Weeknotes, 14 June 2024

We’ve finally resolved the decision part of the “somewhat contentious technical architecture decision that needs making”: all good, and with many compliments on my presentation. I really love how supportive and friendly and nurturing my team — and everyone I’ve met with — is at the English Department for Education. Now on to implementation planning. Also, some AI/LLM work coming up that needs planning, and I’ve been giving thought to how best to make the web app we’re building work well for the content designers, which are some conversations that I’ve especially enjoyed. I do like being someone who people can come to with their problems and being able to say “so, would it help if we did this and this?” I’m definitely struggling with fitting in work around all the meetings, mind.

Another reminder from previously,

Given that I’m cosplaying a Grade 6 civil servant in the English civil service, that means I’m “politically restricted”, so I’m not allowed to engage in “any participation in national political activities”, so I’m actually gonna have to stfu about politics for a few weeks.

The CSLGBT+ May Social and the South Wales Gay Men’s Chorus’s annual concert “Lights! Camera! Slay!” were both amazing, but somewhere in that weekend (probably the bus home) I picked up Covid. Which was less fun. 0/10, do not recommend.

Though I did at least get to watch a bunch of films and TV in between dozing. Apparently my Pride Month theme is messy-as-fuck queers. The watchlist so far:

• Lost Boys and Fairies, a 3-part miniseries on queer shame and queer trauma, in the context of an m/m couple looking to adopt. Fra Fee and Siôn Daniel Young were amazing, as were Elizabeth Berrington and Arwel Gruffydd; also it was so good to see a drama on primetime BBC1 that was bilingual, with a good quantity of the dialogue in Welsh. (Though I wish the club “Neverland” actually existed here in Cardiff; I would definitely go!)

• Femme, messier and more trigger-warning-needing than some of the others, but our protagonist is a Black drag performer in London, who gets queerbashed. While very much not processing the trauma, he spots his attacker in a sauna and starts considering how to serve his revenge.

• Passages, the very sexy Franz Rogowski plays Tomas, a German filmmaker married to Ben Whishaw’s Martin, both based in Paris. He starts an affair with Agathe, played by Adèle Exarchopoulo, which makes him realise quite how much of a chaos bisexual he is and quite how little he knows what he actually wants.

• We Collide, a gorgeous 90-second short blurbed as “a queercore romance: a visceral and immersive exploration of the power of the mosh pit and finding love in the most unlikely of places”. It won the BM Filmmaking Challenge at the 67th BFI London Film Festival, whose judges included Ncuti Gatwa and mentorship from Michaela Coel, which director Jason Bradbury and actors Max Thomas and Jerome Scott were super excited about in interviews 😅 No mess in this one, but Max Thomas is a trans talent to watch and I also look forward to see what else comes from Scott and Bradbury in the future.

• Down Low. The premise of this (very) dark comedy is repressed newly-out 40something (Zachary Quinto) and the sex-worker masseur he finally found the courage to call (Lukas Gage) try to work out how to deal with the accidental death of the Grindr hookup they invited over. Wonderfully ridiculous; I was laughing all the way through.

So now I need recommendations of more messy-queer representation I need to watch. Lemme know on social media (links in footer) if you have suggestions!

Covid meant that I missed the Cardiff Central Library queer book club discussing In Memoriam, which I’m properly gutted about. There’s plenty to content-note in that novel, but I did enjoy it.

Working my way through the Hugos pack still; I’ve read all bar one of the novelettes and all bar one of the short stories — love them all there, but the two Naomi Kritzer works (Best Novelette finalist “The Year Without Sunshine” and Best Short Story finalist “Better Living through Algorithms”) are glorious optimistic views on how we can better survive the bad times, which is always catnip for me.

I’ve got a little further into Vajra Chandrasekera’s novel-finalist The Saint of Bright Doors but I definitely need to get a wriggle on if I’m gonna read 4 novels, 4 novellas, a novelette, a short story, 6 Best Graphic Story or Comic finalists and the 1 Best Related Work in the pack, all before 20 July. (Also: watch 流浪地球2 / The Wandering Earth II, the whole film of which was included (!!), and read the script for Across the Spider-Verse, script but no film 😢) For those of you now tempted to join the WSFS, this year feels a particularly generous pack, with evaluation codes for 4 of the 6 Best Game nominees too!

Unrelated to the Hugos, the Epic Games store currently has a 40% discount on The Expanse: A Telltale Series and on its Avasarala bonus episode “Archangel”, so I’m looking forward to playing those some soon.

Right, back to some tech…