the prodigal returns

[kindkit]

After another long silence for no good reason--mostly the feeling that nothing in my life is important enough to post about--I at last have Significant News.

To wit, I have COVID. For the first time, as far as I know.

So far it's been very mild, just tiredness, an annoying dry cough, mild intermittent sore throat, mild temperature elevation that technically doesn't quality as a fever (although it should, because my normal temperature is only about 97.5 F and I've been running about 2 degrees higher), and some tightness in the chest. I'm keeping an eye on it, of course. I have a pulse oximeter that I bought back in 2020/2021; I'll dig that out and check occasionally.

Interestingly, my symptoms started on Wednesday morning, but I got negative COVID tests on Wednesday and Thursday, and my first positive test was today. It was very, very positive though: a big bold line appeared within about 8 minutes of applying the sample.

So I'm off work until next Thursday, probably; if I continue to feel decent-ish it might be almost enjoyable.

I am, however, pissed off that after over 4 years of avoiding crowds and masking (almost) all the time indoors in public, a moment of truly pathetic weakness led to COVID.

I can't be sure, of course, but my best guess is this: Tuesday of last week, after a doctor's appointment, I wanted to go to Starbucks. I don't regularly go to Starbucks, but I had the craving. And it was a hot day, and this Starbucks had no outdoor seating that was in the shade. So I sat inside, and didn't put my mask back on between drinks because I felt silly. I was there for maybe 45 minutes tops, and wasn't sitting close to anyone. But that seems to have been enough to get whammied.

Apparently there's a new variant again and a new surge? I am an object lesson in why we should keep masking, or mask up again.


So, I'll have some time on my hands for the next week. Can anyone recommend me things? I'm more likely to get to books and podcasts than anything visual, but all recs are welcome. Preferably fairly lighthearted, preferably queer.


Here are some things I've been enjoying lately:

1) The novels of A. J. Demas. These are mostly male/male romance, set in a world based on ancient Greece, Rome, and Persia. They're fun, and there's plot beyond the romance. Some of them are a bit Tumblr-y for my taste, and unfortunately the last novel, The House of the Red Balconies, which was on track to be my favorite, ends very suddenly about 100 pages too soon. However I can recommend Honey and Pepper, and One Night in Boukos (which has two romances, one m/m and one m/f).

The author's notes link you to her other novels, written under the name (possibly her wallet name?) Alice Degan. I read one of them, From all False Doctrine. It was well-written and I enjoyed it in many ways, but it was very, very, very, very Christian. I think the Degan novels were written before the Demas books, and you can definitely see traces of a Christian worldview (specifically Christian sexual ethics) in the early Demas books. There's a lot less of it in the most recent ones.


2) The Old Bridge Inn series, by Annick Trent. Historical queer romance set in 1790s England. There are 4 books: 2 m/m novels, 1 f/f novel, and 1 f/f novella (more a short story imo). They can be read in any order, so I'd recommend trying the best two, The Oak and the Ash (m/m) and Sixpenny Octavo (f/f). These books are deeply, impressively embedded in history, and the central characters are all workers and artisans rather than rich people. The connecting thread is a "reading club" run out of the titular Old Bridge Inn, which meets for reading aloud and to which people can subscribe for a small fee and borrow books. But in the anti-revolutionary panic of 1790s England, the club is only dubiously legal even when it stays out of politics. And not everyone in it is staying out of politics.


3) Various by T. Kingfisher. I thought all of her Kingfisher books were adult books, and that the children's stuff was all published as Ursula Vernon. Turns out that's not true, but I enjoyed both of the kids' books I accidentally bought (Illuminations and Minor Mage). And I really liked Thorn Hedge, which is an adult book (a retelling of Sleeping Beauty) although sadly quite short.


4) World Gone Wrong, by Audacious Machine Creative. This is an audio drama in the form of a chat podcast that discusses the various happenings of what seems to be the ongoing end of the world. More light-hearted than it sounds, with hints that the characters are as deeply traumatized as you'd expect but are trying not to think about it. This is of course riffing off of the Covid pandemic in various ways, so a lot of the jokes are in the "it's funny because it's painfully true" category. But there's also pure silliness: the first episode tackles the question of what to do if your Pekingese dog becomes a werewolf. I've only listened to the first couple of episodes but I like it a lot so far.


5) G.O.B.L.I.N.S, a very new scripted audio drama by most of the people who made Stellar Firma at Rusty Quill. (This is not associated with Rusty Quill, just to be clear.) Features Tim Meredith, Ben Meredith, Imogen Harris, Jenny Haufek, and Amy Dickinson.

The premise is that a woman who works in planning for local government accidentally stumbles through the Veil and into a world of goblins, elves, fairies, the fae, and other such beings. Specifically, she finds herself in their equivalent of a local government planning office. Since she's stuck there until the next time the Veil thins, they offer her a job.

The show is crowdfunding right now, so there's only the pilot episode. But the pilot is very good indeed: funny, engaging, with a whole lot of worldbuilding and characterization threaded, apparently effortlessly, throughout. The pilot only seems to be available on acast, although the show itself will eventually be obtainable from all the usual suspects. You can listen here.

And if you like it, and can spare some money towards helping its staff get paid, the crowdfunder is here.


6) Speaking of Rusty Quill, I keep bouncing off of The Magnus Protocol. Not for any fault of writing or acting, but because the sound design makes portions of it incomprehensible to me. Any scenes set in the staff breakroom or outdoors have background noise, echoes, lower dialogue volume, etc. etc. and while I can see that it's realistic and atmospheric, it's hard for me to understand even listening in my relatively quiet apartment. In my more usual podcast-listening environment (walking through town, or on the bus) I can barely catch one word in four. And I guess transcripts exist but I don't want to have to look at transcripts; I want the sound design to be listener-friendly.

And, well, nothing so far (I've listened to eight episodes) has made me think the show's doing anything genuinely new with the Magnus Archives world. (If I'm wrong, let me know, okay? No need for spoilers, just tell me if you think I should keep trying with it.)

Comments

[starlady]

I've had the same mixing issue with Protocol. My brother and I tried to listen to it in the car and the breakroom sections were incomprehensible. I personally find that if I turn it up loud on my portable speaker while I'm washing dishes at midnight, and have the speaker right near me, I can hear it. But I do go back and read the transcripts every so often.

I do think it's doing things that are different. I would recommend at least sticking it out through the one with Isaac Newton and seeing how you feel -- it's clear that this world operates differently, metaphysically, than TMA's does, and that they're going somewhere different. The Fears certainly don't operate the same way, if they even exist here. I also enjoy two specific overarching elements/themes which I won't spoil unless requested, but they are also being handled differently than TMA.

ETA: I forgot to say, I hope your covid case continues to be mild and resolves quickly!

[kindkit]

I really wonder why TMP is choosing to do the sound that way. No doubt some of it is because the sound folks are working with first-class headphones in quiet rooms, and are already familiar with the dialogue, so they're not noticing how incomprehensible they're making it. But are they not getting feedback from listeners, or are they ignoring it?

Anyway, I'll give it a while longer, as you recommend. I am enjoying it in a lot of ways, although I'm not particularly attached to any of the recurring characters yet.

And thanks for the good wishes re: covid. I'm as vaccinated as I could possibly be, so hopefully that will help.

ETA: I just listened to Protocol episode 9 and then read the transcript, and, wow. I knew some of the sound stuff had narrative implications (specifically, sounds being muffled because they're farther away from whatever's recording them), but I had no clue how much narrative work they're trying to do via sound alone. There was a lot I missed in that episode. Some of it could be me--I'm a words person, and so I tend to focus on that and not really pick up on much else--but I think they may also be being a bit too subtle for their own good. The whole final sequence had me going "I guess. . . there's somebody there?" and then in the transcript there's a trapdoor and a key and etc. etc.

It makes me sympathize more with the Malevolent podcast's decision to just narrate everything, even though I couldn't stand listening to it.

[starlady]

Yeah, I missed a very Thematically Significant tape recorder's presence in one of the later episodes and now I'm just going to go back and read the transcript after every episode I think.

I kind of think it's hypercorrection from TMA, when the mixing was also crap, as in non-existent, for the first season and a half, which was also hard to listen to. Now they very clearly have the equipment and experience to be much fancier. But the thing with audio is that you can't forget that you aren't controlling the listeners or their environment (unless you're mixing for a movie theater or something where there are specifications for the output equipment)! Out here we have crappy speakers, terrible earbuds, noisy environments, and auditory processing disorders.

[kindkit]

I hadn't heard the tape recorder clicks at all, though I did infer the existence of the tape records, or at least of something recording, from the sound quality variations.

I kind of think it's hypercorrection from TMA, when the mixing was also crap, as in non-existent, for the first season and a half, which was also hard to listen to

I never really noticed that--probably due to terrible earbuds, noisy environment, etc. So, oddly, it felt less terrible/frustrating to me, because they weren't trying to do much storytelling via audio alone, as opposed to dialogue. Now they can do much more sophisticated things, and for me it ends up making the experience worse. I guess one comparison would be listening to a recording in mono (not ideal, but you'll hear what there is to hear), vs listening to a stereo recording when one of your earbuds is broken.

ETA: And regarding audio processing difficulties specifically, I have great trouble in real life understanding conversation in a noisy environment. Have that experience reproduced, deliberately, in an audio entertainment is kind of annoying.

[kass]

Aw, hell, I am so sorry. May your case be gentle and may there be no lasting impacts.

[kindkit]

Thanks! Of course it's worrisome because covid can be so unpredictable, but so far, so good.

[lilacsigil]

Avoiding COVID for four years in a public-facing job is no mean feat! My mum finally got it for the first time recently, and the only place she was unmasked was in her respiratory specialist's clinic to do lung function tests, so she was pretty annoyed about that. But on the positive side, all those vaccines have made it far better to get COVID now that any time previously. I hope your case remains mild.

[kindkit]

I'm still kind of surprised that I didn't get it before the vaccine was introduced--I started masking a little later than some other folks due to the US Centers for Disease Control not initially recommending it, and then I used cloth masks for a long time rather than N95s. I guess I just got lucky.

Weird story, though: there's a small, but non-zero, chance that I actually had SARS COV-1 back in 2003. I flew into Toronto for an academic conference while there was an outbreak there, and about a week after I got home, I got very, very sick. It could have been the flu, but I've always wondered. And apparently there's some evidence that SARS 1 antibodies may confer some protection from SARS 2.

Is your mum still sick or is she recovered now? I hope her illness was/is mild.

[lilacsigil]

My mum has serious lung issues after a lifetime of asthma (and had a near-fatal bout of pneumonia early in 2022), so we've been extremely worried about her getting COVID...but she was fine! She had a "mild cold" level of symptoms and that was about it. Thank you, vaccines!

That is an interesting story about the COV-1 possibility! I wonder if it did help - I read about that connection. Did you also have a big immune response to the COVID vaccines?

[vilakins]

I'm glad you enjoyed the Demas books. I didn't notice any Christian influence though, just Greek and Persian which I enjoyed. I haven't read Honey and Pepper or The House of the Red Balconies yet, (or Something HUman which I just found on Amazon) but I enjoyed the others, especially the shared house Damiskos and Varazda live in - such a beautiful found family.

I didn't know about the Degan books, but they do look interesting though I've read a few too many mythical beings books lately.

[kindkit]

I couldn't pinpoint it for sure as Christian influence, but that's how it felt to me. Specifically, a sense that sex is only okay in the context of a lifelong commitment. Not all the books are like that, but some are, and I think the early books are more so.

[sovay]

To wit, I have COVID. For the first time, as far as I know.

Feh. Heal well and uncomplicatedly.

I don't know how totally it fits the lighthearted part of the bill, but Lou Rand's The Gay Detective (1961) is both historically valuable and a lot of fun: almost a parody in that all of its hardboiled tropes are enacted with knowing camp, but its swishy hero is no pushover and the murders he's trying to solve aren't jokes. The author was a gay man deeply familiar with the San Francisco he barely fictionalized into the novel's Bay City and the really annoying thing about it is that it should obviously have been the first in a series which never came to pass. It is the second-oldest mystery novel with an explicitly queer detective I have read.

I had not heard of the Old Bridge Inn series and will check them out; thanks for the heads-up!

[kindkit]

Thank you! I still feel less than great, but today my temp's back to normal.

And I have never heard of this book, and I thought I was pretty well versed in old queer fiction. 1961!

So if it's the second oldest, what's the oldest one?

I hope you enjoy the Old Bridge Inn books. Nobody's going to mistake them for Great Literature, but they're doing things I haven't seen in my (fairly limited) reading of other queer romance books. They also feel a lot less anachronistic than any other recent historicals I've read--of course the characters have views that look decently progressive to us modern readers, but they mostly seem to arrive at them via the language and thought processes of their own times.

I must note, however, the complete omission of characters of color and of any mention of the anti-slavery movement, which is weird for a book set in the 1790s.

[sovay]

Thank you! I still feel less than great, but today my temp's back to normal.

Congratulations! May it stay that way and the rest of you follow.

And I have never heard of this book, and I thought I was pretty well versed in old queer fiction. 1961!

It seems to have been really under the radar of the field until Cleis Press brought it back into print in 2003, although they only offer the e-book nowadays—it was published originally by a particularly marginal pulp outfit, reprinted once in the '60's under the sleazier and significantly inaccurate title of Rough Trade, according to the Cleis introduction fell totally off the map after that point except for a few dismissive acknowledgements until it was rediscovered in the '90's by the San Francisco Queer History Working Group who recognized it as an invaluable map-on-the-slant to pre-liberation queer San Francisco as well as a wittily subversive mystery in its own right, hitting every beat of your standard-issue noir with a flamboyantly light-in-the-loafers P.I. who arrives at the job by inheritance from his previous career as a chorus boy and like so many queens is actually a pretty tough cookie. The style is chunkily colorful, the wisecracks are funny (a dismayed Francis, confronted his first day on the job with a seemingly endless parade of applicants for his advertised assistant: "My God, Bessie! It looks like the third act of Aïda out there"), it does not feel more misogynist because of its gay male default than some straight hardboiled novels of my experience and perhaps even less [rot13] fvapr abguvat jbefr unccraf gb vgf Punaqyre-fglyr alzcub pyvrag zvkrq hc va gur sevatrf bs gur pevzr guna gung fur yrnirf gbja ng gur raq bs gur pnfr. I wish it were better known. The style Cleis described as "hard-boiled camp" really isn't like anything else I have encountered in queer literature of the time.

So if it's the second oldest, what's the oldest one?

The oldest I have personally encountered is The Heart in Exile (1953) by Adam de Hegedus writing as Rodney Garland, which is on the one hand amazing because in mood and milieu it is rather like a Mary Renault novel [rot13] jurer va gur ynfg puncgre gur cebgntbavfg tbrf shpx vg naq cyhzcf sbe gur evfx bs unccvarff jvgu uvf qribgrq znyr frpergnel vafgrnq bs gur fnsr rzbgvbany-frkhny fgenvgwnpxrg ur'f xrcg uvzfrys va sbe lrnef, and on the other it features a scarifying level of mid-century Freud-o-speak which even the hero's being a psychiatrist before his turn to amateur detection cannot really excuse. But it is determined not to be a tragic gay novel even when it contains tragic gay death and it signals as much by having its characters talk frankly about the trope:

"What I wanted to ask you," Terry said a little abruptly, just when I was anxious to change the subject, "is why all plays and novels dealing with queers have an inevitably tragic end. I mean, there's always murder, suicide, insanity or imprisonment. I mean, that's not so in real life, is it? I don't say all queers are happy, but the vast majority aren't unhappy, anyway, and even if they are they don't go round cutting their throats or killing each other."

"The answer to that is that the only way normal society at present accepts the homosexual in literature is with a compulsory tragic end. To be a homo is a crime, and crime mustn't go unpunished; not in books at least. Besides, I think the author himself, by giving you a tragic end, is trying to engage your sympathy: 'Pity us poor buggers.' Which explains the tear-jerker title, the frequent Biblical quotations, the lugubrious tone, the underlining of the tragic element. Besides, happiness—normal or abnormal—is uninteresting."

Terry smiled; I wondered if he was really listening. He said slowly: "If ever I could write a book on the subject, I'd try to tell the truth. I'd write about the majority for whom it isn't really tragic." He raised a soda-red hand. "I suppose disaster is always there, well . . . a sort of threat, in the background, but the real trouble is that most of them are afraid of love. That's what makes them so miserable. One should never be afraid of it, even if one gets jilted. It's the only thing in life, isn't it? I mean love. That's the message."

And as the hero has demonstrated himself to be one of the people who is afraid of love, it would be really stupid if he didn't get the meta-point. So I recommend it on those grounds, but still warn for the psychobabble.

I hope you enjoy the Old Bridge Inn books. Nobody's going to mistake them for Great Literature, but they're doing things I haven't seen in my (fairly limited) reading of other queer romance books.

Beyond the actually eighteenth-century habits of mind?

They also feel a lot less anachronistic than any other recent historicals I've read--of course the characters have views that look decently progressive to us modern readers, but they mostly seem to arrive at them via the language and thought processes of their own times.

And that is actively attractive to me, so thank you for mentioning it. Whitewashing weird but noted.

[rydra_wong]

Wow, both of these sound beyond fascinating, so thank you for the recs.

[sovay]

Wow, both of these sound beyond fascinating, so thank you for the recs.

You're welcome! I hope you enjoy them. I actually just finished poaching part of this comment for a post with a third recommendation.

[rydra_wong]

To wit, I have COVID. For the first time, as far as I know.

Aaargh. Sympathies. I hope it stays very mild.

Can anyone recommend me things? I'm more likely to get to books and podcasts than anything visual, but all recs are welcome. Preferably fairly lighthearted, preferably queer.

I mean, obviously I'm going to be predictable and rec Prophet by Sin Blaché and Helen Macdonald. I wouldn't quite call it "lighthearted" because it deals with its share of trauma, but it's huge fun, extremely readable in a "very good fanfic" way, and very queer, and I do think it might be your cup of tea. Big sf/thriller adventure, great slow-burn romance.

M/m, approximately (one of the characters uses he/him pronouns but self-describes as "not quite a man, but not a woman either"; he counts himself as a man sometimes but exclusively for purposes of gay sex and sarcasm).

ETA: apologies if I've already recced it at you/you didn't like it.

[kindkit]

Staying mild so far--my temp was even back to normal the last time I checked.

You have recced Prophet before, but I completely forgot about it so I'm grateful for the reminder! I've been slow about trying it--I tend, perversely, to get that way about things I see everyone praising. But I will get around to it!

[rydra_wong]

I've been slow about trying it--I tend, perversely, to get that way about things I see everyone praising.

Oh, SAME. I don't know why, but sometimes my brain just turns into the Pingu "well now I am not doing it" meme.

My ability to consume new media is always dependent on the mysterious vagaries of the brain weather anyway, and I assume a lot of other people have the same thing, so any recs should be taken as me leaving the suggestion for if/when the time comes along when something like that seems like it might hit the spot.

[princessofgeeks]

So sorry you have covid but am glad it's a light case!

[kindkit]

Thanks! I'm trying not to dwell on the stories one hears about a mild Covid case turning suddenly much worse, or mild Covid becoming long Covid, but of course it's worrying. So far I'm doing fine, though.

[silveradept]

As someone who also recently joined the "I had successfully avoided COVID until now" club, I hope your recovery is swift, uncomplicated, and complete. I think I got mine from a work break room. And apparently the new strains are quick little bastards about infectiousness, so even long enough to enjoy a drink is enough, and that's extremely aggravating.

I do not have audio dramas or similar to recommend, but if you are inclined to having some sound on that you can rest and fall asleep to while you are recovering, Sumana Harihareswara recommended a podcast called Sounds in the Dark that's ambient electronic music for a couple of hours, interspersed with only a little bit of DJ talking every so often. I'm enjoying it as a really good background music kind of situation where my concentration is elsewhere, and it's very soothing and good for falling asleep to.

[kindkit]

Yeah, it makes sense that new variants would be more infectious, but aggravating is definitely the word for it. I'm sick of masking and I'm sick of never really going anywhere--hence the unnecessary Starbucks stop. Once I'm well again I should probably try to have a rational think-through about what kind of risks I'm willing to accept, e.g. seeing a movie in the cinema while masked. Because I'm tired of feeling so trapped, and if I can find ways to do some things safely, I'll be less likely to make silly, impulsive decisions.

And thanks for the rec!

[silveradept]

Yeah. I will say that even with those negotiations and sticking to what we thought of as acceptable risks and conditions, I still managed to catch it, in a situation that I probably couldn't avoid. It's not going to be foolproof, because there are all kinds of fools out there, but it can be easier on cognition to go "we thought of this as an acceptable risk, and it turned out I rolled a nat 1" rather than "I tried everything to not get it and I still got it."

[cyprinella]

Ugh, I should probably go test. This feels sinus infection-y to me but now I'm not sure...

I'm so excited about GOBLINS! I was definitely in there like a shot on the crowdfunder and I'm hoping it piles up for them quick! Especially since they'll have to schedule taping around Benby 2.

I've been on my comic and comics fic bullshit too hard. Only thing I can think of to rec is Chuck Tingle's Camp Damascus which isn't lighthearted, but definitely queer and definitely a satisfying payoff.

[cyprinella]

If you are interested in comics bullshit, this Leverage/Batman crossover was very good. It got a lot of the emotional stuff of Leverage that gets missed in the "let's write a heist!" fic mindset. https://archiveofourown.org/works/50146096?view_full_work=true

[kindkit]

It's worth testing, alas. On the day when I got my positive result, I almost didn't test because I was feeling a bit better.

I put in for the GOBLINS crowdfunder too--besides it seeming like a potentially great show, it seems that Stellar Firma and the people who made it weren't well treated by RQ. I'd love to see them have a success with this.

I do have a copy of Camp Damascus but I don't know if it's quite what I'm craving right now. (I tend to stockpile ebooks to read . . . eventually.)