#despite reading all the books. | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Tumblr was the first site to host the blog for President Barack Obama in 2011.

#despite reading all the books.

violet-thunder · 1 year

Text

I’ve been a part of IRL queer and trans communities for almost 15 years, and I’ve watched every single one those remorselessly communities chew up and spit out transfems. None of them ever having been able to keep a transfem around for more than a year without getting a “bad vibe.” They’ve all kicked people with no other safety net to the curb, completely cutting them off from any of the benefits of an accepting community. Every transfem I know is either dead or living in poverty with no lifeline besides, perhaps, an extremely unhealthy tgirl skyrim house. Trans guys are just as quick to engage in this type of behavior as cis people! It’s like. Insane to me that I’m getting called delusional over this, I’ve watched this exact thing play out dozens of times. It’s happened to me and every transfem I’ve ever known IRL multiple times. Like. Everyone knows about the tranny hovels. Where do you think that comes from if not from the community widely excluding and discriminating against us? That’s not a situation that happens unless you have literally no where else to go. How do you think we would end up in such uniquely precarious situations if there were not power to leverage over us?

#Like yeah some of my posts about this have been a little emotional #but I have a lot of lived experiences to back this up #and then I go and read books from the 80s about transfem disposability #and find that the exact same thing was happening decades ago too #and despite all that!#I still have hope we will eventually be able to see that excluding our own is bad for all of us #because to be clear here the side that insists this is lateral aggression is the exclusionary side

1K notes · View notes

lovedocket · 5 months

Text

I find it so very interesting that Sejanus knew that coryo was excited for the Plinth Prize and told him not to get his hopes up.

One could only say he would’ve told him that if he knew the Snows were having money trouble orrrr

the much funnier option, Coryo and him talked/have talked with each other.

It makes it seem like Sejanus and Coryo had spoken/been friendly before. Especially when you take a look at the rest of their interactions in school.

—Sejanus, out of all places, chooses to sit next to Coryo during the announcement of the Plinth Prize and during Class.

—Sejanus, out of all people chooses to be nice to Coryo, unlike with Arachne etc etc.

—Again, during lunch, Sejanus takes the seat in front of Coryo like he’s done it before.

It just makes you wonder, this “delusion” from Sejanus that they’re friends had to come from somewhere. Coryo being nice to him. Yes of course. But the rest of it. Sejanus knowing personal details, that he had high hopes for the plinth prize, that he sits next to in class, that Highbottom believes they are friends and Coriolanus can try to control/soothe him during the games at Marcus’s appearance.

If none of this makes sense it’s because my thoughts are all jumbled i need to consume all canon content and jump into their brains.

#snowjanus #so many thoughts all crazy #what happened before after and then #what was the extent of their friendship #how did sejanus like of him come to be despite coryo apprehensiveness with interacting with people #i loooove that the movie can sorta make you infer things without having read the book #and although i’m only halfway through the book i can tell coryos brain is just skewed/doesn’t know how to feel about people #even what he thinks it feels like he’s not sure of it himself #GAWDDD #coriolanus snow #sejanus plinth #the ballad of songbirds and snakes

158 notes · View notes

utilitycaster · 7 months

Text

A few recent books I've read and disliked led me to this conclusion but it feels like there's been this switch over time with queer stories. It used to be that queer relationships (or queerness in general) had to be Show Don't Tell because, well, you could not make them textual! So you get, for example, shows like Legend of Korra, or Xena: Warrior Princess, where you have women who are clearly devoted to each other to a degree that goes beyond mere friendship, and a ton of effort and care is put into that depiction because they can't actually be shown in an explicitly stated relationship. And as a result, these relationships, while they never receive confirmation in the show, are rich and complex.

Now not only is it much easier to make explicitly queer stories outside of niche areas; it's even popular (and, cynically, a marketing tactic). The problem is I've run into a bunch of stories that are marketed very clearly as A Queer Story that forget to like...be a story, or show me why these characters should be in a relationship. It's All Tell No Show: I'm told that the characters are gay and are in a relationship, but no work is done to actually explain why I should care about this beyond "well they are gay and in a gay relationship."

I'm not going to rehash what I discussed here, but Baru Cormorant is an example of those books where I'm given no real reason to care. The protagonist is a lesbian but the prose reads like a phone book. On the other hand, while Starless has a queer disabled woman as a one of the two protagonists, it also provides her with traits other than "queer, disabled, woman, important" and grants her a rich interiority (even though the story is told entirely from the first person point of view of the other protagonist.)

And the thing about the good examples in that link (Starless, Teixcalaan): they show and tell. It's both explicit that these are queer stories with a canon romantic relationship, but the little moments that make up the tapestry of a relationship are given the time that moments in a subtextual - or frankly, even a queerbaiting work are. That's the real tragedy; for queerbaiting to work, you have to actually make the relationship compelling enough for people follow it until you pull the rug out from under them; whereas you can slap a cold fish kiss on a cold fish queer relationship and technically you are Better because it was Explicit Representation even though everything about it was poorly constructed. I would rather have an lazy and shoddy explicit relationship than queerbait just on principle; but honestly I'd rather have a good story that does neither.

One of my more cynical interpretations of this is that writers are either intentionally or inadvertently taking advantage of the legacy of the Show Don't Tell era of queer coding to place the burden of those small moments on the audience. They know that people looking for queer relationships in fiction are used to having to dig for moments and subtext; but instead of providing that subtext, they set up the clunky text and assume the subtext to support it will emerge from the fandom. Or perhaps, more generously, especially for younger queer writers, they are just so used to having to provide that work themselves that they forget they are doing the writing and are able to (and should) layer subtext and text together and weave something actually good.

Either way, it's this that's led to the "Lesbian necromancers in space, need I say more"* era of recommendations, taglines, and writing, in which explicit representation is, if not plentiful, at least available; but a worrying amount of it forgets to actually write realized characters or a relationship with chemistry or a plot that makes sense.

I should also note: there's obviously a TON of straight romances and books that range from mediocre to abominable. I am under no circumstances arguing that "gayboring" media shouldn't exist. But while I don't think queer stories should be held to a higher standard, I don't think I should be obligated to settle for a lower standard either simply because it's gay. I know it's fraught, in that we're at risk of publishers and producers taking away the message "people hate this because it's gay" rather than "people hate this because it's poorly developed," but like...at the very least, could we recommend things in terms of "this is a great book that has a wonderful queer romance" and "this show is gay but it is also deeply mediocre, and if it weren't gay I wouldn't recommend it at all; do what you will with this information."

*I should note: I happen to like The Locked Tomb (of Lesbian Necromancers in Space fame) a lot! I know it's not for everyone; I know it can feel very gimmicky at times. But no matter how you feel, that tagline is DIRE and does a miserable job of representing the books. Like, that premise could suck, actually (and plenty of people find it does) if you're not sold on the mere fact that it's got lesbians, necromancy, or space in it. Worth noting that neither Starless nor the Teixcalaan books were heavily marketed as Queer Romance Fantasy/SF even though both very much are, which does further make me think this is a case of people writing good books that are queer, vs. people writing books with the intention to be on some New Queer SF list or, god forbid, Booktok.

#long post #the book i read this week (light from uncommon stars) was also like. really hit or miss #the locus review of it is spot on. like. i think one of the characters' stories is fantastic but i think it's afraid to have any bite.#also this was out of scope for this post but like. i have recommended terra ignota before #and like. it is saying THE MOST about Gender since Le Guin or Butler imo. but it's NOT marketed as queer at all #and part of that is that it's really not capable to read it as a romance (certainly not a happy one) despite there being queer pairs in it

117 notes · View notes

voltstone · 14 days

Text

Louis: AAAAAAAAHHH! *dramatic piano* Louis: aaAHSOAHHAHHHHH!! AOIHAHAHHHHHHH!! eeeaaaHHHHHH! Violet: HOW ARE YOU LOUDER WITHOUT YOUR TONGUE?! Louis: >:)

— — — —

Violet: Louis. Do not. Louis: Violet: That's my book. Leave it the fuck alone. Louis: You don't— Louis: You're fucking blind. How are you doing any of this??

#twdg #twdg 4 #twdg meme #incorrect quuotes #twdg louis #twdg violet #save violet route vs save louis route #aka how they continue to annoy each other despite it all #i dont care louis would be louder once his tongue properly healed #and violet would be the little shit with her favorite book (because she gets bedtime stories read to her now)#im mean she reads them herself what

47 notes · View notes

thenightpost · 18 days

Text

There's this thing that happens, let's say at school where a bunch of guys are in the bathroom, at the urinal, laughing about some dork that made an anus of himself in gym. You're all basically nice guys, right? You know right from wrong, and would not in a million years be brutal to the poor guy's face. And then it happens: the dork was in the shitter. He comes out of the stall with this look. He heard everything. And you realize you're not really that nice of a guy. This is what I would say if I could, to all smart people of the world with their dumb hillbilly jokes: We are right here in the stall. We can actually hear you. - Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

#this book should be required reading for leftists who see the US South as 'backward' or beyond help #we're here we're queer/POC/disabled and we're resilient as fuck despite all the shitty stereotypes #barbara kingsolver #demon copperhead

18 notes · View notes

ineffectualdemon · 1 year

Text

I will never forget that in middle school because I have no musical talent I didn't join band or choir and I also had no athletic ability so I wasn't on a sports team so during the period everyone was else was doing one of those things the rest of us no talent kids had to take "Reading class" where we just read books

And that sounds nice except I was a fast reader and I was only allowed to read 2 pages of the book in question a day. I was not allowed to read ahead of the class and I was not allowed to read my book from home or even work on my homework.

But if I looked too bored the teacher would get mad at me for that and for not reading and "I read it already" was met with a look of disgust and being told to read it again.

So for like an hour I would either stare into space or read the same 2 pages over and over and over again

And I couldn't even hide my book from home behind my textbook because she watched me like a hawk

Why?

Because the teacher of that class fucking hated me for god knows what reason

Anyway I hated the Odyssey for years because I was forced to read it at an absolute snails pace in middle school and it took me a long time to separate out the story from that experience

#american public school #education #american education #the 90s #i still dont know what her problem with me was #i was an obnoxiously well behaved kid #all i wanted to do was read my book from home quietly after doing rge required reading she found that offensive #despite the fact i had go keep a daily log of how many minutes I read a day #look its not my fault im tone deaf and clumsy as shit #why are you punishing me for that!

85 notes · View notes

spacecravat · 6 months

Note

Hi margot do you have a list you'd share of the Hugo and nebula women? This is so in my vein and I've been feeling the itch to read more sf again also I hope you enjoy the female man I thought it was a fun whirlwind

Here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JgcIyXqcOJbAqMjXKEsGgTRCRBGm6ksCInb6nqFdeao/edit#gid=0

I'm expanding this to women and nonbinary authors, which was less of a concern when I was just doing pre-1980 books, but a few more these days.

Authors with an asterisk next to their name means they won the award for that year.

For the 50s-80s I actually checked every author, since a few (like Andre Norton) used pseudonyms. For the 90s on, I got lazy and mostly just assumed gender based on first name (I know, I know) and only checked ambiguous ones. May or may not be entirely accurate, and there might be a few I have or have not deleted that should be. But it's probably most of them.

Nonbinary authors I am aware of: Caitlín R. Kiernan, Annalee Newitz, Shelley Parker-Chan, and C.L. Polk. And there may be more! I admittedly was not being super thorough.

I removed Yoon Ha Lee, who is the only trans man I know of who's been nominated, but I do love his books so I want to give a shoutout here to the Machineries of Empire series anyway.

Charlie Jane Anders, Rachel Pollack, and Ryka Aoki are the trans woman I'm aware of on the list, though again, there may be more.

The second tab has all winners/nominees, including for a few other awards. (I did delete one entry for association with the Sad Puppies nonsense.)

Also if you have trouble finding any of the books, let me know and I can probably help! I've managed to track most of the older ones down. (I've had good luck with archive.org and libgen for the long out of print.)

#also caveat that just because they're nominated doesn't mean they're good #i've read and hated many of these haha #gothiccoherence #asks #book blogging #leaving jk r*wling in for completeness. despite it all.

17 notes · View notes

boltlightning · 3 months

Text

i finished temeraire and man. what a journey. highly recommend if you enjoy 1) repressed officers with strong hearts who are like fathers to their men 2) english propriety stretched to its extreme 3) discussions of what doing good costs 4) tangible societal change for the better in spite of this 5) incredible platonic relationships developing naturally over time and, of course, 6) big cool dragons who are also your best friends and get into really cool fights. please read these books

#maybe stop after book 5. but i had fun with all them despite my qualms #jane roland...i will cherish you always #her convo with laurence in her fancy house with excidium snoozing nearby...worth the whole series #bolt reads things

12 notes · View notes

dancedance-resolution · 9 months

Text

i started a supercorp portrait of a lady on fire au like three years ago. i'm never going to finish it, but the writing style is pretty cool, so i want to share it. so um enjoy the prologue and a bit of chapter one?

---

Prologue. Bonnelles, France. 1786.

“First, my contours,” Kara said, her voice soft and level. She looked out upon the dozen or so young women, their eyes darting back and forth from their papers to Kara herself. “The outline,” she continued. The increasingly swift sound of scratching charcoal prompted Kara to further instruct, “Not too fast. Take time to look at me.” She paused. “See how my arms are placed.”

At that moment, Kara saw the painting.

She swallowed and took in a breath; she schooled her expression before letting out the air with a pathetically soft “My hands.” Her students’ gaze followed her verbal direction, now observing as Kara’s fingers curled with remembrance. Their own hands now began to sketch the slope of hers—the slope that had once coaxed breathy moans from a lover, the slope that had once created that very painting in all of its hollow longing.

Kara felt her heart rate accelerating, and her attempts at calming deep breaths only made her shoulders shake unsteadily. “Who brought that painting out?” Her eyes darted around, landing on each possible offender, as she tensed her core and adopted a stern countenance.

Every student dutifully turned to look at the work.

It was an especially young girl who finally lifted her hand. “I brought it. From the stock room. Should I have not?”

Kara’s “no” felt like a brick, its weight threatening to pry tears from her reddening eyes. So Kara took another swallow, a handful of blinks, a few more steadying breaths.

“Did you paint it?” the girl asked innocently. Nia, her name was? She stared at Kara, oblivious to the flood of sound overwhelming Kara’s mind and echoing in the cavern of her heart.

“Yes,” Kara uttered softly, the word barely audible as they fell from her lips. “A long time ago.”

Nia’s head snapped back to examine the painting once more. It stood on an old but sturdy easel, tattooed and scarred but still standing. The artwork itself was brooding, with a white sun bleeding into a dark vignette. Heavy clumps of clouds occupied the sky and caged some of the sun’s rays, so the fire burning behind the woman was bright enough in comparison to create a dragging shadow of her figure. The flames crawled up the back of her windswept dress, bringing sharp tension to an otherwise lulling, melancholy landscape.

“What’s the title?”

The sound of the sea began to swell in Kara’s head. Her lips trembled. Her body unwittingly swayed slightly. “Portrait of a Lady on Fire.”

---

Chapter I. The island of Brittany, France, and the surrounding sea. 1779.

Kara squinted into the distance, her face scrunching up a bit as she desperately tried to shield her eyes from the harsh glare of the sun on the water. For all its gorgeous teals and sparkling peaks, it certainly did make her wish for one of those brimmed hats the rowers were all wearing. With every one of their paced paddles, the cork-like little canoe bobbed haphazardly. Kara rather felt as if she were in the wine glass of a thoroughly drunken Marie Antoinette.

At least she wasn’t prone to seasickness.

She still felt quite unsteady, though, being thrown about and forced to pathetically grab onto the boat’s low walls. She leaned forward, trying to regain her balance and ground herself despite the absence of ground.

The wooden pallet holding her canvas was, apparently, as unstable as she was, and the next thing Kara knew, it had been lurched off of the boat like vomit from a drunkard. Kara watched helplessly as it thrashed among the choppy waves, the sea carrying it a few feet from the boat.

The chief rower met her desperate look with exhausted resignation; he ceased his paddling as Kara shed her overcoat and placed a precarious foot on the edge of the canoe.

With a strained creak from the boat’s wood, she jumped into the water, dress billowing behind her. Her first gasp for air upon emerging from the water was audible; she could feel the effort in her throat. Her arms moved in laborious little arcs as she slowly made her way towards the floating pallet and finally made a desperate reach for it. Kara’s fingers grasped onto a wooden board, and she pulled herself up onto it with a grunt.

---

The incessant wind upon the sea was certainly not helping Kara. Dripping wet, she wrapped herself up in her overcoat in a pitiful plea for warmth. She held the edges of the garment up to her lips, the sensation of the dry fabric bringing her some comfort as she closed her eyes and left herself to the mercy of the mighty sea.

But the interminable rocking of the feeble boat wouldn’t allow her any rest.

Kara wasn’t very religious, not anymore. Yet, the sight of the cliffs and coast of Brittany moved her to relieved prayer.

---

The sun had already begun to set as Kara trekked up the sandy coast. Her legs ached with every stumbling, unsure step—maybe she was a bit seasick after all—and her hands were tired of having to grip her full skirt to keep it out of her way.

She paused on the rocks, taking a moment to manually wring some of the water out of her skirt. She filled her lungs with an arduous breath before slinging the rope holding the pallet over her shoulder. Next came the fabric sling, which housed her trunk of personal items—she positioned it on her back with careful poise.

The journey up the cliffs and towards the trees was exhausting. Kara’s skirt required repositioning every few seconds, the rope was digging into her shoulder, and the pallet and trunk slammed into her back with each wobbling step. By the time she reached the straight path up to the residence, her breaths were heavy and pained, and the sun was nearly fully hidden beneath the horizon.

A soft light emanated from the windows above the mansion’s door, helping Kara feel a bit more secure as she knocked. A short blonde woman answered her summon and introduced herself with a flat “I’m Eve.” She opened the door a bit wider and gestured with her body for Kara to come in.

Eve held a small candle as she guided Kara up the stairs, the sounds of their shoes echoing through the grand yet starkly undecorated hallway. The walls of the stairwell were cement bricks, and the wrought iron bannister was rather plain and geometric.

They came to a stop in front of a similarly void room, bare save a few heavy curtains and a daybed. The raised panels along these walls matched the white-painted wood of the window frames, and they gave the chamber some elegant character.

While Eve entered the comparatively less intimidating room, Kara stayed back a moment, taking in the shafts of muted blue light from the windows and the contrasting warm glow of leaping flames from the central fireplace.

Eve crouched down to poke at the fire as Kara set down her belongings. “It was a reception room,” Eve explained. “Though I’ve never seen it used.”

The fire crackled pleasantly. “Have you been here long?” Kara inquired.

“Three years,” Eve answered, directing her attention back to the fire.

Kara peeled off her overcoat and draped it along the wainscoting. “Do you like it here?”

“Yes,” Eve said simply as she stood up. She turned to Kara, meeting her eyes now as her hands smoothed over her skirt. “I’ll let you get dry.” And with a nod, she was on her way.

Kara watched her every step.

Once the door closed, she hastily began removing her overskirt. It fell to the dark herringbone floor with an unglamorous thud.

---

There was no method or grace to the way Kara wrapped her hand around the rusting crowbar, but with a few jerks, she’d managed to successfully pry the top off of the pallet.

After setting down the wood cover, Kara extended her hand, letting it fall clumsily onto the slick canvas in front of her. It was still wet, and her hand’s small circular movement caused moisture to pool at her fingertips, as if her touch had beckoned the water. So her hand withdrew, and Kara slid the canvas out from its container. Her eyes danced over the surface as she considered how to dry it, holding it in front of herself like the Communion host of an evening Mass.

---

Kara decided to accompany her drying canvas, which was now positioned next to the fireplace. Stripped naked, she sat in front of the fire and pulled her legs towards herself—she was vulnerable, sitting there bare and in a new environment, and the action made her feel a bit more small, compact, and safe.

Kara set down her candle so she could light her tobacco pipe with the flames. Her large, smoky exhales grounded her, in a way, with the familiar sight and smell acting as a sort of sedative. And she stared forward, expression blank but unmistakably worn.

---

Kara walked barefoot along the cement floor, making her way through the hall and to the pantry room wrapped in nothing but her robe-like smock.

#again i have no intention of finishing so be forewarned etc #supergirl #supercorp poalof au #i have been feeling a bit weird going through my old work bc. i don't think i've really improved in the three years since starting this???#and i quite literally haven't written anything in 2023 other than like the 1000ish words to finish up this final chapter of tree of my song #&those thousand words genuinely feel worse than my old writing #because i'm out of practice i think #it's weird bc writing is something i think of as super important to me - like in less than a month i'll literally be at community college a #ain despite how bad my experience was last time with it bc i theoretically want to take classes that will make me a better writer #so like blah blah blah do i want to dedicate more of myself and my energy towards writing long term or do i just like the idea of being a #writer.#blah blah blah if i had to do a rose colored glasses on this all it would be. since january i have read 60something books and before this y #ar i hadnt been an avid reader in ages. and most of those books have been in the genre/niche i want to end up writing in #so i was learning writing by reading in that sense #hmm etc etc #i should probably stop taking myself and all of this so seriously lol idk #i'm theoretically back into writing and trying to prioritize it more again so (thumbs up emoji)

29 notes · View notes

e-louise-bates · 9 months

Text

Oh my goodness, you guys, @scarvenartist did it again! After her perfectly smashing job of Maia's portrait, I commissioned her to do a portrait of Len to go along with it, and just look at what she came up with! This absolutely IS Lennox Davies, spy, detective, and magician. Ahhh! I'm so delighted with this!

I'll do another post later of both portraits so you all can see how well they go together, but for right now I want Len to get his moment in the spotlight all on his own.

Thank you again, @scarvenartist! These have been my first-ever commissions of art for my books, and I couldn't be happier with them!

#whitney and davies #lennox davies #I just love his expression #and his stance #and how much both convey about his personality #I do not have a visual imagination at all #which made it so challenging to try to describe what he looks like #but somehow scarvenartist managed to capture him perfectly despite my difficulties #this IS Len and even my poor visualization skills can recognize that #also my husband has an incredibly vivid visual imagination and has read all my books #and when I showed this to him he ALSO said it was perfect for Len #so there you go

25 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

indigo-scarf

leatherbookmark

tormented by the parus major

dentistyuma21-blog

Untitled

rajseafront-blogs

Untitled

thefancyisland

The Fancy Island