Sumana

Saw Captain Marvel. I enjoyed approximately all the same things that, for instance, yasaman did, but ... the moments of enjoyment did not add up to me being glad about the time and money I'd spent. I decided on the way home that I'm stepping off the MCU treadmill. I am aiming to not see Avengers: Endgame in theaters, and am noting this here as a bit of pre-commitment.

The MCU has structural problems that are just not going to go away. In particular, writers and directors have to connect up what's happening in a single movie with innumerable other future projects. And it also has structural constraints that stop it from being what I'm looking for in my entertainment right now. It's meant for children to watch and thus the movies never get as complex or experimental as movies for adults do; the movies are "action" movies full of unrealistic violence; practically every movie is about superheroes rather than thinkers, families, systems, etc.

About four years ago I was so intrigued by "Hey Ho" by thuviaptarth that I dove into the fandom and watched the extant MCU movies. And I got a bunch out of that! But it feels like the marginal returns are diminishing, and I'm going to cut my losses.

Several things I recommended during Worldcon just now:

• Hamilton: An American Musical, and my Tor.com piece on it which discusses how it uses history and why scifi fans are into it
  
• The contemporary and historical romance novels of Courtney Milan
  
• The Indian comic book company Amar Chitra Katha
  
• thingwithwings's Captain America fanfic Known Associates
  
• The BBC historical fiction TV series Indian Summers about 1930s India under British occupation
  
• Mary Anne Mohanraj's short story "Jump Space" and Ken Liu's short story "Single-Bit Error", both of which appeared in the anthology Thoughtcrime Experiments which my spouse Leonard Richardson & I co-edited & co-published in 2009 (Mohanraj has since written a novel in this same universe, and Liu has in multiple interviews called the publication of "Single-Bit Error" a key turning point for his career; "Single-Bit Error" has since been reprinted)
  
• The Archive Of Our Own, a repository for fanworks (such as fanfiction)
  
• Laura Shapiro's critical fanvid "Only A Lad" which critiques the "bad boy woobie" trope
  
• bironic's Ancillary Justice book trailer
  
• The upcoming NASA biopic film Hidden Figures
  
• Benjamin Rosenbaum's blog post about translation of speculative fiction, including several statistics and a link to a directory of translators on the Society of Authors site
  
• The comic book Ms. Marvel
  
• Greg Milner's history of audio engineering Perfecting Sound Forever
  
• Angelica Gorodischer's Kalpa Imperial (translated from Spanish by Ursula K. Le Guin) (I didn't finish this book -- I think it's good but I need to give it another go and finish it)
  
• Andreas Eschbach's The Carpet Makers (translated from German) (championed by Orson Scott Card)
  
• Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad and other works (translated from Polish)
  
• "Let Us Now Praise Awesome Dinosaurs" (a short story about gun-toting, motocross-driving dinosaurs from Mars) and Constellation Games (a novel about video games, programming, and first contact with aliens), both by my spouse, Leonard Richardson
  
• The Member Assistance Fund, financial aid to help people attend WisCon, a feminist science fiction convention that happens in Madison, Wisconsin that happens in late May every year (Memorial Day weekend)
  
• The Tiptree Award for speculative fiction that explores gender -- recommend works now for the jury to consider, and buy books and T-shirts
  
• Michael Lopp's line that art is "the documentation of a thousand interesting decisions".
  
• Hari Kondabolu, an Indian-American stand-up comic whose work I enjoy
  
• The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl written by Ryan North, who also makes Dinosaur Comics
  
• "Cat, Dog, and Badger Each Own A Bookstore. They Are Friends." and "Quill & Scroll" (art in the latter by Brendan Adkins), my two children's book zines about animals who run bookstores
  
• Dan Slott's run on She-Hulk
  
• Joss Whedon's run on Runaways
  
• The Catwoman arc written by Genevieve Valentine
  
• Ta-Nehisi Coates's work writing Black Panther
  
• Kelly Sue DeConnick's work writing Bitch Planet (and the fact that she is one of the guests of honor for next year's WisCon)
  
• Beeminder, a service that helps you stick with habits
  
• !!Con, a conference about the joy, surprise, and delight of programming, and Katie Bechtold's !!Con talk "Code in Spaaaaaace!!!!!" about the constraints (physical, financial, and more) that affect how we write software for space-bound hardware
  
• Gordon Korman, Canadian author of books for children & young adults
  
• Kate Beaton's historical webcomic Hark! A Vagrant
  
• lionpyh's fanfic short story "Fifty Years in the Virtuous City"
  
• The Viable Paradise and Clarion writers' workshops for people who want to improve their skills at writing scifi/fantasy (I haven't been to either of these but I hear they are good)
  
• Changeset Consulting, the company I started that provides short-term project management and maintainership services for free and open source software projects and for companies that depend on them
  
• My past talks and stand-up comedy (and recordings, notes, and transcripts when available)
  
• Saravana Bhavan, an Indian restaurant in New York City
  
• TKTS, a set of kiosks to help you get cheap same-day tickets to live theater in New York City
  
• Free or cheap sightseeing in NYC: the Roosevelt Island tram and the Staten Island Ferry
  
• Dale Carnegie's self-help book How To Win Friends and Influence People, which changed my life when I read it in 10th grade
  

I had a very good time at Worldcon and am recovering now.