Bookworming

PERIOD DRAMA APPRECIATION WEEK ► day 5. favourite dynamic - Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy - Pride and Prejudice.

Perhaps it won't be terrible. And if it is once you've written your first novel, you can start on your second, and that will be better, because you've made mistakes and learned from them.

Nobody would expect you to play an instrument perfectly, or dance, or perform surgery perfectly on your first time. You do something badly until you get good at it. You don't have to show anyone your first novel. (Mine will stay in a box in the attic until I die.)

I turn 20 this week, and I find that it's a little bit intimidating to pass through the "Teen to Technical Adult" threshold; I was wondering if you might have any wisdom, or general life advice, for those who are about to embark on the rest of their lives?

I understand you're probably quite busy right now and that this is a pretty standard question so feel free to ignore this; regardless, you're a very lovely writer, and I am always excited to read (and re-read) something written by you. (Even Coraline, which terrified 3rd grade me just as much as Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark... though Coraline in particular inspired a permanent installment of a night light in my room...)

Highest regards, and best of wishes :)

Pretty much everything I've learned I put in here --

Hi! She was quite hard on herself re: her portrayal of women but I don't think she gives herself enough credit. Le Guin comes at stories anthropologically, and for that reason her portrayal of women is more concerned with function of gender performance/history/roles, power dynamics, and family structures within a community than with the explicit task of writing a 'female hero.' She doesn't write heroes in general, man or woman, and instead centres archivists, historians, scientists, spiritualists, and labourers, roles which are more inclusive not only of women but also other groups traditionally forgotten in the history of civilisations, like pregnant people, children, the elderly, poor craftsmen, the incarcerated etc. Some communities she catalogues are matriarchal, some are patriarchal, and women assume nobility or suffer archaic barbarism realistically. Where the culture allows, she rejects the assumption of feminine affinity to natural, ancient roles.

In The Dispossessed, Le Guin's manifesto of the ambiguous utopia, she compares two civilisations where one is based on absolute gender equality to the point of gender insignificance, and one is more like our reality, where gender performance makes life colourful but also restricts people, makes them lonely from one half of themselves. Her most radical gender study is The Left Hand of Darkness, set in a land of Inuit 'bisexuals' as catalogued by Genly Ai, a Black 'alien' explorer 'trapped' in his masculinity. Racial prejudice is another thing entirely, but Genly is also sexist and his sexism hounds him. It's a mind-altering inquiry into gender/sex as both/either a performance or psychological/biological reality.

Are season 2 and the hypothetical season 3 of Good Omens directly inspired by any other works, the way the book was inspired by "The Omen"? (I know better than to ask which ones, if so... #WaitAndSee)

Thank you!

This is exactly what Superman stands for.

Superman was created by two second-generation Jewish immigrants in the 1930s.

He was created to represent Jewish refugees, partially-assimilated immigrants, and orphan refugees. They couldn’t admit it at the time or he would never have been popular.

Whoever Little Light is they understand Superman far more than the majority of people.

Superman is the hardworking Hispanic immigrant who has developed a taste for apple pie.

The Muslim who plays baseball between prayer calls.

Every immigrant who still speaks their own language at home.

Thud! by Terry Pratchett

https://youtu.be/hHg7kKUcIpA

Also, I wanted to say that your “Norse Mythology” is one of my favorite books; it made me really happy to listen to you read the audiobook as it really brought the stories to life.

Thank you for your time :)

https://youtu.be/hHg7kKUcIpA

I love this!

"Not once, not ever, not even for a nanosecond did I think during my biochemistry and molecular biology bachelor degree and post graduate degree that I’d be getting lectured about mRNA by a guy who hadn’t done year 10 biology. But here we are in 2021 and thanks to Google and social media everyone’s an Associate Professor of Everything. Yes folk, we are dealing with two pandemics; Covid-19 and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And sadly they potentiate each other.

I am not alone when I say that scientists and health professionals are getting tired of trying to stay polite when Dazza from high school links us sensational video after sensational video about how the pandemic (“plandemic”) is a hoax. We’re getting tired of being told we’re in on some sinister conspiracy by people who’s primary reference is YouTube et al. We’re getting tired of being told that Covid, which many of us have worked with face-to-face, isn’t real, effectively having our real-world first-hand experience gaslit by people who’s sole “experience” with Covid is through a touchscreen. These people don’t realise all of the crap they’re being fed has been funnelled though sophisticated algorithms that cleverly tailor their news feeds and search results to fit their cognitive biases. Yes, folks, the internet is profiling you. In the words of Fox Mulder, you’re being “programmed, categorised and easily referenced”. Now there’s the real conspiracy.

Not all people who decline the vaccine are equal. They vary in rationale, justification, intensity and looney-tunity. However they are all finding a friend amongst the loud, persuasive, agitated and increasingly aggressive right wing conspiracy theorists. If you’re not familiar with this growing faction it is an eclectic network of overly suspicious people who represent a malignant challenge to reason, the antithesis to scientific advancement. They’re the dark underbelly of society, and they’re causing more trouble than guys who’s names start with J.

If disillusioned by inherently flawed structures of modern society, whether you stumble across it or seek it out it may suck you in. It has the gravity of an imploding star. A black hole of misinformation. Your one defence is logic and critical thinking, but this is a defence not everyone has.

Of course I understand vaccine hesitancy. I really do. I understand how there are risks associated with the vaccines, and how there are (far greater) risks associated with Covid. However getting the vaccine means actively subjecting yourself to that risk, whereas catching Covid is passively accepting that risk. It’s different. Many people want an external locus of control for any misfortune they experience and the anti-vaxx community offers a justification that fits that narrative perfectly.

Asking healthy young people to get a vaccine to mostly protect frail older people was always going to be a hard sell. They don’t feel like Covid will affect them and are too short-sighted to conceptualise the effect that it will have on the healthcare system. It does not occur to them that their Aunty might die from colorectal cancer because she was bumped from her surveillance scope three times. Or that their grandpa might die in an ambulance bay while awaiting emergency treatment for his heart attack. Or that the facial laceration they get while drunk and climbing a fence will be sutured by an intern and not a plastics reg because the plastics reg has been seconded on to the Covid ward. That sort of thing. Over their heads.

But can we really expect responsible, community-minded, future-focused decisions to be made by people who’s sternums haven’t yet fused?

Being young is supposed to be a time for being selfish and foolish. You should be allowed to make bad decisions when you’re 21, dating a dickhead, grappling with your newfound adulthood and thinking a boob job will solve all your problems. Your prefrontal cortex is still a work in progress and us bigger kids should forgive you for that.

And then there’s the cohort of people who drew the short straw and ended up with no formal education to hone their critical reasoning skills. If you’ve had the privilege of tackling capstone subjects or struggling your way through a post-graduate degree you should really be thankful for the favourable circumstances and genetic lottery that got you there. Some others probably didn’t have the encouragement, mentorship or financial supports to pursue tertiary education after high school. It is easy to think everything is a conspiracy theory when you don’t understand how anything works, it has been said. Bait and tackle, these people are prey for conspiracy theorists.

Then there’s pseudohippies. They opted out of peace, love, unity and respect in favour of hedonism and entitlement. They missed the maturity boat and are still getting written off 5 times a week and cruising 18 year old girls while sporting a tribal tattoo that says they peaked in 2003.

Moving on to perhaps the most grating of these cohorts - the privileged. Privileged people aren’t used to being told they can’t have something, unlike members of marginalised and disadvantaged groups who are stripped of opportunities, luxuries and basic human respect as a norm. It is never going to sit well with these groups when straight, cis, able-bodied white people cry “discrimination!”, “oppression!” and “segregation!” These words are loaded with a history of real human suffering. A kid who spent the last 5 years in offshore detention, a man who’s been imprisoned for “sodomy” or someone who’s relatives were thrown down a mine shaft for worshiping a certain God might not take too kindly to Pastyface McGillicuddy and his wife marching the streets demanding “freedom” and “rights” in protest of this “dictatorship”.

“But why are you writing all of this?” I can hear your inner monologue ask. Well, it’s because like a lot of people in the STEM community I am hitting my ceiling of politeness for having my-better-part-of-a-decade of tertiary education, not to mention my real-world work experience, constantly undermined by people who don’t know a B cell from a T cell. I’m exhausted by trying to break down the science to talk some cold hard sense in to people who picked up some fancy sciencey sounding words that they don’t understand on an anti-vaxx TikTok. I’m sick of people thinking they can lure me to their side by presenting cherry picked statistics, debunked research and videos of fringe scientists and doctors with thinly veiled financial or political agendas playing in to the covid conspiracy hype.