#let anne be exactly who she is and who she becomes in the books

[doverstar]

sometimes anne with an e is so wholly UN-anne of green gables that I have to throw up

[arielleslipgloss]

It Girl Habits!!

(none of these photos are mine)

“You cannot live your life to please others. The choice must be yours.” - Anne Hathaway

Stay busy!! Do you see those it girls like Serena Van Der Woodsen scrolling on their phone all day? No, you rarely do. It girls are always busy doing something. So, therefore do some self care, study, workout, read, journal, go shopping, go on solo dates, hang out with friends, paint, have a dance party, etc. Do fun activities and take care of yourself. Another example of a busy it girl is, Elle Woods. Elle Woods wasn’t becoming one with the couch everyday. She had goals to achieve. She had people that doubted her to prove wrong. So get up! Start planning out your day or week. Start making goals!!

Have goals! You wanna know why you’re bored all the time? Well, it’s because you have no goals. You practically don’t have a life because all you do is sleep, eat, scroll, and repeat. You’re wasting time doing nothing. You could’ve had a clean room by now. Maybe you could have finished that book. Whatever it is, you could have had it. You could’ve been 1% better than yesterday. You don’t though because you have no goals. That time you’re wasting, can be used toward your goals. It can be used toward your dream life. Maybe, you do have goals? Yet you don’t even take action. What are you waiting for? For someone to do the work for you? No, get up and start taking action.

Be mindful of what you consume online!! Just like how who you surround yourself with affects you. What you consume online affects how and who you are. For example, listening to sad music makes you feel sad. Music is meant to tell a story that you feel deeply. You may not even relate to the song, but you feel as if you do. So, you become sad and continue to listen to sad music. When listening to uplifting music you gain confidence. You still feel like you relate to the song. Just with a more positive effect. As for what you watch and read. Don’t read/watch stuff that will put you down. Watch/read content that will help you.

Complimenting yourself every time you pass the mirror!! Some may say it’s cringy, but DO IT. Would you rather be cringy or be the best version of yourself? Exactly, so either say it out loud or in your head. Say it even if you might not believe it. Say it because you deserve it! Try to be creative with your compliments. Not all compliments have to be about your looks. It could be your personality, your thoughtfulness, how creative you are, etc. Also loosen up, be your own hype girl. When you see the mirror you could say, “Omg I look like the main character.” “Oh wait, I am!” Lastly, don’t forget to have fun with hyping yourself up.

Mediating or journaling when stressed!! When stressed we start to feel a lot of tension. So, that’s why meditating is so important to do when stressed. All you have to do is sit down and focus on breathing. Plus, It calms down your nerves, relaxes the mind, body, and soul. Not just that, but plenty of other benefits. Which includes, helps focus, betters mood, helps you sleep, slows down aging, etc. As for journaling, it’s practically free therapy! That is, at least in my eyes. All you need is a notebook, a pen or pencil, and yourself. Journal what’s making you stressed or anxious. Let all your emotions out, write freely. Your words don’t have to make sense. Nor do you need to have perfect writing. In fact, when you journal it may be all over the place. However or whatever you write, just let it out.

Expressing your gratitude!! Life is so beautiful and has so much meaning. So, either write down what you’re grateful for or thank God. You are so blessed to be here today. That is only just one thing to be grateful for. There are so many things to be grateful for, air, family, friends, your mind, being born as you, water, books, food, shoes, clothes, and so much more!! Express your gratitude everyday. It could be the most random thing like, a poster. As long as you’re truly grateful, then express it.

7. Having a low screen time!! Cliché, I know but it’s true. Your devices are consuming you. Think about what you use your device(s) for. Good examples are, for work, for motivation, tips, workout videos, inspiration, knowledge, and maybe even faith reasons. Now here are bad examples, procrastinating, sinning, hating on others, scrolling, because you’re bored, to watching videos of people that make you insecure, and lastly to cope with something. Which to clarify, trying to cope by using your phone, I understand somewhat. On the other hand, it could make what you’re coping with worse. I say that because there are so many studies on why our phone is bad for us. Seriously, so many and we are completely unaware of the damage it does. So for that reason, try to use your phone only for the good. I know you’re probably going to make an excuse. Which we all do and that’s ok, but please try.

8. Encouraging yourself to do better!! You should always be working hard to be 1% better everyday. So on the days you don’t feel like doing anything, encourage yourself. Show up for yourself, you will be so happy after. Lastly, trust yourself to get whatever done!!

9. Having a healthy sleep schedule!! For me, I try to aim for 8-11 hours of sleep. For others, it may be 7-10 hours of sleep. Whatever makes you feel the most well-rested should work. Just try to be consistent and mindful of the time. I also recommend to be off your phone for at least 30-60 minutes before going to bed. It will improve how you sleep a lot. That also being said, try not to be on your phone when you wake up either. It’ll help improve your health by a lot. Especially, the health of your brain and eyes. As I had mentioned, try to be consistent. Set a certain time to go to bed and turn off your phone. Then, get your lovely beauty sleep gorgeous!!

10. CLEANING!! The last habit is, cleaning. Now, I don’t just meaning cleaning your room or house. I mean even your body and mind. For starters, a clean room equals a clean mind. Therefore, stop procrastinating and start cleaning. Turn on some fun music and maybe even romanticize cleaning. Just make it fun and DEEP clean. I know someone reading this has been procrastinating on cleaning. You know who you are, so clean everything. Then, for cleaning the mind a little extra meditate. I feel like I already went over a bit about meditation. So lastly, for the body, take your showers consistently. Also, please wear deodorant. I see way too many people nowadays not wearing deodorant. Seriously, wear your deodorant.

“Always walk around like you have on an invisible tiara on.” - Paris Hilton

Remember, always apply lip gloss and stay pretty! Love you, dolls 💋

Info I used: https://reallifecounseling.us/blog/benefits-of-meditation

My Pinterest: @arielleslipgloss

[writers-potion]

said is NOT DEAD. our brains have seen it so much that when reading dialogue, it just glosses over it. if you don't want to detract from the dialogue, USE SAID. other words might ground the reader a little too much and lose a bit of immersion.

--this comes from my old tutor who now has a phd in literature

Said Is Not Dead

Of course not! "Said" should still be your go-to speech tag, the benefit being that it flows best. I find it nice to have a larger working vocabulary when it comes to expressing speech, though, and I think many writers would agree! It's one thing to use "said" because you know it's the best word choice and another to keep using it because you can think of no alternative.

Having said that:

". . . Don't tell me your character 'excaimed,' 'stated,' or 'replied.' When in doubt, just use 'said.' That's all. Maybe they 'answered.' They certainly did not 'retort.' You can use 'said' more often than you think . . . it's one of those words that takes a while before it starts sounding repetitive." -- Ariel Gore, How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead

"The best form of dialogue attribution is 'said,' as in 'he said, she said, Bill said, Monica said." -- Stephen King, On Writing

"Mr. [Robert] Ludlum . . . hates the 'he said' locution and avoids it as much as possible. Characters in The Bourne Ultimatum seldom 'say' anything. Instead, they cry, interject, interrupt, muse, state, counter, conclude, mumble, whisper (Mr. Ludlum is great on whispers), intone, roar, exclaim, fume, explode, mutter. There is one especially unforgettable tautology: '"I repeat," repeated Alex.' The book may sell in the billions, but it's still junk." -- Newgate Callender, in The New York Times Book Review

"Editors and critics often refer to melodramatic dialogue tags as 'said bookisms.' They know that these phrases give our story an amateurish look. Your readers might not know what the darn things are called, but chances are that they'll notice them, too . . . In most cases, the word 'said' would work just fine, and using said bookisms detracts from the dialogue." -- Ann M. Marble, "'Stop Using Those Said Bookisms,' the Editor Shrieked."

"[Say is] just too simple and clear and straightforward for many people. Why say something when you can declare, assert, expostulate, whine, exclaim, groan, peal, breathe, cry, explain, or asseverate it? I'm all for variety and freshness of expression, but let's not go overboard." -- Patricia T. O'Conner, Woe Is I

"In journalism circles, said is a virtue--simple, precise, and unadorned--and alternatives to it are considered frilly and silly. You don't have to agree, but be aware that lots of editors hold this view. Choose your alternatives to said with great care." --June Casagrande, It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences

"We're all in favor of choosing exactly the right verb for the action, but when you're writing speaker attributions the right verb is nearly always 'said.' The reason those well-intentioned attempts at variety don't work is that verbs other than 'said' tend to draw attention away from the dialogue." --Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Side Note: After a month-long hiatus while this uni writer struggled with exams, internships, interviews and multiple mental breakdowns, I am going to resume answering questions that have piled up in my inbox! Get ready to be bombarded with writing QnA!!!! :)

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

[hier--soir]

feb + mar + apr reads

norma jean baker of troy by anne carson [★★★★★]

"Sometimes I think language should cover its own eyes when it speaks."

"Is she human? Are you? Is she a beast out of control? There's so much danger. No human can become just a beast, you plunge beyond - beyond what? Remember Jack the Ripper? 'I'm down on whores and I shan't quit ripping them till I get buckled,' Jack wrote in a letter to the newspaper, September 18, 1888. He never did get buckled. Of course insane, his mind blooming with it, who could go down that rabbit-hole or unlock such a puzzle as Jack? - but still, the woman! the thing is! the woman has everything and you smile and you take some."

: ̗̀➛ an exploration of the lives and myths of marilyn monroe and helen of troy.

: ̗̀➛ anne carson is there anything you can't do? please email me back. please.

piglet by lottie hazell [★★★★]

"'I want to make some food,' she said. 'For both of us?' he asked. 'No, just for me.'"

: ̗̀➛ one woman, piglet, and the lead up to her wedding in the face of a big confession from her fiancé.

: ̗̀➛ this one slipped beneath my skin and writhed around the spot inside me where i've tucked away all of my food issues.

merciless gods by christos tsiolkas [★★]

"I'm scared that if I let go, not only the room, not only this city, but the whole world will go cold forever."

"Your false gods cannot save you. There is only one God, my God."

: ̗̀➛ short stories that bash you over the head with how awful things and people and places can be. i did not live for this one... particularly wasn't into the one where a guy jerked his dad who has alzheimers off.

foe by iain reid [★★]

"All day. Time keeps moving. I've always thought that was a good thing. Until recently. I'm not so sure now. Is it good? For time to go by fast?"

: ̗̀➛ they want to send junior to space and replace him with a robot that looks and acts and talks exactly like him so his wife has company in his absence.

: ̗̀➛ marriage and trust and complacency, and a guy called terrence who we get reminded over and over has long gorgeous hair.

: ̗̀➛ a little boring for my taste. i had an idea of where it was going pretty early on, and it took a while for me to be proven right. pretty disconcerting!

acts of desperation by megan nolan [★★★★]

"The need was a true and human part of me, but I could feel nothing else of myself to be true or human, and so the need seemed ungodly, an aberration."

: ̗̀➛ a book full of confession, desire, jealousy, violence, and power. messy messy messy!!!! readers procceed with caution.

: ̗̀➛ shout out to everyone who said i should read this - you were right, it is up my alley.

gone girl by gillian flynn [★★★★]

"My wife was no longer my wife but a razor-wire knot daring me to unloop her, and I was not up to the job with my thick, numb, nervous fingers. Country fingers. Flyover fingers untrained in the intricate, dangerous work of solving Amy. When I'd hold up the bloody stumps, she'd sigh and turn to her secret mental notebook on which she tallied all my deficiencies, forever noting disappointments, frailties, shortcomings."

: ̗̀➛ i have become a gillian flynn STAN this year, it's true. despite having seen the movie multiple times, i enjoyed reading this, and was delighted to find some differences in the texts [for better and for worse].

: ̗̀➛ nick dunne, big fan of the lie of omission, mama's boy whose mama is dead, i'd like to introduce you to couples therapy.

dead beautiful and life eternal by yvonne woon [reread] [★★★]

: ̗̀➛ the first two books in a paranormal romance trilogy. these kinda bang guys, i can't lie. 15-year-old me was onto something when she decided to keep these instead of donating them. however, they DO have some of the worst book covers i've ever seen, sorry yvonne.

fourth wing by rebecca yarros [★★★]

: ̗̀➛ a romantasy book that has dragons, smut, and twists that you'll see coming from a mile away. pretty fun. recced to me by one man in person and a thousand women on tik tok.

: ̗̀➛ no one who has the thought 'double standards for the win' is using 'whomever' in a casual sentence with the guy she's having sex with.

: ̗̀➛ good enemies to lovers should have actual murder attempts. but maybe that's jusT MY OPINION.

my book rating system is as follows:

★ = i felt pure contempt the entire time

★★ = yeah it's a book

★★★ = i liked it!

★★★★ = good fucking book, damn

★★★★★ = blew my dick clean off and i'll throw a tantrum if everyone i know doesn't also read it and love it

[rayless-reblogs]

Goldstone Wood and the Oddness of Christian Fantasy

Princess Varvare in a kingdom of roses

I want to share some illustrations inspired by the Tales of Goldstone Wood series by Anne Elisabeth Stengl. It's a Christian fantasy series that I really like. Give me a moment to talk about that – unless you absolutely love Christian fantasy, all Christian fantasies, in which case, maybe skip this.

I spent a chunk of the early 2000s defending fantasy as a genre to a variety of Christians I ran across – not the majority, but still a variety of them – both in my head and to their faces. The preacher who said, from the pulpit, that Harry Potter was Satanic. Writers explaining why JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis were (of course) okay, but all other fantasy novels were suspect. Websites that dissected the occult symbolism you never realized was buried in fantasy media. My friend who frowned at me in concern and said she wouldn't want to have to explain to God why she read “that kind of thing” when she met him after death.

This is Rosie (and her goat Beana, who talks.) I love Rosie utterly, she tries so hard and she feels things so much. The next image is a spoiler, showing her unveiled.

I think that's partially why I'm interested in the genre of Christian fantasy, this attempt to make these two things fit. For me, the fusion often doesn't work. Either writers mix theology and fantasy in a weird confusing way. (Wait, you just had your heroine marry an angel. Do you actually think that happens? Which parts of this actually reflect your belief system?) Or they play things extremely safe and traditional. (Oh boy, another story about a young farm boy who's going to go on a quest and fight the Satan figure and become a hero while his girlfriend does... something peaceful off-screen.) Or they try to be another Lewis in the belief that since Lewis and John Bunyan did it, allegory is an acceptable vehicle for fantasy, and let's be really obvious about the symbolism. (I bet this demon symbolizes evil.) I read Christian fantasy, but it's partially optimistic curiosity, it's partially pessimistic irony, and I haven't found many that I'd recommend.

Rosie unveiled.

But I do like Tales of Goldstone Wood, at least what I've read so far (still missing a few of the installments). I like it enough that I would recommend it to a Christian who wants to read fantasy, or a fantasy reader who doesn't mind Christian themes. Anne Elisabeth Stengl often approaches the Christian elements indirectly, from less obvious angles, so you don't have all the heavy-handed symbols you see in the Lewis and Tolkien knockoffs. She has many, many interesting female characters and a lot of humor. Her series also builds, adding complexity to the world and characters with each installment, many of the characters showing up in multiple books.

Varvare and the unicorn. This unnamed unicorn is one of my favorite elements of the third book – beautiful but dangerous and eldritch. Corrupted – but not exactly evil.

Stengl's also not afraid to get weird and fey with her fantasy elements, at times reminding me strongly of things like Labyrinth, The Neverending Story, and no end of Celtic and European folklore. Her magical characters are unpredictable, merry, fearsome, and unabashedly over the top. Her heroes have depth, flaws to go with their heroism, and never become morally perfect even after their conversions – unlike in so much Christian fiction. Much of Christian fantasy bears the thumbprint of CS Lewis; in Stengl's case, though her writing shows clear nods to Lewis (and not just his Narnia books), she isn't trying to replicate him. These aren't books that Lewis would have written.

Daylily and Lionheart. If the series has a protagonist, it's probably Lionheart there on the right. He seems to be doomed to keep showing up in different story arcs, and he's always interesting.

I recommend you begin with the first one, Heartless. Though Heartless is the least ambitious/unique entry – it's straightforward and, of all of the books, the most directly allegorical. (I bet this guy's the Jesus figure. Yep, yep he is.) But it lays the foundation for the world and establishes many of the central characters, including my favorite Eanrin, the blind cat-shapeshifting bard-knight with the heroism of a knight, the selfishness of a cat, and endless flair. Stengl does explore Christian themes, but at the same time she clearly wants to create beautiful language, memorable characters, and engrossing stories. The stories and characters don't feel secondary to the message.

Eanrin, I like him a lot. He also shows up in almost every book, at least the main books, sometimes pre-injury, sometimes post-.

My favorite book is Starflower, the fourth, because of its courageous heroine (who grows into the librarian-knight Imraldera we see in other books), its twisted echoes of “Beauty and the Beast” and Till We Have Faces, and its focus on, who else, Eanrin in his younger years, before he's really gotten that whole hero thing worked out.

Imraldera. (She's looking at Eanrin.) The series is allegedly over, but I feel like there are still some narrative threads hanging, including with Imraldera here. My hope is that the author returns to the series someday.

As with any recommendation, this isn't a blanket recommendation; you may find things in here you don't like. I don't sign off on every element as perfect. But Christian fantasy is a small genre, it's a weird genre, in my opinion it's often a clumsy genre. Goldstone Wood is proof that it can produce interesting, original material – stuff not merely “good for a Christian fantasy”, but just a good series, period.

[nellasbookplanet]

Book recs: post- and transhumanism

AKA: cyborgs, uploaded minds, and humans otherwise altered by technology.

I have previously written a rec list for books featuring robots and artificial intelligences, but ended up excluding various titles for not quite fitting the theme. Hence, this list, which focuses more on the step from human into something else, commonly with themes of what it means to be human.

Previous book rec posts:

Really cool fantasy worldbuilding, really cool sci-fi worldbuilding, dark sapphic romances, mermaid books, vampire books, portal fantasies, robots and artificial intelligences

For more details on the books, continue under the readmore. Titles marked with an * are my personal favorites. And as always, feel free to share your own recs in the notes!

The Quantum Thief by Hannu Rajaniemi*

Place this one in the category of ‘accept that you’re gonna be confused as hell and just let the world wash over you’. The singularity has come and gone and humans can now easily upload, download and copy themselves into new bodies, not all of them human and not always willingly. Consciousnesses and time has become something close to currency. Follows a murder mystery on Mars.

The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace duology) by Erin Bow*

Young Adult. Featuring a dystopian future in which an AI forcibly keeps world peace by holding the children of world leaders hostage. If anyone attempts to start a war, their child will be executed. Greta is one of these children, kept in a school with others like her. But things start to change one day when a new, less obedient hostage arrives. A unique, slowburn take on the YA dystopian craze, also featuring a bisexual love triangle.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox (Jenna Fox Chronicles) by Mary E. Pearson

Young Adult set in a near future. Jenna wakes from a year long coma after an accident, and something is wrong. Is this really her life? Are her memories her own? Exactly what happened a year ago, and what did her parents do to get her back?

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky*

Millenia and generation spanning scifi. After the collapse of an empire, a planet once part of a project to uplift other species to sentience is left to develop on its own, resulting not in the intelligent monkeys once intended but in sentient giant spiders. Millenia later, what remains of humanity arrives looking for a new home, only to be met by the artificial remains of the ancient woman who once led the uplift project - and she is not willing to let them on her planet.

War Girls by Tochi Onyebuchi*

In an enviromentally fraught future, the Nigerian civil war has flared back up, utilizing cybernetics and mechs to enhance its soldiers. Two sisters, by bond if not by blood, are separated and end up on differing sides of the struggle. Brutal and dark, with themes of dehumanization of soldiers through cybernetics that turn them into weapons, and the effect and trauma this has on them.

The Ship Who Sang by Anne McCaffrey

1969 classic. Features a future in which children born too weak to survive are put into and raised in mechanical bodies. Helva, one of these children, grows up to be put in charge of her own space ship, from which she works to fulfill various missions out in space, missions which she quickly comes to learn are much more dangerous than she could've imagined.

Cinder (The Lunar Chronicles) Marissa Meyer*

Young Adult fairy tale retelling. Cinder, a cyborg with a mysterious past she can't remember, lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters in New Beijing as a deadly plague ravages the world and a race of Lunar people threaten war against the entire planet. As Cinder becomes entwined with the young prince Kai, she is pulled more and more into dangerous politics that see her as less than human due to her cybernetics, yet need her to save them.

House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

Six million years in the future, humanity has spread across the entire Milky Way galaxy. Purslane and Campion are both clones of the same woman, sent into the galaxy millions of years ago to explore along with almost a thousand clones like them. Every 200 000 years they all meet to compare memories and experiences. But this time Purslane and Campion arrive late - and discover that a secret millions of years in the making has lead to an extinction level attack against their kind. Now they must find out the truth before their line is completely wiped out. Absolutely wild world-building, featuring various kinds of posthumans (among which the clones are, shockingly, the most similar to people of our time).

Nexus (Nexus trilogy) by Ramez Naam

In a near future, a nano-drug is developed that can link human minds together, having the potential to change humanity forever. As different factions fight over it - some wanting to control it, other to eradicate it, and many to exploit it - a scientist who's caught improving the drug is thrust into a world of danger and international espionage.

Skinned (Cold Awakening trilogy) by Robin Wasserman

Young Adult. Rich girl Lia Kahn had the perfect life - until she died and was brought back by having her memories downloaded into a mechanical body. Despite having her life back, Lia also finds her life changed, as people fear her and treat her differently. Worse; she herself isn't sure if she's still really Lia, or whether she's even a person at all anymore.

Blindsight (Firefall duology)by Peter Watts*

Vampires and aliens and questions of the nature of consciousnesses, oh my. A ship is sent to investigate the sudden appearance of an alien vessel at the edge of the solar system, but the crew, a group of various level of transhumanism, isn't prepared for the horrors awaiting them. No, seriously, this book will fuck you up, highly recommend if you’re okay with a lot of techno babble and existential horror.

Mortal Enginges (Mortal Engines quartet) by Philip Reeve*

Young Adult. On a barely survivable Earth humanity has taken to living on great wandering cities, hunting each other across the plains for resources. Tom lives in London, but when he intervenes to stop a murder, he falls off the city alongside a strange and hostile girl on the hunt for revenge. Together they set out to catch up to the city, but are chased by a murderous machine like being set on stopping them. Trans/posthumanism isn't the main theme of the book, but it continues to grow in importance throughout the series.

Bonus AKA I haven't read these yet but they seem really cool

Meru by S.B. Divya

A human and a posthuman, called an alloy, venture together into space to explore a newly discovered, earth-like planet, testing the future of the relationship between their peoples on the way.

WE by John Dickinson

Humanity has become a hive mind, constantly connected. When Paul is sent on a one-way mission to a frozen moon, he must disconnect from the rest of humanity, for the first time seeing what it has truly become.

Accelerando by Charles Stross

In a time in which the artificial and the posthuman is more and more outpacing the human, something strange enters the solar system and starts dismantling its planets.

Honorary mentions AKA these didn't really work for me but maybe you guys will like them: We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

[dwellordream]

“The Mother Trap: Everyone’s Talking About ‘Mom Rage,’ But What Is it?” by Merve Emre

“On September 13, 2019, Minna Dubin, a mother in Berkeley, California, published a brief, confessional essay in the Times’ parenting section titled “The Rage Mothers Don’t Talk About.” …What explained her rage? Her son would not get into the car, or eat the foods that she wanted him to eat, or let her brush his teeth. He bit other children. He ignored her. She yelled at him, threatened him, squeezed his arms, threw him in his crib, and wanted badly to hit him. She ate too many sweets and wandered the house, ashamed and lonely, whispering to stop herself from laying her hands on him: “Don’t touch him, don’t touch him, don’t touch him.”

But she was reluctant to speak to anyone, even her husband. “Mother rage is not ‘appropriate,’” she wrote. “As if mother rage equals a lack of love. As if rage has never shared a border with love.” She sensed that her reactions were excessive, but she made no real effort to understand. Understanding was not the point of her essay. The point was to unleash the primal scream of a mother who had regressed—spectacularly, obscenely—into a tantruming child, not unlike the three-year-old who had spurred her rage in the first place.

The tantrum had its desired effect; immediately, Dubin started to receive messages from mothers around the world. They confided that they, too, struggled with uncontrollable anger and that her story “made them feel less alone,” she reported. Her essay went viral when the Times republished it, in April, 2020, weeks after the surge in Covid-19 cases prompted many governments to close schools. Parents struggled to work from home and care for their children, who were suddenly underfoot all the time; households everywhere grew isolated yet overcrowded, overstimulated yet bored, and exceedingly agitated. “Between stay-at-home orders, Covid-19 health concerns, financial instability (or fear of it), and police violence against Black people, it is no surprise that mothers are experiencing intensified rage,” Dubin wrote, in a follow-up essay that was published in the Times on July 6, 2020, with the headline “‘I AM GOING TO PHYSICALLY EXPLODE’: MOM RAGE IN A PANDEMIC.”

The artlessness of Dubin’s essays made them tremendously gripping—so gripping as to deflect certain intellectual and ethical questions that readers might have asked of her central concept, “mom rage.” It was a term that Dubin had adapted from a 1998 essay by Anne Lamott, called “Mother Rage: Theory and Practice.” Whereas Lamott’s essay was a self-deprecating, mock-scholarly comedy about parenting, Dubin presented mom rage as a solemn social diagnosis. But what was “mom rage,” exactly? How did it differ from related diagnoses, such as anger issues or impulse-control disorders? More sensitive questions suggested themselves, too.

…“Mom Rage: The Everyday Crisis of Modern Motherhood” (Seal Press, 2023) is Dubin’s book-length effort to grant mothers the absolution that many of them seek. “What if the conclusion I, and the moms who were writing to me, had come to—that each of us must be ‘the worst mother in the world’—was untrue?” she asks. “What if we were normal mothers reacting to unjust circumstances? What if mom rage were a widespread, culturally-created phenomenon, and not just a personal problem?” Since around 2016, popular works of American feminist nonfiction have often fallen into two overlapping genres: books that reclaim women’s anger for personal and political emancipation (“Rage Becomes Her,” “Burn It Down,” “Good and Mad,” “Eloquent Rage”) and books that popularize Marxist feminist analyses of domestic and emotional work as forms of unwaged labor (“Fed Up,” “All the Rage,” “Essential Labor,” “Emotional Labor,” “Labor of Love”).

The first half of “Mom Rage” squats at the intersection of these genres. The anger of mothers is overdetermined by the “white supremacist, homophobic, classist, ableist, xenophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, capitalist patriarchy,” Dubin writes. The capitalist patriarchy props up the ideology of “capital-M Motherhood,” which “tells mothers we must throw ourselves full throttle into our mothering job—researching, planning, contacting, scheduling, overseeing, washing, tidying, folding, driving, thanking, inviting, hosting, cooking, preparing, and sharing.” Rage is simultaneously “a natural reaction to being systematically stripped of one’s power” and a source of “power in its potential for individual and cultural change.” The remedies Dubin proposes range from state-subsidized child care to communal parenting, art-making (“I recommend the transformative power of creative practice,” she writes), and non-normative sexual arrangements (“I also recommend queerness”).

Dubin’s claims and prescriptions are, by now, staples of pop-feminist nonfiction. Such personal essays and polemics are built on the foundational arguments of an earlier generation of feminists—among them, Silvia Federici, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and Selma James—who, in the nineteen-seventies, argued that capitalism’s emphasis on waged work outside the home occluded the unwaged work of housewives and mothers. It is a measure of how influential such theorizing has become that this proposition, once radical, is almost received opinion among a new crop of cultural critics. But, by the same token, the newer books—call them “feminish”—engage only sparingly with the original sources. Reading paraphrases of paraphrases of paraphrases, one starts to feel as if there is something a little hollow and shiftless about the ease with which phrases such as “white supremacist, homophobic, classist, ableist, xenophobic, transphobic, misogynistic, capitalist patriarchy” are trotted out. We get the right words, strung together like marquee lights, but not the structural analysis that puts them in relation to one another.

…Although rage is the passion that gets top billing in the book, it is made to share the stage with another feeling: shame. Shame is simultaneously the cause and the effect of rage. “Society punishes angry women and shames mothers who step out of their domestic box of caregiving,” Dubin writes. If the shame of not living up to the ideals of capital-“M” Motherhood causes mothers to rage, then it also causes them to stay silent, lest they articulate a greater and deeper shame: that they really are a “bad mom.” “Shame” and its variants appear with greater frequency as “Mom Rage” shifts into its second half, which looks to the genre of self-help to break the “Mom Rage Cycle” and, with it, the “Shame Spiral.” “Self-isolation is a key component of the Shame Spiral for me,” Dubin writes. “I am so deep in my own sorrow and self-hatred after a rage, I have a hard time reaching out to friends.”

Dubin’s presupposition is that it is desirable to banish shame from the scene of parenting, and that once we do we may move “toward creating a more equitable and joyful motherhood.” But surely this depends on the cause of shame and to what ends shame is, or can be, directed. “Shame is itself a form of communication,” the queer theorist Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick writes. Sedgwick, who was also one of the great theorists of shame, saw the relationship between mother and child as a model for the isolation (and, more surprisingly, the possibility of intimacy) that shame can produce. The hot blush or the averted gaze that arises when a mother shouts at her child are “semaphores of trouble,” the outward signs of a breach in their intimacy that has caused them to shrink from each other and into their innermost loneliness. At the same time, these visible responses are invitations for the mother and child to repair their relationship. They can make it anew with an apology or an embrace—and, in doing so, they can make themselves anew, with a deeper understanding of their identities as both linked and separable beings.

…In the book, her son has a name, Ollie, and he is no longer the Everychild she previously presented. Dubin introduces him through his diagnoses: a sensory-processing disorder, fine and gross motor delays, food rigidity, and autism-spectrum disorder. Once we learn this, her mom rage reads differently, as the reaction of a parent facing more than run-of-the-mill challenges. Alarmed by Ollie’s uncomprehending reactions and emotional blankness—“His silence infuriated me,” she writes—she screams and tries to frighten him. Staging these scenes allows her to capture him through his physical responses to her. We learn about his “chubby, tear-streaked face” and the “doughy hugs'' he offers to appease his mother. “Between genetics and autism, Ollie never really had a chance,” she writes, and, although the sentence is specific to his challenges with potty training, it is difficult not to hear in it a more general lament or judgment.

“Moms of sick, disabled, or neurodivergent kids all have increased stress levels that make them more prone to mom rage,” Dubin observes. Such stress cannot be underestimated, but the specificity of Dubin’s experience presents a problem for her thesis. Even if we accept her argument that “white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy” shapes the conditions of contemporary motherhood in profoundly unjust ways, it is clear that this is not the whole story of her rage. The book fails to universalize a particular predicament, and, in strenuously attempting to do so, turns into an exercise in ill-advised candor. There are times when one wants to shield both Dubin and her son from such exposure, and times, too, when one feels rage toward Seal Press, which should have used better editorial discretion with a first-time author. Aptly enough, the fortunes of Seal Press echo, in a way, the current mainstreaming of feminist theory in nonfiction publishing. Founded by two feminists in a Seattle garage in 1976, it has now, after a sequence of corporate acquisitions, ended up as an imprint of Hachette, one of the world’s largest trade publishers, which is apparently happy to pass off the book as a “groundbreaking work of reportage” by dressing it up in the flimsiest fashions of pop feminism.

There are scenes scattered throughout “Mom Rage” when Dubin’s gaze widens beyond the mother’s point of view. In one of them, Dubin’s son and daughter have been tussling over the bathroom door, her on one side of it, him on the other. He pushes too hard, and she falls back and hits her head. Dubin is about to bellow but then stops. Instead, she looks closely at her son: “I recognize regret and sadness in his wet, almond eyes, mirror images of mine. I take a slow breath and see that his heart is just like my heart—full of self-punishment. I open my arms to him and say no words at all.” She closes the chapter by describing a piece of scrap paper with two sentences written on it that, for a time, she kept in her purse to remind her of this moment. The first sentence read, “Ollie is a four-year-old boy, and he is good.” The second read, “I am a thirty-five-year-old woman, and I am also good.”

The mother and child’s silent embrace is the ideal image of intimacy renewed. It is the closest Dubin comes in the book to the tender mood of the photograph, and it will soften even readers who have hardened to her extravagant performance. And yet it is difficult to accept it as proof of understanding. At such a pivotal moment, one would expect the language of recognition to be slightly more imaginative and precise, not his eyes are “mirror images of mine” or “his heart is just like my heart.” How clearly can a writer see anyone or anything—her children or the social and political contours of motherhood—when she perceives everything through the haze of moral cliché? “My boy IS good! I wanted to scream. He’s GOOD!” “Please SEE him! See his good self,” Dubin pleads. It is wrenching to witness how much she needs others to affirm that both she and her son are good, instead of understanding how they can be good to, or good for, each other. And it is unsettling to realize that she is incapable of seeing him or herself clearly—that careless prose can narrow the terrain on which a person encounters others and interrogates her own desires.

Dubin never relinquishes the language of morality. She cannot; her book has promised universal absolution and universal absolution it must deliver. “You are a good mom,” she assures the reader in the book’s last line. But to liberate parents from shame like this is every bit as moralizing an act as scolding them would be. Both acts situate the writer on a plane of judgment above the reader, reducing the reader to an extension of the writer’s values. The question “How can she be sure that I am a good mother?” can only be answered with another question: “Does she care who I am?” The writer gets to play out a fantasy of the infinitely benevolent mother by casting the reader in the role of the child, desperate for forgiveness. Yet what the reader really seeks from the writer, and what the child seeks from his mother, is not a moral sentence. It is an ethical point of view—the attentiveness and the curiosity borne of the clear-eyed recognition of both self and others.”

[triviareads]

Note: I've linked StoryGraph summaries of every book to each title.

The Duke Gets Even by Joanna Shupe

There was a lot of reasons The Duke Gets Even worked as well as it did and I can split it between the relatability factor and the hotness factor.

Because it's set in Gilded Age America, the language is definitely more accessible for first-time HR readers. Even content-wise, the heroine, Nellie, becomes a birth control advocate which comes at a... very fitting time for us here in the United States. She also harbors fears of losing herself to a man if she were to get married, all while being in that position where she's the only single in her friend group. Super relatable.

What is less relatable is just how off-the-charts the chemistry between Nellie and the Duke of Lockwood is. We know it's slowly building in the last 3 books but watching it implode is glorious. I don't know if this is a trend but Lockwood seems to written in the mold of the "new" HR hero, similar to MacLean's Duke of Clayborn, where they give and take in equal measure: sexually (in this case, a bit of pain), and perhaps they even give a little more emotionally in the beginning. They respect their heroines in that they have a deep understanding of what makes them tick, but obviously "respect" doesn't mean they aren't willing to get down and dirty. And when they do, it's GREAT.

Also, because of all the water imagery in this book, I'd recommend listening to the Moonlight soundtrack by Nicholas Britel while you read (try The Middle of the World).

Her Husband's Harlot by Grace Callaway

January has been my Grace Callaway month and I was endlessly delighted as I read every HR she's ever published. This was the first book I read by Grace (who is an Asian Canadian author btw), and it's exactly the sort of deranged nonsense I live for: a bit o' rough self-made hero elevated to the aristocracy, a genteel heroine he falls for immediately and marries, but he panics on their wedding night that the d was too big and he was an animal with her, so he goes to slake his lusts at a brothel with a harlot except, well, guess who the "harlot" is. It's great. 10/10 would recommend.

Fiona and the Enigmatic Earl by Grace Callaway

I was reaching the tail-end of my Callaway marathon when I hit this book and wow... I did not expect to be shook further by Grace. Not only did I enjoy the "investigative services for women" plot, but the couple, Fiona and Hawk, had excellent chemistry even as they ostensibly start off as having married out of "convenience".

There's too much to list but here are a few highlights: "oh no I'm too sore so mutual masturbation it is", One of the best carriage blowjob scenes, in part because he's *standing*, he performs a Clayborn (iykyk), there's a Victorian sex toy store, and there is a dungeon(s) in the toy store with an alter on which our heroine is "sacrificed".

What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long

You can read the summary above⬆️ but let me take this opportunity to wax a rhapsodic on what worked for me in this book:

First, it features a hero hellbent on *revenge* for being cucked. Which is great. The *revenge* involves seducing the sister of the man who cucked him. Also great.

Listen... Alexander says some hot shit. And the reason it's hot isn't even because it's the dirtiest stuff; it's because Genevieve takes in his words and internally goes haywire, and any suggestiveness in Alex's words is not lost on her. She's a Knowing virgin, if you will. They're also usually the two smartest people in the room which makes for great dialogue suffused with barely-restrained sexual tension. Alex is also a very real hero, if that makes sense. He makes dumb jokes after having sex. He can't resist trolling his future brother-in-law. His grief is not over-the-top, but a quiet thing, and all the more moving for it.

Side note: @viscountessevie (Sahara), @jeanvanjer (Z), and I did, in fact, debate whether or not Alexander was daddy (the answer is no).

The Legend of Lyon Redmond by Julie Anne Long

The "Love at first sight" trope can easily be written in a trite, boring way, but Julie wrote it brilliantly here. The book alternated between flashbacks and present-day so we got the full picture of Lyon and Olivia's early relationship (in all its, ah, young adult glory. See: below). We also see them as older and fairly jaded and world-weary, which makes their reunion all the more moving and romantic (and hot. very hot).

It was an emotional book overall, and Z and I found ourselves crying for unexpected characters, to say the least.

The Counterfeit Scoundrel by Lorraine Heath (Releases on Feb 21st)

For the full (funny) story on how I got an early copy, see here.

This was very much a *thinking* book. Ever since I started writing as certain dark things are to be loved almost two years ago, I've always been on the look out for books that basically show that fight for women's rights neither began nor ended with suffrage. I appreciate this book because it delves into how much more difficult it was for women to be granted a divorce historically, and gives a fictionalized take on the lengths women might be willing to go to in order to get a divorce. Make no mistake, Blackwood and Daisy's relationship is very very romantic, but I think by the time I finished, I felt like the history was the main draw for me.

A Daring Pursuit by Kate Bateman

The classic familial enemies-to-lovers book. Also, it's very rare to see HR set in Wales, which I did appreciate. Anyway, "enemies" Carys (a proper Welsh name, according to Rhys Winterborne) and Tristan decide to have an affair so Carys can see what she's missing out on in the marriage bed. As it turns out, A Lot despite her thinking otherwise because of a bad first time. Obviously this gives our hero a chance to be all "he didn't do this for you??" It's all very fire-and-ice until they find themselves in over their heads with all their Feelings, especially Carys.

There is a very primal sex scene post bear-chase, and if that doesn't compel you to read this book, I don't know what will.

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 1/5

Book Blurb:

Perfect for fans of Erin Sterling and Ann Aguirre, for everyone who’s ever dreamed of finding Mr. Right, and settled for Mr. Right Now, this romantic comedy from debut author Shannon Bright is a sparkling cocktail of humor and heart.

Raised by a mother whose ironclad motto is “men are trash,” Iza longs to prove her wrong, ideally with a kind, steady boyfriend who will free her from the exhausting treadmill that is dating.  Although she’s willing to try (almost) anything to find love, accidentally summoning a wish-granting stranger out of thin air was never part of the plan.

Unfortunately, Beckett, her personal wish-granter, isn’t exactly the sage and generous being she would expect. Instead, he loves to party, has attitude to spare, and boasts an uncanny ability to point out Iza’s worst flaws. Iza decides to use one of her three wishes to create her dream man—a modern Mr. Darcy. If that esteemed gentleman can’t impress her overbearing mother, no one can. Using Pride and Prejudice as the handbook to Darcy’s heart, Iza plays the part of Elizabeth Bennet and sets out to create her epic love story.  

Making wishes and winning Darcy over becomes more complicated than Iza expects, especially with Beckett’s adorably dimpled grin and unexpected kindness in the equation. Soon enough, she’s glimpsing the truth of the man behind the flippant persona, and each moment in his company makes her question everything she thought she wanted from love.

Review:

What if you suddenly found yourself with a magical genie who can grant you three wishes and the only thing you ever really wanted was to find Mr. Right? Well for Iza, being raised by a mom who thinks all men are trash, finding a guy to meet her mom's standards has been difficult. Iza longs to find Mr. Right but she's had no luck until suddenly one day after opening a bottle of nail polish suddenly a very cute but frat boy genie appears named Beckett, who tells her he is here to grant her three wishes. Iza wants to find Mr. Right and the only Mr. Right she can think of to ask for is a modern day Mr. Darcy, but when she gets her wish granted he is not what she thinks at all... and maybe her Mr. Right has been next her all along wanting to grant her heart's wishes...if only she could pay attention. This one was such a let down for me, I truly wanted to like it so much but Iza constantly got on my nerves. She goes on and on about how she's tried everything when in fact she has not, she went on one dating app and then went on a date with an actual prince who liked her and dipped. She has serious mommy issues and when someone calls her out on it, she immediately says nah. Iza is whiney, judgmental, and for someone who says she wants Mr. Darcy and says her favorite book is Pride and Prejudice but freaks out when Mr. Darcy just acts like Mr. Darcy and has to have her own friend explain it out for her, it's baffling. I loved Beckett, the genie and love interest and honestly wanted him to end up with someone else because the way she treats him the entire book is not it at all. Sadly this did not come off as a cute rom com and missed the mark on growth for Iza. I really just did not vibe with her at all.

*Thanks Netgalley and Alcove Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[reginarubie]

I could dm you about this but I guess this topic deserves to be brought up publicly. Apparently you are the first writer I came across who made a focus on Aemond's chronic pains caused by the trauma (in fact, he's a disabled person and it upsets me how everyone seems to ignore this aspect). Of course, he could be so stressed after facing Rhaenyra but I view it a bit differently and still wanna thank you 🌼

Ciao Anne!, (@wildfieldz)

This is so sweet, thank you!, You're gonna make me blush!

I was talking about this matter with @maddiethefashionista when I was working on the chapter, as she's my support system and helps give me confidence when I need a boost of it.

I don't understand why the show never showed us the consequences of what these people faced not only emotionally but also physically (they failed utterly on both things tbh). The books do, though I still feel like all the rest takes the precedence over the emotional and physical trauma these people endure; which is what happens in real life and what ends up creating even more trauma and problems.

One of the reasons why I love Sansa so much is that she's solid, despite all the trauma (physical and emotional) she endures she still remains true to herself, she still steps up, steps out in the snow field and still she cares for her cousin like she cared for Bran and her siblings, she still let herself be held and never rejects touch, she never rejects emotionally anyone, she offers herself and still wears her heart on her sleeve as a conscious decision and faces the consequences. Bran is the same, he never folds to his own disability — he is Bran the Broken, but he is also the heir to Winterfell and to Robb's crown, the prince of Winterfell and he remembers both in the same breath, that's endurance. That's the kind of resilience people have and I would've liked to see it more in the show as well — but I digress.

Aemond is a disabled person who worked his ass off to be as efficient and proficient as an able-bodied person (despite his missing eye he becomes a great swordsman; he studies and acquires the competence to lead and to understand the world around him despite his young age and remains loyal to his brother) but still a disabled person he is. He adorned his eye to put something beautiful to cover the marring of his eye, but you can't convince me that didn't have consequences (we're always talking of a gem put inside an empty eye-socket) on top of the consequences people who lost their eye suffer through.

It's human of him to suffer from migraines and also Aemond of him to shoulder through them with gritted teeth. You chose to read it exactly how I wrote it.

There's a reason I keep putting emphasis over Sansa's knees bothering her and her joints having become more fragile after what she endured — the rationing and the almost frostbite — and putting emphasis over Aemond's eye bothering him, the phantom pain of it and the migraines that come from it as well.

I'm not a doctor so I don't know if the symptoms I have described are actually ascribable to the pathology (having lost an eye or almost dying of frostbite) but I've tried to put emphasis over the fact that these people are still human, they get worked up and their health acts up not only as a result from the stress but also of the trauma they endured. But I've seen people living with the consequences of their physical traumas other than emotional so I think that's an aspect that gives depth and truthfulness to the story so thank you for remarking on it.

As always sending all my love ~G.

[mara-and-its-the-same]

living in the past, it's a new generation - tell me as much as you want to about yourself and I'll make a mood board of what i imagine your past life would be (i'm obsessed with historical fashion, let me indulge myself)

this is so creative oh my goodness how do you come up with these??? also i went a little overboard while talking about myself i hope thats ok<3

i'm an isfj, and i'm fairly shy. i have anxiety, and i get really quiet in social settings- i have 3 close friends who mean the world to me, and i'm part of a really small friend group but i value individual friendships much more because of how intimate they are. i listen to music quite often, read too much (i get caught up in books really easily), listen to a lot of music - taylor swift wrote mirrorball for me - and i'm an academic validation girlie. my aesthetic is somewhere in between coastal granddaughter and coquette- i kind of dress like rory gilmore, i wear flared jeans a lot and floral or lacy tops. 

i use she/her pronouns, and i'm straight but mayyybe bi?? i like to think i'm feminine- i love perfume and lavender and candles and claw clips and locket jewelry. i'm 5'2, petite, and i have medium-length hair that's light brown in the winter and strawberry blonde in the summer (idk but something about the sun changes its color, i don't know how). i'm really fair skinned, blush easily, and i have a few freckles- i get sunburned really easily so i try to take really good care of my skin. my teeth aren't very straight but i like to think it's a cute little character flaw haha.

i'm a ballet dancer but i also ice skate for fun, and i play touch football in the spring. i'm also obsessed with pearls. i write a lot as well- mostly poetry, but i don't post it on here lol. i adore pretty trinkets and dresses, iced matchas from starbucks, gracie abrams, romcoms, and pale pink converse. my favorite show is gilmore girls & anne with an e, and my favorite movies are little women (2019) and dead poets society. thank you<33

babe, why do we have the same hair except mine is only red because it's so stained

And also, don't apologize for talking about yourself. This is science, I need DATA!!!! It's also an excuse for me to know you better<3 (this is also gonna be lowkey fantasized because old times be rough and I'm not gonna put your past self through that) We are here for lighthearted gaiety!!!! Nothing more, nothing less!

Anyway, I got carried away and made a pinterest board rather than a mood board, sorry, but anyway, absolutely 100% certainly late victorian ballerina

I kinda feel like its low hanging fruit cus like, you said you love ballet but honestly I was thinking it the whole time, I just got lucky when you confirmed it el oh el

I think you wouldn't be nobility exactly, but like gilded age and whatever, you'd have money so you get a fancy education and excel in all your courses but then you start ballet and you're definitely better than everyone there too. So you eventually become on of the most famous ballerinas and duh everybody wants to be you or be with you but you're like naaahhhh I have enough friends, thank you though. BUT THeN! One day, at some dinner party your obscenely wealthy grandma is having in your honor at her beach mansion house (because you're the bestest ballerina of them all) you meet gaspspps A Devilishly dashing (person of whatever gender you're feelin, I won't tell you what to do) and it's a relentless back and forth of will-they-wont-they and your friends all say yes but you say no because "they're probably just like everyone else, they don't want me for me, they want me for what I do, what I could offer them"

BUT THEN! dun dun dun,,,a totally random accident that happens out of nowhere and is completely unrelated to dance (i'm hella superstitious and if you think i'm putting that out there? Haha no way), leads you to an early retirement because you still love to dance but the fame isn't all you bargained for, so you move to the seaside and DUN DUN DUN! Who comes to visit??? Your beloved suitor!! and then you have a beautiful life filled with perfume bottles, lockets, lavender sprigs, and beach picnics <3

ummmm I got very carried away but i hope you liked it <3

[fideidefenswhore]

"other people are interesting too!" would be a lot more nice if it wasn't just demanding their fave got the most media. I mean they aren't exactly unbiased in this. if Js had all the media they wouldn't want it stopped to give Ab a fair chance. Js and Coa are still 2 of the famous 6 wives. it not as if we never hear about them. as media goes, they don't do too bad. not like medieval queens or even just tudor men. I don't hear no one saying let's have a show all about Philip sidney or they wish Henry fitzroy got more representation or whatever. i mean, it could be worse for antis

I would say COA is by far, also the most venerated and remembered as "the true Queen", but yes, they are both famous for that reason.

I mean, as far as JS goes, there is content, but most of them don't seem interested (I'm speaking of Instagram circles but it seems like the only one they consider 'canon' is Alison Weir's... fascinating because within it she is a sniveling, sanctimonious hypocrite that cries the entire day of Anne Boleyn's coronation at the injustice of her wearing white, since Anne is, of course, a whore that's had premarital sex... then lets Henry hit it raw once Catherine dies [because that becomes when it's morally acceptable to her...tbh, I think this is why it's the one they love this one the most, Jane is #1 COA/Mary I Stan here, it borders on celebrity worship] for five months pre-marriage, wears white upon her own 1st promenade as Queen, doesn't see the irony) in what's out there? I'll be real, I only read May Bride because I was interested in what happened with the whole Catherine Fillol (so like again...is Jane even 'niche'? Do you know who it's really hard to find a novel from the perspective of? Elizabeth Seymour. I was only able to find and check out one from the library) situation and it is almost impossible to find any novels about her, this was like the only one, otherwise I would not bother, I think the Seymours were trash (Margery Wentworth and Elizabeth Cromwell can stay...the rest of the major players, thin ice). I have also read Adrienne Dillard's novel which is half JS-POV, only again for two reasons: 1) I read Raven's Widow and loved it, 2) I've been reading her interviews about this book for years as she's been in-progress in the research and writing stage, she said she had absolutely no interest in romanticizing Henry/Jane, which I was all for... I think that was a very toxic relationship.

I have also, on that note, seen them complain that there are no Henry/Jane sex scenes in any media depictions which is like... I thought you all said he was unequivocally terrible at sex and think the idea of AB having bad sex is funny? Why would you want to see that, if you like Jane...? 

[monstersinthecosmos]

RJ will treat Marius like a saint. He will play therapist/father-in-law to Louis and vouch for his son's innocence and loyalty to Louis. He knows both of his sons fuck Louis so occasional bribery gifts work to preserve his good will.

first of all sorry this is so hot lmfao: He knows both of his sons fuck Louis so occasional bribery gifts work to preserve his good will. 🥵

but no really, like okay here's the thing, and I've said this a few times so I don't want to say it again LOL but obviously everyone can read the same book and we all come out with different ideas about what it meant, based on our lived experiences and tastes, and I think we all knew that the books needed some updates. Not just because they're way too whacky and nonlinear to work smoothly as a TV series, but because there's a lot of outdated tropes & -isms that weren't going to fly.

And like the convergence of those two concepts means that we're gonna get one team's version of the books and also one team's opinion on what needs to be updated.

Like don't get me wrong because Marius is my favorite character in VC (and one of my fav characters in anything ever tbh) but I like him because he's fucking reprehensible. And I would've liked to see a version of him where he's just as charming and soothing and "wise" but where there's no ambiguity about the harm he causes. And like I don't wanna get too deep on Marius meta on a post about RJ & AMC but I think there's a lot of author intent to consider about Marius in the later books and whether or not Anne ever intended to hold him accountable or if she got bored and wanted to write fanfic by the end. That type of inconsistency might be something worth "updating" or worth exploring in a visual medium where we aren't stuck strictly to the interior of someone's POV, and the show is clearly expressing that it wants to play with POVs.

But we all know the types of like, sort of casual surface fans who just enjoy Marius and buy into his bullshit and don't see the harm he's caused, and don't see that he's actually fucking diabolical. I would argue that a lot of these are the same fans who do this to Lestat lmao. (He is, after all, MiniMarius.)

And I'm having a hard time reading what RJ will think of him. On one hand, so many of the decisions made to update the text have been just, overwhelmingly like cishet middle aged white guy decisions. That's exactly Marius's type LMAO. I wouldn't be surprised if they thought he was a saint and portrayed him as a saint, especially bc LET'S BE FUCKING HONEST I don't think they've actually done good research into the entire series, so like he's not thaaaaat bad yet in the trilogy. (There's signs, but, I think we all agree he becomes especially potent in TVA.)

On the other hand!!!!!!!! They've really turned Lestat's abusive behavior up to fucking 3578193587135 so like. Maybe they get it? (tbh I'm still having a hard time sussing out what they intended to be abusive and what they didn't, though. Fucking yikes lmao.)

Plus the lore is so fucking shoddy on AMC I'm curious like what kind of goofy nonsense they'll come up with to create a power imbalance when like idk it feels like all vampires have all powers or some shit like what is Marius going to be able to hold over these guys to impress them?

I also feel like it's hard to gauge what they're squeamish about and what are their standards; ie: aging Claudia up at a glance was OH OKAY SURE LESS GROSS STUFF, but then in reality it was LETS MAKE HER 18 IN LIKE 5 MINUTES AND HAVE HER HYMEN GROW BACK EVERY TIME HER LIL 14 YEAR OLD BODY HAS SEX.

And then in one of the panels RJ made like a kinda dismissive/grossed out comment about Lestat/Gabrielle?

idk man like, update if you need to but I feel like maybe don't commandeer this project if these topics make you squeamish LMAO.

So would they lean into Marius/Armand being predatory? Would they age Armand up so it's not as gross? Will Marius be a saint or will he be so over the top fucking disgusting that he's the no. 1 villain of the show?! Will Armand be aged up but they'll still find a way to make it fucked up?!

It's so hard to say based on RJ's opinions on sexual assault in fiction; like I could see him leaning into it for the shock factor but I could also see him so blithely misreading it that he doesn't see it as an issue in the book at all. Especially because Armand's experience of it doesn't fit neatly into RJ's whole "rape makes you tougher" trope since Armand doesn't ask the reader to think of it as rape. I just worry that this man has such a disconnect with this topic that he wouldn't really see it in the text, idk.

Anyway whew who knows, alls I know is I don't want them to even involve anyone else from canon I cannot stomach this LMAO. I have to keep reminding myself not to dismiss this man/this team as misunderstanding the text because they're educated professionals and keep reminding myself that this is deliberate because they do not care and in the end this is a corporate cash grab and not an artistic project made for us LMAO. And they're already so fucking far off the mark of the books anyway I don't think it's possible to make predictions at all.

[bandedbulbussnarfblat]

Alright y'all, I've been wondering about Alice since season 1. Like, she married Daniel and divorced him, had two daughters with him. She may totally be a character the show made up. But I have dug deep into the wiki and have made some discoveries. So, here are 2 characters that Alice could be based on:

This one is less likely, but I'm putting it first just to get it out of the way. She's Alice Mayfair. Her father was Remy Mayfair, brother to Julien Mayfair, aka the Julien they kept mentioning on the Mayfair Witches. Considering how they've moved the setting to present day (give or take a year or two), Alice could be possibly be around the same age as Daniel in the Immortal Universe. But she does have a daughter, Beatrice, that marries Aaron Lightner in the books. In the Immortal Universe, Aaron/Michael Curry were merged into Ciprien Grieve. So it's possible they could use her, and have Beatrice be one of Daniel's daughters. Just with an updated name, or she's going by her middle name. (If I was named Beatrice, I'd probably use Kate or Lenora/maybe Lenore? It looks like Lenora to me.)

2. This one is still related to the Mayfair Witches, but Alice isn't actually a Mayfair here. Let me explain. Cortland Mayfair, aka the worst uncle ever, from the Mayfair Witches, in the books had a half-brother named Gravier Blackwood, bc their dad was a big slut. And Gravier marries a woman named Alice. The wiki only lists her on his page, and with his last name. But they have a son together named Thomas Blackwood. Who has a daughter named Patsy. Who is the mother of Tarquin Blackwood, aka Quinn, the main character of Blackwood Farm. Which is a book in both the VC and Mayfair Witches. So we're probably going to see some version of it, in some future crossover episode. Rowan could even be there bc Gravier was half Mayfair, if the show wants to. And it could sort of tie Daniel into the story, like either Alice calls him up and is like, 'my grandkid needs help. Yeah, the one got from the son I had with the man I married after I divorced you. But he is our daughters' nephew' Or one of his daughters calls up and is like, 'my dumbass younger brother's kid is in a Situation, help out, you owe me.' And then Daniel helps him get in touch with Lestat, and the crew has a zany adventure.

Idk, I only read the book bc it crossed over with the VC books, I don't really remember much. I do remember there was an intersex vampire, who I just looked up named Petronia. (And I don't exactly remember Anne writing that in a way that was respectful. I actually think they use the h-word.) But she was a Roman gladiator who fought animals and shit. When she was 14. So she was pretty bad ass. In the books some vampire named Arion buys her and gives her money and frees her to do whatever tf she wants. Except she has nowhere to go and asks to stay with him, and he eventually turns her into a vampire.

But Arion kinda just vanishes from the books. Though he may have been mentioned and/or in one of the Prince Lestat books, bc I don't really remember much of them. (Getting through the second book was a slog.) So my idea is that they could make Marius her maker, as he was Roman, and the time periods are close enough. Plus Petronia also disappears from the books. I think it would fit with what we've learned about show Marius so far. Buying someone from an abusive place; takes her in to give her a better life, they become lovers, eventually he turns her. I just think it would be neat to have an actual intersex character, since gender is a bit loose when you're a vampire. I think it could give a unique perspective on gender. And also there need to be more intersex characters on TV; they make up over 2% of people in the world. And two percent may seem small, but that's 2% of over 8 billion people. That's 160 million people. They deserve to see people like them on screen as much as everyone else LGBT+ Remember when we called it LGBTQIA? That's the I. Though I hardly ever see them brought up, unless they're being used in arguments about the gender binary. (Which is so weird to me, bc once I learned that being intersex was a thing, I was like, so why do we only say there are two sexes, if there are literally more of them? And my mom was like, Idk how to answer this to a 7 yr old.)

This post got kinda ramblely. But I will mention one more thing. The vampire Sam Barclay, screenwriter and Talamasca agent, who was teased to be another character (tbh it's probably just Laurent or Everard de Landen) could possibly be based on Barclay Mayfair. Being a Mayfair would probably suck as a man, bc only the ladies get the magic juju (except Julien bc he's special). It would explain the Talamasca connection, bc we know they've been watching the Mayfair's for a long time. He could have got vamped after he started working for them. Probably not, but I know they're gonna eventually crossover all the different shows in the Immortal Universe. And they gave Santiago a bigger part on the show, so maybe?

[remenar]

[SAŽETAK] Bird by Bird - Anne Lamott

Po nazivu knjige, Bird by Bird, nikada ne bih odabrao ovu knjigu kao knjigu kojoj je tematika - pisanje. Knjiga je pisana iz perspektive iskustva i stvaranja spisateljice. Od ranog djetinjstva do profesionalne karijere, prolazi kroz sve aspekte pisanja. Od teških trenutaka do uspjeha. Za svaku situaciju u kojoj se našla, Anne daje konkretne savjete kako se nositi s problemom te "izvući" se iz navedenog. Opisuje i svoje svijetle trenutke do kojih je došla baš zbog pisanja. Fenomenalna knjiga za sve koji žele pisati, bilo fikciju ili publicistiku. Knjiga je fokusirana na fikciju ali velik dio savjeta je univerzalno primjenjiv.

Part One - Writing

"Don't worry about doing it well yet, though. Just start getting it down" "You try to sit down at approximately the same time everyday. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively" "Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die" "It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame" "You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard" "Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea od shitty first drafts. All good writers write them" "Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere." "Besides, perfectionism will ruin your writing, blocking in vetivene's and playfulness and life force" "Writing a first draft is very much like watching a Polaroid develop. You can't - and, in fact, you're not supposed to - know exactly what the picture is going to look like until it has finished developing" "Plot grows out of character" "Drama is the way of holding the reader's attention. The base formula for drama is setup, buildup, payoff - just like a joke" "She said that sometimes she uses a formula when writing a short story, which goes ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending" "How do you know you're done? You just do"

Part Two - The Writing Frame of Mind

"Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on" "To be a good writer, you not only need to to write a great deal but you have to care" "Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly" "If you are not careful, station KFFD will paly in your head twenty-four hours a day, nonstop, in stereo" "You love to get things quiet in your head so you can hear your characters and let them guide your story"

Part Three - Help Along the Way

"Still, I believe in lists and I believe in taking notes, and I believe in index cards for doing both" "If it feels natural, if it helps you to remember, take notes. It's not cheating" "There are enormous number of people out there with invaluable information to share with you, and all you have to do is pick up the phone" "At some point, you want some feedback. You want other people to read it. You want to know what they think" "I don't think you have time to waste not writing because you are afraid you won't be good enough at it" "Writers block is going to happen to you. You will read what little you've written and see with absolute clarity that it is total dog shit"

Part Four - Publication - and Other Reasons to Write

"It helped me to see that is is natural to take on someone else's style, that it's a prop that you use for a while until you have to give it back" "Annie Dillard has said that day by day you have to give the work before you all the best stuff you have, not saving up for latter projects"

Part Five - The Last Class

"Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious" "You simply keep putting down one damn word after the other, as you hear them, as they com to you"

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Goodreads: Bird by Bird Amazon: Bird by Bird Blackwell's: Bird by Bird

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[klovzk4]

The other woman

Part 1

A/N: this is a Karl x Tom/ Karl x Ann fiction, all are based off teachers at my school and is completely satire 😭 Not proof read!

Kissing, angst, cheating, internalised homophobia, crying, age-gap (Karl is in his 60s and Tom is in his late 30s), drama, lmk if theres anything i missed

It was a mistake. The kiss was a mistake. Karl felt so conflicted with his feelings, but one thing he knew is that it was a mistake. He and Ann had been having a secret relationship for almost a year now, and everything was going great! i mean imagine working as a teacher in the same building as your partner who is also a teacher? sounds great, right? it isn’t, it was, but not anymore.

When Karl first met Tom everything seemed 100% platonic, they were just friends! not only that, but they were both men! and had a rather big age gap. But then a few weeks ago, Tom started being more touchy. Karl ignored it at first, thinking it was just Tom getting more comfortable around him, like they were becoming better friends even though Karl knew Tom was gay and had a thing for older men, but then the small comments happened, small compliments about his hair or how strong he was and even sometimes Tommy would be full on flirting with him! Karl knew he should’ve just ignored him, he was with Ann for christ’s sake! but that didn’t seem to stop Tommy from kissing him in his office, didn’t stop Ann from walking in either.

At first, neither Karl or Tom noticed Ann walking in and standing in the door way. “no, we shouldn’t.” Karl said, pulling away from the kiss. “Come on, i’ve seen the way you’ve looked at me… i know you like me too” Tom replied with confidence. “No, i’m with Ann!” Karl said. “Yeah but when you’re with her you’re thinking about me, aren’t you?” Tom replied, getting all smug. “We’re both men! we shouldn’t be together… i’ve never even thought about being with another man before i met you!” Karl said, oblivious to his girlfriend listening to everything he was saying.  “so you admit you think of me that way?” Tom said with a smirk. “No i-“ Karl sighed, stressed and tired from work and whatever the hell was going on now. “just- just leave me alone for now.. i need some space to think about this” Karl said, turning towards the door only to see his girlfriend standing there with tears in her eyes. “A-Ann…?” he whispered softly before getting interrupted by Ann turning around and smelling the door closed.

She wanted to cry, all she wanted to do was cry. She opened the bathroom door and started at herself in the mirror. Tom? really? why did he have to cheat on her and why did it have to be Tom? he promised he wouldn’t do anything like this, let alone with her co-worker who she’d even call her friend! Well at least before, they were definitely not friends now. She had to pull herself together, she had a class to teach soon so crying wasn’t really an option.

Wiping away her tears with toilet paper she opened up the bathroom door and walked over to her classroom. She was teaching two classes today at once as they both were learning the same thing and the other classes teacher wasn’t available to teach at the moment. She braised herself before entering the classroom, hearing all the kids go quiet and stand up from their seats, greeting her. She starter talking about god knows what and told them to work at skole studio so she wouldn’t have to talk in front of them anymore, afraid of having a break down knowing that if she did the person she’d have to talk to would be Tom considering its part of his job. 

She couldn’t think straight but was taken out of her thoughts from two students in front if her, Amaris and Max. “Ann, my chrome book won’t work so i can’t exactly work at skole studio, could you take it down to Tom for me?” Amaris asked, Max besides her as emotional support or something, Ann could care less at the moment. “Yeah of course, ill be right back you and Max can just share their chrome book until i figure out a solution with.. Tom” She said, her demeanour changing at the thought of talking to Tom after what she just saw. “Okie, thanks” They both said as they walked away. Ann got Amaris’s chrome book and got up, quickly mentioning that Max was in control of making sure the class was quiet and if anyone messed around they would have their name written down before walking out of the classroom, closing the door behind her.