Albertine Bookstore, NYC

this week in I Am Very Smart: having enough money to go to the opera, museums and concerts correlates with having enough money for food, shelter and basic health needs

the largest ray species in the world is the giant oceanic manta ray and they can grow to be more than 25 feet across.

look at them!!

...I really want to pet one.

one time I was in new york city and I walked into a random store at 7pm and I saw someone that looked familiar, but I thought, no way. but then we were in the same aisle and he looked at me the same way I looked at him, like, ‘I know you’. it took us a moment to recognize each other since it had been a few years but we were friends in my freshman year of college.

when I was a teenager I made some friends on a cruise and the night before the cruise ended I realized I hadn’t gotten their contact info, so I spent a while scouring the decks for them, and didn’t succeed. two days later I figured I would never see them again, and then we ran into each other in a market in Athens. in a city of more than half a million people, we happened to cross paths.

as a kid I had a friend, and then our moms met and recognized each other - turned out she and I had gone to the same daycare, and had even had little playdates as one-year-olds.

these things never cease to amaze me.

excuse me if this makes very little sense as i have been drinking and it is almost eleven pm on a wednesday but today i walked into my favourite cafe and the frenchman who makes my coffee, didier, told me about how he had just discovered that the woman who had left as I came in happened to live on the same street as his brother, “isn’t the world remarkable?” he said to me. I laughed, “don’t you wonder about how many people you meet on a daily basis that you have something in common with without realising?”

Tonight I had beers with a couple of guys, they were old friends. “How long have you known each other?” I asked. They laughed, “guess!” Turns our they shared a wetnurse, a connection their mothers didn’t discover until they became friends years later.

As I walked to the train I texted my housemate to ask where she was, if she wanted to meet up before we headed home. Suddenly I heard my name called as she ran across the station towards me. “Oh how strange, I just messaged you!”

Sometimes the world feels very large and our differences seem unbridgeable. Other days we run into one another over and over again, and I am glad to recognise friends.

Things astronomy professors say a lot:

Astronomy is not astrology. They’re not the same thing. They’re not interchangeable. Astrology isn’t. even science.

And, of course:

If you take anything away from this class, please, please, please remember how the seasons work!!!!

....this sounds weird, but this post kind of invaded one of my dreams last night. So in my dream, I was trying to explain this whole problem with reconstructions to someone. I was trying and failing to describe how a penguin’s skeleton has a very long neck and actually looks a great deal like a plesiosaur’s skeleton and the implications of that, and then I didn’t have to try and explain anymore because a giant plesiosaur-penguin was swimming through the air toward us.

(After that, there was a thing with a restaurant that was inside a glass bubble and then I had to fold a parachute in a specific way so that when I opened it after jumping out of a plane it would be hard to see, so no one would know I was alive and I could fake my death for mission. And then I had to say goodbye to my friend who had just arrived for a performance but I couldn’t tell her it was the last time I would ever see her, and then I wandered off into the woods with other agents and my specially folded parachute in my backpack. There was a bunch more stuff after that, but it’s not very relevant and I’ve probably already shared way too much of my weird dreams.)

Well-behaved women seldom make history.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

So I feel more or less the same way about Medusa and I wrote a little snippet reframing Medusa’s story. Athena didn’t turn her into a gorgon to punish her for defiling the temple. She did it to protect Medusa. Feedback would be appreciated!

*************************

His eyes sparkled green in the light. Her tears blurred the sight. It hurt. It hurt.

When he was done, Medusa still lay crumpled on the floor. She was silent now, but her face was wet with tears, and her thighs were slick with blood. He surveyed her with disinterest. “Maybe I’ll see you again, pretty. Or maybe not.”

And like the sea breeze, he was gone, as though he had never been.

Medusa sobbed once, loud and broken. She struggled to get up. The pain was too great to stand, but she pulled herself into a kneeling position. There was a strange silence in her mind, as pain and rage warred with disbelief. Rage won out.

Her voice was hoarse as she let out a ragged cry. She raised her fists and slammed them into the stone. The anger still burned within her, so she did it again. Tears ran down her cheeks. She felt useless and small. She had been nothing but a toy to him. How dare he?

“Athena,” she whispered. “Goddess, my goddess. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” She bowed her head and wept.

“Do not apologize, my child.”

Medusa looked up so fast the room spun. She focused on the figure standing in front of her. A woman, with a terrible, fearless kind of beauty, wearing a sword at her hip and a shield on her back. Athena knelt before Medusa and took her face in her hands. “You have done nothing wrong,” she said, lowly, fiercely. “I would have my vengeance upon Poseidon and the other gods for every woman they have hurt, but even I cannot challenge them so.”

Medusa drank in every word. “What am I to do, goddess? I can’t…I can’t bear to endure this again.”

Athena’s face was thoughtful, inscrutable. “The temple has been defiled. You cannot return to your old life.” Medusa bowed her head in sorrow.

Athena continued. “The punishment of Poseidon is beyond me. However, I can grant you a gift. I can give you the power to protect yourself and others. Your rage makes you strong. I can make you my weapon against every man who would bring a woman low. But the price will be high. Are you willing to pay it?”

Medusa hesitated, looking up. The eyes of mortal and goddess met in perfect understanding. Every woman, no matter how high or low, knew the sense of helplessness and rage that men engendered. Medusa would give anything to fight it. Her face hardened with resolve.

“Yes,” Medusa said, and her voice grew stronger. “I would pay any price. Never again.”

Athena’s face bore a sad kind of pride. “Never again,” she agreed.

She rose to her feet, and placed her hand on Medusa’s head.

“I gift you with the power to wreak vengeance. You will stop any man dead in his tracks. I name you Medusa, protectress of women, and executioner of justice.”

And as she lifted her hand from Medusa’s brow, Medusa began to change. Her beautiful red hair, the envy of Athens, morphed into dozens of wriggling snakes. Her nails grew into sharp metal claws.

Athena stepped back. “Rise, my daughter.”

And Medusa rose. She looked up. Her eyes were yellow, and slit like a snake’s. Her lips were red as blood.

“It will be a lonely path that you walk, Medusa. To the west, there is an island called Sarpedon. Make it your sanctuary. Remember that I am proud of you, and be brave, my child.”

She bent and kissed Medusa’s brow…and then she was gone.

There’s evidence that Medusa was actually worshiped in Ancient times as more or less the Patron Goddess of Rape Survivors and a protector of women and I vote we Reclaim The Fuck out of her story.

Where’s ‘memorizes page numbers’???

Via @WritersHQ at Twitter.

(Neutral good / true neutral here.)

...I’ve got some ideas! (This ended up kind of long...oops)

Okay, so the six books in the Enola Holmes series cover events over one year. I don’t think the movie will cover nearly that much time, so I think it will cover only the case from the first book (The Case of the Missing Marquess) and then it will end with the resolution from the sixth book in the series - perhaps with scenes from the other books sprinkled in.

There’s also going to be a number of things that are different from the books - in the books, Enola is not trained to fight, while in the movie she clearly is. In the books, Enola and her mother are not that close, but in the movie they clearly are - although, giving Helena Bonham Carter more screen time is certainly not something I’d complain about. Another major thing that might have plot ramifications is that in the books, Enola runs away before Mycroft can send her off to boarding school. Meanwhile, the trailer clearly shows scenes of Enola at boarding school, so the means of her escape are going to be different in the movie.

In the books, The Case of the Missing Marquess is actually one of the simplest that Enola solves - probably because it’s the first book, and so a great deal of it is taken up with exposition rather than mystery-solving. In the movie, I expect they’ll change that up and make the case more complicated and dramatic. Viscount Tewksbury (i.e. the marquess who went missing), who is introduced in the trailer as a blond teenager on a train, plays a very minor role in the books - also, in the books, he’s twelve. The trailer suggests that his role will be significantly expanded in the movie.

One thing that did bother me a bit about the trailer is that Enola disguises herself as a boy in it. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but in the books, she makes it a bit of a point of pride that she never disguises herself as male - for a couple reasons: one, she knows it is what her brothers will expect her to do, and she is trying to hide from them; and two, in the many ridiculous accoutrements of female fashion, Enola conceals money, candies, other bits and bobs, and her knife. In the books, Enola disguises herself as a widow, a nun, a secretary, an assistant, a scholar woman, a street-seller, an orphan girl, and, as shown in the trailer, a high-born lady. I think it will be something of a pity if the movie forgoes all those many disguises and uses only the disguises of a boy and a lady.

Also, in the books, Enola is largely solitary and mostly works alone, though she occasionally teams up with Sherlock. The movie, it seems, will be giving her some companions. I think that will be fun, but it will kind of reduce one of the books’ main arcs - that Enola can and will do very well on her own.

All in all, I think the movie will be fun to watch and will stay true to the spirit of the books, but the plot of the mystery will be different than anything already present in print. I think it probably would have been more effective to make this a TV series in order to cover more of the story and character development, but what’s done is done. I think the actors will do a marvelous job - I am really looking forward to how Millie Bobby Brown and Henry Cavill portray Enola’s and Sherlock’s sibling relationship.

Some scenes that I hope would show up in the movie in one form or another, but that I think will probably get left out:

when Florence Nightingale gives Sherlock Holmes a piece of her mind

when Enola bursts into Dr. Watson’s home looking for help dressed as a nun and covered in blood, and Watson and Holmes think that she is injured until she whips a bloody knife out of her bodice

when Enola hides from her brother in his own flat, knowing it is the last place he would think to look (actually, I think this one might very well show up in the movie - at 1:00 in the trailer looks like it could be the scene I am referring to, but I can’t tell for sure)

when Enola throws a cat at Sherlock in order to create a distraction and slip out unnoticed

when Enola bumps into Mycroft and kicks him in the shin to get away

when John Watson tells Enola (while she is disguised) that he is worried for Sherlock, as he seems quite distressed over his missing sister

When Mycroft and Sherlock post an ad in the classifieds asking Enola to come home, and she replies: To M.H. and S.H. Rot. E.H.

When Mycroft bursts in to stop a wedding, claiming the bride is an imposter, and Enola rips off her veil, shouts at him, throws off the dress and runs out the door

(also, try this link to download an EPUB copy of that second book, The Case of the Left-Handed Lady.)

I read the Enola Holmes series in one afternoon like two years ago, and I really enjoyed it! I’m excited for this movie. I’m sure some things that I liked in the books will be missing, since that’s just the way of movies, but I really think I’m going to like this movie anyway!

I’m gonna re-read the series before I watch it though. 

(Also Henry Cavill is playing Sherlock?? So Superman is joining Iron Man and Dr.Strange in being Sherlock Holmes and I think that’s fun)