Jesse > Recent Status Updates

We are getting an inkling of how things are starting to line up romantically. Hermione is obviously crushing on Ron and willing to cheat on his behalf. Harry is starting to be fond of Ginny, though he doesn’t exactly know it himself or really understand why. The jump into Tom’s mom’s past is a bit too goofy and maudlin and kind of undercuts the seriousness of what Dumbledore’s showing him.

Harry raves against Snape as the dark arts professor but, like, he’s not a bad teacher as far as we can tell, just a dick to Harry. Also LOL at the bit of foreshadowing with Harry and Ginny as Rowling describes her as having a scent reminiscent of the love potion cauldron. I’m guessing that Slughorn gave Harry… is that Voldemort’s old book, or SNAPE’S??? I don’t know this twist!!!

This book lays on pretty thick the twist with Snape and Malfoy. The real mystery is, what is the task? I know because it’s almost impossible to be around when the book came out without seeing the SKD memes. This book has also spent a bizarre amount of time commenting on Ginny’s attractiveness and her romantic life, from the twins quizzing her on boyfriends to the super-YA-slytherin car talking about her.

Oh, Fleur! The women being catty around Fleur seems like a really weird aside. Totally understandable, though. I like the intro of Slughorn’s character. It isn’t until here that we get an idea of Slytherin as anything but walking menaces to society who are purely greasing the wheels for their own inner circle. Also, the bit with them trying to ship Tonks and Bill is weird but only because I know the endgame.

It was great getting a view of the prime minister interacting with Fudge but the core problem of Harry Potter is the same as the normies to Peculiars. We pay lip service to how they’re maltreated but they are portrayed and reinforced as beneath the notice of the powerfully privileged. Neither author wants to depict the subclass sympathetically.

VERY fast. Now I got to wonder what we’re about to do with 50 pages left. I’m guessing based on what I know that Katniss and Peeta break out but as to who else survives and the status of the rebellion I have no idea.

This moves fast! Cinna the sympathizer was doomed, of course. I’m curious to see how these games play out. Are they interrupted via a revolution? That would just about work. It’s not like you can somehow accept the govt kneeling to a joint Peeta and Katniss victory again, and we’ve hinted that the gamesmaster himself is a rebel sympathizer.

Oh lawd, what is the dress gonna do when she twirls??

Im aware that this is indeed the sequel to the hunger games so having another hunger games sequence seems inevitable but it feels kind of tired how we are easing into it here. I’m guessing that something really, really BAD happens before the actual games are underway

I don’t know if I knew they were headed back due to cultural osmosis or if it just seemed like the logical progression of the situation but I wasn’t all that surprised when the president read his announcement. This was a long preamble to the Games; I’m kind of surprised at how quickly they shifted gears to The Hunger Games II. I appreciated the summary of Haymitch’s game, but it felt brief.

The thing that I don’t get is that District 12 feels like a podunk small town. The other ones feel massive in comparison. You can make a cool, believable, large colliery I think. It was the start of Final Fantasy VI, my first and favorite FF. The apparent size of 12 just doesn’t match up with how tiny it feels.

Also, first mention of the fabled District 13! are these two ladies new major chars?

It’s early yet but it feels like the second act of YA trilogies is the travel story. Catching Fire starts out this way but I have no idea where it’s headed beyond the fact that it has to sort out the Gale / Peeta love triangle. They’re in District 12 now but I am absolutely sure that they’re going to have to leave it. Also, Katniss has a pretty good arc here as she goes through a very human situation.

I wasn’t exactly sure where this was headed at first but the President knowing Katniss’s duplicity and demanding that she prove her self-sacrificing love for Peeta to the districts is definitely a good angle. It kicks in so hard and so soon—and quickly develops into “oh God I have to marry Peeta” it’s like, is this series about overthrowing the government so that she doesn’t have to but does anyway? lol

“By the Lee”

A prose poem of flash fiction where sailors desperately try to sail their ship through a storm but are unsuccessful. It’s not bad, it’s just very short and more about the mood of desperation and Hodgson’s relationship with the ocean, how it relates to the human struggle in that people can fight for their lives but then be swallowed by the ocean with barely a trace.

“The Sharks of the St. Elmo”

In an absurdly morbid situation, a steamer breaks down and at the same time it’s surrounded by a literal sea of sharks, writhing like a pit of snakes. This twigs the bo’sun and the second mate in that something is up—they have something that the sharks want. The captain and the officer are smuggling something, but what is it?

“The Heaving of the Log”

This is a semi-humorous anecdote with a grim twist. It features an abusive officer and apprentices who get back at him with a practical joke, except the prank results in the breaking of the man’s neck. Manslaughter!! The story doesn’t play out the rest of the drama, but I assume that everyone on deck will claim it to be an accident, just as was intended had the victim survived.

“The Riven Night”

Sailors come across a place where the spirit world intersects with ours. Some ghosts accuse their murderers; some are just content to reconnect with their loved ones; and some relationships are shorn so recently that the living are compelled to join the dead. There’s something else, too, on the borderland, something with an undefined but malefic intent.

“The Habitants of Middle Islet”

Hodgson wrote a story where his protagonist follows his buddy, who commandeers a ship in a fugue to find his sweetheart. This starts out feeling similarly, but the stories diverge, with this turning into a badass horror story. What was on the boat? Did Trehorn’s fiance turn into a Lamia or something? Or a siren? Or what???

“The Wild Man of the Sea”

This is a grim tragedy where a Natural seaman is resented for his purity, prowess, and poetic nature, and the course of the ship comes to blame him as a Jonah (a passenger who brings bad luck) while at the same time he foments an inspirational relationship with one of the cabin boys who can feel him but not really understand or articulate their camaraderie.

“Demons of the Sea”

A vignette worthy of Glen Carrig. A boat passes through a part of the ocean that appears to be on its way to boiling. They see some weird things, here, but the only bit for sure are some human-seal-monsters that have recently massacred a boat from Glasgow, and only barely manage to escape a similar fate by the mercy of the ocean breeze.

“Old Golly”

A murderous Captain gets his comeuppance after murdering a sailor of African descent. Was it a ghost, or was it just superstition??? Hodgson gives a ridiculous half-explanation for one of the haunting’s symptoms, the rest I suppose being a Biercian fear-causing-death through clumsiness, but there is enough unexplained to believe that Old Golly got his revenge.

“In the Danger Zone”

Another WWI story except this has more of a proper fight against the submarine as the merchant vessel has been toting some sort of gun, clandestinely, presumably for this purpose; Hodgson was an advocate for mariners being armed because not being so put them at the mercy of pirates, and this story is basically pirates in a submarine.

“A Fight With a Submarine”

Like one of his last two smuggler stories, this story features a boat that’s taken advantage of by a German submarine. It’s a little too bonny or cavalier considering all of the death, but the tone of his last Smuggler story was pretty off, too. The MC gets several over on the Germans but isn’t as inhumanly fortunate as his smuggler character.

“Jack Grey, Second Mate”

This combines the valiant characters under siege on a boat with a romance between the chivalrous second mate and a woman passenger who is being pursued by a scoundrel. There’s a lot about Jack Grey that reminds me of Howard’s protagonists, though without the preponderance of describing how animalistically he moves. A lot of action in this piece.

“The Real Thing: ‘S.O.S.’”

This is a lovely melodrama steeped in poetic imagery as Hodgson narrates in present tense a steamer dashing to the rescue of a cruise liner that is on fire. The only thing that I couldn’t help laughing at is the desperate disclosure of how inadequate the liner’s lifeboats are for their situation. Like, it’s true, but the delivery is so humorously and informationally dramatic.

“The Haunted Pampero”

Hodgson hedges his bets more for his protag’s sanity, here. A dude gets his first boat but it has a reputation of being haunted, so his wife demands to come along with him. Her sensitivity saves the lives of the entire crew as she puts them on to the sea-ghoul, though it takes until the end for everyone to figure out that their rescued man is the thing that’s been terrorizing them.

“We Two and Bully Duncan”

Our hero and his best bud get one over on another pair of abusive officers, both kicking the shit out of them AND stealing their ill-gotten gold. The gold plot leaves a lot of elements to chance, but hey, they’re the heroes, and so they weather the beatings and come across as clever men who best the boorish malcontents.

“The Mystery of Missing Ships”

I’m not so used to Hodgson’s steamer stories but this is one of them, a beaut that contains an improvised cannon, modern piracy with the steamer under siege, and some fine shooting, all in service to shedding a light on the mistaken belief that the seas were civilized. This is a pretty good action piece, way better than the one posthumous smuggler story in the first volume.

“The Regeneration of Captain Bully Keller”

Hodgson digs into his brawling experience for a semi-humorous story where a converted ex-prize fighter tries to win the soul of the man who beat his son nearly half to death… and then it delivers with a long and fascinatingly detailed and choreographed fight between the two men. I wonder if this is anything like Robert E. Howard’s brawler stories?

“The Stone Ship”

A very creepy and seemingly unnatural story that ends up with a bizarre but scientific explanation. Idk, I could go either way with this one. The ship is a fossilized vessel that was brought to the surface by a “Call of Cthulhu”-style upwelling of the sea floor, bringing up giant, lethal centipedes and exploding eels and stuff. A supernatural ending would have been cool, too.

“The Island of the Crossbones”

This is about an old pirate who commandeers his vessel in order to find his old pirate island, but it’s played as a pretty straightforward maybe-murder-mystery until we find out that the old pirate has never intended to kill anyone, merely hijack the boat and—after a conflict—ensure that the captain finds some recompense. A tidy little tale.