collecting: #3
hockey, Knausgård, fanfic, and Resurrection (2025)
Predators Hockey
Listen, it may appear like I’m hopping on the bandwagon but— nope. No wait. I am. I am definitely doing that.
Julia dragged me to a game a few weeks ago (before she had watched Heated Rivalry by the way, she was adamant about making it clear she had been to hockey before this show and was already a fan of the sport) and in a shocking turn of events, I had a lot of fun! I never knew the rules of hockey and I am slowly learning all kinds of things - like how your goalie can literally get off the ice in exchange for an extra attacker and how there’s not a halftime because they have two intermissions and three periods. Who knew!
Our team is subpar this season, but the second game we saw went into overtime and we almost won, so that’s a win in my book. (I’m great at being a sports spectator, clearly.) Although one of our team did push the puck into our own goal so…you can’t win them all, I guess. Last week we got to see Quinn Hughes when we played the Wilds and apparently the internet loves him.
My hockey friend Haley is thrilled about this development in my life and our friendship. Don’t tell my brother but hockey is way better than baseball.
The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I have a confession to make. A few years ago I was writing a book, and in that book I made numerous references to Oscar Wilde and The Picture of Dorian Gray, but I had never read the book. Now I marvel at the audacity of my previous self to reference something so carelessly. Because after having read this…I feel changed.
You may be unaware, but the original publication of Dorian Gray was severely censored by the publisher. The original draft was altered heavily to sanitize a queer work and appease Victorian England. Reading the introductions to this uncensored text was a fascinating history lesson that left me both sad and inspired.
This uncensored edition, the first of its kind, was released in 2011, and it was printed from the original manuscript that Wilde submitted for publication. It’s the story of a man who paints a portrait of a young man with whom he’s fallen in love. It’s the story of the young man who becomes so obsessed with youth that he prays for himself to remain young and beautiful even as his portrait withers away, and he gets his wish. It’s about shame and sin and homosexuality and desire. It’s breath-taking.
I know many people study this in school and that becomes a reason to hate on the work, but reading this for the first time at thirty, I can’t help but marvel at this text. There’s so much subtext, so much metaphor at work here, and Wilde’s prose is a wonder to behold. It’s short and simple, but it has so much to say. It has made me interested in reading more about Wilde’s history, and I already ordered a copy of his annotated prison writings.
This pairs very well with the other book I read recently, The School of Night (below).
Death in the Business of Whaling by Searows
I always forget how gorgeous Searows is. I listen to his stuff periodically (the flush EP was one of my favorite finds last year), but I’d hardly call myself a huge fan. That said, his new album is exactly the type of production I love. Perfect for fans of Phoebe Bridgers or Ethel Cain.
While I am still diving into the lyrics and what all these songs mean, I have been particularly enamored with “Dirt” and “Hunter.” This is a record to put on and leave on until it’s done, and I love putting it on in my car as I’m driving the backroads on my winter commutes.
The School of Night by Karl Ove Knausgård
I’ve had Knausgård on my TBR ever since I heard about his magnum opus, My Struggle. Min Kamp, originally published in Norwegian, is his six volume autobiography series where he dives deep into his own life and the lives of his family members. If you haven’t read the backstory, the controversy, the history of this work, you definitely should, it’s a fascinating exploration of the intersection of ethics and art.
Which, coincidentally is where this book falls as well.
This book is not related to his autobiographical work. It’s entirely fiction, a new (English) release. The reason I was interested in picking it up (the fourth in a series of standalone works) is because it’s about a male photography student and Doctor Faustus. You do not need to read any of his other books to pick this up.
As you know, I myself am a photographer, so obviously I had to pick this up. What I wasn’t expecting was to fall head over heels in love with Knausgård and his style. He has such a reputation, and even though I wasn’t fully aware of that reputation when I started, I can see now just why he has one. The way he writes is so intoxicating because he writes about mundane people living mundane lives, and yet every moment has the possibility to become something poetic. He expounds on life in such wonderful weird ways, and so many of the random musings he sticks into the text stood out to me…even if they were sometimes revolting.
The thing about The School of Night is that it’s truthfully a very dark, very disturbing story about a man who is entirely unlikeable. The plot is sparse, you might say that not a lot happens in the 500+ pages of text, and yet somehow the story drags you along against your will. It’s Faustus in such a unique way. It’s literal and metaphorical all at once. And by the end, disturbed as I was, I could not help but marvel at this masterpiece of fiction. I think it’s best experiencing it without knowing just what it’s supposed to be. (But definitely read the content warnings because whew, it gets weird.)
You bet your ass I am waiting for My Struggle to come in from the library so I can see my guy go absolutely batshit insane in his own life.
Resurrection (2025)
As I said in my previous edition of collecting, I’ve had my eye on this movie for weeks. The trailers intrigued me, but the score is what drove it all home. Once the ice cleared up, I got my ass to the cinema. When I was there, the first showing on a Saturday afternoon, I picked up my ticket at will call and the lady next to me in line asked me what the film was about since her preferred movie wasn’t showing. Me and the ticket guy spent a good two minutes trying to explain a film that is, ultimately, unexplainable. I spent half of the film wondering if I’d ruined this poor woman’s day just because I was going to see a weird meta movie.
The thing is, I cannot explain Resurrection to you. I wasn’t entirely sure I liked it while I was watching, mainly because it’s a very complex film. It’s ergodic in scope, told through five or six different stories that all come together in the end. It’s a movie I will need to watch more than once to fully understand, and I’ve added the context from the director below because it was so mind-blowing to read about after the fact.
This film is about cinema. And art. And dreams. And humanity. And the senses. That’s about all I can say.
It’s technically brilliant. The production is show-stopping. I could not keep my jaw from dropping all the way to the floor. I don’t know how Bi Gan did it, but my god, it’s a masterpiece of film.
In the end, I think I have to see it again before I determine my feelings on it, and I don’t think I can watch it again for a while yet. But also…it changed me, I think. It’s stunning.
(Don’t read the interview commentary below if you don’t want to know anything about the film - I liked the context after the fact, but in truth it would have been nice to know this while I was watching so…you choose!)
milanote (app)
So don’t tell anybody, but I want to write a book.
Okay, not really a secret. But! I’ve spent the past few weeks doing everything in my power to beat my brain against a wall, trying desperately to squeeze inspiration out of every part of my life so that I could maybe possibly find SOMETHING to write about. In the process of brainstorming, I decided to test drive the beloved Milanote app, and even though I can’t bring myself to subscribe to get more access, the little test run I did for my ideas was so much fun. I think it’s a wonderful app, and it offers so many things I was searching for.
Mainly, it’s just digital collaging but in a way that’s accessible and shareable and note-able. I’m sure it’s great for designers and teams and businesses, but from a writer / creative perspective, it was a dream. I loved dragging things around and building connections. I used up all 100 free “cards” trying to brainstorm this one book idea. (Spoiler: I’m still not writing a book.)
The Summer Book (2024)
Currently streaming on Kanopy with your library card!
Perhaps you’ve heard of Tove Jansson’s iconic classic The Summer Book. This is that book! It’s a work about Finland and family and grief, the story of a grandmother, her granddaughter, and the granddaughter’s father as they spend the summer on their island. I read the book last summer and have eagerly been trying to get my hands on the film adaptation.
Needless to say, I absolutely love this film.
The book itself was good, but I think listening to it on audio left a little to be desired for me. It’s told in 22 vignettes, so not a concrete cohesive story so much as little visions into the lives of these characters. The film is similar, although it feels less disjointed, perhaps because it is a film. A lot of the scenes are drawn from the book, but it feels like its own thing while keeping with the spirit of the characters.
Glenn Close absolutely nailed this. And I was thrilled to discover the father is played by an actor who does a lot of work with Joachim Trier (from previous collecting editions). (The score too was made by Hania Rani, a Trier collaborator.)
To me, this film felt like a Finnish exploration of the feelings found in Perfect Days (2023). It’s not at all the same, but both films reflect the contentedness found in a simple life, a life of doing, a life of being. It reflects on age in such a beautiful way. I cried. I felt seen. I could not stop gasping at how stunning this movie looks. It’s a film that forces you to slow down and think and feel, and I really think it’s a masterpiece.
CITY SICKNESS by Deza
Bethany is an acquaintance I knew lifetimes ago when we went to the same church group. Back then she was just a student at my alma mater making pop music, dreaming about making it big. Nowadays, she’s a 20-something rising star who signed with Tove Lo and is best known for her demo-producing alter ego googly eyes. But she first made her mark on me as Deza in 2022 with her CITY SICKNESS project.
I revisit this project (an album that isn’t technically an album) frequently. I guess I turned it on again because it reminds me of one particular trip over that winter when I walked around NYC listening to “Double Take” & “Faking My Own Death” in the cold.
CITY SICKNESS is an indie wonderland. The music videos are quirky and high quality for being so low-budget. The concept and branding is strong. The production is classic Bethany, 2020s pop perfection. But the lyrics are some of my all-time favorites. She somehow manages to hit deep while writing pop hooks that refuse to let you go. Every time I listen to it I find more reasons to love it, and I wish more people would give it its due.
Favorites, forever and always, include: “Get Sad, $pend Money” (my top played song of 2022), “Okay With It” (also made it into my top 5 wrapped for 2022), “FUCVS (Intro),” and “Heaven’s Gates.”
If you’re looking for more Deza, her 2021 EP i don’t do drugs is also a staple in my music collection.
Concordia by Ccainao3
I hesitate to even share this with you all, but being vulnerable on the internet has never scared me before so!
Surely you know how rare this is, that I’m sharing a FANFIC. I don’t read fanfic. I don’t generally enjoy it. Most of the fanfic I’ve found online is not good because it does not understand canon enough to explore characters in ways that make sense. I rarely seek out fanfic because truthfully it’s canon or nothing for me most of the time. If I want “more content,” I will just reengage the original work. I don’t spend a lot of time thinking outside the box in terms of fandom unless someone posts a quick bullet list of headcanons or a brief paragraph post on Tumblr. It just isn’t something I need. Most of the time.
Don’t ask how I got here, but I found my way to this fic through the deep dark passages of Tumblr. It’s for Captive Prince. It has a lot of trigger warnings. It’s explicit, though I’d say it’s much less explicit / sexual than the original series. The reason I agreed to give this a go is simply because the length is astounding. It’s 120k+ words. That’s like 320 pages in Word.
I also really despise fanfic because it’s so short. I get why you wouldn’t write a novel-length fanfic or why that’s unnecessary, especially if a fanfic is not worth reading to begin with, but I want LENGTH. I want a WORLD. I want something I can spend a lot of time in. And this is a fic that I stayed up way too late reading. Because it’s long and magnificent and it’s a modern HOCKEY AU.
The biggest compliment I can give to this author is saying that they inherently understand the characters, the themes, and the original plot of Captive Prince. While they altered a lot to fit the AU (and fit what I assume was their original exploration of the story) — Auguste is alive, Damen’s parents are alive, Kastor is not an evil maniac who sells Damen into sex slavery but instead is just a normal, flawed, competitive brother — I was so engrossed with all of it that everything felt right.
Now I know you’re probably thinking Jenna…this is how fanfic is supposed to work. You’re supposed to feel insane euphoria reading another author explore your favorite characters. YEAH. I KNOW. But I’ve never HAD THAT EXPERIENCE BEFORE. IT’S NEW FOR ME.
Anyway. I’m not getting an AO3 account anytime soon and I still don’t really wanna seek out fanfic, but I concede that sometimes it’s really really good. This fic is really really good, especially if you’re seeking some more queer hockey and you’re at all interested in the dynamics of Capri but never wanted to read the original books themselves. Definitely check out the trigger warnings though there is some dark stuff explored in here.
For those wondering, the first fanfic I ever enjoyed and the one I do actually keep up with (as it’s still being written) is pro bono by sonofadream. It’s an adult Pynch AU where Ronan is a painter and Adam is a lawyer. It’s insane.
Brim Reaper (2024)
Not much to say about this other than it’s ridiculous and brilliant. The perfect short film. And yes, that is our dear friend Huddy being a freak as usual.
i didn’t know there was a movie for the summer book! will definitely check it out