The Antisocial Socialist

Another fairly meh episode, and not referencing a particular case as far as I'm aware. Which, given some of the things they've done with real cases, is maybe a blessing.

We do get some quality UofT though!

( Whole Lotta Love )

This one is. Uh. It's mediocre as a plot but absolutely horrific and irresponsible in the context of the case it's based on. Worse, it knows that and hangs a lampshade on it. But it also has some redeeming qualities, so read on if you can deal with the real case involving the murder of a child.

( Up To Snuff )

After having taken a wee break to watch some movies and the Great Pottery Throwdown (excellent telly btw), I am officially Back On My Bullshit.

Okay episode four of Law & Order Toronto: Criminal Intent, entitled "Forget Me Not," was...good? That's two decent episodes in a row. Granted I'm grading on a curve because, and I can't say this often enough, this is low-budget trashy copaganda, but I actually enjoyed this one as a story. And this is the first time that neither I nor Reddit have been able to determine what this is based on, so it's possible that the writers actually made up a story.

Also this deals with care homes and dementia, so if this is a sensitive topic for you, maybe skip it.

( Forget Me Not )

Fiction

1.The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann
2. Invisible Line, Su J. Sokol
3. Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror, Dianna Gunn (ed.)
4. Neosynthesis, Bryan Chaffin (ed.)
5. Changelog, Rich Larson
6. Sequel: An Anthology, Chenise Puchailo (ed.)

Books With Pictures In 'Em

1. The High Desert, James Spooner

 I have had this one open in a tab most of the week so I would remember to tell you about it. Podside Picnic's "Minnesota NoICE" interviews naomikritzer , lydamorehouse , Marissa Lingen, and J.R. Dawson about their experiences during ICE's occupation of the Twin Cities during Operation Metro Surge.

Look. I think these people are heroes. I think every single person who fought back against a fascist paramilitary that was abducting people from their homes and workplaces, torturing them, putting them in concentration camps, sometimes gunning them down in the streets, is a hero. Any act of resistance that throws sand in those gears is worthy of celebration, and there were a lot of those acts.

The thing is as you can tell by the tagging, I know two of these heroes as people. That to me is what really blew me away listening to this episode. I am currently reading a book about resistance to the Nazis that does amazing work humanizing each and every character, but I don't know any of them personally, so it's easy to imagine that they are somehow larger than life, special people who have qualities that I can never possess. Whereas the folks interviewed in this episode are people basically like me (well, more successful in their writing careers lol) and it was genuinely empowering listening to people just describing what they did. Because it's absolutely heroic but it is heroism that required no particular special skills or background or even executive functioning. A thing needed to be done, they did the thing, they are still doing the thing. It's enough to make you weep.

You still need to do the laundry when the fascists roll in, and this is a podcast episode about that, and everyone should give it a listen.

Just finished: Nothing.

Currently reading: Still working my way through Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. I'm now up to the Warsaw Ghetto, so of course it's bleak stuff, with our protagonists having increasingly fewer less-bad choices as the Nazi regime closes in on them.

Of course a lot leading up to this is the question of "when do we flee?" a question that definitely bears no relevance to anyone today. The answer is more or less implied in the title and, well, we know what happened with the Warsaw Ghetto. A few activists were deemed too valuable to let die and were smuggled out. Many had left before. There was never going to be any way to save everyone, or even most people.

It's a weirdly good way to connect with my heritage. I relate to the fact that even in the worst moment in history my people have ever known, we still found time to fight with Zionists and tankies. There is light even in the darkness.

This one was good by Law & Order standards, in that while the dialogue and acting were quite bad* and I called the murderer almost immediately, it actually performed a socially useful function.

However, it deals with infanticide and I'm putting everything under a cut.

( Uncertain Justice )

This one's about crypto, which admittedly makes my eyes glaze over even though it's really important. It's just that I know enough about economics to know that all money is fake, but crypto is especially fake, and really has all the downsides of money without the advantages of money. Also everyone involved is an asshole, much more so than is depicted in this episode. It's based largely on Andean Medjedovic (and good job casting someone who looks a great deal like him) and the many attempts to find the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

Warning that this episode discusses autism in ways that are fucked up and shitty.

( WAGMI )

Just finished: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This one has been on my list forever just because of the author, so I never looked up what it was about or anything like that. If I had, I'd have read it sooner. It's a queer feminist retelling of "The Two Sisters"/"The Twa Sisters," a.k.a. Loreena McKennitt's "The Bonny Swans," which I loved as a teenage goth and still love as an adult goth. It's so immersive in its writing that I somehow failed to connect there being two daughters with one suitor, a miller with a daughter, a river, a land dispute, and a harper until about halfway through when the realization hit that El-Mohtar is at least goth-adjacent and approximately my age lol. 

Anyway, it's about Esther and Ysabel, two sisters whose family owns a willow grove (willow being used for "grammar," a.k.a. magic) downstream from Faerie. Esther is being courted by the village incel but is in love with Rin, a shapeshifting Fae who plays the harp and has become enchanted by Esther's singing. Esther would kill or die for her younger sister, and the bond between them is gorgeously written.

Tangentially, "The Bonny Swans" always confused me as a kid because it's stitched together from a bunch of versions of the story, so the father is a farmer in the first verse but the king in the last, and it's unclear whether what the miller's daughter pulls from the river is a swan or a woman, and the novella actually goes a fair way to resolving some of these contradictions. But I also noticed that this is low-key a trans narrative, because in the first verse the farmer has "daughters, one two three," and in the last verse there's no middle daughter, but there's a brother named Hugh. This particular story just leaves out the middle child but there's a free plot idea for you if you want one.

Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoridou. Apparently feminist fairy tale retellings is the Nebula theme this year. This is Bluebeard; a modern day woman telling a story to her son about his father, flashing back to a dreamy narrative about a man who curses the land wherever he goes. It's haunting and poetic and unflinching in its depiction of not just domestic abuse but why women stay in abusive relationships. I thought it dragged at the end but was so well-written that I'd absolutely recommend it.

Currently reading: Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple. I just started this last night after pre-ordering it the second I knew of its existence. It's a detailed, illustrated history of the Jewish Bund and the concept of "doikayt," or hereness, the formation of Jewish identity in the diaspora. Obviously this is very relevant and very up my alley and this is the right person to tell the story.

Well looks like this sorry, battered world is still there, at least this part of the world, so here's what I'm reading I guess.

Just finished: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. This whipped. Blood-soaked historical fiction set in the early 1900s as a Pikuni vampire tangles with a Lutheran minister in the wake of a horrific massacre. All of the trigger warnings, obviously as it's quite literally visceral, which is not the most upsetting thing about it. Jones is really quite a brilliant writer.

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. This is not the kind of thing that I normally like but works well as a chaser to the previous book, in that it's low-stakes, cozy, and fun. It's about a group of emancipated sentient robots, a car (also sentient), and a human who take over a ghost kitchen in the aftermath of a war between California and the rest of the US. If they don't pay off their debts, they'll be re-sold into slavery, but this is not the kind of book where that happens. It works for me largely because of the descriptions of the biang biang noodles, but it's also about the big theme of the year, which is who counts as a person.

Currently reading: About to start The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar.