phenryward.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

The Crow's Portion is a 'bad town' thriller (like Red Harvest and Bad Day at Black Rock). But Poe and Masque of the Red Death kept creeping in and it took me a while to realise it's a sort of Brexit Gothic too, esp those ruined rural edgelands feasting on hate. www.bristolnoir.co.uk/the-crows-po...

submitted 2 days ago • 0 comments

I'm going to be honest here, I think AI is going to do so much damage to the usable internet that even after it's inevitably crashes out, it's going to take years to disentangle from every space it's polluted, like digital asbestos it's gonna be time consuming effort and likely expensive venture.

submitted 2 days ago • 105 comments

We'd like to have a tradition of reading short stories on Sundays. Call it #ShortStorySunday. If you'd like, chuck us a link to a short story we can read online. Doesn't have to be by you, doesn't have to be new, just something you think others would enjoy.

submitted 12 days ago • 6 comments

New to actually-finishing-and-submitting, and while I had my first acceptance last week, this story with @bristolnoir.bsky.social is my first publication. Something of a milestone. It's an anti-fascist thriller probably best described as a 'Masque of the Red Harvest'. If you read it let me know!

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

Philanthropy would be one option! Or, failing that, a crackdown on tax evasion and a wealth tax?

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

I've nearly finished a joke about Zeno - I'm half way there.

submitted 14 days ago • 0 comments

Delighted to participate in Art on a Postcard Summer Auction! @artonapostcard with 4 postcard sized waves, some with skeletons, some without. Lots are now live to view. Bidding starts on 17th. Link in Bio Online on Givergy, 17 June - 1 July

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

New to actually-finishing-and-submitting, and while I had my first acceptance last week, this story with @bristolnoir.bsky.social is my first publication. Something of a milestone. It's an anti-fascist thriller probably best described as a 'Masque of the Red Harvest'. If you read it let me know!

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

This is a weird, powerful, and unforgettable novel

submitted 19 days ago • 0 comments

May have to eat shit in the final assessment, but people are overreacting to this: there's some cruelty in this exchange, an undermining of "all animals are equal", and no conceivable way Animal Farm is played as anything than devastating. I foresee a warm hug that becomes a deadly crush.

submitted 20 days ago • 0 comments

This is a really interesting review of a fascinating artefact (relic?)

submitted 23 days ago • 0 comments

Things you discover from the Internet:

submitted 24 days ago • 0 comments

Saw ANATOMY OF A FALL. Having avoided any conversation about it earlier for fear of spoilers, I now really want to know: was anyone sympathetic to the whiny husband? Is there any reading of the court case other than deeply misogynistic, resentful of her success, fundamentally misunderstanding art?

submitted 29 days ago • 0 comments

Some of this week's purchases. (Friends and family concerned for wellbeing, mental health, connection to real world etc)

submitted 38 days ago • 0 comments

As the proud owner of a couple of Cansicks, I recommend having a beautiful, reasonably-priced thing in your home you can look at.

submitted 38 days ago • 2 comments

Excited to find this, but not, in the end, very good. It tries to read like the experience of watching Stalker - boring stretches, digressions (four page foot-notes), weird hyperfocus on seeming ephemera - without being, like Stalker, a towering, miraculous work, somehow stronger for its flaws.

submitted 40 days ago • 1 comment

I'm overwhelmingly a secondhand-first book buyer, so when I get @nationalbooktokens.bsky.social it means I can buy the authors (@johnlangan.bsky.social, @tananarivedue.bsky.social, Mariana Enriquez) I never find because they're clearly too good to give away...

submitted 41 days ago • 3 comments

Yeah yeah "echo chamber" but is anyone happy with Starmer? What has he gained from this?

submitted 45 days ago • 1 comment

I'd mainly heard this "common sense not common newts" argument on Private Eye's podcast, Page 94 - and, I thought, persuasively. Human infrastructure is critical, and we are a country that can't get things finished. But no, it's greed and incompetence holding us back, as always, not best intentions.

submitted 51 days ago • 0 comments

I wondered why this was, and the comments on this thread make it clear: fucking monopolists, as always (when it's not private equity parasites)

submitted 52 days ago • 0 comments

"THIS DOG HAS A DIGESTIVE ISSUE SO HIS FAMILY MADE HIM A CHAIR SO HE CAN ACTUALLY EAT"

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

"THIS DOG HAS A DIGESTIVE ISSUE SO HIS FAMILY MADE HIM A CHAIR SO HE CAN ACTUALLY EAT"

submitted 55 days ago • 0 comments

These Texas Chain Saw Massacre spinoffs are getting silly

submitted 56 days ago • 0 comments

@michaelhobbes.bsky.social says 'nut graf' a lot in this one and it started to get a little kinky

submitted 58 days ago • 0 comments

submitted 59 days ago • 0 comments

Listening to all the Mamet-love on this series (and the grief of Mamet-loss, now he's nuts), got me thinking about what recent movies feel like they could have been written by him at his prime. REBEL RIDGE definitely has that juice.

submitted 65 days ago • 0 comments

Desperate for good lit podcasts. One yday was fine before devolving into worst kind of intellectual parsimony: academia's "No, but" v improv's "Yes, and". Not sharpening distinctions, converging towards more meaningful statement - just obtuse posturing (while discussing satire of academic language)

submitted 70 days ago • 0 comments

This film is extraordinary. Hidden bonus feature: if you show it to someone who has a secret double life, they get oddly uncomfortable and you get to remember that moment years later when everything comes out and changes the way you think about them.

submitted 71 days ago • 0 comments

@jordanharper.bsky.social you say towards the end "If anyone's still listening..." but I want another three hours! Have you seen The Shawl? Probably Mamet's clearest expression of "no magic, only words on the page" and yet, done well: it's magical, and you buy the long con of Art all over again.

submitted 71 days ago • 1 comment