#i was revisiting antigone

[permanentlylatetotheparty]

me, awake at 3 am: avad left meridian so soon after kadaman's execution that he probably didn't have a chance to bury or mourn him until the liberation

[regicidal-defenestration]

I miss them*

(*character in a piece of fiction I could easily revisit and yet do not)

[selchielesbian]

I did not meet my reading goal this year (and threw my list out the window about a month in) but I think that’s fine because I’ve done more reading in the last six months than I have the last four years, which was the point!!

For my own benefit, and your enjoyment, here’s what I read this year:

Finished:

Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall by James Polchin. Absolutely excellent book about the history and formation of the ‘gay panic’ defense. In depth and well researched.

The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Very glad I never got around to reading this in college because I would have made it my entire personality.

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers by Jude Ellison S. Doyle. Essay collection that started out strong but I think lost the plot somewhere around the chapter on motherhood and pregnancy. Since publishing the collection the author has come out as trans so I’d be interested to see them revisit some of their points—there were a few times when they brought trans identity into focus but mostly quoted other trans essayists because they felt they were unqualified to speak on the subject, but wanted to include trans women and nonbinary people when relevant. This book gave me a lot to research, and some film recommendations aside lol.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. I actually received this book from a friend back in 2020, read the first story, and went hmmm. Maybe not for me! I finally picked it back up this year and devoured it in a few days. Really delicious, left me feeling sick and raw for some time. Great stuff.

The Locked Tomb series (GtN, HtN, NtN, As Yet Unsent and Dr. Sex) by Tamsyn Muir. As you all know, it has taken over my life. I think this series has a lot of good and bad qualities and was designed to make me, specifically, insane.

Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower by Tamsyn Muir. Very fun break down of the ‘princess trapped in a tower’ fairytale. This is one I listened to while driving and doing chores so I’d like to sit down with a print copy some time and dig through it a little more.

Antigonick by Sophocles, translated and reworked by Anne Carson. I love Antigone and Anne Carson so this was just entirely delightful. I really recommend watching the live performance here while you read along with the script!

Did Not Finish:

I’m Thinking of Ending Things by Iain Reid. Really enjoyed the nonlinear storytelling and subject matter but I put the book down for a month and was completely lost when I tried to pick it back up again so it’ll have to carry over into next year’s reading list!

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. Just as excellent and unsettling as Her Body, but the narrative hit a little too close to what I went through with my most recent relationship to the point where every chapter made me physically ill so I had to put it down for my own wellbeing. Lol. Someday I’ll return to it. Not this year.

Dead Girls: Essays on Surviving an American Obsession by Alice Bolin. Very disappointing. First few essays were interesting and well written but this is not a cohesive collection and had very little to do with the pitched premise.

This Thing Between Us by Gus Moreno. The plot sounded intriguing but I just found the first few chapters a slog. Could be persuaded to give it another shot but it’s not high on my list.

[mogseltof]

4,10 and 11 for the book ask :)

4. What are your top 3 comfort reads?

God, I usually tend to childhood nostalgia for comfort reads! I'll throw one of those in there: Trixie Belden Mysteries (by Julie Campbell Tatham and "Kathryn Kennedy"). Kid detective stories set in the late 50s, aged a little better than I was expecting, but fully fucked up my sense of what a dollar was worth when I was a child 😆 (The various Blyton detective groups did not age nearly as well, but Nancy Drew remains a classic, though one i don't come back to often)

The Odyssey, transl Emily Wilson, which I don't think I have to sell the merits of to you lmao. My first brush with the classics as a teenager, and still my favourite! It's nice to come back to something I love and know how beloved it's been for so long.

The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper. I read. A Lot. of Arthuriana themed YA as a teen, but this one was my Mum's favourite and subsequently became mine. I think I can still recite the prophecy from heart. I would die for Bran.

10. What is your favourite genre read to recommend to someone who isn't a reader of that genre?

I don't have a lot of these, I usually start with the issue and work back! I'll either look for a 'genre straddler' or a 'it's genre x but written like a genre y' vibes based approach. The Stephanie Plum/Numbers series by Janet Evanovich used to be my favourite 'thrillers that don't read like thrillers' to recommend, but I haven't revisited them in a Long while! If anything on this list will have aged poorly it'll be these, but a lot of the focus is on the will they/won't they dual romance (second chance and mystery badass leading men), and they're written like romcoms. The Martian by Andy Weir is a great intro sci fi as well, a shockingly easy read despite a lot of the concepts it's working with.

11. What is something you've recently reread?

...This is going to drive me up the wall because I don't log rereads on Goodreads OR my spreadsheet, and I KNOW I reread something recently argh.

I'm pretty sure it was A House with Good Bones by T Kingfisher, which I yelled about last time I did one of these memes. Rec stands, vultures, bugs, witches, mid century occult bullshit, chefs kiss. I'm also ABOUT to reread some stuff for my one uni class: My Year of Meats by Ruth Ozeki, who's main character and author I would like to argue with, and Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie, which I Love. It's an adaptation of Antigone set in the context 2010s British antiterrorism crackdowns and relations with Pakistan. Very compelling, Shamsie hit my buy list after reading that and I'm loving her other stuff as well.

[opportunities-eu-com]

GIVENCHY S’inspirant de la mythologie grecque, le sac Antigona rend hommage à la déesse Antigone dont le nom signifie « qui s’oppose ». Matthew M. Williams, directeur artistique de la maison Givenchy, revisite ce modèle emblématique qu’il dote de bord industriel et de volumes généreux. Pour célébrer le 10e anniversaire du sac, GIVENCHY présente Antigona Soft, une version plus décontractée et déstructurée que l’original. Ce sac souple de silhouette géométrique déstructurée est muni de deux poignées, de sangles latérales en cuir retenues par un fermoir quart de tour. Un cadenas en métal poli gravé du logo parachève ce modèle intemporel. Neuf avec dustbag. Disponible✅ Inspirada en la mitologia grega, la bossa Antigona ret homenatge a la deessa Antígona, el nom de la qual significa "qui s'oposa". Enguany, Matthew M. Williams, director artístic de la casa Givenchy, revisa aquest model emblemàtic, donant-li un toc industrial i volums generosos. Per celebrar el 10è aniversari de la bossa, GIVENCHY presenta Antigona Soft, una versió més relaxada i desestructurada que l'original. Aquesta bossa flexible amb una silueta geomètrica no estructurada té dues nanses i corretges laterals de cuir subjectes per un tancament de quart de volta. Un cadenat de metall polit gravat amb el logotip completa aquest model atemporal. Inspirado en la mitología griega, el bolso Antigona rinde homenaje a la diosa Antígona, cuyo nombre significa “la que se opone”. Este año, Matthew M. Williams, director artístico de la casa Givenchy, vuelve a visitar este modelo emblemático, dándole un toque industrial y volúmenes generosos. Para celebrar el 10º aniversario del bolso, GIVENCHY presenta Antigona Soft, una versión más relajada y desestructurada que la original. Este bolso flexible con una silueta geométrica desestructurada tiene dos asas y correas laterales de cuero sujetas por un cierre de cuarto de vuelta. Un candado de metal pulido grabado con el logo completa este modelo atemporal. (à Opportunities.fr Boutique) https://www.instagram.com/p/CpMq4itt8dv/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[tvctionary]

Erin Silver

Erin Silver was born eighteen years ago in the hit TV series Beverly Hills 90210. Daughter of the ex-drug addict Jackie Taylor and the successful orthodontist Mel Silver, and half-sister of the show’s stars, Kelly Taylor and David Silver, Erin wasn’t particularly interesting as a character, only making brief occasional appearances to support the development of the plot. 

The series finale, aired in 2000, seemed to be the last time we would see her: she was nine years old, serving as a flower girl in her brother David’s wedding to Donna Martin. In 2007, the CW Television Network announced the launching of the spin-off series 90210. The Wilson family moves from Kansas to Beverly Hills, where the father of the family is to serve as the new principal of the legendary West Beverly Hills High School. On the first day of school, the daughter, Annie Wilson, meets an eccentric girl called Silver. 

In modern television series, just like in Greek drama, the characters, their background, the plot and its importance have a fluid character. Clytemnestra has one status in Iphigenia at Aulis and another in Electra, and the role of Creon changes from Oedipus the King to Antigone. In the spin-off, Silver –who, just to be cool, now goes by her last name– bears no resemblance whatsoever to the blond, nerdy girl in Beverly Hills 90210. Highly eccentric, often irreverent, drama queen, she is following in the footsteps of her brother David, but instead of hosting a radio show she has a risky blog, which she uses to discuss intimate details about her school peers. After school, Silver hangs out in abused women’s shelters, since her home situation is tough. After her parents separate for a second time, her mother turns to drinking again, and her father, who has remarried a much younger woman, just isn’t there for her. Nor is her brother, who has moved to Japan with his wife Donna and their little daughter. So Erin moves in with her sister Kelly, the now pathetic guidance counselor of her school, in her well-appointed house in Venice, or perhaps Long Beach, and soon enough we understand that Silver’s irreverence and penchant for dramatics can be explained by the fact that she suffers from manic depression. 

Looking back at little Erin’s scenes in Beverly Hills 90210, I’m afraid that I cannot see a connection between little Erin and the teenager Erin. Her character was originally a girl called Daphne, and the writers of 90210 did a last-minute rewrite of her part, changing her name to Erin Silver, so that it would echo the megahit that spawned it, targeting not only the teen girls demographic but also the generation that grew up with these characters. Who wouldn’t want to see the new adventures of Kelly, Donna or David Silver? Most of these seasoned actors didn’t show any interest in revisiting the character that made them famous, and so the chance of seeing again David Silver, Dylan, Steve or Brandon Walsh (although Jason Priestley directed one episode) was lost. Yet the female stars were more cooperative: Shannen Doherty (Brenda Walsh) and Tori Spelling (Donna Martin) appeared in two episodes of the first season, for no apparent reason, whereas Jenny Garth (Kelly Taylor), as her sister’s guardian, made it to the second season. Then the new producer, Rebecca Sinclair, ventured a departure from nostalgia, focusing exclusively on the new generation of characters. Today Silver is nothing but a character in a teen TV series who is struggling in every which way to survive, without shouldering the burden of her famous siblings and their friends, and will probably come to an end together with the series, long before finishing high school, being grateful nonetheless for having a second chance to meet us again.   

[presentlydean]

Supernatural, Season 2, Episode 22, "All Hell Breaks Loose"

Antigone by Sophocles, trans. Richard Emil Braun

[a-terrible-sound]

Pokemon Eteocles and Pokemon Polyneices

[writerthreads]

The top 10 classic fears in literature

By Prof. Marianna Torgovnik on TedBlog

Fear #1:  Death, death, death—did I mention death?

An almost universal fear, death recurs in literature more than any other fear, all the way from canonical works through fantasies like J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. I list the fear of death three times since it occurs in many forms: fear of our own deaths, fear of family members or close friends dying, fear of children preceding parents, the death of an entire culture.

Some examples: Shakespeare’s Sonnets (“Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore”; Hamlet  (“To be or not to be”); John Keats (“When I have fears”); Virginia Woolf, The Waves; Pat Barker, The Ghost Road. This list could go on and on, because the fear does.

Fear #2:  Avoiding death for the wrong reasons.

Literature loves paradox and so, paradoxically, the second greatest fear is avoiding death for the wrong reasons: when death will inevitably follow a noble or moral act or out of cowardice, especially in war. For understandable reasons, this fear is less common than more general fear of death, but it is out there and memorable nonetheless.

Some examples: Sophocles, Antigone (to bury her dead brother, Antigone famously courts death); Shakespeare several times — Hamlet again (“There is a providence in the fall of a sparrow”) and Antony and Cleopatra (to avoid capture by Octavius); Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (“It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done”); Harry Potter in his pursuit of Voldemort.

Fear #3:  Hunger or other severe physical deprivation.

Survival tends to trump the finer emotions when it comes to fear. Sometimes time specific, the fear of hunger nonetheless reminds us of basic things. In romantic novels or poems, it can be and often is a symbol for more abstract needs, like love. In Holocaust literature, it portrays humanity strained to the core.

Some examples: Dante, The Divine Comedy (Count Ugolino and his children); Samuel Taylor Coleridge, “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (“Water, water, every where, nor any drop to drink”); Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre; Elie Wiesel, Night; Susanne Collins’ The Hunger Games.

Fear #4:  Killing or causing the death of someone you love.

Whether by murder, negligence or a set of circumstances beyond our control, the fear of causing the death of someone we love is a big one. It’s a stock feature of numerous spy and crime dramas, where we tend to brush it off since the hero (think James Bond) or (more rarely) heroine’s beloved is almost always a goner. Numerous operas by Verdi, including Rigoletto and Un Ballo in Maschera use this theme, sometimes more than once; in fact, opera thrives on this fear, as in Bizet’s Carmen. It usually takes serious and even majestic forms in literature.

Some examples:  Patroclus dying for Achilles in Homer’s The Iliad; Othello killing Desdemona in Shakespeare’s Othello; Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure (“Done because we are too menny”); D.H. Lawrence’s Women in Love (Gerald choosing to die rather than kill Gudrun); Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Fear #5: Being rejected and/or being loved by the wrong person.

At last we come to a fear that can have a lighter side and, sometimes — though not always — a happy ending. In literature, characters fear being rejected, being loved, and being loved by the wrong person in almost equal proportions. Once again, the examples span the ancient classics all the way up to the present.

Some examples:  Woman loves step-son madly in three versions of the same story, none with a happy ending (Euripides, Hippolytus; Racine, Phaedra; Mary Renault, The Bull from the Sea); mixed up couples set right in Shakespeare’s As You Like It; love triumphs by the end in Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice; two different kinds of love lead to tragedy in Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles; mixed results in Jeffrey Eugenides, The Marriage Plot.

Fear #6:  Illness, disease and aging.

Closely allied to the fear of death — but not identical to it — the fear of illness is another constant though, as we’d expect, the disease most feared changes over time. The bubonic plague used to be the leading contender; TB enjoyed a long dominance until cures were found. Nowadays, cancer and, more often, dementia are far greater fears. There is at least one stunning example in this category of embracing the fear being absolutely the right thing to do: Flaubert’s St Julien, L’Hospitalier, in which the saint embraces a leper and achieves transcendence.

Some examples:  Giovanni Boccacio’s Decameron; Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year; Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray; Albert Camus, La Peste (The Plague); Ian McEwan, Atonement; Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections.

Fear #7:  Lost reputation, divorce or scandal.

People used to fear this one more than they do today, when our motto seems to be that no publicity is really bad publicity and unseemly revelations are the order of the day. Still, this is a significant fear, and one that even recent books revisit in original ways.

Some examples: Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina; D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover; Thomas Wolfe, The Bonfire of the Vanities; Phillip Roth, The Human Stain.

Fear #8:  War, shipwrecks and other disasters.

The fear of shipwrecks can seem archaic — but they were the airplane crashes of yesteryear. Shipwrecks can be mere episodes or the core of the plot; in early literature, they are closely allied with war, a more global disaster. While other disasters arouse fear — earthquakes, volcanos — war and shipwrecks lead the field. Both change characters’ lives, with variable results.

Some examples:  Homer, The Odyssey; Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels; Tolstoy, War and Peace; Yann Martel, Life of Pi.

Fear #9:  The law and, more specifically, lawyers.

Fear of the law is a surprisingly classic fear, weighing in at number nine. But what’s meant by the law changes over time. While fear of God’s judgment remains plausible in literature, it is far less common today than fear of society’s laws — and specifically the rapacity of lawyers and the law’s ability, in Dickens’ words, “to make business for itself.” In some modern books, the law becomes a metaphor for the meaning of life.

Some examples:  The Bible; Aeschylus, The Oresteia; Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter; Dickens, Bleak House; Franz Kafka, The Trial; Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

Fear #10:  That real life won’t resemble literature.

While this might seem the most trivial of fears, in fact it drives a lot of great literature. Some characters want life to be elevated, inflated, like epic or romantic literature. Deprived of that illusion, they die or take their own lives—looping us back to fear #1. Other characters favor codes of renunciation that have been called by literary critics “the Great Tradition,” fearing that they will gain something by immoral or amoral actions; a variation on this fear is the fear, as George Eliot’s Dorothea puts it, “I try not to have desires merely for myself.” Not at all light for avid readers, this fear usefully reminds us that life is not really like a Henry James novel.

Some examples:  Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote; Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary; George Eliot, Middlemarch; Henry James, The Ambassadors; Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.

[gcnesistorevelation]

dark academia literary works: a masterlist

Hello! I replied to this post on Reddit today, trying to compile all the dark academia books I could think of, and then thought that maybe all of you here might find it useful too, so here you go. It is a very, very broad list, a mix of classic and contemporary literature, and there is no set criteria besides having a dark vibe (this includes murder and crime but could just be the way it’s written as well) and portraying an academic setting, most of the time from the student’s point of view. I haven’t read all of these myself and so I can’t judge on quality, but hopefully this will inspire people to add on to it in the comments.

Here you go!

The Lessons by Naomi Alderman Truly, Devious by Maureen Johnson The Secret History, Donna Tartt If We Were Villains by M. L. Rio Maurice by E. M. Forster The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde Possession by A.S. Byatt The Truants by Kate Weinberg The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark Vicious by V. E. Schwab The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater (tangentially related) A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro The Likeness by Tana French The Rachel Papers by Martin Amis Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo (coming out tomorrow!) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman Oleanna by David Mamet Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

Other classics that are not Dark Academia in content, but which I would include in a list of the DA canon: The Iliad and The Odyssey by Homer Shakespeare's plays (Macbeth, Hamlet are good ones to start with) A Separate Peace, John Knowles The Bacchae, Euripides Greek tragedies (a good one to start with is Antigone, very popular and staged many a time) Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman Beat generation literature Jane Austen’s books (light academia, anyone?)

[superheroesandstardust]

Part 1 of my attempt to catch up on Asis. Every day is Asis day

Chapter 41

The way that I read “I’m not kidding when I say this university’s music choices are part of the reason I got my own apartment so fast” as megolovania, followed by hozier, and then legend of Zelda music plays overhead in our dining hall 🤠 (I actually love the music choices in our dining hall shhh don't tell the others)

Reader not being into superhero movies has got to be the funniest bit of irony @lowkeyorloki has ever pulled

Oh wow. Okay reading that the school year is also over immediately hit me with the “so are we registering for Loki’s class again or is that weird??” and I’m glad the consensus that we’re feeling is “AHHHHHH” yknow? It’s a very hard situation. Especially bc while of course they’re both trying to be as unbiased as possible they’re both human and very biased.

I don’t like the idea that we just lied to Loki though that doesn’t feel right. And he definitely knows it was a lie there's no way he doesn't. He's a dad. Parents have that instinct 😳

ANTIGONEEEEE.

dude I love Antigone. And I love that Loki is using texts his students would be familiar with to rebuild their perspective on the world. It’s a very important way to have someone actually grow in my opinion (not that new texts can’t do that too but I like that he’s making a point to revisit). Anyway don't mind me showing teacher appreciation 🤪

Narvi has a sleep over!!! So proud of my boy he’s making friends :’) 💖❣️💘💗💞💞💓

Jane sick??? Slight little thing for plot or are we introducing a comics storyline and things are about to get very bad very fast ???

To be fair, I would never just toss my shirt on the floor but I find it really funny that Loki physically cannot just leave it there. What a dad 😂

Showering with someone is just so sweet and intimate I cannot 😭😭😭 I am so touch starved get out

Loki being slightly possessive akfjfjfjfjjf

"What you mean is that you want Loki to reach inside you, rub the places only he can reach and send you toppling over the edge for the rest of your life. You mean you want to stay in this moment forever, shrouded by the cover of steam and the smell of Loki’s body wash. Here, you and Loki are untouchable. Permanent."

lol ok drama queen (I would. I am a drama queen)

(No but I get that unfortunately due to the nature of their relationship, they don't get quiet moments where they can just simply be together like an average couple and it's starting to take a slight toll on both of them).

Loki is getting so soft in these smut scenes omg 🥺🥺

Okay also and the importance of him wanting to make clear that them having sex isn't a transaction and that they can just be there for each other 😭 look at these fools in love.

I want to braid Loki's hair so bad. And the fact that he asked for it!!!! Screaming, crying, rolling in my bed. I love watching him get more vulnerable and affectionate.

[contre-qui]

End of the Year Reading Tag

I was tagged by the wonderful @the---hermit Thank you so much!

Did you reach your reading goal for the year (if you had one)?

Yes! My goal was 40+ and I read 74 (as of 30 December). I'm very pleased with myself.

What are your top 3 books you read this year?

My official top 3 are coming soon in my Books of 2021 Wrapup, but three of the books that lived in my brain the longest this year were I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name by Audre Lorde, and An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

What's a book you didn't expect to enjoy quite so much going in?

Antigone by Sophocles, translated by H.D.F. Kitto. It was surprisingly good and impressively relevant for such an old play.

Were there any books that didn't live up to your expectations?

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote and The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant.

Did you reread any old faves? If so, which one was your favorite?

I reread The Graveyard Book (Gaiman), The Pearl (Steinbeck), I Am the Cheese (Cormier), Boneshaker (Priest), The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Adams), and The Tempest (Shakespeare). The only one I reread because I love it was The Graveyard Book; besides that I either reread these for class or because I wanted to revisit them because I didn't remember them very well.

Did you DNF any books?

Island by Aldous Huxley and The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Both I would give another shot, but it just wasn't the right time for them when I tried them.

Did you read any books outside your usual preferred genre(s)?

The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant is a romance, which I don't normally read. However, it wasn't very good (and arguably barely a romance as it's advertised). Otherwise I'll kind of read anything so nothing else was super far outside my preferences - simply because I'll give almost anything a shot.

What was your predominant format this year?

Physical - but I did try my first audiobook this year.

What's the longest book you read this year?

The Empire of Gold by S.A. Chakraborty - clocking in at 782 pages.

What are your top 3 anticipated 2022 releases?

HMRC by Juno Dawson is the only one on my radar right now, but I'm sure I'll check out other 2022 releases.

What books from you TBR did you not get to this year, but at excited to read in 2022?

To name a few:

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao, Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews, The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern, and All Boys Aren't Blue by George M. Johnson

I'll tag (no pressure) @l-in-the-creative-world @abbeyx @hopebooks

[iphisesque]

51, 60 and 70 👀

51. a book that you found underwhelming

Bertolt Brecht's Antigone, with no doubt; it might just be that I was still reeling from Jean Anouilh's, and I definitely have to revisit it at some point, but it was quite a letdown in my opinion, especially as someone who had previously only ever read his Life of Galileo and some of his poetry.

60. a book that you think about at 3am

I don't know, to be honest? There are lots of things I think about late at night (I am usually asleep at 3am), but none of them books, I'm afraid 😔

70. your favourite poetry collection

I am flattered that you not only think I read poetry, but poetry collections too ❤️ I don't want to say any ancient poets because that would be cheating, though we all know my love for Sappho, Catullus and Virgil, so I'm going to say anything by Salvatore Quasimodo and Mariannina Coffa, as well as The Siege by Ljuba Merlina Bortolani.

[cordeliaflyte]

8 & 135

a book you finished in one sitting

antigone, if that counts! so short yet so tragic. because it's a tragedy but you know.

recommend any book you like!

i recommend brideshead revisited to everyone i meet it still makes me go crazy

[oatbrew]

I've been following you for a /long/ time so I know this has been asked before but your tastes may have changed so I wanted to ask what are your favourite books of all time along with most meaningful ones since I guess those two aren't exactly the same, as well as other really important media that you think have helped to shape your life

oh man anon have you been with me since my doctor who days? much love from me whatever time you jumped onto my silly raft

favorite books:

they’re all kind of meaningful to me so i didn’t make a distinction between “favorite” and “meaningful” (listed in no particular order)

life of pi by yann martel

tell the wolves i’m home by carol rifka brunt

a clockwork orange by anthony burgess

les miserables by victor hugo

jane eyre by charlotte bronte

persuasion by jane austen

and the mountains echoed by khaled hosseini

war and peace by leo tolstoy

notes from underground by fyodor dostoevsky

giovanni’s room by james baldwin

deathless by catherynne m. valente

gone girl by gillian flynn

on earth we’re briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong

dictee by theresa hak kyung cha

his dark materials by philip pullman

chaos walking by patrick ness

illuminations by walter benjamin

all about love by bell hooks

patron saints of nothing by randy ribay

america is not the heart by elaine castillo

scenes of subjection by saidiya hartman

romances: bringing down the duke & a rogue of one’s own by evie dunmore, the hating game by sally thorne, a week to be wicked by tessa dare, suddenly you by lisa kleypas, the kiss quotient by helen hoang (and more listed here)

plays: king lear & much ado about nothing (favorite shakespearean tragedy and comedy), the glass menagerie by tennessee williams, antigone by sophocles, the oresteian trilogy by aeschylus, endlings by celine song, rust by nancy garcia loza, manny pacquaio punches the world but the earth doesn’t even flinch by mark galarrita, boni alvarez’s entire oeuvre

other formative media:

so formative for me doesn’t necessarily mean good or a current favorite. rather these works are things that have had a considerable impact in how i write, consume, make art, study, read, critique, appreciate, live, etc.

the essay i keep handy at all times and build my life around: washing dishes by thich nhat hanh

childhood/ya books that i seldom touch these days but i still remember random passages of word-for-word: little house series by laura ingalls wilder, the inheritance cycle by christopher paolini, bloodlines series by richelle mead, the diviners & the gemma doyle trilogy by libba bray, the fire and thorns trilogy by rae carson, hate list by jennifer brown, the hunger games series by suzanne collins

divorced, fraught media that still has considerable influence in my current interests and artistry: harry potter, twilight, the infernal devices, hamilton, a song of ice and fire, the walking dead, maximum ride (like yes i know...but also this was the start of the found family trope for me)

video games that make me continuously buy into this stupid hobby: animal crossing: wild world, final fantasy vii (crisis core), kingdom hearts (birth by sleep), persona 3 portable, persona 5, dragon age series, the last of us/part 2, harvest moon: mfomt, pokemon emerald, rune factory 4, fire emblem: awakening, red dead redemption 2, ace attorney series (and other otome/visual novels listed here)

the catwoman comics run by ed brubaker and darwyn cooke

live theatre productions that i constantly steal from as a theatre maker and/or proshots i constantly revisit: hamlet (2017 almeida theatre), natasha pierre and the great comet of 1812 (2016 broadway), much ado about nothing (2019 public theatre), othello (2015 rsc), next to normal (2017 ewp), les miserables 10th anniversary (1995), les miserables (2016 broadway revival with john owen-jones), bandstand (2017 broadway), america adjacent (2019 skylight theatre), the curious incident of the dog in the night-time (2017 national theatre), fun home (2015 broadway), legally blonde the musical (the mtv proshot! a classic), newsies (2017 proshot), rent (2008 final performance proshot), phantom of the opera (2012 royal albert hall proshot), dear evan hansen (2019 us tour), company (2007 broadway revival proshot), hadestown (2019 broadway), gypsy (2008 broadway revival), tick tick...boom! (2001 off-broadway), early starkid productions, mojada: a medea in los angeles (2015 getty villa), miss saigon (1991 broadway...for my complicated feelings about this musical i wrote an entire thinkpiece about that here)

childhood tv shows that made me start a livejournal or a fan forum: teen titans (the original cn show), avatar: the last airbender, doctor who (especially rtd era season 1-4)

my emo albums i still use for writing: welcome to the black parade by my chemical romance, bad blood by bastille, american idiot by green day, folie a deux by fall out boy, a fever you can’t sweat out by panic! at the disco, the twilight movie soundtrack and sm*yer’s custom playlists she posted on her website

all the movies listed here

all animanga listed here

[suits-of-woe]

I’m reading Chaucer’s “The Knight’s Tale” and I knew that was the source for Two Noble Kinsmen and I knew vaguely what era it was supposed to be set but I never put two and two together until now that Palamon and Arcite’s tyrant uncle is fucking CREON, like from Antigone. This fact has rocked my world. (Edit: I just went back and they DO say his name in the play, I just haven’t revisited it in a hot minute and never noticed)

I kind of assumed that Creon had learned his lesson about the whole desecrating prominent people’s dead bodies thing and had a depressing but peaceful reign after that but APPARENTLY NOT.