“The Book of Night With Moon” by Diane Duane

Alright so I’ve now moved onto Duane’s series about cat wizards. (I haven’t fully finished the main Young Wizards series but that’s all I have as ebooks so I’ll return to it eventually.) This book focuses on the team at Grand Central that manage the worldgates that wizards use to travel around the universe more easily.

The book focuses on Rhiow, a black female cat, who is the leader of the group. She works with Saash, another female cat, and Urrah, a male cat. They go in to fix the worldgates one day and come across the young Arhu, a new feline wizard. They take him under their guidance and start fixing the worldgates with him. A crucial part of this is going Downside, to a sort of nearby universe that the worldgates originate from. However, dinosaurs roam that area and it’s a very dangerous mission to do so. They take Arhu with them on their next mission down and discover that he’s a visionary, or a wizard that can see into the future. It’s unsurprisingly pretty disconcerting for him. After that though, something goes wrong with the gates and dinosaurs start pouring out into Grand Central. The human and feline wizards contain it, but the team has to go back down and fix it more permanently.

Downside again, they run into the young dinosaur Ith who becomes friends with Arhu. Turns out that Ith is a wizard dinosaur, and also very new at this. They descend to the depths and end up confronting the Lone Power, the god that invented entropy and death. Turns out that this all has to do with the dinosaurs’ Choice. Every species is confronted by the Lone Power early on, and if you accept its agreement then the species is tricked and doesn’t live as long. If you reject the promise of more power, then you do better, but everyone dies eventually. Ith remakes the dinosaurs’ Choice, and they all take on the form of the gods and goddesses to cast the Lone Power out. Back Topside, everything is back to normal and the feline wizards continue on their work.

I’ll just start with the caveat that this isn’t really for me. I am not a big cat person, I find the amount of washing they do in the book realistic and also gross, and I am much more interested in the humans. Rhiow works with Tom and Carl, and Nita/Kit even make an appearance at one point. And honestly the fact that cats are such little idiots in real life makes me very skeptical that they would actually make it as wizards in New York City. As outdoor cats living in apartments. Suuuuure. There are some aspects of feline culture that are pretty fun, like how Urrah is obsessed with opera, and things like that. But overall, I can tell that I’m not as into it as some other people would be.

Which makes it harder when it gets really confusing and complicated. I had a hard time keeping up with the random feline language words thrown in, and their mythology is distinct from that of the human wizards. It is a lot to keep track of, especially when they start taking on the role of the gods/goddesses. I think Duane does an excellent job writing it in a way where I could understand the gist of what was happening even if I didn’t quite get the details, but I definitely will need to reread this a few times to fully understand what the heck is going on.

It is a trilogy, and I will be continuing on with it. Despite all of the reasons that I have to be skeptical, I do still have the ebooks and therefore will read it haha. Hopefully I can grow to like these characters more!

This Is Beautiful: Sunshine

 This past weekend was beautiful! I got lucky because we had a picnic planned as well, so the weather was so nice! It was great to just relax and hang out for a little. I hope this means that we're close to a sunny summer with lots of outside time.

“The Young Wizards OTP Challenge, Days 1-17” by Diane Duane

This is part of the wizardry bundle that I got a while ago and have been making my way through. I realized that Games Wizards Play was not in the bundle and then didn’t know which to pick up next. So I went for this, figured it was short fiction and it wouldn’t take me too long to get through. 

The basic idea is that there’s a series of prompts to help writers think up scenarios, and these all have to do with a person’s One True Pairing (OTP), a couple that the writer really loves. Duane takes this and writes it about Nita and Kit. And I think that the original prompts go up to day 30, this stops at day 17.

Honestly I really like reading this. They’re short and fun, and Duane clearly tried to think of the prompts in a creative way. So the one abut wearing each other’s clothes has to do with them accidentally offending some aliens, wearing cat ears involves them turning into cats temporarily, and so on.

Duane also inserts herself in, so if you were doubting whether or not she is having fun, you can be sure that she is now. She’s in at the beginning, saying that this may or may not be canon and chatting with Nita and Kit about the challenge. The middle, she gets ice cream with them and check in. And for the last prompt it’s a silly time of her trying to think of different scenarios Nita and Kit would be spooning in without making it unnatural. Which is one of my favorites, Duane interacts with the Transcendental Pig and talks through a few.

Yeah so this I think is also up on her blog, but seeing it all together is quite nice. A fun, light read!

This Is Beautiful: Down Time

 Tis the time of the semester when it finally winds down and I can relax a little. Oof. I am in need of a rest desperately after the past few weeks, and I am looking forward to the summer when things are a little slower, and I'm not just working constantly or in rehearsals. I love being busy, but I sometimes just need a break.

“Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters” by Matt Ridley

I was handed this book by a mentor of mine who recommended I check it out as a way to talk about the social impacts of genetic research. The book is out of date, published in 1999, but I think the concept is still interesting. The book consists of 23 chapters, one for each chromosome in the human genome, and each chapter highlights how genes have impacted humans and their life. The stories don’t cover the whole genome, and they don’t cover all of genetics, but it’s a collection of snapshots of genetics.

I only have a few qualms with it, and of course it has to do with the sex chromosomes. When talking about the X chromosome, he talks about how genetic determinants of autism have been found there. And then uses that to hypothesize that this is why more boys have autism than girls, which isn’t true. Autism just looks different in girls, and the focus on autistic boys means that many girls with autism are not diagnosed until later in life. I might give this one to him, not much was known about autism in the 90s, so probably an honest mistake.

What I am less likely to give him though is what he proceeds to say about the X chromosome. The X chromosome is one of the sex chromosomes, which any transphobe will love to prattle on about how two Xs make a women and the XY combo makes a man. Those of us who are trans and recognize that intersex is a thing know better. There are plenty of people outside of the XX/XY binary and some that are XX but anatomically male or vice versa. Anyways, towards the end of the chapter Ridley starts making some absurd statements about how his daughter’s excitement about a doll couldn’t have anything to do with how she was raised, and similarly for how his son loves toy trucks. He then attempts to drive this home by talking about someone who unfortunately had to be castrated shortly after birth (infection I believe) and was put on hormonal treatment and whose parents were instructed to raise them as a girl. When they found out about this later in life, they immediately went back to living as a man. This is not the slam dunk story the author thinks it is, this is one person who was forced into a gender they did not want and did not get a say in it. Not a single trans person was asked, and if they were, the author might have found out that gender confirming surgery (when voluntary) has extremely low regret rates. And that those same surgeries are forcibly done on intersex infants (similar to this individual) to try and “correct” their sex. It’s gross and could have easily been avoided. No gender is not entirely socialized, but neither is it entirely biological and to claim that is transphobic but also obviously wrong.

My more minor qualm also has to do with the eugenics chapter. Overall it’s well written, but there’s this interesting line about how countries with strong influence of the Roman Catholic Church were more immune to eugenic legislation. And then it never gets expanded on! I have no idea which countries these are since Italy is never mentioned, or what relevance this is to the discussion about how Great Britain resisted eugenic laws. Which just, how did that get past the editors?

The author also has this quip where he constantly goes back and corrects himself. He will make a statement, describe it, and then in the next paragraph he’ll correct himself and say that what he just explained is wrong. Which is an interesting way to come at science, and leaves me wondering if anyone actually finds that valuable. Personally, I would rather you just explain the darn thing to me. Instead of being confusing or writing around a concept, just explain it, get it as accurate as you can, and move on. It feels a lot like he’s showing off or trying to preemptively address any criticisms or something. It just throws me off.

Beyond all this though, I do need to praise the book for how it talks about race and genetics. Ridley makes it clear that some genetic sequences are more frequent among different groups, but never talks about anything as being exclusive to one group or that differences among groups are purely genetic. And this is big for a book from the 90s! Heritability is also discussed and how it is not just genetic effects but also how the environment changes things, and there is a whole chapter dedicated to genetic determinism and how that is not a thing. Which, if I was to recommend this book, this would be the big reason. The field has struggled with how to tackle these topics and here Ridley drops all of the literary fluff and presents it simply and does it really well.

I am also just curious how the chapter on prions has changed over time. That chapter is dedicated to genetic mysteries that we still don’t know the answers to, but that means that it probably got out of date almost immediately. I used to know more about prions, back when I was taking intro genetics courses, but now I am very out of the loop.

Anyways so this was a good read, and I might have overlooked it otherwise for again being rather old. But the parts that were done well definitely have given me food for thought!

This Is Beautiful: International Asexuality Day

 This past Saturday was International Asexuality Day (IAD)! As usual it was a bunch of last minute planning, but I had a blast joining a 24 hour livestream with a bunch of international asexuals talking about what our countries look like when it comes to aces and ace rights. I had a really good time, and I'm glad that this year I was able to have a smaller commitment particularly. So happy IAD!

Why PhDs are Hard

 Honestly this weekend has been tough, I've been trying to get my spirits up for the fun things I have going on but it sucks. PhDs are so hard.

Part of it is the uncertainty. You don't know when you'll graduate, or if you're even on the right path, and you just have to keep chugging with that. Hopefully the stuff you do gets you closer, but also it might not be doing that, maybe it's a detour. And you just have to take your chances there.

Then there's how much time you put into it. Which means that you can also really easily destroy things that you put a lot of time into. And that just hurts so much more than destroying something that was already there. (It also hurts if someone else mucks it up, but then at least you aren't beating yourself up.) There's experiments you can put months into, only for one thing to be off and it doesn't work. Somehow this has happened to me multiple times and I'm getting so sick of it.

So it's just rough. And I don't know what it is about recently, but I feel like I've just been sitting in how hard it is. Hoping next week will be better.

This Is Beautiful: Flow Arts Performance

 So the flow arts group that I'm a part of at school had it's big show this past weekend. It's a good time, I really like what we do and how we work with the Chinese yo-yo group on campus. I also like that we have a scripted play that goes during the show so I get to act a little. The day of though is always such a struggle, we are there all day and if the group itself isn't stressed then the people working there are. It's just hard because I'm exhausted from the week and then I'm on my feet all day and just need some alone time hardcore. Plus it's hard to be excited during the show when I'm just trying to get through it.

Despite all of that complaining, I really loved this year's performance. I think the script was the most elaborate and tightest yet. I think the part I choreographed was pulled off amazingly well. Looking back, I'm happy and I think everything worked really well! I just am constantly questioning how much longer I can do this and if there's anything I can do to emphasize those aspects of it rather than the hard stuff...