Author: Frances K R

Keeping moving.

It’s… wow.  I didn’t realize it had been nearly a month.  I remember this time last year, when I was writing just about daily, and…  Well.  It’s not something I’m going to fix by not writing, I guess.

I’m adjusting to not being on meds for depression, after five years.  I seem to be better, and I am very very glad about that.  I’m not okay; there have been bad days.  But they haven’t been as severe as they were before I had to start seeing my therapist and go onto meds.  I know that depression can sometimes mellow as you age[1], and I’ve learnt better coping strategies, and I suppose it’s possible that now I can manage without medication.  I don’t know yet.

One of the more common side-effects[2] of the meds I was on was what I’m going to loosely characterize as fuzzy-brain–absentmindedness, forgetfulness, confusion, some lack of interest or initiative.  That quality was more or less present in my life for the last five years.  But between five years on assorted medication and my untreated depression before that, I’m not entirely clear on how integral that quality is to me.  So after consideration (and medical consultation), I’m trying life without psych meds and hopefully I can get a baseline on how I think and how my brain works when I am not either medicated or severely depressed.

I would like to be able to manage depression without medication; not because life without medication is better or purer or any other such bootstrapped nonsense, not because my life when I needed medication was less worthwhile.  But life without medication is marginally more secure–I never need to worry about being on vacation and losing my meds, about not being able to pay for them, about losing them in a house fire, I never need to worry even theoretically about a bad batch (although I never did worry about that, but you take my point).

…well, hey.  Managed to articulate something about my life at the moment, and to get something written as well.  I will call that a double win, I guess.

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[1] Presuming, of course, it lets you age.  (Pardon, a touch of habromania.)

[2] There are no side-effects; there are only effects you would prefer not to dwell on.

American Horror Story, season 2

Alright.  Despite the way the last one ended[1], I’m watching the first episode of the second season.  Bunch of the same actors; after the open, it looks like they’re going with a period piece.  The location for this season is an asylum–initially a tuberculosis sanitarium, turned into an asylum for the criminally insane run by the Catholic church. Given how they handled psychiatric help in the last season, I am the antithesis of optimistic.  (Credits do feature Clea Duvall, who I am glad to see, but I’m not sure that’s enough.)

Okay.  The light of my life refers to Mad Men as being a show that boils down to “look at these primitive savages, see how savage and primitive they are”.   I think there’s more to Mad Men than that.  Watching this episode, I am not yet sure I am seeing more than that here.

The woman running the asylum is vomitous.  The doctor brought in to run the medical side of things is arguably worse.  We’ve seen five patients talk so far, and the characterisation is… thin.  Particularly for the three who haven’t proclaimed their innocence.

Common elements in our protagonists: relationships deemed socially unacceptable and kept secret.  The self-proclaimed innocent murderer was a white man married to a black woman[2]; the reporter is a woman with a girlfriend.  Hmh, even Sister Jude, the woman running the asylum, is a nun lusting after her monsignor.

Betting that the doctor is either operating on patients to turn them into a strange new species or grinding them up to feed them to wolves.  Probably the strange new species thing.  There’s a real Nazi eugenicist vibe off him when he’s talking about creating new species.

(Flashback to the contemporary open!  That’s kind of cool.  I hope they make it out.)

Right, so, both the religious figures and the scientific figures are sources of horror.  The reporter’s been incarcerated; her girlfriend Wendy’s being blackmailed into cosigning the recommendation that she be committed with the threat of revealing the fact that she’s a lesbian (she’s a third-grade schoolteacher); and of course no-one that we’re invited to feel any sympathy for is actually insane.  Kit Walker was either possessed or framed by aliens (seriously, the doctor pulled a little metal bug out of him that then got up and ran away), and Lana Winters was locked up because Sister Jude figures she can get away with it.  Grace (the woman who warns Kit that the other inmates will rat him out if he turns off the Muzak in the common room[3]) claims she’s not crazy, and it says a lot about the show that given that she’s white, attractive, and accused of murdering her family (kind of like Kit!) that I am inclined to buy it.

There’s also Shelley.  She’s been diagnosed with nymphomania, which (1) given the time period is a diagnosis I am looking at with a great deal of suspicion, and (2) does make me wonder how she ended up in an asylum for the criminally insane.

Everyone else?  The people who we presume are actually mentally ill?  They’re scary decorations.  The first one we meet is a woman suffering from microcephaly who, we are told, drowned her sister’s baby and cut off his ears.  And there’s poor grooming, twitching, throwing around bodily waste…

So we’ve got a show set in an asylum, where all but three and two-halves (the Monsignor and Wendy) of the characters are patients, and we still can’t actually get a protagonist who’s mentally ill?  I mean, I knew it was too much to hope for, I just hate being reminded of that fact.

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[1] In a fest of Biblical Roanoke magic spell therapy-is-all-lies and women-are-baby-crazy shit that had me earnestly explaining to the dog that if she ever meets a therapist like the one in the TV show she should bite him and she would be a good dog for doing it.

[2] She died.  Horribly. Probably.

[3] He’ll get five more blows with a cane, they’ll get a piece of candy.

Slightly surprised.

I could have sworn I’d written something here in the last month.  Looking over where I’ve actually been typing, though, I can see how I didn’t manage that.

I’ve been chipping away at a couple of stories–one handwritten, one typed up, and it’s interesting to see how the pace is slightly different.  I’ve also been working on a story for a game–the Story Nexus engine’s open to the public, now, and it’s got the potential to be a huge timesink.  (You can check it out online over here.)  And there were some repairs at home, so there’s some work putting everything back into place.

And I’m job-hunting, too, since my contract was not renewed.  That last is probably the most draining of everything, to be honest.

Twilight Turns From Amethyst, by Nicola Belte

I’ve never used the “Press This” function before today; I expect I should probably think rather carefully about how and when I do use it, before making any kind of a habit out of it.  But for the moment, I am just going to recommend the following horror story:

Twilight Turns From Amethyst, by Nicola Belte.

Ignorance and mass media.

My ignorance, to be clear. That title sounded a lot less snippy in my head.

Rather quick, rather flip notes, as I down coffee before work…

First; There are movies I haven’t seen. Quite a lot of them. Two that came up this morning were Scarface and Johnny Got His Gun (because the morning drive music included “Jack Sparrow” and “One”).

What else am I missing? What movies are really worth seeing (and trust me, the expectation that I’ve already seen it is not to be trusted)?

Second; So I’m on goodreads (as that widget in the lower right-hand corner may have indicated). It allows for a five-star rating system, and for me that basically seems to boil down to (1) I’m rating this because I want to establish I thought it was terrible, not that I just didn’t bother to rate it; (2) pretty bad to not-great, but with redeeming moments; (3) decent way to spend some time; (4) everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this; (5) everyone should try reading this.

There’s a whole lot of things falling into the three-star category, including some things that I’m feeling a little bad about, because they’d be four-star books if five-star ratings weren’t reserved for truly amazing things. And I’m wondering if I should reorganize, give everyone-should-try-this books their own shelf and stretch my ratings out so that there was a middle ground between “decent” and “everyone interested in the genre or subject matter should try reading this”.

I may be putting a bit too much thought into this, but I wondered.

Memories, all alone in the moonlight…

On my way home on the bus yesterday, I was flipping through my copy of American Supernatural Tales, looking to find the excellent “The Events at Poroth Farm”, when a fragment of text caught my attention:

…not an “animal of some kind,” as he put it. Something with a dragging tail, with scales, with great clawed feet–

And in the back of my head, a little voice is going wait, wait, I remember this…

–and I knew it had no face.

Yes.

“The Lonesome Place”, by August Derleth.

It’s been so long since I read that that I have no idea, now, where I first saw it.  It’s been printed in a ton of places, but none of them ring any bells. I was surprised to discover it was by Derleth; I always thought of it as a children’s story, the kind of thing you’d find sitting on a shelf with A Touch of Chill and Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Witches.  It’s got a sort of calm tone to the horror, nothing giddily overbearing.  Puts me in mind of Bradbury:

“See, baby? Something bright… something pretty!”
A scalpel.

(It occurs to me, as I write this, that I might have a mildly elastic definition of “children’s story.”  Might.  I’m just tossing that out there for consideration.)

But yeah; I just thought I’d make a note of recognizing an old acquaintance, is all, one I didn’t expect to see there.

Quick thoughts.

Two things have been rattling around my head today:

A man said to the universe: ‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe, ‘That fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.’
     — Stephen Crane

and

“It has been said that writing comes more easily if you have something to say.”
      — Sholem Asch

I thought I had something to say.  I’m just having a little trouble placing it, right now.

Carrying on.

I occasionally wish there was someplace I could file a complaint for matters related to real life – not anything that is anyone’s fault, you understand, more little hiccups that just need to be rectified.

For example, the way stress makes you hungry without actually seeking to burn up anything in the way of fat our calories. Come on, seriously? It would just make so much more sense if the two were linked. And then I could go out after a week of trying to do three people’s jobs in the time allotted to one person, and not feel bad about the fact that I want a hamburger. I really want a hamburger.

In the meantime, however, there is a drink:

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Bless the weekend.