klcthebookworm - Tumblr blog

[klcthebookworm]

i'm reading all the peter wimsey novels because someone recommended gaudy night and that's how i work, and now i'm up to the nine tailors and just finished murder must advertise (my favorite so far), but i found it really hard to get through have his carcase, which was odd since i loved harriet vane so much in strong poison. even the characters seemed to bugger off at the end of have his carcase instead of tying up all the storylines and sayers seemed disengaged after the first act or two. i liked the parts with peter and harriet, even the two chapters that are 99% cipher, but everything else felt weak. did you enjoy this one/why or why not? do you have a favorite of the wimsey novels other than gaudy night?

I may be inducing a fight by saying this but I think Have His Carcase is one of Sayers' weakest novels, and certainly the weakest of those featuring Harriet Vane. I tried to re-read it recently and couldn't get very far into it, and I'm a huge fan of Sayers. I think it's also a necessary book in order to create a complete story for them -- but I don't know that it's necessary to read it in the modern era, and certainly not necessary to re-read it.

(My other picks for least enjoyable: Five Red Herrings and Nine Tailors, both of which are visibly her attempts to write like Agatha Christie, one of her literary heroes -- and they're not bad books, I just don't like Agatha Christie style "clockwork" mysteries, which tend to sacrifice personality to logistics. I suspect this may have impacted Carcase somewhat. We will come back to this.)

Gaudy Night is actually not my favorite overall -- I think it's one of her best, but Murder Must Advertise is my favorite and in fact the first one I read. Which is hilarious because Peter spends a significant amount of time Not Being Peter Wimsey in it, but it's just such a combination of things I love. Advertising (which Sayers worked in and which she also clearly loved writing about), secret identities, crime rings, a hint of romance, office gossip...

Anyway, Carcase. I think the problem is that to get from Strong Poison to Gaudy Night, there has to be a bridge, and it has to be kind of an unpleasant one, and thus you get Have His Carcase. One of the major points of Harriet's arc is that Sayers wanted to contravene the "damsel rescued by the hero" narrative. Not so much because she believed women should save themselves or not, but because she believed that a relationship based on that kind of inequality, where one partner was grateful (or was expected to be grateful eternally) for being saved, was inherently unhealthy and unsustainable, and it was also a super common narrative at the time she was writing. This reaction to the narrative is most visible in her unfinished novel Thrones, Dominations -- which was finished after her death by Jill Paton Walsh, and I'm not a huge fan of the end product, but I've seen the original manuscript held at Wheaton and it's evident that this was a theme before anyone else took over, it wasn't forced into the plot.

In any case, Sayers had to get Harriet and Peter from victim and rescuer to equal footing, and while Gaudy does a lot of lifting in that regard, it doesn't do enough on its own, there had to be a previous groundwork laid. In a sense I'm glad that the grappling they have to do, which is sensible and intelligently written but also really unromantic, was done in Have His Carcase, so that it doesn't intrude more than briefly into Gaudy Night. Carcase is a lot about Harriet setting boundaries and testing whether Peter will cross them, and Peter reacting (sometimes poorly) to someone challenging him in ways he's unaccustomed to being challenged. Carcase is two people finding out the worst parts of each other so they can work out that they love the reality of each other anyways, which is what they're doing in Gaudy. But we have to witness it in Carcase, which is unpleasant. At least for me.

As she matures as an author and gains more power over how she's published, you can see Sayers trying new things -- after Bellona (another fave) she gets very literary with Strong Poison, and then seems to swing between these kind of torturous attempts at Christie's style (Herrings, Tailors) and incredibly sensitive, emotionally delicate books like Murder Must Advertise and Gaudy Night. Carcase is a weird combination of the two, where she seems to be applying the dispassionate Christie style to a book that wants to be Gaudy Night but can't be.

Anyway, even her less enjoyable books can still be pretty fun, and it's worth it to have books like Murder Must Advertise and Strong Poison, and the thrilling romance of Gaudy Night. But yeah, Carcase is a bit of a slog to get through.

[klcthebookworm]

WIP Wednesday: Strix: Forget the Sun

Still plugging away at April's project, Strix: Forget the Sun. So far have added 3887 words to it and hopefully I can get to some fight scenes before April is finished. Since I just changed one character's end point today, it's looking iffy. I may reach them in September. Have a little bit between one of the main characters and the ghost of her mother, who died giving birth to her.

Peg jotted down the road mentioned in the newspaper article, switched the browser tab back to the Google map, and dropped a pin on that location. Then she stretched.

“Glad to see my old desk in use.” Peggy perched on a nearby window seat and the maroon curtain behind her helped her translucent form show up. “Robert never should have left it as a shrine.”

Peg straightened up in the wooden chair that went with the desk. Truth was the ethernet outlet was under the desk and her cord was only so long. “Will he be mad I disturbed it?”

“He shouldn’t be when he only has himself to blame. I’m more interested in what you are doing. Computers have changed a lot in sixteen years.”

“I guess so. I started searching for news reports about body parts showing up. The Haganville Observer only had a couple of articles online.”

“The deaths aren’t high profile enough to generate much buzz yet,” the ghost of her mother said, “not with Barbara and Charles just murdered.”

“Just?”

“It hasn’t even been a week yet.” Peggy sighed. “Possibly the police are also keeping mum about severing limbs to not alarm the public.”

“Jessie said people were hiding to not get kidnapped and chopped up, so the cops have failed at that.” Peg ignored the ghost’s condolent expression and moved on. “I did find more articles across the state and in the next town over, so I started plotting them on Google Maps when a location of a chopped up body part was given. This is what I’ve got so far.” She moved the focus of the map out so more of it was visible.

Peggy moved to behind Peg’s chair and leaned so the ghost could see. “Oh, that is way less messy than thumbtacks on a map on the wall. I did that and my roommate screamed that we wouldn’t get the deposit back with all the holes in the wall.”

“Roommate?” Peg twisted her neck to look at her mother’s ghost, but it was really weird to see the whole room through a head like that so she looked back at the screen again.

"Before I married your father. I guess you haven’t had time to pick up my manuscript again.”

[klcthebookworm]

Murder Must Advertise + Coffee

[klcthebookworm]

when a character is written inconsistently because nobody thought about it that hard and you're like it's time for me to get in there.. and think about it that hard

[klcthebookworm]

This really ought to top every, “Best Opening Lines,” list. The 21st century reading public is sleeping on Dorothy L Sayers.

[klcthebookworm]

Dorothy Sayers in 1932: "Church clocks and bodies in belfries are rather overdone lately."

Dorothy Sayers in 1934: lol jk I have a new special interest so strap in

[klcthebookworm]

I just realized that Ekaterin Vorkosigansaga's maiden name is Vorvayne because the structure and nature of her and Miles's romance are heavily inspired by Sayers's Wimsey novels, in which the romantic heroine is called Harriet Vane.

[klcthebookworm]

Love how tumblr has its own folk stories. Yeah the God of Arepo we’ve all heard the story and we all still cry about it. Yeah that one about the woman locked up for centuries finally getting free. That one about the witch who would marry anyone who could get her house key from her cat and it’s revealed she IS the cat after the narrator befriends the cat.

[klcthebookworm]

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

🎬 Peter Jackson

+ IMDb trivia

[klcthebookworm]

some vash parkour warm ups because i feel like i don't draw enough fun dynamic poses actually

[klcthebookworm]

yknow i never noticed the sheer rareness of images having ids or alt text on this website until i started adding alt text to my art (and trying to remember to add it to any images i post in general, especially text screenshots) and that makes me kinda sad

[klcthebookworm]

The Choice of Anakin

[klcthebookworm]

Perfect interaction with your kiddo

[klcthebookworm]

Tatooine and Skywalkers

I was thinking about Obi-Wan, Luke and Tatooine and realized that despite Obi´s constant complains over the planet and uncle Owen, it was Obi-Wan´s idea to bring baby Luke to Tatooine and make him survive the planet because Anakin was able to do so as well, so Luke had to show he could, as preparation to be able to defeat Vader acording to ROTS novel.

Obi could have chosen literally any other planet, Alderaan, Corellia, etc and even bring over Uncle Owen or Aunt Beru to take care of Luke but no, Luke had to survive Tatooine as a rite of passage or something like that.

So while I feel bad for Obi here you kind of made your bed mister.

About Luke and Anakin experiences on Tatooine:

While Ani certainly liked to have his own adventures and play with Kitster and Wald, he had more than enough being a slave, having a bomb inside his body, hidding threepio from Watto, developing his own detector of bomb chips to take out his and his mothers, escape with his mother in a podracer, of course until QuiGon and Padme told him they needed help, protecting himself from your usual pirates, hutt soldiers, tusken raiders who are always around Tatooine and protect his Mom from abusers while he was at it. He used the same slave system to protect her and others "It´s a shame you can´t kill me because then you would have to pay for me"

It´s LUKE the wild one who believes Tatooine is boring and he absolutely needs to have adventures elsewhere, join the imperial army and the rebellion after that, because he just had enough of shooting at giant rats from a distance and being given shores on the farm by his uncle. Sure there are Hutt soldiers around sometimes but there are also imperial soldiers so the Hutts no longer have as much influence on the planet as they used to have. Luke only comes back to Tatooine to rescue Han and turn Jabba´s base of operations to ashes before going to DS II to talk his Dad out of the darkside.

Like I love Anakin and Luke´s similarities but something I also love about them are their differences.

Anakin is totally willing to work within a system he doesn´t like if he doesn´t have other choice and he can adapt some of it´s characteristics to his and his loved ones benefice until he can fix it enough to make it better for everybody.

Luke is of the mind that if he doesn´t like a system he is totally willing to leave it or bring it down, with explosions if he can involve them.

Tatooine was instrumental in teaching them this. I love that for them.

[klcthebookworm]

Important Milestone

The song about how nobody likes you when you're 23 turns 23 today

[klcthebookworm]

Something that literally changed my life was working with a friend on a coding thing. He was helping me create an auto rig script and was trying to explain something to me but his words were just turning into static in my brain. I was tired and confused and there was so many new concepts happening.

I could feel myself working toward a crying meltdown and was getting preemptively ashamed of what was about to happen when he said, “Hey, are you someone who benefits from breaks?”

It broke me.

Did I benefit from breaks? I didn’t know. I’d never taken them.

When a problem frustrated or upset me I just gritted my teeth and plowed through the emotional distress because eventually if you batter and flail at something long enough you figure it out. So what if you get bruised on the way.

I viscerally remembered in that moment being forced to sit at the table late into the night with my dad screaming at me, trying to understand math. I remembered taking that with me into adulthood and having breakdowns every week trying to understand coding. I could have taken a break? Would it help? I didn’t know! I’d never taken one!

“Yes,” I told him. We paused our call. I ate lunch. I focused on other stuff for half an hour. I came back in a significantly better state of mind, and the thing he’d been trying to explain had been gently cooking in the back of my head and seemed easier to understand.

Now when I find myself gritting my teeth at problems I can hear his gentle voice asking if I benefit from breaks. Yes, dear god, yes why did I never get taught breaks? Why was the only way I knew to keep suffering until something worked?

I was relating to this same friend recently my roadtrip to the redwoods with my wife. “We stopped every hour or so to get out and stretch our legs and switch drivers. It was really nice. When I was a kid we’d just drive twelve hours straight and not stop for anything, just gas. We’d eat in the car and power through.”

He gave a wry smile, immediately connecting the mindset of my parents on a road trip to what they’d instilled in me about brute forcing through discomfort. “Do you benefit from breaks?” he echoed, drawing my attention to it, making me smile with the same sad acknowledgement.

Take breaks. You’re allowed. You don’t have to slam into problems over and over and over, let yourself rest. It will get easier. Take. Breaks.

[klcthebookworm]

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, to listen to doctors and get my flu vaccine and any shots i could because they remembered Before.

then they started fighting Covid precautions.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that the ozone was disappearing and the earth was dying and we needed to recycle and save the planet.

now my parents think climate change is a myth.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that racism was a plague, that we had to love and accept everyone, that we should never judge before walking a mile in their shoes.

then they told me that protesting for my Black siblings was wrong.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that we needed to give to the poor. working at soup kitchens. making quilts. collecting food and money and supplies. building houses. because it was the christian and just plain right thing to do.

now they look at me, on food stamps with their grandchildren, and lament the "welfare state".

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, that it was easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and that any rich man, especially an immoral one, should never run our country.

you can guess who they voted for.

i remember adults telling me, as a kid, so very much.

when did they forget?