That year-end meme that’s making the rounds

1) Was 2010 a good year for you?

Yes!

2) What was your favorite moment of the year?

This may be a recurrent theme, but getting published. My essay for Whedonistas was accepted and will be out in March 2011, I think. And my short story “No Return Address” was published by Strange Horizons in November.

3) What was your least favorite moment of the year?

Probably some of the conflicts I’ve had with my kids over their poor behavioral choices.

4) Where were you when 2010 began?

At home? At work? I don’t remember.

5) Who were you with?

I don’t remember, see #4, above.

The Monday after

1. I got earwormed this morning with Sisters of Mercy’s “Lucretia My Reflection.” Here, let me share.

2. I’m listening to an audiobook of The Girls of Murder City, by Douglas Perry. It’s the story of the women who inspired the story/play/musical/movie “Chicago.” The woman who wrote the play, Maurine Watkins, was one of the crime reporters for the Chicago Tribune. She interviewed Belva and Beulah, the real-life women on whom Velma and Roxie, respectively, were based.

The book is a lot of fun, and I’m enjoying the story as it all unfolds. The narration, as written by Perry, is lush and lurid, though, and I find myself questioning how he knows what the women were thinking. I expect it’s from interviews in the various papers at the time, but I still have a couple quibbles with that. First, at no point has the author said where he’s getting the motivations and internal thoughts from. Second, even if it IS from the news accounts, the various women contradicted each themselves so many times and the newspapers themselves got the facts wrong so often that I am a little wary of the veracity of Perry’s narration.

It could very well be that he has conducted his research with the utmost rigor; I simply have no way of knowing that.

That said, I am liking the book a lot. The audiobook especially — the narrator is a hoot. He does different voices for all the female characters, when they are being quoted or are speaking in their own words. He adds tone and character and emotion to the text, a breathiness of nerves or an arch knowing humor. Again, I don’t know how historically accurate it all is, but it’s a lot of fun.

3. Netflix Streaming is removing a lot of things from my queue. In particular a number of documentaries are expiring on January 1st. So I have been watching a lot of documentaries this week.

It kinda drives me crazy that most accounts of the suffrage movement in the US don’t mention spiritualism or free love. They mention the ties of suffrage to abolition, and to temperance, and to Quakerism, but they leave out the spiritualism and free love. Why is that? Is it because spiritualism is embarrassing to modern sensibilities? Does it tarnish the gleaming historicity of the abolitionists to mention that many of them believed in free love?

It drives me crazy for a few reasons. First, bland-washing history like this gives each generation the erroneous impression that their rebellions are new, unique, and Special. Like hell, people. Sexting has got NOTHING on the letters people used to write. Think your hastily-sent email was a bad idea? Now imagine sending your best friend on horseback to race through the city at night to intercept the message-boy you dispatched, and said friend getting into a fist-fight on the doorstep of your ex-sometimes-beloved’s house with said messenger and his wife waking up and calling the police.

The means change, but the bad decisions people make are ETERNAL.

Second, these sorts of detail are what make history INTERESTING. I can’t recite the first eight presidents of the U.S., but I know why Hamilton and Burr got into a duel. It wasn’t over a woman, it was over honor and national fiscal policy. National fiscal policy. I bet pundits would pay a lot more attention to their words today if they thought they could be called to a field of honor at dawn. I am a little vague on the exact rise of the Roman Imperium, but I know that some historians are pretty sure that Julius Caesar had sex with his young nephew Octavius, aka Caesar Augustus. That certainly makes Octavius’s later rivalry with the other possible object of Caesar’s affections, Marc Antony, more interesting.

History is made by people. By screwed-up, neurotic, aggressive, afraid, impulsive, shining, intelligent, transcendent people. When we ignore their quirks, faults, and flaws we strip away their humanity. We change them from human to symbol, and I believe that this lessens their accomplishments. The amazing and glorious is made more so when it is done by the ordinary and small.

Frodo, Sam, and Gollum destroy the ring, not Gandalf.

Third, suffrage likely would not have occurred in the nineteenth century without spiritualism. Spiritualism gave women strength and power. Spiritualism was democratic — everyone, anyone, could touch the divine power. Many mediums, and especially the most famous of them, were women. And the mediums berated deadbeat husbands or abusive men, they told women to have strength. The mediums comforted everyone who had lost a child — and everyone in the 1800s had lost a child. Everyone. The mediums told of a benevolent god who loved all and planned to reunite all families in the hereafter. These statements, this faith, gave women strength. The suffragettes, berated and attacked daily for their words and beliefs, took comfort in the messages from the spirit world.

This is really no stupider than any other belief fad ever in the history of ever. And I wish more documentaries and histories explored the connections.

4. Christmas went lovely, there were presents at home and I had a nice dinner at work. All is well, and now we are moving back into the normal routines. The kids got Nintendo DS’s (NOT from us) and are playing them quite a bit. There may be DS-restrictions on the horizon if they do not find a natural balance of which we approve …

Christmas Eve 2010

I have to leave for work in a bit. Not many planes fly on Christmas Eve, but some do. And those planes, and those people on those planes, they need air traffic controllers too. Hence it’s my turn to work.

As a result, though, we did Christmas a bit early. We open presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas morning, and we do stockings only within the household. The rules are everything must fit into the stocking of the recipient. We mostly end up complying with the rule, with some things sticking out the top.

It’s pretty lovely, actually. We light the Advent candles and sing carols. This year N and K treated us to euphonium duets, which were fantastic. We light a fire — that didn’t happen this year, the flue seems to be blocked and we’ll have to have it looked at. Then we open our stockings.

Everyone got some candy, of their preferred sort. N got weird-flavored non-chocolate things. J got chocolate imported from England. I got Godiva Pearls. The kids got weird, goofy, ridiculous candy that looked sillier than it tasted good. To each their own on the holiday.

I also got a Nook case, which I am extremely pleased with. And my family got me a waterproof mp3 player so that I can listen to it while I swim.

It’s good to be known.

The kids have announced that they have eaten Too Much Candy, and we’re all sitting down for a late-lunch/early-dinner to counter the effects of the metric tons of sugar.

There is snow everywhere outside, a fresh layer to cover the dirt and grime. The city is not plowing tonight out of respect for the holiday and the fact that so many people are either travelling or having guests. So all is quiet, and peaceful, and when I saw the sun today so very low in the sky I nodded because I know it’s on the rise.

Soon I will leave for work. I will drive in happy and content and loved, a state I wish for each of you. Merry Christmas, Happy Solstice, happy holidays, best wishes and kindest regards. to you all.

2010 Moments in Fandom

I ganked this meme from LJ and Caroline —

Your main fandom of the year?

Twitter

I think my biggest fandom this year was Twitter. I still love this social proprioception. I love hearing about the days my friends are having, as well as the days of various writers, artists, celebrities, or people I vaguely met at a convention that one time. Twitter gives all of these people a human face that I find compelling. I like hearing about Felicia Day’s WoW characters. I like hearing about the workplace holiday party a blogger I’ve never met is at, and what sort of drinks she is having. I like the picspam, the James-Marsden-rickrolls, I like the twelve-part rants about politics, feminism, marketing, horse racing, Bruce Springsteen, or the cultural meaning of the word “cock.” Rants divided into brief little snippets and sent out to the masses.

I like sending my words out and not knowing who will respond. I like chiming in on a question of bathroom tile colors or dog breeds. I like reporting the weather to people around the world and reading, in turn, the weather reports from four continents. I like seeing three days of Halloween costumes.

From Twitter this year I have learned about violent riots, legislative results, border wars, earthquakes, and floods. I have learned about airports conditions worldwide. I learned that a favorite character may be getting a tv show. I have learned of new bands I now like and new books I have now read.

Twitter is suited, well-suited, to the way I like to interact with the broader world. I have been and remain a fan.

My second-biggest fandom is still comics. I mostly avoid the larger haunts of comics fandom, though. I don’t read the main news sites or post to ANY message boards. That’s because I love comics too much to devote my time to the pervasive negativity I found in those places. Whatevs, y’all. I’ll read my comics and write my essays and reviews for Fantastic Fangirls. I’ll write emails and tweets to the creators whose work I enjoy, pleading with them to keep being as awesome as they are. Comics are, along with RPGs, my deepest and longest-lasting fannish loves. The longer I read comics, the more awesome they get.

Your favorite film watched this year?

Easy A, reviewed here.
The Runaways, reviewed here.
Black Swan, reviewed here.

Your favorite book read this year?

Other Powers, by Barbara Goldsmith. My review, here.
Denial: A Memoir of Terror, by Jessica Stern. My review on Goodreads.
Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon, by David Grann. Extremely brief thoughts on Goodreads.
Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, by Sara Marcus. My review.

My Goodreads page can be found here.

Your favorite album or song to listen to this year?

I did a whole post about this. Two posts, actually.

Your favorite TV show of the year?

This has got to be a tie between Fringe and Hellcats. I talk about Fringe further down, when I discuss Agent Olivia Dunham, and I review Hellcats here.

Your best new fandom discovery of the year?

Mai-HiME and Mai-Otome

Oh dear sweet crickets, I love these shows.

You can look up both shows on TVTropes, Mai-HiME, Mai-Otome, or you can look them up on Wikipedia here or here. And if you read all four of those links you will get a fairly good sense of the show. But none of that conveys the sheer unbridled force of the repressed sexuality, the hyped-up heightened emotions, the drama, and the intensity of the shows.

All the anime I’ve ever seen is about intense emotions. Usually repressed in some way until the emotions are undeniable and come exploding to the surface. This is, clearly, a self-selecting data pool, but it is what keeps me coming back to anime. That, and the women.

For reasons I do not entirely understand, manga and anime are formats rich in titles featuring a cast of women. Whether it’s the “harem” genre, like Love Hina, or the “magical girl” genre, there are a ton of shows and comics that have easily a half-dozen female characters, or more. And these a leads and major supporting characters, not walk-ons. Forget about the absurdly low hurdle of the Bechdel Test. These shows, and Mai-HiME and Mai–Otome in particular, show the variety an complexity of the relationships women have with other women.

In the Mai shows we have platonic love, maternal or sisterly dynamics, hero-worship, asexual crushes, sexual crushes, bitter jealousy, and twisted sexual aggression. We have best friends, lovers, and rivals. And these relationships grow over the course of the shows, shifting and changing as the characters grow. These women, these girls, they are people, flawed and fallible and transcendent. How could I not love these shows?

Your biggest fandom disappointment of the year?

I am most frequently disappointed by comics. But that’s only because I care so deeply about them. I won’t list the specific titles that disappointed me here, because it’s all water under the bridge. Suffice it to say, it only hurts because I love.

Your TV boyfriend of the year?

I don’t want to DATE the guys from Terriers — in fact, their lives are so chaotic and messed-up I don’t want them in the same state I live in. But Hank Dolworth and Britt Pollack are the best-written, best-acted, best-conceived male characters I saw on television this year. In, I might add, an amazingly well-written and -produced television show that was cancelled after thirteen episodes. Tim Minear worked on the show, did I mention that? (You can find Tim on Twitter, as @CancelledAgain.)

Your TV girlfriend of the year?

Olivia Dunham.

Agent Dunham did not impress me the first few times I watched Fringe. In fact, the show did not impress me. But this post here explains a number of reasons why you might like the show. And I’m going to quote a bit here about why, specifically, I like Agent Dunham so very much.

”Olivia Duhnam is will push herself to her limits to protect people and solve the case, but she is not so good with Talking about Feelings. She loves deeply; she will literally go to the other side of the world, and beyond, for just a chance to save someone. She’s just much, much better in situations where she can lean in someone’s face threateningly, or use her gun. Or if she can just swagger her way through it. She’s good at swaggering.

That, my friends, is tight wrapped fury in motion.

Olivia Dunham does not damsel in distress; she can and will save herself, thank you very much. The first time she is full on captured by Bad Guys, she ends up strapped to a medical table, and starts sniffling about if they are going to kill her, could she please have a glass of water? Cue me sighing. Then she talks the henchmen into untying her hands so she can sit up and drink. She immediately smashes the glass over his head, and fights her way out of the building. On top of that, she fills her pockets with evidence of what they were up to, and then quickly hides it as soon as she is out the facility, so she can come back for it, once she’s sure she can get it into the hands of people she trusts. Competency.
“

Competence, intelligent, empathy disguised as emotional unavailability; god, I do love Agent Dunham.

Your biggest squee moment of the year?

I got published.

I really, really, REALLY am pleased about this. Like, a huge amount. A lot. Oh, yes, I am full of squee. A month later and the squee has not abated.

The most missed of your old fandoms?

I’ve been feeling nostalgic this year for Theatrical Muse. I don’t have the time for it, not in a million years, but it was amazing fun.

The fandom you haven’t tried yet, but want to?

Huh, nothing comes to mind. Mostly because I have no time.

Your biggest fan anticipations for the New Year?

I’m keen on this whole “being published” thing that I’ve just started. I look forward to it continuing. But that’s not really a FAN anticipation. I’m looking forward to Wiscon and CONvergence, both because of the people who will be there. I am excited to see a lot of friends-I-have-made-on-the-internet (see the above-mentioned Twitter) and to catch up in person with friends I see only a couple times a year.

It’s the people that make the fandom. The people. The bright, shining, wicked smart, articulate, passionate, devoted, insane, creative, witty, living breathing people. Without them — without you — there is no fandom.

Year in Music 2010, part two

[This is part two of my post on this year's music. Part one can be found here.]

Here we go, with more songs and videos:

Year in Music 2010, part 1

[This post is split into two parts, for length. This is part one. Part two is here.]

The Year in Music 2010

This year was the year of the playlist. Many of my favorite songs came to my attention through character-themed playlists given to me by friends. It occurs to me that I don’t know how many of you do this sort of thing, or know what I’m talking about. A character playlist is when you like a character, or a relationship between characters, and you make a playlist to describe that person or relationship. I have found in the last few years that this is the best and easiest way for me to access new songs. The playlist aspect gives me an emotional hook — I listen to the song’s lyrics and apply them to a character I love. I end up feeling that I both know more about the character and also about the song.

This is because the part of music that I most listen to is the emotional story. That story can be in the repeating hook, or it can be in the verses, or the chorus. But I’m not listening to the musical complexity; I’m listening to the story. For a lot of rock tunes the story is … a little bit up to the listener’s discretion. It’s opaque. And for a lot of pop tunes the story is a little generic. In both cases, tying the song to a specific character give me a clearer image of what is happening. (This is also why I like music videos and vids.)