vaznetti | Wednesday? Again?

I have just about finished Warleggan, which is just as well since the library wants it back tomorrow. This is the one where Ross kind of rapes Elizabeth when he finds out she has agreed to marry George. In the book it's very "no, no, oh well I guess we might as well" and it isn't completely clear whether Elizabeth hates Ross for raping her or for having dubcon sex with her, sneaking out in the morning, and then never trying to contact her until weeks after her wedding, which frankly he deserves to be hated for even if the sex had been 1000% consensual. The only situation in which Elizabeth was not going to hate Ross was if he agreed to leave Demelza and shack up with her, and that was pretty clearly not going to happen (to the reader, at least, although Demelza spends most of the rest of the book convinced that he will.)

I vaguely recall that this was a very controversial scene in the tv show as well, but also that it was played more no-no-yes in the romance novel tradition there. But really, the problem is that consensual or not, there is no way Ross doesn't come out of this looking like an asshole, so that by the end of the book, when he's trying for once to act like a responsible human being, it's too late.

Overall I think I like the TV show better than the books I've read, but both of them are really melodramatic and contrived. In a good way! But the show has George's A+ conflicted pining for Ross.

We finished watching Domina. It remained really delightful, although I wonder whether someone who didn't know all about the Primus trial would have enjoyed it quite as much as I did. (I have to admit that Primus' fate in this makes much more sense than his historical fate.) I am really really enjoying their Tiberius and Drusus, and also Tiberius' relationship with both Livia and Antigone; I love how everyone admits that Tiberius is brilliant, but that there's something inexpressibly creepy about him (and of course this eventually comes to the surface in a disturbing but predictable scene.) I also really like that I was never entirely sure what, if anything, Livia feels for Gaius.

It was spectacular to look at and I really really hope they make a second series. It's sort of doing "How did Livia become the Livia of I, Claudius," except just to the left of that.

In other news, I have signed up for

crossworks, and am wondering whether I should sign up for

auexchange too. It would mean two stories at once, plus the next round of

multifandomdrabble. But I am just about at the end of my teaching and marking responsibilities, and having a lot of fanfic to write sometimes actually encourages me to get my own work done. So I don't know.