The Sian from Atlantis

@parthenoid.bsky.social

938 Followers 207 Following

Queen. Writer of things, wearer of tight shiny trousers. Them/they, queer/here. Asking the Question in Bodies. Have some form talking about folk horror. https://patreon.com/Room207Press

1/3 An email purporting to be from the author John Gwynne entitled "Exploring how myths continue to shape every generation" The first part reads: "Hello Sian, I recently came across your work while exploring books that examine the cultural life of enduring myths, and Atlantis Through Time immediately stood out to me. I was especially drawn to your approach of following the legend of Atlantis across centuries, not as a question of proving or disproving its existence, but as a reflection of how each generation reshapes myths to express its own hopes, fears, and imagination. Tracing its influence from Plato through occult traditions, spiritualism, fantasy, and popular culture makes for a fascinating perspective, and it struck me as the kind of work that hasn't received the visibility it deserves."
A letter and response from Prediction Magazine, November 1966, p.46: "BEAT IN TIME One of the Beatles has said that his Group [sic] is more popular than Jesus Christ. What are your views on this statement?" The answer reads: "The 'popularity' of Christ has already endured for nearly 2,009 years. The little day of these tousle-headed song merchants is already on the wane. In 2,000 years many of 'earth's proud empires' have passed away, so what chance has the cacophonous kingdom of the Beatles? They will be lucky if their reign lasts 2,000 days."
A comedic moment from Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood by way of example. Three characters are drawn in very simple outline, and with faces that are barely emojis.
A hand holding a built and weathered Master Grade MS Zaku II Char Aznable Custom ver 2.0, a model of a salmon and red mecha. This one is about 20cm tall and is weathered and panel lined. Pretty nicely if I say so myself.
Wayne Pygram as Scorpius in Farscape (1999-2004). A man, shown in head and shoulders sneers. He has an emaciated wrinkled, skull-like face and thin black lips. He is wearing a futuristic leather harness-like mask and a shiny black uniform. It's a pretty kinky getup, frankly, but Farscape was like that.
Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland as Liz and Malcolm in KEEPER (Osgood Perkins, US 2025). Standing on the other side of a window, they face us at a slightly skewed angle and look off into the middle distance, to the right. Liz wears a red sweater and a teal scarf. Her dark hair is short and wavy. She has an uncertain expression. Malcolm wears a green-grey knitted sweater. He has greying hair and beard, and looks content.
Juliette Gariépy as Kelly-Anne in RED ROOMS (Pascal Laplante, Canada, 2023). Central in the frame is the face of a young woman with high cheekbones and an angular jaw, her long brown hair parted in the middle. She has a passive expression. She wears computer headphones and a black shirt. She sits in a darkened room, and her face is bathed in red light. You can see tiny reflections of her computer screen in her eyes.
A WhatsApp conversation Me: I've made it through to episode 7 Me: _Nancy_ is gunning people down with an M16 Me: This is _awful_, Matt Me: I know sharing suffering with those you love is a thing but whyyyy Me: HOW IS VECNA DEAD AND THERE'S STILL ANOTHER FRICKING HOUR OF THIS, MATT Me: They've graduated There's still another half hour to go (exhausted emoji) My son: IT GETS WORSE My son: NOTHING HAPPENS My son: NOTHING.
Two WhatsApps from me: > I'm into episode 3 and I don't think I can take another 5 hours of this > I'm literally screaming at the screen "STOP EXPLAINING THE PLOT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" A response from my son, quote-replying the previous text message and responding: "HAHAHA"
Two WhatsApp messages. They read: "Watch Stranger Things" "The ending is 'Game of Thrones bad'"
A hand holding a copy of Janisse and Emms eds. Truth & Soul: A Robert Downey Sr. Reader (Spectacular Optical: Pender Island BC, 2025) It is a blue paperback volume. Its cover design features a black and white photograph of a young Robert Downey Sr. In the bottom left hand corner, raising a hand, out of which a flow of orange and green energy is flowing towards the top right hand corner of the cover. The title is contained within the splash of colour on the top right. The names of the editors, Kier-La Janisse and Clint Emms, are printed in white on the bottom right, on a design that looks like overlaid strips of white paper.
Three Cybermen from the 1983 Doctor Who story Earthshock, standing around a console above which is projected, tinted red, a close up image of the Fifth Doctor
A screenshot of a Twitter post from 2021 by Jeff Maurer (@JeffMightbeWrong) showing a faked CAPTCHA with the caption "Select all squares with: Bishops who dissented from the Christological findings of the first councils of Nicaea". The grid is overlaid on a Mediaeval painting of the Nicaean council from a church.
Part of an interview between Sian Ingham and Ari Aster from the MotelX Horror Festival, Lisbon, 2019, published at Sian's Room 207 Press blog (https://www.room207press.com/2020/06/we-dont-go-back-93-midsommar-2019.html) The relevant section reads: AA: I made a decision to not watch any folk horror films before I made Midsommar. I had seen them all before – but it had been about ten years since I had seen – really, any of them. I knew them but kind of wanted to stay away from them, while also paying homage to an extent, and acknowledging what came before. It was sort of important to me to just stay clear of them. HDI: Were you perhaps acknowledging hazy memories of having seen those films rather than the films themselves? AA: In a way. I mean, certainly the connection between Midsommar and The Wicker Man is pretty clear. And if anything, that was sort of the key for me to – breaking the film open, because at the time I was concerned with – writing – a breakup movie, and wanting to find an appropriate framework, you know, over which to drape this kind of more personal material. And I am a genre filmmaker. I was approached by a Swedish production company, called B-Reel, that wanted me to make a folk horror film set in Sweden. And that was exciting to me for a lot of reasons. But when I – you know when I sat down and I engaged with the exercise of, you know, imagining what my folk horror might be. It was almost immediate how I made the connection between the film I had been trying to form and that structure.
Nic Cage as the Carpenter in The Carpenter's Son (2025). A grizzled, long-haired, bearded Cage gives an intense and quintessentially Cagey expression against a blue sky.
An illustration from Peter Carroll’s 1982 chaos magic text Psychonaut, rendered by Brian Ward (Liber Null/Psychonaut, combined edition, San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser, 1987: p124), showing an abstract representation of a round-headed, grinning demon with piggy eyes over a blade drawn as part of a chaos symbol and a geometric figure that looks like pillars.
The Blu-Ray boxsets of the two seasons of cancelled HBO Max show Raised by Wolves (2020 and 2022), on a wooden table.
Emma Stone as Michelle in Bugonia (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2025). She is shown in closeup. She has a shaved head and her entire face and head are slathered in white insect bite cream. She is touching her scalp with her left hand and looking off screen above right.
Megan Fox as Alice in Subservience (2024). She stands in a bathroom. Shown from the head and shoulders, she is wearing a maid uniform. Yhe right side of her face is damaged, revealing ill defined roboty technology under torn artificial skin. Her right eye is silver rather than brown like the other one.
Toni Collette as creepy cult leader/torture school principal Evelyn in Netflix series Wayward. Seen in 3/4 head and shoulders, she sits on a dining chair in a low-lit room and has an assessing expression. She wears a brown shirt and glasses with large frames.
Close up of the faces of Dave Franco (left) and Alison Brie (right) in the 2025 film Together. They face each other in front of a dark background. They have expressions of anguish and fear. Their skin is unhealthy looking and slick with sweat.
The cover of Prediction Magazine, November 1966. On the cover is actress Nyree Dawn Porter, and behind her geometric shapes containing symbolic representations of Gemini, Libra and Scorpio. Also mentioned on the cover: an astrological profile of Barbara Cartland, "Changing Your Luck", "Horses from Nowhere", Palmistry, the Tarot and Graphology.
My hand, holding my copy of Love and Rockets Vol.1, Music for Mechanics, credited to Los Bros Hernandez. The cover, drawn by Jaime in a clean style, is a police line up showing four of the Locas characters: Izzy, Maggie, Hopey and Penny Century.
A partial screenshot of the word count of a Google Docs file. It reads 86538 words.
A still from the 2010 film Submarine, featuring the boy and the girl from the movie holding hands
A painted example of the 2006 Rackham Miniatures model S'Erum, an anthropomorphic snake with worn bronze armour and a large rifle.
A header from the Crowdfunder page Help the All-Terrain Wheelchair Project (www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/help-the-all-terrain-wheelchair-project). The picture beneath it is taken by someone sitting in a wheelchair. It shows a pair of knees in camo trousers on a rugged all terrain wheelchair with an orange frame and mountain bike wheels, on grass covered ground.
Sarah Brightman as Blind Mags in Repo! the Genetic Opera (2008), shown from the chest up in front of a dark blue digitally rendered background. She has black, elaborately dressed hair and wears over-the-top goth makeup with black lipstick and dramatic black eyeshadow with two inch long false lashes. She has uncanny silver contact lenses. She is wearing a black spiked choker and a black ball gown with large feathers covering the bodice.
a 54mm miniature of an elf king in a green cloak, holding a long halberd, painted with artists' oil paints. this model is the Sea Elf Lord by Thunderbolt Mountain Miniatures, c.1991.
A post on Twitter from a poster with the handle ADHDelaide reading: 'How old were you when you realised that when people meant lazy they meant "I don't feel like doing it but I could if I wanted to" and not "I've been trying for days and I feel like a failure because I should be able to but I'm not"? I was 25.'
A photograph of a model, about 2' tall, of a bat-winged angelic or demonic creature like a bird that perches on a narrow tower. Its face is that of a cherub. at the base of the tower, a tiny figure stands, clutching its hands.
The logo of Citrus Housing co-operative, a silhouette similar to a house, divided up into rainbow coloured segments resembling a citrus fruit
Still of Mia Farrow as Rosemary in Rosemary's Baby, hand over her mouth, eyes wide in shock, because she's just read Roman Polanski's Wikipedia biog
Screenshot of a public Facebook post by Wouter j. Hanegraff, dated 9th Jan 2025. "Horrible, deeply dramatic news for anybody who cares about the preservation of Theosophical heritage. I was just told that the entire property of the Theosophical Society in Altadena near Pasadena has been completely destroyed by the fires in Los Angeles. This was the world's largest archive of Theosophical materials, including a library with 40.000 titles, the entire archive of the history of the TS, including ca. 10.000 unpublished letters, pertaining to HPB, the Mahatmas, W.Q. Judge, G.R.S. Mead, Katherine Tingley, and G. de Purucker, membership records since 1875, art objects, and countless other irreplaceable materials. The archives also contained works of Boehme, Gichtel, donations from the king of Siam including rare Buddhist scriptures, and so on. [with thanks to Reinout Spaink for the information] This is obviously just one part of an even much larger drama that is currently unfolding, but one that deals a devasting blow to the modern study of esotericism and of modern Theosophy more in particular. It is hard to fathom but it seems to be true."
Dark, desaturated picture of Doug Jones as Count Orlock in Nosferatu: a Symphony of Horror (2023). He grimaces, his hand close to his face.
Screenshot of a Facebook Messenger toast from me that reads "I regret to inform you that while I am not strictly toxic, I am about as good for you as packet ramen"
Artist Rohan Fox, dressed in a floral waistcoat and homemade Regency dandy style shirt, smiling, behind their table at the Elysium market. It is covered with folksy art prints, lino prints, and cards depicting rabbits, birds, chairs and animal skulls.
The cover of a Holder Christian Paperback from 1986, Delivered to Declare, by Gabriele Trinkle, with David Hall. The cover is a head and shoulders picture of a smiling bespectacled woman of indeterminate age with a brown Princess Di hairstyle, and makeup and clothing stereotypical of the era. A lengthy subtitle at the bottom reads "Sold to Satan as a child, harassed by demonic influences almost to breaking point, and then wonderfully released through the power of Christ."
My right hand holding a paperback edition of Lewis Spence's The Occult Sciences In Atlantis with the classic "light pouring from an undersea ruin" cover illustration.
Letter from Amazing Stories, September 1945: THE NECROMINICON [sic] SIRS: In line with your research on the Lemurian question, may I refer you to the "Necrominicon" of Abdul Alhazred, and also the singularly famous "Das Inausprechlichen Kulten" by Von Juntz. Both of these volumes may be found in the reserve room of Miskatonic University's Library in Arkton, Massachusetts. I am a graduate of occult sciences in this university and have been engaged in conflict with Mr Shaver's "underground deros" since my graduation there in 1935...
A page from Egerton Sykes's Classical References to Atlantis, including such references as "Bible: Pentateuch, Isaiah, Ezekiel" with no further or more detailed citations.
A still from the Doctor Who story Kinda. Tegan stands in the foreground, with a scared expression, her face half in shadow, while the manifestation of the Mara, a young man dressed as a Jacobean clown, leers at her malevolently in the background.
A photograph of a page from the book T.C. Lethbridge: the Man Who Saw the Future, by Terry Welbourn. On the page a photograph of three men standing in a field; two are filming a third dowsing. The caption reads "1966, Hole House, Branscombe: the BBC film Tom with his pendulum."
Copies of Edgar Cayce On Atlantis and Edgar Cayce in Context – the Readings: Truth and Fiction by K Paul Johnson
A recent paperback facsimile edition of A Dweller on Two Planets Or, The Dividing of the Way by Phylos the Thibetan
Harvey Spencer Lewis
A photo of Mt Shasta
A facsimile of the headline of the story "A People of Mystery" from the LA Times, May 22, 1932, p34. The subtitles are "Are they remnants of a lost race?" And "do they possess a fabulous gold treasure?" The byline is Edward Lanser, illustrated by A.L Ewing.
A (SFW, I'm not a monster) picture of a generic winsome anime style neko catgirl
Socrates in a philosophical dialogue with young men Bill S Preston Esq. and Ted "Theodore" Logan.
Portrait bust of Plato
A picture that's supposed to be the Bimini Road, but I got it off the internet and I'm not 100% sure.
A scene from The Undersea Kingdom (1936)
DVD cover for the whole 12 chapter adventure serial The Undersea Kingdom (1936), starting Ray "Crash" Corrigan and Lon Chaney
A photograph of Edgar Cayce, a smiling, avuncular, bespectacled man in a suit and tie.
HP Lovecraft
One of John Ballou Newbrough's illustrations from Oahspe, a map of Pan
Colonel James Churchward
Text from William Scott-Elliott's The Lost Lemuria (1904): "The following is a description of a man who belonged to one of the later sub-races-probably the fifth. "His stature was gigantic, somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet. His skin was very dark, being of a yellowish brown colour. He had a long lower jaw, a strangely flattened face, eyes small but piercing and set curiously far apart, so that he could see sideways as well as in front, while the eye at the back of the head--on which part of the head no hair, of course, grew--enabled him to see in that direction also. He had no forehead, but there seemed to be a roll of flesh where it should have been. The head sloped backwards and upwards in a rather curious way. The arms and legs (especially the former) were longer in proportion than ours, and could not be perfectly straightened either at elbows or knees; the hands and feet were enormous, and the heels projected backwards in an ungainly way. The figure was draped in a loose robe of skin, something like rhinoceros hide, but more p. 24 scaly, probably the skin of some animal of which we now know only through its fossil remains. Round his head, on which the hair was quite short, was twisted another piece of skin to which were attached tassels of bright red, blue and other colours. In his left hand he held a sharpened staff, which was doubtless used for defence or attack. It was about the height of his own body, viz., twelve to fifteen feet."
An illustration in pencils and watercolours by the author of Pren the Hermit, a sad-faced Lemurian