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and a shoutout to the two Māori men who travelled to Vienna in 1859, got themselves apprenticed as printers (and incidentally became accomplished ballroom dancers), and finally had an audience with Franz Josef where they charmed him so much that he sent a printing press to New Zealand….which was promptly used from 1861 to print the newspaper of the Kingitanga anti-colonial movement.

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My flesh, my home 🦪 🫧

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Round boi inspired by the radish tattoo on my ankle. If that's not meaningful art, what is ? 🫜

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This really ought to top every, “Best Opening Lines,” list. The 21st century reading public is sleeping on Dorothy L Sayers.

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From a project I was working on before going in another direction, but still wanted to post this. Inspired by this photo of mourning doves nesting in the fossil of a triceratops, and how it tells us that the world can end, just not forever.

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Lila Schwarzkopf Carlsen (American, 1925-2008), Delilah, c. 1958, pastel (maybe oil pastel).

Lila Carlsen was my maternal aunt. She was not a professional artist. Delilah was my childhood cat. We got her as a kitten when I was about 6. This is an early portrait. (She was seal point Siamese and became much darker with age.) She passed away about 1970. I don't know if my aunt drew this from life or a photo. It's not in good shape and needs restoration and reframing. You can see the rip and discoloration of the paper.

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there's a fine line between being wary of manipulation and becoming completely paranoid because you get very close to the realisation that pretty much all human interaction involves doing things we hope will lead to a result we like

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quiz: why do lobsters have one claw bigger

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whenever i read books i cannot actually imagine what the characters look like, they're all somewhat like this.

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He said, From my blood and bone and vomit I conjured up a beautiful labyrinth to house you in. I made you look like a Christmas-tree fairy… I made you look like a Renaissance angel… I made you Adam and Eve… Galatea. Barbie. Frankenstein’s monster with long, yellow hair.

He said, It wasn’t enough.

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house mice & deer mice

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POZZO: […] Let us not then speak ill of our generation, it is not any unhappier than its predecessors. (Pause.) Let us not speak well of it either. (Pause.) Let us not speak of it at all. (Pause. Judiciously.) It is true the population has increased.

—Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

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life can't be that bad when there's still cat and other assorted creatures

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New York City ballet production of Midsummer Nights Dream

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the third house is so silly its the fucking ‘I eat hot chip and lie but you’ll like it because my lies are sexy’ house. It’s the ‘every time I show up i am noticeably out of place in the narrative i find myself in because ive sucker punched my way into being relevant’ house. a fundamental trait of the third house is just believing that you’re the main character when you’re absolutely not. They’re a house of tragically genre and role confused characters. Even down to their literature, (Abella Trine, the heroine of palamedes’ terrible river bubble novel he’s stuck with) the third house always acts in a way that implies that they all think they’re the main character of a trashy novel. And its so funny because they succeed! 90 percent of the time in any story, the main character randomly appears in the narrative with no warning to any of the other characters, and out of nowhere begins to affect the plot in ways unthinkable to the supporting cast.

In tlt we as the readers get to see that dynamic from the *other perspective* corona and ianthe and naberius and valency and cyrus are NOT the main characters, but any time they appear theres this sense of bewilderment you get when you think about them for like 2 seconds. Like where the hell did you come from man?? By all accounts you should not be doing this well. Who ARE YOU. Who do you *think* you are??? Throughout Gideon the ninth, ianthe is just like fucking stalking everyone and ignoring the entire plot to skulk around who knows where, and the only times she gets a spotlight or opens her mouth, the vibes are deplorable! delightfully nasty! befuddling! Every 80 pages ianthe pops out of her hole for 2 pages to say something weirdly ominous or offensive, and you’re like. Okay weird nasty c plot character you’re pretty funky and I kinda forgot you were here. AND THEN. NINETY PERCENT OF THE WAY THROUGH THE BOOK. SHE COMES OUT OF NOWHERE TO GIVE A DRAMATIZED VILLAINOUS SPEECH ABOUT HOW SHE KILLED AND ATE A DUDE. AND SHE WASNT EVEN THE ONE DOING ALL THE OTHER MURDERS. This is a completely unrelated murder she has committed, for completely unrelated reasons. everyone should now realize that they underestimated her and rue the day they assumed lesser of her necromantic capabilities! She even admits she had a whole speech planned out thats going Not Well bc the guy she ate is trying to come back up.

Babs is tragically in the wrong genre, stretching his fabulous abs for no one who cares, i mean, he is a guy who- in any book not filled with toxic lesbian drama- would be a star player, but he’s not! He gets eaten and all anyone there who knew him had to say about it was “babs? Who even cares about babs!” In line with the thirds rule of tropious misplaced leads with main character syndrome, he is a trope that is subverted tragically in that he has everything that should set him up for success narratively, yet any time he is mentioned or does anything ever, he’s humiliated! all his lovers cheat on him, even when he wins a duel he gets shat on by everyone there bc his personality sucks, no one cares about his abs, he’s stuck in a toxic power dynamic with bad twin and worse twin, he gets fucking EATEN. Babs by all accounts would be the successful male lead but gets ZERO WINS over the course of the entire series. You’re confused about how and why this kind of character is in this kind of book, and it makes perfect sense that he does not do well! He has you thinking “what is this hetero romance lead doing in this book of ravenous lesbians. I hate him. I hope they eat him.” And then they DO. Hes not supposed to be in this book but he insists he is and it gets him killed.

Cyrus and Valency never actually appear in the story, yet still manage this bewildering insistence of their own importance. Who else but 2 people eternally convinced that they are the main characters would paint dozens of their own nudes and give them out at birthday parties? I rest my case.

Corona is the most subtle out of all of these, the confident, charismatic and beautiful leader is present in any book no matter the genre. So what makes corona out of place? What makes her the genre switcher? Her relative mundanity. Her supreme insistence of making everything she does a hot girl summer, no matter the horrors. In as yet unset she is notably *not* the main character, yet she is able to turn the whole of Judith’s attempt at a gritty torturous prisoner of war log into a messy and petty sapphic drama. In nona the ninth she uses this power to become a key figure amongst characters such as: 10,000 year old woman stuck in her dead best friends body, A girl so obsessed with her QPR that shes dying bc she lets his ghost take over her body several times a day, the resurrected soul of the planet earth stuck inside the body of a malnourished 19 year old girl, a commando rebel nepo baby with 2 machetes and a gas mask, a 14 year old girl named hot sauce who keeps a gun in her pants. This is not to say Corona isn’t an outlandish or weird character. She’s MESSED up. this is to say that she has no magical powers or outlandish talent, yet still manages to come out of the woodwork performing deeds entirely unexpected. At some point in nona the ninth she is literally the only perfectly mortal person in a room of powerful superhumans and demigods. it has you thinking HOW AND WHY DID YOU GET HERE. and the answer is that shes third. This is what the third does. When you’re challenging a fascist demigod to a duel, the third comes in, grabs your gun, and goes “IM GOING TO KILL MYSELF IF YOU DONT FIGHT RIGHT NOW!” And because the fascist demigod is her sister and also third, it works somehow.

Speaking of that particular fascist third demigod: even when pal is fighting her in her mindscape, shes not the main character. Ianthe literally builds an entire pocket dimension where she is the center of attention of a stage play, and PAL is the main character. The third fundamentally cannot be main characters, bc their whole thing is being so self possessed that they feel like characters that are EXTREMELY genre confused.

The funny thing is, i think ianthe is the only one of these who realizes shes fundamentally misunderstood the role shes meant to play. In harrow the ninth she acts the roguish bad boy love interest who is mean and angsty to the female lead. She’s soooooo cynical, so quirky, referencing many times different tropes from trashy romance novels shes read. She directly parallels john in the belief that she is the main character. Its not until she spends her time babysitting and covering for john that she realizes she isnt like him, or realizes theyre both not what she thinks they are. She sees gods pathetic wallowing and is like “fuck. He thinks he’s the main character. Hes a pathetic villain. I think im the main character. Im a pathetic villain!” her experiences in the time between the end of harrow the ninth and when she shows up in nona have caused her to realize shes a full hog villain. She goes from “heh.. im the ill ignored female lead that no one expected…” in Gideon the ninth, to “heh… im the cynical bad boy romancer that the priggish female lead needs….” In harrow the ninth, to her nona the ninth mindset of “LMAO IM THE NARCISSISTIC VILLAIN!i am the fascist white girl this galaxy needs. The emperor is having a midlife crisis orgy and i am the shadow government. I literally don’t care anymore the zombie apocalypse is upon us and im best friends with a corpse who won’t stop moping over her ex” Whatever fucked up shit has happened to ianthe in that gap of time has caused her to completely reevaluate her role in the story.

anyway i love the third house. i love their freaky gimmicks and infiltrating the narrative and warping it to their own agenda bc they’re fundamentally genre confused. I love how it fucks them over in the stupidest ways.