#I don't paint scenes that often so this was a fun challenge

[ask-azurearts]

Commission work for @dragonnest-art comic Skies Under Avalon which you can read here! I'm eternally grateful for being commissioned to create a piece for their comic and am so glad they like it. Thank you again for the commission!

[novlr]

do you have any tips on how to get better at showing, not telling when it comes to descriptions in stories? i really struggle with describing characters without blatantly telling you what their features are especially. i always find myself reverting back to telling without realising it. thanks!!

Our post in the Reading Room today is all about showing, not telling, and includes these great writing exercises to help you improve your skills!

Writing exercises to show, not tell

Picture this!

Using a random picture (it can be anything from a stock photo, your favourite painting, or a book cover you like), describe what it shows without explicitly stating what’s depicted.

This isn’t an easy task, but it’s a great challenge to get you to start describing things without stating the obvious. It’s a good way to practice giving readers a sense of things and really putting your imagination through its paces.

Let me give you an example below:

With a regal bearing and a piercing green gaze, she stands before the void in feline judgement.

Sensory immersion

Choose a familiar setting, like a coffee shop, a park, or a favourite restaurant. Spend a few minutes observing your surroundings, paying close attention to the sensory details, then write a descriptive passage that never mentions exactly where you are.

Focus on sensory details and illustrate what is happening around you. Share this passage with someone who is also familiar with the place and see if they can tell where you’re writing about from description alone.

All about action

Take a character from one of your stories or create a new one. Write a scene where the character experiences a strong emotion, such as joy, anger, or fear. Without explicitly stating the emotion, write around it using action only.

You can use body language, facial expressions, and gestures but avoid using anything (synonyms, for example) that will give away the emotion. Show it to a trusted writing buddy and see if they can guess the emotion you’re trying to convey.

Talk it out

Write an exchange between two characters where they are having an emotionally charged moment. You can use a character you’ve created, or use two characters from a favourite book or TV show that you know well. As long as you have a good sense for who they are and their back story.

The exercise is to avoid directly stating the emotion each character is experiencing; instead, use tone of voice and word choice to illustrate their emotional state and convey their thoughts and emotions indirectly.

Narrate your day

This one is super fun, but be warned, if you do it in public, people will think you’re a little odd. I’ve done it before, and it resulted in some hilarious real-world interactions, but just be prepared. Some of you might prefer to only do this one when you’re alone.

The task for this is to narrate everything you do for a day. Using the recorder on your phone, dictate your actions, your thoughts, and your feelings. Going for a walk? Talk about where you’re going, what is around you, how things feel under your feet, and what the weather is like. What other things are you thinking about on the walk? How are you feeling? Not just in the moment, but what is going on in the back of your mind?

At the end of the day, listen back to everything you’ve narrated. Take note of what sticks out. When I did this exercise, I found that the emotions I thought I might be feeling in any given moment were often not the ones that I was actually feeling. For instance, I’d spoken with my family earlier in the day, and there was a sense of homesickness that wormed its way into every other moment of the day, from my interactions with others to my mood before bed.

An exercise like this can really help show you how to use subtext to show, not tell.

Remember to approach these exercises with an open mind and a willingness to experiment. The goal is to practice and refine your ability to show rather than tell, not to generate a world-class piece of prose that you’d immediately want to include in your next project.

[juubli]

Here are some process shots for this one of Raphael from BG3! That magnificent bastard...

So I started out with a sketch of Raphael. He's got such a charismatic swagger doing the whole "What's better than the Devil you don't know? The devil you do" scene. I just wanted to do a caricature study and have a bit of fun.

Moving from rough sketch to clean line art is always challenging for me as I often get bored or what was originally loose and fun can become stiff.

I had to redo the linework twice because I didn't like how the first one turned out! Second time is always the charm.

I initially only planned to draw the character but I love the design of House of Hope too much, so I went back into the game and took a bunch of screen shots and sketched out the rough bg.

Then I went ahead and cleaned up the bg. At this point is when I group the layers properly, so there is a clear separation between foreground, and background as well setting up the layers for animation. (Making sure the fireplace guards overlaps the walls behind it.)

At the next stage I adding in the flat colors. I wanted to keep the style treatment of this piece more on the cell shaded/cartoony instead of super painterly. So I keep the color treatment fairly flat with a small amount of texture with the intention to add lighting as a fx overlapping treatment instead of painted in.

I work on the characters and the bgs at the same time to keep the values and color temp consistant, constantly adjusting as I go. From habit from work, I always paint the entire BG JUST incase I need to make changes or make adjustments to subject in from. Here is the bg all done, with fire painted in as a place holder.

And finally, adding the final lighting layers added on Raphael. I keep it simple here, just a redish/purple multiply player with the areas in the light masked out, and inverse mask on an orange/red overlay layer of the areas in the light.

Animating the fire took ironically the longest, the animation tools in photoshop is clunky and I haven't animated since school days. I looked up a lot of references and tutorials! It's not perfect but good enough for me!

[bosskie]

Enjoying the Yaymans

I'm trying to improve my art, so I did this quick-ish thing to practice perspective and lighting.

I gotta say that I often admire the official (concept) art of OWI and I wish that I could draw/paint similar stuff. (If you ask me what's the most mind-blowing piece, it's that RuptureFarms painting for Abe's Oddysee, the one you see in the intro; man, just, I cannot find words to explain how amazing it is to me...) I mean that concept art in general since there are multiple amazing artists who have done that stuff. So, I took some inspiration to the style here from the certain art style there.

I probably messed something here since this was a challenging thing to do but I tried my best; I barely draw stuff like this. I wish to do more stuff like this since I'm trying to learn a decent quick-ish concept art style, especially when my way to draw ain't quick... I'm really not the one to say if my stuff looks 'good enough' or when it looks professional, so I'm just trying to improve my stuff in general. I just don't personally feel like my stuff is anything amazing/great/impressive...

But yeah, just Molluck enjoying the beach, naked once more... I'm still trying to learn to draw his body too since it's just so difficult... I love to create stuff but it's difficult for multiple reasons... I want too much more Molluck content, so I take that pain. Also yeah, that is a broken Abe beach ball; just for fun. Oh, and you might remember that I just like to draw Molluck in pink; it just somehow suits him!

I'm not sure about what kind of Molluck scenes to draw in this style, so I'm open for suggestions but I make no promises, for the quality or that I'll draw it; I still appreciate it.

[mothric]

this resurfaces in my consciousness every so often and quietly bothers me like a pebble in my shoe, so let me tell you all about a small, formative memory.

I was playing smash bros melee with my two older brothers. the game came out right around my 9th birthday, so I was solidly 9 years old. I picked Luigi, and while waiting for the others to select their characters I idly scrolled through his outfit skins and landed on a pink shirt and cap with bright red overalls. "oh! he's pretty!" I said.

immediately both my brothers sprang at me with "woah! no he's not, he's a boy."

"well, then he's a pretty boy," I said, and they pushed back harder. "boys aren't pretty. don't ever call a boy pretty," they scolded. "the correct word is handsome." and I remember thinking something like, um, I'm looking at a boy right NOW and he IS pretty, so yeah they CAN be, stupid, but I was 9 and impatient and wanted to play viddy game, so I said "okay" and dropped it.

but he was pretty. Luigi was plenty handsome in green and the other palettes, but "handsome" wasn't the right word to me when his outfit made me think of strawberry milk and shortcake. why couldn't he be both? why was "pretty" a bad word only when applied to boys? why couldn't a boy be any descriptive word under the sun? why were we gendering adjectives?

I remember feeling weirdly ashamed in that moment, not because I'd done anything wrong but because the responses of those around me told me that I'd brushed up against some unseen social rule that was not to be touched. I knew, on some level, that the shame didn't come from me, but I couldn't make sense of why it was there at all.

it was such a small, fleeting moment, one that my brothers have probably long since forgotten about, but it's telling that I remember it, and specifically the feeling of wrongness about it that I couldn't articulate but felt in my bones.

at 9 years old I understood gender neutrality, a concept that seemed so simple and straightforward to me it baffled me that my brothers didn't get it. at 9 years old I learned, not that boys can't be pretty, but that grown-ups make up nonsensical rules about words, and about beauty, and about gender, and they get really sensitive about it if you challenge them. at 9 years old I understood boys could be pretty, and not long after I took it a logical step further and realized girls could be handsome, and my little world expanded.

as I grew up I observed men and boys in my life getting hung up over such small things. my brother lost his black umbrella and refused to borrow my pink one. my dad scorned high school boys he observed with painted nails, even though it was the in thing at the time with the influx of emo and scene culture. my partner in college bristled when I told him his eyelashes were the prettiest I'd ever seen. I observed that "man = pretty?" was used as a punchline in shows and movies and laughed about in real life. and I remembered Luigi and his strawberry outfit, and I thought, what a dull and restricted world you have all chosen to live in.

not everyone needs to like to be called pretty, and that's okay. it's important to respect how individuals want to be addressed. but time and again I've observed that the men who bristle most against it seem to live in a rigid world of insecurity and shame. and that stuff isn't inherent. it's learned and taught and reinforced.

Luigi would love to be called pretty. he would love to be called cute and adorable. if you are any shape of man or boy and want to be those things, Luigi supports you. it's all a bunch of silly grown-up rules anyway, so why not have fun and embrace joy?🍓

[a-song-of-art-and-fire]

Lord Reyne, The Red Lion

"And who are you, the proud lord said,

that I must bow so low?

Only a cat of a different coat,

that's all the truth I know.

In a coat of gold or a coat of red,

a lion still has claws,

And mine are long and sharp, my lord,

as long and sharp as yours."

I've mentioned before that painting these miniatures often means spending hours thinking about a character you've never given a second thought, and I don't know if that's ever been as true as in this case. I couldn't have told you one thing about Lord Roger Reyne, beyond him being the "proud lord" from the song.

I was looking to fill out my Ninepenny Kings battle scene, and I had a lot of these lion headed guys, so I thought a young Tywin would be fun. However, I had a reread of the Ninepenny Kings section, and the ridiculous amount of writing George did for the WOIAF Westerlands section that ended up being cut, and a bit of a narrative formed. The Westerlands armies were led by Jason Lannister in place of Tywin's father, but he was killed quickly and Roger became the leader of the Westerland forces. We also know Tywin never leads from the front and avoids fighting where possible, which he certainly frames as pragmatism, but we know how Westerosi culture values a martial lead-by-example warrior, and Tywin is very tapped into Westerosi masculinity. Finally, we know that before the brutal rains of Castamere, an injured, feverish Lord Reyne challenged Tywin to single combat, which Tywin refused in favour of a massacre.

From all of this, I wonder if Tywin had his first taste of real combat on the Stepstones - and realised he wasn't cut out for it. Seeing his uncle cut down before him, he didn't take up the noble Lannister mantle and lead his fathers vassals, he stood back and let the natural warrior Lord Reyne take the... reins. (Sorry). And maybe that resentment fed into his brutality to the Reynes and Tarbecks. And when an older, possibly elderly Lord Roger challenged him to single combat - debilitated by a crossbow wound which had gone septic - Tywin still couldnt quite escape being that scared lad, seeing this powerful red lion take his rightful glory, and chose to massacre hundreds of innocents rather than face that fear.

Or maybe I'm making all of this up. He was a fun mini to paint, nice doing a Lannister style with a change of palette. I was torn finding a balance between the white and red, and I'm happy with how it turned out.

[heartstringsduet]

Hi Michelle!

For nice ask week my question for you is what is your favourite thing to draw? Do you prefer still objects, scenery, people or something else? Do you like physical drawing or digital more? You also write, so when you have an idea how do you choose if you’d rather write or draw it? Or do you itch to do both 💗 What do you like most about creating art? And is there a famous artwork that inspires you? ✍🏼🎨🧑‍🎨🖼

Hi D :D Ohhhh a bunch of questions oh man. what is your favourite thing to draw? Faces. I'm not thta good at it yet but faces especially when you draw them, are often so intricate and unique. animals are pretty fun to draw too becauswe they're often so curvy haha Do you like physical drawing or digital more? Both have a very different feel even with a paper screen and the thin ipad pen. I kind of love drawing with colored pencils and painting with guache is super challenging but can be so rewarding. But then god the luxury off deleting a line in a click??? Being able to adjust some mistakes? Really really neat. So rn I love digital a bit more but like both

You also write, so when you have an idea how do you choose if you’d rather write or draw it? Ohhh I'm not as skilled as @whatsintheboxmh so I can only do very simple comics. So most ideas for me are a lot easier to execute in writing. I also think I'm a better writer than artist but I guess that's up for interpretation. But if I want to draw something, it usually helps to be inspired by specific scenes in fics for example. What do you like most about creating art? When something turns out like you imagined??? It's the best feeling. You made something out of nothing and you can so easily show people. Like my RL friends don't read my fic but they do look at my art. And is there a famous artwork that inspires you? Ohhh for sure. I love the drawings by Klimt for the vibrancy and geometry and just emotion he created and Mucha for the detailed, unique style. Neither of them is something I think I'll do but I can't help but admire them. And as for the style, I love colorful art like the one by heartsl0b :D

[coffeedrgn87]

Blurbs On Writing (2022 Edition)

I had this idea for a little thought compilation about my writing a while back, but I held back, unsure whether I wanted to write it all down. If I am honest, the thought of sharing something personal scared me, and still does. Today, I decided that I do want to look back on my writing exploits over the past year and add my observations. These will be at random, and I'll note them down as they come into my head. You can find the list after the break.

I enjoy writing for someone (I like the challenge), and teasing the recipient with excerpts or talking about their idea with them makes me so happy. There's something special about sharing a piece of my writing with someone or dedicating it to a particular person. Unfortunately, I don't get to do this nearly enough, and my anxiety makes it difficult to reach out to people. Occasionally, I'll jump over my shadow and ask, but it takes a lot of effort, and most of the time, I do not have the energy.

I guess not many people like reading unfinished or WIP multi-chapter things, and I understand why it doesn't work for some folx, but I've discovered that I love writing this way. It's hard for me to withdraw into a corner, quietly work on something long, and only share it once it's completely done. I don't know how other writers feel about creating their work and/or sharing it as they go, but my personal perception is that even if an author posts a chapter a week or every other day, the work is usually already finished. I may be entirely mistaken, so don't consider this opinion etched in stone. For me, writing a chapter and sharing it is thrilling. The anticipation of being able to share an update, the readers' excitement, and potential interaction via comments/messages. I thrive on that. It often lets me incorporate ideas, tweak future chapters slightly, or sometimes change course entirely.

I absolutely adore one-word prompts. There's something magical about building a short story around a prompt. Sometimes the story is centred around the prompt; other times, it's just a support, an aid. Whichever it is, it's always exciting. I particularly enjoy noun prompts, though I don't limit myself in that regard. The way these tiny prompts spark an idea is magical, but it's also frustrating when you stare at a prompt and draw a complete blank. Especially when that uninspiring prompt is part of a challenge.

Describing scenes, particularly outdoor scenes such as a forest, a meadow, a cave, or a beach (to name but a few), is such fun. I like painting a pretty picture, going into detail about what's happening, what can be seen, how things smell, what they look like... It's not been a big focus for me before, but in 2022 I really made it my priority, and I feel it's elevated my writing. I've had a few lovely comments from readers who enjoyed it, so I guess I'm on the right track.

Smells and tastes are a delight to describe, and I first dipped my toes into making that a priority when I took part in a fest in 2020, but it took time for me to turn it into a habit. My Google search has since learnt that I like to research these things. Thrilling. Thank you, Google, my trusted research partner.

If I can make it happen, I like it when my characters spent time in the kitchen. Growing up, a lot of life happened in our kitchen (mainly because my dad was a kitchen person, but it's also my inner cat, associating the kitchen with warmth, chatter, and coffee, which awakens the dragon in me), and that shows in my writing. I think I did it unconsciously until I, at one point, added the tag "life happens in the kitchen" to one of my fics on AO3, and now writing scenes in the kitchen has become a staple of mine.

I never thought I might enjoy writing sprints with other people, but for a brief period, I got to try this and found it delightful. It tickled my competitive side. Perhaps I'll dip my toes into that again at some point...we'll see.

I've gotten much better at showing rather than telling how a character feels, and it's become such a joy to add in all those little descriptors that my readers can hopefully identify with when they read my works.

Eyes seem to be something I focus a lot on when describing a person. Eyes are stunning, and I truly enjoy describing them, especially the colour and how it makes the other person feel. Knowing that one of my characters is smiling or laughing or just genuinely happy makes me happy, and I always quietly hope that the same applies to my readers.

I'm no longer all that fussed about writing super-detailed sex scenes. I go there, but in recent months I've found that stripping away some of the details of the actual "this goes there in this way" and replacing it with feelings or a character's reaction gives me much more joy. Perhaps it's loosely related to a recent discovery I made about myself, or perhaps it's just my writing evolving, but I find this interesting. We'll see where this goes. One thing that I'm very sure about, though, is that my love for smut will always burn brightly.

Pets or animals in general. I love including a pet or an animal as a character, especially when I can give them an attitude, a quirk, or something that makes the pet or animal a delight to read. I've invented a few furry/feathery/scaly companions over the past year, and it's something I want to focus on even more. I'd be happy to have 50K of one character + a menagerie of animals, and while I don't know how my readers would feel about that, a writer can dream, can they not?

I don't especially feel like I'm part of my favourite fandoms. This might be a sad revelation, but it's true. While I thrive on making new connections and responding to messages/comments (after all, I am a chatterbug), I sadly am not the kind of person to reach out to people. It takes me forever to decide to take the plunge, and my anxiety always wreaks havoc on every attempt. I no longer feel confident enough to make the first move. I overthink, worry, and convince myself that there isn't a space for me. On a few occasions, it's made me want to stop writing, but I have since learnt not to give in to that impulse. My writing is all mine. It's something I would never give up, not for anyone. Still, not having that sense of belonging makes it hard to connect. I tried for a while, but I just don't have that much strength (for personal reasons, I won't elaborate any further).

Lastly, (and to end this on a positive note) I have learnt not to compare myself to other writers, whether they've been published or whether they're fanfic writers whose works I gobble up like coffee. Occasionally, the feeling still creeps in, but for the most part, I manage to ignore it. To continue to grow as a writer, I need to be able to appreciate without feeling like reading a gorgeous piece of writing makes me want to give up on my own writing. Instead, I allow other works to push me towards doing better.

[goforth-ladymidnight]

For the ask game: 🥺 🦅 ✅

From this ask game:

🥺 Is there a certain type of moment or common interaction between your characters that never fails to put you in your feels?

Declarations of love and affection make me feel all the feels. The Feylin proposal scene in the "Forever" fic I wrote is one good example. I knew it was coming, but when I actually put the words on the page, it was rather emotional.

🦅 Do you outline fics or fly by the seat of your pants?

Definitely pantsing. I always have some idea of how I want the story to go, but I don't enjoy making outlines, even though I know it would streamline the process. I prefer discovering the story as I go along as opposed to figuring everything out in advance.

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

Hmm. I've written up at least three different answers, and I'm still not sure that I'm objective enough to answer this one. Do I use the phrase "her face flushed" or "he smirked back" too often? Probably. Do I mention Tamlin in every one of my fics even if it's just in passing? Yes. Yes, I do. I just like him, OK? Do I reveal my personal hang-ups or preferences in how I portray romantic relationships on the page? ... No comment.

Seriously though, I do know that I insist on including a detailed landscape description in every chapter or one-shot, because I have to set the scene in my head. I went to school for graphic design, and I'm forever noticing shadows and colors and patterns around me, so I try to paint or sculpt that kind of imagery out of the written word. It's a challenge, but it's fun.

Thanks for asking these questions! The last one especially really got me thinking, so it was a nice exercise. :)

[i-do-trash-fanfictions]

So I stayed over with my friend last night after a Halloween party. The other people there and the two who stayed the night with us were all people I've never met before since they all went to my friends school. I expected to be left out of the loop. I've had a very bad week and I've had thoughts about suicide often this week. I was the first there and when everyone else showed up I felt very included. We all played cards against humanity, my first time playing, out in the duck lodge my friend's dad had. I did good and laughed the hardest I had in a long time. We ate tacos together and talked about the clubs we were all in and about school. We painted pumpkins while we watched Megamind and quoted it in unison. Everyone complimented my pumpkin which was painted like a Frankenstein. We made s'mores together in the microwave. When everyone left but the four of us who were staying the night we did the blind, mute, and deaf baking challenge. Even though I let them do the challenge they made me feel included while I watched. Then we rented Twilight and hilariously reanacted the scenes. We could barely take a breath before we busted out in laughter again. This morning me and one of them got up before the other two. We made coffee and ate cake for breakfast while we talked on as if we had known each other for years. We ate leftover tacos again and then cheese dip as we played another game of cards against humanity again before I had to leave.

All of that to say this. Go out. Have fun. Meet people. It might be just what you needed. I went into this party expecting to be left out and hoping it was over. Instead I made four new friends, laughed so hard that I could barely breathe, and upon coming home realized that life is still worth living because you don't wanna miss out on times like that.

[violet-bookmark]

Oranges are not the only fruit, by Jeanette Winterson

I have been trying to read this book for almost ten years, but every time I was at my local library they either didn't have it or I had forgotten about it. I didn't want to read it in PDF, and luckily this year I could get my hands on the english (original) version, so there it goes. 

Before we delve into it: TW for exorcism, conversion therapy and a sex scene (not descriptive, but it happens) between an adult and a minor. 

This book tells us the life and adventures of young Jeanette, a girl who has been adopted into a religious family. Her devout mother wants to make a missionary out of her, and so raises her by the bible's words and (edited) versions of Jane Eyre. She lives a normal, religious life until she falls for a girl working at a fish stall and their friendship quickly turns into romance, making everyone repudiate them while Jeanette starts to realize that she is a lesbian, and to question everything she knows. 

I found the writing style intriguing and hard to define. I loved it because it challenged me; it was not like anything I have ever read before. All over the place but focused, wandering but always going to a point that you couldn't see just yet. It took the reader by surprise, and I truly admire Jeanette Winterson for it. The way she described everything was also really interesting: full of wonder but at the same time with that feeling of nostalgia and desperation that plagues some old books. I also enjoyed how nothing was done to be palatable, or to fit into some mold. Things were just like they were, and this book embraced everything as it came; the happy, the sad and the outright weird, which is a lot, as the protagonist is greatly confused by the world (who wouldn't be?). The style also changed in slight but powerful ways: some scenes are written in a sharp, realistic way, while others are strange and blurry like a dream. It highlights the protagonist's mental state in each scene perfectly. This book is slow at the start, and albeit I loved all the funny moments, which there are a lot of, I got a little impatient while waiting for the plot to reveal itself. But the wait paid off: I loved this book. From the ones I have read for this blog, it is my favourite so far. It might even be my favourite book, but I just finished it so I want to give it more time before saying something like this. 

I usually dislike books that are about the author, or that have a shameless author avatar as the protagonist. They are usually boring and egocentric, painting the protagonist as someone who can do no wrong, or who is literally perfect and completely boring to read about. Reading these kind of books often feels like reading the author's ego fantasies, and it makes me feel second hand embarrasment and to pity the author at the same time because I find it sad to have the need to write oneself as perfect, as if they are seeking validation from their readers. 

This book was an example of the author as protagonist done right. It helps that it was written by a woman; we usually can't make a career out of writing ourselves as flawless, or even as powerful without people bemoaning about it not being realistic or being a bore. Male authors get away with it way more easily. Jeanette is always curious about the world, too naïve and trusting at times, but always finding the fun and the irony in all situations, even the harshest ones. She acts as much as she observes: this book is about her as much as it is about her town, her mother and the religious order she is part of. It also speaks a lot about the contradictions of faith and religion itself.

One of my favourite scenes was when the neighbours are having sex, the protagonist's mother hears them and, along with other christians, starts to play the piano and to shout passages of the bible in hopes to make them stop "sinning". I like it because it is as crazy and hilarious as it sounds. The protagonist had a way to highlight irony and to always turn the most bizarre situations into the ridiculous. I also loved the funeral scene, but I don't want to give away any spoilers of that one. I will just say that Murphy's law is at play.

I also loved the tales of the Prince, of Sir Percival and of Winnet the witch apprentice. Despite seemingly being random at first, they gave continuity to Jeanette's story in very interesting and creative ways. The tale of the Prince who searched for perfection was very ironic, displaying Winterson's clever sense of humor and her ability to narrate in different ways. Sir Percival's was my favourite, it was very sad but had the particular madness of those who leave everything behind in the search of a delirious dream, something very human. Winnet's tale was very much like Jeanette's life, in a way, and full of hope towards the ending. 

Despite my quick summary, don't expect anything "shippable" in this book. This book has a lesbian protagonist, excellent insights into the mind of a homosexual and religious person and about life itself, but it is not the type of literature where you will find romance. If anything, you will find gay people throwing their lovers to the wolves for the sake of being forgiven by their community, or having to throw themselves to the wolves so that their lover will be forgiven. It was hard to read in that aspect. 

Read this book if you are curious about the story of a lesbian and christian girl who has to confront the fact that her religion sees her as a demon, if you like ironic and dark comedy and short tales. Don't read this book if you're searching for a love story. The best recommendation that I can give you right now for that is Lady Knight.