labingi

LOTR Re-Read Running Thoughts - Bombadil

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 16:40:07 GMT

(I mentioned last post that East-Farthing folk tend to use "funny" instead of "queer," but this was apparently a fluke. Merry is back to calling things "queer" and so do people in Bree.)

I understand why Peter Jackson cut out the Tom Bombadil. In addition to all the singing, it's one of the most digressive parts of LOTR, as it focuses very little on anything to do with the Ring (not nothing, but little). I had forgotten that Tom not only bursts into song a lot but talks almost entirely in meter. It is interesting, though, that he drops out of meter in the paragraph where he's talking about how old he is/how he predates the coming of Morgoth.

I had also forgotten that when the hobbits are cavorting naked on the Barrow Downs, it's actually only three of them cavorting naked. Frodo never loses his clothes, which is handy for him--and possibly, in universe, the hand of God--because he could have lost the Ring right there. This means, however, he owes us a naked scene, which he will give us later on.

Accents

At Bree, the gatekeeper identifies Frodo as being from the Shire by the way he talks, which I take to mean his accent because there aren't any obvious dialectical markers in his words (that I see).

This raises a thorny problem for LOTR adaptation or just reading aloud: what on earth is one to do about all the accents that would logically exist? Traditionally, (ex. BBC radio) readings have gone for elevated RP unless the lines show non-standard dialect markers. That's how I grew up and is my happy place, but I admit it doesn't make sense, and the Bree line suggests it's not reflective of Tolkien's intent. Jackson did possibly as well as one could with this, having subtle alterations between more British and more American across different groups. But I do find it weird that there's more accent variation among three hobbit cousins than across the whole rest of Middle-earth. Elves, to date, seem to always come out elevated RP, and Rings of Power got slammed for this--unfairly, I think, as it's just doing what everyone else has done and clearly did put some thought into accents. But it's a fair point that Elves are speaking a foreign language when speaking the Common Tongue, so it might make sense to have them sound foreign, relative to English. All in all, I don't have the perfect answer and would love to hear others' views.

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LotR Re-Read Running Thoughts

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 23:40:23 GMT

I've started rereading The Lord of the Rings for the first time at least ten years, and I thought I would note some stuff that is popping out to me this time around:

Sam is character we almost always see surrounded by his social "betters" and in his humble servant mode, which makes it really interesting to me that the first scene he's in shows him in conversation with this social equals in a more comfortable and outspoken mode. This immediately sets up how calibrated his behaviors are to his social context.

Frodo's first line is "Has he gone?" This sets up nicely the association of his character with loss.

People in Hobbiton tend to call things "queer"; people in the East Farthing tend to call things "funny," though they also use "queer." Merry calls things "funny"; he is a true Bucklander.

Frodo is really quite witty. Hobbits are, in general, and this isn't new news for me about Frodo, but it is striking me what a high percentage of his dialogue has some sort of wit or irony. I think this was largely lost in Jackson's script, which tends to go for terrified or generically nice.

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A Catholic View of Reading, and My Agnostic, Buddhist Response

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 05:10:58 GMT

(Reposted from my Substack)

I recently attended a Trinity Lecture Series lecture, "Knowing What We Don’t Know: Cultivating Intellectual Humility Through Imaginative Literature" with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson. It was a very good lecture by a Catholic for an audience assumed to be entirely Catholic. As an agnostic Buddhist, I was a cultural guest, and it was the first time in a long time I have been a guest in discourse community that assumes everyone is an insider. Such an experience is a gift, even—perhaps especially—when it causes discomfort. Moreover, it was an apt gift to receive in a lecture about cultivating humility and knowing what we don’t know. I tried to follow Professor Hooten Wilson’s (hereafter JHW) advice to listen openly and think deeply. Here are some of my impressions.

I am fully onboard with her advice to read a wide range of fiction with openness and, if those works don’t initially connect with us, to start with the thought, “Maybe I missed something.” I’m not great at that. I’m a judgmental reader of fiction, especially if it’s recent. So this is something I can and should strive to improve on.

A key aspect of her advice was to read texts widely known to be great works of high morality in order to cultivate “taste.” By developing a taste for such works, we can gravitate to them and increase our exposure to good role models and lessons, while decreasing the amount of time we spend engaging with harmful inputs. I agree with a lot of this. “Taste” is not the word I would personally use because, to me, “taste” is a relatively amoral word; it refers to entertainment (or food, etc.) that one enjoys regardless of one’s underlying morals. For example, one may have a “taste” for horror movies without thinking people should terrorize each other in real life. JHW, however, ties “taste” strongly to moral rectitude, which is lexically alien to me.

I agree, however, that morality is deeply entangled with fiction. I agree that what we like generally says something about our values—or at least this is true for me. I agree that this is important and deserves consideration. I might call it something different: discernment, judgment? I personally would leave a greater philosophical space for enjoying works without morally agreeing with them.

But I agree that surrounding oneself with beneficial inputs is beneficial. Reading great works helps the heart and mind in ways that reading trash doesn’t. I have certainly absorbed ill effects from works with some kind of “harmful” message. The most harmful to me personally has been the message that women have to have a romantic partner to be anything other than a failure. This was culturally louder in my formative years than it is now, and it followed me from Disney to Jane Austen to every pop fantasy novel to every Shakespearean comedy, and so on.

But this is tricky because harmful messages can be in great works that also have good messages. Pride and Prejudice is a good novel; Much Ado about Nothing is a good play. I’m glad I’ve read both. On balance, I agree with my parents (and I think JHW agrees too) that reading broadly is a decent way to sort through different kinds of messaging. I doubt that it’s possible not to get psychologically hurt (at least for someone, like myself, who absorbs a lot of life through literature), but it certainly is possible to cultivate a practice of reading works that are thoughtful, well crafted, and conscientious in their various ways.

Where JHW’s discourse threw me was not in its basic points about reading but in its (Catholic) stance on humanity. She opened by asserting that we (humans) tend to think only about our successes and see our lives as a continuous rise through accomplishments. I thought, what universe does she inhabit? I thought, my default perspective is better summed up by an interchange in the Monk movie, where Monk says something offensive, and a bystander says, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” And Monk says, “Yes, every day. All the time.” (Quote may not be exact.)( Read more... )

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Happy Downfall of Sauron Day, 2026!

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 02:07:06 GMT

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day, Middle-earth denizens! I will be honest, this year it's a feat just to remember to post. I've had zero brain cells to spare for Middle-earth.

I usually get to spend March 25 in my hometown, which is usually lovely at this time of year, but this year, the dates were such that I spent all day driving from California back to Oregon (about 8 hours), so no commemorative hike. My town is still lovely, but it's really showing the effects of climate change this season. It looks more like May than March, the grass already quite dry and peas already out in full force. So that was depressing.

Not a bad thing but a very emotionally trying thing: my hopes to get our family property situated in some form that would protect it long-term, hopefully in concert with Indigenous people of the region blew up spectacularly. Basically, my mom (who is the owner) overrode it with another plan, and it will be okay. It's fine, but it's requiring a huge cognitive shift on my part after years of trying to figure out land-back. It has also been, by turns, embarrassing, humbling, disappointing, and contentious, which has left no mental space for Tolkien.

So if I have anything to say about LotR today, it may be that I feel a little bit like Frodo saying that the Shire has been saved but not for him. Except thanks to rabid necrophilic (just recently heard that adjective) imperialism driving climate collapse, I can't really say it's been saved, but it has been put in nearly as favorable a position as the necrophilic empire allows. But not for me, not as the home it once was. As with Frodo, it's still there, and I'm still welcome, and (unlike Frodo) I'll still be around, but I can't really go home again.

Well, as my mother put it today, "It would be nice if Sauron had actually fallen." We can only hope.

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Friend Is Okay + Book Discount

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 04:16:29 GMT

Update to my previous entry: I heard from my friend in Baghdad, and she and her family are okay. She is, however, worried about her friends in Iran. Thanks to everyone for your kind wishes.

On a totally different subject, here is a Bookshop.org code for 20% off your first purchase (only ships to US):

https://refer.bookshop.org/egkfmyy2rdr6

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The War in the Middle East - A Person Reflection

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 18:56:11 GMT

(Copied from my Substack)

Disclaimer: I’m not claiming my story is important. It’s just the story I have to tell.

One of my best friends lives in Baghdad, which is among the many, many places now bombed in this regional war started by my government. As I write this, she and her family are probably all right. As far as I know, there have been no strikes near where they live and work. They’ve survived worse. They survived being bombed by my country during the war over obviously fake WMD’s. But as the days go by and I don’t hear from her, I can’t help reflecting that they might soon die because my country is run by lunatics and cowards.

And I keep thinking I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

My own senators and representative already oppose the was on Iran, even heavily pro-Israeli Ron Wyden. I’ve already written to thank them. But they are outnumbered by the cowards in Congress. I could sign petitions. I could write or call other legislators. I could stand in the street with a sign, but what can I do that would have real impact? Where do my strengths lie for taking action?

I don’t have a good answer for what to do about this war. But broadly, thinking of my life on Earth, my mind turns toward my writing, and as that’s a focus of this Substack, I’ll share a thought about it. In my science fiction, I write messy situations, and I write with sympathy toward virtually all my characters. I sometimes feel this puts me at odds with the prevailing values of my own progressive comrades in current social science fiction circles. The Zeitgeist there seems to favor sharp divisions between right and wrong: the oppressed are in the right; the oppressors are in the wrong. This must be clearly driven home in the name of real-world justice.

I think I respectfully disagree. Not with the premise about oppression being bad, but with the narrative prescription of moral simplicity. I’m not saying straightforward moralizing stories shouldn’t exist. Many value them and get validation of their own struggles from them. Those stories have their place. But I occupy a different place. I try to write (almost) everyone with sympathy: oppressed, oppressor, dictator, soldier, abused, abuser, the broadminded, the dogmatic.

What does this have to do with the war in the Middle East? This war has been enabled by simplistic morality narratives: Iran has a harmful regime (true); therefore, it’s fine for “the good guys” (us/US) to drop missiles on them because they are “bad guys.” The same rationale supports ICE, excuses January 6th but deports people for a school protest, excuses kidnapping the president of Venezuela while defending “Our President” tooth and nail. It’s American exceptionalism on steroids: “We are Good, and they are Bad, so anything we do to ‘get’ them is Good.”

This kind of mindset, even if it’s not even close to this level of stupid, makes it easy to label groups as deserving punishment because they do bad things. Iran’s government is oppressive; it does fund attacks that kill civilians. This eclipses the schoolgirls, the families going about their business, the people doing the hard work for decades of trying to resist a reactionary theocracy. It makes a bomb seem like an easy answer.

My friend, whom I dearly love, could die in this war. She’s an English teacher just trying to live her life.

What can I do? I’ll go on trying to figure that out, imperfectly, often ineffectually, and sometimes irresponsibly, as I learn how to be a citizen under fascism. But one thing I will surely keep on doing is writing characters with sympathy. With the exception of a few very minor walk-ons, it will be every character, every time: the murderers, the rapists, the wealthy, the colonizers, the trampled, the sacrificed, the raped, the ignored, the destitute, the elite, the insightful, and the lacking in insight. I’ll do it because this world needs more sympathy, and that’s something I can do.

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Why Wuthering Heights Matters (to Me)

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 03:59:21 GMT

Dreamwidth, I have been cheating on you with Substack. I love you much more, Dreamwidth. My relationship with Substack is purely a matter of convenience. However, the following post is also on my Substack, which may explain its reading as a bit more formal than I usually hold forth here.

Content warning: This is a dark book with lots of abuse, and I discuss some of it.

The discourse over Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights movie has prompted a resurgence of conversation about Emily Brontë’s novel and reminded me just how controversial the book remains almost 180 years after its publication. Wuthering Heights recounts the obsessive attachment of Catherine and Heathcliff, two young people growing up on Yorkshire moors at the end of the 18th century, and the harm done to them and by them. Many love it; many hate it. I am in the “love” camp, and I want to explain why Wuthering Heights is an important book, both to me and in our world to this day.

Spoilers for the novel follow.( Read more... )

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My Mother's Holiday Message

Mon, 05 Jan 2026 05:56:47 GMT

A bit late, I wanted to share my mother's holiday letter (with her permission):

My Year of Not-doing

by Patricia Spicer

In 2025, while friends and relatives were busy with many accomplishments, I did NOT do several things:

My house was painted, but not by me. A painter did it.

A tiny home was installed on my property in Glen Ellen, but I did not do it. My remarkable tenant, Juan Sanchez, did it.

A new gate was added to my front porch railing, but I did not do it. A carpenter did it.

You can see how much I did NOT do. And there was much more.

But I did make two trips to Iceland, one with Rick Steves and one through the remarkable pictures of my cousin Holly, who also took me to all the film sites for the Lord of the Rings in New Zealand. How beautiful and what an easy way to travel!

Yes, Arwen and I did take one actual trip to Glen Ellen in June, very brief, due to my painful back injury. Much better now.

I look forward to another year of Not-doing, when I expect to xeriscape my front yard, but I will let the landscaper do it.

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The Hive Mind in Pluribus

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 17:10:24 GMT

I have been enjoying Jessie Gender’s reviews of Pluribus. I appreciate her perspectives and agree on many points but also had some disagreement with points raised in her review of the finale. Namely, I think her use of the word “hegemony” is sometimes inaccurate or, at least, imprecise, and I am not prepared, as she is, to definitively judge the hive mind as “bad.”

Spoilers below for season 1 of Pluribus( Read more... )

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I Love a Good Emergency!

Wed, 24 Dec 2025 23:02:58 GMT

The 1970’s TV show Emergency! is a treasure. If you want a reminder that society can be decent and humane, (re)discover it today. Emergency! follows the adventures of two paramedics (Roy and John) and the firefighters and hospital staff they work with. It’s low on plot, high on the specifics of various rescues and medical procedures, interspersed with human interest and light comedy. Though it is sometimes pulse-pounding, things almost always turn out okay and interpersonal conflicts are almost always slight. It’s a feel-good show about competent people doing their jobs with professionalism and compassion.

Below the cut are three things I especially like about Emergency! No spoilers to speak of; there’s not much to “spoil.” ( Read more... )

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Own Hands Story Search Update with Linkspam

Fri, 12 Dec 2025 05:44:01 GMT

This is an ownhands update, but it has enough cool links I'm crossposting here so more people can see: some great alternative economy, digital commons stuff!

Thanks to PDX Time Bank (see Hourworld.org for more info), I’ve been fortunate to meet two amazing collaborators on the Own Hands Story Search tool: Rob Bednark and Matt McNamara. Rob has jumpstarted serious work on this project, and Matt put together an impressive prototype, integrated with a wealth of information from OpenLibrary, something I would never have thought of.

A quick plug: If you use the research-organization tool, Zotero, you may also be interested in Matt’s Zotero extension for Firefox, Webtero, optimized for web-based research.

Also through the time bank, I’m doing beta reading of Sara Bednark’s (Rob’s wife) novel, Delia, a very well-written tale of isolation and connection in the pandemic. I look forward to seeing this work published and will keep you posted on DW.

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Got Proof Copy of My Novel!

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 23:42:56 GMT

I (finally) received the proof copy of my social sci-fi novel, A Soldier in the Borderlands, lovely cover art by Xavier Aguirre. Here's the blurb:

On a planet racked by drought, fourteen-year-old soldier Tánashen has done terrible things to serve the Citadel. Guilt is a price he’s willing to pay for the Citadel to protect his brother from the raiders who massacred their people. But when the so-called “raiders” capture Tánashen, he must face the fact that the Citadel lied; they are the true oppressor. Now, he’ll risk death to save his brother from the Citadel and liberate his homeland. There's just one complication: most lies contain some truth.

If anyone is interested in reviewing this book, I'm happy to send you a free epub or PDF. Just PM me.

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Seeking Ideas - Good Conservatives?

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 20:39:42 GMT

I'm looking for names of public figures, still alive today, who progressive thinkers might consider morally good conservatives, by some definition. I'm thinking of people like Pope Leo, for example. This could include, for example, political figures, religious leaders, authors, journalists, actors, philanthropists, etc.

This is for an essay I'm writing on making broad alliances. I'd welcome your thoughts.

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Interview Towa Elder Charlie Toledo

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 02:47:46 GMT

I wanted to share the interview I did for Sufficiency and Wellbeing with Charlie Toledo, the amazing director of the Suscol Intertribal Council in Napa, California. I feel deeply honored that she took this time to share her thoughts about effective activism and finding hope and joy in our troubled times.

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The Virgin and the Swine Review – A Swing and a Miss

Mon, 06 Oct 2025 02:43:00 GMT

Continuing the Mabinogion Tetrology discussion started here.

Walton's adaptation of the Fourth Branch of the Welsh Mabinogi is her first major book, written in the 1930s, and this may be why it's a bit rough. It also inherits an oddly structured, complex story and navigates it faithfully. It's an ambitious attempt at adding modern psychological depth and realism to this tale, and it's a great idea but not successfully executed, in my opinion. For me as a non-Welsh, lay reader, this is an endeavor that deserves to be redone. The potential is there, but the story falters for two main reasons: too much telling vs. showing and the fact that it's just hard to write a compelling story about unlikable characters.

See my previous post for a spoilery summary. Spoilery thoughts follow... ( Read more... )

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The Mabinogion Tetrology - Review, Rec, & Thoughts

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 04:06:13 GMT

I have just finished The Mabinogion Tetrology by Evangeline Walton, compiled novelizations of the Four Branches of the medieval Welsh Mabinogi. I highly recommend this work to fantasy fans who like tie-ins to traditional stories and don't mind a non-scholarly approach from a cultural outsider (Walton was American). It's a very "faithful" adaptation in that it takes virtually nothing out. The Four Branches themselves are just a few pages each, so Walton interpolates a lot, clearly from a 20th-century cultural standpoint (including idolization of "progress" and a surprising amount of Buddhism). One book was published in the 1930s, the others in the 1970s. The whole work is about 650 pages long, with the first three branches being novellas and the fourth a short novel.

Speaking as a cultural outsider and lay reader myself, I think she does this quite well. Specifically, I think she does good work with the First Branch (The Prince of Annwn), and the Second (The Children of Llyr) and Third (The Song of Rhiannon) are among the most engaging and rewarding works I've read in a very long time! The Fourth Branch (The Island of the Mighty, a.k.a. The Virgin and the Swine), which was the first she wrote, is hit and miss for me but still worth reading. The whole work is generally quite feminist; I have no doubt was a huge influence on The Mists of Avalon.Spoilery review follows...( Read more... )

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I made a link!

Wed, 01 Oct 2025 02:21:36 GMT

I was trying to figure out how to create a link to a ticket site for our Ursula K. Le Guin Birthday Event. (Come on by if you're near Portland, Oregon!) And the very old program we use to post updates was baffling me. I kept clicking around all the many, many menu options for where to add a link.

Then, I uncovered a note that I could use "unfiltered HTML."

"Can it be," I wondered, "that I could just type in an actual HTML tag?"

And, lo, it worked!

The only reason I remember how to do this after 20 years is Dreamwidth, where I do this regularly (and nowhere else). Thank you, Dreamwidth!

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Human Kindness!

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 14:52:15 GMT

7:45 am, and I have already been the recipient of human kindness. Asked the fellow at disability center if they could convert PDFs to Word for me so to spare me screen time during a chronic pain flare. He said the center doesn't do that, but he understands chronic pain & would do it personally. All my gratitude to this caring man!

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Happy Bilbo and Frodo's Birthday, 2025!

Tue, 23 Sep 2025 02:05:01 GMT

Happy Bilbo and Frodo's Birthday! (In the great crossover 'verse in my mind, Frodo is 96 this year, I think. My math is bad, but for reasons unlikely to become apparent right now, my reference point is he's 46 years older than me, so.)

In honor of this year's birthday, I thought I'd respond Tolkienesquely to a video I recently watched, LibraryofaViking's "What Modern Fantasy Gets Wrong (and why it matters)," which is interesting and nuanced, and, its clickbaity title notwithstanding, respectful toward fantasy old and new.

Specifically, I want to respond to the video's reference to R. F. Kuang's defense of fantasy (and SF?) being ideological. I have not seen/read her speech. I'm responding to this video's reference to it; folks familiar with the whole are welcome to add context. I gather that Kuang defends ideological fantasy against the common (often rightwing) critique that it's being ruined by being too "ideological" or "political" (i.e. "woke"). As characterized by LibraryofaViking, she argues that it is artistically valid to take an ideological stand and pursue it didactically in a genre novel.

The Problem I See with (Some) Modern "Ideological" SF&F

I agree ideological didacticism is valid (i.e. it should be publishable and socially allowable, and it can have good artistic quality—Jemisin, for me, is an example; I haven't read Kuang). Likewise, I agree the rightwing critique often has a subtext that the problem is not (entirely) being ideological but being leftwing. It's not just critiquing bad writing; it's critiquing values the critic doesn't agree with and casting this disagreement as a question of "writing quality." Side note: these aren't separate issues; values and artistic quality are entangled, but they are also not the same thing.

That said, as someone often annoyed by the didacticism of modern SF&F, for me, the problem is not that it's ideological; it's that it's simplistic. ( Read more... )

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Alien: Earth, Ep 1 - Climate Report Card

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 03:54:58 GMT

I enjoyed episode 1 of Alien: Earth. It seems a pretty good show, but for this post I'm just going to evaluate its performance on addressing climate breakdown. I've only seen this ep. once and wasn't taking notes, so feel free to chime in with what I missed.

Baseline: the show is set in 2120, about 100 years from now, i.e. in the middle of dealing with either a) voluntary radical change in how civilization lives on the Earth and/or b) involuntary climate breakdown, with much of the Earth being uninhabitable. How is the show doing with that reality?

* Handicap point: It's trying to maintain continuity with Alien's timeline, which is from the 1970s. (+1)

* Massive technological advancement with no sign of climate impacts on industrial infrastructure, etc.: -1

* Paradisal, verdant island forested with mature trees many of which are probably over 100 and no signs of climate damage or commentary (that I caught) on how this can be: -1

* Community that looks like it has adjusted to significant sea-level rise: +1

* Metropolis with flawless skyscrapers, greenery and no sign of climate damage or slowdown in materials extraction. (To match physical reality, it must have one or the other.): -1

* Massive department stores with many aisles of clothing and splashy ads suggesting that marketing-driven, fast-fashion culture has persisted unchanged for over 100 years without resulting in biophysical ruin for much of the Earth. -3 (This is projection grotesquely out of step with all realistic projections.)

TOTAL: -4

For research I'm drawing on, see the first two sections especially of this bibliography.

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"My Cat Is a God"

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 21:42:54 GMT

Pleased to share my first article for Sufficiency and Wellbeing magazine, "My Cat Is a God" (literally), featuring Hudson the Hudster.

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The Bone Harp by Victoria Goddard: An Originalized Silmarillion Fic - Review

Mon, 11 Aug 2025 03:04:00 GMT

This is the first self-published book I have ever read a good chunk of without realizing it was self-published. [EDIT: This is not a dig at self-published writing. I am self-published and hope my books are roughly comparable to traditional in quality, but it is a mountain to climb to do all the traditional publisher work yourself on your own dime, so I'm impressed when a work does it, and I want to uplift that it's possible.] The book is as well written as a number of recent traditionally published books; it’s well edited, proofread, designed, nice cover art. It looks professional.

But in retrospect, it had to be self-published because it’s a Silmarillion fan fic with the names changed, and a traditional publisher wouldn’t take it for fear of being sued. Its premise (I’ll just render this in Tolkien terms) is one of the exiled Noldor returns to the Undying Lands after dying (?) in Middle-earth. That’s a fantastic premise for a fic! With some alterations, it’s a great premise for an original story. That’s why I bought it! I don’t think it fully exploits this premise, though. It’s a goldmine for psychological and philosophical development, and it has fairly little of either, in my opinion.

It does have a great original addition in the idea of a male and female elf who are well-matched “professional/vocational” rivals to such a degree they can be almost interchanged with each other. That concept may be the story’s strongest, and again, I felt it wasn’t fully exploited.

But some of my discontents are discontents with the source material (The Silmarillion): 1) the style is, for my taste, too expository—too much “telling,” not enough “showing”; 2) I just don’t get the concept of the Undying Lands on any deep level, because my cosmology is very different from Tolkien’s. Goddard is, I think, trying to follow Tolkien here, and part of my difficulty suspending disbelief may come from my just not getting it. I give her marks, on the whole, for showing respect for Tolkien’s work and not altering his Elves in any bizarre ways.

One the whole, I find the book conceptually fascinating but not developed deeply enough to fully engage me. Spoilers follow...( Read more... )

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My Bookshop.org Recommendations Lists

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 02:47:30 GMT

I have started some book recommendations lists at Bookshop.org. I currently have lists for:

* Genre fiction I love for character and relationship depth.
* Genre fiction I love for being thought provoking.
* Ecological genre fiction recommendations.

So far, these lists include my old standby titles, but I'm hoping to expand them (as I'm hoping to actually get back into reading again!).

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The Convincing Gender Egalitarianism of Arcane

Wed, 06 Aug 2025 18:24:36 GMT

Continuing to take some moments off from living through fascism to fangirl over Arcane, I want to discuss Arcane’s worldbuilding around gender. (Of possible interest to inhiding.) It does the common fantasy trope of presenting what would logically be a patriarchy as essentially gender egalitarian, but it is uncommon in doing a fairly good job selling it; at least, I buy it enough to suspend my disbelief, which is a high compliment. Possible spoilers for S1 and S2 behind the cut; warning for talk about violence and sexual violence.( Read more... )

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The Simplistic Anti-Racism of The Sandman Netflix Show

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 15:58:11 GMT

Note: This post is about the work, not the author. The author is relevant to the work, but this post is about something other than his actions and their gender implications in the work. I mostly discuss the show but reference the graphic novels. I like the show overall a lot and will discuss that more in another post; this one is just about race.

As was typical of the 1990s, the Sandman graphic novels are pretty white. For their time, they’re not clueless about showing racial diversity, but their handling of race needed updating for the show. Unfortunately, the show’s attempts to be anti-racist strike me as simplistic. Their approach is to take several characters who were white and cast them with Black people. That’s it; that’s the whole approach. This misses two crucial points about race:

1) There are more races than white and Black.

2) Systemic white supremacy is not just about centering white people; it’s about centering white culture.

General Spoilers for Season 2 and the graphic novel equivalent follow( Read more... )

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