hey y’all, just a quick update this time around!
first things first, a bit of transparency
in case you’re unaware of what’s transpired over the past two months re: substack, the company has not only platformed powerful hatemongers, particularly transphobes, but continues to pay those people large “advances” to entice them to publish on the site. jude doyle wrote a generous explanation of that in early march for gen, which was an expansion on his own newsletter a few days prior. this revelation came (to me anyway) a couple days after i sent my most recent newsletter, and i’ve been trying to decide what my next moves are for malonemail going forward. i’m still considering some alternatives, but haven’t settled on one yet, much less had a moment to build this out in a new CMS (NMS?).
to be perfectly honest, i’m not sure whether leaving is the right move at all, given how reprehensible almost every single publisher has behaved toward marginalized users; moving to another platform just seems like opting to support another, slightly different flavor of scummy, unethical white man. (no ethical consumption/production, under capitalism, etc.) but as i said, i’m still thinking about it. i just wanted to make sure malonemail subscribers know this is what substack is.
a quick writing update
if you follow me on twitter, you might have seen me bitching over the past couple weeks or so about pulling off an unnamed, high-stakes recap assignment. technically i pitched recapping netflix’s shadow and bone to my editor at vulture back in february, but i had no idea how much harder it would be to recap a streaming show that drops all episodes at once.
for one, i got the green light in late march, which shortened the turnaround time for eight (!) recaps significantly and turned me into a goblin with scrambled eggs for brains over the past two weeks. (the show is based on a 7+ book “universe” and the showrunner and author have remixed its elements, so this involved a LOT of rereading.)
for another, there’s absolutely zero engagement with readers/the fandom from the time you start writing the premiere recap till after you file the finale recap and the whole batch publishes at once (or, in my case, gradually over two days). any facts i might have got wrong, any easter eggs i might have overlooked, any exciting fan theories i picked up on twitter in the interim — i wasn’t able to engage with any of that discourse in the recaps themselves. recapping is such a dialectical, community-driven thing for me (as is all of my writing) so that part was a bit of a bummer!
but i really did enjoy the season, which dropped friday, and it was a relief to see that most fans felt the same way i did about a lot of it. (minus the darklina shippers. can’t relate! will never relate!!) it was an adventure to write 16,000+ words without hearing a single bit of feedback (not to mention probably good practice if i’m ever going to write a book). nevertheless, i really did miss being able to tweet about each recap every week (yeah, duh, i love attention, i’m a WRITER onLINE). so i figured, why not just assemble all eight links here? that way, i can get posting them out of my system, and people can have them all in one place, if and when they decide to watch and read. so, here they are:
episode 1, “a searing burst of light” - an explainer, mostly, of the grishaverse, as well as the major changes author leigh bardugo and showrunner eric heisserer made to the original text for the show and why those choices ended up being both a salve and a huge gamble. oh, and, you know, the shit that happens in the premiere.
episode 2, “we’re all someone’s monster” - how certain updates and additions to the books create a more nuanced and lived-in political reality for the grishaverse. god, I love when the details work.
episode 3, “the making at the heart of the world” - on in-universe racism, amplifier technicalities, the goat (!!!!), and the conductor being hot IRL?
episode 4, “otkazats’ya” - on alina and mal’s trauma-fueled codependency, and, thank god, finally, a heist.
episode 5, “show me who you are” - on ben barnes, sankta baghra, and the show’s freakishly good ship chemistry.
episode 6, “the heart is an arrow” - on the small science and health, plus mal being wonderful, despite no kissing.
episode 7, “the unsea” - on kirigan’s annoyingly contradictory backstory, what “immortal actually means, and the kaz/inej dynamic.
episode 8, “no mourners” - on accepting the diminishment of the crows in favor of a more balanced story overall.
anyway, i’m hungry now, so tweet at me about details you loved and theories you read and shit i got wrong — i’m telling you, i’m that starved for discourse!
xoxo
oh, p.s.
fuck the oscars. moving to union station displaced the entire unhoused encampment we cook for every week. if you watched the ceremony, consider venmoing some mutual aid cash to @catherine-schetina or me (@devonmaloney) or buying something from our amazon wishlist so we can continue this eternal uphill battle in supporting our community.