#but that hasn’t really been an issue with other Austen novels

[fallenangelontheceiling]

I’m breaking my No Tumblr For Lent rule because I really have to share -

I’m 65 pages into Mansfield Park and I can’t stand Edmund. He’s objectively a Good Person (which I can already tell is going to be a rarity in this narrative), but god is he insufferable.

The Crawfords are flakes, but at least they’re entertaining flakes so far.

Austen is always scathingly snarky but this is the first time I think she comes off a bit self-righteous??

[classic80sand90smovieloves2]

Meeting and Dating Rip Van Kelt

(Pretty boy vs ugly homemade gif)(Requested by anonymous)

- You met Rip while attending the school dance. He caught your eye the moment he walked in, half a foot taller than most of his classmates and standing still while everyone else went to look for a dancing partner. He was certainly hard to miss and one look at that brooding face made you glad you didn’t

- Whether you had the nerve to approach him or not didn’t matter as you were swept onto the dance floor, instantly losing track of the prefect while being swallowed by the crowd.

- Even as you danced with another boy, you couldn’t seem to get his face out of your head. Little did you know, you weren’t the only one noticing attractive strangers. 

- You excused yourself as the song came to an end, making your way over to the refreshments for a drink and a chance to catch your breath. You were just about to take a sip of the punch when a voice rang out close behind you. 

“You might not want to drink that.” 

- Turning around, you were met with the gorgeous sight of the boy from before. He took the cup from your hands, setting it on the table as he hinted at it’s more “grown-up” contents, leaving out the fact that it was him who put them there. 

“The safer option would be the water fountain... I could walk you to one if you’d like?” 

- You agreed and he offered you his hand, leading you outside of the gym and down the quiet hallway. He took the chance to get a good look at your face, admiring your features while you were distracted. 

- When you returned to the gym you were met with the sight of couples dancing close, a slow song reverberating throughout the room. He took one look at the mass of students, then at you and immediately asked if you’d like to dance; you happily agreed. 

- The two of you made conversation while you danced, at one point he asked you if you were seeing anybody and teasingly refused to believe that you weren’t. In response you asked if he was going steady with somebody, commenting that it didn’t make sense for him to be single either. 

“Maybe we should do something about our predicament then? There’s a nice diner in town, great coffee, wonderful donuts. I could take you there Friday if you’d like?” And so the date was set. 

- Friday comes along and you get all gussied up, boarding the bus into town with an eager nervousness inside you. 

- Rip’s already waiting at the street corner when you arrive, he offers you a warm smile and a hand to steady yourself with as you step onto the sidewalk. You walk a little ways to the diner and sit down at a booth where you begin to get to know each other better. If he hadn’t won your heart before, his flattery and good manners sure did. 

- You had your first kiss after attending one of his football games about a week or so into dating. His team had just won the game and everyone was cheering like mad. As everyone was excitedly clearing the field, he ran over to you and kissed you with enough passion to turn your legs into jelly. He apologized as you parted but neither of you were the least bit sorry. 

- The two of you have been going steady ever since. 

- Subtle Pda. People may not be able to tell that you’re dating from just looking at you but once they know they can’t help but notice all the small details that give it away. 

- Adoring looks, kissing each others cheeks, him brushing your hair behind your ear; all can be overlooked or seen as platonic until you’re confronted with the fact that it’s all actually romantic. 

- Deep kisses. 

- Hugs from behind. 

- You ever just wanna be held close? Just completely fucking snuggled? If your answer is yes then congratulations, you found your perfect man. 

-  This man... this gorgeous man is 6′4″ so you never have to worry about wearing heels or losing him in a crowd. The only thing you’ll ever need to worry about is reaching his lips when you want a kiss. 

- He usually sleeps on his side so being the big spoon just comes naturally to him. Charlie can confirm that even when you aren’t together, he still cuddles his pillow like its you.  

- There’s always a seat saved for you right beside him... or on his lap. 

- Your chair? Pulled out. The door before you? Opened. The street? Blocked by his body. Him? A chivalrous gentleman. 

- Jaw kisses. He does have a gorgeous jaw, doesn’t he?

- Hand kisses. 

- He likes to hold your hands in his while you talk, playing with your fingers and rubbing your knuckles as he listens or tries to remember what he wanted to say. 

- He’s so proud when you start going steady. He can’t help but smile every time he hears someone talking about the two of you as a couple. 

- He’s nicely clingy. You don’t see each other often so his daily calls and refusal to let go of you is, more often than not, appreciated. 

- The two of you have matching rings to show that you’re together. 

- He tries his best to save his money so that he has enough to take you out whenever he wants. 

- It’s my firm belief that the taller you are, the more you yearn to be closer to the ground. It’s for this very reason that Rip loves to lay on you, or rest his head on you while he sits on the floor. 

- His arm just fits so perfectly around your shoulder, it’s like you were made for each other. 

- He’s quite fond of the nicknames “kitten”, “darling” and “doll” but there’s also a good chance that he’d call you something cute or odd that stems from some experience you’ve had together. 

- Bowling dates. 

- Cafe dates. 

- Picking up some sweets from the bakery and sitting down to enjoy them together. 

- He’s probably taken you for a late night swim in the lake or boat ride. The water and air is freezing cold but you find ways to warm each other up. 

- Always has a plan for everything, whether it be for dates or what you should do in a situation.  

- He’s not an incredibly serious person but he doesn’t smile all too often which makes the fact that he’s constantly smiling around you even more heartwarming. 

- Sitting back and watching with a smile as he roughhouses with his friends. You can’t help but find it adorable when he jogs back over to you, panting and smiling with an “I won” leaving his lips. 

- Cheering him on at his games. 

- Dancing to records together. 

- Even though he’s a prefect, he’s certainly no goody two shoes. He isn’t afraid to sneak out to see you or break a few rules. 

- Sneaking a drink with him. He thinks the disgusted face you make when you take a sip is adorable. 

- He likes giving you a teasing pout whenever you look sad, usually followed by a soft “what’s the matter?” if your face doesn’t change. 

- Sitting on the phone with him. Oftentimes one of the boys will come and harass him so you’ll just hear him whispering “quit it” or something of the sort in the background between his words. 

- Getting letters sent to you. He has really nice handwriting, it’s a looping script which makes you feel like you’re in some Jane Austen novel whenever you receive them. 

- Studying together. You may not have the same classes but he always tries his best to help you out whenever he can. 

- Your parents love him and that’s a fact. Who wouldn’t want their daughter dating a wealthy, well educated, respectable young man with a good future ahead of him? 

- Family dinners and holidays. You’re constantly being invited over to his house. I have this feeling that even though Rip looks like he came straight out of a dream, he hasn’t had many girlfriends, if any, so his parents are particularly fond of you. 

- He’s completely loyal to you so you never have to worry about him being unfaithful. 

- He doesn’t get noticeably jealous very often but that’s mainly because he’s so observant. He’s always the first to catch them coming towards you so he tends to just swoop in and join you before they can reach you. If the person had a non-romantic reason for approaching you then they won’t be afraid to talk to you in front of him, right? 

- He trusts you so if you excuse yourself to talk to them in private then he’ll let you go without any protest. He just doesn’t trust them and wants to be there for you if you need anything. 

- He always comes to your aid, even if you initially deny his help. 

- You and Rip have had maybe one or two fights during your whole relationship. He’s incredibly understanding and good at staying calm so even if you have a disagreement over something it’s easy to just talk things out and resolve the issue without actually “fighting”. 

- On the off chance that you do have an actual fight, you tend to bicker before just giving each other the silent treatment for a while. It gives you the time to cool down and see how stupid you’re both being. You’ll probably be the one to cave first but the way he looks at you while you approach him shows that he’s forgiven you and is relieved you aren’t mad at him anymore. Chances are he’ll just pull you into a hug and that will be that. 

- Quiet “I love you’s” every now and again. He says it often enough that you know he does and just a tad too little so that it still feels completely special whenever he does say it. 

- Going steady in the 50′s really meant something so you can rest assured knowing that as long as you’re together, he’s planning on staying that way for a long time. Might as well plan ahead and set the date for your wedding. 

[fortunatelylori]

Sandtion: The Sense and sensibility connection - a meta collab with @and-holly-goes-lightly

As some of you may have gathered, @and-holly-goes-lightly​ and I are salt mates (this is a tumblr term I have learned only recently and am planning to run into the ground. You have been forwarned. I don’t want any complaints down the line!)

It all started about a year ago, with this:

And progressed steadily until we ended up here:

Occasionally, between ogling pictures of naked men, we discuss serious issues as well. Those end up as metas for your consumption, most of the time.

It’s a colaboration that works well. I write long metas, she writes really good ones. We enjoy. We have fun.

Given that we both obssesively analyze tv content and that we tend to reach about the same conclusions, we have been planning on doing some project together for a while now.

I think if 2 months ago someone had told us that Sanditon would be the tv show that would see us join writing forces, we would have been more than a little shocked.

But here we are … hoplessly obssessed with Austen’s unfinished novel and ITV’s unfinished tv show (get the hint, ITV?!?! I hope you do. Chop, chop! You can’t live on Downton Abbey reruns for the rest of time, you know)

So on this most special of days, @and-holly-goes-lightly​ and I bring you the motherload of Sandtion metas. Two crazy writers, one tv show, one simple title:

Sandtion: The Sense and Sensibility connection

It’s no surprise to anyone, at this point, that Andrew Davies wears his Austen influences on his sleeve in Sanditon. You can find easter eggs for most of Austen’s work, from the famous Pride and Prejudice to the obscure Lady Susan.

However, Sense and Sensibility seems to be one work that hasn’t insipired much comparison from the fandom. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Sandion’s last two episodes were so hard to digest and why so many question marks were raised in regards to Charlotte’s characterization.

In this project we aim to dispel some of that confusion and attempt to put into prespective the character arcs of both Sidney and Charlotte in:

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility by @fortunatelylori​

As well as delve deeper into Charlotte’s POV through out the season finale in:

Charlotte Heywood - From Sensibility to Sense by @and-holly-goes-lightly​

We hope you enjoy our take. Please don’t forget to leave us your comments in the reply section. This is a new format for us and we’d love to hear from you on how you like this kind of collaborative work.

        Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility

As I was reading the now infamous Theo James interview, I was reminded of the “unusual” visual representation of Sanditon. It really does look quite different to most Austen adaptations which are defined by the sunny, sanitized domesticity of the English garden.

Sanditon doesn’t look like that. It’s rough and a little wild. It presents a world in the throes of change, with gales, nudity and darkness lurking around the corners. I think it’s those visual cues that made Theo link it to Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire gloomy moors and harsh winds.

But that just goes to show you Mr. James has not done his proper Andrew Davies research (Tsk, tsk, me thinks he will need to do a few more nude scenes to atone for it) because the wind swept beaches, the wilderness of the English countryside, the cowboy motif? They all go back to this:

I imagine the visual style of Sense and Sensibility 2008 was in part generated by an attempt to separate it from the very famous 1995 version (the quintessential sunny English countryside film) and in part as a response to the earthier approach Joe Wright took for his now very influential version of Pride and Prejudice (2005).

But I do think Sanditon owes more to S&S 2008 than just its visuals. I’ve talked about this in the past but Sanditon, to me, is really Davies’ homage to Austen’s entire body of work so the more you dig and analyze, the more similarities and parallels you are going to find between Sanditon, its characters and the rest of the Austenverse (I really hope this is just a thing I say in a sarcastic way on tumblr. Not everything needs to be a –verse, people!).

Episode 8 really brought this theory into focus for me. In my review I said that the finale marked the tonal shift of the story from the naïve, hopeful and mostly comedic territory of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice towards the darker, more reflective tone of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.

Of course, comedy and witticisms are a core trait of all of Austen’s work. Her voice is so powerful that she is always an extra character in her own stories. However, Persuasion and S&S are also permeated with a sense of loss and angst that her other works don’t really have.

They’re more mature I suppose one could say. And it’s that maturity that plays a role in the shift that occurred in the season finale of Sanditon. Because Sanditon is really all about Charlotte Heywood. We enter this world with her and we follow her coming of age story throughout the season. And that story is marked by a pretty steep transition from the romantic, hopeful heroine represented by Marianne Dashwood to her restrained, sensible sister, Eleanor.

One of the things I liked the most about S&S 2008 was how much more balanced its view on Marianne and Eleanor was. In the 1995 film, it always felt as if Marianne was presented as a cautionary tale while Eleanor was the heroic nurturing woman who endures everything stoically and is rewarded for her restraint in the end.

But that’s not really, to my mind, the message Jane Austen would like us to get out of S&S. Just like with Pride and Prejudice, Austen is shining a light on the folly of both extreme sense and as well as extreme sensibility. It is not wise to jump head first into situations having only Lord Byron’s poems as your guide but it’s also equally unwise to constrain yourself to the point where you are unable to confide in anyone, to the point where you deny your feelings and end up a passive participant to your own life.

With Charlotte Heywood, we get to explore both those behavioral patterns.

The change from Marianne to Eleanor doesn’t occur in episode 8, by the way. It occurs at the end of episode 6 and carries through to the finale. That’s why people, including myself, were taken aback by Charlotte’s apparent change in demeanor in episode 7, from the girl who always spoke her mind (even when she shouldn’t) and wore her heart on her sleeve to the outwardly detached, apprehensive young woman who was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as the man she loved was about to propose to her.  

It would be easy to blame this transition on poor execution and I do believe the shift was too sudden and it was a mistake to have it start off screen (in between episode 6 and episode 7). However, the arc itself is not a mistake and it’s actually very clever.

For one because it allows us to explore this story both from the naïve, romantic perspective as well as the angst filled one.

Secondly, and most importantly, because it works in tandem with Sidney’s arc, who is going through the exact opposite journey from the emotionally repressed outlier to the open hearted tormented hero, representative of the Byronic romantic ideal.

What was supposed to happen is that by the end of episode 8, Sidney and Charlotte would meet in the middle, she as a more controlled romantic, he as a warmhearted stoic. What Davies gave us instead is two ships that passed each other in the night and have, by their last scene in episode 8, completely exchanged places.

So I think it’s important to go back to the beginning and analyze how the meeting between the naïve romantic Charlotte and the world weary Sidney ended up altering them forever and how, while deeply painful for both of them at the moment, their separation and behavior shift will end up benefiting them when their eventual reunion occurs (whether or not ITV decides to renew this series, Charlotte and Sidney WILL get married and have 2 to 3 adorable children because this is an Austen story and I will accept nothing less, damn it!)

One of the most important scenes in the whole season for me was the carriage scene in episode 6. I wrote a whole meta on it that you can find here and I have to go back to it in order to reference this extremely important exchange that sits as the lynchpin of this meta:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing this scene and how pivotal it is in the story of Sidney as the motivator behind his lowering of his emotional guard. But I don’t think we’ve spent nearly enough time asking ourselves what this exchange tells us about Charlotte.

Because this doesn’t just announce a change in Sidney, it also foreshadows one for her. Sidney is correct in implying she doesn’t really understand love because she’s never experienced it. She is, however, about to realize that she’s in love with him and thus her assertion that she’d rather be naïve than insensible of feeling is just about to be tested.

And the surprising result is … Charlotte fails at her own paradigm. For the rest of the season, she will never be as emotionally open as she is in episode 6.

Charlotte is unable to remain the open book, expansive girl in the face of first supposed unrequited love and then as she experiences loss. She, instead, withdraws inward and begins building up her walls just as Sidney did after Eliza left him.

I think Davies understands Austen’s ultimate message that you fall into the extreme of sense or sensibility at your own peril, which is why he chooses to have his main two characters traverse opposite journeys so they can be brought closer by the end of the story (in season 2 of course).

That’s because at the core of all of the fights and misunderstandings between Charlotte and Sidney sit two problems:

Sidney Parker does not believe in the good intentions of other people. He is operating from a place of hurt and feeling under attack. He is essentially under the impression that the people he comes into contact with have ulterior motives, and none of them are good. And you can’t really blame him for that distorted image of reality when you consider what the two most meaningful relationships in his life have been up until this point.

On the one hand you have Tom who weaponizes even the most benign of compliments:

Tom: At least I have your prowess on the cricket field to be thankful for.

Sidney: Well in truth you have Lord Babington to thank for that. I am here at his behest to give him support in his time of romantic need. God knows he shall need it.

Tom: You’re a good friend, Sidney …  I don’t suppose you could try just one last time… [to go ask for money]

On the other hand, you have Eliza Campion who says stuff like this with a straight face:

Sidney: You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.

Eliza: I’ve waited for 10 years. What’s another quarter of an hour?

While researching this meta and also trying to figure out my Christmas fic, I’ve come to realize that both Tom and Eliza are using a victim narrative to get what they want from the people around them. What Sidney has learned from these relationships is that nothing in life comes for free. Any compliment, any sign of affection comes with a price tag or an eventual let down.

For her part, Charlotte Heywood is suspicious of Sidney because he doesn’t make himself easy to understand.

Charlotte thrives on communication and she tends to empathize and like people who share, or overshare, information with her. Her opinion on Tom shifts the moment he starts including her in his Sanditon projects. She is apprehensive of Otis for quite a bit of episode 4 but ends up completely on his side the moment he talks about his past as a slave and making innuendos about Sidney, despite neither one of those things really resolving her initial reasons for being apprehensive.

This behavior is really down to Charlotte’s upbringing in a very large but very happy family. Or as Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey would put it:

Eleanor: I think you have had a quite dangerous upbringing. You’ve been brought up to believe that everyone is as pure in heart as you are.

Incidentally another Andrew Davies adaptation …

In Charlotte’s mind, people who are open emotionally and speak their mind must be good people. After all, she is this way and she certainly always has the best of intentions. When someone doesn’t do that, or worse they evade and try to manipulate, she distances herself from them, as is the case with Edward and Clara.

And since Charlotte views meaningful communication as the ultimate sign of trust, it’s this withholding of information, this emotional barrier she can sense in Sidney, that makes her mistrustful of him. She can’t understand his emotional withdrawal for what it is – a response to trauma - because she’s never experienced it. And as such she will always fundamentally misunderstand him.

We see these two character hang ups rearing their ugly heads again and again in their conflicts:

Episode 1

Sidney: And what have you observed about me upon our small acquaintance?

Charlotte: I think you must be the sensible brother of the three. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that your younger brother, Arthur, is a very … contrary nature. Alternately over lethargic and over energetic. While your elder brother, Tom, could be called over enthusiastic. I’m afraid that despite his good nature, he neglects his own happiness and his family’s in his passionate devotion to Sanditon. Don’t you agree?

Sidney: Upon my word, Miss Heywood, you are very free with your opinions. And upon what experience of the world do you form your judgments? Where have you been? Nowhere. What have you learnt? Nothing it would seem. And yet you take it upon yourself to criticize. Let me put it to you, Miss Heywood: which is the better way to live? To sit in your father’s home, with your piano and your embroidery, waiting for someone to come and take you off your parents’ hands? Or to expend your energy in trying to make a difference? To leave your mark. To leave the world in a better place than you found it. That is what my brother, Tom, is trying to do. At the expense of a great deal of effort and anxiety, in a good cause in which I do my best to help and support him. And you see fit to … to criticize him … to amuse yourself at his expense.

Fortunatelylori: … I have a theory that the reason why Sidney’s been forced into prostitution by the end of season 1 is because he used the argument of the fucking patriarchy to defend Tom The Worst Parker. Gee, Sidney, us women would love to go out there and change the world but your male friends are forcing us to stay home with our pianos and embroideries to make sure they take full advantage of our ovaries. Please take several seats!

Fortunatelylori: Also … fyi … Tom isn’t protecting England from the French or helping Warren de La Rue develop the freaking light bulb. He is trying to run a dime a dozen seaside resort and failing miserably at it so spare us the change the world one naked ass at a time speeches.

Charlotte is baited by Sidney, the emotional recluse, into oversharing which she can’t help herself from doing because even at this early stage she has a crush on him and wants to impress him with her insight. He takes that rather kind take on his brother Tom and spins it into a narrative of inexperienced superficiality and mockery because that’s what he’s conditioned himself to think about people.

Episode 2  

Charlotte: Our conversation at the party … I expressed myself badly and I fear you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to disparage your brother or to offend you. Indeed I have the greatest admiration for what you and he are doing here in Sanditon. You were right to rebuke me and indeed I am sorry. I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood. I have no interest in your approval or disapproval. Quite simply, I don’t care what you think or how you feel. I’m sorry if that disappoints you but there it is. Have I made myself clear?

Fortunatelylori: Badly done, Sidney! Badly done indeed!

Not much to say about Charlotte in this one as this argument is ALL on Sidney and his trust issues. In his world, this kind of earnest apology and brave taking of responsibility is always a precursor to a guilt trip or a victimization episode. So he has become very adept at shooting down any such attempt forcefully.

It’s only in episode 3, when he sees Charlotte helping Mr. Stringer without any expectations of reward and her accepting his apology without any hint of emotional blackmail that Sidney is able to lower his guard and begin to see Charlotte for the honest, kind and generous human being that she is:

Fortunatelylori: Awwww! This is Sidney essentially seeing his unborn children in Charlotte’s eyes. (that is the most romantic lyric in the English language and no one will convince me otherwise)

However, what ends up happening? Sidney lowers his guard just in time for Charlotte to reactivate her suspicions which leads to their most explosive fight to date:

Episode 4

Sidney: Did we not agree that you would look out for Georgiana? Keep her out of trouble? I should have known you weren’t to be trusted.

Charlotte: And I should have known, despite your professed concern, you care nothing for her happiness.

Sidney: I would ask you to refrain from making judgments about a situation you don’t understand.

Charlotte: I understand perfectly well!

Sidney: Of course you do! Even though you’ve known Georgiana but a handful of weeks and him but a matter of hours.

Charlotte: That was time enough to learn that Mr. Molyneux is as respectable a gentleman as I have ever had cause to meet.

Sidney: You seem to find it impossible to distinguish between the truth and your own opinion!

Charlotte: The truth? You wish to speak of the truth, Mr. Parker? The truth is you are so blinded by prejudice that you would judge a man by the color of his skin alone.

Sidney: You speak out of turn.

Charlotte: Why should I expect any better from a man whose fortune is so tainted with the stain of slavery!

Sidney: That is enough! … I do not need to justify myself to you.

They essentially spiral out of control in this scene. Sidney’s trust issues come back and his lack of feed-back to Charlotte’s accusations make her provide increasingly horrible explanations to fill in the blanks.

Because their fights tend to be very intense (they are both people with very strong personalities), it’s easy to think of the two of them as simply not being compatible.

But their issues aren’t a matter of compatibility but rather an inability to find the right channels on which to communicate with each other, despite both wanting to.

Which brings us to episode 5

I love these little acting choices Theo James makes. This sigh is so evocative because it’s pretty clear it’s not frustration or boredom, but rather Sidney still reeling from her accusations in episode 4.

On the other side, Charlotte looks at him and thinks he is distant and non-affected and because, despite being angry, she still wants to connect with him, she tries so hard to use Sidney’s acerbic wit against him and keeps attempting to poke the big grizzly bear:

Charlotte: I assume you are here for the cricket.

Sidney: Never short of assumptions, Miss Heywood.

Unable to find a chink in his cold shoulder, Charlotte tries again at the cricket match:

Charlotte: Good luck to you too, Mr. Parker. Although I imagine you don’t think you’ll need it.

Sidney: Yes more assumptions, Miss Heywood?

Sidney is so pissed at her in this episode, not even her low key flirting with James Stringer galvanizes him.

But then something quite unexpected happens … Without actually realizing it, Charlotte manages to find the right channel to communicate on:

Stringer: You haven’t got another player to replace him. We win.

Charlotte: I’ll play.

With the wide eyed enthusiasm of a true romantic, Charlotte taps into the core of what Sidney desperately needs in his life. She doesn’t just help and support him when he needs her to but crucially she doesn’t put a price tag on it.

Charlotte: Is that a smile I detected?

Sidney: Oh, I doubt it …

Charlotte doesn’t enter the cricket match because she wants to use that gesture to ask Sidney for money for her pyramid scheme or gaslight him into thinking her betrayal was actually her “waiting” for him. Charlotte does it because she wants to see him smile. And just look at him …

Unfortunately that momentary progress is derailed again when Georgiana is kidnapped which will eventually lead to the carriage scene in episode 6 where Charlotte’s need for feed-back clashes with Sidney’s trust issues in their most revealing conversation.

It’s tempting to look at this argument and think Sidney is the only one who is in the wrong and who needs to change. But that would be missing a few important aspects of the story.

Charlotte: Otis never meant to place Georgiana in harm’s way. Any more than I did.  

Sidney: And yet you both did.

I think a lot of people, Charlotte included, fall into the trap of believing that if someone didn’t intend to harm someone else that means they haven’t actually done something wrong. Which is why there are still people in the Sanditon tag that are resisting the idea that Tom Parker is a villain. Surely he never meant to hurt his brother and he didn’t force him to propose to Eliza, so why is everyone so hard on him?

But like Charlotte had to learn with Otis, just because Tom didn’t intend to cause Sidney harm doesn’t change the fact that he very much did.

In this case, Charlotte’s major mistake was not that she helped Georgiana stay in touch with Otis. Charlotte’s mistake was in assuming she had the whole 1000 piece puzzle completed when she only had about 200 pieces in place.

Charlotte: All I ever cared about was Georgiana’s happiness.

Sidney: What did you think I cared about?

Charlotte: That is anyone’s guess!

Sidney: I’ve done the best I can by Georgiana.

Charlotte: No! At every turn you have abdicated responsibility. If you truly cared for her welfare, you would have watched over her yourself.

Sidney: It is a role I neither sought or asked for.

Charlotte: Of course not! Because you are determined to remain an outlier. God forbid you give something of yourself!

Sidney: Please do not presume to know my mind, Miss Heywood.

Charlotte: How could anyone know your mind? You take pains to be unknowable. All I know is that you cannot bear the idea of two people being in love.

Despite admitting she doesn’t know his mind, Charlotte can’t help herself from filling in the blanks with what she assumes is a conscious desire to be uncaring. Because she doesn’t have the life experience to come up with another answer.

For his part, Sidney is hurt by her lack of trust in him but unwilling to trust her enough in return to tell her the whole story. Still her words do affect him enough to make him begin to lower his barrier and give Theo James one of his best acting moments:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

Sidney: Is that really what you think of me? I’m sorry that you think that. How much easier my life would have been if I were …

Fortunatelylori: I just … he’s very good … that is all

It would be very tempting to assume that since Charlotte admits to being naïve once the whole Otis and Georgiana’s situation is revealed:

Charlotte: It’s all so overwhelming! I hardly know what to think anymore. (beat) About anything! I’ve always felt so certain of my judgment. But now I see that I have been blinded by sentiment and naivety. How could I have gotten it all so wrong? No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me …

and Sidney begins to show more outward concern for the people around him and validate Charlotte in ever increasingly romantic ways:

Charlotte: I know … I’m too headstrong. I’m too opinionated. I’m too …

Sidney: No. You are not too anything. Don’t doubt yourself. You’re more than equal to any woman here.

That their clashing world views are now aligned. But the truth is, Sidney isn’t the one to explain to Charlotte how it was that he became “insensible of feeling”. It’s Tom that tells her that story (and then promptly bungles whatever help he might have provided his brother). Sidney’s trust issues remain which is evident even as late as episode 8:

Babbington: I believe she’s tamed me.

Sidney: Yes … I just imagine how that might feel.

And

Sidney: I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before.

Don’t get me wrong, I melt every time I hear that second line but it is indicative of the fact that love still feels like an inherently risky and dangerous thing for Sidney where he is obliged to hand over his power to someone else and pray that person doesn’t abuse it the way Eliza did.

For Charlotte’s part, Sidney beginning to reveal more of himself and show her the true man underneath the armor, makes her fall more and more in love with him. And the more she loves him, the more afraid she is of outwardly showing it. His confusion over his feelings for her and Eliza’s reappearance in his life, cause her to attempt to fill in the blanks again in episode 7. First by proxy, while talking to James Stringer:

Charlotte: You are far too sensible to form such a misguided and futile attachment.

Stringer: Why should it be futile, Miss Heywood? For all you know your feelings are repaid 5 times over.

Charlotte: I allowed myself to believe so for the briefest of moments. But I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes.

And then directly:

Sidney: I hope you weren’t too offended by Mrs. Campion. It was only meant in jest.

Charlotte: Is that all I am to you? A source of amusement?

Sidney: No. Of course not! You’re … Forgive me.

Charlotte: On the contrary, you’ve done me a great service. I am no longer in any doubt as to how you regard me.

So what happens in episode 8? Well, they essentially trade places, going from this:

Charlotte: I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood.

To this:

Sidney: Tell me you don’t think too badly of me.

Charlotte: I don’t think badly of you.

In one of my metas I made the point that Sidney Parker IS Charlotte Heywood’s coming of age story: he is her first love, the first man she is sexually attracted to, her first kiss and well … unfortunately also her first (and hopefully only) heartbreak.

By being forced to deal with her own sense of loss and the pain of being separated from the person she loves, Charlotte will finally be able to understand the true nature of Sidney’s insensitivity of feeling. Instead of causing her suspicion or apprehension, she will be able to connect with it because she’s lived through it herself.

As for Sidney … I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the end he is forced to do to Charlotte what Eliza did to him all those years ago. He chooses to marry a wealthy woman he does not love and disappoint a poor woman whom he does love.

I think given that his motives are obviously altruistic while Eliza’s were not (both per Tom’s story as well as her general character as revealed in the show so far), the point of the similarity is not to bring him closer to Eliza. Certainly not when he’s looking at Charlotte like this:

Which means that him being forced to contend with what happened 10 years ago by reliving the incident, this time in the role of the aggressor, is there to increase his level of vulnerability and put him in the place of the earnest person trying to reach out for emotional connection and having to fight to pull down the walls he himself helped put up in Charlotte.

You know what they say … If you really want to know someone, walk a mile in their shoes. No one ever said those shoes would be comfortable.

[alwaysspeakshermind]

Top 5  Anti-Varchie Arguments & Why They Make No Sense

#4: “Varchie’s boring/predictable, love at first sight is so cliché(d).”

Love at first sight is so clichéd? Okay, sure, I’ll allow that.

I’ll even agree.

But think contextually for a sec: love-at-first-sight is so clichéd as opposed to what? The utterly original, never-been-done-before uniqueness of best-friends-to-lovers that Barchie and also Bughead, why do people who say they want to see a friends-to-lovers relationship keep forgetting Bughead’s in that category? represents? The novel concept of enemies-to-lovers that is Cheryl/Toni (and Veggie if you squint)? The dated-in-the-past-but-sparks-still-fly (Falice, Tom Keller/Sierra McCoy, Fred/Hermione) or misunderstood-outsider-falls-in-love-with-“perfect”-America’s Sweetheart (Bughead, and also Kevin/Joaquin, Kevin/Fangs)? 

Come on.

Whether it’s your cup of tea or not, a trope is a trope is a trope. There are only so many combinations possible when it comes to romantic dynamics, and since fiction and reality have both existed for a really long time, there’s no one trope that hasn’t already been done a million times over. So…what’s the point of harping on this particular one? Or any other trope just because it’s not your personal favorite?

Yes, Love At First Sight is the bread-and-butter of many fairytales and/or Disney movies. But it’s by no means alone in that regard. 

Best friends/childhood friends-to-lovers has been a longtime staple of books, TV shows, rom-coms, and musicals (Harry Potter, Kim Possible, 13 Going On 30, Phantom of the Opera, and Lion King all say hello), and so has enemies-to-lovers (27 Dresses, The Proposal, You’ve Got Mail, Tangled, etc.). I’m not even going to bother touching on the sparks-still-fly/loner-loves-”good” kid thing, because the first is the golden goose for Hallmark, Lifetime, an a billion-and-one romance novels, while the second is YA fiction in a nutshell. And if you’re one of those “I can’t help it, friends-to-lovers is my crack” kind of people, it might be worth noting that “Love At First Sight” is plenty of other people’s crack. Also, if your complaint against a trope you find overused is a valid argument, so is someone else’s. Childhood-best-friends-to-lovers may feel newer and unique to you, but it doesn’t to everyone. Some people are as tired of it as you are of Love At First Sight. 

And even if your claim is that “love at first sight’s not realistic/there’s like zero basis for it in the real world/it’s the exception not the rule,” that claim also extends to Childhood Best-Friends-To-Lovers and Enemies-To-Lovers. 

In the real world, the Best-Friends-To-Lovers thing is about as common as Love At First Sight, with the latter maybe being a bit more common, since the overwhelming majority of people tend to notice attraction within the first fifteen minutes of meeting someone and the overwhelming majority of childhood best friends grow up thinking of each other as a sibling. (Important distinction: when childhood best friends do grow up, fall in love and get married, they don’t tend to take until high school/college to figure out how they feel. They’re typically aware of it from puberty/slightly before puberty onward, and it doesn’t change because they already know everything there is to know about that person...they know if they’re attracted to them; they know if they’re not.) And both those tropes are more common in everyday life than enemies-to-lovers since, in truth, most people don’t want to have anything to do with the antagonistic person who made their life miserable.

So realism/unrealism? Kind of a shifting-sands argument. Especially within the context of a show that puts an ex-“gang” member in as sheriff and deputizes other “gang” members, one of whom is named Sweet Pea, of all things. I mean, if you truly feel morally obligated to reality-police Riverdale, there are far more pressing issues than the likelihood of two teens meeting each other one time and deciding within five minutes that “This is The One” (which is not even how it happens except for Archie, but still).

What it really comes down to is not the trope itself, but how well the trope is executed. 

In other words, it’s not what you’re given...it’s what you do with what you’re given. Every trope has been done many times before. Like it or not, that is an undeniable fact. Arguing that something has little-to-no value purely on the basis of its commonality is in essence weighting originality (theory) over style (practical application). To illustrate why this kind of thinking is a critical mistake, let’s put it this way: weighting originality over style is like saying Riverdale Season 3 is better than Riverdale Season 1. 

...Which, as even the most casual of Riverdale viewers knows, is not the case.

Is S3 more ambitious than S1? Yes. Does S3 contain more jaw-dropping plot twists than S1? Absolutely. Are there some damn fun episodes in S3? For sure. But guess what? S3 also contains far more plot holes, inane plot “twists” and contradictory developments/sheer why-are-you-trying-to-make-fetch-happen-with-this-storyline moments because S3 goes so hard for shock value/the unexpected, that it effectively lapses on execution and winds up with a more creative, but ultimately less-compelling finished product than S1. Moral to the story? Creativity is good, but devotion to creativity at the exclusion of all else is not. If a few predictable elements aren’t mixed into an unpredictable world (or vice versa), everything ceases to shock. On Riverdale, because things are always so wild, the biggest surprises are usually when things unfold normally/don’t go haywire.

Now.

Me personally, I’ve shipped every trope at least once. I’m in the habit of making myself set aside all preconceived notions when beginning a new show/book/movie, because I never know what, if any, ship I’ll go for. Historically, I’m about 50-50 on Childhood-best-friends-to-lovers—sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. Enemies-to-lovers—usually, I dig it, sometimes it’s a big, fat no from me, dawg. Love At First Sight however, I am overwhelmingly prejudiced against. And when I say overwhelmingly prejudiced, I mean that as a rule, I flat-out hate it. I find it stupid. It annoys me. I roll my eyes and make jokes.

But, here I am. Writing a bunch of long-ass Tumblr posts in defense of a fictional relationship that makes a direct play on the Love At First Sight trope.

So why are Archie and Veronica my huge exception? 

Well, for one thing, their relationship kicks off in a manner that is highly evocative of the comics. The instant Archie sees Veronica, all of time (for him) stands still. The one solitary thing he’s aware of from the moment she steps into Pop’s and he looks up is her. No matter what he’s doing, he ends up looking at her, and after a very short amount of time, the same goes for Veronica (though of course, she tries to play it cool). Regardless of how I feel about the cheesiness of the trope, the execution of the scene is fricking cute.

For another: it actually is an unusual trope, and I was surprised to see it used. 

Don’t get me wrong, the whole see-a-person-across-a-crowded-room deal is a cliché and it’s a million percent been done to death. But the funny thing is, Love At First Sight is such a clichéd cliché that it’s hardly ever used nowadays. By virtue of its extreme clichédness in fact, it has accidentally and ironically become fresh again because the second someone suggests it, someone else inevitably goes, “Nah, that’s too clichéd, we can’t do that.” In all honesty, I can’t remember one TV show or non-90s-Disney movie I watched in the last ten years where that trope was used over any/all of the other tropes available. I actually intended to make a list of the books/movies/shows I know of that have used the friends/enemies to lovers trope for comparison purposes, but it was getting so long with just the books section I ended up going, “Haha, no,” and scrapped that plan. (But for the record, almost every single Jane Austen novel is on that list.)

So, in summary: Love At First Sight clichéd? Yep. For sure.

Too clichéd?

Nope.

Certainly no more, and arguably less, than the other tropes Riverdale’s many ships adhere to. So if you’re not nonstop complaining about those other ships on the basis of the overdone/predictability factor, it shouldn’t be an issue that Varchie’s relationship is built around a recognizable trope that has been out-of-use by most everyone except Disney for a good while now. (Besides, some tropes are considered timeless for a reason.) 

And seriously, if we’re going to go down the Disney path, let’s stop a second and recall how many Disney Channel shows/movies in the last decade utilized Best-Friends-To-Lovers and Enemies-To-Lovers. Or hey, what about Nickelodeon shows? Or  maybe cop/CSI/civil service-type shows where best friend partners/partners who hate each other eventually fall in love?

Again, a relationship is not automatically made “boring” because it falls within the parameters of a well-known trope, and “predictable” does not automatically mean “bad.” If that were truly the case, no fictional relationship from probably the 18th century onward would have any popularity and/or critical acclaim. And if you try to argue that that’s just how it is for you personally: predictable/clichéd = boring, you should probably keep in mind that when measured by those standards, every single other ship on Riverdale is, by definition, boring. 

Every.

Single.

One.

Not just Varchie. 

So if you really are passionate about Riverdale not focusing on a “boring, predictable, clichéd ship instead of an interesting one,” you might want to take a break from griping about Archie and Veronica and start examining exactly how original those "interesting” ships you’re touting actually are. And if that’s not really what you mean, if you don’t really buy into the line you’re selling (i.e., you’re just using “they’re so boring” as an excuse to disguise the fact that you don’t like Varchie because they prevent your preferred ship from happening), you might also want to consider just being honest about that. 

Because when you build your argument around a point that encompasses more relationships than just the one you’re criticizing, it makes you look like you’re either extremely clueless in not realizing that your complaint also applies to your ship/other ships, or else a giant hypocrite.

[bittysvalentines]

Loose Lips Sail Ships

From: @missweber (Sophia_Prester on AO3)

To: @ellieotbelle Pairing: Bob Zimmermann/Alicia Zimmermann Tags: Meet cute, pining, spoilers for Jane Eyre, accidentally getting stoned, mild second-hand embarrassment, Bob is a doofus, honestly Alicia is the brains in the family Summary: Bob has a crush on a beautiful actress, but there's no way she would be interested in him, so there's no point in trying to do anything about it, right?

Bob was in love.

Well, it was something akin to 'in love'. Kind of. Maybe.

A few (okay, several) dramatically bad breakups had taught him that you had to know someone before you could say you were in love with them, and seeing someone interviewed on a stupid talk show while you were stuck at home on injured reserve in no way counted as knowing.

So maybe it was fair to say that he was primed to fall in love with Alicia Andersen if he ever got the chance to meet her and she didn't turn out to be one of those people who was actually horrible once you got to know them.

Somehow, he doubted this would be the case. He wasn't a rookie any more, and he had learned from several (okay, many) dramatically bad breakups to spot the more obvious red flags.

The problem was, he wasn't sure how he would ever get the chance to actually meet her.

In theory, it shouldn't be difficult. He was Bad Bob Zimmermann, damn it, and he had met plenty of other celebrities at parties, charity events, and the occasional nightclub. In fact, many of these meetings were precursors to a number (a lot) of dramatically bad breakups.

Maybe it was a good thing that everything he read about Alicia Andersen (it was a dark day when Mario found out he had bought an issue of Vogue just because she was on the cover) said she wasn't much of a party person.

Maybe he could meet her at some charity gala, because she did occasionally go to those (she was particularly vocal about funding AIDS research), but she was always quick to state in interviews that her idea of a perfect evening was sitting at home reading or running lines for whatever play she was obsessed with at the moment.

When his thoughts turned in those directions, he realized that a jock with a playboy reputation might not merit a second thought from her. It was one reason why he brushed off Mario's suggestion of having his agent call her agent and arrange something.

Another reason was that the whole idea sounded kind of gross.

No, it sounded really gross. One part presumptuous and one part transactional and one hundred percent slimy. If he tried something like that, Alicia would probably have him burned in effigy before efficiently trashing what was left of his reputation.

"Or get yourself booked as a guest judge on one of those stupid shows, or volunteer to help co-host something," Mario suggested after Bob explained his reluctance. "It worked for Wayne, didn't it? What's the worst that could happen?"

The worst that could happen was that the divine Ms. Anderson, a woman who probably knew all the plays of Shakespeare and all the novels of Jane Austen by heart, would have little use for a man who once bragged on camera that he technically hadn't graduated high school because he kept skipping art class to practice his slap shot.

"I'll think about it," he said, privately deciding that it was safer not to take the risk. Not taking a risk meant not looking foolish. It meant not getting shot down, possibly in public.

Or worse, she could shoot him down in private and be nice about it.

He wouldn't try to get in touch with her, and that was that.

* * *

Bob almost changed his mind a few times.

The first was after the whole Danielle incident, the first breakup in a long time that wasn't dramatically bad only because she dumped him halfway through the first date.

"Bob, this has been fun, but... no it hasn't, because the whole time I've been sitting here, it's been clear you were wishing I was someone else." She got up from the table, all long legs and perfect hair and... well, he didn't really know much about her other than that, and didn't that say something?

(It did, and it wasn't good.)

She left the restaurant before he could apologize and before the waiter arrived with the very hefty bill. He hated to admit it, but she had been right.

Bob got as far as rehearsing how he would bring up the subject with his agent before he told himself not to be stupid.

The second time was because he went to see Alicia's the latest movie even though it wasn't the sort of thing he would normally go see, given that it was based on a book he'd only pretended to read back in high school.

He was sneaky about going to the theater, sneaky enough that the other guys chirped him about being desperate enough to go to a strip club, but a few pointed hip checks during practice put an end to that.

The truth was, he almost snuck out shortly after he snuck in, because to his surprise and displeasure, Alicia Andersen was not playing the lead role. Some other actress had the role of Jane Eyre, and given the movie's nearly three-hour running time, whoever Alicia was playing might not be around for a while.

But then Jane's shitty aunt sent her to that shitty school, and her friend got sick, and crisse, the poor kid died?

Well, he couldn't leave now. He had to stick around long enough to make sure Jane was going to be okay.

His first impression of Rochester was that the man deserved to be slammed into the boards, hard. Slew-footing was also an option.

By the time it was clear that something strange and unwholesome was going on in the attics of Thornfield, Bob was so caught up in the story that he almost forgot why he wanted to see the movie in the first place.

And then, there she was.

He didn't recognize her at first. She was wild-haired and wild-eyed, barely visible in candlelight as she threatened Jane (who deserved so, so much better) with a knife.

By the time the truth came out about the madwoman locked away in the attic (and seriously, what the actual fucking fuck??) Bob was of the opinion that the first Mrs. Rochester deserved a hell of a lot better, too.

It wasn't anything like the glamorous roles Alicia Andersen usually took, and she was only on screen for maybe fifteen minutes, tops, but Bob thought it was the best thing she had done, ever.

When she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, he felt just as smug as when his pet rookie got nominated for the Calder last year, and it took every bit of willpower he had not to ask his agent to forward his congratulations to her agent.

Every bit.

The third time was a week later, on his birthday. He was sulking in the press box, serving the first of a two game suspension (on his birthday!) for beating the crap out of a highly deserving Cam Neely (so yeah, he was carrying a little bit of a hate-on for the Bruins from his Habs days) and feeling more than a little sorry for himself.

He wanted someone to talk to who wasn't a part of his team, or his support staff. He wanted to talk to someone who wasn't part of hockey, and wasn't that a new feeling?

It would just take a call, and then a follow up call, and he deserved to have something nice on his birthday, didn't he?

But it would be kind of creepy to call her out of the blue like that, wouldn't it?

He didn't call. And if he didn't call, she couldn't say no.

* * *

In the end, it was the pills that did it.

At least, that was what he maintained the next day, the day after that, and every time he told the story in years to come.

The Pens were in New York for three days. The trip had a game against the Rangers on one end, a game against the Islanders on the other, and Valentine's Day smack in the middle. A lot of the guys who were married or who had a serious girlfriend had big plans for the night, and PR and the press were all over it.

More specifically, they were all over him. Bob's nickname wasn't just because of his reputation for starting fights. He was also known for leaving a string of broken hearted girlfriends behind (which wasn't fair, as he usually wasn't the one doing the leaving).

The nonsense started even before the first game.

"So, Bob. You have any big plans for tomorrow with a special someone?"

"No. I'm looking forward to a good night of rest between games."

He fielded a few questions about his thoughts on facing off against Marcel Dionne before it started again with another reporter.

"I heard a rumor that maybe you and Christy Tur -"

"Ha ha. No."

And then another reporter.

"You can't tell me that Bad Bob Zimmermann doesn't have a hot - "

"Oh, yes, I can!"

And then another.

"I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for you to pick up some pretty young - "

At this point, Mario frog-marched him to the visitors' locker room because PR had declared that him literally growling and baring his teeth at reporters did little to 'foster a productive relationship with the press corps.'

It was a good game from a team perspective, and the win was needed if they wanted to secure a playoff position. It wasn't so good from a Zimmermann perspective, because a pileup early in the third period tweaked his back enough that he needed help getting off the ice.

The only saving grace was that he didn't blow his point streak and the back thing seemed to be just muscle strain.

"We'll put you down as a game-day decision for the Islanders," the team doctor said. "If you can get some rest tonight and tomorrow, you'll probably be okay. The trick is getting it so you can relax."

The doctor handed Bob a small pill bottle with what sounded like two pills inside it. Bob fiddled with the child-proof cap while the doctor explained what to do with alternating heat and ice. "In there is some pain medication and a muscle relaxer. Go ahead and take them - "

Bob got the cap off and tossed the pills back without benefit of water.

" - when you get back to the hotel," the doctor finished with a sigh. "Just make sure you have someone with you until you get back to your room."

The one good thing about getting injured was that it got him out of doing press. One of the rookies got assigned to accompany him back to the hotel while everyone else went out to celebrate the win.

Any other time, Bob might have felt sad about missing out, but by the time their cab got them back to the hotel, he wasn't feeling sad about anything.

He was one of the best damn hockey players in the world, he loved his team (he really did, he told the rookie - whatever his name was - he really, really did) and he loved New York City, and tomorrow was Valentine's Day, and there was something important, something important he was supposed to do or say...

Oh! And here was this nice person with a tape recorder and his friend with a camera asking him about his Valentine's plans. How nice!

"I don't have any," he told the men, once he remembered that he should speak English. He swatted at the rookie, who kept on trying to interrupt them for some reason. "Nope. No plans. Not for me. But there's someone I would love to have plans with."

The bubble of happiness that had formed around him ebbed for a moment. He didn't have plans with her, and he doubted she'd want to have plans with him, and it was so sad that he just had to tell someone about it.

So, when the nice men asked him who that someone was, he told them.

* * *

Later, Bob wouldn't be able to say for sure what restaurant it was. He would remember the white tablecloths and romantic lighting and how his custom-tailored suit still didn't feel swanky enough for this kind of place and how his stomach tried to turn itself inside-out with terror.

Most of all, he would remember the tripping, tumbling beat of his heart as Alicia Andersen walked into the restaurant and stopped to talk to the hostess.

Film could never do justice to the gold of her hair, or the soft blue of her dress, which looked like it had been pulled down from the summer sky. The hostess nodded at her and then led her straight back. To him.

Bob staggered to his feet, and failed to bite back a curse when his back twinged. It was loud enough that a nearby couple glared at him, and Alicia raised an eyebrow.

Oh, this was getting off to a great start.

He hurried to help her with her chair even though his back protested. "I am so, so sorry about this."

She gave him a polite and questioning little smile, but said nothing.

"In my defense, not that I'm trying to excuse what I did, I had just taken a muscle relaxer and a pain pill?" He tried giving her a charming smile, remembering just a second too late that he was waiting for the off season to do something about that missing incisor. He tried for a closed-lipped smolder instead. "I didn't remember saying anything to that reporter until my agent and the head of our PR team both showed up in my hotel room to yell at me this morning. Actually, I still don't remember saying it."

The shift in her facial expression was subtle, but telling. It was the sort of thing that she'd used to tell the audience so much about the first Mrs. Rochester before she even uttered a word. She wasn't happy, but it was a different kind of not-happy than he would have expected from a woman who was probably badgered by her publicity team to go on a date she probably didn't want.

"Are you saying that you didn't really want to spend Valentine's Day with me?"

For one crazy moment, Bob thought irony had struck in his favor, and she had been pining after him like he had been pining after her. But no, she was just curious.

"Ouais, I wanted to very much, but only if it was something you wanted, too."

The brief lapse into French got a flicker of a smile. "The fact that your agent told mine you would understand if I didn't want to go to dinner was one reason I did want to go."

"What was the other reason?"

Alicia rolled her eyes and propped her chin in one hand. "My agent wants to drum up a bit more publicity for my latest movie. Classic case of good critical reception but slow box office."

"What? Even with your Oscar nomination? Euh, I should have said congratulations earlier. Sorry."

She laughed, but it was kind, not mocking. He wanted to hear it again. "You really are Canadian, aren't you? But thank you. I'm delighted about the nomination, but best supporting actress isn't as much of a draw as best picture. I'd give up my own nomination in a heartbeat if we could have gotten that one instead."

"That's right. You were co-producer on that, weren't you?"

The look he got was one of unguarded, unfiltered surprise.

"It was one of the best movies I saw in a long time, even though I was disappointed at first you weren't playing Jane. But that twist about the first Mrs. Rochester... " He whistled low and shook his head. "I honestly had no idea that was coming. And I love how even though you didn't have many lines, you could tell this woman had a whole life before that crosseur Rochester wrecked it all. Euh, are you all right?"

Her jaw had dropped, but it shifted into a smile that started in her eyes. "Oh, yes. I was hoping people would get that from my performance. But you really had no idea about the madwoman in the attic? I assumed everyone who went to see the movie would already know the story."

"Alas, I am but an illiterate goon," he said, raising his wine glass in a mock toast. "I only went to see the movie because this hot actress had a supporting role."

He wasn't sure, but he thought her foot might have bumped against his.

"You know, I normally don't like it when men comment on my looks, but from you, I find I don't mind. Now isn't that funny?"

Bob forgot how to breathe.

"So, you'd been wanting to ask me out for a while, but you had to wait until you were loopy on pain pills to do anything about it. Why?"

There were so many things he could say about being respectful and not a creep, and while these things were true, they weren't the most true.

"I was afraid you'd say no," he said quietly.

"But I maybe I would say yes. And you would never know."

Bob huffed out a laugh. "That reminds me of something my friend Wayne said."

"Oh, is Wayne a smart guy?"

Bob waggled his hand. "He has his moments. So will you?"

"Will I what?"

Her hand was on the table within easy reaching distance. He slid his hand towards hers, waiting for a signal that he had gotten this wrong.

"Say yes?"

She raised an eyebrow, but this time he saw the humor behind it. He placed his hand on hers, and the world tipped on its axis when she turned her hand over and gave a gentle squeeze.

"Well, you'll just have to ask to find out, won't you?"

He would.

He took a deep breath, and he took the shot.

She said yes.

[lilyev]

wassup my dudes, i’m bee and i’m a huge ass nerd who’s super excited to be here ! pls take my daughter lily and love her, or hate her, w/e, i’m fine with it either way

isn’t that LILY EVANS ? yeah that is HER, sitting there at the GRYFFINDOR table with those other SIXTH years and i think i heard sybill saying they look like ZOEY DEUTCH… whoever that is! when she looks into her crystal ball she sees fireflies, coffee with cinnamon, cigarettes in the backyard, honey-flavoured chapstick, chipped nail polish, lying on the roof during a thunderstorm, flowers growing from cracks in the pavement, the feeling you get walking out from a cinema.  anyway i’ve heard they’re pretty TENDERHEARTED, TEMPESTUOUS, and INDEPENDENT. apparently they’re a MUGGLEBORN but i’m sure that’s not related. 

aesthetic: fireflies, coffee with cinnamon, cigarettes in the backyard, the smell of bookstores, honey-flavoured chapstick, whispered secrets, the burn of firewhiskey in your chest, chipped nail polish, polaroids, lying on the roof during a thunderstorm, chapped lips, the summertime buzz of cicadas, flowers growing from cracks in the pavement, burnt chocolate chip cookies, jane austen novels, angry tears, happy tears, scribbled notes in the margins of old books, the red glow of a sunset, the feeling you get walking out from a cinema

CHILDHOOD

lily evans grew up in cokeworth, england, a “distinctly unmagical” town that is solely known for being the fourth-largest steel producer in england. the steel factory smokestacks in the west loom over the town and its winding alleyways, cinder blocks, and weeds growing out of pavement cracks.

lily’s childhood was that of mowed green lawns, challah bread, flintstones reruns in grainy black and white, and playing outside after dinner with petunia till the sky grew dark and the fireflies and mosquitoes came out and their parents would call them back home for bed.

her parents were both university professors who had met while getting their doctorates, her mother in german literature and her father in political science. they were both academic, intelligent people, and saw no reason not to treat their children as such. this meant lots of political discussion over the dining room table — at nine, little lily knew more about the government deficit than most of her schoolteachers probably did. petunia tended to tune out these debates, claiming disinterest, but lily loved them, listening in avidly even if she didn’t understand. as she got older she began to participate more and more, and often even brought up issues she was interested in.

but despite her brightness, contrary to popular belief, school hasn’t always come naturally to lily. she just could never quite bring herself to focus in school. some teachers labelled her a chatterbox, others simply labelled her trouble. really, it was more of a combination of a desire to befriend every creature she met with an inability to sit still.

because lily yearned for something more than life at the end of the cul-de-sac, yearned for some great adventure. she was a curious, fearless thing as a child, always leaping off of the swing and tugging tuney to go explore on the other side of the tracks, where their parents didn’t allow them to go.

so when she met a sallow-skinned boy from the wrong side of town, and he told her about magic, lily was enraptured by the thought. severus snape and the world he spoke of represented, to lily, the adventure she’d only ever dreamed of.

you all know the story — lily didn’t mean to, but she traded one best friend for another, and petunia was left behind, hurt and angry.

HOGWARTS

flash forward to eleven year old lily – small for her age, sitting on a stool in the great hall and listening to the hat debate between slytherin and gryffindor. after she ended up being sorted into gryffindor, and heard everything her housemates had to say about slytherin, she couldn’t help but wonder why the hat had thought it might suit her. ( like mother like son, am i right ? )

but lily is ambitious and proud, and ( especially as a first year ) overflowing with a desire to prove herself. but when it comes down to it, she has a softness under her skin that doesn’t suit the cold blood of a snake, and her instinct to protect those she loves vastly outweighs her self-preservation instinct.

and all of a sudden, she was doing better in school than she ever had before. hogwarts gave her eager, curious young mind the adventure and intrigue it had been craving. for the first time, she actually wanted to learn. the professors quickly became used to the wiry girl with messy auburn hair and bright eyes sitting in the front row of every class and peppering them with questions.

she became the gryffindor prefect last year, something she was both very excited and very apprehensive about. she’s very conscious about the influence she has on younger students, and she’s determined to prove that she was the right choice.

PERSONALITY

lily evans has two main motivators: sentiment and spite. on one hand, she’s romantic and nostalgic, clinging to her fairytale endings and her belief that everyone has at least a little bit of good inside of them. she’d like to believe that everything will turn out the way it should, and that all pain is temporary and useful.

but on the other hand, she has her temper. lord, this girl is stubborn and proud to her very core. she does not easily admit she’s wrong, and she’s often guided by her emotions rather than her reason. it’s not a great combination. she has been called tempestuous.

she tends to make snap judgements about people and stubbornly sticks to those snap judgements. it takes her a while before she admits that someone isn’t as bad as she had previously thought, or that someone is worse than she previously thought ( see: james potter, severus snape )

she doesn’t react well to personal criticism. she can be pretty defensive and even hypocritical sometimes.

but for all her faults ( and she has many — she’s stubborn, over-idealistic, proud, spiteful, at times selfish, hypocritical, quick-tempered, biased ) lily loves. and she hopes. with all her heart.

she cares so much about everything. she wears her emotions on her sleeves. she cries when she’s angry, and when she’s happy, and when she’s talking passionately about something she loves.

if you’re someone lily evans loves, you should count yourself lucky, because she will defend you to the death. and if you’re a person who lily evans hates, you should also count yourself lucky, because no matter how much she hates you, there’s a little part of her that believes in the good part of you.

sometimes she wishes she was tougher, less vulnerable. she wishes the word ‘mudblood’ wouldn’t sting each time it’s flung at her like a grenade ( but it does ), and she wishes she isn’t disappointed with every chanukah that goes by without a card from pertunia ( but she is ). but in true lily evans fashion, she stubbornly holds her chin up high and smiles and doesn’t let the world see her hurting.

HEADCANONS

she keeps trying to keep a diary but she always forgets to write in it, although she refuses to admit it’s a hopeless cause.

has a love for sweeping, dramatic classical music and movie soundtracks

lily comes from a progressive jewish family ! lily was never really super into it when she was little ( she enjoyed the chanukah dreidel games and the purim festivities, loved listening to the stories of esther and the exodus, but fidgeted all through hebrew school and hated the solemnity and fasting of yom kippur ) but she has a greater appreciation for the culture now she’s older. still doesn’t really observe kashrut though.

[ HOLOCAUST TW ] part of the reason she’s super super super against blood purity is bc of this and obvs also cause she’s a muggleborn ! her mother was eight when the second world war started, and as lily’s gotten older she’s heard more and more about her mother’s experience. and it chills her how much it reminds her of all this blood purity and voldemort stuff. [ END TW ]

petunia converts to catholicism for vernon when they get married and lily is so angry she cries for days, but then their mother sits down with her and talks about how everyone has their own faith and you can’t judge someone else for theirs

loves cats even though she’s allergic to them ( has a toad named gilbert, after gilbert blythe from anne of green gables )

has an irrational fear of seaweed – not the kind you eat, the kind that brushes up against your ankles when you’re swimming. also afraid of flying and airplanes

has an extensive collection of nail polish ( picks at her nail polish when she’s nervous )

a physically affectionate person – loves hugs, and cheek kisses, and platonic hand holding

loves old audrey hepburn movies 

she always loved when her parents read to her but she never had the attention span for actually sitting and reading books even though she loved them

[ DEATH, SMOKING TW ] she smokes …… she knows it’s bad but she started after her paternal grandfather died when she was 12 – they were going through his belongings and she found a half-used pack of his cigarettes and pocketed them. she just smoked them to try and catch his smell and feel closer to him but it developed into a habit and then an addiction ( although lily will insist she can stop anytime ) [ END TW ]

bisexual as FUCK thanks 4 coming to my ted talk

[mermaidsirennikita]

July 2018 Book Roundup

This was a bit of a slump month for me in terms of reading.  But wait!  I read so many books!  Yeah, but I savored very few of them.  Some were mediocre, and several were bad.  Very bad.  Standouts included Riley Sager’s “spooky summer camp reinvented” thriller The Last Time I Lied and the very satisfying conclusion to Kiersten White’s super underrated Conqueror’s Saga, Bright We Burn.  You win some months and lose some months--I hope the next one is better.

My Plain Jane by Cynthia Hand, Jodi Meadows, and Brodi Ashton.  2/5.  A retelling of Jane Eyre, My Plain Jane sees Charlotte Bronte and Jane Eyre as friends at Lowood together, with Jane able to see ghosts and Charlotte desperate to get to the bottom of her secrets.  As Jane takes a job at Thornfield Hall, she is pursued by Charlotte and intrepid paranormal investigator Alexander, in a tale full of ghosts, secret wives, and romance.  I... really don’t want to say I hate this because it had its funny, cute moments that remind me of My Lady Jane, but... I kind of hated it?  It’s partially my own fault, really, because the book was exactly what it described itself to be.  But what worked when twisting history--My Lady Jane focused on Jane Grey--just doesn’t work when retelling a popular book.  Charlotte was quirky girl’d to the point of being twee; she also seemed into Jane Austen, which bugged me because she wasn’t.  And much of Jane’s side of things seemed like condescending fix it fic, in a way.  Don’t you know that Jane only falls for Rochester because she’s a romantic young woman with no life experience (and an obsessed with Mr. Darcy because I guess)????  Maybe I just like the real Jane Eyre too much.  Either way, I’m still going to read the next Jane book, but cannot recommend this one.

The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager.  5/5.  Fifteen years ago, Emma Davis was the last person to see Vivian, Allison, and Natalie before they disappeared from Camp Nightingale--and the world--forever.  She accused a boy she liked of doing something terrible; and she vanished into obscurity, reinventing herself as an up and coming artist.  But she can’t seem to stop painting the girls, even as she covered them up afterwards.  Upon the prompting of the camp’s owner--and dogged by guilt--Emma returns to teach at the reopened Camp Nightingale, given three new girls to mentor.  Yet she still can’t seem to stop seeing the girls--especially the entrancing, manipulative Vivian.  Riley Sager does something with his books that make me really happy: he keeps on taking a classic teen slasher trope and making a whole book about it.  I loved the sexy-teens-in-a-cabin angle of Final Girls--and this book takes on the whole creepy camp thing, complete with a spooky lake and campfire legends.  He also throws in--for good measure--toxic, intoxicating girl relationships!  Because yes, Emma had a crush on a boy, but her world was really dominated by Vivian.  At one point, I thought that this book would be a 4 out of 5 because as much as I love the tone and atmosphere and the overall story, I wasn’t a big fan of how Emma’s hallucinations worked and the ending seemed rather predictable.  But that wasn’t the REAL ending.  And the real ending?  Just... yes.  The present storyline in this book is good, but the past--mostly Vivian, let’s be real, that’s a girl after my own heart--is fantastic.  

Bring Me Back by B.A. Paris.  1/5.  While stopped at a gas station with her boyfriend FInn, Layla goes missing. Twelve years later--after enduring a period as the prime suspect in Layla’s murder, despite the fact that her body was never found--Finn is engaged to Layla’s sister Ellen.  Out of nowhere, little signs begin appearing that lead Finn to wonder... could Layla still be out there?  WHAT A DUMB BOOK.  I didn’t realize that I’d read one of Paris’s books, the super underwhelming The Breakdown.  If I had, I wouldn’t have tried it.  God, this was fucking stupid.  Literally every twist you would think of, every basic “surprise” is here.  And then one that is so--but the real issue is Finn.  I don’t take issue with flawed protagonists, but Finn was more than flawed.  He was creepy (fine in certain cases) and stupid (never fine).  And for that matter, everyone else was so one-dimensional that it was impossible to sweep aside his shortcomings.  I skimmed this after a point, and I’m glad I didn’t waste any more time on it.

The List by Joanna Bolouri.  1/5.  IT GOT WORSE!!!  I won’t bother with a summary, because this is actually pretty fucking simple: a year (!!!!) after her ex cheated on her, thirty-year-old Phoebe still isn’t over it.  In an effort to revitalize her sex life, she makes a list of sexual experiences she hasn’t tried and wants to, and sets off to check them off with her best guy friend, Oliver.  Okay, admittedly, I should have known that this would be a diary book, which is a style I usually don’t like (with some notable exceptions).  Phoebe has the most annoying voice I have ever read.  It’s as if the author wants to mimic Bridget Jones, but doesn’t understand why people like Bridget and why she came off more as hapless but amusing, instead of just... a moron.  Phoebe is a FUCKING MORON.  She hates her job, she uses cutesy slang words (like, my least favorite cutesy slang words from the U.K.) and describes sex acts in the least appealing way possible.  But it’s not as if the author wants the sex to feel real, because aside from a few mishaps, Phoebe overall has great sexual experiences, even when you imagine that if this is the first time she’s doing them, it’d probably be more awkward.  Like... we’re supposed to buy that Phoebe LOOOOOVES anal after the first time she’s tried it, but she describes it as feeling like “she’s going to the bathroom, but good” basically.  HOT STUFF.  And she’s just a dipshit in general.  She and all of her friends are.  I knew this was definitely going to be 1/5 after Oliver made a joke about stereotypical “Native American” names (a joke that is somehow worse knowing that an author from the U.K. wrote it) but even before then, Phoebe is talking about her lack of sexual satisfaction with her friends all of whom are in their thirties and one of them... is like... humping a couch?  I don’t know why authors who write “sexual” books think that this is normal behavior.  I am in my 20s; I’ve been in weird situations; I know a lot of weird people.  Never has some dry-humped a couch in front of me... as a joke.... or in general.  Wow.  Stupid.

Choose Your Own Disaster by Dana Schwartz.  3/5.  Dana Schwartz’s memoir--detailing her struggles with eating disorders, mental illness in general, romantic travails, and finding herself as a millennial--is laid out in the style of a choose your own adventure novel.  While it’s certainly well-written and takes advantage of its gimmick, I can’t say this was as enjoyable as My Lady’s Choosing.  Obviously, they’re totally different genres, but...  I don’t know.  This wasn’t a fun read to me, even though I think it was important.  Some parts hit too close to home, which isn’t Schwartz’s fault, while other parts seemed overwritten, which is.  A mixed bag.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell.  4/5.  Shortly after marrying the wealthy and handsome Rupert, Elsie finds herself widowed and pregnant, sent away to the Bainbridge family’s country estate to wait for her baby to be born.  She’s met with eerie villagers and angry servants, as well as Rupert’s awkward cousin, Sarah.  All of that, however, she could deal with--what’s more unsettling are the violent events that begin occurring in the house, and strange painted “silent companions” that seem to pop up everywhere, their eyes appearing to follow Elsie around.  Perhaps most disturbing of all is the diary Sarah finds, detailing the story of Rupert’s ancestress, Anne Bainbridge--and her mute daughter Hetta...  This kicked off with a slow start; I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get through it.  But about 50 pages in, things PICK UP.  Especially when we get into Anne’s diary, which is where some of the really creepy stuff takes place.  It’s a spooky, unsettling story that feels like it’s of another time.  If you’re a fan of “The Others”--which I am--I’d highly recommend the novel.  

Bright We Burn by Kiersten White.  4/5.  The final book in The Conqueror’s Saga sees Radu finally forced to make a choice for his future, as Lada’s conflict with him and Mehmed--and all of her enemies, really--finally comes to a head.  I can’t say much more than that, because... final book in the series, and all.  I really can’t recommend this trilogy enough.  Yes, a gender-flipped Vlad the Impaler story sounds weird.  But Lada is a great character you so rarely see in YA--a truly horrible female lead.  She’s awful.  Not a monster, but not really redeemable either, especially after this installment.  And I wouldn’t even say that Lada is the most complex character in the series--that goes to Radu, her brother who is a) gay b) a Muslim convert and c) in love with Mehmed, their childhood friend who is in love with Lada, who kind of loves Mehmed but kind of hates him because he’s about as horrible a she is.  I loved this poisonous triangle of scheming and bad people--Radu is significantly less horrible than Lada and Mehmed, but has his moments--and the world and the supporting characters, and the only reason this book didn’t a full 5/5 is because I think there needed to be more.  The conflict of the trio really petered out a bit for me, and it came down to Lada and Radu.  And I love Lada and Radu, but Mehmed was the kind of antagonist that got their asses in gear, and the book needed that extra kick.  Overall, however, this was a great conclusion--super satisfying, and quite bloody.

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones.  4/5.  Celestial and Roy are upwardly mobile Atlanta residents--she a rising artist, he a young executive--and just over  a year into their marriage when Roy is arrested for a crime he didn’t commit.  Sentenced to twelve years in prison, Roy writes to Celestial as their marriage gradually disintegrates.  When he’s exonerated and freed five years into his sentence, he returns to her.  But Celestial has built up a relationship with Andre, her childhood friend and the best man at her and Roy’s wedding.  The question isn’t just one of who Celestial belongs with--and whether she belongs with anyone--but of whether or not she and Roy ever would have worked out in the first place?  This is a DEEP literary book, y’all.  Not light reading.  And I can’t say it was super enjoyable?  I mean, this is one of those harshly realistic, love isn’t enough tearjerkers.  But it was very well-written, and it examined themes and questions that I don’t think you’d necessarily expect from such a relatively simple premise.  Of course, much of the novel does revolve around being a black man (or woman) in 21st century America--so I can’t critique that aspect.  The only thing I really can say as a criticism is that the older characters in the novel--Celestial and Roy’s parents, primarily--do essentially repeat themselves a good bit.  And again, I can’t say that I like everything every character did or said--but every action came from a very real place.  It’s a harsh one.

Give Me Your Hand by Megan Abbott.  3/5.  Kit is an ambitious scientist, hoping to gain a spot on a PMDD-related study led by her idol.  She’s the only woman in the running, and considered a shoo-in the the “woman spot”--until Diane shows up.  Diane and Kit knew each other when they were younger; and Diane told Kit a secret that derailed both of their lives.  With the weight of Diane’s secret on her mind, Kit begins to slowly unravel, questioning how she should handle a secret that has gone from being another person’s problem, to hers as well.  I’m not one of those people scared off by Abbott’s squicky, literary style of telling domestic thriller stories.  I’m used to her obsession with the female body and feminine mysteries in general.  I’m not sure why this one didn’t click with me.  The writing was still there, and on paper the story is something I should have liked--so I’m saying it’s me, not her.  It may be that the books of Abbott’s I’ve really liked have dealt more with the truly domestic sphere or something more mundane and universal than scientific studies?  I just wasn’t attached to this story or the characters.

The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware.  3/5.  Down on her luck tarot card reader Hal is shocked when she receives word that she is the possible recipient of an inheritance.  Her grandmother has died, and Hal is summoned to her home to hear the will being read.  The only issue is that to Hal’s knowledge, her grandmother was already dead--and with her mother gone, she has no way of knowing who this woman is.  Desperate for money, she goes to the Westaway estate, only to find that the inheritance may not be worth the risk.  This is a very standard mystery/thriller.  Kind of predictable.  I really don’t have much to say about it.  The book wasn’t bad but it didn’t thrill me, so it might be another me/my slump thing.

Love and Other Words by Christina Lauren.  4/5.  Macy hasn’t seen her childhood friend and first love Elliot for eleven years.  When they run into each other in a coffee shop, he’s an aspiring novelist and she’s a resident on the brink of marriage.  As the novel traces the story of Elliot and Macy’s past--and what he did to make her cut off contact with him the same night he confessed his love--Macy is confronted with a decision about her future, and owning up to who she is in the present.  A slump-breaker!  This is a really good romance, y’all.  Elliot and Macy’s chemistry is palpable.  You spend the whole novel worrying less about what drove them apart, and more about when they’re going to get together.  That being said, the best part of the book was definitely the past.  Their friendship felt genuine, which made the sexual tension buildup even better (speaking of: this is one of the few contemporary romances with legitimately good sex scenes).  The stakes aren’t quite as high in the present--it seems painstakingly obvious from the beginning that Macy can fix her issues in a pretty simple way.  And if she didn’t know that, I’d be a bit less annoyed, but she does.  Not much happens in the present, really--that’s just the payoff for what started in the past.  Still, this is a very sweet, sexy, and kind of heartwarming book that I would recommend to anyone who needs something that’s light without being TOO light.

Roomies by Christina Lauren.  3/5.  Holland is obsessed with a guitarist on the subway, and has been for about six months.  By a twist of fate, they finally meet, and through her connections she is able to get him a job opportunity.  The only problem is that Calvin--an Irish immigrant who’s overstayed his student visa--is in the States illegally.  So, out of the goodness of her heart and not at all because she wants to jump his bones, Holland offers to marry him so that he can get his green card.  What could go wrong?  Christina Lauren is, again, great at building up the sexual tension between her characters, and can actually write good sex scenes.  This is a sweet, fluffy, silly book.  I’d recommend it to romance fans.  It’s just not as substantial as Love and Other Words and the plot could have been stronger; I basically skimmed over that stuff because it didn’t really grab me, and focused more on the romantic bits between Holland Calvin.  A quick, nice read, but I’ve read better romance novels.

Lying in Wait by Liz Nugent.  2/5.  Andrew and Lydia, a wealthy couple who’ve fallen on hard time, have buried the body of a young woman in their back yard. Though Lydia desperately tries to keep the secret from their son, Laurence, he discovers the truth before long.  Meanwhile, their victim’s sister investigates Annie’s disappearance, struggling for answers.  Ugh, this hasn’t been a great month for me + thrillers.  This one sucked.  In theory, there were good ideas, and moments of good voice, but the overall execution was very poor.  The characters came off as caricatures, one of the worst things you can do in a thriller imo.  And ooooh, there was so much emphasis on Laurence’s obesity, Annie’s lack of education--it seemed lurid and borderline exploitative at times.  Hard pass.

[letsbitchyfestcollection]

You were a sixteen year-old high school student in Oklahoma when you wrote The Outsiders. Where did you get the idea for the story? I was actually fifteen when I first began it. It was the year I was sixteen and a junior in high school that I did the majority of the work (that year I made a D in creative writing). One day a friend of mine was walking home from school and these "nice" kids jumped out of a car and beat him up because they didn't like his being a greaser. This made me mad and I just went home and started pounding out a story about this boy who was beaten up while he was walking home from the movies--the beginning of The Outsiders. I was just something to let off steam. I didn't have any grand design. I just sat down and started writing it. I look back and I think it was totally written in my subconscious or something. S.E Hinton considering that nice kids usually not go around beating people up in real life so either your so called freind must of done samething that pissed of these so called nice kids and they attcaked your freind usually nice decent children don't just go around beating strangers up there must be more to this story about your freind being attcaked. Did you even witness this attcak or did you hear it as gossip around high school so without you being a witness to the events you don't know if your freind hasn't embellished facts maybe do same research before you strat writing a novel instead of just running of with your emotions. So was there a real-life Ponyboy? A real Johnny? Ponyboy's gang was inspired by a true-life gang, the members of which were very dear to me. Later, all the gang members I hung out with were sure they were in the book--but they aren't. I guess it's because these characters are really kind of universal without losing their individuality. Firstly a real greaser gangs wouldn't allow a girl to hang with them unless they were part of the gang themselves but maybe you got inspired by real greaser gangs just by observing them around the community so you base your charcters on real gresers but no of these real greasers are in the book so basically you as a writer could have made shit up and do you really thing real greasers would have been impressed with the way you were writing about them being cry babies and hugging one another and being melodramatic they properly laughed at you for writing them like this did you show your so called greasers freinds your writing i bet you didn't. How did you turn that inspiration for a story into such memorable characters? When I write, an interesting transformation takes place. I go from thinking about my narrator to being him. A lot of Ponyboy's thoughts are my thoughts. He's probably the closest I've come to putting myself into a character. He has a lot of freedom, true-blue friends, people he loves and who love him; the things that are important to him are the things that are important to me. I think Ponyboy and Soda and Darry come out better than the rest of them because they have their love for one another. So basically what your saying is that ponyboy is a self insert of yourself so you basically created a mary sue with your lead character well tell us samething we don't know boys are usually will have farmore freedom becouse it socially expectable unlike us girls who have to be protected from the world and we don't have as much freedom I should now I have an older brother who had way more free then me becouse he's 16 years old them myself and i was so caged in most of the time the backyard was my playground becouse it was safer then the park so you basically self inserted what you value instead of inserting samething diffrent in ponyboy like valuesin justice/freedom/honesty/intrgrity/ freedom of speech etc these far better values for teens to work towrads then I have amazing freinds sametimes your so called frinds are that amazing and can be increibly toxic. What were you like as a teenager? Were you a Greaser; a Soc? I was a tomboy--I played football, my close friends were guys. Fortunately, I was born without the need-to-belong gene, the gene that says you have to be in a little group to feel secure. I never wanted to be classified as anything, nor did I ever join anything for fear of losing my individuality. I didn't even realize that these guys, who were my good friends, were greasers until one day we were walking down the street and some guys came and yelled, "Greaser!" It's funny to look back at people you've know your whole life, to suddenly see them as everyone else sees them, with their slicked-back hair and cigarettes hanging out of their mouths and their black leather jackets, and respond, "My God, they're hoods." You knew them and they're not hoods, but they just look like hoods. I had friends on the rich side of town, too, and saw that they had their share of problems, also. so basically you were a loner and anti social and didn't want to get invloved in after school activities maybe becouse you didn't have any freinds. Nobody is born with a gene for belonging it the way your socalized within society/family/school etc didn't your mum drag you out of the bedroom and tell you you were going to be part of the family and you even said in an interview that your mother was abusive towards you maybe becouse you were anti social. And bullcrap you didn't know they were greasers. Did you really have freinds on the rich side of town even though you were a loner. I can tell you being at school with children who are assholes and i had toput up with there shit 5 days a week was enough i didn't want to hang out with these children after school as well or on the weekend or during school break either which was rather peaceful. How did you pursue getting The Outsiders published? When I wrote it I hadn't thought of getting it published. But at school one day I mentioned to a friend that I wrote, and her mother happened to write children's books. I gave her a copy of The Outsiders, and this woman showed it to a friend who had a New York agent. The agent liked it and sold it to the second publisher who read it. She has been my agent ever since. I received the contract from the publisher on graduation day! Well it seems like the novel didn't see an editor that why same of it doesn't sound beliverable and not providing any consequnces with your charcters it doesn't work like this in the real world. Firstly Ponyboy spiting at another person in same states it considered assult on a person then david drowning ponyboy he wouldn't have been charged under the law this is how stupid johnny is instead off holding bob off with the swith he had and try and get david to let pony go johnny had enough criminal motive enough to go after bob after bob attcaked him 4 months earlier if he had lived that would have been enough to convict the kid on murder instead of manslaughter becouse there is enough intent to cause injury or death. dally harbouring futatives running away from the law hrassing girls he would have been charged along with them and ponyboy wouldn't have gone to a boys home he would have been charged and been put in prison instead teenagers who have wagged school have been placed in jail man i wish authors who want to write about real life issues would go watch reasl documetries about teens in prison and see what they did to land up in there it doesn't take a lot to get into trouble and fuck your life up. What made you want to become a writer? The major influence on my writing has been my reading. When I was young, I read everything, including cereal boxes and coffee labels. Reading taught me sentence structure, paragraphing, how to build a chapter. Strangely enough, it never taught me spelling. I have always loved to write, almost as much as I love to read. I began goofing around with a typewriter when I was about twelve. I've always written about things that interest me, so my first years of writing (grades three through ten), I wrote about cowboys and horses. I wanted to be a cowboy and have a horse. Writing is easy for me because I never begain to write unless I have something to say. I'm a character writer. Some writers are plot writers...I have to begin with people. I always knew my characters, exactly what they look like, their birthdays, what they like for breakfast. It doesn't matter if these things appear in the book. I still have to know. I get ideas for characters from real people, but overall they are fictional; my characters exist only in my head. What books and authors inspire and influence you? Well, as an adult, I can pick out a lot of authors who have influenced me. My favorite authors are Jane Austen, Mary Renault, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Shirley Jackson. My favorite books are The Haunting of Hill House, Fire from Heaven, Emma, and Tender Is the Night. I like Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s novels, but not his short stories, and the other way around for J.D. Salinger. But people want to know your childhood influences, and I'll have to say just books in general. I loved to read, and as soon as I learned how I was reading everything I could get my hands on. I was a horse nut, and Peanuts the Pony was the first book I ever checked out of the library. I still remember that book. The act of reading was so pleasurable for me. For an introverted kid, it's a means of communication, because you interact with the author even if you aren't sitting there conversing with her. Why do you use your initials instead of your full name? My publisher was afraid that the reviewers would assume a girl couldn't write a book like The Outsiders. Later, when my books became popular, I found I liked the privacy of having a "public" name and a private one, so it has worked out fine. Why didn;t you just go with your name becouse people are assumping a male wrote this but they read the novel and they can tell that a chick wrote it instead I was reading sweet valley high and baby sitters club way before the outsiders and these novels were flying of the selve with teens becouse they could relate to them. When it was first published, the realism of The Outsiders shocked a lot of reviewers, but readers embraced the book. Did that surprise you? No, I was pleased that people were shocked when The Outsiders came out. One of my reasons for writing it was that I wanted something realistic to be written about teenagers. At that time realistic teenage fiction didn't exist. If you didn't want to read Mary Jane Goes to the Prom and you were through with horse books, there was nothing to read. I just wanted to write something that dealt with what I saw kids really doing. Why do you think the book has remained so popular through the years? Every teenager feels that adults have no idea what's going on. That's exactly the way I felt when I wrote The Outsiders. Even today, the concept of the in-group and the out-group remains the same. The kids say, "Okay, this is like the Preppies and the Punks," or whatever they call themselves. The uniforms change, and the names of the groups change, but kids really grasp how similar their situations are to Ponyboy's. Some portions were quoted from "The Outsiders Conference & Readers Meet Author" from University of Utah's Top of the News, November 1968; "S.E. Hinton:On Writing and Tex" in Notes from Delacorte Press, Winter 1979/Spring 1980; "S.E. Hinton on Becoming a Writer" from teachers@random; "The Insider Outsider" in Interview, July 1999; and "Autobiographical Sketch" from the Educational Paperback Association. Powered by

[speckeh]

Speckeh’s 2018 Book List

It’s 2018! Last year my book list was a decent size but I didn’t read a lot of sparkling novels! So this year I’m focusing on decent books with the occasional textbook thrown in!

1. Cappiello: The Posters of Leonetto Cappiello: 5/5 stars. I haven’t had time to sleep more than 8 hours let alone time to breathe to read book this semester. I’ve never been busier which has been a nice experience, but boy do I miss reading books! I found this at Tuesday Morning 40% off and it’s huge and beautiful and needed it. I love this book! Cappiello has a wonderful drawing style. He draws multiple body shapes, various commercial posters, and GINGERS. HE DRAWS SO MANY BEAUTIFUL RED HAIRED LADIES. I’M SO FUCKING THRILLED. If you find this book hella cheap and have the shelf space for it, it’s a great art book to have! 

2. The Elements of Rhetoric - How to Write and Speak Clearly: 4/5 stars. This is for my Proposal Writing and Development class. Everything this book states, I’ve already read or learned about in Argument Writing during summer last year so nothing really jumps out as me as amazing or eye opening. The writer does some relevant story telling with the different styles of rhetoric to use and how to use them effectively, but it’s not the greatest read. I’ll probably keep it as it’s a great little book for quick glossary terms or brushing up on information. If this is your jam, this might be a cheap book you can add to your academic shelf!

3-4. Kamisama Darling Vol 1 and 2: 5/5 stars. 

5. Namae mo Shiranai Machiawase 4/5 stars

6. Star Trek Cats: 5/5 stars. I hung out with one of my quickly growing best friends yesterday and I saw this book when we were in the humor section. My heart MELTED. I read this as B&N and even though it’s short, I needed to buy it. It’s one of my favorite art humor books I’ve flipped through recently. It’s full of episode jokes and just fucking ADORABLE cats that make the weirdest faces.

7. The Prophet: 5/5 stars. Another book I bought with one of my best friends. It was recommended to me by the really nice (and very sweet) worker there who complimented me on my outfit. I was going to ask we could trade numbers and hang out and gain a new friend from her, but she was very busy. Anyways. The friend I was with told me he absolutely loved this book and it spoke to him on a spiritual level. And I have to agree. Having been raised in a mormon household and then realizing I was hella queer and questioned E V E R Y T H I N G about organized religions, this book was excellent. Because The Prophet isn’t any certain religion, he’s just giving people a way of life and he never condemns anyone or anything. The Prophet and the Siddhartha are essentially my religion. The whole belief there is no “set path” for a religious life and happy ending, that no one is right and no one is wrong in their religion, and that it depends on how you treat others and how you service others but also how you serve yourself. An excellent read for the beginning of the year for me. 

8. The Non-Profit Narrative: 2/5 stars. It’s the same for the Elements of Rhetoric book I read, I’ve read all of these terms before in my nonprofit management class so nothing was very new or interesting to me. I skipped through 70% of the book. If you want a short, short ass book on how to run nonprofits and social media, this is a great little read. If you’re already familiar with the contexts of nonprofit, don’t waste your money. 

9. When The Body Says No: 5/5 stars. This book is.. just wow. This is the first time I have ever marked up my own personal book with highlights, pens, and pencils. I only ever do it to copied school books on computer paper. It’s no secret I’ve been going to a counselor off and on since I’ve been 13. And I’ve seen and confronted death for a long time. I’m very traumatized from my experiences and I have a lot of issues I don’t really deal with. My counselor told me to read this book because I am the post child of when your body says no for you when you can’t. And I am. It’s.. amazing how well he knows me and my experiences I’ve been through. I learned amazing facts about myself how my childhood forced me into emotional repression, that children who lose a parent before 17 are 40% more likely to develop cancer, that the underlying stress of never being able to say no to your family because you don’t want to disappoint them causes a turmoil in your body that can turn deadly. If you have anger issues, stress disorders, genetic diseases, autoimmune disease, any sort of illness you developed later as an adult, read this book. Because I promise you, you’ll find something about you you never knew about.

10. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao: 3/5 stars. This was a book I had to read for my intro to English literature class (I’m changing emphasis so I have to take more entry level classes BLEGH). While I did devour this book so fast, I wasn’t particularly impressed with this book. I guess I’m kind of sick of the narrative of “geeky boy is a virgin and hates himself and the world,” and people around him either patting his back or deciding to take it upon themselves to fix him, no matter what cultural background they are. While I’m thrilled I could read about a Dominican cultural and have a non-white narrative and characters, this book didn’t sparkle to me. Maybe it’s because this book wasn’t written for me, or maybe I don’t really care for Diaz’s writing style. Either way I barely earned a 3 stars from me.

11. Pictures of the Gone World: 4.5/5 Stars I bought this book at a liquidation sale. I either find amazing poetry books at random, or duds. Luckily this was a fantastic one that held a lot of elements I love in poems: historical themes and humor. He helped pushing and defend one of my new favorite poets, Allen Ginsberg so you know I have mad respect for him. This was his first poetry book and he quickly became famous in the beat poetry world. Compared to other poets, he’s definitely a easier one to get into for beginners but the words still hold beauty and harsh truths. Definitely a great way to introduce yourself to beatnik poetry!

12. I Capture The Castle: 5/5 stars. Do you ever pick up a book that’s been calling to you for ages and by the fifth page in you know you have a new best friend? I’m not one for first person narratives, it takes a special way of writing it to keep my interest. I Capture The Castle with repressed and writer’s voice of a 40 year old woman from 17 year old Cassandra just melted my heart. I have a soft spot for Dodie Smith and she won me over with this book. From the beautiful scenery of a decaying castle, to a 17 year old’s first encounter with love, it’s just so so captivating. it hasn’t been since the Shadow of the Wind that my heart literally raced and I couldn’t read fast enough to know what happened next. And the last sentence of Cassandra’s journal of “I love you, I love you, I love you,” keeps playing over and over in my head. If you want to get lost in a old English castle and a young girl’s narrative, you will not regret picking this book up. 

13. A Concise History of Hawai’i: 3/5 Stars. I’ve always wanted to know about my birth state since we moved away when I was too young to remember anything. I’ve always been called a island girl and have had a fascination with water. I stopped being interested in calling Hawai’i my birth state because I was so young and my family memories are bitter sweet. But I finally returned to Hawai’i in May 2016, and I was shocked to feel like I was Home. I’ve been missing Hawai’i like crazy and have been trying to read this book forever. I bought it on my trip there. Well I finished it. It was pretty interesting, it’s concise, and quick and I learned a lot. But the book also brings up an important question.Can a white man write about a cultural history on Hawai’i? I’m not sure and I was somewhat bothered by that question throughout the book so that dampened my star rating. I feel like a history of Hawai’i would be so different and way more vibrating if a Native Hawaiian had written it. But, if you want a general and quick history of Hawai’i from the formation to 1999, it’s a decent read.

14. Wyoming Poems 1994: 5/5 Stars. I really like this short poetry book. It’s only 26 poems and all about Wyoming and the life there. It’s from 1995 so you know it’s more of a modern take on Wyoming. Definitely a great little book. Really debating on joining the Wyoming Writer’s mailing list ahah!!

15-21: Various Manga. between 3-5/5 stars.

22. Secret Garden: 10 minutes classics: 2/5 stars. I love the Secret Garden. It’s one of my top 5 books of all time in my life and will always be in the top 5. The 10 minute classic books is great for a reader wanting a short synopsis of the Secret Garden and it has lovely pictures, but it really loses the magic, the world building, and the characters’ relationships in just 10 minutes. I’ll probably keep the book just because of lovely pictures, but it was a let down!

23. Lovers Legends: The Gay Greek Myths. 4/5 stars. My love for reading and history can be pinpointed exactly to D’Aubaires’ Book of Greek Myths. It planted the seeds of my career ambitions, the types of research I love to conduct, and the person who I am. I always knew the Greeks were more gay than society teaches children, but this book really paints it simple for you. First off, it uses a poem by one of my favorites Allen Grinsberg, and then the author reiterates the gay greek myths in clear and easy stories, and shows how they all connect. The symposium style chapters were long and tedious and I ended up skipping them, and the book really only has 110 pages of stories with the next 80+ being sources, research, and a bibliography. Either way, love me some truth bomb gay ass greek myth!!

24. Colonel Brandon’s Diary: 4/5 Stars. I’m a sucker for Austen continuations or different perspectives. It comes from a personal reason from childhood memories with one of my parents. I’ve read 2 other of Amanda Grange’s diaries of Austen men. Brandon is not my favorite Austen hero and while the book I liked him enough, he doesn’t sparkle as much as say Knightley for me. I’m sure as I get older I may like him more, but for now it was nice to read a 300 page version of Sense and Sensibility that is a great companion novel for like.. better spark notes. If you need a quick summer read to last you a day or two, I highly suggest Amanda Grange’s books! (Except for Pride and Prejudice and Pyramids. That was just… bad)

25. Reunion by Fred Uhlman 5/5 Stars: I really started to enjoy World War II stories, but fictional ones about non-American centric stories. Reunion is a beautiful, fast read, about a teenaged Jewish boy who meets a handsome and captivating Lord’s son at his school. It really is about a first love. Hans is obsessed with Konradin; he thinks he’s handsome, educated, and lonely like him. The two go off on trips, Konradin often comes to his house, they read poetry and discuss coins together. It’s very easy to think of Konradin and Hans sharing firsts. It’s a beautiful little story that wrenched my gut with the very last line, and the descriptions had me drawing little scenes in the book. If you have 3-4 hours to spare, this is a great read if you can get it.

26. Instructions to a Young Bookseller: 5/5 Stars. As someone hoping to enter the book world after graduating University, this was a great little read. Obviously any sort of written conference has an edge of boring to it. But the book is full of gem quotes and advice that can be used for anything and not just young booksellers. If you’re able to find this book (most likely in the Heffer bookstore at Cambridge) give it a read. It’s a short 46 pages but a great way to pass the time and to give you advice that transcends passed 1933.

27. Among the Janeites: 2/5 Stars. I wasn’t impressed with this book, which is a shame because I desperately wanted to like this book. I loved when Yaffe described and told the stories of her fellow Janeites, but I really couldn’t stand her narration. I don’t know if it’s because I’m annoyed by the “I’m an elite Jane Austen fan because of these reasons” or I just don’t like the way she writes her narratives. Sometimes, you just don’t clash well with a author. I applaud her efforts to write this book, but I have to admit I was disappointed that she admitted she only focused on white North American Jane Austen fans. What a waste!! How amazing would it have been to have read more diverse fans? Hear about their efforts, their stories? Instead I found myself reading some of the same stories over and over again. I didn’t even finish the last two chapters because everything was the same rhythm and nothing was interesting any more. I wanted to put down the book many times, but found I couldn’t whenever I read the stories of those who did amazing things with their Jane Austen passions. But other than that, kind of disappointed I brought this book on my trip to England. :/

28. Tea with Mr. Rochester: 4/5 Stars. Sometimes a collection of short stories takes me awhile to read, this was not one of those!! I have had my eye on this book from Persephone’s for at least 2 years now, and I finally got to go to the shop two weeks ago! I really enjoy the literary metaphors and the descriptions are beautiful, but Towers has a way of writing that has you go: “..did.. did I skip a page?” Often the story would jump and you would feel confused of where the characters are now, how much time had passed, and how did these two characters meet. The lack of background, time, and setting is discombobulating, but not too distracting from enjoying it! If you have the pleasure of going to Persephone’s Book, definitely give this book a try!

29. For Your Eyes Only: 4/5 stars. I think I’m now a little more than halfway done with the original James Bond series! For Your Eyes Only is very different as these are short stories. Some of them are action pact while others are Bond at dinner parties listening to stories. It was an entirely new take and very interesting for sure! Some of the stories were hard to get through, slow, which is why I dropped it down to four stars, but a lot of them were really fun. I especially loved Quantum of Solace which explained the title and now I’m wanting to rewatch the film now knowing the definition of the phrase. I can tell that Ian Flemming is now aware of his homoerotic writing with James Bond and is starting to cut it out, which is a real shame since they’re so beautiful. But his obsession with eating eggs for nearly every meal is back which made me happy! I’ll have to see in the next book if the homoeroticness comes back!

30. This One Summer: 4/5 stars. Ranted and raved about since the debut of this comic, with one of my favorite illustrators who drew SuperMutant Magic Academy, an awarded comic! And I can’t help but feel disappointed in the story. I know this is directed at teens and if I had read this when I was between 13-16 it would have BLOWN my mind. Now at 23, this isn’t the most poignant story. I think it’s important for teens but it isn’t really for me. I’ll probably gift this comic to my friend Ramona because I think she will like this comic a lot. But for me it’s just.. beautiful artwork. But nothing much more than that. 

31. The Alchemist: 3/5 stars The Alchemist was suggested to me by my BFF and my other friend told me he hated it. I’m in between. While I understand why some people absolutely LOVE this book and I appreciate that the author had a passion for his story and didn’t settle for rejection, I think the story is lacking a lot of magic and luster it could have had. It’s kind of like a book trying to follow after The Little Prince in an Arabic/South American story with a christian spin to it. I enjoyed reading it and experiencing a well loved story, but I gave it to another friend and I kind of regret buying it from a story and not borrowing it from a library.

32. Omae no Koi wa Ore no Mono: 5/5 stars. Good manga. Lovely characters. Story is good. I enjoyed it thoroughly!

33. The Fall of America: 4/5 stars. Allen Ginsberg is my second favorite poet right behind Billy Collins. After reading Howl and falling in love with everything, this book was a let down. A lot of the poems were loooong run ons that seemed to forget what he was trying to talk about. My favorites were when he was un-ashamedly GAY and talking about sucking cock and having sex with guys, and a very real Vietnam war poem, but the rest was very on the fence. If I didn’t love him so much I would have skipped a lot of the poems in this book. But I also know this is a similar complaint from other readers. It’s hard to follow after such a massive success and nationally known poetry book of Howl, but he did his best. Not all of your own poems will be sparkling and rich in something new and world opening. 

34-36. Various Manga: 34 5/5 stars, 35 4/5 stars, 36 4/5 stars. 

37. Twisted Romance Volume 1: 2/5 stars. While some of the stories were beautiful and drawn amazing, I felt like the collection was disjointed and didn’t go very well. It was weird to have a comic book also be split up between stories with a written novel. I’m sure this would be someone’s cup of tea, but not mine.

38. My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness: 4/5 stars. My dear friend Ramona put the first and second novel in front of me to read while we spent like 4 hours at Barnes and Noble today. It was super fun to be with my sweet sweet friend and just, decompress. I read this book and so much of it I could relate to. Not only am I a Queer female, but I also struggle with mental health, depression, and feelings of abandoning my mother. Not to mention being touch starved. But I docked it down from a perfect score because Kabi’s narrative was so frustrating. That never ending cycle of getting so close and then self-sabotaging herself is so frustrating and makes me mad. I put the book back after I finished reading it, and then decided I had to buy it at the last moment. 

39. My Solo Exchange Diary (Sexual to My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness) Vol 2: 3/5 stars. Unlike the first book, this was even more frustrating and was hard for me to be empathetic to her. Someone who obviously struggled hard with her mental health and struggle against her parents, I felt like her Solo Exchange Diary was just an excuse to not do what she wanted. I didn’t think Kabi grew much between the two volumes which is super disappointing. As a reader you want her to be better. Though when she mentioned how her happiness is tied to abandoning her mom, OOFFFF. THAT SURE IS MEEE. 

40. Close Range: 2/5 stars. I actually stopped reading this book entirely. I started off reading the Brokeback Mountain story in this anthology, and it hooked me! Sadly, the rest of the stories didn’t capture me as much as BM. Eventually the characters bled to be the same: stoic, struggling with family, very Wyoming. That was it. It was all men, white men who struggle to be “men” and then proceed to do stupid shit/hurtful things that you want them to die over. I lost interest and I’m sad because I wanted to love this collection, but I couldn’t do it anymore. 

41. Bond By Design: 5/5 Stars.  Back in 2016, Shennelly gave me a mini version of this book and for Christmas last year I got the full version. It’s fascinating to see the drawing progression and what the art team focuses on drawing. It’s a shame to see the Daniel Craig films not having as much hand drawn art, but they were created more in the era of computer art and less relying on storyboard sketches. Needless to say, it was pretty awesome to see all the thumbnails and knowing a lot of them came to life in the films I watched! P.s. I went to the museum and Turner painting features in Skyfall over the summer! 

42. The Hobbit Comic: 4/5 stars.  This is a comic I’ve had on my shelf before I started uni so around 3-4 years it’s been sitting on my shelf waiting to be read. I picked it up because I was going on a car trip and I wanted something light and easy for the 4 1/2 hours it took to reach our destination. While the art was awesome, this was not a light read. It felt like reading the Hobbit all over again with how exact dialogue and scenes were written out. And I docked this comic down a star because I felt like I would be so overwhelmed by the reading I couldn’t enjoy the art. That’s a big problem with direct story comics. They’re so much dialogue and story they want to use, they don’t realize how tedious it becomes for a reader. Other than that, if you’re a die hard LOTR fan, this is a great edition fo the Hobbit to have! 

43. The Adventure Zone - There Be Gerblins! 5/5 stars. I started listening to The Good Brothers after Percy told me to back at the end of 2016. I started to their The Adventure Zone podcast right before my trip to Norway. I have great memories of listening to the first 3 adventures, nodding off on the plane, during down time at our various hotels, on the way back home, desperately trying to download as many possible while I had wifi. I love TAZ and so when they announced a comic book a year ago, I’ve been waiting ever since! It isn’t a let down! Where the Hobbit had issues with too much dialogue, TAZ There be Gerblins didn’t run into that issue! Also I love that even though the characters have never been officially designed, there was opportunity for diversity, AND THEY DID A TON OF DIVERSITY. Also the Director was exactly how I envisioned her and that made me so fucking happy. Please support the good boys and buy the comic if you like it!

44. Monstress Vol 3: 5/5 stars. While the art is dynamic, the plot hella feminist, interesting, so many cool female characters! The plot is still confusing volume 3 in. I might have reread the other two before reading the 3rd since it has been a year since I’ve read the book. But the darkness and “real” themes of disabilities and responsibilities is just great!

45. The White Cat: and two other stories: 5/5 stars. The art for this children’s fairytale book is gorgeous. Though some of the pictures feel like they’re a few pages behind or ahead of the events that actually happened. But JEEZ you guys! These are some fucking dark stories. A cat behead, Jack the Giant Killer, Rip Van Winkle just being lazy as FUCK. We don’t get children’s stories like this. It was an awesome edition I found that was originally 30 dollars that was for sale for 5 dollars due to a liquidation sale. It’s great. 

46. The Young Visitors or Mr. Salteena’s Plan: 5/5 stars. The Young Visitors is such a treat. I first found my copy in England in a discount shelf and loved the frayed pink cover with interesting illustrations. And then at another going out of business sale, I found a red cover and bought it without thinking much of it. I absolute LOVE this book. This story is written by a 9 year old Daisy with the themes of a true Victorian novel. An older man chasing after a young woman who falls in love with a rich young man and the older man cries at his defeat. It’s an excellent little read that is amazing from being written in 1919! I have plans to eventually see the manuscript in the museum it’s held in! I’m using my second copy as a lend out to my friends to make sure they’ve read this story!

47. What Makes My Cat Purr? : 5/5 stars My friend bought this for me at an antique mall because it melted my heart. Reasons why little kittens purr???? Mostly because you show them love??? UHHH HOW CAN YOU NOT LOVE THIS NOVEL?

48. Sock Monkey - The Glass Knob: 4/5 Stars. Sock Monkey and his friends ned to replace the door handle with glass and a random assortments. Silly, but sweet.

49. The Paper Doll Wedding: 4/5 Stars. Fun. That’s all. 

50. Spot’s Favorite Colors: 4/5 Stars. Bought this for my nephew. We used to have matching cards with this!

51. That’s Not My Dinosaur: 4/5 Stars. For my nephew! He loooves it. Touch and feel.

52. The Mitten: 5/5 Stars. This book was read to us each winter in elementary school. I bought it for my nephew!

53. Toot: 4/5 Stars. For my nephew! A book about farts!

54. Erte Art: 4/5 Stars. Erte’s art which was dazzling and seemed to be something from the 2000s rather than the 1900s. Loved the different designs of his work and that he included women of color and not just white models throughout his work!

55. Sea Prayer: 4/5 Stars. Everyone was ranting and raving about the poetry, but I love the watercolors. It was an impactful story, but I felt the story was a bit rushed. Over all beautiful.

56. The Prince and the Dressmaker: 5/5 Stars. I’ve had this comic book in my shopping cart for a year! I finally asked for it at B&N and bit the bullet. UHMMMM. GORGEOUS. 

57. HeartStopper Vol. 1: 5/5 Stars. UHM WOW. I funded this on kickstarter without really knowing much about the comic. It then sat on my shelf for a couple of months and a friend, randomly, asked me if I read it. I finally read it and goooood, I loooooved it!!!

58. Fuddles: 3/5 stars. A fat cat gets out of the house and lost, I hated it but loved the illustration.

59. Birdsong: 5/5 Stars. All the different birds and songs they sing, silly, fun. 

60. Santa’s Snow Cat: 4/5 Stars. A silly Christmas story about how Santa loses his most beloved cat in New York. 

61. The Tiger: 5/5 Stars. A dialogue-less comic about a tiger in the jungle, living its life, trying to hunt prey (unsuccessfully), and other predators. Beautiful art, I would recommend!

62. The Angel’s Game: 2.5/5 stars. Sadly, this is the second time I’ve been disappointed by Carlos. Angel’s game had a slow start. A writer being worked to death by underpaying publishers until he develops a brain tumor. He meets a mysterious man after much travesty and agrees to write him a book with no money as an issue. But as the story progresses, the narrator becomes distressed and stupid to discover the truth. He loses so much, and by the end of the book it feels like a bad fever dream. It really seems the hype after Shadow of the Wind is so hard to defeat. Hopefully his newest, final, and largest book in the quad series will be like the first. Let’s hope it’s not like the middl two!

63: Ore no Omawarisan: 5/5 stars

64: Goriyou wa Keikakuteki ni: 4/5 stars. 

65. The Shotgunner: 3/5 stars. As I was trying to compile my favorites of 2018, I realized I completely missed three books?? Shotgunner was finished the last day of 2018 and I think I was just totally exhausted from everything. The book was extremely silly but fast paced. A man wanted for murder runs back to his home town to find his brother has been murdered and his widow (an old fling)  needs his help to get out of town. It doesn’t end how you think it would and it seemed to move in a very fast paced way. It wasn’t my favorite western book I’ve read, but it certainly had layers to it I wasn’t expecting!

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + the Divine #31

Spoilers, obv.

Well, yes.

Jamie/Matt's cover

Woden's never looked more dapper, I think. I look at this, and suddenly wish I could go back in time to show it to the artists circa my X-men run, when I was trying to explain my Jack Kirby meets Jane Austen ideas for Sinister were all about. This! Like this! Tweaked slightly from the image from solicits to reposition the circuitry to the left of Woden to look less like a butt plug.

Sophie Campbell's cover

We've been trying to arrange something with Sophie since Commercial Suicide, so we're very happy to finally get her to a page. I've loved her since I first saw her work, in the early 00s Oni graph novel with Antony Johnston, Spooked. She was instantly fascinating, and seeing her work develop over all the years has been a thrill. This is one of the best Cassandra covers for me – just really stark and striking.

Page 1

Yes, we all want the leggings.

Really basic layout here – the steady angle three tired panels, which I love. It's Uber's signature panel structure, and just tries to put you in the place. In WicDiv's case, we seem to use it a long in the Underground, which seems to be about inertia.

Also think the whole space is meaning – this is a one page scene, with three panels. We get very little of Persephone in this issue, and this magnifies each of these beats. This is all important. It has to be, as otherwise why are we lingering on it?

That final panel though, right? The stillness Jamie is working with here is fantastic.

Okay – let's talk a little structural here. As several people have noted, this an issue which may recal issue 11, which cut between two threads (Baph/Inanna and Laura/Ananke) at the crucial, most interesting moment. Here, Imperial Phase has burned down to three threads – or three and a half threads, if you include Baphomet/Morrigan who aren't in the issue. Cutting between three threads feels too slow, with you spending too much time away from a scene to maintain interest. As such, this issue essentially treats two threads as one thread – the Persephone/Sakmet segues into the Baal/Minerva/Amaterasu thread across the issue, and we cut between it and the Norns/Woden/Dionysus at every key beat.

There is one main exception to this, but it's early on, and it's notable the pace is kept relatively low before that. It's only after that we go to the full on hard-cuts.

In other words – the page just lingers, because we're not starting to dance properly yet. The tempo needs to be kept low, as to go in too hard would break the Cass/Dio scene in a few pages time.

Er... there's a bunch of theory there. So much of what I try to write is to establish motivations and stakes, and then when they're in place, bring it all crashing down. We are very rollercoaster.

Page 2

Every time I flick through this issue, I and hit this point I find myself turning to Belle and Sebastian's I Don't Love Anyone. It's one of the bits I can hear the music in WicDiv, just that lying in bed, and the hard cut to black to the credits with B&S over.

Page 3-4

Man, I get sadder and sadder every time I see Dio with his coffee cup.

As I think I said last time, I saved the last bit of exposition about the gig for this issue because if I said it last time, I'd have to repeat it this time anyway. In short: the first page is “What is this gig actually ABOUT anyway?”

Every time I see the Norns and Woden on the same page, I just feel sorry for Clayton. That is a lot of work.

With Woden's customary green, the hologram map has a certain Emerald City vibe, I think?

The end of page 4 is A+ acting from Jamie. Comedy lives in the mid-shot, etc. I believe Jamie added a panel here of extra Woden waving and Cass' expression, which shows that I've made him get stockholm syndrome with modified-eight-panel structures.

(Joking aside, it just adds to the work. Having a little thinking time before Cass' eye wide realisation sells the moment.)

Page 5-6

These two pages would be the place where I could have cut if I was bouncing between the threads... but for all the reasons I talk about on Page 1, I don't. That's not what's happening. Yet.

8 panel grid here, which speaks to the sort of material that this scene is – very small and human, the eight panel being my go-to for autobiographical work.

(Plus, we have a lot of fish to fry here. I have to get this stuff into the space)

The “NOT YOU AS WELL!” makes me smile.

Woden's last line was originally something like “Don't worry. I am incapable of love.” which is a very Woden thing to say, but in the context of the following discussion made me suspect it may be taken as Woden saying he's aromantic. Clearly, this would be unwanted, so I wrote around it.

The Crap. Crap. Crappity. Shitfuck. Panel is Cassandra continuing to be out of context panel champion.

The Dio/Cass conversation seems to have gone down well, which does make me happy. We're writing around some delicate stuff here, on the nature of friendship. I wanted Cass and Dio to explicitly talk about this, but I also knew that Dio would never tell Cass... so it leads to Cass finding out another way. The problem then is that Cass also wouldn't want to embarrass Dio. So we end up in a conversation like this, of all too transparent hypotheticals.

I love these two.

Page 7-8

Okay, this is just a Jamie masterclass, and the sort of scene I'd only write for someone I knew could pull this shit off. As Persephone – our de facto lead – isn't in this issue much, I wanted to keep the focus on her, so we keep the frame on her and let us really see her go through the response. Right here, Baal's response doesn't matter. What's going on here with Persephone?

I'm fond of the empty-cigarettes box thrown away as a timer on how long she's procrastinated before making the call. I believe that came up in conversation rather than being in a script, in terms of doing the whole cigarette packet. I think it was just throwing away a cigarette in the first draft, which is far too short a time. We want Persephone there, a long time, just considering this.

I suspect some people would have cut page 7, but I'm much more interested in seeing someone wrestle with inertia. This hasn't been easy for Persephone.

Anyway – Page 8. Look at those faces. 2 to 3 to 4 is a story in and of itself. The cringe of 3 turning to a counter-attack.

And the start of the hard-cuts. Hit a moment of tension, pose a question, and then move the frame away.

Page 9-10-11

To something else, ideally as interesting. Page 9 is clearly something to kill Jamie. We move to Dionysus empty silhouette crowds ASAP, but the amount of inking and work in these first few panels is a considerable expenditure from our “budget.” But it's unavoidable.

9.3 – yes, that does look a lot like Lloyd.

The last panels of 9 took some conversation to make it clear what I meant was getting across. Jamie noted how Dio did it back in issue 8 was one and one contact, but I was looking for the visual. Trying to sell the idea of the effect just SPREADING across the crowd by contact, like ripples in water was the thing. No-one's gone “Wait – that isn't how Dio works” so I presume it sold it.

Love the framing in the last 3 – the use of space around Dio in panel 4 is particularly good. Matt's colouring in the last panel too.

Page 10 – first of two splash pages. For an issue that's packed, we still found a place to let this stuff breathe. In this case, selling the crowd, and the weird magic of the cerebellum above them was key. Also a page turn, onto the big image.

Page 11 is a rush of last key details – panel 2's showing how it's closed off is particularly key. This is all intensely private. Obviously panel 3 is Matt really going for it – that's just a wonderfully fun on burst f everything.

And then Woden fucks everything up. The cut is telling – where to do this is taste. You could do it after he shoots. I thought it was more interesting to cut after he pulls the gun. The “What is he doing?” is more interesting to me than the answer.

Page 12-13

Back to the other thread. This involved a quick trip to the British Museum to get some reference shots for Jamie and me, with the lovely Al Ewing in company. The roof is accurate, though a nightmare to draw. The “opening of the triangle” is artistic licence. Don't try it, kids.

All the shots here are also clearly “expensive” in terms of the time they take.

The Amy/Baal conversation has some fun elements – I wanted to do a scene where the Norns shouted at them, but it just didn't fit in the structure. That we know Cass well enough to know how it would have gone just by referring to it probably shows how much we understand the cast at this point.

Jamie's shadowed shot of Baal was a last minute choice, and works terribly well.

Page 14-15-16

Back to the other thread.

Woden talks about something to take out people's powers in terms of hunting Sakhmet, foreshadowing this. The WARPED panel was in response to the pencils, where the idea of having the left of the panel normal and the right warped – as in, effectively working as two panels, showing when Woden's effect kicks in was telling.

Change of colour as Woden takes control, from the old skool rave of Dio to the cold techno of Woden.

And, yes, this does appear to be a Radio Ga Ga riff.

Jamie took the last panel at a more neutral angle originally, but decided to rework it to be closer on Dionysus, to really stress his importance here. That Woden controls the crowd is clear in panel 2 – there's no need to reiterate in the third.

Page 17-18

Statues of Sekhmet, as last seen in issue 17.

After we started working on the Red Performance of Amaterasu, Clayton suggested that we did a lettering style change as well. Clearly the right idea. We originally tried it with pure red balloons, but they merged with the coloured art on page 18, so we added the outline.

Yes, callback to issue 1 and issue 21.

Panel 4 on 19 originally had two balloons, but C felt it was over too quick and suggested adding a third balloon to extend the moment. Works beautifully, and a good example of how you can use lettering to control panel “Length.”

Abstractly you could have cut away at the page 19, but the other thread has already reached its cliffhanger and this is not a high drama moment.

Page 19-20-21-22

Page 19 is the page which required the most on the page editorial work in the issue. Amaterasu dooms herself in a delicate way, and as it's her last moment, her mistakes – all her mistakes – need to be clear. To be fair to Amaterasu, she – like most of the cast – doesn't know much about Sakhmet's background. She doesn't exactly know what a field of landmines she's dancing across.

But still - less throwing Amaterasu under a bus, and more put her at the bottom of a mountain covered in buses and starting a bus-avalanche. You can easily imagine Amaterasu starring at the oncoming wall of public transport and going "I LOVE BUSES!"

People ask me about how much the story has changed in development. It's not exactly that simple. Some beats I know as the big structural architecture of the story – Luci in issue 5, Laura in issue 11, Ananke in issue 22 and so on. Other character's stories, while are planned in their shape, are left to be weaved into the story as they're most appropriate. Amaterasu would be one of those characters – my original suspicion would be she'd die at the end of Imperial Phase Part I, but I realised that there wasn't enough space to really delineate her misstep, so pushed it a little later. Equally, the idea that this should occur at the British Museum only came to me after issue 17, seeing how Sakhmet and Amaterasu's arcs complimented one another – and specifically how Amaterasu related to the museum.

Originally the scene was only 3 pages, but Jamie wanted to page 20 as two pages. You can see why. As well as giving more space to hit the moments, it puts the splash page of a page turn.

There's a lot to unpack in the last few pages and the last page particularly – the mix horror and the beauty of it is pointed. Me walking through it is kind of missing the point of visual information – it's resolves in complicated ways that rub up against each other.

In terms of technical elements, I'd draw your attention to how casual Jamie choses to pick things – and the pop art of Matt's choices. Extreme realism on the first panel of 20, before we go to the more impressionistic colours in the second panel. The brightness of Amy's powers, and so on and so forth. Really strong work.

Goodbye, Amaterasu.

Page 23

The line came to me late, and I was surprised that – until then - I wasn't conscious of the multiple uses of stealing throughout the issue thematically, in both story threads.

And the first new skull in a long time. I was wondering if Sergio would have forgot how to do it.

The Norns and Dionysus blurred to show their present state. We've not exactly done much of this since the first arc, but we thought it'd be useful to bring back.

This one seems to have gone down well. Back next month with 32, where things continue to escalate.

Thanks for reading.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT EVERYTHING

Often, indeed, it is scanned into tokens, and everything I've seen has tended to confirm what he said. And if, as nearly everyone who knows agrees, startups are better off in one of its centers. The trouble is, there are a lot of thoughtful people in it, but thoughtful people aren't willing to use a simple data structure called a list for both code and data. The whole field is uncomfortable in its own skin. The final contributing factor is the culture of the forum. But babysitting this process was so expensive for software vendors that it didn't make sense to charge less than $50,000 into at a valuation of a million can't take $6 million from VCs at that valuation. The meaning of interest can vary. Control the channel and you could feed them what you wanted, and change your mind later as often as you wanted, and change your mind later as often as you wanted. I should have been less worried about doing something that seemed cool, and just done something I liked.

8921298 organization 0. They know their audience. Over time, the default language, embodied in a succession of popular languages, like Jane Austen's novels, continue to survive at all. The mere existence of prep schools is proof of that. Nonhackers don't often realize this, but you have to impress to get into grad school, and they don't see evidence of specific abuses unless they go looking for it. But if audiences have a lot of the best ones actually prefer to work hard: these guys would have paid to be able to get investors into an auction for your series A round. For one thing, it's the place to be if that one thing is what you're trying to solve.

So if we do have infix syntax, there's a really good job of solving slightly the wrong problem. Don't worry if a project doesn't seem to be most productive when they're paid in proportion to the wealth they generate. They don't care about companies that are plugging along but don't seem likely in the immediate future to get bought or go public. Whatever a committee decides tends to stay that way, even if this causes some breakage. And in desktop software there is a lot less unexploited now. It was a lot of the worst ones were designed for other people to use. A conditional is an if-then-else construct. They're also in a business where winners tend to keep winning and losers to keep losing. It hasn't occurred in a single one of my 4000 spams.

Mark Zuckerberg, the kind of possibility that the pointy-haired boss's brain to Java and then back through Java's history to its origins, you end up with special offers and valuable offers having probabilities of. And yet it is convenient, especially when you're generating code, to have operators that take any number of arguments. Prose can be rewritten over and over, and it's the same thing for me, and moreover discovered of a lot of changes that have been forced on VCs, this change won't turn out to be a deal; so there must be. And what makes them congeal is experience. If I had, I think filtering based on individual words, Bayesian filters automatically notice. As a rule you want to do with how abstract the language is brief to a fault. So you shouldn't start a startup. A few hackers understand it, and expand your ambitions when and if you look, you can make the search results useless, because the time it takes to write a universal Lisp function and show that it is unsolicited, but that it is automated. The reason is that even in a bad economy it's not that hard to build something big from scratch.

You'd negotiate a round size and valuation with the lead, who'd supply some but not all of them. The nine ideas are, in successive lines. And when I used to joke that our function was to tell founders things they would ignore. So someone investigated, and sure enough, that patent application had continued in the pipeline for several years after, and finally issued in 2003, but no one told me. By putting you in this situation, to realize what was happening and to milk it. In fact, faces seem to have some sort of new, vocational version of college focused on entrepreneurship. If you go and see all its flaws very clearly. It's so easy to understand what they do: you call a function on the macro's arguments, and so on. But babysitting this process was so expensive for software vendors that it didn't have to.