27nov2025

Like a lot of people I've been utterly charmed by the reports ganked from that study about urban versus rural racoon differences, to wit, the urban ones have shorter snouts, possibly an indicator that raccoons are in the very earliest stages of domestication. Of course, mainstream media being what it is, some of those outlets are trumpeting, ‘Raccoons will be the next big pet/domesticated animal!’, leading the bits of the paper that I thought far more interesting, that did happen to be emphasized in the article where I first encountered it, to be ignored:

This is a citizen study, done by high school students! Their science teacher wanted to engage them with something more interesting than reading out of a textbook, and experiments are absolutely the way to teach science. In this case, (IIRC) the students found images tagged with the animals’ location and then measured images of them.

Second, their research was so robust it was accepted into and printed by a peer reviewed journal. Cool science is being discovered by ordinary people all the time, and while cutting edge science that requires fancy labs and lots of funding (and years of training) should absolutely be funded (not undermined...sighhhhh) the best way, in my not so humble opinion, to get people on board with that is do some science themselves, so they have a greater appreciation for it.

Besides, as the kids discovered, it's fun.

So why, you might wonder, do shorter snouts lead to all these domestication claims? Well, my (very) lay understanding is that domesticated animals—humans being a particularly good example—undergo changes in the timing of their maturation such that they retain neonatal (childish) features, such big foreheads, flattened faces and smaller jaws—think about the way we compare to our closest relatives, chimps and bonobos, then how puppies, kittens and foals all look compared to their adult forms—big foreheads, flatter faces, smaller jaws.

Besides the smaller snouts the other big difference between urban raccoons and their wilder-living counterparts is that they're more comfortable with people, as anyone living in a city who's also gone camping can plainly attest. Raccoons (and squirrels, boy howdy, squirrels, of any urban species) are much noisier and willing to approach people. I mean, I hear raccoons on a regular basis screeching over my compost bin, and squirrels will practically run over my feet on the deck, whereas I barely see and never hear them while camping. You could argue there's less predation in cities, excepting coyotes are supposed to have widely colonized urban areas, and I myself regularly see hawks and hear owls at home. (In fact, the closest I ever got to a hawk was while it was consuming a squirrel in my front yard. So lack of predators can't be the reason the local rodents are so much more aggressive.)

Since the theory is that dogs and cats started domesticating themselves by associating with people, it doesn't seem that far-fetched to suggest that someday, squirrels or raccoons could become domesticated. (Especially if we biohacked the process by identifying the genetic changes that would predispose these animals—after all, if in a few decades foxes could acquire the floppy ears, curly tails and spotted coat patterns of domestic dogs strictly for breeding them for tameness, what with the leaps and bounds of genetic engineering, it doesn't seem that far-fetched to identify the markers differentiating domesticated animals and then emphasize/insert/create them in other animals...)

But then of course the question becomes, but should we?

Not so very long ago there was a movement gaining some traction that we shouldn't even own already-domesticated animals such as cats and dogs, as pets. This more extreme position seems to have died down, but I note that pet owners are expected, at least in theory/ideally to do a lot more for their pets nowadays than, say, 50 years ago—I hardly ever see dogs in collars anymore, but instead in the less choking harnesses; it's far more common to spend hundreds, even thousands of dollars on medical care, and most of all is the more collaborative relationship being promulgated: providing plenty of enrichment with play, or developing more robust communication, as with buttons.

Under those parameters, I think the argument can be made that it's perfectly ethical to have a cat, dog or other domesticated animal in one's household. Frankly, I love those instagram posts where people excitedly show off their horse's desire to do do a fancy capriole move for the joy of it, or accept that today is not a riding day: they've given their horse the right to say no.

I s'pose what I'd like to see is a more collaborative relationship between the world, including its fauna, and us—bird feeders strike me as a classic example, and giving crows treats in exchange for picking up garbage (shiny things they tend to collect anyway) as a modern one, because in neither case is the animal coerced. In any event, behaviours encouraging us to see ourselves collaborating with the environment, alongside other living things, absolutely strikes me as the way to go.

That connection is indeed something to be very thankful for.

And speaking of cats and dogs, here's a nice doggie;)

26nov2025

I'm now on the 4th or 5th or something round of the great office tidy, the part that moves all my 2D media—watercolours, gouache, acrylics, waaaay too many acrylic mediums and bottles of ink, conte crayons, coloured pencils, oil pastels, regular pastels, pastel pencils, water-soluable coloured crayons, charcoal, liquid graphite and solid ink (why yes, I buy this stuff the way the fashion conscious purchase clothes, or quilters & sewists fabrics, and after 40 years or so, it's kinda piled up) downstairs into the office, so that the desk upstairs can be re-purposed as a stringing area. But! I also have cluttersome tabs on the desktop, soooo sometimes my links take off on their own. (Cuzza social media always, always attempting to slurp up more attention, amirite?)

I tend to be leery of youtube's algorithm, cuz I don't wanna be sucked into ever more radical rabbit holes, but somehow or other —possibly because I was in the other room—I ended up listening to Jessica Kellgren-Fozard's Is Harry Potter Ableist? and really liked it. I realize most people have long since given up on Harry Potter because of the creator's transphobia (which oddly enough was the problem I addressed in my own HP fanfic, i.e. why aren't trans folk, let alone genderfluid people, switching sex as a matter of course, years before she made it such an issue) and racism (also an element in my story), but it never occurred to me to have such fun stuff as magical wheelchairs or other cool aids, which Kellgren-Fozard mentions in passing as issues addressed by disabled fanfic authors.

I really liked hearing about this fresh (to me) take on Harry Potter, and recommend her perspective highly. She also has a bunch of links from other points of view, a couple of which I've already seen, enjoyed, and can recommend:

• Contrapoints, and of course
• Lindsay Ellis (part of her Death of an Author series, also highly recommended—well, just about anything by this author, really)
• Shaun's, while not on the list, is also good:)

Two of the new ones I sampled were Kat Blaque's and Lily Thompson's brief look at Harry Potter, at a mere 10 hours long. I bailed at five, not because I wasn't finding it entertaining but because I disagree so strongly with one of the creator's most staunchly held beliefs, that the Law of Secrecy, the maguffin that allows the speshul wizarding community to exist secretly alongside the mundanes, needs to be abolished, & her constant beating on that drum just wore me out.

This comes out of how much readers are willing to give conventions a pass—HP is a modern faery tale/fantasy from a child's POV, hence the incredibly evil foster parents, lack of psychological damage from their abuse, horrendous lack of oversight and safety at Hogwarts (though I had to make my headmaster analogue a villain to get that to work properly) —all hallmarks of classic faery tales or other kid fantasies, and drawing the line is a bit different for everyone. (Think of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia stories, for another example of how the universe really doesn't hang together, once you start thinking about it—100 years of winter, what did everyone eat?!) —And while both Simpson and I are aware of these conventions, I'm clearly more willing to accept them.

The thing is that while one can set up a universe with all these appalling social defaults, (say, to provide something for the characters to strive against) that doesn't mean you as author have to valorize them. I mean, I can kind of see how a European-descent white lady (ahem) might write a story full of sexism, racism, fatphobia, ableism, queer-baiting and the like (at least, till fans started writing in and pointing out these problems, at which point, you know, apologies and efforts to improve are the order of the day) but practically from the get go, the underlying rule of this universe is might makes right—thus, because Harry and friends are the heroes, it's okay for them to —just to cite a particularly horrifying example—obliviate their foes, or even their parents.

So the question then is, why? For the youtubers, a generation younger, who grew up with HP, it's a sentimental part of their childhood. For me, it generated lots—lots and lots and lots—of interesting critiques in the form of fanfic, and I enjoy that sort of thing. And finally, as I alluded yesterday, there are a lot of really juicy world-building details: not only are the adults’ power subverted (as is the case in all good faery tales) but the world focuses on kid-appealing elements—lovingly described wands, or cool classifications (the Houses, each with their own color scheme, totem animal, founder, motto and ostensible philosophy), all the differing brands of brooms, the lovingly described and delicious food (for which the kids can absolutely choose, with no veggies nor indeed parental oversight to require your eating them). What lovely wish-fulfillment! but also, and I think crucially, a dollop of garbage pail kids style grossness. Remember those? And the moral panic by parents?

I do.

I mean, think about the snot flavoured jellybeans that russian-roulette the tastier flavours, Hagrid's blast ended screwts, the spells that do disgusting things to the kids (losing one's arm bones is one of the less horrid that springs to memory) —and all played for consequence-free laughs because the text mostly justifies this stuff as ‘just the way things are’. Rowling's special magic is a gift for transmuting the real world's ills into an enticing alternate universe in which the pain is explained—or magicked—away.

So, whilst all we complainers are spoiling the fun worrying about the ethics of turning objects into living creatures (or worse, turning porcupines into pincushions) or chopping up mandrake roots that are real little people while they scream in agony, or angsting over the fact that house-elves are literal slaves (never mind the habit of some families of mounting their heads on the wall like trophies, iccckkkkkkk) or—or—or...kids can just focus on the surface delights and disgusts of these vivid details.

And that, I believe, is why so many people find Harry Potter compelling.

Why I found it compelling. Had I read it as a child, I suspect I would've found bits mildly...unsettling on a subconscious level; even as an adult, it can take awhile (or others’ critiques) before I figure out why something is problematic. As it happens, I didn't read HP till I was an adult, and by that time I had enough experience with the genre to find it mildly entertaining, but nothing extraordinary: this essay is basically, why yes, HP has lots of problems, but here's why I think kid-me (& all the people who far more deeply mourning the loss or attempting to figure out how to ethically enjoy it) liked it in the first place.

In effect, I'm pushing back—just gently, I hope!—against the very valid critiques (because no-one who doesn't love HP makes a 10 hour video about its flaws)—as to why folks , even now, get sucked in.

Speaking of old media, have a link to some mixed media featuring the Met's splendid (and, come to think, rather HP-esque) Cloisters.

25nov2025

So today I thought I would treat y'all to a sort of ‘Goldilocs and the 3 Bears’ set of reviews of three romantasies, which are like fantasy, except geared towards the romance instead of the sf&f market, cuz I guess too many romance readers think sf&f is full of sexist asshats? Which to be fair, there was that sad/rabid puppy kerfluffle, but then women dominated the hugos (sf&f's big award); or mebbe folks looking for sexy fluff are just not in the mood for big, challenging stuff, which to be honest has been my problem all too often of late. N.K. Jemisin's three-peat hugo award winning trilogy Broken Earth is splendid, but, like J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, while I'm super glad I read it, I don't know that I'll ever reread it, and neither is what I'd consider a comfort read (that's just for me, though, serious readers can and do totally reread both these giants of the fantasy genre).

This is looooooooong, so here's the teal deer:

1. Kimberly Lemming's That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf—sweet, consensual (and non racist) porn for those who like their erotic fiction leavened with character development and plot;
2. Travis Baldree's Bookshops & Bonedust—porn free! sweet story of a laid-up orc helping a discouraged shop owner rebuild her book business, just distressingly ignorant of book fantasy's tropes about consequences. Otherwise a charming comfort read (and special kudos for all four of the main characters being female, especially by a male author);
3. Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape a Dragon's Breath: ah, finally, my sweet spot. The elevator pitch for this would be, what if a Native author wrote her take on Naomi Novik's Temeraire series with a dash of Harry Potter/Hogwarts thrown in, minus that author's bigotries against women and minorities. Still very readable, but not quite as fluffy as the other two; bonus points for a very cool aneurotypical character!

So! First up (this is the order in which I read these, btw) we have Kimberly Lemming's That Time I Got Drunk and Yeeted a Love Potion at a Werewolf, which I checked from the library cuz it looked like a cute, sweet romance, which indeed it is. There were a lot of things I liked, such as a protag of colour as a matter of fact (you'd hardly know this but for the cover and a comment about hair care half way through the story—this is that, ‘it's not the focus, just something the character is, cuz not every book has to go all angsty on the inequalities of the world’), the consent—in fact, much of the relationship revolves around issues of consent, because the characters like each other from the get-go, but because of the love potion of the title (and I love the influence of those absurdly long titles from Japanese light novels, which honestly, this kind of seems the same...?) the female protag is concerned the potioned werewolf is under the influence.

I do wish there'd been more background. Brie (groooooaaan) is a cheesemonger and the object of her interest is lactose intolerant, and that joke is it for her profession's relevance to the story—I wanted to know more about her career. Frex, there are vegan cheesemongers in NYC that are attempting to replicate the complex fermentation processes using vegan, instead of dairy, sources, and I would've loved to have seen a magical take on this. I don't even recall what the male protag's profession was, besides being a werewolf—sailor, mebbe? (Which if he were, how were they gonna feel about long separations?) Not to mention, they're different species, that's a lot of negotiation between quite differing cultures, but while we do get some interaction between the female protag and her friends (one of whom starred in the first book of the series, and yes, mebbe I would've liked this more if I'd started with that...) we don't really see the matrix of the male characters. (Come to think, I guess he's part of a cohort on a ship magically blown into to the women characters’ part of the world...?)

Anyway. Those are nits.

My biggest issue was with the porn to plot ratio. Papa Bear's bed was too hard (ahem). This book had too much porn, not enough story. To be sure, there is a plot, I just got frustrated plowing through all the sex scenes to get to it. That said, the author seems to be having some fun here: sex scenes are sexy, and nicely and inventively written, if you're into that sort of thing (my fave was the knot, which IIRC is a real thing in dogs, hence my justification about differing species) but this is basically an erotic novel with enough plot and character development to leaven the sexy bits. I think one or two sexy scenes over the course of a romance, to illustrate the developing relationship of the couple, is about my limit, (&, not to be spoilsport, honestly my ideal?) so this was waaaaay too much for me and I finally skipped to the end/DNF.

But if you're looking for super-spicy with consent, plot, and sweet characters, this might just be the book for you. The covers (both versions) are cute too:)

Next up: Mama bear's bed is just too soft—given my complaints the desk clerk at the library recommended Travis Baldree, specifically Bookshops & Bonedust, which is second in his Legends & Lattes series (that being the first, though Bookshops is actually a prequel to it.) No sex! she promised, and indeed this is basically in the ‘kisses’ category, with a bit of hugging and stroking, so no complaints there.

The characters are well drawn, and the author deserves real kudos for the secondary characters, also nicely developed, particularly the mooching, selfish goblin who nevertheless helps save the day, or the super sweet homunculus (though his backstory could admittedly used a bit more development.)

But the lack of consequences! I actually had attempted this book before (it's available DRM free on Kobo, and the wizard bought it) but I stalled when the protag, an undead-skeleton slaughtering orc, decides along with the titular bookshop rattkin (awwww, sweet rats;) owner to resurrect a powerful, evil mage's bag of bones. No, no, no, are you people out of your ever-loving minds?!?

I mean, I get it—the orc character is big, brawny, young, and extremely impulsive, which is how she comes to be laid up in this backwater town while her leg heals up from an injury basically resulting in not following orders. Because I promised the librarian assistant I would read the book, I pushed past my discomfort, and liked the way the author resolved this point. But!

The trio of main characters—orc, rattkin, and dwarven baker love interest—also end up with one of those bags of holdings, also courtesy of the big bad, and Ms Orc decides to appropriate a giant sword—which of course tips off the evil wizard, to whom it currently belongs. This sword clearly had a bad rep even before it was acquired, as it's called Black Blood (or the like, I'm too lazy to look it up) which immediately flashed me on the classic evil sword, Stormbringer, Elric of Melnibone's blade that had to drink blood (i.e. kill someone) once it was drawn.

However, though Ms Orc has a few bad dreams, that's it. No other consequences for stealing this thing—wizard doesn't use her connection to make Our Hero insane, trap the entire group, or anything else particularly dire. I mean, eventually Evil Wizard shows up, but by then, our trio has come up with a plan to deal with her. Again, I liked the resolution of the main climax—it's a refreshing subversion of the great loner bashing the big bad with mighty magical swordfighting—but my overall impression was that the author, while clearly familiar with tropes in video games (I presume, he did that for a living for a decade or more) the origins of these tropes (to be found in, um, books) seemed to have passed him by.

It's rather weird, to see stuff I read as a matter of course when young now mostly erased by the sands of time. Bujold talks about genre as a ‘conversation’, and acknowledgement of genre tropes, such as the evil wizard whomping your ass for messing with their stuff, or the downsides of bonding with evil magical swords, was just entirely absent, and seemingly nearly consequence free. It bugged me. Find a cool thing, keep a cool thing, despite its evil origins. Sorry, folks, that's not how evil works...

When I pointed out these issues, the person recommending the book kept apologizing, and I could not seem to convince her, that actually, I liked the book—enough to actually think about it, and read the first book in the series! But she couldn't be swayed: I had criticisms, therefore the book was unacceptable. (Sigh.) Very fun, charming fantasy/romantasy with good character development, vivid plotting, both with the big bad, but also the slow revitalization of the moldering bookshop, interspersed with lots of very sweet interactions about recommending favourite books, so of course it's gonna appeal to people in libraries or a half-century history of reading sf&f.

So finally we get to my third choice, the just-right Moniquill Blackgoose's To Shape a Dragon's Breath, book 1 in her Nampeshiweisit series. If Naomi Novik's Temeraire alternate history series featuring a draconic air force during the Napoleonic Wars is a cross between Anne McCaffrey's Dragons of Pern and Patrick O'Brien's seafaring Aubrey-Maturin novels with a touch of Jane Austen thrown in, (all whilst attempting to subvert the sexism, colonialism and racism rife in stories of that era) then Blackgoose's first book in her Nampeshiweisit series could be thought of a variation on that theme, as it's told from the point of view of Anequs of the Masquisit people, whose lands, customs, even the people themselves are under threat by the Angle and Viking colonialists.

Written by a member of the Seaconke Wampanoag Tribe, Anequs, in addition to all usual challenges of having to train and tame an infant creature whose breath can render everything around it to ash, must cope with racism, ‘nice white people’ in the form of her roommate, family who question her decision to learn from whites how (magically) to shape her dragon's breath at an academy—shades of Harry Potter, except without all the horrid bigotries being valorized by the author. As with the second book, there are indeed romance subplots (two of them, actually) but the focus is on navigating (sorry...) a school where she's unaware of the many unspoken rules and conventions, and absolutely determined to resist being assimilated into white culture.

I thought it the most successful in terms of character development as driven by environment, and the protagonist's distrust and disgust of her land's occupiers is unsurprisingly very authentically depicted, as are the compromises she's forced to make in order to survive. That is not to say the book isn't readable or appealing—I devoured it, staying up till two in the morning to finish it, which I haven't done in a long, long long time.

Strictly speaking, this book is just fantasy, rather than ‘romantasy’, despite the romantic subplots; so it's perfect for lovers of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar, Naomi Novik's Temeraire or even Harry Potter or other magical school stories. I will say that, Harry Potter, despite its many, many problems is vivid in its details (e.g. the wands, or potions, or money, or clothes or magical creatures) in a way most other stories simply can't duplicate—so for Dragon's Breath I wanted to know more about spells to shape the dragons’ breath, or the shape of the circle dances of Masquisit (which play an important part in the plot).

Those are nits, however. The next book is due out in just two more months, and I'm really looking forward to it. And oh yes, speaking of waiting, here's that braid I started over a year ago, in Japan.

24nov2025

At last, my flash, flash trigger, and camera are all working together again, so I celebrated by photographing some kumihimo, which had the advantage of being much easier to shoot than transparent and/or shiny reflective glass bead jewelry (especially earrings, ugh, which ideally have to be hung from nearly invisible monofilament). But hey, at least now I can photograph jewelry again, though I expect it will take awhile to remember how.

In the meantime, nice opaque, matte textiles. Yay. Enjoy.

20nov2025

So today is the Day of Trans Remembrance, which is different from the March 31 International Day of Trans Visibility, in that the former is a memorial, whereas the latter is a more celebratory holiday.

I fail utterly to understand why the average cis person finds trans people, who are a tiny minority, so scary, but the most interesting comment I encountered over gender affirming care is that cis (non trans) folks get gender affirming care all the time—breast reconstruction after cancer, for example, or even cosmetic breast enhancement in terms of commonplace surgery, or the steroids that bodybuilders and other elite athletes frequently take on the hormone side. Minoxidil (let alone viagra) also spring to mind as typically male related gender affirming care.

Until I encountered this comparison, I tended to think of the one as ‘gender affirming care’, a trans thing, versus stuff regular people do to make themselves look and feel better. But really, there's not a whole lotta difference, is there?

(Perhaps the most extreme gender affirming care I've heard of is leg lengthening, a process which sounds like it puts any surgeries or hormones used by trans folk to utter shame with regard to pain and expense. Though I suppose trans folk could also do this, but because they're such a tiny part of the population this procedure is typically performed on cis men.)

I admit I can't help feeling that striped flowers kind of fit with today's theme, not least because they can—and do—revert to one colour or the other. Today's example is shima nishiki tree peonies in the original red and white; mine, while still striped (because I keep removing any branches that produce solid coloured flowers) are more of a magenta than red, like the type shown here.

17nov2025

I was all set to do something different this week, say, studio photography of some (relatively) recent kumi. Got the new flash trigger, looked up the strobist site, paired trigger with my godox flash, got it working, mounted the flash on the tripod to start testing it with the camera...

...and promptly cracked the plastic housing on the flash hotshoe contact.

Fortunately, godox does make a replacement part for twenty bucks, so back to B&HPhoto I went to order it. In a perfect world I suppose I could complain about that plastic housing, but a) godox seems (from comments on the intertubes I did not pursue) to have fixed it in later models b) they offer a metal replacement and c) let's be real here, this is a cheap alternative to the brand name flash (which moreover has way more manual controls, which is why strobist recommends it, besides cost).

I really was pleased to be able to (potentially) repair this thing so easily—nothing like the effort the wizard expended to fix my trigger, let alone replacing the battery on his phone, for which he ordered a kit from ifixit, and involves, if I understand correctly, taking a heat gun to the phone (and this is rated a ‘medium difficulty(!)’ repair)...

So. Have another little doodle. At least it's a cute cat.