About: Writer and academic. Here I post my fanfiction, personal thoughts, and reblogs of whatever interests me.
Links: AO3 ☆ goodreads ☆ letterboxd ☆ my writing ☆ my reading
Things I Post About: Sadomasochism. Twentieth century literature. Donald Sutherland as President Snow. Learning Russian. Age gaps. Horror. "Bad victims." Degeneracy. Cultural representations of fascism. Incest. Old men. War.
Do you not agree that Russia is a oligofascitic technocracy?
Is campism really the answer?
(this ask is presumably in response to this post I reblogged the other day)
I've never heard the term "oligofascist" before. Considering that both "oligarchy" and "fascism" are historical terms whose application to current politics is more than a little arbitrary and poorly-defined, it makes sense that folks would combine the two rather than admit that corruption and concentration of wealth are an inherent feature of liberalism.
I consider the Russian Federation to be a bourgeois democracy whose corrupt elements are not incredibly different from those of many other bourgeois democracies, and which exist primarily because of Western influence, not despite it or due to a lack of it.
I'm not saying I support every act of the Russian government. I'm not saying I believe Russia is motivated purely by good will and humanitarianism when it comes to the Donbass. But the continued denial of Ukrainian actions against the people of the Donbass, against the DPR and LPR, and against Russians/Russophones in Ukraine more broadly only serves to promote a one-sided view of the conflict that furthers Western/NATO interests and activities in the region.
Why is it that criticizing the Western narrative about a conflict Western powers are heavily invested in is considered "campism", but the uncritical repetition of that same Western narrative by Western so-called "leftists" is not? Why is it not "campism" when these "leftists" adopt a pro-Ukraine or even a pro-NATO stance, when they deny neo-Nazi and ethnic nationalist elements in Ukraine (despite many of them having previous condemned the rise of these elements prior to the war!)? Why is it not "campism" when they deny, whitewash, or even justify Ukrainian actions against the Donbass and against Russians in Ukraine?
I am not asking anyone to adopt an uncritical pro-Russia stance. I am not asking anyone to take everything the Russian government says at face value. I am asking people to adopt a critical stance towards Ukraine, towards NATO, towards the Western imperialists, and most importantly to look at and to understand Ukraine's actions in the Donbass and against Russians in Ukraine. I had very recently made the mistake myself of not being critical or inquisitive enough towards the background and nature of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which is why I have tried to make an effort since then to amplify the voices of those providing perspectives of the war that Western media deliberately suppresses.
For more information:
💬 3 🔁 260 ❤️ 365 · Post by @hafizevna · what's the deal with donbass/ukraine? i kinda took the us media narrative at face value with that
💬 1 🔁 704 ❤️ 712 · Some sources on Donbass in English from non-Russian sources: · Ukraine is not Palestine, Russia is not Israel - The Pal
Maxim Gorky, The Life of a Useless Man ☆☆☆☆ Yury Olesha, Envy ☆☆☆ Yevgeny Zamyatin, X and Other Stories ☆☆☆☆ Konstantin Vaginov, Goat Song ☆☆☆
I feel like I have so little time and energy for reading with work and language study... Perhaps this will change in summer when I at least don't have so much marking to do. Well, I am almost (but still not quite) finished with my English language Russian novels. Then I will have to further punish myself by reading in Russian.
Maxim Gorky, The Life of a Useless Man ☆☆☆☆
The story of a 'useless man' (a put-upon boy, bullied, solitary, lacking in intellectual or emotional intelligence) clashes somewhat awkwardly with Gorky's overt political narrative. The latter is far less interesting than the former, but the former is really good.
Yury Olesha, Envy ☆☆☆☆
Interestingly, my criticisms of Envy are very similar to those of Life of a Useless Man. The first half of this novel is absolutely fantastic: a character portrait of a young man obsessively envious of his employer and landlord, driven almost to psychosis. But then the second half shifts into a completely different mode and suddenly we're in a political allegory about post-revolutionary industrial Russia. It's just much weaker stuff.
Yevgeny Zamyatin, X and Other Stories ☆☆☆☆
Very uneven, but the good was worth the weaker material even though there wasn't much of it. Honestly I'd only really recommend "At the End of the Earth" and "The Flood".
"Provincial Life": A grim and miserable, though effective, story of an awful man "failing up" through rape and lying and luck in a wretched village. This is not an interesting theme to me, but it was well executed. It felt like a better take on Sologub's "The Petty Demon".
"At the End of the Earth": A military settlement and their many mishaps. Full of rich characters and miserable mistakes. I, ah, really enjoyed the marital rape <3
"The Cave": This just felt... unfinished? I was reminded of Dead Man's Letters, which perhaps it inspired. A postapocalyptic story of a couple slowly dying in a cave/apartment, and then suddenly it ends. Really striking atmosphere but this honestly felt like an unfinished manuscript.
"Mamai": I simply did not understand this story. Like "The Cave" it ends extremely abruptly. The reincarnation of Mongolian commander Mamai gets into some scrapes, except the joke is he's a complete coward, and also this is a fantasy version of St Petersburg where the buildings sail through time like ships (which sounds amazing but is literally a background detail), and there is going to be an inspection, and then the story ends. ??
"X": Again, this felt unfinished. There is a repentant (unrepentant) priest in the wake of the revolution, there are rumours and mistaken identity, and then... it ends. I was enjoying it until I turned the final page and it was just... over.
"The Flood": This was strong enough to justify a four star rating for the whole volume. A woman sees her husband begin an affair with another woman, and she... takes it badly. It was nice to read a female perspective that didn't involve constantly fainting and twiddling away about romance. Good pregnancy horror, which I appreciate.
Konstantin Vaginov, Goat Song ☆☆☆
I did not "get" this novel. I am insufficiently familiar with the literary period it is satirising/eulogising and without that context it was a disconnected and uninteresting story for the most part. There was some beautiful prose, however, and the ending was suitably melancholic. I didn't read the second novel in the volume since I was so nonplussed by the first; maybe I'll return to it later when I have a better grasp on the literary landscape of this period.
Uh, so…this is gonna be a long one…somehow or other THG wound up in my YouTube FYP. I honestly don’t even remember what I watched to put it there. Anyway, that sent me down a rabbit hole that ended in spending an entire week and a half on your EverSnow back catalogue. TSS and WWC took me awhile since people kept making me move and do things lol (too bad I didn’t find it before my niblings were out for summer break😢 alas). And then I went through the comments with control F on WWC to see if anyone had already asked this, and it seemed not. So, I will.
Like all millennials, I am very attuned to ‘as you wish,’ and I noticed from your blog that you are, too. My first question is, was that just you as a writer making a reference or if Katniss had looked closer at his bookshelf in WWC would she have found a certain story a grandparent reads to their bored, sick grandkid? Making the reference very subtle and deliberate on Snow’s part as he knew she wouldn’t get it.
(Kinda hurt myself with that one, given Caltha’s ultimate fate. But it’s also kinda funny to imagine a Princess Bride AU. “I’ve got my wife to murder, the Districts to frame for it…I’m swamped.” Obviously, Peeta is Westley and Katniss as Buttercup decides not to be rescued when she can just mess the whole thing up from the inside. Honestly, I’ve always kinda had a thing for Chris Sarandon in that movie and shipped B/H, on its own.)
My second question is, I noticed that Snow apparently knew Morse Code with that mention of a series of beeps on the radio Katniss couldn’t understand. So I was guessing the ‘song’ he was tapping on his fingers while being drowned was meant to be a message, instead. But what was it?
Third question. You said that PLB was sort of his backstory for WWC, and I noticed the callback on “being loved by you is the worst thing.” Which made me wonder if Snow essentially turning off his sex drive was a sort of lowkey trauma response after realizing what Tigris really thought of the whole situation.
Ahh, thank you so much for these questions!! <3
“As you wish”: I didn’t include this as a conscious reference to The Princess Bride, but that is indeed my favourite film of all time (I’ve read the book also but the film is truly exceptional) and it is definitely floating around in my mind constantly. I think it’s just a kind of polite acquiescence that fits Snow very well. Looking at WWC now, I didn’t realise how often he said it! Sixteen times, haha. There’s also a bit of a game to it, I think. By repeatedly insisting that Katniss is the one in control, she also becomes responsible for everything, and as she’s inclined to guilt, it offers an opportunity to manipulate that guilt. But also he just likes doing as he’s told in that fic :)
Personally, I always shipped Humperdinck/Rugen. But Westley/Buttercup is the sweetest romantic couple of all time. What can I say, I like an obedient man.
That’s a really clever idea about the morse code! It wasn’t what I had in mind but it’s a super interesting read. I often put little ideas into stories that I sometimes come back to later, or perhaps in other fics, but sometimes they just remain as little bits of texture in the world that can’t be fully interpreted. But what I had in mind is that he’s playing the opening bars of Mozart’s piano concerto no. 19. The backstory I had for this was that he had taught himself to use it as a grounding technique, and as long as he could absorb himself fully into the piece then he could maintain control. But, of course, the drowning was too much for him. I used to use mental music in a similar way to deal with the pain from a particular medical procedure I had to have regularly when in hospital, although since I am less cool and cultured than Snow I always used the Pocahontas soundtrack.
That’s an interesting interpretation, about turning off his sex drive as a trauma response. In my head, PLB is the more extreme version of his backstory, and in WWC he probably didn’t have quite so unhealthy a relationship with Tigris. Probably very very codependent and controlling, but perhaps not physically sexual. When thinking about Snow’s sexual feelings in WWC, I thought about how Donald Sutherland insists on there not being any thing sexual in Snow’s feelings for Katniss (“he’s in love with her. Not sexually.”) while also saying rather erotic things (“he tastes her, her being is palpable in his mouth”) which made me want to write Snow in that fic as someone who had a very intense awareness that his obsession with Katniss Everdeen could only be justified if it remained free of personal erotic interest. But then she has to go and rub her vagina on him, good job Katniss. I really like the trauma response idea though as well!
Thank you so much for this ask <3 I love to talk about my fics haha.
This is stunning. I am honoured. Thank you so much for your work.
The downtown glitz of the Capitol, the gorgeous detail on the interior wall, Katniss stealing the lime (<3 this is one of my favourite little character details for her), her sad sulk when he rejects her (you’ve made him so disdainful :) ), his loathing for her dance with Daric (how he looms over them), her awful harassment (how suitably repulsive is Nance), and the murder. I adore the detail of the spilled milk cocktail <3 And, of course, the two of them together: glorious and terrible and resplendent. She with her righteous fury still muddied by naivety… Well, she soon loses that :)
I am so impressed at the attention to detail… There are so many tiny elements you captured perfectly. How Snow inclines his head to hear her, the drinks, their clothing… I’m floored, truly.
When I first began writing The Shivering Season I had no idea if anyone would even read it (me, coming a decade late to a fandom with a character dynamic it seemed nobody cared about). I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams to see such phenomenal artwork created for it. I cannot thank you enough. It is deeply meaningful to me.
Спасибо всегда. У меня нет слов, чтобы высказывать моя радость. Конечно я не могу хорошо писать по-русски, но я надеюсь, что ты понимаешь глубину моего чувства. Твоё искусство очень красивое и важное меня.
Notably taking place during the Battle of Moscow, the parade was held in honor of The October Revolution twenty four years prior. Joseph Stalin delivered a speech to the soldiers on the parade at the Red square who would go to battle immediately after the parade.
