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Look at her with her eyes like a flame
Mar. 12th, 2023 01:22 pmI feel as if I've barely been around these parts recently — I think it's been close to a week since I logged into Dreamwidth, and there are an overwhelming number of posts to catch up with. Luckily, I've been very productive this weekend, and after writing this post I've essentially got the entire afternoon free, so I can dive into my feed and see what you've all been up to.
I've got a couple of short stories, two films, and a book to log in terms of stuff read/watched since I last posted.
The short stories were from one of the recent issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and as always I found myself impressed at the editorial choice to group things together that fit well thematically. Both the stories were about the experiences of people coming to terms with the colonisation of their lands and communities, and trying to navigate this traumatic situation without much recourse to power.
'Our Grandmother's Words' (M.H. Ayinde) is a story in which the colonial erasure of language and culture is made starkly literal: the colonists possess the ability to rob locals of their words, including the ability to say no, or to advocate for fair trading conditions. But it's also a story about the power of language and memory and culture to survive and resist.
'Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea' (Kelsey Hutton) is a story in which a woman from a colonised nation finds herself thrown into the role of ambassador for her people at the court of the colonising country, and she has to navigate this fraught environment using the skills and abilities she possesses, pleading the case of her people to indifferent, uncomprehending ears.
I would have to say that neither story is particularly subtle!
I've just finished reading Book of Night, Holly Black's adult fiction debut. I had thought it was a stand-alone, but it's actually the first in a trilogy in a fantasy version of our own world in which magic exists, but is not equally distributed. Some people have the ability to separate themselves from their shadows, possess other people, and force them to do their will. Black's favourite themes and character dynamics are all on display here — she loves scammers, tricksters, con artists and elaborate supernatural heists, and relationships between characters who are lying to each other and themselves. She likes to write stories about people living on the margins, in the interstitial places, eking out a living throught their ability to read people, lie convincingly, and run successful scams, but always with a slight sense of desperation, as if they know their luck may run out at any moment. She has a couple of irritating stylistic tics that I find very grating (constantly name dropping brands; her protagnist never gets into her car, but always 'her Corolla,' she sends her sister not to the chemist/pharmacy, but 'to Walgreens,' and so on), but I've read enough Holly Black books by now to know that she and I share an id (in particuar when it comes to relationship and character dynamics) so I grit my teeth and put up with it.
On Thursday night, Matthias and I saw a film at the community cinema — Ynys Men, an unsettling, nightmarish film set on an isolated Cornish island in the 1970s. There's very little dialogue, and we observe a middle-aged woman engage in repetitive, ritualistic daily routines. As these routines cycle around, strange memories and historical moments start to intrude, and the audience's grip on reality becomes more and more tenuous. It's as if the island is haunted by the memories of its previous inhabitants, and the blasted landscape of ruined buildings, decaying mines, and weathered standing stones adds to the eerie atmosphere. The film's use of sound, in particular, is excellent.
Last night, we watched the Luther film, which has just been added to Netflix this week. In it, the titular police officer (played by Idris Elba) stalks his way through a labyrinthine, dystopian London, hunting a serial killer whose cruelty is particularly theatrical and comic-bookish, even by the standards of this show. We're missing the character of Alice, who in the TV series was played with amoral aplomb by Ruth Wilson and was a fabulous foil for Luther, and the film does suffer from her absence, but if you liked the show, you'll probably like the film. I'm on record as absolutely detesting any work of fiction that suggests that some criminals or terrorists are so vile and evil that stopping them means abandoning correct police procedure and stooping to their level (the Nolan Batman films are a particularly hated example of this for me), and that is of course the central premise of the Luther series, so I guess it's my one exception. I suppose it helps that a) the rule-breaking police officer is played with such presence and charisma by Idris Elba (it really is his best role) and b) his slow slide (and then speed run) towards damnation is shown to utterly destroy him as a person, until he's hollowed out, nothing but a dramatic swooshy coat and a death wish. But his methods are vindicated in that they're shown in the show (and film) to work, and implied to be the only thing that would work in such circumstances, which makes me uneasy, although Luther is hardly the only crime drama to make this particular argument. It helps, I guess, to view the whole thing as a setting-change and no-superpowers Batman AU.
In addition to reading and films, I've finished the first draft of my![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
once_upon_fic assignment, gone to the gym twice for swimming, and for fitness classes, wandered along the river with Matthias, and done a bunch of cooking (including multiple recipes from ![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sami_tamimi's Palestinian cookbook). Compared to how I was feeling for much of the past six weeks, it's a change very much for the better. I feel like the vegetable seedlings growing in the kitchen — emerging from the dark earth, into the light.
I've got a couple of short stories, two films, and a book to log in terms of stuff read/watched since I last posted.
The short stories were from one of the recent issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and as always I found myself impressed at the editorial choice to group things together that fit well thematically. Both the stories were about the experiences of people coming to terms with the colonisation of their lands and communities, and trying to navigate this traumatic situation without much recourse to power.
'Our Grandmother's Words' (M.H. Ayinde) is a story in which the colonial erasure of language and culture is made starkly literal: the colonists possess the ability to rob locals of their words, including the ability to say no, or to advocate for fair trading conditions. But it's also a story about the power of language and memory and culture to survive and resist.
'Your Great Mother Across the Salt Sea' (Kelsey Hutton) is a story in which a woman from a colonised nation finds herself thrown into the role of ambassador for her people at the court of the colonising country, and she has to navigate this fraught environment using the skills and abilities she possesses, pleading the case of her people to indifferent, uncomprehending ears.
I would have to say that neither story is particularly subtle!
I've just finished reading Book of Night, Holly Black's adult fiction debut. I had thought it was a stand-alone, but it's actually the first in a trilogy in a fantasy version of our own world in which magic exists, but is not equally distributed. Some people have the ability to separate themselves from their shadows, possess other people, and force them to do their will. Black's favourite themes and character dynamics are all on display here — she loves scammers, tricksters, con artists and elaborate supernatural heists, and relationships between characters who are lying to each other and themselves. She likes to write stories about people living on the margins, in the interstitial places, eking out a living throught their ability to read people, lie convincingly, and run successful scams, but always with a slight sense of desperation, as if they know their luck may run out at any moment. She has a couple of irritating stylistic tics that I find very grating (constantly name dropping brands; her protagnist never gets into her car, but always 'her Corolla,' she sends her sister not to the chemist/pharmacy, but 'to Walgreens,' and so on), but I've read enough Holly Black books by now to know that she and I share an id (in particuar when it comes to relationship and character dynamics) so I grit my teeth and put up with it.
On Thursday night, Matthias and I saw a film at the community cinema — Ynys Men, an unsettling, nightmarish film set on an isolated Cornish island in the 1970s. There's very little dialogue, and we observe a middle-aged woman engage in repetitive, ritualistic daily routines. As these routines cycle around, strange memories and historical moments start to intrude, and the audience's grip on reality becomes more and more tenuous. It's as if the island is haunted by the memories of its previous inhabitants, and the blasted landscape of ruined buildings, decaying mines, and weathered standing stones adds to the eerie atmosphere. The film's use of sound, in particular, is excellent.
Last night, we watched the Luther film, which has just been added to Netflix this week. In it, the titular police officer (played by Idris Elba) stalks his way through a labyrinthine, dystopian London, hunting a serial killer whose cruelty is particularly theatrical and comic-bookish, even by the standards of this show. We're missing the character of Alice, who in the TV series was played with amoral aplomb by Ruth Wilson and was a fabulous foil for Luther, and the film does suffer from her absence, but if you liked the show, you'll probably like the film. I'm on record as absolutely detesting any work of fiction that suggests that some criminals or terrorists are so vile and evil that stopping them means abandoning correct police procedure and stooping to their level (the Nolan Batman films are a particularly hated example of this for me), and that is of course the central premise of the Luther series, so I guess it's my one exception. I suppose it helps that a) the rule-breaking police officer is played with such presence and charisma by Idris Elba (it really is his best role) and b) his slow slide (and then speed run) towards damnation is shown to utterly destroy him as a person, until he's hollowed out, nothing but a dramatic swooshy coat and a death wish. But his methods are vindicated in that they're shown in the show (and film) to work, and implied to be the only thing that would work in such circumstances, which makes me uneasy, although Luther is hardly the only crime drama to make this particular argument. It helps, I guess, to view the whole thing as a setting-change and no-superpowers Batman AU.
In addition to reading and films, I've finished the first draft of my
once_upon_fic assignment, gone to the gym twice for swimming, and for fitness classes, wandered along the river with Matthias, and done a bunch of cooking (including multiple recipes from sami_tamimi's Palestinian cookbook). Compared to how I was feeling for much of the past six weeks, it's a change very much for the better. I feel like the vegetable seedlings growing in the kitchen — emerging from the dark earth, into the light.![[wordpress.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/1225b00cee13/-/s.wordpress.org/about/images/wpmini-blue.png){kind=small}
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