#(gorgeous love letter to gothic horror

[madegeeky]

So apparently one of the next Micheline Pitt fandom collections is going to be Labyrinth! They haven't shown any pics of anything yet but I'm intrigued. I haven't seen it in a long time and have no intense nostalgia for it so haven't felt the need to go and watch it again.

But one thing I do know is that costuming in it is really interesting and I'm really excited to see what Micheline does with it.

[writerthreads]

Ten must-read books for writers (or anyone, really.)

By Writerthreads on Instagram

Obviously this list is highly subjective and based on my research and personal experience. Please share your favourite books as well!!

1. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Woolf is the queen of the stream of consciousness and a master at diving into characters' inner thoughts, conveying complex emotions, themes and perspective. Her prose is breathtaking, her character memorable.

2. Beloved by Toni Morrison

Morrison tackles difficult themes with poise like no other, diving into topics like grief, trauma, and identity. Read this book to learn how to develop multi-layered narratives whilst maintaining perfect pacing and a intricate narrative structure.

3. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A masterpiece. Sharp social commentary, eloquent prose and vivid imagery... what more can you want from a book? Every word was chosen for a purpose, and it shows the importance of restraint in writing.

4. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Tolkien's legendary fantasy world-building makes his series a staple in fantasy literature. The geography, cultures and histories in his works are well-crafted. Anyone trying to build a complex world can learn from from this series.

5. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Our second Woolf classic in this list! Mrs. Dalloway is a masterclass of a perfect character study. Woolf weaves different viewpoints intricately, capturing the essence of human experience.

6. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Austen character development is legendary, showcasing complex, evolving characters like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. The novel’s witty dialogue show insight into personality and societal norms, and her narrative voice and well-structured plot keeps readers hooked to the very end.

7. Never Let Me Go by Kazoo Ishiguro

Ishiguro’s novel presents a quietly devastating exploration of memory, identity, and humanity through a dystopian lens. The subtle, restrained prose and profound emotional impact illustrate how to weave complex themes into a seemingly simple narrative.

8. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

This book made me cry so very hard. The author explored themes like identity and fame, while creating an engaging and multi-layered plot that had me hooked. Reid’s vivid prose showcases techniques for creating emotionally resonant and storytelling that allows readers to feel for the characters.

9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Márquez’s masterpiece provides a gorgeous, profound exploration of magical realism. Its intricate narrative and richly imagined world blends fantastical elements with real-world themes into something unique and breathtaking.

10. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Brontes exploration of dark themes, framed within a dark and brooding narrative, makes it the quintessential gothic read. It's emotionally intense, complex in structure, and definitely memorable, perfect for any budding writer dabbling in dark academia, modern gothic literature, horror, etc.

And here's my rather shoddy list from a non-English major who reads too much! And Sorry for the lack of accents on the required letters, I haven't figured out how to add them on my laptop. Please give me a general opinion on my book recs and whether they're good, or if you have more suggestions! Lots of love.

[ehc-on-ao3]

Wednesday's Stalker Secret Admirer

(The impetus for this rather silly idea: Wednesday is listed as a horror comedy series. I recall something about the overall plan for season 2 of Wednesday to ramp up the horror aspect. But what if it went the other route and ramped up the comedy instead?)

Wednesday Addams.

Dark. Brooding. Stoic.

Utterly mesmerizing.

Socially inept.

Terrifyingly gorgeous.

The source of many people's pain and suffering.

Hero of Nevermore.

But most importantly?

Target.

The stalker had spent months studying the gothic shadow in twin pigtails, knew her moves, her thoughts, her patterns. They started this cat-and-mouse game at least a dozen steps ahead of the amateur detective, prepared to taunt, mock, threaten, then finally kill her in the most humiliating way possible. It was destined to be their magnum opus! If it wasn't for one small, tiny detail:

Wednesday Addams simply didn't get it.

What the stalker did not (could not in a million years) anticipate was that Wednesday would utterly misinterpret every single text, written letter, and threatening package delivered to her door as the attempts of a secret admirer to win her love rather than a bloodthirsty stalker hellbent on rendering her dead and buried.

The animated .gif of her getting skewered by a butcher knife netted the response of, "Clearly you are an individual of refined taste. I approve, though with reservation."

Huh? Never mind, try again, this time via a physical letter written in blood delivered to her door. The response via text?

"I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the letter, though I believe my heart has been snared by another. My advice: in the future, try vellum, as it will not allow the blood to seep through to the envelope and spoil the surprise."

And the response to the decapitated cat speared into her front lawn?

"Your attempts at courtship, though admirable, are no longer desired, for I am now in a committed relationship. I shall, however, remember the gifts fondly as it was a first for me. May you find happiness in another soon enough."

Okay, no more screwing around. Time to break out the big guns.

The stalker, of course, followed Wednesday back to Nevermore, quickly discovering the identity her paramour: one Enid Sinclair. Recently-turned werewolf, bright where Wednesday was dark, smiling when the other frowned. But most critically, the chink in Wednesday's armor. What better way to extract a bloody revenge on the girl than by targeting her loved one? A few discrete photos, a overly-threatening message sent via text, and bam! A thoroughly shaken Wednesday ripe for the picking!

Right?

Wrong.

"While I am not unfamiliar with the idea of courting more than one paramour at a time, I am uncertain if Enid is willing to share. I shall bring it up with her in the near-future and respond posthaste. However, I would not hold out much hope as werewolves tend to be territorial. It is, after all, a stereotype for a reason."

While the stalker is busy screaming and violently smashing anything breakable in their vicinity (how did she not get it?!), Wednesday is true to her word and reveals the various messages to Enid. In an attempt to be more open and honest, she had already advised Enid of the existence of her secret admirer during their break (which had immediately prompted Enid to finally get off her tail and ask Wednesday to be her girlfriend), but this would be the first time she actually shared the images with her girlfriend.

A girlfriend who was as territorial as Wednesday anticipated. Enid was adamant that Wednesday cease contact with her admirer, though Wednesday didn't understand the vehemence behind the request. Her admirer was dangerous? Sick? The messages and gifts the acts of a madman? Wednesday nearly rolled her eyes. Untrue. This was simply someone who understood the intricacies of an Addams courtship. Still, while the admirer had intrigued her, Wednesday only had eyes for Enid. She would abide by her request and cease all contact. After one last message, of course.

"As I anticipated, Enid is not open to a poly relationship. She has also understandably requested I cease all contact with you and I shall abide by her request. Consider this my final message."

Wednesday then proceeded to "block" the sender on her phone. While she didn't understand jealousy herself, she knew it had the potential of poisoning a relationship as quickly as hemlock (to a normie, anyway), and would take whatever steps Enid requested in order to be a proper significant other.

Cue the stalker sending even more messages to Wednesday's phone via multiple burner accounts.

Cue Wednesday becoming exasperated at the now-unwanted amorous attention from her secret admirer, then handing Enid her phone to "finally block them for good."

Cue Enid seeking the assistance of the Nightshades to locate this stalker and make good on her promise to Wednesday to "finally block them for good."

Cue a whole lot of violence and screaming.

Cue a bloody Enid kissing the oblivious but always insanely attractive Wednesday who all but melts at the attention. While she adores her time with Enid, she can't help the shiver of excitement at Enid finally getting into the Addams way of courtship, blood and all.

[abhainnwhump]

"Nighty, Dream invited me to take botany classes 'n he said knew I was dyslexic 'n he'd read to me!"

Ribbon cheerfully annouced.

"Can I go? I know it is risky but can I? Horror can come with me if it is too risky to go alone!"

----------------------------------------------------------

Earlier...

"Dream, I think I can relate to Nightmare to a degree, you say you know your brother is in there but you don't seem to care about who he is currently and only who he once was. It... feels like conditional love. And when love is conditional, it can feel like you were never loved to begin with."

Cross realizes as he spoke that this a trans allegory.

-Gothic Ribbon Anon

First || Second || Third || Fourth

(Content warnings: Domestic abuse, toxic love, conditioned whumpee, transphobia? I'm not sure with Ribbon's circumstance being so questionable)

"Um, Nightmare? Dream wants me to come over to the Omega Timeline so we can take a botany class! He said he's going to help me read the assignment because he knows I have dyslexia!" Ribbon bounced, excitement glinting in her eyes. "Can I go? Please? Please? I can have Horror or Killer come with to guard me if it's too-"

"You spoke to Dream?"

Nightmare stopped writing his letter to look up at him. Ribbon froze in the middle of a bounce. Ribbon smiled for his sake. "Y- yeah. When we were on our last mission, Dream slipped me a note in battle. He said he just wants to hang out with me angry get to know me! So can I go?"

"Absolutely not." Nightmare stood up and stared down at her, making Ribbon gulp. She recognized Nightmare's mood swings from anywhere. "How could you even consider such a thing? You know Dream is dangerous, are you trying to make me worry? I have told you for talk to him for months. He's a liar, a fraud, he never came for you when you called his name. What makes you believe he cares for you now?"

Ribbon didn't like Nightmare's tone at all and looked away. She was a bit disappointed. It was one class, a plant class! He wasn't asking to go practice fighting. "But he promise-"

Nightmare struck Ribbon across the face. Ribbon yipped and held her cheek. "I apologize for that, but you are never, ever, meant to speak to Dream. It's for your safety. He only wants to take you away and confuse your messed up mind further. Do you understand?

Ribbon looked down, ashamed for even suggesting such a thing. Why was she so easy to manipulate? Nightmare noticed the regret and gave her a hug with his tendrils. "Aw, my sweet little angel. You're too stupid for your own good. Everyone wants to take advantage of you. If you want friends so badly, I'll pick them out for you. I can't have anyone messing with your innocent mind . . ."

================================================

Dream stared into the distance off his balcony, holding the clasp of is cape. The Omega Timeline was truly gorgeous if you knew where to look. Above the Waterfall, an area mixed up of the Waterfall areas of thirty AUs, it looked like a magical splash park. He wanted to take Ink here, it would help clear his head from what Nightmare did to him.

Cross peered next to him, holding his hand. Cross kept glancing at him with a questioning look. Eventually, Dream sighed. "Is there something you want to say? Are you okay, cookie dough?"

"Hm? Yeah, I'm fine. Just thinking." Cross side. He picked a rock off the ground and threw it in the water. It made a mystical plunk and white patterns rippled through the spot. Dream tilted his head and Cross explained himself. "Whenever you talk about Nightmare, you always talk about wanting him back, getting your brother still in there, but you never say anything positive about him in the present. I know there isn't anything positive to say, I've seen it myself, but you always manage to find the good in anyone, it strange you can't do it with your own brother. It's like you only love him conditionally if he acts like the scared shy boy you once knew. When you love someone conditionally like that, it can come off as never loving them at all because you aren't willing to change. I almost relate in that way."

Dream took a moment to process what they heard. Cross could not choose to defend Nightmare, not after all he's been through. He squeezed his hand. "Cross, I would love Nightmare if he still acted like himself, but he kills innocents. It's completely different. If he didn't, I could accept the change. It's the same with Ink. But with him, he still can be saved. He's only been brainwashed for half a year, not the centuries Nightmare has been. We can still bring him back to his senses."

"True, he's pure evil, but I've heard you give excuses on why Dust slaughters more than Nightmare. You can't accept who he is now and that's not good for anyone." Cross zoned out for a moment. "The more I say it, the more it sounds like a trans allegory."

"I'm certain Nightmare is at least partially homophobic and transphobic, I don't think that's the case." Dream laughed weakly. He stared deep into the waterfall whispering and flowing below. It was beautiful. They waited for the day Ink could come here with him and they could be friends again."

[tyrannuspitch]

Assorted Thor comic recs

I recently combed through a LOT of fairly random Thor comics; these are the best ones I've found so far. I went in without much in the way of guidance or expectations, so I don't really know whether this is a typical list of universally agreed greatest hits, or slightly more unorthodox with some hidden gems, but either way, I hope it's useful to someone.

These stories are all recent (2010 or later), and pretty short (from 20 to 160 pages). The first three are self-contained and beginner-friendly; they could function as introductions to Thor comics. The fourth is a subversion, so you need some general familiarity with Thor comics, but continuity is still not very important. The last one works best if you have also read, at minimum, Agent of Asgard.

So, in no particular order...

Thor: Where Walk the Frost Giants (one issue, 20 pages)

This is a short story in which Thor has to foil a frost giant invasion of Asgard, with the help of a young boy who idolises him. I'll admit the plot is fairly generic - but it's the best side of generic. The art style is halfway between retro comics and a storybook, with gorgeous colouring. The cheesy Silver Age high fantasy dialogue is rendered lovingly and unapologetically. This is a love letter to quintessential Thor comics without the racism/sexism/etc that often weigh them down, and it helped me, as someone who first loved Thor in its self-subverting forms, to appreciate the straight versions at their best.

--

2. Thor: Season One (one issue, 100 pages)

This is a funny, clever, fast-paced retelling of Thor's origin story as Donald Blake. I love its take on Donald Blake - it makes him a compelling character of his own, and his identity/existential crisis is the most emotionally compelling part of the story. Donald/Thor's relationship with Jane is another highlight. The Asgard plotline is, in my opinion, a little bit shallow, but it is still consistently entertaining. The art is beautiful, highly expressive, and particularly good at portraying magic/wonder.

--

3. Thor the Mighty Avenger (eight issues, from 2010 - not to be confused with the 2011 run of the same name)

This is a Thor backstory more akin to MCU Thor, with no Donald Blake, but it takes place over much longer than three days, and it expands Thor and Jane's relationship beautifully. Its Thor characterisation is layered, incredibly charming, and easily some of the best: a noble, out-of-touch weirdo with no self-preservation instinct and some delightful "sad wet cat" moments, slowly learning to love Earth.

The art is simple, charming and highly expressive, reminiscent of a retro comic, but with more modern designs.

--

4. Thor: For Asgard (six issues)

This series follows Thor as a new king struggling to maintain order as the Asgardian empire is threatened by uprisings, civil war, and possibly the coming of Ragnarok. It's a very dark take on Asgard and on Thor himself, verging on horror at times, and featuring, among other things: gore, war crimes, discussion of rape, more than one ritual suicide, and a journey through Hel. It definitely won't be for everyone, but personally, I found it incredibly refreshing. ("They're trigger warnings to you; to me they're the reason it's on my reading list"...)

The art reminds me of 80s/90s fantasy movies - shadowy and rich with gothic details like furs, candles, and skulls.

--

5. The Immortal Thor (currently six issues, ongoing)

This series follows Thor's fight against the gods of Utgard, each of whom is essentially a darker and more powerful mirror of an Asgardian god. It's an ongoing series, part of a continuity I'm not perfectly caught up on, but I'm really enjoying it anyway.

The art is beautiful - very colourful, with an excellent sense of magic and wonder - and the writing is incredible, the best I've encountered in any comic. It's clever, funny, subtle, and emotionally compelling, and it succeeds in balancing them all.

Although it's Thor-centric, this story's Loki characterisation is also really good - what's it's doing with the God(dess) of Stories role is fun and, afaik, completely new; and it's leading to some really interesting explorations of Thor and Loki's relationship.

--

Thus concludes my list. I'm not sure how to tie something like this up, but I feel like it looks odd if I don't. Bon appetit?

[ash-and-books]

Rating: 1/5

Book Blurb: A modern masterpiece, this is a classic Gothic thriller-fantasy from New York Times bestselling author Erin A. Craig, about doomed love, menacing ambition, and the ghosts that haunt us forever. In a manor by the sea, one sister is still cursed.

Despite dreams of adventures far beyond the Salann shores, seventeen-year-old Verity Thaumas has remained at her family’s estate, Highmoor, with her older sister Camille, while their sisters have scattered across Arcannia.

When their sister Mercy sends word that the Duchess of Bloem—wife of a celebrated botanist—is interested in having Verity paint a portrait of her son, Alexander, Verity jumps at the chance, but Camille won’t allow it. Forced to reveal the secret she’s kept for years, Camille tells Verity the truth one day: Verity is still seeing ghosts, she just doesn’t know it.

Stunned, Verity flees Highmoor that night and—with nowhere else to turn—makes her way to Bloem. At first, she is captivated by the lush, luxurious landscape and is quickly drawn to charming, witty, and impossibly handsome Alexander Laurent. And soon, to her surprise, a romance . . . blossoms.

But it’s not long before Verity is plagued with nightmares, and the darker side of Bloem begins to show through its sickly-sweet façade. . . .

Review:

A gothic mystery set in a mysterious beautiful manor filled with stunning plants and a family with a dark secret. Verity is an artist who is commissioned to paint the portrait of the Duchess of Bloem's son, Alexander. She has been living with her sister in their family estate for years and yearns to finally explore the world and go on an adventure, this would be the chance for her to finally escape. Verity Thaumas comes from a family that is said to be cursed, her parents died, six of her sisters have died, but now the rest of her sisters are happily living their lives except for Verity who yearns to explore. When her sister Mercy sends her a letter telling her that a Duchess is interested in hiring her to paint her son's portrait for his 20th birthday, Verity immediately accepts. Then she discovers that her sister Camille is adamantly against it because of the secret she has been keeping form Verity, the fact that Verity can see and communicate with ghosts. That doesn't stop Verity from going though and soon she fins herself in the gorgeous and luxurious Bloem estate beginning a romance with the handsome and kind Alexander Laurent. Yet strange things are happening and she keeps getting warnings from ghosts that she should escape because there is a monster here and that something much darker is going on with this family. Can she figure out the secret lurking beneath this sickly sweet facade of a family? Unfortunately for me this book was a big let down, it fell flat so many times and I honestly was fed up with Verity for a majority of the book and the romance didn't work at all. This was advertised as a gothic horror with romance and honestly it was just meh. Verity see's so many things wrong and see's so many red flags but purposely chooses and knowingly chooses to ignore them. The romance was so bad, it was insta love, except the entire time Verity was just gas lighting herself into thinking she was in love with Alex despite the amount of time she notes she doesn't really feel like she's in love and doesn't really feel all that much about Alex except that they have a nice time together. Then there was the weird love triangle introduced and ugh, seriously what even was this book. I didn't read the first book but had no trouble following along with this one. Overall, this one was a miss from me, I love gothic romances and mysteries but this one just missed the mark a bit. However, if you do enjoy gothic mysteries with twisted families then give this one a go maybe you'll have a better time with it than I did.

*SPOIER: that Gerard Bloem, the father, had been sleeping with women to get children from them for his experiments and then killing the women. He had two other sons that were the triplet to Alex, but he deemed them both not good enough and then they came back to the mansion to get their inheritance but killed Gerard instead and tried to kill Alex. They both die and now Alex and Verity decide to continue their relationship the end of the book shows that one of the brothers is still alive*

*Thanks Netgalley and Random House Children's, Delacorte Press for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

[fictionz]

New Fiction 2024 - September

"The Cold Embrace" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1860)

To ghost, to suffer, to feel her hands.

"The Love Letter" by Jack Finney (1959)

We should be so lucky to have even a single letter to our name.

"Doggy-Dog World" by Hilary Leichter (2020)

We are what we want what we are what we want.

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite (2018)

Not the horror story I expected, but rather a darkly comedic look at Nigerian society, and really society at large and the expectations and privileges we are afforded. The narrator had a particular approach to life that will click with anyone who can't let that mote of dust rest in peace.

Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata & trans. Ginny Tapley Takemori (2016)

We should all be so lucky as to find our own convenience store.

Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time by James Gurney (1992)

Dinosaurs and humans create a wondrous socialist utopia, accompanied by gorgeous art. Also some pleistocene mammals for good measure.

Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)

The Austrian countryside is a gothic teenage wasteland.

Dead Space by Kali Wallace (2021)

You solve A.I. crimes, what do you get? A prosthetic shoulder and deeper in debt.

Allegiance in Exile by David R. George III (2013)

Allegiance in Exile is a bit scattered in the plot but they have a really cool and subtle reveal near the end. It's also interesting to hang out with Kirk as the five-year mission comes to a close. Who are you, who am I, when the thing is done and the future awaits?

The Baby-sitter by R.L. Stine (1989)

Things move along predictably and then WHOA he really ratchets up the horror at the end, particularly for a book targeted at young teens. As the advertisement at the end of the book states, nobody scares 'em like R.L. Stine.

Be Afraid — Be Very Afraid! by R.L. Stine (1999)

Aw R.L., you had me going! It's a strange format at first, then it starts to get intriguing, but then the page count limit rears its head and the story wraps up way too blithely.

The Curse of the Creeping Coffin by R.L. Stine (1996)

Doesn't hit the same wacky highs as the previous entry, but the myriad ghost adventures won me over in the end.

"Under the Floorboards" by Emily Carroll (2012)

It's all fun and games until you and you can't work it out.

"Nightfall" by Bill DuBay & Bernie Wrightson (1977)

Who else would it be at this time of night?

"Monster War" by Joy Chin, Christopher Golden, Tom Sniegoski, Vitor Ishimura, Scott Kester, Trroy Peteri (2005)

Lots of cooks in this kitchen, ingredients in this stew. The monster mash is more interesting than the IP side of the dish.

"The wind carries your last cry away" by avi (2024)

And at long last only the hills will know.

A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll (2023)

It doesn't matter if you see what you think you saw. It's there, waiting for you.

Frankenstein: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito (2018)

Read it for Frankenstein, stay for the strange tales of Oshikiri and his poorly secured house.

Frankenstein 2000 dev. Peter Fothergill (1985)

Only vaguely related to Frankenstein but such a creative collection of levels that it doesn't matter, they're still great.

Castle Frankenstein dev. Epic Software (1984)

Oh, sweet forgiving parser and high contrast colors. With those basics out of the way, this is a text adventure game that can actually be enjoyed.

The Crow dir. Rupert Sanders (2024)

The look of a crow but the heart of a checklist.

1992 dir. Ariel Vromen (2024)

Couldn't decide between the backdrop or the foreground.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice dir. Tim Burton (2024)

Just hang in there for the finale.

The Front Room dir. Max Eggers & Sam Eggers (2024)

You're here for Kathryn Hunter.

Häxan dir. Benjamin Christensen (1922)

Now that's something. It presaged true crime television with live reenactments.

Friday the 13th: A New Beginning dir. Danny Steinmann (1985)

I guess you have to try and get away.

The Critic dir. Anand Tucker (2024)

Delightfully devilish, Sir Ian.

Paranormal Activity dir. Oren Peli (2007)

Whoa that's a slow simmer with a spicy kick.

Speak No Evil dir. James Watkins (2024)

I suppose, but the ending is lacking and we all know it.

The Killer's Game dir. J. J. Perry (2024)

I wish I could be there but I fell overboard early on.

Vampyr dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer (1932)

Not quite the classic vampirism I crave.

November dir. Rainer Sarnet (2017)

Listen, gardening tool servants possessed by demons.

Crimson Peak dir. Guillermo del Toro (2015)

Looks pretty!

Whiplash dir. Damien Chazelle (2014)

JK Simmons is too good at being the worst.

The Substance dir. Coralie Fargeat (2024)

I too made noises of discomfort for the duration.

Never Let Go dir. Alexandre Aja (2024)

On the edge of something, but never at the heart of it.

The Others dir. Alejandro Amenábar (2001)

A slow and perhaps predictable build to the sublime.

The Purge dir. James DeMonaco (2013)

We're not supposed to want more.

Wolfs dir. Jon Watts (2024)

The classic fun of assassination friends.

Bagman dir. Colm McCarthy (2024)

Just creepy enough to getcha.

Azrael dir. E.L. Katz (2024)

Needs a survival horror video game stat.

The Wild Robot dir. Chris Sanders (2024)

Gorgeous scenery and heartfelt robot moments my beloved.

Megalopolis dir. Francis Ford Coppola (2024)

Should I go and take a classics class again?

Rosemary's Baby dir. Roman Polanski (1968)

I waited for the twist and its arrival was so subtle that it made me stop and think about where I was.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers dir. Philip Kaufman (1978)

We lost something when we stopped employing the hushed and overlapping dialogue of the 70s. This remake is chock full of that and running scenes with with very audible footsteps. But it's also creepy as heck and surprisingly fleshy.

[alvaeris]

Ughh yeah memorizing the chords is so hard especially with the ADHD it's so hard to focus on actually learning the names of each one. If I ever did do a cover I thought was really good I'd probably post it yeah, I actually have posted one before but that's it (it was a Mitski cover). I'm so jealous I've never done karaoke with anyone before but I reallyy want to someday

I mostly just learn indie shit on the guitar, I only play acoustic but I wanna learn bass and electric someday. I like way too many different kinds of music to list here but some I can think of off the top of my head are gothic rock, nu-metal, kpop, punk, hyperpop, dance, scene, broadway shit. Mostly generally alternative stuff but I'm not immune to a good pop song either (and yeah you caught me, I do mainly like musical theatre)

Ummm thank you twirls hair. I like when people compliment my writing n my art. Maybe I can send you a small list of anime recs cuz I'm already yapping way too much. BUT DEMON SLAYER IS SO BANGER it's one of my favorites honestly and I usually don't like the more popular ones.

Phycological horror is my favorite yeah :3 I psychological stuff in general because I like things that actually make me feel. Normal horror doesn't scare or disturb me or anything like that n it feels boring but body horror and psychological horror are a completely different case when done right

PS you write on AO3?? May I read some of your work perchance. Maybe I can show you some of mine :3 (no pressure)

-💜🩷🖤👑

oh, yeah, i can imagine 😭 i have a few friends with adhd and they already struggle enough with focusing on one thing, let alone sitting down and memorising. but at least you were able to manage it! i get cold feet from just looking at all the letters. where did you post the cover? i'd love to hear it if you let me- but it's fine if not, i'm sure it's gorgeous! i've never gone for karaoke before either, so this wilk be my first experience with it! i hope you're able to go with someone in the future.

what songs in particular have you learned? do you have to read sheet music for guitar, or memorise everything? hmm, i'm afraid i'm quite unknowledgable on the different types of guitars. is electric the one you can use an amp with? and is bass just, like, lower? or are there other differences?

woah, you have such a diverse music taste! it's like a little bit of everything- mad respect 😮‍💨 i've listened to a few of those. maybe i'll try some of the others as well! ALSO I WAS RIGHT YAY. what's your favourite musical? mine is ride the cyclone, but i also like mean girls and heathers quite a bit. i actually went to watch hamilton earlier this year! it's one of my favourite memories.

no problem hehehe, and i like it when you yap ;D send me recs if you want, i'll check them out to see if i'm interested in them!

ohh, that makes sense. psychological horror is pretty scary 😭 i'm terrified of suspense.

i have written some fics on ao3, but i haven't posted any! they're all in my drafts. maybe i will post them after the exams. they're all dottolone though 😭 and some william afton. if i decide to publish them i'll be sure to send them to you! but you have to give me some of yours too teehee.

[wormsin]

god. horror movies will have opening credits in bright red, sometimes in gorgeous Gothic lettering. every time. and I always love it, never change cinema :)

[alwynthetiredreader]

2032 RELEASES I'M MOST EXCITED FOR!

Ander and Santi Were Here by Jonny Garza Villa

Fifteen Hundred Miles is just one of my favorite books ever so I cannot wait for this, especially considering there's a nonbinary LI!! Bless Jonny.

ALSO HAVE YOU SEEN THAT COVER????

Travelers Along The Way by Aminah Mae Safi

Tell Me How You Really Fell is also one of my favorites and so far, it looked like Aminah Mae Safi had only written contemporaries?? so this looks like a fun change, it's a fantasy robin hood remix, very fun!

Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

again,,, another writer who wrote one of my favorites, and actually I'm obsessed with Iron Widow, there's a movie in the works that I'm just so hyped for and Xiran is coming to ComicCon in Portugal in December and i got tickets for it, I'm just AAAAAAAAA

but either way, the sequel looks fantastic, that cover? *chefs kiss* AND XIRAN SAID IN AN INTERVIEW THE SEQUEL HAS MATH LESBIANS!!

Breakup From Hell by Ann Dávila Cardinal

that cover was very quick to catch my eye tbh and then i found out the author and MC are latine so i was sold, but also that's one hell of a premise! HS girl tired of everything meets guy who seems to have this strange influence on her and then she finds out he's sorta like the devil?! so now she needs to break up with him sjfbsadkhbdg it sounds amazing

Love Letters From Joy by Melissa See

from a disabled author, with ace rep like come on... look at the female MC with her little ace flag tote bag, again was sold very quickly

AND IT'S ACADEMIC RIVALS TO LOVERS?!?!

The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa

Queer latine pirates was all I needed tbh. And again, gorgeous cover!

The Fraud Squad by Kyla Zhao

I had the pleasure of helping this author do a cover reveal with a book trailer and everything, I'm patiently waiting for this one. It's like a Singaporean The Devil Wears Prada and I'm all for it

The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro

Of course there's another latine book on the list, this one a gothic horror based on the folklore of La Llorona!

Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni

Armenian sapphics... set in Armenia!! With an MC learning to embrace all of her identities, it sounds amazing and beautiful cover as well.

Always The Almost by Edward Underhill

TRANS REP!!! TRANS REP ALERT!!!

It's faking dating, one of them is a pianist and the other a cartoonist, omfg i already know I'll love this one so much

The Wrong King of Weird by James Ramos

Again, cover caught my eye instantly and it's by a nonbinary author!!!

Set in high school, it also looks like it's gonna be dealing with racism one way or the other. The art style on the cover is gorgeous and the characters look very interesting, I'm excited to meet them

The Dark Place by Britney S. Lewis

I absolutely adored The Undead Truth of Us and I was waiting for this announcement for a couple of months, and obviously, that cover doesn't disappoint. I don't even need to know what this one is about, i'll buy anything Britney writes

[rottenbooks]

Dark academia inspired books I want to read

⚰️The Six by Kirk Holland⚰️

💀 Fiction, Fantasy, LGBT

In a small Texas town, the unusually strong son of two bestselling authors is sick of sitting on the sidelines. Cozy in the tall trees of Oregon, a little woman sharpens her knives and readies herself for another day at the faire. Meanwhile, another young woman is prepared for a day of conning tourists and begging a living unaware that she’s being stalked by a man with a secret of his own. And on each coast, the enchanting adopted twins of a media mogul enjoy the fruits of the high life. They all have one thing in common: none of the Six know who they are.

They’re about to discover it.

Discover who they are. Discover those around them are more than they claimed. Discover the end game is only the first play.

🏚️Gothikana by RuNyx🏚️

📜 Dark Romance, Gothic, Mystery, Horror

An unusual girl. An enigmatic man. An ancient castle. What could go wrong?

An outcast her entire life, Corvina Clemm is left adrift after losing her mother. When she receives the admission letter from the mysterious University of Verenmore, she accepts it as a sign from the universe. The last thing she expects though is an olden, secluded castle on top of a mountain riddled with secrets, deceit, and death.

An enigma his entire life, Vad Deverell likes being a closed book but knowing exactly everything that happens in the university. A part-time professor working on his thesis, Vad has been around long enough to know the dangers the castle possesses.

And he knows the moment his paths cross with Corvina, she's dangerous to everything that he is.

They shouldn't have caught each other's eye. They cannot be. But a chill-inducing century-old mystery forces them to collide. People have disappeared every five years for over a hundred years, and Corvina is getting clues to unraveling it all, and Vad needs to keep an eye on her.

And so begins a tale of the mystique, the morbid, the macabre, and a deep love that blossoms in the unlikeliest of places.

🔮Ninth House (Alex Stern #1) by Leigh Bardugo🔮

🕯️ Paranormal, Adult, Horror, Mystery

Galaxy “Alex” Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance: to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs” are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.

📕People Like Us by Dana Mele📕

📌 Mystery, Thriller, Young Adult, LGBT

Kay Donovan may have skeletons in her closet, but the past is past, and she's reinvented herself entirely. Now she's a star soccer player whose group of gorgeous friends run their private school with effortless popularity and acerbic wit. But when a girl's body is found in the lake, Kay's carefully constructed life begins to topple.

The dead girl has left Kay a computer-coded scavenger hunt, which, as it unravels, begins to implicate suspect after suspect, until Kay herself is in the crosshairs of a murder investigation. But if Kay's finally backed into a corner, she'll do what it takes to survive. Because at Bates Academy, the truth is something you make...not something that happened.

🌷Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas🌷

🌆 Horror, Thriller, Adult, Gothic

You are in the house and the house is in the woods.

You are in the house and the house is in you . . .

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises its graduates a future of sublime power and prestige, and that they can become anything or anyone they desire.

Among this year’s incoming class is Ines, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, pills, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. The school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves and their place within the formidable black iron gates of Catherine.

For Ines, Catherine is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had, and her serious, timid roommate, Baby, soon becomes an unlikely friend. Yet the House’s strange protocols make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when Baby’s obsessive desire for acceptance ends in tragedy, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda that is connected to a secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.

🍁We Wish You Luck by Caroline Zancan🍁

💌 Contemporary, Adult, Mystery, Thriller

It doesn't take long for the students on Fielding campus to become obsessed with Hannah, Leslie and Jimmy. The three graduate students are mysterious, inaccessible, and brilliant. Leslie, glamorous and brash, has declared that she wants to write erotica and make millions. Hannah is quietly confident, loyal, elegantly beautiful, and the person they all want to be; and Jimmy is a haunted genius with no past. After Simone—young, bestselling author and erstwhile model—shows up as a visiting professor, and after everything that happened with her, the trio only become more notorious.

Love. Death. Revenge. These age-old tropes come to life as the semesters unfold. The threesome came to study writing, to be writers, and this is the story they've woven together: of friendship and passion, of competition and envy, of creativity as life and death. Now, they submit this story, We Wish You Luck, for your reading pleasure.

❌How We Fall Apart (How We Fall Apart #1) by Katie Zhao❌

🔪 Young Adult, Crime, Mystery, Contemporary

Nancy Luo is shocked when her former best friend, Jamie Ruan, top ranked junior at Sinclair Prep, goes missing, and then is found dead. Nancy is even more shocked when word starts to spread that she and her friends--Krystal, Akil, and Alexander--are the prime suspects, thanks to "The Proctor," someone anonymously incriminating them via the school's social media app.

They all used to be Jamie's closest friends, and she knew each of their deepest, darkest secrets. Now, somehow The Proctor knows them, too. The four must uncover the true killer before The Proctor exposes more than they can bear and costs them more than they can afford, like Nancy's full scholarship. Soon, Nancy suspects that her friends may be keeping secrets from her, too.

☠️Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth, Sara Lautman (Illustrations)☠️

📖 Horror, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Mystery

Our story begins in 1902, at The Brookhants School for Girls. Flo and Clara, two impressionable students, are obsessed with each other and with a daring young writer named Mary MacLane, the author of a scandalous bestselling memoir. To show their devotion to Mary, the girls establish their own private club and call it The Plain Bad Heroine Society. They meet in secret in a nearby apple orchard, the setting of their wildest happiness and, ultimately, of their macabre deaths. This is where their bodies are later discovered with a copy of Mary’s book splayed beside them, the victims of a swarm of stinging, angry yellow jackets. Less than five years later, The Brookhants School for Girls closes its doors forever—but not before three more people mysteriously die on the property, each in a most troubling way.

Over a century later, the now abandoned and crumbling Brookhants is back in the news when wunderkind writer, Merritt Emmons, publishes a breakout book celebrating the queer, feminist history surrounding the “haunted and cursed” Gilded-Age institution. Her bestselling book inspires a controversial horror film adaptation starring celebrity actor and lesbian it girl Harper Harper playing the ill-fated heroine Flo, opposite B-list actress and former child star Audrey Wells as Clara. But as Brookhants opens its gates once again, and our three modern heroines arrive on set to begin filming, past and present become grimly entangled—or perhaps just grimly exploited—and soon it’s impossible to tell where the curse leaves off and Hollywood begins.

A story within a story within a story and featuring black-and-white period illustrations.

[james-joyces-right-eyeball]

Absolute Favorite Books I’d Recommend to Anyone

This is a list of my top-tier favorite books that I would recommend/talk about endlessly to pretty much anyone (in no particular order). I know people probably don’t care but I just like talking about books I love so here we are.

Beloved - Toni Morrison

~ Based off the real story of Margaret Garner, a slave woman who escaped slavery and when captured killed her child in order to prevent them from ever being enslaved again, Beloved tells the story of a mother named Sethe, born in slavery who eventually escaped and is haunted by the figurative demons of her trauma and the literal (arguably) ghost of her dead daughter, who she herself killed. It is an excellent exploration of the horrors of slavery and of the haunting legacy of the institution for those who were subjected to it.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

~ If you’ve been on Tumblr for a while, you probably know what Lolita is. The story of the predatory Humbert Humbert who lusts after, rapes, and kidnaps the “nymphet” Dolores Haze. An excellent construction of how predators, unreliable narrators in their own right, hide behind fabrications, almost-believable excuses, and pretty words to make their actions seem maybe not so bad. In the words of the book itself, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”

Ulysses - James Joyce

~ Notoriously one of the most difficult books in the English language, Ulysses lifts its structure from Homer’s Odyssey to tell the story of a common man, Leopold Bloom, as he goes about his day. Yes, this book takes place over the course of only one day. We follow Bloom as well as Joyce’s literary counterpart Stephen Daedalus through their thoughts and actions, gathering details of their lives previous throughout. It’s a book that, in my own words, “is life”. It is sad, funny, strange, vulgar, disgusting, beautiful, revelatory, sensual, and nonsensical all at once. Joyce aimed to create a reflection of life through his stream-of-consciousness style which some people might find confusing, but I personally find absolutely beautiful and honest and realistic. The prose is also gorgeous, but that could be applied to everything Joyce wrote. 

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

~ The classic gothic book that tells the tale of Heathcliff and his ultimately destructive love of Catherine Earnshaw, whose eventual marriage to someone else and the general mistreatment of him by her family drives Heathcliff insane and he spends the rest of his life trying to take revenge by abusing and torturing the next Earnshaw and Linton (the family into which Catherine marries) generations. If I’m being honest, I like this book mostly because of how wild and dark it is, but the writing is also genius and beautiful. I think the book also carries an interesting view of the destructive nature of revenge, overzealous love, and othering.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith

~ A coming-of-age story at the turn of the century that tells the story of Francie Nolan, a young bookish girl growing up in a lower class family in New York City. It tells about her father’s struggles with alcoholism as well as her mother’s struggles to deal with that and at the same time raise Francie and her brother. Francie is confronted with a strange, uncertain world as a young girl, but tries to face it with bravery throughout childhood

Little Women - Louisa May Alcott

~ Another coming-of-age story, this time about four young sisters: Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy March. You are probably familiar with this book already; it’s had more movie adaptations then I can possibly remember off the top of my head. It’s the story of four sisters as they try to navigate growing up, love, and loss during the mid to late 1800s.

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

~ A novel that tells the story of Celie, a young black woman who is raped and then married young to a man who will go on to use and abuse her, through her letters to God. Throughout the novel she meets Shug Avery, a woman with whom she eventually falls in love and begins a relationship with. Through this and her eventual freedom from her abusive husband, she is able to gain at last her own sense of self and take back control over her life, a life no longer ruled by the abusive men around her.

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

~ The tragic story of young black girl Pecola Breedlove, who wants nothing more than to have blonde hair and blue eyes just like the women she sees in the movies. Both a deconstruction of the whiteness of beauty standards as well as how these standards can utterly destroy vulnerable young girls, it is also an exploration of the people who allow these sorts of things to happen, including Pecola’s mother and father. The Bluest Eye, I think, showcases one of the aspects of Toni Morrison that I like the most, that I aspire to the most: her ability to enter the minds of all people, even people who you might despise at first. Her characters, especially Cholly in The Bluest Eye, are ones you might not entirely sympathize with, but they will always be ones you understand.

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

~ Based off of the author’s own experiences as a young college student, The Bell Jar tells the story of Esther Greenwood, whose depression over her place as a woman in a patriarchal society as well as her inability to choose a life path for herself leads to a suicide attempt and a subsequent stay in a mental hospital. A very nuanced portrayal of mental illness, especially anxiety and depression, The Bell Jar is an extremely moving and relatable story for me and clearly is as well for others. It is a classic for a reason.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

~ A memoir of Angelou’s childhood, this book tells the story of her experiences living as a black girl in the south with her grandmother and brother as well as her later years living with her mother. It also tells of how she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was around eight or nine, and how she struggled to live with that and find her voice, both literally and figuratively. A wonderful book about overcoming struggles and the power of words and literature in such times.

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

~ Ellison’s novel tells the story of a young black man, never getting a name in the text, and his feelings of invisibility and his struggles to find a place in society to belong. His struggles only lead him further into despair, until he decides to “become invisible” as people seem not to see him as a person anyway. Invisible Man is an exploration of American mid-century racism and the isolation it causes to those subjected to it. Not only that, but it is surprisingly relevant to our times now, especially on the subject of police violence. (Personal anecdote: When I first read this book, when I got to the aforementioned police violence part it was right in the middle of the BLM resurgence last summer and I cried for a good twenty minutes while reading that chapter over how nothing had changed and it still hurts me to think about it. Embarrassingly, my dad walked in on me while I was crying, and I had to quickly explain it away.)

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

~ The title basically says it all lol. This book tells of the coming-of-age of Stephen Daedalus (the same one from the later-written Ulysses). His sensitive childhood, his awkward and lustful adolescence, his feelings of Irish nationality and Catholic guilt, and his struggles to fully realize himself, both as an artist and a human being. It is a very hopeful story, and one that I love mostly because I relate so much to Stephen Daedalus as an artist and as a person.

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

~ A magical-realist intergenerational family drama, Marquez’s book traces the various lives and loves of the Buendia family over the course of (you guessed it!) one hundred years. A beautifully written, at times extremely emotionally moving and chilling masterpiece, Marquez in a way retells the history of Colombia, of its colonization and exploitation.  

Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

~ A classic Russian novel of society and love, Tolstoy tells the story of Anna Karenina, married, wealthy woman with a child she adores. However, she falls in love with another man, Count Vronsky, and comes to a tragic end for her love. The parallel story of the novel is that of Konstantin Levin, a wealthy landowner who also struggles to find fulfillment in his life and understand his place in society.

The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner

~ A novel that features an entire family of unreliable narrators, The Sound and the Fury details the fall of a once-prominent southern Compson family and always-present place of the past. There are four different narratives: Benjy Compson, a mentally disabled man who is unsure of his surroundings and of time and only knows that he misses his older sister Caddy; Quintin Compson, the eldest son and a Harvard man both obsessed with his sister retaining her “purity” and the fact that she failed to do so and had a baby out of wedlock, going as far to claim it is his baby in an attempt to preserve something of the family reputation; Jason Compson, who is the caretaker of Caddy’s daughter and believes her to be going down her mother’s “sinful” path; and Dilsey, the black maid of the Compson’s who unlike the people she cares for is not weighed down by their history. The narratives take place in different time periods and is in a stream-of-consciousness style. It’s a deeply dark and disturbing novel about the haunting nature of the past, a common theme in Faulkner’s work (see Absalom, Absalom! for more of this).

Song of Solomon - Toni Morrison

~ It is the story of Milkman Dead, a young black man growing up in the south and his relationship with his very complicated family. To say anymore would be to spoil the novel, but I will say that it is an excellent book about family, self-fulfillment in a world that tries to deny you that, and, like The Bluest Eye, exhibits Morrison’s excellent character work.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof - Tennessee Williams

~ A play which takes place on the patriarch of a family’s birthday in the oppressive heat of the midsummer south, Williams’ play explores lies, secrets, and how repression only results in anger, frustration, and sadness. It’s a tragic but brilliant play that I think was very ahead of its time. If you’ve read it (or do read it) then you know what I mean.

Giovanni’s Room - James Baldwin

~ This book tells the story of a young man and his love of another man named Giovanni while he is in Paris. It is a book about love, queer guilt, and has what I would call an ambiguous ending. There is uncertainty at the end, but there does seem to be some kind of acceptance. It is a bit of a coming-out story, but more than that it is a story of personal acceptance and at the same time a sad, tragic love story.

HERmione - H.D.

~ An underrated modernist masterpiece, HERmione is a somewhat fictionalized account of the author, Hilda Doolittle’s, experience as a young aspiring poet dating another poet (in real life Ezra Pound in this book named George Lowndes) who is a threat to her both physically and emotionally. It explores her own mental state, as she considers herself a failure and falls in love with a woman for the first time (Fayne Rabb in the book, Frances Gregg in real life). 

To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf

~ People think about going to a lighthouse. They do not. A couple years and a war passes then they do. That may seem like a boring plot, and you may be right. However, To the Lighthouse is not much about plot. It is more about the inner lives of its characters, a family and their friends, on two different occasions of their lives: one before WWI and one after WWI. Woolf explores in this novel the trauma that results from such a massive loss of life and security. Not only that, she also explores the nature of art (especially in female artists) in the character of Lily Briscoe and her struggles to complete a painting. It’s a short novel, but it contains so much about life, love, and loss within these few pages.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers

~ A southern gothic novel about isolation and loneliness in a small town. Every character has something to separate them from wider society, and often find solace and companionship in a deaf man, John Singer, who himself experiences a loneliness that they cannot understand. There are various forms of social isolation explored in this novel: by race, disability, age, gender, etc. A wonderful, heart-wrenching book about loneliness and the depths it can potentially drag people to.

The Waste Land - T.S. Eliot

~ A modernist masterpiece of a poem, Eliot describes feeling emptiness and isolation. The brilliance of it can only be shown by an excerpt:

“Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”

“The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. The nymphs are departed. Sweet Thames, run softly, till I end my song. The river bears no empty bottles, sandwich papers, Silk handkerchiefs, cardboard boxes, cigarette ends Or other testimony of summer nights. The nymphs are departed. And their friends, the loitering heirs of city directors; Departed, have left no addresses. By the waters of Leman I sat down and wept . . . Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song, Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud or long. But at my back in a cold blast I hear The rattle of the bones, and chuckle spread from ear to ear. “

(My personal favorite line from this poem is, “I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”)

The Trial - Franz Kafka

~ The protagonist of the novel, Josef K., wakes up one morning to find that he has been placed under arrest for reasons that are kept from him. Kafka creates throughout the novel a scathing satire of bureaucracy, as K. tries to find out more about his case, more about his trial, but only becomes more confused as he digs deeper. There seems to be no rhyme or reason to the world he lives in, and the more tries to explain it the further the more that proves to be the case. An excellently constructed novel and a great one to read if you would like to be depressed about the state of the world because, though Kafka’s work is a satire, like a lot of his other work, it manages to strike a strangely real note.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead - Tom Stoppard

~ An absurdist play that is a retelling of Shakespeare’s Hamlet from the perspective of minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who in the broad overview of the original play, do not matter. Throughout the play, they question their existence and the purpose of it and through that Stoppard dissects not only the absurdity of life, but how fiction and theater reflect that absurdity inadvertently.

As I Lay Dying - William Faulkner

~ The novel details the journey the Bundren family makes after the death of the family matriarch, Addie, to bury her. Each chapter offers a different narrative from the family members and those who surround them, revealing some ulterior motives to them “going to town” to bury Addie. The patriarch Anse desires a pair of false teeth, and the daughter Dewey Dell is pregnant and needs an abortion, as there is no way for her or her family to support it. It’s about the powerlessness of people in the impoverished south. The Bundrens are constantly subject to forces beyond their control, struggles which would be easily solved if they had the money to spare for it. There is more to the book, but that is my favorite reading of it, that of class. Faulkner’s ability to create distinct voices for every one of his characters shines through here.

And, last but not least:

The Collected Poems - Sylvia Plath

~ All the poems Plath wrote during her tragically short lifetime. The best way to demonstrate or summarize the book’s brilliance is just to show you. This is her poem “Edge”, which appears in the book:

“The woman is perfected.   Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment,   The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga,   Her bare Feet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,   One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty.   She has folded Them back into her body as petals   Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about,   Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED! HAPPY READING TO ALL!

[alexsfictionaddiction]

‘She overcame everything that was meant to destroy her.’

Women are truly incredible creatures. We have spent centuries being overlooked, downtrodden and dismissed. In some respects, we have come a long way in terms of gender equality but there are still many recent occurrences which remind us of how far we have to go. 

So many female illnesses take years to diagnose or aren’t taken seriously enough when they are. Women are still having to justify why they chose not to have children. We’re still working with a pay gap. Some women aren’t considered to be women because of the body parts they were born with or without. There are still places in the world where women simply don’t and never will have the opportunities to live life on their own terms. Despite all this, we’re still out in the world making and doing amazing things and looking beautiful while doing them. 

This recommendation list is really a collection of books that celebrate women, their courage, their friendships and their choices. It’s pretty varied in terms of genre and style, so I’m pretty sure you’ll find at least one book here that piques your interest. Keep being your fierce, unstoppable self and honour your girls today. -Love, Alex x

1. Dangerous Women by Hope Adams.

In 1841, 180 English women are on board The Rajah, a ship bound for Australia. All of them are criminals, most of them convicted of petty crimes but one of them has a deadly dark secret. Then someone is killed and the hunt for the culprit is on. But it’s hard to protest your innocence when you’ve already been found guilty. This addictive mystery is so well-researched and is based on the true stories of real female criminals aboard The Rajah. There is an overwhelming, stifling darkness, haunting the whole novel that is so atmospheric and reflective of conditions on board. It’s a story of sisterhood, female friendship and the existence of the Rajah Quilt is an example of the incredible feats that women can overcome if they work together. 

2. Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu.

Viv is tired of following the rules at her high school and is determined to shake things up. Channelling her mum’s former punk persona, Viv creates and secretly distributes a feminist zine to her classmates, who start to take action. Cliques are abandoned as new friendships are formed and a revolution kicks off. The real sweetness about this gutsy, fierce YA novel is the fact that talking about the daily trials and tribulations that girls go through brings them together rather than divides them. There are some fantastic characters and the inclusion of male allies is everything.

3. Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams.

After a disastrous break up, British-Jamaican millennial Queenie embarks on a journey, riddled with bad choices, to discover what she really wants from life. Straddling two cultures, a job where she is perpetually underappreciated and an underlying mental health condition, Queenie is a relatable depiction of what it means to be a young, Black woman in 21st century London. Funny, honest and deeply moving, Queenie is an essential enlightening read with a wonderfully flawed, real woman at its heart.

4. Hag: Forgotten Folktales Retold.

Inspired by British urban myths, this collection of spooky, fantastical stories by various female authors celebrates women in all of their guises. These stories are written by the likes of Daisy Johnson, Kirsty Logan, Irenosen Okojie, Eimear McBride and more. Some of the stories are very dark. Some of them offer powerful insights into other cultures. Some of them explore inherently female issues such as the repression of desire and motherhood. Overriding the whole collection is the wonder and power of women defying the odds and achieving their dreams. A fantastically unique read, ideal for International Women’s Day.

5. My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman.

When Elsa’s grandmother dies, she discovers a series of letters apologising to the various people she has wronged. Elsa’s mission to deliver these letters leads to some strange places and a journey that leads to getting to know her grandmother in a way she never did, when she was alive. The relationship between seven-year-old Elsa and her grandmother is so beautiful and I’m sure I’ll never read another grandmother-granddaughter relationship like it. Granny is a truly formidable character and a woman who has left behind a very full, colourful life. Backman is a master at writing quirky, uplifting stories of community and this charming novel is no different.

6. Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo.

Kim Jiyoung has recently given up work to raise her baby daughter but before long, she begins displaying strange symptoms, such as impersonating the voices of other women. As her psychosis deepens, Jiyoung’s entire life is spilled to her male psychiatrist and it’s a life of restriction, abuse and control. This incredibly evocative book is a harrowing illustration of the misogyny ingrained deep in Korean culture and the devastating effects it can have on the women who live within it. A woman on the brink of insanity speaks for them all in this heavily symbolic, heartbreaking read.

7. The Shelf by Helly Acton.

Amy is pretty sure that Jamie is about to propose, so she is more than shocked to find herself on The Shelf, a reality TV show for single women. Over the next few weeks, she and five other women must take on challenges to improve themselves and be crowned ‘The Keeper’. The Shelf is a joyful celebration of singledom and female friendship. Funny and heartwarming, it inspires its readers to never settle for second best and discover life and yourself, completely on your own terms.

8. Invisible Women by Caroline Criado-Perez.

The world is made for men. Cars, phones, the medical industry, workplace laws and more areas of modern society largely ignore women. This fantastically informative manual exposes all the data biases that have been hidden from us. Caroline Criado-Perez has collated stories and case studies from across the globe that show how women’s lives and health are affected by our male-minded world and calls for drastic change.

9. A Kind of Spark by Elle McNicoll.

Addie has autism but she is so much more than that. When she learns of her hometown’s involvement in witch trials, she launches a campaign to erect a memorial for the women who died during them. This gorgeous, uplifting, funny middle-grade book offers a unique insight into a neurodivergent mind and simultaneously honours innocent, murdered women. You’ll get all the feels!

10. Olive by Emma Gannon.

Olive’s choice to not be a mother has ended her nine year relationship and her three best friends are all at various stages of motherhood. So, where will Olive fit into their lives now? This wonderfully sensitive and thoughtful novel is a wonderful celebration of women who are child-free by choice as well as giving voice to those who have struggled to become mothers. It will speak to any woman who has ever been asked when they’re going to take the leap into that ‘inevitable’ stage of a female life -motherhood.

11. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Evelyn Hugo is a retired Hollywood icon who has personally chosen struggling, unknown reporter Monique to dictate her biography to. No one knows why, not even Monique herself. Over a series of intimate meetings, Evelyn tells Monique her story; from her rise to fame in the 1950s LA to her retirement 30 years later and the myriad of romances throughout that time. In time, it becomes clear that Evelyn’s and Monique’s lives intertwine in a heartbreaking fashion. Soaring, epic and completely unforgettable, Evelyn Hugo is the story of a woman who was consistently objectified, moulded and suppressed. Ultimately, it is a story of a great forbidden love and the hell that fame can bring, especially for women.

12. The Year of the Witching by Alexis Henderson.

Imannuelle’s mixed heritage is sacrilege in the tiny, puritanical community in which she lives. So she does her best to obey the rules and worship the Father. However, she finds herself in the haunted Darkwood where the spirits of murdered witches roam but they have a gift for Immanuelle -her dead mother’s journal, which leads to her discovering the dark truths behind the community she was born into. This atmospheric, brooding fantasy-horror novel champions the overthrowing of control, the discovery of one’s own inner power and capabilities as well as demonstrating how women have been villified by the patriarchy for centuries, simply for leading the lives that they want to lead. An addictive, Gothic witchy treat!

[evocatiio]

Hi! You posted recently about the podcasts you listen to — wlw detectives, wlw ghost hunters, etc. Can you give me recommendations for your favorite wlw fictional podcasts? Thanks so much!

These are my current favourites!

Arden: I pretty much yelled about this one everyday for about six months. It’s a fictional true crime comedy/drama podcast where the cases are based on a shakespeare play each season. the main wlw (bea and brenda) will drive you insane in the best way and the slowburn banter and chemistry is so incredibly good I could listen to them all day. There’s lots of lgbtq+ rep, the sound design and the ensemble are wonderful and s2 is one of my absolute favourite seasons of anything ever.

Alice isn’t dead: this is a really popular thriller/horror podcast that follows a woman who becomes a truck driver to look for their missing not so dead wife. The writing is amazing and profound and the atmosphere is truly top notch. also jasika nicole voice acting what more could you want

The strange case of starship iris: basically a crew of rebel gays in space. super cute wlw and lgbtq+ rep!

The pasithea powder: It follows jane and sophie who are estranged friends with History™ that end up trying to figure out a government conspiracy together. It’s told through a series of calls/voicemails and set ten months after a war that jane and sophie found themselves on the opposite ends of whilst being convinced that they did the right thing. The dynamic and angst is chef kiss excellence I’m completely obsessed I genuinely think about it all the time.

Greenhouse: through some circumstances a recluse and a florist exchange letters to each other. It’s pretty short but very very wholesome!

Mabel: if you’re in the mood for gothic gays, this one has some gorgeous poetic writing. Anna and mabel have almost unprecedented levels of emo yearning they’re very insane for each other and I fucking love it.

[fremedon]

It’s almost Yuletide! This will be my 18th Yuletide! My first Yuletide story will be old enough to vote this year and I have some mixed feelings about that! But also I have never missed or defaulted on a Yuletide since, and I have to say I feel pretty proud of that. I am still pretty far down the Les Misérables rabbit hole (speaking of which, it is not too late to propose programming for Barricades!), and unsurprisingly all the fandoms I'm nominating/requesting this year are set in July Monarchy France--Les Mis canon era: Petit-Cénacle RPF, Champavert: Contes Cruelles | Champavert: Immoral Tales - Pétrus Borel, and Les Enfants du Paradis | Children of Paradise. Petit-Cénacle RPF The Petit-Cénacle was a French Romantic salon, slightly younger and considerably more politically radical than the Cénacle centered on Hugo and Dumas; it included painters and sculptors as well as writers and critics, and most of its members at least dabbled in both written and visual arts. Its best-known members today are Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Pétrus Borel (the Lycanthrope)--the last two are thinly fictionalized in Les Misérables as Jean Prouvaire and Bahorel. (It's debatable how much Grantaire owes to Gautier but it's probably a nonzero amount.) The group coalesced around Borel and Nerval as the organizers of the Battle of Hernani--a fight between Romantics and classicists at the premiere of Victor Hugo's play Hernani in 1830. Most theater productions at this time had claques--groups of paid supporters of a show or an actor, who were planted in the audience to drum up applause. For Hernani--the first Romantic work staged at the prestigious Comédie-Français, which broke classical norms so thoroughly that it no longer seems at all transgressive--Hugo and the theater management decided they were going to need more than just a claque. They recruited a few of Hugo's fans--Gautier was so star-struck he had to be physically hauled up the stairs to Hugo's apartment--to stage An Event. The fans recruited their friends. They showed up in cosplay, with the play already memorized and callback lines devised. It was basically the Rocky Horror Picture Show of its day. It almost immediately turned into an actual fight, with fists and projectiles flying. And it made Hernani the hottest ticket in Paris. This is the group's origin story, and they pretty much spent their lives living up to it. They were every bit as extra as you would expect--Nerval allegedly walked a lobster on a leash in the Champs-Elyseés, explaining that "it knows the secrets of the deep, and it does not bark"--but they also stayed friends all their lives, often living together, supporting each other through poverty and mental illness and absurd political upheaval. I'm nominating Pétrus Borel | Le Lycanthrope, Théophile Gautier, Gérard de Nerval, and Philothée O’Neddy; you could nominate other people like Jehan Duseigneur, Celestin Nanteuil, or the Deverias, or associates of the group like Dumas and Hugo. The Canon Gautier's History of Romanticism covers the early days of the group and the Battle of Hernani in some detail. (There is also a 2002 French TV movie, La bataille d'Hernani, which is charming and pretty accurate; hit me up if you want a copy.) Other than that--this crowd wrote a lot, and they're all very present in their work--even in their fiction, which is shockingly modern in a ton of ways. For Gautier, Mademoiselle de Maupin has a lot of genderfeels, surprisingly literal landscape porn, and a fursuit sex scene in chapter two. If you want Nerval's works in English, you might be limited to dead-tree versions, but I highly, highly recommend The Salt Smugglers, a work of metafiction that answers the question, "What if The Princess Bride had been written in 1850 specifically to troll the press censorship laws of Prince President Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte?" Borel's experimental short story collection Champavert has a new and very good English translation by Brian Stableford and is also my next fandom :D. Champavert: Contes Immoraux | Champavert: Immoral Tales - Pétrus Borel Last year I requested Borel RPF but I decided this book was unfanficcable. This year, I am going to have a little more faith in the Yuletide community. Champavert, available in ebook and dead tree form, is a weird as hell little book and probably the best thing I read last year. It's an experimental short story collection from 1830. Someone on one of my Les Mis Discords described it as "a collection of gothic creepypasta, but the author is constantly clanging pots and pans together and going 'JUST IN CASE you didn't notice, the real horror was colonialism and misogyny all along and i'm very angry about it!'" And, yeah, pretty much that, with added metafictional weirdness, intense nerding about architecture and regional languages, and the absolute delight that is Borel's righteously ebullient voice. Borel wrote for a couple of years under the name of The Lycanthrope, and though he kills the alter ego in this book, the name stuck, and would continue to be used by friends and enemies alike all his life. Pretty much everyone who met Pétrus agreed that 1) he was just ungodly hot; 2) he was probably a werewolf, sure, that makes sense; and 3) he was definitely older than he claimed to be, possibly by centuries, possibly just immortal, who knows. But, like I said, he kills the alter ego in this book: it begins with an introduction announcing that "Pétrus Borel" has been a pseudonym all along, that the Lycanthrope's real name is Champavert--and that the Lycanthrope is dead and these are his posthumous papers, compiled by an unnamed editor; the papers include some of Borel's actual poems and letters, published under his own name. The final story in the collection is called "Champavert, The Lycanthrope," and is situated as an autobiographical story, following a collection of fictional tales--which share thematic elements and, in the frame of the book, start to look like "Champavert"'s attempts to use fiction to come to terms with events of his own life. And that's probably an oversimplification; this is a dense little book and it's doing a lot. The subtitle is Contes Immoraux. It's part of a genre of "contes cruelles" (and, content note for. Um. A lot), but it's never gratuitously cruel--it's very consciously interrogating the idea of the moral story, and what sort of morality is encoded in fables, and what it means to set a story where people get what they deserve in an unjust world where that's rarely the case. I'm nominating the unnamed editor, Champavert, his friend Jean-Louis from the introduction and the final story, and Flava from the final story; you could also nominate characters from the explicitly fictional stories. Les Enfants du Paradis | Children of Paradise This is a film made between 1943 and 1945 in Vichy and Occupied France and set...somewhere?...around the July Revolution, probably, I'll get into that :D. There's a DVD in print from Criterion and quite possibly available through your local library system. (And it's streaming on Amazon Prime and the Criterion Channel.) It's beautifully filmed, with gorgeous sets and costumes and a truly unbelievable number of extras, and some fantastic pantomime scenes. (On stage and off; there's a scene where a henchman attempts to publicly humiliate a mime, and it goes about as well as you would expect.) "Paradise," in the title, is the equivalent of "the gods" in English--the cheap seats in the topmost tier of a theater. It's set in and around the theaters of the Boulevard du Temple--the area called the Boulevard du Crime, not for the pickpockets outside the theaters but for the content of the melodramas inside them. The story follows a woman called Garance, after the flower (red madder), a grisette turned artists' model turned sideshow girl turned actress turned courtesan, and four men who love her, some of whom she loves, all of whom ultimately fail to connect with her in the way she needs or wants or can live with. This sounds like a setup for some slut-shaming garbage. It's not--Garance is a person, with interiority, and the story never blames her for what other people project onto her. Of those four men, one is a fictional count and the other three are heavily fictionalized real people: the actor Frédérick Lemaître, the mime Baptiste Deburau, and the celebrity criminal Lacenaire. Everyone in this story is performing for an audience, pretty much constantly, onstage or off: reflexively, or deliberately, or compulsively. Garance's survival skill is to reflect back to people what they want to see of themselves. She never lies, but she shows very different parts of herself to different people. We get the impression that there are aspects of herself she doesn't have much access to without someone else to show them to. Frédérick is also a mirror, in a way that makes him and Garance good as friends and terrible as lovers--an empty hall of mirrors. He's always playing a part--the libertine, the artist, the lover--and mining his actual life and emotions for the sake of his art. Baptiste channels his life into his art as well, but without any deliberation or artifice--everything goes into the character, unfiltered. It makes him a better artist than any of the others will ever be, but his lack of self-awareness is terrifying, and his transparency fascinates Garance and Frédérick, who are more themselves with him than with anyone else. Lacenaire, the playwright turned thief and murderer, seems to no self at all, except when other people are watching. Against the performers are the spectators: the gaze of others--fashion, etiquette, and reputation--personified by Count Mornay; and the internal gaze personified in Nathalie, an actress and Baptiste's eventual wife, who hopes that if they observe the forms of devotion for long enough the feeling will follow. The time frame is deliberately vague--it's set an idealized July Monarchy where all these people were simultaneously at the most exciting part of their careers. In the real world, Frédérick turned his performance of Robert Macaire into burlesque in 1823, Baptiste's tragic pantomime Le Marrrchand d’Habits! ("The Old-Clothes Seller") played in 1842, and Lacenaire's final murder, for which he is guillotined, is 1832; these all take place in Act II of the movie within about a week of each other. (Théophile Gautier, mentioned but tragically offstage in the film, was a fan of Baptiste; Le Marrrchand d’Habits! started as Gautier's fanfic--he wrote a fake review of a nonexistent pantomime, and the review became popular enough the Theater des Funambules decided to actually stage it. It only ran for seven performances.) I am nominating Garance, Frédérick Lemaître, Baptiste Deburau, and Pierre François Lacenaire. You could nominate any of the other characters (Count Mornay, Nathalie, the old-clothes seller Jéricho, Baptiste's father, his landlady, Nathalie's father the Funambules manager). Gautier, regrettably, does not actually appear in the film but you can bet that's going to be one of my prompts. So, that's one good movie you definitely have time to watch before signups, several good books you probably have time for and that are probably not like whatever else you're reading right now, and one RPF rabbit hole to go down! Please consider taking up any or all of these so that you can write me fanfic about Romantic shenanigans.

[strangeandforlornbooks]

LGBT Book Recs

F/F version

Historical

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters: victorian thief pretending to be a maid and a lady fall in love and keep betraying each other and being sad. lots of plot twists/insane asylums/creepy old houses/gothic vibes. the book that inspired the handmaiden movie. happy ending after a lot of angst!

Sci-Fi

Meddling Kids by Edgar Cantero: scooby-doo meets eldritch horror. the grown-up survivors (and one ghost) of a kid-detective team realize they never REALLY solved their last case. very creative and entertaining writing style. happy ending!

The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow: in the distant future, the world is controlled by an AI who ensures peace by taking world leaders’ children hostage. If war breaks out, they die. not as cheesy as it sounds. very exciting, I read it in two days, lots of tricky moral decisions and tension. kind of ambiguous ending because it’s a series but love saves the day! :)

The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers: honestly not my favorite but I know some people really love it. a very laid back space opera about a misfit spaceship crew and a new clerk with a secret. I honestly cannot remember the ending but I think it was happy-ish?

Wilder Girls by Rory Power: good but WACK. very gothic. isolated girls’ school on an island is slowly being taken over by this weird disease/rot/alien thing. there’s moral ambiguity galore! evil government! strong female friendships! ambiguous ending.

Contemporary

Love Letters to the Dead by Ava Dellaira: f/f couple is a side plot but its cute. protagonist is a troubled young girl entering high school, falling in love, growing up. very sad but has a happy ending.

Jane Unlimited by Kristin Cashore: calling this contemporary is a huge stretch because each section of the book is written in a different genre and has a different ending. sounds confusing but it really works-my favorites were gothic horror and fantasy but they all weave into each other in really cool ways. very sweet and entertaining style. bi protagonist. some endings are happy and some are not but you’re kind of signing up for that.

This Is Where It Ends by Marieke Nijkamp: weird, pretty dark novel I borrowed from a friend about a school shooter. very tense and depressing but beautifully written. ambiguous/unhappy ending.

Fantasy

Elegy and Swansong by Vale Aida: EXCELLENT series (also has m/m romance). the lesbians are extremely machiavellian and morally questionable but frankly also very hot. very exciting w/ lots of twists and warring fantasy nations. if you’ve ever read Dorothy Dunnett’s work it’s like that but w/ strong female characters. happy ending for the second one!

The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera: reading this right now, so idk about the ending but I think it’s the first in a series. princesses who fight demons are in love! gorgeous prose w/o a lot of action. strong song of achilles vibes if you’ve read that.

Honorable Mentions

Sadie by Courtney Summers: has like one lesbian kiss but I really liked it generally! very tense story about a girl chasing her sister’s murderer w/ an accompanying podcast investigating her disappearance months later. very dark and unhappy ending.

Rock and Riot by Chelsey Furedi: actually a webcomic! very cute and free online. has m/m romance also. happy ending.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern: I think there is a lesbian couple mentioned at one point? I read it a very long time ago. warring victorian magicians- pretty good. kind of like Kate dicamillo. ambiguous ending I think?

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf: I was supposed to read this for school and I did not, but its a classic and one of the first novels to address women’s sexuality so openly. very tricky to read because it’s all stream of consciousness but most people agree the protagonist is bi.