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I'm, uh, back? Got back into reading this year after 6 years of a PhD program killed the habit. I don't really know how tumblr works after all this time, bear with me.

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me: there are no ‘rules’ for fantasy, and that’s the beautiful thing about it. sure there are staples of the genre, but a creator shouldn’t feel bound by them. the only limits are your imagination!

fantasy game: the health potions aren’t red.

me: you lost me.

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le gasp! are you back?

Hehe probably not really 😅 i still check in occasionally but grad school has me totally swamped

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the Lymond Chronicles abridged

Lymond: do you know what I want, Jerott?

Lymond: I want to sit in a comfy chair and read a book

Lymond: and enjoy some nice music

Lymond: violence is intolerable and I just want a nice quiet life

Lymond: now shut the fuck up and get on the pirate ship

Lymond: this contraband isn't gonna smuggle itself

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types of stard

mu

ba

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You know an underused premise for magical realism or urban fantasy? Humanities departments. These are strange and magical places. There are commonalities among them, but they are also – and this is a key part of their identity, their quiddity – each distinctive. Gather round, o writers, and let me expound unto you the possibilities of this.

The Coffee Room/Room of Requirement

Here are kept office supplies and coffee, in some combination. Perhaps only the department secretary knows what combination. Perhaps no one does. 

In my first institution, the office supplies were kept in a locked steel cabinet of ancient vintage; the department secretary (of equally ancient vintage) had to be supplicated for them. The coffee machine was a Keurig that was never perfectly clean. The grad students had a variety of electric kettles and eco-friendly brewing alternatives. 

In my second institution, the coffee pot and electric kettle were both pretty regularly used. A few packets of instant soup were kept on hand for the moments when humanities professors (inevitably) forgot to feed ourselves. Those of us who went in to microwave our lunches between 2 and 3 p.m. invariably traded weary smiles of mutual acknowledgement.

In my present institution, there are two coffee pots. They are never used. There is a Christmas-themed tin shaped like a teddy bear for “coffee fund donations.” The office supplies are in labeled Rubbermaid bins. There is a bin of rapidly-aging rubber bands. There is, I kid you not, a container for floppy disk storage; that thing is definitely a portal of some kind. In the communal fridge, there’s a half gallon of milk. Has it been the same milk during the months I’ve been here? I have no idea.

The Offices

To a sometimes terrifying extent, offices become reflections – not to say physical manifestations – of their occupants’ methods, personalities, and characters. 

By custom, even the doors can be adorned with quirky art. You’ll have the American historian with a collection of newspaper cartoons stretching back decades. From language faculty, particularly, you’ll have an assortment of travel/language/art posters. You’ll probably have at least two outspoken feminists, and at least one cat person. One professor will have marker artwork from their kids semi-permanently on the whiteboard outside their door. Posters from past campus events form their own historical record.

And then there are the bookshelves. You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the visceral fear of being buried under an avalanche of the worldly goods of a professor who has worked in the same room for 40 years. Some of those manila folders date back to the height of the Cold War. As a visiting professor, I worked in an office where two of the shelves were constantly collapsing under the weight of paperback editions of Shakespeare in double rows. I once knew a woman who kept the inflatable sharks of her predecessor on the bookshelves because she thought they looked cool. I have yet to meet a historian who doesn’t have show-and-tell objects of some kind. When I was a grad student, our ceiling leaked (into a secondhand saucepan) but we had a Lego castle which was the envy of the department.

The People

Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must be silent. There is a kind of holy mystery, I think, about the concentrated weirdness of dedicated scholars, brought together, often, from all corners of the world. 

In grad school I knew and reverenced a woman who may be a reincarnation of a 17th-century Anglican. She had (has, I presume) a habit of lovingly semi-bellowing at her students about their poor study habits and life choices. 

I retain passionate admiration for the small, stout, formidably brilliant Nepalese man who taught Orientalism using Disney films, and spoke with misty-eyed nostalgia about the footnotes on soil types in his dissertation. 

I think with fondness of pedagogical encouragement offered in elevators, and with sympathy of the shell-shocked expression of a German with a double Ph.D. emerging from his first intro-level survey class in years. 

Professors’ style choices are delightfully, triumphantly eclectic, varying in charming ways according to department, occasionally fossilized in the decade of their professionalization. Art historians are intimidatingly stylish. The English department has the best scarves. There is a great solidarity among young scholars trying to find good blazers they can afford. There’s always at least one good-humored man in the department who is slightly late to meetings but will buy everyone coffee (or beers at the end of the semester.) There are Possibilities here. I do love a good campus novel. But the sheer weirdness of campus life remains largely underexploited.

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credit to @raindropsonroses123 thx sis

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the same

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Victorian Gothic Gothic

Your mother died giving birth to you. Every woman dies in childbirth. If you have younger siblings, do not question how they got there. Truly, you do not want to know.

You have no ears, but delicate pink shells. Your teeth are pearls. Instead of hands you have small white paws. You are beautiful, and terrifying.

A handsome stranger has awakened something deep within your breast. You do not know what it is, but it is awake, and it is aware.

People keep dying of consumption. You cannot say as yet who is doing the consuming.

There is mist on the moor. There is always mist on the moor. Seasons have no meaning here.

Everyone outside of very specific parts of England is evil. This must be true. It must be, and that’s why you should never, ever leave. Ever.

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What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don’t know and I’m afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.

Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (via booksqouted)

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I was trying to actually do something productive today, but apparently you’re just getting a meme instead.

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This looks like a nice place to sleep.

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Hey can I just say that it’s utterly fucked that George RR Martin and Patrick Rothfuss are revered as gods of modern fantasy writing when neither of them has been able to produce a book in years and they also can’t write women

plus George RR Martin just copied wars of the roses

and Rothfuss made a legit plot point that Kvothe fucked a fairy for months

I’m not saying that I don’t enjoy these books, because I do, but I am just saying that I read fantasy books 10x better by women all the time. 

meanwhile, there are so many female fantasy authors who produce brilliant work, but because it is marketed towards women, it’s either YA or it’s paranormal romance (BOTH OF WHICH I STAN OK) and therefore doesn’t get considered “serious” fantasy even though they have better world building, magic, and writing style than most “masters of the genre.”

like, why is it that fantasy books written about women and by women are ONLY READ BY WOMEN AND MARKETED TO WOMEN, meanwhile fantasy books written by men about men are READ BY EVERYONE AND MARKETED AS THE NORM. 

like male fantasy nerds are just sleeping on Ilona Andrews because they write about women and add a romance plot line, meanwhile Kate Daniels is one of the best damn fantasy series I have ever read with some of the best world building and plotting e v e r. 

And I’m not implying that authors have to produce 3 books a year to be serious authors, but it’s a bit ridiculous that the fantasy genre and pub industry keeps pushing asoiaf and kingkiller chronicles at us when we don’t even have a date for the sequel. WHY DON’T YOU PROMOTE BOOKS BY WOMEN WHO KNOW HOW TO WRITE GOOD FEMALE CHARACTERS?? WHY NOT PROMOTE FANTASY BOOKS BY AUTHORS OF COLOR??

WHY IS FANTASY ON THE SAME WHITE MAN BULLSHIT ALL THE TIME????

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I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver, from “Starlings in Winter” (via oofpoetry)

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Do you have any poems that speak to troubled teens? Bilingual is best. Would you like to come to dinner with the patrons and sip Patrón? Will you tell us the stories that make us uncomfortable, but not complicit?

The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual, Ada Limón

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Ada Limón