I don’t have enough to say about “Home” to fill a whole post, so I’m just going to make a comment about it here before moving on to “Scarecrow” and the general topic of Supernatural and its female characters.
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Sometimes the glare of a light is your friend instead of your enemy. In this case, it provides a dramatic “sun” for this sculpture of a xiuhcoatl or fire serpent, which sits in the British Museum.
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This is from the other Sainte-Chapelle, the one at the Chateau de Vincennes. (There are probably lots of other Sainte-Chapelles, but those are the two I visited.) It’s a wildly different space, with cream-colored walls painted in very few places, apart from this emblem painted on repeatedly on the ceiling high above. I, er, have a possibly obsessive tendency to photograph interesting ceilings, so of course this detail drew my eye.
As I said before, I won’t be blogging each episode individually. That would be way too much work, not to mention that I don’t have something interesting to say about every. single. ep. But the pilot, being the thing that launches the whole series, does get its own post.
I’ll start talking about actual episodes and content soon enough, but before that, I’d like to look at the general format of the show. (No spoilers, really, but I’ll put it behind a cut for length anyway.
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Remember that turtle head from a while ago? Here’s more context for it. I don’t have any especially good shots of the whole temple, but envision that head sticking out over the front door, the entire roof shaped like the back of a giant silver turtle, and at the top . . . this. A statue of Kannon huge enough to be seen from a mile away, with children arrayed adoringly at her feet.
I told you it was a weird place. ð
This is one of the few photos where I haven’t just done normal editing to it. The sky was very cloudy that day, which made for very boring light; at my father’s suggestion I dropped the “aged photo” filter over it, giving the whole thing the sepia tinge you see here.
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This is Sainte-Chapelle again, this time looking the other way in the upper sanctuary, toward the rose window. As you can see, a few of its “petals” are missing; they’re doing restorations on the stained glass elsewhere, so I don’t know if those will eventually be replaced, or whether the absence of the original glass means they’ll be left as they are. Doesn’t stop it from being absolutely lovely, though.
So I’m almost done with the revision of the third Memoir, I just turned in my next chapter for L5R, the number of pictures left to edit is down to two digits, and the next ten months are jam-packed full of time-consuming things I intend to do.
Which means it’s a perfect time to start a new giant project!
(Or at least it’s a perfect time for my brain to suggest a new giant project.)
I’ve decided I’m in a mood to re-watch Supernatural. And if I’m going to do that, I might as well blog my way through, because one of my reasons for re-watching it is to take a look at its macro-level narrative structure. Eric Kripke, the showrunner, did a remarkably good job of blending a strongly episodic, Monster of the Week format with a long-term metaplot and thematic development, and I’d like to take a look at how he did it. I won’t be blogging each episode individually, but rather commenting on structural stuff as it comes up during the course of the show.
This will involve spoilers. Lots of them. I’ll put everything behind cuts, but if you already know the show or don’t care about being spoiled, feel free to share your thoughts!
Before I get started on the actual blogging, let me share how I got into this show, and why I find it interesting enough to merit this kind of project.
Look, guys. I tried. Really I did.
Not just the usual steps, but extra steps. I culled. I culled again. I tagged early, so that I could compare crosses to crosses, statues to statues, urns to urns, and delete the ones that just weren’t on par with the rest. I deleted more when I started editing. I got rid of as much as I could.
And I still have 229 bloody photos from Highgate and Brompton Cemeteries.
It was October! There was autumn color! Leaves and branches blown down by the storm! Crows posing on crosses! Ivy eating EVERYTHING! It was like being in Japan when the cherry trees were blooming. Those places were just too damn photogenic for their own good — or rather, for mine.
I mean, this is a major improvement over where I started. I think I had more than 450 shots from those two places when I started. But still. 229 photos of crosses, crosses with ivy, statues, statues with ivy, urns, urns with ivy, obelisks, obelisks with ivy, the occasional mausoleum, and did I mention the ivy?
Between this and Zakopane, I’m sorely tempted to post nothing but cemetery shots in October. I have more than enough.
Since this came up in comments the other day — you should be able to click through on any of the photos from “A Year in Pictures” and get the largest version I have. Actual size varies wildly, since my older photos are often smaller to start with and some of my selections have been massively cropped; some of them will be OMGWTFBBQENORMOUS and others will be not that much larger than what’s posted on my site. But if you want to pull any of them down for private use, feel free. (If you want to use them for some other purpose, drop me a line and we’ll work something out.)
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I ended up not writing any scenes set in Cambridge for A Star Shall Fall, but I went there during my research trip because I thought I might need to. This organ was in the King’s College Chapel, and as I am a sucker for pretty fan-vaulting, I could not resist this shot.
1) You have until the end of the month to write a letter to Lady Trent (and get one back)!
2) You also have until next Sunday to bid on these ARCs for Con or Bust. We’re up to $70 for the pair; remember the money goes to a very good cause!
âThe problem is that the âvocal minorityâ of insects who make up the new generation of writers donât scramble for the shadows when outside lights shines on themâthey bare their pincers and go for the jugular. Maybe it is a good thing that SFWA keeps them locked up. The newer members who Scalzi et al. brought in are an embarrassment to the genre.â â (name withheld) on SFF.net, during the recent unpleasantness.
I hereby declare myself a proud member of the Insect Army — not a member of SFWA, but certainly part of the “new generation of writers” and unwilling to run for cover when bigotry and stupidity rear their heads in my industry.
And if I’m willing to say that when I am massively phobic of cockroaches and abhor the damn things to the depths of my soul, you know I mean it.
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I don’t even remember what exactly this thing was: a tomb, I think, with a couple of sculptures sitting on top of it, in the Vatican museum. The light on the figure’s side was just really striking.
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The Å»uraw is the old medieval crane of GdaÅsk: an enormously tall building with a giant treadmill-driven pulley system inside for lifting cargo from ships. Kyle and I arrived in GdaÅsk late at night and discovered our hotel was just across the MotÅawa River from the Å»uraw, and so we spent a little while admiring (and photographing) the view. The stillness of the night meant the reflection was absolutely lovely.
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There was a recent Korean exhibit at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Several of the items on display were seals, all of them with turtles on top, and the turtles’ cheerfully grumpy expressions were just adorable to me. ð
. . . I forgot to write any of them down.
And now I don’t remember what they were.
Well, so much for that.
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The upper hall at Sainte-Chapelle is bloody. amazing. Medieval churches used to be painted; this one still is, and its stained glass is an uttery glory. This is the canopy over the altar at one end of the sanctuary.
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In addition to the bamboo forest I posted before, the area around Tenryuuji in Arashiyama has some absolutely splendid moss. With the sunlight coming down, it looked utterly like a fairy realm.
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Like most of the temples we visited, Halebidu had multiple structures on its ground. This is the interior of the main one. Off to the right about halfway down is a small chamber with the actual shrine in it, but the whole place is (of course) intricately carved. (The ceilings are even more amazing; I’ll be posting a picture from those eventually.)
