Antigone Progone > Recent Status Updates

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The Theologians: It is eerie beyond expression that I have spent, like, two months coming up with a fantasy religion for my book, and out of of every story in human history, THIS is the one that came up with my idea first

"All the rivers run into the sea, but the seas are not yet full" struck me in the heart like a dagger. Mantel is beyond compare in painting grief

The Immortals: Beautiful and transcendent. I would recommend these to anyone, but this one you HAVE to check out, even if it's not one of the big names. It uses the word "vertiginous" four or five times

The Sect of the Phoenix: Something cosmically funny about me, an asexual, being completely baffled as to what they're talking about here

Three Versions of Judas: I adore Borges's little niche of "here's an anecdote about a strange academic". Clever twist!

The Secret Miracle: I'm so glad that this book finally got back to me on Libby. Beautiful, powerful, mystical little story

*cautiously and optimistically* Thomas Cromwell is... a baby meow meow? And my friend?

Death and the Compass: This is real nemesis shit right here. Don't step to me unless you're willing to formulate a mystery so tantalizing that my inevitable attempt to unravel it will lead to my demise

Theme of the Traitor and the Hero: (cf. Lisa the Iconoclast)

The Shape of the Sword: Hell of an ending on this one! Goosebumps. I really dig the epistolary theme, it's a cool throwback to 18/19th century lit. Maybe Steven Universe discourse isn't the worst type of leftist infighting there is

Funes the Memorious: A subtle one, but REALLY GOOD. I wish I had more to say about it, given how much I liked it. "What if there was an intriguing guy?" - Jorge Luis Borges

The Library of Babel: I think that randomly generated text is bereft of meaning, even if it happens to accurately portray or predict past or future events. *smiling blankly as another $15,000,000,000,000,000 get invested into ChatGPT*

The Circular Ruins: Sorry if this is anti-intellectual, but I can't be arsed anymore over whether or not life is a dream. "Oh, but what if your entire existence is a simulation?" then I guess I have ~*simulated*~ student loans to pay back that I'm banking my ~*simulated*~ employer will cover once I get a ~*simulated*~ professorship position at a ~*simulated*~ college, damn

Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote: Yeah! Every time YOU read a book, that IS a new narrative never seen before in the world, because it's filtered through YOUR experiences! The academic self-congratulating satire is just the icing on the cake

The Lottery in Babylon: Feels really prescient in a way I'm too sleepy to explain. This was written in the '40s, a time of growing authoritarianism and hopelessness around the world. This imagines a world where people can say, "Well, it's not MY fault I did that! THEY drew the numbers! THEY cast my lot!" Like, do you see what I'm saying? Qanon and shit? Right?

The Garden of Forking Paths: I'm a little wary of this one, vis-a-vis the white guy educating the Chinese protagonist about his ancestor's life's work. There is a pretty juice twist at the end though. Also I bet that story would have done NUMBERS in the early internet days. The world's first visual novel???

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius: Not to be reductive, but it rocks that the first SCP story was written in the 1940's

The fatphobia is problematic but I'm 👀 at the subtle hints that maybe Walter was kinda a rat bastard when he was alive... yesss we love it when grief distorts the memories of those closest to us and sands off all the harsher attributes that we'd prefer to forget

I have a confession to make: I did some posturing elsewhere about stopping reading this because of some incongruous messaging from the author and the weird stuff with the black slavers - which IS weird - but I primarily stopped reading this because I thought the "We gotta be the best bull jumpers EVER! Let's DANCE!" stuff was cringe. And also the loan was due at Libby and I couldn't place a hold on it. Sorry or2

It's crazy that the last thing Theseus said to his father before getting sold into white slavery was, "Father! Remember! DON'T let women have rights!"

There's a lot of stuff in here where I'm like, "Okay, obviously the author isn't saying 'all of this is good', she's just conveying the worldview of a male member of the Ancient Greek aristocracy." Like, I know she's not saying taking women as plunder from battle is good. BUT. The stuff with Medea feels really orientalist in a way that seems to come from the author and not the protagonist, and that Sucks