The Lauds and Laments of a Witch

Aww shucks. It’s almost like I asked for this opportunity. (I did. Thank you for indulging me, @laughingthelaughiest) General warnings for the description of things involved with terrible car accidents – aka screeching metal and lots of blood. Happy ending though, I promise! Nobody died.

I am six years old. My father plows snow in the winter months, which means that bolted onto the front of his work truck is a very heavy snow plow that – when not in use – rests primly about a foot above the ground like a lady lifting up her skirts as she steps over a puddle.

“Hey kiddo, do you want to come to work with me?” my dad asks one day during a relatively minor* snowstorm.

(* minor my ass)

Because there was nothing more exciting to me at this time in my life than sitting in a warm truck and watching what is essentially a large metal trough push tons of snow from one end of a parking lot to the other, I practically yell, “WHY YES DAD, THAT SOUNDS GREAT!!!” and we get in the truck.

Only instead of arriving at our intended destination, we encounter a car coming from the opposite direction that spins out on a patch of black ice and manages to hurtle broadside at full speed into the plow.

I am pretty much just flung forwards, and terrible things happen to my face when my body continues on its general trajectory towards the windshield. Thanks, momentum!

Luckily (and novel-like), there was a nurse a couple of cars behind us who stopped to see if everyone was okay. She opened my door to find that I was very clearly not okay, and while my father did his best to staunch the blood that was streaming down my face, she tasked herself with keeping me conscious until the paramedics arrived.

Being six and probably concussed, she didn’t talk to me about anything complicated. I did not know who the president was. I sure as heck couldn’t have told you the date. But my favorite subject in school? I know that! Reading! My favorite color? Yellow! My favorite animal? GIRAFFES.

It’s important at this stage to mention that this car accident occurred on a street where people lived, and there had been a group of boys playing in the snow two houses up from where the truck stopped. Boys + crushed cars + blood = apparently just riveting, because a couple of them were staring at me/the vehicles from a couple yards away.

At my presumably slurred but very enthusiastic response of “GIRAFFES!” one of these boys split off from the rest and hoofed it through the snow towards his house. I was too focused on wanting to sleep and the nurse not letting me to notice this, but it for sure happened. As you will see.

Several sirens later, I am loaded into the ambulance wearing a neck brace and what feels like all of the gauze on planet Earth. My dad climbs in next to me, and the paramedic is just about to shut the doors when there’s a very small voice from outside. 

We are all as so:

My father: probably still terrified that I’m going to die, literally could not care less what this other tiny child who is not his has to say, wants to get to the hospital, still has to call and tell my mom that I’m injured

The paramedic: good at his job, knows I’m stable, has a moment to spare, leans back out of the ambulance.

Myself: still in shock, staring up at the rows of medical supplies and disgustingly bright lighting, more concerned that my dad will crush my fingers than anything else going on in, say, the bleeding face area. (Severe head injury? Who’s she? DAD I KNOW YOU LOVE ME BUT PLEASE LET GO OF MY HAND THAT HURTS.)

The boy who had hoofed it home and then evidently hoofed it right back: “Would you please give this to the little girl who got hurt?”

Me now in the year 2018: wanting to cry because I still can’t believe this is a real thing that happened to me in real life and it wasn’t a dream it was real

So the paramedic says “Yes, of course. She’ll love it!” or something equally as efficient because I am still technically quite injured and they really do need to get to the hospital at some point. The boy leaves, the door is shut, the paramedic sets something on the stretcher next to me.

[pause for dramatic effect]

½: a screenshotted tumblr reply from user laughingthelaughiest that reads, in all caps, “joe tell us the story”

Human beings need ritual. If we are deprived of ritual, we make new ritual. It does not matter if you call it religion or state or whatever it is you call it, human beings will keep making up new rituals.

You cannot stop us, and saying 'this ritual which I like and doesn't hurt anyone else is fine, but that ritual which you like and doesn't hurt anyone else is bad' is just bigotry.

When I say 'you cannot stop us,' I literally mean you cannot stop human beings from making up rituals and religions. Leave a group of six year old girls alone near a mud pit for an hour and you will come back to a newly-minted faith. We make ritual. We make culture. That is what we do.

No, Judaism will not 'naturally cease to exist' when all of our material needs are met. What will happen then is that the Jews will get Jewier, because we will have all the time in the world to study Torah and write stories and make Jewish art. If you met all of my material needs tomorrow, two days from now there would be six more hamsas, a complete bound copy of all the volumes of the Talmud, and a shit-ton of giant Jewish art prints in my house.

Birthday parties are ritual, you sing a song and blow out candles.

Family dinners are ritual, you sit together at a set time and share a meal.

Harvest and planting seasons are ritual, especially if you add some party to thank your helpers or do something like leaving every 3rd produce so the less fortunate or the wild animals can have something to eat.

A custom is the local way something useful is done.

A ritual only has meaning in a society — there is no utility to it.

“Singing Happy Birthday and blowing out candles” is a ritual. “Ringing a doorbell/knocking on a door” is a custom. If you have no door or doorbell, you have to get the inhabitant’s attention another way.

Planting and harvesting are just tasks. Leaving every Nth plant is custom if you know animals or people are eating it (utility), but ritual if you were leaving it in honor of/for a deity (honor). 

The crowning of a prom queen and king.

The annual spaghetti dinner at the fire hall.

A weekly family dinner where everyone has to be there so we can spend time together or Mom Will Be Upset.

Human beings create rituals big and small, and we assign social, cultural, and religious meaning to them. If you think about American high school alone, there are a thousand rituals that we've made up out of nowhere. Dressing up for prom and having your picture taken is a ritual and a rite of passage. The way in which the football team must run out onto the field to the fight song is a small ritual that's part of the bigger ritual of opening the game, including the singing of the national anthem and all of the starting players having their names announced. If these things suddenly didn't happen, you could still play the game, sure! But people would be upset and discomfitted because the ritual of it all had been disrupted.

Anything performed for its symbolic nature is a ritual, and trying to differentiate between religious and non-religious actions as "oh this isn't a ritual, it's not in honor of a God specifically" is not only incorrect, but it misses the things that people substitute for deities - because we do. In societies where religion is banned or anathema, religious-like rituals -- the singing of hymns, the ceremonies in honor of a certain time of year or event -- transfer to other entities such as the state.

People who don't want to think of themselves as religious often try to protest or indeed to find a difference between custom and ritual, but at the end of the day, there is no real meaningful difference. It doesn't matter if you leave the gleanings of the field for the widow or the orphan for practical reasons or because HaShem proscribed this act. It really doesn't, and it especially doesn't matter to the widow or the orphan - your motivations don't matter outside of yourself a lot of the time. Only your actions do, and those actions, those gestures, regardless of motivation, are part of what bind human beings to one another.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

So Carpathia was not a top-end luxury liner. Her reputation was for being Jolly Comfortable - she was very broad in her proportions, and not super-duper fast, and the result was that she didn’t rock so much on the waves and you couldn’t particularly hear/feel the engines. She was solid and dependable, and lots of people liked using her, but she therefore occupied a lesser niche than Titanic or Olympian or whatever - and crucially, as a result of that, she only had one radio operator on board. This means she only had radio ops for a certain window in the day, unlike Titanic, which had 24 hour radio ops.

So on that night, when Titanic went down, Carpathia’s wireless operator - one Harold Cottam - clocked off his shift at midnight, and went to bed. While he was getting ready for bed, though, he left the transmitter on for the hell of it, and therefore picked up a transmission from Cape Race in Newfoundland, the closest transmitting tower sending messages to the ships. They told him that they had a backlog of private traffic for Titanic that wasn’t getting through. So, even though his shift was over, and it was now 11 minutes past bloody midnight, and he just wanted to go to bed, Harold Cottam decided that nonetheless, he’d be helpful, and let the Titanic know they had messages waiting.

And that’s how he received the Titanic’s distress signal. In spite of no longer being on shift to receive it, and therefore in order to send Carpathia galloping to Titanic’s rescue, and thus saving 705 people.

All because Harold Cottam decided one night to be kind. 

Rostrum had ordered that no messages to the press be sent out of respect to the survivors, for they would have their privacy destroyed as soon as they reached New York. Cottam respected this order, even under extreme duress of fatigue, stress, and the knowledge that in some cases the bribes were almost three times his annual salary.

He eventually went to bed but not before working with one of the rescued Titanic’s radio operators, Harold Bride, to transmit as many messages as possible. Bride was injured (his feet had been crushed in a lifeboat) and had just passed the body of the second of Titanic’s radio operators aboard (Jack Phillips), so neither of them were really in the best shape to keep working, but they did.

There are probably sound reasons why not, one of which is probably that getting yet another ‘Titanic’ project greenlit is far easier - name recognition, pre-sold property, multiple conspiracy theories to play with (all discredited, but when did that stop the “History” Channel?)

Here are a couple of stories about ‘Carpathia’:

As @mylordshesacactus has already said, her boilers and engines were rated for no more than 14 knots and, when she managed 17.5 for the only time in her life it’s said (I hate the phrase but I have to use it) that the Chief Engineer hung his hat over the main pressure gauge so no-one - including himself - could see how far its needle was into the red.

Captain Rostron, a religious man, was seen on several occasions standing privately on the exposed bridge wing with his own hat raised and his mouth moving in silent prayer, and when daylight revealed the extent of the ice-field his ship had passed without harm, he only said “There must have been another Hand on the wheel than mine…”

There’s another problem-of-sorts about a screenplay set aboard ‘Carpathia’ - an astonishing lack of that easy dramatic tool, conflict. Captain Rostron decided he was going to the ‘Titanic’s assistance, and that was that. AFAIK not a single passenger or crewman - not one - questioned the wisdom of his decision either then or afterwards, even when…

…‘Carpathia’ headed at more than full speed, in the dark, through dangerous waters where an iceberg had apparently just sunk an “unsinkable” ship.

It’s easier to write - and sell - a story about pride, arrogance, stupidity, rich against poor and lives lost through hubris, than it is to write one about people who rallied round and did the right thing at the right time, not for reward but because it was the right thing to do.

Here’s Rostron and his officers…

…the ‘Carpathia’ stewards and cabin crew….

…some of her passengers…

…and some of the people they helped.

I’m publishing a book, and needed to resize an image for the cover art. But neither of the art programs I have can do it right: one only views things at different sizes, and the other would have to convert it into RGB colors; bad for printing.

I’m not about to shell out the money for Photoshop or InDesign. Not when I just need to resize one image!

But this is legit, and it works, and now my image is the perfect size. It took like 30 seconds. I am so grateful.

It has been literal years but every time I see Martin’s tweets posted somewhere and his word is shared as truth while her post is not shared it sort of reiterates the fact that we trust men to speak about feminism more than we believe women who experience it. 

Adding screenshots of her post. His whole post is there without needing a link. Hers should be, too.

(Image source) [ID: four black and white photo’s of a person demonstrating how to wear a simple wrap top made out of a rectangle with a neckhole and straps at the sides.]

Easy vintage wrap top

This vintage wrap top design is an easy beginners project: you don’t need a pattern, you can customise it to your own size, and despite lacking stretch it doesn’t require any zippers or buttons.

The top is made out of woven fabric and consists of a rectangle in which a hole for the head is cut. Straps are added to the short sides of the rectangle to tie the top around your body.

There’s a lot of variations on this top: to see examples, check out these written tutorials by Sew What Gilly, Freshly Given, Gina Michele, Sadie the Sewing Machine, The Thread, and Mood Fabrics.

AssunDIY on Youtube also has tutorials for two variations on this top: a rectangle shirt version and a butterfly shirt version.

Given the simplicity of this top, it’s a neat way to use up old bed sheets and such.

Some examples:

(Image source 1) [ID: a person standing in a kitchen while wearing a gray wrap top with t-shirt-like sleeves and a round neckline.]

(Image source 2) [ID: a gray wrap top lying on a wooden floor. The top consists of a rectangle with a hole cut in the middle for the head. Two sets of straps, one thin and one thick, have been sewn to the sides of the rectangle.]

(Image source 1) [ID: a person modelling a royal blue wrap top with large sleeves and a slot neckline.]

(Image source 2) [ID: a royal blue wrap top lying on a tiled floor. The top consists of a rectangle with a hole and a slit for the head, and thin straps at one end of the rectangle and thick straps at the other end.]

Once upon a time, long, long ago, there was a great forest with trees so tall that they shut out the sky, and it was always dark in that place. A single road passed through it, one side to the other, and no wise traveler ever ventured off that road.

In the forest to the east of the road there was a great hill, with a tower on it, and in that tower there lived a wizard. He was solitary and ill-tempered, but if someone in trouble came to him humbly and begged his aid, he did not usually refuse.

In the forest to the west of the road - or so it was said, for it was not visible as the hill and tower were - there was a great dark hollow with a house at the bottom of it, where the forest witch, the Cailleach Foraoise, lived with her seven daughters. She was ill-natured and dangerous, but still, she had been known to give aid to those willing to pay her price.

It happened that the king of the land had grown cruel and dangerous, and he taxed his people to starvation, he poisoned their land and slew any who displeased him. He slew even his own sons, when they defied him, and all went in terror of him. This king had three nephews, the sons of his sister, and they saw that soon they would be in danger from him as well, so they fled his castle by night, and took the road through the dark forest.

When they reached the river that ran through the heart of the forest, they stopped and took counsel of each other. They must do all that they could to save the kingdom and its people, that they agreed, but they debated what that was until the youngest spoke.

She went to church and prayed for a child every Sunday, but no child came. She went to every midwife and wise woman for miles around, and followed all their advice, but no child came.

So at last, though she knew of the dangers, she drew her brown woolen shawl over her head and on Midsummer’s Eve she went out to the forest, to a certain clearing, and dropped a copper penny and a lock of her hair into the old well there, and she wished for a child.

“You know,” a voice said behind her, a low and cunning voice, a voice that had a coax and a wheedle and a sly laugh all mixed up in it together, “that there will be a price to pay later.”

She did not turn to look at the creature. She knew better. “I know it,” she said, still staring into the well. “And I also know that I may set conditions.”

“That is true,” the creature said, after a moment, and there was less laugh in its voice now. It wasn’t pleased that she knew that. “What condition do you set? A boy child? A lucky one?”

“That the child will come to no harm,” she said, lifting her head to stare into the woods. “Whether I succeed in paying your price, or passing your test, or not, the child will not suffer. It will not die, or be hurt, or cursed with ill luck or any other thing. No harm of any kind.”

“Ahhhhh.” The sound was long and low, between a sigh and a hum. “Yes. That is a fair condition. Whatever price there is, whatever test there is, it will be for you and you alone.” A long, slender hand extended into her sight, almost human save for the skin, as pale a green as a new leaf. The hand held a pear, ripe and sweet, though the pears were nowhere ripe yet. “Eat this,” the voice said, and she trembled with the effort of keeping her eyes straight ahead. “All of it, on your way home. Before you enter your own gate, plant the core of it beside the gate, where the ground is soft and rich. You will have what you ask for.”

It occurred when Walt and I were flying our final training sortie. We needed 100 hours in the jet to complete our training and attain Mission Ready status. Somewhere over Colorado we had passed the century mark. We had made the turn in Arizona and the jet was performing flawlessly. My gauges were wired in the front seat and we were starting to feel pretty good about ourselves, not only because we would soon be flying real missions but because we had gained a great deal of confidence in the plane in the past ten months. Ripping across the barren deserts 80,000 feet below us, I could already see the coast of California from the Arizona border. I was, finally, after many humbling months of simulators and study, ahead of the jet.

I was beginning to feel a bit sorry for Walter in the back seat. There he was, with no really good view of the incredible sights before us, tasked with monitoring four different radios. This was good practice for him for when we began flying real missions, when a priority transmission from headquarters could be vital. It had been difficult, too, for me to relinquish control of the radios, as during my entire flying career I had controlled my own transmissions. But it was part of the division of duties in this plane and I had adjusted to it. I still insisted on talking on the radio while we were on the ground, however. Walt was so good at many things, but he couldn’t match my expertise at sounding smooth on the radios, a skill that had been honed sharply with years in fighter squadrons where the slightest radio miscue was grounds for beheading. He understood that and allowed me that luxury.

Just to get a sense of what Walt had to contend with, I pulled the radio toggle switches and monitored the frequencies along with him. The predominant radio chatter was from Los Angeles Center, far below us, controlling daily traffic in their sector. While they had us on their scope (albeit briefly), we were in uncontrolled airspace and normally would not talk to them unless we needed to descend into their airspace.

We listened as the shaky voice of a lone Cessna pilot asked Center for a readout of his ground speed. Center replied: “November Charlie 175, I’m showing you at ninety knots on the ground.”

Now the thing to understand about Center controllers, was that whether they were talking to a rookie pilot in a Cessna, or to Air Force One, they always spoke in the exact same, calm, deep, professional, tone that made one feel important. I referred to it as the “ Houston Center voice.” I have always felt that after years of seeing documentaries on this country’s space program and listening to the calm and distinct voice of the Houston controllers, that all other controllers since then wanted to sound like that, and that they basically did. And it didn’t matter what sector of the country we would be flying in, it always seemed like the same guy was talking. Over the years that tone of voice had become somewhat of a comforting sound to pilots everywhere. Conversely, over the years, pilots always wanted to ensure that, when transmitting, they sounded like Chuck Yeager, or at least like John Wayne. Better to die than sound bad on the radios.

Just moments after the Cessna’s inquiry, a Twin Beech piped up on frequency, in a rather superior tone, asking for his ground speed. “I have you at one hundred and twenty-five knots of ground speed.” Boy, I thought, the Beechcraft really must think he is dazzling his Cessna brethren. Then out of the blue, a navy F-18 pilot out of NAS Lemoore came up on frequency. You knew right away it was a Navy jock because he sounded very cool on the radios. “Center, Dusty 52 ground speed check”. Before Center could reply, I’m thinking to myself, hey, Dusty 52 has a ground speed indicator in that million-dollar cockpit, so why is he asking Center for a readout? Then I got it, ol’ Dusty here is making sure that every bug smasher from Mount Whitney to the Mojave knows what true speed is. He’s the fastest dude in the valley today, and he just wants everyone to know how much fun he is having in his new Hornet. And the reply, always with that same, calm, voice, with more distinct alliteration than emotion: “Dusty 52, Center, we have you at 620 on the ground.”

And I thought to myself, is this a ripe situation, or what? As my hand instinctively reached for the mic button, I had to remind myself that Walt was in control of the radios. Still, I thought, it must be done - in mere seconds we’ll be out of the sector and the opportunity will be lost. That Hornet must die, and die now. I thought about all of our Sim training and how important it was that we developed well as a crew and knew that to jump in on the radios now would destroy the integrity of all that we had worked toward becoming. I was torn.

Somewhere, 13 miles above Arizona, there was a pilot screaming inside his space helmet. Then, I heard it. The click of the mic button from the back seat. That was the very moment that I knew Walter and I had become a crew. Very professionally, and with no emotion, Walter spoke: “Los Angeles Center, Aspen 20, can you give us a ground speed check?” There was no hesitation, and the replay came as if was an everyday request. “Aspen 20, I show you at one thousand eight hundred and forty-two knots, across the ground.”

I think it was the forty-two knots that I liked the best, so accurate and proud was Center to deliver that information without hesitation, and you just knew he was smiling. But the precise point at which I knew that Walt and I were going to be really good friends for a long time was when he keyed the mic once again to say, in his most fighter-pilot-like voice: “Ah, Center, much thanks, we’re showing closer to nineteen hundred on the money.”

For a moment Walter was a god. And we finally heard a little crack in the armor of the Houston Center voice, when L.A. came back with, “Roger that Aspen, Your equipment is probably more accurate than ours. You boys have a good one.”

It all had lasted for just moments, but in that short, memorable sprint across the southwest, the Navy had been flamed, all mortal airplanes on freq were forced to bow before the King of Speed, and more importantly, Walter and I had crossed the threshold of being a crew. A fine day’s work.

We never heard another transmission on that frequency all the way to the coast.”

It makes finding stuff a bit challenging, let me tell you. So like, if you know anything that fits that bill, can you share it with me? (I’m already aware of @normal-horoscopes, and I’m familiar with Welcome To Night Vale.

I like stories with things that are weird, and unnatural, and dangerous in the same sense that a river or a fire is dangerous; it cares nothing for you and can destroy you, but it also has no malice and, once you know its nature, you can work with it more-or-less safely, so long as you never think yourself “safe”.

I like dark castles ruled by ominous and mysterious beings, and I especially love the various petty drama that happens between the monsters who work in said castles.

The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin: though it draws on the tradition of eldritch horror and certainly invokes dangerous, larger-than-life forces with their own rules, it’s also full of humor, beauty, action, and magic. 

Silver In the Wood, by Emily Tesh: this novella, which features woods that are more than woods and humans who are no longer human, could have been a horror story, but instead it’s poignant and cozy and fun. 

The Wayward Children series by Seanan McGuire, especially Every Heart a Doorway and Down Among the Sticks and Bones: I can’t think of a more apt description than “horror aesthetic without the horror mood”. 

Under the Pendulum Sun, by Jeanette Ng: lyrical, tricksy, featuring a mysterious castle ruled by ominous and inscrutable beings, and a human woman trying to unravel its mysteries, plus missionaries and colonialism and marvelously otherwordly fairies. 

Saffron and Brimstone, by Elizabeth Hand: short stories full of dark fantasy, strange people, and poetic, moody prose. 

Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer: a team of scientists explore Area X, long cut off from civilization and full of surreal new forms of life. 

Uprooted, by Naomi Novik: features an enigmatic wizard in a mysterious tower, a generations-old curse, and some truly alarming trees, but the overall mood is charming, magical, and fairy tale-esque. 

Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge: eldritch horrors, human secrets, and shifting un-life, possibly shading a little into friendship angst but excellently executed. 

Cuckoo Song, by Frances Hardinge: creepy, whimsical, and original changeling story, with a really wonderfully layered, unreliable narrator 

A Skinful of Shadows, by Frances Hardinge: ghosts, castles, unnatural magics and the scheming factions of humans who have spent generations harnessing it, all wrapped up in the chaos of the English Civil War. 

The Lie Tree, by Frances Hardinge: all of the fog and secrets and intensely Gothic atmosphere, a delightfully twisted protagonist, and a strangely unnatural force of nature. 

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, by Theodora Goss: this one uses all of the Victorian horror tropes (and characters) without being in the least a horror story. It’s a rollicking, irreverent adventure about found family and variously inhuman characters defining their own humanity. 

The Lynburn Legacy trilogy, by Sarah Rees Brennan: a little bit Gothic manor, a little bit Girl Detective, and a lot of sinister but hella petty magical rivalry. 

Vampires In the Lemon Grove, by Karen Russell: surreal, magical, haunting short stories. 

The Coldest Girl In Coldtown, by Holly Black: by turns frenetic, opulent, and snarky, this original twist on teenaged vampires takes place in a world where walled cold towns are home to the undead an anyone who wants to party with them. 

The Ballad of Black Tom, by Victor LaValle: occult magic in Jazz Age New York, both a reimagining and rebuttal of Lovecraftian horror. 

The Folk Keeper, by Franny Billingsley: a short and elegant middle grade novel that combines folklore, gothic mystery, a manor by the sea, and strange creatures in the dark that can be bound by rituals and rhymes, but remain always hungry.  

Jonathan Strange and Mister Norrell, by Susanna Clarke: historical fantasy full of strange and dangerous fairy magic, ruthless rivalries, old Yorkshire buildings, and thick atmosphere. 

The Girl With All the Gifts, by M.R. Carey: monsters and humans and sometimes you can’t tell which is which, loving and lyrical and scary, the implacable new life that may or may not bring about the end of the world. 

The Innsmouth Legacy, by Ruthanna Emrys. Another re-imagining of Lovecraftian horror, this from the point of view of one of the survivors of the government’s massacre of the town of Innsmouth.

Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant might also be of interest to you.

Also Christopher Moore’s Bloodsucking Fiends, You Suck:A Love Story, and Love Bites.

Oh! And The Lost Girls by Sonia Hartl, though that might veer a little more into “people I used to know hate me” than you want (but that’s more the initial setting that gets things rolling; it’s not a dreary overarching tone).

UH WHAT

This might have been the bit that hit me hardest, actually:

it would be easy to misinterpret the following scenario as a standoff between two partners: Imagine that your partner asks you to pay the electric bill, and you say to yourself, “OK, I have time to do that today.” But when you sit down to do it, you keep getting distracted. The ADHD brain needs higher stimulation in order to complete this rote task with minimal payoff. Your ADHD brain says, “That task is way too boring, and I refuse to focus on it. Find something that interests me more, which offers me a bigger dopamine reward, and I’ll work with you.” It doesn’t matter that you know you should pay the bill as promised; if your brain won’t engage, it’s an ugly standoff. Perhaps, after a day of procrastination — when your partner will be home in 20 minutes and the bill is still unpaid — there may be enough of an adrenaline rush from a sense of crisis that your brain will engage and you pay the bill.

The ADHD brain and its owner are at odds with one another. It’s difficult to compel a disengaged brain to engage by force of will. In fact, much of the treatment for ADHD involves learning to psych out the brain, so that it will attend to necessary, low-stimulation tasks.

Appreciating the tug-of-war within that pits intellect against neurobiology increases compassion and acceptance for one’s hidden struggle.

I feel SEEN. OTZ