TIME TO CLEAN SOME HOUSE [553]

I have spent the last forty minutes filling two Ikea “Pappis” boxes with DVDs I had been keeping in a loft. I will always support owning your own copy of something, but with Blu-ray having now existed for twenty years, my having joined that bandwagon in 2011, looking at these discs has either made me think, “I’ve got this on Blu-ray now,” or, “I’ll come back to this eventually”. Then in the box it goes, to be taken away. VHS, DVD, or Blu-ray, most people will have had this discussion with themselves.

I had an enormous amount of trepidation at beginning to clear out this loft, which I had filled with (most of) a life’s worth of books, comics, CDs and DVDs, especially as it had reached “where do you even start?” levels. But I had been asked to start because the heatwaves that made the summer of 2026 so uncomfortable also highlighted how combustible people’s houses became in that heat, and so much paper in a room without climate control was now asking for trouble.

With limited space elsewhere at home for me to use as storage, I was confronted with the option that immediately confirmed I had too much stuff, leading me to reject it very quickly: paying for a self-storage facility. I could not see myself maintaining an off-site memory hole, being held in conditions even further out of my control.

I had needed to something about this at some point, which had always been “later”, but being asked causes you to reconsider your priorities. Once I had come to terms with having a collection that made me look like a budding hoarder, I could find a way of turning this experience into a positive one.

After tiring myself out on the first weekend by bringing out the items I clearly had no use of like exercise equipment, old PC peripherals and wires, and a typewriter, I established a routine of coming home from work, eating dinner, then clearing out two bags or boxes of items, mostly books. By the weekend, not only could you tell yourself you made a good start, but you also would have spent a week considering whether you ever going to get around to reading, watching or listening to that, and could that question have been asked at the time of acquiring the item?

I now look forward to having this moment of catharsis each evening, and I haven’t gone back to retrieve anything so far. These books, films, TV shows and so on do not become lost just because I don’t have access to them. Remembering that has made parting with them that much easier. 

What this ongoing process has also done is highlight where I used to be hastier in getting rid of things, like having none of my school exercise books because I only deemed the end of term grade as important. Likewise, I had re-bought, some time ago, two books I thought had gone years before: “The Saga of Erik the Viking” by Terry Jones, with painted illustrations by Michael Foreman, and a 1975 book titled “The Science Fiction Book: An Illustrated History” by Franz Rottensteiner, which had been a case of searching online for a book that could match my memory of what was in the pages. I could have saved myself a lot of time.

I FEEL IT COMING TOGETHER [280]

The situation doesn’t normally arise when you feel like alluding to Susan Sontag’s essay “Against Interpretation” in an article about an online comic created by your sister, but sometimes you would rather talk about how good something is, rather than dissect it until you know how good something was before you killed it. Sontag’s essay ends, “in place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art,” and my intention here is only to tell you why you should read Layla Spence’s “Ill Fame” [https://www.webtoons.com/en/challenge/ill-fame/list?title_no=382596&page=1].

Set in and around an island, “Ill Fame” centres on Frankie and Rhys, who have found a life together, but only in their human forms – Frankie is a seal, and daughter of King Augustus, while Rhys is a crow, and the King’s messenger. When Thomas Reid, an envoy for the Land King, comes with Caritas, a snake that can see the future, with an offer of help, lives will be changed.

I initially attributed the title “Ill Fame” to Frankie’s father holding her in low esteem for her relationship with a crow through their ability to change forms – the ability to communicate as seal and crow is rendered crucial for them to survive as a couple against the threat of royal protocol and destiny. However, the “ill fame” also belongs to the kingdom itself, neglected by the Sea King, and given the opportunity to fall in with the Land King.

I have never really been a fan of fantasy as a genre – I do remember we once had a copy of the film “Krull” recorded from TV, and I had a copy of the Terry Jones novel “The Saga of Erik the Viking,” illustrated by Michael Foreman – but the world of “Ill Fame” is, for me, entirely of itself, not harking back to particular stories I might have seen elsewhere, or overtly trying to use its genre as an allegory for our present, unless that has happened and I have not realised yet. The state of both the sea kingdom, and of Frankie and Rhys’s relationship, remains precarious at the time of writing, and I am interested to see where this goes.

Of course, the art pulls you into the story. Presented in the online comic format of a downward scroll, each part is defined by bold black lines, spare in detail, with extremely expressive character work. The use of the sea as a setting complements the scrolling nature of the comic, allowing for a more play in how scenes unfold, and the grading of the colour through each scene, usually restricted to three or four colours to set mood, is particularly impressive – it makes the way printed comics are presented feel particularly choppy as a result, as the speed of the story is determined only by the reader.

Art demands to be considered on its own terms, any words I have are written in the hope that I can push you in the direction of “Ill Fame,” and I hope I can add to the people already following the story. Moreover, because I know how much Layla puts into her art anyway, I want more people to see it out of a sense of solidarity and pride, so make sure you follow her Instagram account for updates too [link].