#minimoonstar

[wellntruly]

minimoonstar replied to your post “THE GOLDFINCH - Liveblogged”

Reading this has made me think this behemoth is better structured than I felt it was 😅

I’ve never read The Secret History so I can’t compare (kinda similar reasons to you, suspected I would get Big Mad at it) but after finishing The Goldfinch I read a Vanity Fair piece about the “critical response” ie NY Review of Books griping it was “YA” and I kinda thought, bold of you to assume Tartt isn’t intentionally writing YA (about Harry Potter with an Oxy problem)

It’s also intentionally a Big American Novel re Vegas which is also the Twin Peaks S3 Vegas; but no she is dead serious, no satire

Yeah you’re welcome Donna Tartt, I see my tendency to focus on the resonant parts means I inadvertently produced this thing for you. God I am my own genie’s curse...

I read these comments at a hotel bar while picking at a Caesar salad as my appetite has been totally shot (really sailing into a wedding weekend strong), but honestly kinda feeling like I can just subsist of things like that exceedingly tasty Vanity Fair piece I also ate right up this week, and such spiritually nourishing fare as “Harry Potter with an Oxy problem.” Sabina I lost it.

(Incidentally my favorite and very stupid Hilarity Casting for grown Theo is Darren Criss and you know why.) (Though I mean actually, he was swell at being well-dressed & antisocial. Can he be sort of enervated though? This is the Question, for my dumbass imaginings.)

This going to sound insane but I was also completely picturing Twin Peaks: The Return Vegas the whole drive from the airport, and then at some point Larry took a turn and suddenly I just skidded across my mental map to land at some godforsaken coordinates much more to the southeast than the more northwesterly area I’d placed Dougie (no this makes absolutely no sense). Anyway, no don’t tell me this!!!! She can’t be serious!! Oh noo.

[imathers]

Rules: Tag nine people you want to get to know better.

Tagged by: @minimoonstar We’re going to a wedding this afternoon, so I might as well knock this out now... going to be pretty boring though, sorry

Relationship Status: happily married!

Favourite Colour: this one particularly nice shade of dark-ish grey that the living room of my old apartment in Guelph was painted

Lipstick or Chapstick?: neither, ever

Last song you listened to: Last night I was trying to remember which Oneida song talked about pissing in Prospect Park after seeing an instagram friend’s post of a beautiful sunset/sky from there (it’s “Lavender”) but I let The Wedding keep playing after I figured that out, so it was “DID I DIE OR HAVE MY EYES ROLLED BACK INSIDE MY HEEEAAAAAAAAAD”

Last movie you watched: Godzilla: King of the Monsters (it was big and beautiful and dumb and we loved it), TV-wise we finished episode 8 of The Terror (great show, hard to watch over dinner)

Top 3 Characters: ...in what? Like, my characters? From D&D? These aren’t, y’know, hard rankings, but it’s probably the three I played the longest: Quill, the doppleganger monk/warshaper who’s going to keep attacking more terrifying things until one finally kills him (the most mechanically broken character I’ve ever made, but he’s in good company); Kallicrates Aerobateo, the blue-skinned last son of a fallen noble family in the city of Balic, landlord to the rest of the party and psion who blew up things with lightning a lot (a lot); and back in second edition days, Yakomo Harada, arch-wild mage powerful enough to wipe out half a demon army with one spell, dumb enough to die by drinking a pint of sulphuric acid.

Top 3 Ships: Not really my thing, although Anaïs tells me I kept yelling “kiss” at Eleanor and Chidi when we were watching The Good Place. I enjoy other people’s ships more than I actually have any of my own.

Books and manga you are currently reading: Borges’ Fictions (rereading the contents of it, at least; I got it for like 50 cents at a work book sale, and it’s easier to carry on the subway than my Complete Fictions), Derek Yu’s book on Spelunky, too many comic books but especially The Immortal Hulk. My currently reading shelf has all the other books I’ve read this year but haven’t filed yet.

Top 5 Musicals: I really, really don’t like almost all musicals. “Almost all” because maybe there is or will be an exception, but I can’t think of it.

Tagging: I don’t know, folks, you do you (gotta throw in @symptomoflove but otherwise have at it, I’m saying)

[planetefantome]

Thank you @minimoonstar for tagging me!

I think the main question was “top 5 Musicals”?

5. Romeo et Juliette. I liked the songs when I was a child, but didn’t even know it was a musical until 3 years ago. I like the 2010 revival.

4. Hair. I watched it with my father as a teen, and I still love it. My favourite song is “Hair”.

3. Dear Evan Hansen: I like the story & the instrumentation, and I find the interpretation phenomenal.

2. Next To Normal: it’s very self-contained, it’s like an excellent play mixed with a rock concept album. Alice Ripley plays Diana extremely well.

1. Rent. 

Top 3 characters:

Right now, let’s say Alceste in the Molière play Le Misanthrope, Gwendolen Chant in Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones, and Brendan Frye in the movie Brick directed by Rian Johnson. 

Top 3 ships (also right now):

Bel Rowley and Freddie Lyon from the BBC series the Hour. With or without Hector Madden.

Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, the Agatha Christie’s characters.

Travis Marks and Wes Mitchell from the US series Common Law. 

Books and manga you are currently reading:

Canada by Richard Ford  / L’île du point Némo by Jean-Marie de Roblès / Quatre-vingt-treize by Victor Hugo / The Edda / The Complete Works of Euripides (tome II) / Christmas at Little Beach Street Bakery by Jenny Colgan (someone lent me the series so I have to finish it but I’m not that into it.) / If on a Winter’s Night a Traveller by Italo Calvino / Neuromancer by William Gibson / Maze Cheats by B. R. Collins (probably the one I will finish today) / Uncommon, by Owen Hatherly (a book about Pulp, the band) / La Géopolitique de l’Empire Romain by Yann Le Bohea / Sky Key (Endgame #2) by James Frey (I already disliked the first book and I really struggle to finish the second, but someone (else) lent it to me so...) / Mémoires d’une jeune fille rangée by Simone de Beauvoir / The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers (I’ve misplaced my copy) / Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson / Dodger by Terry Pratchett / Arsène Lupin contre Sherlock Holmès by Maurice Leblanc / La Nausée by Jean-Paul Sartre / Chez Borges by Alberto Manguel / Generation Kill by Evan Wright / The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky / The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov / For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway / La Horde du Contrevent by Alain Damasio / Paradise Lost by Milton / Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf / Vous connaissez peut-être by Joann Sfar / Le porteur d’histoire by Alexis Michalik / etc 

(Basically, if I can’t read a book in one setting, it takes me forever to pick it up again)

Favourite colour: 

Green. Mint green, aqua, dark green, even forest green & lime. Not kaki though.

Last movie you watched

I think it was Detective Pikachu? I liked the universe.

Last song you listened to

Thirsty by Taemin. I’m trying to put together a k-pop playlist for my friend who doesn’t like what she’s heard so far, and it’s... difficult. I should listen to more groups.

[lizardkingeliot]

minimoonstar replied to your post “Wait wait wait so I'm bi but still pretty religious so even just...”

That ship left the harbour for good when my parents made me watch Thornbirds with them at age 11, good job parents

[pka42]

8, 19 for meme

8. What’s the oldest (longest since last update) fic you most want to continue (unfinished or no)?

My fic that has been unfinished for the longest time is Taking a Strange Path, which is just a silly little Strangepath AU I really need to finish. Perhaps now that The Path Season 3 is out I’ll actually do it.

The thing I really want to finish, however, is THE LOVERS, a fic which first chapter was a giveaway. I’m looking forward to adding a second chapter and introducing characters that’ll make this into a truly wonderful crossover fic. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time, just because the Hannibal cast and those two would be amazing together. I’m probably going to be the only person in the fandom who even knows the source material but I. Don’t. Care. It’s gonna be great!

19. If you had to pick one fic/scene/chapter of your work to describe your entire portfolio to a stranger, which would you pick?

Oh my God, this is probably the most difficult question of them all.

I mean, if I wanted to impress somebody, I’d give them Porzellan, my Radiance piece, ‘cause it’s the best thing I’ve written. But that wouldn’t really be fair because it’s so unlike anything else I’ve written and not really a good example of what I usually do. Idk, which is the angstiest-smut-without-many-sensory-details-and-too-many-scenes-starting-with-dialogue I’ve written? I’d probably have to choose that and deal with it sucking a lot. That’s at my rotten, rotten core. XD

Thanks so much for asking stuff!

Go ask me more!

[existingcharactersdiehorribly]

minimoonstar replied to your photoset “hyperfashionist: Hannifashion November Challenge: 30 days of Bedelia...”

I’m not convinced Gillian A wasn’t wearing a wig sometimes tbh

I’m sure she was. She’s been pretty open about having to wear one for Scully for X Files Season 10. Katie Isabelle has posted a few pictures of the wigs/extensions she had for Margot, and if memory serves, LJ did as well. 

I personally don’t have a trained enough eye to really notice wig vs not wig, I think they’re pretty damn good wigs.

But just knowing they use them makes me feel a tad bit more realistic about the perfectly gorgeous hair we see on TV all the time. 

[wellntruly]

#I've been reading The Goldfinch #thinking about Tartt's portrayal of PTSD [minimoonstar]

Wow but exact same

📯📯BOOK CLUUUB! This is the secret of my unhinged hints!!!! Far too much more to come, tomorrow, need just like, another minute

“Trauma impels people both to withdraw from close relationships and to seek them desperately. The profound disruption in basic trust, the common feelings of shame, guilt, and inferiority, and the need to avoid reminders of the trauma that might be found in social life, all foster withdrawal from close relationships. But the terror of the traumatic event intensifies the need for protective attachments. The traumatized person therefore frequently alternates between isolation and anxious clinging to others. […] It results in the formation of intense, unstable relationships that fluctuate between extremes.”

— Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery (via psychologicalsnippets-blog)

[subdee]

Rules: Tag nine people you want to get to know better.

Tagged by: @minimoonstar. Thanks for catching me after my return to tumblr Sabina, happy to be mutuals with you for 10 years ;___;

Relationship Status: Just bought a house with my bf of 3.5 years

Favourite Colour: bright red & deep purple.

Lipstick or Chapstick?: chapstick, I don't think I've ever worn lipstick

Last song you listened to: Will Wood's live album "The Real" and specifically, "Hand Me My Shovel, I'm Going In"... Or RJ playing Patty Loveless "Lead the Parade" on guitar in the other room right now.

Last movie you watched: Booksmart. Great movie, go see it!

Top 3 Characters: According to myanimelist (last updated April 2017), my favorite characters are Killua Zoldyck, Asakura You, Yang Wen-li and Shi Seiran. I'd have to think to come up with any more recent ones.

Top 3 Ships: Gon/Killua...hmm. Sasuke/Naruto, Pete/Carl? I'm having a hard time with this actually. Maybe Sakura/Syaoran from CCS, though I don't like them in The Blank Card. Yukino and Arima from KareKano if I ignore the ending.

Books and manga you are currently reading: I'm reading a nonfiction book about Nazis in Argentina "The Real Odessa" very, very slowly. Manga-wise I binged through The Promised Neverland recently.

Top 5 Musicals: Wow this is difficult? I'll just list the soundtracks I like the most:

Rent, Jekyll and Hyde, Oklahoma!, Ragtime, Garden of Eden

Some of these I haven't seen, I just like the songs a lot. "Luck Be a Lady" from Guys and Dolls may be my favorite song from a musical... also “Can’t Help Loving That Man” from Showboat >__> 

Tagging @darthtulip, @unicornmagic, @camiliasamica, @plastic-lions, @king-in-yellow, @squeakgirl, @kuro-tsuki, @paintheskywithcolor, @aella-a

[lazulisong]

minimoonstar replied to your post: Looks like vodka Tuesday will be canceled in favor...

What about vodka ON ice cream

never tried it but can wholeheartedly recommend WHISKEY on ice cream 

[avoresmith]

minimoonstar replied to your post:

Anyway I’ve been playing Horizon Zero Dawn

aw, and it really does look gorgeous too

It’s SO GORGEOUS, and honestly if you enjoy the playing a game part of playing a game, I think it’s worth at least picking up used (I regret the sixty dollars a lil bit but I wouldn’t regret fourty maybe). But you can definitely just be wandering and fighting and be struck by how cinematically gorgeous it is. In the ‘exploring an open world’ sense it’s much prettier than MGSV. 

But when you AREN’T wandering and fighting everything is very stagnate and poorly animated. I’m not sure if this is a limitation of the engine or just Guerrilla’s directing skills, since there are almost no cut scenes. 

I think it’s definitely a serviceable replacement to the Fox Engine, and I am at least stoked as hell for Death Stranding.

‘Good advertisement for Death Stranding’ is probably the main conclusion I’ve taken from HDZ tbh. SIGH.

[wellntruly]

You always write the exact kind of review I want to read of whatever specific thing you’re reviewing. Truly pal, you elevate my own nonsense by mere association with these Quality Thoughts that always have me rollin’ with insights and laffs!

The Goldfinch

This write-up is largely plot-free spoiler-free; if you want a hilarious and skeptical but appreciative blow-by-blow, I recommend @wellntruly‘s recent recap (accidental book club!)

I’ve never read The Secret History, but there’s a 1992 Vanity Fair profile of Donna Tartt-as-new-literary-sensation that ends with her spotting, and exclaiming, over a goldfinch in the wild. And then she goes and publishes a novel about one! Or rather a (real) painting of one, twenty years later. Whereupon Vanity Fair put out a piece re the literary controversy The Goldfinch inspired, which boils down to the predictable fact that it won the Pulitzer and became a massive best-seller but some critics thought it was overrated. XD; Which it may be – I don’t know what the competition was – in that the ending peters out in a bafflingly underdeveloped manner, improbably wrapping up plot threads with bracketed bits of prose inserted pell-mell, as if she only published because she ran out of steam. It’s a pity, because the beginning is so strong; and indeed the middle, even though at first you’re like, “wow this prose is fireworks, loving the art history” and after a while you’re like, mmm maybe too many fireworks. But speaking as someone who cried upon first seeing the originals of certain Old Masters I’d fallen in love with as a child, never too much art history. 

I would submit the critics who call it Dickensian and the critics who call it a YA novel are picking up on the same quality, which is firstly, bold of you to assume re a novel whose protagonist is nicknamed Harry Potter that the author was not deliberately writing YA, or rather took as project to “elevate” the kind of framing and narration expected of YA (however that worked out for her); and secondly, who these days reads Great Expectations or Oliver Twist not as YA? There’s an ambition, too, a striving after Great American Novel-ness – post-terrorism New York, post-crash Las Vegas (the Vegas part of the book seems to take place in the same development as the Vegas part of Twin Peaks S3), prescription opioids and global art crime – with which the YA mouthfeel is not incompatible and to which it might be essential. In that I suspect Tartt was deliberately writing a novel about the ‘00-10s that could be assigned school reading in 2075, the way The Great Gatsby is now a synedoche for the 1920s. You know, her book has its faults but is it better than The Catcher In the Rye? Bitch, it might be! I could have done with a Boris in TCITR, or even an Andy. That high school class of ‘75 is the audience Tartt cares about, the one that just might make her immortal in a way the New York Review of Books can never. It’s a long game and she might not win it, but kudos to her for playing – I don’t know that many others are.

(Leftover thoughts: I identified with the dead mom, a really excellent YA dead mom as they go. I don’t want my son to grow up to do art crime and feel unloved :( so it behooves me not to be blown to smithereens for ducking into the Met on a whim, although it would be on brand. The upcoming movie strikes me as cannily cast – catch them going after the Nicole Kidman audience and the Ansel Elgort audience and the Finn Wolfhard audience, really hitting those quadrants – and like Atonement, I think has a chance of improving on the book, if it sticks its landing. Give it to me, Roger Deakins!)

[wellntruly]

minimoonstar replied to your post “Camp: Notes on Fashion, or: The Met Gala Goes Full Galaxy Brain”

M…Maybe Ezra Miller also wanted to go as a seraphim to the Catholicism one and was talked down due to it being too camp

Oh there were a FAIR amount of looks this year that felt like they were the camp rejects of previous years, and Ezra Miller was definitely one of them

Actually speaking of Camp Catholicism, maybe the number one realization I had on Met Gala Boxing Day, kicked off by a comment from @memory-for-trifles, is that we’ve now had two years in a row where Jude Law could have just straight up come as the Young Pope and it would have been note-perfect

[imathers]

minimoonstar replied to your post: princessnijireiki: like, y'all, if it’s a...

There’s no win - they WANT you to take your kids out of public school and homeschool them, so they can stop funding the system

Absolutely! I almost added something about the fact that, although my straight-white-male-ness and place that I live contribute to this a lot, I had a generally really good experience in public school (not that our school was flawless, there was definitely room for improvement) and I wish everyone could have that, but after misphrasing it a few times decided to just let the post stand by itself. There’s some hideous stuff going on in public schooling, maybe more in the states than here but I’m sure here too, but I don’t want people to have to rely on private schooling or home schooling — I want there to be a good public education system! Certainly not one where the teachers have guns or there are armed guards, and not one that’s more interested in production capitalism-friendly conformity than helping people improve their lives, either.

[posledniyshans]

ten characters, ten fandoms, ten tags

tagged by @romanroydinnerparty :)))

1. rustin cohle (true detective)

2. kendall roy (succession)

3. dolores abernathy (westworld)

4. laura palmer (twin peaks universe)

5. elliot alderson (& darlene) (mr. robot)

6. jesse pinkman (breaking bad)

7. camina drummer (the expanse)

8. dr nicholas rush (stargate universe)

9. will graham (hannibal)

10. cosima niehaus (orphan black)

Tagging @minimoonstar @kenology @kendallspatricide @knstewys @myplasticadversary @cauldronofmorning @bpdkendallroy @concisely-confused @corrosivewillsurreal @hysteriashiv @cinemapphic @septembriseur

[lizardkingeliot]

minimoonstar replied to your post: I guess some GBT men are just bothered by the way...

The thing that drives me nuts about this particular one is that Nickie’s survey literally says that 20% of Hannibal fic writers self-identify as heterosexual. Even if all of that 20% were cis women, it still means that 80% of ficcers are NOT “cishet”

Yeah same. And that was mostly what spurred my original, exhausted post because how 80% queer = “cishet girls” is honestly baffling and clearly the person who started that nonsense was projecting with a big ole side of misogyny and I am just Tired.

minimoonstar replied to your post “I guess some GBT men are just bothered by the way that many cishet...”

I'm so much more interested in discussing how we've evidently achieved the bi/pan wonderland we all deserve lol

ALSO SAME. It is honestly amazing and I’m so proud. <3

[foyernormanchapel]

re: “it is also proof that style, that prose itself, can control morality.”

minimoonstar replied to your photo ““ Martin Amis, “Vladimir Nabokov and the Problem from Hell”

I think so; but “style” and “writer’s ability to hold and convey complex and nuanced ideas, including ethical ones” have a lot of Venn overlap. Ursula K Leguin wrote that she was cautious about writing essays bc she was used to going where fiction took her and that toolset applied to non-fiction could lead to a text that convincingly made arguments she didn’t want to make. If I think of e.g. fandom antis a lot of them are at an age where I myself had no experienced discernment re literary style.

(2/2) So limited ability to parse “this text makes me feel bad bc Problematic” vs “this text makes me feel bad bc the writer *wants* me to feel bad” vs “the writer wants me to feel good about a bad thing *and* be troubled by my own response” (a la Nabokov). Visual art is another dynamic, but I definitely think really good, mature fic writers don’t get called out for the content of their stories in isolation (as opposed to what they might post on social media, say).

gonna selfishly reblog this for me to keep forever cause it’s so good THANK YOU THANK YOU. that venn overlap definitely exists, and im curious whether there are any works in literary theory? literary criticism? aesthetics?? philosophy??? that deal with why and how that venn overlap exists... so if anyone has an idea where to look pls let me know!

+ just thinking to myself, i’ve recently come to watch some booktubers (ppl who  talk about books on youtube) bc listening to people rant about YA novels i’ll never read is super entertaining, and turns out a lot of these are comically bad. like think fifty shades in terms of both literary quality + and bad bdsm/dating/relationship messaging. like straightup an idiot oaf treating a girl horribly and the book saying that it’s lurve. and i thought if say 80% of a person’s literary history consists of YA novels like this, i could understand why they would eventually develop an anti mentality; read a lot of trashy books wt trashy messaging and that’s what you come to think works of fiction/authors in general are out to ‘do to you.’ i’m not saying that the current younger generation is reading more YA than previous generations, that is in no way a reasonable conjecture bc YA has been around forever, and even if they are reading more YA, that doesnt mean that their literary discernment would be any lacking compared to those who read more traditional lit..

but i couldn’t help but notice, a lot of YA novels exist in the venn overlap of bad style and bad ‘morality’, and a lot of YA readers (at least by looking at booktube) seem to come to develop a ‘depiction of abuse in fiction that is not outright condemnatory is unacceptable’ kind of stance (v reasonably & understandably) and im wondering whether that would have any effect on ppl developing anti mentality within fandom spaces

so yeah... just thinking aloud trying to understand where the anti trend is coming from but it could’ve been there since the 80s and im just noticing it now and being completely off the mark XD