#it came out less than a year ago

[libertyreads]

Book Review #20 of 2024--

Everyone on This Train Is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson. Rating: 4 stars.

Read from March 16th to 17th.

This is what I've been longing for all month long. I had zero intentions of finishing this book in less than 36 hours, but the heart wants what the heart wants. It's an especially surprising feat given I spent half of that time either working or commuting. My brain found a hyperfixation to override my depression and said "All Aboard!" (Train reference. Ha.) I was surprised to see that I also gave the first book in this series a 4 star rating since I thought this one was actually a bit better than the first. But I also remember feeling the need to bump it up last time based on the writing style and structure.

In this one we follow author Ernest Cunningham who managed to survive a serial killer on the mountains in his last book and who somehow has to survive a train full of murderous authors. He's invited to an author convention aboard a famous train in Australia and things roll along from there (is this stretching the metaphor a little too far? Probably.). I really like the way this series is written and the whole structure of the story. Ernest as a narrator is just so fun. I agree, though, with what Gavin from GavinReadsItAll who said that continuing the series from here might be difficult just because they'll have to try to keep it fresh and new which is hard to do in this format. Based on the way the story ends, I can see a few ways the author can achieve it. I just think it's going to take thinking outside of the box a little bit. I always enjoy a reliable narrator and when the clues are on the page for anyone to pick up and solve the case. There were a couple of things I figured out well before Ernest gave his big reveal at the end, but a few surprises that didn't feel unbelievable.

I think this one had to find its footing a little bit in the actual mystery. How do you follow up the success of the first book? How do you give more twists without being an unreliable narrator? And how do you have subplots that are worth the page time? I think some were more successful than others but can I really fault this book too much when I read it in a day and a half? I don't think I can. I hope there are more in this series in the future and that it manages to keep the structure and writing style fresh and fun.

[lesbinewren]

truly do not understand people looking at something with dynamic, colorful, beautifully stylized animation and going “okay that’s cool but what if it just looked like real life instead”

[anghraine]

I've been moving and navigating further departmental nonsense etc (my pseudo-dissertation got approved for defending, though! l o l). But it was interesting to see the Worst P&P Takes poll I reblogged accumulating more results and the general tenor of responses in the notes.

I mean, the results are definitely to be expected if you're familiar with the side of Austen fandom doing a lot of the reblogging etc. But still, interesting!

Many Tumblr polls specify that they're asking about personal preferences that may be irrational—favorite/least favorite, coolest/most annoying, or something like that. This one, though, asked for the worst interpretation of P&P, not the most annoying one—and the current leader is "Darcy is never really proud, he's just shy and probably has anxiety" against some very steep competition on the Bad Takes front.

I was thinking about why that seemed a kind of tediously predictable choice even though I agree that the take is wrong, and realized that while I do disagree with the shy Darcy interpretation and I particularly disagree with the specific formulation where he is never proud at all, it ultimately feels to me like a failure of nuance rather than just completely wrongheaded like some of the others. And this is probably my fundamental difference with a lot of Darcy takes I see!

In my opinion, a character who is introverted and who feels awkward in various social situations and who doesn't like common social activities and who has to work himself up to talking to his crush and who is repeatedly suggested to behave very differently in contexts where he's more comfortable being interpreted as shy and anxious is not that big of a leap.

Yes, it's important that he is actually fundamentally confident and haughty, that he makes his personal feelings of discomfort other people's problem, and that he thinks he's such a unique and special butterfly that he doesn't need to even put in an effort outside his personal social circle. But it's a misreading that is easy to follow (and long predates the 2005 P&P, as I've mentioned before!).

The additional misreading that a shy and anxious Darcy is also never proud at all is a much more drastic leap, and in my experience, condemnations of shy Darcy interpretations rarely differentiate between "Darcy is shy as well as arrogant" and "Darcy is shy rather than arrogant" as interpretations (although their basic arguments are quite different). But even that as the worst possible misreading of P&P when Darcy is not even the main character is ?????????

I mean, for one alternative (not even the one I voted for!), the idea that Elizabeth is an author avatar Mary Sue seems a far worse misreading of P&P than basically anything to do with Darcy at all. The center piece of the entire novel is Elizabeth's epiphany of self-knowledge about her own shortcomings that do not particularly resemble Austen's at all, but were ethically a concern for her, and she's a complex, interesting character in general whom Austen correctly regarded as a major achievement. Inverting that into Elizabeth as an improbably perfect, reality-warping self-insert is deeply wrong and frankly pretty misogynistic as well.

(ngl though, it's a little funny to see such a blatantly terrible reading of Elizabeth rank so far behind the shy Darcy votes. I've gotten "does anyone actually think/say that?" so many times on my posts about Austen fandom's prioritization of Darcy's character development over Elizabeth's and yet...)

And even just going with the Darcy-centric misreadings, the idea of Darcy as a "bad boy" seems easily the most absolutely wrong take on him. His pride is at least complicated and the finer points can be fairly debated and it's a quality that actually changes somewhat throughout the novel, and you can have discussion over what happened when, whose testimonies should be weighted more, etc. But there is no point at which "bad boy" isn't utterly wrong for him. However, there's definitely a tendency in some wings of the fandom to find the idea of Darcy being misread too favorably more objectionable than him being read too unfavorably, regardless of the particulars, so it's not a surprise.

I suppose you could argue about what "worst" means in the context of variously bad interpretations. Like, is an interpretation that is about a fairly trivial aspect of the book but extremely wrong about it "worse" than an interpretation that is pretty bad but at least comprehensibly so about something very important?

[r0semultiverse]

How many hours did they end up staying awake in total? Do we know? I wanna figure out if I’d survive with my stimulants or not.

[aquanutart]

I absolutely LOVE the Squirtle/Wartortle illustrations by kantaro in Pokemon 151!

The Squirtle jumping so joyfully from the rock into the ocean, the colors are STUNNING! I love the contrast of the Squirtle's aqua blue framed in the vivid orange sky, the soft bit of blue reflecting in its shell and its tail just catching the sun, how little and squishy its body looks as it launches itself towards the water with such tremendous excitement!

The lineless style of the background gives me the feel of a travel poster and I sense the tropical environment around it from the rocks and trees framing the corners, the waterfall splashing with as much energy as the Squirtle!

The layered blues on the surface of the water and the bubbles rising at the corner make me FEEL the liquid rising to meet the Squirtle--I can just feel how the next moment it's going to break through and be immersed in a cool island swim!

And the Wartortle running along the sunset beach, this is somehow everything I always imagined for Wartortle! I adore the way the rich purple melts into the warm red/orange sky, the matching purple clouds and shadows in the foreground, and how the dimming sunlight glows red on Wartortle's deep blues!

I love how the yellow and orange of the sky illuminate the lapping waves, I can just feel the gentle motion of the sea at dusk. The aqua color of the ocean matches Wartortle's ears and tail and sets off the red-orange sand, I just love how the colors are here!

Wartortle looks so round and squishy, I love its happiness as it goes frolicking through the shallows, chasing the bubbles caught in the setting sun! The shine and deep shadow on its shell give it an almost jewel texture like real tortoise shell; I love the silhouetted splash Wartortle leaves as it goes running across the shore. It's so full of energy and delight at the end of a gorgeous day! The colors in these are SO vivid and harmonized and the style is so cute and bursting with energy and joy. I just LOVE it (also Squirtle is my starter)

[angiestown]

[pulsingvoid]

i used to think that there will never be another trc because of its unique quality for the genre but i'm starting to think that there will never be another trc because i am not a kid anymore and loath as i have been to admit it i was a kid at the cusp of 19 when trc found me making it the last story i would ever experience that would feel like it's part of my childhood. because it is

[dyketennant]

oh i can already tell i’m about to have some really unpopular opinions about the edge of sleep tv show

[vonkarmic]

i was led to believe that torrenting video games would be about as easy as pirating literally anything else is. and so i’ve been spending 3 hours downloading a game that i expected to take 15 minutes tops

[seventh-district]

so uh. that 2.2 Special Program, huh

[britneyshakespeare]

without doubt one of the worst things about bratz dolls is that you cannot display them without shoes bc they look weird as fuck. stumpy ass bitches

[lae-zels]

nothing like news about a sequel making me want to replay the original

[mwagneto]

maybe binging the white lotus and the boys back to back in less than 3 days total by staying up til 6am every night is doing bad things to my mental stability. maybe

[prototypesteve]

Moment of Realization.

Nothing special about the place in this photo, but this is the exact moment when it really, really registered in my mind that I’m 7,000 km from home, in London, England. Maybe it was the eff-you scale of the architecture, or maybe it was how I started to notice how there seems to be no pattern to how street signs were mounted, or maybe it was that I realized I’d spent the past four hours trying to figure out how locals¹ chose which side of the sidewalk to walk on². Whatever it was, this was where and when it all sank in. I really did this. Wheee!

Footnotes:

¹ I watched for people with work-style bags, or a gym bag, or for people ignoring the scenery and watching (or casually ignoring) the pedestrian lights.

² If there is a pattern, I haven’t found it. I looked all over³ Holborn, Strand, Whitehall, and Soho, on a Saturday night.

³ Saturday was Asexuality Day,and if there’s something more asexual than spending Saturday night in some party-parts of London, trying to discern the locals’ sidewalk protocols, I don’t know it.

[kris-mage-fics]

URL Music

Thanks for tagging me @bi-stander!

K: The Koi Story (锦鲤抄) performed by Jiaju and Zongli

R: Renn by :LOR3L3I:

I: In And Out Of Love by Armin van Buuren feat. Sharon Den Adel

S: Surrender by The Birthday Massacre (cw: lyrics about stalking)

M: Middle Of The Night by Elley Duhé

A: Arise by CLANN

G: Good Behavior by Plumb

E: Everytime We Touch or Evacuate The Dancefloor by Cascada (Sorry I can't choose!)

F: Flower Maiden by Dzivia

I: I Miss You by blink-182 (cw: flashing lights, disturbing imagery, depictions of drowning, and spiders)

C: Concomitance by Anton Belov (bandcamp link since I couldn't find it as a single on youtube)

S: Show Your Fangs by The Crane Wives

By the way, a lot of these videos have the lyrics in the CC, description box, or in one of the top comments. Though I know some of the lyrics for "Good Behavior" are wrong.

Tagging @yuuugay (three U's might be hard, but I believe in you, Yuki!), and @georgiedoesntfloat (I'm sure you'll find some awesome songs!), and anyone who'd like to do this too! (Sorry for not tagging anyone else, I actually did like 96% of this two days ago then my brain decided it couldn't think of more people who like music and it hasn't been cooperating with me since. :/ Did I go overboard with the colors? Idk, but I'm leaving it.)

[pyrriax]

ANYWHO goodnight tumblr i'll be back on the art grind tomorrow i think 🙏