Author: deejgray

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Wheel of Time (Series)

Books That Made Me Part Whateverith: Wheel of Time (series) by Robert Jordan (feat. Brandon Sanderson for the finale)

When I was younger and living overseas, one of the greatest gifts that I could or would ever get were the huge Media Mail bags of books from my former librarian grandmother. We didn’t always have the best of relationships, but she never failed to support me in what I wanted to do and she would always send me books. Books of all stripes and sizes and genres that she would get at library sales and used book fairs. It was not unusual to get several books in a series, all out of order. So I’d get book 1 and then book 5 and book 7 and then have to piece the rest of the series together by myself. However there was one M Bag that carried a prize beyond measure – sometime between late 1999 and early 2000 – we got an M Bag that held all eight of the Wheel of Time books in it.

A complete series (so far – as the 9th book had not yet been published) was a rare thing to find in these bags and I immediately set upon them like a starving feral child who hadn’t seen decent food in a while (according to my sibling at the time). It caused a bit of conflict with my mother who worried about me potentially reading things that I wasn’t old enough to understand until I pointed out that if I had questions, I had a track record of asking them to explain stuff. I was 14 almost 15 and exceedingly resolved that nothing was going to get in my way of reading these books. The covers were glorious and catnip to my brain and I cannot stress enough how amazing it was that they were all there so I did not have wait or wonder what happened next or how exactly we got from point C to Point X. It was all there for me and it was a glorious feast.

I sped through these books faster than I think anyone would believe possible (unless you’ve seen me read and I was faster then than I am now) and I was completely subsuming myself in the Wheel of Time world and the characters and everything about them. I got to the end of Book 8 and screamed out loud because that was a nasty cliffhanger and where was the next book? Was there even a next book? Surely, we’re not going to be left hanging forever right?!!? Understandably everyone else in the household was not amused by my outburst but I maintain the scream was warranted. Might have helped that it wasn’t almost bedtime when it happened.

I remembered the Internet was a thing and started diving into the Wheel of Time fan sites and the forums and reading through all the different fan theories and speculations and the excitement over the ninth book coming out and I was a joyful fanthing. Waiting for books 9 and 10 was horrific especially since I had yet to be able to convince anyone back home to send me book 9 – I had to wait until I was back in the states briefly myself in order to pick 9 and 10 up. I was exceedingly fortunate that our departure date was the day after the release date for book 10 and that I had very understanding grandparents who did not mind the emergency trip to the nearest bookstore. It helped that they knew that if they didn’t take me, I was totally going to find the nearest bus route or hitchhike to the nearest bookstore that carried new releases. I was 16, looked about 10ish, and would not be stopped from this quest.

My second email address was failebashere@***** and I legitimately could not get enough of Perrin and Faile and Egwene and Gawyn and then Mat who stole my whole heart and then some. I loved watching Lan and Nynaeve and them being the definition of “its complicated.” I still (forever) want all the backstory and the additional tales of the time of legend even more so than what we did get. I could happily lose myself in this world for ages upon ages and never ever get bored. If I was stuck on a desert island with only one book series for the rest of my life, it’d be this one. No contest.

One of my college friends and I became friends because she was reading The Great Hunt and I legit just sat down across from her in the cafeteria, held out my hand, and said something along the lines of “Hi I’m [x] and I have never seen anyone else actually reading these in real life, I think we should be friends.” We are still friends to this day.

Another college friend allowed me to commission her to make me an Aes Sedai shawl. It’s handknit -the pattern assembled from 3-4 separate patterns and combined to make one of the most priceless fandom costume pieces I own. She didn’t charge me nearly enough for it, either.

I have found amazing people through this series and it never ever gets old. The squee we all share is intensely and deeply infectious and joyful. It’s one of the happiest fandom communities I get to share in.

I never ever thought I would see an adaptation of Wheel of Time – especially not a live action one. I have been cautiously hopeful during the initial announcements and then we got casting news and I got more excited. We got a teaser and my faith and confidence grew.

We got a trailer and I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing for a good minute there as I just got overwhelmed with FEELING. My roommate watched me blink back tears as I watched the trailer another three times, just to make sure I was actually seeing this in real life and not an extremely detailed dream/hallucination.

We’ve got a show. The first episode premieres tomorrow. We’re getting an adaptation that as far as we can tell looks like its going to be AMAZING. It looks like the showrunners not only understand the source material but they’re respecting it. The cast looks lovely and the settings were breathtaking from what we got in the trailer.

Just like there were no words for what it meant to me to have been seen and represented in Every Heart A Doorway, there really aren’t the words to encapsulate what it means to see this world in live action, to be able to watch this story that I love from the beginning. To know that the show is going to bring in new fans to come and share in the joyful squee. It’s exhilarating. I can barely wait.

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What If? (series)

The What If? Marvel series on Disney + has been something that has captured the imaginations of thousands of people. It’s not hard to see why, the art is astounding. The artists and animators should get all the awards for their work on it. Ordinarily, this is sort of thing that would be right up my alley. I love alternate universes and remixes – it’s part of why fanfic will never lose its hold on me. I like the thought experiments and the results from extrapolating out the what if questions.

I wanted to love this series more than I did. I really did. Some of the episodes made me chuckle, some of them made frown, and some of them I really wondered what the actual hell the writers were trying to convey initially because I was pretty sure that it wasn’t what was shown in the final project. The voice actors were brilliant – their performances were stellar.

There was only one episode however that really got me engaged – everything else was just pleasant filler – entertaining to have on in the background while doing something else. The stories relied too much on our previous connections to the characters featured and our willingness to still accept the characterizations that came out of the MCU.

Maybe Season Two will be better, maybe it won’t. This series for me is going into the great ideas but not great execution pile that a lot of MCU projects seem to be hitting. I remember the MCU stories used to be good – I wish they’d go back to that.

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Black Widow (film)

Black Widow was a movie. Choices were made. Not entirely sure I liked all of them, but still, at least we finally got the movie that’s been promised forever. We finally stopped getting jerked around by the studio. We got something we’d been asking for pretty much since her intro in Iron Man 2.

The film itself was okay. There was more than one point that the movie startled a laugh out of me. I really loved the vibe of it and getting to see more about Natasha here in the MCU. I loved seeing Alexei and Malina and Yalena and all their interactions. The science-y bits were kind of cool, if absolutely terrifying in both scope and practice. Ray Winstone, the bad guy was a snooze-fest and I’m still kind of pissed about what we learned about Budapest. Rick Mason was amazing and I love the actor they cast for it and I hope we get more of him. I was also amused by Valentina’s cameo.

Here’s where I got angry. This movie was treated, in large part, as an afterthought. It should have had a bigger emotional impact and it didn’t. Like it made me laugh a little, but other than that, it fell flat. . The major reason it fell flat was because I already knew what was going to happen to Natasha ultimately and just having that knowledge, robbed this movie of a lot of its strength and emotional impact. We should have gotten this movie before Infinity War at best and definitely before Endgame. It would have had a much bigger impact on the fans. Because they didn’t, we got cheated out of what would have been a much superior experience. We got cheated out of any kind of sequels with Natasha in them.

That makes me angry. I was already furious about Natasha’s end in Endgame and seeing this movie just made that anger worse. I didn’t think it was possible for me to get more livid at Endgame. Then I watched Black Widow and discovered there were still depths to descend in the anger escalator of Endgame feels.

So yeah, it was A Movie. Choices were made. I just wish that those choices hadn’t been at the expense of the legions of Natasha fans or the character herself.

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Fandom Firsts

Fandom Firsts/First Introductions have been on my mind a lot this summer. It’s been the kind of summer where work-life balance is a joke when it comes to my day job. All I’ve done besides work is ponder stuff and occasionally watch something on television. Mostly rewatching comfort stuff because that’s all I’ve had the spoons for. I was rewatching Babylon 5 season one with my dad and it hit me when we got to the first Bester episode that this show was my first introduction to Walter Koenig as an actor. My parents knew him first as Chekov from Star Trek, but I wasn’t introduced to the Star Trek movies and original series until several years after I’d found B5. Seeing him as Chekov was a hell of a headtrip that first time, I kept expecting him to be working some kind of angle or having a shady plan (Dad was particularly amused by this).

Same thing happened much later on as my nerd household started watching Falling Skies and it took me a couple of episodes to place where I’d seen Colin Cunningham who played John Pope before ( I keep forgetting IMDB is a thing ya’ll. I remember a time before it) and that was an even bigger headtrip. Cunningham played Major Paul Davis on Stargate SG-1 who is a character that was a direct opposite to Pope in just about every possible way. It’s still kind of a headtrip when I watch episodes of either series. Cunningham’s range is great.

Or how, since I was a Disney Afternoon kid, getting introduced to the “Indiana Jones” kind of character via Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers years and years before I ever actually saw Raiders of the Lost Ark. Same with the “Magnum P.I” character type. Granted 90’s Cartoons were a million times smarter than they had to be (and a lot of them still hold up which will never not be hilarious and amazing) and a lot of them were packed full of references and visuals that would not necessarily make sense to the target demographic but would be fun easter eggs or references to their parents. I mean The Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series had several episodes that were spoofs or parodies of popular movies (including but not limited to Die Hard and Pulp Fiction). In a cartoon. On the *Disney* Channel.

These are all just a handful of examples – this post could go on forever if I tried to list them all out. Tell me about some of your Fandom Firsts/First Impressions in the comments!

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In The Heights (film)

I finally got to see the In The Heights movie. Never gotten a chance to see it live on Broadway and it hasn’t been here on a traveling tour that I know of, so this was the first time I really had gotten to experience the story (I am aware of the criticisms that had come up around the film version and I agree with them, but this wasn’t an opportunity I could pass up. I am glad I didn’t.

It was going to be good, no doubts on that front. I knew that it was going to be moving and emotional because that’s what Lin and Quiara and Alex and everyone else associated with the film or show is really really good at doing. I knew all these little bits of trivia about it because of my falling headlong down the Hamilton rabbit hole a couple of years ago.

All of this I knew and expected it.

I did not expect that it would make me homesick to the point of tears. The kind of saudade that bowls you over like a tsunami wave and leaves you with an aching head, buckled knees, and the inability to breathe for all of the sheer feeling that is going through you.

There are days where I miss Brasil so much I can barely function. I miss the communidade and the familia and the food. I miss the way everything is so vibrant and colorful and like Usnavi says, the streets are made of music.

If you have a chance before July 11th, maybe give the film a shot. It is a very enjoyable film.

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Hope Wins.

It’s been a couple of hours since we got the official call and I am still shaking with the force of sheer relief and emotion running through me- that we won. We pulled it out and Love WON ya’ll, Hope WON. It may not have been the exact blowout that some were hoping for, but we got it done. Our BIPOC carried us over the line in Arizona and Georgia and in Philadelphia. Sex workers carried us over the line in Nevada. We don’t have to suffer that man in the government anymore, polluting everything he touches.

Biden and Harris are our next President and Vice President.

The work is by no means done. We still need to push the same way we have been for the changes we want to see in the world. A little under half the country still voted for him. We still have 2 months before the changeover. They’ve already shown up with their guns and their threats and their itchy trigger fingers. White brothers and sisters need to be standing in front of our BIPOC people. Do no harm but take no shit. Do not concede an inch. Make a plan for a safe place to go if things go pear-shaped, buy some extra groceries just in case.

Today, take a deep breath. Then we get back to it. President Biden and Madam Vice President Harris have a long and hard job ahead of them. We have to rebuild the Executive Branch. We have to focus on the GA runoffs so that we can take back the Senate and Congress will be Dem Majority again. We need to get this pandemic under control.

Take courage, friends. We won battles all over, but the struggle is not over yet. Take heart, love won. Hope carried the day.

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Articles of the Federation for Dewey’s Readathon

Articles of the Federation is written by Keith R.A. DeCandido and it is the 15th thing I have read for the readathon. It is also extremely my jam. It was marketed as “The West Wing but in Trek” and that is an very apt description. Also, full disclosure, Keith’s a dear friend and I love all his incredibly varied work. This book is no exception to that.

I was incubated a Trekkie, my parents are mad Trekkies, and I grew up with Trek in a way that I didn’t with Star Wars. It’s always been there in the background of all my fandoms. This book gave us a glance at the inner workings of the Federation government which is not something we get to see a lot of in the series. It’s fantastic.

The characterizations are brilliant and very memorable, the writing excellent, and you walk out of this novel having had a very vivid picture painted for you in exquisite detail. If you loved the West Wing, if you love Trek, you will not be disappointed with this book.

My only regret is that there are not seven more seasons of this show/book. I would cheerfully throw all the money at it.

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Die #1-14 for Dewey’s Readathon

It’s Dewey’s time again! I love this so much and it’s the 3rd or 4th year that I am participating in it. Got a later start but hey, it doesn’t matter as much because yay reading.!!! I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. Currently I am on the lunch break so I figured it was as good a time as any to update y’all on my progress.

So far for the readathon: Die issues 1 through 14. I love this comic. I love this comic more than I can properly express in words or emojis. Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans and their whole team are just freaking brilliant and what they do and this comic is a masterclass all its own on craft, games, storytelling, and the consequences of our own choices. There are layers to it that doesn’t reveal themselves truly until you reread it.

If I have a favorite type of literature, it’s things like this. If you enjoy twisty things, D&D, or really self-aware literature that likes to turn tropes and cliches on their end, do yourself a favor and pick this up. The first 2 trades are out and the third should be following in the next little while.

It’s so breathtakingly unflinchingly good.

There’s even a beta version of an RPG that Gillen wrote while creating this. It’s magical.

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New Liver, Same Eagles: Newman Strikes Again

Reader, I regret to inform you that the Neurotypicals are at it again. Or rather one specific neurotypical is. There is a recent book review in the NY Times that isn’t worth the ink or paper or pixels it’s printed on. It’s written by Judith Newman and it’s a terrifying mass of horrific delusion and absolutely no fact-checking. If that name sounds familiar, this is the same person that wrote To Siri With Love, a book so actively harmful there was a whole movement to #BoycottToSiri because of the levels of sheer hate speech about neurodivergent people in it. The book where she divulged medical histories and personal information about her son without ever asking if that was okay with HIM. The one where she wants medical power of attorney over that same son when he hits 18 so she can get him sterilized.

Yeah, that person.

The review she wrote for We Walk is even more delusional that the letter that Steve Rogers wrote to Tony Stark at the end of Captain America: Civil War. It name-drops Allen Buchanan, a “bioethicist”/eugenicist which is not surprising given the author, but still left me staring in almost incoherent fury at my screen. The book itself has its own issues, falling into the same traps that To Siri did. Newman also seems to come to the conclusion that inspiration porn is good, actually. Which was right around the time my blood pressure started spiking again. Twitter link below goes into some of the details as to why this was a bad take par excellence.

Twitter Link Discussing The Review

As for my personal opinion, I tend towards the side of no representation for us without us. As an autistic adult, I sincerely wish parents of autistic children would stop writing about us without any seeming care for how their words affect us.

Words matter. Attitudes matter. Theirs are actively harmful to people like me.

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