#they're annotated

[toastery]

we have an analysis assignment for tgg in english you know i'm gonna make it QUEER

my teacher gave us five different excerpts to choose from, and i'm either doing natsby's first meeting (can't wait to read an entire paragraph about gatsby's smile once again) or the scene when jay leaves through the back of nick's house when daisy gets there and he's standing out in the pouring rain like a little pathetic wet cat "glaring tragically into" nick's eyes and then the clock nonsense !!

im so glad my english teacher ships natsby (not explicitly confirmed BUT HE DEFINITELY DOES.) so i can be as silly as i want with this and make it extra super gay

#the great gatsby #great gatsby #natsby #nick x gatsby #jay gatsby #nick carraway #god they're so gay #i hate fictional men from the 1920s #assignmentwriting #annotations

[welcometogrouchland]

Caleb and Evelyn are hanging out in gravesfield one day (after she reveals herself as a witch to him. There's no concrete timeline but let's just say this is still a year/few years before Caleb flees the human realm, but he's been to the demon realm before on monster of the week style adventures w/ eve) when Caleb suddenly has A Responsibility to attend to w/ Philip (some kind of town meeting? Idk).

Evelyn asks to tag along in disguise but Caleb sadly tells her "sorry but this is really only a thing men do around here :( sad u can't come tho" and evelyns like no prob babe lol and just illusions herself a mustache and pants + ties her hair up and is like boom. Boy mode. And starts dragging Caleb by the hand to whatever big boy puritan conference he has to attend meanwhile Caleb is completely silent bc his inner monologue is just "WHY AM I STILL ATTRACTED TO HER. WHY IS SHE HOT. DO I LIKE MEN???"

Anyway that's how Caleb found out he was bi and after a quick (but very intense, he was a 1600s christian after all) crisis Evelyn takes him to the ye olde gay club

#ramblings of a lunatic #the owl house #toh #caleb wittebane #evelyn clawthorne #revising for my poetry test and. listen #I'm not gonna assign my blorbos to 17th century metaphysical poetry. I'm not gonna do that #but i did doodle caleb and evelyn on a lot of my annotations (bc. okay in all fairness they're either ye olde love poems- #-or ye olde poems about salvation guilt faith and a fear of death and damnation. eithet way it's befitting alright?) #and now I'm thinking about them again #going to the ye olde gay club #it's probably just a tavern with some bards fuckin it up to medieval hips don't lie #(you guys remember medieval music covers in like 2020??? the first big weird music trend before sea shanties?? sm fun)

[bitchfitch]

Idk. that crochet pattern post is going around again and it made me curious. So. going through the happypatty patterns I've bought in the last 2 years and adding together all the pages,

that's 18 patterns.

the grand total is 925 8.5x11 pages. I am. Extremely tempted to go grab one or two more patterns to push past the 1k mark.

I'm also extremely tempted to, when I win the lottery and thus have access to a printer capable of printing full length book pages, case bind as many of these patterns as I can into volumes just so I can like. have them on a shelf to chill with.

#ill prolly do it when i have some cash spare #Idk man. sometimes the woes can be cured by throwing 5 bucks at an indie artist at spending a few hours reading a crochet #pattern like a picture book. #I may not be able to do a lot of crochet but the like. techniques and artistry that go into making these patterns is fucking. Fascinating #i dont read a lot of fiction bc im busy fucking. annotating crochet patterns like they're a research paper

[chromotps]

Do you have any favorite acelu headcanons/tropes/dynamics?? All your works of them are so gorgeous and amazing and wonderful that it’s got me curious on what other thoughts you might have for them. （●´∀｀）ノ♡

AHHH thank you!! From you, it means a lot--I love so many of the details and backstories woven into your works for them!! TwT

I barely know where to begin with this bc like. Everything about acelu is my favorite. But I've also sort of been in a brainrot for them for so long now that my brain is entirely mush when I even think of them. Where do I start???

I guess, I love all the Ace-Lives-related headcanons. Anything about him finding more of a sense of self after Marineford, now that he's reckoned with the fact that he really is unconditionally loved... I personally adore any storyline where Ace kind of mellows out, like, his life isn't about proving he deserves to exist anymore, so he isn't as unforgiving with himself. I actually wanna link this comment thread between me & @to-a-merrier-world bc the headcanon of Ace getting a Stawhat tattoo makes me go wild. It just makes so much sense—his Whitebeard tattoo was on his back as a sign of worth and labor and duty, but the Stawhat tattoo over his heart would place more emphasis on his joys and dreams and jusT gosh. I need to lie down. This idea also ties into your to be deserving fic and Ace allowing himself more like, purely whimsical adornment?? Especially if it's gifts from Luffy??? I can't quite word it now, but the way it could symbolize him just loving the parts of himself that aren't just for fighting makes me. weak. I think it's why I like drawing post-timeskip Ace ideas so much (I already have another sketch I'm planning to post 😂)

hhhh okay that was a lot of Ace Talk. On Luffy's side... tbh Luffy is always harder for me to pin down. But I always love the idea that he needed Ace as a kid just as much as Ace needed him. Like this hc (from another comment 😂)—"Ace needs someone to prove unconditionally that he's lovable, and Luffy needs someone to prove that his love is important, and not easy to abandon." tbh acelu reminds me of my old D&D character, where basically, she was always pretty cheerful and resilient, but felt isolated—like she was always too alien to really relate to others. But then, this other character loved her as she is, and I think Ace did something similar for Luffy in the end? Like, in a world where Luffy never got Ace, I wonder if he'd still be as emotionally secure and kind. Probably! But... ahhh. This hc is more indulgent, but I really love the idea that Ace helps Luffy remember who he is beneath all the power and bravery. Where most of the One Piece world loves Luffy for being a liberator and a fearless captain, Ace loved him before all that—when he was just a kid who loved to laugh and share a meal and marvel at the world.

Oh my goddd I'm rambling. uuuuhhhh there's so much more, I love both when people write Ace as cool and suave, but also when he's a giant lovesick dork... The enemies/annoyance-to childhood friends-to lovers trope works in every world, I'd love to see it in AUs as like a bodyguard + celebrity/royalty plot, or arranged marriage—or pretty much, any story where Luffy wins Ace over with his terrifyingly stubborn love. I also love the fact that their dynamic is so playful!!! If an acelu fic/art doesn't imply that they can—and love—laughing together, then it's out of character to me. 😂

I don't know... they just have it all.... the depth and "I would die for you" level of devotion. But also the ridiculous "we're two feral gremlins who dare each other to eat doritos soaked in mountain dew" shenanigans. It's that mix of both.

#acelu #meta #headcanons #i'm going to stop now #but i COULD keep going #my god could I keep talking #part of me wants to do an annotation of every song i put on each of their playlists #maybe... another day... #also i didn't really touch on it but #the whole 'brother' thing #part of me loves that they mean so much to each other that #they chose to make each other family #but also they're so wild that of course they don't stick to the rules #they use the word 'brother' but i also could see them not even blinking at #realizing they have romantic feelings for each other #sure ace might hem and haw over it a bit but in the end #one word they chose when they were kids never really captured the entirety of what they mean to each other #OR not to totally out myself but #i've shipped siblings before and like #there's something about transgressing social norms bc the devotion to each other is just that strong #that always gets me #but i don't need to get into that right now #it's a long way to say that i would absolutely read a fic where #ace and luffy are brothers related by blood who run a gang or something #and have and would kill for each other #and also kiss sometimes

[mack-anthology-mp3]

just saw a post saying 'if these are on her bookshelf, run' and it had this is how you lose the time war and the starless sea on it??? and like gideon the ninth??? which i still havent read rahhh but like these are not femcel books whatare you talkingggg abouttttttttttt the starless sea is really lovely???? this is how you lose the time war is dark and complex but like????? and it had the secret history on it too and i havent read that either but its a very popular book. the only people who are toxic about that book are the people who romanticise it and i'm pretty sure thats missing the point of that book idk. lots of people like that book who dont think working yourself into a delirium is hashtag aesthetic or liking fiction murder makes you edgy. and if you've missed the point of the secret history surely theres no way you got anything out of the starless sea that book has LAYERS. i dont know man

#i think i need to reread the starless sea and annotate it this time #i love that book so so much i need to draw them as well #ajhskajnhsa if only i could draw well w/out a reference hehe #the starless sea #and like okay there was some messed up stuff in this is how you lose the time war but nothing that wouldn't be out of place in a tumblr pos #if you know what i mean #like there was toxic yuri (literally) dramatic metaphors secret love etc #plant woman vs. artificial intelligance woman but they're in love #like it was pretty damn intense but it wasnt like. full of Problems #idk

[cerealandchoccymilk]

Trigun Bookclub: Trigun Vol.1-2, Chapter #08

previous | all | next

CW: Some of my analysis in this post touches the topic of suicidal ideation (there will be a warning around that portion).

I’m doing a deep-read of the Japanese original print (reread) and Overhaul 1.0 (first read) side-by-side, and writing down everything I notice from small details, version differences, translation differences, etc.

The volume numbers will be mismatched for most of the remainder of Trigun, since the Japanese first edition is 3 volumes while all later versions are 2 volumes.

As always, here are the non-analysis panels aka just my homosexual mumbling:

And the rest is under the cut.

[link for if the images aren’t in horizontal rows]

This chapter is the beginning of the Japanese Volume 2, which is from #08 to #13 (plus the pilot as a bonus).

Starting off with the cool as balls shot of Vash being shot a billion bullets at! I did write "rule of cool" here since I thought he was just magically evading the firing squad. However, on second thought, I think Neon specifically ordered the gang to not actually shoot him, judging by how he says "not bad" immediately afterwards. It's his way to test Vash, to see if he flinches.

[cw sui] The "You ain't afraid of dyin', are ya?!" line stuck out to me a lot... Many rereaders (and I assume first-timers too, at this point in the bookclub) know that Vash is... casually suicidal? I'm not sure if that's the right way to put it, but he doesn't have much of a sense of self-preservation. He's not seeking death, of course, but he's not exactly avoiding it either.... This becomes much more apparent and relevant at the end of Trigun and in Maximum, so I'll leave it until I get to those parts. [/cw]

Dear god the crotch shot. okay (squeezing this into a row because I don't really want this guy's balls to take up the whole screen lmao)

I've always loved how Nightow draws these circles to show spinning motion in his artwork!! It's simple but it really pops... it's just so so (chef's kiss)

I wonder just what Vash's next move was going to be here? He's pretty much cornered... but I guess he can always get out of any situation, as he usually does.

Vash's expression of sheer confusion is golden. I love him lmao

Meryl!!!!!!!!! Milly!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We missed you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love how immediately after he calls Meryl a little girl he gets spooked by the Big Girl instead.

This is not directly translatable, but I find Milly's line here very cute. In Japanese, she says「…私は――　ミリィ…トンプソンとゆいます　えとえとイチオー スタンガンミリィとは私のコトをゆいます」 The correct word for "I'm called [smth]" here would be 言います(iimasu), but the pronunciation ゆいます(yuimasu) is a bit childish in this context. If I recall correctly, isn't Milly the youngest of many siblings? Maybe it's a little quirk showing that youngest-sibling aspect of hers.

Meryl asking Vash to be a "responsible adult" for once.... lol

This is the first time his name has been called since his encounter with Kaito and the beginning of the BL gang' hijack. I completely forgot that Kaito has no idea who he is!! Vash didn't give him a name; he's just been calling him あんた("you") the whole time!!

Excuse the messier handwriting from here on… I was working on this during a car ride.

A detail in the Japanese version - this line was originally written「おまえが消したって話んなってるJULY(あのまち)だが…」with "JULY" having a ruby pronunciation note of あのまち("that city").

This part was initially written to be a translation suggestion but I decided to just keep it a JP phrasing note:

「あのガレキが俺の見た最初の風景だ」 "That mountain of debris was the first thing I saw."

Translation suggestion - Here, Neon says「サシの勝負だ」, where サシ means "face-to-face" or "one-on-one." I would say it's more like "This fight is between just the two of us," to show more of the respect Neon has for Vash.

More of this respect is shown in the next page, where they make a promise that Neon will step back if Vash wins the duel. Neon recognizes Vash's skill and ideology, and treats him as an equal.

And here's the action!

I found interesting that Neon's war-cry/exclamation "ha" was actually written in kanji as 派. The kanji by itself means group or faction, but considering Neon's character, maybe it's supposed to be a reference to the word 派手(hade), meaning "gaudy?"

This duel definitely isn't following regular duel rules... but no one said it was unfair or anything. Maybe this is just how they are in No Man's Land.

Neon shoots with his dynamo-gun (?) instead of his cool engraved pistol.... Anyways, his first strike is at Vash, and they all hit the rocks that are falling between them. Vash then shields himself with one of those rocks by jumping in the same direction as it.

And he's doing another frontflip!! In sync with the falling rock!! With a wound in his gut!! In midair and upside down, he precisely shoots five rounds into Neon. It hits his dynamo, but looking closely I can see that maybe he got his arm shot too.

damn....

A bit of a tangent - many of Neon's actions are reminiscent of old Japanese culture, which is very interesting. His pose during his first appearance in Chapter #05 (how did i remember that. i checked just in case and i was right), where he sort of squats and extends his open palm to the front, is a very stereotypical kabuki pose. Again, I don't know about the specifics of kabuki, but his pose on the the panel where Vash jumps also looks kabuki-esque to me. Neon's respect towards Vash as a fellow gunslinger and his beliefs on dignity reminds me of bushidō. It's not representative of all aspects, of course, but there are definitely elements incorporated in his character.

This line (including the speech bubble after it) is a bit weird when translated so it will have to be tweaked, but a direct translation would be:

「このままではブレーキングはおろか…　船体ごと爆発する可能性があります！！」 "If it continues like this, the ship itself may blow up, let alone brake!!"

I'm pretty sure "brake" (miswrote in the image, will fix later) here means that they won't be able to put on the brakes due to the boiler malfunction. But I don't know shit about machinery or how to phrase this. (shrug)

That’s it for Chapter #08! As always, the Japanese annotations are in the reblogs.

#btw take all my translation phrasings here with a grain of salt theyre all done in like 3 minutes #they're just raw drafts to get the meaning across lol #if i had more time and resources i could think more about details and making them sound natural but nah we doin this snap snap #anyways godddddd i love neon #trigunbookclub #trigun annotation #trigun #trigun manga

[fictionadventurer]

imaginary book: “The Ruined Idylls of Calomar”, low fantasy (quite obscure, authorship disputed; philologists suspect the first draft was written in a Celtic or Semitic language in the late 19th or early 20th century.)

The Ruined Idylls of Calomar by A.E. Mann

This haunting work of fantasy claims to be the journals of an unnamed scholar living in exile after the fall of the hidden lands of Calomar. Once a thriving, peaceful, highly civilized culture, its glory was brought low by the pride, greed, and wrath of kings, scholars, explorers and warriors who fought for glory, power, and honor, until its final destruction by a dark, nameless weapon left only a scant handful of survivors to escape and tell the tale. In haunting language, the narrator writes of Calomar's glory and intrigue, its final fall, and his irresistible yet doomed attempts to return to his lost homeland and learn what, if anything, has survived.

#imaginary book recs #answered asks #this one was recommended to me by a friend whose tastes are much more cultured than mine #as in she's reading gormenghast and lord dunsany while i read mediocre self-published fairy tale retellings #i read the gutenberg version right on my computer while procrastinating #the description sounds more generic than it actually is #it's like a bridge between those victorian explorer atlantis lost land tales and a more modern take on fantasy #i wouldn't be surprised if it was an influence on tolkien or at least i suspect they're drawing from similar traditions #these people are much less noble and the narrative rather sadder than tolkien's #but i was still enthralled #sometimes you need to read about people who are better than you #and sometimes you need to watch the intrigues of people who fight and fail #and this one fits well into the latter tradition without losing that sense of wonder and goodness that undergirds good fantasy #the language is kind of dense but once you get going i found it rather readable #you have to be in the right mood and fortunately i found it at the right time #i'd like to see if i could find an annotated version one day #i don't know as much as i'd like about the origins and authorship and all those things like that #and at the very least i suspect there are worlds of references that i'm missing

[queer-reader-07]

self control is knowing i want to reread good omens because i want to annotate the fuck out of my physical copy but deciding against it because i have an embarrassing number of unread books on my shelf that need my love too

#and by embarrassing number i mean all of 7 books #which i know is nothing to some people but to me is stressful and must be dealt with #the issue is that half of them are long fantasy books #which i love #but i don't have time for to dedicate brain power to #so they're just withering on my shelf while i get romcoms from the library in the meantime #anyway 2024 goal is to read those damn books because i know i'm going to like them for fuck's sake #and THEN i'll reread good omens and annotate the shit out of it

[difeisheng]

so like... there have to have been people somewhere writing obikin fanfics in-canon right

#im just imagining obi-wan anakin and ahsoka landing on some outer rim world #and ahsoka sees something at a stall and she's torn between gawking horrified and absolutely cackling #at the prints of shitty obikin romance novels someone is selling #anakin buys a pile of them since they're so cheap (he uses temple credits to do it too obi-wan is facepalming) #and decides to read them just to see how they're describing him #he expects them to be off about his feelings toward obi-wan but ends up having a Realization over time that they're not wrong #obi-wan meanwhile IS still mortified but ends up being yanked into reading a couple anyway #at least a fictional version of him gets to be with anakin. that's a win right #but he takes a pen with him as he reads #and annotates and writes corrective notes in the margins about how he'd react/think in certain situations #alright i still have an assignment to do before i go to bed. goodnight #star wars #obikin #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi #complementary halves of a single warrior #ashton originals

[vellichorsdesire]

favorite item from ur f/o :3?

#they also annotate books for fun with each others notes in diff colors #they tend to have a copy of the book other than the annotated one #they're not in the box tho cuz it's in their bookshelf somewhere... #❥ ask blog kinda event!

[themoonking]

the drinking game for dracula is take a shot every time stoker describes a female vampire as "voluptuous"

#post driven by the fact that im writing an essay on female sexuality in dracula and so i annotated every time it came up #and 'voluptuous' is his FAVORITE word to use #but genuinely dracula is so weird bc on the one hand #it depicts women as being equal in intelligence and competence to men #but on the other hand #the depiction of female sexuality is outright hateful to the point where it can be a little hard to read sometimes #i speak #dracula #see women can be smart but NOT sexy bc if they're sexy thats evil and devilish and violence against them is good

[indexcard]

i know we're in the "actually, there is a core of truth to the phrase 'not all men,' and we shouldn't generalise" phase of the cultural cycle at large but truly nothing hits like going UGH MEN!!!!!! when you're dealing with an inexplicable man in your life

#blah blah blah #i need a ten-page annotated cultural study explaining why they're all like this

[celebregol]

also i know that when i started reading tolkien (esp the earlier works) i was like “what do you mean this guy is the tallest, you said this other guy was the tallest. how tall are these people if everyone is over six feet” and so on and so forth, but i think it really boils down to the folklorish nature of in general, the first and second age. too lazy to pull up the quote but it’s along the lines of the silm supposed to having been made up of oral accounts, stories, things like that. so in addition to the fact that these non human species are otherworldly, the fact that these elves are coming from valinor, there is the exaggerated aspect that comes with these being stories and tales that are passed down. hence multiple candidates for the tallest elf around. it’s a way to show grandeur, to show how looming their presence is, to communicate a sliver as to who these elves were. it doesn’t mean it has to be fact, though.

#silmarillion #does this make sense? hopefully it does #c.posts #in completely unrelated news let's hear it out for the countdown!! #11 more days. 11 more days until i can order the first five books of home #or maybe it's more technically 12 days but i'll try to make it work in 11 #i want those books to be mine i will annotate them so much #and i'll actually feel comfortable doing so cause they're mass market

[saviourkingslut]

Hi! I saw that you mentionned scrivener in your latest post and I've been meaning to try it. Is it good? I'm a one-doc-per-chapter kind of person so I wonder if it would work for me.

hi, sorry for the somewhat late reply, i wanted to include some screenshots to make my explanation a little clearer but didn't have the energy to sit down for it properly before now. if you're a one-doc-per-chapter writer i definitely think you should consider it! scrivener's most important feature, i think, is that it gives you:

the opportunity to split up your writing any way you want, whether per chapter, per scene, or even per paragraph...

...but all your writing is always within immediate reach, and you can restructure it whichever way you want.

to make that a little clearer, i've included a picture from my own work. scrivener is mostly geared towards creative writing, but i use it for my dissertation and that works very well too. this is the general interface, where you can see i've been writing an introduction:

scrivener's most important feature, to me, is its 'binder', which is this bit:

at the top, you'll see 'draft' - this is the entirety of the project you're working on. in this case, that's my dissertation. underneath, you see a little book, called 'introduction' - that's a main part of the draft. and underneath that, you can see a couple of folders and documents. that's all the different parts of my introduction. you can create as many folders and put as many different documents in those folders as you want. what i find incredible about this, is that i have an overview of all my topics, and that i can switch between all my different topics without having to open different documents OR put all my shit in one big document, which always makes me lose my way completely. and if i feel like restructuring my text? well, i can go to the binder, and drag the texts to another spot there.

since you like to work by chapter, you could just structure your binder like that in a way that works for you, but you'd still have access to all your other work if there's ever a moment when you need to refer back to it. or if you're working on multiple chapters at the same time, you can just switch between them.

something else that has helped me a lot is the 'research' part of the binder:

the 'research' part is meant for you as a writer to put down all your resources - your pdfs, your images, whatever you're using as reference while you're writing. now, because im writing an academic text and need more references than the average (fan)fiction writer, im using zotero as a reference manager. instead, im using the reserach folder to store my writing plans so i can reference and update them there. you see that 'reorganisation' folder there: it's also where i store my texts when i notice that the current structure is not working at all and i need to start over - but in such cases i don't need to write all the text itself from scratch again. this way i can keep everything within easy reach and copy-paste in the same document (you can split your screen within the program, and work in two documents at once).

what's also great are the tools. in programs like word or google docs you'll find some of these, but not all. as you can see, the first symbol leads to a sidebar where you can put a synopsis for the specific text you're working on, and it lets you add notes. the second one lets you add bookmarks to your text, like texts or references you want within reach immediately. the third one lets you add specific metadata or tags. the fourth lets you make snapshots; scrivener saves all your work immediately, but if you're about to make a big change, you can create a snapshot and roll back to that if it's not working out after all. finally, there's the comments, which speak for itself. all the way down the bar you'll also see that you can label texts ('no label' here, there's a colour system) and note what part of the writing progress this part of the text is at.

what i personally like very much is the bar at the top that now says 'opening 2.0'. you can see a light blue bar at the bottom of it: that indicates my writing progress. you can set a writing goal in number of words for your project. for my entire 'introduction', that's 8000 words, and as you can see im nearly there. if you hover over the 'opening 2.0' bar, it'll shift to show you the number of words you've written AND the number of words you've written in that specific writing session like so: 7300/8000 | 345. what i like is that it counts the actual words written - if i've deleted a sentence, my count goes down again. that's useful for me because i tend to think 'oh i've written so much today' while all i've been doing is tiny edits for 2 hours, but not actually put down more words.

there's MUCH more that scrivener offers, but i can't explain it all here. they offer a free trial for 30 days, and it comes with a practice document that explains all the features to you by making you work in the program. id recommend giving that a try if you're interested! the program is expensive (it cost me 70 euros) but it's absolutely been worth it for me. i used to have long-ass documents with half-finished paragraphs and snippets of thoughts and sentences all over, and this has helped me structure my texts more easily while also not cluttering my workspace with loose thoughts and ideas because i have more places to put them now.

#asks #long ass posts by ME feat. dumb opera shit #annotation is kinda ehh btw. like there's in-text and footnotes options but bc i use zotero they're not that great for me #there's a zotero extenstion but it's difficult to add if you're a luddite like me so i use the comments to put author and page no. instead #then i add the actual footnotes in word once i've converted the file

[ordyneir]

[Ethel’s instinct in the face of danger or disrespect is to fight back, but she realizes now that doing so would only repeat the cycle of abuse that she’s faced, and it would come back to bite her even harder.]

VISERYS: And I have tried often to discuss it with you, but you’ve refused me at every turn. RHAENYRA: That is because I do not wish to get married. VISERYS: (shouts) Even I do not exist above tradition and duty, Rhaenyra!

#my eyelids r slowly closing as i type this but oh. #OH OKAY! #this specific annotation for the chorus just made me think of nyra and her father so quickly. #viserys being the one to teach rhaenyra to go for what she wants and then snatching that away from her as soon as she enters womanhood.. #his expectations of her arent just his anymore; they're the entire realm's. #she is no longer her father's little girl; she has a duty to a whole people! and she doesn't know what to do with herself any longer #his continual disappointment in her; her continual belief it is because she is not the son he wanted so badly #IM SICKKKKK #ok sleep time

[the-busy-ghost]

There are some books that are just BETTER if you go through them with a pencil and underline the shit out of tiny details, and honestly if anyone found Hogg's 'Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner' difficult to get into, I highly encourage you to give it another go and give yourself a license to extensively research & annotate every little bit

#I mean I'm biased I already liked it #But my reread was just ten times more enjoyable because I scribbled all over it #Marking in historical details and double-checking what looked like subtle references and thinking over things like faith humour gender etc #And above all NAMES my god that man likes playing with names #At least I think so #And how Hogg puts himself into the story and then doesn't and then does again?? #Classics aren't necessarily all going to be books that sweep you off your feet #Sometimes they're classics because you get to gnaw away at them like a worm with an apple #And you know I'm highly HIGHLY biased but I really enjoyed doing that with this book #It fits perfectly into some of my favourite literary pigeonholes #Ticks a lot of different boxes #And I doubt I will make any converts but as I'm aware taste in particular books is very personal #And unlike say Wuthering Heights the particular reasons I liked Hogg's confessions aren't necessarily common #But also this website has analysed the hell out of Dracula for the last two years #And I grant you Confessions doesn't have as much action but takin just a little bit of that annotating and research energy into it #Really improves the whole experience of reading this book #reading log