#warsaw was fantastic

[theraggedygirl11]

Trending on 4th place 👀

Those new outfits really made us going crazy

Laughing at the fact that only Kris is trending

[idkhowupdates]

idkhow: Arrived in Warsaw. All fires both literal and figurative were extinguished. Then Warsaw lit a fire of their own! An amazing start to what will surely be a fantastic run of shows in Europe!

-📸 @jacobspreng & @anbursztynphotography

[polish-art-tournament]

paintings* round 1 poll 19

Illustration for St. Nicholas by Mary Mapes Dodge by Władysław T. Benda, c. 1904:

[no propaganda has been submitted]

Insanalia by Bartosz Stępiński, 2024:

propaganda: Są w tej chwili wystawione w Muzeum Sztuki Fantastycznej w Warszawie i polecam zobaczyć na żywo jak ktoś ma okazję, bo te detale i tekstura are wonderful [currently it is on display in the Museum of Fantastical Art in Warsaw and I recommend going to see it live if you have the chance, because the details and the texture are wonderful]

[vestaignis]

Мрачно-фантастические работы выдающегося польского художника Здзислава Бексиньского. (Zdzisław Beksiński)

Darkly fantastic works by the outstanding Polish artist Zdzislaw Beksinski.

Очарование мрачных картин польского художника второй половины ХХ века Здзислава Бексиньского представляет собой нетипичный вариант сюрреализма с ярко выраженной апокалиптичной тематикой. Бексиньский стал известен своим уникальным и мрачно-фантастическим стилем. Его картины в основном созданы с использованием масляных красок на оргалитовых панелях, которые он подготавливал сам. Произведения Бексиньского, насыщенные темными тонами и пугающими образами, привлекают внимание зрителей своей глубиной и оригинальностью.

В работах Бексиньского часто присутствуют непонятные и загадочные персонажи, создающие атмосферу невероятного и потустороннего. Абстракция и реализм переплетаются в его работах, придавая им особый очарование и таинственность. Художник исследовал темы смерти, разрушения и одиночества, передавая эти эмоции через каждый штрих кисти. Бексиньский умело сочетал мрачность с красотой, создавая удивительные образы, которые заставляют нас задуматься о смысле жизни и ее бренности. Однажды он сказал: «Важно то, что появляется в вашей душе, а не то, что видят ваши глаза».

Здзислав Бексиньский получил известность в Западной Европе, Японии и США. Он говорил, что он творит в одной из двух манер: барочной и готической. В первой преобладало содержание, а во второй – форма.Во время своего "фантастическ��го" периода Бексиньский говорил: «Я хотел бы рисовать в такой манере, словно это сфотографированные сны».

Сам Бексиньский погиб в собственной варшавской квартире, где его обнаружили с семнадцатью колотыми ранами в феврале 2005 года. Виновным признали 19-летнего сына коменданта дома, в котором жил художник. Причиной нападения стал отказ Бексиньского дать денег в долг. Художник остается одним из самых влиятельных и инновационных представителей современного искусства, продолжая вдохновлять новое поколение художников своим неповторимым стилем и философией.

The charm of the dark paintings of the Polish artist of the second half of the twentieth century, Zdzislaw Beksinski, represents an atypical version of surrealism with a pronounced apocalyptic theme. Beksinski became known for his unique and darkly fantastic style. His paintings are mainly created using oil paints on hardboard panels, which he prepared himself. Beksiński's works, rich in dark tones and frightening images, attract the attention of viewers with their depth and originality.

Beksinski's works often feature incomprehensible and mysterious characters, creating an atmosphere of the incredible and otherworldly. Abstraction and realism are intertwined in his works, giving them a special charm and mystery. The artist explored themes of death, destruction and loneliness, conveying these emotions through every stroke of the brush. Beksinski skillfully combined darkness with beauty, creating amazing images that make us think about the meaning of life and its frailty. He once said: “It is what appears in your soul that matters, not what your eyes see.”

Zdzisław Beksiński gained fame in Western Europe, Japan and the USA. He said that he creates in one of two styles: baroque and gothic. In the first, content predominated, and in the second, form. During his “fantastic” period, Beksiński said: “I would like to paint in such a manner as if they were photographed dreams.”

Beksinski himself died in his Warsaw apartment, where he was found with seventeen stab wounds in February 2005. The 19-year-old son of the commandant of the house where the artist lived was found guilty. The reason for the attack was Beksinski's refusal to lend money. The artist remains one of the most influential and innovative representatives of contemporary art, continuing to inspire a new generation of artists with his unique style and philosophy.

Источник:/cameralabs.org/9929-polskij-khudozhnik-zdzislav-beksinskij, /pikuli.top/36534-zdzislav-beksinskij.html, artchive.ru/artists/11292~Zdzislav_Beksin'skij, /bigpicture.ru/uzhasayushhie-kartiny-polskogo-xudozhnika-ubitogo-pomeshhavshimisya-podrostkam/, /reactor.cc/post/1869160

[wulka303]

As a Polish person I LOVE Iceman being Polish or at least having some Polish family members so I will share with you 100% accurate headcanons I've created (some additional Icemav too)

● When something goes wrong or Ice is mad he will curse in Polish

● Ice mastered the art of making pierogi and bigos

● In his household the trash can is ALWAYS under the sink and he keeps cleaning cloth on the oven handle - don't ask why it's the rules

● One day the whole 86' class came over and Maverick got confused because he couldn't find the trash can

● Ice is more likely to speak Polish when drunk or sleep talking

● Ice is very difficult to get drunk

● Ice is most likely a Catholic so when he was younger he got really torn apart after realizing he was gay and will go to hell

● Later after meeting Maverick he knew it was a very good reason to go to hell

● For some reason Ice loves disco polo but will never admit it - 86' class doesn't even know the meaning behind all of the songs but will vibe nonetheless

● On Ice and Maverick's wedding reception there was a disco polo band and when Ice got absolutely hammered he sang along and danced - Slider got it all recorded and it's a fantastic blackmail material

● Ice visited Poland a few times - few during communist times and few after

● Ice hates Warsaw and loves Kraków

● When he took Maverick to Poland he lost him for a while and later found his husband befriending babcia

● As a Polish person Ice is very hospitable so he didn't mind Dagger Squad at his home all the time

● Ice learned the lyrics to Biały węgorz aka. The polish cow song

[albiclalepsza]

Just remembered that there is a Polish version of the Metro universe and it's really funny because like, if you have ever heard anything about the original series you know that it takes place in the Moscow metro, which is gigantic and pretty fucking complicated

Every time I'm rereading these books and the name of the station pops up I search for it on the map to place it somewhere and I can never remember which stations are supposed to be next to each other, even after a dozen readthroughs. It's a fantastic, complex setting which gives the author so many opportunities to put cool shit in this world.

Now, there is a book series in Poland where the concept is the same as in Glukhovsky's books, but it takes place in the Warsaw metro. And the contrast between the two is so funny.

It's so tinyyyy. I loved these books as a kid and I read them years before the original series, but compared to the Moscow metro this is just like a younger sibling copying the older one in an adorable way

[canmom]

games games'd recently

Solar Ash: the second game by the people who made Hyper Light Drifter. My feelings about it largely align with the reviews: gorgeous aesthetic if not quite as personally a vibe as HLD, the skating flows really nicely, the 'track down all the collectable things' structure was a little frustrating at times but I got used to it, the Shadow of the Colossus-like boss battles were a lot of fun when they worked.

It's a game about a decaying world full of people trapped in cycles of facing their last, worst moments. Most of the people you meet are some kind of animal people - cat people, fungus people, snail space imperialists - and the tone varies between darkly comedic and Meditating Severely On Death. The tone often swings a little pulpy.

So, ultimately - spoilers! - it turns out to be a time loop (something they pretty heavily foreshadow). Your player character Rei is one half of a split being who, after failing to save her world, has been resetting time and time again. The character 'Echo' who you encounter after every boss fight, with a white theme in contrast to your character's black motifs, is the other half of you - the half that isn't convinced to keep trying over and over again to save your planet and is pretty mad at Rei for prolonging this whole miserable existence.

In the true ending finale sequence, Rei finally concedes and turns into a big monster, and you play as Echo (who conveniently controls the exact same as Rei) to pull out the big spikes impaling her, metaphorically allowing her to reconcile with you and allow the world to move on with the other characters .

So like, big old trauma flashback metaphor I guess? The character's inner world is reflected in a big expansive scifi.

The thing that intrigues me most about this game is the tech art. For example, take the cyan goop you surf along in various levels. It looks like it's made of metaballs, and I kind of wonder if they are doing some clever stuff with meshing, or if they're rendering with signed distance fields, or what... in any case, it leads to some very cool level design where you can skate over all surfaces of the blobby space matter, and there is no consistent 'down' direction.

I went looking for how they did this and I ended up finding a half-hour talk from the lead technical artist, which doesn't really address the cyan goop, but does talk about integrating Houdini procedural simulations into the game using Unreal...

He talks mostly about the process of authoring the game's 'islands' (using a procedural editor tool that runs Houdini to generate the geometry), but does casually mention the clouds becoming 'really cool SDF clouds' in game, so I guess I called it! Really cool that that can run real time without being too expensive. I am definitely curious about how they handled raymarching so many metaballs (assuming they used raymarching, but that is the standard way to render SDFs).

It's kind of crazy that Heart Machine could go from a Game Maker game (even one with fantastic art direction) to a game as ambitious as this one. In practice though... running all over the bosses is cool but with the amount of camera hinting (necessary at the speed you're moving) it kind of feels like a series of QTEs, just figuring out where the next node is and trying to avoid jumping in the black goop, and if you screw up, you have to try again from the start. They're really cool sequences, but from a gameplay perspective, more like a rhythm game than anything.

This game didn't quite hit the same level of 'wow vibes' of HLD for me - I liked the atmosphere of HLD, the quiet and haunted world, the Nausicaa-like monsters. But I definitely enjoyed my time with it, and it's crazy inspiring on a tech art level.

The Thaumaturge: This is the latest game from 11 Bit Studios, of Frostpunk and This War of Mine fame. It's a fascinating concept: an RPG set in Warsaw at the turn of the 20th century, a world of boiling-over social tensions, in which you play essentially a wizard who summons invisible demons salutors to reveal secrets and manipulate people. Your father (also a wizard, you hated him) died mysteriously and now you're back at the family home to try to investigate.

I haven't finished this game yet (nowhere near, it's a big game), but I wanted to briefly comment!

In the first ten minutes of this game, you go to meet Rasputin. From that point I was already pretty much sold.

After sorting out some peasant-y business in what is essentially the tutorial area, you travel to Warsaw where the bulk of the game takes place, currently ruled by the Russian empire. Pretty much as soon as you get off the train, you run into Tsar Nicholas giving a speech, and get caught up in a tense standoff between the Russian cops and Polish workers. I ended up in prison lmao

This is the type of RPG that does have a combat system, and finds some... kinda awkward reasons to get Wiktor Szulski into fights now and again, but it's a pretty intriguing design oriented mostly around applying and exploiting status effects. But really, I'm here for the story, and the period setting. Although 11Bit are not a Polish studio, the game has the option of full voice acting in Polish, which is really sick - apparently they put some effort into giving it period language as well. And even though this is an occult story about wizard business, there's clearly a huge amount of love for the historical setting - there's a bunch of mini sidequests that just take you to look at landmarks and get a little bit of xp from it.

Wiktor is a fun protagonist to inhabit, and the game encourages you towards spicier dialogue options with its system of Flaws - essentially, each salutor is associated with a point of characterisation, such as pride, and if you feed that flaw by picking prideful dialogue options when they're offered, that will apparently make your salutor more powerful. It is certainly reminiscent of Disco Elysium's design with the thoughts as characters, but it's got enough of its own flavour to not feel derivative.

I will surely have much more to say about The Thaumaturge as I progress through it, but honestly, just wanted to shine a light on this game because it's fascinating. This kind of RPG doesn't come along often enough.

Neon White: Only just started on this one. It's exactly what everyone says: an addicting game designed to ease you into speedrunning. I have two friends on Steam who have played it and both of their times are very tight and several seconds faster than what I'm able to do lol.

Everyone also says the plot is a bit ehh and well... they're right. Strangely the tone reminded me most of all of the anime Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers: oddly casual, and despite the weebcore vibes, the character archetypes are more American - bubbly psycho girl, femme fatale, frat bro. It's very much aiming for humour, and generally it's not terrible, but the hit rate there is kinda mixed. I'm actually a bit surprised by it - given the aesthetic with the hannya masks everywhere, I was kinda expecting something way more chuuni, but it's quite laid back so far.

But none of that matters really because it's a speedrunning game, it's not about the story! The controls are tight as hell, the levels are elegantly designed to steer you towards picking up on shortcuts with a compelling learning curve, and restarting is incredibly easy. So far I've grabbed Ace medals on every level I've played, but there's a huge amount of room for improvement still. Definitely reminiscent of doing time trials in Mirror's Edge back in the day. Definitely gonna play this more.

[gagatkas]

Full-lenght feature for family audience, combining animation and live-action. The project in development since 2012, completed in 2024. Inspired by classic comic books from the 80′, created by Tadeusz Baranowski. The movie is produced by Human Film (formerly Human Ark) in coproduction with PFX, Telewizja Polska SA, dayhey, Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission.

Writer & Director: Wojtek Wawszczyk Art Director: Tomasz Lew Leśniak Production: Human Film Co-production: PFX, Telewizja Polska SA, dayhey, Mazovia Warsaw Film Commission

Our part in making the film Agata & Tomek Karelus: Concept art, key frames, surfacing, mattepainting 

It's been quite a ride! Almost a year of working on concept art, textures, and underpainting, and we were just a small part of a huge team of incredibly talented people who poured their hearts and souls into this film. We grew up reading Tadeusz Baranowski's comics. I never imagined that now, as parents of a child the same age as we were back then, we would have the opportunity to work on a project with the heroes of our childhood. I think it turned out fantastically! But none of this would have been possible without this amazing team. We're truly grateful!

[harrison-abbott]

Back in 2016, I self harmed quite severely and had to go to hospital. Thankfully, I survived, and I’m still here.

But following that crazy incident, my self esteem was at an all time low. I just felt so unachieved, and I doubted my credibility as a writer. What made it worse was that my elder brother got married, and he had all of these fantastic friends, and he was a successful musician – so I felt like a lesser sibling.

And my girlfriend at the time kept comparing me to him in a negative way, and not just him but my other siblings too. So all in all I was pretty mucked up in a psychological way.

The NHS assigned me to a therapist so I could speak about the self harm incident. And he was really fantastic – a very nice, engaging man. And he asked lots of questions that tucked in to the issue and he seemed to guess the dilemma without really knowing me. It helped to speak to him.

Then in the summer, I was in Poland and my then girlfriend said something that ruptured my self esteem all over again. I nearly jumped out of a window, ten storeys up in a Warsaw hotel. And, thank God I didn’t – as I wouldn’t have survived that fall.

Anyway, when I got back to Scotland, I tried to get in touch with the therapist again – because he had invited me to come back for a final meeting about various issues.

But the man had left the practise. He had moved on and worked somewhere else now.

I still really needed to speak to somebody, so I spoke with this chap on the phone, who I thought was a therapist as well. In a really desperate, frenzied mood, I went in and met this new man. And I splurged out all of my issues to him. As I was speaking, I realised that he wasn’t a therapist in a specialised sense: he was a regular GP. Not that he wasn’t a pleasant man as well – he was – but as I was relaying my problems in a manic manner, it was obvious he didn’t have the skills to help me out.

It was really embarrassing. And after I left, I just felt totally lost. Like nobody could help me. ‘I’m the only one who can help me out,’ I thought. So it was as if after all that had happened

I literally couldn’t even turn to the NHS for aid.

I needed to come up with a solution for the whole thing. What I wanted most of all was to become a published prose writer. So I started writing short fiction intensely. I reckoned, ‘I have to get some fiction published – there is no other route’. I wrote stories and sent them out in the latter half of 2016. And they were routinely rejected by the publishers. And each rejection was a further stab and did nothing to ease my issues.

But I just kept trying. And in 2017 I wrote a story based on a man who attacked me when I was in my teens. It was a fictional story, with the premise being his assault of me.

That was in January when I wrote it, when I was in Prague. And in March 2017 it was published. I’d done it. Somebody liked it enough to publish my fiction. I knew that writing was what was going to keep me alive. And, though life is often very hard, it’s worth living for the mini achievements you put the work into.

[polish-art-tournament]

paintings round 2 poll 10

tap to view full images

Insanalia by Bartosz Stępiński, 2024:

propaganda: Są w tej chwili wystawione w Muzeum Sztuki Fantastycznej w Warszawie i polecam zobaczyć na żywo jak ktoś ma okazję, bo te detale i tekstura are wonderful [currently it is on display in the Museum of Fantastical Art in Warsaw and I recommend going to see it live if you have the chance, because the details and the texture are wonderful]

Death and conflagration, central section of the triptych “Disaster” by Adam Chmielowski, c. 1870:

[no propaganda has been submitted]

[yukinojou]

1989: thought dump

I've heard about 1989 the musical, but it's playing in theatres far from Warsaw and I've been frankly busy this past year with funerals and health crises. Now I've finally seen a live proshot (whee, guess who recorded it too) and this is nowhere near a review, these are absolutely random thoughts:

first impression: this is so very Hamilton

second impression: damn, this is in dialogue with Hamilton at the same time it's in dialogue with Mickiewicz, five gallons of national mythos and three layers of recent history and hello LMM you could have done so much more with women

(third part of this thought was seeing Aleksander Kwaśniewski's entrance and losing my shit laughing because of COURSE he nicks his entrance from a shiny American musical because that's exactly his style)

more musical should have spooky a capella folk songs

This is stuff from my childhood and just before; I was watching with my mother and she says all the period details were spot on, especially the song about how everyone has the same stuff in their home because it's all there is in the shops.

(my family had some different stuff, but I had the advantage of three grandparents allowed to travel including one actually allowed to go west and the fourth one was a doctor who got art from her patients)

so so much dialogue with our recent history too and the Women's Strike and the sheer tangible anger of women who won't be putting up with this shit anymore

I'm sure I'm missing like half the hiphop references but this is so much a crew musical, no clear leads but each person getting their due, and the lyrics are fantastic and rich and I need to watch three more times and someone needs to put them up on whatever the Polish equivalent of Genius is just so I can read all the annotations

honestly the hiphop thing works because it's Polish hiphop with its poetry and wild swings and melancholy and anger, and because the events of 1980 to 1989 created the deprivation and shock that gave birth to Polish hiphop

it especially works in the Nobel prize scene where it's so very meta on the way men put words in women's mouths

the actors are just *chef's kiss* and the proshot really picked up on all the emoting, the Teatr TV crew really know their stuff

gods, the whole thing with the black market meat that thaws and leaves bloodstains on the hands of the woman who is dying and the shirt of the man left behind, and I remember that from childhood, the way black market butchered meat would just bleed everywhere

In conclusion, I suspect I feel the way Black theatre kids felt watching Hamilton for the first time, and I need this one on DVD.

[magpiefngrl]

fave cinematic fic moments

This is a brilliant fandom game by @mxlfoydraco. Many thanks to @kbrick for tagging me! <333 Read their fantastic selections here.

I seem to remember either whole fics (the vibe) or sex scenes lol. Setting is also something that sticks to my mind.

Drarry:

--the entirety of Bound Skerry by frayach

--Grimmauld Place in House Proud by astolat

--the first scene of Unhook the Stars by jad, which is also the first sex scene

--Draco dancing in the nightclub in Warsaw in with exactness grinds he all by thistle_verse

--everything in In The Dark by @bixgirl1

Other ships:

--the kiss in run all the lights by fahye (Damen/Laurent)

--the pool sex scene in coming on like a wave by TheDameJudiWench (wangxian) (and every single word I've read by this author)

--the entirety of Treading Water by @writcraft (prongsfoot)

--the first kiss/sex scene in the flowering garden in Hal-an-Tow by halsinator (Childermass/Segundus)

Tagging: @lqtraintracks @julcheninred @lettersbyelise @writcraft @o0o-chibaken-o0o and anyone else who wants to play and has the time and inclination &lt;3

[blueiscoool]

Beautiful Medieval Tiles Discovered in Poland

Archaeologists working in eastern Poland have unearthed several hundred fragments of tiles that once decorated the walls and floor of a late-medieval stronghold.

A team of archaeologists and historians from the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences made the discovery over the summer while excavating the remains of a wooden castle in Żelechów, which lies southeast of Warsaw. The castle was likely built in the mid-15th century, only to be abandoned at the beginning of the 16th century and then burnt down in a fire later that century.

Archaeologists have been on the site since 2017, and this year they removed burnt timbers and clay, which revealed hundreds of fragments that once belonged to a cocklestove, a type of heating device that would have warmed the building. They came in a wide range of colors, including green, yellow, white and blue, and were of a style similar to those found at Wawel Castle, the main royal castle of Polish kings.

“Among its remains we found numerous, beautifully decorated tiles with rich geometric, plant and animal patterns,” says Wojciech Bis from the Institute of Archeology and Ethnology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. “There were also images of fantastic animals, including griffin, human figures and coats of arms.”

In addition to tiles, the archaeologists found fragments of ceramic vessels. Among them were thin-walled table dishes designed for serving meals and kitchen utensils for the preparation of dishes. They included pots and pans on three legs. In addition, numerous post-consumption animal bones with traces of cutting and chopping were found, mainly from pigs and oxen. This is evidence of abundant feasts at the castle.

Coins were also discovered, including a silver penny minted during the reign of Wenceslaus IV (1378-1419).

[sztukadeliryczna]

Drawing inspired by Dariusz Zawadzki's painting "Biomechanical Head".

The work was made in pencil in sketchbooks just after seeing the artist's exhibition in Warsaw at the Museum of Fantastic Art

How do you like it?🖤🖤

[under-the-ladder]

I'll probably check Benidorm announcement tomorrow. Today I had a lovely trip around Warsaw. Went to the parliament and was absolutely amazed by it

Visited also the Neon Museum where the music video for The Ride was filmed. The neons were too close to see them properly imo but still it's fantastic they got rescued instead of left to rot

Anyways, here are some shots I took:

[signipotens]

1, 2, 4 for the ask game?

Ooh! Thank you for indulging me :​]

I realised after I reblogged the ask game that almost all of what I’ve read recently has been research for my new big Mormon alternate history/fanfic project, so I’ll give you a Mormon thing and a non-Mormon thing for each :​p

1. What’s something you read recently and enjoyed?

For Mormon stuff, most of the books I’ve been reading are things I’ve read before, but I recently bought Jared Farmer’s On Zion’s Mount: Mormons, Indians, and the American Landscape (Harvard UP, 2010) and it’s so good. As much a history of a lake and a mountain as it is a history of the people who have come to live there, and even more so a history of the way that Americans—Mormons, Indians, and Gentiles alike—have used and conceived of the lands that they have built their homes on, Farmer does a fantastic job of situating Mormon Zionism both in its American and its particular Mormon contexts, and of showcasing the ways that mythology, history, folklore, and everyday life have come crashing together as the Mormons have made Utah into their national homeland and the Timpanogos have been wrenched from theirs.

For non-Mormon stuff, I’ve recently finished reading The Book of Abraham by Marek Halter (completely unrelated to the Mormon thing of the same name). Though at times it can be a bit of a bit of a who’s who of famous Europeans and pogroms, and the portrayal of women is lacking throughout (charitably, this is drawing on a general theme in Jewish and European historical chronicles, which also sideline women), I think it’s worth reading for the form alone. Drawing on all manner of epistolary, journalistic, biblical, and aggadaic styles, Halter follows the lives of generations upon generations of one Jewish family (after about 1600, his own) as they live their lives in various locales across Europe and SWANA between the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 and the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943. Makes me want to read Carlo Ginzburg’s The Cheese and the Worms again, since I think that’s one of the few books that might have the same vibes. Also going to read the sequel here soon.

2. What’s something you read recently and disliked?

Despite being, in my opinion, one of the seminal moments in Mormon history, and despite it being extremely well-documented, the Exodus to Utah is surprisingly poorly covered in the academic literature. That Richard Bennett’s duology We’ll Find the Place: The Mormon Exodus, 1846–1848 (Deseret Book, 1997) and Mormons at the Missouri, 1846–1852: “And Should We Die” (University of Oklahoma Press, 1987) is the best we’ve got is honestly a bit more a condemnation of the state of current Mormon scholarship than it is praise of Bennett’s work. That’s not to say that they’re bad, and I like the ideas at play—the establishment of legitimacy in the post-Martyrdom Church, the role of Religion™ in defining how Mormons went about finding their Promised Land, the practical mechanics of funding and moving several thousand people across a country—but the narrative, sourcing, numerical analysis, and Bennett’s writing style are fairly weak, and his analysis is lacking a certain breadth and depth as I would prefer for what ought to be the seminal work on the subject. Must be read alongside at least Lawrence Coates’ “Refugees Meet: The Mormons and Indians in Iowa” (BYU Studies Quarterly 21, no. 4, 1981) and something like Carol Madsen’s Journey to Zion: Voices from the Mormon Trail (Deseret Book, 1997).

For general fiction, at the beginning of summer I read through the first couple books in the Expanse series, Leviathan Wakes, Caliban’s War, and Abaddon’s Gate, and while I think they’re decently good and recommendable, I also couldn’t really get into them, I guess? My disappointment with how the books treat Mormons can be found elsewhere and is kinda pertinent to this; otherwise I just didn’t really vibe with the setting and didn’t particularly like the authors’ treatment of future religion and politics, tho I did enjoy the characters well enough, especially Holden. Don’t know if I’ll continue into the next arc, but I probably won’t for the time being, unless someone wants to convince me :​p

4. What are your top 3 comfort reads?

Mostly stuff I loved in my childhood. I think my main go-to is Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth, but I also love Jules Verne, especially Voyage au centre de la terre and Tour du monde en 80 jours, both of which never fail to cheer me up. My third, weird answer is Winthrop Sargeant’s eminent translation of the Bhagavad Gita, both for the content of the story itself and especially for Sargeant’s extensive glosses (each line is given in Devanagari, IAST, a word-for-word translation, and a prose translation, with an exhaustive concordance on each page giving the roots, inflectional information, and translations for each word in that page’s stanza. very fun for linguistics brain :​] ).