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ddarker-dreams · 4 years

Text

Pandora’s Box. Yan Chrollo x Reader

Warnings: Medicine mention, descriptions of anxiety, and implied minor character death. Word count: 2.7k.

A simple plan is the best kind to have.

The less variables at play, the higher your rates of success are. You’ve anticipated some margin of error, a safety net of sorts, to be used if necessary. Everything within your realm of influence has been taken into account. Your friend in a car meeting you at a dead spot, a train ticket purchased with a prepaid visa card on a VPN, and a few precious pieces of jewelry to be pawned off at a later time. Scraping these assets together is a commendable feat, having to skulk around to make it this far.

Nothing feels out of the ordinary, you think. Your preparations are almost complete. All that’s left is to wait to ensure the beast in hiding cannot come for you.

Prayer doesn’t traditionally feel worth the effort -- any god that’d allow you to be subjugated to a hell such as this is no god worth pleading to -- but tonight is different. Tonight you pray to any deity that may spare you some pity, that this plan may succeed without a hitch. The time signals the beginning of the next phase, the most vital aspect.

Tonight’s soup had an additional ingredient, a generous helping of sleep inducing pills. To avoid suspicion, you partook in the meal as usual, hoping to cancel out the effects later by ingesting a gratuitous amount of energy drinks. It served the original purpose of fending off fatigue, but not without presenting a unique set of problems of its own. The caffeine has served to heighten your anxiety, upping what was already a nerve-wracking experience to a new level.

Your guts feeling like they’re rearranging themselves, your body not capable of forgoing fidgeting a single moment. No longer can you tell if it’s nausea, stomach pain, or hyperventilation. Maybe it’s everything at once. All you know is that you’ve never had your body working against you more than now. Every nerve is frayed, your senses on high alert to any shadow or noise.

Deep breaths no longer bring you reprieve. Each raggedy breath you manage to squeeze out is an accomplishment, overshadowed by the fear that he might hear you. How irrational a thought, that Chrollo would be capable of picking up on the differences in your breathing from afar. It doesn’t matter how illogical the worry may be. With Chrollo, you’ve learned that nothing is impossible. To expect the unexpected has been the mantra of your mind these past few months.

Just a bit longer... I need to know he’s asleep for sure. Or else it’s over.

Your foot taps against the ground in a frantic rhythm, ears ringing like funeral tolls. The last time you dared peak into your shared room with Chrollo, he was supposedly fast asleep, out like a light. What should’ve been a cause for victory brought nothing but a fresh wave of dread. A guessing game ensues. Trying to decipher his body language from earlier for hints only serves to make you feel worse. You’ve been so cautious, walking on sheets of thin ice at every move. Chrollo hadn’t acted out of the ordinary to your knowledge. Not that he has a way of acting ‘ordinary’ anyways, your limited understanding of his person having to suffice.

Should everything be going according to your design, your friend will be in position to pick you up. There’s no more stalling, the point of return ahead of you.

It’s time.

You do a final check over your mental checklist. Your backpack is stocked with the necessities: toiletries, a few changes of clothes, a filtered hydro flask, non perishable foods and your train ticket. To any onlooker it might look like you’re going hiking. Sporting worn sneakers, loose-fitting clothes, and having your hair pulled away from your face. This is really it. The culmination of sneaking around behind Chrollo’s back for months, unfolding before your very eyes. Everything is falling into place as it’s meant to.

You walk to the door.

Each step you take is quiet as can be. Every shuffle of clothes, or the slightest of creaks from the floorboards, causes you to wince and pause. This penthouse has served as your personal circle of hell for months on end, the walls absorbing your cries and screams. You despise this place with every fiber of your being. The antique décor, the ancient texts that lay strewn about, the scent of sandalwood that you find nauseating.

Ghosts of the past return to haunt you as you walk through different areas. Swirling around your head, they threaten to consume you, chipping away at your resolve. His hypnotic voice resonates in your mind like whispers of the serpent in the garden, tempting you. Weighing you down. Not even your own mind is a safe haven from his speech that disguises itself as flowery, when the reality is far more sinister. Chrollo’s words are constricting vines, lined with thorns, embedding themselves deeper into your flesh the harder you try to pry them out.

“Don’t you remember how difficult your life was before me?”

Another step.

“All those people who left you, who took advantage of you?”

Your hands shake around your small, homemade EMP. It’s made from spare parts you managed to find around the penthouse, clumsily assembled through trial and error. The pulse it emits is next to nothing. Copper coils threaten to fall loose at any second when you raise it to the security system by the door. Holding your breath, you press down on the trigger. The device lets out rapid clicking sounds, the security monitor flickering before going blank.

“I know you’ll come around.”

Finally, come the excessive locks on the door. The compressed air you said you needed for cleaning is next up. The can is cool against your trembling fingers, white specs decorating the locks as you spray them over. With some persistence, they come undone, one after the other. Unshackling you from the depths. You open the door that’s mocked you relentlessly for months, withholding your prized freedom.

“But even in the event that you don’t...”

The surrounding world is a blur of colors. Your eyes don’t focus on any object for too long, scanning your surroundings for potential threats. It feels as if your stomach is in your throat when the elevator starts its descent. He had you up on the fiftieth floor?

You fixate on the screen, numbers not flashing by fast enough for your liking.

40.

20.

“Well. There are always ways of overcoming inconveniences such as that.”

It’s an extravagant lobby. Far more luxurious than you could ever have hoped to afford, this building being one of the most exclusive in Yorknew. The person at the front desk calls out and you ignore it. You must look mighty suspicious, not that you care. The priority now is escape. Running out the revolving door, crisp autumn air greets you. You’ve never felt more grateful for the bustling streets of the city. Even at night the city remains awake, making it easier to blend in. No one out here spares you a second glance as you weave in and out of fast paced crowds.

23rd street. That’s where you’ll meet up with your friend, who will then transport you to the subway. Glancing up at the signposts, you realize you’ll be in for some walking. There’s no letting your guard down. Constantly looking over your shoulder, all you see are the faces of strangers. You’ve never felt so grateful to be a part of a crowd.

Finally, after walking for what feels like an eternity, you spot your beacon of hope. A clothing store’s bright neon sign, which your friend sits parked in front of. Since these stores are closed this time of day, the crowd that once surrounded you have thinned out, yet you try not to fixate on the lack of cover. Jay walking across the street doesn’t prove to be an issue. The pollution from the city hides the stars behind a layer of smog, streetlamps your lone source of light.

Heart hammering in your chest, you tap on the window of her car with urgency. “Amelia, it’s me. [First].”

You hear the doors unlock.

Taking it as a sign she heard you, you waste no time swinging into the passenger seat of the car. Amelia immediately turns the keys, car humming to life. Your chest heaves with exhaustion from the draining events. This is it. The second to last step before you reclaim your freedom. It’s almost like a dream, the light at the end of a long tunnel. Amelia’s appearance is just as you recalled it. Hazel eyes, tan skin, long black hair, and an average build. Your heart leaps at the sight of her.

“I’ve been so worried about you,” your friend confesses in a hushed whisper. “[First], what... what happened? You completely fell off the face of the Earth for months. Then you contact me out of nowhere? What’s going on?”

It isn’t easy meeting her eyes, so you don’t. “I... I don’t know if it’s safe to talk about it. The less you know, the better.”

She takes a moment to assess you before sighing. “Alright, I can tell this is serious. Just... I’m glad you’re alright.”

Amelia begins driving without another word. Silence hangs in the air, offering a time to reflect. Your plan, Chrollo, what you’ll do next... it whirls around your head like a vortex. A gut feeling refuses to leave you alone whenever you picture his face. A dreadful thought that this entire escapade was too easy. Is it just your paranoia? It could very well be. Hugging your backpack closer to you for comfort, you’re startled by Amelia suddenly speaking up.

“The subway station, huh,” she reminiscences aloud, eyes flickering from the road to you. “So you’re leaving Yorknew?”

There’s no way to continue dodging her questions. “... Yeah, I am.”

“Where are you going?”

It’s natural she’d have lots of questions. Had the situation been reversed, you’d have plenty of your own. For her wellbeing you don’t want to indulge more than necessary. Lying to someone who is helping you lives a sour taste in your mouth. It’s for her sake, you remind yourself. Having to involve Amelia in this at all was the last thing you wanted to do.

“I’m going to Zaban City. I have some extended family there.”

Amelia hums in confirmation to your story. “Your cousin, right?”

“Right.”

She stops pressing that particular subject, likely sensing your apprehension. You take advantage of the peaceful atmosphere and close your eyes. The sleeping pills from earlier are starting to grow more prominent. Losing consciousness is the last thing you need right now, but indulging in some much needed rest sounds too inviting.

“There was something else I was wondering about.” Amelia starts, earning your attention. Looks like sleep will have to wait for later. You yawn, stretching your weary limbs, and wait for her to continue. She smiles, dark eyelashes fluttering shut in deep thought.

“Oh, sweet [First],” she whispers your name in the gentlest of tones, and looks over at you. “Why are you so selfish?”

You blink, the words not settling in immediately. “What...?”

She continues without missing a beat. “You used to be so envious of me. Always pretending to play nice, because you were too passive to say how you really felt. How you hated me.”

“Amelia? What are you talking about? I... I never hated you, what--”

“Even now you can’t bring yourself to admit the truth,” she sighs. “Not that I’m surprised. You’ve always cared way too much about what people think. Why would now be any different?”

Her unexpected attack on your character has you shifting in your seat. Every word that leaves her lips is in her voice, yet feels so different than her normal character. Did something happen in the time Chrollo took you away? Anxiety rears its ugly head at the line of questioning. You take a sudden interest in your fingers, playing with them on your lap.

“I don’t understand where any of this is coming from.” You admit, eyebrows furrowing together. The shift in atmosphere is tangible. What was once a warm reunion under stressful times has corrupted into a frosty confrontation. These insecurities of hers that laid dormant in your heart... why is she bringing this up now? In your most vulnerable hour? Nothing is making sense. These ugly feelings of yours were only ever confided in one person.

“You knew it’d be a danger to my life to contact me. You knew that, and still you did it all the same. I wonder why that is. Could it be... that you wouldn’t care if I died? If I was tortured for aiding your escape?”

Your heart drops. This knowledge... how can she know any of this? Amelia used the word escape, clear as day. Is that a coincidence? You look over at the car door, seeing it’s locked. Something’s not right here, you deduce. I don’t know what it is exactly, but something is very wrong...!

She continues on. “I really do want to know what your justification for this is. Out of everyone you could’ve picked for help, you specifically chose me, knowing the danger it’d bring. Did you think I’d be spared in some sort of miracle?”

The spare moonlight streaming in illuminates Amelia’s face, highlighting how pale her skin looks. Veins that would normally not have been so prominent have a blue tint, her lips a similar shade. Your eyes drop to the unnaturally large scarf that surrounds her neck. It’s not that cold out yet, why is she wearing something so cumbersome? Reaching out with unsteady hands, you pull the fabric back. Your gut feels like it’s been punched at the sight, eyes widening in horror.

On the back of her neck is an antenna, with bat wings on the end.

Shit! Shit, shit, shit--

In a frenzy, you stretch forward, searching for the button to unlock the car door. The second you find it, it’s pressed, and you unbuckle your seatbelt. You hear her speaking up again. Your heart feels like it’s about to burst from your chest as you jump out the car, grateful it isn’t going too fast. Skin meeting asphalt, you hiss at the pain, rolling onto your side. None of that matters now. How did he do it? He has to be nearby, maybe you can still make it to the station in time. Your head hurts from the impact, legs wobbling like jelly.

It’s difficult to focus. You grit your teeth, utilizing the remnants of your strength to get to your knees. Why did the caffeine have to wear off so soon...? It was going so well. You finally had your chance, your time to take back your life. To go back to how things were. Struggling to get to your feet, you throw your backpack off, praying the lost weight will help you get up.

“You never answered my questions,” calls a deeper voice. You gulp back acidic bile as a hand is extended in front of you. “I was hoping you would.”

Your head hangs down. It’s over. For a transgression such as this, you imagine you’re in for quite the punishment. How funny a thing fate is. Similar to streams of rushing water, there are many twists and turns, leading you down paths you never wanted to go. Fingernails dig into the sensitive flesh of your palms, the pain anchoring your wandering mind to reality. All other parts of your body have lost feeling. Numbness is what you’ve come to know.

The devil incarnate bends over, taking your tearstained face into his fingers, and lifting it to meet his eyes. An abyss of grey stares back at you, devoid of humanity. Taking pleasure in besting you yet again. Disappointment is mixed within an interest to see what you’ll do next. There’s no smile on his face as you’ve come to expect. You see an empty shell of a man glowering down at you, from a place just out of reach.

“I can’t say I’m too pleased about this, [First]. We’ll need to have a long discussion, don’t you think?”

#chrollo lucilfer #chrollo #chrollo imagine #chrollo lucilfer imagine #chrollo x reader #yandere chrollo #yandere chrollo imagine #yandere chrollo lucilfer #yandere chrollo x reader #yandere #yandere x reader #Hunter X Hunter #hunter x hunter imagine #yandere hunter x hunter #hunter x hunter imagines #hxh x reader #yandere hxh x reader #my stuff

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lucifers-horror-harem · 4 years

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Heyy so I was wondering if you could do a nsfw alphabet for Brahms? 🥺

Hey I’m sorry it took me a hot sec to post anything in a while but hopefully you enjoy! I love doing these alphabets cause it helps me get a better feel for the character.

Brahms N/S/F/W Alphabet

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Brahms is a clingy boy after sex, typically wrapping himself around your body and refusing to let go. You’re his teddy bear and he’ll throw a tantrum if you refuse to snuggle with him afterward. He loves leaving kisses along your neck and jaw and humming so deeply it reminds you of a purring cat.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

His hands are probably his favorite part of his. Especially after meeting you and reveling in how you react to his touch. No matter your size he will always see you as smaller and more fragile than him and seeing his big hands gripping your wrists or holding onto your waist always get him going.

While he would love every part of his partner unconditionally, his favorite part would be their eyes. There’s so much emotion he can see from them, he can tell when you’re happy, worried, upset, or needy. He can’t get enough of the way you look at him with such softness when he is at his most gentle and desire when he is teasing you. And sometimes, he gets a thrill out of the look of fear in your eyes when he is being more dominant and direct with you, liking to see just how much of an effect he has on you.

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Brahms will certainly make a mess out of you if you’ll allow him. He really can’t decide where he likes to come the best. A few of his favorite places would be your chest, along your stomach and thighs, and inside of you. He gets a rush seeing you covered in his come like he’s laid claim to you.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Brahms has loads of dirty secrets, he's lived in the walls for most of his life so everything of his is a dirty secret. But one of the dirtiest that he has is that before he revealed himself to you, he would steal your underwear and watch you through the walls. You wouldn't have to be doing anything explicitly erotic, but anytime his urges got the better of him and when he felt he might lose himself and lunge out of the walls to grab you, he will take your underwear and jerk it off along his cock, the fabric adding much-needed friction for him to satiate his urges and come before he does anything too rash. As he usually makes a mess of your underwear, you find you're missing a lot of pairs frequently, both clean ones and ones from the hamper. Because you know Brahms is a dirty boy and would definitely get off on inhaling your smell as well.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

He is a virgin, no question. The most experience that Brahms has is what he's read in the books on his shelves. He most likely hasn't read actual erotica but the books that he's read might have some sexual scenes or descriptions of such things (albeit probably only from very older books that use way too many euphemisms and flowery language). He is also aware of reproduction and how to have sex through diagrams in stuffy anatomy and biology books. As a lot of his knowledge is in a scientific context, he will really need you to guide him the first few times. After that, it's no holds barred.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

He has a hard time deciding. Brahms really enjoys missionary so he can pin you down and watch every expression on your face as he pleasures you. However, he is also partial to doggy style because sometimes he gets so worked up that he can’t help but want to take you as roughly and deeply as possible.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

Brahms is always more serious during intimate moments, the most he might do is a little laugh as he teases you. He’s not one for joking during sex simply because he is still a little insecure about his abilities, though if you’re with him for long enough he might start to loosen up a bit.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

Have you SEEN how hairy this man is??? Brahms has probably never used a razor in his entire life so he's a full wolfman. He also never really had opportunities to clean himself fully like in a shower (the most he probably does is a makeshift sponge bath if even that) so you're most likely going to have to get him used to proper hygiene unless you like a very stinky wall boy. He also wouldn't bother with his body hair on his own unless you offered to trim it for him. A full shave anywhere right off the bat might not be too good either, because he will feel naked and itchy for days. You will have to get used to some hair on him because even if you were offering him kisses as rewards for shaving he wouldn't let himself be completely shaved head to toe. As it is, it'll be an absolute pain trying to get Brahms to agree to you manscaping him below the belt because it is certainly a mess down there.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

Brahms is always romantic during intimate moments. Or at least, what he believes is romantic. Most of the time he is simply overwhelmed by his desire for you and if he can manage it in the heat of the moment he will grunt how beautiful and lovely you are in your ear as he thrusts into you, praising and telling you that you’re all his and no one else’s. His heart is in the right place but you might need to help him understand the nuances of romance.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

Absolutely. While he might have associations with it being a dirty act from being punished by his mother, he still finds he cannot help himself when he first saw you through the walls. Mostly it’s a way for him to calm himself down and take control of himself again when he feels the urge to reveal himself to you. At first it might begin when he sees you changing or showering, but it could escalate to him just jacking off to you doing simple tasks around the house.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Brahms might have a hard time putting words to describing what his kinks are because he has been so sheltered, but he has far too many to count. Essentially when he finds his perfect person to be the nanny at the Heelshire mansion, his kink will be everything about you. You yourself are what turns him on the most. He’s a huge voyeur, no surprise there. He also has a bit of a size kink because of his size compared to you. Essentially if his partner is involved, he will be down to do or try anything.

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

He loves dragging you in the walls and having sex with you pinned flush against the wall. While he’s thrusting into you from behind, he’ll make you look through one of his peepholes and tell you exactly what he does while he watches you through them. His bed in the walls is another favorite place, mostly because he can keep you between the wall and him and you would have to get through him if you wanted to get up. He likes having you all trapped for himself.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Honestly, anything can turn Brahms on when it comes to you. You could show this boy a bare ankle and he would instantly nut. But if you really want to drive him crazy, wear revealing clothing. Lingerie, booty shorts, crop tops, leggings, skirts, anything that covers you while also teasing what is underneath. He won’t be able to control himself and he will either pester you all day about giving him attention or simply tackling you on the spot and giving all of his love right then and there.

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

Absolutely will not share you with anyone else. He refuses to even entertain that notion. On a similar note, he wouldn’t be interested in public sex, not that he leaves the Hillshire mansion anyways, but he refuses to even think about someone other than him looking at you in such a vulnerable position. You’re his and his alone.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

He is usually more of a giver. Brahms always wants to make sure you’re taken care of, and as someone who is horny for praise, he gets off on getting you off. And if you tell him what a good boy he’s being? Instant nut. Though he will never turn down oral from you, though he might be a little twitchy about it at first. He’s not used to someone pleasuring him.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

When he’s horny and in more of his man persona, he’s all sorts of feral and rough with you. It’s not that he doesn’t want to take his time, he’s just usually so pent up and has such a high sex drive that he can’t help himself. It’s possible for him to go slower but it will take a lot of urging him and a bit more willpower on his end, as well as the promise of rewards if he does.

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

All. The. TIME. Since he’s been so pent up for years upon years in the walls, any small action from you will get him needy. If you’re not careful, he’ll bend you over every surface in the house, and then when he’s done will scurry away while you’re sitting there trying to process what just happened, all the while cursing him for making you horny in the process, thus continuing the cycle.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

Brahms is hardly a risk-taker in his own life and any sort of change will upset him. Even spending more time outside the walls is tough for him, but once he’s grown used to you the risky behavior he will have is having sex outside the walls or your bedroom. For someone so used to sneaking out of the walls without being spotted and getting reprimanded by his parents, it’s a thrilling experience for him to be so naughty out in the open with no one scolding him for it.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

While he isn’t one to last a long time, he can go for as many rounds as he can stand. Since just about everything about you gets him in the mood, he could have just orgasmed and will start getting hard again.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

Brahms doesn’t personally own any toys but if you do he won’t protest. The only thing he might not like is if you use them by yourself. He wants to be a part of the fun too, whether he’s using them on you, you on him, or both of you using them together.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He LOVES teasing. Any opportunity to see your flustered expression while you try to scold him is one he will take. Plus he loves seeing just how needy he can get you.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

Brahms usually isn’t loud at all especially if the sex is slower. He might make a few moans here and there. But when he’s needy for you he will make all sorts of animalistic grunts and groans. He’s less talkative except to tell you how good you’re being for him. He usually gets so carried away that he can hardly speak and mostly just moans in your ear as he ruts into you.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Brahms is a curious boy, and on some occasions when he steals your underwear he’s attempted to wear it. Especially anything soft and silky you might own, it’s a different sensation on his body that he isn’t used to and the whole debaucherous act leaves him unable to contain himself. You might have to invest in buying him his own undies. But even then he would prefer to steal yours because they smell like you.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

He is slightly above average length but he is also endowed in the girth department. Again, lots of hair down there.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

The easiest way to explain his sex drive is that he is the kind of guy to get hard over any bare bit of skin not covered. He will settle down more the longer you're together, but he still acts like a feral animal anytime he sees you.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

He will be out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow. Get used to falling asleep with his arms and legs wrapped around you and his chin resting on your head. Good luck if you need to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

#brahms heelshire x reader #brahms heelshire #slasher x reader #the boy 2016 #anon

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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Re the BTD recap: "the prose is still incredibly messy in places" "To be frank, it’s not that I think this is all particularly good… just not particularly bad either." If it's not too much trouble, can I get some concrete examples for why? I feel like I often don't notice this sort of thing, so I want to know what I'm missing. Might help me to be a better writer.

Challenging request, anon! :D I feel like I need a few disclaimers here:

The book is serviceable. It’s just not going to be winning any awards. Talking about how the prose and dialogue can be better isn’t meant to translate to, “This is the worst thing ever written.” Because it’s not.

This is very much a pot calling the kettle black situation. Anyone here has the capability of hopping onto AO3, finding a horribly written passage of my own, and shaking it in my virtual face. So this is likewise not intended to be me standing atop a pedestal going, “Anyone - myself included - could do better.” I often can’t do better because writing is hard.

I’m not a creative writing instructor, thus it’s often difficult for me to articulate why I think a piece of literature doesn’t read well. If you’ve ever, say, come out of a movie with a strong sense of it not being “good” but can’t easily explain why it failed? It’s similar to that. By consuming lots of media we get a sense of “quality” over “badly written” that then informs our reactions to new texts, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to boil that response down to, “See here on page 3? They shouldn’t have done this. Fix that and it’s ‘good’ now.”

Nevertheless, let’s try. I’ll take a passage from the prologue where Sun is facing off against these “goons”

Two glowing clones of Sun flared into existence, one facing Pink and the second squaring off against Green. That left Brown—whom he figured was both the leader of the group and the most dangerous. Why? Because he was hiding the most.

Brown slashed a hand toward Sun. “Take him.”

“Which one?” Green asked.

“The real one,” Pink said. “These are just flashy illusions.”

Sun directed one of his clones to punch Pink in the face.

She blinked and looked more annoyed than hurt.

“That’s no illusion!” Green reached for clone Two.

Sun’s clones were physical manifestations of his Aura, every bit as capable of inflicting damage as he was. But it could be difficult to control them, especially while he was fighting. They were better suited to giving him the element of surprise, extra pairs of hands, or emergency backup when he needed it.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t sustain them long, and they couldn’t take much damage, as they drew Aura from Sun himself. If he kept them going too long, or tried to create too many clones, it usually weakened the Aura shield protecting him. But he’d improved a lot with training, and his Semblance was a lot stronger than it used to be.

Sun whipped out his gunchucks, Ruyi Bang and Jingu Bang, spinning them as he and Brown circled each other slowly. At the same time, Sun was fighting Pink and Green through his clones. Pink was some kind of boxer, dancing around and jabbing with her fists, which One was managing to block. Meanwhile, Green was trying to grab Two and wrestle him to the ground.

Brown had some kind of martial arts training similar to Sun’s—but he wasn’t nearly as good. Sun leaned back as Brown did a high roundhouse kick; he felt a breeze as his opponent’s booted foot swept past his nose with a lot of power behind it. Sun flicked his right gunchuck to loop it around Brown’s ankle and pulled him out of his stance, hitting him with the closed gunchuck in his left hand. The man took the full blow, but it didn’t even faze him.

Now let’s break down some of the reasons why this passage doesn’t work for me. I’ll work chronologically.

As mentioned in the recap, it’s rather awkward for a PoV character to ask and answer their own questions. Especially when they’re not presented as literal thoughts. The “Why? Because...” takes me right out of the story. It suddenly sounds like I’m attending a lecture or reading an article. Sun believes X. Why does he believe this? Because of Y evidence.

The dialogue is clunky. This problem is admittedly more obvious at other points, but there are a lot of moments where it doesn’t feel like this is a natural thing someone would think or say. Which again, is really hard to write. How people speak is quite different from how we think they speak and finding a balance between that (eliminating most pauses like “um” or “like” that would be too frustrating to read, giving characters more flowery language to serve the story’s goals even if it’s not realistic, etc.) is hard to nail. Here, Sun is often thinking things that don’t sound l like an actual thought in a panicked teen’s head.

Oh crap, Sun thought. I’m losing. How am I actually losing?

It just sounds like exposition. The reader needs to know that Sun is losing! So Sun will tell them that.

The villains, so far, are a bit too cartoony for me.

“You got lucky, monkeyboy,” Green said as he walked off, his companions following him through the cloud of foul vapor. “This time.”

Which is admittedly a matter of taste and does have some justification given RWBY’s early writing (think Roman). Still, it’s hard to take lines like this seriously, especially when we just had the group making fun of Velvet for cheesy quips. But the villain’s quips are supposed to read as daunting?

Connected to Sun’s thought above, there is a lot of telling rather than showing throughout. For example: “She blinked and looked more annoyed than hurt.” There are ways of showing the reader that Pink is annoyed (indeed, just leaving it at “She blinked” would have gotten the point across) rather than resorting to, “She looked ___”. Another good example would be “ Sun leaned back as Brown did a high roundhouse kick; he felt a breeze as his opponent’s booted foot swept past his nose with a lot of power behind it.” You don’t need to reassure the reader that there was “a lot of power behind it.” The action itself - feeling a breeze, his boot passing close to his nose - conveys that on its own.

To be clear, telling isn’t something you can’t ever do (break those writing rules!!) especially when sometimes you just want to be clear/convey something succinctly, but it is something to keep in mind. It’s another balancing act. Too much telling and the reader feels like they’re just being told a list of things to believe. Too much showing and it feels like the writer is trying too hard to make everything detailed, exciting, etc. Still, a good writer is going to be able to convey everything (Sun losing a fight, annoyance, a powerful kick) without feeling the need to remind the reader of things every few lines, “This is what’s happening. Don’t get confused!”

After the fight starts we immediately get a two paragraph info-dump about Sun’s semblance. How it works, what his limitations are, and what that means for this fight. Again, show that! We’ve just started an action sequence. The fight is underway. The reader doesn’t want to get pulled out of the action for another lecture. Rather than hitting pause on the fun stuff to explain things, create scenarios where these details become relevant and can be shown to the reader. Right now we don’t care what Sun’s limitations are unless those limitations become important.

We get another announcement in the form of “[Brown] wasn’t nearly as good [as Sun]” instead of (again) showing us that. Indeed, as I mention in the recap all the action that comes next contradicts this. So where did this assertion come from? If Sun knows that Brown uses a martial arts style similar to his then theoretically they’ve been fighting for at least a few seconds... but the reader doesn’t get to see that. Meyers was too busy telling us about Sun’s semblance.

Finally, there are pockets of Meyer’s writing that are all roughly the same. Meaning, sentences have little variety to them. This isn’t a consistent problem (and it’s certainly not the worst example I’ve seen of this) but on the whole he could use a more engaging flow to his work, both in terms of sentence length and balance among actions, dialogue, descriptions, and thoughts. Otherwise you get prose that reads, “This happened. Then this happened. This happened next. See the length? It’s all the same. Very little changes. And the reader gets bored.” Again, not a consistent problem, but one he should keep working on.

There are a number of other, smaller issues that are beginning to pop up. Such as the in parentheses pronunciation of the teams’ names, or the overuse of “he sent” whenever Fox communicates telepathically. In contrast, there are things about the writing that I’ve enjoyed. There are moments of dialogue - such as Fox’s joke in Chapter One, or how Sun’s instructions to “find Shade” literally refer to the school but also remind the reader that shade, in such a hot environment, is crucial - that I think are worth pointing to and going, “Yeah. That was a nice touch.” Overall though? It’s that, “I just came out of a bad movie” feeling. There’s too much clunkiness throughout. The writing often lacks variety or feels absurd. I’m taken out of the story more often than I fall into it. Is it the worst thing I’ve ever read? Far from it, but fans aren’t wrong when they say things like, “I’ve read better fic than this professional story.”

#rwby #rwde #mymetas #Anonymous

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traumatized-motherfuckers · 3 years

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CPTSD relationship patterns on repeat

Listen wherever you stream, search “complex trauma” and subscribe. Or, find episodes, blog posts, and a private support community at t-mfrs.com

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Things I’ve gotten good at throughout this Trauma journey:

Seeing connections between where I’m from and where I am

Thinking for the first time about where I’m going

Letting myself have emotions

Letting those emotions go

Redirecting my energy and attention away from ruminating

Being accountable for my own feelings

Being accountable for times of being a shithead

Listening and validating other humans

Listening and validating myself

Recognizing what circumstances do/don’t work for me

Realizing how my codependency plays with relationships

Letting go of self-hate inner critic talk

Reframing events with reasonable views

Accepting myself, even when I first want to thrash myself

Semi-consistently caring for myself

Setting realistic boundaries and goals

Sleeping

Things I’m still shitty at:

Letting my overwhelm skew reality

Anxious self-slave-driving

Being a snarky turd when my head is overloaded

Taking on other people’s energies and emotions

Trusting myself in all areas of life

Forming healthy relationships.

Okay, it’s that last one that has me most perpetually fighting feelings of panic and doom.

This seems like an apt way to kick off the new year. I think a lot of us have questions about relationships and would like to improve our operations in 2021. I can also tell you, this one is extremely appropriate looking back at the last year of my life.

One of the biggest lessons I've learned in the past few spins around the sun has been how romance does - and definitely doesn't - fit into my life. I think 2020 was particularly packed full of important lectures and pop quizzes, many of which I failed. It felt like knowing that the correct answer was C, but finding my hand filling in the circle for A every time, anyways.

This is a terrible ideaaaa... and I'm doing it. Pause for about 2 months. Now I'm upset that it was a terrible idea.

Yeah, it's been great. But I have no one to blame but myself. Because as much as I've worked on this trauma management life of mine, I haven't done a good job of working on the relationship aspect of it. I've let my usual patterns dominate. And that's what needs to be examined today.

I mean. Can someone tell me about healthy relationships in functional terms? What IS that even?

Look, I’m not hoping that someone will pop up and share some, “mutual respect, good communication, trust, support, care, similar goals, similar beliefs…” sort of shit. I fucking KNOW about the idealistic, flowery terms that all the light-hearted couples counselors recommend establishing for a happy relationship. I get it.

I’m not ignorant when it comes to the ways humans should interact. I’ve had enough experience with friendships and relationships, alike, to understand the basics of person-to-person interactions. I know I talk about myself like I’ve been a feral child locked in a cage for 20 years, but the truth is that if you met me on the streets I’d probably seem like a normal, well-adapted, personable human being. That Leo Ascendant component of my personality tricks people into actually thinking I’m an extrovert who wants attention. (Hilarious, explains a lot of comments I’ve gotten in my past)

Nah, I’m not asking for the trite descriptions of a healthy partnership that everyone who’s ever been friends on a basic girl’s Facebook has seen before in cursive writing on top of a washed-out pink-tinted field. Those are empty sounding words that I don’t believe most couples manage to put into action, no matter how many selfies they take together or labradoodles they adopt.

For me, Fuckers, the mystery isn’t, “in a fairytale world, how do two humans interact to have a lifelong bliss factory?” Respect, trust, appreciation, mutual understanding… blah blah blah. What the fuck ever.

The real question is how.

And, shit, let me just be honest with all of you - not just the Patrons who’ve already heard my personal bitching - it’s on my mind because I did a thing I definitely should not have… recently, I got into a new romantic relationship that I definitely was not looking for. I’ll spare you all the details today, but know that I’ve entered it kicking and screaming, and it’s caused me a lot of grief already.

Let the life shittery begin! Can’t wait to be destroyed.

Today, I want to bring this personal fire burning in my gut into the podcast. Motherfuck me, if it hasn’t become difficult to ignore… plus, I know that a lot of us Traumatized folks are in a similar boat when it comes to relationship confusion, unhealth, and destruction. So let’s just count the ways that I have no idea how to do this right and I’m destined to be let down by my poor choices.

This time around, I'm bringing you a list of all the ways I tend to fuck things up with other humans. In part, due to Complex Trauma. In other part, probably due to my own personal shortcomings. Listed in no particular order. On a later date, I'm going to be revisiting a lot of these patterns as I examine how early life set a lot of us up for a lot of abuse acceptance in greater detail. Stick around for those continuations on romantic disaster, if this sounds like you, too.

I'm talking about:

Partner choice: Musicians, narcissists, and addicts

Emotional codependency

Mistrust

… That turns into willful blind belief of their words

Inadequacy

Parenting analogues

Authority figures & disappointment

Misdirected commitment

Learned helplessness

Partner choice: Musicians, narcissists and addicts

Who has bad taste in partners? Over and over and over again? It’s me! And probably a lot of you.

Maybe that’s not fair. Maybe they’ve been wonderful guys who just didn’t mesh well with my inner or outer world… but I can tell you, there have been some similarities, and they don’t bode well for a happy future together.

You know me by now. Difficulty connecting with “normal” humans, no interest in small talk, a huge fan of deep emotional honesty, a bit gritty and assholeish, tends to be repelled by anything too widely embraced by the general public, definitely comes with a difficult past, fears of the future, and ongoing challenges in the present.

So, who do you think I get along with? Ivy leaguers with stable, supportive families, an optimistic outlook, and a 20-year plan? Or equally messy and complex humans with a set of neuroses handed down from their unexamined early traumas that make them similarly bitter and disillusioned with life? Just… probably hidden from immediate sight.

Grown men who’ve responsibly built a life for themselves with ambition, personal insight, and balance? Or man-children who’re still figuring out that they can’t drink every night of the week if they want to be functional in life and financially sound? But... with their addictions hidden behind “an appreciation for fine whiskies” or a necessity to sample the craft beer they brew.

Independent, confident humans who have no problem running their own world like a boss and trust that I’m capable of doing the same, with integrity and respect? Or distrustful turds who need me to be in their sight, half-directing their lives at all times unless I’m aiming to be accused of cheating, lying, and being unable to care for myself? Only… they hide their controlling and aggressive tendencies behind go-with-the-flow facades in the beginning.

If you guessed “B” in all three examples, you are correct!

Plus... so, so many musicians. Like, the last 6 of them have either subscribed to guitar or drum camp. And that hasn't been a purposeful decision - those are just the men I get along with until we hate each other.

It's always a rapid connection, a mutual respect for our interests in the arts, and a shared shitty attitude that starts out directed at the world and ends directed at each other. So many emotions. So many ups and downs. So many proclamations of "I can't live without you!" until the day we run in opposite directions and never look back.

Is that a coincidence? Or are all musical folk a bit wild? I hate to generalize, but I can tell you with great amusement that if you start typing "Are all musicians..." into Google, it will autocomplete with "cheaters, narcissists, and crazy." It also suggests "rich," but I can tell you for a fact that isn't true. The narcissist thing... uh.... very well might be correct. But I'll leave that for someone else to study.

So, I don't know what to make of this trend. There do seem to be some commonalities between the musicians in my past life - and they do seem to be categorized by the instrument of choice. For instance, drummers are never concerned with my time, and guitarists are emotional catastrophes. But what do I know? Can't make sweeping conclusions... I, at least, need a larger sample size. With my track record, I'm sure I'll have the numbers soon enough.

Congratulations if you predicted nothing but unstable disasters in my past. It's true, I’m an idiot. Okay, that’s not fair. No inner critic talk. Get out of here, Pam and Karen.

The fact of the matter is, I am a terrible judge of character when I start sensing a connection. I tend to connect with people who have complicated lives and inner worlds, just like I do. And from what I can tell, that is always my downfall.

Challenging connections

Let’s go ahead and chalk this one up to never having close connections or support growing up.

You know what I always wanted, hoped for, and idealized as a kid? Someone loving me. Another human actually understanding my weirdness and signing on for more. The idea of a human who wanted to know what I thought and felt. The option of spending time with someone and feeling cared for. Also, somebody finding me attractive, instead of being repulsed by my ass-length ginger hair, flat chest, dorky hand-me-downs, bleach-stained horse sweaters, and buck teeth... also would have been a dream come true.

I’m pretty sure that growing up lonely didn’t help me in any regard when it came to my later-in-life relationship problems. Starving for connection apparently puts you in a state of deprivation, where you’re likely to think anything is better than the empty feeling inside. You know, just for the rest of your life or so.

To this day, if I meet someone and we’re able to converse without abundant clarifications or apologies for the prickly things that come out of my mouth as dry humor or unbendable opinions… we’re on a roll. If we can connect over shared perspectives on humans, life, and psychology… things are getting more serious. If we can honestly talk about the ways we’re horrible to ourselves and joke about our shared challenges in figuring out what the point of this shitty slip-and-slide of life is about… uh oh, this might be a real connection.

And so, it makes sense that I connect with all the most complicated people you’d ever meet. And we connect INTENSELY. I’m complicated, myself, and I look for folks who can accept it without their heads exploding. I’m never going to be happy holding conversations with Sports Bar Joe or Pretty Boy Blaine. They’re never going to understand the internal strife that dominates my world. I’m never going to understand how they can be all *happy,* *close with their families,* and *laid back about life.*

Gross. I can’t even say the words.

But give me the angstiest, most anxious, most misunderstood dude on the block, and we’re likely to get along swimmingly. We’ll talk over beers until the birds start to chirp. We’ll joke in our native tongues, playing with words, obscure references, and dry humor as if we’ve known each other for 25 years. We’ll share secrets about our tumultuous inner worlds and the ways that we can’t seem to get our heads on straight enough to keep our ships on course.

And the next thing you know, we’ll be incestuously connected with a somewhat false sense of intimacy that erupts out of the gates. “No one has ever understood me the way you do. I can really be myself around you. I’ve never had such easy conversations about this shit before.”

… That’s about the point when I lose all perspective. There’s a tunnel running from my face to this dude’s heart. I stop seeing things for what they are. I project a kinder, gentler, more well-intended personality on the subject of my feels. I quickly turn a blind eye to all the shit they’re doing that I wholeheartedly hate or otherwise cause my red flags to be unpacked.

I feel like I know them, inside and out. I feel like I can help them - like we can help each other - to sort through this dumb world we’ve been born into and all the circumstances holding us back. A real Sid and Nancy storyline emerges. No one gets him like I do. If only they could see the things I see. We’re just two broken souls who found each other, a little rough around the edges, but we see the diamonds underneath. And we’re in this battle together from now on.

Yeah, right.

Sooooo… This is how I wind up with the unpredictable narcissists who seem like nice guys, the secret addicts who keep their substance abuse hidden from everyone, and the emotional abusers who are ready to leverage my mental health admissions against me the first time they get the chance. Dudes who have highly emotional worlds and no idea how to deal with them. Men who don’t want to explore their own shortcomings and instead choose avoidant courses in life.

And, again, the musicians. So, so many musicians. I really am coming to think that they’re the most fucked up people of all - and that's saying a lot coming from me. Generally speaking, I've seen that there’s no sense of personal responsibility, an obsession with themselves, and a hidden inferiority complex that turns them into bitchy little dogs when they feel threatened. What’s with that, anyways? Can you guys try to be more original in your plight to be the most original?

Okay, anyways. Sorry to keep dragging on musicians.

The point is, my attempts at relationships start out on the wrong foot. Choosing the wrong partner is a pretty surefire way to dash all hopes for those fluffy ideals I mentioned earlier. No one is going to respect me, listen to me, or support me when they’re too busy dealing with their own alcoholism, abandonment issues, and narcissistic flailings… or, not dealing with them, to be more specific.

We aren’t going to be able to work through things when they’re consumed with being the king of the world, hiding from all negative emotions, and trying to keep their head away from analysing their own actions. Hell, it’ll be difficult to even find the time for serious talks, since they’re so busy traveling to band practices, hustling away for barely-paying gigs, and staring at their social media while they count the ways they’re victims of the universe.

Choose imbalanced, mentally ill, self-serving partners… get unhealthy, controlling, unpredictable relationships. Pretty goddamn obvious. And yet, I still can never seem to see the full picture of the human who’s caught my attention through the fog that’s created by the connection of our shared dysfunctions.

I guess this is where that, “love yourself and get yourself healthy first,” sentiment comes into play, so the connections don’t continue to be as disasterious as your personal experience is. Hopefully I’m on the right path in my own journey, at least. Also, a lot less starved for connection. I got y’all Motherfuckers in the Discord community, for starters. And I’ve become determined to live a life where I support myself and rely on no one outside of Archie’s snuggles, for finishers.

Step one: Be careful about who you deem a good person, just because you can share self-deprecating jokes about being nutjobs and similar musical interests. Learn to choose someone who isn’t an even trashier trash human than you are. It’s a start.

Emotional codependency

Hand in hand with forming connections that include deep emotional outpourings and admissions of all the dark things we hide from the light at our office jobs… comes codependency.

I’ve said it before and let me say it again… I didn’t understand codependency until very recently.

In my mind, it was akin to those creepy couples who won’t leave the house without each other, have the same friends, interests, and opinions on everything... and possibly wear matching cat shirts. Those people who never spend time with other humans because they're too busy being shoved up their partner’s ass. The folks who call to check in on each other throughout the day when they’re at work. Gag. Particularly, I imagined those pathetic girls who cry when their boyfriend is out of sight and post 12 pictures a day of them together.

Rightfully, I scoffed and insisted that I didn't have problems with codependency. That’s not me. But it turns out, this view isn’t quite right, so much as I was being an uninformed asshole.

Codependency doesn’t mean you’re a needy, incapable human being who sucks the life power out of someone else, like I used to think. Codependency is a two-way relationship defined by poor boundaries and non-existent emotional regulation. Two humans who see their experiences as one, all the way down to how they feel and how they deal with how they feel. (i.e. turning to their significant other for comfort and emotional control in a time of need instead of working through it by themselves). Relationships where the emotions are transferred from party to party until it's unclear who’s bringing what dish to the gathering. Waking up not knowing how your day is going to be, because it depends on how someone else feels about theirs. Emotional enablement city.

Oh, yeah, when you put it like that, I definitely have issues with codependency.

For me, the codependency is largely going to be emotional. In the past, I didn’t know how to have a relationship of any sort without having a third influence in the mix. There was the person, myself, and our shared emotions... that often called more shots than either of us did.

Because I tend to be on the empath scale (although I do everything I can to fight it out of defense), I think I’m naturally tuned into other people’s emotional and energetic states, for better or for worse. When someone walks into the room with a bad vibe, I feel it to my core. I become so uncomfortable that I take it on myself to try to “fix” the problem for them, and in doing so, I avoid the negative sensation, myself. This is negative reinforcement, if anyone wanted to ABA with me.

That being said, clearly if my boo is having a hard time… it’s not okay. They’re in a shit place and therefore so am I. I must do whatever I can to make it better. To sit down and talk in circles with them, if that’s what relieves some of their tension. To commiserate about how unfair the circumstances are. To validate the negativity that they’re projecting and wallowing in.

Don’t worry though, this goes the other way, too. In the past, I have fully expected my romantic partners to alleviate any inner discomfort that I’ve felt. If I was having a low-down day, I wanted them to cheer me up. If I was full of anxiety, I wanted them to find a way to release it. If I was frustrated with a work situation or coworker, I wanted them to be as angry and indignant as I felt.

So… I guess that doesn’t even sound too off-base to me, at least not when I’m leaning on my teenage expectations of what relationships are supposed to be. In my head, it was always completely ideal that I would wind up with someone who could essentially read my thoughts and comfort me like my family never did. I just wanted someone who would be by my side, thinking about me all the time, and working double time to make sure I was keeping my depression and anxiety on the up-and-up. Is that too much to ask? Uh… yeah, it is.

Maybe in a fairytale love story like the ones I saw in teenage romance movies growing up, this is the perfect way for two broken misfits to interact. “We’re both so damaged and hurt that no one has ever really seen us - but now we have each other to lick our shared wounds.” Yeah, romantic. Also really fucked up and dangerous in the real world.

The problem is, after a few months of this, it gets pretty hard to determine what’s my experience and what’s yours. The emotions become so transitive that it can be invigorating, immersive, overwhelming, and exhausting to be in each other’s company, depending on the day and the event. Living together or essentially sharing a residence makes it much worse - there’s no physical barrier between us, so that emotional barrier is even less existent. We don't have to try to text about our woes, we can just unleash them the moment we step foot in the door. Ready or not, your night is about to be ruined by my day, and vice-versa.

How does this go wrong? Uh, let’s count the ways.

1. My emotional management was never up to par, in the first place. Having your feelings catapulted my way effectively pushes me off the balance beam that I was already wobbling on. If I was having a difficult day but holding it together on my own through coping techniques and reasonable thinking - fucking forget it, that’s over now. We’re both in a shitty state now. Great. In the context of trying to recover from mental health issues… yeah, it’s a fucking disaster. Being retriggered by your partner or sucked into a depressive undertow when you’re trying to make positive change is a losing battle.

2. I never learned how to cope with my own emotions. There was generally someone else for me to hurtle them at, and our subsequent hours of bitching would give me the comfort I was looking for. I didn’t need to learn to manage my feelings - I always had a glorified babysitter to keep me alive. I never had to be accountable for my inner world. I never had to look at things with logic or reason. I could let myself spiral and trust that my best friend or boyfriend would catch me before I slipped down the drain.

3. It becomes impossible to talk about issues - personal or shared. When you’re already sharing emotions there’s an explosive effect when conflict is brought up. Neither one of us knows how to handle our shit, we expect the other person to hold us up with kid gloves, annnd now that person is the source of my distress? We’re both completely beside ourselves, upset, hurt, and angry… and it’s towards each other? Now who the fuck do we call? There's a huge sense of confusion and betrayal. No one has the skills to de-escalate the argument or return to a normal emotional state.

4. How do you break up when half of your existence is in the body of another human? You can’t mentally or emotionally separate yourself from them. Physically separating yourself feels like ripping out a few of your organs and leaving them on the streets. And, who’s going to keep you afloat when you’re going through the pain of the break up? That’s the job of your partner, afterall… can’t have a vacant desk sitting here. It’s best to just suck it up and stick with it. No one would understand what you’ve both been through together, anyways.

In a word, that’s codependency.

Not what people think it is. Not what our culture describes it as. Not so easy to spot until you’re educated and honest with yourself… plus, probably viewing things through the lenses of hindsight.

Definitely a sneaky recipe for disaster when you let it take over a well-intended, emotionally transparent, highly connective relationship. And, Motherfuckers, I’ve always tended to.

Head to t-mfrs.com for more!

#cptsd #healcptsd #just cptsd things #cptsdsurvivor #cptsdwarrior #cptsd problems #cptsd romance #trauma #ptsd #childhood ptsd #childhoodtraumarecovery #healingcomplextrauma #relationships

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scribbledwriting · 6 years

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“Show, Don’t Tell!”: Using the Five Senses in Writing

This is an extended piece to my ‘Show, Don’t tell’ post. When writing the senses, I like to imagine the scene as if I were watching a movie. It’s the simplest way for me to picture and write when it comes to descriptions. You don’t want to overload the reader, but you do want to paint the picture instead of telling them. Staying aware of the five senses in your writing will dramatically improve your skill. It not only helps the reader be a part of the story but helps the writer set important scenes, without having to outright state what is happening. In this post, I will explain how I use the five senses in my writing. As always, my advice is subjective and only to show what I personally do. Whether you keep the senses in mind as you write, or you edit them in later, making sure you pay attention to keywords will help eliminate the stress of going back later to figure out what (maybe!) went wrong.

SEE: On Sight

One of the easiest ways to go about elaborating sight is to eliminate words related to vision (look, saw, gazed, peek, etc). It also helps to stay aware of items, colors, sizes, etc. Do the same thing you’d do with words related to sight, eliminate them. Of course, don’t erase every word or phrase, but being proactive, keeping them in mind, and avoiding them will help you avoid overloading your reader with too much purple prose. (Granted, I would die for purple prose, but I understand that’s not everyone’s thing).

Examples:

Jill saw Jack running. He carried a silver pail. He tripped and fell down the hill.

There are a lot of sight-words in this example. As the writer, it is your decision to choose what you want to elaborate on, whether it is one thing, or all of them. How much of the story you want to paint is up to you—

Jack’s feet blurred against the green grass as his toe caught his ankle. He rolled on his side, his silver pail flying into the air and reaching Jill first.

Jill craned her neck to find Jack staggering down the hill. Water sloshed from the sides of the bucket, swinging and glistening in the sunlight. He stumbled and grabbed for the handle with his second hand as the pail threatened to leave his grasp, and then he slipped, toppling down the hill.

In both of these scenarios, the reader can “see” that Jack is running and tripped without specifically stating that Jill saw it. They also “see” he had a silver pail and dropped it.

Being more visually descriptive is also very important for facial expressions. It takes a simple mood and elevates it. Describing the expression also gives the reader the chance to “feel” that way too, almost like a mimic, which helps them visualize and empathize with the character.

Example:

Maxine made a disgusted face.

Think of what a disgusted reaction looks like; usually, it involves frowning, pinching your nose, sticking out your tongue, etc. Sometimes, it can help to look in a mirror and write what you’re seeing, too.

Maxine flared her nostrils and stuck out her tongue.

In the latter example, the reader is able to infer that Maxine is disgusted by how the writer described her reaction.

HEAR: On Sound

Describing sound can be tricky. It’s also hard to remember when to use it. We tend to think of sound in terms of music or voices—okay, okay, sometimes we sprinkle in animals howling or the wind blowing, too!—but sound can be incredibly important in setting a scene and is often under-utilized. Sounds let the reader know their surroundings without pulling from what is going on and adds intensity!

Examples:

Manuel sat nervously at the coffee table.

Again, as the writer, you can decide where to incorporate the use of sound. Here are a couple of suggestions, based on the above example:

Manuel’s fingers drummed against the table and drowned out the low whistle escaping from between his teeth as he exhaled. All around him, there was cheerful chatter, through which the barista’s loud voice occasionally sliced.

Manuel’s thoughts whirred and hummed, a dull grinding and the clinking of glass broke through the constant thump of his knee against the underside of the table.

In both of these examples, the reader was able to gather that Manuel was nervous (tapping knee, drumming fingers, low whistle). They are also able to gather he is in a coffee shop (or a restaurant of sorts) without explicitly saying so.

TOUCH: On Sensation

The best way to handle touch is by imagining whatever it is you are describing and what it feels like. If you don’t know how something feels, google it. Don’t describe a snake as slimy just because its scales are shiny and gives it a slime-like effect. That said, touch doesn’t just deal with what your character is physically touching. It can also deal with emotions and help to express them without saying outright how your character feels.

Example:

Opal touched the silk blanket. She felt sleepy and closed her eyes.

Here we can elaborate on what the blanket feels like when Opal touches it and how she feels to indicate she is tired:

The supple fabric slid between Opal’s fingers like water. Her tired muscles sagged and sharp, tiny pinpricks pressed against her heavy eyelids as she lay back.

The reader knows the blanket was very soft and also that she is tired without specifically stating she was sleepy.

TASTE: On Flavor

Taste is a fun sense to mess with. It can show the reader so much more than how delicious the bread is (or how gross dirt is). I like to play around with taste in the weather/air, the taste of fear, the taste of cat hair in your mouth because there is always cat hair in your mouth… all right, maybe that’s a personal thing.

Example:

The sun rose over the city.

What do you use for taste here? A city can’t taste, the sun doesn’t taste, but your character does!

Yellow light spilled over the streets, soaking the grit from the rainbow puddles into the air. The bitter grease lingered and settled in his mouth, strengthening every time he scraped his teeth against his tongue.

Experiment with taste in your writing. Describe things you wouldn’t normally think to taste, like crude oil*. The internet is a good resource when it’s something you don’t want to try yourself, like crude oil**. Chances are, someone out there has already tried it and explained what it tastes like online.

SCENT: On Smell

Ahhh, smell. Smell lets the reader know so much: they can figure out where a character is, what they’re doing, where they are, etc., just from a few scent-related descriptors thrown around. Smell is also useful in triggering memories or past events.

Danny walked through the forest.

You can use so many of the five senses here! But since we’re focusing on scent, let’s zero in on that:

A crisp hint of pine lingered in the air and blended with the pungent decay of the brown needles underfoot.

Without stating anything about a forest, the reader has an idea of where Danny is. You can also use smell to show emotion!

Danny was in love.

How do you smell love, K? Well, you’ve got me there: you can’t. But as a writer, you can think of what love means to you and of things you associate with love, and work from there. Personally, I imagine it would have a sweet smell, maybe too sweet.

A rush of flowery sweetness filled his nostrils as the handsome young man walked by.

There you have it. Of course, there’s a lot more to writing the five senses, as there is with anything, but this is to give you a basic idea of what I do when I’m writing. Being proactive and keeping the senses in mind while writing can be tough and exhausting, but the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And you don’t leave it all for editing! Remember: the most important thing is to keep practicing.

Happy writing!

* Please do not taste crude oil. I can’t believe I have to type this, but some people want to eat Tide Pods, so here I am.

** Do not taste crude oil. You will die.

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jakey-beefed-it · 6 years

Note

also: lay on some writing advice, my dude

Hokay so, the following are definitely examples of ‘do as I say; not as I do’ and/or could serve as writing advice to myself because i have genuinely TERRIBLE writing habits that should not be encouraged

Read as much as you can, as widely as you can. Read for enjoyment but keep a critical eye for what does and doesn’t work for you.

Write regularly. Every day if you can. If you have to take a day off due to shenanigans, okay, don’t beat yourself up. But don’t let yourself lose momentum, either. Nothing kills a project faster than losing steam by lack of diligence.

‘Write what you know’ in that if you’re not an astrophysicist you should probably write softer sci-fi rather than harder sci-fi. By no means do you need in-depth knowledge about every damn thing. Research what you must, then venture forth and make fiction. And as Stephen King says ‘the heart knows things, too’. And those things are more integral to story than the details of, say, boiling leather with deer brains, Steve.

There are basically two extremes in terms of description- I usually refer to them as ‘Steinbeck vs Hemmingway’ but basically it is entirely too possible to overdescribe and it is entirely to possible to underdescribe. Personally I encourage more toward sparse detail but what’s there has some real weight to it; say 25% of the way along the axis, halfway between ‘Hemmingway’ and ‘middle’. But if what gets YOU excited about writing is flowery description, fuckin, go nuts. You’re writing for yourself first and foremost. Can always trim down purple prose in the edit.

First Drafts should be seen as a race against all the things that keep you from writing. For me that’s depression, mostly. Write quickly and without pause as much as possible- no breaks to research, no breaks to outline. Just go. Even stream of consciousness if you have to. Get the STORY down on paper, get it out of your head, get it in front of you so you can look at it and tinker with it and refine it into successive drafts that get better each time.

Second Drafts are basically rewrites. This is where you clean up extraneous bullshit, flesh out underdeveloped plots and characters, tie together dangling loose ends that seem to fit one another conveniently, and generally make it look like you know what you’re doing to those who don’t know better. Second drafts are also where I slow down the most. In many ways it can be the most workmanlike draft because you’ve got so much to do from scratch but you don’t have the raw energy of a rough draft. Keep pluggin’ away though.

Successive drafts are just polishing the damn thing.

One of the most jarring and kinda painful bits of writing advice I ever read but that also resonated with me was something along the lines of "Write a million words. Then burn them. Now you’re ready to write.” The number might vary pretty widely from person to person but writing is a skill like any other; practice is how you get better. Even Pelé wasn’t born able to bicycle kick, ya know?

Outline. Even if you don’t outline for your first draft, which is fair- gotta maintain that speed -outline for your second. Plan where you’re going. Whether you’re an architect or a gardener type writer, you need some structure. Can’t plant a garden by just flinging seeds out the window.

Figure out your weaknesses and spend most of your effort working on improving them. This is the opposite of the old military maxim ‘reinforce victory; not defeat’. But instead of taking your already solid description and pushing it to excellent while your dialogue lags behind as ‘atrocious’, say, you should really be working in improving that dialogue. Anything you’re already credible at, you’ll only get better through the basic practice you’ll be getting sort of on the backswing of your swipes at improving your actual weaknesses.

Shitty at description? Read a lot. No, more. No, more. Notice what works and what doesn’t. Imitate the greats until your own voice emerges.

Shitty at dialogue? Listen a lot. Watch very talky movies. Listen for what works, and what sounds clunky. Then you’ll be able to ‘hear’ it in your own dialogue.

Shitty at plotting? Outline. Connect previously unconnected bits of setting or story in interesting ways. Make it look like you planned it all along.

Anyhow this is getting lengthy and I don’t even know how useful most of it is- it’s just repeating back advice that I found useful, mostly -so I’m going to cut it off here, but the last bit of advice is pretty basic.

Write. People will tell you it’s a waste of time. Write anyway. You might tell yourself you’ll never get anywhere with it. Write anyway. Literally every human being is their own fucking universe of experiences; everyone, everyone has a unique voice and stories to tell. Not all of them feel the need to tell the stories in print, but if you do? Write.

#diemarysues

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coffeeandcalligraphy · 6 years

Text

Lots of writing! | Writing Update #1

Hey People of Earth!

I have many a things to update. mwahaha

The first of which is this bad boy!

FISHBOWL was a one shot-ish thing I worked on in mid August because I didn't want to write the scene I had to write, but also didn't want to write outside of my universe. Soooo, of *course* your girl wrote herself some more fanfiction because? I mean? Why not!

It’s not unheard of on this blog that I ship (and then, subsequently cannoned) my boyz Lonan and Harrison. I’d written the first chunk of this story on mobile, just in a note, because I’d gotten an idea for some dialogue. (I had the whole story written besides the beginning and end.) The struggle was figuring out how to start the story. I toyed with a couple ideas, writing a million different first sentences. Frustrated that I wasn’t feeling any of ‘em, I shelved the project for the night and went to bed.

The next day, I came back to FISHBOWL, and I looked over the random first sentences I’d jotted down. One caught my eye, and so aha, I found my sentence. (I struggle with writing openings, so once the first sentence is nailed down, I usually am able to get a good flow rather quickly). I wrote the entire thing in one sitting, and while it’s disjointed and weird, I had a lot of fun.

EXCERPTS:

The story itself is basically plot-less since it was only meant to entertain myself, but I think I wrote some cool stuff, and explored a setting (Lonan’s room) with a lot more diligence than I have before.

This excerpt’s first line inspired me to write the rest of this story (lol my only motivation). It’s not even a favourite line, it just helped me wrap my head around the language a bit/gave me the idea to have a fishbowl-lens look on the story.

The bottle is crystal edged. Half drained. A kaleidoscope through his eye.

He passes it over with ease. Harrison can’t tell if he’s done it because he’s drunk, or because he doesn’t want questions.

“My mom likes this shit,” Harrison says, fingering the bottle, like he’s holding a memory and not jade-tinted glass. Careful, so he won’t shatter it. It’s almost like he’s a child again.

I also lluuuurve this next paragraph, just because loppy IS SUCH A NICE WORD. loppyloppyloppy. I just like the personality of the objects in Lonan’s bedroom (because he’s got none). Like his poor depressed lonely fishbowl, poor slothy aloe, poor upset betta.

Harrison watches the fishbowl on the nightstand. He should change the water. It’s aglae’d and forgotten, almost, like the loppy potted aloe on his desk. The blue betta hardly slashes through the water. Ris reaches over and unscrews the pot of pet store bloodworms, sprinkles in a pinch of the pellets. The fish cuts around its browning bamboo stake, and vacuums two into its mouth. Its fins wiggle like ink drops.

This is the last paragraph of FISHBOWL, and I mean, I like her tho?

The betta fish glugs through the water in a flowery whoosh. Bottom feeds the last of the bloodworms. The takeout containers are empty, and rolled onto their backs. Stained rusted orange with dried chili. The aloe plant is still curved instead of straight. Harrison makes a note to water it in the morning. The digital clock bleeds 6:22 in neon cherry light. When it bounces off Lonan’s eyes, they look purple.

So that’s it for FISHBOWL! I had a lot of fun writing this lol. Maybe too much. I must be stopped.

CHICKEN NOODLE is chapter 14 of REWIRED, and to be frank, it was a bit of a pain to write. I’d churned it out after writing a really intense scene previously, and couldn’t really feel into the flow of the words as easily as I’d done before. The first scene took a chunk of time to write, because I wasn’t sure where I was taking it. After finally nailing a concept, I did complete it, and I’m rather happy with how that section of the chapter turned out.

However, lol, scene two is a mess?? In my opinion at least, I did read this chapter to @sarahkelsiwrites last night, and she rather enjoyed it! Because it was SUCHHH a mess, and I had no motivation to write it, I, toward the beginning of the month, adapted the scene to screen.

Stripping back the scene really allowed me to figure out how I wanted it to end (which was exciting!). Obviously, it isn’t a very good screenplay, but it was exciting to have a different take on the scene/focus on a new form to learn instead of self deprecating!

The following excerpt is from the beginning-ish of the chapter and sets up the concept:

Maybe this is how it feels. To be a child, or a fetus, or a cell, or a human, stuck in the womb of a mother. Sloshing in amniotic fluid. Doing little fetal summer saults. Eating what she eats. Drinking what she drinks. That last serving of apple crumble. The remnant touches of cognac stuck to her lips. A dog and a bone, a human and its lung, a plant and its gardener, a mother and her child. Can’t live without her, even when you want to. Bitter dependency.

my favourite parts of this are ‘fetal summersaults’ and ‘human and its lung’ like ooooh. I’m like not 100 on it but I don’t mind it!

PEACH is chapter 15 of REWIRED, and oh boy is she a CHAPTER. I drafted this one as well as 16 over three days (they’re both super short), and I’m shook??

Chapter 14 ends with Reeve saying some *very* horrible things about another character (Emily), and her relationship with our boy Harrison. Because of this, she’s finally decided to check out Emily for herself, and see if she’s really as horrible as Reeve (who’s assumed her to be a Lolita figure), has anticipated.

Here’s an excerpt:

Emily and I sit on her pull out. My mother would haphazardly call it tacky—blue gingham, red quilt—but I almost like it. With its coffee stains, and holes that vomit polyester. Second-hand charm. Maybe Harrison toted it off some suburb’s curb for her.

So this is the final chapter I’ll be updating you guys on (because it’s the most recent one that I’ve written lol).

LOLITA, LOLITA, takes place in short succession after PEACH, and deals with a familiar theme--romanticizing/glorifying a female figure (sorta similarly to Lolita, which contributed to--of course--the title). This chapter is sort of the tail end of the ‘whimsical’ adventure Reeve has had entering Emily’s world, and has a lotttt of French inspiration.

Emily, as a character, does study the French language/culture a bit, and Reeve really clings to this particular detail. I think in a lot of ways, she does this because this is a detail she previously ridiculed (in the line: The kind of girl who learns French in her spare time and smokes essential oils, from chapter 10).

Here’s the first one (I think it’s kind of clunky honestly but I like the idea so when I revisit, hopefully with some editing I can clean it up):

We split a brownie over a glass of Pinot Noir. She says it’s a French thing, and I imagine the bottle emptying on the veranda of a politician’s off coast villa. My lipstick stains the rim of the glass in a ruby porthole. It tastes like fruity hand sanitizer to me.

I also really like the next one, particularly the end. Like with before, I think it’s kinda clunky but I ain’t all that mad:

She’s pulled her hair into a bun. The gold ridge of a bobby pin peaks out from behind a twist. Hiding between the white of her scalp. My nails have dried, now, and she’s gifted me her peach lip gloss, which I wear gracefully on my lips like it isn’t second-hand, but a lavish salve made in Europe. Tested on the eyelids of a fetid rabbit. Warm and licked at on the mouth of a rich young woman. An off brand perfume clings to her throat. The plastic breath of amber and ylang-ylang. I’ve tried to mimic her up-do, but my hair falls, even when I pump it with hairspray. Je suis amoureuse. I should tell her. I am in love.

^^ the perfume in question in my head is like a bootleg version of Chanel No. 5, hence some of the perfume’s classic notes!

The second half of this update deals with Reeve *attempting* to talk to her brother (@Lonan @Lonan). They’ve now migrated to his room, which she notes, is vastly different to Emily’s.

The first excerpt is a line I find kind of funny because a) food b) relatable c) lol Lonan’s ideas for gifts tho d) SAME e) grapefruits ?? f) it’s kind of adorable

He’s brought me half a grapefruit and a spoon. A surrender, or a lost attempt at a gift. The flesh wet, and pink.

like tbhhh grapefruits as presents sounds litttt

The next is actually sort of stolen from FISHBOWL, ha. FISHBOWL takes place in Lonan’s room, so I *very much* stole all the description from there and shoved it into this chapter. oops lol.

His room feels smaller, somehow. I think he’s moved the bed. Or it might be the new coat of paint. The addition of small things, like houseplants, candles, miniature replicas of American landmarks. A wilted aloe plant. A fish bowl. The blue betta inking the water in bored compliance. I think to ask him if he’s made the space more claustrophobic on purpose, but don’t at the last second. Lonan’s never been one to collect clutter.

And lastly! Not my favourite but eh:

I say, “I like what you’ve done with the place,” even though I don’t. “What kind of plant is that? This one?” I get up from my spot on the floor next to him. Touch at the pot next to the watering can. Finger the waxy leaves. Anthurium, peace lily, ficus? Probably a ficus. “I think Mom would like these. You should take a picture to show her later.”

I like the tone of this scene a lot because it’s so dissociative. Almost underwater. It’s kind of a very thin version of my usual style, but I think it works for what I was going for for sure (I hope lol).

So that’s about it for this update! I know it was a lil different, but I hope you guys enjoyed regardless! As always, thanks for reading! :)

--Rachel

#writing #writerblr #amwriting #writingupdates

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rosecorcoranwrites · 5 years

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Writing Q & A #1

This is stolen from one of my own ask games, but (A) some of my answers and changed, (B) no one ever asks me for those games anyway and ( C) I do what I want!

Q: What is your favorite punctuation mark?

A: Anyone who has read the Styx Trilogy knows that it is the ellipsis, followed closely by the m-dash.

Q: What writing taboos do you break consistently?

A: "Don't use adverbs", "don't use passive voice", and "don't use prologues". I have no regrets.

Q: What POV do you prefer and why?

A: I prefer third or first from multiple viewpoints. I'm just not a fan of sticking with one character throughout the whole story.

Q: What tense do you prefer and why?

A: Past, hands down. I am grudgingly using present tense in my novella-in-verse because the immediacy adds to the who-dun-it-ness, in that you are seeing exactly what the characters are thinking as it happens. I think present tense sounds extremely unnatural in prose, but since poetry is already artificial, it actually works.

Q: Adverbs: for or against?

A: For. Why? Because adverbs, unlike present tense, sound natural. I would much rather an author use "adverb + everyday verb/adjective" to describe something than "flowery verb/adjective that sounds completely jarring in the narration" or, worse "inexact fancy verb/adjective that might be a synonym for an everyday verb/adjective but has a totally different connotation". There's some old author adage about saying "exhausted" instead of "very tired", but "exhausted" is not the same thing as "very tired", and would not work in all the same circumstances as "very tired", so it should not be seen as an automatic substitute. Part of writing is choosing the right words, and sometimes the right words are the ordinary, everyday words that you and I use all the time.

Q: Do you outline or not?

A: Well, now I do.

Q: Do you prefer writing dialogue or narration?

A: I prefer dialogue when writing prose, but narration when writing poetry. I secretly (or maybe not secretly?) like being overdramatic when describing things, and poetry allows this more than prose. On the flip side, I like realistic-sounding dialogue, which is trickier to write with poetry.

Q: What punctuation/grammar/spelling errors do you make consistently?

A: I don't use question marks, tend to stick apostrophes in plurals for no reason, and generally make a lot of spelling mistakes. Spelling is not my strong suit.

Q: Do you write characters based off of real people or make them up?

A: I make them up, but sometimes they are loosely based on other fictional characters, or perhaps even just the arcs of other characters. I have sometimes created characters off of the missed opportunities in other people's stories.

Q: Do you write more guy or girl characters?

A: Girls! I have no idea why this is. I wouldn't say it's because I'm a woman, because I have female friends who do the opposite and write mostly men. It's just what my brain comes up with!

Q: Which is easier to write: guys or girls?

A: 99% of the time, they are equally easy to write. The exception is when writing the social niceties of romantic relationships in the 20th century! I've researched aspects of this from the man's perspective, like "how soon is too soon to give a girl flowers" or "how do you make it clear you're asking a woman out on a date", because a certain character in my alternate-history/fantasy/mystery WIP is head-over-heels for an absolutely oblivious woman. I need to walk the razors edge of him being obvious about his intentions without seeming desperate. I've never had to research anything about women, so I think that means men are just a little harder to write.

Q: Which is easier to write: original fiction or fan fiction?

A: Original fiction. I might do the odd fan fiction as a poem or in my head, but most of what I create is original.

Q: What do you include in character descriptions?

A: I'm very much a minimalist. I might mention a few features--sex, height, dress--but little else. The secret behind this is that... that's sort of how I imagine people... I honestly think I have a mild case of prosopagnosia, and have a horrible time both remembering and recognizing faces. When I think of a scene, as I've said in previous posts, I might picture blocking and close ups and actions, and maybe facial expressions, but rarely actually imagine what the characters' faces look like. I'm not one of those people with face claims or detailed lists of identifying marks should my characters disappear or show as Jane Does. It's just the way I am.

Q: Do you let people read your rough drafts?

A: Yes! Usually only very close friends and family. Perhaps I will use betas in the future, but we'll see.

Q: What do you do with your rough drafts once you write a new draft?

A: I save them! Once I tried to keep these in organized folders on my computer, but then I started more than one folder for some reason, and one thing led to another and... let's just say that the old drafts are all safe, but are scattered all over the place.

Q: How do you handle writer’s block?

A: I talk about the story to someone I trust, usually a family member. Just bouncing ideas off of someone, or hearing their reaction to a plot point, can be a big help.

Q: How many stories do you work on at one time?

A: Usually two "on paper", be that outlining or actually writing, and several in my head.

Q: Do you write from beginning to end, or jump around in your story.

A: In my head, I jump around. I try to generally start at the beginning while writing "on paper", but sometimes I'll skip scenes that are giving me trouble or will jump to scenes that are the most fleshed out.

Q: What is one thing you would never do in a story or to a character?

A: I would never use a character's death for shock value. I absolutely detest when authors do this, because it is clear they don't care about their characters and have no better means of surprising their audience. To be clear, I'm fine with shocking deaths as long as they are fitting, naturally follow from the story, and have some point, effecting the story or the characters after the death. Shock-value deaths serve no actual purpose other than to shock the audience; they are the jump-scares of death, which is a pretty poor reason to nix a character.

Q: What do you do if you come to a fork in the road (where your story could go one of two different ways)?

A: I usually write out in too columns what this will mean, not just immediately, but for the rest of the story. I choose the one that ends up with a more satisfying result.

Q: Do you “write what you know” or not?

A: Technically yes, because my writing is based off of the massive amount of fiction I consume in my life. My alternate-history/fantasy/mystery is also going to be chock full of things that I happen to be interested in: true crime elements, the history of the atomic bombings, Japanese everything, folklore, etc etc.

Q: How do you figure out your characters' looks, personalities, and speech patterns?

A: It mostly just sort of happens, honestly.

Q: How do you figure out character motivation and backstory?

A: By doing a lot of daydreaming and letting my imagination do what it will. Some characters are very easy to figure out, while others have trickier situations to deal with, relevant to the plot or otherwise. But, truly, daydreaming and letting my mind wander is my modus operandi for character backstories (and regular stories, truth be told).

#writing q and a #writing q & a #writing question and answer #long post #writer q and a #author q and a #writer q & a #author q & a #q & a #q and a #question and answer #writer question and answer #author question and answer #writing questions #writer questions #author questions #author personal #If you want the original 'ask'#search 'random writing asks' on my blog

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halcyoncoast · 6 years

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So I started reading the Captive Prince series...

...and I was engaged enough to currently be in the middle of Book 3 (mostly because I was bored and I need a longish series to tidy me over) but as a whole I am thoroughly disappointed. I have heard many great things about this series (from Tumblr mostly) over the past few years, but when I read it for myself I found it mediocre at best.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have some good qualities here and there. I like the character dynamics. Well, like is perhaps the wrong word, I can’t look away from the general fuckery between the characters the same way one can’t look away from a trainwreck, although by the middle of the third book I have grown very tired of Laurent’s toxic little games and I want very bad things to happen to him. And yes, I am fully spoiled about his backstory. I am still tired of his characterization. Being around a person like that day in and day out would be exhausting. Being in a relationship with him sound self-destructive at best. Damen is okay as a character, there’s nothing particularly original about him, but he doesn’t grate, so yay?

But let’s get to the part that really floored me for a book that has been so very lauded by my dashboard in the past few years. I would say the world-building is atrocious, but that would be very unfair. For world-building to be atrocious there needs to be world-building to begin with. There are some vague noises about Damen’s people being based on the Ancient Greeks and Laurent’s sound very vaguely French-like, but beyond that we’ve got nothing. Well, okay, we know Vere people like clothes that cover them up and have many strings and Akielos warriors strut around mostly naked and Vere slaves, pardon “pets” (who are slaves but have contracts? hmm?), wear lots of jewelry while the Akielos ones are in see-through garbs, but that’s about it.

Architecture? Wat architecture? “Heavily decorated” is not a description. It’s an avoidance of description.

Armor? Weapons? Wat’s dat? The entirety of the second book was spent in war camps and the like and yet I am still not sure what their armor is made of. Steel? Leather? Bronze? It took to the MIDDLE of that book to be mentioned their swords were made of steel. (Fascinating, considering that half of the mentioned cultures are based on Ancient Greece). What kind of swords? Roman-like swords? Zweihanders? Rapiers? “Sword” and “armor” are not accurate or even remotely interesting descriptions. How those weapons are actually used is even more vague - lots of flowery descriptions of Laurent’s obnoxiously omniescient intelligence used in combat that actually says nothing of substance. In book 3 we suddenly find out that the Akielos people use short swords and long swords, but how that fits their culture and combat style is, as usual, a giant ?????

Frankly, as I mentioned more than once, I am in the middle of Book 3 and I still haven’t gotten a proper description of the climate of that world beyond it very vaguely sounding WARM. I don’t think there has been a single incidence of rain. I wonder what grows there in the absence of precipitation so they can eat it. I won’t even bother with the idea of irrigation, lolol. But since there’s no description of food beyond “meat”, “bread”, “candied nuts” and wine we’ll never know.

The overall impression is that the author is exceedingly lazy. If “sloth” requires a picture next to it in the dictionary we can stick Pacat’s picture next to it. She avoided doing any sort of research that was required to build a pseudo-historical setting. And, frankly, in my book that is a cardinal fucking sin because if I’ll be reading a period book I want to read a period fucking book. If it was just about the gay drama between a pair of pretty boys I can go over to AO3 and get my fill of that - and I’ll probably find stories that have been written with more effort and care about the world they’re set in. The difference would be that those authors didn’t get paid to do it.

Here are two excerpts from Book 1 and Book 2 that, out of all the lack of world-building really struck me as obnoxious and really encapsulate Pacat’s sheer world-building laziness:

As for the room, everywhere he looked his eyes were assaulted with ornamentation. The walls were overrun by decoration. The wooden doors were delicate as a screen and carved with a repeated design that included gaps in the wood; through them you could glimpse shadowy impressions of what lay on the other side.

Gaps in the wood. That’s the very best she could do. Wood with holes. Kill me now.

And also:

The townships and villages that they passed, speckling the hills, took on a different aspect: long, low rooftops and other architectural hints that were unmistakably Vaskian.

“Other architectural hints” Girl. Wat? What other architectural hints? If you can’t be arsed to write about it why should I be arsed to care?!

And speaking of AO3, let’s get to the porn erotica. In that regard I found these books just as disappointing as in almost every other regard. Tame, boring, not descriptive enough, yawn-worthy. Once again, you’re going to find better porn erotica on AO3. PS. It’s fascinating how the occasional hetero sex is far more descriptive than the gay one. For a supposed gay erotica series there is a fascinating amount of descriptions of big tits and female nipples.

I’m still probably going to finish book 3 - mostly because I like finishing things that I’ve started - and because I will probably hope that bad things will happen to Laurent to the very end, but I can just tell I’ll be disappointed. But then again, I am used to that feeling when it comes to this series so I am sure I will get over it. :)

#captive prince

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escapeinpapers · 4 years

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MAY WRAP-UP

This month, I think I spent way too much time in booktube that my attention for a certain book quickly goes to another one. I’m quite mad at myself because I had not been consistent of my May TBR. Even so, I’m still pretty proud of myself because I’ve read more than what I expected to read. Also, I would say there were books that disappointed me this month but there were some that I quickly rated as 5 stars and made me so emotional.

So here are the books that I’ve read for the month of May.

NEW ADULT/ADULT ROMANCE

To Love Jason Thorn by Ella Maise (2/5)

The story is told by POV’s main characters, Olive and Jason. Olive is an indie author whose book will be adapted into a movie. She then finds out that the actor who will be playing the male protagonist is her brother’s childhood bestfriend/ her childhood crush and first love, Jason.

I honestly love the childhood crush and second chance romance trope on this book but it was getting bad and bad as I continue to read. I even prepared myself to be ready for a major twist or revelation but I was just disappointed. It felt like there was no real and impressive conflict on their relationship. I enjoyed the first few chapters and maybe towards the first half but it just got really crappy. There were cringey love scenes and sometimes the characters were being dumb that it is so frustrating.

(P.s. Every time Jason calls Olive “little one”, I cringe and I remember Thanos from Avengers lol.)

The Guy on the Right by Kate Stewart (3.5/5)

This is a friends to lovers novel. Main characters are Theo and Laney. Theo is quite shy and a reserved person. He lives in a house with Troy, the popular playboy roommate. He calls himself as “the guy on the right” because Troy always takes the spotlight and many girls go after him. He met Laney on a party. She, on the other hand is the quirky, outspoken and hardworking country girl. They became close, started a social media page and they eventually fell in love with each other.

This is my first new adult book ever. I’m usually into young adult and adult books so it was a huge step for me to explore this genre and gladly I enjoyed this book and now I’m more interested to read other new adult books. The storyline was good. I gave it only 3.5 stars because it was just an okay read for me. I love the elements of music and social media. The characters were also charming in their own ways. And you’ll get quotations called Grannism every end of a chapter. Some were really relatable.

Read my full review:

The Naked Truth by Vi Keeland (4/5)

The book is all about a second chance romance. Layla, a lawyer, was asked to do the pitch for a prospect client to their law firm. She didn’t know that the client she’s gonna impress was Gray, her ex who just got out of prison. Gray want Layla back and he wants to clear all the misunderstanding and explain to her why he had to lie to her.

I didn’t expect to love this book. I love the shift of timelines from present to the past. I thought that it will be just full of steamy scenes but the plot was amazing. The twists and turns were impressive. There’s one that really struck me and I literally screamed with that revelation. It was a major drama I didn’t see coming. I think people who love K-Drama (like me) would like this book. I also love how the author portrayed the aspects of family, marriage as well as death. The lawyer-prisoner romance was also interesting. It is my first time reading that kind of trope. My only issue with this book is Layla being sometimes annoying with her petty arguments.

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren (5/5)

Due to food poisoning, Olive’s twin sister and Ethan’s brother can’t make it to their honeymoon in Maui. Thus, Olive and Ethan were asked to take their places. The problem is, Olive and Ethan do not get along very well. They pretty much hate each other’s guts but the two need to work together and act as newly married couple. Only, they didn’t realize that this free vacation is changing their lives.

This was an easy 5 stars for me. I enjoyed this book so much because it was atmospheric. It felt like I was on the beach myself because of how engaging the story was. The enemy to lovers and fake marriage/relationship tropes were done beautifully. I was easily hooked into the story and the twists were just freaking good. Olive and Ethan’s chemistry is so strong. Their banters were very fun. I just love love love this book.

Read my full review:

Ugly Love by Colleen Hoover (5/5)

The story revolves around Tate and Miles. Tate is a nurse who has no time for love and Miles is a pilot who doesn’t want to love again. Their first meeting was not great but their paths always cross because he’s her new neighbor and he’s her brother’s friend and co-pilot. Physical attraction grew between them and they can’t put aside their desires so they had some sort of friends with benefits relationship. But things get really bad because they are slowly breaking their own rules.

This is officially one of my favorite books of all time. Everything in this book is just perfect. I kind of judged this book very wrongly 2 years ago when I first tried to read this because I thought it will be just about sex and at that time my smut level on books was really low. But, I decided to read it again out of a whim at freaking midnight. I looked past through the love scenes (though idk I find it dreamy and romantic now) and focused on the story, and swear, I was blown away. I never thought that I would cry so badly again over a book.

Read my full review:

FANTASY

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas (2/5)

This is somewhat a Beauty and the Beast retelling. Feyre, a normal mortal girl, killed a Faerie (a magical creature) while she was hunting for food. She was punished to live in a High Fae’s manor to pay for the life she had taken and she ends up falling in love with Tamlin, her captor who can shapeshift and who wears a crappy mask.

I really want to love this book. Some people told me to don’t stop reading because it will get good. But sadly, I just did not like it (Sorry! ). The writing is atmospheric though, I admired it at first. However, as I go on, the description of the settings or for the other things were too much and I think did not necessarily affect the situation at hand. Sometimes, it was just too flowery and over with metaphors. Feyre and Tamlin as characters were not effective, their chemistry is “meh”. There were cringey lines especially on the love scenes. The plot twists were not hard for me to predict. I think this book was not just for me to read. Though, I’ve been told that the sequel is the best among the series so I might give it a shot soon.

The Grisha Trilogy by Leigh Bardugo

Shadow & Bone (3/5)

Siege & Storm (3/5)

Ruin & Rising (2/5)

Alina had discovered her unique powers to summon light when they were assigned to cross the Shadow Fold. It’s a forsaken place of impenetrable darkness with flesh eating monsters. Leaving Mal, her childhood bestfriend and the guy that she also likes, she was sent to the Little Palace to work with the magical elites called Grisha in hopes that she could destroy the fold and unite Ravka. While working to hone her powers, she finds herself developing feelings for The Darkling, the mysterious and attractive as hell leader of Grisha. On her journey to destroy the Shadow Fold, she encountered many challenges, revelations and truth about the people around her.

I really had high expectations for this series because I love the author and her Six of Crows duology. But I was again, disappointed. It’s not that it was that bad, it was not just as great as I expected it to be. I have a love and hate relationship with this series. The first book was good. The build up of the story was beautifully done. I love the magical system and the characters were intriguing, but only at first. I understand why the Darkling is hyped up till now because he is absolutely mysterious and hot (plus Ben Barnes will be playing the role for the Netflix adaptation). Revealing Alina’s power as well as the Darkling’s was very cool. The second book is where the Darkling gets literally dark. Even though this was more tensed because of the twists, I enjoyed and laughed many times than the first book because of Nikolai. He’s not the main character of this series but its funny because I like him the most. Scratch that. I love him. The third book was just so disappointing. I enjoyed the side characters’ romance more and the twists were not that impressive. And the ending? Worst. I think there’s one common denominator of all the things that I didn’t like in this series, and that is Alina being a typical weak female protagonist. She is just annoying sometimes, too dependent of the other characters and does weak and petty arguments.

Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (5/5)

This is the sequel of the Six of Crows duology. Kaz and his crew did the heist they were asked to do but they had to face their consequences and take down the real enemy. As much as I’m excited to tell you more about the plot, I won’t go any further because I don’t want to spoil anything.

I absolutely love the first book and I was not disappointed with this one. This is my best fantasy reads so far. I fell in love more with Kaz, Inej, Matthias, Niña, Wylan and Jesper. They are just freaking amazing. The character development was done so good. The plot twists are super amazing and I got fooled many times. Also, the ending is so satisfying. I have to admit, I enjoyed this duology more than The Grisha Trilogy.

Read my full review:

YOUNG ADULT CONTEMPORARY

10 Blind Dates by Ashley Elston (4/5)

We follow Sophie’s journey towards healing her broken heart. Her Grandma decided to set up her in blind dates and the guys he’ll be dating are chosen by some of her family members. So, she went onto these days, in hopes to forget her ex-boyfriend. But things get complicated. Her ex wants her back but the feelings she had for an old friend is growing back.

If you’re looking for something that is light, cute and a quick read, this is the book for you. The blind dating thing was just very cute. I never expected to like it, but it was just interesting and each date was fun in their own ways. I also love the essence of family and friendship on this book. As a person who grew up in a family-oriented household, I can relate so much of the main character.

Read my full review:

They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera (5/5)

In this world, there’s this system called Death Cast. They call people to give them an alert that they’re gonna die on that day. No when and how but only the information that on that day that you are called, it’s your time to say goodbye to the world. Mateo had been always paranoid about the time that he will receive the call. So, when Death Cast called him, he had been more paranoid than ever. Then, he met Rufus, who’s also gonna die that day, through The Last Friend app. Despite the two having very different attitude towards accepting their death, they decided to spend their last day together.

This is the kind of book that is very hard to put down. The title itself is already very intriguing. All the time I was reading this, I can’t help but to be anxious because knowing anytime soon, Rufus and Mateo are gonna die. I had a lot of theories on how they would die but it was no where near. The narration is very deceiving which I love. The message of this book is also very touching plus the characters are very relatable and I can’t help to put myself in their shoes. I know it is unpleasant to think about death especially these times but this book just made me realize things about life and it made me reflect and ask myself on how I’ve been living my life so far. I love this book so much that it is one of my best reads for this year and I might make a full review for this one.

So those were all the books that I've read for the month of May. For June, I've been thinking to read genres that I don't usually read such as msytery and thrillers. I hope I would be consistent on my next month's TBR.

Thank you for reading. I hope some of the books caught your interest. Till my next post ❤

#may wrap up #book review

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rainhorn6-blog · 5 years

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What I Read: July 2018 | Recommendations for Books to Read

If you’re looking for a good book to read, you’ve come to the right place. This post is part of my monthly “What I Read” series, featuring the books I read the previous month with lots of recommendations for you! All of these book pair perfectly with donuts, cookies, pasta, or pizza… And always a glass of wine.

Have you heard of Tsundoku? It’s a Japanese term used to describe the art of buying books and then not reading them. If you saw the piles of books in my house, you would totally know that I practice tsundoku in a major way. So much so that my husband sent me this article and was like “um hello, this is you.” But it’s not like I’m over here just collecting books. I promise! I only buy books I truly want to read and I have every intention of reading every book that’s currently on my bookshelf or sitting in a pile around my house… At some point. The problem is, the piles keep growing and my reading time is not expanding. Nine books in a month sounds like a huge amount to some people, but at this rate, I’ll never get through all of the books I want to read. I also get a lot of books sent to me and absolutely love reading new releases, so sometimes I have to remind myself to go back and grab something from one of my piles. Oh, and let’s not even talk about my “virtual piles” of electronic books. You can’t see them, so as far as you’re concerned, they don’t exist, OK?

Anyway, in this month of reading, most of my books are “newbies,” but I did grab two older books, one that I actually re-read (Crazy Rich Asians) and one that has been on my to read list for a long time (The Song of Achilles). I’m going to start making even more effort to read some of the “older” books I’ve been collecting, instead of simply grabbing the new shiny things!

Do you have an insane amount of books at your house or apartment, too? Or do you have more self-restraint than I do?

In any event, I’m excited to share my July month of reading with you! (Just an FYI that links to some of the books below are affiliate links. Thank you for supporting WANM!). And don’t forget to follow my book Instagram account (bookstagram!) at @booksontheside!

The Other Woman by Sandie Jones: If you think you have an evil mother-in-law, you need to meet Pammie. Yikes! When Emily meets Adam, she quickly falls in love with him… But then she meets his mom. Pammie is that kind of evil that is veiled behind sweetness, so not everyone sees it. She’s absolutely horrible to Emily, but in ways that make Emily question whether she’s paranoid or being overly petty. This was a page turner for me because Pammie’s behavior is so ridiculous and I couldn’t wait to see what she’d do next. But honestly, I had a hard time justifying why Emily put up with so much! Her love for Adam wasn’t totally believable to me, at least not to the point where she’d put up with Pammie’s antics. I wanted to jump into the book and shake her. I also didn’t love the ending and felt like it was a little rushed… But overall, this is a fun not-too-scary, but still suspenseful thriller perfect for a light read. Also, if you have issues with your mother-in-law, this book may end up making you thankful for her! The Other Woman’s official pub date is August 21, but you can pre-order it now. (thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book!)

Campaign Widows by Aimee Agresti: OK, I have some mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed it because it’s a fun (very fictional) look inside a presidential campaign, showcasing what the presidential campaigns experience is like for spouses of candidates, staff members, journalists, etc. It follows five self-proclaimed “campaign widows” during a presidential election season. The main widow is Cady, who has picked up her whole life to move to DC to be with her boyfriend (turned fiancé) who is working for a presidential hopeful. As a producer on a news program, Cady covers much of the election and is also thankfully thrown into a group of other campaign widows who can commiserate with one another. My main issue with the book is that there are so many characters, it was a bit hard for me to keep them all straight and get fully sucked into the story. But I still enjoyed the story and feel like this is another one of those light fun summer books that’s perfect to read on vacation. (thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book!)

My Squirrel Days by Ellie Kemper: It’s hard not to love Ellie Kemper (in case you’re like “huh? who?? You probably know her as either a) Erin on The Office, b) Kimmy Schmidt, or c) Becca in Bridemaids). I’ve been a fan of Ellie for a long time, but was slightly worried about this book because I feel like she’s so typecast and has such a voice that, while endearing, can also be a tad bit annoying. Her memoir ended up showing me that she basically has all the good parts of her characters in her real personality (sweet, kind, quirky), but is also so much more (smart, down-to-Earth). Her “Kimmy Schmidt voice” (how I refer to it!) definitely comes out at times, but not to the point of ridiculousness. I loved this book because I learned so much about Ellie that I had no idea about, including the fact that she had such a seemingly normal childhood and one that I could relate to in many ways. She always loved performing, but wasn’t a child actor and didn’t even really get into acting until doing improv in college (after quitting the field hockey team). She’s just so normal, likable, a humble. I didn’t love every single essay in the book and have definitely laughed more reading other memoirs, but still really enjoyed the book… And now want Ellie Kemper to be my bff. My Squirrel Days’ official pub date is October 9, but you can pre-order it now (thanks to NetGalley for my copy of this book!)

The Garden Party by Grace Dane Mazur: This definitely wasn’t my favorite book of the month, but I do think it’s beautifully written and I loved the concept of it from the moment I read the description- two families come together for the wedding rehearsal dinner of their children. The families are quite different (though seem much more alike than they think!) and both have worries and apprehensions about the dinner. I think many people can relate to this as there are always some nerves involved when bringing together the families of significant others. I love that this novel takes place all in one evening and that we get peeks into each unique character’s lives. But this is another book with a ton of characters that are tough to keep straight and some I thought could have been cut all together. However, I have to mention again that the prose is beautiful (though in some spots a little too flowery) and I think this is the kind of book I’d enjoy much more were I to read it a second time and really let myself sink into every sentence, reflecting on its full meaning. If you have time to sink into this book, do so, but just know that it may leave you wanting more. (thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book!)

Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan: OK, this was actually my second time reading this book, but with the movie coming out this month, I had to read it again! Also, I let over a year go by between reading the first and second books of the series and realized that I had forgotten way too much needed to brush up. It actually kind of felt like I was reading it for the first time… So, I guess that’s one of the benefits of my normal book amnesia (LOL). I also read this along with a reading group I’m in on Instagram and that made it even more enjoyable as we got to discuss it as we read. The story follows multiple characters of a (very!) wealthy Asian family, but really centers on Nick and Rachel. After college, Nick left his family in Singapore and moved to New York City, where he meets Rachel, an American Chinese girl from a “normal” family. She has absolutely no idea of his extreme wealth (and crazy family) until he takes her to visit his family where everyone is ridiculously rich and obsessed with money and status. Sure, the book is a little bit outrageous at times and incredibly un-relatable, but that’s also what makes it fun. Now I’m even more excited for the movie and two followup books!

The Summer Wives by Beatriz Williams: I pretty much always enjoy novels from Beatriz Williams and will likely forever read her new releases, though my biggest criticism about them is that they aren’t always super memorable to me. But they are enjoyable and in many cases, that’s exactly what I want when I’m reading (as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not great at retaining lots of info about all the books I read anyway). This book jumps between a few time periods. One in the early 1950s when 18-year-old Miranda Schuyler arrives on Winthrop Island with her mother who is set to marry the wealthy Hugh Fisher. Miranda gets to know the island with her new step-sister Isobel and lobsterman Joseph Vargas. We also jump to the late 1960s when Miranda is returning to the island after some sort of accident and a long time away from the island. In between these scenes, we go back to the 1930s and learn some of the happenings and relationships on the island during those times. The Summer Wives is the kind of book that had me quickly turning the pages wanting to know how everything would tie together and what exactly happened in the various phases of Miranda’s life. Even though I haven’t been thinking about it a ton since I finished it, I still thoroughly enjoyed reading it! (thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book!)

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller: This one has been on my must-read list for forever since I’ve heard so much good stuff about it. I’m happy to say that it didn’t disappoint, though it’s definitely a bit different than my normal book loves and may not be for everyone! I admit, it isn’t really the type of book I’d usually pick up; war stories with lots of battle scenes aren’t quite my thing. But The Song of Achilles is about so much more than battle scenes and has such a focus on relationships and emotions that I couldn’t help but get sucked in. The book left me feeling all kinds of things and wanting to take a seriously deep dive into Greek mythology… So, I’m calling it a definite win. The story revolves around Patroclus, his childhood, and how he first comes to meet Achilles. I love how the book is set up and I feel like all the details Miller includes are so intentional and essential to the story and our emotions. As his relationship with Achilles grows, the feelings between them feel so believable and real. The decisions they make are often heart-wrenching and they deal with situations I can’t imagine myself in. Yes, there are plenty of battle scenes (how the heck did this war last for so long?!), but they’re also quite intentional and everything always goes back to the relationships. This is one that I definitely want to re-read at some point and I think I’ll gain something new from it every time I do! And now I’m extra excited to read Miller’s next book Circe (which is sitting on my shelf waiting for me!).

All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover: I know so many people who are obsessed with Colleen Hoover books; I’m pretty sure she has some of the biggest super fans around. I definitely wouldn’t say I’m obsessed with her, but I do really enjoy her books and am happy to grab her new releases as soon as I can. Sometimes her books just feel way too dramatic to me… But I’m happy to say All Your Perfects is my favorite from her thus far. In true Hoover fashion, it’s a very dramatic book… But in ways that feel really realistic and right. The book bounces back and forth from the past (about 7 years ago) to the present. It starts with Quinn heading to her fiancé, Ethan’s apartment, only to run into a random guys sitting in front of Ethan’s apartment door. Why was he there? Well, because his girlfriend was inside Ethan’s apartment in bed with him (I promise I’m not spoiling anything). Flash forward more than seven years and we learn that Quinn and this mystery man Graham are now married (so cute!), but seem to be on the brink of divorce in large part due to trouble with infertility. The book feels so powerful because in the sections that take place in the past, we can easily see how crazy deep in love Quinn and Graham are… In some ways, you think “how could a couple like this ever want to leave each other?” But then in the sections that take place in the present, we gain a very clear understanding of why their marriage is struggling so much. This is definitely an emotional book and one that may be difficult for some people to read if only because it’s so real and spot-on. Hoover does an excellent job dealing with a very tough subject matter that’s relevant to so many people. And even if it’s not relevant to you, you’ll still be able to feel for this couple and get completely immersed in their story. If you haven’t read any Hoover yet, make this your first one. (thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my copy of this book!)

The Masterpiece by Fiona Davis: You know this book is going to be up my alley because it’s historical fiction that takes place in NYC. For some reason, this is the first book from Fiona Davis I’ve read, but now I definitely want to check out her other releases. This story bounces back and forth between two time periods- the 1920s and 1970s- and focuses on the art school that once lived within Grand Central Terminal. In the 1920s, it’s a popular and respected place to take art classes. In the 1970s, it’s completely abandoned and not many people even know it was ever there. The school really did exist, though the story Fiona Davis tells in The Masterpiece is fictional. We follow Clara Darden, a teacher at the school in the 1920s and and blossoming illustrator striving to get her fashion-focused illustrations published in Vogue and the like. We also follow Virginia Clay, a recently divorced mother, struggling to make ends meet in the 1970s, with a new job at the Grand Central Station information booth who discovers the abandoned art school. The women are incredibly different, but both ambitious and determined and I felt immediate connections with both of them. I love how Davis intertwined the two time periods and how she managed to bring everything together at the end (with a bit of a twist I definitely wasn’t expecting!). It’s the kind of book that has you missing the characters once you’re done reading it. It also has me wanting to take a trip to NYC to wander around Grand Central Station and learn more about its history. (thanks to the publisher for my copy of this book!)

And that was my July in books! Spoiler alert… I know we’re not even two weeks in, but I think August is going to be my favorite reading month of 2018 so far! I’m also off on vacation later this week and am hoping to get some seriously good reading time in.

Tell me what you’ve been reading lately!

If you’re looking for more book recommendations, feel free to take a look at my other book review posts from so far in 2018:

What I Read in January What I Read in February What I Read in March What I Read in April What I Read in May What I Read in June

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Source: https://wearenotmartha.com/what-i-read-july-2018-recommendations-for-books-to-read/

#read more #see more #check it out #interesting #learn more

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luminisvii · 5 years

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So it’s pretty late right now and I’m liberally using the Bold function, but let’s talk about bad fanfiction.

Usually the first thing that springs to mind when it comes to bad fanfiction is My Immortal. Anyone who’s talked to me for more than five minutes knows that My Immortal is undoubtedly one of my favorite pieces of literature. And that’s not a joke, I think it’s an absolute masterpiece of bad. The misspellings, the reworkings of the characters to be goth/scene in an incredibly middle school way, to Marty McFly’s cameo to the chapter written by a self proclaimed troll--It’s a perfect storm of bad literature that makes for a hilarious read. I won’t get into a huge tangent but what makes My Immortal so funny is it has a certain level of naturalness to its writing where you’re never quite sure how serious the author is. The true joke is the mystery. We’ll never know who wrote the infamous fic and how serious they were when they did.

However, My Immortal is kind of scratching the surface. See, that’s a fic that’s actually funny bad. Most bad fanfiction is bad bad. Today, I intend to discuss the lesser known fanfic that I rank as being one of the most difficult reading experiences I ever had, and I only successfully pulled through after many years thanks to the love and support of my friends and us reading it out loud at 4 AM.

That fanfic is known as My Inner Life. Don’t let the title fool you, it was written well before our favorite goff showcase and it’s honestly a whole lot worse. This Legend of Zelda fic, written by one Jen and based on her dreams, features a young lady named Jenna who is a simple merchant traveling in Hyrule when one Link catches her eye and it goes downhill from there. The short version is that there’s a lot of overly dramatic sex, tedious clothes descriptions that include too many triforces, poor treatment of horses, Jenna getting praised and lavished with attention for no reason, and no research put into the lore. After a while it straight up forgets about being an Ocarina of Time fanfic and launches off into some nonsense about griffins and an evil lord I can’t actually remember the name of (It was very late and I was very tired so I called him Lord Asshole after a while, it has the same effect) and also that The Griffins, who live just beyond the Black Mountains, do not trust easily.

If you wish to read it, you should probably quit now, but if you are too weak (which is honestly understandable) here’s my recounting of the story.

Where to start is a little bit hard, but a good place is the insane 2,000 word author’s note at the beginning. Jen, seemingly unaware of how thin skinned she’s being, goes on about how anyone who leaves her a negative review is being is immature and thin-skinned. Here’s a delightful excerpt that shows the author’s view on all of this!

“Also as a side note, I NEVER physically hurt ANYONE with this story. I got one reviewer that said. “Oh God please stop writing, your hurting everyone.” Now I want to know where I physically touched that person. I want to know how I’m twisting anyone’s arms to read this. I have never done anything of the sort in any way, shape or form and I DO NOT appreciate being accused of that! If you’re emotionally hurt over this, its your fault not mine.”

She spends quite a bit of time talking about how reviewers need to be more mature as she dedicates that much time to complaining about negative reviews and methodically rebuking everything they say from her poor grammar to Jenna being a Mary Sue. Now, props to the author for straight up saying that Jenna is the obvious author avatar that she is--Jenna is simply the dream persona of Jen, which okay, fine, that is not that bad. It’s what happens with Jenna that really makes me want to drink.

The other majorly telling factor is the first line of the story itself.

“Dreams come in many forms. Some good, some bad, some very realistic, even ones that feels very real.”

You may have noticed a redundancy there. That is only the beginning. If you get tired of hearing about the same things repeatedly, you will be VERY tired very quickly in here. Jen likes to constantly explain things to the point where she has footnotes in the story, and just after citing a footnote she explains what was cited in text anyway so now you have a double explanation.

“A tale of love, passion, despair and hope. I enjoyed my inner life. I looked forward to going to sleep to it every night. And I look forward to ones that will come, because LOVE WILL NEVER DIE.”

I love quoting that. I’m also not sleeping so I guess I don’t know the meaning of true love.

Anything beyond this point is where I start to die because I actually grew up playing Ocarina of Time and I’m quite well versed in its lore, so if you are too this is going to be about as pleasant as root canal.

Since me recounting everything in detail means we’d be here into the next year, I’m going to try to boil this down to its essence. TL;DR: Jenna meets Link and they fuck. Badly. A month later and they’re getting married so they can fuck more. This whole time you have King Hyrule who is treating a random merchant off the street better than Zelda, the Sages are just inexplicably back despite now residing in the Sacred Realm. Zelda also inherently gives up the throne because she will not marry and thus is no longer in the line of succession but this random guy from Kokiri Forest who married a random merchant is! Ruto is turned into a jealous harpy and the other sages hardly appear at all.

After they get married they go to the part where I quit the first time I started reading this fic which was the Bonding Ceremony. If getting married to a guy you met a month ago wasn’t enough, going to a monastery and getting telepathically bonded by drinking his piss sure is. Okay, it’s not JUST the piss drinking, but that was enough to make poor 2014 me stop trying and go lie down. They also fuck in front of the monks because that’s a thing straight people do, I guess.

Somewhere in there Jenna gets pregnant and has a child. She names the child Link Jr. I don’t have anything to say about that, I think it’s comedy in itself. On top of that Epona also gets pregnant so they get new horses named Midnight Star and Star Dancer. That’s not an important detail at all, my friend simply hates those horse names and I’m bringing them up on the off chance that she reads this.

Oh yeah, Dark Link is an antagonist at one point and he inexplicably talks exactly like a stereotypical villain and ties Link and Jenna up in a room and leaves them there for no reason like a small time crook leaving Batman in a cage with all his gizmos nearby. And turns out Jenna has magical powers and is from some ancient race of super people or whatever. They have to explain this over and over again in the same few paragraphs and I want to die.

Beyond all the bad sex that has tiger metaphors (Somehow Jen knows how tigers fuck) there’s the Original Material which had me crying more than the tragedy that was the remain of OoT’s story. Once we get tired of Link and Jenna’s love story and Tiger Sex, there’s suddenly an invasion from Lord Ariakas who is threatening the Griffins who live beyond the Black Mountains, just a day’s ride from Hyrule. He’s just some evil guy who threatens the Griffins, who do not trust easily, and who live near The Black Mountains. If you think redundancy is painful then prepare for the worst redundancy you’ve seen yet. I went insane when we were reading this and tallied all the times The Black Mountains are mentioned and turns out it was a whole lot less than I thought, but almost all of them happened in a short amount of time so it felt like an eternity of explaining The Black Fucking Mountains. Turns out I’m a masochist of sorts because this STILL didn’t shake me off. In order to repel Lord Arakias’ forces, Link and Jenna need to talk to the Griffins who like to make a big deal about how they don’t trust anyone as they instantly trust Jenna and let her into their royal court to give her support and magical gifts. It’s kind of incredible how Jenna does nothing and is constantly rewarded for it.

Sadly this ends in a cliffhanger, like all good terrible fanfics. But that’s a semi-coherent retelling of the actual plot. It takes way too long to explain any of these plot points in story. Characters constantly repeat themselves, there’s a bunch of small plot points I left out because we’d REALLY be here all year if we talked about this, there’s the original material where I have to give credit that she went and did this BUT ALSO DID YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS MANY TIMES WHAT THE BLACK FUCKING MOUNTAINS ARE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

I’m not okay. Time for some deeper analysis of particularly notable parts.

The sex scenes are sadly some of the less entertaining sections. They’re pretty boring for the most part, but then you have shit like “I turned tigress” and my personal favorite, “when I took his nut sack and caressed it with my hand, it was his undoing.” That exact sentence shows up TWICE in the fic, same wording and everything. Remember this, ladies, next time you have sex with a man, caress his nut sack. It’ll be his undoing. It’s not just the silly wording, though, there’s some stupid stuff in there too about how having sex makes your children stronger and also exactly how much fluid Jenna is ejecting which is a little bit alarming to say the least. Otherwise they’re a bit bland and use the same flowery language that you’d expect from poorly written erotica. Also they fuck in front of a bunch of monks. It’s for the bonding.

If you’re into LoZ lore then you’re going to have a bad time, too. My favorite thing is showing people the segment where Jenna explains how the OoT timeskip works because it makes zero sense to everyone, OoT fan or not. Let’s take a quick history lesson for OoT if you’re not familiar with it. In Ocarina of Time, a major plot point and element of gameplay is that Link travels between past and future in a seven year gap. From Link’s point of view, the change is instantaneous, right down to the fact that his age changes from child to adult and vice versa. To everyone else, they’re living those seven years. Time continues without Link there to observe it, and in Link’s absence Hyrule collapses. Thus is the plot--trying to stop Ganondorf from destroying the future with a power that Link and Zelda accidentally gave him. The point is all Non-Link people experience time normally, and the world moves on.

Somehow Jenna missed something that I inherently understood when I was a wee child of 8, barely able to play Ocarina of Time due to poor reading comprehension and lack of Zelda Puzzle Solving Skills™.

“Gannondorf tricked the soon to be "Hero of Time" into unlocking the door to the Sacred Realm. I even noticed that Zelda was a little older then I. Last I saw her she was four years younger then me. It was told to me that when Gannondorf went into the Temple of Time and into the Scared Realm, time jumped ahead in Hyrule seven years. Yet only two years passed in my land. And in the rest of the world.

After the "Hero of Time" defeated the King of Evil, the hero was granted to either return to the past or to remain in the present time. Since he chose to remain in the present Zelda jumped ahead of me in age by four years. It seems that everyone in Hyrule jumped in age from the rest of the world.”

I’m not sure I really understand still. I’ve read this so many times trying to comprehend and maybe I’m just stupid but this doesn’t scan. But when you time travel it should affect the whole world or else that’d be pretty fucked. Back To The Future would be pretty wack if only Hill Valley was sent back to the 50s but everywhere else was still 80s.

God, I spent too much time on this. It still hurts my brain.

I also just have to have a section where I metaphorically hand Zelda a box of chocolates and a check for 5,000 dollars for even being in this mess. The real MVP of the story is Zelda for tolerating all this bullshit. She has to watch her father treat Jenna better than her, she gives Jenna a bracelet from her mother who is dead for Jenna’s wedding, she has to passively accept that because she isn’t married she’s lost her claim to the throne and it’s being handed over to Link and Jenna because despite both of them being nobodies they’re more legitimate heirs to the throne than the king’s own daughter. She also has to be the one to help Jenna birth her baby and it’s maybe a little bit weird to have the princess of a nation be your personal midwife. Even if she is your so called best friend. Were I ever in the circumstances of giving birth, I wouldn’t make my friends help. Please get an actual nurse. Also for some reason Jenna won’t stop calling her baby a miracle and it’s done so frequently it’s a little off-putting. Even the chapter where the child is born is called “The Miracle” like idk I know life is mysterious and miraculous but I’m not sure giving birth, something a lot of cis woman can do, is a “miracle.” Me not sobbing while reading this is a miracle. Zelda, honey, you deserve so much better.

I’m running out of things that will actually last a paragraph or so tangent wise, so time to wrap things up with smaller notes:

-Jenna thinks that you boot horses in the knees to get them moving. You are probably not riding a horse right if you can kick it in the knees while sitting on its back. That’s not even getting into other horse related mishaps like the fact that kneecapping them isn’t a good idea either.

-Link Jr. is capable of math at like, four months or something. I wish I was that talented.

-Ruto is my wife and I will not stand for this slander against her. Yeah, call me a fish fucker if you want, Sidon is cute too don’t @ me

-Take a shot every time Jenna mentions triforces on her outfit (actually don’t)

-Jenna makes a big deal about how Link has to go off to war and how she’ll miss him and he’ll miss her and it’s all very emotional but he’s back literally the next chapter

-One of my favorite moments is Mido rightfully pointing out that Jenna isn’t a Kokiri and thus has no right to receive a fairy but everyone thinks he’s being super rude for actually having common sense. They barely gave LINK a fairy and he grew up there!

-I inflicted this on my friends and it went as well as you’d think it would. Quote supplied by Jen who is not THAT Jen but a far superior one

-Somewhere in the fic suddenly Link and Zelda’s eyes are capable of changing color based on mood, or maybe they could do this the whole time and my eyes were changing based on mood alright, they were glazing over and I missed it

-Jen always types “threw” instead of “through” and it’s just enough to throw me off every time. Also every time a character starts a new sentence she starts another set of quotations even if they were already talking and occasionally she misspells “huge” as “hugh” which leads to some hilarious circumstances

-THEY DRANK EACH OTHER’S PISS

-Apparently when you are telepathically bonded with your Husband/Wife you aren’t allowed to be in a room with someone of the opposite sex AT ALL. Personally I think that reeks of insecurity

-Also because a good pal loses her shit every time we mention it, Jen couldn’t come up with a marriage ceremony that wasn’t just a christian one for a universe where christianity doesn’t exist, but she sure likes to put world building into those DAMN GRIFFINS

All in All? My Inner Life is not for the weak willed. It is INCREDIBLY long and redundant and while it’s still pretty funny, it’s mostly plain terrible. I consider is a much better showcase of what bad fanfiction is actually like, and also since it’s of a more standard awful, it means people can’t badly parody it while missing the point as to why it’s funny. So at least there will only be one My Inner Life and no imitators.

Seriously, I hate My Immortal imitators. Write your own terrible fanfiction, damn you! If I had a shot for every time a fanfic was compared to My Immortal I would be dead six years ago. Getting compared to MI is not a good thing, but not for the reasons you’d think. At least My Inner Life only shares the basic premise of a self insert character and the rest is a ride of complete bullshit that’s par the course for terrible Mary Sue fiction. Everyone loves Jenna for no reason and those who voice the valid concerns against her are seen as unreasonable and stupid. Characters are bent backwards to serve the threadbare plot and apparently Jenna’s love life alone is enough to constitute half of the story before we just plain forget it’s a Legend of Zelda fanfic and it goes off into some generic high fantasy horse crap with dragons and Griffins and some evil guy like what even is his name and it all ends without any real closure.

However if you are strong enough or maybe just a masochist (me) I highly recommend this fic for just being a test of endurance and also for all the funny little moments sprinkled throughout. It’ll certainly be a waste of time and it’s a good thing to read with friends. While it’s an oldie, it’s a goodie, and no one comes out unscathed.

Also the author apparently is a good sport about it now, although who knows. It’s just a thing I heard. While I like making fun of Jen throughout reading the fic, she doesn’t seem awful. Just perhaps young and unaware.

Truly, the real treasure was the piss we drank along the way. I’m sorry I will never be over that

#don't tell me tell #long post #REALLY LONG ASS POST #i couldn't sleep so i made this essay instead #i accept my fate as the bad fanfic expert #i might regret this later #but for now i need rest

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thornswithroses · 7 years

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2016 Books I’ve Read

I had been hoping to read more books last year, but I am relieved to have made it halfway to my reading goals. It is a lot better than it was back in 2015.

Real Murders (Aurora Teagarden, book #1) by Charlaine Harris

I actually enjoy Harris’ other mysteries more than I do the Sookie Stackhouse series. And I’m glad I only bothered with one of the Stackhouse books, considering that I hear how disappointing the last book ended. It does not help that the True Blood series left a bad taste my mouth after how they end Tara. The Harper Connelly books are actually my favorites, but the Teagarden ones may soon prove to be my second. I like Aurora Teagarden, I like how as ridiculous and delightfully flowery of a name she has, she is a grounded person.

Harris likes to describe the clothing her protagonists wear or want, and while I usually enjoy that aspect of writing, it is rather amusing when Harris does it. Namely, because the clothes she describes sound rather dated and probably would be more suited to someone in their sixties rather than their late twenties.

The writing is sparse but absorbing, and Harris has a flair for a comfortable Agatha Christie likability in most of her works. This is no exception that.

Would recommend: a cozy but gripping reading to relax at night with.

Ash by Malinda Lo

I found myself so frustrated for sweet Ash. I never really appreciated how much the original Cinderella had to overcome until reading this book. Even her beloved father talked over the healing women of their original village, including Ash’s mother. Isobel is one of my most hated characters this year, for how she abuses Ash. And how much of pain Ash goes through could have been avoided if she had been listened to.

I am usually leery of love triangles where the queer girl has to choose between a man or a woman. I’m bisexual, and I am very much aware that a queer woman is not less queer for wanting to be with a man. However, we cannot argue that heterosexual relationships are prioritized over homosexual ones. We cannot claim that bisexuality is not often dismissed as a curiosity by writers, most especially by male ones. It is 2017, and this shit still occurs. We cannot argue that female sexuality and relationships with women, be they romantic or platonic, are often dismissed in media.

That said, I knew Malinda Lo was not going to fail me with how she handled Ash’s bisexuality. I used to follow Malinda Lo’s writings on AfterEllen in my Baby Feminist Years, and I do not regret that. She is a phenomenal writer, whether she writes in fiction or nonfiction.

Ash’s relationships to Sidhean and Kaisa are different but special in her life. With Kaisa, their relationship has the delectability of apples, a tenderness and subtle warmth that is not written enough for gay relationships. With Sidhean, there is a tension for forbidden lust and the gradual trust they grow for one another.

The ending is satisfying, but that is all I will give to you. I urge you to read this book, especially as it comes from an author that actually actively works with diversifying young adult literature to the best she can.

Would recommend: a thoughtful, lyrical novel about a girl that overcomes obstacles to find love and her own independence.

Mary Reilly by Valerie Marin

This is the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as seen through the eyes of Mary Reilly, a loyal, hardworking house-maid for the doctor. The book is written as if it were from Mary’s own journaling.

I like the protagonist. Usually, when the perspectives of fringe characters are written about how they view a famed character, they simplify too many matters.

With Mary, yes, she is enamored but misguided by Dr. Jekyll’s supposed virtues, but as the novella goes on, as palpable as the sexual tension gets between them, she is not shy about pointing out the classism he and the world have on her, at least to herself.

The book also has her deal with the abuses she undergone as a child from her father’s hands. I will not give spoilers away, but it is rather satisfying how she comes to terms with her abuse after attending a funeral (and, no, it’s not her abuser’s funeral.)

I like the different relationships she has with her fellow servants and how we see the grit of her daily duties. As I said before, the sexual tension between Mary and Dr. Jekyll is deliciously intense. It also helps that they are both shown to genuinely care about each other, adding a certain sweetness to the star-crossed quality of their relationship.

And when the book wants to be chilling, it does indeed do that.

Would recommend: for all your fun, gothy indulgences!

The Name of The Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

An underrated epic fantasy that seems to understand that the quiet moments of a person’s life is just as important as the high-paced ones. The narration written uniquely, there’s a story-within-a-story with yet another one hidden somewhere under there.

I enjoy reading older, isolated, world-weary Kvothe and how that contrasts with him telling his story of a younger, bright-eyed him that wants to learn and wants to avenge his loved ones.

The book is a big one, and it is filled to the brim of so many conflicts and adventures. The humor is vibrant as red, the constant worry of poverty always hitting close to home for me, and his friendships and rivalries with everyone makes one feel invigorating. Oh, believe me, there is plenty of darker aspects to this story, and plenty of moments where I had to take a break from reading because it hurt too much at times. But Rothfuss seems to have the instinctual sense of when enough is enough, unlike the likes of George R.R. Martin and Joss Whedon.

Sometimes I got annoyed with how it felt like the author’s own feelings spilled somewhere. I thought the book could get too dismissive of the beliefs of the rural villages, and, believe me, I hate the concept of a sweet, harmless small town, especially when it mostly features white people. I’m no Stars Hollow fangirl, but my issue is rather it does not look at it through a nuanced lens.

All in all, what issues I have are little compared to so many factors that had me enjoy this book.

Would recommend: for people looking for a rich narrative that carves out many emotions from you, especially if you’re looking for an elaborate fantasy.

Decreation by Anne Carson

I am going to be real with you.

There are a lot of elements to this book that have flown over my head.

Decreation holds so many references and vocabulary that had me searching all sorts of sources to understand.

I have been interested in reading Anne Carson since seeing so many snippets of her words around. It's possibly odd to say that being confused by the book and having to do research to know it makes me enjoy "Decreation" very much. I like books that force me to think. I like books that have the sort of lines that ring well together like a series of synchronizing bells. Anne Carson has an enthralling mind, and I look forward to reading more of her work. If you want to read a challenging book with prose and poetry that is clean and shining like knives, this is the book for you

Would recommend: for people looking for something that makes them want to ponder and to be lulled by the beauty of how words are arranged.

The Poison Eaters and Other Stories by Holly Black

When it comes to short story collections, let's face it, there are going to be stories that you adored, stories you're indifferent to, and stories you just really, really, really hate. For most of the stories in this collection, I enjoyed them immensely. I remember when I read Holly Black's first novel, Tithe, I was absorbed by the lush prose. I can only describe it as like a spiderweb, how it shimmered and ensnared. I am crestfallen that she has simplified that style over the years, I wish YA authors can trust their readers, especially the teenage ones, into appreciating descriptive prose. One of the reasons why I moved from YA literature to adult fiction by the time I was sixteen was because I got tired of the simple style of writing. I wanted to challenge myself more, and I wanted to appreciate the art of language. I still do. Holly Black's style is still not how it was in her Tithe days, but the stories are still written in an eye-catching way. Maybe not like a spiderweb, but surely as the sheen of water. My favorites were: "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown" is about vampire towns, need I say more? "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" had an interesting take of becoming a wolf where it is a flower instead of a bloody chomp that turns you. I will admit I have always had a soft spot for beautiful things that cause horror. "The Night Market" was a delightful romance with a Filipino girl with a port stain birthmark on her face that has an elf in a tree enamored with her, much to her surprise and frustration. It was entertaining to see their dynamic of challenging and outwitting one another, especially over the girl's sister's safety. "The Dog King" was with wolves in a castle, literally and metaphorically. "The Coat of Stars" was about a gay man rescuing his lost love, with the bonus of costume porn. "The Land of Heart's Desire" had me the excellent opportunity of reuniting with beloved characters from Black's Modern Faerie Tales series. The last story, "The Poison Eaters," I love the unique narration, the way the girl that was a weapon became a strategist for revenge. The stories I disliked were few and far. "A Reversal of Fortune" had an endearing pit bull dog, but that's all the positivity I can give it. The story's concept sounded good--a girl challenges the Devil to save her pet's life--but written in such a weak and juvenile way that was also, to put it bluntly, gross. "Virgin" also had an interesting concept but I feel this had the potential to have been expanded more, whether novel-length or just a longer short story. "In Vodka Veritas" went too far into the silly route for me, especially for an interesting concept as having a Bacchanal in a high school prom. The narrator was also annoying as fuck. "Paper Cuts Scissors" should have expanded the characters more, it was a shallow little story. "Going Ironside" was hard to follow and it had a good concept but a lukewarm execution.

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

The Goblin Emperor is a political fantasy that is loving and hopeful and does not move through violence necessarily so much as surviving the eyes and gossip of a land that does not always see half-Goblins like Maia in high regards. I like my prickly books; I appreciate the blood and the lust and the anger, and all the other juicy bits of a harrowing plot. Believe me, I do. However, I honestly find the politics here and in the Kushiel's Legacy far more engrossing than in famous works such as Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" series. Maia is proof that having a genuinely sweet personality does not make one a dull protagonist. He is an underdog and coming from an abusive home life will certainly have readers already feeling protective of him. The biggest charm out of Maia however, is how Maia uses his goodness and need for survival to be calculating as Maia moves into the Emperor role. He's calculating how good his ruling should be. That is striking to me. He holds similar characteristics to one of my favorite fantasy characters, Sansa Stark. The characters surrounding him, all differing arrays of morals, are also striking. His bodyguards that are quite the sun-and-moon pair in demeanor and strength, his loyal assistant, his fiance, a passionate warrior girl. All in all, this was a satisfying read and one that I will enjoy rereading again and again.

Would recommend: if you love character-driven stories set in a lush, intricately-woven setting with one of the most likable protagonists around.

Carpathia by Cecilia Woloch

Woloch writes of moving, of grief, of love, all with great aplomb. There is a birdlike quality to her words as she talks about her father, his death, love, of moving across so many landscapes. Her poems have the serenity of the color blue. I cannot wait to see read more from her.

Would recommend: if you want to be lulled by beautiful wording and imagery.

The Divinity Student by Michael Cisco

This book is like reading one long hallucination. The surrealism is everywhere, the horror underlying everything. The imagery is haunting in the best of ways, it feels like smoke clinging to your clothes. There is no logic to this story. You just cannot make sense of it. There is a reason why Cisco is often compared to Franz Kafka.

Would recommend: if you want to pore over surrealism and odd imagery rather than a particular plot.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

One of the most satisfying fantasies I have read the past few years. Novik knows how to make twists and she knows how to make those twists flow right. While I could feel old-school sort of fantasy as a backbone to this story, it still stands all on its own. The characters were vivid in their personalities.

Sometimes I had frustrations with Agnieszka, with how much she fussed over dealing with fancy indulgences. There is nothing wrong with her for preferring a rural, simpler life, but it felt tacked-on too often. At least it is not as bad as Hunger Games, where the bad guys in that story enjoyed to opulent, feminine indulgences that had something of a homophobic coding too.

I do adore how Agnieszka’s clumsiness is not made to be endearing, but a human flaw. I wish to have seen more of her friendship with Kasia and see her relationship with the Dragon get developed more but all in all, it was enjoyable.

The magic system was also beautifully envisioned and executed.

Would recommend: character-driven, brilliant world-building, and unique storytelling.

Batgirl, Volume 1: The Darkest Reflection by Gail Simone

I hate the new 52. I hate most of it. I'm probably not going to read most titles from DC for a while. I am still not forgiving them for that hot topic nightmare that is Harley Quinn's makeover. I also have a small confession to make.

As a child, I was not that interested in Batgirl. I liked her enough on the Adam West show. I thought it was fantastic that she was a librarian. I thought Yvonne Craig was lovely. Other than that depiction, I barely gave thought to Barbara Gordon.

With DC animation, my holy trinity of favorite female characters was Huntress (Bertinelli), Wonder Woman, and Catwoman. In recent years, especially with the passing of Craig, I've come to appreciate her more, value her character, her relationships with others, her strong will, her kindness, her flaws, her mistakes. Gail Simone actually made her a whole person to me when she was Oracle. And while I am still pissed that she is not that anymore, Simone's writing had me cheer for Barbara in getting back out onto the streets. This volume shows the ups and downs of her friendships to people she has known for a long time, the tentative friendship with her roommate that has the potential to expand a lot deeper, and above all, her relationship with both her parents. It always annoyed me when superhero stories got with the Disney Parent Problem, where there was only one parent active in the protagonist's life and how that was most often the father. Here, we see Barbara's mother and how their relationship is broken, and you feel for both of them. You want to be angry with Barbara's mom for leaving the family, but you also empathize her efforts into healing that rift, especially how they're not quite satisfied; no doubt there is a deeper story about why exactly she left. You understand Barbara's hurt but you also know she's not one to deal with emotions, including bitterness, well, and she is not above pettiness and evasiveness. I really look forward to where this goes in the next volumes.

Would recommend: for long-time Batgirl fans and for those interested in getting to know her more.

Ms. Marvel, Volume 1: No Normal by G. Willow Wilson

Kamala Khan has to be one of the sweetest characters I ever had the fortune of reading. She’s awkward, silly, earnest, and good-intentioned.

Some of the dialogue does feel stilted. I am guessing because Wilson is still trying to balance showing real-life issues while telling a story. I know people had issues with how static her family feels at the moment, although from what I’ve seen, they do develop well as the series goes on.

Would recommend: a fun, charismatic read that personally makes me think back to watching favorite Saturday morning cartoons.

#thorn's personal #thorn's book recommendations

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rigelmejo · 4 years

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Reading through 5 chapters of 他们的故事 by 一根黄瓜丝儿 yesterday did more for my reading speed and confidence than any of my graded readers. (I think its the difficulty thing, I am for better or worse usually better at remembering things I find challenging...)

Like many posts on here my intent is more to document my process usually than to necessarily recommend anything. So I am not necessarily saying that this story is any good, and I still don’t know where it’s going since like many cnovels it has dozens upon dozens of chapters. So please apply my experiences and process to whatever novels and things you want to read instead. If, like me, your vocabulary is somewhere in the middle to end of HSK 4’s requirement, then you’ll probably be able to read through a target language web novel like this too. If that’s something you want to try. (Fair warning some are easier and some are harder... priest’s are harder... ;-; although to be fair I could probably start slogging through a priest novel now, I’m just not personally ready yet to tolerate That level of difficulty, I would rather improve my reading level more first).

I just stumbled upon this story 他们的故事 on accident, trying to find the gl manhua by the same name lol. (Also, fyi, that gl manhua can be found both on the authors Weibo and for sale as a comic book). So, Im just reading through this similarly titled web novel so far, it’s surprisingly super well suited to my reading level. It’s at a level where I could skim it for the gist of the main plot if I wanted (which may be a little draining). Or I can slow myself down a little and look up a few new words a page (either all the words I don’t know so I have full understanding, or just a few keywords if they’re bothering me). The rate of new words I could look up is just low enough that looking them up doesn’t waste much of my time or slow down my reading very much. So it’s very tolerable, but I’m regularly finding new words to learn too so it isn’t boring. In a way it’s well suited to intensive, lookup many words reading, but the difficulty is low enough that it could be a challenging ‘extensive’ leisure read if I just skimmed over some of the unknown words and only tried guessing the most obvious from content words. The story is also first person, with a lot of straightforward telling of descriptions of scenes and dialogue. So there’s a lot of nice practice for reading fiction narrative descriptions without much flowery language or metaphor, and most nouns are very daily-real life. It’s also good practice seeing proper nouns in the sentences and recognizing them, and getting used to the feature in chinese writing where you can sometimes drop who is doing what in sentences. (Priest does it a LOT in their novels and it’s much harder to follow if you get lost in the metaphors or beautiful descriptions in between).

The author of this particular story also tends to use the same main words over and over, which is nice to use as a crutch after graded readers that do something similar. I’m guessing most authors are like this, since we all have writing styles. What makes this story’s noticeable is the author mostly uses COMMON words in their particular style. I appreciate it, since I write similarly. Most of the words I look up in this story are common words I have already bookmarked from other things I’ve read, it’s how common the words are! So I know I’m getting a lot of “review” and learning a lot of useful words as I read and get all this repeated exposure to words that are helpful to know.

Also just, the story is simply written but interesting! It’s target audience is probably high schooler to adults. the main characters are entering college, the way the main character and their circumstances are written seem very maturely aware of more adult concerns in life - like what they want to do for a career, like if their lover will have difficulties coming out, like if his adopted parents (aunt and uncle) accepting him will be changed if his cousin reacts negatively, about how friendships change as we grow up. I’m only in chapter 6 so it’s got plenty of time to get toxic or fall to horrible tropes. But so far there’s nothing unrelatable or particularly unrealistic (no “I’m only gay for you” or dubious power imbalance relationships, or abuse glorified, etc). It reads so far as a very realistic grounded slice of life story. It’s extremely relatable to me, as someone who also worried about all those things at that age, and went through them a lot like how the character is. And I find the realistic approach to the subject matter very resonant. especially when, while some unrealisticslly framatic plots can be compelling sometimes lol, there’s a lot of bl works out there that fall to a ton of innaccurate to full on toxic tropes. In comparison, like, this particular novel sort of quickly goes over the main character getting passionate with his lover the first time. It is glossed over as one might recount a detail of life. Described somewhat like “we were young, passionately into each other the way first love always is. Eventually, our frequent touches went past kissing and holding each other, we were intimate. Actually, it hurt a little. I didn’t mention it, back then. I had been so happy, at that time, to be close to him. To be with him.” (I am summarizing here). But like, you can see how if you’ve got similar life experience it really reads like a gentle fond reminisce of being a young adult having your first time with someone. It’s just written so plainly, and gently. I love the main characters voice, describing how there are no villains in this story, no bad people. The mc’s tone is this kind of fond love as he remembers his past, with a hint of melancholy foreshadowing how it is eventually leading him to that intro of chapter 1 - contemplating dying. It’s simple, relatable, and if you like realistic stories then it’s compelling too. As someone who’s high school years were a lot like this, I connect easily and appreciate this story a lot so far.

I’ve been reading through this using Pleco WebReader, since it’s my favorite reader tool. But totally free alternatives would be the app Idiom, or the website Chinese Zero To Hero’s Reader feature.

I’m sure this would be true of any story you picked to read from - I think the long reading sessions are helping me review new words over and over, helping me get quicker at understanding the gist of sentences, and giving me both the repetition study help of a graded reader mixed with enough challenge required to keep exposing me to new words and providing enough difficulty that it’s helping me improve. The biggest weakness I’m noticing in my reading sessions is I gloss over new words when I don’t recognize the hanzi, even if I look them up they don’t “stick.” I think if I spend some time the first time I see those new characters, consciously breaking them down into pieces and making up a bit of a mnemonic for just their meaning in the word, it might help them stick easier in the long run. With the repetition of words I am finding that I’m quickly learning all the new words that are composed of individual characters I know. But words made up of totally new hanzi I keep failing to recognize over and over despite how frequently they’re showing up.

#rant #reading practice #他们的故事 #im still quite surprised theres a cnovel #with the same name as the very popular gl manhua

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