And through the squall the course stays true

[sovay]

I slept ten hours last night. I didn't even wake up around dawn. I woke in the early afternoon to a light pattern filtering around the door that reminded me of the late lamented Dueling Dragons/Dragon Challenge which I rode for the first and only time with spatch when we visited Orlando in 2012. I took a picture with my desperately grainy phone because I knew the minute I moved the door to retrieve my real camera, I'd lose it. Someday I will live again in an apartment where it is possible to hang art on the bedroom walls.



I have spent the afternoon doing almost nothing except talking to people on the internet and drinking horchata from La Posada in Magoun Square, from which we ordered dinner last night based on rushthatspeaks' recommendation and by which we were rewarded with a damn near lifetime supply of pupusas revueltas and pork ribs drenched in thick dark mole poblano and falling off the bone. Rob said that I made such happy noises over the horchata, I sounded like one of the cats porcupining over a treat. It seemed almost impossibly delicious. Yesterday I was so tired that while I fell appreciatively on the food when it arrived, I had not noticed I was hungry until that had been the case for at least twelve hours.

The thing I was also too tired to remember to mention about "The Dead, the Wide-Eyed and the Legless" is that it is the first fiction of any kind I have managed to write this year since "Tea with the Earl of Twilight." I believe it is also the first time I have participated in any kind of fest or exchange—my fic-writing is so irregular and randomly inspired, I have never felt comfortable committing to anything that involves a signup or deadlines. So that was something of a big deal, camouflaged by unnecessary levels of panic. I have written so very little this year.

One of the reasons I feel like such a terrible zamler is that the world is full of awful things which I used to document more of my reactions to and now I feel more as though it is taken as read that we are all trying to wave while drowning and any hand flashing out of the waves is the important thing, but it does leave gaps in the record.

Comments

[kathmandu]

Agreed that the world is currently so full of awful things that we can all take it as read. We can still express personal reactions, and document where convenient, but there's no more point in fretting about things un-recorded than in fretting about how few things you personally can carry away from the flood. We have to hope that enough people will carry/record enough.

If the remaining records of the 1918 pandemic are a useful standard, it will be enough.
ETA: I don't know if you've read The Plague of the Spanish Lady, but it was full of first-hand survivors' accounts, stitched together with the outlines of news reports. It was gripping and vivid.

[sovay]

If the remaining records of the 1918 pandemic are a useful standard, it will be enough.

Thank you. It is true that all a person can do is all a person can do. I just prefer to be part of the remembering if I can, not the silence.

ETA: I don't know if you've read The Plague of the Spanish Lady, but it was full of first-hand survivors' accounts, stitched together with the outlines of news reports. It was gripping and vivid.

I have not, and I am glad to hear it exists.

[asakiyume]

Oh, you're documenting it. You're documenting it. I'm pretty inarticulate right now, but believe me, your journal is a cogent record of the indignities and the atrocities we're party too.

I haven't read the fic yet--I didn't when you posted about it because I haven't watched much of Torchwood, but I think it was Kore who said you could read it without knowing the baseline story, so I mean to go back and check it out.

A luta continua--para sempre. You're part of the struggle, and I'm grateful for that.

[sovay]

I'm pretty inarticulate right now, but believe me, your journal is a cogent record of the indignities and the atrocities we're party too.

That is good to know. I hate that it has to be done.

I haven't read the fic yet--I didn't when you posted about it because I haven't watched much of Torchwood, but I think it was Kore who said you could read it without knowing the baseline story, so I mean to go back and check it out.

Thank you! The salient facts are that one of the foregrounded characters is complicatedly dead (he's not a ghost, he's just no longer biologically alive in most of the relevant senses), the other is usually one of the more grounding members of the team (or at least not prone to falling apart where others can see her; in other respects she's a classic mad scientist), and they work for a theoretically top secret agency dealing with generally extraterrestrial or extradimensional weirdness that falls through a space-time rift in the middle of Cardiff (often at high personal cost or Pyrrhic victory). When I had just started watching it, I said that I was fascinated by the show tonally because the episodes I had seen so far functioned most like a moderately violent, rather hurt/comfort-driven workplace comedy and as of the penultimate episode of the second season (I have not yet watched the finale because it kills off two-fifths of the main cast and aside from the fact that they were two of my favorite characters, I still can't understand taking the time to build such a strong and flexible ensemble cast with intriguingly evolving group dynamics and then just binning it), this description has remained essentially accurate. After some initial bobbles, the first two seasons are very much about holding on to the light in the darkness and the people in it with you and that has unsurprisingly struck a chord with me. [edit] Oh, and Myfanwy is a pterodactyl.

A luta continua--para sempre. You're part of the struggle, and I'm grateful for that.

Thank you. You, too, and likewise.

[asakiyume]

Well I loved it. The mycology was equal parts horrifying and eerie beautiful, and the part that had f*d Tosh up was pretty hard stuff--no wonder she wants to get hammered. As usual, you have tons of little descriptions that I loved:

a corpse turned feral art installation

Except that he had seen for himself that sometimes even the stars held out a hand in the dark and when a stranger reached out to take it, it sang like the depths of the sea

in death as in life a skinny little sod with a face like a wet cat and less in the way of weight than many women he had slept with

Nice.

We could all use some workmates like Owen.

[sovay]

Well I loved it.

I'm so glad!

The mycology was equal parts horrifying and eerie beautiful, and the part that had f*d Tosh up was pretty hard stuff--no wonder she wants to get hammered.

Yeah, it is emphatically not a grimdark show, at least at this phase of its existence, but it is often dark. It's also just as often completely ridiculous, or deeply moving, or simultaneously all of the above.

Nice.

Thank you!

I am pleased with the description of Owen because I consider Burn Gorman to be an extraordinarily beautiful person, but he reminds me of Leslie Howard in that I am amazed and delighted that so much of the rest of the planet agrees with me, because I am pretty sure that by objective standards he has kind of a weird face.

We could all use some workmates like Owen.

I love him. He spends much of the first season being a self-destructive trash fire of a human being whose best qualities come out in his professional life: he is a damned good doctor and his healing instincts kick in so hard that he'll do his best to save the life of someone he just stood down from doing violence to himself and then he'll snap something unforgivable at one of his teammates beause they were just thinking about asking if he was all right and it's all so desperately self-inflicted. Refreshingly, by the start of the second season—to a significant extent as a result of the events of the first-season finale—he has begun to sort himself out to the point where he may always be a reflexively prickly, defensive cynic with a very mixed record of major life decisions, but he can now actually acknowledge his relationships with his teammates as caring or affectionate or at least collegial without always needing to have a get-out-of-emotions-free card in his wallet in case of emergencies. He even gets around to agreeing to go on a date with Tosh, which would have been unthinkable in the first season for a host of reasons. And then he dies and sort of comes back and his relationship with everything including himself goes to hell and he has to rebuild all of it and decide what's worth going on with and I don't care if it's ironic, I find it powerful in the ways where sometimes it is impossible to separate the damage that people endure from the ways they find to grow from it while also understanding that having to endure it in the first place sucks. He handles being dead about as well as most people would to begin with, which is to say terribly. It gets better.

If you decide to watch the show, my advice is to treat the first two episodes as dry runs for the real thing, even though the first episode itself is actually invaluable as set-up for later developments; I wound up describing them after the fact as proto-Torchwood because it was possible to discern the kind of tone and ensemble dynamic the showrunner and writers were aiming for, but they absolutely did not land it straight off the bat. In the third episode, the show feels like it suddenly snaps into focus: the characters feel like themselves rather than experimental sketches, the goofiness and the darkess start playing together instead of fighting for dominance, and the rest of the season is not without its rocky moments (or episodes), but it never again feels so wildly off-kilter from its own core. I have no idea how that happens with actual broadcast television rather than unaired pilots, but here we are. Fortunately, I started with the first-season finale and watched the first half of the second season before going back for the rest of the first season and catching up from there, so I knew what it was supposed to look like and could therefore afford to wait for it to get its head on straight.

[asakiyume]

I feel like he's the sort of character who needs to see the kind and perceptive words you've written about him. Wish we could show him.

[sovay]

I feel like he's the sort of character who needs to see the kind and perceptive words you've written about him. Wish we could show him.

Fortunately, he does have his teammates, and they make their assorted love languages unambiguously clear. (Why didn't this show have a third season with this cast?)

[umadoshi]

I'm glad to hear about plentiful sleep and delicious food! *hugs*

[sovay]

I'm glad to hear about plentiful sleep and delicious food!

Thank you! We made our own plentiful food tonight and it was also delicious!

*hugs*

[gwynnega]

I'm glad you had good sleep and a massive supply of great food! I love "porcupining" to mean those happy food noises. (It should be about time for the video of the porcupine eating a pumpkin to recirculate!)

[sovay]

I'm glad you had good sleep and a massive supply of great food!

Thank you!

I love "porcupining" to mean those happy food noises. (It should be about time for the video of the porcupine eating a pumpkin to recirculate!)

Absolutely seasonal.

[sholio]

I'm glad to have helped out with inspiring you to write something! And it's such a lovely story, lyrical and true and heartfelt. I have a lot of feelings about it. ♥

[sovay]

I'm glad to have helped out with inspiring you to write something!

Your comfort fest was a very good idea!

And it's such a lovely story, lyrical and true and heartfelt. I have a lot of feelings about it.

Seriously, this makes me happy. Thank you.

[thistleingrey]

Yay, 10h of sleep!

[sovay]

Yay, 10h of sleep!

Thank you! I don't know if it can be achieved again tonight, but I am about to give it a heartfelt try.

[thistleingrey]

Having it in a dose is good; having it again would be better, but it's still good to have had the one if following doesn't occur right away, IMO.

[sovay]

Having it in a dose is good; having it again would be better, but it's still good to have had the one if following doesn't occur right away, IMO.

Thank you. I slept less last night, but nonetheless slept, and I'm taking it.

[selkie]

You should tell them (tell the journal people at large) about your successful book therapy practice which someone might know how to market.

Seasonally-thematically related to the changing of the light, if I have gone back on any vows to you this year or been otherwise selfish, tunnel-visioned, or a dick, may all those things be washed into the maelstrom outside and I will do better in the year to come.

[sovay]

You should tell them (tell the journal people at large) about your successful book therapy practice which someone might know how to market.

I will remember to do this thing. I certainly have no idea how even to advertise it.

Seasonally-thematically related to the changing of the light, if I have gone back on any vows to you this year or been otherwise selfish, tunnel-visioned, or a dick, may all those things be washed into the maelstrom outside and I will do better in the year to come.

Thank you. I think you have done pretty much exactly the opposite, but I understand the value of ritual. Forgive me if I have hurt you by action or inaction; I will make restitution.

[selkie]

It is, it is ritual! A big one. We have fought through hell this year to be here as the gates close. It feels like we ought to light the fire and say the words from our respective places in the forest. No one could have imagined, when we were younger prettier people, how dumb and grim this would all get. I’m glad to have you here while we stare at the entropy as it flies past.

*hugs*

[sovay]

It feels like we ought to light the fire and say the words from our respective places in the forest.

Well, all we know how to do these days is tell the story, so I'm doing that as best I can. I am glad you are here telling stories with me.

*hugs*

[thisbluespirit]

I'm glad you got some sleep! And I hope there may be more of that and of writing for you. ♥

[sovay]

I'm glad you got some sleep! And I hope there may be more of that and of writing for you.

Thank you! I did, actually, sleep a not unreasonable amount last night.

[ethelmay]

Speaking of dueling dragons, I have always felt that Husky Stadium viewed from the water looks like two dragons rearing angrily at each other.

[sovay]

Speaking of dueling dragons, I have always felt that Husky Stadium viewed from the water looks like two dragons rearing angrily at each other.

I see why you think that! They look territorial.