#octavia books

[heelsorthink-blog]

Here we go again ....

I started this blog almost exactly 10 years ago.  I had just arrived in New Orleans to embark on a four month adventure and research exercise.  At the time I was just entering the data collection stage of my PhD and my focus was on the Krewe of Muses, an all-female Mardi Gras krewe.

As a Canadian, Mardi Gras parades and parade culture were a pretty foreign concept and an even stranger subject for a doctoral thesis at a Canadian university.  What started as a feminist investigation became a much broader look at the important role that art and creativity play in community building, community identity, and friendship.  

When I returned home to Canada, I wrote a number of different versions of my dissertation but never defended.  The version that resonated with my research participants, did not resonate at all with my dissertation committee.  

‘Complicated” is one of the most common words writers use to describe New Orleans.  It is a city of contradictions, which all make total sense when you are here, but are almost impossible to explain and to understand if you have never visited or had to opportunity to wander the streets to explore and experience all the city, and its people have to offer.

Last night I heard author Janis F Kearney read from her recent book Only on Sundays at Octavia Books.  She spoke that as a writer, you need to “speak your truth”.  I think that is the reason I never defended my thesis or received my PhD.  I needed and wanted to speak the truth that the female members of the Krewe of Muses shared with me.  I wanted to capture the spirit, the sense of magic, and excitement they shared with me.  The experience of riding in Muses, glittering shoes, or watching the parade hoping to catch one of their coveted shoes or specialty throws did not fit neatly within a framework of critical race or feminist theory.  It was complicated!

So here I am 10 years later, temporarily returning to the Irish Channel, the neighbourhood I called home a decade ago and ready to revisit a project that was shelved but not forgotten.

#mardi gras #krewe of muses #mardigras #irish channel #parade #krewe #janis f kearney #octavia books #new orleans #phd

[mostlyghostie]

A fun recent commission!

Shop / Instagram

#my art #artists on tumblr #books #booklr #illustration #bookstack #dune #the expanse #octavia butler #murderbot

[charliejaneanders]

Andreea Kindryd was a production assistant on the original Star Trek back in the 1960s, and was heavily involved in the civil rights movement alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. She became one of the first Black women movie/TV producers, and was friends with Octavia Butler. She's written a memoir called From Slavery to the Stars that just came out, and it's well worth picking up. Please show her some love!

#books #andreea kindryd #star trek #octavia butler

[rjalker]

Pro tip, writers who only use she/her or he/him pronouns:

If you usually write everything in 3rd person POV, but just suddenly feel the need to write in the 1st person as soon as you're dealing with a character who uses neopronouns of some sort, that is your unpacked exorsexism talking and trying to make you avoid using the pronouns that make you uncomfortable.

Resist the urge. Write your story in 3rd person POV just the same way you would if the character used she/her or he/him. Get used to it.

Switching to 1st person POV as soon as it's about a character that uses they/them or it/its or xe/xem is the lazy cowardly exorsexist way out. You can do better. Accept the challenge, or at least have the strength to admit you're choosing the coward's way out on purpose.

And no, saying that "using it/its pronouns in the 3rd person is just too difficult tho :(" is not an excuse, that's just an admission that you don't know how to write.

#Neopronouns #exorsexism #writing tips #writing advice #Rjalker reads The Murderbot Diaries #Rjalker reads Xenogenesis #oh everyone who uses he/him or she/her pronouns is in 3rd person #but NOW ALLLLLL OF A SUDDEN IT's 1st person as soon as the narrator uses it/its???? #I SEE WHAT'S GOING ON HERE LOL #It was annoying enough with TMBD but COME ON OCTAVIA BUTLER. You've been using it/its for these characters for the last two books #with no problem. why are you doing this now. come on. #you know how to use these pronouns #why are you being a coward all of a sudden #theythempronouns #ititspronouns #neopronouns #novapronouns #nounself pronouns #nameself pronouns #bah #neopronomisia

[methotrex8]

Parable of the Sower is legitimately the scariest book I’ve ever read.

#every horrible thing that is happening in the USA just Makes Sense and I don’t like it #not at all #to clarify I like the book but the way that it all sounds so real has given me chills #parable of the sower #octavia butler

[souldagger]

ever read something so exceptionally well crafted and nuanced it makes everything you've ever read before worse in retrospect? that's what reading octavia butler feels like to me

#finished adulthood rites......... #.txt #books #octavia e butler

[philosophors]

“When your rage is choking you, it is best to say nothing.”

— Octavia E. Butler

#octavia butler #octavia e butler #literature #lit #literature lover #literature quote #literature quotes #english literature #philosophy #philosophical #philosopher #philosophers #philosophy of life #philosophy quote #philosophy quotes #quote #quotes #excerpts #excerpt #quoteoftheday #booklover #book #bookworm #books #booklr #book quotes #book quotations

[lobster-tales]

Books Read in 2023:

Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

All that you touch You Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change.

#parable of the sower #octavia e butler #bookedit #literature #lit edit #lit aesthetic #my edit #books read in 2023 #I read a couple more books this year but this is the last moodboard I think for 2023

[sickoherd]

THE 100 -- dating reader from a different clan

mild angst???

requested by @nickeverdeen: gn!reader who is from a different clan and got captured by their group (smth like Sasha case), but reader is in relationship with them (Clarke, Sasha and Octavia) and is innocent?

era: s1 dropship

author note: sorry i havent posted in ages my mental health hasn't been great :) also im going to add in sasha once I finish rereading the books bc unfortunately I don't remember her very much.

Clarke:

the two of you met early on, she was at the river about to bathe, and you stumbled upon her whilst hunting.

she pointed her gun at you, you threatened her in trig...

it was all so romantic.

clarke never could have pulled the trigger though, your beauty struck her.

when you saw the internal battle in her eyes, you relented, raising your hands in surrender to show her you meant no harm, you were just passing through.

she let you leave, albeit, reluctantly.

that was just the first of your many encounters.

always at the river, it became your secret spot

the both of you would go there daily, hoping to catch a glimpse and feel those butterflies erupt in your bellies.

communications between the two of you was tricky however, you didn't understand her language and she didn't understand trig.

so you had to communicate at the start through offerings.

you would bring her food, or help her fish.

or even guard her while she bathed.

or you joined her...

eventually, you manged to learn a few words of her language, and your ability to speak them grew with every conversation.

you hadn't been dating for very long,

but she was always so insistent that you stay away from her camp

she didn't want the others to think you were a threat and kill you

of course though, you just didn't listen

you wanted to bring clarke some herbs you found, of which you had been tsught had medicinal properties.

You just wanted to share it with her

clarke was on guard duty tonight, you observed from further in the trees and woodlands surrounding their camp

the noise and bustle of the camp didn't frighten you, if anything it made you feel better that you wouldn't be heard as you made your way to clarke

however, she spotted you first

the look she gave you was one of pure death.

oh was she pissed...

you just gave her a smile.

clarke had a quick scan of her surroundings to check no one else was around, before walking over to you

holding out the herbs to her, she gave you a confused look before you explained.

"good for healing!", you beamed at her and she practically melted at your smile

she couldn't help herself, she just had to kiss you, but as she leaned in and you placed your arms around her, you heard footsteps.

in the dark, your loving embrace wasn't too visible, but to bellamy, who had just stumbled upon the two of you, it looked murderous.

"let go of her!" bellamy shouted, making you jump and clarke looked so scared all you wanted to do was hold her.

"bellamy no wait-"

but he didn't wait, he shot you in the leg.

"no! stop!" clarke screamed, tears falling uncontrollably down her face.

bellamy ran to her, checking her over for injuries, while you were writhing in pain on the floor

by now, a small crowd has formed, hush whispers of the words grounder and dangerous

bellamy had to restrain clarke as she tried to get to you, now being dragged off by miller and a few others.

she was sobbing, completely incoherent.

she couldn't let them take you...

Octavia:

you had seen her before

chasing butterflies, kissing a boy

you admired her truly

she was beautiful

the way the blue light shone on her

she was in her element and you were just happy to witness such a beautiful moment

you did not believe that you should attack these newcomers, but rather learn about them,communicate with them

like lincoln did

from then on, when you could, you looked out for her

never approaching her, just spectating

however, you two met officially through lincoln

you grew up with him, he was like an older brother to you

so when you entered his little hideout, you were incredibly shocked to find the girl you had been so hopelessly admiring for days inside.

unfortunately, you were in the cave when octavia was found, lincoln was off hunting

so it was you who was taken...

octavia had seen you before

she saw you in the trees, or in the woods and in her dreams

she saw you in that cave

she saw you get knocked out by her people and dragged back to her camp

she didn't know you, but oh how she wanted to

she longed to know you

this mysterious grounder who had been haunting her dreams

but now they were going to torture you and most likely kill you

octavia snuck into see you, to help you escape

you were so beat up and battered, but octavia still thought you were as breathtaking as her dreams

of course, since arriving on earth, she's been one for doing spontaneous things, but she couldn't name the force that drove her to kiss you.

but she did, and it was right

it felt so right that when you kissed her back, butterflies exploded in her belly

but now she had to get you out

she had to save you

#sy talks 🌥 #the 100 fanfiction #the 100 #the 100 x reader #octavia blake x reader #octavia blake #clarke griffin x reader #clarke griffin #the 100 books #cw the 100

[theoreticallysensible]

I finished Ursula K Le Guin’s The Farthest Shore yesterday, and it got me thinking about two things:

1) The relationship between truth and meaning.

2) The wisdom of accepting death.

The conflict of the book is established when it is discovered that people have lost their connection to the “true speech”, the language of creation, which means that wizards can no longer use magic, but also that everyone falls into nihilism, listlessness, and paranoia. People retain their regular language, but the language of magic is lost, and so they lose their grip on reality. They see everything as flat, without any transcendence in anything. Nothing is more significant than anything else, and so nothing is worth doing. People keep talking, but none of it means anything real.

The cause of this is someone trying to escape the fear of death by dying and coming back immortal, leaving a tear in the world that magic leaks out of. The fact that they have to first die to find immortal life suggests that death and immortality are in a way the same thing, and that this deconstruction is the cause of the spread of nihilism. The necromancer is able to send out a message to people’s dark sides, causing this change in them:

By denying life you may deny death and live forever!

This is reflected in the fact that the souls of the dead show an even more extreme embodiment of the emptiness and stillness experienced by those seduced by the message. The tear in the world is blurring the distinctions between life and death, and calling for people to hurry it along.

For Le Guin then, life is change and difference - rather like Octavia Butler’s message from Parable of the Sower that “God Is Change”. Maybe the key part of Butler’s poem for this though is “The Only Lasting Truth Is Change.” Seeking immortality is sort of denying reality. Le Guin describes each individual life as a wave on the ocean, and claims that seeking immortality would be like making the entire ocean one wave, so that it grows still. In other words, life cannot exist without other lives, and without a chance of ending. A single life that totalises all would be indistinguishable from death.

I’m with her on the first point, that a changeless life would be indistinguishable from death. Experience is formed through interaction, which inevitably changes both parties. This is ancient knowledge, which Le Guin no doubt gets from her passion for Taoism, but my favourite exposition is Donna Haraway’s Situated Knowledges. But if life is always changing, always unfinished, why could there not theoretically be an eternal life which does not totalise, which accepts its mutability?

I think here is where we run up against the tension between Le Guin’s commitments to true language on on side and contingency on the other. Nietzsche is famous for having pointed out that language is a host of metaphors. Derrida then took this further to point out that no word is self-contained, rather its meaning is dependent on so many others that it can never be pinned down perfectly to mean just one thing for certain. This includes the self. It stops and starts when we’re knocked unconscious, and its altered with every experience, every exchange of atoms. In a sense we die a lot - if we thing of ourselves as a being, rather than an emergent property of various processes. We can’t be perfectly described with a word, because we aren’t a constant thing anyway, irrespective of that final death.

But this is kind of a moot point as Le Guin’s story is concerned. Few of us ever actually seek immortality. And Le Guin is right to frame it as an impossible task. It plays a symbolic role for the equally, perhaps even more, impossible task of seeking control, constancy, solidity. Nothing is constant - The Only Lasting Truth Is Change. But for me this just makes the final change of death easier to accept, as just one more change that will leave the previous version of myself behind - only this time there won’t be a recognisably new version to take its place.

There is definitely a difficulty in accepting the indefinite fuzziness that comes to things when you look at them like this though, that can lead to the nihilism Le Guin was so afraid of. I think Le Guin answers this rather well though, when she says that we cannot help but do everything we do, want everything we want, feel everything we feel. We can’t actually avoid caring about things, especially if we throw ourselves into them. We don’t have to justify what we care about based on some sort of metaphysical truth, as if we could ever be certain of that - we just have to accept the inclinations given to us by the universe and act on them in a balanced way to make ourselves content. Don’t rationalise your feelings through strict force of will, pay attention to them and what the good asks of you. That’s actually from a different anarcha-feminist writer - Simone Weil - but it fits!

#ursula k. le guin #ursula le guin #le guin #donna haraway #earthsea #the farthest shore #friedrich nietzsche #nietzsche #derrida #jacques derrida #philosophy #existentialism #books #fantasy books #octavia butler #octavia e. butler #taoism #daoism #meaning #language #semiotics #parable of the sower #simone weil #immortality #death

[eleanor-arroway]

Octavia E. Butler's lost works

"There's much more to her career than the dozen or so books we know; out of the spirit of brutal perfectionism that drove her, she held a lot of interesting and worthy work back. I've talked a lot about the treasures of the Huntington in these pages: the unpublished Blindsight, "Evening" [1] and Paraclete; the many Tricksters; the alternative Xenogenesis, the lost short stories and essays and sequels and interviews and plays. This material should not be left only to the small number of scholars who are able to make their way to the Huntington; much of it can see, and deserves to see, publication. These are not discarded scraps or abandonded, embarrassing mistakes; it's just more.

Butler's incredible productivity, coupled with her intense self-criticism, self-censorship, and perfectionism, has conspired to create a vast intertextual hidden archive of alternative versions and lost tales that will, I hope, reinvigorate the study of her work as more scholars are able to get to the Huntington and as more of it trickles out in published form."

From Gerry Canavan's biography of Octavia E. Butler in the Modern Masters of Science Fiction series

#octavia butler #octavia e butler #Octavia E. Butler #I am once again asking you to release the butler archives #star trek fanfiction #parable of the trickster #earthseed #books #Xenogenesis #lilith's brood #so much more #this biography was also a great peek at the underwater part of the iceberg of her work so to speak #gerry canavan #science fiction

[theamityelf]

Man, if the Lilith's Brood/Xenogenesis trilogy had a fandom of even moderate size, I would be irretrievably weird about it, rather than just endearingly weird about it.

Who can I beg to read those books? (rhetorical)

#lilith's brood #xenogenesis trilogy #dawn by octavia butler #octavia butler #book recommendations

[charliejaneanders]

My latest newsletter is about books that have changed the way I think about space opera. These are some amazing reads that redefined the genre. Plus my thoughts on Olivia Rodrigo!

#books #space opera #becky chambers #writing #space #star wars #hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy #the stainless steel rat #octavia butler #ursula k le guin #olivia rodrigo

[hellyeahscarleteen]

#octavia butler #books #new york magazine #vulture homepage lede #profile

[haveyoureadthisscifibook]

vote YES if you have finished the entire book.

vote NO if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

#scifi #books #Dawn #Octavia E. Butler #Xenogenesis #poll #result: no #l: English

[souldagger]

octavia butler's books make me miss writing essays sooo much i only started Adulthood Rites a couple days ago and it instantly made me go back to rotating Dawn in my head 24/7. in my room like this rn

#thinking abt the themes of colonialism and consent and the ways in which the oankali are genuinely more fucking horrific #than any stereotypical alien invasion could be #.txt #books #octavia e butler