Sirenia Bats with Crystal Hearts

I read the latest Sirenia Digest to-day which has the new Caitlin R. Kiernan story called "DARKNESS, ON THE FACE OF THE DEEP". It's another nice, gloomily atmospheric piece.

Like many of Caitlin's stories for the Digest, it consists of dialogue between two lovers. It's told in first person by a writer who's gone to stay at a seaside cabin while working on a novel. Strolling on the beach one day, the writer sees something strange and elects not to inform anyone. I'd say it's ultimately a story about communication and how much responsibility one has for their isolation. With the gloomy beach setting, it could've been an Ingmar Bergman movie.

I watched Lost Highway on Sunday, planning to blog about it on Monday but realised I have too much to say about the film. So I've been reading and watching analyses of it made by others in preparation for a much longer essay I'll probably write this coming weekend. Unsurprisingly, most of the videos covering it on YouTube regurgitate the same observations. One of the few unique takes I came across argued that Fred Madison's derangement comes from his bitterness at being a terrible saxophone player. It was no joke. You may not like the song, "Red Bats with Teeth," and it's deliberately designed to be abrasive, but only a highly competent saxophonist could handle it.

I blame the analyst's lack of exposure to avaunt-garde music.

To-day's a holiday here in Japan and I've already squandered most of it playing Skyrim. I've been playing with another modded companion character, this one a really impressive piece of work called Ashe: Crystal Heart. In addition to a number of innovative gaming features, Ashe has easily the best voice actress I've heard in any mod so far. Which is no surprise since she's a working professional named Anna Rust who has appeared in numerous films and television series. She even has a Wikipedia entry. Skyrim modding is getting out of hand and it's great. I reiterate; this is a totally free, user made mod.

It comes from a modder called Martimus who also made the Serana Dialogue Add-On. And, like that mod, the writing is sometimes too cheesy and effusive. But most of it is good enough and Anna Rust's performance boosts it considerably.