it doesssss

i loved it!

there's nothing like finishing a really good book!!

when i was a few chapters in i gushed about it to someone i know, and the next time i saw them the first thing they did was hold up the copy they'd bought because it sounded so good, and now next time i see them i'm going to be like "have you finished it?! i NEED to talk about ittttt"

Trans women (there's a space, it's not one word) are women. Violence against trans women is violence against women. "A fairly high chance", the chance is 100% because it IS violence against a woman!!

Stop degendering her. And her point was about pinkwashing cop/military propaganda, so she is correct to connect them.

The point is that Top Gun was so successful and influential that it helped to shape pop-culture marketability of superficial queerness in film/TV. It does go hand-in-hand with "women can do imperial violence too" media like Zero Dark Thirty. It's not the only thing, but Top Gun is an example.

what a grindingly miserable book to read as a lesbian and feminist. i've got so many things i could read that are more interesting in their craft/execution that are not so awful in their themes and politics.

an entire book about how women are silly and immature for thinking she can do anything but accept the first offer of marriage she receives. a book where accepting this is character growth. the heterosexual bargain is the happy ending, so grow up and marry the neighbour who's a nonce.

in between work today i've reached the last stretch of The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (no spoilers pls), read another three chapters of Emma, and now I'm sitting down for more Imago and oh my god is Emma a disheartening slog compared to those two.

it's ironic that Emma blatantly has ADHD (e.g the long list of started-and-abandoned hobbies/arts/crafts) because my ADHD finds reading it interminable. also the book would be more interesting if she was lesbian or ace/aro tbh, the comphet hangs over it like a lead blanket.

that's why i'm using the word 'chatfic' specifically. it has the same weaknesses. it's all samey dialogue that uses so many words to say so little about the characters saying the words. "show don't tell" is an overused maximum but this is so heavy on the telling i feel disinterested.

i'm left without strong feelings about any of them and i'm a tenth of the way in already. most of the dialogue could be from any character. it's all "marriageablility, class", with no variation. reading a chapter is like swimming through honey. stodgy, samey, lethargic and weightless.

so often there's no sense of the conversation beyond words. no body language, no physical space, if you're lucky you get a line of "Emma thought". it leaves so much of the dialogue feeling samey and weightless and disembodied. i don't have a strong sense of the differences between characters.

The gripping prologue!! The heart-wrenching start to Chapter One!! It's all so evocative!!

I find the modern toaster indispensable.