#as well as adolescence and identity and friendship.

[bylertruther]

a collection of my thoughts + notes as i read lucas on the line —

first of all, i am, of course, feeling yet another wave of anger at all the "hot takes" that floated around cheapening lucas's season four journey or vilifying him for wanting to try new things, make a better life for himself, and be in the company of other black people that weren't related to him for once. as if his experience as a black boy doesn't make his life all that much harder, so much more complicated and isolating, even as he tries to better it. just... sigh. the more i read the more upset i felt about how fandom, no matter which one it is, treats black characters, especially ones with darker skin.

max breaks my fucking heart into a million pieces in this, over and over again.

i already know that people mischaracterize mike to a horrendous degree, but it is just... funny, for lack of a better word and in a terribly unfunny way, just how egregious it is. mike's written as such a stern stubborn hardass. he's a good older brother, and even uses that Older Brother Voice on others when necessary. he thinks motorcycles are cool, as well as the people that ride them. he's mopey and broody and irritable. he wants to fight to defend the ones he loves, but he won't do it if the offenders are bigger than him, which they often are. he fidgets with an old dnd die. he likes board and card games. he's honestly kind of a Cool^tm nerd guy—just has that standoffish vibe to him. he's the most difficult person to convince, apparently. he's also incredibly cut-to-the-chase, no-bullshit, mega blunt. of course we know that mike can be kind and sweet beyond his years, too, but i feel like that outer, more prominent layer of his—which, honestly, has persisted since the very beginning—is often cast aside by people for something more palatable. sad.

mike is the heart, i know this, everyone knows this, but... it is kind of funny that dustin and mike gave up on calling themselves a party, and what remained of them in hawkins wasn't much, didn't support lucas at all (which did hurt him a lot, because he couldn't give up hope that they eventually would), and that they only came together again like old times when will and el came down, but that togetherness went away once they left again. "look how the party fell apart just by will and el moving away." mike is the heart of the party, yes, but he relies on will, whether it be the support he offers or the inspiration he serves him, in order to be that heart. just interesting to see that repeated here, too.

the party doesn't understand or even see the racism lucas faces, which is to be expected, but still sad.

lucas is prone to nervousness and anxiety, and he clenches his hands into fists to keep them from visibly shaking. he also doesn't like the aggression that's prevalent in hyper-masculine spaces and takes note of it.

lucas's father was adopted by a white family, but they're not allowed to talk about them—ever. he's a vietnam veteran and doesn't talk about his time there either. he prefers keeping a low profile, because he feels that keeps his family, and people like them, safer. he also used to be a barber and he's the one that gives lucas his hi-top fade.

will didn't only wear jonathan's clothes. he also wore joyce's.

so many beautiful and heart-wrenching passages about the monsters of hawkins, which is a repeating motif in these tie-in books. it's classism, racism, homophobia, ableism, and so much more, and it's always there, lying in wait. those vulnerable are expected to remain small and hidden to survive, lest they become targets.

lucas has a dnd character that sounds a lot like robin hood. hashtag commie king 🤝

robin was the wise-beyond-her-years, nonjudgmental mediator between lucas, dustin, and mike. it took them hours to reconcile and she would interfere when it got too heated. lucas also felt that she would've fit right into the party were she their age.

nancy was their official chauffeur. hehe.

max flinches whenever anyone mentions neil or calls her maxine like he does. she also tried to run away on halloween, but talked herself out of it.

mike wasn't interested in dressing up for halloween because will and el were gone. max wanted to go as green lantern and lucas wanted to go as mad max, thinking he could borrow the costume from her.

eddie is apparently a freak, jackass, always high, and looks like he hasn't showered in a week. nice.

lucas knows the "i contain multitudes" walt whitman quote and it was a black boy that shared it with him. that boy, jay, also showed him james baldwin. the sinclairs are also fans of prince. 🌈 :)

i already knew this before reading, but it was nice to have even more proof that lucas is indeed the bestest boy in all of existence. this is #real and true.

#man. this book made me cry so many times lmao. fucking felt. also it was just so... good? beautiful? what a lovely dive into race and class #as well as adolescence and identity and friendship. #books #lotl #now to tag everyone... #lucas #max #mike #will #robin #i might eventually screenshot all of my highlighted passages because i want to archive those but... sigh. that's so much lol. #i'll queue them at some point. probably. hopefully. #mine

[saltnpepperbunny]

SPB's Webcomics: Masterpost

This masterpost is an assembly of my webcomics, all of which can be read on Tumblr! You will find links to each comic here, as well as links to story navigation and the original comic sites (which are a great place to binge). My comics are all heavily thematic and focus on things like queerness/LGBTQ, neurodivergence, disability, etc. Some are Pokemon comics and some are original stories. Enjoy!

Finding Your Roots is a pokemon nuzlocke comic depicting the story of Cedar, a mudkip from Littleroot who sets out on a journey to save the life of an orphaned egg. The region of Hoenn can be a dangerous place, especially to pokemon like Cedar and her friends. But together, Team Hearth can overcome even the greatest challenges. FYR explores themes of identity, race relations, disability, and queer existence.

Started in July 2018. Updates Tues.

@findingyourrootscomic First Page Story Navigation Comic Site

Children of the Light is an original comic featuring a dysfunctional family of light spirits. The second-youngest child, Tashi, wants to prove they're capable of being a forest guardian just like the rest of their siblings. To do so, Tashi must pass the Spirit Tree's test and successfully raise their newborn sibling Ru, who hears hallucinatory voices from plantlife, into a proper forest guardian. As fellow defective spirits, can Tashi and Ru overcome the odds? COTL explores themes of neurodivergence, ableism, abuse within families, and queer identity.

Started in October 2022. Updates Thurs/Sat.

@childrenofthelightcomic First Page Story Navigation Comic Site

After losing their mate in an accident, one young rabbit must navigate the challenges of the wild, bear the loss of their closest friend, and endure the cruelty of the herd's superstition. What becomes of the rabbits who have faced the unimaginable and endured the greatest suffering? What does it mean to lose your soul? TTWH explores themes of grief, trauma, mental illness, and survival in a cruel, uncaring world.

October 2020 - February 2022

@thethingswehavecomic First Page Story Navigation Comic Site

Little Lapses is a PMD comic about a trio of friends: Holly the yungoos, Cinnabar the scorbunny, and Blue the phanpy. It's the last day of school, and things should be perfect... so why does Blue seem so sad? Holly and Cinnabar team up to cheer up their friend and make today the best day ever! But good intentions pave the road to trouble, and this trio of friends may be in for more than they can handle. LL explores themes of childhood, forgiveness, femalehood, and friendship. This is a collaborative project with co-author @zeropro.

August 2021 - July 2023

@pmdlittlelapses First Page Story Navigation Comic Site

Pipe Up is an original comic about Piper the rabbit, a teenage girl in high school, and her best friend, Kai the fennec fox. PU explores themes of adolescence, queer identity, neurodivergence, and plurality. This is a collaborative project with co-authors TinySweetBunny and @thetruegge.

Started in January 2024. On hiatus.

@pipeupcomic First Page Story Navigation Comic Site

#spb's comics #webcomic #comic #pokemon comic #original comic #graphic novel #pmd comic #nuzlocke

[holdoncallfailed]

do you ever think about the parallels between damon and graham and paul and john? the childhood best friends and inseparable creative partners, one is the pusher for the dream, and the other one is the arty emotional live wire, the jealousy, competitiveness, emotional breakdown, and dissatisfaction/unhappiness with their dynamic. eventually, one gets a new creative partner, and the wedge becomes a chasm. yet only one of them got the opportunity to fully reconcile while the other was robbed of it.

of course, they're not the same, and the level of success does make for a lot of that separation. but I see how much time and effort it took for damon and graham to rebuild their relationship, knowing it couldn't go to what it once was but still working to repair it. glad they did, especially when you hear paul say that one should never put off telling someone you love them.

yeeeesss this has been a point of great interest for myself and certain other rpf scholars on this site (hi @elena-ferrante). watching paul in get back really reminded me of damon lol...i think it's interesting that part of the tension between d&g and j&p is that the domineering control freak "spokesman" member of the pair comes across as the one calling the shots but is in fact so full of admiration for and places such a high value on the opinion of the other that he becomes sort of deferential to him... i think they all struggle(d) with their identities and public images being intertwined. but i also think that there is/was more love between them than we could possibly understand from the outside. i really sincerely think that john and paul would have reconciled if they'd been given enough time.

speaking more broadly to your point about the wedge & the chasm: i think another thing about why bands are so interesting and why they capture the public imagination is that they frequently present this homosocial fantasy of companionship that is very much rooted in an adolescent configuration of life , i.e. hanging out with your friends all the time, doing whatever you want, responsible for only yourselves, obligated to each other out of a shared passion. and that lifestyle is not compatible with The Institution of Adulthood, i.e. stable career, marriage and family-rearing, which still feels compulsory—if not totally inescapable—for most people in [heterosexual] society. a band can be a world unto itself but it is not the real world. there are soooooooooo many examples of bands falling apart once a member gets married and/or commits to a new creative partner because that development inevitably ruins the fantasy on which the band was built, consciously or subconsciously. the real world comes careening back into focus...and you can't ever get that old life back once you've deviated from it.

i think the assumption within heterosexual society that homosociality is something that one "ages out of" is very pervasive (and homophobic, natch, but we don't have to get into that now). that homosocial relationships—or even friendships more generally—are always ultimately secondary to romantic relationships (specifically marriage) is something that i think a lot of people struggle with as they move further into adulthood (i know i am lol). it just happened on a much more drastic scale for these guys because of their fame.

also so much of the stuff in this post is very damon & graham coded...

well anyway let's all kill ourselves.

#Anonymous

[mysticstarlightduck]

OC Interaction Tag

I was tagged by @willtheweaver (here) and @illarian-rambling (here)! Thank you so much for the tag!

Rules: describe an OC and pair how they would interact with the given OCs from the people who tagged you!

Imma do this in two parts, so I'll go with Nimwen from Of Starlight and Beasts for Part 1 because I feel like I don't talk about that girl enough! Then I'll go with my boy Renn from the unnamed standalone fairytale WIP that plopped its way into my brain this weekend and hasn't let go since, for Part 2!

Part 1

Will's OC: Fen is a crow. But he does not act like one, having grown up among the foxes of the forest. All his life, he has had to keep his identity a secret. For obvious reasons, Fen does not let too much of himself be known. What he does show is an understanding nature ,and a knack for bringing out the best in others. Storyteller, a good fighter, tracker, and cook, he is skilled in many arts, though you’d never know that from the way he stays humble and modest. He values friendship, and will support those he trust.

My OC: Nimwen is an 18 year old girl who has spent most of her life (since she was 8) travelling through the uncharted forests of a region popularly called "the wilds", with her adoptive brother Scarlet and their little band of misfits. They live on the outskirts of society, since their kingdom has been so dilligently outcasting them, but they don't seem to mind it. All in all, Nimwen is an awkward, overly anxious, often paranoid but incredibly sweet girl, though she rarely lets strangers get too close to her. She embodies the energy of a skittish deer that will bolt at the nearest sign of danger, even if its a false alarm, though she has very good reasons to be that way - her father was wrongfully executed for treason, and the people of the kingdom didn't exactly give her much reason to trust them after what they did, so yeah. She's very in touch with nature and other people's feelings though she somehow seems very much oblivious to her own. She prefers to avoid confrontation, and will only fight if that's the absolute last resort in a life or death situation. She loves very deeply and makes strong bonds once you get to know her properly.

How they'd interact: I think Nimwen wouldn't be that surprised to meet a sentient, possibly talking, crow - she lives in a world where that kind of magic is actually rather common. So, once they'd met, I think those two would get along pretty well and would likely become good friends. She'd probably be very excited to learn about the new places this bird has seen and flown to, and they'd have a lot in common to talk about when it comes to forests and such. She'd likely listen to his stories for hours on end, never losing interest. The only tricky part would be convincing her brother that Fen is not a spy sent by the King to get them both killed, but once that's out of the way, I'd say conversations would be pretty interesting. Nim's an expert secret keeper, so I firmly believe keeping Fen's identity hidden will not be difficult for her.

Part 2

Illarian's OC: Twenari is an adolescent girl (12 in the first book, 16 in the second two) with short locs and a preference for skirts over pants. She is a prodigy sorcerer and general gifted kid. Throughout her childhood, her smuggler mother used her as a source of magical security and intimidation, which eventually caused her to run away after being forced to commit one too many unsavory acts. Because of this, Twenari acts much older than she is. She's pragmatic, blunt, and strategic. However, in other ways, she's very behind the learning curve. She's painfully introverted and never learned to socialize beyond formal events. Magic is her darling and purpose. She's insatiably curious about everything, but mostly, she wants to understand all the world has to offer in the field of the arcane. She's also at a kill count of about six. That's what happens when you're constantly chased by mercenaries and have the ability to explode people with your brain

My OC: Renn is a young man in his late teens (his exact age hasn't been specified yet, but he's suspected to be around 16-19) with a penchant for dark humor and a love for all that's mysterious and slightly macabre. He has a very strong vibe that is reminiscent of those early 2000s goth/emo kids, minus the angst - just the aesthetics and the sometimes deeply philosophical existential crisis - despite his fantasy medieval setting. He is a rule breaker and likes to question authorities at every chance he gets, and is also very savvy about the true inner workings of their seemingly perfect kingdom. It is implied that he has some kind of secret he is keeping hidden at all costs, and that implication would be true, but its not what most people would assume. While the townsfolk mostly label him as this unhinged/"crazy" reject who is always causing trouble and is up to no good, he is actually a really sweet kid that just had some truly fucked up stuff happen in his past. He is a loyal friend and values honesty and integrity above all else, even if it means he'll have to go down fighting for what he believes in. Despite all of this intensity, he just wants someone to truly understand him and have a pure friendship towards him. He is also implied to be gifted in some kind of magic, though it isn't specified which, and that he has knowlege of "forbidden arts".

How I think they'd interact: I believe Renn would see Twenari as a little sister figure of sorts, mostly because she is a few years younger than him (especially in her first book) but also because he probably sees a lot of his younger self in her - the painful introversion, the passion and drive for knowledge, the wish to cut free from the past. I think that given their personalities and pasts they'd probably get along quite well, especially when it comes to their insatiable curiosity for the arcane, as well as their wish to understand a world that is just so confusing to them as it is. They'd probably disagree a bit when it comes to rules though - as you mentioned she's pragmatic, and I know Renn's a certified rule breaker - but they would probably find a way to work around that. They're also kids who are very smart and who are way too mature for their own age due to having to grow up too fast, so I can see them relating to eachother in that way too.

Tagging: @memento-morri-writes, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @mk-writes-stuff, @littleladymab, @little-peril-stories, @oh-no-another-idea, @autumnalwalker, @eccaiia, @winterandwords, @rickie-the-storyteller, @forthesanityofstorytellers, @the-ellia-west, @cowboybrunch, @ybotter and OPEN TAG

#oc interaction #oc interaction tag #writers on tumblr #writerblr #my wips #character writing #my writing #my characters #writeblr #writing #writers #wip of starlight and beasts

[ashesandhackles]

Prisoner of Azkaban reread (Part 2)

Chapter 17,18,19,20

The details of how furniture being gouged out makes you think of adolescent werewolf that Remus was (cooped up and aggressive), and why he would enjoy the full moon runs with Marauders. ('best times of his life' as he says. Whatever feelings he has of the near misses, his spirit in Forest Again is "happy to be back in place of adoloscent wanderings". This is important for Remus' characterisation)

Ron standing on a broken leg to yell at Sirius ("if you want to kill harry, you'll have to kill us too!") moves him (show of loyalty? After all of these years?) but also makes him feel guilty: "Lie down. You will damage that leg even more."

Hermione, who was petrified and asking Harry to be quiet - the moment she spots Harry is in danger from Sirius, she kicks the person she was petrified of moments before (book Hermione is nuanced!) XD And Ron throws himself on Sirius' wand hand. Basically Sirius is getting beaten up by kids.

"Going to kill me, Harry?" - ah, Sirius. He feels enormous amount of guilt for their deaths and doesn't deny that he "killed them". Sirius goes completely silent when Harry says, "You never heard her, did you? My mum trying to stop Voldemort from murdering me". He tried to plead his case before Harry said this, and now, he basically hands over the power to Harry in the scene and let Harry do whatever he wants. He even tries to push Crookshanks off, to get him out Harry's wand's way. (Crookshanks' love for Sirius is deeply endearing btw)

I know people focus a lot on the cracks in Sirius and Remus' friendship, but this wordless communication where Remus figures out who was the actual traitor (Sirius doesn't say a word, btw - he just points at Scabbers, and Remus immediately gets it) is… utterly radical after 13 years of suffering.

"Get away from me werewolf" - to show Ron say this, a child from largely progressive Weasley household, is to show deeply prejudiced the wizarding world is.

The fact that Remus is on his side after 12 years, makes Sirius sit on bed with a "shaking hand". It is similar to Remus' voice that was shaking with "suppressed emotion." (Crookshanks goes to comfort Sirius, and goes to his lap)

One of the ways Remus' guilt at not telling about Sirius' animagus form manifested is that he watched Harry on the map, in a way to handle the untoward incidents that may happen himself. (i mean he would have done it regardless, but this is way to keep his secrets as well)

There are two desires in Sirius - the desire to protect Harry, the desire for vengeance against Peter. The stronger desire, we see, even in the smaller moments is to do right by Harry. It is exactly what Remus invokes when Sirius tries to grab Scabbers from Ron - "You owe Harry the truth, Sirius" and he immediately stops struggling.

"My mind seems to be less so when I was with them" - the Marauders granted a very deep-seated need in Remus, a way to experience his wolf as not a terrible monstrous thing, but a source of joy, a way of integrating that self into his identity without shame.

Remus uses "err" when he is minismising the severity of a situation. "Sirius thought it would be - er - amusing to tell Snape.." (adding @urupotter and @thecat-isblogging-blog thoughts on this when we discussed )

Also, Hermione's role as an advocate in these chapters begins here - she asks Remus the right questions, and she will continue to do so in coming chapters, making sure everyone's story is heard. It is in keeping with the book's ideas of justice and mercy - and while Hermione is the advocate, Harry is the deliverer of justice - one who decides what to do.

Chapter 19 - POA

Snape having to play nursemaid by bringing Lups his goblet of Wolfsbane would not have endeared Lups to him. XD (But it also shows Snape's gritted teeth approach to things he considers danger and how to neutralise that danger)

Snape's first set of dialogue is "I told Headmaster again and again you have been helping Black into castle..". Translation: My father figure that I unfortunately projected onto has been dismissing my feelings and my concerns and now I can spitefully show him the proof. ("I will be very interested to see how Dumbledore takes this")

And Remus lets his anger show up more openly and it is cold and dismissive: "You fool. Is a schoolboy grudge worth putting an innocent man back inside Azkaban?"

Hermione tries to advocate for Lups, saying he should be heard. This is her role in the chapter - when Harry is too emotional and Ron is too confused, she takes over as the advocate in the chapter, while Harry is the judge.

Harry sees that Snape is beyond reason, so he decides to follow Hermione's lead and advocate for Lups instead.

"You would have died like your father too arrogant to believe that he was mistaken in Black" hints to what Snape is feeling in this scene, not to mention being inside the Shrieking Shack where he was sent by Sirius once as a trick, make him regress even more. (Also he dies in Shrieking Shack in Deathly Hallows)

When Snape threatens Harry, "Get out of the way or I will make you" - the trio try to disarm him at once and he gets knocked out. I love Ron and Hermione don't hesitate to do this (even though Hermione panics, "we attacked a teacher"). They are truly ride or die for Harry.

Sirius breaks, and Remus in response "gets a steely note" in his voice ("give me that rat"). The moment Peter appears, Remus will begin to grow colder and colder in the scene.

"His wet eyes seemed to be burning into his face". "fathomless eyes" "sunken eyes suddenly overbright". There is so much emphasis on Sirius' eyes for his emotion - even in GOF, his eyes "shuttered" when talking about his imprisonment. Such a powerful description of his energy and emotionality. It makes you feel his presence as a character.

"Well hello Peter, long time no see" "You might have missed finer points when you have been squeaking around on bed" LMAO. the passive aggression in this man.

Voldemort's closest supporters, most likely the Lestranges, are aware that Peter is the informant. Not everyone seems to be aware - Snape clearly isnt. This is to show hierarchy within Death Eaters. There is also an implication that Lucius may be aware - which is fun again when you look at power dynamics in his "friendship" with Snape. The implication in DH is that Lucius took him under his wing, something that Snape is clearly grateful for (he reacts unconsciously to him being named as DE in GOF), but Snape is not in on the Chamber of Secrets plot, nor about Peter. Also Snape is working against the Malfoys. So many criss-crossing loyalties. XD

"Throat too tight to speak, Harry nodded." - an indication that Harry is near tears too.

Remus rolling up sleeves to get ready to kill Peter. What a gentleman.

When Peter speaks to Harry, Sirius loses it. And then when Peter invokes James to manipulate Harry is when Remus comes forward along with Sirius to throw Peter to the floor. (it's a subtle detail because Remus is quiet and asking polite-sarcastic questions - but it shows how angry he is). For me, the interesting part about Remus' behaviour in the chapter is that he is already on Sirius' side without question. So all the questions he is asking Peter is almost like he is working up his rage more and more.

"You should have died, died rather than betray your friends, as we would have done for you!" "You should have realised, if Voldemort didnt kill you - we would." Sirius is talking about the loyalty Peter refused to show (that they would have showed), and Remus is doling out what would be the expected punishment for that lack of loyalty: "Goodbye Peter"

I am in awe of the fact that Sirius, who was in prison for 12 years and has much right to decide what to do with Peter as much as Harry does, immediately hands over the decision to Harry when Harry asks it. And even when Sirius is threatening Peter, "if you transform, we will kill you", he checks with Harry, "you agree Harry?"

The chapter ends with this sentence, "Crookshanks led the way out of the room, his bottle brush tail held jauntily high." LOL, he has been vindicated!

Chapter 20 - POA

the awkward way Sirius offers Harry a home. He is so unsure! He dominates the scenes of previous chapter, and he is a powerful personality despite being pretty much a walking corpse with alive eyes. And then he turns into something very endearing, when he is all: "of course I though you wouldnt want to -I understand. I just thought-"

And then - when Harry assures him he wants to live with him, "Sirius' gaunt face broke into the first true smile Harry had seen upon it. The difference made it startling, as though a person ten years youngers was shining through the starved mask" . I imprinted on this relationship right then and there, and there is no other dynamic that moves me as much as this in the series.

Harry gropes in the mist for Sirius' arm, and grabs onto him when Dementors come. "They werent going to take him". Adding link to my meta which explains in more detail the beginning of the intense bond between Harry and Sirius.

Chapter 21

Madam Pomfrey having a chocolate the size of a boulder that she has to break apart with the hammer. XD And then she tries to shut Harry up by forcing a chocolate down his throat.

"You surely dont believe a word of Black's story?" "Sirius Black proved he was capable of murder at 16. You havent forgotten he tried to kill me?" Ah, Snape. Dumbledore is siding with Marauders again in his head, and that, among other things, will trigger his final lash out.

Harry understands Dumbles' broader intention (fly Buckbeak to Sirius' window) and Hermione thinks of bigger plans: "If we steal him now, the committee is going to think Hagrid set him free." And Harry spots immediate threats: the werewolf that might run right at them.

"How can you stand this? How can you stand watching it happen?" - Harry doesnt know how to not act. It is one of the reasons in Deathly hallows that when he decides to not go after the wand, it is the scariest thing he had done in his life. He could not remember not acting.

"Get your filthy hands off it" - Harry's dislike for Snape deepened in this book, and gains even more personal edge than before. (it is also in reaction to Harry's anger when Snape suggests they have been confunded. "We' re not confunded!" Harry roars)

"Where are you Dad? Come on" : Harry realising he had seen himself, but conjures a Patronus in the shape of his father's Animagus form is just poetry. Legit one of the most beautiful moments in the series. (And Harry realised… "Prongs," he whispered). This book is also the most contained and stand alone when it comes to Harry's development.

Chapter 22 - POA

It is interesting here that Dumbledore is a bit amused by Snape's meltdown, Snape incensed - but by middle of GOF, their dynamic develops to this ("Sometimes I think we Sort too soon"). It was pointed out by econteacher on discord about how Barty Crouch Jnr as FakeMoody would play this book's fracture against Dumbledore and Snape, since they dont seem to be properly communicating in GOF ("Dumbledore happens to trust me. I refuse to believe he gave you permission to check my office" and how Jnr arrives at the scene of his father's murder: "Snape said something about Crouch."). The Dumbledore-Snape relationship is reaffirmed and repaired by end of GOF book, by Snape's show of loyalty to Dumbledore in front of Fudge (where Snape straight up shows his Dark Mark to Fudge to stop him from mouthing off Dumbledore), and him going to Voldemort on Dumbledore's orders.

Lups confirming to Hagrid he didn't eat anything in the night points to interesting stuff about his memory when he is transformed.

Lups wanting to leave as quickly as possible because he feels he has let down Dumbledore - by keeping Sirius' animagus form a secret back in school to now, and the fact he was loose on the grounds in the night.

Ron takes Pidwidgeon out of harm's way when he notices Crookshanks eyeing him. XD And then he gets Crookshanks to sniff him. "What do you reckon? Definitely an owl?" this moment is so adorable. Crookshanks purrs, and Ron decides, "Thats good enough for me"

"I only hoped to get a glimpse of you before starting my journey " ahhhhhh kill meee

Sirius gifting Ron an owl as an apology of what he put him through.

Harry threatening Vernon cheerfully with Sirius name rofl "He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of wizard prison and is on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me though.. keep up with my news.. check I'm happy"

POA ends on such a bittersweet hopeful note.

#hp reread #harry james potter #ron weasley #hermione granger #sirius black #remus lupin

[anonymousewrites]

Adolescent Antichrist (Book 4) Chapter Four

Father Figure! Lucifer x Teen! Reader

Chapter Four: Someone has to Make Sure You don’t do Anything Stupid

Summary: Lucifer and Chloe struggle with the newest development in their friendship, (Y/N) and Em bond, and Kinley plots.

            Lucifer calmly played piano until his phone dinged. He smiled as he read the message from Chloe asking for a make-up date. The elevator pinged and opened. He grinned and turned, expecting Chloe to be making a surprise visit for a date at that moment. Lucifer’s smile faltered as a priest stepped into the Penthouse.

            “Who are you?” asked Lucifer.

            “I’m Father Kinley,” said the priest. “I’m here because…there’s something you need to know about Chloe Decker.”

            Lucifer sighed, got up, and poured himself a drink. “Forgive me, Father, for not offering you a drink. I have an aversion to the cloth. Daddy issues. Long story.”

            “I understand,” said Kinley. “And I do apologize for the intrusion, Mr. Morningstar. Please ju—Allow me to explain myself.”

            “Excellent course of action,” said Lucifer.

            “You see, I’m not a normal priest,” said Kinley, beginning his tale to manipulate Lucifer.

            “Was there ever such a thing?” chuckled Lucifer.

            “I mean, I’m not a normal priest in the sense that I don’t have my own congregation,” said Kinley. “I am, uh—I’m an investigator for the Vatican.” He handed a business card to Lucifer.

            “Vatican Investigator?” questioned Lucifer. “Sounds like a soon-to-be-canceled TV show.”

            “Oh, I assure you, it’s a very real job,” said Kinley. And that is why I’m here. To stop you and the Antichrist from bringing the apocalypse. “I’ve spent the last forty years traveling the globe in pursuit of the demonic. I know the divine is real. And I also know that evil walks the Earth. And that you, Mr. Morningstar—”

            “Oh, brother, here we go,” sighed Lucifer.

            “—are not it,” finished Kinley, lying about his knowledge of Lucifer’s identity.

            “Not quite what I was expecting,” said Lucifer.

            No, because you can be handled simply by being sent back to Hell. The Antichrist is the greater evil, thought Kinley.

            “So, if I’m not the Devil, then why are you here?” asked Lucifer. “And what does any of this have to do with the Detective?”

            “Oh, because Ms. Decker believes that you are,” said Kinley.

            “I see,” said Lucifer.

            “About a month ago, she came to Rome with a most outlandish tale,” continued Kinley, spinning the truth into a tale to break Lucifer and Chloe apart. “The Devil himself is hiding in plain sight, masquerading as a nightclub owner in Los Angeles. And that he’d revealed himself to her.”

            Lucifer chuckled. “Well, this is wonderful news.”

            “Wonderful? How so?” said Kinley.

            “Well, as my therapist or kid would say: talking about your issues was the first step in dealing with them,” said Lucifer. “So if the Detective did have issues with me, well, it sounds like they’ve been dealt with. She talked with a priest and (Y/N). Now, if that’s everything, Father, you can be on your merry way.”

            “I just felt that it was my duty to warn you,” said Kinley. “Because the reason she came to Rome was to, well, ‘send the Devil back to Hell.’ ”

            Lucifer chuckled. “The Detective would never do that.”

            “Chloe is a good person with a good heart,” said Kinley.

            “Finally, something we can agree on,” said Lucifer.

            “But whatever she went through, whatever drove her to Rome, it shook her to her very core,” said Kinley gravely. “She is the reason that I’m here. You need to be careful, Mr. Morningstar. God knows what she has planned for you.” He patted Lucifer’s shoulder as Lucifer stared at him and walked to the elevator.

            The doors opened before he arrived, and (Y/N) walked out holding a bag of fabric they bought. Kinley paused and watched (Y/N) give him a questioningly glance.

            The Antichrist…

            (Y/N)’s eyes narrowed. Something was off about him. Something in his eyes spelled anger. But Kinley turned away, and the doors of the elevator closed before (Y/N) could see anything else.

            “Who was that?” asked (Y/N).

            “Father Kinley, a ‘Vatican Investigator,’ ” said Lucifer absently.

            “Why was he here?” said (Y/N).

            “He says the Detective came to Rome looking for a way to send me back to Hell,” said Lucifer.

            (Y/N) crossed their arms. “You don’t believe that shit, do you?”

            “She was quite disturbed in the beginning…” said Lucifer. “And why would a priest lie?”

            (Y/N) rolled their eyes. “Priests are human. Humans lie. But even if he’s telling the truth, it could’ve been just a passing thought on Decker’s part. She was shocked by your identity. It was a lot for her, and maybe she had a passing thought when speaking to a priest in Rome that it would be better to have the Devil in hell.” They smiled at Lucifer. “Decker wouldn’t hurt you. If she ever thought to, it was a random thought that was probably pretty quickly ignored. People say a lot of stuff when they’re scared and confused. Just ignore it.”

            Lucifer looked at (Y/N) softly before smiling. “Perhaps. When did you get so wise?”

            (Y/N) grinned. “Someone has to make sure you don’t do anything stupid.”

            “Me? Stupid? Nonsense,” said Lucifer with a grin.

            (Y/N) rolled their eyes with a smile. “Yeah, sure, Dad.” They moved to leave the room, and Lucifer stopped them.

            “Thank you for the advice,” he said honestly. He squeezed their shoulder affectionately.

            (Y/N) smiled. “You’re welcome.”

l

            (Y/N) looked up from their math homework as Em came into the library with an annoyed scowl.

            “If I hear Maze talk to me about the best way to teach a baby to fight one more time, I’m going to send her right back to Hell,” grumbled Em, sitting down.

            “She’s really concerned about Linda and her pregnancy,” observed (Y/N). “It’s…sweet for Maze.”

            “Sweet? Try annoying to all Hell,” said Em. “I’m the one she runs every possible emergency scenario by. She learned what documentaries are and keeps telling me in detail what can go wrong in birth and the pain of it.”

            “Can’t blame her for being a little worried. Or Linda, actually,” said (Y/N). “I mean, it’s Amenadiel’s baby, too, which is weird enough on its own, but it’s a Celestial baby. I’d be freaked out if I was having a not-human baby.”

            “I wonder if there’ll be another birdie flying around,” said Em curiously.

            “A flying baby? Shit, Linda shouldn’t just be worried, she should be terrified,” said (Y/N).

            Em laughed and grinned, leaning on their hand and elbow. She gazed intensely at (Y/N). “Come on, you didn’t turn out that bad.”

            (Y/N) turned a little pink. That was happening more and more around Em. Weird. “Shut up.”

            Em just grinned wider. “Whatever you say, Birdie. Just saying, you’re pretty cool.”

            “…I’m waiting for the punchline,” said (Y/N), eying Em with playful suspicion.

            “No punchline. I can’t even say you’re cool for a human since you’re not one,” said Em, shrugging. She smirked.

            Here it comes.

            “But I can say you’re pretty cool when you’re not being moody,” teased Em.

            “I’m always moody,” said (Y/N).

            “Then I guess you’re actually not cool!” said Em.

            “Go back to Hell,” said (Y/N) pointedly.

            Em grinned wider. They liked (Y/N)’s face when they got annoyed. It was cute. Plus, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t see the slight smile of amusement. That was cute too. (Y/N) was cute.

l

            “Mr. Morninstar, thank you for reaching out,” said Kinley, walking up to Lucifer. “Are you okay? Did Detective Decker…Did she do something?”

            “No,” said Lucifer. “And she never will.” He smiled. “I’m just here to tell you that you’re wrong about the Detective. If she’s planning anything, it’s an apology. My kid was right. Whatever she said to you, it was just the panic of her thoughts, nothing more.”

            “I certainly hope that’s the case,” said Kinley.

            “Oh, ye of little faith, Father,” said Lucifer.

            “Have you noticed her carrying a vial?” remarked Kinley “innocently.”

            “A what?” said Lucifer.

            “A vial,” repeated Kinley. “It’s, uh, an ornate thing. It’s about the size of a plum. I got word from a colleague of mine in Rome that she’d met with a priest who was hellbent on banishing the Devil from Earth.”

            “And you all get paid to do this?” said Lucifer incredulously. “I’m genuinely asking.” He tried to walk away, but Kinley followed.

            “Supposedly, this priest has uncovered a ceremony that would—and-and bear with me—trap the Devil in Hell for all eternity,” said Kinley. “He’s shared the details of this ceremony with Chloe.”

            Lucifer chuckled. “A ceremony to banish the Devil to Hell? That is priceless. No, but seriously, you all need to take End of Days out of the Vatican movie night rotation. Definitely not one of Arnold’s best.”

            “I know. I know it sounds crazy,” said Kinley. “But Chloe was very distressed the last time I saw her. Apparently, the ceremony involves giving the subject a sacramental liquid that would sedate the Devil.”

            “Ooh. Let me guess, it’s inside the plum vial,” said Lucifer.

            “So I’m told,” said Kinley. “And if it would sedate the Devil, I feat that it involves some poison, something that would kill a normal man.”

            “You’re incorrigible, aren’t you?” chuckled Lucifer, not taking Kinley seriously.

            “Do you honestly think that I would travel thousands of miles, tell you these outlandish tales, if I didn’t take them seriously?” said Kinley. He took them so seriously he was prepared to remove Lucifer and eliminate (Y/N). “I hope beyond hope that I’m wrong. But if there is any chance that Chloe could try something, you need to be careful.”

            “Well, consider me warned,” said Lucifer, annoyed with how Kinley kept going on and on. “You may absolve yourself of any further responsibility in this matter. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have plans.” Lucifer patted Kinley’s shoulder and walked past the priest and out the church.

            Kinley firmly brushed Lucifer’s touch off as a fellow priest appeared beside them.

            “Is that the man?” said the priest, Bishop Hoffman.

            “Not a man, Your Excellency,” said Kinley. “The prophecy is real. And now that the trap is set, everything will come together soon. I even saw the Antichrist.”

            “The Antichrist…It must be quite formidable,” said Hoffman.

            “Yes,” said Kinley. He wouldn’t tell Hoffman the age of the Antichrist. No, the Bishop might see the need to be merciful. Kinley was the only one who understood the need to remove them. The Antichrist was an evil being that would bring ruin to Earth, teenager or not. Kinley would eliminate that evil.

Taglist:

@sammyscreencaps-13

@grippleback-galaxy-galaxy

@scarlettqueen190

@ziro-the-null-god

@sammy-13

@zeros-rot

@ceridwyn3

@technikerin23

@poetoflawed

#adolescent antichrist #x reader #x gn reader #gn reader #x nb reader #nb reader #x teen!reader #x teen reader #lucifer x teen reader #lucifer tv #lucifer x reader #lucifer fic #lucifer #lucifer netflix #lucifer x teen!reader #lucifer x gender neutral reader #lucifer morningstar #lucifer morninstar x reader #netflix lucifer #netflix #father figure #found family #found family trope

[st-clements-steps]

A Greysnow Meta

Let’s be clear this is not a ship theory, I find it very unlikely Jon and Theon will become romantically involved in canon. Someone much more interested in unravelling the textual clues of canon could surely make some interesting predictions about when and how Theon and Jon will meet again, and what state they might both be in at that point. And it would be up to each of us readers whether we wanted to read those clues as foreshadowing a romantic relationship or a platonic friendship or a strategic alliance.

Instead I am interested in the dynamic possibilities of Greysnow, what does Greysnow offer as a ship? And yes I do think a modern smut one shot can offer as much (or as little) interesting character exploration as a book quoting essay. Since shipping can be a very fun way to elaborate on any complex media, including asoiaf/GoT, the forces that would come into play in the ship can tell us a lot about Theon, Jon and our own fan responses.

(This mainly a book discussion but it does discuss the show a little)

Enemies to Lovers

My feelings on this trope are a subjective thing, I know that, but the twist from anger into passion can be a very compelling one and it works with Greysnow twice over. 

As adolescents growing up together we know they have a mutual dislike: 

Theon ignored him utterly, but there was nothing new in that. Jon I AGOT

The bastard was a sullen boy, quick to sense a slight, jealous of Theon's high birth Theon I ACOK

And here can’t we read how put out they each are but by what they perceive as the other’s disregard for them? They don’t like the other and yet there is an underlying sense they wanted to be noticed, or not to be treated with sullen disdain. This is Enemies to Lovers in the fun, frisson filled state that most fanfic (and romance readers) expect of it. The romantic and sexual tension offers a myriad of possibilities.

Of course there is also a much more violent Enemies to Lovers possibility with Greysnow, Theon sees it:

Jon would take his head off in a heartbeat. A Ghost in Winterfell (ADWD)

It's a possibility in which Theon immediately confronts the reader with the way Ramsay has been set up to mirror Jon:

Plucked from the clutches of one bastard to die at the hands of another, what a jape. A Ghost in Winterfell (ADWD)

And so the Enemies to Lovers trope can offer, the shippers, the writers, the hopers, something much more complex than frisson, if that’s the road they want to take. Canon offers it up to us, we can explore Theon’s abuse at the hands of one bastard by imagining the relationship he would form with the bastard central to the text. We can explore Jon’s relationship to his birth status by viewing him through the prism of someone who has experienced a man who lives up to the very worst of Westeros’ rhetoric against baseborn children.

Misunderstandings

Misunderstandings and their resolution make a story go round, they are a fundamental part of all the best stories. And Enemies to Lovers offers misunderstanding inherently as part of its dynamic, we can see that immediately in the quotes above. The hint they don’t want to be at odds, the narrow picture they have each assumed of the other. 

And yet there is also the opposite misunderstanding, Theon believes Jon would take his head, Jon thinks:

They [Bran and Rickon] can't be dead. Theon would never do that. Jon VI (ASOS)

Whether he still believes this, come The Winds of Winter, well who knows? That’s the possibility the writer can play with, the shipper can daydream about, because there are so many different misunderstanding paths to wander off down, Jon, awakened from the dead, may not remember his previous animosity towards Theon, or he might demand the right to execute Theon himself, they may need to unravel together the mysterious intervention of the weirwood tree, or the complexities of having your own name take from you?

In a world where everyone’s identity is a slippery thing, like a flipped coin, Theon and Jon unravelling the misunderstandings of canon, either at odds or in tandem could be so interesting.

An exploration of Jon’s canonical attraction to men

Jon thinks of male characters in ways that read like he finds them attractive. GRRM may never explore this, and maybe he does not intend it, with Jaime it could be a platonic admiration I suppose:

Jon found it hard to look away from him. This is what a king should look like, he thought to himself as the man passed. Jon I (AGOT)

Try and convince me that you can dismiss his description of Satin in the same way though:

He was pretty as a girl with his dark eyes, soft skin, and raven's ringlets. Jon VII (ASOS)

And yes you could explore this attraction through writing Jon x Satin, or any number of Jon x male character ships but….

An mlm ship that explores 2 POV characters

The asoiaf (and GoT) fandom is oddly heterosexual (we have to discount HOTD here, where everything gets much more queer). I say oddly because most other fandoms appear to be much more about mlm shipping than anything else.

The five biggest mlm ships in asoiaf/GoT are all ships which include at least one non-POV character. Of course most of them are tagged with both show and book so perhaps this doesn’t matter? But as a writer, writing a character is much easier if they have a voice you can explore first. Even with show-only fics it is undeniable that the POV characters who survived to season 8 have a lot more screen time. I love side characters, even a few who are only graced with a few lines, but as a reader I can’t deny that my conception of a non-POV character could be wildly different to someone else’s. Even when someone is a thoughtful, considered writer, who has clearly used canon to build their characters. 

If you’re writing considered fanfic the foundations of writing a POV character are so much stronger. And they offer so much more opportunity to reflect on the text, to comment on and discuss canon in a way that can be gentler and much less hostile than a lot of meta ends up being.

An exploration of Theon’s complex sexuality

Interestingly despite my above analysis on Jon’s sexuality it is Theon who features in the 2 most tagged mlm relationships in asoiaf/GoT. And yes here show dynamics clearly have some influence because actually Theon’s sexuality is strangely more elusive than Jon’s despite his greater apparent interest in actual sex. 

In my mind Theon never appears to express attraction unless the other person has already clearly shown an interest (or fucked him). What he seems to like is to be wanted. 

And so he flirts. It is Cat who tells us this time and again, describes his easy confidence and his cocky smile, his vault to lift her from the boat, tells us of him:

Enjoying a horn of ale and regaling her father's garrison with an account of the slaughter in the Whispering Wood. Catelyn XI (AGOT)

Theon plays down his attachment to everyone, Patrek is not too ill a fellow, and it is only when he gives the reader the tiniest hint of the liaison with a miller’s wife (so many miller’s wives, so little time) that we hear something softer:

Would that Patrek were with me now. Theon I (ACOK)

And yet despite Theon’s ambiguity, or perhaps because of it, people are drawn to ship him in mlm relationships. 

And of course Greysnow offers the possibility that a simple cocky smile does not always work, the possibility of exploring how Theon copes when he is not overtly wanted? When the other person is as good at concealing his emotions as Theon himself is in many ways.

No one is quite what they appear in asoiaf, literally, they have identities that are taken from them, they are concealed, to abuse them on occasion, to protect them in other instances. What is more, as we get under the skin of every POV character, we see the ways in which those around them are misreading their true feelings, the ways they are dissembling to meet society’s expectations. And Greysnow is a lovely ship for peeling back the tricksiness of identity, the secrets both Jon and Theon are keeping and exposing the truths of both their characters.

#theon greyjoy #jon snow #greysnowweek #jon x theon #asoiaf #valyrianscrolls #I cannot meta the show I watched the show and had feelings #My feelings were mainly right (obv) #Yes yes there should be a lot more Jon x Tyrion (at least from an exploring characters through shipping discussion and fics perspective) #more jon x sam too #fic as a way to explore characters

[sylviamarsh]

Ann Goldstein knows the works of Elena Ferrante intimately – perhaps more than anyone else in the English-speaking world – but she doesn’t have any great desire to meet her. Goldstein is the literary translator who has brought the Italian author’s novels, most famously the Neapolitan Quartet, to Anglophone audiences. In English, like in the original Italian, they have become bestsellers. Ferrante is beloved for her truthful depictions of adolescent friendship and the pains of womanhood. But “Elena Ferrante” is a pseudonym: the identity of the author is not known to the public, despite numerous attempts to discover her.

Goldstein communicates with Ferrante via her Italian publisher. “It doesn’t really bother me, not to speak to her directly,” she said over Zoom from her book-laden apartment in Greenwich Village, New York City. “The person who writes the books is the person I know, whoever that person is, the consciousness that’s writing the books is someone that I have a dialogue with.” She giggled, as she did frequently, despite being about to say something she must have insisted many times before. “And – by the way – I don’t know who she is. And it’s not me.”

Goldstein was born in 1949 and grew up in New Jersey. She has been translating Italian literature into English since the early 1990s and spent the bulk of her career working in the copy department at the New Yorker, which she joined in 1974. In the late 1980s she became the head of the department, overseeing copyediting and proof-reading. She had studied ancient Greek at university, and can read French “pretty well”, but it was with New Yorker colleagues that she first learned Italian. Over three successive years the group read the trio of books comprising Dante’s Divine Comedy. Goldstein was in her late thirties at the time; it is more difficult to learn a language later in life. “You don’t get the same facility, the same kind of fluency, as if you were a child,” she said, “but you can do something.”

She retired from the magazine in 2017 and has since pursued translation. She still abides by the many grammatical rules instilled in her by four decades at the New Yorker (“things like the serial comma or the Oxford comma – nobody seems to use that any more, which is ridiculous, because it’s so clarifying”). The two halves of her career are distinct yet overlapping. “I do think that proofreading, copy-editing, editing, they have to do with an attention to detail, and of course translation is all about attention to detail. It’s attention to particular words, to sentences, and how words work in a sentence. It’s about getting everything as right as you can, or what you think of as right, from the way the word is spelled – and we might have a difference of opinion about that,” that amused her, “to the way it’s used.”

Goldstein spoke knowingly about her own language (“spelled” could of course be “spelt”) and regularly corrected herself, as though always in pursuit of the most precise way of conveying her meaning. She wore a grey V-neck jumper, dangly silver earrings and thick-rimmed glasses – above which her eyebrows often appeared, jumping up in excitement as she furrowed her brow in concentration and then quickly released it.

Her most recent translation is of Forbidden Notebook by Alba de Céspedes. First published in Italy in the 1950s, the novel comprises a series of diary entries by Valeria Cossati, who secretly writes of her deep dissatisfaction with her life in post-war Rome. “I was struck by the fact that it seems – it’s a little bit cliché to say this – but it seems so contemporary. It seems like she’s dealing with the same problems that women have now, or have had since then. This was 70 years ago. The daily struggles are different, but the psychological struggles are so similar.”

The book is also being republished in Italy, where it has been out of print for decades. It marks a “rediscovery”, a reassertion of an author who was successful in her lifetime, but whom the patriarchal cultural memory has forgotten. It was in Ferrante’s Frantumaglia, a collection of letters, essays and interviews that Goldstein translated into English, that she first learnt of de Céspedes, whose life was remarkable by any standard – and of particular interest to the translator, who is fascinated by wartime and postwar Italy.

De Céspedes was the granddaughter of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, who led Cuba’s revolt for independence from Spain and then served as its first president. She was born in Rome, married when she was 15 and had a child aged 17. In 1943 she and her second husband fled to escape the Nazis’ occupation of the capital. “So they spent a month hiding in the woods in Abruzzo!” Goldstein explained, wide-eyed. “She wrote a diary – there’s a little diary that I translated that I’m trying to get published. It’s amazing. I don’t know how she wrote it, but she did, just about being in the woods, and they were slowly being more and more closely surrounded by the Germans. It’s pretty dramatic. She had a wild life!”

Goldstein’s enthusiasm for her authors – and for her part in the “rediscovery” project of an author such as de Céspedes – is evident. The thematic similarity between Forbidden Notebook and many of Ferrante’s works is, she said, a coincidence. “But I do like novels about women – I guess. Though not exclusively. I have done a lot more [books by] women, especially first person narrator women. There’s something about it that is particularly congenial.” She stopped herself. “But I’m always interested in anything!”

She could not, however, explain exactly what she looks for in literature she might translate. She prefers books that are set in Italy, but beyond that – “I don’t really look for anything. Most books, even if they ostensibly don’t seem interesting, end up being interesting for one reason or another, either for translation issues or language issues.”

She doesn’t see herself as a writer as such – “I mean, I’m not writing anything of my own” – and aligns herself instead with the critic Cesare Garboli, who wrote: “To translate is to be an actor.” “The actor is performing,” Goldstein said. “It’s only once, it’s his own personal performance, and nobody else can do the same thing.” Translation is also, she said, “a puzzle. You’re solving puzzles all the time. But in order to solve them, you have to interpret.” And of course there is never just one answer.

For a long time those critiquing the publishing industry spoke of the “3 per cent problem” – that just 3 per cent of books sold in English were in translation. (The statistic has been cited for both the UK and the US.) In the 30 years Goldstein has been translating, she has seen that number grow. “There’s definitely more openness to translations,” she said, citing the proliferation of small presses, including New Directions and Archipelago Books in the US, as leading the charge. “The Ferrante phenomenon” – as she described it – has helped translators receive the credit they deserve. “Because there’s no author, it made people more aware of the fact that there’s a translator involved in the book.”

Goldstein has a personal fascination with Italian culture, but also sees a moral pursuit in reading in translation. “It opens you up to other cultures. We’re all very – well, especially in America – we’re so inward-facing, we’re so solipsistic,” she punctuated her pause with a laugh. “Or, what’s the word! I mean, that’s one word. People don’t attend to other cultures. They don’t pay attention, and they don’t want to learn anything. They don’t want to understand how other people might think, how their neighbours might think. It’s just, the more you know, the better it is. The broader your sense of the world – it can’t help but make you a better person.”

“Forbidden Notebook”, by Alba de Céspedes and translated by Ann Goldstein, is published by Pushkin Press

#ann goldstein #elena ferrante #alba de céspedes #language #translation

[myinterestsvary-writes]

Rereading this, I can see how this might seem to degrade Haruhi, no matter how unintentionally because supposedly all the Host Club men are attracted to women and Haruhi is a genuine person. It says more about her than anything that she bags so much attention. I understand why people like her, I was just thinking of it from a realism? standpoint. How likely is it that a group of boys fall for the same girl like that, but honestly…

They’re friends for a reason. Please read anyways.

I can not be the only one who thinks it is crazy that every single one of the host club besides Hani and maybe Mori (but he was strongly considered to be the endgame choice at a point) had feelings/fallen in love with Haruhi. I’ve never been in gender imbalanced friend groups, so I don’t know how truthful this is to reality for a lot of people, but I’d think that relates back to the subconscious notion I’ve seen some men use in reference to the opposite sex when the meeting isn’t happenstance/casual or pre-puberty of, “if I find you sexually attractive, I’m willing to be friends with you.” There must be - I hope there is - men who don’t think that way and really just enjoy another person’s company regardless of sex and determines friendship off of that, but that’s what I think when I see the Host Club so willingly accept her as their “secret princess” knowing that most of them fall in love with her. It kind of temporarily taints their friendships, you know?

Warning: ship biases below

Tamaki and Haruhi were never friends, no matter how much Tamaki wanted to be along with her father figure (which negatively impacted their romantic development, as referenced later on), they were begrudged acquaintances who slowly over time on both sides come to understand, respect and admire each other based on multiple, deep conversations and observed actions that spoke to their individual cores and that translated into falling in love as there was attraction there. That’s how the author distinguished between him and everyone else as viable love interests. Plus, it was their dynamic that was most intriguing in terms of writing and development as their characters’ growth directly happens because of each other.

The twins became friends with her the moment she stopped keeping to herself and was forced to join their club. They weren’t really friends at first because there was still a prejudice against her and despite her natural charm and admirable traits, they could still rationalize that she’s more than likely just another person not apart of their small world. They soon found her interesting because she was quickly able to tell them apart, as the only person able to do this so quickly. It’s actually revealed later on that Tamaki knew for a while how to as well, but it took him longer because he’s dumb, it also took quite some time for the twins to open up to him, their friendships with him are just very different from their relationship with Haruhi. I definitely understand why they would develop feelings for her as they’re adolescents who are still developing their identities, constantly around an attractive, inspiring girl their age. The thing is however, being as oblivious as she is, Haruhi can’t see them as anyone other than her dear friends because that’s the established relationship she had with them for so long that she grew most comfortable with. There’s also a strong likelihood that since Haruhi’s not “awakened” by the time the twins’ feelings come in full force, she just doesn’t find them significantly attractive…yet. There’s always the future, but I doubt that they’ll pursue her even then in favour of their friendship.

Kyoya is a bit more tricky. He’s the reason why I’m making this post after all. Haruhi believes that if he can’t gain anything from the action, he won’t do it. That is for the most part a true characteristic of Kyoya’s, which is why he finds her so interesting and likeable. She’s able to show the audience that Kyoya does in fact have a heart even without self-interest, but for the most part is self interested as an aspiring businessman. Haruhi doesn’t know his background nor family all too well, so she doesn’t know truly that he’s so resentful because of them. Maybe that would change her perception of him further, maybe that would put him more in her mind as she grew more conscious in wanting to help him, but I truly doubt Kyoya would let her go any further in that pursuit when he’s so successful at playing his father on his own in the succession crisis anyway. Plus, as shown with Hikaru and Kaoru trying to help Hikaru win Haruhi over, and her favouring Kaoru over him, Haruhi doesn’t find Hikaru’s darkness pleasant nor attractive but she does accept it as part of both Hikaru and Kyoya’s personalities. They’re her dear friends. It’s possible that Kyoya had developed some feelings for her - as hinted at in the beach episode - but I highly doubt that it developed into a deep romantic love as suppressing those feelings tend to smother them akin to a flame.

Kyoya is in love with Tamaki. Not that you can’t be in love with multiple people at once, but he’s the one who had the most significant presence in his life, who had the most notable influence over him. Who he called precious. I just…have never seen any indication of romantic feelings for Haruhi and Hani and Mori are great observers but I don’t believe them when it comes to Kyoya. They’re more than likely just ignorant on homosexual subtext lmao

#haruhi fujioka #tamaki suoh #hikaru hitachiin #kaoru hitachiin #the hitachiin twins #kyoya ootori #takashi morinozuka #mitsukuni haninozuka #ohshc #ouran high school host club #manga #Anime

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🦇 Imogen, Obviously by @beckyalbertalli Book Review 🦇

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

❓ #QOTD What movie majorly impacted your life? ❓ 🦇 Imogen Scott has endless experience as a straight queer ally. Her friends are pan and bi, her sister is out, and she never misses a Pride Alliance meeting. While visiting her best friend Lili at college, who has her own little queer community, Imogen takes "supportive" a step further. She pretends to be Lili's ex-girlfriend and bi. The longer she wears the label, the more she wonders if it fits...especially when she's in the company of Lili's new friend, Tessa. Can Imogen keep her story straight, or is she finally starting to see who's staring at her in the mirror?

💜 This recent streak of bi/sapphic YA books (One Last Stop, Perfect on Paper, and now this) has left me slain. It's all too much. I am FEELING too much. Be still, thy bi heart.

💜 In all seriousness, this is the exact story little baby bi me needed back in high school, and I'm so glad it's on shelves for adolescent readers now. There's SO MUCH to discuss, the themes of self-identity, friendship, and coming-of-age so perfectly layered to make Imogen so obviously (I had to) exactly who she is. Imogen's "bunny" brain is a realistic mental chaos of self-doubt and queer questioning. Everyone assumes straight is the default, when really, it should be bi until proven otherwise. Most people aren't given the chance to question their sexuality, to explore who they are, instead establishing themselves in a pre-determined box. I've been there, and Imogen's constant questioning and confusion make her emotions all the more real. She questions if queerness looks a certain way, or if we're supposed to have our queer awakenings by a certain time, or if we're supposed to be CERTAIN, but how could we with the constant DISCOURSE over everything? Imogen's voice leaps off the page, making her easy to like; a character you want to follow to the end. Lili is EVERYTHING as a best friend (and queer mentor), while Gretchen so perfectly straddles the line between well-meaning and toxic. We've all had that friend we realized (almost too little, too late) wasn't looking out for our best interests, the one in the back of your head spinning every worst fear until it became a play-it-on repeat thought. Though she could have felt too extreme, we see why Imogen hears Gretchen out, why Imogen gives her a second chance, allowing her to become the cranked-up monster of self-doubt in Imogen's head. Also, The Owl House, One Last Stop, and Sailor Moon mentions were everything.

💙 This had an awkward start for me, namely because of all the names and identities we're given in the first few chapters. It felt like Imogen's younger, queer sister was less of a character and more of a plot piece (both to prove that Imogen was surrounded by self-aware queers and to show what queerness looked like in Imogen's eyes). She doesn't have some cute scenes with Imogen until the end, and by that point, I wanted more.

🦇 Recommended for fans of Perfect on Paper and One Last Stop.

✨ The Vibes ✨ 🩷 Young Adult 🩷 Queer Cast 🩷 Bisexual FMC 🩷 College/Coming-of-Age 🩷 Identity 🩷 Romance & Friendship

💬 Quotes ❝ The only way to let someone into your reality is to retell it. ❞ ❝ One girl can’t topple your entire sexuality, right? ❞ ❝ All these moments, scattered and separate. All these disconnected dots. ❞ ❝ Then she buries her face in the crook of my neck, and every breath she breathes feels like a love letter. ❞ ❝ How I felt. Dizzy, off- balance, unsteady. Like my bones were too big for my body. Like I couldn’t zip myself closed. Like I’d colored outside my own outline, stepped out of frame, made myself three- dimensional. ❞

#books #book review #queer books #sapphic books #sapphic romance #queer book recs #queer book review #bi books #bisexual visibility #bisexual pride #bisexuality #batty about books #battyaboutbooks #ya books #young adult romance #young adult books #young adult fiction #young adult #knitwear #knitting #books and coffee #coffee and books #book: imogen obviously #author: becky albertalli

[ddelline]

time loop thursday

blurb | I did in fact miss wednesday wip posting deadline, but this works, and I did just write 6k of this in one sitting, even though I really did not have time to do that. this behemoth fic, istg

premise | since this isn't really a normal time loop fic, but also kind of time traveling all over the place!fic, ofc I'm visiting All Of The Trope-y Timelines. and here we are at hidden inventory/sudden death. bc I love writing shōko. honestly mainly bc of that. still no goyuu (lmao) but it is a quite lengthy bit of hi/sd!trio feat older!satoru

Suguru puffs an exasperated breath and crosses his arms over his chest. His nails are bitten down, not filed as they usually were; his left ring finger and pinky are taped. Must have happened at some point Satoru can’t recall from their (thankfully) brief bout with Fushiguro. “I can’t say either of that made it on to my list of concerns. This extra examination was unnecessary, as well. Why wouldn’t you notice it’s him? Satoru’s a horrible liar.” Suguru tips his chin in Satoru’s direction. He raises an eyebrow at him. His expression is relaxing in slow increments, even if it still retains an edge of caution. “You can tell from the CES. Like this.” Suguru reaches out towards Satoru. It’s cautious without for that matter being slow, clearly telegraphing, giving Satoru the chance to influence what happens next.

A horrible, rippling weight in Satoru’s chest seizes at that. He thinks it might be his whole heart. It’s such a painfully Suguru thing to do; is a thoughtful, mindless tic he’s had since they were kids, all of nine gangly years, spiteful and prideful and intensely aware of their prodigy: complete assholes, in fact. But it’d been underscored by sullen, insecure tenderness, like awkward adolescent friendship tends towards. He dispels Infinity with a twitch of his fingers. Three of Suguru’s fingers make contact, press lightly down in the crook of his elbow. He withdraws momentarily after. “It’s a lot more tempered, but it feels the same. There’s no change in the mass or texture of the signature.”

Shōko rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. “Never mind a shikigami, your sense of curse echolocating seems to be just as good. Better. Why don’t they teach us this in med school?”

“Don’t call me a curse,” grouses Suguru. “And they do teach us this. In jujutsu school. You just happened to sleep through the majority part of the curse energy analysis curriculum.”

Shōko shrugs. “Cursed energy is just like, fwoosh, and crrrck. Like the crackle of fire, you know. Sometimes a little shhhwp, and yoosh.” Suguru rolls his eyes. “Besides, saying that just because it feels like Satoru, it has to be him, is reductionist. Your cursed energy signature isn’t necessarily fixed. Vessels’ CE have shown to adapt, even to a certain extent mix, with the host curse’s. From a scientific point of view, it’s highly unlikely that something like an innate technique capable of cloaking or imitating another’s CE, for example, can’t exist.”

Satoru whistles and grins. “Here’s someone who did all the suggested additional readings. At least in that class. I appreciate your being in my corner though, Suguru. Even if that was a solid, grade A-smack down.”

“Satoru,” says Suguru, in the same breath as Shōko says, “Gojō-san,” after which they both chorus more or less identical sentiments of “shut up, no one was talking to you.”

Spindly fingers fit themselves into the spaces between his ribs. They reach inwards, finding his lungs and heart and curl; settle securely around bloody, wildly pumping organ matter. They squeeze. Satoru’s fingers spasm marginally where they’re resting across the flat of his own thigh.

He failed them both before. And in so many more ways than he ever realized. More than he ever will, probably. No matter how long he lives, or how much he learns. Whatever he does, or doesn’t do here: he won’t fail them like that again.

*

Yaga rucks his sunglasses up to rest on his brow and pinches the bridge of his nose. An aggravated breath hisses out of him. Satoru can guess what comes next. “Goddamn!” swears his now-teacher, future-headmaster. When he looks at Satoru again, moments later, his expression is grim. “I can’t fault you for this one, Satoru. Maybe I ought to praise you. But goddamn.”

“Please don’t, sensei,” sighs Shōko, “One violation of fundamental world principles per day is enough.”

“I agree,” says Suguru. Satoru tsks.

Yaga gestures for them to zip it. “Enough. Cynicisms and smart quips aren’t going to get us closer to figuring out what to do about this,” he levels Satoru with a sharp stare again, “we’ve not got any time, either. Ijichi’s doing his best to keep the damned lid on for now, but a near-successful assassination of the Star Plasma Vessel carried out by a member of one of the big three—on warded school ground, no less; it’s a shitstorm the size of a hurricane brewing in a teacup. High council, the noble Three, plus a string of second tier branch families, jujutsu regulatory institutions—we’ve got an official inquiry pending from the desk of the PM; no one doesn’t want to get in on how we could’ve let this happen.”

Satoru desperately wants to note, out loud, something about Yaga’s uncharacteristically colourful language. It’s not that he doesn’t appreciate the gravity of the situation—no one is more keen than Satoru to figure out what the actual fuck is happening, or root out the apparent fail safe at the heart of the temporal knot he’s gotten himself stuck in, unpick it and put things right again. But frankly, if he’s not allowed to take a moment to breathe, and appreciate, Yaga Masamichi illustrating the monumental fuckfest of the protection and escort mission of Amanai Riko as a hurricane sized shitstorm wreaking havoc within the bounds of a tiny teacup—then what point is there to all the pain, suffering, and trauma they’ve needed to endure along the way (some of them twice over, now)?

“We didn’t let it happen, though,” says Satoru, who is sadly twenty nine and sensible. “Believe me, I’ve been privy to the alternative. It’s far shittier.”

“So you’ve alluded to,” says Yaga, “Cursory background is provided, but I don’t think that’s enough.”

Satoru doesn’t glance towards Suguru and Shōko, parked behind respective desks to his left. The crux of the matter, and the solution to the problem, won’t become apparent to them just because he provides a detailed account of this future’s, and his own past, eleven years. “People died. Curses banded merrily together to plan an apocalypse. Gojō Satoru, Strongest Sorcerer, failed. We failed, pretty spectacularly actually, in preventing jujutsu society, an idiotically archaic reactionist system which favoured genealogy over talent and control over reform, from rinse, recycle and repeat-doom cycling us straight off a cliff.” Satoru pauses, levelling Yaga with a flat stare, “If I had time stamps, I’d call Ijichi in to transcribe. But since what happened today didn’t happen the last time around—I’d guess we’re winging it from here. Sensei.”

Silence as thick as dewy, muggy fog settles over the classroom. Satoru slouches more exaggeratedly into the desk he’d taken to leaning against when they’d been summoned. Either Suguru or Shōko voices a small, shock-adjacent expel of breath. Yaga remains quiet, only emoting by way of one eyebrow twitching, and a muscle in his jaw spasming and fluttering with tension.

“Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just delivered a rousing speech on progressive political reform,” says Shōko faintly.

Suguru heaves a belly deep sigh. “Satoru,” he chides, “All of that, and you’re still so disrespectful?”

“All of you. Shut up,” booms Yaga. He unfolds his hands, displacing his weight, and slowly gets to his feet. Satoru vaguely entertains the hilarious irony in surviving Fushiguro Toji stabbing the Inverted Spear of Heaven through his frontal lobe, only to end up being strangled to death by his teacher for mouthing off during a debriefing. A lunging attack isn’t forthcoming, however. He stands, keeps regarding Satoru with dark eyes and a tense jaw. Eventually, he just sighs. Deflates. “You’re still an arrogant shit, Satoru, and for that you don’t deserve to be rewarded. But you’re right. Damned if you aren’t right.” His teacher pauses, then nods at him, hard and jerky. “You grew up. A lot of people probably benefited from that. Let’s see if we can as well.”

#fandom: jujutsu kaisen #work: fic #jjk #fic: cv/sm #wip wednesday #goyuu #at it again tagging goyuu when the goyuu is still pending #ddelline's blatant in-tag lies #when will this fic end #no one knows #certainly not me

[i-am-the-page-turner]

"Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

"Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Sáenz is a heartwarming and thought-provoking coming-of-age story. Set in the 1980s, it follows the journey of two Mexican-American boys, Aristotle (Ari) and Dante, as they navigate the complexities of identity, friendship, and self-discovery. Ari is an introspective and reserved teenager who feels like an outsider in his own life. One summer day at the local swimming pool, he meets Dante, a charismatic and artistic boy who helps Ari break out of his shell. As their friendship blossoms, they embark on a transformative journey together. Through their deep conversations and shared experiences, Ari and Dante explore their own identities, confronting questions about family, sexuality, and cultural heritage. As they navigate the challenges of adolescence, they also discover the power of love, acceptance, and the importance of staying true to oneself. The novel beautifully captures the nuances of Ari and Dante's friendship, as well as the complexities of their individual journeys. Benjamin Alire Sáenz's writing is poetic and evocative, immersing readers in the emotions and experiences of the characters. "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" is a touching and profound story that explores themes of self-acceptance, friendship, and the universal search for belonging. It has resonated with readers around the world and continues to be celebrated for its authentic portrayal of teenage life and the power of connection.

#books #books & libraries #bookish #booklr #booksbooksbooks #reading #bookstore #books and reading #bookstagram #books and literature #booktok #book tumblr #booktube #book talk #book thoughts #lgbtq #lgbt books #lgbtq community #lgbt pride #lgb alliance #lgbtqia #friendship #book review #bookblr #bookshelf #queer books #book quotes #bookworm #booklover

[therumpus]

The Mini Interview with Parisa Akhbari

by Liz von Klemperer

Parisa Akhbari’s debut young adult novel Just Another Epic Love Poem (Dial Books, 2024) captures the complexity of queer, sapphic friendships that teeter into something more. The never-ending poem co-written by the protagonists is woven throughout the narrative, along text threads. This structure mimics the unique intimacy of adolescence, in which conversations morph and evolve from school to home to sleepovers and back again. Akhbari’s work as a teen therapist shines through, as she deftly delves into the complexities of navigating first relationships and the inevitability of leaving home.

I was excited to speak with Parisa Akhbari via Zoom about how her favorite poets made their way into the pages of her first novel, and about how she wrote the kind of book she wanted to read as a teen.

***

The Rumpus: How did you start writing this? What were the initial seeds of the idea?

Parisa Akhbari: In my day job I work with teens as a therapist, and that means I’m often immersed in the big emotions of adolescence. Over the past few years, as I sat with young people facing experiences of racism and homophobia and isolation, and also witnessed their rights being taken away on a national level, I started to feel that the adult generation had failed young people. I felt this sense of powerlessness about what I had to offer, when young people are up against so much. It made me reflect on what I wanted from the adults around me when I was seventeen or eighteen. And what I wanted was to believe that change was possible: that the circumstances of my life could transform. It would have meant a lot to imagine that someone like me could live a happy, fulfilling life, despite the complexities of their existence or despite the hardships they’re going through. Those are the kinds of mirrors, the kinds of stories I wish I’d had growing up. I wish I’d seen representations of queer, Iranian American or mixed race young people, living lives that are meaningful, complicated, fulfilling. Lives in which they are deeply loved and connected to others. A desire for that kind of story propelled me to write young adult literature.

For Just Another Epic Love Poem in particular, I thought back on the way my best friends and I communicated in high school. We used every channel available to us: texting, talking on the phone for hours, writing notes back and forth in class, leaving letters in each other’s lockers. We found all these ways to connect. It was one nonstop conversation that continually evolved. When you know someone that well, your voices also start to resonate with each other as you pick up each other’s cadences and idiosyncrasies. I wanted to bring that sense of never-ending connection to a story. The two main characters in JAELP, Mitra and Bea, not only share their queer identity and their experience of Catholic school, but they also have this secret poetic language through which they voice their thoughts. Their never-ending poem becomes a framework through which they can express themselves in a way that they can’t anywhere else.

Rumpus: This is a love story—what’s your relationship to love stories, and what motivated you to write a love story?

Akhbari: When I was a teen, I mostly read love stories, but I didn’t see queerness or POC characters represented in those stories. I read a lot of Sarah Dessen books, which I enjoyed, but they centered white and heterosexual characters. In much of the YA I had access to at the time, the protagonist’s focus was a relationship with a guy. Although I wasn’t out in high school, my closest relationships were with other girls. My best friends were girls, and even though I dated guys, I had crushes on girls, and felt the most emotional intimacy—and confusion!—in my relationships with girls. I didn’t see that dynamic explored in literature or on TV. Once I came out, I grappled with some of the nuances of being in queer friendships and relationships. The line between friendship and romance was much blurrier. Sometimes I’d have a relationship with someone, and we would move back and forth across that line. In writing YA, I wanted to explore what transforms in the space between two best friends as they navigate that line together. I think it’s a uniquely queer experience that a lot of folks in the LGBTQ community can relate to. There’s something wonderful and complicated about the fluidity of how you define who you are to one another.

Rumpus: Yes, it really speaks to a specific kind of queer culture. The transition from friendship to relationship and losing your friend in an attempt to build a new romantic relationship.

Akhbari: In the beginning of the novel, Mitra is focused on what she can gain from becoming romantically involved with Bea. She’s thinking about how amazing it would be to finally get to love her best friend in that way. And then she’s confronted with the reality that change and loss are inherent in that shift. Mitra and Bea lose the ability to say “I love you” in the way they did before. They lose some of the easy comfort they shared, because suddenly their interactions become heated and heightened. Mitra has to navigate all these new questions: Can we touch like we did before? Can we talk in the way we used to? It presents a lot of challenges for her.

Rumpus: The format of your book mimics that never-ending, multimedia back and forth. I also love the amount of poetry you include. How did that structure evolve?

Akhbari: Originally, I started writing the book in a traditional structure that alternated prose with snippets of the never-ending poem that they trade back and forth. But I found that structure boxed me in. I was already trying to break out of a typical novel format through the never-ending poem, and it felt constraining to limit myself only to prose for the rest of the story. To shake things up, my editor suggested I think about what’s at the heart of each beat in the story, and then consider the best format in which to tell that beat. It may be that the emotional core of the moment is best expressed in a text message, or a list, or a poem that the main character, Mitra, writes for a school assignment. 

For example, in writing about Mitra’s reconnection with her estranged mother, the heart of that moment is Mitra’s response to seeing her mom for the first time in years. She has this moment of acknowledging all the little differences in the way her mom looks, and how she’s both unfamiliar and familiar at the same time. The moment trips Mitra’s memories in a visceral way. Although I could try to capture that moment in prose, I felt poetry would tap into an emotional depth for Mitra that she couldn’t directly face in the prose of her inner monologue. Poetry and art can give people a lens through which to look at the hardest things in their lives. They can examine their monsters through metaphors, poetry, and art in a way they can’t confront directly.

Rumpus: Speaking of poetry, you reference so many poets in this book because your protagonists love poetry. What is your relationship with some of these poets? How did you choose them?

Akhbari: Growing up, I thought poetry was stuffy, old-timey, and inaccessible. The poets I learned about in school were often dead, straight, white guys. They weren’t people I could relate to. It felt like they lived on some other untouchable level. Once I realized that other poets existed who spoke to me and to my experience, and whose art was just as valid, then I felt like I had my way in. That opened the door to poetry for me. 

One of those poets was Hafez, whom Mitra calls upon throughout the story. In Iranian culture, Hafez isn’t just a revered poet; he’s a spiritual channel. In the way that a lot of Westerners look to astrology or tarot, Hafez is the guy you go to when you’re like, “What do I do about this situation? Or, What’s ahead for me?” My bibi jaan taught me to ask a question and find an answer in the pages of Hafez’s Divān. The challenge is how to interpret his words. That was fun to play with throughout Just Another Epic Love Poem because Mitra doesn’t have the assistance of her mom anymore to help her interpret. She has to figure out the answers to her big existential questions by herself. 

Naomi Shihab Nye’s poem, “Kindness,” became an anchor for me early on in writing this book. She’s one of my favorite poets, in part because I connect to her writing about the Middle East, and also because I find her poetry to be grounded in the senses in a very accessible way. She’s a renowned writer of both adult and children’s poetry. People can disconnect from poetry when they find it too abstract, or unrelatable, or not reflective of their lives. But everything I’ve read of Naomi Shihab Nye’s feels like something that a teen could understand on a gut level, even if they don’t know all of the “rules” of poetic structure.

Rumpus: Is there a part of this book that feels pressing to articulate that I’ve missed?

Akhbari: One of my hopes for readers is that they can see poetry as accessible and relevant to their lives. We absorb a lot of cultural messages about who gets to be a poet, and what poetry looks like. I hope readers who have been pushed to the margins find that poetry is a powerful and concise tool for self-expression. In the same way that people have been reshaping and expanding queerness to create a space for themselves, you can also dismantle the rules and assumptions about poetry and reinvent it to fit your world. You can make it spacious enough to express your experience.

#writblr #lit #interviews #the rumpus #creative writing

[learnthisphrase]

Best books of 2023

The best books I read in 2023

Knock Knock, Open Wide by Neil Sharpson (Tor Nightfire, 2023)

Imagine Tana French writing a folklore-infused horror novel, and you have Knock Knock, Open Wide. The always-thrilling plot takes in a life-changing accident, a love affair, and a sinister TV series; the storylines overlap and entwine perfectly, and there’s a lot of beautifully crafted character work. It’s a dark and eerie book, but full of life and love, too.

Black Mountain by Simon Bestwick (Independent Legions, 2021)

A mixed-media horror novel disguised as non-fiction about the many strange incidents surrounding a cursed/haunted mountain. Unputdownable and genuinely unnerving at points – I had the time of my life reading this. I’m amazed it isn’t better-known among horror fans!

The Last Language by Jennifer duBois (Milkweed Editions, 2023)

A riveting, disturbing book about a language therapist’s relationship with the autistic man she’s helping to ‘speak’ using the controversial method of facilitated communication. I read it in one fevered session, completely in the grip of the dizzying, queasy moral maze duBois creates.

Hydra by Adriane Howell (Transit Lounge, 2022)

Just when you think the ‘unhinged woman’ trend has had its day, this excellent Australian debut offers a fresh spin on the whole idea. Anja’s dry, idiosyncratic voice rings out from the page, and the plot is never far away from intimations of something dark and weird. Read if you love Ottessa Moshfegh and Tár.

My Death by Lisa Tuttle (2004, reissued by NYRB Classics 2023)

A perfect novella about a widowed writer who becomes obsessed with her latest project, a biography of a little-known artist’s muse. Astonishingly clever, convincing and absorbing, it’s a revelation and turned me into an instant fan of Tuttle’s writing.

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine (Penguin, 2000)

A beautiful and eloquent coming-of-age tale dressed up as a crime novel. The plot has so many different strands that it’s difficult to describe concisely, but this is essentially a character-focused story about identity, aspiration and love. The rare book that actually made me cry.

How Can I Help You by Laura Sims (Putnam, 2023; UK ebook out in January 2024)

Explores the tense relationship between two women with secrets (some more dangerous than others) who both work at a public library. A sharp, nuanced character study that is also utterly propulsive. If you loved Death of a Bookseller, this should be next on your wishlist.

Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, translated by Michael Henry Heim (Picador, 1985)

1930s cult classic about a dissolute Russian teenager, his friendships, affairs and drug addiction. Think No Longer Human, but (in my opinion) way better. It’s philosophical, funny and stuffed with remarkable descriptive writing.

Where the Dead Wait by Ally Wilkes (Titan, January 2024)

Years after an infamous failed expedition, a captain with a sullied reputation must return to the Arctic in search of his former lieutenant. Immersive and enthralling at every level, this is a blood-soaked, frostbitten treat – I’ve been describing it as The Terror meets Heart of Darkness.

The Devil’s Playground by Craig Russell (Doubleday, 2023)

An elaborately plotted historical mystery about a legendary silent horror movie. Come for the lost film and its ghosts; stay for the well-researched portrait of old Hollywood, the world-weary heroine, and the fascinating detective story.

We Were Never Friends by Margaret Bearman (Brio Books, 2020)

A woman looks back at a strange period of her youth when her family became entangled with Kyla, a hated classmate of hers. Dazzling at the sentence level – Bearman illuminates Lotti and Kyla’s world with startling colour, vividly portraying the emotional landscape of adolescence.

Honour Thy Father by Lesley Glaister (Bloomsbury, 1991)

Four elderly – yet naive – siblings live in self-imposed imprisonment amid the squalid remains of their family home. How did they end up like this? We Have Always Lived in the Castle meets Come Join Our Disease in a dark tale that perfectly balances tender nostalgia, black humour and sinister threat.

Angel by Elizabeth Taylor (Virago, 1957)

We meet Angel as an impetuous 15-year-old convinced she will become a great novelist, and follow throughout her life as she first fails upwards, then eventually loses everything. It’s a tragic story that centres on a pathetic character, yet Taylor writes with a compassion that makes it almost romantic.

The Night Ocean by Paul La Farge (Penguin, 2017)

A labyrinthine series of stories within stories inspired by H.P. Lovecraft – but you definitely don’t need to like (or have read) Lovecraft to enjoy it. Deceptively complex, it excavates the lives of its characters while maintaining a subtle sense that the whole narrative is haunted.

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward (Viper, 2023)

My favourite of Ward’s books since her debut Rawblood, this is a story about murder that deals with the long shadow it casts. It’s also about writing and witchcraft, unrequited love, and the death of the author, and is unexpectedly heartbreaking.

Brainwyrms by Alison Rumfitt (Cipher Press, 2023)

This book takes the ‘trauma as horror’ trope and eats it from the inside out. It’s full of fearless writing about fetishes, transness, transphobia, dysphoria, and what – if anything – it means to be virtuous. While often disgusting (be warned), I wanted to reread it straight away.

Where Furnaces Burn by Joel Lane (2012, reissued by Influx Press 2023)

A sprawling map of linked stories; layered, moody and strange. Not the easiest book to recommend – Lane, one of my favourite writers, invariably creates very bleak worlds – but an incredibly rewarding reading experience.

Notable reread: Kiss Me First by Lottie Moggach (Picador, 2013)

A grieving, lonely young woman finds solace on an online debate forum and ends up immersed in someone else’s life. Just as fast-paced, gripping and brilliantly voice-driven as it was when I first read it a decade ago.

Honourable mentions

So many good books came out in 2023 that I have to mention a few more. The Book of Ayn by Lexi Freiman was the funniest, sharpest, most quotable novel I read this year. I loved the intriguing layers of Ben Tufnell’s The North Shore and Viola Di Grado’s poignant Blue Hunger, translated by Jamie Richards. Verity M. Holloway’s romantic, atmospheric The Others of Edenwell deserved way more attention. And this may be an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed Elizabeth Hand’s A Haunting on the Hill more than The Haunting of Hill House.

For thought-provoking plots: Service by Sarah Gilmartin and Kids Run the Show by Delphine de Vigan, translated by Alison Anderson. For pure thrills: Nicholas Binge’s mind-bending Ascension and Jinwoo Chong’s dazzling Flux. For both, and great suspense: A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates.

And not forgetting the brilliant 2023 books I read as review copies last year: Nina Allan’s masterpiece Conquest, Alice Slater’s ultra-compelling Death of a Bookseller, and Maria Dong’s loveable Liar, Dreamer, Thief.

[thearchertheprey]

yes hello id like 2 hear ANYTHING u have to say about mayple's friendships!!! OR....OR. if u have anything on unova or sinnoh thatd be neat 👀

oh my goodness thank you i've been waiting for this. i'm using this as an excuse to talk about lisia. sorry if you were expecting otherwise but we need to talk about lisia. we need to. it's time.

if you didn't know this about me i am absolutely fascinated with the psych and sociology behind the entertainment industries, child stars, and what alyson stoner calls the "toddler to trainwreck industrial pipeline". lisia and the maple twins are three representations (of many) of how fame can fundamentally change a child's life

fino disappears from the public eye shortly after calming groudon, leaving hoenn to build an idealized legacy for him (he gets better)

may is poorly received from the beginning due to the love people have for fino, creating a highly tumultuous adolescence with multiple public fights and breakdowns (she gets better)

lisia is........... LOL still struggling. lisia spends her whole adolescence being controlled by contracts, and internalizes her stress & trauma while keeping up a good public image. only well into her 20s does she start talking about how industry life affected her. she's still very much in the process of unpacking her life and finding her identity

lisia befriends fino and may entirely separate from one another, and their friendships with lisia is basically the only thing they have in common until they're adults. both of them offer a compassionate and empathetic perspective to lisia's struggle, and provide a private space for her to be herself and not worry about how she's perceived. lisia's relationships with the twins are supportive, earnest friendships in a sea of people who want to exploit and profit off of her -- they are the core reasons for her coming out triumphant over the idol industry.

fino loved contests before he became a Hero (TM) -- when he disappears, he still makes time for lisia, and encourages her efforts to break free and be her own person. they start writing songs together. may doesn't gel with contests, but they're inseparable friends who keep each other grounded during a time when all eyes are on them. lisia starts to see may as the only person who understands her. it's a little charming. then her managers tell her may is a bad influence and forbid them from hanging out -- then it's a LOT charming. women love bad bitches etc etc. may is not a lyrical collaborator, but she is, unknown to anyone but lisia, a muse.

anyway may & fino growing into competent adults with strong senses of identity is the catalyst for lisia to break her contracts when she turns 18 and start thinking about who she is when she's not putting on a public performance. fino helps her to "disappear" for a while to focus on herself. she falls in love with her culture & heritage, and starts training under wallace to succeed him as the keeper of the origin temple. she starts training with may, and eventually takes up wallace's mantle as sootopolis gym leader. she starts forming her own social circle, but may and fino are always close to her heart.

she's done with performing, but is a stronger and more successful songwriter than ever, selling multiple #1 hits to other artists. then she starts publishing her own albums -- rich, storytelling-based concept albums exploring hoenn mythology and modern archetypes. no longer a doll controlled by the industry, lisia becomes an independently-published poet, finally recognized for her own merit and allowed to create the art she wants. longtime fans love her intense ballads about the industry, about falling from pedestals, about being kept in music boxes and patched with superglue. critics praise her folktale-inspired collections, reimagining ancient sootopolitan stories about heroes of old. international youth hear a totally fictional concept album about a young trainer with the world on her shoulders and the rival that follows her all the way to victory road, and they make it a cult classic.

also wallace and steven are epic fucking divorced and she's the driving force behind getting them back together and remarried. she is 100% puppeting fino and may in order to orchestrate this. this is funny to me and toki only because they have a huge wedding, and the only time fino ever openly communicates is when he's schwasted

lisia was booboo bananas infatuated with may for like all of their adolescence. it's NOT A LOVE TRIANGLE i hate love triangles. she moved on from it a long time ago and there are no issues in their friendship. but fino LOVES embarrassing people with stupid moments from their childhood. it's his god-given duty. ESPECIALLY if it's going to ruin may's night

#mapleverse #rov art #may maple #brendan serafino maple #lisia olea #brendan birch #maybelle birch #sorry if u were hoping i would talk about other people. i have lisia brainrot this week.

[unchataparis]

A 'DO I SHIP IT?' template made by XStephTheHedgehogX on DeviantArt.

Before I get immortalised as that one Liladrien person who writes a lot of stories about them and seems to genuinely ship them: yes, I do ship them. I think they're both interesting and aesthetic people, underutilised by the plot with a lot of dynamite potential together.

BUT, I also do not think Lila and Adrien should not end up together in the permanent, romantic sense because their psyche just cannot aligned. Even in a future where Lila is redeemed and a morally good person, their outlook on life and general stance regarding hobbies and careers are simply too mismatching. I can see the two of them dating, having fun and respecting each other, but settling down for the long term? Adrien is the 'white picket fence' and 'two-and-a-half children' person. Lila is the 'growing old elegantly in a private mansion surrounded by fourteen cats' kind of gal.

NOTP: So, although Lila and Adrien is my favourite Miraculous pairing, it's purely because they're my favourite Miraculous characters. I want to see them in a relationship together, but I don't think they'll work out quite so well in the long-term.

I SHIP IT: One hundred percent. I feel like Adrien and Lila's arc went tremendously unexplored. I wonder how their meeting would've gone if Marinette never interrupted them in Volpina, if Adrien and Lila could've formed an actual friendship, and how Adrien would've reacted to Lila's lies from there. I feel like Adrien needs someone like Lila in his life, someone like Félix, whose appears to care about him but is also willing to feed him the facts bluntly.

underrated/why not?: Again, stemming from the points above, there is so much potential for how a relationship between Lila and Adrien could've went. I really don't like how in Season 5, Adrien started standing up to/exposing Lila for Marinette. I felt like he could've done it for a more independent reason.

would read a fic about it/reads fics about it: Absolutely! In fact, I take it one step further and writes fics about it.

the sexiest pair: I should mention at this point that when I write about Lila and Adrien, they're either late teenagers or early adults. I'm not fond of writing about adolescents getting it on. From an aesthetic standpoint, Adrien and Lila mesh together perfectly. Old money and high luxury, glittery baddie and designer purses. Think about yacht parties and mansion photoshoot scenes, red carpet dates and clandestine late-night rendezvous. I made a post way earlier about what Adrien and Lila's aesthetic would be, and you can see what I'm envisioning, right?

i'm curious, can i know more?: We don't know anything about Lila. In fact, we don't even know her real name. Is she Cerise? Or some other vixen in the hiding? I'm not entirely sold on this Lila/Cerise/Iris mash-up yet, because it seems to come out of nowhere to me. Lila already has a massive 'plot-twist' in that she's actually a liar and a huge arc of Miraculous had been devoted to her exposé and the class' subsequent reaction. The next step in the narrative would be how Lila moves on/takes revenge. Instead, we, the audience, learn that Lila has another trick up her sleeve, she forged her whole identity! I'm very excited to watch Season 6, because, new powers, new outfits, and new Butterfly villain aside, I also really want to find out what's up with Lila.

Fun fact: It was pretty hard to find sources on this, but did you know that some ship names develop based on who the dominant partner is? I couldn't find who originally coined the term Liladrien, but if they're not making a perfect combination of both of their names, then they believe that in a romantic relationship between Lila and Adrien, Lila would be topping. Sounds about right.

#miraculous #adrien agreste #lila rossi #liladrien