Multi-prong update

[feuervogel]

1. Saturday, a few friends and I went on the Big Boss Brewery's tour for my birthday. It was extremely popular, but the weather was nice - 70 degrees or so - so after it was over, there was a big open-air festival almost in their parking lot. There were two food trucks (OnlyBurger (the veggie burger was pretty good, but the fries were meh) and KoKyuBBQ (Ben enjoyed the duck bratwurst sandwich and tater tots fried in duck fat)).

I tried their new Dunkelweizen, D'Icer, and it was pretty good. It wasn't Weihenstephaner or anything, but it was drinkable. (Speaking of Dunkelweizen, I tried New Belgium's in their Lips of Faith series; it was black as Coke and about half as sweet.)

After digesting the beers and food, Ben and I went out to Sage for dinner, where I boringly got the fesen joon. The jokey waiter must have cut his hair since New Year's, because I didn't recognize him until he started talking.

2. I haven't gotten anything productive done on my writing in a while. I fixed the plot issue I think; I still need to propagate some of the changes, but I can do that while I'm doing the hardest part of the revision process: getting into the characters' heads and adding descriptions. What do they see/hear/smell/feel/etc? What can I say other than "he narrowed his eyes" (eg)?

3. SCHEISST EUCH IN DIE HOSEN, WIR STEHEN GANZ AM OBEN, UND WIR STEIGEN WIEDER AUF. HIER KOMMT HERTHA! Yesterday's match pitted the best offense (us) against the best defense (Fürth), and we got a 2:0 win out of it, extending our lead over our next competitor to 4 points. Unless we lose the rest of our matches (which is, of course, technically possible, but not terribly likely), we'll get promoted back to the first league. HA HO HE!

4. I got the results from my bloodwork last week. I'm currently overmedicated for my thyroid, so I get to take half the Cytomel for a while and see what happens. (My TSH was undetectable, and my T3 was above normal limits, but T4 was fine.) Hopefully this won't lead to a return of The Nausea. Inability to concentrate is one of the symptoms of hyperthyroidism, so that helps explain #2.

5. Reading one of the free books I got, Darkship Thieves. I'm not very far into it yet, but so far, our heroine has ripped her nightshirt in half to stop the men attempting to abduct her in their tracks and commented on how she knows the man whose spaceship she ends up in is a "real man" (I paraphrase) because he responds to the sight of her breasts. Said real man (who's got cat's eyes, which is actually kind of nifty tech) is from an anarcho-individualist culture (barf), and on p 87, there's this bit about "those wacky 21st century folks, thinking there aren't really gender differences in brains" which made me want to hurl the book across the room.

Frustratingly, Persecution of the Other (and the people the cat-guy is descended from are basically bioengineered to be smarter/faster/stronger/fit better in X situation and were, of course, persecuted and wiped out on Earth, except those who fled) is very frequently a liberal/progressive motif, where The Other stands in for queers or racial/ethnic minorities or other real-life disprivileged groups. I don't get the impression Ms Hoyt has any truck with that librul pansy nonsense.

At least I didn't pay money for it. (I did buy Mark Van Name's omnibus Jump Gate Twist, and I feel OK about that, because Mark admits to being Baen's token liberal. Also, it features a beefcake/emo shot of Jon on the cover.)

6. Still taking tai chi. I'm taking a break from weapons to go back to Dr Jay's 9th Street Dance Chen class for the current session. I can't take both, because they meet at the same time. I may go back to weapons over summer, because it doesn't look like he's teaching Chen over summer. (I could be wrong; it happens on occasion.) I'm also taking Nina's Tuesday evening class, which may ALSO be going on hiatus over summer.

So I'm going to have to self-motivate if I want to get my yellow sash this year. I'm awful at that.

7. Cats are evil.

Comments

[krait]

and commented on how she knows the man whose spaceship she ends up in is a "real man" (I paraphrase) because he responds to the sight of her breasts. [...]
and on p 87, there's this bit about "those wacky 21st century folks, thinking there aren't really gender differences in brains" which made me want to hurl the book across the room.

Arrgh, this is one of my huge issues with military SF -- I love the genre in general, but the writers are often on the same plane as your Hoyt seems to be, leaving me with gems about how "all red-blooded men" can't get enough of boobs because it's some mystically ingrained genetic trait of man-ness that even a highly-gengineered future space-faring man will still have. Because OF COURSE there have NEVER been any human cultures where breasts weren't sexualised, even back when we were just plain old un-tweaked Homo sapiens stock... Sigh.

Likewise, books with awesome military teams doing awesome military hijinks are inexplicably lacking in females, and when there is one, she's the bomb tech. Or she inexplicably falls in love with her commanding officer and has a stupid affair with him and gets accidentally pregnant but decides to keep the baby anyway despite the phenomenal publicity-storm it will bring down on them both after spending an entire book avoiding exactly that. Double sigh.

Tanya Huff and Lois Bujold are pretty much the only ones whose positions on such things I can count on (and that's only if I ignore some of the things Bujold's done)...

[feuervogel]

Yup, double ugh. That's why my space opera with mercenaries stars a gay guy and his commanding WOMAN officer (who's either a lesbian or homoromantic demisexual) in a special forces unit. Did I mention the part where he's culturally Muslim? And she's raised by secular Turks?

I'll probably never SELL it (because OMG it's "too PC" or "WTF queers in the military"... Israel? Hello?) but I'm going to keep writing it.

I wish Bujold didn't have such an undercurrent of "BABIES ARE THE TRUE EXPRESSION OF LOVE" in her books. Even considering the aristocracy aspect and how important it is in their minds to continue the bloodline, the natalism is wearing on occasion.

[ranyart]

Oh man, I just hit that point in the fourth Sharing Knife book... I was going to maybe chalk it up to the culture in the particular world she built, but if that is a pattern in all of her books, that's less exciting.

I should really try her SF stuff again.

[feuervogel]

I have to ignore it, because I enjoy the books so much. Sure, she's my parents' age, so her upbringing was very mom+dad+2.2 kids and maybe a dog and a white picket fence, and maybe she's honestly never known someone who has no desire to have children. It's still annoying.

My MCs are a gay guy who's OK with other people's kids, a mom, and a woman who has no desire for children (and maybe not even romantic relationships!) Because that reflects the reality I live in, you know? It's like all those movies set in LA where there are no Latin@s in the background.

[krait]

Yes, it helps me a little with the ignoring that a lot of her worlds do involve serious reasons why Breed Like Bunnies would be the cultural norm -- farmers and Lakewalkers both have sound economic reasons to reproduce abundantly, and likewise the aristo focus of the Chalion novels means that most everybody needs an heir (and she's not reticent about the sort of awful behaviour that need can create -- witness Sera).

[krait]

Until recently I thought I'd reached a reasonable selection rubrik -- only read those which have a female main character.

Then I picked up a couple of books by Mike Shepherd, and... Well, there went that notion. :D (Honestly, the second one was teensy bit better than the first, and he's a new author, so I'd be willing to try the third one from a library. Just not sure I'd buy it without reading, as I did the first two.)


Bujold's apparent conviction that all hetero romance (for a definition of hetero that seems to be, "at least one partner has a uterus") must end in babies is one of those things I try my best to ignore. Also her unending romance focus -- I think the only somewhat-main character who doesn't have a canon love interest is Elli Quinn (and half the fandom hates her).

[feuervogel]

Why do people hate Elli? :(((((

[krait]

It baffles me, too!

As I follow, however, it seems most of them assume her sending the cat-blanket was a deliberate and vindictive attack on Ekaterin. Although my friend J seems to dislike her because she didn't give up everything to marry Miles. *shrugs* So, yeah. Beats me! (If you accept WoG as canon, then the first group are wrong -- Bujold has said in discussions that 1. it was new blanket, not THE blanket, and 2. Elli didn't give much thought to it at all.)

[krait]

ALSO: keep writing yours, because I want to read it! Don't stop considering publishing, either; even if there's no publisher on Earth willing to take it on (unlikely! I mean, that guy I mentioned got published!), you could always go the self-published route. At least among fen it really seems to be breaking out of the negative image it had -- Copperbadge has self-published three or four books now, and the author of an original slash novel I'm avidly following has said she will publish when the story is complete, and I've got money in a jar awaiting that day! You might not get rich or be invited to cons with David Weber, but I for one would gladly shelve your spacemarines!novel at the very top of my military SF shelf! :D

[feuervogel]

It's so rare to find non-conservative people into military SF! I got to a page of Darkship Thieves last night that got me thisclose to throwing it across the room: "Europe was dying because of this stupid religion that refused to integrate in society." >:[

Once I finish this round of revisions, I'm going to write the synopsis and sit on it a while, while I outline & start the prequel(s). Those are set during the coup that set up the government our heroes are overthrowing.

[ladyegreen.livejournal.com]

You're quite the busy person. Well wishes for your thyroid medication working out for you.

[feuervogel]

Thanks. I skipped the T3 completely this morning, and depending on how I feel later today, I might skip it tomorrow as well.

[amakarie.livejournal.com]

so far, our heroine has ripped her nightshirt in half to stop the men attempting to abduct her

...really?

Anyways, I'm glad they seem to have figure out what was causing the nausea. It's amazing how many things your thyroid can screw up.

[feuervogel]

Really. She's by herself, in her nightshirt (after being awakened by the people trying to abduct her), all of 5'5", and this big dudes are trying to grab her. She decides to slow them down by short-circuiting their real brains by activating their lizard-brains. She also describes her tits as "big enough that other women call her fat," whatever the fuck that means.

And this book is written by a woman. wtf.

The nausea was abdominal migraines, related to thyroid imbalance.

[amakarie.livejournal.com]

And this book is written by a woman. wtf.

Unfortunately there's a lot of instances when female writers do detriment to themselves when they write. I don't know if this author said "Oh hai, this is female empowerment, using her womanly wiles to defeat men!" but it's extremely misguided.

In popular culture, there aren't a lot of decent female writers as role models. R.K. Rowling, probably the best. Personally I think Stephenie Meyer's encouraging really unhealthy philosophy towards teenage relationships "It's hot if your boyfriend stalks you and really wants to kill you!" Oh yeah, that's super helpful!

As a female writer, I get really nervous when I try to write female characters. Am I making her overbearing? Too meek? Not three-dimensional enough? The fact that none of these thoughts come when writing males is sad; it's like I'm more comfortable writing the opposite sex than I am my own, cos I feel a lot of responsibility to do it right. Sad...

[feuervogel]

Well, there's a lot more balance in portrayals of men in media: heroes, villains, wizards, warlocks, chefs, dads, policemen... Women are more often than not stereotyped and 2-dimensional. So we feel like we should make 3-dimensional women with flaws but who aren't stereotypes and have their own motivations and everything. You know, like EVERY SINGLE MALE CHARACTER EVER WRITTEN.

My female leads are a mercenary commander in a special forces unit (whose goal is to get the job done efficiently) and a woman in the resistance (whom the mercenaries are assisting), whose goal is to get rid of the dictator before he executes her husband for treason (and to have a free station with a popularly elected government, open travel and communication between stations, and other basic freedoms like that). Her mom was one of the people who fought against the dictator in the coup 25 years before.