It's Only A Paper Rose

Ups:

So this is happening.

Honestly, it both isn't a big deal and really, really is. Gumbo Fiction Salon is something of a mainstay with the local genre crowd; they regularly feature writers with super long lists of awards and professional credits. Meanwhile, here I'm sitting with my modest AO3 resumé—I've read at their open mic a few times but never won any awards, let alone been paid for my work. But I've gotten to know Tina (the woman who runs the salon) over the past couple of years, and she was having trouble finding a featured reader this month, so when I jokingly said "I could read half an hour of my smutty fanfiction?" she jumped on my offer.  (I comfort myself that she's already familiar with at least a bit of my work, so I'm not exactly a shot in the dark.)

But yeah, writing a professional bio was intimidating—I totally believe in fanfic as a valid art form, but we don't really have awards or bestseller statistics. It's more like coming from the punk underground, we're mostly self-taught and refine our craft entirely through community feedback.  On the upside, several of my fanfic friends have expressed interest in coming...this being the Pandemic Times, it's hard to say who might show up, but maybe we'll take over the salon, haha.

Anyway, thanks to the pandemic, it's all via Zoom, so if any of you want to hear a scene from the novel-length Stranger Things story I've been working on, I'd love to have you! And yes, it is smutty, but I'm honestly pretty proud of it—it's one of the better erotic scenes I've written, and I feel like the dynamic and the atmosphere stand on their own pretty well.

On the subject of the punk underground, I've been disappearing down the fascinating sociological rabbit hole of the Southern California hardcore punk scene in the late 70s and early 80s. (Ironically, this started as research for Billy Hargrove's background, only I discovered last night that I was researching entirely the wrong subculture—metalheads were the ones with the long hair who listened to professionally produced bands, both of which were outright shunned by the punk scene.  Ah well, it'll be useful for some other project, I'm sure.)  I've been fascinated by Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk, which is basically a collection of short memoirs by various people who lived through the scene. Similar to The Dirt: The Unauthorized Biography of Mötley Crüe, the constantly shifting perspective gives a surprisingly in-depth look into the context and community, as well as shining a light on the Rashomon-esque differences in perceptions and experiences; it's also an approach particularly well suited to the DIY ethos of the movement. (The audiobook is particularly awesome, as each piece is read by the contributor and—perhaps unsurprisingly—they've all so far been strong performers who really bring their pieces to life. Plus they interweave clips of the music here and there, which is a nice touch.)

I'm only a couple hours in, but so far I think my favorite moment has been from Jane Wiedlin—"By 1978 nearly everyone was in a band except for a few lone girls. That was how The Go Go's formed...Eventually it became painfully obvious that you needed no prior knowledge to form a punk band and that we were the only kids left who hadn't done so...hey, why not? We were perfectly capable of being just as incompetent as everyone else!" It honestly puts me more than a little in mind of the fanfiction scene—there's something about that combination of a low bar to entry, an enthusiastic community audience, and a wide range of 'acceptable' skill levels that creates something like an Oort Cloud of artistic achievement. I feel like there's something to be said here about the inherent creativity of the human spirit vs. the capitalist assumption that people will only create in exchange for money, but I also suspect it's more complicated than that—for all that the chaos is exciting, humans tend to crave structure, and the introduction of money into a system inevitably creates a hierarchy. Even in systems like fandom that by their nature can't involve money, the initial chaos and excitement of a new fandom or new shop eventually stratifies into the big-name authors and the lesser-knowns, which (if tumblr discourse is anything to go by) often results in no small amount of bitterness from people, especially those who've been there since early on but been pushed to the edges...

Man, humans are complicated.  But endlessly fascinating!


Downs:

Condo board stuff has been especially stressful lately. The latest emergency involves two words that strike fear into the heart of any property manager: Water Intrusion, courtesy of the hundred-year-old roof masonry. We're doing our best to get it addressed ASAP, but there's a whole roof parapet that needs to be rebuilt, tuckpointed and caulked, and thanks to the pandemic, our usual masonry company is backed up by several months. I did get one company out here for a quote—and the amount was equal to literally our entire reserve right now. I've got a line on another company to come give a second opinion after the holiday weekend, but we're almost certainly going to need a special assessment, which means calling an emergency owners' meeting, and possibly applying for a bridge loan...and meantime I'm eyeing the roof doubtfully every time it rains. Still, at least the assessment should be an easy sell, if not particularly fun. Water intrusion is one of those universal Building Emergencies that even non-handy people know is A Big Problem.

And perhaps most heartbreakingly: when Dexter's latest kidney panel came back a couple weeks ago, the doctor warned us that his numbers were well into end-stage levels; this past weekend, he seems to have hit the point where he's losing continence. He's still pretty with it and doesn't seem to be in distress, but he's spending more and more time napping; long story short, I think we may be calling the vet this week. It's never an easy decision, but I'd much rather he make the transition before he reaches the point of serious pain/distress. We've had a good extra year with him thanks to fluid therapy; I'm extremely grateful, both for the additional snuggles and the time to process my own feelings about this. I'm sad, but I'm not angry. Seventeen to eighteen years is a good run for a kitty.

Still, I'm going to miss the heck out of this cat.

What is it that makes minor back injuries the reverse of minor head injuries? With the latter, they hurt like the dickens in the moment but then (presuming they're not serious) fade into the background. Minor back injuries, however, might not feel like a big deal at the time, but boy do they make their presence known as you go about your day.

And my leg had finally recovered from wrenching my knee a month ago. Grumble.

Anyway, let's get on with things:

What I've just finished reading

The Honor of the Queen, by David Weber. (Okay, so I technically have an hour left on the audiobook but I'm going to finish it today and I doubt anything's coming that'll drastically alter my opinions.) During one of the apparently-endless hashing-outs of potential battle strategies and planned tactical maneuvers, my mind wandered a bit, wondering why it was that I couldn't bring myself to care about any of it. It was during the prolonged battle sequence that I figured it out: the loving descriptions of drive technologies and weapons capabilities and tactical maneuvers were all coming at the expense of any real characterization, which meant that the rapid-fire point-of-view changes between characters was getting confusing - not having learned anything unique or memorable about any of these people, I couldn't remember who half the names were. I know some people love this kind of strategic minutiae for its own sake, and more power to them, but my interest in strategy is directly tied to my interest in the people involved, and I just can't bring myself to care about this course-change or that missile salvo when I don't have the first idea who the people are plotting the courses or firing the missiles.

In fairness, and to my relief, the gender politics haven't grown substantially worse over this installment...but at the same time, I can't say they've really gotten that much better; this series has a serious case of "story about a woman written by a man". (I have never once met a woman who would describe "crossing her arms" as "folding her arms under her breasts". For serious.) And what with the pacing and characterization issues, I'm frankly just not that interested in continuing.

What I'm currently reading

The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo, by Tom Reiss. As my post about historical perspective might have indicated, I'm very much enjoying reading this right after Alexander Hamilton; it's kind of fascinating to see what was going on in France at the same time, and thanks to having the lyrics to the musical memorized ("Seventeen...sev-sev-seventeen-eighty-nine...") I actually have some dates in my head to draw rough correspondences. Interestingly, the older Alexandre Dumas also grew up in the French Indies (in what is now Haiti, to Hamilton's Nevis - truly a forgotten spot in the Carribean), so the fact that The Black Count goes into some additional detail about the sugar industry of the time lends itself to further understanding of Hamilton's childhood as well.

Reiss' primary difference from Chernow, so far, is that he's far less focused on his title character; rather than closely examining primary sources to tease out the quirks of his personality, the text has so far been content to draw him in broad strokes while filling in a good chunk of French history. Given that it's written for a popular American audience, whose perceptions of the Revolution are probably shaped entirely by, say, a TV adaptation of The Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews and Jane Seymour and Ian McKellen! *swoon*), I'm totally okay with this, but it might feel a little basic to someone already well-read about the period. I do hope we get to spend a little more time with the titular Black Count himself - I'm about a quarter of the way through, and so far we know that he was extremely strong, intelligent, dashing, and ambitious...and not much more than that. Some of this might simply be a lack of primary sources, however; it's rather easier to gain insight into a historical figure's personality when they had the twin advantages of a tremendous output of writing and people actively dedicated to preserving their work after their death, neither of which (I suspect) Dumas Senior had.

What I plan to read next

My goal for this week is to pick up and hopefully finish All About Love. Fingers crossed!

A bit of coverage about the Great Alaska Earthquake - mostly photo slideshows - has been popping up here and there, as it took place a half-century ago this year. It's really mostly of interest to people of a science-y bent, as it remains the largest earthquake (magnitude 9.2) ever recorded in the United States. Obviously I have something of a more personal interest, as I grew up in Anchorage, albeit a very different Anchorage than the frontier town pictured. It's been interesting, looking at the pictures and seeing what parts I do and don't recognize.

I don't believe any of my family members were there; if I recall correctly, my family history in Alaska stretches back to the mid-seventies, when my paternal grandmother moved up there with my (then pre-teenaged) father and uncle. (The records of the Baha'i News archive bear this out, as I find a bunch of mentions of my grandmother's name near "Alaska" from 1976 onward, but none beforehand; if I recall correctly, she converted to the Baha'i faith either just before or shortly after her move. I intend to ask her about this, though.) I vaguely remember her mentioning the quake when I was young, albeit in general terms. My father liked to take my brother and me out to Government Hill (pictured post-quake in the second photo of that slideshow; fortunately it was a holiday and the school was empty) and watch the railroad station and the inlet beyond. I remember him telling me it was one of the big damage centers in the earthquake, and that there was an elementary school there; now it's just a steeply-sloped grassy knoll that we liked to roll down at the time.

I also remember devoting a good chunk of time to earthquake drills and training when I was in school. At the time, I didn't really think much of it; we regularly had minor earthquakes, so it made sense that we'd want to be prepared in case a bigger one hit. (The largest one I experienced was the 2002 Denali Earthquake; it was a 7.9, but the epicenter was some ways away from where I was attending school in Fairbanks, so mostly it was just a good jolt.) In retrospect, however, it strikes me that the time/intensity of the training was probably a little bit out of proportion to the actual likelihood of another big quake actually happening. Memory is often a far greater spur to action than logic, and at the time, most of the adults around me remembered the quake. Given what an emotional event that was, it makes sense that they'd want to make sure their kids knew what to do if it happened again. Especially since this was before the Internet, and knowledge of how subduction zones work (and, thus, the relative unlikelihood of it happening again anytime in the next couple hundred years) was not widespread. Actually, that was probably the scariest part of living through it - I can only imagine how long people were looking distrustfully at the ground beneath their feet, the one thing that was supposed to always be there. Even just watching the little footage we have of it is intense. You want to yell at the cinematographer to stop shaking the camera until you realize that that's not him, that's the ground moving.

Still, the ending was mostly happy. A relatively few people were killed, thanks to the low population density. The rebuilding didn't take long at all - thanks to federal disaster relief funds, the city was almost back to normal within a year. And the USGS was able to make significant strides in studying plate tectonics and fault lines. (They recently produced a fascinating video explaining precisely how revolutionary their efforts were, and how it contributed to understanding megathrust earthquakes; it also has some of the scraps of footage of the actual event.) My favorite anecdote is the one about the businessman who hung a sign outside his (ruined) shop: "I knew making a living in Alaska would be hard but I never thought I'd go this far in the hole!"