For a hundred generations, I had walked the world drowsy and dull, idle and at my ease. I left no prints, I did no deeds. Even those who had loved me a little did not care to stay.
Then I learned that I could bend the world to my will, as a bow is bent for an arrow. I would have done that toil a thousand times to keep such power in my hands. I thought: this is how Zeus felt when he first lifted the thunderbolt.
It's taken me four years to finally muster enough courage to turn the first page of Madeline Miller's telling of the little spoken of Circe, daughter of Helios and Perse, goddess, nymph, villain, witch.
Four years to prepare myself to bear the weight of that lingering devastation once again, to allow the branding of it on my skin, and to be at peace with it.
Four years, fourteen hundred and sixty days, thirty-five thousand and forty hours, two million, one hundred and two thousand, four hundred minutes.
And exactly long enough.
I was not careful. I was reckless, headlong. He was another knife, I could feel it. A different sort, but a knife still. I did not care. I thought: give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.
If The Song of Achilles was formed of whispered, pleading sighs, then Circe is a tireless, defiant scream into the void.
One goddess', one woman's, ceaseless fight against a set of rules she didn't agree to, would never agree to, and that were ultimately built to set her up to fail.
To set all women up to fail, to have no way out, to never escape.
Circe is a story for every woman who's been punished for choosing their own power: Joan of Arc, Anne Boleyn, the three centuries of "witches" burned, the mothers, daughters, sisters, the CEOs, the nurses, doctors, cleaners, teachers, artists, activists.
For every woman who was ever told she was "too emotional" when her only crime was not being afraid to feel.
For every woman who was told to cover up, not show too much skin, because they're clearly "asking for it", as if all they are is a body to be used.
For every little girl who wanted to play a sport, but was barred from the field "in case they got hurt."
For every woman who's been pushed aside, talked over, loomed over, told to smile, unnecessarily explained to, judged by their appearance.
Circe is a story for every woman who's been told "no" simply because of their biology, from the day they were born to the end of it, and what that cage can force you to become, what atrocities it'll force you to commit simply to survive, to earn a modicum of peace, bodily autonomy, your fucking self.
All my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.
...
"...a monster," he said, "she always has a place. She may have all the glory her teeth can snatch. She will not be loved for it, but she will not be constrained."
...
His rage was so hot the air bent and wavered around him. "I can end you with a thought."
It was my oldest fear, that white annihilation. I felt it shiver through me. But enough. At last, enough.
"You can," I said. "But you have always been cautious, Father. You know I have stood against Athena. I have walked in the blackest deeps. You cannot guess what spells I have cast, what poisons I have gathered to protect myself against you, how your power may rebound upon your head. Who knows what is in me? Will you find out?
Women in the Greek myths are so often categorised into three things:
🌿 The maiden (virginal, helpless, naïve)
🌿 The siren (seductive, manipulative, vain)
🌿 The villain (bloodthirsty, ugly, cruel)
Three stereotypes to capture the experience of womankind, only three, and which take no account of their complexities, their inner lives, their humanity. And rarely even in these oversimplified roles they're given do they take centre stage, acting instead as narrative scaffolding for the heroes to reach their destinies.
Circe is such a character, historically a villain who uses her powers for ill against any who cross her, holed up on her island prison, brewing spells, turning passing seamen into pigs and serving them up for breakfast.
She's created monsters, turned humans into gods without consent, delivered innocents as banquet for the Minotaur, and by all accounts, by the rules of these myths, she is a villain.
But is she?
Does committing villainous acts when you've been backed into a corner, when you're fighting for your life make you a villain? Or does it make you a survivor? Does it make you strong? Does it make you powerful?
When "heroes" do these things, when they kill monsters, bloody their hands in battle, sack lands and make themselves kings, they're revered for it. Celebrated. Crowned.
They may be ultimately punished in the end, depending on whatever lazy machination of the gods they're trapped within, but the stories will still sing of them as heroes.
Odysseus.
Zeus.
Jason.
Men and gods alike who did terrible things in the name of glory but are spoken of with awe.
And what was Circe's first "crime"?
After years of abuse from those she called family?
The offence that imprisoned her on an island for the rest of eternity?
She used her magic to make the man she loved immortal, she reached for happiness in an existence of unrelenting misery, and they called her "witch", "corruption", "traitor", and cast her out.
Is there anything more familiar than a woman being punished for being powerful and embracing it?
I looked again into that forest. Yesterday – was it only yesterday? – I had waited for someone to come and tell me it was safe. But who would that be? My father, Aeëtes? That is what exile meant: no one was coming, no one ever would. There was fear in that knowledge, but after my long night of terrors it felt small and inconsequential. The worst of my cowardice had been sweated out. In its place was a giddy spark. I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open.
I stepped into those woods and began my life.
But ultimately this is where the gods fucked up because the island may have been a physical prison, but to Circe?
To Circe it was her untethering, her freedom at last to be wild, scream at the sky, brew spells, excuse herself from petty, familial politics, and just be.
Whoever that is: villain, witch, woman, lover, friend, beast, hero.
It was at last her choice.
What scares those with power more than someone who holds them outside the rules of society, who knows themselves completely, and scorns any who demand their obedience?
Nothing, not a damn thing, and especially when it's a woman.
Circe may be a story of generational misogyny, but it's also an example of the strength it takes to be a woman in a man's world, the guts it takes to turn your middle fingers up to the "big man" in the sky and say "fuck you, I'll live exactly how I want to, and you can't do a damn to stop me, even if it hurts."
You can call Circe a villain - a title she's earned, a side character who exists to send heroes on their way with wisdom and a healthy dose of fear, you can minimise yet another woman in these tales to solely that, or instead you could look a little deeper, read around what the myths allow you to see and discover a complex female character who not only survived but thrived, who lived and loved and loathed, who nurtured her power and protected it at all costs from those who would snuff it out or take it for their own.
And who succeeded where Achilles was devastatingly thwarted:
All my life, I have been moving forward, and now I am here. I have a mortal's voice, let me have the rest. I lift the brimming bowl to my lips and drink.
There is no realm in existence where I will not read Madeline Miller's writing, where I won't treasure every word, it just doesn't exist, and I'll wait as long as she needs to gift us her take on the Persephone tale.
If it takes a decade, I'll be here on my own, impenetrable island, hanging with the little tuxedo lion who stalks the halls of my house, grateful for whenever it arrives.
But I won't wait four years to read it when it does, I won't be scared of how it might make me feel, because I may have folded the page edges of The Song of Achilles to remember the loving sighs of Patroclus and his gilded husband, to map their love and hold it close, but for Circe, for every corner creased just for her, it was in the name of her triumphs, her pain, her defiance, her strength and her failures, her tears, her laughter, her humanity.
She may be a goddess by blood, but in nature, by the ways she loves and lives fully, she is so very much human, and I'd fold every corner in her name just to see her happy.
He said, "[...] we will go back. We will go back until you are satisfied."
It was so simple. If you want it, I will do it. If it would make you happy, I will go with you. Is there a moment that a heart cracks?
[...]
...in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.
Other than these being dreamier than dreamy (Zuzana always hits), this one goes out to my friend Scott, who I shamed into reading the trilogy - because he's old enough to know better!, and then didn't respond to his very detailed email concerning major and minor plot/character points because I came down with a case of the memory paralysis due to remembering NOTHING about the story and totally flaked in response.
(It's been over a decade since I read it, and, y'know, I don't remember yesterday, so...)
I'm sorry, Scott, truly, deeply, sincerely, please don't punish me with hard Sci-Fi, I beg of thee.
And no, I don't know what the point of Tom Bombadil is, I don't even remember him appearing in the story.
But maybe he's a chill "fuck you" to all the drama babies roaming Middle-Earth giving each other supernatural slappies because it's their turn to wear the One Ring?
He's the The Dude of the Old Forest (yes, I had to look up where he lived, don't judge me!).
But with bunnies and foliage instead of severed phalanges.
Only for paperbacks, though, and excluding graphic novels/paperbacks that are essentially the quality of a hardback without the "hard" ← Iykyk.
It's how I save my favourite passages, quotes, vibes, and to some that's a form of desecration, a defilement of the book that could be avoided by using tabs/bits of paper/etc. instead of permanently altering the page.
Sure, totally agree.
But to me it's a roadmap, a living marker within the story that says I was here, I enjoyed this thing, I want to remember it, a trail I can follow back whenever I feel like journeying that particular narrative route once again. Time again.
A shred of paper can easily be lost, a sticky tab worn away by age, but that little triangular fold will remain, even unfolded, the linear imprint engraved forever.
...
But bend the spine like a fucking barbarian in my presence?
If she suddenly transformed into an adorable tangle of wool she'd be totally cool with it, crack a beer, read some porn, and flirt/torment Harrow while she swung her sword around like she's auditioning for a Shakespearean role.
She's just that kind of goblin.
Plus, being made of wool matches her squishy himbo insides.
*sigh*
I love her.
If only she had a Harrow companion - a third her size, obviously - to necromance bones at her head for breathing too loudly.
The gremlin babies are back and they're still the absolute fucking worst!
And so very much worth waiting for.
I was reasonably concerned - nothing too extreme - that the second season would fall prey to sophomore-itis and lose its initial special, dirtbag something.
It's happened before, it'll happen again, and it's a bummer every damn time, especially when it happens to a show you've invested your full emotional rolodex into.
And I do love these precious idiots ever so much, they need to be protected at all costs, so, personally, I needed their second go around to live up to the first.
And it did!
In a totally different way!
The first season was very heavy, very socially and culturally aware, dealing with things like:
🍭 Austism
🍭 Rape
🍭 Mental health
🍭 Parental abuse
🍭 Racial profiling + abuse by the police
🍭 PTSD
🍭 Slut-shaming
🍭 Cultural identity
🍭 Bi-awakening
🍭 Asexuality
🍭 Toxic Masculinity
🍭 Teacher/student relationship allegations + the repercussions of
Amongst other things.
The first season packed a hell of a lot into only eight episodes, but it all felt vital to the story and wholly natural to how bloody hectic it is to be a teenager, whilst also paying homage to the original show and its ilk's tendency towards hyperbolic storytelling.
It took me totally by surprise, mostly because I remember the OG show and it was kind of hilariously bad in a nostalgically charming way? So, I wasn't expecting a Gen Z update to necessarily improve on it.
...
Hands up if you're a fucking idiot?
It's, plainly put, fucking awesome and so irresistibly lovable, and the second season continues on in entirely the same vein, mixing humour with intense issues such as:
Heartbreak High doesn't come to play and it's all the more enjoyable for it, but for the second season they, in my opinion, levelled the fuck up by leaning hard into the mid-nineties melodrama.
There was a childhood grudge, a revenge plot, hateful propaganda, secret romances, an incel after-school club, a senior dance with fuckery abound, a hate-letter screened on a dusty projector, fire!
And an exit stage left pursued by a miscommunication.
Allllll the good stuff, and it went and ended on a doozy of a cliffhanger.
Precious, hysterical babies.
If this show gets cancelled after only two seasons in classic Netflix fashion and they take them away from me:
The level of pissed I will reach will be fucking incendiary.
I don't wish being an artist making reels to feed the algorithim beast just for it to spit them out whenever it damn well pleases or not at all on my worst enemy, but fuck do I love watching other people draw.
Especially in my medium.
And Raghav's process is extremely pleasing to watch; from the bare bones architecture to the softly highlighted curves, I can feel the graphite shine on my fingertips.
And also, how tiny these pieces are.
I don't know about other people's experience at art school, but I was pushed to draw on a grand scale when all I wanted was to draw as small as possible.
It's comforting to see diminutive artists thriving.
So... I read You, Again by Kate Goldbeck (a When Harry Met Sally retelling) last month and fell id-io-tically in love with it.
So in love I lost my mind a tiny bit, and haven't been able to stop thinking about the story since.
You should read it, it's a life-ruiner, in the best way imaginable.
But the main draw for me was the hero being unapologetically based on Adam Driver, who I've been low-key (lies, it's always been high-key) crushing on since he appeared as Adam Sackler in Girls:
The moment he walked into shot I was obsessed with his beautiful face, the way he delivered his lines, his discordant humour, and the sheer breadth of the man.
His character in Girls is strange, and toxic, and unbelievably fragile, but so compelling it's kind of obscene. You might not like everything he does, at times might find it repulsive, but the desire to keep on looking is unshakeable.
I love Adam Sackler, and I always will.
And even though in You, Again, his character, Josh, couldn't be further from Sackler's (Josh is the Sally of the story, with a pole firmly rooted up his emotionally stunted, entirely loveable ass), my entire being demanded a Girls rewatch.
If only to watch him run across New York in the dead of night to go get the girl.
Subconsciously (or unconsciously? I'm never sure!) I think I meant to do this because I knew in my bones that HA would release it as a novella (fucking, yes!), and I wanted the satisfaction of reading it in full without knowing the ending.
...
Sounds like bullshit to convince myself I didn't just completely fail to read it, right?
But nah, my brain knew exactly what it was doing, that wily lump of grey squish, she had plans and I just wasn't privy to them.
I love you, brain, why can't you be nice to me like this all the time?
It's no secret that I'm obsessed with the Belcher family, they're my burger baby beloveds, but when they create entire episodes dedicated to other people's storytelling (that I love; Blade Runner's a life-changer) and do it with both respect and gentle roasting, my love transcends human capacity.
Since 2016, the year Shelfari(remember Shelfari?) was abruptly swallowed up by Goodreads, I have been participating in the yearly GR Reading Challenge.
Before this I'd never catalogued my reading in any form of list, other than a few sporadic reviews which were more Tweet-length than the carefully dithered over word vomit I send off into the digital aether these days, but besides that I just... read.
One book immediately after the next, no pausing for breath or deliberation, the full Cookie Monster method.
And I never felt the desire to keep track of these books other than remembering how I felt about them, which was an entirely insular affair - don't ask me to talk about the books I love or even one's I've just finished/in the middle of reading, all you'll get are strangled noises of delighted anguish because I feel everything and remember nothing.
But I saw the challenge and thought it looked like a satisfying way of archiving the stories I'd consumed in that particular year whilst also feeding my fetish for all things lists, so I joined.
I started small (for me; if you read one book a year and that's enough, perfect, absolutely fucking ideal, you keep doing you), fifty completed books as the goal, and I surpassed it by three - I wasn't reading as intensely eight years ago, fifty-three seems like a crazy low number to me now. I was chuffed, those extra three books brought me a surge of satisfaction, like the plus symbol next to an A, or a gold star adhered proudly to the top of an essay, or reaching double figure views on a blog post with a rogue comment thrown in (comments actually make me anxious as fuck, being perceived is stressful). It was instant gratification, and so, the next year when I read eighty-four books, I thought: this is fun, I like this, I'm really good at this.
Cut to 2018, and two hundred and sixty-seven books have been consumed and catalogued.
2019: three hundred and twenty-three books.
2020: three hundred and fifty-six books.
I was smashing it, reading like my life depended on it, nothing could stop me.
Except, this funny thing happened a year later where my consumption dipped considerably; if we're being specific, by sixty-six books.
(Just realising this coincided with Covid, and that explains so much)
And then the next year another thirty-two were lost.
And then all of a sudden it's 2023 and I'm down to two hundred and three books in total, a full one hundred and fifty-three reduction in just a few short years.
And I can tell you exactly why: pressure and glory chasing.
I can't remember the exact year I started started writing detailed reviews but I do know it prompted this... toppling effect, wherein I couldn't start a new book before I'd reviewed the just finished one because I needed that story to remain clear in my mind so I could focus all my thoughts down into the review, which meant my main reading slowed considerably - I'm a multi-book reader who's routinely devouring three books at once, but because they're usually separated into different genres, I can read the non-main books without them impinging on the "main" read. ... I'm not crazy, I swear, this makes total sense to me.
And that felt like a failure.
I wasn't reading as well as I used to, I wasn't participating in the Challenge as efficiently as everyone else, I wasn't keeping up.
(If you've ever been academically gifted or just pretty good at school and fond of good grades with a genuine fear of failure - hi, hello!, then you'll know how fuuuucking triggering I found the slowing in pace my reading was taking)
...
But keeping up with who, exactly?
Reading isn't a social act for me, it's something I started and continue to do because it's genuinely the greatest escape for the psyche known to man (and my depressed ass needed an exit stage left, stat.), and moreover, I just fucking love it.
I love stories and impossible characters and imaginary lands.
I love being spirited away with the turning of a page at any moment in time.
I love that it's just for me.
I'm in these stories while I read them, I'm the sole observer, it's my grand adventure and no one else's.
So when did it start being about writing a good enough review for other people to read? - I don't even get that many likes or comments on GR or this blog, but the what if? is always bossing me at the back of my brain.
When did it become about consuming as many books as possible in a year instead of consuming as many as were consumed? The end. No qualifier.
When did making sure I was up to date with all the new releases and holding them ahead of books I've meant to read for years become a priority?
When did Bookstagram and Booktok and Booktube, and their shameless plugging become so prevalent in my reading decisions?
When exactly did reading become a competition?
Can I mark the date or the moment this happened? Nope! But I do know for the last few years I've been... tired, harried.
Writing reviews has become a chore - but I continue to do it because I like remembering how I felt with more clarity.
The disappointment of yet another über-hyped "new hit" being totally underwhelming has started to grate - Fourth Wing, you know I'm looking at you.
Feeling stuck in one genre, something that previously didn't bother me, is now bothering me - I love Fantasy and all its sub-genres, but I miss experimenting with other genres, and since delving into the book community I feel like I've been trapped.
And the fact that I'm currently fourteen books behind schedule on my Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of two hundred is filling me with urgent fucking shame.
I feel harassed.
I feel like I need to find short stories to fill the gap, read more Graphic Novels (I'll do that anyway) because they're speedy, anything just so I'm on schedule or better yet, ahead.
Which is resulting in my brain looking pretty much like this:
All squish, no joy.
And that's insane, absolute insanity, and I've kind of done it to myself.
I set this goal, I was lulled in by the performative nature of the book community, I let myself be more concerned with numbers and the new shiny books coming out every week instead of following book blogs that rejoiced in the campness of 80s Fantasy (Black Gate, I haven't read you in years and it's a fucking crime), or the people who deep dive into the timeframe in which we'll get a new Donna Tartt novel - just over a decade is the norm, we're right on schedule, or just checking out lists of books that are for subject matter, vibe, character types, etc. - I do currently have a list open for Labyrinth-esque reads, which I'm very excited about.
And for what?
To read two hundred plus books a year and feel exhausted?
To feel superior for absolutely no reason?
To whittle my favourite pastime into a competition with anonymous people on the internet?
Yeah... I think I'm done with that, done with the whole performance of Bookstagram/tok/tube, and tying my reading value to a number literally no one cares about.
A number I have now officially decreased down to a goal of one hundred books, did it just now, and not to be hyperbolic, but I feel a million times better.
It'd probably be easier to simply not do the challenge, to walk away entirely and not track my reading at all, but I do actually enjoy seeing it progress and receiving the roundup at the end of year - also, lists.
I like participating in bookish things on the internet, I like hyping and commenting on reviews, I like biannually doing something bookstagrammy (even though I find it so fucking stressful; like I said, perceivement - not a word - makes me twitchy).
And I like having my little corner of internet to bombard unwary visitors with unhinged, bookish verbiage.
So, I'll keep doing the challenge, but not for the numbers and not to show off, but as a little keepsake of all the places my brain was whisked away to, all the people I met, and all the emotional trauma I collected on the way.
Sobbing over fictional characters, the true mark of a seasoned bookworm.
The new season starts airing on the 12th of May, and the promos/trailers/Jam Reiderson interviews are ki-lling me.
Straight up King Punch-ing the shit out my heart because I love these idiots/show so fucking desperately, in a truly feral way (ask my sisters, I haven't shut up about it in months), and I won't get to see it until who knows when!
And it's making me Lestat levels of bratty:
(Beautiful idiot)
I'm hoping the wait for it to arrive in the UK won't be too long, seeing as the BBC acquired showing rights last year, but eh, who can tell in this age of fuckery!
Therefore, thus, hence, I'm rewatching the first season to quell my inner brat and save the nearest and dearest from any vamp-based tantrums that may occur in the mean time.
It's going well so far.
After three watches I'm noticing new things, like Lestat proclaiming a freshly twitching offering to Louis as his "criminal biscuit":
Your honour, I love him.
He's the unhinged vampire brat-prince I've always wanted and Sam Reid's performance is nothing short of bloody hypnotic, I sincerely cannot look away.
The man isn't playing a vampire, he became the vampire, and dear lord he's serving Michelin star c*nt with his slutty little waist:
And his supremely dramatic hair flips.
Ugh, perfection.
Australia, you did real well.
Real, real well.
Bravo.
Now gimme the second season before I pitch a fit, develop the cloud gift and start dropping loved ones from the sky.
Reviewing a Terry Pratchett book is like explaining a joke before you've told it: entirely fucking redundant.
So... I'm not... gonna?
Instead, here's Pratchett's sardonic, and horrifyingly resonant, theorisation of what Hell might just be like:
Hell wasn’t what Rincewind had been led to expect, although there were signs of what it might once have been―a few clinkers in a corner, a bad scorch mark on the ceiling. It was hot, though, with the kind of heat that you get by boiling air inside an oven for years― Hell, it has been suggested, is other people. This has always come as a bit of a surprise to many working demons, who had always thought hell was sticking sharp things into people and pushing them into lakes of blood and so on. This is because demons, like most people, have failed to distinguish between the body and the soul.
The fact was that, as droves of demon kings had noticed, there was a limit to what you could do to a soul with, e.g., red-hot tweezers, because even fairly evil and corrupt souls were bright enough to realise that since they didn’t have the concomitant body and nerve endings attached to them there was no real reason, other than force of habit, why they should suffer excruciating agony. So they didn’t. Demons went on doing it anyway, because numb and mindless stupidity is part of what being a demon is all about, but since no-one was suffering they didn’t enjoy it much either and the whole thing was pointless. Centuries and centuries of pointlessness. Astfgl had adopted, without realising what he was doing, a radically new approach. Demons can move interdimensionally, and so he’d found the basic ingredients for a very worthwhile lake of blood equivalent, as it were, for the soul. Learn from humans, he’d told the demon lords. Learn from humans. It’s amazing what you can learn from humans. You take, for example, a certain type of hotel. It is probably an English version of an American hotel, but operated with that peculiarly English genius for taking something American and subtracting from it its one worthwhile aspect, so that you end up with slow fast food, West Country and Western music and, well, this hotel. It’s early closing day. The bar is really just a pastel-pink paneled table with a silly bucket on it, set in one corner, and it won’t be open for hours yet. And then you add rain, and let the one channel available on the TV be, perhaps, Welsh Channel Four, showing its usual mobius Eisteddfod from Pant-y-gyrdl. And there is only one book in this hotel, left behind by a previous victim. It is one of those where the name of the author is on the front in raised gold letters much bigger than the tittle, and it probably has a rose and a bullet on there too. Half the pages are missing. And the only cinema in the town is showing something with subtitles and French umbrellas in it.
And then you stop time, but not experience, so that it seems as though the very fluff in the carpet is gradually rising up to fill the brain and your mouth starts to taste like an old denture. And you make it last for ever and ever. That’s even longer than from now to opening time. And then you distil it. Of course the Discworld lacks a number of the items listed above, but boredom is universal and Astfgl had achieved in Hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which is a) costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time.
Yup, yup, yup, that's the nightmare, especially if you're a socially anxious gremlin who breaks out in hives whenever small talk rears its insufferable head.
I adore High Lord Wizard Pratchett, but that's just too close to home.
Sometimes perfection needs a little necessary editing to get there, and whoever shaped this movie into the masterpiece it is knew exactly the fuck what they were doing.
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