Noel B

Years ago, Spouse got offered a promotion. It was a great opportunity: career advancement, a raise, upskilling... Only problem: it would require us to move to Detroit.

At the time we had been in Chicago for a little over a year and we were both in love (still are! we're simps for this city). It's just a perfect match for our values and our lifestyle: it's beautiful, it's comfortable, it's easy to move around without a car, we have good friends here.

We really didn't want to move. So Spouse rejected the promotion. The company still pushed for it, offered different incentives, Spouse explained moving out of Chicago was a dealbreaker.

So the company invited both of us to Detroit. We would spend a couple of days there, being wined and dined, exploring the city. They would show us around so we could see that Detroit was very similar to Chicago and that we would surely be as happy there as we were here. They arranged for our accommodation and a car rental.

In which they accidentally let the riff-raff into their exclusive club

Someone on Here made me aware that there was a fan translation of Robert Kurvitz's novel "Sacred and Terrible Air" and, having willfully allowed Disco Elysium to ruin my life, I had to read it.

The story takes place in the same world as Disco Elysium, with its isolas of matter surrounded by the nothingness of the pale, an element that is central to the book, both textually and thematically. It follows three men, still investigating the disappearance of their high school sweethearts, unable to let go decades after the case was closed with no resolution.

But this is Elysium, so of course there is a lot more going on.

rebug for the evening crowd

Someone on Here made me aware that there was a fan translation of Robert Kurvitz's novel "Sacred and Terrible Air" and, having willfully allowed Disco Elysium to ruin my life, I had to read it.

The story takes place in the same world as Disco Elysium, with its isolas of matter surrounded by the nothingness of the pale, an element that is central to the book, both textually and thematically. It follows three men, still investigating the disappearance of their high school sweethearts, unable to let go decades after the case was closed with no resolution.

But this is Elysium, so of course there is a lot more going on.

(Please understand that when I say "racism" I mean "...and xenophobia, sexism, ableism, general misanthropy, etc." …We'll get there. )

Abstract

For the third entry of my "Fair and Balanced™ Reviews of Craft Books" series, I read The Science of Storytelling, by Will Storr. In my Fair and Balanced™ opinion, this book hates science as much as it hates storytelling, but not as much as it hates human people. When I say this, I'm not making a glib joke about the poor quality of the book and how painful of an experience it was to read it. I'm actually saying this book is dripping with contempt for humanity, and I cannot fathom why the author chose a career in the arts if the mere idea of genuine human connection is so foreign to him as to seem risible.

Introduction: Life is meaningless and people are horrible