The end is nearly upon us and I am so happy. I feel like this has been such a stressful, busy semester and I need it to be over. The light at the end of the tunnel is visible, and I'm very happy about that.
I have this grant due on Monday, and some bits the Monday after, and just 2 assignments remaining in this class. And a dance performance and my extracurriculars are over. We are nearly there!
This was another free ebook that I got from Tor.com! It was a quick read, I think the whole thing is about 50 pages, but it was fun.
The story follows Tobias, a sort of otherworldly groundsman for a forest as he meets and falls for his employer. His employer, Silver, studies folklore and heard of a Wild Man that lived in the woods which prompted him to meet Tobias. However, Silver doesn’t know that the Lord of the Summer is coming and he accidentally comes into the woods the night that the Lord of the Summer is coming. He ends up being taken away, and Tobias reveals that he used to be in a relationship with the Lord, before they both became creatures of the wood. Silver’s mom then comes looking for her son, and decided that the way to do this is to take down the big oak that Tobias and the Lord’s lives are bound to. They succeed in bringing the tree down but are unable to find Silver. As a result of this though, the Lord of the Summer is killed and Tobias becomes a mortal man once more. A year after this happens though, Tobias enters the wood and runs into Silver, who has now taken his place as a wild man of the wood. They kiss and reconcile before leaving to see Silver’s mom.
So the story is really cute, it’s evident from the beginning that the two characters are flirting with each other and despite the fact that it’s so short their relationship doesn’t feel rushed. It’s nice to see how it develops and how their relationship reflects Tobias’ feelings about mortals as he warms up to them once more and emerges from the wood.
Additionally it is a neat take on stories about Fairy Kings and things like that. The Lord of the Summer is explicitly said to not be a Fairy King, but he sure functions like one. There’s also dryads which are spirits linked to trees and other mythical creatures. The story doesn’t go into much detail on them, but their presence brings a forest-y mystery to the whole tale.
Short and sweet, this is a story that’s well written and
worth the read!
I finally started the tv show version of "What We Do In The Shadows" and it's every bit as funny as my friends have been telling me! I watched the movie a few years ago with an old roommate, and the tv show is basically that but it's longer and therefore has more content. It's a good time!
Honestly one of the best parts of this is that it's a show where I can have it on in the background and do work during since it doesn't exactly require a ton of thought. But I can tell that a lot of thought went into the show as well. It's very funny, and character arcs are already being set up. I can't wait to get through this.
I’m slowly but surely going through Rick Riordan’s books again and revisiting the books that had such an impact on me when I was in high school and college. The Mark of Athena is part of the Heroes of Olympus series that follows the Percy Jackson series and focuses on seven different demigods instead of just one.
To recap, there’s three demigods from the Roman camp and four from the Greek camp. They’re working together to stop Gaia, mother earth, from rising again and unleashing monsters upon the world. Plus the Romans are mad at the Greeks and are attacking their camp soon. Low pressure. In this book they start at the Roman camp to bring them all together, where one of their party unwittingly starts a conflict between the camps, and from there they head to Rome to try and save another demigod who has been imprisoned by giants and has information that they need. Plus Annabeth, daughter of Athena, has been called by this mysterious duty called the Mark of Athena (ooo title drop) to rescue her mother’s statue in Rome.
Once in Rome, Annabeth heads off on her quest; Piper, Jason, and Percy go to save Nico; and Leo, Frank, and Hazel get led into a trap while also looking for Nico. Annabeth ends up finding the statue, but she opens up a hole to Tartarus (the godly depths of hell) in the process. Nico tells them that the Doors of Death, which need to be closed to prevent Gaia from awakening, have to be closed from both sides. One in Greece and one in Tartarus. Which then makes it oddly convenient that Annabeth and Percy are both pulled into Tartarus through the hole created. The others prepare to sail to Greece and meet them there.
There’s a lot of stuff in the book that I skip over. But honestly, my favorite part is the fact that it focuses more on Annabeth. Annabeth was in the Percy Jackson series, and played a huge role in it, but we never got to hear from her perspective. Even in the earlier Heroes of Olympus books we didn’t hear from her in favor of learning more about the newer characters. It’s great to see things from her perspective and see her get her own quest for once.
One of Riordan’s big themes is questioning that the gods are right or good in what they do. This comes up a number of times, but most dramatically with the spider Arachne who was turned into a spider for bragging that she was a better weaver than the gods. Was this a just punishment? Annabeth doesn’t seem to think so. But she also doesn’t want to die so she ends up casting the spider into Tartarus. Arachne then drags Annabeth in with her. A lot of Percy Jackson dealt with this theme, and how the gods’ whims could have a huge impact on mortals. It’d be nice to see it elaborated on a bit further here, especially as the end grows close.
And then there’s the ending. Percy and Annabeth falling into Tartarus together is one of the most vivid book endings in my mind. It sets up the next book so perfectly, and devastates you in the process. Percy doesn’t want to be separated from Annabeth again after he was transplanted to the Roman camp and she had to do a solo quest to get the statue. So he refuses to let her go and tumbles into hell with her. It’s enough to rip your heart out.
The next book is The House of Hades, let’s see how this series progresses!
I might have mentioned earlier, but I'm working on the technical theater side of things for a student written show as the props manager. It's been forever since I did any props work, and I'm finding it really refreshing. I actually think the last time I did props was in 2014 when I was a freshman in college, wow that was a while ago.
Like I said, it's a student written show, so it's nice to have students doing every side of this. And the director has given me a lot of freedom, I don't remember having this little direction the last time I worked on props. It's really nice. :)
Also it's great to be working with my hands on things? I always forget just how satisfying I find that to be. For example, I made a puzzle out of cardboard and painted cats on it. It was a lovely way to spend an evening, and I've got a puzzle now! How cool is that? And I'm painting a sack with red paint to make it all bloody, so fun! Anyways, technical theater is a good time, try it if you haven't.
This was another ebook that I nabbed from Tor.com! (They gave out 3 for March, very exciting.) This first of the trio was short, but I really enjoyed it.
The main character is a SecUnit, or a Security Unit. Essentially they are a robot with some human parts deployed for security. The protagonist calls themselves “Murderbot” so that’s how I’ll refer to them. Murderbot is accompanying a group of scientists on an exploration mission on another planet. Eventually they realize that the larger outpost they came from is offline, and when they get there they only find dead bodies. Murderbot realizes that someone is hacking the SecUnits to cause them to go rogue and kill humans. So together with the humans, they come up with a plan to respond once these humans come looking for them. In the end, they are victorious and get home safe and the humans want to adopt Murderbot, but Murderbot decides to leave and live their own life.
Now there are some holes in the plot, how they get off the planet and home being one of them, and why these people are killing humans and things being another, but that honestly didn’t bother me that much. Possibly it was right there in the text and I ignored it. What was much more fascinating to me was the relationship between Murderbot and the humans. From the beginning, the humans want to try and connect with their SecUnit, but the Murderbot wants nothing to do with that. However, you do see the Murderbot care, deeply, about the people that they are protecting. By the end they refer to the leader of the expedition as “my favorite human.” It’s really cute.
I feel like so often stories like these are told from the
perspective of the human in the relationship, not the robot. It’s nice to see
it turned on its head and dealt with so much humanity and feeling.
I think I've written about this before, but I finally finished "Lovely Little Losers," a series of vlogs recapitulating the story of the Shakespeare play "Love's Labors Lost." You can watch it yourself right here! It uses the same characters as "Nothing Much To Do", the group's adaptation of "Much Ado About Nothing", which I have written about before.
What I really liked about this was being able to see the characters continue to grow and develop. I tried to find some research on if these two plays are thought to be sequels or not and couldn't find much. Beyond that the theory exists that is. And while we're at it, I don't know much about "Love's Labors Lost" either except that it's about some guys who decide not to fall in love and then they conveniently fall in love! Classic Shakespeare.
Anyways so Benedick, Pedro, Balthasar, and their new friend Freddie are all living together while going to university. Essentially everyone is a bit of a mess so they decide to adopt these rules like sticking to the budget and having a curfew and not kissing. Meanwhile Beatrice and Meg decide to come up to visit them with their new friend Kit, they also end up staying with Vegan Freddie since the rules keep them from staying at the main flat. Eventually Freddie starts dating Kit, Pedro realizes that he's in love with Balthasar, and Benedick decides to drop out of uni and travel with Beatrice. But also now Leo has cancer and it's a mixed ending.
The characterizations of these productions are just so good! I love that Benedick has matured quite a bit, and now he's sitting around shipping his friends and things like that. And Balthasar is studying music and Pedro gets into acting and exploring his bisexuality. It's so cute and fun to watch.
My main complaints are about some of the new aspects. I never felt as though I knew the added characters as well, like Freddie or Kit. I totally missed that they were secretly dating for a while. I also have no idea how this possibly maps back to a Shakespeare play, you cannot convince me that Shakespeare had a character called "Freddie" let alone "Vegan Freddie." Plus if this is from the original play, I don't think Shakespeare had a gay couple (Pedro and Balthasar) by the end. I mean it's cute, but I thought it was more of a straight adaptation like "Nothing Much To Do" was.
My other complaint is with the ending. "Nothing Much To Do" felt like it took forever to end, with characters saying goodbye and summing things up for a while. "Lovely Little Losers" ends abruptly, with finding out that Leo has cancer and they have to head home. I think that's why I feel like I've lost the characters (I'm honestly having an emotional reaction over here) and I miss them so much. I think also part of this though is the fact that I have a huge investment in Pedro and Balthasar's relationship haha.
This turned into a really big post, but I loved being able to linger in this Shakespearean universe for a little longer. It definitely was worth the watch and went faster than I thought it would!
This is another ebook that I got for free from Tor.com. It’s a lot shorter than some of the other ones, only a little over 100 pages.
The story takes place in a kind of Wild West area. There’s small towns with harsh rules, and there’s the Librarians that travel between towns and deliver Approved Materials. Esther decides to run away and join the Librarians after her girlfriend, Beatriz, is caught with Unapproved Materials and hung. Once with the Librarians though, she learns that they’re all gay and that they really are part of a kind of resistance network throughout the area. She also strikes up a budding romance with Cye, another Librarian in training.
It's a short book, there’s not a ton going on here really. There’s some cool representation with Cye, who uses they/them pronouns, and a poly throuple that the Librarians escort to safety. Other than that… It’s hard to say. There’s some aspects of the world building that I liked, but it’s not really fleshed out enough. I wish that there was more about Esther’s relationship with Beatriz, and Esther’s family, but not a ton about that either.
All in all, not a bad read, but not a particularly good one
either. Having said that, I did get this book for free, so I can’t complain too
much!
I know I already wrote about this but also shush. This did make my week so there.
I forget a lot of the time just how much I love doing queer advocacy work and event planning and education and all that good stuff. But it's so energizing and wonderful to do this kind of work for this community! For Aro Week I organized three different events, one of them I was giving a presentation on existing aromantic research and it was so cool! I was so worried that no one would show up and talk to me about the research and things like that, but it went amazingly well and I'm so happy with how it turned out.
Here's to keeping this momentum going! We have to keep building this community up and growing and spreading awareness!!
