#I literally have no idea if Vonnegut is a good writer

[olreid]

So I want to preface this with the fact that I’m being completely genuine here, there’s no gotcha, and that I’ve been an artist of some flavor basically my whole life but mostly I’m a writer of fiction. And. You have your against representation tag. And I’m coming around on the idea that Representation Doesn’t matter all that much, Actually, but jaws and birth of a nation and other works like them are still extant and have/had a measurable effect on our culture. So, that said, combined with that Kurt Vonnegut quote about the Vietnam War and the pie, is there any conclusion I can come to other than “art can’t help, it can only harm”? Is art at best irrelevant to societal struggles, and at worst, can only set us back?

help not birth of a nation AND kurt vonnegut!!

hashtag against representation is definitely not arguing that art is inherently either irrelevant or antithetical to social change; it is not even primarily making a claim about art so much as it is posting against a particular mode of critical reception which posits that art is only successful or acceptable insofar as it portrays a world which is either a mirror to ours and/or aspirational in some way. within this framework, art is pretty strictly utilitarian, and that only insofar as it manages to either reveal something already extant about our world or, more saliently, to set a moral example for how we ought to behave. i really disagree with the idea that art needs to accomplish either of those goals in order to adequately justify its existence, and i think that idea ends up retroactively making some claims about the relationship between art and life that i also disagree with.

namely, i would push back on the implicit claim that audiences can't be trusted with work that is dark or complex or portrays people behaving in ways that are unpalatable, that such work if left to proliferate unchecked would somehow exert nefarious influence over viewers or readers to the point of causing people to confuse depiction or exploration or critical inquiry for straightforward endorsement which of course they would be powerless to resist. idk it goes back to earlier posts about the idea that consuming #problematic media corrupts your soul and rubs off its problematicness on you whereas consuming moral media that has #positive representation conversely purifies you and serves as concrete evidence of your fundamentally good character. which in and of itself is just the latest iteration of the ever-recurring moral panic about the power of art to exert undue influence over us and bypass our ability to reason; see my pinned post for an example from an earlier historical period lol.

i think the vonnegut point you reference is helpful here insofar as he reminds us that while politically charged art can and does influence hearts and minds, it is also not a substitute for taking political action in other forms; representation paradigms and politics would have us conflate the two, such that just watching the right kinds of shows comes to stand in for being politically engaged. and while it may be meaningful or moving for people to see fictional worlds that are diverse along a variety of axes, i don't buy the idea that that automatically translates into structural change in the world we live in, where people can't afford rent or access healthcare or etc.

the point, at least as i see it, is that like. pushing for fictional diversity in and of itself is not going to save us; it blurs the lines between fiction and reality such that people begin to needlessly try and police or purify others' fiction consumption and production habits because they think it tells them something about those same people's political commitments, and imo is also often a drain on collective energy that could be more effectively deployed elsewhere. it's less that Representation Doesn't Matter and more that representation is literally just representation, no more and no less, and certainly not the lever by which we can most effectively bring about social change.

again that's not to say that art has no place in politics or political movements, but i think the relationship is much more complicated than make art where people are good to each other -> people will be good to each other in real life. and even if that WERE the case, it still wouldn’t obligate people to exclusively produce positive or progressive art.

#just one melatonin haver's opinion. 👍 #asks #anon #against representation

[thee-morrigan]

5, 7, 10 for the writer asks?

[weird questions for writers]

bunny! hello! i'm having a blast with these questions, so thanks for sending some <3 I'm going to apologize now because I'm honestly not sure if my answers are *really* answering the questions but I tried!

5. Do you have any writing superstitions? What are they and why are they 100% true?

i don't know that this counts as a true superstition or just a quirk, but i can't write unless i have a title for my document. i really hyperfixate on having a proper title even if i end up changing it later (e.g., the sam fic i just posted started out being called "the mean season")

7. What is your deepest joy about writing?

hmmm this is a really good question! i think probably just knowing how powerful writing can be? not necessarily my own of course lmao but just the way a handful of letters carefully arranged can spark a reaction in people that's so truly and violently felt it seems almost like the closest thing we have to actual magic. it's wild to me how writing can do things like that.

10. Has a piece of writing ever “haunted” you? Has your own writing haunted you? What does that mean to you?

literally anything/everything kurt vonnegut has ever written tbh. for example, I was recently reading a books of love letters exchanged between him and his wife (whom he called "woof" which has no business making my heart react as strongly as it has to that nickname). so many bits are wonderful, but I think my favorite/the section that haunts me most because of its simplicity and heft is this:

I swear before the maker of sycamores and little fishes that I adore you for being the heavenly cluster of ideas and woman you are. I would do anything on God’s charred acre to make you happy. It may be poor technique, but I’m the truest bum you’ve ever come across.

every single part of this is so sincere and so lovely that it makes me feel a little crazy, tbh.

(re: the other half of the question: the only time my own writing has haunted me has been in the most horror-oriented ways; specifically, my thesis gave me literal nightmares for like a solid year and a half. but that's not as fun to think about! :P)

#ty again for the ask! #answered #evilbunnyking #katie says things

[kirkjerk]

(re)rereading douglas adams

Thinking about rereading Douglas Adams' (once "increasingly inaccurately named") Hitchhiker's Trilogy, maybe to cut the "every Vonnegut novel" sequence I'm in.

(I am aware how strongly both series lean into the "what white high school boys think is amazing" vibe - but both Vonnegut and Adams are solid writers with a ton of ideas and strong humanist bents)

I remember re-rereading the Douglas Adams series before, but I think that must have been 20 years ago, yikes.

Five years ago, discussing the "specialness" of the Bible (like wondering if almost any series could serve as a "holy book" if it had folks reading it closely for moral instruction, and working to pull out lessons from it) I chose the HHGTTG series as a thought experiment counterexample. And it was a TERRIBLE choice for that discussion because there are so many amazing thought experiments crammed in the series. So much of the book is Adams framing deep ideas in goofy scenarios - the Total Perspective Vortex, Agrajag's reincarnations, etc... like, Adams confesses that the Man in the Shack is Adams retorting his philosophy student friends who were talking about ridiculously strict empiricism and skepticism. You could absolutely make a holy text of it, 42 or no.

It's so hard to read with "beginner's eyes", so many turns of phrase and whole paragraphs have been so deeply pressed into my memory.

(Also, to be fair, DNA doesn't set himself up as much of a worldbuilder, which is usually crucial for my enjoyment of other science fiction or fantasy. He spins hard wacky, anything that is good for a laugh or to explore the philosophical point. I think that's why some of my favorite writing is when he returns to Earth, as in So Long and Thank for All the Fish and the Dirk Gently stuff - literally and figuratively a bit more grounded.)

[prime-catra]

I have discovered that the only ‘classic’ literature i actually like is. like. Dystopia. Like 1984 (i have no mouth and i must scream but idk if that’s considered classic). Etc. with that being said i dont like classic dystopia because i consider it horror adjacent because it usually never has happy endings. With that being said again. I have just checked out slaughter house five from my local library. I have no idea what the book is about all i know is supernatural and supernatural fanfic. Do with this information what you will

#I literally have no idea if Vonnegut is a good writer #because usually when i read a new writer i read a snippet online to decide if i like their writing style #But i took the plunge #This is so embarrassing supernatural is literally infiltrating my life #Me #laur talks

[sortasirius]

Prompt: Sam sets Dean up on a blind date. Dean is reluctant but Sam talks him into it. Dean meets Cas at the diner/wherever and hates to admit it, but the guy is kinda really hot and he's really enjoying their conversation. Before they've finished their meal, a girl/guy approaches their table. It's the person Sam wanted to set Dean up with. Cas realizes he got a text message half an hour ago from his actual blind date, who had to cancel at the last minute. Heheh :D

Boy I really swagged in fifteen minutes late with Starbucks on this one huh?  Sorry for being AWOL, y’all, life got me a little down recently but I’m feeling better, love you all eternally and here’s some absolutely shameless AU fluff.

Thank you so so much for prompting me this, literally any and all prompts are welcome at all times always <3

Words: 1341

“This is embarrassing,” Dean whines, staring at Sam who’s staring at his phone, paying Dean no mind.

“It’s not embarrassing, lots of people go on blind dates.”

Dean rolls his eyes, Sam was purposefully missing the point here, he shouldn’t have to explain why this was embarrassing, why having your younger brother, who is in college, set you up with a blind date with someone he met at a party is embarrassing.

“I don’t think I’m ready.”

Sam looks up from his homework, equal parts exasperated with American History in the 1800s as he is with Dean himself.  He takes a long swig of coffee, sweeps his hair out of his face, and fixes Dean with a stare that makes Dean feel like he’s being x-rayed.  He turns away from Sam’s eyes, looking out at the park they were sitting in, Sam insisting that only commuting to and from work wasn’t enough fresh air for him, and had dragged him out to the park by their shared apartment to study in Sam’s case, to crush 40 levels of Candy Crush in Dean’s.

“You’ll be fine, they’re really nice, I think you’ll like them.”

“You really won’t give me any details?”

“Nope.”

Dean sighs heavily, looking around for some inspiration, some excuse as to why he can’t go on this date.  He just doesn’t do dating, much less the type of dating that should be left in a nineties rom com.  He comes up empty.

“Fine, but you have to do dishes for the next week. And laundry.”

Sam grins into his history books.

“Fine.”

Dean isn’t nervous as he walks into the little diner, because he doesn’t get nervous, thanks for asking.  He doesn’t pick the seat at the booth the hostess shows him so he can see the door on purpose, he just happens to like to sit this way.  He’s also not tapping his foot on the linoleum floor and twisting his hands together, because that would mean he cared about this, which he does not.

The diner’s familiar, which is a blessing and a curse, because he knows what’s good but also can’t look at the menu for something to do.

This is dumb.  He feels like he’s twelve.

The door jingles, and Dean’s head snaps up.  The guy speaking to the hostess is a little shorter than Dean, but not by much.  His hair is dark and sticking up in all directions, he’s got a killer jawline, and the type of stance that says he knows he’s hot.  He leans toward the hostess with a smile, and she stares at him for a second too long before leading him straight towards Dean, and he has to fight the urge to stand up and throw himself through the glass window to avoid this whole thing.  Damn Sam, he really knew his type.

“Hi,” the guy says, and Dean tries his best not to stare at the way his dark jeans hug his hips and the way his t-shirt is just a little too small across his chest and shoulders.  Fuck.

Dean takes the hand that’s offered and the guy slides into the booth across from him.  His eyes are bright blue and so intense that Dean feels his throat constricting like he’s having an allergic reaction.  This is going to be a fucking disaster, he had not expected this guy to be this hot.

“Hey.  I’m Dean, nice to uh, meet you.”

“Dean, that’s a nice name.  I’m Cas.”

“Cool, hi Cas.”

Dean will not let this be awkward, this guy is too hot not to take back to his apartment.

“So, what do you do?”

“Straight in with it, then?” Cas smiles a crooked smile that Dean melts a little at, “I’m a writer, I work for the university as a professor.”

Dean liked that he put the title of writer before professor.

“That’s cool, what d’you teach?”

“English and literature, depending on the semester.  What do you do?”

The conversation is far easier than Dean had expected.  Talking to Cas is as easy as breathing, and they go from one topic to the next with ease. From sports, which Cas knows nothing about, to literature, where Cas spends five minutes doe-eyed over Dean as he talks about his love for Vonnegut and Tolstoy.  Dean doesn’t even really taste his bacon cheeseburger, which is a real shame because they’re the best in the city.

“I have to say, you aren’t what I expected,” Cas smiles at Dean with bright eyes and Dean feels himself turning red.

“Yeah you really aren’t either, not that I’m complaining or anything.”

“Glad to hear there aren’t any complaints.”

Dean grins, taking a bite of his burger and not even caring if he’s graceful about it.

“Who would I go to with complaints?”

“Hm?  Oh, you’d have to take that up with the HR department, but they’re on an extended vacation at the moment,” Cas taps his own head, making a face that makes Dean choke into his fries.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had an HR department, it’s just sheer chaos up here.”

Cas laughs this full laugh that makes Dean laugh as well. He hasn’t found someone this easy to talk to…ever, except for Sam.  As much as he dreaded this meal, he’s dreading the end of it even more.  He thought “connections” with people right off the bat were made up by Hollywood to sell tickets to bad movies, he had never expected to connect with someone this fast, but the idea of the date being over made his palms get sweaty.

“Listen, I don’t wanna assume-” Dean begins, right as a pretty girl with long blonde hair comes up to their table, breaking the little bubble of bliss that had developed over the course of their conversation.

“Hi, so sorry to bother you, are either of you Dean?”

Dean looks her up and down, surprised.  He doesn’t recognize her, and he’s not one to forget someone he meets.

“Uh yeah, I am.”

“I think we were supposed to meet for lunch forty five minutes ago?”

Dean looks from Cas, to the girl, to Cas again.  Cas’ brow is furrowed with confusion as he goes digging through his phone.  Dean watches his eyebrows knit, his eyes widen, and his mouth fall open as he looks up to stare at Dean.

“Um.  My blind date texted me half an hour ago saying he had to cancel.”

They stare at each other, it feels like Dean’s brain is trying to catch up.  The girl, Dean’s actual date, is watching them, looking more curious than annoyed.

“So…”

“So we weren’t meant to be on this date.”

Dean blinks several times.  Fuck it, maybe this was down to fate.  He turns back to the pretty girl and gives her his most charming smile.

“I’m so sorry.  Can we, uh, reschedule?”

She eyes them, and Dean hadn’t even realized he and Cas were leaning across the table, as close to each other as the plastic would allow.

“Uh, yeah, we can.  No problem.”

“I really am sorry.”

She smiles awkwardly and heads out the door.  Dean immediately puts his face in his hands, Cas starts laughing.

“What’re you laughing at?”

“That was so awkward, I thought you were going to shrivel up right there.”

Dean rolls his eyes and picks up a couple of fries, pretending to ignore Cas, like he’d known him all his life.  Cas pulls himself together after a couple of minutes, wiping his eyes on the back of his hand.

“What were you saying, before your actual date interrupted ours?”

Dean blushes again.  But again, fate right?

“I was saying, I didn’t want to assume anything, but are you free later this week?”

Cas grins, and takes Dean’s hand in his.  His hand is warm and solid and Dean does not want to let it go.

“I’ll check my schedule, I may have a couple of blind dates to cancel, but I think the HR department can fit you in.”

#my writing #destiel #spn #supernatural #deancas #anyway send me all prompts pls and thnk u #anonymous #lilly answers

[incorrectbatfam]

Any tips for writing? Like not the grammar or specific Mary Sue type stuff, like tips for becoming a better writer in general?

Fanfiction writers are still writers. Don’t brush yourself aside just because you’re writing about Batman and Superman’s romantic getaway to Paris, and don’t let anyone else invalidate you either. On the same note, that also means treat your works as if they are original pieces you are presenting to an audience—treat it with respect and dignity. (It also means the below content applies to you too.)

Your level of comfort, interest, and love for writing will directly translate into your work. If the long paragraph you’re writing is boring and tedious to you, it’s gonna be boring and tedious to the reader. If you’re writing out of obligation (such as request fulfillment) instead of out of desire, that’s going to show and your readers won’t love it as much as you want them to. If you’re writing a topic that you’re not comfortable writing, guess what? Likewise, if you’re having fun and pouring your heart into your work, your readers are gonna want to join you for the ride.

Write. Write as much as you can, whenever you have the opportunity. Write during your lunch break, write on the bus, write when you have nothing to do on a rainy day. Consistent practice is the key to improvement. But more importantly: read and research more than you write. Explore which books are successful in your genre and why. Read classics and myths. Google why eyebrows fall off or watch a documentary about the Texarkana killer or read a Writer’s Digest article about plot building. Don’t just brush it off with a note saying “this probably isn’t good or accurate lol”. Pause. Go back. Do it right.

Not everyone is gonna love what you write because you’re not writing for everyone. Don’t just write something and toss it out to the world randomly. Figure out your audience first, and then write accordingly (and it’s okay if your audience changes). 

Your creativity and your skill level are probably not on equal footing. This is especially true if you haven’t been writing for very long (i.e. a year or less). You likely have these grand ideas that you can’t wait to get on paper, but when you do, it’s sloppy-looking and underwhelming. This is a starting point—nobody writes a masterpiece on the first try. Keep practicing, keep learning, and you will rise to your potential in due time.

Learn the rules, then bend them at your will. This goes for all things—conventions, societal norms, story building, characters, etc. E.E. Cummings said “f*ck you” to grammar because he knew how it works and thus how to convey his message without it. Jane Austen used double negatives and was famous for being progressive for her time. Edgar Allen Poe wrote unsettling things. Kurt Vonnegut just hated semicolons. But all these authors knew what they were getting into and that’s how they pulled it off properly.

Have confidence, not pride. Learn to take criticism where it’s valid and learn to discern that from plain old hate. Listen to feedback and edit or rewrite as needed. You could be William goddamn Shakespeare himself and there will always be something you need to work on—some way you can be better. But at the same time, know at what point to stop editing and to just trust yourself. I can’t tell you how to do that; you have to figure it out for yourself.

Take your work seriously, but not too seriously. Have fun with it! You don’t need to confine yourself to certain standards or feel pressured to write a certain way if you don’t want to. Not a fan of serious philosophical monologues? Don’t do it. You wanna write a middle-grade story about a princess traveling on magical unicorn farts? By all means! One of my drafts is literally my OTP singing a High School Musical song. Sometimes you gotta let loose and have a good laugh—and your readers will gladly join you in the revelry.

#ask #anonymous #personal #not dc related #writing tips #advice #writing

[fanfictionaries]

A Fine Line Between Lust and Hate - jbbuckybarnes Birthday Challenge

Thank you to @jbbuckybarnes for this fun writing challenge! Congratulations on over 900 followers and also happy 21st birthday! It’s a fun age, enjoy it! 

Prompt 1: Bookstore AU

Prompt 2: “Just gimme the book and fuck off!” 

Pairing: AU Bookstore!Bucky Barnes X female reader

Summary:  If there was one person you hated more than anyone else in the world it was James Buchanan “Call Me Bucky” Barnes. Or at least, you thought you did. As Bucky continues to press your patience, it becomes unclear as to whether it’s hate you feel, or lust. 

Words: 3.5k

Warnings: Swearing, smut, doggy style, oral (male receiving), NSFW/18+ only

Author’s Note: Man, I do love a good rousing debate over literature. 

***

You stood in one of the long aisles as you worked on putting the store’s most recent influx of donations on the shelves. The endless rows of historical memories stretched high above your head and all around you. However, the large stack in front of you currently sat untouched, a copy of Ernst Jünger’s Storm of Steel held tightly in your grasp, as you watched the events occurring at the front desk. Your coworker, James, was leant casually against the counter, once again ignoring his work duties as he openly and obnoxiously flirted with the woman in front of him.

God, you hated him. You hated his stupid long hair that he pulled up into a stupid bun. You hated his stupid tight jeans that hugged his thick thighs and his stupid red Henley that accentuated his muscular shoulders and arms. You hated his stupid handsome face that only fueled his overall cocky attitude. God, you absolutely hated James Buchanan ‘Call Me Bucky’ Barnes.

You hadn’t set out to hate him of course. Quite the opposite in fact. When your boss informed you of a new employee who wasn’t a billion-year-old woman, you had been ecstatic. Not to say you didn’t love Lucille, but to finally meet a person close to your age that loved books so much they were willing to work at the musty, expansive bookstore was a dream come true. For years now, you’d found yourself spending more time alone, tucked into the rows of books than you did with anyone your own age. You’d think that the kitschy bookstore would be a draw to the younger individuals in town, with the rise of intellectualism or at least the guise of intellectualism within today’s youth. Not to mention, the fact that it was nestled in between the cutest antique store and 50’s style diner. But, alas, it didn’t seem to be on trend for your town. Instead, you got the odd stragglers of older individuals who still enjoyed reading physical books, and local community college students looking to either sell or buy books for classes. That’s why the idea of coming into work every day to a coworker you could relate to was beyond wonderful. However, it hadn’t taken long for James to get so far under your skin, you practically wore him like a pair of itchy long johns.

It had started with his complete disregard for the books and their safety. As a self-proclaimed bibliophile, you took great pride in the care and safety of the books in the store. They were a mix of new and used, the older ones coming into your protective arms the moment you clocked the torn corners and dog-eared pages. You spent hours restoring them before putting them out to be appreciated by the next reader. That’s why, on his third day there when you’d spotted him using his copy of Catcher in the Rye as a coaster for his iced coffee, you’d nearly had an aneurysm. You wished that the situation was a one-time thing, but every time you turned a corner, he was bending spines, creasing pages, WRITING in the margins. He was a book sadist.

Then of course, there was the lackadaisical way in which he approached his job. Not once, not twice, but ten times in the last three months you had stayed late finishing work that had been assigned to him. Why did you do it, instead of letting him take the fall for shoddy work? Well, because it was always things that needed to be done either before the shop could close or before the shop could open. Closing out the till, turning off all the lights, locking the back door, fixing the displays, picking up the giant stack of books that had fallen near the back, changing a burnt-out light using the very old and very rickety ladder.

And lastly, the one thing you absolutely hated the most about him was just how incredibly flirty he was! From the very beginning, he took every opportunity to hit on you. At first it had been flattering, but incredibly jarring and confusing. What could he possibly want with you? He looked like that and you looked like, well people didn’t really want to date the weird bookstore girl that always smelled faintly of old books. Then, it had all come into focus. James flirted with everyone. Not just you. Everyone. The moment a woman under the age of forty walked through those front doors, James was there with his stupid charming ways; “Can I help you with anything today?” “What’s a beautiful woman like you doing in here today?” “I knew a woman of your caliber would have good taste in books.” All the while, he’d chance little glances your way, smirking at you and raising his eyebrows slightly. It was all a game to him. Prick.

“Now, see, that is a fantastic choice. I knew the moment you walked in you had good taste,” stated James pointing down at the copy of The God of Small Things that was currently clutched to the woman’s chest in her perfectly manicured hands. You rolled your eyes. Ridiculous. You glanced over again to see James smirking in your direction before he walked the woman to the front door and waved her goodbye, shutting and locking the door behind her. Last customer of the day. You sighed, turning back to the stacks in front of you and swiftly putting the books back into place. The quicker you got this done, the quicker you would be out of there and away from James’ mocking face and overall itchy personality. You continued to put the books away, probably harsher than you should have, as you listened to the faint sounds of James closing out the till. Well, at least he was doing that today. I knew the moment you walked in you had good taste, you mocked him in your head, huffing and puffing at just how infuriating he was. You winced at a particularly harsh shove of a book into the shelve. Quickly, you pulled it out and inspect the corners and sides of the hard cover.

“Careful there—” a pair of large hands came into your line of site, snatching the book from your hands “—What did Michael Herr ever do to you?”

“Nothing,” you huffed, turning to grab the book back, but coming up unsuccessful. “Although, I really would prefer it if you didn’t allow customers to stay so late past closing.”

“Why? Got somewhere to be? Hot date?” James asked, circling around you to lean against the bookshelves to your right.

You snorted, “As if that’s any of your business.”

“Come on. Lighten up a little bit (Y/N). She needed help finding a good book for her English class,” said James, pulling the book out of reach as you attempted to grab it back from him once again.

“Okay,” you scoffed, rolling your eyes and reaching back down to the stack of books remaining on the cart to your left.

“What? You got something against Indian authors writing about caste relations and cultural tensions?”

“No, but I think if Roy tried to squeeze one more literary device into the text, the book would literally explode. Nobody genuinely enjoys a work where the author is intentionally trying to be clever. It’s obnoxious,” you said as you continued to put the books into their correct spaces as quickly as possible.

“Oh, so I guess you don’t care for Shakespeare then? What about Vonnegut, Anne Rice, Tolkien? Every author thinks they’re clever (Y/N). If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be writers,” said James, crossing his arms and leaning towards you condescendingly.

“That’s-that’s just ridiculous,” you responded lamely, placing the last book in your pile away.

“Oh really? Then please, oh smart one, name a single author who didn’t take themselves so seriously that it didn’t bleed through their work in some way,” James challenged, once again pulling the book in his hands away from your reaching hands.

You stood there, glowering at the man in front of you as you tried to come up with some king of answer. “C. S. Lewis,” you blurted out, wanting to kick yourself at the obviously stupid answer.

A barking laugh left James, “Oh come on. The man spent most of his career preaching Christian values and what it means to be moral. He even went so far as to write a short story on what the afterlife looks like and how to get into heaven. Or are we just going to pretend like The Great Divorce didn’t happen? Just because he wrote a bunch of entertaining children’s stories bathed in Christian symbolism with little effort does not mean that he didn’t take himself seriously.”

His astute criticism caught you off guard and peaked your anger, mainly because to a certain extent he was right. That didn’t mean you were going to let him know that though, “Excuse you! I’ll have you know he wrote The Great Divorce after the death of his wife. What else was he supposed to write about? You know what James—”

“How many times do I have to tell you to call me Bucky?”

“Just gimme the book and fuck off!”

Your eyes widened at your outburst. You’d never spoken to anyone like that before in your life. Opening your mouth to apologize, you quickly closed it when James sighed heavily and pushed himself off of the bookshelf. He stared at you, his eyes calculating as he closed the space between you, slamming the good on the shelf behind your head. You jumped, turning so that you faced him head on, your back to the endless rows of books. James placed an intimidatingly large arm on either side of you, bracing himself against oak shelves. You swallowed thickly at the sheer size of him. Your pulse quickened. He had never been this close to you.

“You know what (Y/N)? I think you’re just jealous,” James murmured, tilting his head dangerously low to yours.

“Jealous? Of what?” you asked, your voice embarrassingly breathy, as your head began to swim. He was so close. So close you could smell his cologne, a musky warm scent mixed with the fresh scent of soap and…old books? Subtly, you tried to inhale more of the tantalizing smell without James noticing. But one glance up and you could see that familiar smirk and cocky gleam in his eye.

“Me, and every woman that walks in here ready to fuck me in the encyclopedia section.”

You gasped at his words, “That’s ridiculous. Why would I be jealous of that?”

“Because you want to fuck me in the encyclopedia section.”

“I—I do not—I do not want to—I hate you!”

James leaned closer, his nose brushing against yours, “Doesn’t mean you don’t want to fuck me—” His head titled, his lips brushing across your cheek, your jawline, and then to the shell of your ear. “—Just say the word and I’ll take you right there. Right then. Any time. Any day.”

You shivered at the offer. Never had his flirting gone this far. Sure, James had given you a flirtatious smile and charming little comment here and there, but never had he come close to propositioning you. You should say no. You hate him. He’s everything you despise and yet…

“Fuck it.” Rising up on the tips of your toes, you wrap your arms around his neck and press your lips to his in a searing kiss. James’ lips claim yours, never hesitating for a second, as if expecting it. The soft skin of his plush lips a stark contrast to the harsh way in which you both battled for dominance. Every ounce of anger, frustration, and tension that you held towards him fought its way through your body as you nipped, bit, and tugged. James’ hands moved from the bookshelf to your body, gripping your hips and tugging you harshly against him, revealing the same level of pent up aggression. His hands traveled upwards, cupping your breasts through your sweater, roughly massaging them as he slipped his tongue into your mouth. Threading your fingers into his hair, you tugged harshly earning you a growl from James. Breaking away from the kiss just long enough to pull your sweater up and over your head, your bodies reconnected, the feel of your bare torso against him feeling oh so right. You continued to hang onto him for dear life, as his kisses left you breathless and needy. Bringing a leg up around his hip, your pelvis rocked against him, searching for any kind of friction as you climbed him like a tree.

“Eager, aren’t we?” James teased, hands moving down to harshly grasp your ass and lift you up. Wrapping your legs around his hips, you allowed him to carry you the brief distance away from the bookshelves and lower you onto the rough carpet floor. Trailing kisses down your neck and towards your breasts, he roughly yanked the cups of your bra down before taking a nipple between his teeth. You arched into his mouth, loving the sting as he bit down.

“God, I knew you’d be a fucking little minx,” panted James, sitting up on his knees. “Look at you all sexy and needy. Just had to get you to let go.”

Pushing up onto your elbows, you stared up at him, “Shut the fuck up and take your shirt off James.”

Swinging his hand down, he swatted the inside of your thigh, “The name’s Bucky, babe.”

Your head fell backwards at the contact and your pussy clenched as you moaned low. Sitting up, you ripped his shirt from his torso and threw it behind you before pushing him down onto the ground. You made quick work of removing your bra, shoes, and pants before reaching for his belt buckle. This time it was his turn to push up onto his elbows as he watched your near naked form, undo his belt and then his pants. You tugged at his pants and then his boxers in a desperate manner, James kicking off his shoes and socks to held aid in their removal. Finally, when he was naked before you, you took a moment to admire the lean curves of his muscular form and the thick cock that sat just below his belly button, nestled in a patch of short brown curls.

Running your nails lightly up and down his thighs, you smirked as he writhed below you, sucking in a harsh breath through his teeth. Lowering yourself slowly, you positioned yourself between his thick thighs and grasped the base of his cock in your hand, wasting no time in wrapping your lips around the head and swirling your tongue around him. Bucky cursed, low and sexy as you took him in your mouth. You worked him with your lips and tongue as your moved lower and lower. Spit gathered in your mouth as you breathed through your nose, giving your all into pleasuring the man below you. You wanted to once and for all wipe the smirk off of James “Bucky” Barnes’ face. When you made it almost all the way to the base, you hollowed your cheeks, sucking as you massaged the vein on the underside of his cock with your tongue. His hands flew to the back of your head, fingers lacing in your hair and gripping tight. He held onto you for dear life as you attempted to suck the soul out of him through his dick alone.

“Jesus Christ! Fuck! (Y/N),” he yelled, his body shuddering. When you slipped down the last few inches, allowing his cock to slip easily down your throat, he stilled, body rigid before he pulled you off of him with a curse.

You fell backwards onto your hands, spit coating your lips and drool falling down your chin as you breathed in deeply. A low growl escaped James’ throat as he launched himself at you, flipping you onto your stomach, and ripping your panties down your legs. His hands found your center in no time, his fingers delving deep into your core easily, aided by the embarrassing amount of arousal there. James fingered you, curving and finding that special spot inside of you that made your see stars. You yelped, bucking your hips back against him. His teeth sunk into the supple flesh of your ass.

“You’re god damn dripping down my arm (Y/N). Did sucking my cock turn you on that much?”

“Yes!” you admitted, continuing to rock your hips against him. Pulling his fingers from you, you whimpered at the loss of contact. The loss was only temporary though, as soon James was pulling your hips up, placing you back on your knees, face still pressed against the carpet as he lined his cock up with your entrance. There was no slow and delicate start. No, in one swift thrust, he was seated fully inside of you, hands firmly grasping your ass as he began to fuck you at a punishing pace.

“Fucking hell baby. Your pussy is like a vice-grip. I don’t think I’m going to last long,” he admitted, continuing to pound into you, his balls slapping against your clit with every thrust. He reached down, finding your clit and rubbing light, fast circles around it until you began to feel the familiar pressure building in your lower abdomen.

“Yes! Bucky! Fuck. Just like that, don’t stop!” you cried, desperate to reach your climax. The carpet scraped against your skin, sure to leave burns after. But you didn’t care. The only thing you cared about was the delicious stretch of your cunt around Bucky’s cock and your imminent orgasm.

“That’s it, baby. Say my fucking name again. Say my name as you cum all around me.”

You chanted his name over and over again, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, until finally you were approaching the edge and falling over. Your body shuddered and hips bucked as you came, loving the feeling of every hard ridge of Bucky’s thick cock inside of you. A few seconds late, he was pulling out of you and then you felt the warm streams of cum splashing across your ass. You collapsed fully onto the carpet below you, Bucky falling after you and rolling to lay beside you. You laid there, in post-orgasmic bliss. The feeling of Bucky’s fingertips trailing up and down your spine soothing you down from your high. After a little while, the two of your stood up and began to redress. Bucky, ever the gentleman, told you to wait as he ran to the front counter and came back with some tissues before wiping up the mess he had made on your ass.

Once you were both dressed, you finished closing up the store. Neither of you spoke, instead choosing to spare the other furtive little glances as you turned out the lights and locked the door behind you both.

“Looks like the diner is still open. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?” Bucky asked, looking down at you giving you a small, shy smile that you’d never seen on him before.

His question caught you off guard. He wanted to buy you coffee. “Oh, Bucky. You don’t have to feel obligated to—”

“—I don’t feel obligated. I, um, I want to.” He swallowed thickly, almost as if he was nervous. Was he nervous? “I know we just, well, I know we skipped a few steps, but I actually do want to take you out. I’ve been trying to hint it to you for the past three months.”

“So, all the flirting with the customers…?”

“Was me stupidly trying to make you jealous,” laughed Bucky, stuffing his hands in his coat pockets.  

“Ah,” you said, a smiling spreading across your face, “How about you buy me a coffee and tell me all your thoughts on Brontë.”

“How much time do you have?” asked Bucky with an exaggerated groan.

Holding your hand out to him, you reveled in the feel of his warm palm connecting with yours, “All the time in the world.”

Marvel Taglist:

@caffiend-queen

@hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall

#jbbuckybarnesBirthdayChallenge #fanfic #fanfiction #bookstoreau #smut #bucky x you #bucky x female reader #bucky x y/n #marvel

[translitsupplement]

Watching and Learning -  "Darryl" by Jackie Ess

Reviewed in this essay:

Darryl - Jackie Ess (Clash Books, 2021)

I read Jackie Ess’ new book Darryl recently and, like a cliche, I couldn’t put it down. I started reading it at about seven AM and before I knew what was happening, it was afternoon and the book was over, and I felt like crying a little. It was a damn good read.

It follows Darryl, a guy who lives off an inheritance and likes watching his wife fuck other men. He’s a cuck, as they put it, and he’s strangely proud of it. There’s a bit where he talks about coming out as one to his mom, and it’s funny and kind of cringe, but in a good way. Which is about how I’d sum up this novel: Darryl is a guy who stumbles around, searching for answers, and he doesn’t always like what he finds but he’s plucky and keeps on searching all the same.

Ess takes readers into the darker corners of the web where people play for keeps and occasionally die, and eventually, Darryl faces the darkness himself. It’s hard not to ask sometimes if it’s a GHB dream, and to ask if he’s scared of finding himself in this darkness… but there’s always Ess’ sense of humour and compassion, and her skillful writing keeps the book grounded.

Darryl’s an internet novel, in the same way that Patricia Lockwood’s new book No One Is Talking About This is, and it’s written in a similarly breezy, casual way about the trouble and mess the internet can bring to people’s lives. Darryl is writing a blog, or just keeping people updated on his comings and cummings, and the people he runs across. The demonic shrink Clive, the tarot-reading Sartori, and Bill, a guy who likes fucking Darryl’s wife and becomes something more than a friend.

But he’s plugged in online, talking about his message board pals, people calling each other “cucks” on the internet, and investigates people like a sleuth. He’s a smart, interesting guy who knows a little about poetry, opera and has opinions on the Golden State Warriors. As Torrey Peters’ blurb puts it, he’s a seeker. And in him, we find some answers, particularly to the statement posed one time by Vonnegut: we are who we pretend to be.

For example, about halfway through the book, Darryl has a moment where he talks about crossdressing:

“The idea of crossdressing is so fucked up, man, like what do actual women wear? Not big frilly dresses. Not big frilly dresses. T-Shirts and jeans, yoga pants, fast fashion bullshit. So what’s crossdressing? That’s what I already wear. It’s just an attitude.” (Pg 88).

In little bits like this, Darryl resonated with me. Back a few years ago, when I was trying to get my shit together, I wrote about Grimes and her “vibing in a gender-neutral zone” and asked what women’s clothing is but just a different fitting shirt. A few years later, I’m wearing that shirt and taking seven pills a day and have a different legal name. I’m not saying Darryl is a trans narrative or anything, but I am saying I saw myself reflected at times in this book and it’s stuck with me.

There’s other ways I saw myself here. I too spent a lot of time on the internet looking for answers to questions; unlike him, I never had the time or social skills to like meet up with people off-line, and my journey took a longer, maybe less weird route through stuff like Fictionpress, Tumblr blogs and eventually, a zine Ess edited a few years back which influenced me enough I followed all the writers from it on twitter. It’s weird seeing someone ask themselves similar questions as one asked oneself back in the day, but it’s refreshing, interesting and kind of messy. And maybe that’s a better way to look at this.

A more serious review might ask how Darryl examines stuff like masculinity in the 21st century, and maybe someone will write that review. I’m just here, at 9:30am on my day off, on coffee number four, trying to sort my thoughts about this book into something coherent. Something more than “Hey, I really liked this book and I think it’ll win a Lammy.” But I’m willing to bet it will.

Throughout Darryl, I found myself glued to the action. It’s told in a simple way, with down-to-earth prose, and although the story takes on an otherworldly quality - like how I imagine Twin Peaks is, although I’ve only seen bits and pieces - with murders and sex and death and a town with hidden secrets, it always comes across like Darryl is telling you story, maybe over a beer and maybe while you’re watching the big game, not because either of you really care about sports, but because he’s feels like he’s supposed to, and maybe you do too.  

I feel sometimes that Peters writes what I’d call messy fiction, in that her characters are fully shaped and involved in tangled, frayed relationships, as compared to someone like Casey Plett, who’s people feel heartbreakingly real, but have a comparatively cleaner life. I’m thinking of, say, The Masker, a story about two people in Vegas (I think - it’s been a minute since I read it) who are involved in the sexual underground, in a relationship with dark edges of sex and violence. I think Darryl lives in a similar universe. It’s messy and the people are complicated. They get mixed up in things that threaten to sweep them away, with people who are dangerous to know, and sex with strangers who smack people around.

But gosh, I wish I could write like this, even if I’d never want to live in this world.

All in all, it’s a stunning debut novel, a compelling story about a seeker who gets more than he reckoned for when he started asking his wife to fuck other men while he watched. It’s equally moving and funny, and like I said up top, I literally read this book in one marathon stretch.  It’s not out for a few weeks, but you can pre-order it via Clash Books. I’d recommend you do.

#darryl #jackie ess #clash books #book review #books

[emptymanuscript]

Pet Peeve, the

So, the book I am reading has hit one of my big pet peeves. One of my biggest.

It’s distinguishing fundamentally between a good and a bad story. Even if those aren’t the words it’s using.

In its own terms between a story and a situation. A story being the type of writing that follows its parameters. A situation being everything else. Situations of course have their place and can be excellent but aren’t stories.

I hate this concept. Not just here but as a general principle. Because it ALWAYS comes down to taste.

The book has given the nonspecific example of a teen slasher flick. Anything where it’s all action with no character motivation. Of course two of the paragons of story held up at prior points was Jaws and Die Hard.

I had this professor in college. He insisted that Kurt Vonnegut wasn’t a Sci-Fi writer. Which is obviously ridiculous to anyone who has ever read Kurt Vonnegut. After a lot of pushing and pressing a friend of mine finally got out of him that he said that because he didn’t like Sci-Fi but he did like Vonnegut. So he had taken the extra step off the derp end and decided that his taste defined genre.

Having watched that professor’s mental contortions it became kind of obvious afterwards. This is what people do. And they go to great lengths to make it work. They create the “good” category out of what they personally like and the “bad” category out of what they don’t and then tie themselves in knots trying to keep it working.

I love Sci-Fi. In principle. I HATED the new Battle Star Galactica series. It’s one of my deep regrets in life that I watched all of it, getting angrier and surlier with every episode that disappointed me. And there’s no sane argument to be made that BSG wasn’t Sci-Fi. Not one complaint I have would be a legitimate critique of its Sci-Fi-ness.

More than that, not one story critique I could make, and I made many at the time, would be a sane argument that it was somehow not a story. Because that’s not the way the world works. Individual tastes don’t determine what something is.

There’s not story and situation. There’s not literate and trash fiction. Genre fiction isn’t bad because particular people prefer literary. That’s tastes not facts.

As with science, if you run into a theory of fiction or story or characterization or whatever that cannot accomodate the observed facts then theory must change or be abandoned.

In this kind of case it’s simple. I tend not to like Sci-Fi but I do like what Vonnegut does with it. I love Sci-Fi but I didn’t like how BSG treated its story and character arcs enough that I didn’t like it even though it was Sci-Fi. Stories TEND to work better when the plot derives from character motivation and it results in a change of moral outlook on the part of the main character.

And to be 100% truthful this is the real reason that I keep running back to the MICE Quotient. Because it’s acknowledging that there are at least 4 primary types of story construction based on the same fundamental principles present in all stories. And the only idea I have encountered that seems more accurate is that there may be 6. It doesn’t cover everything but it acknowledges a fundamental truth that most writing guides like to avoid:

(y)our way of making a story not only isn’t the one way to do it, there’s a decent chance it’s not the best way.

[so-shiny-so-chrome]

Witness: Kalashnikorn

Creator name (AO3): Kalashnikorn

Creator name (Tumblr): Main-force-patrol

Link to creator works: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalashnikorn

Creator name (other platform- please specify): @Riccarterfans (twitter)

Q: Why the Mad Max Fandom?

A: My interest in Mad Max started early. I was maybe 12-14 when my mom picked it up on VHS at a garage sale because she had fond memories of the film when it came out (she saw it in theaters, which is rare for her). We’re both fond of cars and dystopian/apocalyptic stuff, so I easily connected with the movie and fell in love with WAY too many of the characters. So there was my weirdo self, in the early 2000s, loving MM1 but not really having a fandom to join. I had fun on my own, drawing stuff, making toys of the characters, writing doofy adolescent fanfic. You know, the works. But I did it in isolation, because I was a LONELY kid. Not just in terms of fandom, there were just never other kids around, or adults (other than my parents) around. Therefore, I spent most of my time online, and lost countless hours lurking on the MadMaxMovies.com forum. But I didn’t feel safe talking to people there, because the only other fans were guys my dad’s age. For years, if I had any kind of fandom-related wish that I’d give an arm to fulfill, it was that other girls and queer folks would embrace the MM series so I could finally share my excitement with people that would “get” me. Fast forward to 2015. Fury Road fulfilled that wish. I knew tumblr was my best chance at getting those friends I’d wanted for so long. It’s better than I’d ever dreamed. Mad Max Fandom, I love you! Special shoutout to @d--t, @crunkmouse, @sillyb0yblue, @sleepymayo, @lethalpr0tector, @legendofstraydog, @partyinvalhalla and @vanessa-geraldine-carlysle! 

Q: What do you think are some defining aspects of your work? Do you have a style? Recurrent themes?

A: I love to write first-person fic that delves into the darker aspects of the human psyche. How do we justify killing others? What impact does a hypermasculine culture have upon a man with depression and anxiety? Is violence really the key to surviving the apocalypse? I also enjoy writing about people seeking control or freedom, and wrestling with that they believe they need to do to achieve that. 

Q: What (if any) music do you listen to for help getting those creative juices flowing?

A: Since I do first person, I like something to get me into the head of the character I’m writing, so I make playlists for certain characters. 99% of the time, anymore, I’m writing as Roop, so on his playlist I’ve got a bunch of stuff quasi-hipster stuff that touches upon themes of isolation, anger, violence, and feelings of helplessness. There’s a bunch of indie rock, some seventies stuff, and A LOT OF PINK FLOYD. Oh, and there’s some Aussie rock in there too, of course. 

Q: What is your biggest challenge as a creator?

A: Finding the time to write! 

Q: Which character do you relate to the most, and how does that affect your approach to that character? Is someone else your favourite to portray? How has your understanding of these characters grown through portraying them?

A: Roop… And Roop.  And my understanding of him has absolutely grown through portraying him. He’s a character that’s in MM1 for like.. Ten minutes? And after the opening chase scene, he hardly has any lines. But Steve Millichamp does an excellent job portraying him with his posture, body language, etc. So I gleaned ideas from his non-verbal performance. Honestly, if you look at the number of times he makes a mopey face, it’s astounding. Other times, he looks at Fifi for guidance, the way a kid looks at a parent or teacher. He doesn’t seem to have any friends at work, partially due to his own personality. I could go on for hours. From all that, I extrapolated that he’s basically caught between childhood and adulthood, and he’s trying to sort out what it means to be a good cop and a good person. Sometimes those things aren’t congruent, and it tears him up because he’s a very type A, hardworking perfectionist. Growing up, he was told that he was gifted, smart, etc., and he feels like an imposter because he fixates on his shortcomings and mistakes. And when trying to live up to this impossibly high standard, he puts a lot of pressure on himself and struggles when he has to surrender or when he fails. There’s a ton more, but those are the highlights. The vast majority my MM/Roop fic stays offline. Pretty much all of it is irrelevant to the rest of the Mad Max universe, so there’s no point in posting it. It’s taken on a life of its own. Of course, some people have let me know that they dislike or disagree with my characterization of Roop. That’s fine. Nobody’s forcing them to read my fic.

Q: Do you ever self-insert, even accidentally?

A: Oh hell yes. And I’m completely shameless about it, because I don’t think the practice should be taboo or frowned upon. We wouldn’t shame an actor who tapped their lived experience to bring authenticity to a role, would we?  I think we should extend the same understanding to writers. Aside from being a great way to understand more about our selves, enjoy an escapist fantasy, or work through trauma, I think self-insertion can be a great way to evoke emotional authenticity in a story.

Q: Do you have any favourite relationships to portray? What interests you about them?

A: I pretty much stick to what I consider my strength, which is genfic. So I mostly stick to portraying platonic interactions, both friendly and unfriendly. I particularly like exploring how Roop interacts with/judges his co-workers. I’m also fond of writing about good moms who love and encourage their kids. Sometimes the mom is the viewpoint character, sometimes it’s the kid. Regardless, I like looking at how parental relationships can shape a person’s worldview.

Q: How does your work for the fandom change how you look at the source material?

A: My work makes me hyper-analyze MM1 and its novelization. I mostly write MM1 fic because I feel like we could have gotten a lot more mileage out of exploring MM1’s world, before society fully broke down and became the more fantastical wasteland we know and love in MM2, MM3, and MMFR. As much as I like the later worldbuilding stuff, I can really appreciate watching a civilization crumble in a grounded, slow-burning manner. 

Q: To break or not to break canon? Why?

A: Depends on what you mean by “break.” I think a lot purists would say that I break canon, so I’ll put it this way: I like to write stories where I add to canon without directly contradicting it. We’re never shown Roop’s home life, for instance. It’s free real estate! I do this because I just want MORE MM1. More Roop, more MFP, more Armalites, all of it. I don’t feel the need to change anything, just add more volume to it. That said, I love it when others break canon! I have a ton of fun reading AUs and alternate scenes. 

Q: Share some headcanons

A: GRAB A SEAT AND PUT YOUR SITTIN’ PANTS ON. Here we go: In addition to recruiting local police officers and other traditional recruiting strategies, the MFP uses conscription to fill out its ranks. Roop is one such draftee. Roop doesn’t spend any time with Charlie outside of work. He really just tries to minimize contact with the guy. If we do all my Roop headcanons, we’ll be here until the Miller completes MM5. Charlie wanted to go seminary school and become a priest, but was drafted. Losing his voice pretty much killed his dream of preaching. Fifi takes an interest in his men, but only so he can better manipulate them into staying/reenlisting. Bubba was a former MFP officer who went rogue once budget cuts and bureaucratic decisions made law enforcement abandon his rural hometown.

Q: Who are some works by other creators inside and outside of the fandom that have influenced your work?Inside the fandom, the old RP crowd and I bounced a lot of ideas off each other, and interacting with their muses helped Roop’s story grow by leaps and bounds (finger guns at @d--t’s OC, Renholder, @vanessa-geraldine-carlysle’s portrayal of Charlie, and @legendofstraydog’s OC, Syrup!) Outside the fandom, my biggest influences are Kurt Vonnegut, J.D. Salinger, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and Sam Esmail.

Q: Have you visited or do you plan to visit Australia, Wasteland Weekend, or other Mad Max place?

A: Not yet, but I'd love to go someday!

Q: Tell us about a current WIP or planned project

A: “Autotomy” is my big current WIP. It’s 7 chapters into its 9 or 10 chapter run (I’ve literally got chapter 8 open in another window as I’m writing this). It follows Roop immediately after MM1 ends. He sees the aftermath of Max’s rampage, and begins to question his own ideals. Then his morals are put to the test when an unexpected guest arrives at his home. The word “autotomy” describes cutting off a part of oneself to escape a greater threat. Think of a lizard that sheds its trapped tail to avoid being eaten. I’m using it in the literal and metaphorical sense. At the end of MM1, we see someone have to make a literal life-or-limb decision. And in this story, Roop has to decide whether or not to cut off the toxic ideology that has guided his actions.

Thank you @main-force-patrol @richardcarterfans some of your tags got lost in reformatting.  You may want to retag your peeps

#Mad Max Fandom Creator Spotlight #Mad Max Fandom Spotlight #mad max fic #mad max fic author spotlight #kalishnakorn #main-force-patrol

[ournewoverlords]

Some thoughts on Ted Chiang’s Exhalation (2019) - Part I

Ted Chiang is such an interesting writer to me. His stories have such a neutral, impersonal tone — “thinky” scifi, theoretical what-if experiments far from our own space and time — and yet they wrestle with such “base” human questions at their core. I was surprised at how emotional I felt after reading some of them — not during the reading but days afterwards, when I’d watch a kid play in the park and think about the main character in “The Lifecycle of Software Objects”, who’d tried very hard to give her digital-child-pet a life in a society that didn’t consider it worthy of one. There’s something about his stories that have an impact on you a long time later, like a stone dropped too clean to make an initial splash, but whose ripples keep echoing in you for a long time after.

Some of these questions are very familiar, if you’ve read his previous collections, most famously Stories of Your Life and Others: how much free will do we really have; how do we go on in a world without it; how the instruments we use (language and writing, as much as any other tech) changes the way we think, feel, and relate to each other; the purpose of science and the purpose of stories, and the lines where they cross, the spaces where they meet. Is it the actual, physical, objective-laws world that shapes who we are, or the stories we tell ourselves about it? What is an individual — a single, measly person, whose only contribution might be to write a good account of the advent of a piece of tech, not even the inventor but a bystander — to the clockwork machinery of the universe? Why are we, in the cosmic scheme of things?

Maybe it’s all the Black-Mirror/Hunger-Games type stuff that’s been so en vogue in the last decade (not to mention a certain orange-y harbinger of the apocalypse sitting in the White House, and the impending existential dread of climate change), but I found this to be a very “hopeful” collection. Optimistic may be too strong a word for it, but it grapples with these dystopian concepts and comes out the other side with the sense that just as the world grows and changes, we will find a way to grow and change, and whether time turns all our great pyramids and gods to dust we are still a species worth saving. The time machines, robots, parallel universes, and knowledge that we have no destiny except the final entropy of all living things will challenge who we are, but not the missive to be kind to one another. Even if our fate is already set, we can still choose what kind of person we will be when we meet it.

In that way, perhaps the way the narrators, men and women and nameless alike, are so detached and analytical in the way they observe the world reflects not a limitation of Chiang’s character range, but a purposeful choice by the author. They’re scientists, struggling with a crisis of faith: whether they’ve made the correct diagnosis, drawn the correct conclusion, stuck to the right course, let go at the right time. Watches, who’ve met their watchmaker. Yet what makes this collection particularly beautiful — particularly scifi — to me is how these mechanical people become not gods in the future, but simply more human.

Some thoughts on the individual stories under the cut, warning for spoilers. I’m splitting this into two parts because I'm a rambler, so this one is the first half, going up to The Lifecyle of Software Objects:

The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate

“Nothing erases the past. There is repentance, there is atonement, and there is forgiveness. That is all, but that is enough.”

I think it’s so fitting that a short-story collection about the meaning of stories opens with a scifi retelling of Scheherazade’s One Thousand and One Nights, the most famous short-story collection of all. It’s not just the ancient Middle East setting that’s familiar, but the structure: like those fables, this is a nested story-within-a-story, a series of morality tales told to a narrator who has his own secret not yet revealed to the audience. The scifi piece here is the time-machine gate, which, like Arrival, raises questions about the nature of time and free will — what if the future were an unchangeable scroll, the script set in ink before your birth? What does coming to know that future do to the knower?

Some, naturally, use it to enrich themselves, the classic time-travel trope of traveling to the past to give yourself the stock picks (note: buy Apple). Another underestimates the trickery of fate, while the wife uses it to rescue her future husband. But what’s interesting here is that in all these cases, no one actually changes the future; nor did they actually change the past, because the past *must* have happened for the future to happen. The characters merely make the future that was going to happen happen, much as Arrival’s Louise felt obligated “to act precisely as she knew would.”

It’s a theme that Chiang is clearly very interested in, with his most famous demonstration in Stories of Your Life / Arrival.  If we already know the future, and we can’t change it no matter what we do, that implies that we don’t have free will. The narrator’s attempt then, to change his future by changing his past must fail: a harsh word spoken and a wife lost can’t be taken back, unless it was meant to be.

But the fact that the narrator tried, I think, and went to great lengths trying, is the human element of this fantasy story. That his first instinct was to try to save his wife says something about him; the fact that it was all futile in the end doesn’t negate the meaning of his attempt. I keep remembering this Vonnegut quote about Lot’s wife, who was warned not to look back at the burning city, and yet couldn’t help doing so as she fled: “but she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.” The merchant didn’t do the wise thing, but he did the human thing — isn’t that the part that hurts?

The one issue I had with this story is that I’m always completely frustrated by time-travel-paradox stories — it doesn’t make sense to me that a universe wouldn’t branch off, so to speak, the moment you step back in time, so I don’t understand *why* both our past and future can’t be changed. I had the same issue with Arrival, where I couldn’t explain to myself why Louise HAD to walk the future she saw. (It doesn’t help that I’ve been watching a lot of Future Man, which has a lot of fun jumping around and sticking its fingers up the timey-wimey stuff.) But I also believe that the technical puzzle really isn’t the point of this story — accepting the premise that the past and future are unchangeable even if we can see them, the idea is that we still have to live them anyways, and it’s through those experiences that we change, grow, become different people. If the merchant hadn’t tried to rescue his wife, would he have found his atonement at the end? Or are there things we have to do anyways, even if we already know the answer?

Exhalation

“But in truth the source of life is a difference in air pressure, the flow of air from spaces where it is thick to those where it is thin.”

A slim little story, with a steampunk texture and some lovely little flourishes of prose in between extremely in-depth explanations of what I can only describe as “mechanical stuff” (you can see the technical writer in Chiang here — he really likes describing machinery). But the thing I really like about his work is that even as he’s a geek fascinated by the technology itself, he’s even more interested in its impact on the people and societies that find themselves confronting it. “How the world works” affects how people think about themselves, and that philosophical bent gives his stories more depth than “wouldn’t it be cool if…” thought experiments to me.

On the one level, “air” here could be a direct substitution for “energy”, where the second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of an isolated system can only go up, never down. Every breath we take adds another little bit of disorder into the universe. That makes sense: none of us are renewable machines, all our civilizations have finite lifespans, and the way we’re treating the planet doesn’t exactly bode well for at least extending what time we have. Hell, we’re literally screwing our own oxygen, and unlike the narrator’s species we don’t need the laws of physics to do it for us.

What I thought was particularly interesting, though, was reading this on a more metaphorical level. I’m stretching it here, but it’s the idea that people don’t really live on the materia itself, but on the immaterial ebbs and flows between them; that it’s the passing of thoughts, energy, love, emotion between us that keeps us alive. When that exchange dies — whether because we all became the same, or because we’ve lost interest in seeking that exchange — so too do we as a species.

Is it language that keeps us alive, or having another person hear it? Is it the having of food, or having someone with whom to share it?

What’s Expected of Us

“My message to you is this: Pretend that you have free will.”

Oh ho — I had a thought after reading this that the order of the stories in this collection is really deliberate, because this book is in tension to itself. That is, one story will set out one hypothesis/POV, and then the next will straight-up rebut it, a kind of self-conflict that reminds me both of the history of science and the way I think most conflicts occur in real life: not as wrong vs right, but as different POVs that can all be true at once without being the whole of the answer, if there is one at all.

The previous story ends with a spirited declaration that “the buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them was inevitable.” This one states exactly the opposite: everything HAS been predicted and you have no choice at all. And unlike the first story, which had the same deterministic view, the conclusion here is not to accept fate but to fight it. (Not that you can choose whether to fight it or not - it’s all been predetermined!)

First of all, this is based on a real, ongoing debate. I was really interested in neuroscience (and in particular, its impact on ethics and law) back in college and it reminded me instantly of those experiments showing that our subconscious brain makes a decision before we become conscious of making it (see Neuroscience of free will), and I’m sure experiments like Libet’s were the inspiration behind the Predictor device here.

The fact that no one’s reacted the same way people do here is probably because we have such a strong perception of our own free will that it just seems too obviously ludicrous, and the experiments so far are nowhere near as iron-tight and replicable as the Predictor. Even so, though, think about all those factors you didn’t have control over that have such an impact on where you are today: where you were born (living at the poverty level in the U.S. still puts you at the top 14% worldwide!), your parents, your genetic temperament, much of your health and innate interests and talents. There’s a lot of that vaunted genetics-plus-environment explanation for behavior that is out of our hands, and what’s left over is all the most interesting — and hardest to define — stuff.

I’m not saying that Chiang is making a social critique here, but I think that’s what this whole collection is grappling with: “the stuff that’s left over.” Keep in mind the narrator’s two assertions at the end that will pop over and over again: the idea that civilization depends on “self-deception” — or what others might call “stories” — and that “some of you will succumb and some of you won’t, and my sending this warning won’t alter those proportions”. Because in the last story, following the narrator’s command to believe in the lie is exactly what alters them.

The Lifecycle of Software Objects

Confession: I’m rarely blown away by Chiang’s prose. It does the job but it doesn’t get me swooning over a sentence or a particularly striking piece of imagery. Reading TLoSO, the piece of fiction I kept thinking of was Philip K Dick’s Do Android Dream of Electric Sheep, a novella whose wordcraft I also thought was workmanly — and yet, I fucking love that book, and this was my favorite story in Exhalation.

I can’t fully articulate why, but it’s the one that’s stuck with me the longest, even as I think The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling is more original and Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom is more satisfying. It’s one of the most “conventional” stories here, along with Anxiety (perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s these two that are being adapted for Hollywood) — actual characters, with actual story arcs, and things happening and people making difficult choices. It has a cinematic vision and a fully-realized world that spans decades in the lives of those characters. It even has bad guys, and an interesting conceit: what if we had these digital pets called “digients” that could learn how to talk, and play, and maybe even learn up to the level of a adolescent while looking like these adorable baby animals that you’ll never have to feed, clean, or scoop poop after? You can just “suspend” them when you’re tired of playing with them; they’re cuter than robots, less pressure than children, and less work than pets!

The length and conventionality of the narrative structure makes it easier to relate to, I think, but it’s not why I love it and keep juxtaposing it by the Philip K Dick book. Like Androids, at the heart of it I think this is a story about empathy. It’s a story about the inherent terror, sorrow, and joy of parenting, of being in charge of another life with no guardrails or handbook on how to do it. It’s about being an adult, with jobs, responsibilities, and obligations to others in constant competition with values inside yourself, and never knowing if you got that balance right.

It’s about being a parent in a society where you’re in constant negotiation with it about the value of that life: where the only worth your child has is how much money they can make someone, how intelligent they are (and therefore how much money they can make someone), how much utility they have as an academic exercise or as a sex partner. No matter how much you love your kid, the only thing the world cares about is whether they have some “use”, and this story is all about that feeling: the heartache of justifying an existence you don’t feel should need justifying. Because whether the digients are actually robots, children, pets, or replicants — that’s probably never going to be proven, in the same way we’ll never know if Deckard really is a replicant, but that’s not really what matters here. What matters is whether you choose to believe these digital-pet-things deserve to be treated like they have value, the kind of value that makes torturing them evil, discarding them cruel, and keeping promises to them matter.

Ana and Derek choose to believe. They’re one of the very few who do, and they raise their digients as children, teaching them how to read, finding them play partners, taking joy in their successes, wrestling with how to discipline their mischief. When disaster strikes — Blue Gamma goes bankrupt, Data Earth becomes obsolete, making obsolete their first-gen digients with it — they shield them from the “finances”, much as many parents do. Then they throw themselves into the only mission that matters anymore: finding a way to give them some semblance of a good life.

Hope after hope turns them down, until at last, there’s only a startup called Binary Desire, who proposes to make the digients sex bots, in the most reasonable language: they won’t be sex slaves, this is a voluntary modification to their circuits plus careful training that will make them genuinely fall in love with their chosen partner. A kind of directed puberty, if you will — after all, none of us asked for our hormones and crushes, right? How is this different from being born with the oxytocin to connect to our family, or Blue Gamma’s initial breeding of the digients to be cute and cuddly? How is it different from being born with a certain set of genes that might predispose us to like certain people — isn’t that even the whole concept of “soul mates” in the first place, an innate connection?

But there’s something so particularly awful about Binary Desire’s proposal, as nicely as they couch it as completely consensual. First of all, as Ana and Derek argue, the digients are still child-like (though this is partly because of Derek’s and especially Ana’s own protectiveness). But even if they had the consciousness and experience of full adults, it’d still feel wrong to me, and I think it’s because of this: forcing a being to remake themselves just for our own convenience feels instinctively wrong. Binary Desire’s customers could find real, living, actually-consensual partners — but they don’t want to, they’d rather pay for a bot hardwired to fall in love with them, and delude themselves that this is “ultimate sexual fulfillment” for both parties.

That’s what feels so wrong about the way the digients are treated in the society of TLoSO in general: it’s not that people are actively torturing the bots a la the Kubrick/Spielberg movie A.I., it’s just that they’re always doing whatever is most convenient for themselves. There’s no friction, no “cost” — and therefore, no weight to any of their relationships either. It’s not that they’re selfish people, any more than us fast-swiping Tinder and all those other dating apps whose entire goal was to remove friction from “the dating market” — the point is that technology has made these options available that were never there before.

What if you could push a button and make your child perfect? What if you could pay a few bucks and make someone love you forever? Binary Sense even tries to get around that by demanding the relationship be built up over months rather than a cheap-and-quick hormonal hit because people want “real” relationships not slaves — but that friction is still artificial, just like how Ana tells Derek at the beginning that it’s weirder to pretend the digients are real animals. Getting things easy, getting things without having to pay any emotional price or sacrificing anything of yourself — that cheapens you.

I think that’s the answer to Binary Desire’s question that tortures Ana: “why can nonsexual relationships with them [like yours and Derek’s] be healthy, while sexual ones can’t?” It’s not really about nonsexual vs sexual — it’s about investing in a relationship honestly, vs trying to take shortcuts. Binary Desire’s emotional training program to get the digient to fall in love is still a shortcut, just a different kind of shortcut. People are always looking for certainty, the certainty that they’ve made the right choice — certain profit, certain success, certain returns for their investment. But relationships aren’t about certainty; at every moment, you might be fucking this all up forever, but it’s that discomfort that you makes you human. It’s about knowing that you might have nothing left to show at the end of years of effort and being willing to make that effort anyway.

The people in Ana and Dereks’ society suck because they’re unwilling to take the risk that might they invest everything, and still be left with nothing. They would never give their whole heart to something, whether that thing was a person or a bot. They want the kind of relationship that you can suspend, rewind, erase, start over if you don’t like it anymore. And that’s no relationship at all.

That’s why Ana and Derek are the heroes here, or at least, as much “hero” as you can be in a Ted Chiang piece — because they do pay a price for their love for Jax and Marco and Polo. They don’t take the easy way out of suspending them even as it costs them relationships, jobs, their statuses in society. At the end, Derek even sacrifices the one thing he discovered he wanted throughout the years— his chance with Ana — to make what he hopes is the right choice for Marco. They’re not the same kind of parents at all — Ana is more protective, Derek more willing to push them, to let them struggle out of the idea that’s needed for growth — but the crucial thing is both put that duty above themselves, the moment they became “parents”: the duty to try to give them a good life.

On the one hand, you can say it’s a sickness, valuing robots that might never gain more intellectual capacity than a 10-year-old over other human beings; on the other you can say they have this kind of fundamental integrity, this will to treat them right. Because Ana promised Jax she wouldn’t suspend him, she won’t. Because Derek can sacrifice neither Marco nor Ana, he lets Marco make his own choice, and lets Ana blame him. Maybe those are all terrible choices, maybe it’s not what you’d think of as a happy life, but — being able to have empathy with something outside yourself, even if it’s a thing not a person, being the kind of person who stands by their promises and doesn’t squirrel out of the hard decisions — isn’t that the kind of life you can live with? And isn’t that all we can ask for in the end?

---

Second half coming up!

#exhalation #ted chiang #exhalation review #book review

[janiedean]

Hi 😊 I’m not reading much these days but I really wanna make an effort and do it more, do you have any suggestions? I don’t really have a favorite genre, but I’m looking for books where the psychology of the characters is very well done, thank you!!

hey! :D

okay so let me think, other than asoiaf of course because that definitely has very well-done psychology ;) :

if you want some scifi easy-ish reading (in the sense that it’s mostly finished trilogies that don’t require extra effort) I’ll recommend you anything by my pal ian tregillis who has done two AMAZING fantasy/scifi series, the milkweed tryptich and alchemy wars (AW is the best but milkweed is also great), which have some of the best genre character work I’ve seen in the last twenty years;

(btw grrm does very good character build also in his other genre novels - fevre dream is a+, the armageddon rag is my favorite out of the nonasoiaf books he wrote and dying of the light also was great)

anything by michael chabon too - he’s a gem of a writer with an exceptional use of language and who always has a+++ characters. my favorite is kavalier & clay but really anything of his is good;

any stephen king has a+++ character work but if you wanna start small, either misery, different seasons, dolores claiborne or carrie will do :) (the dark tower is my fave OBV. but it’s a seven books series I don’t hate you that much lmao)

margaret atwood is great at that too - handmaid’s tale is not too long and a perfect introduction, but her best imo is the madaddam trilogy and out of the solo ones alias grace and the blind assassin (oryx & crake ie the first one in the madaddam trilogy is The Literal Best tho);

if you want good quality easy reading with lovely flawed characters nick hornby is absolutely your friend - my fave is a long way down but high fidelity and about a boy are also great to start with;

if you REALLY wanna go hard on it with GOOD PSYCHOLOGICAL STUFF I’d say go with the classic and try dostoevskij but I mean that stuff is literal bricks so if you wanted something short to start with maybe not a good idea, but like anything from the middle of his career (crime & punishment, the idiot, demons, brothers karamazov etc.) is like... MASTERPIECE PSYCHOLOGICAL WORK ON THE CHARACTERS like seriously;

if you wanna go for english classics that aren’t too-much-of-a-brick, forster is a great author (maurice is my fave in the centuries tbh);

the french classics are usually great as well tho long, but if you’re up for it I’d try stendhal - the red and the black is a masterpiece imo, and dumas also does excellent char. work AND even if his novels are bricks they’re really easy-reading, try the three musketeers for one ;) they’re also fun XD

if you’re into shakespeare try m. l. rio’s if we were villains, it’s a REALLY good book with REALLY well-done characters AND it has the ship of the century tbh ;)

if you want good characters and in general excellent writing BUT with short books, try vonnegut. anything, but guys VONNEGUT IS AMAZING my fave is god bless you mr rosewater but slaughterhouse 5, cat’s cradle, breakfast of champions and the sirens of titan are also very good to start with but really he’s never written a bad book in his life ;)

also hmm try steinbeck? if you want short stuff go with of mice and men and cannery row + sweet thursday (the latter two FOR A MIRACLE AREN’T SAD), if then you wanna brave the grapes of wrath you’re in for top five books according to me ;)

if you go under /tagged/book-recs there’s more stuff I recced that might be useful :)

#book recs #:) #Anonymous #ask post

[dust2dust34]

Hi Bre, I love your writing and was wondering if there's anything you could tease about your Blood Hands rewrite? How will it be different than the original? When do you expect to start posting? Any possibility of an excerpt? Thanks for answering!

Hello, beautiful anon, and thank you!

Wow, you guys, I have been in a constant, near-tears giddy explosion of feels about the asks I’ve been getting for Blood Hands. I’m so happy to see the excitement for this fic! This thing is my baby, I have poured my heart and soul into it. I recently told my beta that Blood Hands is my every fic indulgence and that’s exactly what it is. I love it so much. I’m not really talking about it at all to anyone, so that’s the story behind my random tag posts where I just babble about whatever I’m doing at the moment. That they inspire asks fills me with glee. And they will definitely be continuing, because I need some outlet. 

It is not done, but I am 144k into it and there’s still a lot of story to tell. (I’m expecting my amazing beta to send me an email that just says: “Look, I get that you need to explore this hug, but you don’t need 5k for that one thing alone.” AND SHE WILL BE RIGHT. That number up there is word vomit, I haven’t edited anything yet.) I have literally cut myself off from the world to write it, which I only do when I’m in a zone. And I’ve been in a zone, finally. 

My main struggle with rewriting this thing has been just that: the rewrite. Taking the old chapters and fitting them into the new version. Lemme tell you something, okay, it’s been really hard for me. Because a lot of the moments in the original version are cornerstones in my mind, and I banked on them not changing. But the kicker is that they have to change, because the story has changed. So that’s been fun. (Haha... ha... haaa.) But all those moments are still there, they’re just different now. In a good way. A very good way.

I don’t know when I’ll start posting just yet! 

How will it be different from the original? That is a loaded question. I’ll start by saying I was very devoted to the idea of keeping Blood Hands very canon-compliant when I wrote the original fic. That is no longer the case. Oliver and Felicity’s dynamic is wildly different. (I literally had a moment when I was in Hawaii last year, when after staring at the ocean for 30 minutes it just clicked what I had to do differently in this version. This story has tormented me, y’all.) I still wanted to keep it canon-ish going in, so one of my struggles has been getting all the emotional development that we’ve seen onscreen happening in the space of a few days. So as you can imagine things are very, very tense and as a result, those very, very tense things have forced Oliver and Felicity into Situations. And as we all know, things happen in Situations. I also wanted to mine the shit out of every single thing ever so I really dove into the whys and hows of each scene, which took me down altered paths and changed basically everything, and that just circled me right back to the “cornerstones” I had in my mind about this fic and how they had to change.

It’s been a writing adventure, for sure.

The story/plot itself is the same, none of that has changed, although I have added more story for Felicity, to give her more motivation instead of just reacting to Oliver as she mostly did in the first version. I also decided Oliver needed to be way darker, so Blood Hands is basically what Arrow could have been if it had been on Netflix. 

It’s bloody, it’s filled with curse words, it’s violent, and it’s sexy. 

(And oh yes, anon who sent an ask about angst, there is so much angst.)

Guys, I’m pretty sure Blood Hands is my love letter to fanfiction.

Thank you so much for the asks. They fuel me, I cannot express enough how much they mean to me. I still won’t be talking about Blood Hands at length past my random Instagram stories and my tag posts, because I have learned that I’m that writer who totally agrees with Kurt Vonnegut about my projects: “Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”

But I will leave you with a tiny excerpt from the chapter I’m currently writing:

Blood Hands Excerpt

“Hi,” she whispered.

“Hi,” he breathed, so soft it was barely audible.

Even if she had missed it, though, she felt the reciprocation in his touch.

He tilted his head, staring at her with something akin to wonder. She didn’t feel his hand moving until his fingers slid over her jaw, her ear, into her hair as he cupped her face. Her heart stuttered, heat coiling in the pit of her stomach, her lips parting on a tiny gasp. His thumb slipped over her chin, grazing the edge of her bottom lip, tracing the corner of her mouth.

She licked her lips and his parted in return.

Thank you again!!!

#bre answers #and gets emotional #blood hands #anonymous

[bennomartens]

First of the Month Post: 2/1/22

(this image came from Steve Kamb’s twitter, in case that wasn’t obvious)

Intro (this section is an introduction)

This is a new writing venture for me. I’ve struggled the past few years with my writing, with being consistent, with output. I don’t know that this little blog will help in that regard, but I intend to find out.

As someone who has spent most of the past two decades identifying as a writer and having been fairly prolific in publishing work, the self-consciousness and debilitating writer’s block I’ve been experiencing since roughly the day after Trump’s election has been difficult to weather. Throw a global pandemic on top, and it’s been downright brutal. 

Writing is a necessity for my well-being; it’s how I figure out what the hell I’m thinking, make sense of the world, and release my emotions in a healthy, constructive way.

Not having this outlet has taken a toll on me, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.

So, I’m trying this. I don’t know how often I’ll write in this space or what exactly I’ll be writing about. But my hope is that, amongst the shitstorm world we’re currently living in, I can rediscover my voice.

Who the eff are you? (this section is about me)

If you’ve read this far, thank you. I’m Benno, the writer of this little experiment. I’m 41 years old, an alumnus of Baldwin-Wallace College and The Ohio State University, a city planner who works in the community development field helping small towns and rural communities address their infrastructure needs, and a resident of northeast Ohio. 

The Edge of America that I titled this blog after comes partly from my geographic location, literally on the edge of the country along the shores of Lake Erie, but also from a zine series I used to write, the attitude I try to bring to my life (derived from the wisdom of my all-time favorite writer, Kurt Vonnegut), and the circumstances of living in America right now, when any number of external forces can push a person off their precarious position and over the edge.

I have no idea what this blog will ultimately turn out to be, but that should at least give you some idea of where my perspective comes from. It seems like something a reader should know from the outset.

Anyway, here’s what’s going on in my world on this first day of February:

Books are badass (this section is about reading)

Warning: my reading is OUT OF CONTROL right now. I am in various stages of making my way through five different books, not including page-a-day books that I read every day throughout the year. 

First up, I have been on a Wendell Berry kick since September when I was first introduced to him. I’ve thus far read two of his essay collections and one of his novels, and with every sentence I fall in love more. Reading Berry is making me a better thinker, a better citizen, and a more conscientious consumer. It’s also helping me in my job to better understand some of the challenges and issues that folks in rural communities are up against. I just started The Art of Loading Brush, after having already completed The World-Ending Fire and The Unsettling of America. I highly recommend Wendell Berry to anyone who ever learned how to read, he’s that good.

I have also, since September, been making my way through Robert Richardson’s excellent biography of Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Mind on Fire. As an accompaniment, I’m also reading Emerson’s original works as they come up in the biography. I’m nearing the completion of Essays: Part One, which were published in 1841, and include his most famous work, Self-Reliance. Emerson was a fascinating dude, and one I think ought to be studied much more in-depth than the reading of (and, quite often, the misinterpretation of) Self-Reliance. He’s way more than just that essay, good as it is, and has served as a nice complement to my reading of Berry.

The Berry and Emerson books have been taking up the bulk of my reading time, but I’m also reading Robert Greene’s Mastery (if Ryan Holiday recommends a book, it’s usually worthwhile) and Jonathan Franzen’s new novel Crossroads. Hopefully by next month I’ll have more to report on those two.

As for what I read last month, in addition to The Unsettling of America, January’s nerdery also included Existentialism is a Humanism by Jean-Paul Sartre, The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis, and After Tonight, Everything Will be Different by Adam Gnade.

The first two were short reads that I was just curious about. Perhaps at some later date, they’ll turn out to have been important to my life, but right now they’re just lines on a list. 

Gnade’s novel, though, was thoroughly good, and I want to say a little bit more about it. Adam is my favorite living writer. His latest novel is what he has called “the food book,” with each chapter centering around a meal. His characters and the life shit they deal with are specific to a time and place in his life (up to and including the present day), but they’re also plenty universal. It’s gritty, heart-rending prose, and if you’re anything like me, you’ll identify with a whole lot of what the characters go through as they attempt (not always successfully) to navigate American society in the 21st century in an ethical way and with their ideals and souls at least somewhat intact.

Of course, there’s more to a reading life than just books in the age of the internet, so here are a few other things I’ve been reading and enjoying: Austin Kleon’s newsletter, Gracy Olmstead’s newsletter (whose book, Uprooted, was the best thing I read in 2021 not written by Wendell Berry, and was the source of my introduction to Berry), Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter, Chuck McKeever’s newsletter, the articles of Strong Towns (for urban planning/community development goodness), and The Athletic and Defector (for my sports fix) (both of these are subscription sites, so fair warning that there’s a paywall).

Sportsball (this section is about sports)

I’m not much of a tv person. Basically, I watch live sports and little else. Right now I’m all about the Cleveland Cavaliers, the Ohio State basketball teams (men’s and women’s), and, to a lesser extent, the NBA and college basketball generally. 

I’m a Clevelander and therefore a loooooong-suffering Cleveland Browns fan, so seeing the Cincinnati Bengals reach the Super Bowl is something I have very mixed feelings about. I’m happy to see someone besides Patrick Mahomes or Tom Brady get a crack at a title, and at least it’s not the Steelers or Ravens, but it’s the goddamn Bengals. In-state rivals and divisional adversaries and all that.

I should also mention that my first love in this life was the game of baseball, and it is still a major interest of mine. So I’m monitoring the MLB lockout very closely. If the owners cause a delay to spring training or, even worse, the regular season, I’m going to be seriously pissed. Yes, I said the owners and made no mention of the players union. Yes, I always side with labor over management as a general life rule. Make whatever conclusion about me you would like from that statement.

February’s big question (this section is me rambling about something)

Like a lot of people (most people, I’m assuming), the past two and a half years have been tough for me. The absolute clusterfuckery of the handling of the pandemic has really left me cynical and disillusioned about a whole lot of things. Even more so than I already was. I have felt for a while now a deep desire to disengage as much as is humanly possible from mainstream American society. Our culture here in America is largely stupid, mean-spirited, and unhealthy both physically and mentally, and I’ve been thinking of how to minimize my exposure to the worst parts of it. I’m not sure how feasible it is without becoming some sort of doomsday prepper or eschewing my very real responsibilities, but it seems worthwhile to at least ponder.

My initial response to this question has been to deactivate my social media accounts (except for Tumblr, which I love too much to let go of, and which is so different from the twitters and instagrams of the world), stop watching the news entirely, stop reading “content” except for sports coverage, being more selective in my food choices and attempting to educate myself more on where my food comes from (obvious Wendell Berry influence at work), shopping local and mom & pop and small business whenever possible, and staying away, as much as I can, from amazon, which is not terribly easy considering how far its reach now extends.

There’s a lot more I know I could (and should) be doing. As a white, middle class, heterosexual male, my privilege is fucking enormous in this country, and it’s not lost on me that wanting to disengage from mainstream society is only a thought I can entertain because of that privilege. Privilege denotes responsibility too, though, and that’s something I take very seriously. I do what I can through my job, my limited but still existent disposable income, and hopefully as I get back into a writing habit, through the words I publish, to contribute in a positive manner to the world beyond myself. But I know I need to step up my game in that arena, and it’s another piece of the puzzle I’m contemplating.

Outro (this section is where I say goodbye)

If you read this far, my sincere thanks. I hope to write in this space more or less consistently, but we’ll see. I have a lot of ideas and the aforementioned need to write to understand my thoughts and the world, so this seems like a good project to start. It’s hosted on Tumblr, so it’s not like it’ll find a big audience. That should help with my self-consciousness. (Much of my past work didn’t have a big audience either, though, and I still ended up not writing for most of the past five years...*shrug emoji*).

So I guess all I can say is hopefully I’ll have a new post soon.

#first of the month post

[tinkdw]

Could you describe more about Jensen and Jared swapping lines in Slumber Party? What’s the story on that? This is the first I’ve heard of it.

They talk about it all the freaking time at cons. They’re so proud of it, like, we know Sam and Dean so well we knew these lines were the wrong way around so we changed them yay us! Freaking…. URGH. OK here goes.

youtube link

Original written by Robbie:

Sam: wow Joffrey’s a dick!Charlie: you have no idea, wait until -Dean: woah woah woah spoilers! I haven’t read all the books yet! Sam: you’re going to read the books? *incredulous*Dean: yes, Sam, I like to read books. *Pause*. You know, the ones without pictures *sarcastic face*

Canon because they’re freaking irritating - I still love em but jeez you just didn’t get it - idiots:

Dean: wow Joffrey’s a dick!Charlie: you have no idea, wait until -Sam: woah woah woah spoilers! I haven’t read all the books yet.Dean: you’re going to read the books?Sam: yes, Dean, I like to read books. *Pause*. You know, the ones without picturesDean: *confused face*

Which makes no sense in terms of exposition or use in the episode or, well, anything at all, all it does is REINFORCE the stupid toxic masculine facade that Dean upholds and remind us that Sam likes to read - which we already knew.

J2 just reinforced the facade BS because they didn’t understand the point the scene was making, that the BS facade is just that, A BS FACADE.

Meta writers and Robbie who wrote it that way around on purpose:

Reminder that this is also before Jensen was awkward about shooting the “Dean likes Taylor Swift” scene for exactly the same reason, that he didn’t want the Dean below the facade stuff, he likes Dean who only likes classic rock, he likes Dean who doesn’t read, acts like a dude bro, URGH. JENSEN. 

You play the guy as double faceted so well how on earth do you have such a top level Dean understanding? OK Sigh. He’s clearly better now 3+ years on but it’s still infuriating given he plays the friggin character as double faceted. It can’t be just good editing.

Reminder that during this period of episodes we are exploring why Dean throws Cas out of the bunker in parallel to Robin, the Cus’s waitress and framing his responsibility to Sam in Bad Boys, we see Dean and Sam’s toxic codependency get to the worst point in 8x23/9x01 and here we see Sam who says he’s ok with his life but he really isn’t, he’s resigned to it because he feels Dean can’t do it without him, it’s so deep in Sam/Dean dynamics, Sam wanting out but not feeling like he can because he has a responsibility to Dean to stay and Dean needing him and Dean not being able to let go of the deep parental responsibility he had forced upon him as such a young influenceable adult, where we see he gave up the chance to have so much love, tenderness and support, to have a father figure who cares about him massively contrasted in this episode to John, to potentially grow up in this positive environment and be a mechanic or a guitar playing rock star, with a girlfriend, being a normal kid and going to prom, all this exposing that he has this macho dude bro facade up in essence as a facade to protect himself from these feelings of loss at what he’s had to give up for Sam. 

It’s all SO META. I mean it’s not even that hidden subtext, you just have to listen to the story being told, it’s really not that subtextual at all, they literally say a lot of this out loud, as well as the obvious “here’s the life Dean left behind for Sam and isn’t it so tragic” whole freaking episode that followed.

Oh dear now you also have me onto the fact that these episodes were out of order when they aired for reasons and this again ties into all this. Basically the subtext being too textual so they ramped it back a bit by putting them out of order so it didn’t flow so well. But yeah, the original order had Bad Boys directly after this episode.

*No coincidence whatsoever that it all ties in together then*

*Side eyes TPTB*

*Even more pissy with the fact that they changed all this*

I mean it doesn’t really change anything for me, I can still see all this stuff regardless because I enjoy looking at things a bit deeper so I noticed anyway, but it’s irritating having to fend off idiotic antis who say this isn’t in the show because they don’t want to see it and it’s not clear enough. Chuck bless Dabb for making this all blatant now anyway :p

TL;DR Dean is multi faceted, yes sure he has a bit of a dude bro classic rock macho side but he also has another side, who likes Vonnegut, Dr Sexy, Taylor Swift (and a bunch of other music I bet we just don’t know yet), enjoys LARPING and reading Game of Thrones, later tells us he read freaking AESOP.

By season 11 Jensen is getting it a bit more and well also the show runners / writers are putting their foot down as this stuff needs to be textualised to make any sense of the actual narrative now too given they’ve rested so much on his being double faceted, needing to address the self acceptance arc etc. By 2017 he imo now does get it, given he’s started saying at cons that he used to think he was SO like Dean and now realises there are some big differences, distancing himself from the softer side of Dean I imagine, because reasons.

So yeah, Dean was supposed to say the game of thrones line, as part of his “who he really is” story beyond the facade, but they changed it to Sam saying it. Because they are adorable but irritating doofuses. 

#spn 9x04 #salmon dean #toxic codependency #robbie thompson #supernatural #slumber party #j2 say things that are annoying but we still love em #spn 9x04 meta #just stick to acting boys #let the writers do the writing #at least they do that now :D #got

[faketextson-ice]

-admin elliott version-

my turn! like hidari said, we just copied and pasted this ask meme because we’re unapologetically lazy. 

under the cut, because i love nothing more than to talk about myself and i don’t wanna clog your feed:

if someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

fuckk me. okay, hmm. well, first you’d have to absorb any and all content about My Man Alex(ander the Great) (<<we’re on a first-name basis) and i’m a huge fucking greco-roman nerd. then you’d listen to lady gaga and system of a down and baroque chamber and miles davis, and watch all of buzzfeed unsolved at LEAST twice. i enjoy classical literature, but then also dark stuff. so besides what i mention below, pick up some Bukowski, some Vonnegut, Up Jumps the Devil by Michael Poore, and as much trashy gay fanfiction as you can consume.

have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? if so, who?

ah, this is a difficult one. Kerouac is pretty close, along with Richard Siken and a splash of Vonnegut.

list your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.

i hyperfixate on fandoms, so i’m not currently involved in many?

yuri on ice = otabek altin and yuri plisetsky

the iliad (don’t laugh at me i know i’m awful) = hector

star wars = kylo aka trash son

do you like your name?  is there another name you think would fit you better?

i picked elliott so i mean

do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do?

pass

are you religious/spiritual?

first chunk of my life i was raised roman catholic, but i’m not really religious anymore. i do hold some spiritual beliefs, though.

do you care about your ethnicity?

i’m very, very white, but my mother was adopted so now we’re trying to reconnect with the cultural background she never experienced as a child? mainly greek and russian jew, but again i’m just a european mut. white people jokes are so much fun, too.

what musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime?

UGHHH this is so difficult. i like SOAD, but for a while Timber Timbre was my shit. and - this is so nerdy - johann sebastian bach 4ever.

are you an artist?

i try to be. i’m actually in the process of becoming a tattoo apprentice, after i dropped out of art school ;;_;; i recently made an art insta so i’m gonna plug it, too. follow me @homericink ;)

do you have a creed?

“you catch more flies with honey than vinegar”

describe your ideal day.

i wake up early after a good night’s rest. i play with my dogs for a little bit outside, and i read some on the hammock. then i come inside and work on an art project. i get shitty fast food with my friends, and i come home and write until i’m tired. since this is an idea day, my insomnia is gone and i go to bed by midnight and sleep soundly.

dog person or cat person?

dog person! (don’t get me wrong, though. i love kitties, too!) dogs can be total spazzes, full of silly energy and endless amounts of love, and they’re so trusting! i always joke that people have done nothing to deserve dogs, and it’s true. they are so pure and good and all they want is someone to love them?? i like how they’re more hands-on, and you can literally wrestle with them and they’ll smile up at you with a big slobbery grin  ^_^  cats are too similar to people for me - i want to work to be worthy of an animal friend that’s better than me.

inside or outdoors?

outdoors as a concept, inside in practice.

are you a musician?

yep! technically i can play five different instruments, but i have two primary ones: violin and mandolin.

five most influential books over your lifetime.

FUCKKKKKKK ONLY FIVE????? come talk to me about books pls

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Iliad by Homer

The Devil All the Time by Donald Ray Pollock

if you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same?

not at all, man. situations i was thrust into as a kid definitely shaped who i am, but i’ve made my peace with it.

would you say your tumblr is a fair representation of the “real you”?

“tumblr” me is much more organized than i am in real life. i have comorbid ocd and adhd, which is much easier to manage online than irl. i am a disaster human™

what’s your patronus?

this one is tough. either a billy goat, a black or grizzly bear, or a shark.

which Harry Potter house would you be in? or are you a muggle?

i’m a staunch slytherin!

would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?

MIDDLE EARTH!!! every autumn when the leaves start falling, i get the biggest tolkien hard-on and i just. *sighs wistfully*

do you love easily?

i… hm. i form super close, super intense platonic relationships easily, and i’d die for a number of people in my life. but i still don’t understand romantic love? i have a hard time recognizing it in myself.

list the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.

thinking & pacing, art/music/writing, talking, lying awake in bed from insomnia, smothering my dogs with love.

how often would you want to see your family every year?

i, too, am living with my family now that i’m back from college. and i like certain family members more than others so idk.

have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone?

nah

could you live as a hermit?

nah

how would you describe your gender/sexuality?

queer

do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?

i look like a twinky art student with transition lenses, 13 piercings and 2 tattoos so, almost? i also feel like i should have a bar of soap in my mouth at all times

on a scale from 1 to 10, how hard is it for someone to get under your skin?

i’d say like a solid 2. ocd is a bitch like that

three songs that you connect with right now.

On Our Knees - Konoba

Bored - Deftones

I’m Still Here (Jim’s Theme) from the Treasure Planet soundtrack ;;_;;

pick one of your favorite quotes.

"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this what it means to be free?"   - Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

#admin elliott #about me #thanks anon! #ask meme