Sakura of DOOM

Sigh. I need to stop reading other reaction posts before I write my own, at least while I'm in my current brain state.

( Elementary 1x23-1x24 The Woman/Heroine )

I am really not prepared, due to the events of the past few weeks.

Must remember to pack HDMI cable.

Anyway, I will be arriving Friday afternoon and leaving Monday night. Anyone still around for an early Monday dinner? I have made vague flailing attempts at meal planning.

I like texts MUCH more than phone calls (and for some reason, my phone doesn't always ring when people call), and I should have my iPhone with me most of the time, so I'll have access to email and Twitter messages and etc. PM me if you want my number!

Mostly hoping I will appear semi-intelligent on my panels and that there will be no flight delays. *knock on wood*

Because I reread all my old rat entries and realized I had forgotten stuff, and because I don't want to go to sleep yet because I hate that moment of waking up and then remembering that they're gone.

( By me and CB )

Haru's death is hitting particularly hard, probably due to my having expected him to outlive Momo, my worries about Momo being by himself, and the fact that I'm not getting rats after these guys. (At least for now. If CB and I ever have a space big enough for a rat room + cats...) I'm especially worried about Momo, who's never been this alone before. Hang in there, Momo! Please don't give up?

I got a big bucket and a smaller basket yesterday so I can bring him around with me in the apartment, but I'm not sure how much he likes it so far. He's pretty irritated with me already because I keep trying to clean him (hind leg paralysis means he can't groom as well as usual), but on the other hand, maybe having a warm hand in there is good for him? (CB wants to label the basket "Momo's RV.")

It's been especially helpful having CB at hand; I always feel really lonely mourning the rats because usually I'm the only one who has interacted with them significantly. CB hasn't really been able to play with them due to allergies, but he's put them in drawings and random notes to me and has seen or heard about various rat adventures, and he misses Haru a lot too.

Too bad there aren't people bent on breeding super-long-lived rats.

I thought Haru would be my last rat, since he'd been doing just fine, but Saturday night, he was having trouble breathing and his legs wouldn't really hold him up. I took him in to the vet yesterday, and he spent the night there with oxygen, but he was still having trouble breathing today, and he hadn't eaten and wasn't very active.

I got to hold him and scritch him for a while before deciding to let him go, and hold him through all the vet examinations yesterday, so I hope that helped a little.

He was a fun, cheerful rat. When I first got him and Momo, he was the one who would run around exploring while Momo hid behind my neck, and he immediately latched on to Ed-rat when they met. He also figured out how to escape the cage, and the only way I could get him out of the various nooks and crannies he hid in was to bring out Ed-rat. He was super fond of piling things on top of the igloo and the food bowl, which I exploited for my entertainment by dismantling his piles and watching him go about assembling them again. He loved having a blanket over the rat cage and always managed to pull pieces of it in, so much so that a queen-sized blanket was gradually reduced to a one-foot square by the time he was done with it.

I hope he is making giant piles of stuff and having fun chasing Ed-rat around now.

What I've read: Finished my reread of Dawn for Wiscon \o/! I have various quotes highlighted for things like heteronormativity, consent issues, gender essentialism, slavery analogues, and etc., but I still need to mull over things and synthesize before I have anything particularly good to say. Aside from issues about gender and sexuality, which hopefully will get discussed in depth at the Wiscon panel, I'm really interested in how Butler deals with violence. And I'd like to compare Dawn to other post-apocalyptic books about rebuilding society, since I think many of them fall prey to the "The strongest will survive and this is just and right!" mindset that Butler doesn't necessarily avoid, but does try to complicate. Lilith's relationships with other women aren't explored as much, possibly due to the emphasis on pair bonding and reproduction. Some thoughts on how OSC's Worthing Saga has a section very much like Lilith Awakening various people and having to train them for life on Earth, though possibly I only see similarities because I don't read that much SF and therefore don't know other works with this general theme. Lilith vs. Jason Worthing and how the people they awaken and train react to them is especially informed by the characters' and authors' race and gender, imo.

What I'm reading: Partway through Adulthood Rites! Dawn ended much more abruptly than I had remembered, and there's a big shift between it and Adulthood Rites. So far: more notes on heteronormativity, gender essentialism, and violence, as well as a continuation of Humans as Other. I really want to poke at the idea of the specialness and risk of a Human-born male child.

What I'm reading next: For once, I am fairly certain! If all goes well, I will proceed to Imago.

Sigh, I have been reading (and posting) much less of late.

What I've just read: I feel like I haven't had much brain the past few weeks. Anyway, I finally figured out how to split up a single epub file into several so I can split up several compilations I have—they mess with my series numbering! And I hate it when a compilation of romance novellas has novellas in several series I'm keeping track of, so I don't know which series to count it as. My quest for book organization perfection will never end... This is the long way to say that in the course of splitting up novellas, I came across Sharon Shinn's "Nocturne" in Angels of Darkness, reread it, and was struck by a desire to reread some of her Samaria books. And lo, I was down in South Bay over the weekend and found my copy of Jovah's Angel.

"Nocturne" is a light, enjoyable read that doesn't feature issues about faith. This is good, because I feel the Samaria series overall doesn't do very well with those. I like the first-person voice, and the fact that the heroine is past thirty (iirc). There's a bit of "hey disabled person, stop moping around," as the heroine finds a recently blinded angel, but I liked how they found a way for him to fly again.

Jovah's Angel was less light and less enjoyable, alas, and it reminded me of why I am not a Samaria fan. I vaguely remembered it having more engineering stuff and more crises of faith and was sad to find that this was not so. Anyway, this is the one where Alleluia discovers that their god Jovah is actually the orbiting spaceship Jehovah. I didn't remember the subplot regarding former Archangel Delilah at all. Overall, I like that there are two female Archangels here, and that they aren't pitted against each other, but I would have liked seeing them together more. I also didn't quite buy how quickly the Alleluia/Caleb romance progressed, and of course, I still want more deconstruction of the whole Jovah-picking-your-perfect-mate thing. Overall, the book isn't enough of a romance to satisfy, and it's not enough of sf to satisfy on that front as well.

I also read volume 1 of 7 Seeds. So far, I am unimpressed by the heroine, though I am sure I would be the extremely frightened and nervous one if I randomly found myself in a boat with strangers and no memory of how I got there. Plus, she probably develops into a badass later on, so I am content to wait and watch. On a more random note, EW BUGS. I'm glad Tamura doesn't draw them in great detail.

What I'm reading: Just started Lilith in preparation for Wiscon, which hopefully I will continue. I am feeling rather meh lately, and the dystopic situation weirdly makes me feel better.

What I'm reading next: If I am being optimistic, more Xenogenesis! Also, more of 7 Seeds. Though I am tempted to start on a Fruits Basket reread because CB has just started on the anime. And I just got Yes, Chef from the library, which has POC author + food + easy reading in its favor.

Disclaimer: I got a review copy of this from the author.

This is the first volume of the Tokyo Demons light novel series, which can also be read online. It's clearly part of a larger arc, but the volume has a complete plot and resolution. It's very much in the tradition of "teens with superpowers/mutant powers/psychic abilities/etc." where here, said teens are dropped in the middle of yakuza, gangs, and a secret organization with nefarious goals.

I feel like I should have had much more fun reading this than I actually did, given the premise. There are some cool bits, particularly re: Ayase, one of the POV characters, figuring out creative ways to use her powers (her body turns into a swarm of bugs), but one initial problem was just that the plot takes so long to kick in! Some elements are being set in place early on, but it felt like there were too many instances showing Ayase being withdrawn or Jo (the other POV character) being tough and street smart without anything actually happening. The plot finally gets a jump kick halfway through, with the teens disclosing their mutant powers and finding out about Nefarious Organization, but that's a long time to have various characters wandering around, not knowing what's going on, and mostly going through the same loop of not wanting people to find out about their powers or ... something, in Jo's case.

My main issue, though, was that I found it really difficult to connect with the characters. They seem interesting enough on paper—Ayase, the paranoid girl trying to hide her ability; Jo, the pickpocket smoker who tries to not care about anyone; Sachi, the nice guy who is trying to bring everyone together—but it doesn't quite gel in the execution. For example, I never really bought that Jo secretly cared about people while trying to maintain his tough demeanor. You see a lot of him waffling on getting involved, but he never seemed invested in any of the characters as people with personalities, with the possible exception of Mitsuko, who he wants to bone. I also completely don't buy Sachi as the heart of the gang. The emphasis is always on how much he wants to help and how he tries to get close to various people so he can, but to me, it felt like him repeatedly crossing boundaries and signals to get people to interact with him, which is creepy. Ayase probably gets the best character arc of the bunch, but it's really frustrating watching her get maneuvered into a potential romantic triangle.

I also wish there were more women. There are some in the organization fighting Nefarious Organization, but there isn't much interaction among the women. It's also frustrating that Ayase is so far the only girl teen mutant among a group of around five of them, and that she's already getting embroiled in aforementioned romantic triangle. Mitsuko shows up later and seems cool, but she also primarily interacts with the guys, and in a very sexualized manner at that. She's supposedly the sempai for a lot of girls in the school, and she helps out Ayase at one point, but most of that is background to her relationship with Jo and another supporting male character. One of the older women in Nice Organization is cool, and another mostly seems to be there due to her relationship with another one of the guys.

So, fun plot when it kicks in, but the characters all feel a bit too flat for me, and it could use a lot more women.

I haven't posted about the rats for a while... Most of it is because Momo's hind legs continue to deteriorate, which makes me sad. He's still getting around pretty well, but mostly via his front legs, with some flailing with his hind legs, and I need to weigh him again to make sure he's eating. I took him to the vet because he has a fatty lump on his chest (probably just fatty tissue) and possible lumpiness elsewhere, and my old vet said he looked fine while the new vet said he was overweight. Now, of course, I feel guilty about feeding them too much, though old vet mostly did not care about rat weights, so I will try to not feel too guilty.

Other than that, they are in the lazy guy rat stage of life. Also! CB's allergies are now much reduced. After two air filters and assiduous cleaning, what helped the most was putting a blanket over the cage. This was great for the winter, since my apartment gets pretty cold, though I'm trying to think of what to do now that it's getting warmer. Also, Haru has greatly enjoyed the new addition and spends tons of time pulling bits of blanket through the cage to chew off and line the igloo with. He managed to pare down a queen-size blanket to something roughly 1' x 1'!

( Giant photos )

What I've read: So sad, I don't think I finished anything this week, aside from rereading bits of Skip Beat. Oh wait, no! I read Sarah Mayberry's Her Best Worst Mistake, since it was pretty highly recced on Dear Author. I've tried getting into some of Mayberry's stuff in the past because DA has liked her other books, but I bounced off most of them due to the gimmick-y professions feel. I.e. famous movie star and celebrity chef he hires fall in love! Or: agents have to go undercover in a BDSM club! The contemporary setting makes it so much harder for me to suspend my disbelief, particular when power dynamics are in play.

Anyway, I really liked this one, which is about a woman who sleeps with her best friend's ex-fiance (the best friend breaks up with said fiance in a previous book). There's the Big Secret of when she will tell her best friend, but done in a way that's very convincing. Violet knows she should tell Elizabeth, Martin (the hero) wants her to tell Elizabeth, the readers want her to, but the reasons why she can't get herself to are really the crux of the book and of Violet's character development. I love how much weight is given to Violet's development, and I really like how Violet and Elizabeth's friendship is one of the driving forces of the book. All the relationships feel like real people interacting, which isn't always the case for contemporaries for me.

What I'm reading now: I started up the Ben Aaronovitch again! Hopefully I will make more progress. I also started Mayberry's She's Got It Bad after liking Her Best Worst Mistake, but I fell out of romance mood again. Also, I don't like the hero nearly as much, and it's got the gimmick-y profession thing.

Also, I don't know how if I should count this, but I've also started playing Samsara, an interactive fiction piece set in 1757 Bengal. You're a dreamwalker who is supposedly working for the Nawab of Bengal, but both British and French forces are threats on the horizon. It's based on the same engine that does Fallen London, but the chunks of text are much longer, which helps me follow the storyline more. The gameplay is also more directed and there's less grind, which again helps, and the story has been unfolding fairly quickly. Right now there are only two chapters up—each chapter took me a few hours to explore—but I really want more.

What I'm reading next: Hopefully starting back on Tokyo Demons again.