Unexpected bonus Christmas extract from Son who doesn't really do fiction.
After an hour's rest, they struggled on until noon. The tents were pitched and supper was issued: cold seal steak and tea - nothing more.
On the same night exactly one year before, after a festive dinner on board the Endurance, Greenstreet had written in his diary: 'Here endeth another Christmas Day. I wonder how and under what circumstances our next one will be spent.' That night he failed to even mention what day it was. And Shackleton recorded briefly all that really needed to be said: 'Curions Christmas. Thoughts of home.'
Wishing you all a happier time than being stuck in Antarctica, whether or not you celebrate Christmas.
Today is Isaac Newton's Birthday, so I'd like to start by wishing you all a
very Heavy Newtonmas. I am thankful for...
Friction, and in particular socks with grippy bottoms for wearing
around the house.
Gravity, without which those socks wouldn't work. (Neither would a lot
of other things, of course. I'm also looking for a little levity, and
not finding nearly enough.)
The reason for the season -- axial tilt.
Also, having just about the right amount of it. (Uranus has way too
much!)
Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.
Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!
Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.
It's December Days time again. This year, I have decided that I'm going to talk about skills and applications thereof, if for no other reason than because I am prone to both the fixed mindset and the downplaying of any skills that I might have obtained as not "real" skills because they do not fit some form of ideal.
What a great thing to wake up to in my part of the world - the Yuletide archive is open! (Usually here in Germany it's noon before that happens.) Merry Christmas to all who celebrate, and peaceful holidays for everyone. I will do my annual pic spam later, but for now, here are the two lovely Foundation stories I got, both Demerzel-centric, the former from her pov, the second from Cleon XXIV's - last season's Day, in other words - , and both superb in their characterisations.
Remembrance (3416 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Foundation (TV 2021) Rating: Not Rated Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death Characters: Demerzel (Foundation TV 2021), Hari Seldon, Cleon XXIV Additional Tags: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, mix of book and tv series canon Summary:
Demerzel wanted to scream back at him, to explain how this was all his fault, Cleon the First damning them all to this nightmare fate that none of them could escape.
But she said nothing, and walked away. Like she always did.
standard deviation (4805 words) by Anonymous Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Foundation (TV 2021) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Cleon XXIV & Demerzel (Foundation TV 2021) Characters: Cleon XXIV (Foundation TV 2021), Demerzel (Foundation TV 2021) Additional Tags: Character Study, Artificial Intelligence, Complicated Relationships, Mother-Son Relationship, Loyalty, Yuletide 2025, Yuletide Treat Summary:
He can’t get a rise out of her, and can never push hard enough that she pushes back. Human mothers eventually raise their voices, yell back, get upset. You can fling hurtful words at a human mother. But as far as he can tell, it never lands with Demerzel; there’s no heart there to twist the knife into.
(Relationship study for what slowly went wrong between Cleon XXIV and Demerzel. Spoilers for all of season 3.)
All That Means or Mourns by Ruthanna Emrys. I really love how Ruthana Emrys thinks about community and connection and the natural world. "Transformed by a broad-spread fungal infection that connects humans with nature, one woman feels closer to the world than ever, but further from the people she loves the most…"
Pride and Prejudice, play adaptation by Sherwood Smith (sartorias) of the Jane Austen novel. Thank you sartorias for letting us read your adaptation of P&P originally performed by high school students! It did a really good job of condensing the plot while leaving in some dialogue that adaptations often leave out, and it was funny!
Much Ado About Numbers, Rob Eastaway. I picked this up again and finished it, but found that the bits that I'd already read were the most interesting to me. I found this book to be strongest when it was explaining the technology level of Shakespeare's time, and weakest when it was going into speculative interpretations of Shakespeare. (Though some of the theories it admitted were too far out there, like the joking theory that Cassio the "great arithmetician" might have inspired the naming of the Casio calculator.)
Alice James: Her brothers, her journal, edited by Alice Robeson Burr. I recently learned about Alice James, sister of the better known late 19th century American intellectuals Willam and Henry James, and was interested enough to pick up her diary. This book also contains Alice Robeson Burr's essay on the James family, which had some interesting tidbits that led to my learning more about forgotten 19th century American women intelectuals, like Mary Moody Emerson, aunt of and inspiration to the better-known Ralph Waldo, and Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, of which Burr writes "In those days and communities, there was always a woman who read Greek, and in Concord it was Mrs. Ripley who had this distinction."
I'm about halfway through Alice James's diary ; being a diary (and without contextual footnotes) it is slow going although it does have some good passages writing about her chronic illness and other things.
St. Helios, Alice Robeson Burr. The diary being slow going, I decided to look into what else Anna Robeson Burr had published -- she was a prolific popular novelist, and encountered this entertainingly snarky review of her novel St. Helios, which was enough to get me to pick it up. I found it to be very readable but ultimately disappointing novel. It is set in 1920 and centers on the triangle between an aristocratic British poet who is both a relic of the Victorian era and a Byronic figure, his illegimate daughter, and the American lawyer who falls in love with both (though the book is not that slashy). The daughter starts out as the most interesting of the three main characters, but halfway through she gets a change of heart and moves from manipulative schemer to damsel in distress. After reading, I found twomore contemporary reviews of this book, which are just as entertaining as the NYT review.
How did it get to be Christmas Eve? Are we sure? This year has been hard to believe in. I fell asleep in front of the decorated tree. Merry Erev Christmas.
Current Music:The Mountain Goats, "Dawn of Revelation"
Networking and Net Growth By Dialecticdreamer/Sarah Williams Part 2 of 3 Word count (story only): 1311
:: Cassie’s landlord gave her a rent increase which will make her homeless. Her medical needs and food allergy makes the standard dormitory living and communal meals in homeless shelters a nightmare rather than a temporary solution. Word spreads, and… Gentle fiction for the December 2025 prompt event, with great thanks to the reader who suggested it. ::
Only two days after leaving the doctor’s office, Cassie’s phone rang every five minutes for half an hour. With her hands finally set in the bracers, she could answer on the third ring of the seventh call. “Hello?”
“Cassie! I was starting to worry,” Doctor Brian Mitchell began. “What did I interrupt?”
“I had to wash the wrist braces,” she grumbled. “They didn’t dry the first time, and I’ve been running up and down to the laundry room to check on them, because I can’t not be answering chat questions for work, but I also can’t afford to have the braces stolen.” ( Read more... )
My senior year of college, I was invited by the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine to come and write a story about the college’s Green Key Weekend, a weekend of partying and games and partying and also partying with partying on the side (why did they invite me? Because I was from the famously unfun University of Chicago, and they wanted to see what the weekend looked like from the view of an outsider with that sort of perspective).
There was much of the weekend I don’t remember (ahem), but one thing that sticks in my mind is the Spring Sing concert, in which the several acapella groups of Dartmouth got together and did their thing. I thought they were all fantastic, and also, during the concert there was one girl who took a penny, balanced it on the end of a stretched-out wire coat hanger and spun it, keeping it stuck on the end of that coat hanger while singing the Toy R’ Us jingle, backward. I remember thinking this was the most hilariously amazing thing I’d ever seen, and also, I wanted to marry that girl, whoever she was.
Spoiler: I did not marry her. But neither has a year gone by that I have not thought about her and wondered what she was doing with her life now. We don’t always pick the things we remember. They make an impression nevertheless.
It is perhaps this personal history with acapella that primed me to enjoy Pitch Perfect as much as I did. It is a very silly film about something that doesn’t have much consequence, namely, the hyper-competitive college acapella circuit. This is obscure to the real world (or was, until this film), but is life-or-death to the theater-adjacent-kids who yearn to get out and sing without instrumental accompaniment. I first watched Pitch Perfect not expecting much, and came away having laughed more than I thought I would, and having been unexpectedly moved in a couple of places.
The plot: Beca (Anna Kendrick) is a jaded wanna-be DJ attending Barden University, mostly because her dad’s on the faculty so presumably she’s getting a tuition discount. She mostly wants to work at the college radio station and focus on her remixes, but one day Chloe (Brittany Snow) hears her singing in the shower and basically dragoons her into auditioning for the Barton Bellas, a once-proud all-girl acapella group now struggling because of an infamous event at the previous year’s national competition (which I will not relate, you will see it soon enough if you watch the film).
Beca auditions, gets in and immediately butts heads with Aubrey (Anna Camp), the group’s type-a leader, who wants to do things just so. Beca wants to loosen things up, whether everyone else agrees or not, and eventually there’s a battle of wills for the future of the group, interspersed with various competitions and run-ins with the Treblemakers, Barden’s all-male acapella group, who include Jesse (Skylar Astin), a fellow freshman who is sweet on Beca more than Beca is sweet on him.
Truth to tell, Beca is not a hugely sympathetic main character, even if she is played winningly by Kendrick. Beca gets a lot of mileage out of not being a joiner and being her own person, but mostly it just means she’s unhappy and maybe a little miserable to be around, and causes more trouble than needs to be caused. This is not bad for the movie, since it precipitates at least a couple of amusing scenes (including an acapella rumble, which is as ridiculous as it sounds). It does make you wonder what everyone in this film sees in her. Usually when someone is this casually dismissive of everyone and everything, you just let them get on with being their own little ball of gloom.
But no, the film and its characters are determined to pull her out of her shell, mostly because otherwise there wouldn’t be much of a movie, but also because they intuit that Beca’s lone wolf act is just that, an act. She likes being part of a group, and having friends, and being someone that others can rely on. The question for the movie is whether all of that can be achieved through the power of song, and whether Beca’s own particular set of musical skills will come into play. Inasmuch as this is a crowd-pleasing comedy, you will get no points for guessing how it’s all going to turn out.
No points, but that doesn’t mean it’s not still fun and even affecting. Acapella doesn’t mean anything in the real world, but there are worse things to get wrapped up in as a college-age person, and there’s something to be said about the joy you can have, getting into the same groove as all your friends. This movie is a jukebox musical and all the music is diegetic, but when you’re with a group of people who will naturally burst into song just because they feel like it, that diegetic nature doesn’t feel materially different from a standard musical. There’s something winning about a bunch of people just singing because, you know, why not? Why not sing? Even Beca eventually gives in to it. The power of pop compels her!
Naturally this all leads up to the movie’s final musical performance, where Beca has come up with a way to bring the underdog Bellas back to glory. I don’t know enough about the state of collegiate acapella in the early 2010s to know if what occurs here is an actual innovation or just the film reinventing the musical wheel, but at that point I also didn’t care. It’s a banger of a performance, so full of music nerd energy that I couldn’t help but smile all the way through it, and maybe even tear up (I am a weeper, deal with it). As musical payoffs go, it’s a winner.
Does the world change because of it? Not really, no. But not everything has to change the world. Sometimes just saving a dour little freshman from her own self-imposed alienation is enough. And in the meantime, the movie packs in a lot of snark along with the songs, thanks to a fun script, a very funny supporting cast (including Rebel Wilson in her star-making role), and a greek chorus in the form of two acapella color commentators (John Michael Higgins and Elizabeth Banks, the latter of whom also produced, and who would direct the sequel). It even made a pop star out of Anna Kendrick, as “Cups,” a version of a song she performed in the film, went to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Pitch Perfect was a moderate-sized hit at the box office and blossomed in home video. Its two successors were box office smashes and there was even a TV series spin-off that detailed the adventures of a Treblemaker named Bumper (Adam DeVine) following up a fluke hit in Germany. None of these quite had the magic of the original, but they didn’t have to have that full measure of magic. Turns out people just seem to enjoy low-stakes comedy with a lot of music thrown in. I’m somewhat surprised that this film hasn’t yet been turned into a Broadway musical. If ever there was a property designed for the a long Broadway run as a tourist favorite followed by an eternal life as a touring show, it is this one. I suspect it’s a question of when, not if.
I watch Pitch Perfect when I need a little pick-me-up, because it’s fun, it has music, and inevitably it makes me smile. I suspect I am not alone in this assessment; I imagine every single acapella kid ever feels the same way, up to and including that penny-swinging, backwards-Toys-R-Us-theme-song singing girl. I know she’s still out there. I bet she loves this film to death.
— JS
(PS: If you want to read that story I wrote about Dartmouth’s Green Key Weekend, 34 years ago now, it’s here.)
2025 was a rough year for me in terms of public fandom participation and output. I usually do something at least several times a year and feel more of a sense of connection to it than I have this year. I've still done a few things, but nothing seems to have "stuck" in the way that I would like it to.
However, toward the end of the year, I started to feel more actively connected to my fandoms. Started to have a little more internal continuity, which I've complained about the lack of throughout the year.
This year has been a lot of adjustment and change, even though most of it has been good for me.
Anyway, I just went through fandomcalendar and picked out any and everything that's current that I even might be interested or equipped to do. There are a few things I skipped either because of parameters, dates, or fandoms I'm not in, but here's what I found:
Mood Theme in a Year at moodthemeinayear. I'm not as visual as I am interested in writing and sound, but sometimes I take a notion, and this requires less independent creativity from me, so I might give it a shot if I take a notion.
Comment Bingo Round 8 at comment_bingo. This round is open until the end of March. Challenging oneself to go around leaving comments on others' works. I could use some guidance with how to go about participating in fandom in the reader direction as well. I comment on almost everything I read, but I get choice paralysis or am bad at searching and don't read as much as I could.
candyheartsex - Candy Hearts Exchange - "Candy Hearts is a multifandom gift exchange with a low minimum and a focus on relationships, both platonic and romantic/sexual." - Nominations are still open for a couple of days, which is one thing that draws me to this!
I think that I've said this elsewhere: whatever you're celebrating or otherwise observing at this time of year, I hope that the Occasion(s) will be kind to you and yours.
So here I am in the comfy chair: Listening to music, checking email, and basking in the Happy Lite.
Several kind people sent me tea over the last few days, and I now rejoice in two infusers, where I previously had none. This morning, in celebration of the weather, I am enjoying Russian Caravan tea.
Ah..."and all the bad boys are standing in the shadows/and all the good girls are home with broken hearts."
The Long Back Yard
# Taking a break to do PT homework, start washing the curtains and take out some chicken breasts to hopefully defrost in time to be cooked for tomorrow's lunch and! follow up baked chicken sandwiches. The Forbidden Food List includes all lunch meats and ... that's an ongoing hardship. But, there's no prohibition against sliced chicken off a home-cooked breast.
It's still snowing a bit, and I'm measuring just 5 inches on the deck.
UPS is still insisting it's making a delivery today, and I found a place to tell the driver to PUT THE BOX IN THE GARAGE, and I opened the garage door. Fingers crossed.
I got an automated call saying that the local Senior Center, which serves lunch to a good many people, is closed today on account of Weather. Reopening on Friday. I hope everybody who depends on that lunch is OK.
I've explored the new door configuration again and what I think is that I need to go to Home Despot next week and Stare at Stuff.
The cats are Visibly Relieved to have their Safe Room back. The last couple days were tense for all of us. But! It's behind us now. Just gotta settle the bill. (eek! and yes, I can settle the bill, and I don't depend on the Senior Center for lunch. Which makes me a very fortunate woman.)
How's everybody doing today? # Well done UPS!
The Ring went off, which meant that somebody had approached the front door, and I said to Rookie and Tali as I got up from my keyboard. "That's UPS, and they didn't put in the garage."
There was a car in the driveway when I got to the door, and the box was on the front step, and I was opening the door, when the driver of the car got out, and came rushing back to me, "I'm so sorry; I only just saw that you wanted it in the garage. I'm really sorry."
And I said, "Thank you for coming back. Since you got it this far, can you just put it inside the door?"
"Oh, yes. I can certainly do that! I'm sorry."
And he put the box in the house; we exchanged Happy Holidays and he drove off.
So, praise where earned. Well-done, UPS!
And in fact, this is what was in the box:
: # Wrote +/-1160 words today, and reviewed several scenes that I considered "problematical,"which are, in fact, perfectly fine and actually do belong in this book. The WIP entire is more or less 112,200 words.
Coon Cat Happy Hour has occurred. I have discovered that I bought some frozen dumplings, and that will be my evening meal. Tomorrow, my intention is to write and to bake a loaf of bread, perhaps not even in that order.
Everybody have a good evening. Stay safe. I'll be around tomorrow.
Oh! Today's blog post title from Mr. Thomas Petty, "Free fallin'"
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