Archive for Consuming media

Consuming media

Holiday Watch Parties for Charity on Twitch!

TL;DR

Holiday watch party graphicI’m raising money for Duke Children’s Hospital via Extra Life this season, and figured holiday watch parties on Twitch would be a fun way to do so. Anyone who knows me knows I’m a sucker for holiday romances, and my bar for quality is quite low. Now that Twitch lets you stream Amazon Prime movies, they’re offering watch parties, and I thought that would be a great idea to enjoy some movies, invite some of my snarkier friends to join me from time to time, AND raise money for charity!

If you support over at Extra Life you can get books from me, or even choose the next movie I watch. (Must be on Amazon Prime, and must be holiday related.) But there is one movie I will watch ONLY if I raise $1000, and that’s the movie rated 0% on Rotten Tomatoes: Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.

To add some fun, I discovered you can create your own custom BINGO cards, so I made a Christmas movie card! Get your own randomized card and play along! I will watch chat during the movie, and the first person to BINGO will win a prize! Here’s a sample card.

Christmas Movie Bingo Card
They’re randomized every time you click the link!

Apologies, there doesn’t seem to be an accessible version, if anyone knows of a way to make it accessible, let me know.

I’m starting TODAY at 3pm EST with A Holiday Engagement. You can watch with me if you can stream it on Amazon Prime, and if you can’t but you have another service with the movie, just put it in another window and start when I do.

I’m still working on the schedule and guests, so watch this space, or over at Twitch, to find out more.

NOTES:
While I would LOVE to pontificate on the political impact of all the fake “not England”* countries that crop up in the new Christmas royalty genre**, and I absolutely cannot WAIT to rewatch the new, expletive-filled movie Holidate, they’re rooted over there at Netflix, which I am unable to stream legally. I have considered just telling you to watch Netflix on your own at the same time as me, but we will have to see how the Amazon Prime parties play out.

I also don’t think I can pause the movie, so any commentary I make will be over the movie itself. But it was good enough for MST3K I guess…

I can’t record this, so live is the only way you can watch it. Not sure if there’s a VOD or not… Anyway, I will be playing with different days and times for these watch parties to try to hit audiences around the world.

* Aside: I might make a map of all these “not England” countries from romances that have American queens now. I think it’s a US plot to take over Not-Europe.
** Y’all, this article was last updated in 2018. There have been MORE movies since then (including a new Princess Switch movie – Switched Again, where Vanessa Hudgens gets to play a THIRD character. I now expect this franchise to go full Orphan Black and nothing else is acceptable.) I may be emailing Jenna Guillaume for an update.

 

Books, Books, Consuming media, News, Projects

News! Updates! Stuff!

I’m slowly returning to getting shit done, and wanted to make a few announcements:

  • I can finally announce my book deal! I have a three book deal with Ace, and I’m excited to be working with my new publisher! More info when marketing allows it.
  • I’m co-editing an anthology for Escape Pod’s 15th anniversary! S.B. Divya and I are bringing together some reprints and some original stories to make an Escape Pod anthology, out from Titan books!
  • Six Wakes is a Kindle MONTHLY Deal! Check it- for all of March, Six Wakes is on sale for $3!
  • Currently reading: Docile by KM Szpara and Or What You Will by Jo Walton (ARC). Both recommended.
  • And the podcasts are returning this week!
Consuming media

My Award Eligibility Post for 2019

It’s that special time of year again, where we try to remember what the heck we spent the last 12 months doing. I’ve been quiet, head-down on the writing front, but I have still been podcasting and editing. So here is my eligibility post for 2020.

  • Escape Pod – eligible for any semi-prozine category
  • S.B. Divya and Mur Lafferty – eligible for any short form editor category
  • Ditch Diggers – eligible for any podcast/fancast category
  • I Should Be Writing – eligible for any podcast/fancast category

As for my endorsements, I am not endorsing much adult fiction, partly because I’m on the jury for the Philip K. Dick award and am keeping my opinions of original paperbacks to myself, but here are some of the other categories I feel strongly about.

Fan Writer: Alasdair Stuart continues to do amazing work from his newsletter to his in depth host spots on various Escape Artists podcasts. Jason Sanford is also doing a great job at keeping track of the news in SF.

Dramatic Work (short): I love seeing clipping. on the Hugo ballot because it shows how much we as a genre are willing to stretch ourselves. This year they did a full EP release alongside Rivers Solomon’s (Hugo-eligible!) novella The Deep, on which they share writing credit. (The EP is different from their Hugo-nominated single “The Deep.” But it contains that single, so I don’t know if that messes with eligibility or not.)

Dramatic Work (long): I find it amusing that The Witcher is so polarizing. I am firmly on the “loved it” side. It wasn’t perfect, and the disability representation seems to go from empowering to stereotypical (I am not a disability critic/scholar, so I invite you to read this criticism) but I really enjoyed it regardless. I also loved The Umbrella Academy as a whole season as well, and it looks like it’s not going to go the same direction as the comic did, which I really hated.

Graphic Story: I really enjoyed Die by Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans. It shows that some stories we think of as tired cliches are masterful stories in the hands of an excellent storyteller. Kids get sucked into their own RPG game, but it’s so much more than that. (The title can give you a hint what the genre of this comic is.)

Lodestar (YA- not a Hugo): Neal Shusterman has written his YA trilogy masterpiece Arc of the Scythe underneath the radar of SF circles, but the final book, The Toll, came out last year, and it was as good as the first two. The series follows people who live in a government-free, eternal-life utopia ruled by a benevolent AI and Scythes, people who legally kill in order to a) control the population and b) remind people that life has meaning when it has a chance to end. All of the fascinating plotlines come to head including the introduction of a non-binary salvage captain.

I’m sure there’s more, but I will blog them as time goes on.

 

 

 

Consuming media

The Good Place, Essay 1: Female friendships

My latest television obsession is The Good Place, a show about the afterlife, and a woman who isn’t supposed to be there. It’s pretty clear from the start that Eleanor has been sent to the Good Place by mistake, as they think she was an important humanitarian when in reality she sold fake pharmaceuticals to gullible elderly people. She is introduced to her afterlife soul mate, Chidi, who is an ethics professor. He agrees to help hide her identity and teach her how to be a good person to fit in. Their neighbors are Tahani, a British philanthropist and her soul mate, Jianyu, a silent Taiwanese monk.

The two other main characters are Michael, the immortal being  in charge of the Good Place, and Janet, the friendly AI who keeps it running. But they’re not discussed much in this post.

This show is brilliant, philosophical, and hysterical. I’ve been wanting to write my thoughts for some time, and am only now getting to it. Holidays, y’all. You know. (Did you have a good new year?)

Unfortunately, to blog about The Good Place, I’m going to have to spoil the hell out of it. This show has a lot more to spoil than the classic “will they/won’t they” sexual tension. So if you haven’t seen it, please please please go watch it and then come back to my post. Unless you like being spoiled. I’m not judging.

Eleanor and Tahani bond

Spoilers ahead. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

It turns out that Eleanor isn’t the only fraud. The silent monk is actually a pre-successful professional DJ from Florida (JACKSONVILLE!) named Jason, who’s basically a guy with a toddler’s brain – he has a heart of gold, is an idiot, and really doesn’t know right from wrong.

The best way to get to know Jason is to know how he ranks the F&F movies. Number 5 is Number 1.

While there’s not a lot of sexual tension in the show, Eleanor and Chidi do bond, as he is impressed with her growth and she appreciates his dedication to helping her stay in the Good Place, even though it means he may never meet his real soul mate. And Chidi, an intellectual like Tahani, helps Jason do things for her that she would appreciate, Cyrano-style.

In the Season One episode, “Chidi’s Choice,” a whole lot of stuff happens. Eleanor realizes she’s in love with Chidi. Tahani find’s out Jianyu/Jason is a fraud and that Chidi has been helping him talk to her. And the “real Eleanor” (Chidi’s real soul mate) is back from The Bad Place in order to change places with the Fake Eleanor.

The episode gives a lot of back story to Chidi: he has trouble with decisions, and we get a flashback to his childhood where, after his failure to pick kids for a soccer team, his best friend says, “Way to go Chidi. You just filibustered recess!” However, the real shining point is the relationship between Eleanor and Tahani.

After her realization, Eleanor sits Chidi down and gives him a very sweet, very clumsy, kind of insulting proclamation of love. “You’re way more of a buzzkill than any [former boyfriend] and yet I never want to leave you!” Then Tahani barges in and says she knows Jianyu is a fraud, and that Chidi has been helping him, which proves Chidi loves her. Chidi is shocked, and deals with it in a very Chidi way.

How Chidi deals with affection from two women.

The two women are left alone with the discomfort of realizing they want the same guy. They begin to argue, and then Eleanor stops and takes the story in a direction THAT NO OTHER SHOW HAS EVER GONE IN THE HISTORY OF TELEVISION.*

She says, “No. We are not going to be those women that fight over a guy. We have a weird, forked up friendship, but it’s our friendship.” And then she says they’re going to spend the day together.

They do something Tahani wants to do, which is watching a classic BBC comedy about a sophisticated woman and her friendship with an uncultured idiot, and then they do something Eleanor wants to do, which is give Tahani hair extensions. “These are real cheap. You’ll want to stay away from open flames and altercations at outlet malls.” Then she apologizes for hiding Jason/Jianyu’s identity from Tahani. Tahani forgives her.

More happens, like they wonder if Jason and Eleanor are soul mates, and then they find out that Jason has proposed to Janet the AI because she’s the only person who’s nice to him, and she has accepted. Eleanor and Tahani arrive to witness their wedding, which is one of my favorite weddngs in all of television and includes vows like, “Janet, my digital queen. We can dare to dream. Send nude pics of your heart to me. Jacksonville Jaguars RULE!” but that’s beside the point.

My favorite takeaway from this episode is that it introduced a love triangle and then sidestepped it ENTIRELY. Chidi does make a decision (we don’t know what it is), shows up to tell them, but they brush him off saying they both may have been mistaken regarding their feelings, and besides Tahani has an idea how to keep Eleanor in the Good Place for good, so they run off to figure that out. Chidi is left behind, having no knowledge of the Jason/Janet whirlwind romance, watching them dance at their wedding and repeatedly saying, “What?”

Thank you, Good Place writers, for giving two women a deeper friendship that isn’t focused on mooning over men, competing over men, or discussing what woman to backstab to get ahead (or get a man).

NEXT FEW BLOG POSTS: I discuss Mindy St. Claire and the male gaze, and come up with a way to make my two favorite bit characters, Tahani’s sister Camilla and Jason’s best bud Pillboi, regulars on the show. And also we must discuss why, on a scale from 1-13, 8 is the highest.

Pillboi
Pillboi
Consuming media, Podcasts, Projects

Writing Podcast News For Your Ear Holes

It’s been a banner few weeks! In the past 10 days or so, I’ve managed to get back onto a weekly schedule, writing podcast-wise. I guess this means my ADHD treatment is working, which is awesome.

So the new podcast plan: I’ll be doing ISBW and Ditch Diggers in alternating weeks. This week had ISBW #373 released on Monday, and next week will feature Ditch Diggers #38 with Tobias Buckell about “The Power of ‘No'”. I have episodes planned through May, and my brain fog has lifted, for the most part, which is making this planning so much easier.

(If you’re a Patreon subscriber, you get the podcasts as soon as I edit them, instead of waiting for release day. All the supporters got the Ditch Diggers episode today, for example.)

More writing podcast news outside the Murverse:

New writing podcast: Get To Work HurleyGet To Work, Hurley: Frequent Ditch Digger guest host Kameron Hurley has her own writing podcast now! She produced this podcast as a Patreon supporter goal, and she’s doing it for everyone who wants to listen. Episode one just dropped, and she’s as fun and natural on the mic as she is when she guest hosts Ditch Diggers.

New writing podcast: Critiki PartyThe CriTiki Party: This is an interesting idea for a writing podcast that my old friend, Travis Heermann, let me know about. Listeners can submit work that will be read aloud and critiqued on the podcast. If you wonder how to give a good critique, or just want to see how people critique common errors made by beginning writers, then check it out.

Other Recommendations:

Do you not have enough writing and SF podcasts in your life already? Of course not! There are some other fine podcasts also are finalists for the Hugo Award for Best Fancast, and if you want to check them out, here they all are!

 

Consuming media

For your Hugo Consideration (Best Dramatic Presentation: Short)

Tony-winner Daveed Diggs (from Hamilton and the hip hop group clipping.) is a science fiction fan. He’s a fan of Afrofuturism, having studied works by N.K. Jemisin, Octavia Butler, and Samuel R, Delaney. After he left Hamilton he began work on a concept album called Splendor and Misery.

Splendor & Misery is an Afrofuturist, dystopian concept album that follows the survivor of a slave uprising on an interstellar cargo ship. As he struggles alone and lost, the AI on the ship falls in love with him.

Many of the songs have Diggs’ signature rapid fire lyrics, and I found it helpful to read the discussion at Genius.com to catch all of the lyrics and find some of the more obscure literary references. And there you can learn about the baffling coded track “Interlude 02”:

Foxtrot, Uniform, Whiskey, Romeo
Whiskey, Charlie, Oscar, X-Ray
Echo, India, Uniform
[Beep]
Delta, Lima, Quebec, Foxtrot
Echo, India, Quebec, India
Foxtrot, Uniform, Whiskey, Romeo
Whiskey, Charlie, Oscar, X-Ray
Echo, India, Uniform
[Beep]
Delta, Lima

The key to decoding this is hidden elsewhere on the album.

It’s an amazing experience to listen to, and I haven’t grown tired of it yet. So if you have any slot open on your Hugo ballot for Best Dramatic Presentation: Short, I fully think this is worthy of a nomination.

Books, Books, Consuming media, News, Projects

Books to read! And Six Wakes press!

Today is the launch day for The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley and Idle Ingredients by Matt Wallace. You should run and get both now.

I’m not endorsing them because they’re talented, which they are, or because they’re my friends, which they also are. But I’m bringing them up because I thought you might want some books to read after Six Wakes and Bookburners.

Kameron and I both wrote very female-heavy space opera books, and they’re coming out close to each other. So if you like Six Wakes you will probably like The Stars Are Legion.

And Matt’s Sin Du Jour novella series (of which Idle Ingredients is #4)  is like The Shambling Guides with catering, so if you like my stuff, you will like Matt’s. Start with Envy of Angels if you’re new to the series.

So really, reader, I’m doing this for you.

You’re welcome!

New press about Six Wakes I just had to share! This is from the Barnes and Noble blog:

Lafferty fearlessly follows the moral, ethical, and practical implications of this questionably idyllic future. How does quasi-immortality change what it means to be human? If our bodies are disposable, are we then our minds? And what if that mind is just a copy? It’s all very much grounded in the juicy mystery elements, but there are larger ideas behind it all.

And a part I particularly appreciate about the character of Dr. Joanna Glass:

[Joanna] raises questions about notions of perfection, and makes a powerfully rare, if understated, anti-ableist statement.

This was important to me, because even though the hacking that would “fix” Joanna’s genetically abnormal legs is illegal, it would be pretty easy for someone with her wealth and privilege to have it done. She chooses not to.

Venom out of costume: actress Teal Sherer

I was inspired, in part, by the character of Venom in Felicia Day’s gaming series “The Guild.” A horrible nihilist in the rival guild, she has a rare moment of frank, non-antagonistic vulnerability when she wonders aloud why she can’t have a wheelchair in the game like she has in real life, because she wants her avatar to fully represent her. (Pedantic Vork tries to explain how the ADA hasn’t really reached dungeons so it would be hard for her to move around, and then her character kills his.)

Also the the main character in John Scalzi’s Lock In, Chris, makes the same statement as people take sides in a debate about whether their “locked in” status should be cured. The locked in community has created a unique and rich alternate online lifestyle, and they would have to give that up if they were cured.

Those two stories had me thinking about pop culture’s usual view of disability, especially concerning science fiction and its desire to “fix” everything with futuristic technology. So I tried to address it in this book.


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Books, Consuming media, Games

Adulting Hardcore [Artist’s Way, Overwatch]

I’ve started the Artist’s Way again- specifically the Finding Water, the Art of Perseverance book.

I have a weird relationship with The Artist’s Way. I’ve found it very useful. But it’s hard to read as an atheist; Cameron does her best to accommodate everyone, sometimes calling it God, sometimes the Universe. Essentially when you open yourself up to being creative, then God (or the Universe) sends you opportunities and gifts and stuff.

To reconcile this with my own beliefs (or lack thereof) I see it as opening yourself up to creativity just makes you open your damn eyes and look around you. Opportunities are there all the time, but usually we don’t think they’re for us, like the delivery person standing on your stoop with a bouquet of flowers. “Sorry, you must be at the wrong house.” Or you don’t even see something as an opportunity. But doing the Artist’s Way helps you look around and maybe just try something you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Julia Cameron either is brilliant or she is knows a good thing to milk: all of her programs have the same basic principle: write 3 pages of longhand every morning. Go on an “artist’s date” alone during the week. She’s also included walking in the program by now, but I don’t think it was part of the first one. But they all focus on a different part of the artist’s life, usually in memoir form.

Finding Water came to me right when I needed it. It’s a meditation for artists who have a career but may be feeling a slump, or imposter syndrome, and how to get your focus back. I picked the book up last year when I was feeling some particular professional jealousy, and read the first chapter. It was just what I needed. (note I said least year; I didn’t start doing the program hardcore until recently. Honestly I hate morning pages. So I do them, drop them, pick them back up.)

I’m starting week 3 now, and I’ll report back in later to say how i’m doing.

—

I started playing Overwatch (PS4). It was hard for me to warm to because I a) am not good at shooters and b) hate playing online games with strangers. But I should have trusted Blizzard. The only game design they’ve ever done that I’ve disliked is Hearthstone. (I just don’t get it. It’s a card game when I’ve played better card games on other apps. What am I missing? Anyway. I digress.) Overwatch is designed with four kinds of characters: offense (high damage), tanks (high defense), defense (neutralize the other team), and support (healing, buffing.) The vastly different characters offer a style of play that works for different people.

Junkrat, totally not the Evil Midnight Bomber or the Joker.
“You’ll never prove a thing, copper, I’m just a part time electrician…bad is good, baby! Down with government!”

I find myself liking the support characters (Mercy the valkyrie and Zenyatta the robot monk) and the occasional defense characters (Junkrat the Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight and Mei the climatologist). When I play offense I just turn into a smear on the ground, and I have never enjoyed tanks.

What Blizzard has done so brilliantly is take an idea from Splatoon and take it a step farther. To keep people (teen boys) from frothing all over the game with homophobic and sexist slurs, they don’t have a chat function on the console. There isn’t an obvious way to choose a team, although my daughter says it’s possible.* You can do vocal team chat, but since you can’t choose a team you could be playing with people all over the world. The options to communicate with people are signaling in game things like Hello and I need healing. There isn’t a gay slur among them.

You can unlock other things to say. (I unlocked Zenyatta’s saying “I dreamt I was a butterfly,” which I love) You can unlock things to spray on the wall. I am of course unlocking all sorts of awesome skins and sprays and sayings for people I don’t play at all, but I figure the more I play, the more shit I will unlock.

When we got Overwatch, my daughter started playing on my account (long story, misunderstanding, let’s move on) and pushed my level up. I feel like I should apologize to people because it says I’m level 16, but I promise i’m not playing like a level 16 player. So if you see mightymur out there flailing about, blame my kid.

Yeah. All her fault that I’m not good at this game. Totally…

Anyway. I love it. Despite my moans of despair when we are against a team of fucking sniper campers who destroy me the moment I respawn, I actually am having fun. It’s what I needed after last week’s stress of book launches** and turn in.

And so he says to me, you want to be a bad guy? and I say Yeah Baby! I want to be bad! I says Churchill space ponies I’m making gravy without the lumps! Ah ha ha ha ha haaaaa!!!!!

* This is not an official review. I’m just saying this from what I’ve experienced playing the PS4 version. You may indeed be able to do these things, but I choose not to.
** The books are still getting great reviews. I got a very flattering email from someone Friday night – I won’t say who, cause I don’t have their permission, but goddamn, did it make my weekend.

Books, Consuming media

2016: Reading

screen-shot-2016-12-31-at-1-41-35-pm
For the record, I took this screen shot before the year was up. So I still have time to win…

Yesterday I was looking for pictures of myself I’d posted in this blog. Aside from the fact that it was very hard to find any, it meant that I read several old blog posts. I got to the end of year 2015 post on reading and was astonished. I’d forgotten that I’d made a pledge to read as many of the books that I already owned (aka from my existing To Be Read pile). I’d reduced my Audible subscriptions to 1 credit a month. I had a Plan.

After a few months of buying more Audible credits so I could get more audiobooks, I finally turned my subscription back where it was.I didn’t just fail at this. I completely forgot I’d created the goal in the first place. That’s impressive.

Of course, the year was a shit fire, and I find comfort in buying books. And I like to support my friends. And publishers often send me ARCs from people I interview. So the books kept coming in.

I don’t know if I can try to make the same attempt this year. Too many good books are coming out, such as The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley, Seven Surrenders by Ada Palmer, The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemisin. I think I will, however, start keeping track on Goodreads of books I already own as opposed to books I purchased. Or I could totally cheat and just preorder all of the above today. That could work…

If you don’t know, I track my reading on Goodreads, but I neither engage with any of the flame wars there, nor do I often review books. I know several authors review books professionally, but I don’t find it something I want to do. I don’t want to harm a friend’s sales, but I don’t want to just throw around 5 star reviews either. So I just mark that I read it. (I may be more honest with books outside my field, such as nonfiction or graphic novels.)

This year I nearly made my goal of 80 books read. I re-read some of them, which didn’t make Goodreads’ official tally of books read, since you can’t list that you read a book on different dates (you can make a separate shelf for rereads, but the official Goodreads number comes from the date you read the book. If you mark a book as read but don’t give it a date, then it doesn’t go into the tally.)

Favorite books? Nah. I know how shitty I feel when I’m left off a blog post of “Best Books/Podcasts of the year!” so I try not to make my own. If you want to see what I read, check out my Goodreads shelves.

Books, Consuming media, Games, News, Projects

STORIUM, News, and Skyrim tales

The amazing storytelling site I’ve been involved with, Storium, has launched an awesome interactive demo to help new players. It’s free and doesn’t require a signup. You literally have nothing to lose except for 5 minutes of your time. Check it out!

Library Journal just gave Six Wakes and Bookburners some love as well! And Six Wakes got a star! (You DO know that you can really help a book out by pre-ordering, right? Get Bookburners here. Get Six Wakes here.

We’ve gotten the new shiny Skyrim with mod support and better graphics and we’re all playing it with great glee. It helped to kill things during the month when we saw our nation crumble in a dumpster fire.

There are still interesting bugs with a game so intricate. The latest one I encountered had my adopted son begging for a present when I got home. I had a shirt for him, so I gave it to him. He was then immediately naked (with undies, natch) and ran around playing in the rain. Then he went to sit under a tree. In the rain. With no clothes on.

I followed him and tried to talk to him, but “get your damn clothes back on, you fool child” was nowhere in the dialogue tree. So I decided it was my housecarl’s problem and went on adventuring. (I just discovered others have noticed this bug.)

Then there was the time I was being chased by a wolf, ran into a bear, and then a dragon landed on all of us. But that’s another tale.

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