jaggedwolf

The Portrait of a Lady | Anna Chronistic and the Scarab of Destiny | Mother of Souls

The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

Continuing my adventures in the classics where a woman makes very bad romantic choices. Alas, this time she goes so far as to marry the bad choice. I knew nothing about this book other than the title and its author until February of this year, when I came across a reference to “Isabel Archer sitting in her chair” in Researcher’s First Murder.

She sure sits in that chair, huh.

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Side note: Read a decent chunk of this while sitting in a park and a random fellow remarked “I finished that book two months ago, it’s very psychological” and I was like yeah, you’re not wrong.

Anna Chronistic and the Scarab of Destiny by Anakaret Wells

Time-travel novel that made me wonder if I’m a dummy or if the plot in the last third of the book was poorly explained. Of course, those are not mutually exclusive options.

Additionally, I think it rude to offer several intriguing times and locations and then spend the bulk of your time travel novel in an upper-class home in 18th/19th century England. (No, I cannot recall which century it was and I may even be mistaken in this broad range.)

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Mother of Souls by Heather Rose Jones

Third book in the Alpennia series. The new romance here was my least favorite of the three couples, perhaps because it itself is least certain of being a settled Romance at all. Yet I did enjoy the imagery of their particular pairing. Also, just plain fun to hang out with the gang again.

...I may have gained a het ship I support in this series, despite the impossibility of the class and religious differences???? C’mon, I know this setting is too grounded for it but I think the hets should have this.

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Imogen, Obviously | The Return of The Native | The Obelisk Gate

Imogen, Obviously by Becky Albertalli

YA novel by the author of Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda. I didn’t read that book but I did watch Love, Simon back when it was released in theatres and my main thought across the two works is god these teens are so stressed that I get second-hand stressed.

Also our poor protagonist really needs to Log Off. Never have I wanted a protagonist to delete social media more.

The plot goes as follows: Imogen, #StraightAlly, is visiting her childhood best friend, Lily, at college. Only Lily, embarrassed at her own lack of romantic experience, has told all of her friends that Imogen is her ex. Imogen agrees to go along with it, first having a internal crisis over The Ethics of Pretending To Be Queer, and then has a realization or two when thrust into a social context where no one thinks she’s straight.

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Got reminded to read Leah on the Offbeat sometime.

The Return of The Native by Thomas Hardy

Much heath such plants wow. Lady did not actually do affair but she almost did so time to die lady goodbye.

I mean that basically summarizes it. I will say, though, out of the “lady does affair back in the day” books I’ve read, I found something compelling in Eustacia Vye that I did not in Bovary or Anna Karenina. Perhaps it is the nature of her selfishness. The men themselves are not her goal but that they can convey her to somewhere other than the dreary heath, to Budmouth or even Paris. (It is definitely not that she doesn’t actually have an affair, I don’t care about that.)

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The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin

Hmmmm does some interesting character stuff, but the style started to grate as did the plot. Ultimately liked the first book in the series more. I am curious to see how things end in the final book.

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Taxi | 42nd Street | King Kong

Taxi (1931)

8/419 on the NYC list. Not as focused on the independent cab drivers vs the big consolidated company as I thought it would be. The primary plot is the romance between the daughter of a cabbie who dies in prison and a hotheaded independent cabbie. Again, I thought the way the hotheadedness would cause conflict would be mainly because of said taxi war, and it does come up at the climactic plot, but overall cabbie Nolan is hotheaded about things that don’t make any sense.

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42nd Street

9/419 on the NYC list. Another backstage musical. Don’t get the appeal of our chorus girl protagonist turned leading lady. Without knowing Ann was Ginger Rogers I thought she felt far more alive than our wallflower ingenue. Another character introduces himself as a “Broadway juvenile” and I still don’t know what that means.

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King Kong (1933)

10/419 on the NYC list. Fay Wray got hired to scream and boy did she scream. My favorite monster fight scene here has to be King Kong vs that T-Rex looking creature, primarily because of the method by which King Kong wins but also because Ann screams so fucking loudly that the T-Rex creature doesn’t like it.

Nightmare subway commute dropped: King Kong peeling off the tracks and peering into a window

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Lonesome | Rear Window | The Cameraman

Lonesome (1928)

3/419 on the NYC list. A part-talkie about a very lonely gal and a very lonely guy hitting it off at Coney Island and then dramatically losing track of each other.

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Rear Window

A rewatch. I last watched this in 2013 or 2014. A less inwardly tormenting Hitchcock, with our guy L.B. Jeffries convinced he's seen a murder in the apartment across the courtyard.

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The Cameraman

4/419 on the NYC list. Firstly, I didn't know one of Buster Keaton's things was maintaining an absolutely stoic expression while engaged in all of these shenanigans, and it did make his schticks funnier. Secondly, I found myself thinking if that Keaton's character does not know where Grand Central is he does not deserve a job as a newsreel cameraman.

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Do Revenge

Obviously had to watch this after seeing Strangers on a Train, because this is a high school modern au of that starring Veronica from Riverdale and the lesbian from Stranger Things. I kept getting surprised by actors I recognized, oh that’s Sansa Stark, oh that’s Buffy Summers, oh that’s Noa from PLL:OS, what that’s one of Kamala’s love interests from Ms. Marvel okay.

Anyway, it was very fun, had a good time watching these teen girls get revenge and argue with each other. Spoilers below.

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Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

Excellent watch on the big screen, much like it’s predecessor. Spoilers below.

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Dial M For Murder

Next on the Hitchcock endeavour. A fun little....not murder mystery no, but murder unravelment. Columbo-esque or Poker Face-esque, depending on your poison. But it had some horrendous kisses at its start, I was not convinced any of the three characters enjoyed those kisses. Apparently filmed in 3-D. (One must consider if the kisses were worse in 3-D.)

One of the talkier Hitchcocks. Like Rope, you could guess it was adapted from a play without the credits telling you, between the talkiness and the single setting. Hadn’t realized almost all of his films were adaptations. Apparently Hitchcock kept his name out of the negotiations to buy the film rights for Strangers On A Train from Patricia Highsmith, who was later quite annoyed at how little they sold for.

As always, spoilers under the cut.

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What can I say, some people are radioactive.

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin S1

HBO show that has more of a slasher take on the teen girls getting tormented by text messages than the original. (I hate everything about the naming scheme - giving this the "original sin" subtitle when everyone is going to naturally refer to the 2010-2017 show as the original one, changing said subtitle for the next season when this is absolutely not an anthology).

I did have fun watching this, and have an appreciation for how it's doing something different beyond a genre change. The dead girl at the heart of the original show (see!) is Alison, a teen terror who never found someone in Rosewood she didn't want to torment. The dead girl at the heart of this show isn't either of the women who die as teenagers at dances - one in 1999, one in 2022 - but our main protagonist's mother, Davie, who was such an Alison in 1999, but a saint of a mother as an adult. The other four girls' mothers were friends with Davie in high school, and they were united in bullying the hell out of the girl that did die in 1999.

So the girls aren't being tormented about their own sins, but their mothers'. I have no objections to that, they get some good stuff out of that, especially Imogen, but it does leave our main girls feeling a little...put upon. Or blameless.

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A thing I was pettily annoyed at compared to the original show was that there was no f/f with any of the main girls. Come on man, the original show had one of its four mains be gay and that was back when they had to deal with ABC Family's advertisers going uhhhhh can you show less gay stuff with her thx. You're on HBO in 2022, you have no excuse! Three of the girls in the 2022 show had boyfriends and there was other m/f stuff among the teens so I feel justified in my grumbling at this. They could've easily had one of the boyfriends be a girlfriend, or even, god forbid, have the obvious pair of the main girls get together.

Anyway, will watch S2, will hope that some of these things improve but I expect I'll be entertained regardless.

Fallout

I'd gotten an hour into Fallout 3 before giving up, is the most of my experience before watching this show. Enjoyed it, I thought it conveyed the world-building well, the goofy black humour worked for me, as did Lucy as protagonist. There are some convenient plot contrivances that one has to overlook, like why is everyone's timing such that they are in various places at the exact same time.

My most petty annoyance (apparently I am filled with petty annoyances today) is that as soon as I saw Ghoul Man with a Fucked Up Face as one of our main characters, the only thought I could have about him is "You would be soooooo much more interesting as a woman." Seriously. Sooooo much more. I know I do constantly contemplate female versions of characters but like, Maximus or Lucy's brother were fine to me as men, whatever. Ghoul Man? Nope, I was just internally going yeah, should be Ghoul Woman.

It would also help my question of what the 2077 era was like - we've got 50s aesthetics, we're relatively cool about race and gender given Barb's position though we've still got racial typecasting on tv, we hate the commies but uh...are we cool about gay people? Unclear. It really does not matter to the plot or the show at all but I could not help but wonder about it given the Cold War vibes, y'know.

Spoilers below.

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The Afterparty S1 & S2

Murder mystery-slash-comedy where every season focuses on a murder, with each episode featuring the interrogation of a suspect, who tells their narrative in their own genre - romcom, thriller, period piece, etc. I binged this show in a few days, definitely recommend it. It filled the mystery-loving gap in my media now that I'm done with my Poirot reading.

S1 is better constructed mystery-wise, but S2 better exploits the conceit of every episode being a different genre, and all of it was a joy to watch. I can't help thinking of S2 vs S1 in the same way I think of Glass Onion vs Knives Out. The benefit that a first installment gets in this genre is it can have another mystery underlying the homicidal one: what sort of person is our detective? what sort of person is the one we see them with? Those questions leave a wider scope. The second installments are inherently hampered by the lack of that...but the second installments also get in their own way in how they construct themselves.

More spoilery explanations below.

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We Are Lady Parts S2

The long-awaited S2 has arrived!!! All of the new songs are absolute bangers!! The band is as charming as ever! Compared to the first season, S2 does struggle to juggle its broader scope, as it tries to give every band member her own arc. Amina remains endearing, as she proclaims she is in her villain era for maintaining proper work-life boundaries. Though, I found myself cooling on her romance. Of the band members that aren't Amina and Saira, Bisma's journey in self-perception and self-presentation was most compelling to me. I got very cross at anyone even halfway questioning her decisions there. It was cool to see Taz settle into band managing as a broader pursuit, realizing she's in it for the thrill of discovery, not just something she's doing for her mate.

I'll save Saira and Ayesha for under the cut, to avoid spoilers.

Steve is my favorite Lady Parts fan🤘. I wanted to appreciate the Gen Z band but their cover sucks and they sucked more at the inter-band dinner. Noor's stuff this season surprised me in a good way, but I wish we'd gotten more time with it - there's something awful about realizing your impact on a lifelong friend and wondering what else it extends to.

It was odd that whenever the band was on break for practical reasons that the gang didn't seem to hang out as friends at all, especially when one or more of them was dealing with personal shit - there's no equivalent of them all whisking Amina off to the countryside to help her deal.

Okay, spoiler time.

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There was much less Amina-Saira goodness this season since their arcs weren't as enmeshed, but there were still crumbs, from growl-singing at each other before practice to the Speak callback. Saira will give into writing girl power anthems if Amina shoots her the puppy dog eyes a single time <3.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

TL;DR this meme lmfao

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Those Who Wait by Haley Cass

I...probably would’ve given up on this romance novel halfway through, between the prose, characterization, and handling of politics, if it weren’t for a friend enlightening me that it was actually a Sansa/Margaery fic with the numbers filed off for publication. A ship that I am deeply neutral on, but did make the whole experience more entertaining, as I went “oh my god, her dad is the senator, and her grandma was the president!”

Unfortunately when you have the Margaery expy - Charlotte - being a Deputy Mayor in NYC who is running for an open House Representative seat, you have me judging the political stuff. On the one level, the words “Democrat” or “Republican” or “primary” are never uttered. On a different level, I don’t think Charlotte is as competent a politician as the book wants me to believe she is? She is closested publicly for political career reasons, but we’re told she’s been hooking up with so many women (rarely the same one twice) right till her campaign starts. When she discusses attack openings with her strategist at no point does she mention the possibility of any of those women outing her (even accidentally! Like “oh lmao I think I hooked up with that lady running for congress”), she has no concerns about being followed while running around with Sutton, she has to be talked into using a political opportunity.

The Sansa expy - Sutton - was a bit too much of a blushing ingenue for my taste. Found it funny that while discussing the book with friends I had to go look for details to confirm that she was a grad student getting a master’s and not a grad student getting a PhD because the book never explicitly states that, just leaves little clues.

Final note: I understand what the author was going for with the Renly/Loras expies, but it is absolutely insane to have the NYC mayor be secretly dating a NYPD cop, given uh, everything. The press should notice how much they hang out given that they literally pop into offices together, and should be having a field day over even a friendship. You could’ve just made Loras personal security! That’s so easy!

Help at Any Cost: How the Troubled-Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids by Maia Szalavitz

This is a good book from 2006 on the US troubled teen industry and the numerous abuses, deaths, and repeat offenders it has gotten away with it. I read Joe vs Elan, which wrapped up last year, and wanted to read a broader overview of the industry.

The Synanon cult of the 60s is a huge inspiration for many of these “behavioural therapy” or “drug rehabilitation” programs that get forced on unwilling teenagers. The Seed in the 70s and Straight in the 80s are two examples hugely popular with politicians and parents as the War on Drugs kicks into high gear and parents are easily convinced that a single whiff of marijuana will leave their kid a doomed addict on the streets. Those spawn many of their own spinoffs, including the terrible combo of “wilderness boot camps”, where kids get marched through hot deserts, injuries and medical emergencies are assumed to be faked, and even the staff that aren’t cruel shits lack any training to be looking after kids in the outdoors.

As I predicted, this book left me in a low level of constant rage for the past week. I found it harder to read than some of my roughest non-fiction reads, and I think that stems from the fact of how much goddamn active effort went into hurting these kids while people on the outside pretended these were normal and fine institutions to pack kids off too. Just. Furious. At the founders and institutions and employees, of course, but also the parents, who accept things like

• Yeah, we have to kidnap your kid with no warning from their bed in the middle of the night with two dudes that’ll threaten violence for any disobedience, this is completely fucking normal
• Oh, if you want us to keep treating your kid who is an addict/problem child, you have to let us imprison their perfectly normal sibling who is right here and who we’ve coerced into admitting all sorts of things when we isolated them in a different room. (It’s bad that this stuff happened to any kids at all, but thinking of this specific trade as an acceptable one as a parent....)
• You will not physically see your kid or have phone calls with your kids for months, and if your kid sends you any letters saying they are being abused or starved, that means your kid is trying to manipulate you.

Again, the ultimate villains are the institutions but the above drove me insane because, I dunno, I kind of think you have one (1) job as a parent, and even some of the sympathetic parents made me think they just wanted to drop a teenager off somewhere like a dented car at the mechanic.

As the book points out, this is a consequence of a larger cultural belief in the idea of “tough love”, and a cultural obsession with the faults of adolescence even as the adolescents of today are continually safer than the adolescents of yesterday. Most teenagers grow into pretty functional adults without any need for inpatient treatment, and these institutions tends to produced very troubled adults, who struggle with getting past the betrayal and powerlessness of their experiences.

I skimmed the wikipedia article for the troubled teen industry today - the most recent death in one of those wilderness teen camps was in February 2024. So, yeah. Still happening. No one’s really checking on these kids. Even in cases where successful civil or criminal charges were brought, many of the people involved were allowed to continue opening new schools elsewhere without even a slap on the wrist.

To end on a slightly less depressing note, I found heartening how hard people fought for some of the victims:

• Richard Bradbury’s childhood friend, who when he finds out where Richard has been and that he’s now working there, keeps talking to him till he realizes how fucked up Straight is
• Fred Collins’ fraternity brothers, who house and hide him when he escapes from Seed
• Paul Richards’ neighbours, who keep asking after him when his parents send him to a school in Samoa, and when his parents disown him for leaving the program, adopt him.

On The Waterfront (1954)

Is it funny that I thought there would be actual boxing in this movie given the "I coulda been a contender" line the film is famous for?

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Rope (1948)

I've been rewatching Pretty Little Liars, and planning to consume more of the show's inspirations/references/allusions, and so of course, there's Hitchcock. I've only seen Rear Window and Vertigo. The more recent of those was 9 years ago. The plan is to go through a list of Hitchcock's films and watch in chronological order the ones whose names I recognized.

Which leads me to Rope, a film that has absolutely no connection to PLL, but I've heard about forever as the one where the heavily implied gay couple murder a guy together. What I didn't know was that they also leave the body in their apartment, where they immediately host a dinner party for murdered dude's family and mutual friends.

That part's not a spoiler, this is all known in the first five minutes.

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Rebecca (1940)

So, I realized I missed Rebecca when scanning the list of Hitchcock films, hence watching Rope first. But someone reminded me of this film recently, and it does come up a little in Sleep No More, and so I gave it a watch.

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I swear I've been reading things other than Christie mysteries this year, those other things are just long long reads...

Marple: Twelve New Mysteries

So, this one isn't actually by Agatha Christie but is a Miss Marple short story collection by twelve authors, each putting their own spin on the classic detective. I'm less familiar with Marple. Of the novels I've only read A Murder Is Announced and a few other short stories I've come across in my Poirot endeavour, but I found this a fun collection nonetheless. There are the pastiches, with another murder in the vicarage or quiet town genealogy sparking up into violence, and then the ones that put a new spin - Miss Marple in Manhattan, Miss Marple on a steamer to Hong Kong, Miss Marple dining at Cambridge, etc. Was a fun read, my favorites were The Jade Empress by Jean Kwok, The Disappearance by Leigh Bardugo, and The Murdering Sort by Karen M. McManus.

Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie

The crime novelist Ariadne Oliver gets a bad feeling about the murder puzzle hunt she's organizing, so of course she invites her friend Hercule Poirot to the party. Her instincts are proven right. While I'm glad to return to the more classic setting for a Christie mystery after the badly-handled Hickory Dickory Dock and there's a satisfying reveal to a certain character's speech pattern, I didn't care too much for this one's resolution. It required a perpetrator to engage in way more shenanigans than necessary, without the appropriate characterization to support it.

I adore Oliver whenever she shows up though, and she was as delightful as ever here.

Cat Among the Pigeons by Agatha Christie

Murder at an all-girls boarding school. Poirot makes a late entrance, but the means by which he does so is so pleasing to me that I cannot criticize it. In the meantime, I enjoyed the POVs of the school's competent headmistress Bulstrode, clever student Julia Upjohn and that of Julia's overly credulous and tennis-obsessed friend. Also good: all the adults being bewildered when they ask Julia where her mother can be contacted and Julia going, I don't know, she's on a bus in Anatolia somewhere. The resolution to the mystery makes sense, with some Christie-typical misdirection, and I didn't mind there being less Poirot.

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding by Agatha Christie

A short story collection, mostly Poirots, one Miss Marple. I thought Under Dog was fun, even with the silly hypnosis scene, and Greenshaw's Folly was satisfying in its simplicity.

Talking Meme Index

For today, quailfence asked me which games I'm most looking forward to playing this year.

I'm afraid you've caught me at an awkward spot. At the end of 2023 I wrapped up my endeavours to play all the games in the Uncharted and the Ace Attorney series, so my to-play list is rather empty. I gave Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order a try but quit a couple of hours in - didn't like the level design, nothing really grabbed me about the gameplay or the story, other than seeing Archie Andrews whenever I looked at the protagonist.

I've got ideas for games I might play this year, but nothing specific that I'm really dying to get to.

• Life is Strange prequel that's been burning a hole in my Steam Library
• Elsinore is a time-looping Hamlet game I've been meaning to get to for a while now
• Homestuck visual novels I've also been meaning to get to
• Horizon Zero Dawn DLC
• ...if I want to pick another video game series, I could always try Halo? It should probably run on my laptop, it's old enough for that I think. I played the first 1.5 levels when I was a kid but never finished the game.

What games are people looking forward to playing this year?