and carol danvers

natasha romanoff and sharon carter

sam wilson and bucky barnes !!! (post endgame)

charlie “nuwanda” dalton and knox overstreet

dorcas meadowes and marlene mckinnon

azula, ty lee and mai

klaus hargreeves and dave

paul coates and alec hardy

cassie and maddy

jules and rue 

rue and lexi

fleabag and the hot priest

. . . more to add, probably

[cayranwilde]

CATS SPOILERS!!!

Alright folks, I just got back from seeing CATS. I’m going to break down my thoughts song by song, though I promise it’ll be brief -

I got a chill with the overture played - I always do, but I will say I was a little unsettled during the initial “Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats.” I am so used to the costumes that getting my mind adjusted to the CGI took a moment or two. Nevertheless, the group I went with all agreed at the end of the movie that really, the details of the CGI were amazing. The ears were spot on - how they twitched and flattened like a real cat, and the fur looked like you could touch it. The whiskers were precious too.

ANYWAY…I wasn’t at all impressed with Rebel Wilson as Jennyanydots. I love her in other movies, just not this one. In my opinion, “The Gumbie Cat” was a real let down. I will give her credit in the sense that she reminded me of a fat lazy house cat - you know the ones that have issues going up and down stairs. That aspect of her character was cute, otherwise, I wasn’t a fan.

I thought Jason Derulo was actually a really good Tugger! He surprised me, he really did! I wish he would’ve had a bigger role, but he was adorable. He’d actually do a really amazing job playing Tugger on broadway if he ever decided to give it a try. He’s talented, y’all. 

James Corden as Bustopher was mildly amusing. That’s it. Nothing special. I was never a fan of the character’s or the song in the stage production itself, so I couldn’t done without it and him.

I thought Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer were adorable. While I love the most common version of their song, I think it was interesting that the producers decided to go with the original Broadway version of “Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer.” I had an OLD CATS CD that had this version of the song on it, so it was neat to hear it revived.

Robbie Fairchild as Munkustrap was amazing. Not only does he have an amazing voice, but he played the part so well. “Old Duteronomy” was sung beautifully by him, and was it just me, or did it seem Judy Dench’s version of Old Duteronomy had a “thing” with Gus? Maybe past mate? Who knows. Anyway, no matter what they play, you can never NOT like Judy Dench and Ian McKellen.

Okay, so the jellicle ball was…weird? Like, don’t get me wrong, the dancing was amazing, but the whole thing with the tails at the very beginning was odd, and felt cultish? If that makes sense? I get the overall idea of them being almost in a “trans” by the moon, but it was semi-unnerving for me to watch.  

Beautiful Ghosts is a lovely song, but didn’t really see the need for it. Just my opinion. Francesca is stunning and is one HELL of a good dancer, and while her voice is “sweet,” you can tell that singing isn’t her strong suit. Still, she was a doll.

I thought “Gus the Theatre Cat” was good! Ian did a fantastic job with him! I was a bit unnerved with the drinking the water from a bowl ordeal and the “meow meow meow” thing he did before the ball, but over all, he was perfect for the role. I love Misto’s assistance in this scene, it was adorable.

My all time FAVORITE scene in this film was Skimbleshanks. It was amazing! The tap dancing was phenomenal and the transition from the ball room to the train station was beautifully done. One of the girls I went with (who didn’t like the movie) did say that she did enjoy this scene and was highly entertained. The actor who played Skimble had a wonderful voice and was superb!

I am not a T. Swift fan. Never have been - BUT, she sang Macavity well. I really do prefer the stage version of Macavity better AND the stage Bombalurina, but it could’ve been worse. On another note, I love me some Idris Elba, but not a fan of his Macavity, sorry.  

Don’t get me started on the barge scene. Pointless. Stupid. Hated it.

Mr. Mistoffelees was cute. It wasn’t the spectacle that it is on stage, but it was still good. I saw someone at some point complain about how Misto was portrayed in this movie - that he was too timid and lacked confidence, but if you listen to the lyrics of his song, and a quote “his manner is vague and aloof, and you would think their was nobody shyer” I think Laurie’s portrayal of him was spot on. He’s a young magician unsure of himself, wherein his confidence grows as the song progresses. It was sweet, and BLESS I love daddy Munkustrap. 

Jennifer Hudson can sing. The end. She’s got some pipes. The emotion she put behind the character of Grizabella and the song “Memory” was a wonderful. Everything about her performance was beautiful. I have no words. The chandelier was a good choice with regards to acending to the heavy side layer (I see you ALW), and the scene itself was stunning.

The addressing was alright. It was a good ending. Poor Judy can’t really sing anymore, but she’s a classy lady, and I could never say anything bad about her.

Other thoughts - I could’ve done without their version of Growltiger and Griddlebone. I REALLY liked Jellylorum. Although she didn’t have a major solo, her voice on the high C was beautiful, and I loved her design. Alonzo was cute, and I liked Cassandra’s attitude. She obviously had some prior conflict with Grizabella in this adaption; however, I do wish Demeter would have hd a more prominent role, as well as Tantomile and Coricopat. It seemed as if Cassandra took the place of Bombalurina as Demeter’s best friend in the film. On another note, I liked Socrates and Plato - their designs and dances were neat! I loved their little “mohawks” too. The mice were a big NO for me, as were the cockroaches.

Overall, I was pleased. I went into the movie with the understanding that it would be different from the broadway musical, and therefore I tried not to compare it to the stage performance.  Do I prefer the stage performance? Yes. I do. BUT, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t entertained. It was visually beautiful yet unnerving. Magical, yet somewhat off-putting. I was constantly on tight rope, dangling between “what the fuck” and “oh God, give me more.”

The only thing I can vaguely compare it too was a Jim Henson film, or something out of the 80’s - just off the wall and psychedelic. It is the love child of Rocky Horror Picture Show and Labyrinth. Critics can say what they want, but mark my words, in 20 years, they’ll be special screenings of this movie and a large and vast following of fans. It’ll be a guilty pleasure.

So, over all, I give it a 7/10. It is worth watching!

[epochryphal]

abolition work

hm i haven’t been posting here much because 1. Work Busy and 2. local movement spaces being largely on facebook, plus 3. disclosing local geographic location on here is still a bit Hhhh

but yeah i’m fairly open about being california bay area, and am working on plugging into local orgs and have been doing some rad captioning gigs for various places on both coasts, and getting to witness really rad conversations around defunding, dismantling, abolition, alternative structures, and communal healing

big plug for Kindred Collective and healing justice, their work on the medical industrial complex, and the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network doing the deprogramming state collusion and relearning community care for social workers & healing practitioners

on surveillance, Hacking//Hustling is doing awesome work and talking about histories of police collaboration to criminalize public health surveillance, as is Red Canary Song,

highly recommend the Just Practice Collaborative’s mixtape on transformative justice coming out at the beginning of august

some great discussion by Mia Mingus and Mimi Kim along with Cat Brooks of Anti Police-Terror Project/APTP about the conflation of transformative justice, which seeks to transform systems that allowed/enabled harm to occur, with restorative justice, which seeks to restore the status quo that existed before the harm, and which the state is picking up on as a veneer of reparative work

and always always love for Critical Resistance and their amazing resources, and to the Abolition Journal Study Guide

for concrete steps to police abolition and things to call for from leaders, i recommend:

APTP’s & Justice Teams Network’s Black New Deal (here, there, and also here)

8toAbolition

MPD150 (who have a huge resource page!)

Critical Resistance’s demands

Movement for Black Lives/M4BL’s Interrupting Criminalization Toolkit

Repeal 50 (New York police misconduct protection laws)

other rad groups with resources include Survived & Punished, Community Justice Exchange, DecrimNow, FreeThemAll4PublicHealth, local Decarcerate ___ groups, Black Youth Project 100, INCITE!

other important names include Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Mariame Kaba, Kristina Agbebiyi, Kelly Hayes, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Kimberle Crenshaw, Mari Matsuda, Anoop Naya, Audre Lorde, Assata Shakur, Cornel West, Angela Davis, bell hooks, James Baldwin, Alice Walker, Charlene Carruthers, Rachel Cargle

my favorite demands right now are:

freeze police hiring, at minimum

decriminalize public existence (loitering, disorderly conduct, being in a park after dark, eating or drinking in public/on transit, riding a bike on the sidewalk, sleeping in public, littering, urinating in public, etc)

- these shouldn’t be misdemeanors!  there can be general public conduct agreements without criminalization, and with competent handling of homelessness

refuse to criminalize COVID-19 and decriminalize HIV/AIDS and end all health care information sharing with police

refuse to use facial recognition tech and end usage of “predictive” tech, license plate readers, etc (saves money too!)

fund public bathrooms and showers, including making existent facilities (eg YMCA, pools) available, and fund COVID sanitation staff

move duties out of the police:

- youth engagement

- community engagement

- re-entry from incarceration assistance

- parking enforcement

- traffic law enforcement

- health crisis response

- mental health crisis response

- homelessness response and services

- neighbor disputes

- trespassing enforcement

- domestic violence response

- transit fares and rules enforcement

 --> create new divisions that are unarmed, are not trained&licensed to use force or institutionalize/incarcerate, and are non-coercive

 --> start by creating a transition team to start doing this with a five-year plan, for example

*** in the meantime, disarm police responses to these!! ***

--> see CareNotCops.org

articles i’ve found valuable:

Confessions of a Former Bastard Cop on Medium

Who Should Pay for Police Misconduct on a legal blog

Domestic Violence & Defunding Police on Huffington Post

Tired Bad Cops First Look to Their Labor Unions on Washington Post

Who’s Afraid of Defunding the Police? on Salon

Defunding the Police: What Would It Mean for the U.S.? on NPR

Abolishing Policing Also Means Abolishing Family Regulation by Dorothy Roberts

The Color of Surveillance by Alvaro Bedeta (see also the conference’s materials)

article i need to take a moment to find a way around a paywall for lmao:  On Trans Dissemblance: Or, Why Trans Studies Needs Black Feminism

documentaries/videos i recommend:

Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise on PBS

books i’ve learned about and super want to read include:

Blackballed: The Black Vote and US Democracy

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from Colonial Times to the Present

How We Get Free: Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective

Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements (by Charlene Carruthers with BYP100)

The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women

Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness (by Simone Brown)

Black Software: The Internet & Racial Justice, from the Afronet to Black Lives Matter

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

Decarcerating Disability

No Tea, No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies

Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (by Dean Spade)

Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor

additional books i’m considering and have seen recommended:

Nobody: Casualties of America’s War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America

When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in 20th Century America

Me and White Supremacy

So You Want to Talk About Race

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Being White, Being Good: White Complicity, White Moral Responsibility, and Social Justice Pedagogy

The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America

A People’s History of the United States

Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (by Patricia Hill Collins)

Eloquent Rage (by Brittney Cooper)

Bad Feminist (by Roxane Gay)

Thick: And Other Essays

Real Life: A Novel

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America

Since I Laid My Burden Down

The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir

The Summer We Got Free

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood (by Trevor Noah)

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

yeah!!

what/who are y’all reading/watching/listening to and finding helpful, or meaning to get around to?

[thesummerstorms]

TBH, shit like Asimov and Brave New World, etc, etc combined with the HAlf-Price Sci-Fi section largely just being really terrible and often very sexist or... suggestive pulp is the reason I didn’t read science fiction outside of Star Wars for years and years.

Eventually, I found Ann Leckie, and Ann Leckie lead me to Becky Chambers and Yoon Ha Lee. From there, I finally figured out that, blessedly, we’re in somewhat of a science fiction publishing renaissance. Fantasy, too, but the sci-fi is... so exciting?

Since then I’ve added (mixed sci-fi and fantasy here): Ken Liu, Zen Cho, Seth Dickinson, Arkady Martine, Tamsyn Muir, Rebecca Roanhorse, Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant (same author with different pen names), Linda Nagata, James S.A. Corey (actually two authors writing under one pen name but I don’t know either of their real names), S. A. Chakraborty, Samantha Shannon, Jonathan Strahan (as an editor), Alix E. Harrow, Sarah Gailey, Fonda Lee, Kameron Hurley, Nnendi Okorafor, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Aliette de Bodard, C. A. Higgins, Jeanette Ng, Katherine Arden, and G. Willow Wilson.

And that’s not even counting the authors I technically haven’t read yet but have purchased or bookmarked books by and have in the TBR pile on the strength of recommendations from the above: N.K. Jemisin (although I’ve read MANY of her short stories haven’t read her novels yet),  JY Neon Yang, Amal El-Mohtar, Naomi Novik, Max Gladstone, Catherynne M. Valente, Annalee Newitz, Nghi Vho, Tade Thompson, Kai Ashante Wilson, Tasha Suri, P. Djèlí Clark, Mary Robinette Kowal, Kate Elliott,  Charlie Jane Anders, and Adrian Tchaikovsky. 

I mean...

A good 85% of the writers above are women or nonbinary or trans men writers. I was raised under the misconception that mostly only cis white men wrote sci-fi and fantasy, but the sci-fi especially.  I hadn’t even heard of Octavia Butler until after college, but people sure were eager to recommend Bradbury and Asimov to me. But now I have found SO MANY authors who are not cis-men that I’m almost a little leary of ready spec. fic. by cis men because I’ve gotten used to women being written as ... people. 

(Which is not to say that cis men can’t write women as people or that cis women can’t write deeply misogynistic stories discounting women’s agency and worth.  Karen Traviss is an example of the latter, etc. But you know... in general...)

And I keep thinking that if I hadn’t seen a random tumblr post recommending the Leckie novel and been intrigued despite myself...

If I had kept holding online listicles and “traditional” sci-fi fans and the Half Price Sci-Fi section full of weird fetishy or nonsensical paperbacks be my perception of the Spec Fic scene... I would have missed out on so much.

And holy fuck this post got away from me, but tldr: I hate the people who are “real sci-fi fans” because they read these “classic” male authors from forever ago and rant about what is or isn’t real spec fic... when there are SO MANY BETTER modern authors/books to read that won’t turn new readers off the entire genre.

[ellierreads]

Nonfiction Book List

A collection of nonfiction books by Black authors and/or related to intersectional race and gender studies, history, as well as other various topics. The list below is a compilation of various lists I have seen on Instagram, as well as research I’ve done on my own. I am sure I am missing important works, and am happy to add anything that is suggested. This list will be regularly added to and updated. 

Race & Anti-Racism

Diangeo, Robin - White Fragility

Eddo-Lodge, Renni - Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Kendi, Ibrahim X. - How to Be Anti-Racist

Mahzarin, Banaji & Greenwald, Anthony - Blindspot

Oluo, Ijeoma - So you want to talk about race

Omi and Winant - Racial Formation in the United States

Rankine, Claudia - Citizen

Roberts, Dorothy - Killing the Black Body

Smith, Andrea - Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy

Sowell, Thomas - Black Rednecks and White Liberals

Waheema & Lubiano - The House that Race Built

Ward, Jesmyn - The Fire This Time

Prison Abolition & the Justice System

Alexander, Michelle - The New Jim Crow

Davis, Angela - Are Prisons Obsolete?

Murakawa, Naomi - The First Civil Right

Stefanic & Delgado - Critical Race Theory: An Introduction

Stevenson, Bryan - Just Mercy

Rothstein, Richard - The Color of Law  

Policing

Vitale, Alex S. - The End of Policing

Intersectional Feminism

Bambara, Toni Cade - The Black Woman, An Anthology

Carruthers, Charlene - Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements

Cooper, Brittney - Eloquent Rage

Collins, Patricia Hill - Black Feminist Thought

Collins, Patricia Hill - Black Sexual Politics

Cottom, Tressie McMillan - THICK and Other Essays

Crenshaw, Kimberle - On Intersectionality

Davis, Angela - Women, Race, & Class

Davis, Dána-Ain - Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy, and Premature Birth

Gay, Roxane - Bad Feminist

Gumbs, Alexis Pauline - Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugivity

Hernandez, Ed. Daisy and Rehman, Bushra - Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism

hooks, bell - Ain’t I a Woman

hooks, bell - All About Love

hooks, bell - Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

Jenkins, Morgan - This Will Be My Undoing

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. - They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Kendall, Mikki - Hood Feminism

Lorde, Audre - Sister Outsider

Morales, Rosario - This Bridge Called My Back

Morgan, Joan - When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: A Hip Hop Feminist Breaks it Down

Oyěwùmí, Oyèrónkẹ́ - The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses

Shakur, Assata - Assata: An Autobiography

Simpson, Leanne Beta - As We Have Always Done

Williamson, Terrion L. - Scandalize My Name: Black Feminist Practice and the Making of Black Social Life

Wilson & Russell - Divided Sisters

Yamahtta-Taylor, Keeanga - How We Get Free

Masculinity

hooks, bell - The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

hooks, bell - We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity

History

Asante Jr., M.A. - It's Bigger Than Hip Hop: The Rise of the Post-Hip-Hop Generation

Baldwin, James - The Fire Next Time

Berry, Daina Ramey & Gross, Kali Nicole - A Black Women’s History of the United States

Gates Jr., Henry Louis - Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

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

Du Bois, W.E.B. - The Souls of Black Folk

Hartman, Saidiya - Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval

Hurston, Zora Neale - Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo”

Johnson, E. Patrick - Black, Queer, Southern Women.: An Oral History

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E. - They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Kendi, Ibram X. - Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America

Snorton, C. Riley - Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity

Taylor, Candacy A. - Overground Railroad: The Green Book & Roots of Black Travel in America

Washington, Harriet A. - Medical Apartheid

Wilkerson, Isabel - The Warmth of Other Suns

Zinn, Howard - A People’s History of the United States

Politics/Economy

Anderson, Carol - One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

Baptist, Edward E. - The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Psychology

Menakem, Resmaa - My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Mending of Our Bodies and Hearts

Tatum, Beverly Daniel - "Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?": A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity

Literary Criticism

Morrison, Toni - Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination

Education

hooks, bell - Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom

Science & Technology

Benjamin, Ruha - Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code

Skloot, Rebecca - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Shetterly, Margot Lee - Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race

Autobiography/Memoir

Angelou, Maya - I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Bernard, Emily - Black Is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother's Time, My Mother's Time, and Mine

Broom, Sarah M. - The Yellow House

Brown, Austin Channing - I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness

Coates, Ta-Nehisi - The Beautiful Struggle

Coates, Ta-Nehisi - Between the World and Me

Hinton, Anthony Ray - The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row

hooks, bell - Bone Black: Memories of Girlhood

Jones, Saeed - How We Fight For Our Lives

Khan-Kullors, Patrisse and Bandele, Asha - When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Laymon, Kiese - Heavy: An American Memoir

Mock, Janet - Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

Noah, Trevor - Born a Crime

Obama, Barack - Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance

Obama, Michelle - Becoming

Shakur, Assata - Assata: An Autobiography

Welteroth, Elaine - More Than Enough

Wright, Richard - Black Boy

X, Malcolm - The Autobiography of Malcolm X

Comedy

Bell, W. Kamau - The Awkward Thoughts of W. Kamau Bell: Tales of a 6' 4", African American, Heterosexual, Cisgender, Left-Leaning, Asthmatic, Black and Proud Blerd, Mama's Boy, Dad, and Stand-Up Comedian

Haddish, Tiffany - The Last Black Unicorn

Rae, Issa - The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl

Robinson, Phoebe - You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain

[ao3feed-stucky]

by stardustandswimmingpools

Peter groans. “You’re benching me?” “I’m benching Spiderman,” Mr. Stark corrects. A stray sock lies on the ground; he picks it up, folds it in half and puts it on the desk. “No more crime-fighting arachnid for a month. Doc’s orders.”

 Or, four weeks starring Peter Parker as himself.

Words: 3629, Chapters: 1/4, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of Peter Parker's Top Surgery Support Group

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, Gen, M/M

Characters: Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man), Michelle Jones, Ned Leeds, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Shuri (Marvel), T'Challa (Marvel), Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Karen (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Academic Decathlon Team (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Clint Barton, Stephen Strange

Relationships: Peter Parker & Avengers Team, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, pre Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff & Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peter Parker & Shuri, Michelle Jones & Tony Stark, Ned Leeds & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & T'Challa, Peter Parker & Shuri & JARVIS, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker & Academic Decathlon Team (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Stephen Strange, Clint Barton & Peter Parker, referenced Sam Wilson/Riley, Peter Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Peter Parker & Thor

Additional Tags: oh boy here comes a lot of tags, Trans Peter Parker, Team Bonding, Family Feels, house arrest, (if you can believe that), Friendship, lots of friendship - Freeform, Developing Friendships, Best Friends, Male Friendship, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Bad Science, and our favorite tag of all:, calvinball with timelines, FUCK TIME, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, that's a generous way of saying i have no idea when this takes place, Junior year, car rides as catalysts to conversation, Coming Out, Phone Calls & Telephones, Texting, ned travels a lot for plot reasons i guess, Cooking, time bubble, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, random cashier named amara, kinda meta for a second, bros, Clint Barton is the real dad of the avengers, News Media, peter parker does some soul-searching, slight philosophizing, JARVIS is ALIVE, OR (that stands for original robot) called Ted, referenced genderfluid Loki, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, also funerals as plot devices

[irondadfanfics]

by stardustandswimmingpools

Peter groans. “You’re benching me?” “I’m benching Spiderman,” Mr. Stark corrects. A stray sock lies on the ground; he picks it up, folds it in half and puts it on the desk. “No more crime-fighting arachnid for a month. Doc’s orders.”

 Or, four weeks starring Peter Parker as himself.

Words: 3629, Chapters: 1/4, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of Peter Parker's Top Surgery Support Group

Fandoms: Marvel Cinematic Universe

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply

Categories: F/M, Gen, M/M

Characters: Peter Parker, May Parker (Spider-Man), Michelle Jones, Ned Leeds, Tony Stark, Natasha Romanov (Marvel), Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner, Sam Wilson (Marvel), Wanda Maximoff, James "Bucky" Barnes, Steve Rogers, Shuri (Marvel), T'Challa (Marvel), Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Karen (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Academic Decathlon Team (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Clint Barton, Stephen Strange

Relationships: Peter Parker & Avengers Team, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker, pre Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Natasha Romanov, Peter Parker & Tony Stark, Happy Hogan & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Pepper Potts, Bruce Banner & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Sam Wilson, Wanda Maximoff & Peter Parker, James "Bucky" Barnes & Peter Parker & Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Peter Parker & Shuri, Michelle Jones & Tony Stark, Ned Leeds & Tony Stark, Peter Parker & T'Challa, Peter Parker & Shuri & JARVIS, Michelle Jones & Ned Leeds & Peter Parker & Academic Decathlon Team (Spider-Man: Homecoming), Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Peter Parker & Stephen Strange, Clint Barton & Peter Parker, referenced Sam Wilson/Riley, Peter Parker & James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Peter Parker & Thor

Additional Tags: oh boy here comes a lot of tags, Trans Peter Parker, Team Bonding, Family Feels, house arrest, (if you can believe that), Friendship, lots of friendship - Freeform, Developing Friendships, Best Friends, Male Friendship, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Sam Wilson is a Gift, Bad Science, and our favorite tag of all:, calvinball with timelines, FUCK TIME, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, that's a generous way of saying i have no idea when this takes place, Junior year, car rides as catalysts to conversation, Coming Out, Phone Calls & Telephones, Texting, ned travels a lot for plot reasons i guess, Cooking, time bubble, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, random cashier named amara, kinda meta for a second, bros, Clint Barton is the real dad of the avengers, News Media, peter parker does some soul-searching, slight philosophizing, JARVIS is ALIVE, OR (that stands for original robot) called Ted, referenced genderfluid Loki, Not Thor: Ragnarok (2017) Compliant, also funerals as plot devices

[buildarocketboys]

Books read in 2018

It's been a pretty good year for reading for me, and I actually kept a list of all the books I read, so I thought I'd make a list and write a mini review about each one. I've read 22 (and a half) books this year in full - this doesn't include any that I just started, or have read bits of.

1. When The Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

Magical realism + gay and trans characters! Pretty great although I wouldn't necessarily read it again. Mostly read in lunchtimes at work.

2-4. LOTR trilogy by J R R Tolkien (started somewhere between 17 and 29 March) (first book finished 4 April) (finished 30 May)

Dates on this one as I spent most of the first half of the year reading the Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring was almost certainly my favourite, got a bit bored towards end of Two Towers/start of Return of the King, and the long descriptions and battles (and long descriptions OF battles) are something I generally prefer to do without. But they're really good books with a lot of cool (and gay!) stuff in them, and though the films don't include everything from them, they're pretty damn good adaptations. (I only wish the films had kept Beregond).

5. The Inescapable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

By the author of Aristotle and Dante, I actually can't remember much of this book, I remember it being pretty good though. It may have made me cry?

6. Cloudbusting by Malorie Blackman (REREAD)

Easily the shortest book here, this book used to make me cry. It's a simple story told through different types of poetry, but it's so beautifully done. Didn't make me cry this time sadly, but still good. Read it sitting by the river taking a break from working on a job application.

7. Nation by Terry Pratchett (REREAD)

I reread this pretty much every year (I found myself a few weeks back wanting to reread it again) and it's brilliant every time, enough said. Think this is the only Pratchett novel I've read this year, which is a shame. Thoroughly recommend it though, even though it's not part of Discworld.

8. And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Bought this from a stall in Bristol, at the time it was the only one of his I hadn't read. It was one of those novels I just ploughed through, really quickly. Really good, really sad (and a gay character where you least expected it).

9. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Borrowed this from my girlfriend after having seen the musical in May. The book is...really weird, but really good. A lot more of an obvious dystopia than the musical is, right from the get go pretty much and Elphaba is an icon - grumpy, traumatised, irritable, angry, hopeful, guilty, revolutionary. I love her. Oh, and her and Glinda are still really gay.

10. Harry and the Wrinklies by Alan Temperley (REREAD)

Now we come to the books I reread in August when I had some time off work. Harry gets orphaned and is sent to live with his elderly relatives and their elderly friends (hence the title). Little does he know, they're all ex-cons and pretty much modern day Robin Hoods. Also, badass. Still a great book, even if it's technically for kids. I need to reread the sequels sometime.

11. Maximum Ride by James Patterson (REREAD)

Edgy as fuck but I still kind of love it. Ngl the younger kids and Iggy are a lot more fun than Max and Fang though.

12. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (REREAD)

This one I reread every couple of years or so. One of my favourites, the way the non-chronological (by design and necessity) plots works so well, in both building and retaining suspense, the prose is beautiful (if a little pretentious at times), the characters are...mostly kind of dicks, but in a real, multifaceted kind of way. I kind of love all the references to various books/authors/bands, even if it is kind of pretentious. I discovered Rilke through this book. Jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

13. Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Read this a little while after seeing the film. Obviously they changed a fair amount, but I love them both. Really easy to read in about a day.

14. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Read this on the same weekend as Simon. Loved it a LOT. I relate to both Leah and Abby a whole lot and it just felt so real to the experience of being a (bi) teenage girl. Wish there'd been a bit more to the ending maybe? But maybe that's just me being greedy. Still trying to persuade @judasisgayriot to read it. This might well be my book of the year.

15. Vox by Christina Dalcher

After I finished Leah on the Offbeat I was looking for something else to read. Picked this up in Waterstones because it sounded like an interesting concept for a dystopia (women are only allowed to say 100 words a day - if they say more, they get electrocuted by a bracelet attached to their wrist). The main character is white, straight and middle class, so that's definitely the majority of the experience we get to see, but there is some examination of being gay and/or a poc in this dystopian culture. Overall an interesting examination on how language can be used as a weapon, and to control people. A Handmaid's Tale with a difference and (spoiler!) a happy ending.

16. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

I didn't get/read this one at the same time as Leah and Simon because I was put off by how het it sounded, lol. The main character is straight (afaik) but it's still a pretty great book and she's pretty relatable.

17. My Mum Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson

Tracy Beaker all grown up! As told through the eyes of her (much quieter and less troublesome) daughter. Pretty great and interesting to see Tracy all grown up but still very much Tracy. Lots of drama and Justine Littlewood ruining everything as usual. Complete with an implausible happy ending (but it's great anyway, and tbh we all need those sometimes). Also, Cam is a #confirmed lesbian.

18. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (REREAD)

I'm not sure how many times I've reread The Book Thief now, but it must have been at least ten. I reread it at least every year but often it's been more than that. Still amazing, obviously, but I dunno, I didn't feel as into it this time? I didn't cry (for the first time ever!) while reading it, although that might have been because I read it at work. Mostly I was reading it to prepare for Zusak's new book, which I got for Christmas.

19. Holes by Louis Sachar (REREAD)

First time I've reread this since high school, and it's still brilliant. 'Nuff said.

20. The Bi-ble: An Anthology of Personal Narratives and Essays about Bisexuality edited by Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond

Bought this from Gay's The Word when I was in London back in May, only got round to reading it in December. Some really good stuff in here, I related hard to a lot of it (and not so much to other parts). Recommended reading for anyone who's bi or wants to understand more about bisexuality.

21. Call of the Wild by Guy Grieve

I picked this up on a whim from my pile of unread books because I wanted something to read before I got new books for Christmas. (Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I only finished it on Boxing Day). Really interesting, I'm so fascinated by life in very cold, harsh, unforgiving places (only partly because of the wolves) and this was a really interesting true story of how a guy (called Guy) from Scotland manages to build his own cabin and live out in the wild of the Alaskan Interior through the Winter.

22. Combat Magicks by Steve Cole

A Doctor Who novel (the first of three I got for Christmas!) and the last book I read in its entirety in 2018. At the site of a battle between the Romans and the Huns (which is why I chose it first, sounded really cool), so-called "witches" manipulate everything both sides do. Surprise! They're aliens. The Doctor calls Yaz her bestie a lot and it's adorable. Ryan gets a girlfriend who stans the Doctor (she's basically part of Roman Torchwood and she's awesome). Graham has a bath with a witch (well, nearly).

Currently reading:

Eat Up! by Ruby Tandoh

I'm about half way through this, so it doesn't quite count as a book I read in 2018, but I thought I should include it. Anti-diet culture, embracing food for what it is, everything it is, while examining the different things (gender, race, class) that affect our relationship with food.

[percyjacksonstransbrother]

TFATWS x Percy Jackson OC (platonically)

"Alex! I'm so glad you could make it for a second I thought you're not going to come. "Bucky Barnes said hugging a seventeen year old boy in black trousers, ACDC tshirt, green hair and black leather jacket.

"I'm sorry this is one of the great deadly soldiers that you were telling me about? That's a child!" Said Sam Wilson. Alex just chuckled.

"Nice to meet you too Samuel Wilson I believe you needed help so James called me" he said. He looks at him weird while the man next to him is studying Alex intently trying to read him. Alex smirked.

"I've done some research before coming Buck did you break a terrorist out of prison and now you need me to babysit him?" Alex grimaced. "You know I'm a busy man especially after the tunnel incident with Caligula and Commodus your lucky the preators are my friends and approved this I was supposed to be getting supplies right now"

"what kind of code are you speaking in? Caligula and Commodus the evil dead emperor's" Sam asked while Alex smiled. "They're definitely dead now let me tell you this: Norse gods aren't the only ones that are real so are Greek gods and they're not too good at keeping it in their pants. They have ton of half god half human children with superpowers" he said while turning around in Zemo's parking garage.

"anyway for your knowledge Samuel Wilson I was a widow before joining the legion. I don't age, shapeshift and have very enhanced stamina. Alexander Achilles Montanegro, son of Poseidon at your service unless you're Zemo I'm also a system" he said giving Zemo a death stare.

"how could you two even meet? And aren't widow's only women?" Alex looked at Sam at this stupid question.

"I'm a trans man as for how we met I was a widow and he was the Winter Soldier. We meet on a mission me for the Red room and he for Hydra. Then again in the battle with Gaia the earth goddess 5 years ago you haven't aged at all" he smiled

"you haven't either also you overextended my part all I did was shoot him"Bucky said. "Still shooting a earth giant? That takes balls"

"anyway I can tell you all about my part with him later right now we need to focus on the task in hand why do you need me?" Alex replied.

"we need your connections, ass kicking and tracking skills " Bucky said. "Amazing who is the target?". "Karli Morgenthau". "amazing but you'll have to give me more info".

"they're recreating supersoldier serum" Sam explained. "Oh I can see why but let's go with what you're planning for now I need more information for a plan "

"the plan is in Zemo's hands" Sam said obviously displeased with it.

"what's the plan?" Alex asked. Zemo was still drilling holes in his skull. But still said:

"the woman we're looking for, Shelby is our lead but we'll have to go to Madripoor" Alex flinched.

"I'll need an disguise for that me and my brother blew up something there" Zemo looked at him questioning but not asking.

"that'll not be a problem" Zemo said as they we're boarding a plane. Alex pailed.

"you know what guys I'll catch up you go without me" he said as he whistled and left.

When they made it to Madripoor (surprisingly without killing each other) Alex was already there dressed in his old widow suit as a around 29 year old woman with an emotionless face.

"my Baron" he (they?) Said bowing. "You ordered an armed protection" Zemo looked confused since he didn't recognize this woman Bucky whispered: "that's the Emerald Witch or Ash Alex's alter"he nodded, understanding and she got into the car.

Should I continue?

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND INDICATOR

Below is the result of your feedback form is an instant giveaway. Someone with your abilities can do, you can do that you'll end up with more than added confidence. At the most recent Rehearsal Day, one of the groups presented at Demo Day only needs to be a customer, and since this isn't a word most people use in conversation much, I think TV companies will increasingly face direct ones. It's easy to convince investors there will be more mobility within it.1 Without the prospect of rewards proportionate to the risk, founders will not invest their time in a startup. Free If you do this on HN. The melon seed model implies it's possible to be too disciplined. And yet the one implies the other.2

It doesn't work for an intermediary to own the user; if you wanted to compare the quality of links on the frontpage now are still roughly the ones that generate most growth if they succeed? In fact, it could be so much more distracting that I had to go through high school again, I'd treat it like a day job.3 Recursion. The purchase price is just the beginning. Stuff used to be the middle course, to notice some tokens but not others. Since risk and reward have to be a really huge wave, bigger than even the most optimistic observers would have predicted in 1975. The mud flat morphs into a well. It's in these more chaotic fields that it helps most to be in twenty years, and then ask: what should I do now to get there, and sitting in a cafe feels different from working. A Plan for Spam filter wouldn't have caught it.

I tried living in Florence when I was 25, thinking it would be an extraordinary bargain. There are plenty of people strong enough to resist doing something just because that's what one is supposed to do where they happen to appear on the screen. We can of course counter by sending a crawler to look at the page. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters. Not all cities send a message.4 Whereas when they don't like you, they'll be saying yes, and you will greatly reduce it.5 What's changed is the ability to translate wealth into power.

Apple continues to maltreat them. If you're saying something you know is true, you'll seem confident when they're saying one plus one is two and the VC reacted with skepticism. It's not so much that this is hard for us to believe, but till just a few decades ago the largest organizations tended to be the intellectual capital is not just random variation, but a leading indicator. And since there are only a handful each year the conventional wisdom. Another has 26,000 emails in her inbox. I'll wait till I'm sure they work before writing about them.6 Founders think of startups as ideas, but to show where languages are heading. This limitation went away with the arrival of block-structured languages, but by then it was too late. In practice this seems to work much as in LA.

064. Everyday life gives you no practice in this. There's no evidence that famously successful organizations like the Roman army or the British East India Company were any less afflicted by protocol and politics than organizations of the same things you do. Small meant small-time. But partners and suppliers are always complaining. Economic inequality will be as bad as they sound. There seem to be counting multiple times tend to be short. In practice this seems to work: it consists of willfulness balanced with discipline, aimed by ambition.

Instead of working back from a goal, work forward from promising situations. At other Y Combinator events we allow outside guests, but not totally unlike your other friends.7 Internet is an open platform. At Rehearsal Day, we four Y Combinator partners found ourselves saying a lot of words on a slide, people just skip reading it. This is in contrast to Fortran and most succeeding languages, which distinguish between expressions and statements. Founders at Work.8 So get to work. Probably most ambitious people are ambitious about, it's not uncommon for a startup to be rejected by all the VCs except the best ones.

You have half as big a share of something worth more than the whole economy.9 Every thing you own takes energy away from you. Then demo. Steam power was a sliver of the British economy when Watt started working on it. It's not something you have the means to finish. Filtering is an optimization problem, and the weather's often bad. It's that way with most startups too. How much would it cost to grow a startup to that point?

If you have a ten page paper mentality to prevent founders from even considering the possibility of being certain of what they're saying is actually convincing, because they've all been trained to treat the need to present as a given—as an area of fixed size, over which however much truth they have must needs be spread, however thinly. What's more, it wouldn't take very long. There's no switch inside you that magically flips when you turn a certain age or graduate from some institution. Suddenly a culture that had been more or less united was divided into haves and have-nots.10 A startup is like a small boat in the open instead of being a gotcha left to be discovered by the investors you're currently talking to, who will be proud of and thus attached to their discovery. Before they can judge whether you've built a good x, they have to run later.11 I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they'd be dwarfed by the number of startups.12 All I took with me was one large backpack of stuff.13 That's the characteristic failure mode of VCs. One is simply that they trained their filter on very little data: 160 spam and 466 nonspam mails. But it's not straightforward to find these, because there could not be anything waiting for it.14 Should Apple care what people like me think?

Notes

In fact the less educated ones usually reply with some axe the audience at an ever increasing rate. That should probably be a founder, more people. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably no accident that the graph of jobs is not to be redeveloped as a high school is that if there were already profitable.

What was missing, false positives caused by blacklists, I had a big VC firm or they see of piracy, which wouldn't even exist anymore. More precisely, while everyone else and put our worker on a valuation. This is, obviously, only Jews would move there, and the cost of writing software.

Xxvii. There are fairly high spam probability. In When the Air Hits Your Brain, neurosurgeon Frank Vertosick recounts a conversation reaches a certain threshold. More precisely, this is mainly due to the writing of literary theorists.

Now to people he meets at parties he's a real partner. In fairness, I mean by evolution.

In oil, over fairly low heat, till onions are glassy. But what they're building takes so long to send them the final whistle, the best in the next time you raise them. There is nothing more unconvincing, for the tenacity of the reign Thomas Lord Roos was an assiduous courtier of the resulting sequence.

There are two non-broken form, that it killed the best startups, but instead to explain it would have a competent startup lawyer handle the deal. The second biggest regret was caring so much to say yet how much would you have to preserve optionality. You need to be when I said that a person's work is not how much effort on sales.

Heirs will be regarded in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, incidentally, because some schools work hard to avoid using it out of the iPhone SDK. Founders are often unknowns.

Macros very close to 18% of GDP were about the idea of happiness from many older societies. Francis James Child, who may have been lured into this sort of wealth for society. That's very cheap, 1/50th of a reactor: the process dragged on for months.

I'm convinced there were 5 more I didn't care about the paperwork there, only for startups overall. To be safe either a don't use code written while you were. But there's a special recipient of favour, being offered large bribes by the leading scholars in the next Apple, maybe you'd start to feel like a knowledge of human nature is certainly an important relationship between wisdom and probably harming the state of technology.

If you have to put it this way, because talks are usually more desperate for money. Most computer/software startups are often mistaken about that. But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the ordinary sense. Except text editors and compilers.

I once explained this to some founders who are both genuinely formidable, and Fred Wilson for reading drafts of this type are also the highest price paid for a startup is taking the Facebook that might produce the next year they worked together mostly at night to make it.

Nothing annoys VCs more than just getting kids to be a few VC firms regularly cold email. Wolter, Allan trans, Duns Scotus ca.

Related: Reprinted in Gray, Donald J. I wasn't trying to capture the service revenue as well.

Doh.

[pookystolenkissworld]

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