olivieblake

[olivieblake]

Hey Olivie. Hope you're doing well!!

I need advice and I figured maybe possibly you could help.

So basically I'm studying the devil's degree (computer science & IT) and I am not loving it at all. But it's like everyone around me (including mentors) are encouraging me to stay here because it's like a lucrative degree.

The thing is I want to change my degree and I have 2 things I could choose from (so I have 3 options which are all very different from each other) but its like what if it sucks more there than it does here.

Like what if the grass isn't greener and I make the wrong choice. Why is being 18 this hard =((((

Anyway thanks for reading all of that.

Stay safe and take care. =)

omg baby girl just take some classes that seem interesting and follow the thing that makes your brain feel most alive!!!!!!!! unless your university is much different than mine you should have elective and general education credits that are unrelated to your major. go check out the other grass. also, I got a "lucrative" degree (maybe not lucrative, certainly very practical) and I have never used it. I spent all my spare credits on art history and look what I do now. you gotta do the thing that makes your brain go !!! because it's the thing you'll have the most endurance for. and until you decide what it is, your only job is to be young and curious and to discover the opportunities that are open to you. your only responsibility is to learn as much as you can. okay? okay, good talk

#big sistering #I've said variations on this many times so pardon my relative brevity #but yeah you don't have to decide what your forever looks like #it is never too late to try to do what you want to do and be who you want to be

[olivieblake]

there are some questions in here that I will answer when I film my OBINW video about writing the atlas trilogy because that seems like the best way to avoid accidentally flashing someone with spoilers. that will happen at some point, hopefully soon! theoretically tomorrow even although who knows when it will post

#the atlas complex #olivie blake is not writing

[olivieblake]

Who do you feel are your greatest inspirations?

oh gosh truly impossible to say. I'm just every book I've ever read and every song I've ever listened to and every movie and tv show I've ever seen in a trench coat and every time I try to answer this question I immediately have the feeling that I forgot something crucial. certainly in the realm of fantasy I'd point to neil gaiman and ve schwab, but who would I be without sarah dessen and dodie smith? and at the best of times I am aiming for the emotional complexity of elena ferrante and the hysterical realism of zadie smith. but I would say every individual work has its own long list of personal canon and inspiration that ranges drastically depending on what I was thinking about at the time

#gratuitous personal information

[olivieblake]

Hi Olivie. If you could give every character in ta6 a song, what would they be?

please enjoy my playlists!

#there's several songs for every character in there #I simply can't be made to choose

[olivieblake]

hi i just finished my mechanical romance (the audiobook which is BRILLIANT) and then i found you on tumblr and i wanted to say your book is glorious and hit me in such a deeply personal way.

im also biracial and a mechanical engineer. like teo, i was insanely competitive in high school and had a close relationship with a physics teacher who's definitely a bit sexist but trying his best. like bel, i wasn't sure i fit in engineering and i love building things and got rejected from MIT. like neelam, i was a mean and moody teen and constantly fighting to get robotics guys to take me seriously. this book threw me back into every horrible group project i had in college, especially the tiny pool filter baby i made for senior design with a team of guys and one woman who didn't like me. every deep conversation in a car, i felt like i was there, having it with myself or my sister or my best friend.

i don't often see myself so directly reflected in books. i wish i had something like this in high school. im so glad to have it now, and even happier for all the kids in high school that get to read it now.

also you're really funny and teo and bel are adorable

omg!!!! I love this. not just you saying I'm funny (although thank you very much). I am so honored to have written something that spoke to you in this way. I'm so touched that it felt that real and right to you. I'm so glad in general that you enjoyed the book and thank you so much for sharing this, because I know there's a lot of the old me in there too and I'm happy we could share it asynchronously together in the ether like this

#my mechanical romance

[olivieblake]

i’ve sent u a million of these but letting u know this tuesday that I am still turning over the philosophical implications of the atlas trilogy as I will be for a long time. todays thoughts are centered on Nothazai becoming the new caretaker and selling out and libby rhodes continually fucking over poc (belen, tristan, nico) who she expects unconditional allegiance from and then validating it using her own suffering (which is also sooo ironic considering her issues with ezra over his whole white knight thing, but of course it’s only an issue for her when it’s on the basis of gender) libby rhodes is the queen of white feminism but my problematic truth is that I still kinda love her im soooo sorry. maybe the others were right to bully her in the beginning but for the wrong reasons (not the bangs) ‼️

anyways thanks for the thought fodder and hope that people are being nice to you even after you broke all our hearts.

ah yes my fondness for undressing hypocrisy lol. that old chestnut!

libby, via her corruption arc, is certainly an allegory for conservative "feminism," which I assume you can tell is not something I hold in high regard, but in terms of craft, the spectrum of morality was always very important in this series—she's meant to feel familiar and sympathetic so that when she eventually grows comfortable with atrocity, her rationalization of her actions and choices feels like something you can half believe. the whole series is a thought experiment. what is a villain? what is a hero? what is power and what is exploitation? the tension built into the character of libby rhodes is meant to feel dynamic and conflicting, so that wherever you land on her as a character, I hope her arc is an interesting one to read

#ideally uncomfortable but I won't make demands #I don't really believe in black and white villains and heroes #I basically hope she was interesting to think about!!! #that's kind of my only goal #the atlas complex spoilers #the atlas complex

[olivieblake]

Hi Olivie, will there be more books set in the same universe as the atlas series? I loved the Atlas Complex even though it broke my heart.

I left a few things open (for example, I know what would happen next if someone put a gun to my head and told me to write book 4, presumably titled the atlas xerox) but I don't intend to revisit it, certainly not for quite a long time. I do hope you have a sense for things carrying on—VE schwab puts this in lovely terms, where when you close the book it's like closing the door on the house where the characters go on about their lives, such that you can come back and see what they're doing at a later time. that's very much how I view it, which is in part an effect of coming from fandom and also because I chose quite a narrow sliver of their lives to focus on because it fit with my narrative themes rather than because I was trying to encompass their whole lives in three books. they are so very young when the story ends. so much is left for them to fuck with

#the atlas complex #thank you for reading!

[olivieblake]

Today at the Leipzig Book Fair :)

ahh! exciting!! thanks for sending!

#the atlas six #the atlas paradox

[olivieblake]

oh they were cousins nevermind

aNd ThEy WeRe CoUsInS!

#to the tune of AnD tHeY wErE rOoMmAtEs #honestly given medieval times that context could mean anything #who knows what the author (me) was thinking #how to win friends and influence people

[olivieblake]

hallo I just finished re-reading 'how to win friends and influence people' and i have to ask, did Isabel really have some sort of romantic feelings for cadmus or was that completely his narcissism talking? because their dynamic is so so interesting and funny to me lol they were evil bestfriends

i also finished the atlas complex last night and it was SO GOOD. (i'm slightly obsessed w your books at the moment can you tell)

I genuinely do not remember lol I'm sure it could have been any number of weird and toxic things (I really had zero plan while I was writing that fic—she says, as if she ever has much of a plan). evil best friends very plausible! thank you so much for reading my stuff!!

#how to win friends and influence people

[olivieblake]

Hey, Olivie! Absolutely adored "The Atlas Complex" and I'm excited to hear you have two brand new books coming in 2025. Can I ask if "Stargazing is Necrophilia" also has a prospective pub year as well? Thanks!

that book is going to require a lot out of me to finish and it also requires me to be very offline (when I wrote AWYITE I didn't have a twitter and I only used instagram to look at architectural digest and, like, fashion blogs) but I will probably work on it this year, so it will maybe come out late 2026 or, more likely, early 2027, depending on the order I write it with the gothic romance and my third standalone SFF

#stargazing is necrophilia

[olivieblake]

Not a question, just a comment. I started "One for my enemy" and I grew up on russian fairytales. The sentence about the yelp review for hair and nail supplements made me almost gag hahaha absolutely brilliant 🤣

I really love slavic folklore and always hope that aspect of OFME comes across as the homage I intended—and thank you, I am never more overjoyed than when someone laughs at my jokes!!

#one for my enemy

[olivieblake]

Hi Olivie, I love your books and am working my way through all of them. I saw The Fairytale Collection listed but they're out of print and not available as ebooks either. Will they be coming back for sale?

thank you for asking but no, they're out of print forever. when KDP raised printing prices I couldn't personally justify charging more for what I believe is subpar work (as a literal physical product) compared to everything I've released with tor. but many of the best stories from the collection will be in my forthcoming anthology januaries

#januaries #fairytale collections

[olivieblake]

When is the next Olivie Blake is Not Writing episode?

fantastic question

#I'm working on it #we're all trying our best!

[olivieblake]

hey olivie,

realized today that I have never seen Atlas Blakely art

(except for sorta in TAC), which is wild.

for me it's quite intentional! a lot about his character relied on the audience not noticing or interrogating certain things about him until the end. for example he's much younger than he seems

#the atlas series

[olivieblake]

Also, I have to extend my appreciation and awe of your book Alone With You in the Ether. That book stayed with me for a long time, and it felt so personal. And I adore your fics as well! Your humor, your world-building, your wide range of original characters in How to Win -- they're all tremendously wonderful!

thank you very much, I appreciate it! I'm glad you enjoyed both those works in particular, one is very close to me emotionally and one is just an incredibly absurd and sweeping epic of which I am very proud lol

#alone with you in the ether #how to win friends and influence people #I mean the vampires alone #the cousins #truly some of my best craft

[olivieblake]

why do they always hate on Libby's bangs?

mainly they are dicks but also some bangs are just really bad

#for me the key term was 'infantilizing' bangs #it spoke to something more about her personality than her hairstyle #she is kind of a goodie-two-shoes #I don't hate all bangs #sorry for bang slander ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #the atlas six