naomikritzer | Reading

I spent over an hour working on this collage without being able to quite pin down the name for it. Initially, I titled it 'Imbalance,' but that word didn't quite capture the ominousness of what I was trying to convey. Eventually, I decided upon 'Upheaval.'

I remarked to someone this week that I didn't envision the beginning of my retirement being quite like this.

Besides all the uncertainty over the usual issues at this time of life like 'what do I do with my time?' and 'what is my new budget going to be like?' there are other questions, like 'will my next door neighbor be arrested?' and 'is this neighborhood business open, or have all their employees been kidnapped?' and 'what are the chances that my car is going to get rammed by ICE?'

I'm not going to go into great depth about all the news events that this collage is reflecting. If you are not aware, the Twin Cities are under siege by the federal government. Constitutional rights are being absolutely ignored. Rather, the ICE agents cruising around the city are making a huge show of deliberately and flagrantly violating constitutional rights, apparently just to demonstrate that they can.

There are rumors flying around the city, and everyone is angry, stressed, and yes, afraid. Yet the city is pulling together, with people joining Signal groups to protect their neighbors, setting up patrols to guard schools, churches, and day care centers, and donating money and supplies to support immigrants in hiding from ICE. All these actions are like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm.

A stormy sea with a lighthouse, partially obscured by fog. A woman stands unsteadily on top of the waves, in three overlapping poses, arms flailing as if struggling for balance. A giant, ominous-looking kraken lurks partially below the surface of the waves, brandishing its tentacles threateningly, center right.

Upheaval

2 Upheaval

Click on the links to see the 2026, 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

Current Mood: stressed

adrian_turtle

Is anyone I know going to Arisia this weekend? I'm thinking of going for a day but haven't decided which day. Masking is the only way I feel safe going to this kind of event, but masking also makes it harder to make a long relaxed day of it because I can't go out to a restaurant with half a dozen friends for 90 minutes in the middle of the day. Even so, I'd like to see people if that's possible.

rachelmanija

In this engrossing historical novel, three storylines converge on a single target, a female Nazi nicknamed the Huntress. During the war, we follow Nina, one of the Soviet women who flew bomber runs and were known as the Night Witches. After the war, we follow Ian, a British war correspondent turned Nazi hunter, who has teamed up with Nina to hunt down the Huntress as Nina is one of the very few people who saw her face and survived. At the same time, in Boston, we follow Jordan, a young woman who wants to be a photographer and is suspicious of the beautiful German immigrant her father wants to marry...

In The Huntress, we often know what has happened or surely must happen, but not why or how; we know Nina somehow ended up facing off with the Huntress, but not how she got there or how she escaped; we know who Jordan's stepmom-to-be is and that she'll surely be unmasked eventually, but not how or when that'll happen or how the confrontation will go down. There's a lot of suspense but none of it depends on shocking twists, though there are some unexpected turns.

Nina and Jordan are very likable and compelling, especially Nina who is kind of a force of nature. It took me a while to warm up to Ian, but I did about halfway through. Nina's story is fascinating and I could have read a whole novel just about her and her all-female regiment, but I never minded switching back to Jordan as while her life is more ordinary, it's got this tense undercurrent of creeping horror as she and everyone around her are being gaslit and manipulated by a Nazi.

This is the kind of satisfying, engrossing historical novel that I think used to be more common, though this one probably has a lot more queerness than it would have had if it had been written in the 80s - a woman/woman relationship is central to the story, and there are multiple other queer characters. It has some nice funny moments and dialogue to leaven a generally serious story (Nina in particular can be hilarious), and there's some excellent set piece action scenes. If my description sounds good to you, you'll almost certainly enjoy it.

Spoilers! ( Read more... )

Quinn has written multiple historical novels, mostly set during or around WW2. This is the first I've read but it made me want to read more of hers.

Content notes: Wartime-typical violence, gaslighting, a child in danger. The Huntress murdered six children, but this scene does not appear on-page. There is no sexual assault and no scenes in concentration camps.

adrian_turtle

We went to the Boston rally against ICE last Saturday. One of my study partners asked afterwards if it made me fired up with solidarity, and inspired to resist more strongly? Not really. Not this time. But my presence made the crowd a bit bigger, and I hope a bigger crowd inspired others incrementally more.

I saw a kid near the T station, on the edge of the crowd, and heard her ask, "Mommy, what's ab abol abolish?" She was of an age to be fairly new to reading, so she had to sound out the word on the "Abolish ICE" signs. Her mother said abolishing was when you got rid of something completely by making a law against it, like the abolition of slavery. It made me wonder about little kids tagging along when when Bostonians marched for abolition in the 19th century.

james_davis_nicoll

Their last cunning scheme set apocalypse in motion. What wonders will follow Billy and Milly's next bold endeavour?

Their Kingdom Come (Night Eaters, volume 3) by Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda

yhlee

By way of

sovay: Stand with Minnesota, appears to be locally vetted. I've made a modest donation to one of the listed organizations.

(Still buried under health + family + work + school stuff as well, sorry - if I'm not responding or late to respond, that's why.)

sabotabby

Today's episode is Wizards & Spaceships' "Editing Roundtable ft. Alexandra Pierce and Josh Wilson." If you read any SFFH, you'll know that the short story and critical essay markets are central in ways that they really aren't in other genre fiction or in literary fiction. If you hang out with SFFH people, you'll notice that "we should start a magazine" gets said almost as often as "we should start a podcast." Anyway, this episode looks at magazine publishing. Alexandra is the editor of Speculative Insight, which publishes critique and analysis about genre fiction, and Josh Wilson is the editor of The Fabulist, which specializes in extremely short SFFH. It's, among other things, a much more positive episode than I normally post here, so you should check it out.

sholio

I rewatched this one tonight, mostly for the Timov of it all, but also ...

( Spoilers for the episode )

sasha_feather

Gratitude / Self-reassurance / fighting against negativity bias!

1. The animals seem happy and content. I don't go to the barn every day and sometimes I feel bad about that, but I suspect I'm stressing over nothing, or channeling other stress into this area. The cat and dog make me laugh and are good companions. Again I stress sometimes with Sally the dog, but, it's probably easier to be crabby with her than with my family.

2. The house is reasonably clean, it's warm inside, the hot water is working, etc.

3. I have some friendly and wonderful neighbors.

4. My parents are doing well. My mom is so much better now that she's in the assisted living place rather than the nursing home. Just a huge relief.

5. I got to chat with two good friends today, Jesse and Emily, and it was a real mood lifter.

6. TV I'm enjoying: The Pitt, FallOut, Heated Rivalry.

7. On YouTube I watch the Handsome Podcast almost every single day. This is 3 queer comedians (Tig Notaro, Fortune Feimster, and Mae Martin) chatting and being silly.

8. I've been playing Terra Nil on my laptop and I can't rec it highly enough. I feel like it is meditative in the best way and really helps my brain chill out. The game play is very similar to Sim City, but instead of building a city you get to reclaim wasteland and turn it into wilderness. Very easy to learn, but challenging enough to keep me engaged. Click-only means it's easy to play in bed with my beloved Left-handed mouse, and doesn't bother my right shoulder. Sound design is relaxing, the graphics are pretty. Minimal reading makes it migraine compatible for me, and i can control the motion. It's not timed. Thank you to my friend eruthros for buying this game for me.

rachelmanija

Brom was a fantasy illustrator before he started writing his own books. They all contain spectacular color plates as well as black and white illustrations, which add a lot to the story.

Krampus opens with a prologue of the imprisoned Krampus vowing revenge on Santa Claus, then cuts to Santa Claus being chased through a trailer park by horned goblins, one of whom falls to his death when Santa escapes on his sleigh drawn by flying reindeer.

But he left his sack behind, which is promptly picked up Jesse, who just moments previously was considering suicide because he's basically a character from a country song: he's broke; his wife left him, taking their kid with her, and she's now with the town sheriff; Jesse never had the music career he wanted because of poor self-esteem and stage fright, AND he's being forced to do dangerous drug smuggling by the crime lord who runs the town with help from the sheriff. Santa's sack will provide any toy you want, but only toys; Jesse, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, uses it get his daughter every toy she's ever wanted, so now his wife thinks he stole them and the corrupt sheriff is on his ass again. And so are Krampus's band of Bellsnickles, who also want the sack because it's the key to freeing Krampus...

This book is absolutely nuts. The tone isn't as absurd as the summary might make it sound; it is often pretty funny, but it's more of a mythic fantasy meets gritty crime drama, sort of like Charles de Lint was writing in the 80s. Absolutely the best part is when Krampus finally gets to be Krampus in the modern day, spreading Yule tidings, terrorizing suburban adults, and terrifying but also delighting suburban children.

carbonel

Hi! It's been a while, so it's a bit embarrassing that my first post is asking for help, but maybe it'll inspire me to do a better job of posting (I do read DW regularly, at least).

I posted this query in a couple of unrelated forums and got a lot of suggestions but not the correct one, so I’m trying again here.

On a group on Ravelry, someone posted Mary Engelbreit’s classic illustration of life being a chair of bowlies, and that reminded me that I’ve been trying to remember the name of the same sort of popular artist from the 1990s, but her specialty was cats. Mostly realistic-looking cats based on ones she actually knew, in characteristic cat-type positions, but with lots of colorful decorations in the rest of the picture. I had a couple of calendars and an organizer with her work, but I’ve totally forgotten her name. It might be a three-name name. There were a couple of years when her art was pretty much everywhere, and then she faded quickly, alas.

Does this ring a bell for anyone?

ETA: One of my friends on Ravelry finally found it after (counts) twelve wrong guesses. There are a lot of cat artists out there! The artist in question is Lesley Anne Ivory.

Names that it's not:

B. Kliban
Laurel Burch
Doris Hays
Susan Herbert
Lesley Fotherby
Linda Jane Smith
Lisa Frank
Elizabeth Blackadder

oracne

Please feel free to link me to all your Yuletide recommendations!

I gave up on most of my fanfiction reading logging the last couple of months, but hope to start that up again soon. In the meantime, I post TBR Challenge and monthly reading logs on my website/blog - I haven't been cross-posting here recently, my apologies, but my reading has been pretty sparse anyway. My December reading log goes live there Friday morning.

james_davis_nicoll

Murderbot and allies struggle to establish friendly relations with a rediscovered lost colony in time to protect them from a predatory company.

System Collapse (Murderbot, volume 7) by Martha Wells

james_davis_nicoll

My Outgunned game is a spy thriller of sorts. I thought it would be fun to skip the usual "characters start together, get briefed, plot their mission together" and so on, I'd start with three of the five breaking into an apartment. They are 14-year-old Diane Dean (the driver), 18-year-old Concordia Butterstein (unsanctioned intrusion and asset acquisition expert) and 70-year-old Jethro Winthrop (the smooth talking fellow who hired the other two because they offered the best value for price)

( Read more... )

laramie

I don't think many people saw this when I posted it originally. I'm looking especially for feedback from other creative types...

I've been thinking about compiling a collection of my artwork. I don't have a very consistent body of work. What I have is a visual record of explorations through a wide range of media and motivated by a range of inspiring thoughts and events. So, I'll need to talk about what inspired me, what I was trying to accomplish and what I learned in the process of the work. I'm thinking of interspersing the artwork with a series of essays and memories. Here's a start. Hopelessly pedantic? Meaningful? What do you think?

Why Make Art?

For my own part, many motivations join forces to move me to create.

In one sense, it seems an absolutely essential aspect of my identity as a human being. Making art is a continuation of the playful explorations of childhood by which we learn about our world, and ourselves, and our capabilities.

Such play is a process employed in building our maps of cognitive reality, in exercising and building intelligence through practical application of what our senses reveal in conjunction with what our social training requires.

Humans are wired to create works of art (visual, musical, visceral, muscular, gustatory, literary, and more) the way birds are wired to build nests. Some might argue that nests serve a more practical, observably useful purpose than do works of art.

That would depend on how much we value cognitive maps making sense of our complex world and how we value the kind of thinking that builds bridges between individuals and society, between the worlds of the senses and of objective rationality, the kind of thinking good at finding creative solutions to the plethora of problems we encounter while living in the material world.

So, one reason for making art is that I like to explore my sensory experiences in a playful way. Different artists, obviously, produce different work. Different media, different tools and materials, different circumstances can all lead the explorations of a single artist into new and different paths.

Put pen and ink in my hands and I’ll explore fine dark lines in relation to a blank page. I may explore them abstractly, looking for patterns inspired by the movement of my hands to music or in relation to a grid, or by combining variations on the theme of a single curve. Or I may explore in relation to what I see in the world around me, reproducing the curves of a face or a tree, a landscape or cityscape. Or I may explore what my imagination or dreams inspire: drawing a unicorn, mermaid or gryphon – as informed by reality, but not confined by it. My explorations may lead me to combine any number of these differing approaches.

Put crayons in my hands and I’ll explore the potential of bright colors and thick lines and the texture of the paper in conjunction with the waxy material. A light hand shows the texture of rough paper. A heavy hand emphasizes color over texture. Crayon resists watercolor, which will flow into the gaps the wax fails to cover… Again, I can explore abstractly, representationally, expressively, surreally or in any combination – but the results will look very different from those produced with other materials.

Similarly, explorations in three-dimensional media, or in computer-generated images will produce very different results according to the potential of their types.

Exploring across multiple media teaches me to look for and recognize the potential in a range of differing creative environments. Take away my pen, my pencils, my crayons, whatever tools I’ve been using – and I will still know how to approach turning whatever materials are at hand to creative ends.

In another sense, creative work is about power. The world is vast and complex and almost entirely beyond my power to affect. Almost. All but this one spot at the point of my pencil or pen or brush. All but this word, and the next one, and the next. I have the power to change just so much, and to share what I have done with – at least some of – the people around me and make it a part of their experience as well as mine. In turn, I can see and hear and feel the changes they make. Together we create a culture of shared experiences. We create civilization by sharing our creative experiences and our understandings in this way.

In that sense, creative work is about relationships. Art builds bridges between individuals and society. No two individuals see the world from the same position at the same time. If you want someone else to see things your way, you need to reproduce what you see in a form you can share. This has gotten a lot easier since the invention of photography, and even the best photograph loses something in translation.

The potential for seeing the world through the eyes of others – that’s huge. Like hearing the music born of another heart and recognizing one’s own passions there. We lead different lives, separate lives – as becomes only too clear in times of pain or suffering. However much we sympathize, we do not feel the same pain as the individual who has been injured or suffered a loss. You don’t feel my aching toes, courting frostbite as I walk home through sub-zero weather from a bus stop. I don’t feel your stubbed toe or mashed finger or your craving for that next cig or drink or whatever it is you may be craving.

But an evocative description or representation can remind me of my own pains and needs and I can understand that what you have experienced is similar enough to warrant my sympathy. The arts give us tools for recognizing the validity in one another’s individual experiences; they create a bridge between subjective experiences and objectively verifiable reality.

Art also builds bridges between the internal worlds of the senses and a more objective rationality. The left hand may not know what the right hand is doing. I may not know how to put what I’m feeling into terms that anyone else could understand, but an abstract expressionist painting could get the idea across, not only to others who might see it, but to my own distracted, abstracted conscious ego.

Different artistic approaches reach different audiences. No one work will reach everyone. The deaf will not appreciate your music. The blind will not appreciate any of my visual works or approaches. No one will relate to every possible work from every possible artist. Our choices, our differences in these ways help to define us as individuals and to define cultures and sub-cultures and fan groups and marketing niches. It’s all very frustrating and wonderful and confusing and amazing.
Samples of my artwork

james_davis_nicoll

A vast megadungeon from Expeditious Retreat Press for D&D, AD&D, and other tabletop fantasy roleplaying games.

Bundle of Holding: Halls of Arden Vul (from 2022)

rachelmanija

A Bad Idea comic by Matt Kindt, Ramon Villalobos and Tamra Bonvillain. A swords and sorcery parody/pastiche about a group of badass, backstabbing, greedy, terrible people tasked with saving a peaceful city from invaders. I picked this up based on the art, which is spectacular - I especially love the unusual color palette.

Unfortunately, the story is both cliched and kind of edgelord, and I didn't care about any of the characters. Also, the art is extremely gory - the panel above is mild. So I won't be continuing this series, but I may look into what else Ramon Villalobos, the artist, has done.

lydamorehouse

Image: albino loon (one of which has been spotted near Minnesota) melting ICE with LASER EYES by Cat Saint-Croix.

I have to say that I also really love the outpouring of art that has been happening.

Speaking of art, last night I happened to see that a group of my Hamline-Midway neighbors were gathering at a random street corner to sing. The idea was just to gather in a low-risk way so that some very little children could join. Also, in hopes that if there were neighbors nearby in hiding from the gestapo, they could hear our voices. The temps are dropping here, so there weren't very many of us. Probably a dozen? But we stood together in a circle and raised our voices and sang old protest songs, some hymns, and even one pop song ("Lean on Me.")

Did it stop ICE? No. Was it extremely cathartic? Fully. Did I heal my soul a little? Yes, it helped.

In my effort to do SOMETHING every day, I'm hoping to join one of the pedestrian bridge brigades today. It's at an awkward time for me (right when I need to get Shawn from work), but, if nothing else, I might spend some time making a poster or two.

It's funny because we are absolutely a metro area under seige, but it is also fully possible to go through your day and not see anything? My grocery stores are open--even Shanghai market. Shawn is going to work. Mason is applying to law schools, going over to his uncle's to do handiperson work... life is kind of going on, while also very much NOT for so many of us.

james_davis_nicoll

...Wait, we're supposed to believe that it's the rebels who are wrong?

Side-Eyeing Science Fiction’s Love of Empire

james_davis_nicoll

A teen subject to intermittent time-loops sets out to prevent the murder of his unlikable grandfather. This will be much harder than he expects.

The Man Who Died Seven Times by Yasuhiko Nishizawa