Good Things Friday (159) and Link Love
March 11, 2022
1. I had a massage on Friday that really helped my muscles loosen up and bonus didn’t have a massive pain rebound afterward. I still needed to lay down and rest more than half the day Saturday and a few hours pm Sunday but that’s still a bit of improvement.
Challenges this week: everything.
2018 marks 41 years of IMF ‘rescue’ of Jamaica
I kept waiting for a jump scare.
Ukraine: India doctor stranded with a jaguar and panther
Omicron subvariant BA.2: The new symptoms to look out for
Arlan Hamilton Went From Homeless to Running $20 Million in VC Funds. Here’s How She Did It. I’ve been following Arlan’s work for some time now and admire her enough that I invested in her company when she opened up investing to the public.
I’ve used AirBnB once, I think it was ten or more years ago, but everything I’ve heard about them since has been bad including this. This is something they could so easily fix but nope of course they don’t: Ukraine Bookers on Airbnb Get Duped Despite Heartfelt Support
Amanda Diebert’s pay gap story is something to behold
I’d be very happy never to have rape scenes in books I’m reading ever again. It’s excessively common in real life, I’d rather not see it happening to fictional characters too. That’s not at all, obviously, to say that people don’t have a right to write about their experiences if they choose to but I just do not see it as a necessary and inevitable thing that must happen to fictional characters to be believable. I’d like to pretend for a moment that in some fictionap universes, we don’t have to live in constant awareness of rape: Things I will not do to my characters. Ever.
Whale sharks are the biggest fish in the ocean, and they are beautifully majestically creatures.
This one swimming in bioluminescent algae looks like its swimming with the stars!
(📽️Imgr Hauntologist2) pic.twitter.com/23eeC9o119
— Jan Freedman (@JanFreedman) March 5, 2022
The summary of BA.2 symptoms is helpful! I’d like to take a moment to be a pedant and point out it still shows up fine on all tests a patient would take to determine “Do I have Covid today?”. It simply can’t always be characterized by variant ID without sequencing.
Jenny F. Scientist recently posted…Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
Oh that’s an important point! The way I read it was the opposite and that was mildly concerning but we really just need the rapid test to tell us yea or nay. Variant identification is a nice to have, not a need to have.
Re: Seanan McGuire: I find it good to know that she has this approach. There was a point in the early 90’s when I decided that rape was overused by certain authors to the point at which it was either lazy and unimaginative writing OR it was someone doing their own personal psychological work via fiction. And that either way, I was going to drop authors over it. And I did.
There are other ways to communicate that some bad guy is bad. There are other experiences a character can have that can drive their choices for good or for ill. If a writer has a brain, they do not have to push the that particular button, and they certainly don’t have to push it repeatedly.
I very much agree. It’s so prevalent that I brace myself for WHEN it’s going to happen and I hate that so much that it very much ruins my enjoyment of a lot of books. If you recall the authors off the top of your head that you’ve dropped, I’d appreciate the names so I can just spare myself too.
Oh, the big one back then was Mercedes Lackey, which is probably not news to you. She did a ton of YA fantasy novels, and I think now writes for both adolescents and adults. Every one of her early main characters was raped or gang-raped at some point. I don’t know if she’s still doing it. I know she’s still writing.
Heinlein made it onto my “no” list at around the same time for both rape and misogyny. I don’t think people read him much anymore, though, unless they’re doing a history of science fiction thing– his books were being reissued at around the time I tried reading him and were considered genre history at the time.
Alan Dean Foster lost me with one of his books, not because the main character was raped–he wasn’t– but because the female lead was knocked out and kidnapped by a psycho ex early on and when she awoke– tied to a bed– her first thought was something like, “well, he’s not getting another date with me!”
Jennifer Estep, more recently, is on my list. Not so much for rape, though she does include rape/near rape, but because she does a “he’s a jerk, but I’m so attracted, sexytimes” thing, which rubs me the wrong way. I know it’s a common storyline, but if an author overdoes it, I lose patience with the author.
Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs are both on thin ice with me at this point. I really like their stories and writing and haven’t dropped them, but they both put things in backstories or relationships that are problematic.
I hate to say it and hadn’t really realized it until writing this, but– I don’t think I could read as much fantasy and science fiction as I do without accepting that a LOT of writers do it. The point at which I start drawing lines is when they start making it their goto thing or when they outright put it very graphically on the page. It’s like the writer has to have a certain level of repetition or badness before I decide “enough.” Which isn’t great.