Tenth Post!

[hoisinsauce]

I TAKE IT BACK, GO BACK TO FUCKING THE HOUSE!

(https://secretfanspace.dreamwidth.org/2511.html?thread=3560655#cmt3560655)

Welcome back! Chat fandom, weird internet stuff, creative work, games, books, anything! Meme listens, and sometimes even replies!

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Comments

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

I've had a really bad day at work, and I'm going to self-medicate with garbage.

> Content Warning
> This is a TRUE enemies to lovers Hercules retelling with a twist. The book is full of suffering, violence, sarcasm, and gallows humor. It's a slow burn and the villains will get the girl in the end.
> Sometimes becoming a hero hurts - a lot.
> Beware.

We haven't even started yet and I'm already seeing why Goodreads called this 'My Immortal, but with Greek mythology.'

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

We start off with a quick world-building rundown - Earth is ruled by a hundred immortal Spartans, who founded the famously Greek Roman Empire. They are divided into the Olympians, who exist, and the Cthonians, who are sexy and evil. Centuries ago, the Cthonians lost the obligatory civil war, and have now been drafted into service to defend humanity against the obligatory monster apocalypse.

They're also really bad at having procreative sex, which is why they're now required by law to get married at the tender age of 26. I'm sure this will be relevant later.

Anyways.

In Chapter 1, we meet our heroine, Alexis Hert. She lives in the famously Greek state of Montana. Her dad, who subsists entirely on a diet of bleach, tied her to a rock and left her to die. Her first thought?

What would Emmy Noether and Carl Gauss do in this situation?

Make friends with an invisible snake named Nyx and acquire a government-assigned little brother named Charlie, apparently. Of course, literally two pages later her parents tell her to kill Charlie. There's a fight. The Olympian police officers who show up are really rude to her.

'Stay still,' the male medic snapped as he squeezed my cheeks and dabbed at my left eye.
He's probably never taken math above calculus. Carl Gauss would never speak to me like this.

Apocalypse monsters inexplicably kill Alexis's mom, and she frames her dad for the murder. This gives her more time to write Emmy Noether and Carl Gauss fanfiction, apparently.

The girl in the mirror looked calm. Covered in cuts, with eerie mismatched eyes, she was intimidating. Powerful. To her right, the emergency phone hung untouched on the wall.
'Who is she? I must know her name,' Carl Gauss would say if he saw her walking down the street in Brunswick, Germany. 'That girl will be my prodigy!'
I smiled.
My abusers were gone.
I was free.

Not all that familiar with German mathematician canon - is Gauss IC in this scene?

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Oh my god I'm howling. My recollection is that Gauss was focused and haughty. He didn't need to be nice because he was a child prodigy and extremely good at what he did (the number of things named after him...). He did not have a reputation as a teacher or mentor, more as a loner who withheld results until they were perfect and polished. Noether was famous as a teacher, though!

I do appreciate the Andromeda reference at least.

Spartans founding the Roman empire! Please keep the info about the bonkers worldbuilding flowing.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Data analyst friend asks:

How is it that they're immortal and there are specifically 100 of them and they also "turn 26"?

I didn't even think to delve into the numbers, but I think that's a good point. "I'm just trying to wrap my head around the ontology!" says friend. Well, you see, I guess entities are spread out in a gaussian distribution... (Hahaha I don't even know what that is, probability-something, right? I do puns, not numbers!)

Friend also needs more details about:

> Her dad, who subsists entirely on a diet of bleach

I had assumed this was a corrupted retelling of Prometheus, but maybe that's giving it too much credit.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

> How is it that they're immortal and there are specifically 100 of them and they also "turn 26"?

Good question! Apparently the immortality only kicks in when they turn 20, which is why the kids are killing each other at the tender age of 19. There's probably some way to kill them after they're 20, too. Part of why there's this whole population crisis is that after their little civil war, they killed all the kids of the four Chthonic houses and now all the replacement kids are underage and need to get married.

In other words, their ages are probably the exact opposite of the Gaussian distribution. Bunch of babies on one end, bunch of old farts/house heads on the other, and no one in between.

> I had assumed this was a corrupted retelling of Prometheus.

You know, I have no idea if that's a reference to anything! But the backstory is that her parents spend all their time high off cleaning supplies and mold juice, and that's why they're bad parents. Also, selling it to their neighbors is their side hustle. I suspect this is less of a mythology thing and more of a Montana thing.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Chapter 3 starts with an eight-year timeskip. Alexis and Charlie are now homeless orphans, so Alexis goes to high school because that's what a girl's gotta do if she's going to support her little brother with the money she'll get from proving the Riemann hypothesis.

Unfortunately, her classmates don't care about math - they only want to talk about penises and polyamory. Alexis, of course, has more important things on her mind.

I couldn't have cared less.
Carl Gauss, aka aggressive celibacy, was the only one for me.

Alexis is propositioned for sex by some guy she tutors in math. Unfortunately, she remembers that he thought zero wasn't a real number and is instantly turned off. As the socially well-adjusted individual she is, she immediately flees the scene so she can think really hard about the Riemann hypothesis.

Somewhere in the afterlife, Carl Gauss waited for me (I was delusional).

Since she's 19, she's required to take the SAT, except it's Spartan and not Scholastic. Somehow this reveals that she's got undisclosed Spartan heritage, which means she's whisked away into the magic immortal equivalent of the Hunger Games. She kills no one, does nothing, and somehow survives the exam. Gauss isn't even mentioned once, which seriously limits my interest in this section of the novel.

Is this what the foreword meant by the 'villains will get the girl'? Will poor Carl Gauss have his prodigy stolen away from him by sexy and evil Spartans? How will one dead German mathematician compete against literal gods who own billion-dollar defense companies and engage in fujobaiting for high school students?

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

What on earth is going on

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

My reaction too, fellow confused dan.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

DYRT

I honestly don't know. The author has a degree in classical studies and allegedly landed a seven-figure deal to publish this book. Which is absolutely incredible, because this is the writing level we're talking about:

> I was half-naked, covered in scraps and streaks of sand, but I couldn't find the energy to care. Free the nipple and the lips (vaginal)?

> 'As I said before,' he said as his hawk (government surveillance drone) stared at us.

> Poco got bored and shoved the chalk into his mouth (I wonder if that tastes any good).

I'm still only a quarter of the way through! It feels like it's already been multiple lifetimes. The next arc is the obligatory Magic School (Evil) arc, and there's so many random characters and inexplicable infodumps that I can't figure out what's even worth summarizing and what's just bloat.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, here we are again. I did a little background research and apparently the author got her start self-publishing het omegaverse, which explains A Lot, actually.

We left off at the descriptively-named Initiation Massacre, where all the 19-year-old Spartan kids gather together to kill each other. Fifty kids walk in, ten of them leave. Alexis is the only girl because this is, after all, a reverse harem and we aren't allowed to have female characters who aren't straight out of Mean Girls.

If you survive that, you're then assigned a mentor and tossed into The Crucible, where more things try to kill you. You know, I thought their population crisis thing was because they were really bad at having sex. Evidently the sex is fine. They're just really bad at keeping their kids alive.

It was strange hearing Latin spoken aloud. The fact that the words were spoken out of order made my head pound as I struggled to translate them.

Of course, we get a few motivational speeches before throwing the kids into the wringer. My Latin 3 teacher would be so disappointed in Alexis! I remember him walking into class on the first day of school and spouting off an entire lecture in spoken Latin while we stared at him like he was speaking another language.

We're also introduced to Hades, who is presiding over this murderfest.

If he was a musical melody, he'd be the Locrian mode - the darkest musical scale played on the piano.

I forgot that there's this whole thing where Alexis isn't just into Carl Gauss - she's also into music. Not in a Mozart/Salieri fanfiction way, though. More that whenever there's an action scene, we're subjected to 'classical music (delusion) filled the darkness' narration where each line is punctuated by incomprehensible musical direction. It's like she's got her own cello-wielding TIM following her around, playing anime songs.

Like, here's the scene where her mother dies:

The orchestra played their final act.
Fists banged against the door, a desperate man pleaded brokenly, and my hands trembled harder.
The door rattled.
The dying screamed.
Haunting classical music played.
There was an awful gurgling noise, then... silence. The only sound was Father sobbing brokenly.
The musicians put down their instruments and bowed.

I can feel my own writing skills regressing just typing this out. Wake me up when the author remembers she doesn't have to start a new paragraph after every period.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Forgot to mention that she was also, apparently, really into Harry Potter fanfiction. I put it at a 90% chance she's a Dramione, but one of her author bios says she's a Tom Riddle simp so I'm reconsidering.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

> The fact that the words were spoken out of order made my head pound as I struggled to translate them.

But... I thought the word order doesn't matter in Latin... I don't even know Latin but I'm fairly sure you just adjust the word endings? If you know Latin, why would that make your head pound? You'd know Latin!

> If he was a musical melody, he'd be the Locrian mode

But a mode isn't a melody! Aaaaargh

(Also gahhhhhh, stop it, I'M the ONLY person who legit adores Locrian! don't take it as an ~aesthetic~
if you don't even like music and just googled "darkest scale"; when I use it for a character it MEANS SOMETHING, aaaaargh!!! We all know the first draft said he was a scale made from only the black keys and then some musician beta 'improved' it to this)

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Might've had five beers over the weekend and polished off the rest of this book, which is probably the required number of beers to actually survive reading this but not the right number of beers to write anything coherent about it. Please beer with me while I try to sort it out.

Anyways, Alexis survives the Initiation Massacre with a little help from her new buddy Drex Chen, who exists solely to ensure that I, personally, feel represented. Thanks, Mr. Chen. You will never be important again.

This means that she's assigned a mentor. Since she's a special snowflake, she gets assigned two mentors - Achilles and Patroclus. As their names suggest, they are Absolutely Normal about each other. They have their names tattooed on each other. Achilles has a muzzle (?) that only Patroclus has a key to (?). Considering Charlie, the little brother that Alexis has completely forgotten about at this point, also doesn't talk, I'm starting to think I've stumbled upon one of the author's kinks.

They also run a billion-dollar weapons company (?) with the other two Chthonic boys, Kharon and Augustus, because even in a semi-apocalyptic magic school story, we still can't escape tyrant CEO tropes.

Excuse me? A marriage law at twenty-six? I'd be a child bride.

We have very different definitions of 'child,' apparently. There's some drama about the marriage law because the Chthonic kids aren't allowed to marry each other, which they're really unhappy about. On the other hand, they would be allowed to all marry the same person, as long as that person isn't a known Chthonic kid. Huh! I sure wonder where this is going!

Anyways, after the Initiation Massacre comes The Crucible.

All Sparta is divided by one mental test, one of which paranoia inhabits, sleep deprivation another, and starvation the third.

Hey, I recognize this! Omnia Gallia in tres partes divisa est. One of the few texts I still remember from 2.5 years of Latin class. The one thing I'll give this author is that she seems at least as qualified to quote Latin as I am.

I'd never been a bird girl.
It was just - no one could prove birds weren't spying on us.
Also, why were they always flying around? Where were they going? What were they doing? Why were they always singing? Suspicious.
Morning chirps echoed through the windows, and my eyes widened. They've got us surrounded.

Alexis does not react well to learning that she's going to get an animal familiar, and that it's most likely going to be a bird.

Sadly, the opportunity to join the Spartans giving fellatio - and not competing to literal death - did not present itself.

Pretty sure this would be more interesting than a death game. I'm saddened as well.

'This is not a simple math class where normal boring math has no object permanence. Every number and symbol we use will be tied to a real-life ethics problem.'

To prepare for The Crucible, Alexis goes to math class. Carl Gauss is inescapable.

I actually wish we'd gotten more details about this because I simply do not understand how they've 'improved' math. Practical applications, I understand. But ethics? What kind of ethics problems are they doing here? Is it like - 'Two trains, 100 miles apart, are approaching each other. One of them is moving at 60mph; the other is moving at 40mph. Carl Gauss is tied to the train tracks at the midpoint. Which train do you derail first?'

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

> 'Two trains, 100 miles apart, are approaching each other. One of them is moving at 60mph; the other is moving at 40mph. Carl Gauss is tied to the train tracks at the midpoint. Which train do you derail first?'

"You derail the 60mph one, obviously! That's going to hit him first, because it's moving faster! Obviously!"

"Or maybe you go for the other one, because you think it'll be over faster that way, and one of them's going to hit him, no matter what?"

"No! You must do everything you can to protect Gauss."

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Finally got a little more information on what they're teaching in math ethics.

'Alexis,' he said. 'What did I say a month ago is a tenant of Thagorean ethics that allows you to divide fractions of zero?'
'Unreal n-numbers,' I said numbly as my teeth chattered. The answer was so obvious I didn't even have to think about it, which was good because at the moment, a lot of thought processing was not happening.
Pine beamed. 'Correct - right again. Your mind is truly impressive.'
Carl Gauss would push me to be better, not praise me for answering stupid questions.

I'm even more confused now than I was before I read this passage.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Alright, we've met Patroclus and Achilles. Now it's time to complete the set and meet Kharon and Augustus, Alexis's professors at Spartan Murder College and also her government-assigned love interests.

So cute. He's a raccoon mother.

Remember how I said all the Spartans get animal familiars? Augustus has a raccoon named Poco, who perches on his shoulder and rubs his little paw-hands in Augustus's Cruella de Vil hair. This is a metaphor for how this book is trash and we, the readers, are simply dumpster-diving raccoons.

Augustus looked worried.
I made a whale sound.
He did not make one back. This is why I don't talk to people. They never understand me.

As you can see, their first meeting is going great. Alexis pretty much spends her entire time at Murder College in a weird haze of conspiracy theories - she simply cannot stop going off about how birds are evil - and whining about how much school sucks, which is a little disappointing. I wanted more math philosophy, okay?

He can't know I spent the last meditation imagining Carl Gauss whispering sweet nothings to me while he proved the existence of algebra... right?
What if he's reading my mind right now? What if he's going to kill me for picturing Carl Gauss naked? What if he knows I'm imagining him in a dress because he's a raccoon mother?

Like, how do you even prove the existence of algebra? Do they also teach you to prove the existence of the scientific method, or of the five-paragraph essay? The world-building in this story is absolutely nuts and I need to know more about it.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Anyways, Kharon. Kharon gets a few POV chapters, which are marked with an image of a Roman bust with sunglasses on. This is probably all you need to know about him. https://i.imgur.com/7nck5n0.png

I didn't want a mortal enemy.
I wanted to listen to eighteenth-century music and solve obscure math equations. Maybe lie in some flower fields during the summer and swim in a warm lake. Marry Carl Gauss and bear his children in the afterlife.

As you can see, their first meeting is going great. Alexis meets Kharon for the first time and the guy she's standing next to mysteriously dies. He then shows up at her house, they do the whole 'You killed him!' 'No, you killed him!' 'If you didn't kill him and I didn't kill him, then who's driving the car?' song and dance, he threatens to kill her if she kills herself, and then leaves.

Also, Kharon's animal familiars are dogs. Their names are Hell and Hound. He's very creative.

Suddenly the old beliefs that women had 'hysteria' problems didn't seem so far-fetched.
I could see it.
Case in point, I was a woman, and I was hysterical.

What is it about the word 'hysteria' that inspires everyone who learns about it in Feminism 101 to give everyone else unprompted lectures about it?

I told Nyx in detail the plot of my favorite Emmy and Carl fanfic (yes, they whispered calculus problems to each other while riding off into the sunset... on each other).

After all these traumatic encounters with men who aren't Carl Gauss, Alexis finally gets a bit of time to rest and recuperate. Unfortunately, she's once again forced to interact with society (and make whale noises) when my favorite character, Drex Chen, approaches her for math tutoring. God, my high school calculus teacher really was right when he told us math was how you got dates in college.

I shuddered in horror.
How can you get through a day without knowing linear algebra? How do you live?

I do perfectly fine for myself, thank you very much! Sadly, Alexis is about to turn Mr. Chen down when she's suddenly attacked by mean classmates (who are probably going insane from not knowing linear algebra), and she beats them up in a panic.

'Wahooo.' Nyx slithered up my leg. 'That's my girl. I'm so proud right now... this is the best day of my life. I knew you had it in you, bestie. Pussy power, crush the patriarchy! Don't stop now - murder them all. KILL EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM!'

I'm killing everyone in this room, and I'm starting with myself.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Guess this one's the inverse of the Johnson "I refute it thus!". You just shove a piece of paper with an equation on it, and boom, done, existence proven. Unless this is a Descartes-style enquiry? "I see the algebra before me, but perhaps a demon is making me hallucinate it"? Gauss proved the existence of reality beyond the sense-impresssions of a single thinking thing? PROVED?! Wow! You'd think this would come up more!

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Well, here we go again.

It was official: I was not living a good life.
God, is this because of that one M-rated Carl Gauss fanfic I wrote? Please forgive me. I knew it was wrong when I was writing it, but I couldn't stop myself.

Alexis, as usual, is not having a good time at Murder College. Her classmates are bullying her for being a female with daddy issues, her professors are trying to get her to call them Daddy, and she's got a stalker leaving her gift boxes with the gouged-out eyes of every man who looks at her funny.

'Carl Gauss would never treat me like this,' I whispered miserably. 'What happened to nice men who love math and treating a woman right?'
Nyx scoffed. 'They died out because they were pathetic and embarrassing losers. No woman wants a nerd.'
'I do,' I said.
'No - you just think you do,' Nyx hissed. 'What you want is a real man who wants to slaughter for you.'

Dans of danspace, are you a Dark Fuck Prince appreciator or a Carl Gauss girlie? These are the only two options.

Despite the fact that Alexis has done nothing but whine about how much Murder College sucks and how it's going to kill her, she's actually managed to survive until graduation, which means she's now getting invited to a bunch of (sex) parties. Patroclus gives Achilles an incredibly unsexy blowjob at one of them, allowing the author to check off yet another representation checkbox.

'Why are all the sirens looking at you with horror?' Nyx hissed. 'Did you tell them about your Emmy and Carl fanfic? I told you it makes you weird and unlikable.'

Also, Alexis discovers that her Spartan superpower is being able to talk to non-humans. Her mentors are surprisingly impressed by how useful her superpower is, probably because she can weaponize it by telling people about her kinky Gauss headcanons.

'Perfect,' Helen squealed. 'I'm a genius. Everyone's gonna lose it when they see you.' She clapped. 'Cunt - absolute cunt, served.'
Excuse me? What did she just call me?

We also meet Helen, the last of the Chthonic kids. She's sixteen, incredibly spoiled, and can only communicate in Tiktok memes.

Fluck the flucking world. Life's a biatch like that.
Yes, I was in my emo era.

Same, girl. Same.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

I do quite like Nyx, from what I've seen of the quotes from this. It talks real talk and troll talk. I can't remember if it's a guy or what; I think it said it slithered, earlier, so I've been picturing it as a mascot snake, like a harsher Mushu or something.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

All right, we're finally in the endgame of this book, which means a lot of stuff is going to be happening all at once. After so many pages of Alexis moping and mooning after Carl Gauss, something needs to actually happen so the publisher will pick up the author's pitch for more books.

The House of Zeus didn't have a fertility issue - it had a murder issue.

First thing Alexis does is get kidnapped. The culprit? Theros, who's been leaving her a bunch of threatening notes about how she needs to leave town or Face the Consequences. The reason? Well, everyone thinks Alexis is one of Zeus's illegitimate kids, and Theros thinks he's the One True Blood Son or whatever and refuses to let random bastards taint his dad's reputation. It's never really explained why everyone thinks Alexis is a Zeus kid, so I think the ship's already sailed on that one. If you've got no parents, people just assume Zeus has been sleeping around again.

Then, she gets rescued and immediately tries to murder the guy in front of everyone. This reveals that she has Murder Powers, which means that all the random people who have been dropping dead around her were probably murdered by her. Oops.

And then we get the BIG REVEAL!

Hercules.
She was the famous daughter of Persephone and Hades. Everyone in Sparta knew how they'd tragically lost her after Titans attacked.

Alexis is actually Hercules, who is the presumed-dead daughter of Hades (?) and Persephone (??). Why? The author's Classics degree has to be useful somewhere, I guess. It's just that somewhere is apparently the Crab Nebula.

Anyways, upon discovering this Zeus immediately offers a marriage alliance with Theros, the guy who just tried to kidnap and murder her. At this point it would be more subversive to publish a book where Zeus is actually a decent person, for once.

But no! You see, Alexis actually can't get married to Theros - because she's already married to someone else! Remember all those severed body parts and gouged-out eyeballs she was getting in gift boxes? Well, those were apparently courting gifts from her professors, who apparently figured out the big reveal around the same time any readers with eyes did.

Just to make sure we know that, we get a flashback of Kharon plotting evilly.

I laughed harder.
The stalking had begun.

What a great guy. 10/10, would marry again.

Turns out this is all the result of the marriage law from Chapter 1. The Chthonic kids are required to get married at 26, but they're also not allowed to marry any of the existing Chthonic kids because of Spartan politics. So they came up with those whole convoluted plan to marry Alexis before anyone else figured out she was a Chthonic, all because they're racist.

Kharon dipped his throat to my ear. 'Are you okay?' His voice was a throaty rasp.
No. I'm cheating on Carl Gauss. I'm an unloyal whore.

Alexis, of course, is taking all of this very well. The book ends on her plotting her revenge... all for the sake of getting together with her beloved Carl Gauss, of course.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

Anyways. What an awful book. I had fun - and I think the author is self-aware enough that some of that fun was, at least, intentional - but I definitely lost some IQ points reading it. I hope danspace enjoyed my heroic sacrifice, at least.

Shout-out to Drex Chen for being the only relatable character in this book. We Asian kids who can't do linear algebra must stick together.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

As a bonus, I present to you this truly excellent Goodreads review:

The main character wants to become a mathematician. So, instead of finding the olympians hot like all of her classmates, she's not like other girls, and instead has sexual fantasies and writes fanfiction about Charles Gauss. This feels very weird and strange to me because if anyone's writing fanfic about Gauss, it's not going to be straight or self insert fic, he would definitely be topping Wilhelm Weber or having orgies with the Gottingen Seven.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/7076982954

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

I'd like to confess that I ship William Henry Hudson with Carl Gauss now.

Re: Books - Blood of Hercules (Jasmine Mas)

[(Anonymous)]

But is it omegaverse