Hils's journal

1.
The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar, is very beautifully written and really is a love letter to fairy tales and sisterhood, all of which I knew it would be going into it. It is also a novella I am turning over in my head because I am trying to figure out if my "I think it should've been longer" is a genuine structural thing or just the side-effect of the print volume being ~130 pages long, only 99 of which are the titular story. (the other 30 pages are a short story teasing her upcoming short story collection.)

This is not a long story! Reading a doorstopper novel, something like Priory of the Orange Tree or Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell (neither of which I ever finished, hah), being off in your estimations of length by 30 pages is unlikely to matter to the overall pacing of the book or what you expect from it.

It is almost a quarter of these printed pages.

That is a very significant amount of difference! I think about structure and pacing as I read. It's not always conscious, but I know that the number of pages remaining matters to me and my expectations. Sure, there's often some number of pages that aren't narrative at the end of a novel, but: scale, again, and also the sort of book that has extensive end notes/an appendix/etc is visible from the start, where it probably has a map and/or dramatis personae as well.

All of this is to say: I liked this story quite a lot! Which is why I'm spending so many words squinting at the way it was presented and poking at it like "you could've done better to prepare me for how this story was going to pace so that I wasn't surprised when it ended". (Because it is a gorgeous volume, with beautiful illustrations and clear care given to how it appears as an object, so why—)


2.
I taught kids class for aikido last night, because my friend who usually lead teaches wasn't feeling well, and used this as an excuse to teach the kids a very basic forward roll technique. They're all good enough at forward rolls to take one, and this throw done at their level just guides them into the position to take a forward roll; there's no force behind it, just form. (If done with the right timing and angle, it is very effective at forcing a roll! But that's much more advanced and very hard to do unintentionally.)

They did great with it, as I knew they would, and idk why this is the first time they've been taught a forward roll technique other than "my friend didn't want to teach it yet".

Next on my agenda: making them do the ikkyo pin. We'll see how long it takes to get there. (This is more likely to be something I can be like "hey what if we taught this" about and get "oh, yeah, sure" in response.)


3.
I talked to my mom on the phone this weekend. [insert 1k of deleted words about family stuff here, which tbh boil down to: I really should figure out finding and seeing a therapist. (this is not a new thought.)]


4.
I've started watching The Apothecary Diaries, an anime that I have been "yeah I'd probably like this" about since I first heard of it, and: surprise! I do like it quite a lot, as I like most stories about women and their politics and also weird girls with specialized knowledge using that knowledge to solve mysteries and help people. Maomao, the protag, is a 17yo apothecary who loves poison, does not notice people flirting with her, and thinks about how pretty the women surrounding her are all the time. (Also there's a dude who's in love with her in part because she's the only woman who goes "ew, leave me alone" instead of mooning over him, because heterosexuality must be gestured at and dudes need representation too.) (There are other men in the show; that guy, who also has interesting plot reasons for existing and doesn't actually exist solely to moon over Maomao, is just the only one other than Maomao's dad/teacher who really matters.)

I'm 10eps in and having fun. Truly just one of those things where sometimes everyone going OMG IT'S SO GOOD makes it hard to give stuff a shot, and going "y'know what I want to try something new and this has always sounded fun" is a lot easier to make happen.


5.
In other thoughts about tv shows and structure/pacing. So. Okay. I have a terrible fondness for Hearing About Sports while also often having zero interest in watching sports. (Sometimes tavina liveblogs sports at me and I adore this, it's very fun, please tell me about your investment in an event and explain to me why you have feelings about it; I love to go !!! over things I only just heard about and learn about underdogs I will promptly root for on principle. or about Your Team doing well at things when I have no investment about rooting for anyone in particular but like it when my friends' investment is rewarded!)

So there's the netflix sports shows, which I'm pretty sure started with Drive to Survive, which is about F1. There are a number of seasons. My twin got me to start watching them like. Three years ago...? Something like that. It's a good series, and that's in large part because in its first season it understood a very important fact about sports tv:

You need to give the audience enough context about the sport that they know why they should be invested in it.

It's not enough to present a charismatic and/or attractive person who wants to win (and probably won't) and say "look! root for this person!". You gotta know what the sport is, and what makes it dramatic, and what it takes for someone to be good at it, and then you need to show the people you're following being good at that sport! It's okay if they fail, or fuck up, or whatever not being perfect looks like; you just also gotta show when they do things right, when they get close to victory, when they have the stuff that makes it interesting to root for them. And that means the audience needs to know what that is, and what it looks like, and see that happening.

A startling number of mediocre Netflix sports reality shows do not understand that the first thing I want from a sports reality show is: the sport

perhaps I am unusual for this, but, like

if you want to get people into your sport... I think they need to be given the tools to understand the basics of how your sport works... and see that sport being performed/played in competition...

also your show can't just be "look! women can do this too!" and generally spend more times on the lives of the women than on the women actually doing the thing. like, yes, I know people find that inspiring, but wow it's more inspiring to see people doing thing than to see them crying with their families about having fucked up, couldn't you have used that time to show some people doing cool stuff instead. show me their training. their actions. not their failures to the point where I'm like... where even was the cool victory stuff... you were too focused on humanizing them and forgot that being visibly good at shit is part of the story of "I want to be one of the best in the world at this activity" too...

To nobody's surprise, I once again had the best grades in my apprentice cohort. (More entertaining: first/second/third for my year was the exact same people in the exact same order, and the other two were fighting over second place because they figured I'd get first again.) Apparently this means I'll get to go to the regional competition again next year, since the way that's structured is "the people who do best each year get to go and we figure out what category each of you is in along the way (and also the one TAB guy goes)". We'll see! (This means two of us will need to do something we don't do for work. Curious to see if the guy who did architectural last year will do it again this year. Very curious who gets asked to do welding.) It'll be in Boston next year, so that's an easy drive, something to look forward to.

The last day of school, where they announce this, is also a potluck provided by the instructional staff. There was. Functionally nothing I could eat, between "cannot eat cheese/dairy" and "does not eat pork/beef". I know why I expect better in general even if my reaction is weary disappointment and "yeah, of course". (I have explained these food restrictions multiple times and nobody thinks about them anyway.) (they are not hard to avoid)

Work is work. It continues. It's very funny any day that everyone's just sort of like... "we are doing obnoxious things that are not hard but are time-consuming and make us wonder what the people who told us to do this were thinking, and also it is hot, how much time can we spend talking instead".

Obligate Diurnalism continues to rear its head as we approach the solstice. Probably I am not getting as much sleep as I should most nights! Oh well. I am getting enough sleep, overall, and my body will force me to bed earlier if I actually need it.

in non-irl things:

Murderbot show continues to be good! Very fun to watch! Has some divergences from the book, in large part because of being a different medium I suspect, but that's not making it any less fun to watch. Everyone's facial expressions are fantastic. The in-universe media is a joy. They made a theme song for Sanctuary Moon and it's so cheesy and good.

I have been spending a truly impressive amount of time talking to hafnia about a specific AU for our D&D blorbos (which started out as iddy kink nonsense but then GREW PLOT), which is so canon-divergent we're just like "this is basically original work with D&D filling in the worldbuilding that's not important". It is such a joy to wake up in the morning to see more of it turned into prose and be like "oooh YES :eyes:" and have feelings about things that I already knew were going to happen because we've talked out like the vast majority of what's going to happen. xD But it's DIFFERENT when it's in narrative prose instead of flowing between rp and brainstorming, y'know?

However also I need to write more things that are not about the D&D campaign that is my primary fandom brain thing right now, due to having exchanges etc that uh I did agree to do and do care a lot about but also I did most of those sign ups before (*checks*) the beginning of the month (50k later and we are at "gotta clear up the curse before we can get to the really iddy kink nonsense, but that shouldn't take too much longer!"). So. Can't plan for "I have been CONSUMED"?

...it's fine I can write enough words in the time available, I just need to drag myself away from going "HEY SO WHAT IF" or "OH NO: A THOUGHT" all the time. xD

(I am having SUCH a good time with this though <3)