axolotl9 | Network

Review copy provided by the publisher.

This is not a stand-alone book. It's a close sequel to Witch King, and the characters and their situation are more thoroughly introduced in that volume. Unless you're a forgetful reader or specifically like to reread whole series when new installments come out, I think Wells gives you enough grounding to just pick this one up, but not enough for this to stand alone--it's not intended to.

If I had had to pick the title of this book, the word "alliances" would have figured heavily in it. I get that the two titles pair well this way, but this is a book substantially about dealing with one's allies--the ones who are definitely, definitely not friends as well as the ones Kai loves dearly who are not actually as reliable as he might have hoped. The other enemies of Hierarchy are not all immediately eager to team up with an actual demon; some of them require convincing that the enemy of their enemy really is their friend (VALID, because that is not a universally true thing). And of course Kai's own nearest and dearest are growing as people and have the growing pains associated with that. If you enjoyed Witch King, you're in for a treat as this is very much a continuation of all the things it was doing.

james_davis_nicoll

Arrogant traffic analyst Boyd Hakluyt is just a pawn in the struggle for Ciudad de Vados' future.

The Squares of the City by John Brunner

queenlua

Okay, yeah, as people watching my Tumblr may have already noticed, I gave Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 a try on a whim (mostly because of this post tbh) & I had a grand old time & now I'm here to dump some thoughts about it before I lose them forever.

Full disclosure, a big reason that I got SO into this game (devoured it in ~2 weeks) was because Bird Guy got into it too, at exactly the same time, and did you know it is VERY fun to blast through a big bombastic game in Your Favorite Genre alongside the love of your life? Highly recommend it. We were heckling each other and swapping strategy protips and speculating wildly about the plot together the whole time; it was SO weeby in our household lol.

We historically have somewhat divergent tastes in video games (he plays FPSes, Soulsbornes, and grand strategy games; I tend more toward turn-based tactical RPGs, narrative-driven RPGs, stealth-action games, and platformers). There's also a lot of places where our tastes overlap (we both love a good puzzle game, hence both of us getting oneshot by Blue Prince a few months back, and we both enjoyed e.g. Breath of the Wild), but up until now I don't think he's ever liked anything in the (admittedly fuzzy) space of "big, bombastic, narrative-heavy 90s/00s-style RPGs."

( a list of all the ways this game is a big fat love letter to A Specific Era Of RPGs )

So, yeah, the game nailed a 10/10 on "bottling up a bunch of highlights from the RPGs-of-a-specific-era into a modern Essence Du Jour." This will probably make me sound either sappy or deranged or both, but I really do feel like it let me share something precious and lovely with my husband in a way that finally got him to enjoy it too, and I'm pretty grateful for that. Sort of like the first time I took him to see fireflies in Kentucky because he, a west coast boy, had never seen them before.

Combat, however—combat is very different than any mainline Final Fantasy game, and it rules, actually.

( what the combat is like )

The plot's another thing I was a little apprehensive about going in. The premise sounded a little stilted/weird/cheesy to my ear, and the vague rumblings I'd heard about the game online made it sound like it was all going to be some sort of philosophical-dilemma-disguised-as-a-story sort of deal, which is just not interesting in to me. (I very seriously entertained majoring in philosophy; I've taken classes on "what if we were a brain in a vat tho" kind of dilemmas; I get the appeal. I just don't find it as appealing these days :P)

Without spoiling, I'd say it doesn't really demand deep philosophical wrestling any more than, say, Christopher Nolan's Inception does—it's there if you want it and I'm sure forum nerds are arguing about it at we speak (<3 you forum nerds, you are my people), but it's mostly focused on some broader thematic concerns and the attendant characters. I don't think the characters or their world are quite as juicy in terms of their interpersonal dynamics or as fully-fleshed-out-in-relation-to-their-world as, say, the Final Fantasy 10 cast... but they're interesting enough (Verso and Maelle prove particularly chewy), there's good synergy in the ensemble, and the game REALLY leans hard into the light-and-dark interplay suggested by the title. The bright/charming bits are SURPRISINGLY goofy and silly and disarming for it; the grim bits are grim in a PG-13 way but no less satisfying for it.

Okay that's al lthe general stuff. Some more spoiler-y and off-the-cuff thoughts below—no major spoilers but if you're like "I do not even wish to Know The Name Of Potential Bosses In The Game," yeah, here's your chance to stop reading.

( vaguely spoilery stuff )

oh god also i forgot to mention the soundtrack. straight bangers, every single one of them. i have the sheet music for "alicia" and "verso" sitting on my piano as we speak. truly it is the 90s again and they got their own damn Uematsu lol

marycatelli

Hurrah. The stepmother and stepdaughter ran off together and found themselves in a hut in the forest, desperately needing two people to die.

Horrible people, to be sure, but they have no real way to kill the husband and father, and they don't even know who the other person is.

I think the mirror is going to be helpful. A bit.

troisoiseaux

Currently reading Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly, one of her Benjamin January historical mysteries, usually set in 1830s New Orleans, although this one sees newlyweds January and Rose take a busman's honeymoon to Mexico to rescue their friend Hannibal Sefton, who has been accused of murder. Enjoying this! It's very Gothic: the mad patriarch ruling over his isolated hacienda with an iron fist, where pretty much everyone else is on their way to madness if not already there; the picturesque ruins in the form of Aztec pyramids; and of course, People Getting Real Weird With Religion. So far, this book's historical cameo has been General Santa Anna, who I did not connect with the sea shanty "Santiana" until a reference to his nickname as "Napoleon of the West"; I've also noticed that Hambly has an apparent running joke with herself of slipping in the names of minor characters from Les Mis (e.g., Combeferre's Livery in Die Upon A Kiss) and assumed the French chef named Guillenormand was one of those, although the spelling differs slightly— and as this Guillenormand is a "heretic Revolutionist" who fled France upon the Bourbons' return to power, I doubt Hugo's Gillenormand would acknowledge any relation.

I'm approximately three-quarters through Dune and things have gotten really weird. (Jessica + the Water of Life ritual????) Also, oddly, this audiobook keeps slipping back and forth between using a full cast of different voice actors for the different characters and having a single narrator Doing Voices for all the characters, which has a very odd effect when it changes from scene to scene and the main narrator has a completely different way of reading, e.g., Count Fenring's verbal tic than the other, specific voice actor does. It has also introduced more of a soundscape, including (in a move so cliche it was accidentally funny) ambiguously exotic flute music when Paul's Fremen love interest ~~Zendaya~~ Chani was introduced. So far my favorite chapter/scene has been when Frank Herbert used one character's death to be like "AND IN THIS ESSAY I WILL—" about ecology, via that guy's dying hallucinations of his dead father.

mmerriam

I might have bought a shirt with raccoons dressed as cowboys, doing things like playing guitar, sitting around the campfire, and riding a dinosaur while wielding a mythical Colt Buntline Special.

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-grave-of-james-lick

$The two 36-inch refracting lenses in the Lick Observatory telescope are among the largest ever built.$

James Lick was a 19th-century entrepreneur who owned many hotels, orchards, and other businesses in and around San Francisco. For much of his life he was not particularly generous, but this changed after he had a stroke and started to fund many charities.

His dream was to have a large pyramid in the middle of the city where he could be entombed, but fortunately, he got talked out of that by his peers. Instead, Lick donated an astronomical $700,000 (roughly $25 million today) to build the world's most advanced observatory atop Mount Hamilton, about 70 miles (112 km) southeast of San Francisco. The Lick Observatory opened in 1888. It was the first observatory with permanent staff on the mountain. Many discoveries were made there, including several moons of Jupiter, as well as exoplanets.

Lick himself supports these discoveries in a rather literal way, as his coffin was interred in the pillar on which the telescope stands. His gravestone is only visible from below the platform and rarely open to visitors.

One of Lick's stipulations was that his grave be marked with flowers, which is why a plastic bouquet can be found in front of the marker to this day.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-grave-of-james-lick

sovay

In the appendices of Alzina Stone Dale's 1984 edition of Dorothy L. Sayers and Muriel St. Clare Byrne's Busman's Honeymoon (1936), reproduced for the first time from a handwritten sheet by Sayers with an additional scribble from Byrne, I have found perhaps the greatest production note I have read in a playscript in my life:

Warning

The murder contrivance in Act III Scene 2 will not work properly unless it is sufficiently weighted. It is therefore GENUINELY DEADLY.

Producers are earnestly requested to see that the beam, chain & attachments & the clearance above the head of the actor playing CRUTCHLEY are thoroughly tested at every performance immediately before the beginning of the Scene, in order to avoid a POSSIBLY FATAL ACCIDENT.

How is it that in this our era of infinite meta when See How They Run (2022) was a real film that came out in theaters and not someone's especially clever Yuletide treat no Sayers fan has ever worked this note into a fictional production of Busman's Honeymoon where the blasphemed aspidistra exacted a worse revenge than corroded soot? I don't want to write it, I'm just amazed no one's taken advantage of it. I wouldn't mind knowing either if the 1988 revival with Edward Petherbridge and Emily Richards found a way of reproducing the effect without risking their Crutchley, since Byrne's "Note to Producers" describes the stage trick in technical detail down to the supplier of the globes for the lamp and she still agreed with Sayers—she wanted the warning inserted before the relevant scene in the acting edition—that it could wreck an actor if not set up with belt-and-braces care. Otherwise I am most entertained so far that according to Dale, while the collaboration between the two women was much more mutual than an author and her beta-reader, Byrne characteristically put in the stage business and directions which it seems Sayers was less inclined to write than dialogue. This same edition includes Sayers' solo-penned and previously unpublished Love All (1941) and testifies to the further treasury of the Malden Public Library, whose poetry section when we were directed to it turned out to be a miscellany of anthologies, plays, and biographies shading into what used to be shelved as world literature. I have three more Christies for my mother, another unfamiliar Elizabeth Goudge, another unfamiliar Elleston Trevor, some nonfiction on an angle of women's war work and the Battle of the Atlantic that I actually know nothing about, and the summer play of Christopher Fry's seasonal quartet. I am running on about a fifth of a neuron at this point, but

rushthatspeaks bought me ice cream.

Current Music: Frank Turner, "Recovery"

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/daugim-cross

Many centuries ago, Old Goa was also called "Cidade de Goa" (City of Goa) or "Goa Dourada" (Golden Goa). It had two bustling suburbs called Daugim to the east and Panelim to the west, amongst others.

Daugim, the eastern suburb, was home to the Madre De Deus Church, which was eventually shifted to Saligao in North Goa. Due to the presence of the church, Daugim was also referred to as "Madre De Deus."

The suburb was also the residence of Fidalgos (Portuguese aristrocrats). According to historical sources, the area was a community hub populated with many houses.

Eventually, after capital was moved from Old Goa to Panaji in the 1840s, Old Goa and its suburbs fell into neglect and disrepair. The Church of Madre De Deus moved from Daugim to Saligao. Today, Daugim is a largely deserted area and has been reduced to a memory from the past. However, some reminders of its once vibrant existence remain in the form of old relics and ruins dotting the area.

One such marker is a memorial cross which stands on the side of the road connecting Old Goa to the village of Gandaulim. An inscription on the cross reads: "Calcada De Daugim." "Calcada" translates to sidewalk or pavement or in some contexts, roadway.

The location of this marker gives an idea of the location of this once thriving but now deserted suburb of Old Goa. The place lives on in memory by means of this marker.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/daugim-cross

schneefink

I wrote eleven fics for MCYTblr Aufest Battleship. Eleven! And I actually like all of them and am even proud of some. Go me!

A Cast of His Face for

Kaesa, Hermitcraft
1k, Bdubs/Etho, fantasy AU
Summary: Twelve days, five hours, and twenty-two minutes after Etho died, he walked into Bdubs' office.
Author's Note: The first fic I wrote for this event. I had the idea for a story combining Major Character Death + cloning + paperwork and this came out. I tried for a combination of funny and heartbreaking, and from the comments I succeeded :)

Undeath Certificate for

salemoleander, Hermitcraft
0.3k, Cub&Cleo, afterlife
Summary: There's been an error with the paperwork regarding Cleo's afterlife.
Author's Note: Another case of "I looked at a tag combination and got an idea I really liked," in this case immortality + deity AU + paperwork. Perfectly suited for ZombieCleo, of course, and manager Cub.

In the Oldest Cell for

januarymorning, Hermitcraft
1.6k, Grian/Cub/Scar, fantasy AU outsider PoV
Summary: I'd been alone in my cell for fourteen years when they finally threw someone else in with me again. An avian, with red and purple and blue feathers.
Author's Note: Same thing again. I loved coming up with stories for specific words even back in school. And writing low pressure first person outsider PoV was fun and surprisingly easy.

The Last Task in Grumbot for

Kaesa, Hermitcraft
0.9k, Grian & Mumbo & Scar, among us mech AU
Summary: Mumbo had insisted on checking on Grian's mech one last time.
Author's Note: We were getting closer to the end of the board and needed more hits on Major Character Death, among us AU, mech AU, darkfic, and a few others, so this happened. Also featuring tasty betrayal.

Who will you eat tomorrow so we can rule together for

zoewinter1, Hermitcraft
0.3k, Docm77, Among Us AU
Summary: The massive solar storm that made it necessary for all planetary bases to evacuate to the orbital station was the best thing that could have happened for Doc's cover. The dragon was a nice bonus.
Author's Note: We were close to clearing the board and needed more Among Us AU, iirc I wrote this on my way to work on public transport. Did not expect to write vore tbh ^^ and I had never written Docm before but I think it came out well.

I wrote these first five fics in four days btw. Something in the lava down in the Nether.

Soulmate Bond (Homebrew) for

ggumdrop, Hermitcraft
0.6k, Cub & Scar, D&D AU
Summary: "Cub, I need you to listen to me."
"Who are you?“"
"I'm your soulmate. That's why you can hear me even in the antimagic field."
As soon as the voice mentions being your soulmate, you recognize where it's coming from: there's a tug inside of you, an invisible string connecting you to someone else. (Don't worry about it, it's homebrew.)
Author's Note: I rested during the first boss fight but came right back for the second board, and I think the idea of using 2nd person PoV for a D&D-style narration was cool. (I wrote parts of this during my lunch break at work. Seriously what was in that lava.)

Sounds So Splendid for

zoewinter1, Life Series
0.3k, Gem & Scott & Impulse, space opera AU
Summary: “Impulse. We're a rock band on a space station. Why in the never-ending event horizon have you signed us up to be background musicians for an opera?"
“Because of the tax break, of course."
Author's Note: Iirc someone mentioned hitting space opera by having an actual opera in space somehow and I could not resist. I was also glad to get a hit on "taxes," I would have been disappointed otherwise. And I was particularly happy with the title for this one.

Teammates for Life for

Sharo, Hermitcraft/MCC
0.8k, Cub&/Scar, canon divergence
Summary: Scar is anxious to meet his MCC teammate Cubfan135 for the first time.
Author's Note: I thought "canon divergence" and "different first meeting" would go very well together, thought of Convex, and then of MCC. I had fun with this one, especially making up a history for AU Cub (yes he won Minecraft Monday together with Techno, because I said so.) I had to do research!, look up MCC records and stuff, that was fun too.

A Dangerous Prize for

Alice_not_Alice, Hermitcraft
4.2k, Etho & Cleo, fantasy AU
Summary: King Ren gives Cleo to General Etho as a war prize, not knowing that there are plans in motion.
Author's Note: Alice likes fae!Etho, fey bargains, power imbalances, situations where Character A is compelled by outside forces to hurt or bind Character B, and a bunch of other tasty things, and I was planning to write them something from the beginning. It took a while to finish because I had to figure out the ~scale, but I was happy with the roles I found for the characters. My one contribution to the grand battle against the Wither Storm.

The Upside of the Downside for

Odaigahara, Hermitcraft
2.9k, Grian/Cub/Scar, Pyre fusion
Summary: As the Nightwings' Reader, Grian has a difficult choice to make before his first Liberation Rite. Who should have the chance to be freed from their exile? Cub and Scar would make the decision easier, if he could believe them.
Fusion with Pyre (Video Game)
Author's Note: Speaking of fics that I planned early, took me a while to figure out, and where I was happy with the roles I found for the cast: this one. I saw "video game fusion," looked at my Steam library, saw "Pyre," and could not get the idea out of my head. And it seems like I succeeded in making it understandable for people without knowledge of the game, which is good. I really like how the fusion turned out and might even be thinking of writing more in this AU one day (will probably not happen but who knows.)
I was very efficient with tags on this one considering how long it is (I got 27), that also felt good.

Potato Blossom Magic for

im_always_stressed, Dream SMP
0.4k, Technoblade/Philza, sex pollen aftermath
Summary: Admittedly, out of everyone to get caught in a potato blossom cloud with, Philza wasn't the worst option.
Author's Note: We were very close to finishing the third board and sex pollen was one of the few tags still needed. I don't remember how I got the idea for this Techno/Phil snippet (which I wrote on my phone during my commute) but it was fun. It's been a while since I watched either of them so I rewatched parts of Techno's turtle stream and was reminded just how great they were together.

Aand that's it! 11 works and 13.469 words in total, over 17 days. I had such a great time. Hermitcraft is now my most-written fandom on AO3 with 20 works, followed by SGA with 17.

And I could not resist signing up for multifandom Battleship, which starts this weekend. I'm planning to take it a little slower, and I still need to add more prompts, but I also wasn't planning to do this much for MCYT Battleship so who knows.

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-lagoda

In the 19th century, New Bedford, Massachusetts was known as “the city that lit the world” due to its significant role in the whaling industry, providing oil for lamps. Even today, long after whale oil became obsolete and whaling was outlawed, its history and cultural impact can be felt throughout the city. The New Bedford Whaling Museum explores the complex legacy of whale hunting and the role ships like the Lagoda played in this once-mighty industry.

The original Lagoda was built in 1826 at the Wanton Shipyard in what is today Norwell, Massachusetts. It was supposed to be named after Lake Ladoga in Russia, but two letters were transposed. The ship spent its early years as a merchant vessel before it was purchased by whaling agent Jonathan Bourne Jr. in 1841 and converted into a whaling ship. The Lagoda spent the next 30 years as a whaling vessel and was one of seven ships that narrowly escaped the Arctic whaling disaster of 1871, carrying 195 survivors safely to Hawaii. In 1886, the Lagoda was sold and three years later left for Japan, where it spent a decade as a coal hulk before being broken up in 1899.

In 1915, Bourne's daughter Emily donated a building to the New Bedford Whaling Museum and allocated funds to build a half-scale replica of her father’s ship, 89 feet long, with a 50-foot mast. The museum describes it as the largest ship model in the world.

The history of whaling is a complex yet significant one. On one hand, the systematic hunting of whales almost led to the extinction of several species. On the other, whaling was essential to numerous cultures around the world; and in the United States, it was an industry where Black, Native American, and Asian sailors could rise to positions of prominence. The New Bedford Whaling Museum explores all these aspects, and if you have an interest in maritime whaling history, the Lagoda and the museum are both worth a visit.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-lagoda

atlas_obscura_places_feed

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/miculla-petroglyphs

Human figures at Miculla Petroglyphs

Under the scorching sun of southern Peru, on the fringes of the Atacama Desert, lie the Miculla Petroglyphs, a collection of ancient rock carvings whose origin remains a mystery. Preserved by both the dry climate and isolated location, the petroglyphs depict striking scenes: human figures engaged in dances or ceremonies; people hunting animals; and representations of animals, plants, and geometric patterns.

Scholars continue to debate who carved the stones and when. The presence of zigzag patterns alongside human figures suggests a lineage with Toro Muerto, a massive collection of over 6,000 petroglyphs found in the neighboring Arequipa region. Other researchers link the carvings to the Tiwanaku culture and the Inca empire, supported by the discovery of ceramics from these civilizations in the area. Additional candidates include the cultures of Colla, Chiribaya, or even the Chinchorro, an ancient coastal culture from northern Chile.

The dating of the petroglyphs is just as uncertain. Some estimates place them as early as 4,500 BCE, while more conservative estimates date the petroglyphs from 500 to 1500 AD, just before the arrival of the Spanish. It seems the only consensus among researchers is that the Miculla petroglyphs were carved by different cultural groups over various chronological periods.

Today, a selection of the petroglyphs can be visited at a small interpretation center located 22 kilometers (about 14 miles) to the northeast of the Peruvian city of Tacna, along a quiet highway that heads toward the triple frontier between Peru, Bolivia, and Chile. Adjacent to the observation center, a wooden suspension bridge leads to a couple of scenic viewpoints, inviting visitors to contemplate the silent, surrounding desert.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/miculla-petroglyphs

minoanmiss

( You're about to view content that the journal owner has advised should be viewed with discretion. )

Current Mood: curious

marycatelli

I essayed

james_davis_nicoll

Everything you need for your own GURPS 4E tabletop roleplaying campaign.

Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022)

Volume 3 (Nov 2008 - Dec 2018) of Pyramid, the Steve Jackson Games magazine for tabletop roleplaying gamers. Sixty issues and more!

Bundle of Holding: Pyramid 1

james_davis_nicoll

Why wait around for the throne or the cash when murder can deliver it immediately?

Five Dangerously Impatient Heirs and Successors

runpunkrun

a dragonfly
unable to settle
on the grass
-1690

Translation by Jane Reichhold.

( 俳句 )

james_davis_nicoll

2004: Labour spares no effort to liberate Britons from human rights, UKIP's electoral successes surely do not reflect fundamental flaws in the British psyche, and London voters are heartbroken to discover the Livingstone who was just elected mayor isn’t the Livingstone who co-wrote the Fighting Fantasy books.

Poll #33332 Clarke Award Finalists 2004

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?

View Answers

Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
19 (52.8%)

Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
5 (13.9%)

Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
14 (38.9%)

Maul by Tricia Sullivan
4 (11.1%)

Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
2 (5.6%)

Pattern Recognition by William Gibson
16 (44.4%)

Bold for have read, italic for intend to read,, underline for never heard of it.

Which 2004 Clarke Award Finalists Have You Read?
Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
Coalescent by Stephen Baxter
Darwin's Children by Greg Bear
Maul by Tricia Sullivan
Midnight Lamp by Gwyneth Jones
Pattern Recognition by William Gibson

sovay

From an apparent radiant in Arcturus, which made it either a straggler of the Boötids or just passing through, just as

spatch and I were getting up from our summer-hazed star-watching under the three-quarter moon, we saw a slow fireball of a meteor streak south and westward. All we had seen until then were the familiar blinks of planes and what we less happily took for satellites crawling steadily across the body of Ursa Major. We lay on the granite blocks that were installed six or seven years ago in commemoration of the eighteenth-century farm that became first a field of victory gardens and then the public park where I would spend my childhood sledding in winter and setting off model rockets in summer. The jeweled string of the Boston skyline has built itself considerably up since then. I used to dream of finding a meteorite in a field. It seemed statistically not impossible.

Current Music: Of Monsters and Men, "Empire"

coffeeandink

Ghost Quartet is a band: Dave Malloy on keyboard, Brent Arnold on cello, Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford on various instruments, and everyone providing vocals. Ghost Quartet is a song cycle, a concert album performed semi-staged, a mash-up of "Snow White, Rose Red," The One Thousand and One Nights, the Noh play Matsukaze, "Cruel Sister", "The Fall of the House of Usher", the front page photo of a fatal train accident, and a grab bag of Twilight Zone episodes. The ghost of Thelonious Monk is sometimes invoked, but does not appear; whisky is often invoked, and, if you see the show live, will most certainly appear. "I'm confused/And more than a little frightened," says (one incarnation of) the (more-or-less) protagonist. "It's okay, my dear," her sister/lover/mother/daughter/deuteragonist reassures her, "this is a circular story."

Once upon a time two sisters fell in love with an astronomer who lived in a tree. He seduced Rose, the younger, then stole her work ("for a prestigious astronomy journal"), and then abandoned her for her sister, Pearl. Rose asked a bear to maul the astronomer in revenge, but the bear first demanded a pot of honey, a piece of stardust, a secret baptism, and a photograph of a ghost. (The music is a direct quote of the list of spell ingredients from Into the Woods.) Rose searches for all these ingredients through multiple lifetimes; and that's the plot.

Except it is much less comprehensible than that. The songs are nested in each other like Scheherazade's stories; you can follow from one song to the next, but retracing the connections in memory is impossible; this is less a narrative than a maze. Surreal timelines crash together in atonal cacophany; one moment Dave Malloy, or a nameless astronomer played by Dave Malloy, or Dave Malloy playing Dave Malloy is trying to solve epistemology and another moment the entire house of Usher, or all the actors, are telling you about their favorite whiskies. The climax is a subway accident we have glimpsed before, in aftermath, in full, circling around it, a trauma and a terror that cannot be faced directly; the crash is the fall of a house is the failure to act is the failure to look is the failure to look away.

There are two recordings available. Ghost Quartet, recorded in a studio, has cleaner audio, but Live at the McKitterick includes more of the interstitial scenes and feels more like the performance.

In Greenwood Cemetery, there were three slightly raised stages separated by batches of folding chairs, one for Dave Malloy, one for Brent Arnold, and one for Gelsey Bell and Brittain Ashford, with a flat patch of grass in the center across which they sang to each other, and into which they sometimes moved; you could sit in the chairs, or on cushions in front of the first row, or with cheaper tickets you could sit in the grass on the very low hills above the staging area, among the monuments and gravestones, and, presumably, among more ghosts. The show started a little before sunset; I saw a hawk fly over, and I could hear birds singing along when the humans sang a capella. It was in the middle of Brooklyn, so even after dark I couldn't see stars; but fireflies sparked everywhere.

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axolotl9

The Darkroom, and the Cameraman Within

April 2025

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Page Summary

mrissa - Queen Demon, by Martha Wells
james_davis_nicoll - The Squares of the City by John Brunner
queenlua - clair obscur: expedition 33 retrospective
marycatelli - twisting the tale, part two
troisoiseaux - Recent reading
mmerriam - (no subject)
atlas_obscura_places_feed - James Lick’s Grave in Mount Hamilton, California
sovay - Cider and some kind of smelling salts
atlas_obscura_places_feed - Goa's Daugim Cross in Old Goa, India
schneefink - I wrote eleven (11) fics for MCYTblr AUfest Battleship
atlas_obscura_places_feed - The Lagoda in New Bedford, Massachusetts
atlas_obscura_places_feed - Miculla Petroglyphs in Tacna, Peru
minoanmiss - I just remembered something
marycatelli - Umlauts In World-Building
james_davis_nicoll - Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022) & Pyramid 1
james_davis_nicoll - Five Dangerously Impatient Heirs and Successors
runpunkrun - #660, Bashō
james_davis_nicoll - Clarke Award Finalists 2004
sovay - Comes a river running wild that will create an empire for you
coffeeandink - Ghost Quartet (Green-Wood Cemetery, 7/28/25)

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Queen Demon, by Martha Wells

The Squares of the City by John Brunner

clair obscur: expedition 33 retrospective

twisting the tale, part two

Recent reading

(no subject)

James Lick’s Grave in Mount Hamilton, California

Cider and some kind of smelling salts

Goa's Daugim Cross in Old Goa, India

I wrote eleven (11) fics for MCYTblr AUfest Battleship

The Lagoda in New Bedford, Massachusetts

Miculla Petroglyphs in Tacna, Peru

I just remembered something

Umlauts In World-Building

Bundle of Holding: GURPS 4E Essentials (from 2022) & Pyramid 1

Five Dangerously Impatient Heirs and Successors

#660, Bashō

Clarke Award Finalists 2004

Comes a river running wild that will create an empire for you

Ghost Quartet (Green-Wood Cemetery, 7/28/25)

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April 2025

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