Jesse > Recent Status Updates

It’s so fun reading Ito before he started to exaggerate grossness.

Ito became a better artist but his characters are so dynamic in these early stories; it feels like a treat to read the chase scene in “Bio”.

Umm. The enormous introduction elucidates and unpacks some very important points, but the parts about Beckford’s pederasty - including having his cousin’s wife offering to groom his 4-year old nephew for Beckford’s consumption - is beyond horrifying. The actual story thus far is pretty on-point for “oriental” stuff excepting the Caliph’s ambivalence toward Islam.

I am not feeling like immersing myself in the crushing judgement of flannery o Conner just yet so I’m going to read this gothic classic for a better perspective on where some of Clark Ashton Smith’s work was coming from (since, uh, he wrote a fan-fiction segment that builds off of Vathek)

Hey!! I actually did really well with this one as far as picking up on certain clues and figuring out who the killer was! I had no idea how important the sanatorium stuff was, though, so I had no idea what the motive was. A fun one!

After the Frankenstein section there is a run of stories about a luckless boy named Oshikiri who is a nexus of supernatural phenomena. It doesn’t get an overarching story until “The Intruder”, where it starts to focus on the house as a dimensional nexus. It closes on a few short concept stories - both creepy flash fiction bits - and then cute stories about Ito and his mom’s dog, non-non.

Okay! It isn’t until now that Poirot rejoins the case. I don’t know what is going on and the red herrings are all looking pretty good. That’s Christie at her best - red herrings all over the place.

Like, the reason he was so good at stepping into the imaginary role of the butler to find the papers is BECAUSE HE LITERALLY HAD BEEN THE BUTLER. Maybe that’s why the host had made sport of him - because he knew that he wasn’t actually a butler but the actor in disguise. Was he posing as a butler to creep on Egg?

I’m convinced that the murderer is either Egg, who is doing it to evoke a charming detective persona in an actor twice her age whom she intends to marry, or it’s the actor himself who did the murders in order to get her attention. Or the first death was an accident and the inspiration for the second murder… perpetuated by Sir Charles disguised as the butler. Of course, it’s probably Milray or someone else

This is and isn’t a Poirot novel. Hercule was present at the first party, and the narrator engaged him after the second death, but this has primarily been about the amateur detective duo of Sir Charles the actor and his good friend, Mr. Satterthwaite.

Suspecting that the butler, Ellis, miiight have been the actor, Sir Charles, in disguise. Was this just a way to try and get Egg’s attentions??

What if Egg murdered the second man as a means to get reacquainted with Sir Charles??

Hey! A dead guy! This mystery starts out pretty early! At least, I assume that Babbington was poisoned or something.

This mostly straight retelling of Frankenstein is all the more horrifying by Ito’s art. Some stuff gets skimmed over but you get a showdown between the monster and a completed female monster… plot twist that it gives Victor Justine’s head to top it off with.

Some big spoilers in the endgame of the first book of this trilogy… getting really meta. I am actually psyched to see how the rest of the trilogy resolves itself, supposing that the end of this book doesn’t just crater.

A horribly graphic section, drawing on the Japanese Rape of Nanjing. Everything is in the aftermath of the massacre but the survivor accounts - especially a former military school comrade, now horrifically traumatized rape survivor - are so much worse because it’s basically exactly what happened to the Chinese in Nanjing. And the account of Atlan’s treatment draws from Japanese medical “experiments”.

Seemingly simultaneous arcs of enemies to lovers and potential lovers to… whatever exists between Rin and Altan. Also finding the Chinese version of Tarot, so to speak. I’m pretty sure this is the I Ching? It’s interesting how this book pulls from history, with the Federation being a Japan analogue vs Rin’s Nikara, and the inhumane tactics that they employ.