hello hi! // about

[felinejumper]

hello, hi;

on ao3 here (current fic population: 3).

updated 21.02.13 to say my Big Things right now are the untamed and the magnus archives so that's...that's me.

some other things i like:

• virginia woolf
• science fiction of all sorts (with a heavy bent towards Butler/LeGuin style, and the newer era of 'fuck empire we're gay')
• vegetable gardens
• libraries & librarians & archival science
• fantasy of all sorts (with an even heavier bend towards, you guessed it, 'fuck empire we're gay')
• ....pirates ('fuck empire we're gay' yes ok you get the theme) *fandom
• history of science, especially the history of life sciences, especially the role of science in identity formation (like!! let's talk! about lesbians in the 20s in america!! and the creation of lesbian as a category that people could inhabit?)
• Fraught Fucking
• dubious mentorship
• trans robots vs cis robots (I hate Westworld, and i LOVE to hate Westworld, I'm sorry, I cannot stop reveling in my hate. edit: v1 of an attempt to tackle this here)
• storytelling (did I mention fan of fandom)
• bread production tactics & fancy icing tactics
• f/f emotions

say hi, i am usually slow to get back but that's just me, not you, I promise.

Comments

[breathedout]

That is a QUALITY list of interests, hell yeah.

[felinejumper]

Well, you read someone's Strachey/Keynes/etc. fic and then you read Mrs. Dalloway and then you wake up ten months later with a Project Gutenberg hangover and...here we are today.

[breathedout]

Ahahahah oh boy. Yes. Haven't we all been there. Quite the gateway drug, the undying love affair between Lytton Strachey and Et Cetera.

[annathecrow]

"fuck empire we're gay" -- okay, this made me cackle loudly :D And it's a pretty neat summary of that very specific book flavor that I, too, prefer.

(When I'm not reading questionable crap from BookBub, that is. Alas, one does not say no to discounted literature that promises badass female space captains...)

"bread production tactics" -- this is such a specific AND vague term, I love it. Are you interested in home baking? The history of bread making? The eternal question of why European bread is round and UK, US and Russian bread rectangular? No way to tell...

[felinejumper]

"Fuck empire we're gay" is apparently the only genre I subscribe to and insist on shoving down everyone's throat whenever humanly possible. Glad to have a pal around who's the same way! I *love* this graphic about empire in SFF - does it perchance include any of your current bad-ass female space captains? (source)

Also...if you haven't read it yet, and you are down with having your heart completely and utterly trashed, may I recommend The Traitor Baru Cormorant? It plays hardball with that theme.

Re: bread, I am interested in all of those things. And since you gave me a platform...

1. bread is a fundamental human experience! Everybody makes bread, kinda like everyone makes dumplings! And it's always great. I love eating it and making it and having everyone tell me I'm amazing for doing so.


2. (speaking from the U.S. here) - The mythologies around sourdough bread are unreal. It gets all of this HYPE, these mythical attributes of health and locality and realness and curative powers, in ways that are just...not...scientifically speaking here, true. Like cast iron pans, or like fermented foods, there's this whole American pioneer thing that just isn't really backed up by data and yet is very, very comforting to a lot of people because of how it gives them a kind of cultural/historical relationship to food. Which is often missing

[annathecrow]

Now, that is a very pretty graph. And yes! I absolutely love Ancillary Justice! Or, the whole series more specifically - I was in awe after finishing Justice, head over heals after Sword, and squeeing loudly after Mercy.

Traitor Baru Cormorant sounds interesting, but unfortunately "emotionally crushing" is pretty much an anti-recommendation for me. :/ I won't bother you with my lengthy and overshare-y excuse, so... yeah. I'll keep it in mind, though, maybe I'll get to it!

Bread! I lowkey obsessed with grain & staple food production myself, so I completely understand the appeal.

1. But is it really? Even if you ignore yeast/leavening and broaden the definition of bread to "baked dough" (which I would argue is not correct), there are many cultures whose cuisine doesn't include it! Have you read about cassava? Holy shit, humans are hardcore. That said, the ubiquity of bread and bread-like products is truly amazing.

2. Oh, the pioneer thing is an interesting perspective, I never considered that... in Europe you can see a similar idealization of home-made bread, but here it's just one aspect of a general "olden days" nostalgia tied to idealized village life that is seen as more "true" than our current lifestyles.

Food production is such a ready target for social anxieties, it's so fascinating! Have you ever noticed the resemblance of modern fad diets and food-related religious practices? I strongly suspect we (as a species) are hardwired to worry about our sustenance, so when it's not scarcity, it's morality or quality or some other metric we invent (bodyweight, for example).

On a more lighthearted note re:pioneer cooking, the reenactment YouTube Townsends is absolute delight, and they have a bread making series.

[felinejumper]

Definitely stay far away from Traitor, then, there's enough books in the world that are not *explicitly* about betrayal. Ancillary -- yeah. YEAH. If you happen to come across anything more in that vein, please consider me for your book pitches.

bread:

1. I've read about cassava, but not about the toxicity aspect, that is wild! Especially for a food that so many people still rely on. It makes me cranky that I'll never know the factual story of how humans figured out that kind of food processing--cassava, maize, potatoes etc. There's a somewhat compelling argument that cooking/food processing is what made us human (on an evolutionary scale), because it's both such a complex task, and also frees up so much digestive energy. But. Stilllll amazing.
   
2. Yes, that sounds very similar! I would be deeply interested in a more comprehensive cross-cultural comparison, there's so many interweaving threads of (broadly speaking) mythical bodies and histories (also as it relates to vaccinations!). I also don't have a good read on that particular kind of nutrition nostalgia/anxiety in, say, China, or Argentina, or how it signifies. Also: colonizer/colonized dynamics--the Navajo in the U.S. have a super interesting cultural relationship to frybread, for example (although I suspect thatdoes not count as your technical definition of bread, which I'm also intrigued by).
   
   I had not thought about fad diets and religious practice as such!! But I will! I would very much like that Venn diagram of like, lentil-eating monks and the Mediterranean diet, both in actual content and more metaphysical rhetoric about purity and control.
   
   I do think about the morality of my food all the time, though, instead of where I'm going to hunt deer, which does very much feel like a function of how well supplied I am with food in general. Yeah. I...that's a really good point, even though I'm not sure what to do with it -- move to the country and grow everything myself is usually where I end up.
   
   AND last but not least, GOOD @ pioneer cooking videos! Not least because this is *very* good fic reference for, like, the 18th century bakery AU I will self-indulgently write sometime.
   

[annathecrow]

For books, I think I specifically gravitate to the trope of "fuck the Crapsack World, we are going to be nice, to everyone". I have recently started the Confluence series by Jennifer Foehner Wells and at least the first two books seem to go pretty solidly in that direction. The main character is a female linguist/anthropologist, and it's so satisfying to read about an alien first contact done by someone who has experience with first contacts!

...and now that I'm writing it, whoops, that looks a lot like sociopolitical wish-fulfillment. If we can imagine aliens getting along, why can't humans do it, goddammit! *shakes fist*

"cooking as a cornerstone of human evolution" -- hnnnnnnngggg I know what my next research binge is gonna be about! Because that makes so much sense.

"frybread" -- thanks for the link, that's super interesting. Also, I suspect that my definition of bread is about as good as any that tries to generalize across cultures and languages (which is to say, not at all). In my native language nobody would call "flatbread" bread. Hell, the English are still arguing whether jaffa cakes are bisquits or not.

"pioneer videos" -- lol, my interest about history is at least 75% "this would make a cool story/setting!" XD Like, I am aware it will never happen, but it's like with hunting dog breeds - the instinct doesn't go away.

[sciatrix]

history of science, especially the history of life sciences, especially the role of science in identity formation (like!! let's talk! about lesbians in the 20s in america!! and the creation of lesbian as a category of people?)

*scoots chair closer* THIS IS AN INTEREST I TOO SHARE. do you have a place you like to go off about this? Because I am very into the 1920s and I am very into queer history and also I am a life scientist and also I work on sexuality (not in humans but still) and also I am extremely interested in identity formation and hi excuse me would you like to brainmeld because I WANT TO KNOW ALL THE THOUGHTS ON THIS, MY GOD.

HI.

HI.

HI.

this is probably coming on too strong but I AM SO EXCITED ABOUT EVERYTHING IN THIS PARAGRAPH HELLO

[felinejumper]

HI. YEAH. Please scoot your chair close but not too close so that we can still wave our hands in the air excitedly and not break any noses!!

I do not *yet* have a place I go off, because I, in true scientist fashion, am extremely loathe to make claims without a metric ton of evidence, and I am still a history teacup pig. BUT! In the future, probably this very journal, and definitely PMs where I feel less pressured to have a coherent story and can just !!!!!! (and certainly I go off IRL like 70% of the time).

UH ANYWAY, hello, yes, please let's internet-equiv. of mind meld on aannnnyyy of the venn diagram of interests, which appears to be just a circle. (your research! queerness + academia! scientific responsibility! etc etc!)

[forestofglory]

Hi! I saw that you subscribed to my journal so I came to find out more about you. You seem pretty awesome! This great interest list. Anyways, I just wanted to let you know that I subscribed back.

Re: bread production have you read White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf by Aaron Bobrow-Strain? I thought it was really good and it seems up your alley. It got lots of bread history but also some really interesting social context and stuff about people trying to reform other peoples diets.(I'm really into food/environmental history -- I just like thinking about how people think about nature a lot.)

Do you have recs for stories about mentorship? I have been looking for more of these recently.

[felinejumper]

This bread production bullet point has been so delightfully productive. I haven't read the Bobrow-Strain book, but I sure would like to! (additional: just read the summary fully, it is VERY up my alley!!!!)

re: mentorship recs, not really! I really, really wish I did--it's only recently that I've been able to articulate that as a driving interest, and thus hadn't been ID'ing it in stories previously. And it tends to be peripheral rather than a driving force, so hard to search for, and I want it to be as confused and muddled and fraught as the mentorship I've participated in. In the paper book world, I might argue that there's sufficiently messy mentorship themes in Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series, & if you've read it I'd be interested to hear your thoughts! (and would recommend, if you haven't) (I don't recall any dead moms¹, nor any particularly strong mothers, so ymmv). I have also been toying with writing something with relationships in Tamora Pierce's Emelan series, which I'm guessing you have read! I've been ruminating a whole bunch on Daja & Frostpine and queerness, craft, race, gender, and ways they might fight + learn in a slightly less always-supportive way.

BUT: I will keep an eye out, and certainly keep me on the list for anything you see in that category!

^{1. And if you're wondering about my provenance in your follow list, it was because of your "where are the moms in sff?" post, a VERY good question indeed. Perhaps related to the mentorship q?}

[forestofglory]

I'm really glad you liked my moms essay. I do think its at least a little bit related to the lack of mentors -- in that there just aren't a lot of women older than 35 in SFF.

I hadn't thought about Machineries of Empire as mentorship story but you are right that it is. What cool way to think about those books. And now I want to reread the Emelan books because its really long time since I last read them!

[xmarksthespotwhereistand]

Hi! These are some interesting interests! I definitely want to read more about transmission in robots, because I am trans and I love robots (also, it's true that I have approached this question in more of a naive, ignorant way: how robot bodies would give us a chance to define our own physical presentation, I've read a very good post about how in cyberpunk, it is always the company-forced cyborgness is what create the dysphoric feel and that it never really examines what would happen if we could define our own cyborgness)...
So definitely something I would enjoy reading more about. Also, "fuck empire, we are gay" means "our love is our resistance" or more "our deviance is our resistance" or "the empire made the personal political so now we are going to fuck it (and each other)" or...? Can you tell I love read about it, too?
Happy interacting at DW! I'm new here, too, let's interact with each other!

For my tastes in Sherlock (TV) note icon

[jesse_the_k]

I've subscribed because your interests are interesting.

Also, I've been drowning in Sherlock FIC for the last um, decade.

Our tastes seem to overlap a bit, having stalked your bookmarks.

My Absolute Faves includes one series that may be relevant to your interests

It's two novels now: STATIC by patternofdefiance it does nifty SFnal things with John's cyberthetic replacements--these prosthetics have some AI, require him to interact with the medical establishment in entirely new ways, play around with medical authority, assistive technology, and of course augmented sex.

[little_brisk]

hello! if i know you from elsewhere i'm not placing you, but anyone with that set of interests is someone i should be dw circlets or whatever we call them with!

[felinejumper]

Circlets! Crownlets! Olympic ringlets!
I'd be surprised if you knew me from elsewhere (i.e. professional grade lurker), but *waves* hello, glad to find overlaps.

[fhionnuisce]

I would love to talk to people about many of these topics! I'm glad we met and I'm looking forward to sticking around more on Dreamwidth now (I am not a Tumblr defectee but I came back over because I discovered people were coming back here. I've always used it for fandom purposes but not in a while.)

I'm working on a fic 'verse where Sam Winchester is enby (I am enby and already wrote a lot of enby Dean) and they through a series of happy accidents become the caretaker of a library and then go to library school so I'd love to talk to you about library things! Also I have so much to say about Black Sails oh my god.....

[felinejumper]

I am SO interested in DW migration, as I...yes, as I did already say, so it's actually delightful to hear snippets about how people use platforms!

enby/librarians are exceedingly exceedingly in my interests, good good good; and Black Sails basically functions as a lodestone to my entire self, so...yes, please do hit me up with ALL of those whenever and wherever. Hurray, new friends!

[fhionnuisce]

Awesome! Well for now I have to pause brainstorming on this librarian AU, because I don't know what I will be writing for Fandom Trumps Hate shortly, if at all, and I need to devote all brainpower to that if I am bid on. So I deliberately put the librarian thing on the back shelf for right now. But I'll know more maybe March-ish? and I'll hit you up! For that kind of thing should we talk here or is a PM okay?

[felinejumper]

A PM is absolutely fine! Probably slightly more effective, even. Yay!

(I will also now state my usual disclaimer that I am Very Bad at responding quickly and consistently, and it is absolutely 0% a reflection on whoever is actually contacting me and much more a reflection of my ability to manage approximately 0.8 things/day)

[fhionnuisce]

Trust me, I understand! :D Actually given that maybe I should PM now, and we can have a slow, running discussion that is not time sensitive.

[felinejumper]

just wanted to pop back in and say yes, please, whenever! while also exerting no pressure whatsoever for soon! <3

[fhionnuisce]

Cool! I'll know more about my availability and when during life things this will be getting written, after the Fandom Trumps Hate auction is over. Right now I'm in a bit of a holding pattern while I wait (bidding starts tonight omg!) and I always am a bit confused with what to do with my time during these waiting periods. I'll be in touch soon! <3

[donut_donut]

i got into the sherlock fandom 8 years too late but it's literally changed my life

I'd love to hear more about this! I got into the show in 2014 (so... four years too late? lol) and it has also changed my life in a way that feels bizarre for a pretty mainstream tv show.

your other interests intrigue me too

[felinejumper]

I have a long essay brewing about this; maybe I'll actually write it someday! I'm very much craving reflections more generally on fandom-entry-experiences, so I'd be VERY interested in your experience as well!

The short-ish version is just that I was (retrospectively) in the market for escapist reading material last fall (er, 2018) & someone forwarded me a Rec Center (I wish I could remember why!) and I bit really hard on Sherlock because I had loved BBC in 2011 and read all the ACD as a kid. So it was an easy entry point into this wonderland of really novel kinds of stories, and like. UGH. FANDOM. A tumblr thing once described fic as a genre (rather than a style), and that feels very accurate to that headlong free fall of like "oh, wow, people are writing about relationships.", and it became immediately clear that fic writers were engaging with media and story-telling in often super nuanced ways that I was not too often in my day-to-day RL.

ANYWAY it's an endlessly interesting topic to me, the way people find things out, so.Yeah. What happened in 20..15?

[felinejumper]

OH ALSO I was going to comment on the post itself, but I saw on greywash's bisexual yelling post a mention of CYBMN rants: I would also be a very interested reader!

[donut_donut]

Oh! Yes, here it is -- my rant on CMBYN fandom and press and bisexual erasure.

[donut_donut]

This post is also kind of related, though it's mostly about differences between the book and the movie. But I talk for a bit about how Elio's sexuality was made (a bit) more conventional for the movie.

[donut_donut]

ohhhhhh I see. I'm sorry, we've got a slightly crossed wire here I'm afraid. I do read some fanfic, and I have a handful of authors I follow assiduously, but I'm actually in the (relatively unusual?) position of being obsessed with the show itself.

I was recently reading a very astute comment somewhere and now I can't for the life of me find it, positing that there are two kinds of fandom -- one where the fans consider the canon perfect, and the other where the fans consider it a good concept that was crappily executed and is in desperate need of fixing. I get the impression that most Sherlock fans would put themselves and the show in the latter category, but I am very much in the former -- I think of it as just this perfect, gorgeous, glorious object that I want to roll around in forever and ever.

Which is weird! Because while I've been known to enjoy some mainstream pop culture entertainments in my life, I don't generally fall SO HARD for something so... middlebrow, with a huge active fandom? So that's been a bit awkward for my self-identity.

Sometimes I think back to an interview Moffat gave way back in S1 era I think, where he was like, "we were totally surprised by the success of the show. We thought we were making a passion project that might be a critical darling but would probably only be watched by 40 people who became entirely devoted to it." And then it became this monstrous worldwide juggernaut of a show... But sometimes I wonder if I was actually meant to be one of those 40 people, haha, who are fully invested in Moftiss's vision, and everyone else is looking at the show and wondering why this piece of mainstream pop entertainment isn't conforming to their expectations for that sort of thing.

Anyway that's kind of my story, lol: I just really really like Sherlock to a sort of scary degree, and I've written thousands of words of analysis on it, and I'm always looking for other people who are as passionate about it as I am. I have found a few!

[achray]

Hello! Also usually a lurker, also small and shy, also interested in a LARGE NUMBER of things on your list.

[felinejumper]

My list, carefully shaped by hovering around the edges of fandom and sucking up recommendations like a sponge. It's a good place to learn things!

Among other topics (fwiw I think I found you through greywash yelling about bisexuality, god bless), I am deeply invested in your teaching fan studies stories -- it's such a delightful overlap to hear about by proxy! Excited to hear more of them, excited to make new friends always, hello :)

[achray]

*waves* (in passing, on way to bed far too late, as is usual by the time I get to DW...)

[fhionnuisce]

OH MY GOODNESS. I just realized we've interacted on AO3! I think before we were friends here. I am roguefaerie there (we talked Black Sails lol.)

[fiachairecht]

(Hello, I wandered over from your Femslash After Dark letter and specifically your Gentleman Jack feelings, what an excellent list of interests you have!)

[felinejumper]

(hello! What a delightful way to be found! I'm glad there's some additional resonance on my broader DW as well \o/)

[aimedatthestars]

*waves*

Here via your Baru fic I've been meaning to read. Saw this page which has lots of my interests! Libraries, fuck empire we're gay! Pirates who are also gay and anti-imperial!

[felinejumper]

hi! yay, wine country revolutionary Tain Hu is....honestly, probably the escape I should be writing myself right now. Yes! I feel like Baru Cormorant people tend to have a very lovely venn diagram across those things, including also "?? what's a happy ending ANYWAY." welcome, hello, I am not here as often as I'd like, but honestly who is?