The Aviary

Media I Have Consumed Lately:

- Today, I went to see X-Men: First Class. Which I thoroughly enjoyed. Because how can one not enjoy a story that is that much about the epic love between Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr? It was fab.

- Have now finished season 5 of Supernatural. Turns out I have a new addition to the list of Things Sara Is Easy For In Fiction, and that is British demons named Crowley. I...did not realize that was a category that was ever going to contain more than one character*, but Supernatural!Crowley fills me with immense amounts of glee. I kinda want to be him when I grow up (minus the complete amorality and disregard for human life, of course).

- After talking about Stephen Asma's On Monsters at Wiscon, I bought it for my kindle. I'm very much enjoying it so far, even though the first few chapters are very much Monsters In the Ancient World, which I don't care about very much.** Soon, though, I will get to read about more modern monsters. Also, there is a section on torture porn, which the discussion at Wiscon has made me very interested to read, though not interested enough to actually start investigating the genre. (Yet.)





*Though, considering that I have found, to date, three characters who fall in the character type of "Dark haired angry guy with the personality of a junkyard dog and only one eye" (which I thought was probably the most oddly specific character type I had), I probably shouldn't be quite so surprised.

**I don't start caring about monsters until they can have a conversation with you. I have a hard time considering things like griffins and dragons and such to be monsters, honestly. I tend to class those more as "creatures" or "magical/mythical beasts". For me, I guess, calling something a monster requires both a definite connection to humanity and intent on the part of the monster. I am most interested in monsters that are obvious Other but also obviously humanish and, ideally, have been othered through a choice on their own part. Which, I suppose, explains why I've never been terribly interested in werewolves - they have their otherness thrust upon them, most of the time. Zombies, likewise - can't have a conversation, not their fault. Zombies are fun, sure, but they're not interesting in and of themselves.

Things:

- The library is doing this event in..."celebration of" is the wrong word, but it's that sort of thing. In memory of? I don't know. Anyway. This event dealing with Linda Hazzard and her sanitarium. And, I mean, I read Starvation Heights and I completely understand the draw of that book* and sure, I can see it being historically interesting to go and see the place where it happened. But that doesn't mean that I want her face staring at me every time I go to the library webpage. It's kinda freaky.

- My bloomers are about a third of the way done, in that I have made both legs and joined them together and now get to knit the body portion. And then I get to knit the ruffly bits! I am so excited about doing something that isn't stockinette, I just can't even tell you.

- While knitting, I have been watching season 4 of Supernatural, which I skipped ahead to because there is a list of Things Sara is Easy For In Fiction and both angels and the War in Heaven are pretty high on that list. Supernatural is fun and I'm enjoying it but it has some obvious flaws. Thus I make a request - can anyone recommend some fiction that has angels and the War in Heaven and also, maybe, some women? Possibly more than one? Any medium, I'm easy. (Alas, I have read Good Omens to recently for that to be of any use. Also other relevant things by Neil Gaiman. Maybe I should netflix The Prophecy again...)

- It is really sunny today. I'm glad to see the sun, but I'm really not looking forward to it getting warm. I realize that it's necessary but sometimes I really would like to skip summer entirely. (I'm such a wimp - it barely gets above 80 here. I still want to skip that.)





*Tangentially, it is still oddly thrilling to read stuff that's set where I live. I mean, Seattle is thrilling enough but a lot of Starvation Heights happened in Kitsap county. So weird.