Quentin's Weeknotes 2/16/19-2/22/19

This week:

• I read Lady Killer Vol. 1 by Jamie S. Rich and Joelle Jones. The story is fun–a 1950’s-era suburban housewife who moonlights as an assassin. It’s a great combination of blood and sterile cleanliness. But the real draw is the breath-taking art by Joelle Jones, which draws on mid-century design, but also shows off her peerless drafting and pencilling skills.
• I read this brief note from M. John Harrison’s blog, worth reproducing in full for its advice on writing good characters, as well as for a good description of what many of us are living through these days:

People who lost their ontological security so long ago they don’t even remember it happened to them. They muddle along trying to construct and maintain a self out of what’s left, continually remaking the world out of unstable bits and pieces, suffering a condition they don’t even recognise as loneliness. They stumble upon a life of habit and that will have to do. It gives them a certain gallantry. We recognise that about them even when it’s irritating. People who have lost ontological security to that extent are rarely aware of it, so when writing them it is best not to present direct explanations or origins. That would rationalise their behaviour the way single-event trauma is used in the Hollywood blueprint, to add motivation and simple causality to plot-driving characterisations and characterisation-driven plots.