#pandemic reading

[lostinthestacks]

Currently Reading: The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

#the cartographers #peng shepherd #currently reading #reading 2022 #pandemic reading #june 2022 #fiction #magical realism

[buttersteps]

ayo edebiri: the movie reviewer we deserve

and her dad also has an account

#why did i only find this out via twitter what have i been doing with my life i could have spent the pandemic going through her letterboxd #she is so funny #but some of her takes are also incisive and poignant #what a great read #ayo edebiri #the bear fx #inception #pride and prejudice #etc #films #film review #jeremy allen white #movies

[andypantsx3]

u guys, question. how did all of u first start getting into x reader?? do u remember??

#i had never read an x reader until shortly after the pandemic started and i saw a few at the top of the bnha ao3 tags #how did u find this niche????

[razzek]

One thing that's starting to really get to me with the James Somerton stuff is a real strong undercurrent of disdain toward his fans. And yeah, I was one of them. A good scam artist isn't as easy to spot as y'all seem to think. You forget that you have all the information right now. Two days ago most of you had never heard of him and it would have kept going. Anyone can fall for a scam, nobody is immune. I would love to have had whatever resources you guys think we all should magically know about so I could have kept my sad $5 a month I really needed but thought was going to something worthwhile. Some of us can only devote so much energy into things and when you have no idea whatsoever that something is amiss of course you're not going to go digging for sources, why would you when everything is fine as far as you know? I really wish I could have seen the dissenting opinions on him but for many, many reasons that aren't just that the dissenting voices weren't widely circulating at the time all I had was the thought every now and again that "huh that doesn't seem right" and then go on with my day. And I think that happened to a lot of us. So yeah. Say what you gotta say about Somerton, he has more than earned it with the damage he's caused, but maybe don't shit so hard on his former fans because that is going to be you someday with something, it happens to everyone sooner or later.

#james somerton #hbomberguy #todd in the shadows #I really am greatful for Harris and Todd's hard work in exposing all of this #and I am glad I get to see the real voices I did like that james was stealing #I'm just tired of all these people jumping on the drama train taking a dump on folks who are also victims of these crimes #razz rambles #this whole situation is upsetting me in the weirdest ways #I'm distraught but I'm not at the same time #and yet it's 6am and I can't stop reading through the tags and seeing the takes I missed #vaspider's essay and remarks from an AIDS pandemic survivor are especially good #I lived through that shit too but had no idea I was living through it #cuz that's what being blind and impoverished in rural community was like #queer wasn't even something I knew I could be until like 2010 #so it's nice to see my own history #it's not just the young queers who have little to no knowledge of our history

[semisolidmind]

so i had an idea based on a horror manga i read forever ago

(not sure what to call this)

Emi Saito, a college student, lives a normal life with her nurse aunt and older sister, Kami... Until Kami, a famed geneticist, dissapears. A few months after, a horrible, unbelievable outbreak occurs;

All of Japan's regional and corporate mascots have become real, living beings, and many of them have a thirst for human blood.

Panic and terror rule the streets as hundreds of adorable (and not so adorable) mascots swarm and kill any human they come across. While there seem to be a few exceptions, most of the mascots are maliciously murderous. There doesn't seem to be a way to kill them either. Bullets, fire, acid, explosives...nothing fazes them. They regenerate at super speeds and bounce back seemingly no matter what.

Emi witnesses her aunt die trying to protect the patients at her clinic.

With no one left to turn to, Emi flees the city on her own, somehow managing to dodge the many mascots that prowl the streets. She makes her way to the countryside, attempting to find shelter or survivors. Eventually she's cornered by a small pack of wandering mascots, but just before they can take a bite out of her, she's saved by a rough-looking dog mascot.

He introduces himself as Uzu, the mascot of a small seaside fishing village. He asks Emi if she can cook, she says yes, and he whisks her (somewhat unwillingly) away to the village to be his lil' housewife- I mean maid! Housemaid!

Things are tentatively peaceful for the two for a while. Uzu is happy to have company-whohappentobereallycute-who can cook fish, and Emi is just happy to be alive and safe (even if her roomie is a bit terrifying).

Until some mail arrives for Emi. Her sister is alive, and is calling her to return home.

Uzu, who's come to care deeply for Emi (far beyond his stomach) doesn't trust the letter, and urges her to stay with him. They've built a good life here, he reasons, why rock the boat? But Emi insists. Her sister might still be alive, she has to know for sure. Uzu relents. He'll go with her, ever loyal, and kinda wanting to see the city for himself.

So they go, making their way across the countryside, fighting mascots and rogue humans along the way. When they get to the city, it lies mostly empty, ravaged and bloodied by the mad mascots. Emi, remembering her time before meeting Uzu, is now a bit reluctant.

#click for quality cause mobile is stupid #semisolid ocs #anybody here read pygmalion #it’s real messed up #exophilia #monster boyfriend #fuwa fuwa pandemic

[atissi]

okay all of the reviews for "severance" by ling ma said it was a hilariously deadpan satire on the post-apocalypse — and maybe that was true in 2018 — but now that i've read it i can say i probably laughed Once and felt a bone-deep nihilistic dread Constantly. the bit about the protagonist's company gifting her a self-care kit of 2 N95 masks, a nutrient bar, and an expanded insurance plan in response to a worldwide pandemic isn't really funny post-2020, it's just realism.

#good novel i felt actually insane reading how many parts of the 2020 pandemic ling ma accidentally predicted #and then felt insane experiencing Everything Else #idk i just love works about corporate gothic and alienation and shame and isolation. and severance hit like every beat #also i think the way the protagonist's immigrant experience tied in with her behaviours and the plot was just really clever #that she is essentially saved by and doomed by her lack of home. her severance from society if you will. ba dum tss #i figured out i can check out books from my library through a phone app. and then stole all my friends' library card information. im balling #beepbeep.txt #literature

[onewolfaday]

Can we get a legosi from beastars?

070

#i read most of beastars over the pandemic fun fact. i really like the themes in it. also wolf guy #wolves #wolf #legosi #beastars #chorus howl

[fox-guardian]

do you think they mask up at the OIAR. it's 2024. like. apart from audio quality (and ofc they'd want crisp audio either way) there's nothing suggesting they're Not masked up over there. if so, then RIP to alice's epic snakebites, they never see the light of day.

#ramblings with major #tmagp #this post brought to you by me reading a fic and going 'why aren't they wearing a ma- Oh Yeah There's Not A Pandemic In Blorbo World' #and then going wait.... there Could be a pandemic in blorbo world.... this time....

[pastafossa]

How do you get past writer's block? I have a fic that I'm working on that is updating on a schedule, and I made the mistake of giving myself a month off in between parts and now I can't really get back into writing it. I don't want to leave it abandoned because I have a few people who I know are really invested and I don't want to leave them hanging, but I'm having a hard time getting as excited to write it as I did before.

Ok so I'm in a weird place for this, hilariously. Because The Answer That Usually Works For Me (TM) and that carried me through a regular weekly update schedule for almost two and a half years is, in fact, not at present working for me apparently my brain can write through a pandemic but not through recovery from the shit that went down in December/Jan so we found my writing kryptonite. However, I'm going to assume you're closer to 2021 Pasta than 2024 Pasta. SO LET'S GO WITH THE METHOD I NORMALLY USE SINCE IT WAS SUCCESSFUL FOR YEARS. Cause that's the thing: sure, I've written almost a million words, and pumped out chapters for years (ignoring the past few months) but I promise, I hit the same walls as everyone else even when nailing weekly uploads. But over those years, I came up with a fairly solid list of steps that I'd go through one by one.

Fun one first: when I'm in a block, I almost always try re-engaging with canon first. I'd rewatch my favorite episodes, binge a whole season, or even the whole series depending on how much of a boost I needed. For me at least that was often like Pavlov's bell, my favorite story triggering a flood of affection. I'd remember why I loved this fandom and the characters so much, and it could often kickstart my brain and excitement back into gear. If you really want to dangle a carrot and your fic touches on canon, focus on watching parts you're excited to get to in your story. A big one for me in TRT for example was the post-Nobu, Nelson v. Murdock episode, since I'd had that planned for TRT almost since the start, and I was very excited to reach the hurt/comfort I had planned. Even if your fic isn't following canon though, see if it'll give you a creative rush again!

So let's say step 1 doesn't work, either because the canon just isn't hitting the spot or because your fic is dealing with something else. In this case, my next step was usually to jump ahead to write a scene I was really eager to get to. It was often a short blurb, but it was always something I REALLY wanted to explore, and because I'm also a reader who likes exactly the tropes and plots I'm writing, I want to read what fucking happens. Except, fuck, I'm not there yet, am I? And I can't see how that scene finishes until I write my way up to it and finish it. This is my own carrot. Multiple scenes in TRT were written months or even years in advance, simply as a way to bribe myself. This is also an option!

But maybe this doesn't work. Sometimes it didn't. This is when it got a bit more serious. For anyone who was reading at the time, you'd have noticed that I'd sometimes drop side fics, either Matt POVs or one-shots. This was me, in essence, working on the shower principle (basically, ideas/solutions will come if you stop thinking about it and do something else, like take a shower). I figured if I went and wrote something else - either with less stress, or something fun and dopamine-inducing - the part of my brain focused on my Big Fic would wander around the writer's block beneath my notice. And it almost always worked, all while I still kept my brain trained that, hey, even if we're not writing This Thing, we're still writing.

But let's say this doesn't work either. You're well, and truly, stuck. Been there now and then. And, you're going to hate this one. I hate it but it works 9 times of 10. And it is: Write anyway. Half of it was spite. I was not going to give up my schedule, I liked my schedule. The other half was that I knew myself. I knew if I could just get past the chapter/plot/dialogue I was struggling with, I'd be able to roll along again. And so I made a rule: whatever I wrote didn't have to be pretty. It just had to exist. If that meant I wrote, "Jane chased the cat in circles and caught it. She was happy." then that's what I wrote. Because everything, EVERYTHING, can be fixed in editing. But you can't fix what doesn't exist. And so there were those nights when I would scowl and groan and snarl and bash my head against that writer's block until 5 in the morning, but in the end Jane chased that fucking cat adn caught it, it was written. Hilariously, sometimes those chapters have wound up amazing (likely because I spent so much time hammering at them) and reader favorites. There are absolutely, I believe, moments where you can, and should, see if you can push through.

But that brings me to *waves* now. A lesson I've only recently recently and with encouragement. Namely... sometimes brain no go and that's ok. My steps work for me 99.9% of the time, but I've done the above during the past few months, and it just... hasn't dragged me out entirely out of it yet. Sometimes, our brains demand that break, especially when things just aren't going great. There's a reason TRT had a break of roughly 2 years between chapter 4 and chapter 5 (feel free to check the chapter index with dates on AO3!). I had some life things happening and I just was not in a place to write, even if I was still busily plotting and planning and thinking about TRT behind the scenes. And that was ok. We're not machines. I came back like a bulldozer in Jan 2021, yes, and bulldozed through weekly updates, but that break was needed. And now I'm obviously taking a short one again while I recover from everything. It's ok if you're not in a place for it. So the last step is one I've been told a lot by dear friends recently as they helped me through this: be kind to yourself, and try not to stress if none of the above works. The story will always be there, and if TRT is any indication through all its highs and lows, your readers will be there when you start up again.

#writer's block #i am on step five if that's not obvious and that's ok #steps 1-4 got me through about 2 years of writing and over a hundred chapters. damn near a mill words. #so i'm VERY confident it works most of the time #or it does for me anyway #just. you know. not all the time #what's funny is i suspect if you read all of trt knowing the above #you'll SEE these moments #moments where i clearly hit a chapter i'd written ahead of time cause it had more detail or more excitement radiating in my notes #alternatively no one has any idea which ones are which which is even funnier to me #look i do not judge *anyone* who just can't do weekly chapter #the pandemic was a weird period where i had the time to do that and the management required to keep up with it outside then is intense #like it's possible. i was doing it before shit started going sideways last year cause that was NOT my year basically from july onwards #but just be kind to yourself about it #the story will come #and your readers will be there for it

[lostinthestacks]

Mid-Year Reading

It’s halfway through 2022 and I’ve somehow managed to get halfway to my reading goal!

I’ve been trying to borrow more from my local library, so reads not pictured above are:

One by One by Ruth Ware

The Very, Very Far North by Dan Bar-El

The Hunting Party by Lucy Foley

The Shepherd and the Horned Girl by Breanna Bright (ARC from @childrenstoryhour )

In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware

A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz

In a Glass Grimmly by Adam Gidwitz

The Grimm Conclusion by Adam Gidwitz

Gallant by V.E. Schwab

It’s so hard to pick favorites, but some of the best books I’ve read so far this year are The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, Gallant, The Library of the Dead, and The Very, Very Far North.

#midyear #reading 2022 #pandemic reading #progress #june 2022

[paula-dot-jpg]

Big fan of these weirdos

x

#they are my faves i'm so glad jnj remembered their friendship existed in tpot 5 #if i drew and posted more frequently i would be so annoying about them and there would be nothing anyone could do about it #you would not believe all of the wip art i made of them during 2020-2021 when the pandemic first struck #when i was revisiting the series after not watching it since like 2015. my emotional support talking objects #also what fries is saying is the beginning paragraph of the metamorphosis by franz kafka #his stuff isn't for everyone but i read it last year and thought it was interesting. also hc fries loves kafka and is so obnoxious about it #just like me fr #bfdi #battle for dream island #tpot #the power of two #bfb #bfdi fries #bfdi puffball #fanart #my art #digital art #artist on tumblr

[marimeiastories]

During the pandemic, the residents of a village in Norfolk county decided to open a contact-free book and board games library in an old phone box. The residents could also post riddles in a mini post box inside, signing the riddle with their name. Whoever picked the riddle had to solve it and then put it back in a letter addressed to the riddle-maker.

In love with this.

#books and reading #riddles #board games #phone box #pandemic #covid19 #covid pandemic #mental health support #motivational #mental health #positive attitude #mental health blog #self care #books & libraries #reading #bookblr

[allweknewisdead]

The Second Coming (1919) - W. B. Yeats

The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

#w.b. yeats #william butler yeats #the second coming #things fall apart #slouching towards bethlehem #chinua achebe #joan didion #poem #poetry #inspiration to other authors #pandemic #reading #yeats

[emblazonet]

Moreta: Dragonlady of Pern

THIS BOOK IS SO GOOD!! It's so good! This is 100% my favourite Pern book so far. The characters are all great. The setting felt alive and interesting. The stakes were fucking high. I knew Moreta was going to die, in the way you know Vanyel is going to die in The Last Herald-Mage trilogy, because we're going back in time to explore the life of a characters from an in-universe ballad, and it made me love her more.

It's also about a pandemic, but in a soothing way? Honestly it was SUCH a relief to read a story about people just fucking doing the work of Dealing With A Contagious Flu without much of the bullshittery we've all had to live through these past three years.

This got long, so more under the cut!

There are no psycho anti-vax cults in Pern. The small population scattered over a continent that's constantly being besieged by Thread does not, generally, have the luxury of either the greed we've gotten to witness IRL nor the misinformation campaigns. Characters that hoard are stolen from; characters who try to prevent vaccination are villains in the narrative and the good guys go into their territory to vaccinate—that's Moreta's final heroic moment! She dies, not from the disease but from exhaustion, to ensure everyone gets vaccinated to PREVENT A SECOND WAVE.

I expected to feel re-traumatized by the pandemic conflict. Instead, it felt healing to read about these characters. It felt affirming. It made me feel better about my choice to continue wearing a mask in public. It felt invigorating: ok, so my world isn't as sensible as Pern's, but it's still worth it to fight disease, to fight the depression and apathy—in short, it did exactly what a fantasy book is supposed to do. Inspire. I don't know that this will be everyone's take away, but it was mine.

This book gets so much right, I can't even believe this is the same author who wrote all those other Pern books I've read so far. (How did we jump from the crap of The White Dragon into this? HOW?) All these things:

Despite there being SO MANY characters, the book largely juggles its cast well, and while I often forgot names, the context usually helped me out. Every character actually felt unique and distinct and like they had different lives they were living.

Moreta and Alessan's relationship was so well done. You know it's not a romance that will go anywhere, so it feels precious when they snatch some time together. Also, Alessan is just an attractive dude character? Unlike any other of the male leads in a Pern book, Alessan appeals to me.

The relationship between Moreta and the older queen rider, Leri—UGH MY HEART. At the beginning of the book I was worried Moreta would have the 'not like other girls' vibe... I needn't worried. Leri as mentor, accomplice and friend is everything I could have asked for in a female friendship. And Moreta has other relationships and positive experiences with women, and it's so good, but what she has with Leri is so special.

The way the book builds this yearning for Moreta to be able to fly Orlith again, and then at the end she's with Leri's exhausted Holth, and they die away from their partners in the line of duty—I CRIED OK. It was so much. It was so good.

Only small bits of time travel, smart avoidance of paradoxes, thank you.

I was super invested in Moreta's healing of the Thread-damaged dragon wings. The whole process of healing dragons was super interesting!

Loved that Threadfall kept on happening throughout, it made the stakes even higher in the best way possible.

There were things I think could have been better:

I didn't enjoy Moreta's introduction and it made me feel like the book was gonna suck lol, she was arguing with Nesso and then talking about her body in a way that just felt dated and weird.

Everyone on Pern must have the same blood type I guess? Because they're just using extracted blood to make the vaccine, and the vaccine appears to have no ill effect. Honestly, the book had so much going on I'm pretty grateful it didn't go into Accurate Medical Science, but it did feel incredibly oversimplified.

Telgar Weyr's Weyrleader just sort of like decides everyone's not allowed into his territory and fuck you guys but I didn't really get a feel for that character at all or where he was coming from? So it undermined Moreta's end sacrifice a bit, because the ending felt rushed.

I really wanted Sh'gall to do something so egregiously annoying that someone yelled at him. Sh'gall was basically the comic relief though, I generally enjoyed how useless he was lol.

Overall? 11/10 and I REALLY hope the rest of the Pern books are this good! I'm going to pick back up in January with Nerilka's Story.

#Amber reads Pern #Dragonriders of Pern #Moreta #straight up I enjoyed this one even more than Dragonsong #wish we'd globally handled the pandemic like they did on Pern #still losing my mind that runnerbeasts are just horses #ffs #I'm gonna have to design a weird equine for pern

[blurmarsh]

Talked with some friends about dream selves and it compelled me to draw Shinmy as a derse dreamer

#touhou #touhou project #shinmyoumaru sukuna #digital art #art #drawing #also for the record i think she'd be a page of rage #feel free to correct me tho idk about classpects as much as i should #believe it or not i actually didn't read homestuck as it came out i read it from start to finish in 2021 #the pandemic and college had me fucked up

[poetlcs]

100 books to read before you die 

→   #47. great expectations by charles dickens

#litedit #classiclitedit #classic #great expectations #charles dickens #100 books to read before you die #books #mine #this is what I did over the pandemic. read dickens finally lmfao #the100