I love this from the introduction to the novel Mary by Nat Cassidy:

Robyn was a Stephen King junkie, so she was the perfect person to ask for a way to defeat Carrie so that I wouldn’t have to be afraid of her anymore. Except that’s not what my mom did, not quite. She sat me down and told me the story of Carrie, and she did so in such a way that made my heart break for this poor girl who’d been dealt such an unfair hand. She made sure I understood that Carrie wasn’t so much the monster as she was surrounded by them. I’d never heard a horror story framed that way. I’d never felt sympathy—love, even—for something I thought I was supposed to fear.

Incidentally, for probably a year or so after that talk, whenever I was alone and afraid (which, as a latchkey kid who was already obsessed with horror, was often), I would talk to Carrie White. She became something of a matron saint for me. I have very clear memories of being home all by myself and literally whispering things, like, “I’m sorry they were so mean to you, Carrie; I’ll be your friend. I won’t treat you like they did. Please just keep me safe.” And hey, I survived childhood. So I can’t rule out that it didn’t work.

A few years later, I started writing my own stories, and I had an early idea for a novel that, in part, would be something of an homage. It came from a simple question: What would happen if Carrie didn’t have any special powers? Where would she be as a grown-up? Would she still have a story? I knew right away I’d even give this novel a title that acknowledged the connection. I’d call it Mary.

I arrived to Stranger Things very late, but I'm already on season 4 and like it very much. It's not the plot that keeps me bingeing, but the characters and that the 1980s is so key to this show. I love that the mall is an essential part of season 3 and that the "friends don't lie" dynamic is so heart-warming and important.

The gross factor (the squishing especially) is pretty off-putting, but I'm able to put that aside. I won't go into too much detail about that, if you watch Stranger Things you know what I mean about the Mind Flayer et al.

Though Dustin and El are my absolute favorite characters (Steve has really grown on me, though, and I'm starting to like Robin though she still feels "new" to me) I can't help but think how much Nancy reminds me of someone I used to know decades ago.

The person I'm thinking of only vaguely physically resembles Nancy, if at all, but their temperament. especially their kindness and quiet strength, totally echo Nancy's.

I should write more about this when I have my thoughts better arranged. I have a headache and my mind is on a million and one different things, or at least it feels that way. Plus, for no one reason I can pin point I just feel incredibly sad and remorseful.

 

I hate how men can be sometimes (with toxic masculinity) but I love how they really could be, in an alternate reality.

Every man I have ever found appealing is just a character on a TV show and they always seem to care about everyone, even if it's only in the smallest of ways. They can be very manly and tough without being toxic.

In the darkness of my living room, the glow of the tv and the easy way I fall into made up worlds and the facade of a glass of wine or two, I like to pretend I can believe anything.

The lead actor, Aaron Stanford, on the tv show 12 Monkeys, Kirk Acevedo on Fringe (and also on 12 Monkeys) Jason Bateman, but only as the animated Nick Wilde in the movie Zootopia movies. I don't want to be with men intimately, but I like them so much in non-threatening, comfortably distant ways.

Ever since I started realizing what my feelings about girls in high school and later on women, in adult life, meant I have struggled with the fact that I’m attracted to women, even if it’s mostly emotional and romantically.

I pretty much am sure I could live to be 1 million years old and I still wouldn’t fully accept I’m gay.

I want to like men the way I’m supposed to like men, I really, really do.

I'm reading a book right now called The Queer Thing About Sin: Why The West Came to Hate Queer Love and I get the intro so very much:

When I was a teenager, I believed I was going to hell. For centuries, it was almost universally acknowledged that all gay men would. It wasn’t until years later that I asked myself where that idea came from, and why was it that, thousands of years ago when the Bible was written, people decided that queer love was a sin? 

It hadn’t always been a sin to be queer. In many cities across the ancient world, same-sex love was celebrated. So how did homophobia take root? Why did so many societies start executing men and women for the same love once praised by their philosophers and rulers? 

I have personal reasons for wanting to know the answer. My father died when I was two years old and for many years being Christian made me feel whole. Christianity gave me a compass with which to navigate the world and allowed me to commune with the people I’d lost. But that all changed when I fell in love with another boy at school. 

The love that upended my world was clandestine and unrequited. Little girls and boys grow up knowing they will get married; they sketch out the geography of their future relationships long before they even feel physical attraction. For queer people, desire arrives unannounced – it comes as a lightning bolt through a clear-blue sky. I knew I couldn’t tell anyone. I had to keep it secret from him, from the world, and at times even from myself. It was what Christianity taught me to do.

Last night I had the strangest dream...but, then, all of my dreams are pretty much strange.

Even so the strangeness was not the bad strange that most of my dreams usually are. 

In it, my grandfather (who I rarely dream about and who died in 1986) says, "Pizza for everyone!" and suddenly there is a big party. But instead of my relatives it's mostly strangers except for my grandfather (oddly and sadly I don't see my grandmother in this dream) and my mom.

Suddenly, Julie Newmar appears and I am so excited!! I always loved her as Catwoman in the 1960s Batman series and in the dream she appears as she is now, in 2025.I want to talk to her but I'm too shy and, to my horror, I realize I have my pajamas on, the very same things I wore to bed in real life.

In that way dream movements have no transitions I am suddenly in a different place at the party and Julie Newmar approaches me and says she heard I was a big fan and did I want have my picture taken with her.

I tell her I would but I'm still in my pajamas, but when I look down I'm suddenly in a pretty beige blazer with white pants and a white top.

"I think I can be in that picture after all," I say and am so happy I'll have a picture, but then I wake up and the dream is over.

I re-watched Netflix's Dark in less than two days, during the holiday four-day weekend I had, then I started 12 Monkeys. Both affect me so deeply I struggle with the words to justify just how much I love them. (It still boggles my mind that a show as good as 12 Monkeys debuted on the SyFy Channel…actually, I take that back because I just remembered that that’s the channel Resident Alien debuted on a few years ago and I love that show too).

I have seen Dark multiple times and 12 Monkeys will be my second re-watch. There are so many similarities between the two but the latter is just so underrated it's almost criminal. I feel Dark is more bleak and emotional than 12 Monkeys  and it hits hard with its themes of generational trauma, eternal recurrence and the futility that pervades it.

Eternal Recurrence has fascinated (and terrified) me since I was rather young. I didn't know it was called that at the time, but I remember randomly thinking one day that maybe we just kept living the same exact life over and over and over again.

But looking back at that memory now, I realize it probably wasn't eternal recurrence that had popped into my mind then. With eternal recurrence, you wouldn't be aware of having previously lived the very same exact life. Everything (down to every last thought you have) would eternally recur so you would never actually know you were living the same life repeatedly.

(Speaking of Nietzsche’s Eternal Recurrence I found myself talking with a customer about him today and it reminded me how much I can have a good day at work and how much I can love my job when I’m with a really nice or engaging customer. We talked for a while and it was just one of the best conversations I’ve had in a long time. I really really really need to remember how much I used to love my job and how much I still can).

Though I am reluctant to use AI for this part (Grok and Gemini each offered horribly wrong facts about the family trees on Dark) I do find this very helpful:

• Exact Repetition: For the recurrence to be eternal and exact, every single atom, event, and thought must repeat in precisely the same order. The first time you experienced a moment, you did not remember a previous life; therefore, in the recurring life, you would also not have that memory.
• No Mechanism for Memory Transfer: The concept, most notably explored by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, is generally presented as a cosmological hypothesis where the universe and all events within it repeat infinitely. It does not involve a soul or consciousness that exists outside of the physical reality of the life cycle, which would be necessary to carry memories from one cycle to the next. Your consciousness is part of the recurring pattern itself.
• The Philosophical Purpose: Nietzsche used the idea as a thought experiment, a "greatest weight" to assess one's affirmation of life. The lack of memory is crucial to this test. If you knew everything was a repeat, you might act differently, which would break the "exact same life" rule. The point is to ask if you would live your current life—with all its joys and sorrows, exactly as it is—over and over again, unknowingly.