what’s the recipe for something you love eating to feel nurtured at the moment? do you have a dish that’s a family recipe you’d never give away? and which creature/exhibit is your favourite to visit in an aquarium? 🤍
darling of my life ily 💌🌹💞
1: chickpeas with slow-cooked (but not always) peppers are my absolute beloved..... it's the one thing i can always eat and the one thing all my kitchen staples revolve around (i have never measured of any of this and just go by eye or what i feel so this is a VERY rough estimation but anyway!!):
2 large onions
olive oil
2 or 3 bell peppers (i try to always include a green one bc they're slightly less sweet and add a nice balance to the yellow and red ones)
can of chickpeas
tomato purée
ground ginger
ground garlic
ground cumin
salt
EDIT: forgot to add: dried basil!!
Heat the oil in a small pot.
Chop the onions and peppers and add them in that order (shake the pot a little to disperse and/or avoid sticking but don't stir).
Let it cook / simmer over a low heat until the the onions are translucent and the peppers have softened slightly (now you can stir).
Stir in ground garlic and ginger (measured generously w your heart--that said, ginger should be added in increments bc it adds a nice kick of heat which i love but if you want to be more cautious then just taste as you go along and add accordingly), and a bit of cumin.
Stir in the tomato puree (again, i'm a measure by sight gal, but a tablespoon at a time until you get the right taste / colour should do it).
Add a little water -- not enough to cover the contents but enough that it combines with the puree to get a thick pasta-sauce consistency. Add salt to taste
Increase the heat and cook until all the foam has gone. Add salt to taste
Drain your can of chickpeas, rinse them, and add them into the pot at the very end. Turn off the hob and let everything cook with the residual heat and done!!
Best way to eat this in my opinion is by putting spoonfuls while still warm onto toasted bread with goat's cheese 💕
2) not a dish per se but my mother's version of a tomato pesto (which is less to do with not wanting to share it full stop but more with the fact that if shared it has to be shared in person, in the moment, in actually making it (or attempting to lol) with someone ❤️)
3) i haven't been to an aquarium in SO long but i love love LOVE the little seahorses and jellyfish!!! i woulod visit exclusively for them!
hii🤍 I went to an exhibition today with dali sculptures and one of the artists featured alongside them was charles billich — please look at this detail from his work titled chrystal chandelier !!!
felt you would appreciate it as much as I did🌹
OH I LOVE THAT!!!! <333 the phantom of the opera vibes are AMAZING!!!!!!
KEY TERMS: gothic heroines, final girls, bluebeard narratives, death & the maiden, monster theory, dangerous appetites, antiquarianism, sawbones & their history, perfumery, poison bottles, cursed jewels, blood vials, soft & warm light, morbidness & coziness intertwined, with more than a dash of elegance & sophisticated taste 🖤
media recommendations under the cut!
(a sidenote: i did not include a lot of obvious choices, such as angela carter or helene cixous or anne carson or any gothic 101 authors, since i know for a fact you’re already familiar with them. to be perfectly honest, you’re one of the most well-read people i’ve ever met, so i wouldn’t be surprised if you were already familiar with most of these, but i did my best!)
Severance: Stories, Robert Olen Butler—talking heads! literally!
Fairy Tales for the Disillusioned: Enchanted Stories from the French Decadent Tradition,
The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi Di Lampedusa (for some truly exquisite prose),
Imaginary Lives by Marcel Schwob (oh, Schwob is criminally underrated; also, these tales remind me of early Borges)
Kieślowski films! La Double Vie de Véronique (1991), especially—this scene is... somewhat spoiler-y, but goodness. it is beautiful, in a grandiose way. also, can we talk about the lyrics of the featured piece?
speaking of Polish movies: Cold War (2018) & Ida (2013) are also a must!
Arthur Machen’s short stories, and especially The Inmost Light,
M. R. James’ short stories, of course, but especially Count Magnus,
The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson; the entire collection serves as one of my favourite retellings of the Daemon Lover ballad, although it’s not a very straightforward one—The Man in the Blue Suit (slash James Harris) is at most a peripheral figure, and his status as a supernatural entity is up in the air, since most of the stories are uncanny instead of explicitly supernatural (and yet, whenever he enters the stage, something shifts in the atmosphere & things go... very wrong, very quickly). I especially recommend The Tooth!
speaking of daemon lovers, here’s an academic analysis of this motif: Demon-Lovers and Their Victims in British Fiction (an extended excerpt is available on Google Books)
still speaking of daemon lovers: The Book of Tobit! and, specifically, the story of Asmodeus and Sarah of Media, who might or might have not inspired the line about the woman wailing for her demon-lover in Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. also! this... retelling of sorts: (x)
The Song of the Sun: Collected Writings by Leah Bodine Drake (her poems of fantasy are quite wonderful; here’s an example!),
speaking of fantasy-themed poems... these anthologies are very good indeed (& beautifully published!): Monster Verse / Dead & Undead / Killer Verse / Bewitched & Haunted,
Het Lied van Heer Halewijn (a proto-Bluebeard story, and the Dutch equivalent of Lady Isabel and the Elf Knight)
speaking of... these are some of my favourite transformative works dealing with this ballad: (x) (x) (x) (once again, it’s fanfiction, but it’s quality fanfiction, cross my heart & hope to die)
german-language musicals! goodness, they’re some full-throated, pulpy, gothic extravaganza. here’s my favourite scene from Tanz der Vampire, and here’s the english lyrics, and here’s the english-language demo (it is... not as good as the original, alas). i also recommend Elisabeth & Rebecca! speaking of pulpy musicals: can we talk about the riddle from the scarlet pimpernel? because it has no business being this catchy.
alright, i’ve covered some lowbrow musicals, so let’s talk highbrow now: The Great Comet is based on a tiny excerpt from War & Peace, but good god. it /feels/ monumental in scope. this song is... yeah. yeah. it’s also sung-through (like Les Mis, or Evita), so you’re not missing out on anything, even if you only listen to the cast recording!
speaking of songs with great Madi energy... Take This Waltz by Leonard Cohen (based on a poem by Lorca!) definitely reminds me of you!
also. Memorial by Susanne Sundfør. it’s the drama! and Kate Bush, obviously, especially Hammer Horror (even more obviously) <3 and this rendition of Memory!
i don’t know whether you own ps4, or even consider yourself someone keen on video games as a medium, but madi. madi. madi. bloodborne is practically tailor-made for you, and i’m not even exaggerating. dubious medicine! secret cults! victorian architecture! blood, blood everywhere! eldritch abominations beyond human comprehension! i’m going to fly you to poland just so you can play it.
on a related note... netflix’s castlevania is. well, i genuinely cannot say whether it’s good, but it’s fun, and its aesthetic is basically gothic on steroids. very explicit, that is to say: sex and murder usually take place simultaneously.
some academic books of interest that were not already included in my previous masterpost:
The Ring of Truth: And Other Myths of Sex and Jewelry,
the Devil’s Advocates series,
The Work of the Dead: A Cultural History of Mortal Remains,
Dark Banquet: Blood and the Curious Lives of Blood-Feeding Creatures,
Rabid: A Cultural History of the World's Most Diabolical Virus,
[me, kicking down the door] hello yes it is i, the correct audience for a discussion of the harsh & problematic devaluation of romance as a genre/as writing
I should be working but this is way better. Please take a seat and pour yourself some scotch, my dear Madi. This should be very short though—
I think we can agree that the real problem with romance is simple : it’s written mainly by women, and generally aimed at women.The nerve. How could it ever be a “serious” genre?
On the contrary, it has become a belittling of sorts, “just a romance”, something that couldn’t be literary*, something that’s snickered at because it provides phantasmagoria, escapism, and usually light-heartedness. It is a low genre, a cheap one, because romance is often serial, published en masse, with writers writing several novels a year, and stories being simple enough to be accessible to anyone who wants to pick up a book.
My question is : doesn’t fantasy, sci-fi, comics provide escapism and phantasmagoria? Aren’t detective novels serial, and accessible, and popular? They do and they are, but they are less of a woman genre, and so less harshly judged.
There are “good” (either well-written, or enjoyable, or binge-worthy, whatever you define as good) romance novels and bad ones, of course. As in any genre. Romance can be problematic in many ways—some of it distils, through very distinct narrative tropes, ideas that are suffocatingly sexist : the commanding man, the young virgin/naive waiting to be rescued, the woman rival, the possession and toxicity. But it’s also very interesting and can become very impactful in many ways—
It is a genre where woman writing can exist for its own sake, and not as imitation of male writing, not in the anxiety of influence; it is a genre where woman often talk about women experiences and the fulfilment of women desires, however idealised, and that is still not something to be taken lightly or taken for granted. It is a genre that unveils, between the lines, either in combatting them or in endorsing them, the cogs of our patriarcal society and how it impacts human relationships. As an aware reader, you can learn a lot from toxic ideals written down innocently enough; and you can take much pleasure in seeing them crushed in the subverting of old romance conventions, when authors decide that they are in fact not here for it, and will not condone them.
And then, the argument that romance writing is not good is just silly. First things first, it is a very coded genre, full of conventions and constraints, which makes it inherently challenging, and so impressive to navigate. Stylistically, there is good, less good, and bad. It varies from author to author, from book to book, and from reader to reader and what they might construct from what they are reading.
I think that’s all for now but I might add to that later—I just jotted stuff down on the page, but, you know—rambling.
* Interesting that Daphné du Maurier’s “Frenchman’s Creek”, which is definitely focused on the character development of a woman at crossroads and her romantic and sexual attraction to a pirate (romance 101), is sometimes described as “not exactly a romance” because it is “too literary” to be one and too much of a classic. Please.
Thelma, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, American Mary and Penny Dreadful🥰
1. thelma:
Nah | haven’t seen yet | didn’t like/gave up | like it | love it | highly recommend.
a reason why: repressed lesbians?? sign me up.
2. a girl walks home alone at night
Nah | haven’t seen yet | didn’t like/gave up | like it | love it | highly recommend.
a reason why: can you believe? i’m not even sure why, i followed the release of this movie and everything.
3. american mary
Nah | haven’t seen yet | didn’t like/gave up | like it | love it | highly recommend.
a reason why: what is there not to love in this, from katharine back to horror to the makeup and absurd characters. perfect. i truly need to rewatch asap. and i cannottttttt wait for their next movie oh my god.
4. penny dreadful
Nah | haven’t seen yet | didn’t like/gave up | like it | love it | highly recommend.
a reason why: i’m honestly so lazy when it comes to (life) shows but i have seen some of it on my dash thru the years.
