Happy Things

[maplemood]

September so far has been jam-packed (by my standards, anyway) and stressful; things should calm down by the end of the month but probably not before then, so in the meantime here are some nice things that happened in between stressing about travel and stressing about classes:

1.) I finished Under the Jolly Roger...which probably isn't quite my favorite Bloody Jack book, but still most definitely worth reading and a ton of fun. Almost too much fun, considering this is the book where Jacky gets press-ganged into the Navy and nearly raped by a sadistic captain, only to be saved at the very last second when the captain's heart fails and he literally dies on top of her. And okay, there's usually at least one rape threat per book (Do I love this series to pieces? Yes. Does it have its issues? Also, yes.), so I came to this one prepared, but...yeesh. Of course Jacky manages to turn the situation to her advantage and bounce back in record time; there's much more focus on the trauma of her battle experiences than, y'know, the trauma of being under constant threat of sexual assault.

2.) I started In the Belly of the Bloodhound, which I had to buy since it's one of the books in the series that none of the libraries in my area (NONE) have for some reason, and so far it's been seven bucks well spent; this just might end up being my favorite (next to the original Bloody Jack, obviously). This time around in breezily traumatizing plot points, Jacky and a bunch of other students from the Lawson Peabody School for Young Girls in Boston are kidnapped by slavers to be sold to harems on the Barbary Coast. I have a huge weakness for we-all-need-to-band-together-in-order-to-get-through-this storylines, and this one is shaping up to be a good one. 

3.) I've been tossing around the idea of writing about War and Peace for my senior capstone--aka the final huge paper you have to write as an English major--so I checked out a book called Slavic Sins of the Flesh: Food, Sex, and Carnal Appetite in Nineteenth Century Russian Fiction from my college library. Sadly, I haven't got a chance to read the Leo Tolstoy section yet, but with a title like that it's got to be at least interesting, and hopefully helpful.

4.) I wrote a fic for jump_scare_exchange ! And received an awesome fic in return! Both my fic and my gift are for Black Sails--I requested a couple different characters and pairings and got my favorite tiny rarepair plus ghosts. (And totally in-character dialogue! Seriously, what more could a girl ask for?)

My gift:

hope your road is a long one by thedevilchicken : Abigail has had a good life. Charles Vane might be dead, but he's been there for most of it.

My fic:

A Kingdom of Sand: “This place ain’t right. Never has been.”

Among other great prompts, I got Anne/Jack and haunted/eldritch places, which I tried to do my best by. I did tinker with this fic quite a bit before it gelled in a way that I was even halfway happy with, and I'm still not sure I really nailed what I was going for, but then again I never am. (And while I was grabbing the link for this post I realized I'd completely overlooked a typo in the first few sentences...oops.) Anne was ridiculously fun to write, though, and I'd love to write more of her some day. 

Comments

[skygiants]

In the Belly of the Bloodhound is one of my favorites and I always feel guilty about it because, on the one hand, the whole "white schoolgirls kidnapped to Africa" trope is ... what it is ........ and on the other hand ALL THE SCHOOLGIRLS WHO HATE EACH OTHER NEED TO WORK TOGETHER!

[maplemood]

I'm having sort of the same issue, I think--like, a combo of "Oh boy, this would benefit from a more critical reading because the set-up is loaded AT BEST," and then at the same time not being able to think about the story at all critically yet because they band together in different Divisions! Clarissa and Jacky have to work together!! They essentially form their own makeshift family/society in order to survive and it's just!!! Also it's been so much fun so far to get to know some of the more minor Lawson Peabody girls.

[theladyscribe]

Oh man, I had at least the first couple Bloody Jack books! I don't remember how far I got into them - I barely remember reading them, it's been so long - but I do remember enjoying them. (Huge piracy/age of sail fan, so I was bound to like them.) I'll have to see if my parents still have them when I go home at the holidays!

[maplemood]

They're so, so good! I'm a huge piracy/age of sail fan too, but for some reason I didn't get into the series until I was in high school--I'd heard of it way before then but never bothered to check if the library had it. Jacky's just a fabulous narrator--she really sells even the weirder parts.

[conuly]

It's the once-per-book rape threats that eventually got me to give up on the series. When you start wishing they'd just get it over with already instead of dangling that tired plot again, it's time to move on.

[maplemood]

Yeah, I've had friends who gave up on the series because of those and I can't really blame them. To a certain extent I get why they're there, given the setting, but there's literally at least one in every book, and after a while there's just no impact to them anymore.