jkatkina

I read the two sequels to Annihilation in the last couple of weeks. The books were released in fairly quick succession and it shows; they are one piece of work, and although I would say Annihilation is a perfect thing on its own, the follow-ups feel structurally congruous.

As a whole, these books are a fevered love letter to ecological restoration independent of, and uninterested in, human needs. They are also an exploration of the concept of hyperobjects. They're also a deeply unsettling exploration of transformation. The core of these books are a fractally repeating spiral: forever moving towards a thing that they will never arrive at.

In fact, the parts of the third book that stumble the worst are the ones that offer too direct an answer to certain questions: I would rather the story have stayed a meditation of the unknowable, although in many ways it still did despite these moments.

If you have an interest in meditations on the unknowable, or if you have an abiding horror in where the anthropocene era is headed, I recommend these books to you.

I slept in till 1pm today after staying up till midnight. I've had almost two weeks of bad health, zombie days and shitty sleep, probably due to some cortisol bullshit: I think this was making up that time, but I'm really struggling.

I had shit I wanted to do today -- but more than that, I had a day that wasn't centered around plans with other people. A day to sort of expand and take stock and get stuff done and maybe get myself an hour in a coffee shop just to chill. Of course, by the time I got up, my brother had texted TL and made dinner plans, so like... lovely, I haven't seen the nephews since before Christmas! But I also feel really incredibly off-balance.


You know how you can ignore a problem for ages, but then when you look at it, you see the extent of it, and it becomes overwhelming? I think I'm having one of those.

Boy and howdy, I've been reading this anthology of queer story essays about known donors, and it is giving me feelings. And Baby Makes More.

A lot of them so far have to do with how family and the definitions around family change for the familial groups with a known donor. How the donor becomes part of the family, less than parent, more than a stranger, and has an interest in the child's growing.

There are a lot of queer parents in the book who stress about that connection. For my part, it sounds lovely.

I for many years held out hope that somehow we'd stumble into a fella we both took a shine to, and that the notion of a donor would arrive organically. If I'm honest, asking my brothers was a second fiddle to that lovely abstract -- but the reality is, at this point in my life I don't really have the time or inclination for polyamory, though I like it in theory. (We've also had a couple of rough experiences. Last time we delved, TL got her heart broken and I still have rage for the people who did it. They were our friends before that and even just by that fact, they had a responsibility to be kind. I'll tell that tale sometime.)

Failing that, there is a loveliness to the idea of finding another queer family with some sort of sperm-haver, and asking them to help us grow ours. It's a riskier proposition than brothers, but -- but it has the chance to grow our circle, and I love the notion of growing our circle.

I admit, since brother #2 is out of the runnings, I am feeling a pull to look at other options. When it was both, and we could anonymize, it felt very much to me like that not-knowing was a bequeathing: that it washed the DNA of traces of others, and became mine because I was the one laying claim to it.

Oh, it's a push and pull. I still feel a gut desire to see a child related to both her and I, but. But. Family is complicated, and faced with the chaos of options, I feel the same as when faced with a blank page.

We did it!!

I am and will forever be a slower writer than TL, but damn it, I sustain. And we did it -- we're 75% of the way through book 2, at 100,000 words, probably 25% of which was fluff meant to keep us going when energy was flagging.

I thoroughly recommend writing alongside a loved other, folks. Sneak in with some RP when both of you are going UGGGHHH I DON'T WANNA and it brings the energy back up. Or at least fills in wordcount on a slow day.

I'm pretty proud of having done this alongside full-time work, although holy shit my wallet and adrenals are feeling all the time in coffee shops this month.

I've been going to this coffee shop near work for about a week and a half, a few days a week, to write NaNo stuff after work. The first night I went there, the mocha was fantastic (which was why I'd chosen that place to go in the first place), but also the vibrant older Italian lady behind the counter kept bringing me little treats -- a cookie with my mocha, a very generous sample of their pizza. It may have been a ploy to get a new regular.

It worked.

I even brought TL there last Friday. We had the meat-olives-and-bread board they serve (it has an italian name I'm forgetting rn), and it was huge and delicious, and the lady had once more included a treat -- some cheese along with everything else. I asked her her name, and she told me, and like a dingus I didn't write it down and immediately forgot.

Today I went there to write, and I asked the lady's name again (and she remembered mine). She seemed pleased.

Towards the end of my visit, when I was passing by the counter, she snagged me as she was chattering with another woman and told me "I'd like to introduce you to my wife."

I was so delighted that she'd clocked me and TL, and was giving me this wonderful queer signal, that I got all grins and red-faced and awkward, told them both I was delighted to meet them, and retreated back to my table. They were still sitting together and chatting by the time I left and I said goodbye to them.

I don't know why it makes me so happy to be spotted out in the wild by other queers, but by god, it does.

So today is our Halloween DnD session!!

And I am dressing up as Bright, my high-strung, anxious, suspicious rogue Tiefling. He was once described by our Kenku bard as "that weird little man who screams at everyone and then goes to have a panic attack in the corner". This is accurate.

I have spent the last month or so -- and especially the last week -- accruing, finding or creating bits and pieces of the costume. It's not perfect (I could keep adding details for a million years), but it's getting close, and I am excited for it.

I've wanted to do "drag" for years. (Airquotes because tbh dressing in feminine ways feels just as much "drag" to me as masc.) I generally dress neutral-to-masc anyhow, but... but now I have a binder, and an explicitly male character to play. I probably didn't have to wait until I had a halloween excuse to get the binder, but, I don't know. There isn't really that much I can do about these tits, so in my day-to-day I think a binder would make me feel rather more self-conscious than less.

In any case, today it is fun. I am slowly undergoing my transformation over the course of the day (there's a lot of makeup, or at least what seems to me to be a lot of makeup!). I'm not sure how well the horns will stick, but I have a plan.

So, with reason, I've been feeling pretty good lately.

Weekend was crazy. Three solid days of people, which pushes my limits for sure. Community Day and DnD on Saturday, and Thanksgiving on both Sunday and Monday, with my family and E&R and their kids respectively. I'm shocked I'm not sick — for those counting, that's three toddlers and one baby and all had snotty noses. Good job, immune system.

This is also my last week working on a project that I find technically enjoyable (I love me some rendering-heavy paint, especially of organic scenery, and boy howdy am I RENDERING SOME PLANTS m'boys) but sort of soulless. On next to a big franchise that helped shape my childhood and I'm excited to put my hand in.

More than that, though — well. A few things. The others I'll talk about later, but, oh man.

I think I'm in the right job, finally, after years of stress and confusion about it. At least for the time being, it's proving challenging and rewarding, and after a long, long time of not, I'm rebuilding my sense of self. I keep rising to the challenges at this work. I keep doing better. The hunger in my soul has a direction and though it still flares up from time to time, it's been helping me really sink my teeth into chasing projects and making impressions.

We had folio reviews yesterday, with the art director of the entire company. He'd done some several months ago and was back for the rest of us, to get to know all of us folks up in Vancouver (Titmouse is mainly based out of the US). It was serendipitous, honestly — in those several months I've been on three different shows, with three very very different styles, and honestly, I've killed it at all three. I've worked hard to.

He had noticed. I never expect that. In the ten or so minutes I got to chat with him, I learned that 1. He already knew who I was; 2. He had already taken note of my skill and versatility, and 3. he's got an eye on me for the future. We had a chat about the kind of folio improvements I'd have to put together to nail a position on his A-list, and organized to have coffee next time he's up.

This is big. It was a good conversation and the most validating thing that has happened to me in a very, very long time. It's one thing to know you're good at something, but — I'm so used to just simply not being seen at all, when I'm working in a group environment. It's powerful to be seen.

So we run a DnD game on a somewhat irregular schedule, coming out in the wash to about once every two weeks, with a handful of friends. TL DMs and we host folks at our place, which is ideal because I can satisfy my delight in feeding my friends and when the night is over I can immediately collapse onto the couch in exhaustion, like a fainting lady, without any transit first.

Anyways, I don't know what was in the air tonight but everyone was fucking bonkers.

At one point we were discussing unintentionally hilarious 90s toys, and the DM punished us by naming our allied sailor NPCs after them: RIP Bondage Barbie, and godspeed Cockring Ken with that water elemental we trapped in a barrel for you.

At another point, HMS Pinafore came on the "nautical RPG" spotify playlist came on, and none of us, including the DM, could breathe laughing for about five minutes.

This is the shit I live for. Honestly there's nothing better than just being silly with people. I think this is why drinking is so popular in social gatherings -- that said, our DnD games are sober, so that freedom to be absurd has been much harder won over a long time, and it's so, so satisfying.

I've spent a lot of my life without a robust social group -- I've had friends, but rarely have those friends known each other. I don't know how long this group will last, but god it's a delight to have it now.

why in the dickens does moving take so much doing

like can't it all unbox and organize itself once I get it into the place, UGH

And after a solid week of being sick, I'm back. Apologies to everyone whose comments I just didn't reply to -- I've spent an alarming amount of the past seven days fetal on the couch with a fever, and then making preparations for next Saturday (which I will tell you about afterwards, and is fairly large).

I've been rewarded with epic sunshine for my recovery, at least. It's beginning to feel legitimately like spring here and I cannot get enough.

So I've been listening to a new podcast at work called Treks and the City. It's brilliantly named -- you get almost everything you need to know about it from that name. It's two ladies, Trek fans, who listen to episodes of TNG and shoot the shit about them with each other and a guest. But as they would say it, it's not just Trek, it's Trek and the City -- and just like the other show the name riffs on, they're constantly off talking about their lives, their experiences, TMI stuff and everything, in addition to Star Trek. They're unapologetic. They're often off-topic and brook that as a feature, rather than a bug.

They also look at TNG (and with their Patreon, other Treks) from a feminist and particularly woman-centric point of view, as well as from a point of view of multiculturalism and the connective tissue of marginalized identity between. One host is a straight white comedian, the other is a bi (I think) Venezuelan-American comedian who is, over the course of the early podcast, converting to Judaism. I tend to come at things largely from a queer perspective myself, rarely from a specifically female perspective, and from a not-very-nuanced white perspective -- and hearing their voices on this thing I've loved so long is fascinating.

It's also forced me to wrestle with some internal biases. I have a complicated relationship with gender, particularly with being female -- I don't feel very female, and I think that's led to an antagonism in me to things that other women seem to share so easily. I've had to check myself for judging the way that they speak to one another and the way that they engage with a whole web of topics at a time rather than just carrying on in a linear and logical manner. There are some episodes I've really hated -- one in particular with a guest who didn't watch the episode at all and seeemed to try and cover by being as gross as possible, a couple others that just fell flat. Largely, however, I've grown to really enjoy witnessing the way these two women share with each other and their guests their love of TNG, because it's changed my own understanding of the breadth of people to which this show appeals. Their joy overwhelms and is so clear. Their earnestness is bright and unapologetic without being trite.

There are a billion Star Trek podcasts out there to enjoy, and almost as many devoted specifically to TNG. But Treks and the City provides a perspective that I would consider pretty unique and worthwhile among them.