#excellent reading

[bacardi-and-coke]

[nfcomics]

BATMAN ONE BAD DAY PENGUIN • House Ad • art • Giuseppe Camuncoli [Oct 2022]

The Penguin's criminal enterprise and the Iceberg Lounge have been stolen from underneath him by his former associate the Umbrella Man. The Umbrella Man has removed all of the rules for crime in Gotham City that the Penguin put in place, and the city is in chaos. The Penguin is a broken man, and he'll have to travel through the burning streets of Gotham with a gun and a single bullet putting together a new crew to take back what he's built. Will Batman help the devil he knows or face the devil he doesn't in the form of the Umbrella Man? A crime epic from the team behind the critically acclaimed Other History of the DC Universe, John Ridley and Giuseppe Camuncoli--don't miss it!

(W) John Ridley (A) Giuseppe Camuncoli (CA) Giuseppe Camuncoli

[bookandcover]

I can’t possibly do this book justice in writing about it. It’s tied (with Human Acts) for my favorite book of 2022. I know this book is stylistically an inevitable favorite: it’s my preferred genre (realistic literary fiction), and it seems deliberately written for someone who derives glee from every literary allusion and who is waiting to draw intricate plot deductions (sometimes people try to get me to stop analyzing things I read/watch because “doesn’t that take the fun out of it?” No, that’s exactly where the fun is, I respond). While these characteristics certainly describe me and what I find most rewarding in literature, I’m not, however, a gamer, and I probably missed the joy of many allusions to games and gaming. Given the book’s masterful literary self-awareness, surely gaming is treated with similar deftness. In spite of this, I gained a new appreciation for the world-building of gaming, caught up in the incredible narratives and aesthetics, the haunting liminal space of the game world, the attention-to-detail in development (of Ichigo in particular). 

From its early chapters, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow leans on excellent prose and thorough, measured character development to succeed. The first half of the book lulls the reader into a false sense of security, sliding backward and forward in time as it develops the central characters of Sam and Sadie, as well as the figures who surround them: Anna Lee (Sam’s mom), Marx (roommate and producer), Zoe (Marx’s girlfriend), Sam’s Korean grandparents, Ant and Simon (dynamic, young techie couple), Sadie’s sister Alice, and Sadie’s Jewish grandmother Freda. These early chapters have some clever and thoughtful reveals in the plotting: we have to infer that Sam’s broken and mashed foot was the result of the car crash that killed his family, through their absence in these hospital scenes; there is the reveal of Anna and Sam’s hasty departure from New York for L.A. as another Anna Lee leaps to her death; we also confront the truth of Sadie’s depression (an abortion she had just before Sam reappeared in her life). These early chapters gather strength through realism. 

Sam and Sadie are deeply flawed, incredibly relatable characters. As a brilliant young woman at MIT, Sadie struggles through her college relationship with her professor Dov (truly the worst, and the only character with whom I never sympathized). Sam sees in his reunion with Sadie the potential for a collaboration that will revolutionize the gaming world, and pursues reconnection after having cut her from his life when they were kids. Marx installs himself as perpetual cheerleader, and self-sacrificing friend, while also being a bit of a playboy who stays friends with all his exs through sheer charm and good will. Each character is, in turns, deeply relatable and utterly exasperating. These characters are real in their contradictions: Sam’s stubbornness about his disability and his refusal to let this define him (almost to a fault, as he risks his life, and lashes back at those who have his best interests at heart), Sadie’s fearless pride in making her holocaust-focused game Solution for her MIT classmates paired with her long-term fixation with securing Dov’s good opinion, Marx’s whimsical break-ups as he grows bored with people, yet loves Sam and Sadie unconditionally. It’s the time spent on characterization upfront that earns the devastating, beautiful second half of the book. 

In the second half of the book, so many details from the first half (details that were seemingly trivial) return to the forefront. This seems less plot-driven and more a perspective on realism—focusing on the way we make meaning of our lives, holding onto and romanticizing particular moments and memories, imbuing objects with sentiment, relying on language to fills empty holes we cannot imagine ourselves falling into, yet do. 

The section that vaults this book into life-changing, transcendent territory is the section called NPC. In a point of view shift from the rest of the book, this section is entirely first-person POV for Marx Watanabe. The character who has played third-wheel to Sam and Sadie throughout their professional relationship (and their complex, interwoven friendship, as well as Sadie and Marx eventually falling in love) suddenly takes center stage. It’s an apt metaphor. All of Marx’s theater background comes to bear, as he gets, for once, to play the main role. Later, after his death, Sadie immortalizes him in a game she designs, where the role of Macbeth is played by a tall handsome asian man (when Marx, in real life, was relegated to the role of Banquo). As Marx’s death story unfolds, interspersed with real-time events as he lies dying in a coma and moments from his complex history with his two closest friends, we receive a full reversal of ours and Sam’s expectations for the NPC. Sam calls Marx an NPC; we, too, dismiss him in comparison to the furiously vivacious Sam and Sadie for much of the book. Yet, the supporting role he played in life, and in death, is crucial, essential, and one of real agency. It’s our loss if we overlook the NPC. 

This section beautifully and poignantly reframes and repurposes the early sections of the book: from the reappearance of Sadie’s EmilyBlaster game in the moment Marx is shot to the titular reference (I was waiting for it!) about how Marx wanted to name the gaming company (ultimately called Unfair Games) after his understanding of the promise of retries and redoes imbedded in the concept of a game. This section is an exercise in literary mastery and plotting, a shocking record of the violence humans are capable of, and a tear-jerking account of a single and unique life. Even though I knew, before reading this section, that Marx had been shot to death in an active shooter scenario at Unfair Games, I was not expecting the realism of this scene. I felt inside it. I felt the brutality of what humans are capable of, and I felt how human (instead of inhuman) we are in the face of, and in the perpetuation of, violence. I bawled my way through this section of the book and felt exhausted, wrung-out, after reading it. Every moment was charged and deliberate—the placement of the story of Sam and Marx’s early roommate-bonding over a rehearsal of the scene of Banquo’s death in Macbeth to the way the men who bring guns to Unfair are seeking Sam, striking back against the diversity he has embraced as the emblematic Mayor of Mapletown who grants gay marriages far ahead of his time. 

The final section of the book is titled Freights and Grooves and connects to the Emily Dickinson poem quoted at the beginning of the book: 

That Love is all there is,

Is all we know of Love;

It is enough, the freight should be

Proportioned to the groove.

This mysterious poem—little, monstrous—is explored at the heart of the book. What is love that it must hurt us? But it never hurts us too much—the hurt love causes, the weight of it, carves just so deeply a change in us. Love’s no more than we can handle and exactly all that we can take. Or perhaps this poem means that any love is unknowable in portion to the impossible, unnamable nature of that love? To name love, to know it, is to simplify it to a point that it no longer resembles the love itself. In this book, I loved how, at each turn, the connection between Sam and Sadie is unique love, love that transcends lovers, traumas, hurts, and losing touch. It’s love that is unknowable and all-knowing, and every time Sam tries to name it, to force it into something more familiar, are the moments that show how that romantic love would be a weak approximation of the enduring love these characters share. 

[loosethreadsofyoursoul]

it’s just that endverse!castiel and demon!dean would match each other’s freak. kind of tragic they never met

[idontknowwhatimdoing-13]

When Crystals is like wait Niko how do you know that I kissed Charles its definitely because Edwin and Niko were hanging out one night between episodes five and six and Edwin was like “I realized I like this boy but he just kissed the girl he likes” and Niko did the math.

Like Edwin knows two boys he could potentially like.

And Monty isn't about to be not liking Edwin or liking a girl.

And Charles makes it very obvious that he likes Crystal and also has only two girls he knows one of which is Niko herself who definitely wasn't kissing Charles.

Like Crystal it wasn't hard to figure out.

[maesonc-artistic-adventures]

Based on Chapt 13 of @cutebutalsostabby ‘s fanfic “Big Oof 2022, aka Whumptober”

“‘You,’ Hyrule declared furiously, ‘are an absolute, complete dumbass.’

Lying prone on the ground with a deeply pissed-off mage looming above his head, it was rather difficult for Warriors to argue the point. He gave a weak thumbs up and croaked back, ‘Yep.’

Hyrule shook his head disbelievingly and announced, ‘You and Legend give me shit for this all the time, but you’re both equally as bad.’

Warriors nodded. ‘Very true,’ he rasped peaceably. ‘Be sure to learn from our bad examples.’”

————————————

Hyrule and Warrior’s dynamic is so excellent and few do it as well as this fic!

[biblically-accurate-dca]

substitute

[lazycranberrydoodles]

you’d think after 800 years he’d learn his lesson about taking afternoon naps. / prev comic / follow for more sleepy xie lian

[hedgehog-moss]

Forgive me for making yet another post about the French Revolution but one small detail that makes me laugh is when, as things started to go seriously wrong, one of Louis XVI's advisers tried to persuade him & Marie-Antoinette to get away from Paris and wait for things to calm down (the idea was "if you lay low and wait, the newly-created National Assembly will vote something stupid and lose popular support" which was a solid plan honestly.) But he was also like "whatever you do, DO NOT go East or South or people will think you'll get help from other monarchies to restore your power and that won't calm things down"

So the King was advised to flee to Normandy, which... is just a short ferry ride away from another monarchy. But that's completely different since it's England. To be fair to the English, the French monarchy had basically bankrupted itself a few years back to send millions in support of the American revolutionaries because it would be a shame not to take advantage of "perhaps the best opportunity for centuries to come to put England in its place" (actual quote by France's minister of Foreign Affairs in 1777)

—still I love the realistic approach of the King's adviser telling him, Sire you can't go near any of our borders rn, it'll escalate the situation, Parisians will know you're trying to get another country to help. Obviously you can go set up camp right across the sea from England though, that's fine since everyone knows the English wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire¹

¹ Perfidious Albion was like "aw no France is in turmoil and possibly weakened :) a shame :)" exactly like France re: them at the start of the US independence war ² they also thought well these backward french are finally following our glorious example and entering civilisation (parliamentary monarchy) ³ and only when the Girondins started being like "let's spread the French Revolution to the whole universe!!! or at least Belgium" did England finally decide "it's been a while since we last declared war on France actually" (but it was too late for Louis XVI) ⁴ That's not how footnotes work sorry. Trying to make my post look fancier

[expelliarmus]

[wombywoo]

piñata boy 💀

[apoetsworld]

Sorry to all those "sirius can sing" stans...but headcannon sirius black sounds like a dying cat singing in the shower and he thinks he sounds angelic...and james changes the subject when he brings it up, peter runs out of the room and remus never shuts up ab how he actually sounds like he's being murdered when he sings "Is there Life On Mars?" by David Bowie

[fishbloc]

"it doesn’t feel like much of a victory at all. there was room for love here. there was room for a lot of things. but none of it matters in the end. if it all goes to waste, i'll take my punishment for having loved."

[galina]

My outfit 🤝 my current book

[soracities]

i HAVE to ask, as an essay reading enthusiast, WHERE do you find essays to read?

going through the 'essay' tag on your blog was a time well spend

lit magazines babes!!! Lithub, Electric Lit, Guernica, N+1, Devin Kelly's Ordinary Plots, Longreads, Quanta Magazine, Aeon (my beloved!!), The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings), Nautilus, Poetry Foundation, Paris Review's redux archives!!! i also tend to look up essays / authors mentioned IN the essays I'm reading which also introduces me to new work! hope this helps and happy essay reading anon 🤍

[brother-emperors]

DO NOT BE AFRAID

this is combining Ovid's Heroides and the Excidium Troie because I can't stop thinking of Hermes telling him not to be afraid. what the fuck!! Ares is wearing the crown that Paris gave him.

I have. thoughts. about Paris. he's almost got this Troilos parallel in my mind, that the event that defines him in detail exists in a lost narrative that we don't have (the Cypria), but everyone else knew. the event that defines Troilos is his death (murdered, butchered by Achilles, the violence of which haunts everything after. Achilles, child killer, you can't escape that!), and the event that defines Paris is the Judgement. what's a lost text but a kind of grave!!

idk I don't think that Paris before the Judgement would recognize himself after bc when you become god touched, it rearranges your guts. you become transformed in the worst way possible! how could you recognize yourself! but I also think that all the Parises after the Judgement would recognize each other because that event is so locked into the trauma of war and the scar it leaves on the land, it's like a scar on the narrative too. it exists like this forever, over and over again, so you exist like that forever too. Troy collects grief and despairs.

Troy as trauma: Reflections on intergenerational transmission and the locus of trauma, Andromache Karanika

and Paris is like. a miserable little god/corpse-puppet or something, like a match for the gods to throw onto gasoline.

The Excidium Troie + Ovid's Heroides:

Excidium Troie, trans. Muhammad Syarif Fadhlurrahman

Ovid, Heroides 16 (trans. Harold Isbell)

a collection of things regarding Paris that made me go 😬 but under a cut bc this is getting. very long.

The Divine Twins in Early Greek Poetry, Corolla Torontonensis

Iliad 24 and the Judgement of Paris, C.J. Mackie

Elegy and Epic and the Recognition of Paris: Ovid "Heroides" 16, Elizabeth Forbis Mazurek

Ennian Influence in "Heroides" 16 and 17, Howard Jacobson

Paris/Alexandros in the "Iliad", I. J. F. de Jong