Using a stock photo with a watermark makes me feel like the Spiffing Brit. I’ve been gaming for a few days and not blogging, so I’ve really fallen behind on Blaugust. Even though I’m not an official participant, I’ve been enjoying reading people’s posts and taking part 馃檪
Anyway, I got stuck on one from last week, “What gets me excited”, but I think I can answer that one, but first, I’m going to talk a little about the ones that I missed.
Rituals
This one is from Everwake at Everwake’s Internet Adventures, who asks:
Everyone has specific rituals that they follow, tell us about one of yours.
That’s easy enough. When I get up, I play with the cats a few minutes, then wash out their food bowls and feed them. Then I make some tea and catch up on Twitter and Reddit, and read my morning webcomics. Then I move my son’s car so that my boyfriend can leave for work, and then I write a blog post which brings us… to right now.
Mascots
The Rambling Redshirt at Beyond Tannhauser Gate asks:
If you had a mascot to represent you, what would it be?
I guess the answer to that would depend upon how much self-loathing I was feeling at the time. I don’t really know what sort of funny furry cartoon character jumping around a baseball field would best fit me.
At work, I have a turtle carved from stone who is always there when I need her. I also have a Bulbasaur I 3D printed and painted myself. So I guess my mascot would be a reptile of some sort, low to the ground, quiet but dependable. My grandfather used to have a large, carved wooden toad that used to live in various places in the living room. I loved that thing.
Hiro Protagonist
Endalia at Princess in a Castle owns the next writing prompt:
Tell us about some of your favorite protagonist/s and explain why.
This one is easy.
Essun of N. K. Jemisin’s “Broken Earth” trilogy. We meet her at three points in her life, first as a mother whose husband, horrified at what he has learned about her, kills one of their children and absconds with the other. I could feel that horror and betrayal. Jemisin is one of the greatest writers of our generation, and she can just reach in and twist my guts just with words. All her books are amazing, but these books are the best of hers I’ve read so far. I haven’t read her new series yet.
Pyanfur of C. J. Cherryh’s “Pride of Chanur” books. This series connects with her larger “Alliance” series, but instead of being about human plotting, shifts over to look at an encounter from the alien viewpoint. Pyanfur is the lion-like captain of a trading ship who encounters a lost and bloody creature the like of which she has never seen — mostly hairless, with blunt teeth and claws, but quite possibly sentient. And greatly desired by the hateful kif. As realistic portrayal of first contact with an alien race as you could like. Their communication problems inform the entire first book. I reread this trilogy as part of my forced Isaias blackout tossback to powerless times.
Breq of Ann Lecki’s “Ancillary Justice” books. This book was pretty controversial when it came out for its use of female pronouns for every character, no matter their biological gender. The far future civilization of the Raadchai makes no such distinction in their language, and since several of the characters have multiple bodies, it would be a distinction without meaning in any event. This conceit plays around a ship that suddenly finds itself confined to one human body, who becomes entangled in a cosmic civil war between two halves of the same emperor.
Five Things I Hate About You
This prompt was given to Jen of Book of Jen, but she hasn’t written a piece I can link to. The prompt goes:
Tell us 5 facts about yourself.
Usually I prefer people find out about me by actually getting to know me. Telling people random trivia about myself just serves to define me from that point on. So you’ll have to work at this one.
- I share my name with a Motown singer whose biggest hit was covered by “Blood, Sweat and Tears”
- I wrote the news for a university radio station in New Hampshire for awhile
- I used to photograph bridges as a hobby
- I ride a racing trike
- I live with my boyfriend, my son, three cats and a snake
I’m So Excited
Heather of Just Geeking By writes:
What are the things that get you excited in life?
I’m pretty excited by waking up healthy and happy each morning next to someone I love, covered in cats, living the best life I can in a world that is falling to pieces around me.
I count my blessings often because so many people do not have the things I take for granted. A good life, for as long as it lasts, is the greatest gift, and nothing else comes close.
Influencers, Assemble!
Chestnut at Gamer Girl Confessions has a great post riffing on the following prompt:
Tell us about a person/s or thing/s that has greatly influenced you.
Back in a previous post, I talked about the sort of trick question that, as a child, I would take way too literally. This is exactly that sort of question. But it’s easy enough to answer, for better or worse.
It’s… my dad. For rills.
Dad was a mechanical engineer. I’m a programmer, and my sister Hillary is a systems engineer. Dad took German. All us kids took German (I think, except Jenn, the rebel in the family). Dad played trumpet in school. All us kids also took trumpet (except Jenn, the rebel, who took trombone). Dad liked telling long, elaborate jokes. I still tell those same jokes. Dad rode bicycles. So do the rest of us (except Jenn).
Dad was really good at molding his four daughters. Except Jenn. But she mostly was just reacting against it, so, even her.
Your Wildest Dreams
Blogging superstar Syp at Biobreak asks:
What is your earliest memory related to one of your core fandoms?
My earliest memory is of toddling up my grandparent’s driveway in Concord, NH. I was still wearing diapers, I think. Then I remember spilling orange soda in a nursery school. Like, a whole bottle of it. They were really mad. I used to piss off my kindergarten teachers so much that they’d yell at me. What they didn’t know is that the vast majority of the time, I had no idea what was going on with everything. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, but for most of my childhood, I felt I was missing the piece of myself that had any idea of how normal people worked. Eventually I just accepted myself for who I was and forgot about being normal.
A few posts back, I wasn’t sure if I even had a core fandom, but as I’ve been writing this post today, it’s pretty clear that science fiction is my core fandom. Of course. It is so obviously that.
The first science fiction book I can remember reading is “The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet” by Eleanor Cameron, and set in Pacific Grove, California, where I would one day, many years later, work. I’d forgotten everything about the book, except the title. I remember the kids at school making fun of me for reading it when I took it out of the library in grade school. After that, I made sure to just read that sort of book at the public library, about which I have already written.
A Post to Rule All Posts
Princess Poppy and Easther Dustfeather of Glittering Girly Gwent Gaming prompt us to answer:
Write that one post you wanted to write so often, but always postponed. Finally do it!
Besides THIS post?
I think my most wanted post would probably begin:
People of Earth, on this day your old lives end, and your new lives begin.
I’ll leave that writing prompt… for others to continue.
You Can Never Meet Your Heroes
Bhagpuss at Inventory Full owns the last topic of today’s post:
If you could meet any person you look up to, who would it be?
I always wonder what people get out of meet and greets with famous people, like meeting a band backstage at a concert. You mean nothing to them, likely less than nothing, and there’s nothing you could ask them that would change their opinion of you.
I’ve met a lot of SF writers, from living in the Bay Area (the… Monterey Bay area) and going to the SF cons in the area. C.J.Cherryh? Met her. She was drunk. Robert Jordan? Yup. Kevin J. Anderson? He was just a newbie writer when I met him. Paul O. Williams? Harlan Ellison? Robert Silverberg? Poul Anderson? Jack Chalker? Marion Zimmer Bradley? Met them all. Orson Scott Card! He and I share a love for the writings of Lloyd Biggle Jr, I found out.
The people I would most like to meet are the people I would most like to thank for changing my life and setting me free. I would thank them for their strength and their leadership. Their names wouldn’t mean anything to any reader of this post, because they are personal.
I guess the people I would most like to meet are those in Team Spode. I have been gaming with these guys for over a decade, and I’ve only met one of them, Stingite the Friendly Necromancer, who is just as cool in real life as he is online. Now I just need to meet Lord Spode and Kaptain KY to complete the set. After having spent so many years talking with them and gaming with them, I’d really like to meet them.
I really like the Ann Lecki novels. It’s one of my favorite SF series of recent years.
I think that if you’ve read a lot of SF the pronoun thing doesn’t really make that much of an impact, maybe. I’ve read a lot of stories where the writer plays around with gender and pronouns so for me it was just another of those “Hang on, how does this work? Oh, okay, got it” deals. I found all the stuff about tea ceremonies more intriguing – don’t see a lot of that in the genre. I think the gender politics probably had (or will have) a good deal more impact on more mainstream readers, although there’s certainly a particular (stereotypical) stripe of SF fan, well-represented in the SF section where I work, who might have some issues with it. But those people almost certainly won’t read it in the first place, sadly. They could do with getting out of their niche a little.
I occasionally reread books I haven’t read for a long time, and now the books where every character was male and the only occasional female was a stereotype have become unreadable. But when I was a kid, I guess I accepted that only males did anything important and exciting. What I love about Leckie’s thing with the pronouns is, sure, everyone is “she” now, but what about fifty years ago when everything was “he” and nobody said anything about it?
I reread the first couple books of Asimov’s “Foundation” series recently — all characters were men, except for some stereotypical women (abusive wife, sensitive mistress who wants to be pretty). I then remember how he made the hero of his I, Robot stories a woman, Susan Calvin. He didn’t have to do it, but he did. I’m pretty happy that the TV series has recast many of the roles (for Foundation) as women.