ateolf | Network

Just finished: The Magic Words: Writing Great Books for Children and Young Adults by Cheryl B. Klein. I don't really have a lot to add: This was good and useful, especially if you're in the revision stage of a project, which I am not. It weirdly made me want to read a few of the books that it talks about as examples, though with my TBR list as it is and a general disinterest in YA literature, I likely won't.

Currently reading: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang. It's time, fuckos! I've had a hold on this one since I read a bad review of it. I have heard that Kuang often doesn't land her endings, which I hope is not the case, because this has one of the best openings I've come across in a good long time. It begins with Alice Law, a postgrad in linguistic magick, preparing a chalk circle to go to Hell to retrieve the soul of her recently dead advisor, Professor Grimes, because he's on her dissertation committee and is her only chance to get tenure. The cost for going to Hell and returning is half your remaining lifespan, but Alice is more than willing to pay that in exchange for having a stable job, making her possibly the most relatable character in genre fiction. Her plans are interrupted by Peter, her hated academic rival and the department's golden boy, who insists on coming with her even though his prospects for career advancement are much better than hers.

Anyway this is completely hilarious and painful and only an inconvenient need to work and sleep is keeping me from it at the moment.

clairaudient posting in

addme

Name: Rina.

Age: 41 years.

I mostly post about: My everyday life, my thoughts, the emotional turmoil I am going through day by day, music (A LOT OF MUSIC TALK; this is more than just something I am interested in, it really is my passion :D!), lyrics/quotes/etc references, movies & books (When I can), struggles in my psyche, career talk *__*, spirituality, and also sometimes politics. And generally: LOVE!

My hobbies are: Creative writing [poetry (that can often be used as lyrics later) and general fictional stories], crocheting [Ironically I struggle less with magic rings than just simple chains?! Oô], cycling [I would *LOVE* to travel to places by bike, too!], dancing [To express myself; influenced mainly by industrial dancing, hiphop, acrobatics, bellydance, jazz dance, etc. I usually do not like dancing with partners, though :P, and I would LOVE to try hoop and pole dance!], DIY, drawing & painting [No matter the canvas! Mainly portraits, seals (and other animals) and lots of surrealist influences!], knitting, learning foreign languages, learning new things, listening to music, martial arts, mixing and mastering knowledge acquisation ;D, photography, playing the electric guitar, playing the keyboard/piano, recording music, sewing, singing, songwriting [music & lyrics], spiritual practices [Tropical and Chinese astrology, tarot/cartomancy, numerology, palmistry, tossing witches runes, scrying, aura readings, etc.], travelling, watching movies.

My fandoms are: I do not really know whether this counts as "fandom", because, yes, there are e. g. bands and musicians I really like a lot, but then again, I am not really part of any true "fandoms"... Unless you count in platforms (Reddit, Discord, etc.) dedicated to the people in question... Either way, here is a (non-exhaustive) list, categorised a bit, though...
BOOKS - Alan And Naomi (M. Levoy), Antonio Im Wunderland (J. Weiler), Big Magic (E. Gilbert), Borderline Personality Disorder Demystified (R. O. Friedel), Die Kinder Erwachen (C. Polar), Hab Ich Selbst Gemacht (S. Klingner), Ich Geh Jetzt In Dein Karma Rein (B. Wagner), I'm Off Then (H. Kerkeling), Last Quarter (all; Ai Yazawa), Living Out Loud (K. Smith), Many Lives Many Masters (Dr. B. Weiss), Maria Ihm Schmeckt's Nicht (J. Weiler), Mort (T. Pratchett), Only Love Is Real (Dr. B. Weiss), Old Magic (M. Curley), Popular Music From Vittula (M. Niemi), Reasons To Stay Alive (M. Haig), Rebel Witch (K.-A. Maddox), Remix 1 (B. v. Stuckrad-Barre), Same Soul Many Bodies (Dr. B. Weiss), Show Your Work (A. Kleon), Steal Like An Artist (A. Kleon), The Dark (M. Curley), The Key (M. Curley), The Metamorphosis (F. Kafka), The Named (M. Curley), The Trial (F. Kafka), Yes Man (D. Wallace), You Are A Medium (S. Dillard), Your Head Is A Houseboat (C. Walker).
MOVIES - A Clockwork Orange, Amadeus, Animalympics, Anne Frank's Diary, A Time To Kill, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Back To The Future (all), Bandits, Beetlejuice, Billy Elliot, Blue Is The Warmest Color, Coco, Control, Dancer In The Dark, Dangerous Minds, Dark Shadows, Dead Poets Society, Demolition Man, Dracula: Dead And Loving It, 23 (1998), Edward Scissorhands, Ed Wood, Encanto, Fight Club, Flashdance, Fucking Amal, Gattaca, Ghostbusters, Girl: Interrupted, Good Bye Lenin, Hangin' Out, Hocus Pocus, Inception, Inside Out (1 & 2), Interview With The Vampire, Kopps, Labyrinth, Light Of Day, Mind Game, Mulan (1998), Murder By Death, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Richy Guitar, Run Lola Run, School Of Rock, Sing, Sing Street, Sister Act (1 & 2), Slumdog Millionaire, Song Of The Sea, Soul, Soylent Green, Speed, Teen Witch, Thank You For Smoking, The Basketball Diaries, The Boat That Rocked, The Bob's Burgers Movie, The Celebration, The Crow, The Cure (1995), The Disaster Artist, The Hate U Give, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, The Linguini Incident, The Matrix, The Muppets Take Manhattan, The Craft, The Naked Gun (All, except for the reboot :P!), The Nightmare Before Christmas, The Pink Panther (2006), The Plague Dogs, The Secret Of NIMH, The Return Of Captain Invincible, The Runaways, The Sixth Sense, The Truman Show, The Twelve Tasks Of Asterix, This Boy's Life, This Is Spinal Tap, Too Hard To Handle, Trainspotting, Tron: Ares, Twister, Velvet Goldmine, Wach, Wasted Youth, What's Eating Gilber Grape, What To Do In Case Of Fire, What We Do In The Shadows, While You Were Sleeping, Yes Man, You Instead.
MUSIC - Alice Cooper, Alien Sex Fiend, Alizée, All Gone Dead, A Perfect Circle, Apulanta, Bauhaus, Bela B., Billy Idol, Blur, Bronski Beat, Boy Harsher, Camouflage, Cinemascope, Cinema Strange, Clan Of Xymox, David Bowie, Dead Or Alive, Depeche Mode, Die Ärzte, Die Fantastischen Vier, Don Huonot, Duran Duran, Esoterik, Farin Urlaub (Racing Team), Fettes Brot, Fiction, Foo Fighters, Garbage, Ghosting, Goethes Erben, Green Day, Grossstadtgeflüster, Inkubus Sukkubus, Joan Jett & The Blackhearts, Joy Division, Julien Bam, Käärijä, Kino Carey, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, L'Âme Immortelle, Leaether Strip, Linkin Park, London After Midnight, Luci'fer Luscious Violenoué, Maître Gims, Mark Forster, Marteria, Marusha, Mia., Minuit Machine, Mylène Farmer, New Order, Nine Inch Nails, Pharao, Project Pitchfork, Psycho Le Cému, Rihanna, Rob Zombie, Roman Rain, ЯR, Santa Hates You, She Wants Revenge, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Slam Bamboo, Soft Cell, Space Tribe, Specimen, Spinal Tap, Stromae, Tears For Fears, The Clash, The Cramps, The Crüxshadows, The Cult, The Cure, The Mission, The Offspring, The Prodigy, The Runaways, The Sisters Of Mercy, The 69 Eyes, The Weeknd, Thomas D, Tic Tac Toe, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, Van Halen, Vanished Empire, Virgin Prunes, Xmal Deutschland... Most likely I forgot a gazillion in this list D:, because this happens so often.

I'm looking to meet people who: I'm looking to meet people who don't tame their souls! Who are authentic beyond words, who stand up for their ideals, who are open-minded, kind, creative, intuitive, etc. :D

My posting schedule tends to be: Almost daily, though I will not promise it will always be like this!

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: Ableism, animal cruelty, animal testing, anti-semitism, arrogance, body shaming, elitism, fascism, fatphobia, homophobia, ignorance, islamophobia, racism, religious fanatism, sexism, transphobia.

Before adding me, you should know: I struggle with my mental health (ORLY?), mainly in terms of C-PTSD, BPD, EDNOS/OSFED, and severe depression, and while I try not to overdo it in terms of expressing what this means, there could be entries in this regard... I will put potentially triggering entries behind cuts, though. Also: I'll be gone from Sunday (2nd) until Saturday (8th), so it might take a bit in case you comment then to answer you or add you back. If you have any more questions/comments, please let me know.

Current Mood: curious
Current Music: Garbage - "As Heaven Is Wide"

loganberrybunny

Public

Content warning on this one for threats of sexual violence. I've deliberately put some of my own wording before the (text-only) screenshot, so you can stop reading now if you want to.

This is it. As I say, the smoking gun. If you've been following my posts about Sandra Peabody (originally credited as Sandra Cassell) and the abuse she suffered on the set of Wes Craven's early horror film, The Last House on the Left, then you'll know that one thing that's repeatedly frustrated me is how difficult the evidence is to find. It's not hidden exactly, but a lot of it's in un-Googled places like DVD commentary tracks, obscure video clips, or a making-of book that's been out of print for two decades. But now, finally, I've found something different.

This is from an actual mainstream publication: Vanity Fair. Specifically, from this article from March 2008. It's paywalled, and normally free users can't read very far down – as you may well find if you click that link – but very recently I was able to get legitimate access on some kind of very short-term mobile free trial offer. The article is called Killer Instincts, it's bylined Jason Zinoman, and it starts on p304 of the print edition. It's a long article – over 5,000 words – and the relevant part here is almost 2,000 words in, far beyond the usual paywall line. That's why I'm only reproducing the small section that's directly relevant:

It's pretty sickening stuff. If you've spent the time I have in researching what happened on this set, it's sadly not surprising that David Hess would say that. Nevertheless, it's extremely rare, possibly even unique given how difficult it was for me to find this, for him to be quoted saying something so directly repulsive in a mainstream publication. Hess is no longer around; he died in 2011. I would say "good", except that it means he'll never be held accountable.

Vanity Fair failed on that, too. After the extract I've included, without any further editorial comment, we get many paragraphs of rambly recollections from Wes Craven, the director of Last House on the Left. We get to learn all kinds of things about him, from his Baptist upbringing to the time he encountered Quentin Tarantino. What we don't get, anywhere, is Mr Zinoman actually asking Craven why he allowed behaviour like Hess's on his film set, and whether he regretted failing to protect a young and vulnerable actress.

Craven too is dead now, so that question too can never be asked. He left a more worthwhile legacy than Hess, and in his later career he does seem to have shown proper concern for his actors. But he didn't here, and as far as I'm aware he never once apologised for that. He got as far as a "She wasn't always acting" or a "We put her through hell", usually accompanied by that rueful chuckle of his, but actually saying sorry to the woman his actor terrorised was apparently a step too far.

I have serious issues with the way parts of the horror fandom still seem to idolise David Hess as "the Mad Hessian". He threatened a young woman with rape on set in autumn 1971, then spoke with no remorse about it 37 years later, and if that doesn't disqualify him then your moral radar is broken. I also have issues, more widely, with the whitewashing of Wes Craven's career. He did a lot of good things in his time, but the way he ran the Last House set wasn't one of them, and that needs to be said much more.

Sandra deserved so much better than this.

Current Mood: sick

charmmypaws posting in

addme

Name: amanda

Age:30's

I mostly post about:personal things and venting

My hobbies are:anime, gaming , fashion, roleplaying

My fandoms are: most are old so.. lol pokemon, sailor moon, cardcaptor sakura, detective conan, demon slayer, inuyasha, final fantasy, kingdom hearts to name some.

I'm looking to meet people who:i dunno.. doesn't matter to me lol

My posting schedule tends to be: pretty much spordiac due to life and health.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: minors, being rude, dishonest and what not

Before adding me, you should know: i'm not the most social person or nicest but i am shy so give me space and time get back to you.

Current Mood: apathetic

$radiantfracture: Beadwork bunny head (Default)$

radiantfracture

There's a gorgeous windstorm going on. Beautiful for listening to, not so great for trying to hear the UPS truck.

Like a fool who thinks it's 2015, I ordered clothing online from the United States and have been fretting about it ever since. All shipping interfaces were as incoherent as you might expect.

But Blamo was having a deep-discount flash sale and I have been drooling over this non-species-specific sock-animal onesie for... a long time.

Sadly, that magnificent garment was not on sale and incidentally profoundly impractical. So I ordered this Completely Normal Cardigan(tm) instead:

... it happens to have this hood:

(Not sure why the resolution is so crap here.)

There did end up being tariff charges, but not that bad.

I... feel more whole as a person.

§rf§

PS I swear it did not have to be a rabbit.

loganberrybunny

Public

270/365: Piccolos, Bewdley
Click for a larger, sharper image
Another fairly unexciting day, which is naturally par for the course for me! The most interesting thing I can remember seeing is a hole in the road on Park Lane where National Grid were replacing something or other. Yes, this is the level of thrills we get in Bewdley life. Today's photo is even more amazing, as it's a coffee shop I almost never go into! Piccolos is fine as far as service goes, but it's really cramped inside and so it doesn't feel comfortable lingering. What's the point of a coffee shop where you can't linger, eh?

Current Mood: awake

lycomingst

Rules: How many letters of the alphabet have you used for starting a fic title? One fic per line, ‘A’ and 'The’ do not count for 'a’ and ’t’. Post your score out of 26 at the end, along with your total fic count.

A Answered Questions from Theatrical Muse for Rupert Giles
B Bowl-a-Rama Crossover,The Bourne Legacy. The Heat
C California Dreaming Cordelia, Doyle
D Daddy: Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know Essay on fathers in the Whedonverse
E The Examined Life of Mr. Gordo What it says
F Four Pairs of Shoes That Giles Never Bought and One He Did
G Giles, Drabbles
H
I
J Justine, Drabbles AtS
K
L
M The Mallrats
Crossover, BtVS, The Office (US)
N
O On the Way Back from Hell The Last of Us
P Philadelphia Darla, AtS
Q
R Reunion
Ghosts (UK)
S Sadder and Wiser Girls
T Transition The Bourne Legacy
U
V Vampires of Tlme Community, Dean Pelton
W What We Know about Baudelaire AtS
X Xander, Drabbles
Y
Z

17/26

fflo

Finally, it's Shots Eve, and 24 hours from now I may very well have that special feeling of pain reduction and masking, followed before long by greater mobility, with maybe some wooziness in the mix, but, hey, I'll take it.

I hear tell there's something with your own plasma now.

I dunno.

Right now I'm just looking to tomorrow.

Got 2 potatoes baking in the oven.

fflo

sabotabby

Barely making headlines yesterday was the announcement that governments have failed once again to meet climate targets. As Hurricane Melissa barrels towards Jamaica, threatening to do catastrophic damage, it's important to remember that these governments had a choice, that we as so-called Western civilization had a choice, and we chose wrong every single time.

The thing you may not have heard of at all was the announcement yesterday of the extinction of the Christmas Island shrew. This little animal was a victim of an even older human-caused catastrophe, the colonization of Australia and its surrounding islands by first Britain, then Japan. The invasion of Europeans introduced black rats to the island, which in turn introduced a parasite that wiped out most of the population.

With so many other horrors, including the continuing horrors perpetrated by colonialism, take a moment to grieve for this tiny, innocent creature, which was a unique being that in our carelessness and cruelty, we destroyed. Just another beautiful life lost to the gaping maw of capitalism. The people in charge think that they can cheat death by colonizing Mars or uploading their brains into a god-machine but there won't be any little shrews there, and also their fantasies are impossible. There is only this world and we're shitting it up like we have a spare one stashed somewhere.

rejectomorph

Lots of sleep Monday, and I almost didn't wake up until after nightfall, but did so just in time to see one of the feral cats my neighbor has been feeding munching its dinner in the dusk. The mailbox was empty. I came back in and considered going back to bed, but decided to watch a music video and got caught up in it. I guess that's what I'll be doing for the next couple of hours at least. Eventually I should fix tonight's dinner, but first I'd need to clean up the dishes from Sunday's dinner. Time and I are having another one of our disagreements. The curse of true loathe never runs smooth.

A couple of hours later, I got Sunday's dishes done, but then I decided I was too tired to fix dinner, so I just made a malted. now I'm ready to go back to bed. I still haven't turned the furnace on, despite some cool days, but we've now gotten into that warm spell that will extend through the first several days of November, so I'm still saving money on that month's bill. One good thing, at least. There are all sorts of things I need to deal with soon, but I am totally without energy these days, and I fear I might never get around to them. Catastrophe of one sort or another is likely. The world and I can relate, huh?

Sleep, before I collapse. I bet I'll wake up in the dark again, physically and mentally. Maybe if I'm expecting it it won't be so disorienting.

loganberrybunny

Public

269/365: Bromsgrove Hospital
Click for a larger, sharper image
And I do mean quick: I was in Bromsgrove Hospital for about 15-20 minutes! The annoying thing was that, even with a lift, it took forever to get to and from Bromsgrove thanks to two separate long traffic lights on the road from Kidderminster. Also, I was starving by the time we got back as I'd declined the offer of a bite, which I rather regretted! Small hospital that it is, its restaurant is only open at lunchtime, which is less than ideal if your appointment is at 16:15... anyway, I was there for routine eye screening, and I always like going to Bromsgrove for that as it has the most modern equipment and so the scans are very quick. No need for dilating eye drops these days! The photo above is exactly what you'd expect, but it does show you how small the place is. There's a small two-storey wing just to the right, but that's about all.

Current Mood: tired

loganberrybunny

Public

And for anyone who's seen The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, as I now have, I want to be clear: my subject line is accurate. I don't mean her character, Sally Hardesty, though she was indeed a proto-Final Girl. I mean the actress herself, Marilyn Burns.

In my recent post, I detailed three particularly nasty examples of her mistreatment while making the film, but these were far from the only ones. Among other things she was semi-accidentally hit on the head with a sledgehammer whose steel shaft hadn't been made safe, was hurt doing a six/seven-foot jump involving sugar glass that had hardened in the humid conditions (her limp near the end is genuine), smashed up both knees to be bleeding pretty badly after 17 takes of the gas station sequence (Tobe Hooper: "It was terrible, but it played very well"), was chased through dark woods with a live chainsaw (chain off, but rubber belt on), and – for just a second – was in a room with a Gunnar Hansen who literally wanted to kill her because the set conditions had driven him deluded and for that moment he thought he was Leatherface.

So, Final Girl? Let's have a look at the scorecard:

1) Moral superiority. Her safety was treated as rather a low priority by Tobe Hooper and his obsession with bloody "raw authenticity", leading to injury after injury. She was upset by neither him nor anyone else on set praising her performances. Yet in later years, while she was honest about what she'd faced, she never sounded vindictive or twisted, and she was willing to remain on good terms with Hooper, Hansen (except for a while after his knife deception was revealed) and the others. She didn't treat anyone else the way Hooper treated her. Box ticked.

2) Resourcefulness. Despite not being an experienced actress, she was able to produce a performance that is still talked about while frequently acting under extreme duress – exhaustion and overheating at best, active abuse and assault at worst. She did most of her own stunts, some of which were significantly more dangerous than those of many other actresses of the era and genre – sometimes even more reminiscent of the silent era. Box ticked.

3) Resilience. Are you kidding me? Let me remind you that she somehow made it through a shoot where, in the space of five weeks, she had been beaten to the point of unconsciousness, dripped with her own blood, assaulted with a knife, run from working chainsaws and done about 900 takes of every angle regardless of fatigue because of Tobe sodding Hooper's cavalier attitude to her safety and obsessive artistic perfectionism. Box ticked.

4) Survival. On this set, that didn't just mean getting through a tedious, tiring shoot. It literally meant what it says: survival. She could have died in several ways out there: if Hansen's delusion had lasted a little longer, if the steel-cored "broom" had caught her an unlucky blow on the temple, if the sledgehammer had been wielded a bit too hard, if she'd succumbed to the extreme heat of the dinner scene, if a chainsaw accident in the dark had severed an artery... Box ticked.

5) Overcoming her monster. The "monster" here is probably a combination of things. Tobe Hooper (yes, again), the generally appallingly unsafe set, and the brutal Texas heat. In post-production, Hooper deliberately drove her to emotional collapse for the eye close-up scene, despite being under nothing like the pressure he had been on set. The set involved genius stunts like one actor putting gunpowder on his hand and lighting a match. All this should have broken her. It didn't. Box ticked.

6) Bearing witness. Burns didn't retreat into a quiet life once TCM had finished filming. She chose to lean into her experience and engage with fans and journalists, guest at conventions, do Q&A sessions and interviews, and more besides. She was straightforward about how hard her experience had been, but she almost never crossed into bitterness or anger. Once she knew the truth about Hansen's lie, she was able to talk about it fully. Box ticked.

So there we are. A perfect full house. The whole point of the Final Girl is that she's supposed to be fictional, something impossible to recreate in real life. Yet Burns did it – and she did it without the predestined protection of the script that her fictional counterparts have. She faced moments when it was genuinely uncertain whether she would leave that movie set alive. Her treatment was unconscionable, and she should never have had to earn this title. But since she did:

Marilyn Burns. The real Final Girl.

Current Mood: impressed but sad

frandroid

The Legendary Pink Dots were a 3-piece band tonight. Once you removed Ka-Spel, the remaining two musicians formed "Orbital Service", which turns out played better LPD-style material than when Ka-Spel sang with them. LPD were also good, but nowhere as good as on some of their albums.

Showing how far down they've come, they were playing at the Dance Cave rather than Lee's.

loganberrybunny

Public

268/365: A gate and a field
Click for a larger, sharper image
The clocks have gone back, which means sunset is suddenly well before five and it's dark the whole way through after teatime. It is (briefly) a little bit lighter in the mornings, but I'm not really an early morning person when I can help it. The weather was mostly grey again, albeit with one or two breaks. Today's photo is me really scraping the barrel. Well, no, it's not that. I'm not sure I have a barrel. It's just a gate leading to a field by the interestingly named Snuff Mill Walk. I have absolutely no idea whether said road ever boasted an actual snuff mill; these days it's simply a mildly posh residential cul-de-sac.

Current Mood: relaxed

lycomingst

These questions were originally suggested by akarii.

1. What do you see when you are looking out of the window closest to you?
The closest is dull, the other one is a view of the back yard and is much more agreeable.

2. Who was the last person coming into your room?
Me, always me.

3. What is the most predominant colour around you?
The walls are dull white, but the blanket is dark blue with roses and Eiffel Towers on it.

4. What is right behind you?
A headboard and a window with a chewed up blind.

5. What is on today's calendar sheet?
I’ve cleaned the litter boxes, vacuumed, paid bills and mailed them. The rest of the day is waiting for the PBS shows. Sunday mysteries, yay!

therealtrash posting in

addme

Name: Max Natan (Or just Max)

Age: 61, but reversed lol.

I mostly post about: Anything I want to express, but I usually talk about my life experiences and my thoughts on random topics.

My hobbies are: Writing, drawing, making comics, petting my cat, taking photos, observing nature, sometimes reading, imagining surreal things, watching YouTube animations.

My fandoms are: I’m not really a fandom guy, I like some media, but I don’t interact with the fandom often. There are some media I like: Madoka Magica, Dandadan, Deltarune, Undertale, Ghost and Pals, Gorillaz, Weezer, Vewn Channel, Ghosttundra Channel.

I’m looking to meet people who: Enjoy things like romance stories, horror stories, surrealism, nature, and people who don’t mind me being a little weird.

My posting schedule tends to be: irregular lol.

When I add people, my dealbreakers are: extremists, people over 19.

Before adding me, you should know: I’m Brazilian, so my English isn’t the best, I’m kinda obsessed with certain words, like “lol,” I’m a bit insecure and anxious, My memory is kinda bad, and I don’t know very well how to start a conversation.

dolorosa_12

It's been a nice, cosy, relaxing weekend, after a long run of weeks packed with activities. I've currently got chicken stock bubbling away on the stove in the next room over, ready to be used in tonight's soup for dinner. Both the sound and smell of stock are the epitome of warmth to me.

The extra hour of sleep was extremely welcome, and it was glorious to wake up in full sunlight after weeks of dark mornings (although the months of darkness at 4pm is always going to hit me like a hammer), walk out to the pool in the freezing sunlit air (all the neighbourhood cats were sitting in their respective windows, looking out at pedestrians as if we were crazy for being outside), swim my regular 1km in an uncharacteristically empty pool, and then walk along the river and through the market with Matthias. The sun disappeared at virtually the exact moment we walked back through the door of our house, which was unintentionally impeccable timing on our part.

Other good things: the pottery taster class last week was lovely. I was spectacularly bad at it — there are just so many things to keep track of, and the smallest, most subtle hand movement or shift in the body's position can cause a pot to collapse beyond repair on the wheel — but the setting was great, the instructor was patient, and the activity was meditative. I definitely want to do more, but it will probably need to wait until next year, due to various upcoming travels and other activities. It was good to try it out, though.

Last weekend, Matthias and I also went down to London on Sunday to attend, of all things, a sumo tournament (the first outside Japan in nearly 35 years) in the Royal Albert Hall. Matthias, who's never met a sport he doesn't like (except for golf), got massively into sumo a few years back, and the serendipitous existence of this exhibition tournament in London was too good to miss. As with many of his interests, I was just happy to be along for the ride, but I ended up having a great time. I love the Albert Hall as an events venue, and it worked brilliantly here. It was packed to the rafters, including with lots of groups of youngish children who were clearly massive fans (with banners, etc).

Work has been exhausting, and my choice of reading material (mostly rereads of childhood favourites) has reflected that, although I did finally get to The Voyage Home, the concluding book in Pat Barker's trilogy of books retelling events in and around the Iliad from various female characters' perspectives. The first two books are the Briseis-centric retelling of my heart — the versions of these stories for which I'd been searching for decades, trudging through a lot of dross to get to — and I'd been a bit sad to see that Barker had decided Briseis's story was done in the second book, and moved on to other characters. Did the world really need yet another retelling of the tragedy of Cassandra, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, and was Barker actually going to add anything to this well-trodden ground with her contribution? Even after finishing the book, I'm not sure I know the answer — I found it excellent and compelling, but unlike Barker's take on Briseis (which I talk about in more detail here), it didn't dig itself into the spaces around my heart, with truths at once obvious and devastating. Violent patriarchal honour culture is awful, and will destroy everyone, including violent patriarchs? Life goes on, and people will find a way to survive, in spite of incredible devastation, carving out their own little spaces of safety wherever they can? These are interesting enough as animating ideas, but do they justify yet another retelling?

In my wanderings yesterday, I went past the independent bookshop and bought my own copy of The Rose Field, the concluding brick of a tome in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials sequel/prequel trilogy, The Book of Dust. I've only read 150 of 600+ pages, so I'll make no firm conclusions here, other than to state I feel quite bittersweet about the whole thing. His Dark Materials was utterly formative for me (I read it at exactly the right ages, while having to wait for the second two books to be published), and it is no exaggeration to say that if not for picking up Northern Lights/The Golden Compass as a thirteen-year-old, I would not be living in this country, have done the PhD that I did, be working in the line of work that I do, nor be married to the person that I am. The message boards of a fan forum for HDM were my first experience of online fandom, and remain my gold standard for fannish community. I'm still good friends with most of the people I met through the forum, though our days of dissecting Pullman's books and speculating about future directions of the series are long gone. They've all been posting photos of their own copies of The Rose Field and seem for the most part hugely excited to see how Lyra's story concludes. I myself feel quite alienated by all this, and hesitant to raise my ambivalence. I loved the prequel of this new trilogy, but found the second book (chronologically, the first half of the 'sequel' component of the trilogy) not just a let down, but actively enraging (there's a whole vanished Twitter DM conversation between me and

sophia.mcdougall consisting of me ranting in real time as I read my way further through the book), and apparently laying the groundwork for one of my few massive character dynamic squicks. It didn't change how I felt about the original trilogy, because that's so embedded in me that there's no extracting it, but it did cause a major shift in my overall thinking about Pullman as a writer. So far, I don't have such a strong Do Not Want reaction to The Rose Field, but it's early days, and my overall assessment hinges on how all the various threads are pulled together.

Rather than leaving this post on such a grumbling note, I will close with a link to a Substack post by Marie Le Conte that's been bringing me a lot of joy. In it, she talks about the rather surreal experience of her teenage years, when she and a couple of other friends had the enormous chutzpah to create and run a somewhat successful internet music fanzine. I won't go into more detail than that, except to say that the specific combination of teenage certainty and intellectual arrogance is extremely recognisable to me, although my own context was different. It's a fun read, even if there were a lot of moments of 'I'm in this picture and I don't like it.'

rejectomorph

Saturday I got to do my least-favorite thing twice, namely to wake up in darkness. The first time I didn't remember when I'd gone to bed, and didn't remember the previous day, so I looked at the phone clock and it said somewhere around 7:30 Saturday, and it seemed too dark to be morning, so I believed I had slept through the entirety of an utterly forgotten Saturday. A short time later the light began to grow outside, and I realized it was only Saturday morning, so dark because we are near the end of daylight saving time.

So I lived through Saturday after all, and still didn't remember it when it was over, except that I'd gotten up too early and so had to have an afternoon nap, and that nap lasted until after nightfall, so I got to wake up in the dark again. After the second nap I started fixing a big dinner, which wasn't done until after midnight, and I ate it and became stuffed and logy, which I remain even now. Oh, there was some rain early in the morning, and there is some rain now, But in between was only sad anticipation and regret. Or maybe that's just what my brain thought during the times it was running aimlessly in its hamster wheel. Does it matter? Probably not. Probably nothing does, and I've just worn myself out and need to sleep yet again.

Didn't I used to be able to string together words coherently? Maybe I just imagined it. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe if I sleep now I'll dream it again. Better than nothing, I guess.

( Sunday Verse )

sabotabby

I faithfully go to the Kensington Festival of Lights every year, but I haven't been to its darker, spookier, sister festival, the Night of Dread, in forever. It's run by Clay and Paper out of Dufferin Grove Park (for non-Torontonians, this is one of the best parks in the city, though in recent years it has fallen victim to violent encampment sweeps over the protests of nearly everyone who uses it).

( what lies within? )

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The Family Ghost

October 2025

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Page generated Oct. 29th, 2025 03:53 pm

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an exercise in lying still...

Network

Reading Wednesday

Bonjour tout le monde!

The smoking gun in Vanity Fair

intro post.

Cardigan nights

Piccolos

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Shots Eve

Postcard of the Day

Your moment of climate grief

52/248: Disorientation

Quick hospital visit

Marilyn Burns: Final Girl

the dots

And now it's basically winter

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Open atmosphere, take me anywhere

52/246-247: Through the Dark, Darkly

Night of Dread

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October 2025

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