I write science fiction, draw, paint, photobash, do woodworking, and dabble in 2d videogames design. Big fan of reducing waste, and of building community

https://jacobcoffinwrites.wordpress.com

@jacobcoffin@writing.exchange

  • 13 Posts
  • 34 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 5th, 2023

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  • On an old raspberry pi 3b, a copy of a blog by one of my favorite writers (the original is long gone and was never archived, I happened to grab a copy with wget when it came back up briefly) so I can read it when I’m on my home network. And a pi hole dns adblocker.

    I’m hoping to set up some kind of media system for streaming eventually, but we currently use a PS4 as our media center and it doesn’t look like our options for compatibe apps are great.

    I’d definitely like to get a local Mealie instance going in the next year



  • I would! It’s early, and I don’t think it was made to be cyberpunk. But the themes are there - the small blue-collar crew contrasted with the absurdly powerful corporation, and the distrust between them. The way the company casually turns their ship against them. And the aesthetics are there - Alien was one of the films that set the standard for used future aesthetics. I’d say cyberpunk for me is a mix of themes and aesthetics, but I’m good with including settings as well - the world of Alien and Aliens is cyberpunk, and I’m okay with calling a story set in it cyberpunk as long as it has some of the other elements. I don’t think I require the characters to be punks, I’d say a lot of cyberpunk characters aren’t.








  • When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger is a kind of complicated recommendation for this. It features I think the most trans characters I’ve ever seen in one book, the main character’s girlfriend and most of their acquaintances are trans, and the story treats them decently as people with jobs and lives outside of that part of their identity. The problem, if it is one, is that they’re all sex workers. I can’t remember any trans character in the book who isn’t. This fits the story decently as they’re all living in the Budayeen, the entertainment and criminal quarter of an unnamed Middle-Eastern city, the only place where they, and small-time criminals like the protagonist, can exist with a minimum of hassle. But there’s some complicated history and pop-cupture entanglements around being trans and being a sex worker (and the limited other roles historically available to them) which might change how audiences read this forty years later. I honestly have no idea. I quite liked the book, it’s weird in places (for other reasons) but that’s what I read cyberpunk for, and it has a bunch of awesome cyberpunk concepts, a unique setting, and some creative misuses of technology.

    I think the Gibson short story Johnny Mnemonic or Burning Chrome has a pair of guards, one of whom is trans, but it’s clearly been awhile since I read it. Gibson’s Sprawl books all had a kind of fascination with extending cosmetic surgery past sex and race, so it comes up in passing occasionally.