sdani

Karina Ahmed's parents have gone to Bangladesh for a month to visit family, leaving her with her grandmother, her younger brother, and the class "bad boy" (he wears a leather jacket) she's supposed to be tutoring in English, if he ever shows up.

In this, I think Bhuiyan wrote the book she needed—a dutiful brown girl finds a rich white Tumblr-therapy speaking boyfriend and the courage to defy her parents—and I hope it finds the readers who need it. The story is moving and the romance is sweet, though the prose often reads as unpracticed and the romance eventually devolves into saccharine cliches with Ace (his name is Ace) saying things like "you've stolen my heart" and "you're the brightest star here" which dulls its originality and makes Ace the most supportive, considerate, loving, patient, woke, rich white teenage boy in all of New York City, which was a bit hard to swallow. It's 100% wish fulfillment and I'm 100% cool with that, but it made Ace and the actual dating the least satisfying part of this for me. Instead, I was most interested in Karina's struggle to figure out what she wanted from her life and whether or not she could stand up to her parents and ask for it. The family dynamics are well drawn and I was invested in Karina and her relationship with her parents, her brother, her grandma, and her many, many cousins.

Features:

• a Muslim Bangladeshi-American teenager
• teenage poetry
• fake dating
• a kick-ass Dadu (grandma)
• the unconditional love of two OTT best friends
• depictions of anxiety
• controlling parents

Finally, also from my drafts, and the last in my irregular series from 2020-2024 of watching stuff, The Twilight Zone, on DVD from the library:

Jordan Peele and Simon Kinberg (IMDb says: A British film producer, director, and screenwriter known for producing the X-Men films, Fant4stic, Logan, the Deadpool films, Cinderella, and The Martian) reboot the Twilight Zone. The stories are twisty, thought provoking, and intense, reproducing the original show's vibe and big name guest stars, while also adding diversity and confronting modern social issues like racism, sexism, and colonialism. I could only comfortably watch one episode at a time, and sometimes only uncomfortably. "Replay" was particularly effective in the way it portrayed the threat that police pose for Black people in America and I found it to be very tense. Other favorites from season one: "The Comedian," "A Traveler" (written by Glen Morgan of The X-Files's Morgan & Wong), and "Not All Men." But, as with any anthology, the stories are of varying quality and sometimes I spent the whole hour trying to divine the twist or decipher the in-universe rules because the show failed to make me interested in the characters or their problems. The season one finale, "Blurryman," was especially boring despite featuring my beloved Zazie Beetz.

I ended up I watching both seasons for completism rather than pleasure, with the second season a huge let down after the first. I briefly perked up for "8" about a remote science station doing deep sea research in Antarctica, all of that deeply my jam, starring Joel McHale's face, of which I am a big fan, but the rest of him is not so great at dramatic acting, and the episode itself was so flat I couldn't even care about what the twist meant for the fate of humanity. The standout in that season was easily "Try, Try" and its (correct) reading of Groundhog Day as romantic horror, as a woman is stalked and manipulated by Topher Grace in ways she couldn't possibly anticipate or defend against.

Condition Zebra

A Pod/Fic Collaboration! Fic by Punk. Podfic, audiobook, and cover by mific.

Fandom: Stargate Atlantis
Pairing: McKay/Sheppard
Rating: Teen, for swears
Content notes: No standard notes apply.

Size: 8,650 words and 1 hour

Summary: John Sheppard, reaching new heights of not seeing it coming.

Punk's notes: In 2013, mific and I agreed that it'd be cool if I wrote a fic for her to podfic. I did, but then a lot of life happened and eleven years passed before I was able to open it up again and edit it into shape with the help of panisdead. This story is much better because of her, and I'm so grateful for the time she put in across multiple betas. I'm also grateful for mific, who did a wonderful job with the podfic, as always, and that all three of us were still around to finish this project.

Title from my dad, who served on an aircraft carrier in the US Navy during the Vietnam War and told me about how "Set Condition Zebra throughout the ship" would come over the 1MC and all personnel would be expected to report to their assigned stations as quickly as practical to prepare the ship for combat.

In memory of ESS and SK.

mific's notes: When Punk reminded me about our plan to collaborate I was excited, and even more so after reading this excellent story. It's been enormous fun to podfic, both because the story itself is like the best of canon with added John and Rodney feels, and as Punk was open to features like sound effects. I've had a ball making the podfic and the cover art, and I hope you all love the story as much as I do.

Download or stream mific's podfic on AO3, where you can also read the fic, or stay put and read it here.

( Condition Zebra )

A/N: You can reblog this on Tumblr if you're feeling it, and if you want to know why Rodney was shouting about pigs, he was quoting Robert Heinlein: "Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig."