jeliza

I just realized that almost all my recent posts are locked down to just me because of speculative angsting I don't really want to pull people into. Oops. I will be taking many uncomfortable tests soon, which have a very high probability of saying "you're fine" but the waiting is just ... ugh. 

The kids have finished their first semesters of regular high school and it is .. challenging?  As ever, the problem is not their smarts, but all those lovely ADHD/sad brain shenanigans.  They've also both come down with a horrid virus which means missing a whole lot of school, which doesn't help.

I am really perturbed that when the career center people came in to give the presentation about "hey, almost time to register for next fall" they apparently spent most of it on COLLEGE COLLEGE COLLEGE which just makes the kids who are already definitely not on the straight-to-a-4-year path feel like crap, but given the current economy and population full of 20 somethings with five figures of student loan debt working retail and driving for uber on the side, i think it's irresponsible to be pushing it that hard for "everyone", especially without at least talking about the vocational/trade programs and community colleges and such. I mean, Shorecrest has an *in-house* culinary arts training program that is quite good, and that's not even the only thing they offer, but they don't seem to be pushing it.

(Jeez, do I ever journal about anything besides sickness, parenting and business?)

I am mostly drowning my sorrows in fanfic, which I now realize stems directly from seeing my twitter acquaintance lorata post a couple years ago about her Captain America story treating more realistically how two men who were from the 40s would handle waking up in a world where it was okay to be gay. I at that point didn't actually care about Captain America at all, and had barely ever read any fanfic, and now my habit has slowly snowballed to where I read far more of it than I do "regular" fiction, and most of it Marvel-based. (Also Leverage. Anything crossed with Leverage, because heists are pleasing.)  I also now have Opinions(TM) about how the movies massively screwed up Hawkeye, Black Widow, the Maximoffs and the Winter Soldier, and am probably going to shell out for Disney+ so I can watch whether they fix anything in the spinoff series-es. And I'm buying comics of characters I only learned about from fanfic.  The sheer quantity of Avenger fic which has the specific canon of MCU but substituting Matt Fraction-era comics Hawkeye is hilarious.

(The fic is Slow Work, and it's still one of the best long-form fics I've read.)

I haven't written any yet, though I'm starting to consider it in a "write the fic you want in the world" way, except the amount of research I would need to do is daunting for most of it. And I haven't written any fiction in 25 years. I might be able to manage the  Lilo and Stitch/Captain Marvel crossover where Stitch and Goose are buddies who wreak havoc at the beach without excessive prep, though.

I spent basically all of memorial day weekend in bed sick, which is just ... great. I can get up and walk around today, but am tiring really, really quickly, and unfortunately, there was a lot that needed to get done this weekend and some of it can't be put off any longer, which is to say, two customer orders, one of which is a multi-hour album assembly, and getting ready for my show this weekend.  I was gonna debut some new stuff at Oddmall (I got hair comb settings and the cabinet pulls are not that far from completion as are the clipboards) but now ... not so much.

Iko's first obedience class apparently went really well, but given that I was on gatorade and nap duty, S and D took him. I read a whole lot of fanfiction which the lights low, including an epic Age of Ultron fix-fic that would have been SO MUCH BETTER than what they filmed. So. Much. Better. 

I kind of want them to recast Hawkeye and do a solo film/series prequel based on Matt Fraction's run in the comics now. (With his goddamn hearing aids in, thank you very much.)

Bleah.

I'm embarking on my hugo nomination ballot, and while as usual my head is stuffed full of short fiction, I haven't read much in terms of hugo-class novels of recent vintage (well, I bought lots of books last year that were apparently pubbed at the end of 2014) and I would love suggestions -- specifically of hugo eligible works, so sf/f published in 2015.

(A big old suggestion post from me of short fiction and artists to check out will be forthcoming.)

I have already read/am planning to (try to) read:

• Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold (apparently considered a 2015 release for the nebula, at least, becuase of the eARC or some such? I highly recommend it, but it isn't the kind of read I tend to put on my Hugo nomination ballot.)


• Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho


• Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear


• House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard


• Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia


• Shadowshaper and Half-Resurrection Blues by Daniel José Older


• Escape from Baghdad! by Saad Hossein


• Last Song before Night by Ilana Myers


• The 5th Season by N.K. Jemisin


• The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall


• Uprooted by Naomi Novik


• The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley


• The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (pubbed in the UK in 2014, and the US in 2015, ergo Hugo-eligible, and why are the Worldcon awards still based on US pub dates? though I suppose to do otherwise would disadvantage non-US works with the voting population)


• Lagoon, by Nnedi Okorafor (same eligibility as above)

I don't read horror or grimdark (so no Kameron Hurley, and I'm a little trepidatious about the Jemisin based on what I've heard so far), and I don't have the brains for incredibly dense text a la Mieville right now, and I tend to dislike time travel.

So, anything not already on that list I should try and stuff into my brain in the next month?
(I am planning to start each of those, but bailing mid-story and putting on the pile for later if I like it but don't Hugo like it.)