hermionesviolin: photo shoot image of Summer Glau (who played River Tam) with text "we are all made of stars" (no one can stop us now)
2023-12-28 09:06 pm

"The hot one." (by which she very much meant Sabine, not Shin)

During our phonecall tonight, I told Abby about this musesfool reblog, and she Googled Cal [Kestis -- who's in video games, apparently] while I read her the fanart comic. I did end up Googling later (to find out whether he and Ahsoka had canonically interacted). In chat after our phonecall:
me:

Haven't canonically met, but 22 fics pairing them. https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Cal%20Kestis*s*Ahsoka%20Tano/works

(I was closing tabs and realized this was on the results page of my "cal ahsoka" Google search.)

Abby:

Where are the Ahsoka Tano/Sabine Wren pairings, I ask? The fuck is wrong with this fandom.

I mean, I also maybe don’t understand how to make AO3 do what I want.

me:

There are 60 of them, apparently. https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Ahsoka%20Tano*s*Sabine%20Wren/works

Abby:

Oh, thank god.

The fandom is saved. Also, 60 works is too many to go through right now looking for the dynamic I want. 😀
hermionesviolin: a pair of glasses resting on an open book (tired (glasses))
2023-10-02 10:53 am

culture consumed (September, 2023)

tv
  • with Abby: Ahsoka 1.03-1.07 -- finale this week! but we won't get to watch it until Friday :/


music videos

books
  • ~read Abby ~7 picturebooks -- incl 4 big feelings picture books I'd gotten from the library because of nibling O
  • [feminist sff book club] A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys (recommended by [personal profile] reflectedeve) -- first contact novel with a Jewish polyamorous mom; aliens want to rescue humans because they've been destroying the Earth, but some humans have been doing a lot of work to repair and live in better harmony with the Earth and don't want to leave; we get at least some exposure to 3 different Earth factions (with varying degrees of interest in leaving Earth).
  • We Still Belong by Christine Day -- middle-grade Upper Skagit, which manages to touch on a lot of things without feeling like it's doing too much or even feeling heavy-handed or teachy


movies
  • started watching Fast X with Abby
    (In June, prepping for the impending 2 Trans 2 Furious zine put together by the person who does her favorite podcast, Abby started watching the Fast & Furious movies.  I've seen a few of them at bad/fannish movie night, so having seen 8 and 9, I was interested when she started watching 10 -- but god, that movie is two and a half hours, so I was okay that we stopped about 40 minutes in.)


live theatre
    in the same weekend:

  • ASP's Taming of the Shrew with Abby, Cate, and Allie -- which sounded interesting, but which we did not like.  (I stayed for the post-show discussion with the director, which only helped a little.)

    This production really leans into the opening framing device -- setting it at a 1970s nightclub, where Christopher Sly is a jerk to women and passes out drunk and the women decide to trick him into believing he's a woman.  Hi, force-femming someone as punishment (as opposed to a sexy consensual "funishment") is really uncomfortable.

    This is the official blurb:
    Actors’ Shakespeare Project kicks off our 2023-24 Season by tackling one of the most controversial entries in Shakespeare’s canon – The Taming of the Shrew

    After a long night of drinking, disruption, and harassing barmaids, Christopher Sly finds himself trapped in the worst of predicaments: a stage play. Thrown into the role of Katherine – the titular "Shrew” – he tumbles headfirst into a world of witty wordplay, leering suitors, and the full force of the oppressive patriarchy. As the rest of the all-female/non-binary ensemble constructs the zany world of Padua around him, will Sly learn the error of his ways?
    Everyone in the cast is female or non-binary, except Sly.

    I had expected that they were gonna make him believe he's literally Katherine the character in the play -- like construct the play around him as if the play is reality -- but instead they tell him he's their friend Katherine and then they put on this play and tell him they're one person short and convince him to play Katherine. At first, he's reading lines from a script, and he and sometimes others sit on the edge of the stage watching while they're not performing, but after a few scenes that fades away and it's like the play is real? Everyone except Sly (and also except Bianca, my partner noted?) wears a red clown nose, which indicates that they're acting, and they occasionally take them off to break character (but this didn't seem entirely consistent?). So I'm not entirely sure how we're supposed to think of the events of the play -- like is Sly actually being tortured when Katherine the character is tortured? And they choose to keep in that final speech where Katherine talks about womanly submissive duty -- and Sly/Kate plays it completely straight, and the other characters try to sort of stop him and clearly indicate with their body language that they didn't want this. Which, okay, you decided to do this play; did you forget about this ending? In the post-show thing, the director talked about how this is a revenge play, and trying to use patriarchy to undermine patriarchy just reinforces patriarchy, which, okay, but, this did not feel like a particularly nuanced (or even effective, tbh) way to teach audiences, "You might think that if you could make your oppressor shared your oppressed status, they would repent of their oppressive behavior, but actually that is not the way." Like, Sly becomes a somewhat tragic figure because he has accepted the message the play seems to try to teach him -- that as a woman he should be subservient to his husband; he did what the society around him told him they wanted him to do.

    On Sunday, we chatted with our friend Bridget (a theatre professional), who noted that the play is much more Bianca's play than Kate's (which is one reason she thought this production didn't work). Which made me think of my friend Cate's idea to do a production of Shrew with a trans woman as Bianca (1: it means you have lots of people talking about how beautiful and desirable a trans woman is, which is nice; and 2: it potentially does interesting things with the Bianca and Kate dynamic, since they would have grown up for at least some period of time expecting that Bianca would inherit as the son, etc.).

  • Central Square Theater's Angels in America, Part 2: Perestroika with Abby (having seen Part 1 in April)
    During the first intermission, Abby said, "This is the most Mormon thing I've ever seen."


other
  • Harvard Powwow with Abby -- I've gone with my mom in years past, but she had other plans this time, so I just took Abby. We did meet up with my former coworker Meg (and I finally got to meet her partner), and also had a bonus surprise encounter with climbing/QERG-Meagan.


***

Currently reading: Dear Mothman by Robin Gow -- middle-grade autistic trans boy. reminds me in some ways of Kyle Lukoff's Too Bright to See, but it's much more ... "bittersweet" isn't quite the right word, but...

Reading next: 🤷🏻‍♀️