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The Sorrow and the Pity, short story by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu

About the author (from Tomorrow There Will Be Sun, the 2024 Hope Prize anthology): Ani Kayode Somtochukwu is an award-winning writer and queer liberation activist from Enugu, Nigeria. He is the author of And Then He Sang a Lullaby, which won the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was Gold Winner for the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in Literary Fiction. His Instagram here.

If you're looking for more fiction of gay Nigerian boys, you could check out the novel Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh.

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I read this book, Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh, over 7 days in December 2024. The cover reminded me of the posters for Moonlight (dir. Barry Jenkins). Anyways, I'll go through the screenshots I took of Blessings and put some here.

As I started reading it, I was listening to Revelation by Troye Sivan and Jónsi.

Was that a reference to Nietzsche's "unbearable lightness of being"?

Very soft writing. I was reminded of Blessings when I read a short story about two Igbo boys in a relationship, called The Sorrow and the Pity, which was shortlisted by The Hope Prize and published in their anthology There Will Be Sun. It was written by Ani Kayode Somtochukwu (his Instagram here).

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The book was published yesterday (Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me by Lana Estemirova), but I wonder where the film (Natasha by Andrew Meier and Mark Franchetti) will be available.

Lana Estemirova was 15 in 2009, when her mother, the renowned Chechen human rights activist Natalia Estemirova, was kidnapped and murdered. Bundled into a car as she walked to the bus stop on her way to work, she was driven out of town and then shot five times in the chest and head.

The killing was widely seen as retribution for Estemirova’s fearless investigations of extrajudicial murders, kidnappings and human rights abuses in Chechnya, first by Russian soldiers and then by forces loyal to the Kremlin-appointed warlord, Ramzan Kadyrov. Nobody was ever prosecuted for the crime.

Three years later, Lana, Natalia’s only child stood at her mother’s grave and made two promises: firstly, that she would never take needless risks and would ensure her own future children led boring, stable lives; and secondly, that she would write a book about her mother, to ensure that “she will be remembered and her killers will fade like ghosts”.

Please Live: The Chechen Wars, My Mother and Me by Lana Estemirova, is published by John Murray on 19 June

Natasha, a film by Andrew Meier and Mark Franchetti, will premiere at the Tribeca film festival on 8 June

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Have written the Solotov fic. It’s no longer a fanfic. As a friend said over Discord:

[I]t ceases to be fanfic or anything of that sort. You have comitted yourself to telling a more sincere and truthful story.

It references a line from AD Miller’s 2011 Man Booker Prize-shortlisted novel Snowdrops, which goes, “one of those filthy little wars that broke out in the Caucasus when the evil empire collapsed, wars that I hadn’t even heard of until I started taking Moscow taxis”.

It uses the last verse of the anthem of the independent Chechen Republic of Ichkeria.

It uses a line from Katherine S Layton’s Chechnya: Culture and Society (2014), “Only the extremists remain”, referring to Chechnya’s resistance to Russian occupation.

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Too bad, their The Old Words probably greatly influenced this Solotov fic. Both about former soldiers and family men who, along with their nation, have lost everything and currently live a nonexistence.

Hey 👋 You know the author of impeccable fanfiction, Septembriseur? Do you know if there’s any way of contacting them? I don’t think they’ve been checking their AO3 comments for ages. I want to ask them another question

Yeah :( I don’t know how to reach them except by AO3 anymore. They deleted without saying anything. I miss their commentary, they literally never missed.

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So I was right about the starting young. But about Spain, nah I don't think so.

Take a listen.

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"My name is Josh Stewart and I play Solotov. He was a Chechen soldier from an early age of probably 11, 12 years old. He came up through the ranks and became the most decorated sniper in the region and his skill sort of led him down the road of a paid assassin."

"He's ready to be done with it. He's got his place on top of a mountain in Spain where he grows his herbs and he's content with that life but this piece of evidence is coming back to haunt him."

Take a listen.

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Is that Josh Stewart in your pfp?

Yeah! still from a deleted scene the Collection. And Solotov is my second favorite Josh Stewart role. Holt McLaren is my third followed by every other role because I'm hopeless

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Still on a quest to create the Solotov fic. Some thoughts:

It's implied that a payment from Atlas for his service could potentially be revolution for his people, but:

Solotov says he wants 'rebirth'—does this mean leaving his past behind?

-> "I do not always want to be looking over my shoulder."

(Also I can't believe he was just relaxing at a villa in Spain as his 'retirement'. Surely he wasn't going to be picking herbs for the rest of his life.)

Chechens have a thing for never being slaves, while Solotov refers to Hayes as his 'master'. Must've really grated on his sensibilities.

Chechens usually don't smoke. Could just be a misstep by the show creators, but could show that Solotov is losing his way (not being Chechen, but in an unhealthy uncontrolled way).

Solotov had a thing for Julie, or otherwise a soft spot.

Solotov was going to kill Bo Winnick for harassing Julie. Source.

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CANON: Solotov was going to kill Bo Winnick! Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/shooter/comments/lezs8b/comment/gn2ujgn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

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the association between water and death in alex rider has always been so fascinating to me because…it’s water. you cannot live without it; on paper it is so much less threatening than a gun or a bomb or a deadly virus. and yet time and time again alex half-drowns. in the mine and the jellyfish tank in stormbreaker; destroying the gentleman’s boat and breaking into sarov’s compound in skeleton key; locked in the cellar in scorpia; diving in ark angel; the pleasures’ car crashing into the loch in crocodile tears; waterboarded by the CIA in scorpia rising. when alex meets yassen again in eagle strike, they are on a jetty by the sea. venice is a city slowly sinking into the water. to kill john they had to blow up a plane; to kill ian they had to wait until he was alone on a country lane to put two bullets in his skull; in another world the rider brothers might have avoided these things, but how do you avoid water. how do you avoid becoming your father’s son and your uncle’s nephew when you’ve never known anything else, never been given any other choice. the first time alex sees julia rothman in scorpia, ‘she was on the water; Alex was on the land’. it doesn’t last. he follows her without thinking.

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these are so easy to make alex rider is everwhere for those with eyes to see it

last/next

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[Image description: The title, "Fanworks Permission Statement Builder," and black line-drawing-style pictures of a hand holding a pencil and of a microphone with a pop filter, over a background of crumpled paper. End ID.] (credit to @rystonlentil for the image ID)

Hey fanworks creators!

Excited about the idea of someone creating something based on your fan creation (like podfics, fanart, translations, etc)? On the other hand, do you not want people creating stuff based off your fanworks and don't want to have to turn them down? Or do you have a more nuanced idea of what you are and aren't comfortable with people doing based on your fan creations? Don't particularly care one way or the other about what people create based on your stuff?

SPEND JUST A FEW MINUTES TO QUICKLY GENERATE A FANWORKS PERMISSION STATEMENT LETTING PEOPLE KNOW YOUR PREFERENCES!!!

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A permission statement is for anyone that creates fanworks! Yes, even if you don't think anyone would ever want to create something based off your fanworks. You never know! It's not egotistical to post a permission statement, it's HELPFUL. Yes, even if you don't want people making something based off your works. It means no one has to reach out to ask you, they can know your preferences right away.

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Absolutely not! It's great for fan creators of ALL kinds to have a fanworks permission statement! Fanartists, someone might want to use your fanart as inspiration for a fanfic or create fanart inspired by your work in a different medium! Podficcers, other people creating in an audible medium might want to insert clips of your podfics into their work, or copy the way you did certain effects! Fanbinders, you might inspire an artist with the way you do your binding! This is really for everyone, because fandom is infinitely creative and who knows how another fan creator might be inspired by your work!

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Don't want to come up with a permission statement on your own? Not sure what should even go into a permission statement? Want someone to at least give you a starting place that you can edit to better reflect your preferences? Want someone to just hand you a ready-to-use permission statement that you can paste into your profile? Spend just a few minutes answering some questions about your preferences, and you'll have a permission statement ready to use or edit!

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Have any sources influenced how you wrote Zemo in The Old Words? Maybe Voices from Chernobyl? Have you researched soldiers that grew up in war zones before? I’m trying to figure out how to write a similar character.

Well, first of all, I do know quite a few people who grew up in war zones and whose fathers or brothers fought for warlords. So it’s not hard for me to imagine why or how someone fights in a nationalist militia.

My original concentration in grad school was human rights rhetoric, so I’ve done a lot of reading about the characterization of human rights victims and perpetrators. You might look at the work of Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith, for example, or some of the academic analysis that has been produced of child soldier narratives.

I was doing a lot of reading about Ukrainian nationalism in the context of Chernobyl when I started writing my second Zemo story, so there probably was a bit of influence there, but I was also reading a lot of, like, Balkan memes. So.

There is also the fact that I have a weird tendency to turn about half the characters I write into members of the Wittgenstein family in some way, which speaks to my enduring preoccupation with Ludwig Wittgenstein. He’s never not at the back of my mind.

I don’t know how one comes to imagine a character, though. You have to do enough reading, possess enough facts, that you actually have the toolkit necessary to assemble an imaginary figure— if you don’t have those facts as tools, you’ll inevitably fail. But you also have to exercise an empathy that allows you to inhabit the skin of others.

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On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society by Dave Grossman.

The Old Words by kvikindi/@septembriseur

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We do, too, Josh... we do, too.

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