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seasurfacefullofclouds1 · 4 months

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To the anon who wrote about analyzing and discussing Louis song lyrics in a deeper way, the issue to me is that every single Louis analysis or discussion ends up being seen through the Larry lens. They co-opt every single discussion. All the lyrics have to be fit into the Larry narrative - even if it makes absolutely no sense. His set design and lighting choices and clothing - all must be shoe-horned into his secret signaling about Larry.

I always think about the ridiculous Back to You theory of him supposedly singing “I love him” instead of “it”. First, that song is about an extremely dysfunctional relationship. If you believe in long term Larry love, then that song should make you have doubts. But one little idea that he is singing “him” and the entire song becomes about Larry signaling.

Louis could escape the One Direction lens, he just can’t escape the Larry lens and it’s so sad. He has some of the best written songs of any of the 5.

Louis’ time and craft often go unappreciated, and his team doesn’t bother to make promote beyond the One Direction fanfiction crowd.

Part of the problem is that young audiences no longer have the patience (or capacity) to listen to layered songs. It’s difficult to pick out any popular song that isn’t about gossip or personal trauma… surely there’s more to pop music than sassy clapbacks?

Larries made Habit an uncomfortable concert experience even though the song is mostly an explanation of Louis’ ambivalence toward a solo career. Louis’ reluctance of the facing the stage alone, the explicit comparison of a music career to drug addiction (knowing full well how many musicians succumb to it), and the very mixed feelings toward an audience that both adulates and destroys, this (as Sylvia Plath put it) “peanut-crunching crowd” that treats celebrities like circus acts. All of these contradictions miraculously co-exist in a simple ballad with a one-word title, but the nuance is entirely lost in the screams of “Princess Park,” because (according to Larries) who cares about trauma as long as it’s “gay”?

Back To You is a song about toxic co-dependence, as poisonous and vicious as one can imagine, dressed up in a happy pop tune (later, rock tune). It’s about two people whose relationship has deteriorated so much that they can’t even talk to each other without using the language of physical violence, but they also feel trapped. It’s as much about depressing as it is about love.

But the analysis and appreciation from Louis’ fandom has been driven away by Larries, and by Louis’ team.

There used to be so many smart, articulate Louies in the fandom. When I look at old recommendation posts, the fandom now looks like a graveyard. So many Louies got tired of being bullied or the toxic Larrie atmosphere, or Harries, or waiting for a good team, that they left. There would be good streaming projects and fandom projects to make things fun, lots of art and creative momentum.

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bnwthinking · 1 year

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I want to get more into classic literature. Any recommendations? Your taste is awesome. (I'm mainly interested in romantic literature. Major bonus points if it's gay. But I'm up for any kind of classic literature.)

omg thanks for this question!! i love giving recs on this shit lol

ancient queer stuff

'collected works of sappho' is always good place to start, i would recommend anne carson's translation. it is not the most literal in translation but it is the best version in my opinion for understanding the gay emotions that sappho was trying to to convey.

on that note, i would also recommend reading enheduanna's 'poems for the goddess inanna'. think of her as sappho's elder, she was a sumerian poet and the first person we know to have ever created a collection of poems and signed her name to it. she was also very queer.

'the iliad' is also very very gay!! i dont have a favourite translation, my fave greek translator hasn't covered it yet but deffo check homer out.

classic (or modern classic) queer stuff

'orlando' by virginia woolf - a book about a man that wakes up as a woman one day and also immortal. the book is a bisexual in everyway love letter to vita sackville-west, the arguable love of virginia woolf's life. also would recommend reading 'mrs dalloway' or 'a room of one's own' by woolf and literally anything written by vita who was an established writer, too.

'giovanni's room' by james baldwin - this book was really important in my coming out process when i was a teenager. its about letting yourself be loved when you've been raised in shame. james baldwin's writing is a gift. check out his poetry if you're into poetry fs. i also really like baldwin's 'tell me how long the train's been gone'

'the well of loneliness' by radclyffe hall - not a personal fave of mine but definitely an important piece of lesbian literature.

'maurice' by e.m forster - forster hid this book from the world until his death. its about gay happiness and he knew if publishers got their hands on it they would make it about gay sadness. it was publish how forster wanted in the 1970's even though he wrote it in like 1917 or something lol

'the price of salt' by patricia highsmith - the novel that the movie carol is based off of

'the city and the pillar' by gore vidal

'better angel' by forman brown

the dark bisexual quartet that is : mary shelley's 'frankenstein', bram stoker's 'dracula', oscar wilde's 'the picture of dorian gray' and joseph le fanu's 'carmilla'

'rebecca' by daphne du maurier - i love 'rebecca' because it so bisexual and nasty but anything by daphne is a big rec from me!! she was openly bi and it's very evident in her work lol.

'the bell jar' by sylvia plath - the original manic pixie bisexual. i try to read 'the bell jar' once every couple of years.

'the charioteer' by mary renault - mary renault was one of the first people to write gay fiction in the uk in a positive light and her work was frequently banned!!

'Q.E.D' by gertrude stein

'yellow rose' by yoshiya nobuko - she wrote a lot of lesbian lit but 'yellow rose' is one of her only stories translated into english

'tales of a mask' by yukio mishima

'patience and sarah' by isabelle miller

'the color purple' by alice walker - gay but depressing as all fuck however literary wise, the writing is incredible. taught me a lot about voice and perspective.

'the great gatsby' by f. scott fitzgerald - easy to read, so damn short and the most subtext to ever subtext. fitz was a shit but whatever.

non specifically queer classic stuff

'tess of the d'urbervilles' or 'jude the obscure' by thomas hardy - hardy owned my arse when i was a teenager lol, i would consider these two of my fave books ever.

'wuthering heights' by emily bronte - divisive as always. its a book people either love or hate. its also a confusing read and i would recommend looking up a character map if you do attempt it. however, i'm one of the people that thinks 'wuthering heights' lives up the hype and the first time i read it it broke me.

'pride and prejudice' by jane austen - like wuthering heights but fun!

'the mill on the floss' by george eliot - 'silar marner' is good, too but i like mill better. i wrote my entrance essay for uni on it and my ma used to read it to me when i was little.

'metamorphosis' by franz kafka - anything by kafka is good tbh

'the second sex' by simone de beauvoir - important read that helped me understand a lot about early 20th century feminism, the good and the bad. the book i consider the foundation for a lot of what has come since.

'the lord of the rings' by jrr tolkien - idk if you're looking for fantasy (if you are let me know i'll make another list lol) but if you haven't read lotr, i promise it is better than you can ever imagine. tolkien also lives up to the hype.

lovecraft. start with the cthulhu mythos and branch out from there. 'the call of cthulhu' or 'the dunwich horror' or 'the nameless city' are good entry points imo.

okay that seems like a lot, i have more if you need lol. hope this helps in some way!

#book recs #reading recs

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blazing-michael · 1 year

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for the ask game... 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 34, 38, 39 and 44. (i sure do have a lot of shit to ask❗)

you sure do have a lot of things to ask...... ok let's go

3. do you smoke?

kind of? yes? no? i can smoke or vape if i feel dramatic but i never inhale. this is bad for your voice and i'm a singer. anyways it doesn't happen too often.

4. do you drink?

yes i do but then again not very often and nothing strong. i love cheap sparkling wine and cocktails. my favourites are piña colada & sex on the beach.

7. have any tattoos?

yes. a raspberry/blackberry vine through the length of my forearm in color. can show you if you dm about it.

8. want any tattoos?

if i have a shit ton of money. akchually it's quite painful for a thing that costs that much and has no practical use. but if someone said they would pay for it, i would do sylvia plath on my shoulder. or something with strawberries or violets or bees.

9. got any piercings?

i have my ears pierced. a hole in the left ear, three holes in the right. lately haven't worn earrings though.

10. want any piercings?

a septum piercing. but i don't want to deal with the wound so i just wear a fake nose ring sometimes.

13. biggest turn ons

hands in tight gloves oh my god. kissing. music. i admit maybe i have a thing for angels..... i know they don't exist but still....

14. biggest turn offs

telephone calls.

15. favourite movie

sister, act. a) the main character is a black woman starring whoopi goldberg; b) the plot is not revolving around a man. in fact it's about a singer hiding in a women monastery from a criminal and finding a way to enjoy being there; c) no sexualisation since they all are nuns; d) i ship two female characters 🥰; e) it's a kind funny movie made by gay men. i love it. sequel too. also i love midsommar.

17. someone you miss

i will forever miss my exes. not romantically of course but as friends. they are beautiful people. i wrote many songs about them so i can't avoid missing them every once in a while. hope it doesn't sound weird.

19. a fact about your personality

i can't cry at funerals or when i'm sad but if some little thing upsets me i can and i will sob.

21. what i love most about myself (+tagging @sweetslemon cause you also asked that)

idk. im pretty chill. it's a nice quality for a person.

25. my idea of a perfect date

kissing in the rain. napping together in a hammock. watching the stars. anything is fine as long as my woman is with me.

34. what i find attractive in women

kindness. being powerful yet gentle. laughter.

38. childhood career choice

i wanted to be a computer scientist or a space scientist, florist and musician. it took me some time to understand what it takes to be a space scientist... currently working at a flowershop and wondering if i can really become a good musician.

39. my favourite ice cream flavour

chocolate. to specify шоколадный магнат с кусочками брауни.

44. a random fact about anything

one day i climbed a spotlight at a stadium to watch a concert for free. the police couldn't make me get down on my own so they called a firetruck with a ladder. later they took pity on me and let me pass without any conditions.

wow that iz a lot. have fun reading all that 🚬 and thank you for asking now i feel like a superstar after an interview😎😎

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lslanw · 1 year

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“It’s not up to the author to teach readers morality”

Every so often, I see these posts come up, and I want to respond, because they annoy me.

quick note: I’ve professionally published about a dozen mostly horror short stories. A lot of dismemberment, poisonings, cannibalism, that sort of thing. Also, Nabokov’s Lolita is one of my favorite books.

In fact, it was Lolita being a specific mention here that got me to write this.

Accurate statement: the presence of specific content in a piece of fiction doesn’t mean the author approves of or practices the content depicted.

Inaccurate statement: you cannot look at an author’s body of work and determine that they have a thing.

Point one: Authors absolutely have things. Listen, writing takes a lot of effort, and you don’t do it unless you’ve got a pretty strong motivation. We can all agree on that, right?

Of all the things in the world that you might have written, you chose specific ones. And often, as they write, people find themselves returning to the same well over and over, because it’s important to them.

The generation of writers that lived through the World Wars often never stopped writing about them, even when they’re nominally writing about rings and hobbits, or psychic rabbits.

Toni Morrison isn’t “actually a ghost” but she is a black author living in a society that is still significantly shaped by a history of slavery, AND she would never have written Beloved if that fact did not weigh heavy on her.

Literature is absolutely strewn with the broken hearts of gay writers who were never permitted to be with the people they loved, and instead wrote beautiful, tragic novels and poems about intense, complex relationships between characters of the same sex.

You’re not crazy or overreacting when you read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s nest and your take away is “shit, Ken Kesey fucking hates women”. You’re not wrong if you read Heinlein and go “holy shit, this guy has a hard on for the military.” Sylvia Plath is an amazing writer, but if you read any volume of her work and think “this person was probably pretty happy,” you’re not a very perceptive reader.

Every writer leaves traces of their heart and soul smeared all across their work, and it’s not always the ones the writer expected it would be. But you wouldn’t write it if something about it didn’t matter to you.

Second point: The way you write about a thing absolutely makes a difference.

Nabokov devotes loads of time in Lolita to telling you what a piece of shit Humbert is. Nabokov, again and again, outside of Lolita, devoted loads of personal time telling anyone who would listen what a piece of shit Humbert is. It’s the whole point of the book.

I keep seeing people say “I don’t want to be forced to spoon-feed people morality“ or some variation of “it’s not my job to tell you what’s right and wrong.”

Actually, I’m going to let the original post author speak for themselves here, so I’m not putting words in their mouth.

“Authors are allowed to write downright despicable characters - and guess what they are even allowed to make despicable characters charismatic and likeble and the protagonists of their stories if they wish - because absolute monsters exist only under the bed.”

Barring the last bit (I defy you to look at history and say there have never been monsters), I don’t disagree with this, in principle. But in practice? I’ve read so many stories both published and unpublished where it’s very clear the author has some personal kink, or wish, or trauma that they’re pouring out onto the page. A lot of times it’s harmless (though I often find it annoying), but I’ve read people who were absolutely advocating for pederasty, fascism, the hotness of rape, racism, and eugenics (science fiction and horror are particularly prone to this because you can always write off that it’s “just a thought experiment” or “it’s supposed to be horror”). Just writing about a thing doesn’t mean you support it. But, if you write over and over about a thing in pretty glowing terms? People aren’t wrong to give a bit of side eye.

Point Three: Reading and Writing are both skills. Not everyone is good at them, and a lot of the traditions and trends informing both are pretty poisonous.

Every year, loads of people pick up the book Lolita, which is about pedophilia as told by a pedophile character, and come away with the impression that actually the narrator is pretty cool and probably in the right. I’m really not sure how they do it, because the book takes pains even through the unreliable narration to make sure you know the girl hates the situation but can’t get out of it, but I suspect two things are happening: one, they came in with a number of beliefs in situ that made that an easier conclusion to come to; and two, we’re trained by a tradition of narrative to assume that the narrator is right and the protagonist is synonymous with the good guy. A lot of readers, across a whole spectrum of what they read, have a tendency to miss the point. I don’t want to put that across as a moral failing. Reading takes energy, concentration, and above all practice to do well. Don’t believe me? Have you ever re-read a favorite novel a few years later and thought “wow, jeez, this isn’t how I remember it at all”? Or maybe if not that far, you’ll certainly notice things making a different impression as you’ve accrued more life and reading experience. Have you ever looked back on something you loved at 12 and thought “yikes!”? One result of this is that people can have some trouble distinguishing between “this writer is just writing about this” and “this writer is totally fucking into this.”

A lot of people in fanfiction spaces are also learning the craft as they go, and we often start by reaching for tropes and structures that are familiar. Unfortunately, a load of those easy, familiar tools are pretty rotten at their core. (eg. The hottest people are also the morally best. It’s okay to use force to get sex because secretly the other person wants it and just playing coy. You can live for hundreds of episodes in New York City and never run across anyone who isn’t white. etc). Starting writers are most likely to uncritically replicate other people’s mistakes or preoccupations, in part because they’re so focused on figuring out how to do the thing at all. I remember talking to one young writer who had written that his main character’s girlfriend had been brutally murdered by the mob to keep that character from telling the secrets he knew about the mob (and to give the main character a tragic backstory of course). I said to him that wasn’t very effective, why didn’t the mob just try to kill the main character? He seemed completely surprised and said he had never even considered that. He was, of course, replicating a form you see over and over in action movies where men are heroes and women are disposable props. But he was new at his craft (and frankly from a pretty conservative background. He was way better about female characters once he’d been asked a couple of times to consider what he was doing). We all do stuff like that in the beginning. Listen, I know the internet isn’t a welcoming place for nuance, but here’s where I come down on this Writing, by its very nature, can never completely shake a writer’s personal and cultural baggage, though practice and proficiency can do a lot to help. A lot of writers are going to get read as saying something they aren’t. A lot of writers are going to be read as saying something they absolutely are, but don’t want to be seen as saying, and those people are probably going to deflect and yell at you for morality policing. Some people will be both at once. Some people aren’t going to know which they really are. I’ve written a couple of stories about cannibalism I’m pretty proud of. I’m not a cannibal myself and not terribly interested in eating a person, but that doesn’t mean those stories don’t have my personal feelings, thoughts, and biases about bodies, sex, violence, and the way people treat each other generally all over them. That’s WHY I wrote them, whether I knew it at the time or not.

#writing #morality police #creativity #cw: nuance

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indigos-dreamscape · 3 years

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7 pages into the bell jar by Sylvia Plath and already I think Esther and Doreen are gay. THE WAY ESTHER DESCRIBES DOREEN AND HER BODY OMG GAY

#sylvia plath #the bell jar #the bell jar sylvia plath #1930s gays #Esther x Doreen #Sylvia Plath wrote gays #classic literature #poetry #classic poetry

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persephoneflouwers · 3 years

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The meaning behind the Moon

A nonsense non-fiction, by me.

First things first, whatever comes from this post wasn’t meant as an explanation. It would be so bold of me to pretend I know stuff because I don’t. Really, I don’t. This is me just showing off, let’s say it. I like finding meanings in things, even if they are not official you know? Also… this turned out to be very romantic at the end, so… there’s your warning!

The really smart people in this fandom figured out the meaning behind Pierrot Lunaire and some others linked Pierrot to a short film by Anger, “Rabbit’s Moon”. Of course it was shot under a blue filter, of course. (also here and I’ll add mine, kinda cocky of me sorry lol)

«The plot revolves around a clown, Pierrot, his longing for the moon (in which a rabbit lives – a concept found in both Japanese folklore and Aztec mythology), and his futile attempts to jump up and catch it.»

We also know how strong Bowie influence is on Harry. I only read this by @bluewinnerangel on the matter. I know nothing about Bowie. So my apologies for any incorrect statement I make.

«Bowie’s Pierrot narrates and shows the tragic end of a hero reduced to madness, to depression, chained and forgotten in the stellar lands. This image adopts the new meaning artists started giving Pierrot as not only the clumsy fool with a one way crush for a beautiful girl.»

That’s the modern concept of clown, isn’t it?

Now let’s dig in some literature cause I LOVE IT. When I think about the moon, I can’t not think of the “first” person on the moon. Now, you may not know him, but let me introduce you “Astolfo sulla Luna”.

Astolfo is the narrator in the poem “Orlando furioso” by Ludovico Ariosto. A classic. Italian poem from the XVI century, I don’t think I can sum it up because it’s sooooo long. Just know that Orlando is a soldier who loses his mind out of jealousy, because the woman he loves, Angelica, runs away with Medoro. They look disgustingly in love and Orlando can’t bear it: he throws away his shining harmor and lays on the floor for DAYS, until Astolfo, riding his hippogriff, flies to the moon, where he finds Orlando mental sanity in a little ampoule. This is the Platonism of the poem. Plato, again (I talked about it linked to coacoac here). The moon (hyperuranium for Plato) becomes the place where you can find all the things that men lose on the Earth: wealth, fame, tears, love, unfulfilled dreams.

My question was “what’s up with the moon for Harry and Louis now?”. No need to mention the “Louis is the sun and Harry is the moon” thing, do I?

First the fact that the moon has always been referred to as she. I don’t know much about English/American literature. I can think of Sylvia Plath (‘The Moon and the Yew Tree’ (1961), she refers to the moon in the sky as her mother) as an example. In Italian literature, poets used moon as something to project their loneliness, their emotional sore, their insecurities. Leopardi wrote the most beautiful poems to the moon. The moon stands there, absent, cold, untouchable like the women in his life (he was rumoured to be gay, too but that’s not the point). I was wondering… what if the moon is his feminine side and Harry chose Pierrot cause Pierrot wants to reach the moon so much? You clearly see all the efforts Pierrot makes to reach the moon in the short film. He is jumping around until he falls tired on the floor. What if that’s also Harry’s attempt to finally embrace his feminine side? I don’t know maybe I’m going too deep here, sorry.

Secondly, we had 369 merch. It’s chaos, I talked a little about it here too.

The sculpture is called “et si ma bille était la lune” and I found the translation here on tumblr. I interpreted it as a story of a “little wise guy” who’s in their dark room and struggles to sleep. There’s no light whatsoever and even if they could open the window to let the moonlight in, there’s no moon in the sky. It’s a moonless night, but the little wise guy is determined to change this. They take their cute little ladder and their only treasure, which happens to be a marble, and climbs till the top to use the marble for a moon.

Hello, though the dark…

When the night is coming down on you, We will find a way through the dark

Hello, ready to run…

I don't wanna get lost in the dark of the night, This time I'm ready to run

It’s just— Pierrot is jumping aimlessly trying to catch the moon in the sky, right? he is making a fool of himself and presumably he is gonna end up with his heart broken, you know? And do you see what that little wise guy does? HE TAKES A LADDER AND PUTS HIS LITTLE MARBLE IN THE SKY??? HELLO?? IM AN EMOTIONAL MESS!

Whatever you do, don’t think about Louis doing anything he can do light up the fucking sky for his boy, okay? To give his boy his moon, what he misses, what he wants. I mean… they are the “I would give you the moon” couple, aren’t they?

“Does the little wise guy with the marble and his ladder know that Pierrot Lunaire is in love with him?”

Can we make this a thing? Thank you.

Thanks for joining this absolute mess of a class. Till next time. Baci baci

#pierrot #the moon and the sun #h&l parallels #maybe i am on drugs please forgive me or ignore me #I felt like I could share my thoughts with the class #harryween night 2 #harry and gucci #once you see this 369 stuff itms over #369 #also…#louis is the literal sun of this worl #little wise guy and pierrot

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jaydee1818 · 2 years

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What are some of your favorite books and fanfics?

Favorite books! Oh my, here we go………

Frankenstein is my all time #1 favorite book of all time all time. If I could only read one book for the rest of my life it would be Frankenstein. If I was on a desert island and could bring only one book, it would be Frankenstein. I have at least 7 different copies of Frankenstein, and probably as many different biographies on Mary Shelley’s life and influence. I have a tattoo of the word in Mary Shelley’s handwriting and her signature on my rib cage next to my heart. I can never ever recommend reading Frankenstein enough- specifically the original 1818 text, which is what I’ve linked here. Mary Shelley is my favorite author and her influence on the world of fiction is impossible to quantify. I love her and ache for her every time I think of her. I could speak of her endlessly. I love her. Like. Emotionally, non-colloquially, love her. The Last Man and Falkner and Lodore- are hers and are all up here too.

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka- or almost anything by him. He doesn’t have much novel-wise, but his short stories are fantastic- In the Penal Colony and A Hunger Artist are particularly good. A Country Doctor is always amazing to read and my favorite of his.

Dracula by Bram Stoker

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

Anything By Shirley Jackson- The Lottery is an amazing short story read. Unparalleled. Please read it. Please read it. It’s short, I promise. Truly recommend it. She wrote The Haunting of Hill House if you saw the adaptation on Netflix.

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James is what Haunting of Bly Manor on Netflix was based on- not a gay story (tragic), but the very first piece of horror I remember reading and it did scare the pants off of me when I was younger. It’s a quick one- more a novella.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, of course.

Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux is a quick little joy of a book.

Faust by Goethe and Faustus by Christopher Marlowe as companion reads- Both are plays, heads up on that.

If you’re into a true book to tackle, and an amazing one at that, Notre-Dame des Paris (Hunchback of Notre Dame) by Victor Hugo is a great example of his work without having to fucking drag your way through the miserable ones . Now it’s long, don’t get me wrong, but it isn’t Les Mis long. And in my opinion it’s a better example of his style anyway. It’s a great read for seeing how to handle viewpoints and outside characters, multiple narrators, and one-off character chapters. It’s a great book to read to explore how to write.

If you want shit to hit too close to home right now I also quite love The Plague by Albert Camus

Jurassic Park by Michael Chrichton I can always go back to as a fun read. It’s my beach book.

The Books of Blood by Clive Barker are all phenomenal short story collections and I love Clive Barker. You might recognize him for Hellraiser or Nightbreed if you’ve seen those movies- The Hellbound Heart and Cabal are the respective novels.

Anything by Octavia E Butler or Agatha Christie (some of her stuff is hitting open source! I weep.)

And then Sylvia Plath and Enda St Vincent Millay for some poetry- though I’m not super big on poetry in general, these ladies are *chef’s kiss* Plath is a surprise to no one, I’m sure.

A lot of the stuff I like is open source/public domain- and I’ve linked the ones freely available online here. If it’s underlined, you can click it to read! As a general recommendation I would cruise Project Gutenberg. It’s absolutely an amazing site.

Basically I really really enjoy science fiction and classical literature. I find the study of the human condition most enthralling in good science fiction. And some good horror as well. But not Steven King. Hate Steven King…except for Carrie which he openly admits his wife helped him write so I don’t count it.

And that list was longer than I intended…

As for fics…I don’t usually go back to fics very often, actually. I’m an intake hound for fics. I just read em and read em. New and next. Or old! I’ll go back back back and read older ones that are done one page at a time. But none specifically, usually.

You Are My Soul to Save is a banger that I do reread and it’s fucking awesome as hell. I am very jealous of the quality on that one.

This entire ass person is a freak who I love and I don’t know how they write so much.

I keep up with the ongoing ones, too. Probably like the rest of you lol. This one and this one particularly I have notifications set up for. Honestly I’m more keen to take fic recommendations than give them! So if you know any you’d recommend, let me know!

Sorry, haha, long answer is long. I just love me them books! I can talk more about any of them if you want- feel free to chat me

#ask #books #book recs #long answer #text

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pureleafy · 3 years

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I know this probably one of those impossible to answer kind of questions, but do you have a fave poet? Who and why? 💕

You’re so right, it’s almost impossible 😭

I love Sappho and Sylvia Plath.

Sappho has beautiful lyrical poetry that was trashed, searched for, preserved, lost, and collected in fragments. I lowkey believe that a lot of her work was ruined or burned by Christians since she wrote about loving women. The imagery and sensations that she wrote about is nothing like I have ever read. Like I can really feel and taste her words. Obviously she has a special place in my heart because of the sapphic experience of yearning and desire — personally I think no cis man could ever write about women the way that women can. It’s visually gorgeous and emotionally raw. My blog title and pinned post are quotes by her and they’re lovely.

Plath to me feeds my angsty, tragic, and dark side of my soul. She’s like Poe, in a way, who I also love. Her poems are haunting and melancholic. Her imagery of life and death, dark and light, makes it hard for me to believe that her suicide came as a surprise. As tragic as it is, her poetry is riddled in ideations of death and suicide. I think her descriptions of depression and of the like hit me so hard. I remember the first time I read one of her poems, I just felt so gutted. It takes a lot to knock the wind out of me but she did that.

I have a lot of other poets that I enjoy like Silverstein, Gibson, Kafka, Wilde, Sexton… I’m a basic bitch: if you write about love, mental illness, darkness, or anything gay I go insane.

#ask #poetry #thank u for this ask!!!#sorry I went on a tangent haha

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bellablue42 · 3 years

Text

Myself as a writer and Death of the Author

I’m trying to write a novel, and it’s really hard. I feel like I’m not getting anywhere, I’m on my fifth draft and trying to create a lengthy enough narrative that doesn’t feel like filler. It is difficult, to say the least, and I really admire people with the ability to write quickly and well.

But there’s a lot about She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named going around again, and it made me think. We all know that she’s not the best person, but she is a writer, and she is a creator, and her works are widespread. And that... causes problems.

Is it ok to consume her work? How much do her opinions reflect in her work, and can we spot it? I have no idea, but here’s my best shot, as an aspiring writer and a high-school literature student.

Please be warned I have no experience, and I’m kind of making this up as I go along, but here we go.

Last year, at the start of the school year, in Literature, my class watched Midnight in Paris. The movie was written and directed by Woody Allen, who is... well-known for all the wrong reasons, namely allegedly assulting seven-year-old Dylan Farrow. One of the girls in my class pointed out this fact, and my teacher nodded and said that we were discussing Death of the Author.

Death of the Author is an interesting topic. It holds that an author’s intentions and background should have no impact on interpreting a text. It is interesting, and it is really bloody hard to do.

Keep in mind that if you pick up a book by a relatively famous author, you will know something about them. If you take Mrs Dalloway, for example, if you’ve ever heard of Virginia Woolf, you will doubtless know that she was a writer and that she committed suicide, even if you know nothing else. The fact that she did commit suicide will influence the way you read Mrs Dalloway.

If you read Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath, for example, you will probably know that Plath was not mentally healthy and committed suicide by sticking her head in an oven. And that will influence the way you read Lady Lazarus. If you read any of Lovecraft’s work, you will come to the conclusion that he is a racist. It’s not hard to figure out.

Death of the Author means separating these facts from the way you interpret a work. It is really hard, trust me.

Because we look for links, everywhere we look for these links. We know that Sylvia Plath committed suicide, so when you read Lady Lazarus, you make connections. Go read Lady Lazarus now, go read it knowing that Plath committed suicide, and keep that fact in mind. Here’s the link: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49000/lady-lazarus

Now read it again, and try to forget it, all the connections you made knowing that Plath stuck her head in an oven. It is really hard to do, because you know, and you remember. Death of the Author is forgetting the context of the author, forgetting their impact on the text.

Here’s a thing, I write a lot. Like, a lot. Not published, obviously, but I write about as much as I read, and that is a lot. And I believe, that when you write, you put a bit of yourself into it. It doesn’t have to be obvious, maybe just the way you connect to a character, or your views on a topic. I can’t say I don’t do this - my main character is an asexual lesbian who panics a lot and loves her girlfriend. Her competence doesn’t come from me, but the gender, the sexuality, the panic? All of that is inspired by, you know, me. My experiences, my opinions. I am conscious in my word choices, I’m trying not to use gendered language for the soldiers, because they are men, women, non-binary, genderfluid and others, all together, so my main character can’t call them her men, they are her soldiers. It’s hard. I’m aware that I have biases, and my reading experiences are usually texts that ... do not do this.

Sorry, I’m rambling, and no-one wants to know.

But I as a writer, put a bit of myself in my work. And I think that’s what makes Death of the Author so hard to do, so hard to remember.

And now onto HER. I can’t remember what brought my attention to her in the first place, maybe a post about a Harry Potter tv show?

The problem about JK Rowling is that she wrote Harry Potter. And Harry Potter is... huge. The problem is that we grew up on Harry Potter.

Looking back, there are big problems with the series; plot holes bigger than my fist, a lack of original plot lines, and little creativity. Harry Potter is a mishmash of already well-established genres and archetypes, and it... doesn’t fit together particularly well.

(Take Dumbledore, at once the mentor archetype from the fantasy genre and the authority figure in the boarding school genre. The problem is that being both causes a bit of dissonance. He mimics the typical ‘wise old mentor wizard’ from fantasy, like Gandalf, but he is also a school headmaster. He is a grandfatherly teacher who takes an interest in the son of two of his past students, nothing particularly new, but at the same time, he’s a figure out of legend, an incredibly powerful man, both magically and politically. It is hard for my brain to fit them together well because they are two different archetypes and they don’t mesh. They belong in different genres, because the way he is written can’t seem to decide which one he is. I might write more on this later if anyone’s interested)

But Rowling’s a TERF. And she’s been on Twitter and said all sorts of bizarre things about the odd mish-mash of genres she’s created. I’m not really a fan of Harry Potter anymore, I grew up with it. I have seven books in a shoebox under my bed. I have read far better books, I have read many, many books with more interesting stories, better internal consistency and characters with actual depth, who don’t need fandom to be interesting.

And yet I still have all seven books in a shoebox under my bed. It’s hard. I genuinely liked the books - when I was twelve. I’d sooner recommend the Discworld books by the late great Sir Terry Pratchett than Harry Potter, and not just because of HER. They’re better books. Harry Potter is average.

But we loved them.

And Rowling’s a TERF. Her views on trans people are... not okay, by any measure. I don’t have words for ... how great the cognitive dissonance is. She wrote a series, a seven-book, eight-movie series, about the power of unconditional love. Over a million words, just under 20 hours about acceptance and tolerance. And yet she doesn’t believe that trans women are women.

The problem is that it is hard to apply Death of the Author. Once you know that JK discriminates against transgender people, it is hard to read Harry Potter without remembering that.

Then you get into other issues about how all of the endgame couples are straight. And Dumbledore’s only gay when the series is ended. And there’s a lack of diversity in the books and the movies. And once you start reading into it, it gets ... iffy. Because it’s not meant to be read into, not meant to be analysed. It’s a children’s series. But it’s problematic, not for the things it says, but fo the things it doesn’t say.

The thing is that SHE is impressive. As a writer, at least, not as a person. Because it is hard to write, and she managed an extensive, relatively-coherent storyline across seven books, released over ten years. But her first book got rejected, again and again.

Her net worth is somewhere between 650 million and 1.2 billion. And she earns all that money off a book series whose main themes are friendship and love. And she’s a TERF.

I can’t say I hate her - I don’t know her. She might be a genuinely nice person, but she’s a TERF. She doesn’t believe that trans people are the gender that they say they are. I cannot understand how you can believe that, but. She does, apparently. She wrote so much about love conquering all evil, and friendship saving the day, but she doesn’t think that trans women should be allowed into female bathrooms.

I hate her ideology.

Go read Discworld instead. Think about Death of the Author, then read Night Watch. It’s a great book. Or go read Good Omens, because Pratchett co-wrote that.

The thing about Discworld is that you can tell what Pratchett thinks is worth paying attention to. Small Gods is primarily about religion, about belief, and about people. The last one is the most important, because Pratchett believed that the greatest thing you can be is human and kind, and he’s right. The witches on the Discworld are... perhaps not nice, but they are decent, and they are fundamentally people. They are human, and they are kind, and that is what makes them good people.

The thing about Harry Potter is that “Muggle” sounds like a slur. There’s all this attention paid to the whole “mudblood” thing that people forget that behind all the blood purity nonsense - which sounds a lot like eugenics - the purebloods, the rich entitled kids, believe that non-magical people are less than animals. The Wizarding world is stuck in the Middle Ages, not even the bloody Renaissance. Human history has passed them by. It is so hard now to read Harry Potter without finding problems, like how all the magicals are fundamentally stupid, how a literal one-year-old is praised for supposedly killing an extremely powerful mass-murdering psycopath. A one-year-old. The Wizarding World is not a functional society, and it’s not meant to be. It’s not meant to hold up to scrutiny.

Look, Harry Potter is average, at best. Ask me for good kids books and I will point you in a dozen different directions, and I will point you in a dozen different directions - but not there.

Because Death of the Author is hard. Not taking the creator’s intentions and background into account when interpreting a work is hard. You can know that an author is queer, or a person of colour, or of a certain religion, but once you know it, it is hard to not see it.

You see, all the main characters in Harry Potter are white. They’re also all straight. Everyone not Harry Potter is flat. There is very little depth to anyone in those books, because they don’t matter. Hermione is defined by her relationship with Ron because her relationship is the most debated part of her character. Ron - in the movies at least - is seen as stupid because he is written stupid, he is written as comic relief. Book-verse Ron is a strategist, but that’s only really shown in the first two books. They’re not written with depth, they don’t need it. Harry’s the protagonist, Hermione’s the smart one, Ron’s the dumb-but-loyal comic-relief best friend. Ginny is the love interest, Luna’s the crazy one, the twins are comic-relief pranksters. Draco is the racist antagonist, Voldemort is a more extreme mass-murdering version. There are exactly zero trust-worth adults in a whole seven-book series, there are three? characters with depth in the whole series, everyone else is defined by a role and a single characteristic.

It is so hard to look critically at Harry Potter and not see everything that relates to Rowling. It is problematic as a series, and problematic as content created by a TERF. It is problematic as literature in the first place. It’s written as a kids book, but for all its ‘adult’ themes, it can’t stand up to scrutiny.

This got long - I got a bit carried away. Sorry.

Tell me what you think, tell me your opinion. I’d love to discuss this with you because it so hard to write about. Argue with me, tell me I’m wrong. Tell me I’m right if you think I am. Have I said anything problematic? Please lets start talking about this because it’s interesting and a difficult topic, and I think we need to start looking closer at authors and content creators.

#i didn't wake up today to write a long meta post #but i did anyway #long post #meta #Harry Potter #Death of the Author #please debate more with me #harry potter is problematic and here's why #this has no cohesion to it #please give me feedback #i apologise for shitty writing #this had no plan #sorry

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luciatraskwrites · 4 years

Text

i’m glad i chose the bell jar for my next book once i finished an enemy of the people.

i admit that i jumped to conclusions about plath’s work based on snippets of her poetry that had been taken out of context as well as the way people speak of her. many i’d encountered would say her name with reverence, i’d see bits and pieces of her poetry verse on instagram and here. and i went out of my way to avoid her work.

for context: i had a “not like other girls” mentality but it was... unconventional. i really wasn’t too similar to the other girls i’d known. i was much more openly feminine (still am), very open about my attraction and preference to boys, and dealt with criticism for it. i was too shallow, i hated girls who didn’t conform to femininity - that’s what people thought of me. and most importantly: i was happy being a girl. i am a cisgender girl who was and still is comfortable in her own skin.

so when i first saw sylvia plath, i remember sighing and rolling my eyes. i’d stay away from her work, i didn’t /get/ her. “oh dear,” i remember thinking to myself, “not another one of those women writers who thinks that the ~inherent suffering of being a woman~ is a personality trait and an excuse to shame or shun girls like me or men in her life. i’ll stick to my yeats and dickinson, thank you - at least dickinson could turn a poem about a bird eating a worm into something lovely that i’d enjoy reading.”

you have to remember that this was work that was divorced from context. it was only years later that i began to find out more about plath and her work. this was writing from a mentally ill woman who struggled to retain a sense of individuality in a time like the 1950s, and who was very poorly treated by the men in her life. let me emphasize that i love the fashion and film of the 1950s, but it’s a time period i wouldn’t have wanted to live in: i’m mixed-race, a girl, autistic - three strikes against me! imagine what that must have been like for a depressed, mentally ill woman treated the way she was.

so i began to shift my way of thinking towards plath. this was someone who was writing from personal experience, conveying her resentment and pain through her writing. she, like so many other writers, was writing for herself. this is what she went through. she wasn’t “projecting” - she was suffering and used writing as an outlet. she wrote not just for others and to publish the bell jar, but for herself.

this was her life. this was her story.

there is, i think, something to be said about the shaming or shunning of traditionally feminine girls, as well as neurodivergent girls, in feminism (and i say this as a feminist - i support and agree with many ideologies of the movement, and believe that just like any other form of activism or movement for equality that there are aspects of it worthy of criticism). there is something to be said about how we only really attach plath’s poetry to her death, as well as every time a figure (mainly women, though i’ve seen the same with montgomery clift hailed as a tragic gay icon) in the history of art is mentally ill or suffering we make that all she is - judy garland is only her drug addiction and insecurities and not her tremendous talent and perseverance through all she went through, gene tierney is only her bipolar disorder and depression and not someone who managed to break the cycle for herself and open up about her own experiences with these and get better, marilyn monroe is only an icon of tragic glamor and not an activist and actress and someone who was really, really trying to get better, openly saying “i only want to be wonderful”.

but i think the context of her work is helping me to reconcile with the assumptions i made about her. so, i’m reading the bell jar. i don’t know if i will be able to connect to esther the way so many other readers have. still, though, i can change and try.

#personal #idc if you reblog this or not #i really don't #i'm just rambling

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langblrwhy · 4 years

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My goals for 2020

March

1 Go out every week [While the quarantine lasts, I'll ignore this topic, starting now]

I went out 3 of the 4 weeks and then I went to quarantine.

2 Try 2 new foods every month (food, beverage, recipe)

I ate aparagus, ricotta with dried tomato quiche (I've never ate a quiche or a dried tomato before), yellow pepper and pumpkin. I drank a Coffee Frappuccino.

3 Be fluent in esperanto

I've been studying esperanto almost everyday. I translated a wikipedia page into esperanto, I wrote a plot for a fiction, I used to chat with my friend via messages and chatted with people 2 times via video, but I don't feel that comfortable with the language yet.

4 Practice having conversations via audio and video

...... In the first 3 weeks I made that just a couple times, since quarantine I have being doing it every day.

5 Write a 10k fiction in french and publish it on Wattpad

I organized the plot and everything, now I just have to properly right. I'll try to write 5k words during the Camp NaNoWriMo.

It's called La professeur de saphisme et quelques cafés (The professor of saphism and some coffees), it'll be a lesbian romance between a professor and a (grow up) student.

6 Try to study russian again and focus on the basic

I didn't :c

7 Watch a movie every week

1. All The Bright Places (USA, 2020)

2. La Belle Junie (France, 2008)

3. The Dreamers (France, 2003)

4. Nothing To Hide (France, 2018)

5. Mulholland Drive (USA, 2001)

6. The Second Mother (Brazil, 2015) (this was my favorite)

8 Read 5 books

I read dozens of pages of The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath. (Yeah, I'm super slowly in reading, I'll try to read more in april)

9 Finalize 1 art every month (it doesn't have to be good, just finished)

I did!

10 Go for a walking every week (this doesn't count as "going out") [While this quarantine lasts, I'll adapt this topic for "doing some exercise every week, starting in april]

Again, I walk several kilometers every week until I went on quarantine.

I haven't been doing any exercise at home, at least I sunbath almost everyday.

11 Try to make listening podcasts an habit

... I listened just half of a podcast about COVID19 and its impact on economy.

12 Learn toki pona

I gave up learning this... Again.

13 Write a fiction in esperanto

I had an idea, organize everything and I'll write during the Camp NaNoWriMo.

It's called Geja Servo (Gay Service), it's about travelling and a gay couple.

14 Try 1 new thing per month

I never ever had been on quarantine before, does it count? Lol

I also studied a little bit of kanji, I shaved my head and try to study morse code (I stopped because it was giving me headaches lol)

15 Interact on virtual groups (telegram, tumblr, whatever)

There is a polyglot club in my city, we have been call to speak in other languages and I've been practicing english, french and esperanto with them.

16 Be more proactice and publish my stuff somewhere online (draw, fiction, whatever)

I post something I wrote on Wattpad, but I didn't really try to publicize it.

17 Finish all duolingo tasks by the end of the year

I've being doing duolingo for the last 41 days straight, I'm on the Pearl League right now. I'll probably finish this before august.

18 Sketch everyweek

I've been sketching and painting every other day

I'll try to accomplish at least 70% every month.

12/16 = 75%

Because of the Camp NaNoWriMo I'll add for april:

19 Write 5k words in my french fiction (La professeur de saphisme et quelques cafés)

20 Write 5k words in my esperanto fiction (Geja Servo)

21 Write 10k words in my english fiction (Aspaldiko) and post, at least a bit, on Wattpad

#goals #studyblr #langblr #new years goals

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arivers610 · 5 years

Text

Bitches Be Crazy

Erica perked up when Celeste and Mina sat down,

“Good you guys are here now, okay so how does everyone feel about going to a club this weekend!”

Daisy and Mina nodded but Celeste and Nehemie didn’t seem too excited.

Celeste shrugged her shoulders,

“I’m just not a “club” person. Sorry but I think I’m going to pass.”

Nehemie nodded,

“Me too.”

“Oh come ‘on Neh, just tell your parents you’re staying over at my place.”

“And what will you be telling your parents Aminata?” Nehemie using Mina’s full name made her sound even more like the mother of the group.

“I’ll tell them we’re having a sleepover at your place. It’ll be just like that time we went to New York to see Drake and that turned out fine.”

“Us missing our bus, you losing your money and making us stay at some rent by the hour motel is not my definition of fine.”

“But that won’t happen because Celeste said that she lives on he own, everyone looked at Celeste, so can we stay with you this weekend?”

“Sure but I don’t know if I want to go out.”

“Please Celeste, Mina begged then Erica joined in, we need the whole gang.”

“Okay fine, but I have to ask my roommate.”

“Who’s your roommate?” Daisy asked

“His name is Julien, I found him on craigslist and he hasn’t killed me yet so he’s a pretty good roommate.”

“You live with a guy that you met on craigslist?” Erica shouted

“Is he cute?” Daisy asked

“He is and he is also very, very gay so there’s no need to worry about anything other than him possibly stealing your clothes.”

“Well that settles it, we’ll get ready at Celeste’s, drive over to the club and crash at her place, Erica shrugged her shoulders, as long as it’s okay with your roommate.”

Celeste sighed and nodded,

“I’ll ask him tonight but, Celeste pointed to Erica before she could celebrate, when one of us is ready to leave we all leave together, okay?”

Everyone nodded in agreement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Later on~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Celeste decided to take a break from her school work and do something that would relax her, paint. She threw on an old t-shirt of hers that was already splattered with paint, a pair of Soffe shorts, also covered in paint, and pulled her hair into a pony tail at the top of her head.

She laid down her white tarp, turned on some music and let her paint brush glide across the blank canvas. Her go to thing to paint was birds or flowers but this time she just started painting lines and dripping paint onto the canvas. Celeste picked up the canvas and slowly rotated it. The pinks and purples swirled together with the blue. She decided to leave the one corner completely free of paint. She dipped a thinner paint brush into some brown paint and painted a bird with its wings spread out. Underneath it she wrote with her fancy paint pen,

Be like a bird, fly forwards not backwards

When Julien came home, Celeste showed him her painting.

“I like the Jackson Pollock vibes, not crazy about the bird, Celeste rolled her eyes, but then again I can barely draw stick figures so who am I too judge. I love it.”

“Thanks, so how was work?”Celeste asked.

“It was okay, clam chowder girl called off again. So I had to stick around until thick ass Tony came in.” Julien smiled and grabbed a plate to warm up the leftover chicken and rice.

“I know why you call Tony, thick ass Tony but why do you call that girl clam chowder girl again?”

“Because it was the first thing she dropped when she started working, Celeste smiled and nodded, oh and how was school today? Did you learn anything?” he popped it in the microwave for 90 seconds.

Celeste shrugged her shoulders ,

“It was okay, oh by the way some of my friends want to go out on Saturday so I told them they can crash here afterwards, is that okay with you.”

Julien jumped up and hugged Celeste,

“Yes of course it’s okay, he flung her back and forth, I’m so happy you’re making friends.”

Celeste laughed and pushed him away,

“JuJu, you act like I’m some shut in who never wants to leave the house and would love nothing more than to lay on the couch and, Celeste stopped and nodded, okay so I guess that is pretty much me.”

“But not anymore, this weekend you’re going out, maybe next weekend you’ll finally get laid.” Julien clapped his hands together.

Celeste sighed and shook her head,

“I don’t need to get laid Julien.”

“Oh really, he walked into the living room and grabbed the remote, let’s check and see what you’ve been watching on Netflix, shall we?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“When you’re sexually frustrated you watch Marvel movies because you’ve got the hots for the three Chris’s, Evans, Hemsworth and Pratt.”

“No I don’t, Celeste lunged at Julien for the remote, okay you’ve made you’re point. But it still doesn’t matter.”

Julien backed off,

“Okay, you’re right. I’m sorry I brought it up, he put his arm around her, you can do or not do whoever you want. Besides, one of us in this apartment should be welcomed at the pearly gates.” He winked and nudged his shoulder into hers.

“Nah, I’m already going to hell for laughing at old people falling down in those life alert commercials.”

“Did you ever see the video where someone takes clips from the commercials and adds music to it?”

“Yes, but let’s watch them anyway.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The next day~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The feminist voice of Sylvia Plath can be heard in her writing and told through her life, Celeste cleared her throat and looked down at her note cards, an examples of her feminist voice can be found in her poem Lady Lazarus which ends with the words, out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air, Celeste looked up from her note cards and saw Ian smiling at her, even at the young age of 17 Sylvia wasn’t interested in the traditional roles that women had during that time. She wrote, I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day, spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free I want to think, to be omniscient.”

Celeste put her note cards down and used the rest of her time to show images of Sylvia in a PowerPoint.

“Okay thank you Ms. Drummer, that was very informative. Does anyone have any questions, just as she was about to go sit down, a hand shot up in the air, Ian do you have a question for Celeste?”

Celeste clenched her jaw and let out an audible sigh. Ian nodded and leaned forward in his seat,

“Yeah I was wondering why you didn’t mention the fact that she was mentally ill?”

“Well because it doesn’t have anything to do with her being a feminist. If this was a Psych class I would’ve mentioned it. Unless you think they’re connected?”

Everyone turned and looked at Ian. He shook his head,

“I’m not saying they’re connected but maybe there is some truth to the saying, bitches be crazy.”

A few people in the class laughed but the teacher stopped it from going any further,

“Okay let’s keep the questions relevant and stop using terms like bitch to describe women.”

“My apologies Ms. Anderson and Celeste, I should have phrased the question better.”

His apologetic smile was enough for the teacher but Celeste stuck her lip up in disgust and took her seat.

After class the teacher handed Celeste her paper back and the grade she got on her presentation,

“You’re paper was great I just wish you would have brought that in a little more with your presentation but overall you did a good job. Keep it up!”

Celeste smiled and took her paper from the teacher. An A- wasn’t a bad grade but if it weren’t for the presentation part of the assignment she would have gotten higher than a 90%. She walked out of class with her head down reading the comments on her paper. Someone in front of her held the door for her,

“Thanks.” She said without looking up.

“You’re welcome Ms. Drummer.”

Celeste shook her head and turned around to face Ian,

“Don’t say my name like that.” Celeste straightened her back to appear taller and louder than she actually was.

“Like what?” Ian put his hands in his pockets and leaned in.

“Like, Celeste waved her hands in front of his face, that. Like everything you say has some hidden motive. It’s creepy and weird.”

“Whatever you say, he looked down at her paper then up to her face, good job by the way.” He winked and brushed past her.

IanJReyes0716: “The night I lost my keys, broke into a car and realized it wasn’t my car.”

KingStephen009:”You never did get that jacket back from that tattooed chick, did you?”

IanJReyes0716: “Nope but it was worth it.”

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m-madeleine · 5 years

Note

hiiii :) for the book questions, please talk about: 3, 9, 15, 22, 27, 64 :)

Hey :)

3. Your current favorite book?

I haven’t been reading much lately, but Maurice did a thing to me last year. And Angela Carter’s Black Venus was pretty great. I’ve also been having Les Mis feels after I finally finished the Brick recently.

9. An author/s you like/love?

Tolkien. No qualifiers.

Idk how good it is that I feel obliged to include Oscar Wilde for…not primarily writing-related things, but yeah.

Let’s put Jane Austen in here for old time’s sake.

Sylvia Plath. Huge wake-up call, poetry-wise.

Warsan Shire. No idea how she does her thing, but it’s very good.

I used to really like Graham Greene, but I haven’t read anything of his in a while.

Neil Gaiman. It’s complicated, but the things I like, I like a lot.

It feels a lil weird including someone based on one (1) book, but Harper Lee made a huge impression on me.

Angela Carter is kind of a recent discovery.

….I almost forgot about Christopher Isherwood. I’m so sorry, baby, how could I.

Ok I feel weird about only including Anglophone writers, so if pressed for writers for my other languages, I’d name Georg Büchner and Wolfgang Borchert for German and Alexander Pushkin for Russian (I feel like I’ve inhaled more Sergei Lukyanenko than Pushkin in my time, but that dude’s politics are so shitty he personally can suck it tbh, no matter how cool his worldbuilding is)

15. Favorite genre?

Here’s where I admit I…mostly read classics, with little regard to genre. I know, I know, The Canon™ is a terrible concept, but I just usually end up going for books that have some kind of distinction, be it Ye Olde Classics, modern classics, classics of their genre, must-reads. That makes me sound kinda horrible, but well. There’s only so much space in my brain and I don’t like any one genre enough to really commit to it. To spin that positively, I guess I like to read broadely, but only things that I’ve already…been pointed towards, in a way.

Slightly more likely to go for fantasy, and romance, probably. Also I quite like children’s lit! Usually more when it’s already older. I also will read basically anything and everything gay, without regard for any of the above (seriously, that’s basically the only thing that’ll entice me into pulling something from the shelf without having ever heard of it before), which is not really a genre, but yeah.

22. Favorite series?

Probably still Harry Potter. It takes a lot to get me invested in something with multiple installments. I also used to love Sergei Lukyanenko’s Night Watch series, as mentioned above, but ehhhh. I’ve got Feelings about that these days, even if it’ll always have a (somewhat) begrudging place in my heart (and nah, I haven’t read anything he wrote past 2010).

27. Favorite character/s?

Guh, do I have trouble with that. I don’t think that with books, I really view individual characters as separate from the overall cast, the setting, the plot, the language, etc? Maybe it’s a little different when something is like an actual fandom for me.

64. What else do you get besides books at a bookstore?

Another huge dramatic admission, I rarely go to bookstores bc…I rarely buy books (I’m a librarian’s kid, any wishes in that direction were met with a blank stare and a “But why spend money when I can get that for free from work”).

These days, I tend to go to the British Bookshop for gifts though. Like nerdy-leaning pins, mugs, jute bags.

Thank you for the questions!

#kikidiesunddas #replies #askbox meme #madeleine reads

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brown4eyedgirl · 5 years

Text

On finding community in books

He rolled over and brushed my face with his hand. My husband and I have these moments after our long days. Together, in the quiet, away from the chaos of our separate work places, when I've put my computer, note books, and reading aside, it's just us.

After nearly five years of longing for a husband who would read in bed, I looked over and there he was lost in, another book. He’s now reading almost as voraciously as me.

“You have to get rid of some of the bad books,” he said softly, as if he hoped it would come off as pillow talk but instead it was a request to purge my book collection.

Before his fingers grazed my cheek, they were thumbing the spines and covers that line the shelves in my office. Some are beautiful books. Inspiring books. Books you want to go back to and read over and over until the pages are worn thin from fingers clutching them. Some are research books. Highlighted with post-it notes hanging out. And yes, some are bad books. But getting rid of them, recycling them, feels like an act of blasphemy or treason. I’m a writer and a library worker. Books are treasured, sacred, beloved, and my husband wanted some of them gone.

“I’m a writer. I need to support other writers,” I tell him with every purchase of a new book. The thing is, it’s not just the authors of the titles that line my bookshelves that I’m supporting, it’s myself as a writer that I’m supporting.

***

When I fall in love with an author’s work, I start finding and reading as many books, essays and articles by them as possible. This happened after I first read Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me. After Googling and reading for hours, I stumbled upon a list of tips she wrote for writers. Number 3 is “Read. And don’t Read.” The first time I read that, my heart sang. I put so much pressure on myself to sit with my fingers on my keyboard watching the word count on the piece I was working on climb. The pressure sat heavy on me, and if I couldn’t come up with anything to write, guilt would set in. Knowing that reading could be part of my writing practice liberated me. I’d always found inspiration in the pages of the books I bought and checked out from the Library, and now one my favorite writers had given me permission to get lost in books to keep my writing afloat.

Writing as a creative pursuit is immensely isolating. Before anyone gets up, I’m awake. I steal away a few hours in the morning, before I get ready for work, to write. In these hours I lose myself to my thoughts, to my frustrations, to my insecurities. Creating, for artists both literary and visual, means getting tangled in some of the deepest and darkest parts of ourselves in hopes that what we create will leap out and grab those who find it. One of the ways I cope with the torment that occasionally comes with writing is sighing. These deep exhales attract my husband’s attention from other parts of the house. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“That was a big sigh to be nothing.”

“I’m just tired.”

Tired of thinking of what to write. Tired of relying on my brain to think up new words for the ones I repeat too often. Tired of worrying about structure, voice, character development, themes. Tired of waking up at 5:50 am so that hopefully I’ll get 2 good hours of writing in before I must shift gears, do my hair, put on work clothes and turn in to the teen services coordinator at our community’s public library. This level of exhaustion causes me to feel depleted some days. I wake up, my brain barely recognizing my alarm, and drape myself over the kitchen counter as I wait for the kettle to boil so that I can make coffee that will hopefully provide just enough stimulus to help me write again. “But maybe, when writing feels like scraping your insides clean before you have a chance to replenish yourself, it’s okay not to set a word count goal in your off hours,” Alicia Elliott wrote her piece “On Burnout.” But how does a writer fill the well again without losing momentum? This is the fear I wake to every morning I decide to take a day off because the thought of stringing together coherent words makes me want to run into the woods and leave the world behind. What if when I sit down at my computer again, I can’t write? The words don’t come, and I can’t think of a beautiful scene to describe the time that my ex and I went snowshoeing to hot springs. My deepest fear is that my book goes unfinished because I simply couldn’t think of any more words to write. I worry about failing myself. This happens at least once every two months, and then I crumble. I wander the house, my work place, listless with a sullen look heavy on my face. Eventually I remember there is a place to go refuel and to gain the will to write again. I surround myself with writers, friends who’ve chosen the same life of torture and anguish, a community of writers that exists online, but most importantly the writers whose books have inspired me before.

***

“I need a good book,” a member of the public said to me. I live for this question. I love recommending books.

“What do you like?” Every time I ask a library patron this question, I hope they’ll answer with nonfiction, as this is what I write, and most often read.

Our library is not full of dark wood and tall shelves stuffed with leather bound books. It’s a new space part with modern metal shelving, flooded with natural light. We don’t often shush people, and instead spend more time reminding those who expect total silence that this is a community space. Songs from story time will often reach the service desk and during a summer classical music academy, musicians use the meeting rooms to practice which causes flute, oboe and clarinet to seep into the nonfiction, mystery and DVD sections. An espresso grinder is heard at the public computers as the social enterprise coffee shop in the library prepares another latte for a student there to study for exams. This is the reality of our small-town library, we are more than just books. But when a moment to gush about a title I love comes, I take it wholeheartedly and will get caught up trying to find a reader a book they’ll love.

A favorite I regularly reach for, that sits on the library’s staff picks shelf with the handwritten sticker “Megan’s Pick” on it is Kyo Maclear’s Birds Art Life. At the other end of the library, in the children’s section, more of Maclear’s books sit on display selected as staff favorites.

There is a chapter in Birds Art Life on creative lulls. I’ve talked about this chapter to people who’ve heard me talk about it too many times. I’ve photocopied parts of it and read it aloud to a group of teen writers I work with at the library. I’ve shoved it into my husband’s hands when he’s wondered what to do with his life. “A lull can be soothing, tranquilizing and even restorative… Yet for many artists I know, the word lull signifies the exact opposite: the absence, the flaw, the incompleteness, something lethal and dangerous, a source of fear and melancholia.” The first time I read this chapter it was like Maclear had written it for me. She knew me, my struggles as a creative person, the trouble I had some days with self-discipline, the way sometimes what would start as “research” would devolve into online shopping. But it wasn’t just that she knew, she understood.

Looking at the shelves of books in my office and living room I find comfort. Kyo Maclear is joined by Sylvia Plath, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Caitlin Moran, Nick Hornby, Margaret Atwood, Vivek Shraya, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichi, Charlotte Gill, Ian Brown, Tanya Talaga and many more. Just glancing at the spines of these books, and the ones I walk past as I move through the library during my work day remind me that I’m not alone. There are others like me who have struggled with themselves, and the world to share their work and their words with the world. While I sit alone in my office, with my computer and my thoughts, I’m part of a community and a history that’s bigger than just me, and the books I sit with daily connect me to all the writers I know, love and am inspired by.

#books reading writing writers community booklover amwriting

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