#I also like other books and authors

[raventhekittycat]

I recently got a bookstore gift card for graduation, and I was wondering if anyone had any good fantasy recommendations? I tend to like stuff by authors such as Tamora Pierce, Naomi Novik, Trudi Canavan, Shannon Hale, but I've also enjoyed some Madeline L'Engle (I know she's more SF than fantasy) and Dianne Wynn Jones. I also recently read a book by Foz Meadows, who's title escapes me now, that I also enjoyed. I'll take recommendations in other genres as well, but fantasy tends to be my favorite, and I'd love to get a new book or author to dive into!

[fictionadventurer]

I love libraries.

I'm browsing the WWI shelves (as you do) and notice a very old book about the war. I glance at the first pages that talk about how one day the war will be over and we'll look at this place and not see any signs of the battlefield.

Then it hits me. And I check the publishing date.

This book was printed before the war's end. Not written. Printed. The physical object was created in 1918, while the war in question was raging and the end was as yet uncertain.

Now I'm standing on the other side of the apocalypse, with this physical link to that era in my hands. I'm living proof that the war did end and life did go on and we can all look at the end of the world as a long-ago memory.

Reading old books is cool enough, connecting our minds and hearts through the ideas of people who lived long ago, but there's something extra profound about holding a copy of the book that comes from the time that it was written. It's a physical link between the past and the present connecting me to those long-ago people. A piece of the past come into the future that gives me the chance to almost take the hand of some long-ago reader, to hold something they could have held, connecting not just mentally but physically to their era, a moment of connection across more than a century.

Excuse me while I go weep.

[tea-cat-arts]

Shen Yuan getting transported into pidw isn't "the system punishing him for being a lazy internet hater," but instead representative of "step 1 of the creative process: getting so mad at something you decide to go write your own fucking book" in this essay I will

[fluentisonus]

I've said this before but valjean's view of the bishop throughout the book gets me so bad because like. he knew him for what, a day maybe? and it absolutely had a vast & profound & positive impact on him. but then he goes on to spend the whole book comparing himself to his idealized vision of the bishop & finding himself wanting & feeling guilty and miserable about every petty or selfish thought that crosses his mind. but it's so fucked up because like we as the readers know the bishop better! we've read the whole first book and we know he came from a privileged & wealthy background, that he was a rake when he was young, it wasn't til he was in his 40s or 50s to have some sort of change of heart & become a priest (a similar age to valjean when he met him!), that he has moments that seriously shake him, that he has some dubious politics left over, that he still has moments of pettiness he has to work through on the page (his initial approach to the member of the convention, e.g.). and also he's just kind of a weird old guy (affectionate). and like this is not to criticize the bishop, I think he's a genuinely really good guy, just that while the bishop has a realistic view of himself & his past ("he described himself with a smile, an ex-sinner,"), valjean is not getting any of this except maybe like. what would be mentioned in the newspaper when the bishop died. so his whole view of him is of this one shining moment where he changed his life and he feels he doesn't live up to that. which is sad! because the bishop understood him more than he realized & wouldn't have wanted him to feel that way

[magpie-trove]

Actually I don’t think you are actually fr an adult author if you can’t write something without a s*x scene in it

[aroaceleovaldez]

Something something Jason feeling like he doesn't quite fit as "Greek" or "Roman" as a metaphor for bisexuality, particularly the semi-canonical bi-coding in his half of experiences during the Cupid scene and how Favonius and Cupid speak to him in parallel to the scenes confirming Nico is gay.

Something something the camps as metaphors for traditionally acceptable forms of relationships and Nico living as a rogue outside of them, rejecting expectation (ergo in himself representing a metaphor of queer identity and living outside of boxes and defined/usually hetero-allonormative/binary ideas of what love/relationships should look like) versus Jason struggling with the expectation to conform to a label and even discussing with Nico both of them remaining at CHB together.

Something something the inverse of Jason shifting away from the camps after he breaks up with Piper, feeling lost and unable to find a place between the camps as he begins to explore his queer identity properly for the first time versus Nico only remaining at CHB because he has entered a relationship. In this essay I will-

[greenerteacups]

What do you think of jkr as a writer? I for one has always felt like she didn’t treat her female characters well. It felt strange, being critical of her when she was god queen of the earth, and also being 10

I think most of the problems in her books can be chalked up to genre hopping. Books 1-3 are perfectly good and serviceable children's books — great children's books, even! They have compelling, relatable characters and juicy mystery plots. They have problems, sure, but for the first three books someone's ever written — especially someone with little or no background in creative writing — they're really fucking good. So: there's her flowers.

The last four books pivot sharply into much more emotionally complicated and sociopolitically loaded territory, because they're describing a war. And it's hard to write children's books about war. I would venture you can't really do it, at least without dramatically misrepresenting what war is! And so Rowling makes the executive decision somewhere during the writing of Book 4 that she's not going to flinch away from that, she's going to go for dramatic realism, and she kills Cedric Diggory to let us know. People had died in Harry Potter before, of course — Quirrell gets sent to the fucking shadow realm, for example. But children haven't. (It also gives parents who are reading these books with their children a warning shot: shit is about to get significantly more real, think twice before you buy the next one of these for your 10-year-old.) After that, Rowling starts leaning much more into dramatic realism, and the fast-paced mystery-novel plotting of the first few books is replaced by a slow, simmering political conflict that unfurls over the course of about a million words.

The problem — besides the fact that she's picking one of the hardest things to write about, like, in all of literature, war is really insanely complicated and emotionally intense and hard to portray well — is that she's now trying to use characters, plot points, and technologies she developed for a children's series to enact a sprawling war drama among teenagers and adults. So Hermione, who was a reasonably precocious snobby eleven-year-old, becomes this sort of encyclopedic all-knowing savant of the wizarding world, who somehow remains functional and mostly even-headed despite her identity being the chief target of a prolifically murderous terrorist group. Draco Malfoy, a schoolyard bully whose primary tools included 1. namecalling and 2. telling teacher, JOINS said terrorist group (and admittedly does react reasonably, i.e., has a total crashout and takes to sobbing in a girls' bathroom whenever he gets a free minute). Dumbledore, who starts out as "whimsical friendly winky-wink trustworthy grandfather type", ends up being Magical Winston Churchill in a violent game of spycraft and espionage, eventually revealing he's only been keeping Harry at all these seven years because he wants to KILL him! And like, maybe really good technical writing could smooth out these transitions and make the first-order dramatic choices seem more natural, but Rowling is like, a Fine Writer, technically speaking. meaning she's reasonably consistent in characterization, her plotting is well-paced and believable, she has a clear authorial voice, and her prose is readable. personally, that's not enough to get me to buy into some of the changes that happen in the later books, and because she stuffs these things so full with new elements every installment, a lot of stuff ends up getting glossed over.

And like, I still love the books. I think they're wonderful, and they taught me how to read. but i can say that and also say that Rowling probably did herself a disservice by trying to write four giant war novels as sequels to her first three mystery children's books.

[odo-apologist]

Thinking about Out of Time, specifically the ending, which, in my opinion, is one of the best Rimmer scenes of the franchise. It's one of those moments- like his sacrifice for Nirvannah in Holoship or his insistence that Lister burn his soldiers in Marooned as a gesture of friendship- that hint at the potential that he has, deep down, of being noble, heroic, kind. What's particularly interesting about this scene, though, is that up to this point, Rimmer has often been shown as having a fascination with power, with militarism and fascist aesthetics. This is among his worst, most dangerous traits. You see the extreme outcome of it in Meltdown, what I think is Rimmer at his most abhorrent; he is the cause of the death of an entire group of people all because he wanted to live out his power fantasy of being a strategic military general, watching the battle at a distance like he describes in Marooned. Of course, as others have pointed out in their own posts, Rimmer's desire for/adoration of power likely comes more from his desire to be loved and prove he's deserving of love, but its consequences can be horrific. In Out of Time, when he encounters a version of himself that is an *actual* fascist sympathizer/apologist, he is disgusted. He is the one who wants to fight and who says, "Better dead than smeg." Whereas his future self says he would rather die than live like rats as the present crew do, our Rimmer would rather die fighting than live a life of ease and comfort while rubbing shoulders with bloodthirsty, power-crazed dictators.

And I think it's really interesting that the episode before this one is Rimmerworld. The aspect I often think about (that I wouldn't be surprised a lot of other fans also often think about) is Rimmer's 550+ years of imprisonment. It's such a disturbing concept, being kept in solitude for that inconceivably long, that its apparent dismissive treatment as a joke and lack of any real impact on Rimmer haunts me a little bit and I'm glad there are a few fics out there that explore the aftermath more thoroughly. But before he ends up in that situation, he 1. Abandons the others- the seemingly only people who have ever come close to caring about him- to die, leaving them to flee in an escape pod, and 2. Creates a civilization of clones of himself that he clearly bases off of the Roman Empire (a notable inspiration for many fascists). The first is significant because it shows the contrast between his cowardice in that situation and his lack of it in Out of Time. But the second point here, about the creation of his civilization, may show why that contrast happens between episodes, the reason for it. The civilization of Rimmerworld, based on an obsession with power, inspired by what we can assume is Rimmer's own idealized view of the Romans and empire in general, is the same that causes his centuries of suffering. So the next episode, when he sees another version of himself willing to get along with the kind of people like those who imprisoned him (who, albeit, were also versions of him)...I don't know, maybe the events of Rimmerworld did have some notable effect on him after all, at least for a while; maybe that's why he was so sure in his decision that the crew fight even though he knows they'll die trying.

Or maybe I'm just being ridiculous and overthinking things

[bookcub]

Chappell Roan Book Rec

like many other, I am currently obsessed with The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess so here are a few book recs based on the songs!!

(you can message me for questions about content warnings!)

Femininomon

A Guest in the House by E. M. Carroll (horror graphic novel)

What happens when you marry a mediocre liar and there's a ghost you are definitely attracted to in the house (that might be his dead wife)?

Relevant lyric: Stuck in the suburbs, you're folding his laundry/Got what you wanted so stop feeling sorry

Bonus Rec: Romancing the Inventor by Gail Carriger (adult steampunk romance)

Red Wine Supernova

Satisfaction Guaranteed by Karelia Stenz-Waters (adult romance)

Imagine inheriting a sex toy shop with a enchanting stranger who you feel incredibly connected to. . .

Relevant lyric: I heard you like magic/I got a wand and a rabbit

Bonus Rec: Sunstone by Stjepan Šejić (adult romance graphic novel)

After Midnight

Ash by Malinda Lo (YA fantasy)

I had to choose a queer Cinderella for this one, especially one whose mother warns her away from the forest at night.

Relevant lyric: This is what I wanted, this is what I like/I've been a good, good girl for a long time now

Bonus Rec: A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (adult historical fantasy, sequel)

Coffee

The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec (adult fantasy)

When your ex is the trickster god Loki and you have prophetic futures, you know you can never just have coffee.

Relevant lyric: Here come the excuses that fuel the illusions/But I'd rather feel something than nothing at all,

Bonus Rec: Seven Days in June by Tia Williams (adult contemporary)

Casual

The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi (adult gothic)

Remember that toxic homoerotic best friend you had a child? Who believed in magic and was also the most manipulative person you've ever met? It never was a casual relationship, was it?

Relevant lyric: Hate that I let this drag on so long, you can go to hell

Bonus Rec: Ben and Beatriz by Katalina Gamarra (adult romance)

Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl

A Spindle Splintered/A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow (adult fantasy)

Entering the fairy tale multiverse always leads to the strangest (and funnest) relationships (platonic and romantic) of your life.

Relevant lyrics: We're leaving the planet and you can't come

Bonus Rec: Cash Degado is Living the Dream by Tehlor Kay Mejia (adult contemporary)

HOT TO GO!

The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz (graphic novel)

What if I dressed up as a count to inherit my father's fortune and you were a princess and we both liked grilled cheese???

Relevant lyric: I could be the one, or your new addiction/ It's all in my head but I want non-fiction

Bonus Rec: Act Your Age, Eve Brown by Talia Hibbert

My Kink is Karma

Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan (adult historical romance)

She said, let's destroy my terrible nephew's life, and how could you say no to such a romantic proposal?

Relevant lyric: Wishing you the best, in the worst way

Bonus Rec: Girl Serpent Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust (YA fantasy)

Picture You

A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall (adult historical romance)

Oops, I faked my death and reinvented myself and you were way more distraught than I thought you would be. . .

Relevant lyric: Do you picture me like I picture you?/Am I in the frame from your point of view?

Kaleidoscope

The Scapegracers by H. A. Clarke (YA urban fantasy)

What if we formed a coven and what if we were all a little in love with each other?

Relevant lyric: And love is a kaleidoscope/How it works we'll never know

Bonus Rec: The Girls I've Been by Tess Sharpe (YA thriller)

Pink Pony Club

The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang (graphic novel)

He was a drag queen, she was a seamstress, can I make it anymore obvious?

Relevant Lyric: And I heard that there's a special place/Where boys and girls can all be queens every single day

Bonus Rec: Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo (YA historical)

Naked in Manhattan

Astrid Parker Doesn't Fail by Ashley Herring Blake (adult romance)

Isn't it romantic, designing a house with someone with your entirely opposite tastes?

Relevant lyric: Boys suck and girls I've never tried

Bonus Rec: Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust (YA fantasy)

California

Honey Girl by Morgan Rogers (adult contemporary)

If a PhD can't save you, maybe a drunken marriage in Vegas can?

Relevant lyric: Cause I was never told that I wasn't gonna get/The things I want the most

Guilty Pleasure

Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner (adult romance)

Fake dating your boss? 0/10 recommended. . . right?

Relevant lyric: I want this like a cigarette/Can we drag it out and never quit?

Bonus Rec: That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming (adult fantasy romance)

Bonus:

Good Luck, Babe

Sorry, Bro by Taleen Voskuni (adult contemporary)

Relevant lyric: You'd have to stop the world just to stop the feeling

Ophelia After All by Racquel Marie (YA contemporary)

[wuthering-tempest]

A little misty told me you have a sinner oc and I haven’t been able to find an oc tag or anything, so please tell me about em or gimme the tag or whatever you’re comfy with!

-Ink Anon

OHHH HI!! I don't really have a tag for her here because I haven't actually posted her much on this account and I'm always really shy about fan ocs but 👉👈 i'll put most info/extra drawings under the readmore, a lot of her outfit/design is still a wip so forgive the messiness

Meet Captain Nemo! She's based directly around Jules Verne's Nemo of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea/Journey Through The Impossible/The Mysterious Island! She is an extremely intelligent and knowledgeable woman, but alternates often between calculated aloofness and bouts of impassioned agitation and can occasionally be provoked into furious outbursts, especially now that she's been dredged up from hiding.

She's got a very complicated past with many fixer associations and syndicates alike, and her place of origin is a complete mystery, as is her real name and reason for why she's so averse to life in the City and disdainful of it's many rules. Whatever it is that caused her to be this way is what pushed her to craft the Nautilus, her beloved magnum opus made of various tech from all across the City. She originally intended to use the ship to completely escape the City and it's rules, but due to mysterious circumstances that she refuses to speak on, the ship and much of it's crew have disappeared without a trace.

Her distinct habits include introducing herself to strangers by a wide variety of pseudonyms, a knowledge of many languages and codes, her general quietness unless something directly involves her input or expertise, smoking very particular cigars, and a strong dislike and surprising inability to remain impartial when matters of the impoverished people (especially children) of the Backstreets are involved.

As for actual gameplay, Her base ID does slashing Gloom and Pride, with some applying bleed count and others applying rupture potency. Her weapon, Nautile, is composed of three chakrams inlaid like an astrolabe, with the largest having a handle in the middle. It seats into a glove on her right hand, but can also connect to either side of a tactical harness she wears and can be hidden by her LC coat in case she doesn't need it ready! Her base E.G.O., Infini Vivant, is Wrath affinity and themed upon the electric ampoule-based gun Captain Nemo used to hunt underwater, and does piercing bleed damage and adds rupture count.

Although I like to think of scenarios where she would interact with canon sinners (she would have a preference for those like Ishmael and Meursault and a dislike of those like Outis and Hong Lu), she's more treated as a Sinner who exists in a noncanon smaller mobile unit dedicated to working with the LCD and handling things like Monoliths and Distortions.

[hells-plaid-angel]

 Carson McCullers - The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

[fictionadventurer]

We laugh at sci-fi for how it over-explains technology, but we also need to make fun of how Victorians describe any time period that takes place more than ten years before the book's publishing date.

It's like if we wrote like this about the '80s or '90s.

According to the curious fashions of the day, she wore a shirt of tie-dye print. It may seem quaint to our modern sensibilities, but such colorful styles were a common sight in any public street of those times.

At the time this story occurred, it was not uncommon for young men to wear their hair cropped closely around the face, but allow the hair behind the head to grow until it brushed the level of the shoulders.

In those days, the information superhighway was little more than a crude unpaved path, full of hazards and beset by brigands, so it is not strange that our heroine, instead of entering her query into the search bar on her browser, went to the public library and scoured the books on the shelves for the information she sought.

She and her friends went to the theater to see E.T. How strange to think that film was once at the heights of popularity and acclaim, as well-known in its day as films like The Hunger Games or The Avengers have become in the intervening time.

I get that the lack of video and audio recording made it harder for future generations to experience the details of the past, and that technology was changing their world at a faster rate than ever before, but also, dude, it was only, like, forty years ago, so maybe chill out a bit.

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

The Mires

literary, magical realism

follows three women who are neighbours in Kāpiti, in the near future

a Māori single mother, and her daughter - who can sense the thoughts and memories of people and the land

a refugee from climate disaster, struggling to fit in with the unfamiliar culture and relative safety with her husband and young daughter

and an older white woman whose son has recently moved home after being groomed into a right wing extremist group, causing tensions to rise among them all

[heph]

do you think gale shadowheart and wyll would share smut recommendations with each other? based off that one party banter of wyll and shadowheart sharing lines from a smut novel they read

Yes! I have thoughts about this!

I think Astarion mostly reads non-fiction, books that inform him about the world around him, books about certain types of magic and bits of history. He reads a lot of it, but doesn't remember most of it. I think he reads mostly to forget his miserable existence back in Cazador's Palace.

Wyll and Shadowheart I think love their romance novels, spicy or otherwise. From fictitious Bawdry to fluff friends to lovers ^_^

My boy Gale stays flexy and likes both types! So he can have a book club w the romance girlies talking about the intricacies of the romantic novel of the week as well as a private one with Astarion to discuss stuff like history, where Astarion just listens to Gale info dump and occasionally asks questions or adds on tidbits to keep the conversation going

[clownbrainrot]

there's something soooo nerd wish fulfillment about hanbrough... like imagine mike reading all bills books for years and years being his biggest fan bill is his favorite author and then they get together... and bill gets critique from mike all the thoughts & opinions he's had about his writing and the critique is actually happily received and implemented... mikey being first in the acknowledgments in his next book!!!!! heeeelp!

[cosmic-walkers]

I have so many thoughts about Jane and how her main goal was to be viewed through the eyes of men. She was a product of their consumption.

The silent, one-sided rivalry going on between Thomas and Henry over her is one of the most defining parts of the season. And perhaps, rivalry is not the correct word, but they both want her, they both desire her, Henry wants her because he needs an heir, and a wife, and for all the tears he doesn’t really care about her after her death. On the other end, Thomas wants her because he believes he could’ve been a better husband to her. He proclaims it at her death, and like Henry, he is left crying and shattered.

Between Henry and Thomas, Jane was propped up as a Madonna figure; an innocent doe, a virgin queen, someone who was untouched, and must be protected, and someone who is innocent.

She was very much seen and desired through their eyes, and their eyes alone. Even when she was in the company of other women, those women were drowned out, her relationships with them were not as strong as her relationship with Thomas or Henry.

She existed mainly for the consumption of men, to marry her, to impregnate her, to desire her from afar, to believe they could treat her better, etc. It reminds me of the movie Milena, if you’ve ever seen it or part of it. Where you have this beautiful woman, but her life/person is viewed through the eyes of men, and she is overly desired by them. Even the ‘good’ ones. This isn’t really a good or bad thing in Jane’s case. I just find it interesting how at least to me, she is a character propped up by men, and viewed through the eyes of men. There is hardly a scene with Jane where she is alone, without Thomas or Henry.