Gimme a quilt!
Jun. 23rd, 2025 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobel posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
agonyauntDear Eric: My sister-in-law made quilts for two of her nieces. They unwrapped them to oohs, aahs and applause on Christmas Eve at my house. My daughter did not receive a gift. I sent a polite email to sister-in-law explaining that my daughter was disappointed. I received a snail mail reply that included a gift certificate and a note. Sister-in-law wrote that I was a bully and stated that she would never set foot in my house again. She hasn’t for several years. What should I do?
— Stitchy Situation
Situation: Your sister-in-law’s reaction was a bit extreme, all things considered (or at least all things detailed in your letter). This suggests to me that maybe there’s something else under it for her, whether it’s other issues she has with your relationship or a sensitivity around the particular gift. Or maybe her feelings were hurt by your email, even though it was polite.
The best way to sort it all out is by asking. It’s been years and she hasn’t come back, so I’m curious what your relationship is like outside of visits. Has this escalated to grudge territory? Does she speak to you at all? If she doesn’t, you may have to make a bigger gesture in order to reset things. Telling her, “I don’t like what happened between us” and “I’m sorry for my part” could help lay a foundation for reconciliation.
Try, if you can, not to let the conversation get too caught up in what happened years ago, though. The gift card, the email, et cetera. All the details can become places where you both get stuck relitigating and rehashing. Instead, focus on the objective of the conversation — you want to re-establish contact. It will also help to have a concrete goal, as well as an emotional one. Perhaps something like extending an invitation for her to come for lunch.
If she’s not receptive to a phone call or face-to-face conversation, an email or letter will work, but a spoken conversation is vastly more effective.
— Stitchy Situation
Situation: Your sister-in-law’s reaction was a bit extreme, all things considered (or at least all things detailed in your letter). This suggests to me that maybe there’s something else under it for her, whether it’s other issues she has with your relationship or a sensitivity around the particular gift. Or maybe her feelings were hurt by your email, even though it was polite.
The best way to sort it all out is by asking. It’s been years and she hasn’t come back, so I’m curious what your relationship is like outside of visits. Has this escalated to grudge territory? Does she speak to you at all? If she doesn’t, you may have to make a bigger gesture in order to reset things. Telling her, “I don’t like what happened between us” and “I’m sorry for my part” could help lay a foundation for reconciliation.
Try, if you can, not to let the conversation get too caught up in what happened years ago, though. The gift card, the email, et cetera. All the details can become places where you both get stuck relitigating and rehashing. Instead, focus on the objective of the conversation — you want to re-establish contact. It will also help to have a concrete goal, as well as an emotional one. Perhaps something like extending an invitation for her to come for lunch.
If she’s not receptive to a phone call or face-to-face conversation, an email or letter will work, but a spoken conversation is vastly more effective.
Media Round Up: June 23, 2025
Jun. 23rd, 2025 11:56 amforestofgloryHere's so thoughts about things I've been reading and watching recently:
The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon by Grace Lin— Read out loud to the kid. I loved Grace Lin’s other MG books so I was very excited for this! It was very charming. As always I enjoy the author’s illustrations. I enjoyed having Chinese mythical creatures in a modern city. I don’t love it quite as much as some of the author’s other work, but it was good and worth reading.
The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann Leblanc— I heard about this novella from a WisCon panel on recent trans SFF. It's about a space cheese maker who finds out the asteroid that houses her cheese cave is about to be yeetted into the sun. She is one of many people who is a copy of an original human, including the person she sells her cheese to and the woman she goes to for help. This book was maybe not as weird as it was presented to me, and some of the politics are exactly like current earth queer community debates. Still I loved all the details about food, and the bits of community building that were present around the edges of the story.
The Truth Season 3 cases 6 and 7— This is labeled as two cases but it's really one very long case! I was a little disappointed to have to wait a week for resolution. This case also featured some upsetting queer phobic violence as part of one character’s backstory. But there were a lot of fun things too. They fought zombies with bubble guns!
The Treasured Voice Season 6 ep 1 — I started watching this while I was waiting between episodes of The Truth. It’s a singing reality show featuring people pairing up to sing songs. It’s got Liu Yuning! I’ve only seen the first episode but it seems pretty chill so far though there are some judges who make negative comments.
( Maiden )
The Gate, the Girl, and the Dragon by Grace Lin— Read out loud to the kid. I loved Grace Lin’s other MG books so I was very excited for this! It was very charming. As always I enjoy the author’s illustrations. I enjoyed having Chinese mythical creatures in a modern city. I don’t love it quite as much as some of the author’s other work, but it was good and worth reading.
The Transitive Properties of Cheese by Ann Leblanc— I heard about this novella from a WisCon panel on recent trans SFF. It's about a space cheese maker who finds out the asteroid that houses her cheese cave is about to be yeetted into the sun. She is one of many people who is a copy of an original human, including the person she sells her cheese to and the woman she goes to for help. This book was maybe not as weird as it was presented to me, and some of the politics are exactly like current earth queer community debates. Still I loved all the details about food, and the bits of community building that were present around the edges of the story.
The Truth Season 3 cases 6 and 7— This is labeled as two cases but it's really one very long case! I was a little disappointed to have to wait a week for resolution. This case also featured some upsetting queer phobic violence as part of one character’s backstory. But there were a lot of fun things too. They fought zombies with bubble guns!
The Treasured Voice Season 6 ep 1 — I started watching this while I was waiting between episodes of The Truth. It’s a singing reality show featuring people pairing up to sing songs. It’s got Liu Yuning! I’ve only seen the first episode but it seems pretty chill so far though there are some judges who make negative comments.
( Maiden )
Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg (1993)
Jun. 23rd, 2025 12:56 pmpauraqueFlashing forward 75 years from The Autobiography of an Androgyne...
Stone Butch Blues is an autobiographical novel following Jess Goldberg, a queer working-class Jewish kid from upstate New York. It covers her 1950s childhood in which she is punished and rejected by her parents for not conforming to gender norms, her coming-of-age and finding a place as a butch in the lesbian community despite relentless police brutality, her decision to pursue medical transition, her partial detransition when she realizes she's neither a man nor a woman, her loves and losses, and her political awakening as a union organizer.
So, I came out as trans in the late 1990s, and two questions I soon grew to hate hearing were "Have you seen Boys Don't Cry?" and "Have you read Stone Butch Blues?" No, I hadn't, because I was already having a difficult time and I did not think I would find it helpful to consume media about people like me being raped and murdered, thanks. Well, I still haven't seen Boys Don't Cry (not planning to!) but now I have read Stone Butch Blues and I think I was right that reading it back then wouldn't have helped, except in that it would have given me more context for what some of the older people in the queer community had been through and why some of them treated me the way they did.
( Cut for length and content: hate crimes (in the book) and in-community hostility towards nonbinary people (in my own life). This post is more about me than about the book. )
Stone Butch Blues is available for free on Feinberg's website.
Stone Butch Blues is an autobiographical novel following Jess Goldberg, a queer working-class Jewish kid from upstate New York. It covers her 1950s childhood in which she is punished and rejected by her parents for not conforming to gender norms, her coming-of-age and finding a place as a butch in the lesbian community despite relentless police brutality, her decision to pursue medical transition, her partial detransition when she realizes she's neither a man nor a woman, her loves and losses, and her political awakening as a union organizer.
So, I came out as trans in the late 1990s, and two questions I soon grew to hate hearing were "Have you seen Boys Don't Cry?" and "Have you read Stone Butch Blues?" No, I hadn't, because I was already having a difficult time and I did not think I would find it helpful to consume media about people like me being raped and murdered, thanks. Well, I still haven't seen Boys Don't Cry (not planning to!) but now I have read Stone Butch Blues and I think I was right that reading it back then wouldn't have helped, except in that it would have given me more context for what some of the older people in the queer community had been through and why some of them treated me the way they did.
( Cut for length and content: hate crimes (in the book) and in-community hostility towards nonbinary people (in my own life). This post is more about me than about the book. )
Stone Butch Blues is available for free on Feinberg's website.
Meanwhile...
Jun. 23rd, 2025 10:27 amselenakReal Life (not mine, personally, mine is just very busy) in terms of global politics being a continued horrorshow, I find myself dealing with it in vastly different ways in terms of fandom - either reading/watching/listening to things (almost) entirely unconnected - for example, this YouTube channel by a guy named Elliot Roberts whose reviews of all things Beatles as well as of musical biopics of other folk I can hearitly recommend for their enthusiasm (or scorn, cough, Bohemian Raphsody, cough), wit and charm - , or consuming media that is very much connected to Current Events. For example: about two weeks ago there was a fascinating event here in Munich where an Israeli author, Yishai Sarid, who is currently teaching Hebrew Literature at Munich University was introduced via both readings from several of his novels, many, though not all of which are translated into German, and via conversations. While the excerpts of already published novels (and the conversations around them) certainly were captivating, and led me to reading one of them, Limassol, which is a well written Le Carréan thriller in the Israel of 2009 (when it was published) context), the novel he talked about which I was most curious about hasn't been translated into German yet, though it has been translated into English: The Third Temple.
This was was originally published in 2015 and evidently has been translated into English in 2024, with an afterword by Yishai Saraid in which he basically says "people thought I was kidding or writing sci fi in 2015. I wish. I could see where this is going then, and now you can, too". If I tell you that a reviewer back in the day according to google described the novel as "if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child", you may guess what it's about. I will say that if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child, I wouild expect it to be a female rather than a male narrator, but yeah, other than this. ( A spoilery review ensues. )
This was was originally published in 2015 and evidently has been translated into English in 2024, with an afterword by Yishai Saraid in which he basically says "people thought I was kidding or writing sci fi in 2015. I wish. I could see where this is going then, and now you can, too". If I tell you that a reviewer back in the day according to google described the novel as "if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child", you may guess what it's about. I will say that if the staff of Haaretz and Margaret Atwood had a child, I wouild expect it to be a female rather than a male narrator, but yeah, other than this. ( A spoilery review ensues. )
Signups Are Closed
Jun. 22nd, 2025 08:43 pmjustmarriedmod posting in justmarriedexchangeMatching has run!
There are currently 2 participants unmatchable on offers. If your username starts with B or N, please check the email associated with your AO3 account. Matching will be re-run as soon as these participants reply, or at 11:59pm UTC 23 June (~ 1 day from now), whichever is earlier.
If everyone is matchable after this, assignments will be sent out within several hours.
There are currently 2 participants unmatchable on offers. If your username starts with B or N, please check the email associated with your AO3 account. Matching will be re-run as soon as these participants reply, or at 11:59pm UTC 23 June (~ 1 day from now), whichever is earlier.
If everyone is matchable after this, assignments will be sent out within several hours.
That art show thing I mentioned last post
Jun. 22nd, 2025 07:55 pmgenartiI posted a while ago about how I'd been really getting into pottery this year. That remains true, and shows no signs of stopping. It's just so fun! I still take a 3-hour class once a week at a member-owned studio near me; I think wistfully about spending more time on it too, but for various reasons including but not limited to the busyness of my life in general, that dedicated weekly slot is what works right now.
Back in late February, I spotted a flyer that someone had hung up on the studio bulletin board. It was a call for Boston-area artists to submit art inspired by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, as part of an art show and book circle event co-organized by two local stores, The Local Hand and JustBook-ish.
I'd been meaning to read Parable of the Sower for ages, and the idea of doing a pottery piece inspired by a book seemed really fun -- like a Yuletide prompt, but for physical objects. Also, if your piece was accepted, you got a $500 stipend and 75% of the sale price if your piece sold, and let's be real, that was also extremely motivating.
And motivation was useful! Because the deadline was just over a month away. Pottery has a lot of built-in wait time while things dry, get fired, etc, so on a once-a-week schedule that was going to be pretty tight.
So I read the book, and loved it -- I'd been told that it was brilliant, which it is, and that it's brutal, which it is, but all of the (accurate!) discussions of its brutality hadn't conveyed the fierce pragmatism and focus of how Butler writes hope and community, and that's what I loved most -- and by the next week, I had a plan.
( About my piece, and the process, and also noodling about pottery and art -- this got very long )
Back in late February, I spotted a flyer that someone had hung up on the studio bulletin board. It was a call for Boston-area artists to submit art inspired by Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, as part of an art show and book circle event co-organized by two local stores, The Local Hand and JustBook-ish.
I'd been meaning to read Parable of the Sower for ages, and the idea of doing a pottery piece inspired by a book seemed really fun -- like a Yuletide prompt, but for physical objects. Also, if your piece was accepted, you got a $500 stipend and 75% of the sale price if your piece sold, and let's be real, that was also extremely motivating.
And motivation was useful! Because the deadline was just over a month away. Pottery has a lot of built-in wait time while things dry, get fired, etc, so on a once-a-week schedule that was going to be pretty tight.
So I read the book, and loved it -- I'd been told that it was brilliant, which it is, and that it's brutal, which it is, but all of the (accurate!) discussions of its brutality hadn't conveyed the fierce pragmatism and focus of how Butler writes hope and community, and that's what I loved most -- and by the next week, I had a plan.
( About my piece, and the process, and also noodling about pottery and art -- this got very long )
(no subject)
Jun. 22nd, 2025 08:02 pmskygiantsWhen I'm reading nonfiction, there's often a fine line for me between 'you, the author, are getting yourself all up in this narrative and I wish you'd get out of the way' and 'you, the author, have a clearly presented point of view and it makes it easy and fun to fight with you about your topic; pray continue.' Happily, Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages falls squarely in the latter category for me. She's telling me a bunch of fascinating gossip and I do often disagree with her about what it all means but we're having such a good time arguing about it!
Rose starts out her book by explaining that she's interested in the idea of 'marriage' both as a narrative construct developed by the partners within it -- "a subjectivist fiction with two points of view often deeply in conflict, sometimes fortuitously congruent" -- and a negotiation of power, vulnerable to exploitation. She also says that she wanted to find a good balance of happy and unhappy Victorian marriages as case studies to explore, but then she got so fascinated by several of the unhappy ones that things got a little out of balance .... and she is right! Her case studies are fascinating, and at least one of them (the one she clearly sees as the happiest) is not technically a marriage at all (which, of course, is part of her point.)
The couples in question are:
Thomas Carlyle and Jane Baillie Carlyle -- the framing device for the whole book, because even though this marriage is not her favorite marriage Jane Carlyle is her favorite character. Notable for the fact that Jane Carlyle wrote a secret diary through her years of marriage detailing how unhappy she was, which was given to Carlyle after her death, making him feel incredibly guilty, and then published after his death, making everyone else feel like he ought to have been feeling incredibly guilty. Rose considers the secret postmortem diary gift a brilliant stroke of Jane's in Triumphantly Taking Control Of The Narrative Of Their Marriage.
John Ruskin and Effie Gray -- like every possible Victorian drama happened to this marriage. non-consummation! parent drama! art drama! accusations that Ruskin was trying to manipulate Effie Gray into a ruinous affair so that he could divorce her! Effie Gray's family coming down secretly to sneak her away so she could launch a big divorce case instead! my favorite element of this whole story is that the third man in the Art Love Triangle, John Millais, was painting Ruskin's portrait when he and Gray fell in love instead, and Ruskin insisted on making Millais keep painting his portrait for numerous awkward sittings while the divorce proceedings played themselves out and [according to Rose] was genuinely startled that Millais was not interested in subsequently continuing their pleasant correspondence.
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor -- this was my favorite section; I had never heard of these guys but I loved their energy. Harriet Taylor was married to John Taylor but was not enjoying the experience, began a passionate intellectual correspondence with John Stuart Mill who believed as strongly as she did in women's rights etc., they seriously considered the ethics around running off together but decided that while all three of them (Harriet Taylor, John Taylor, and John Mill) were made moderately unhappy by the current situation of "John Mill comes over three nights a week for passionate intellectual discussions with Harriet Taylor while John Taylor considerately goes Out for Several Hours, nobody was made as miserable by it as John Taylor would be if Harriet left John Taylor and therefore ethics demanded that the situation remain as it was. (Meanwhile the Carlyles, who were friends of John Mill, nicknamed Harriet 'Platonica,' which I have to admit is a very funny move if you are a bitchy 19th century intellectual and you hate the married woman your friend is having a passionate but celibate philosophical romance of the soul with.) Eventually John Taylor did die and Harriet Taylor and John Mill did get married -- platonically or otherwise is unknown but regardless they seem to have been blissfully happy. Rose thinks that Harriet Taylor was probably not as brilliant as John Mill thought and John Mill was henpecked, but happily so, because letting his wife tell him what to do soothed his patriarchal guilt. I think that Rose is a killjoy. Let a genius think his partner of the soul is also a genius if he wants to! I'm not going to tell him that he's wrong!
Charles Dickens and Catherine Dickens -- oh this was a Bad Marriage and everyone knows it. Unlike all the other women in this book, Catherine Dickens did not really command a narrative space of her own except Cast Aside Wife which -- although that's probably part of Rose's point -- makes this section IMO weaker and a bit less fun than the others.
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes -- Rose's favorite! She thinks these guys are very romantic and who can blame her, though she does want to take time to argue with people who think that George Eliot's genius relied more on George Henry Lewes kindling the flame than it did on George Eliot herself. It not being 1983 anymore, it did not occur to me that 'George Eliot was not primarily responsible for George Eliot' was an argument that needed to be made. "Maybe marriage is better when it doesn't have to actually be marriage" is clearly a point she's excited to make, given which one does wonder why she doesn't pull any Victorian long-term same-sex partnerships into her thematic examination. And the answer, probably, is 'I'm interested in specifically in the narrative of heterosexual marriage and heterosexual power dynamics and the ways they still leave an imprint on our contemporary moment,' which is fair, but if you're already exploring a thing by looking outside it .... well, anyway. I just looked up her bibliography out of curiosity to see if she ever did write about gay people and the answer is "well, she's got a book about Josephine Baker" so I may well be looking that up in future so I can have fun arguing with Rose some more!
Rose starts out her book by explaining that she's interested in the idea of 'marriage' both as a narrative construct developed by the partners within it -- "a subjectivist fiction with two points of view often deeply in conflict, sometimes fortuitously congruent" -- and a negotiation of power, vulnerable to exploitation. She also says that she wanted to find a good balance of happy and unhappy Victorian marriages as case studies to explore, but then she got so fascinated by several of the unhappy ones that things got a little out of balance .... and she is right! Her case studies are fascinating, and at least one of them (the one she clearly sees as the happiest) is not technically a marriage at all (which, of course, is part of her point.)
The couples in question are:
Thomas Carlyle and Jane Baillie Carlyle -- the framing device for the whole book, because even though this marriage is not her favorite marriage Jane Carlyle is her favorite character. Notable for the fact that Jane Carlyle wrote a secret diary through her years of marriage detailing how unhappy she was, which was given to Carlyle after her death, making him feel incredibly guilty, and then published after his death, making everyone else feel like he ought to have been feeling incredibly guilty. Rose considers the secret postmortem diary gift a brilliant stroke of Jane's in Triumphantly Taking Control Of The Narrative Of Their Marriage.
John Ruskin and Effie Gray -- like every possible Victorian drama happened to this marriage. non-consummation! parent drama! art drama! accusations that Ruskin was trying to manipulate Effie Gray into a ruinous affair so that he could divorce her! Effie Gray's family coming down secretly to sneak her away so she could launch a big divorce case instead! my favorite element of this whole story is that the third man in the Art Love Triangle, John Millais, was painting Ruskin's portrait when he and Gray fell in love instead, and Ruskin insisted on making Millais keep painting his portrait for numerous awkward sittings while the divorce proceedings played themselves out and [according to Rose] was genuinely startled that Millais was not interested in subsequently continuing their pleasant correspondence.
John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor -- this was my favorite section; I had never heard of these guys but I loved their energy. Harriet Taylor was married to John Taylor but was not enjoying the experience, began a passionate intellectual correspondence with John Stuart Mill who believed as strongly as she did in women's rights etc., they seriously considered the ethics around running off together but decided that while all three of them (Harriet Taylor, John Taylor, and John Mill) were made moderately unhappy by the current situation of "John Mill comes over three nights a week for passionate intellectual discussions with Harriet Taylor while John Taylor considerately goes Out for Several Hours, nobody was made as miserable by it as John Taylor would be if Harriet left John Taylor and therefore ethics demanded that the situation remain as it was. (Meanwhile the Carlyles, who were friends of John Mill, nicknamed Harriet 'Platonica,' which I have to admit is a very funny move if you are a bitchy 19th century intellectual and you hate the married woman your friend is having a passionate but celibate philosophical romance of the soul with.) Eventually John Taylor did die and Harriet Taylor and John Mill did get married -- platonically or otherwise is unknown but regardless they seem to have been blissfully happy. Rose thinks that Harriet Taylor was probably not as brilliant as John Mill thought and John Mill was henpecked, but happily so, because letting his wife tell him what to do soothed his patriarchal guilt. I think that Rose is a killjoy. Let a genius think his partner of the soul is also a genius if he wants to! I'm not going to tell him that he's wrong!
Charles Dickens and Catherine Dickens -- oh this was a Bad Marriage and everyone knows it. Unlike all the other women in this book, Catherine Dickens did not really command a narrative space of her own except Cast Aside Wife which -- although that's probably part of Rose's point -- makes this section IMO weaker and a bit less fun than the others.
George Eliot and George Henry Lewes -- Rose's favorite! She thinks these guys are very romantic and who can blame her, though she does want to take time to argue with people who think that George Eliot's genius relied more on George Henry Lewes kindling the flame than it did on George Eliot herself. It not being 1983 anymore, it did not occur to me that 'George Eliot was not primarily responsible for George Eliot' was an argument that needed to be made. "Maybe marriage is better when it doesn't have to actually be marriage" is clearly a point she's excited to make, given which one does wonder why she doesn't pull any Victorian long-term same-sex partnerships into her thematic examination. And the answer, probably, is 'I'm interested in specifically in the narrative of heterosexual marriage and heterosexual power dynamics and the ways they still leave an imprint on our contemporary moment,' which is fair, but if you're already exploring a thing by looking outside it .... well, anyway. I just looked up her bibliography out of curiosity to see if she ever did write about gay people and the answer is "well, she's got a book about Josephine Baker" so I may well be looking that up in future so I can have fun arguing with Rose some more!
Just Over 4 Hours To Sign Up
Jun. 22nd, 2025 03:26 pmjustmarriedmod posting in justmarriedexchangeRSVPs to this year's weddings close in just over 4 hours! This is a good time to update any WIP requests, link your Dear Creator letters, or check that you are matchable on offers. All requests are visible at the Requests Summary page, or at the AutoAO3App.
Sign up here: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/justmarried2025/signups/new
Sign up here: https://archiveofourown.org/collections/justmarried2025/signups/new
Media Post
Jun. 22nd, 2025 11:54 aminchoatewordsMovies: None.
Television/Streaming: Watched episode 3 of Buffy ("Witch"). That's the one about the cheerleading squad and all the chaos that ensues there because of Amy - well, her mom. It was entertaining but I called that it was the mom doing this shit behind the scenes before any of the main characters did. Also, I was annoyed when they needed "eye of newt" for that one spell and they dissected a frog. For one, not the same thing, and for two, eye of newt is not a literal eye, it's a term for mustard seed.
Also watched Episode 7 of Farscape ("PK Tech Girl"). That's the one where they find the old abandoned Peacekeeper ship and the tech, Gilina, and she and Crichton have a "moment" (or really, a series of moments as they're all trying not to die, heh). I liked this one. I really like the otherworldly creatures on this show and how they look. The Sheyangs remind me of Battletoads dropped in a nuclear waste dump.
Taskmaster is almost over for this series; only two more episodes. I love this group. They are hilarious and Jason continues to be a chaos gremlin.
Books: I finished Persuasion. This is the second time that I have read this work that I recall. The first time I logged it was ten years ago. I really loved it then and I still do. Despite the time period being vastly different, I think there are some universal feelings there that could be extrapolated into the modern age. So many of us have broken up with folks we still had feelings for, and even years might have gone by and you see them again, and it brings up all of those feelings with a force to steal your breath. Anne's family ignores her even though she does have important things to say; her dad is a shallow man.
Currently reading Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz. I read a review some time ago comparing Joan Didion (who I really like) and Eve Babitz, who I had not heard of. Apparently her works are having a renaissance in recent years and she definitely has a more breeze style than Didion, but that's not an insult by any means.
Television/Streaming: Watched episode 3 of Buffy ("Witch"). That's the one about the cheerleading squad and all the chaos that ensues there because of Amy - well, her mom. It was entertaining but I called that it was the mom doing this shit behind the scenes before any of the main characters did. Also, I was annoyed when they needed "eye of newt" for that one spell and they dissected a frog. For one, not the same thing, and for two, eye of newt is not a literal eye, it's a term for mustard seed.
Also watched Episode 7 of Farscape ("PK Tech Girl"). That's the one where they find the old abandoned Peacekeeper ship and the tech, Gilina, and she and Crichton have a "moment" (or really, a series of moments as they're all trying not to die, heh). I liked this one. I really like the otherworldly creatures on this show and how they look. The Sheyangs remind me of Battletoads dropped in a nuclear waste dump.
Taskmaster is almost over for this series; only two more episodes. I love this group. They are hilarious and Jason continues to be a chaos gremlin.
Books: I finished Persuasion. This is the second time that I have read this work that I recall. The first time I logged it was ten years ago. I really loved it then and I still do. Despite the time period being vastly different, I think there are some universal feelings there that could be extrapolated into the modern age. So many of us have broken up with folks we still had feelings for, and even years might have gone by and you see them again, and it brings up all of those feelings with a force to steal your breath. Anne's family ignores her even though she does have important things to say; her dad is a shallow man.
Currently reading Eve's Hollywood by Eve Babitz. I read a review some time ago comparing Joan Didion (who I really like) and Eve Babitz, who I had not heard of. Apparently her works are having a renaissance in recent years and she definitely has a more breeze style than Didion, but that's not an insult by any means.
Pokemon/Burn Notice
Jun. 22nd, 2025 10:36 ambrithistorianIt occurred to me that the main characters of Burn Notice can be mapped 1:1 to the main characters of Pokemon:
- Michael = Ash
- Fionna = Misty
- Sam = Brock
And so I made this:
Post-solstice linkpost
Jun. 22nd, 2025 03:38 pmdolorosa_12Having lots of open tabs stresses me out, so that makes it high time for a new linkpost.
This is what I've been saving up for later these past few weeks:
The first two links are what I'd call digital housekeeping. One is instructions on how to archive-lock all your works on AO3 to registered users in a single go. The second is something I'm planning to do when I have a good stretch of free time: 'The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life.'
Then I've got an essay by fantasy author Robert Jackson Bennet, 'The 21st century seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid'.
This is followed by another essay, 'Close Reading is for Everyone' (Dan Sinykin).
For those of you who, like me, were completely blown away on every conceivable level by the film Sinners, Dee Holloway's got a reading list for anyone who wants to dive into everything explored in the film in more depth, from every conceivable angle.
I've been spending most of this afternoon watching Olia Hercules cook varenyky and ferment cabbage in real time, which is massively meditative and soothing. I've found myself in recent years feeling an immense sense of nurture and nourishment from demonstrations or descriptions of people doing everyday activities — cooking, gardening, writing, crafts, repairs — in an unhurried, calm, and compassionate manner, where it's clear that the work itself is a kind of love. This cooking demonstration definitely falls under that heading.
This is what I've been saving up for later these past few weeks:
The first two links are what I'd call digital housekeeping. One is instructions on how to archive-lock all your works on AO3 to registered users in a single go. The second is something I'm planning to do when I have a good stretch of free time: 'The 21-day Cyber-Cleanse: designed to remove toxic tech from your life.'
Then I've got an essay by fantasy author Robert Jackson Bennet, 'The 21st century seems replete with examples as to why autocracies are, to put it mildly, very stupid'.
This is followed by another essay, 'Close Reading is for Everyone' (Dan Sinykin).
For those of you who, like me, were completely blown away on every conceivable level by the film Sinners, Dee Holloway's got a reading list for anyone who wants to dive into everything explored in the film in more depth, from every conceivable angle.
I've been spending most of this afternoon watching Olia Hercules cook varenyky and ferment cabbage in real time, which is massively meditative and soothing. I've found myself in recent years feeling an immense sense of nurture and nourishment from demonstrations or descriptions of people doing everyday activities — cooking, gardening, writing, crafts, repairs — in an unhurried, calm, and compassionate manner, where it's clear that the work itself is a kind of love. This cooking demonstration definitely falls under that heading.
(no subject)
Jun. 21st, 2025 11:45 amkaioseaI wish I had a good place to put early drafts of fic, but where there was also the possibility of natural discovery and maybe comments (aka probably not Dreamwidth). I know I could put a draft on AO3, but that feels like too much pressure. Idk why because it's certainly possible but I feel like AO3 is where I'd want to put finished things, not first drafts. It feels harder to edit something once it's on there.
I re-read one of the funniest quests in Genshin - I can't believe this was time-limited! I didn't realize it was, or I forgot. I really love the relationships in Sumeru.
https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/An_Odd_Textual_Mystery
I re-read one of the funniest quests in Genshin - I can't believe this was time-limited! I didn't realize it was, or I forgot. I really love the relationships in Sumeru.
https://genshin-impact.fandom.com/wiki/An_Odd_Textual_Mystery
Happy Solstice
Jun. 21st, 2025 11:36 amelisiI give you Lara Fabian and Dimash performing 'Adagio' live at the Wembley arena in London, 03/06/2025:
(This is from Lara's concert, Dimash was a guest. Longer version here including Lara's introduction of Dimash and their interactions after finishing the song. Also - mostly for myself - here is Mansur's video. He's Dimash's younger brother and accompanied him on the trip.)
~
And from The Good Law Project: Pick a side – hate or Pride. "We’re teaming up with Stop Funding Hate to tell these companies to drop GB News. This Pride, let’s make support really mean something."
~
And finally: Click this video to be the reason +700 families in Gaza received water🥹🇵🇸
Many good links in the description.
(This is from Lara's concert, Dimash was a guest. Longer version here including Lara's introduction of Dimash and their interactions after finishing the song. Also - mostly for myself - here is Mansur's video. He's Dimash's younger brother and accompanied him on the trip.)
~
And from The Good Law Project: Pick a side – hate or Pride. "We’re teaming up with Stop Funding Hate to tell these companies to drop GB News. This Pride, let’s make support really mean something."
~
And finally: Click this video to be the reason +700 families in Gaza received water🥹🇵🇸
Many good links in the description.
Recent reading
Jun. 21st, 2025 10:33 amregshoeI have not been brilliantly attentive to my last few books due to the whole 'new obsession' situation, but here they are anyway:
Bagthorpes v. the World by Helen Cresswell (1979). Picked up from a box of random free stuff left outside someone's house to be got rid of. The Bagthorpe saga (this is the fourth of ten books; I correctly guessed it wouldn't be sufficiently continuity-heavy to need reading in order) seems to be basically a wacky 70s sitcom in book form, featuring the adventures of a variously eccentric middle-class English family. In this book financial worries lead them to attempt to become self-sufficient, while they also have to manoeuvre for an inheritance from the eccentric great-aunt and deal with the five-year-old cousin's dedication to her 'death and funerals' phase. It's funny but not brilliant; it made decent enough reading during stressful travelling, which is what I did, but I won't seek out the rest of the series.
King Lear by William Shakespeare (c. 1606). Whenever I watch or read a Shakespeare play I enjoy the brilliant intricacies of language while probably missing about 90% of them, and then decide I'll have to think about it for a bit before forming proper opinions. Perhaps I should have watched a performance before reading; my mother has recommended the film with Laurence Olivier, and I will watch it at some point but see above re. I can only watch one thing at the moment. As it is, I thought the tragic ending was beautiful ('And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, no life!/Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life/And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more/Never, never, never, never, never.'— ;__; ), and I was interested to read in R. A. Foakes's introduction to the Arden edition that a) while, as usual with Shakespeare's plays, the story of King Lear was a previously existing one which he adapted, his ending is different from that of the previous versions and b) between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries virtually all productions used a rewritten/bowdlerised version of the play which replaced Shakespeare's ending with a happier one. Clearly the ending is an important matter! I was also puzzled by a passage where Shakespeare uses the word 'choughs' and Foakes says in a footnote that it means 'jackdaws': the scene is set on the cliffs of Dover so I thought it seemed likely that Shakespeare did mean choughs (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax), but Wikipedia, citing Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey who are probably reliable sources for this sort of thing, agrees that 'chough' formerly meant 'jackdaw' (Coloeus monedula). But that's also puzzling because I have heard both birds and it seems to me obvious that 'chough' is better onomatopoeia for P. pyrrhocorax and 'jack' for C. monedula. Hmmm.
Metal from Heaven by August Clarke (2024). Set in a world undergoing a fantasy Industrial Revolution based on ichorite, a mysterious substance which causes a mysterious disease in the children of people who work with it; our narrator Marney Honeycutt (which rather inappropriately reminded me of Lucy Honeychurch) is one of the first to be afflicted, and also her entire family were massacred when the owner of the factory where they worked decided to put down a strike the really thorough way when Marney was twelve. She escapes and ends up being adopted by a gang of bandits who've made themselves an amazing socialist bandit paradise by murdering a local aristocratic ruler, pretending to all the other aristocrats that he's just really reclusive and taking over his house and land; meanwhile Marney plots how she's going to get revenge on that factory owner. Also, almost everyone is a lesbian. I thought various parts of the plot probably wouldn't stand up to thorough scrutiny, and there were some seriously questionable decisions made (e.g., if your entire plan for the future of your bandit paradise depends on the continued survival of one person, I think you can not let her go out on highly dangerous bandit raids, actually); I found the language often careless and sometimes jarringly modern for the fantasy Industrial Revolution; most of the sex scenes made no emotional sense to me (I don't want to overstate this as a flaw, I'm sure it was important and meaningful for the author and for the right kind of readers, but I was not one of them). However, I did like the book on the whole, and I think it's very good, largely for two reasons: 1) the worldbuilding is thoughtful and really interesting, especially in portraying a range of different religions, views of the world, naming systems and concepts of sexuality and gender, and in how these things vary by class; and in the eventual discovery of what ichorite really is; and 2) it is absolutely committed to being exactly what Clarke wants it to be, no holding back at all, and I respect them for that. Also the way it's narrated, with Marney speaking in first person to a specific other character, is great and used to good effect, and the ending is weird and amazing. I did guess the first big twist as soon as we found out the relevant backstory fact about the character in question, but I had no idea what was coming next.
I've just collected a 600 page book on the history of ballet from the library, so that's something more relevant to read next.
Bagthorpes v. the World by Helen Cresswell (1979). Picked up from a box of random free stuff left outside someone's house to be got rid of. The Bagthorpe saga (this is the fourth of ten books; I correctly guessed it wouldn't be sufficiently continuity-heavy to need reading in order) seems to be basically a wacky 70s sitcom in book form, featuring the adventures of a variously eccentric middle-class English family. In this book financial worries lead them to attempt to become self-sufficient, while they also have to manoeuvre for an inheritance from the eccentric great-aunt and deal with the five-year-old cousin's dedication to her 'death and funerals' phase. It's funny but not brilliant; it made decent enough reading during stressful travelling, which is what I did, but I won't seek out the rest of the series.
King Lear by William Shakespeare (c. 1606). Whenever I watch or read a Shakespeare play I enjoy the brilliant intricacies of language while probably missing about 90% of them, and then decide I'll have to think about it for a bit before forming proper opinions. Perhaps I should have watched a performance before reading; my mother has recommended the film with Laurence Olivier, and I will watch it at some point but see above re. I can only watch one thing at the moment. As it is, I thought the tragic ending was beautiful ('And my poor fool is hanged. No, no, no life!/Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life/And thou no breath at all? Thou'lt come no more/Never, never, never, never, never.'— ;__; ), and I was interested to read in R. A. Foakes's introduction to the Arden edition that a) while, as usual with Shakespeare's plays, the story of King Lear was a previously existing one which he adapted, his ending is different from that of the previous versions and b) between the late seventeenth and mid-nineteenth centuries virtually all productions used a rewritten/bowdlerised version of the play which replaced Shakespeare's ending with a happier one. Clearly the ending is an important matter! I was also puzzled by a passage where Shakespeare uses the word 'choughs' and Foakes says in a footnote that it means 'jackdaws': the scene is set on the cliffs of Dover so I thought it seemed likely that Shakespeare did mean choughs (Pyrrhocorax pyrrhocorax), but Wikipedia, citing Mark Cocker and Richard Mabey who are probably reliable sources for this sort of thing, agrees that 'chough' formerly meant 'jackdaw' (Coloeus monedula). But that's also puzzling because I have heard both birds and it seems to me obvious that 'chough' is better onomatopoeia for P. pyrrhocorax and 'jack' for C. monedula. Hmmm.
Metal from Heaven by August Clarke (2024). Set in a world undergoing a fantasy Industrial Revolution based on ichorite, a mysterious substance which causes a mysterious disease in the children of people who work with it; our narrator Marney Honeycutt (which rather inappropriately reminded me of Lucy Honeychurch) is one of the first to be afflicted, and also her entire family were massacred when the owner of the factory where they worked decided to put down a strike the really thorough way when Marney was twelve. She escapes and ends up being adopted by a gang of bandits who've made themselves an amazing socialist bandit paradise by murdering a local aristocratic ruler, pretending to all the other aristocrats that he's just really reclusive and taking over his house and land; meanwhile Marney plots how she's going to get revenge on that factory owner. Also, almost everyone is a lesbian. I thought various parts of the plot probably wouldn't stand up to thorough scrutiny, and there were some seriously questionable decisions made (e.g., if your entire plan for the future of your bandit paradise depends on the continued survival of one person, I think you can not let her go out on highly dangerous bandit raids, actually); I found the language often careless and sometimes jarringly modern for the fantasy Industrial Revolution; most of the sex scenes made no emotional sense to me (I don't want to overstate this as a flaw, I'm sure it was important and meaningful for the author and for the right kind of readers, but I was not one of them). However, I did like the book on the whole, and I think it's very good, largely for two reasons: 1) the worldbuilding is thoughtful and really interesting, especially in portraying a range of different religions, views of the world, naming systems and concepts of sexuality and gender, and in how these things vary by class; and in the eventual discovery of what ichorite really is; and 2) it is absolutely committed to being exactly what Clarke wants it to be, no holding back at all, and I respect them for that. Also the way it's narrated, with Marney speaking in first person to a specific other character, is great and used to good effect, and the ending is weird and amazing. I did guess the first big twist as soon as we found out the relevant backstory fact about the character in question, but I had no idea what was coming next.
I've just collected a 600 page book on the history of ballet from the library, so that's something more relevant to read next.
horror movies and things
Jun. 20th, 2025 09:38 pmsnickficMasters of Horror: Cigarette Burns. In John Carpenter's episode of the horror anthology series, a guy (Norman Reedus) who finds rare movie prints is hired to find one that may no longer exist after horrific violence broke out on the night it was shown. I love stories about haunted media, and the haunted media parts of this were solid. Unlike Antrum: The Deadliest Movie Ever Made, this mostly resisted the temptation of actually showing us the cursed movie, but the effects as our guy gets closer to finding it are satisfyingly disturbing. It even gets pretty gory towards the end, which I was not expecting.
That said, it's weirdly paced and very talky, and the main character should have been played by someone older, because Norman Reedus with his baby face absolutely cannot sell this role. Also, IMO it really mishandled the reveal ( spoilers )
--
Sator (2021). A man lives in a cabin in the woods while trying to discover what happened to his mother, who may have been taken by a demon that she and her mother both claimed to hear messages from. This movie doesn't have much dialogue, is very poorly lit, and relies heavily on the viewer being able to recognize and distinguish faces to distinguish what's happening, which I'm pretty bad at, so overall I understood only the broadest strokes of this movie. I think I would really like the movie that I think it was trying to be, a story of an inherited gift/curse and how it affects and has affected different members of the family, but I need a bit more than this movie could give me.
In particular,
( spoilery questions )
I will say the spooky woodsy vibes were very good, and despite being objectively pretty slow, I was engaged the whole time. Also, the actress playing the grandma with dementia was fantastic. Loved her.
Overall I don't recommend this one, but if you watch it, I would love to know what you think happens in it.
That said, it's weirdly paced and very talky, and the main character should have been played by someone older, because Norman Reedus with his baby face absolutely cannot sell this role. Also, IMO it really mishandled the reveal ( spoilers )
--
Sator (2021). A man lives in a cabin in the woods while trying to discover what happened to his mother, who may have been taken by a demon that she and her mother both claimed to hear messages from. This movie doesn't have much dialogue, is very poorly lit, and relies heavily on the viewer being able to recognize and distinguish faces to distinguish what's happening, which I'm pretty bad at, so overall I understood only the broadest strokes of this movie. I think I would really like the movie that I think it was trying to be, a story of an inherited gift/curse and how it affects and has affected different members of the family, but I need a bit more than this movie could give me.
In particular,
( spoilery questions )
I will say the spooky woodsy vibes were very good, and despite being objectively pretty slow, I was engaged the whole time. Also, the actress playing the grandma with dementia was fantastic. Loved her.
Overall I don't recommend this one, but if you watch it, I would love to know what you think happens in it.
Icons That Need Homes
Jun. 20th, 2025 09:16 pmjayregee posting in iconsI am getting rid of these icons. They need a good home. Want any of them? Some were made when I was just beginning to make icons so their appearance may not be up to code.
( More Icons of DIfferent Fandoms... )
( More Icons of DIfferent Fandoms... )
Easter Eggs During Wartime
Jun. 20th, 2025 01:54 pmbrithistorianYesterday morning Z. was watching Kim Possible during breakfast, and I burst out laughing when one of the villains[^1] said "This is not a party. This is not a disco. This is not fooling around." ^^
[^1] For those of you interested enough in Kim Possible to want to know, it was Señor Senior Sr., so the voice actor was either Earl Boen (who was Dr. Silberman in Terminator 2) or Ricardo Montalban (who needs no introduction).
ETA: I couldn't not look it up. This was s1e11 ("Coach Possible"), so Señor Senior Sr. was played by Earl Boen.