Bandcamp Friday
Dec. 5th, 2025 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabby There are a few hours left in Bandcamp Friday. Instead of using Spotify, why not buy some music there? Coincidentally Grace Petrie has a new EP out.
sabotabbypodcast friday
Dec. 5th, 2025 07:12 amsabotabbyThere has been another round of great podcasts this week, but this is not an unbiased blog, and thus check out The Fiction Lab's "The Intersection Between Activism & Fiction with Rachel A. Rosen" and hear all about how fiction and real life activism inform each other, the challenges of telling political stories, and how to make your political stories (and activism) a little less on-the-nose.
Reading Wednesday
Dec. 3rd, 2025 07:07 amsabotabbyJust finished: The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Couldn't put this one down, which is why I'm tired this morning. It's dark academia meets gothic with three rather compelling heroines who've been cursed by witches. Like most gothics, it's more about the atmosphere than the mystery, though I did really enjoy ( spoilers ). And I loved all three characters, which, in true SMG style, are very driven, to the point of alienating most of the people in their lives, and very lifelike.
I am glad I was warned for ( another spoiler )
Oh it's also super adorable to see the "ancient department heads" at Stoneridge College. This is best not spoiled.
Currently reading: Nothing, but I have a hold that should be coming in soon at the library so it's time to read all my short books.
I am glad I was warned for ( another spoiler )
Oh it's also super adorable to see the "ancient department heads" at Stoneridge College. This is best not spoiled.
Currently reading: Nothing, but I have a hold that should be coming in soon at the library so it's time to read all my short books.
fuckin white people
Nov. 30th, 2025 11:17 amsabotabby The City of Toronto decided to, at the request of Black Lives Matter six years ago, rename a bunch of places that were named after Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811). Many important landmarks here, including a major street and two subway stations, are named after this guy (as well as a small town and many other streets around Ontario).
Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), was a wealthy British white man who was in favour of the "gradual abolition" of slavery, which is to say that over half a million Africans who might have otherwise been freed were instead trafficked during the delay.
Many, many people are suddenly amateur historians defending the life and beliefs of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), the beauteous sound of the syllables upon the tongue, the importance of remembering history (textbooks no longer exist, you see, and Wikipedia was never invented) and the cost to the city of the renaming. These same people have never, to my knowledge, issued a single complaint about Gichi Kiiwenging being renamed to York and later to Toronto, constituting a massive act of disrespecting and forgetting history and culture and a financial cost still borne by today's Anishinaabowen. They probably even call the Skydome the Rogers Centre now!
Is this act symbolic and pointless? Kinda. Black Lives Matter also asked, famously, for the police to be defunded, but this year the police budget got a 3.9% raise, ballooning to a princely $1.22 billion, at a time when violent crime continues to fall. I think that's a more important demand! I also think that the new name of the subway station is stupid. However, as a Jewish person, I wouldn't like to be walking down a street named after Hitler, so I do think it's a nice symbolic gesture to call it something else.
All I can say is imagine being so white and having so few problems that you have suddenly started caring about Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811)!
Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), was a wealthy British white man who was in favour of the "gradual abolition" of slavery, which is to say that over half a million Africans who might have otherwise been freed were instead trafficked during the delay.
Many, many people are suddenly amateur historians defending the life and beliefs of Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811), the beauteous sound of the syllables upon the tongue, the importance of remembering history (textbooks no longer exist, you see, and Wikipedia was never invented) and the cost to the city of the renaming. These same people have never, to my knowledge, issued a single complaint about Gichi Kiiwenging being renamed to York and later to Toronto, constituting a massive act of disrespecting and forgetting history and culture and a financial cost still borne by today's Anishinaabowen. They probably even call the Skydome the Rogers Centre now!
Is this act symbolic and pointless? Kinda. Black Lives Matter also asked, famously, for the police to be defunded, but this year the police budget got a 3.9% raise, ballooning to a princely $1.22 billion, at a time when violent crime continues to fall. I think that's a more important demand! I also think that the new name of the subway station is stupid. However, as a Jewish person, I wouldn't like to be walking down a street named after Hitler, so I do think it's a nice symbolic gesture to call it something else.
All I can say is imagine being so white and having so few problems that you have suddenly started caring about Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville (1742-1811)!
Look! I remembered to post before December started this year!
Nov. 30th, 2025 02:42 am![[staff profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user_staff.png){kind=small}
denise posting in ![[site community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/comm_staff.png){kind=small}
dw_newsHello, friends! It's about to be December again, and you know what that means: the fact I am posting this actually before December 1 means karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.
The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.
( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )
Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.
On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.
karzilla reminded me about the existence of linear time again. Wait, no -- well, yes, but also -- okay, look, let me back up and start again: it's almost December, and that means it's time for our annual December holiday points bonus.The standard explanation: For the entire month of December, all orders made in the Shop of points and paid time, either for you or as a gift for a friend, will have 10% of your completed cart total sent to you in points when you finish the transaction. For instance, if you buy an order of 12 months of paid time for $35 (350 points), you'll get 35 points when the order is complete, to use on a future purchase.
( The fine print and much more behind this cut! )
Thank you, in short, for being the best possible users any social media site could possibly ever hope for. I'm probably in danger of crossing the Sappiness Line if I haven't already, but you all make everything worth it.
On behalf of Mark, Jen, Robby, and our team of awesome volunteers, and to each and every one of you, whether you've been with us on this wild ride since the beginning or just signed up last week, I'm wishing you all a very happy set of end-of-year holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, and hoping for all of you that your 2026 is full of kindness, determination, empathy, and a hell of a lot more luck than we've all had lately. Let's go.
podcast friday
Nov. 28th, 2025 07:09 amsabotabby It's hard to pick this week again, as there's been a lot of good stuff, but I've harped on about AI and Peter Thiel a fair bit so how about a throwback series? Sarah Marshall has been killing it on The Devil You Know (among CBC's last gasps before complete enshittification), which is a really cool take on the Satanic Panic. It's a story I know quite well, having, well, been around back then, and also read and watched a lot about it after the fact. Her approach is different, though; she interviews people who were not main characters in the drama but were nonetheless affected.
My favourite episode so far has been the second episode, "Marylyn Remembers." I knew the story of Michelle Remembers, the book responsible for the idea that Satanic ritual abuse victims were repressing their memories, and of the relationship between Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, who grossly abused his professional responsibilities and ultimately married her. What I didn't know was anything about his wife at the time, Marylyn, who Sarah tracks down for her take on the story. She's clear-eyed and insightful after all these years about her experiences, and despite the true crime label on the show, Sarah's interview is warm and compassionate, telling a very human story of betrayal amidst an imaginary epic battle of good vs. evil.
It's funny to think of this as a history podcast (again, since I was around for it!) but of course there are modern parallels, and Sarah is not subtle about drawing them.
My favourite episode so far has been the second episode, "Marylyn Remembers." I knew the story of Michelle Remembers, the book responsible for the idea that Satanic ritual abuse victims were repressing their memories, and of the relationship between Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist Lawrence Pazder, who grossly abused his professional responsibilities and ultimately married her. What I didn't know was anything about his wife at the time, Marylyn, who Sarah tracks down for her take on the story. She's clear-eyed and insightful after all these years about her experiences, and despite the true crime label on the show, Sarah's interview is warm and compassionate, telling a very human story of betrayal amidst an imaginary epic battle of good vs. evil.
It's funny to think of this as a history podcast (again, since I was around for it!) but of course there are modern parallels, and Sarah is not subtle about drawing them.
Reading Wednesday
Nov. 26th, 2025 06:53 amsabotabbyJust finished: To Leave a Warrior Behind: The Life and Stories of Charles R. Saunders, the Man Who Rewrote Fantasy by Jon Tattrie. This was so good. Saunders was a fascinating person both on and off the page, but also the biography is really well written and a page-turner. I don't have a lot to add beyond that you'll like it if you're at all interested in genre fiction, Black social movements, and/or the history of Black communities in Halifax. Or just interesting people in general.
The second is that a lot of the advice amounts to "write better," with no real suggestions for that. Like, he quotes part of a Churchill speech to talk about inspiring leaders, and one of the exercises is "give your character an inspiring speech." How. Tell me how. Or at least analyze the Churchill speech to talk about what's working in it.
The problem with talking about emotion in writing is that this is built often through a prolonged time with the characters, so if you quote excerpts from books no one has read (there are a few classics in there, but a lot of the examples are from books I'd never read, like Christian fiction), you need context. This is something Klein does very well in her book—she talks about the well-known ones that we'd all have encountered, like the awful wizard books and The Fault In Our Stars and the Hunger Games, but her most detailed analysis is a book she edited called Marcelo In the Real World. Assuming no one has read it (I'd never heard of it), she not only analyzes lengthy passages, but sets up the entire context of the story so we can see why those passages work. Whereas Maass quotes a paragraph and assumes we'll get the emotion, whereas my reaction is, "who are these people and why should I care?"
But most of all, it's very shallow for a book about, well, feelings. He warns away from sending your characters to overly dark places or making them overly dark people, and the autobiographical sketches suggest an upper-middle class, cishet, white, cozy life. Readers want to feel connected and inspired by your characters, so they should be positive and inspirational.
I'm sorry what.
I was hoping, in a book like this, to get a sense of how to better twist the knife. His breakdown of The Fault Of Our Stars amounts to "we feel sad because of how these kids lived, not how they die." Really? Is that all you take from it, emotionally speaking?
One passage really stands out to me, and that's an incident where he describes trying to pay for tickets for a game that his young son really wants to see, only he's lost his wallet on the subway. His wife is with him but doesn't have her wallet. He is faced with a moment of panic at the prospect of disappointing his son.
Okay, that's pretty good! I like the idea of investing relatively low-stakes moments with emotion. Only...he goes on to talk about something else, and then adds "by the way my wife had her wallet after all so she paid and I regained my cool and we all saw the game." Which, I'm sure is what happened, but why tell the story if that's the ending?
If I were writing it, off the top of my head, why not have the parents argue, the wife codependent on her husband, the husband irresponsible to leave his wallet on the subway. It could get public, ugly, and explosive. And then the child starts crying, more upset at the prospect of his parents fighting than missing the game. In an upbeat story, they realize that their son is the most important thing and stop fighting in order to comfort him. Or in a more adult story, they make up, coldly, but the resentment continues to fester, and the absent wallets become a metaphor for patriarchal control. Anything other than "oh it all turned out to be fine."
So yeah this book didn't do it for me.
Currently reading: The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The library gods sent me a chaser after that last one. It's about two generations of women; Minerva, in 1998, lives on a rather beautiful and extremely haunted campus, researching a forgotten author who was a contemporary of Lovecraft. In 1908, her great-grandmother, Alba, lives on a farm and years for the elegant, sophisticated life that her uncle leads in the city. I've just hit the point where Minerva runs into the wealthy son of a university donor who knew the author and has been invited to brunch with the family, and Alba's uncle has come to live with them (and maybe convince her brother to sell the family farm). Anyway, it's SMG, obviously I'm into it.
The Emotional Craft of Fiction: How to Write the Story Beneath the Surface by Donald Maass. And now I am going to go on a rant for a bit.
This was one of two craft books that another author recommended to me (the other being The Magic Words by Cheryl B. Klein, which actually was quite good). Maass is a well-known literary agent who runs a well-known literary agency so I think it's important to read what he has to say. However this...not good. Bad even. My initial impression was "eh, there's some good advice in here" and gradually shifted to "maybe this is why not enough books by BIPOC and/or queer authors getting traditionally published???"
I have a number of criticisms, the first being that the book could have been half the length if he'd just cut the lengthy vague personal opinions and autobiographic rambles. It's not concise. He'll take a metaphor and stretch it across several pages while admitting it's not a great metaphor. Why? Was he getting paid by the word? Unclear.
This was one of two craft books that another author recommended to me (the other being The Magic Words by Cheryl B. Klein, which actually was quite good). Maass is a well-known literary agent who runs a well-known literary agency so I think it's important to read what he has to say. However this...not good. Bad even. My initial impression was "eh, there's some good advice in here" and gradually shifted to "maybe this is why not enough books by BIPOC and/or queer authors getting traditionally published???"
I have a number of criticisms, the first being that the book could have been half the length if he'd just cut the lengthy vague personal opinions and autobiographic rambles. It's not concise. He'll take a metaphor and stretch it across several pages while admitting it's not a great metaphor. Why? Was he getting paid by the word? Unclear.
The second is that a lot of the advice amounts to "write better," with no real suggestions for that. Like, he quotes part of a Churchill speech to talk about inspiring leaders, and one of the exercises is "give your character an inspiring speech." How. Tell me how. Or at least analyze the Churchill speech to talk about what's working in it.
The problem with talking about emotion in writing is that this is built often through a prolonged time with the characters, so if you quote excerpts from books no one has read (there are a few classics in there, but a lot of the examples are from books I'd never read, like Christian fiction), you need context. This is something Klein does very well in her book—she talks about the well-known ones that we'd all have encountered, like the awful wizard books and The Fault In Our Stars and the Hunger Games, but her most detailed analysis is a book she edited called Marcelo In the Real World. Assuming no one has read it (I'd never heard of it), she not only analyzes lengthy passages, but sets up the entire context of the story so we can see why those passages work. Whereas Maass quotes a paragraph and assumes we'll get the emotion, whereas my reaction is, "who are these people and why should I care?"
But most of all, it's very shallow for a book about, well, feelings. He warns away from sending your characters to overly dark places or making them overly dark people, and the autobiographical sketches suggest an upper-middle class, cishet, white, cozy life. Readers want to feel connected and inspired by your characters, so they should be positive and inspirational.
I'm sorry what.
I was hoping, in a book like this, to get a sense of how to better twist the knife. His breakdown of The Fault Of Our Stars amounts to "we feel sad because of how these kids lived, not how they die." Really? Is that all you take from it, emotionally speaking?
One passage really stands out to me, and that's an incident where he describes trying to pay for tickets for a game that his young son really wants to see, only he's lost his wallet on the subway. His wife is with him but doesn't have her wallet. He is faced with a moment of panic at the prospect of disappointing his son.
Okay, that's pretty good! I like the idea of investing relatively low-stakes moments with emotion. Only...he goes on to talk about something else, and then adds "by the way my wife had her wallet after all so she paid and I regained my cool and we all saw the game." Which, I'm sure is what happened, but why tell the story if that's the ending?
If I were writing it, off the top of my head, why not have the parents argue, the wife codependent on her husband, the husband irresponsible to leave his wallet on the subway. It could get public, ugly, and explosive. And then the child starts crying, more upset at the prospect of his parents fighting than missing the game. In an upbeat story, they realize that their son is the most important thing and stop fighting in order to comfort him. Or in a more adult story, they make up, coldly, but the resentment continues to fester, and the absent wallets become a metaphor for patriarchal control. Anything other than "oh it all turned out to be fine."
So yeah this book didn't do it for me.
Currently reading: The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. The library gods sent me a chaser after that last one. It's about two generations of women; Minerva, in 1998, lives on a rather beautiful and extremely haunted campus, researching a forgotten author who was a contemporary of Lovecraft. In 1908, her great-grandmother, Alba, lives on a farm and years for the elegant, sophisticated life that her uncle leads in the city. I've just hit the point where Minerva runs into the wealthy son of a university donor who knew the author and has been invited to brunch with the family, and Alba's uncle has come to live with them (and maybe convince her brother to sell the family farm). Anyway, it's SMG, obviously I'm into it.