#﹐ m usher‚ prose.

[andsanctify]

❝ one kill to prevent thousands, that's good politics. ❞

@danviers , alex danvers ⟳ madeline usher , prompt

[mostlysignssomeportents]

It’s been twenty years since my Microsoft DRM talk

On THURSDAY (June 20) I'm live onstage in LOS ANGELES for a recording of the GO FACT YOURSELF podcast. On FRIDAY (June 21) I'm doing an ONLINE READING for the LOCUS AWARDS at 16hPT. On SATURDAY (June 22) I'll be in OAKLAND, CA for a panel and a keynote at the LOCUS AWARDS.

This week on my podcast,This week on my podcast, I read my June 17, 2004 Microsoft Research speech about DRM, a talk that went viral two decades ago, and reassess its legacy:

https://craphound.com/msftdrm.txt

It's been 20 years (and one day) since I gave that talk. It wasn't my first talk like that, but at the time, it was the most successful talk I'd ever given. I was still learning how to deliver a talk at the time, tinkering with different prose and delivery styles (to my eye, there's a lot of Bruce Sterling in that one, something that's still true today).

I learned to give talks by attending sf conventions and watching keynotes and panel presentations and taking mental notes. I was especially impressed with the oratory style of Harlan Ellison, whom I heard speak on numerous occasions, and by Judith Merril, who was a wonderful mentor to me and many other writers:

https://locusmag.com/2021/09/cory-doctorow-breaking-in/

I was also influenced by the speakers I'd heard at the many political rallies I'd attended and helped organize; from the speakers at the annual Labour Day parade to the anti-nuclear proliferation and pro-abortion rights marches I was very involved with. I also have vivid memories of the speeches that Helen Caldicott gave in Toronto when I was growing up, where I volunteered as an usher:

https://www.helencaldicott.com/

When I helped found a dotcom startup in the late 1990s, my partners and I decided that I'd do the onstage talking; we paid for a couple hours of speaker training from an expensive consultant in San Francisco. The only thing I remember from that session was the advice to look into the audience as much as possible, rather than reading from notes with my head down. Good advice, but kinda obvious.

The impetus for that training was my onstage presentation at the first O'Reilly P2P conference in 2001. I don't quite remember what I said there, but I remember that it made an impression on Tim O'Reilly, which meant a lot to me then (and now):

https://www.oreilly.com/pub/pr/844

I don't remember who invited me to give the talk at Microsoft Research that day, but I think it was probably Marc Smith, who was researching social media at the time by data-mining Usenet archives to understand social graphs. I think I timed the gig so that I could kill three birds with one stone: in addition to that talk, I attended (and maybe spoke at?) that year's Computers, Freedom and Privacy conference, and attended an early preview of the soon-to-launch Sci Fi Museum (now the Museum of Pop Culture). I got to meet Nichelle Nichols (and promptly embarrassed myself by getting tongue-tied and telling her how much I loved the vocals she did on her recording of the Star Wars theme, something I'm still hot around the ears over, though she was a pro and gently corrected me, "I think you mean Star *Trek"):

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=4IiJUQSsxNw&list=OLAK5uy_lHUn58fbpceC3PrK2Xu9smBNBjR_-mAHQ

But the start of that trip was the talk at Microsoft Research; I'd been on the Microsoft campus before. That startup I did? Microsoft tried to buy us, which prompted our asshole VCs to cram the founders and steal our equity, which created so much acrimony that the Microsoft deal fell through. I was pretty bitter at the time, but in retrospect, I really dodged a bullet – for one thing, the deal involved my going to work for Microsoft as a DRM evangelist. I mean, talk about the road not taken!

This was my first time back at Microsoft as an EFF employee. There was some pre-show meet-and-greet-type stuff, and then I was shown into a packed conference room where I gave my talk and had a lively (and generally friendly) Q&A. MSR was – and is – the woolier side of Microsoft, where all kinds of interesting people did all kinds of great research.

Indeed, almost every Microsoft employee I've ever met was a good and talented person doing the best work they could. The fact that Microsoft produces such a consistent stream of garbage products and crooked business practices is an important testament to the way that a rotten organization can be so much less than the sum of its parts.

I'm a fully paid up subscriber to Ronald Coase's "Theory of the Firm" (not so much his other views):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

Coase says the reason institutions exist is to enable people to work together with lowered "coordination costs." In other words, if you and I are going to knit a sweater together, we're going to need to figure out how to make sure that we're not both making the left sleeve. Creating an institution – the Mafia, the Catholic Church, Microsoft, a company, a co-op, a committee that puts on a regional science fiction con – is all about minimizing those costs.

As Yochai Benkler pointed out in 2002, the coolest and most transformative thing about the internet is that it let us do more complex collective work with smaller and less structured institutions:

https://www.benkler.org/CoasesPenguin.PDF

That was the initial prompt for my novel Walkaway, which asked, "What if we could build luxury hotels and even space programs with the kind of (relatively) lightweight institutional overheads associated with Wikipedia and the Linux kernel?"

https://crookedtimber.org/2017/05/10/coases-spectre/

So the structure of institutions is really important. At the same time, I'm skeptical of the idea that there are "good companies" and "bad companies." Small businesses, family businesses, and other firms that aren't exposed to the finance sector can reflect their leaders' personalities, but it's a huge mistake to ascribe personalities to the companies themselves.

That's how you get foolish ideas like "Apple is a good company because they embrace paid service and Google is a bad company because they make money from surveillance." Apple will spy on you, too, if they can:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Disney and Fox weren't Romeo and Juliet, star-crossed lovers making goo-goo eyes at each other across the table at MPA meetings. They were two giant public companies, and any differences between them were irrelevancies and marketing myths:

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

I think senior management's personalities do matter (see, for example, the destruction of Boeing after it was colonized by sociopaths from McDonnell Douglas), but the influence of those personalities is much less important than the constraints that competition and regulation impose on companies. In other words, an asshole can run a company that delivers good products at fair prices under ethical conditions – provided that failing to do so will cost more in lost business and fines than they stand to make by cheating:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/24/record-scratch/#autoenshittification

Microsoft is a company founded and run by colossal assholes. Bill Gates is a monster and he surrounded himself with monsters, and they hired monsters to fill out the courts of their corporate palaces:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/14/patch-tuesday/#fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again

To the extent that good things come out of Microsoft – some of its games products, the odd piece of hardware, important papers from MSR – it's in spite of the leadership; it's the result of constraints imposed by competition and regulation – and that's why Microsoft pursued such an aggressive program of extinguishing its competitors and capturing its regulators.

In retrospect, I think one of my goals in that talk was to convince those people doing good work for a rotten institution to go elsewhere and do other things. Certainly, that's one of the goals I pursue in the talks I give today. At the time, some of Microsoft's highest-profile technologists were publicly resigning over the company's war on free/open source software, so it wasn't an unrealistic goal:

https://web.archive.org/web/20030214215639/http://synthesist.net/writing/onleavingms.html

What I did not expect what that publishing the talk on my site and blogging it on Boing Boing would spark a wave of public interest that would get its message in front of several orders of magnitude more people than I spoke to at Microsoft that day. Partly, that was because I released the talk into the public domain, using the brand-new Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration (which was later replaced with the CC0 mark, due to legal issues withBu its drafting):

https://web.archive.org/web/20100223035835/http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain/

Some mix of the content of the speech, the spirit of the moment, and the novelty of that wide open license sparked a ton of interest. Jason Kottke recorded an audio version that Andy Baio hosted:

https://kottke.org/04/06/cory-drm-talk

My brutalist ASCII transcript was quickly converted to beautiful HTML by Matt Haughey and Anil Dash:

https://web.archive.org/web/20040622235333/http://www.dashes.com/anil/stuff/doctorow-drm-ms.html

For people who needed a hardcopy, there was Patrick Berry's printer-friendly stylesheet:

https://patandkat.com/pat/weblog/mirror/cory-drm/doctorow-drm-ms.html

Multiple people recorded (and sold!) audio versions, and then there were all the fan translations, into Danish, French, Finnish, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (both EU and Brazilian), Spanish and Swedish. I stayed in touch with some of those translators, and they helped me translate the position papers I wrote for UN WIPO meetings. Those papers were so effective that ratfuckers from the copyright lobby started to steal them and hide them in the UN toilets (!):

https://web.archive.org/web/20041119132831/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/002117.php

Re-reading the speech for my podcast on Sunday, I expected to be struck by the anachronisms in it, and there were a few of those to be sure. But far more clear was the common thread running from this talk to other talks I gave that took on a significant life of their own, like my 2011 "War On General Purpose Computing" talk for CCC:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

And my work on Adversarial Interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interoperability

And my most recent work, on enshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/

In other words, I've been saying the same thing – in different ways – for more than 20 years. That could be depressing, but I actually found it uplifting. Two decades ago, I was radicalized by a fear that the internet would be seized by corporations and governments and transformed into a system of surveillance and control. I found my way into a job at EFF, where I worked with colleagues across multiple disciplines – coders, lawyers and activists – to fight this force.

At the time, this was a fringe cause. Most of the traditional activists I'd come up with in the feminist, antiwar, antiracist, environmental and labour movement viewed digital rights as a distraction and dismissed its partisans as sad, self-obsessed nerds who mistook fights over the management of Star Trek message boards for civil rights struggles:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/10/04/small-change-malcolm-gladwell

I thought I was right then, and I think history has borne me out. The point of waging these fights – both in the wide public sphere and within political movements – is to get people activated before it's too late. Every day that goes by is a day when the internet becomes more inhospitable to political organizing for a better world – more surveillant, more controlling. I believed then – and believe today – that the internet isn't more important that the other fights I waged as a young activist, but I think that the internet is fundamental to those fights.

Saving the planet, smashing patriarchy, overthrowing tyranny and freeing labor are all fights that will be coordinated – Coase style – on the internet. Without a free, fair and open internet, those fights are infinitely harder to win.

The project of getting people to understand, care about, and fight for digital rights is a marathon, not a sprint. When I joined EFF, it was already 12 years old. There were six people in the org then (I was the seventh). Today, there's more than a hundred of us, and we're stretched so thin! The 30+ year old idea that internet policy will intersect with every part of every fight has been utterly vindicated.

Back in 2004, I asked Microsoft why they were willing to fight the US government to the death over antitrust enforcement, but were such wimps when confronted with the entertainment industry's demands for DRM. 20 years later, I think I know the answer: Microsoft understood that DRM would let them usurp the relationship between creative workers, entertainment industry companies, and audiences. Their perfect instincts for seeking out and capitalizing on opportunities to seize monopoly power drove them to make deliberately defective products, in the belief that their market power would let them cram those products down our throats:

https://memex.craphound.com/2004/01/27/protect-your-investment-buy-open/

Here's a link to the podcast episode:

https://craphound.com/news/2024/06/16/my-2004-microsoft-drm-talk/

And here's direct link to the MP3 (hosting courtesy of the Internet Archive; they'll host your stuff for free forever):

https://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_470_-_My_2004_Microsoft_DRM_Talk.mp3

And here's the RSS feed for my podcast:

https://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/06/18/greetings-fellow-pirates/#arrrrrrrrrr

[fullmetalfisting]

Here’s my August 2023 wrap up! Reviews under the cut. Also, I truly don’t understand how I wound up reading so many vampire-themed books this month! I don’t find vampires particularly interesting, this was just how my holds on books from the library shook out.

From Blood and Ash by Jennifer M. Armentrout | Fantasy, New Adult, Romance

⭐⭐

Summary: Poppy is the Maiden, a high-ranking position of power meant to usher in a new era of prosperity after she completes the mysterious “Ascension.” But as the Ascension grows nearer, her doubts begin to multiply. Her own misgivings paired with civil unrest cause her to question everything she knows. Also, one of her bodyguards is dreamy.

Thoughts: The worldbuilding was subpar to bad and the characters were all unlikable. The big twist was interesting, but not worth the slog it was to get there. Maybe I’m being too harsh, but I don’t understand why there are so freaking many New Adult Fantasy Romance books out these days. Of course, I would love to stumble upon a new Six of Crows or The Cruel Prince. But the fact is, not every author is skilled enough to write the new Grishaverse. I know a lot of people loved this book, but it just wasn’t it for me.

The Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard | Thriller, Mystery, Crime, Suspense

⭐⭐⭐ and 1/2

Summary: Lucy’s sister, Nicki, has been missing ever since she walked out of a Dublin bar late one night without a word to her friends. Angela is the Irish equivalent of a police dispatcher for the Missing Persons Unit who longs to be a detective herself. An unnamed man drives through the Irish countryside as he enumerates his crimes to the woman in his backseat, his latest victim. When Angela makes an alarming discovery, she sets a series of events into motion that changes the hunt for the serial killer plaguing Ireland and might just crack the case.

Thoughts: This was exceptionally entertaining, though the beginning was a bit slow. The commentary of what it’s like to be a woman in a precarious situation was spot-on, though it didn’t add anything new to the conversation. What I really enjoyed about this book was that it didn’t feel ghoulish, as crime novels often do since True Crime became so popular.

Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper | Young Adult, Witches, Historical Fiction, Mother and Daughter Relationships, Fantasy, Romance

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Avery Roe is descended from a long line of witches, all of whom resided on Prince Island, Massachusetts, giving up something unimaginable in order to obtain their magic, which they then use to protect the whalers at sea. But Avery’s mother saw the price that had to be paid in order to become the island’s witch and chose, instead, to attempt to make a life in Victorian society. Avery struggles against her mother’s rules, longing to go to her grandmother and learn the spells she needs to become the next island’s witch. But when Avery has a prophetic dream that shows her she will be murdered, suddenly Avery’s struggles become urgent.

Thoughts: This book had extraordinary prose and fantastic descriptions. Kulper masterfully depicted a tense relationship between mother and daughter. However, the price that is so built up that must be paid in order to obtain one’s magic was anticlimactic. I was, “That’s all?”

Naramauke by Lily Sparks | Young Adult, Companion Novella, Horror, Romance, Contemporary

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Erik’s version of events from the novel Teen Killers Club by Lily Sparks.

Thoughts: This novella gave readers of the Teen Killers Club series (final installment out in October) a glimpse into the motivations of characters that we didn’t get to see from Signal’s perspective. Definitely hyped me up for Teen Killers at Large.

Dark Water Daughter by H.M. Long | Fantasy, Pirates, Romance, Magic

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: A swashbuckling fantasy set among pirates, tree spirits, and mages alike. Mary Firth is a Stormsinger: someone who can control the winds and weather with a song. She has kept her ability a secret all her life for her own safety, but when she is mistaken as a highwayman and brought to the noose, she has no choice but to sing herself out of the situation. Now, pirates and privateers are after her for her unique ability to sail ships wherever they need to go. But that’s not all they’re after.

Thoughts: While well-written and entertaining at times, I found myself at sea (pun not intended) for a lot of this. I think this type of story just wasn’t for me, and it isn’t going to be something I remember reading six months from now.

How to Bite Your Neighbor and Win a Wager by D.N. Bryn | M M Romance, Vampires, Contemporary, New Adult

⭐

Summary: Wes is a recent college graduate mourning the sudden disappearance of his beloved mother. Vincent is a starving, houseless vampire whose support system was yanked away from him when he was turned by accident during his freshman year of college. Together, they explore a milquetoast attraction to one another as Vincent experiences a veritable barrage of hate crimes while Wes stands insipidly by. Also, there are entire passages lifted from The Song of Achilles and reworded so it’s not technically plagiarism.

Thoughts: This was hot, wet garbage. It reads like fanfiction written by the cringiest theater kid you ever had the displeasure of meeting in high school. The dialogue reminds one of how young teenagers speak, not how adults interact with one another. Case in point: a side character asks Wes if Vincent makes him, “tingly in [his] pingly.” He proceeds to refer to his penis as his “pingly” for the rest of the novel. I can’t make this shit up. And while the plot was clearly too ambitious of a concept for the skill level of the author, I am still disappointed with the result of this whole pharmaceutical conspiracy.

Mister Magic by Kiersten White | Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Contemporary

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Everyone remembers their favorite childhood television show, Mister Magic. What no one can agree on is what Mister Magic looked like. Unlike most shows from the early 90s, it’s impossible to find recordings of the episodes, even in the furthest reaches of the internet. But in an era where nostalgia is extremely profitable, someone gets the idea to have a reunion of the cast of the show in the form of a podcast. Val is 38 and lives on a ranch in Idaho. She has no memories of her time before she and her father arrived at the ranch covered in fresh burn scars at the age of eight. But when three men show up to her father’s funeral, she feels like she’s met them before. And when they tell her that her mother is alive and they all share a past, she has no choice but to return to the place where Mister Magic was filmed in search of answers.

Thoughts: The opening of this book is stunning. It draws the reader in, playing on that weird Mandela Effect we all have about media from our own childhoods. However, as the story progresses, things become more and more surreal, to the point where I wasn’t sure I was following what exactly was going on. It was so abstract that I found myself getting frustrated and bored.

Rent to Be by Sonia Hartl | Romance, Contemporary, New Adult

⭐⭐⭐

NOTE: I read an ARC.

Summary: Isla Jane is an elder zoomer (not a millennial, as the book blurbs will have to believe) who was, like many of us post-college twentysomethings, one unforeseen expense away from financial disaster. That expense, for her, came in the form of a broken transmission, which caused her to miss rent payments, which caused her to get kicked out by her roommates. Thus kicks off Isla’s month-long struggle to keep her head above water while she sleeps under her desk at work, housesits, and crashes on her brother’s couch, all while her brother’s handsome best friend stands by, sometimes teasing her but most of the time supporting her.

Thoughts: Hartl discusses the economic woes all new adults face with startling accuracy (although I’m not sure why Isla didn’t go to a food rescue if she was so food-insecure). However, Isla’s introduction in the story is frankly a lot, and for a few chapters, I was siding with her roommates. I’ve had roommates of my own neglect to pay their share of rent and neglect to discuss it with me, and believe me, I was not happy when the landlord showed up wondering where his $500-odd dollars were. Despite the initial bad taste in my mouth, I did grow to like Isla and sympathize with her interpersonal problems with her parents: Boundaries matter. And I think Cade acted as a great foil in that regard. Just because someone had it worse than Isla, that doesn’t mean Isla isn’t allowed to be hurt by her parent’s thoughtlessness. Overall, a good portrayal of young millennial/elder zoomer financial struggles with a cute romance.

In Nightfall by Suzanne Young | Urban Fantasy, Horror, Contemporary, Young Adult, Vampires, Reimagining, Supernatural

⭐⭐

Summary: In this reimagining of the 1987 film The Lost Boys, a pair of siblings visit their father’s hometown in the wake of their parent’s divorce. While Marco immediately falls in love with the stunning and stunningly cool Minnow, our heroine, Theo, isn’t so enamored. Things get stranger and stranger as their visit progresses, until it’s clear that there’s something wrong with this town--and it’s gotten its claws into Marco.

Thoughts: This was maybe ten to fifteen chapters too long. The paperback is nearly 400 pages and if I’m being honest, a YA vampire thriller with no symbolism/philosophy to speak of has no business being so tedious and long. I had to force myself through certain parts. It had the potential to be really fun and creepy if an editor had gone through it with some hedge clippers. Instead, it was boring. Amazing cover though.

Tilly in Technicolor by Mazey Eddings | Romance, Young Adult, Contemporary, Mental Health, Travel, Humor

⭐⭐⭐

NOTE: I read an ARC.

Summary: Tilly just graduated high school by the skin of her teeth thanks to her ADHD making it impossible to focus in a traditional classroom setting. Oliver, also neurodivergent, runs a successful Instagram page utilizing Pantone’s colors to relate to the world around him and start a dialogue about color theory. Both have spots as summer interns for a startup nail polish company, where they traverse falling in love in a world that wasn’t made for your brain chemistry.

Thoughts: Despite its serious subject matter, I found Tilly in Technicolor to be both heartfelt and wildly funny. The dialogue was age-appropriate for a YA book without feeling like an adult was poorly imitating how kids talk, and the characters were all flawed from the jump without seeming unlikeable. I did, however, find myself rolling my eyes at the inevitable Final Act Breakup, though that was resolved in pretty short order.

The Last Girls Standing by Jennifer Dugan | Horror, LGBT, Mystery, Young Adult

⭐

Summary: Sloan and Cherry are the only two girls who survived a horrific mass-murder. Now, as Sloan is trying to recover her memories, she grows more and more certain that Cherry is gaslighting her about what really happened that night.

Thoughts: I was expecting a fun slasher book. What I got was two dysfunctional lesbians screaming at each for 75% of the book. I was like, Just break up already! You two are so toxic to one another! I was annoyed at how misleading the cover and blurbs on this book were.

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas | Historical Fiction, Horror, Vampires, Vaqueros, Gothic, Romance

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: After a gruesome mauling by a gray, eyeless, humanoid monster, Néstor believes his childhood sweetheart, Nena, to be dead. In the wake of the attack, he flees the ranch he was raised on and spends the next nine years breaking horses by day and chasing Nena’s ghost away with copious amounts of alcohol and meaningless sex by night. But when he is called back to the ranch after the Texans declare war on Mexico, he discovers that Nena survived the attack, and she is furious that he left her without so much as a word. An accomplished healer, Nena accompanies her father’s battalion to war, where she and Néstor are separated from everyone else. Soon, she and Néstor learn that there is more to be scared of than just the Yanquís trying to take their land.

Thoughts: At first, I found this to be an excellent, immersive read that had me feeling Néstor’s grief and Nena’s anger. It transported me to mid-1800s Northern Mexico. As the story wore on, I found the interpersonal conflict to be deeply annoying. In his inner monologue, Néstor insists he loves Nena. Yet when the two fight, he hits below the belt, casting aspersions on her due to imagined slights and even blaming her for being complicit to the exploitation of the working class. Like, Dude. She’s an unmarried woman during the Victorian era and there are vampires attacking you. I’m all for bringing down capitalism but maybe some of your ire is a little misplaced. They both whine an exceeding amount throughout the story about their relationship.

Ashes in the Snow by Oriana Ramuno | Historical Fiction, World War II, Crime, Holocaust, Nazi Germany, Murder Mystery

⭐⭐⭐

Note: I read an ARC

Summary: The year is 1943 and Detective Hugo Fischer, accomplished criminologist, is sent to Auschwitz to investigate the mysterious death of a high-ranking SS officer. A young twin and current favorite of the infamous Josef Mengele, eight-year-old Gioele is the one who discovered the body. The boy strikes a deal with the detective: he will provide information if Hugo locates his parents.

Thoughts: This novel opens up with a punch to the face: Detective Hugo Fischer is standing on the train platform in front of Auschwitz, waiting to be escorted to the crime scene. From there, he watches as an SS officer rips a baby from her mother’s arms and stomps her to death. After witnessing such a thing, one would think that Hugo might not be shocked at the horror that awaits him inside the camp. Yet it seems as though every injustice shocks him anew. I’m like, Hugo, you just saw a man murder a baby in front of her mother and you’re shocked that the Nazis are performing human experimentation? Come on. But Hugo has, since the Nazi party seized power, kept his head down in order to survive, which is why he wears the swastika on his jacket and pretends his bad leg was the result of polio and not a degenerative disease. And while the book seemed to be leaning quite hard on Hannah Arendt’s idea of the banality of evil, there is no denying that what went on at Auschwitz was anything but banal. While it was an engrossing read, I found myself disliking all of the characters except Gioele, because I don’t believe the line of reasoning that plenty of Nazis were doing their jobs because execution was the only other option. We even learn that Hugo had job offers all over the world but chose to stay in Berlin. It was difficult sympathizing with a character who, when we meet him, witnessed the brutal murder of a baby girl without uttering so much as a word.

Eventide by Sarah Goodman | Historical Fiction, Young Adult, Fantasy, Horror, Magic

⭐⭐

Summary: When Verity and Lilah’s father is committed to an asylum after the death of their mother, the two sisters find themselves on an orphan train heading from New York City to the small town of Wheeler, Arkansas. When adorable, 11-year-old Lilah is adopted immediately and there are no offers made on taciturn, 17-year-old Verity, Verity must take on an indenture to stay close to her beloved sister. But Wheeler is an odd town with strange magic in its bones and not everyone is as they seem, especially the mild-mannered schoolteacher who adopted Lilah.

Thoughts: I really do not like the sort of story where something is obviously happening and everyone around the protagonist doesn’t believe them. At least Verity’s friends and the one social worker believed her. I suppose I found myself frustrated that Verity showed up to a town and had to pay for the sins of her parents. What a parent does shouldn’t be the child’s burden to bear and the ending wasn’t fair.

The Lady Rogue by Jenn Bennet | Young Adult, Historical Fiction, Adventure

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Theodora Fox lives on the sidelines of her father’s Indiana Jones-esque treasure hunting career, staying behind at hotels with governesses and tutors as he and Huck Gallager--her ex-boyfriend and father’s apprentice of sorts--go on adventures. After Theo’s tutor absconds with all of her money, leaving Theo in a foreign city with no resources, the last person she wants to see is Huck Gallagher, who left in the middle of the night over a year ago without so much as a word. But when he tells her he believes her father to be in trouble, she has no choice but to set her feelings aside and team up with her former love to come to his rescue.

Thoughts: I really, really enjoyed the adventure side of this book. It was a fun romp through the Carpathian Mountains. The personal conflict between Huck and Theo, however, felt half-baked. It needed to be fleshed out a little more. And while the two seemed to agree that Fox (Theo’s father) was the root cause of their problems, that was never explored in any satisfying way. It felt like the author was rushing the ending rather than giving these characters catharsis after they’d been badly hurt by someone they both considered a parental figure.

With a Kiss We Die by L. R. Dorn | Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Contemporary

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Ryanna Raines is an investigative journalist and host of the hit true-crime podcast known as, “The Raines Report.” Before landing on a subject for her sixth season, she receives an intriguing message on her tip line from a 22-year-old theater student from USCB whose parents were found murdered in their San Diego home. He knows that the police are days away from charging both him and his 18-year-old girlfriend with murder and he wants Raines to fly to California and give the young students a chance to tell their side of the story and proclaim their innocence.

Thoughts: At first, I found this read to be deeply absorbing. I liked the podcast-y format (though I haven’t listened to a podcast in years, I can still appreciate the unique approach to storytelling). But as the story wore on, it became clear that there would be no big twists or interesting discoveries. It was anticlimactic and perhaps that was the point as the book was a fictional lens with which to look at the true crime genre. Still, I found myself unsatisfied with the lack of mystery in this alleged mystery novel.

Cackle by Rachel Harrison | Horror, Fantasy, Witches, Contemporary

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Annie Crane, suffering from a devastating breakup, has no choice but to move out of her expensive NYC apartment she shared with her now-ex and take a job teaching upstate. In the small, picturesque village of Rowan, Annie meets Sophie and begins a life-altering transformation.

Thoughts: This was honestly a really funny read. I’ve read another book by this author that was equally as funny, so I expected that. However, I thought the plot could stand to be a little more developed and I would have liked it to be a little darker.

Jackal by Erin E. Adams | Horror, Race, Contemporary, Thriller, Black Horror, Supernatural

⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Liz Rocher grew up in the Rust Belt town of Johnstown, PA. A black girl in an affluent, predominantly white community, she struggled to fit in with her classmates throughout her childhood, and when she left the small town for New York City, it was for good. When her best friend announces she’s getting married, though, Liz sucks it up and returns to her hometown in order to be a bridesmaid and to visit her best friend’s nine-year-old daughter (her goddaughter), Caroline, who herself is half black. At the wedding, though, Caroline goes missing. This starts Liz down a path of discovery: black girls go missing every June in this little, idyllic town.

Thoughts: While this was an engrossing read, I can’t help but feel like it would have been more effective as a screenplay/movie. And while the novel subverted plenty of tropes, it was still in the tired genre of “woman with a substance abuse problem returns to hometown and stumbles upon a murderer.”

My Roommate is a Vampire by Jenna Levine | Contemporary, Romance, Comedy, Vampires

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Summary: Chicago-based artist Cassie Greenberg is shocked to see a Craigslist apartment listed for only $200 a month. Financially desperate, she decides to meet her potential roommate, fully expecting to encounter a complete weirdo or worse. Well, her roommate is a weirdo: he’s wildly handsome, only comes out at night, never seems to cook or eat, and has a tenuous understanding of technology at best. When Cassie finds blood bags in the fridge, the pieces come together in her mind: her roommate is a vampire.

Thoughts: This was a super funny read. While I’d prefer the plot to be a little more developed, it was fun and campy and I laughed out loud more than once. Definitely didn’t take itself too seriously and I’d recommend it as a palate cleanser.

Together We Rot by Skyla Arndt | Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance, Mystery, Horror, Cults

⭐⭐

Summary: Wil and Elwood were best friends until her mom went missing last year. Then Wil finds herself being gaslighted by the local police and begins noticing all the deeply strange rituals of the local church. Worse, she’s sure she has seen members of the church wearing her mother’s jewelry. Elwood’s father is the preacher and leader of the strange church, and when Wil confronts Elwood, he chooses believing his family over believing her. That is, until he overhears his father speaking about human sacrifice to the local sheriff and realizes he must run for his life.

Thoughts: I thought the prose was overly-flowery and Elwood’s abrupt shift from steadfastly believing his family of being innocent to immediately believing them to be murderers was strange to say the least. He doesn’t even take the time to question what he overheard. He just runs away.

[itsthenovelteafactor]

Favorite Books 2023

I had a really good reading year in 2023, and was lucky enough to find some new favorites. I thought I’d share some recommendations here, and would love to hear some of yours! (If you are reading this, I mean you, specifically💛 ) 

The Postscript Murders (Elly Griffiths): This is the sequel to The Stranger Diaries, which was also one of my favorite books the year I first read it. Harbinder Kaur is a detective I could follow endlessly, the kind I seek to read mysteries about. She’s nuanced and clever and messy and deeply compassionate (even against her better judgement). Honestly, the character work throughout this book is excellent; the characters have such richly drawn personalities that feel fully developed, and the mystery is clever and well paced. 

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup (John Carreyrou): I watched the documentary on HBO (The Inventor - also fantastic) about Elizabeth Holmes and fell down a bit of a rabbit hole. It’s a bit terrifying to see how far someone could get on lies and connections to powerful people, but Carreyrou is also quick to point out all the people striving to do the right thing against all odds. There’s some fascinating discussions of science and technology, but the core always comes back to the people involved. This account manages to make this true story that feels larger than fiction grounded in individuals and their decisions; it’s well-researched, deliberately written, and absolutely engrossing. 

The Sea of Tranquility (Emily St. John Mandel): Mandel’s writing constantly inspires me; there is a deep precision to her descriptions that manages to still feel like it’s gliding, and a moving amount of compassion for the characters who inhabit the story, however flawed they may be. This book combines different timelines, moving from perspective to perspective in a way that only truly makes sense when it all comes together (and it comes together with a gut punch). 

What Moves the Dead (T. Kingfisher): A retelling of The Fall of the House of Usher with sinister fungi, I don’t think it’d be possible to make a better book for me on purpose. The writing is twisted, but lyrical, and the take on the story brings a powerful source of dread. Inter-spliced with this is a surprising and fascinating discussion of how culture and language shape ideas of gender. This is a contender for my favorite horror book of all time, and would highly recommend in particular to fans of Mexican Gothic. 

Plain Bad Heroines (Emily M. Danforth): This is a gothic boarding school ghost story turned Hollywood satire that is, at its heart, a sapphic love story. With an omniscient narrator (a lá Lemony Snicket, dear readers) this book tells the complicated history of an all girls’ school, and the women, past and present connected to it. It’s dark and grotesque and moving and funny and I could not put it down once I started. 

The House of Rust (Khadija Abdalla Bajabar): This is a magical realism coming-of-age story incorporating elements of diasporic Hadrami culture, following a girl’s quest to recover her father from the sea, who accidentally discovers herself along the way. The prose is gorgeous and even, making reading it feel like listening to a particularly well-told bedtime story. Aisha herself is a complicated and delightful character to follow, she’s allowed the messiness of adolescence and the way her journey ends is both surprising and necessary.  We also get the perspectives of crows with their own social hierarchy and politics, and a talking cat for whom I’d lay down my life. 

This World Does Not Belong to Us (Natalia García Friere, translated by Victor Meadowcroft): This is the kind of book you can’t annotate, because every single line would be highlighted. There is a delightful menage to the prose, to the garden which has a mind of its own, and to the slow and deliberate way the story begins to come together. This is a story about a lot of things, but primarily the dynamic between a father whose allowance of cruelty has made him cruel, and a son who cannot make allowances any more. It is poignant, and somehow both very simple and very deep. 

Never The Wind (Francesco Dimitri): This is a gothic coming of age story set in southern Italy, and following a recently blind thirteen year old, who begins to suspect a creature is stalking the farmhouse his parents are renovating into a hotel. There are a lot of things to love about this book – the prose, the characters, the discussion of a layered family history where digging leaves you with more questions than answers – but the friendship that blossoms between the two leads is a highlight. There is something incredibly moving about the first person to fight for you against the world.

The Watcher in the Shadows (Carlos Ruiz Zafón): Zafón is perhaps my favorite writer of all time, and the fact that I’ve almost read through his entire backlog would be saddening if it didn’t mean I also got to read stories like this one. The Watcher in the Shadows is one of his young adult novels, following a girl who moves with her family to the coast of Normandy, where a reclusive toymaker builds a labyrinth of mechanical puppets in his mansion on the hill. It’s as twisted and terrifying as that premise would lead one to suspect, but also beautiful and lush and contemplative and quiet. 

[sskk-ao3feed]

Rabid Dog (I Won't Let Them Take You Away)

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/VtYoBEg by casrainvy Atsushi seemed to have been watching his movements, because a motley of yellow and purple flashed down and away.  “You said you had two weeks left,” the man ushered out in explanation, “give me one week.”  Akutagawa stares at him; similar to a scarved dog on its deathbed. “A week for what?”  “To prove that your life means something.” OR, Akutagawa has two weeks left to live, and Atsushi tries to show him the light. Words: 6504, Chapters: 1/8, Language: English Fandoms: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Categories: M/M Characters: Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs) Relationships: Akutagawa Ryuunosuke/Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs) Additional Tags: Angst, Sad Ending, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, But also, It Gets Worse, Sad Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke is Bad at Feelings (Bungou Stray Dogs), Sick Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Nakajima Atsushi is a Ray of Sunshine (Bungou Stray Dogs), Extended Metaphors, Purple Prose, Other Additional Tags to Be Added read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/VtYoBEg

[thirstyvampyre]

Edgar Allan Poe

My Rankings based his works as found in 'Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe' as published by Doubleday

All Prose

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether

Ligeia

The Fall of the House of Usher

The Purloined Letter

The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym of Nantucket

Eleonora

The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The Cask of Amontillado

Berenice

The Masque of the Red Death

The Oval Portrait

Bon-Bon

Mystification

The Assignation

A Predicament

How to Write a Blackwood Article

"Thou Art the Man"

The Tell-tale Heart

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar

Hop-Frog

The Angel of the Odd

X-ing the Paragrab

Morella

William Wilson

Mellonta Tauta

Von Kempelen and his Discovery

Loss of Breath

The Imp of the Perverse

The Spectacles

King Pest

Mesmeric Revelation

The Black Cat

Why the Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling

The Oblong Box

The Premature Burial

The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaal

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains

Never Bet the Devil Your Head

The Colloquy of Monos and Una

The Man That Was Used Up

The Balloon-Hoax

Metzengerstein

Four Beasts in One

The Power of Words

The Gold-Bug

The Pit and the Pendulum

The Sphinx

A Tale of Jerusalem

Lionizing

Three Sundays in a Week

The Devil in the Belfry

Shadow - A Parable

The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion

Some Words with a Mummy

A Descent into the Maelström

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

The Duc de l'Omelette

Silence - A Fable

The Island of the Fay

The Domain of Arnheim

The Business Man

Landor's Cottage

The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade

MS. Found in a Bottle

Diddling

The Man of the Crowd

[laemony]

What I’ve read in 2020!

Welcome back to this thing I started in 2017 and still don’t know WHY it should matter!

2017  2018  2019

This year has been a shit show but I must admit I’ve read quite a lot (who knew that staying at home with nothing else to do, except watching the world burn, could lead to this?!) Anyway! This is it, enjoy!

WAR AND PEACE, L. TOLSTOY – biggest book I’ve ever read in my life, I don’t know how but it’s never boring, I loved the characters and I adored the historical knowledge; the two subjects mix, when people are at war they miss peace, and when they are at peace they miss and look for war; it’s full of time skips in a very Russian fashion… only thing it bothered me, in my edition at least, all the paragraphs written in French didn’t have a translation, I hope I didn’t lose too many infos lol 8,5/10

PERSUASION, J. AUSTEN – this book! A surprise, a revelation, a discovery! Brilliant! Funny! Lovely! Anne’s expressions of her family are hilarious; one of my favourites so far, even if “lost love who is not as forgotten as you thought they would be” sounds way too much like the story of my life 10/10

THE YEARS, V. WOOLF – it felt lonely, yet lively; a bit hopeless, but not too sad; the chatter, the teasing, is all very familiar, as if she wrote about my own family; simple in its day-to-day life; felt like autumn (if it makes sense????) 8/10

THE DEAD SOULS, N. GOGOL – ridiculous characters, ridiculous conversations, I loved the ironic way it depicts Russian society and its people; the last chapter is a mess, I couldn’t imagine how it could end and to be honest I still have no idea 7,5/10

THE PROCESS, F. KAFKA – no time-line; not a single emotion, not from the characters neither from the author; a cold, indifferent depiction of a series of facts, which are everything but clear; not an inch of silence, just words; it tired me out, I just needed a bit more silence 5/10

THE WHITE GUARD, M. BULGAKOV – I simply love how he writes (wrote??) and his characters are always so unique and interesting; I adore the references to Tolstoy and Dostoevskij; this book has more of a painting than a book; it’s an impressive recount of a fundamental historical moment; the end is not clear but beautiful 9,5/10

THE HANDMAID’S TALE, M. ATWOOD – I thought I wouldn’t have been able to stomach it, and then I found out that there’s a right way to tell a story about violence and she mastered it; cruel people are just that, no craziness, no dark past, just thirst for power and the confidence of knowing what’s best for everyone; it gave me chills, it made me angry; I love how she writes, it’s the first time a first person pov doesn’t make me want to tear my eyes off my face… people who watched the series: do you know what’s the real name of Offred? I need it 10/10

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, J. AUSTEN – as usual, her books must be read in one breath; Jane and Charles’ story is my favourite; I love Mr Bennet as much as I can’t suffer everyone’s sisters (except Miss Darcy of course); it has an amazing mix of characters, I absolutely love the drama that follows Mr Darcy; I honestly expected a more dramatic confession at the end but it was great 9/10

NOTES FROM A DEATH HOUSE, F. DOSTOEVSKY – a bit too auto-biographic for my tastes, but I adored his depiction of a humanity which is often forgotten; it’s very disturbing in its actuality if you stop to think about it; he never tires himself saying that those “criminals” are also and foremost human beings 7,5/10

ASYLUM, P. MCGRATH – the first part is fast-paced, it leaves you breathless and with an anxious need to keep on reading; then it started to be a little more psychological and it kinda bored me; I liked the narrator very much, it was really disturbing 7,5/10

DOCTOR ZIVAGO, B. PASTERNAK – every Russian book I’ve read gave me a glimpse of Russian history and culture, yet they’re all different and I think that’s often underappreciated. Now, this book. This book is, simply put, breath-taking. The landscapes are immense and colourful, the talent of this man is unparalleled; it has a devastating end, it’s a book I’ll probably read over and over again just ‘cause reading it is “such a sweet sorrow” 10/10 (this rec is shorter than what it should have been in my mind, but I’d probably end up talking about this book and only this book so that’s it, it’s called self-control)

EMMA, J. AUSTEN – at first I was annoyed by Emma’s character, but then she proved herself so oblivious it started to become pretty funny; I can’t get over how much people talk in this book, the irony is SO on point, I love it; I probably like it more than Persuasion, because there are so many twists that the ending left me really surprised for once. And let me tell you, Jane Austen is THE BEST at depicting insufferable people 10/10

UNO, NESSUNO, E CENTOMILA, L. PIRANDELLO – look at me, reading Italian literature, world must be ending… to be honest? I don’t remember much of it? And I didn’t take notes as I usually do? I must’ve been bored out of my mind… I’ll give it a 6/10 on trust alone because I know Pirandello is great lol

HIS DARK MATERIALS, P. PULLMAN – finally got to this and it left me pretty confused; the first book is great, I loved the characters and the scenery, but in the other two I felt like too many things were left unexplained and Lyra’s character too lost some of its greatness; the end brought very little clarity, if at all, and of course I hated it with a passion; I don’t think he expressed the maximum potential of the world he built, but I liked it alright 7,5/10

1984, G. ORWELL – saying I was disappointed might be an understatement; I like how it’s written but the story in itself is frustrating, frankly boring, and disappointing, especially the end; you don’t build so much tension just to end it like that! Tho, maybe that’s exactly what he wanted to convey; everything is pretty much hopeless, made me angry 7/10

CARRIE, S. KING – first of his book I’ve ever read, AND I LOVED IT; it’s not a style I like very much, letting us know how it will end since the beginning, but it was great, magnificent, empowering; I don’t know if I’ll ever have the patience to read the others (they’re all so big) but this certainly got me curious 9/10

JACOB’S ROOM, V. WOOLF – confusing, very confusing, more confusing than anything of hers; of course it’s very beautifully written, but I have no idea what happened there 6,5 maybe 7/10?

THE WITCH, S. JACKSON – my personal Halloween challenge begins with this; short, CREEPY, VERY CREEPY, to the point (what point?); absolutely loved it 8/10

THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE, S. JACKSON – listen, creepy houses are my jam, they’re the best; my first impression of the characters went like this: they’re all batshit crazy, I love them; it honestly gave me nightmares; I wish I would’ve read it in English tho 8/10

THE ABC MURDERS, A. CHRISTIE – the queen of plot-twists herself, she never disappoints; not my favourite, mind you, but it was great how she built the story of the murderer just to… well, you’ll have to read it 7,5/10

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER, E. A. POE – I love when short stories such as this leave so much space around them to build whatever plot your imagination can come up with; it’s great, even left like it is 8/10

THE PENELOPIAD, M. ATWOOD – whatever guys, this woman has the ability to write the worst things in such a delicate way simply out of this world; I ADORE HER 9/10

THE UNCOMMON READER, A. BENNETT – hilarious from start to finish, kinda frustrating in the way only royal etiquette can be; I love how the Queen relates to others and I adored her inner monologue; the end is brilliant and the whole book (more or less 100 pages) feels like a breath of fresh air 8/10

THEATRE

THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, W. SHAKESPEARE – funny, brilliant, it became one of my favourite comedies (and there aren’t many of them) 8/10

CYMBELINE, W. SHAKESPEARE – nice little thing, with all the ingredients of a tragedy but with a happy ending; for a moment I thought it would end in a King Lear’s way, glad it didn’t 7,5/10

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, W. SHAKESPEARE – the first of Shakespeare’s plays that I didn’t like at all, and I think the reasons are pretty clear to whoever has read it; it kinda felt “out of character” for him, but maybe I’m just an ignorant 4/10

POETRY and LETTERS

ARIEL, S. PLATH – raw, powerful, sad, everything I expected of it, I also have the best edition ever, she’s great 8/10

POEMS FROM THE MOOR, E. BRONTE – the talent, the power of this woman; I’ll cry the loss of the Gondal’s saga for the rest of my life 8/10

LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET, R. M. RILKE – amazing, the thins this man could write even in such a trivial thing as a letter, I love him 10/10

MARINA CVETAEVA – I must admit, I like her prose better than her poetry; her letters are heart breaking yet so full of enthusiasm you can’t help but feel for her; also, she loves Boris as much as I do, her letters to him are my favourite thing in the world 9/10

BORIS PASTERNAK – this man was the best present this year could give me, do yourself a favour and go read him 10/10

SPECIAL MENTION: THE SECRET HISTORY, D. TARTT – I may have a problem with her books, but I’ve started this in January and never got the patience to finish it; chapters WAY too long, characters that are so insufferable they can’t be real; pretentious, boring… I can’t give it a rating because I didn’t finish it and I’m not a monster, but the bar is very low

This is it I guess! I hope I gave you a little bit of entertainment, this is something I usually do for myself but I’m glad to share with you every year. I wish you a better end of 2020 than the whole, stay strong and stay safe!  A virtual hug to everyone 💚💚💚 

[boughtwithaprice]

The Literary Forms in Philippine Literature

by: Christine F. Godinez-Ortega

        The diversity and richness of Philippine literature evolved side by side with the country's history. This can best be appreciated in the context of the country's pre-colonial cultural traditions and the socio-political histories of its colonial and contemporary traditions.         

       The average Filipino's unfamiliarity with his indigenous literature was largely due to what has been impressed upon him: that his country was "discovered" and, hence, Philippine "history" started only in 1521.

       So successful were the efforts of colonialists to blot out the memory of the country's largely oral past that present-day Filipino writers, artists and journalists are trying to correct this inequity by recognizing the country's wealth of ethnic traditions and disseminating them in schools and in the mass media.

       The rousings of nationalistic pride in the 1960s and 1970s also helped bring about this change of attitude among a new breed of Filipinos concerned about the "Filipino identity."

Pre-Colonial Times

       Owing to the works of our own archaeologists, ethnologists and anthropologists, we are able to know more and better judge information about our pre-colonial times set against a bulk of material about early Filipinos as recorded by Spanish, Chinese, Arabic and other chroniclers of the past.

       Pre-colonial inhabitants of our islands showcase a rich past through their folk speeches, folk songs, folk narratives and indigenous rituals and mimetic dances that affirm our ties with our Southeast Asian neighbors.

       The most seminal of these folk speeches is the riddle which is tigmo in Cebuano, bugtong in Tagalog, paktakon in Ilongo and patototdon in Bicol. Central to the riddle is the talinghaga or metaphor because it "reveals subtle resemblances between two unlike objects" and one's power of observation and wit are put to the test. While some riddles are ingenious, others verge on the obscene or are sex-related.

       The proverbs or aphorisms express norms or codes of behavior, community beliefs or they instill values by offering nuggets of wisdom in short, rhyming verse.

       The extended form, tanaga, a mono-riming heptasyllabic quatrain expressing insights and lessons on life is "more emotionally charged than the terse proverb and thus has affinities with the folk lyric." Some examples are the basahanon or extended didactic sayings from Bukidnon and the daraida and daragilon from Panay.

       The folk song, a form of folk lyric which expresses the hopes and aspirations, the people's lifestyles as well as their loves. These are often repetitive and sonorous, didactic and naive as in the children's songs or Ida-ida (Maguindanao), tulang pambata (Tagalog) or cansiones para abbing (Ibanag).

       A few examples are the lullabyes or Ili-ili (Ilongo); love songs like the panawagon and balitao (Ilongo); harana or serenade (Cebuano); the bayok (Maranao); the seven-syllable per line poem, ambahan of the Mangyans that are about human relationships, social entertainment and also serve as a tool for teaching the young; work songs that depict the livelihood of the people often sung to go with the movement of workers such as the kalusan (Ivatan), soliranin (Tagalog rowing song) or the mambayu, a Kalinga rice-pounding song; the verbal jousts/games like the duplo popular during wakes.

       Other folk songs are the drinking songs sung during carousals like the tagay (Cebuano and Waray); dirges and lamentations extolling the deeds of the dead like the kanogon (Cebuano) or the Annako (Bontoc).

       A type of narrative song or kissa among the Tausug of Mindanao, the parang sabil, uses for its subject matter the exploits of historical and legendary heroes. It tells of a Muslim hero who seeks death at the hands of non-Muslims.

       The folk narratives, i.e. epics and folk tales are varied, exotic and magical. They explain how the world was created, how certain animals possess certain characteristics, why some places have waterfalls, volcanoes, mountains, flora or fauna and, in the case of legends, an explanation of the origins of things. Fables are about animals and these teach moral lessons.

       Our country's epics are considered ethno-epics because unlike, say, Germany's Niebelunginlied, our epics are not national for they are "histories" of varied groups that consider themselves "nations."

       The epics come in various names: Guman (Subanon); Darangen (Maranao); Hudhud (Ifugao); and Ulahingan (Manobo). These epics revolve around supernatural events or heroic deeds and they embody or validate the beliefs and customs and ideals of a community. These are sung or chanted to the accompaniment of indigenous musical instruments and dancing performed during harvests, weddings or funerals by chanters. The chanters who were taught by their ancestors are considered "treasures" and/or repositories of wisdom in their communities.

       Examples of these epics are the Lam-ang (Ilocano); Hinilawod (Sulod); Kudaman (Palawan); Darangen (Maranao); Ulahingan (Livunganen-Arumanen Manobo); Mangovayt Buhong na Langit (The Maiden of the Buhong Sky from Tuwaang--Manobo); Ag Tobig neg

Keboklagan (Subanon); and Tudbulol (T'boli).

The Spanish Colonial Tradition

       While it is true that Spain subjugated the Philippines for more mundane reasons, this former European power contributed much in the shaping and recording of our literature.   Religion and institutions that represented European civilization enriched the languages in the lowlands, introduced theater which we would come to know as komedya, the sinakulo, the sarswela, the playlets and the drama. Spain also brought to the country, though at a much later time, liberal  ideas and an internationalism that influenced our own Filipino intellectuals and writers for them to understand the meanings of "liberty and freedom."

       Literature in this period may be classified as religious prose and poetry and secular prose and poetry.

       Religious lyrics written by ladino poets or those versed in both Spanish and Tagalog were included in early catechism and were used to teach Filipinos the Spanish language. Fernando Bagonbanta's "Salamat nang walang hanga/gracias de sin sempiternas" (Unending thanks) is a fine example that is found in the Memorial de la vida cristiana en lengua tagala (Guidelines for the Christian life in the Tagalog language) published in 1605.

       Another form of religious lyrics are the meditative verses like the dalit appended to novenas and catechisms. It has no fixed meter nor rime scheme although a number are written in octosyllabic quatrains and have a solemn tone and spiritual subject matter.

       But among the religious poetry of the day, it is the pasyon in octosyllabic quintillas that became entrenched in the Filipino's commemoration of Christ's agony and resurrection at Calvary. Gaspar Aquino de Belen's "Ang Mahal na Passion ni Jesu Christong Panginoon natin na tola" (Holy Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ in Verse) put out in 1704 is the country's earliest known pasyon.

       Other known pasyons chanted during the Lenten season are in Ilocano, Pangasinan, Ibanag, Cebuano, Bicol, Ilongo and Waray.

       Aside from religious poetry, there were various kinds of prose narratives written to prescribe proper decorum. Like the pasyon, these prose narratives were also used for proselitization. Some forms are: dialogo (dialogue), Manual de Urbanidad (conduct book); ejemplo (exemplum) and tratado (tratado). The most well-known are Modesto de Castro's "Pagsusulatan ng Dalawang Binibini na si Urbana at si Feliza" (Correspondence between the Two Maidens Urbana and Feliza) in 1864 and Joaquin Tuason's "Ang Bagong Robinson" (The New Robinson) in 1879, an adaptation of Daniel Defoe's novel.

       Secular works appeared alongside historical and economic changes, the emergence of an opulent class and the middle class who could avail of a European education. This Filipino elite could now read printed works that used to be the exclusive domain of the missionaries.

       The most notable of the secular lyrics followed the conventions of a romantic tradition: the languishing but loyal lover, the elusive, often heartless beloved, the rival. The leading poets were Jose Corazon de Jesus (Huseng Sisiw) and Francisco Balagtas. Some secular poets who wrote in this same tradition were Leona Florentino, Jacinto Kawili, Isabelo de los Reyes and Rafael Gandioco.

       Another popular secular poetry is the metrical romance, the awit and korido in Tagalog. The awit is set in dodecasyllabic quatrains while the korido is in octosyllabic quatrains. These are colorful tales of chivalry from European sources made for singing and chanting such as Gonzalo de Cordoba (Gonzalo of Cordoba) and Ibong Adarna (Adarna Bird). There are numerous metrical romances in Tagalog, Bicol, Ilongo, Pampango, Ilocano and in Pangasinan. The awit as a popular poetic genre reached new heights in Balagtas' "Florante at Laura" (ca. 1838-1861), the most famous of the country's metrical romances.

       Again, the winds of change began to blow in 19th century Philippines. Filipino intellectuals educated in Europe called ilustrados began to write about the downside of colonization. This, coupled with the simmering calls for reforms by the masses gathered a formidable force of writers like Jose Rizal, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Mariano Ponce, Emilio Jacinto and Andres Bonifacio.

       This led to the formation of the Propaganda Movement where prose works such as the political essays and Rizal's two political novels, Noli Me Tangere and the El filibusterismo helped usher in the Philippine revolution resulting in the downfall of the Spanish regime, and, at the same time planted the seeds of a national consciousness among Filipinos.

       But if Rizal's novels are political, the novel Ninay (1885) by Pedro Paterno is largely cultural and is considered the first Filipino novel. Although Paterno's Ninay gave impetus to other novelists like Jesus Balmori and Antonio M. Abad to continue writing in Spanish, this did not flourish.

       Other Filipino writers published the essay and short fiction in Spanish in La Vanguardia, El Debate, Renacimiento Filipino, and Nueva Era. The more notable essayists and fictionists were Claro M. Recto, Teodoro M. Kalaw, Epifanio de los Reyes, Vicente Sotto, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Rafael Palma, Enrique Laygo (Caretas or Masks, 1925) and Balmori who mastered the prosa romantica or romantic prose.

       But the introduction of English as medium of instruction in the Philippines hastened the demise of Spanish so that by the 1930s, English writing had overtaken Spanish writing. During the language's death throes, however, writing in the romantic tradition, from the awit and korido, would continue in the novels of Magdalena Jalandoni. But patriotic writing continued under the new colonialists. These appeared in the vernacular poems and modern adaptations of works during the Spanish period and which further maintained the Spanish tradition.

The American Colonial Period

       A new set of colonizers brought about new changes in Philippine literature. New literary forms such as free verse [in poetry], the modern short story and the critical essay were introduced. American influence was deeply entrenched with the firm establishment of English as the medium of instruction in all schools and with literary modernism that highlighted the writer's individuality and cultivated consciousness of craft, sometimes at the expense of social consciousness.

       The poet, and later, National Artist for Literature, Jose Garcia Villa used free verse and espoused the dictum, "Art for art's sake" to the chagrin of other writers more concerned with the utilitarian aspect of literature. Another maverick in poetry who used free verse and talked about illicit love in her poetry was Angela Manalang Gloria, a woman poet described as ahead of her time. Despite the threat of censorship by the new dispensation, more writers turned up "seditious works" and popular writing in the native languages bloomed through the weekly outlets like Liwayway and Bisaya.

       The Balagtas tradition persisted until the poet Alejandro G. Abadilla advocated modernism in poetry. Abadilla later influenced young poets who wrote modern verses in the 1960s such as Virgilio S. Almario, Pedro I. Ricarte and Rolando S. Tinio.

       While the early Filipino poets grappled with the verities of the new language, Filipinos seemed to have taken easily to the modern short story as published in the Philippines Free Press, the College Folio and Philippines Herald. Paz Marquez Benitez's "Dead Stars" published in 1925 was the first successful short story in English written by a Filipino. Later on, Arturo B. Rotor and Manuel E. Arguilla showed exceptional skills with the short story.

       Alongside this development, writers in the vernaculars continued to write in the provinces. Others like Lope K. Santos, Valeriano Hernandez Peña and Patricio Mariano were writing minimal narratives similar to the early Tagalog short fiction called dali or pasingaw (sketch).

       The romantic tradition was fused with American pop culture or European influences in the adaptations of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan by F. P. Boquecosa who also penned Ang Palad ni Pepe after Charles Dicken's David Copperfield even as the realist tradition was kept alive in the novels by Lope K. Santos and Faustino Aguilar, among others.

       It should be noted that if there was a dearth of the Filipino novel in English, the novel in the vernaculars continued to be written and serialized in weekly magazines like Liwayway, Bisaya, Hiligaynon and Bannawag.

       The essay in English became a potent medium from the 1920's to the present. Some leading essayists were journalists like Carlos P. Romulo, Jorge Bocobo, Pura Santillan Castrence, etc. who wrote formal to humorous to informal essays for the delectation by Filipinos.

       Among those who wrote criticism developed during the American period were Ignacio Manlapaz, Leopoldo Yabes and I.V. Mallari. But it was Salvador P. Lopez's criticism that grabbed attention when he won the Commonwealth Literay Award for the essay in 1940 with his "Literature and Society." This essay posited that art must have substance and that Villa's adherence to "Art for Art's Sake" is decadent.

       The last throes of American colonialism saw the flourishing of Philippine literature in English at the same time, with the introduction of the New Critical aesthetics, made writers pay close attention to craft and "indirectly engendered a disparaging attitude" towards vernacular writings -- a tension that would recur in the contemporary period.

The Contemporary Period

       The flowering of Philippine literature in the various languages continue especially with the appearance of new publications after the Martial Law years and the resurgence of committed literature in the 1960s and the 1970s.

       Filipino writers continue to write poetry, short stories, novellas, novels and essays whether these are socially committed, gender/ethnic related or are personal in intention or not.

       Of course the Filipino writer has become more conscious of his art with the proliferation of writers workshops here and abroad and the bulk of literature available to him via the mass media including the internet. The various literary awards such as the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature, the Philippines Free Press, Philippine Graphic, Home Life and Panorama literary awards encourage him to compete with his peers and hope that his creative efforts will be rewarded in the long run.

       With the new requirement by the Commission on Higher Education of teaching of Philippine Literature in all tertiary schools in the country emphasizing the teaching of the vernacular literature or literatures of the regions, the audience for Filipino writers is virtually assured. And, perhaps, a national literature finding its niche among the literatures of the world will not be far behind.

[ao3feed-gendrya]

The King of Wolves

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2PSQAbn

by kokonutpineapple

Ever since winning its independence, the North has become extremely isolated. The King in the North, Robb Stark, is an enigma to the southern houses. Only eerie rumors and frightening fairy tales tell of the North and its mysterious ruler. Despite these rumors, Margaery Tyrell has been betrothed to Robb Stark in a desperate bid to gain protection from the Seven Kingdom's vengeful new queen. However, once she arrives at Winterfell, she discovers that things aren't as they seem. In fact, they are much worse. Will Margaery be able to unravel the mystery surrounding the surviving Starks, or is she doomed to live in the dark?

Words: 6727, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Fandoms: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV), A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence

Categories: F/M

Characters: Robb Stark, Margaery Tyrell, Jon Snow, Arya Stark, Gendry Waters, Beth Cassel, Sansa Stark (mentioned), Ghost (ASoIaF), Grey Wind (ASoIaF), Nymeria (ASoIaF), Daenerys Targaryen, mentioned - Character

Relationships: Robb Stark/Margaery Tyrell, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Background, also Arya's still a child so its basically just a one sided crush rn

Additional Tags: Robb Stark is King in the North, Margaery is Queen in the North, Man fuck the South, Northern Independence for Life, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Horror, Edgar Allan Poe was a freak but man could he write prose, Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, quasi Gothic vibes but still medieval, If any of yall've read Fall of the House of Usher thats the vibe im going for, Mystery, Imagine Margaery as like Nancy Drew but more manipulative, Jon is a good brother, Arya is Arya, Robb is emotionally constipated, Slow Burn, Imagine Buzzfeed Unsolved except its just Margaery, Feminism, bc why not, Im a sucker for female empowerment, The Starks are frantically trying to hide a secret but they're very bad at it, Also inspired by Blackford Manor from Cartoon Hangover, just halloween vibes bc I refuse to acknowledge that its over, its spooky time, I LOVE SPOOKY TINGz, spooky season is year round, I've never really liked Daenerys so im sorry if im a little biased, That being said there will be no outright character bashing, Blood and Gore

read it on the AO3 at http://bit.ly/2PSQAbn

[ellipsesarefun]

for @linabeanwrites for the @keitorexchange event!!!

I”M SO SORRY I”M LATE... I tried a domestic AU for this fic from one of your prompts... the blade of marmora au is only mentioned... I took so long to finish this... I’m really sorry..

Six in the morning seems like the best time to be up and about, Lotor muses as he prepares himself a warm cup of tea. He settles down on the table by the It's the city's silence blending with a gradual wave of sunrise that alerts his mind yet soothes his nerves. But that's probably also the tea, he snorts to himself. 

He gets up from his seat and ambles to a small alcove where the light caresses his face and his mind blesses him a sense of serendipity. This planet seems to have quite the resources. Far off from the star quadrant Daizabaal resided, this one seems to have its own mixture of hell an paradise. Though-

 His ears catch light footsteps from behind and he smiles.

 -mostly paradise.

 Lotor had known Keith for awhile, being a de facto Commander for some time in the Blade of Marmora during the war against Zarkon. That delegation amongst the Galran Empire and the Altean allies was where he found a lone Blade of Marmoran skulking in one of the small balconies. It was quite an awkward night, him and Keith, but after then Keith had been assigned as one of his Generals and they stayed in touch since. 

And now, they're here.

 "How long have you been back?" His companion yawns as the footsteps come to a stop by his side. Lotor casts a dazed look at the black bedhair, sleep-glittered eyes and rumpled clothes. He never imagined that he'd found the time to be here. With Keith. At this deca-pheeb where the border duty and paperwork lighten enough for him to sneak away for a seven quintant cruise beyond his star quadrant. 

"A few vargas ago." Lotor replies, snaking his arm around Keith's waist. The firm build of muscle beneath his embrace reinforces that the this long-awaited reunion is a reality. That they have the freedom to do whatever they have been wanting to do for so long. These months of only seeing his face on a virtual screen bares no comparison to this. He listens to their hearts thrum together and his grip around his lover's waist tighten. Keith reciprocates with his own arms around Lotor's waist and a small kiss on the shoulder. 

"M'glad I came..." Lotor whispers, nibbling his lover's earlobe between his teeth, "It's been far too long..."

"Yea." Keith finishes for him, dropping another kiss, this time on his cheek. Their foreheads meet, lavender irises adoring one another. 

"Wanna help me make breakfast?" Keith asks.

Lotor smirks, "With pleasure."

  Sigh.

 They had merely began the day with breakfast and a varga of sparring but he's already returning to his procrastinated paperwork. He had only outlined most of the documents but he had forgotten that there's some that he needs to submit a final draft at the end of the seventh-quintant vacation. He has an idea on the middle and last portions but-

Agh. He should've known to at least check thrice if he had brought all his notes on the allocated sources between the warring races in Daizabaal without before slipping away to his own castle ship. Lotor rarely is careless, and he always makes sure he's steps ahead, makes sure he's quintants away from the deadline, but the moments where his infallibility slips in is one that he cannot fully tolerate. 

He squeezes his fists into his eye-sockets. Emperors don't make slip ups. Especially emperors who still needs to gain the loyalty of many warring races; especially the one warring race he grew up as.

A heavy thump on his shoulders disrupts his wallowing and he looks up to a pair of lips pecking his cheek. Immediately, Lotor softens and deflates under his lover's touch and he gives a kiss of his own on Keith's nose. Suddenly, the paper is almost forgotten and his lover's face is pure bliss.

He looks down, however, and pauses, searching through his written prose and finds the ridiculousness that he's using Keith's spare fountain pen to draft such an important document. He hasn't had to before, not unless he forgot his virtual documents back in Daizabaal--which he did...

 A hand smaller than his own suddenly grasps the fountain pen he's holding. The hand then gently pries the object from his and sets it on the table, replacing it with his own bare hand. He gasps at the warmth it emanates, realizing once again how long ago since they've shared a room this wide and have talked politics in his briefing room when the generals were out to who knows where. 

"Relax." Keith's smooth sultry voice tingles his entire body. Lotor feels his tension receding. "You have seven days to finish it. You've been here for three vargas already." The warm palm around his hand gives a reassuring grip. Fingers start to uncurl his, now lacing them together.

"But-" Lotor tries to protest but his lover is already pulling him out of the sofa. Keith turns the knob of the door and continues to haul Lotor out of the apartment. They stop by the balustrade, where the sun gleams down its morning glow and the people and the vehicles hustle and bustle about the streets. Lotor stares, in awe for a moment, imbibing the view beneath them. He turns and he can't help but gaze at those gargantuan shimmers in his lover's violet eyes.

 What gorgeous eyes. 

 "Let me ride you." Lotor blinks but curls his lips at the admission. One of the things he loves this man is his straightforwardness. 

"Well, we haven't done THAT here today so-" Lotor leans in and strikes out his best suave look and puckered lips. It garners a guffaw of laughter from Keith and Lotor preens at his own little accomplishment. Many occasions he's seen Keith pull a frown and it's always a wonder to hear such a beautiful laugh. 

"Well sure, but what I mean is," He grins, "Let me ride you around. There's an open field not far from here."

"But," he pauses, leaning in as well, "We could do it while-"

Lotor giggles and pulls Keith close by his shirt, "Later." He whispers, planting a kiss on his nose. Keith nods, cheeky grin still apparent. 

 "Later." He agrees.

  The motorbike zooms past the blur of buildings, pas the light traffic of a Sunday afternoon and out to the open road. The wind smoothly blows against them as Lotor feels his white locks stringing along the breeze. He shuffles his grip around Keith, settling his chin on the  shoulder. The sky blazes in a shade of violet, dappled down into a mixture of brown and red-yellow. They clash against the rolling fields of green and oak yellow brushstrokes and violet hazed hills, where a small house not far from where they're driving.

The first time Keith had strung him along like this was months after the delegation they first interacted in. He had been burning himself out on his new position as Emperor, as there had been a tremendously larger amount of disapproval than he anticipated. With Zendak looming over Daizabaal in hopes to take over the throne and civil war propagating in planets everywhere, there didn't seem to be a time to breathe and indulge in recreational activities. 

It was then on a mundane night where he was busily rummaging through his files did someone knock by his door. Puzzled, Lotor paused his reading and opened the door to a black tousled hair, bright violet eyes, and Blade of Marmoran armor. It took only a smooch and a few dobashes of playful convincing before Lotor was ushered out of his own quarters and onto a motorbike by the gardens below. They had spent the night in clandestine dalliance beneath the teeming violet sky, whispering sweet nothings of each other until the sunrise spilled through the horizon...

 "We're here." The statement snaps Lotor from his stupor and releases unwinds his arms from Keith, roaming around the meadows surrounding the cabin. He steps foot into the open space, indulging the cotton-soft grass as he ambles towards the front porch of the cabin. Twilight air filters through his lungs, luring him into blissful relaxation.  

Keith is already laying a carpet on the grass, arranging two baskets full of, what he supposes, food and drinks. He beckons Lotor over with batting eyelashes and an elated grin. Shaking his head in a mixture of amusement and exasperation, Lotor approaches. What this outing entails he still has no clue. It was only halfway there did he notice a black dagger aiming towards him.

Lotor immediately catches the dagger with ease, throwing it right back at his lover. Keith jumps off a few ticks after, the dagger barely missing him as it hits the grass, and draws out another blade from his pocket. Lotor mirrors the movement, bringing out a dagger of his own. They begin to circle around each other, letting the ticks pass by. 

They both take first move, their swords clashing with one another. They simultaneously paced backwards, dancing around each other in a flurry of parries and offenses. In the early days of war, Lotor had taken joy at beating Keith and the other new recruits during training. Now however, Keith can endure the blows, even to the point where he was able to triumph over Lotor at least more than twice. It was great pride as a mentor to see his student flourish.

 But doesn't mean he's letting Keith earn his triumph with ease, Lotor muses as he twirls the dagger out from Keith's grasp and into his palms. 

"I win." He says, still twirling the dagger as a sign of victory. Keith narrows his eyes at him for a tick or two before smirking again.

"There's still tomorrow, anyways." Keith obligingly relents, returning his dagger back into his pocket. Lotor doesn't restrain his ebullient smile at his lover's admirable perseverance. Keith responds with his own as they gravitate into their warm embrace. Lotor exhales a long breathy sigh, a smile still on his face. They walk back to their safehaven and settle down on the carpet, where they converse over a billion things as random as the twinkling stars above.  

 Keith is a bountiful of surprises today. Kisses everywhere and anywhere at anytime, having breakfast together, a spar for a varga or so, Keith listening to Lotor's complaints while helping with his procrastination.. and then this.

 This breathtaking landscape; empty of civilization yet vibrating with life and color.

And of Keith.

Keith when he's in ruffled clothes and bedhair after a nap. Keith with the Earthy breakfast of bacon and eggs and a cup of coffee. Keith with his avid concern and motivation while Lotor drafts his treaties. Keith with his motorbike and firm build that Lotor holds onto while the wind rushes through his face. Keith and his elegance with the dagger under the sunset. Lotor is struck with the realization that wherever he goes, no matter how many lightyears he travels, an essence of Keith will always be present, a comfort to his own heart.

 Daizabaal is still his home yet here, where his lover scintillates brighter than the star-light canvas draped upon them, is his also his home on its own.

The Inspiration I’ve used is the picture on the bottom right.

[finishinglinepress]

FLP FEATURED AUTHOR OF THE DAY:R. W. Haynes, Professor of English at Texas A&M International University, has published poetry in many journals in the United States and in other countries. As an academic scholar, he specializes in British Renaissance literature, and he has also taught extensively in such areas as medieval thought, Southern literature, classical poetry, and writing. Since 1992, he has offered regular graduate and undergraduate courses in Shakespeare, as well as seminars in Ibsen, Chaucer, Spenser, rhetoric, and other topics. In 2004, Haynes met Texas playwright/screenwriter Horton Foote and has since become a leading scholar of that author’s remarkable oeuvre, publishing a book on Foote’s plays in 2010 and editing a collection of essays on his works in 2016. Haynes also writes plays and fiction. In 2016, he received the SCMLA Poetry Award ($500) at the South Central Modern Language Association Conference. In 2019, two collections of his poetry were published, Laredo Light (Cyberwit) and Let the Whales Escape (Finishing Line Press)

To Order: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/heidegger-looks-at-the-moon-by-r-w-haynes/

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Heidegger Looks at the Moon by R. W. Haynes

Replete with floor traps and velvet curtains, Haynes’ theater-poems include Texas, Mexico, a conference in Tennessee, a backyard barbecue, and meeting rooms at work among their many interchangeable sets. You’ll watch the duels of characters named, alluded to, and unnamed. You’ll hear the ghosts of Dickinson, Stevens, Shakespeare, and Berryman floating somewhere near the tracked lighting above the stage. Characters named include Heidegger, of course, Jack Ruby, Cicero, Medea, Hurricane Dolly, sometimes central, sometimes walk-ons, sometimes the costume and mask for the unnamed characters or the poet. And you’ll recognize the unnamed characters, those people at work vying for power and career advancement, those writers at conferences needing acclaim. Always startling and unexpected, part of the intrigue is wondering who will appear next and where, at a Texas thrift shop, perhaps? Tragedy and comedy mix. Acts of eloquent end-stopped lines, meter, rhyme and hard-won contemplations give us a glimpse beyond the human mess, like a hawk, “Gliding with dignity, unthought intent, / Like part of the wind itself, its weightless ascent.”

–Suzette Marie Bishop, author of She Took Off Her Wings and Shoes (May Swenson Award), Horse-Minded , and Hive-Mind, teaches Poetry and Creative Writing at Texas A&M International University.

Whether Heidegger ruminates on hopelessness and desperation in downtown Waco, or Cicero rants at Cleopatra and Caesar, Haynes’s well-wrought phrasing and spontaneous wit enliven his speakers throughout Heidegger Looks at the Moon. These meditative poems span the emotional spectrum, showing us a writer of uncommon observational power. The dissolution of Aristotelian form is found in a desert landscape blurred by rain, Gadamer contemplates imagery from Wallace Stevens, the line between the canine and the human is questioned. In this book of musical and philosophical poetry, Haynes not only displays a radiant intellect, but he also ushers us into the hauntings of human interiority, revealing to us both “marvels everywhere” as well as the wounds the “nurse of philosophy” leaves.

–C.H. Gorrie, Editor at Consequence

These are wonderful poems. In the best poetic tradition, they come alive and prod memories through elegant allusions to classical mythology, literature, and popular culture. Thinkers like Heidegger, of course, pop singers like Sam the Sham, writers like Harry Crews, common folk like Big Jake, as well as literary, classical, biblical and historical characters, populate the world found here. R.W. Haynes’ masterful command of language and poetic forms inspires the reader to come on board and enjoy the ride, and we are the richer for traveling along with the poet to Waco or Ft. Stockton, crossing the Rio Grande with Charon, and visiting imagined pasts or literary spaces with Oswald Alving or Chaucer.

–Norma Elia Cantú, Norine R. and T. Frank Murchison Professor of the Humanities, Trinity University, author of Canícula and numerous other works of prose and poetry.

Please share/please repost [PROMO] #flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry

[andsanctify]

❝ just because you can, doesn't mean you should. ❞

@cyclopaes , scott summers ⟳ madeline usher , prompt

[levyfiles]

Numbers 8 and 11 from your identity ask, lovely! 💙💙

8. what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime? After I graduated from high school in 2004 and went on to uni in Ghana, i moved to the UK and lived in Northampton for a period of time. I was going through a lot of bad stuff when I ‘discovered’ the band Muse. It’s one of the only 90′s alt-bands I have the entire discography of and one of the few bands I ‘grew’ with. I still listen to them, still marvel at their talent and absolutely still write to their Starlight single b-sides.

My highschool experience band though is Moist. A true embodiment of Canadian grunge. I still have a lot of their dated music on my playlist and the lead singer David Usher was my long-time rockstar crush. Black Black Heart changed my LIFE. I love LOVE his voice. My own vocals are like 60% inspired by his style. When i was 14 I always thought I’d grow up, meet him and then somehow convince him to serenade me to sleep at least once a week. His soft, melancholy tones are still my favourite lullaby. And then of course his lyrics; the man is a certifiable poet and has influenced so much of my prose. Plus it was a big deal back in the day that an Asian Canadian guy was making such a big break into the canadian music industry as a grunge artist. 

Another is Mother Mother who I only really got into in 2012. Found them during another rough time in my life and even though I’m not as informed about the band’s dynamic or who they are, their music has been a strange and special comfort to me for many years now. Shout out to my all-time favourite track Born in a Flash.

And last pick while certainly not the end of my list because there are a lot more is Florence + the Machine. I cannot even tell you how many elaborate pieces of writing I’ve conquered just listening to her music and I still keep her fresh on my playlists because her fantastical pieces, her siren like vocals and the themes of her journey have always resonated so strongly with a more fragile side of me. 

Honourable mentions go to Donald Glover, Gackt Camui (i disowned him 4 years ago don’t worry) Andy Samberg(yep, loneyisland tracks still make it in my library), Beyonce, Arashi, Lana Del Rey, INKT, and KAT-TUN

11. describe your ideal day. L M A O sorry I’m just thinking about how once upon a time this answer would have been so much more elaborate but I’m ancient and jaded now so when I read the question my first thought was immediately. A day off from work where all my errands are done, my sister is home, and I’ve not moved from my position on the couch because i’ve been writing all damn day without interruption.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The original legacy of Wendy and Richard Pini's ElfQuest

In this excerpt from Dark Horse Comics's 40th Anniversary Ashcan issue of ElfQuest, available today in comic stores, Hanna Means-Shannon explains how Wendy and Richard Pini showed indies the way in an age before crowdfunding.

For those of us who grew up reading print comics from the newsstand or the comic shop, but have since then witnessed the birth of digital comics, we may feel we have seen major changes in the landscape of comic publishing. We would not be wrong to think so, and the developments that we have gradually embraced in comics form a continuum that may yet lead to changes far beyond our current imaginative climate.

However, the shifts that occurred in both the method of creating comics and in publishing in the decades before many of us were part of the comics conversation were so wide-ranging and astonishing in their impact that it is hard for more youthful readers to fully grasp those seismic shifts now. And yet those very shifts created the continental drifts that led to the current changes we still witness. Conceptually, comics became community-driven in the hands of self-publishers like Wendy and Richard Pini, the creators of ElfQuest, long before the dawn of fan-driven webcomics or crowdfunding platforms.

No doubt books will be written on the ways in which ElfQuest, and self-published comics that followed ElfQuest’s example, blazed remarkable trails in fan engagement. This is particularly likely now that the Pinis have generously donated a wealth of original art and supporting documents as an ElfQuest archive to the library at Columbia University. The size of the donation itself, and Columbia’s delight in receiving it, suggest just how significant comics historians know ElfQuest to be, and what potential for research and discussion lies ahead.

The unlikelihood of ElfQuest ever coming into existence as we know it was, however, profound. All it would have taken would have been a momentary hesitation from the Pinis when their first ElfQuest story appeared in an indie comics magazine printed on sub-standard materials, only for that publisher to promptly go out of business. They could have taken that as a sign to move on and try some other endeavor less precarious, less potentially disappointing, than comics. But instead, they didn’t simply take the series to another publisher, but sat down and conceived of a superior way to present the material, geared toward aesthetic values and a rich reading experience for the audience. Taking matters one step further, they self-published that material, a decisive act that set them on a path which is still unfolding forty years later.

Trying to pin down the alchemy of appeal in the comic series itself will leave you certain of its raptor-like ability to seize the its raptor-like ability to seize the reader’s attention, but perhaps even less able to single out just one particular quality that makes it shine. But if you open a book like The Complete ElfQuest Volume 1, which takes you back in crisp clarity to the “Original Quest” and earliest ElfQuest stories, you will be immediately struck by Wendy Pini’s art style and the intense use of page space for layered narrative. You’ll also notice the manga-like visual focus on the emotional state of the comic’s characters, as well as the more general mood of each panel. It’s no exaggeration to say that a single panel is often capable of conveying a whole world in ElfQuest. And yet this is a book that transmits thousands of years of alternate history for its star-traveling and shipwrecked elves, the splintered clans that result from their crash-landing in pre-history, and in particular, the life and times of the Wolfriders. This is a story world that plays out on both the large scale and the small scale, and suggests that both have virtually equal emotional weight in the narrative.

Central characters Cutter and Skywise immediately enable the reader to grasp the intense personal lives of the elves, and the procession of long periods of time and vast distances in space enable the reader to grasp their cultural and historical context in ways that we may wish we could grasp our own. The Pinis built upon these original core elements to establish an astonishingly wide cast of characters, times, and places. It is hard to conceive of a more expansive story universe in the realms of science fiction or fantasy than the Pinis have created through attention to their original architecture. Their ability to build ElfQuest has been just as impressive as their ability has been to reach readers outside of mainstream distribution.

Of course, prior to the Pinis, there had been other comic creators who discovered that self-publication can reach readers, and their lessons learned no doubt empowered ElfQuest to come into being in the same way that ElfQuest has since then empowered many comics in the digital comics generation to reach out to their own fanbases. But innovation is often found, not only in the tools we use, but in how we use them. With ElfQuest, the Pinis essentially took a model previously associated with underground comix and applied the verve and self-determination of that movement to an entirely new mode of storytelling.

Their new mode was genre-blending fantasy that would parallel the interests of the mainstream comics industry and, even more closely, the interests of the mainstream prose fiction market. Somewhere at the intersection of the two, ElfQuest would not only become a monumental success story, but usher several generations of fantasy fans into the realm of comics readership, too.

In retrospect, what Wendy and Richard Pini did contained plenty of common sense, but it also reflected very specific personal aesthetics that the Pinis expanded into in the hopes of creating a superior reading experience. They took their story and blew it up into magazine format, created a full-color glossy cover for it, and provided extra character portraits on the back covers. They created their story on substantial paper stock that would do justice to the lavish inking and make reading the script elements sharper and clearer. That paved the way for readers to encounter the Pinis’ story as a more opulent experience of the fantastic.

As ElfQuest grew, and as readers, holding this superior quality of book in their hands, experienced the unique world and universe the Pinis had artfully created for them, people were, quite simply, hooked. The Pinis had created a new product in a new format that appealed to the senses, the emotions, and a desire for community among readers. Only as the comic became increasingly successful did other potential self-publishers take note of this emerging fandom as a developing marketplace.

ElfQuest soon garnered interest from publishers, but the Pinis decided to only work with publishers on the collected editions, and not on the creation of the stories themselves for many years. This effectively reduced the influence of outside sensibilities on the creation of characters and storylines and shored up the original feel of ElfQuest to an even greater degree. However, the Pinis were not without their own organizational structures for production. They have spoken in the past about Richard’s role as editor and co-scripter in the creation of ElfQuest, and little insights like these help unlock the mysteries of the comic’s success.When Richard and Wendy co-scripted each issue of their comic, they produced a back-and-forth typical of editorial process. When Richard quite literally took out a pen and trimmed and reconfigured dialog, he brought an internal awareness of process to the series that kept the reader in mind and focused on a specific goal: the greatest possible quality in the final product.

If the Pinis are beginning to sound both like business people and a two-person publishing house, that is because they pioneered both personas for comic creators seeking to publish and distribute their own work. If that sounds unromantic compared to the alluring, and often extravagantly beautiful stories that Wendy and Richard tell, ask yourself: What could be more romantic than producing an experience with readers so firmly in mind that stories arrive regularly for them in high-quality format? Nothing takes a reader as directly out of the world of a comics story than the conditions under which they are read. The Pinis fine-tuned those conditions as carefully as they crafted their stories.

Over the years, the Pinis would have to become even more firmly entrenched as business people in running their own publishing house. It is hard to conceive of any other independently created property that, in continuing to publish new work across four decades, was obliged to make deals with several major publishers for collected and remastered editions. From Marvel Comics, to DC Comics, and finally, to Dark Horse for new stories, collection and distribution, few creative teams have had such an intense experience of learning just how creator-owned properties can have mutually beneficial relationships with publishers.

But that task has not been thankless for the Pinis. The response from fans has always been what has buoyed the series and inspired the Pinis to continue their work. Developing into multi-media formats, from prose, to drama, to music, and more, the world of ElfQuest has proved highly versatile in inhabiting the imagination of its audience. The existence of ElfQuest continues to support the idea that creative people can craft new ways of thinking, as well as new ways of storytelling, and when released on the world, those innovations can find a community who will benefit from them.

ElfQuest found a tribe in the days before crowdfunding, before webcomics, and before the rise of all-access digital platforms. And it managed to adapt new methods in order to reach readers over a swath of publishing history very few properties can boast. As such, it represents the power of like-minded communities to find each other through the stories they tell.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/06/the-original-legacy-of-wendy-a.html

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Rabid Dog (I Won't Let Them Take You Away)

read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/uBN61L3 by casrainvy Atsushi seemed to have been watching his movements, because a motley of yellow and purple flashed down and away.  “You said you had two weeks left,” the man ushered out in explanation, “give me one week.”  Akutagawa stares at him; similar to a scarved dog on its deathbed. “A week for what?”  “To prove that your life means something.” OR, Akutagawa has two weeks left to live, and Atsushi tries to show him the light. Words: 6504, Chapters: 1/8, Language: English Fandoms: 文豪ストレイドッグス | Bungou Stray Dogs Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death Categories: M/M Characters: Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs) Relationships: Akutagawa Ryuunosuke/Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs), Akutagawa Ryuunosuke & Nakajima Atsushi (Bungou Stray Dogs) Additional Tags: Angst, Sad Ending, It Gets Worse Before It Gets Better, But also, It Gets Worse, Sad Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Akutagawa Ryuunosuke is Bad at Feelings (Bungou Stray Dogs), Sick Akutagawa Ryuunosuke (Bungou Stray Dogs), Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Nakajima Atsushi is a Ray of Sunshine (Bungou Stray Dogs), Extended Metaphors, Purple Prose, Other Additional Tags to Be Added read it on AO3 at https://ift.tt/uBN61L3

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Alex’s Literary Reads of 2019 (from the months of June to September)

Caution: Bad, unedited writing ahead. Alex is a lazy person

Being a law student is an exhausting line of self-inflicted harm. Your life becomes an onslaught of reading materials and even more reading materials to catch up to. Now, reading has been second nature to me since I was four years old, so you can just imagine the sheer amount of readings my law professors have given us for me to consider detesting reading. 

I’ve managed to keep my sobriety from purely academic books by inserting novels, short stories and some poetry along the way. In all my four years in law school, this is the only year that I read as much as I wanted to. Mostly, short stories and essays that could be finished in one sitting. I had summer classes and wasn’t able to go home at all since January or February so I kept myself preoccupied by reading leisurely ( I know, gasp! Is that even possible for Alex in this economy?).

So here they are ++ some reviews and thoughts on the books.

1. Delta of Venus by Anais Nin

I read this book at the same time as a friend of mine. It was my first time diving into erotica considered to hold literary merit, the ones I had before were utterly terrible, by the way. But we are talking of Anais Nin anyway, so there’s that. It’s actually a collection of erotic short stories involving different, unconnected characters although a few of them were referenced in other stories. As someone who’s always been fine with sex in plots, this one left me feeling visibly unsettled. I realized how truly romanticized sex can be in popular books (e.g Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy). The outpouring of feminine pleasure on those books was strictly gratuitous and self-indulgent. Delta of Venus was an uncomfortable experience because it fleshed out several discomfiting realities of sex and titillation – violence is often an element of power play in the bedroom, voyeuristic tendencies of everyone, depraved fantasies which are almost immoral in their insistence. 

Of particular impressions were ‘The Hungarian Adventurer’ and ‘Boarding School’ which explored themes of rape, incest, and even bestiality at one point.  It wasn’t the fact of preference that appalled me, it was the simple exposition of the truth – sex is all things good and bad, inexplicable and sensual. I have a problem with how media portrays sex, especially in popular culture which is partial with idealistic notions of sexual roles apparent in concepts like the male gaze and fantasy in porn. You see, these things eventually become damaging. When we glamorize something as common as sex, it either becomes fodder for taboo or fantasy, which incidentally what occurs with conversations of sex. Either it is a subject much condemned for its alleged impurity or a dirty little secret which encourages unrealistic expectations for both sexes. 

Nin’s style of writing borders on the absurd, but it is done intentionally. In one interview, she narrated how a client wanted her to write erotica which was basically porn and just skip the poetry. She refused as any self-respecting and intelligent woman would.  And well, we need to appreciate her for that. If she let the client have his way, then what we’d have is an exaggerated image of sex instead of the unnerving stories of Delta. In a sense, we can consider Delta as a commentary on sex literature which caters to a male audience. The stories were rife with feeling, of emotion, which feminized a genre so overtly masculine, pandering to the male gaze.

There were quite a number of jibes at the male gaze as well with stories like ‘Marianne’ and the ‘The Veiled Woman’. My favorite was when Marianne (Marianne) met a man who felt erotic pleasure by only being looked at, like an object of desire. It appeared to me as a reverse of the male gaze, which often portrayed women as the object of desire, effacing her human qualities to turn her into just a vessel to express lust, infatuation or even love. But here, the object of desire is a man and we are made privy into his thoughts and actions, humanizing him instead of treating him as just an object. 

Overall, Delta of Venus was a fine starter for anyone who wished to know more of Anais Nin. The prose flowed well, even lyrically so, despite sex being a subject which can easily turn stale if not carefully written. 

2. Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe

My first experience with Poe was when I was around nine or ten years old. I was a nosy child when it came to other people’s books and one day I found printed copies of short stories of my cousin’s in his room. One of them was A Tell-Tale Heart.  I still remember feeling on edge as I read the slightly blurred lines in cheap brown paper, it was utterly thrilling. The horror of the story comes less from the almost supernatural obsession of the unnamed character with the eye of the old man. It was more on his slipping attempts of overcoming the inhuman desire to kill the man for his eye. 

There’s always something that fascinates me with horror that is internally driven. More than the hostility of vampires, the looming threats of an apocalypse, the real horror for me lies in the deep recesses of the human heart, that inscrutable machine that throbs inextricably within all of us. And I feel like that’s what always impressed me with Poe. He had the excellent ability to articulate darkness that is motivated by the self and that is a feat for writers. Stephen King, for example, is great at understanding that his monsters are metaphors for his inner demons but he relates them into tangible forms be it demon dogs, telekinetic teenagers to give them an external existence. 

Poe has a clear grasp of fear and all its friends. And though some critics would lend an idea that Poe writes well with supernatural elements, I beg to disagree. He uses, for one, unreliable narrators (Berenice, William Williamson, Fall of the House of Usher). The thing with unreliable narrators is they warp the sense of reality of the stories, an indication to the reader that everything is not what it seems. And if one pays enough attention, then they could ask the all-important question: Is this the real-life or is this just fantasy? If you’re playing with those two possibilities, then you’d be less scared with the supernatural/ external world than the worldview of the narrator. You start to scrutinize him more closely, dog his steps, intimate his intentions, etc like some fixated lover. In doing so, in peering into the mind of another, you stumble into your own inner motivations, your thoughts and who knows you might mirror the darkness the narrator is struggling with? 

And there is the true gift of Poe – he reads everyone like how he reads himself. He doesn’t do this by getting acquainted with thousands of people with innumerable different lives. No, sir. He forces readers to examine themselves and the darkness inherent in men but constantly, through our self-delusion denied as present in others but not in ourselves. I need not belabor that this kind of writer is my favorite, the ones with a very vivid understanding of humanity, no matter how bleak the answers that arrive to them.

I went at liberties with Poe (lol) but some favorites inside the collection of stories are The Case of M. Valdemar, Black Cat, Descent into the Maelstrom and Pit of the Pendulum. My only issue is Poe’s tendency to philosophize in protracted terms that I was afraid I was going to get bored to death ( Domain of Arnheim, The Island of the Fay) with the possible exception of ‘The Colloquy of Monos and Una’ since I like the ideas presented there. 

3. Slapstick! or Lonesome No More by Kurt Vonnegut

I was supposed to start with Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions or Cat’s Cradle but the only available copy of the writer’s work in the book fair (thanks BBW!!) was this one. It seemed like a light read, a stark contrast from Poe’s grim, verbose collection, so I decided to give it a go. The last time I read a sci-fi novel was Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 ( a real shame since I planned on reading more sci-fi this year). I finished it in less than a day and I wouldn’t say it left me with any remarkable opinion as much as the other books have had on me except that Vonnegut seemed like that fun, carefree uncle in reunions who has an alcohol abuse problem, is unmarried, and eats grapefruit for breakfast.

It’s not a very long novel and Vonnegut kept ending every part with ‘Hi, ho’. There’s a deeper sadness that is thinly veiled in the book as well, yeah slapstick, which reminded me of David Wallace’s Infinite Jest except the latter presents a more serious nod to its humor. 

It tells the story of Wilbur and Eliza, twins who are considered conventionally horrendous and abnormal in physical qualities. They are tall, too tall in fact. But thank god for rich parents who secretly dislike them, that they lived a sheltered existence away from everyone else other than their servants and a doctor who checks them every day. Unbeknownst to the parents and everyone else, the twins are super smart but only if they are allowed to share their intelligence by being close to each other. 

Long story made short, it’s a light read and perhaps a good overview of Vonnegut’s style of writing. I did want to read Slaughterhouse-Five after this one, so maybe that’s a good start. 

4. Dubliners by James Joyce

I’m having a hard time deciding whether this is my favorite out of everything else in this list or not. James Joyce was actually one of the writers I wanted to read very closely and understand his style better. He had such status and influence in modernism, plus the mythic reputations of both Finnegan’s Wake and Ulysses for their wrought complexity and ingenuity in style that I felt drawn to his works.  You should have seen my face when I got a copy of this book at the BBW Fair last August – think of a kid in a candy store for an accurate depiction. 

Let’s cut right down to the chase. What do I really think of this book? To sum up my thoughts about it: If there is a master class for short story writing, Dubliners should be a required reading. I am by no means a writer or journalist but as someone who reads short stories often (more often than novels or poetry) for the last two or three years, Dubliners was a standout. 

Dubliners is actually a collection of short stories (hell I’ve only been having collections, is this a pattern? lol). They are set in Ireland mediated through the simplicity of daily life.  I admired the craftsmanship of Joyce in this one, the prose was written so concisely, dispensing with the arduous descriptions that lead nowhere.  

The characters, too, were forged from the circumstances of ordinariness – a dead priest, an abused woman, a boy about to come of age and so on. The characters themselves feel like semblances of a collective consciousness – that of Ireland during a tumultuous time in the  20th century.  In a way, the mundane, individual aspects of a character’s life was a mirror to the social conditions Joyce wanted to portray emphatically in the stories. The style was polished in a way that one is made to occupy the places mentioned in Dublin through the familiarity of an old friend, a returning local into the arms of unchanged memories. There hung in each story, a great atmosphere of nostalgia and I suspect it is because Joyce knows how to excavate sentiments for places which we haven’t even visited or seen but that somehow we recognize as phantoms of our very own lives. 

There is indeed great beauty in the most ordinary things and it takes the eye of an artist to take the uneventful and reveal its exquisiteness. Joyce made me grasp a show of that ability in the days that I pored through his collection. Whatever he intended while writing Dubliners, whether as a mirror of a conflicted Irish society or as a commentary to the social context borne through those times, it is his style that won me over. The plots were as simplistic as possible and there was no way to harness more meaning from the events of a character’s life rather than to take them at face value and coming to the understanding of just how nuanced and visceral our daily lives can be if only we looked hard enough, paid attention enough.

Dubliners reminded me of what I look for most in a book. It really is less of the plot or even it’s overarching theme and more of the style. Language as an art form has always been my standard in saying if a book has taken me in or not.  The great writer, Vladimir Nabokov is similarly convinced that language can elevate a story into an art form. There is artistic merit in a writer’s style just by itself and I would rather read a book with a weak plot but with a sound use of language than a novel plot with a severely exploited and copied style. 

5. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Perhaps the other strong contender for favorite in this list is Heart of Darkness. To be fair, it was less a book and more of an experience. An experience of what literature can do when it goes beyond style and narration to get to the bottom of the writer’s innermost motivations for writing the book. I ended Heart of Darkness, perplexed and in much quandary. There are only two possible explanations: First either the book was beyond me and my mediocre mind that try as I might, meaning of any sort would only elude me. Second, it was so condensed with significance that reading it once simply didn’t qualify as reading it at all. By the end of maybe two days, I realized it was the latter. For the lack of any other time, I’m going to try and process its entirety with the sum of my reading it only once.

I confess I looked up a video review off YouTube before getting to the book, mostly because classics have a way of being exhaustively discussed without losing their ability to sustain a reader’s interest. In my case, spoilers don’t do any damage or if there is any, of only negligible consequence since I look for other things other than the stream of events.

According to the video review, the book is an example of darkness as a location. To put context to this description, it would be good to tell a bit of the story. This is about an English man named Marlow who went to Congo to take on greener chances in the trade therein and for which the backdrop is meant to replicate the inhuman conditions of the slave trade. Amidst all this is another man named Kurtz, who was quite illustrious as a prodigious ivory trader and who was steeped in so much mystery. Upon arriving at the Congo, Marlow witnesses the cruel treatment of the ‘slaves’ under the supervision of the Europeans.