So, kind of late to the game with this and really shouldn't be spending my diminishing free time writing this up (sister's crazy wedding in India coming up, deadline for first dissertation chapter, panic all around about future job prospects....), but I finally got around to seeing the first Iron Man movie ( Read more... )

Kind of random, but I just wondered if anyone had thoughts on this. Why is it that two of the most vocal animal-human characters, Mr. Cat and Duck, end up as animals but two of the least vocal and most animal ones, piano penguin dude and Ms. Goat, end up as humans when the story ends? It seems like such a strange reversal since we think of complex ( Read more... )

As any reader of the Tortall books knows, the discussion of race, colonialism, and imperialism improves as TP herself grows and improves as a writer. One drawback of published work is that you are stuck with your early mistakes, so the somewhat simplistic world-building of early Tortall ‘verse could not be scrapped as TP’s ideas clearly became more ( Read more... )

So ever since I saw the Star Trek movie, I’ve gone on a Star Trek series binge-watching DS 9 for the first time (a little to dark for my tastes; I’m a TNG girl at heart, although I do like how DS9 has more roles for the ladies beyond nurturing and taking dictation), and the Original Series which I had always assumed would be too cringeworthy but is ( Read more... )

Dear self ( Read more... )

Ok, so I've only been to one anime convention and that was Anime Boston back when I was a sophomore in college and I've never cosplayed (haha, I keep wanting to say "cross-play" as some sort of weird conflation of "cross dress" and "cosplay" XD). There are a number of reasons for this, but mostly because I am Too Lazy ( Read more... )

So, was out of town for the past week or so. Saw Star Trek--it reignited all my nostalgia for the series (I only ever saw NextGen, but surprisingly, all of the original series is on youtube officially and I've been nerdishly watching an ep here and there).

TPH is finally finally almost done. I think 2 more chapters, but I kind of feel a little ( Read more... )

Before grad school, I could count on my hand the number of manga I had read but somehow, the anxieties of grad school have unleashed my inner manga-reader. These are my shameful confessions.

Until recently, I'd only glanced at a few shoujo manga, and for the most part been turned off right away. Even setting most of the absurd premises aside (and ( Read more... )

As someone so invested in the written word, in texts, in textuality, it is hard not to be moved by that.

Last random thought: I was struck by how ambiguous a character Autor is. He's at once pompous, unthinking and clueless (when Fakir tells him that Drosselmeyer visited him, Autor's response is "cool" not "Oh fuck" like it should be...). And yet ( Read more... )