#(house of) bookclub

[weebsinstash]

I would ruin him. (Clark)

My Adventures With Superman Clark hits me as the kind of yandere where you fuck him after a few casual drinks because he's just so cute and dorky like just the nerdiest shy little hunk you can't help but spank his bubble butt and ride him till he's about to cry and then later on you find out you took his virginity and that casual fucking doesn't exist in his world and he wants you as a serious partner now and won't really take no for an answer

Like lowkey he gives me Izuku energy with how he's, a sweet dedicated uwu baby (like motherfucker LITERALLY makes the cat mouth in one episode) but can be an absolute menace when you upset him or rather, when he's worried for your wellbeing. You can scream and yell and say the most awful things to him and he won't raise a hand against you but if anyone hurt you... well. I mean. They'll be grievously injured is all I'm saying.

Just the idea of absolutely wrecking his shit in bed just like really giving it to him and blowing his poor lil country boy mind as you permanantly punch the hole in that v card of his and afterwards you're just, back at the office like it's nothing, thinking you just got some amazing dick but nothing else, meanwhile he thinks you're like. Dating now 😭 god could you even imagine if you two start regularly getting coffees or like, doing small things together, and you just take it as like hanging out platonically and, he thinks you're going on dates and are officially dating and one day he just outright catches you with another man and is CRUSHED that you basically just say "what??? We had a one night stand, I thought that was just a casual thing?? Bro you thought us hanging out as friends was a date????"

Clark going home taking off his glasses to cry in front of his shrine of photos of you with candles and everything 😭 he's kept receipts from getting coffee or catching a movie together, bought a tube of the same kind of hand cream you use so he can have something that smells like you and also uses it too (it's good stuff, thanks for the unintentional recommendation!), he's got like notebooks with flowcharts and ideas for future potential dates, all sorts of personal notes about you, what you like, plans for the future together, some real over the top shit, bro is practically planning for marriage

You could quit your job to avoid this man and he'd be stalking you as Superman but I think it'd be hilarious if you said "Clark I know that's you :/" just, almost right away. Or, he gets on your good side as Superman while you avoid him as Clark, so, some real miraculous ladybug love triangle shit. LMAOOO imagine going to let Supes get in those guts because you think he's so hunky and cute and he's like absolutely blowing your back out, really taking charge, it's amazing, and you flip him over and it's. Seeing him on his back with his hair all tossled already with him inside of you that THEN you're like "oh shit CLARK???" but like he won't let you hop off until you've both finished either 😩❤️

He's just so. Cute and young in this new show. I want to like. Be the milf neighbor he chases after. I want to invite him in for some lemonade after he helps cut my grass and I suck him off so good he comes back every single week to "help me around the house" 👌 I fix his glasses and ruffle his hair as he leaves my front step with a blush. I wave to him with a wine glass in hand in my fuzzy pink robe and thank him for 'fixing my plumbing' and that I'll see him again Tuesday 💅

[cosmichorrorlesbians]

what's your dissertation about? you mentioned it in the siltcord and i'm really interested

oh my god hey I'm so happy you're interested! broad strokes because I've only been working on it for a few weeks but: the current theme is 'resistant landscapes' (both man-made and natural) in the later writing of Shirley Jackson!

Essentially, my main thread is that Jackson had two parallel strands to her work, which as far as I can tell began kind of interrelated but then diverged quite significantly? She's probably best known now for The Haunting of Hill House and to a lesser extent We Have Always Lived In The Castle, which are these. weird surreal psychological horror novels, engaging explicitly or implicitly with the supernatural, and centred around introspective, strange and sometimes deeply misanthropic female characters from isolated social units with dysfunctional, possessive relationships to each other.

Aaaaand then on the other hand she was known for being a 'happy housewife' who wrote these whimsical, quasi-autobiographical stories about all her children and how hopeless her husband was. These were popular too. Betty Friedan called her out in landmark 1963 feminist manifesto The Feminine Mystique for essentially spreading patriarchal propaganda.

The interrelation between the two is really jarring, because in one family is a source of horror and tragedy and in the other it's a source of, like... laundry. And Jackson's home life wasn't everything those stories made it out to be-- her marriage was unfaithful, her mother could probably be fairly called emotionally abusive, and as I talked about on the siltcord, she developed severe agoraphobia which often left her housebound.

So, yeah. My plan is to explore the depiction of families as constructed social units in dialogue with the environments they are constructed in in that work. Obviously a lot of that is relation of house to family, in the context of which Hill House is especially rewarding to consider, but I also want to look at relationships with nature and urban environments (especially in the context of settler colonialism and how that has had an enduring legacy in Jackson's particular part of New England), xenophobia (largely in regard to class, though racism and anti-Semitism are presences in her writing), domesticity and the idea of the housewife, and how horror relates to All Of This. The ideal of making a home within a hostile environment and of that environment turning on you, essentially.

I don't yet have particular areas of focus within that broad umbrella, but I might update with bits and pieces about it as I work? I don't really talk about academic stuff on here but I am very much Critical Literary Analysis Guy and I do also post relentlessly about haunted houses as a concept so if people would be interested in it maybe I will

anyway if you've read this far I recommend Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition (2024) by Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing which is a book about how horror movie tropes can be mirrored in built environments! I'm reading it right now and it's conceptually fascinating plus fairlyyy comprehensible by academic standards (if a little dense) if you, like me, are a Fool who knows nothing of architecture. very good also for getting to look at pictures of some of the most Fucked Up Buildings (affectionate) you've ever seen.

[puppybot]

dykes md

[writing-for-life]

“Tales in the Sand” in Context of “The Doll’s House”

About Patriarchy, the Madness of Pure Dream and Nada & Morpheus as mirrors of each other

Over the past week, we had interesting community discussions about “Nada’s dream” on both a more direct and a more metaphorical/allegorical level (join us if you’d like to read/discuss).

But one of the most important functions of “Tales in the Sand” is its place in the overall narrative. You can look at it as a “story within a story” on several different levels—self-contained or as part of a whole.

One thing that can be looked at in a pretty self-contained way is “Tales in the Sand” as the opener of “The Doll’s House”—it explicitly belongs to this arc, even if it is somewhat of a transition issue.

Some of you might be familiar with Henrik Ibsen’s play “A Doll’s House”, and I can’t help but think about the common themes, especially with regard to Nada, but also parts of the overall Doll’s House arc:

A woman who is smart and extremely capable, but unfulfilled and caught up in a patriarchal system. I won’t summarise the whole story here, but Ibsen’s protagonist Nora secretly borrowed money (to help her husband recover from illness no less)—during a time when women weren’t allowed to engage in financial affairs. When the whole thing falls apart, she even thinks of killing herself. The reaction of her husband, which is belittling and patronising [he “forgives” her and has the gall to say that act of forgiveness reminds him of how much he loves her, because she is a “helpless child” and dependent on him] ultimately makes her leave him, despite knowing what this means: They have children, and while the play ends here, it was highly unlikely for a woman during that time to get custody. So we can only have a guess of what will become of her. In a way, she didn’t kill herself, yet committed societal suicide and might probably face a very difficult life from here onwards…

And while we have a real doll’s house in the actual story of the Sandman’s “The Doll’s House”, and that holds its own meaning (we are currently discussing this in the community as well), I cannot help but think about Ibsen’s play about:

A woman standing up for what she believes in at great cost to herself. Which: Ouch, because that sentiment as such is almost verbatim echoed in Dream Hunters.

Now that’s the self-contained parallel in “Tales in the Sand”—women who are capable still get caught up in patriarchal systems and beliefs (it is expected of Nada to “find a man”—why, one could ask? Because: the patriarchy…)

Let’s move on to Nada and Morpheus as mirrors…

Nada is an almost exact mirror of Morpheus: Lonely, caught up in her “function”, burdened by rules and responsibilities. And more importantly: She is as unwilling to let go of them as he. They arrive at a stalemate, which is made very clear in Season of Mists: She isn’t willing to lay down who she is for him, he won’t lay down his function for her. They are made of the same material, so to speak.

There is also a really interesting parallel when we look at Nada’s dream on a more conceptual level: What kind of dreams have the power to ultimately destroy you (and your people)? Nada is explicitly described as a good and benevolent leader, and while I have my personal theory what her dream was (you can find it here), this is open to interpretation and will forever stay a head-canon.

But there is much to be said for losing our grip on reality when we become too caught up in our dreams, whatever they may be and however benevolent—the script to “The Doll’s House” contains these lines when describing Dream’s throne room:

The windows actually lead onto the madness of pure dream, which is at the true centre of the dreamworld…

These lines don’t appear anywhere in the comics, but they are narrated almost verbatim in the Audible, so we can absolutely consider them canon.

And they apply to both Nada and Morpheus to certain degrees—they are both lonely, caught in the ivory tower of their respective existences. One gets caught up in a dream until it destroys her and her civilisation, the other is pure d/Dream (this also says a lot about Morpheus btw, because we all know how desperately he has to keep the proverbial lid on everything so it doesn’t consume him).

And then there is this, down to standing on a rock/spire (did I ever say I always wondered about the actual mechanics of Morpheus’ death? Because Death usually is NOT the one who kills you; but I digress):

They both make the ultimate sacrifice because they can’t be other than they are.

And then this:

Even the parallels of Nada being reborn as a boy (meh though, sorry, but maybe that’s for another time) and not remembering anymore, and yet clearly doing so on some subconscious level (she/he is at his funeral after all, and while all of us are, she/he is briefly seen with his lovers).

That’s like Daniel!Dream not being Morpheus and also not truly being Daniel Hall anymore, but echoes of both remain.

And don’t even get me started on hope. I wrote about this so many times, you can find all related metas here…

So I guess this is one thing about Nada and her dream that couldn’t be made clearer if we tried:

While all the other angles, be they a more direct or conceptual reading, make sense, the most important, and probably also obvious one, is that Nada’s dream is also Dream’s. And that’s something we also get in the TV show in other contexts:

NG stated it explicitly in his intro/script to The Doll’s House—the whole arc is about how the Endless relate to humans. And “the truth of mankind” is also Dream’s, whether he admits to it or not. How could it not be—he holds our subconscious.

Nada and Morpheus are direct mirrors of each other. And the whole of “Tales in the Sand” is just one ginormous bit of foreshadowing, whether NG was already aware of it at the time or not…

[sweet-like-cinnamon-5]

Sandman Audible Appreciation Post - The Doll's House

So I read this page and I said to myself- cool- Lucien is walking around the Dreaming and taking the census.

But no!

Here is the Audible narration:

The palace of the lord of Dreams is no longer the ruin it was when he first returned from captivity, not that the sleeping Rose Walker is aware of its history. She dreams of elegant towers and walls studded with jewels and gems, covering not so much acres, as what seems like square miles. Lucien, reading from his ledger, walks up a driveway to a huge gateway, guarded, to Rose's alarm, by three huge mythological beasts: a wyvern, a hippogryph, and a griffin. They allow him to pass through the great outer doorway.

The palace of Dream contains many rooms. As befits a dream, and Rose's dream in particular, none of them appear to have any logical connection to each other. The hallway is lined with suits of armor. Lucien bustles through, lost in his calculations. In the next room, the suits of armor give way to storefront mannequins, unclothed, lining a huge swimming pool. The only way to walk across is by means of a long, unsteady plank. Lucien pays it little heed.

Each room presents new inconsistencies. Rose's dream seems almost random in its variety, yet Lucien is a constant factor, refusing to be distracted. The room through which subway trains pass is of no consequence to him either.

Lucien isn't walking around different parts of the Dreaming- he's walking through the palace, one long path taking him to Dream in the throne room, and as he walks from room to room, his surroundings are changing around him in that classic dream logic "I'm walking on a hallway oh now in the next room it's a swimming pool oh now in this room the wall has a face oh now it's a train track, huh ok that's cool" kind of way.

I just think that's so cool, and I literally didn't get that from just looking at the page. It wasn't until I heard the audiobook that I looked back at this page and I was like- ohhhh, panel 2 is the gatekeepers and the palace door, and then Lucien is walking through the palace. I needed the description to make that click for me. (I may just be dumb though lol)

Similarly, at the beginning, with the description of the Threshold of Desire:

The threshold is larger than you can easily imagine

Ok

perhaps a thousand feet high

Oh!! So like- the height of the Eiffel Tower? Ok yeah that's way way taller than i was picturing

And this is my appreciation post for reading the comic and listening to the Audible at the same time, because the combination in magic <3

Small Changes

Comic Miranda: "Free holidays in England don't grow on trees!" / Audible Miranda: "Free vacations in England don't grow on trees!"

When Unity first tells Miranda she's her mother:

Comic Miranda: "You're mad!" / Audible Miranda: "You're wrong!"

Two tiny tiny changes to make Miranda's dialogue more American, I am guessing ;)

Dream Line Readings

James McAvoy is relatively calm in this episode!

Morpheus only appears on 5 pages (and only 3 of them are speaking pages- the other 2 he is just hilariously lurking in the dollhouse), and James McAvoy is excellent, as always, but he doesn't do any yelling that sends me into hysterics this time around.

I would like to share this, possibly one of my most favorite pages of the entire comic:

It is gorgeous

Look how good The Dreaming looks! Look at him rebuilding!

I just really really like to think of Dream being like- oh I hear Lucien about to come in, time to ✨strike a pose✨

I really like this issue overall. We meet Desire and Despair! We see a gallery and the sigils for the first time. We meet Rose and Miranda and learn how they're related to Unity! (Rose and Miranda are shocked to acquire a parent/grandparent- and little do they know that the reader has also just met their other parent/grandparent- but the reader doesn't know it yet either mwahaha!) We see The Dreaming in its renewed splendor, see Dream and Lucien going about their work, meet the Corinthian and hear about Brute/Glob/Fiddler's Green, learn about the concept of a dream vortex for the first time. We start to learn more about how the Endless relate to and interact with mortals, and with each other, and with the world around them. Good stuff is to come. In general I am a big fan of this arc.

[kayray-art]

for lumity week 2023 on twitter <33

day 1: azura bookclub

[f1uffy-turtle-fanfic]

Lumity Week Day 1: Azura Bookclub

CW for talks of death and sacrifice

Last week, the final book in the Good Witch Azura series was released. And frankly, Amity was rather anxious to get her hands on it. Luckily, when Luz visited last time, she was able to snag her a copy. She was filled to the brim with excitement, so much so that she couldn't help but take Luz by the face and kiss her over and over again. Today, she finally put the book down. Because today, they were going to talk about how it ended.

It was strange to think that the series would end at all, much less the way that it did. Amity, quite frankly, didn't know what to feel. She and Luz shared their love for the series when they were just fourteen. Amity herself has been reading them since she was eleven. And now they're both sixteen. The series that brought them closer together had been brought to a close. It was over, just like that.

Amity set her reading glasses down on the end table along with her book, and she rubbed at the corners of her eyes with her thumb and forefinger. She was just about to get up from her seat when she heard a knock at the door.

Weird, Amity thought, I wasn't expecting her until four. It was then that her gaze drifted over to the demon clock that hung on the wall in her room, which read: four-fifteen. Oh! Dear Titan!

"Psst," Luz hissed through the door, "sweet potato, it's me."

"Be there in a minute," Amity called back to her as she quickly set a table up in the middle of the room with a few chairs tucked away neatly underneath. She breathed deeply before turning to open the door for her.

"Hey."

"Que tal, hermosa," Luz greeted her girlfriend, kissing her on the cheek.

Amity flushed, "oh, I was just finishing up --"

"The book? Emira told me you were still reading it when I got here."

Amity rubbed at the back of her neck, her face growing hotter. "How's school going for you?" She deflected.

Luz pulled up one of the chairs Amity set up and sat down, folding her hands into one another and resting her chin. "It's been alright," she sighed, "it's definitely better than before I came to the Isles, but I still prefer it here, you know?"

"That’s not an excuse for you not to do your work, is it?" Amity said sternly, leaning her hand on one hip.

"No, absolutely not," Luz smiled at her, "I just like being here. I like being with you."

Amity nodded and pulled out the other chair to sit across from Luz. "I like you here too," she said softly, kissing her cheek, "now, do you want me to get any snacks or drinks for you, mi batata?"

This time Luz flushed, "Yes, please."

Once they prepared the snacks and some tea, Luz set her copy of the book down on the table. Her eyes gleamed with anticipation.

“Sooo,” she mused, “what did you think?”

Amity was caught off guard. She only just finished the book and barely had time to think. The first time Luz asked her this, she had recently finished the fifth book, Turn of the Tides, and was giving her back the copy she borrowed. Back then, she had so much on her mind: school, pressure from her mother, and her crush on Luz. All of it swam through her head that it made her practically dizzy.

In retrospect, Amity enjoyed the book. She especially enjoyed the new character that was introduced; Lucy’s sibling, Mica Malingale. Luz found a fan drawing of her with Mica, and she was so embarrassed that she immediately burned the drawing.

“Do you mind starting?” She asked, “I still need time to think.”

Luz made a mock bow in response, at least the best interpretation of one while sitting down. “It would be my absolute pleasure,” she said in her most exaggerated posh Erynian accent. Amity couldn’t help but laugh at how cute she was.

The young witch took a sip of her warm tea and watched lovingly as Luz went on about the story. What she liked, what she didn’t like, and what she thought was great in concept but needed better execution. And then she stopped suddenly. Luz had tears rolling down her cheeks.

“Amity,” Luz said meditatively, “have you heard about what happened when I faced Belos? What really happened?”

“Eda told me a few things,” Amity answered worriedly, “Why? What’s going on?”

“You know how Azura died?”

Amity paused. She knew exactly what Luz was saying. Reaching over to touch her hand, she spoke to her calmly.

“But she came back, didn’t she?” Amity said, “And even if she stayed dead, she sacrificed herself for Hecate. Azura always thought she was an awful person for falling for Menos’ tricks. But that’s what he does; he tricks people. He tricked all of Eryon. He used the Desolation to lie to and manipulate the people. But just because she fell for it doesn’t make her a bad person. It made her a victim. But Azura saw Menos for what he really was. He labeled everyone who defied him as a witch. She rose and called him out for his abuse and claimed the title of The Good Witch not just for her, but for everyone he mistreated.”

Amity rose out of her chair now, “And she never had to sacrifice herself to prove that she was good, even if she had no choice. All she had to do was be there for the people; for everyone that she came across on her adventures; Malingale, Eila, Aithlin, even Hecate,” tears started rolling down Amity’s cheeks, “Hecate, while she was a childhood friend, she became an enemy, another victim of Menos. But Azura made her see that she was wrong. And eventually, Hecate grew to love her.”

Amity now knelt before Luz and put her hands on her shoulders, “and with that love, she brought her back. Despite everything they’ve been through, she loved her. And you can’t take loved away.”

Luz wept into Amity’s shoulder. It was everything that Luz needed to hear. She never completely processed what happened back then. And when the hero that she looked up to suffered nearly the same fate, it brought everything back.

It brought back all the hardships and all the struggles she faced. All the mistakes that she made. But in the end, she had love, just like Azura.

Luz wiped the tears away from her eyes and withdrew her breath. Then she smiled at Amity, the Hecate to her Azura, her cotton candy goddess. She was so lucky to have someone like her by her side. Luz leaned in to kiss Amity, and she returned the favor. They stayed that way for a while until they eventually pulled away. Luz then started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“So, I see you liked the book.”

Amity’s face grew hot, and joined in her girlfriend’s laughter, “You’re such a dork.”

“You know it.”

Amity leaned into Luz���s shoulder, kissing her cheek, “I love you.”

Luz’s smile softened as she rested her cheek against Amity’s head.

“I love you too.”

[dextervexter]

“But most of all, she remembers what happened to Gretchen and how everything got so fucked up back in 1988, the year her best friend was possessed by the devil.”

[karlkapri]

no but for someone who leaves the house approximately twice a month i sure do be getting myself into Situations

[andromerot]

ok going to sleep now but i just wanna say. the haunting of hill house is a book you have to treat with care. you have to pay attention to it. if you only try to extract from it a scary horror novel it won't yield. pay attention to the imagery used, the motifs, the recurring phrases. ask questions about it and try to answer them. think about the structure of the book. notice the way the narration changes and who it sides with. okay?

[backlogbooks]

it begins

[buddyhollyscurls]

WHO WANTS TO GO ON BOOKCLUBS.COM AND JOIN A BOOK CLUB WITH ME LET'S DO LA CASA DE LOS ESPIRITUS OOOORRRR THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL OOOOORRRRR GIOVANNI'S ROOM

[roseshavethoughts]

The House on Cold Hill - Peter James

The House on Cold Hill - Peter James #BookReview #IAmReading #Fiction #Horror

The House on Cold Hill by Peter James Title – The House on Cold Hill Author – Peter James Genre – Horror | Thriller Published – 2015 ⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 2.5 out of 5. Links – Amazon | Goodreads Moving from the heart of Brighton to the Sussex countryside. Ollie Harcourt, his wife, Caro, and their twelve-year-old daughter, Jade hopes to make a huge, dilapidated, Georgian mansion their next project…

[seavoice]

it's been so long since i've picked up random mass-y titles at a dusty book fair it was so beautiful

[celestialprincesse]

♡🎀

Simon Riley is the type to get his partner a dog, argue with the wall.

He maybe even pulls some strings to get them a retired K9, or maybe one that didn't make it all the way through training due to size, injury etc.

He literally cannot stand the thought of them alone when he's deployed for long periods of time, not just worried about them being lonely despite having loads of friends, a bookclub and a job. He also can't stand the thought of them unprotected in their home.

Their house is practically a safe house with the way Simon's done it up with help of the boys and some pretty fancy security equipment, but the fact that there's also a massive, scary looking dog in the house is just another layer of protection.

The dog is absolutely just the sweetest, most gentle thing, but after all those years of training, it's fiercely loyal to its owners, and won't hesitate to bare its teeth if they're threatened - much like Simon himself.

[irisofink]

Secretely loath being a responsible adult, had my eye on an amazing house of wind bookclub sweater, yes the enchanted oddities one, finally it restocked, in my size, added to cart, and 25 or so shipping costs not to mention import taxes... And I let it go. Grumbling.