It's our task to placate the ancient ones
Sometimes when I’m anxious, my mind focuses on a place. It can be someplace specific, but often it’s just the idea of a place, or something I’ve completely made up. Recently, I’ve invented a house in the woods I’ve been mentally running off to. It’s not very big, but there are lots of windows, and skylights (houses in the woods must always have skylights, I’m fairly certain that’s a written rule), and built-in shelves filled with books, and my dogs are there, and in the mornings we go rambling through the mist.
So that’s where my brain has been this week. The closest I actually come to fooling myself is when I turn on my thunderstorm app at night to go to sleep, and in that halfway place between awake and asleep I can be anywhere at all. It’s been rather nice.
You can put yourself there too, if you like.
(Sources: John Lautner’s Walstrom House are 1 & 2, 3 is a mystery illustrated A-frame, 4 is the Eames House)
Notable Breakfast
Blueberry pancakes & apple chicken sausage.
Dog Thing
Took a nap in a pile of dogs yesterday.
Mixed Media
I love the story of Beauty and the Beast. I’ll read/watch just about any interpretation of it (I even hung on to the CW’s terrible imagining for 2 long seasons), so I was pretty thrilled when Marian Churchland’s long out-of-print graphic novel Beast came back and I was finally able to get my hands on it. I liked it a great deal!
In Beast, the role of Belle is occupied by Colette, who is a sculptor who prefers to work in stone. She’s hired by the requisite mysterious stranger to complete a portrait of him in a giant block of Carrara marble, which has its own complicated history. It’s simple, and not very long, but the tone is fantastic and Churchland’s art is perfect.
Reading it got me thinking about why I like the Beauty and the Beast story so much, and I realized that I feel the same way about East of the Sun, West of the Moon, which is similarly a tale of a girl who is stolen/tricked into living with a mysterious beast and comes to care for them. What does that say about me? I have no answers. (I also read romance novels about gargoyles, so maybe it says I think non-human beasts are hot.)
If you also like beastly tales, may I recommend Heart’s Blood by Juliet Marillier and East by Edith Pattou? Ice by Sarah Beth Durst is also great.
Also: Halsey’s album Badlands is fantastic, I cannot say that enough. Mad Max Fury Road came out on DVD/Blu-ray Tuesday, and I observed the occasion by listening to the soundtrack 100 times. And then watching the movie and all of its extras. Naturally.
please note that I am not recommending the 2011 film Beastly because I do like to pretend to a level of quality in this newsletter
I Read Comics for a Living
This was a fairly small week for comics, but Liz Suburbia’s Sacred Heart came out and I loved it. About kids living in a town in the 80s/90s which may have been abandoned by adults (they certainly seem to have been abandoned by their parents), and all of the insane, average teenage nonsense they get into. Meanwhile, there are the occasional murdered classmates, the many relationship mishaps, and the two little girls who seem certain that something is coming. This is the kind of comic that makes you laugh and role your eyes and then hits you with a sucker punch of feelings and significance on the next page.
Also good:
Silk #7 While the whole Secret Wars thing has been happening, a few of Marvel’s previous books have still been running, showing their heroes’ “last days,” leading right up to the event that got Secret Wars started. This issue was Cindy Moon’s last day, as she tries to make her way across town to someone who may or may not be the little brother she hasn’t seen in over a decade. It’s poignant and completely perfect.
Jem and the Holograms #6 As a consequence of last issue’s altercation, the Holograms are kicked out of the battle of the bands they were counting on to make their name. Meanwhile, budding relationships are strained and falling apart. This is the last issue in the first arc, and Sophie Campbell’s last issue for a while, and it definitely left me hungry for more.
Wonder Woman Vol 6: Bones This is the last part of Brian Azzarello & Cliff Chiang’s phenomenal run on Wonder Woman collected, and truly the end of an era. This was one of my gateway comics, way back when I started buying them again, and I am so sorry to see it finally over. Chiang was a formative influence in how I’ve come to expect to see Diana depicted. This article puts it best: “He drew her as thick-limbed and broad-shouldered, with olive skin and a strong jaw…Chiang liked to show Wonder Woman in action, not imperiled. She stood at least a head taller than everyone around her. She had the solidity of a refrigerator.”
Anxiety Pyjamas
Fics I Shouted About
‘cause after all he’s just a man by spacenarwhal The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Illya/Gaby. Gaby isn’t interested in belonging to anyone, but it doesn’t occur to her that she doesn’t have to be the one to belong.
The Best Defense by krakens The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Illya/Gaby. Gaby wants to learn to fight.
i broke my bones playing games with you by mooosicaldreamz Agent Carter/MCU, Peggy/Angie, modern Cap!PeggyAU. It’s a universe where Peggy Carter was given the serum and lost Steve Rogers, the man she loved, on a mission. Now she’s in the future, trying to work with the Avengers, and maybe falling for a waitress.
untitled by halekingsourwolf Teen Wolf, Sterek, high school AU. Derek’s a jock, Stiles is not, but the only person who seems to care about their respective places in the hierarchy is Stiles. Classic miscommunication trope, oh how I love thee.
Lastly
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