Moby Dick sonnet
I am fond of blackout sonnets. Here is one I made from about the first page of Moby Dick:
It's a fun word game that incentivizes a certain kind of close reading. I don't prioritize transforming the themes or narrative, but that could be a fun challenge.
Sorry, I'm too lazy to preserve the blackout format on this website. Too many html strikethroughs!
Some years ago— having nothing on shore
I find myself growing grim about the mouth;
whenever its November in my soul;
when I find my coffin knocking — I account
This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
I take to ship. Manhattoes, belted round
by wharves as Indian isles by coral
surround her waterward extreme down-town
where noble mole is washed by waves, and cooled
by breezes, out of sight, look at the crowds
the city dreamy Sabbath afternoon
like silent sentinels all around the town
look oer extremest limit of the land
as nigh the water as they possibly can
It's a fun word game that incentivizes a certain kind of close reading. I don't prioritize transforming the themes or narrative, but that could be a fun challenge.
Sorry, I'm too lazy to preserve the blackout format on this website. Too many html strikethroughs!
Early and endangered writing systems
Some wordpresses by Cambridge classicists:
Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS), and its sequel Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems (VIEWS).
There's some conlang stuff too -- I found them via their post about the pictograms in Alien was recently dug up by The Rec Center.
Through VIEWS I found their friend the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets -- maybe my favorite page I found mucking around that day.
Contexts of and Relations between Early Writing Systems (CREWS), and its sequel Visual Interactions in Early Writing Systems (VIEWS).
There's some conlang stuff too -- I found them via their post about the pictograms in Alien was recently dug up by The Rec Center.
Through VIEWS I found their friend the Atlas of Endangered Alphabets -- maybe my favorite page I found mucking around that day.
The Only Innocent Man
A short story in the transmasculine fanfiction metatext subgenre, about being a slave to the algorithm. Distressing!
Jennifer Mills News
A "newspaper" that answers the question, what if one woman made her own personal local section of The Onion every week for 21 years? I love someone who can commit to a bit that much. JMN reminds me of Friday Night in West Ealing and You, single-page, weekly zines that I read when I was in Australia. Both of those are super offline and unavailable in the US so I'm stoked to find a similar-ish offering via tumblr and email. The weekly Poetry Corner also gives me the vibes of Nancy Kangas, who did joke poems and cartoons in Muse magazine when I was a kid (and went on to teach poetry to kids). I've been walking around all weekend tormenting my loved ones with read alouds.
Paths of Approach to Science Fiction
An introductory spec fic reading list courtesy of Vajra Chandrasekera, author of The Saint of Bright Doors. I can vouch for the excellence of The Disposessed and Amatka, and The Calcutta Chromosome is great so far.
The Book of Ratings
I think I learned about Lore Sjoberg's Book of Ratings on tvtropes when I was 13 or something? It's been an immense source of pleasure to me, scrolling through the ratings while I waited for my quesadilla from the college cafeteria grill.
So it's a series of bon mots about various things, arranged by category. Sometimes the categories themselves are funny, in an "ok, you found the common thread between the things you happened to want to write about today" kind of way. Some favorites: things from the dollar store, rules for my apartment complex.
So it's a series of bon mots about various things, arranged by category. Sometimes the categories themselves are funny, in an "ok, you found the common thread between the things you happened to want to write about today" kind of way. Some favorites: things from the dollar store, rules for my apartment complex.
Eminism
Emi Koyama is a feminist writer and activist. I first bought her zines at Olympia Zine Fest, or maybe it was Portland Zine Symposium. Either way, it was the mid-2010s and I learned a lot about bodily autonomy, harm reduction, self-care, and the structural challenges faced by sex workers, intersex people, and survivors. I think Emi is a feminist thinker that everyone should read! Her writing doesn't have a lot of jargon, so don't worry if you're not a theory person. (I'm not.) The website has a lot of content so give it a go, you will definitely find something that changes your worldview.
Vina Jie-Min Prasad is my Favorite Author
She has most of her short stories for free on her website, and you should do what I did and read all of them in one go. (Whether you should read the explicit ones depends on whether you're a monster and/or robot fucker.) They're definitely fandom-y - Ari drew a connection between fandom for robots and this article about that new star wars droid that people are thirsty for. Prasad's stories are very sweet and funny to me, very romantic, very id-ish. I can't wait until she has some books out so I can buy everything she writes.
I think my favorite story other than 'fandom for robots' is portrait of skull with man, a story about a pretentious artist bugging his boyfriend from beyond the grave.
I think my favorite story other than 'fandom for robots' is portrait of skull with man, a story about a pretentious artist bugging his boyfriend from beyond the grave.