Galaxy: The Prettiest Star

Galaxy: The Prettiest Star is a graphic novel by Jadzia Axelrod and Jess Taylor. It's a joyful, colorful celebration of lines and active drawings; also, incidentally, it is a metaphor for trans-ness. The main character is a vivid alien princess, in disguise as a normal human highschool-age boy. There is also a playful supervisory robot corgi.

The story explores attempts to blend in at high school, experimenting with self-presentation, the malleability of friendships and social pressure and how high school feels very high-stakes. Plus there is a charming corgi! (I've recently met a corgi puppy who lives a few blocks away and is a charming ball of energy.)

The story is straightforward works really nicely. It holds up for me as a way to discuss masking, coming out, being yourself, and transition. Always feeling watched and surveilled on personal presentation. Some parts are definitely fantasy and I was left bemusedly trying to figure out if anything lined up with the secret radio transmissions, or the eternal space war.

This post's theme word is reck (n), "care or concern." The entire basketball team had little reck for the prom night dancing kerfuffle.

Quotes for the past year

 Accumulated on various scraps of paper, which apparently is my brain's preferred mode of operation.

D: "I'm not just a talking head for delivering CS and sarcasm."

D (during a lecture): "What do we know --- he asks rhetorically --- about the properties of cosine?"

A cool note that I'd never thought of, from D: "Testing only tells you if bugs are there. It can't guarantee that bugs are not there."

"We expect furniture to migrate... quite a bit, in my experience."

Grocery checkout clerk: "What's your maximum carry weight? ... are you shopping for an army?"

Me: It took 5 weeks, but we've run out of symbols. How do you feel about the Greek alphabet? Hebrew?

Student: Hmm.

Me: I sometimes use hieroglyphics. Stork times alpha!

Student: That's awful.

(conclusion: we used Greek, plenty of letters there)

This post's theme word is besom (n), "a bundle of twigs attached to a handle and used as a broom." The marketing department recommends that flying besoms be replaced by modern flying broomsticks.