This Is Beautiful: Birthday Parties

 This past weekend I hosted a birthday party. Ok it isn't exactly news that parties are fun if you're into it, but I'm really happy that I was able to get different groups of friends together and they all got along. People that work in my lab were able to meet friends that I do theater with! And everyone was cool with it. It's just really nice to see other people having a nice time and knowing that you made this possible. Having my hands in many different pots allows me to do this, and it isn't often that I feel like all of these different parts of me come together. It's really nice. 

“The Hidden Oracle” by Rick Riordan

This is the first book of The Trials of Apollo series! I’ve never read this one from Riordan. We’re now getting into new territory, I’m excited! This whole book is all from Apollo’s perspective which is really different, and honestly I was pretty amused throughout. There are these haikus at the start of each chapter talking about how he feels or what happens in the chapter, and it’s a nice nod to him being the God of Poetry without it getting overwhelming. A big part of the story is how Apollo is a god, but he can still grow and change and become less annoying. So I wonder if his narration will get less amusing as we go as he learns to be a decent person. I think Riordan can manage that balance, but we will see.

Also this book is really GAY, Apollo is canonically bi and talks about how he likes girls and guys, plus Will and Nico are dating and really sweet together. Having a bi protagonist who is also a god? This is really great to see, I bet it means a lot to teens that are questioning their sexuality.

Anyways plot of the book is that Apollo is dumped somewhere in Manhattan as a mortal boy. There he meets Meg, another demigod, and they travel to Camp Half-Blood with the help of Percy (who has a minor role in the book, and good for him to be honest he needs a break). At camp, the Oracle isn’t working and campers have started going missing. Apollo figures out that the woods have become the Grove of Dodona, an ancient way of getting prophecies, and it’s been calling to demigods hence the disappearances. He travels to the woods to figure it out, and finds out that his son, Nero, from Rome wants to control the Grove and is there too. Plus he’s Meg’s step-father and has been manipulating her this whole time. Meg runs away at the end; Apollo wants to go after her but doesn’t know how. Just then, Leo and Calypso return and the plan is for Apollo to get a ride to the West Coast with them!

This book hit a really nice balance of old and new friends, great examples are Percy and Leo appearing but not taking starring roles. It allows us to see some familiar faces and get to know the new cast of characters. The ending battle is sort of underwhelming, like the ending fight in the last series. It feels like the author threw that in just to have it (honestly I didn’t even think it was worth including in the summary). I am excited for the next one though! This series is shaping up to be a good time.

This Is Beautiful: The Heart of Robin Hood

 Alright this past weekend I saw a pretty cool show at my university, "The Heart of Robin Hood." Now this wasn't an entirely perfect production, but there were a lot of really cool things about it. Plus it's just nice to see a show about my obsessions haha.

The good things included the scenic design being really cool. It was in a forest with a ton of ramps, and they had an alcove in the back for a band to play during the show. It also was just a fun production with a lot of funny aspects and some camp. There was this one character, Pierre, who was very funny and constantly broke the fourth wall. In the end, he wraps up the play saying that this show is about how he found his heart, meaning that he found kids that he ends up adopting. Which is really sweet!

The play suffered though from what I think a lot of Robin Hood media suffers from which is that it didn't know what tone it was going with. There was so much camp and silly things, especially in the second half. But the first half involved one man getting beheaded, another losing a tongue really bloodily, and a person being hanged and physically hanging there. Which does not match up. It's a common issue though, I think a lot of people want to make this an intense story about good and evil, but also the villains are comically incompetent and there's anachronisms throw around to be self-aware. And you can't really have both.

The other thing I want to mention is that the play was interesting because it mostly was about Marion, and her dressing as a boy and going into the woods as Martin, who is the idealized Robin Hood. But while that's cool and all, the play is still "The Heart of Robin Hood." I guess we shouldn't mistake who the original legend is about!

But still it was such a fun time, and it kind of was about storytelling and nature which is rad. I had a lot of fun.

"Shadows of Self" by Brandon Sanderson

This book is the sequel to The Alloy of Law and similarly I did get it for free off of Tor.com. However, this one feels very different, I think the author wrote the two pretty far apart temporally. And I suspect that he changed his mind with where he wanted the series to go. One big change is that the narration is slightly different, instead of full chapters from a characters POV we get sections from multiple depending on what’s happening (one isn’t necessarily better but I think indicates a different approach to this book).

The book starts after the previous one: Wax is a constable, Wayne is tagging around with him, and Marasi has gone into law as well (she’s an assistant at the moment). Then there’s been a mysterious mass murder and Wax is on the case when he receives communication (a full conversation really) from Harmony, this universe’s god. (This is where things start to get weird.) It turns out that one of Harmony’s servants has gone rogue and is doing the killing. Their name is Bleeder and they want to free the world from Harmony’s dictatorship. (There’s a LOT about their religion and things like that in this book, I wasn’t able to follow all of it but you get the general idea that they’re up against a very powerful supernatural being.) It turns out that Bleeder was the governor all along and they end up having the constables take charge instead and use the mob mentality of the city (stirred up by Bleeder) to root out corruption. Meanwhile Wax is facing down Bleeder and finds out that Bleeder used to be his old lover Lessie out in the Roughs. Wax thought he killed Lessie and then ends up killing Bleeder. Again.

I honestly liked the original basis of a fantasy mystery book more so than the mystical gods stuff, so take all of this with a grain of salt. It is a cool way though to explore free will, for a lot of the book Wax is dealing with how Harmony tells him to do things, or puts him in situations, just to fulfill a plan of his. This connects to Bleeder who wants to end this and give people full autonomy/chaos really, but that comes with a lot of murder and stuff.

I don’t know, we’ll see where this goes. I didn’t love the turn that this took, having the god stuff was pretty heavy handed for what the author wanted to talk about. But I do have the next one so I might as well read it.

This Is Beautiful: Holiday Celebrations

 I'm a bit of a Scrooge around the holidays, but there is something nice about these. I think it's the time being spent together, especially after this semester when I haven't had a ton of time to hang out with people. So it's making me a little less of a Scrooge. I still have a ton of work before the holiday itself, but the celebrations have already started and I'm enjoying them.

“The Alloy of Law” by Brandon Sanderson

This is another free ebook that I got from Tor.com. I didn’t realize that this author worked on the Wheel of Time series! That made me pretty excited to dive in.

This is essentially a steampunk mystery novel about Wax, a lawman who has spent time in the Roughs until accidentally shooting his partner and coming home to settle down. His old friend Wayne comes to annoy him about a villainous crew kidnapping women and stealing things, so he ends up getting dragged back into it when his fiancée is among the captured. Her cousin Marasi also joins them as a student of law. They end up saving the day and solving it, but all of the women except for his fiancée are still out there in captivity. And Wax learns that his uncle that he thought was dead is behind it all.

 It's a really compelling story, and the magic system with using different metals to do different things (restore health, speed up time, act like a magnet and push/pull steel…) is quite cool. I really enjoyed that aspect, you can tell that the author put a lot of work into that part of the world building.

My main critique is that the romance between Wax and Marasi felt forced. Marasi plays the girl who is so flustered by this guy, flustered by everything really, but falls for him and he thinks he’s damaged goods so he turns her down. It's not even that it's necessarily bad, it's just sooooooo tired. And it's not that great of a trope! Not to mention that Wax killing his previous partner (who was female) feels like "kill the girl so that the man can have some character growth" and that I don't need. It's just you can tell that the author is male when you read this.

 The names are also a lot of fun while reading, there's Wax and Wayne obviously. But there's also the bad guy Max versus good guy Wax. That's all I noticed on first pass, I bet there's others I missed.

The whole idea of an alloy is a prevalent theme as well, that you can mix together two different things to create something new. It gets remarked on a lot in the dialogue in relation to character growth and in relation to the metals themselves since metal figures heavily in the magic system.

Other interesting thing to note is that there's sections from newspapers of the area that I’m sure have SOMETHING to do with the story but I can’t figure it out. They're just snippets of articles and some ads and I know there's something here but I can't figure it out!

 Ok so having thrown all these thoughts together, I adore the characters and the world and will keep reading. There's three more books in this series and I'm excited for them!

This Is Beautiful: "How to Argue With a Racist"

 I'm going to eventually write a full post about this book, but I absolutely loved reading How to Argue With a Racist by Adam Rutherford. As a genetics student who also does DEI, I've noticed more and more bigots using genetics in their arguments. But I also don't feel that my PhD program has really fully prepared me to go toe-to-toe with these people since you inevitably end up getting a really narrow expertise in these programs. This book helped with that. There aren't any super complicated concepts, I learned about these in class and I'm sure the broader public could keep up here, but it covers details that I didn't know or weren't mentioned in class. It's an excellent read; I'm recommending it to others in my program!

“The Last Stand” by Paris Hansch

I got my hands on this book by signing up for Hansch’s mailing list (you can join me here). It is a prequel to her other books about the same world. I was not totally sure what to make of the book itself, I do have my complaints about it but most of them are inherent in what this book is designed to do. Which is to actually purchase her other novels.

The book follows Celia who is the lead priestess at a dragon temple. Her powers as such include manipulating an element and being able to influence others’ emotions. When the book starts she is rather shaken as she just used her powers to kill an assassin. Which is traumatizing enough as it is, but she also made a vow to not use her powers to kill and broke that vow. She immediately has to go from that to swearing her daughter in as a dragon priestess, turns out that her daughter is very talented as well. She then gets word that the Empress is trying to destroy her community, because also earlier that week she awakened the powers in two individuals who then went on to try and assassinate the Empress. The book ends with the Empress killing everyone in the village, the only survivor is Celia’s daughter who discovers that no one remembers her village or her at all in the aftermath.

My main issue is that everything happens so fast. It goes from peace to annihilation in maybe 20 pages or so, which seems a little overblown and ridiculous. If there was a history of animosity, I could find that believable, but the whole premise is that nothing wrong was really done on the part of these people. The incident that sparked this was told through a flashback, which does not really help and mostly muddies the timeline a little bit.

There also is not time to get to know these characters. This could make sense if the prequel was to a story featuring these characters more, but I think the sequels take place hundreds of years later. There is this one character, Tobias, who is implied to have instigated the annihilation and assassinations but that is not resolved by the end. So unless he lives for several hundred years I do not know if that loose end will ever get wrapped up.

Anyways so I am not sure what to make of this book. It was an enjoyable read for sure, and it is short and free. But I don’t know if I’ll be diving into her other books just right now.

This Is Beautiful: Acting

 Last week I was in another play! It was "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie. I was playing both Marston and Narracott, which even combined is the smallest role in the play but that's alright. I couldn't have fit anything bigger into my schedule.

Narracott is only on stage briefly, he's some boat guy mostly. And Marston is a classic frat boy asshole without a single brain cell. I surprisingly had a lot of fun with this role! Because he's just so dumb he's so easy to make fun of and just be in character while he's confused or distracted with different situations. And he surprisingly has some fun lines, nothing really beats the "wizard car" or the enigma of a line that is "tricky, what? I say, wizard place for a holiday, what?" Plus then I get to die brutally on stage before shit gets real which is pretty fun.

I do think that all of the recent acting that I've done has made me much more confident as an actor, which is cool to see. Well by recent acting I think I mostly mean playing Puck, by far the largest and most intense role that I've had. I feel like that gave me a bit of a boost and now I can take minor roles like Marson and still have a ton of fun and make choices with them. 

Anyways it's a good time and I'm having fun. I am glad to have some free time back in my life though.

Madison, Wisconsin

Last week I was at a conference in Madison for a few days. It was a wonderful time, I ended up really liking the city. I cannot totally tell if that is because this was a great place to have a conference or if I actually like the place, but regardless I had a great time.

The town itself feels like a small college town. I was really amazed how few cars there are around and how quiet it is. Most of it is very walkable, especially if you’re sticking to the downtown area near where the university is. There is a bus system, I never really used it though. The airport is maybe 20 minutes from downtown, and since I did not have the time to go far away I just never needed it.

The conference I was participating in was at the Monona Terrace Convention Center, which was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and has a rooftop garden! There are a few other Wright places around, I did not have time to check them out, but still really cool. It is also very close to downtown which was nice as I could skip a session and just head to a museum.

In the center of town there is the capitol building. It’s a huge structure and really recognizable as it looks very similar to the capitol in DC. Taking a tour is free, but you can also just hop in and wander around. The building is gorgeous, there is so much marble and fancy rock everywhere! In the center there are some panels with historical information, but the tour also gets you into areas like the governor’s conference room, the courtroom, the senate, and others. And the tour guide gives you tidbits of history about Wisconsin as a state as well as Madison. You can also climb up to get onto the roof and see incredible views of the city! Well worth a visit for sure.

Close to the University of Wisconsin is the Chazen Museum of Art. It is run by the school and definitely has the feel of a small but well cared for university art museum. I think the biggest name that they have is an Andy Warhol but do not let that deter you, the collection is still fun to wander through. The best part, for me anyways, was a temporary exhibit about discrimination and exclusion at the university. It was incredibly well done, they go from the beginning where the school purchased land from the indigenous people up until more recent events and testimonials (I think the most recent I saw was from 2018). You can even look at it online here. It’s really great to see an institution taking the time to examine and document their history instead of covering it up.

The other art museum that I went to was the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMOCA). This was a cool museum, it is located roughly between the Chazen and the capitol building on State Street, which is a main street of sorts for shops and restaurants. (Usually it is crawling with students though.) There were also two exhibits addressing race in there as well, one curated by Black female artists and one by a Black man. Both were really cool and incredible to walk through. And there is a sculpture garden on the roof! My one complaint was that there were multiple installations that basically required you to walk into a dark room and feel uncomfortable, after the first one of those I really did not want to enter the second but did my best. It just feels like a lot for a visitor to take in during a small amount of time.

I have to say, usually with the Midwest there is the “Midwest nice” where people act courteous but are also super racist and I did not get that vibe here. Everyone was super friendly, and with all of the art installations about race and just the sheer volume of “Black Lives Matter” signs around I felt as though the city was making an effort to be inclusive. Maybe that is not true of everyone, maybe that changes the second you leave downtown, but it was nice to see some effort being made.

I really enjoyed my time in Madison, enough that I would definitely consider visiting again. I only saw the three different places and never even left the downtown area (there is also a zoo and a botanic gardens). Hopefully I can come back soon!

This Is Beautiful: Live Theater

 This past weekend I went to see TWO live shows. One was "Bakkhai" that a student theater group was putting on, and one was "Much Ado About Nothing" that a local theater troupe was performing. Both were so fun! And they were very different vibes as well, "Bakkhai" is a cautionary tale about not making a god angry while "Much Ado" is a Shakespeare comedy. But both of them really made me appreciate the difference with live theater and having people physically in front of you doing the motions in real time. It is so different from watching it on a screen because you are there and get the small shock when actors yell at you or can see them sweat under the lights. And it feels so much more immersive that way. Live theater is awesome. That's all.

“The Border Keeper” by Kerstin Hall

Look, I love the free ebooks that I can get from Tor.com, but I’ve now had two in a row that I don’t really love and I think it speaks to how when you are just getting a random book, they can be hit or miss.

I don’t even know how I would sum up this book as I had no idea what was happening a lot of the time. There’s this man and he goes to the Border Keeper mentioned in the title with a request to find someone. She takes him into another world, I’m not sure if it’s like the world of the living and the world of the dead or a realistic world and a fantasy world or what the distinction is, but they go over there and do some things and eventually find her. How he knows that he found her I do not know, it just is stated in the text. And there’s also a subplot where the Border Keeper accidentally split her child’s soul in eight pieces and they are all hunting her down. At the end of the book the man defeats these pieces, I also do not know how this happens. But it’s implied he spontaneously becomes a god.

I think the main issue is that we never get enough information to actually figure out what is happening in the book. It is not a very long book either, so we do not have enough time to become attached to the characters or the world before getting lost in the sauce as it were. The result is a confusing mess where I just figure I should finish the book even if I could not tell you what happened in it.

Once again, there is a sequel. I will not be looking to read it.

This Is Beautiful: Taking a Break

 Alright look I'm starting to get burnt out to a crisp. It's getting to the point where I am now structuring breaks into my schedule, which I usually don't do. And it's working pretty well for me so far. So would recommend. Just plan to do the minimum amount of work and give yourself a break periodically, you deserve it!

Los Angeles

 Last week I was at a conference at Las Angeles. It was my first time in the city and my first time on the west coast! It was an interesting trip, I don't think I loved the city itself, but it was fun for less than a week.

The best part was the food by far. I had some amazing ramen that probably ruined every other ramen experience for me. And we found great takoyaki that made me really sad that I live in an area without a good takoyaki place. I wanted to get a Korean dog from K-town, but never found the time unfortunately. There also was this incredible Lebanese place that we stopped by on our last day. So good!

By far the worst part is the transportation. It's really hard to get to most places by foot since there's so much sprawl, but there aren't a ton of public transit options. I did see a few street cars, and some buses, but not enough where they were convenient. So if you want to get far you have to call a cab. And then you hit the traffic. It takes so long to get anywhere just because of all the cars in the road. There's so many highways, and they are just all packed. You have to plan really carefully in order to get anywhere.

It's also a city that really has not dealt with homelessness very well. There's architecture everywhere designed to deter homeless individuals from staying places, spikes on the benches and things like that. There are usually a few tents on each street corner. It's honestly really sad to see. There were a bunch of COVID-19 testing sites on the street, but I also never saw anyone manning those. 

Then there was all the smog. I thought I caught a cold or something while I was there because my throat hurt, but then I went home and recovered pretty quickly. I literally think I just couldn't handle the air! We went up to the observatory and when you look down, you just see it as a blanket covering the whole city!

So it was a fine trip, it was nice to get out of the house. But I doubt that I'll be going out of my way to return to LA anytime soon.

This Is Beautiful: Playing Music

 So last week I was away at a conference in LA. I honestly didn't love LA, and I didn't love the conference because as fun as it was and as helpful as it was, it was pretty big and overwhelming. But when I got back I had a band concert the next day. I wasn't looking forward to it, I missed the last rehearsal and I was pretty tired. But it was a great time! I felt good about the performance, it felt fun, and it was energizing! It honestly was a great reminder that I love doing performances like this, and I love making music with other people even if the conditions aren't ideal. We have our holiday concert coming up in a few weeks, I hope that one is just as rewarding as this!

“The Widow Queen” by Elzbieta Cherezinska

This is another book that I got for free from Tor.com, and it’s a much longer book than the ones that they usually send out! This is essentially a fictionalized history of Northern Europe, focusing on Norway, Sweden, Poland, and a little of England.

The book follows the two children of a Duke of Poland, the son goes on to be Poland’s first king, and the daughter is married off to the king of Sweden. They also have some half-siblings that the book follows for part of it as well. Importantly, the daughter, Sigrid as she’s called in Sweden, falls in love with Olav who is trying to reclaim the throne of Finland. But they aren’t married and are separated. Sigrid’s husband though then sacrifices himself to Odin, and she ends up having to then marry the king of Norway to keep the peace. It ends after she gives birth to her third son.

This book wants to be Game of Thrones sooooooo badly. It has multiple protagonists in different countries, follows a bunch of characters vying for power, and has so much unnecessary sex. From the first chapter, there’s a scene where the two Polish kids are watching their parents have sex, and I could not tell you what the purpose of that scene was in the greater sense of the story. This continues as the kids grow up and become parents, there’s a lot of information about their sex lives that I could have done without.

There also is a total lack of regard for the servants. The two Polish children have a matching set of servants that follow them around. The daughter’s is mute as well. There’s no interest whatsoever in the servant’s life or opinions. I think there’s a description of her communicating wordlessly maybe once. It is assumed that she cares for the princess who becomes the queen, but since this book is claiming to be a feminist retelling of history focusing on the often overlooked queen, it seems incomplete to me without going into detail on the servants who are the backbone of the household.

I respect the author for trying to fill in the gaps and return some history to the queen that has been overlooked by the history books. But it is hard for me to have any interest when I do not care about the characters, either because I do not know them well enough or they just keep having sex. So as a whole, this book fails to follow through on its goal.

There is a sequel, and potentially a whole series. I however, will not be reading it as I do not wish to spend any more time on this story.

This Is Beautiful: Rite of Spring

 I saw a dance performance of Stravinski's "Rite of Spring" last weekend and it was incredible! It was performed with an all-African cast and it was such a powerhouse of talent. The dancers were all on dirt that was spread across the stage, and I thought this was brilliant because it so fundamentally changed their relationship to the ground now that they could feel it, bury their feet in it, and fling it around. You could also then see their footprints and track the dancers to an extent. The costumes were incredible as well, I loved the choice to put all of the women in light dresses that you could see the dirt and sweat stains on, while the men were in dark pants. And of course the soloist at the end was incredible, such a talented actor and dancer. Definitely not a performance to miss!

“Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture” by Sherronda J. Brown

Just finished this book in time for Ace Week! I have been looking forward to this since I found out early this year that Brown got a book deal and was releasing this. It’s a really amazing book, I’ve been tweeting about it as I go through and it’s been a great experience.

The book is written in a really accessible way, while still getting into deeper ideas and themes. All of the chapters are relatively short, and they open with a quick anecdote or illustration of the topic. This would actually make it work quite well as a series of essays, where you can separate out the chapters.

As you can tell from the title, it focuses a lot on race, and how particularly Black individuals are hypersexualized and fetishized. Many people doubt that Black aces exist because of this, and the book is a really strong reclamation of this identity. Brown in particular focuses on the experiences of Black women, and I think reading this text will be so powerful for that demographic.

My favorite chapter was probably the one on asexuality with historical characters. In it Brown goes into two historically queer, Black figures and creates the argument that they could be read as asexual. However, she doesn't go so far as to force the label on them and put them into this box. Instead she simply creates the space for them to be read as such and that space in and of itself is undeniably queer and ace. Which I agree wholeheartedly with, it was great to see this spelled out while nodding my head vigorously.

This is an excellent read regardless of your orientation, race, or gender. It's so important to understand others' experiences and how these ideas have shaped the way you see others. I hope that there's more books like this on the way, this is hopefully only the beginning of this exploration.

This Is Beautiful: Wynton Marsalis' "All Rise"

 This past weekend I got to see a performance of Wynton Marsalis' symphony "All Rise" at my university, featuring the composer himself on trumpet. It was incredible! There wasn't a single dull moment and you could really hear all of his influences from jazz to blues to classical to everything in between! And seeing the master himself on trumpet was really amazing, I could instantly tell who he was just based on how he used that horn.

Don't skimp on classical music, it has some amazing gems in it and it's just as diverse as any other genre.

“The Blood of Olympus” by Rick Riordan

This book is the final installment of the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan. I knew that I read this when it first came out, but I didn’t really have any memory of it. I realized why after I finished this book, it’s… not a great ending to the series.

There’s a lot of good things, don’t get me wrong, but overall it just doesn’t leave much of an impression. The final battle is kind of separated in two, there’s one battle with everyone’s godly parents that is pretty cool, but then there’s the battle with the Greek and Roman demigods fighting Gaea, the big bad of the series. This final final fight just feels anti-climatic. All that really happens is they rip Gaea out of the earth and from there defeating her is pretty simple. It’s mentioned that there are casualties, sure, but none of them are named characters so it doesn’t really impact the reader. It feels like things are getting wrapped up nice and neat because that’s what you do at the end rather than giving a satisfying ending to the series and the journey that we’ve been on.

One exception though that I want to comment on is Nico’s journey. I didn’t think much about this the first time I read the book, like I said I didn’t remember much. I think I forgot that Nico is revealed to be gay in an earlier book. But throughout this book, the relationship between Nico and Will (a child of Apollo) is really clearly a romantic relationship. Well not yet. But likely soon. I did not notice this at all the first time and it was really lovely to go back and realize that this is actually a great way to show a queer character in a way that doesn’t focus on the queerness as the only aspect of their personality. And it shows so nicely that Nico is opening up more to the people around him and forming friendships.

This is as far as I got the first time that I read Riordan’s books. I’m going to next pick up The Trials of Apollo series, and this will be the first time that I’m reading these so it’ll be very exciting to see what I’ve been missing!

This Is Beautiful: Sophisticated Ladies

 Last weekend I went to see "Sophisticated Ladies" which was a musical revue of Duke Ellington's music. It was a ton of fun! The dancing, music, and production in general was spectacular. I mean it's hard to mess it up with such great music but still good to see.

Only comment was that there was a part at the beginning where different cast voices came up talking about the legacy of Duke Ellington, and it went on just a little too long... Like I get that it's important but the thing was full of "um's" and just took up so much time. But there were other cool allusions to the history of the production, including closing the first act with footage of individuals from the original run! Which was very cool.

Anyways my favorite part were all of the dancers. There was a cast member whose only role was to tap dance (no singing) and he was absolutely amazing! He paid a great tribute to Gregory Hines through his performance. And there was another cast member who incorporated hip-hop stunningly well to his performance, a great way to show how these art forms change over time.

It was fun, it was fabulous, it was a great time!

“An Unnatural Life” by Erin K. Wagner

This is the third and final novella from Tor.com’s sci-fi drop that I read. Honestly this is the one that I had the most issues with. The story is about a lawyer living on Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, and she ends up defending a robotnic, or a robot worker, in court for murder. Everyone sees the robots as inferior and she ends up ostracized and laughed at for trying. Her argument for an appeal on his case is that he didn’t have a jury of his peers, everyone was biased against him. It’s alluded that this argument implies that robots aren’t the same as humans, that he needed to be tried by a jury of AI, and this could throw some robot rights into question. After winning the appeal though, the robot is murdered in prison.

My main sticking point is that there’s a fairly obvious parallel to racism here. Many Black individuals were unfairly convicted because of prejudiced juries, yet they are seen as equals in the eyes of the law now. Why not use that as a precedent to protect against robot rights being stripped? Especially with the prison fights and a near riot in front of the lawyer’s house, the similarities are obvious. So I’m not sure why that didn’t come up, unless the author truly didn’t think of it. Which feels incredibly disappointing. When it comes to things like AI and new life forms, we do in fact have a history of treating even fellow human beings like monsters. It’s not that hard to find it.

Anyways so this was the only novella in the collection that I didn’t love, and two out of three isn’t bad. We shall see what the next one has in store for me!

This Is Beautiful: Event Planning

 This is an odd one but also I am in a rough patch right now and I am having a crisis over what I want to do with my life. But event planning is pretty fun? I mean I have planned events in the past and I think they are an awesome way to do community building and information sharing. But I'm at the stage right now where a bunch of events that have been in the works for a while are all coming together and it is really nice to see that happen. I don't know, that's all I have going for me this week, life's been hard.

“Unlocked” by John Scalzi

This is the second novella in the Tor.com trilogy of sci-fi stories. This one hit a little close to home. The conceit is that this is a collection of interviews about Haden’s Syndrome, a fictional pandemic that wipes out a decent chunk of the world’s population and leaves more “locked in,” a state where their brains are fully functioning but their bodies are completely immobile. It details the onset, progression, and how treatments were developed, as well as the future of the disease. Many experts and patients weigh in.

First thing’s first, this was definitely inspired by COVID-19 in the United States, you cannot convince me otherwise. Haden’s starts with an initial outbreak from an epidemiology conference and the symptoms are different, but otherwise it is so so similar. The initial failure of public health policy to contain it really feels awful having been through it in real life. What’s different through are the treatments that get developed. Haden’s never gets an effective vaccine, but the treatment ends up being that you can hook up a locked in person’s neurons to a lifelike robot suit that they can then move around. This leads to a great solution for the disease, but I really like how the author lays out the additional problems it creates. Now those using the robots get discriminated against, and you can’t use the robots for anything other than Hayden’s which gets into disability rights.

I couldn’t believe how short this story was, less than 80 pages and it hit a lot of different issues. There’s prison reform where inmates are initially used as test subjects for the neurons. There’s virtual social lives versus physical social lives with those locked in finding more supportive communities amongst themselves. There’s intense politics around the funding for research. It’s all so well crafted and well done.

The different voices did all sound pretty similar, no one had a distinctive turn of phrase or anything like that, but that added to the smoothness of the narrative so I don’t think it’s necessary. Overall it was a thought-provoking read and would highly recommend.

This Is Beautiful: Solo Conference Trips

 Alright so I've been a PhD student for a while, I've been to my fair share of conferences. The pandemic has reduced that number, for sure, but I've still been. During my postbac I went to the fruit fly meeting, and I've now attended a few conferences virtually. Last week though I went on my own to a smaller, in person conference, and it blew my mind how much I enjoyed it.

In the past I've only attended really large conferences with hundreds of people, this one was much smaller. There was only one session going on at a time, maybe 2 during lunch, and the poster sessions had maybe 20 posters being presented at once. This is small, the fly meeting had hundreds of attendees! It also was a conference that I went to on my own, none of my other lab members came with me and I didn't know anyone who would be there. (I ended up running into a collaborator, but we just chatted and didn't like hang out or anything.)

The result was I felt much more energized! Usually I practically destroy myself trying to get to every session, but this time I skipped whatever I didn't want to see and wandered around the city (Madison, Wisconsin, I'm sure I'll write about it eventually) or just took a break. And since I knew no one there was no pressure to do everything or look like a slacker. It could be more of a vacation than work.

I need to do this more often, it was so fun and a really lovely way to balance work and travel. And I really like traveling by myself so it wasn't that difficult for me. Time to start looking for next semester I guess!

“A Psalm for the Wild-Built” by Becky Chambers

This is a three part novella that I also grabbed from Tor.com (I know I’m so behind, I really do) all of which are science fiction. This first one isn’t long, maybe a hundred pages or so, and I thought it was a super cute story.

The plot follows Sibling Dex, a monk who decides to leave the monastery and become a tea monk, basically someone who listens to people’s problems and gives them tea. This choice is made almost on an impulse, they’ve had no training whatsoever. At first they’re in over their head, but they master their craft and soon excel at it. But eventually they’re unhappy with this job too, so they decide to head into the wilderness. There Dex runs into a robot called Mosscap who has been tasked with initiating contact between the robots and the humans. History there is that the robots one day all gained consciousness and left the humans to live on their own. Surprisingly, the humans respected this and haven’t tried to make contact since then. Mosscap wants to go around asking humans what they need, to figure out what the relationship between these two communities can look like.

They end up travelling together, both learning about each other’s cultures. When they get to their destination in the woods, Dex finally admits that they don’t know what they’re doing in the woods and have no plan going forward but still feel so unhappy. Mosscap responds by performing his own tea monk service for them. They then head into the human villages together to start Mosscap’s work.

I really enjoyed this story! The idea of monks serving tea and travelling around the different villages is super cute, and the descriptions of Mosscap are honestly adorable. I also really liked seeing their relationship change and blossom. The two of them have a number of conversations about nature, being, and purpose and having the clash of viewpoints between the two of them was enlightening. Mosscap’s whole point is that humans are animals, we don’t have a purpose any more than a bear does. And robots, while being constructed things, are like that as well. While humans are made of genes and cells, they are made of metal and solar power.

Mosscap’s whole philosophy actually falls nicely into what you would call subjectivism in theories about the meaning of life. It’s my personal favorite, so I’m a little biased here. Subjectivism is the idea that you could pick anything you want to be the meaning of your life. That could be sitting in your backyard and counting every blade of grass, it does not matter what it is and it’s different for every person. The robots have an almost identical version of this where robots are known to go off into the woods and spend years watching stalagmites grow and things like that. Dex falls more under the category of objectivism as well as nihilism at points. Objectivism is the idea that some purposes in life are better than others, that you should pursue good things like being nice to people and stuff like that. This is actually what most philosophers agree with these days, in the interest of creating a functioning society. When Dex is freaking out trying to become a good tea monk and serve their god, they are aligning with objectivism. And nihilism is the idea that there is no purpose to life at all, you can do whatever you want and it simply won’t matter in the end. Dex’s crisis over not knowing what they should do aligns nicely with this idea, although they don’t wallow in it for very long. The story actually serves as a really nice primer for these ideas!

My one issue is that there’s a bit of a loose end that doesn’t get wrapped up. The best way to describe Dex’s rationale for leaving is that they want to hear crickets chirping. They don’t find any by the end, and it doesn’t even get mentioned while they’re in the wilderness. Which can be easily explained by saying that it was never really about the crickets, but still feels strange to not address it.

Loved reading this story, definitely would recommend it if you’re looking for something short and sweet!

This Is Beautiful: Rick and Morty season 6

 Rick and Morty just came back for its 6th season and the first few episodes have been amazing! I'm really excited to see what comes out of the rest of the season. 

The first episode was a great episode that was part of the overarching plot and serialized. Lately these kinds of episodes (as in the past few seasons) have felt overwhelming and like the writers are just relying on throwbacks to be compelling. This one felt really tight, which is saying something as there were multiple story-lines playing out.

The second episode was then much more episodic and a one-off. Both the A plot and the B plot were really good, with the A plot focusing on Rick and Morty being stuck in a video game and the B plot being Summer ripping off Die Hard. Both were really funny and excellently done.

I'm really excited to see what the rest of the season holds, I think it'll be a really good one!

”Middlegame” by Seanan McGuire

This was a free ebook that I snagged off of Tor.com and I recognized the cover immediately and was thrilled to start reading it. The premise is that alchemists have been working on converting what is essentially the instructions and equations for the whole universe, the Doctrine of Ethos, into knowledge that a human can have. The way they do this is by splitting it into two parts: language and numbers. (Yes this is a bit of an oversimplification, but bear with me.) They then put those into a set of twins and have those raised in the world to see how they develop. If all goes well, then they will have a huge weapon at their disposal to make and remake the world as they see fit. Of course, the man developing these kids is Reed, a construct from the late alchemist Baker, and all he wants is power and he doesn’t care who he has to kill to make that happen.

The book follows the two kids destined to embody this Doctrine: Roger, who cannot get enough of words; and Dodger, a math genius. They find themselves able to talk to each other telepathically early on in their lives and help each other out. The story then follows as they meet each other, and fall apart from each other, continually trying to beat back Reed’s forces as they learn what they are. This involves time travel, as of course the equation behind the universe can reset time, and they keep trying to get it right. Part of the mystery is figuring out that this is what they are doing, almost subconsciously, altering time and going back again and again.

It is such a compelling story. Despite the fact that half of the characters aren’t really people, they’re constructed by alchemists, they are incredibly believable. To me half the fun was seeing how the idea of math would present itself in a person versus language. Dodger was always more aggressive and hot-headed with little regard for her future (and didn’t have very good depth perception) while Roger was more personable and quiet (and color-blind). They also compliment each other really well, you can tell in all of their interactions with each other and other people.

Throughout the story there’s references to Baker’s children’s books that are basically her ideas distilled down so that children can understand them. I feel like I’d have to reread them to get all of the parallels, but it ends up being essentially Roger and Dodger’s story laid out. The books are similar to The Wizard of Oz, which comes up as well, and it’s a nice reference to fiction we in this world would be familiar with.

The book is the ideal mix of confusing, since we are thrown into the world of alchemy, and familiar, with Roger and Dodger heading to grad school together and normal occurrences like that. It’s a great read that I want to revisit and see if I can pick up on more patterns.

This Is Beautiful: UK Ace Con 2022

 This past weekend was the 2022 UK Ace Con! It was my third year being part of the organizing team and I had a lot of fun. There were a number of challenges, it was after the semester started so I was really busy, the Queen died that week so the UK organizers were unsure if we should postpone at the last minute, and of course there were tech issues. But at its heart, this was a weekend spent with fellow aces talking about really important issues within the community and it was full of affirmations and community.

I had to get up really early both days to be on UK time, the first day I was part of the intro to talk about accessibility for the conference, and from there went straight to an Ace 101 presentation. This was new this year, but I think it really helped some attendees. After that I led an anti-racism workshop with another ace, and that gave me a lot of anxiety, would there be trolls, would I mess up the slides, etc. It ended up going really well, the discussion went long but a lot of good comments were had. I hope that this can be a regular part of ace spaces, to help us combat the whiteness and racism in the community.

Second day had to get up early again, first to lead a conversation on non-romantic relationships. I took a backseat on this one since I'm not in a platonic relationship, but the conversation was really cool and different from previous years. Then had a trans/non-binary aces conversation, it was something like my 3rd time leading that haha! Always good every year though. And finally led a discussion on child-free aces. This was another new topic, and I think it was cool to highlight that aspect of the community.

All in all, a busy weekend but a really nice one! I hope that next year it isn't during the fall semester but I'm always excited to be a part of it.

“The Eyre Affair” by Jasper Fforde

I picked up this book at the recommendation of my partner, who is a big Fforde fan. It’s a really delightful book, I could see how it easily became a successful series. The story takes place in an alternate England where time rifts are common, dodos have been resurrected as pets, and the ability to travel within the pages of a novel has recently been developed.

The protagonist is Thursday Next, a LitraTec detective who handles literary crimes such as fake Shakespearean plays and things like that. When the original manuscript to Martin Chuzzlewit by Dickens is stolen, she’s on the case. Unfortunately though there’s no clues. She then gets approached by the higher-ups about how her former professor at university is now a master criminal, practically undetectable, and he likely stole the novel. He fakes his death and no one believes Thursday, who is still after him. His next target though, is Jane Eyre. Thursday ends up having to go into the novel, and slightly altering  the ending, in order to ensure its safety and get home.

Thursday is a wonderful protagonist. She’s bold and clever and dedicated to her work. She’s also a veteran of the war in Crimea with Russia, there’s a sub-plot where she works to stop the fighting and deals with losing her brother in the war as well. This book isn’t that old, early 2000s I think, but since it’s written by a man I would have definitely expected a protagonist like this to be male as well, instead of female. I’m so happy with the result though, Thursday is perfect the way she is.

I realized partway through the book that it’s basically fanfiction. With a really elaborate premise. Really Fforde wanted to write about Jane Eyre and Rochester in particular, so he came up with an original character and plunked her into it. It’s rather clever and honestly kinda cute. I’ve never read Jane Eyre in my life and while there are parts that assume a certain familiarity with the text (the fact that the ending is altered though the course of the novel for instance) I got through it alright. It is very clearly written for lovers of literature though.

The Thursday Next series has something like seven installments, I’m really looking forward to further literary adventures in the rest of it!

This Is Beautiful: Teaching

 I started teaching this week and I think I really like it! It isn't so different from running a rehearsal really, you still have to get the students to do a thing and understand the thing. And the effort that they put into it really impacts what comes out of it, more so than what I'm doing. It's really cool, and while I'm sure I still have a lot to learn I'm really enjoying it!

Chicago

Finally made it down to Chicago this past weekend! It was a really fun trip, I can’t believe I haven’t managed to check it out yet. We took the train down and had a hard time finding somewhere to stay, but eventually snagged an AirBnB on the south side by the University of Chicago. That meant that we had to take a train into the city and back out, but there was barely anywhere else we could go without spending a lot of money.

The first day we stayed down by the University of Chicago and checked out the Museum of Science and Industry. I really enjoyed it, science museums are always overrun with screaming children and this was no exception. But they had a whole exhibit dedicated to genetics and I can’t say no to that. There also was a really cool miniature train set simulating how cargo gets from Chicago to Seattle. There were a lot of miniatures in general, like a miniature circus and a fairy castle, neither of which I could figure out why they were there otherwise. We also walked over to Promontory Point, which had some amazing views of the city and the museum. I had wanted to check out the Renaissance Society, a small art gallery that’s part of the school, but it unfortunately was closed.

The next day we took the train to the center of Chicago to do all those touristy things. Like getting a picture with the bean (formally known as Cloudgate)! We also went to the Art Institute of Chicago which was probably my favorite part of the trip. They have an amazing collection! I particularly loved the impressionist section and the contemporary galleries. There was also a really cute miniatures wing here (more miniatures???) with all sorts of different architecture styles in it. After that we went across the street to the Chicago Cultural Center to get a taste of more local art. It was definitely a good idea to get the feel for both sides: famous and local art. Then we walked along the Riverfront to the Navy Pier, which had more great views of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. Last museum of the day was Intuit: the Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art. It’s a small gallery but has a neat collection of self-taught artists primarily. Around the corner from there is Time Out Market which had a milkshake bar that was really delightful.

For the final day I wanted to check out the Jane Addams’ Hull House and the National Museum of Mexican Art, but they were both closed. So instead we went to the Aquarium! They had a pool where you can pet the sting rays and a lot of really cool exhibits about local waters and fish. Plus belugas, dolphins, and penguins are always a hit. From there we went to Chinatown for lunch and to walk around a little before leaving.

Chicago is interesting, it’s very similar to New York City in it’s layout with the numbered streets. But I would honestly say that the infrastructure of NYC is better, we mostly only took the Chicago subway on the last day in town. Chicago does feel more integrated though, there’s less cultural enclaves which is really nice. Chicago is patchwork in it’s own way, the only subway line that goes south is the red line and that clearly cuts off communities from downtown, but you get much more of a mix in the majority of it.

There’s just so much to do in Chicago, so many museums and fun activities. I really want to come back soon to check it out, and to check out some of the music scene there. I still feel like I didn’t quite get a handle on the pulse that Chicago runs on, possibly because it’s so big and contains so much. I hope I’ll be back there soon!

This Is Beautiful: Reading Time

 I just got back from vacation and what was really nice about that break, and what's been sticking with me about it, is how much time I had to just sit and read. I rarely have time to do this during the school year so having the free time to do this is really nice. I also think that because of school I tend to feel like I need to do something all of the time that's going towards a specific goal. So when I sit and read I feel really antsy and anxious. Going on vacation tends to lessen that. 

The two weeks that I had off let me read a lot of material, so keep an eye out for that in future posts! :)

“The Curse of the Black Cat” by Lou Wilham

I got this book for free online and it was a cute quick read. It’s about a prince who’s gay and doesn’t want to be, he begs a witch to turn him straight and the witch instead turns him into a cat until he can love himself. He lives an immortal life as a cat until he’s in modern-day New York City and gets adopted by a gay chef. Upon seeing his owner getting his heart broken by some shitty guy, he enters into another deal with the witch to turn into a human for a few hours a day to woo his chef. And through that he learns to love himself and isn’t a cat anymore. Yay!

So it’s a short story, and there isn’t a ton there to dissect. But definitely worth it to be able to read on the train. I’m not a huge fan of stories where being in a relationship saves someone, especially when it comes to queerness since hey aromantic people exist. But this story was honestly so short that I don’t think it’s worth it to criticize it on that front.

That statement might tell you all you need to know about how I feel about this story, haha. It’s short and fine, nothing to super write home about. But nice to pass the time.

This Is Beautiful: The Owl House

 Over vacation I caught up with the end of season 2 of "The Owl House" and it just makes me SO MAD how good this show is and the fact that Disney gave it the axe. I think they're about halfway through their planned plotline and they only get 3 more episodes to finish it up. Ugh!

The show is so so good, all of the characters are incredible and the story is intriguing. I love that all of the characters are fully developed and fully fleshed, and every detail matters. Partially because the show is super serialized too, but still. Also the world is incredibly intriguing and so vibrant and colorful. It really is a work of art, you can tell how much love the creators put into making it.

I'm not going to go into detail since I don't want to spoil things, but it's a very good show and I hope Disney learns to regret the decision to end it early because we need more shows like this in the world.

Vacation!

 Just a heads up that I'll be on vacation for the next 2 weeks! Woo! 

Regularly scheduled posting will be back week of the 22nd.

This is Beautiful: Heartstopper

 I'm very late to this party but I started "Heartstopper" on Netflix and it is so wonderful and lovely to watch. This is a tv show based off of a comic by Alice Oseman, who I've talked about before in this post on her book Loveless. Oseman is an aroace writer and creator, and she clearly brings her love of the queer community to this creation as well.

"Heartstopper" tells the story of Charlie, a young boy in high school (his 15th birthday party is part of the show, this guy is young) who has recently come out as gay. He's in an obviously unhealthy relationship with another boy at his school who wants to keep their relationship a secret and pretends that he doesn't know Charlie if he sees him in the hallway. Charlie then meets Nick, a boy a year older than him, but he quickly develops a crush on Nick. 

Mild spoilers for "Heartstopper": eventually Charlie ends his relationship with that abusive guy, and he and Nick end up kissing at a party. Nick didn't realize that he was gay and he starts going through a gay crisis. He also asks Charlie if they could keep their relationship a secret while he works through this. And that's as far as I've gotten so far haha.

What's really nice about the show is the parallels and differences between Charlie's two relationships. Because Nick so clearly cares deeply about Charlie, and hates what he's doing to him by keeping their relationship secret. I bet that they'll stop keeping it a secret by the end of the show, but it's getting at a really nice message that I wish more media got at which is that it is ok to be in the closet. You don't have to come out if you don't want to. Sure it'll have repercussions on those you're in a relationship with, but no one should force you to come out if you aren't ready.

And Nick in general is just such a good guy. He panics and agrees to go on a date with one of his female friends, and Charlie's friend overhears and tells Charlie to stop hanging out with Nick. Nick overhears the warning and instead of trying to say anything to Charlie to turn him away from his friend, or denying it, Nick just gives him a hug and tries to comfort him. Charlie's friend confronts Nick a while later and Nick doesn't deny it then either. He's just such a good guy and wants to be a good friend/partner. 

This is a super cute show to watch and it's so refreshing that a queer relationship is portrayed so positively. I want to go back and read the comics now as well! I'm also looking forward to season 2, which Oseman has said will contain ace representation. I bet it'll be great to watch as an ace myself.

"Bloodmoon Huntress" by Nicole Andelfinger

 Bloodmoon Huntress is the second graphic novel based on the Netflix show "The Dragon Prince." I wrote about the first one in this post. What's also really exciting is around the time the new book came out, the show finally announced that the fourth season would be coming out in November! Huzzah!

This book is different from the first graphic novel, instead of taking place after season 3 ended and being a continuation of the story, it takes place much earlier. Rayla is a moonshadow elf who is one of the main characters in the tv show. Here she is shown as a child who is living with her adoptive fathers for the first time after her parents leave to guard a dragon. It gives a lot of insight into Rayla's relationship with her dads, as well as why she started training to become an assassin.

The book opens with Rayla being mad at her parents for leaving her. If they want to serve the greater good, she reasons, then they should stay with her and not cause her pain. They leave anyways though, and Rayla is left with Runaan and Ethari. Ethari is much more of a homebody and typically watches Rayla, but she's curious where Runaan goes since they won't tell her. She eventually learns that he is an assassin, and is confused why he'd kill for a living instead of staying with Ethari.

The bloodmoon is coming up soon, it's a time of the year when there's a huge festival that no one is allowed to leave. Rayla is suspicious as there clearly is some danger being hidden. She then runs into a lost elf in the woods whose family was kidnapped by a moonshadow elf who wants to kill them and drain their blood. Rayla tries to get help, but no one believes her. So she runs off on her own. Rayla faces off with the mysterious elf, and gets herself pushed into a river in the process. Ethari and Runaan find her then, having realized that she ran off and that she was right. The two of them drive off the blood-sucking elf and they all head home safe. 

Rayla says she understands now, sort of, why some people feel called to protect not just themselves but strangers as well. She asks Runaan to train her to become an assassin as well.

The book is great because we don't know much about Rayla's childhood and background. Seeing her deal with losing her parents makes you understand much more about her relationship with her surrogate parents, Runaan and Ethari. And watching her decide to become an assassin is an incredible arc. It makes a lot of sense to me with events that then transpire in the show.

Rayla ends up failing as an assassin, she ends up not being able to kill. It's literally the first thing that happens in the show and it sets off a chain of events. But as we learn in this book, I don't think she actually wants to become an assassin. I think she mostly wants to follow Runaan, get trained by him and spend time with him and be like him. The fact that she fails later makes sense because Rayla at the end of this story seems to understand why people will put their lives towards service to something larger. I don't think she understands the ramifications of making that choice for herself.

I quite liked this book, it's a quick read but it's what I needed to get excited for season 4 of "The Dragon Prince!" I can't wait until November!

This Is Beautiful: The Ending of Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers

I'm sure I'm going to write sooooo much more about this game but I need to put this out here right now. The ending of this game is so freaking good. It's incredible. SPOILERS AHEAD!

The ending as you approach it seems to be a showdown between you and the rival team's manager. But everyone keeps pointing out that some facts just aren't adding up. It not-so-subtly hints that something is going to go awry. But then you get to the final fight and you end up sucked into the real big bad of the series, Polybius. A game that sucks you in and makes you confront your worst demons. 

And the cheater is revealed to not be the manager, but your rival! A character that you designed at the very beginning and I figured was a throw away character. I literally spent 0 time talking to my rival this run through because I didn't care haha. His Iris (a sentient phone app AI, basically a character in her own right) has become corrupted and has been cheating on his behalf. It's up to you to show them the error of their ways, and confront your own weaknesses in the process.

There's some changes that are made based on the choices that you make. I didn't romance my rival this round so I wonder if that would change it. And I accidentally encouraged my Iris to break the law and cause chaos a lot so that impacted the ending as well (whoops). But in the end I was so pleased. Between this game and the first one, I don't know how much longer these writers can keep forcing me to rethink the power of a story. But I am very eager to see them continue to try.

I'll certainly write more, probably once I go through all of the different endings, romances, etc. I'm very excited to quarter up and continue!

"Elatsoe" by Darcie Little Badger

 This book has been on my list for a while now. It's a book written by and about an indigenous asexual. That alone puts it in a class all by itself, I can't think of any other books about an indigenous asexual, let alone by one. (Although if I'm wrong please do correct me as I'd like to read it.)

The book opens with Ellie (full name: Elatsoe) playing fetch with her ghost dog. Her family has the knowledge of how to communicate with ghosts and can call them back. However when Ellie's cousin Trevor dies, she comes face to face with the rule that no human ghosts can be brought back as human ghosts are violent and not themselves as they were in life. When Trevor dies, Ellie receives a message from him saying that he was murdered and that she has to protect his wife and child. The book then turns into a murder mystery as Ellie and her best friend Jay try to hunt down and prove that the killer did it.

On the way, they discover that the murder is a prominent doctor in a nearby town who is close with vampires in the area. On the night that the murderer is set to hold a fancy gathering for the town, Trevor's son wakes his ghost up. Trevor's ghost heads to the party as well to wreck his vengeance on the town. Ellie and Jay and company have to get there and stop him, plus prove that the doctor killed Trevor.

The coolest part of the book is the world. It's more or less an alternate reality where magic is a fundamental part of life. Having ghost dogs is still uncommon, but Jay is a child of Oberon (the fairy king from "A Midsummer Night's Dream") and can create light. Vampires exist and have entire industries around providing them with artificial blood. There's a branch of government for regulating the magic. It's really cool how she integrates it into contemporary society. 

And then there's the dogs. Ellie's whole family is really into having dogs, there are plenty of legends about her Six-Great-Grandmother and her protective pack of ghost dogs. Dogs and their loyalty factor heavily into the book, and as a fellow dog lover, that resonated quite strongly with me.

Ok so the asexual things, what's nice about this book is that the fact that Ellie is asexual is dropped so casually into the book. There's some references to how she doesn't date and doesn't understand romantic relationships, but the word "asexual" is actually used about halfway though. It's great that we can have books like this that don't have to explain fully what asexuality is and can have a character just exist as asexual.

And the indigenous aspect is wonderful. The book is steeped in Lipan Apache culture, most explicitly in the funeral rites for Trevor. Details like how people can't know the location of the body and things like that become plot points in the mystery. There's also plenty of stories about Six-Great-Grandmother that get into how the indigenous tribes were forced off of their land. There's even a curse that Ellie's mother puts on a vampire saying that he is not welcome on their land. It positions indigenous people as a kind of superhero while on their land, which is quite cool.

I adored this book, and I remember reading a while back that Darcie Little Badger has another book out now! I hope that I can get my hands on it soon.

This Is Beautiful: Dogsitting

 I love taking care of other people's pets, I don't know why but this is just so fun for me. I think it's a combination of the change of scenery with staying in someone else's place and getting to hang out with animals that you don't have to deal with all the time. 

This past weekend I was taking care of my boss's two elderly dogs. They're both very sweet and this was my second time taking care of them so I was already familiar with their routine. I just love spending time with other people's animals and becoming friends with the pets, there's something really rewarding in that for me.

Plus there's the pool and all that, it was a lovely weekend so I did have a nice time hanging out outside with the puppies. A lovely time had all around!

The Logistics of Mentoring High School Students

 I imagine that I'll eventually have more to say about the actual mentoring aspect of it, but this right here is a bit of a rant about how difficult it is to mentor high school students in a scientific research setting. I've been participating in the inaugural year of a program doing exactly that at my university, and it has been a bit of a nightmare, even for me as someone not in charge of the program, with paperwork.

High schoolers are really limited by what they can do in a laboratory setting. I believe these rules are designed to prevent them from doing much of anything except watching, but that isn't explicitly said anywhere. You aren't supposed to let them handle any chemicals, including ethanol, so that cuts down the experiments. And they can't handle anything that is a biosafety level 2 or above. Which mostly means that they cannot handle anything from humans, although other animals can be fair game. So you have to keep all of this in mind when designing experiments.

Once you get past all that, there's also the paperwork of getting permission for them to be in lab. I'm not familiar with the details, but I do know that there were several hoops to go through. Not to mention that multiple forms are flat out incorrect about the information that they ask for, I know one of them states that they require an individual's tax id but what they actually need is your social security number. This set back the student in my lab, we had to have multiple meetings about it before it could be sorted so that he could get paid for his work.

What has really been affecting my day-to-day though is the level of supervision required for mentoring a high schooler. They aren't supposed to go anywhere alone so I have to chaperone him from place to place and keep an eye on him in the lab. Which for the most part is fine, it's not like I'm going anywhere, but it does change the feel a bit. Usually you're expected to do independent research, and like it says, work independently. I worry that my student isn't having that experience because he isn't allowed to work independently. I'm encouraging him to work on his own when he feels comfortable, but technically I don't think I'm supposed to even be doing that much.

Getting research experience early on is so crucial for knowing what you want to do and what path you want to take. Putting all of these restrictions on, making it harder to students to have fulfilling experiences, just makes these programs less likely to exist. I feel like schools with a vested interest in recruiting students should be making this process easier, not harder. I hope that this can change, that programs like the one I'm participating in will become more established and help more students, but I also know that change in academia is slow going when it happens. So we shall see where it goes from here.

This Is Beautiful: Finally Moving

 This weekend I finally moved out of my apartment and into the house that my partner owns and that I've been basically living in for the past year. So it was about time, haha. It's just really nice to be done with that, having all of my things in one place, and not worrying about it anymore.

We also got together with a bunch of friends for the move, and it was really nice to see all of them and get the help needed for the move. Friends are so great, you offer to feed them as exchange for help and they're down for anything!

So that's all for now, moving ended and I need a rest!

Leaving a Unhealthy Environment

 I finally pulled the plug and officially left an organization that became unhealthy and draining on my mental health this morning. I have been thinking about and planning this for months, but it still was nerve-wracking to finally do it. But it also feels good, like a weight has been lifted.

Without getting into specifics, I'm on the board for an organization that had an interpersonal issue within the org that could impact the safety of other members, and I don't think the other board members took it very seriously. I've been leaving our meetings and sobbing for a while now. I love the organization, I spent four years in it, but it got to the point where I had to leave for my mental health and physical safety.

I stuck around until this morning, and then sent a letter that I had drafted to the entire organization describing why I was leaving. I couldn't live with myself without telling people why I was leaving. So I did it, and likely caused some drama. I'd been sitting on the draft for weeks, I had multiple people look at it, but it's still a big thing to do to call out someone on their mistakes.

Even with all that prep work, I still sat there for a minute or two and looked at my message, wondering if this was a good idea. Which of course it was, I'd thought about it for long enough, but it's still hard to do. And then I sent it. So of course it's been flooding my thoughts all afternoon, did anyone read it, what did they think of it, etc. And of course it doesn't matter, I've left and therefore will not see the reaction or the fruits of my actions. Which is fine, I gave it my best shot, but doesn't mean that I'm not thinking about it.

While my partner and I were getting coffee, we ran into a friendly stranger, got to talking, and they offered to do a tarot reading for us. I got the eight of swords, indicating that I'm in the middle of a conflict and that I need to pull myself together and get myself out of this situation (or something like that, I'm not an expert on tarot). Which had a pretty clear meaning to me, you got yourself out of the organization physically now do it mentally.

And that's a good reminder that there's a lot of good from this decision. I don't have the weight of this org on me anymore, future decisions aren't my problem. I'll have more clarity and freedom going forward. Which is the whole reason I wanted to leave in the first place. Things are looking up, I just have to allow myself to see it that way.

This Is Beautiful: Working Out

 You know, I never really thought that I'd be writing a post about this. I mean I like moving as much as the next person, so not at all, but it's never something I look forward to. This week though has been so insanely busy that I haven't had time to get my regular yoga session in. And it's probably why I haven't been doing well lately, haha. I finally noticed that when I managed to squeeze one in and it felt like my whole head got out of a fog. Exercise feels good, and I wish that wasn't the case because it sucks but it does. And I probably should do it more often.

Shakespeare in the Arb 2022

 As of last week, that's a wrap on Shakespeare in the Arb! It was such an incredible experience. I loved being a part of it and I hope that I can do it again next year.

The community was really the best part of it (as with most experiences). I really enjoyed doing this with people that are part of the local community, students from undergrad, people who have done this for years, and those who just started this year. It was such a diverse group (relatively) and it was great to not be surrounded by solely undergrads. For once I wasn't the oldest person there! The group also clearly enjoyed doing social events and spending time together. We were all busy, but everyone made time to chat and get to know each other.

Then there's the method of doing environmental theater and moving through the arboretum throughout the play. I really loved this way of doing theater, I felt as though we were much closer to the location and got to see many really cool plants and animals. A black squirrel definitely stole one of the final scenes on closing night. A deer once jumped through very close to Titania's bower. You wouldn't get that anywhere else.

I am definitely looking forward to doing this again, if at all possible. I feel sure that I already made multiple new, strong friendships and I hope that I can keep that going into future years.

This Is Beautiful: Wedding and Visiting Hometown

 This past weekend I headed back to my hometown for my cousin's wedding. It was a really nice time, the traveling wasn't horrible and it was nice to get a break from work. It also meant that I could see my hometown again for the first time in about seven years, and could introduce my partner to some friends and family members and show him around.

It was a bit of a whirlwind tour, but we hit all of the important parts. I know that my hometown isn't really a part of my life anymore since I'm never back there, but I feel like it's an important part of me that I want to share with others who are important to me. So it was really nice that we got to do that. And I was so happy that I could make my cousin's wedding and share that experience with her! I haven't seen her in a while so while we didn't have time to catch up, still good to see her and be there.

"The House of Hades" by Rick Riordan

 Continuing with my rereading of Riordan's works, we have The House of Hades. I completely forgot until I popped the book open that it started with an apology from the author for the previous cliffhanger that the book before this one left on. It isn't part of the story, but I think it's really nice when an author has a sense of humor about the pain that he's leaving us in!

The book starts with Percy and Annabeth making their way through Tartarus. Along the way, they meet up with an unexpected ally, Bob the Titan. He used to be a bloodthirsty enemy, but after Percy dunked him in a river that forces you to lose all of your memories, he now only remembers the demigods as friends. This is a really nice subplot, it allows the book to get into the morally gray areas of both the heroes and the villains. Is Percy good for taking away his memories? Is Bob now good if he's helping them?

While that's going on, the other demigods are trying to make their way to the House of Hades, where they'll meet Percy and Annabeth. As part of the journey, Jason makes the decision to not be Roman anymore and throw his lot in with the Greeks (and his girlfriend). In the process, he makes Frank a Roman leader to take his place. Leo also gets lost and ends up on Calypso's island, where Percy was a few books ago. He ends up falling for Calypso and swears that he'll make it back to break her free. This is another plot point that I much appreciated, as it gives some continuation of Calypso's story and let's Leo have his own thing going and stop being the seventh wheel in their group. Plus Nico is revealed to be gay, with a bit of a crush on Percy. I had totally forgotten that this part of the story existed, it was nice to revisit and see some queer content!

Eventually the two stories come together at the end and are successful in shutting the doors to Tartarus. But they now have an even bigger battle ahead of them (of course) so they sail off to finally confront Gaea. Hooray for more books in the series!

My favorite part of the book was the part that deals with the morally gray area, of course. While Percy and Annabeth are traveling with Bob, he's continually forced to question his past, and how he feels about it. Percy is now regarded as a friend, true, but he hasn't visited Bob at all over the years until he fell into Tartarus and accidentally asked for his help. Does that mean he's still a friend? And how does Bob fit into his larger Titan family, some of whom he meets along the way? What I really like about this is that the demigods are shown to have flaws, and not be perfect victims here. They cause a lot of harm in the world as well with their adventures.

Plus there's the gay representation. I forgot about this, and I hope that it gets fleshed out more in the coming books (I'm pretty sure it does). Right now, it's a sad gay Nico pining after Percy, and ideally there would be more queer joy there than this. But I'm happy right now with the idea being introduced and we can nitpick later after this plotline is more fleshed out.

Onwards to the next book! I'm excited to see what we have in store as I have almost completely forgotten these later ones.

This Is Beautiful: Communication

 Alright well similarly to my last post, I finally told my partner that I'm struggling more than I thought with caretaking. And that I felt bad and that he deserved a better caretaker. He was incredible about it, and said that I was doing amazingly even if I feel like I'm not. Caretakers don't have to be perfect, you just have to get the job done.

I'm not sure what I expected, but that was so reassuring that I feel a lot better now. Probably should have done that earlier, but oh well.

Caretaking

 Caretaking is so much harder than I thought it'd be. This is going to be an incoherent post since I'm still sorting it all out and haven't had much time, but that's the general idea.

I genuinely love taking care of my partner, but since he's had surgery it's been difficult. I think I ended up being much more worried about him than I thought I'd be. Any type of surgery is scary, even ones with a low probability of issues. 

I also realized how much time it takes up. He does a lot around the house and now I have to do it all! Not that I didn't appreciate it before, but I didn't fully internalize that I'd be doing the work of two people.

And it creates a sort of strange power dynamic. Your partner is supposed to be your equal, and now I'm looking after him and worrying about him. It's an adjustment for sure.

I'll probably have more fleshed out thoughts at some point in the future, but for now, that's what's going on.

This Is Beautiful: "Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers"

 I finally popped open my Steam account and downloaded the sequel to "Arcade Spirits" that I've been waiting for all this time. I am not very far into it, but I already adore the game!

One great improvement over the original is the amount of customization. You can pick your name, nickname, pronouns (from many options), body type, clothing, and you even get to design your rival! It's really cool especially to see all of the pronoun options, there's the typical he, she, they, but also many more like fae, ze, it, etc. What great queer representation!

Then there's the characters. These have always been the strength of visual novels like these. I immediately fell in love with Grace, a wonderful Black lady scientist. She just resonates with me so much as a fellow scientist. Then there's Locksley, who was clearly inspired by Robin Hood. Robin Hood in the legends is originally from Locksley, plus the character wears a green hoodie and is a rogue game repairer who values justice and fairness. I'm obsessed. Plus there's a super cool disabled character, Jynx, who I also love. And others, but those are the main ones so far.

I'm so excited to see how the story unfolds and how the game mechanics come to life like the original. Here we go!

"Witchmark" by C.L. Polk

 I'm veeeery slowly making my way through this pile of free ebooks that I've been able to download from Tor.com each month. I think this one was from back in March, haha. But I finally finished it.

Witchmark is a book set in what I think is a fantasy, alternate reality England where witches exist and specifically shape the weather. The witches themselves are divided into two groups, there's the Primaries who are able to sing and control magic through their voice, and the Secondaries who are typically seen as support and are forced to bind themselves to a Primary and give their power to them. The protagonist is Miles Singer, a Secondary who ran away from home to become a physician rather than be bound as a servant. He has been making a life for himself, until he has a patient who is another witch. He dies, but not before telling Miles that he was murdered. The bulk of the plot is a murder mystery as Miles tries to chase down the killer. Along the way he meets Tristan, a mysterious person who intrigues Miles and clearly also has an aptitude for magic. (Queer romance incoming!) And Miles' sister Grace eventually finds him and Miles' past finally catches up with him.

There's so much to love about this book. There's a gay romance that's really sweet and lovely, and it gest into aspects of classism and racism that are relevant to our contemporary society. For example, witches of a lesser social standing are persecuted in this reality, for no reason other than the fact that they are poor. Miles comes to this realization partway through the book, with Tristan's help. I think having that perspective of someone who is slowly realizing that the system is rigged is really helpful for those who are experiencing a similar realization in real life.

My main complaint is that the politics of this world are super complicated. It turns out that the witch leadership and the mortal leadership are both all tied up in this murder and different people profit and gain power from the status quo. I couldn't really keep up with the logic, who was doing what, things like that. But I just kept going and you get the gist of it really. I imagine though if you keep reading the rest of the series that it all comes back in the end.

Having said that, this book stands on its own really well, and feels like a complete story. I might check out the rest, probably not, but maybe if I stumble on it. I did really like the characters and the world that I was introduced to, it just felt so complete and wrapped up entirely. I'm not intending it as a complaint, it's rare that you don't see a series that promotes later books, but it does mean that I won't go out of my way to read the next one. All that to say, check out this book! The first of this series is really incredible.

This Is Beautiful: Performing

 The performances are now open for Shakespeare in the Arb's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in which I'm playing Puck! It's so nice to be performing again, especially in such a gorgeous setting and with such a fun character.

It's exhausting, don't get me wrong, but there's also something so energizing about it. Part of it is certainly that I have to do this physical work, but it's also so fun and joyous. I'm really glad that I did this and am part of this performance.

Pride Month 2022

 Happy Pride, but just to everyone who doesn't feel fully part of the queer community!

Whether that's because you're single, uninterested in romance, uninterested in sex, not a fan of alcohol, closeted, a person of color, not from the US/UK, disabled, "not queer enough," unsure of where you fit in, or anything else. This month is for you! There is a community here to support and accept you!

I hope you're able to do something fun and empowering this month, which might involve attending a formal celebration or not! And if you don't have a supportive community already, then I'm your community now.

This Is Beautiful: Big Experiment Done

 I've been planning a huge experiment for MONTHS and have just run into all of these setbacks. But I finally did it last Friday and now it's going! We'll know in a few weeks how it came out.

It's not the usual "this is beautiful" subject, but honestly I've felt so good since that got done that this counts for me haha.

"Me and White Supremacy" by Layla Saad

 I recently finished working through Me and White Supremacy which is a book based on an Instagram challenge designed for individuals to work though and address how they are complicit in white supremacy. It's the first book of its kind that I've read, even though I've read most of the big books about racism (White Fragility, How to be an Antiracist, etc). This book is inherently very interactive and personal as a result. 

The structure of the book is simple, each day contains information about a concept inherent in white supremacy and a list of prompts to journal and think through for each day. Even though the reading is short, each day is designed to be intense and for you to really go through and think about your actions and feelings in relation to each topic.

Having read other similar books before, I found that this book didn't expose me to many new concepts around white supremacy. They all interweave and so it can be pretty similar. However, going through and thinking about how each concept affects my life makes the experience radically different. For example, I never really think about my conceptions and prejudices around Black children, but there's a whole day dedicated to that in this book. 

What I also really liked is that the book contains an appendix about how to lead meetings discussing the content of the book. It's not something that I've seen many other places, but it's a cool way to make sure that people respect the work going forward.

Another aspect of this is that I've been reading this book along with a Discord server dedicated to discussing and meeting and working through this together. It's been great having a community to talk about these issues and recommend resources and get advice. Having a community is so important for this work, and it's a great reminder that we aren't alone in this. Our actions affect and can hurt others around us, but we can also enact great change. Would highly recommend that anyone read this and do the work to improve their mindset before taking on the world.

This Is Beautiful: Chris and Jack sketches

 Alright well I did it, I went through Chris and Jack's podcast and now the sketches. In case you missed it, Jack is Jack De Cena from "Avatar: The Last Airbender" as well as "The Dragon Prince" and Chris Smith is his writing partner. They've been friends forever and write sketches that they put up online. 

So you can find all of their stuff on YouTube at this link, and it's a lot of fun just going through these. Most of their sketches revolve around their relationship as friends, and it's super cute. They're very comfortable with like hugging each other and expressing their affection (I talked about this earlier as well haha) and that's lovely. They're also hilarious! A number of sketches involve them collaborating with Dante Bosco (voice of Zuko on "Avatar") and other friends. They also have a bit where they want to make Julysixth Park a day to celebrate Jurassic Park and that's always amusing somehow. Give them a watch! Most sketches are less than 10 minutes so it won't take you long to just watch a few.

"Yasuke: The True Story of the Legendary African Samurai" by Thomas Lockley and Geoffrey Girard

 I started this book for a book club, but doesn't look like the meeting will eventually be happening so I guess I read this for nothing. Anyways, this book was largely kind of odd to read in that I'm unsure what it was trying to be. I'm not sure whether the author wanted this to be non-fiction or historical fiction. The narration jumps around in time and supplies details that may or may not be historically accurate such as what different characters are thinking or saying. I have no doubt that this is all based on history but the result is that it reads with super flowery language and often enters the realm of speculation.

This is a book about Yasuke, a Black man who came to Japan in the sixteenth century with the Jesuits with the goal of being a bodyguard for individuals who are trying to spread Christianity. He then is gifted to a Japanese warlord and stays by his side for many years, and becomes a samurai under his service. When the warlord is overthrown and betrayed by one of his allies, Yasuke disappears from history.

The end of the book gets into adaptations of Yasuke's story and how he's influenced characters and stories. He's made a few appearances in anime which is really cool since there aren't many Black characters in general in anime. And he's appeared in video games. I think part of the reason why this book was suggested is that there's a Netflix series coming out about him soon! And that was really cool to read about.

Plus there's an Author's Note at the end that talks about how cool this story is in that here's a Black man that manages to travel across the world, speak multiple languages, and be bestowed the highest honor from another culture. It's a really cool way of looking at history and not focusing on exclusively white men. And that makes this part of history really cool to learn about!

Having said that though, I think the author is also a Black man, but a lot of the time Yasuke is described as being really "exotic" and wild. Part of that doesn't really sit right with me since many POC are called that in modern times to fetishize them. Maybe a clearer distinction between how Yasuke is being described and how people of the time described him and would have seen him could have helped. 

So this was a neat book to read and learn about, but the overall reading experience was pretty average. I'm happy that this story is being amplified, but in terms of its value as a book, I think you could get the same info from a Wikipedia article.

This Is Beautiful: Community

 This past weekend, I had a meeting for a group called "Aces Committed to Anti-Racism" which is a Discord server dedicated to members of the a-spec community that want to work against racism, both in general and in the community. A lot of it consists of reading the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad. It's a really good book, and I'll definitely blog about it eventually. But being able to have a more face-to-face conversation with the other members was really refreshing and invigorating! It reminded me of what we're all working towards and how we can lift each other up throughout this process. 

I tend to be really pessimistic about my interactions online, and while I still definitely am that, it was nice to remind myself that we are still people. And that we can talk to each other. And we aren't alone in this journey.

New Leviwand Video

 Roughly once a year I make a new leviwand video using choreography that I developed, music that I cut, and footage that I shot (well that last one is just since the pandemic). It's really nice to see how my thoughts and creativity around this has changed. For this piece, I really wanted to shoot the same footage in many different places (had to get cut down to four) and mix those together. And of course the song is "Chasing Pavements" by Adele. It's just really nice to focus on this for a bit and make some art!

Anyways, the video is below, hope you like it!

This Is Beautiful: Annabeth Chase is Black!

 This has probably been talked about by others who know more specifics, but I am honestly so thrilled with the casting of Annabeth Chase in the Percy Jackson TV series as a Black woman! From what I've seen the author, Rick Riordan, has been pulling hard for this casting and has been given a lot of autonomy from Disney, and I'm so glad that he made this call. It will mean so much for Black children everywhere, whether they grew up with this series or are just discovering it now. And it makes me excited for the production as a whole, after the flop of the 2 movies I have been nervous. But if they can pull this off with all the racist haters out there? They can pull off anything. I can't wait to finally watch it.

Being Outside

 I'm in a production of Shakespeare in the Arb this summer (think Shakespeare in the Park but in an Arboretum) and we just started having outside rehearsals. I was excited sure, but I also thought it'd be really draining to be outside for that long. It's been amazing to be honest, I'm having such a good time with this production, and I think a big part of it is that it's outside!

Being outside has done amazing things for my mood. I can feel my mood getting better just from being there and breathing that outside air. It really clears off the weight of the day from my shoulders. I think also part of it is that I'm outside and away from a computer or wifi haha, you cannot get ahold of me even if I wanted to respond!

I think it's also the fact that the production has set up this culture of respect of the environment and the space that we're in. One of the first meetings was walking through the Arb and looking at where we'd be working and noticing the local plants and things like that. It's been stressed that we have to be careful with this space, that it's "a living museum" and we need to treat it as such. It's environmental theater with a conservationist goal.

The play itself is "A Midsummer Night's Dream" which is arguably the first conservationist text. Shakespeare spends a lot of time describing the forest and the magic of the environment! He was writing this at a time where a lot of wood was being chopped down for fuel and materials, it's likely that there was an environmental crisis happening in his day as well.

It's been amazing putting this production together, I can't wait to see what we make!