Pointed Ramblings
December Will Be Magic Again is the next essay. You'll get that one early next week. In addition to that, I need another paid post to stay afloat after paying rent. So instead of the upcoming commission post (fuck you, Ashley), here's an off-the-cuff post of my thoughts at this time.
Life's been rough lately. Working in retail is soul-destroying, and it's going to be difficult to keep the job during my final semester as an associate-degree-less student. I'll need the Patreon income more than ever for the next few months. It won't keep me afloat - not even close - but I can use all the money I get right now. Oh! And my partner and I have a couple weeks to find a new apartment! That's fun.
So I've allowed myself to get lost in fiction lately. I've been slowly getting into gaming after a lifetime of playing probably less than ten videos games. Portal is a new favorite - a truly splendid puzzle game whose central mechanic is both clever and inexhaustible even for a dumb bitch like me, who has to pause the game every minute or so to watch a YouTube playthrough of it. I'm currently on the final level with GLaDOs and suspecting the people at Valve have some real mommy issues they're working through (although the game's only two major characters being women makes this slightly more interesting). I may take a break before playing Portal 2, which I snatched for $.99 during a Steam sale. For now I'm content to have been playing this lovely bit of science fiction gaming for a few weeks.
Another obsession lately has been Warren Ellis. His brand of caustic grossness is delightful, but it relies on the thematic depth and human beauty buried in his stories to survive. I've been into Ellis for a couple years, but my interest in his work has been significantly renewed as my girlfriend and I have gone through Transmetropolitan. I'm sick to death of superheroes and their comics, so I may focus on creator-owned comics for a while, and this may be the best. For years I would have said that From Hell was my favorite comic. I'm not positive that's untrue now, but Transmetropolitan may be in the process of dethroning it. Maybe after reading the next trade in this series I'll read those Global Frequency books I've got. After I finish Transmet, I'll probably check out Planetary. But enough of me listing Ellis comics. Go read his stuff, nerds.
Oh. Yes. Another segue. I picked up a copy of Ellis' debut mystery novel, Crooked Little Vein. I believe it is autographed, as there's a large cursive W and some other fucked up letter on the title page. So that's cool. Ellis isn't the only reason I bought this one though. I've had a hankering for mystery fiction lately. Having barely scratched that itch with a bit of (admittedly excellent) Granada-era Sherlock Holmes with Jeremy Brett, I figured I'd pick up some mystery novels to read as I owned basically none. Maybe this has been an attempt to reconnect with my childhood, as the last few months have been one long session of dissociating from my past. At the risk of digging too much into my personal life, it's been a rough time. Maybe getting lost in some mystery paperbacks will serve as a nice distraction from the gestation of trauma and depression.
And you guessed it, another segue! The other staple of my childhood I've been revisiting is, you'll recall from my most recent books journal entry, Brian Jacques' series of children's fantasy novels, Redwall. These are not great books: they're episodically restructured, populated by archetypes rather than fleshed out characters, and implicitly racist and classist. Yet I still find myself captivated by them, even if I'm not the 8/9-year-old who listened to the narrator-and-full-cast-performed audiobooks while reading the series with her mom I once was. There's some genuinely interesting stuff in this, with its rustic, secular gothic quality, its neat (although silly and convoluted) puzzles, and all the cool battles and food. Somebody needs to put me in charge of a TV adaptation of this series. Or turn it into a puzzle game. Forget the tedious first book. Just go straight for Mossflower and follow it up with the original. Somebody who is good at the economy help me budget this, my family is dying. Or just pay me to do something. Either way is good.