ugh, sleep backwards

peels isn't a sleep related word though

um, I mean, I went to sleep around 0800 and got up around 1600 and that's kind of counterproductive
but the only way I've ever found to fix this is to keep going to bed later and getting up later
and in the meantime treat the awake time like a day.

so, onwards.

todays dreams were not a coherent plot. I remember the part where I was stuck in teh house from when I was 8, looking across what used to be fields, to the somehow much more desirable new housing development, with a ground floor flat. If I'm going to get dreams I prefer the adventure ones to the ones where I'm frustrated about broadly the same things I'm frustrated about awake.

There was also another part where I and 7 other people representing potential selves were gathered around a picnic table. I'd set out from the old house but only got as far as the picnic table in the garden before highly symbolic stuff waylaid me. So there was like a seamstress who could sew doll clothes and also had the most best dress and so forth, and there was a knitter who looked less elegant but much warmer, and then there were two of Clint Barton, one in a MIB suit and one in shirt sleeves with a police badge tucked in the front of his belt. So then I got all eyeroll-y about my options, because I'd tried being an Agent of SHIELD and after two years they told me I never was an agent really and I should just quit play acting and go home. And then Black Widow and Hawkeye appeared solely to make these really raised eyebrow WTF faces and like sympathise.


So I don't know what my 7 realist alternatives to being this version of me are, but in dreams two of them are Clint Barton, and they all look much better in their own outfits.


... it's kind of like waking up with a bad taste in your mouth, only it's the taste of having made all your choices already.

... ugh.



Okay, I'll go read, this is depressing.

Dune

So I started reading Dune
because when I looked at that whole section of shelf I was just, like, ugh
but it has been a while since I read them.

But then the setup is that there's this whole order of knowledgeable powerful women with pretty much superpowers and did I mention power? But what is their whole goal?
To make a guy with the powers
who can really show them how it's done.

Ugh.




And I mean, it's an interesting and vivid 'verse so far, got layers, has actual plural women, they even have significant conversations together, it Bechdel passes so much better than the stack of books I've read recently, it has many good points, and I know many people kind of worship the things...
... but ugh.

I just don't want to like them, somehow.



So if I don't like it by the end of the book, all the Dune books are going, no problem
somebody somewhere will read them.


But, like, why so ugh? When I am identifying good points?

I don't know.

Though I already find it tedious that women are only women if there's a reason to be women. Like, there's a scene with random soldiers, introduced as soldiers, no pronouns. So naturally I imagine a mixed group. But no, because the next thing said about them is that they'll want to know if 'their women' got there safe, and that the planet has more women than men.

... ugh?

And Lady Jessica has many good points but thus far she has mostly been fussing about how her Duke won't marry her, and she never gets invited to meetings, which don't have any women at them.

How does space future have such garbage background sexism?

Like every time I think a crowd scene has women in it the story just shuts down that possibility.



Also I'm already epic tired of this Chosen One bullshit narrative. Being a good Duke isn't about being secretly the first boy bene gesserit and a super special mentat and the smartest guy in the room. Being a good leader is about assembling a bunch of people who individually excel in their specialities, and preferably are far better than you at them, but you have the knack of making their work fit together towards a common goal. You don't need to be super special, let alone all the kinds of special at once. You just need to know what your people want and how to organise them to get it.



It's like the book is one giant :eyeroll: but wrapped in some actually good writing?
Ugh.