Oh And

I got told today that a thing I thought was settled isn't settled.

AND

I have almost no time to settle it.

AND

I can't call anyone about it until TUESDAY.

Fuck this year. 
FUCK 2022.
FUCK IT WITH A JAGGED FORK.

Pod Recs

If you've been thinking about dipping your toes into listening to horror or SciFi podcasts and aren't sure where to start, these are some recommendations. 

The DECA Tapes: Hard SciFi/dystopian future/completed. 

We follow the crew of a slow ship traveling through space to a mining colony. Along the way, we find out some pretty nasty secrets.

DECA Tapes only has 8 episodes, so if you're not sure if you're ready to commit to something for several seasons, this is a good place to start.

The Magnus Archives: Horror/modern day/completed. 

We follow a prim and disgruntled archivist as he tries to organize boxes and boxes full of statements people have given about supernatural events. Things get really complicated as the dark secrets of the universe are revealed. 

TMA is probably one of the better-known podcasts of this kind. You've probably seen tons of memes over it and not even realized it. It's legit amazing.

Old Gods of Appalachia: horror anthology/points of American history/ongoing. 

This is a collection of stories about the people, places, and events in the Appalachia region of the US, a mountain range that is older than bones. It has bargaining tricksters, magical grannies, and monsters rooted deep in the rocks. 

If you love listening to people tell you stories, this is a good podcast for you. If you love cosmic horror stuff (Lovecraft or Machen), you will like this a lot.

The Silt Verses: magical reality horror/alt modern era/ongoing.

This podcast.  THIS PODCAST. This podcast is about a place where gods can be born via intention and belief. And then they want to feed. Corporations and governments are trying to control this, but they really can't. 

This podcast is the best thing I listened to last year. The two seasons they have out are enthralling with some of the most mesmerizing voice actors around. It's SO good.

All of these podcasts have unique storytelling, great world-building, and expansive mythologies (even if one of those mythologies is based on comics). They will give you hours of entertainment and a lot of stuff to think about.

What a Dame

I just finished touching up my nails and thought about how much I, personally, owe to Vivienne Westwood. So many things that I love to the core of my being, so many things that influence and inspire me, and so many things that have, at one point or another kept me alive, were directly or indirectly influenced by this woman. 

She died today and I've watched people I adore pouring out messages of gratitude to her, thanking her for being the foundation of the modern alt-fashion movement. How many people are selling their creations today because Westwood had the courage to open up a shop and call it Sex? How many people found the courage to be their true selves because Westwood showed us how sometimes the best thing to do was to brazenly and beautifully be the freak everyone accused you of being?

I painted my nails and thought about her. The goth in me demanded they be black. The punk in me demanded that I not clean the edges. A black splattered mess on my fingers, sloppy and messy and so very true to who I am. 

Thank you, Vivienne Westwood for daring to let your creations and ideas and questions and demands be seen, be sold, and become art. Thank you for everything.

Answers

There were some questions I needed to be answered before I started my plan. Today I got those answers and I feel optimistic about things. The van's battery is working. My windows will roll down. Looks like the last round of car repair worked. 

It's been a week since Tinkerbell passed. I still think I see her out of the corner of my eye. I still anticipate her weight on my shoulder. The house is lonely without her.

Last Week of the Year

The year is quickly winding down. The holidays are over and things will begin again. Given that 2022 was pretty awful, I would love to say I'm ready for it to begone. The problem is, I've reason to believe this next year will be worse, so, as always, I'm a little bit nervous about it.

What do I want out of the new year? I want my plan to work. I have a plan. I'm not ready to talk about it, but I have one. I want it to work. I want us to be safe. I want us to have good days and better days. I want us to accomplish the rather meager household goals we have. 

I think most of all I just want to live life without trepidation for a while. Things have gotten so scary. We deserve better than scary. I want things to be peaceful and secure and decent. 

Things have been scary for a while now. They need to calm down and let us rest. We, all of us, need rest and restoration. This is all just being too much.

A Good Holiday

My birthday was great! I stayed at home. Friends came to visit me. It was lowkey and wonderful. 

Christmas was also very good. We mostly just talked. We had a very good holiday dinner. It was nice.

There are two factors in all of this that caused issues. The first is that it is SO cold. It was better today, but in the days before, it was so very, very cold. 

The other issue, of course, is Tinkerbell. I miss her so much. It's difficult to adjust to her not being on my shoulder or sitting on my table. It's difficult to eat or drink something and not have her begging for it. I miss her energy. 

I miss her companionship. I miss the constant disagreement we had about where she should be sitting or how she should be digging her claws into me or why she has to block my view of my computer screen. I miss all of her quirks and plans and demands. She was so important to me and it hurts that she's gone. 

SO Cold

It got down to basically 1° last night and WOW it was cold. It was cold this morning too, but it got warmer. I think we hit a balmy 14° and that made such a difference.

BY THE WAY, I just got unlazy enough to Google how to make degree symbols. And now I will do it all the time. You do it by pressing down the Alt key and then typing 0176 on your numeric keyboard. 

Also I'm turning 49 tomorrow. 

Snow Day

Snow Days always sound so much better when you're a kid. 

Anyway, it snowed. We knew there would still be snow on the ground tomorrow so we planned on shopping today. Honestly, we should have gone yesterday, but with the Tink situation, that probably would have been impossible. 

I was so stressed about all of it that even though I DID get to keep my mailbox on the porch at least for another year, I just didn't care.

I mean, I should care. I should have been happy and victorious about it given all the humiliation and annoyance I had to go to to make that happen. And I DO care now that it's later in the day. 

Anyway, tomorrow is supposed to be horribly cold. Next week is supposed to be in the 60s. I'm sure my body will adjust to that just SO well. 

My Angel Tink

Tink has passed. She took her last breath while I was holding her. She knew she was safe and warmed and loved. 

I'm not going to process this for a while. She was very very old, but it still feels wrong that she's gone now. It feels wrong that all of them are gone.

JT and I have lived together for over 20 years. In that time, we sheltered many cats and grieved together when they left us.

Julian
Alice
Salem
Rhiannon
Rowan
Tink

Now, all we have is Millie. 

Millie and a house full of ghost cats.

Still With Us

Tinkerbelle is still with us, though it seems that it's just a matter of time. She's not in pain or scared or anything like that. She's just slowing down. 

We're keeping vigil.

I'm very tired of 2022 taking things from me.

Tink

Tinkerbell isn't doing well. At all. She's not eating much. She's only drinking a little. She's staying on me most of the time, even during the night.

We had The Talk today. We decided that she doesn't seem to be in pain and she clearly still has her own mind and will, so for now, we'll just keep watch over her and see if this is the path to her ending things on her own terms or if she just feels kinda bad because of the weather shift. 

I love this cat. It really sucks that cats don't live as long as humans. 

And Done

Holiday stuff with my family is over. I got some nice things. Most importantly, I got my pillows.

OH! A surprise gift. My brother had my mom's copy of JRRT's Unfinished Tales. It's super old and very awesome. I love it so much and I'm glad it's mine now.

Everyone liked the gifts I got them. So yay.

Holidaze

For the last several days the cat has been on my lap in such a way that I couldn't make blog posts. Don't make me try to explain.

All my gifts are wrapped. My roommate did the wrapping, which is why they look decent. Thank you to him. Tomorrow's shindig is still SO up in the air. My sister-in-law doesn't know when her play will be over now. I'm wondering if I shouldn't drive myself. Oh. And we have no idea what we're eating. Sigh.

Anyway, by this time tomorrow night, all of it will be over.

End of the Year Q&A

 Song of the year? Anoana Heilung It's one of those songs that reset your soul.

Album of the year? All Nerve The Breeders This album actually came out in 2018, but I only found it this year. It's the first album in a while that I've listened to all the way through, many times, and really thought about a lot.

Favorite musical artist / group you started listening to this year. alyona alyona, a Ukranian artist who raps fiercely and sings like a damned angel. 

Movie of the year? I think the one I enjoyed the most was the new Hellraiser. I know a lot of people were against it because of the gender switch, but I usually find genderswaps interesting and I did in this case as well. Better yet, the movie had a clear plot, which is rare in Hellraiser movies. 

TV show of the year? House of the Dragon. Great performances, great costuming. I love that we're learning more about the culture of dragon riders. The showrunners made some odd choices in how they structured the timeline, but I'm applying my 'all adaptations are alternative universes' philosophy and just letting it ride. 

Having said that, the content I enjoyed the most this year was podcasts.  I listened to the totality of The Magnus Archives. I caught up with Old Gods of Appalachia and The Silt Verses. I started The Black Tapes and Hello from the Hallowoods. All this is surpassed anything else media-wise.

Episode of tv or webisode that defined the year for you? It's from Old Gods of Appalachia and involved The Railroad Man and Jack trading barbs over who owed who what now. I'm always here for well-done trickster content. 

Favorite actor of the year? Méabh de Brún, who plays Sister Carpenter in The Silt Verses. If this list had a bit for Best Character Arc it would be Sister's Carpenter's over the first two seasons of the podcast. There is a moment when she accepts a certain something about herself that gave me the chills harder than anything else has in a long while. 

Best month for you this year? August, weirdly. It was hot but nothing screwed up. Basically, every other month was a stressful mess.

Something that made you cry this year? Okay a lot of stuff, but I want to go with one of the uplifting things and say that commercial where the guy makes his grandmother's recipe for the holiday meal and her ghost is watching him. 

Something you want to do again next year? Listen to podcasts. Create stuff.

And in relating back to the last question, just to put it out there, I would like to shed more tears this year over well-written fiction than over bullshit going wrong in the real world. Enough of that. Give us a year of peace and quiet. Give us a year to recover and be okay again. 

Favorite book you read this year? Blindsight by Peter Watts. I usually don't go for hard sci-fi, but this had vampires so I couldn't help myself. It ended up having the kind of nihilistic vision of the future that I assume will probably happen and questioning everything we value about ourselves. 

What’s something you learned this year? I really learned a lot about writing and writing techniques. They've changed a lot over the last decade and I think implementing the newer style has made my writing stronger. 

If you could send a message to yourself back on the first day of the year, what would it be? Shockingly, you will still be writing at the end of the year.

Did you keep any New Year’s Resolutions? I did, actually. My resolution was to spend the year writing fan fiction and I did. I am very proud of myself for that. I plan on having at least one more fic out before the year ends. 

The New Do

..........okay.

So the intentional part of my new hairstyle is that I dyed it black. It's a good black with a blue base and seems to have covered my gray nicely. And it smells good.

The UNintentional part of my new hairstyle is that.......

Okay.

Look.

So I got a set of clip-in bangs. I've not really figured out how to style it yet, but, the thing is.....well.

Sigh.

Okay. It needed to be trimmed. And I trimmed on it while it was on my head.

And I thought all of my hair was out of the way. I purposefully made sure all of my hair was out of the way. 

Hair moves though. Funny that.

I now have some really short, very blunt, need-to-be-fixed pixie bangs. Not on the wig. On my own head. 

Yeah.

So that's the new do. 

Yay?

And a Trickster Goes Down

In the world of The Silt Verses, gods must feed and they must be fed. That second part is always the kicker. Sacrifices have to be made and the humans have to decide which of their own they're going to send to the gods. 

This post contains lots of spoilers for The Silt Verses so only continue if you like to be spoiled. 

"And this is how you make it worse."

We don't meet Dennis in the first season, but his presence is felt. His daughter Paige, our third central character in the story, addresses him during her first episode. She is angry at how the life she has built for herself compromises her morals for the seduction of comfort, something she assumes her con artist father wouldn't view as a problem. 

She talks about how he only calls when he wants something (almost always money) and never really engages with her in a meaningful way. When she needs him to talk to her, he won't pick up the phone.

Through various other stories from Paige's POV, we learn that he used to use her in his cons. He would use anyone else he could as well, and often preyed on the bloated level of faith found within their world and certainly within his marks. It's quite clear that while Dennis is aware that the gods exist, it means little to him. In a world full of faith, he has none. 

How does he get away with this? Well, most of the time anyway? 

It has to do with the nature of Tricksters. Dennis is a con artist with many children and many lovers and a million stories to spin for those around him. He swindles and steals and beguiles. For this, they give him money. It is a small sacrifice on their part, but enough of one to allow him to move outside of the normal roads allowed. The gods don't bother him because they recognize something of themselves in him.

Even though Paige would hate to admit this, she operates in the same way. Paige is smart and very good at tricking people. She makes friends with the people who kidnap her and tricks a whole squadron of police just long enough that her friends can escape their clutches. When everything is said and done, she ends the first season as a cultural hero. 

In the first season, neither of them actively worships a god, but they certainly understand how to wield divine energy to their benefit.

"Who amongst us should be denied a second chance?"

In the second season, Paige decides she will create a god capable of saving everyone from the rest of them. She toys with various ideas, finally deciding on one that ends up making her a prophet.

She takes refuge in her father's home during this time. She doesn't expect him to be there, but he is. As she works on the creation of her god, Dennis criticizes and questions, and argues with all of it. 

And yet, he still participates in every facet of the divine creation. He does every part of the rituals and even helps Paige to find her first worshipper. Even though he has been painted as a grifter who will grift even his own child, he supports said child during this very vital point in her life.

Why?

I think it's because the biggest trick at play is that he's let her think he doesn't love her. He does though. Even though he thinks this is all a very bad idea, he still goes through with it because he has faith in her and what she's capable of. 

All the while, he continues to amplify his Trickster energy. Every interaction with anyone else is a swindle, even to the point of trying to con the person who helped them up to the very last second he can. 

This culminates as this story arc ends for the season. The police are after Paige and Dennis pretends to sell her out, leading the authorities to his house so she can be apprehended. 

The audience doesn't exactly know what is happening at the moment. We know that he arrived back home and told Paige and her friend that the cops were coming. This was right after Paige had stated he would probably sell them out eventually. 

Our next scene has him leading the cops to the basement where he claims he has them hidden. It looks as if Paige's predictions are coming true and he's going to turn them in to save himself.

Instead, Dennis is tricking the cops. And Paige, honestly. For all he argued with her about the god she created, in his last act, he summons that god and sacrifices himself to it, basically killing all of the authorities around him as well. 

This allows Paige to get out of the country safely, but it does something else as well. As her father is dying, Paige falls into a coma, more than likely because of all the power her god now has. All of her father's trickster energy is now part of her religion.

And it should be noted that the god Paige created is a trickster as well, or at least, allows those about to be sacrificed to be tricksters. The god is a god of martyrs. If called upon, it will arrive when someone is being sacrificed to another god and consume that sacrifice before they can. It doesn't save the person who is about to die, but it starves the diety they were intended for and gives them a small measure of power within the situation. 

The sacrifice itself becomes a trick, which is probably something that amused Dennis to no end. He died proud of his kid. He died for his kid. These are two things she never thought the was capable of, which is another trick as well.  

Magic Christmas

 I don't have like a lot of supergreat memories of childhood and the holidays, but when I was 13, I was in this rare place of peace where my mother was between husbands. 

She was in college. My brother and I were doing well in school, and things were, for once, looking up. 

When Christmas break started, she bought a little tree. Think Charlie Brown tree, but maybe with a little more fullness. She brought it home and strung it with lights. 

We made little paper ornaments for it. I don't think it would have held anything heavier than that and we had no idea where the ornaments we used to have had ended up in the series of moves and divorces and flights from bad situations.

Once the tree was decorated, it was nice and festive. Mom decided to take it a step further and strung lights over the whole living room. Suddenly we went from festive to magical.

Most of that winter break was spent with the three of us just hanging in the living room with all the lights off except for the holiday ones. We talked more than we had in a long time. Sometimes it was serious, sometimes just goofy stuff. 

Mom always referred to the year she was 32 as the year of the Magic Christmas. She said she never remembered being happier. As far as my childhood years are concerned, I agree. 

Avatars

I got to finally do my avatar on Facebook. It's far more flattering than it should be, but whatever.  They don't allow them to be fat enough. It isn't like I don't edit my pictures anyway.

Anyway, it was fun. I enjoyed it a lot. I'm glad I finally did it.

And Yet Another Hit

My car window hasn't been interested in rolling down in a while. Now when I roll it down, it doesn't want to roll up either. That's more dangerous. 

So I made an appointment to get it fixed and have my oil changed. That will happen next Friday. I'm really hoping this is an easy fix and the car doesn't screw up in other, special ways and that they don't try to gaslight me about nothing being wrong.

Look. I have PLANS for that week before Christmas. I have things I need to do. I need everything to function and be okay. 

I broke down a little day because this has been a year full of things just not working for me. Apps that work for everyone else just don't work for me. My computer broke. My phone broke. A game I wanted to play just to soothe my brain wouldn't work. The van won't run.  They can't seem to fix it. Everything is just....why can't it work? Please, just let some of it work.

Ugghh. Anyway. *shakes head*

Ugh

I was having a good day until someone posted something about the dean of a private school. The title of the article was clickbait and the article as a whole was pretty full of red flags. The whole thing was very much aligned with this current hellish queer panic thing we're having to endure. 

I hope the poor dean of this school doesn't get shot. I hope his school isn't terrorized.

Anyway, it really brought me down. 

Also the cats are really on my nerves. They keep knocking everything down and clawing me.

Plans and Plans

The family tossed out some tentative dates for when we would have our holiday party thing. I liked one more than the other two and did my best to subtly push for it. I hope it works. 

I bought a game I've not played in years today. It's SO GOOD to have it again. So wonderful. Seriously. Much thanks to my roommate for locating it.

The Conclusion of Krampusgate

 

• My hometown is about 11,000 people.

• It's in the Bible Belt and most in my town reflect this.

• Every year, we have a Christmas parade.

• This year, one of the businesses decided to feature Krampus.

• Chaos.

• Seriously, within hours of people finding out about this, there were chain texts going around, proclaiming that someone was going to be THE DEVIL at the parade.

• The business's Facebook page had over 800 comments.

• Lots of stuff about the Devil.

• Lots of comments about how people should learn to use Google.

• One woman commented that she suspected we were the town that Footloose was based on.

• Of course, because of course, some people started making threats against the business.

• And against the people who work there.

• And against Krampus.

• And probably against the Devil, but I'm not sure about that.

• The mayor got involved.

• On Facebook.

• Sigh.

• He said that he would ask them to not do this thing, but he couldn't stop them.

• He assured everyone that the parade was about CHRISTmas and not the Devil.

• Then he used Google and realized what Krampus was.

• His post has been deleted.

• People had had enough.

• Songs were made up.

• “They're bringing Krampus back. And all the fundies don't know how to act.”

• One of my friends invented a minion of Krampus that he named after our home town.

• There is now a backstory and art.

• We plan on making it a holiday.

• When the parade happened, no one did anything violent.

• Krampus was there. Most people just took pictures with him.

• Someone commented that if you ignored the robe and the horns, he basically just looks like any other old dude in our town.

Quiet Saturday

After the week we had, we needed things to be quiet for a bit. Last night the washer screwed up and we had to have someone come fix it. This involved us scrambling to get soaking wet clothes out of it. That was annoying. 

Anyway, it's fixed. I really hope the rest of December is quiet. We need that. This year has been A LOT. I mean, August was okay, but that says a lot doesn't it, given that August is hot as hell. 

Local Evil

It seems my ignorant little town has decided to freak out about the Krampus. A local business wanted to do a Krampus display and instead of using Google to figure out what this means, everyone freaked out because they think it was the Devil.

Bwahahahhahahhhhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. HA!

So people started freaking out and sending text messages and calling the mayor and throwing fits about it. Wow. Way to disrespect people's traditions.