#excellent excellent book rec

[itmightrain]

@fahye was right Summer Sons by Lee Mandelo fucking slaps

[fictionadventurer]

I'm fascinated by the ways in which the things a creator is good at making don't necessarily line up with the kind of art that they respect or even enjoy.

This has haunted me ever since I saw a Youtube video about the downfall of The Band Perry, a country band that I had liked until their music got weird and they kind of fell off the face of the earth. Well, it turns out that they tried to reinvent their image and their style of music several times before the band finally fell apart. When they started, they had this weird Southern Gothic homeschooler style that really worked for them and was reasonably popular, but then they tried to switch to a cooler type of pop music--a style they supposedly admired and enjoyed--and it just did not work at all. They failed because they chased what they wanted to make instead of sticking with the style that they were good at.

It's a tension that's present in all creative work. At one point does "going outside the box" go too far? Can one be happy making good work even if it's not the kind of stuff they like or admire? Are the techniques and styles that are most appealing to us appealing because they're things that we can't create ourselves? As in, our minds don't work that way, so seeing these things from other creators is exciting, but the fact that our minds don't work that way is exactly why we can't imitate those things. Where's the line between creative integrity--pushing yourself to make better things--and pride--wanting to make something more prestigious and impressive instead of humbly making the type of art you're best suited to make? Can one even clearly see what they're best at making, and appreciate the good that's there rather than chasing after styles and techniques that seem better? There are no solid answers, which is why I'm going to be endlessly thinking about this.

[femmefatalevibe]

Femme Fatale Booklist: Seduction, Allure, & Sensuality

Unbound: A Woman's Guide to Power by Kasia Urbaniak 

Pussy: A Reclamation by Regena Thomashauer 

Existential Kink: Unmask Your Shadow and Embrace Your Power by Carolyn Elliott

Yes, Mistress: Why Men Crave Female Domination by Alicia Zadig

Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life by Emily Nagoski 

Bitch: On the Female of the Species by Lucy Cooke 

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century by Amia Srinivasan 

Be Your Own Brand of Sexy: A New Sexual Revolution for Women  by Susan L. Edelman 

All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks

For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality by Lonnie Barbach 

VIVE LA DIFFERENCE: A FRENCHMAN'S PERSPECTIVE ON AMERICAN WOMEN, LOVE, RESPECT AND RELATIONSHIPS by Guy Blaise

Rethinking Prestige Branding: Secrets of the Ueber-Brands by Wolfgang Schaefer and JP Kuehlwein (you are the luxury brand)

The Luxury Strategy: Break the Rules of Marketing to Build Luxury Brands by Jean-Noël Kapferer (Author), Vincent Bastien 

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win by Maria Konnikova 

[phaedraismyusername]

Gave into the FOMO and dropped everything to reread the Hunger Games series, then read the prequel, and now I can't find anything else I want to read

[platoapproved]

HELLO I'm here to inform you all the second (and last) part of this fic is up and I'm GOING to cry. Armand being interviewed by Daniel, this time from Armand's perspective.

And Armand could look at Louis, because Louis was never looking at him. If he said that out loud, to Daniel Molloy, he knows what the response would be. But Armand has had his fill of being looked at, of being observed. A lover who would talk to him but also let him drift alongside, unscrutinized. A rare gift in this world where a beautiful face is seen as an invitation.

[thatscarletflycatcher]

I have said good things about Verena in the Midst, by E.V. Lucas. His Advisory Ben is EVEN BETTER. I read it today in about two sittings (had doctor's waiting room time to burn) and I finished it with a smile and that sweet glow that finishing a satisfying book gives.

Ben is short for Benita, an efficient, level headed young woman of 22, whose father, a very fussy man, has just remarried. Ben sees this as the moment to leave home and get a job. During a visit to a country family desperate to find a shaker in the middle of nowhere, Ben conceives the idea of setting up an agency to run errands for country people, and generally orient and advice. She leases a place on top of a used books shop, just recently set up by two WWI veterans (the novel is set in the 1920s), gets herself an assistant and an errand boy, and sets up to work.

Like Verena in the Midst, this is another solid light short novel, but this one has much more of a plot. It's also funnier. It has a love triangle that didn't make me cringe. Ben's work is so interesting, and the people that come to her for help and her relatives are also fun and quirky in their own ways. It has a proposal scene that lands.

Verena in the Midst made me want a radio drama. This one made me want a movie.

Maybe producing companies should just hire someone to peruse public domain works instead of so many remakes and sequels.

Anyways, neither will change your life, but I do think the public here would enjoy either or both.

[pondslime]

read the entirety of annihilation by jeff vandermeer in four hours—by flashlight on my living room floor—during last night's blackout. highly recommend it (the nonstop reading, not the blackout ofc)

[grownups-are-the-real-monsters]

IT fans.....please jump fully into Stephen King's work and discover all the other fun LGBTQA+ ships.....👀‼

[queenlua]

i leave a bunch of fun logical/physical puzzle-type-things out in the common area whenever i have a guest crashing at our place

(e.g. ThinkFun, Hanayama, that book of Puzzle Baron logic games, etc)

y'know, just so there's something you can fiddle with while shooting the shit and catching up and whatnot

and i think it says something amusing about my median guest that, without fail, they either leave (1) with one of those puzzles in their suitcase b/c they were clearly having so much fun i was like Bro Please Just Take It With You, Please Consider It A Gift From Me, or (2) with one of those puzzles ordered & actively shipping to their home address as we say our goodbyes

[waveridden]

iso book recs that will rock my fucking world

[fictionadventurer]

There's a story here. I don't know what it is, but it fascinates me.

[femmefatalevibe]

How do you keep up with current events and expand your knowledge?

Hi love! Here are some of the best ways/resources I've found to stay updated on current events & lifelong learning:

Subscribing to daily newsletters like DailySkimm, The Morning, and Morning Brew for current events & news updates and industry-focused newsletters to stay up-to-date in my field (for me, I subscribe to Business of Fashion's Daily Digest, Glossy POP, and Vogue/Vogue Business's newsletters)

Read publications including New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, The Economist, The New Yorker, etc., and more industry-focused publications for fashion/beauty/marketing & advertising/digital strategy daily (or at least 5 days a week)

Keep and work through a reading list for the quarter. I try to read at least two self-development/psychology/health and industry/career-focused books per quarter; sometimes, I'll throw in a biography, finance, art, history, philosophy, or literary book in too for more variety/to expand my worldly knowledge

Take at least 1-2 courses and certification classes per quarter (either through Google, LinkedIn Courses or Assessments, Youtube, Masterclass, Skillshare, Udemy, etc.)

Frequently listen to TED talks on YouTube and podcasts (mainly on Spotify & Apple Podcasts)

Attend virtual panels and talks in areas of interest

Have conversations with insightful people (mentors, colleagues, and the amazing individuals I get to call my closest friends)

Hope this helps xx

[taleweaver-ramblings]

Just finished Dark & Stormy (by Suzannah Rowntree, Miss Dark book 3) last night, and it is a miracle that I didn't burst into incoherent screeching right then and there at quarter-to-midnight. I don't think I'm going to recover from that ending for a LONG while.

[honourablejester]

Thoughts on Starfinder’s Pact Worlds Setting, Part 2

Following from this post, I’ve now finished reading through the Pact Worlds setting book. Some more thoughts:

Of the six outer planets I hadn’t gotten to yet, Liavara is my favourite, and I promise that’s not just because it’s clearly borrowing notes from Bespin and Lando Calrissian stole my childhood heart. Honest. But. For similar reasons to the Diaspora, I do love the kind of hard-space, SF edge that this gas giant has, the frontier-style, rough-and-tumble, gas mining, protecting-the-environment vs business-of-survival-and-greed vibe it has. Roselight also has serious Sunless Sea vibes, and is also just a very pretty idea. But the main thing on Liavara, as with the Diaspora, is all the random mysterious junk floating around. Hullheap, where ships inexplicably get dragged to their death on a shepherd moon. The Old Hulk, the pre-Roselight mining station and hub for Liavara, which failed during the Gap and now just occasionally surfaces back up into the non-crushing levels of the gas giant like a ghost ship or vanishing island on faulty-but-still-trying buoyancy engines. And Deep Station, the gas giant equivalent of a deep-sea exploration platform that is so much tougher than any of its support ships, so no one can follow it when it goes down into the crushing depths of the planet. So, naturally, it’s gone down and gone dark, and no one knows what’s happened to it. I love a good lost-expedition quest hook.

I’m going to say, a thing I love in general in this book is how happy they are to hang adventure hooks all over their setting. Pretty much every bit of the Pact Worlds has some random mystery knocking around for you to poke your nose into. And, you know, also faction politics and general ‘you can be hired to do any damn thing’ sort of vibe, but I’m drawn to the mysteries in particular. I would totally play a xenoarchaeologist character and just hope to get sent to investigate any of these. Between the First One cities on Aballon (and their other potential facilities further out into the system, like the Footprints of the First Ones in the Diaspora, and possibly the entirety of Apostae?), the mysterious structure or ship that’s sitting pretty inside the Eyes of the Ancients on Bretheda where no one can hope to reach it, whatever’s causing the Hum in the Diaspora and the Hullheap on Liavara’s shepherd moon (are they linked?), the random hovercar 370 miles down the horrifying biological ‘throat’ on Aucturn that has mileage on it equal to several times the thickness of the planet and the ominous message ‘we found the one who calls’, or the weird ghost city on Eox that seems like a normal ghost city on a dead world where everything is undead, except that it couldn’t have existed pre-calamity because it would have been under the ocean, so what’s up with that?

I would play a whole campaign that’s just a team of xenoarchaeologists and other specialists getting sent on dungeon dives, *ahem*, I mean archaeological digs in all the mystery hot spots around the Pact Worlds. There’s so many. That’s not including the overtly supernatural and/or occulty sites, like the Gap-era prison in the Diaspora where everyone’s vanished, and anyone who stays there now has horrifying nightmares and talks about flayed figures in yellow rags menacing them (hello King in Yellow! Always a pleasure!).  

On that note, you could also easily have another campaign that’s just the part as cult hunters or investigators delving into places like the Fastness of the Ordered Mind on Verces, or the House of the Void in the Diaspora, or Aucturn. Like all of Aucturn. Mind you, they’re all pretty up-front cults, it’s more getting into what they’re doing and how worried does anyone have to be longterm about them.

If you want a more survivalist party, there’s also a salvage campaign where you’re extreme salvage specialists, and you’re taking on the Everests of Pact World salvage like attempting to get into and out of the Hum with your ship, sanity and salvage intact, or going after Deep Station or Old Hulk on Liavara, or Hullheap. Or the depths of Apostae. Or, again, the First One cities on Aballon. There’s so many like ghost ships and ghost stations and mysterious (and deadly) piles of junk floating around the system, and it’s your job, and vocation, badge of pride, that you’re going after them. Heh.

There’s a lot of adventure hooks strewn liberally around the system, is my point here, and many of them I’d be entirely happy to follow purely from the brief mentions given in this book. Do I want to play 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea meets the Abyss trying to reach a lost research station diving the crush depths of the interior of a gas giant? Absolutely I do. Do I want to investigate and figure out what the hell is up with the creepy ghost prison in an asteroid field that’s probably been taken over by an outer god? You bet! Do I want to play a trucking contractor venturing out across an ice-sheet under endless night to pick up a shipment from a frozen industrial platform that’s suddenly gone dark, and there’s trails of blood leading out across the ice to a series of caves? I am that fool. Do I want to be a government investigator assigned to figure out why orbital greenhouses around the sun, all of them belonging to one particular company, are suddenly turning into ghost stations after their cargo ate their crews? I will play that game.

The book does a good job of giving you hooks and tools to set stories in this place, is what I’m saying here. There’s a lot to work with. And those are just the bits that I, personally, immediately want answers to and a chance to explore. There’s many other types of adventures and campaigns that also immediately jump out, whether you want a social or political or war or exploration sort of game.

It’s such a cool setting. The Pact Worlds themselves, before you ever get out to Near Space or the Veskarium, or the Azlanti Empire, or the Vast, or the Drift, already has a crap tonne going for it.

Ahem. Anyway. I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed it a lot. If you enjoy lore and worldbuilding and setting exploration, great pick-up. Do recommend.

I wanna be a Pact Worlds xenoarchaeologist so bad …

[intoxicatingimmediacy]

At Roadburn journalist Cody Davis sat down with King Yosef, clipping. and Ashanti Mattina, better known as Backxwash, to discuss their personal journeys through experimental music. For insight on why clipping. don't have much metal influence in their sound, how King Yosef keeps on creating when he's not quite in the mood or how Backxwash felt when clipping. gave her a beat, you’ve come to the right place.

[phaedraismyusername]

I'm rereading I Am Legend for the first time since I was a teenager and good lawd i forgot how much our lad whinges at the start about that undead coochie