forestofglory | Entries tagged with star trek

I've been watching many things with other people recently. Plus one thing by myself! I've also succeeded in getting the library to lend me some more manga. So here's a few thoughts on recent media:

Iron Monkey— So somehow our conversation about how awesome Michelle Yeoh is in Star Trek: Discovery led to us watching this kung fu movie. Michelle Yeoh isn’t in but her co-star from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is. The version we saw was the edited for Americans version with slower fight scenes and some cultural references taken out. It was a lot of fun! I enjoyed the fight scenes, and there was also a lot of fun food.

Wotakoi: Love is Hard for Otaku, Vol 1 by Fujita— This is a manga about two couples who are Otaku. Maybe this is because of translation issues but I found this a little bit mean spirited rather than cute.

The Moon Brightens for You episodes 1-3 — I watched a whole episode of a full length TV show, which I haven’t done in ages! In fact I watched 3! I picked this c-drama because I wanted something with a female main character and it looked cute. Our main character’s dad is like “fine you are sect leader now” and sends her out into the world to go have an adventure. There's some mistaken identities and mysteries too. So far it's a bit goofy but cute, and very swooshy. (Content note: accidental groping, kidnapping)

Star Trek: Picard episodes 1-3— Watching this with R. Michel Chabon is the showrunner for this. I have not read a one of his novels in awhile, I got fed up with his treatment of female characters, but something about the tone and pacing of this is reminiscent of a Chabon novel, though I can’t quite explain what. I’m not sure that’s a good thing. This show loves its narrative tricks like intercutting scenes, and flashbacks a bit too much. At three episodes in I’m not sure that I like any of the characters, even Picard.

The Yin-Yang Master: Dream Of Eternity — My friend Mary Beth got a group of us together to have an online watch part of this movie. It was so fun! It was a little hard to keep up with both the subs and the text chat, but I felt like the text chat really added to the experience. It was nice to be able to ask questions, and enthuse about pretty costumes. The movie was very pretty and very gay. (content note: insects, body horror, sucide, snakes, bugs)

TGCF dongua episode 8-11— Still watching this with friends. The gory bits are really gory, but the pretty bits are really pretty, and it manages to be quite romantic despite the censorship. This all of the first season but there’s now a bonus episode we are going to watch soon (Content note: Snakes, war)

Barakamon vol 1-5 by Satsuki Yoshino— This cute slice of life manga about a calligrapher who moves to a small village in rural Japan to reflect and get better at his craft. There’s a bit more slapstick and people getting hurt than I really enjoy, but its mostly this guy hanging out with kids and learning to do new things. I’m looking forward to reading more. (Content notes: “comedic” harm to children, bugs, animal death)

Star Trek: Discovery Season 3 episodes 7-13— We finished the season! It was lot of fun. Though I did end up yelling “Biology doesn’t work that way! DNA isn’t magic!” at the screen a few times. There were some bits right at the end about unity vs justice that hit really hard because of political stuff, but which I really loved. And of course I still love all the characters so much, plus there’s few new characters that I love now.

Laid-Back Camp, Vol. 2 - Vol 6 by Afro— so writing my reading year in review inspired me to try to figure out a work around for the problems I’m having with the catalogue that are making checking out manga difficult. I have not completely succeeded, but I did manage to check out this series. This a lovely slice of life manga about high school girls going on camping trips featuring lots of pretty views and yummy camp food. A nice calming read.

Zoned in the USA: The Origins and Implications of American Land-Use Regulation by Sonia A. Hirt— I was very excited to join an urban planning book club. This was the book selected for the 1st meeting I attended. I didn’t like the actual book that much. It was rather dull and repetitive . Plus while it mentioned racism once or twice it really failed to properly acknowledge and engage with how much racism has shaped US land use policy. However the book club meeting was great! Lots of people had interesting things to say about this book. (If you’d like to read about racism and zoning I’d recommend The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein, the book club also mentioned Americans Against the City as a better book about similar topics)

Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard — I really enjoyed this novella set in the Xuya verse and featuring sentient ships, memory implants, and a mystery.

TGCF dongua episode 2-7— Still watching this online with a group of friends. It is really pretty but also I had forgotten how quite how gorey the plot is, and seeing it rather than reading it really brings that home. But there’s enough of a balance of soft pretty bits that I can handle it.

The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg— I really love Lemberg’s Bridverse stories so I was very excited to read this novella, which is set in that world. It was really good, featuring trans elders and magical weaving! But also the story dealt with a lot of heavy themes like abuse and athortiarism, and I found that hard going at times.

It's been a while since I did one of these posts. I'm just not consuming new media very much right now, but here are some things I did watch or read recently.

Jupiter Ascending — so I was reminded of this because someone on twitter linked to fic that is fusion with this. And when I mentioned I’d never seen it people thought I’d enjoy it. It was on Netflix, and it seemed like a good thing to do while I was avoiding the hottest part of the house. It was fun! Lots of amazing over the top sets and costumes. Some of the action scenes were a bit visually dark and hard to follow but I mostly enjoyed them. I really enjoyed the bees but I was expecting more of them, and why are they not in space? This definitely is not a movie where I want to think too hard about the plot but I’m glad I finally got around to watching this.

Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality by James Kwak — A book about how a simplistic understanding of economics has impacted US politics.This was ok but I wanted it to be a little bit more in depth. For example going more into the research about how income inequality is bad. And even though this book is only a few years old there were places that felt slightly outdated. Since this book addressed inequality in the US I expected it to mention race but it never did and that felt like a major oversight.

“Loosestrife” by Marissa Lingen— I really enjoyed this story featuring intelligent genetically engineered goats!

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells— I reread the 1st four novelas in this series and then read Network Effects the new novel that just came out. These are actually kind of more violent than I really wanted just now. I had remembered all the delightful bits of murderbot enjoying its media more than people and had forgotten quite how brutal the violence in these books is.

Star Trek: Voyager — we are now about halfway through season 7! Still enjoying this very much. I wanted to shout out to “Muse” -- I really enjoyed the ancient greek style play retelling of Voyager in that episode. I’m a bit sad that its almost over but also a bit excited to watch something new. Our next show will be Picard, and then maybe another Chinese drama?

Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones This the most recent book in the Alpennia series and I think I would have enjoyed it a little bit more if I had reread the rest of the series first. However this book stands alone quite well, being about the below stairs world of the characters from the other books. For the most part it was a nice gentle coming of age story, with bit higher stakes at the end and I enjoyed it very much. (Content notes: ableism, plague)

Tea in China: A Religious and Cultural History by James A. Benn-- I thought I’d like to write some fic featuring a lot of tea drinking. So I started doing a little bit of research, and then I fell down a rabbit hole, and ended up buying this book. So far I’m loving it! It’s full of all kinds of interesting details about daily life and religion that I really enjoy learning about.(And while I haven't used it in fic yet, someone else did!)

Finna by Nino Cipri -- This novella about queer exes investigating a wormhole in the IKEA like store were they work was lot of fun! And it also is excellent at depicting dealing with anxiety and the daily grind of retail work.

The Strange Case of Starship Iris MINI EPISODE 1: Airplay -- This great science fiction podcast is currently between seasons but they released this mini episode, which was delightful. I smiled the whole way through. It was so nice to spend a bit more time with these characters!

Check, Please! Books 1 and 2 by by Ngozi Ukazu I’d read most of this delighful comic about hockey and baking, with a gay main character online, but I’d some how never gotten around to the last few comics. Anyways it was lovely to read it all in one go, and the ending was so sweet and made me tear up a little bit!

The White Road: Journey Into an Obsession by Edmund de Waal This book is hard to explain. It's a memoir and also a history of porcelain in Europe. It’s fascinating and beautifully written. However sometimes it can feel a bit othering towards groups the author doesn’t belong to. Also towards the end it took an expected turn into Nazis. Still I enjoyed it a lot and it made me want to go throw some pots or at least look at some porcelain.

Star Trek: Voyager We are now well into season 6. Since we aren’t watching all the episodes we have about 20 or so left that we are planning to watch. So we are getting somewhat close to the end.

Star Trek: Voyager There have been a couple of episodes recently that deal with long term mental health problems and they did as well as they could in the space of an episode but it's just not enough time. Also it reminds me about how bad Star Trek is in general about mental health stuff so it left me feeling grumpy. But there have also been a couple of really good episodes including “Infinite Regress”.

A Duet for Invisible Strings by Llinos Cathryn Thomas -- this is modern day fantasy f/f romance novella-- it was very sweet! Sadly I’m very unmusical, and the main characters in this book are musicians, so most of the music bits of this went over my head.

Stargazing by Jen Wang A middle grade graphic novel about the friendship between two Chinese american girls. ( spoilers )

Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare Vol. 4 by Yuhki Kamatani The final volume in this manga series about a gay teen finding a queer community. I really loved this whole series, and felt that it ended on just the right note.(Content note death, homophobia)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power season 4 I’ve been having a bit of TV watching slump. There’s a lot of TV I’d like to watch but I haven’t been watching it. So I thought watching a cartoon with shorter episodes might help me break out of that. It does seem to have helped. I just finished it yeseter so we’ll see if I’m able to go on to watch something with longer episodes next.

This season I really enjoyed the episodes that focused on secondary characters and less excited by the main story arc. I especially liked Scopia’s arc! I think it's good that they introduced a non- binary character but I don’t love that they are shapeshifter working for the bad guys. This is they be a problem with there being so few non-binary characters -- each one has to do so much work representing enbies.

The Anglo-Saxon Fenland by Susan Oosthuizen I follow this author on twitter where she posts a lot fascinating things about historical ecology so I wanted to check out one of her books. I picked this one because I lived in Cambridge near the fens for a few years and was fascinated by that landscape. Anyways I think this book was a bit more technical than I wanted, I ended up skimming some bits, and while there were a lot of fascinating details it was hard for me to understand the big picture.

Come Drink With Me by Michelle Kan This is marketed as “An Aromantic Chinese Fairytale”. It is about a dragon and phoenix living among mortals and taking part in opera. It's mostly very slice of life, and I loved all the opera details. The ending was a bit of a change in tone and I’m not sure I liked it. Still overall very cute!

“Every Tiny Tooth and Claw (or: Letters from the First Month of the New Directorate)” by Marissa Lingen I have been mostly focusing my short fiction reading on 2019 work I want to read before Hugo nominations close, but this 2020 story snuck in there too. This is an epistolary story about academics and magical rodents with politics that start in the background and slowly creep up on the reader and the characters. I just loved how sweet these letters were and all the little details of daily life.

Outer Wilds by Mobius Digital

justira mentioned that they enjoyed this game as a piece of cosy media. I asked R who is more into games than I am about it, and he had also heard good things about it. So we bought it and have been playing it together. So far it's really fun -- I love games with lots to explore and I can see why Ira called it cosy.

Miranda in Milan by Katharine Duckett So The Tempest is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays so I was intrigued by the concept of this novella about Miranda after she leaves the island. But I found it a bit too dark and suspenseful for my tastes. But it does have queer romance, so if you are into queer fansty and have higher tolerance for darkness than I do, which most people do, you might enjoy this a lot! (content note: physical abuse)

Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama

spindizzy was talking about this manga on twitter a couple of weeks ago, and when I went to the library later that day the 1st two volumes were on display so I scooped them up! So far it's a pretty cute magical school type story with hints and a bigger and darker plot.

Star Trek: Voyager We finished season four and are starting season five. I keep being distracted by how many PADDs (those little tablet like things they use) everyone has. It seems that every new piece of information needs its own PADD. I know that it's an artifact of when the show was made, but I keep wondering why they have to hand carry PADDs around instead of sending an email.

The Orphans of Raspay by Lois McMaster Bujold This is the latest in the Penric and Desdemona novellas. This was a perfectly fine adventure story but I feel like Bujold can do much better, after spending the last several novellas getting to know some new characters it was disappointing that they barely make an appearance here. (Content note: Slavery including threatend sexual abuse)

Steven Universe: The Movie This was very enjoyable! It was nice to spend more time with all these beloved characters. The main problem with Steven Universe is that it treats all problems as interpersonal when some of them are systematic and this movie doesn’t fix that, but it was charming and fun despite that. I’m always here for Steven trying to talk his way out of problems.

Are You Listening? by Tillie Walden This fablisist graphic novel about two queer women on a road trip was beautifully drawn. The art does so much to convey the mood. It's very surreal and melancholy in places. (Content note: sexual assault, grief)

The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games by Ebony Elizabeth Thomas This is an academic book about race in SFF, or more specifically Blackness with a focus of the portrayal of Black women.It’s a mix of lit crit and discussion of fan reactions, so they’ll be a section on how certain work reflects the culture’s ideas about race and then some discussion of the fan culture around it I thought it was really good!

Marvel Rising by Devin Grayson et al. I’m not a big superhero person, but I am fond of both Squirrel Girl and Ms Marvel so a comic where they team up seemed like fun. But it felt a bit bland to me lacking most of what I really like about these characters. The team up got them both out of their normal context, which meant that we only got a small scene with Squirrel Girl’s friends and none of Ms Marvel’s family, and I missed all of them. Plus one of the things that I love about Squirrel Girl is that she always tries to find a non-violent solution, and that didn’t really happen here. So this was a perfectly ok story but didn’t really give me what I wanted from the team up.

Field Trip by Molly Brooks This MG graphic novel is sequel to Sanity & Tallulah. Its a fun story about girls having and adventure in space

Star Trek: Voyager We are now in the middle of season four and things are a bit bleaker than in the 1st three seasons. But we have Seven of Nine now and she is great! Also I knew that Voyager had more of found family vibe than other Treks, but I didn’t realize that they just call themselves a family all the time! It's so nice. Also the show does a great job of teaming up different pairs of character to good effect.

In 2019, almost all the TV I watched fell into three categories: kids cartoons, Chinese drama and Star Trek. For the most part I watch TV pretty slowly, a couple of episodes a week. Though sometimes I get very into something and watch it faster. I thought it would be nice to look back at the year and what I’ve watched and what I’ve written about it. This year I’ve been doing regular media round ups as well as writing some longer reviews. So I’ve written a little bit about each show and linked to any earlier writings. These are in roughly chronological order of when I finished watching the show.

Star Trek: The Next Generation

R and I watched this together -- we mostly watched this last year but we watched the second half of the last season in January 2019. I’m glad I watched it, but boy did the show under-use its female characters!

Writings: We Finished The Next Generation!

Stargate

Another show I watched with R. We watched about 2.5 seasons before we got distracted by other things. We might get back to it at some point, but then again we might not. I generally enjoyed this, but I have concerns about how it valorises the military.

Writings: Mentioned in media wrap ups here and here

Legend of Korra Seasons 3 and 4

I’m glad I finally got around to watching this! Overall I think I liked Legend of Korra less than Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) but still found it worth watching. I liked Korra and her friends, even if I found some of their romance plots aggravating. And I enjoyed seeing how the world had developed since ATLA, and getting cameos of characters from that show.

Writings: Season 3, Season 4

Guardian

This was the first Chinese Drama I watched! I loved it! It’s intensely slashy despite censorship, it has a lovely found family vibe, and great characters. In some ways the details of the show are a bit haphazard, the worldbuilding is not well thought out and the plot has some holes, but it's an absolute masterclass in using food to show character and relationships. As well as really enjoying watching this I got involved in the show’s transformative fandom, which is active on Dreamwidth. That’s been great! I’ve met many nice people and read a ton of great fic.

Writings: Mentioned in media round ups here and here And I also spent a lot of time staring at food in the show and wrote some food meta: All the Food and Drink in Guardian a chronological list, and Three Things About Food in Guardian. As well as two fics “Five Times Shen Wei Fed People and One Time Someone Fed Him” and “Cooking Arrangements”.

Hilda

I loved this cartoon about a girl who loves to explore. I really enjoyed Hilda’s mum as well as her friends. It’s so nice to have a kids show where the mother is present and even gets to join some of the adventures. Plus the show’s take on nature and friendship is just lovely.

Writings: Mentioned in media rounds ups here and here

She-Ra seasons 2 and 3

This continues to be cute and colorful! I love that there’s so many powerful female characters and really enjoy the focus on friendship.

Writings: She-Ra: and the Princesses of Power Season 3 and season two was mentioned in this media round up

Star Trek: Discovery Season 2

I watched the second season of Discovery with R. Overall I enjoyed this though I had some problems and didn’t love the ending. But there are so many great older women characters!

Writings: “Moms, Space Dyslexia, and Explosions: Star Trek: Discovery Season 2”

The Untamed

I got really into this Chinese drama set in ancient fantasy China. It’s based on an m/m novel but due to censorship there’s no acknowedged queer relationships, just many many insense looks and such. But there are a lot of complex family relationships as well. This show gave me so many sibling feelings! There’s a really central relationship between siblings and I love it. In general I’m quite fond of the tangled web of characters and relationships in this drama thought I do wish the show did better by its female characters.

I’ve been calling this “The swooshy show” around the house. One of my friends who watched it told me that she didn’t realize it was literally as well as atmospherically swooshy. The characters all wear long flowing robes and jump around a lot. I’m deeply into the swooshy aesthetic.

Writings: Mentioned in media rounds ups here, here, here, and here. And I wrote a fic as well “One Time That Wen Qing Got Lost and Five Times She Was Found”. I also have a Twitter thread of recs for female centerted fanfic of the show and the book it's based on.

Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid

This a very cute anime about a dragon who decides to be a maid for the human woman who saved her life. It's very domestic with a focus on daily life. It's also pretty queer with the characters saying “I love you” to each other even if they don’t quite come out and say they are in a romantic relationship. There’s a bit too much focus on some of the characters’ large breasts, and a couple of drunk scenes that made me uncomfortable but mostly this is a very charming show.

Writings: Mentioned in media rounds ups here,and, here

Nirvana in Fire

After I enjoyed Guardian so much I wanted to watch another Chinese drama and I had heard many, many good things about this one. So I convinced R to watch it with me. It’s a very political show set in not quite historical China (there are some magic elements). The show is exceptionally well plotted, and has very pretty costumes. Also many wonderful characters. This was nice to watch with R because the plot was so twisty it was fun to have someone to discuss it with.

Writings: Mentioned in many many media rounds ups including here, here, here, here,here,here, here, and here. (Some media round ups skipped because I didn’t say anything substantial)

Star Trek: Voyager

This is what I’m currently watching with R. I’ve very much enjoying it. It’s a nice amount of twisty puzzle, and moral dilemmas, with lot of found family stuff thrown in too. We are currently in season 3 and I’m looking forward to more.

Writings: Mentioned in media rounds ups here, here here, and here Also I posted and asked for episode recs please stop by and tell me your favorites even if you missed it the first time.

All in all, 2019 was a great TV year for me. While I know plenty of people who watch much more than I do, I really enjoyed what I watched this year. I discovered that I enjoy Chinese drama, I met some great characters, I had some great conversations with R about the things we watched together and I got more involved in transformative fandom than ever before.

In 2020, I expect that I’ll continue to watch more things along the same lines. I have several more Chinese dramas on my to-watch list and I’d like to get around to the 4th season of She-Ra and maybe The Dragon Prince. R and I are continuing to watch Voyager, which should keep us busy for a while.

What TV did you enjoy in 2019? What do recommend that I watch?

Star Trek: Voyager-- We have finished season 3 and watched the first episode of season four which means lots of Borg, and I’ve kinda met Seven of Nine! There was a great episode where Tuvok and Tom Paris where trying to write a holo-novel together and Tuvok quotes some Vulcan poetics! Now I really want some fic about Vulcan poetics -- if you know of any please send it my way.

Moontangled by Stephanie Burgis I love The Harwood Spellbook series of fantasy novellas of which is the most recent installment, and went the author was offering ARC’s on twitter I jumped at the chance! This was delightful as expected, I will have a longer review after this comes out which will be sometime in February.

I Love You So Mochi by Sarah Kuhn This was a YA novel about an Japanese American girl who visits Japan for spring break. Its really cute and has wonderful descriptions of food and clothing. The main character is searching for a vocation in the story and as a person who would like to have a vocation but doesn’t really I found this theme a bit hard to deal with. But I still enjoyed the book. I also appreciated that the main character’s mom is not dead and that their mother/daughter relationship plays an important role in the book.

Yuletide 2019 I read a lot of fanfic posted as part of this annual small fandoms exchange. There was quite a lot of fic for my Chinese drama fandoms and also many fics based on books I enjoyed. Here are a some of recs:

”A Series of Discoveries” by genarti
(Sorcerer to the Crown) a very cute take on Rollo’s backstory

”Be Bold, but not Too Bold” by meguri_aite
(In Other Lands), the summary of this is pretty prefect “A dragon appears in the Borderlands, and Elliot Schafer makes it his first order of business to get kidnapped by it.”

”Situation Normal” (Murderbot) Murderbot goes to a scientific conference and mets ART again.

”The Past Didn't Go Anywhere” by FairestCat (The Untamed) A wonderful Wen Qing Lives fic

”Fire in the Blood” by Jo Lasalle (The Untamed) I enjoyed not knowing more than the tags going into this fic so I’m just going to say that this gave me a lot of feelings.

Get You A Man Who Can Do Both by marycrawford (Guardian) A very cute Da Qing POV midcanon.

“Ring the Bells (That Still Can Ring)” by Shadaras (The Untamed) Another Wen Qing centric fic (I love her, ok?) also featuring some very excellent Jiang Yanli

The Witch Boy, The Hidden Witch, and Midwinter Witch by Molly Ostertag -- the first two where rereads. These middle grade graphic novels about a boy who wants to do girls magic and his family and friends are so good! I especially enjoyed the complicated family politics in the last volume. And I love that one of his friends has two dads and it's not an issue at all. The art here is lovely and colorful. I just really loved these!

I haven’t been consuming a lot of new media the last few weeks so this will be a shortish update. I’ve been very slowly rewatching The Untamed and reading a lot of fanfic, also mostly Untamed, but also several other Chinese source canons, and some Yuletide fic though I haven’t really dug into that collection yet. I don’t usually include fic in these round ups because the transformative fandom norms for talking about that are pretty different than the book fandom norms and I’m still figuring that out. But if you are curious about some of the things I’ve been reading I’ve started a thread on twitter with recs for lady-centric Untamed/MDZS fic.

Star Trek: Voyager We are now somewhere in the middle of season three. I’m still enjoying this but several episodes recently have been hard to watch because they hit my embarrassment squick. Tom Paris has been given several opportunities to be a pushy jerk in recent episodes, but instead has respected other people’s boundaries, so that’s been lovely. I think I like Janeway’s new hair but I enjoyed the way the updo could fall down in a disaster.

The Living Dead This is spin off movie of The Untamed featuring two of my favorite side character having an adventure together. This was ok, but very confusing. Also a lot of it was very dark in a literal sense. So it was hard to see and that didn’t help the confusion. I wanted a bit more interaction between the two characters. Still there where some fun fight scenes, and some nice teamwork.

Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather This is a science fiction novella about catholic nuns living on a living spaceship. I enjoyed it but the worldbuilding felt like a lot of details that didn’t quite go together and that was a bit frustrating. However I really enjoy the religion in space bits and the ways the nuns worked together as a community.

Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju Vol. 8-10 by Haruko Kumota I finished this! I don’t have a lot to add to what I’ve said about this before. Basically this great story about intergenerational relationships and being an artist. It had a very satisfying ending. (Content note: death, grief)

I Like to Watch: Arguing My Way Through the TV Revolution by Emily Nussbaum So I have four non fiction library books out of the library right now, and the other three are all nature/city books, but I read this one of TV criticism instead. (In fairness this one has lot of holds on it so I can’t renew it like I can the others) Due to cultural snobbism that I’m getting over and auditory processing problems I’m not great at TV, and haven’t watched most of the things reviewed in this book. The author’s taste and mine don’t really line up either -- she likes a lot dark stuff and not much SFF. So I’ve skipped around it this a lot. But I enjoyed Nussbaum’s discussion about how shows about male antiheroes are valued and equally influential but softer shows about women are not. This book also helped me have more historical context for what’s going on with TV now. And there was a long essay about the me too movement and having art that was formative for you but was made by bad people that was worth reading.

Nirvana in Fire eps 48-54 We finished it! We’ve been watching this for so long and now it's over! You know those moments that have been built up slowly over the course of a long work of fiction, and then it all comes together and matters? Well there are a bunch of those in these last few episodes of the drama and its so good! But also there were new surprises even at the very end. This drama was very well plotted! The ending was very satisfying.

Star Trek: Voyager -- This is what R and I are watching now that we’ve finished Nirvana in Fire, its change of pace, but I’m excited. (If you have thoughts on which episodes we should watch and which we should skip come tell me about it) So far I like everyone on the crew except Tom Paris, who keeps harassing women and saying racist things. (Seriously I almost liked him for a minute there before he opened his mouth again) But so far it's very Star Trek in best way a bit goofy but full of people who are trying to be their best selves in difficult circumstances. This long show and we’ll be watching it for awhile but I probably won’t include it in every round up unless I have something specific to say about it.

Heaven Official’s Blessing by 墨香铜臭 This was really long, but I finished it! This a Boy’s Love novel about god and demon, but the gods are relatively low powered compared to western fansty. This doesn’t have much family stuff as Mo Dao Zu Shi had which is too bad, but there were still a lot of characters with complex histories with each other. There where a couple of genderqueer characters though their relationship with gender where not really explored.

Xie Lian, the god or heavenly official, is super cute, especially when flustered. I identify a lot with teen Xie Lian, being all "save the world" and older Xie Lian being very disillusioned. I was like that as teen too. Though I wish saving the common people was a bit more of the focus of the story. I read Xie Lian as having similar low key depression to mine. He has a hard time recognizing his own worth and seem a bit overwhelmed by the world. Hua Cheng, the demon, is just super devoted and romantic. I think this could be creepy, because Hua Cheng is pretty obsessed for 800 years, but I found it mostly really sweet. There some very cute domestic bits, also a fair amount of angst. (Content note: gore, undead, child harm including death, war, body horror causing disease, misscarage/forced abortion, suicide)

To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers. This novella has lot descriptions of space travel and exoplanets. I enjoyed all the fictional ecology! There’s also a nice found family vibe with crew as I’ve come to expect from a Chambers story.

R and I have almost finished watching Nirvana in Fire! If all goes to plan we will finish next week.

We have decided that our next show will be Star Trek: Voyager. We are going to do a good parts version similar to what we did with Next Generation. Basically the idea is to watch the good episodes but skip the bad ones. (From what I hear Voyager is very uneven.) So I wanted to ask here for advice. Which episodes are good that I should definitely watch and which ones should I avoid?

*The other day on my commute I listened to the Antimatter Pod episode on Motherhood in Star Trek. Its great! Now that I've caught up with Discovery I can check out their back catalog!

*Other the weekend I bashed my right knee into the bathroom counter and it really hurts! Its still brusied today, but I took I walk anyways because after a very gloomy May we are have a mini heat wave and I wanted to be outside. I ice the knee afterwards so hopefully that will be ok.

*Today I baked a milk chocolate cheesecake for R's up coming birthday. I've been using this recipe for his birthday cake for a few years now and its really good.

*Also this afternoon my niece, who is about 11 came over. She spent most of her time playing Mario. I never really got to play video games as kid -- one the perils of being a girl I guess. Now I'm very bad at the hand-eye stuff needed to play a lot of games, so I'm happy to give my niece a place to try out those kind of skills. The rest of my family doesn't really approve.

I finished watching season two of Star Trek Discovery and I have many thoughts and feelings. For the most part this season felt lighter and goofier than last season. So in tone season two is more like other Star Trek shows that I've watched. I mostly enjoyed this season but I also had some problems -- especially with regards to how it dealt with disability.

( Spoilers for the Whole Season )

My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame, Translated by Anne Ishii Someone I know described this as “for straights” and I see what they where getting at. It's the story of someone working on overcoming their homophobia. Yaichi’s brother moved to Canada (form Japan) and married a man. The brother than died and the his husband Mike arrives at Yaichi’s doorstep for planned visit as the manga opens. The story really centers Yaichi’s feelings of discomfort as he slowly comes to accept Mike. So I can see why some people find that frustrating. Still a lot of this manga is really cute! I particularly liked Yaichi’s daughter Kana, who is really excited to meet her Uncle and very accepting of him.

I Ship My Adversary X Me by PEPA translated by Yudun & MomoepomThis is a partly translated chinese web novel . So far 16 of 47 chapters have been translated. It freaking adorable! Its boys love story about two actors that most of the fans have decided hate each other and are rivals. However one of actors finds out that some of the fans ship them instead, and that he really likes reading all their fluffy takes on the relationship! So far this just full of them have very cute interactions with each other. And they feed each other! Really I am very squeeful about it. However one of the two translators who was working on this seems to be taking a mental health break so it might be a while until we get any more. (Content note: embarrassing situations)

The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders Anders is the guest of honor and WisCon which I will be attending so it seemed like a good idea to read her latest book. For me this was more of an ideas book than an character book. But there were a lot of really interesting ideas about about time, memory, and governance that I want to think about more.

Star Trek Discovery Season 2 R and I have only 2 episodes left of this. I’ve been taking a bunch of notes and will probably do a longer write up about the season when we finish it.

She Ra Season 2 The second season of this cartoon is delightful. My main problem here is that seven episodes makes for a very short season and I wanted more, especially since the season ends on a cliffhanger. Also there wasn’t enough Queen Angella. I really liked that this season focused on characters growing into their new roles. Also we got a queer relationship on screen! Looking forward to more of this soon.

Star Trek: Discovery Season 2 R and I started watching this with the plan to finish it before WisCon. We’ve watched 4 or 5 episodes so far. At this point this season is goofier and lighter than season 1 and feels a bit more like other Treks I’ve watched. There’s more focus on ethical dilemmas and such witch is very Star Trek focus. Also there are many many awesome older women. Some of them are mothers though none of them raising small children. Still it's good to see more fictional moms. I hope some of the awesome older ladies get to interact with each other.

Golden Kamuy up vol 8 by Satoru Noda This all that’s currently been translated into English so I have to stop here for the moment. I’m still really enjoying the historical setting and all food details. However these volumes got pretty gruesome and also spent a lot of time alway form core character hanging out with less nice people. And there were some villainous tragic queers. So that wasn’t great. But I do like the main characters and will probably read more when it is available.

Yotsuba&!, Vols 8-9 by Kiyohiko Azuma Still very cute! I have few more volumes out form the library.

Not For Use In Navigation: Thirteen Stories by Iona Datt Sharma I am working my way very slowly through this. "Akbar learns to Read and Write" was lovely meditation on learning. I have one novella "Quarter Days", left I've read it before so I know its really good. But I’ve gotten sick and this isn’t the kind of thing I can read when sick -- to much detail to miss. So something to look forward to when I feel better.

I also got a couple of the Hugo shortlisted art books out of the library. I wouldn’t have called The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition an art book but it sure is pretty. Makes me want to do an Earthsea reread. Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana: A Visual History is fun to look at for nostalgia but not really my favorite kind of art.

And I’ve read quite lot of Guardian fic. Maybe I need a way to keep track of the fic that I read? I don’t k

R and I finished watching Star Trek: The Next Generation last night. We've been doing a good parts version where we skipped the worst episodes. It been a fun thing to watch together and talk about. I mentioned in my TV Wrap Up that I hadn't written much about it since season 4 and I think the main reason for that is that I don't really have anything new to say. I still wish this show did better by it's female characters, I still love the arts and crafts bits (in season 7 we got to see a bit of Kilgon Opera which was great), I still hate the prime directive, I still like that the show is optimistic mostly. Anyways the final episode gave us Future!Cambridge and Future!Data with a houseful of cats which I very much enjoyed. Data's idea of how a professor should dress also amuses me.

I think next we are going to watch a non-Trek show but eventually we plan to watch Voyager. The new season of Discovery has started airing but our plan is to wait until the whole season is out and watch it all then.

R and I recently finished watching season four of Star Trek: The Next Generation (TNG). When we started watching TNG the plan was to watch the highlights but we quickly changed to just skipping the worst episodes. I have lots thoughts about season four but they aren’t really a proper review or essay -- I lack a thesis statement. So I’m just going to write up bunch of bullet points and share my thoughts that way.

( Read more... )

This post is going to discuss representation of marginalized people in Star Trek: Discovery. You can read my thoughts on themes and continuity in the show here.

Star Trek has generally tried to push the envelope in terms of who gets to be on screen and has had some successes and some failures at this. It was groundbreaking for The Original Series (TOS) to even have a black woman on the bridge even though by today’s standards the show is not very diverse. Watching Next Generation today I’m constantly frustrated by the female characters and how they don’t get to do anything, but I get the impression it was about average for its time. In Deep Space 9 (DS9) we got to see a black man as captain (and a father), and the show featured some wonderful female characters. However, DS9 also featured some very problematic Jewish-coded characters. Voyager gave us our first Trek show with a female captain but also featured a very poorly done Native American character. Enterprise’s main crew seems to be about as diverse as TOS’s, but--given that there are are about 35 years between the shows--that’s not what I’d consider progressive. Discovery, too, has some big successes and some big failures in terms of representation. Its biggest problem is that it shows us glimpses of much more than it delivered on several counts.

( ”spoilers” )

I recently finished watching Star Trek:Discovery, and I wanted to reflect on the series here. This post is going to talk about the series over all and how it fits in with other Trek. Then in a follow up post I’m going to talk about representation of marginalized people on Discovery. (I started out writing one long post but it was too disorganized and needed to be split up.) Since I last wrote about Star Trek R and I have finished watching original series (TOS) highlights and watched most of the first three seasons of Next Generation (TNG), skipping the really bad episodes (e.g. most of season one). At the end of season 3 of TNG we took a break to watch Discovery. I’m becoming a bit obsessed with all things Star Trek. I’ve been enjoying pondering questions like “what would one wager in post scarcity society?” and coming up with Watsonian solutions to Doylist problems.*

Before I get into spoilery bits, I want to say that I liked Discovery and that it did contain thematic elements that are important to making it feel like Star Trek to me. However, it did lack a lot of the quiet character moments that I enjoy in other Star Trek shows. I really wanted to be able to see Discovery as something that stood on its own, but the show was keen to remind me about how it linked to the franchise.

( spoilers )

*In the Sherlock Holmes stories Watson is the 1st person narrator and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is author. So a Watsonian approach uses only in universe stuff, whereas a Doylist approach acknowledges that the story is work of fiction created