Week 5
Jo’s watching
Castle
Castle is a 2009 drama you can watch on Disney+.
Everyone has their guilty pleasure, and I’ve found mine: watching Nathan Fillion play the same charismatic man-child in every show he’s ever starred in.
My favourite is Castle. Fillion plays a writer assisting in police investigations. I mean, what a novel idea. I want to see more shows with writers getting away with weird and obscure hobbies because they’re ‘writing a book’ and need to know the intricate workings of artificial intelligence, decomposition rates, animal husbandry, or sonography. It’s almost Sherlock Holmes but playing in a sandpit of imagination rather than intelligence. After all—and to quote Richard Castle—‘There are two kinds of folks who sit around thinking about how to kill people: psychopaths and mystery writers’. I happen to think all writers are a kind of obscure breed, of which you should never see their search histories. The number of times I’ve googled where to fire an arrow to keep your victim alive or exactly how long it takes to bleed out should have caught the attention of the police.
Olivia’s reading
The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro
This week I’d like to discuss another excellent piece of short fiction—The Three Thousand, Four Hundred Twenty-Third Law of Robotics by Adam-Troy Castro, which appeared in the March Issue (166) of Lightspeed Magazine. It’s a story about the depths of human cruelty, which is shown to us through the suffering of a robot ordered, ‘Don’t move until we come back for you,’ by human owners with no intention of ever returning. The robot stands for centuries and then millennia, forever suffering—because of course humans made their mechanical slaves capable of emotions—bound not just by Asimov’s three laws of robotics but thousands more, all designed to exercise such a fine degree of control that the robots are helpless even to voice their distress, let alone rebel against human orders.
It’s a short, (bitter) sweet story that I highly enjoyed and would recommend.
Callum’s listening
Her (Original Score)
When I first watched Spike Jonze’s 2013 film, Her, time only mattered within the film; I felt the world slowly turning around me, my mind enveloped in the strange, near-future sci-fi romance. I experienced several emotions—loneliness, despair, confusion, hope—and found myself wondering why I let myself get sucked into this film, and what had made it so unique at the time. I wasn’t in love with an AI, nor did I long for the connection that Theodore Twombly struggled for. By the film’s end, I felt euphoric; not just because of what I’d seen but because ambient music continued to echo in my mind.
I searched Spotify for ‘Song on the Beach’ and ‘Photograph’ during the film—two beautifully-composed songs by Arcade Fire and Owen Pallett on Her’s original score—and suddenly found there weren’t enough hours in the next few days. I would write, read, and sleep to these two songs alone.
I let the rest of the score trickle in as I began to love the album; the slow electronic grind, the long rise, the pace of the polished piano, the pathing of Pallett’s stillness and evocation. I thought of my life and the short memories I’d play along to each song, piecing the emotions to the pace of whatever played next. I revisited the first time I loved, the first time I cried, and I could now wholly recall moments of my youth. I watched my childhood friends laughing, my father smiling, my family happy again. I no longer pictured the movie the score was composed for, but felt content with the memories playing to each song in my head.
This original score transported me to places I thought I was blind to and had forgotten. With collaboration from composer and violinist Owen Pallett, Arcade Fire’s haunting talent is clear. The score is an evocative piece that stands confidently beside the film it was made for.
Callum Ross-Rowland (he/him) is a Brisbane-based creative writing student at QUT. He was 2023 Literary Salon’s Photographer with his recent Diploma in Photo Imaging from Billy Blue (Torrens). He was recently shortlisted for Photographer of the year in the Animal and Nature category and regularly photographs for Artful Heads magazine where he captures portraits of artists from different mediums. Find him on Instagram @alrightatart.
Josephine Renee (she/her) is a 23-year-old Meanjin author majoring in creative writing at QUT. She is the Brisbane Writers Festival 2024 Youth Ambassador and a co-president of the QUT Literary Salon, as well as the 2023 recipient of the Kellie van Meurs Memorial Scholarship. She has travelled Europe for two years, spent a year and a half in North America, and recently returned from Paris. When not gaining worldbuilding inspiration, she dedicates her time to writing and illustrating. She has work published in WhyNot, ScratchThat Magazine, and Glass Magazine. Find her on Instagram @josephine_renee_official or at josephinerenee.com.
Olivia J Pryor (She/They) is a 25-year-old Meanjin based queer trans woman writer in her final year of studying creative writing at QUT. She is a lover of speculative fiction in all its forms: sci-fi; fantasy; horror; weird fiction and others, but still enjoys reading, watching, and listening to media in all genres and forms. She cares deeply about marginalised voices in the arts, particularly queer and trans women.
Logo created by Josephine Renee
Art created by Sophie Gollant
Sophie Gollant (she/her) is marked by her earnest oil paintings and photographs of earthly, isolated scenes. Sophie’s practice is steeped in metaphors and motifs that earnestly draw on her experiences of womanhood, chronic illness, and solitude.
Instagram: @soggolla