"Phantom Pain" - Imzadi fic

Ever since I watched "The Host" (the Odan episode, where Riker volunteers his body to host a Trill parasite, and Beverly happens to be in love with that Trill...) I've had a detailed outline for a coda in my WIP folder. It sort of ties "First Contact" and "The Host" together -- and I also had detailed outlines for a separate "First Contact" coda, and for "The Pegasus" as well.

Every day I hunt through my outlines for something to write. Usually it's a multichap, "Odysseus to Telemachus" or "Noli Me Tangere" -- but if you work on a multichap every day for a week, then you really feel the itch to write something short and self-contained as a break. Only every time I checked these codas, I still liked the ideas, they just didn't strike me as fun. Finally yesterday the inspiration struck for "The Host" and I managed to pound out a 7K oneshot!

(That brings me up to 9K for the whole day, counting the two chaps I wrote for Odysseus -- really pleased with that!)

I don't know if anyone is interested in a Troi/Riker hurt/comfort fic, but I figured I'd pimp it here too just in case, because I'm really happy with it -- same with the Thomas Riker & Will Riker gen fic from Sunday, but I know that one's a tough sell even within the TNG fandom 😆 You can read The Host coda, Phantom Pain, here.

89 Perfect Short Films and Novels

Loved this list!

Among the books, they've listed some of my all-time favorites: Wide Sargasso Sea, A Month in the Country, The Bookshop. And in movies, I adore Wicker Man. Gotta check out the rest on this list.

Not That Bad - Roxanne Gay review

Well, I finished "Not That Bad", a selection of essays on rape edited by Roxanne Gay ... and despite my optimism, I'd have to give it 2/5 stars, max.

I did like Roxanne Gay when I first read her, but over time, she's become synonymous with a certain brand of feminism that rubs me the wrong way, and seems to be embraced by a specific flavor of person: cis, straight, white, wealthy, "woke", and mean as hell. The sort of privileged person who uses wokeness as a bludgeon to bully anyone they deem as lesser -- and who they deem "lesser" has some startling similarities to who racists and homophobes deem "lesser". This is not to say Roxanne Gay is herself privileged or that any of those descriptors apply to her; just that her writing seems to speak to a group of people I want nothing to do with, even though they claim to hold the same values as me.

Because this book is just edited by Gay, not written by her, I was eager to give it a chance. The subject material especially drew me in. Here's the review I wrote up for Goodreads:

 

( Cut for rape discussion, undetailed )