Not a Manic Pixie Dream Girl...

One of my weekly must reads is Tor Books' Lovecraft Reread, in which Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth conduct a study of the writings of H.P. Lovecraft and authors, who like themselves, were inspired by the 'Lovecraft Mythos'. It's a fun sort of book club, and Ruthanna and Anne do a great job at exploring and deconstructing the good (an imaginative blend of science fiction and horror fiction) and bad (racism and xenophobia) of Lovecraft.

The current discussion involves “The Seal of R’lyeh” by August Derleth who is simultaneously lauded for saving the writings of Lovecraft from lapsing into obscurity and derided for imposing his own biases on Lovecraft's conceptions, namely a trite good-vs-evil narrative and a silly correspondence between Lovecraft's alien 'gods' and the classic elements. Lovecraft's eldritch elders were portrayed as being so alien that human concepts of morality were meaningless to them and human knowledge of matter was insufficient to comprehend their makeup. Derleth's fiction in effect hammered Lovecraft's creations into anthropocentric holes.

Since I'm discussing the story and its tropes, I figure that I should give any readers a huge SPOILER WARNING for a whole bunch of stories, starting with H.P. Lovecraft's The Shadow Over Innsmouth. For those who have no interest in reading the story, but want to continue, here's a nice minute-and-a-half summary:





Alright, with that out of the way, Derleth's story is based on The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a continuation of the narrative of the inhabitants of that decaying seaside town. It follows the Derlethian cliché of a young man inheriting an ancestral home and discovering the recondite, outré lore hidden within. Derleth used the same trope in such forgettable stories as "The Return of Hastur" and "Beyond the Threshold"... lot of grandfatherly and avuncular wizards in Derleth's Lovecraft pastiches. In the case of "The Seal of R’lyeh", the protagonist inherits a home in the vicinity of Innsmouth, which instantly telegraphs the direction in which the narrative will go to the Lovecraft savvy. The story does, however, portray the Innsmouth natives in a somewhat sympathetic light, and even features an example of a 'sexy Deep One':


She was twenty-five, but there were days when she looked much younger, and other days when she looked older. I went to her home, found her, asked her to come towork for me days. She had a car of her own, even if but an old-fashioned Model T; she could drive up and back; and the prospect of working in what she called strangely,“Sylvan’s hiding,” seemed to appeal to her. Indeed, she seemed almost eager to come, and promised to come that day still, if I wished her to. She was not a good-looking girl,but, like my uncle, she was strangely attractive to me, however much she may have turned others away; there was a certain charm about her wide, flat-lipped mouth, and her eyes, which were undeniably cold, seemed often very warm to me.


Even though the initial portrayal of the Deep Ones was meant to elicit revulsion, the sexy fishwife trope actually began with Lovecraft himself:


She was, I judge, about twenty-three at the time; and was taking a special course in mediaeval metaphysics at Miskatonic. The daughter of a friend of mine had met her before—in the Hall School at Kingsport—and had been inclined to shun her because of her odd reputation. She was dark, smallish, and very good-looking except for overprotuberant eyes; but something in her expression alienated extremely sensitive people. It was, however, largely her origin and conversation which caused average folk to avoid her. She was one of the Innsmouth Waites, and dark legends have clustered for generations about crumbling, half-deserted Innsmouth and its people. There are tales of horrible bargains about the year 1850, and of a strange element “not quite human” in the ancient families of the run-down fishing port—tales such as only old-time Yankees can devise and repeat with proper awesomeness.


The sexy Deep Ones trope has also cropped up in stories by James Wade and Charles Stross, and movies such as Grinding Nemo and The Shadow of Innsmouth adaptation Dagon, in which Macarena Gomez manages to be both sexy as hell and super-scary:

Hey, baby why don't you smile more?

"The Seal of R’lyeh" is basically the old tale of 'boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy and girl mutate into fishpeople and go on a quest for the home/tomb of their evil alien god'. In the usual Lovecraft tale, the protagonist goes mad when he (it's always a d00d) learns about the terrifying reality that humans are a mere speck in a vast, indifferent cosmos. In "The Seal of R’lyeh", the protagonist learns about the terrifying reality that humans are a mere speck in a vast, indifferent cosmos, is okay with that, and goes off to have adventures with his squamous squeeze. I don't know if Derleth intended his story to be a spoof of his mentor's body of work, but "The Seal of R’lyeh" is a perfect inversion of the typical Lovecraft tale.

The story suffers from Derleth's typical sins of name-dropping Lovecraftian entities to pad the word count, and of referring to events from other 'mythos tales', which the narrator shouldn't be aware of. A little bit of Derleth goes a long way, but the general consensus, shared by myself, is that his stories usually wear out their welcome after a while. In one criticism of the story under consideration, Tor reader Ophid remarked:


I agree with most point, but Ada reminded me of a RomCom cliche: the woman who’s “different” simply because she’s not blonde and fashionably dressed and also just snarks at the male protagonist. Besides her appearance, I have no idea why Marius likes her; all she does is dangle what he doesn’t know in his face and makes digs at how little his parents taught him. Then she saves him from drowning and suddenly they’re married.


To which some Bastard replied: Heh, Manic Ichthy Dream Girl!

A Case of Congestion

I don't typically travel by taxi, being a dedicated public transportation user. The last time I took a taxi ride in NYC was about a year ago, when I traveled from the Atlantic Avenue subway station to a Wonkette meetup in Red Hook, Brooklyn. I've never used a ridesharing app. That being said, I do try to keep abreast of all sorts of transportation issues in the NY Metro Area. Last weekend, a congestion pricing surcharge was applied to rides from hired motor vehicles, both medallion cabs and app-based ride sharing services. I believe in the principle of congestion pricing, and the application of the funds raised to maintain and improve public transportation. That being said, I believe that medallion taxis should be exempt from the surcharge- taxi medallions, those permits which allow a vehicle to be operated as a taxi, used to be very pricey, but the ascendancy of app based services such as Uber and Lyft have caused them to plummet in value. Since medallion purchases involve a large initial outlay of money, they should be considered a 'prepayment' of congestion costs.

Taxi drivers are having a hard time making ends meet. Last year, in New York City, eight taxi drivers committed suicide, largely due to financial difficulties. The majority of NYC's taxi drivers are immigrants- driving has historically been a good starter job for recent arrivals. Things are looking bleak for the medallion cab industry, by exempting these cabs from congestion pricing, the playing field between the industry and the rideshare app industry can be leveled somewhat.

Party Unity, No Unity Across the Aisle

The pre-speech coverage of tonight's State of the Union address is supposed to be 'unity', which is convincing exactly no-one. In fact, Trump was bashing Chuck Schumer on Twitter this morning... so much for unity.

Tonight is bar trivia night for me, so I won't be watching the address live. Why bother wasting time being lied to? I figure I'll have time to catch up on the atrocities tomorrow, no need to give Vulgarmort any help with the ratings. More important than the State of the Union will be Stacey Abrams' rebuttal. The Democratic Party, indeed the current Resistance, is headed up by women and people of color, and Ms Abrams is a powerful symbol of intraparty unity- she ran a stellar campaign thwarted by racially motivated anti-voting measures, and is the perfect mouthpiece to articulate a message refuting Republican white supremacy and ratfuckery.

What a Difference a Few Days Make

Not a week ago, I couldn't even feel my face while walking outdoors. The northern half of these here United States was gripped in a polar vortex. Here in New York, we got off pretty easily- the temperatures bottomed out around 0F, with wind chills getting as low as -20F. It wasn't a pleasant time, especially when one has to be out and about at night for one's job.

Today, in contrast, was 58F, for one acclimated to last week's cold, that meant walking around in shirtsleeves for much of the day. As luck would have it, I actually had to work today, which is uncharacteristic for a Monday. It was a glorious afternoon to be out and about, especially since I was working in a particularly lovely site. Unfortunately, it's not where Ginger works, so I didn't get to play around with her outdoors this afternoon. Over the weekend, though, when the temperatures topped the freezing mark, I did let her go outside so she could get some relief from being cooped up in the same building (the ones with the convenient radiator covers on which to sleep) for days on end.

The rest of the week promises to be well above normal, temperature wise, but I don't expect anybody on Fox to mention that. I'm not complaining, but I would like to have a February that's a nice average between 'Greenland' and 'late March'.

Sportball Spectator

It’s been a while since I’ve watched the Superb Owl. For the past few years, I’ve worked the night shift while the game was played. Oddly enough, it was a schedule conflict which freed up this evening- one of the guys in my department is on a business trip, so I had to cover his shift, freeing me up this evening. I’m now planning on catching the second half of the game with some friends. I don’t give a panda’s patootie about the game, but it’s an opportunity to hang out drinking beer.

While the spectacle is the main event, it’s not the only event.

I'll Do It My Way

We share our dojo with yoga students and gymnasts- it's a beautiful room with a tatami floor, perfect for all sorts of floor exercises. This morning, our gymnastics instructor was running late for one of her classes, so sensei took it upon himself to begin running the class: "We're going to do gymnastics, in the judo way!"

There's a bit of overlap, we do a lot of tumbling in order to practice how to fall safely. Sensei ran the class for a few minutes while the rest of us taught our judo classes, then the gymnastics coach arrived. She thought that sensei's line was hilarious. We form a mutual admiration society, her sons took judo classes with us, and even more significantly, she herself was mentored in her youth by the legendary Rusty Kanokogi, whose name is synonymous with both New York City judo and women's judo in the United States. She's exactly the sort of coach who can appreciate running a gymnastics class in the judo way.

A Crime so Vast, It Changed the Planet

In the annals of historical atrocities, few rival the slaughter of the indigenous population of the Americas. Recent research suggests that the 'Little Ice Age' was caused in part by the death of approximately ninety percent of the population of the Americas, a reduction of the population from about sixty million to about six million. With the human population plummeting and the subsequent reversion of farmland to forest, the theory goes, enough carbon dioxide was photosynthetically sequestered in the form of wood that it caused the Earth's temperature to drop.

Pre-Columbian North America was the home of sophisticated societies which built large communities, though racist hypotheses were promulgated to downplay the achievements of American autochthones- the large earthworks were attributed to Vikings, Atlanteans, a lost tribe of Israelites, giants... a whole slew of 'suspects'. In an egregious recent example, a pseudoscientific/pseudohistorical television series pushed the trope, by which I mean tripe, of giant mound builders, identified by at least one crank as half-Denisovan hybrid giants. With the paucity of Denisovan remains, these ancient people have become part of the legendarium of all sorts of 'WOO' peddlers, from Bigfoot aficianados to Nephilim nudniks. As if killing off the majority of Native Americans weren't bad enough, there are ongoing efforts to erase them from the historical narrative altogether.