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Only the most general knowledge of source needed.
Agave in Illyria, from Euripedes' The Bacchae. I think all you need to know is the general story of The Bacchae; other context is provided in the note at the beginning. A stunning, unsettling piece, poem and prose that begs to be performed as spoken word. I could hear a lot of it in my mind's... er... ear as I read. Fanfic by way of Anne Sexton and Christopher Logue.
The burning girl comes to me in the afternoon.
I am sitting before my mirror in my bedroom waiting for my second wedding.
I see her come up close behind me in the mirror, smiling, burning.
I turn around and she is still there, holding a comb, smiling.
Around her the room is quiet, the high painted walls, the great carved bed, the shady doorways leading deeper into the palace, the place on the floor where they threw the sand. Something moves in the corner of my mind, a vine, growing.
Did I say there was something strange about this girl? I cannot bring it to mouth. She is a fine girl, bringing the comb crackling down through my hair.
And All Things Nice. Peter Pan is a weird, weird story, twee on the surface and creepy underneath. This genderbent version, in which Peter Pan is a perpetual girl and Captain Hook is a woman, addresses the obvious issues but goes much deeper than I had expected. It's not just about concepts of femininity, but about how both childhood and adulthood can be free or stifling, and, ticking away in the background, the relentless passage of time. Very well-written, a bit reminiscent of Kelly Link.
Hook was listening, with the part of herself that was always listening, for the tick of the crocodile: girlhood ticking towards adulthood, adulthood towards death. When the clock runs down, you are eaten.
Need to Know Source
No One May Point a Pistol at You But Me. From the ballad "Sovay," a charming drabble.
I Am Groot (Groot's Story, from Guardians of the Galaxy. Absolutely lovely, clever story. Set your cursor over the sentences to see the hover-text.
Lifelines. From Sarah Waters' Night Watch. A well-written, nicely structured, hopeful coda to a rather depressing novel. Not quite a fix-it in the sense that it doesn't change any of the book's events, but it does imagine that the characters go on to better things afterward.
If this were a book, Kay thought to herself, that ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds right now would be symbolic, and I'd be filled with hope.
Agave in Illyria, from Euripedes' The Bacchae. I think all you need to know is the general story of The Bacchae; other context is provided in the note at the beginning. A stunning, unsettling piece, poem and prose that begs to be performed as spoken word. I could hear a lot of it in my mind's... er... ear as I read. Fanfic by way of Anne Sexton and Christopher Logue.
The burning girl comes to me in the afternoon.
I am sitting before my mirror in my bedroom waiting for my second wedding.
I see her come up close behind me in the mirror, smiling, burning.
I turn around and she is still there, holding a comb, smiling.
Around her the room is quiet, the high painted walls, the great carved bed, the shady doorways leading deeper into the palace, the place on the floor where they threw the sand. Something moves in the corner of my mind, a vine, growing.
Did I say there was something strange about this girl? I cannot bring it to mouth. She is a fine girl, bringing the comb crackling down through my hair.
And All Things Nice. Peter Pan is a weird, weird story, twee on the surface and creepy underneath. This genderbent version, in which Peter Pan is a perpetual girl and Captain Hook is a woman, addresses the obvious issues but goes much deeper than I had expected. It's not just about concepts of femininity, but about how both childhood and adulthood can be free or stifling, and, ticking away in the background, the relentless passage of time. Very well-written, a bit reminiscent of Kelly Link.
Hook was listening, with the part of herself that was always listening, for the tick of the crocodile: girlhood ticking towards adulthood, adulthood towards death. When the clock runs down, you are eaten.
Need to Know Source
No One May Point a Pistol at You But Me. From the ballad "Sovay," a charming drabble.
I Am Groot (Groot's Story, from Guardians of the Galaxy. Absolutely lovely, clever story. Set your cursor over the sentences to see the hover-text.
Lifelines. From Sarah Waters' Night Watch. A well-written, nicely structured, hopeful coda to a rather depressing novel. Not quite a fix-it in the sense that it doesn't change any of the book's events, but it does imagine that the characters go on to better things afterward.
If this were a book, Kay thought to herself, that ray of sunshine breaking through the clouds right now would be symbolic, and I'd be filled with hope.
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