change the pear vol. 24 12 Sep 2024

hello! usually i love the feeling that comes with september but my internal clock has been thrown out by this move and the change of hemisphere and the brutal tossing of my fragile body back into winter and consequently i have no idea what time of year it is. spring is coming i guess? rumour has it? but for those of you back in the northern hemisphere, i hope the nights aren’t drawing in too quickly.

on repeat

• vertigo by griff. i maintain that despite her clear vocal talent, griff needs to put down the lyric-writing pen and let someone else take care of that side of things so she can ascend to proper stardom. but this song is genuinely good, lyrically, and her vocals are stunning as always, with fun, interesting instrumentals to round it all off.

• apple by charli xcx. finally having my brat moment, or at least my apple moment. i can’t stop listening!!!

• and to combine the two: griff covering apple!

• western wind by carly rae jepsen. a perfect song to take me into spring.

reading

the yaoi gods have got me, as happens about twice a year on average, where my brain gets offered up as some kind of sacrificial lamb for them to feast on. this time it’s the fantasy series the cemeteries of amalo, following the adventures of thara celehar, a gay elf priest who can speak to the dead. please stay with me. don’t scroll away. along the way he meets a half-goblin opera composer, iäna pel-thenhior, and, you guessed it, they have been sending me bonkers bananas insane. it’s really quite bad for me out here, not least because 1) all they do over two whole entire novels is (barely) hold hands. BARELY!! and 2) this series is so obscure that there are a mere 60 works on ao3 for them (by contrast, there are 43,825 works for lan wangji and wei wuxian from the untamed). this is bad news for all of you, too, because my crazy’s got to go somewhere and that somewhere is here.

the cemeteries of amalo is a follow-up series to the goblin emperor, in which we meet celehar for the first time. he is a witness for the dead, who are priests of the god ulis with the unique power to communicate with dead people’s spirits shortly after they die. at the beginning of the story he has renounced his prelacy for mysterious and unknown reasons (spoiler alert: they’re gay ones) and is residing at court on the charity of his cousin, meaning he’s conveniently on hand for the new emperor, maia, to call on to investigate the untimely deaths of the previous emperor and his sons. when maia meets celehar, he immediately realises that something is incredibly wrong with this man, and we soon find out what it is: in his previous position, he fell in love with a married man. the marriage was deeply unhappy and there were no recourses to help celehar’s lover, and so he turned to murder, killing his wife. but the body was found, and celehar asked to witness for her to find out who did it. he couldn’t lie, and so his lover was convicted for the death of his wife, and beheaded. yikes, to say the least. anyway, through witnessing for maia’s father, he gains back his confidence in his calling and, although he’s offered a place in maia’s household, he decides to go off and work as a witness for the dead once more.

book 1 of the follow-up series, the witness for the dead, finds celehar in amalo, depressed as ever. he is called to investigate the murder of an unknown woman, whom he realises is an opera singer. to the opera, then! where he meets flamboyant, gaudy (in his own words), fiery-tempered iäna pel-thenhior, the principal director of the opera and its composer. after their first meeting, this crops up in celehar’s narration: “He strode away, leaving me for a moment off balance, as if the force of his personality had been holding me upright.” okay lol…….i know what you are………

the book goes on, iäna offering his help for celehar’s investigation and celehar accepting it, coming to and from the opera to interview suspects, getting iäna to help him clear out the victim’s room, go hunting for information in her usual haunts across the city, etc. i should also point out that celehar’s narration is a hellscape. he is incredibly lacking in self-esteem, doesn’t believe he deserves to be happy, an insomniac, and tormented by memories of evru, his lover whom he convicted to death. AND YET. even through this incredibly biased lens (his own thoughts), we see how kind he is, how honest, how principled. people trust him, not only with their dead, but themselves: their secrets, their grief, their hopes and fears. they care for him, because he is a person worth caring for, even if he doesn’t think that about himself. iäna pel-thenhior recognises this from the start:

“Are you not afraid I will use that truth against you?”

He stopped and considered me for a moment, then said, “No. You are honest and you serve Ulis faithfully. If you were merely looking for a convenient person to blame, you wouldn’t have made it as far as the Vermilion Opera in the first place.”

“You are wagering rather a lot on your reading of my character.”

“It isn’t a wager,” said Pel-Thenhior.

devastatingly romantic. to ME! i will spare you all a full recounting of the novel’s events, but the scene that sends me the most insane is one where iäna and celehar have been out investigating, and iäna takes him to dinner….at his MOTHER’S RESTAURANT. where obviously his mother comes out and fusses over them and is delighted that celehar can speak a little of the goblin language and tells iäna: “i like this one, don’t scare him away.” you can’t see me as i type this but i’m smiling like an idiot. GOD. GAY PEOPLE!!! this experience (going on a date) causes celehar to have a panic attack afterwards, because he’s so terrified to love again. i won’t say i’ve been there because that would cheapen his very real trauma but i feel it’s a sentiment that we can all relate to on some level.

at the end of the book, celehar solves the mystery and takes iäna out for tea, where iäna tells him, “you can come use my box at the opera* any time you like”. (*where i will obviously be every night because i am the principal director) like…………………….okay. cool. i feel fine and normal about this.

do you guys see why this is driving me feral yet? here’s book 2: the grief of stones. iäna is not immediately involved in this book’s mysteries but that doesn’t stop celehar from going to the opera to hang out with him (“I was being a fool and I knew it”). and the next night too (“Two nights in a row?” he said as he waved me to the second chair at his small table. I knew I was blushing again). like. guys!!! and celehar keeps going back, always under the pretext of “asking advice” or “telling him about the case” but to the discerning reader, it is very obvious what is going on. it is also obvious to the entire cast and working staff of the opera, who recognise celehar and greet him cheerily every time he interrupts a rehearsal/arrives late to slink into the box in the middle of the performance/turns up to their after-work drinks/etc etc.

during the course of the investigation, celehar has to battle a very powerful dead spirit, which leaves him wounded and unable to speak to the dead. he goes to the opera (of course) to see iäna.

i must side-note again to explain that this world has elaborate grammar conventions for formality: we for first-person formal, I for first-person informal, you for second-person formal and thee/thou/thy for third-person informal. so far celehar and iäna have exclusively used I and you with one another, which tends to be the case amongst normal people addressing each other—unless you are intimate in some way. you can see where i’m going with this, i hope.

so celehar expresses that he’s lost his powers, and in this moment of vulnerability and pain and suffering, iäna says, defiantly (defiantly!!):

“I would be of comfort to thee if I could.”

I was so startled at being thee’d I could barely speak. “Th … thou wouldst?”

“Needst not sound so shocked,” he said, rather wryly. “I did not think that my regard for thee was any particular secret.”

excuse me, i need a moment to compose myself.

okay, so that was fucking crazy, right? right??? lord above. they talk more, celehar refuses iäna’s offer of company (!) at night (!!!) to help him with his bad dreams (!!!), and goes home to muse on not being sure what iäna wants: “simple companionship or something more”. girl, if i SLAP….

celehar solves the mystery again, everything ties up apart from this pesky business of losing his ability to speak to the dead, aka his entire identity and also his job and reason for being in this city. he is convinced by a friend to write to the archprelate (his big boss) to ask to stay in amalo (and every time celehar thinks about staying he also thinks about….you guessed it….iäna). and then celehar goes to the opera to tell iäna about the investigation and this happens:

He hesitated. “Art thou any better?”

“Can I hear the dead, dost mean? No. There is no change.”

“What wilt thou do?”

“That is for the Archprelate to decide. I have written to him, but I do not know when I will hear back.”

“And yet thou’rt still sane! I’m not sure I would be.”

“Sometimes insanity is tempting,” I admitted.

In the dark, Iäna’s hand found mine, and we sat for a while in silence, until I dredged together enough fortitude to say, “I am keeping thee from thy rehearsal. I should go.”

“As long as thou com’st back,” said Iäna.

shaking crying screaming throwing up. tearing my hair out. RENDING my GARMENTS.

last seen

i finished house of the dragon season 2. let’s get into it.

THE GOOD: rhaenyra really comes into her own this season. loved every scene with her and jace (who i kind of fancy, no further questions at this time). LOVED her alliance with mysaria. i found mysaria initially so boring and dull and then in episode six the penny finally dropped and i was like OH, she’s a lesbian. not only am i on board, i’m driving the damn train myself. the episode 4 battle was sick. princess rhaenys i would follow you into battle anywhere. really enjoyed the finding-new-dragonriders arc!

THE BAD: pacing was utterly terrible, and character work is distinctly lacking. i need someone to sit me down like i’m a child and explain otto hightower’s motivations to me in this season. WHY would he want aegon on the throne? the only good reason to do that would be to shaft rhaenyra, and tbqh it’s also not exactly clear why he didn’t ally himself to her and try to work with her, years before. the whole “i don’t think the realm will get behind a woman” line just doesn’t feel good enough, especially when he lets alicent basically rule for viserys during his illness. so then does he just want his own blood on the throne? he doesn’t seem stupid or cutthroat enough for that. it also takes away a lot of agency from alicent to have him be the driving force behind putting aegon on the throne; but then i guess they needed to give her a “way out” for all the back-and-forths she has with rhaenyra later on. idk i get that the homoerotic best friends-to-enemies dynamic between rhaenicent is what the showrunners are trying to push as the heart of this war, but it doesn’t quite land to me.

and don’t even get me started on daemon and what an incredibly chaotic character he is, i don’t even have the energy to get into his 500 personality changes and opaque motivations. being imprisoned in his mind palace of delusion every single episode was an act of violence towards me personally. each time i would start an episode and think, please for the love of god make daemon’s hallucinations be over and the show would be like, nope! here’s an extended scene of him fucking his mum, enjoy xx i actually left the room during the one where he’s watching viserys mourning aemma and went to brush my teeth, wash my face etc. came back and it was STILL going on. intensely boring and lazy storytelling, imo.

also, i could have told you without watching that HBO doesn’t have the range or the inclination to do a revolution storyline properly; i really didn’t need to have “there are good kings and bad kings and good kings take care of their people!” rammed down my throat for an entire season.

finally can someone PLEASE teach the showrunners how to write a joke? please….just one moment of levity……it’s all i ask……

THE UGLY: please for the love of god someone get the velaryons some better wigs. to quote arenike, they look like mops that have been draped over their heads.

THE MINDNUMBINGLY DULL: oh my god, all the table chat that kept going round and round in circles. we get it, men are misogynists and warmongers and don’t listen to women! we don’t need 5 scenes of exactly the same stuff! they’re trying to replicate the intense political manouevrings that we loved in game of thrones but there just isn’t enough substance or heft to these scenes to make them intriguing or tense or interesting.

THE IRREDEEMABLY EVIL: aemond.

miscellaneous

the big yellow wattle tree on my way to work and how glorious it looks in the sun. learning from tina about the scar trees on campus and the old sacred ngunnawal men’s place. reading about the ngangkari and their traditional healing practices. zoë sending me a video of a newt. hana’s brother saying he misses me (cry!) the warbling of the magpies. reading poems with agnes on the theme of time. climbing the kilter board and sending a 6c+! doing 10 pull-ups. driving a 4wd for the first time. reading hay and trisha’s article on fandom, fanfiction and yaoi. visiting the national gallery and its spectacular collection of aboriginal and torres strait islander art. walking through the aboriginal memorial. the soviet agit-prop crockery. doug and karen visiting and bringing me fresh eggs, lemons and parsley from the farm. the fish stall at the market. ciabatta rolls. agedashi tofu. three-berry jam. this w. s. merwin poem. this chris abani poem. this richard siken poem. this episode of the groundings podcast on the non-profit industrial complex. this quote from ruth wilson gilmore.