(no subject)
Okay, so clearly the recs didn't happen! Sorry. Still working on 'em.
What have I done this weekend? Not a lot of writing either, sadly. Writing has kind of been my destressing thing after work lately and I guess I don't feel as much like writing when I'm not stressed out by work?
I did finish rereading Soon I Will Be Invincible, which I liked very much the first time I read it but liked more this time around. tl;dr it's a novel about a mad scientist supervillain who's just escaped from prison and a newly-working-for-the-Justice-League/Avengers-analogue cyborg superheroine. One of the other characters in the cast has a major reveal at the end, so rereading made me go OOH OOH every time that character showed up and I quite liked them before but this time it was more rewarding to see the wheels turning in their head. I also felt a lot more sympathy for Fatale this time around? I mean I found her sympathetic the first time, but I read it in college and a big part of Fatale's theme was "okay so I did everything I thought I was supposed to do and now I'm not sure what I'm doing but people are depending on me for some reason and they think I'm competent and I'll take the opportunities offered me, but I don't know if I'm up to that challenge." And that... was not a part of my college life, but it is definitely a part of my life now.
I guess it's telling that in college I found Dr. Impossible -- not sympathetic, exactly, he's a dick no matter what time of life you read him -- but more relateable. He's kind of stuck in college. That's where his real life ended and his supervillain life began. Fatale has amnesia, so she really only has the future and we don't get a lot of backstory on her life pre-powers; Dr. Impossible is totally obsessed with his past and we get a lot on being the bullied kid, being repeatedly told how smart he was as a kid and how great that was supposed to be, but also feeling totally alienated from everything, and I have to say I could probably have related to his experiences of being That Kid at any point after maybe second grade, and all that really intensified for me in high school. I'm not a genius or anything, like he's supposed to be, but I definitely remember hating my classmates for being so damn slow for most of grade school and high school. (Middle school I had different problems, but at least I was going to Nerd School. Nerd School didn't help Dr. Impossible but it sure helped me.) So I kind of glommed onto him as a terrible but understandable character my first time around, and this time was... weird, because I still felt all that but I was like "wow, you have not grown as a person since your early twenties, have you? I'm so sorry. Except I'm not, because the reason you have no friends is because you're such a dick to them." Fatale's not perfect, obviously, but I get her now, and I'm really glad I get her, not just because it made the book more rewarding.
I will admit, though, his New Ice Age plan sounded pretty neat. I'd read that AU. I'm not writing that AU. And I'm pretty much always up for fucked-up mad scientist characters.
I also finished listening to the Welcome to Night Vale novel, finally. It was very good. I'll try not to say anything spoilery here because I'm sure there are people on my flist who want to read it and haven't yet done so; I liked it a lot and I'm curious how it holds up in print, because I have the print version but the print version doesn't sound like Cecil Baldwin, so obviously I opted for the audio version. I am sad that there's so little fic about the two main characters, and none (on AO3 at least) where they interact at all! (I think most of the stuff about them was written before the novel, based on their brief appearances in the show.) Anyway, I kind of loved them and all their interactions and the ending was really, really satisfying. I may do another (fully spoilery) post just on WTNV once I've caught up with the actual show.
What have I done this weekend? Not a lot of writing either, sadly. Writing has kind of been my destressing thing after work lately and I guess I don't feel as much like writing when I'm not stressed out by work?
I did finish rereading Soon I Will Be Invincible, which I liked very much the first time I read it but liked more this time around. tl;dr it's a novel about a mad scientist supervillain who's just escaped from prison and a newly-working-for-the-Justice-League/Avengers-analogue cyborg superheroine. One of the other characters in the cast has a major reveal at the end, so rereading made me go OOH OOH every time that character showed up and I quite liked them before but this time it was more rewarding to see the wheels turning in their head. I also felt a lot more sympathy for Fatale this time around? I mean I found her sympathetic the first time, but I read it in college and a big part of Fatale's theme was "okay so I did everything I thought I was supposed to do and now I'm not sure what I'm doing but people are depending on me for some reason and they think I'm competent and I'll take the opportunities offered me, but I don't know if I'm up to that challenge." And that... was not a part of my college life, but it is definitely a part of my life now.
I guess it's telling that in college I found Dr. Impossible -- not sympathetic, exactly, he's a dick no matter what time of life you read him -- but more relateable. He's kind of stuck in college. That's where his real life ended and his supervillain life began. Fatale has amnesia, so she really only has the future and we don't get a lot of backstory on her life pre-powers; Dr. Impossible is totally obsessed with his past and we get a lot on being the bullied kid, being repeatedly told how smart he was as a kid and how great that was supposed to be, but also feeling totally alienated from everything, and I have to say I could probably have related to his experiences of being That Kid at any point after maybe second grade, and all that really intensified for me in high school. I'm not a genius or anything, like he's supposed to be, but I definitely remember hating my classmates for being so damn slow for most of grade school and high school. (Middle school I had different problems, but at least I was going to Nerd School. Nerd School didn't help Dr. Impossible but it sure helped me.) So I kind of glommed onto him as a terrible but understandable character my first time around, and this time was... weird, because I still felt all that but I was like "wow, you have not grown as a person since your early twenties, have you? I'm so sorry. Except I'm not, because the reason you have no friends is because you're such a dick to them." Fatale's not perfect, obviously, but I get her now, and I'm really glad I get her, not just because it made the book more rewarding.
I will admit, though, his New Ice Age plan sounded pretty neat. I'd read that AU. I'm not writing that AU. And I'm pretty much always up for fucked-up mad scientist characters.
I also finished listening to the Welcome to Night Vale novel, finally. It was very good. I'll try not to say anything spoilery here because I'm sure there are people on my flist who want to read it and haven't yet done so; I liked it a lot and I'm curious how it holds up in print, because I have the print version but the print version doesn't sound like Cecil Baldwin, so obviously I opted for the audio version. I am sad that there's so little fic about the two main characters, and none (on AO3 at least) where they interact at all! (I think most of the stuff about them was written before the novel, based on their brief appearances in the show.) Anyway, I kind of loved them and all their interactions and the ending was really, really satisfying. I may do another (fully spoilery) post just on WTNV once I've caught up with the actual show.