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this break has me itching to get back to school; the more healthy I slowly get the more unhealthy I recognise some things to be, and I need that distraction 🙃

Good news though, I've been taking the time to read and it's been great! Too stressed to write unfortunately, but well seeing as the first book of 2020 has been The Future Is History (Masha Gessen) I haven't really been in a fic headspace. Gotta love starting the year in the streets 

I also found myself re-reading Ender's Game/Shadow and trying to finish Lawrence in Arabia (Scott Anderson) so the pall is hanging pretty well around me. Whatta world, isn't it!

Realtalk, The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia is probably one of the best contemporary reads I've found. (Off of the top of my head, my other best nonfiction for the decade was probably Down Girl.) Masha Gessen is an excellent writer, and I'm so glad to've found a sincere explanation of the road to current events. Gessen is, of course, talking specifically about Russia and the rise of Putin's system, but understanding that also helps me realise so much of what's gone on in the US as well. It's grim, certainly, to realise the extent to which we're collectively living in Interesting Times, but the best we can do is try to find common ground, right? The anti-russian nonsense that's been kicking back up is so bafflingly stupid to see, and instead I wish I could convince more people to read this and realise how much more we have in common than not. 
Honestly, if I was the one teaching my spring semiar on totalitarianism, I would've probably included the chapter "The Future Is History" itself on our readings list, because Gessen does an amazing job of tying together some of the best names and introducing their concepts without pretension. I first read Arendt in that class and it was frankly extremely hard for me to break into digestible pieces. Gessen processes and contextualizes Arendt, Fromm, Gudkov, Bogdanov, Fitzpatrick, etc, and before you know it, you're holding a working epistemology of totalitarianism vs authoritarianism, with confidence to branch out to, say, Levada next!

My other cheery read has been a slow slog through Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East, which is everything it sounds like. The abject horror of knowing what the west is about to do to the middle east is only tempered by Anderson's relentless mockery of how poorly WW1 was run - on a random quick flip-through, I've got "when it came to committing folly, British war planners were just warming up" (118), "the old-fashioned notion that a nation should abide by its promises" (163), and of course, "Lawrence was nothing if not resourceful, and he had next thought to put one of his more pronounced personality traits to good use: the ability to annoy" (192). Yeah, it's named after Ned and he's one of the major threads, but it's not actually just another biography. Anderson has a full cast to refer to in trying to explain (not unlike Gessen, actually) how on earth the stage was set for what we've got today. It is Buckwild to think that America was once considered a distant and noninterventionary body. I laugh so I don't cry, yanno?

So in hopes of lightening the mood, I figured I'd watch The Witcher! Which actually is infuriating if I try to actually think about 99% of it, but hey, I might have a fever, so it's easier than usual to fuzz those bits out. anyway, sick!brain insists on 'henry cavill leather armor fight monsters,' so I'm fine with that. It took me a while to get solid netflix access actually, so I took that time to write up a bit of meta responding to a really good meta on the bath scenes with Jaskier and Geralt vs Geralt vs Yennefer, because I don't faff about when hyperfixating lmao: ( Read more... )

tripped and fell 100% into geraltxjaskier though, like, I have taken that bait, hook line and sinker. I'm not feverish enough not to notice I'm being yanked around - the instrumental cut of 'her sweet kiss' playing in the bg of geralt and yennefer's reunion kiss is like, the cherry on top of dashing any questions that it might not've been intentional. But I'm always a sucker for pining, so catch me sketching along to 'you belong with me'!