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Fury Eleven

~ Michal ~ 3 Comments

i.e, “This is why I don’t (usually) write fanfiction”, part 2. Also, there be spoilers for the book.

In which my mind drifts while reading Station Eleven.

With apologies to Emily St. John Mandel.

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Kirsten found it difficult to concentrate on memorizing her lines with all the noise from the flatbed’s engine, the constant smell of burning gazzoline, not to mention the jostling as the theatre troupe made its way down the cracked and folded asphalt. Her battered Dover Editions paperback of King Lear was bound to make her carsick, but there was no time to brush up on her acting between towns otherwise; you couldn’t stop, not with the roving bands of ne’er-do-wells drawn towards the highways. The flatbed was a stage, a storage place for costumes and instruments, and a moving fortress.

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A Response

~ Michal ~ 4 Comments

In response to recent assertions by certain authors and critics that including warrior women, or indeed strong female characters at all, in fantasy fiction is “anti-civilizational” and will somehow lead to the destruction of the western world, I only have this to say:

…For I would hurl your cities down
And I would break your shrines
And give the site of every town
To thistles and to vines.

Higher the walls of Nineveh
And prouder Babel’s spires-
I bellowed from the desert way-
They crumbled in my fires.

For all the works of cultured man
Must fare and fade and fall
I am the Dark Barbarian
That towers over all.

-From “A Word from the Outer Dark”, by Robert E. Howard

Now excuse me while I go sharpen my axe. And prepare my pen. I’ve got a civilization to destroy.

This is Why I Don’t Write Fan Fiction

~ Michal ~ 11 Comments

I’ve been know to snigger at fan fiction on occasion.  However, seeing as I’ve never written any, it seemed a tad bit unfair, and felt I owed Ralfast the benefit of the doubt.  So I gave it a go today.

This was the result:

The Doctor and his Girl

Her last good memory was of a blue police box blinking out of existence and leaving a cold, dark alley behind.

The three years that followed were nothing but misery and pain. It’s hard to find a job when you’ve got a blank slate of time on your resume where you hadn’t any employment at all. If she tried to talk to others about their petty little lives, her mind would drift to the stars. I’ve met Shakespeare and Gandhi and Genghis Khan, I’ve been on far-off planets where twin moons hang heavy in a pink sky. I don’t care what you made for supper last night. I don’t care.

She’d come back to a world where her mother plugged up the toilet and she’d have to attack it with a plunger, and those times she’d just stare into the toilet bowl and cry.

So much time had passed and he’d never come back. She always hoped he’d come but the whomp, whomp of the emerging TARDIS never touched her ears. He was off with some new girl now, some blonde tart, on a journey across the universe.

And her, he’d left her behind. Left her to the worst of worlds.

She stands in the washroom staring at the mirror, at the lines appearing on her face, at the gaunt, haunted look of her eyes. Because there was that, too. The murders. The wars. The flames. No comfort for those, either.

“You…you bastard,” she whispers at the mirror and hastily rubs the snot from her nose with her wrist. “Why won’t you come back?”

But there’s no answer. Of course there isn’t.

She picks up the razor blade and flicks off the cover. Looks back at the mirror again. Then, with a final sob, draws it across her throat. Left to right.

The blood on the mirror dissolves to reveal an endless field of stars, comets, nebulae. A whole universe spread out before her. She wants to smile, she wants to laugh.

But it’s the last thing she ever sees.

She’s joined them all. Every girl who’s accompanied the Doctor, only to be dumped back at home without warning, and left to never again to venture among the stars.

The End

I…I just ruined Doctor Who for myself.

Um…

Not doing this again.  Nope.  NEVER AGAIN.

A Very Quick Podcast Recommendation

~ Michal ~ Leave a comment

ImageI’ve begun listening to the New Books in History Podcast, a series of interviews with historians from a wide range of fields.  I absolutely adore these, seeing as History is my chosen field of study and I’m always happy to hear people enthusiastically discussing the subject (that’s one of the main attractions here–hearing historians enthuse about obscure historical marginalia can be unbearably cute).

My latest listen was the interview with Jay Rubenstein concerning his book Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse.  I was quite surprised to hear Rubenstein started out on the path to this book through studying the works of Guibert de Nogent; I wrote two seminar papers on Guibert’s memoir and history of the first crusade, respectively, in my last year of undergraduate studies at university.  I found Rubenstein’s exploration of crusading discourse(for lack of a better term) and its close connection to the imagery of the Apocalypse utterly fascinating.

Actually, all these interviews are well worth your time.  After getting repeatedly bummed out over the good blogging press surrounding the Hardcore History podcast  (which I do not like one bit), I was pleased to discover a podcast this, well, excellent.

Go thee and listen!   

My Altar

~ Michal ~ 6 Comments

As I have little to nothing to say today, here’s a picture of my bookshelf (click to embiggen):

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You can tell a lot about a person from his or her bookshelf.  In my case, space is rather limited, and I have to cull my books often, so what’s left is almost pure, distilled me.

(Well, except for that copy of His Majesty’s Dragon hanging about, which I will dispose of shortly, and the Gormenghast trilogy, which I have so far proven unable to tackle due to falling asleep within the first ten pages).

I will note that I still have two boxes of books in Edmonton, while the majority of Polish books remain on another, smaller shelf.

And, as always, the bookshelf guardians remain on active duty:

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I will not explain the book to the far left.

An Old Shame, or “My Younger Self ‘Does’ the Vikings”

~ Michal ~ 6 Comments

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At some point, most writers realize everything they wrote in high school was crap. 

What follows is a short story I wrote when I was 13 years old.  Presented, presumably, for your amusement and edification.  It never fails to give me a fit of giggles, and it says a lot about the person I was (and still am). 

I offer no other excuses.

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