Robin Talley

Reblog every Halloween.

I have a story about the Not Deer from two summers ago. I lived deep in the Appalachia mountains at the time, unlike the foothills I’m in now. I was wandering in the woods, probably two thirds of a mile from my house at that point, as one does when they live two miles down a twisting dirt road with the nearest town (and therefore things to do) thirty minutes away, when I heard brush moving. I knew it was probably a harmless animal- a possum, or a deer, maybe a particularly destructive rabbit, and I turned to look.

well. hm. it was a deer in the way that a graveyard is a playground. you can treat it as such, I guess, but it won’t feel the same.

it was about thirty feet away from me, staring. wild deer don’t stare at random people to begin with- they just run away. she was breathing hard and making a low rumbling sound. I didn’t really know what to do, and I hadn’t really thought about the dangers of going near wild animals even if they are “harmless” deer, so I went towards her.

I swear to god, this thing’s eyes blanked out and it took a couple jerking steps forward, moving really strangely? and I flinched, because what the hell, and then she ran off to the side while staring at me until she was about fifty feet away. it was deeply unsettling in a way that I can’t explain and I know that that thing was not quite a deer.

I sprinted all the way home.

I’ve seen something like this myself. I would say “The joints went the wrong way” but it was more that there might have been more or less joints than you’d expect? The bends were not where the bends go. And the shape of the face was wrong in a way I’d describe as: You have a friend who only draws wolves. They’re really, really, really good at wolves. You want them to draw a deer. They try their best, and neither of you are exactly pleased with the results. There was also an issue of scale - like you gave a deer the proportions of a moose.

I’ve heard “Deer” comes from “Deor” which just means “beast” or “quadruped” so… it was definitely a Deor, but 100% not a Deer. 

I collect spooky stories from other people and a friend once told me about driving back from a “ghost hunt” out in SE Oklahoma, seeing what they described as “like a deer” that stood in the middle of the road, and refused to move. So when one of them got out to go shoo it away by hand they all realized, about the same time… that it was only almost a deer. They described the collective reaction as wildly disproportionate to what they remember having seen - which was just … not quite a deer?

They said there was about fifteen minutes of foot to the floor speeding before they all, right about the same time, felt a change in mood come over them and they began to sob like “little scared kids”. It was only weeks later that they were like “You know… deer don’t look anything like that.”

I grew up in an Appalachia-adjacent area off the Blue Ridge Parkway and this is the first I’ve heard of this. But I will say that if I had heard this story when I was in middle school, say, I probably would have engaged in far fewer Blue Ridge Parkway-related risky behaviors once I got a little older and acquired friends with access to cars, and thus, let’s all share this tale far and wide, shall we?

“Harry Potter has to go into the lake and find his Wheezy—” “Find my what?” “—and take his Wheezy back from the merpeople!” “What’s a Wheezy?” “Your Wheezy, sir, your Wheezy—Wheezy who is giving Dobby his jumper!” Dobby plucked at the shrunken maroon sweater he was now wearing over his shorts. “What?” Harry gasped. “They’ve got… they’ve got Ron?” “The thing Harry Potter will miss the most, sir!” squeaked Dobby.

We love an actor warmup.

My Dictaphone is stuck on record. It won’t stop recording things. So it’s just what you want lying around the White House Counsel’s Office, because there’s never been a problem with that before.

I maintain that the acting was more than 50% of the reason this show worked, and Aaron Sorkin’s writing was, AT MOST, maybe like 30%. These three actors are part of the reason why. 

Kiera Knightley in the Pirates movies is my kryptonite. 

Tipping the Velvet 20th Anniversary ↳ If I were to write Tipping now, what, I wonder, would I change? Well, I’d tidy it up, for starters. I’d give Nancy that kick, make her less selfish and ungenerous. I might be kinder to the ghastly older ladies of Dina’s salon. I wouldn’t wheel in a black character, Bill, simply to have him be part of the white protagonist’s moral education. And I think I’d pay more attention to Nancy’s first love, Kitty. Poor Kitty: she starts off as Vesta Tilley in a shaft of rosy limelight, and ends up as a Victorian Wee Jimmy Krankie – a casualty of the novel’s 1990s take-no-prisoners out-and-proudness. But she’s a bit of a blank, and I find myself wondering now: what’s going on for Kitty? Where did she come from? What makes her tick? If I were ever to write a sequel to the novel, hers is the story I might tell. (Sarah Waters, London, 2018)

me: I’m working on a new show

my friends: okay yeah cool

me: there are hot girls and they kiss

my friends: TICKETS ? WHERE ? NOW PLEASE.

god im reading a text about romance fiction (especially targeted at young adults) for class and one sentence in it literally made my brain explode because ive been thinking about this kind of stuff too, how “Many people wouldn’t fall in love if they’ve never heard about it before.” and like…imagine there was no ideal/overaccentuated image of love and romance painted in postmodern mass media….how would we love? would it be purer? more authentic? what would we do differently? would we fall in love at all if we werent constantly being fed an ideal concept of love as the norm in mass media? like what is a natural process of human feelings and what is just a projection of how we want to love and want to be loved based on what we’ve seen on tv and read in books etc? in this essay i will

w … wh … where’s the rest of the essay, op? 

Fave Five: All-Queer Anthologies

All Out and Out Now ed. by Saundra Mitchell Summer Love and If the Fates Allow…

Vanity Fair’s 2008 ‘Hitchcock Hollywood Portfolio’

Queen Elsa in “Frozen II” (2019, dir. Jennifer Lee, Chris Buck)