darkrosaleen | Reading

( Brief discussion of current geopolitics )My fiance and I spent the morning doing yard/beautification work at our fabulous local trans org's new community center, which is still a fixer upper. I moved a giant load of downed branches and picked up two bags' worth of trash, and my fiance assembled a trampoline someone had recently donated. Later we agreed that doing that work was the only reason we felt even remotely sane for the rest of the day. The org we worked with does exemplary work for local queer folks and immigrants. It's good to spend time with the other people in our community who care about seeing that work done, and doing something positive with my hands was a great way to burn off the fear/anger energy. A little group of teenagers showed up and did some raking. It was really lovely to see them.

In the afternoon, while alternately obsessing over the news and resolutely trying to think of other things, we went to a dear friend's surprise birthday party. When she first came in, ~30 of us were packed into a back room waiting to leap out. One of our number was her two year old nephew, who predictably started wailing just as everyone shushed. One of his parents hustled him out a back door, and my friend was none the wiser until our cue. The party was a roaring success. I only knew a handful of people there, but her husband had done a wonderful job with the guest list and everyone got along excellently. And there was prosciutto at the buffet.

We stopped by the pet store to get crickets for our housemate's tarantula, then ate a quick dinner and headed out to an indie wrestling show at a local bar. It was my first time attending a show at that venue, and I had even more fun than I expected. The highlight was a comedy match between a time-displaced caveman attempting to become our ruler through combat prowess and a gentleman billed as "the world's deadliest talking mime." There were a great deal of invisible walls, lassos, and other props, which couldn't be ruled against because the ref couldn't see them.

I'm glad my day was already booked full, because seeing all the normal people who inhabit the world around me is a great antidote to the dull feeling you get when you spend too long reading headlines without going outside. It is that bad, and it's not going to get better soon. It is that bad, and also today a group of semi-strangers and I made our community space nicer. So many people in my circle of friends and family have early voted because I talked to them about it. It's always humbling and disconcerting to experience such joy at the same time as I'm feeling so much anger, sorrow, and fear. But we need that joy. That's how we keep showing up for each other tomorrow.

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and secure. Good night.

Current Mood: rejuvenated

snickfic

Here are a couple of my favorite winter soup recipes. They're from cookbooks, so no handy online version to link to. So this is for you and also for me, so I can access these away from my cookbooks.

( Pork and hominy soup )

( Sausage, White Bean, and Kale Soup With Besar )

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The following pinch hits need creators and are due at the same time as assignments, on April 12th at 11:59 PM EDT. Assignments must be at least 500 words or a sketch on unlined paper, and must include significant gore content. To claim a pinch hit, either comment on this post or email me at shimmeringwords@gmail.com including the assignment you want and your AO3 username. Comments are screened. If you post an anonymous comment, I can't reply to it.

( Pinch Hit #1: Art, Fic - The Starving Saints - Caitlin Starling, Trigun (Anime & Manga 1995-2008), Blue Eye Samurai (Cartoon), Dredge (Video Game), The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling )

~~( Pinch Hit #2: Art, Fic - Stranger Things (TV 2016) )~~

( Pinch Hit #3: Art, Fic - 镇魂 | Guardian (TV 2018), 镇魂 | Guardian - priest )

( Pinch Hit #4: Art, Fic - Gachiakuta (Anime), ダンジョン飯 | Dungeon Meshi | Delicious in Dungeon, Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Helluva Boss (Web Series) )

( Pinch Hit #5: Fic - Night Prince - Jeaniene Frost, グノーシア | Gnosia (Visual Novel), Dracula Rising (Cartoon) )

( Pinch Hit #6: Art, Fic - W.I.T.C.H., Winx Club, D.Gray-man (Anime & Manga), カヤちゃんはコワくない | Kaya-chan wa Kowakunai | Kaya-chan Isn't Scary (Anime), SK8 the Infinity (Anime) )

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Assignments are out! Have fun creating, everyone!

Assignments are due April 12th, at 11:59 PM EDT. They must be at least 500 words or a nice sketch on unlined paper, with significant gore content, and respect your recipient's reasonable DNWs. Remember to stay anonymous until creators are revealed on May 1st! Do not contact your recipient directly. If you need to ask a clarifying question, or have any other problems, please contact me at shimmeringwords@gmail.com, and I will pass the question on anonymously or otherwise assist you.

gremdark

A few days ago, I got a text from a principal who is looking for a long term sub for a position she describes as "4th grade language arts." It would start in mid-March and last until the end of the year. Obviously this is the holy grail for me, even if there's no associated pay bump from the regular sub rate. I would so love to get some experience lesson planning for the same group of kids over a longer span.

I'm meeting with her later this afternoon, so we shall see. I typically interview very well in person, so all that remains is to hope that my credentials line up with her expectations and that she isn't too thrown by my gender. The platform I book substitute jobs through does not let you set a preferred name, so I've been updating schools on the honorific I prefer to use professionally when I show up to each new gig.

This brings me to the day's other bit of excitement. I finally got around to calling up my local circuit court to confirm which documents I need to pull together for my legal name change petition. Evidently I won't need to attend a hearing or pay a fee, and the process should take 3-5 days from the time I file the paperwork with the circuit court, after which I can go back in and begin the laborious process of getting my entire life up to date. My fiance has been dispatched to print off some forms on his office printer. I'm doing it! And it's definitely better to do it now, before I'm juggling a marriage license or any of the other legal entanglements I'm liable to acquire in the future.

Current Mood: bouncy
Current Music: At My Most Beautiful - R.E.M.

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Sign ups are now closed!

We had several participants who were unmatchable or otherwise had problems with their signs up which must be resolved. Please check the email associated with your AO3 account if your username begins with: ~~H, K, O, or S.~~ These participants have twenty-four hours to contact me before their sign ups are deleted.

Assignments will go out as soon as all problems are resolved, by some time on February 27. Thank you for participating!

likeadeuce

Watching as many adaptations of 'Wuthering Heights' as I can get my hands on, professional tennis, or updates on the baby monkey at the Japanese zoo that's having trouble making friends.

How are you?

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gremdark

Milestone! I've finally recovered enough from my big abdominal incision five months ago that the cat can knead my stomach again.

I'm home sick today with a cold (negative flu and covid tests) and it's reminding me what good chronic pain flare company he used to be. I'd wake up from pain naps to find him curled into my side to share the warmth of my heating pad. All of which is to say that someone's earned himself a go with his treat puzzle. Or will, once he gets bored of purring in my lap.

gremdark

I'm bracing myself to start the legal process of changing my name next month, which means I need to finally decide what I want it to be. The first and middle names are sorted, and in fact I've used them socially and professionally for my entire adult life. The last name(s) are the issue.

I've written under my mother's maiden name for a while. That side of the family is very tight-knit, with a well documented history that means the world to me. I am generally closer with them. Firstname Maidenname would make sense.

I do not often speak to my father, and his last name is common enough in the United States that it, paired with my similarly-common legal first name, has given me major issues over the years. (Imagine trying to get anything done when your name is John Smith and there are 4300 other John Smiths in every database, some of whom share your exact birthday down to the year. It's a nightmare.) That being said, my father's name is also his father's name, and my grandfather and I are very close.

When my grandfather was a small child, he was forcibly taken into foster care, and records indicate his mother was institutionalized at that time. We do not know his original surname, or indeed if he had a surname prior to being placed in the 1940s foster care system. We know that ours was government-assigned, a common practice at the time where indigenous foster kids were concerned. He has never been able to locate sufficient records to find members of his birth family.

So my last name has always been complicated for me.

On one hand, I think having a less-common surname would make many of my lifelong database issues disappear. On the other hand, I have decidedly mixed feelings about severing a tie to what my grandfather refers to as his "family stump." On the other other hand, I have no other strong emotional connections to the name, and I'd love to gain my mother's maiden name.''

I'm tempted to just have two last names, with or without a hyphen. But the internet says that sometimes creates logistical database issues of the very kind I hope to escape. So here I sit, weighing my options for the millionth time. It's certainly a quagmire.

Current Mood: torn

snickfic

I would like to bulk up my store of recipes that travel and reheat well and are good for taking to other people, the "casserole for someone who's ill/grieving/up all night with a newborn" kind of thing. Casseroles and hearty soups are welcome, but also other kinds of one-dish meals that don't require much fiddling other than reheating.

In return, I can offer one of my own that fits this description:
White chicken chili

snickfic

In which I’m ambivalent about several fandom-favorite shows. Oh boy!

Heated Rivalry. It was wild watching a hockey romance on my screen after writing ~350k of hockey romance fic. Literally on the tv I could see writers addressing and working within the same logistical constraints all us hockey RPFers do! And this is a show that knows hockey. From the very beginning with the joint ad shoot, I knew I was in good hands. Maybe my favorite nerdy moment of the whole show was towards the end where they’re discussing how to get Ilya on a different team, and Shane straight up starts laying out the salary cap considerations. In bed! Extremely hot of him!

I couldn’t help but think about how it must be even wilder to watch if you’re a closeted NHL player. Like damn. I was crying at the big climactic scene in ep 5, as a queer unathletic woman in her 40s; imagine what that must be like to someone who actually plays the sport and lives that environment every day. I think I saw something about a juniors player(?) coming out recently and citing the show as being part of his inspiration, and just, man.

So did I like it? Well, I enjoyed watching it and would watch it again (except probably not episode three; I feel for Scott but the whole romcom thing about murdered me, and I have negative interest in Kip). I love Ilya to little tiny pieces, and I think Connor Storrie did an incredible job with him. That “deadpan on the outside, dying on the inside” kind of character is catnip. The show also made me cry big fat tears twice, which basically never happens. I’m weak for musical cues, but actually crying over a movie or tv or book is extremely rare for me.

On the other hand, I think Shane is a much weaker character, with very little external to react to compared to Ilya’s family troubles. The entire core of Shane’s character is being anxious about things that mostly haven’t happened yet, which is difficult to build a narrative arc around. I also don’t think Hudson Williams is as strong an actor as Storrie, but it’s honestly hard to say when the material he’s working with is so much weaker. I feel like it's particularly rough because he's so clearly a Sidney Crosby expy, and Sid is so much more interesting a person than Shane is. If Shane had more Sid in him (the leadership in the room, the thoughtful and very proactive team caretaking, the weird random nerdy obsessions), I would like him a lot more.

Also, I’m sorry to say but I got bored of the sex after a while. 🙈 When it comes to live action sex scenes, less is more for me, I guess? I do appreciate, as I saw someone comment, that the show made it extremely clear what everyone’s dicks were doing at all times, even though we basically never see them.

Overall, a fun time! Not mad I saw it. Not sure it really needs a second season, when it feels like it already told the whole story, but I guess we’ll see.

--

Murderbot. I read the first book a while back and was unimpressed, but I thought a change in medium might address a lot of my issues with it, specifically a sense of worldbuilding and adding more depth to the characters, even if only by being played by real live people. And indeed, I do think the show was an improvement on that score. The live actors, the flashbacks, and the necessity of building sets all added a lot to make this feel like a real world that people live in.

To be honest, the real reason I wanted to watch the show was because I really like David Dastmalchian and because Gurathin was the most interesting character in the book after Murderbot, and I was extremely well fed on those counts. The expansion of Gurathin’s character added a lot to him, to the show, and especially to the relationship with Murderbot. Holy shit, it’s like they revamped him specifically as shipbait. ( spoiler cut for those that need it )

On the other hand, the show retains a lot of the weird tonal dissonance present in the book, and without the excuse of Murderbot as an unreliable narrator. I think Martha Wells probably has politics similar to mine, and I'm confident that her representation of the extremely queer, communal society of PreservationAux was meant to be a positive one, but what we see on screen often feels like it's making a joke at the team's expense. Ratthi and Arada are the worst, because they always feel like they're about fourteen years old, but everyone on the team frequently comes across as naïve, sheltered, and neither capable of nor interested in emotionally grappling with the reality of the world they live in. The way they are loudly protective of local fauna that has repeatedly tried to kill them or threatened their lives is a good example. They come across as parodies of people who hold their professed values, rather than serious examples of what those values might look like in practice.

The exception, for better and for worse, is Gurathin, an outsider who has joined their community only recently, barely buys into most of their practices, and notably is never the butt of the joke.

And like, I recognize that this is a relatively light-hearted show! Some of my very dearest tv shows and movies are ones that mix silliness with heart, like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. I think I still haven't fully figured out why this rubs me the wrong way, when those don't.

All that didn't prevent me from enjoying it overall, though. I laughed a lot. I also thought Skarsgard did great. I've not liked him before, but tbf that was in Infinity Pool and The Northman, and it's possible I hated those in general and not because of him. Anyway, I think the more he gets to be a weird little (big) guy, the better he is, so he's great as Murderbot.

And unlike Heated Rivalry, this is clearly dying for a second season. I'm glad it's been renewed.

snickfic

A week before the CH deadline, I thought I might have to default on my assignment. I had literally no words and no energy to try to make some. But at the last minute I got a nice, easy, short idea and wrote it in two days, and I was really happy with it. And then somehow in the three days before reveals I wrote two more things! Huh! And also a separate thing for Bulletproof!

for the man who has everything, Oasis RPF, Liam/Noel, 1400 words. 5 times Liam flirted with Noel during the reunion tour, and one time he didn't have to. I WAS NOT going to sign up for CH this year, but a request turned up for Liam/Noel at the very last minute, and I could not possibly refuse. (I've decided that I'm allowed to break my no-signups rule for Oasis requests. It's not like there are lots of them!)

This feels like a spiritual sibling to my vignettes fic from last year, although not in the same continuity. That fic was about their slow relationship rebuild leading up to tour, while this is about rebuilding during the tour, but in both cases it's a lot of short scenes that string together into a bigger whole, relatively sparsely written. This one leans a lot harder on specific canon events, partly because the period during the tour gave us all way more to work with than the period before (which is mostly a total mystery to this day!).

I didn't think I had another of those in me, but once I had the idea the day before the deadline, it all flowed really smoothly. I wrote the last scene and was like "this is way too soppy and cheesy, I'll need to rewrite it," but then I came later to edit and decided it had exactly the right amount of cheese, actually! FEELINGS.

--

14 Capra, Drowning by Numbers (1988), Cissie/Cissie/Cissie/Madgett, 800 words. It happened like this: on a Saturday afternoon, Cissie, Cissie, and Cissie agreed it was time for an experiment.

This movie had been on my radar for a while, I think because I'd seen a Yuletide promo for it? I was motivated to finally watch it when a CH request came up for pinch hit. It's a deeply weird, surrealist meditation on death featuring three women named Cissie and also starring Bernard Hill, and after I finished I was like, "I definitely cannot write fic for this." Then I went to take a shower, had not even gotten into the shower yet when the first line came to me, and I put my clothes back on, sat down, and wrote the whole thing in half an hour.

The fic is partly a "for want of a nail" fix-it of canon, and partly simply a fill for the prompt of the Cissies taking turns with Madgett. I think of all the fic I've written, it's probably one of the least comprehensible for reading canon-blind. I had fun, though, and christened the fandom tag, which is always nice. And the recipient seemed to really like it, which is the most gratifying part of writing something super niche. <3

--

full-service, The Housemaid, Millie/Nina, 2100 words. The obligatory post-canon cunnilingus fic, as you do.

This movie ended with such interesting possibilities for these two, and I knew my friend lioness was requesting them for CH, but what really got me to write this was that there were two entire fics in the fandom tag and neither for this ship. ;___; I wrote it all in a rush over two days, and I think it kind of shows, but I had fun, and maybe people will see the vision and write more of them. I would definitely read more about Millie's post-canon exploits and how her relationship with Nina evolves.

--

tea in the moonlight, The Endless, Aaron/Justin, 1700 words. The red flower knocks Aaron up, with Justin's assistance, and they have to decide what to do about it.

I had about 200 words of this for the Bulletproof tag "complicated but ultimately positive feelings about incestuous mpregnancy," one of maybe half a dozen Bulletproof false starts this year. I didn't think it was going to go anywhere, but after I finished the Housemaid fic, it turned out I still had energy left over, and I wrote the rest of it and posted it that same day.

I didn't end up gifting it to anyone, so as one of exactly twelve fics in the fandom tag, it hasn't gotten much attention. Now I'm kind of second-guessing posting it at all, or at least posting so soon without letting it sit for a while and giving it another editing pass. It's not remotely on the same level as my other Endless fic. OTOH I do really like the weird incesty mpreg feelings in it. IDK.

snickfic

A few recs before author reveals! (And then a reveals post tonight lol.)

First, my gifts! Both for True Detective: Night Country.
The Near Horizon, Danvers & Navarro, 3k. Danvers has a new mystery to solve, and sometimes, if she stands in the right place and looks in the right direction, Navarro might show up and give her information about it. A post-canon fic with some lovely lines, great Danvers voice, and some of that same ambiguity we saw in canon re: exactly what the heck the end of Navarro's story was.

the mercy of eternity, Danvers/Navarro, 500 words. Navarro is unmoored in time, and it's up to Danvers to anchor her again. I really like the nonlinear approach here and how it lets the reader feel as disoriented as the character.

And some other favorites:
role models, Heated Rivalry, OMC/OMC with background Shane/Ilya, 7k. A wrenching and then hopeful look at two young hockey players navigating what it means to be queer while looking up to still-closeted Shane and Ilya. Lovely, probably readable canon-blind.

down, down, down, Original Work, Final Girl/Female Serial Killer, 900 words. After all the serial killing, the final girl has a lot she's not telling. I'm in awe of how much the author packs into such a short fic. Weird, chewy, fucky, A+.

Bridging the Divide, Wake Up Dead Man, Vera Draven & Grace Wicks, 4k. Vera meets a ghost, and then keeps coming back to meet her again. I think of everyone in the movie, these two got the shortest end of the stick and the least restitution for it, and this is so satisfying, as Grace gets to be herself in her own words, and they're able to sympathize with each other. It's not so much hurt/comfort as it is just two people being seen who desperately needed it, and it's so beautifully and delicately told.

gremdark

I had some long days at the end of this week. On Thursday I took a job that was listed as a para position in a classroom alongside a teacher and assistant. When I got there it emerged that they actually wanted me to teach a first grade class alone, last minute, without plans and with no other adult in the classroom to lean on. In a class usually run by three adults.

I did it, and no one got badly hurt. One girl got a little pencil prick and bled a bit, but that was the worst direct child-harm. The little boy who normally has his own one-to-one para needed redirection about every thirty seconds, but I managed to keep things fairly calm and tear-free while getting through all but one of the emergency make-do lessons the very kind teacher next door printed for me. One student was determinedly destructive, which eventually forced me to break a long streak of not removing students from my classrooms. I hate doing that, but I tried everything else first.

Sometimes at this job, I'm thrown into a situation where I just have to tell myself that I need to do the best I can with the skills and tools I have. From a surprise solo teaching gig with zero premade sub plans, I ended up with a roomful of alive, uninjured children and a couple stacks of semi-complete worksheets. That's not a bad result, even if I'm not as polished at lower elementary instruction as I hope to eventually become. Everything is practice.

The funniest moment of the day was when a teeny six year old boy looked down at his subtraction worksheet and back up at me, scrunched up his face, and said in his birdlike little voice, "Ms. Gremdark, why are you such a bastard?" I did a strategic lip bite to keep from laughing. It was an absolutely hilarious delivery.

Today, things worked out so that I was in the classroom directly across the hall from Thursday's, teaching K-5 music. The music teacher had planned her absence well in advance and left an absolute holy grail of sub plans. She had detailed teaching scripts for each class, bonus suggestions for if material ended early, and all kinds of supplementals to cover various contingencies. As a result things went very smoothly. I taught 5th and 2nd grade music in the morning, then saw 4th grade and Kindergarten after recess and 3rd grade just before dismissal. It was a nigh-perfect day, even with the usual shoving matches and tattling and stolen pencils. I've started bringing a little bluetooth speaker in my bag, and I use it to play a specific jazz album when classes are doing ""silent"" solo work. It's a very effective strategy, though it was no match for post-recess Kindergarten energy.

3rd grade was the most challenging. One boy repeatedly asked me if I was a virgin. "That's not a question we ask people at school, Name. Focus on your worksheet." Later in the class, the same boy asked to go to the bathroom, then flooded it. According to his teacher, he's done that several times this year.

My favorite moment of the day happened in the 4th grade class, which the sub plan had warned me would be "chatty and high energy." Sure enough, I had to raise my voice more than I prefer and separate several people. The older kids were doing a webquest about Black musicians. The jazz album brought the chattiness down to a low rumble. Then I had to spend a good fifteen minutes intervening in a situation where two girls were bullying a third girl, calling her names and trying to make her upset. It was clearly an established pattern.

I finally got the instigators separated on opposite sides of the back of the room, but by then the girl they'd been cruel to was crying. She'd already been stuck on the worksheet before the bullying picked up steam, and of course it's so hard to figure out a confusing assignment when something else is upsetting you. I sat with her for a bit and made sure she knew that I would tell her regular teacher what happened and that there would be no consequences if she couldn't finish it by the end of class. That made her feel better about taking a breather in the "calming corner." It took about twenty minutes, but she emerged with dry eyes at last and settled in to work out the tricky part of the worksheet.

Just as I was about to walk over and see if I could help without embarrassing her, two little boys looked at each other and crossed the room to talk to her. These two had previously been very high energy and done a lot of roughhousing, but now they made sure to speak quietly and kindly to their classmate. They invited her back to where they were sitting and folded her into their little group. I was touched to see how gently a previously loud and rough group of kids met their classmate's anxiety and stress with compassion. I didn't need to say a word to that group for the rest of the period. With their support, she finished the worksheet just before the end of class. I made sure to tell all three that I was proud of them before they lined up.

That's one thing I love about teaching. For every kid I see acting out cruel patterns they've adopted from adults, I see more making choices like those little boys and using the tools they have to do what they can for the people around them.

Current Mood: touched
Current Music: Mint Jams (The jazz album with magic child quieting powers)

snickfic

Wuthering Heights (2026). Young woman is torn between her love for the best friend she grew up with and her wealthy new-money neighbor.

I enjoyed this a lot. Emerald Fennell's visual spectacle is always on point, and in particular the costumes and sets are fantastic. There are a bunch of amazing set pieces, and the artificiality of Linton's mansion and the wardrobe he gives Cathy vs the organic squalor of her home and childhood were really effective IMO in contrasting several different binaries at once. I loved every single ridiculous dress. I was also really into Cathy and Heathcliff's starcrossed love. Heathcliff is so gone on her, and even when he's trying to be manipulative, he mostly comes across as desperate. (When he approaches Linton's ward Isabela in hopes of making Cathy jealous, he is the most gentlemanly ravisher you have ever met.) And Cathy is clearly equally gone on him, even if she gets in her own way sometimes.

I think the script could have used some work. For one thing, several secondary characters' motivations were left as exercises to the viewer (Cathy's father and especially her companion Nelly); like yes, I can form theories about why they did what they did, but maybe a little less subtlety here is in order. Also, just to make Cathy and Heathcliff feel a bit more complex as characters and/or to just make their relationship more toxic or at least complicated. Honestly, my main criticism here is that Fennell, against all expectations and especially considering her work on Saltburn, doesn't go nearly as weird and batshit as the story could support. The visuals yes, the character dynamics no.

Overall, though, a good time. I ship it and immediately went looking for fic. (There were 15 fics in the tag, half from before the movie even came out, and half the new ones were crossovers. RIP.)

--

The Tunnel (2011). An Australian mockumentary about a news crew that goes into abandoned subway tunnels underneath Sydney looking for a story.

I'm always interested in mockumentary horror, as opposed to your standard found footage, so I was excited to check this out. Unfortunately, the longer I sit with it, the less I like it. First of all, the whole point of the mockumentary aspect is to add depth, context, and contrast to the found footage, but IMO the interview clips here were almost extraneous. There were one or two nice moments, like when they have the anchor listen for the first time to what another crew member in the tunnels had heard through his head phones, but there was very little else that we couldn't have gotten from the found footage itself. The news investigation framing all felt a little off as well; the supposed pretext for going into the tunnels feels a little overheated. "Politicians fail to give updates on big proposal" does not feel like the red flag for a huge scandal, and various other aspects that were treated as potentially newsworthy just weren't, IMO. Also, surely the most terrifying part of underground horror is the threat of getting lost? I was astounded by how little a concern this was in the movie, even when they were running around without any care whatsoever for where they were.

What really killed this for me, though, was the gender politics. As with so many found footage type movies, there's one female character, the news anchor, and everyone else is male. (Why is this????) There are repeated assertions from the guys both in the found footage and the interview segments that the anchor doesn't know what she's doing, doesn't deserve her position, and probably is fucking the station director. And what do you know, they're right, several people die because of her ambition and poor judgment, not to mention how she goes into crying hysterics several times. In 2011!! Just brutal.

There's a behind the scenes doc about the movie that I managed to watch five minutes of, and before I turned it off, it was entirely about what genius fundraisers the creators were, and how they "disrupted" the Australian film funding model by "inventing NFTs before they were big." (They raised funds by ~selling frames of the movie to donors.) So... yeah.

The movie isn't entirely without merit; there's some great found footage moments. If you just want to watch people stumble around underground being chased by unknown monsters, you could do worse. But a very qualified rec.

--

Prince of Darkness (1987). Per Shudder, this John Carpenter movie "follows a group of quantum physics students in Los Angeles who are asked to assist a Catholic priest in investigating an ancient cylinder of liquid discovered in a monastery, which they come to find is a sentient, liquid embodiment of Satan."

NGL, I watched this because I really really wanted to see a movie about the liquid embodiment of Satan, and now I have, I guess. This was just bad. There are some memorable moments; I loved the dripping fluid floating upwards and that the canister (OF FLUID) was locked to "only open from the inside." The dream transmissions for the future were honestly rad. The bugs and creepy-crawlies everwhere were really effective sometimes. There's also a fun sense of claustrophobia as the night goes on and things close in around the characters. Also, frankly, the devil and Jesus as extraterrestials who came to take over and warn Earth, respectively, was neat! I wish the movie had gone harder on that!

OTOH, the eventual romance began with the guy being such a creeper that I was sure he was being set up as a villain, and then he's a big old sexist to her right before he asks her out, and I hated that. The demon instapregnancy was so predictable and tedious. One of the guys repeatedly has homophobic comments made to and by him, and also he's weirdly racist to one of the girls, and this is all for no apparent reason except as a characterization note. And overall the movie was just slow and lacking in charm. I would love to see this exact premise from someone who was actually good at writing characters.

I definitely wouldn't recommend this to anyone unless they were interested in specific elements of the plot or if they're a John Carpenter completionist.

gremdark

My interview with the alt-certification program wrapped up an hour ago. Since then, I've been snacking, snuggling the cat, and collecting my thoughts.

That went well, I think. My interviewer had prior teaching experience near the community where I live, so we had a good shared knowledge base at the outset. Vibes were good. My sample lesson hit all the notes I wanted within the five minute timeframe, and afterward my interviewer said he'd enjoyed learning more about the topic. I was particularly pleased with the results of the data review portion. In the Q&A section after I presented my documents, my interviewer mentioned that he'd had to skip a number of followup questions because I'd already addressed their contents.

I know I'm a well-qualified candidate, and since my surgery last year I know I finally have the energy to do this work. So now we wait. I'll hear their decision in early March. If things go particularly well, I could be working under a provisional license alongside a professional mentor as early as August. Fingers crossed!

At this point I've done everything I can to positively influence the outcome, so all the pressure's off. In the absolute worst case scenario, I'll keep subbing while building application portfolios for the other alt-certification programs in my area. It feels so good to have momentum again after I was so sick for so long. Even the worst days now are better than operating at that level of constant pain.

I had to take a break from writing for almost a month to pour my free time and energy into getting my application materials together, so I'm very excited to have my hobby time back. And I guess I'd better get back to doing my full share of the household dishes now that I'm not buried in a heap of time-sensitive deadlines. Eyeing up the kitchen sink as we speak.

Current Mood: energetic
Current Music: Local radio station

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gremdark

Busy day today, but at least I can feel my momentum in a positive direction.

I got up early and went in for what had been listed as a one hour substitute gig at a nearby middle school. When I showed up, they asked me to stay 8:30 to noon, as apparently there had been a mistake in the coding on their side of the app. With an inner wince at the derailing of my morning, I agreed.

As it turned out, the school needed about 40 minutes of substitute teaching from me. It wasn't my favorite 40 minutes I've had as a sub. A student called me a faggot before 9 a.m. I was grateful to hand the class off to their regular teacher. For the remainder of the morning, they asked me to sit in the empty auditorium and keep students from entering it. When I got to the auditorium, I found out that I was the second sub they'd asked to sit in there. The two of us sat together for three hours, during which maybe six students total poked their heads in. Still, we had a nice chat, and I've certainly done more strenuous work for less money.

In the last hour I was there, the in-school suspension group was moved into the auditorium. I quickly developed a very low opinion of the teacher running things. He responded to one disgruntled twelve year old's needling by going off on a tirade about how children have no rights, then settled in to watch tiktoks on his cell phone without headphones. At full volume. His weapon of choice for keeping the students' volume under control was a metal whistle. Every time he interrupted his scrolling to blow it, the students responded with a cacophony of high pitched sounds of their own, then steadily ramped up the volume until it hit the prior level. To say I was glad to escape out to the parking lot is an understatement.

The library across the street from the school is hosting early voting, so I swung in and filled out a ballot. There's a larger-than-usual effort to primary my state's evil, Trump-crony senator, so I held my nose and voted in the Republican primary to help move the needle away from Trump and towards the candidates who at least pretend to care more about farm subsidies than making life worse for immigrants. I like everything about my state except the people who run it, so here's hoping local politics shift enough that I don't have to plan a cross-country move in the next few years. There are people here I'm loath to leave behind.

The rest of the day promises to be a good one. It's my neighbor's day off, and he's coming over with a box of free cookies from his bakery job. The plan is for him to get writing done while I finish my interview prep work, and with any luck we'll keep each other on task. I'm excited to hug him. I'm glad we both found jobs this month, but with him working evenings and nights and me going in at 7 or 8 in the morning, I'm seeing much less of him than I prefer. He's off Friday too, so I'm cooking him dinner. That'll be a good emotional reset.

I finished my slides and speaking notes for the sample lesson last night. I had to cut out some content from the beginning to make it stay under five minutes, but it still feels meaty and reflective of the things I'm best at as a teacher. Now I just have to get the slides and citations for the data analysis piece together and make sure I've practiced delivering those. One way or another, the interview is tomorrow at 11 a.m. After that, I can breathe a little more easily.

Current Mood: accomplished

isis

I'm finally feeling mostly human after being down with a cold for about a week; serves me right for being a judge at the regional science fair and exposing myself to all those middle school germ factories. Well, I read a lot, anyway.

Shroud by Adrien Tchaikovsky - first-contact with a very alien alien species on the tidally-locked moon of a gas giant. Earth is (FRTDNEATJ*) uninhabitable, humans have diaspora'ed in spaceships under the iron rule of corporations who cynically consider only a person's value to the bottom line, and the Special Projects team of the Garveneer is evaluating what resources can be extracted from the moon nicknamed "Shroud" when disaster (of course) strikes. The middle 3/5 of the book is a bizarre roadtrip through a strange frozen hell, as an engineer and an administrator (both women) must navigate their escape pod to a place where they might be able to call for rescue.

When I'd just started this book I said that it reminded me of Alien Clay, and it really does have a lot in common with that book, especially since they are both expressions of Tchaikovsky's One Weird Theme, i.e. "How can we see Other as Person?" He hits the same beats as he does in that and other books that are expressions of that theme (for example, the exploratory overture that is interpreted as hostility, the completely different methods of accomplishing the same task) but if it's the sort of thing you like, you will like this sort of thing. It also reminded me a bit of Dragon's Egg by Robert L. Forward, in the sense that it starts with an environment which is the opposite of anything humans would expect to find life on, and reasons out from physics and chemistry what life might be like in that environment. Finally, it (weirdly) reminded me of Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher, because the narrator, Juna Ceelander, feels that she's the worst possible person for the job (of survival, in this case); the engineer has a perfect skill-set for repairing the pod and interpreting the data they receive, but she's an administrator, she can do everyone's job a little, even if she can't do anybody's job as well as they can. But it turns out that it's important that she can do everyone's job a little; and it's also important that she can talk to the engineer, and stroke her ego when she's despairing, and not mind taking the blame for something she didn't do if it helps the engineer stay on task, and that's very Summer.

I enjoyed this book quite a lot!

[*] for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming by Mike Brown is what took me through most of the worst of my cold, as it's an easy-to-read micro-history-slash-memoir, which is one of my favorite nonfiction genres. Brown is the astronomer who discovered a number of objects in the Kuiper Belt, planetoids roughly the size of Pluto, which led to the inevitable question: are these all planets, too? If so, the solar system would have twelve or fifteen or more planets. If not - Pluto, as one of these objects, should not be considered a planet.

I really enjoyed the tour through the history of human discovery and conception of the solar system, and the development of astronomy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He manages to outline the important aspects of esoteric technical issues without getting bogged down in detail, so it's very accessible to non-scientists. Interwoven in this was his own story, the story of his career in astronomy but also his marriage and the birth of his daughter. It's an engaging, chatty book, and one must forgive him for side-stepping the central question of "so what the heck is a planet, anyway?"

Don't Stop the Carnival by Herman Wouk, which B had read a while back when he was on a Herman Wouk kick. I'd read Winds of War and War and Remembrance, and Marjorie Morningstar, but that was it, and I remembered he had said it reminded him a lot of our time in the Bahamas and Caribbean when we were living on our boat.

The best thing about this book is Wouk's sharp, funny writing - his paragraphs are things of beauty, his characters drawn crisply with description that always seems novel. The story itself is one disaster after another, as Norman Paperman, Broadway publicist, discovers that running a resort in paradise is, actually, hell. It's funny, but the kind of funny that you want to read peeking through your fingers, because you just feel so bad for the poor characters.

On the other hand, this book was published in 1965, and it shows. I don't think the racist, sexist, antisemitic, pro-colonization attitudes expressed by the various characters are Wouk's - he's Jewish, for one thing, and he's mostly making a point about these characters, and these attitudes. The homophobia, I'm not sure. But the book's steeped in -ism and -phobia, and I cringed a lot.

I enjoyed this book (for some value of "enjoy") right up until near the end, where a sudden shift in tone ruined everything.

Don't Stop the Spoilers

Two characters die unexpectedly; a minor character, and then a more major character, and everything goes from zany slapstick disasters ameliorated at the last minute to a somber reckoning in the ashes of last night's party. In this light, the ending feels jarring: the resort's problems are solved, the future looks rosy, and Norman realizes he is not cut out for life in Paradise and, selling the resort to another sucker, returns to the icy New York winter.

Reflecting on it, I think this ending is a better ending than the glib alternative of the resort's problems are solved, the future looks rosy, and Norman raises a glass and looks forward to dealing with whatever Paradise throws at him in the future. But because everything has gone somber, it feels not like he's learned a lesson and acknowledged reality, but that he's had his face rubbed in horror and decided he can't cope. If he'd celebrated his success and then ruefully stepped away, it would be an act of strength, but he runs back home, defeated, and all his experience along the way seems pointless.

Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand - I got this book in a fantasy book Humble Bundle, so I was expecting fantasy, which this is very much not. It's a psychological thriller, following the first-person narrator Cass Neary, a fucked-up, drugged-out, briefly brilliant photographer who has been sent by an old acquaintance to interview a reclusive photographer - one of Cass's heroes - on a Maine island.

I kept reading because the narrative voice is fabulous and incredibly seductive, even though the character is a terrible person who does terrible things in between slugs of Jack Daniels and gulps of stolen uppers. It feels very immersive, both in the sense of being immersed in the world of the novel's events and in the sense of being immersed in the perspective of a messed-up photographer. But overall it's not really the sort of book I typically read, and it's not something I'd recommend unless you're into this type of book.

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