TERF’s Are Bad

The Black Monarch’s Ghost - Created by Ben Turner

Here is the original box cover, for nostalgia’s sake.

First, you need to understand that the rule that jurors can’t just google things is coming from a good place. Like imagine that you are on a jury that’s considering, say, a medical malpractice lawsuit and one of your fellow jurors comes into the jury room and says to you, “I think the victim’s expert was lying because WebMD totally contradicts everything they said.”

And you might be like, “But WebMD is notoriously unreliable website and the expert you’re talking about is a researcher from Mayo Clinic.” But this person cannot be swayed.

Like, we can all agree that would be bad.

So even though these rules can contribute to unjust outcomes as in the case above (and seriously, the fact that the defense attorney didn’t fact check that is probably grounds for legal malpractice), they also prevent jurors from just looking up bullshit online and taking it more seriously than the actual experts the court has put on. And I think in the era of anti-vaxxers/QAnon/COVID denial/etc., we can all understand why it’s a bad idea to trust that people can tell fact from bullshit online.

So in light of this, how do you as a juror fact check something?

The key here is that you have to ask the court for information. Jurors can ask questions of the court during deliberations, so if something you said sounds off to you, you can ask for more information.

The key term you want to use here is “credibility.”

The job of a jury is to decide what are called “questions of fact.” Long before the trial even starts, lawyers will have hashed out all the “questions of law” --- like, what the statute of limitations is; what laws, exactly, were allegedly broken; whether the court you’re in even has jurisdiction; stuff like that. Jurors are responsible for deciding which side’s version of the facts has more credibility.

For instance, if the prosecution’s witness says X and the defense’s witness says Y, the jury is responsible for deciding which is true, X or Y. And you do this by weighing which one is more credible.

So in this case, if the juror had known to, he could have told the judge, “In order to properly assess the ICE agent’s credibility, I need more information about his tattoo. I have doubts about whether he was telling the truth about it, which would impact how credible I would find his testimony. Can the agent please provide evidence that it really is what he says it is?”

“Only for—no!”

Sunshine by Robin McKinley - practical baker is captured by vampires, escapes, reluctantly teams up with better vampire to kill the bad one.

Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - young hat maker ages 60 years overnight, proceeds to upend the life of a disaster wizard while learning self-confidence.

the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett - hard to encapsulate, but equally funny and hard-hitting, tackling race and gender and corruption and other forms of inequality while also, like, making fun of post offices and Hollywood and Shakespeare. Three or four tackle war, true, but there’s something like 35 others to choose from.

the Accidental Turn series by J.M. Frey - recent Ph.D of colour lands in the Fantasyland™ she did her thesis on, goes off about agency and diversity while recovering from the Dark Lord’s attentions and learning the truth about her fictional crush.

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire - evil alchemist creates superpowered children to assist world takeover; children just want to be a family; family is complicated.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik - young woman takes over family business, must outwit fairies with a love of gold.

the Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede - princess runs away to become a dragon’s housekeeper, fights off rescuers, solves problems large and small, melts wizards.

the October Daye novels by Seanan Mcguire - Half-fae detective solves murders, finds missing persons, develops found family, can’t stop self from upending the social order.

The Golem and the Djinni by Helene Wecker - A quiet golem, a tempestuous djinn, Gilded Age New York. Immigrants, identity, friendship, hope, and self-discovery.

An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard - A witch from an outsider House enters New York’s magical Hunger Games, to prove a point. The problems of magic were not intended.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes - Part-time con artist gets hired to find two missing pop stars, with the help of the magical sloth on her back. Noir ensues.

Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica - Nature photographer lands on water-world, discovers lost family, tries to convince self magic is impossible.

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips - Greek gods, washed up in North London, curse Apollo to fall for the cleaner. Existential crisis, meet rom-com.

Every Heart a Doorway (and sequels) by Seanan McGuire - the children of portal fantasy end up in boarding school coping with being kicked out of their various worlds, then some of them start getting murdered. 

The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan - the world is flooded, there’s a lady who works with a bear at a circus that sails to different places to perform, and a lady who is sort of an undertaker, and they fall in love

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees - there are fairies but no one talks about them anymore because That’s Just Not How We Are except this state of affairs cannot possibly last and people start getting lured to fairyland

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - fifth son of emperor who’s lived his whole life away from court abruptly becomes emperor when his father and older brothers are killed in an accident, spends entire book trying to make friends and figure how the fuck to do a) confidence and b) ruling ethically

The Various by Steven Augarde - girl spends summer at uncle’s farm, finds the group of “various” (no direct parallel, but think somewhere between gnomes and pixies) that live in the woods, mysterious history, flying horse, The Cat Is Evil (this is technically middle grade but it’s so good I can’t even)

Tam Lin, Juniper Gentian and Rosemary, and The Secret Country by Pamela Dean (all different stories).  

The Spellkey by Ann Downer.  

Swordheart  or Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher.  

The Curse of Chalion or the Penric series by Lois McMaster Bujold.

The Terrier/Bloodhound/Mastiff series by Tamora Pierce Teenage former street rat aspires to and joins law enforcement in pseudo-medieval fantasy land, proves to have moral code forged of adamantium and more determination than an entire battalion. Also talks to unquiet ghosts carried by pigeons.

the Winding Circle books by Tamora Pierce (with the exception of Battle Magic) Four teenagers are snatched from the jaws of peril, discover they have incredibly strong yet overlooked magical powers, slowly become a found family, survive an earthquake, pirates, forest fires, plague, and puberty.

The Keeper Chronicles, by Tanya Huff Magic user accidentally gets roped into running a boarding house in Toronto. The decor is from the 50s, the handyman is an incredibly handsome and pureminded myopic Newfoundlander, and there is a (literal) portal to Hell in the basement. The third book adds lesbians and a mall that eats street kids to the mix. (Enchantment Emporium and its sequels are in the same world btw)

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If by “no war” you legitimately just mean that war is not the driving plot force:

the Hawk and Fisher books by Simon R Green  Fairytale-destined prince and princess decide that destiny is bullshit, ditch their kindgoms, become the only honest pseudo-cops in fantasy-Gotham because strangely being a prince/princess doesn’t actually give you life skills that are not applicable to being a mercenary. Buildings eat people, gods are murdered, street drugs turn people into animals, Hawk and Fisher are so very tired.

Oath of Swords and its sequels, by David Weber

The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, by Catherine Webb  In this universe, there are a handful of time travelers –  people who are forced to live the same life over and over, retaining their memories with each rebirth.  As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside with the following message: the end of the world is getting faster.

this is the dumbest thing i've done in this year

We interrupt our regularly scheduled aesthetic posting with a special message about the upcoming science-fiction YA novel IRON WIDOW by non-binary cosplayer, history buff, and YouTube sensation Xiran Jay Zhao (links to their website in the next post)

I have a longer, more formal “review” of this book scheduled for the release date (September 21st, 2021) but I really, really want to hype this book up as much as possible as early as possible to encourage people to pre-order it. I haven’t been this excited about a YA book in quite a while. Let me tell you why!

- It was pitched as PACIFIC RIM meets THE HANDMAID’S TALE in a world inspired by Chinese folklore and history, where boy-girl teams pilot giant mecha to fight alien monsters – but the psychic strain usually kills the girls. But only the girls….hmmm…something fishy is going on here…

- The main character is a reimagining of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor of China, who decides she’s going to assassinate the boy who murdered her older sister by volunteering to be his next co-pilot. She assassinates him so well that she kills him through their psychic link and becomes a dreaded IRON WIDOW!

- This makes her very interesting to the government, which would really prefer to make her disappear, but can’t afford to waste that kind of psychic power – so they pair her up with a ~dangerous criminal~ to pilot a new mecha, confident that he will be psychically strong enough to overpower her

- This backfires spectacularly, and suddenly Wu Zetian and her co-pilot have to manipulate both pop culture and the government just to stay alive.

- Plot ensues.

Why should you read this book?

Go back and re-read that plot summary until you understand why  BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!!

- We have a polyamorous F/M/M mutual relationship, I repeat, we PRE-EMPTIVELY SOLVE a LOVE TRIANGLE with POLYAMORY

- Wu Zetian is an amazing anti-hero and I mean that with all my heart. She is constantly doing stuff in this book that made me go, “Wait, can you do that?”  She WILL cut a bitch. Also, she uses a cane or wheelchair because she has bound feet, and you can tell that Xiran really went the extra mile to think about how to portray this and how it affects the character. A lot of YA protagonists can start to feel “same-y” after a while to me, but Wu Zetian REALLY stands out.

- The world is really, really cool? There is SO MUCH going on with the aliens and the mecha and the world they’re living in which I cannot spoil except to say that your primary emotion through the third act will be “?!!!?!!?!!?!!!” AND even outside of the meta plot, there is so much thought and detail put into the rest of the setting, it is so beautiful and it feels like you’re really there. Plus every character is a reimagining/reference to a historical or folklore figure and it was really neat to go on a little scavenger hunt of “Oh! I recognize that name!”

- IRON WIDOW will do for YA sci-fi what CHILDREN OF BLOOD AND BONE did for YA fantasy – if it gets support. Xiran has talked about how they couldn’t get an American publisher to even consider publishing this book because publishers didn’t think American audiences would be interested in Chinese folklore or idol culture or a story about giant mecha, which?? Have they MET the internet?? They were also told that schools and libraries will be reluctant to stock IRON WIDOW because of the polyamorous romance. BUT that is why I really hope people show up for this book because it is SO DESERVING OF SUCCESS and it could open so many doors for other writers and for the whole YA landscape

- Xiran Jay Zhao is a really cool non-binary author and their writing is as charismatic and entertaining as their other content. I just think they’re neat!

- And one more thing? The cover looks like this: