#chamerionwrites

1 the character everyone gets wrong

Should I ragebait Maedhros anon again? Let me ragebait them again. As the excellent post goes, girl that's not an eldest daughter that's a feudal lord. That man was made in the same mold as notable fiction anti-heroes like Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon and I have to witness him being turned into anxiety!Hux 2.0 but with the added horror of people being earnest about taylor swift eldest daughter dot mp3 style takes on Maedhros.

TBH speaking of, man, whatever the fuck was going on with giving Hux anxiety and turning him into a guy absolutely paralysed with anxiety. What WAS in the water. Why did that guy get everywhere. What the fuck even was sequel era Star Wars fandom!

9. worst part of canon

You know, Star Wars has some pretty low lows on the whole, and unfortunately Rise of Skywalker is a spectacularly low low, but I kind of admire the sheer camp of "somehow Palpatine returned" and then whatever the fuck he was doing in that last insane Sith battle thing. The crass gay guy in me is stupendously delighted by that nonsense, it brings a genuine smile to my face, though not for the reasons intended.

What does not spark joy, however, besides Andor S2, is The Phantom Menace. Firstly, why is it dredging up 19th century racisms and imputing them to various aliens. Secondly, why is literally half this movie a boring pod race - and mind you I adore racing films, so for me to find this boring is saying something about the whack pacing here. Thirdly, I could not care less about the cool duel. You know what sparks joy in this film? The Trade Union sector politics. I wish we could have had more of that and less of literally everything else and especially not the bizarre amounts of racism.

So I was tagged by both @nimmieamee and @chamerionwrites to show 9 books I plan to read in 2025 and. Well, it's a good thing I reorganised my bookshelves the other day. I now have a stack of books on my desk which is the year's To Read pile, so I've pick out nine from that stack.

I also have read a book already - Heavenly Tyrant by @xiranjayzhao, the sequel to Iron Widow. It was rad and I'm looking forward to the next book very much.

As we know, I am where tag games go to die, so I tag no one, though if you wish to join in, you can blame me anyway.

List below.

Witchcraft: a History in 13 Trials by Marion Gibson - Bought on sight in a Waterstones, only a few pages in so far. Unsure if I like the tone, but we'll see.

Horus Rising by Dan Abnett - Recommended by someone in my book group after I made them read some Imperial Radch for similar "part of an imperial war machine and blinkered because of that" aspects.

Doom Sword by Peter Beere - I read this once as a child. It is, notably, of its era and not very good. I don't care. Sometimes, childhood trash must be returned to, to pick out good bits and critique the bad.

My Neighbour Totoro by Hayao Miyazaki and Tsugiko Kubo - The boyfriend gave me this as a Christmas present. Given Totoro is one of our anti-anxiety films, I am looking forward to it.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - Saw the film, thought it was good. My sister recommended the book. Giving it a go.

The Pun Also Rises by John Pollack - Given to me by a friend who loves his puns. Concerned it may make me pun to annoying levels. We shall see.

The Kingdoms by Natasha Pulley - My brother @lengthy-artery has gone on about Natasha Pulley books to sibs and I, so when one sib was clearing out books, I dibsed this.

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo - Also got this in Waterstones (at the same time as #1, as it happens). Read some of Bardugo's stuff before, mixed feelings about it, but the premise has me curious.

This was surprisingly hard! There seem to be fewer “D” things than you’d expect... 

movie: Do the Right Thing

tv show: this one was easy, though - Deadwood

book: hmmm... Dance of the Happy Shades (I still can’t believe that was Alice Munro’s first collection), or maybe The Dark is Rising (which has all the flaws of mid-century British fantasy, but I still love it)

song: Divorce Song

fictional person: I'm quite fond of Davits Draven, of course, but the other name that came to mind was Diana Prince - Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman was a formative childhood influence

(WIP title meme)

Self Indulgent Dystopia - oh my, this one. It’s a Dracula fic I started literally twelve years ago (I said I never delete things) and actually wrote a sizable chunk of before abandoning it in overwhelm at how much exposition it required.

It’s a very ridiculous YA dystopia style AU where the whole story of Dracula takes place in a world where vampires are in political control, and so our heroes are running a very small and dubiously effective underground resistance movement. 

I think the ‘vampires rule the world’ trope is hilarious and sort of fascinating as both a blatant extrapolation of the implications of the ‘vampire as aristocrat and/or capitalist’ narrative, while also being a reversal of the ‘vampire as outsider’ trope. The world-building fun of that was always one of my favorite parts of Kim Newman’s Anno Dracula series, and I thought he missed a lot of opportunities there. This story was an attempt to play with that, but it took a lot of work for something that was ultimately a gimmick. I eventually did a brief and less world-building intensive Dracula dystopia that more directly riffed on Newman in Countermine.

I said I wouldn’t do excerpts, but I’ll break my rule for this, because I do sort of want to share the ridiculousness with all of you. Warning for non-graphic description of torture/execution, and also for something that is definitely not my best craftsmanship as a writer:

The man who was that day ordered to be executed had been convicted of possession of a crucifix, and when his crime was described Mina felt a sudden flare of fear and nausea, remembering the box of crucifixes hidden under the floorboards of the office shared by Jack and the Professor. The details of the execution bothered her, as they always had even before she knew enough to call them by the name wrong; the prisoner, in his nondescript clothing, led up the stairs to the wooden platform by several of the Guards, mortals who had agreed to work against their own species in exchange for a substantial salary and lifetime freedom from the fear of being bitten. The reading of the crime in emotionless voices, and then the slow death of the prisoner, the steady drip of garish blood onto the wood. But none of that was what made her furious. No, what made her most angry, what made her want to fill her arms with crucifixes and garlic and wooden stakes and run through the streets screaming, was Jonathan’s reaction when the official torturer and executioner, Count Vlad Dracula, stepped out onto the platform.

Like, look at that! Look at the YA tropes! 

Thanks for playing! Hm, light. Lets see where that shows up. Looks like we have a partial hit here:

Carrot's blood decided it didn't want to be seen anywhere near the brain that was dealing with this new information. It slunk away from his head, leaving Carrot feeling lightheaded and woozy. "Oh, dear," Carrot said faintly. "That's not good."

And here it is properly:

Framed in the warm yellow light of the hall was the strong chin and adorably crooked button nose of Luke Skywalker.

~

(replying only now because i fell asleep and then yesterday the fucking sheep ran down the fence. i fucking hate sheep and i’m pretty sure the ram wants to kill me) same honestly, like you do the best CIS meta -- they made me think. and tbh i don’t think i could have really lasted in the fandom if i’d felt it was just me, well, yelling at a cloud about narrative framing and the like. that’d be really frustrating, and not half as fun or interesting. it’s so much better to have people to share that with

Ok so: honest to God I intended this to be fannish--maybe something about the complete linguistic butchery of "representation" which could still be a fun post to do. But right now, here at one A.M., when I finally have a chance to answer this, I'm salty as fuck about the American health care system. Specifically, the total lack of dental coverage for low-income adults, and how, due to completely inadequate coverage, charities are trying to fill a hole for a huge chunk of the population that's so vast that the rest of the fortunately covered have a wide variety of carriers and options, precisely because! of what a market it is.

The 2011 census, something like 46 million people live in poverty. Now, you can chop about eighteen million out of the dental pool, cause they're under eighteen, and thank fuck that even in deeply red states, those people's dental are covered. (Now, I'm speaking very specifically from a red-state perspective, and I pray it's better than this in blue states.)

In your typical red state, you're fucked once you pass eighteen in terms of dental care. And dental care without insurance is...I once had a family member who was reasonably financially solvent do me the extreme kindness of paying for a filling at a reputable dentist. We walked out the door, and they looked me dead in the eye and said: "That's the last time I can do that. It's completely wiped out my emergency funds for the next couple months."

I've been having ongoing if infrequent pain in my lower jaw since Thanksgiving, and I did what most poor folk do. I gargled with saltwater, brushed my teeth more frequently, and prayed that whatever it was would just please god go the fuck away. Fast-forward to today:I wake up, and oh holy shit pain is back, but it's so, so much worse. Queue desperate attempts at remedies. Nothing works.

I tentatively start exploring my mouth and oh I'm so fucked it looks like there's a tiny piece of my tooth that's actually broken off. So: can't go to emergency dentistry; familial aid's completely out, for various personal reasons and I don't have the money.

So, face feeling like it was low-key being drilled into with an icepick, I got online and found a list of low-cost options. On Monday, I'll call and grill all of 'em, about fillings and god forbid, maybe crowns. And then I'll pick the one that's cheapest; irregardless of appointment back-log. And then I'll spend the next couple weeks taking advil to sleep. Because I guarantee you the backlog will be that long.

And feeling profoundly fortunate; I, after all, can still eat on the other side, and my frequent brushing's kept it from becoming infected. There's no abscess; I can wait without fear of more than profoundly awful pain, and I'm privileged enough to have gotten thorough education in proper oral care, such that in the near-decade in which I haven't been covered, this's the only serious problem I've had. I know there're many. many people who aren't nearly as fortunate.

But when professional pundits wisely do the equivalent of beard-stroking and talk about how medicare-for-all, even with its dental and long-term care benefits that would be fucking revolutionary for most folks is an election killer, because republicans gonna fucking republican and spout BS, without taking into account that we can counterattack, it makes me rage. They don't have to live like this; no one should’ve had the day I’ve had. Absolutely no one. But for it to be happening in the richest country in the world is such a ludicrously dystopian level of horror that if I wronte it in a novel, people would tell me it was unrealistic, that there simply had to be more of a safetynet than this.

And part of the reason, frankly, that this horror persists is the immense cultural shame poor folks are burdened with. It’s considered gauche to discuss financial trials; too traumatic for the people around you hearing about them, and something we’re raised from the cradle to know would make others look at us with pity and a little bit of:why can’t you get your shit together??