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Sep. 25th, 2025 10:20 am
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[personal profile] mrissa
 In May the subscribers of If There's Anyone Left got to read my short story, The Things You Know, The Things You Trust. Now it's free to read online! Go, read, enjoy!
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[personal profile] mizkit
When last we saw our heroes, they were returning from a side trip to Memphis. In our absence, Teddy, Freddy, Evelyn and Calliope had a side adventure and then went out and got properly smashed at a drag king club, the name of which is escaping me, somewhere in Cairo. This all went as well as you could possibly imagine, and they returned incredibly hung over.

Teddy and Dr Willie Preston met for the first time. It was most excellent. Tragically, they then parted ways, Teddy to nurse a headache and Willie to lead us into very questionable choices at the Great Pyramids.

DM: Okay, you're at the pyramids! What do you want to do?

The party: ...ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm..............

Alice: I'm going to go look at the dig where Willie's sarcophagus disappeared.

Evelyn: I'm going to go look at those very handsome young men digging things up.

Calliope: ...I feel like someone should keep an eye on Alice, so I guess I'll do that...

DM: Can any of you ride camels?

Alice: I have two in ride!

Evelyn: I've got 6 in ride.

DM, mumbling: of course Evelyn is a horse girl

Evelyn's player: -attempts protest- -falters into inevitable agreement-

Calliope: I grew up in central London, I can't ride at all.

DM: Okay, so Alice goes to the dig where Willie's sarcophagus disappeared, Evelyn goes to look at the men working, and Calliope...goes where the camel wants to go. Fey, what are you doing?

Fey: I want to see if there are any mysterious and cryptic messages at the Sphinx.

Alice finds the dig, which is covered over, and immediately starts looking for something to dig it up again with. "I wonder if I can convince the camel to dig..."

DM: ah yes, those notorious digging animals, camels

Calliope's camel: GRRROOOOOOONK

DM: is anybody trying to do anything formal? Get permission for anything?

Alice: Do you think I could steal a shovel from somebody?

Evelyn: Hellooooo, handsome young men! My, what fine muscles you have as you do your hard work! Isn't Egypt lovely! So full of mysterious mysteries! Perhaps you could tell me about what you're working on!

Young men: -are crude-

Calliope's camel: GRRROOOOOOONK

DM: Fey, you find a mysterious and cryptic message at the Sphinx! In the meantime, is anybody trying to do anything formal? Get permission for anything?

Fey: -returns to Evelyn, triumphant-

Young men: -are very crude-

Evelyn: I can tell you're being crude, you naughty young things, although I don't know what you're saying because I'm American and only speak English! Take that!

Calliope's camel: GRRRRRRRRRROOOOOOOOOOONK -and also carries Calliope over to an abandoned well/garbage chute that the DM wants us to notice- GRRROOOOOOONK

The poor beleaguered DM: is anybody trying to do anything formal? Get permission for anything?

Calliope & Evelyn: Oh look, we've found a deep empty hole in the ground! Everybody come look!

(Everybody comes to look.)

DM, desperate now: is anybody trying to do anything formal? Get permission for anything?

Me: We've never done anything like that before in this entire adventure, so I'd say we're constitutionally unlikely to start now.

DM, relieved that somebody has made a decision: Okay, great. It's getting very hot out now and other archaeology parties and tourists are going off to rest in the heat of the day.

Evelyn: is there anything nearby I can steal to help us get into that hole without killing ourselves?

DM: Like this truck full of supplies?

Evelyn: AMAZING. I get rope, pitons, lanterns (a long list of other things I can't remember) and...whiskey?

DM: there is no whiskey

Evelyn: DAMN.

After a brief discussion of our general athletic skills, Fey goes down the hole first, to try to put pitons in to make it easier for everybody else. Instead, he falls. Whoops. At least he manages a good roll on his health save and isn't horribly damaged.

Alice, who is equally athletic, follows and successfully puts pitons in to help the others. We leave Dr Willie Preston above-ground in case we need someone to notify the authorities of an emergency.

My father, later, horrified, as we relate the adventure to him: You left BILL in charge of EMERGENCIES?

Us: we are not the best at making good decisions

Back in the game, we all get fifty feet down into the ground, which is somewhat slimy and stinky because of the garbage archaeologists have been throwing down here.

GM: Okay, who's going first?

Alice: I'm going first. Fey fell down the hole. Also my driving trait is curiosity.

Evelyn & Calliope: be our guest

Fey: hnf

GM: By the way, Alice, you are extremely comfortable down here in these tunnels. Absolutely comfortable.

Alice: Of course I am.

Everybody else: WE'RE NOT!

GM: nor should you be

(ok he didn't actually say that but COME ON)

As it turns out, it's almost as bad an idea to let Alice lead the party through catacombs and tunnels of doom while driven by curiosity and no discomfort at all as it would be to let, say, Teddy take the lead. She barges ahead with an alarming single-mindedness while everybody else is like "Um. Um. Perhaps...well, shit, Alice has the light, better catch up!"

...up until the point when there's a Terrible Stench that only Alice can smell, and it belatedly occurs to her that maybe she should try to sense trouble.

DM: -rolls for my perception check- You in danger, girl

DM: You are suddenly very very afraid and feel strongly you should get out of there.

Alice: LET'S GO THE OTHER DIRECTION, GUYS

Unfortunately, while Alice was barging off That Way down a path of horrible black roses, Calliope got another light working and she and Evelyn took a quick look The Other Way, where they saw terrifying Anubis-headed things standing motionless in the darkness. They scurry back with Evelyn hissing, "Whatever you do, don't tell Alice what we just saw" at Calliope.

Calliope: No shit, Sherlock.

Evelyn & Calliope: NOPE WE WERE WRONG LET'S GO THE WAY YOU CHOSE IN THE FIRST PLACE ALICE

Alice: NOPE I'M WRONG LET'S GO THE WAY YOU JUST CAME FROM ALSO CAN'T YOU HEAR THAT CRYING CHILD WE HAVE TO GET TO THE CRYING CHILD NOW THERE ARE MEN CALLING FOR HELP WE MUST HELP THEM!

Fey: you people are all idiots, aren't you

Calliope, who really does think fast: these tunnels all twist around down here, Alice. The sound is probably coming from somewhere else entirely and if we go down the path of black roses we'll find them.

Alice, somewhat dubious: ...okay...

We do not find any crying children or men calling for help. We DO find tunnels dripping blood (LET'S NOT GO THAT WAY), more Anubis-headed monsters, and finally...

...finally a deep glowing red light begins to draw us toward it, and for the first time we begin to go up instead of down, up, up, up...into a chamber filled with the red light, and a hard (yellow?) light that's difficult to even look at, and a general sacrificial vibe, and...

...what quite frankly appears to be a Hellmouth at the far end of the chamber.

DM, cheerfully: Well! You have two or three sessions left in Egypt, I reckon. (pause) Or one, if you mess up!

And on that note, we close tonight's adventure. O_O
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[personal profile] mrissa
 Guess what I’ve been up to? Yes! It’s a novella! It’s the story of an ex-harpy, her harpy ex-girlfriend, and some extremely opinionated weaponry. Pastries! Operettas! Complicated friendships! All in one conveniently sized volume (or file)!

Seriously, very excited, friends.


 

Books read, early September

Sep. 16th, 2025 06:53 am
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[personal profile] mrissa
 

Karen Babine, The Allure of Elsewhere: A Memoir of Going Solo. Babine's take on both camping and more generally living as a single woman is particularly interesting because she is very much not solo most of the time in this book--this is a book that is grappling with her roots, her family, and engaging with her current family. It paints a picture of a life that can be satisfying without fitting prior molds--and our demographics are such that there are a lot of tiny details that really resonated with me.

Angeline Boulley, Sisters in the Wind. This is the third YA thriller about Native issues in the US, centering around the same families and clusters of characters. Boulley is writing them to try to be stand-alone but interwoven, and I'd like to see how someone who hadn't read the earlier volumes felt about how well this succeeded. I did read the earlier volumes, and I felt like there was quite a lot of "here's an update on someone you already know" going on here, and like the balance of that with the narrative at hand was a bit off. I also think she's set herself a very hard task, because when the real life issues you're writing about genuinely produce people who behave like cartoon villains, you don't want to sanitize them into something more understandable, and yet then you're stuck with the people who behave like cartoon villains. It's a tough problem. So I still found this worth reading, but I felt like the earlier volumes were stronger in some ways.

A'Lelia Bundles, Joy Goddess: A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance. I picked this up from the "new books" shelf in the library, and I fear it's one of those books where the author had a reasonably good bio of a famous ancestor in her, and she wrote that already (a bio of Madam C.J. Walker) and has gone on to what is clearly a labor of love writing about her famous ancestors but doesn't rise to be nearly as interesting to me as the events and subjects on the periphery of the book. Probably mostly recommended for people with a special interest in this era/location.

Martin Cahill, Audition for the Fox. My copy of this arrived early, but it's out now, I think? Interesting take on gods and their relationship with humanity, a fun fantasy novella.

Emilie A. Caspar, Just Following Orders: Atrocities and the Brain Science of Obedience. This is a fascinating book by a neuropsychologist who has not only done the more standard kind of campus studies into obedience and the variables that affect (or, apparently, in many cases do not affect) it but has also done a lot of interviews and various kinds of brain imaging (fMRI and EEG primarily) on groups of people who could reasonably be described as the foot soldiers of genocide in Cambodia and Rwanda. Caspar's willingness to admit which things she does not know is only one of the things I find refreshing about her work. She's also willing and able to engage with these interviewees on the subject of stopping either themselves or others from committing similar acts, what factors might be important there. This is not a book with all the answers but I'm really glad she's out there asking the questions.

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. Reread. The curious thing about this reread is that it's so smoothly written, it's such a pleasant and easy read, that it was startling to notice how little momentum this book has. Each chapter is a lovely reading experience if you like that sort of thing! (You've seen the number of 19th century novels I read. Of course I like that sort of thing.) But also each chapter is a conscious decision to have more of it, because there's very little of either plot or character pushing forward in any way.

Brandon Crilly, Castoff. Discussed elsewhere.

Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Joy Is My Middle Name. Only a handful of these poems really resonated with me, but the ones that did really resonated with me, which is an interesting experience to have of a poetry collection.

Georges Duby, France in the Middle Ages: 987-1460. This is largely about the evolutions of the concepts and theoretical bases of power in French society in this era, and was really interesting for the things it bothered to examine in that way--where and when and how the Roman Catholic church got involved in various life milestones, for example, generally later than one might think while living in a world so shaped by those processes that they may seem obvious. Worth having. Did not hate Philip Augustus enough but is that even possible.

Xochitl Gonzalez, Anita de Monte Laughs Last. I found this harrowing in places, because I am auntie age, so the story of young women making themselves smaller and less interesting for men has my auntie heart wailing "OH BABY NO DON'T DO IT" without, of course, being able to do one darn thing about it. Do they come through the other side from that behavior: well, what is the title, really, it's not a spoiler to say yes. More concretely: this is about a murdered (fictional) Latina artist in the 1980s and an art history student in the late 1990s putting the pieces together. Most of it is not about the putting the pieces together in any kind of thriller/mystery sense. If you're used to that pacing, this pacing will strike you as very weird. Mostly it's about the shapes of their lives. I liked it even when I was reading it between the cracks between my fingers.

Guy Gavriel Kay, Written on the Dark. I feel like the smaller scale of this bit of fantasized history doesn't serve his type of writing well--there's not the grand sweep, and he's not going to turn into a painter of miniatures at this stage of his career. I also--look, I know he's writing these things as fantasy, so he's allowed to change stuff, I just feel like if a character is still obviously Joan of Arc I'm allowed to disagree with his take on Joan of Arc, which I do, on basically every level. Ah well. If you like Kay books, this sure is one all the same.

T. Kingfisher, Hemlock and Silver. I was mildly disappointed in this one. The mirror magic was creepy, but the romance plot felt pro forma to me, some of the plot beats more obvious than a reinterpreted fairy tale novel would strictly require. Of course she can still write sentences, and this was still an incredibly quick read, it just won't make my Favorite T. Kingfisher Books Top Three.

Kelly Link, Magic for Beginners. Reread. This title could also have matched up with The Book of Love but definitely not, not, not vice versa. This is not a book of love. It's a book of disorientation and weirdness. Which I knew going in, but having been here before doesn't make it less like that.

Alec Nevala-Lee, Collisions: A Physicist's Journey from Hiroshima to the Death of the Dinosaurs. Look, I can't explain to you why Alec, who seems like a nice guy, has chosen a career path that could be described as "writing biographies of nerds Marissa would not want to have lunch with." But he does a good job of it, they're interesting books and manage to learn a lot about--even understand--their subjects without falling the least bit in love with their subjects. This one is Luis Alvarez. Did a lot of interesting things! Also I went into this book with the feeling that even an hour in his company would be more than I really wanted, and I did not come out of it with any particle of that opinion altered.

Lyndal Roper, Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants' War. An account of a really interesting time, illuminating of things that came after, somewhat repetitive.

Vandana Singh, Ambiguity Machines and Other Stories. Reread. Yes, the stories here were also satisfyingly where I left them, science fictiony and vivid.

Travis Tomchuk, Transnational Radicals: Italian Anarchists in Canada and the US, 1915-1940. This is actually a book about Italian anarchists in Canada that recognizes that there was a lot of cross-border traffic, so it also looked at those parts of the US that directly affect Canada--Detroit-Windsor, for example. Lots of analysis on Italian immigrants' immigration experiences either as caused by or as causing their radicalism. Interesting stuff but probably not a good choice My First History of Early Twentieth Century Radicalism.

Natalie Wee, Beast at Every Threshold. It is not Wee's fault that I wanted more beasts. Poets are allowed to be metaphorical like that. I did want more beasts, but what is here instead is good being itself anyway.

Fran Wilde, A Catalog of Storms. This was my first reading of this collection but not my first reading of the vast majority of stories within it. This is the relief of a collection by someone whose work I enjoy, knowing that each of the stories will be reliably good and now I have them in one spot, hurrah, glad this is here.

For your listening pleasure

Sep. 15th, 2025 01:08 pm
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[personal profile] mrissa
 Here's a video of me reading my own poetry for the first time, with SFWA's Speculative Poetry Open Mic. I have not listened to it because I cannot bear listening to myself, but I have hopes that other people feel differently about it....

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