amysgoblinhorde

[amysgoblinhorde]

Is anybody else starting to respond to reading the news with a gutteral snarl, as though headlines are a glimpse of the full moon and are triggering a transformation into a very angry and hairy person who probably needs more coffee?

[amysgoblinhorde]

If you were a fan of Our Flag Means Death you would probably also really enjoy reading Cursed Under London by Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch.

It gives me similar vibes anyway ... So, It's an anachronistic historic rom-com with a very silly sense of humour, a warm heart and lots of joyful chaos. It's very stupid. And very loveable.

The naked fight scene! The argumentative henchmen (and one hench-Thomasina)! Zombie Christopher Marlowe! Dame Honkensby! Plus so very much bisexuality!

[amysgoblinhorde]

The Anti-JK Rowling: Praise for TJ Klune

I am going to overshare. I do not apologise for this.

Way back in the mid 1990s, I was I young girl in school and I was badly suffering the years of harassment and abuse by my peers and also by the grown ups who should have cared for me. I was told I brought it on myself by being weird, I was told I was an attention seeker (yes, and can't you hear me cry for help?) and it was actually the lip curling disdain of the teachers that broke me the most.

I began to feel like maybe I did deserve it. I must have been so unpleasant, so hideous a person that others could see me for what I was and the universe itself was punishing me. I developed Body Dysmorphic Disorder, I kept checking mirrors to see if I could glimpse the monster, mocking myself whenever I thought I looked normal.

Anyway. It all came to a head in my third year, when I became admittedly a bit of an edgelord. I sucked in the darkness and screamed it out.

I was sent to a hospital school. This was a little tiny class of mixed ages for children who needed extra help. It was better here, I made friends - but I also learned a dark lesson here that no child should have to -

There is an appropriate face for trauma.

And I didn't have it. I was not the cute cancer kid. I was not the brave smiling little trooper. I was told by some of the staff in the hospital school that I didn't really belong there, I should consider myself lucky. One teacher said that those of us who were there for mental health issues were weak, we had failed. If we were braver we would be in a normal school.

I would have been 11 when the first Harry Potter book came out, though I didn't read any until sixth form college. I wanted to know what the fuss was about, a movie was being made.

I thought they were fun, as many did. But I can't pretend it didn't hammer an extra nail into my heart as it yet again told me that there was an acceptable face for trauma and it was not mine.

Harry Potter. He was written to be a good looking lad, sporty. Tragically dead parents that he didn't remember anything about. Suffered abuse, but it didn't break him in any inconvenient way. He was a tragically brave little hero with his friends the impossibly clever poster girl (who incidentally was very pretty when she wanted to be) and the token dweeb who appears to have mostly be written to prop up the other two.

Then we have Neville. His story was genuinely heartbreaking and yes it was addressed, but not really. His horrors are not something we talk about. Let's not go there, let's treat it like a dark embarrassing secret. But what a brave lad he is, standing up to his friends! Not for, you know, visiting his brain damaged parents and living with his abusive grandmother. No, no, it's the friends he stands up to. Brave silly Neville. Not the hero, of course. But isn't he brave?

And at last we come to TJ Klune. I read The House in the Cerulean Sea only recently. And wow. I laughed and cried in equal measure.

As with Harry Potter, we have a collection of magical youths, learning to navigate their powers as they grow. But the differences are diamond sharp, the focus instead on all the right things while still being joyful, fantastic and often hilarious.

How can this brilliant man get it so right in such a simple way? It's obvious, when you think about it.

All traumatised children matter.

There is no right face of trauma, least of all on a child, but hey let's not leave out the grown ups. At 40 years of age I thought I knew this, but I must have kept my younger self in a little cell in my mind (ahhh but she's different, she was a monster. We don't talk about her ...).

I was David. And I was Lucy. Why is it so much easier to forgive myself when I see myself as a yeti?

Children will lash out. Forgive yourself that. Children can be little weirdos, little balls of chaos and anger. That's okay. And no child's suffering should be ignored in favour of another, no matter what they look like or what they have done.

No child should be expected to be a poster boy hero, and no child should be chastised if they do not perform trauma right.

So yeah ... Thanks for reading until the end. And thanks to TJ Klune for making a 40 year old woman feel so many things, the strangest of all being forgiveness and acceptance of her 13 year old self.

Also, Chauncey is handsome as crap.

[amysgoblinhorde]

Fly By Night by Frances Hardinge

He who controls the press controls the message.

I am a believer in the idea that adults could learn a lot from children's books. Here is one such book which trusts young readers to comprehend the often difficult topics of political intrigue, censorship, and betrayal. It is a whirlwind of escapades that does not end until the final page. As with Plain Kate by Erin Bow, there is simply something about young heroines with animal companions that make a story work so well.

No matter your age, read this book. When you are done, read more books, and always with an open mind. Never stop thinking. There is no right or wrong way to judge a book; the only wrong you could do is to ban it.

[amysgoblinhorde]

... Sense and Sensibility, that's the book where a woman flies off on her rocket in a magical adventure across the countryside - but she experiences trials along the way, when her coat becomes one with the rocket and her boot melts.

I'm glad they included her sassy and daring extra elongated peaked hat. That's important.

[amysgoblinhorde]

Femme au violon, 1922 by Jean Delville (Belgian, 1867--1953)

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i like hanging out with u

[amysgoblinhorde]

Maeve Binchy here to summarise the departure scene from Good Omens S2 ...

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Why the Confirmation of Crowley and Aziraphale Hits Different Than Other Romances | Tor.com

[amysgoblinhorde]

"My word," she said, taken aback. "That's the biggest cock I've ever seen, and I seen a few in my time."

- Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett

[amysgoblinhorde]

My goodness, I would be doing the exact same thing ...

So there’s this beauty salon near me and every single time I drive past it I hear this bitch trilling, “Salon NoRRRELLLLL!”

(gif by @fengshuismirke)

[amysgoblinhorde]

Regarding the Arrangement between Aziraphale and Crowley in Good Omens -

“If one was going to Hull for a quick temptation, it made sense to nip across the city and carry out a standard brief moment of divine ecstasy.”

I love to imagine how each of them would play the opposite role, as needed. I can’t imagine either of them would be very good at it.

My head-canon is that Crowley would be very blasé; throughout history there will be a string of confused but blessed individuals speaking wistfully of their holy encounter with an angelic being who scowled and kept checking his watch …

Aziraphale would be the opposite, if he was going to play the demon then he would do the job properly! Perhaps he would even raid a joke shop for demonic props and accessories to assist in his role. Sinners throughout time, if they tried to remember it, would be able to pinpoint their descent to a strangely apologetic eldritch entity.

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[amysgoblinhorde]

Nods and Winks: Good Omens and Stairway to Heaven

… Plus Observations On A Plane!

Good Omens Series 2 was brimming with little nods and pastiches in a way that Terry Pratchett fans can particularly appreciate, considering how his novels especially are best read with an eye always open for pop culture references! A lot of these are mentioned in Amazon’s X-Ray feature. I like to speculate on my own, such as deciding whether that scene in Episode 2 with Crowley/Crawley and Aziraphale is visually like that famous scene in Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal where Death appears to the Knight on the beach …

…but I digress!

There is one film that becomes something of a Motif throughout S2 and that is A Matter of Life and Death, or Stairway to Heaven (US title – for clarity, I will use this title going forward).

Powell and Pressburger films are nodded to a lot throughout the series, but Stairway to Heaven is the most repeated and can be found in all sorts of places; film posters in Maggie’s shop, the book ‘My Best Games of Chess’ being dropped from a (slightly less extreme) height, and even Crowley-Angel’s hairdo.

Which got me thinking about when a Nod becomes a Wink. When a reference becomes thematic. And does this just apply to motifs throughout this series, or does it also become a Clue (with a capital C) for the next one?

I do not like - and I’m not very good at - speculating about things that haven’t happened yet. To me, that’s like trying to peep at somebody getting dressed through a crack in a door; it makes me weirdly uncomfortable, and I can’t tell arse from elbow anyway! I’d love to hear what other fans think on this and what cleverer clogs can make of it.

Obviously, we haven’t got and will not get a retelling of Stairway to Heaven, but I would be interested to see if there will be or are more direct parallels. “The dead shall walk the Earth” sounds portentous and we know the Second Coming will be in the plot of S3 - and once again dead walking the earth is also what starts the events of Stairway to Heaven. Regarding themes, I think we already can say that both works share the concept that Love on Earth beats the rulings of Heaven or Hell! Lord Beelzebub and Gabriel proved that one already. (Incidentally, that conversation about gravity and flies was very fun and very clever in hindsight, as they both gravitated to each other on Earth and then flew off together!).

There is one little thing that stood out to me … a plane (that appears to be on fire? Or just highly reflective) named ‘Thy Kingdom Airways’ is in the opening title animation.

This is weird because there are no planes in Good Omens Series 2. Stairway to Heaven starts with a plane crash … a different type of plane, mind you! Is this a bit like the rains of fish in Series 1, something that was later dropped in this series? Is it something that is yet to be? Or is it all just a (pickled) red herring?

[amysgoblinhorde]

The Dance of Death, 1910 by Sidney Harold Meteyard (English, 1868--1947)

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Neil on "you were right" dances ... From way back in 2011!

[amysgoblinhorde]

I just realised, if one thing came out of the whole disastrous Ball, it's that Aziraphale performed the most blessed unintended miracle of his career when ensuring that there will never be another Whickber Street traders meeting ever again ...

If you are ever obligated to go to voluntary or community-lead meetings, you will almost certainly have encountered a Mr Brown. Mr Browns are everywhere.