Film Corner: The Sword

The Sword

Alright, my good bitches. I come bearing Amazon movies because it's been a long fucking day. THE SWORD. Nice, solid name for a minute. "In 730 AD, young Garron is given the task to defend his home as his father rides to war. That task proves to be difficult as the calamity strikes and the enemy closes in." Wait what? They didn't even capitalize The Calamity. What is it?

"Ever obedient, Garron must rely on his father's guidance and God's strength to overcome the odds--or risk death for all that he loves." I'm nervous now. Is this a Christian movie? Some of those are mind bogglingly bad. We have red Roman centurion costumes from a passion play. We have wheat fields from GLADIATOR. We have a sword being nonspecifically forged. We have a very specific filming technique that probably has a name but it's where the camera just holds perfectly still on a scene and doesn't move at all in any way.

We have his wife wearing glowing virginal white while she gardens, which I question the wisdom of. Roman Centurion Marcus has to go away for travel and says they can't complain and have been fortunate; his superiors are "getting apprehensive about our beliefs" KLAXON KLAXON WE HAVE CHRISTIAN MOVIE. This doesn't make sense; 730 AD was like 400 years after Constantine. Christians weren't being persecuted then!! I'm pretty sure!! Idk, I'm tired. I wish more movies involved religious beliefs without them being Christian or Christian Expy. They keep talking about God, so they're definitely monotheistic.

Film Corner: Let's Talk About Star Wars (Part 1)

[Rise of Skywalker spoilers herein. This post is from a twitter thread. Part 2, which is an original composition, will go up on my January Patreon.]

Today I go to see and probably hate the Star War. I don't like JJ Abrams and I feel like at this point I'm going out of an obligation to Carrie, so my hopes aren't super high. Things I want from the film:

- More Rose/Finn and Finn/Poe.

- Ace Rey and a continuation of her having parentage that doesn't matter; she's just a random force-sensitive. (Those occur!!) In place of Ace Rey, I will accept Rose/Finn/Rey with Finn having Poe as a romantic ace boyfriend, I am flexible.

- Jedi Finn.

- Kylo to die without redemption. If he *is* redeemed, then immediate death. By which I mean I would prefer Kylo not be redeemed at all, but if they do Because Darth Vader Was then I want him to only be redeemed in death (like Darth Vader was). I don't want him alive and happy at the end of this. (I do think there is a place in society for redemption narratives; I do not think a last minute redemption of Space Nazi Wizard is the time and place.)

I informed Girlfriend of these wants a few days ago and she gave me such a sincere look of pity that I wanted to give her a hug, so I'm not too hopeful.

[Later.]

....what.

WHAT.

FUCKING WHAT.

Open Thread: Ice on dead leaves


Exactly what the title says.  Taken at my sister's farm, possibly on Christmas.

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  This is currently the only one:
   ● Star Wars: Episode IX -- The Rise of Skywalker

-

Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: The Babysitter

The Babysitter

Okay, I am sick as fuck and have the flu maybe so instead of working on edits, I'm going to attempt The Babysitter on Netflix.

"What class did you learn that in?"
"No one learns anything in class, Cole. That's why we have the internet."

Why are school bullies always portrayed as fat? Fat kids are overwhelmingly more likely to BE bullied. There's no reason other than fat stigma to signal instantly to the audience that this person is bad *because* they are fat. The head bully is also a black kid because OF COURSE a fat black kid is going to have more social power in a white school + white suburbia than his skinny, attractive, white male victim.

Look, the trailer was good so I'm hoping it gets better. Cole has been rescued by the most beautiful girl in the world. She is scarily affectionate. The trailer has teased that she will try to satanically murder Cole in a sorta cheesy Home Alone thriller. This pleases my flu-addled brain. I... really like Cole's mom. I was not expecting that. No, I actually love her.

Cole's adorable-and-age-appropriate girl friend warns him that his overly-affectionate hot babysitter probably has guys over while he sleeps. He determines to stay up and be sure for himself because the babysitter has creepily groomed him into a 'relationship'. To the movie's credit (I think? I've been burned before), it is presented as SUPER creepy and NOT OKAY how the older girl is grooming Cole. I know the movie is supposed to be cheese, but I really hope they do this right because I've been hammering on about how we don't take male victims seriously.

Mom and Dad leave for the weekend so now it's just Cole and Bee the Babysitter. Oh my god, this is like CRACKS but with a boy being creepily groomed instead of girls. (I like CRACKS but it's NOT a safe movie for everyone.) The babysitter girl even kinda looks like Netflix budget younger Eva Green. (She's very good in this role, whoever she is.) She tries to give Cole alcohol and Cole pours it in a potted plant instead YES MY GOOD SON YES.

God, I know some of this is going to play into the "hot girls are liars and you can't trust them" problematic trope, but I almost feel like this is an EXCELLENT picture of grooming and how to guard against it. Cole pretends to fall asleep and hears a bunch of people downstairs. He crawls out to investigate and my heart is in my throat.

*SCREAMING*

Yeah, I have no idea how to live-tweet this movie and will probably have to stop tweeting because trying to WORD at it is very hard. Taken in a vacuum, it is surprisingly good so far at showing how vulnerable men can be groomed and abused. Which... we don't really have enough of, so... good? Taken in the surrounding cultural context, there's definitely shades of "hot women can't be trusted" which we have WAY TOO MUCH OF, so... less good?

But if they'd made the babysitter a boy, then we'd fall into Predatory Gay tropes. And if she was plain, we'd fall into Underage Grooming Of Boys Is Only Abusive If She's Not Hot tropes. So I have no idea how to rate this movie but I will definitely be watching it further. Thanks for sticking with my extremely short live-watch thread. Oh gosh, they even addressed that just because Bee is evil doesn't mean all or even most women are. It's like they KNEW the trope was lurking in the background.

Wow, okay, that was a wild ride, but I guess I liked it? I don't know. Note there is fat-shaming and racism in addition to the abuse grooming triggers.

Film Corner: Babes with Blades

Babes with Blades

Alright, I'm back and ready to rumble. Or watch movies. Today's movie is called BABES WITH BLADES. Not the most auspicious title, but I remind you that DUDES & DRAGONS was actually surprisingly good and self-aware. "Set on the planet Draiga, this steampunk action film features world-class female martial artists and follows Azura as she tries to save her dying race."

We're going into a flashback. 12 years ago, a girl (it's the martial artist we saw in WARRIORESS and that one movie with the pirates and gargoyles and zombies and dragon wizard!) was... captured? by bad guys? but then escaped and has lived on the streets of Draiga ever since. The problem with movies structured around "An actor who fights! Watch them fight!" is that you still need to put some effort into the other stuff: plot, camera work, dialogue, etc.

Open Thread: Cat


This is my cat, also what appears to be the distal knuckle of my right middle finger, but mostly my cat.

It was taken, about a week ago, from more or less where I'm presently sitting.  Interestingly (or not) she's about as close right now, but in the exact opposite direction (i.e. she's up, back, and to the left, where she appears to be taking a nap.)

...and she demonstrated she's awake just to prove me wrong.

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  This is the only current one:
   ● Star Wars: Episode IX -- The Rise of Skywalker

-

Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Movie Open Thread: Walking on the Sky, and still going up (Star Wars)


First off, sorry I didn't have an open thread last week.  There will be one tomorrow.

Also tomorrow, Star Wars: Episode IX -- The Rise of Skywalker is released in the United States.  Except local theaters here in Maine are two minutes into a showing as I type this (today is very much not tomorrow) and Los Angeles, apparently not part of the United States, is in its fourth day of watching the movie.

But it's totally opening tomorrow, the internet says so, so it seems like it's time we had a place for people to talk about those who walk upon the sky and say, "This is is boring.  Must go higher!"

Anyway . . .

This is a place to discuss the movie Star Wars: Episode IX -- The Rise of Skywalker, including spoilers (without need for ROT 13 Cthulhu summoning.)

Unfortunately the "Current Comments" feature removes whitespace so, to avoid spoilers appearing there, please use some space for non-spoiler comments or just start your comment with some nonsense.

Example nonsense:
[nonsense] Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, id soleat doctus sit, cum te erant omnium. Invidunt periculis at cum, eos diam vivendum no, ea qui vivendum legendos. Verterem similique ut pri, iisque prodesset voluptaria no nam. Eos esse mollis et, mei no putent utamur praesent, nec ex solum saperet. No has soluta molestie.[/nonsense]
And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Dead Rising

Dead Rising

I'm trying to watch DEAD RISING on Amazon Prime whilst battling a heat stroke and I'm sorry but did they just call this pharmaceutical company "Phenotrans"?? How are we not already using that word for, like, a trans death metal band or something, that is too good a word for the cis to have.

The zombie cop remembers how to use a pistol. ...I have questions. Maybe they aren't zombies, maybe they too have heat stroke. Zombies know fear of death in this verse? That's new.

I like that they already know what zombies are and, like, have quarantine procedures for outbreaks. The white news lady cares more about looters than zombies. The football dome has people who can't evacuate for whatever reason, including infected people who have to take Zombrex daily. I guess maybe the Zombrex is past its expiration date because people are turning regardless.

Frank West, video game protagonist I think, is being interviewed on television. A reporter who is NOT Frank West runs from zombies who may or may not have heat stroke. He has cracked the story that Zombrex isn't effective anymore (orrrrr the formula has been changed? c'mon, guys, where's your conspiracy theory enthusiasm?).

I'm rooting for Survival Girl here, not gonna lie. She's so done with Reporter Guy. She's also demonstrating the game's crafting mechanic. She has made a paladin shield from the biggest garbage can lid in the universe. The military are closing the quarantine gates on the survivors, like military does. Frank West is being a jackass. Dunno if that's game canon.

The government is afraid that the Oregon outbreak is a resistant strain, so they're killing survivors / locking everyone inside to fend for themselves. Reporter Guy is trying to get people to care. Good luck, my dude. Oh no, Survival Girl needs Zombrex. I like her. Zombrex is working for her, so it's either not a resistant strain or her drugs are different or something.

Meanwhile, the government is going to firebomb the quarantined area. Frank West gives terrible advice on television. A....biker gang is killing zombies. .....and looting. They have face paint, fur coats, and katanas. Oregon biker gangs. I'm gonna be honest, this movie in which BOTH the government AND the biker gangs are hurting innocent people is kinda a downer considering the relatively light hearted tone of the games (or so I thought).

My heat stroke headache is really throbbing so I'm gonna close my eyes. I'm sorry.

Film Corner: Infini

Infini

Alright, it's time for another shitty Amazon Prime movie for me to vent my "can't get out of bed" frustrations at. Get yon popcorn. Tonight's thing is a scifi called INFINI which was aggressively algorithmmed at me after I watched BEYOND THE TREK or whatever that last one was called. The one with the designer babies finding emotions in space.

23rd century. 95% of the world is at or below the poverty line. I assume we're gonna TOTAL RECALL this up rather than guillotine the 5%. "As a result, many take dangerous jobs in the interplanetary mining, military, and space exploration." Ah, in college I wrote a fun paper on asteroid mining. (It's basically not worth it yet, but they do sometimes have minerals that are tricky to get on earth.)

"Off-Earth transit is achieved via SLIPSTREAMING, the process of turning matter into a data signals and transmitting it to a fixed coordinate anywhere in the known universe." Surely this is the Star Trek Transporter Problem in that death no longer has meaning because you can always just print a backup copy of yourself from yesterday? I mean, I will not fault someone for dodging the same problems Star Trek dodges, just pointing it out.

Open Thread: Stairs to Nowhere


Three things here.  First, sorry this is several days late.  My time has been occupied, almost exclusively, with stuff related to my sister.  (She's doing remarkably well, for the record, and is expected to be released tomorrow, which is two weeks, to the day, after she got run over.)

Second, I really should have used flash.

Third, we didn't notice when we came in.  Our room was on the third floor, it was late, the building in question has no elevator, and so when we got to floor three we just went straight for the door, into the room, and unloaded our stuff.

It was the next morning, when we were leaving to spend the day with my sister, that we realized that the stairs up were of a different sort.  They look completely different, as the rest of the stairwell is composed of white walls, no carpet, and a simple, light (possibly pine) railing.  That, however, wasn't what stood out.

It was the complete and utter lack of a destination for the stairs that stood out.  (Presumably it's a result of a no-longer-in-use roof access point or Eldritch dimensional shenanigans.)

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Warwolves

Warwolves

Alright, we're gonna try another werewolf movie. WARWOLVES. Jack Ford leads a special forces unit back to the United States to hunt down Jake Gabriel-- Wait, the main characters are Jake and Jack? That's gonna play hell on my hearing!

Apparently one of the two men has contacted werewolfism and must be hunted down. Unbeknownst, "three of the female soldiers" in the special forces unit have also contracted werewolfism and are now "she-wolves". Thank god they're not just "wolves", I needed gender confirmation. Nice to see women, plural, in the movie special forces unit for once, but they sound like they're gonna be Dracula Brides except werewolves. So.

JESUS, massive trigger warning for suicide right out of the gate. A soldier writes a letter and then shoots himself. It's unexpected and happened before I understood what was going on. Be careful. Soldiers play football and there are indeed three women in camo pants. They're supermodels instead of body builders, which is disappointing to me, and they're...flirty and kissing the men. Um. I don't think that's...right? This has more of a "company picnic" vibe than I was expecting from Special Forces.

Film Corner: Howl


Howl

HOWL: Passengers on a night train are attacked by a vicious creature out of folklore, and must band together in order to survive until morning. I hope it's a banshee. (It is never a banshee. It will be a werewolf.)

Oh, good, the unskippable Amazon Prime videos now include fat jokes.

Our POV character appears to be an employee of the "Alpha Trax" line. Is that a real line or a werewolf alpha joke, I legit don't know. He's been turned down on his application to supervisor, on account of management preferring to promote an obvious douche. Obvious Douche puts Alpha Trax Boy on the next redeye because the usual guy called in sick. (FROM LYCANTHROPY? WHO KNOWS.) He's a ticket inspector with a crush on the stewardess. He rattles off the names of the quaint English places they'll be passing through, all of which I assume will not be equipped to deal with werewolves.

We have been jump-scared by a Chihuahua.

Storify: Impeachment Hearings

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11/13/2019

Okay, I'm going to try to live-tweet the Impeachment Hearings.

I'm coming in late because I had tech problems on my end. Chairman Schiff is outlining the concerns in a thoughtful manner. "The president has instructed witnesses to ignore subpoenas and refuse to appear." (All quotes from me are subject to user error; the feed isn't closed-captioned.) "If we find that the president abused his power ... must we simply 'Get Over It'? Is this what Americans should now expect? If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?" --Schiff

I haven't heard Schiff speak before; he's a very effective public speaker so far. Calm and measured, thoughtful, not grand-standing. Nunes is talking now. He, uh, strikes an immediate awful contrast to Schiff's calm. He's blasting Democrats for "smearing any Republican who ever shook hands with a Russian." Nunes is playing to the base and I don't know how well that will work. Instead of answering Schiff's thoughtful charges, he's complaining that Dems tried to obtain "nude photos" of Trump from Russians.

Film Corner: Beyond the Trek

Beyond the Trek

BEYOND THE TREK: A deep space mining vessel has been adrift for two years. It is suspected the crew brutally killed each other, but the reason for the bloodbath is unknown. A rescue crew is sent to find if there are any survivors, what happened, and why.

Ok, first of all, does this sort of investigation EVER end well? It's always either demons, aliens, or Space Mental Illness. Second of all, does that title make any sense except as a desperate bid for Star Trek fans to notice it? I'm surprised they didn't go whole hog and call it Event Trek: Horizon Dead Space.

Event Trek: Dead Wars on the Horizon Space.

Event Trek: Battlestar Dead Wars on the Horizon Space.

Event System Shock Trek: Dead Wars on the Horizon Space.

Although, honestly given what we know about human nature, most workplace killings just involve a disgruntled employee with a weapon. Has a SciFi movie ever done that as the reveal?? Don't say Pandorum, it's covered under Space Mental Illness and also I'm the only person to watch Pandorum. Even the director of Pandorum didn't watch Pandorum. I love it anyway, though.

I still really hate the unskippable Amazon Prime commercials.

December Newsletter (2019)

These monthly review posts are always so strange for me because I have to think things like "was my girlfriend really not my girlfriend last month?" That seems strange and impossible. Surely my girlfriend has always been my girlfriend. I cannot quite comprehend a time in which she was not, and yet I know it must be true.

...you can probably tell I'm doing well this month. *shy smile*

Movies were live-watched on Twitter and scheduled for posting on the Patreon every Tuesday and Thursday--I hope you'll like those a lot. I posted a new Narnia post! I have some more D&D drabbles to put up, although a few of them still need to be put onto paper. I'm working on a story which is coming along very slowly; I've always known I work slower in winter because of my seasonal affective disorder. It's alright. Slow and steady wins the race.

Reminder! It's a new month, which means new paper books for the $25 patrons and new bookmarks for the $5 patrons! If I don't have your address, send me a message on the internal system or email me at AnaMardoll at gmail dot com. I love sending ya'll things!

An index to the deconstructions on my blog is here.

My YouTube channel is here.

Do you like "Tumblr Threads" which collect funny tumblr posts? I have one here!

My Twitter account @DivorceKittens with stories and pictures is here.

Please drop in the comments and let me know how you're doing? I love you all and I know this time of year isn't always easy.

Narnia: In Which Little Happens

[Narnia Content Note: Animal Mistreatment. One gif from the Frozen 2 trailer.]

Narnia Recap: Digory and Polly used their rings to flee from a dying world but found to their surprise that the mysterious Queen Jadis was able to come with them through the power of the rings.

The Magician's Nephew, Chapter 6: The Beginning of Uncle Andrew's Troubles

When we last left our heroes, they were rocketing at high speeds away from Charn towards the Woods Between Worlds (though, through what medium they are traveling, I could not say) and they had an unexpected tag-along. 

   “LET GO! LET GO!” SCREAMED POLLY.
   “I’m not touching you!” said Digory.
   Then their heads came out of the pool and, once more, the sunny quietness of the Wood between the Worlds was all about them, and it seemed richer and warmer and more peaceful than ever after the staleness and ruin of the place they had just left. I think that, if they had been given the chance, they would again have forgotten who they were and where they came from and would have lain down and enjoyed themselves, half asleep, listening to the growing of the trees. But this time there was something that kept them as wide-awake as possible: for as soon as they had got out on to the grass, they found that they were not alone. The Queen, or the Witch (whichever you like to call her) had come up with them, holding on fast by Polly’s hair. That was why Polly had been shouting out “Let go!”

Open Thread: Light Reflected Off Wet Containers


Sorry for the lack of open thread last week, depression was really bad, and after Tuesday evening I had some very different priorities.  I figured that it was better to wait for Friday and this one than post a stopgap open thread so late on Wednesday that it might as well have been Thursday.

The picture was taken from the Portland side of the red bridge (Casco Bay Bridge.)  This loading yard used to be parking for the Scotia Prince, which was a cruise/ferry that went from Portland to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.  Notable for also being a way for Mainers in the Portland area to gamble, since as soon as you crossed out of Maine territorial waters it became legal.

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Predators

Predators

As a grand finale to the Alien Franchise re-watch, I'll close out with Predators which is not an alien film but cheekily sorta refers to the xenomorphs at one point. I really enjoyed Predators more than basically any of the other Predator movies and concepts I've seen because it was like someone took the idea and tried to make it more... hmm... tonally consistent? Well, that's my opinion anyway.

We open with Adrian Brody waking in a freefall and being very confused and terrified. A strange parachute attached to him opens when *it* feels like, rather than from any urging on his part. It's a very effective opening for shit getting real. Adrian wakes up again, this time on the ground, just in time to see a confused and frightened stranger land with similar violence and point guns at him. "Don't!" Adrian orders, but in a sort of friendly badass way.

This is my FAVORITE trivia about this movie: According to Nimród Antal and Robert Rodriguez on the commentary, in the script, the character Cuchillo was described as "a guy who looks like Danny Trejo." When Danny Trejo heard this, he called Robert Rodriguez and said, "hey, I heard there's a guy in the script for 'Predators' who looks just like Danny Trejo, and guess what, I look just like Danny Trejo!"

Film Corner: Aliens vs Predator

Alien vs Predator

Alright, here we go. Movie night. Aliens vs. Predator has a soft spot in my heart because my spouse made me watch it and I expected to absolutely HATE it and instead ending up liking it a lot. That was a few years ago, though, so let's see how it holds up. I tentatively select "extended version" on the play screen, though sometimes that's a mistake. We'll see.

We start in a snowy place where a panicky man is running around willy-nilly. Invisible Wolverine stabs or shoots him, it's unclear, and we cut away. I'm sure that's fine. In space, a Weyland satellite exists. It locates an identified heat signature in somewhere. Everyone seems very excitable about it. A Black woman climbing an icy mountain gets a call on her bluetooth headset from someone claiming to represent Weyland Industries. They offer her a bribe to meet with Weyland, and when she reaches the top of the mountain a helicopter is there waiting for her.

Smash cut to... somewhere warmer and people speaking Spanish. A person excavating a dig locates a pepsi-cola cap before HE takes a call from Weyland as well. Weyland is clearly putting together the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. A Scottish man takes a picture of the Black woman while she sleeps. She has the extreme patience to not slap the camera out of his hands. He asks her to take a picture of him for his boys. He's a chemical engineer. She splits her time between environmentalism and taking scientists on the ice. I love her and would die for her.

Open Thread: Sun-Obscuring Clouds


In spite of how it looks, this isn't actually that close to Sunset.  At least, I don't think it was.  Taken through the passenger window of a car.

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Covenant

Covenant

Anyway, if I want to start Covenant tonight I need to do it now, so I guess let's do this.

We open with David being turned on for the first time. Weyland quizzes him about what he sees and feels. Weyland looks a LOT younger than before, which suggests that the David on Prometheus was an older android model than I'd expected. David and Weyland talk about god and needing to meet one's creator and David instantly questions why he should have to serve Weyland if Weyland is ephemeral, fleeting, and capable of death. This is just... argh, no.

The best I can do here is assume that David was programmed with Weyland's values, because there's no *objective* reason to assume that immortal beings are inherently better than mortal ones. Something being fleeting does not make it less precious. It feels like Scott or whoever wants to make a really profound point about existence with these movies but instead is just exposing a lot of his own fears and biases which aren't, strictly speaking, facts or objective.

Open Thread: The Great and Powerful


Not the first time I've used an image of a toy, though it might be the first time I used a picture of one that someone I know actually owns instead of a toy spotted in the wild, as it were.  While I was picking up clothes off the floor of a closet, I found The Great and Powerful Trixie Lulamoon laying on her side.

Originally I was going to use a different image of her.  That one is much sharper, but it came at the expense of the sparkles.  Trixie here captures the light of a flash in a way that makes it look like she's glowing, but the flash completely overpowers the sparkles, and the sparkles, I have realized, are compulsory.

So, anyway: small sparkly plastic toy.  Sit/stand/whatever in awe of her greatness and power.

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Friday Saturday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us here, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Prometheus

Prometheus

Alright, bitches, witches, good friends with stitches, and people with itches: the Alien marathon continues with Prometheus. Prometheus has a lot of emotions for me because I wanted to see it in theaters (a new alien movie! In my lifetime!) but I was instead in the hospital having surgery. Then I saw it on Bluray and was glad I didn't see it in theaters, lolsob.

In a sign of the high quality control that went into this release, I have to wrestle with the Bluray disc for 20 minutes in an attempt to get the damn thing to fucking play. I think the bluray is trying to cleverly "resume playing" from the last time and is instead just horking itself. The fact that we're gonna have to watch the DVD instead would almost be funny if I weren't so irritated, lol.

Open Thread: Fallen Leaves


Sorry this is so very late.  Depression has been really bad.  I have food and water, but it's hard to think, hard to move, hard to get the food or the water, and hard to remember that I'm supposed to be eating or drinking it instead of staring off into space.

Normally I'd reserve such "Woe is me" stuff for the comments or my own blog, but this is really late and I figured you all deserved an explanation.

Picture from October 29th of 2018.  I haven't exactly been taking a lot of pictures lately.

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Friday Sunday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us basically over, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

November Newsletter (2019)

October is over and it feels like all I did was blink. Where did the time go?

A lot of it went to a new friend who is a bit more than a friend now. *shy* It's hard to remember only a year ago I was asking you all to reassure me that I'd someday be able to stop missing my ex-husband so much. I can't remember the last time I've been this happy, even if it means I'm not as productive as I'd like to be. Time keeps slipping away but in good ways, in that did we just spend two hours talking about our favorite movies kind of ways.

[TW: Parental Bigotry] What was, uh, not fun was my mother dropping by to demand if I was "in a homosexual relationship". (If you're on twitter, you may have already seen this thread.) This was a case of a particularly suspicious stopped clock being right: she couldn't believe my friend would come over to take care of me while I was ill unless we were dating. *sigh* I told my mother that I'm bisexual and that there's a girl I'm interested in dating, and she berated me for a bit and bluntly suggested that this was why my ex-husband left me. (It's not, and it would be biphobic of him if it was, rather than "my fault".)

I'm not quite estranged yet, but visits from my parents (and the resultant disability care they were providing me) have essentially stopped. Which is honestly a strange relief on my part, but more than a little inconvenient because I needed the aid. Based on a lot of your recommendations, I'm looking at Care.com for some in-home aid but a lot of this is overwhelming at the moment. My friend is helping to chase the nightmares away by holding me at night and I took this week off of work to try to put myself back together. It's difficult because I really did try to give my parents the fiction they wanted, but I just couldn't convincingly lie and say I was heterosexual like she wanted.

In terms of what this means for Patreon, I did get some outlining done on my No Man of Woman Born sequel idea and I noodled some words onto paper but they aren't ready for post. So it's another month of live-watches, drabbles about characters, and let's play videos. And maybe a few more things.

Reminder! It's a new month, which means new paper books for the $25 patrons and new bookmarks for the $5 patrons! If I don't have your address, send me a message on the internal system or email me at AnaMardoll at gmail dot com. I love sending ya'll things!

An index to the deconstructions on my blog is here.

My YouTube channel is here. The Phoenix Wright videos are here.

Do you like "Tumblr Threads" which collect funny tumblr posts? I have one here!

My Twitter account @DivorceKittens with stories and pictures is here.

Thank you for much for hanging in here with me--you are all quite literally helping me to stay alive. I love you.

Film Corner: Alien Resurrection

Alien Resurrection

Alright, it's Alien 4 aka Resurrection aka Joss Whedon Has Issues time. Get yer popcorn. I'm going to state that I actually like this movie, but I can't stand Joss Whedon so it's going to be a complicated live tweet, lolsob.

We open with naked child-Ripley in a tube that then morphs into naked adult-Ripley in a tube. On an operating table, doctors extract the chestburster from her and decide to sew Ripley back up. Weirdly, there's a little umbilical cord they have to cut, which you'd think might be acidic, but apparently not. But, look, this movie is going to be about PREGNANCY and MOTHERHOOD and not about science, so we might as well resign ourselves to some inaccuracies now.

Ripley actually wakes during the procedure and grabs the hand of the doctor and twists it. This is our first introduction to a "Ripley" that isn't who we remember. I do like this Ripley and the way Weaver plays her; she's continuing her path into nihilism.

Open Thread: An old sunset


This was taken on January 14th of 2013.  It's the sky over South Portland as seen from the new Veterans Bridge.

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Alien 3

Alien 3

We'll go Special Edition again, because we can.

An egg on the Sulaco. A facehugger climbs up Ripley's sleeping tube. We see a skeletal imaging of a face wrapped with a facehugger, then acid starts a fire in the sleeping compartment. Honestly the alien was really lucky the ship crash-landed somewhere habitable and didn't just explode in space.

A pretty man walks on a planet which is pretty in, like, a dirty way. I guess he's pretty in a dirty way too. He finds Ripley by a body of water and carries her back home. Men stare at Ripley in her underwear while he barks at them to get down to the beach and look for other survivors. Pretty sure this is all added footage for the director's cut.

Hicks and Newt are dead, slain by an inability to re-sign the same actors. We learn that this is a prison planet which is honestly FASCINATING to me: it suggests that there are so many habitable planets that humanity can afford to waste one on housing, like, 60 men. Anyway, the men are worried that Ripley will upset their religious chastity and honestly bite my ass.

Open Thread: Leaves Turn


According to my yard, as evidenced in the above picture, it's Fall.

(Those who pay attention to planets and orbits noticed the onset of Autumn on this side of the equator almost a month ago.)

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We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  This is the only current one:
   ● Game of Thrones

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Friday Saturday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us here, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Aliens

Aliens

Next up is ALIENS, which is probably my favorite; I used to watch it during panic attacks in order to calm down. Of course we instantly open with MORE slow pans over dust-ridden consoles, because Ripley wasn't picked up where and when she'd hoped and instead took the long way through the solar system. She's alive and that means the salvagers don't get to claim the ship as salvage and I just remember being *so relieved* that they didn't just kill her for a payday.

A visitor: Jones and a man in a suit. "I work for the Company but I'm actually an okay guy." Ripley eyes him warily. No one has told her that she was out there for 57 years, so Burke ends up having to break the news. I did genuinely feel bad for him for that much. They should've had a doctor tell her! Prior to the Company inquest, Burke informs Ripley that her daughter died at age 66. All they have of her is a grainy photo. Ripley sobs. My heart.

Open Thread: Web of Light


I mean, technically it's a web of silk that just has light bouncing off of it, but I think the wording I used is preferable.

-

We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  This is the only current one:
   ● Game of Thrones

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Friday Saturday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us here, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: Alien

Alien

I think I'm gonna do an Alien marathon, not unlike my LOTR one. I gotta do something while I'm stuck in bed, or I get cranky.

So the first thing you need to know about me is that I didn't see any of the Alien movies until adulthood, because my childhood Christian cult thought movies were gateway drugs to Satanism. So all the cool old-school tech seemed like a really neat retro look when I finally saw these movies. Just saying. The slow-pan "nothing happens for ten minutes while you look at pretty space pictures, AND YOU'LL SAY NOTHING AND LIKE IT" film techniques didn't maybe age quite as well as the retro tech.

Ooh, 1979 theatrical or 2003 director cut? I think we'll do 2003. Ridley Scott tells us he didn't change much for this version and I am only just noticing how similar his name is to Ripley.

Open Thread: Wrinkles


The computer I'm using right now doesn't have much in the way of image editing ability, which is annoying because this image would be sharp as sharp can be (well . . . significantly sharper) if I'd been able to use a different down-scaling algorithm.

(Also I would have liked a to have somewhat finer control over the balance of color, light, and shadow.  It's direct sunlight on a crumply indoor surface, the camera could have used some help when it comes to making it look like it actually looked.)

Regardless: Wrinkles.  The sort of wrinkles that might be produced if your toddler niece were sleeping on an adult sized bed.  Actually, I think the wrinkles were there before I put her on the bed, but still . . . (I don't actually know the answer to, "But still what?")

*double checks the day of the week*

This is not late.  (I'd prefer to have posted it 12 hours ago, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not actually late.)  That's *checks* three weeks in a row.  Woo!

-

We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are the current ones:
   ● Game of Thrones
   ● Avengers: Endgame
   ● Captain Marvel

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

October Newsletter (2019)

I wanted this newsletter to go up on the first of the month, but my back has gone completely out on three different days this week: one day it was so bad they sent me home from work because I just... couldn't stand up straight. At all. So that's been a thing I've been dealing with and I'm sorry for the tardiness.

I've also been grappling with some personal revelations that I'm not quite sure what to do with; I feel like I need to get them out and down so they stop being scary and start being made real. So here we go.

When I began the Earthside series, I envisioned a multi-book series much like the Xanth series that meant so much to me as a child. Book after book with no end in sight, with a sprawling magical world and new protagonists cropping up from the supporting casts of previous books. I plotted. I planned. I have planning notes for books with Mina as the protagonist, with Elric, with Lavender, with Joel, with Jing, with Reese. I love them all, these characters, and love the world I made for them.

I was also planning to get these out the door quickly, ideally one book a year alongside other smaller projects. I didn't think anything of ending Survival Rout on a bit of a cliffhanger because the next book was going to come out a year later, pick up directly on its heels, and be about apprehending the dangling villain before he can hurt Aniyah again. I had a chapter-by-chapter outline, I knew exactly what happened each step of the way, how long could it take to write a book? I'd written several at that point, after all!

Then I started No Man of Woman Born as a side-project. My husband at the time asked what was taking all my creative energies and causing me to type frantically away at the keyboard day and night and, excited, I told him. His response to my working on a "trans book, by a trans author, for trans readers" was not... super positive. On the days I set for working on Earthside, I found it difficult to write romance when my own relationship was not doing... super well. I stared at the pages and realized it just wasn't coming, and so I set Earthside to the side for a time.

After my divorce, the association of the draft with my husband only increased and I've spent the better part of a year trying to cajole, bribe, force, and hector myself into writing a book that I just can't seem to write at the moment. I know the words. I know what needs to go on the page. But my fingers just can't seem to do the thing. It's the most vexing thing I've ever experienced.

And when I try to work on other projects--Narnia posts, patreon fic, trans stories, anything--a little voice in my head screams "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE WRITING THE OTHER THING" and that means nothing gets on the paper at all.

I've been blaming a lot of this on... well, everything. 2019 political stress. Work stress. Divorce stress. New medication stress. Back pain. But. BUT. Writing drabbles for my DM this last month at her command made me realize... I like writing. I miss writing. I just don't miss feeling like a failure every time I sit down at the keyboard because I'm "supposed" to be writing something else. That part isn't helping me.

So with that in mind, I am going to make an announcement: I am putting my Earthside project on hiatus until future notice. I really hate doing this and I particularly hate doing so when I left Book 2 on a cliffhanger book; if I could go back in time and change that, I would. I can tell you that [the rest of this paragraph has spoilers for Survival Rout] even though Aniyah does not remember Timothy, he does not re-kidnap her. Mina (who you may remember from Poison Kiss) discovers that he's been working for the True Fae and she goes on a city-wide hunt to capture him before he can hurt anyone else.

I hope that someday I can pick up Earthside again. Hell, even while writing all this out I feel a spark of "ooooh, I miss that". Maybe I just need to find the right writing group or "critique cheerleader" to send my drafts so they can bang the table and go "more!" (I work best when I'm writing "for" someone, as seen with my DM drabbles.) If anyone wants to volunteer for that in the comments, god bless you. But any work I do on Earthside will be "extra" in addition to the projects I've been neglecting. I want to make those my "official" focus, at least for a little while.

With that in mind, what are my goals for the year?

I want to write another Narnia post. I miss those.

I want to write a sequel to No Man of Woman Born. I...I don't need more projects, I know. But every reader who wrote me saying they needed these fairy tale stories, it... it touched me every time. I'm not sure what this sequel will be about, as I think I'm done with the prophecy angle for awhile; I'm kinda thinking I might do a collection of (some of) the "Disney Princess" fairy tales, but with transness. I want that.

I want to share more of my D&D stuff with you. I really don't know if there's any interest in this or if you're all just humoring me, but I put together some handouts for my Curse of Strahd players and I'll be damned if I won't show them to someone. So here we are.

Moving on:

October Stuff: 

- I did a live-watch of the Alien series and I hope you enjoy those as they go up. I really love the franchise, despite its occasional misstep.

- D&D handouts for Curse of Strahd!

- I plan to continue my Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney live-play on YouTube.

Reminder! It's a new month, which means new paper books for the $25 patrons and new bookmarks for the $5 patrons! If I don't have your address, send me a message on the internal system or email me at AnaMardoll at gmail dot com. I love sending ya'll things!

An index to the deconstructions on my blog is here.

My YouTube channel is here. The Phoenix Wright videos are here.

Do you like "Tumblr Threads" which collect funny tumblr posts? I have one here!

My Twitter account @DivorceKittens with stories and pictures is here.

I know this newsletter was a long one and not necessarily everything you'd want to hear. Thank you so much for being here with me. I love you all.

Writings: Alberta


They were in Lucy's room, sitting on the edge of her bed and looking at a picture on the opposite wall. It was the only picture in the house that they liked. Aunt Alberta didn't like it at all (that was why it was put away in a little back room upstairs), but she couldn't get rid of it because it had been a wedding present from someone she did not want to offend. --Voyage of the Dawn Treader

---

Alberta is at a party with her sister Helen, and their boyfriends Harold Scrubb and John Pevensie. Their host is a Professor who teacher John at college; Alberta has never attended any classes with him as the lecturer, but she's not fond of his way of talking down to her and calling the girls "my dear". During the party, Alberta nips off to tuck her coat into a wardrobe upstairs--it seems a bit of a walk just to set her jacket aside, but the Professor had asked her to take her coat there. Something in the way he asked made her suspicious, as though there were a prank she wasn't aware of going on in the background, but she went anyway.

She's forced to reach to the very back of the wardrobe to find an empty hanger, and then suddenly she is tripping and sprawling forward onto snow. Alberta looks around her in alarm but there is no way to get back out of wherever she is; no door in the air behind her. She is going mad, or has hit her head, or... something she previously thought was impossible has become impossibly present. Magic? She'd never believed in the stuff before, not even as a child, but the memory of Kirke's smirking smile nags at her. *He* knew this would happen. She doesn't know how he could have known such a thing, but he did. She's certain.

She moves slowly forward into the strange and inhospitable winter world before her. The land is silent and she's just beginning to think she's alone in this place--and starting to worry about how she will survive the severe cold for any length of time--when a sleigh pulls up and a strange woman bids her with ill-disguised anger to sit beside her. Not wishing to offend this imposing and dangerous personage, Alberta obediently sits on the sleigh bench with her as instructed. She's a little worried about how she will get back to the spot where she came in, but that's a problem for the future; she can't go much longer without warmth.

The Queen (for that is what she tells Alberta she is) turns gregarious during their ride, plying Alberta with dozens of questions that she fires off at a rapid clip, hiding her impatience under a veneer of sweet syrup that makes Alberta's teeth ache to hear--she is reminded of strained family gatherings at Christmastime, and distant aunts who demand hugs and smell like verbena and old lilac. Alberta answers the questions with wary tact, telling as little as she can about her sister and their two boyfriends. Several times she assures the queen that, yes, there are four of them. Her father isn't named Adam and her mother isn't named Eve, but she goes along with this without contradiction, sensing that the woman would be dangerous to cross.

When the Queen serves hot chocolate for them to drink, Alberta waits until she looks away before dumping the contents of her cup into the snow. She won't eat anything in this strange world until the alternative is dire. Who knows but that food here might be poison to her!

Once the food is gone, the Queen becomes more at ease, lazily issuing orders to Alberta with the easy command of one who is accustomed to being obeyed. She instructs the girl to "return right away" with the other three "Sons of Adam and Daughter of Eve", but to not tell them anything about the woman or her world. Alberta nodded her head a great deal and made noises of agreement, not because she wanted to ever see this blighted winter waste again but because she hoped this meant the woman had the power to return her home. When the sleigh stops by the edge of the forest again, Alberta scrambles off into the trees, hoping against hope that she can find her way back through that cursed wardrobe.

By some miracle, a door in the air awaits her in the depths of the woods, sitting smack in the middle of her path as though waiting for her return. She is just stepping through the shimmering apparition when a large fox hisses at her from a nearby bush. "Don't trust the Queen! She's starving us with eternal winter!" Alberta turns her head to him, mouth already opening to ask what he means, but her foot carries her forward and in the next moment she is tumbling out of the wardrobe and onto the floor of Kirke's ostentatiously large house.

Alberta sits awhile on the floor of the cold room which now seems so very warm in comparison to the world she fled. When Helen comes upstairs to ask what has taken her sister away from the party for so long, Alberta lies and says she needed a moment away from the men downstairs. Dreamy as Helen has always been, there are limits to her credulity; Alberta harbors no doubt that a magical world of snow would test her limits. As for the others, Harold was born without an imagination and John possesses a cruel penchant for teasing. And that damned Professor had already made several insulting jokes over dinner about "hysterical" feminists and the "madness" of being for equal treatment between the sexes. Alberta could half-believe he played this trick on her knowing no one would believe her and would think she'd lost her mind.

Well, she wasn't going to play his game. She wouldn't say a word.

Yet... the experience ate at her. Somewhere there were people who were starving because of tyranny. She couldn't help them, but she recognize their plight was not unusual in her own world. Alberta had already been drawn to feminism but now she felt called to further activism. Food scarcity was something she could try to fix--and she'd damn well fix it in her own world before gallivanting off in search of other worlds.

It was a few years later when Professor Kirke gave her that damned painting. She'd had to invite him to the wedding; Harold loved the man because John loved him. Whatever Harold's other virtues were, he'd sadly never shrugged off the vice of believing whatever John believed--at least whenever John was around to tell him. Alberta could see why her sister loved the charismatic Pevensie boy, but she couldn't help but wish he didn't have quite so much sway over her own husband. When the Professor gave them the framed picture, Harold declared then and there that he loved it and wouldn't part with it for the world. Alberta hadn't liked the way Kirke looked at her for her reaction--there was something predatory in the smirking gleam of his smile, and possibly a seed of doubt? or a question he could not voice?--but she gave him the vacuous grin that she'd perfected for her tyrant of a father, and a stalemate had ensued.

Later, she'd stashed the painting in their guest bedroom and occasionally allowed herself to look at the thing. It wasn't anything like the magical world she'd visited; that had been a place of snow and ice and black dormant trees whereas this was a blue-green sea with a little purple ship sailing towards the viewer. But something in the glint of the wooden frame reminded her of that cursed wardrobe, and if she stayed in the room for too long she got a chilly shiver that made her pause. Harold wouldn't hear of throwing the thing out, but after Eustace was born she kept the guest room locked up tight.

They'd only had one child, of course. Food conservation and responsible population numbers started at home. She'd taught Eustace from day one the importance of thinking carefully about one's ecological footprint on the earth, about food storage, and about the children in other countries who had less to eat than he did. In order to bring the lessons home to him, she used object lessons--he'd been particularly interested in cataloging which insects were edible and which were not. He liked to catch them in his free time, pin them on cards, and look them up in books. He'd mark each card carefully and keep them as reminders of how much easier it was for him to eat than for some of the other children on earth.

When Harold recommended that Eustace spend a summer with the Pevensies, Alberta hadn't objected. She and Harold could have a second honeymoon, and it was nice to relax now that the war was over. But Eustace came back with funny dinner stories of his cousins and the strange magical country they believed they'd been to while they stayed with Professor Kirke during the Blitz. Alberta felt a lump in the pit of her stomach. She'd asked Eustace, casually, for more details but all he could tell her was that they all seemed keen to go back. Later he recalled that the oldest girl, Susan, had been a little subdued about the adventure. Eustace had taken that to mean that she was the cleverest of the group, to be so disinterested in fantasy.

Alberta was conflicted. She called up her sister and invited the children to come stay with them next holiday. After all, Helen and John had taken such good care of Eustace during his visit. No, she didn't mind that there were four of them. But then Helen had changed the plan by announcing that Peter would be staying with Professor Kirke for the summer while Susan went to America with them. It would be easier on Alberta, she said, only having the two youngest to care for. Alberta had bit her lip, and known there was nothing she could say that wouldn't sound unbelievable. She just had to hope that the older two would be all right.

When Lucy and Edmund arrived, Alberta studied them closely. They seemed healthy and happy, a little obnoxious about the vegetarian dishes placed on the table, but nothing unusual for children who had been raised in a different atmosphere. Eustace didn't seem to like them at all, and Alberta was privately relieved he kept his distance. Too late, she remembered the painting in the closed-up guest room--she'd spent ten years deliberately not thinking about it, trying to avoid the feelings of guilt and despair the memory evoked, only to remember it after her niece was already installed in the room. She could have kicked herself for her carelessness.

When she tried to take it down--"you don't want this garish old thing in your room, do you?"--the girl had strenuously objected, coming close to tears. Alberta's misgivings were as wide as the English channel, but she didn't want to traumatize the girl further without good reason. And of course she didn't know for sure the painting was malignant, just that it had been a gift from a man who may or may not have sent her into a strange magical world without warning or consent. She wished she could *know*.

Maybe it was all a coincidence that the little girl claimed to have found a magical world in Kirke's house. That was what little children did, didn't they? Well, not her Eustace; but other children made up stories, right? Maybe it was a coincidence that the child said she wanted to return to that strange place. Maybe those feelings had nothing to do with the painting she liked, and she merely liked it because of the color. Or... or something. Alberta tried to rationalize the situation to herself, to believe she was over-reacting.

The only sensible thing to do was to leave the painting where Lucy liked it and monitor the situation closely. Eustace wouldn't get caught up in anything; he didn't like Lucy or the picture, for which Alberta was grateful. If the little girl disappeared--the idea seemed mad, but IF--then Alberta would track down the Professor and wring a straight answer out of him before Lucy had a chance to miss dinner. Alberta wasn't going to stand for any more nonsense from him. Not a peep.

---

In Narnia, Jadis watched the direction the young woman walked and grimly decided she would need to install a permanent spy in the region. There had been a community of fauns in the forest once, and she thought she had one in her collection. He would know how to survive in the cold woods, and fauns were notoriously too meek to consider things like rebellion. Yes, a faun would do nicely.

Open Thread: White and Green


My camera just got back from being repaired.  This is a good thing, but --as you might imagine-- before that could happen it first had to be elsewhere being repaired.   Have a picture from a day less than a month ago.

I debated with myself whether the "and Green" was justified.  There's a lot of green in the image, for sure, but most of it is background green.  There's relatively little foreground green.

-

We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are the current ones:
   ● Game of Thrones
   ● Avengers: Endgame
   ● Captain Marvel

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Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!

Film Corner: I Am Dragon

I Am Dragon

Ok, we're gonna try this again. A reminder that these live tweets go up on my patreon so for the low price of $1-2 dollars a month, you need never miss one!!

I AM DRAGON is a great title, let's try this one. "In the midst of her wedding, Princess Miroslava is kidnapped by a dragon and carried away into his castle on a remote island. Now the only things Mira has are a stone cage and a mysterious young man named Arman but who is he and what is he doing on that island? Miroslava will know the truth too late: loving a dragon will reveal the bitter truth." I mean, I guess the title and the description give the twist away, but that NAME.

"What's your name?"
"Are-man."
"What?"
"Uhh, Arman. I'm a man. Unrelated to my human name."

Open Thread: More Purple


Have I mentioned that it always seems to be difficult to get pictures of purple things to look like, color-wise, the purple things they're pictures of?  Because it does.

Sorry for the lack of open thread last week.

-

We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers.  These are the current ones:
   ● Game of Thrones
   ● Avengers: Endgame
   ● Captain Marvel

-

Friday Recommendations!  What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately?  Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!

And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!