A Little Writing

I'm May, and this is just a place for me to talk and post a little writing, mostly reviews at the moment, but more if I ever manage to finish anything. This is a sideblog.

[warblingandwriting]

I know I shouldn't have expected much from an American Man Director(TM) but is too much to ask that the movie about the horrific rape and murder of a Vietnamese woman not end with another Vietnamese woman basically telling the White Male main character "the war is over and you are absolved"???

[warblingandwriting]

I'm so sorry but lots of people talking about a thing just has the opposite effect on me. The more I hear people praising something - eveb if it's something I'm likely to enjoy - the less I actually want to interact with it

[dyrewrites]

I want to pick apart House of Darkness, I do. I want to explain why it's not at all what it was apparently going for and is in fact a shallow and disturbingly sexist piece of hot garbage.

Unfortunately I just spent an hour and too many minutes watching the hot garbage and am too angry for words.

Beyond these:

Dracula doesn't need a feminist retelling and you can't call something that just because the cast is mostly women.

There was nothing feminist about that movie.

It was just bad. Real bad.

Bad for a vampire movie, bad for a horror movie, bad for a revenge fantasy movie.

Bad as any kind of movie.

[warblingandwriting]

You're so right about this, it's also one of te worst movies I've ever seen. Luckily you don't even need to pick it apart because it's on its face so self-evidently bad it's not worth the time.

[jackalxhearts]

My new zine is available for download here! I've posted the full zine above, but if you'd like to download it or check out my other work, please check out my Itch.io page.

[literary-illuminati]

2025 Book Review #58 – Cyteen – The Betrayal, by C. J. Cherryh

I was introduced to Cherryh’s work with Downbelow Stationnearly (god) four years ago. I adored it, and bought what’s branded as the sequel (actually just the chronological next story set in the same universe) almost immediately. It then sat on my bookshelf shaming me until, oh, late-September. But, having finally overcome years and years of inertia to read the first book of the collected trilogy, I can confirm it is really, truly excellent. Entirely deserving of the Hugo it got back in the ‘80s.

The book is set on the planet of Cyteen – the second non-terran world ever discovered by humanity with its own biosphere, and the only one without advanced native life. It is mostly set, specifically, in the cutting edge laboratory complex that pioneered both the industrial-scale cloning and the hypnotic education ‘tapes’ that played such a large part in Cyteen (and the larger Union around it) winning independence from Earth and establishing itself as a galactic power. Now Arianna Emory, the scientific genius behind much of that pioneering who rules the labs (and Union’s scientific apparatus in general) like a queen, is doing everything she needs to to secure secrecy and unlimited funding for one new project. Well over a century old, she’s well aware that she’s pushing the edges of what Union’s rejuvenation therapies can do – and with legacy in mind, she is determined to find a way to clone and reproduce the history-shaping genius of, well, people like her. As things transpire, it will end up being needed sooner than anyone anticipated.

So this is book 1 of a trilogy, and I do see why most editions have them all bundled together in one volume. This is basically a book-length prologue for what is clearly the real meat of the story. It is, as it happens, a prologue that’s incredibly interesting and compelling in its own right, at least for me. But still, it is table setting and a bit of rising action, a vast number of characters with barely any complete arcs, and an utter, complete lack of redemption or catharsis. As a stand-alone reading experience it would be pretty unsatisfying.

One of the things I greatly appreciated about Downbelow Station is just how coolly and ruthlessly the narrative treats its characters; Cyteen shares this (and far more than Cherryh’s other work that I’ve read does). Far more than the truly overwhelming majority of genre fiction I’ve read, these feel like events that could really happen. Which is to say, all the fantastical technology actually feels like technology rather than convenient plot devices, and chance and circumstance seem blind and uncaring rather than clearly elevating one or two or ten people as The Protagonists of the Universe (impressive work, given that this is a story where two or three of them objectively literally are).

It is also ruthless in the sense of being largely a story of a) bureaucratic politics and favour-trading and b) the abuse of the vulnerable by the powerful, and all of it in what is a rich, functional, optimistic and outward-looking slave society. All of Union society is built on the Azis – genetically engineered and mass-produced clones providing every sort of labour and subjects for every sort of experiment one can imagine. Some are more privileged than others, and some citizens treat them with more respect and care than their peers – but the story is quite matter-of-fact and almost off-handed in showing or mentioning all the different ways they are abused or used up and disposed of. Given where the story is set, it is unsurprising that ‘abolitionists’ are a bunch of boogeymen and dangerous cranks, but it adds something to the quiet horror of it all that no one (not even the thoroughly indoctrinated and tape-educated Azi POVs we get) of real importance to the narrative ever questions the whole system.

In addition to all the in-universe exposition, the book also has little excerpts from an in-universe educational serial giving glimpses into the whole industrial economy that is the Azis life cycle. Which is exactly the sort of thing that is just total catnip for me in any circumstance, but was especially well-suited for this I think. The line of how tragically the rejuvenation therapies just don’t help with the strain and injuries they tend to get and so aren’t worth applying, and how this means the caste of Azis grown for manual labor rarely lives past 40, is probably one of the most striking in the whole book.

Not that it’s just Azis who are mistreated. This is a story very interested in how much different people are considered to matter by their societies, and the horror that is declaring someone to be a Great Man (or, in this case, Great Woman). Ari Emory is indisputably a genius, has personally advanced the fields of cloning and genetic manipulation by leaps and bounds, has spent decades making herself the beating heart of scientific politics (and funding) throughout Union. And so the fact that she habitually abuses her personal Azis (and how cavalier she is declaring research subjects lost causes and terminating them as soon as their purpose is complete) passes basically without comment, and the number of younger (much younger) and more junior researchers or interns she has coerced into sex over the decades just an embarrassing foible one keeps quiet and works around. (One of the most striking conversations near the end of the book is one of the senior bureaucrats in the Science Directorate explaining to one of our protagonists how he does sympathize with him and is doing what he can to protect him, but making it quite explicit that he considered Ari a friend and will not stand for him publicly besmirching her legacy).

I have read a decent number of stories written in the ‘70s and ‘80s over the last couple of months, and it’s striking how much less dated Cherryh feels than most majority of them. Not not dated, to be sure; there’s any number of verbal and stylistic tics that are very 20th century (people really stopped using ‘damn!’ as an exclamation with teeth at some point), and the tropes and worldbuilding are clearly very much in conversation with now-basically-forgotten traditions of space opera and futurology. But still – the character work is embarrassingly better and more devoted to psychological realism than any of the book’s contemporaries (and a great many well-regarded books released now too, to be fair), and Union as it’s portrayed (racially integrated, genuinely gender-egalitarian, a horrifying expansionist scientific-industrial slave state) feels far closer to modern sociological-minded space opera than most of what I’ve seen that was in the water as it released. Though I suppose it might be more accurate to just say that this is a common ancestor of a lot of more recent fiction I’ve enjoyed as well.

Anyway, great book, thorough recommendation, looking forward to starting book two.

[goslinggf]

"girl dinner" "boy kibble" can y'all just eat a meal gender neutrally

[goslinggf]

gender neutrients

[ghostlywriterr]

Art Nouveau Villa Ruggeri in Pesaro. Italy

[leolaroot]

star trek sucks bc they were the blackface show in the 60s and then in the nineties they were still the blackface show. and then in the 2010s they tried to retcon the Blackface Alien Race and people got so fucking mad they just returned to being the blackface show. in 2023 they had a guy put on blackface to portray a klingon.

[arctic-hands]

Thought crimes aren't real, telepaths don't exist, and even if they were and do, having your head constantly play "Fly me to the moon/Let me kick its fucking ass/Let me show you what I learned/In my moon jiu-jitsu class" on repeat while out and about in public isn't illegal

[somadyoucouldbite]

though if you existed in a setting that had telepaths that seems like a good way to keep them from knowing what you're actually thinking

This is a plot point in Alfred Bester's The Demolished Man!

[prettyboysdontlookatexplosions]

I like genre fiction for the same reason I like black-and-white film, stylized dialogue, animation, the paintings of Marc Chagall or ballet: things feel more real if they’re obviously a little fake. If somebody asked me whether I preferred literary fiction to genre fiction (or vice versa) I would say, I hope, that I prefer good fiction to bad fiction.

[...]

As Moore herself characterized it, her story is a Western, just played in the key of space. Like a wandering cowboy, Northwest Smith is ambiguously good and ambiguously noble—he is no gentleman, but he might be something better. And it’s a story that seems easy to understand symbolically. The Shambleau is booze, or a bad love affair, or drugs. Yet to pursue this sort of reading is to court frustration. We can understand the strange and disturbing being at this story’s heart through analogy, but what makes it memorable is our sense that we can only flatten it out if we try to go further. What Moore aims to do—and succeeds in doing—is presenting us with something that is outside of the realm of possible experience. “Shambleau” draws its sense of reality from the ways it resembles ordinary situations, but it is not reducible to them.

b. d. mcclay, "the soul should not be handled"

[vivacias]

What's a book written by a woman that changed your life or that you consider a classic? Any genre, any language.

[altair-the-heretic]

congratulations emerald fennell you just spent 80 million dollars telling everyone you don't know how to read

[bethanydelleman]

Isabella does a strange analysis of Romeo and Juliet at the beginning of the film where she blames Nurse of all people for the tragedy, so she got two whole misreads in for the price of one!

[bethanydelleman]

Done "Wuthering Heights" 2026.

Verdict: Lol

Honestly though, it was occasionally very visually striking. That is the best I can say for it.

The dialogue was ridiculous. The characters were random. Heathcliff was the epitome of a little meow meow with no revenge in him at all. Nelly, my love, was slandered! Edgar might as well have been played by a cardboard cut-out that said, "Yes, my dear." Isabella was an insult to women everywhere. Thrushcross Grange is Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in a bad way. Like the very creepy boat ride of the 1971 movie. The sex wasn't sexy. The costumes were... well random. Lol.

[warblingandwriting]

Would someone like to tell me why the new WH is basically just the notebook lmao? I knew it was going to be bad but at least the trailers made it look like it would be a bit fun and over the top and kind of freaky. Literally just extremely boring.

Like Catherine has "boring" sex with Linton, but then her sex with Heathcliff (yes they actually have sex, it's a whole other issue) is no different? Like they clearly want you to feel like it's different but the characters don't actually do anything kinky or particularly non-vanilla. Why was this made?

[warblingandwriting]

It is always a little grating how when some people learn a new history fact instead of realizing that past was as vast and nuanced as life now they'll be like Now I Have The One True History To Rule Them All! And start spouting that as fact instead of a previous understanding they had, even if both were kinda true.

[warblingandwriting]

Someone: My professor never listened to me about my interpretation that- [says something that doesn't make sense]

[warblingandwriting]

Y'all I know the Oscar's don't really matter but I did really enjoy this short film (has a cool Twilight Zone vibe imo) you should check it out (fair warning though tws for violence (lots of slapping) and people being 'dissapeared':