Nameless: A Feature in Development

[helloladies]

At the end of every week, we gather at Lady Business HQ to share media thoughts and chat about the recent happenings in our tiny spheres of human experience. Puns welcome.

In theory, eventually this feature will have a name once we all agree on one. In the meantime, to open the festivities, a gif to sum up 2016 so far:

Comments

[justira]

I have been rereading the Vorkosigan saga! I finally got through rereading the first billion books and have started on new-to-me ones. From that latter category the only one I've read so far was Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, which I read before Cryoburn because chronology, dammit. It was... interesting. Very different from a Miles novel. I enjoyed Ivan and Tej a lot, but in the end the novel didn't really quite gel for me. The climax was just not very exciting for me, and it was missing that Milesian sense of tension and chaos. I liked hearing from Ivan a lot in A Civil Campaign, and seeing more of him was good. The wedding scene, at least, had all the Milesian chaos I could want, and was one of the highlights of the book for me.

And I'm just gonna say this once, but I was holding out for Ivan/Byerly, dammit. I like Tej and Rish fine, and seeing so much of Byerly was great, but I still thought they had great chemistry.

I've also just finished Sleeping Giants today, which had a lot of potential but sort of just fizzled out. I'm probably going to do a full review of it, so for now this is just an invitation to chat with me about the book if anyone else has read it.

On the nonfiction side of things, I've been reading Game Change, which is about the 2008 election. It's been pretty fascinating, especially comparing my memories of the election with what was going on behind the scenes and what moments ended up being historically notable. The "Yes We Can" speech barely got a mention, for example, even though I remember it being a phenomenon. I'm only about halfway through the book so far, and not even done with the Democratic primary between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. I'm pretty excited to see more about the general election!

On that topic, I have been obsessively refreshing the Five Thirty Eight 2016 election forecast. It's so terrifying!

Finally, I've been watching Adventure Time with my partner. So many people love the show, but I bounced off it in my initial attempt to watch it all in order. But my partner has found a clever way of watching it that actually works for me: following the plotlines of individual characters. This makes the series feel a lot more coherent for me, and I've been really enjoying it. The first arc we watched was Marceline's, and it was as gay as I wanted (without actually coming out and saying it in canon). But come on, Marceline and Princess Bubblegum. The next arc we're doing, which we've already started on, is the Flame Princess story, which has some really legit relationship dynamics, very real for a kids' show.

[renay]

One day I will read the whole Vorkosigan series! Technically I should at at least read Cordelia's Honor because I read so little of it before bouncing off that I could count Bujold as a new author for this year.

(I'm still bitter about Sleeping Giants. HOW DO YOU MAKE GIANT ROBOTS BORING?)

Is Game Change pretty accessible to people who don't have a lot of political knowledge/language in their toolkit? That's largely why I bounce off a lot of political nonfiction; having to stop and look up terminology is time consuming and draining.

[owlmoose]

I enjoyed the Ivan book, but I agree it wasn't as strong as it could have been.

My favorite book about the 2008 election is Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister, which is about the effects of gender politics, especially the Clinton campaign but it also discusses Sarah Palin and Michelle Obama. Really interesting.

[spindizzy]

I'm kinda intrigued that the "Yes We Can" speech wasn't made a lot of, because I remember that and I was eighteen and on the wrong side of an ocean for that election to affect me.

Marceline! I know literally nothing about Adventure Time except that I want Marceline and Princess Bubblegum to go off and have gay adventures everywhere. (I... Also bounced off it quite hard the first time I watched it, but that could have been because I was suspicious of EVERYTHING that friend-of-a-friend showed me. Maybe I should try it again!)

media stuffed in face this week, also, a poll

[renay]

• Ms. Marvel Volume 5
• Saga Volume 6
• Dear White People
• Multiple episodes of Avengers Assemble (I can't believe they basically did a "pretend to be a couple on a cruise ship" episode, even if it was Clint and Natasha)
• several chapters of Out of the House of Bondage while are full of white women getting dragged
• The Obelisk Gate (I may like it even better than The Fifth Season)

Also, based on this article about President Obama, a) will there be vampire fanfiction soon or b) the vampire fanfiction already exists but is about to feature almonds (SEVEN ONLY) heavily?

Re: media stuffed in face this week, also, a poll

[owlmoose]

I also read Saga Volume 6! So good.

Also, WTF is up with those seven almonds?

Re: media stuffed in face this week, also, a poll

[bookgazing]

Obelisk Gate - so jealous (but even if I had it I would not get round to it for at least 3 months so...). Also, Ms. Marvel 5!! I think we still have a couple of weeks before the new trade drops here but I pre-ordered it despite having 0 room or £'s for it.

Re: media stuffed in face this week, also, a poll

[spindizzy]

But Nay, "pretend to be a couple on a cruise ship" is like your favourite trope! (How much like the tablet game is the tv show? I can't work out if I'll like it or not.)

I... Actually own The Fifth Season, how far up my TBR pile does it need to be moved, on a scale of one to Black-Wolves-levels-of-WHY-HAVE-YOU-NOT-READ-THIS-YET?!

[owlmoose]

This week, I started my Hugo reading in earnest. I finished everything I needed to read in the novella category, and am almost done with novelette. Once that's finished (the Stephen King story, which I'm looking forward to -- I've always liked King but haven't really kept up with him in recent years), I can tackle Seveneves.

We also started playing Lego Marvel Superheroes on the PS4, which is exactly the bit of silly fun that I was hoping for (and needed a bit of right now).

[renay]

I keep looking at Seveneves and going "BUT IT'S SO LONG AND IT'S BY A DUDE." Uggggh, I dunno. I could really use the time spent on those 8000000 pages elsewhere but I have so little Hugo reading to do this year I feel like I should at least make the effort.

*jealous grumbling about your PS4*

[forestofglory]

I haven't done any Hugo reading at all so far, and I'm not sure that I'm going to at this point. I mean I have better things to read in my limited reading time, and I'm just not feeling it.

I bought The fifth season when it came out but I haven't read it because I just haven't felt emotional strong enough. Also I hear it has kid death and I just can't with the fictional kid harm right now. (On the other hand I started reading A Midwife's Tale which is a history book about a Midwife in early America, and all the death isn't bothering me, even though tons of kids died of scarlet fever in the 1st chapter. Go figure.) Anyways not reading the 5th season is putting a mental block on of some type on the rest of my Hugo reading.

[spindizzy]

Do you think you're gonna end up talking about your Hugo reading on your journal/Lady Business? I have it in my head you said that you were gonna try to give everything a fair chance to fail on their own merits rather than the slates' (I... May have misremembered that, please correct me if I'm wrong!), so I'd be interested in hearing how that's shaking out for you! Especially because Seveneves looks big enough to kill a man with. :(

[stardreamer]

I recently discovered the Raksura books by Martha Wells, and have fallen into them almost as obsessively as I did with The Goblin Emperor last year. They have the same amazing sense of world-building, only on a much larger and looser scale; I swear, there are more different races in the Three Worlds than we saw in all 4 series of Star Trek! The Raksura themselves are fascinatingly alien -- shapeshifting carnivores with some of the characteristics of dinosaurs but a social structure more akin to that of bees, and of course fully intelligent on top of that. Which makes for some really interesting trope-inversion...

So far I've read the first three. The 4th one is out, but I've been warned that it ends on a cliffhanger and am thinking seriously of waiting to get it until the 5th one is out too.

[owlmoose]

I've been meaning to check out Martha Wells for awhile now. Is this series a good place to start?

[spindizzy]

Q: Susan, did you spend all of Monday reading through a stack of like twenty BL manga?
A: Hahahaha, what do you take me for — yes, yes I did, that was me.

SO MUCH MANGA, GUYS, MY NUMBER OF BOOKS READ FOR THE YEAR ARE NOW A M A Z I N G!

But in news not related to me putting lots and lots of dubcon stories in my eyes (Please, someone, recommend me lots of BL manga with no consent issues, I will be forever in your debt! I can think of... Little Butterfly, and Flutter, and then I can't remember any more.), a cinema near me is doing a Studio Ghibli season! Me and my friend (who has never seen a Studio Ghibli movie before) have been all over that this week. :D We saw Spirited Away on Wednesday and When Marnie Was There yesterday, and they were pretty good! I will be back later to have MANY OPINIONS, in the meantime has anyone else seen Marnie?

[bookgazing]

Oh the SG season sounds so cool. I haven't seen Marnie (the nternet says it will make me cry - will it?) but I've seen a bunch of other films from Ghibli because Film Four is pretty good at putting them on. The most recent one I saw was Kiki's Delivery Service and it was soooo lovely.

[renay]

Well, were any of the BL manga, you know, good?

[(Anonymous)]

Non-dubcon BL: Yoshinaga's "What Did You Eat for Dinner Yesterday?" (Warning: This tends to become more and more of a cooking manga, complete with recipes, as the series goes on. This can get frustrating if, like me, you're a lot more interested in the gay couple's relationship than in the exact step by step process of how lawyer/amateur cook Shirou cooks the dinner du jour) and "Hide and Seek" (at least for the first two volumes--I haven't read the third yet, though I doubt there will be any dubcon in that, either). Also "Future Lovers." (One of the guys had previously considered himself straight until he wound up being seduced by a guy he met at a bar while kind of drunk and distraught over having been dumped by the woman he'd been dating. So I suppose that's a bit questionable, but he's the seme and there are no physical intimidation or blackmail-type issues. Unfortunately the publisher went out of business, so finding this two-volume series could be difficult.)

Marfisa (who only has an LJ account)

[bookgazing]

Naming is so hard. Can we just steal a name from a gif or cultural meme :P?

[biting_moopie]

The only name I can think of is 'Lady Time', which has another meaning but is now stuck in my head and I can't think of anything else.

[litomnivore]

AV Club does a similar thing that's called "Tell Us About Your Pop Culture Weekend." I like the "tell us" part. That's inviting, right?

[bookgazing]

So this week/last week in my quest to block out the real world I decided to rewatch the first season of Prison Break because of the prettiness of Wentworth Miller's face. Sometimes my terrible coping strategy is to pile into dude heavy media full of hot guys instead of going out and finding stories that will actually make me feel different and better. Not good but Susan assures me I'm not the only one who does this, so I feel OK. Anyway, I ended up getting waaaaay into Dominic Purcell and am braving the whole series even though I am petrified of stories about the death penalty. Just, Dominic Purcell in a range of very simple prison clothes - ughhhh.

I also finished UnREAL's first series recently and liked it a lot. I don't know if it would be anyone's cup of tea but I found that it told stories about female worlds that are full of toxic stuff in a really different way (namely by not making itself all about this weird, untrue idea that women are just natural backstabbers, especially when around other women). I'm writing a post about this one. Also, it has awesome/terrible brunette ladies, including Shiri Appleby who you might remember from Roswell.

Watched the first series of Alpha House in a day while hungover. It was alright. I mostly was like 'it's not Veep' and I guess it's hard to make a comedy about Republicans because every supposed far out joke can be found in someone's real life campaign? I felt kind of the same way about people trying to satirise the Tory's and UKIP in a drama - doesn't really work unless you're very clever about it. I like Gary though - the playboy up and comer who actually falls for the lady who funds his campaign and remains faithful to her.

Trying to watch Preacher but not sure I'm feeling it. Is anyone else watching?

Books - I'm stuck in the middle of a bunch: The Girls (yay/argh/yay) by Emma Cline; The Queen of the Night by Alexander Chee (so good but so big); Perdido Street Station by China Meiville (same) and The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale (undecided as yet). I finished We Go Around in the Night and Are Consumed by Fire.

[biting_moopie]

Planning on starting Preacher, mainly because Ruth Negga is hot and talented.

Wentworth Miller's face is one of the main reasons I put myself through 'Legends of Tomorrow'. He's also really funny, though.

I've heard about UnREAL and I might try it: are there any light or comedic episodes?

[transcendancing]

I am not a ladybusinesser per se, but my weekend has been filled with Australian election wtfuckery. And I could use a fluffy place to hang for a while. So! Reading this post was *aces*.

Today I've listened to some podcasts to catch up on (2 episodes of Tansy Rayner Roberts' Sheep Might Fly, 2 episodes of Alex from Galactic Suburbia's new kitchen podcast, and also one episode of Galactic Suburbia (still behind on so much). But I managed to clear some email while listening :>

Also, although I haven't read it yet I'm about to start on this fic: I Ain't Got Nothin' (but the Blues) by a friend of mine which looks darling. I'm not in the MCU fanverse, but I love Captain Jack and figure that this is probably not a terrible place to start for reading MCU fic :) Actually this will be the first piece of fic I've read in forever and I'm a bit delighted to have fic to read again (I am so lazy about finding it, it's all too overwhelming most of the time).

Otherwise I've not finished a book in June and I have been playing silly app games all weekend ahead of my last week of prac which has been long, tiring and stressful (also unexpectedly triggering last week which was not fun).

I am looking forward to more books and fluff and loveliness in the weeks to come as recovery! I plan to read more Courtney Milan, continue my own Bujold reread and poke my friend into blogging about it with me, finish books I've started, catch up on my other blogging project I'm neglecting this weekend - but involves reading a horror book which isn't happening yet.

I've yet to see 'Civil War' but once I can rent that, it's high on my list. Plus maybe I need to rewatch Jupiter Ascending AGAIN, especially as one of my copanellists from the science fiction convention where we did a panel on Jupiter Ascending suggested it was a good candidate for poly fic which is my big BUTTON for fic. I miss White Collar and Leverage fic being so plentiful, I really do! (Recs for good poly fic regardless of fandom welcome btw).

I read 'The Cloud Roads' by Martha Wells recently and quite enjoyed it - it's not my favourite book I've read this year, but it was solid and I do want to read the rest. The worldbuilding is awesome and that part I enjoyed a lot.

Want to finish reading 'Aurora' by Kim Stanley Robinson, 'Binti' by Nnedi Okorafor, and 'Tremontaine' that is the finished Serial Box publication. And other things, just need some brain back.

------

(Just in case any of you are interested my thoughts and an overview of our election ridiculousness below but if you want fluffy stop reading here).

To summarise Australia right now, we have no government, we are unlikely to have one for a month because the election was too close to call and it's preferential voting which takes time to count and recount accurately. Usually by about 9pm we know how bad the next 3 years are projected to look (we haven't had something to be inspired by leadership wise in ages). Not this time! Our parliament is thoroughly hung with a bunch of seats with an unknown winner hanging in the balance. This is the best of the available options for us atm though since both our major parties have been out in favour of offshore detention processing for refugees and are basically racist and evil.

Our minor parties have been shafted from even having their views considered, including the one almost-but-not-quite-major-party that actually has their crap together, but then looking at some of the other ones my fellow Australians have elected I can kind of see why because URGH. Anyway, there is a faint possibility things will improve because a minority government requires negotiation and consensus in considerable amounts that has been missing in recent years. However, there's also a faint possibility of things being horribly worse because the same party could just squeak in a win: WE DON'T KNOW.

The only really good bit:

One of the people elected to parliament is Linda Burney, an Aboriginal woman of Wiradjuri descent, who will be the first Indigenous woman elected. This is huge huge huge. If nothing else I hope that any of the legislation that will improve things for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians actually gets through government and implemented with funding. *fingers crossed*

[biting_moopie]

So that's why I hadn't heard anything about the election result. That's amazing news about Linda Burney! The rest...sigh. The treatment of refugees is beyond appalling. Labor lost my vote years ago because of this - to my parents' shock and horror. I hope things work out soon (I don't live in Australia at the moment but keep up with the news as best I can.) Thanks for the rundown!

[biting_moopie]

Accurate macro is depressingly accurate.

I started a Veep fanfic that is fluffy, coffee-shop AU. It won't be posted but it's so much fun to write.

[bookgazing]

Aww that sounds awesome - I kind of want to know what everyone does in the coffee-shop :)

[litomnivore]

I'm still doing battle with the stomach flu from hell, so I have not been terribly lucid over the last four days, but I have watched three episodes of Black Mirror, which I enjoyed. I watched "The National Anthem," 15 Million Credits," and "Be Right Back."

[renay]

Your immune system and I are gonna end up having to have A Talk.