forever we try

Circe by Madeline Miller: Well-researched and well-written--aside from a couple deviations it follows the myths pretty closely, so the plot isn't all too unexpected and the middle chapters dragged a bit for me. I'm also not a huge fan of the way Miller chose to explain Circe's decision to turn the sailors who arrive on Aeaea into pigs( spoiler and a bit of a tw ) But the last few chapters, and especially the ending, made up for everything else. There's a bit of an unexpected twist that I really dug, and the very last scene is lovely.

Brother, I'm Dying by Edwidge Danticat: A memoir focused on the author's relationship with her father, who immigrated to the US when she was a toddler, and her uncle, whom she lived with in Haiti until she was twelve years old. I don't have much else to say about this one except that I really, really enjoyed it. It's very honest and some parts are brutal (in a nutshell: immigration policy in the US is massively screwed up and always has been; the same goes for US foreign policy), but overall the writing is matter-of-fact and warm. Love and deep family connections really shine through.

My Heart is Laughing by Rose Lagercrantz: A really cute chapter book translated from Swedish. It's also the second in a series, so now I want to read the rest.

On to Book Fourteen of War and Peace. If I'm being honest with myself I'll probably skim (or outright skip) the last here's-my-master's-thesis-on-history epilogue...or maybe not. We'll see. Either way, the end is in sight and I'm still not ready (though very much ready for Natasha and Pierre to admit their feelings to each other--again--and get together already).

Squeaking this post in just under the line--I want to start being more systematic about recording/reviewing the books I've read, which may or may not actually happen but hey, you have to start somewhere. War and Peace is still taking up the bulk of my reading time (which absolutely isn't a complaint, I'm up to Book Twelve so, barring any huge distractions, on track to finish it this summer, and that was my main reading goal anyway), but I've had the time to sneak in a few other things now that my summer class is over.
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On the TV front, I just finished the first season of Black Sails and started the second. Hardcore obsession hasn't kicked in yet but I've got a pretty good feeling that it might--of the characters so far Flint, Eleanor, Anne, and Max are my favorites, and aside from being chock full of all the brutal, backstabbing, wooden-ships-and-iron-men, Golden Age of Piracy tropes you could ask for so much of it is just gorgeous to look at. Since I've got a soft spot for anything Treasure Island-inspired I've been wanting to watch this show for a couple of years, and so far it's been worth the wait.

Short little thing that I'm not completely sure actually works but is also the first story over 100 words I've been able to finish in a while, so I'm really glad to have written it. It's also either gen with a touch of Persephone/Eurydice or straight up Persephone/Eurydice masquerading as gen--I'm still not sure and honestly don't think the two of them would be very sure, either. 

mother kiss me cheek and chin: “I’d have walked out on my own.” She shakes, furious. “And I wouldn’t have come back. I’d never come back.”My Orpheus. “Freer than you,” Eurydice snaps, ‘cause if Persephone can twist the knife so can she, so can she. 

Every time I fall out of journaling and then try to write a catch-up post I remember that my life is pretty boring for the most part...which I don't mind except for when I'm trying to write catch-up posts. But anyway. I've been pretty busy. Some things have happened. More things have not happened. 

1.) My summer class is officially over with! It ended up being a lot more relaxed and less stressful (though not stress-free) than I was worried it would be. It still did obviously take up most of my time, and I haven't wanted to read or write much of anything for the past three weeks or so. I don't want to not want to read or write anything, so hopefully I can get back into the groove of that soon. Hopefully. 

2.) I'm about three episodes into season 3/the last season of Jessica Jones and realizing more and more that the show peaked for me in the first season. It's not that I hated season 2 and I don't hate what I've seen so far of season 3 either but...I'm just not grabbed by it? Either emotionally or plot-wise; I keep switching it off mid-episode and going to do something else because it's...not all that interesting. At least not to me and at least not right now. I wonder if some of that has to do with pacing; NONE of the Marvel Netflix shows had this as a strong point but back in season 1 of JJ Kilgrave was a presence right from the beginning. Season 2 took its sweet time setting up the villain, and season 3 seems like it's going down the same route, and for some reason they way they went/go about that sucks so much urgency out of the plot for me. Not having a good sense of who the villain is for the first couple episodes doesn't leave me all that interested in finding out. Also--I really, really didn't want to be this person but GOOD LORD is Trish getting on my nerves. I love her. I really do love her, and boy do I get the obsession with wanting to be someone special and heroic and to do something that matters (who doesn't?), but her desire to be someone is really starting to overtake her desire to, y'know, actually help people. Which I'm pretty sure is what this season is going for, and I'm pretty sure they'll resolve it in an interesting way (if I can make it that far), but. TRISH.

3.) On the bright side I got a new phone and have been catching up on My Favorite Murder and also getting into The Teacher's Pet; I need to finish The Long Dance, too.

4.) War and Peace keeps chugging on. I'm up to Volume Three, Andrei is very obviously Not Long for This World and I'm much, much sadder about that than I expected I would be based on my reaction to him when I first started. Pierre continues to be adorable and awkward and ineffectual in the most relatable way, Natasha and Princess Mary and Sonya are all lovely and wonderful, Hélène is awful and wonderful, Anatole is pitiful, Dolokhov is...Dolokhov. I know I'm missing more than half the characters, but I really do love every single one and I'm both excited to say that I finished War and Peace and not ready at all to finish War and Peace. 

Things have been busy and I'm coming home most days feeling like all the energy to read/write/comment/do anything but sleep or mess around on my phone has been sucked right out of me, but Monday I went swimming for the first time this summer and that honestly made up for a lot. I don't remember swimming AT ALL last summer, when I was pretty much just as busy, which is insane and awful because if there's one thing all this heat is good for, it's swimming.

Otherwise, I've been trying to get writing and reading done in random spurts; I did just finish one non-War and Peace book (Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) and started on another (An Untamed State by Roxane Gay). I can usually read during the breaks we get in my summer class and while I'm waiting in the hall for the class to start, but once I get home I've either got something else to do or I'm down for the count. I haven't been watching anything lately--I still need to finish Westworld. 

Anyway! Reveals happened for hurtcomfortex  and I got the most amazing fic ever, written by one of the most amazing friends ever:

A Road that Bends by acequeenking  (Hadestown): This fic was, essentially, me and my id getting repeatedly gut-punched and enjoying every minute of it. There's Hades and Persephone falling in love and out of love and back in love again, there's references to Greek mythology and Americana, there's angry sex and bittersweet-but-mostly-sweet reconciliation sex, there's Hermes being awesome and Demeter being wry and equally awesome, there's bitter old marrieds who do love each other but also deeply dislike each other and know exactly where to twist the knife, there's a genuine effort to make their relationship work, there's hope and an absolutely perfect ending...and there's over 20k words of it all. 20k. I feel ridiculously happy and blessed to have gotten this; it really is the gift fic of my dreams.

Unfortunately, I ended up having to default on my assignments, because business and poor planning and...okay, actually, business and poor planning were pretty much the extent of it. No more exchanges for me, at least for a while--for whatever reason I haven't been able to hack them lately, and if I can't I'd rather not sign up and maybe treat if I'm feeling up to it than leave someone hanging so close to the deadline.

'Hadestown-adjacent' in that I started listening because Amber Gray, and then fell in love with the story and everyone else, and then decided I might as well go ahead and try to read the source material, since I've been kinda-sorta meaning to read it for years...

Anyway! Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812! It's a musical based on a teeny section of War and Peace, and it's lovely and funny and sad and hopeful and sweet; I love it a lot and hope it gets a Broadway revival at some point, because the fandom seems like it's not completely inactive but smallish, at least right now. But there are fics, and a lot of them look pretty good, and now that the semester's over I should (theoretically) have time to go through and read them all. 

Amber Gray, by the way, played Hélène, Pierre's wife off-Broadway and during the Broadway run. They don't get along, and they aren't reconciled by the end of the musical (or ever, she eventually dies in the book) but I kind of wish they would reconcile, because I've never met a canon angsty couple that I didn't like. And Hélène is so charmingly poisonous in a way you can't help but love ("God, to think I married a man like you!"), and there's the implication that, even though she doesn't love her husband (and probably never did) she at least doesn't want him dead, which...I mean, there's room for growth there! Maybe not a lot, but at least a bit!

So, after bingeing the original cast recording on Spotify I decided I might as well try to read the book. I have a kind of iffy relationship with classics; some I really love (Wuthering Heights! Jamaica Inn!) and some I really want to love but just can't get into (Les Miserables!). War and Peace is actually a lot easier to get into than Les Miserables--though they're both extremely long, War and Peace feels more focused (to me, anyway) and from what I hear Tolstoy saves most of the plotless philosophical rambling for the end, which is nice. Of the characters so far, I adore Pierre and Princess Mary, love Hélène and Natasha and Marya Dmitrievna (and even Anatole, if I'm being honest--he's awful but the way the narrator just rips into him is a lot of fun), and...kind of couldn't care less about Andrei/Prince Andrew? He is growing on me slowly but surely, though. 

Since War and Peace is so ridiculously long, my plan is to hopefully have it finished by the end of this summer. I'm not sure how well that'll end up working out, especially with my summer class, but I do want to have a goal in mind, otherwise I'll probably end up sort of trailing off. My Russian lit class last semester did leave me wanting to read more Russian classics (we stuck mostly with books written after or during the Soviet period), so that's another bit of motivation. 

I spent most all of my free time last week writing 12kish words of Hades/Persephone babyfic and about killed my brain in the process--it's been a while since I wrote anything over 2,000-3,000 words and finals week is coming up FAST--but also I regret nothing because Hades/Persephone babyfic. I don't know if anyone has an undying need for the most dysfunctional couple ever to start procreating, but if you do...here it is. As always there are a whole bunch of things I'd fix if I had more time/knew how to, but overall I'm not completely ashamed of it, which is always a good thing. I just wish there was more kid/babyfic in the Hadestown fandom specifically, because I, for one, do have an undying need to see the most dysfunctional couple ever with babies, and writing your own fics is great but never quite the same as reading someone else's. 

So, yeah. I think I'm going through the worst of my Hadestown obsessive spiral right now, which isn't super ideal when it comes to the timing of final exams and papers but is at least a nice distraction. Also, we've just started to get more spring-like weather around here, so listening to the recording on repeat feels especially appropriate. :) The cyclical nature of the story--at least when it comes to the gods; Orpheus and Eurydice don't get the luxury of trying over and over and over again--makes me so hopeful and sad at the same time; so does the theme of art being both enough and absolutely not enough. I'm probably biased in her favor, anyway, but Eurydice doesn't make any choices that I probably wouldn't make if I were in the same situation, and the fact that she makes what seems to be the best choice at the time and ends up trapped in Hadestown for eternity...if it comes down to a choice between your true love and, y'know, having enough food to get you through the winter, I can't see all that many people deciding any differently than she did. That being said, I do love Orpheus. I love pretty much everyone, and there's no clear-cut villain in the story, even when it comes to Hades, and it makes the whole thing 100x better and 100x sadder.  

when i was a young girl: “For you.” Hades pinches her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Only for you, lover,” he says, and there’s a warning there and Persephone laughs at it. The man’s a pure fool at least half the time, but Ma and Uncle Zeus and all the rest help her if she doesn’t love him.

I don't know that all too many people on DW are in the fandom, but Hadestown is a Greek mythology (Orpheus and Eurydice, specifically) inspired musical set in a 1930s-era dystopia and it's the bomb. I've been trying to write fic for it for ages. 

(I went back and forth over whether or not I should've put an incest warning in the tags, since Persephone is Hades' niece no matter how you spin their romance, but in the end I decided that it's a pretty well-known part of mythology at this point and also not a huge focus in this particular fic, so.) (Also, people who get super uncomfortable or offended by mythological incest wouldn't [I'm assuming] be reading in the fandom anyway.) 

It's been only around two weeks since I started it, but I'm finished with Banshee and have NO IDEA what to do with myself, in terms of which show I'll get obsessed with next. Which isn't a bad problem--or even really a problem--to have, but is there another show out there that can top Banshee's mix of total batshit craziness and really genuinely emotional moments? I think not.

Season 4 is probably absolutely the most batshit of them all (Satanism! Serial killers! Satanist serial killers!). At the same time, it might be the most conventional season of all; I saw a review on Amazon where the reviewer complained that season 4 felt too much like something out of Criminal Minds, and...I wouldn't say it felt too much like Criminal Minds, but I also wouldn't say that it didn't feel like Criminal Minds at all. The storylines and their resolutions aren't as unexpected as some of the stuff from earlier seasons, but then there's the ending, which is perfectly bittersweet for some characters and perfectly tragic/awful for others. I loved it. 

I finished the third season of Banshee today and Kurt Bunker is another character who seems like he was designed to appeal to me specifically. (sholio , I'm pretty sure this was the guy you were talking about!) In this show, nobody gets away with not having a Dark and Tragic Backstory, and his is probably one of the most intense, but (for me, anyway) it's incredibly compelling--his "I am guys like that" speech to Brock was fantastic--especially since he's trying so hard to overcome his past.