The Rambling
@therambling.bsky.social
Wandering off the beaten track since 1750. We give everyone’s pitch a friendly read. Find us at https://the-rambling.com
Pinned
The Rambling
@therambling.bsky.social
· Nov 27
Give thanks—The Rambling is out! From Lost to Lord of the Rings, reality TV to “succubus chic,” you will not lack for conversation at the dinner table after reading our latest issue, now live at the-rambling.com.
Reposted by The Rambling
Season 2 of Severance comes out today (finally!). Here's a piece I wrote for @therambling.bsky.social about how the show reflects how attitudes about corporate work have evolved (and have not) since the 1950s and 1960s. the-rambling.com/2022/10/21/i...
Living to Work in Severance - The Rambling
In this essay, Andrew Strombeck considers how Severance reminds its viewers that the Always-Be-Hustling era masks grim truths about work. As long as we view work as a place to find our best selves, we...
the-rambling.com
January 17, 2025 at 4:49 PM
Season 2 of Severance comes out today (finally!). Here's a piece I wrote for @therambling.bsky.social about how the show reflects how attitudes about corporate work have evolved (and have not) since the 1950s and 1960s. the-rambling.com/2022/10/21/i...
Reposted by The Rambling
Three years ago this week, my first public-facing piece on TTRPG Actual Play appeared in @therambling.bsky.social — on the end of @criticalrole.bsky.social Campaign 1 but more the stories AP tells about friendship.
I had no idea where this work would take me, personally or professionally.
I had no idea where this work would take me, personally or professionally.
Fantasy Friends - The Rambling
Emily Friedman explores friendship and pleasure in roleplaying games, as viewer and player. An introduction to "actual play" livestreaming on Twitch and YouTube, including the shows produced by Critic...
the-rambling.com
February 14, 2025 at 1:27 PM
Three years ago this week, my first public-facing piece on TTRPG Actual Play appeared in @therambling.bsky.social — on the end of @criticalrole.bsky.social Campaign 1 but more the stories AP tells about friendship.
I had no idea where this work would take me, personally or professionally.
I had no idea where this work would take me, personally or professionally.
"The buds of spring seemed to defy the season of death that was spreading across the world." Robert Lublin on rereading The Lord of the Rings during the pandemic.
Running Through Middle-earth - The Rambling
Robert I. Lublin has loved J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings series since he was 10 and re-read it often—but after finding comfort in Tolkien’s novels for so many years, he was dismayed to find...
the-rambling.com
December 3, 2024 at 5:52 PM
"The buds of spring seemed to defy the season of death that was spreading across the world." Robert Lublin on rereading The Lord of the Rings during the pandemic.
"Why is it that so many reality dating shows use formats that recall the courtship rituals of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels?" Miranda Hoegberg compares forms old and new.
The Best Use of the Worst Story: Realism and Reality TV - The Rambling
Miranda Hoegberg considers how couples learn about each other through watching reality dating shows—and what this might mean about how we learn in general from didactic forms like the realist novel. A...
the-rambling.com
December 3, 2024 at 1:28 AM
"Why is it that so many reality dating shows use formats that recall the courtship rituals of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels?" Miranda Hoegberg compares forms old and new.
"Where the Sidewalk Ends proceeds relentlessly to poke fun at routine interactions and needless, exhaustive productivity in a world swarming with the detritus of accumulating waste." @tyholter.bsky.social revisits the Shel Silverstein classic on its 50th anniversary.
This Town Grows Old Around Me - The Rambling
Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends remains an unparalleled classic of children’s literature. On the occasion of its 50th anniversary, poet Ty Holter reflects on the book’s resistance to commer...
the-rambling.com
November 30, 2024 at 7:42 PM
"Where the Sidewalk Ends proceeds relentlessly to poke fun at routine interactions and needless, exhaustive productivity in a world swarming with the detritus of accumulating waste." @tyholter.bsky.social revisits the Shel Silverstein classic on its 50th anniversary.
“The notion of living with actual illness is anathema to our self-directed, time-prizing society.” Julia Kendal on the intersection of illness and beauty trends, historically and now.
Sick Girl Winter - The Rambling
Hot girl summer gives way to sick girl winter in the long wake of COVID-19. Julia Kendal, a writer and social justice advocate, explores the phenomenon of “succubus chic” by connecting contemporary we...
the-rambling.com
November 30, 2024 at 1:42 AM
“The notion of living with actual illness is anathema to our self-directed, time-prizing society.” Julia Kendal on the intersection of illness and beauty trends, historically and now.
"I’ve spent many years searching for some version of my story, yet what seems a simple premise—'daughter carries on without father'—is not so simple to find in children’s literature." Abigail Spencer on the Amber Brown series
Seeing Red, Feeling Blue: Rereading Amber Brown - The Rambling
Abigail Spencer revisits Paula Danziger’s Amber Brown series and finds kinship with a childhood not often depicted in children’s fiction. An only child of divorced parents, Amber manages her father’s ...
the-rambling.com
November 28, 2024 at 8:07 PM
"I’ve spent many years searching for some version of my story, yet what seems a simple premise—'daughter carries on without father'—is not so simple to find in children’s literature." Abigail Spencer on the Amber Brown series
"By then, I knew that what I had always wanted from a story was what I had wanted from life: to make it mean something despite what seemed like utter chaos." Samantha Colicchio on her journey with the hit TV show Lost.
the-rambling.com/2024/11/23/i...
the-rambling.com/2024/11/23/i...
We Are Lost - The Rambling
On the 20th anniversary of the hit TV show Lost, author Samantha Colicchio examines the series through the lens of her experience at NYU’s acting conservatory. She explores the show’s philosophical qu...
the-rambling.com
November 27, 2024 at 5:00 PM
"By then, I knew that what I had always wanted from a story was what I had wanted from life: to make it mean something despite what seemed like utter chaos." Samantha Colicchio on her journey with the hit TV show Lost.
the-rambling.com/2024/11/23/i...
the-rambling.com/2024/11/23/i...
Reposted by The Rambling
Turkey trot your way over to @therambling.bsky.social straight away, because our latest issue is out—from Lost to Lord of the Rings, reality TV to “succubus chic,” you will not lack for conversation at the dinner table after reading the essays at the-rambling.com. 🐌🦃
November 27, 2024 at 2:55 AM
Turkey trot your way over to @therambling.bsky.social straight away, because our latest issue is out—from Lost to Lord of the Rings, reality TV to “succubus chic,” you will not lack for conversation at the dinner table after reading the essays at the-rambling.com. 🐌🦃
Give thanks—The Rambling is out! From Lost to Lord of the Rings, reality TV to “succubus chic,” you will not lack for conversation at the dinner table after reading our latest issue, now live at the-rambling.com.
November 27, 2024 at 1:07 AM
Give thanks—The Rambling is out! From Lost to Lord of the Rings, reality TV to “succubus chic,” you will not lack for conversation at the dinner table after reading our latest issue, now live at the-rambling.com.
Reposted by The Rambling
If you aren’t following @therambling.bsky.social yet, you might wanna do that before next week. #teaser
November 23, 2024 at 6:41 PM
If you aren’t following @therambling.bsky.social yet, you might wanna do that before next week. #teaser
"Sometimes it’s easier to stay home, to embrace what was, than to face a present you don’t recognize." Jillian Caddell on the adult complexities of the children's classic The Wind in the Willows. 💙📚 #booksky
Jillian Caddell on Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows - The Rambling
Jillian Caddell writes about Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows for The Rambling.
the-rambling.com
June 5, 2024 at 6:02 PM
"Sometimes it’s easier to stay home, to embrace what was, than to face a present you don’t recognize." Jillian Caddell on the adult complexities of the children's classic The Wind in the Willows. 💙📚 #booksky
“It’s easy to treat language as something in our minds, as something other than the stuff of the world that it signifies. But Enlightenment philosophy of language started from an insistence that words are a kind of thing." @cweiss-smith.bsky.social's best reads on the origins of language. #c18th
Courtney Weiss Smith’s List: Where Does Language Come From? - The Rambling
Where does language come from? Courtney Weiss Smith has found answers in Enlightenment philosophy of language and current evolutionary science. But she’s also a mother, watching as language comes for ...
the-rambling.com
June 4, 2024 at 4:16 PM
“It’s easy to treat language as something in our minds, as something other than the stuff of the world that it signifies. But Enlightenment philosophy of language started from an insistence that words are a kind of thing." @cweiss-smith.bsky.social's best reads on the origins of language. #c18th
Reposted by The Rambling
Wow. #C18L
This is huge news. The microfilm (& OCR?) of EEBO and The Eighteenth Century (ie ECCO) is available via Internet Archive! I need to dig derper but I wonder about the reactions from libraries, Gale, and ProQuest. H/T to David Smith @dasmiq.bsky.social for sharing news. archive.org/details/bim_...
Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Books, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine
archive.org
June 4, 2024 at 10:34 AM
Wow. #C18L
"On Our Flag Means Death, the spirit of foppery, especially its gentler masculinity, is celebrated."
Our Flag Means Fop - The Rambling
In this essay, Lucina C. Schwartz offers new insights and historical contexts for understanding the foppish characters of the hit show, Our Flag Means Death—and why fabric is Stede and Ed’s love langu...
the-rambling.com
June 3, 2024 at 7:14 PM
"On Our Flag Means Death, the spirit of foppery, especially its gentler masculinity, is celebrated."
"What are we looking for when we constantly bring the past into the present? Or try to make visible what kinds of pasts are always already stitched into a given present?" @tonyweiling.bsky.social
Circa 198X: Superpose, Science Fiction Histories, and the Trans Child - The Rambling
The ongoing webcomic Superpose (a piece of “trans-gay sci-fi”) takes place in the partially redacted year of 198X. A historical fiction about the 1980s that crosses the wires of the virtual and the re...
the-rambling.com
May 28, 2024 at 10:52 PM
"What are we looking for when we constantly bring the past into the present? Or try to make visible what kinds of pasts are always already stitched into a given present?" @tonyweiling.bsky.social
Reposted by The Rambling
I loved writing this. It is all true.
My thanks to @crystal-b-lake.bsky.social and Sarah, as always, for the amazing @therambling.bsky.social
🥰🥰
My thanks to @crystal-b-lake.bsky.social and Sarah, as always, for the amazing @therambling.bsky.social
🥰🥰
“What is it about keeping up that is so endemic to the life of a writer, to the career of an academic?” #AcademicSky @titachico.bsky.social
Books I'd Like to Write! - The Rambling
(A Listicle) The things you think of to link are not in your control. It’s just who you are, bumping into the world. But how you link them is what shows the nature of your mind. Individuality resides ...
the-rambling.com
May 26, 2024 at 1:29 AM
I loved writing this. It is all true.
My thanks to @crystal-b-lake.bsky.social and Sarah, as always, for the amazing @therambling.bsky.social
🥰🥰
My thanks to @crystal-b-lake.bsky.social and Sarah, as always, for the amazing @therambling.bsky.social
🥰🥰
“The moral panic produced by the fallacy of misplaced scale obscures the fact that trans children are nothing new.” @jttremblay.bsky.social
Introduction - The Rambling
Current moral panics obscure the fact that trans children are nothing new. In Histories of the Transgender Child, Jules Gill-Peterson focuses on the role that trans children played, often reluctantly,...
the-rambling.com
May 24, 2024 at 4:32 PM
“The moral panic produced by the fallacy of misplaced scale obscures the fact that trans children are nothing new.” @jttremblay.bsky.social
“Not all digression is literary, although it is perhaps the case that all literature is digressive. Not because it wanders or strays aimlessly, but because it does so with style, that is to say, with curious restraint.”
Insensibly Led - The Rambling
Towards A Theory of Digression —but this is a digression from my subject—no matter for that, a digression is quite the thing in a history, and surely it must be much more so in a meditation. What’s a ...
the-rambling.com
May 23, 2024 at 5:46 PM
“Not all digression is literary, although it is perhaps the case that all literature is digressive. Not because it wanders or strays aimlessly, but because it does so with style, that is to say, with curious restraint.”
“What is it about keeping up that is so endemic to the life of a writer, to the career of an academic?” #AcademicSky @titachico.bsky.social
Books I'd Like to Write! - The Rambling
(A Listicle) The things you think of to link are not in your control. It’s just who you are, bumping into the world. But how you link them is what shows the nature of your mind. Individuality resides ...
the-rambling.com
May 22, 2024 at 6:00 PM
“What is it about keeping up that is so endemic to the life of a writer, to the career of an academic?” #AcademicSky @titachico.bsky.social
"This is what, in the end, I find so engaging about the film: this promise of the luxury to imagine and realize wilder, queerer nights for Dickinson, who otherwise is torn from her social and aesthetic worlds and, as Jackson suggests, made miserable for consumption."
Dickinson’s Luxury - The Rambling
In the years before I started grad school, I worked for a time at a French bakery on the ground floor of a five-star hotel. It was essentially a fast-casual restaurant dressed up with ornate lettering...
the-rambling.com
May 21, 2024 at 7:32 PM
"This is what, in the end, I find so engaging about the film: this promise of the luxury to imagine and realize wilder, queerer nights for Dickinson, who otherwise is torn from her social and aesthetic worlds and, as Jackson suggests, made miserable for consumption."
"I muster a few self-deprecating mantras: 'Fool! Look in thy heart and write!'"
To Encounter the Muse - The Rambling
Elisa Oh writes a poem reflecting on the nature of academic labor, the academic and scholarly writing process, as well as writing in a second language.
the-rambling.com
May 20, 2024 at 8:36 PM
"I muster a few self-deprecating mantras: 'Fool! Look in thy heart and write!'"
Reposted by The Rambling
Lovely ugly words from @marymullen.bsky.social ❤️
“Figuring out just what words are doing is hard work. Are they acting? Preventing action? Are they distracting us from the actions that matter?” @marymullen.bsky.social
The Importance of Being Earnest - The Rambling
Discussing Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s ghost story, “The Cold Embrace,” and the bureaucratic tasks required to get divorced, this essay considers how nineteenth-cen...
the-rambling.com
May 18, 2024 at 10:14 AM
Lovely ugly words from @marymullen.bsky.social ❤️
“Figuring out just what words are doing is hard work. Are they acting? Preventing action? Are they distracting us from the actions that matter?” @marymullen.bsky.social
The Importance of Being Earnest - The Rambling
Discussing Robert Browning’s dramatic monologues, Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s ghost story, “The Cold Embrace,” and the bureaucratic tasks required to get divorced, this essay considers how nineteenth-cen...
the-rambling.com
May 17, 2024 at 10:00 PM
“Figuring out just what words are doing is hard work. Are they acting? Preventing action? Are they distracting us from the actions that matter?” @marymullen.bsky.social
Reposted by The Rambling
This is an excellent exploration of precisely the process I've gone through with Eddings.
A re-listen last year found the Belgariad / Mallorca just about tolerable, and the Elenium utterly beyond the pale, even for nostalgia.
A re-listen last year found the Belgariad / Mallorca just about tolerable, and the Elenium utterly beyond the pale, even for nostalgia.
“To maintain loyalty to old aesthetic allegiances can be a manifestation of kindness towards our younger selves, a form of self-focused compassion. Even works of the most dubious merit have as their grace the fact that we remember them, and have attached to that memory a collection of others...” 💙📚
First Loves and Bad Fantasy: Re-reading David Eddings - The Rambling
David Eddings was a best-selling writer, a convicted child abuser, and one of the chief literary influences of my childhood. Thirty years after falling in love with his shlocky but influential brand o...
the-rambling.com
May 16, 2024 at 4:56 PM
This is an excellent exploration of precisely the process I've gone through with Eddings.
A re-listen last year found the Belgariad / Mallorca just about tolerable, and the Elenium utterly beyond the pale, even for nostalgia.
A re-listen last year found the Belgariad / Mallorca just about tolerable, and the Elenium utterly beyond the pale, even for nostalgia.