Dead Romans Appreciation Society

Most of you probably know by now that I have a lot of feelings about Dead Romans and the dead Carthaginians who love them. The rest of you probably already have your eyes glaeing over by now, which fair enough. I have several RL friends who have a dedicated "you and your Ancient Dead People" face* for me. Doesn't mean I love them any less. (The friends or the Anceint Dead People.)

For the last couple of days I've been having trouble writing fic because I apparently feel like I should be working on my original fiction instead and having trouble writing original fiction because the novel is almost over aaaaaaaaaaah (*runs arpund with head on fire*), so of course I have been procrastinating like crazy.

Over the course of procrastinating, I came across The Dead Romans Society which is a delightful webcomic (unfortunately hosted on Tumblr, which is not the best site for hosting webcomics) about Dante going on another otherworldly roadtrip, this time with a bunch of dead Romans to show him towards Vergil.

There isn't a lot of it, but what there is of it is absolutely delightful. It manages to pack an amazing of (accurate, as far as I can tell) characterisation, humour and emotional gutpunches in a very small space. Also, the art is great and the character design is amazing.



Do you know how hard it is to give people recognisable designs when they're all wearing the same thing, espceially when that thing is A FUCKING TOGA? Very.

So yeah, if you are at all interested in Dead Romans, you should totally read it.

As a closing thought, here's Catullus being a total Sappho fanboy. (Can you blame him? It's Sappho.)

PSA TOTALLY UNRELATED TO ROMANS AS FAR AS I KNOW: THIS SATURDAY IS FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! IT DOES NOT HAPPEN ONLY IN ENGLISH-SPEAKING COUNTRIES! You too could soon be reading free comics! Free stuff is amazing! Comics are amazing! Free comics are therefore double plus amazing! Exclamation points are also amazing!


*It is not always the same face, even on the same friend. I may talk a lot about Ancient Dead People. Ask me about that time I texted my brother about cycling in togas!

Long time no reading Wednesday

Okay, before I dive right into "dhampyresa goes tl;dr about books", I have a question to ask. I've been thinking that I'm never going to get around to writing the remaining posts from the December talking meme (everything except the first five) if I don't impose some kind of external structure on it/myself. These posts are likely to be 1k+ words, because I have thoughts and feelings and talk a lot. My question is:

If I were to write a weekly meta(-ish) kind of post, which day would you rather I do it on?

• Monday
• Tuesday
• Thursday
• Saturday
• Sunday

I'm excluding Wednesdays because I already do Reading Wednesday on those and Friday, for personal reasons of me getting home super late on those days.

By the by, if anyone has anything else they want me to talk about, feel free to ask!

Okay, onto "dhampyresa talks too much about books".


What did you finish reading

Several things, actually! Probably not as much as I could have given that it's been a month since I did one of these, but more than I expected, given that life interferred.


Le Visage de l'Ombre, by Erik L'Homme: ( Enjoyed it, I guess )

Reading bingo-wise, I'm counting this as "book with antonyms in the title" (random card), given that shadows don't typically have faces.


Going Postal, by Terry Pratchett: ( Laughed, cried, loved it, of course )

Reading bingo: "book your parent loves" (random card).


Gustav Adolf Mossa: L'oeuvre symboliste: 1903-1918 (exposition catalogue for a 1992 exposition at the Pavillon des Arts): ( Would not reccomend (pictures under cut, btw) )

Reading bingo: "book you once started but did not finish" (hard mode of "book on farthest shelf/oldest ebook") (random card).


Ekhö Monde Miroir, 3: Hollywood Boulevard, by Arleston (scénario) and Alessandro Barbucci (art): ( Liked it )

Reading bingo: "book where main male and female don't fall in love" (serious card).


The Broken Forest, by Megan Derr: ( Loved it! )

Would definitely reccomend this book to anyone who wants to read about lesbians investigating murders in a setting that does clever things with fairytales.

Reading bingo: "book with trans* main character" (serious card). Adamina is MtF.


Taijiku, by Elizabeth Andre: ( Enjoyed it )

Reading bingo: "book with queer main character" (serious card). Angela has a girlfriend.


This makes 0/25 on the Mix'n'Match Card (unchanged from last time), 19/25 on the Random Card (+3 from last time AND A BINGO) and 5/25 on the Serious Card (+3 from last time) for hamsterwoman's reading bingo.

( Details! )

Currently reading

Still stalled on The Art of War, The Kick-Ass Writer, La véritable histoire de Carthage et de Hannibal, Les Fleurs du Mal and Métronome.


Rome's Revolution: Death of the Republic and Birth of the Empire, by Richard Alston: I am reading this because I have been having Feelings About Romans lately (you're very surprised, I know) and someone recently framed Octavian's ascension to Princeps as him being ROME'S VERY OWN YA PROTAGONIST to me and that is so perfect I am immensely saddened said YA novel does not exist. Instead I'm reading an Oxford University book on the subject.

It's very good so far! I like author's style and that he doesn't buy into the pro-Empire proganda that can be rife when looking at books dealing with the Roman Empire (my thoughts on the Roman Empire are the same as my thoughts on any empires: IMPERIALISM IS BAD OKAY DON'T DO IT KIDS).

So far the author has mostly been catching the reader up on the political situation in Rome before Caesar shows up. He goes back to the Gracchi and points to their assassination as the moment when the Empire became inevitable. (Sidenote: I am still a major fan of the Gracchi and I am forever crying because of what happened to them. NICE JOB RUINING IT FOR THE REST OF US ROMAN MOB(S).) I agree with this and think the political context is very well explained. If anything, I might have gone back earlier; the more I think about it, the more I can trace the beginning of the thought patterns that eventually lead to the Empire to the Second Punic War and Scipio Africanus (even though it breaks my heart to think of Scipio bringing down the Republic, no matter how indirectly, because HE WOULD NEVER and in fact he didn't, but yeah, it's all there. But nobody wants to hear my thoughts on this. >:[).


The Ghosts of Cannae: Hannibal and the Darkest Hour of the Roman Republic, by Robert L. O'Connell: I am also enjoying this! But I am only on page, like, 17 or so. So far most of my notes consist of "FFS HISTORY GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL THE PRIMARY SOURCES" and laughing because of this one dude being both named "Manlius" and described as a "hardcore Roman" and looking wonderingly at "Hannibal, the proverbial trickster", because that's a very... interesting way of looking at things.

And then there's this quote (emphasis mine):

Rome, on the other hand lost [at Cannae] -- suffering in one day more battle deaths than the United States during the entire course of the war in Vietnam, suffering more dead soldiers than any army on any single day of combat in the entire course of Western military history.

That floored me, ngl.


L'aigle et le safran, by Sen: (You can buy it online or read it online. I'm reading the paper version, so I don't know if the online text is the same, but at a glance it looks like it is.)

It's been so long since I read anything this beautiful in French.

La vision était très belle contre le blanc du sol, nimbée de cette grâce irréaliste d'un moment parfait – le sang, la neige, et l'élégance lente de la silhouette qui se redressait auprès du cadavre, et Fairn en savoura l'essence éphémère avant de se forcer, à regret, à s'avancer et à élever la parole.

Look at this! "Cette grâce irréaliste d'un moment parfait", that's gorgeous.

Mostly I'm basking in how very very lovely the language is, but I am also enjoying everything else, from the characters to the plot to the worldbuilding to the understated romance to the illustrations (they are so beuatiful, omg). I am so so so glad I bought this book. It's beautiful.


What are you reading next? (aka the to-read list)

( To-read list )

Changes to the list:

• I will not be reading The Grass-King's Concubine by Kari Sperring, because one of the main characters shares a first name with someone I'm very close to and it just feels really weird and I can't do it and gdit I was so looking forward to reading this book >:(
  
• moved The Skull Throne, by Peter V. Brett to "Books that I have already", because I am apparently weak and hate myself.
• I will no longer be reading Empire Ascendant or any other book by Kameron Hurley. Hurley made a post about Internet culture and ~bravery~ and invoked her one grandmother who'd grown up in Nazi-occupied France and you know what? All four of my grandparents grew up in Nazi-occupied France and FUCK THAT POST AND THE HORSE IT RODE IN ON. I'd been suspecting for a while that Hurley was more interested in her Tough Feminist persona than in either actual feminism or good writing and that sealed it. You don't get to use an experience that haunted/still haunts my grandparents and looms over my family history to score cheap points in an internet debate. (I could turn this into a "my grandmother was more impacted by the war than yours was" competition, but I will not, because that's not the point and the fact that that post did so was utterly, utterly crass and disgusting.) Ms Hurley, you've lost a reader in me. I'd say sorry, but I'm not. I'm not even sorry that I'm not sorry. I am done, I am so done, with people from the US using WW2 for cheap debating points.

So there. That was "dhampyresa talks about books".