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reading rainbow
Aug. 7th, 2013 12:53 pmIt was a good week for hearing about queer webcomics. Really like Decrypting Rita so far. (Don't tell me if it's like anything, okay?)
Things about Malindo Lo's Adaptation that worked for me:
- Girls kissing girls. This part here, it worked, yes it did. I was texting M-pig as I tried to read it over lunch, to the tune of, "jeez, Malinda Lo, I am trying to eat teriyaki here, not combust." It spoke to my experience as a bi girl, is I guess what I'm saying.
- Modern kids having conversations about queerness. This is what sold me on the book, and there are three sentences about the literal use of the term queer, but my favorite was actually the formerly straight-ID'ed protagonist talking to her gay best friend about how their "best gay" friendship was supposed to work and him saying "I wouldn't know, my best friend is not a straight girl!"
- Creepy foreignness of one's own body and mind. Not unusual for character-as-guinea-pig plot, but well done.
- Protagonist is legitimately bisexual in my humble opinion, and I am still holding out hope for a triad ending.
Things about Malinda Lo's Adaptation that did not work for me:
- Terrorist birds.
- Government-alien conspiracy.
- Basically all the thriller elements whatsoever barring the scary car chase at the beginning.
- Not concluding the story completely. Such novels are just always annoying, there's no way around that.
Reading Arakawa's Silver Spoon in scans, finding it cute. The closeness of the character designs to the FMA ones is pretty disconcerting, though.
Susan Sontag on camp was interesting, and I don't agree with most of the specifics. Things have changed in fifty years.
I finished the Star Rigger omnibus by Jeffrey Carver a while ago. Actually only the first book of this was the appealing Menolly-narrative; the second is wall-to-wall dragons and not enough human-type people, and it becomes impossible to ignore that the dragon society is annoyingly gender-essentialist in ways that reflect human sexism. (Warrior males, passive visionary females: it could all be much less annoying if those were swapped or there were a Sif or something.) Also, insufficient parrot.
Looking forward to One Girl Goes Hunting!
Things about Malindo Lo's Adaptation that worked for me:
- Girls kissing girls. This part here, it worked, yes it did. I was texting M-pig as I tried to read it over lunch, to the tune of, "jeez, Malinda Lo, I am trying to eat teriyaki here, not combust." It spoke to my experience as a bi girl, is I guess what I'm saying.
- Modern kids having conversations about queerness. This is what sold me on the book, and there are three sentences about the literal use of the term queer, but my favorite was actually the formerly straight-ID'ed protagonist talking to her gay best friend about how their "best gay" friendship was supposed to work and him saying "I wouldn't know, my best friend is not a straight girl!"
- Creepy foreignness of one's own body and mind. Not unusual for character-as-guinea-pig plot, but well done.
- Protagonist is legitimately bisexual in my humble opinion, and I am still holding out hope for a triad ending.
Things about Malinda Lo's Adaptation that did not work for me:
- Terrorist birds.
- Government-alien conspiracy.
- Basically all the thriller elements whatsoever barring the scary car chase at the beginning.
- Not concluding the story completely. Such novels are just always annoying, there's no way around that.
Reading Arakawa's Silver Spoon in scans, finding it cute. The closeness of the character designs to the FMA ones is pretty disconcerting, though.
Susan Sontag on camp was interesting, and I don't agree with most of the specifics. Things have changed in fifty years.
I finished the Star Rigger omnibus by Jeffrey Carver a while ago. Actually only the first book of this was the appealing Menolly-narrative; the second is wall-to-wall dragons and not enough human-type people, and it becomes impossible to ignore that the dragon society is annoyingly gender-essentialist in ways that reflect human sexism. (Warrior males, passive visionary females: it could all be much less annoying if those were swapped or there were a Sif or something.) Also, insufficient parrot.
Looking forward to One Girl Goes Hunting!
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