#shes written very differently in the novels to how she is in the audios

[bambi-kinos]

I just came across your analysis of However Absurd and thought it was lovely. I'm curious, as someone who thinks John and Paul had some kind of romantic or sexual relationship, what is your take on The Lovers That Never Were? Is he using the word "lovers" to mean "partners"? I have always interpreted it to mean that Paul knows there was something there but it never happened. Every time I start to be convinced that they were together in some way I think of this song and the devastating way Paul sings it in the demo and the heartbreaking fact that he still felt it that intensely 13 years after John's death.

Oh wow thank you! The server had a lot of fun discussing that, if it's good it's because I had a little help from my friends heheh (─‿‿─) ♡

I ended up writing a massive novel in response to all this so I hope you enjoy reading it heheh. For server members, I've pulled some quotes from my previous Discord essays on this topic so you'll see some stuff that you've read.

tl;dr - I don't think "The Lovers That Never Were" contradicts the secret relationship theory at all! I think it compliments it very well actually.

In order to get into All That, I will outline how I perceive what their relationship was built on and how they reacted to it. I should note that I don't consider this definitive. It's important to remember that we all have unique interpretations of John and Paul because of our experiences and our personal POVs. There is no single answer until Paul decides to tell us what happened and/or Sean publishes John's diaries (written and audio). Until that happens, we are all forced to look at the same material and draw our own conclusions which will naturally be shaped through our personal perceptions. Some of us are older and are much closer to the original culture that John and Paul were raised in; some of us are younger and grew up in a much more LGBT+ positive environment. This naturally has an impact on how we interpret John and Paul's relationship.

I say this because I know my POV on John and Paul is a bit different from everyone else's. I'm a historian by training but part of being a historian is the understanding that you will never fully understand the events as they happened because your personal viewpoint and inherent bias is simply too strong. But that's okay because this is a part of humanity that we all share, yeah? With that understanding LET'S GO!

Paul My view on Paul is that he's always understood that he's different from other men. I doubt he could put a name to it until very recently. Paul has synesthesia, he's bisexual, he connects to music in a savant-like way, he's neurodivergent which is why he takes criticism so hard, and all of that would still be true even if he didn't have left over emotional issues from his mother dying the way she did + his fraught relationship with his father.

Keep in mind that circumstantial evidence points to the idea that Paul orchestrated the meeting at the fête! He realized he had a mutual friend with John in Ivan (who is to say that he did not meet Ivan at a QM performance and had that mental realization there?) He went through Hot Girl Summer before and after the fête, wanting to be fucking fit so that he wasn't embarrassed to meet John! I did the same thing when I had a crush as a teenager!

So with all that in mind, imagine this: you're Paul McCartney. You met John Lennon barely a year after Mary died. You turned 15 on June 18th, 1957 and met John at the fête on July 6, 1957. At some undetermined point before this garden party you saw a beautiful boy on the bus and began riding it obsessively hoping the Teddie boy would get on it. You followed him to the chippie and stood in line behind him…allegedly because you thought "oh wow he looks so cool." Marky Mark thinks (and I agree) that you may have even followed John to at least one Quarry Man show before the fête. Is this 'normal' behavior? Or is this the unhinged behavior of a teenager with a massive crush? The kind that comes about when you see a cute boy with red hair, and red is the color you associate with happiness, and then you find out that he plays guitar just like you and you follow him around until you see one of his performances and he's so good he knocks you back and then someone says "hi Paul, I didn't know you liked music!" behind you. And you realize that it's your friend and that you can meet the boy you have a crush on through this friend. You just need to lose weight and grow your hair out first.

When did Paul first see John, anyway? Before he turned 15 I'd wager.

I submit the idea that Paul has been in love John Lennon for his entire life. It will be 67 years of love when this July 6th rolls around. John was making a name for himself, he was known around town as "that Lennon." A minor celebrity like we’ve all had in our hometowns. Paul loved music. Before the internet you would go to the town square to hear a band.

Paul did that. Saw John. Pursued him with intent. When John went to Gambier Terrace to be with Stuart, Paul made a nuisance of himself showing up at their parties and playing the proto-version of "Michelle" in front of the girls…and John.

I love you, I love you, I love you That's all I want to say Until I find a way I will say the only words I know that You'll understand

I don't think that a 15 year old Paul McCartney would explicitly label his feelings for John as 'love' or a 'crush' but I do think that's what happened. When you're a teenager, a crush can express itself in many different ways. I used to have a big crush on a girl who was a volleyball player at my junior high school…that expressed itself as intense admiration. I even told one of my friends that I thought she was 'really cool.' It wasn't until later that I realized that I had a crush on her.

But I think that Paul has always known that he's 'different' and that he wasn't like other boys while growing up. Part of his touchiness about his looks comes from being bullied but I also think that he's a lot more self aware than he pretends to be. I think he realized relatively fast how he felt about John (maybe once John picked up with Stuart and Cynthia at art college.) I think he carried that with him for years hence his anguished response to being jilted in Hamburg and how furious he was at John for running off to Spain with Brian. He didn't realize it immediately but once it sticks to you then it fucking sticks. I think that Paul has done a lot internal wrestling with being a bisexual man and what that means for him and that he has been wrestling with it for decades. I think he was fully in the grip of that wrestling as he and John's friendship began growing and Paul realized what was happening to him. He does enjoy women but I also think that he felt it was necessary to pursue them heavily as a young man to camouflage himself.

I don't think a day has gone by since 1957 where Paul has not known what he was. What exactly that means for him…is up for interpretation. That's where the gray area is. But IMO Paul has almost always known that he's sexually attracted to other men and that John woke this in him. The big question for Paul is what he should do about it.

John There's been a lot written about John and his sexuality that I won't rehash here but truthfully I think John was in a similar place to Paul in knowing that he's always had a sexual preference for other men. John was a lot less comfortable about it though. Having unprotected sex with his girlfriends was, IMO, John trying to subconsciously engineer a situation that would "fix" him via an accidental pregnancy necessitating a marriage.

Of course that didn't do anything because it never does. John still felt chemistry with Paul when they met at the fête, with that quote about them "circling each other like cats." IMO John felt something immediately -- it's not entirely clear what -- though I don't think it "love at first sight" like with Paul. IMO their friendship, while still rooted in that chemistry, developed very naturally for John and he got to enjoy a platonic relationship with Paul before he put it all together. I say this because John saw Paul as a kid, not a peer, and that this endured for their lives in Liverpool pre-Hamburg. I struggle to imagine John or Paul deliberately inciting sexual or romantic contact during that time period aside from the group wank sessions (which were really trolling sessions from John.) Like, when Julia died, John went out and sought peers at art college like Cynthia and Stuart, other students his age. John and Paul bonded over losing their mothers and Paul has that quote about pranking people with the "oh yeah…my mum's dead thanks <3" bit but it also seems like John didn't want to be around that all the time. He lost his Uncle George and then his mother, he was starting to think that he was a death-curse on men in his family and that he brought suffering with him. He wanted to be away from that so he took a vacation from music to get a chance of scenery. Which meant putting Paul in a place of competition with Stuart and Cyn but I don't think John was thinking of that initially (though he exploited the situation later.)

Then Hamburg happens and they run wild. I have an entire meta about this that you can read here but I genuinely think John did not see Paul as a full fledged adult and potential sexual partner until they were in Hamburg in the red light district. I think that something happened there that we don't know about, that it's tied up in Stuart deciding to be with Astrid, John jilting Paul, Paul saying "fuck you I'm done" and getting a job at the coil winding factory in Liverpool after being deported, John tracking Paul down and spending weeks (probably) groveling and then giving Paul an ultimatum to come back to the Beatles. All of that screams 'I just realized I'm in love with my best friend and I'm freaking the fuck out' to me lmao.

John and Paul Of course something else changed after that too and John and Paul ended up becoming so close that even the Liverpool squares around them noticed. I think that whatever was going in their relationship, it started here. In the place where John and Paul were equally distraught with each other, the future of the band was uncertain, and Paul wanted a sign of commitment from John so that he didn't feel like he wasted years of his life. And of course John always felt compelled to be the man Paul wanted him to be so he treated Paul to a vacation in Paris which was so life affirming for them that it stayed with them for the rest of their lives. IMO the Paris vacation was explicitly romantic for them.

I think a switch flipped in 1961 and they went from "messing around" to "there's something there." It erupted in Paris and they showed each other more understanding and care then they expected from each other. John did sexy pin up poses for Paul in a bed that they shared; John remembers how the French held each other in their arms and just kissed each other, lovingly; Paul felt that he discovered the answer and that all those big name philosophers had nothing on the self realization he came to inside himself. Paul even took a photo of John that high lighted his package! Thanks to @louiselux for pointing this one out:

The thing was all the kissing and the holding that was going on in Paris. And it was so romantic, just to be there and see them, even though I was twenty-one and sort of not romantic. But I really loved it, the way the people would just stand under a tree kissing; and they weren’t mauling at each other, they were just kissing. — John Lennon, Playboy interview 1980

“We were like Paris existentialists. Jean-Paul Sartre had nothing on us. Sod ‘em all - I could write a novel… It was all inside me. I could do anything now.”

Paul McCartney, Anthology

Something happened in Paris and it wasn't just them getting haircuts and John buying Paul milkshakes. There was commitment there. And then the spell comes over them again when they return in January 1964:

The first night, John and Paul stayed in their suite, listening to records and reading fan mail. George, who had been signed for 100 pounds a day by the Daily Express to write of his experiences in Paris, went to a nightclub in the Place Pigalle.

Back in the City of Light, John and Paul slept till three o'clock in the afternoon. That much everybody agreed on.

Quote by Vincent Mulchrone from Daily Mail: George Harrison was astir early, but John Lennon and Paul McCartney slumbered on until frantic photographers forced them at lens point into the Champs-Élysées.

Derek Taylor (a British journalist) wanted to know why the Beatles slept so much. "My office wants to know what they're doing in Paris, so they'd better be doing something."

Love Me Do by Michael Braun

But I know what you're thinking. "What the hell does this all have to do with these two songs?"

And my reply is to keep a few things in mind:

Paul takes criticism and slights incredibly hard, possibly overreacting in some places and letting them overwhelm him mentally.

He never got over Barcelona, he never stopped resenting Stuart and Brian, he never got over John pulling the rug out from under him regarding the order of their names in the song credits. He contemplated committing suicide by smothering himself while he was in Scotland recovering from John leaving him.

John Lennon had a baby with a woman in the middle of all this. Julian Lennon was born April 8, 1963, conceived in July 1962, less than a year after Paris.

However Absurd & The Lovers That Never Were I listened to "However Absurd" and "The Lovers That Never Were" in that order. My immediate reaction is that these are both the same kind of song: they are both expressing sadness and frustration with John. This is a common theme with Paul's post-1980 John songs. What I find interesting is that they depict different though related gripes regarding John. In "However Absurd" Paul is expressing his longing for a cottagecore fantasy romance with John and then expressing frustration at John mocking him for it:

Ears twitch, like a dog Breaking eggs in a dish Do not mock me when I say This is not a lie

But in "The Lovers That Never Were" Paul expresses a different gripe: frustration that John won't commit to him and "anticipating" the break up that he secretly knew was coming ever since 1963 when John abandoned him and his own son to play patty-cake with Brian in Spain:

I hang patiently on every word you send Will we ever be much more than just friends? As for you, you sit there playing this game You keep me waiting

When all of the clocks have run down All over the world We'll be the lovers that never were

For as long as the sun shines in somebody's eyes I believe in you baby, so don't tell me lies For as long as the trees throw down blossoms and leaves I know there will be a parade of unpainted dreams

And I know dear, how much it's going to hurt If you still refuse to get your hands dirty So you, you must tell me something… I love you Say goodbye or anything

All of the clocks have run down Time's at an end If we can't be lovers we'll never be friends

John's penchant for disregarding Paul's feelings and even weaponizing them against Paul; the dashing of Paul's cottagecore dreams that were made and solidified in Paris; the fact that John, no matter what his intentions, could not get his shit together and commit to Paul no matter what he may have felt. These two songs are not contradictory to one another. Paul's idea of "commitment" looks very much like what he had with Linda and John in 1967: sharing a home, sharing a bed, being together every day, preferably somewhere green and remote. Exclusivity. Remember that Paul deliberately sabotaged his relationship with Jane Asher by nailing a woman in their bed when Jane came home, knowing perfectly well that he was breaking their exclusivity agreement.

That IMO, is what makes someone a lover and not just a friend you have sex with and secretly pine for. No cheating, or at least your agreed version of it. No disrespecting the relationship. Continuously being together. What did John do instead of this?

I think that Paul started out his "relationship" with John carrying high hopes and then watched them crumble to dust, over and over, because John simply did not take him seriously. He got Cynthia pregnant, he ran around on Paul with Brian, he had the nerve to flip out on Jane Asher when Paul brought her around when he was the one who couldn't stay faithful to Cynthia.

My hot take is that these songs demonstrate that Paul simply could not imagine John ever truly committing to him and treating him as a true partner. The homophobia and yes ~society~ is in there too but Paul was happy to flout this when it came to just about anyone else, traipsing all over France with Fraser and Mal. The difference is that he flat out didn't trust John. Being jilted for Stuart in Hamburg loomed too big in his head. Cynthia and Julian loomed too big in his head. Brian and Barcelona, realizing that John would happily betray whatever agreements or understandings he had with Paul simply to screw Paul out of a deal, loomed too big in his head. I think in particular its Barcelona that made Paul think John didn't value any of their professed ideals. John broke Paul's heart years before Yoko came along.

He didn't trust John. Fatalism is easier than taking control of your own life sometimes, and in Paul's mind there was no reason to believe John was genuine. Like, Paul knew John very well! He had very good reason to think that John was simply not serious about him. And John, no matter what his intentions were, proved that correct over and over and over and over.

So ultimately, I think that's what these songs are about. The melodies don't necessarily reflect this when I listened to them but I think that "The Lovers That Never Were" in particular is juxtaposing bitter wink-and-nod lyrics with an oddly perky tune. It's Paul laughing at himself for ever thinking John was willing to commit. He's mocking himself because while he allowed himself to get swept up in the dream of a possible genuine relationship with John, he knew deep down that it would go the way it did. That John would find a reason to get tired of him and abandon him. And then when Yoko came along, that's exactly what John did. Paul fatalistically accepted that the time had come and John met Paul's low expectations of him.

The Weight I don't think John and Paul necessarily planned to have a secret relationship. It seems more like they bundled the sexual/romantic stuff into their "thing" where it was just part and parcel of who they were and what they did. "It's only gay if the balls touch" etc. At some point that changed but Paul became convinced early on that it wouldn't work out so he didn't acknowledge his own secret desires and dreams. There was no roadmap between him and John about where they were taking this exactly and how they were going to make it work. He had sex with John and even engaged with romantic actions with John, hoping against hope that something would change and he would be proven wrong, but then John would be careless and Paul would collapse into hurt.

And oh yeah: Paul never, ever discussed any of this with John Lennon. He never told John how hurt he was because he didn't want to put up with John's derision. He felt devalued and lost and in typical Paul fashion he chose to ignore this for years and never bring it up, forcing it to come out in bizarre nonsensical actions when he inevitably boiled over. Why would he choose to confront it? He made sure to set up several safety nets to catch him! Jane and the Ashers, striking out on his own with "The Family Way" score, rubbing John's face in his escapades with other males as a way to go 'see, I don't need you just like you don't need me. How about THAT?'

I don't think John ever intended to hurt Paul as badly as he did. He thought that if Paul was upset about something then he would know via their ~telepathic connection.~ I think that he deliberately overlooked warning signs because he felt intensely guilty about certain actions he took (God only knows which ones) and that he helped himself not see Paul's hurt. I do think if he had the slightest idea of what was going on in Paul's head then he would have changed tactics immediately out of fear of losing Paul forever. But at heart John was a coward and if he didn't want to see something was wrong then he wouldn't see it unless something forced his hand. Like say, having his former best friend/ex-lover look him in the eye and go "I can write new songs" and kill The Beatles in a court of law. (And of course once he realized what he had done, years after the fact, it was too little too late. He couldn't take it back. How do you make up for inflicting that much hurt on someone that you supposedly care for? This paralyzed John for years.)

This was obviously a huge mistake and I think it was one of the landmines that blew their relationship up. Paul allowed his distrust and bitterness to overwhelm him. He should have been honest with John about his feelings; maybe not immediately but when they were able to look back with some perspective. Paul should have realized that their relationship could take heat. He should have trusted John more and if he had then John could have risen to the occasion. Everything could have been different. No more "I believe in you baby, so don't tell me lies." No more "Do not mock me when I say/This is not a lie."

He even expresses this in a third song, one that IMO puts this entire thing into perspective and ties these three songs together with a neat bow. "This One":

Did I ever take you in my arms, look you in the eye Tell you that 'I do?' Did I ever open up my heart And let you look inside?…

Did I ever touch you on the cheek Say that you were mine, thank you for the smile? Did I ever knock upon your door Try to get inside?…

Please take note of the bolded "Tell you that 'I do'!" Paul's deepest regret with regards to John is not trusting him more. He wishes that he had opened up to John about his hurt and how he angry he was that John was devaluing their relationship. That he wanted to commit to John but that he was scared John wouldn't say 'I do' back.

From John's POV he's just being John; he's looking out for the band. God knows he tried to be what Paul needed him to be but he got mixed signals and inconsistent behavior and Paul's ice queen behavior frustrated him to no end. This resulted in an endless circle of "fuck you/no no no, fuck YOU/well fuck you then!/fuck you" that ended up killing what they had.

But John is guilty in this too. He never made himself accountable to Paul. He didn't explain his actions. He acted rashly and selfishly and then was shocked when it blew up in his face. He didn't consistently act like he loved Paul. He took Paul for granted and told himself that he was doing the right thing, because changing your behavior is very very hard. He didn't let Paul in when it mattered.

Did you ever take me in your arms Look me in the eye, tell me that 'you do?'

As Paul grew up and he started to come to grips with the "What happened" of it all, maybe he realized that he had procrastinated. That he put off what mattered most because he couldn't bear to make himself vulnerable as a young man. Maybe he was waiting for a perfect moment to open himself up to John knowing perfectly well it would never arrive, a common delaying tactic for insecure and avoidant people. Not admitting that the perfect moment would never come and that he had to extend trust to receive it in return.

If I never did it, I was only waiting For a better moment that didn't come There never could be a better moment Than this one, this one

I think he's still angry at John for multiple betrayals, slaps to the face, and devaluing the specialness of their relationship and their affection for each other. But I also think that Paul is angry at himself for not trusting John, for not working harder at their relationship. He also delivered multiple betrayals and slaps to the face to John, feeding John's insecurity and fears of abandonment. Making a mockery of their relationship and how special it was. Paul has been doing public penance for this ever since John died, which snapped everything into perspective and he finally realized the full scope of his own screw ups.

Because it took two to destroy a relationship this intense and this special. If Paul did not know that before...

Well. He does now.

#the beatles #mclennon #john lennon #paul mccartney #mclennon meta #my meta #mclennon server #this was a really fun ask anon thank you!

[hinamie]

some notes/hcs from th jjk band!au ! read at your leisure i have written a novel 🫠

tl;dr guitarist brothers suku/ita bassist megu drummer nobara band name BL4CK FL4SH

i imagine them slightly aged up in this au, i'm thinking yuuji n them are around 17 and sukuna is 2 years older ( i would make the age gap wider to account for canon but i feel like any older and sukuna wouldn't be caught dead playing in his little brother's band)

it /is/ technically yuuji's band, he /was/ the one who started it even though sukuna would argue that he's the one funding the whole thing and nobara would argue that she's the one organizing and promoting every one of their gigs and megumi would argue that he constantly loses sleep writing mixing and producing their songs,, they all love yuuji tho so they go along and let him put his name on it

don't think too hard about how sukuna, 19, makes enough to fund a band . wholesome legal stuff, promise

yuuji's current guitar is a hand me down from sukuna after he had saved up enough to splurge on the double necked monstrosity he has currently. because they were strapped for cash growing up, for years yuuji played on a beginner kid's size electric guitar that sukuna (serial music snob) couldn't stand the sound of and may or may not have violently smashed before tsundere-ly shoving his old guitar into yuuji's hands.

that being the case, sukuna thinks what yuuji has done to his old guitar is atrocious bc he's the type to take /meticulous/ care of his instruments. we're talking regular tune ups, wax, mods, the works. man carries spare strings and a microfibre cloth on him at all times just in case and Will Not let yuuji near his gear because yuuji is a hurricane of a boy and has dropped and broken his equipment more times than any of them care to count . they do however make a game out of placing bets as to what he'll knock over during practice

yuuji usually does lead vocals because his energy is quite frankly contagious and he's a natural at working a crowd . Sukuna sings backup vocal but there are a handful of songs where they switch and he sings lead and those songs are . hm . a very different vibe ! and some of their most successful releases much to his brother's chagrin

megumi had always noticed and admired sukuna's voice and thought it would be a waste not to give him a lead vocal part so he was originally the one to offer to collaborate with sukuna to write a few songs more tailored to his style ,, yuuji felt a bit snuffed but couldn't deny that megumi had a point so he agreed to take a back seat

once sukuna had gotten a taste for the spotlight and saw the stream count on the songs he led he and yuuji started bickering a lot more over who gets to take over lead vocals. they've tried duets before and it's simply out of the question so instead they fight over megumi to get him to write for one of them. it still usually ends up being yuuji which irks sukuna but he's placated by how explosive the reaction is when he /does/ get a song to himself

megumi can also sing !!! he's really good !!!!except he's shy and stubborn and won't do it in front of others. he once drunkenly admitted that he has a secret folder on his laptop full of audio files of himself singing unreleased songs and they (mostly nobara) haven't let him forget it and pester him relentlessly to let them listen. he will not because his songs are emo and sappy and pining and definitely not about yuuji

this is MY brainrot so this au is not immune to pining megumi x oblivious yuuji. one time yuuji kept inviting a girl he liked to their rehearsals and megumi's mood would get so sour that most days they had to call practice early and the ensuing show was one of their worst performances ever because their practices had been so unproductive. nobara is 95% sure she knows what was up but in the interest of keeping megumi in the band she kept her mouth shut ((she did admonish yuuji afterwards that no more outside spectators were allowed at practice no matter how hot he thinks they are))

in the days leading up to their first ever show yuuji was an anxious wreck to the point where the rest of them were legitimately concerned for his health but completely at a loss as to what they could do to help. megumi's love language is Not words of affirmation so instead he got yuuji a new set of audio cables accompanied by a note that read "good luck -M" to help ease his nerves. yuuji keeps the note taped to his guitar

megumi and nobara can both play piano and alternate covering the keyboard parts if a song requires it. (((megumi is a lot better at it which annoys nobara but she attributes the skill difference to his "freakishly long fingers and perfect pitch, which is basically cheating anyway")))

nobara gives the boys hell for making her play manager most of the time but she honestly thrives when a gig is coming up and she gets to order them around and use sukuna's credit card to book photoshoots and print promotional materials and buy them new outfits to match the concept

everyone but sukuna dreads the aforementioned shopping days. yuuji is a chronic protag who just wants to sing with his friends and megumi thinks coordinated outfits are frivolous and a waste of time . sukuna however /loves/ the visual aspect of performing because he's a dramatic bitch and wants to make sure they leave an impression. he and nobara are a force to be reckoned with and megumi and yuuji fight for their lives when they bust out the eyeliner

gojo is in this au because i guess he has to be smh i am never free -_- he was megumi's old music teacher and he runs the studio they rent out ("friends and family discount for my favourite student! aren't i kind, megumi-chan?") and they're pretty sure he's famous overseas or a retired star or something because whenever he comes to their shows there's a flood of paparazzi and tabloids that he miraculously manages to avoid??? they have no idea how he does it but they're happy to leech off the publicity

#jjk band!au #i have more don't tempt me take this away from me #hina.txt

[ofliterarynature]

JANUARY 2024 WRAP UP

[loved liked ok DNF (reread) bookclub*]

Mammoths at the Gates • An Impossible Imposter • Greywaren • The Hexologists • Mister Impossible • Reclaiming Two Spirits • (Check, Please: #Hockey)* • Thornhedge • Call Down the Hawk • All the Hidden Paths • All the Beauty in the World • (The Raven King) • (A Strange and Stubborn Endurance) • (Blue Lily, Lily Blue) • The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie • The Missing Page • Bird By Bird • Lucky Red • Portrait of a Thief

I suppose I may as well start with the giant pile of Maggie Stiefvater and get that out of the way, lol. According to Goodreads, this was at least my 3rd time through the entire Raven Cycle. Despite that, I had only the vaguest idea of what happened in the last two books, and now having reread them (again), yeah, that tracks! I can hang with book 3 but I have no idea what was really going on in The Raven King, and as a series finale I didn't love it. It felt a lot like the dreamer plotlines drowned out the original Glendower and ley line story that we started with. But, Maggie being Maggie, I love the way she writes so much that I at least still enjoyed the reading experience. And it made an incredibly clear lead-in to the Dreamer Trilogy (which I had not read), it made total sense, I was hopeful! Again, Maggie being Maggie, I had a good time reading them, I liked learning more about the Lynch brothers, I'm always down for some art forgery, but I just didn't really like it and (while I'm glad for Maggie that she was able to write it) I could have lived without it. It completely did not have the vibe or charm of TRC and, criminally, did not include the Gangsey. How!!!!

The Missing Page - liked it! It felt a lot more solid as a mystery than the first book, which I greatly appreciated, though the villagers in the first book were maybe a bit more fun. I'm not feeling particularly inspired to go look up more Cat Sebastian after this, but if she writes another one of these I'd read it.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie - I've had this one on my mystery tbr for a while, and for some reason I'd thought it was set in a much earlier time period than the 1950's? lol. Our protagonist is the youngest of 3 sisters growing up in genteel poverty with an absent father, and she has the run of the village, the house, and an incredibly well stocked chemistry lab left by an ancestor. She is both incredibly clever and terribly naive, and absolutely terrifying because of it. Flavia is fascinating as a detective, because she's not written as the protagonist of a middle grade mystery novel - she's a child. This was an interesting read, but I'm not sure it's what I'm looking for in a mystery novel and I don't think I'll continue the series.

A Strange and Stubborn Endurance - reread this in advance of the sequel - it was a bit easier to see some flaws this time around, but had a good time! This *was* my first time listening to it on audio though, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it. It had a different person reading for each of the main characters and their voices just didn't pair well for me - not to mention one of them also read Lev AC Rosen's Lavender House and boy does he do some distinctive character voices.

All the Hidden Paths - didn't go quite so well. I think primarily my mental space was not pairing well with the tensions of reading this for the first time, I do think on a reread I might like it better. Somehow the spy/saboteur was my favorite character? He was soo bad at his job, I found it very funny. But overall, I think it was just a little too close to a rehash of the plot from the first book, leaving me to think Meadows might not be the best at writing mysteries. Luckily it does at least score high on my romance scale.

All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me - first nonfic of the year! I've been eagerly anticipating my library getting an audio copy ever since I first heard about this last year, it sounded cool, I'm fascinated by art museums and behind-the-scenes! Unfortunately I was not into it, and almost 2 months on I can't remember enough to even try to tell you why. It did pair interestingly with another recent read, The Mixed Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, but I'm still learning how far into memoir territory I can go. Someone stop me from trying the other Met nonfic book I found recently lol.

Thornhedge - wonderful! No notes! I love fairy tales and this was a delight to read.

Check, Please! #Hockey - loved getting to revisit this for book club! I've been meaning to for a few years, because y'all. I've read so much fanfic, and I have no idea what is in the comic, what Ngozi posted as extras, and what is fanon. The comic had less than I was expecting! Still fun, my fellow book-clubber liked it, but my real love was the tweets! I'll definitely try to read Vol 2 this year so I can then browse the larger collection of them compiled in the Chirpbook.

Reclaiming Two Spirits: I saw this one on tumblr and fortunately was able to get access to the audiobook! It's a topic I was very interested in learning more about, and I did! But - this is a research project, more than anything, it could be very repetitive (which, fair. colonizers suck), and it felt distanced from its subject. I feel it's a book that definitely has its place, but it's not objectively a 'good read,' and I'd rather have had something from someone who is indigenous and two-spirit themselves.

The Hexologists - it has its quirks, but this was unapologetically a delight to read and I had a fun time! I'm a sucker for a world with a magic vs industrial revolution, not to mention a married pair of established investigators, and I always appreciate an author who's willing to get a bit silly. If there's ever more books I'd love to read them!

An Impossible Imposter - she is what she is, I had a good time! This one felt like it might have taken some inspo from The Moonstone 👀

Mammoths at the Gate - had a good time with this, as I always do with the Singing Hills books. Stories about stories are like catnip, I should reread them all sometime!

Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott (DNF) - I have only the vaguest memories of reading parts of this for a creative writing class in college, and now that I'm getting more into nonfiction thought why not? Unfortunately the audiobook version I got was read by the author, who absolutely does not have an audiobook voice/cadence. I considered trying again with the version read by someone else, but decided I wasn't actually interested enough to continue.

Lucky Red By Claudia Cravens (DNF) - the host of one of the podcasts I listen to was gushing about this one and I was like, sapphic western? Sign me up! I read about 25% of it, and it all seemed fine, it just wasn't feeling particularly interesting to me. Absolutely give it a shot if you'd like!

Portrait of a Thief by Grace D Li (DNF) - I knew going in this had been getting mixed reviews. I really like the idea of it - I enjoy a heist, am always interested in fine arts/art history drama, and vigilante art repatriation hell yeah! But this felt very much like it was trying to emulate a heist *movie*, and it just wasn’t working for me as a book. If this ever gets adapted I’d love to see it.

#bec posts #book log #wrap up 2024 #books #booklr #book reviews #the raven cycle #dreamer trilogy #maggie stiefvater #hither page #the sweetness at the bottom of the pie #a strange and stubborn endurance #all the beauty in the world #thornhedge #check please #reclaiming two spirits #the hexologists #singing hills cycle #veronica speedwell

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

So, I weirdly haven’t written enough about this on this blog so far, given what a big thing it is for me – I’m going to the fucking UK this summer. For real this time. For real. Here is a post about it.

I first posted on this blog about wanting to go to the UK in early 2021, I think. I remember making posts about how maybe once the vaccines were finally released, and I was all vaccinated, travel would be safe, and I could go for a little while before I start my college courses again. That didn’t happen for quite a few reasons.

I spent much of 2021 planning a hypothetical trip, knowing it probably couldn’t really happen, because obviously things like this don’t really happen, but I needed something to fantasize about in the depths of lockdown. It’s odd that a global pandemic made me interested in international travel for the first time. Pre-COVID, my life was so full of a single sport that I didn’t really have time to think about anything else as a hobby. I was on the road most weekends, but that road was the 401, driving off to the same few cities anywhere from two to twelve hours away, to sleep in a cheap hotel or on someone’s gym floor and then shout at teenagers at day and immediately drive home. Every once in a while we’d go to a tournament in the States, which counted as exciting international travel. The idea of actually seeing places that are not in or near the border with my country just hadn’t occurred to me.

Then the world ended, I fell deep into the Britcom rabbit hole, all that stuff. And in 2021, I got really into 1) memorizing how to label all the countries and major cities in the world, and all the counties or other regional areas in the UK and Ireland, on a blank map, because I’d learned that the larger world existed and I wanted to be clear about where it all is, and 2) going through places I’ve never been on Google Earth, usually while listening to audio comedy. I also took to looking up things to do in the UK on Trip Advisor, mapping the route on Google Maps and following it on Google Earth, knowing this was all for a hypothetical fantasy trip but still researching things like train fares and schedules because it was more fun if it felt like it could be real.

I’m fascinated by the idea of places that are Different From Here being actual real physical places where people could actually go. Which is especially weird in this case because I actually have been to the UK. I have a godmother there, whom I’ve met in person three times, twice when she’s come to Canada and once when for my sixteenth birthday she paid for my mother and I to go to England for a week. We stayed at her place in London, did all the tourist-y things, also spent a day in some spot in Somerset but I’m fuzzy on where or why, it was 2006. My clearest memory of the week is seeing Spamalot on St. Patrick’s Day and thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I’ve also got fairly clear memories of climbing stairs at St. Paul’s Cathedral, thinking Westminster Abbey was the most beautiful building I’d ever seen, and seeing some extremely cool stuff at the British Library including some original handwritten Beatles lyrics. And I remember the tube and being impressed that the cars really do have driver doors on the wrong side, that’s not just a thing they made up on Fawlty Towers.

Still, it was so long ago, and it was such a short time compared to the amount of time that I’ve spent watching Britian on TV, that it does feel a bit like Britain is a fictional place that exists on TV. Obviously I realize that’s a very ignorant North American thing for me to say, and in my defense I think I know a hell of a lot more about Britain than the average ignorant North American. I can label all the regions in England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales in under five minutes. But I’ve got to admit, on a visceral level, learning all that stuff does feel a bit like memorizing lore in a fantasy novel.

There is kind of an appeal in the idea that… okay, the last time I was this obsessed with something besides a sport in which I actually participated, I was a kid in the Harry Potter fandom. I was a kid who read a lot of books, and a lot of my favourites happened to be British fantasy or sci-fi novels (Harry Potter, CS Lewis, Tolkein, His Dark Materials, Douglas Adams), but Harry Potter was the one that took over my life from the ages of about ten to fourteen. You classic situation of – didn’t have friends in real life, all my social interaction came from Harry Potter message boards, a vast chunk of my free time dedicated to reading every passage of the books over and over and over and analyzing them and writing things about them and I made some friends on the internet who loved Luna Lovegood as much as I did. Then I got to high school and started wrestling and made some friends in real life and slowly moved away from online fandom, didn’t do anything except that for fifteen years, then the world ended, I came back and found a new online fandom that was also British but had less magic and more panel shows, then the author turned out to be a terrible person and ruined my childhood.

Anyway. The point is that I remember when I was a kid, obviously I spent ages fantasizing about being able to actually go to all those places in Harry Potter. But I couldn’t, because those are not real places. Well, my new foray into fandom also feels a bit like that – like this fictional thing I’ve got obsessed with that no one around me knows anything about but some people on the internet are into it. Except that this time, the place where all these things happen is actually a real place, and I can pay money to go there. This concept remains amazing to me.

So I mapped out the idea of this trip a couple of years ago, and for a long time, it stayed in a limbo between fantasy and genuine possibility. I did actually start working out budgets and putting money aside for it, but all the while thinking this won’t actually work. I was starting to do things post-lockdown again, the sense that we were all locked down so nothing is real so I may as well engaged in some escapism and plan some fantasy trips – that started to give way to regular life, and in regular life, I’m not a person who does shit like that. I can’t just fly across the ocean to see a fictional place. I still had it vaguely in my head that maybe someday I’d like to, but I stopped actively planning anything.

But at the same time, the whole concept of Britain was starting to feel a bit less fictional (I’m… I’m feeling the need to clarify, again, that this is just a sort of emotional automatic response to put “the place where Britcom happens” in the “fictional” category in my brain… I did not at any point genuinely think the United Kingdom was fictional… especially since I’ve been there before). I do remember the first time I got physical, tangible proof that the people in the fictional Britcom world are real, when Russell Howard came to my city in March 2022 (my then-girlfriend got us tickets because she knew I liked British comedians, she was excited about it so I didn’t tell her that actually I’m mad at him for the Jordan Peterson apologism so don’t want to go, it’s not something I’d have chosen myself but it was a thoughtful gift and to be fair an extremely fun night), and I could not get over the idea that the man from the fictional place was here in real life displacing air like he’s a real human being and actually all of it is physically real. Over the next few months I did an 8.5-hour drive to New York City to see Nish Kumar, and then two months later a 2-hour drive to see him do the same show in Montreal, because it was that fucking great a show. I also saw James Acaster in Montreal, and a club night with Dara O’Briain and Fern Brady and Phil Wang and Tom Allen and Sindhu Vee and every single one of them was an actual real person breathing the same air as me. Before the show I saw Dara O’Briain on the street and was so shocked that I hit my mother too hard to show her and she jumped and the commotion attracted his attention and I didn’t know what to do except stare at him like he was a zoo animal until he smiled awkwardly at me and went on his way.

Things like this did rather renew my interest in a trip, not just for the novelty of seeing a place that feels fictional, but for the more practical purposes of seeing my favourite comedians live. My interests within Britcom were starting to shift significantly toward stand-up, I got obsessed for a while with learning everything about the history of the Edinburgh Festival in the 21st Century, it seemed like another world, the time of the Chocolate Milk Gang and 24-hour shows from the early 00s, but then I watched videos on the internet that were filmed at the 2022 Edinburgh Festival and realized this place is actually real and still happening now and it is technically possible to go there.

After that, the concept rapidly became de-fictionalized in my mind when I sent someone a message on a comedy forum, in the hopes of finding a few comedy recordings that I heard existed, and by complete coincidence stumbled upon the best person I possibly could have. I’d thought worst case scenario is he doesn’t reply and I will be left to assume he saw my message and considered it horribly rude, great scenario is he has a few things I’m asking for, amazing best case scenario is maybe he has lots of stuff and is willing to share. As it happened, I got the best case scenario, plus far more than that. Specifically, a the coolest fucking person I could possibly have found, as a new friend, direct interaction that made all of this seem a hell of a lot less fictional very, very fast. He said things like “So are you ever going to come out here and actually see this stuff yourself”, and I said things like “Obviously I have plotted a route and looked up train fares but don’t be silly, that was just the stuff of lockdown-induced dreams.”

I quickly started planning things more seriously, but at the same time, the editing work I’d been doing started drying up, I had a bit of a financial crisis where I became concerned that I’d be unable to pay rent, and couldn’t save for a trip. I followed the 2023 Edinburgh Festival from afar, from NextUp streams and hearing stories about it from a friend who actually went there and sent me pictures, which was so fucking cool, and it was all so very very real.

I got a new job, this one much harder because it involves leaving the house all day for five days a week, but also it’s much more stable than the editing work I did for all of lockdowns, and I was able to start saving money in the second half of 2023. I learned that the place where I work shuts down for the last week of July, and the Monday of the following week is a holiday. So I put in a request for just four days off, the Tuesday-Friday, to create a two-week holiday. One week in London at the end of July, and one week in Edinburgh during the first week of the Edinburgh Festival.

The time off got approved (barely, I was told I can’t book any other vacation time in 2024, but I got it) in late 2023, and it was so exciting, and that’s the first time it started to feel even a little bit real. Then I booked an Air B&B for the week in Edinburgh, because it’s my understanding that accommodation availability and prices are a huge issue there and you want to book early. I think I did well, though. Found a place that’s not cheap but not unfeasibly expensive, I can have my own room and it’s a 50-minute walk or 10-minute bus from Edinburgh city centre. It was so exciting to book the place, put some money down, finally have something on the books for sure. Though I did triple check that it’s fully refundable if I cancel up until pretty much the day before, just in case something goes wrong.

I booked the flights over Christmas. They weren’t cheap, but I was able to afford them without destroying my ability to pay rent, because it turns out there is a reason why I put myself through human interaction for 8-10 hours five days a week. I did pay an extra fee to give myself the ability to pay another fee and cancel them, because still, it felt like I can’t be totally sure this will actually work. But that was a big commitment.

And that’s pretty well the main things sorted out. I still have to book a whole lot of train tickets, but I have the flights. I have the time off work. I have the Edinburgh accommodation. I have accommodation in London, because the absolute coolest person I could possibly come across on a comedy message board has a spare room, and is extremely kind and generous with his time and space, and I’ve said some pretty disparaging things about that message board before (based on some quite bad threads from like fifteen years ago, that I spent weeks reading in their entirety because, you know, autism), and I would like to take them all back.

Now they’ve announced the first bunch of acts at the 2024 Edinburgh Festival, and I’ve been going through picking out which ones look most interesting to me, and for maybe the first time, it’s finally feeling completely, entirely real. This is happening. For real this time. I am going through an Edinburgh Festival catalogue not just to take screenshots of the most interesting blurbs so I can save them in a folder and/or post them on my blog to say here’s an interesting piece of history. I am going through it to pick what shows I wish to see.

So here’s my plan, that I’m writing because I now feel confident that I think it’s actually going to happen. Obviously I have a spreadsheet with various tabs, and a KMZ file so I can open Google Earth with all the places I might potentially want to see already marked. I have been planning this trip for years. I have two weeks in the UK, and I don’t want to waste a single second. I want to make sure all that time spent planning comes to something, because as a fundamental part of my personality, I have always believed that there is a level of planning you can do to guarantee that everything goes right. This belief has been proven wrong time and time again, but I’ve never tried something with this much planning beforehand, so surely this time it’ll work. No taking a chance on some tourist attraction that might turn out to be shit, because I’ll have looked at it all on Google Earth beforehand and ranked things in order of how cool they look.

I have organized my spreadsheet into seven tabs: overview, plan by day, places to eat, things to see London, in Edinburgh, in Cambridge, and things to pack. I have organized each “things to see” tab into three sections: things I want to see for reasons related to general tourism, things I want to see for reasons related to comedy, and things I want to see for reasons related to Harry Potter. I apologize for the latter, and obviously I will not be doing anything that would give revenue to JK Rowling. But nothing JK Rowling can say in the 2020s will change my childhood, and I need to spend some amount of time indulging my childhood dreams of running around fancy buildings feeling like I’m in a magical British land.

London, tourism: pretty straightforward. Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral are on the list, because I remember how cool they were last time, and because for some reason when I stopped being Christian at age 16 I did not also get rid of my awe at fancy churches. I want to see Parliament and related areas, I want to try to get a picture of the Number 10 door as seen in Yes Minister. I want to see some bridges. Take a cable car across a river. Go look at Douglas Adams in Highgate Cemetery (I realize there are more famous people than Douglas Adams there, I’d like to see them too, but mainly Douglas Adams). Go see what The British Library has going on while I’m there. There are too many pubs on the list given the fact that I’m currently trying to stop drinking, I am going to cut some of those pubs off the list and I’m just trying to decide which ones, but I really love a good pub and the ones in London look so cool and even if I can’t have a pint I want to sit there in the atmosphere and have a burger or some shit.

Harry Potter tour of London is simple. Obviously I want to go look at King’s Cross Station, I did it when I was 16 and it was so fucking cool, I don’t care how stupid that is. Otherwise, I’ve looked up three different areas that were used in filming Diagon Alley, and according to Google Earth, seem like the do sort of look like Diagon Alley-like places. That’s what’s interesting to me. I’m not really interested in places where the movies just happened to be filmed (the movies were fine, I’ve seen them a couple of times each, but it was the books that I read until I had them nearly memorized), I want to see places that look like they could be where the books were actually set. And Goodwin’s Court appears to look like where Harry Potter could have actually been set. So I’ve made an appointment to go walk down a road.

For the comedy-related locations in London, there are a few venues I want to see. Ideally while something’s playing in them, but even if there’s nothing I’m interested in at the Soho Theatre while I’m there, I’d still want to go in and just see the building, after the all the shows I’ve seen and heard that were recorded there. Same with The Bill Murray. Battersea Arts Centre. I also wish to make a pilgrimage to the bit of Regent’s Park where Daniel Kitson’s done some of the most landmark nights of comedy in the last twenty years. Obviously I want to go stand outside the gates to the Taskmaster house and see just how close it is to that golf course. (There will also be a few hours of the itinerary where I might just leave some of the details blank, no need to get too much into what I want to see there, it’s in my spreadsheet as just “Crystal Palace”, and I will say that if you don’t want people to go look at a place where you used to live, don’t make your address the title of your theatre show – I need to stress again, just so we’re clear about what level of creepiness I’m talking about here, it is a former address, not anywhere that anyone significant lives now or has lived for the last fifteen years, it's just the subject of comedy stories that are now long in the past, as are various surrounding landmarks, it’s archaeology.)

Now, in Edinburgh I’ve put a lot fewer things on the itinerary, because I want to leave most of my time for going to see comedy shows. And going to see a couple of music shows, because that first wave of events they’ve announced includes a couple of traditional Scottish music things that I am so excited about, it’s going to be mostly comedy but I do want to do that as well. Celtic music, Harry Potter, British comedy – all the biggest special interests of my life besides the one where you beat people up, all easy to access at this festival (I mean, technically Edinburgh has something called wrestling too, but it’s best if I don’t hear anyone try to compare the Max + Ivan wrestling to the sport that I do).

I do want to climb Arthur’s Seat, because I’ve done it about a hundred times in Google Earth so I just have to do it in real life. When Mark Watson released his book last year, I got the signed and dedicated version and he said we can tell him about a problem we have for him to solve in the dedication. I said my problem is I’m going to London and Edinburgh next year and need advice on where to go, he said I should climb Scott’s Monument. Even though my levels of respect for Mark Watson have dropped significantly since that book actually came out, I am still going to climb Scott’s Monument because Mark Watson told me to.

Similarly, this extremely kind and cool person I know recently got the chance to get me an autographed copy of Tim Key’s new book (which I unfortunately won’t get until I go to London and pick it up in person, but it looks great), where he also asked Tim to give me some advice for my trip. Tim Key said to go to Mosque Kitchen, and Indian restaurant in Edinburgh, so I’m doing that. Oh, and while I’m in London I have to go to a place called Kebab Kid, because it’s Nish Kumar’s favourite shawarma place in England, which I know because I know a guy who could just walk up to Nish Kumar after one of his gigs and ask him what his favourite shawarma place is. Have I mentioned how fucking cool this is?

Anyway. That’s the extent of my interest in Edinburgh tourism, mainly. I mean, if I were going when the festival weren’t on, there would be plenty of other stuff I want to see. But I don’t want to take time away from festival events. I might do the castle. The castle’s probably cool. I definitely want to walk up that hill, as I’ve done many times on Google Earth, and look at the castle. Whether I pay to go inside will depend if there’s a hole in the comedy schedule, I guess.

In the Edinburgh – Harry Potter section, I have a few things. Greyfriar’s Kirkyard, the graveyard with the story about the dog that’s probably bullshit (I mean, it happened, but I think someone was just feeding that dog) but the story about how it inspired Harry Potter character names that’s true. Go get a picture of Tom Riddle’s grave. I’ve marked a couple of streets and a couple of buildings that look particularly like they could be from Harry Potter, those are on the list of places to walk. There’s a Harry Potter store that I want to go in and look through the stuff because the interior seems really cool, but I promise I would never spend money in there.

And then Edinburgh – comedy will probably take care of itself. I want to see The Stand and The Gilded Balloon, as the sites of many of my favourite comedy events over the last twenty years. But I’m hoping I’ll end up in those places anyway to see shows, so no need to make a special trip. If not, though, I’m making a special trip. I have to see the stage where the cow got torn apart. I absolutely have to go see it in person.

There is also the Cambridge tab, because I have blocked off one of my London days to take a train to Cambridge and back. I have made a Google Earth document with about 20 of the most interesting-seeming colleges marked. Obviously I’m not going to see 20 colleges, I’m going to look at them all in Google Earth and then rank them by how cool they look and go see as many as I can in order. I have also, of course, marked down which ones let you take tours and at what times. The place I’m most excited to see is the Wren Library, which appears to be a library from Harry Potter or His Dark Materials or something. I want to see Trinity College because it’s the college on which Douglas Adams based the college in the first Dirk Gently book. A few of the colleges have chapels that look really pretty and are interesting to me because I have for some reason not lost my awe of pretty churches. And mainly, I just want to walk around the Cambridge University grounds looking at stuff.

Oh, and we’re leaving another day to take a train to Kent, where they have an archive of stand-up comedy materials that I wish to see. But I haven’t made a tab for that, because I just want to see some stuff in the University of Kent and then go back to London.

I am also hoping I can block out one day from the Edinburgh week to not book any shows, and just take trains around Scotland. I have always wanted to take trains around Scotland. I have always romanticized trains, I have always romanticized Scotland, taking a train through rural parts of Scotland will make me feel like I’m on the Hogwarts Express, it’s everything my over-romanticizing heart fantasized about when imagining this trip. I’ve checked, and while it would be an incredibly long day, it is possible to take a train from Edinburgh to Mallaig in the morning, have a couple of hours in Mallaig, and take another train back at night. This would take me, twice, through something that’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful train journeys in the world, from Glasgow to Mallaig. Mallaig is a tiny village on the West Coast of Scotland and it’s got a hiking trail and a pub and I just want to take a train across a country and walk around the trail and then sit in that pub and look at the ocean. I want that so badly. It’s been a rough couple of months, I find it hard to spend 8 to 10 hours a day interacting with other people, the thought that one day in early August I might spend one hour sitting in a pub in Mallaig looking at the ocean is really getting me the through the day at this point. There are a few pubs in Mallaig, but obviously I’ve picked out my favourite. I want to eat seafood. I love seafood. That’s not just a Mallaig thing, seafood is my favourite food and I always eat lots of it when I visit the East Coast of Canada because it’s better near the ocean. All of Britain is near the ocean, so I want to eat all their seafood.

Okay, that’s the plan. I was going to write about what I’m thinking in terms of actual shows to see, but I might let that turn into a different post. Right now, I’m just excited about the idea of posting this on the internet because it is real and I am actually going to do it and having this to look forward to is way too big a proportion of my motivation at this point in my life.

[galwithalibrarycard]

My New Who watchthrough has now reached well into the second half of Series 7, and it’s time for some Opinions:

- I’m gay for Clara Oswald already. Also I crackship her with Amy Pond and I will be reading all the fanfic.

- I don’t care for River Song.

- Okay, no, hear me out, River’s an interesting character and I like Alex Kingston, but I can’t stand how her entire character bit is a constant smug-ass “I know something you don’t know”, and her whole arc felt kind of anticlimactic. Also, I don’t buy for a second that she and Eleven have an actual romantic relationship. I don’t see the spark. It’s all offscreen if it happens at all, so I don’t care. Bringing me to…

- Eleven/Amy/Rory OT3 is the superior ship of the Smith years. Platonic found family or romantic messy awkward polyamory, either way they’re very sweet together and I’d rather watch them than River any day. You can also have asexual Eleven in there, which I can really see why people headcanon. I want to call them “ot3: the power of three” but I feel like the threes sound redundant. Oh whatever, I’m calling it, that’s the ship tag I’m using.

- If it wasn’t for the weird Doctor/River romance, you could totally say that River’s Time Lord DNA makes Amy, Rory, and Eleven ALL her parents, and I’m annoyed that canon makes it more than a little weird to consider that headcanon concept, because it could be cute in another world.

- I like the Ponds a lot, but I have to say: Amy and Rory’s ending felt like such an arbitrary “we’re obligated to make the separation from the Doctor permanent, what monster can we use to do that?” ass-pull of a writing choice. In my head, Amy and Rory’s arc ends with them staying on Earth in 2012 at the end of The Power of Three and enjoying the mundane life they built together. Just say the Doctor sends them postcards and visits offscreen once in a while. The characters don’t have to be walled off from the Doctor forever just because the actors never want to come back to the show. I really like the idea of them choosing their own life outside the TARDIS, almost Martha-style. (Gotta love Martha!)

- It feels cheap to take Amy’s kid away and then not bother to give her an emotional arc dealing with that trauma. Same for Rory, for that matter. I bet someone could write or has written some extremely deep fanfic about that. I don’t know that I want to read it but I want it to exist, if that makes sense. And I would’ve liked to see more of it onscreen.

- The episode with the Gunslinger is OOC garbage, the Doctor would never use a gun, learn the show’s lore, Steve.

- So many little “what straight white man did this???” moments in Moffat era. It’s like going on a nice walk and then every once in a while you find yourself walking through a surprise cloud of gnats. (Not that Davies era was completely blameless either but damn.)

- Eleven’s “retirement” and hopeless disillusionment in The Snowmen feels like a flat, rushed, emotionless retread of the far superior arc of Ten going dark and mad with grief and his god complex across his last four specials. Ten did it better.

- Speaking of which, godDAMN the Tenth Doctor’s send off was good. I miss him forever and I need all his audio dramas and tie-in novels yesterday.

- While we’re on that, I have FEELINGS about Tenrose and Tentoorose and how they’re the same exact ship but also two completely different ships, but I’m still tagging them both as “otp: I believe in her” and no one can stop me. (They could have had a house with a mortgage AND still traveled in the TARDIS on weekends, I’m just saying.) (They are PEAK ROMANCE and I’m never recovering.)

- Lotta concrit here but that being said, I really do love Eleven, he’s a sweet adorable lil bean. I’m gonna miss him so much too. Can’t believe I only have a handful of his episodes left! There’s so much good stuff in here, truly. Vincent and the Doctor! The Power of Three! 🥹 I also really liked Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, even though the longer you look at it, the more Problems you see. Those are my standouts off the top of my head.

- We are now well into the era of New Who I’ve never seen any of and know basically nothing about, so no spoilers please!

- I’ve also never seen any of Classic Who, so be aware of that. There’s a lot I don’t know.

- (I already do kind of pre-ship Twelve and River in a totally superficial way, just because, to quote Bones, “they are the exact same level of hotness.” I just think they’d look good together, and sometimes I’m basic like that. I know she has an episode with him, that’s the only thing I know about that era, so we’ll see.)

I’m all-in on this fandom now, for real. And I still have so much to catch up on! So, is it too much of a line to say Allons-y? (I still like it a little better than Geronimo!) 🤗🪐👽

#my post #gal’s dw opinions #DW opinions tag #so I don’t have to put this in the real tags bc big new-to-me fandom is scary #i love this show ok #please no one get mad at me I’m literally just chilling and having thoughts #also I don’t looooove how much more of a kids show the Eleven era is trying to be #there’s a difference between a family show and a kids show and sometimes they lean too far to the kid show direction for my taste #and on that note it’s late and I’m going to bed goodnight! #i feel like this comes off as a really negative post but it is not meant that way #i still finish most episodes feeling overall happy

[miyakuli]

Norn9 Var Commons

There is a girl who watched the anime of Norn9 back in 2016 and well, the anime was pretty bad (and kinda ugly xD) but she still felt kinda interested by the characters and the universe that it stuck in her mind for a long time....especially since she had a big otp in it and the anime never made them canon at the end, the frustration....

The girl soon learned that the anime was actually a bad adaptation of a visual novel game of the same name. She wasn’t playing many at that time because the most of the VN were on PS Vita and the poor girl couldn’t afford one (and wasn’t interested either). So she waited, hoping that someday, the game will be exported on pc or a console she would possess.

And this year, her wish came true ; Otomate group brought Norn9 on switch with a fixed english translation (apparently the previous one was bad) and more contents <3

Ok first, let me be clear, yes I definitely bought the game because I NEEDED TO SEE MY OTP FINALLY BE CANON xD it was for my own mental health lol 7 years of craving guys (TTvTT). I didn’t even start by this one though to not be biased about each routes (it was my 4th routes!!! I’VE BEEN PATIENT) and well, IT WAS STILL THE BEST ROUTE IM SORRY, AKito x Nanami best pair for sure <3333

That being said, how was the game? well, definitely better than the anime xD less confusing and more focused as well...even though the story isn’t always clear and consistent :

❤ An unusual otome since it gives you the choice between 3 different heroines, each with their own LI. They each have their own characteristics and are never relegated to the background, which is really cool for their personal development. Another positive point; THEY ARE DUBBED!!! (I hate when everyone is dubbed except for the girl, it's so annoying ><) ❤ An amazing cast with endearing characters, even the most secondary or the most horrible x) ❤ A very nice chara-design and frankly beautiful illustrations. ❤A beautiful OST which I never get tired of even after 40 hours of play ;) ❤ ALL.THE.EXTRAS!!!! (mini-games + bonus dub on the illustrations + mini comics etc...) ❤ An appreciated fast skip system which, compared to the normal skip, allows you to skip all the dialogues already read at once and which saves a lot of time when you just want to unlock an ending or an illustration.

+/- I really liked the sci-fi aspect of the universe and the story brought a lot of mystery and even surprises..but still there are inconsistencies in how each routes are put together. The universe is getting a little imprecise bcs of that.

✖ The epilogue and the character of Sorata. Sorata is not a bad character but we could very well have removed him that it would not have changed anything I think. He is supposed to be the main character at first but disappears completely in favor of the heroines. And when his route comes with the epilogue, it's so rushed that we don't even have time to appreciate his arc and his role in the story. The poor kid deserved better :/ ✖ The use of first/last names in the English translation is very distracting. For example, we hear the heroine call her companion "Kakeru" in the dubbing but it will be written "Yuiga" in the dialog box. And it happens a lot and I don't understand why the translation just couldn't follow the audio dialogues… ✖ I have a pbm with Ron's route because I didn't feel any real chemistry with Nanami. It's also the only route where I didn't feel any sparks between the characters.

It took me 40h+ to finish so yeah, that's a big one ;) I'd recommend just for the heroines bcs it's a nice change to have more than one but also because the girls are adorable, smart and brave <3 It's rare for me to appreciate that much the main girl tbh!

➡ My personal VN ranking (in french)

#norn9 #norn9 var commons #it's so weird that I've waited 7 years just for a ship but at the end I spent 40 hours to enjoy the story and all the characters <3 #also I have a gay ship MOUHAHA I didn't see it coming but really I love them so much XDD (Kakeru and Senri <33) #Nanami is still best girl to me <3 About Koharu I remember I thought she was boring in the anime - #but omg in the game she is absolutely adorable and she evolves so much IM PROUD OF THIS BABY GIRL #not a big fan of Mikoto but I love her strength and her friendship with the girls is so sweet as well <3 #Lola plays games #personal #Youtube

[grayintogreen]

I was pointed in the direction of the Nerds With Friends podcast that Madeleine Roux was on in July and talked about the Lucien novel so here’s what I learned:

- the book has a very House of Leaves vibe with a lot of interesting experimental text (she doesn’t know how that will translate to audio book format).

-there was some implication that there might be some second person POV for the weirder stuff which my RotS novel-loving ass is here for.

-the book is very weird and a little scary.

-she asked for a sensitivity reader to make sure she was writing Otis favorably.

-she wanted to be absolutely certain Matt and Tal didn’t want her to write an “uwu cinnamon roll” backstory for Lucien or she wouldn’t do it, but she was pretty vague on what she meant by that since that can mean anything from “I refuse to baby this bitch” (valid) to “I refuse to write him as sympathetic at all,” which I’m of two minds about (I mostly just want him written as the Greek tragedy he is who is redeemable if he would JUST MAKE BETTER CHOICES), but she specifically describes him as a character who had multiple opportunities to choose better and didn’t which I agree with.

-She specifically says the book deals with his childhood and how a person becomes the kind of person he became, so that’s promising.

-she also specifically says that a lot of stuff related to the campaign is “what he was doing when he was offscreen” so that’s nice!

-Matt and Taliesin gave her a lot of creative freedom which tells me that a lot of this is probably her version and not specifically Word of Matt, which we knew but it’s nice to know if I hate anything, I can throw it out like a normal fucking person and not a person who tries to stick savagely to the letter of canon. I don’t think I’m gonna hate anything because that’s not who I am as a person but I am uh very committed to my perceptions… but LitMoR exists as its own thing so I’ll always have that.

- she calls him a “war criminal” at one point which I’m not sure if flesh orgies were a subject of the Geneva Convention. It was pretty funny though. (She probably meant killing Vess. I guess murdering a political figure is a war crime but is it when she genuinely deserved it? Yes…)

All in all it sounds very exciting!! My major concern is, like… her not liking Lucien and it being a “I need you to be Shinji hating Shinji not Spike Spencer hating Shinji” kind of thing where it comes out in the text/performance how much you hate the character and were just here for the cosmic horror. I think Matt and Taliesin would have pulled the plug on it if it was blatantly obvious she was pushing a personal bias since they both DO like Lucien and Matt specifically says that Molly is the “good parts of Lucien” which means he HAD good parts to begin with.

(Look I just don’t want him written as a monster from the start with zero redeeming qualities- he can be a little shit from the start. Lord knows he was downright shitty all through TCTNC so I know I see him that way, but… idk there’s a difference. I think the HE HAD A CHOICE to not be this way says it won’t be that kind of story but I’m wary as someone who thinks Lucien is extremely nuanced and will be pissed if he’s reduced to one-note villainy. I have a lot of feelings guys. I don’t like the term comfort character but this loser is a character I love a lot and want to see given his due diligence by someone willing to explore him from a place of interest.)

But mostly I worry about not getting to see the Tombtakers being FRIENDS, because of the focus on Lucien being a dickbag monster. because Lucien being capable of loving people and just not choosing love the way Molly does is kind of a major thing about his character and it doesn’t hit the same if he’s never genuinely compassionate towards them.

#the nine eyes of Lucien #lucien nonagon

[mejomonster]

I'm reading a research paper on 同志文学 and it was written around 2010. I'm really curious how the literature landscape has changed. The paper makes no mention so far of 耽美, so I am wondering if perhaps it was less big back then? But also I know there's fairly old danmei stories online.

Tongzhi stories specifically seem to be majority written by queer writers, and read by queer readers (when this paper was written about 30% of readers were straight and referred to as zhi tongzhi straight comrades, or 腐女 which I'm pretty sure nowadays is used similar to fujioshi - a term to describe or insult danmei/BL readers). Danmei in contrast seems to have a majority straight readership, in the sense that it's more widely popular generally (queer people read and many straight people widespread read it). So I'm wondering if when danmei got an upswing in popularity, which it did by the time we got multiple danmei show/donghua/manhua/audio drama adaptations in recent years, did tongzhi novels become more niche? Becoming more of a separate section of the online literature landscape, more closed off and read by primarily queer people staying out of the limelight of public popularity (compared to danmei)? Or did tongzhi literature partly get taken by wider audiences as similar? Because when I looked up the difference between tongzhi xiaoshuo and danmei I'm apparently far from the only person who Google that lol (I got a lot of chinese results I'm about to read through). And when I looked up tongzhi xiaoshuo on its own, I didn't see sites that specifically were posting tongzhi fiction, instead I saw a lot of tongzhi/danmei combined rec lists and sites that include tongzhi within their wider collection of stuff. (Though this research paper lists sites at the end so I'll be able to go find them eventually - I couldn't find BoySky 阳光地带 though which is what the research paper listed by name). So far based on the paper, tongzhi literature seems more like realistic setting queer literature in America (so maybe Heartstopper, maybe Call Me By Your Name, not so much Sarah Waters novels since she goes more multi genre with both queer romance and thriller historical). I'm curious if there is thriller historical tongzhi literature. I'm also curious how to find the lesbian tongzhi stories, because they are mentioned as existing in this paper, but when searching tongzhi xiaoshuo like I mentioned mostly danmei-related stories are coming up which are men/men.

Then there's baihei, which I'm not sure was as popular for the Last 20 years as danmei was, if it's like other parts of the world and GL just generally being less widespread. Baihei also has kicked up in popularity as of Very Recently - we saw Couple of Mirrors this past year, baihe webnovels so popular English donghua reviewers mention them and hope to see them adapted as much as people were hype about mdzs, more short form Baihei web shows, inside and outside of China more GL shows are getting started period. So like... danmei has some historical context. I'm not sure when baihe popped up, and I'd love to find out (I'm going to Google it) but so far history of queer women in Europe, America, or China I've struggled to ever find any fucking info (except victorian women marriages that's about all I've found). So I worry there will be little research on baihe and when it started and how it evolved. I'm curious if it's connected to tongzhi wenxue, since tongzhi wenxue includes lesbian fiction. Or if it it's a completely separate genre (in the sense that like.. danmei with its focus on beauty and that it does not strictly need to include queer realism makes it a separate entity from tongzhi literature, although some danmei does cross the line into feeling a bit like both danmei genre specific qualities and very queer literature general qualities... sort of like how Manner of Death and Not Me thai dramas both contain BL tropes but also just feel generally like thrillers with queer romance in them). So yeah, I'm curious when baihe started online and what got it growing. (I would guess to some degree it grew as danmei grew, since both bring in straight audiences along with queer audiences so it's a bigger general audience of readers, and as danmei gets bigger people expect more care given to baihe, which in some way has been happening in most countries that start with queer men stories in media then gradually more queer women stories start getting produced).

Feel free to ignore. If anyone has links to development of tongzhi wenxue, danmei and baihe, I'd be very curious. Articles can be in chinese. I'm looking for these discussions right now but I'm not particularly good at searching for information in chinese.

#rant #baihe #danmei #tongzhi wenxue #i searched 同志小说比较耽美 because thats about the extent of how i could figure out how to word this ToT

[maryellencarter]

Memed from @thisbluespirit : "Share ten different favorite characters from ten different pieces of media, in no particular order, then tag ten people."

Do I even have ten blorbos? Surely I must. I don't have handy gifs of most of them, I don't think. How far back in my fannish history am I going to wind up going here?

1: Jigen Daisuke, from Lupin III. I've told this story in a few different places, but about six or seven years ago -- I think it must have been 2015 because some of the promotional material from Part 4 looks awfully familiar -- VirusQ was reblogging an assortment of Lupin stuff. Now, VQ and I have *extremely* similar taste in sharpshooters. I saw about a five-second clip from Jigen's Gravestone, the bit where Jigen is explaining to Lupin why he lost the first quick-draw duel in that movie (I'm pretty sure it was the Japanese subbed version but it could have been English with dubtitles, I know the audio was written down because like fuck would I have remembered Jigen's name six years later if it wasn't), and I said to myself, "If I see *any* more of this man I am going to have a new hyperfixation, and I do not have the spoons for that right now," and I blocked the Lupin III tag on Tumblr for the next six years.

Then, late last year, Leia asked me "hey would you buy me an action figure for Christmas if I asked", and she linked me a figure of one Goemon Ishikawa XIII, whom I had never heard of in my life. But I clicked through to the Amazon listing, and you know how those have the long stringy search-engine titles, so it was something like "Banpresto Goemon Ishikawa XIII Lupin III", and I was like "I know that name, Lupin III" and I had a feeling as of impending fate. (Not to be melodramatic, but I really did. I have a habit of putting off many visual medias until the stars align, and sometimes they actually do align and it's a very particular feeling.) And then I scrolled down to "other people also bought" and went I KNOW THAT SKRUNKLY ASS MOTHERFUCKER ^_^ and then I very cautiously made noises (not to get Leia's hopes up too far) indicating that I would be amenable to being shown the thing, and then she did, and now I've seen 95% of it and we're in the middle of publishing a 50k novel about it :D

(Also I've dragged at least two other people into it after me. The First is one *hell* of a gateway drug. XD)

2: Wes Janson, from about ten seconds of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, and also four tie-in novels by Aaron Allston from the '90s. If you've seen ESB, you presumably remember the scene on Hoth where they use the snowspeeder tow cables to wrap around the AT-AT's legs and knock it down. Wes is the gunner who actually makes the shot that anchors the tow cable to the AT-AT's foot. This is his entire existence on film. However, because Star Wars, his personality and backstory was greatly expanded in the tie-in novels (and some comics which I read much later and so only regard when they happen to add important details like the existence of socks in the GFFA). He became Rogue Squadron's class clown with some underlying survivor's guilt and PTSD that presents *really* similarly to mine, plus the ability as a trainer to turn a ragtag band of misfit pilots into a found family -- an ability which his friend and boss Wedge Antilles weaponizes as the premise of the Wraith Squadron trilogy, because Wedge never saw a character trait he didn't think tactically about.

I first read the tie-in novels in 2007 or thereabouts, while being extremely isolated and struggling with undiagnosed PTSD, ongoing emotional abuse, and an assortment of other mental health bullshit, and latched onto Wes *hard*. I've wandered in and out of the fandom several times over the years; I originally wanted to grow up to be Wes but didn't think that was possible. When it occurs to me to think about it, I'm still quite thoroughly confused that I've not only grown up to be him but have also managed to acquire my very own Hobbie Klivian. (That's the guy in the background of Princess Leia's briefing scene on Hoth who says "Two fighters against a Star Destroyer?" In the comics and at least one of the novels, he's Wes's BFF, wingmate, and partner in crime. He's laconic, sarcastic, pessimistic, and has up to three prosthetic limbs and possibly a prosthetic dick, depending on which parts of canon you accept and which ones you think are an editing error, a stupid throwaway line, etc. Star Wars! *jazz hands* Hobbie is a massive troll, but quiet enough that people usually notice the much more flamboyant Wes first.)

Did I mention Wes is also a sharpshooter? For some reason, I have a *type*, and very little about it is physical appearance -- I think "sharpshooter with a soft spot for people who need help, probably has PTSD, also a knack for unexpectedly wise insights possibly delivered in a rusty baritone" is probably gonna be at least half the guys on this list.

3: Zaeed Massani. Case in point. Zaeed is a DLC character from Mass Effect 2, voiced by the late and greatly lamented Robin Sachs, who was an absolutely amazing voice actor (possibly better known as the recurring chaos sorcerer Ethan Rayne in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the main villain whose name is escaping me in GalaxyQuest, although there's something wrong with the mike setup or the ADR in GalaxyQuest so you don't really get the full effect of his amazing vocal range). Uh. Where was I? Right. Zaeed is yet another sharpshooter, a merc in his forties or fifties -- Mass Effect continuity being what it is, he has at least two wildly contradictory backstory timelines. Point is, twenty-odd years ago as of ME2, he founded a mercenary group which became very large and successful, and his co-founder double-crossed him and shot him in the face at point-blank range. Being made primarily of steel wool and hatred, Zaeed survived this with only the loss of an eye, which you'd think would be a problem for a sharpshooter, but nope, he's still one of the best there is at what he does.

As of ME2, Zaeed has been trying for twenty years to find and get revenge on the man who double-crossed him. Being a DLC character, he has a nice compact little story where you can either help him get his revenge -- having to let a factory's worth of trapped workers burn to death in order to do so, because video games -- or save the trapped workers but let the enemy get away. When I first played ME2 on a severely underclocked computer, I had planned to take the "Paragon" route where you save the workers (me being me, I had read a walkthrough of the mission beforehand), but there's a puzzle minigame you have to solve to open the door to that route, and my computer lagged too much to get through the minigame, so I had to take the "Renegade" route where you take a quicker path through the burning factory, help Zaeed get his revenge, but have to listen to the distant screams of the dying factory workers the whole time.

I've since played both routes, but Robin Sachs absolutely *nailed* the voice acting, the script was fantastic as well ("Don't you call that a goddamn grudge!" hits me really hard for personal reasons), and I always wind up going Renegade because... well. Depictions of PTSD mostly have a tendency to trigger my own PTSD (it's complicated), but some of them land just right. Plus, listening to him tell the story about Jessie, his first gun that ge finally had to retire a couple of years before ME2... god, he absolutely breaks my damn heart every time.

Actually, I should probably tell the story about Jessie, too. It's this weird recursive piece of causality. So, okay, when I was very first getting into Mass Effect 3 multiplayer, this would have been in early 2013. There used to be these weekend challenges where you competed to get a certain number of points with certain weapons, or killing certain enemies, or whatever. I hadn't played any of the singleplayer games yet, didn't know any of the characters, I was just messing around in what is still objectively the best co-op shooter multiplayer ever created. Early March 2013, it was announced that one of the voice actors had just died and there was going to be a memorial weekend challenge, so many kill points with this specific gun and so many with this specific power. Well, I didn't have any kit with the required power (it took me literally another year to finally unlock one), but I had the gun because it's one of the five starter guns you unlock on your first multiplayer login. So I'm always down for a memorial event like that, so I did what I could. Didn't get very far that weekend, but I did find that I liked the gun -- a basic shooter game assault rifle, very "spray and pray" style (which was about all I could do on this extremely laggy underpowered computer), kind of a peashooter as far as damage per bullet but with a really big clip and easy to aim.

So then I carried this gun as my default for quite a long time, and of course anytime people were talking about their favorite guns in the game they just had nothing good to say about it (because, gamers being gamers, there are like two or three guns that are really best suited to the highest difficulty level, and this gun really is only suited to the lowest difficulty but that's what I played). So then when I finally got around to playing singleplayer, and I got to Mass Effect 2... even before you do Zaeed's DLC mission, as soon as you recruit him, you can go and talk to him about various items scattered around his room, get some war stories and characterization out of him. And one of those items was his first gun, which he named Jessie, which was this same model of starter assault rifle. He spoke so fondly about it that a big part of why I initially latched onto him is that I'd finally found someone else (even though a fictional character) who appreciated this gun. Which, of course, I only appreciated so much because of the memorial weekend challenge for Robin Sachs, where we had to use Zaeed's gun.

Damn, now I want to play Mass Effect again. I take Zaeed everywhere in ME2, every mission that you get to choose a squadmate on (there are some where you can only take required squadmates). Because squadmates don't have bullet/power travel time but the player character does, and because my computer was so laggy, telling Zaeed to shoot a particular enemy off me was often the only way I stayed alive.

Am I gonna be able to fit ten blorbos in a single tumblr post at this rate? Fuck if I know.

4: Wolverine / Logan, from the X-Men (comics and various assorted animated shows, I've never gotten into the live action X-Men stuff). Not a sharpshooter, for once. ^_^ So back in 2004, Spider-Man 2 (the Tobey Maguire one with Alfred Molina as Doc Ock) came out, and somebody recommended it to my mother, who became absolutely obsessed with all things Spidey. So a friend of hers was taping the '90s Spider-Man animated TV show off cable at the time, and I wound up getting assigned the rather drudging work of cutting the commercials out of said show using some video editing software we had for reasons, so we could burn it to DVD-R without having to sit through a bunch of ads. I still owned that set of homemade DVDs until I lost all my most treasured stuff a few years back, actually, but it's on Disney+ now, so there's that.

Point is, the '90s Spider-Man cartoon did a crossover two-parter with the '90s X-Men cartoon, and I *really* have a thing for those growly baritones, okay? So I wound up finding the bulk black-and-white "Essential X-Men" reprints of Chris Claremont's run at the library -- they had volumes two and three, which turned out to be the perfect introduction for me, covering most of John Byrne's run as artist (including the classic Dark Phoenix Saga, which literally every X-Men adaptation apparently has to cover at some point) and all of Dave Cockrum's second run, and more to the point, covering the most pivotal part of Wolverine's character development from a feral hypothetically-teenage asshole with no known name to something pretty much approximating his "standard" characterization in the years since. As an autistic tortellini dealing with constant forced overstimulation and unpredictable meltdowns, I really latched onto the portrayal of Logan's struggle to control his "berserker rage" meltdowns caused by his enhanced senses.

Of course, Herself was always terrified of anything that she feared might get me in touch with my violent side, and for good damn reason -- both my parents strongly deserved to have me snap and kill them, and I'm convinced that she at least knew it. (I have not, for the record, killed anyone irl. Yet. You never know.) She forbade me to read X-Men comics, I attempted to set An Boundary on my eighteenth birthday by telling her I would respect her rules and not bring them into her house but I was an adult who needed to make my own moral decisions and I would continue to read them at the library, and she very conveniently started the Remodel of Doom a few months later which kept me 100% isolated and under her control for the next five years as well as permanently ruining my health... but also forced me to spend most of my waking hours at the library because the house where I was living didn't have running water or, uh, installed toilets for a lot of that timeframe, which meant I found a compilation of "40 Years of X-Men" on CD-ROM at the library and read *the entire fucking thing*.

With that kind of isolation and that kind of input, I wound up developing a headmate version of Logan, who helped me massively with surviving and getting out of that whole situation. He very, very rarely shows up anymore, which is a really good sign, because it means I haven't been in that kind of a survival situation in... several years at least. I still think of him as my big brother, though (which is from a whole other situation I may have mentioned where my sisters and I had this incredibly complicated multi-crossover found family storyline going on... it says a lot about our general situation that the one who insisted no abuse was happening and I couldn't even use the term "a bad situation" about my experiences, was also the most heavily involved in creating a world where none of us had any interaction with our RL bio-parents.)

(My name in that storyline was Estel, which is Sindarin for "hope". On the nose much? ^_^ Logan still calls me Essie, which nobody else who's still in my life does. I've tried on a royal fuckton of names over the years. If I was going to change my legal name again, I'd probably take the last name Logan. Unless I made it my middle name and chose something that's not a first name for my last name -- my current legal name consists of three names that can all be first names, and the confusion it causes at doctor's offices is a pain in the ass.)

... that's only four blorbos, but I am out of spoons. I'm pretty sure the other six would fit the pattern as well. Let's see if I can at least make the rest of the list, if not say anything about them.

5: Adam Cartwright, from Bonanza. The original reason I wanted a hat, before Logan even entered the scene. Another sharpshooter, soft-spoken, mechanically minded (I have been known to say that my type is guys you'd want around to help you rebuild after an apocalypse, specifically a lot of them have engineering and/or childcare skills), and -- man, I don't know if it holds up, I don't even know where the hell I'd watch it since my VHS tapes are long gone, but I loved the hell out of early Bonanza back in the day. It hit the same kind of "eye-opening social justice for an extraordinarily sheltered tortellini" buttons as Howard Pease's 1930s YA mystery novels. The very first episode I ever saw was about the ways USian society treats felons after their jail sentences are up -- I can still hear the guest star saying bitterly, "They say you do your time and you pay your price, but don't you believe it!"

6: Richard Dean Anderson as MacGyver and Jack O'Neill, which are two very different characters but I'll put that down as a twofer.

7: Gandalf, because he is a delightful bitchy-ass troll. We read The Hobbit and LOTR out loud as a family when I was ten, which was possibly the best thing that ever happened to me as a kid, and I was hooked right from "Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I like it or not, or that you feel good this morning, or that it is a morning to be good on?" (I am still *insanely* proud that, with no other spoilers than the fact that the blurb for ROTK in the back of The Hobbit mentioned Gandalf, I recognized him on his return as Gandalf the White at the same moment Aragorn does and for the same reason -- his "laughing long and softly" there is distinctive, he does it in that first conversation with Bilbo in The Hobbit as well (at least I think it's the first conversation, I have my one-volume of LOTR but I don't own The Hobbit currently).

8: Does Marvel count as one fandom? Seems like it's supposed to, these days, but I'm gonna put down Venom as well. I named my hat after him. Well, *I* didn't, exactly -- my sister had a brown cowboy hat of which the brand name was Eddy, so when I got my black cowboy hat, he was promptly named Venom. I didn't mind, because in the '90s Spider-Man cartoon, Venom is voiced by Hank Azaria nomming on all the available scenery and then some, and I do love me some good scenery-chewing. Also Eddie Brock is just kind of a dork in any incarnation, and depending on your version and timeframe, he's also very much the Catholic guilt superhero, which you can see why that grabbed me.

Anyway, then Herself decided my hat was in fact a symbiote and wouldn't sit next to him in church (another reason I wanted a hat was for taking it off in church purposes, because when that's about the only way you can express masculinity as a very suppressed trans tortoise, you do what you can). Well, she always said she didn't actually believe he was a symbiote, but in a defensive sort of way, and she really wouldn't sit next to him. So that's why my hat has pronouns. That and the fact that he was basically my only remotely physical companion during the Remodel of Doom. Have you ever had to figure out the logistics of crying on a hat's shoulder? I have. Much of my hat-wearing experience lends itself well to writing Jigen, but I'm not so sure about that bit.

(Technically I retired Venom-the-hat earlier this year, he has a spot on the closet shelf now, but the new hat seems to be inheriting the pronouns. Nearly twenty years of habit doesn't go away easy. The new one doesn't seem to have a name for now, presumably because I have other friends.)

9: Merryweather from Sleeping Beauty? Man, I am either running out of blorbos or not thinking of some. Merryweather was partly a color coding thing -- my birth name was a variant of Mary and my next sister's was a variant of Rose, so whenever there were things like toothbrushes to divvy up, I got the blue one and she got the red or pink one. Suited me just fine, not being the pink-coded one after she came along. Anyway, so in Sleeping Beauty, obviously Flora was "her" fairy and Merryweather was mine, but Merryweather is also very relatable -- the most aggressive of the three fairies, the one who it's implied does all the chores for the sixteen years Aurora is growing up, and also she's just a little cutie.

10: Dr McCoy, from Star Trek: The Original Series. My space doctor. *The* space doctor by whom all others are measured. I could do a whole essay if I wasn't so tired. Best space doctor.

#meme

[haven-is-literate]

"So This is Ever After" F.T. Lukens [REVIEW]

(4 bees out of 7)

[No spoilers]

I AM EASY TO PLEASE. I can't give this book any lower though I must say it's objectively just okay. I originally read this book as a friend of mine saw the cover in a book store and thought I would enjoy it. She was correct.

This is a light hearted cute romance novel set in a DND type world. This novel is a bastard child of the Simon Snow trilogy (by Rainbow Rowel), I'm sorry, this just had to be said, only this novel does not attempt to write a system of magic and instead just,,,, uses DND. This is an absolutely acceptable thing to do as an author but I just personally don't like it, because systems of magic are interesting to read and this novel just didn't really have one.

I did enjoy this book but it very much came out of a fondness for Wattpad books that I read as a tween, because this novel has a lingering Wattpad smell that it can't seem to shake.

The Bad:

This book relies heavily on the miscommunication trope, which was not very clearly written and I genuinely didn't understand the first time the miscommunication occurred.

The characters are kind of basic, they are an appropriate amount of witty and young and they are slightly developed and adequately rounded by the end of the book, but over all lack luster.

The system of MAGIC, I know I already touched on this but it was just so non-existent and undeveloped that I was sad and I just want more about the world.

There is a trope that is a world building plot point that is blatantly reused from another F.T. Lukens novel (more on this later)

The one NB character in this novel is done dirty :( [not really, but i just felt bad for them and second hand awkwardness by the end of the book]

The Good:

It's cute! if you want a light hearted read to destress you can easily pick up this novel

It has a lot of diverse characters (thought the main character and the secondary character are both white cis men), there is about equal male to female characters that are developed and get screen time, there are characters of color and an NB character that are only casual mentions as the world is build to not really involve prejudice or bias with sexuality, gender(identity) or race

There is a straight couple that just makes me happy for the fact that their story is so badly written, there was no context or much preluding their getting together and just felt like the two were pushed together to make the plot work. It's not good writing but it did make me laugh.

Smut: There ain't none of it, sorry for my horny toads but this ain't your book. There are some suggestive mentions and one sexually provocatively scene but nothing to write home about. Though, the main character is incredibly horny, and honry toad might relate to his 17 year old thoughts as I know they reminisced with my pansexual self in a spiritual manner.

Audio experience: This is a standard audio book, all read by the same Person (Kevin R. Free) who does voices for the different character's dialogue. A little on the slower side as I did have to speed it up to 1.5 for it to keep my attention, but overall a good standard audio book.

For research purposes I read F.T. Lukens' other novel that is currently out "In Deeper Waters" which is a spicy-a meat-a-ball. [read review here]

IN CONCLUSION: This book is objectively not great, but it's good enough to keep my attention when read at 1.5 speed. this is a leisure book I would put as optional on the bottom of your reading list. But it's still cute.

This is a fun read. This novel is one you read when you have an excess of time or want to for self-care time. This novel will no change your life but it does have a nice message: you can handle whatever hand life decides to deal you.

Favorite quote:

“How was I feeling? Like spoiled meat. Like brackish water. Like I had worked very hard at shearing and chasing sheep all over the field, and had fallen down a rocky hill, then trudged home to sleep on the floor, and woke up with a sore body and without purpose.”

-F.T. Lukens, So This is Ever After

P.S. the cover art kind of gorg, done by Sam Schechter, I just adore the composition.

#so this is ever after #books & libraries #review #literature #f.t. lukens #ya novels

[heepthecheep]

Maybe I'm just a really picky ass with way to high of standards, but something does it seem like the vast majority of books published within the last decade are just. Not good at all?

Now, of course, I can't read/listen to everything, I do have a life, but so many of these new, highly acclaimed books I just dnf, if I'm even able to get a decent way into the book to begin with.

The last few (recent) books I've been impressed with where Lincoln in the Bardo (Saunders, 2017), Mem (Morrow, 2018), The Electric hotel (Smith, 2019) a d Mischling (Konar, 2016)

I can't even say that I particularly enjoyed the the stories of characters of the first two: I really only liked how intensely the characters voices (for a lack of a better term) came across in Lincoln, and not to mention how unique the actual style of the book was. If Mem had been an actual book I probably wouldn't have finished it, but I only stuck with the audio book because the central ideas where just so unique.

Electric Hotel and Mischling on the other hand where super entertaining! And I actually looked forward to continue reading them! And don't get me wrong, they certainly had issues, but the issues where tolerable, and honestly didn't really take away from the actual story being told!

Dishonorable mention goes to the book C (McCarthy, 2010). This book is certainly... something. This book has some of the best imagery I've ever encountered- seriously, I can still see some of the scenes in my minds eye at this very moment- but good Lord, the rest of this book doesn't know what to do with itself. It's supposedly about this guy's (Serge? I think was his name) relationship with his sister and communication (specifically the evolution of technology and deaf education), and yeah, for the first 100 pages it is, but then she dies and the plot takes off...and then it's about constipation (I'm not kidding, this book spends so much time talking about shit I'm convinced that the author was into it), then it's about world war one! And ghosts! And drugs! And traveling in Egypt! All the while Serge or whatever is having disastrous relationships with an ever-changing cast of women who are so under developed I really couldn't tell you anything about them (other then the lady that is involved with the constipation plot. Of course.) all while being under cut with this strange incest thing that is so infrequently mentioned that you forget about it before it brought up again. Why.

Though my little tanget makes it sound not good, this book has some really fucking high highs, but I just don't get what all of these different plot beats are trying to tell me.

Oh! How could I forget! Salt to the Sea (Sepetys, 2016) was really good! It's not a small book but I flew through it in a day! Despite being split between 4 different points of view, it still manages to not wander or be confusing. It's horribly tragic, but so so good.

The Watch that Ends the Night (Wolf, 2011) was obviously written for a YA audience but I still really liked it. A novel about the Titanic that doesn't focus on Romance? Yes, please!!

[xxxdreamscapexxx]

i think the film is excellent! it captures so well some things about the book, and the way it frames the end is muuuch different than highsmith did, in my opinion for the better. but some of its other choices annoy me in terms of characterization. they’re very different works in terms of mood and affect, despite how faithful the story is to its counterpart. so i think it’s a really really interesting read if youve already seen the film. i watched the movie first too.

other favorites of mine are Madam Will You Talk (i can’t remember the author but it’s another romance from later in the fifties, sadly very straight :p), the four book Saga of Pliocene Exile series by Julian May (a science fiction story from the eighties about —among other things— the shortcomings of utopianism, reproductive rights, and those who cannot fit even in a near-perfect society), and of course Carmilla by le fanu which needs no introduction. generally i like books filled with fraught or interesting politics or the more complex love stories. that or philosophy but i assume you meant fiction novels not dry old walter benjamin and foucault :p

what about you, ma’am? what are some of your favorite books? what have you been reading lately?

~ 🙇🏽‍♀️🙇🏽‍♀️🙇🏽‍♀️ ~

Well, I suppose I'll have to read the book and find out. You certainly have an interesting taste in literature. I'm most familiar with Carmilla. I wasn't very impressed by the quality of writing, but I enjoyed the obsession and possessiveness, the search for a deeper connection and the lengths one might go to achieve that. Hm... Some of my favorite books are: "The Historian" by Elizabeth Kostova. It's a very well written, well-researched book. It takes you on a journey through eastern Europe and it tells a multi-layered, compelling story. I absolutely loved it the first time and re-reading it never disappoints. "Lives of the Mayfair witches" trilogy by Anne Rice is a twisted, haunting, beautiful story of the lives of a powerful family of witches. It spreads through the centuries and reveals their struggles with death, persecution, wealth and their growing power and what it means. I'm a big fan of twisted tales, so this one captured me very easily as the author absolutely disregards what is tabu, revealing shocking details about the lives of the characters. "Frankenstein" by Mary Shelly I believe needs very little introduction. I think most people are familiar with the storyline, but what the book offers that you can't see in any movie / TV show is the way Mary Shelly writes! That book is pure poetry with every word. It's gorgeous. I can't tell you enough how beautifully written it is and how much it makes you think. "Dune" by Frank Herbert is also an amazing novel. The author has some very interesting things to say on the subject of politics and philosophy, which mixed with the action and the very imaginative world-building truly captures the reader. That's off the top of my head currently, though I've loved many more books over the years. As for my latest reads... Well, actually I don't have much time to read these days, so I've been listening to audio books a lot, while driving or doing other things, but... "Ninth house" by Leigh Bardugo and the sequel "Hell bent". The author has a lot of great books (her "Shadow and bone" trilogy was incredible too) and she's been very popular these days, so I won't dive into too much detail, but her books are really good and she's also a very imaginative writer. As I like them a little twisted, she fits in quite well.

#reading #litearture #anon asks #books

[elfgrove]

So I've been audio-booking my way through the Trials of Apollo novels, and I just got to the bit in the Burning Maze novel I knew was gonna piss me off.

Yep. It pissed me off.

And the narrative voice the Trials of Apollo are written in works really well. The sniveling self-centered god who is protected by the narrative the same way Percy was through all the prior books fits. And he very much is protected by the narrative, so it takes out some of the tension because like Percy, RR isn't really going to let anything permanent happen to him. The audience knows that, and that's fine for a YA book to do.

Here's the thing.

How RR handled the Solace/Di Angelo get together made no sense. It was poorly written. You don't put a character through the absolute abusive/neglected hell he did for Nico then pair him up romantically with a character he has had zero interaction with beyond that character telling him he was exaggerating all his troubles and just being "emo" about it unless you plan to make that story arc about bad relationships where one partner constantly belittles the experiences of the other or it's gonna be about the dismissive partner learning to listen and be empathetic to lived experiences outside their own. Reading Trials of Apollo, Nico is basically a fresh slate acting as a brand new teen character as if his past experiences hadn't happened or having a boyfriend really did magically fix him into a standard goth teen. It's NOT good.

RR never handled the entire wind wipe, fake memories, and charm speak mind-controlling that littered Piper and Jason's relationship. And I like both of those characters.

You take an insecure, hormonal teen girl, put her in the middle of traumatic events, mess with her brain, give her magic mind control powers and no training about ethical use of said powers, of course she's gonna misuse them to try to ease her circumstances. It doesn't make it right, but it's understandable character behavior. What isn't right is no one ever calls her out about using mind control on her kidnapped amnesiac boyfriend or using it in situations where it's not needed just to get her way. She never develops a moral code about when it is or not okay to mind control people. In Trials of Apollo she regularly uses the mind control to steal cars from her neighbor because they don't like each other and gets the car in regular legal trouble. They're both rich assholes. She minds controls people over minor shit because she can. I am glad once Trials hit that she and Jason broke up. That it's because she realized she doesn't know who she is outside the emergency and the influence of the gods? Good. That the relationship was founded on mind manipulation could have stood to be a bigger factor, but that would require Piper an RR to examine how she uses her power too, something he's clearly not about to do.

The novels never really work through the fake memories & fake relationship part of the equation.

So you have Jason Grace who has almost as traumatic a story as Nico, but in different ways. The boy deserves some respite and a happy ending or at least a future. He got the romantic mind control form multiple sides. That's never worked through. He was kidnapped form the only home he recalled and his memories wiped. His ties to New Rome were never really properly addressed/explored. We got some tell rather than show that he felt torn between camps and chose to belong to both. We don't get his perspective on the break up with Piper or the manipulative mess that romance was. It's just Jason is (comparatively) well adjusted and does what the narrative needs the doll to do.

So in this book about Apollo, RR brings in Jason for a single book cameo, focuses entirely on Piper's side of the narrative equation, then kills Jason off dramatically. No narrative closure for him. He's killed to further Apollo's story and to traumatize Piper. It's shitty to put the character through all he's ben through and kill him off to protect a character with narrative immunity. And to follow up that death with lines about oh yes death is often unreasonable and good people die unjustly while bad people live does not sit right when you have Apollo and Percy Jackson who are never at risk of death despite having been in numerous situations that should have killed them. You don't get to play the oh no death is often unfair and not a good/reasonable story when you have 10+ books of Percy Jackson the narratively immune to all fucking consequences.

UGH. I fucking hate how RR treats characters that by all rights should have more nuanced stories or the same narrative immunity his other leads get.

#RANT #elfgrove reads percy jackson #elf sideeyes Percy the blog #elf sideeyes RR the blog #elfgrove reads trials of apollo #spoilers

[dheatopia]

Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek Commentary

Depicting the horrifying story of a group of skiers trapped in the center of a devastating avalanche in 2012.

"Each snowflake added to the depth, and each snowflake added to the weight. It might take a million snowflakes for a skier to notice the difference. It might take just one for a mountain to move."

The multimedia piece was written by John Branch – New York Times reporter. To effectively portray the tone and content, the article employs traditional written language available in all classic periodicals as well as various types of media.

traditional written language available in all classic periodicals, as well as various types of media. Audio samples, video, images, and automated animations are also employed and displayed over a sequence of three-dimensional maps.

These various media formats are employed as tools that assist the readers in further grasping the whole context of the incident – making the multimedia article less complicated.

What makes Snow Fall different from other publications?

Easy!

Establishes a great opener.

Snow Fall included a great illustration that allows the readers to have an initial thought about what the whole article is about. Also, putting more emphasis on the technicality of the text, the title itself, "Snow Fall," was written with sedateness. This sets the overall tone and establishes the entire story topic.

Reveals the power of description.

It gave life to the avalanche.

Telling a real story and making it realistic are two different things, with each having their own difficulties. However, John Branch didn’t step down from the challenge. Snow Fall (as mentioned earlier) tells the real-life story of skiers who faced a catastrophic incident as they were swallowed alive by the avalanche.

Branch didn’t miss using a great figurative speech in which he personified the Avalanche and

Portrayed it as "the enemy" of the story.

"…fresh, soft snow — instantly became the enemy."

How every event was paired with a description helped the readers a lot on how to picture the occurrence more accurately. Also, the way that the texts were verbalized like a novel tingles the mind of a novel reader like me. The use of a lot of similes and metaphors was highly appreciated.

Multimedia publication breakthrough

When we talk about multimedia publication, it means a publication that incorporates various kinds of media (photos, moving images, audio recording, etc.). John didn’t disappoint when he embedded a short video clip of the interview of Elyse Saugstad as she was "mummified" by the horrifying avalanche, a slideshow of photos (with corresponding relevant captions), moving pictures, and even a three-dimensional map.

Bonus: The character’s name, age, and title are embedded in a clickable link in the respective selection that they were mentioned. – A very smart way to include the audience in the life of the character beyond what is mentioned in the selection. To give the readers a sense of reality. Seeing the names with the included photo and identification makes it feel more authentic.

With the recognition received, the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing and a Peabody Award come with the inspiration it imparts to the future of news and magazine publication. A cross between the print and digital worlds of publication.

#Snow Fall #Multimedia Publication #Article Commentary #Avalanche #Tunnel Creek #John Branch #Ney York TImes

[book-ramblings]

URBAN FANTASY

I quite like Urban Fantasy, it’s not my favourite genre, but it is one I sometimes get a hankering for and nothing else will do.

Nowadays Urban Fantasy tends to be very private detective focused, which I don’t mind, but I have read some of the older stuff which could be a lot of different things, but in a city. The writer I have read the most by here is Charles de Lint, I’ve read a handful of books and a couple of short story collections by him. The first thing I read by him was The Blue Girl, which I loved. I want to read more early Urban Fantasy, let me know if you have any recommendations.

When it comes to the more detective style Urban Fantasy, I’ll have to start with the Dresden Files, it’s the most famous. I really like it. I know it’s popular to dump on it for being sexist, and if it bothers you, then you shouldn’t read it. Personally, I’ve never felt that a character or series has to be perfectly in line with my opinions and morals - I have a brain, and I don’t mind using it tackling these kinds of stories. I actually love Harry quite a lot, in fiction I tend to be drawn to broken and traumatised men.

I’ll do one more male main character and then get to my favourite women. Alex Verus (first book: Fated, author: Benedict Jacka) is a mage, who lives and runs a magic shop in London. The series is finished, and there are twelve books. All the books have a one word title, somthing like: Taken, Cursed or Hidden, which makes it impossible for me to remember the order of the books :) There are some similarities to Harry Dresden, Alex is also a broken, traumatised man, but his magic is very different to Harry’s, and he needs to be sneakier and use his brain more to survive, because his power is seeing a little bit into the future - and while it is useful in combat it’s not a violent power. I really like these books, I’ve read them all, and I love Alex and his friends.

On to the female main characters. I’ll start with October Daye by Seanan McGuire. There are sixteen books out and two more coming in the autumn of 2023, according to goodreads. I’ve read six of them, all of them by audiobook so I’m not sure how anything is spelled. The first book is Rosemary and Rue. October is half Fae, half human and she has a troubled past, and works for a local Fae Lord, Sylvester Torquil. October, or Toby, is a great character, her friends and enemies are quite interesting and her adventures, as far as I’ve read at least, are a great mix of exciting, creepy, scary and fun to read about. It’s probably about time that I read more, actually. Also, the narrator for the audio books is Mary Robinette Kowal, who is not only a fantastic narrator, but also one of my favourite authors.

Next is Mercy Thompson, written by Patricia Briggs. The first book is Moon Called, there are 13 books out. I’ve read five, and the sixth is my current audiobook. The thing I like best about this series is Mercy herself. She’s a college graduate, majored in history, works as a mechanic and she’s a shape shifter - she can turn into a coyote. Her father, who died in a car accident before she was born, was Native American. Mercy’s really cool, and she’s also a good character. She’s strong, and I don’t primarily mean physically, and she’s affected by the things that happen to her. Early in the series there is a bit of a love triangle with two guys being interested in her, which isn’t my favourite, but it doesn’t go on forever.

The last series I’m going to talk about may be my favourite: Kate Daniels by Ilona Andrews. There are ten novels, the first one is called Magic Bites. I have read six of them and currently have number seven out from the library. They all have titles like: Magic Burns, Magic Slays etc, so it’s impossible for me to remember the order of the books. I love Kate, she’s strong (not only physically), she’s tough, determined and really, really cool. I have seen some people call her a Mary Sue, because she’s too good a fighter, but she’s been trained her whole life to fight, because a dangerous and powerful man wants to kill her. And I love a sword fighter. I do not agree that she’s a Mary Sue. There are also some fantastic side characters. And some annoying ones.

I’m not a person who worries much about trigger warnings, I don’t have many triggers, and I don’t mind “dealing with them” through reading, so if this is important for you - find out about them before reading. I also don’t always remember books that well, especially when I only read them for entertainment, which is really how I think about Urban Fantasy. I can tell you that there is sexual assault in Mercy Thompson, though I don’t remember which book. And a giant spider side character in Alex Verus.

What are your favourite Urban fantasy series?

[sankarsvoice]

What is Narrative storytelling

Storytelling has been a part of our lives since our existence. Ever since childhood, parents would use stories as their ultimate weapon, whether that be trying to feed their kids, put them to bed, or even educate them about big life lessons otherwise too complicated for their delicate brains. 

As we grow older, our parents may stop, but stories remain a part of our lives. There is a story everywhere and in everything around us: the roads we travel through, the people we meet, or even the food we eat. These days storytelling is used for more than just entertainment. For instance, business storytelling is a rapidly growing marketing tool. 

The art of storytelling has existed for as long as one can possibly remember, and it is one such art form that will never die away. Over the centuries, it has evolved and grown, giving us excellent writers and works such as Jane Austen, William Shakespeare, Ronald Dahl to, Nicholas Sparks, and Jk Rowling in the more recent times. 

Writers use many forms and styles of storytelling to create these masterpieces, and narrative storytelling is one such form. 

What is narrative storytelling? 

The definition of narrative storytelling, according to nfiedu.com, is as follows: “the narrative is a storytelling technique wherein characters describe the events of a story, experience, or details from their point of view. Narrative stories can be either fictitious or non-fictitious and include vivid descriptions of the conflict.”

Narrative storytelling is synonymously used with storytelling and is the art of narrating a sequence of events and incidents that come together to form the primary building block of a story. It is often narrated by a character or a group of characters, giving us insights into every little detail about the world the writer has created. It can be in written form or even in the form of audio. 

Narrative storytelling often consists of three parts: the beginning, the middle, and the end. The beginning is where we get an insight into the characters, the world, and what is going on in the characters’ life. It can be something really happening or something really mundane.

 Here’s an example, the opening paragraph of the mega-successful series The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. 

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.

This simple beginning, narrated by the female protagonist Katniss Everdeen, gives an insight into her life while introducing another character named Prim. The second part of narrative storytelling is the middle, where the story evolves and the conflict is revealed. 

The characters are thrown in life and death situations, making decisions that could destroy everything, and in the case of The Hunger Games, Katniss surviving the deadly games with Peeta Mellark. The final part, or the end, is where the conflict is dealt with successfully, and a favorable outcome is reached, which can be slightly different in serialized novels.

 Sticking with The Hunger Games example, the end of book one is marked by Katniss and Peeta winning the games and coming back home. If done correctly, narrative storytelling can transfer and immerse the audience into the world that the writer aimed to create, leading to the successful execution of the plot. 

But what exactly makes for a successful storyteller? 

Skills needed for successful storytelling: 

Telling a story, now how hard could it be? Answer: very. Storytelling is no cup of tea. While everyone can write a story, only some know how to tell it. But it’s not impossible. With the proper knowledge and skills, one can easily do it. Here are some quick skills you can pick up to become a good storyteller: 

Proper articulation skills: 

When writing a story, words do it for you. But when you are narrating one, it is more than that. As a narrator, you will be the one taking the audience through the story without any help from written words. 

And hence, to be a good storyteller, it is crucial to know how to articulate while doing the narration properly. The audience must understand what you are saying, meaning that as a storyteller, your pronunciation, tone, and voice should be absolutely clear and spot on. 

The use of emotions: 

Stories are all about emotions. A good story is one that has the ability to bring out feelings even from the least sensitive person. As a narrator, you must know how to inject feelings into your narration that would make the audience feel them too. 

Without emotions, a story is just a bunch of words on paper. Similarly, failing to add emotions to your narration would be like reciting something from a piece of paper; as a narrator, you definitely don’t want that. 

Maintaining a steady voice: 

As a narrative storyteller, your voice is one of your most essential tools. While narrating a story, it is vital to have a steady voice and hold onto the tone and style you have opted for until it requires to be changed. If you have a shaky voice or an uncertain speaking style, it will ruin the entire experience for the audience. 

Pausing: 

Another essential skill to become a good storyteller is to know where to wait. In books, a pause is indicated by using commas and full stops. When reading out a story or a script, it is integral to understand that commas indicate pausing and that you must halt a mini second before continuing.

The same stands for full-stop. Every time a sentence ends, wait a moment before starting again. This allows the story to flow, and failing to do this can make your narration sound monotonous and even annoying. 

Type of narrator’s voice: 

Narrative storytelling uses three types of narrator’s voice: first person, second person, and third person. 

The first-person narrator’s voice is conveyed from the protagonist’s point of view and includes pronouns such as ‘I’ and ‘We.’ This is the most commonly used narrative voice. 

The second person refers to the use of ‘You’ or ‘Your,’ hinting that the story is revolving around you, i.e., the readers. And last but not least, the third person involves the use of ‘He,’ ‘She,’ or ‘They.’

In the third person narrator voice, the story unfolds through the eyes of a third person separate from the protagonist or the antagonist and is the next most commonly used form of narrative voice. 

Narrative storytelling is an art that has evolved and grown over the centuries. It is an immersive experience capable of transporting the audience to the fantastic world a storyteller spins just with words or voice. Done correctly, narrative storytelling is a trick that never fails.