(no subject)

I've been feeling playlisty recently, so a few weeks ago I did a Twitter meme where I asked people for prompts for 5-song playlistlets about things we both liked, which I would make in the next week.

...it has now been almonst a month, but on the other hand almost every playlist on this list has more than 5 songs in it, so really it was an equal-opportunity lie!


clones (star wars) for bluestalking - I uh for sure had this one ready to go already, mostly with songs siphoned off from the playlist for my clone amateur oral historian character from our last tabletop campaign

bash for jothra - relatedly, the playlist for my clone amateur oral historian character from our last tabletop campaign

wild theatrical productions for evewithanapple - I was not sure whether this prompt meant 'songs from wild theatrical productions' or 'the mood of creating/experiencing a wild theatrical production', so I attempted to do the second with the first? please note that 'wild' is not a condemnation, some of these are from productions I think are legitimately delightful and some from productions I sincerely believe are terrible

Kay for aella_irene - this was surprisingly difficult, the only thing in my personal feelings about Sir Kay that for sure I feel like I captured was my strong belief that he spends his entire life annoyed and stressed

Russian Doll for aberration - this is another one I definitely had cued up and ready to go already

the Iron Bull (Dragon Age) for agonistes - the Land Down Under here represents Ferelden

bog bodies - shati forbade me from using Zombie by The Cranberries in this playlist, which, technically, I did not

UNIONS! - happydork is lucky this playlist was not composed entirely of Daniel Kahn songs

True Pretenses by Rose Lerner for sophia_sol - this one was so much fun to do AND coincidentally also gave me an excuse to use another Daniel Kahn song >.>

Ernest Shackleton Loves Me for pseudo_tsuga - an attempt at conveying the Mood of this great work without using any actual songs from the show

Princess Tutu - ok YOU guys all know that my personal playlist for this is LENGTHY, but the person who requested it is my roommate M and we've just finished watching S1, so I had to leave off more than half the things I would put on it until a later date when they will make sense >.>

Twelve Kingdoms for izilen - another playlist I have had ready to go for years just waiting for someone to ask me about it

the specific emotion of yankumi pretending that shin rescued her from the scary gang member she just beat up for esmenet - this is indeed a very specific delightful emotion which I did my best to capture!

trapped in an inn for nextian - a mediocre playlist for a great prompt, I would LOVE more suggestions for songs that express the feeling of 'I'm been stuck for a week in this place with a bunch of people I don't like OH WAIT no nevermind I love them now'


Feel free to chime in with a.) song suggestions for any of these playlists or b.) more prompts, I am always looking to grow my music collection and I continue to find playlisting a pleasant and soothing activity.

(no subject)

Okay, so on principle, I want to encourage books like The Whale: A Love Story. It would have been very easy for Mark Beauregard to write the kind of nonfiction that drives me up a wall, involving a lot of unverifiable internal monologue and speculation, and instead he just went directly to publishing Nathaniel Hawthorne/Herman Melville slash fiction! In theory, I respect this!

In practice, I don't think any narrator in my recent memory has filled me with QUITE so much secondhand embarrassment as Beauregard's obsessively horny Herman Melville?

Hawthorne's features were so fine that they could have belonged to a woman: eyebrows that prettily framed his coffee brown eyes; a hawkish Roman nose; sensuous red lips, the bottom lip a wide devouring flare; and waving chestnut hair that fell in ringlets behind his ears.

Hawthorne was fifteen years Herman's senior, but his face seemed to Herman to defy the laws of earthly decay. So noble did Hawthorne seem that Herman conjectured that some unique mechanism had gradually been transferring his inner beauty touch by touch outward towards his external features with each passing day [...] that his face would become almost ethereal.

Here is an actual daguerrotype of Hawthorne, for context:



I mean he's a perfectly appealing-looking dude but I don't know if 'ethereal' and 'sensuous' are the words I'd use?

[Hawthorne]'s only concessions to the cold were his knee-high black boots and a black scarf that he had tied around his waist, but which now he unwound and wrapped dashingly around his neck - mostly but not completely covering the bare flesh of his exposed chest. He did it so self-consciously that Herman suspected for a moment that he might be flaunting himself: he was even more beautiful and sexual than Herman's wood-chopping fantasy had been.

While reading this, I could not help but think about those tumblr posts that attempt to slut-shame Alexander Hamilton ... let Nathaniel Hawthorne wear a scarf without being subject to the male gaze!

The book covers the period from 1851-52 when Hawthorne and Melville were literary neighbors and also, in occasional scholarly speculation and definitely in this text, literary gaybors. Their relationship largely consists of Melville showing up, wild-eyed and lustful, at Hawthorne's door and Hawthorne repeatedly explaining that it's not that he's not into Melville but also, he is happily married and does not want to cheat on his wife, sorry!

Meanwhile, Melville makes terrible decision after terrible decision, acts like more and more of a dick to his wife and family, and goes deeper and deeper into debt in order to hang onto the thin thread of hope that he might someday work his way into Hawthorne's heart and maybe also his pants. "It'll all be fine once Moby-Dick sells a million copies!" he tells himself, repeatedly. Buddy ..... I and history have bad news for you there .....

Some moments when I literally had to put my hands over my face so I didn't scream out loud at Melville's bad decision-making abilities:

- Melville flips out internally at Hawthorne giving him a book! in front of his WIFE! the tenderness with which he made this gesture seemed absolutely shameless to Herman
- Melville promises his wife that she can buy a house that will be hers, with her money, and then promptly goes and buys a house that she doesn't like because it's walking distance to Hawthorne's place
- Melville attempts to confess his crush to his EXTREMELY STRAIGHT, EXTREMELY STRESSED cousin: "I have the feeling that I have not yet begun to unfold the inner flower of myself, but I believe that I can do so now, with the help of this special person."
- Melville forgets that he is living in the 1850s and invites a random teenager with a crush on him upstairs to his study, and closes the door, with his entire family downstairs and 100% convinced he's having an affair
- Melville GETS CAUGHT SKULKING OUTSIDE HAWTHORNE'S WINDOW IN THE DARK, WHILE HE'S HAVING GUESTS OVER, LIKE A CREEPER

And, I mean, for all I know the events as provided by this text are a thousand percent factual; Herman Melville really does seem like a person who was indeed extra enough to make exactly these consistently bad decisions. But I think possibly he might also have had slightly more of a sense of humor and self-awareness about it? Or maybe not, I don't know, I've never actually read Moby-Dick. Anyway I spent a lot of this book with my hands over my face, but if you are less affected by this than I and have been longing to read novel-length Great American Author published slash fiction then here is for sure your chance!

This review courtesy of obopolsk, who has been trying to hand me her copy of The Whale for YEARS and finally successfully ambushed me last week.