#love and virtue

[poetlcs]

endless australian novels → love & virtue by diana reid

Whenever I say I was at university with Eve, people ask me what she was like, sceptical perhaps that she could have always been as whole and self-assured as she now appears. To which I say something like: ‘People are infinitely complex.’ But I say it in such a way—so pregnant with misanthropy—that it’s obvious I hate her.

#love and virtue #diana reid #australian lit #booklr #australian #mine #liked it so much more then seeing other people #litedit #endlessaus

[proceduralbob]

Whenever I say I was at university with Eve, people ask me what she was like, sceptical perhaps that she could have always been as whole and self-assured as she now appears. To which I say something like: 'People are infinitely complex.' But I say it in such a way - so pregnant with misanthropy - that it's obvious I hate her.

Love & Virtue, Diana Reid

#books i read in 2023 #love & virtue #love and virtue #diana reid #yes i know that is also the name of a criminal minds character but it's the author's actual name

[ohjoyce]

2022 in books

It’s been a good year in books. More waves of covid = more time spent inside reading, away from crowds of people so silver linings and all that.

Happily, I’ve also been lucky enough to have lived with and befriended fellow keen bean readers and we’ve swapped our lil paperback collections back and forth. One of my top 5 favourite feelings has got to be watching someone you know read a book you love. Up there too is chatting with a friend about a book they’ve lent you as you read it for the first time. Chef’s kiss experiences.

This year, I elected to read almost entirely for pleasure. I switched jobs two times and worked on getting into a consistent fitness routine of going to the gym 3 times a week so was not looking for anything else challenging or intellectually stimulating to do in my free time. Unfortunately, Canberra does not have very good libraries so I didn't have access to a huge variety of options. But, the library of friends came through with the goods.

Without further ado, a list of my 2022 in books in chronological order that I read them.

The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennet

Quite an interesting and thought-provoking exploration of race and the extent to we are able to choose who we become. Two mixed-race twins growing up in 1950s America experience very different parallel realities as one chooses to capitalise on her lighter skin colour to pass as white. Raised questions of material comfort versus cultural integrity have no clear answers but makes for compelling food for thought.

How We Love by Clementine Ford

This book is slight departure from Clementine Ford's usual stuff-- more tender and vulnerable. Each chapter is about one of the loves in her life and it's as much a letter to a past and future selves as it is an ode to non-romantic love. I also went to her ‘Secular Love Sermon’ aka How We Love book tour show in November of this year which was maybe the best event I went to this year. Here’s to love as bearing witness to life and telling stories always.

The Dry by Jane Harper

Before this year, I hadn't read any of Jane Harper's books. This year I read them all. Goes to show how addictive and effective they are as crime thrillers. The story unfolds and weaves together to reach such a satisfying conclusion. I can't really say too much without spoiling it but Jane Harper has a wonderful way of characterising the Australian bush landscape as a focal point in her novels.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by JK Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

Incredibly unmemorable. It was pleasant but I can't remember a single thing on reflection.

The Survivors by Jane Harper

Not one of my favourite Jane Harper novels, but as always a great page-turning read.

After I Do by Taylor Jenkin Reid

An interesting exploration of love after marriage and the reality of the highs and lows that starts after most romance stories end. As can be clearly seen from the other books by the same author I kept picking up after this one, I really relished this unconventional premise.

Malibu Rising by Taylor Jenkin Reid

I picked this up because the cover was kind of pretty and I was on a lunch-break walk to Civic Library and this was the best pleasant surprise. Something about this novel reminded me of getting deliciously absorbed into a book during school holidays — falling asleep reading and then reading again first thing in the morning. I have a big soft spot for self-made underdog stories and eldest/only daughter protagonists.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkin Reid

Absolutely devoured this story of old-school glamour, love, and disappointment. Nice and neat tie-in with the narrator/journalist’s own modern day sub-plot.

Entire ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas.

Faerie smut that fits in just about every trope of men written by a woman for the female gaze in a good way. Very fun.

Love Stories by Trent Dalton

Touchingly earnest, Trent Dalton shows us that in hard times, sometimes the best thing to go is to choose to go soft. To choose to show and share the hurt and highs of loving and being loved that are the only things that'll matter in the end. This got me through a chaotic and draining month I worked in family law. I cried a lot.

Force of Nature by Jane Harper

Again, a lesser favourite but good fun nonetheless.

The Lost Man by Jane Harper

This one is up there, so good I reread it a week ago. The perfectly placed red herrings, the family tension, and small-town grudges and secrets. 10/10 times. I particularly enjoyed how men's mental health, loneliness, and isolation were prevalent themes. Jane Harper also sprinkles easter eggs throughout her Faulk novels which subtly intertwine the characters from her books which is fun to spot.

Milk Fed by Melissa Broder

There was a lot of online hype about this book, and the author is behind a twitter account I used to follow called 'SoSadToday' (yeah, I know bahaha). But the rather triggering portrayal of disordered eating and punitive calorie counting made this one a pretty stressful read. There was also zero sense of closure at the end, only confusion.

Book Lovers by Emily Henry

A very sweet and delightful rom-com read for those of us who are sometimes sick of the overly predictable cookie-cutter romance novel. The protagonist is very relatable and is all in all a refreshing palate cleanser to the saccharine netflix christmas holiday movie tropes.

Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton

Absent of any particularly astute life advice at least in any productive sense but deeply comforting that the era of being in your twenties is as chaotic as it is character-building and all of it is normal.

The No Show by Beth O'Leary

Slightly over-complicated plot-twist but props for originality and side-plot which I may or may not have become more invested in than the main plot by the end.

Second First Impressions by Sally Thorne

A fun, quirky, alternative rom-com read with colourful characters and the evergreen message that it's more than ok to be a cosy offbeat weirdo as long as enjoy it.

No Matter Our Wreckage by Gemma Carey

Written by a now-Canberran dwelling lady academic researcher, this book reflexively documents   her own childhood sexual assault and abuse. Which is to say things get very real and very dark at points. But, Gemma Carey refuses to let her story go untold and that courage glues together what is an otherwise tragic and deeply personal patchwork of recollections and tribulations.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

Honestly, I can't say I'm a big Sally Rooney fan but sometimes you are having a mid time and simply want to escape into someone else's even mid-er time this hits. I can't explain it any other way.

The Switch by Beth O'Leary

I tried to listen to the audiobook of this story and didn't make it very far but when I found a copy of the paperback, I got through it quite readily. Cosy as all Beth O'Leary novels are, if the obstacle-boyfriend can be a bit characterised as a bit obviously shit.

November 9th Colleen Hoover

If you miss the days of scoffing down random wattpad stories as a tween, this is perfect.

Love and Virtue by Diana Reid

I spent on year studying at the University of Sydney in 2017 and used to always wonder what went on behind the hedges of the overpriced colleges where presumably people with very rich parents lived. This book is almost definitely a very accurate window into the answer. Having studied law and arts at Usyd herself, the

Verity by Colleen Hoover

Wtf!? Truly I was relentlessly gazumped and then bamboozled. No sense can be made of this one, it's beyond sense.

Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

I've just finished this book, it might be my last read of 2022. A very sweet and escapist read (mostly for me, as a mathematically and scientifically challenged legal professional lmao). Though I will say I enjoyed Ali Hazelwood's other novel The Love Hypothesis a smidge more.

Whew, that was quite a test for my memory. Any outstandingly great or shitty reads for you in 2022? KEEN TO DISCUSS as always.

#love on the brain #verity #love and virtue #ali hazelwood #colleen hoover #diana reid #november 9th #the switch #beth o'leary #sally rooney #conversations with friends #no matter our wreckage #gemma carey #sally thorne #second first impressions #everything i know about love #dolly alderton #book lovers #emily henry #ACOTAR #a court of thorns and #a court of mist and fury #sarah j maas #a court of war and ruin #a court of frost and starlight #milk fed #melissa broder #trent dalton #love stories #the lost man

[deep-space-lines]

I know Gabriel is canonically really popular with Heaven’s residents but there’s bound to be some heavenly loser with pronoun envy

#my art #ultrakill #gabriel ultrakill #i love angel pronoun lore #he earned those pronouns fair and square and now he gets to wear a he/him pin like the badges on military uniforms #of course he has blue wings and pronouns #also can you fuckin imagine being a virtue?? #imagine you live your entire life as a Good Christian(tm) and then u get to heaven and find out not only do u still have to work a 9 to 5 #you have to do it in hell #forever #man i’d be salty too #straka's shitposts #sketches

[dangocheeked]

2023.10.31 ☆ happy birthday, wei wuxian!

#mdzs #mdzs fanart #wangxian #wei wuxian #lan wangji #lwj is god's strongest soldier #i love post-canon wangxian and their little games #wwx would run his mouth about all the ways that dastardly hanguang-jun has besmirched the yiling laozu's virtue once again!!!! #obviously wwx has to act out a little so lwj would be forced make him *behave* #they have the nastiest papapa over it #happy birthday wwx i hope u get the dicking u deserve

[gascansposts]

Game host Danny as seen from: this post by @phantoms-world-and-more ! (And vaguely inspired by a different post by @help-itrappedmyself :D)

The main show is definitely these two images here!

Danny should definitely be wearing his normal shirt and paints combo during The Host role, but change outfits depending on what “role” he’s playing! But the little pin identifying the role stays throughout all outfits mostly because I think it would be funny! Also the no swearing bit is because little ghosts (box lunch) likes to watch this show, along with many Amity Parker’s in Danny’s home universe (if we’re going with good reveal Danny)

This image is me trying to figure out what Danny would look like (I don’t like these, Danny looks weird /neg)

I might do some more doodles of this one, but yeah! I super like this idea :D

#dpxdc #game show Danny #danny phantom #danny fenton #art #yep #arty art #dcxdp #dp x dc #dc x dp #(only dpxdc by virtue of its a bigger fandom) #danny phantom au #game host danny #tbh… #I love the bit where the ‘different’ characters are all actually just the same character in different outfits #and no other attempts at hiding who this person #hello yes I am Danny but he is a different Danny because we wear different shirts

[turtleblogatlast]

Every day I’m haunted by the fact the boys happily swim in sewer water

Even if it’s filtered somehow there’s no way it’s not still nasty 😭 Bet they can defeat any of their villains just by accidentally giving them diseases I swear

#rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #bless their hearts but they’re nasty #it’s funny because like #each and every one of them has moments #where they’re a typical disgusting teenage boy #and then the next they have STANDARDS #can’t blame Leo for being so determined to go to a spa #even if he nearly licked his own foot that’s prob cleaner than anything else the boys have been up to in years 💀 #thank you shelldon for all your hard work cleaning after then 🙏 #they’re all gross teenage boys!!! #even Donnie he is NO exception here #bro was DRINKING A BEVERAGE while wading through sewer water he is just as gross as his bros #bro also talks with his mouth full he is no more refined than his equally gross bros fr and I love it #but yeah no way that water isn’t disgusting even filtering it would still leave grime on the walls of the sewer for yearsss #pros of them moving into an abandoned subway system is fixing their sense of smell enough to not be as gross #100% that’s part of why they didn’t mind being so filthy pre shelldon #because I mean they were literally raised in the sewers and they’re teenage boys like that’s a double whammy #THEY ALSO DONT WEAR SHOES #the few times any of them do the shoes are discarded before heading home 💀 #I love them tho they are endearing anyhow #April’s immune system must be godlike just being around them fr #honestly no joke Mikey’s probably the cleanest of them all #just by virtue of being a chef #Leo I see as a mixture since he no doubt loves to pamper himself so he’s clean like #a percentage of time before he goes out and ruins his own hard work #Donnie is similar in that he’s just VERY SELECTIVE about what he thinks is too gross #Raph may be more on the stinky end but it’s not his fault he has his stinks and eats things of dubious origin(esp since his bros ate poison) #Donnie and Leo really have the gall to be sick about Raph eating the origami salami but they have no room to talk #all their villains are prob like please stay away from us we have salmonella now

[astrhae]

Let there be matter, let there be gravity, let there be everything from pages 11 to 3,000,602 inclusive... (Funny if I did the good thing and you did the bad one, eh?)

GOOD OMENS SEASON 2 + the seven virtues and the seven sins

#this is made with ALL the love for aziraphale #currently my mind is stuck with crowley watching their miracle light up in the bookshop #like he watched the first stars light up #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #goodomensedit #my edits #they're both just so!! #all of these are taken from the wikipedia pages for each virtue or sin

[kagoutiss]

din’s champion

#tloz #ocarina of time #oot #ganondorf #din #um #ganondin #…..does anyone here ship them ha. hahaha #i mean their whole thing is funny actually because she didnt even choose him but he managed to steal her triforce and #so then hes her ‘chosen’ by technicality. but with her virtue being power it’s maybe kinda one and the same #and anyway beyond that ​point i feel like she loves shaking him around like a mortal dog toy #but like in some way she also must have believed in him enough to give him Power in a different lifetime. so he’d survive his own execution #i;m just saying there is so much you can interpret about their relationship. despite her being #literally an unseen 4th dimensional being who is the embodiment of power and fire and change amd earth itself etc #like what do they think of each other. what does she think of this tiny mortal who somehow stole a piece of her and now theyre bound by it #take my hand walk w me thru mortal x god hyperdimensional traumatic power imbalance situationship. and youre both girls

[ffc1cb]

played thru all of zero escape games recently... it was an experience

#uhhm. aheem heem #zero escape 999 #virtue's last reward #zero time dilemma #zero escape #clover field #sigma klim #phi zero escape #luna zero escape #junpei tenmyouji #akane kurashiki #carlos ztd #oh god #quark vlr #thats everylne i think #art stuff #should i tag anything here as spoilers. the joke about carlos isnt even accurate #anyway luna best ze character ever. no im not biased towards [spoiler]. i just think shes neat. and also i love [spoiler]

[woosh-floosh]

(read left to right) I had to make a comic version of this moment form the fanbook because it's such a funny image

Fantranslation is by @wireddd1 on twitter!

#ritsu plays ness because he's a special psychic boy #mob plays donkey kong because he is the buffest character in melee by virtue of being a gorilla and also mob likes monkeys #<- I know gorillas are not monkeys #okay I am looking at the character renders again and captain falcon is pretty buff too but a gorilla would still rip him apart #I am looking up gorilla strength and it says a fully grown silverback is stronger than 20 human adults combined #art #fanart #comics #mob psycho 100 #mp100 #I think if they played ultimate mob would still play donkey kong but ritsu would switch to lucas because he is tortured #I heemed and hawed over whether I should draw a fake game or melee [adjusting for when mob psycho would be published] but I went with melee #because I love smash bros and it's important to draw what you think is important to you #also I could use donkey kong hitboxes as refrence instead of making up my own moveset for 9 panels

[dramoor]

~Tolerance of evil is not a Christian virtue~

#tolerance of evil is not a Christian virtue #unconditional love #do not approve of bad behavior #Christian

[katabay]

original thief series basso & garrett :)

ngl, it's about quality over quantity for me. an npc can have a total of three minutes of screen time, but if they have a cool name, they can live rent free in my head and I'll spend several hours trying to decipher drawable features from a blurry screenshot of pixels

there is a vague hint of a story here, and that's because every time I try to play thi4f, I get incredibly frustrated with how Not Fun the game play is. like, is the story good? well. but it has a PLAGUE. that should've given it instant 'I'll replay this once a year' status in my heart, but the game play sucks so bad that I've never finished it. I can't believe Not Fun gameplay beat out my obsession with narrative plagues.

anyway, the idea is basically if the original era had a game with a plague centric narrative and some other stuff I liked out of thi4f thrown into a narrative blender, with a heavy dash of horror thrown in because some parts of the thief games were scarier to me than entire dedicated horror genre games.

⭐ places I’m at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

#if i had a laptop and the skillset i would attempt a story mod because the thief modders who create whole mission stories #are GENIUS and also somewhat terrifying. love them! xoxox #anyway im actually kind of obsessed with parts of thi4f but its also like. not at that sweet spot of almost good enough to be fun #to talk about. which. for the record. has not stopped me from talking about it at length to people #the city itself actually fucking fascinates me. its almost alive and im SO mad that not a single part of that game is actually terrifying #it should be gnarlier and instead it feels a bit like it doesn't quite want to be trapped in the story it has to tell? #but between the level that has the bodies on the meathooks #and the scene with the bodies hanging from the rafters or whatever that was and garrett living in a clock tower #because the game is very much ALMOST about changing times and authoritarian violence and capitalism #(like. by virtue of how the story sort of spins out i think it misses it's mark on a lot of stuff here #in the sense that i dont feel like it actually wants to tell that story. it wants to. go in a different direction. or at least walk on top #of those themes instead of through it) #ANYWAY between all of those things. it does kind of live in my head rent free. they did create a compelling setting #SHAME THEY DIDNT WANT TO ACTUALLY EAT ANY OF IT #unrelated but i would've given thi4f a 10/10 if they kept garrett's fucking nail polish from the concept art. cowards. unforgivable #thief the dark project #i still have no idea how to tag the game series as a whole RIP #sorry for the dedicated dark project fans. if you know what the general series tag is. please let me know #garrett thief #basso thief

[anonymouscheeses]

She's so underrated and for what? The edgy red furry?? I love him too but cmon look at this snack right here 😭

#art #fanart #artists on tumblr #digital art #hazbin #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel vaggie #hazbin hotel vagatha #hazbin hotel charlie #hazbin hotel emily #hazbin vaggie #hazbin emily #hazbin charlie #vaggie #emily hazbin hotel #charlie morningstar #chaggie #rainbowmoth #unholy trinity #two and a half halos #charlie x vaggie x emily #hey did i eat or is jt just me? like i think i ate the food and the plate and the kitchen too. sm i cooking? did i cook the food? did i eat? #DID I EAT HER DESIGN UP OR WHAT??? #how do i draw chubby women. im trying bro let me cook ill learn i swear 😭 i love chub WHY CANT I DRAW IT?? GRAA #royalhalo #hazbin hotel redesign #hazbin redesign #unholy virtue

[fictionadventurer]

Thinking about Rory Williams. What a character.

The completely ordinary man who doesn't become extraordinary, but is already extraordinary.

The coma nurse who can watch over patients becomes a guardian who watches over the love of his life for two-thousand years.

A man being faithful to one woman makes him one of the greatest heroes in history.

Being good, kind, honorable and faithful is a higher kind of virtue than the Doctor's flashy cleverness.

He didn't need to become a hero. He was a hero and got to prove it when put in extraordinary circumstances.

Just a fantastic character.

#doctor who #rory williams #i saw a gifset that sparked rtd vs moffat thoughts #and no one wants that dead horse beat again #so i focused on the rory part of the thoughts #because for all their relative flaws and virtues and similarities as writers #the reason that i prefer moffat comes down to 'rtd would never have written rory williams' #everything about that character is the antithesis of rtd's worldview and is the core of what i love best about moffat's

[rawberry-preserves]

I know someone else made this post but I wanna throw out my own options!

#zero Escape #9 hours 9 persons 9 doors #virtues last reward #zero time dilemma #999 #vlr #ztd #its so fucking bonkers i love this series so much #dont mind the adjacent tags #Danganronpa #ace attorney #your turn to die