#like. hes supposed to be tragic yes but hes also an incredibly unreliable narrator

[6ftgator]

It's so funny that the iwtv show somehow made louis way more sympathetic and lestat...worse? Don't get me wrong they're both god awful but it's impressive to me

[thanks-mike-stamford]

Fics that inspire my writing - Part II

This is Part II. Read Part I or Part III

Continuing the discussion, I grouped these fics together for something they have in common: author style! It was actually a bit hard choosing them because they are all written by authors who have a distinct style. Something in them that makes you recognise the author right away, that makes you think - oh yes, definitely is a story from this person. When you have a bunch of stories with the same kind of feel, it's hard to choose one to illustrate my point. Tip is: binge read the authors below!

Part II

I Used to Live Alone Before I Knew You by etothepii Back when there wasn't even s2 yet I was already reading stuff from this author. I absolutely love their fics. This one is super interesting, a Good Omens fusion book version - beyond numerous screaming posts on the internet I'm not really familiar with this universe.

Something I like in all their fics and it's worked beautifully in this one is that there's more than it seems under the surface. The characters are not an open book even to the reader, and the narrator (close Sherlock POV) doesn't give all the information. The narrator sometimes doesn't even explain the information we are given. The facts are presented piece by piece, building the layers of a character, making it clear that even if right now, for this story, it's not relevant, this person is a complex human being (or angel. Or demon) that doesn't exist solely for the purpose of the plot. Two factors help with this: the non-linear narrative, that permits we only know a part of someone when it becomes relevant; and the sort of omniscience of Sherlock. I say sort of because yes, he's a demon and he has access to the core of someone. He's able to fish for stuff that happened in someone's life and how they feel about that as a way to build their vulnerability to sin. However, this is not necessarily mind-reading or future prediction. He makes deductions based on the soul, let's put this way. But because he can't use it to predict exactly what is going to happen, he still gets surprised. Because the characters are layered, they are able to be consistent with what we know and yet unexpected, up until the end.

The combination of giving powers to the narrator and using non-linearity is brilliant, working to enhance the themes behind the plot, which are about the complexity of the human soul. I'm working on a WIP that has similar themes and I try to play with these aspects to make it smooth like this story, instead of a philosophical essay using voices of characters. I've tried the non-linear narrative in a published fic, but it didn't have the same level of success in serving the story. Let's see if it goes better when I try again.

What It Is by toyhto This author has two main things going on in their fics: the type of angst that makes you question yourself, and the type of humour that is not really about trying to make you laugh, it's a very weird type of humour. I love weird stuff.

This fic is not Toyhto's best angsty one or best humourous one, but it's one that creates a good mix of both, like a tragicomedy (but without a tragic ending). You have John not knowing how to feel about Sherlock, and Sherlock gambling possibilities on how to fix the situation. It's the narrative that fascinates me. The story keeps its cards close, the reader is often a bit uncomfortable, a bit wrong-footed. You don't know where the story is going (hell, sometimes you don't even know where a scene is going), so you keep hanging up until the end. There's an underlying panic in how characters interact, but it's never hysterical, it's never loud or obnoxious. And then you find yourself snorting in situations that shouldn't have been funny. Life is usually not one genre or the other, so why literature should be? I love that the story never tries to be something (sad, funny, intriguing), and yet it is. It's not easy to pull something like this.

I have a WIP currently on my drive folder where I try to play with this tragicomedy narrative thing. This fic inspires me in trying to keep the reader on their toes all while looking effortless.

Borrowed Ghosts by DiscordantWords DiscordantWords has been out there since 2016 showing how there's more than a way to fix canon. In fact there are multiple ways. This is the author you want to go if you watch the show and think eeh this should have gone a different way. There's probably a story in here which takes the same premise you thought about.

This one is just too incredible. Because it picks up right from a crucial point in canon and said - ok, what if everything still happened, but they actually make sense? For this story consistency is key, and if canon gave us a John Watson making bad decisions while nursing an unreliable brain work, that's what you get. But make it make sense! This is what happens when you are on a roll of bad decisions, this story tells me. This is what happens when you're isolated from what before kept you on track. This is what happens when on top of everything your mind is playing you tricks: they don't just stop because you decided to. That's not how it works. This story acknowledges the bad stuff, but to fix them it doesn't propose miracles, and it definitely doesn't ignore them. We get the consequences but we also get the process of change that is necessary for things to be good once again. Like John says: there's a difference between wishing something happened differently and wishing it hadn't happened at all. But it did happen, so now what?

Make it canon divergence but character consistency and twist it to fix it, it's what inspires me in this fic.

The Ancillus's Tale by Chryse I reiterate that everything by Chryse is a must, but everyone that follows me on twitter had to deal with me constantly gushing about their most recent work for months, so it will be this one here. I just have a lot of feelings about this fic. Oh, yes, omegaverse again, inspired by The Handmaid's Tale.

The one aspect that comes to my mind when I think about Chryse's works is dark themes. If I want to read about fucked up stuff happening, I will go to them. And this particular fix has fucked up stuff from the first to the last chapter. And it's very immersive: you get inside the head of whoever is POV at the moment, Sherlock or John. You get their physical reactions, their thoughts, you know what they know. And the world building is on point: detailed enough that is totally credible, you can see reality becoming that way, but it's not described to exhaustion. We are presented the info about what we need to know, and rest is there, somewhere at your peripheral vision where you know it exists but it doesn't become a nuisance to the plot. But more important than that, it's how the dark themes are treated. It's never on black or white situations, surprisingly, despite the universe setting. The characters especially - they are allowed to have conflicted feelings, they are allowed to misbehave even if they are supposed to be on the good side, they have nuance and complexity. And the cherry on top: just because it has a dark premise, it doesn't mean it can't have a super satisfying happy ending that even brings comfort to the soul after letting it being hurt. We get snippets of comfort, the promise it's going to happen all along the fic, to compensate the extreme suffering the characters are going through. It's glorious.

I have been toying with the idea of writing something on the dark side. In fact my next multi chapter is super fucked up (but as always, with the certainty of a happy ending), and I hope it can see the world soon. I'm writing with this premise in mind: characters are allowed to have conflicted feelings, and they are allowed to misbehave, that won't make them the bad guys.

This was part II! If you missed part I, just click here. Part III is up!

[sophielovesbooks]

Sophie’s Dark Academia Rec List

In honour of my favourite genre, have a very personal, very subjective recommendations list!

-        The Secret History (Donna Tartt)

The obvious choice, a classic. In my personal opinion, it’s not perfect and there are better dark academia books out there, but it has massively shaped the genre and therefore deserves recognition. Also, the aesthetic is on point! Read if you want to get a feel for the genre or if you’re simply curious.

-        If We Were Villains (M. L. Rio)

Basically a newer, better The Secret History?? Plenty of similarities, minus certain problematic bits that were present in TSH. Amazing prose, incredible characters, absolutely worth the read. A prime example of dark academia! Read if you love Shakespeare and college settings and compelling characters and drama and just beautiful writing!

-        Black Chalk (Christopher J. Yates)

Also a fairly good example of the genre, but tragically underhyped. Darker than, for example, If We Were Villains. Set at Oxford! Will mess with your head. The characters are not necessarily likeable, but interesting. The writing is fairly complex. Read for a dark academia thriller which takes the unreliable narrator to an impressive new extreme (in a good way!)

-        Truly Devious (Maureen Johnson)

A rare YA dark academia book! Read for murder and mystery and a beautiful boarding school setting as well as a really likeable main character! Due to its nature less dark and somewhat less mature than most of the other books on this list, but if you’re looking for more of a quick and fun dark academia read, this is the one for you!

In a similar vain: The Vanishing Stair (Maureen Johnson)

Cannot actually vouch for this as I haven’t read it yet, but it’s the sequel to Truly Devious and I have heard good things.

-        The Secret Place (Tana French)

MASSIVELY underappreciated dark academia with (gasp) supernatural elements?! The most beautiful prose and funniest dialogue you will ever see. Incredible characters. Again, amazing boarding school setting and close group of female friends! (They will break your heart). Also murder. Also half of the story being told from a detective’s PoV. Read if you value good literature. Just. Read it.

-        The Likeness (Tana French)

Actually, maybe I was kidding before, maybe this book is the most underappreciated dark academia book out there? Either way, it’s my favourite. Within dark academia and within ALL OF THE BOOKS. This is it. The perfect novel. Characters that own my hearts to this day. Writing so beautiful that it had me sobbing uncontrollably on several occasions. The university it is set in is Trinity College Dublin. (Cue me being bitter that I don’t go there every single day for the rest of my life.) Very intriguing mystery, too. Hilarious dialogue. All the emotions. All the heartbreak. Just… I love it so much, okay? <3

-        The Lying Game (Ruth Ware)

Good, very good. Set in a boarding school near the ocean, but unfortunately, only the past tense story line is and we don’t get to see too much of it. Very interesting characters. Much heavier on the dark than the academia. Read if you’re looking for more of a classic murder mystery/thriller and are not too focussed on the academia. Also read for an interesting group of female friends.

-        The Basic Eight (Daniel Handler)

Very promising, but wasn’t my cup of tea at all. The setting is an American High School on the West Coast. The murder isn’t that much of a mystery. I’m mentioning it here because I know that other people love this book, even though I really didn’t. I would say don’t read, but see for yourself, I suppose.

-        The Lessons (Naomi Alderman)

Yes, okay, an interesting one. Set at Oxford, which was amazing. Interesting characters with interesting dynamics. I read it quickly and was quite entertained. But there were certain problematic bits (regarding LGBTQ+ representation and mental illness), so you’ve been warned. Not my fave, but I mostly enjoyed it while reading it.

 There are a few more dark academia books on my shelves, which I unfortunately cannot include on this list, as I haven’t read them yet. One of them is “The Lake of Dead Languages” by Carol Goodman. Another is “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh. Might edit this post later to add these and more. xx

UPDATE!! (With slightly longer descriptions this time, because people are actually reading this? Reblogging even? Wow!) 

-        The Lake of Dead Languages (Carol Goodman)

THE ALL-FEMALE DARK ACADEMIA NOVEL WE ALL NEED AND DESERVE…?? The setting is A++. An all-female boarding school in the Adirondack Mountains in New York! There is a lake that features so heavily in the story, it basically counts as a main character. Told from the PoV of a teacher who used to go to the school. There are two close groups of female friends, one in the present timeline, one in the past. Both have dark, dark secrets and both fit the dark academia genre so well! Also, heavy focus on Latin rather than Ancient Greek, which I have all the love for. This one is a gem, so give it a chance!

-        Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

An actual classic, as in… first published in 1945. And it reads like it. The beginning came with beautiful vibes! Our young boy Charles starting his time at Oxford, meeting a lot of pretentious people, including one Lord Sebastian Flyte, who Charles is suspiciously fascinated by. Sebastian is the biggest dork to ever dork, carries around with him an actual teddy bear named Aloysius, the absolute madmen?? But it’s all downhill from there, with alcoholism and war and depressing times… And Oxford only really features in the first half or less.

-        People Like Us (Dana Mele)

Another rare YA dark academia!! Features a group of Mean Girls who one day, when out at night to go swimming, find one of their classmates floating dead in the lake. Which is an excellent dark academia set-up, let’s be honest. Also, sapphic girls, incredible sapphic girls with really complex relationships! Bi main character! A fun and quick read, much like “Truly Devious”. More descriptions of the beautiful boarding school buildings would have been welcome, but at least we got a few! Anyway, go forth and enjoy this little beauty.

-        Party Girls Die in Pearls (Plum Sykes)

Umm… I barely even comprehend this book’s existence? Has a prime dark academia set-up with a murdered girl in Oxford, but I still somehow DNF’d it after about 20 pages?! The main character’s name is Ursula Flowerbutton, and if you think that’s quirky and funny… good for you, you might actually enjoy this book. But you’ll also have to endure descriptions of clothes, oh, so many descriptions of clothes! And for anything unique to Oxford that might make the book fun because only those who know will know… you’ll get a footnote. So actually, everyone will know, with zero effort. Definitely not for me, but if you want to read a glossy magazine style dark academia, knock yourself out, friend!

-        The Night Climbers (Ivo Stourton)

Breath-taking! A piece of beauty! Set at Cambridge (and the campus features heavily!), a main character reminiscent of Richard Papen, an intriguing group of new friends that he would do anything to belong with. Including… climbing the buildings of Cambridge at night? Without proper equipment, just with his hands and feet?? Honestly, out of the books on this list, this one is the closest in style and maturity and characterisation to The Secret History! The writing is absolutely gorgeous, the plot fascinating. And it’s dark academia that features a non-violent crime, which works surprisingly well. All in all: A STUNNER THAT FANS OF THE SECRET HISTORY SHOULD CHECK OUT!!

-        As I Descended (Robyn Talley)

A queer, sapphic Macbeth retelling?? Also a rare YA dark academia with strong supernatural elements?! The representation is on point, with two hispanic main characters, wlw, mlm and one of the girls in the main couple being disabled! The boarding school setting is also on point (and uniquely different as the school building is actually a former plantation in Virginia). This book is so different and so spooky! It wasn’t perfect and some say the retelling didn’t work 100% (I, personally, felt that the plot slowed down a bit), but the atmosphere is amazing and the characters are pretty cool, too!

Not to worry, my quest to find and read as many DA books as possible isn’t over. So this list might be updates again some time in the future! :)

[thesffcorner]

Autonomous by Annalee Newitz

Autonomous is a speculative sci-fi novel by Annalee Newitz. It follows several characters in a near future world ruled by patents on all technology and medicine, self-actualizing robots, colonization of Mars, and bot and human indenture. Jack is a drug pirate who reverse engineers patented drugs and sells them to people who can't afford the patented version. When one of her latest reverse-engineered drugs causes horrible side-effects including death, two agents get put on her case; Paladin a newly created and booted robot and Eliasz a human IPC agent. This is a short, but dense novel. There is so much to talk about, so many themes to unpack and so much world-building. This futuristic Earth feels eerily real, despite being a future of slavery (now called indenture to work contracts) and actual robots. Because it's still our Earth, and Newitz spends a lot of time talking about real locations like Vancouver or Casablanca, and this atmosphere of the different sci-tech clusters we meet are reminiscent of actual co-op and university groups today. I could write an entire book on the world-building alone; it's so meticulous, so well woven into the narrative, that I found myself wanting to find out more about this world and how it functions than the actual story. This book gets compared a lot to Neuromancer and I definitely see why, but unfortunately, that means that all the issues I had with that novel appear here too. While Newitz is definitely way better at crafting unlikable protagonists (in that I actually didn't absolutely abhor Jack and Paladin even though they are both flawed, kind of horrible beings), this book is chuck full of sex and it's just as awkward as it was in Neuromancer. In the year of our Lord 2018, when the most popular opinion is how much people want to fuck the Fishman from The Shape of Water, reading about a robot (who I imagine looks like Orisa from Overwatch) and a human have sex was a profoundly unappealing experience. 

Additionally, there is a big focus on technology and how it works; not just chemistry and medicine, but also robotics and automation, which obviously was one of the main focuses of Neuromancer as well. I found this a lot more accessible because of Newitz's language, and the fact that Jack isn't supposed to be an unreliable narrator like Case was. Another point of comparison is the theme of autonomy and self-actualization; in the former it was AI, here it's robots. So let's get into the characters. First we have Jack, and I have to get a gripe out of the way immediately. This book is marketed around Jack being the main character, but that's not really true. While it is her actions that set the plot into motion, she doesn't really change as a character and spends most of the plot reacting to things. Towards the end of the book she completely gets removed from the main action until the very climax, and even then, we end the book following different characters' story rather than hers. In spite of this, she is still an interesting character. The more we find out about her backstory, the more I sympathized with her and I understood her reluctance to bond with anyone, why she travels alone, and how she ended up in the position she did. I liked that she was so willing to even sacrifice her own life to fix the mistake she made in reverse engineering Zacuty. She is still a flawed character; she is a drug addict herself, albeit a high functioning one, she is stubborn, holds grudges that turn deadly and, well there is that whole thing about reverse engineering a drug without testing it first. I enjoyed following her story a lot, especially when we got to Saskatchewan, and wouldn't be opposed to following her misadventures in a future book. Next we have Threezed. He is a breath of fresh air, in that he's the only one of the main characters that isn't some sort of engineer or chemist or scientist. He represents the indenture system in that he is an indentured person himself, having grown up in an indentured school that goes bankrupt. I found the indenture system the most horrifying aspect of this future, because again, like the patent system it's something that very closely resembles our own world. Yes, we in the west aren't slaves to the companies that employ us, but we are only a step removed. I can just imagine the culmination of the system we have in place now being something close to this (or maybe perhaps the ultra-capitalist system in Ubik). As a character Threezed is sarcastic, apathetic and I ultimately didn't learn that much about him, but I did enjoy his presence. Med is next, and I liked her the most. She seems to be the most genuinely good character out of the bunch, which is ironic because she's a bot. She is part of an experimental program of autonomous bots that grow up with a family; as such she had never been indentured and has some struggles understanding and connecting with other bots because of it. I will ask the question I always do in these situations; why would anyone want to create a completely self-aware bot who looks and acts exactly as a human and is also raised as a human. Why? To what end? Either way, I liked Med. She doesn't have a lot of personality, but I did like what little she does show, especially towards the end of the book. Eliasz is the IPC agents sent after Jack, and he was my least favorite character. He simultaneously has no personality and the most confusing personality of the book. He is violently homophobic and trigger happy, but is also very kind and friendly to bots. He blindly follows the IPC and the incredibly corrupt patent laws to the extent that he mutilates and kills people, but then cares about justice for indentured humans. I just... I didn't like him. Not even when we find out his tragic backstory or when he makes a decision in the end that turns out well for everyone else. But now, let's talk about the true main character, and by far the most interesting character, Paladin. Paladin is a military grade robot. We start the journey with them, from one of their very first drills. When we meet Paladin everyone refers to him as he, because everyone assumes the brain that is hardwired in his body that helps him with facial recognition is male (because sexism). However, halfway through the story we find out that the brain Paladin has is female which causes dramatic changes in both how she perceives the world and how Eliasz sees her. I have... some issues with this. Let's start off with the genders. Eliasz is clearly attracted to Paladin from the very first moment they meet, but when Paladin inquires about sex, he rudely shuts her down saying he isn't a 'faggot'. As soon as Paladin finds out the brain is female and tells him, he initiates sexual contact. What? I'm sorry how is his homophobia being rewarded as a good thing? Yes it doesn't matter what gender he decides Paladin is (after all Paladin is a robot), but the fact that he's never confronted with his latent desires, his homophobia or transness as a possible state of being pissed me off more than it had any right to. Another bigger issue is Paladin's autonomy. Halfway through the novel, Paladin and Eliasz get separated and she gets a temporary autonomy key. While in its possession, she realizes that her emotions towards Elisaz are still valid even though the latent code that makes her automatically love him and want to protect him is suspended. To be precise, she figures this out by examining her memories from Casablanca "when he'd [Eliasz] asked Paladin whether he should call her 'she'. It's true that he was asking the wrong question, but if she listened to the words behind the words... he was asking her consent" (pg 236). Furthermore "because he'd asked her consent so indirectly, his query hadn't activated any of her emotional control programs. [...] Nothing in her programming prevented her from saying no to Eliasz, so she had chosen to say yes." (pg. 236) However, if we go back to Casablanca, the only reason she says yes, is because she wants to have sex with Eliasz! She knows he is homophobic so saying no (meaning for him to keep calling her 'he') would mean he no longer wants to have a relationship with her, at least not consciously. "If Paladin were female, Eliasz would not be a faggot. And maybe then Eliasz could touch Paladin again, the way he had last night, giving and receiving pleasure in an undocumented form of emotional feedback loop" (pg. 184-5). So why is she so sure she said yes willingly? And even then her entire motivation is STILL based around how Eliasz would feel! Additionally, and this is a SPOILER because it's the literal end of the novel, so don't read this paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled, Eliasz buys out her contract from the military. This somehow makes her autonomous? How? Wouldn't it just mean that now Eliasz is her owner instead of the military? She'd be indentured to him the way Threezed was to the drug peddler at the beginning of the book? And then they move to Mars, how sweet. Barf. Honestly, Paladin deserves better, and she deserves a better plot-line. I have so much more to say, but I've rambled on enough. This is a serious book, and there really is a lot to discuss and unpack. I recommend you read it and experience it for yourself; and if you like Neuromancer then you will probably enjoy it more than I did. I didn't love it, but I'm still glad I read it.

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