#letter;main

[flowerytale]

May Sarton, from “Contemplation of Poussin”, Letters from Maine

[bluerosefox]

GHOSTS WITH HEARTBEATS

When Jason had been going to Gotham Academy, he had (for a good reputation for the media and to help him catch up on his penmanship, remember he had been on the streets and dropped out of school before getting picked up by Bruce for a while) signed up for a penpal project for 'less privileged people' to write to.

(Although Jason was annoyed the penpal project stayed within the states and only selected a middle of nowhere town, he knew the Richie Rich Elites would never subjugate their 'Heirs' to actual kids in need of learning how to read and write)

But Jason didn't mind his penpal.

Danny Fenton was a riot to talk, err write to in all honestly.

From his dry punny humor (and boy can he give even Dick a run for his money in the pun department but hey using some of them actually got Dick to warm up to him a few missions ago) and death jokes so many death jokes, to his nerdy love for space Jason enjoyed writing to Danny.

Even the short stories he would write about a ghost kid protecting a small town from other ghosts was interesting to read. He really liked the different kinds of ghosts there could be. Granted some seemed very OP like that Clockwork dude.

Jason liked writing to Danny, and even after the penpal project was over they had plans to keep sending letters, maybe even exchange numbers soon...

But then he died by the hands of the Joker.

The letters leaving Wayne Manor may had decreased but the letters being sent never did or at least until a few years ago.

Then Jason somehow returned to the land of the living.

Got taken by the LoA, tossed in the green waters and turned into their Pit Raged weapon for a while before leaving them behind and setting out for his revenge against the Joker and to force B's hand.

And becoming a Crime Boss for a while too. Can't forget that.

Point being with all this going on, the old warm memories of exchanging letters with Danny Fenton was pushed into the back of his mind and forgotten about for a while.

It isn't until one afternoon at Wayne Manor that while roughhousing with Dick, who had Jason in a brotherly headlock as they walked down a hall to one of the sitting rooms, that while Jason had slipped out of Dick's hold had stumbled into a hallway desk that had a few things on the top of it, one of the things being a small box that tumbled off when Jason hit it.

The box lid opened and out of it spilled out a good number of letters.

"Shiii-p, dang it Dick!" Jason said when he looked at the mess he accidentally made and stopped himself from swearing, the place might be named Wayne Manor but everyone knew this was Alfie's domain and no swearing was a rule within his halls.

Dick only laughed and teased only in a way a sibling can do "Hey not my fault your as big as a tank Jaybird! We should get you some caution signals if you keep bumping into things!"

Jason flipped him his favorite finger, thankfully Alfred only knew when they swore thus it did not summon him, and bent down to the letters.

His hands froze when he recognized the hand writing and the address it was sent from.

"From: Danny Fent Nightingale

Amity Park, IL"

To: Jason Todd-Wayne

Gotham City, NJ.

Wayne Manor"

And when Jason opened the letter. He really wasn't expecting what was written inside.

"Jason.

I'm finally leaving Amity Park. I can't be there anymore, not after everything. I'm too tired, and emotionally hurt. Everything is just to much. And I can't keep doing this to myself. My parents still can’t understand there is nothing ‘wrong’ with me or why I refuse to let them take care of Ellie, I refuse to let her live the way Jazz and I did, Jazz has to much on her plate already with her own life and college but she’s been hounding me to reach out to mom and dad, Sam refuses to listen to me when I tell her I want to be more than ‘Phantom’ in Amity Park, and Tucker is so busy trying to get into a good college and job we barely have time to talk nowadays. And don’t get me started on Vlad, that fruitloop’s been breathing down my neck since Ellie’s deaging.

Despite how much of a hellhole you like to call it, I think Gotham might be my, no mine and Ellie’s best bet of living some kind of life, especially now since the whole deaging she had to go through, she needs an ectoplasm rich city as well and since she has no actual papers because she was my clone and I remember you saying Gotham has people who can create new identities and-

I’m rambling again, to letter you again. I really need to stop it.

I can’t keep pretending you’re going to read these.

I know you’ll never read these. You’re gone. I can’t even find you in the Realms no matter where I look.

I’m sorry. For using you as, well, a way to vent my life for last couple of years. I shouldn’t had done it but it helped me.

Believing my friend was still alive and getting my letters I mean.

Again I’m sorry.

This will be my last letter to your ghost, pun unintended.

Goodbye Jason. Wish us luck in your city.

-Danny Fen-Nightingale...."

The sent date on the letter was roughly eight years ago.

[pettyprocrastination]

I'm sorry to the gang but I think initially Aemond is a bad lover.

Like, to actually think about it.

His first ever sexual interaction is with a prostitute twice his age that he was coerced into by his older brother, and it seems like he's never seen that woman again until season one when he returned to the brothel in search of aegon hence her speaking on how much he's grown since she last saw him which he seemed visibly uncomfortable within.

It's likely that his interaction with Sylvie was his first and only sexual interaction.

Which means that when he married you and it comes time to consummate your marriage and try for an heir. The sex is...less than ideal.

It's methodical and routine. Your husband above you rutting into you until he cums and then some because the maestro said his seed must "settle" for a child to take hold.

In his mind, sex is done out of obligation and dedication. It's an expectation for a man of a noble house to sire a son to continue the name. And what does he know of pleasure? The vile whispers his brother croons with no intention other than to see his younger brother uncomfortable? The prostitute he laid with before he was even a man himself? Those situations did nothing but make his skin crawl- it's no wonder that his sex is nothing further than noble obligation to his wife and his lineage.

It's less than an issue in your eyes until a knight tasked with standing guard by your door each night speaks I'll of the prince to his brothers in arms.

It spreads like wildfire before the day is even finished. What was once gentle ribbing between men in arms became vile wishes towards you- the dragon prince's wife. Conversation of how it's "a damn shame to let a pretty little thing like her go to waste" and how if they had their chance they'd show you how a proper man lays with a woman.

And maybe one idiotic son of a lord brought into the kingsguard, egged on by too much wine and the racacous laughter of his brethren jests that perhaps one night he'll slip into your room and show you how a proper man fucks when your husband is a way.

"Let the cyclops ride his dragon if it means the princess will ride mine."

Unfortunate for him that our husband happened to be entering the training yard just in time to hear his promise to his brothers in arms.

Now the thing with Aemond is that he's deeply prideful, but also so, so, so desperate for approval. He's spent his entire life chasing it and getting so little in return. His mother was insistent on what makes a good husband- loyalty, dedication, listening to ones wife unlike the way he watched his father wave away her concerns all throughout his childhood. He was adamant about being the proper husband in every strict tradition and stiff display of affection he offered you-

but nobody helped him with sex. So to learn through the vile words of some idiotic guards that he has left his wife wanting becomes the only thought in his mind and must be rectified.

You've only just begun your day when your husband slips into your room, telling whoever is stationed by your door to leave as he locks it behind him before standing before you, hands twitching and eye looking anywhere in the room but you.

So nervous, like a little boy all over again.

When you ask him gently what's wrong he does not hide it from you.

"I have left you wanting, haven't I?"

You let out an incredulous laugh, so taken aback by the blunt question you don't know what would be an appropriate response.

To say he hasn't would be a lie.

To say he has could harm his ego, further spurring his rage.

Instead, you gently cup his face where a pale hand envelopes your own.

"Most men do not concern themselves with the comfort of their wife."

Your blaise response hurts more than saying yes.

"I am not most men."

Your husband, the crown prince and rider of a generations old war hardened beast, looks at you with eager eyes and tells you- asks you to show him how you wish to be touched.

How to fuck you.

You spend the night In his arms, gentle guiding him on where you wish to be kissed, bitten, and licked. How to hold you, where to touch and how hard. Your husband is a receptive one, content to go for hours upon hours until your legs are trembling and there are tears in your eyes because once he learned the utter euphoria of seeing your sing his name in the breathy moan there was nothing he desired more in this wretched world to hear it again and again and again.

When you do finally rest, bodies slick with sweat and exhaustion creeping through your veins, you find yourself wrapped in his arms and his head tucked into the crook of your shoulder. He says nothing about siring a child, or the maestros advice, but simply kisses the spot just beneath your ear before letting himself slowly drift into a deep sleep, the first moment within your marriage that he is truly relaxed in your presence.

The next morning his family is kind enough to say nothing of the bite marks lining your neck as you eat breakfast, just as they are mindful to not ask of the head that once belonged to a member of the kings guard that now belonged on a spike before the castle walls.

[notgays]

💀🐈‍⬛ JAY BAUMAN SPOOKY MOVIE MASTERPOST 🐈‍⬛💀

all of jay's halloween/october movie recommendations as of now, there is no 2018 because he started making it a yearly tradition in 2019. in '18, he replied to his original list suggesting "may" and "dark night of the scarecrow", which ended up on the 2019 list. so, nothing is missing! he usually posts his cute lil lists on october 1st so that is presumably when we will get the 2024 recs if he's got more!

twitter links for his thoughts on themes (well, for a couple ) of his picks, etc:

17 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23

[radioactive-earthshine]

NGL I have STRONG opinions about digital releases omitting the letters to the editor section of older comics. I feel like the letters are a part of comic history and should be aggressively preserved.

[coquelicoq]

if you're wondering what the big deal is about the louis-philippe sentence in les misérables, it is, in the original french, 760 words long. the subject of the sentence doesn't appear until 95% of the way through, at word #711; the main verb is word #712. the sentence contains 91 commas and 49 semicolons and is almost entirely a list of laudatory adjectival phrases describing the erstwhile king of france. this is perhaps especially notable because les mis is, shall we say, not known for being particularly gung-ho about the monarchy.

this sentence copied and pasted into Word takes up more than one page single-spaced. in the 1800-page folio classique edition, it is fully two and a half of those 1800 pages. that means that les mis is 0.14% this single sentence. more of les mis is made up of this sentence than earth's atmosphere is made up of carbon dioxide (0.04%). if the page count of les mis stayed the same but every sentence was the length of this one, les mis would consist of only 720 sentences total.

incidentally, guess who named hugo a peer of france 17 years before the publication of les mis?

[fcthots]

hear me out.. tattoo artist! jason

Ok think Jason w tattoos is UDHFH STEP ON ME. AND TATTOO ARTIST JASON? EVERYTHING. but I have such a fear of needles that this is the only way I could do this one. I will return to it later if I become any less of a a coward.

Also this somehow turned into a full fic, don’t ask me how. I just looked down and there were words typed in the post. I don’t know what possessed me. And before I forget: it’s not really relevant so far if the bats are still bats in this AU, but the batfamily is still at the very least, a family.

Jason works at a tattoo parlor and that’s where you two meet. It’s love at first, well, first day? Anyway, you come in wanting to get your ears pierced. You know you’re scared going into it so you call ahead and ask for the nicest, most gentle, and most patient person there and you book a stupidly long appointment with him so you have time to have a panic attack and freak tf out.

You were not expecting Jason to be over 6 feet tall and be the most menacing person you’ve ever seen (and you saw batman one time!!). You also weren’t expecting him to be so stupidly fucking attractive. You sit down where he gestures for you to, and hug your arms close to yourself. He gets everything ready while you start trying to control your breathing. You can see Jason continuously turning to look at you out of the corner of your eye as you fidget with your ears wondering how bad this is gonna hurt.

“You okay?” You look up at him. He’s staring at you with concern in his eyes. Ok, so maybe you weren’t as good at controlling your breathing as you thought, but you still needed to respond.

“Mhm.” Your words were sort of failing you right now so that would have to do. You attempt to keep your tears in.

“You ready?” You look down and see the needle in his hands. Absolutely the fuck not. Your breathing gets worse, your tears are starting to make it out of their prison, and you are about to have a panic attack.

“No.” It comes out too fast. You shake your head wildly to make sure you get the message across.

He immediately puts down the needle and shows you his open hands. “Can I sit?” You bring your knees to your chest and nod before you hide your face. “You’re scared of needles?” He sits next to you, keeping a respectful distance.

“Phobia,” you mumble as you slightly lift up your head. You see the equipment on the table and you attempt to cover up the way your heart spikes. Jason follows your gaze. He gets up and puts a clean towel over the needles before he sits back down.

You were very clearly crying now despite trying not to. Your adrenaline was kicking in.

He held out his hand. “Do you wanna hold my hand?”

You jerked. “Do you mean like while you stick me with the needle? Because I’m not ready. I’ll be ready soon. I swear I’ll try and get myself together, I just need a minute-”

“We’re not piercing your ears right now. You can hold it then too if you would like, but I was asking if holding my hand would help you right now. We have all the time in the world for the needles later. I just wanna help you through this for now.”

You grab his hand. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?”

“I’m sorry for all this. I don’t mean to make your job harder. Also I might be here for a long time. I’ll try not to, but I’m scared.”

“Don’t be sorry and don’t worry about me. Let’s help you right now. I can be content here all day. You’re just helping me slack off.”

You smile and wipe your tears with your free hand.

You sit in silence for about 5 or so minutes before Jason pipes up. “So why are you getting your ears pierced if you’re scared of needles?”

“People keep telling me I need to. Also I have a friend’s wedding coming up and I was told my dress needed to have earrings.” His hand is warm and huge. You really don’t want to let go.

“But if it’s causing you this much stress, who cares about earrings?”

“Most other people apparently.”

“That’s fuckin stupid.”

You laugh and finally meet his eyes.

He starts talking again. “Well what about clip-on earrings?”

“They don’t really make those much anymore. Super hard to find.” Jason looks thoughtful at that.

“Didn’t you book out the rest of my day?”

“…yeah sor-”

“Respectfully, don’t finish that sentence. My brothers ex-girlfriend makes jewelry, and I know for a fact that she makes clip-ons and fake piercings. Steph, her name is Steph by the way, used to make them for my brother before he moved in with us and was able to get them pierced. I’m 99% sure she’s home right now.”

You feel a huge weight lifted off your chest. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. How did you get here?”

“I walked from my apartment. It’s not all that far.”

“Alright well, if you’re comfortable with it, we can take my bike to go see if she can make you some if you want to go now. It’s not a walkable distance really. And don’t feel pressured to-”

“Let’s go.”

“What?”

“Let’s go. Anything to not jam a needle into my ears.”

Jason leads you by the hand to his bike and takes you back to Wayne manor. There are so many people there that barely question why you’re there. Jason walks off to go find Steph and you get nervous until a dog approaches you. A child follows shortly after.

“Titus can tell that you are upset. He is trained to help with such things.”

Jason comes back to find you with Steph in tow only to see the dog literally laying on top of you while you discuss animals with Damian.

What a weird ass fucking day, but a good one.

Part two

[georgeharrisonsmiling]

[nelkcats]

Wrong Date

After years of Val trying to kill him as Phantom, Danny finally got fed up and took Sam's advice, arranged a whole package full of flowers, chocolates, and even stuffed ghosts and apologized for being a jerk, asking if wanted to talk and confessing that he was Phantom, he wasn't being particularly romantic but he supposed all those package would soften the blow.

The problem arose when the mailman took his package and saw "addressed to Red H." Danny's luck was really bad because the poor man got confused and sent the package to Gotham, towards Red Hood's lair.

You can imagine Jason's surprise when he found the whole reveal of a secret identity in a package full of flowers and ghost bears. It didn't come with a photo, but the creator was very obvious, he didn't even need the Batcomputer to search the boy's social media and realize he was cute, but absent-minded or stupid.

In the end, Val meet Danny in a fight to the death, both were tired when the halfa told her the whole story, and although his ex understood the situation, she admitted not having received any packages.

Danny panicked when a week later Red Hood sent him a picture winking at him that said "Wrong receiver Phantom, but if you want to talk I'll take a date."

[da-janela-lateral]

My artstyle is by no means completely consistent, but I've seen so many wonderful and gorgeous references these days that I had to make my own chart of how I draw them!

[visualtaehyun]

Disclaimer: not a native Thai speaker, still learning 🙏

คุณคิดถึงเพลงของเค้าหรอ /khun khit theung phleng khaawng khao raaw/ = "You miss my song(s)?"

Reminder that her name is Pleng เพลง (= song) so when she asked this, I almost expected Wan to give an even more ambiguous answer than she actually did, like-

ใช่ คิดถึงเพลงของเค้า /chai, khit theung phleng khaawng khao/ = Yes, [I] miss my Pleng. 😞

(Quick info on pronouns: they both use เค้า /khao/ (=I; cute & informal) and คุณ /khun/ (=you; polite & formal) with each other and have done so throughout the entire show so far. Wan, however, also only ever calls Pleng 'คุณเพลง /Khun Pleng/' when calling her name.)

[dayz-ina-daze]

Lil somethin’ somethin’ for a fantasy DabiHawks rp I’m currently obsessing over…

Bit of an anatomy practice. Bit of shading practice. Bit of wing practice. Shameless excuse to draw Hawks again - my baby.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

I know you don't like discussing the muses but i love your takes and perspectives and i had to ask you about this. after listening to ttpd, did you have the impression that she really loved matty more than any of her exes/previous relationships?. And listening to the whole album as a whole would you call it the ''matty album'' or do you think there are more prominent themes in there than their period together?. (hope this doesn't bother you, feel free to delete if you don't feel like answering it)

hey anon! You're right, I don't really like to get into the muses as I don't really think there's anything to add to the conversation at this point, and ultimately I don't think it matters.

That being said, and with the caveat that I am not Taylor and I do not know Taylor so I cannot speak to her thoughts and can only make relatively educated guesses based on being an avid consumer of her work and a student of the human condition (lol), no I do not think Taylor loved Matty more than anyone else. I think there was maybe a brief period in the thick of things where she *thought* she did because she was not thinking clearly and was in full-on denial, but to me the message that is loud and clear in the album (and more or less explicitly stated in the epilogue) is that it was not any kind of real love affair. It was certainly infatuation and lust and the promise of something more, and there may have been some love as well, but he was in no way the love of her life by any measure.

I would call it a "Matty album" insofar as they're about events in which he was present, sure. But I feel it much more as a Taylor album, if that makes sense, even though I know that's a cop out because every album is to a degree. I can't explain it well, but I don't see TTPD as a Matty (or Joe) album in the way that I would maybe say Red is a "Jake" album or 1989 may be a "Harry" album or even Lover being a "Joe" album whatever, because even if they don't figure in all the songs, that kind of heartbreak permeates so much of the material.

The thing about TTPD and the Matty situation is that the Matty situation is really a Joe situation (which in some ways is actually partially a Jake situation). I always say I hate treating Taylor like a character so I hate speaking about her and her work in this way, but you don't get the Matty situation without the Joe situation precipitating it. It's @taylortruther's now-infamous donut vs. hole analogy. The reason Taylor makes the choices she does with Matty is directly tied to what happened with Joe that made her feel she needed to. Which is not to say Taylor isn't responsible for her own actions or doesn't have agency in her own life, but I mean it in that the situation in which she found herself with Joe, and the pain it caused, is what made the alternative so comforting and perhaps even necessary in her mind. It's why it makes it so hard to "paternity test" the album, because the stories are inherently intertwined and you don't get the former without the latter.

The major "theme" of the album to me is the loss of a very specific, very personal dream, and the way in which she lost it, and the way in which grieving that loss drove her to make the choices she did. We're all talking very delicately about it because it's a sensitive topic, but it's late on Friday and few people are going to see this, so I'm going to say it: it's the give you my wild, give you a child of it all. The yearning she expresses both overtly and sub-textually for having a family in the album is palpable in a very iykyk kind of way, and it's the realization that those plans are not going to come to fruition in the way she had once imagined that drives a lot of the pain she experiences, and makes her jump at the chance to find that again with someone else.

I started a draft post about the theme of womanhood and motherhood on TTPD three months ago that I never finished because I ran out of time and ran out of steam, but it was the most striking thing to me on the album, not because I didn't know that she wanted those things because that's been obvious for years (definitely since Lover, and again, peace put it all on the table), but because the vulnerability she expressed about it on the album is incredibly moving, and it's so generous of her to trust listeners with those feelings and experiences.

Again, it's the thirtysomething of it all.

She is in relationship A which she at one point believes is forever, one which she at one point believes is going to lead to marriage and children. She is so committed to that dream that she either ignores or tries to fix serious issues that may otherwise lead others to think the two people in the relationship are incompatible, both because she loves the person deeply and because she feels that this is meant to be the way she achieves that dream. She gives it her everything, and it still dies a slow, painful, onerous death, and she feels like it may take her along with it. The dream of getting married and presumably having a family gets taken off the table: how we don't know and will likely never know because that is private between the parties involved. All that matters in the context of the album is that those plans never come to fruition and never would.

Then you have relationship B, an old flame who knows just enough buttons to push both to trigger and to flatter. A person who she presumably trusts with very sensitive, personal information as her life slowly crumbles, and this person is telling her all the things she wants to hear because he knows about what is happening in relationship A because she's told him. Person in relationship B doesn't get an "in" with her and sell her this dream unless what happens in relationship A precedes it. It's not a grand love affair for the ages, it's not a mutual decision on building their own dream together. It's Person B learning about what is happening with Person A and saying "I can do that!" even if he can't or doesn't. The dream he sells her is a rental car; it's not his own, he's just borrowing it from someone else and selling it back to her.

And the reason she falls for it is because it is what she aches for the most in her personal life, and she is grappling with it disintegrating, so she (unfortunately for her) falls for the easy way out, and in turn sells herself a story about how this must be fated, and this must be meant to be, because this person wants all the same things she does and she didn't even have to bargain for it! Well, yes, because she fed him the dream in the first place. (Like a mark falling for a sleeper cell spy.) It's too good to be true because it isn't true. IMO Person B doesn't come running out of the gate with the marriage/baby/dream life promises unless he knows that is what she most desires. But what's left unsaid out of all of it is that: those dreams were her dreams because they were her dreams with Person A. It was a whole life they had together, and a whole life they had planned for in some fashion, and a whole life that has to be dismantled in the aftermath.

So all this to say, yes, on the surface, Matty is a "main character" on the album, but truly he's a side character to Taylor as the narrator and person experiencing it and Joe as the ghost bit-player-who-haunts-every-scene. (Again, I hate referring to real people as characters, it gives me the absolute ick, but in this case it's the only way to answer the question.) I jokingly call it the Matty album for shorthand or when I want to say something out of pocket, but really, it's a disservice to the album to say that because it's not a muse album as in it's about the romance (like, say, Red often is), it's about a soul-crushing heartbreak that goes beyond it. The romance is the symptom, not the cause.

The loss of youth is tied in with all this: she's not 22 anymore. She isn't even 32 anymore. She had a very specific idea of what her life was going to look like at this point and had planned for that life, and it goes up in smoke. But again, to bring the womanhood into it all: there is, unfortunately, a deadline for these things. You're with someone for over half a decade you think is going to be your life partner and father of your children and and then he's not. You spent half a decade building this relationship for it to crumble, but now you're in your mid-30s and you don't necessarily have another half-decade to build that trust and faith in someone else before being ready to start a family. And maybe you're scared that anyone else who may become your partner will need that much time to build that trust and faith, because that's kind of all you've ever know in relationships. But lo and behold, someone comes into your life you once had feelings for and maybe now do again and is offering you everything you want and thought you'd have by this point in your life right now. It feels like an elixir that as we find out is actually poison.

That youth is not just the chance for motherhood, but it's also the hopes and idealism and belief in the future that often gradually erodes as we age. But for Taylor as well, it's also tied into the trauma of what she went through particularly in 2016, which kicks off a lot of things on the album as well (her retreat, her relationship with Joe, the pivoting in her career, etc.). That event caused a pretty clear before/after in her life (like a few other events, I suspect), and another major theme in the album is her finally grappling with the full weight of that. They're all different branches of the same tree of the story of TTPD and her life.

I could talk about this stuff forever, but I'm going to stop here because it's long enough and I should save stuff for one of the dozens of drafts I have half-baked lol. But this is just something I needed to get off my chest perhaps.

[theblackfemininesociety]

Ladies, 2024 is personal.

Dear Besties and future Besties,

We're starting FRESH this year, I want to encourage each and every one of you to dedicate 2024 to becoming your best self, from the inside out. This is your ✨IT Girl era✨, a time to prioritize self-care, personal growth, and breaking old habits.

Start by investing in your mental and emotional well-being. Consider therapy or counseling to unpack any past traumas, explore your innermost thoughts and feelings, and gain a deeper understanding of yourself. Remember, healing is a journey, and seeking professional help is a sign of strength, not weakness.

Let's focus on our physical well-being. Make time for regular workouts and prioritize your health. Whether it's hitting the gym, practicing yoga, or simply going for a walk, physical activity not only benefits your body but also clears your mind and boosts your confidence.

Breaking old habits is never easy, but this year, let's challenge ourselves to do just that. Identify any negative patterns or addictions that hold you back and take the necessary steps to overcome them. Seek support from loved ones, join our group, or even consider professional help. Remember, you have the power to change your life. ✨💞

In the midst of this transformation, it's crucial to practice being more private and working smarter. In a world that often values constant sharing and busyness, find solace in quiet moments and focus on the tasks that truly matter. Prioritize your goals, streamline your efforts, and eliminate distractions. By doing so, you'll find that you can accomplish more in less time, leaving room for personal growth and self-care. You are not for everyone, be selective with your energy this year babe. 🩷

Financial stability is vital, so let's make it a priority this year. Save your money, create a budget, and invest in your future. By being mindful of your spending habits and making smart financial decisions, you'll be empowering yourself to live a life of financial freedom and security.

Remember, peace is the REAL luxury. Prioritize your mental and emotional well-being above all else. Surround yourself with positivity, cut out toxic relationships, and embrace moments of solitude. By cultivating inner peace, you'll radiate strength and tranquility, attracting positivity and abundance into your life.

Lastly, love on yourself. You are more precious than rubies and daughters of the most high God. Embrace your worth and never settle for less than you deserve. Set boundaries, demand respect, and prioritize your own happiness. By loving and valuing yourself, you'll attract those who do the same.

In the upcoming year, let's remain humble, determined, and refuse to accept anything less than what we truly deserve. 🥂

We will continue to work with you on becoming the best versions of yourself! Please take advantage of all of our guides/ resources (click here) & there’s plenty more ahead, stay tuned!

Xoxo,

The Black Feminine Society 💋

model 🏷️ _kendrabailey

[mrdarcysdadbod]

Still mulling over Anne with an E and I think I need to watch another adaptation or two of AOGG bc I want to criticize the... Misappropriation of narrative space, I suppose, but I suspect that's also just a side effect of the medium, you know? Because what I mean by this is that Anne of Green Gables as a book is very, very narrow in its scope, as it is purely and solely about Anne and, especially early on, she doesn't give other people's stories or perspectives much space in her narrative, and is somewhat ruthlessly self-interested at times in a way that actively constrains the scope of the narrative. To me that's an interesting and delightful aspect of the book as a childhood/coming of age novel, because especially at an age like nine or ten, children really are focused on their own internal world primarily and are still in the earlier-to-middling stages of being more conscious of those around them and their lives and perspectives. A side effect of this is that, for example, we have no clue what's going on with Gilbert other than a few comments from secondary characters and some of Anne's own accidental, quickly interrupted mentions. I find this deeply charming, especially the way that it hints at Anne having editorial sway over the narrative, because she clearly thinks about him far more than he comes up in the text, and I think it could be adapted in a cute and inventive way to the screen, but that's neither here nor there.

The way this relates to Anne With an E is that I think AWaE got too ambitious in widening the scope of the narrative. I'm not even necessarily against the idea of, say, exploring Anne's history and behavior with a modern understanding of trauma rather than an Edwardian children's novel that absolutely wasn't interested in or intending to tackle the emotional realities of traumatized children. And that's a place where it shined (the scene of her cheerfully telling her classmates about "the mouse in a man's pants" to their growing horror was painfully accurate to the experience of not understanding that your funny story is actually deeply worrying), even if it got awkward at times (unfortunately the Anne actress did not carry off the flashbacks well and they were just kind of corny). Unfortunately I do think that there's, I suppose, a maximum amount of gritty reimagining that any narrative can reasonably bear, and I think AWaE way overdid it.

(putting this under a cut bc it got long and wandered away from the point)

I think there's space in that narrative to explore something like, pick two: residential schools or early 20th century modes of queerness or some B plot about con-men that came out of nowhere and mainly served to undermine the notion of Green Gables and Avonlea as a fundamentally safe place - frankly I'm not even against the idea of undermining that notion, in a "challenging the narratives of settler-colonial pastoralism" way, but I think that the residential school plot should've been the thing to do that, as a way of emphasizing that the idyllic safety of Avonlea came not as a result of hardy white Protestant goodness but very much at the expense of displaced and oppressed First Nations people, but I think the way they chose to do the conman B plot was actually counterintuitive to that end, because it positioned the outsiders as the ones seeking to extract profit at the expense of the good hardworking white Protestants of Avonlea, who then became the victims of a thieving invader, when, like. Colonialism, y'know? I digress.

Returning to my original point about the scope and space of the narrative, I may have the most issue with Gilbert's entire plotline. On the most basic level, it requires a significant reframing and rewriting of his and Anne's relationship at this point in their story, which I just... disagree with. I think it's a misstep to try and reimagine a deliberate erasure of him from the narrative via Anne's (somewhat petty) refusal to include him, even though he's very much present and the reader is regularly reminded of his presence in her life outside the text, as an opportunity to actually remove him from Avonlea and do some weird shit with him. Gilbert Blythe doesn't really need to go on a personal journey justifying his passion for medicine and wrestling with the realities and impacts of the Atlantic slave trade. (If I read that sentence after reading the book but before watching this show, I would find it completely bewildering.) It's not even that I don't think "Canada, as an English/French colonial project, has always benefited from and enabled the violence of slavery even if actual chattel slavery wasn't present there in nearly the same amount as it was in other parts of the empire" isn't worth exploring as an element of the showmakers' clear desire to interrogate and challenge AOGG as, unavoidably, a work of colonial fiction. I just don't think putting Gilbert on a boat achieves that. I'm not sure exactly how I'd achieve it - frankly I'm not well-versed enough in Canadian Black history to have a take - but, to me, deciding to literally import a character to make the point about Canada needing to wrestle with anti-Black racism as much as anyone is, like... I mean it's kind of decentering Black Canadians, isn't it? And the whole thing puts Gilbert in this really weird position of clumsily lampshading the white savior in relation to Bash, but also kind of a white savior by proxy in terms of Bash's relationship to the Black community in Charlottetown. I don't know, I'm not qualified to have much of a take on this, it was just all so bizarre and unnecessary to me.

Returning again to my original point, I ultimately just think that, while the text of AoGG leaves a lot unsaid and implied about what's going on with other characters in the novel, there's only so far you can stretch that and still be telling the same story, you know? And while the core of the book is Anne exploring her place in the world, and that can be expanded to include more serious questions about things like childhood trauma and various societal bigotries, I still don't quite know how I feel about the necessity of committing to, essentially, a change in genre for the sake of tackling some of these issues, because at the end of the day, for all it doesn't shy away from things like Ruby's or Matthew's deaths and the attending grief, AoGG is a children's book, and those challenging episodes still come with a resolution and catharsis, and that's... not really something you can achieve, if you're going to include residential schools as a B plot. Like, for a show set in 1890 or whatever, there's absolutely no way to have any sort of resolution or catharsis about a residential school without egregiously whitewashing the reality, especially in, what, 2019 this was airing? After several years of mass graves getting uncovered? I don't know, I think they were just too ambitious. It's not that the legacies of slavery and ongoing Native genocide don't deserve to be explored, but I'm not sure that an adaptation of a book that is firmly rooted in an idealized image of a rural Canadian childhood is the place for it. It's kind of weird to have the horrific violence of the residential schools sharing space with Anne putting liniment instead of vanilla in the cake, you know?

[literaryvein-reblogs]

A Writer's Advice: John Steinbeck on Falling in Love

Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968) writes this beautiful response to his eldest son Thom’s 1958 letter, in which the teenage boy confesses to have fallen desperately in love with a girl named Susan while at boarding school.

New York November 10, 1958 Dear Thom: We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers. First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you. Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had. You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love. But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you. Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it. The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it. If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration. Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also. It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good. Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it. We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can. And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away. Love, Fa