not much has changed, but i want to do another one of these so i'm just gonna ramble a whooole bunch :3
1. ended up reading the next two books in the seafort saga, cuz i didn't actually ever finish that series. not reading the last book yet though, because i'm happy enough with the ending of the 6th book and fear a cliffhanger in the last book, since feintuch died before he had a chance to publish the 8th. but ohhh boy. those books. idk why i waited so long to read them bc the implications they have for the rest of feintuch's work is crazy.
sticking with the limited palette again, it's a fun challenge and helps the final result look more cohesive even if it doesn't look quite as cool as it could w/ color.
2.a. in book 5, we have a new protagonist, seafort's son (pt). we set him up with the usual best friend arrangement (jared).
4. okay, maybe "wins" is a bit of a stretch. the only part of the curse they break is the "figuring out the feelings" thing, not the eventual death of the best friend. as seafort watches jared die because he's too slow to save him, he goes back to calling him pt's "friend." he holds the shoulders of his own "friend" (fifth edition, seafort goes through best friends faster than wives) as he dies. and yet.
2. you see, feintuch gives every one of his protagonists a gay best friend. this friend loves the protagonist, and while the protagonist may use the word "love" a whole lot (and even have a sexual relationship, in rodrigo's case), the protagonist never fully returns the feelings. they move on, settle down with a girl (or three girls, in seafort's case, bc they keep dying/going insane). yet this doesn't make them happy. okay. there could be a lot of reasons for that, it doesn't mean they would be happy with the best friend character. sure. sure. until you get to book 6.
3. yet in book 6 we're back to seafort as narrator. okay, what happened to pt and jared? oh. ohhhh. they broke the curse. they broke the cycle. they've been living together for five years, dating for longer, and are considering adoption. seafort calls jared his 'son in law.' and they're the happiest any seafort protagonists have ever been. all that effort, into showing exactly how they followed in their forefathers shoes in the last book, and feintuch says the right decision was to love each other. love wins.
5. a timeline that repeats, over and over and over. emotionally distant parents, near death illness, gay best friend. become a man. and yet the man that was happiest was the one who both accepted (seafort couldn't) and returned (rodrigo couldn't) the feelings of his best friend. the year is 1999. when i first started looking for this series after reading rodrigo of caledon, i could only find the sixth book. over and over and over again. and in the end, they were happy.
do you like space (the retro scifi kind)? do you like the navy hierarchy (or at least watching characters struggle in it)? do you like characters racked with calvinist guilt (catholics have nothing on seafort)? do you like insanely codependent office relationships between two men who really reallly really should just be court martialed? read the seafort saga i'm on my knees broo. not eddie boss on my knees in front of seafort. but i'm on them.
i made a joke about making my own space navy characters and then accidentally followed through and got wayyyy too attached to them. what if you were a seminary student on your final pilgrimage before becoming a priest but this annoying midshipman won't leave you alone and the ship computer somehow knew about your childhood best friend who only exists in your memories and you know was never real? also your name is boyer. it's the future you gotta have a stupid name okay. i am a responsible creator and did not make these guys up because i realized msi's "5tr82he11" wouldn't fit one of my pre existing ocs bc none of them believe in hell. what
got really into listening to msi lmaooo. i'd been exclusively listening to "sex for homework" for a couple weeks before my best friend (if we were feintuch characters he'd be the protagonist and i'd be the best friend. but like. just alexi or tyre level though not like derek or vax. okay maybe vax but not jason) pointed out that i had it on one of my oc playlists and recommended the band's album "pink". and that shit was good. got the guy i'm the feintuch protagonist for to listen to it too, and then listened to the album "<3" a couple days later. listened to "you'll rebel to anything" today but didn't like it as much as the last two.
back home in 25 days. chinese class is done (german girl kissed me on the cheek as i stood up to do my final presentation. we've barely talked sense). school all week now but tuesdays and thursday are just in the library. getting back into chess (getting better at endgame, usually my weakest part). getting closer to finishing an online calculus course. found a collection of nobel prize winner literature in the english section of the library, reading a physical book for the first time in ages (already nearly to 100 for the year).
on the bus home from our final rotary trip, my classmates cried. i didn't. i felt happy about that. i hadn't made any emotional attachments. as always, i'm ready to move on. life is a stream, i'm okay if it whisks me away. but then i used to modicum of emotional intelligence left in my half asleep head, and realized that while i would never be as sad as them, i'd never be as happy as they had been either. i thought about this, closed my eyes for a while, and opened them. when they gave advice to the future exchange students, they emphasized always going out when they were invited. i didn't do that. if i'd done that, could i have been one of them? then i realized that was stupid. when i did go out with them, i was stressed out. maybe we could've been better friends, but i do genuinely enjoy myself better alone. could i have had as many happy memories as i did (because thinking about it, i did have plenty) if i'd been forcing myself into a state of near constant anxiety to hang out with them? probably not. it's the past now.
i think a lot about how nice it would be to have a best friend who i could tell everything to. yet i only just realized to do that, i'd have to tell someone things. i arrive at an impasse. "i've made no close friends here," i say. "what about emanuel?" eli asks. "oh, i just hang out with him because it's convenient." i say this, but sometimes i worry he understands me better the person i call my best friend. he's read rodrigo, he's read seafort, including my annotations. he's watched most of logh, he listens to msi when i share earbuds with him. he knows i'm in love with myself. he makes ur mom jokes on my behalf to igor. if that's just convenience, what have any of my friendships been?
i worry that because i'll never be as trusting as a child again, i've forever missed my chance to have a life changing best friend. when i was a kid, i was alone. i had friends at school, but we didn't hang out afterwards. half my memories aren't real. i remember people i've never met and places i've never been. i miss someone i never knew. i look in the mirror and i see her.
pax.
started playing bully! i love it so far i haven't had this much fun in a game in ages
when i was reading book 5, i was really scared. i saw my younger self in pt, the kid who was too fast at school work and well liked by adults because he knew how to act around them. i saw myself in jared, closer to my current self, upset at the world and everyone around him. unable to trust anyone. i knew jared was going to die and i was so sure it wasn't going to be fair. pt would always be loved and jared would always be hated. but that wasn't what happened at all. they found their own love, they grew up. they blundered and improved. time is a stream, change is inevitable. maybe, you just have to hope for the impossible (a feintuch protagonist being happily in love with his best friend). no need to get calvinist about it.
