from Sophia Helix

sophia_helix did a challenge of responding briefly on 7 topics.  I poked my head in and she threw these my way.


1) Favorite Doctor Who
I'm only familiar with the 2005 and following Doctors, so I'm not going to pretend I get to pick beyond those. I feel like I love the intricately plotted, relational, timey-wimey Eleventh Doctor the most of those three- Christ Eccleston was great at being shell-shocked, Tennent was great at being wacky and fierce, but Eleven actually occasionally feels deeply alien to me in a way neither of them did.

2) The Dresden Files
Disclaimer- the Dresden Files suck at feminism, and rewrite the highly multiracial Chicago to be entirely white, which is Not Cool. (I presently live in the area around University of Chicago, where Billy and the baby werewolves live. We don't worry about trolls, we worry about muggers.) The only black character of substance, in a 10+ series of books, is RUSSIAN.

HOWEVER. The first person narratives are cheesy in the best of the genre voice-over talent. There is loads of irony, and angst, and there is an overall movement of the book from being "This is something I wrote to show how much contempt I have for urban fantasy" to "This series will be my best-loved legacy, better make it good." The characters are flawed, the narrator is unreliable, the moral choices are dark and twisted but faced by someone who is ABSOLUTELY COMMITTED to being the kind of fuck-up that he is, for good or ill. There is deep and abidingly awesome slash potential. There are supporting characters who act believably and with strength and integrity.

And, on one memorable instance, when the moon was high and the odds were, too, there was a zombie tyrannosaur.

3) Dream Vacation
Cool weather on firm ground, with sweaters but not coats yet, somewhere near an ocean. With the potential for tea, and either a LARGE stack of genre novels and "good" books, or a fast internet connection. My Gentleman would condescendingly teach me how to clean a fish. Within a train ride or bus, some really good restaurants. A reasonable chance for me to communicate on my own in the native language.

4) FOOD!

I recently learned to make cheese!

I also am making bread more and spaghetti sauce, and and and. The experience has made me love food a lot more, because now eating is both food, and an analytical experience that I can tweak and learn from.

I have also stopped experimenting with recipes so much- usually, the recipe will give me something tasty, so I don't tweak until the second time around, or unless I have to. But when I do tweak, I am less likely to find out it was a horrible mistake.

I currently make really good lasagna, steamed fish and veggies, chicken and dumpling soup, over roasted potatoes, mashed potatoes, black bean and pumpkin soup, and buttermilk pancakes.

5)Marrying a foreigner.

Well, I'm actually still kind of in the process? Because while there's been a civil wedding, it's been recently enough that we have not yet started the legality phase, and the actual religious and family ceremony is some months off.

It's hard to find where "marrying someone" and "marrying a foreigner" meet, because there are certainly things going on in my head with getting married. My sister's reaction! My mother stepping in to plan the wedding! Moving in with my future husband! Meeting his parents.

And there are some things that are very clearly FOREIGN about the experience. Meeting his parents meant trans-Atlantic flights, and them speaking my language, not theirs. I had to learn their language. (Slowly. Painfully. Ongoing project, friends.) I have had to figure out some stuff.

But, honestly, there's a lot of stuff that's inflected by his foreignness that benefits from that-- meeting and joining (to an extent) another person's FAMILY is an act of migration and translation and adoption, all of which are made more apparent and clear by the difference in culture, but would still have major differences in family culture that would have to be dealt with, whether or not he was foreign.

I am very glad that we are both of appropriate genders that my country will consider our marriage valid and grant him permanent residence.

6) Best childhood memory

This is kind of an unnatural way of thinking about my childhood- I can easily think of the really awful things that, as a child, I thought were really awful! But I cannot think of happiness as an emotion with the same kind of sorting algorithm.

However, I remember the day my mom brought our first dog back from the pound. That dog was MY DOG. I took her on walks, I made her sleep in my bed, I fed her. She was MY dog, more than anyone else in the house. And as that was a huge milestone and a major step in my life, I remember it well. By comparison, my brother was born two years before we got the dog, and I have no recollection of his birth at all.


7) Books, Natch.

I changed my desk to a standing desk by hoisting it up on stacks of books that I don't use or read often, and the change was 15 inches. These included dictionaries for Latin and German, and the Hebrew Bible, as well as just some other thick books.

My habit of purchasing books have altered recently. I read a lot of books for my curriculum and I highlight them like mad with colored pencils, so I try to buy them rather than altering the library books.

For pleasure reading, I buy books from people who I want to succeed.

Mary Doria Russell, I want you to succeed- I have all your novels in hardcover.

N.K. Jemisin, I want you to succeed, I own all of your novels, because you are the shit and I want to keep reading your stuff forever.

Jim Butcher, you are sometimes problematic with the white!Chicago, but you made it so your fans could legally do free fanfic of your stuff, so I bought a lot of your Dresden Files books, and I want you to succeed. Also, Marcone is the shit.

China Mieville, you bald brilliant weirdling, I buy your books because I want you to succeed and write me more novels and children's novels that I can give to my future!spawn and make them weird, too. I also like the shape of your head.

Naomi Novik, I want you to succeed, and I have all of your Temeraire books, and when there was a promotion to get a free copy sent to a friend, I did that too.

Greg Rucka, I buy your books because I want you to succeed, mostly so that you will write more about Two-Face and Renee Montoya, but feel free to also do more of those bodyguard novels.

Diane Duane, I have bought all of your Young Wizards series, starting from when I was twelve, because I want you to succeed. (Actually, Diane, I'm not worried too much about you. But I still give you money, just to make sure.)

Neal Stephenson, I buy your books on Kindle, because I want you to succeed, but I also feel bad about the number of trees you kill.

George RR Martin, I buy your books once a decade, because that's when you publish more in the Song of Ice and Fire, but also in the hopes that you will someday relax your anti-fanfic policy and allow the flowering of a Westerosi sandbox, the mere dream of which brings tears to my little eyes.

I buy your books (as opposed to getting them from the library in a few months) because I love you and I want you to write and I want you to write a lot of good things for me to read.

Authors, I am FARMING you. Because each one of you have given me something deep and ephemeral, wonderful and fine, and I will pay you my precious student dollars because when I someday stop being a student and have more money to blow on you, I want you to still be there for me to read your most recent books.