Recent Entries

Entry tags:

reading

Reading Thoughts

(A computer crash ate the last attempt to put this all down and that is something I am trying to avoid this time!)

So, I have been thinking about doing a reading notebook this year - I kind of want to be a bit more deliberate about writing down what I have read, and what I thought about it.

I fell down a rabbit hole last night on Youtube, watching videos made by bullet journal influencers (a thing that exists!) about their own book journals and the elaborate art projects and data collection that they are planning on using to set lofty goals for their reading in the new year. Bullet journalling seems to have turned into art journals in the last few years, as far as I can tell? There is watercolors and scrapbooking and lots and lots of washi tape. I last checked in to the bullet journal system in about January of 2020 bc I did want to be a little more thoughtful about things, and I've modified it enough that it's hardly like the minimalist lists that were part of the initial structure. It is quite useful to have some mechanisms to check out what you're working on and if it's working out for you.

That said, I have some clear thoughts about what I do NOT want in a reading journal:
- Annuality - I am not making a reading journal for 2022, I am just setting up a journal to write down what I am reading and how I think about it, it will not turn over in 2023 automatically.
-Star based rating systems - I might use one as a joke, but I think they are a bit dumb.
-Goals - I am not trying to hit 50 books or whatever. I might count things up at the end of the year, I might not, it hardly matters. I have Storygraph for stats if I really want them.

Things I do want:
-A Ravelry-like vibe - On Ravelry, you're working on your version of a project, with your needles and yarn, and while I see lots of people's other projects based on a similar pattern, it's not about a competition or making the socks for an audience. It's for me to wear them. The reading journal is for me, an aide memoire.
-A way to track publishing - I am going to count fic over 50K as a book, so fic v. self published v. traditional publishing is something I want to track.
-A To Be Read section - I keep buying books and forgetting to read them or getting distracted. I want some structure there to keep hold of things.
-Books are entered as they are started - I want to record what books I start and don't finish or set aside. Those are also interesting.
-Short book reviews - maybe a few sentences, very simple and breezy, about books that I do finish and want to talk about.
-genre - some way of tracking that

There is a part of me that is honestly just as interested in writing up all the media I enjoy in a similar way - not just which books I have read, but which movies and tv series and when I watched them and what I think of them. That seems like it might be a big goal to enter into all at once, tho, so I am going to put a hold on that for now.

Entry tags:

Reading Wednesday Meme

Currently reading:

Still on The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (aka, Mo Dao Zu Shi) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, the source material for the Netflix Chinese drama, the Untamed.

I am finding some of the issues I had with the show (when I tried to watch it several times) persist. This is mostly tone issues - it's a bit jarring to read stuff where something truly ghastly and horrible is happening but the main characters reaction is minimal or nothing. There's also an odd thing of POV, where the author will shift into one character's mind for the duration of a few observations and then move on, and that exposition are often dumped after an event. Something will occur and then characters will react Very Strongly, and the story will have to pause for a paragraph or two and explain all the backstory. (Example - a haughty young man makes a sneering comment in public about his fiancee, who we have never met or seen mentioned before but [we are now informed] is a nice girl but nothing special and only engaged to this guy because their mothers were friends. Hearing him, two people absolutely lose their shit about his bad behavior - because it's their fucking sister! All of this information arrives after the fact. We have never seen this haughty young man before.)

Overall, I can see why fans went apeshit over this book and I'm also willing to bet that this novel works better in its original language. I keep wondering about the allusions I'm missing (which I know I am) and how I work to catch up. It's all going a bit better now that I'm taking notes.

Recently finished

Once & Future by spqr on AO3 (https://archiveofourown.org/works/35856907) - Reminiscent of The Accidental Warlord and His Pack by inexplicifics, (Links: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683661). This is a very charming story about Jaskier kissing an enchanted statue and it turning out to be a hot dude. Lovely fic, deeply uninterested in the violent edges of the Witcher universe. Just got posted this week!

The Witcher and the Lordling: Into the Mountains by Alex51324 (https://archiveofourown.org/series/2331386) - Technically, this second entry in this series is not entirely finished but it didn't impede my enjoyment at all. In an alternate universe where Witchers were not culled so much as leashed, Geralt and Jaskier break free and head out into the world. If you would enjoy reading a detailed breakdown of how to make a winter camp in the woods with nothing but a few tools and some knowhow, this is a great fic.

Up next:
Really I need to get back into House of Leaves before I completely forget the characters and the plot. I've also got the last two novellas of Neon Yang's Tensorate series up with my book club, so those will probably be the next on my list.

Some days are some days

Life:

I am visiting family over the holiday, and while it has been going peacefully, the wear and tear of six people in a house that usually holds one is becoming apparent.

For example, I am hiding from my mother because we tried to watch a show with two timelines and it turns out she can't do that without her demanding "Oh, my god, Who is that [new character]? what happened to the characters in the flashback??" every two minutes. I have put the show on pause and gone to the basement room I'm in "for a nap" before I became ungracious.

It's also becoming clear that some people are more interested in 'pandemic adjacent' stories than I can really stand, so the act of negotiating shared watch experiences is a slight grind, tho I am actually glad I branched out because Station Eleven seems to have real promise!

(If anyone is interested in the theatrical troupe in a post apocalyptic America, I recommend seeing a production of Mr. Burns; a Post Electric Play, which I got to see live in 2019. Excellent play, deeply thoughtful, very funny.)

The Christmas holiday has been relatively chill - I got to give my siblings a detailed rundown of the awfulness of my last visit to the in-laws and they join me in my WTF face regarding it. It's nice to have their support. I'm also just really happy to see them - they are delightful nerds.

Reading:

I have started reading the new more official translation of The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation (aka, Mo Dao Zu Shi) by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu, which is the source material for the Netflix Chinese drama, the Untamed. The show seems to have taken fandom by storm, but I have needed a few approaches and the aid of a fandom buddy to get into the source material. The new novel translation, which is part 1 of three, is a more natural read than the fan translation of the novel, and I am finding that I don't mind my own unfamiliarity with the genre nearly as frustrating with a novel. (Tho, I am taking notes, because I find it difficult to hold onto the proper names of all the characters, sects, and locations without writing them down.)

I have also started a re-read of the Witcher and the Lordling by Alex5324, an alternate universe fic where Jaskier and Geralt run away into the woods together.

Entry tags:

Life update and some reading recs

What I've Been Up To:
- Professional Life -
I started a new job at a new place! Still a university, but much smaller and with a much more tight staff. Crucially, it is completely remote, and responded to Covid with much stronger protocols and much more humane approach to the staff. They were not advertising the position as remote, but they are expanding to have remote staff as something they learned from the pandemic, so I'm feeling quite hopeful about this place and a return to the part of my job that I really liked.

In the weeks before and after I left, two people from my old team at my old university also left and moved to new places - I'm pleased for all of them.

-Social Media-
I'm still doing Tumblr and TikTok as my main incoming information - both of them seem to be good at showing me new things, which I really value. I'm basically off Facebook, Instagram, and anything else except Dreamwidth (eh, sorry for going dark at lot there!)

-Journals-
I've become moderately obsessed this week with book journals that I have seen on Tiktok - they seem part of an enjoyable tread of maximalist bullet journaling which is rather attractive as an art form. I started a bullet journal in January of 2020 and it rapidly turned into a hybrid model of a journal with a to-do list - it never really took the turn of involving all the colored pencils and stencils and graphs that people seem to like, but it did involve an investment in my own pleasure in the form of buying myself nice journals to write in, nice stickers to put in them, and nice pens to write with. All of those things, working from a mindset of "You are allowed to buy yourself Enough Things so that you don't start hoarding them to Save For Later" has really worked - I got out of my own way a bit there.

Partially I am a bit jealous of my sister, who has a notebook where she has written down every book she's finished since her early teens. It's patchy - she lost the habit for a few years - but it's kind of charming and I like the idea of it as a compact aide de memoir.

What I've Been Reading

-Traditional Publishing -
A Marvellous Light by Freya Markse - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/9ae07ba5-fd85-44d6-ac5d-f9d45b3b21e7 - An excellent first novel! Really enjoyed the story, the characters were charming. It felt like someone took a look a Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and was like, but what if the story was brisk and breezy and queer?

Red Thread of Fortune by Neon Yang - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/be5daded-a3d3-427a-9bc5-c122fee68b7a Short, solid, not as dark as it seems like it should be from the premise. Takes place after the Black Tides of Heaven, and seems like they are both stories pulled from a mythology that exists just to the side of other novels. Really good stuff.

Have His Carcase by Dorothy Sayers - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/40d83eee-cab2-4a83-b05d-cc0400c3fdc4 This novel was very very solid and just a touch too slow for my attention. The characters and their banter were charming enough to carry it - for a mystery reader with more taste for the genre, I think it would come across better.

- Self Published -
Morning Glory Milking Farm by C.M. Nascosta - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/cda06f38-9c67-42c3-89a1-b6d016fbc5aa Oh, god, just read the summary. It's sexy and goofy and absurd and a little too on the nose about the post-college millennial life

Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard - https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/2b1c3268-5abe-4e82-85e5-c2e98b4450a5 - Absurdly long, deeply kind, a book in which the main character saves the world by being the most organized person in an empire and actually being put in charge of the damn thing. And by, saves the world, I mean establishes universal basic income, decentralizing the nobility, and instituting government reforms based on his fantasy!Polynesian background that emphasizes the good in people being fostered and leadership as a duty.

-Fanfiction-

Soldier's Heart by Alex51324 - I re-read this sprawling, gorgeous thing again, and it was just in time. The WWI setting was profoundly helpful in re-watching the Lord of the Rings films and catching on thematic resonances in that work that I hadn't paid attention to before. Tho, also, probably some of that is from trying to do media studies in a more thoughtful way.

What's on My Mind
-Covid-
Not again. Please. I am very glad now I got my booster, since that seems to keep Omicron at least from being quite as spreadable. But I am about to leave on a trip and there are literally no antigen tests in any pharmacy for a 50 mile radius - they all sold out within two hours of showing up in the store.

So, it's a family visit with some masks and antigen testing and strong precautions about avoiding people outside the bubble.

-Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch -
Thank god I didn't call off my Great Queer Supernatural Re-Watch - that nonsense is sustaining me thru the idea of another winter in insolation. We're resolved to do more careful reading about race and whiteness in the show - after season 3 there are almost no characters of color in the show at all, but there is a LOT of symbols and ideas that work on ideas of whiteness and masculinity, and we need some more tools to think about those.

(no subject)

Testing something out. I have a new laptop that has a tablet-ish functionality that allows for handwriting with the bluetooth stylus that comes with it.

For my first Smart phone the model I picked was a Samsung Note, which at the time was one of the largest phones on the market. Now, its a normal size phone But at the time, it was MAssive and it always made people gape. The draw for me of a giant phone was to read on it and use the stylus it came with to write- I hated predictive text and it rarely worked well for me.

so imagine my surprise when the smartphone was absolute crap at using the handwriting to text tool! Utter balls. J could not make it work at all, and it partially wanted a custom shorthand.

This, however, it is not bad. Lots of errors, I can see ,but also , I have been able to fix a lot as I go, and it is much better at reading cursive. Overall, a much improved bit of tech. But still not as fast as I type.

More Musing on Midnight Mass - Spoilers

I'm still chewing on Midnight Mass, and why the typical compassionate, multi-viewpoint Mike Flanagan ending, an ending the emphasizes the flawed humanity of everyone involved, worked for me in the endings of Bly Manor and Hill House, but falls so flat with Midnight Mass.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Leah Schnelbach for their excellent discussion of Midnight Mass at Tor.com - go read it here: https://www.tor.com/2021/10/01/religious-horror-and-horrific-religion-in-midnight-mass/

Midnight Mass has a villain. Bly Manor and Hill House have trauma that make their apparently villains worthy of compassion and mercy even as they do awful things, but Midnight Mass has an actual, straight forward villain, and pretends that it doesn't, and I think there's the issue for me.

Spoilers below the cut!

( Read more... )
So this story has a villain. And I am annoyed by how the story seems to fail to even realize that in its last chapters.

Midnight Mass - meta with light spoilers

I had a whole long post planned about the successes and failures of Netflix's Midnight Mass, and it was eaten by the internet when my computer shut down unexpectedly.

So, here's my thoughts - I like episodes 1-5, and then episodes 6 and 7 really leaned into elements of the show that I had been unconsciously forgiving, to the severe detriment of the show.

The show goes out of its way to forgive and humanize the behavior of someone who was legitimately wrong, acting in bad faith, and harming people from a position of authority - for decades. And the show ends with that person being a tragic main character, when I thought the show was setting that character up for a detailed and definitive fall from grace (a phrase I choose quite pointedly.)

I'll put this one non-detailed spoiler behind a cut:
( Read more... )

The issues with Haunting of Hill House and Bly Manor were specific to the characters and focused on giving full scope to the emotions of the story, but this same trend really let me down with Midnight Mass. Like, you can depict and forgive flaws in a family or a relationship that you simply cannot forgive of an institution, and Midnight Mass simply did not understand that even a little bit.

Wednesday Reading Meme

on Friday!

What I Just Finished Reading: Son of a Trickster by Eden Robinson, which was my suggestion for the book club that I'm in. Most of the people in the reading group found the start slow and the plot a bit undirected and the main character kind of without a goal - all of those things felt true to me, but I also didn't mind them and really thought they served the point of the novel. The main character is about 16, after all, in a small town in Canada - his main goals are preserving relationships with the people who love and want to care for him, while realizing that he's pretty helpless to do much to keep them. He's honest and young and traumatized. I'm lining up the next two books in the series.

What I am Currently Reading: House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, which feels like if the Ong's Hat conspiracy episode of Decoder Ring was a novel. Very much enjoying it, no idea what's happening next, solid horror and interesting book work.

What I Plan to Read Next: Eve Sedgewick's Epistemology of the Closet and A Psalm for the Wild Built sometime in the next couple weeks.

Entry tags:

Sort of back from being sort of away

I am freshly back online from a lovely vacation that involved very little structured time - exactly what I needed!

We visited some friends in southern states, which involved some magnificent fish dishes and some truly excellent BBQ. (After a lovely sampling of available sauces, I have picked a mustardy one that went well on everything, and purchased a bottle to take home.)

Bookwise, I picked up Andy Weir's most recent book, Project Hail Mary, a novel very much in line with The Martian for "smart person does thoughtful science carefully for high stakes and laudable goals." Overall I thought it was a fun and fast-paced read with a character, Ryland Grace, an extremely smart person who is also doing some really interesting things.

I do notice an element from The Martian that has carried over here, which is that Weir is pessimistic about politics and governments functioning together well and quickly in groups when faced with major stakes - in The Martian, this is handled by having all the committed scientists do an end-run around the politicians of their various countries to work together directly, any fallout in their future be damned- and Weir just doesn't really return to that, but it feels relatively natural; in PHM, this is handled by giving one character a 'get out of international law free' card for the scope of the scientific project they are working on, and then pointing out that there will be consequences for their actions later. While I think the second approach might better convey the idea that, actually, it's quite hard to make large groups of people work towards a single goal, no matter how much it's in their own interests, I preferred the first approach. PHM shunts the problem of imperfect authority to one side and says, this single person will make the right call - which is just moving the problem of authority onto one person rather than handling it.

I'm mentioning it here because I'm chewing it over a bit - it's pretty clearly a plot device to let Grace get to the cool science faster with less political discussion and I think it does the job quite well. But, man, if they had picked the wrong person to be the de-facto dictator of the big important science, none of this would have worked at all.

I'm also reading House of Leaves, which I have started before and put down before - I think this time will be better because I am less freaked out by the horror elements, and I have more time to devote to reading it on this vacation. I'm also letting myself write in the margins a lot, which is a great way of tracking my progress and my thoughts in a book this prone to sending the reader towards the end notes.

Entry tags:

fanfiction,
recs

Nostalgia and a Good SPN Horror Fic REc

Oh, man, I was feeling nostalgic about some SPN writers from about 9-10 years ago and reached out to one, and wow, still around on DW, that's such a delight to find out!

Unrelatedly, here's something I just read in my newfound love of horror fics in Supernatural, and oooof, I need people to read this so we can all share this experience.

Recs:
Fandom: Supernatural, involves elements of the film The Descent (2005)

Title: Every Part of the Animal

Author: komodobits & Askance (doomcountry),

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11423637

Author Summary: It’s their first case after the Trials, after Heaven has collapsed: playing back-up to another team of hunters taking out some werewolves in the mountains. It's a routine job, an easy job - at least until the radio goes silent. Sam, Dean, and Cas follow after, but the caves into which the hunters have vanished wind deeper and darker than they could have expected, and something is wrong. Cas can feel it. The Winchesters may not believe what he’s hearing, but there's something down here with them—and it's not the people they came here to find, and it's not the werewolves they've been tracking. It's something else, something older, something violent, and it knows they're here.

Why I love it: Oh, ok, first of all, HEED THE WARNINGS - I will also add that this fic takes place in a cave setting and has strong claustropobia elements. This is above and beyond canon, but is very much like what the show might have been if it could have been R-Rated. But, God, this just takes every little bit of the Supernatural canon on angels and uses it to hurt you. It's true and real and amazing horror and it was particularly incredible compelling because, due to being exposed to the Marvel comic book character Venom back in the 1990s, I have always been highly susceptible to the trope of "two beings sharing a body and they love each other." This fic absolutely weaponized that concept and every bit of lore about possession and vessels. This is a hell specifically created for Castiel to suffer in, and it's so fucking compelling. I read this in one sitting, and cried.

(no subject)

Recently, I've been looking for a place where I can work remotely, and, sadly, it's not going super well. I was turned down from two jobs on Thursday in the space of my commute home - not the best way to start a long weekend. One of them was a real goal for me, in terms of the organization and the team, but, meh, the time is not ripe.

Overall, I'm going to be on the lookout for remote jobs in prospect research and development for nonprofits, so if you see any postings, send them my way!

Entry tags:

book,
recs

Reading Stuff

- I'm still reading Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet and, oh, man, it's a lovely read - I'm really appreciating doing some late in life queer reading that really leans into the concepts of ambiguity and complex relationships. It's deeply enjoyable.

- Started reading Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard based on a glowing Twitter recommendation that compared it to the West Wing but in a fantasy setting. It's, apparently, slightly in a series but seems to stand alone really well, and I'm finding it to be a book that's very much about the experience of a soothing setting and interesting characters with a bedrock solid relationship between that is maybe blossoming into more? It's 900 pages and it was $7 on Amazon by a Canadian author who seems to mostly be making cheese while writing novels.

- Recently read A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine - great book, interesting interstellar view of how civilizations eat their citizens and what it means to be part of a larger whole. Fantastically alien aliens. I didn't enjoy it *quite* as much as my re-read of A Memory Called Empire, the first book in this series, but I think it will hold up to a good re-read.

- I've been on a kick recently for reading books that explore empire and propaganda and systems of oppression via the metaphor of a hive mind. Some of these, like Desolation Called Peace, do this thru comparing several modes of empires that work via technology and biology and we see thru the eyes of several people in different competing cultures. Also excellent books in this vein - Mexican Gothic, Ancillary Justice, Axiom's End, and some elements of the MurderBot series.

Eyes on the Prize - A Real Life Update

There has been a lot going on the past few weeks!

- I am looking for a new job. (Doing this while I still have one is quite nice.) The business I work for showed some bad signs before the pandemic and doubled down on those during the pandemic, and seems to be trying to pretend that didn't happen - since people seem to be hiring again now, I'm looking! One of my colleagues, a hero, left on 24 hours notice after being very clear for several months that she was not pleased with where things were heading. I adore her.
- I broke a tooth/ lost a filling and am going to have to do some long delayed dental upkeep. It's stable for now and the temporary filling will be replaced in a couple of weeks.
- Our basement flooded slightly after two weeks of unrelenting rain - only about an inch or two of water, and our Wonderful Wet/Dry Vacuum did a champion job glugging it all out of the basement, but it was the worst we have seen and it is clearly time to start looking at ways to waterproof this thing. Measures have been taken to make the sump pump more effective and we're running a dehumidifier all the time to help it out.

(no subject)

I do not really follow football, except when it leads to a possibility of watching England being sad.

I don't even mean the players, really - I honestly hope they are really nice people and have excellent careers and great success - so long as it's not while playing for England.

Entry tags:

reading

ugh, this book

Read Laura Lam's Pantomime - truly did not enjoy this book. I'm venting here a bit because a friend of mine REALLY enjoyed it and I feel bad for disliking it so much.
SPOILERS Behind the Cut!
( Continue Reading )

In summary: This book is a debut novel; it shows. Lam doesn't seem to like women very much. The start is slow and kind of bad, but the ending is rushed and worse.

Entry tags:

Proof of life and some recs

I still exist!

Life updates:
My garden this year is amazing and my peas and potatoes are causing me real joy. Also, if you have never enjoyed salad, try growing your own romaine lettuce in a pot, it's a-maz-ing how much better the fresh leaves are. My peas are hilarious and honestly I wonder if they are drunk.

Fic recs:
My love of Supernatural is ongoing, as if the Great Queer Rewatch, but I am realizing that longer fics are harder for me to read in that mode right now. I'm not sure why! But this rec set is mostly going to be light on Supernatural recs, and instead on shorter or fresher fandoms that have caught my eye recently.

Title: Cuckoo And Nest

Author: komodobits

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423959
Author Summary: For a long time, Castiel thought that every earthly possession other than the immediately necessary was excess to requirement. But Dean – Dean who named his car, who keeps a photograph of his mother in his wallet, some thirty-plus years after her death, who still has the crumpled ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a sleeping pelican emblazoned on it from the Microtel outside of Roanoke where he first kissed Castiel, clumsy and unsure, under the unsteady fluorescence of an exhausted bathroom bulb – is sentimental.

It puzzles Castiel, where Dean draws the line between what is meaningful and what it is worthless.

Why I love it: This fic sits in a sweet spot for me, of a character in relationship where he feels like his place is contingent, not secure, and finding out that actually, no, he's totally beloved and his partner is just... kind of bad at communicating that. It's also got like, differing love languages! "Making Space For The Person You Love" is absolutely an underrated theme, and one that speaks very intimately to me, a person who is Messy TM in literal and figurative ways.

***

Title: Separate Ways by PepperPrints

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339102

Author Summary: With Moff Gideon defeated and the Darksaber reclaimed, the rumours of newly named Mand'alor Din Djarin spread through the galaxy... along with the stories of the Child he carries with him. Determined to meet him, Luke Skywalker arrives on Mandalore -- but before he can get any closer, he has to prove himself worthy of Mandalorian standards.

Why I love it: [Summary Contain Spoilers for Season 1 of the Mandalorian] So, this fic was written BEFORE the second season, which makes the pairing of Luke Skywalker/Din Djarin even more inspired. This is a story about Luke, who is quite drained and injured by the events of the Original Star Wars Trilogy, find a new place and a new love in the backwaters world of a renew Mandalor community. It's a slow burn, but a sweet one, and, important to me, doesn't ask Din to leave behind his own religious beliefs to join Luke. It's sort of technically a Royal AU, but only in the same way that Leia Organa is both a general and a princess. I just... I like the idea of Luke finding a softer epilogue than he gets in canon, and this has that. Kidfic.

Entry tags:

Horror films in the time of a coup

I have been watching a lot of classic horror films as part of the Great Queer Rewatch of Supernatural.

If you haven't seen Night of the Living Dead (1968), it fell into the public domain, so some very good copies are around on Youtube, I watched this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw50caHk62g - there are also color version if that floats your boat, but I found the black and white one particularly effecting.

Just now, it's hard for me not to see this film as a lynching movie. It's not, precisely, about a lynching. But it's not not about a lynching.

This film is charming in the way that shoestring budget, actor-focused, tight narratives working with an interesting concept kind of a film are always charming to me. (Similarly, Christopher Eccelston's Doctor Who, Bound by the Wachowski Sisters, classic Twilight Zone episodes)

Our hero, Ben is played by an incredibly skilled actor, literally an acting teacher for most of his career, who makes Ben kind and competent and authoritative without cruelty. He protects people, he is kind to someone who's breaking down under the stress, he's smart and decisive and calls people on their shit. He's allowed to get angry and punch someone who put his life in danger, and we're allowed to cheer him on when he does.

I found out afterwards that the role of Ben had been written for a white actor, and then when Duane Jones auditions, they cast him without re-writing the part. That is important. Because there are ways that Ben behaves that are not allowed for a specifically Black character in 1968, and I'm pretty sure that a lot of them would not be allowed for a Black actor in 2021. ("Allowed" here in the sense of, "someone would find this unbelievable for a Black person to act like a fully human person who is competent and smart, and re-write that, because Black characters are not allowed to be unquestionably heroic in the same ways as a white actor is.")

The fact that they opted NOT to re-write around Duane Jones's race meant that there are scenes at the end of the film where Good Heroic White Men With Guns come to save the day, and they offhandedly kill Ben and they drag his body to be burned in a pyre with the zombies, and all I could see were the photos of murdered Black people that run in Ken Burns documentaries about the Civil War and about jazz, and all I could see were the white supremacists breaking into the Capitol Building with plastic handcuffs.

Having survived the night in a house surrounded by crazed, cannibalistic undead white people who were turned into monsters before they could be buried, Ben has saved himself! He lived! He made it! He saved himself! And then white men with guns showed up and killed him casually, without understanding that he's a human being, because they can kill him at at distance. Because they have guns. Because no one organizes them well enough to make them fucking check who they are shooting at.

I know that George Romero has talked about not re-writing Ben to be 'more black' and deciding not to change the ending, and that he didn't intend to make this a commentary about race. I really, really recommend the movie as being an excellent and touching film, with good performances and sympathetic characters.

And, also, I'm having really hard time not seeing this as a movie about a deeply good man being murdered by a white mob, because that's what's in my head right now.

Entry tags:

Well then

Coups, huh?

"Don’t Prosecute Gotham’s Supervillains for Their Latest Scheme" by the Joker

*****
Some other reading I am doing!

Title: Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film
Author: Carol Clover (originally 1992, my copy is the 2015 Princeton Classics edition)
Link: Jstor actually has the full text!
Why I love it: This is actually a tricky one, because I am reading it slowly as part of the background reading for the Great Queer Rewatch of Supernatural, and so I am on Chapter 3. That said, it's really interesting, and I am using it both as a resource on its own and pulling its citations for my own reading. It's made me a much more careful reader of Supernatural. I'm also planning to read a good number of other things about gender and sexuality in film, and particularly in horror, so there's a lot I'm thinking about here. There are some flaws - her analysis needs a lot more gender studies than it has (the field was pretty young in the late 1980's), so I'm planning to supplement with Gender Trouble and The Epistemology of the Closet. That said, this is a really approachable classic for thinking about film and horror, and as a person who really benefits from having a specific set of examples to look at when diving into a new field, this has been great!

**

Title: If I'm Haunting You, You Must Be Haunting Me
Author: Mardia
Fandom: Knives Out ( 2019)
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22042492
Author Summary:
It seems horribly fitting that when Marta’s soulbond arrives, it’s in the most absurdly ridiculous, horrible way imaginable. It involves the Thrombeys, so of course something that should be wonderful just ends up being terrible in the end.
Why I Love It:
Oh, oh, I love this. This is a soulmate Marta/Ransom fic. Let's be real - Ransom is the fucking worst and there is something deeply wrong with me for enjoying this pairing so much. But he's so entertaining, and so amorally loyal to Marta in this fic that I really, really enjoy setting the moral analytic part of my brain aside for a bit while reading it. I find there is something deeply attractive about indulging the fantasy of having someone really lean into that amoral devotion. (The line where Juliet calls Romeo, "The god of my idolatry" just sends shivers down my spine.) As Marta spends so much of the film being a good and noble person, this feels indulgent and fun and deeply sexy. Highly recommend.

**

Title: Ernesto de la Cruz vs. The Court of Public Opinion
Author: skater_of_the_surface
Fandom: Coco (2017)
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573815
Author Summary:
The thrilling sequel to Coco that you've all been waiting for! Miguel visits ... wait for it... wait for it... A LIBRARY. Or : Miguel probably can't prove that Ernesto is a murderer, but stupendous fuckbucket is still on the table.
Why I Love It: It's epistolary fiction! A story told thru a series of article and tweets, detailing what happens when Miguel tries to spread the story of what really happened to his " no-good dirty rotten guitar-playing great-great-grandfather." It's charming and fun to read. (The author is not Mexican and does not speak Spanish.)

**
Two Related Recs:

Article: FAQ:THE “SNAKE FIGHT” PORTION OF YOUR THESIS DEFENSE by Luke Burns

Fanfic!
Title: The Best Defense
Author: Neveralarch
Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28298529
Author Summary:
You had to fight a big snake for your thesis defense. One of the largest ones you'd ever seen—and you'd attended plenty of defenses, seen the fear in the doctoral candidates' eyes as they sought out their snake in the shadows. You don't actually know if it's the biggest snake the facilities department had to offer, because they don't like to give out that much information. But it was a very big snake indeed.
Why I Love It: The "Snake Fight" Portion of Your Thesis Defense is just a perfect absurd encapsulation of the complete absurdity of academia and the way it grinds you down. Literally everyone I know who went thru a Ph.D program have major horror stories about the toll the process took on their mental and physical health and personal lives. This, makes a joke of it. The fic itself imagines the Snake Fight Portion of Your Thesis Defense turned back on the unkind and awful advisor who selected the snake for you, and imagines, What if the snake was on your side?

Entry tags:

Back from Holidays! and also The Great Queer Rewatch of Supernatural

Back from my Holiday Hiatus!

Visiting my sister (with pre-visit covid testing and a quarantine before and after) was lovely and I was very happy that neither of us had to spend Christmas alone.

I have totally failed to investigate the Yuletide posts and I am going to be working thru a LOT of backlogged recs. Yay!

I have a bunch of notifications to sort thru from DW, so if I have not yet replied to your comment, forgive me!

The Great Queer Rewatch of Supernatural has reached 1.20- "Dead Man's Blood," and wow, the show loved making John Winchester a terrible father right up until they narratively would have to make him the real villain of the show, and then they dodge! In a Season One that is full of stories that portray real world male violence and give is a small-s supernatural excuses so that the white men in authority are never at fault, wow, this one is real specific and real bad!

(Spoiler for Season One thru "Dead Man's Blood"

(- even if we never examine later issues with John Winchester's behavior to sabotage his sons' futures, Season One REALLY leans into the 'hunting=alcoholism' narrative for John. The reveal that he'd put money into college savings funds for his sons Before Their Mother Died is meant to be a sign that he wanted something different for them, but then the reveal that he 'spent the money on ammo' is just a fucking stab in the gut. Yeah, they laugh, and there really ought to be more bitterness to it. This is SO CLEARLY the addiction trope of a parent raiding the kid's savings for their drugs, and the show doesn't seem to realize how deeply unsympathetic that makes John.
(As my dear friend has said before, "He did his best. But he should have tried the best of somebody better.")

Entry tags:

In which Supernatural Season 16 is great - about the Rewatch

Yeah, so the show with the characters who cannot stay dead is, apparently, not staying dead. The end of Supernatural has felt like a shockingly active time for the fandom!

Which is not to say that I recommend getting into it. I don't. This show is Not Good. As Benoit Blanc says, it compels me, though.

I've been undertaking what I'm calling A Fully Spoiled Rewatch with my friend, iphys. My idea is largely modeled on a podcast I have really enjoyed (and highly recommend!), Still Pretty , a 'fully spoiled' podcast with Lani and Noelli hosting it and analyzing each episode in the context of the canon and their media studies background.

So, what's the ethos behind this rewatch?
1. Queer Reading - The show does not really *want* a queer audience or a female audience, but, we're here and we're going to be reading the show with a particular interest in that. Why do people read Dean as queer? What parts of the text support this? What parts have heterosexual explanations that we, two queers, would not have noticed without careful analysis?

2. Fully Spoiled - Taking each episode in the larger context of the canon, and drawing parallels where we find them. (Example: Season One's "Faith" has the DNA for Season Four's "Lazarus Rising," and also echoes into the Series Finale.)

3. What You See Is What You Get - Fandom tends to really encourage reading the text with an understanding that there are generous margins, places where you can set a story or speculate a headcanon into being, or tease out a thread they left dangling. Fandom lives and breathes in the nooks and crannies of a text. But, there's also something to saying, This is what the show put on the screen, so let's give that more weight in our analysis than the spaces they left blank. As a corollary, deuterocanonical sources like the Journal of John Winchester (as available online) are also sources we're looking at - but where the show contradicts those external sources, the show wins.

4. Do Your Homework - Season One is really a love letter to horror films, so we've been doing our homework and watching those (Example: Season One's "Home" does not really make sense without watching Poltergeist, and I liked the episode a lot more after having watched it. I watched Texas Chain Saw Massacre yesterday! It was really good!) Kripke cited Kerouac's On The Road as an influence, so we're going to read that. We're also doing some academic reading - I've got Carol Clover's Men Women and Chain Saws out of the library for this very reason.

5. Who's the Main Character? - Some episodes are clearly meant to highlight of the Winchester brothers above another, some are balanced, and some of the later ones are not even really about the Winbros at all! It makes it a fun question to ask.

Already, this approach has yielded some really interesting insights!

One of the weirder, but more revealing episodes of season one, "Home," where the Winbros return to their childhood home to find it haunted, are really much more comprehensible with the source material that they are drawn from -the film Poltergeist, which focuses really intensely on a mother saving her child from a spiritual/supernatural danger.

Likewise, I had a really interesting insight into John Winchester that I never had before - that he reads to a straight audience as feeling tremendous but unspoken *guilt* for failing to save his wife from a supernatural death in their own home prior to the start of the series. Which might be one of those things that the show's writers, largely straight, had assumed would be Too Obvious To Need Saying, but honestly was quite a revelation to me! (Not one that reflects well on John, not even a little, but inflects his abuse towards his sons in a different light.) It's implied that he failed as a husband/man in a duty to protect his wife - and that's not a dynamic I had ever once considered as being even a little bit part of *my* conception of marriage! But is very clearly part of some ideals set out for a heterosexual couple.