#Look one of the reasons I trust Le Guin

[folklorist-word-florist]

An Overlook on Pacing

SO, pacing! The element that can break or make your story! :D

As we are talking about writing here, we are talking about the speed of your story: the speed of the events unfolding, AND the speed of how the events are told to the reader. E.g. You can have a story that happens in a thousand years, told in the same number of pages of a story that takes place in ten minutes. The first speed is about pacing the plot, do you rely on exposition to world-build? On dialogue? On descriptions of setting or action? The latter is about the pacing of your prose, how you construct your sentences, where you place—and how frequently—action and dialogue, exposition and inflection.

Plot and structure

First we have to acknowledge pacing is interlinked with genre. Different genres have different conventions due to audience expectations. Pacing both depends and determines the genre. And as one writer might write a space opera today, and a contemporary character study tomorrow, so their pacing would change.

My opinion is that there's no good pacing, only the right pacing--for your story. Want to drag a kiss into two pages long? Do it, but with intention, which comes with due diligence on studying different types of story structure. The most useful writing advice I got on this is Ursula K. Le Guin's two-word wisdom:

Crowd, Leap; which event serves best in lengthy detail, which can and should be a sweeping impression. This requires some planning ahead of time, so all-panster might feel a bit 😬 here. I will put a post together on panster-planster-planner later. For now, I say for panster, write all the scenes the way they are coming to you right now, as much and as quickly as you can. You can sort the event pacing in editing.

A recommendation you might have heard ad nauseam: Blake Snyder's Save the Cat beat sheet. Like any plot structure studies, take a look, apply it to the story you love, see how they worked or not worked, and take notes on how that might serve your own writing. 

Save the Cat Beat Sheet Template  •  Infographic

Stories exist with a paradoxical preposition: what we read is past tense by the nature of writing and reading, yet many, especially genre fiction writers, strive to provide the sense that the unfolding of events occurs in front of the reader's eyes; there, the sense of wonder, suspense, or urgency. Even with in flashback of The Bad Thing Hundred Winters Ago, the story moves forward because we get a clue of why something is happening/going to happen now or why/how the characters are the way they are, etc..

(Note I did not say "plot," only "story." Because Story is more than just what happened, but how what happened and where what happened and why what happened.)

Everything you put on the page should be thoughtfully curated. Every scene and each word has your own reason for why it's exactly where it is—a process that takes time and practice and critique, but trust that it'll come:)

This leads to the other part of pacing: controlling the flow, thus (attempting to) control how your readers think and feel about the story.

Save the Cat! website has many beat sheet analysis of popular movies that can be helpful in understanding how to apply the principles.

Musicality

Stories work in forward motion, pulling readers along with them. Sometimes the motion is fast, action-packed and no breathing room, like what the story character is experiencing; sometimes the motion is slow, maybe to mimic a sense of conversational tone, writer to reader, or to create the agony of suspense.

The gradations of these motions are no accidents: again, intention. Be aware of how your placement of descriptive writing, dialogue, beats, the rhythm of your sentences might change the reader's perception of time. And rhythm is in every word in every language (multi-lingo people, like yours truly, might notice how this affect the way you like your sentence constructed and use it to create a style true to you).

In short, longer words/sentences/paragraphs=slowing down. shorter words/sentences/paragraphs=speed up. There should be a balanced combination of acceleration and deceleration. Usually this is combined with story beats (action scene is followed with reaction scene, give the readers breathing room and create anticipation for next action).

An advice to combat writer's block I got when I first started writing was "Read poetry out loud."

Read anything out loud. Books from writers you like, song lyrics, your own writing. Get a feel of the shape of how the words are put together. This great advice does have an obvious deficit, ofc, in requiring the advisee possessing hearing and speech ability (and a deeper connection to them both; some people are just more visual, then it can be the length of sentences and paragraph on paper that matters). Anyone here who are writing hearing-impaired would like to chime in, we would be very grateful.

[roobylavender]

second tag meme and also from @ravenkinnie: book recs!

no time to spare / ursula le guin / i've been slowly trying to make my way through her essay collections and this is one i really love so far. i also read words are my matter but that one had some of her more questionable political stances so i enjoyed this one bc it was focused on more generic and personal topics

good intentions / kasim ali / i would honestly highly recommend this to south asians specifically bc i don't think i've seen any other book that holds south asian millennials accountable for their tendency to damn their parents to inflexibility from the outset and then fail to hold themselves accountable for never challenging traditional mindsets. this book specifically deals with anti-blackness within the south asian community and i think it does a fantastic job of it (please wait until the end bc it does end as it deserves to end but for a moment you will get worried towards the middle that it won't go that way lol. trust me)

the king of attolia / megan whalen turner / obv i would rec the queen's thief series in general but this is by and large my favorite of the whole series (well. bar the sixth book which closely ties with it) and much as i am sure everyone loved this series the most when it was from eugenides's perspective i cannot help but think that i never love eugenides more than when i read about him through the perspective of those who love him dearly

each little bird that sings / deborah wiles / this was a pretty formative book in my childhood esp wrt the concept of how children process death. it's actually part of a quartet of companion novels, each of which i love dearly and one of which is actually the inspiration for my current username, but i think this one is executed the best and it also happens to be the most well known installment, definitely for good reason

supreme inequality / adam cohen / i feel like if you're not necessarily into studying the law but want to gain a better, in-depth understanding of why we are where we are right now with american law this is a good book to read. it corrects a lot of misconceptions around the idea that the supreme court was ever consistently progressive (ie severe brevity and breakdown of the social welfare oriented burger era) and discusses the evolution of judicial interpretation of major topics over the course of the last several decades

the f team / rawah arja / this came as a rec in a melina marchetta newsletter and i'm so glad it did! it's a really fun and messy look into life as a lebanese-australian boy and what i think it does well is not shy away from culturally ingrained flaws, rather seek to dissect and understand them and highlight how crucial an emotionally mature and communication-dependent upbringing is for young muslim/arab boys. there are a few jokes here and there that caught the side eye from me bc they felt severely lacking in self-awareness but other than that i really enjoyed it

the piper's son / melina marchetta / my favorite marchetta novel forever and always, and the second installment in the inner west trilogy of companion novels, following saving francesca. what i really adore about this one is the interplay of grief between so many people and this guilt you have to overcome over the impact of the death of a loved one on your life. bc sometimes it utterly tears you apart and other times it brings you together and the emotions of that are so horribly complicated. i also simply adore the continued exploration of the main friend group and how as harsh as the girls are on tom they are so protective and dedicated, too, bc that's how they all are with each other. it's a book that constantly makes me ache

beloved / toni morrison / interestingly i find this book to be highly relevant considering the recent abortion fiasco in the american legal scene and its relation to abusive domestic situations but it's also one of the books i loved reading the most in undergrad particularly bc of its brutal exploration into how oppressed peoples are driven to self-inflicted violence as a last resort. can you blame a woman for killing her child when the only other option was damning that child to a life of slavery? it's a situation that has to be analyzed with so much empathy and compassion and that's exactly what morrison affords it

the secret garden / frances hodgson burnett / one of two other books i loved reading the most in undergrad (with the third one being north and south). i read this for a british literature class that i took at a time i was severely starting to doubt my degree again after having already gone through a really rough depressive period following jonghyun's death so it really opportunely entered my life. i remember reading the magic monologue towards the end and just crying and crying bc it felt so liberating and while the rest of my undergrad journey was not necessarily a total high i do think this helped comfort me a lot

tagging: @briarhips, @lateafternoonsunlight, @senorscotty, @dankovskaya & @infatuate !

[rotationalsymmetry]

I haven’t read Omelas in a couple decades and this is going off of pure memory, which could be incorrect. But the thing about Those Who Walk Away From Omelas, is (like the trolley problem) you’re presumed to not be the one who’s suffering.

Tell the same story from the perspective of the kid who’s been locked in a closet your entire life so that other people can be happy. Tell me you don’t want to burn the entire world down.

Or imagine this. You live somewhere far away from Omelas. You’ve heard of it, but you’ve never been there. You meet someone. You gradually get to know them. They’re kinda weird, but they’re your kind of person. You find yourself falling for them. They never, ever talk about their past. You’re concerned, but you want to respect their privacy.

Time passes, your special person is getting some of their rougher edges smoothed off, they trust a little more easily, they freak out at small things a little bit less often. And one night, in the hushed darkness where nothing is entirely real, they tell you.

Does it still look like a moral dilemma now? (And do you have any sympathy whatsoever for someone who merely walked away?)

I’ve read some other of Le Guin’s work more recently. And you know what? I don’t think it’s supposed to be a moral dilemma. (Again, I haven’t read the story in ages, could be very wrong.) I think it’s supposed to be, “even in the best case scenario, even if the world created by deliberately knowingly causing someone intense suffering (torture, incarceration, immigrant “detention centers”) was the best possible world for everyone else, surely even then knowingly causing a person that much suffering is morally unacceptable. So in our world, which is not Omelas and we make people suffer like that for much less benefit, it definitely can’t be morally acceptable. Right?”

Anyways, open borders/abolish ICE, abolish the police, abolish prisons (no prisons no death penalty no retributive justice of any sort no holding people against their will on grounds of them being a danger to themselves or others), no torture, no causing people suffering on purpose for any reason ever.

[jedno-pivo-prosim]

"Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive. Predictions are uttered by prophets (free of charge), by clairvoyants (who usually charge a fee, and are therefore more honoured in their day than prophets), and by futurologists (salaried). Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying. The weather bureau will tell you what next Tuesday will be like, and the Rand Corporation will tell you what the twenty-first century will be like. I don't recommend that you turn to the writers of fiction for such information. It's none of their business. (...) But our society, being troubled and bewildered, seeking guidance, sometimes puts an entirely mistaken trust in artists, using them as prophets and futurologists. (...) it is words that make the trouble and confusion. We are asked now to consider words as useful in only one way: as signs. Our philosophers, some of them, would have us agree that a word (sentence, statement) has value only in so far as it has one single meaning, points to the fact that is comprehensible to the rational intellect, logically sound, and - ideally - quantifiable. Apollo, the god of light, of reason, of proportion, harmony, number - Apollo blinds those who press to close in worship. Don't look straight at the sun. Go into a dark bar for a bit and have a beer with Dionysios, every now and then." (Excerpt from Ursula K. Le Guin's introduction to The Left Hand of Darkness (1969))

[dykesynthezoid]

Are your politics really that “radical” if you actively still refuse to deconstruct the hegemonic colonialist idea that “might makes right” and that violence is the only truly effective strategy for liberation. Like is it really

The more I start to prioritize non-violence in my politics the more I realize how many leftists who scream and shout about opposing colonialism, about bringing low existing hierarchy, about how much they hate this country etc, have actively not deconstructed some pretty fundamental colonialist ideas. Some pretty fundamentally American ideas, at that. They continue to center themselves in world politics. They continue to see violence as inherently “justified” (whatever that may mean) as long as it’s the “good guys” who are doing it. They continue to see “defense” as the same thing as violent offense. They continue to value the social control and power they can wield over others more than they do helping people. They continue to see the world in terms of domination and destruction rather than investing in ideas of reparation and renewal.

“What, so you think people can’t fight back? That’s just siding with the oppressor!”

I’d be interested to know where I said resistance is wrong. At this point I try not to even approach the idea of violent revolution with moral judgement, frankly. More and more I seek to remove the element of my own moral perceptions from these things (sometimes I succeed and sometimes I don’t. I’m only human). Besides, what would it matter for me, as a singular person, to think somebody’s actions are “wrong”? What weight does that actually carry?

What I can say is that, in practice, violence has consequences. In practice, it has a tendency to compound upon itself. In practice, spontaneous self-defense, and even organized community defense, looks very different than a hyper-organized, hierarchical, premeditated violent offense. In practice, the most vulnerable of any population are always the ones who pay the most consequences for violent action, even if that is not the intention. In practice, people use the chaos of violence to enact their own personal goals. In practice, you cannot trust that every person you resist with would not take advantage of that chaos to bolster themselves, to continue the cycle of one party dominating another. In practice, violence may not even be as effective as you actually think it is.

I’m tired of asking what is right and wrong. I’m tired of asking what is “justified” or, god forbid, (cue the Ursula K. Le Guin quote) “deserved.” Instead I consider what actually matters: what is harmful and what is helpful. Suffering is harmful. Violent oppression is harmful. I want to be helpful.

The questions that guide my activism now are:

What is the most effective?

How can I do the least harm?

How can I do the most good?

None of this implies that I think violence is never necessary, or even that I think violence cannot be a tool of resistance. What it does imply is that I take violence very, very seriously. And that I recognize its consequences, and I do not consider its use lightly.

(If you find yourself feeling instinctively angry or incensed by anything I’ve said here, I urge you to go back and reread the post, and this time make an earnest effort to find the best-faith possible reading, and balance that with your instinctive response. Ask yourself, is this post about OP giving their personal opinions about specific global events, or is it a much more broad indictment of leftism in the global north? Ask yourself, should I assume that because this person dislikes violence, that must mean they actually, for some reason, love it when the oppressor does it, and the only reason they didn’t discuss that here is definitely because they love the oppressor so much, and not for any other reason, such as being concise or specific and not trying to write an entire novel in a tumblr post?)

[bettsfic]

Hi betts! I hope you’re doing alright and that your semester is wrapping up smoothly. I have a question about genre, I guess? I’ll preface this with the fact that I am not a writer or lit person, but just an enthusiastic reader. But as I’ve been on Tumblr and TikTok (in this case BookTok), I’ve noticed that it’s a lot of the same kinds of books that people get obsessed over. Largely, SFF written by women and often in “new adult.” I’m thinking of V. E. Schwab, Leigh Bardugo, etc. I’ve read a number of these books and enjoyed some of them quite a lot, but they’ve never captivated me the way they do some. That’s fine, people have different tastes. But after being served yet another TikTok about this same category of book, I kinda realized that for some reason they just don’t feel that adult to me. Which is weird because they typically deal with very adult themes. Some are super sexual or violent and the like, but the way they’re written doesn’t feel mature to me. Even The Poppy Wars, which is very adult, falls into this category for me (I did enjoy this one, though). I’ve tried to interrogate this for bias, especially since I know a lot of people like them because they are written by women, (mostly) feature more diversity, and have large female audiences. But then I think about which books did feel adult, but fall in similar genres: N. K. Jesimin and Ursula Le Guin come to mind (even her youth fiction feels more adult to me). So I guess I’m curious what you feel makes a writing style more mature versus simply the content? Why is it that SFF, while often depicting adult events, doesn’t come across as mature? I guess my frustration is that it’s one of my favorite genres, but the recommendations I’m getting across many folks just...isn’t the SFF I want. How does one distinguish between these? Idk if I’ve expressed this well and I definitely am not trying to judge people. I’m just looking for a certain atmosphere in my reading that I find rarely.

i’m so excited i have an answer to this. so first i want to say, i experience this also and it’s why i struggle to get through a lot of books. it’s why i love the secret history but couldn’t get twenty pages into if we were villains, even though everyone told me they had a lot in common. even if the description of a book is compelling and the story is very much to my taste, and even if the writing is totally competent, i’ve found that sometimes there’s just something lacking that makes me set a book down and never pick it back up. 

i was thrilled to find there’s term for this: the implied author.

the implied author was coined by wayne c. booth in his book the rhetoric of fiction which, while dense, is a really fantastic read (if you’ve been keeping up with my newsletter you know how feral i am for this book). as a blanket definition, the implied author is the space that exists between the narrator and the writer. when you read something, you can’t make any factual conclusions about the writer (the author is dead and all that), but the narration often tips you off to the idea that the consciousness behind the writing is wiser and knows more than the narrator. 

that’s a very condensed version of booth’s definition, which takes up like 40 pages. here forward are some conclusions i’ve drawn based on it. 

when the space between the narrator and implied author is narrow, some of us as readers tend to get bored pretty quickly. it’s what you’re referring to as maturity. however, when that space is wide, when it’s clear that the implied author is much, much bigger than the narration, that’s when i’m willing to sink my teeth into something. the wider that distance, the more i’m happy to ignore things like syntactical clumsiness or poor grammar. i would follow a good implied author into hell. 

for example, i could write a story from the point of view of a violent abuser. if you were to read it, you wouldn’t be able to say for certain that i, the writer, was not a violent abuser also. but you would be able to tell via the implied author whether or not there is an awareness of the abuse, whether it’s being written with intentionality. not morality, mind you, but artistic purpose. 

the implied author has an idiosyncratic relationship to the reader. sometimes depending on the complexity of the work and the critical reading skills of the reader, the presence of the implied author can be invisible. this is the catalyst, imo, to a significant amount of the present morality discourse. many (if not all) purity officers and antis don’t have the reading skills to be able to see the implied author, or that the moral trespasses that occur in fiction are written intentionally and for a purpose. they believe that anything depicted in fiction is advocating for or promoting that which it’s depicting. 

lolita is kind of the ultimate classic example of the inability of some readers to see the implied author. nabokov even has a fictional preface from the pov of a scholar doing research, flat-out telling us that humbert is a bad guy and Do Not Trust Him. and yet, lolita has been misinterpreted and vilified for decades now.

in that same vein, the implied author is the reason that some stories put a bad taste in our mouths. it’s how we reach the conclusion that a story is racist or sexist or homophobic outside the literal depictions of racism, sexism, and homophobia. how can you witness racism taking place in a story and know that it’s speaking to the experience of racism and not advocating for racism? that’s the presence of the implied author. sometimes, though, you can’t tell. sometimes a writer tries to speak to the experience of something and fails at making clear their own awareness. or sometimes, they’re just not aware at all. 

in fanfiction, the implied author takes place, in part, in the tags. i remember stumbling upon a fic written by a purity officer which depicted an extremely unhealthy, non-negotiated power dynamic. and none of it was tagged. i had no evidence the author was aware that they were even writing something “problematic.” obviously i support their right to depict whatever kind of relationship they want for whatever reason they want, but i did find it a bit off-putting, that this person who was a known harasser in fandom had no seeming understanding that they were writing the very kind of fic they were rallying against.

but, you know, my hands aren’t clean either. until the MFA, i was a very poor reader. for example, in 2010 i read the hunger games for the first time. in 2020 i re-read the series on my kindle, where all my annotations from 2010 had been saved, and so i got to see all my glaring misinterpretations of the text. every time katniss has to get dolled up in the capitol and made beautiful, i left a note like “ugh,” because i thought all depictions of performative femininity were Bad. even though thg is a YA book and i was an honors student in college, i was still unable to see that katniss’s beautifying was commentary on consumerism. i was oblivious to collins’ implied author, the presence in the book that is shaking you by the shoulders and going, THIS IS WHAT’S WRONG WITH SOCIETY. 

but sometimes, like in your case, the opposite situation occurs: you the reader are wider than the implied author, and so some books have little to offer you in terms of depth or insight into the human experience. i don’t mean that to sound pretentious or anything; what i mean is, we all read at different skill levels and for different reasons, and we all get different things out of the stories we read. we’re all at different places in our reading lives, and we all have room to grow.

i hope i explained this clearly enough! hopefully one day i’ll be able to write a formal essay on this, because booth wrote about it in the 60s and a lot has happened in fiction since then. 

[chronicallylatetotheparty]

Watching (the Adventures of) Merlin season one on Netflix

Episode One: The Dragon's Call

. . . I feel like going to the capital of the kingdom indiscriminately slaughtering magic users wasn't the best idea.

Why? Well, that guy did just get executed.

And now his mom is mad. You tell that sorry excuse for a king, witch lady.

I don't like Uther, in case it was unclear.

Wait... if you could teleport why not just grab your son and ditch before he loses his head? Literally.

Oh, wow. Arthur is a dick.

Morgana. We have no choice but to stan tbh.

Dragon, you're really rubbing me the wrong way.

That's right Merlin! We need more than Because Destiny Says So!

Where did the spiderwebs come from? That sleeping spell gives me Sleeping Beauty vibes.

Ah, yes. The old drop-the- chandelier-on-the-villain trick. :(

If she went after Uther instead of Arthur I would have no complaints.

Manservant? You call that a reward for saving your son?

Episode Two: Valiant

Snake!Shield

Oh, he's gonna- Yup, dead. That's what happens when you deal with knights who cheat.

Where did that guy even get a magic shield in the first place?

Is there a thriving magic black market or something?

I love Guin.

. . . I feel like Sir Valiant didn't think this through. If bite marks are visible.

Ugh, you're the worst Uther.

It's only the second episode! Did you forget who saved your son already?

Stop being a jerk Arthur.

Lol. Merlin bringing a dog statue to life in order to practice for the Snake!Shield.

Bye Valiant!

Episode Three: The Mark of Nimueh

Whatcha up to with that egg, new witch lady?

You gonna poison the water of all of Camelot? Seems like a jerk move.

Dang that's a lot of dead bodies...

No, I like Guin's dad!

Yes! Cure him Merlin!

No! Stop arresting Guin, Uther!

You tell him, Morgana!

That plague monster that hatched from witch lady's egg is creepy.

Dead monster!

Arthur is kinda oblivious to Merlin's magic ngl.

Yay! Guin's free!

What do you know about witch lady Nimueh, Uther? Hmm? Why she want you dead? Besides the obvious reasons.

Episode Four: The Poisoned Chalice

Wow, Nimueh really doesn't like Merlin saving the day.

Wow, Nimueh really orchestrated an entire diplomatic incident in order to kill Merlin while also ensuring Camelot is destroyed by its neighbor. Impressive.

I really like Merlin and Guin's friendship.

Dang. Merlin really drank poison in order to save Arthur.

Merlin saved Arthur's life, Uther! Let him return the favor!

Oh, wow. Arthur really disobeyed his father in order to save Merlin's life.

I didn't know Merlin could cast spells while deathly delirious. And several miles away from him too.

Uther you b****! The antidote is right there! Let Arthur save his friend!

Putting your own son in a cell is such a jerk move.

At least Arthur and Guin manage to sneak the antidote to Merlin.

Quick aside: Internet spoilers say Uther needs to die for Arthur to complete his himbofication- I mean character development. So, if you could get on with that? Thanks!

Episode Five: Lancelot

Wow, that's a very CGI griffin.

Lancelot is so precious- Uh, I mean effective! Saving Merlin and all.

I know, Guin. I know.

Always thought it was a stupid rule to only let nobles be knights.

You're really going to commit magical forgery for someone you just met, Merlin?

I mean, Lancelot is earnest, hardworking, modest, kind despite his tragic backstory and it's his childhood dream to be a knight...

Yeah, I'd commit magical forgery too.

Lol, knocked you on your ass didn't he Arthur? (The second time at least)

I don't remember griffins being man-eaters!

Uther stop arresting people! Ugh, you're such a classist.

Let Lancelot help fight the griffin, Arthur! You need all the help you can get!

Well okay letting him go was nice of you.

Lancelot-Merlin tag team!

Wow. Lancelot really strode in with Camelot's singular braincell by figuring out Merlin has magic.

(The bar is low, okay.)

No, don't take away the braincell! Stay! The griffin was a team effort!

Okay, Lancelot's lawful good tendencies are a little annoying but, hey, nobody's perfect.

Episode Six: A Remedy to Cure All Ills

Edwin, no. Leave Morgana alone.

Oh, beetles! Curse beetles! That's not creepy at all.

Gaius how do you know Edwin?

What diabolical plot are you hatching Edwin? Oh, you're replacing Gaius in the royal court. That's kinda rude.

Merlin's so happy meeting another magic user that isn't trying to kill him (yet).

Le gasp! Uther's purge killed Edwin's parents? WhO cOuLd HaVe fOreSeEn tHis!?

But seriously. No wonder Edwin wants Uther dead.

I know Edwin blackmailed Gaius with exposing Merlin but he also wants to kill Uther!

That gives him a pass in my book.

Gaius no. Let Uther die.

Edwin stop trying to kill Gaius! You're going to-

Yup, here comes Merlin and-

Edwin's dead :(

Well he was trying to overthrow the kingdom. That's... bad... I guess.

Episode Seven: The Gates of Avalon

That title is misleading. It's more of a natural portal/magic lake type thing.

Arthur saves a father and daughter from bandits (Which they hired but shhh)

And they immediately try to put a love spell on Arthur

For human sacrifice purposes of course

Idk why the Sidhe want a human prince's soul -look at him, you don't know where he's been- but that's the price for readmission

I wonder how the dad killed one of his own kind? Was it an accident or...?

Exiling the daughter too makes me suspicious of Avalon's justice system

Evil laugh is a bit out of place for someone who is trying to restore his daughter's immortality

(They are so whiny about being mortal. Hey, we put up with it all the time!)

The fairy-like Sidhe moving in accelerated time so they just look like tiny orbs of light was an interesting touch. The blue faces and razor sharp teeth is not a good look for them, lol

They make Arthur ask to be married ('cause it takes a while for the love spell to go into full blown mind control or something)

Prompting Uther to threaten to kill both of them

(I feel like they didn't think this through)

Morgana admonishes Uther for being the worst

He replies that first love rarely lasts and that Arthur is inexperienced in such things. Plus that Arthur only met the girl yesterday

... I can't believe Uther is the voice of reason this episode

He doesn't get any points though. Due to the whole "threatening to execution his son's 'crush' " thing

The daughter is having second thoughts about using Arthur as a human sacrifice

Dear old dad puts those to rest and they try drowning Arthur in the lake that is/is the portal to, Avalon

Merlin's really leaning into the whole "Cool motive. Still murder.", thing huh?

Like, he did NOT hesitate to blow up both of them

Episode Eight: The Beginning of the End

Why do magic users keep going to Camelot!? The king is trying to KILL YOU!

Wow, this grown ass man is threatened by a literal child... I hate Uther so much

Morgana is the MVP of this episode. I love her

Protect that druid kid!

I feel like you're being paranoid Uther

You tell him Morgana!

Dragon, no. Stop prophesying death and destruction.

Wow, this grown ass dragon is threatened by a literal child...

Aaaand Morgana got caught sneaking the kid out of the city :(

Uther she is your adopted daughter! Stop putting people in cells!

Arthur is gonna sneak him out now?

While Morgana distracts the king?

Yes, excellent. What could possibly-

Merlin stop listening to that destiny dragon! Hearing his voice in your head is no basis for trust!

Cutting it close... Yay! They made it!

Mordred!? MORDRED!?

THAT little boy is Mordred!?

... Okay, I'm more inclined to believe the destiny dragon now

Still think letting him die would be a dick move

Episode Nine: Excalibur

What're you up to with that tomb Nimueh?

Oh! It's some kind of undead knight. Yes.

Throwing down the gauntlet. Pfft! Always thought that was a stupid idea.

Also: that Black Knight literally crashed your party!

Ugh, knights.

Nimueh if you can just teleport into the heart of Camelot while Uther is alone why don't you just stab him? Grab one of those pointy things he likes so much and stab him in the back. Easy peasy!

Stealing this joke but Don't do evil magic kids. It fries your brain cells.

Wait, the Black Knight is Uther's brother-in-law!?

Arthur's mother died in childbirth!?

Uther asked Nimueh to use her magic so he could have Arthur!?

Equivalent Exchange!?

Uther went on a genocidal rampage because he didn't bother with the instruction manual of ancient and powerful magic!?

Actually, that last one is not surprising at all.

I can't believe they're using the Wife in the Fridge trope. That appliance hasn't even been invented yet!

Ooh, Merlin's going to use his magic to destroy the Black Knight so Arthur doesn't have to fight him

As he's killed two knights already

Aaaaand, yup, he's still there. His cloak didn't even catch fire...

Arthur stop being a bastard. It doesn't suit you

Dragon forged sword! DRAGON FORGED SWORD!

Only Arthur can wield it. Yup, got it. How could this possibly go wrong?

Uther drugged Arthur and took his place in the fight... I have mixed feelings about this.

Wait, the dragon was very specific about only Arthur using that super special sword! Oh, snap.

Well at least the Black Knight is dead. Again.

Oh, dragon is not happy.

I know the dragon said "where no mortal soul could find it" but are you sure you wanna throw it into Avalon, Merlin?

Those people were gonna suck Arthur's soul out of his body

Episode Ten: The Moment of Truth

The way this episode title just lies to your face like that...

Oh, you're Merlin's mother! Thought we had an anime protagonists type thing going on

I... would like to say Uther is being unreasonable when he decides not to cross borders to get rid of some bandits. But I can totally see everyone hating him so that's a no go.

Lady, you were in a whole different kingdom. Why for the love of Merlin did you send him to Camelot!?

We're off to save the village! Morgana and Guin are coming too!

A wild Arthur appears!

Morgana better at swordplay than Arthur confirmed!

Merlin! I didn't know you had friends!

Granted he's a bit rough around the edges but

Okay. If it were literally anyone else besides Arthur. I'd say he was right about lords and knights being useless snobs.

Actually. He's right about lords and knights being useless snobs. Ah, that felt great.

Wow, the homosexual subtext is strong with this one.

The girls can tell Arthur came for Merlin.

But get your foot out of his face! I don't care how royal it is!

Look at Guin over here calling out Arthur for being a dick

And talking him into letting the women fight. She's on a roll

Aw, Merlin's friend died. :(

And he took credit for Merlin's tornado (so Arthur wouldn't find out about Merlin's magic)

Episode Eleven: The Labyrinth of Gedref

Lol, that unicorn could use a haircut.

No, Arthur. I said a haircut not an arrow to the chest!

Bad things? What kind of bad things Gaius?

Uther what's the point of having an expert in magical lore if you're not going to listen to him!

And all the crops are dead. Fantastic.

I know it's a magic thing but stating outright that the blight only targets edible plants is still really unsettling.

And the water's turned to sand. Great.

Who're you and how come Merlin is the only magic user that can't teleport?

What kind of tests mister Keeper of the Unicorns, sir?

Arthur I know you don't want to believe it's your fault... But it's totally your fault.

Uther no. People are starving.

You tell him Arthur.

Oh, the "theif" was a test!

Aaaaand he failed the second one. :(

Merlin's got a lot of faith in Arthur.

It's interesting how the Keeper can only direct the curse caused by the unicorn's death. Or rather the trials surrounding the curse, but can't break it himself.

Unicorns have some powerful magic.

The Labyrinth was barely on screen for five minutes! Surely something with Unicorn in the title would be more appropriate?

Arthur drinking a poisoned cup so Merlin could live?

That's some strong parallels right there.

The Keeper of the Unicorns is such a troll! Sleeping potion, hah!

The day is saved, Arthur lies to Uther's face about killing the Keeper and the unicorn resurrects itself.

Still needs a haircut though.

Episode Twelve: To Kill the King

Whatcha up to Guin's dad?

Oh that guy isn't suspicious at all.

You didn't think it was shady when he asked to meet in the middle of the night!?

Philosopher's Stone!?

Wow, the guards found him quickly.

What- No! Don't arrest Guin's dad!

Uther, he's a blacksmith! Stop being paranoid!

Will you stop executing people!? That inn keeper didn't know that guy was a dangerous sorcerer!

No, nononononono! He surrendered! Why did you do that!? Guin's father was important to Morgana!

That's why she gave him the key!

Dragon has his priorities straight.

Shut up, Merlin. You literally blew up a father and daughter for trying to kill one(1) person. (No really, you could see their hands flying off.)

Morgana deserves a little murder. As a treat.

Yes! Get him! Kill the bastard!

No! Why would you make GUIN say that!? Who are you and what have you done with Guin!?🔪🔪

UGH, he literally committed genocide!

The "that would make me as bad as he is" DOES NOT APPLY!

What- Oh, he still has the fairy's staff.

No. Stop it! Let Uther die!

Oh, God, Uther is such an abusive piece of GARBAGE!

Stop! Don't fall for it Morgana!

*sees dagger being pushed closer to Uther's "heart"* Yes! Yes! YES!

*Morgana saves him* NO!

NO!

NOOOOOO!

*inarticulate ranting in the background*

Episode Thirteen:

Okay, the cgi might be getting a little better 'cause the Questing Beast is freaky

Old religion? What is that? And how come it's conveniently absent from the previous episodes?

Dang, they really here just casually gaslighting Morgana like that 😡

Merlin you know Morgana has visions! You couldn't have been a little more careful? She warned you. Now look at Arthur, he's got the heroic death disease

Granted that thing does seem like a handful

Why do you only act like a father when it's a matter of life and death? Why can't you be a father literally any other time!?

"The old religion is the magic of the Earth itself."

Well that sounds fascinating, dragon. Are you going to elaborate? No? Later then?

Soooooo, is the old religion actually a religion or is it a magic? It's really unclear...

"You will be a better king than your father could ever hope to be." Guin, you're back!

I expected a place called the Isle of the Blessed to be less... creepy

Nimueh! Whatcha up to girl? Plotting the demise of a kingdom? Not today it seems

Oh there some Equivalent Exchange type nonsense going on is there?

Arthur you were supposed to be in a coma not listening to Guin!

Oh. Oh, no.

Merlin saying goodbye as he prepares to trade his life for his mother's is 😢😭

Wow, that dragon really knew Nimueh would give Merlin's mother the curse and didn't say anything. The little b*****!

No wonder Merlin's mad at him. Stop breathing fire at him! It's your own fault!

Gaius, no! Not the dead mentor trope!

"You stood by and watched as our friends died." Damn, Nimueh isn't pulling her punches.

Merlin vs Nimueh! Ready? Fight!

Anime protagonist power up! Dang, Nimueh's dead... I feel like that wasn't supposed to happen.

At least no one else is dying. Since Nimueh's death appeased the Equivalent Exchange laws of the old religion.

[algernoninwonderland]

Miraculous is playing one big game of Calvinball with its magic/power system and it undermines the show quite a bit

TL;DR: Miraculous has, at first glance, a very basic power/magic system… Only whenever it tries to get more complicated than “Moon Prism Power, Make up!” it ends up being an unspeakable mess, due to poor creative decisions that don’t allow for the audience to truly understand what is going on and why, outside of “whatever the plot requires so that we can get to the next scene”. 

It may well be because the people making this show wanted to shift their attention to kwamis and their powers in the future seasons, but holding onto that for seventy-something episodes has done the show a disservice.

Longg isn’t the kwami of Perfection. Longg is the kwami of being a cool dragon. And sometimes, being a cool dragon is enough, you know? Instead of doing complex things poorly, you can tackle simple concepts really well and people won’t think any less of your creation, au contraire.

Throughout the history of the superhero genre, a pretty nifty thing most creators have understood is that you need to explain a bit of how and why the hero’s powers work. Superman is superpowered because it’s all a matter of gravity, a fact underlined in the very first issue of Action Comics, in the very first page of Superman ever. The X-Men are mutants. Sherlock Holmes was bitten by a radioactive detective.

Basically, what happens in most cases is, the creators come up with a set of rules to sort of explain the storyworld so that you know to manage your expectations, so that the storyworld feels more cohesive too. That’s what I call a neat way to allow your audience to suspend their disbelief and feel more involved in the story being told! Things happen and are allowed to happen a certain way for a reason in-universe, there is a kind of logic proper to the work of fiction being built that makes it easier for the audience to fully get into said work.

In Hunter X Hunter, Nen is a pretty cool concept that is well-defined, we see what it is at first with no explanations, and it’s hella intriguing, which makes you want to know more (and that’s deliberate) and then the manga explains it to you a few chapters later and for the most part, Togashi sticks to that definition. And now we understand what is going on and how. Cool, right?

What do we have here? Creative decisions that are often given justifications in-universe to make them more believable in the context of the story being told, even though they are ultimately arbitrary decisions which can be challenged (see how Superman’s powers changed over time, for instance). You can toy with these explanations and that makes for great comedic potential, just look at One Punch Man!

Magic can be a little murkier for sure, because magic doesn’t necessarily follow rational logic. I won’t be getting into the soft/hard magic talk here. Still, if you want your audience to understand what is going on and if you’re not a complete hack (looking at you Joanne Kathleen), you tend to set up some rules so that the audience can grasp what the hell is going on, understand why something is really impressive or really basic. Is it really such a big deal that a character is able to master that one spell? Why? Ursula Le Guin and Brandon Sanderson are really good at that, and manage a good balance of mystery and understandability.

Miraculous fumbles the bag pretty hard when it comes to how its magic/power system works. Which, after 70-something episodes, is not great. 

Part of it is due to the exposition style Miraculous has chosen for itself, which could be great but ultimately isn’t, and part of it is due to poor definition in the first place.

Miraculous hates exposition dumps most of the time, and I think it’s actually a good thing. No one wants to feel as though they’re sitting through a boring class instead of having fun. Well done, guys! Exposition dumps often make you all the more aware of the artificiality of a story. And so, Miraculous mostly relies on context cues as a means of introducing you to the world. They just show you the thing and trust you to understand and interpret it properly. And sometimes, it works really well!

I still sincerely believe that Stormy Weather is a fantastic first episode, and it does its job amazingly well. In 24 minutes, you learn the very basic outlines of how stuff works, relationships between the characters and superpowers. Yes, it’s very basic, but that’s fine, you can’t drop all that new information on your audience all at once. We understand that the power within the Miraculous, that of the kwami, allows for its wearer to transform. This comes with nifty perks, heightened agility, reflexes, amazing strength, magical accessories, and special quirks unique to each of the Miraculouses.

Are we good so far? See, if we stuck to that, it’d be fine. Not mind-blowing but pretty okay still. Doesn’t have to be too complicated to be enjoyable, just look at Sailor Moon!

And then Miraculous tried to spice things up and communicated its ideas so poorly that the arbitrary decisions taken by the writers are glaring, and seriously affect the audience’s suspension of disbelief and enjoyment. 

The kwamis aren’t just cutesy mascots, they’re gods. And yet their powers are very limited. Why? Well, the show doesn’t really bring that question up, we can only try and infer things. Now, what are these limitations, and why do they exist in the first place? I’ve got a vague answer to the first question (a time limit for transformation once the special power is being used).

The answer to that second question is very unsatisfactory, and that’s the only one I’ve got: “because the plot requires it if we want to do such and such thing”. Which is an answer that applies to absolutely all creative decisions in fiction, yes, but there’s usually more to it as well, in competently-made shows at least, it’s not so transparent. Why is Marinette able to wield so many Miraculouses at once? Well, it’d look cool and it’d make her look powerful, so why not! But Adrien can’t. Why? He just can’t. No explanations whatsoever. Just because. It’s magic. Shut up and watch the show.

Well, that’s not entirely true. We’ve got fleeting remarks about being able to unlock kwami powers and maintaining a transformation for longer and whatnot. The problem is, they’re just that, fleeting remarks, and worse, they are so scattered across the show it’s really easy to forget about them in-between episodes, especially since the release schedule is absolute nonsense (it isn’t the creators’ fault, but it certainly has an impact on the way the audience engages with the show). So no, the show isn’t going down the “just roll with it” route, not entirely… And that makes the lack of proper explanation that much worse.

It feels as through the few rules there are in Miraculous are being made up on the fly and… Heh. That’s just not great.

It doesn’t help that the powers themselves are… Really something, huh?

Chat Noir’s power is the only one that really fits with what his kwami is meant to represent. Destruction. Easy to represent, right?

Creation is trickier, that requires being imaginative, and Miraculous isn’t terribly imaginative when it comes to its lucky charms. Hey kids, did you know that you could use a ladder to stop an ice-skater? How creative! I mean you could also use salt to melt the ice, or a baseball bat to smash his kneecaps, then… The point is, being convoluted isn’t the same thing as being creative, and while Chat Noir gets to decide what he destroys, Ladybug gets an item thrown at her and you better believe she’ll find an use to it… How is that creation exactly? Is the lucky charm popping out of thin air creation? That’s a bit underwhelming, isn’t it?

Tikki represents convolution, Nooroo is the power of creating minor antagonists…

I had to check the Wiki to remember what concepts the other kwamis are meant to represent. There’s a disconnect between that and the way powers are represented on-screen. Pollen isn’t the kwami of Subjection. Pollen is the kwami of stabbing people with a stinger. How do I know that? I watched the show and nothing else.

If you want your audience to not be confused, if you don’t want your story to feel completely arbitrary to your audience (though it’ll always be just that), maybe take the time to explain things that are crucial for the understanding of the storyworld’s inner workings. You don’t have to give everything away in the first ten episodes, not at all, but you should explain them at some point, take the time to do so if these are more complex concepts that are crucial to your show. And if they aren’t key to your show, you don’t have to include them, and I promise no-one will notice.

[terramythos]

TerraMythos 2021 Reading Challenge - Book 16 of 26

Title: Tales From Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle #5) (2001)

Author: Ursula K. Le Guin

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Short Story Collection, Novella, Third-Person, Female Protagonist 

Rating: 8/10 (note: this is an average)

Date Began: 7/2/2021

Date Finished: 7/6/2021

Tales From Earthsea is a collection of five short stories and novellas which take place in the Earthsea universe. In addition, there’s a supplementary timeline of Earthsea’s history, tradition, and cultural details of note. The last story in the collection, Dragonfly, serves as a bridge between Tehanu (#4) and The Other Wind (#6), the final book in the series. 

Of the five stories, my favorites (both 10/10s) were The Finder and On The High Marsh.

The way one does research into nonexistent history is to tell the story and find out what happened. I believe this isn’t very different from what historians of the so-called real world do. Even if we are present at some historic event, do we comprehend it— can we even remember it— until we can tell it in a story? 

Content warnings, individual ratings/commentary, and spoilers below the cut.

Content warnings for the book: Death and violence, child abuse (including implied sexual abuse), police brutality, slavery, reference to torture and execution, brief reference to inc*st, misogyny, animal cruelty, mild body horror, very brief implied mind control via a "love charm" (it doesn't work).

#1 - The Finder (10/10)

In The Dark Time, magic is widely mistrusted. Petty tyrants use the once noble art in pursuit of power and glory. Medra, the son of a shipwright in Havnor, has magical talents honed in secret. One day, he curses a ship built for a warlord’s fleet. Unfortunately, he gets caught and sent to a prison camp. There he is forced to use finding magic to locate veins of cinnabar.

The prison exists to refine quicksilver, a substance the most powerful mage on the island believes will turn him into a god. While in the refinery, Medra feels a spiritual connection to a dying slave, a young woman named Anieb. The two of them devise a plan to kill the mage and escape. Medra’s journey eventually takes him to the island of Roke and the founding of its prestigious wizard school. 

‘The dead are dead. The great and mighty go their way unchecked. All the hope left in the world is in the people of no account.’ 

I really enjoyed this novella. The Dark Time is largely unexplored in the stories of Earthsea, so it was interesting to read about it here. I get the feeling that we’re approaching or in the middle of one such time in the real world, so seeing a version of it on the page is depressing yet hopeful. The story is dark; mass feudal warfare, a literal concentration camp in the opening half, widespread enslavement, and abuse of power. But it also offers hope and the promise of change. The story also explores the integral role of women in not only the preservation of magic in a bleak age of humanity, but the very foundation of Roke. 

Medra’s story spoke to me; how he resists the despotic powers-that-be, his connection with Anieb even after her tragic death, and how despite his disillusionment with humanity, he ultimately fights to create a better world. I also thought Gelluk was a horrifying villain. He’s characterized as a soft-spoken, almost kindly man who loves children and animals— yet his narrative thoughts involve burning hundreds of slaves alive in order to better fuel the quicksilver refinery. “Nice doesn’t mean good” taken to an extreme, and a mirror of many villains in the real world. 

Le Guin was anti-capitalist, but that way of thinking seems peripheral in the Earthsea series. The Finder, however, definitely has a Marxist reading in it. A recurring theme is the disenfranchised rising up against the powerful. Indeed both antagonists, who are despotic wizards of great power, are soundly defeated by groups of people they consider powerless. Magic is only considered relevant for the value and power it produces, an idea antithetical to the rest of the series. The quicksilver refinery also embraces anti-capitalist rhetoric; this section focuses on how mass enslavement and death is used to manufacture a meaningless commodity only one person “benefits” from. That’s not even getting into the prison-industrial complex. 

I dunno. This story slaps. It’s not at all what I expected from a Roke origin story.

#2 - Diamond and Darkrose (5/10)

Diamond, the son of a prosperous lumber merchant, struggles to find his true calling in life. His father disapproves of almost everything he does, including his close friendship with the local witch’s daughter Rose. While he loves music, his father derides his talents and forces him to abandon the pursuit. When Diamond shows some  promise in magic, he travels to a neighboring town to serve as the local wizard’s apprentice. But when this path estranges him from Rose, he grows disillusioned.

Rose had looked after herself from an early age; and this was one of the reasons Diamond loved her. With her, he knew what freedom was. Without her, he could attain it only when he was hearing and singing and playing music.

I did not like this story very much. I gave Diamond and Darkrose a 5/10 because it’s competently written (duh), and the protagonist has a character arc not entirely dependent on the central romance. But that’s about all I can say for it.

None of the characters are especially appealing. Diamond’s mentor figures are all extremely narrow-minded. Rose, supposedly his true love since childhood, drops him the moment things become difficult. And Diamond himself is a pushover who only grows a spine and pursues his dreams at the end of the story. I understand that’s his character flaw and his arc is about overcoming that. But due to all these factors, I was annoyed by every major character. The only person I didn’t dislike was Diamond’s mother, who only shows up for a couple of scenes.

Someone please tell me there are love stories out there where the romantic tension is NOT based on a fucking MISUNDERSTANDING. That shit drives me up a wall! It’s so overdone and painful to read.

#3 - The Bones of the Earth (8/10)

Dulse is an aging wizard on the island of Gont, reflecting on his life and relationship with his former apprentice, a young man he calls Silence. But he senses something amiss on the island; a massive earthquake poised to destroy a nearby port town and its inhabitants. To avert disaster, Dulse realizes he must turn to an ancient form of magic taught to him long ago— and he needs Silence’s help to save the town.

In there he knew he should hurry, that the bones of the earth ached to move, and that he must become them to guide them, but he could not hurry. There was on him the bewilderment of any transformation. He had in his day been fox, and bull, and dragonfly, and knew what it was to change being. But this was different, this slow enlargement. I am vastening, he thought.

So I’ve always liked Ogion in the main series; I love the idea of an immensely powerful wizard who lives an unassuming life of silence, contemplation, and appreciation of the natural world. In The Bones of the Earth, we get a glimpse of Ogion through his mentor’s eyes. Ogion’s heroism and how he stopped the earthquake is mentioned several times in the main series, but this is our first look at what actually happened.

Dulse is an unexpected and fascinating perspective character. It would be so easy to tell this story wholly from Ogion’s perspective, but I think making Dulse the protagonist was the right call. In particular, Dulse’s mind is starting to go. Le Guin presents this by utilizing flashbacks and connecting them to the present. This technique conveys Dulse’s disorientation and confusion so the reader experiences it alongside him... it’s hard to describe without actually reading the story. I also loved the little twist at the end regarding where Dulse learned the ancient magic that saves the island. There’s also a strong thematic connection to The Farthest Shore; death and becoming one with the rest of the world.

#4 - On The High Marsh (10/10)

A half-mad wanderer named Irioth comes upon a small settlement on the volcanic, marshy island of Semel. A murrain has been devastating the local cattle population, and Irioth offers his powers as a curer to heal the animals. He settles into a calm rural life with Gift, a widow working a small dairy. Though Gift likes Irioth, and the animals instinctively trust him, she senses something amiss with the man. Soon, Irioth’s dark past threatens to return and disturb the peace.

“Oh, yes,” Irioth said. “It was my fault.” But she forgave, and the grey cat was pressed up against his thigh, dreaming. The cat’s dreams came into his mind, in the low fields where he spoke with the animals, the dusky places. The cat leapt there, and then there was milk, and the deep soft thrilling. There was no fault, only the great innocence. No need for words. They would not find him here. He was not here to find. There was no need to speak any name. There was nobody but her, and the cat dreaming, and the fire flickering. He had come over the dead mountain on black roads, but here the streams ran slow among the pastures.

This story is a banger. It has a Western vibe— a stranger coming into a cattle town haunted by a mysterious past. Also cowboys. It’s an atmospheric story, and I think hits on the “small rural town” vibe better than Tehanu did. But there were several writing choices I especially liked.

We don’t learn Irioth’s name until a little while into the story; his physical description, temperament, and ability to immediately identify Gift’s true name just by looking at her makes one assume he’s Ged. He’s also got an interesting redemption arc, because it’s presented in a reverse order. We see Irioth’s genuine desire to do good, and his gentle and patient manner with animals and other people. He doesn’t even consider asking for payment for curing the murrain until Gift tells him he should. But there’s a sense that something is off; he’s paranoid, clearly running from something. The use-name he picks is Otak, a fictional ferret-like creature— which Gift asserts looks nice, but has sharp teeth.

Near the end, Ged actually does show up and explain what happened to Irioth. They have pretty similar backstories; both were powerful, arrogant young mages who messed with forces  they shouldn’t have, then went through great personal sacrifice to right the wrong (oh god the initial deception was intentional they’re narrative foils oh god). Ged embraced the darkest aspects of himself to avert calamity. Irioth came to Semel to escape Roke and atone by helping others. One detail I especially liked was that Irioth once considered healing beneath him, but now he takes a deep joy in using it to help. 

#5 - Dragonfly (8/10)

Irian lives a solitary life-- her father is a drunkard living in the ruins of their family’s once prosperous estate. Her closest relationship is with the local village witch, who named her in secret in the dead of night.  When a disgraced young wizard named Ivory comes to town, he sees Irian as a potential conquest. To gain power over her, he hatches a scheme; disguise Irian as a man, travel to Roke, and sneak her into the male-only wizard school— humiliating the great Masters.

But Irian is restless. She knows she has power, but her true nature is a mystery even to her. Irian sees Ivory’s plan as an opportunity to find answers from the most powerful wizards in the world. When the Doorkeeper actually lets her into the school, she finds herself in a magical and political conflict over the future of Roke— and discovers what exactly she is.

“Dark is bad,” said the Patterner. “Eh?”

Irian drew a deep breath and looked at him eye to eye as they sat there. “Only in dark the light,” she said.

This is one of those stories that has a rocky start, but a great second half. The first part of the novella felt dry to me; I’ve read plenty of tales about social outcasts with weird, unexplainable powers. On top of this, a chunk of the early narration is from Ivory’s POV, and he’s a complete tool. That can be a fun perspective to take, and I like the fact that he thinks he’s manipulating Irian when she’s the one pulling the strings. But since he’s an irrelevant character who disappears from the story halfway through, it feels like a waste to devote a huge chunk of the story to him.

However, once Irian arrives at Roke, the story gets much more interesting. Her presence at Roke causes a huge scandal that divides the Masters. Women being forbidden from Roke is a Series Thing at this point, but Earthsea is in an era of change (although I DO question that she’s the first woman to try it). The Finder demonstrated that women were pivotal in the foundation of Roke, something largely erased from history. Barring women stems from a power hungry bigot codifying it into tradition.

Irian finds some unexpected allies--minor characters in the previous books. The Doorkeeper continues to be the coolest motherfucker there. The Patterner is a major character in this story; he was in just one scene in The Farthest Shore, so I liked learning more about him. The Namer is the kind of guy you’d expect to be a stodgy traditionalist, so him siding with Irian is surprising. The Summoner, a heroic figure in previous books and stories, is a sinister villain here. As for the ending, well… if you didn’t see it coming, I’d wonder if you even read Tehanu. The same hints are there.

There were little particulars I liked, such as Irian moving into a decrepit hut that’s definitely Medra’s old home. My favorite detail is that this story has a parallel scene with The Finder. In The Finder, there’s a scene where an antagonist, Early, invades Roke in the form of a dragon. He lands on Roke Knoll, a site of power that reveals one’s true form. It turns him back into a human, leaving him defenseless when the residents of Roke attack him and repel his invasion. The reversal happens in Dragonfly. Irian gets attacked by one of the Masters while at Roke Knoll — and its magic turns her into her true form, a dragon. Props to whoever picked the cover design, since it references both scenes.

#6 - A Description of Earthsea

I’m not rating this since it’s basically a lore dump. It’s a deep dive into Earthsea’s history, languages, cultures, and other relevant world details. It’s the kind of bonus info a lot of fantasy series tack on as reference material.  According to Le Guin, she wrote this to get some idea of the timeline on each of these stories.

As a series, Earthsea has relatively little worldbuilding exposition. Sometimes characters reference legends or historical events, but usually the reader lacks the context to fully understand them. The focus is more on the lives of the characters and their personal experience of the world. I think something like A Description of Earthsea has benefits and drawbacks for the reader. On one hand it's nice to have some definitive information to tie things together. On the other, this does represent a loss of some of the mystery in the story.

I think this is the first thing in the series that even mentions homosexuality, so props for that I guess?

Closing Thoughts

A short story collection is always going to have high and low points. I tend to look at each story individually and score that way, but an average is always misleading. Diamond and Darkrose dragged the score down since there were only five stories total. But I enjoyed the majority of them. I am interested to see where the human/dragon subplot goes in the final installment; I assume Irian will show up at some point? We’ll see.

[notbecauseofvictories]

Hi Sarah! My friend and I are starting a bookclub (as much as you can with two people who aren't pressed for deadlines) and I was wondering if you have any recommendations? (That is if you have time to rec anything!) We're starting off with Deathless and have Fitzgerald next in line somewhere but I def want to try to expand the genres we read and tbh from years of following you, I trust your judgement

I don’t...like giving recommendations? At least not directly, it seems like too much opportunity for getting it wrong. Everybody has their own tastes, after all, and even the best of friends don’t necessarily vibe with what you vibe with. (I’ve experienced this with multiple friends, so I know what I’m talking about.) Truly, one of the reasons that my whole “I’m going to get back into reading for pleasure!” push has been so successful is that I only bother with books that interest me, and stop reading when they fail to catch my attention.

But I’ve now read at least 60 books in 2020, which is approximately 60 more than I’ve read in the years prior, so I’m happy to share that. Below is my list of recent reads, beginning to end, along with a very short review---I keep this list in the notes app on my phone, so they have to be. Where I’ve talked about a book in a post, I’ve tried to link to it. 

Peruse, and if something catches your interest I hope you enjoy!

2020 Reading List

Crazy Rich Asians series, Kevin Kwan (here)

Blackwater, Michael McDowell (here; pulpy horror and southern gothic in one novel; come for the monster but stay for the family drama.)

Fire and Hemlock, Diane Wynne Jones (here; weird and thoughtful, in ways I’m still thinking about)

The Secret History, Donna Tartt

Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn (here; loved it! I can see why people glommed onto it)

Swamplandia!, Karen Russell (unfinished, I could not get past the first paragraph; just....no.)

Rules of Scoundrels series, Sarah MacLean (an enjoyable romp through classic romancelandia, though if you read through 4 back to back you realize that MacLean really only writes 1 type of relationship and 1 type of sexual encounter, though I do appreciate insisting that the hero go down first.)

The Bear and the Nightingale, Katherine Arden (here)

Dread Nation, Justine Ireland (great, put it with Stealing Thunder in terms of fun YA fantasy that makes everything less white and Eurocentric)

The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson (VERY good. haunting good.)

Tell My Horse, Zora Neale Hurston (I read an interesting critique of Hurston that said she stripped a lot of the radicalism out of black stories - these might be an example, or counterexample. I haven't decided yet.)

The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society, T. Kingfisher (fun!)

St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, Karen Russell (some of these short stories are wonderful; however, Swamplandia's inspiration is still unreadable, which is wild.)

17776, Jon Bois (made me cry. deeply human. A triumph of internet storytelling)

The Girl with All the Gifts, M. R. Carey (deeply enjoyable. the ending is a bittersweet kick in the teeth, and I really enjoyed the adults' relationships)

The Door in the Hedge and Other Stories, Robin McKinley (enjoyable, but never really resolved into anything.)

The Hero and the Crown, Robin McKinley (fun, but feels very early fantasy - or maybe I've just read too many of the subsequent knock-offs.)

Mrs. Caliban, Rachel Ingalls (weird little pulp novel.)

All Systems Red, Martha Wells (enjoyable, but I don't get the hype. won't be looking into the series unless opportunity arises.)

A People's History of Chicago, Kevin Coval (made me cry. bought a copy. am still thinking about it.)

The Sol Majestic, Ferrett Steinmetz (charming, a sf novel mostly about fine dining)

House in the Cerulean Sea, TJ Klune (immensely enjoyable read, for all it feels like fic with the serial numbers filed off)

The Au Pair, Emma Rous (not bad, but felt like it wanted to be more than it is)

The Night Tiger, Yangsze Choo (preferred this to Ghost Bride; I enjoy a well-crafted mystery novel and this delivered)

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula Le Guin (unfinished, I cannot fucking get into Le Guin and should really stop trying)

The Ghost Bride, Yangsze Choo (enjoyable, but not nearly as fun as Ghost Bride - the romance felt very disjointed, and could have used another round of editing)

Temptation's Darling, Johanna Lindsey (pure, unadulterated id in a romance novel, complete with a girl dressing as a boy to avoid detection)

Social Creature, Tara Isabella Burton (a strange, dark psychological portrait; really made a mark even though I can't quite put my finger on why)

The Girl on the Train, Paula Hawkins (slow at first, but picks up halfway through and builds nicely; a whiff of Gone Girl with the staggered perspectives building together)

Stealing Thunder, Alina Boyden (fun Tortall vibes, but set in Mughal India)

The Traitor Baru Cormorant; The Monster Baru Commorant, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson (LOVE this, so much misery, terrible, ecstatic; more here)

This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar, Max Gladstone (epistolary love poetry, vicious and lovely; more here)

The Elementals, Michael McDowell

Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir (didn't like this one as much as I thought I would; narrator's contemporary voice was so jarring against the stylized world and action sequences read like the novelization for a video game; more here)

Finna, Nino Cipri (a fun little romp through interdimensional Ikea, if on the lighter side)

Magic for Liars, Sarah Gailey (engrossing, even if I could see every plot twist coming from a mile away)

Desdemona and the Deep, C. S. E. Cooney (enjoyed the weirdness & the fae bits, but very light fare)

A Blink of the Screen, Terry Pratchett (admittedly just read this for the Discworld bits)

A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine (not as good about politics and colonialism as Baru, but still a powerful book about The Empire, and EXTREMELY cool worldbuilding that manages to be wholly alien and yet never heavily expositional)

Blackfish City, Sam J. Miller (see my post)

Last Werewolf, Glen Duncan (didn't finish, got to to first explicit sex scene and couldn't get any further)

Prosper's Demon, KJ Parker (didn't work for me...felt like a short story that wanted to be fleshed out into a novel)

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

His Majesty's Dragon, Naomi Novik (extremely fun, even for a reader who doesn't much like Napoleonic stories)

Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone (fun romp - hard to believe that this is the same author as Time War though you can see glimmers of it in the imagery here)

A Scot in the Dark, Sarah MacLean (palette cleanser, she does write a good romance novel even it's basically the same romance novel over and over)

The Resurrectionist, E. B. Hudspeth (borrowed it on a whim one night, kept feeling like there was something I was supposed to /get/ about it, but never did - though I liked the Mutter Museum parallels)

Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang (he's a better ideas guy than a writer, though Hell Is The Absence of God made my skin prickle all over)

Gods of Jade and Shadow, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (fun, very much a throwback to my YA days of fairytale retellings, though obviously less European)

Four Roads Cross, Max Gladstone (it turns out I was a LOT more fond of Tara than I initially realized - plus this book had a good Pratchett-esque pacing and reliance on characterization)

Get in Trouble, Kelly Link (reading this after the Chiang was instructive - Link is such a better storyteller, better at prioritizing the human over the concept)

Gods Behaving Badly, Marie Phillips

Soulless; Changeless; Blameless, all by Gail Carriger (this series is basically a romance novel with some fantasy plot thrown in for fun; extremely charming and funny)

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, Marlon James (got about 1/3 of the way through and had to wave the white flag; will try again because I like the plot and the worldbuilding; the tone is just so hard to get through)

Pew, Catherine Lacey (a strange book, I'm still thinking about it; a good Southern book, though)

Nuremberg Diary, GM Gilbert (it took me two months to finish, and was worth it)

River of Teeth, Sarah Gailey (I wanted to like this one a lot more than I actually did; would have made a terrific movie but ultimately was not a great novel. Preferred Magic for Liars.)

Mexican Gothic, Silvia Moreno-Garcia (extremely fun, though more trippy than Gods and the plot didn't work as well for me - though it was very original)

The New Voices of Fantasy, Peter S. Beagle (collected anthology, with some favorites I've read before Ursula Vernon's "Jackalope Wives", "Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers" "The Husband Stitch"; others that were great new finds "Selkie Stories are for Losers" from Sofia Satamar and "A Kiss With Teeth" from Max Gladstone and "The Philosophers" from Adam Ehrlich Sachs)

[solynaceawrites]

Wires [4]: Frustration

Rating: Mature Archive Warnings: Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death Categories: F/F, F/M Fandom: Devil May Cry Relationships: Dante/Original Female Character(s), Implied Nero/Kyrie, Implied Vergil/Original Female Character(s), Implied Lady/Trish, Dante/Lirael Thorne, Dante/Lir Characters: Dante, Morrison, Nero, Original Female Character(s), Lirael Thorne, Lir Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Violence, Gore, Dark, Horror, Supernatural Elements, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Serial Killers, Angst, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut Summary: In Red Grave City, a serial killer stalks the streets. Lirael Thorne, recently transferred from Fortuna and looking for an escape from her past, winds up on his trail. Hunting him with her veteran partner, Dante Redgrave, they try to piece together the wires that bind the three of them together. In a race to catch him before he leaves more victims in his wake, the things thought buried will come to the surface, tearing lives and comfort apart.

»»————-　⚜　————-««

“Death and life are the same thing- like the two sides of my hand, the palm and the back. And still the palm and back are not the same . . . They can neither be separated, nor mixed.” —Ursula K. Le Guin

»»————-　⚜　————-««

Lir takes Simon Marson’s statement with a grain of salt. It’s not that she doesn’t trust him—she doesn’t trust lawyers as a whole, but nothing so far has given her a reason to believe he’d outright lie—just that she’s learned firsthand how memories get clouded and fuzzy, particularly about routines. Sure, their victim worked for him. And, yes, she probably did the exact same thing every day, going to her paid internship at her father’s office Monday through Saturday, taking Sunday off, and spending Friday night bar-hopping with her friends. Yet there’s simply too much Marson was unaware of. The questions of who her friends are, what she did when she wasn’t working, her hobbies, any potential lovers, hell even where she lived, are all ones he provided no answer to or understanding of. To him, Sophie truly existed only in the hours between 8:00 am and 6:30 pm. Which isn’t exactly unusual, but it makes her job of following those leads harder, and she ends their interview feeling more irritated than she had when she started.

Dante, too, must be frustrated, because he says nothing at all to her when he leaves the observation room to join her at their desks, merely clacking angrily on his keyboard as he types his report. Lir does the same, transcribing the interview with Marson and her notes to send to Morrison later. A stiff drink is what she needs, maybe a call to Joan for a bit of relaxation, but she settles for chewing aspirin and drinking the bitter coffee unique to precincts. By the time she’s done recounting the events of the last thirty-six hours, her fingers are stiff and the throbbing in her temples has turned into a fierce clawing that makes her eyes water, and she’s keenly aware of the fact that they’re fast closing in on the forty-eight hour mark and how much more difficult this investigation is going to be beyond it.

“You eaten?” Dante asks. Lir shakes her head, and he picks up his phone, dialing quickly. “Me neither. ‘Bout to keel over, if I’m honest. You good with pizza?”

“Sure. Whatever toppings are fine.”

He flashes her a grin before speaking into the receiver, and Lir uses the time to read back over Trish’s findings. They aren’t pretty. While there were no ligature marks, showing that Sophie was neither restrained nor strangled, there were heavy levels of Rohypnol in her blood, meaning she would have been unable to do anything at all. In fact, Trish notes that the dose probably would have been fatal, given the fact that Sophie was well over the legal limit for intoxication, clocking a BA of 0.16%, putting her at the threshold for alcohol poisoning. Did she normally drink so much? Lir runs her fingers over the paper, frowning slightly as she thinks. Joan hadn’t said much more about Sophie’s habits other than her cocktail of choice, and they hadn’t asked for a receipt, a stupid oversight that needs to be corrected. Because if that much liquor was’t common for Sophie, it means either she was drinking a lot more, which could lead them to recent stresses.

Or that the killer was feeding her margaritas all night to make sure she was too weak to fight him.

“There was no phone recovered from the alley, right?” she asks. Dante gives a grunt as he hangs up the phone, and she leans back, stretching to relieve the tension in her shoulders. “We’ve got to find her friends, talk to them.”

“What about the mother?”

“Gone. Parents divorced when Sophie was . . .” Lir checks her notes. “Six. The original custody agreement was for the mom to have supervised visitation, but she went no contact when Sophie was twelve. The last Marson heard from her, she was living with her new husband in Portland.”

Dante whistles. “No contact? Think Marson was abusing her?”

“Maybe. But why would Sophie hang around, if that was the case? You watch your dad beat on your mom for six years and wind up working for him?”

He grunts and leans back, crossing his arms over his chest and staring thoughtfully at a spot just over her right shoulder. “Abuse doesn’t always make it to the kids,” he says after a moment. “Sure, maybe pops was an asshole, but he was probably smart enough to keep it behind closed doors. Or maybe there wasn’t anything goin’ on other than two people who didn’t want to be together anymore.” He pauses to take a sip of coffee. “Could have been mom, too.”

“Right.” Lir massages her temples, and the pressure there subsides enough that she no longer feels like her eyes are going to burst. A migraine is the last thing she needs right now, but that’s exactly where she’s headed if she doesn’t get some sort of rest soon. “So, we have a victim whose father knows nothing about her personal life, a killer who was smart enough to make sure we couldn’t trace her beyond the bar, and, after nearly forty hours, no real answers.”

“Sounds about right.” Dante’s grin is bitter.

“Fuck.” She drums her fingers on her desk. “Crime scene still roped off?”

“As far as I know. You plannin’ a visit?”

“Yeah. I need to get some air, and I want to take it in now that it’s quiet.” Lir grabs her coat from the back of her chair as she stands, sliding it on before leaning to open her desk and grab her gun and badge. Fastening them to her belt, she mutters, “Maybe something got missed.”

Dante gets up, stretching with a loud yawn. “Alright. I’ll go with you.”

“I don’t need—”

“I’m not babysittin’ you, Lir.” His eyes are somehow both grave and mocking, and she’s not sure which irritates her more. “There’s a killer. None of us should be goin’ out alone, especially with the statistics about who else might show up there to get their jollies.”

That gives her pause. “Right. Okay. You driving?”

He dangles his keys. Lips twitching, she turns and heads down the stairs and out to the lot, listening to the quiet thumping of Dante’s shoes as he follows her. For someone so big, he doesn’t make a lot of noise when he moves, and she wonders idly if it’s a force of habit or just how he is as she slides into the passenger seat of his car and fastens her seatbelt. Like always, he flicks on the radio and finds a classic rock station before starting the drive, and he ignores her popping two aspirin into her mouth and chewing them dry. 

The ride back to the alley passes in the silence between them. Lir looks out of her window, the rain sliding along the glass turning the world outside to a muted painting of blurred shapes and bright flashes of color on an otherwise dreary background, and thinks. Sophie Marsons had gone to the bar, as was her usual weekend habit, and ordered her preferred drink. Had she gone with friends? Had they danced, and laughed, until a stranger stole into their group, with eyes only for Sophie, eyes full of murder that she might have mistaken for desire? Despite what she had said to Dante about their victim being chosen randomly, Lir has little doubt that she knew her killer. Statistics point to it, the inevitable need for the comfort brought by familiarity that a new killer needs to do his work. Statistics, the voice of her old academy instructor rasps in her mind, are statistically incorrect.

If Sophie wasn’t the first, then there’s another victim out there.

Cold, bitter rain lashes her as soon as she steps out of the car. Huffing, watching her breath condense and twist in the air, Lir pulls her hood up around her face and tucks her hands into her pockets, wishing she had a slicker even if the garish yellow color of it would make her stick out like a sore thumb. Dante joins her, grimacing as he sets a black trilby on his head, water dripping from the brim steadily. “Good thing we already got forensics,” he mutters.

“Mm.” Making a non-committal noise in her throat, she ducks under the crime scene tape and walks into the alley, where she stands and takes it in. Without pedestrian and vehicular traffic on the street, it’s unnervingly quiet; is this how it was at four in the morning? Nothing but silence as the dull oppressiveness of the city while Sophie was carved open like livestock? 

Lir is moving towards the dumpster when something rustles behind it. Pausing, she stares at it, her brow pinched and her hand moving slowly to her gun, waiting. Cat, she thinks, or rat. Something digging for scraps now that humanity has gone away. But the silhouette she can just make out on the other side is too large, and, as she watches, a tanned hand grips the edge before a rain-soaked head pokes cautiously around, the eyes that she sees wide enough that the whites are like spotlights. Behind her, she hears Dante hiss, the faint splash of water as he slowly comes up beside her. Looks like he was right. Someone else had shown up, and now all that’s left to do is figure out whether or not they’re the murderer.

“Police,” Dante barks. “Don’t move!”

The man jumps to his feet and takes off, and Lir lets out a string of curses as she darts after him. They always fucking run, guilty or innocent, because seeing a cop always makes them feel like they’ve done something wrong. Bearers of bad news, thugs with guns, she’s heard it all, and she wonders how this guy thinks of the police even as she chases him down the winding alleys of a city she’s already growing to hate. “Thorne!” Dante shouts, his voice dwindling as the distance between them grows. “Goddamnit, Thorne!”

Up ahead, the black coat swirls as the man rushes through the maze. Sometimes all she has is a glimpse of fabric as he turns a corner, others, on the straight, narrow stretches, she can make out more of him, and her mind catalogues these snapshots. Slender build. Dark jeans. Heavy boots. The glint of a ring. A pair of wild eyes peering over his shoulder. Despite knowing she should draw it, Lir leaves her gun holstered. Don’t you ever, her instructor had said gravely, take that thing out unless you intend to shoot, and she’s got no desire to fire a bullet that would at best embed itself harmlessly into a wall and at worst ricochet and cause more damage.

Her hood falls back, rain plastering her hair to face and neck. In her chest, her heart is a drum, and her blood roars in her ears, equaled only by the low whistle of her breathing as she tries to control it to fight off fatigue. Keep moving, she tells her legs, don’t fucking stop until you know who he is.

At her hip, her radio crackles, only to be ignored. Right now, it is only her and her prey, locked in the chase until one of them is forced to stop. Guilty people run, sure. So do frightened ones. Which is he? Killer or morbid onlooker, dangerous or afraid? 

Lir never gets the chance to find out. They burst into a side-street, the cars around them blaring horns of fear and anger at this sudden intrusion, and a hand clamps onto her shoulder and yanks her back as a truck passes through the space she’d been about to step into. By the time it and its trailer clear out, the man is gone, and a scream bubbles in her throat that she fights to swallow. She knows who grabbed her—the scent of Dante’s cologne, muted by the rain, wafts into her nose, accompanied by the spiced, salty blend of sweat and deodorant—and she allows him to lead her back to the sidewalk, where she doubles over with her hands on her thighs and struggles to slow her breathing from the harsh, jagged pants to something close to normal. At this angle, she can make out the way water has turned the leather of his shoes a dull brown. Never gonna look nice again, she thinks, and closes her eyes against the swell of nausea that comes from exertion on an empty stomach.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Dante growls, his voice rasping and hoarse from chasing her. “You ever stop to think for a damned second that we’d need backup? Or that chasing that idiot could have gotten you killed?”

The scolding makes her angry all over again. “I’m sorry,” she snaps, straightening to glare at him. “Should I have let our only lead so far go?”

“If it meant surviving? Yeah, you should’ve. Or were you hoping to wind up like Marsons?” His eyes are cold with fury, his cheeks flushed with it. “I told you, I fucking told you—”

Lir’s phone rings, cutting off whatever tirade he’d been heading towards. Scowling, she answers it. “Thorne.”

“You with Redgrave?” Morrison asks, crackling with static. 

“Yeah.” Dante makes an impatient motion with his hand, and she holds up a finger in the standard request for a minute of silence.

“Get your asses over to Tellula Park. He’ll know where it is.”

There’s something so foreboding about Morrison’s tone that Lir knows the answer to her question before she even asks it. “What’s there?”

Morrison sighs. “Another body. Looks like our killer didn’t want to wait for us to catch him.”

“We’ll be there.” She hangs up, then looks at Dante, frustration and defeat welling within her to make her voice curiously flat. “There’s another victim in Tellula Park.”

Dante curses. “Our guy?”

“Morrison said it was,” she replies.

He glances around, studying the street sign at the intersection. “C’mon. Car’s about two blocks away. We’ll have to book it if we don’t want Morrison to rip us new assholes for taking our sweet time.”

Lir nods. Dante turns and starts down the sidewalk, and she follows, craving a drink and a good night’s rest and maybe a bit of company, angry to have wasted time on some idiot onlooker when the killer was busy leaving them another corpse, another family to notify, another twisted web. I didn’t know, she thinks, and that just makes her feel worse. Tunnel vision, that’s what she had fallen into, too focused on what was in front of her nose to take a second to really contemplate if a killer who took such care not to be noticed would have been so stupid as to come back to the scene of his crime in the middle of the day with cops still around. 

They’re sweating and miserably damp by the time they reach the car. Dante pulls towels from the backseat for them to sit on—something her father had done, to keep water from damaging the seats—and turns on the heater to fight some of the chill. It’s only once they’re on their way to the new scene that he says anything at all. “It wasn’t your fault.”

Lir’s head snaps towards him at both the words and the sympathy within them. Not that it’s unusual for cops to know how their partner feels, but usually that takes years of working together, not days, so either he’s particularly good and reading the people around him or he’s projecting. “What?”

“The new victim,” he explains. “Wasn’t anything you could have done. We had and have nothing to go on, and you chasin’ that guy didn’t get this one killed. Or,” his mouth twitches, “do you think you’re better than every other cop on the force?”

“Of course not,” she protests hotly. “I just . . .”

Dante cracks the window and lights a cigarette that he pulls from the pack in his door. “Look,” he says, exhaling smoke, “I get it. You’re new, gotta prove yourself, and this guy is a pain in the ass. But you ain’t got any control over him, or what he does. Only thing you can do is learn, be better, so you can catch him.”

It’s spoken in the same tone he might have used to console a weeping toddler, and she bristles. “You don’t know me.”

“No, but I read your file.” He glances at her as he tosses the cigarette, still half-lit, out of the window. “You know what was top and center on the behavior section? Empathetic. You feel things, Thorne, feel ‘em deep, maybe, and that’s great for gettin’ inside the head of whoever’s doin’ this, but it means he can get inside your head, too, if you let him.”

She sinks into her seat, thinking of her dream, and gooseflesh breaks out across her arms despite the warm air blowing from the vents. “So what’s your drive, then? Fame? Promotions?”

Dante snorts. “Nah. Just don’t like bastards who hurt women, that’s all.” He pauses, then exhales slowly. “Look. I’m not gonna rat you out to Morrison. You made a decision that anyone else would’ve made. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t a fucking stupid decision, but . . . It stays between us. Right?”

There’s a rush of gratitude that she hates feeling. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Okay,” he agrees amicably.

[e-louise-bates]

“Every utopia since Utopia has also been, clearly or obscurely, actually or possibly, in the author's or in the readers' judgment, both a good place and a bad one. Every eutopia contains a dystopia, every dystopia contains a eutopia.” 

-Ursula K Le Guin, No Time to Spare

I’ve been feeling disheartened over the tone of Star Trek: Picard as it has been presented thus far (disclaimer: I haven’t watched any of the episodes yet, but I’ve been reading recaps on a few different sites, and that combined with Sir Patrick Stewart’s own claims about the nature of the show have given me a fairly reasonable feel for the tone). I’ve also not been impressed with the tone of Discovery (which I have watched, so I can speak a little more confidently there). The sense of darkness, of emptiness, of--dare I say--hopelessness (though I’m still trusting that changes for Picard by the end, though not soon enough to convince me to watch, despite--or perhaps because of--my love for Seven and the Voyager crew. I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in a future where Icheb is tortured and Seven is forced to kill her adopted son out of mercy and apparently Janeway is doing nothing because Kate Mulgrew isn’t a guest star on this show) in the future, of a universe where humanity turns out to be ultimately self-serving and small-minded, is not an attitude I look for from Star Trek, of all places.

So when I came across this Le Guin quote in No Time to Spare, I took comfort in the idea. This grim, glum, joyless, empty version of Star Trek is the inevitable backlash to the utopia the Federation was presented as in the earlier shows, something flirted with in DS9 and Insurrection but never seriously challenged. For every eutopia there is a dystopia, and the shows now are simply exploring that aspect.

(It’s also the inevitable outcome of a utopia based on humanism--to quote Dorothy L Sayers:

“The delusion of the mechanical perfectibility of mankind through a combined process of scientific knowledge and unconscious evolution has been responsible for a great deal of heartbreak. It is, at bottom, far more pessimistic than Christian pessimism, because, if science and progress break down, there is nothing to fall back upon. Humanism is self-contained - it provides for man no resource outside himself.” -Dorothy L Sayers, Creed or Chaos?

I think the pessimism we are seeing in the world today as to the state of social affairs and the lack of justice, truth, and love in the world, especially in the realm of politics, is exactly what Sayers was speaking of, and since Star Trek did envision the utopic Federation as the result of a world without religion, an entirely humanistic utopian, perhaps this was what it was headed for all along.)

So I can understand why the choices have been made to present ST in this way, and it is, perhaps, more realistic than a still-hopeful ST, still believing in the power of humanity to achieve perfection through science and progress. My heart is eased by coming to this place of acceptance.

But because I DO believe in hope, in truth, in justice, and in love, you better believe that I am also busily constructing a head canon where Janeway has been spending the last fourteen years working to fix where the Federation has gone wrong, and finally now realizes that it never was what she believed it to be, that the principles she held so strongly to in the Delta Quadrant were her own, not the Federation’s, and so she gathers all the Voyager crew who wants to leave, along with their families, and calls in all the favors she is owed by Q (senior and junior) to transport them lock, stock, and barrel back to the Delta Quadrant where they can build a new coalition of planets and start fresh. And oh yes, Q Jr. goes back in time and saves Icheb.

There’s a lot to ponder here, the nature of eutopias and the belief system of humanism, and what happens when they break down, especially compared to the eucatastrophic nature of Tolkien’s “long defeat.” On the one hand, the latter would seem more pessimistic, and yet in the end it is more hopeful than the rosiest vision of the future as presented by humanism. I haven’t worked through all the implications yet, and I’ve strayed rather far from my original thoughts based on the Le Guin quote, and used far more parentheses than is reasonable, but there you are.

[risingfire17-the-weeb-trash]

The Ones Who Walk Away- Ch 4- Homework

Seven’s point of view. Seven helps Yoosung with his homework, and ends up revealing a side of himself he never planned to! They reference a short story called “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin, a story about a “perfect” society where the happiness of everyone depends on the absolute misery of one child, who is locked away. The others all know about it, and have to choose: save the child or save their own happiness. Most choose their happiness. A few choose to leave for the scary unknown world beyond Omelas. No one tries to rescue the child. Seven sees himself and his brother in this child, and he’s certain his story cannot be rewritten. Will Yoosung help him rewrite the story, or will he become trapped in a fate of his own? That’s going to be the central question of this fic.

              He was not sneaky at all, so I had plenty of time to hide the computer screens before he opened the door. I still mentally cursed having to work with an outsider around. Talk about security breach risk!

                 “Ever hear of knocking?”

                 “It’s not your office.”

                 “Not yours either.” Not wanting to look at the kid’s crestfallen face for too long, I asked, “What’s up?”

                 He held up an envelope. “It’s your payment. Rika left it with me.” Payment? More like my next instructions. My payment was, and always will be, his safety. Not that the kid needed to know that.

                 “Just leave it by the door. I’ll grab it on my way out.”

                 I expected him to leave. What I didn’t expect was for him to linger in the doorway, twiddling his thumbs and looking at the floor. I just couldn’t catch a break. “What is it?”

                 “Well…I was wondering if you could help me.” He pulled what looked like a schoolbook out of his pocket. “I have to read this for English class, but there’s this word I don’t understand, and the back part of my English-Korean dictionary got ruined a while back, and you said you were a genius so I thought maybe you’d know English…” Kid’s face was red. Like red. He would not look me in the eyes. It was honestly adorable, in such an infuriating way! Couldn’t he just leave him alone?

                 “You ever think of just looking it up on your phone?”

                 “I tried, but I can’t get internet for some reason.” Oh. That made sense. With the work I was doing, it was no surprise other devices in the house might have an unstable connection. And damn, he looked so pitiful. All over one homework assignment. What a life, huh?

                 “Oh, hell, you’re just lucky I have some updates to wait on before I can continue this.” That was true. Not that I needed to admit that to him. What the hell was I doing? “Lemme see.”

                 I cannot remember the last time I saw a smile as bright as his as he rushed toward me. Yeah, no way he was getting that close to the computers. Instead I guided him toward the couch. “Yeah, yeah, quit groveling and let me see the word. Oh, that’s pronounced yoo-tow-pee-uh. It’s like…a perfect place, where no one suffers, like a paradise.” I had a whole history lesson, complete with commentary, on the idea of utopia, but that was probably a bit more information than he needed for his homework.

                 “Oh thank you! That word was all over the review questions and I couldn’t figure it out! English is hard!” So this is how normal kids learn, huh? I wouldn’t know. I’d learned three languages in two years, and had started two more. The agency needed me to learn a lot of languages so I could hack into international databases. And the agency had a way of making sure their agents understood the importance of learning quickly.

                 Luckily for me, I absorbed knowledge like a sponge. Both useful things like languages and codes, and useless things like the rise and inevitable fall of “Utopian” societies.

                  Unfortunately for me, I sometimes lacked the ability to keep my damn mouth shut. Like now. “So, what’re you reading?”

                  “Oh, uh, it’s called ‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.’ It’s American.” Well, now that he’d gone and mentioned one of my favorite foreign short stories, I would certainly have a hard time keeping my mouth shut!

                  “Ah! I can see why you’d need the word ‘utopia,’ then! Omelas is definitely utopia; it’s clean and bright and everyone is happy, and they get to have festivals all the time! It’s perfect, right?”

                 “I guess, but what about the kid who has to suffer for all that to exist? And everyone just lets it happen! Even the ones who say they care just leave instead of trying to stop it! Isn’t it horrible?” His lip was quivering. Damn, normal people had such weak stomachs. Couldn’t face the truth.

                  I didn’t bother to ask him what he would do if he was a resident of Omelas. I knew what he would say, that he would pull some heroic bullshit and rescue the kid, to hell with the fabric of their society. I also knew what he would actually do, had he been raised there. He’d be a good boy and do what his elders told him. He would cry a bit and then forget the manner entirely to protect his own sanity. He was only human, after all, and there was only so much that normal humans untouched by darkness could understand.

                   But something in me raged when I thought about good boy Yoosung Kim turning a blind eye to the suffering of children like that one, like me, like…him. Children of darkness. My stomach started to twist. All I wanted was for this boy to stay innocent and away from the darkness, so why now did I feel a burning desire to force him to see its ugly face?

                  “Hey. What would you do if you were the kid?” I leaned in, eager to see what answer he could come up with. When he could give nothing but incoherent stuttering, the dark urge that had suddenly took over me flared up even more.

                   “Aw, c’mon, think about it! You’re locked up, living in filth and darkness, fed just enough rotten scraps to keep you alive, and everyone who knows about you looks the other way, afraid your suffering is a disease they can catch! Heh. You’re a disease they can catch. Every time someone sees you, you hope they’ll be the one to make it stop, but every time your hope is crushed!”

                    “What would you do if everyone around you was a terrible person that pushed you into darkness?” I held my breath waiting for his answer.

                    “Well, I think I’d…I don’t know, try to talk to them? They’re not cruel, they’re just…scared. But if I could promise them I’d look out for them if they look out for me, then they wouldn’t have to be afraid, even if the world did change.” Huh. They were scared, huh? Should’ve tried to comfort them, huh? As they tried to kill me. Pathetic. What did I expect, though? It’s not like the kid’s logic could ever work in my world. There, kids like him got erased.

                    “And who teaches you to be nice? In fact, who teaches you to talk at all? No one talks to you, down there in the darkness. If you’re going to teach them to be nice to you, you’ve got to learn to be nice first, right? How do you learn to be nice if you’re never shown niceness?” That’s right. No one had taught met to be nice. That’s why I couldn’t be nice to him. He should stay away.

                    He was trembling under my gaze now, and his eyes were filled with tears. I wondered how long it had been since I had last worn such an expression. Years, at least. Of course, back then, I had actually lived in darkness. This kid was about to break just hearing about it.

                    “Wh-what would you do?”

                    “Me?” Wrong question to ask, cutie pie. “I’d become just as evil as my tormentors. No. Not just as evil. More evil. I would watch everything they do and learn to do it far better than they ever could. That’s the only way to take care of yourself in a world like that. Don’t you think?”

                    His head hung. “I…I couldn’t.”

                   “Even if everyone let you suffer? Even if no one cared?” He nodded. I was getting angry now. Stop acting like this, kid! Stop saying it’s okay for others to hurt you! Stop being a good boy! Stop acting like him!

                  He looked into my eyes, and I realized a few things: first, that I had gone way too far. And second, that I had stopped the strict monitoring I always had of my facial expressions. This kid just saw beneath a mask that has fooled criminal masterminds. Why had I let him?

                 Was it because he reminded me of him?

                 Before I could turn the whole thing into a sick joke, the boy collapsed in my arms, tears dampening my shirt. All my training and I had no idea how to confront this. The sweet boy that should be protected had fallen apart by my own hand, yet he was still hanging onto me. Why?

                 He pushed himself up just enough to look at me with his teary eyes. He was way too close, but I’d forgotten how to move. Through his tears, he asked me in a quivering voice, “is that what you did?”

                 My heart stopped.

                 He saw me.

                 He fucking saw me.

                 Is that what he would ask if he could see me now?

                 His once perfectly groomed brown hair had started to fall into his face. I reached down and tucked them back. It was all I could do, because I could not yet speak, or even move away. He was so close. His shaky breath on my face was my only air as I drowned in a sea of his violet tears.

                Is this what I would do if he confronted me?

               No. I couldn’t compare this guy to my brother anymore. Not when he made my breath quicken like this. Not when he made my blood boil like this. Not when I wanted, so terribly…

              …to kiss him.

              He’d stopped crying. He was staring up at me, waiting for me to make my move. His eyes were so trusting, like he would accept whatever I did. God, how could I have ever wanted to hurt him? How could I want to do anything but protect him?

             I was still moving closer, and he was still letting me….

             And then there was screeching. What? Oh, right. My computer. The updates were done. That’s right. Rika’s computer. I had a job to do. A dirty job. One that should be kept as far away from innocent guys like Yoosung Kim as humanly possible.

               Oh God, what the hell had I just done? Shit, damage control, damage control….

                And then my jokester face was back on, my mask once again hiding everything. And with that, my feelings retreated back to whatever realm of hell they had escaped from. I was calm.

                “And that’s our English lesson for today! Now run along, kiddo, I’ve got work to do!” I hightailed it out of his face and plopped back down at the desk, my back to him. Poor kid. He was probably so confused. Better that than anything else, though.

                “You didn’t answer me. Did you become…evil…to escape evil?” His voice was a terrified whisper. No. We weren’t going there. I was not going to traumatize this poor child anymore.

                 “Ehhh? C’mon, man, we were just having a hypothetical discussion about utopia! Isn’t that what your teacher wanted? I read those review questions, you know!” Goofy smile, remember to crinkle the eyes. Singsong voice. Dramatic arm flourishes. Perfect.

                 “It seemed…a bit more….” Nope. It wasn’t. It can’t be.

                 “Listen kid, you asked for help on your homework. I delivered. That’s all. Sorry if you can’t tell the difference between that and some sort of…I dunno, bonding experience with some guy you just met.” Poor guy would probably take that to heart and beat himself up for it, but it was better this way. He’d hurt far more if he tried to get close to me.

                 “Oh. I see. Um, thanks. And…I’m sorry for making it weird.” And then he ran from the room, leaving me to finish my work in peace. Thank goodness it was so easy to lose myself in. See, this kind of work is just a series of puzzles, and puzzles follow certain rules. I know all the rules, so no puzzle could keep me stumped for long. But when there’s a good puzzle in front of me, like the one on this computer, I could dedicate myself, body and soul, to the pursuit of victory. And drown out everything else for a while. Like people.

                 People followed rules too, but there was a lot more variance to account for with people. It’s funny, my safety depends on reducing people to a set of predictable variables, but if I’m honest with myself, a lot of my “predicting” people is educated guesswork, prayer, and waiting for my inevitable failure, and with it, my demise.

                 When I finished, I put everything back in place like I’d never been here. I picked up the envelope on my way out of the room. Usually I waited until I was home to read these assignments, but annoying thoughts of Yoosung Kim were wandering into my mind, and I really needed my next puzzle to drown those out. I was almost out the back door when I read the contents of the envelope, just one simple sentence, in Rika’s handwriting:

                “Keep an eye on him.”

                 I froze. “Keep an eye” on whom? Surely, she couldn’t mean…

                 But this job hadn’t involved anyone else for me to “keep an eye on.” And that would explain why she had suddenly left him here with me. But why now? Hadn’t she kept him away from scum like me all these years? Why was she changing all that? What the hell was she playing at?

                 And if she had chosen to get him involved, what did she plan to do with him?

                 But I didn’t have the luxury of thinking like that. This was a job. And that job kept my brother safe. I would just have to suck up whatever strange feelings this boy had dragged out of me and do it. I turned away from the back door. I’d go out the front, past that table where I knew he was. Studying like a good boy.

                 His eyes darted up when he saw me. They followed me as I walked into the room and stood over him. They widened as I made an offer he wouldn’t refuse.

                 “I’ll tell you my name.”

                 “R-really?” Immediately his face lit up, as if I hadn’t terrified him a short while ago.

                 “Yeah. Consider it a peace offering. I can take my jokes too far sometimes, and I’m sorry.”

                 “Oh, um, I forgive you!” A terrible idea, really.

                 “I’d…like to forget it and start over. So hear me out. I’ll tell you my name, if you promise never to mention that sick little joke of mine again.” I gave him my brightest smile and held out my hand for him to shake. “What do you say?”

                 “I, yes! Deal!” He took my hand eagerly, as I figured he would. I gripped his hand so he could not pull away, and before he could protest, I knelt down to whisper in his ear:

                 “My name is Luciel. I’ll see you around, Yoosung.”

[lgcyiseul]

the dispossessed

                                  “if you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that                                   it’s always beautiful. planets, lives... but close up, a                                   world’s all dirt and rocks. and day to day, life’s a hard                                   job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. you need                                   distance, interval. the way to see how beautiful the earth                                   is, is to see it as the moon. the way to see how beautiful                                   life is, from the vantage point of death.”                                                                                                           u. k. le guin

july 12 / you’re called to hyuncheol’s office before your first lesson of the day. you find him behind his desk with an unreadable expression. he looks neither delighted or angry, which is never a good sign. “sit.” his voice cuts like a knife. you do as told and take the seat in front of him. “when i got a report about your filming of date lottery i could not believe what i was told. the part about you having a bad attitude, i already know. you’ve shown very little growth on that aspect since you joined. i didn’t think you were absolutely thoughtless, though. that came as a surprise to me. i thought you at least had enough decency and dignity to keep your horrendous personality to yourself. or maybe i had faith that you would realize your faults by yourself and change. are you a hopeless case, taesung? is that what you are?”

he crosses his arms and stares at you. he’s remained calm until now, but his body looks tense, like he’s repressing his anger. “you think this show is meant to be your own tinder date that you give yourself the right to treat your partner so poorly? you’re supposed to be respectful at all times, it doesn’t matter if you think the cameras are filming or not. you think the crew doesn’t keep a close eye on you and would let you wander off as you want, and say whatever the heck it is that you want? i’m really starting to regret us believing in your potential. you got a good role in cram school and your attitude doesn’t reflect that you deserve it at all. we’re not just looking for talent, taesung. we want artists that have good character and you really lack in that department. it seems as if you doesn’t care at all, or you never in a million years would have behaved the way you did during date lottery. this is a professional environment. the way you treated her was unacceptable. you not only made her cry but you insulted her more than once. you thought that what, we wouldn’t find out? we wouldn’t care? we would let it slide, maybe?” hyuncheol is now fuming.

“you will be strongly punished this time, taesung. we want you to understand that we can’t debut someone with such poor judgement and character. unless you undergo some serious changes, you’re in trouble. you will be banned from participating in date lottery for this season at least, as well as the new babysitting show. we can’t trust you with them at this point in time. same goes for your vlive show. i feel bad for the guests that were already supposed to be on, but we can’t allow you to host a vlive show after the behavior you displayed. and just so i’m sure you take this period to reflect, you’ll also have mandatory counseling sessions every sunday morning for the next three months at least. in the afternoon, you’ll sit right here in my office and do nothing. no phone, no distractions. you’ll have plenty of time to think about your actions and how you will write your apology letter to han allie. you might think i’m enjoying this, but i’m not. you might think this is unfair or disproportionate, but that’s exactly the reason why you need this punishment. just so you know, i don’t hold grudges. if you show me you’re willing to grow and learn, we can both move forward. now i’m ready to dismiss you, i’ll see you sunday.” he leans back in his chair and waits. “if you wanna say something, it’s now or never. i’m listening.”

he’s pissed. god, he’s so fucking pissed.

it’s a subdued kind of rage—one that bites into his skin, slashes at his muscles. leaves his jaw clenched, his facial expression frozen—nails dig so deep into the arms of his chairs that, he swears, he’s close to drawing blood. he can feel his body shaking, literally, from extinguishing his anger, embers of sheer hatred bubbling deep in the pit of his stomach. they say a child who’s not embraced by a village will burn it down to feel its warmth, and inside taesung resides a certain kind of fury—one that threatens to set everything around him ablaze, even if he himself will get engulfed by the flames.

he’d do anything to shove this stupid, goddamn lecture up hyuncheol’s own fucking—

but taesung knows better, despite how much others would argue otherwise, and decides against talking back, rolling his eyes—he’s a man of survival, after all, not social suicide.

and when hyuncheol asks, he has to hold himself back with a literal bite on his tongue, without a care if the other notices or not. in fact, the whole situation makes him want to scoff or, better, laugh, for taesung knows the tactics—this whole ‘intimidation’ technique to arbitrarily draw lines between ‘good’ and ‘bad’. it’s pathetic and, honestly, a load of bullshit—how dare he, how dare they, characterize him as some caricature villain in their own self-prescribed fiction for a story. don’t they see how hypocritical it is?—he doesn’t make the rules, so why the hell is he the only one getting punished for playing the game?

silence is seen as resistance, so taesung finally speaks when he’s calmed himself down enough to not immediately lunge for hyuncheol’s throat. “i don’t have anything to say. i apologize for my abhorrent behavior, and i thank you for giving me another chance. i’ll see you on sunday, sir.”

asshole.

out of character / as you can see, taesung has been punished following his behavior during the filming of date lottery. if you do not receive any other prompt or update about these before the start of the next trimester (october 4), you can consider that his punishment will be over.

he keeps his cram school role since filming has already started. 

his vlive show is canceled for this trimester, kept in waiting list for next trimester. he also can’t be a guest on other shows for this trimester.

he can’t participate in date lottery or babysitting services this trimester, or any other vlive show.

he can participate in side events or the appropriate monthly schedule, but keep in mind that he will be under close supervision.

he can’t post on sns for the month of july (if by then his july post has already been posted, he will miss august instead).

he gets mandatory counseling with a professional on sunday mornings for at least 3 months. 

he will also spend sunday afternoons in hyuncheol’s office for 1 month, to reflect and write a letter of apology to han allie (if you wish to have him write it, submit it to this blog and it will then be sent to allie after review). 

if you have any questions, feel free to ask!

[brittanyyoungblog]

100+ Love Quotes for Him to Let Him Know You Care

No matter how old your relationship is it can always benefit from some simple words of affirmation. But while feelings come naturally, it’s not always the case for words. If you’re having trouble finding the words to express how you feel to your man, don’t worry—we found them for you.

Here are some of our favorite love quotes for him to let the man in your life know how important he is to you.

1. “My heart is and always will be yours.”–Jane Austen

2. “If I had to choose between breathing and loving you I would use my last breath to tell you I love you.”–DeAnna Anderson

3. “The scariest thing about distance is you don’t know if they’ll miss you or forget about you.”–Nicholas Sparks

4. “I would rather spend one lifetime with you, than face all the ages of this world alone.”–J.R.R. Tolkien

5. “I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, bet`ween the shadow and the soul.”–Pablo Neruda

6. “Promise me you’ll never forget me because if I thought you would, I’d never leave.”–A.A. Milne

7. “Morning without you is a dwindled dawn.”–Emily Dickinson

8. “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” –Friedrich Nietzsche

9. “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”–Khalil Gibran

10. “All love shifts and changes. I don’t know if you can be wholeheartedly in love all the time.”– Julie Andrews

11. “Love is energy of life.”–Robert Browning

12. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.”–James A. Baldwin

13. “Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.”–Samuel Johnson

14. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”–Robert Frost

15. “If you wish to be loved, show more of your faults than your virtues.”–Edward G. Bulwer–Lytton

16. “Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.”–John Lennon

17. “The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.”–Hans Urs von Balthasar

18. “Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.”–Truman Capote

19. “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.”–Zora Neale Hurston

20. “We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”–Orson Welles

21. “The greatest healing therapy is friendship and love.”–Hubert H. Humphrey

22. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”–William Shakespeare

23. “Nobody can predict the future. You just have to give your all to the relationship you’re in and do your best to take care of your partner, communicate and give them every last drop of love you have. I think one of the most important things in a relationship is caring for your significant other through good times and bad.”–Nick Cannon

24. “A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”– Mignon McLaughlin

25. “One is loved because one is loved. No reason is needed for loving.”–Paulo Coelho

26. “Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.”–Helen Keller

27. “Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone–we find it with another.”–Thomas Merton

28. “Unconditional love really exists in each of us. It is part of our deep inner being. It is not so much an active emotion as a state of being. It’s not ‘I love you’ for this or that reason, not ‘I love you if you love me.’ It’s love for no reason, love without an object.”–Ram Dass

29. “The heart asks, and love answers”–Amelius

30. “True love is selfless. It is prepared to sacrifice.”–Sadhu Vaswani

31. “The garden of love is green without limit and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy. Love is beyond either condition: without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.”–Rumi

32. “We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”–Tom Robbins

33. “Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.”–Mother Teresa

34. “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”–Alfred Lord Tennyson

35. “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”–Oscar Wilde

36. “Life is a game and true love is a trophy.”–Rufus Wainwright

37. “Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” –Ann Landers

38. “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.”–Marc Anthony

39. “Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.”–Ariana Grande

40. “Love is flower like; Friendship is like a sheltering tree.”–Samuel Taylor Coleridge

41. “I believe in true love, and I believe in happy endings.”–Christie Brinkley

42. “Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes.”–Friedrich Nietzsche

43. “No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.”–George Chakiris

44. “:True love doesn’t come to you it has to be inside you.”–Julia Roberts

45. “Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear.”–Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

46. “Love planted a rose, and the world turned sweet.”–Katharine Lee Bates

47. “True love cannot be found where it does not exist, nor can it be denied where it does.”– Torquato Tasso

48. “Love consists in giving without getting in return; in giving what is not owed, what is not due the other. That’s why true love is never based, as associations for utility or pleasure are, on a fair exchange.”–Mortimer Adler

49. “Love does not claim possession, but gives freedom.”–Rabindranath Tagore

50. “I love you more than my own skin.”–Frida Kahlo

51. “What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it.”–Juliette Binoche

52. “True love bears all, endures all and triumphs.”–Dada Vaswani

53. “True love is no game of the faint–hearted and the weak. It is born of strength and understanding.”–Meher Baba

54. “Two things you will never have to chase: true friends & true love.”–Mandy Hale

55. “In love there are two things—bodies and words.”–Joyce Carol Oates

56. “Only true love can fuel the hard work that awaits you.”–Tom Freston

57. “True love that lasts forever yes, I do believe in it. My parents have been married for 40 years and my grandparents were married for 70 years. I come from a long line of true loves.”–Zooey Deschanel

58. “Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.”–Bertrand Russell

59. “We loved with a love that was more than love.”–Edgar Allan Poe

60. “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”–Antoine de Saint–Exupery

61. “We are most alive when we’re in love.”–John Updike

62. “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new.”–Ursula K. Le Guin

63. “Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.”–Plato

64. “Love has no age, no limit; and no death.”–John Galsworthy

65. “True love–that is, deep, abiding love that is impervious to emotional whims or fancy–is a choice. It’s a constant commitment to a person regardless of the present circumstances.”–Mark Manson

66. “True love bears all, endures all and triumphs!”–Dada Vaswani

67. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.”–Henry David Thoreau

68. “Love in its essence is spiritual fire.”–Lucius Annaeus Seneca

69. “Love cures people–both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”–Karl A. Menninger

70. “Love is the power to see similarity in the dissimilar.”–Theodor Adorno

71. “Love is space and time measured by the heart.”–Marcel Proust

72. “If it is your time, love will track you down like a cruise missile.”–Lynda Barry

73. “The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”–Tom Robbins

74. “True love, especially first love, can be so tumultuous and passionate that it feels like a violent journey.” –Holliday Grainger

75. “The romantic love we feel toward the opposite sex is probably one extra help from God to bring you together, but that’s it. All the rest of it, the true love, is the test.” –Joan Chen

76. “It is only with true love and compassion that we can begin to mend what is broken in the world. It is these two blessed things that can begin to heal all broken hearts.” –Steve Maraboli

77. “True love is quiescent, except in the nascent moments of true humility.” –Bryant H. McGill

78. “Love is love’s reward.”–John Dryden

79. “Love is metaphysical gravity.”–R. Buckminster Fuller

80. “I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.”– Marilyn Monroe

81. “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” –Erich Segal

82. “Love is my religion–I could die for it.”– John Keats

83. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mind are the same.” –Emily Brontë

84. “Love is a better teacher than duty.” – Albert Einstein

85. “Love can be unselfish, in the sense of being benevolent and generous, without being selfless.”– Mortimer Adler

86. “Love is a canvas furnished by nature and embroidered by imagination.” – Voltaire

87.  “Love, having no geography, knows no boundaries.” – Truman Capote

88.  “Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live.” – Tom Wolfe

89. “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.”–Lao Tzu

90. “Love has no errors, for all errors are the want for love.”– William Law

91. “Being in love is the only transcendent experience.”–Armistead Maupin

92. “Choose your love, Love your choice.”–Thomas S. Monson

93. “They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There’s got to be someone for me. It’s not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone.” –Henry Rollins

94. “So you do believe in true love? she whispered. I took a deep breath, I think I have to, I said, blinking back tears. Without it, we’re all going nowhere.” –Juliet Marillier

95. “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”–Robert Frost

96. “Love is the attempt to form a friendship inspired by beauty.”–Marcus Tullius Cicero

97. “Love is a game that two can play and both win.”–Eva Gabor

98. “There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving–by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done.”–Aldous Huxley

99. “You have half our gifts. I the other. Together we make a whole. Together we are much more powerful.”–Joss Stirling

100. “Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep–burning and unquenchable.”–Bruce Lee

101. “Love is but the discovery of ourselves in another, and the delight in the recognition.”– Alexander Smith

102. “I can’t promise you forever, because that’s not long enough.”–Jason Dorsey

103. “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.”–Robert Munsch

The post 100+ Love Quotes for Him to Let Him Know You Care appeared first on The Date Mix.

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[perfectlinnamonroll]

Just Between Us [Lin-Manuel x Reader]

Summary: Your friend has a brilliant idea how to fix your lack of date to the upcoming wedding.

Word count: 3184 (whaaat?!)

Warnings: cursing, some pretty harsh words directed at the reader, huge amounts of fluff

Author’s notes: Okay, so this my first imagine ever. And first fic in a long, long time. This idea just wouldn’t leave me alone, so I had to get it out. Shoutout to @fragmentofmymind for inspiring me to do this and proofreading the first half. I hope you guys enjoy it!! Just a warning - I’m not a native English speaker, so this might be a little awkward in some places. Sorry!

“Oh God”, you murmured, massaging your temples furiously. This was not happening. How the hell had you gotten yourself into this mess?

Oh, right. It was your goddamn cousin’s fault. As usual.

“Don’t worry”, Alice massaged your shoulder in a way that was probably supposed to be comforting. Right now it only added to your overall tension. “Just ask a friend or something. It’s not a big deal, is it?”

“Except I literally have no one to ask. Besides,” you added, flopping onto the bed dramatically, “who in the right mind would agree to go to a wedding with me?”

“Well, it’s free food.”

“You’re a real friend, Al.”

“You know you can count on me.”

You’d called Alice in for a brainstorming session, since the wedding was taking place in a week and you still haven’t solved the big pressing problem: your datelessness.

Usually it wouldn’t matter; you were used to going to parties alone. So far in your life you’ve been in three relationships – none of which lasted longer than two months. Your talent at attracting fuckboys and assholes was uncanny, to say the least. The point was, you could easily just attend the wedding by yourself.

Unfortunately, this was not an option, thanks to your jerk cousin, Corwin. He was two years younger than you and never had any trouble getting a date. His list of ex-lovers was probably even longer than the one in that Taylor Swift song. And, obviously, he had to be there when you were getting invited to the wedding, and had to make a sardonic remark about how there was no point in giving you a “plus one” invitation since you were sure to show up alone.

So, naturally, you decided to show him that he can go fuck himself and made a promise to yourself that no matter what, you were going to that wedding with a date.

Which brought you right to this moment: a week before the party, still very much single.

Right as you were about to say you should probably give up, Alice suddenly perked up and threw herself to the desk, opening your laptop.

“Wha-“

“Shh! I just had a brilliant idea. There’s this guy that-“

“Alice”, you whined. “We’ve talked about this, I’m not taking a random person-“

“Will you listen to me? Sophie met this great guy when she was working in that recording studio, and they’re still in contact. Claims that she’d throw herself at him if she was into men at all, which you know is the highest compliment any male can hope to receive. And I’ve actually met him once, he’s cute and seems nice, so what do you have to lose?”

“So you’re suggesting I ask this dude, who has no idea I exist, to go to a goddamn wedding with me and survive my family for several hours? With the only added benefit of free food and alcohol? There’s no way he’d agree.”

“Well, he’s online right now, and I’m asking him.”

“Alice!”

She turned away from the laptop to meet your eyes.

“No, really. Worst case scenario, he says no and we’re back to square one. Best case scenario, he says yes, you two go to the wedding, fall hopelessly in love and make out somewhere Corwin can see you, so he finally shuts up about your love life. Right?”

You considered it for a moment, then sighed.

“This is the worst plan ever.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

  And just like that, you found yourself in a coffee shop two blocks away from your apartment, fidgeting in your seat. To your surprise, the guy – named Lin – agreed to go with you without any hesitation whatsoever. So, you scheduled to meet for coffee the day before the wedding and get to know each other a bit, so the evening would hopefully be less of an awkward mess.

You’d agreed to meet at ten, but you woke up uncharacteristically early that morning and found yourself unable to focus on anything. Deciding that pacing around your bedroom in circles was useless, you arrived an hour early. Right now you were sipping your second coffee, watching patrons flutter in and out, and nervously eyeing the clock.

It was quarter before ten when the bell above the door ringed, announcing the arrival of a new guest. You looked at the guy curiously. Judging by the messy black hair and dark circles under his eyes, he was your tomorrow’s date. You did a little wave to get his attention and soon he was slipping into the seat opposite you with a wide smile on his face.

“Hi! I’m Lin, great to meet you! So I’ve been told that we’re deflating a jerk’s ego tomorrow?”

You introduced yourself, unable to keep your eyes off the man’s face. The photo Alice sent you did him no justice at all. His eyes, dark and solemn on the picture, were, in fact, rich brown and endlessly warm, and there were no words to describe the brightness of his megawatt smile.

You found out that Alice has briefly told him about the circumstances of the unfortunate wedding. Apparently, Lin was more than eager to knock your cousin down a few pegs. He insisted that you needed to exchange all kinds of information about yourself, so that your fake dating shtick would seem reasonably genuine.

“Well – we don’t have to tell them we’re dating at all”, you stammered. It was painfully clear that this guy was way out of your league.

Lin shook his head, looking appalled at the idea.

“This is a must”, he insisted. “Who am I to miss out on an opportunity to pretend-date a cute girl?”

You did your best to cover your blush with a long sip of your coffee.

“Okay, you go first”, you suggested. “What do you do?”

He started telling you about his temporary job as an English teacher, which payed the bills while he worked on writing his very own musical (which explained meeting Sophie at the studio). His enthusiasm was contagious, and you found yourself constantly laughing at his stories. You began to understand what Alice meant when she mentioned his “easy charisma”.

“Okay, but that’s enough about me”, he said after a particularly funny story about a pop quiz on Shakespeare. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Well”, you started, laughing nervously, “there’s not much to talk about. I work in an office downtown. A mind-numbingly boring job, just tons of paperwork and not much else.”

“Okay, so what’s the dream, then?”, he asked with a glint in his eyes.

That was a question you weren’t expecting. You looked down at your empty coffee cup and hesitated for a moment.

“It’s- it’s silly, really, but- I’ve always dreamed of being an author. Fantasy, sci-fi, children’s books, stuff like that. But I’ve never written anything I was really satisfied with, you know? Kept throwing most of it out. I suppose I should just stick to what I’m doing right now.”

Despite your best efforts, your eyes started to tear up a little. These traitors.

You suddenly felt something warm encircling your hand. Looking up in surprise, you noticed that Lin covered it with his. You blushed a little at the look in his eyes – endlessly soft and caring.

“You can’t just give up”, he said, seriousness ringing in his voice. “Everyone starts from somewhere. And throwing out your work is one of the worst offenses ever, trust me. Archive it, store it somewhere you’ll never have to look at it again, but never delete any of it. How else are you supposed to track your progress? And, honestly, I don’t believe you.”

“What do you mean-“

“Your writing. You mentioned it with such passion – I can’t believe this is just a temporary thing. You really want to do it, don’t you?”

“Well, I do – or at least I did, but-“

“Then do it”, he smiled. “If it helps, I’ll gladly read whatever you want me to – and maybe you could look at my writing, too? I need some honest feedback. Just between us writers?”

You looked at him – softly, fondly.

“Yeah. Just between us.”

  The conversation soon returned to more mundane stuff, and before you knew it, it was time to return home. You said your goodbyes and agreed to meet at your place the next day an hour before the wedding, to be able to get there without the need to rush.

You returned to your place, trying to focus on preparations for tomorrow – to no avail. Your mind kept wandering back to the man you just met. Oh, there was no denying he was cute, but that’s not what captured your attention the most. No, you kept replaying his words in your head instead. “Just between us writers.”

Honestly, you’ve all but given up on your writing at this point. No matter what you did, the ideas always felt stale, the words awkward, the characters flat. You couldn’t help but compare yourself to your favourites – Le Guin, Gaiman, Pratchett, Hobb – and feel discouraged by the juxtaposition. Beginning was relatively easy and you were quick to become excited with an idea, but the enthusiasm tended to dissipate in the blink of an eye, leaving you disheartened. Putting words together seemed easy when someone else was doing it; not so much when you were trying it yourself.

So, yeah, you’ve basically thrown the towel in at this point. You couldn’t remember the last time you’ve written something that wasn’t a job e-mail. You didn’t even know why you’d mentioned it today, and why to Lin of all people. Was it because he was a writer too? Or just because his sincerity and openness caught you entirely off guard?

Strangely enough, his words of encouragement struck a chord with you. His passion for theatre, the energy with which he talked about his projects was contagious. It reminded you of high school and nights spent polishing the next chapter of your story. Back then, the distance between you and your idols was inspiring instead of terrifying. When had it changed?

  Next day you spent your whole afternoon in a daze, mindlessly preparing yourself for the party while still mulling over the things Lin had brought up yesterday. You were just putting the finishing touches on your makeup when a sharp knock on the door brought you back to reality.

You rushed to the entrance to find it was Lin, right on schedule. The sight of him momentarily struck you dumb. You were going to a wedding, so logically you knew he wouldn’t be sporting the jeans and sweater he sported in the café. Still, nothing could prepare you for his elegant dark grey suit, which he wore with casual confidence. How the hell did you score a man like this?

Fortunately, you managed not to miss a beat and smiled at him, inviting him inside. “Come in, I just need a couple more minutes and I’m ready to go.”

“Oh, don’t tell me you’re not ready”, he said, taking in the sight of you. “I’m pretty sure you can’t improve on perfection.”

“Stop it”, you laughed to hide your embarrassment.

“I’m serious. Here I was, thinking we’ll be keeping a low profile during this, and it’s gonna be impossible when you threaten to outshine the bride.”

You couldn’t do anything to stop the furious blush coming to your cheeks.

“Well, I-“ Damn, what was it about this man that made you so incoherent? “It’s gonna take just a moment. Um, make yourself at home?”, you said quickly before returning to the bathroom.

You leaned on the sink, breathing deeply, and trying to contain yourself. It was just some casual flirting, right? Nothing you couldn’t handle. He was probably doing it just to be polite and ease the tension.  You weren’t going to get your hopes up. One night and you’d probably never see each other again. You were fine with it.

At least that’s what you kept telling yourself.

You left the bathroom a minute later, finally ready to go. Exiting, you noticed Lin standing before your bookshelf, looking curiously at the titles.

“Never seen such a collection belonging to someone who didn’t write”, he commented out loud, smirking in your direction. “You should stop lying to yourself about it. This is meant to be.”

“There are tons of people who enjoy reading but don’t or can’t write”, you reminded him.

Lin shook his head.

“Alright, not gonna argue with a pretty girl just before a date. Shall we go?”

He offered you his arm. You gladly took it.

You’d failed to notice he called the evening a date.

  The wedding part of the whole affair went by in a blur. You had to admit that the venue was lovely. The ceremony took place under a blooming apple tree in a vast garden. It was lucky, since you knew how long waiting lists for wedding sites could be. One week later and the flowers could have been long gone.

The bride, a distant relative of yours whose name you barely remembered (Kate? Karen?), looked rather nice, even though her gown was enormous. What was with people and those huge puffy dresses? You couldn’t remember one woman who pulled it off successfully. Except maybe Beyoncé, but that’s because she was, well, Beyoncé.

The vows were exchanged, which gave you an opportunity to hear newlyweds’ names again (Kate and Nathan, you noted, even though you would probably forget them in a moment), and then you were quickly ushered to a spacious hall. The bride must have been insistent on inviting literally everyone from her side of the family, since you were seeing a lot of vaguely familiar faces you remembered from other gatherings.

Thankfully, introducing Lin to your parents was rather painless, since they were preoccupied with meeting aunt Bertha and other relatives. With a promise that you’d be there later for a longer talk, you exchanged simple pleasantries and went to find your seats at the tables.

The official part of the wedding elapsed quickly. As soon as the music started, Lin smiled at you and asked you for a dance. You’ve just managed to approach the dance floor when you heard a voice that gave you the creeps.

“Well well well, if it isn’t Y/N!”, said Corwin in a mocking tone, walking towards you. “So you did manage to leave your house for once? Won’t your books miss you?”

You did your best to cover your annoyance with a saccharine smile. “Hello, cousin. Could you be so kind and introduce us to your partner?” You nodded at the woman beside him. “I can’t keep track of them, you show up with a new one every party.”

“This is Frances”, he said unperturbed, gesturing to his partner. You couldn’t deny she was attractive: the kind of woman who made you feel insecure by simply existing. Her blue eyes seemed vacant, though, and her smile was definitely forced. You wouldn’t be surprised if she turned out to be just as vapid as most of Corwin’s dates.

Still, you couldn’t judge her merely by virtue of dating your cousin. You did your best to make your expression friendly when you said hello and introduced yourself and Lin. Corwin appraised him with a smirk.

“Wow. Someone actually agreed to show up with you in public. And he’s a step above the pansies you brought earlier, too. Did she blackmail or pay you?”, he smirked at Lin.

You were used to your asshole cousin’s remarks, but it still hurt to hear that. You knew that you two led very different lives, but it didn’t seem like a good enough reason to put you down. You took a deep breath, trying your best to keep a smile on your face. You were just about to politely tell him to stuff it, when Lin put his arm around your waist and pulled you closer to him.

“I don’t know what you mean, man.” You’ve met Lin yesterday, but it was clear to you that he was faking a cheerful tone. “She wasn’t easy to get, but I intend to keep her.”

Corwin outright laughed.

“Hard to get? Her? I don’t know she did to get you to act all adoring like that, but everyone can tell it’s a sham. I wouldn’t go with her even if she offered to spread her legs for me, that freakish prude is just not worth it.”

You could feel your smile fading from your face. Yep, he had to go there. That was it. He was about to get slapped right where he stood. But before you could do anything, Lin put his hand on your cheek, gently turning your head towards him. He looked at you with determination.

And then he kissed you.

Your brain short-circuited for a moment. That was not at all what you were expecting, and you definitely hadn’t discussed that possibility earlier. But you found that you didn’t really want to protest. You closed your eyes, melted into Lin’s embrace and let yourself enjoy the moment.

The kiss was gentle and sweet and ended far too early to your liking. You opened your eyes with reluctance and were immediately rewarded with a clear view of Lin’s face: soft and smiling. You quickly catalogued the memory. Definitely didn’t want to forget that, ever.

And you were right to do so, because a heartbeat later his eyes shifted to harsh as he turned towards Corwin. “You talk about my girlfriend like that again and I swear you will need to be carried out of this place”, he spat. “Let’s go, cariño. I hope the rest of your family isn’t as insolent as this jackass.”

You caught a glimpse of your baffled cousin as you left, walking away from the party and towards the little deserted balcony. Lin hadn’t let go of your hand that entire time.

Saying you were confused would be an understatement. Your head kept spinning and your lips still tingled a little from the sudden kiss.

As soon as you found yourself away from the other guests, Lin turned to you.

“Look, I’m so sorry”, he began to apologize. “I just didn’t expect this guy to be such an asshole, and I tend to act impulsively when I’m angry. I know I should’ve asked you first, and this doesn’t have to mean anything if you don’t want it to, and-“

“Lin”, you interrupted him, looking him in the eye. He closed his mouth immediately. “It’s okay. Honestly. I was just a little surprised, that’s all. It was priceless to see Corwin finally shut up. And, just between us”, you said in a moment of courage, “I definitely don’t regret that.”

“…You don’t?”, Lin asked softly.

“No. No, I don’t.”

“Thank God”, he smiled widely. “Because I can’t say I wouldn’t want to do that again.”

He leaned towards you, stopping just shy of your lips. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to”, he whispered.

“I know”, you answered and smiled before kissing him.