December 2024: deeply unserious patrick

many people are saying this

Here is all the media I experienced in December in roughly the sequence I experienced it. If you like this, leave a like a comment and I will keep doing it.

Winter: A Folio Anthology

This was a book I planned to read every winter for about three Winters then finally did. It was fine! Some selections of decent poetry. Man I did not have much to say about this! I will probably gift it to my aunt at some point.

Conclave: Ralph Fiennes Mutters!

A testament to the power of muttering mysteriously in artistically lit corners, and to the power of Ralphe Finnes looking sad and jowly. I enjoyed this a lot. It was posh melodrama with some egregiously gothic soundtracking and a telenovella plot. Nearly a comedy at times and the end was pretty silly. A fun film. Sergio Castellito is wonderful as the diabolical vape nation cardinal. (another thing is that having so many cardinals tingles my Pokémon/Warhammer collection sense. They all have the same uniform but details are different & they are allowed to wear specific crosses. There are also *rare* cardinals & 1 secret cardinal.)

GenoCyber: Beauty Devil from the Psychic World!

Grotty and weird. Saw this on a shady youtube channel, in a grainy multiply-copied definition - the screen nearly had a texture. Most appropriate for what feels like schitzo-teenage samizdat outsider art. Emotions those of a brain-damaged man, or a victim of sexual trauma. Techno-biological brainmares. Only types of character are innocent savage children with terrifying psychic powers, corrupt megalomaniacal decadents bent on world transformation and victims. Mindscape of an old testament prophet or spiralling conspiracy theorist. A plot that makes you suspect you may have been taking ketamine and forgotten but no its just like that. Pustulating schizoidal mecha-dendrite visuals; a sharp-toothed anime girl screams in pain, the world ended between series, fuck it, let’s end it again, another cyberapocalyptic angel-winged cherubim hanging in the sky. Pretty great series.

Baneblade, by Guy Haley

Tanks! I reconfirm that people-in-a-tank is maybe the perfect Aristotelian drama-vehicle. Everyone is jammed together on the same narrow stage, amongst high tension and shifting scenes. Tanks!

The Taking of Pelham One Two Three

I bounced off this film a long time ago. Maybe I was just too young? I didn't quite get that it was a thriller/comedy. This gets better with age as it becomes a more perfect time capsule of a moment in time, here we see faces, bodies, attitudes and resentment that you jut wouldn't see in a modern film in such a lo-fi, almost anti-dramatic way. The way age hangs upon everyone, the relatively small amount of the 'big score'. This feels like its in the same universe and social 'cosm as Michael Mann's 'Thief'.

The Image of the City by Kevin Lynch

A wonderful, lucid, insightful and, most importantly, *short* book. I was surprised that modern academia could produce something so bright and coherent but then I realised it was published in 1959, before the rot set in.

One of the appendices was of particular interest to me, where many strange and curious navigation systems used by different peoples in different environments were discussed.

A deeply human book.

Mild issue is that many of the ideas brought forth would seem to lead inevitably to an ever-more top-down and theoretical reconstruction of the city, due simply to the universal aspirations of the theory being developed here. Though that is perhaps an inherent problem with all such theory. Lynches concept of 'rhythm' in buildings as seen from fast freeways, the patterning of masses making a kind of sensory music as someone approaches and leaves a city, is tantalising. I have never read it ever suggested at anywhere else. 'City & Image' also brings to mind the liminal relation between the freeway or motorway and the city - they truly are like different realities that only happen to intersect, each is judged by its own patterns and interrelationships and when ones goes from one to the other it is like stepping through a magic mirror.

(Also I don't think anything will ever break the Anglo-American tendency towards adoring basic ugliness in design. Beauty requires hierarchy and the priesthood is corrupt.)

Flesh + Blood by Paul Veerhoven

A very gorgeous, gross and dirty film strewn with magnificent visuals and burnished depravity. No breast remains unbitten, no woman unfondled. Righteously, many of the male case submit to frontal indignity, but for Rutger Haur, who insists on maintaining some underwear, his only cowardly take in an otherwise mesmerising central performance.

Reminds me of Salammbo in its focus on love in hearts too savage for it, and a world too fallen to sustain it, and of 'The Brothers Grosbart' in the bloody picaresque and relentless material cynicism of most of its characters, something broken only by delusions, be they of love or sacred purpose.

Not really a good movie but a powerful one, full of the blood, bones and genitals a Hollywood film would have cut. Potent in its images.

I learn about ‘The Brutalist’

I have not seen ‘The Brutalist’ starring Adrian Brody, but when I do, get ready for a total schizoidal meltdown. Firstly because I fucking hate brutallism and secondly because it likely represents the poor immigrant Jew architect as a victim of the evil anglo while in reality the war-escapee modernist architects were hugely feted, became instantly wealthy and important and actually got to re-write the modern city. Fuck those guys!

Badlands by Terrence Malick

A film so good Tarantino tried to steal it twice. A formless, boundaryless summer. A time outside time where the huge swathe of the prairie becomes a place outside place, may as well be taking place in fairyland. Still has enough actual things happening in it to be an actual story and not just a full-malick jackoff. Anticlimactic and prosaic violence leaving behind numb confusion and uncertainty. Two people as comfortably uncomfortable with each other as they are with the rest of the world; a curiously unerotic romance, the physical abandoned, almost childlike, adding to the storybook feel. Such a texan/southern movie, down to martin sheen discussing gun types with the cops arresting him, shaking hands with the prison guards, and the national guard - "thank you Sir, good luck to you". Malicks ability to find and highlight moments otherwise lost like tears in rain, never more meaningful than when useful, never more useful than when dealing with what he knows.

Iron Warriors Praetor Complete

A doomed Horus Heresy Iron Warriors project. I had to sell the rest, which was probably for the best in the long run. Only this guy remained and here I have completed him. Other than two gifts for my niece and nephew I think this is all I painted in december.

Insanely Popular Everest Tweet

Sometimes I make some random tweet and for no reason I can understand it goes viral. My reply to this tweet about Everest might be the most successful tweet I have ever twote. Should I actually write this movie?

On the Shoulders of Giants and Other Stories

This is a pretty good book!

The titular novlette by Adrian Tchaikovsky is set across a good and interesting relationship; the legless sniper riding a crows-nest and the female Ogor who carries him about.

Hal Wilson does a good trifecta of non-related short stories. In the Wanderer we follow a secret agent trying to track some magical suicide-plague which is eating a crusade army, Past Returns has a broken veteran facing his failures and a chaos cult, but 'The Nameless' would be a great short story in any genre; the residents of a town under threat from ghosts wake up with their memory gone.

Anna Stephens does something interesting with two short stories set at differnt ends of a womans life facing chaos in River of Death and The Siege of Greenspire.

Roadwarden by Liane Mercel is my second favourite story due to its strong grasp of invented detail and just its general vibe.

The scale of the Mortal Realms opens up huge opportunites for storytelling that weren't necessarily there in the Old World and the fact that the Chaos Gods are meaningfully opposed by major deities opens up a moral and spiritual space that I wish GW took more of an interest in.

Andrew Tate in Pentameter

Andrew Tate made a super-long Merlowian mental-breakdown tweet. I liked it so much I translated it into Iambic pentameter.

Scene; Squire Nobody sleeps, enter Sir Cobra, his hands stained with blood;

Sir Cobra: Thou sleepest.

Squire Nobody: [awakens in stupor] My Lord? Be thou hurt?

Sir Cobra: To soundly sleep marks thee overtly gay.

The world at war, death walks the land. Bitcoin.

Squire Nobody:: My liege, I dids't but close mine eye..

Sir Cobra: [overspeaks]

Ascends an All-Time-High each day! Money,

Like winds-bewitched, shifts betwixt the compass points.

The common will subverted, though each Thane,

Each claims; the 'Demos' coronates their rule,

And you have ZERO innate anxiety?

Thou closen up thine eye, and thou becomes,

Absolutely killable, for nine hours!

Full! For neither do ye toss, nor turneth not,

Closed kindly to all calls or clamour from,

This outer world. You don't wake in a sweat?

And cry "news! news prithee! A penny for some tale of tidings fresh!"?

You are not even rich, you are poor, and you snoring?

Of what dreamest thee?

Squire Nobody: My lord.. the blood..

Sir Cobra: You fucking loser YOU HAVE NO MONEY.

Where here a warrior? Where post-traumatic,

Stress? Adrenaline where? Where fear? What blood?

Squire Nobody: Well why would I have Post Traumatic Stress...

Sir Cobra: [interrupts]

If thee a Somone were and not this Thing,

Thou woulds't brave fortunes blade, would sieze some risk,

Would heavily adventure, and heavily,

The weight, would press 'pon thy souls sorrowful seal.

Thy heart would burn with tales of battles lost!

And burn again with hope of battles yet to win!

What form of man, full-grown, has not some issue of the mind?

You feel no stress? None? You're napping? A kitten?

Like a cute little kitty kat? Comfy?

Ah, thou liest in comfort. A blanket thee?

[Sir Cobra tears away the blanket of Squire Nobody, leaving him bare. Sir Cobra rubs his bloodied hands with the blanket.]

Sir Cobra: You are gay. "I had a nap". Gay. "He sleepeth",

Gay. "He waketh not before the dawn". Gay.

I NEVER SLEEP.

I close my eyes but never truly sleep.

I am tired but 'tis well. Life as a man,

(Hold you this) is wanting food you don't eat,

And wanting sleep you CANNOT get. Because,

Thy mind and soul be plagued by battles past,

Present and to-come. Thinkest thou Lord Putin,

Sleepest thus? I laugh out-loud; HA HA!

Lord Trump? NAY! WINNERS OPERATE IN WAR MODE.

[Enter the Ghost of Lady Cobra, wounded, carrying a bloodied dagger]

Sir Cobra: The Eld-Queens mare rides only true mens souls,

I tell thee; nightmares are masculine. Aye,

To shoot awake in sweats cold caul, again!

And again! Once more! Many times a night!

Maybe then your woman would finally love you.

Instead she wakes to see you snore and drool,

Her waking woke you not. She rose from sleep,

And you are out cold because you are scum!

She could stab you in the neck, and mark this well,

She considers it because you deserve it.

Killed by a girl because you were sleepy.

Awwwww.

When once I see a man who loves his sleep,

And acquires it with ease, I know he's bitch-made.

Sleep is that abandoned by heroic souls,

Peace of mind; for Losers. Debate me not.

CHORUS ; Sleeping does not make you homosexual.

Mikey and Nicky, 1976, Directed by Elaine May

I found out about it through a youtube channel. The only place to watch it was another Youtube channel.

Probably a masterwork. No Oscar? She fought the studio & it left a mess. Characters are two men fighting in the dark. We dive deep into their lives as they disappear in the dark. A shadowy relentless moral exchange between horribly imperfect souls. But lively! The blistering vivacity of a Hogarth! Funny too, like Pelham 123, nearly a comedy made into nearly a social documentary by the passage of time.

Kind of a friends movie, kind of a gangster movie, kind of a horror movie. A talking movie but the camera hunts the characters like a drunken man. Absolutely a 4am movie in the dark reaches before dawn. Perfectly captures the feeling of relentless walking in a midnight city where you have no place to go and no way to get there. The only flaw is that Peter Falk is too calm an masculine. His character is a slimy neurotic and low charisma follower. Its sometimes very slightly hard to reconcile.

Ciaphas Cain: The Anthology

Eh. I got this as part of a two for one deal. Flashman in space is… ok? I didn’t hate it. Flashman is interesting in part because he rides atop a huge float of Napoleonic/18th Century British war stories about the ‘good parts’ of British history. Meanwhile Frasiers Flashman is a very well researched look at the very extremely bad parts that people like Hornblower don’t mention and Sharp skates over. An inverted Flashman in space where he’s a nice guy in the dark future is just… its fine.

I become addicted to the Rogue Trader CRPG

None of you will ever see me again.

After nearly getting sucked into Owlcats ‘Pathfinder: Kingmaker’ but managing to eject because it was grindy and the setting dull, I have been pulled into the event horizon of ‘Rogue Trader’, an insanely deep and capacious game involving roleplay, isometric combat, riddles, ship battles, exploration, empire management and everything really. Havin been given the chance to actually live in the Warhammer universe as a Rogue Trader I have given up on getting out. My Jan 2025 in review will probably just be this game. Sorry mum but I am busy conquering the Koronus Expanse.

Bidston by John Atkinson Grimshaw

On the way back from my temp job just after Christmas, the darkness and mysterious mists of Bidston combined to create a beautiful nocturne, and I fucking love a nocturne.

Emperor's Mercy by Henry Zou [CLASSIFIED BY INQUISITORIAL DEGREE]

I have a lot of complex feelings about this one. Rare warhammer samidzat that will never be reprinted since Zou got done for directly plagiarising the memoir of an Iraqui War vet in one of his books.

'Mercy' has an incredible sense of presence, specificity and reality which becomes all the more complex once you realise that many of its 'scenes' and its strong sense of incident is likely nearly mosaiced together from fragments of novels, after action reports, history books etc, like a scrap-book of rejigged combat stories. This might also explain, at least in part, why the performance of the Inquisitors is so variable, sometimes forgetting they have psychic powers, at other times, characters later revealed to be double agents act in incoherent ways.

I am certain Abnett and others draw heavily from other fictions and from military history in creating their own works. Zou ended up on the wrong side of the border. Instead of synthesis he was 'copying'. This does make me dwell a lot on the hard-to-define but know-it-when-you-see-it boundary between Plagaria and Orignalia.

The tragedy is that Zou is (probably) actually good. His wars have the scale and weight of real wars. He is maybe the only warhammer author to have ever understood scale. Armies of multi millions needed to conquer worlds.

As a side-show to the main moral autopsy of the trilogy, the plot of 'Mercy' is pretty repetitive; Inquisitor goes to warzone, has to fight a battle to keep investigating, finds secret which leads to different warzone, goes there, fights a battle to keep investigating, gets another secret which takes him to different warzone with the last big secret, but he has to fight a battle to dig it up.

I'm pretty sure the main characters should have died in the final scene. I did enjoy large parts of the book though. Three stars for my ambivalence about the whole thing.

Farewell!

As I said, you won’t be seeing me till this is finished. The Emperor needs me! (to romance these NPC’s)