stuff and nonsense

[kindkit]

Today I gave myself an apocalypse buzzcut. It was . . . sort of accidental? In that I didn't mean to cut the front of my hair quite that close, but by the time I realized, it was too late to do anything but buzz it even shorter.

It reveals rather mercilessly how much my hair is graying, and how much it's thinning as well. (Thanks, testosterone! Though I suppose a balding trans guy is a lot less likely to get called "ma'am," so, well, thanks, testosterone.) I like how the texture feels, though--suede!

While I was clipping away I took a bunch of pictures of the back of my head, so that I could see what the hell was going on back there. And one of them turned out, by chance, kind of cool.






I am not, by the way, nearly as bald as that picture makes me look. The lighting was less than ideal.

Anyway, I had planned to take the polish off of my nails today, because I have a doctor's appointment on Thursday about my HRT. But fuck it, I might as well keep it. Though I will have to remove it anyway, and re-do, because it's badly chipped.

In other news, I've somewhat regained my ability to read books, so I'm slowly working my way through An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon. It's tough going--the story is engaging, but the content is painful. The main character, Aster, is a biomedical genius on board a generation ship. She's also an enslaved person, subjected to exhausting forced labor, terrible living conditions, and brutality (including sexual assault) from the guards. I'm only about halfway through, so there's a lot I still don't know, including how the ship got this way (or whether it was always this way). I have a feeling that both the backstory and the plot resolution are going to hurt.

When An Unkindness of Ghosts gets to be too much, which is often, I'm re-reading Jane Austen. Mansfield Park at the moment, which is my least favorite Austen, but I keep thinking I should give it more of a chance. But . . . eh. It's not just that it feels prematurely Victorian, but that the whole book focuses on morality about the wrong things. Oh no, look at all this sexual immorality that our pure heroine is untempted by! Look at the (*gasp*) amateur theatricals! Meanwhile, everyone's entire fucking life is built on the income from a Caribbean plantation, or in other words on the income from the forced labor of enslaved people. (Come to think of it, this particular book may not be such a contrast with An Unkindness of Ghosts after all.)

Apart from reading I'm still heavily into everything Rusty Quill. I'm enjoying the leisurely unfolding of the flight to Svalbard on Rusty Quill Gaming, and I've watched at least part of a whole bunch of Twitch streams.

I'd still like to play Ensemble if anyone's interested, though my brief glance at the rules suggests that the mechanics are weirdly un-remote-friendly. (I know they started designing it long ago, but I'd have though they could suggest how to modify it for remote play, at least.)

Comments

[vilakins]

Coolness! But no blue or purple, or did it get shaved off? I had the back of my head shaved a few years ago and loved running my hands over the seductive suediness.

Mansfield Park is my least favourite Austen too. Fanny irritated the hell out of me; basically exactly what you said. I doubt she expresses Austen's views with all the balls in her books, but if there was a point to her, I missed it.

[kindkit]

The purple, which was supposed to last 4-6 weeks, lasted for 2 washes. I might try it again when my hair has grown out a bit. I guess I should dye my hair while I still have enough hair left to bother with!

There's not much wit or joy in either Fanny or Mansfield Park. I think I read somewhere once that Jane Austen was going through an Evangelical Christian phase when she wrote it.

[sovay]

I think I read somewhere once that Jane Austen was going through an Evangelical Christian phase when she wrote it.

I will nonetheless always be fond of it because a friend of mine in college wrote a parody chapter entitled "Mansfield Jurassic Park" in which the Crawfords are eaten by a pair of velociraptors who assume their identities and except for the fact that the new Crawfords go on eating other characters, this makes no difference whatsoever to the plot.

[kindkit]

That is genius. And really, the Crawfords kind of already are velociraptors roaming loose among the sheep.

[vilakins]

What a pity the colour didn't last! I was thinking of trying some chalk streaks in my hair; I don't mind if they wash out while I'm experimenting.

Oh, really? I never heard that; it would certainly explain it. I have no idea why those people think fun and humour are so wrong, yet intolerance and bigotry are just fine. I'm glad that phase didn't last.

[tree_and_leaf]

Austen seems to have taken her faith seriously throughout her life (though there is not much evidence she was ever of the Evangelical party), and it didn't stop her being exceptionally sarcastic.

[oursin]

I've seen an essay - possibly more than one - that addresses Austen's engagement with anti-slavery themes in Mansfield Park through the use of names and allusions that would have been resonant to contemporary readers (e.g. the Mansfield judgement of 1772, Norris, a slave-trader who wrote an account of the Guinea Coast, and I think Fanny reads Cowper) but don't have the same subtext for modern readers.

[kindkit]

I've seen mention of that in the annotations of my edition of Mansfield Park. It seems like a reach, to me--coded messages just don't seem very Austen-like.

I wish I still had my copy of Orientalism so I could re-read what Said had to say. Though I'm sure modern scholars have taken the analysis much further.

[oursin]

It's such ages since I last read Mansfield Park - I'm pretty sure the edition didn't even mention this aspect.

[tree_and_leaf]

The point of Fanny is that she is dependent, exploited, and trying to maintain her integrity despite having been brought up to be meek and cowed.

[kindkit]

I'm finding that it helps my sympathy for Fanny if I think of her as profoundly traumatized, which is a very reasonable interpretation. But it does leave open the question of how, then, she manages to show such a degree of moral rigidity independence.