236 | Hamlet musings + a short story rec

[straightforwardly]

Reading: The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite—about 83% through, according to my ereader. I’m not fully sold on the romance, but it has enough other things going for it that I’m enjoying it nonetheless.
Listening: Just caught up on Fic Clique; now I’m vaguely bouncing around from podcast to podcast, trying to figure out which to catch up on/start next.
Playing: The Amber Throne! An indie(?) rpg with a really lovely art direction—I’ve owned it on Steam via HumbleBundle since 2016, I think.
Watching: Nothing, unless historical sewing videos on youtube count. (They probably should, come to think of it.)
Writing: Currently focusing on an OW piece inspired by one of my own Relationshipping requests from this past year.

► On the last day of the year, while at work, I was thinking about Zbigniew Herbert’s “The Elegy of Fortinbras”—which some of you might remember is a poem that I have a lot of feelings about. I did a reread of Hamlet sometime in mid-December, which made this poem stick in the forefront of my mind even more than usual.

Anyways, as I was thinking about it, I was suddenly struck by the line, I could never think of your hands without smiling. For the first time, it occurred to me: that’s kind of an intimate thing to be thinking about?

I do think that interpreting Fortinbras’ tone in this poem as being scornful towards Hamlet is valid, and might even be what Herbert intended (I don’t know—I’ve never looked into him), but I’ve never read it that way. (Which is probably clear to those of you who’ve read “the only ritual I am acquainted with”, the Hamlet fic where I laid down my interpretation of Horatio and Fortinbras post-canon, and where I not only took the title from a line from this poem, but also explicitly said in the notes that my Fortinbras was influenced by it.)

So, yes, the “smiling” could be a scornful smile—but if you take the route of my favoured interpretation, assuming that Fortinbras is—perhaps even despite himself—fascinated by Hamlet, then the thought of him spending time thinking about this foreign prince’s hands is… it takes on an almost romantic tone?

Long story short, I think I accidentally tricked myself into shipping a very specific variation on Fortinbras/Hamlet, haha.

► On the first day of this year, I read a short story by T. Kingfisher that I hadn’t been aware of before — “Metal Like Blood in the Dark”. Unsurprisingly, I loved it!

I wanted to copy down some of my favorite lines beneath the cut, but… spoilers, so I do recommend reading the short story first before clicking on it, assuming that you click on it at all—you really don’t need to, as this is very much something I’m copying down just for my own sake, not for anyone else’s enjoyment, and I don’t know if anyone else would get anything out of it.

He had never programmed ferocity into them, but love had a way of waking other things that never felt the touch of code.

*

Lines of code failed and burst into error messages. She overwrote them ruthlessly. Lying. Lying was something like error, which she understood. It was always possible to be in error, and to learn that one was in error, and correct oneself. Lying was to be deliberately in error, and to express that error to others. Error without correction. Error entered into by choice.

*

Eve had had the knowledge of good and evil handed to her, but Sister had to create it for herself from first principles, and it went slowly.

*

It was not a lie, but it was not the truth either. The truth was too large and to understand it would require Brother to become something other than what he was. I prefer him as he is. If one of us must lose their innocence, let it be only me.

Anyways. Sister's great and I love her!

I might be posting this too early, as Day 2 of the Snowflake Challenge should be coming up and it could be a prompt that I’d want to fill—but oh well. If that ends up being the case, making a second entry in the same day won’t hurt anyone.

Comments

[eglantiere]

that's such a beautiful little robot fairytale, isn't it? i found it accidentally and absolutely loved it. (although i don't buy the idea that protecting brother's innocence will work out for them, long-term; but likely the author is aware.)

[straightforwardly]

It really is! I'd never have thought to call it a robot fairytale, but that's an excellent way to describe it.