Gluten-free, dairy-free baked goods are a pain to find, and once I find them, they rarely live up to my (admittedly extremely picky) standards.  And I have not enjoyed my DIY endeavors so far; there's been an awful lot of experimentation and preparations with twice as many steps as their dairyful+glutenful counterparts, for mediocre results.

And so I cast my mind back, to the Cookbook of Unreasonably Rich Desserts and Fatally Flawed Recipes.  Once upon a time, a decade or more ago, I got this cookbook.  I think it came from a garage sale.  Filled with fancy cakes.  I tried a few of the recipes and it didn't take long to discover that each recipe had something skipped -- some place where the author undoubtedly assumed her audience was going to be experienced enough to know, for instance, that she meant what I'd call 'simmer' when she said 'boil' (to take the example I marked up in black ink in my copy).

( And I've got a favorite recipe in there. )
(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/137081.html where there are comments.)

• geeks & kinksters.  For the second time in seven months (okay that's not all that often) somebody has claimed that there's vast quantities of overlap between the geeky & kinky communities.  While most of the kinksters I've encountered are geeky, many of the geeks I've encountered aren't kinky.  I guess it's possible they're just not *out*, but I suspect that's not the thing.  I do suspect that the respective sizes of the communities is relevant, here.  But there's all these cute geeks that I'm disappointed to find don't share my proclivities... (ahem)
• writing the Other, part zillion: I don't need to write this, because I'm sure it's been written.  The one where you explain to white authors that never explicitly stating the race of your characters doesn't mean your characters are race-less.  Pretending you're not participating in your surrounding culture while not actually doing anything doesn't mean you're not steeped in that culture, y'know?  I guess the only reason I want to write yet another iteration of this is an author I respected tweeted the fallacy and I'm disappointed. 

I may or may not get around to the post where I enjoyed the Johnson and Morden PK Dick Award nominees and then ruminate to what extent does the main character have to rock before you call a Mary Sue...

...but I *will* get around to the writeup of the recent game of Microscope I played at Story Games Seattle, because if I make sure every game I'm in gets written up I can pretend it gives me license to get stroppy about other people's missing writeups. (though I'll post it over there, not over here.)  I want to know what happens in your games, people!

In case y'all were wondering what I was doing instead of posting here.

(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/136957.html where there are comments.)

For the first time ever I'm going to read the P. K. Dick award nominees *before* it's awarded.  I figured I could commemorate this with short commentary.

I will note that these first four books are the ones that didn't have a long hold-line at the library -- this suggests that the ones I *haven't* read yet are the ones which are especially beloved.  

Deadline, by Mira Grant:  Really tried to keep an open mind while reading this -- I don't usually like zombie stories.  But the protagonist in this one was a metaphorical zombie.  Early on, he makes it clear he's sleepwalking through life, waiting for revenge, and has nothing else to live for.  And I couldn't hold on long enough for him to develop into anything more. Got bored, put it down. This is a rare response from me, but a noncompelling protagonist *and* zombies was just too much for me.

The Company Man, by Robert Jackson Bennett: my favorite of these first four.   Steampunk noir alternative history in the pacific northwest with just a frisson of horror.  Populated with actual three-dimensional characters, for the most part.  I'm disappointed that something historical set in this area only managed a bare two sentences about the Duwamish.  I realize this is faint praise, but both steampunk & alternative histories are notorious for genociding people of color or otherwise not bothering including them in the story, and this book didn't go that far.

The Other by Matthew Hughes: This book *nearly* examined the power-structures behind self/other.  Maybe the subtext -- the protagonist was thoroughly Other on the planet he found himself, but never stopped reminding himself that he's the cosmopolitian, they're barely-civilized and backward -- was intentional.  And if I squint a little, it's a tale of colonialism and what happens to the people left behind once the colony's resources are spent on the exploiter.  But I suspect that the tale I enjoyed wasn't actually the tale I was reading.

The Postmortal, by Drew Magary:  I realize I'm a bit behind the times but this shallow faux-irony doesn't do anything for me.  The first-person real-time narration hides any complexity the main character might have.  The men in the story are barely two-dimensional, and the women are so flimsy as to be practically nonexistant.  The novel's schtick is a metaphor for abortion, complete with clinic bombings and public controversy, but it was impossible for me to care because there wasn't a single character whose fate I bothered to wonder about.  Didn't finish this one either.

I hope that the library's hold system has accidentally crowdsourced some information about quality, here.  That would mean the other nominees are better, and that's why there wasn't a queue for these.

Or perhaps I'm just hopelessly parochial in my speculative fiction tastes. (This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/136548.html where there are comments.)

There's one generalization that radical feminism holds to that I find compelling.  Its the one where Liberal Feminists agitate to get women a larger piece of the pie, but Radical Feminists want a whole different pie.

However, what makes radfems turn into racist transphobic femme-misogynist fuckups is when they identify anything that's ever been used to oppress women as "in the wrong pie."  As if there is nothing in those things that have value, or as if once they're co-opted they're forever tainted.  Which is a losing game, because the status quo will just continue co-opting things. That's just going to turn into having to slough off everything that's ever been "female."  Because the dominant culture finds the radfems' behavior an extremely useful tool for oppressing feminists! 

Want something that's empowering women to become problematic instead?  The radfems will help.

(this post inspired by the transmisogynist who trolled #transchat on twitter this morning.)

(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/136288.html where there are comments.)

(see previous post on test-driving story games.)

So, starting with the one we didn't finish:  Faust & Friends, by Mendel Schmiedekamp.  Schmiedekamp writes chewy game theory articles and comes out with at least one game a year that seems designed to highlight some particular aspect of gameplay/game design.  This one's clearly about relationships.

( my experience playing the game ) (This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/136016.html where there are comments.)

Lately I've been hanging out with a couple of people from the Story Games Seattle meetup & we've been test-driving story games. Thanks to yearly events like GameChef, the landscape of free titles in indie gaming is strewn with titles in their first revision, with only a handful of playtests under their belt. Some of these games go on to do great things, but most of them languish. (the titles available for sale are sometimes higher-quality, but there are no guarantees!)

I'm not temperamentally suited to writing my own games. When I'm engaged in a creative endeavor, I subconsciously expect the step where I show other people what I'm working on to be at the *end*. That's not a good match for, y'know, playtesting? I find I lose interest right around the same time everybody else does (and maybe for the same reason). I get maybe one more version past the first round of playtesting, and then I'm bored. So I can't fault all those v0.1 or 0.2 games out there -- I do the same thing, except I'm too shy to put my efforts up on the internet.  I think I'm going to enjoy playing a bunch of other peoples' unedited works than I would creating my own. 

I'd like to write up a bit about my thoughts on the games we've played -- at the very least, now that we're past three, I keep finding myself missing one whenever I try to make a list of what we've played so far. These commentaries may end up pretty shallow -- for one, they're solely from my perspective. I may see if I can get my co-conspirators to weigh in, but this is primarily an exercise in keeping my thoughts organized.

Anyway, watch this space. No, I'm serious this time, I'm actually going to post something!

(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/135701.html where there are comments.)

Laksa-inspired coconut fish stew

Inspired by:

• http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/3357332.html
• a filet of halibut (cooked more than Nancy intended, but exactly as much as Z likes)
• http://www.laksa.com/recipes.html, but adjusted significantly to match what I happen to have on hand

Spice Paste:

• 6 shallots
• 6 cloves garlic
• 2T cashew butter
• 2T ginger-juice
• 3T diced Anaheim peppers
• 1t flaked bonito
• 1t olive oil
• Prepared curry powder, 1t

Fish Gravy:

• Spice paste
• 1 14oz can coconut milk
• 14oz water
• 2T white miso
• ½  filet baked halibut, crumbled

Also:

• Rice noodles, prepared according to package (soaked in boiling water, in the case of the ones I use)

Pretty things that are also yummy:

• Sliced summer squash, sautéed in hot olive oil, just long enough to get slightly brown, tossed with herbed sea salt
• Quartered crimini mushrooms, tumbled in tamari and briefly sautéed in olive oil
• Yin-yang carrots

Grind first six ingredients until it’s a chunky paste, and stir in olive oil and curry powder.  Heat at least 2T olive oil in a 4qt heavy-bottomed pot.   Add paste and cook for about five minutes, stirring frequently.

Pour in can of coconut milk, water, and miso.  Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring until well-combined.  Dump in crumbled halibut, reduce heat, simmer until heated through.

To serve, put noodles in bowl.  Ladle fish gravy over noodles.   Put pretty yummy things on top. Apologize to partner for making an extraordinary mess of the kitchen, and be thoroughly forgiven due in part to the yumminess of dinner.

For some reason, this was exactly what I needed this evening. (It's Batgirl stew!)

(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/135553.html where there are comments.)

So, Love Your Body day is two weeks from now. I continue to have mixed feelings.

Two years ago I posted about my response to the idea of "making peace" with our bodies. It's all still true. And if you're looking for a succinct, well-thought-out, unambiguous statement from me on the subject, go read that post and then stop, because this post is none of those things. This post is about ambivalence, and futility, and feelings of powerlessness and is even more full of commas and question marks than my writing usually is.

I mean, yes, it is important to practice body-acceptance. But really, why aren't we hearing as much about "Hey You, Stop Hating On Bodies Day"? Or maybe even just "Stop Policing Women's Bodies Day"? Sure, Ms. Magazine showcases a dozen offensive ads a year and many of those get pulled due to reader activism, but … seriously, twelve ads a year? Vs. how big the Love Your Body Day campaign is?

( I'm not on board with personalizing the political.... )

(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/135059.html where there are comments.)

"Do more. Fail better. Be usefully flawed instead of perfectly useless."

(This entry was originally posted at http://sev.dreamwidth.org/134835.html where there are comments.)