juushika

These are, and I swear it's (almost definitely) true, the final crossposts. Hurrah! Hurray!


( Are the Fuddles nice people? )


( Talking Cats: The Musical with my family. )


( Interpersonal relationships, trauma, hurt comfort, and socio-political commentary in Cherryh )

Another Tumblr crosspost. This is one of my favorite narratives from one of my favorite authors, Otsuichi. It's also been made into a manga and a film, both of which are good.


( Receiving the LN )

There was a comfortable disinterest in our relationship that allowed me to express the inhuman and unemotional sides of myself.

( Foreword and afterword )


( Dog )


( Memory/Twins )


( Later in Memory/Twins )


( Goth LN vs Fate/Zero LN )


( Grave )


( Selling Goth to Amy )


( Voice )


( In conversation with Amy )


( Morino's Souvenir Photo )


( In conversation with Amy, pt 2 )

In paging through my Tumblr archives, it occurs to me to crosspost my gigantic pile of Corpse Party blogging, because it would be a loss to the greater internet if 7000 words about Morishige Sakutaro disappeared forever. Blanket TW for gore and character death.


First Playthrough
( Playing Corpse Party. )

( Morishige: literally perfect. )

( Morishige's death transcribed. )

( It's half identification and half fascination )

( Science Lab anatomical model. )

( Mayu's voice is Morishige's apocalypse. )

( I beat Corpse Party on the train. )


Second Playthrough
( Starting. )

( A favorite game. )

( Morishige and Fireshrine. )

( Morishige finds a blood-soaked pouch. )

( Anatomical model take two and Wrong Ends. )


Corpse Party: Book of Shadows

( Chapter 1: Seal )

( Chapter 2: Demise )

( Chapter 3: Encounter )

( Chapter 4: Purgatory )

( Chapter 5: Shangri-La, or: A Morishige Essay )

( Shangri-La bonus thoughts. )

( Chapter 6: Mire )

More on cannibalism, much to the delight of all possible readers: This Guy Served His Friends Tacos Made from His Own Amputated Leg

Which is fascinating but relatively unsensationalized. TL;DR: ( descriptions of violence and ethical cannibalism )


I approach the incipient death of Tumblr with equanimity, although it does mean posting "yay cannibalism" on my, uh, real? serious? long-form blog, rather than making it a causal reblog. But the timing of the Tumblr apocalypse with the approach of Yuletide has put that anxiety-about-social-media/-fandom into high gear.

Every year I wonder why I don't Yuletide; every year I look through the spreadsheet of requests, as if I were going to send a treat to a stranger but without the responsibility of an actual sign up, and I never. never ever. do. Not doing Yuletide makes sense—I don't really fandom, I don't really write anymore, I'm too crazy for social stuff. I know some people write just for this, and it's also the only time I read fanfic (except when bitten by a new OT3), and I appreciate the event and its energy so much that it makes me wish I were that kind of fan, with completionist knowledge about popular or cult releases, able to stick to things instead of just reading a new book. It makes me feel like I do fan wrong. Placing those feels alongside a fandom migration is weirdly lonely. It's not so much that my social sphere is changing as it is a reminder than this isn't really my sphere.

I suppose the holiday season is prone to that sort of loneliness, particularly in this, the post-tragedy, mid-change, pointedly lonely point in my life.


Instead of having feelings, I've been playing Kirby: Triple Deluxe, which turned out to be my own non-Pachimari Hannukah present (since we just ... kept going back for more pachi plush. Final tally: vanilla Pachimari, Pachiking, Pachilover, Pachilantern, Vampachimari, Gingermari, and Pachimummy, aka everything but Snorkelmari, which I distinctly didn't want because of hydrophobia and because the snorkel felt texture is unpleasant. I love them all—Gingermari is the best but vanilla pachi is a close second—and regret nothing). I watched Edobean play it during the sequence of discover Kirby via Edobean's hosted block at Games Done Quick > watch Kirby Let's Plays > consider playing Kirby > suddenly, have played seven Kirby games.

Even having watched it, Triple Deluxe is great. The foreground/background mechanics are strong; the level design in this series is so solid; the more boring dirt/jungle/etc. levels are less boring here than elsewhere (except fire—fire levels are still boring). The true gift of discovering Nintendo as an adult, having never played it as a kid, is the Playmobil/plastic/toy-like feel of the franchises. Pixel art Kirby is great, N64 Kirby is ... N64—but post Return to Dreamland Kirby is so round, so smoothly 3D, so marshmallowy and squishy silicone and plastic. That gentleness (in aesthetic! what they do with content, the aggressively family-friendly baseline with fridge horror and Pikmin-slaughter, is a different story and perhaps a more interesting one) is the perfect choice for low-stakes, forgiving escapism.

The luck I'm having with the game as a pseudo-replay makes me wonder about replaying Kirby's Epic Yarn in a year or so. It's my favorite Kirby by far and objectively one of the best games I've ever played, flawless in aesthetic, unendingly clever in marriage of concept to level design, and my only regret (other than the train mechanic, which is ... flawed) is that I assumed it wouldn't be as surprisingly perfect the second time. But I suspect now that my memory is bad enough & the game strong enough that I'd enjoy a replay.

Title: The Dispossessed (Hainish Cycle Book 6)
Author: Ursula K. Le Guin
Narrator: Don Leslie
Published: Harper Audio, 2010 (1974)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 279,035
Text Number: 905
Read Because: continuing the series, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library and also I own a paperback somewhere
Review: A mathematician from an anarchist moon colony is the first of his people to return to the capitalistic, politically divided home planet. This is significantly more complex than previous Hainish novels (excepting possibly The Left Hand of Darkness, which I didn't reread for this Hainish cycle project—a decision I may reconsider), which are memorable for their intense but quiet introspection. That work benefits this, applying the same intensity to a larger scope, dual timelines with dual worldbuilding. Le Guin writes critically of the concept of utopia, arguing that all societies are flawed, that some are worse that others; that the work of repairing the world is daunting, unending, and nonetheless an obligation—and that argument holds as firm now as ever. I admit I prefer the deceptive restraint of the earlier novels, but I can see why this received the acclaim it did.*

* And I'm glad I didn't miss out on it, since I was under the mistaken impression that I had read it before.


Title: A Face Like Glass
Author: Frances Hardinge
Published: Amulet Books, 2017 (2012)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 490
Total Page Count: 279,525
Text Number: 906
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In the strange underground city of Caverna, expressions are taught, never organically created—except by Neverfell, whose shifting face marks her as an outsider. Hardinge is a fantastic author for bizarre, atmospheric, creative concepts; her plots are weaker, sometimes deviating from that initial atmosphere by becoming action stories. Caverna is a particularly high-concept setting, a more vibrant and marginally more age-appropriate Fallen London, rich with class issues and stylized magics and many things delightfully weird. Neverfell's journey through it is part travelogue, part action/heist/mystery—a combination that suits Caverna and builds into genuinely clever twists which compliment her character arc. It can be heavyhanded in what it does, even allowing for stylization, but it does it well.

But all that I can really say about this book is that I read it as my dad was dying of cancer—while sitting with him in his final days and hours; to decompress immediately after he died. That means I can probably never read it again, but it also means it captured me. Its vibrant strangeness, its indulgences, its delightful darkness, gave me an escape while the worst was happening around me. So if I call this my favorite Hardinge, it's because I think it speaks best to her strengths, but also just because it was there when I needed it and I'm grateful for that.


Title: Children of Time (Children of Time Book 1)
Author: Adrian Tchaikovsky
Published: Pan Books, 2016 (2015)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 600
Total Page Count: 280,125
Text Number: 907
Read Because: recommended by Kalanadi, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A nanovirus encourages the evolution of spider sentience while the last remaining humans journey on an ark-cum-generation ship in search of a new home. Sometimes a speculative concept is sufficiently big and compelling as to excuse issues elsewhere in the work, and this is one hell of a concept: a massive timescale, building entire societies, weird and creative in its technology—and wrestling with an argument about the nature of humanity and sapience which may be its downfall. The bits with the spiders are good and succeed by being strange, invoking a convincing non-human society, but Tchaikovsky explores a reverse-sexism which, while well-intentioned, parallels human sexism while being reductionist and too easily solved. The bits with the humans are joyless, intentionally so: the book argues that humanity is doomed by its destructive drives; I don't even particularly disagree, but it's still a miserable read with largely unlikable characters, saved only by the way the PoV character skips through generations like a stone over water.

What really killed things for me is the ending. ( Spoiler. ) To be thus in argument with the book is a sign of engagement—this is a lot of book, it's distinctive and creative and provoking, it's long, it absolutely sells itself on concept alone; it's engaging. But those unresolved flaws rankle.


Children of Time does this thing where because spiders are cannibalistic during mating (because female spider bigger + easy snack, like, right there = omnom), therefore sapient spider society is sexist—male spiders considered inferior, no social standing, killed/eaten; female spiders building sororities/fighting for dominance among themselves. As the society evolves, cannibalism becomes increasingly taboo—the urge to it can be an enjoyable part of sexual tension, but the act is immoral. The issues of sex/gender/sexuality/sexism/cannibalism absolutely skips some steps in logic but on the whole I buy it, I think it's interesting. I don't so much enjoy how it's resolved, and the larger relationship between reproduction/sapience/sexuality and sexual practice is underexplored—but there is only time for so much, give the book's scope. (Absolutely there's cannibalism fetish porn on spider-world, but this text doesn't go there).

But there is this scene: (context: sapient spider causes himself to be eaten by sapient spider in order to save her life)

He turns to Portia, who has nothing more left to give. She lies on her back, senseless, stripped of everything but her most basic reflexes.

With slow, difficult movements, Fabian begins to court her. He moves his palps before her eyes and touches her, as if he were seeking to mate, triggering slow instinct that has been built over by centuries of civilization but has never quite gone away. There is no food to restore her, save one source. There is not enough air for two, but perhaps sufficient for one.

He sees her fangs unclench and lift, shuddering. For a moment he contemplates them, and considers his regard for this crewmate and companion. She will never forgive him or herself, but perhaps she will live nonetheless.

He gives himself up to her automatic embrace.

Which isn't perfect! You can't make the link of cannibalism = sexual violence = sexism and then insist this version of cannibalism (aka sexual violence) is different because it's consensual and instigated by the victim—actually you can, and should, in the same way that BDSM and rape fantasies are an important part of female desire within a misogynistic society. But it needs to be part of a conversation more complex than spider-sexism on spider-planet, which is crucially flawed, particularly in its resolution.

But that it is scene there at all and has so much potential and emotion is still real good; good job, book.

Title: Ringworld (Ringworld Book 1)
Author: Larry Niven
Narrator: Tom Parker
Published: Blackstone Audio, 2005 (1970)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 320
Total Page Count: 270,610
Text Number: 876
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: A human man is invited on an alien expedition to explore a distant superstructure. I love me a good superstructure, and was prepared to put up with a lot for a good one, going in with knowledge of the limitations of older sci-fi. And this is an engaging premise, and moderately well-realized; the hard sci-fi infodumps are graceless, but convey a large, creative world. But the rest is awful: a clutter of less successful speculative concepts, particularly the ridiculous concept of a luck gene, upon which too much of the plot rests; Niven's persistent and tedious misogyny which destroys all characterization beyond salvage. This wasn't worth my time.


Title: Captive Prince (Captive Prince Book 1)
Author: C.S. Pacat
Published: Berkley, 2015 (2013)
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 265
Total Page Count: 270,875
Text Number: 877
Read Because: personal enjoyment, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: After his brother's coup, a prince is exiled into sexual slavery in a neighboring kingdom. This reads very much like fanfic, which isn't a surprise or criticism—but it's bizarre to inhabit both sets of expectations: fanfic's explorations of consent through a veil of idealization combined with the more critical lens of traditional publishing. The subject matter needs to be engaging, challenging, but not miserable, which is a balance this largely strikes, but with no particular grace. The politics that drive the plot are a productive counterbalance; the twists are profoundly predictable and the worldbuilding is just okay (Veretian society is particularly one-note), but it grounds the central romance, providing a sincere, compelling justification for the slow burn, enemies-to-lovers dynamic. I've read a few fanfic/self-published-turned-traditional-publishing novels; I like this least of the bunch—for various reasons, it was the hardest to take seriously. But it's not bad.


Title: The Siren Depths (Books of the Raksura Book 3)
Author: Martha Wells
Published: Night Shade Books, 2012
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 275
Total Page Count: 271,150
Text Number: 878
Read Because: continuing the series, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Moon is reunited with his birth colony and discovers its unusually close ties to the Fell. This is the first book in the series which I've sincerely enjoyed, as opposed to picking favorite parts from a just-okay whole. By now I've grown invested in the cast, particularly in the intimacies that surround Moon. Raksuran social dynamics can still be tedious, like the bickering among queens and the realistic but still frustrating tendency towards poor communication—but this feels increasingly like a convincing non-human culture, particularly in its sexual politics, with its own prejudices and unwritten rules. This book also does much to complicate the Fell, and Raksuran/Fell relations and history; it's a necessary antidote to the limitations of the first book, more ambiguous, more nuanced. The plot still is just okay—Wells has a great mind for setpieces and as always depicts exhaustion particularly well, but the end is unbalanced and underexplored. But perhaps my central complaint is that I wanted to keep reading—I'm settled into the world and series, now, and didn't want the book to end.

( Quote and Tumblr tags )

Title: Cyteen
Author: C.J. Cherryh
Published: 1988
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 775
Total Page Count: 271,925
Text Number: 879
Read Because: continuing the series
Review: The murder of a Union politician and scientist has lasting repercussions—particularly on her heir, a genetic and social clone. This is the most accessible Cherryh novel I've read. The length is deceptive, ostensibly allowing for a long view—and it is long—but primarily providing room for Cherryh to untangle her trademark density. I miss her terseness, but the emotional intensity is still there and the themes of sexuality and consent benefit from more text and less subtext; it's an unsettling book with an engaging speculative premise, and Cherryh is unafraid to inhabit ambiguities—necessarily, given the content. This is something of a magnum opus, and it makes sense that it's her most awarded work; I prefer her usual style, but found this solidly enjoyable.

Title: In a Lonely Place
Author: Dorothy B. Hughes
Published: New York Review of Books, 2017 (1947)
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 205
Total Page Count: 249,820
Text Number: 801
Read Because: borrowed from my father, who picked it up because of this NPR segment
Review: A grifter tempts fate when he reconnects with an old friend turned detective. This is reminiscent of its noir contemporaries (I'm reminded of Highsmith and Cain, but only because they're the authors with which I'm most familiar): contemplations on class; a stylized voice that sets introspective, slow sections against tense, elevated action; a dark but indulgent tone. The antihero protagonist is engaging and confrontational, especially alongside the book's feminist themes: Hughes's challenges the reader's instinct to sympathize with the protagonist and, with it, his misogyny. The gendered violence is never depicted on page, and the female characters defy the limitations of their genre roles. The building tension set against the reader's disavowal of the protagonist is unexpectedly refined. This has held up well, and Megan Abbott's afterward is succinct and productive.


Title: The Wicked Boy: The Mystery of a Victorian Child Murderer
Author: Kate Summerscale
Published: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 385
Total Page Count: 250,205
Text Number: 802
Read Because: reviewed here by truepenny, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: In London 1895, 13-year-old Robert Coombes murdered his mother; then, for ten days, Robert, his 12-year-old brother Nattie, and an unwitting family friend lived in the house with the corpse decaying in a locked room upstairs. This has some tedious sections (including, perhaps ironically, the murder and its immediate aftermath) which are unaided by Summerscale's precise, exhaustive research and the cultural and anecdotal details that flesh out the historical setting. But it pays for itself in Summerscale's compassionate, complex reading of the case, specifically of Robert's motives and emotions, in the crime and its baffling immediate aftermath, but also during the trial and into adulthood. (One almost wishes for more: a comparison between historical and modern moral panics over popular media is the obvious oversight.) Her refusal of simple answers makes for compelling arguments which are firmly rooted in, but not limited by, historical context—and she still manages to inhabit that morbid, escapist ten-day interlude which makes this case so engaging.


( A real good quote )


Title: Edward III
Author: William Shakespeare
Published: 1596
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 100
Total Page Count: 250,305
Text Number: 803
Read Because: co-read with my mother
Review: This is relatively unremarkable. The interactions between King Edward and the Countess of Salisbury are unsettling and intense (and I swear this was my favorite part even before I read theories about which sections Shakespeare authored); in the second half, the best is Prince Edward's dynamic, substantial character arc. But the two halves are disconnected and, however impressive it may be to condense such a long time period into a single sequence, the series of battles is routine and uninspired. Like Henry VI Part 1: there are seeds of potential, but it lacks the robust, cogent meeting of themes/language/characters which makes Shakespeare's better plays successful.

CW for ridiculous melodrama re: mental illness, grieving; also some discussion of suicidal ideation.



Everything that can go wrong does go wrong! There's some family drama on Devon's side and, as result, houseguests; I have been trying to know as little as possible because there's nothing I could do with the information anyway and I already have enough to deal with. But it has absolutely been aggravating my agoraphobia, which was just about the only mental illness that wasn't acting up more than baseline.

I've always been a little in love with temporary scarcity (like power outages, like childhood illness: that feeling of being slightly inconvenienced in a way that removes you from daily life & its expectations, and so secretly feels like an indulgence); I've always been convinced of the messages I internalized when I got sick, that I wanted to be miserable and was creating my illness as an excuse for histrionics and to escape the real world. At least for the present, those things are my coping mechanisms: being confined to a single room, not being able to make food, my sleep disrupted by outside noises and the anxiety they trigger, has become a sort of fever-dream of non-time; I eat when Devon's around, my sleep is broken and alternatively scarce and profoundly indulgent (entire days spent in and out of dozing), reality is a fiction. It's a relief to have things feel far away; to have a concrete shitty thing which is out of my control to use as an excuse to just ... stop trying.

I don't know how long that sense of escapism that can last—probably not very before it becomes claustrophobic. I also acknowledge that it's not healthy but, you know, I don't care. That sounds childish (and is!), but isn't glib: I believe there are bad and destructive coping mechanisms, but also that they are all coping mechanisms, all serving their purpose (if poorly, if with consequences), indicative of underlying issues & therefore in their way valid. Also that beggars can't be choosers; I will take all I can get, right now.

(I've been having some chronic pain issues—probably the result of broken sleep and now also contributing to it!—atop this, atop Dev's crazy busy schedule, atop my dad, atop being crazy; I keep feeling as if I've reached my limits and then something will push me further. I've been posting melodramatic quotes from gothic fairy stories:

It is like poison. You drink it slowly, over time, and hopefully you will become used to it. Sip it. Every day, until your body is so used to dying a little at a time that it no longer feels the pain as pain, no longer recognises it because it is so good at hiding, at pretending. We are all dying slowly, a little more pain would make little difference. So every day, a tiny sip of death, embraced and savoured like life, like reality, like truth, like everything that is good and worthy and wonderful. It is like drinking shards of broken glass—fragments of a dream—so beautiful, what was once real, now broken, just cutting one up inside.

But you do, because you must, because one day you will be able to drink poison of broken glass and not feel it, not feel the pain, not feel anything, be able to say: "I have forgotten and this is no longer pain, because I feel it so much, because it is like second nature to me, as natural as breathing, and I no longer remember what it is like when it was whole, when I was not feeling this, when it doesn't run through me."

—Under the Pendulum Sun, Jeannette Ng

( tumblr tags )

because it's the best metaphor I have for this exhausted over-saturation of Just Really Bad Shit.)



I've also become hung up on the idea of things to do before I die—it's not even that I'm feeling my own morality: I think about death a lot because of my suicidal ideation, and have no fear or sense of loss regarding my own death. But I also cannot die right now because it would be a supremely shitty thing for my family (and I don't believe that a suicidal person should prioritize anyone else's bereavement over their own suffering—let me be explicit: I think guilt tripping mentally ill people is disgusting—but I recognize that, in this one specific, my pain is hugely outweighed my family's and my father's wellbeing), so I need something to fill my time. I'm not feeling my own urge to accomplish things things before I die, so much as ... sublimating my grief over what my father won't be able to achieve and turning it into things I can achieve.

Mental illness makes a lot of my bucket list (polyamorous found family! write a narrative, maybe a book? hospice or FIV+ cat care, own a Leonberger, etc.) impossible, personally or financially. That means that the vast majority of my actual bucket list is just media: my massive TBR, but also the surprising number of narratives I've been putting off because my preemptive feelings about them are overwhelming.

I feel so overwhelmed already that this is both the best and worst time to check off those things. I need the distraction, but have no concentration; I worry that I won't be able to enjoy the narratives I have the capacity to love, but what's a little self-sabotage compared to knowledge that one day we'll all die? So, in between strange and broken sleep, in between long periods spent staring into the middle distance, I'm reading a lot, rewatching Deep Space 9 (which is a post in and of itself, if only things cribbed from my tumblr; the show is so triggering and so cathartic and also a huge timesink; I'm not sure if watching it is a good idea, or if I'll ever be able to watch it again), catching up on the ridiculous but life-changing epic that is Critical Role now that the original series is complete, trying to check off these various things—things of all sort of scope and import, just stuff I've been holding on to, stories that were meant to be important to me, someday.



I have not been seeing my family nor my father near as much as I should.

Yesterday I was set to visit my family in the evening when I got an email saying they'd remembered they had play tickets, so I moved my plans up an hour, then my mother offered me her ticket. In the end, Dad and I went out to dinner and the play. It was an unexpectedly long and active visit! on four hours of sleep! but certainly fulfilled "meaningful family time."

Dinner was the Woodsman, the closest thing to good "local" Thai, one town over. My dad recommended the palam, a peanut curry over fresh spinach, which I tried because I do like all those ingredients despite that I am the least adventuresome of all possible diners. It was awesome, in every sense: servings there are towering, gigantic—a huge bowl of piled, falling fresh spinach wilting in a sea of peanut curry. The peanut was intense, salty savory and just a little sweet, incredibly strong; so many roasted chopped peanuts; spinach fresh and crunchy, tofu unfried and soft. I ate maybe a fourth of the dish and the leftovers almost didn't fit in the take-home container. Frankly intimidating, and incredibly good.

The play was a polished script reading of Anna Ziegler's Boy, a fictionalized account of the life of David Reimer, who was assigned female after birth and part of the "John/Joan" experiment. (Part of the reason my mum gave me her ticket is because she knew I would probably be more interested in its gender issues than she was, which is true, because I was previously aware of Reimer's case.) The Majestic does monthly readings that are performed one day only; my parents say they've grown more fleshed out, minimalist costuming and props but players still working from scripts. (They also did a Q&A with director and cast for the first time this month, but we skipped it because it had been a long day.) It's a great balance of low-key, inexpensive production and watchability, both in the sense of feeling practiced and in the general quality of the acting. The lead actor was especially strong in a demanding role, alternating between a female-assigned child and an early 20s man.

I am of conflicted feelings regarding the play. I enjoyed it, it's emotionally engaging and I resonate with the narrative-about-narratives, and the lead's ability to carry such a heavy weight is the fulcrum of success. Reimer's case is inherently complex; it's not exclusively about nature/nurture, or gender existentialism, or even (although it is significantly) about the fact that individuals are the gender they say they are & are entitled to inhabit and express that gender no matter what it is or how it interacts with their bodies—it's also about medical abuse. The play channels that later into the argument that you can sincerely love someone and cause them unforgivable harm, and that's an argument which is close to my heart and which I think is an appropriate representation of this doctor/patient dynamic. But the play's other major narrative is that self-knowledge and -acceptance can be mirrored in reconciliations with and/or acceptance by loved ones, and it frames that as an end point#151;which, in the real case, it was not: Reimer's familial and romantic relationships were troubled, and he committed suicide.

Reimer's case is so complex and has had such lasting impact in how we view gender and "confirmation" surgeries, especially in children; I understand how compelling it can be—:I learned of it through Law & Order: SVU!—and believe popular and fictional depictions allow us to discover and explore its complexities. I also understand the value in a narrative that insists reclaiming your identity will make you happy—there's an inherent social value in "it gets better," as well as a narrative value in a happy ending. But it bothers me because Reimer's experience is not apocryphal, not a narrative; it is recent history: he died in 2004. There are probably still surviving family members, people being depicted in these retellings. Reimer committed suicide after separating from his wife—so what does her fictional equivalent in Boy say to her: if you had stayed, he could have had a happy ending? How unfair, how simplistic. There is also value in the instance that it does not get better, because it validates the trauma that people experience and its profound, lasting effects; also because, in this case, it more accurately depicts a real person's story and his decision to end his life.

It reminds me of a section from Colin Dickey's Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places where he looks into a 1949 murder that took place where I lived in Portland. As explained in this interview:

Many ghost stories are based on past tragedies, but when I first learned about Thelma Taylor's story, I was struck because this wasn't a tragedy from the 19th century, but something still fairly recent. People still have memories of Thelma Taylor—including her sister, whom I interviewed for the book—and that changes the way we might otherwise approach any stories of her ghost haunting Portland. I wanted to write about her story to examine how a relatively recent tragedy can be transformed—almost in real time—into a ghost legend.

Reimer's case has a huge and complex legacy; he was also a real person, not that long ago. Anyway, I have two modes of critical response, and the first was "uh huh, mhm, I thought the staging was surprisingly successful and that lead can really act" and the latter was a 15 minute verbal essay about the complicated ethics of adaptation theory that I delivered in the car on our way home. The car smelled profoundly of peanut sauce. It was a good evening, after which my sleep deprivation caught up with me and I slept for a combined 16 hour over three blocks.

Title: Patience and Sarah (A Place for Us)
Author: Isabel Miller
Published: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2005 (1969)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 230
Total Page Count: 244,920
Text Number: 779
Read Because: reviewed by Rosamund, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: Two women dream of escaping their Puritan community to homestead together out west. This is vibrant and joyful; the language is lovely, with flexible, ardent metaphors and transparent pathos. If some later events are more mundane and focus on (mis)communication, they only serve to explore the relationship's maturation and interactions with the public sphere. The historical setting is evocative, the romance complicated and sincere; it doesn't even feel self-published except that's about lesbian women. I believe that on rare occasion an author than exceed their native talent—can exceed, honestly, any reasonable expectation from a story. This does that. It's difficult to express my feelings about this book without sounding hyperbolic, but Patience & Sarah is emotive, invaluable, and quietly transcendent; and I loved it in every word.

Who is this cautious unhoping young woman? Where is the hero who bore such batterings for love and stood up before witnesses to ask me to be a hero too? And I am a hero now. Can't you see? We can be an army of two. We can be Plato's perfect army: lovers, who will never behave dishonorably in each other's sight, and invincible. Let the world either kill us or grow accustomed to us; here we stand.

Title: The House on the Strand
Author: Daphne du Maurier
Narrator: Ron Keith
Published: Hatchette Audio, 2014 (1969)
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 300
Total Page Count: 245,220
Text Number: 780
Read Because: fan of the author, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: While vacationing at a friend's family home, one man slips back in time to the estate's history. This is explicitly speculative in premise, moreso and more extensively than what else I've read of du Maurier. Usually, my favorite part of her work is the meeting of tropey genre hallmarks to strong literary writing, but that combination failed to sell me here. The two halves of the narrative don't mesh particularly well: timeskips and lack of immediate consequences make the historical timeline hard to follow; the modern timeline is intentionally mundane, even petty, with an unlikable protagonist. There's potential in the cumulative effect—in the contrast between those halves, and in how the protagonist chooses between them; in the grim consequences. If I had been as invested in the historical timeline as the protagonist, this could have worked for me (and, to be fair, I listened to it on audio and perhaps failed to give it my full attention). As is, this was the first du Maurier that I didn't particularly enjoy.


Title: Provenance
Author: Ann Leckie
Published: Orbit, 2017
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 440
Total Page Count: 245,660
Text Number: 781
Read Because: fan of the author, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: The daughter of a political family, attempting to con her rival sibling out of succession, stumbles into a mess of intrigue and accident. This feels something like a comedy of errors, something like a fantasy of manners (in space!), with a rolling plot of increasing action and scale but not always intent. The protagonist retains agency, and her character growth is the book's highlight, but the sequence of events is larger than her. I appreciate that scale; Leckie has a way with space opera, simultaneously embracing and challenging its conventions, and this possess the realistically huge scale and diversity of the Imperial Radch series (and the sibling stories contextualize each other). But what stuck with me from Imperial Radch was the character- and trope-level investment, which was absent here: the supporting characters are less engaging, which means the relationships are likewise. Stronger speculative aspects and/or less predictable coming-of-age narratives may have helped enliven things, and the conversation about society and its symbols is interesting, but on the whole I found this fairly unremarkable.