Political Dandyism

what's the opposite of feeling sand slip through your fingers because I feel this poem more and more as time passes

Migraines are dumb. I really don't think anyone should have one.

'Spinning Moonlight' by David Wyatt

i found the tenth circle of hell: it's where your fave blows up on tiktok

Okay, I know nothing about Hozier, so I’ve no idea if this is something he’d do, but that pair of lines:

“You treat your mouth as if it’s Heaven’s gate, the rest of you like you’re the TSA.”

Is that a direct reference to the Heaven’s Gate cult? The one that believed you had to give up all vestiges of human life, sex, food, etc, to live on pure sunlight, in order to elevate your consciousness to a new state of being and enable yourself to leave the planet? The one that committed mass suicide in 1997?

Because, um. That does change the tone a bit, yeah.

The TSA too. Because, yes, initially it scans just as gate guardians, a security organisation to protect the ‘gateway to heaven’ that is the partner’s mouth. Their body is a temple, and that temple is guarded to prevent the wrong things from getting in. But, well. The TSA was formed as a direct response to 9.11. So there’s definitely an implication of fanatical self-protection in there too, the aggressive refusal to admit dangerous elements, the fear of allowing attack.

Combined, if it is a direct reference to Heaven’s Gate, then the imagery here is very much of a very regimented individual who is pursuing an inhuman, self-destructive purity, at least partly out of fear of the world outside their boundaries. Not a pursuit of happiness, but an attempt to escape and stave off attack, to be good enough and pure enough to escape the world and be taken somewhere better.

“You keep telling me to live right, to go to bed before the daylight. But then you wake up for the sunrise, you know you don’t gotta pretend.”

“I aim low, I aim true, and the ground is where I go. I work late where I’m free from the phone, and the job gets done. But you worry some, I know, but who wants to live forever babe? You treat your mouth as if it’s heaven’s gate, the rest of you like you’re the TSA. I wish I could go along, babe don’t get me wrong. You know you’re bright as the morning, as soft as the rain, pretty as a vine, as sweet as a grape. If you can sit in a barrel, maybe I’ll wait.”

If it is a Heaven’s Gate reference, a suicide cult, then ‘I aim low, I aim true, and the ground is where I go’ is possibly a bit a refutation of the ‘heaven’ promised if they live right. The ground is good enough, and death is real, not just a step towards promised heaven. The ground is where we go. Who wants to live forever, babe? And “If you can sit in a barrel, maybe I’ll wait”, could just be, yeah, if you grow up a bit, maybe I’ll wait until then, but in this context, a suicide cult, it could also be: if you survive, maybe I’ll wait.

“You keep telling me to live right […] you know you don’t gotta pretend.” “I wish I could go along, babe, don’t get me wrong.”

There is some implication that the narrator thinks it’s a cult. He thinks they’re pretending to their purity out of fear, and he doesn’t want to be dragged in. Partly because he’s already embraced some of the ‘threats’ they see even in tiny things, like coffee and whiskey and bad sleep cycles, and it hasn’t had the consequences they seem to be afraid of.

“I work late where I’m free from the phone, and the job gets done. But you worry some”.

The job gets done. But they worry anyway.

Yeah. I think I would read this song, not necessarily as a straight exaltation of a bad lifestyle, whiskey and coffee and shitty sleep, but more as just a warning of going too far in the other direction, a life of purity based on fear and worry about other people’s rules. Rules that he thinks the partner does know are false. ‘You don’t gotta pretend’, vs ‘I aim low, I aim true’. Plus ‘you treat your mouth as if it’s heaven’s gate’. Heaven’s Gate was also built on a false prophecy, and their belief system had to change several times when elements of that prophecy were proven untrue. The rules change because the rules aren’t real. They’re externally imposed, and they build off your fear. So relax a little bit, embrace some of the small evils, live as a human some instead of attempting to be a higher life form, and see if it’s really everything you were afraid of.

Poised in Perpetuity: Tanya Preminger’s ‘Round Balance’, 2008

I heard in a song once that hell is roasting heaven slowly from below, but I don't think that's true. I think the earth sea and the vault of the heavens form a sort of bain-marie. Hell is slowly tempering heaven like baking chocolate.

i found the tenth circle of hell: it's where your fave blows up on tiktok

I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

I love the sorrow in which you wrote this

The tragedy of growing up british & left wing is realising all your beloved childhood animals in waistcoats were monarchists to the core

I feel like in many ways "How'd he manage to grow up a middle-aged middle-class British man in Peru, anyways?" is the wrong question but it's still the one I am hung up on, years later.

Hold on let’s do this properly:

Paddington - regrettably a monarchist but in that specific immigrant way. The only actual immigrant on the list. May possibly just be a monarchist as part of the processing stage and is also canonically a child.

Winnie the Pooh - is canonically a stuffed animal, I genuinely don’t think he has this level of thought/agency and is not written as such. The real living breathing animals (owl, rabbit) are not just monarchists, but actively and cruelly bourgeois.

The Velveteen Rabbit - doesn’t wear a waistcoat but not a monarchist either.

Angelina Ballerina - a monarchist and a bit of a little bitch tbqh

The Brambly Hedge mice - really unclear. But like worryingly unclear. Clearly some kind of caste system in operation (lords and ladies) but not capitalist or explicitly feudalist either, it seems a thin overlay over their real political intentions: incredibly intense cheesemaking forming the backbone of a post-scarcity economy.

Beatrix Potter / Peter Rabbit - monarchists.

Richard Scarry - actually I can’t make a call on this one

Animals of Farthing Wood - I … don’t know.

Wind in the Willows - Toad’s a fucking Tory, but I feel like the Water Rat is kind of a comrade

Watership Down - unfortunately many of these rabbits are fashy, even the ones you like. Ursula le Guin said it, not me. They wouldn’t walk away from omelas. However, they touch a lot of grass - enough grass to not be interested in the house of Windsor - which is a point in their favour.

Redwall - monarchists, though not for the British monarchy. and also, somehow, Mouse Anglican verging on Mouse Catholic. Worrying, fascinating.

Oakapple Wood - monarchists

Hobbit - not a woodland creature but wears a waistcoat and is sympathetic to Thorin, Aragorn. Provisionally extremely monarchist and the very earliest interpretations of hobbits appeared to think they are somehow bipedal rabbits, which pissed Tolkien off.

Rupert Bear - British bear in clothes attributed partially for the decline in the usage of the name Rupert - but I don’t know a thing about him

The Highway Rat - all Julia Donaldson creatures lick the boot that crushes them, even the highway rat. Possibly not the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo however is the most naked that anyone has ever been, thus not an animal that would wear clothes.

The Narnia creatures - don’t all wear clothes, but THE definitive monarchists

Fantastic Mr Fox - not a monarchist. and in the wes Anderson film is not even British although the farmers and setting are (brilliant artistic choices, especially including an excellent but fucking random possum that calls the entire ecosystem into question: ultimately these are North American animals subverting and undermining the British landowners in a strange political statement whose intentions and direction are unclear.) Not monarchists, but what?

Viruses - possibly monarchists, wear coats, and present in children’s literature as exemplified by the Usborne “See Inside Germs.” Ultimately more data is needed.

Thoughts on Toad and Frog?

They’re American

This post is bigger than me now but:

I feel like this is us OP

Rupert Bear is 100% a monarchist

The Wombles are probably some form of socialist, though. They're an international group that lives in self-sufficient communes and were all in on recycling in the 1960s.

Mossy mushroomy A-frame cabin commission, with its little pals

I got no photos of my favorite design decision: ceramic "rafters" supporting the needlefelted moss. They'll get their time to shine whenever the felt biodegrades, which will be a while.

I want to write one of those "how to talk to your Gen Z coworkers" thinkpieces, but for Gen X.

"Harsh! Is your new 46-year-old employee tuning you out? Here's how to connect with Gen X in an authentic way that's not totally bogus, dude!"

#hey guys the office breakroom looks like a cassette tape that was eaten by the boombox! can we clean it up? #want to listen to some CDs and rent a movie? #try putting a bowl of ibuprofen out for your gen x coworkers (@clove-pinks' original tags)

Transfem to Transmasc solitary must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my boys.

Trans masc to trans fem solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my girls.

Non-binary to binary trans solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my girls and boys.

Binary trans to non-binary trans solidarity must exist as much as any trans solidarity must exist.

Protect my pals.

I keep seeing people reblog this with their own mention of solidarity and I'm really touched by how much everyone has jumped on board with this because yes, you understand! We're to be here for each other!!!! I love you!!! ♡♡♡♡♡

Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.

Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!

 ‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.

This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:

“Well. Why don’t I make something?”

And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)

So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…

FICTION

The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…

Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.

Frankenstein Weekly – Frankenstein

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Voyage of the Nautilus – Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Letters from Watson – Sherlock Holmes

The Invisible Mail – The Invisible Man

Letters from Bunny – E.W. Hornung’s short stories of the eponymous Bunny and Raffles

Letters Regarding Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster short stories, including the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves

…

……

………

…The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)

The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.  

NONFICTION

…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.

This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.

Got recommended another Substack addition~

Woman in White Weekly - The Woman in White

Chen Chen

[/ID: tweets by @/chenchenwrites, saying: “one of my pet peeves is the belief that a poem is just a more complicated way of saying something you could say plainly. no. at its best, every line of a poem is actually the simplest way you could say something—it's just that the something is complicated & strange & alive.

/

a poem inhabits its own clarity, which may be deeply mysterious but that's different from unclear. and at its best, it is an unparaphrasable clarity. it says what cannot otherwise be said—and it is an encounter with the unsayable (sometimes in the same line!)

/

a poem is not ornament. it is oracle. vital opening into wonder.” /end ID]

I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

I love the sorrow in which you wrote this

The tragedy of growing up british & left wing is realising all your beloved childhood animals in waistcoats were monarchists to the core

I feel like in many ways "How'd he manage to grow up a middle-aged middle-class British man in Peru, anyways?" is the wrong question but it's still the one I am hung up on, years later.

Hold on let’s do this properly:

Paddington - regrettably a monarchist but in that specific immigrant way. The only actual immigrant on the list. May possibly just be a monarchist as part of the processing stage and is also canonically a child.

Winnie the Pooh - is canonically a stuffed animal, I genuinely don’t think he has this level of thought/agency and is not written as such. The real living breathing animals (owl, rabbit) are not just monarchists, but actively and cruelly bourgeois.

The Velveteen Rabbit - doesn’t wear a waistcoat but not a monarchist either.

Angelina Ballerina - a monarchist and a bit of a little bitch tbqh

The Brambly Hedge mice - really unclear. But like worryingly unclear. Clearly some kind of caste system in operation (lords and ladies) but not capitalist or explicitly feudalist either, it seems a thin overlay over their real political intentions: incredibly intense cheesemaking forming the backbone of a post-scarcity economy.

Beatrix Potter / Peter Rabbit - monarchists.

Richard Scarry - actually I can’t make a call on this one whoops no worries he’s American

Animals of Farthing Wood - I … don’t know.

Wind in the Willows - Toad’s a fucking Tory, but I feel like the Water Rat is kind of a comrade

Watership Down - unfortunately many of these rabbits are fashy, even the ones you like. Ursula le Guin said it, not me. They wouldn’t walk away from omelas. However, they touch a lot of grass - enough grass to not be interested in the house of Windsor - which is a point in their favour.

Redwall - monarchists, though not for the British monarchy. and also, somehow, Mouse Anglican verging on Mouse Catholic. Worrying, fascinating.

Oakapple Wood - monarchists

Hobbit - not a woodland creature but wears a waistcoat and is sympathetic to Thorin, Aragorn. Provisionally extremely monarchist and the very earliest interpretations of hobbits appeared to think they are somehow bipedal rabbits, which pissed Tolkien off.

Rupert Bear - British bear in clothes attributed partially for the decline in the usage of the name Rupert - but I don’t know a thing about him

The Highway Rat - all Julia Donaldson creatures lick the boot that crushes them, even the highway rat. Possibly not the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo however is the most naked that anyone has ever been, thus not an animal that would wear clothes.

The Narnia creatures - don’t all wear clothes, but THE definitive monarchists

Fantastic Mr Fox - not a monarchist. and in the wes Anderson film is not even British although the farmers and setting are (brilliant artistic choices, especially including an excellent but fucking random possum that calls the entire ecosystem into question: ultimately these are North American animals subverting and undermining the British landowners in a strange political statement whose intentions and direction are unclear.) Not monarchists, but what?

Viruses - possibly monarchists, wear coats, and present in children’s literature as exemplified by the Usborne “See Inside Germs.” Ultimately more data is needed.

When I was a very suicidal trans activist in Texas, Benjamin Sisko saying “sure, you would [die for your people]. Dying gets you off the hook. The question is: are you willing to live for your people?” changed and possibly saved my life. It’s up there with “if we are going to be damned, let us be damned for who we really are” from Picard. Star Trek not only shows us a better world, it teaches us how to make it there

Water is pretty nice to drink despite how horribly it treated the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The reason priests’ dresses are so long because they’re hiding thigh-high stockings and lace panties under there.