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The desire to have much more, all the glitter and the roar
The mail this evening brought my contributor's copy of Transcendent 2: The Year's Best Transgender Speculative Fiction, edited by Bogi Takács. It looks like a splendid collection and I am honored to be part of its table of contents. Plus it got a starred review from Publishers Weekly. My contribution is "Skerry-Bride," on the theory of more Norse queerness. The nine daughters of Ægir and Rán are called the nine skerry-brides by the eleventh-century skald Snæbjorn: níu brúðir skerja.
The same package contained a small sealed envelope bearing the logo of the Monster Rangers, which looks like Scouting for people who miss Gravity Falls. I now have a Lanterna Badge. I am seriously thinking of ironing it onto my coat. We can use more light.
(I was asked this afternoon for pointers to weird, creepy Christmas traditions in North America. I couldn't think of any that weren't facetious, but I could say that the first thing that comes to mind when looking at Christmas darkness is the way the holiday functions as a weighing of the soul in two of the most famous British and American stories, A Christmas Carol (1843) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Religiously, wouldn't you expect that sort of thing at Easter, harrowing and redemption? But it's the dark time of the year, the turning away of the sun: it makes sense. You want to believe the light is going to come back. You want to believe people are, too.)
The same package contained a small sealed envelope bearing the logo of the Monster Rangers, which looks like Scouting for people who miss Gravity Falls. I now have a Lanterna Badge. I am seriously thinking of ironing it onto my coat. We can use more light.
(I was asked this afternoon for pointers to weird, creepy Christmas traditions in North America. I couldn't think of any that weren't facetious, but I could say that the first thing that comes to mind when looking at Christmas darkness is the way the holiday functions as a weighing of the soul in two of the most famous British and American stories, A Christmas Carol (1843) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Religiously, wouldn't you expect that sort of thing at Easter, harrowing and redemption? But it's the dark time of the year, the turning away of the sun: it makes sense. You want to believe the light is going to come back. You want to believe people are, too.)
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The gift/punishment is definitely not confined to North America, but I want to blame the surveillance part on "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town."
The current manifestation of this via Elf on the Shelf is extra icky.
I live under a rock, so I just had to look this up.
I can see how that happened; I don't think it's a piece of folklore that I like.
I am entertained that the Mensch on the Bench went to the World Baseball Classic this year. (I'm not sure otherwise how I feel about the Mensch on the Bench overall.)
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