#what a banger of a character leadup

[obsessioncollector]

haiiiii peyton ^_^ what were your favorite books this year?

Hiiii Lane!! 🤗💝 I hope you're having a lovely holiday or just a lovely day if you're not celebrating! I am so indecisive when it comes to picking faves so enjoy my non-answer 😊 I'm also going to tag you celia @symptomofloves bc you said you want to see my faves! ❤️

I would say the overarching theme of the year has been longing, desire, eroticism, and obsession, in many manifestations. So I'm going to list a cluster of excellent and often insanity-inducing (compliment!) books that fall into that category, in the order of when I read them (so unranked):

Dennis Cooper — George Miles cycle: THE obsessioncollector saga... Definitely not for everyone bc it's very graphic and upsetting, but he captures the desire for understanding and connection so well. I read it at the beginning of the year so it really set the tone for the year to come.

Mary Gaitskill — Bad Behavior: A story collection! She is one of those writers who articulates things I never realized I feel—reading her is such a revelation!

D.H. Lawrence — The Rainbow; Women in Love: Would transitioning have saved her? I'm kidding but truly he captures the experience of being a teen girl and young woman so well. (These two books are a diptych so I get to lump them together.)

Kathy Acker — In Memoriam to Identity: Read this so you can enjoy the sadly defunct @kathyack-blog-blog 😊 Like Mary Gaitskill in that she captures elements of myself I never knew existed.

Angela Carter — Burning Your Boats: The Collected Stories and The Magic Toyshop: Her most famous work is the story collection The Bloody Chamber, so I also recommend starting there if you want something less daunting than the complete stories. I love Angela Carter! I think I reblogged a gifset of her talking about her work being self-indulgent but she is self-indulgent in the same ways as me! Gothic and elegant and she is such a master of the fairytale/folklore retelling, which I think is so often done in boring and predictable ways.

Edmund White — A Boy's Own Story: All bangers from the very first few pages! Such an eloquent examination of a self-conscious adolescent painfully dedicated to trying to understand himself and others. Reminiscient of that Mishima quote about how he thought he was more mature than the other boys but it was just because he thought about himself more bc he was so insecure </3

And then here are a handful of ones that don't fit into that theme but were nonetheless highlights:

Scholastique Mukasonga — Our Lady of the Nile: Celia is also a Mukasonga fan so you know she has to be good! 😊 This is a collection of interlinked short stories, all set at a Rwandan boarding school. Masterfully combines the more mundane tensions of adolescence with the leadup to the genocide.

Maya Binyam — Hangman: A 2023 release! I don't read many recent releases bc I find it difficult to sift through the hype but I'm so glad I read this one. A treasure and also quite distinctive in terms of the style and structure.

Mae M. Ngai — The Chinese Question: This was my only 5 star nonfiction of the year! Ngai is probably better known for her book about undocumented immigrants in US history, but I read this one bc it was available at my library and it's excellent. It focuses on restrictions on Chinese immigration, both in the US and also South Africa and Australia, around the time of the Gold Rush. Ties into contemporary issues, both in terms of immigration (unsurprisingly) but also in terms of questions of diaspora and cultural identity.

Jhumpa Lahiri — Interpreter of Maladies: I should have read this years ago but I think I unconsciously avoid contemporary writers from bourgeois New England backgrounds bc that's literally me 😭😭😭 Pretty much the platonic idea of a story collection though. All the characters seem so fully realized, in such a small amount of time!

Thomas Mann — Death in Venice and Other Tales: Sometimes people talk about reading to see themselves reflected but Mann is a writer to read if you want to see yourself reflected in the most unflattering light possible 😭 Another writer I'd been putting off for way too long.

Isabella Hammad — Enter Ghost: As I said wrt Angela Carter, I can be wary of anything marketed as a retelling or too intertextual/meta bc I think they're often done poorly, but this is an exception! To be clear, it's not a retelling, but it's centered on a British Palestinian theatre actress who impulsively joins a Palestinian production of Hamlet while visiting her sister. Very intriguing examination of the protagonist trying to understand her own Palestinian identity while also negotiating how to present herself to her family + friends and the world and resists simple dichotomies.

[jadedharleys]

wb terezi

mainly curious about the favorite line one (so many fucking bangers) and favorite song

second to mine to miss of course.

SHIT IFORGOR ABOUT THE ASK GAME CAN YOU TELL THAT I AM SO TERRIBLY TIRED

ok. last thing before i go to sleep is actually answering these

favorite thing about them

she is so sillychaoticviolent but so deeply sad im obssessed thats all u need in a character

least favorite thing about them

less abt her and more abt her portrayal but i think hussie and subsequently everyone forgor what kind of cane she had . im not complainin too hard cause disabled characters are rare enough n i want a cane for my chronic pain but i so rarely see people draw her with the right kind. whatever idk if u could fit a sword in one of those anyways

favorite line

the entirety of the leadup to terezi: remember tbh. this line especially but i have a whole post of AUGH terezi lines

brOTP

no reason they cant be some kinda romance but my friend enlightened me to jane + terezi friendship . they do the most chaotic pranks and the most overserious sleuthing out there . but they can also be yuri

OTP

vrisrezi. come on. they are the doomed yuri of all time

nOTP

idk i mean her n gamzee is fun plotwise but hough. not good. they r punching the shit out each other in the ventilation shafts or they are not a thing. let vriska punch him for her

random headcanon

coming up with this on the spot while sleep deprived dont mind me. ermmm sometimes she tries so very hard to have visions of timelines where she and vriska are actually happy together beyond a few moments of embrace . just to know some version of her has that empty feeling actually filled for once. either it never really works or she never can see them happy (DOOMED YURI!!!)

unpopular opinion

make her cringier. "her hs2 outfits are pretty wacky but fun i suppose" i want to see her looking like she is wearing every single piece of clothing and accessory in a dnd obsessed 2000s scene kids bedroom.

song i associate with them

if i gotta pick one ill go with francis forever by mitski. its literally so her . vrisrezi ofc but we all love our doomed yuri

favorite picture of them

doomed yuri? loser in underwear? the duality of sillygirl

[incandescent-creativity]

SOLE’s Middle School Self

A bunch of links to a live-Tweeting experience where I found my middle school writing and read through it

FIRST IMPRESSIONS: 13,537 words, old name was Wildlife (x)

NO NO NO I TAKE IT ALL BACK: two part thread of 2010 vs 2050, TEL vs SOLE (x)

Dr. Agau... an environmentalist? (x) consistently so? (x)

The first draft is just us telling ourselves the story, and this was a pretty banger way to tell myself a story in middle school. (contains excerpt: x)

Chapter One: short and cliché, but with a pretty good phrase tossed in there (x)

Level A1 vs Experiment 1A; in which I lack consistency (x)

NEWBIES? CRAZIES? CHURLISH? a three part thread (x)

I switched POVs every other paragraph and did not give a fuck (x)

EXCERPT: Agau is overconfident and dumb (x)

This is how motifs work, right? (x)

Dr. Agau was SO different back then, it’s wild. Shrieking? (x)

We now pause your regularly scheduled criticism for some contemplative reflection on being kinder to your past self (x)

What even is Chapter 4 tho (x) <--- turned into a thread about Hans’s foster parents that? apparently existed? RIP the Confaus

A three part thread on Beth’s forgotten powers: talking to sea animals, sharing her underwater breathing, and zero power balancing on my part (x)

Hashtag when your characters aren’t developed; Hans had blue eyes? (x)

Connor Millard has got JOKES (and I think this line even made it into the current draft!): (x)

How on earth did this draft function without Finnigan existing (x) <-- a retweet of a lovely thread on Finnigan, you should read it!

How does grammar work? (x)

Why did I rob Hallie of her intro in this draft? The world may never know... #mysteriesofamiddleschoolmind (x)

Three part thread on how I’ve changed and how I... haven’t, really. (x)

Once again, my middle school writing had some good keepers (read me: x)

Those memes about randomly shooting characters are TRUE (x)

I think this is the only thing that legitimately made me cringe in the whole draft (x)

Reminiscing about plot holes and what caused them (x)

Remembering how I introduced Christian to the story in a very amazed caps lock (x)

...and sharing that bit of writing because I remember being so proud of it (contains excerpt: x)

Establishing character right away? I don’t know her (x)

Oh, right. Describing character appearances is a thing I need to do. (x)

Three-part thread on things that have stayed consistent over 8 years (x)

Suddenly! A Matt! (x) the amount of face-palm gifs I used... I was running out

One of the best puns I have ever seen made about my work (x)

Matt was really bloodthirsty in the last draft (x)

Surprising literally nobody, my pacing is still way off: (x)

How did they function without Finnigan? THIS random plot device I shoved in despite it making no sense (x)

oh my god this draft had KATI (three part thread: x)

I found FIVE typos (x)

Yet more injuries to characters, but taken more seriously than the actual bullet wound for some reason? (x)

Kati didn’t use knives, she had Wolverine style claws? #whateven (x)

Thing seem so abrupt in this draft, there’s NO leadup. Writing Tip: if you want to boost your self esteem, read some old stuff! (x)

ENDING: four part thread on my thoughts (read here)