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bisexualpluto · 7 days

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sometimes you come across a song that reminds you of a particular character, and I kept finding myself being reminded of baxter! so here's my curated playlist of songs that remind me of jamie & baxter. it's kind of vaguely chronological, going from that first summer, to breaking jamie's heart, to the pain and the healing, the reunion, and the reconciliation. it's not all 100% accurate, sometimes it's just vibes, and mostly based on my personal player choices and feelings, but i tried to make it a LITTLE relatable to others haha. and it sort of goes back and forth between each other's perspectives.

also i'm so sorry that it's like half taylor swift if you're not a fan, but the songs just fit!!!

if you want to just go into it and feel things out yourself, please do! but below is each song and a short explanation for why I chose it. enjoy 💕

1. Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift - Jamie

It's cool, that's what I tell him / No rules in breakable heaven / But ooh, oh / It's a cruel summer with you.

And I snuck in through the garden gate / Every night that summer just to seal my fate / And I scream, for whatever it's worth / "I love you, ain't that the worst thing you've ever heard?" / He looks up, grinning like a devil.

baxter ward, your "suitor for a season". i think of this song as the beginning of the summer, when you meet and there's an instant attraction, and you know instantly you're in too deep.

2. Beach House by Carly Rae Jepsen - Baxter

I've got a beach house in Malibu / And I'm probably gonna hurt your feelings

baxter's had other relationships before, and it never gets that deep. this song is mostly just here for the vibes lol

3. Style (Taylor's Version) by Taylor Swift - Jamie

I should just tell you to leave 'cause I / Know exactly where it leads, but I / Watch us go 'round and 'round each time.

you knew what you were getting yourself into.

4. Wildest Dreams (Taylor's Version) by Taylor Swift - Jamie

And his voice is a familiar sound / Nothing lasts forever / But this is getting good now / He's so tall, and handsome as hell / He's so bad, but he does it so well / And when we've had out very last kiss / My last request is...

you have the time of your life with him, but you know it's going to end. you just hope he remembers it as fondly as you do.

5. The Only Heartbreaker by Mitski - Baxter

So I'll be the loser in this game / I'll be the bad guy in the play / I'll be the water main that's burst in flames / You'll be by the window, only watching / I'll be the only heartbreaker

and he knows he's getting in too deep, too. he wants to feel but he doesn't want to connect. he wants to connect, but he doesn't want to feel. he knows it has to end when it ends, and he's okay with it being his fault.

6. Leave Before You Love Me by Marshmello ft. the Jonas Brothers - Baxter

I'm so good at knowing / Of when to leave the party behind / Don't care if they notice / I'll just catch a ride / I'd rather be lonely / Than wrapped around your body too tight / Yeah, I'm the type to get naked / Won't give my heart up for breaking / 'Cause I'm too gone to be staying, staying

this one makes me think about miranda's birthday party, putting so much effort into a group of friends that he doesn't feel a part of and doesn't feel like he's allowed to be. the party is a microcosm of his entire existence in your life: a suitor for a season, a planner for a party. nothing more, nothing less.

7. august by Taylor Swift - Jamie

Salt air, and the rust on your door / I never needed anything more

Will you call when you're back at school? / I remember thinking I had you

Do you remember / Remember when you pulled up and said "Get it the car"? / And I'd cancel my plans just in case you called / Back when I was living for the hope of it all

truly just this whole song. the summer ends and baxter leaves, swearing you'll never hear from him again. and you know now just as surely as you did when he walked out of that cab onto your street, that you won't ever be the same again.

8. Hits Different by Taylor Swift - Baxter

Moving on was always easy for me to do / It hits different, it hits different cause it's you.

Freedom felt like summer then, on the coast / Now the sun burns my heart, and the sand hurts my feelings

Dreams of your hair, and your stare, and sense of belief / In the good in the world, you once believed in me / And I felt you, and I held you for a while / Bet I could still melt your world / Argumentative, antithetical dream girl

he's always been able to pick up and leave a relationship when it gets too close to real. he won't admit it to himself or anyone else, but this time it's different.

9. One That Got Away by MUNA - Jamie

I'm the one who opened up, ready for a connection / I'm the one brave enough to say how I was feeling

I'm the one who's crying over you in a bath on the weekend / But I'm the one who isn't scared to dive into love on the deep end

Now I'm the one that got away

so in the aftermath, you feel your first real heartbreak as deeply as it gets. you feel sad, and frustrated, and disappointed. you wanted to open up, you thought you'd had something deep and intense and real with him. the songs in this section are all in jamie's point of view, because baxter is gone.

10. Strawberries and Cigarettes by Troye Sivan - Jamie

Long nights, daydreams / Sugar and smoke rings, I've been a fool / But strawberries and cigarettes always taste like you

you think you've moved on, but something always brings you back to those memories. vibes vibes vibes

11. Lost the Breakup by Maisie Peters - Jamie

I know I am obsessed, and / Right now I might be a mess / But one day, you're gonna wake up / And oh shit, you lost the breakup

sometimes you just gotta be petty about your breakups! you still have all your friends and family, and what does he have? some hair dye and a driftwood statue? and, you know. maybe you do fantasize a little bit sometimes about running into him and showing him how much better off you are without him!

12. Vertigo by Griff - Jamie

You're scared of love / Well aren't we all?

but over time, you heal, and you understand now. you understand that he was lonely and afraid of being vulnerable. it still makes you sad, but you won't let it ruin your life.

13. Closer by the Chainsmokers ft. Halsey - Jamie

Four years, no call / And now I'm looking pretty in a hotel bar

and then five years have passed, and you walk into a restaurant to meet the wedding planner.

14. Pink Light by MUNA - Jamie

So I'm living inside my mind / I keep retracing that storyline / Thinking if I start again / I can change the way it ends

you've been given a second chance. he's weird and cagey but he's here and he remembers. and slowly, slowly, you drift back to each other.

15. Seventeen by Sharon van Etten - Baxter

I used to be seventeen / Now you're just like me / Down beneath the ashes and the stone / Sure of what I've lived and I've known / I see you so uncomfortably alone / I wish I could show you how much you've grown

this song is baxter talking to his younger self. it's been five years for him too, and during that time he's started to change. or, at least, he's come to a place where he's willing to start.

16. The Archer by Taylor Swift - Baxter

Easy they come, easy they go / I jump from the train, I ride off alone / I never grew up, it's getting so old / Help me hold onto you

I've been the archer, I've been the prey / Who could ever leave me, darling? / But who could stay?

You could stay.

he's been given a second chance. he never believed before that people could really want to stay in his life, but here he is. and here you are.

17. Secret Heart by Feist - Jamie

Secret heart, what are you made of? / What are you afraid of? / Could it be three simple words / Or the fear of being overheard?

and just like always, you understand. simply put, he knew you would.

18. Nobody Gets Me by SZA - Baxter

Only like myself when I'm with you / Nobody gets me, you do

he knows what he lost, and he asks for you to give him another chance.

you do.

19. Walking in the Wind by One Direction - Jamie

You will find me / In places that we've never been / For reasons we don't understand / Walking in the wind

fate brings you both back together.

20. betty by Taylor Swift - Baxter

I don't know anything / But I know I miss you

at the top of a skyscraper, overlooking the city, he asks for your forgiveness, and you ask him to dance. this one is also mostly vibes rather than a one-to-one comparison of their relationship, but it's about a boy who knows he messed up and is asking for a second chance. that's as fitting as anything else.

21. This Love (Taylor's Version) by Taylor Swift - Jamie

This love is good, this love is bad / This love is alive, back from the dead / These hands had to let it go free / And this love came back to me

self explanatory.

22. The Heart is a Muscle by Gang of Youths - Baxter

There will be no years of silence / In the shadow of regret / I won't let a soul betray me / Though my soul got used to it / I will look at love as more than just an instrument of pain / And will give myself completely, to the moving and the strange

The heart is a muscle / I want to make it strong

he wants to change and grow. and he wants to do it with you by his side.

23. Surrender My Heart by Carly Rae Jepsen - Baxter

But the benefits of all the broken hearts / That I broke before they could break me / Is a little bit of life regrets / I won't bring that mess to you when you're with me / And I want to be brave enough to show you my not-so-perfect family / And I want to be brave enough for everything

24. invisible string by Taylor Swift - Jamie

All along there was some invisible string / Tying you to me

when you were thirteen, you danced with a stranger at a soiree. when you were eighteen, that stranger walked out of a cab onto your street. and now, at twenty-three, he's not a stranger anymore.

25. Lover by Taylor Swift - Jamie

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand? / With every guitar string scar on my hand / I take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover / My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue / All's well that ends well to end up with you

i feel like baxter would cry hearing jamie say "at every table, I'll save you a seat". also the bridge has a very wedding-vow kind of vibe, perfect for our wedding planner boyfriend. feels like a fitting end to me!

i hope you enjoy this, it's been a labor of love but also just a natural progression of my obsession with him. i genuinely think baxter has one of the best romance character arcs i've come across, and i hope you love him as much as i do 💕💕💕

#baxter ward #olba #olba mc #jamie last #our life beginnings & always #baxter dlc #Spotify

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nomiyakazehaya · 2 years

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a collection of my personal spin/au on grimmchild and ghost they're all also super old drawings but maybe one day i'll go back and revisit this? 🤔 i don't know if people wanna read my rambling thoughts about this, so under the cut it goes 😂

in terms of which ending this is based off of, i think it's safe to say it's after godmaster (although, specifically, the delicate flower route) 🙂 THOUGH if we want to make things interesting, it could technically be BEFORE the godmaster events too! i like to think that after the events of the delicate flower route, ghost (or shade lord) lowkey misses travelling and little grimm jr? grimmothy?? so they just. come back in their vessel again and takes grimm jr under their wing again and travel the world once more. a comment on grimmothy's little flower ribbon; i imagined ghost going to hornet and requesting if she could make a little ribbon with the delicate flower for grimmothy and thus, came forth this drawing. so it's also p safe to say it was hornet tying on that little thing.

so the chronological order of the events taking place could possibly go like this: ghost completes the troupe's ritual and takes grimm jr under their wing → they accept the grey mourner's request → at some point after making some flower deliveries, ghost goes, "why not one for grimm jr?" and hence goes to hornet to request for an accessory → the entirety of godmaster → aforementioned ghost's yearning → searching and meeting up with hornet and grimm jr and thk → takes grimmothy under their wing again → they exchange their pleasantries and whatever plans with each other and eventually go their separate ways → potential time skip where the duo have basically seen some growth and have developed a mentor(or guardian/caretaker)/student relationship it's all really loosely based off of how my own personal playthrough went so that's roughly how i like to think what happened. to be completely honest, i didn't put too much thought into the exact details so it's all quite messy and rough around the edges.

also sorry for the long babble, i'm bad with words and explaining and my thoughts are going all over the place so that's all i'll have to say for now

#hollow knight #little ghost #the knight #grimmchild #grimm #troupe master grimm #nightmare king grimm #au #⋘ 『 ─ noms' art; 』 ⋙#travelling wanderers au #?#maybe that's what i'll call it??#rkgk

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tobiasdrake · 6 months

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The Disappearance of Yuki Nagato, Episode 1.

I like how, back in Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, I said they should just stop the movie halfway through and end it on everyone settling into the new reality and accepting this world as it is. But the movie disagreed with me.

But then they cancelled the show and when they brought it back they decided that they want to make a show in the new reality instead of going back to the original canon.

So I feel kinda vindicated by that.

Anyways, Yuki show on Crunchyroll with screenshots provided by shady piracy website, let's go!

I am so confused by the status quo of Yuki World. Specifically Kyon. But also specifically the continued existence of Yuki World post-Disappearance.

Melancholy was always pretty up-front with the fact that it does not operate on Multiverse Theory. There exists only one timeline, with time travelers moving back and forth between points on the single line - and, in fact, the presence of people from the future in the past is already baked into the present.

Kyon had to travel back in time to meet Kid Haruhi on Tanabata and give her the idea to go to North High because that's how the history goes. Kyon was always there on Tanabata giving Haruhi the idea to go to North High.

So I am already baffled about what this world is. Kyon is part of the Literature Club and has dinners with Yuki and Ryoko, which implies that he remembers the events of the movie. We don't know much about Alt Kyon but we do know that he and Yuki never spoke two words to one another.

So it could be, like, a What If scenario if Kyon chose to stay and not end Yuki's new reality. But this can't be Original Kyon because he's on good terms with Ryoko. Our Kyon was quite understandably freaked out by the girl who tried to stab him with a knife.

Are we in "Out-of-continuity Loosely Based On" territory? Because they're making references to the movie in the first two minutes so it feels like a direct spinoff. Even though it's metaphysically impossible to be a direct spinoff, because this reality doesn't exist anymore.

(Also Haruhi made her intentions pretty clear that she wanted to form an SOS Brigade on this side of the temporal fence so the fact that Yuki World still has a Literature Club is another mark against a direct spinoff.)

I dunno. My mind is spinning.

RUN YUKI

RUN LIKE HELL

"But she has no powers in this reality--" SHE'S STILL HARUHI

Wonder if Yuki still has Haruhi's powers in this reality? Huh.

Also, I like how Yuki Show begins where Disappearance was. This world was created in the days leading up to Christmas, so it figures that a Christmas Party would be the first thing we're doing. The chronology is consistent.

Which. Again. Makes it so baffling. Are we spinning canonically out of Disappearance or doing our own thing? Make up your mind!

That being said,

New Yuki is such an neurodivergent disaster girl. XD

Yuki: I want to be able to experience a full range of emotions and feelings. Monkey's Paw: I mean you're like 15 which is a pretty overwhelming time hormonally but sure. Here you go. Unlocking full range of emotions to process for the very first time ever in your life.

I wonder how much Ryoko knows? Her appearance at the end of Disappearance implied that she retains at least enough understanding of the situation to kill Kyon with a knife without even questioning why he was trying to shoot Yuki full of science gun.

I don't think she's still a Space Robot because if she had Space Robot powers that fight would have been much different. But she fully understood the situation when she showed up with knife in hand. And I think we can be pretty sure that she did that on her own; Yuki did not intend for her to kill Kyon.

But also, it's not clear how much of Disappearance actually applies to the reality of Yuki Show since Yuki doesn't remember meeting Haruhi and Haruhi hasn't formed this world's version of SOS Brigade.

One way or the other, at least she's still secretly vicious. I love her. Ryoko is making a compelling argument for Best Character and we're only six minutes in.

And then they put a knife in her hand hahahahaha.

Spinoff or alt continuity, they at least know exactly what they're doing with Ryoko.

I like how Ryoko is filling our Crazy Asshole quota but she's a very different flavor of Crazy Asshole from Haruhi. Haruhi was a gleeful crime person while Ryoko (who I think I recall being Class President?) is Lawful Menace. She'll stab you, sure, but she's not about to permit a hot pot on school premises. That would be inappropriate.

And she ships it.

Yeah. Okay. Ryoko is definitely Best Character. She isn't my character, of course; My character's Haruhi. But she is quickly making a name for herself as this show's MVP.

She ships it so hard that she's prepared flirtation cue cards. Everyone should have a bestie like Ryoko Asakura. She reels in the crushes and knifes anyone who looks at her bestie the wrong way.

Oh shit it's them.

I guess it was too much to hope that Mikuru and Tsuruya still hated Kyon's guts in this reality.

How does he even know these two? They're upperclassmen. He only ever met them in our timeline because Haruhi violently abducted Mikuru.

I would like to have a moment of silence for Mikuru.

Because Tsuruya just got her stabbed. She is so stabbed.

The "Yuki vs. Mikuru" fight is definitely going to end with Yuki, Kyon, and Mikuru going out for lunch while Ryoko and Tsuruya resort to street brawling each other.

They have the space heater!?

The one they got for performing in Haruhi's film? The absence of which from this reality was specifically one of the ways it deviated from the original?

...come to think of it, they don't have the computer. The presence of which was one of the ways it bizarrely did not deviate from the original.

This really is a continuity-free Loosely Based On, isn't it?

Lawful Menace. Ryoko found just the right hoops to jump through in order to obtain formal permission to violate the rules.

I love how she brings just enough Haruhi-esque attitude to the show while still being so distinctly separate from Haruhi in personality and behavior.

AWWWWWWWW They kept that! YIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

Oh no, she is going to be part of the show.

Yuki. Yuki, run. You have no idea. You have no idea. RUN.

^_^ This show is so cute. I think I'm going to have a good time with it.

#the melancholy of haruhi suzumiya #drake watches haruhi suzumiya #the disappearance of yuki nagato

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foxgloveinspace · 1 year

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Foxglove’s big lore round up:

I made this more coherent over here but I like some of the links in this thing so. We’ll Keep It.

I don't know if this makes since, and honestly it's subject to change again at any time. I might even come back to this post this afternoon and ad things I think about. Might do that A Lot Actually.

I have many different thoughts about Sleep Token. On one hand I have a thought process that the Lore is a fantasy story, used to deal with the trauma of loss. And then I have a thought process that its not a fantasy story, that nothing in it states it as such, and that everything is about symbolism. And then I have a very deep part of myself that wonders, considering I am a bit of a witch, if maybe it’s not even completely symbolism. But then that’s just the idea that Vessel is, in some ways, a practitioner.

Lets begin.

I think the albums are released in order, but possibly the order in which Vessel could process the emotions he put into the songs, and not necessarily the order in which things happened, but I don’t want to look into that cause it makes my brain hurt, and I do like to think its a chronological time line.

First off, we have my og theory/thought process, which is that there was no woman who broke Vessel’s heart, and that its all a back and forth conversation between Vessel and Sleep. I don’t think this way anymore, I do think that some of it is a conversation between Sleep and Vessel, but I do think that someone broke Vessel’s heart, but not in the since that they left him, in the since that they died. And in doing so, left behind a very conflicted Vessel.

I have expanded on this theory/thought, to include that I think Vessel is a fallen god, and that Sleep is trying to help him regain godhood. (Or, behind the fantasy, Sleep is his reason to keep going, whether that's Sleep Token, or some form of coping mechanism or even just a muse or creative outlet, and godhood = leaving behind grief/depression).

My lore is that Sleep is genuine in his want to help Vessel (I use he/him pronouns because the one interview Vessel did he used he/him for Sleep. I think this is on purpose, and for some reason it really puts an upset in me when people use she/her pronouns for Sleep.), I think Sleep genuinely wants Vessel to get better, but Vessel is fighting Sleep because he is still in a place where he wants to deny that anything was wrong with the relationship he had with this person before they died. I think Vessel in some way blames himself for this Important Person’s death, and as such, fell out of grief, and moving on means becoming a god again.

I think theres also Some One Else in the songs, someone who is alive, and who he tried to go to as a coping mechanism, probably an unhealthy one. This is the person who he sings about mostly in TPWBYT, I think it’s someone who tried to help him after he attempted to take his own life.

Now for Fantasy, I still think that Vessel was ‘born’ with powers, but I think it’s because he is a fallen god, weather he was born, as in re incarnated, or if he just fell from ‘heaven’/Olyumpus, that's an entirely different story. I could see both.

Sleep recognizes him first, sees how powerful he is, sees that with Vessel’s help Sleep could both become more powerful, and help a fellow god out, and such he goes to Vessel.

I think that the other gods have turned their backs on Vessel for some reason. I think maybe the person he loves was important to the gods in some way, and now they are dead, and so he is shunned. I think it also has something to do with why he fell. Maybe he was pushed.

And so Sleep and Vessel have a hard relationship because Vessel is constantly pushing back against Sleep, not wanting to heal and move on even though it will be good for Both of them.

I do think Sleep is selfish in the since that all gods are, and Vessel as a human now can see it. I also think that Sleep does want Vessel to use his powers more then Vessel is comfortable with, and that’s another thing they argue about.

I still think that some songs are about trust, and Love = Trust still. I still that Sleep is partially sleep, and that Vessel suffers from insomnia. I am very adamant in my thoughts that One - Denial, Two - Anger, Sundowning - Bargaining, TPWBYT - Depression, TMBTE - Acceptance.

I talk to myself in circles about Sleep Token, and the different themes I find every time I listen to an album and Pay Attention.

Here’s some links,

My og theory if you want to read it, as some of it is relevant to this post, but also not

Themes I hear from each song (I need to update this again cause theres also a lot of themes of survivors guilt, and I also never got into themes of Water.)

Me and Cass talking about God Mother, and who she might be.

My first post about Vessel being a fallen god

(@a-little-lynx is this the right blog to @ now, or do i still @ the other blog? any way I mentioned you in this post and linked to our conversation about God-Mother I hope thats ok??)

#I ramble around a lot I hope this makes since to read if not I.... honestly I don't care cause a lot of it doesn't make since in my brain #either so. Enjoy the hyper-focused ramblings of an unmedicated adhd person lmao.#very much so #sleep token #my lore/ideas/what i think in this #I don't know #i think i see a fantasy story and then i'm like 'what if its all in my head tho?' oof

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nikethestatue · 7 months

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In my opinion SJM’s writing has declined because of the length of time between books. She used to pump out one book per series each year, equaling 2 books a year. She has said her writing style is not outling, she knows the big points of what will happen but she likes to go on the journey with the characters, and she also writes chronologically and won’t skip ahead to write other scenes. IMO this worked when she was writing quickly because she occupied the same headspace and could smoothly go from one book onto the next. Now that she’s averaging 1-2 years between books (4, in ACOTAR’s case) I think each book feels sort of off and almost OOC. Notice how ACOFAS was the last book she published on that quick timeline, and that was the last book that didn’t have these flaws IMO. She writes based on where she is and how she’s feeling in her current life, so each book will have a different feel to it rather than continuous. She drops plotlines and characters because she loses interest in them as she goes, IMO. I’m not blaming her for the long wait times, I know her life is different now and she needs to do what she needs to do for her personal life. I just think she should consider with her editor how to improve going forward.

Yes, that could be. I have seen a significant decline in her last 3 books. Frankly, ACOSF, HOSAB and HOFAS are just not very good. They are disjointed, they lack the emotional impact that her previous books had, multiple throw away storylines, and extremely lucklustre romances. Even mentally, she keeps lurching from world to world, without keeping them separate in her head, which results in hilariously awkward things such as Cassian knowing about 'lactic acid' and Nesta using the expression 'kill switch'. it's just messy, like the unimpressive romances that she keeps writing. She assassinated Nessian in ACOSF, which was one of her most compelling and interesting pairings back in ACOMAF and ACOWAR. She rushed through Day and Night, without building anything meaningful between them. Quinlar, after CC1 was a mess as well.

I don't know. Between having children, covid and 10 moves back and forth across America, the woman needs to sit down and consider what she wants to do. She clearly cannot write multiple series at the same time. She also needs a goddamn editor, who will tell her, hey Sarah, that's not what you said here. Hey Sarah, this is a continuity error. Hey Sarah, you've used the same expression 74 times in the past 15 pages. Hey Sarah, you've dropped 6 storylines--don't you think it's wasteful? Are you just writing for word count? Hey Sarah, perhaps concentrate on writing fewer characters, but writing them well.

I know she sells like crazy, but honestly, I've been less than impressed with her latest offerings.

I wish I could feel the sense of excitement and overwhelming love that I felt when I was reading ACOTAR for the first time. Where I was sucked into the story and didn't want to let go.

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veliseraptor · 2 years

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Top 5 underrated books you love

oh man see this requires me to judge "underrated" though...challenge, that. but here goes let's see what I can come up with

1. Doctrine of Labyrinths by Sarah Monette. This is the obvious one for me. Out of print fantasy series published at the wrong time my beloved. I mean, admittedly if it was published now the discourse would be a nightmare (if...people read it, maybe it would still be underread), but god I love it so much. I recognize it has its "storytelling flaws" or whatever but this was the first series I read where I felt like the author was putting their hands on my shoulders, looking me directly in the eye, and going "okay, Lise, I'm about to come for you where you live." and then did it.

2. Coldfire Trilogy by C.S. Friedman. It's been a while since I read this one so I hesitated a little over including it, because, you know, "how much can I say I recommend something if I haven't read it in ten years" but part of my problem here is that I've met maybe three other people in my life who have also read it. Maybe if more people started reading it I would actually get around to doing my reread. An early "huh this really feels like it should've been gay, are we sure it's not" book. I'm still not sure it isn't.

3. Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. And Children of Ruin and Children of Memory is sitting on my shelf eagerly awaiting me, but this was the one that kicked it off and I keep trying to recommend it to people, but for some reason "it's about sentient spiders you guys" isn't as compelling a sell as I feel like it is. But it's about increasingly advanced spiders on an evolution fast track building a civilization you guys and also about conflict with the other and all that but. I'm really here for the incredibly fascinating worldbuilding Tchaikovsky does with the spiders.

4. The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks. I really want to at some point ask Ann Leckie if she's read any of the Culture books because...I just feel like there's something there. Not the same, but some kind of connection, and I felt it particularly reading this book. I remember enjoying Consider Phlebas (clearly, I picked up the "next" one in the chronology of this 80s space opera series), but this is the one where I read it and was like. Oh, fuck, you got me. In general I feel like this is a very interesting series worth revisiting - I wouldn't say it's obscure but I feel like a lot of more recent sci-fi/fantasy readers overlook it because "80s sci-fi" has a lot of connotations, deserved or undeserved. I will just say that I'm picky about my sci-fi and this one got me.

5. I went back and forth for a while about what to put here but I think I have to say A City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer, because I remember when I started seeing Annihilation and its sequels take off going NOW YOU GUYS FIND HIM (pleased and exasperated) and that book was my intro to his work. And I still in some ways like it (and his other earlier work) more. But just in general if you are into New Weird stuff, or enjoyed his more recent work, I recommend going back and looking at his older stuff, too. I happen to know that after being hard to find for a while FSG is now reprinting those books.

BONUS: I can't actually say Lymond Chronicles is "underrated" as such because it has a very devoted following and a whole crop of authors talk about it if you start looking, but still. The devoted following is not actually huge. And I love it very dearly.

#conversating #anonymous #sometimes i read things #top five meme

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herearedragons · 2 months

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fic ask for cold water! 1, 2, and 5 <3

Cold Water

What inspired you to write the fic this way?

doijwaeodik you know this one. I was listening to Drumming Song by Florence + The Machine and constructing an imaginary music video, as you do, and ended up with something that was flashing back and forth between Edér and Selene dancing together, and the events of TWM2. At that point I already had the confession-via-dancing plotline in mind and I knew how TWM goes for them, and kind of thought about writing them as separate fics or writing a linear Edérene fic where we go from TWM2 to the confession in chronological order, but it's at this point that I realized one of these storylines could be a framing device for the other. and the rest is history!!!

2. What scene did you first put down?

answered here!

5. What part was hardest to write?

Emotionally? The Saman chapters. They actually Got Me despite me WRITING THEM and also KNOWING everything was going to be fine

from a technical standpoint, I struggled with the second chapter for a while (had to restart it) (the curse of chapter 2: struggling to match the momentum and hype of the first chapter while expanding upon it in a meaningful way), and the final chapter *was* pretty rushed initially due to me speedrunning the last few chapters in a single day and running out of time to finish the fic by the time I got to chapter 11. I fixed up the pacing since then, but maybe when I'll reread chapter 11 in a while I'll have ideas for more changes. or not! maybe I got it this time!

ask me about my fics

#thanks for the ask!!#project: cold water

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bimiio · 10 months

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tell us abt the sex plss<33

got a few requests 4 it so i will tell :3 here’s da lead up if u haven’t read it already n ur curious!! stuff abt da actual sex is under da cut:

so we moved into her room but it wasn’t one of those like desperately kiss as u walk n try 2 find ur way 2 da bed as u go kinda things like we just got up n went normally. when we got in there she had sum stuff on her bed so she started clearing it off n then realized her vibrator was under her pillow so she was like “i’m so sorry i forgot that was there” n i’m ??girl u r abt 2 fuck me do u rlly think i care?????😭 but regardless she put it in her closet n then lifted her blankets so i could get under them cuz she knew i was cold n was like “warm enough now? see? i told you”. then she got under w me n laid next 2 me n was like “c’mere” n pulled me into her n started kissing me again <33

after kissing like dat 4 a little she rolled me onto my back n climbed on top of me n we kept making out like dat until i started (n dis is kinda pathetic i know😔) pushing my hips up against her so she stopped n was like “tell me what you want” n i was like “i dunno :0”. n i wasn’t even sayin it 2 b difficult i prommy i just rlly didn’t know wut i wanted!! like how could i?? ma’am i have never done dis b4!!!!! so then we go back 2 forth 4 a lil n she’s tryna get da words outta me but i truly do not know so then she was like “do you want me to try to figure it out?” n i was like “yeah🥺”. so she’s like “okay baby that’s fine, i’ll figure it out. just tell me what feels good, tell me if you want me to stop” which honestly i appreciated SO much. n bc we had already had da conversation abt my boundaries w being stone n everything i felt comfy enuff dat i knew i could say stop or ask 4 smthn without feeling weird or guilty abt it :) i also was like “i haven’t shaved is that okay?” n she literally LAUGHED AT ME n was like “you don’t even have to ask that of course it’s okay”😭

she goes back 2 kissing me n groping me but sorta shifts herself half off me n starts undoing da button on my jeans n in dat moment i was like. omg!! dis is real dis is abt 2 happen 👁️👁️ but i wasn’t scared i was just excited :3 she was like “is this okay?” n i nodded so she put her hand down my pants n started rlly gently rubbing me over panties while she kept kissing me n my neck n my chest. she was like “does that feel good?” n like it did but she wasn’t QUITE in da right spot so i was like “a little higher” n then she like stopped n smiled at me n went “that’s good, i like feedback” n i was like🫣🫠 then she moved a little higher n started rubbing again n it felt a LOT better. it made me make an embarrassing little sound dat ig riled her up cuz she started rubbing a tiny bit harder n got rougher w her kisses n pulled down my top so she could get 2 my tits. after a little more rubbing on my clit she started dipping her fingers down n sorta pushing my panties 2 da side so she could push inside me

dat made me make more little sounds n then after a little bit of shallow fingering she was pulling herself off of me n moving da blankets off of us so she could take my jeans n panties completely off. we did dat cute little thing where she pulls em off n i lift my hips 2 help her :3 n we both kinda giggled cuz my legs r very long n my jeans were a little too long on me but they were also tight so it felt like it was taking 4evr 2 slide em off😭

once she had everything off my bottom half (atp i was just in my top dat was pulled down under my tits n her unzipped hoodie) she rubbed my pussy a little without any panties in da way n then put her fingers in me all da way😵‍💫 honestly it hurt da tiniest bit cuz i wasn’t dat wet or open yet but dat wasn’t 4 lack of enjoyment i think i was just a little nervous n in my head cuz it was my first time n were just getting started

dis is where everything sorta starts blurring 2gether 4 me in terms of chronological order so i’m not gonna attempt 2 write it all out da way i have been i’m just gonna give y’all my fav parts i rmmbr :3 lemme first say dis 2 establish da vibe tho.. ik i already said she was super dominant throughout da night but dat RLLY carried over into da sex too (nothing kinky just general dominance) n she was also STRONG. so even tho she was shorter than me once she realized i liked when she would take control n move me around she was literally manhandling me. like putting me into different positions n pulling me 2 her n dragging me 2 da edge of da bed etcetc. it was all very fun >:3 anyways here r da highlights

her nose started bleeding!! ik dat’s not like a Sexy thing but it was silly 2 me it was like we were in an anime n she just thought i was so hot her nose started gushing blood. she was fine btw!! she had accidentally got hit in da nose like da day b4 so it had been bleeding on n off a little but she wasn’t in any pain <3

she didn’t have a strap bc her ex took it n her harness when they broke up (evil😔) so we had 2 suffice 4 her fingers but she got DEEP. n she was rough too😵‍💫 like hard deep strokes dat were literally pushing me up da bed

before she went down on me she was fingering me n kissing my hips n thighs while i gripped her hair n scratched her head <33 n then when she DID decide it was time 2 eat me out she DRAGGED me down da bed n against her face

she had me ride her thigh 4 a while cuz i told her da fingering/head was getting 2 b too much 4 me cuz i was too sensitive n while i was she asked me if i liked being called a good girl🫣 i was so excited when she asked bc Y’ALLLLLLLLLLL. da fuckin DIRTY TALK??? dis woman had a MOUTH on her my god. everything she said was so hot n she just kept praising me 4 every little thing

she was thorough as FUCK she had me in every position imaginable n she was rlly testing my flexibility😭 there was one point where she was laying sorta half on top of me half on da bed n then she hiked up my leg dat was further away from her so it was resting on her SHOULDER!! like i was literally knee 2 my ear while she was fingering me n my pussy sounded so wet it was soooo hot embarrassing😭

when she was eating me out n i would get too sensitive n b like “it’s too much” she’d go from sucking on my clit (which she was good as FUCK at btw idk wut she was doing w her tongue it was making me so sensitive my legs were trembling like a leaf in da wind around her head) 2 just gently licking my pussy w a flat tongue n massaging my thighs n hips w her hands <33

omg i just remembered i DID feel like i was gonna pee (i knew i didn’t have 2 actually PEE tho i already had like 3 times in da past few hours n right b4 we started) so dat’s y i kept telling her 2 slow down when i was too sensitive but i think i mighta just squirted all over her if i had given into da sensation. i’ve never squirted b4 tho so i didn’t wanna take da chance in da bed of a girl i had just met y’know?

ik i already mentioned da dirty talk but she kept saying shit like “that’s right baby, do what feels good” n “that’s a good girl” n “you taste good”. or like when i would close my legs cuz i was sensitive she’d gently nudge em open n b like “open up for me” GODDDDDD😵‍💫 OR OR!!! when i would cover my mouth she’d pull my hand away n go “let me hear you” or “talk to me” WHEN I TELL Y’ALL DAT WENT STRAIGHTTTTT 2 DA PUSSY MY GOD🫠 n just anytime she didn’t have her mouth on me she was in my ear encouraging me n talking filth

i told her during dat i have a hard time cumming w other ppl like it’s easier 2 cum on my own n she was like “that’s fine, cumming isn’t the end goal of sex i just want it to be pleasurable while it’s happening” which was so nice n reassuring but then also lead her 2 ask later on how i do it on my own n if i could show her🫣 she was like “i like watching people feel good. do you wanna show me how you do it by yourself?” n i was going INSANEEEE in my head but i denied her request cuz i literally would’ve died of embarrassment. she DID still make me rub my clit while she fingered me tho <33 i felt bad tho cuz my nails were so long they kept bumping into her hand n i was like “i feel like i’m in ur way :(“ n she was like “you’re not in my way, just keep going, make yourself feel good”

at one point she was like “i was gonna ask you something but nevermind don’t worry about it” n i was like “no what is it? ask me” n she was like “i don’t want you to feel pressured” n i was like “you’ve made me very comfortable and you’ve shown you respect my boundaries and my feedback so the worst i can say is no” n then dat convinced her so she was like “yeah okay you’re right. no pressure at all, but do you wanna finger me? i’m asking for YOU. i know what it feels like, i don’t need you to. i just care about you right now, so i’m asking in case you want to try it” n i said no bc i didn’t want 2 but it didn’t kill da mood AT ALL she was very understanding n not disappointed n was genuinely asking 4 me not her. idk i just rlly appreciated dat considering she wasn’t stone or butch/femme at all. yeah :3

there was dis one point where she did smthn dat felt SO GOOD but it only lasted 4 like two seconds n ik i coulda just asked her 2 go back 2 it but once it stopped she was going IN on eating me out which also felt good so i was like ykw it’s fine. basically she’d had me on my back or side da entire time but at one point she flipped me onto my tummy so i was laying flat on her bed like dat n then started fingering me from da back n oh my GODDDDDDDD it felt so good. i was literally whining into da mattress like a little bitch. i think dat’s WHY she flipped me back on my back 2 eat me out tho cuz she wanted 2 hear me😭

i did tell her i came which honestly i don’t think i did. n it’s not dat i felt like i had 2 lie 2 her or she’d b offended if i didn’t cum cuz we’d already talked abt how she didn’t care abt dat but it was all just becoming a lot 4 me n i kept getting rlly close 2 cumming but not being able 2 get over (mental block more than physical i think probably just first time nerves). i’m kinda glad i told her tho bc after i said it she like hiked my leg up n told me 2 open up 4 her n started fingering me so rough n so deep n she was like “if you can do it once, you can do it again. you’re mine now, i’m not letting you go” n LORDDD dat made me tighten around her fingers enuff dat she laughed n was like “you’re tightening around me”😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

anyways yeah i’m pretty sure dat’s like everything :3 ik dis is super messy n incoherent i hope it is still readable enough!! hope y’all enjoyed dis silly little TMI storytime pls lmk ur fav parts n if dis was satisfactory mwah <3

#didn’t proofread shit either just hitting post n calling it a night atp #no editing we did like men #asks #anon #0ut #long post #nsft #st0ryt1m3

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em-writes-stuff-sometimes · 3 months

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https://www.tumblr.com/em-writes-stuff-sometimes/753733902331445248/em-i-need-to-let-you-know-that-terms-of-endearment?source=share

Hi Em! I'm glad my message was nice for you to read <3

I totally agree with you on reader insert fics. I think that's why I usually avoid them too (the clunkiness of them) they just usually don't feel as though they flow as well and the actual stories being told don't really capture my attention as much as they tend to lack depth (This isn't me yucking anyones yum tho! I hope everyone reads whatever they enjoy!!) Also I hope your real-life obligations are going well despite being more demanding than they used to be!

It did flow being read all in one hit! I liked the sound of the, I think it was the third fic that I saw first? Noticed it was part of a series so was like I should probably read it in order then I noticed the dates and was going back and forth on reading it in the order you wrote them or the order they you had placed them like chronologically and decided to go chronologically and there was no indication that you hadn't written it in that order. I did love going to the comments especially of the prequel and people being like "I can't wait to see her with the cannibal for the first time" and I was like witH THE WHO??? Also yeah there's a lot of chapters but they're needed!! I really love the way you have created a character that really does feel like they could belong in the canon and the edits you make to the story to fit her character feel so realistic (There's never enough chapters of this story and I'll be reading them all hehe)

I'm genuinely really happy that my silly little anon post made you feel reassured. There most definitely are so many people who really love the story you're telling and can't wait to see where it goes. Anxiety and doubt are always going to be present when sharing any form of art, any part of yourself that come through when creating something to be shared will be make you nervous but it doesn't mean it's not worth it!

As always the new chapter was amazing! (They're a little family of 3 now ToT) and I can't wait for what's next <3

Hello again, nonnie! What should I call you? You’re cute as a button! So nice to see ya!

I can definitely understand what you mean. Reader insert fic is, incredibly generally speaking, not designed to be sustained long enough for any kind of extensive plot, given that this inevitably requires the protagonist to develop personal characteristics in response to scenarios and choices made in-text. I love that Reader fic provides an immersive experience, but it is only really fully so if it is kept as neutral as possible, to prevent a breaking of said immersion. Giving the Reader a canonical family member, a physical characteristic, even a personality trait can arguably alienate parts of the prospective audience to different degrees (some of which are very much valid and pertinent critiques of reader-fic that diverge from neutral territory). Thus, it is not a mode that people intent on keeping strictly to form will use to write a long-fic. And thus—it can be argued, though agreement is obviously a personal choice here—Reader fic doesn’t generate the same possibilities for storytelling compared to your traditional OC fic, and therefore not as much audience attachment to original characters therein. I’ve had a fair amount of anxiety over the way I’ve chosen to write my own work, given that it is essentially an OC fic using no name and told in second-person POV, which diverges from the standard of acceptable reader-fic. It was largely an experiment that grew uncontrollably and now I’m in too deep to change it, haha. I have been very fortunate that this has accepted by the vast majority of my possible audience, or at least it has not been made a significant point of issue; I try to make it clear as much and as often as I can that I bear no ill intention in assigning identifying attributes to the MC, nicknamed ‘Babey’ to help further separate her from the ever-divergent-from-‘Reader’ vibe I’ve created.

The way I wrote it was an absolute mess, so I am beyond glad it reads chronologically, lol! I think I started with the second chapter of the third instalment, went back and wrote Chapter 1, went to Chapter 3 and continued, got halfway through and switched to the second instalment, wrote that, went back to the third instalment and wrote the second half, wrote the fourth instalment, fifth, then rewrote the second instalment (changed pacing, edited and added three extra chapters for better plot), wrote the first instalment, and now onto the sixth instalment. Absolutely ridiculous of me, I know. I’ve tried very hard to make sure it all fit, and I did have to retcon a few things as I went along. Luckily, from here on out it should be pretty much all chronological, thank feck. I’ve always been very much aware that my fic is a spin on the classic “added OC to canon” trope, and so I’ve tried where I can to not always show the exact same scenes playing out as they do in the show; where I can I will make adjustments or diverge slightly or cut away from the ‘main scene’ to focus on Reader’s inner dialogue. It’s not inventive, no, but my thought is that if it is canon adjacent and well-written, it can serve as a sort of coping mechanism for the fuckery I see on-screen. Reinterpreting The Horrors for my fanfic will definitely help me deal with the inevitable depressing ending of the Dance, lol, and potentially it might do the same for any readers? I’ve always personally liked canon adjacent fics, even if some rag on them. It is important to me that Babey feels like she is part of the universe, and I like doing that by building on existing scenes and events in the show to further enmesh this new character into the world and make it seem like a possible reality. That is not to say everything will happen exactly the same, clearly! But I want my fic to echo similar themes so that it really feels like it could have been an ‘alternate interpretation’ of the in-world history. If that makes sense! I’m writing this at 1am, lol.

I really do appreciate your messages so much. It can get a little lonely out here in the mean streets of Tumblr.com, haha, and there is a small delicate part of me that still squees and gets weepy and full-of-love-and-sunshiney at scraps of praise and validation. The anxiety is real, but ultimately I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I’m no longer willing to sacrifice my own source of happiness to seek universal approval; I love writing, I love my little universe, in my head it is real and thriving and my personal canon because it’s what came from my head and I love that I’ve done that. My life has gotten so much healthier from it. I have suffered from binge eating disorder and insomnia and clinical depression for a very long time, and I am so enthused and distracted by my writing that it has curbed my obsessive tendency to stress/comfort-eat, and so exhausted after clacking at my keyboard in the evenings that I fall right to sleep. Overshare. Yikes. But still, these things are true, and it is just really a super cool bonus that people happen to enjoy what I write! Your support means a helluva lot to me. Thank you.

I’m working on the next update, bit by bit! Hopefully I will have something for everyone soon.

Take care, and thank you again! ILY ❤️❤️

#fanfiction comments

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meg2md · 6 months

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Back to Life Is Really Hard (Residency Edition)

Things I've learned: I do like obstetrics. Mainly, I like that routine obstetric clinic visits are fast and easy, I like that I know how to do basic labor and triage tasks quickly and efficiently, and I like that I get to do cesarean deliveries. That being said, I think I can live without it. There's lots of confounding hours (like who's on my team, the better hours, etc), but gyne is where I'm much, much happier. And that's where I am now!! At the same time I'm trying to buckle up for MIGS applications which happen next year, and basically the advice given to me was to make peace with the numbers because it's possibly one of the most competitive fellowships across all specialties with a 50/50 chance. I'm motivated: I'm about to submit an IRB for my research project, I'm working on manuscript revisions for my med school paper, I'm involved with ACOG on a state level, I have another research project that might come to fruition, and I'm hoping to design a surgical skills curriculum for medical students. I've also started looking in-depth at away rotations for MIGS, and I'm making a spreadsheet of every program I want to apply to (so, probably 50-60 programs). But I also need to be realistic and have a Plan B, because it's a coin flip whether I match.

But to level with ya'll, despite this sliver of ambition I've regained, I'm SO depressed. Like, VERY FREAKING DEPRESSED. I'd say my mood is largely fine, but man, it is incredibly difficult to get out of bed, to be on time, want to be around my co-residents. I'm finally on weekly Prozac again, but my dose most likely needs increased. I'm also starting therapy (again) tomorrow. But it's just... hard. My life got pretty bad at the start of the year. My cat getting really sick, going into a lot of debt from vet bills and conference costs, my car getting vandalized. My oncology rotation was probably the worst I have ever performed in all of residency. I got some really, really tough feedback. It really knocked me on my ass. Things are slowly getting better, but again, I'm working against this baseline depression. The best I can describe it is just... heavy, or blurred. I lost my zest for life. It's like my life is muted.

I drew a tarot card yesterday to describe where I'm at in my life right now. I drew the 10 of Swords.

Yep. That's residency.

My tarot draws are always like this. I gravitate towards swords and cards like The Tower. It's not all bad, though. I like the concept of death, decay, and endings. I like that it creates fertile soil with which life can rise anew. Consider the artwork from the Light Seer's tarot:

We face the loss, the betrayal, the stress... whatever it is that is causing us so much pain. It will always be a part of us, but what rises up from the ashes is much brighter and stronger, "vulnerable, whole, and totally and powerfully alive."

I drew the Tower card before I drew the 10 of Swords. I like the chronology of it, too. It makes sense with the sequence of events in my life, first undergoing its major upheaval (my break-up with my fiance, moving to a new city alone, being dumped by the rebound I fell in love with, living independently for the first time in over a decade, all with the background of my chronic depression)... and then when the fire finally goes out and the dust settles... it's this empty, desiccated landscape, full of hurt and pain and loneliness. But despite all this, the sun still shines, the rain falls, and slowly life springs forth from the rot. I really resonate with cards like these, like Death, The Tower, The Fool, any card that represents endings and beginnings.

(Lol I lost my actual journal and my thoughts had to go somewhere so here we are.)

Anyway back to medicine (ugh), I'm again trying to focus on the ME outside of residency. The YA romantasy books, training for a Tough Mudder, resuming my interest in obscure non-fiction, tennis.

I'm also researching creatine??? IDK my brain is in a million places right now. My boxing class got cancelled so I biked for 40 minutes while watching 1000-lb sisters. Before I was obsessively looking up MIGS fellowship programs and I needed to get my mind OFF residency and medicine.

And since I find my mind drifting back to something that already occupies WAY TOO MUCH SPACE in my life, I'm gonna peace and work on Kingdom of Ash until I fall asleep

#residency #medical school #med school #medblr #gradblr #premed

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callipraxia · 1 year

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Well, folks, here it is. The ATOTS review. It...really could not have been done together with the NWHS review, that was a silly idea. Here is a link to a Google doc with the previous S2 reviews arranged in chronological order, if you want to catch up on those (not sure many people saw the second part of the NWHS review) and don't want to deal with wading through tags and reblogs of reblogs and such. That said...

A Tale of Two Stans

1) And now here we are. A Tale of Two Stans. Aka, the episode that proves you can break the “writing rules” if you’re good enough, since an info-dump like this would normally be a no-no, and yet…well, here we go:

2) Aww, tiny Ford. Why would there be a boarded up stash of mesoamerican gold in New Jersey? Did you also do that thing Dipper does where sometimes he doesn’t really know what a big word means? Possible reference to the whole mesoamerican salamander thing?

3) Oh, Ford did kinda make it into the opening sequence, didn’t he? Last picture to fall on the stack before the title card of the Mystery Crew. Kinda fitting, given that despite being very important from here on out, he still holds himself a bit aloof from most of the cast for the majority of that time.

4) I know why the writers had to include that awkward “brother!” line (so people catching up would remember, “oh, yeah, Stan said that this person was the Author of the Journals and his brother…and then the camera revealed he meant twin brother,” and so they could avoid calling Ford anything for a little while), but it was just…awkward. We see in flashbacks that Stan did sometimes call him “Stanford,” so I have to wonder if anyone would have noticed had Stan gotten halfway through the word and then gotten socked in the jaw. Or heck, even just called him “Ford” - though I’ve gathered that enough of the fandom had already guessed there were twins and one was called Stanley by this point that they might have actually said “wait, what?” upon Stan bringing forth “his” rarely-heard second syllable at the sight of his brother.

5) …And then you see that however clubby they were in the flashback, something has clearly gone Very Wrong in the interim. Or would that be apparent to someone viewing this in isolation, I wonder? Stan’s repeatedly remarked that he’s been working on his project for thirty years, and Powers had previously implied that the machine did…something…thirty years ago in “Scaryoke.” Perhaps someone thought Mr. Mysterious Man With No Name was just very, very confused…and then got to the rest of the episode.

…Though once you’ve seen the rest of the series and especially if you’ve spent far, far too much of your life dissecting Ford’s character on a molecular level, it is noteworthy in its way that all he did was punch Stan. Does he have a bit of a “do not shoot people who closely resemble relatives” policy? Considering the things we know about the multiverse, such a policy could probably have gotten him killed fifteen times over even assuming he didn’t stumble into a parallel Earth where the Shapeshifter had escaped, eaten Stan, and set up shop just to wait for the person it *really* wanted to kill to come back….

Hm. If the Shapeshifter stayed in one form for long enough, would it age the way that form would? I have no idea, my brain is wandering off on tangents again. Anyway, back to the episode.

6) I am…unsure what to make of the fact Ford a) instantly recognized this individual as ‘his’ Stan, despite being aware of others existing, b) immediately figured out Stan is responsible for the portal restarting, without even checking to see if there are other people in the room, implying he isn’t altogether surprised that Stan would do this, and c) gets mad about it and launches into an argument as though picking right back up where he left off thirty years ago. And Stan goes straight from…all kind of emotions to sarcasm “some kind of…sci-fi sideburn dimension?”) with just as little hesitation.

7) “Just because you’re family.” Dang, this makes Stan’s outburst at the end of the episode that much more painful to think about.

8) “Stan, you didn’t tell me there were children down here.” That…would have been one of the upsides of giving the guy time to say…much of anything before you started yelling, Ford. Just saying.

9) Oh gosh, poor Dipper. Just…poor Dipper.

10) “Also maybe the entire U.S. government.” “The WHAT?!” That…was some pretty impressive lede-burying, Stan.

11) “Okay, it’s all right.” There’s Ford, never wanting to admit he’s completely lost control of the situation (I might not have noticed this, but happen to have reread the Ford essay of doom this morning)

12) Gotta compliment the animators on the scene where Ford (completely unaware he’s doing so) drops the bombshell that he’s not Stanley. The camera isn’t really focused on Stan in particular, but he has an utterly “oh [redacted] this is gonna go over like a lead balloon” expression on his face even before Mabel says his name is Stanford.

13) You know Stan was deliberately crafting his retelling of his childhood, focusing on the boat and how they were always a team and etc. Of course, we know from later sections that Stan isn’t necessarily telling the kids everything he remembers (he may not have narrated the scene with Crampelter to them, for instance) but his wording in the speaking bits are clearly trying to remind Ford of “good times.”

14) If you look closely, when Stan jumps into the science fair picture, Ford momentarily looks…something. An expression of consternation is observable. Considering what he later says to Dipper about how being a twin’s a very claustrophobic experience, and the fact they both get called to the office when only one of them was wanted…yeah, I’m going with the theory that Ford wasn’t quite as happy as Stan might have liked to think for a while before the Incident proved the straw that broke the camel’s back. In the beach scene, Tiny Ford muses on whether there is a place where “freaks like me” fit in. I think this sums up a subtle but important difference in the characters: Ford wanted to find a place in society that would accept him, while Stan’s goal was just to get away from it and find a place where neither of them would need acceptance anymore. Which makes it interesting that Ford’s sometimes perceived as the ‘loner’ twin - Ford himself might want to think that, but truth is, he’s wanted to be amongst people since he was a small child, he just couldn’t figure out their social behaviors well enough to remotely compensate for having an unusual physical feature. On one hand, he can function much better when he’s truly on his own than Stan can, but on the other, one reason why Bill might have found Stan harder to manipulate is because of how very exclusive the list of people with opinions Stan actually cares about seems to be. He’s much more comfortable being an outsider…just so long as he has that little group of people on his side. Without them, however…not so much.

15) Why on Earth did the receptionist call “Pines twins” instead of just one of them? Was it just assumed Stan would show up whether called or not (if only out of confusion), or just a habit of everyone treating them as so much of a unit that even the school staff had to remind itself “oh, yeah, this isn’t actually some ‘person with two personalities’ deal, they’re separate people who are in fact capable of walking down hallways independently.”

16) Oh gosh, I just now noticed that the ears are drawn just as…blank things, and now I can’t unsee it.

17) Hi, Principal Guy? I hate you. Just for the record. I think Caryn might agree with me; blink and you’ll miss it, but she clearly gives the guy some kind of Look when he gets to that “and his name’s Stanley” bit, and it could be interpreted as a glare.

(18) Seriously, this...the school sections just anger me for very specific reasons...not least of which is how, er, close to accurate it kinda is in some ways, regardless of how far off it is in others. I have relatives in the same age range as the Stans. One of them once had a teacher snidely remark that he’d pull the hood of his sweater up over his head, too, if he was as ugly as her; he then punished her for said rule infraction by making her walk home after school in the rain. The guy was eventually made to apologize to her very unimpressed and irate mother, but the fact remains – he felt perfectly comfortable saying that out loud to a student’s face in the seventies, just as Ford is the only person in the room here who seems to fully realize ‘wait, that was...not really so much a compliment to me as a setup for insulting Stan, and that’s kinda messed up from both directions.’ Now, I work in education, so I know the system is still seriously screwed up in lots of ways...but at least there would be a reasonable expectation of negative consequences for anyone who said something like that to a student or parent these days.)

19) Setting, briefly, aside how much I’d like to kick the principal character and then give him a lengthy lecture on why he sucks as an educator on every possible front...his remarks about Stan potentially not finishing high school are the reason why I’ve always favored the timeline which puts this in the second half of their junior year of high school instead of their senior year. If it was senior year, after all, then Stan could have continued to coast on Ford’s papers for the rest of the term, or – in the extremely unlikely event Ford just went straight to college without passing Go or collecting 200 diplomas or anything like that – just the school handwaving him through. It only makes sense if he had at least a solid, not-started semester left to fail spectacularly in, and a year left seems more reasonable.

20) This would, however, mean that Filbrick did not kick one of his kids out a couple of months before the kid was eighteen (which still would have been a deplorable thing to do), but a sixteen-year-old. So yeah, kicks and lectures to Filbrick, too.

21) Stan, you’re breaking my heart here. How. Many. Times. In this review set have I mentioned that you’d solve a lot more of your problems if you just told people what they were instead of being defensive and making attempts at jokes and just generally deflecting the situation. I mean, you probably weren’t going to get the outcome you wanted even if you had communicated, but you might have not, y’know, gotten disowned as a teenager, thrown out on the street, and left to fend for yourself and therefore almost inevitably slip into a life of crime.

22) If Stan didn’t intentionally smash the thing, he...probably shouldn’t have phrased the lead-up to the Science Fair Incident that way in his voice-over.

23) it’s kind of interesting to note how far back Stan’s tendency to talk to inanimate objects goes - one assumes he was projecting Ford onto the Journals when he would seemingly monologue to those, but who was he really talking to when he told the machine it was “all your fault!” Thinking back on what I said in my “Little Gift Shop of Horrors” reviews…his attempts to dissociate Ford’s academic giftedness from his base personality, his inability to communicate…it’s tempting to wonder if he’s kind of speaking to Ford when he’s ranting at the machine, too. He might not realize it consciously - would probably go to any lengths to avoid recognizing the fact, actually - but….

24) A lot of people have commented on how stupid the college admissions board bit is (how it’s extremely implausible that they wouldn’t at least look over the work he put into the thing, how they give their school a bad name being rude, etc.), but have an extra point from me: why was an asterfladjik perpetual motion machine being kept right out in the open with the other science fair projects, anyway? For all we know, Crampelter did the majority of the damage in the interim just for spite or something. Or Blendin, or...get the picture? The irresponsibility of whoever was in charge of the exhibits is probably at least as much to blame as anyone else for things going awry there.

25) Stan cost “our family” potential millions. Not “your brother.” “Our family.” The Pines tendency toward groupthink really isn’t just a Stan and Mabel thing, they all have it to some degree – unless, of course, one interprets things as uncharitably as possible, in which case Filbrick and Stan might both use “our family” and “this family” as a cover for “me,” to make a totally selfish objective look better….

Yeah, I know I say I have fun doing it, and I do – but too much character analysis can…kinda start to get to you after a while. Become involuntary. Prompt you to put forward these possibilities in public, as if you were still in English 400-something…Engage with caution, kids.

26) Pity Stan didn’t actually, y’know, go into sales. He managed to a) come up with a convincing-looking product as a teenager with no resources, b) presumably talk his way into an opportunity to pitch it to TV, and c) actually sell what looks like a decent number of fake clothes cleaners and shoddy pitchforks. And then just. Keep. doing it. Over and over again (the map showing glimpses of his travels indicates he got into horse racing at some point, doubtless losing his shirt as one generally eventually does when gambling, and…we probably don’t even want to know why he was being chased by guys with machetes outside the country, do we, but apparently he was also hawking lousy tennis rackets in his twenties along with the previously-viewed StanVac.). In a legit sales job, he might well have done all right for himself….

Except, of course, for it being…tricky to get a job outside of manual labor/something in a plant or mill without a diploma, and, perhaps even more importantly…Stan being Stan. His personality would render him utterly unsuited to joining a sewing plant or a cotton mill, at the very least, even if he’d been so inclined (I don’t know much about meat-packing plants or anything like that, but three generations of my family worked in the same sewing plant; decent living, but you had to have social skills more advanced than any of the Pineses demonstrated to flourish in such an environment, and of course you’d never get rich at it), and possibly for working closely with others/in a subordinate position at all. Despite his lack of self-esteem, Stan does not take orders especially well; we see when he tries and fails to call Ford for help (and then lies about it to the kids) that he’s proud as well as touchy and someone who just fundamentally…struggles to stay within the lines dictated by normal society, really. Perhaps it’s a mental illness or other mental issue (his shoplifting could well be indicative of a compulsive tendency as well as his depression and possible Issues post-homelessness, and when his behavior is looked at as a whole, I imagine it would be quite easy to make a case for him as someone with one of the major personality disorders, especially given his extreme emotional volatility. He could also reasonably be interpreted as having ADHD, with an emphasis on the poor-impulse-control aspect. Most likely, there’s more than one thing a psychiatrist could put a label on going on with him, really), but one gets the impression that Stan just…cannot help himself, or at least finds it extremely difficult to do so. Independent business probably really was his best option, all things considered - though under better circumstances, it might have consisted of something like “eventually taking over the business from the old man” or some joint venture with one of his brothers, not, er, endless con games and dodgy product sales.

27) I do not wish to recall how much time I spent trying to google “universities that were viewed as always second-choice schools in the seventies” and similar terms, trying to pin down where Backupsmore might be/what it might be vaguely based on.

28) It’s also interesting to contemplate…sure, a kid might want to go to CalTech, and, for whatever reason, might not manage. This does not mean said kid could not still get into a really excellent school which could just as easily be someone else’s first choice…which, frankly, it’s hinted Backupsmore…might have been, looked at from a more objective perspective than Ford’s? Perhaps it didn’t have the good publicity of some others, but Ford seems to have flourished there both academically and (by his standards) socially. That’s where he met Fiddleford, someone he considers even brighter than himself. They had a DDMD group, and this resulted in him noting in the Journal that he had ‘friends’, plural. He made rapid progress in his studies and wrote a nationally-ranked doctoral thesis in at least one of the hard sciences at an age when a lot of folks are still working on undergraduate (we’re never given an exact number, but based on a combination of him noting that he is “in his thirties” six years after arriving in Gravity Falls and a lot of googling about how long standard programs in various areas last, I’m…guessing that to be as far ahead as he says he was, he was probably around 23-24. At most.). This is where he also apparently, for reasons unknown, a) participated in a competition to invent mind control devices for a politician and b) even knew that was what the competition was for, which was…interesting (in a fic, I made this a plot point by saying the people who sponsored that program were from the same government agency as Powers and Trigger). It’s understandable why he might be bitter about having a golden opportunity to go to The Very Best snatched away almost as soon as it was presented to him, but it doesn’t seem like Backupsmore was really all that bad of a school. The dorms comment…I never lived in a dorm, but my understanding is that it’s quite common for them to have these sorts of problems, even at good schools. Just one of those “communal living” things, particularly when the residents are at one of those ages where a lot of them are not much invested in keeping their environments clean and tidy.

29) Tea club represent! (I am…quite enthusiastic on the subject of hot tea, so I notice when characters have it. Especially when they are Americans, as this can imply that some thought was put into the decision to draw that instead of a coffee cup)

30) “Just…going to ignore that.” Oh, gosh, poor Dipper. It’s funny - if you just watched this episode, you’d walk away with the impression Mabel and Ford were going to get along fabulously while Ford thought “...what is wrong with that one?” about Dipper. But for Gompers, I guess….

31) Just saying…Fiddleford apparently had a pretty nice house. Unless, of course, the implication is that he, Emma-May, and Tate were literally living in the garage and that the house belonged to someone else, but this seems unlikely. He also seems to have had some business going on his own already, plus whatever Emma-May might have brought in (I’ve written her as a schoolteacher before, and there’s no reason, really, why she shouldn’t be in much any profession one might wish to place her in. It was 1980. Everybody was on the Pill and women were allowed to have private bank accounts even after marriage. Maybe she was the breadwinner, I’m just noting that Fiddleford hardly seems to have been a starving visionary, one way or another)

32) I love the implication that Ford didn’t bother with comments like “hello” or “this is Stanford,” but just sprang “multi-dimensional meta-vortex” on Fiddleford in the first sentence…and Fiddleford just instantly did the calculations in his head to determine it “mathematically feasible” without missing a beat.

33) In the field of detail work - it could be interpreted differently at the time, but we see Fiddleford being a little sloppy with where he put his feet, and them both looking grim just before launching the dummy - all in keeping with the eventual reveals that they were both extremely sleep-deprived and had just had a nasty quarrel the night before.

34) Hate to say it, Stan, but…frame of mind your brother was in at the time, I wouldn’t have entirely ruled out biting under the right circumstances.

35) Stan is the quickest man on two feet with a snappy comeback. Not always to his benefit, but guess you gotta work with the skills you have.

36) Ford, on one hand, you’re quite right - Stan really does have no idea what you’re up against. He exists, at this point, 90% in the mundane world, where things are…usually not as dramatic as they are in yours. Out of context, it sounds like you’re just complaining that you have dangerous enemies; Stan’s response to the mailman a few days earlier was to grab a baseball bat on the assumption that anyone who knocked on his door would be an enemy, so that much, he gets completely. On the other hand, Stan is also right - you really do have no idea what he’s been through. Heck, you both robbed the United States government and he’s the only one who got caught for it; I highly doubt you’d been to any prison (at least at this point), much less a South American prison in the seventies, and things were going pretty well for you until…well, frankly, they hadn’t been going all that well for the past two years, but you didn’t realize it until much more recently. On yet another hand, though, Stan - you looked concerned a mere scene ago that Ford might be going off the deep end, and you were kinda right about that. Man answered the door rambling about people stealing his eyes, and he just handed you some tatty, ragged-looking handwritten book that he’d glued a silhouette of his own hand onto like some kind of grade school art project, all while rambling about how you had to take it to the ends of the Earth to prevent terrible destruction. If you know about Bill, of course, this is all perfectly logical…but without that knowledge, Ford doesn’t look like someone being insensitive here, he looks like someone suffering from severe paranoid delusions, possibly having some kind of psychotic episode. Either way, it’s quite obvious there’s something…Very Wrong.

But then we get back to the theme, boys: communication. Do some of that sometime, won’t you? I mean, you’ve tried everything else, you might as well give this a shot, yeah?

(In real terms, though…this scene is one of the painfully realistic ones. Neither party is thinking straight; for various reasons, neither party may be capable of thinking straight for a sustained amount of time. As an adult who’s seen some Stuff, Stan realizes that there is something…wrong…here…but even leaving aside how frightening it would be to find a relative in that state, and how much you’d try to deny it was as bad as it was by analogizing it to Caryn on a caffeine overdose, this is just Not Something Stan Is Remotely Equipped To Deal With, and wouldn’t really be equipped to deal with even if he didn’t have so many issues of his own. We don’t know how long he’s been traveling, but traveling will wear you out quick enough, and we know the state Ford was in. Neither of them was in anything like any condition to control his temper well even if either had had a better track record than they do, and so, you’ve got two people with anger issues who are playing with incomplete decks here, and who have a lot of personal history…one starts talking over the other, they’re exchanging shots now instead of actually discussing the issue, then next thing you know…yeah. I’ve never actually had it come to blows, but I’ve had a lot of arguments with relatives which played out depressingly similarly, where you’re trying to make a point and the other person jumps in with something else and next thing you know, neither of you is talking about the original subject at all anymore, you’re yelling about something seemingly unrelated. Or possibly even two totally different subjects at once, even though both of you think you’re on the same topic. That’s always…fun….)

37) I know I was defending Backupsmore a few items ago, but, uh…they didn’t have a single lab safety class in there, Ford? And/or they let you in the lab after you failed one in epic fashion? Cause everything about this screams “I never read the lab safety rules in my life!”

38) I also have to wonder if…more than just errors that are attributable to Ford being bad at lab safety was at work here, though. Fiddleford put half a foot over the safety line and got sucked in; Stan ran over it and almost to the base of the thing without it affecting him even as Ford, in the same moments, a) could throw a book hard enough to overcome the gravity suspension but b) could not stop himself from going through the Portal.

39) “That’ll be 99 cents.” Ways You Know This Was Set Before I Was Born….

40) Y’know, I never realized it, but…Lazy Susan changed the course of history. Stan presumably would have either left the store without buying anything or (it is Stan, after all) tried to punch Ma Duskerton in the face before running out the door with the loaf of bread in question if Susan hadn’t happened to mistake him for Ford…and then Toby and Blubbs started telling stories about the “mysterious science guy”’s reputation…and next thing you know, Stan has created the basic idea for the Mystery Shack out of pure desperation. If that hadn’t happened, then nothing else in canon could have proceeded to happen: Stan would probably be dead or permanently in prison by now, Ford would have mysteriously disappeared without a trace when the Northwest Realty people finally came to knock down the door to demand overdue mortgage payments, and Dipper and Mabel would never have come to town. Aside from issues of prophecy and destiny and all that, there’s also just how it’s implied this is the first time Dipper’s had friends…basically ever. They both do a lot of personal growth over that summer, especially him, which they wouldn’t have had otherwise. All because of Lazy Susan, of all people.

41) 1982. Bread costs 99 cents per loaf. And they all just forked over fifteen dollars apiece. That was rather good money in those days, no wonder Stan’s eyes did that thing upon seeing it presented to him.

41) Oh, Lazy Susan also inspired “Mr. Mystery”? Dang, Susan, you are surprisingly important!

42) I’ve noted it before, but I’ll note it again: look at the surroundings of Stan’s mirror in the aging montage. At first, we see a bunch of papers about Stan himself. Next shot, still a lot of papers about Stan/his business, but he’s also taped a picture of himself and Ford as small children to the wall beside it - motivation, I suppose. Then in the final shot, he’s replaced his own “Employee of the ‘Month’ plaque with one declaring Soos the Employee of the Year, and where the picture of himself and Ford was, there’s now a framed photograph of Dipper and Mabel on the fishing trip. I’ll be the first to point out his occasionally questionable motives and ethics and multitude of character flaws, but credit where credit is due: man built a life for himself through genuine work (hey, making up tall tales is a valid job, what else do you call what authors do?)...and then was prepared to throw it all out the window, as he *had* to know that there were going to be…issues…with having killed off his original identity if he really did get Ford back/when Ford got back and saw the length of ‘his’ alleged rap sheet for the past thirty years. He had some personal motivations, of course (he felt guilty about what had happened; he wanted the relationship they’d had as children back; etc), but considering how much he had to lose by 2012, it’s hard not to give Stan some credit when deciding whether or not he genuinely thought he was doing the right thing.

43) “The town. My family. Your parents. Even you kids.” Ah, this is why I assumed that Stan was just airbrushed out of the family’s collective memory after his disownment and that nobody knew he was really Stanley all those years - he lumps ‘your parents’ and ‘you kids’ together as distinct units, implying that ‘my family’ would mean his own parents and presumably the twins’ grandfather. Also, I find Ford’s expression very difficult to interpret here.

44) And then there’s one of those moments when it’s hinted that Dipper and Stan are a lot more alike than either of them might be fully comfortable with - as soon as he’s heard the story, Dipper instantly apologizes for his…actually extremely reasonable doubts and anger in the first part of the episode. It’s not just that even Stan would have trouble believing a tale as tall as the truth of his life: it’s that Stan never told them a tale to begin with, which just left them to draw their own conclusions. I…really can’t think of a sensible interpretation Dipper could have reached other than “this guy is a murdering identity thief who isn’t related to me at all and…even if he doesn’t want to end the world, this is still probably not good, whatever he’s doing” with the evidence he had at the time, especially after the conversation in “Scaryoke” where Stan ‘fessed up to lying about the town and promised that was the end of it. It would, to some extent, be fair to be a bit upset with Stan about this even after learning the truth…but he isn’t. It really was for the family, then? Oh, ok, we’re good.

45) I know the random utility of the totem pole is a bit contrived, but I’ll give ‘em their due: we did see in “Scaryoke” that Stan had security cameras showing the exterior of the property on monitors in the lab, so that’s actually a reasonably sensible place for some electronics to have been after all, I guess.

46) Ford admittedly did a decent enough improv job right up until he fumbled the technology, but it was a good thing Powers and Trigger were a bit dazed and confused - otherwise, they…might have noticed that his “very real report” was actually a picture of Mabel, outlined in flames and apparently laughing maniacally beneath a caption of ‘what hath science wrought?!’, considering it was in plain view of everyone for several shots there.

47) I just realized that the timeline I established once means I almost certainly wrote three novels where Ford is stuck in his just-left-the-Portal outfit: aka, high-collared black rags that make him look a bit like a vampire that’s recently been in a knife fight. I’m…sure this did wonders for him all the times it would have helped him out to be perceived as a Respectable Sort Of Person We Should Listen To….

48) Anyone else really, really want to know what they were talking about for…at least a while, considering it was sunset (but still very much not dark at all) when Soos left the porch and full dark with stars out when it cut to the infamous mirror conversation? Especially since the fact that they were still talking fairly civilly - even joking - at that point meant that the previous conversation…probably was actually going reasonably well, or at least as well as could be expected, all things considered?

Well, there. I did it. A Tale of Two Stans, a full reaction. It only took the entire day….

....Eh, worth it.

#gravity falls #gravity falls characters #gravity falls season 2 #rewatch #a tale of two stans #gravity falls analysis #overanalyzing #overanalyzing the text

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skloomdumpster · 2 years

Text

Meta: FTWS S2 - The Atonement of The Narrative

Season 2 of Fate has one overarching theme, which is regret. It not only is the main fuel behind our protagonist’s actions, but it is also the carrying force behind every decision made by the writers and producers, seeing as the show desperately attempts to atone for the sins committed in season 1.

It is, ultimately, a haunted story.

If season one committed the mistake of showing us who the bad and the good guys were, thus dooming the protagonist - who didn’t have that information - , season two goes out of its way to keep the audience as in the dark as Bloom is. This is best showcased by episode 04, where staying faithful to what Bloom knows is deemed more important than presenting the scenes in a chronological order and exploring their full emotional impact.

Instead of seeing the full fall out of the Andreas, Sky and Silva’s showdown, the editing room (with the avail of the show runner), opts for showing us a chopped up version of it, as Bloom learns of the fact. Cementing that it is more important that we have the same amount of information as Bloom does, than to experience the full scenes. It is, once again, trying to atone for where they failed in season one.

Another example of them trying to atone for where they lacked is the absolute disregard to the relationship between Riven and Beatrix, who are thrown under the bus by episode 02 and the full blown out of that relationship ending is never explored, because it was never about the natural progression of the relationship itself, it was about the writers plainly telling us “we see you, we hear you”.

They are trying to backtrack on the romance they set up because it didn’t hit with its audience. Riventrix was a sin committed by the writer’s room, one they fix with the flicker of a wrist, in the less than two episodes and then brush it off as they band aid the wound by handing the audience what it wants: Riven and Musa interacting.

Other examples could be cited, the introduction of Flora, Sam being written off, Farah being brought back to say goodbye and to further signal to the audience that yes that had been her ending in season 1 and so on, so forth. Everything that season one failed to clarify or to accomplish, season 2 spends its time doing.

And then there’s Bloom.

Bloom is not just a protagonist, she’s a hated protagonist because of the sins committed in season one. Season one had an omniscient narrator, it knew everything, but a protagonist who did not. This made it so us, the audience, knew way more than she did and so that we could judge all of her misguided actions with the foresight she didn’t have.

The obvious and expected consequence of this is Bloom becoming an unlikable protagonist, seeing as she takes the wrong route over and over and we know it. It causes a frustration among the viewers, why won’t you do the right thing, and that emotion had no catharsis in season one. Bloom ends it up happy, with one of her goals achieved “I belong here.” That is frustrating, enraging. Why is this character who’s doing everything wrong getting the happy ending, when I can see that all of its actions led up to the comedy of errors that happens after?

Fear not, season 2 is here to rectify and atone for all of its sins. It baby spoon us the narrative: Bloom is guilty for all that has happened. She’s sooo guilty that she’s desperately trying to fix it: “let’s take our weekend off so we can search for Headmistress Dowling” its one of her first lines. She is told first hand of what is going to happen to Silva and she’s the one who suggests they prison break him, because again, if she hadn’t released Rosalind, then we wouldn’t be in this situation. We know it and she knows it, but most importantly, the writers want us to know that they know it.

So off we go to fix all of the previous mistakes, except it’s not just that. It’s about atonement and atonement is, by definition, “something that you do to show that you are sorry for something bad that you did”. It’s not just Bloom who has to prove she’s sorry, it is the writers. Sorry to the fans of the original cartoons, by introducing Flora and handing us rivusa and giving us transformations. Sorry to those who were frustrated by Bloom’s happy ending in season one, by ultimately taking it away from her in season 2.

This is more than illustrated when they hold a tribune to her character. Gone are the metaphors or the subtlety, they hold a trial where Bloom has to defend herself from the crime of killing Rosalind, something she did to atone for the sins of releasing Rosalind in the first place. What’s more, Bloom is convicted. She’s deemed guilty, not just of killing Rosalind, but she’s deemed guilty of everything she’s done in season one. Exemplified by the character’s monologue when she’s presented with Stella’s letter, which is the vocalization of the audience’s reactions to Bloom in season one.

Bloom’s response to it is the most telling part, “Stella is right in her assessment of what happened that night. It was self-defense. Rosalind attacked me and I defended myself. She's also right in her letter. Because of what happened next. During our standoff, there was a moment where I could have let go and I didn't. Something took over and I wanted to hurt her. I wanted to punish Rosalind for killing Miss Dowling. And in that moment, I wanted her dead. The Dragon Flame gave me the ability to make it happen. I will accept the consequences to my actions.”

They couldn’t put it more plainly.

Bloom is charged and trialed by what she did up until this point and then she’s punished for it.

Obviously the show doesn’t end here, it ends one episode later, when Bloom nearly explodes the entire castle over seeing the one person who sticks out for her and who sides with Bloom in every single conflict die. Because of her, because of her powers. Sky dies because he’s taken by Sebastian, he’s ultimately used against Bloom and she almost kills everybody for it.

Despite the fact that she doesn’t go through with the act, Bloom has already accepted her role out of the narrative. She’s a dead character since the tribune, what we are watching is merely the echo of it. Finally she steps into the light and sentences herself to a far more final punishment than being put in stasis ever could’ve been.

And we’re told by Sky that this is something her character has been battling for a while. “I think you want a way out, I think you’ve been looking for it for a while”, he says and we know its true, because Bloom has been sentenced by the writers’s room from the beginning of the season. We merely watched it happen in seven episodes, but the ending was written already and it was shown to us.

This where Fate’s cinematography truly shines this season, it is building a case in front of our eyes which we do not realize until further inspection. Bloom has been sentenced to exile before the season starts, albeit we’re only told at the ending in words, but the camera? The camera is telling us from the beginning.

Episode 01 of season two already shows us this, the opening shot is Bloom alone, followed by Bloom alone with Rosalind; Bloom with Aisha where she’s once again alone in her begging; Her with Sky; All the girls together sitting the garden and Bloom is the only one standing and slightly away from the group; The scene of the planning Silva’s escape and Bloom’s sitting on the very outskirt of the group, Terra says “in here things are good, because we’re together” and the camera cuts to Bloom looking pensive and once again alone. The scene where they do go save Silva, she’s the one who wanders off alone. She ends the episode by going to Rosalind, once again, alone.

This is just episode one, but I dare you to go through the season and watch it again, noticing how many times Bloom is shot and framed alone and how many times she says the phrase “it’s best if I do it alone/by myself”. I counted and it’s way more than one.

Bloom’s character is systematically isolated through season 2, because she ended season 1 saying “I belong here.” The show couldn’t have been more clear on what it sets out to do.

It’s a ghost story, yanking at the chain of season 1.

And this is, the main reason, why the ending of the season feels insufficient. Because we watched they address season 1 over and over again and in the hero’s journey? We ended up just in the crossover. This is not how a story is typically constructed.

In the Hero’s Journey - a 17 steps long narrative* archtype and often what we consume and expect out of media - Fate: The Winx Saga doesn’t make it to the end. We spend so long fixing mistakes and so long punishing that we end the show in the middle of its second act. The hero accepts itself as the hero, accept the divine responsibility and its tragedy.

Now what?

We don’t see that resolution, this is where it ends.

(*Note: Campbell suggests 17 steps, but for an easier time applying to FTWS, I’d highly recommend reading on David Leeming’s take on the hero’s journey which is 8 steps long. In that one we’re still stuck in Act II, but at step 5: death.)

#fate the winx saga #Fate: The Winx Saga #mymeta

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tellthemeerkatsitsfine · 2 years

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Hey I’ve been looking through your posts and you’ve mentioned quite a bit about reading autobiographies of several comedians. Do you have any favourites and general recommendations? I’m curious to hear which ones are your favourite and which ones you’ve never talked about before for whatever reason. Also have a nice day :)

Thanks for that, I appreciate the message! Here are the comedian memoirs I’ve read or listened to on audiobook in the last couple of years:

- Look Back in Hunger - Jo Brand

- Born Lippy: How to Do Female - Jo Brand

- Can't Stand Up for Sitting Down - Jo Brand

These three I bought together, and I enjoyed all of them. Look Back in Hunger is the closest of them to a straightforward autobiography, telling the story of Jo Brand’s childhood and adolescence, going up to just when she started comedy. Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down is part two of that, the story of her career in stand-up. It’s a fair bit shorter and doesn’t cover too much, but there are interesting stories in there. The other one is less of a straightforward story but it does include lots of stories about Jo Brand’s own life; it’s meant to be things she’s learned along the way about how to get by while being a woman.

Like I said, I liked them all. I went through them pretty quickly; Can’t Stand Up for Sitting Down it short, Born Lippy is easy to read quickly because it’s organized into many different sections, and Look Back in Hunger is just an easy read. I’d really recommend Look Back in Hunger if you have any interest in the comedian Jo Brand, and Born Lippy even if you have no interest in who Jo Brand is but just might enjoy a book about someone’s thoughts on life and sexism and feminism and that sort of thing.

She has an interesting story – it can be broadly summarized as a rebellious childhood (there’s some sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll in that bit) followed by years of working as in a psychiatric facility, the latter of which had some unique stories about dealing with violent patients and things. So… that’s one to get if you think that life sounds interesting.

- James Acaster's Classic Scrapes - James Acaster

- Perfect Sound Whatever – James Acaster

Classic Scrapes is a series of short stories about weird situations James Acaster has got into throughout his life. It’s not really an autobiography, but it puts the stories in chronological order so you do end up getting a picture of his life story in the process. It can also be found, if you’re interested, in its original radio form. The stories started as a regular feature he did on Josh Widdicombe’s XFM show, and then he turned it into a book. That link is a compilation of his radio show stories, which I downloaded and listened to like an audiobook a couple of years ago.

Then I read the actual book, and both have their advantages. The actual book is longer, has more detail and structure, lots of stuff that didn’t get included in the short radio segments, and more of his comic voice since he had time to write and edit it instead of speaking mostly off the cuff. The radio show has some of James Acaster speaking like a normal person (you can hear him develop his “comedy voice” as it goes along, but in the early ones he hadn’t yet), lots of fun back-and-forth with Josh Widdicombe, in a few cases the excitement of the stories unfolding as they go along (notably the cabbage story, which is so worth hearing and/or reading in its full form if you’ve ever seen the WILTY episode about it, because the WILTY episode does not do justice to how wild it was), Nish Kumar laughing really hard, and a general sense that the stories are in a more “raw” form. Personally I preferred the radio stuff but enjoyed both.

Perfect Sound Whatever is a memoir about just one year in his life, which was 2017, and was terrible. It started with his girlfriend leaving him (said girlfriend being an “unnamed NZ comedian” but everyone knows who it is and I sometimes thought he overstepped a bit with how much detail he included about her, given that fact, but it’s not too bad). Then he had a psychological breakdown, a bunch of other bad things happened, and that’s the story of this book.

It’s organized around the fact that he dealt with his 2017 breakdown by listening to all the music he could find that was released in 2016. In each chapter, he talks about some different artist or album he found, and uses that to tell another story about the terrible year he spent listening to them. Personally, I think his taste in music is terrible but his writing is good. I think it might be technically a better book than Classic Scrapes, it has a lot of interesting ruminations on mental health and life in general that make you think about stuff. But Classic Scrapes is better if what you want is his life story.

- Just Ignore Him – Alan Davies

I listened to the audiobook of this one all in one day, which I recommend if you want something to absolutely fuck you up emotionally, but be prepared for the fact that it will do that. I’m not sure quite what to say about it because I think a book like this is best approached without knowing the story so the full impact can hit you as he intended, and Alan Davies has said he doesn’t like people taking some of the darker stuff he talked about and discussing it online, cheapened because its stripped of its context. Having said that, trigger warning for death and child abuse. That should give you a general idea.

It's a really well written book. Alan Davies did a master’s degree in creative writing while writing this book, and you can really see that. Almost always in a good way, maybe very occasionally in a “okay I can really see that he’s applying some creative writing tricks here, and those wires should maybe be less visible” way. But most of the time it works well. I was totally drawn in and really emotionally affected by multiple parts of it. Just… if you’re going to get this book, don’t read or listen to it when you have other shit to do that requires you to not be very emotional that day (I haven’t read the book, only listened to it, but I really recommend the audiobook because he reads it very well).

- Moab Is My Washpot - Stephen Fry

This is a story that runs from his young childhood until he started at Cambridge; there are further volumes that cover his Cambridge days and later, but I haven’t read those. It’s supposed to be very, very good. I think it’s considered one of the great comedy memoirs, like how Stephen Fry is considered one of the great comedy figures. And my view on both those things is sort of… I don’t get it. Not that I think he’s terrible! Well not always, I think a few things about him are at least a bit terrible. But mostly I think he’s fine. I just don’t get the mystique about Stephen Fry. I read Moab Is My Washpot partly in the hopes that I’d understand.

It's definitely a good book. In terms of dense, very well written prose, it’s by far the best thing on this list (with the possible exception of the Sandi Toksvig book, and a few chapters of the Alan Davies one). It has interesting stories. He’s led a hell of a life. Done lots of interesting things, made lots of bad choices that lead to bad consequences but good stories later. He’s often interesting about it.

I think if Stephen Fry weren’t meant to be this towering figure in comedy, I’d have liked this book fine. But because he is, I kept finding things that bugged me about it. Like when he’d write multiple paragraphs of complex prose about how we can surely all understand the sort of youthful yearning and impulsiveness that would lead us to steal credit cards or something, and I just wanted to say, “Dude, I think that’s the bipolar disorder. You needed to see a doctor.”

There’s also the way he describes his childhood like it’s normal (I mean, not like it’s normal, there were a lot of odd things about it, but he described it the way anyone else would describe their childhood) and then at one point casually included a picture of his childhood home and it appears to be a mansion. I grew up with plenty of financial privilege, solidly middle class, lots of people out there would be justified to resent the things I take for granted. But I still sort of resent someone who could grow up in a mansion and think that was so normal that it wasn’t worth mentioning.

As problematic as it is to romanticize privilege and everything, it was interesting to read the story of a well-off boy in British prep school then private school in the 60s and 70s. Interesting in the same way that a novel set in a time and place like that is interesting, to see what that “other world” is like. And Stephen Fry writes well about it. It’s a good book. I just went into it already not hugely liking Stephen Fry, and then I found some things to validate that resentment.

- Backstory – David Mitchell

I’m putting this one next because I had a slight objection to it for a somewhat similar reason to the Stephen Fry book, but on a much smaller scale. He spends a weird amount of the book denying that he is financially privileged, as though his target audience is people who watch WILTY and think Lee Mack’s stories of his posh upbringing are all true. He also spends a sort of odd amount of the book denying that he is gay (not a huge amount of the book, but some of it, which seems like more than the normal amount to spend on that), but to be fair, I think at the time there were rumours of him being gay and he was just responding to those.

There’s one bit when he complains about performing in Liverpool, because the Scousers reject so-called privileged Southerners like Mitchell and Webb. They’re angry because they don’t understand, he says, that they’re really not that privileged! Robert Webb, for example, went to a state school. That got to me a bit because like I said, I grew up solidly middle class, and my parents would never have considered sending me to private school. I think I’ve only ever met two people who went to private school, and they were both known as the incredibly rich kids. If your bar for arguing that you’re not really that privileged is one of the two of you didn’t even go to private school, it seems like a bit of a skewed perspective.

Anyway, I was reminded of that because I just wrote that thing about Stephen Fry, but it was only one small part of a book that I liked overall. It’s a straightforward autobiography, from his young childhood, through his Cambridge days, until pretty much when it was written, in 2012. It includes the development of the Mitchell and Webb partnership, their early TV and radio shows (Sound, Situation, Look, Bruiser), Peep Show, and WILTY. It has some genuinely sweet stuff about Victoria Coren, which appears to be a painfully lovely and romantic story.

It doesn’t follow any special structure except chronological storytelling, so David Mitchell just adds his thoughts about whatever’s happening as it goes along. From a comedy nerd perspective, the stories about Footlights are really interesting, as was the stuff about how he got shows commissioned. Some of it was quite funny. Good book overall.

- Mack the Life – Lee Mack

I read this one right after Backstory, as watching WILTY made me decide to systematically watch both team captains’ other TV shows (that is why I have seen every single episode of Not Going Out, which was probably not the best use of my time, but it was summer 2020, what else was a I going to do?), buy their autobiographies, and read them together. I have to say that of the two, I preferred Lee Mack’s. Not that David’s was bad, just that I really liked Lee’s.

Some people have criticized this book for not getting personal enough, which is true. You won’t find much in there about his family or wife or kids, so if for some reason you’re really interested in Lee Mack’s parents or wife or kids, you’ll be disappointed. But I didn’t mind that. This book is mainly focused on his career, including a lot of his own opinions about the nature of the comedy industry and how to break into it. It basically is his life story, does include stuff about when he was younger, but it tends to gloss over everything except his experiences in comedy, which it discusses in a lot of detail. And I was fine with that because I find that the most interesting part.

I also liked the gimmick that he used for the structure of the book. Each chapter begins with a discussion between him and a psychologist who’s evaluating him for ADHD. I assumed when I read the book that he’d made them all up, but read afterward that he says he really did have a psychologist read it one chapter at a time, and then he talked to her about it and wrote down what they said. I don’t know if that’s true, but either way I thought it worked really well. The exchanges with the psychologist were insightful, funny, and found a cool way to show us his perspectives. The whole book was quite funny, actually. It had a higher joke rate than you’d normally find in an autobiography, even one by a comedian.

- It's Not Me, It's You! - Jon Richardson

Well, I’ll start by saying that this was the only book on the list besides the Alan Davies one that made me cry. So... if that’s what you look for in a comedy memoir, then this one’s for you! It was published in 2011, so probably written in 2010, and it is an intense and concentrated version of 2010 Jon Richardson. It’s going to be polarizing, because 2010 Jon Richardson was a pretty fucked up and intense thing, and if you liked that, you’ll like this book. If you didn’t, you will not. It has so much pointless reveling in anger and despair that I’m honestly surprised his publishers didn’t make him punch it up a bit before putting it out there. He’s not even particularly deep about it all. Just bitter, mainly.

I’ve complained a bit lately about the more recent iterations of Jon Richardson, and it’s not even that he’s bad now, it’s just that I had so much attachment to what he was. Ultimate Worrier was a funny show at times, but it was also Jon Richardson dressed up in these perfectly pressed cardigans, reading off an autocue about how weird he is, and it’s like they took all the fucked up things from 2010 Jon Richardson and put them into this neat little package that’s more palpable for light entertainment. Which I guess is a silly thing for me to say because plenty of the version of him that I liked came out on 8 Out of 10 Cats, which is very much light entertainment. 8 Out of 10 Cats is not a good show. But for a little while, Sean and Jon made something good in it. I just… I haven’t watched/don’t plan to watch his recent Christmas sleepover thing, or his mother in law show, or his panel show for celebrity couples. But it depresses me a bit that they exist. They’re probably even funny at times, I don’t know. I’m probably unnecessarily judgmental.

The point is that this book is an undiluted shot of Jon Richardson from before he was folded into a TV-friendly package, and he just fucking hates everything. It’s after 8 Out of 10 Cats but before Catsdown, after the radio show and before any reconciliation with Russell Howard (you can feel that seething resentment all the way through), before acquiring his girlfriend/now-wife and being happy. And it has occurred to me that it might be messed up that I liked him so much better back when he was unhappier. I strongly disagree with the principle that anyone needs to suffer to make good art. And I don’t actually think it was acquiring a girlfriend/now-wife that created the change – I think that coincided with him losing his edge a little (I apologize to Jon Richardson and also to everyone else for using that expression, I can’t think of a better one), but didn’t necessarily cause it. Or if it did, it didn’t have to cause it. As in he could have got married but not had that change whatever it changed in his comedy. Also, it coincided a bit but not perfectly. He was still very good on Cats and Catsdown for a few years after he was no longer single. So whatever went wrong wasn't Lucy Beaumont's fault.

Back to the point again. This book isn’t a straightforward autobiography – it doesn’t tell his whole life story, though it does make some references to his past. I think it was marketed as a sort of zany collection of thoughts about how to date people if you’re a bit weird, but it’s definitely not that. It is Jon Richardson writing about a few days in his life, and along the way, writing in detail all the things he thinks and feels about what’s happening. It feels like a stream of consciousness. I feels like a journal entry. I don’t know why it was published. I loved it but I don’t know if it's actually “good”.

I’ll say this about any list-based post I write on this blog: the things I put earliest on the list will be discussed in the least detail. Because I start by telling myself I’ll just write a few quick sentences about every item, and then I slowly drop that idea as the list goes along.

- The Audacity - Katherine Ryan

This one is a straightforward life story, from Katherine Ryan’s early childhood to when the book was published, which was in 2021. It includes growing up in Canada, moving to England for her job with Hooters restaurant, having a kid when she wasn’t quite planning to, being a single mother trying to break into comedy, breaking into comedy, and then getting with her current husband and having another kid. Those are the broad notes of the story – obviously a lot of shit happened along the way.

Sometimes when I read or hear something from a comedian, I’ll think I really relate to that, and then think everyone relates to that; it doesn’t mean they’re articulating something I in particular have experienced, they’re just describing things all humans feel. This book weirdly made me realize that isn’t true, because I related to very little of it. It was an exercise in understanding someone who grew up very differently from me – not just in different circumstances, but thinking and feeling and caring about different things. Spending her adolescence reading fashion magazines and wanting to look like the women in them, and getting plastic surgery. I sort of look at that as something on which I hold a sort of theoretical opinion, which is to not judge the people who’ve experienced it even if I don’t understand it, but it was something else to actually read the thought process behind it.

I’ll be honest, I didn’t love this book, mainly because of what I said about a lot of it just feeling alien to me. But I also saw her live over the summer, and saw a lot of women in the crowd excitedly asking her to sign books, who clearly had found something that felt familiar in it. I also wished it had more in there about her experiences in comedy – it had some of that, but the comedy-stories-to-dating-stories ratio wasn’t my favourite.

I’ve also found myself disagreeing with Katherine Ryan ideologically a lot lately (not on things like getting plastic surgery, on which we might disagree about whether to do it for ourselves but I agree with her that it should be allowed and free from judgement – I mean I disagree with some shit she’s said like how people who are paranoid about COVID are boring and anti-vaxxers are more fun), so that’s going to colour and bias my perception of this to a point. The book was fine, it had some good stories, Katherine Ryan annoys me these days.

- Monty Python Speaks – David Morgan

The only one on this list to not be written by its subject, this is something someone else wrote about the story of Monty Python. It was really well done. A lot of work went into this, interviewing the then surviving members of Python itself (everyone but Graham Chapman), as well as lots of people who worked with them, like their producers and other actors. It went from the very beginning, how these guys met each other a few at a time at different schools, did things together there, and then were brought together as Python. It covered all the years when Python was active in detail, discussing their writing process as well as the business side of things. And then went into what they all did when it was over (including, of course, Chapman’s death). I found the whole thing really, really interesting.

It didn’t make me like all the members of Monty Python personally, but it wasn’t meant to. They’re not all likeable people, and the interesting thing about a biography written by someone who isn’t its subject is he’s not telling a story that’s biased toward painting them in a good light. He did his best to show the whole picture, the good and the bad, and I found it absolutely fascinating. I highly recommend this to anyone who’s into British comedy history. Or just comedy history, really.

Also, in case anyone’s concerned, it turns out that no one is wrong to think Michael Palin is the nice one.

- Between the Stops: The View of My Life from the Top of the Number 12 Bus – Sandi Toksvig

I’ve put this one last because it’s my favourite book on this list, and one of my favourite books I’ve ever read. Actually I haven’t technically read it, I listened to the audiobook, and I highly recommend doing that because it’s narrated by the author and she reads it so well. It’s very, very good. I made my father listen to this book. I made my mother listen to this book, and she’s not even into comedy.

This book does tell her life story, starting from childhood and going quite a ways into her career, but it’s not just a straightforward autobiography. It’s told via a bus trip through London, which is an excuse to get in some stuff she knows about London’s history in every chapter. The gimmick is that each chapter represents a stop, and she’ll tell us about the history of the things around that bus stop, and then she’ll go into a story from her life that’s vaguely related to it. I found that gimmick delightful.

Sandi Toksvig has a hell of a story – an interesting multi-national upbringing (one that has almost as much financial privilege in it as Stephen Fry, and the reason it annoys me in his book but not in hers is I like her better than him and I’m a hypocrite), cool experiences that came from her father being a journalist, and then a long and varied career in comedy. Including the feminism and coming out as gay back when that was a dangerous thing to do in the public eye (yeah, so did Stephen Fry, but he’s not so great on the feminism angle, and I like Toksvig better).

It's very well written, you can tell this one was made by a properly skilled writer and not just a comedian who decided to write a book (...no offense to everyone else on this list). It's funny and it flows well and I just really really like it. It's good quality writing and it's an interesting appealing story. Highly recommended to anyone who likes anything good.

...Thanks again for the message, and sorry for replying to your simple request for book recommendations with a 4,000-word screed. I do that sometimes. But I appreciated the chance to go on about that, I hope you found anything at all in it helpful, and I hope you have a lovely night!

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ohjoyce · 2 years

Text

2022 in books

It’s been a good year in books. More waves of covid = more time spent inside reading, away from crowds of people so silver linings and all that.

Happily, I’ve also been lucky enough to have lived with and befriended fellow keen bean readers and we’ve swapped our lil paperback collections back and forth. One of my top 5 favourite feelings has got to be watching someone you know read a book you love. Up there too is chatting with a friend about a book they’ve lent you as you read it for the first time. Chef’s kiss experiences.

This year, I elected to read almost entirely for pleasure. I switched jobs two times and worked on getting into a consistent fitness routine of going to the gym 3 times a week so was not looking for anything else challenging or intellectually stimulating to do in my free time. Unfortunately, Canberra does not have very good libraries so I didn't have access to a huge variety of options. But, the library of friends came through with the goods.

Without further ado, a list of my 2022 in books in chronological order that I read them.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet

Quite an interesting and thought-provoking exploration of race and the extent to we are able to choose who we become. Two mixed-race twins growing up in 1950s America experience very different parallel realities as one chooses to capitalise on her lighter skin colour to pass as white. Raised questions of material comfort versus cultural integrity have no clear answers but makes for compelling food for thought.

How We Love by Clementine Ford

This book is slight departure from Clementine Ford's usual stuff-- more tender and vulnerable. Each chapter is about one of the loves in her life and it's as much a letter to a past and future selves as it is an ode to non-romantic love. I also went to her ‘Secular Love Sermon’ aka How We Love book tour show in November of this year which was maybe the best event I went to this year. Here’s to love as bearing witness to life and telling stories always.

The Dry by Jane Harper

Before this year, I hadn't read any of Jane Harper's books. This year I read them all. Goes to show how addictive and effective they are as crime thrillers. The story unfolds and weaves together to reach such a satisfying conclusion. I can't really say too much without spoiling it but Jane Harper has a wonderful way of characterising the Australian bush landscape as a focal point in her novels.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

Incredibly unmemorable. It was pleasant but I can't remember a single thing on reflection.

The Survivors by Jane Harper

Not one of my favourite Jane Harper novels, but as always a great page-turning read.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkin Reid

An interesting exploration of love after marriage and the reality of the highs and lows that starts after most romance stories end. As can be clearly seen from the other books by the same author I kept picking up after this one, I really relished this unconventional premise.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkin Reid

I picked this up because the cover was kind of pretty and I was on a lunch-break walk to Civic Library and this was the best pleasant surprise. Something about this novel reminded me of getting deliciously absorbed into a book during school holidays — falling asleep reading and then reading again first thing in the morning. I have a big soft spot for self-made underdog stories and eldest/only daughter protagonists.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkin Reid

Absolutely devoured this story of old-school glamour, love, and disappointment. Nice and neat tie-in with the narrator/journalist’s own modern day sub-plot.

Entire ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas.

Faerie smut that fits in just about every trope of men written by a woman for the female gaze in a good way. Very fun.

Love Stories by Trent Dalton

Touchingly earnest, Trent Dalton shows us that in hard times, sometimes the best thing to go is to choose to go soft. To choose to show and share the hurt and highs of loving and being loved that are the only things that'll matter in the end. This got me through a chaotic and draining month I worked in family law. I cried a lot.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

Again, a lesser favourite but good fun nonetheless.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

This one is up there, so good I reread it a week ago. The perfectly placed red herrings, the family tension, and small-town grudges and secrets. 10/10 times. I particularly enjoyed how men's mental health, loneliness, and isolation were prevalent themes. Jane Harper also sprinkles easter eggs throughout her Faulk novels which subtly intertwine the characters from her books which is fun to spot.

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

There was a lot of online hype about this book, and the author is behind a twitter account I used to follow called 'SoSadToday' (yeah, I know bahaha). But the rather triggering portrayal of disordered eating and punitive calorie counting made this one a pretty stressful read. There was also zero sense of closure at the end, only confusion.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

A very sweet and delightful rom-com read for those of us who are sometimes sick of the overly predictable cookie-cutter romance novel. The protagonist is very relatable and is all in all a refreshing palate cleanser to the saccharine netflix christmas holiday movie tropes.

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

Absent of any particularly astute life advice at least in any productive sense but deeply comforting that the era of being in your twenties is as chaotic as it is character-building and all of it is normal.

The No Show by Beth O'Leary

Slightly over-complicated plot-twist but props for originality and side-plot which I may or may not have become more invested in than the main plot by the end.

Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne

A fun, quirky, alternative rom-com read with colourful characters and the evergreen message that it's more than ok to be a cosy offbeat weirdo as long as enjoy it.

No Matter Our Wreckage by Gemma Carey

Written by a now-Canberran dwelling lady academic researcher, this book reflexively documents her own childhood sexual assault and abuse. Which is to say things get very real and very dark at points. But, Gemma Carey refuses to let her story go untold and that courage glues together what is an otherwise tragic and deeply personal patchwork of recollections and tribulations.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Honestly, I can't say I'm a big Sally Rooney fan but sometimes you are having a mid time and simply want to escape into someone else's even mid-er time this hits. I can't explain it any other way.

The Switch by Beth O'Leary

I tried to listen to the audiobook of this story and didn't make it very far but when I found a copy of the paperback, I got through it quite readily. Cosy as all Beth O'Leary novels are, if the obstacle-boyfriend can be a bit characterised as a bit obviously shit.

November 9th Colleen Hoover

If you miss the days of scoffing down random wattpad stories as a tween, this is perfect.

Love and Virtue by Diana Reid

I spent on year studying at the University of Sydney in 2017 and used to always wonder what went on behind the hedges of the overpriced colleges where presumably people with very rich parents lived. This book is almost definitely a very accurate window into the answer. Having studied law and arts at Usyd herself, the

Verity by Colleen Hoover

Wtf!? Truly I was relentlessly gazumped and then bamboozled. No sense can be made of this one, it's beyond sense.

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

I've just finished this book, it might be my last read of 2022. A very sweet and escapist read (mostly for me, as a mathematically and scientifically challenged legal professional lmao). Though I will say I enjoyed Ali Hazelwood's other novel The Love Hypothesis a smidge more.

Whew, that was quite a test for my memory. Any outstandingly great or shitty reads for you in 2022? KEEN TO DISCUSS as always.

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