Brief life update, and another meme response

[dolorosa_12]

Everyone who requested letters with recipes from me a while back should either have received, or will receive their letters soon — I posted the last of the batch today. I enjoyed writing them and have more stationery and stamps, so at some point I'll put up another post asking for recipients.

I'm at the point where I've finally caved and admitted that the only fiction I feel mentally capable of engaging with is historical mysteries with heavy h/c elements, which means Benjamin January, Roma Sub Rosa, and Ovidia Yu's series set in 1930s Singapore. I took a look at the 500-page 'literary' novel that I'd been planning on reading next, and just went nope and retreated back to the cosy, comforting and mildly formulaic.

The prompt for Day Twelve of the fandom meme is as follows:

L: Say something genuinely nice about a character who isn’t one of your faves.

I'm struggling a bit with this one, because I don't spend a lot of time in fandom thinking about characters who aren't my favourites.

I'll talk about Jaxon Hall from Samantha Shannon's Bone Season series. He's not really the type of character that I warm to, although he seems to be the favourite for most of the fandom. However, I love (and find hilarious) his unwavering commitment to doing things for The Aesthetic™. Going about dressed in full on 2050s Victoriana? Absolutely. Writing the definitive guide to clandestine, illegal supernatural abilities solely so that he can rank his own ability highest in the hierarchy, and then funding an illegal printing press to distribute it, deliberately styling it as an underground Victorian pamphlet? Of course. He's completely ridiculous and over the top, especially given he runs an illegal syndicate of petty criminals with superpowers and should be trying to stay under the radar.


M: Name a character that you’d like to have for a friend.

N: Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom (or a fandom of choice).

O: Choose a song at random, what ship does it remind you of?

P: Invent a random AU for any fandom (we always need more ideas).

Q: A fandom you’ve abandoned and why.

R: Which friendship/platonic relationship is your favorite in fandom?

S: Show us an example of your personal headcanon.

T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending?

U: Three favorite characters from three different fandoms, and why they’re your favorites.

V: Which character do you relate to most?

W: A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

X: A trope which you are almost certain to love in any fandom.

Y: What are your secondhand fandoms (i.e., fandoms you aren’t in personally but are tangentially familiar with because your friends/people on your dash are in them)?

Z: Just ramble about something fan-related, go go go!

Comments

[falena]

Your realisation about your capacity for reading these days made me go 'duh' and feel very stupid because that's exactly what I've been going through myself. So, thank you for helping your oblivious internet friend? Also, you reminded me that I've been meaning to check out Saylor's books for ages. I grew up reading a series of historical mysteries set in ancient Rome by an Italian author and you just helped me realise I stopped keeping up with that particular series when I switched from reading Italian to reading almost exclusively in English, in the early 2000s. I've got a good 10 books to catch up on! You rock.

[dolorosa_12]

You're so very welcome!

I hope you enjoy Saylor's books. I've been reading them since I was in secondary school and stumbled upon the first two in my school library, and I love them to bits (although I actually need to catch up on some of the newer books in the series).

One word of warning: his main character, while still recognisably Roman in most of his attitudes, does have a more modern mentality, I assume to make him more relatable to modern readers. And as the series progresses it becomes more and more obvious that Saylor is using it as a proxy to work through his fury at US domestic and foreign policy during the George W. Bush presidency (thinking back on it now, it feels almost quaint to be furious about things that Bush did — I can remember feeling so at the time, for the way it affected Australian politics and the state of the world, but it feels like the anger of a different person). The contemporary politics bleeding in doesn't bother me, but I wanted to warn you just in case.

I really hope you enjoy the series — isn't it great to have a new, massive series to get stuck into?

[falena]

Thanks for the further details about the books. I've just started the first book. Getting into a new book series is great, loads of canon to go through at whatever pace you want with no wait in between books. Yay.

[trepkos]

I don't know the Bone Season but I do like the sound of Jaxon Hall!

[dolorosa_12]

You're not alone: I think he's the favourite character for most of the series' fans, and I'm certain he's the author's favourite to write!

[lokifan]

Jaxon Hall sounds like he'd definitely be my favourite, tbh. I love commitment to The Aesthetic.

[dolorosa_12]

You're not alone — I think he's the favourite of the vast majority of the series fans!