#books written for 10-14 year olds is better than books written for my age

[kindlyeclipse]

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I’m gonna say it. YA, NA and Adult fantasy are all rather formulaic and redundant these days. The same tropes, the same type of worlds, right down to the fairies/demon/warlock or God with magic and big🍆. Why is it that MIDDLE GRADE readers are more imaginative, with better characters, world building and overall story.

#booklr #reading #books #bad fantasy #booklover #bookworm #books and reading #bookish #bookblr #books written for 10-14 year olds is better than books written for my age #fed up #disappointed

[zahri-melitor]

A Quick, Somewhat Joking Discussion of 'the Best Ways To Get Into Comics' (TM)

Be 10-14 years old, pick up a random comic at the library/bookshop/someone's collection and become obsessed. This is proven the best method and the level of confusion engendered by it is actually more useful long term than any other method. (At that age you are going to fall deeply in love with random texts that are never going to quite have the depth your brain imparts on them)

Mention to a friend who does like comics that you want to 'get into comics' and said friend, knowing your preferred types of tv shows and books, your favourite characters and having asked what you're hoping to read, carefully picks out something that is objectively a good starter comic that fits your tastes and makes your brain go brrrr. (god tier level, that friend is a keeper, also congratulations on the fact you are never going to replicate the feel of reading that first comic again)

Lurk or hang out in some fandom space where you are regularly exposed to discussions of comics that includes actual panels and storylines of recent comics, and work out from that what seems to have a vibe you like, so you go and pick up that run (solid option, being able to taste various writers and styles of run before diving in gives you a better chance of choosing a run that hooks you, I was introduced to so many runs via scans_daily in this way back in the day).

Wander into a library or comic shop or bookshop that has a decent number of comics with the idea that you want to look into reading these, and then flip through a bunch of trades in what you think you want to read before something catches your eye and you pick that up (less likely to be a definite hook, but has the benefit of being far more likely than any option listed further below to involve newbie-friendly art. And newbie-friendly art is something that isn't discussed enough in terms of recommendations but is one of the biggest reasons people just getting into comics bounce off the format).

Only here will I mention recommended character reading guides. In my experience they're useful in certain contexts, particularly for characters who have hard-to-trace chronologies, for finding out what runs that person considers essential to the character, for untangling the order of comics in particularly confusing large events, and for narrowing down and directing people where there's a big chunk of material to read about a character. My objection is they tend to be treated like gospel by newbies, they frequently don't consider whether the artwork is going to make their eyes burn, quite often they are more focused on the 'best' stories for a character rather than the 'most accessible stories' for that character (these are two separate concepts!) and they tend to sell a narrative of 'don't read X' where X is quite often a comic which people don't enjoy but where an important event happens or is simply an older comic that's particularly affected by community expectations and standards having changed since it was written.

You know that '75 Years of Comics' series of prestige hardbacks that DC did? They're great to hand to a newbie looking to get into a specific character or mantle, because it's got stand alone stories that are highly regarded or solidly introductory about that character from each era, they can page through it and work out what version makes their brain happy, and then follow up on those leads into more reading. (Expensive but perfect for libraries)

The first trade of a recent run for the character in question by the current or second most recent writer. Most runs when they change lead writers are going to have some level of onboarding simply because a lot of people DO switch what they're reading depending on what team is on the book, and by going with a current run you manage to sidestep a lot of the 'this feels weird and old' problems.

[olderthannetfic]

I've just read an article (in Gazeta Wyborcza) about a very popular series of books among young teens in my country, Poland, called "Rodzina Monet" (Family Monet). The author gained popularity while publishing on Wattpad lol. The article basically said that it's problematic because these books are read by young girls, even 10 years old, and it glorifies violence. Plus it just isn't well written - there were some fragments in the article and yeah it's not well written lmao. A woman in the comments said that her daughter is reading this book and asked if she should forbid it. Since no one answered her, I replied that I don't think forbidding the book is a good solution and suggested talking to her daughter about it, showing her the article and asking what she thinks about it. But I don't know anything more about that situation, for example how old the daughter is. I don't think I'd worry if my child were to read this book, I read trashy stuff too. But I started wondering if maybe there should be some control in such a case? The thing with the books from what I gathered (I haven't read them) is that they are about a 14yo girl, who suddenly lost her mother and grandmother, is sent away to US from Britain where she starts living with her 28yo (handsome) stepbrother and his 3 (also handsome) brothers. She lives in a beautiful villa since the stepbrother is super rich. He's also cold and distant and doesn't understand that she has issues with food (she has some kind of eating disorder). Some of the things he and his 3 brothers do can be described as domestic violence but they apologize, buy her expensive stuff and are all adult handsome men. Yeah it's a young adult fiction. The thing is that it's just not well written so none of the bad behaviours is commented upon.

--

Sounds like typical godawful id trash that people eat up. Making a rule against it will just make it more tantalizing.

It would be far more valuable to kick any worthless partners out of one's life and demonstrate not putting up with shit to a tween girl than to ban her from reading trashy books.

One could always try buying her something better, but IME, people who try that always do it wrong: they buy books that are better written, yes, but the vocabulary and sentence structure are a thousand times harder, there's zero iddy wish fulfillment, and the plot is something fucking depressing and supposedly edifying.

Readers can smell a tryhard "your taste is bad" gift a mile away.

I think it's also important when trying to find replacement trash to understand what the kink actually is. Why is it age gap? Well, have you seen 14-year-olds? They're awkward and covered in zits. Of course the protagonist is young like the readers and the hotties are older.

More importantly, why is it abusive? Absolute idiots will be like "Because society taught girls wah wah wah wah wah", but the actual reason is obvious if you've read trash romance for adults:

It's so the love interest(s) can be in the wrong.

The self inserty protagonist of this type of story has very little power. Not only is she usually younger, but she's poorer, a fish out of water in a new situation, etc. The way she gets power is by the love interest doing something absolutely horrible, realizing they have erred, and then groveling forever. Their guilt is an effective way to manipulate them. And yes, retail therapy is usually the next step from this particular trash classic all the way back to The Flame and the Flower.

You can try giving a teen girl a book about a teen girl action hero who is awesome and whose love interest likes her because of that... But if the reader doesn't feel awesome, she's still going to prefer a book about a loser with a destined, fated love or a misunderstood woobie whom other characters have to grovel to after not initially realizing she was special.

You can't fix self esteem by handing someone a book they don't identify with and telling them their id is wrong. And if self esteem does improve, that doesn't mean the lizard brain is going to switch trash fiction tastes anyway.

One can try leaving other fun books around, but that's about the most that could be helpful.

[bananaofswifts]

“Speak Now” wasn’t the album that made Taylor Swift a superstar. But it was the first one she made as a superstar.

Two years after she released “Fearless,” which sold more than 10 million copies and won the Grammy Award for album of the year, Swift returned in 2010 with her third studio LP, a dense and sprawling collection of songs about a life — a creative life, a professional life and a romantic life — lived squarely in the spotlight.

Now, amid the blockbuster Eras Tour she’ll bring to Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium next month for half a dozen nights, Swift, 33, has remade “Speak Now” as the latest installment in her plan to rerecord her first six albums.

Here are five takeaways from “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)”:

1. SHE WROTE ’EM ALL Swift has long been proud of the fact that she wrote all 14 songs on “Speak Now” by herself, and that hasn’t changed in 2023. In an essay that accompanies the LP’s new edition, she writes that, having had her authorship questioned in the past, she “made a decision that would completely define this album: I decided I would write it entirely on my own. I figured, they couldn’t give all the credit to my cowriters if there weren’t any. But that posed a new challenge: It really had to be good. If it wasn’t, I would be proving my critics right.”

Some no doubt remained suspicious that a woman in her late teens had truly composed “Speak Now’s” songs. Yet revisiting the album makes clear she accomplished what she set out to do: Her best songs here represent a high point in her immense catalog, with an emotional and intellectual incisiveness she’s never surpassed.

“You made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter,” she sings in the strummy opener, “Mine” — an entire short story in a single lyric. “You held your head like a hero on a history-book page,” she sings in the stately closer, “Long Live” — an image about as vivid as words can convey.

2. SHE RETCONNED A SNIDE LYRIC Though she’s made a virtue of precisely replicating her old albums — the “Taylor’s Version” campaign began, don’t forget, as a way to devalue master recordings she doesn’t own — Swift makes a crucial change in her fresh take on “Better Than Revenge.”

The pop-punk song is a snide takedown of a girl who “steals” the narrator’s boyfriend — a framing that reflects Swift’s mindset at age 19 but that also reveals the institutionalized misogyny in which that mindset was shaped. “She’s not a saint and she’s not what you think / She’s an actress,” Swift sneers in the original. “She’s better known for the things that she does on the mattress.”

On the new “Speak Now,” she swaps out the second of those lines for a less problematic lyric: “He was a moth to the flame / She was holding the matches.” It’s easy to understand why, of course, particularly given the heat Swift faced this year for her evidently short-lived romance with the 1975’s Matty Healy, whose history of demeaning comments regarding women of color led many a Swiftie to question the singer’s professed commitment to a variety of progressive ideals.

But it’s also easy to find some trouble in this attempt by one of the world’s richest and most powerful artists to memory-hole an unflattering moment from her past. What might she retcon next?

3. ‘DEAR JOHN’ REMAINS FANTASTICALLY SAVAGE

A better strategy for recontextualizing old work might be the one Swift deployed during a concert last month in Minneapolis, where she introduced a performance of “Speak Now’s” “Dear John” by assuring her ultra-devoted fans that they don’t “need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about 14 billion years ago.”

Her comments were widely understood to refer to John Mayer, about whom Swift is thought to have written “Dear John,” in which she excoriates an ex for gaslighting a woman “too young to be messed with.” Onstage she insisted she no longer cares about what happened to her when she was 19, which is almost certainly untrue. (The whole point of the “Taylor’s Version” project — the whole point of Taylor Swift — is that the past is always alive.)

Yet by explicitly positioning “Dear John” as a totem of her youth, Swift gave herself a kind of moral leeway to present the song as is on the new “Speak Now.” And thank goodness for that: Thirteen years after the song’s original release, its exacting savagery — “I’m shining like fireworks over your sad, empty town” — is still a thrill to behold.

4. BANJOS! Swift wouldn’t score her first No. 1 single on Billboard’s Hot 100 until “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” from 2012’s “Red” — an album for which she consciously adopted the sleek programmed textures of the hitmaking pop producers Max Martin and Shellback.

Given where she’s gone since then, both aesthetically and commercially, it’s fascinating to remember how rooted in hand-played sounds the former country phenom still was on “Speak Now,” which piled on the strings and banjos and acoustic guitars in a year when the Hot 100 was dominated by the likes of Kesha’s “Tik Tok,” Usher’s “OMG,” Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” and Far East Movement’s “Like a G6.”

5. ‘TIMELESS’ LEADS THE OUTTAKES Like Swift’s remakes of “Fearless” and “Red” before it, “Speak Now (Taylor’s Version)” comes with a handful of newly recorded outtakes from her so-called vault. None quite rise to the level of what’s on the album itself, though each provides an intriguing look at where her head was as she was writing.

“Electric Touch” has chugging emo guitars provided in part by Fall Out Boy; “I Can See You” sounds like the Police, of all things. “Castles Crumbling” features Hayley Williams of Paramore (one of Swift’s opening acts on the Eras Tour) and, as produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, suggests she was into cloistered indie folk years before “Folklore” and “Evermore.”

The best of the vault tracks is “Timeless,” a characteristically detailed fantasy in which the narrator, having come across a box of photos in an antique shop, imagines herself in a series of historical romances. (Fans have decided the tune was inspired by Swift’s grandmother Marjorie, whose name provided the title of a track on “Evermore.”) “Time breaks down your mind and body / Don’t you let it touch your soul,” she sings in the bridge — advice she’s clearly taken to heart.

#taylor swift #speak now tv #review

[imminentinertia]

SHIPPER TAG GAME

@lurkingshan tagged me, thank you darling! So now I'm forced to admit that whispers I'm honestly not much of a shipper

I get into shows and films, but rarely so much that I get invested in couples (canon or otherwise). Even rarer, so much that I start taking ship war sides. Notable exception: Harmony (Harry/Hermione) because that ship came with the stupidest shit I've ever seen in any fandom.

1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care anymore?

What do you mean, don't care anymore. I absolutely do care about every ship I've ever shipped.

No wait - as a very young teenager I was so into Alice Hoffman's books it's not even funny. Especially Property Of. I wasn't terribly into the nameless main character, but I adored The Dolphin and thought McKay would be much better off with him. Then I grew up and realised that Property Of is pretty badly written and has a frightfully naïve plot (no wonder, she was practically a baby when she wrote it), although it really hit the spot for a 13 year old with a rabid case of bad boy syndrome, and completely stopped caring about any of the characters.

2. Which ship would you consider your first one?

The first I went insane about was Harry/Draco, so probably that.

3. Your first fanfic belonged to which couple?

Harry/Draco. I wasn't going to write fic at all! Wasn't interested in writing them myself! But I got so fed up with all the horrible purple prose in a lot of fics, wrote a pisstake, and it escalated.

4. Do you remember the first couple you saw a fanart over?

No. That was so many years ago. SO MANY.

5. Did you ever get into ship discourse?

No. When I get into discourse it's about other things than ships. When I try to start discourse it's definitely about other things.

6. Did you used to have any no-otp or have it currently?

Some pairings squick me, but I tend to forget the horrors as quickly as I discover them.

7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read?

Jaeyoung/Sangwoo (Semantic Error).

8. Currently, do you have any OTPs?

VEGAS/PETE. I also adore a number of other BL couples, but that's the OTP. Show versions, not book originals.

9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together?

Spooks WASTED A BRIILLIANT OPPORTUNITY for a ship that could have been either canon or not-canon by KILLING A GUY ten minutes after he meets THE POTENTIAL LOVE OF HIS CANON OR NOT-CANON LIFE. They barely had time to share some chips. YES I AM EXTREMELY MAD, 16 YEARS LATER.

10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting?

To me, any ship that's well written and where both characters are well formed and not limp 2D shit can be kind of interesting. I can't remember any of my squick pairings starting to intrigue me. Does it count that I used to dislike any KinnPorsche pairing featuring Ken, but I'm starting to quite like them?

11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, was considered normal but now you would be cancelled over?

Oh, I'm sure I do. I like age gaps. People are often very weird about them.

12. What was your favorite crack ship?

Giant Squid/anyone. Such a great setup for crack tentacle porn.

13. Who is the couple you read more fanfics of?

I've read a fuckton of Harry/Draco, but because of betaing and rec blog running it might be Even/Isak? Give it enough time and it will be Vegas/Pete.

14. What most of your ships usually have in common?

At least one, preferably both, of the parties is a criminal. Okay, that also has to do with what sorts of films and shows get made and appeal to me, but I love a good criminal so much and I just can't get interested in some goody two-shoes. I can honestly only think of Even/Isak when I try to list my ships that don't feature a delicious criminal. Preferably unhinged murderers, but I'll take minor misdemeanours too.

15. What do you absolutely hate in a ship?

Big fat traditional seme/uke or het dynamics where the seme/man blatantly doesn't give a canon shit about the uke/woman. I could write a thesis on this, I suppose.

As usual I don't dare to actually tag people, but if you've made it this far, you are so tagged.

#tag game

[queen-susans-revenge]

Writer 20 Questions

seen via @findswoman!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

58

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

177,314

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Dragon Age, fairy tale retellings, and one fic each for Sherlock Holmes and Batman

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

so Fade to Black and Fade to Black and Back, my two multi-chapter smut series for Star Wars Rebels, are I guess going to be my enduring fandom legacy lol. 637 kudos for the first and 452 for the second.

After that it's...more smut, but Talk About It is Dragon Age smut, and I guess my most popular stand-alone story at 399 kudos.

Then it's back to Star Wars Rebels, but Wedding Dance (377 kudos) is a gen fic, so that's my most popular non-smut piece. Braided at 320 kudos is another explicit one.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I always mean to, but sometimes when a bunch come in at once I get overwhelmed. I try and go back and respond to unanswered comments every time I revisit an old fic. Just this week I answered a couple that were seven years old *wince*. It's never too late, right?

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

That's Scenes From Rivendell, no question. I can still make myself cry re-reading that fic. Poor Celebcarch.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Most of them have happy endings really, but I'll say the happiest is Marriage of Convenience, because it was written to provide a happy ending for Alistair and Anora--and that's a pairing that only arises out of some pretty grief-laden circumstances in Dragon Age: Origins. So that's the fic that takes something sad and makes it better.

8. Do you get hate on your fic?

A couple times people have tried to chide me for writing smut, which is like ??? Did you not see ALL the warnings? My sister what were you even doing at the devil's sacrament?

9. Do you write smut?

I doooooo. Yes I do. I don't feel even a little bit bad about it, either.

Sex is important! It's one of the most intense, emotion-rich experiences in life! Especially in a love story--there is nothing that will tell you more about the dynamic between two people than showing how they have sex. And the smut is the part that's usually left out in mainstream media, so it's the big "missing piece" that I am often drawn to want to fill in, creatively.

10. Do you write crossovers?

I haven't, but it would be a fun challenge.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I'm aware of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes and it's the best feeling every time. Same for getting podfic made of my stories, or fanart. Just the best.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic?

No, but from rp experiences, I think collabs are absolutely the way to go if possible. It just gets lonely writing on your own, and having a partner keeps the energy up.

14. What‘s your all-time favorite ship?

Space pirate OCs. But excluding my own characters... man, I've had poor luck with my ships, honestly. Looking back through the characters I was really passionate about, canon screwed me one way or another on all of them. I loved Mulder/Scully, Xena/Gabrielle, and Kanan/Hera, and all of their shows went off the rails at the end, so I think about them all with a tinge of sadness now.

It's better to love your own characters, because then at least when you make awful things happen to them, it doesn't come as a surprise.

15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

My only current WIP is a kid's book, and I hope I do finish it!

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialog, and also there's a sort of lyrical register that I can shift into pretty easily (it's a trick I often use for endings).

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Oh, self-indulgence. Things like writing about Kanan's seaglass eyes, or people "growling" their dialog. Cheese, basically. I don't rein myself in too much for fanfic, but in original writing I have to be strict with edits because if I don't force myself to stay spare and restrained, I'm probably getting cheesy with it.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

Tricksy, very tricksy! It's certainly not something you can just hand off to Google Translate. I personally wouldn't do it unless I had some first hand experience with the language, or could consult with native speakers.

Funny story on that, for the space pirate novel, I had a bit where I needed an automated warning looping in various languages. The English was "Warning! Please evacuate the building!"

I asked my Russian friend to give me a translation, and he said I'd need to do some cultural translation first, because the Russian "would be a lot more direct. And they wouldn't say 'please.'" So he gave me Vnimaniye! Vyhodi zdaniye! which apparently translates more directly to "Attention! Exit building."

That's the kind of thing Google Translate can't do for you.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

X-Files. This was Usenet days. Alt.tv.x-files. Many many memories. At one point there was a spinoff group so we could roleplay, but not roleplay being in the show, exactly. Just like all living in a town. It was almost a proto-Tumblr.

I miss Usenet.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

It might be The Last of the Rebel Angels: that one's not the best, I don't think, but it's the weirdest and most ambitious. I had something to say, and even if I only managed to sketch it out or gesture at it, there's still a really tender place in my heart for that fic.

Any fic writers who'd like to fill out the questions, please consider yourselves tagged!

#fic writer problems

[ineffectualdemon]

Do you mind if I ask your top 10 favorite characters (can be male or female) from all of the media that you loved (can be anime/manga, books, movies or tv series)? And why do you love them? Thanks....

Ohhhh that's a hard question

My favourites tend to change depending on which media I'm most obsessed with so I'm going to set some criteria

1. The character has to be from a piece of media I have been into for longer than a year. By which I mean it's survived as something I like and think about even when it's not my current obsession

2. Its favourite character not character identify with the most. There may be some cross over but I have to have a reason other than "I relate to them!"

3. Favourite character does not mean "Character I Think is Nicest" an objectively evil character can be a good character if they are written well

Ok and with that out of the way

10. Adam Young - Good Omens: as much as I love Crowley and Aziraphale I found Adam's journey in the book to be the most compelling. He's at the beginnings of puberty and growing up. The age where all people tend to start figuring out who they are.

He learns things about the world that upset him. That grown-ups don't know what they're doing and the world has so many problems that seem are larger than him. But he has the power to change that but has to learn that can does not equal should

Its very much a coming of age story and is done in a way that I found very poignant

9. Sailor Mercury/Ami - Sailor Moon: Ami is an underrated character in my opinion. She is the smart one and is gentle and helpful and is basically often I think overlooked by the fandom

But I found Ami centric stories to be my favourite. Ami's back story and the issues that haunt her is basically that before the Sailor Senshi she was extremely isolated from her peers. She didn't have any friends her own age and pretty much only studied and seemed fine but was actually terribly lonely.

Ami centric episodes really explore how that isolation and loneliness affected her and how much her friendship with the other Senshi has changed her life for the better. And while 14 year old me who was also very lonely and I did identify with Ami I also just found her quiet strength really compelling

8. Wei Wuxian - Mo Dao Zu Shi: specifically the novel WWX. I like his character because he is morally grey.

He did objectively messed up shit in canon. He also hurt people both because he thought he was doing the right thing and sometimes because he was just being a dick.

When he gets his second chance he obviously has regrets and he's honest with himself about his failures. But I also like him because he's such an unreliable narrator. I like that the novel starts with the rumours and opinions around WWX and then later his own assumptions about what the people around him think of him...and then we gradually learn how nothing we were told at the start was true. Neither the rumours about WWX nor WWX's perspective on past events

He's very complex and his story is of someone who made mistakes in his youth on top of being traumatised and having to live with the consequences of those mistakes and the aftermath of the trauma...is just super interesting. I also like that while he does have regrets and things he would do differently...not all of it. He still has his convictions and feels justified about certain choices. And that's again why I enjoy his character

7. Vetinari - Discworld: While never a main character I really enjoy Vetinari as a character. A man who runs a city state like a finely tuned machine. I love his relationship with Sam Vimes especially and the delicate balance he keeps with him. Not to mention his work with Moist Von Lipwig

I really enjoy characters who work setting the plot up behind the scenes and nudging the main characters to where they need to be for their plans. Another character in this sort of vein I enjoy is Nie Huaisang from MDZS. But Vetinari just has just such an fun vibe to him as he carries on his business

6. Pippin Took - Lord of the Rings: It took me awhile to pick my favourite LOTR character. I based this on who's story I was most excited to get back to when reading The Two Towers

And it really was Pippin. Pippin is young and reckless and for a long time doesn't fully grasp the danger of what they are doing and really doesn't get the grim reality of their situation.

Pretty much all the other characters in the fellowship are aware from the beginning that their mission will probably fail and that they could (and probably would) all die in their attempt to destroy the ring.

That doesn't stop them from trying because they know if they don't try they're definitely going to die and if the go down they are gonna go down fighting

Pippin just does not get this for a long time. Right up until the palantir and going to Minas Tirith, he thinks he's just having an adventure like Bilbo. And when he's right in the thick of it he has to do a lot of growing up very fast

I really enjoy his growth as a character and the path his character takes from kinda spoiled kid to an adult who has strong convictions. I also like that as a character he swears loyalty as a soldier and then has to break that oath in order to do the morally correct thing (save Faramir) I just really love that

5. Bakugou Katsuki - My Hero Academia: yes I know I'm a basic bitch. To be fair though I hated the little shit when I started the show.

I thought he was a 2 dimensional bully and annoying. But the little shit warmed his way into my heart. Bakugou has grown while still retaining his core personality traits. He learns to listen, to encourage those around him, and to respect Deku but all in a very Bakugou angry cat sort of way.

He has so much trauma and anger but he has been self reflecting since the beginning and making changes in a way that feels very natural and real. I have other posts on here about Bakugou and his growth as a character. But I just really like his journey and the current manga arc is kicking my ass

4. Cimorene - The Enchanted Forest Series:

Cimorene is so no nonsense and sensible. She makes choices and saves herself and helps those around her with a strength of character that is admirable

And someone so level headed and sensible could be a boring main character but instead she's someone you want to spend time around and befriend. She really doesn't put up with shit but she never lets that impact her kindness

Also she would correctly gender me and help me get the magical equivalent of HRT if I asked nicely

3. Azula - Avatar the Last Airbender:

Again they don't have to be good guys. But seriously Azula is such an interesting character. When she is the antagonist she is genuinely terrifying but then something happens that reminds you she is a child. A child whose mother made her feel monstrous and a father who groomed her to be a monster.

She is sent to arrest/kill her uncle and brother and does it with glee but also brings her brother back

Her final battle, the confrontation between her and Zuko, is a tragedy and is framed as one

Azula is a villian but she a also a child who is being pitted against her only sibling. I will never tire of her character

2. Dash X - Eerie Indiana:

He's sometimes a villian and sometimes an ally and might be an alien but is also a con man and frankly he's a scrungly rat boy and child me saw him and said "that's my gender please"

1. Geordi La Forge - Star Trek TNG: there are a lot of reasons why this character is great but honestly? Its cause he's nice to Data.

He's smart and kind and he's respectful of Data and is patient when his friend has questions that seem obvious and gently explains social cues

As a small autistic child I wanted someone to be nice to me like Geordi was to Data. So I loved Geordi. Enough to name my teddy after him.

#ask #favourite characters #good omens #adam young #sailor moon #sailor mercury #mdzs #wei wuxian #lotr #pippin #peregrine took #mha #bakugou katsuki #the enchanted forest #cimorene #atla #azula #eerie indiana #dash x #star trek tng #geordi la forge

[someonelookingpraediti]

Currently Reading...

A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara

I honestly didn't know anything about this book before buying it, except that I'd seen people all over tumblr crying over it, calling it "heartbreaking", "brutal", "traumatic". Great, I thought, just my kind of thing!

It's a pretty intimidating book, and probably would have sat on my shelf, collecting dust, languishing in my TBR for years, if Henry hadn't bought us tickets to see the play.

"Have you read A Little Life?" "No, but it's on my TBR!" "Do you want to see the play? It's in May." "Sure, I'll definitely have read it by then!"

And suddenly it was mid-April and, much like in my school days, I had not done the reading.

No worries, I re-bought it on kindle, because that's the way I read quickest, and did some quick calculations. In order to get done before the show, I would need to read 7% of the book per day - not including Sundays, because I know what I'm like. Doable... probably. I'll admit, I was a bit worried.

Henry also warned me that I might need to take breaks and read other things, or I might find it "too much". The word "brutal" came up again. I don't normally read two books at once, I tend to end up neglecting whichever I'm less keen on. But I took his point - getting emotionally drained by a book wouldn't make me read it any faster. So I decided to make this my "take to work" book, and while at home, read some "light" books.

I finished a week ahead of schedule, and didn't really get a lot of other reading done - I managed one children's book.

There are some books you just start reading, and you know. This is one of those.

I was 3% in, and I knew. It's so beautifully written, and long before anything even happened, I was hooked.

At 14%, I cried for the first time.

This book is told in snippets and snapshots, moving back and forth through time, and from so many different perspectives. The book is one of JB's art shows. I want to stop, at 25%, when Jude is stupidly, blissfully happy, when everything is going well for him and he's loved and in love, finally, finally happy. I don't want another 75% of things going wrong.

31%, and happiness is not for Jude. But it's for you, Willem.

At 43% it got bad. At 45%, it got really bad. People kept using the word "brutal", but at first it was almost uplifting. I almost began to think I was reading the wrong book, the sheer tenderness between these boys, the love shared in every interaction, was charming and hopeful. And then, in the space of about a chapter, it all went wrong, and I spent the rest of the evening feeling like someone had kicked me in the sternum.

But it got better, it got better. There were The Happy Years. A subheading that was so positive that at first I couldn't take it at face value. But they really were the happy years.

85%, and I'm crying from sheer happiness.

86%, and the breath is knocked from me in one sentence. I spend the rest of the book crying, and by the end I'm wailing; big, ugly, noisy, gulping, gasping sobs. I'm crying my heart out.

But the thing is. This is a happy book. Yes, it has a sad ending, but many books do. Other than that one particular stretch (43%, remember, and for only 10% of the book) it wasn't brutal. Most of the horrific, terrible things that happen to him are in the past, they've already happened, before the book even starts. Even before the story opens, they are done, past, immutable, unchangeable. They can't be unwritten. The last 15%, the sad 15%, is awful to read - but it doesn't erase the rest of his life - the happy part of his life. It doesn't erase the 35 or so years he and Willem had together. And as the end of the book shows, people die in their forties and fifties and sixties as often as they live to old age. Lives cut short - but not that short. Not tragically short, not unusually short. But unusually happy, at least for a little while.

I don't know if I could bear to read this book again, and I don't know that I could recommend it - at least not to any of the people I know. But I smiled more than I cried.

#currently reading #not totally spoiler free but i think ive done well #a little life #hanya yanigahara

[tiredlyinfandom]

My experience with the library system of the American Public School program

I would like to begin with some background of my literary experience. I was raised by a mother who did not believe in censoring what I read. I was not allowed to read her very clearly trashy romances until I was 18 (side note, I read much worse smut at 13. Comedy romances are pretty good though). I was basically allowed to get and read whatever I wanted. That's how it was for me.

So, I went from Magic Treehouse in first grade, to middle school novels by the time I was in the third grade. I was a big fan of my older sister's spy novels at the time. I was making leaps and bounds in my reading and language comprehension. And then of course, our schools got too crowded and I was redistricted into a middle school for fifth grade. I was excited at first, I would have access to the books that were in my reading level, right?

Wrong.

First library day rolled around, and we were told we could only check out books that were grade level appropriate for our group. Try telling this to a mousy me who had never been told a book was too mature for me. Me, who went to the library once a week during the summer, and read two to three three-hundred page books in one day, staying up all night because I had to know the ending and it couldn't wait until morning.

So I looked around and found that spy novel I remembered reading in third grade. I tried to check it out, only to be told that it was a middle school book. So I had to put it back, I would then pull several books that I had read before, because I had asked my older sister if I could read them from her book shelf. All too mature for a fifth grader.

I eventually settled with a book trilogy I had read before last summer that I knew I would be allowed to get.

A few weeks later we took that stupid reading level test. I, young, 10ish years old, had the reading level of 14-15 year old. I was supposed to be reading three grades above where I was.

So I, smart boy that I was, talked to my mom, told her everything, talked to the librarians, teachers and the principal to negotiate a way for me to read within my actual level. We suggested permission slips. we got shot down, the middle schoolers were taking the books meant for my age range, meaning we had no books to read.

I read the same series eight times, librarians tried to give me new books but I owned most of the good series, read and reread them long before I had been "of age" to comprehend the stories.

Middle school rolled around and I had begun reading Jules Verne, Sherlock Holmes, and had tried to convince my mother to let me buy a book on the murders of Jack the Ripper when I was 11. (My gram was on board, she appreciated my healthy curiosity in the morbid. my mom? Less so).

So yeah, I learned about the censoring of reading by 10, and at that point I was pissed, I didn't like that, I was never one to be told no on my reading material. So I began reading more than what they would have wanted me to.

Now I'm anti government, and censorship of literature is the largest downfall of man. One of the first thing we learn in middle school is the book burnings the Nazis did in Germany. That was the first thing we learned about, to show that a government was controlling.

AND GUESS WHAT.

Controlling the flow of information is fucking fascist. And we have both challenged and banned books, I have read several. Granted, just because a book has been challenged or banned in some places and or schools does not mean a child want's to read about an infant shoved into a freeze when they're 15. I have read Anne Frank, Over the Cuckoo's nest, Of Mice and Men, When the Street Cars Come Back. Those were required readings, and I hated them, Anne Frank had so much trauma, Over the Cuckoo's Nest was written by a white man in the perspective of a mute Native American man. Of Mice and Men was Ableist and infantilizing of character's with a disability, causing us to feel sympathy before hitting us with the "shoot the man with a mental issue because he's better off dead". When the Street Cars Come Back had, among other things, incest, rape, abuse, infant murder, murdered infant in a chest freezer as black mail.

Now if you want to read these things, go on, you can, I just don't think kids should read on murder and war, death and rape, as a requirement. Do I know what should be implemented instead? Hell no, I'm not a teacher, I'm a college student who likes to write. Kids should read stories that teach them lessons and inspire them to push boundaries, not scare them into conformity.

All this to say, I'm still fucking bitter that my school wouldn't let me read spy novels at the age of 10. Fuck you guys, now I write porn on patreon.

(Plug for the patreon: lemon_yard is the username, go support my gay ass, if you want)

#reading #vent post #tw:abuse #tw:rape #tw:murder #tw:sexual assault #tw: infant death #tw:incest #my fucking middle school made me so pissed #stay tuned for a rant on how my 8th grade science teacher killed my dream to be a paelentologist. #yes this is my actual life #yes i had to read those books #lots of old authors are racist fyi #not like lovecraft racist #but still pretty damn racist #we had to read a war book like every year #it was nasty #blog

[waitingformyfavoritesongs]

22 April 2023 Saturday 1:03 am pt

Incubus is threatening me not to put up 🆙 my intaglio print picture here. It’s on my Instagram. He is burning 🔥 my vag. Benny blanco put up 🆙 that song 🎵 on his post George Michael. Michael sounds like my kill. 1:06 am pdt no one seems to care though. I haven’t seen any progress towards resolution. Only threats to tear me apart. I wish I never dated Scott. He wasn’t worth getting to know for me Bcz I don’t like 👍 him now. Hot 🥵 above right ear 👂. If they’re threatening me what is it they’re afraid 😱 of? That people will believe me? Bcz my print was made between fall 2007 and spring 2008? And Amar Malik article said July 2010? 1:10 am pdt it would (left hip bone 🦴 pain) point it in my favor slightly but no one likes me so no one will do anything to help me... so? 1:11 am pdt

1:13 am pdt stereo hearts 🥰

1:14 am pdt never going to dance 💃🏻 again Bcz my hip bones 🦴 etc are being taken away. 1:15 am pdt

1:17 am pdt do you think stereo hearts 🥰 sounds like it was written by a girl 👧 or a guy? I would like to see a poll on this. If you didn’t know who. Wrote it. Curious to know what others think 💭 only for experimental purposes. 1:19 am pdt

1:20 am pdt I want (back pain sharp) my bones 🦴 back and my youthfulness! My health. I don’t care about the money 💰! 1:21 am pdt 😞😖😭 1:22 am pdt I want this nightmare to be over!

1:23 am pdt I want to be able to work hard again without consequences such as losing my bones 🦴 and brain 🧠! 1:24 am pdt 😫😤😰

1:25 am pdt incubus attacked my skull 💀 and probably brain 🧠 today from trying to walk 🥺😖😭 1:26 am pdt

1:29 am pdt years and years of postponement and unfulfilled promises so a lot of stuff I won’t believe until I see results. A lot of stuff is like in reruns. 1:31 am pdt my hotel 🏨 is not giving us extra recycling and compost bins... 🤷🏻‍♀️ Nothings changed. Composting should be mandatory everywhere. 1:32 am pdt

1:33 am pdt acid throat pain no tengo dinero. It’s too bad Travis McCoy didn’t become a millionaire. Wait did Bruno Mars? Did either of those guys do stuff in the billionaire song 🎵? Who can I ask for money 💰? 1:35 am pdt Benny Blancos post literally day after my birthday 🎂 so it looks intentionally dedicated to me about not being able to dance 💃🏻 again. 1:36 am pdt and Amar Malik has some weird posts with a pink liquid spill. Rose 🌹 Rosa pink . Shana = beautiful, rose 🌹, Lilly 1:38 am pdt right arm acid throat too

1:41 am pdt incubus pointed something out to me days ago. It sometimes hard to think 💭 when I can’t breathe 🧘🏻‍♀️ and fighting for my life. So it’s okay 👌 if I’m a whore and it’s my fault 🤦‍♀️ Bcz I shouldn’t have dated me for I don’t remember how long how many days but I don’t think 💭 it was more than 2 months. Some people say by the third month you will know if something will become long term? I don’t really remember spending July 4 th with Scott in 2007. Trying to remember but it’s hard. I used to keep everything. But I was bad at putting dates on drawings ✍️ in my sketch ✍️ books 📖. I guess it was my fault 🤦‍♀️. I don’t have a lot of experience with dating. I guess I never learned until Q said it’s supposed to work immediately. But that was after s*x with Scott. I was trying to see if people would grow on me. I was better off hearing the advice b4 not after. My parents are divorced and they have a huge age gap. My parents were pen 🖊 pals. But I guess my dad rushed my mom Bcz he was already very old. He wanted/needed to have babies 👶 ASAP I guess. They tried to make it work. They weren’t the right fit unfortunately. 1:51 am pdt teeth 🦷 pain 1:52 am some times you just bite the cookie 🍪 5 year engagement. My dad had a fiancé who was stolen by another man 👨, so he had bad luck. 1:53 am pdt my dad wasn’t rich 🤑 I think the other man was? 1:54 am pdt

2:21 am pdt while I was at UCB my eczema on my hands 🙌 got worse so I stopped printmaking. 2:22 am pdt I didn’t do printmaking my second year and beyond. 2:23 am pdt

2:37 am pdt incubus is extremely biased and extremely WRONG 😑. He or she is vilifying me about dating Scott. I was attracted to him too much. And I wanted it to work out 🏋️‍♀️ I wanted to like 👍 someone I was attracted to. But I guess it was too dangerous a situation and I didn’t realize it. Bcz it was hard for me to say no even though I wanted to and meant to say no, he physically didn’t allow me to say no. He physically stopped 🛑 me from responding and went for it. 2:41 am pdt that was probably only the second or third time we hung out even though I don’t remember anymore I think 💭 I used to think 💭 I remembered it being very early on. Too early. Bcz I wanted to say NO Bcz my heart ❤️ wasn’t there yet. But he said he could feel I wanted to. Duh 🙄 that’s hormones. But he is probably trying to lie (acid head pain 2:44 am pdt) and twist it into saying he was in love with out saying it then, but twisted it for later when he wanted to make me look 👀 bad. Bcz he didn’t want people to know what happened exactly. I already told him I don’t think 💭 we should be doing this, but he challenged me. It’s not ok 👌 to challenge a woman 👩🏼. If she says no respect ✊ it. 2:47 am pdt

2:48 am pdt at least I verbally said b4 the s*x a very long no. Acid lips 👄 pain b4 I typed. Acid brain 🧠 pain.

2:50 am pdt I seem to be punished for this. I move to ban lap dances from strip clubs . If I’m being punished acid brain 🧠 pain for that then I will be saving every strippers life by warning ⚠️ them this is what they are like. They will eat your brains 🧠 with acid if you don’t claim responsibility for any rape that occurs after lap dancing 💃🏻. If Scott is punishing me then you are warned. He likes teenagers. Teens at my high school 🏫 rubbed their butts on guys crotch in dances. They didn’t get raped? 2:54 am pdt

2:58 am pdt I guess it’s true. I’m going to die Bcz of Scott cano. Bcz they blame me for stuff they tricked me into doing. 2:59 am pdt men are messed up and 😧. 3 am pdt they are not safe (stomach pain) to be alone with or to conduct business 👨‍💼 with. Unfortunate. 3:01 am pdt

3:04 am pdt I will repeat 🔁 myself Bcz now there are too many posts 😑. Women only desire p*nis. Adequately sized. P*nis. Nothing else would satisfy a woman 👩🏼! But we don’t know what men will try to put their p*nis. Into a pie 🥧 or a sheep 🐑? 3:07 am pdt

3:09 am pdt if people like Amar Malik more than me then I guess there’s nothing I can do. They want to award 🥇 him and not me I cannot do anything. 3:11 am pdt

3:11 am pdt in this weird world 🌎 now that is coming out it doesn’t seem to matter who had the idea 💡 first under what circumstances. Whether I forgot about specific things or I wasn’t made 100% aware of the truth and they messed around with my head a lot for a long time b4 telling me. 3:14 am pdt a lot of sharp back pain. I forgot a lot. No crossover. 3:15 am pdt all I thought 💭 was those guys were regular people like me and they were doing weird bad stuff to me. 3:15 am pdt

3:23 am pdt I guess I have to give up 🆙 Bcz god wants them to have what originally thought 💭 was mine. I thought 💭 about stuff for a while b4 I sang in the shower 🚿 in my apartment. Everything (acid hot pain left hip pain bone 🦴 difficulty breathing cruncher groin bone 🦴 3:26 am pdt I need to face the music 🎶 is that this a cruel joke on me😖😭😫 and that there is nothing else to this. There is no new earth 🌍 that we will all go to together. If there was, I would think 💭 that (pain cramp fart 💨 3::30 am pdt) anyone who has a growing family should go first. Hopefully 🙏 that it’s a quick trip! 3:31 am pdt please stop 🛑 hurting me please stop 🛑 taking my bones 🦴😫😖😭🥵🥵🥵🥵 3:32 am pdt

[lesfeldickbiblestudy]

  Through the Bible with Les Feldick LESSON 1 * PART 1 * BOOK 51 For Lost Mankind – Death and Judgement Hebrews 9:15 – 10:1a Hebrews 9:14a "How much more…" The book of Hebrews is constantly referring back to the system of Law and Judaism – and that it was good. But, now we’ve come on this side of the Cross, and the Law has been set aside; it was completely fulfilled at the Cross. Now everything is what? Better! And so this is exactly what he is talking about here. The Book of Hebrews is not a book of salvation like Romans or Galatians or even a book of church position like Ephesians. The Book of Hebrews was written to Jews who were still hanging on to a lot of the things of Judaism in Paul’s day. And remember that, when Paul writes Hebrews, the Temple in Jerusalem is still going. Even though the Romans had been hating the Jews for probably a hundred years or more, God in His Sovereignty did not let them destroy the Temple until after Paul’s epistles were completed. I hadn’t thought of that before. So now with Paul’s epistles complete (and he can say that we’re no longer under Law), there was no need for the Temple. There was no need for the priesthood, and there was no need for sacrifices. But, it wasn’t until after the revelations of this Age of Grace that God permitted the Temple to be destroyed, and the priesthood dissolved and all the things that were associated with it.What an amazing God we have! And He does everything in perfect timing. Now the other thing I like to point out about the Book of Hebrews is that it’s not for the novice. I don’t expect new believers to just jump in and say, ‘WOW! I can really get a lot out of Hebrews." I just don’t think that’s possible because of what Paul says way back in chapter 5, verses 13 and 14. And I think it’s just for this very reason that the novice cannot fully digest the things in Hebrews. Now for the Jews (to whom he was writing), you see, they were steeped in all this. They had been for generations, but for the non-Jew, this is just something that we’re not accustomed to reading and seeing and delving into – and so he says there in chapter 5 verse 13: Hebrews 5:13-14a "For everyone that useth milk is unskillful in the word of righteousness: for he is a babe. 14. But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, (see!) even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised…" So the Book of Hebrews is not milk, let me put it that way. The Book of Hebrews isn’t for the novice, the young believer. It’s for the mature believer who studies the Word. And, consequently, I suppose, a lot of people think I may be going over their heads in these Hebrews broadcasts, but we trust that as we come through you’ll understand that, even for the novice, my, to just come in and periodically and feast. Iris and I were just talking on our way up about how the world has been changing generation to generation. And she was talking about her Mom having to carry water from the well to the old washing machine and the hand-wringers and hanging out the clothes. You might remember that. Well, we didn’t have any part of that – by the time we got married, we had the washer and the dryer. And now our kids, I suppose they think what we went through was way back in the ancients someplace and they don’t do anything like we did. Well then, as we kept on driving, I thought how this just fits with Hebrews. Hebrews is something you can just jump in and feast on like maybe an occasional trip to a high-class restaurant. Now there again, times have changed. You see, when we were first married and our kids were little, maybe three or four times a year we would drop the kids off at my folks, and we’d go to a real posh steakhouse and we would just live it up and feast. But you know how much that cost us? Ten dollars! The filet mignon in that fabulous steakhouse was $3.75. Times two = $7.50. Plus a couple bucks for the waitress. We’d get out of there for less than ten bucks. Oh, it was a feast. Well, that’s Hebrews.

Every once in a while you come into the Book of Hebrews and you just feast on it. Now you don’t do it every day, because Romans is the book for everyday, and Galatians. And Paul’s Church epistles. That’s down where the rubber meets the road as we say. But Hebrews, you just jump in there once in a while for a delicacy. All right, let’s come back: Hebrews 9:14 "How much more (than the blood of animals mentioned in the previous verse) shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit (there’s your third Person of the Trinity, all involved together, see? ) offered himself without spot to God, (as a lamb, remember back there in Exodus 12 – without blemish) purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Are you all aware of what the word purge means? Now again, I just had a firsthand understanding of it. The natural gas people are laying a pipeline across our ranch, and it’s just going right next to our corral. And they’ve been cooperating with us and so the other day they were ready to lay that stretch where we wanted to have it closed up as quickly as possible. And I noticed that they had all of that pipe welded, laying above ground. Now if you’re like me and you’re going to start thinking, how are they going to get that steel pipe down in that ditch without busting it all up? So when I noticed that they were starting to lay it into the ditch, I got out there and fortunately the foreman happened to be right there next to my corral and he said, "I watch you on television almost every morning." Well, that kind of made the day. So I said, "Now I’ve got a question. How are you going to lay all of these hundreds of feet of pipe that’s all welded together, how are you going to lay it down in that ditch without it breaking?" He said, "Well you see back up there?" That pipe was laying down in that ditch like a rope – it had that much flexibility. Now I was just flabbergasted. So then I went one step further and I said, "Now before your guys came and welded these things I noticed dirt was laying in it. Do you clean all that?" "No," he said, "we don’t pay any attention to that. When we’re all through, we’ll purge it." What did he mean? When they’re all through, I don’t know whether they use air or water, but they’re going to make sure that that pipe is totally immaculate without a speck of steel or welding slag or dirt. They’re going to purge it. Well, that’s the same word. So what did God do with our sin? He purged it. He cleansed us of it. Every last bit! And then He forgot about it! Now even in my small ministry, I’ve had several ladies who have called who had been saved, and as they began to tell me the next part of their life they start to weep. And now I almost know what’s coming. What do you suppose they’re weeping about? Their past. They’ve come out of prostitution and they can’t get it out of their mind. "Oh, I know I’m saved but it’s my past." You know what I tell these poor gals? I say, "Listen, I know that when we’re human, we can’t forget. Much as we try, you can’t forget. But God does!" That’s one of His attributes. God can forget! And when He purges us from our sin, He doesn’t ever bring them up to His mind, He never will throw them up to us. It’s over so far as God is concerned." And that’s what I try to tell them. And there’s also men that come from almost the same kind of a rotten background. And they say, "Les, I just can’t get my past out of my mind. I can’t forget it." Well, look at it the way God does. God has forgotten your past. He will never throw it up to you again. You’re purged of all that. And all you can do is take it by faith and praise Him moment by moment. Oh, thank you Lord that you’ll never again hold my rotten past against me! We’ve been purged. We’ve been cleansed. But what is the cleansing element? The blood! Now you don’t hear much about that anymore and it’s a sad, sad commentary on Christendom. The blood is the cleansing agent. And that alone can do it. So He offered himself without spot to God,

Hebrews 9:14b "…purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?" Now here again, the dead works response is directly given to the Nation of Israel, because see, they’re the ones that have been under a religion of dead works. All their Temple worship, all their sacrifices, couldn’t take away sin. It was dead works. And so, now Paul is saying, "My, the blood of the Lamb! That which has purged us and has cleansed us from even the dead works of Judaism and has brought them to serve the living God." All right, now let’s move on to verse 15. Hebrews 9:15a "And for this cause (because God has with His own blood purged us of all our filth and our sin) he is the mediator of the new testament (covenant) that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament (covenant),…" Now you’ll notice I’m using the word ‘covenant’ rather than the word ‘testament’ because in the Old Testament as we call it, you don’t see that word ‘testament;’ it’s ‘covenant.’ And the covenant back in the Old Testament was from God to Israel but with Moses as the mediator. Moses was the go-between God and Israel. And there is a new covenant coming according to Jeremiah 31:31, directed only to the Nation of Israel. But, you see, we’ve come under all of the good things of what God has done to fulfill that covenant to Israel and we’re getting what I’ve often called the overflow. And everything that Christ did there at the Cross in order to establish that new covenant with Israel, we’re enjoying all the benefits as well. All right, because He has purged us and He has purged these Hebrews of their sinfulness, He has caused them now to turn to the Living God instead of a dead religion. All right, verse 15 again: Hebrews 9:15 "And for this cause he is the mediator of the new testament, (covenant) that by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions that were under the first testament,(covenant) they which are called might receive the promise of eternal inheritance." Well now a few weeks ago, I think I asked my class here in Tulsa, "How long is eternity?" You remember, it’s as long as God lives! Eternity is as long as God will live. And that’s how long? Forever and ever. All right, so this whole transaction then of the Cross, the shed blood, has made possible an eternal inheritance. Hebrews 9:16 "For where a testament is, there must also of necessity be the death of the testator." Now you know, I had to look at a couple of commentators. And, I’ve said for years back, I didn’t pay too much attention to commentators and sure enough, here again, one said one thing and the other one said another. So, which one am I supposed to believe? The one said that the word testament was totally out of order. It should be covenant all the way through, because testament was the Greek and the Roman concept. Whereas, covenant was the Hebrew concept. Well, that makes sense. But on the other hand, the other fellow came back and said testament is the right word because we are under a different set of circumstances than the covenants made back in the Old Testament. So there again, see, you just almost have to flip it in the air and take your pick. Hebrews 9:17 For a testament (as we refer to it, as the last will and testament) is of force after men are dead: otherwise it is of no strength at all while the testator liveth." Well, that’s understandable in our economy isn’t it? We know that if you have a last will and testament laying in your bank box or in your safe at home, it’s of no use. It doesn’t have any power until when? When you die. Then when you die, that becomes the law and by that they will establish the settling of your estate. All right, so this is what I guess here in verse 17 is what it’s referring to, that Christ could not fulfill these promises made to us in the human race until He had died. Now verse 18. Hebrews 9:18a "Whereupon, neither the first testament…" Now again, let’s be careful. In my Bible, the word testament is in what? It’s in italics.

And I’ve taught some of you now for over twenty years. What does that mean? It’s added by the translator. So I like it better without it. Just leave it out. Verse 18 again. Hebrews 9:18 "Whereupon neither the first was dedicated without blood." Well, the first what? Covenant! Now what covenant is Paul referring to? Law! When Moses came down the mountain with the commandments written in stone, that was the covenant of Law. And it was the first covenant. See? So, "Whereupon neither the first (that is the covenant of Law) was dedicated without blood." It’s always involving blood. Now again, I’m sure every believer, sooner or later, is going to come to the point and ask the question, "Why does God put so much emphasis on blood when it comes to salvation?" Haven’t you? I have. And I think, I’ve got a little bit of the answer. Now you know, I’ve said so often in my class here in Oklahoma, this salvation work of God is so profound, it is so complex, it is so deep that I can’t comprehend it all. And I don’t think anybody else can. We can just take a little bit of it that we can really understand, and we take it by faith. But on the other hand as we’ve said so often, it’s so simple a child can believe it and understand it. But to really get down and understand all of the ramifications of this, I just don’t think it’s humanly possible. But, let’s take a stab at it. Come back with me to Genesis chapter 9. And of course, we know that God had already instituted the blood sacrifice when He dealt with Adam and Eve back in chapter 3. And we certainly dealt with it with Abel who offered a more excellent sacrifice than Cain because it was an animal sacrifice involving the shed blood. But now we come to chapter 9 and this will be the first time that we have anything definitive about the blood. All right, chapter 9, right after the flood, verse 4, Genesis 9:4-6a "But flesh (God says to Noah) with the life thereof, which is the blood, ye shall not eat. (and the whole idea was that in verse 5) 5. And surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. 6. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed:…" Well, the secret to the whole thing, I think, is up there in verse 4. Why the blood? Because ‘life is in the blood.’ The blood is the source of all living. All right, then of course, you come on over to Exodus and the lamb that was supposed to be without spot, without blemish. And then you come all the way up through the Old Testament sacrifices. It was constantly the animal sacrifices and the shedding of its blood. I remember several years ago when we were in Jerusalem and, at that time, the guide would still take us up to the Temple Mount and into the Dome of the Rock where this huge rock comes up (some of you have been there) out of the basement, so to speak – where supposedly Abraham offered Isaac. But our guide was explaining that, according to legend (and of course that’s all you go by), right about in that very spot is where the priests were sacrificing all of these animals. By the hundreds, day in and day out. Well, that involved a lot of blood. And they had discerned that the blood would go down deep into the crevices and then find its way out to the Kedron Valley. Well it makes for a good story, but the point I wanted to make was about this constant shedding of blood. And I don’t think our Jewish guide had ever comprehended it before, but he made the comment, "You know folks, a lot of times the Jewish family had to offer up a lamb that was really a family pet. And that would just make it all the more devastating that that little pet lamb had to give its blood for the sins of its owners." Later, I said to our guide, "It’s the same way with Christ. When Christ died and shed His blood it was to make such an impact upon the human race, whom He loved, that it would make them conscience of the horrible price of their sin."

And you know what that good Jew said? "I never thought of that before." But isn’t that true? You see, as that Jewish family would bring that precious little lamb, and they would see that lamb give its life and its blood because of what? Their sin. And if it had its right effect, it would devastate them to think that their sin caused the death of that precious little animal. And I imagine, too, that’s why God chose sheep as the primary sacrificial animal. They’re not a rebellious type. They’re not the kind that’s going to fight and buck and everything else. But, they’re so docile and it’s so easy to be touched by simplicity. Well, it’s the same way when Christ died. The Lamb of God that took away the sin of the world. He suffered, He died, and it was brought about by only one thing. And what was it? Man’s sin. That’s all. And so He went to that Cross in payment for man’s sin; otherwise He would have never had to do it. But, getting back to what we were talking about, the blood – life was in the blood. And even in biology, unless a seed falls into the ground – and Jesus used the analogy Himself in John chapter 12, I think it was. Unless that seed falls into the ground and does what? Dies. It abides alone. But, if it die, then what? New life. It’s the same way with the shed blood, see? When Christ shed His blood, it wasn’t just that alone, but it was the fact that His life was poured out and the shed blood epitomized that life and it became death and then out of that death came what? New life! And that’s where we are. We have eternal life because of that death of Christ. And not just as I’ve always stressed so often over the years, not just His death, burial and resurrection but we can never shun the efficacy of His shed blood. Because blood was the price of redemption as God had mandated from day one, that life was in the blood. And blood alone could be the price of redemption. Alright, come back to Hebrews again, chapter 9, verse 18: Hebrews 9:18 "Whereupon neither the first covenant (the covenant of Law) was dedicated without blood." And then in verse 19, we go all the way back to Exodus, and this is what had to happen. Hebrews 9:19a "For when Moses (at the very beginning of the system of Law. When he had brought the Commandments down from the mountain and now has the instructions for building the Tabernacle to establish the ritual and the sacrifices.) had spoken every precept to all the people according to the law, he took the blood…" Now people don’t like this. Maybe that’s why I revel in teaching it. I like to rub people the wrong way, if it’ll wake them up and get them into The Book. And so, it was never without blood, see? He took – Hebrews 9:19b-20 "…the blood of calves and goats, with water, and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book, (that is the Book of Law) and all the people, 20. Saying, This is the blood of the covenant which God hath enjoined unto you." Now right from the very beginning of God’s dealing with the Nation of Israel in the matter of the Spirit, what is preeminent? The blood! And you go back to Exodus chapter 12, what was that one thing that spared the Nation of Israel on the night of the death angel? The blood. Where? On the door. And for those Jews who had put that lamb’s blood on the three spots of the door, which again of course, formed a cross, there was complete safety. Without the blood, they were doomed. So the whole concept from the very beginning of the experience of the Nation of Israel is, you cannot make the first step toward God without the shedding of blood.

[poorlyconditioned]

Untitled Propositions (a love letter)

This text was originally written for NoMorePotluck's Age Issue (Fall 2015), edited by Dayna McLeod. However, their website is currently offline. Heres hoping this important open-source queer feminist journal can be accessed again, soon because we love and need you. But, for now:

Untitled Propositions (a love letter)

1. When we met, I was that doubled soft-edged blue of 22. I will always think of that number as magical.

2. Time-delayed and hungover, she laughed, asking, “HOW old is your partner, again?” And I laughed too, to cover my impulse to vomit and hide, as she immediately apologized and we changed topics. Sucking our beers and pretending nothing was happening. (When I learned she’d also had a relationship with an older woman, I hated her. I hated her as a microcosm of everyone who’d ever made me feel ashamed.)

3. mediocre, fair, commonplace, ordinary, regular, middling

4. I read recently, in a book whose author you’d raved about some years ago, that most people think they are above average in most things. The inherent meaning of “average” precludes this possibility. The book proposed that if we could all be content with our average traits, we’d be much happier.

5. I will still sit by your bed and hold your hand through your last breaths when the time comes, if I’m still here, if you still want.

6. Don’t worry, I’ll follow your lead and we can pretend we don’t know how it feels to be erased – don’t know what it’s like when your wet, lapping thrusts are unimaginable to the eyes across the room at the soirée. We can pretend it doesn’t mark us, each time we are made invisible. C’est la vie.

7. Everyone’s done it. Everyone knows about breaking up.

8. I know you hate public performances of our intimacies. I’m sorry. But where am I in that? My life’s work turns on public intimacies – you’ve always known who and how I am. And I am nothing other than you, right now. My theory has dried up in this spider-shell of a body so, when asked to write, I can write only you. Again and again and again.

9. Not being able to stay makes me pretty fucking average.

10. Reading Women, in which Chloe Caldwell’s lover is 19 years her senior, I think: “Pfffft… amateurs.”

11. Don’t worry – this text is fiction, anyway.

12. I’m surprised by how hard it is for me to recognize what is and isn’t the end of us. The black and white films that parented me have made me think it will be obvious. It isn’t.

13. You taught me that one can never know the intimacy others share in the twilight.

14. Every time we touched, we defied    :    building worlds out of sparks spitting from the metal clash of our intellectual fencing, leaking from our hot little apartment into the world-in-crisis that surrounded us.

15. Thank you.

16. Phaedrus and Socrates joust speeches back and forth, pulling apart the lover and the boy – slamming them back together in different configurations. Again. Again. In the end though it’s not about the madness of love, is it Socrates? You care only to make a demonstration of persuasion and rhetoric, writing and knowing. You fucker.

17. To be understood beyond understanding yourself. To know the lines caressing your face better than my own. To leap.

18. A friend sends us a YouTube video of Eileen Myles and Leopoldine Core reading a love poem together, interweaving their devotion to writing and each other – one grey-haired and tough, the other so youthful it hurts. We watch it over and over, sipping morning coffee, grinning. I tried to find that video today. It’s been taken off the internet.

19. I keep the marks that are left in a cream white envelope in my bedside drawer. Stowed treasure.

20. Don’t forget to tell yourself what you need to hear.

21. When we were 18 and living in New York, my best friend told me I was growing younger every year, though she’d always found me to be older than my age. She said I’d meet myself at 26, and finally be the age I was. So, Sophie? Have my two crossing selves met? Is it momentary? Will they continue on together or pass and part…

22. You never trusted me.

23. When things get really bad, near the end, I find myself wishing I were a bookshelf. I start laying with books piled on my body in the studio. No opinion, nothing to be done. Just the sun moving across my wooded surfaces, dust settling, dust wiped away, dust settling again. Maybe a cat dulls its claws on my edges.

24. I thought we had the wisdom to end more gently than this.

25. The first time you saw me perform – naked and bloody – and still wanted me to come home with you after. You bathed my wounds, tu m'as pris dans tes bras et I was reborn.

26. When I finally say it, the metal door slams down behind your eyes and I am suddenly standing alone in a dead silent desert, endlessly flat, grateful for the wind whipping hard lashes of sand into my skin because at least it’s something I can feel.

27. Is this place holding me?

      What does it sense as it holds?

      A throbbing?

      My sadness and my lust?

28. I wonder where and how you are. I wonder what you do on Sundays, now.

29. I am still only able to hold others in performance.

30. Writing about heartbreak – average.

31. I disdain knowing, even as I write, that I’ll heal. The nail polish grows off my toes, my dark roots come in, the circle cut into my shoulder scabs over and fades. Eventually, all the marks of us will be invisible.

32. And everyone can blame it on age. Even us. A simplification that makes things easier to stomach: someone always dies at the end of the women-falling-in-love-with-women movie.

33. We were never average.

34. The back of your neck, blue-moon washed, as you sleep turned away from me, my arms wrapped around you, every night for years.

35. Everything you ever said was interesting. Since the beginning.

36. It’s heartbreaking to be what the world says you are.

[the-ghost-king]

So I'm not going to start like an Anti-Chiron tag because I don't find that enjoyable personally, but every so often people ask why I dislike him so here's essentially a "masterpost" of my thoughts on that situation for when anyone asks, just so I have it to explain some...

This isn't nearly a full list, and there's many more "incidents" that make me less than fond of Chiron, I don't hate the old man but he leaves a bad taste in my mouth and I'm not a fan of that. He's a very twisted character.

- The Lightning Thief

This quote is literally just after Percy's mom "dies", they're all sitting on the porch of the Big House right after he's finally woken up after days of sleeping, and that's the line Chiron pulls out on him.

That's straight up emotional manipulation which was entirely unnecessary in the context of what Chiron was trying to explain. There wasn't a single reason for that, in the slightest.

Immediately following that, and Percy, who canonically has anger issues, does his best to remain calm, he is immediately threatened by Dionysus, and Chiron doesn't even tell Dionysus off for doing that; Chiron just let's it happen. It's Grover who has to speak up to tell Dionysus off...

The only reason Chiron comes out looking like a old guy in this scene is because Dionysus was so much worse in his behavior, at one point intimidating Percy with his power over madness.

- The Titan's Curse

This is the aftermath of when Nico ran away upon confirmation of Bianca's death. When Percy is telling Chiron about the situation, Chiron wishes Nico had been eaten alive rather than recruited into an army.

He'd rather a child be dead than fight against him, and he openly tells this to other children he's in charge of. If Percy went missing would he have said "I hope he was eaten <3" as well?

I don't blame Perry for not delivering the truth here, it was done in an effort to protect Nico; which wasn't something Annabeth had planned on doing... I don't blame Annabeth for that though either, she's been beneath Chiron so long that she probably doesn't realize the shady stuff he does, and to her "going to tell" probably was the "right" move because she was a child...

But the fact that Chiron believes Nico truly would be better off eaten than alive :/

- Tower of Nero

This quote from Tower of Nero shows that Chiron lied to a bunch of young children (most of them were young because the older campers are largely dead because of the war or too old for camp now). It wasn't just a little white lie that adults sometimes tell kids either; they were walking into battle and he told them it was a field trip.

Did he even begin to explain the danger he was putting these kids in? Did the children understand their situation? And how dangerous it was?

Kayla has been blindsided over the years into thinking that telling children they're going on a field trip instead of fighting a battle is something to make a joke of and not be questioned... (Again, I don't blame her she's only like 12 in the book, but still)

Apollo also agrees, which isn't on Chiron but it's a whole mother reason why I can't stand Rick's interpretation of Apollo...

<><><><><>

This isn't me being like "oh Chiron is the worst most evil character ever" I just think that he has numerous flaws which are largely ignored in favor of the "perfect wise teacher" narrative when in fact Chiron and Dumbledore share a lot of.. Offputting qualities.

I do think that some of the situation is simply a result of Chiron having his hands tied behind his back by the gods some. And he even goes so far as to confirm this in a scene of TLT

However many of the scenes in which he exhibits behaviors like that in my first three screenshots are not related to anything the gods require and are, in fact, of Chiron's own free will.

Some things I would blame Zeus and the council for, such as how he withholds information from Percy to an excessive amount for long periods of time even when Percy straight up asks about things. I could easily see that being Zeus trying to prevent Percy from claiming the prophecy as his own, and I could see reasoning that maybe Chiron had sworn over the River Styx or something similar.

But those things don't apply to Chiron making such an unnecessary comment about Percy's mother so close to her "death". It doesn't explain why he would say he hoped Nico had been eaten out loud, and it doesn't cover the fact that he led children into a battlefield without telling them that's what was happening.

I think the context of Chiron's choices and comments would be different if the campers were older. If they were in their late teens or early twenties for the most part, I wouldn't really have much to say about how Chiron handled the situation.

But this man is in charge of children and extremely young teenagers, Percy is only 12 in TLT, maybe if he would have been 16 or 17 then I could give Chiron a pass, but he wasn't. Within the context of the comment he made in the Titan's Curse, Percy is only 14 and Nico is 10 at the beginning of the book... You don't wish a 10 year old had been eaten alive by a monster no matter how bad you think the alternative is, and if you do wish that you don't say it out loud to a group of other children. In the battle from Tower of Nero we get a quick look at the battlefield, and although Ben's age, and the age of another girl fighting alongside him are never confirmed they are implied to be fairly young, and we know Kayla is only 12 at the time too; yet Chiron told them it was a field trip instead of a battle, limiting the time they would have to mentally prepare themselves for what was coming.

On top of that, the nods the reader gets to the fact that Chiron can't act out against the gods depletes over the course of the series. After TLT the amount of times the situation involves the gods interfering with what Chiron is allowed to say lessens, and by the time the Heroes of Olympus series comes around, these limitations on his speech is almost entirely gone. Yet as seen in Tower of Nero he still does morally questionable things in regards to how he treats the campers.

Like I said, I recognize that in many scenes Chiron's hands are tied behind his back because of the gods.. But there are undeniably things he does of his own free will that are, in the nicest manner, very :/

This also isn't a full list of comparisons just a few notable scenes. I don't think Chiron is equally as bad as Dumbledore, but I think it undeniable that Chiron has some significant flaws built into his character design.

A good character has flaws, and there's nothing wrong with having a character that doesn't always conduct themselves properly or have good intentions- it's actually good writing, and I can appreciate that, but for some reason I find myself personally rubbed the wrong way by Chiron. This doesn't make Chiron badly written, or poorly designed, in fact I would say Rick's Chiron is very well designed in lots of ways, but I just don't like how it's never acknowledged by anyone in the series.

Like I said, I'm not starting an anti-Chiron situation, I just think little events like those mentioned, the way he's built a child army, and how he doesn't even try to plead with the gods over raising the ages on campers being allowed to battle is a little sus. But it more so bothers me that there's no attention payed to this problem anywhere in the books, not even by a side character or Luke, nowhere.

I don't actually care that much and this isn't that important to me, but sometimes people ask why I don't like Chiron and this is basically just my explanation to hand off to them... It's not even so much that I dislike Chiron entirely, he's well written and has his "good" moments, I just don't like the way other characters interact with him and his actions.

It's more a personal beef with him rather than an aspect of poor writing or him "being bad"... PJO in general (and HoO/ToA to a much lesser extent) shows that there's not such an inherent good vs bad in the world, and that sometimes people are victims of circumstances in some situations, or they're horribly misguided in their actions, but the series does a good job of showing those people as human still, and I applaud that.

I don't really know how to tie this up in its entirety, but there's nothing wrong with having a morally grey character who does questionable things and in many aspects it is good writing. I think Chiron is a result of Rick not thinking through the implications what he's doing in lots of situations, and I can see a fairly consistent drop in Chiron's characterization from PJO-ToA which is consistent with most other aspects of Rick's work.

I also want to clarify that if you like Chiron and disagree with me, that's absolutely 110% okay, I just personally dislike Chiron and that's on me. Like my problem with many of Rick's other immortal characters, I think he missed important aspects of them in some manner and slightly (or entirely in some cases) mischaracterized them in comparison to their original myths.. Some of these characters he came around on and fixed their character in many aspects to their more "correct" characterization (like Hera), while others (like Chiron and Apollo) he never quite figured them out. Which is a running complaint I have with Rick so I'm just adding this to his tab.

But yeah, I don't hate Chiron I just dislike him and those are different things, and I don't think it's a bad thing to have a morally questionable character, Chiron just personally rubs me the wrong way and I just wanted to explain that more fully because I've been asked about it multiple times.

Also I apologize for not adding a [read more] to this, it's a complaint of mine often when scrolling through the tags but I'm on mobile currently and don't have immediate access to a computer so~

#pjo #Hoo #Chiron pjo #percy jackson #long post

[doberbutts]

azcrowleyfell

That's super interesting! Sounds like your dad knows a buttload about black culture and history.

Not to be funny but like. He lived it. 

Ruby Bridges, the girl who turned the tide on the desegregation argument in schools, is 66 years old.

My dad is 66 years old.

My dad’s dad, if he was still alive, would be 104. He died when I was young.

The Emancipation Proclamation was 158 years ago. Some states took a bit longer to actually follow through, which is why we have Juneteenth.

He doesn’t “know” black culture and history. He lived it. He remembers it. This was his life. This was his father’s life. This was his grandfather’s life.

My great great grandparents were slaves. My grandfather’s grandfather was born a slave. This is history that is only one or two generations removed from the present. The history we have isn’t written down in books. It’s told to us from our elders who lived it, who experienced it, who bled and died so we might have something better.

Dad became a black history buff because 50 years ago you had to in order to survive as a black man in a white man’s world. My dad was already 14 by the time it was legal for him to vote. He was 13 when it became legal to have the marriage he has shared with my mother for close to 40 years. He had just started to attend school when it became acceptable for him to sit in the same classroom as a white boy his age. He was just 3 years old when Martin Luther King Jr began his journey as a national symbol of black empowerment. He was 9 for “I Have A Dream”. He was 10 when it became illegal to bar someone from a job based on race. He was 14 when MLK was killed.

My grandfather returned home from WWII and Vietnam as a military vet to a country that hated him not for his actions as a soldier but for the color of his skin. He often reported that his time as a soldier was the first time he was ever treated as an equal, rather than as subhuman. Grandpa lived from just before WWI ended all the way to the housing market crash in the early 2000s. This isn’t history for him. It was just what happened while he was alive.

I don’t “know” black history and culture. It simply is my history and culture. It’s my dad’s life. It’s my grandpa’s life. It’s the lives of those before him that I never got to meet.

If you want to know more black history, ask a black person who lived it. They’re still alive. They have their stories to tell.

[fairest]

Favorite books 2021

1. Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This - as an internet addict and pro-abortion parent this novel was deeply relatable, and left me in a puddle of tears. On the internet: “To be involved in a consensual hallucination of normalcy is much worse than being mad.”

2. Miranda Popkey, Topics of Conversation - sultry dialogues from the wine cellar in this formally inventive 2020 novel. Like when the Reality TV camera pans away and you still hear the drama, only the drama is real.

3. Avner Landes, Meiselman: The Lean Years - the story of a man who works at a public library and wants a better parking space. A young Joel & Ethan Coen should bring this to the screen. Made me think about the word circumambulation, the deity the sentence. I read this novel when I thought I was dying from OG covid and felt okay about it being the last book I would read.

4. Christine Smallwood, The Life of the Mind - a study of ambient grief, and an urgent reminder the mind/body problem is a woman’s issue. Textbook for writing in the close third person. I guess that’s the life of the mind.

5. For Now, Eileen Myles - minor work but still Myles for now. Read this lying on my back on the floor, wishing I was as cool as Eileen Myles.

6. Brooks Sterritt, The History of America in My Lifetime - deeply funny and moving quest for a man doing an impression of himself. Tender and over too soon, like the late Brahms on the turntable. Read this at the River House. Killed a few mosquitos with it, but not enough.

7. Lauren Oyler, Fake Accounts - This I-do-this-I-do-that novel reads like a true friend, an honorary ex-boyfriend. Choicest first word: consensus.

8. Greg Grandin, From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America - A cogent survey of this well-known story that America was like, Iraq was pretty boring—it gave us swell Kathryn Bigelow flicks but little else. So Donald Trump is like: gals, gather round my wall. I’m bringing Indian Country back on the inside where it belongs. America roars.  

9. Amitav Ghosh, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable - read this 2016 book in Cafe Luigi on Clark Street. Things aren’t looking so good for the planet but at least we’re getting good works out of it.  

10. Jack Kerouac, Visions of Cody - This “novel” written over decades is a smarmy mess at times, and a reminder that the prophet is also the servant. Felt like I was at the right age to read this, three years younger than Kerouac when he died. Read this at Calo Ristorante and the Farm House.

11. Gary Indiana, Do Everything in the Dark - Eternally under-the-radar 2003 New York novel about la vie bohème. Wish I would have read this right after college. Read it this year, tanning on the deck, waiting for a plane crash. 

12. Charles Valle, Proof of Stake: An Elegy, a longer poem about coming to terms with life after death. Read this during a hard day at work and it made me feel better.

13. Jon Lindsay, Body High - Instant Classic medium cool LA novel. Stupendous editing. Belongs on that shelf near the register so I don’t steal it.

14. Raven Leilani, Luster - Hard, like a cracked diamond. The first debut novel I’ve read since publishing Jenny in Corona that I like as much as Jenny in Corona. Rode the bus for no reason to concentrate on this one.

15. Kate Zambreno, Heroines - You’ll never look at “Once Again, to Zelda” in the same way. Read this at the pool and in the pool.

16. Gary Lutz, The Complete Gary Lutz - One of those books where you learn the word “wibbling” means “speaking or writing vaguely at great length.” Read this at the dining room table under a banker’s lamp.

17. The Old Testament Book of Samuel - one of the first novels, they say. The story within that most typifies how I feel about society right now is when David comes leaping and dancing home from the wars, like he just bought back his stocks, and his wife Michal stands in the doorway hands on hips, muttering, what the fuck is he so happy about.

#book of samuel #gary lutz #kate zambreno #raven leilani #jon lindsay #Charles Valle #Gary Indiana #Jack Kerouac #amitav ghosh #greg grandin #lauren oyler #brooks sterritt #eileen myles #avner landes #miranda popkey #patricia lockwood #2021

[evilphrog]

First Lines Meme

Tagged by @sidleyparkhermit

List the first lines of the last 10 stories you published. Look to see any patterns you notice yourself, and see if anyone else notices any. Then tag some friends.

This is a bit different for me because I haven't published most of my stuff, and most of it is analysis instead of fiction.

1. There exists a pocket dimension inside every coat closet, which is connected to every other coat closet in the world.

This was originally a short story I wrote at age 14, after discovering Douglas Adams and learning you can do That with words. It was literally just about coat closets, but I later repurposed it into a stilly story for my husband about what our future kids might be like. The line holds a very dear place in my heart, because it was the first thing I ever wrote that I was proud of.

2. Orion peered shiftily over his shoulder, verified he wasn’t being followed, and approached the portal.

This was one of my first tries at starting mid-event, instead of with some exposition. It was made as a bit of backstory for our DND campaign, written as a joke for my friends. Orion was my very first character, and my husband and I are working on a book about his adventures in our spare time.

3. The seaside town of Lagrange was the sort of place that could only be referred to as charming. It was populated almost entirely by cow-eyed farmers who knew no greater joy in life than a hard day’s work.

From the same campaign, but a different story about another character, a barbarian who is definitely using "charming" in a derogatory way.

4. “Oh for fuck’s sake Why me?!” - Draw Me a Blueprint of your Heart Shadow and Bone

This is the opener for my one and only longfic. Still a WIP, and one of my few pieces of fiction written in first person. I have trouble with first person, because I like to get in every character's head and show their thoughts. It also feels weird using I to describe things I would never do or say, because I am very much NOT like Alina in this story. But the original book is first person, and I was trying to hold with the writing style.

5. Aziraphale was walking along the edge of the ark, checking up on everything. - Doubt Good Omens (Book)

I kind of cringe looking at this fic now, but I am still proud of it. I had to learn how to write again after a bad head injury, and this was my very first actual story produced after three years of rehabilitation. It isn't the most original or skillful, but I like to see how far I've come in such a short time.

6. When I first hear the news, time doesn't stop. Icy cold terror refuses to run through my veins, and my heart completely fails to skip a beat.

Now we are firmly out of fiction and into my essays. This one is my college application essay from high school, where I exploit my cancer diagnosis for all it's worth. It was fun to go back through very old works, because I was a lot better than I gave myself credit for.

7. I had to watch a newborn baby the other day, and the experience has helped me to reach the conclusion that any child below the age of four is not actually a human, but is, in fact, a tangible representation of pure evil.

Another one from Past Me, and makes me entirely unsurprised that I chose to adopt teenagers rather than babies. Tell me how you really feel, go on, don't hold back.

8. Seven hundred and ten days, and it still burns the same. Some of the color of the world died with you.

This was the opener to a song I wrote after losing someone I deeply loved. Well, Past Me, over a decade later, it also still burns the same. Sorry you had to find out this way.

9. Your motivation can't be self-hate.

This was a lecture I wrote for work, about the paradox in mental health where therapists recommend things like walks outside, healthy food, limiting screen time, learning hobbies, good sleep, etc. But if a client does those things out of an effort to "fix" themselves rather than because those things are inherently enjoyable, they don't get the benefits because their brain views it as work to stave off the guilt and shame, rather than a fun way to spend time. My recommendation was to focus on reinforcing the client's right to fun relaxation and enjoyment of life, rather than pushing specific Approved Activities.

10. People love the Loki series because it is a story of redemption.  But what I think a lot of folks miss is that it is just as much a redemption for Mobius as it is for Loki - Mobius and the Theme of Redemption Loki (TV)

Yeah, Mobius hit me right in the religious trauma. That whole show did, really. I love the complexity of every character involved, and how everyone who watches it seems to have a different idea of which characters were right and which ones were wrong. It was a world where there were no "good" choices, just the constant struggle between freedom and safety.

It was interesting to go back over and see how my writing has evolved over time. I definitely see a clear distinction between the things I wrote pre and post injury. I think I got more focused on the subject, and less focused on word choices. I can't decided if I prefer that or not. My older stuff seems more entertaining, but a bit harder to follow. Past me had a love for exploiting English in ways that leave sentences ambiguous and open for comedic misunderstandings. Present me has a love for human behavior and ethics.

tagging: @sirnotappearinginthisblog @dont-offend-the-bees @yoshiyakiryu @all-about-the-tea-parties @highwarlockofphilly @chaos-monkeyy

#tag game #first lines #my writing