dolorosa_12 | Saw you the other day looking so undermined

It would be accurate to say that this week was entirely dominated by what I can only describe as an extended geopolitics-related nervous breakdown. Then I read a bunch of (depressing, but clear) Timothy Snyder essays, and calmed down, then I read another essay by Snyder this morning and freaked out, then I wrote a furious email to my MP, and made plans to go to a protest next weekend, and calmed down again somewhat. I wish I could feel more confident that my fellow citizens and residents of western European countries truly understand the gravity of our situation, and understand that if they want to carry on living in (albeit flawed) democracies, surrounded by and allied with other democracies, this might actually involve some sacrifice, action, and/or risk on their part — and the longer they carry on denying this, the greater the sacrifice, action and risk will be. .

Other than all that, it's been a fairly standard weekend for me: gym-ing, swimming, cooking, yoga-ing, and reading. My legs and hips are still sore from yesterday's two hours in the gym, my upper body is completely relaxed from this morning's 1km swim, and I'm trying to decide whether I can fit in a walk in between this afternoon's various activities.

Matthias and I took out a discounted three-month subscription to MUBI (a film streaming platform), and are trying to make the most of it by getting through as many films hosted there in the next months. Last night we watched The Substance, the Oscar-nominated film starring Demi Moore as an ageing celebrity TV fitness instructor (à la Jane Fonda) who, at risk of being booted off her TV show and replaced by a younger model, signs up for a dubious experimental treatment which creates a better (younger, more flawlessly — uncannily — beautiful) version of herself. This is something of a devil's bargain, with predictably horrifying results, as the alter-ego slowly takes over her life in a grotesquely extractive way. The film's commentary on ageing and female beauty (and in particular the disposable way Hollywood treats all actresses over thirty) is about as subtle as a hammer to the head, but its real strength — as befits a story all about the surface of things — is in its visual storytelling, and how much it is able to say with set, costuming and make-up, rather than words. Be warned that the film involves visceral gore and body horror throughout, and it's a lot.

In terms of books, I managed a reread of a childhood favourite trilogy (The Plum-Rain Scroll, The Dragon Stone, and The Peony Lantern by Ruth Manley, a children's fantasy adventure quest series using Japanese mythology and folklore in a similar manner, and with a similar storytelling style, to Lloyd Alexander's The Chronicles of Prydain series' use of Welsh mythology), and, on the recommendation of

vriddy, Godkiller, the first in an epic fantasy trilogy by Hannah Kaner. This novel is set in a world in which gods are tangible, numerous, and weird, with complicated relationships with the human beings who worship (or fear) them, and dangerous consequences when they are not appeased. Unequal bargains are part and parcel of life. Into this complicated situation step our heroes: a traumatised (female) mercenary, and a retired knight, who are forced into an uneasy alliance to protect a twelve-year-old orphaned artistocratic girl who has somehow become unbreakably bound to a god of white lies. All are harbouring secrets, and all of these are slowly revealed over the course of the book, which takes the form of a dangerous road trip across a continent scarred by previous years of civil war. I enjoyed this a lot, and will be collecting the sequel from the local public library as soon as the person who's borrowed it returns it!

I've now picked up Ada Palmer's Inventing the Renaissance: a massive, doorstopper of a book, but written in a chatty, inviting style that I would find patronising in some hands, but in Palmer's (having seen her speak in public, and knowing something of her pedagogical approach to the classes she teaches as an academic historian) feels authentic and genuine. If you want to get an idea of the style and content of the book, the most recent backlog of posts at her

exurbe_feed blog will give you a very good idea.

Looking at the time, I think I will be able to go on that walk after all, before returning home to a smokey cup of tea, slow-cooking Indonesian curry for dinner, and a very long, slow, anxiety-focused yoga session. A good, balanced weekend: at least within the four walls of my house (and the less said about the chaos outside, the better).

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

vriddy

I'm happy Godkiller worked well for you, too :) I hope we'll see more of the MC's family in the next book(s), I was a bit disappointed to have them disappear from the story so quickly! I wrote my review just when we meet them first.

And oh, I didn't expect Inventing the Renaissance to be a doorstopper though I suppose I should have expected it! I've been toying with the idea of getting my hands on it considering how much I've been enjoying the related posts, but I'll probably hold off a little bit (at least until I get my current library stack of books under control!! Haha.)

No words for the rest. I hope you enjoyed your walk :)

From:

dolorosa_12

Ada Palmer is incapable of being concise, but she has such an engaging style that I'm just happy to be there, verbosity and all. (I was at a panel event she gave at Worldcon a few years back, and she was enjoying talking with us so much that she ended up convening an extra, spontaneous evening spoiler chat about the Terra Ignota books for anyone who wantted to come. This was meant to run for two hours or so...four hours later, and she was still going strong!)

Given what you've said about your stack of library books, I think it makes sense to hold off on Inventing the Renaissance for now!

I have high hopes for the sequel to Godkiller, and am so happy that your own post prompted me to read the series at last!

From:

jesse_the_k

from perhaps you? yesterday about the Medici's biggest ramp in the world, and wow that was fascinating and instructive and funny. Her authorial voice is so accessible! I treasure her "History of the Book" panel from NZ Worldcon 2020. The Invention of the Renaissance has a well-narrated audiobook that I so hope is available outside Amazon.

Thanks to a locked post elsewhere, I'm pondering an OUTSTANDING essay by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, you don't have to tell anyone anything; you can control the means of how you do so. four thoughts about the distribution of ideas. which dives deep into why stepping back from social media isn't "giving up."

Hooray for swimming!

From:

dolorosa_12

It wasn't me who linked it — I've only linked the blog as a whole — but I agree with everything you say regarding Ada Palmer. She's such a fantastic, and enthusiastic communicator.

That essay was great, and made really good points.

From:

thawrecka

I loved The Substance. I saw an interview where Coralie Fargeat said she wanted to be subtle originally, but realised to tell this kind of story and do justice to the subject matter she had to be as unsubtle as possible. I like horror and body horror anyway, so I had a great time, but it's such a good examination of how people internalise all the ageist, sexist, toxic body standards, and how they damage your mind and body, and Demi Moore is excellent in it.

From:

dolorosa_12

It's a fantastic film, and certainly has no need to be subtle. I struggle with gore and body horror, so I had to watch a lot of it through my fingers, but I don't see how that particular story could have been told any other way. And yes, Demi Moore is fantastic in it.

From:

hunningham

Wait a minute. Ada Palmer, Exurbe ... somehow I had not realised that the writer of Exurbe and of Terra Ignota were the same person. How did I miss that?

From:

dolorosa_12

Yes, it's the same person, and I'm delighted that this is the way you found out!

From:

darkmarcy

I loved the Substance, even I had to close my eyes several times during it! It was so delightfully cartoonish, its world so small: One tv channel, one Show, only chance to be Someone. It certainly is a polarising film but I admired how it was not subtle at all. And I loved how it did not feature internet or modern tech at all, bar the memory stick. (Sure IRL people would dig up Sue's origins etc)

And it was way funnier than Fargeat's debut feature Revenge (which it excellent as well but brutal. I describe it as small scale feminist Kill Bill) yet with a small nod towards it (the star earrings of Sue)

From:

dolorosa_12

its world so small: One tv channel, one Show, only chance to be Someone. It certainly is a polarising film but I admired how it was not subtle at all. And I loved how it did not feature internet or modern tech at all, bar the memory stick. (Sure IRL people would dig up Sue's origins etc)

That is all very perceptive, and I hadn't even noticed that — but now you mention it, she used a landline phone and nobody carried smartphones. I had clocked that the job advertisement for Elisabeth's replacement was printed in a newspaper, and remembered thinking that it was unlikely they'd find many 18-30-year-olds that way, but didn't really take in the overall low-tech ambience. It definitely adds to the claustrophobia of it all.

(And yes, the title is from Pendulum's 'The Tempest', whose lyrics definitely sum up my feelings on our current geopolitical shitshow. )

From:

la_marquise

Oh, I empathise re the politics.

From:

dolorosa_12

I wish I could get more people in western Europe to understand that my support for Ukraine is not because Ukrainians are brave, or Russia under Putin's leadership has committed atrocities, or because Zelenskyy gives good speeches (although all these things are true), but because — in addition to these things — the outcome of the war actually has security implications for me, and for everyone who lives on our continent. I think in the UK most people are broadly supportive of Ukraine, but it's for the former reasons, and not the latter, and our political leadership (from both parties that have been in power during the fullscale invasion) have done a poor job of communicating the latter — a fault which is not unique to the UK. Something fundamental shifted this week, and yet people are still viewing it through a prism of phony 'peace' negotiations and where Ukraine's borders might lie tomorrow, as opposed to the fact that all of us in Europe (and my family in Asia and Australia) are less safe now than we were last Monday.

From:

lirazel

I keep thinking of that comic panel: "What a stupid time to be alive."

I'm glad to hear about Godkiller--it's been on my list for a while. And I hadn't even heard about the Palmer book but it sounds fun!

Looking at the time, I think I will be able to go on that walk after all, before returning home to a smokey cup of tea, slow-cooking Indonesian curry for dinner, and a very long, slow, anxiety-focused yoga session

That sounds perfect.

From:

dolorosa_12

I keep thinking of that comic panel: "What a stupid time to be alive."

I want to say preemptively that what I'm going to say next is not directed at you personally, nor is it anything that you should feel any responsibility towards (nor the need to apologise for); I know you didn't vote for this and I know that you have been working hard, both before and after the most recent US election, at concrete actions to bring about justice and political change in your country and beyond.

With that said, I don't think people in the United States realise quite how angry European residents and citizens are with their country right now. In the past few days, the US leadership and its proxies has (among other things):

'Negotiated' 'peace' on behalf of an invaded country, with its invader, without input from the country fighting for its continued independent existence, and offering upfront (before the 'negotiations' even took place) everything the invading country stated as its aims when it invaded in the first place.

Described the European and Ukrainian responses (i.e. sanctions, aid, defending themselves, and a desire for war crimes prosecution of the Russian leadership) to the invasion of Ukraine as 'irritants' that needed to be overcome so that the US could go back to diplomatic and economic relations with Russia.

Told the leaders of an entire continent of nations who have trotted along obligingly to support and be involved in every US war of the 20th and 21st centuries that they didn't see the need for military alliances any more, and that we could no longer count on them to defend us in the event of a war (and that they might withdraw US troops from the most vulnerable eastern countries within NATO, and that they were unlikely to lift a finger if attempts were made to invade or annex those countries).

Posed for a photo op at the site of Dachau concentration camp, then met with the leadership of Germany's neo-Nazi party (and refused to meet with the actual democratically elected leader of Germany) and tried to interfere in this weekend's German elections.

Told a whole roomful of European politicians that the biggest threat to their democracy wasn't an emboldened Russia, but rather the fact that we have laws against hate speech and disinformation (and require them to be prosecuted, taken down, and/or labelled as such).

(One of the German hosts of the conference at which most of this took place was actually in tears when he gave his concluding remarks, that's how bad all this was.)

I know Americans are dealing with an absolute firehose of terrible stuff domestically right now, so it's unsurprising if none of this is front-page news, but over in Europe, people are livid, and terrified. (And beyond Europe as well: my cousin who lives in South Korea, which has similar military/security arrangements with the US, is absolutely spitting mad.)

I'd rather not speedrun a repeat of the years 1933-38, you know? (Nor what comes after that.)

Anyway, on to nicer topics: books!

I think you'd enjoy both Godkiller and the Palmer book. The former doesn't break any suprising ground in terms of plot (it's a solid work of epic fantasy), but the characters are fun, queerness is normative in the world, and I like the way humans interact with and perceive the divine in a setting where gods are tangible and very present in everyday life. As to the Ada Palmer book, I'd encourage you to read a few of the linked blog posts — they'll give you a good idea of the tone and content, before you commit to a 600-page doorstopper.

That sounds perfect.

I'm just living that cosy, parodically cottagecore life!

Edited (added more html code for ease of reading) Date: 2025-02-18 07:09 pm (UTC)

From:

lirazel

I think you're very right that most USAmericans are unaware of this. Partly this is because of the firehose of awful, but honestly more of it is about the extreme US-centrism of our media and political environment. Most USAmericans simply don't think about other countries. Like, at all. It wouldn't occur to them to even wonder about how the rest of the world is reacting. I've been aware to some extent because of my friends around the world, but I know it's not the case for most people.

I hate that everything our stupid, stupid government does affects everyone else on the planet. It shouldn't be this way. Even if we had a perfectly benevolent government (lol), it still shouldn't have this big of an affect on everyone else.

I like the way humans interact with and perceive the divine in a setting where gods are tangible and very present in everyday life

This is what intrigues me about it!

From:

dolorosa_12

A European diplomat who was the conference in Munich where all this happened said to Timothy Snyder later that until this week, the US had been (from their perspective), 'a benign hegemon,' and now they're something else. (I think we could quibble with that characterisation, since I wouldn't say the experiences of Europeans are comparable to, say, people in Latin America when it comes to relationships with the US, but it's certainly accurate as far as the shift in Europe has been in the past few days.)

What was done and said today was even worse than all the things I listed in my previous comment.

From:

lirazel

Yeah, that pov kind of makes sense from a European perspective, even if it doesn't from the global south. But those days are well and truly over, it seems.

I am not a violent person, nor do I think we should invite violence into our political scene (mostly because it will always end up hurting the most vulnerable people the most). But I absolutely would not blame Zelensky if he murdered Tr*** with his bare hands. My personal theory is not just the typical stuff about worshiping Putin, etc, but that Zelensky shows Tr*** all that he could never be. Zelensky is the real deal badasss patriot of a kind that makes Tr*** look so pathetic and childish in comparison. I think he HATES Zelensky for that.

From:

dolorosa_12

I've always thought exactly the same as you re: Zelenskyy (although a lot of what he's saying is also just word-for-word parroting of Russian propaganda, like the stuff about Zelenskyy being illegitimate since his presidential term has overrun due to the imposibility of holding elections in wartime).

I also don't think the Orange Menace actually understands patriotism, or thinks it's particularly laudable, even in the 'support our brave troops' kind of way (remember his disparaging remarks about wounded veterans, and contempt for John McCain having been a prisoner of war). I didn't really understand patriotism — it just seemed like some kind of weird Brexity or American thing — until I saw the example of Ukrainians, because it doesn't mean thinking your country is the best in the world and above all criticism, but rather it means loving your country and the people who form it so much that you are prepared to die to make it better (especially if 'better' means 'free forever from the multigenerational threat of tyranny and colonisation from our totalitarian neighbour'). At first it shamed me, and then it gave me moral clarity about what I would be prepared to do and have done to me in similar circumstances, to the extent that if a wider war breaks out in my part of the world — which European military figures have been warning is likely to happen in the next five years, and which is a very real prospect in a lot of people's minds right now — I have already decided what my choices and actions woudl be.

Back to what you were saying, I'd also argue that it's not just that Zelenskyy shows his inadequacies, it's also that he's never forgiven Zelenskyy for refusing to submit to his notion of politics as mafia-style business transactions — neither during his first term, or now.

The grimly ironic thing is that up until this past week, Ukrainians were physically and psychologically exhausted, fractious, and increasingly divided, and people I know are now saying that in the past 48 hours, their sense of clarity, unity, and common purpose is back to where it was in the first three months of the fullscale war. My only hope now is that their European partners truly understand that something in the fabric of the universe has fundamentally shifted this week, and it is in their own interest to diverge from the United States in their policy towards Ukraine.

From:

lirazel

Oh no, I don't think Tr*** has any desire whatsoever to actually be patriotic, however you define that. He's far too selfish for that. But he wants to appear patriotic, which makes the genuine patriotism of someone like Zelensky all the more offensive to him.

I still don't value patriotism personally simply because I don't place any value on nation-states, but I do value certain ideals enough to fight for them, and in some cases, as with Ukraine, it's clear which side of the conflict my ideals line up with. If you're using "Ukraine" to mean "freer than you're ever allowed to be under Putin and also our decisions are made by us and not someone far away" then that is a Ukraine I understand the fight for and support, even if I personally am not thrilled about equating it with a nation, if that makes sense.

I have already decided what my choices and actions woudl be.

That is very admirable. I really hope you won't ever be in that position, but I really respect that you've thought about it already. I have too though in a less immediate way, and you make me want to pin things down more firmly.

people I know are now saying that in the past 48 hours, their sense of clarity, unity, and common purpose is back to where it was in the first three months of the fullscale war.

Wow. Never underestimate the human power of spite. (And in this case, I mean "spite" in a positive, defiant way.)

My only hope now is that their European partners truly understand that something in the fabric of the universe has fundamentally shifted this week, and it is in their own interest to diverge from the United States in their policy towards Ukraine.

Absolutely.

From:

dolorosa_12

I'm a social democrat, so I value the concept of a nation-state simply as nation-states are currently the best framework we have for enacting social democracy, at least within their arbitrary borders. By that I mean that they make it functionally possible to pay taxes and have those taxes be spent on cradle-to-the-grave social services, infrastructure, and so on — and we don't have any better frameworks for doing this, so far. (Not that the nation-state I live in currently is doing a good job on the social democracy front...) And in the context of an existential war (where the way people live their lives is so fundamentally different on both sides of that national border in the war), I understand why the concept is powerful, and why people are motivated by patriotism. But beyond that, I agree with you.

From:

lirazel

I get this and respect it! I'm pretty much a Chomskyite in this area:

"So despite the anarchist 'vision,' I think aspects of the state system, like the one that makes sure children eat, have to be defended—in fact, defended very vigorously. And given the accelerating effort that’s being made these days to roll back the victories for justice and human rights which have been won through long and often extremely bitter struggles in the West, in my opinion the immediate goal of even committed anarchists should be to defend some state institutions, while helping to pry them open to more meaningful public participation, and ultimately to dismantle them in a much more free society."

I'm an anarchist in my principles, but I'm an incrementalist in my methods. Basically: as we work towards societies built really and truly upon free association, we have to keep and improve the institutions that prevent human suffering (most of which gets lumped under 'the welfare state'). I'm not against institutions: I'm against the way that institutions always, inevitably, become about consolidating and protecting their own power instead of helping whoever they were set up to help in the first place. That's one of the key draws of anarchism: it says, institutions should only exist as long as they actually help people. As soon as they start not to, let's dump them. Examine every institution to see whether it's deriving its authority from free association and the needs for actual people; if it hasn't, chuck it and build a different one. To my mind, that's antithetical to the whole concept of a state, you know?

But my short-term goals really align with social democrats' even if my long term goals are anti-statist.

All that said, I simply can't support any kind of propping up the idea of a state, even if I'm for propping up the actual functions of a state. This is why I don't value patriotism, even if I do very much value the kinds of things you're talking about states doing. It may be a semantic position, but it's one that's important to me.