The sheer, unmitigated gall

In the first installment of The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, it appeared to be making Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward bad people. I didn't love that, but it was a relatively minor part of the overall story. 

There were changes to many characters from many authors' works, but that part bothered me more. 

I love the book Dracula. Because of that affection, I have read it multiple times, as well as having read some of the parts that were written and then removed. That makes departures from the book as written more glaring.

The series revolves around a group of daughters of scientists who experimented on them, giving them unusual abilities. They come together and solve mysteries. 

Those daughters are Mary Jekyll and Diana Hyde, Beatrice Rappacini, Catherina Moreau (a puma turned into a woman by Dr. Moreau on his island), and Justine Frankenstein, who was reanimated by Victor after she was hung for the murder actually committed by his other reanimated corpse.

The first novel also incorporates Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. As it progresses, other characters enter from those books, as well as books by H. Rider Haggard and J. Sheridan Le Fanu.

As it is, I don't really like Arthur Conan Doyle's work and I haven't read any Haggard. I have mostly read Frankenstein, but my mind wandered a lot, possibly unfairly. 

I have read Carmilla, though it's been a while, and I might like The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde as much as I like Dracula.

I actually kind of liked Rappacini's Daughter surviving her end, but the price was that her lover died, and her father as well, both of which were sad for her.

The characters from Carmilla don't come up right away, so that wasn't an issue. With the characters from Stevenson, Mr. Hyde himself shows up briefly at the end, but I did not immediately object to either half having daughters. That made the main frustration the maligning of the Dracula characters, and again, it started out small.

It got much worse, including unforgivable Quincy slander. Then Goss blew them all up while they were in pursuit of their evil schemes.

I have some thoughts about why it went down this way; that is one post. 

In addition, there was something else that came to mind more recently when I read the spoiler for The Bride movie.

The tricky part with these posts is that I am going to criticize a lot of things without full or any viewing. I worry that's unfair, but watching them is a price I am unwilling to pay.

Anyway, The Bride apparently starts with the ghost of Mary Shelley saying she hadn't been able to tell the story before. 

When I first read the movie spoiler, the way it was written implied that those primitive times wouldn't allow her to say what she wanted. 

That raised my hackles; I really got the impression that she said what she wanted to say. 

Something else I read made it seem more like she wanted to tell additional story but did not live long enough. That's not quite as offensive, but it's still questionable. Frankenstein was published in 1818; Shelley died in 1851. I think she had time.

Unless it's just that the actual successful creation of the Bride had not happened until well after her death, so only her ghost saw it. THAT makes perfect sense. 

To some extent I had viewed the series as a feminist spin on works like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which leaves out any women except for Mina Harker, and always with Jonathan dead. I can see centering women, and perhaps also making the men less heroic to that end, my personal preferences aside.

However, making Victor Frankenstein sweetly devoted to saving Justine and nurturing, while the monster is pure evil, against the writing of Shelley... that's not super feminist.

I will add to this that I had not been interested in the Emerald Fennell version of Wuthering Heights. It looked like they wanted to take the eating scene from Tom Jones and play it straight. Okay, that's not how the book goes, but okay.

Then a clip happened to come up on my feed of Isabella on a chain -- completely degraded and clinging to it -- and I am just going to be embarrassed for everyone here because they should be.

One of the comments on the clip talked about the courage book Isabella showed in leaving her husband and then raising her child without him. I was mainly glad that her dog survived, and add nearly killing the dog to Heathcliff's psychopathic nature. Like many psychopaths, he could be charming, and that's how he got Isabella, but his cruelty did not keep her.

I am very irritated with all of them. 

Related posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/spooky-season-finishing-up-series.html  

Spooky Season: Finishing up the series

Writing about this has been very drawn-out; there was a lot happening. I pursued different themes, and had other things to write about that were not related to Spooky Season at all.

Really, the only thing left is the series:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/03/spooky-season-series.html 

(Perhaps I should note that I have now read the Universal Monsters Mummy book now and I did not hate it.) 

One thing that is absolutely clear after going through them is that if something bugs you in the beginning of a trilogy, it will only get more frustrating. Therefore...

Iron Tongue of Midnight (#3 in The Forge and Fracture Series) by Brittany N. Williams

Yes, the violent fairy scenes got more frequent and gorier. I think that even got to Williams; after one fight something appears around the corner for a cliffhanger, then the next chapter just says it was quickly dispatched. I was dreading the details, but that was still weird.

After all of that, the ease of the resolution didn't feel real or earned.

Angel of the Overpass (#3 in Ghost Roads) by Seanan McGuire

More lore, more expanding mythology and more teenage attitude from ghost Rose. She periodically mentions that she isn't really a teenager anymore, despite still looking like one. I have an idea for how you could demonstrate that. 

Most of the attitude is shown as a way of adding dramatic tension to things she is going to need to do but does not want to do. We all know you are going to do it; just get to it.

I may not be a young and fun person anymore.

While this is the end of the series, there is a shared universe with other series. If I loved these books I would probably be thrilled by that. Nope. 

House of Elephants (#3 in Witchlings) by Claribel A. Ortega

It still gets overly tween at times, but there are aspects that I do like. 

As it is, this one is definitely not a trilogy. A fourth novel is out, as well as a short story and a fifth novel slated for publication later this year. I may read them, but am currently uncommitted.

The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl (#3 in The Extraordinary Adventures of the Athena Club) by Theodora Goss  

Goss is not a bad writer. If she were working with original characters I would probably have been okay. 

I could say that the issue is that she messed with characters that I really like in works I really respect, but I am not a huge fan of Frankenstein or any of the Sherlock Holmes stories and they are part of my irritation, which grew exponentially worse by the end of the series.

In yesterday's post I mentioned that I was going to pursue a tangent before continuing in that vein.

This is the reason for the tangent.

It's not just this, but also The Other Bennett Sister and The Bride and Wuthering Heights.

I need to take some time to complain!  

Related Posts:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2025/12/ghostly-childrens-picture-books.html  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/01/a-ghostly-movie.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/01/monstrous-comics.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/01/ghostly-middle-reader-books-old-school.html 

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/spooky-season-new-horizons.html 

Will I celebrate?

There can be a lot more to say about death, disagreement, and disinformation, as well as dehumanization. I will get to that, though I think next week's posts are going to go in a different direction.

First I want to address the other point from the previous post, where part of the justification for Trump celebrating Mueller's death was how hard liberals will celebrate Trump's death:

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2026/04/but-is-that-celebrating.html 

There are a lot of those posts, with non really being that quotable. 

I could be bothered by people making assumptions again, and assumptions that have a vilifying tendency. However, many liberals replied confirming that they will celebrate. Gleefully. 

While there is still a dehumanizing element on the one side, I'm not getting too excited over this one. It was a lie to say that liberals were celebrating Charlie Kirk's death, but the future celebration is only a predication and may well be an accurate one.

(Though if you want to read a bizarre fantasy with replies showing other participants in the mass delusion, here you go: https://x.com/afshineemrani/status/2035869038723887304) 

With all of that being said, I don't picture myself celebrating.

This is not that I am a superior person and above such petty things; if anyone deserves their death celebrated, it's this guy.

He has caused an appalling amount of damage, from physical structures to protocols that acted as guidelines to agreements that increased safety to loss of human life. 

If he has not been the only cause of many people becoming more ignorant and more hateful, he has certainly enabled it.

Therein lies the problem; when he goes, the wreckage will remain.

There might be some sense of relief that he can't do anything else. I find it hard to credit him with any charisma, but there must be some to explain the cult-like devotion. Vance does not have that, but he will still have the endorsement of the evil tech bros that made him the choice, and again, institutions are in ruins.

It would be nice to think that it could help some things, but there will be so much to fix and so many obstructionists -- on the right and the left -- that I don't see any celebrations in my future.

Maybe there will be a shift in the struggle.

I won't begrudge anyone who does get some satisfaction out of it, but I don't think it can be a lasting satisfaction.

I mean, unless it's just joy that someone you hated died. I don't know how much satisfaction you can get out of that. The point is that it won't fix things.

There is a sorrow with that, but that's been here for a while. 

But is that "celebrating"?

I have mentioned hyperbole and exaggeration, but it is probably more of an outright lie that liberals were celebrating Charlie Kirk's death.

I was nonetheless seeing multiple assertions that had happened.

This was happening just after Robert Mueller died, and the president was predictably horrible:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/mueller-trump-fbi-presidents-standoff 

While it's not worth a lot, there are conservatives who still have a sense of decorum. Because of that, they realized this behavior was not good, but they still didn't want to be too critical of him, which is dangerous. 

Much like leftists, the easiest path is to criticize liberals. This played out in two main ways:

1. This is nothing compared to how liberals will celebrate when Trump dies.
2. What about how they celebrated when Charlie Kirk died?

Laying aside the first one for now, I don't really remember anyone celebrating.

It was not uncommon to point out that he had not been a really good person or a fighter for free speech and open debate.

It was not uncommon to point out that various right-wingers had angry posts about Kirk, most notably Nick Fuentes, though there were others.

After appearing to fall in line that MAGAs should not be pressuring the government for the release of the Epstein Files, Kirk went back on that:

https://www.newsweek.com/jeffrey-epstein-files-update-charlie-kirk-trump-message-2099999 

It was a fairly mild rebellion, but there were people who perceived it as a lack of support and were angry. 

That could have been a motive in the shooting, but with the current FBI's incompetence, I am not sure how definitive an answer we will get. 

Anyway, after the shooting, right-wingers who had posted violent or critical things about Kirk removed them, then started trying to get ordinary people who had posted criticisms of Kirk fired.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/charlie-kirk-critics_n_68c5a9b5e4b0efc9da5fea41  

It's the circle of life.

As people were discussing it, a lot of people pointed out his flaws. That conflicted with the quick lionization of Kirk, as they pointed out that he had not really been that big a deal, with a somewhat limited audience. People who had never heard of him before were now heartbroken at his loss. 

There was a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration in that.

From my point of view, Charlie Kirk was the Campus Crusade for Christ version of Steven Crowder.  I would see his face and have to run through my head "nope, not Matt Walsh, not Gaetz... Wohl? Oh, Kirk."

That may sound mean, but is it celebrating? 

Those critical posts tended to state over and over again that Kirk's flaws did not mean that he deserved to be murdered. 

Someone replied to one of the posts with the accusations of celebration, with exactly that point: posts saying that Kirk sowed division or lied or targeted naive young students then said he didn't deserve to die.

The answer (that I should have bookmarked) was a rebuttal that most of those posts reversed the order.

He didn't deserve to die, BUT... then it's a party.  

I mention the lack of intellectual honesty a lot, but we should note that it accomplishes different things.

Sometimes the purpose is continuing to avoid self-examination and to not let logic or perspective interfere, but part of that is also turning the people you disagree with into monsters.

What kind of insecurity do you need to have that vilification of others is necessary?

Xander

Nicholas Brendon, who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, died on March 20th. He was less than a month away from turning 55.

Xander was a major character on a show that meant a lot to a lot of people. Without any special powers or supernatural traits, he may have been the easiest to relate to. For many he was the heart of the show. It makes sense that people were upset and expressed grief. 

Perhaps less logical but still not surprising, many people swooped in to criticize that outpouring of grief for such a problematic person. That set off additional people swooping in to ask whether we can't just let people grieve.

For Brendon himself, he did have legal and health issues, some of it pretty well-documented.

The cycle of grief, anger at the grief, and anger at the anger is all pretty familiar. I have even written about it before.

However, since we have a lot of people dying around now, and a lot of people being terrible as a matter of course, perhaps this is a good time to review some things.

We should remember that an actor is not the person that they played, even when there are remarkable physical similarities. 

It's okay to care about entertainers. Their faces are familiar, they create work that we find meaningful... why wouldn't we care? And they're still human beings, which should be a good reason to care, though that doesn't always work out the way you might hope.

With social media we sometimes get more personal sides. Those might be carefully curated, but sometimes you can get an idea of a person and like them better. Plus, with conventions, there are often opportunities to meet and have photos and maybe listen to them on panels.

I don't want to discount any of those experiences.

It would also be a bad idea to worship them. 

It is also okay to care about imperfect people. It's necessary to do so. Otherwise your choices are either shutting your heart down completely for a miserable existence or using denial as the coping tool that allows you to enjoy anyone only by ignoring their flaws.

That one gets used more than it should.

When we know someone's flaws and still love them, that love is a love that can last and grow. Necessary for family, but probably less important for celebrities.

I have said before that it is reductive to focus on whether someone is a good person or a bad person. That's still true, but there are people who try harder to do good and people who don't seem to make any efforts at all in a positive direction.

Fame can mess people up, and health issues can take an emotional toll. 

Dominator culture often rewards people for bad behavior, making it seem reasonable and even admirable.

This is not limited to Nicholas Brendon. I don't actually know that much about him. If some people had bad experiences with him and other people had bad experiences, neither side negates the other.

It is unfortunate that often this mostly gets talked about after someone is dead. If it came up earlier -- maybe someone gets called out or called in -- maybe some people would improve and right some wrongs, or at least try.

One can easily try and get nowhere, though. That happens too.

I can't give you any easy answer for any person. There are some things that I think are important.

We need to be able to reject bad behavior, even from people we like.

We need to be willing to allow attempts to change, even from people we don't like.

We need to prioritize the people who are most vulnerable.

We need to care about each other and wish each other well.  

I'm not expecting the world to end tonight, but if it did, all we would have is our characters and the love that we shared, our knowledge and our memories. 

There are lots of good reasons to try and be better. 

Related posts:  

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/03/and-i-like-them.html

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2018/02/nahm-2017-taking-sides.html 

Spooky Season: New horizons

I know; there was a bit of a gap, as I was last writing about this in January. 

There are always a lot of things to write about. I will try and finish this round next week, with links.

For planned reading that I had mentioned further back, technically there should really only be finishing up the four series I had been reading.

It's never that simple, is it?

I did finish four trilogies, but I was also thinking of other books that I intended to get to eventually that might apply. 

First I should note that there are some books that could go with horror but are Native American written and themed; they don't feel like they belong here so I am saving them. 

Otherwise, I found another three trilogies, sort of.

First off, I have followed Daniel José Older for some time. I actually wanted to read his Bone Street Rumba series, but the library only had that electronically. I do not have an appropriate device, so I started Shadowshaper, the first in the Shadowshaper Cypher series, instead.. 

The setting really feels alive and the people breathe. Well, there are some that stop breathing though they do not stop existing in different ways. Heritage is important, and art, both of which make sense from Older.

There are ways in which it is very beautiful. I probably will read more in this series.  

Maya and the Rising Dark, #1 in the same-named series, by Rena Barron.

I'd added this to my to-read list a while ago, but I can't remember who recommended it. A comic-con was a key factor, so I assume that was part of how it came up.

For the series I was already reading, The Forge and Fracture Series features Orisha as a key part of the world-building, as well as a threat of dangerous foes coming through a breach in what had been providing safety. Those are both true for Maya as well, but the tone is completely different.

While it can feel young, it still handles some complex issues well, including that killing your enemies may be necessary without it being good.

I feel a little less likely to stick with this series than Shadowshaper, but am still not ruling it out.  

I added Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward to my to-read list back in 2016. Again, I don't remember what the recommendation had been. However, I saw it listed as Bois Sauvage #2. A series? You don't say..

Well, kind of. I read #1, Where the Line Bleeds.

Two things about that: while there are three books that all take place in Bois Sauvage -- a place in rural Mississippi -- each book focuses on a different family. 

Having only read one, I do not know if there are characters in common between the three books, though I suspect that does happen.

I can't trust my suspicions, though, because while those two titles and the third, Sing, Unburied, Sing, had me thinking that there would be supernatural elements, there are not. They are just about how difficult and depressing regular life can be.

I may have had a harder time because parents who are present but not (even if it's for the best) may be a harder issue for me right now.

I am not sure if I am going to continue. I might.

I haven't removed number 2 from my to-read list yet, so there's that. 

If I decide to finish these series, or at least read the second offerings, will I decide to do that around October?

That is not impossible. 

Catching up: April 2nd

Something was weird with my Tuesday post, where it just didn't seem to get the visibility that it normally does.

Yesterday it only had eight views. There is a limit to how much I care about views, but I do care some.

In addition, because it was April Fool's Day there was a part of me that worried that anything I posted could come off as a joke. 

That was not the only way the date influenced me. I actually changed the song order on the playlist to have the kind of less serious song up. It was just switching the order of two adjacent songs, so not a big deal, but still something I worried about.

In addition, I somehow miscounted the quotes for Women's History Month and had an extra. Sometimes I just go over into the next month, but a quote about racism on April 1st?

I don't know that anyone is celebrating, but there are too many fools on display all the time now; it puts a real damper on things.

I thought I knew what I was going to write today, but I am simply not feeling it. Maybe I had the order wrong. 

Anyway, here's what's going on.

I am currently working on the literature study for my capstone. There is a research component to the learning module, and before working that out I need to know what other research has said and what areas could use more investigation. 

This mainly involves looking up old academic journals, but not too old. There can be older articles that are foundational and have value for that, but I should not be basing my work on anything outdated. I should be aware of the current state of the academic thought on my topic.

One article that sounded interesting to me was from 2009. That's a little old, but not necessarily useless. 

However, my school library only has issues of that journal going back to 2012. There was an option to purchase, but it was $68.00! You are not important enough for that!

For perspective, a different article I am interested in would also require purchase, but I could have access to the information for 48 hours for $12. That is much more reasonable.

As it is, it looks like I have enough free information available that I probably won't buy anything, but that is one of the issues to consider.

It is taking longer than I had hoped, but this is one of the two assignments that I expected to need more time.

I was telling a friend about the frustration of always thinking I should go through things faster. She advised that I double the time expected and then add fifteen minutes.

It's an interesting way of looking at it. I think of it as two steps: first, you are just underestimating the time, so keep that as a guiding principle. 

Then, weird little things will come up that don't drastically change the schedule, but are still annoying. That's your fifteen minutes.

It could be a lot worse.