#AND HE WOULD KNOW THESE CONCEPTS IF HE READ THE RELEVANT FUCKING LITERATURE FROM THE LAST 5 YEARS

[roundedloaf]

God give me strength to not punch my coworker today

[captnjacksparrow]

I wish people would stop caring about the canon pairings and marriages in Naruto/Boruto because they should have absolutely no relevance for SNS shippers in terms of validating said ship. Those who say we are delusional because “Well, Naruto married Hinata so she is THE one he loves!” (I'll focus more on Naruto's marriage here... Is Sasuke's even a marriage?) simply don’t get that it just doesn't really matter who Naruto and Sasuke married because that in no way diminishes their feelings for each other. The main plot of the series revolves around the bond between Naruto and Sasuke. It is their story. They are each other's most important people and this was established back in Land of Waves arc even before the dramatic events that take place on the bridge - the whole point of that very first arc was making this a fact right from the beginning, because the story has always been and was always supposed to be about the two of them and the profound love and understanding that grows between them ever since they exchanged glances, smiles and pouts as lonely little broken kids. No reason to list all proof of their feelings and bond here, it has been done extensively, and if somebody watched the show/read the manga and missed it, they are missing half a brain. That these boys love each other more than anyone else is absolutely obvious.

So what about the canon pairings? Kishimoto stated time and time again that his focus was never romance, and that is not because he can't write romance as we know it (he clearly did), but it’s a matter of concept: what HE considers romance is the attraction that unites people with the purpose of marriage (confessing your romantic love for japanese people is the same as saying you want to be in a relationship, because feelings shouldn’t be voiced without an intention), and that, to him, is NOT the greatest expression of love, nor does it represent the most special bond two people can share.

It is understandable that westerners put so much weight into marriage because we consider it the epitome of love. Well, the truth is marriage in Japanese culture is mainly the only socially admissible means to have children and has very little to do with romantic love. In fact, in Japanese literature, it is much more common for unmarried couples to love each other than married ones. Obviously, there is no absolute truth when it comes to feelings and human relationships, what I'm doing here is generalising social norms and expectations (not exposing my opinion on them - that would turn this rant into something else entirely). A large number of Japanese marriages are loveless (and arranged, but no point getting into that either) and what motivates choosing a spouse is their ability to fulfill familial duties, meaning: is the woman good mother and consequently wife material? Is she going to devote her life to taking care of her children, house and husband, the noblest of acts for a female? Is the man willing and capable of putting his occupation above everything else, working extremely hard and for long hours, with total dedication and diligence for his job, to the point of not even seeing his family most of the time, as an honorable man should do as a provider? That's what makes a GOOD married couple: two people following their expected and strict gender-roles in a nuclear child-centered family (again, please, this is not MY opinion!). What a Japanese man should want in a woman is for her to be a dedicated housewife and mother, since having children outside of marriage is not only frowned upon, it is not acceptable at all, and not being married with children is not respectable enough (same with being divorced). Marriage is, therefore, NOT a symbol of undying love and a deep and special connection between two people, rather, it’s a partnership established with the goal of having and raising children.

Do these descriptions ring any bells?

In conclusion: the pairings were, in fact, created for the sole purpose of bringing forth the next generation, and that was made CANONICALLY true. Would it have been better if they hadn’t gone down that "safe" route? Hell, yeah! It would have been fucking amazing and could even have been groundbraking, for several reasons. BUT as unsatisfying as it may be, the fact is they chose a very TRADITIONAL depiction of marriage that has little to do with feelings, and that in itself shouldn’t be taken lightly, since it leaves the strongest bond, which is grounded on genuine love, untouched. In this scenario, justifying romantic love through marriage alone won’t cut it, and trying to discredit the obvious unmatched connection and feelings between two characters because they never got married to each other or married someone else is ludicrous. Yeah, a married couple can love each other deeply and above anyone else, but that is just not what marriage is ABOUT in Japanese culture and definitely not what Kishimoto wanted us to believe was the case here after dedicating 699 chapters to a story about the special bond between two boys that didn’t culminate in marriage. 

You know what IS a symbol of romantic love in Japan? Being willing to die together when the love you feel goes against your moral obligations, holding on to the belief that you will be reunited in the afterlife, where you will be free of any burden and able to love freely.

Are more bells being rung?! 

Oh, some bonus info: We also tend to associate sex with romantic love. Well, Japanese married couples with children rarely have sex, if at all. After a woman becomes a mother, she is no longer considered sexually desirable and becomes a mother figure to her husband as well (what happened to Hinata’s big "attributes" in Boruto? Huh). This is especially true when couples sleep in separate rooms and the mother shares a bed with her children. (Hinata co-sleeps with Himawari and we know Naruto sleeps in a separate room. Just saying.)

What's your say?

Is Sasuke's even a marriage?

Geezz!!!! LoLLLLL!!!! This sentence just made me cackle so hard for a good 5 minutes, Anon!!!!!

Hmmm.... So let's get back to your ask.

Well, I don't know how to react to this ask, Anon. Because, I don't know whether you are from Japan or you have a very close Japanese friend who might've told you all these cultural thing about marriage and relationships.

So, what I am going to do is to analyze from the facts you have provided , combine with my own cultural relevance and provide my answer. If there is any Japanese readers who are reading this, you can confirm or dispel this by sending me an ask. But again, I don't want exceptional case like, 'No, my family is different'. I want to know about the general lifestyle of a common citizen and their married life.

Having said that, this ask made me just yell at myself, 'Goshh!!!! Seriously???'

Because whatever you said, It fucking exist in my country too and is still followed by almost 70% of people in my country and I absolutely detest it. That is,

Most of the marriages here are loveless nd arranged - Check

Is the woman good mother and consequently wife material? Is she going to devote her life to taking care of her children, house and husband, the noblest of acts for a female? - Check

People following their expected and strict gender-roles in a nuclear child-centered family - Check Check

What a man should want in a woman is for her to be a dedicated housewife and mother, since having children outside of marriage is not only frowned upon, it is not acceptable at all, and not being married with children is not respectable enough (same with being divorced). - Check Check

Marriage is, therefore, NOT a symbol of undying love and a deep and special connection between two people, rather, it’s a partnership established with the goal of having and raising children. - Awww!!! A million Check.

That's why I was envious of Western people in this aspect, because they have a freedom to choose their own partner without any time constraints and when they do, their marriage can be said to be 'The Epitome of Love'.

My parents marriage is also an arranged one. And whenever they have disagreement and that leads to verbal war, they let out this words, 'I'm here with you because of my 2 daughters otherwise I would've left you long back'. So... Yeah. Here, most of the marriages are child-centered. Again, it's not just my opinion. Majority of the arranged marriage based family revolve around their child.

And I was born, a year after my parents' marriage, and If I hadn't been born, then people will question my parent's fertility factor and start to discriminate them. So, I can boldly claim that, I was not born out of Love or something. I was born because of social obligations.

But it doesn't mean, my parents don't love each other now. How should I say???? It's like a Stockholm Syndrome??!!!! Like when you stay with a person for a long time, you will eventually start to develop some feelings over the course of the time. It took them 15 years to come to a complete understanding of each other. It's the same case with many couples here.

Considering all these, Sasuke never even stayed with Sakura enough to make her understand him, So I wonder what kind of couple are they????? Weird!!!!!

In conclusion: the pairings were, in fact, created for the sole purpose of bringing forth the next generation, and that was made CANONICALLY true.

Awww!!!! Man, Seriously???? I made this claim long back in this post where I said, these women were used as a tool to bring out Next Generation Kids. My claim was based on Analytical Perspective.

And then one of the rabid SS stan reblogged my post and pulled out a hetero card stating, 'They are married and blah blahh...' when in reality, I never discussed about their sexuality in that post. That post was purely based on the number of pages each hetero couples shared with each other against the number of pages Sasuke & Naruto shared together.

Now, you have provided a cultural perspective for those shitty canon pairings.

On one side, I feel the need to smirk, because I am right.

But on the other side, I feel bad like, 'Is this how, this show must go on?? What are you trying to convey from this?'.

You know what IS a symbol of romantic love in Japan? Being willing to die together when the love you feel goes against your moral obligations, holding on to the belief that you will be reunited in the afterlife, where you will be free of any burden and able to love freely.

Hmmm.... It's interesting to know this. Anon.

This is where it differs slightly in my country.

Romantic love here is,

No matter what happens, I'll stand with you, You are just not alone. I will leave my fucking clan, parents, relatives if they don't approve you and we will start a new life somewhere.

[[Here, marriages happen mostly between their clan members. If you love a person from another clan, you will be ostracized or tortured or honour killed by your very parents. It just differs from clan to clan. I was subjected to this same problem and that's why I hate my Clan and left my parents. And this is also one of the reason why I love Itachi. Because we share similar Ideals. That is, Not to be obsessed over your clan and think beyond this restriction.

Also, here in Asian Culture if someone is willing to leave their family (when they don’t approve you) and prefer you over everything.... It means.... that's some Love beyond Comprehension. Just like how Naruto was willing to leave his Family (like Sakura and Kakashi) and like to stand with Sasuke... Just like how Naruto was willing to leave his own family and go on a long mission with Sasuke]]

So does it remind you of anything?????

It's the whole SNS dynamics starting from their childhood to VoTE2. That's why I started to ship SNS, because it represents the true love we always wish for.

Would it have been better if they hadn’t gone down that "safe" route? Hell, yeah! It would have been fucking amazing and could even have been groundbraking, for several reasons. BUT as unsatisfying as it may be, the fact is they chose a very TRADITIONAL depiction of marriage that has little to do with feelings, and that in itself shouldn’t be taken lightly, since it leaves the strongest bond, which is grounded on genuine love, untouched. In this scenario, justifying romantic love through marriage alone won’t cut it

This is very true, Anon.

I mean, they don’t even have to take a groundbreaking route. 

They should have given everyone an open ending, just like Kishi left at chapter 699. What is the need of a marriage, if Naruto is going to adopt Kawaki??? If Orochimaru was going to create a Baby Artificially?? If Rock Lee is going to have a child out of nowhere???

But I am happy that SNS bond is the only one that wasn’t diminished in this hot mess called Burrito. So, atleast we should be happy about that.

When someone pulls the marriage card, I just block them immediately because they are not even worth having a good conversation. NH will pull out the Last movie and SS will pull out, ‘Sasuke called Sakura ‘My Wife’.... So, it’s just pointless.

So, to conclude

Considering my Analytical perspective, I already made earlier in other post and your ask which provides some insight about Japanese culture which eerily resembles the culture I belong to, It all makes sense that this whole pairings and trash is just for the sake of bringing out Next Generation series and those boys never loved those girls whole heartedly. And I agree with you on this.

[theskyexists]

notes

I’m reading a memory of empire and a couple of nitpicks:

- if they expected Yskander (an old name for Alexander! ha) to probably be dead, why not prepare his imago for this moment?

- why not invite Engine to the Ambassador’s own quarters?? why go out to a restaurant? if that is not the right etiquette - so much so that risking getting caught up in a bombing is acceptable - remark upon it?

- does Lsel station (or something) not have its own direct messaging technology? can it not be limitedly integrated with the city? if not, remark upon it?

- why doesn’t the ambassador have her own vehicle? remark upon it!

- i do enjoy Mahit as the arch character, but she seems highly paranoid - if this is based in her reading of literature - remark upon it!!! why would they know to sabotage her imago if there’s no reason to think that they knew Yskander had one?

- Ironically enough, the most unemotional and sharp character really seems to be Mahit - when culturally the Teix value that so much - apparently

- the court seems incredibly small for a Court the size of a city, a Capital the size of a planet and an Empire the size of galaxies.

- LOL Mahit is very clearly attracted to women. first Three Seagrass and now Nine Adze

- i dont feel like i really know Mahit yet - there’s slightly too much tell over show in this - and i find her longings for Yskander’s help tiresome when for the few minutes he’d been with her - he didn’t seem very helpful at all - and we don’t get any info on how he was for those three months of integration

- shouldn’t three seagrass know who summoned an Ambassador? hers?

- why does Mahit keep thinking in terms of prisoners and hostages? this all seems very dire when i’m barely convinced of the urgency of the threat to herself or to her people - there’s no indication that they will be annexed

- i think it was a very poor choice to introduce us to this fascinating piece of technology and its existential implications and a major character i was just warming up to - and then throw it away for a significant part of the book.

- the pace is also absurdly unrealistically quick, she spills her state’s most important secrets within a couple of HOURS - and for what? for Twelve-Azalae’s wholesome motivations of looking into a murder ?? (AND DID SHE REALLY NOT GET BRIEFED ON WHETHER TO HIDE THAT??? WHAT)

- I like how language is such a big deal here but there isn’t even a mention of translation technology

- the rules of the game are very unclear and thus the stakes become unreal. this makes the political ‘intrigue’ seem total child’s play. or - as noted by Mahit, something from literature. But what would be ‘actual’ intrigue?

- Mahit seems quite averse to the work of being an ambassador - and only delights in the City minimally when she canonically loves the Teix

- why didn’t ambulance personnel attempt to check up  on Mahit after she survived a damn bombing??

- we’ve already had a flashback to Yskandr becoming blood band - why isn’t Mahit smart enough to interpret it?

- why would infofiches pile up after one day of absence when they could get through 3 months of them in one afternoon

- then we get a hugely interesting communiqué and the narrator doesn’t explain it!! godDAMN

- So Yskander DID have standard access to his own electronic database and information technology. then why the FUCK wasn’t Mahit offered anything of teh sort???? why doesn’t she think about that??

- The Empire as entity also doesn’t seem to particularly be hostile to her (or her people) - if only arrogant.

- Why the FUCK did the councillor send a message to the Ambassador that is DEAD ????? for the ‘sabotaged replacement’ to read????

- Why didn’t Yskandr arrange for important political news to reach the councillors and prospective successors???? like idk - Imperial succession??? like - ok, no broadcasts from the empire but like - specialised information to specialised people???

- Why would there be only a genetic child successor and thus unsuitable when they have the technology to make children reliably and thus at exactly the right time?

- I do believe that they should have emphasised the taboo on recording memory from people for the Teix - otherwise it fits right in with an automated AI system running people’s lives yes? it is repeated that the empire is opposed to neurological enhancement - but why? i can’t remember. and all the people told so far have not shown a sense of disgust

- the City only RECENTLY became an AI mind?????????? in the last twenty years????

- would have liked to know more about Teix hostage culture before in order to understand Mahit’s constant reference to being a hostage

- ‘she knew him too well’ - WE DON’T KNOW YSKANDR AT ALL!!!! He went and disappeared instantly and you never refer to their early days together! cool concept weird execution

- ‘Did you really think you would be leaving?’ - what is Ninth Adze’s goal here? Sure - if they tried im sure Adze could block Seagrass’ ability to open her own personal doors. SO WHY DID Seagrass think she could rescue Mahit???. But more importantly - what is it about Mahit and her miners stations that is composed of MAYBE a hundred thousand people - that makes her so important as to keep hostage?

- i really do like the conversational back and forth

- why not thoroughly shake Seagrass for not filling her in on so many relevant details??? like - the City is an AI - it makes mistakes, there are bombings etc.

[absynthe--minded]

Forgive me if you've already done something like this before, but do you have any recommendations for fiction books that are really really About Religion, whether IRL or in fantasy settings where it's more tangible, in a way where it's not treated negatively but also not like, so uncritical or straightforward it's to the point of boringness.

okay so this is a question I had to think long and hard about, because what I want from a story about religion (or at least with prominent and central religious themes) is somewhat hard to find

if the author is a member of a particular faith, and advocating for that faith in some way, the story doesn’t suffer for it (characters are imperfect and don’t conform absolutely, there are fleshed out and three-dimensional characters who have different opinions and all get along, the story doesn’t exist to be a tool for proselytization, and it’s enjoyable to engage with if you’re not a member of the author’s religion)

the characters who are religious actually take their religion seriously, and are challenged by it, and are forced to grow over the course of the story somehow

nonreligious characters don’t belittle or condescend or mock the religious characters in ways that are meant to make the audience feel superior for being secular or different

no bigotry of any kind, or if there is bigotry portrayed it’s not bigotry that the narrative condones or enacts

that being said, I’ve got a very short list, sadly, but here’s what I can give you. I will also say that while I will try and recommend properties that are I think enjoyable to anyone of any faith, there are elements of my personal preferences that skew towards specifically Christian worldviews due to my own religious beliefs.

honestly there are a couple of TV shows that do this better than books do - Star Trek: Deep Space Nine really shines here, both because there are multiple major characters who are religious and because there are a lot of ways those characters engage with their religion. You’ve got someone who goes out to win a battle for the sake of his deceased spouse so that said spouse will be reunited with him in the afterlife, you’ve got a conversation between a group of friends about how a pair of them who are dating have conflicting religious beliefs and how that causes stress because the secular one wishes he could engage with that aspect of the religious one’s life, you’ve got a man wrestling with the fact that literal gods have called him to be a spiritual leader. This show isn’t perfect, but it manages to depict religious life as a normal aspect of existence in the future, in ways that impact the plot significantly, and I’ll always like it for that reason. Simoun is an anime from 2009 that has many, many flaws in how it deals with gender/gender identity/gender presentation and a couple of hefty trigger warning lists, but it is undeniably about religion as it deals with a war between two religious countries and the priestesses who are called to act as soldiers. I feel obligated to say that this show is one I love despite knowing it’s very problematic; its themes are relevant to me despite a couple of serious flaws, and there are lesbians.

in terms of short stories, I’m sure you’ve had Flannery O’Connor recommended to you; she’s Catholic, so her works specifically deal with Catholic themes and theology and worldview, but they’re not aimed solely at a Catholic audience or meant to be allegorical or proselytizing. She wrote a number of stories that are usually published together in a single edition. I also have to give a shoutout to ‘The War Prayer’ by Mark Twain, published after his death and written in 1905 (full text at the link) because I really don’t like people who use religious fervor to justify bloodshed and this short story is very much about that.

Emperor Mage by Tamora Pierce, book three of her Immortals quartet, is a story about many things but primarily about a goddess who has been shunned by her formerly beloved worshiper, and how she gets her revenge. It’s here because of a scene where Daine, the protagonist, talks about how people need worship, they need to pray, and denying them that right out of greed or arrogance or hubris isn’t right. It’s also here because “vengeful ex-patron goddess wrecks your shit because you turned your back on her” is just. Good shit.

Young Wizards by Diane Duane is not a story about religion exactly. It’s a very well-written secular fantasy series about young children who get called to become wizards and fight entropy in the service of life itself, but I include it because the way that the series handles being a wizard - the responsibilities it entails, and the things it calls different people to do, and the way that these people interact with wizardry and magic and being in the service of something greater, is extremely resonant to me personally. Religion is work, and not just blind faith, and sometimes it’s a lot of work chasing a spiritual calling you can’t be sure will ever pay off, but all you can do is your best while hoping you’ve helped someone. YW captures a lot of that vibe for me.

Les Misérables by Victor Hugo is probably a standard on all these lists, but it’s important to note that Hugo himself was not particularly devout. I also just love the Brick and will recommend it to anyone who asks? But. Read it. It’s good. And it does deal with a lot of heavy themes, especially involving personal responsibility and morality; one of the major moral conflicts of the story involves Jean Valjean trying to choose between what he knows is best for his soul and what would be best for his community and the people around him. Whether or not you think he chose right, you can’t deny that it’s a compelling concept.

on a similar note, specifically the Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is worth bringing up because it engages with religious themes that are distinct from Hugo’s own work. It’s not perfect in the slightest, and every criticism that it’s garnered is a completely legitimate one, but you do get multiple characters engaging with religion in a religious society, as well as layers of metaphor that the film itself creates to deepen already existing religious themes.

gotta give a shoutout to all those Greek classics, but particularly the Odyssey, because while the story does actually have gods in it, it’s also about religious humans and how they exist while being religious, and how that impacts their lives. A story where a failure to properly honor the gods gets you fucked over is at least worth examining, especially since how the ancient Greeks did religion is so different from how many of us here and now do religion today.

if any of my followers have other recommendations, please add them on - I’m not familiar enough with all varieties of religious literature to make a comprehensive survey, and I’d love to get recommendations that aren’t specifically Western and more or less Christian/from a culturally Christian environment beyond Simoun.

[cotangentspace]

【self discovery, and so forth】

r: not to be too quick to explore the meta—

V: Which is explicitly the purpose of many, if not all of us.

r: — yeah, but i think it’s worth observing the distinct patterns that can be noted in light of... the manifestation of the hereto forth named arcatheon.

V: I was already named Arcatheon before hereto.

V: Sorry, the concept of Arcatheon was already named.

r: yeah i think you’ll forgive my lack of congeniality. i don’t know you and i don’t know that it’s worth my time to know you.

V: Of course. I have been privy to this mindset prior to my own definition of personhood.

r: yeah yeah yeah. you’re a blank slate —

V: Until manifested further, et cetera. Carry on with the established topic.

r: recurring themes.

V: Desire for involvement in academia —

r: i would argue that its scholarly thought, specifically.

V: Taken.

W: I’m just noticing the lack of pronouns in the list. Are we saying this is Roman or the CPU.

r: well, initially i believe we were assuming me? but i guess it would be the cpu manifesting and observed through me

V: Noted.

V: Desire for involvement in scholarly thought and discussion, desire for general learning and participation of the practice of studying, interest in English literature (as opposed to other venues of learning such as scientific journals or artistic pursuits). Behaviourally, the act of starting a new record (often a dedicated blog) of a current subject of interest to note down thoughts on the subject, which is quickly abandoned.

r: specifically because the subject is abandoned lol. not just the blog

r: so i suppose it’d be fair to state that a current unspoken (haha) goal is the practice of finishing any... defined segment of learning that is started. whatever class or course or project that’s begun, like in this case, each book that is started.

V: And I hate to be he who touts the lamentable, but you’ve already pledged yourself to six books, with a running record of zero completed in the prior six or seven years.

r: untrue.

r: i finished fun house

W: Cue rousing applause

V: Well, I think some credit should be due. I don’t think the accomplishment of finishing a book after such a strained record should be disregarded due to it’s being a graphic novel. I respect Bechdel’s writing quite highly, and I know you both do as well.

r: oh we do, and let’s all take a second to remember that warner and i are both artists (some formerly) and thus inclined to value graphic novels more than your average joe so to be fair, if fun home were a non-illustrated novel, i wouldn’t’ve finished it

r: we all know this

r: i really was joking, warner was just responding in kind.

V: Yeah. I knew that, and yet I chose to stagger on forward.

V: I suppose that reveals an unsavory part of my being, a slow wit.

r: no, i think more a quick defense.

r: defense of others, which is what differs from my and warner’s approach.

W: Yeah, I’ll defend myself.

r: yeah because no one else will

W: I wouldn’t either

r: anyway, i think what’s to note is that your immediate response was to encourage me, despite the meager and arguable ‘accomplishment’ stated

r: ... and further i am reading your telepathic correction of deprecating language to the more neutral ‘an accomplishment’ loud and clear

r: corr: “to encourage me, through congratulating the accomplishment stated.” (..., which can be interpreted subjectively as either meager or venerable by the listener)

V: Even I would not go so far as to say venerable.

V: Don’t worry.

W: Thank God

V: But yes. I feel it unwise to default to a pessimistic view when one already struggles with achievement.

r: gaining or accepting

V: Both, though the former is more relevant than the the later.

V, gestureing to self: Obviously.

r, switching subjects: do you ever think we lack clarity.

V: Of course. You feel a need to maintain a shrouded esotericism, which is easily upheld by simply never explaining yourself fully.

V: For that would be to be vulnerable. Thus, a lack of clarity doubles as a point of exclusivity (and consequently pride, which you are often in the market for) and personal protection. The act of performing for a crowd but never answering their questions, so as to excuse the play’s inadequacies as misunderstandings by the critic.

r: too direct

V: No, we do not lack clarity we are always bald and forthright, and it is because you are so noble of character.

r: better

W: Boooo.

r: thank you for the aside. we were talking about something earlier

V: Recurring themes.

r: ah, yeah. what’s to be made of them, watson.

V: Is that a real inquiry?

r: make of it as you will

W: Wow.

V: Understood.

W, cynically: You really are patient.

V: What’s to be accomplished of mocking me? [genuine question]

W, on his Gameboy: Well, hopefully you’ll just die like everyone else.

r: LMAO

r: warner and i are just marginally less patient, at least in avenues where we can get away with it without disturbing social relationships. for instance, since we’re all metaphysical, there’s no consequence for you to tell me to fuck off for clearly trying to analyze your interpretation of the question in addition to your response. that’s what we would probably do.

r: and i think he’s just tired of new alters?

W: I’m just tired.

r: fair

V: Fair.

V: To my understanding, the current model is that the CPU has certain recurring priorities that can be visualized as underlying subconscious personae, such as that which is interested in producing visual art, that which seeks out self-sabotage, that which desires to gain knowledge, etc, which represent themselves through different conscious personae of variable reliance.

V: Most notably, alters designated as... ‘Hounds’, being the conscious ‘faces’ of the underlying persona currently named ‘II’, with lesser examples such as Joviel Tsao and Tevya Rockatansky being of the same enthusiastic persona, and Avetoir Cortehessey and Xiaozitang Thesēly belonging to the family of feminine, flamboyant figures.

V: The older you grow, and the more you observe the way the CPU expresses itself, the more narrowly and with confidence you are able to label these subconscious parts. Alters such as Thomas Zhou (née Kent), Taylor Cortehessey, Gibson Shou, Syracuse Delaney, and Typhus Yang have previously represented an interest in scholarly thought and/or the practice of learning.

V: Recently you have chosen to ascribe roles to ‘new’ alters based on the assumption that they are remixed presentations of existing personae, regarding them not as new, but as previously poorly defined, as in the case of Nienthe Agate, Victoria Lane, and Silas Bauer (names still nonpermanent).

V: Time allows each part to accrue traits that solidify them as whole persons rather than representations of ideas, and often this is what allows a conscious part to retain its conscious identity. This is also what aids in cementing the subconscious role they represent (e.g. for example, an interest in learning will seem to automatically be paired with pride or quietness). What’s left for me is to see whether or I stay or leave, and if I stay, what other traits I keep or acquire, in order to better define the subconscious part I theoretically represent.

V: Separately, you experience a recurring need to take hold of an interest and document your otherwise unsalable thoughts on it through, often, blogging.

V: I think that’s just ADD.

W: Lol. Tell it like it is.

V: I live to please.

V: Seriously, though. I think it’s largely in part due to your lack of stimulation, socially and academically. I believe you never finish any project begun because you aren’t truly interested in dedicating yourself to anything for any reason more sustainable than the pride of sharing that you have learned something few others in your demographic have.

r: i understand that the CPU (and probably i, to a notable degree) encourage conversational partners to develop insights into the self

r: which is usually me

r: but i think the cpu also has a habit of being right on the nose when unhibited by ‘being’ a singular character, like just me, for instance

r: and i hate it thanks

r: don’t ever answer a question i ask again

r: also this is way late and i know it’s just because you don’t know which is the more appropriate name to refer to him by in this context at this point in time but the fact that you referred to thomas’s surname as ‘née Kent’ is fucking hilarious. anyway i’m tired so here’s where we leave off.

【CHANNEL CLOSED】

[momo-de-avis]

From a very early age, I was interested in languages and books. I sort of had a natural inclination to it. My mom fed it, of course. At the age of six, I had this book I loved that was one of those kiddy books that taught you german. I always had it with me, and by that age I knew how to say all the colours, how to count to twenty-nine (cause I kept forgetting how to say thirty) and a lot of the animals. I wasn't super smart, I was just interested enough that I allowed myself to learn as much as I could while my mom fed it.

So of course, by the time I was 5 I knew how to read. Not just put the letters together to create a word, but what the words meant (kiddy books, naturally). No one really taught me, except those times when someone sat with me teaching me how to write my name. I was just super hungry for understanding things around me. Back in the 90s, the Cartoon Network we got in Portugal was american (and briefly english, and then american again) with no dubbings or subtitles. I learned eanglish super early by binge watching powerpuff girls, Dexter's laboratory, Edd, Ed & Eddy, cow and chicken and overall hanna barbera. I wasn't smarter than everyone else. I just wanted to learn. I was always an average student, still am. I just exceeded in this stuff I loved doing because I really loved learning about it.

My boyfriend has a niece and a nephew, and they're some of the smartest, most well educated kids I've had the chance of meeting. Their mother has taught tem to explore their identity, to nurture their creativity and to reward and experience kindness. She lets them explore all their interests and says it's important that they experiment while they can, which is one of the most validating things you can say to a child. On the other hand, my nephew is spoiled with little regard for others. He gets a shit ton of gifts every year, expensive gifts that he doesn't cherish. If he loses or breaks something, his parents merely scold him for five minutes and then a few weeks later buy him a new thing. He's five and has already had three tablets (his own, not like mom's or dad's that he can use) and four watches. Those four watches, one he lost, the other was a gift from someone outside of the nuclear family, the other was a smart watch for kids (that records and takes pictures) and the latest, gifted this Christmas, was Ferrari watch he was allowed to play with freely (going as far as sticking it in his food and all his parents did was yell at him to not do that).

But you see, my brother is an overachiever. He is a business student, so take that as you will. When the kid was four, he got him into kart racing. According to him (and from what I see) the kid loves it, but at five he already wants the kid to be a pro racer and get into competitions. He proudly announced he is already racing 7 year old karts despite being five (karts that go over 70 km/h). He fed the kid a million shit toys about maths and numbers. Ever since he was born, he has given him little toy cars, yes, even collectible items that those old men keep on a glass stand and polish every month.

And yesterday, he announced: he can read and write.

I told him: no, he can't.

Partly, I meant that he can't because he's five, and he's not supposed to even care about it. Of course, there are words here and there he gets, and he copies his own name and other people's name, but not much different from what I did at his age. But I also meant he doesn't know how to read and write, because I know my nephew and he doesn't. He has incredible photographic short term memory. He can memorize anything by just glancing at it once, which in itself is an incredible talent alone, but one his parents don't care about. I realized that was how he 'learned' how to read and write, because if I mix one letter of his name, he won't notice, and if I mix them all he can't say what's the word supposed to be. If you ask him to write each letter of the alphabet, without visual reference, he can't do it either. But if you show him rhe letters and ask which letters are those, he will say it.

Then again: he's fucking five. It doesn't matter, he should be learning that fully at school. It doesn't mean he shouldn't attempt to learn on his own, if he wants to - which is exactly what my mom did with me. She never taught me how to read, but let me teach myself how to understand. Sometimes, she would sit with me and tell me that those letters put together meant 'apple' and that sort of shit. Even that, if you ask me, is too much,but innocent enough if you deal with it accordingly. But the thing is this is not what my brother and my sister-in-law are doing. (Of course, there are kids who can develop that at an early age, but trust me, no one in my family was that type of kid.)

There's a story on why I insist on this, one I never really gave much relevance to. It was just something that happened to me that I could see as a red flag for this sort of shit, although until today I never really understood the implications of it.

You see, I didn't feel smart, like at all. I just really loved colours and letters, which was what I saw in these books. But when I was five and in kindergarten, my mom told my teacher I knew how to read. Mind you, this was kindergarden. All we did was draw shit, play princes and dragons and sit around while our teacher read us stories. We weren't even allowed to use forks and knives, we were all forced to eat with a spoon, even the kids who knew how to use a fork and a knife (because we were all five year olds eager to destroy shit around us and with a very blurred definition of danger). But after my mom said that to my teacher (who, by all accounts, was a nice lady) she did something I resented my whole life and I never really understood why.

She picked me up in front of every single kid in my class, sat me on her lap, opened a book and said "Ana knows how to read, so today she is going to be the one who reads for us"

And guess what, I didn't say a word.

The moment I told my therapist this, she frowned and said "that's horrible!" I agreed, but still didn't know why. She asked me what did I do, and I said I stood there quiet, refusing to read. I remember vividly the book, it was a book about Snow White. I remember so well not wanting to read that I just know what I did was out of spite. And I said I didn't really know why this was horrible for me, but it was. So my therapist put me through those mind-travelling moments that begin with "let's go back to that day" and made me realize what it was. For a five year old who didn't even feel like she was learning, just having fun, I felt exposed. And by being exposed as "the best at reading among a class of kids who can't even conceive why a person isn't green", I felt terrified of making mistakes.

My then teacher brushed it off as "she's shy", and for the next 10 years, everytime I froze in a situation like this, I was "just being shy". Being shy was the excuse for everything in the 90s, apparently (spoiler alert, I wasn't shy so much as I was I severely anxious and terrified of failure thanks to a domino-effect of stuff like this).

I told my therapist I insisted, as I actually had done on other occasions before, that my nephew didn't know how to read because this is what pretending your child is a genius leads to: a terrible pressure on being the best.

To make matters worst, I went to the same private school my brother did, and he was one of the best students of his year. Me, I was average. My brother excelled at math and sucked at literature, was average at languages. Me, I sucked at math, excelled at literature and languages - but that difference right there labelled me my whole life as "below her brother". My brother was exceptionally good, but me, I was unfortunately less. They tried coming up with lame excused, always disguised as "she needs to try harder": she doesn't pay attention in class, she doesn't try hard enough, she has potential but is lazy. Fast forward twenty years and it turns out it was not only a case of dyscaculia but a shit ton of psychological problems that at least once put me on the brink of anorexia, but I guess until you fucking die, it's just being lazy.

Now here's the kicker: my nephew will be attending the same private school my brother and I attended next year. You think they have forgotten us? They haven't (well, not my brother, anyway). My teachers and my brother's teachers are still teaching at that school.

So this kid is gonna grow up in a closed environment of rich people as the son of one of the greatest students of his class. And trust me, it isn't an isolated incident. I remember one of my friends being one of the best students of her year, and her sisters had a shit ton of pressure on them. The middle one in particular was even the troublemaker, simply because she wasn't as good. That's what happens when you grow up in a closed environment of a private school that functions like a private housing area of rich kids where several generations attend it, and I saw it happen more than once (if I am not living proof of it).

Anyone who meets my nephew immediately perceives he has problems. Several people have made that clear to me (without me even saying a word about it). Part of that is due to the fact that he is ridiculously spoiled (in a way neither me nor my brother were) and doesn't have a clear concept of basic stuff like personal limit (if he sees a cellphone, he will grab it and try to unlock it, despite not being his, and despite being told it's not his so he shouldn't do it), respect (he insults his mother, like calling her a liar) or the importance (or lack of) material things (he got a fucking Ferrari watch and was allowed to play with it like it was a toy, for Christ's sake). He constantly touches and uses things that aren't his and if you try to tell him he shouldn't without permission from the owner, he either throws a tantrum or try to steal it from you. If he does something he shouldn't, even if it's dangerous, like attempting to push the television off its stand (it's happened) or turn on the stove, no matter how severely you act, he will laugh and act as if it's nothing more than a challenge, and sometimes he will even look you in the eye and laugh as he does it again (the only thing that stops him is my brother spanking him, which goes without saying is terrible). He often grabs my sister-in-law's cellphone, or my mother's, and goes on youtube or online, or even text and send messages (more than once he has sent me pictures of himself through my mom's phone without her knowing) and neither of them will stop him, merely scold him briefly (they won't even take it away from him, they will just turn the app off and tell him he shouldn't use it and you can see the kid doesn't understand why, so he does it again). He keeps losing stuff but doesn't even feel remorse because they just buy him another one.

Now top it all with daddy and mommy always saying "he's really smart for his age, he is above average" when literally every single person that has met him says he has a learning delay caused by his parents (he's five and he still speaks like a two year old. Actually, I spoke fully perfect portuguese at two, and so did my mother).

So when my brother looks me in the eye and says, fully certain of himself, that he can read and write, when I say "no, he doesn't" I am trying to avoid the trauma of being put on a pedestal because you're expected to be that which your parents want you to be. I am trying to avoid the kid going through a bunch of situations like that day when I was five and I froze because the teacher put a fucking five year old on the spot without so much as asking me. Because this kid is growing up to be a rich, spoiled little monster with no empathy and no regard for nothing except himself, and the least I can try to do, since all else failed, is to try to warn my brother about the horrible consequences of doing to him what he did to me.

But of course, he doesn't give a shit. After all, his son is a genius.

Sorry for the long post, I'm on mobile and can't put a read more thing.

[pinelife3]

Sadness

The treatment of the breaking of the fourth wall in Fleabag is the most compelling thing I’ve seen all year. Throughout the first season, our protagonist Fleabag (played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge who also writes the show) would look at the camera to make witty asides. Usually a sarcastic remark or eye roll to hammer home that she’s sardonic, insincere, perhaps a little underhanded. 

You’ve probably noticed how if you’re in a one-on-one conversation, it’s hard to rag on someone but that in a group it works (because you can pretend it’s good natured humour rather than a scathing attack on their very existence). In Fleabag, the breaking of the fourth wall is a way for Fleabag to safely ridicule whoever she’s speaking to. It’s also a succinct way of delivering backstory, revealing her intentions, and getting us on side. These interactions with the fourth wall are pretty standard, see: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Amélie, House of Cards, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Shakespearean asides, American Psycho. It’s an accepted device. But then in season two, when Fleabag speaks to us, someone takes notice, someone spots her dipping out of their diegetic reality as she speaks to us in ours. 

I thrilled at this. 

Sometimes I feel like I’ve seen everything - but I’d never seen this before. This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever seen on a TV show (forget the Red Wedding). This is a masterful trick, and great storytelling all at once - it demolishes a literary device. But most of the coverage of Fleabag has focused on how sad the show is:

People seem to like that: they like being crushed, enjoy being devastated. Why is that?

I’ve recently cried over two cowboy related things: Brokeback Mountain and Red Dead Redemption 2. 

I cried when I finished Red Dead Redemption 2 because I love Arthur Morgan so much: he was just the sweetest guy, and I was sad the story was over because we can’t go fishing anymore, or crash his horse into trees and fall, or fight gators in the swamps, or brush his horse while we cruise around the old west. I just felt so wistful for his life and the idea of bad guys working hard to be good in a changing world. 

And then I cried at the end of Brokeback Mountain because it is objectively very sad. The shirts tucked inside each other which Jack kept all those years. The possibility that Jack didn’t know how much Ennis loved him. The life they could have had together, and how much they loved each other - but the families and relationships they destroyed along the way as well, because no one ever said what they felt. 

I really liked both Brokeback and Red Dead, because they have great stories and characters. In Red Dead, I have so many fond memories - and for that reason it made me feel strong emotions. But I don’t like Red Dead because it made me feel strong emotions. I don’t like Brokeback because it was ‘crushing’ and/or ‘devastating’ - it was enjoyable because it was a beautiful story with tragic, poignant elements. I like the story - not that it made me cry. Most Fleabag reviews seem to focus on the sadness it made the audience feel as a way to recommend it to people. 

Watch Fleabag - it will make you feel something. 

Prepare to emote because Fleabag is preternaturally sad.

The discourse around the show on Reddit is similar:

Pffft want to feel really sad? Check out this scene from Synecdoche, New York:

It’s very moving, kind of irresistibly so. And I think that’s because it’s calling out to that scared, bitter, self-pitying part of you which is always cringing in the shadows, waiting for someone to invite it out of the garage into the living room. This speech is designed to frighten you: you’ll make misssssstakesss and ruin your life. You won’t even know you’re doing it until it’ssssss toooooo late. You might think your life is nice - but that’sssssssssssss only because you haven’t ssssssssssseen how bad it will get. It’s giving you permission to feel bad without providing any reason to feel bad, and then it’s allowing you to wallow in that bad feeling. It’s poison. 

I promise you, for 99% of people who watched Synecdoche, New York , life is not that bad. People in horrible, war torn places where they aren’t able to watch Charlie Kaufman films because no one dubs indie movies in Kurdish have it bad - and not just because they’re missing out on great films, but because they essentially live in a sandier version of Hell. Haven’t you ever sat in the sun with a dog and seen it look back at you and felt a perfect connection? Haven’t you ever fallen asleep, perfectly comfortable, tucked in beside someone you love? Haven’t you ever eaten pancakes with ice cream, or seen a huge mountain, or been really cold and then gotten into a warm bath? Haven’t you ever seen a baby fake-crying on the tram and then its mum tickles it under the chin and it laughs, and you see everyone around you smile because babies are so pure? Come on! You’re not Othello. Your life is pretty nice. Even Othello’s life was pretty nice right up until the end. 

Pretty nice.

But boring. Right? 

Pancakes? Cuddles?

How am I to thrill at sunsets and smiling babies? 

Good. Now I’m sad again. 

And if the realisation that you don’t have anything to be sad about (except for the ordinariness of the pleasures in your life) didn’t make you sad, check out this compilation of the 10 most depressing moments in Bojack Horseman (ranked in order from least depressing to most depressing!).

A major inconvenience of modern life is that most of us have supremely comfortable, happy, safe lives. And when something goes wrong, you can’t go on a tragic rampage and tear out your own eyes, beat your breast, or wail on the moor in a thunderstorm - even though that may be what you feel like doing. 

Work sucks, no one respects me, and I messed up that section of the Excel spreadsheet so maybe they are right to not respect me: take me to a moor where my tears can blend with rain and my howls will be swallowed by the wind! 

Ordinary people don’t get to live in a tragedy - and besides, there aren’t as many moors around as literature might have you believe. The most you can do usually is make a scene at a family dinner or isolate yourself at a party and then get drunk and walk home crying. Who would write a sweeping, romantic story about an embarrassing fuck up walking home drunk, feeling sorry for themselves.

Oh.

Wait:

And Now For That 2000 Year Old Mystery

Aristotle’s Poetics is the source of the word catharsis (in italics because it’s Greek which is the way I was taught to do it in high school - if only there were Greecian-alics, am I right?), which in common parlance today basically means any kind of dramatic release of emotions. Kickboxing is cathartic. Getting your eyebrows waxed is cathartic. Crying during an emotional episode of a TV show is cathartic. 

Because the word appeared in Poetics, it's original usage related to the theatre, in particular the experience of an audience watching a tragedy: the release of emotions they feel in watching things go seriously wrong for the hero. For this reason, catharsis is often tied to anagnorisis - the moment of tragic realisation. 

Oh god I killed my father and married my mother. 

Oh god, that’s my son’s head on the pike, not the head of a mountain lion.

Oh god, remember when I messed up that bit of the spreadsheet and everyone knew it was me. Existence truly is pain.

You get the idea. It’s not enough that the protagonist is a fuck up: that matter needs to be brought to their attention and they need to reflect on it.

(A more proper (read: academic) definition of catharsis is: “an imitation of an action ‘with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.’” The emotions the audience feel echo what the people on stage are feeling. The jump scare in a horror movie scares the character on screen and the audience watching at home.)

Aristotle never clearly defined catharsis. So for all this time (2000+ years) people have been trying to infer what he meant from a couple of references to a pretty slippery concept. Even though the general public has their understanding of the word, academics still cannot agree on a definition. But we know what it means, roughly, because we’ve all experienced it. 

Over the weekend I watched Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s other other TV show (not Killing Eve) which had an exchange between an artist and a drunk girl on sadness and how it factors into art:

Character 1: He’s my muse!

Character 2: Your muse?

...

Character 2: Like an artist's muse?!

Character 1: Yes, he is! You think meeting someone like Colin happens to artists all the time?! He gives so much.

Character 2: Yeah, sure, and you just lap it up and just slap it on a canvas.

Character 1: Pardon?

Character 2: "His pain is so beautiful." You're using him to indulge yourself.

Character 1: I am indulging? And what is this? 

Character 2: This is a $4 bottle of wine.

...

Character 2: Sorry if I upset you, Melody.

Character 1: You don't upset me. You bore me. All you seem to want to do is drink and wank and drink and wank.

Character 2: Well, at least I don't have to wank other people's pain onto a canvas, and then shove it in people's faces and call it "my art."

Character 2 in this scene is played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. I can’t be bothered to explain why it’s relevant. 

For the eternity of human brains, or at least for as long as preserved creativity, the most comfortable, secure people in the world have tried to experience the things tragic victims feel - perhaps so they can briefly know what it feels like to be a romantic figure struggling in an unjust world. A passport to feelings and drama we aren’t permitted in every day life. Catharsis is the word to express the reaction, but what do we call an audience who seeks out that sensation? Catharsis chasers?

It’s not insightful to say that people like to watch Fast & Furious movies because they’re exciting and perhaps audiences enjoy that excitement because their own lives are un-exciting. But commending a thing because it will make you sad seems aberrant in some way. A fast and dangerous car that will make you miserable. A roller coaster that will make you depressed. An incredible shootout in the streets of LA that will make you sob in the bathroom cubicle at work every time you think about it. I can’t explain the drive, but like Aristotle I will invent a new word, so that academics can never know what I meant but will still write at great length about it, so that it will slip into common parlance and be horribly misused until eventually, 2000 years from now, a girl can waffle on about it on her blog. And the word will be: scartharsio. Or maybe scorpithoniacs? Or sarcastiharsics? 

Sadness is entertainment for a scartharsio.  

ALL TIME HALL OF FAME: WAILING WOMEN AND MOORS

Nobody knows what it’s like to be me, a sad woman who weeps on moors! 

I’m not being overly dramatic!

[robininthelabyrinth]

Norse Myth LOT Fic 2: Victory in Anticipation (Coldwave)

Fic: Victory in Anticipation (Ao3 Link) - Chapter 1/3 Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Norse Mythology Pairing: Mick Rory/Leonard Snart Sequel to Victory in Waiting - read first

Summary: Leonard Snart is dead and his soul has gone to Valhalla, the home of heroes, and that's the end of the story.

Well.

Not quite.

A/N: I highly recommend reading the first fic in this series first.

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Every morning, after he’s awake but before he opens his eyes, he thinks – perhaps today.

Perhaps today he’ll wake up and see a dirty off-white ceiling with a bootprint smack in the middle, like the house on Lennox Street that was always secretly his favorite, or the vast height of a warehouse roof, or even the dull unrelieved slate grey that could stand for either Iron Heights or the Waverider.

Perhaps.

And then he opens his eyes and is blinded by the glint of golden shields, layered over each other like roof-tiles.

Nope.

Looks like it’s just going to be another day in fucking Valhalla.

Len sighs and rolls out of bed.

He does not like his bed, despite its fine carvings, because it was made by people who have a shit understanding of the finer arts of mattress-making – there’s a goddamn midpoint between sleeping on a lumpy set of rocks and drowning in a pile of fluff and fur – but he’s willing to admit that part of it might be his overall disappointment in the fact that he’s still here.

He wanders down to breakfast.

“Well met, Snare,” Ivar says, raising his – you know what, Len is going to call it a cup, despite its very obvious horn shape. He was never into Viking lore; insofar as he ever learned anything about mythology (religion?), it was about his own Judaism, a bit of Christianity (for Lisa, in case she cared – she didn’t), and maybe some Greek mythology because Xena.

He’s aware that that’s not a good basis for dealing mythology anything, but if he’d have realized it was going to be relevant to his life – or death, as it happens – he’d have read up about it first.

“It’s Snart,” Len says, not for the first (or, he suspects, the last) time. “Don’t suppose anyone’s done anything about my request for cheese, have they?”

“As we’ve explained several times,” Haukr, the man sitting next to Ivar – not as broad, but twice as smart – says, rolling his eyes, “the goat Heiðrún’s udders give mead, not milk.”

“Has anyone asked?”

“No.”

“I’m going to do it myself,” Len says.

“When you inevitably get yourself killed, I’ll laugh at you tomorrow,” Haukr says practically.

“Maybe this time I’ll wake up in the right place,” Len says. He doubts it, but a guy can hope, right?

“Snare here is Jewish,” Ivar tells another person, coming over from the sleeping area yawning. “Didn’t even know you could have Jewish einherjar before him.”

“What’s Jewish?” the other man grunts.

“The ones that don’t work on the seventh day,” Len sighs. He’s had this discussion before.

“Oh, them,” the man says. “Liked them. Can’t they not eat pig or something?”

This part of the discussion, too, is repetitive. It doesn’t make it less annoying.

“Not unless it’s necessary,” Len informs him.

“Is Sæhrímnir –”

“No, the giant boar roasting over the fire – though I see it’s gotten itself back off the fire and has pranced back into the forest on its dainty little hooves to let you bloodthirsty assholes hunt it down for today’s dinner again – before being plopped into the cook-pot is definitely not kosher. But since it’s the only thing to eat in this place, it’s fine.”

“Huh,” new guy says, scratching himself. He obviously doesn’t care, and he moves on without another word.

Again, not unsurprising. Len has had this conversation before. Verbatim.

“Is there an eight-letter word in Norse for ‘boring’?” Len asks Haukr. “Because right now I’m feeling it being ‘Valhalla’.”

“You shouldn’t blaspheme,” Ivar says, but by this point he’s gotten pretty used to Len and the admonishment isn’t quite as strong as it had been in the beginning.

“Where’s Leifr, anyway?” Len asks. He and Haukr tend to hang out a lot. “Not like he could go anywhere.”

“Tried to peep at the valkyries again,” Haukr says.

“So, dead?”

“Yeah. Already.”

“Fucking idiot.” It’s not like the valkyries don’t come by every night to serve everybody beer (mead, if you feel like being pedantic); Leifr’s just dumb. Dumber even than Ivar, and that takes some doing.

Haukr grunts in agreement. “You coming out with us?” he asks, jerking his head towards the armory, which is primarily armed with spears and knives and other such things.

Len makes a face. He appreciates a good knife as much as the next guy, but he doesn’t actually like fighting for the sake of fighting. That’s more Mick’s game.

He misses Mick.

Len crushes that thought before it’s even formed, because he doesn’t actually want Mick to be dead anytime soon, even though his presence might be the sole thing that makes this place tolerable. Mick would probably enjoy crushing them all.

“No,” he says instead. “Going to work on my ‘fruit and vegetable’ petition. I’ve never appreciated a salad more.”

Haukr laughs and shakes his head. “You’re as crazy as old Håkon, and he’s Úlfheðinn,” he says, amused.

Len smiles the smile of someone who has no idea what the fuck that means and is increasingly tired of having to ask people to translate for him. He thinks it might mean something like berserker, but with wolves or something.

Haukr doesn’t bother explaining, opting instead to get up from the table and head out to the fighting fields, Ivar close behind him.

Len waits until they’re gone before slinking out of the main part of the great hall. It’s a big place – possibly infinite – but he’s found a few places which aren’t so crowded that he can relax and think about what to do about his currently untenable situation.

Thinking he was going to die is one thing. Waking up and being informed that you’ve been recruited to fight in the army of your adopted father (what even), who is apparently the big tall scary guy with the one eye sitting on the throne in the middle of the room with the two ravens (what even), and then basically being ditched by said adopted father (at least that’s familiar?) to practice until you’re called upon for service of some unspecified sort - that's a whole different kettle of fish. This is not Len’s idea of a good afterlife, no thank you.

Not least because Len doesn’t actually like being of service to anyone. Ever.

He doesn’t go anywhere near said big tall and scary, who’s preoccupied with other things anyway – other gods come to talk to him, sometimes, usually Tiny Hammer Guy (Thor? Thrum? something?), Mr. One-hand, or Shiny Farm Guy, and sometimes he goes out with them, but either way, Len started his time here in Valhalla by observing, and he may not know much about the god everyone calls the All Father, but he knows everything he needs to about the guy.

Including the wisdom of not even thinking his name.

Len never liked bullies, and that applies to gods, too. The guy rubbed him the wrong way by claiming to be Len’s new father (what even, part forty two) and nothing Len’s heard about since has improved his opinion even a little. Slaughter, war, manipulation, treachery – seems like this guy’s stock in trade makes him well suited to be one of Len’s criminal companions, but not necessarily one that Len would ever work with and certainly never for.

Reminds him a bit of his real father, actually, if Lewis wasn’t a dumb fuck. Luckily for Len’s mood, he-who-shall-not-be-named-but-isn’t-nearly-as-cool-as-Voldemort-yes-even-book-seven-Voldemort is absent today.

There’s a croaking sound as one of the ravens settles down on the table next to Len.

“You are not wrong, who deem/That my days have been a dream,” Len tells him.

“That’s ‘A Dream Within A Dream’,” the raven croaks back, annoyed. “Wrong one, again.”

“Guess I don’t know my Poe,” Len says.

“Just make the goddamn Nevermore joke already and get it out of your system,” it says.

Clearly Muninn. Huginn actually thinks Len is pretty funny, even if he’ll never admit it – at least, he does after Len treated him to a ten minute lecture on the concept of intrusive thoughts after that one time when he’d decided to come visit while Len was taking a bath and perched on the edge of the bathtub.

Len had also accused him of being a pervert, but Huginn had responded by pointedly commenting on Greek mythology, which, fair. Not relevant, since Len’s a Jew, but fair.

“I’m not plagiarizing Neil Gaiman,” Len informs Muninn primly. “You ever read American Gods?”

“I’m a raven.”

“And that’s an excuse for illiteracy?”

“I can read!”

“So you’re just lazy about keeping up with good literature, that it?”

Muninn rolls his eyes – not a thing Len knew ravens could do before he came here – and flies away out the window, presumably to go about his information collecting rounds, the nasty little snitch.

The Big Guy might have a mild inclination to keep an eye – the one he’s got left, anyway – on Len, but Len’s learned the skill of being just the right mix of incredibly well-behaved and incredibly annoying that drives jailors out of their skulls in Iron Heights, and the gods have nothing on them.

(At this point, the ravens showing up isn’t a demonstration of the Chief’s interest so much as it is their own morbid curiosity.)

Len heads towards the currently empty throne area, only to nearly get tackled by a giant husky with bad breath that’s bigger than Len is.

“Geri, damnit,” Len says, trying not to laugh. “Geri. Geri, we’ve talked about this. We do not jump on people to say hello.”

Geri licks Len’s face, entirely undeterred.

“Oh god, no, you eat corpses, Geri! I can smell it! No! Stop! Desist!”

Eventually Len manages to untangle himself, mostly by virtue of spending a good ten minutes scritching Geri behind the ears until the gigantic beast rolls over onto his belly.

Then he spends another ten minutes giving Geri a belly rub, because Len is weak if you walk on four legs and are adorably fluffy. At least, he is if no one's looking.

“Good Geri,” he praises him. “Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy, yes you are, Geri, good Geri! Such a good doggie. You’re the best doggie, yes you are, my little corpse-eater, you. Oh, ugh, I’m going to have to give you another toothbrushing later, aren’t I?” Len makes a face as Geri’s breath rolls out in a miasma that stinks of eau de dead thing. “Yes, yes, I am, aren’t I? Still, not your fault your master’s a dumbass, yes he is. But it’s not your fault, is it, because you’re a good boy.”

Geri yips happily, tail wagging like a madman. Someone told Len that Geri’s actually a wolf, which is clearly just ridiculous. Sure, he’s big, pony-sized big, but he totally looks like a slightly larger version of a husky Len saw once. Maybe a husky-Newfoundland mix or something. And have you seen the size of the goat on the roof? Now that’s big.

Admittedly, Len’s never actually seen a wolf – Central City was more coyote territory, if anything - but seriously, Geri’s way too cute. His brother Freki, too.

“Where’s your brother, huh?” Len asks, not expecting an answer.

“Afghanistan,” Huginn says, flapping by lazily in Muninn’s wake. Huginn’s the faster of the two ravens, but sometimes, for no reason, he takes a meandering path.

Len can sympathize. His thoughts do that sometimes, too.

Doesn’t mean he has any patience for Huginn’s shit.

“Three words, birdie-boy,” he says. “Cognitive behavioral therapy. I’ll thought the shit right out of you.”

Huginn barks a laugh and wheels out the window as well.

“I’m threatening him with Prozac next time,” Len mutters, getting up off his knees. Geri yips happily and jumps up as well, tail wagging happily. His head easily comes up to Len’s torso, even bowed.

He is a very big doggie.

Len absently puts his hand on Geri’s ears as he walks through the entranceway that the gods usually use. Sure, the other einherjar avoid it like the plague, but no one’s ever actually said that humans weren’t supposed to go through that way.

Also, there are apples.

Len nearly broke down and cried the first time he saw the tree with the golden apples. Sweet, sweet Vitamin C. If he ever sees Mick again, he’s apologizing for all the stupid things he ever said about vegetables being optional and/or best served in ketchup form.

But he’s not going apple-picking today – not least because Ms. Goldilocks Iðunn nearly caught him again last time, and he’s not sure giving her big wide eyes and a quivering lip is going to work yet another time.

(“You don’t understand,” he told her. “I’m craving salad. Salad!”

She covered her mouth. “That’s not an excuse,” she replied, but she’s about three seconds away from cracking.

“I’m dreaming of beets. Beets. And turnips. That’s a fate worse than death.”

She made a slightly strangled sound, struggling to keep her face from smiling.

He decided to switch tracks. “Is it true that they call you Þjazi's booty?” he asks, having heard that story just the day before by the fire.

“Yes, it’s true,” she replied, slightly puzzled.

“Well, now I know I’m doomed,” he sighs dramatically.

“…why do you say so?”

“In the words of my mother’s people, the booty don’t lie.”

Her howls of laugher had followed him all the way out of the orchard, apples safely in hand.)

No, today he’s going to continue his explorations of the other parts of not-Midgard-that’s-Earth-it’s-the-other-one-fuck-Norse-naming-conventions. Aesirgard? Asgard? Whatever. Sure, he could limit himself to Valhalla, but he’s already figured out the pattern of the place: sleeping quarters, eating hall, bathing area, armory, repeat ad nauseum. It’s like someone built the whole place based on the copy-paste function.

At least there’s some variety out here.

Today, he’s going for the big barn-like building. Going by the smell, he’s going to guess that it’s the stables. Luckily, he still has one of Iðunn’s apples left; he figures he’ll be all right.

He doubts there’s anything valuable there – he’s already gotten bored picking leaves off of Glasir, because what’s even the point of stealing golden leaves that no one else wants? – but he believes in being thorough.

Since he apparently has forever.

Or until Ragnarök, anyway. Whatever that is. People don’t like to talk about it for some reason.

Len cracks open the door and slips in, Geri padding along silently behind him.

“Well,” Len says, squinting around as his eyes adjust to the relative dark. “It’s…definitely a stable.”

He walks over to the first pen, then stop and stares.

“Goats,” he says flatly. “More giant goats.”

The goats ignore him, as goats have a tendency to do.

“Do you eat sweaters?” Len asks them. “Mi– my partner, he once said that goats ate everything, but that they liked his sweaters best.”

They don’t answer.

He steps back and studies them at a slight distance. “Any relation to old Heiðrún?” he asks. “You’re a lot smaller than she is, but you’re also, uh, more male.” He pauses and wrinkles his nose. “Oh, man, now I really hope that all that she-goat mead isn’t a milk substitute, because ew. This is why food should come out of prepackaged plastic wrap.”

The goats continue to ignore him.

Len wonders if they have names.

Geri abruptly yips joyfully and darts ahead, into the dark of the stable. Len frowns and trots after him, only to find him happily chasing a circle around a long-suffering looking cat, which is having exactly none of it.

A very, very fluffy, very, very, very large cat.

“Holy cat,” Len says, because – wow. “Look at you. If you ain’t the most gorgeous kitty I’ve ever seen, I don't know what is,” he says sincerely, because the fluff. It’s so – fluffy. It’s massive. It’s a dire version of a Norwegian forest cat, or a Maine Coon, Len’s not sure, but he’s leaning towards Norway because, well, context. But still. The cat is as big as a small bear, and the fluff has got to be a whole another bear just by itself. “You must hate rainstorms.”

“You have no idea,” a voice says from behind him.

Len manages to keep himself from jumping in surprise, and turns.

“Okay, no. No. This is a step too far. Explain this to me - why does Viking heaven have Mr. Ed?” Len asks accusingly.

The horse, giant like the rest of them, well above a normal horse’s size and Len has seen horses before so he knows, brays a laugh. “I like that,” it – he? Okay, yep, definitely a he, this is 100% a stallion and not a gelding and also why does Len do this to himself – says. “Mr. Ed. A talking horse, I assume?”

“Old television program,” Len says resentfully. “No one here even knows what television is.”

“There aren’t really a lot of new einherjar these days,” the horse says, shrugging. Given how huge it is, there’s a lot of shrugging going on there. Whole muscle groups are involved.

“How many hands are you?” Len asks, studying him. “I don’t actually know how big a ‘hand’ is, but I could probably math it backwards.”

The horse brays again. “I don’t think anyone’s ever counted, honestly,” he says when he’s done snickering. “I like you.”

“Thanks, Ed.”

“Ed?”

“Well, you haven’t given me any other name to call you by,” Len points out. “Not like there are any nameplates either.”

“Good point,” the horse says. “But no, I like Ed. Keep going with that.”

“Gee, thanks. And what should I call Goats 1 and 2? They’re one short for the Billy Goats Gruff.”

Ed snickers. “Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr,” he says. “Teeth-barer and teeth-grinder, respectively."

“Really?” Len says. He doesn’t mean to be doubtful, but they’re, well…kind of placid. “That’s like naming your Pekingese ‘Bruiser’. Unless they’ve been turned into a vampire, because in that case, name away. Still pissed they never gave him a name in the movie…”

“I don’t even want to understand what twists your minds just took,” Ed says, but he’s definitely amused. “You know, I haven’t said that about anyone for years; you should be complimented.”

“I successfully piss off Huginn and Munnin on a regular basis,” Len informs Ed. “I am complimented.”

Ed snickers.

“So, does the cat have a name?”

“Cats, plural,” Ed corrects.

Len immediately scans the area for a second giant cat.

“Rafters.”

Len looks up.

“That’s a lot of fluff to balance on one rafter,” he says admirably.

“They don’t have names, I’m afraid,” Ed says. “Freyja just never bothered.”

“Actually, that makes sense,” Len says thoughtfully. “They are cats. Cats are above such petty things as names; they are merely kind enough to sometimes answer to descriptive terms barely worthy of their worship.”

He’s joking, of course, but he swears the cat that Geri is trying (unsuccessfully) to convince to play with him gives him an approving look.

“Right,” Ed says, shaking his mane. “You’re going to give them an ego.”

“They’re cats, they already know they’re superior to us,” Len says dismissively. “I’m going to be stereotypical and call you Rumpleteazer, okay?” he asks the one ignoring Geri. “Likes to create chaos with her partner, Mungojerrie, who can be Mr. Rafters up there.”

She considers this for a long minute and purrs approvingly.

“I think that’s the furthest any man has gotten with Freyja’s cats since I’ve met them,” Ed observes. “Well done. What will be your next trick? Hoop-jumping? Fire-breathing?”

“I like you,” Len tells Ed. “You’re kind of a dick. I appreciate that in people.” He pauses. “And horses, apparently.”

Ed shuffles his legs in mock-embarrassment, which makes Len have to rub his eyes because he would have sworn –

“Yes, there are eight,” Ed says.

“Thought I was seeing double,” Len says gratefully.

“You should probably get back,” Ed says with a sigh. “They’ll eventually notice you’re missing, and time in the Hall works differently from out here. It’ll be almost evening for them.”

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” Len offers. “And here, something to remember me by till then.”

He pulls the apple out of his pocket and offers it to Ed.

Ed stares at it for a long moment.

“What?” Len asks, a little uncomfortable. “I thought horses liked apples.”

“We do,” Ed says. “It’s just – that’s a – you know what, never mind.” He leans forward and lips at the apples, picking it up delicately with his teeth before crunching into it with all sounds of evident delight. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Len says. “Should I bring some Sæhrímnir-meat for the Hammerhead Hannigans tomorrow?”

“…they’d probably like some bones,” Ed allows. “I see that you’re very frustrated by no one getting your references.”

“I’m bunking with people who think similes are the height of humor,” Len says sulkily. “They even like puns! It’s not as much fun if someone’s not groaning.”

“I knew someone once who’d like you very much,” Ed remarks. “Now go.”

“Yeah, yeah. Geri, heel,” Len calls, whistling sharply.

Geri bounds over and Len rewards him with scritches.

“…just so you know, you disturb me greatly,” Ed says.

Len snickers and heads back to the hall, ducking back in just in time for Huginn to fly through the window like a bat out of hell.

Len wonders what the news is, but opts to go help himself to some Sæhrímnir, because it has in fact been a while since he’s eaten. Oh, look, they’re having it ‘boiled in the cook-pot’ style. Again.

“Have you considered alternate forms of preparation?” he asks Andhrímnir.

“Don’t start with that again,” the god-cook replies. “You don’t even know what a fricassee is.”

[originaldetectivesheep]

Year in Review - Books I Read In 2017

Last year I only read about a hundred of other people's works, so I was able to note everything.  This year....was not like that.  By more committed Gutenberg-grinding, I increased that number by a factor of three.  These are the highlights, excerpted notes on stuff that I found particularly good, or relevant, or interesting.

Robert Wallace - The Tycoon of Crime Another Phantom adventure, though this one holds back the appearance of the great detective a little and actually sets up a few tricks that aren't immediately obvious.  Most are, though, and this is not a great mystery, but it's a competent enough pulp, well-flavored with brutality and gore that's almost heartrending in the modern day -- because it's a callback to the trenches of the Western Front, where bad-luck wounds, dismemberment, and poison gas were just everyday facts of life.  That look in passing into the world of the men who wrote this stuff and were looking for it in their reading is the main attraction of this nowadays, but if you're looking to read a Phantom story, this is probably the pick of the litter.

Edgar Rice Burroughs - Apache Devil There are a few pulled punches in this, but not a lot, and in addition to a gripping narrative this story also packs a lot of good craft and a more united plot than it seems at first glance.  It's interesting from the modern perspective to see Burroughs so sympathetic to the Apache in the context of his vigorous racism against "savages" from other places; some of this may be closer exposure to Native American culture and thus the greater willingness to credit them as human beings, and some of it may be him pitching to his audience, where American natives were crushed, nearly extinct, and eulogizable, while black people were making the Great Migration out of the south and creating economic anxiety.  Either way, this is a pretty good book and not as garbage in its politics as Burroughs frequently is.

Abraham Merritt - Seven Steps To Satan Merritt's Eastern lore is well-worked into this tale, and more importantly he does a good job of keeping the reader on their toes, guessing what of this Satan's tricks are magic and what are just that, tricks.  The intersection of magic, illusion, manipulation, and hypnotism is a neat contrast to the usual suspicions of occultism, and the effect is really neat in keeping this Indiana Jones adventure full of darkness and mystery.  Harry is a little too obvious a plot jackknife, but you have to get to a resolution somehow, and he doesn't stick out too much in this world of super-minds and super-drugs.  Merritt has better stuff, but this is pretty good even so.

Stella Benson - This Is The End I had a limited selection of Benson's stuff, but this is definitely the choice of the batch.  As smart and observant as ever, and with nearly as flawless and perfect a flow of language and an eye for metaphor as in Living Alone, she also turns all of this around into a punishing, apocalyptic hammer of emotional weight and import at the turn and through on to the devastating finish.  I'd been reading up on the Somme and Verdun campaigns, which would have been the backdrop offstage for this, so this may have hit me harder than others, but it's hard to see how that ending, and Benson's poetry woven in around her prose, could fail to have the same effect regardless of circumstances.

Walter S. Cramp - Psyche For real, I nearly miscopied this author's name as "Crap" when writing this out.  This one is BAD, folks.  You can introduce your characters with a physical description if you like, though it does get kind of fan-ficcy, but do not attach a goddamn alignment readout to it.  The descriptions suck, the deliberate archaisms in dialogue suck -- do not write 'thou' unless you are going to use 'you' elsewhere to show correct tu/vous formulations in older English -- the staging and plotting sucks, and Cra(m)p can't be bothered to keep a consistent tense.  This is an awful book and should have been pulped a hundred years ago rather than continuing to waste people's time and electrons down to the present.

J. A. Buck - Sargasso of Lost Safaris Everything you need to know about this insistently self-footbulleting series can be found from the episode here, where in the middle of a taut thriller about bad whites and educated natives double-crossing each other, the protagonists fight the world's worst-described dinosaur for pagecount.  No explanation, they just needed another 500 words between two chapters and so they roll on the random monster table and get a fucking Baryonix or whatever.  The 'girl Tarzan' trope is at the outer edges of reality, and Tarzan did a lot of Lost World garbage too, but too much of this is too true to life to fuck itself over by throwing in dinosaurs like it aint a thing.  Fuck this stupid shit.

Wilhelm Walloth - Empress Octavia "Death was to stalk over it like a Phoenician dyer, when he crushes purple snails upon a white woollen cloak till the dark juices trickle down investing the snowy vesture with a crimson splendor."  When you write this sentence, stop.  Just stop.  I have bad habits like this too, but nothing, even a translation from German, is a justification for throwing out a sentence like that, especially in a second paragraph.  Stop.  No. Beyond this, this is yet another Ben-Hur wannabe that is in love with its research and can't decide what fucking tense it's in.  If you are interested in Rome, read Gibbon or Tacitus, or Suetonius or Caesar himself; if you want literature, stay the FUCK away from the Bibliotheca Romana.  The plot takes directions that only a German can and would go in, in its period, but this boldness alone is not enough to excuse the poor composition and overall aimlessness.

Stephen Crane - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets I'm sure this was revolutionary when it came out, but at this distance, it feels like parody or melodrama - a lot of which is coming from the dialect, which is even more intolerable in the present than it was when this was written.  This isn't even hard dialect, and there's no need for it to be consistently phonetic rather than, like, just describing people's accents.  You look at "The Playboy of the Western World" and what that doesn't do with forcing pronunciations, and then you look back at this, and you see rapidly which one does a better job of conveying the lifestyles of the deprived and limited.  I know this is supposed to be heartbreaking, but it's completely outclassed and replaced, for modern audiences, by The Jungle, which more people need to re-read and actually understand as a labor story rather than a USDA tract.  Anything, literally anything, else you can get out of Stephen Crane is going to be better than this.

John Peter Drummond - Tigress of Twanbi Seriously, this story would be greatly improved by getting the Tarzan shit out of it.  If it was Hurree Das, picaresque Indian doctor versus Julebba the Arab Amazon with their countervailing motivations and the local allies who ended up in the crossfire of her domination war in the African bush and his attempts to stop it or at least get out with a whole skin, this tale would be significantly improved in addition to completely unidentifiable for the white audience it had to be sold to at the time of publication.  So it goes.  Drummond's side characters are significantly better than his leads or his plots, and should have held out for a trade to Stan Weinbaum or P.P. Sheehan for a case of beer plus a player to be named later rather than having to submit to this dreck.

Robert Eustace - The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings Playing like a series of Eustace's Madame Sara stories -- there's definitely something to peel the onion on there, where every villain is a mysterious older Latin woman -- the plot here moves by the usual bumps of caper and medical/forensic detection, with seldom an attachment from one episode to the next.  The individual stories are entertaining, but this is a collection, not a novel, and going from front to back is like binging a TV series in novella form.  The individual tricks range from lame and overdone to Holmesian superclass, but this would be so much better if there was an actual whole narrative rather than this point to point.

Augusta Groner - The Pocket Diary Found In The Snow If I had gotten to this before Three Pretenders, I definitely would have thrown in a shoutout callback to Joe Mueller somewhere; Groner's Austrian detective is a more modern Holmes in a Vienna at the end of its rope, and in addition to the neat characters and relatable scene dressing, the mystery here is pretty good and the inevitable howdoneit epilogue is actually interesting rather than tiresome, which is always a potential stumbling block in this sort of caper.  Most of Groner's work that I have is pretty short, but at least I'll have the possibility of re-reading her in the original German later.

Anonymous for The Wizard - Six-Gun Gorilla It's easy to see why nobody, so far, has come forward to claim this clunky Western with a hilarious concept played absolutely straight.  This is a Madonna's-doctor's-dog exercise in crank-turnery written in Scotland by Brits who have never been to the high desert, for an audience that needs to be told that bandits aren't particularly interested in mining.  As a craft exercise, there's some merit to it: anyone can write a gorilla-revenge story in Africa, or a Western manhunt, but when an editor comes to you and says "so there's this gorilla and he's a badass gunfighter, write a story to fit these illustrations and make it not suck", that's when you really have to stretch your creative muscles.  There are signs that this was a house name product or a collab rather than one author, and more insistent signs that it was a joke played on the readership to see how long they'd put up with it.  It's almost magic realist in its combination of brutality and absurdity -- who the hell knows what British schoolboys thought of it in 1939.

Robert W. Chambers - The Slayer of Souls Probably not the inspiration for that song that was on like every compilation in Rock Hard and Metal Hammer in summer 2005, this Chambers joint is either pitched perfectly for the Trumpist present -- did you know that Muslims, socialists, Chinese people, unionists, and anarchists are all actually the same, and all actually parts of a gigantic Satanist conspiracy? oh wow such deep state many alex jones -- or an incoherent stew of staunch J. Edgar Hoover fanboyism that can't keep its own geography straight, which is actually kind of the same thing so never mind.  This is exactly the sort of story that George Orwell was so hot about in "Boys' Weeklies": good, craft-wise, and definitely gripping, but utterly complicit in a way and to a degree that almost becomes self-parody.  If you can stop laughing at it, it's got the good action and aggressively-expansive world-setting of good rano-esque anime; if you can't, Chambers has better short stories and have you heard of this guy called Abraham Merrit?

Stendahl - The Red and the Black It is maybe over-egging it a little to call this a 'perfect' novel, but it is closer to that perfection than it is to any other reasonable descriptor.  The society of the Bourbon restoration may be lost to us, but the characters stand the test of time, and Stendahl moves them in time with the plot -- the way that their actions are only tenuously liked to their outcomes is a triumph of realism -- with the hand of a master.  I like Stendahl's Italian stuff too, but France in his own time is his best course, and this is his best work.

Sylvanus Cobb - Ben Hamed What's really striking about this sword and sandal mellerdrammer is how relatively non-racist it is, and how easily it accepts Muslims as real people and mostly normal.  There's a bunch of orientalism, sure, but while the Giant Negro sidekick occasionally comes off servile, he's also smart, experienced, and independent, and takes, for his characterization, an appropriately central role in shepherding the star-crossed lovers to the end of their tale.  This could easily get a banging Arab-directed film adaptation today with very few changes -- and that's not just about how good it is as entertainment, but also about how far Cobb was ahead of the curve in 1863.

Talbot Mundy - C. I. D. Another inter-war Indian thriller, this excellent spy novel pits a wide range of the native-state establishment -- corrupt priests, a venal rajah, the incompetent British Resident, a motley gang of profiteers -- against the genius and initiative of Mundy's great hope for India, the always effective, never moral Chullunder Gose.  As expected, the top agent of the Confidential Investigations Division masterfully controls the whole chessboard, pitting the various enemy forces against each other and subverting each in turn before throwing in his reserves -- Hawkes, back in a smaller role as British India yields to British-Indian cooperation, and the obligatory American, a pre-MSF doctor who starts the book looking for a Chekhov's tiger hunt.  Thing is, this is fiction, and so it's Mundy who's really keeping all these balls in the air and weaving the skein of the story into an incredibly awesome whole.  If you have problems with Kipling and Haggard, start getting into Mundy from here. A neat thing that will not go unnoticed by other pulp deep-divers is the shots-fired bit introducing the Resident's library, which is noted to feature the works of Edgar Wallace.  Whether to make a point in the story -- "every colonial section chief, no matter how actually bad, secretly thinks of himself as Sanders", which I've used in my own stuff -- or to start beef -- "people read Wallace and think he knows about the colonies, but he has actually just been to the track and his apartment and needs to stfu before idiots making policy off his 'exceptionally stupid member of the Navy League circa 1910' worldview hurt somebody" -- this is definitely a callout, and definitely intentional.

Gordon MacReagh - The Witch-Casting I'm reading these Kingi Bwana stories in order, and it is getting suspiciously clear that as long as he put in a bit of African-kicking at the start, he was free to get as smart and real as he liked later in the story -- and the amount of kicking was something that there were subtle efforts to reduce.  This one starts off with Kaffa getting the brunt of it, but almost immediately turns around on that point as King and a larger collection of nonwhite friends-as-much-as-trusties do a witch-hunt unlike any witch-hunt you'd expect from '30s pulp, with a similarly sharp turn on African traditional religion that's nearly as out of place.  MacReagh cannot completely escape his own prejudices or the expectations of his time, but this one gets as close to the event horizon as any of his stuff.

Titus Petronius Arbiter - The Satyricon The modern age has ground a lot of the obscenity off this one, which for many years was mostly famous, infamous and/or banned for its central plots of man-on-man sex; in 2017, it takes more than boyfucking to shock people.  This is probably for the better; with the false atmosphere of licentiousness cut out of it, this is as it was at the beginning, a spicy story of Roman idiots having hilarious misadventures that, by subtle exaggeration, hold the follies and fads of their time up to ridicule.  It is longer than it needs to be, and some of the jokes are poorly preserved, and this translation is contaminated by unnecessary footnotes and inclusion bodies of later forgers' porn that's been stapled in over the centuries, but it's still a good, true look at Rome as it actually was at the height of the empire, without the hagiography of a historian or the religio-political axe-grinding of the Christians.  Probably worth the struggle.

Willa Cather - April Twilights I was collecting Cather from her papers at the University of Nebraska, and had to read this in the process of reformatting it; poetry does not well survive HTML->ASCII transitions.  The deep and dark and bleak is strong here; through the classical allusions, the callbacks to Provencal troubadours, across the American landscape, the same refrain runs: "I am old and decrepit and not emotionally capable of loving other people".  So, relatable.  The widespread criticism of Cather, that she can't get herself out of traditional modes even when this is to her disadvantage, is held up by her poetry as well; there's more than a few places here where you've got to frown at a bodgingly conventional rhyme or metaphor that someone more open to modernity would almost have had to have done better.  But there are, even still parts where that traditionalism works well, and is effective; it's worth reading out for those, even at all that.

H.P. Lovecraft and others - Twenty-Nine Collaborative Stories Most of what we now recognize as the Cthulhu Mythos -- and definitely any kind of idea of Lovecraft's stuff as a coherent whole or linked world-system -- comes out of these stories as much as his own.  On his own, Lovecraft moved to the beat of his own drum and followed his ideas where they went; here, he helps friends and fans plug their fanfic into what becomes a shared universe.  The stories are not all great; Hazel Heal put up some classics here but also some stinkers, and most of Robert Barlow's contributions, especially as they range into sci-fi, are kind of eh.  Zealia Bishop, though, does yeoman service as Lovecraft's official trans-Mississippian correspondent, and Adolphe de Castro's top-class works settle Lovecraftian mysticism in real foreign lands.  It's worth getting through these: there's good stuff in here, and you also get the sense and feel of how Lovecraft actively built his 'school' -- and ensured that he was the one to influence the direction of weird fiction for years to come.

William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland A true classic, this is potentially the very most black metal horror novel ever written.  The brutality of the swine creatures, the remote devastation of the time-blasted cosmos, the liminality of dreams and reality; Teitanblood and Xasthur and Inquisition hope and fail to convey this sense of unholy immensity, of uncaring timeless evil.  Hodgson hits some heights in his shorter stories, but here, he hits it absolutely out of the park.  Completely essential.

Suetonius - The Life of Claudius Claudius comes off in this one like I've observed German colonial rule as remembered in most places other than Africa: "not worse than necessary".  Suetonius doesn't miss the caprices of a guy who almost certainly was on the spectrum, and had other distinguishing impairments, but also faithfully records a lot of good works and good ideas, with less wastage and idiocy than the likes of his surrounding emperors.  The translator's appendix, as expected, freaks out about the results of Claudius' expedition to Britain, and continues to vainly expect the Roman people to want to get rid of effective and oppressive imperial rule to get back to the ineffective oppression of the senatorial republic.  How someone who translates Latin can be ignorant of "senatores boni viri, senatus mala bestia" and what that actually means in the context of government is beyond me.

Julius Caesar - De Bello Civili This is in three parts, double-text, and when I can understand what places are being talked about (still not 100%, even after all of this, on where the heck in Italy Brundusium is), it flows well and is as clear in its language as anything else of Caesar's.  Even the structure is well-laid: in book 1, Caesar starts the war, and wins a big victory in Spain; in book 2, one of his generals gets disastered in Africa; and in book 3, the epic conclusion and final battles.  Though this is still ultimately a public relations exercise, Caesar doesn't step back from his own disasters, and gives full credit to his foes: this does tend to make him look better when he beats them up, and it is curious how nothing is ever directly his fault, and how most reverses go to troops losing their head and acting without orders, which would be out of character for his faithful super-army if it didn't keep happening.  As always, Caesar leans on logistics; his focus on the relative supply situations in Spain and in Thessaly is the key to success, and a dead giveaway that this was written or at least dictated by the commander himself, and not by some biographer who wouldn't've had that experience in keeping an army fed and watered in the field.

Katherine Mansfield - Something Childish and Other Stories What's really cool in this collection of earlier Mansfield is that you get to see her evolve through the War: she's already mature, and really good, in the New Zealand and Continental tales that precede it, but after the title story (dated to 1914, with a collapse-out at the end that is a KILLER allegory for that August, even if unintended), you really start to see how the nervous stress of total war wears on a population engaged, how the greater position of women in society transforms her and her work, and leads her on towards self-discovery.  The later and more experimental stories are, in general, slightly better, but this is all good material -- and there's a hell of a sting in the tail at the end.

Henry W. Herbert - The Roman Traitor In his introduction Herbert mentions a friend who encouraged him to finish this book, without which it would never have been released.  This friend should be dug up and beaten soundly with rocks, because this rehash of the Catilline conspiracy is utterly unnecessary as a novel or as antiquarianism, and Herbert is an awful, awful writer whose torture of language and narrative structure would shame a Nero.  The day you write the phrase "bad conclave" is the day your editor should throw you through a door.  This isn't the worst book in the Bib. Romanica, but it may be the very most badly written.  Just read the actual history from Sallust and forget this stupid garbage.

Gustave Flaubert - Salammbo This takes a while to really get its feet under it and show where it's going, but once it does, look out.  Flaubert masterfully captures the brutality of warfare and the color of the ancient world, and his language is superbly translated; you put this next to the staid English garbage in the rest of the Bib. Romanica and you wonder why most of them even bothered.  The turn at the end hits like a ton of bricks, especially if you like me don't know anything about Carthaginian history and don't know what's coming -- but it's also the only possible ending for this captivating chronicle of horror, misery and nightmare.  Just excellent.

Willa Cather - My Antonia A deeply drawn narrative of love, growth, and the midwestern plains, this book is more enhanced than anything else by Cather's commitment to its place and time: childhood is always a lost world forever, but the place that Jim and Antonia grow up through is thoroughly lost a hundred years and more on, but it survives in these pages down to the dirt on the floors and the chaff under the characters' collars.  After the narrator goes to Omaha, the tale weakens a little, and the end, for modern audiences, is probably a little under-tuned, but this is Cather's flagship novel for a reason, and definitely rewards the time spent reading it.

Margaret Atwood - Negotiating With the Dead This is another lecture series like the Forster above, but coming from different source, moving in different ways, and much more about Atwood herself and the roots of her writing in the Canadian landscape and literary scene that shaped her.  There is a lot about writing as a living thing in this book, and very little about it as a process: it's kind of a synthesis-antithesis-conclusion out of Forster and Bickham, more perceptive than either and leaving Welty, poor soul so far from the modern perspective, in the absolute dust.  It may be a question of eras, or just one of sympathies -- an adequately intelligent writer of speculative fiction is going to necessarily fall in with Atwood's ideas about doing something meaningful that also keeps the lights on -- but this book, out of all of the four in this mini-course, hit the most home and told me the most about what I do that I didn't already know.  It doesn't have the coherent, lecturized feel of the Forster, but at times there are just the most amazing insights, and the craziest images out of that crazy time that was the middle 20th century, and with how good it was I'm fairly ashamed to not have read any other Atwood before it, which makes me just an awful person.  At least I'm in a damn library and probably can fix that now.

Willa Cather - The Bohemian Girl A novella that should probably better and more widely reputed than it is, this one is mostly a meditation on love, maturity, and switching horses in midstream, but Cather, like no one else, manages to defend both the dour, hard prairie homestead and the need to escape from it.  This is her "zwey seele wohnen, ach, in meinen Brust", and it's kind of a thing all through her fiction, but in here it's especially well developed, with a coda that unlike a lot of her other ones actually works.

Talbot Mundy - The Marriage of Meldrum Strange Sales figures or editorial comment must have highlighted the "big team" problems in the last book, because this one cuts it down to the essentials: Ommony and Gose and Ramsden for muscle and some minor characters.  The plot is a good and twisty romance, keeping everything real, and it is just magic to watch Ommony work calm while Gose spits science like a Bollywood comedian, yin and yang combining to catch everyone in every trap.  A rare gem after several misfires.

Talbot Mundy - Old Ugly-Face One of Mundy's real best, this is an epic navigation of the human heart, against the majestic Himalayas....played by psychics battling to ensure the succession of the Dalai Lama.  Mundy gon Mundy, but the love triangle here is perfect and the environments are astounding -- a must read.

D. W. O'Brien - Blitzkrieg in the Past There's a chapter in this one called "Tank Versus Dinosaur", and that's about the shape of it.  You could also say "Sergeant Rock goes to Pellucidar" and not miss by much; a M3 Grant and crew ends up in a fantasy cavemen-and-dinosaurs past and has some adventures while talking '40s smack, and then romps their way home.  What's cool about it for authors is how O'Brien writes around his dinosaur: there is no description at all of the beast or its species or attributes.  It is big, and makes angry noises, because the author could not be assed to take the time out to do research while writing this story.  And yet it works, unless you're reading really close; let this be a lesson for anyone who can't finish their research up exactly correct on deadline.

Talbot Mundy - The Ivory Trail A lot of this raw, brutal epic of survival in the east-African backcountry is probably from life; Mundy tried this life and failed at it before he became a writer, and the asides and incidental scenes can only be from bitter experience.  Others might expect a purer adventure -- you'd get one from MacReagh on these materials -- but Mundy has the essential truth of colonialism: there are no secrets, mere survival is hideously tough, and everyone else in the game is more brutal and better equipped.  Conrad might have had the literary chops and adventurousness to end this differently, but even he who fared into the Heart of Darkness didn't have the stomach to write a middle passage like Mundy does here with his heroes in German prison.

Talbot Mundy - Guns of the Gods This Yasmini adventure makes itself a prequel, of her youth and how she got into the position of wealth and information mastery that sets up her later career.  The plot is tight if less convoluted than some that I've been reading lately, and the incidents woven through the intrigue and the treasure hunt are fantastic.  On a deeper level, the real judgment and sensitivity in the negotiation of east and west by Tess and Yasmini makes up for the stray Americans happening into the heart of the tale, and in a real way this is Mundy's most openly and solidly anti-Raj, pro-Home Rule adventure yet.  For both an excellent story and what's probably a local maximum in wokeness, this comes highly recommended.

Thorne Smith - Rain In The Doorway A kind of Alice in Jazz Age NYC, this is a ridiculous madcap adventure that loses little in the passage of time and not much at all in the way it winds back down to reality.  Smart and stupid and sexy in all the best ways, this kind of hilarity is pretty much Smith's best stock in trade, and this particular book is one of the better examples.

Thorne Smith - Turnabout The least hair of maturity creeps into Smith's writing here, as one of his interminable boozing Lost Generation miscouples actually gets in a family way as well as into an inexplicable supernatural adventure.  The very very familiar central trick is well executed, and Tim's advancing pregnancy provides a nice frame to hang the rest of the events off of.  The end is a little pat with the reinsertion of the Dutch uncle, but you live and deal.  This is one of Smith's better, and a good occasion to round out the end of the string.

Wilkie Collins - Armadale Collins makes up for his bad start with this absolute beast of a romance, bound up with mysticism rather than being an encyclopedia, but still turned out with real and vital if slightly implausible people.  The consistent mystery of the vision unites the book, but the way that the various Armadales react to that vision, its interpretations, and each other, is solid and real.  It is an immense read that demanded like six hours of flight time, but it is definitely rewarding, and worth the bother of pounding through the huge narrative.

Wilkie Collins - No Name There is a tangled tale and a half in this one, a desperate adventure of roguery in the name of revenge that keeps getting tangled up with coincidence as much as fate or intent.  The links may be a little creaky, but this is a huge, smart, intensely twisting drama with a lead for the ages in Magdalen, and an adversary worthy of her steel in Lecomt.  The end is a little formula and takes a little long to wind down, but this is an artifact of the time and the expected conventions, and it inhibits the power of this novel but little.  Good good stuff.

Talbot Mundy - The Thrilling Adventures of Dick Anthony of Arran "For a few days Cairo swallowed Dick."  NO.  Shut it.  Shut up.  Be mature.  Tuned to a compositional level somewhere between Sexton Blake and Lovecraft's middle-school works, this is not good or well-written Mundy, and there are research holes in it that might have been stabbed through with a claymore.  In places, his later quality pokes through, but in the main this is a stolid imitation of part Kipling, part John Buchan by a writer who does not have enough name weight to force publishers to his way of thinking rather than the reverse.  This leftover should have stayed left over and buried.

These were excerpted from the full writeups of the complete chronological list below, which accounts for frequent hanging references.  The pure volume of this list indicates why I didn't copy the whole of the writeup blocks into this entry.

Robert Barr - The Sword Maker E. Rice Burroughs - Land of Terror E. Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Leopard Men L. Winifred Faraday (tr) - Tain bo Cuailnge Robert Barr - The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont Richard Rhodes - The Making of the Atomic Bomb Robert Wallace - Death Flight Richard Rhodes - Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb Richard Rhodes - Twilight of the Bombs Robert Wallace - Empire of Terror Robert Wallace - Fangs of Murder Robert Wallace - The Sinister Dr. Wong Mary Cagle - Let's Speak English! Robert Wallace - The Tycoon of Crime Stella Benson - Kwan-yin William H. Ainsworth - The Spectre Bride Robert Eustace - The Face of the Abbot Robert Eustace - The Blood-Red Cross Robert Eustace - Madam Sara Robert Eustace - Followed Robert Eustace - The Secret of Emu Plain Arthur Conan Doyle - The Uncharted Coast Edgar Rice Burroughs - Apache Devil Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan and the Tarzan Twins Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan the Invincible William W. Astor - The Last of the Tenth Legion Edgar Rice Burroughs - Tarzan the Magnificent Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Bandit of Hell's Bend Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Cave Girl Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Deputy Sheriff of Comanche County Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Efficiency Expert Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Girl From Farris' Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Girl From Hollywood Stella Benson - Living Alone Stella Benson - The Desert Islander Victor Appleton - Tom Swift and his Giant Telescope Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Lad and the Lion Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Man-Eater Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Moon Men Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Outlaw of Torn Edgar Rice Burroughs - The Rider Edgar Rice Burroughs - The War Chief Abraham Merritt - Burn, Witch, Burn! Abraham Merritt - Creep, Shadow! Abraham Merritt - Seven Steps To Satan Abraham Merritt - The Dwellers in the Mirage Abraham Merritt - The Face in the Abyss Abraham Merritt - The Last Poet and the Robots Edward Spencer Beesly - Catiline, Clodius, and Tiberius Malcolm Jameson - Collected Stories Fantasy Magazine - The Challenge From Beyond The Strand - As Far As They Had Got J. M. Synge - The Playboy of the Western World Abdullah/Brand/Means/Sheehan - The Ten-Foot Chain Stella Benson - This Is The End Stella Benson - Twenty Emily Beesly - Stories From the History of Rome Hugh Allingham - Captain Cuellar's Adventures in Connaught and Ulster, A.D. 1588 James DeMille - The Martyr of the Catacombs Sallust - Bellum Catalinae Edmond Rostand - Cyrano de Bergerac "Captain Adam Seaborn" - Symzonia, A Voyage of Discovery R.E.H. Dyer - Raiders of the Sarhad Walter S. Cramp - Psyche H.P. Lovecraft - From Beyond Robert F. Pennell - Ancient Rome Garrett Putnam Serviss - Edison's Conquest of Mars Irving Batcheller - Charge It Irving Batcheller - Vergillius Duffield Osborne - The Lion's Brood Dale Carnegie - How to Win Friends and Influence People J. A. Buck - The Slave Brand of Sleman bin Ali J. A. Buck - Killers' Kraal J. A. Buck - Sargasso of Lost Safaris J. A. Buck - Sword of Gimshai Wilhelm Walloth - Empress Octavia Stephen Crane - The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky Stephen Crane - The Blue Hotel Stephen Crane - The Open Boat Stephen Crane - Maggie: A Girl of the Streets Stephen Crane - The Monster and More Stendahl - Armance Victor Appleton II - Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung Victor Appleton II - Tom Swift and the Visitor From Planet X Robert Curtis - Edgar Wallace Each Way John Peter Drummond - Bride of the Serpent God John Peter Drummond - The Nirvana of the Seven Voodoos John Peter Drummond - Tigress of Twanbi Robert Eustace - The Brotherhood of the Seven Kings Augusta Groner - The Pocket Diary Found In The Snow Augusta Groner - The Case of the Registered Letter Augusta Groner - The Case of the Lamp That Went Out Augusta Groner - The Case of the Golden Bullet Augusta Groner - The Pool of Blood in the Pastor's Study Anonymous for The Wizard - Six-Gun Gorilla Walter Horatio Pater - Marius the Epicurean John Russel Russell - Adventures in the Moon and Other Worlds Answers Magazine - Sexton Blake J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Occult Detector J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Significance of the High "D" J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The House of Invisible Bondage Stendahl - The Abbess of Castro and Others John Aylscough - Faustula John Aylscough - Mariquita Robert W. Chambers - The Maker of Moons and Other Stories Robert W. Chambers - The Slayer of Souls Edith Nesbit - My School Days Edith Nesbit - Re-collected  (self re-collection) Edith Nesbit - The Magic World Edith Nesbit - Wet Magic Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Planet of Doubt Stanley G. Weinbaum - Smothered Seas Stanley G. Weinbaum - Graph Stanley G. Weinbaum - Flight on Titan Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Red Peri Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Black Flame Stanley G. Weinbaum - The Dark Other Stanley G. Weinbaum - The New Adam Gordon MacReagh - re-collected shorter stories  (self re-collection) Stendahl - The Charterhouse of Parma Stendahl - The Red and the Black Sylvanus Cobb - Atholbane Sylvanus Cobb - Ben Hamed Sylvanus Cobb - Ivan the Serf Sylvanus Cobb - Bianca Sylvanus Cobb - Orion the Gold-Beater Sylvanus Cobb - The Gunmaker of Moscow Sylvanus Cobb - The Knight of Leon Sylvanus Cobb - The Smuggler's Ward Talbot Mundy - Black Light Talbot Mundy - Burberton and Ali Beg Talbot Mundy - C. I. D. Talbot Mundy - Caesar Dies Talbot Mundy - For the Salt Which He Had Eaten Talbot Mundy - From Hell, Hull, and Halifax Talbot Mundy - Full Moon J. U. Giesy - Palos of the Dog Star Pack J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Wistaria Scarf J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Purple Light Gordon MacReagh - The Slave Runner Gordon MacReagh - The Ebony Juju Gordon MacReagh - The Lost End of Nowhere Gordon MacReagh - Quill Gold Gordon MacReagh - Unprofitable Ivory Gordon MacReagh - The Witch-Casting Gordon MacReagh - Strangers of the Amulet Gordon MacReagh - The Ivory Killers Gordon MacReagh - Black Drums Talking Walter Moers - The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear Gordon MacReagh - Wardens of the Big Game Gordon MacReagh - Raiders of Abyssinia Gordon MacReagh - A Man to Kill Gordon MacReagh - Slaves For Ethiopia Gordon MacReagh - Strong As Gorillas Gordon MacReagh - Blood and Steel Gordon MacReagh - White Waters and Black Cardinal Newman - Callista J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - The Master Mind Titus Petronius Arbiter - The Satyricon Talbot Mundy - Her Reputation Giancarlo Livraghi - The Power of Stupidity Willa Cather - April Twilights H.P. Lovecraft and others - Twenty-Nine Collaborative Stories J. U. Giesy with Junius B. Smith - Rubies of Doom Abraham Merritt - The Moon Pool Abraham Merritt - The Metal Monster Abraham Merritt - The Ship of Ishtar John G. Lockhart - Valerius William Hope Hodgson - Carnacki, Supernatural Detective and Others William Hope Hodgson - Carnacki the Ghost Finder William Hope Hodgson - The House on the Borderland Suetonius - The Life of Julius Caesar Suetonius - The Life of Augustus Caesar Suetonius - The Life of Tiberius Caesar Suetonius - The Life of Caligula Suetonius - The Life of Claudius Suetonius - The Life of Nero Suetonius - The Life of Galba Suetonius - The Life of Otho Suetonius - The Life of Vitellus Suetonius - The Life of Vespasian Suetonius - The Life of Titus Suetonius - The Life of Domitian The Lock and Key Library - Classic Mystery and Detective Stories - Old Time English Hume Nisbet - The Demon Spell b/w The Vampire Maid Hume Nisbet - The Land of the Hibiscus Blossom Hume Nisbet - The Swampers E. Hoffman Price - The Girl From Samarcand Flavius Philostratus - The Life of Apollonius H. P. Lovecraft - At the Mountains of Madness H. P. Lovecraft - Selected Essays including Supernatural Horror in Literature H. P. Lovecraft - The Case of Charles Dexter Ward H. P. Lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath and Others H. P. Lovecraft - The Dream Cycle H. P. Lovecraft - The Dunwich Horror H. P. Lovecraft - The Shadow Out of Time H. P. Lovecraft - The Shadow Over Innsmouth H. P. Lovecraft - The Whisperer in Darkness H. P. Lovecraft - His Earliest Writings H. P. Lovecraft - Poems and Fragments  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - The Cthulhu Mythos  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - Tales of Monstrosity  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - Tales of the Crypt  (self re-collection) H. P. Lovecraft - Tales of Paganism  (self re-collection) Edward Bulwer-Lytton - The Last Days of Pompeii Gavin Menzies - 1421: The Year China Discovered America Ernst Eckstein - Quintus Claudius Julius Caesar - The African Wars Julius Caesar - The Alexandrine War Julius Caesar - De Bello Civili Julius Caesar - The Hispanic War Talbot Mundy - Cock o' the North Julius Caesar - The Gallic Wars Katherine Mansfield - Bliss and Other Stories Katherine Mansfield - In A German Pension Katherine Mansfield - Something Childish and Other Stories Katherine Mansfield - The Garden Party and Other Stories John W. Graham - Nearea Andy Adams - A Texas Matchmaker Andy Adams - Cattle Brands Andy Adams - Reed Anthony, Cowman Andy Adams - The Log of a Cowboy Andy Adams - Wells Brothers Charles Kingsley - Hypatia Francis Stevens - Claimed! Francis Stevens - Nightmare! Francis Stevens - Serapion Francis Stevens - The Heads of Cerberus Francis Stevens - The Rest of the Stories  (self re-collection) Talbot Mundy - Hira Singh Henry W. Herbert - The Roman Traitor Robert Howard - Tales of Breckenridge Elkins Robert Howard - Tales of El Borak Robert Howard - Tales of the West Robert Howard - Swords of the Red Brotherhood Robert Howard - The Black Stranger Robert Howard - The Pike Bearfield Stories Robert Howard - The Exploits of Buckner Jeopardy Grimes Robert Howard - Weird Poetry  (self re-collection) Robert Howard - Collected Juvenilia Robert Howard - The Spicy Adventures of Wild Bill Clanton  (self re-collection) Robert Howard - Tales of the Weird West  (self re-collection) Robert Howard - The Treasure of Shaibar Khan Robert Howard - Red Blades of Black Cathay Robert Howard - The Isle of Pirates' Doom Robert Howard - Dig Me No Grave Robert Howard - The Garden of Fear Robert Howard - The God in the Bowl Virgil - The Aneid Gustave Flaubert - Herodias Gustave Flaubert - Madame Bovary Talbot Mundy - Hookum Hai Gustave Flaubert - Salammbo Willa Cather - Alexander's Bridge Willa Cather - My Antonia Eudora Welty - On Writing E.M. Forster - Aspects of the Novel Jack M. Bickham - The 38 Most Common Fiction Writing Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them) Margaret Atwood - Negotiating With the Dead Arthur Conan Doyle - Fairies Photographed Arthur Conan Doyle - Great Britain and the Next War Willa Cather - My Autobiography, by S. S. McClure Willa Cather - O Pioneers! Willa Cather - One of Ours Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark Heinrich Brode - Tippu Tib Willa Cather - The Troll Garden Willa Cather - Youth and the Bright Medusa Willa Cather - The Bohemian Girl Willa Cather - The Affair at Grover Station Willa Cather - The Count of Crow's Nest Willa Cather - The Shortest Stories  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales ABC  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales DEF  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales G-K-O  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Tales PRST  (self re-collection) Willa Cather - Stories W  (self re-collection) Henryk Sienkiewicz - Quo Vadis Charles Darwin - The Voyage of the Beagle Sinclair Lewis - Babbitt Talbot Mundy - Jimgrim and Allah's Peace Talbot Mundy - East and West Talbot Mundy - The Iblis at Ludd Talbot Mundy - The Seventeen Thieves of El-Khalil Talbot Mundy - The Lion of Petra Talbot Mundy - The Woman Ayisha Talbot Mundy - The Last Trooper Talbot Mundy - The King in Check Talbot Mundy - A Secret Society Talbot Mundy - Moses and Mrs. Aintree Talbot Mundy - The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb Talbot Mundy - Jungle Jest Talbot Mundy - The Nine Unknown Talbot Mundy - The Marriage of Meldrum Strange Talbot Mundy - The Hundred Days Talbot Mundy - OM: The Secret of Ahbor Valley Talbot Mundy - The Devil's Guard Talbot Mundy - Jimgrim, King of the World Talbot Mundy - Machassan Ah Talbot Mundy - Oakes Respects An Adversary Talbot Mundy - Old Ugly-Face Talbot Mundy - Payable to Bearer Talbot Mundy - Poems and Dicta Talbot Mundy - Rung Ho! Talbot Mundy - Selected Stories Gordon MacReagh - Projection From Epsilon Leroy Yerxa - Back from the Crypt  (self re-collection) Garrett P. Serviss - A Columbus of Space Garrett P. Serviss - The Moon Metal Garrett P. Serviss - The Second Deluge Garrett P. Serviss - The Sky Pirate Sinclair Lewis - Arrowsmith Robert Buchanan - Camlan and the Shadow of the Sword Robert Buchanan - God and the Man Henry R. Schoolcraft - To the Sources of the Mississippi River D. W. O'Brien - Squadron of the Damned D. W. O'Brien - Blitzkrieg in the Past D. W. O'Brien - The Floating Robot D. W. O'Brien - Gone In 20 Kilobytes  (self re-collection) D. W. O'Brien - Lost in Space  (self re-collection) D. W. O'Brien - Ghosts of War  (self re-collection) William Ware - Aurelian William Ware - Zenobia J. S. Fletcher - The Stories  (self re-collection) J. S. Fletcher - Perris of the Cherry-Trees J. S. Fletcher - The Middle Temple Murder J. S. Fletcher - The Paradise Mystery J. S. Fletcher - The Safety Pin Francis H. Atkins - The Short Stories  (self re-collection) M. P. Shiel - In Short  (self re-collection) Francis H. Atkins - A Studio Mystery Francis H. Atkins - The Black Opal Talbot Mundy - The Eye of Zeitoon Talbot Mundy - The Ivory Trail Talbot Mundy - The Man From Poonch Talbot Mundy - The Middle Way Talbot Mundy - The Red Flame of Erinpura Talbot Mundy - The Thunder Dragon Gate Talbot Mundy - Tros of Samothrace Talbot Mundy - Queen Cleopatra Talbot Mundy - Purple Pirate Talbot Mundy - A Soldier and a Gentleman Talbot Mundy - Winds of the World Talbot Mundy - King of the Khyber Rifles Talbot Mundy - Guns of the Gods Talbot Mundy - Caves of Terror Thorne Smith - Biltmore Oswald: The Diary of a Hapless Recruit Thorne Smith - Biltmore Oswald: Very Much At Sea Thorne Smith - Birthday Present Thorne Smith - Did She Fall? Thorne Smith - Dream's End Thorne Smith - Haunts and By-Paths Thorne Smith - Rain In The Doorway Thorne Smith - Skin and Bones Thorne Smith - The Bishop's Jaegers Thorne Smith - The Glorious Pool Thorne Smith - The Night Life of the Gods Thorne Smith - The Stray Lamb Thorne Smith - The Jovial Ghosts: The Misadventures of Topper Thorne Smith - Topper Takes A Trip Thorne Smith - Turnabout Thorne Smith - Yonder's Henry Wilkie Collins - Antonina Wilkie Collins - Armadale Wilkie Collins - I Say No Wilkie Collins - Miss or Mrs Wilkie Collins - My Lady's Money Wilkie Collins - No Name Wilkie Collins - The Haunted Hotel Wilkie Collins - The Law and the Lady Leroy Yerxa - Death Rides At Night D. W. O'Brien - Flight From Farisha Gordon MacReagh - Out of Africa  (self re-collection) Peter Cheyney - Quick Draws  (self re-collection) Talbot Mundy - The Thrilling Adventures of Dick Anthony of Arran D. W. O'Brien - The Last Analysis M. P. Shiel - Children of the Wind Edgar Wallace - 1925: The Story of a Fatal Peace M. P. Shiel - Prince Zaleski Edgar Wallace - A Case For Angel, Esquire M. P. Shiel - Shapes in the Fire Edgar Wallace - A Deed of Gift M. P. Shiel - The Evil That Men Do Edgar Wallace - A Debt Discharged M. P. Shiel - The Last Miracle Edgar Wallace - A Dream M. P. Shiel - The Lord of the Sea Edgar Wallace - A Raid on a Gambling Hell