#I really probably should finish that book

[literary-illuminati]

2025 Book Review #6 – The Lotus Empire by Tasha Suri

This is the final book in the increasingly rare Epic Fantasy Trilogy to actually finish after only three books. It’s very much a direct continuation, too – there were several occasions I wished I had reread Jasmine Throne or Oleander Sword before starting it so I could better keep sideplots and minor characters straight in my head (and to figure out if some things that happen were in any way foreshadowed). Overall, still a very fun read and a mostly satisfying conclusion to the trilogy – though I admit I did find it to be the weakest of the three on a few different levels. Though that’s mostly just personal appeal, probably; of course my favourite is the book that ends with the central romance breaking up via knife in heart and not the one where they get back together.

The book picks up shortly after Oleander Sword lets off – Malini’s claim to the throne secured beyond victory on the battlefield all doubt by her brother’s willing immolation, recovering from the near-lethal wound Priya inflicted upon her. Priya, meanwhile, has returned to c – and finds herself awkwardly thrust into the position of mediating between her people and her arisen gods – gods who clearly care about her and her destiny more than the rest of the nation combined. Categorically unable to get over each other, they find themselves forced onto opposing of a war even as Priya becomes more and more grimly aware of just what the destiny the yaksha have shaped her for actually entails.

And then there are a half dozen other POVs of various importance, some supporting characters in Priya or Malini’s story, others branching off into their own plot lines of varying import. I honestly feel like the book’s main weakness is that it should have either leaned further into the ensemble cast or been a bit brutal with cutting POVs to better focus on the central romance. It’s not a fatal failing – (almost) everyone’s arc does cohere, but the internal journeys e.g. Rao and Sima go on feel a bit tell-don’t-show just because of how few pages there are to dedicate to them. Priya and Malini meanwhile, have plenty of time but also a relationship that goes through so many twists and curves that some of the most vital individual beats still feel rushed and cramped.

My main actual disappointment with the book is the lack of real political intrigue and manoeuvring – the sort of thing that had been of the real highlights of the first two for me. Which is largely still the progression of the narrative – Malini won the game of thrones, with the exception of the priesthood everyone who matters is either loyal to her or dead. What irks is the number of words spent gesturing towards court intrigue and threats to her rule from within that turn out to be utterly hopeless – the Empress Dowager’s whole subplot could have been cut with very little loss, and for all the buildup of the priests of the Mothers infiltrating her army and entourage and collecting information, with the only exception who only needed two scenes, all the danger from them just comes from exactly the obvious people anyone would have expected it too.

Which might be why (unlike my memories of previous books) I enjoyed Priya’s chapters significantly more than Malini’s this time. Her relationship with Mani Ara – the elder goddess who she is being shaped as the mortal vessel/incarnation of – through the first three quarters or so of the book is probably my favourite part of it. Her relationship with the yaksha and trying desperately to be the ruler/priestess/protector Ahiranya needs is also just really compelling reading. By contrast, Malini manoeuvring to keep her throne and fight the yaksha while the priesthood she relies upon waits for her to accept their prophecy that only her human sacrifice and immolation will save the world should have been absolute catnip to me, but (far more than Priya’s issues) got drowned out by the romance on the one hand and chasing various High Fantasy Magic Plot Coupons on the other.

Human sacrifice of various kinds is pretty key to the book – to the themes of the whole series, really. Priya and Malini both live on borrowed time before their destiny of consumption or immolation by the divine calls for them, and every kind of magic in the setting is build upon the (ideally willing) offering up of blood and breath. Empire specifically gets, I fear, a bit confused about what it’s trying to say with this theme. One is left with the impression that martyring yourself for the sake of others is tragic but beautiful and noble – unless you are a protagonist, in which case the selfish power of life and the imperative to find a reason to keep on living triumph over all. It feels odd, after two books spent dwelling so deeply on cultural scripts and social pressures that connive to create ‘willing’ sacrifices, to have a finale that relies upon all these priests and monks expend themselves as magical ordnance with barely a qualm raised by anyone.

I do wish more of a line had been drawn between Malini and the yaksha in general (or just Mani Ara in particular, though her less so than her embodied children). Both they and she are desperately to live, to survive against all odds and at all costs – even if their deaths are written in the stars, and their survival endangers the world around them. Or well – maybe it’s just my insensitive xenophilia speaking but – I feel like there’s something to worry at there, anyway. The yaksha are clearly people in a moral sense, an clearly motivated by the fear of death and a callous disregard for humanity more than anything else – given the book’s stance on major characters with real pathos dying for the sake of theology otherwise (Priya, Malini, Rao), the way the book frames the world rejecting them and their eventual acceptance of their deaths as right and noble sits a bit oddly.

But this probably seems far more negative than I actually am about this book. The setting is vivid and well-drawn, the imagery is beautiful – the aesthetics of the yaksha and the rot especially is just incredibly compelling to me – and Suri manages to balance a great many different POV characters without their internal monologues ever blending together or becoming gratingly gimmicky in an attempt to make them distinct. For all my qualms about the book’s ending, the central romance does really work – which is absolutely vital, because even more than the previous books in the series it really is the spine the whole story is hanging on.

So yeah, if you’re in the market for a trilogy or doorstoper-sized fantasy tomes, you could absolutely do a lot worse. If this is weaker than the previous two, it’s still good, and the three together cohere as a single story far better than a lot of similar series’. Give Jasmine Throne a try and go from there, at least.

[literaticat]

If an author writes a book not knowing the genre, will the book fit into a genre when it’s finished—or is it possible for a book to be completely genre-less?

I'm about to GO OFF, so if you just want the short answer:

I presume that if an author is writing a novel and they don't have a specific genre in mind when they are doing it, they are just writing fiction. You can get more specific after you finish the book and figure out where it belongs in the bookstore and how to describe it.

It's not really possible for a book to be "completely genre-less" because that implies that it CAN'T be categorized in a bookstore -- I bet your book can be. (I should hope so, anyway, otherwise how will it sell???) -- but also, uh -- it doesn't really matter? Everyone gets really hung up on these hyper-specific genre labels, but you don't really need to get THAT specific. If your book is just "general interest fiction" that's OK -- so call it a novel and describe what the tone is. (Funny? Realistic? Literary? Fast paced? Tearjerking? There has to be some way to describe it, no? )

Even if your book is just weird as hell rambling about things I would never read about in a hundred years -- guess what, that's a genre, Experimental Fiction. ;-)

--

Long Answer: Fun fact about the word "genre" -- it comes from the same root as genus, like what you probably heard back in school when learning about the taxonomy of animals and whatnot.

Because I am extra, I decided to do a little taxonomy of books. It's still a work in progress, I might decide to change it a bit, but this is the basic chart.

I'll assume that pretty much any book we're talking about here has the same domain, kingdom, phylum and class, and PROBABLY the same order, too, since most of you are likely writing Fiction.

Within the order FICTION, there are "families", which I here call Categories -- novels, graphic novels, plays, essay collections, short story anthologies, young adult novels, young adult anthologies, middle grade novels, middle grade graphic novels, chapter books, picture books, ETC. Categories in the order NONFICTION include Biography/Memoir, Cookbook, Reference, Religion, History, Science, etc.

Within each Category, there are different Genres -- that is, the type of [novel, or whatever] it is. Genres of novel include mystery, science fiction, horror, realistic, historical, romance, western, etc.

And within each Genre, you can get even more specific with species, which I am calling subgenre/tone. That's the type of the type, in other words. There are well-established subgenres (like Horror could be slasher, or gothic, or psychological. Romance could be historical, or realistic/contemporary, or whatever) -- but it's also acceptable to get more specific with tone or style -- "Comedic", "literary", "commercial" "upmarket" etc. (You can also have books that have both subgenre AND tone -- that's like species and sub-species)

Examples:

DRACULA: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Classic Novel > GENRE: Horror > SUBGENRE/TONE: Gothic

DON'T LET THE PIGEON DRIVE THE BUS: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Picture Book > GENRE: Meta-fiction > SUBGENRE/TONE: Comedic

LINCOLN IN THE BARDO: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Novel > GENRE: Magical Realism > SUBGENRE: Experimental > TONE: Literary

JAMES: ORDER: Fiction > CATEGORY: Novel > GENRE: Historical Fiction > SUBGRENRE: Retelling > TONE: Literary

You get it?

OK SO, in the bookstore, the books are first divided by CATEGORY. All the Cookbooks are together, because that's the Category, but if there are a lot of them, they will be broken up into categories-within-the-category ("genre" if you will). Perhaps they would be grouped by region or style (Mexican cuisine, Middle Eastern cuisine, European cuisine; Health Food; Baking; etc). Mastering the Art of French Cooking would be in Cookbooks, of course -- but in a larger bookstore with many cookbooks, it would likely be found in its region, either French or European Cuisine -- and in a store with a HUGE French cooking section, those books might even be further divided into "French > classic techniques" "French > desserts" "French > postmodern cuisine", etc. So:

MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING: Order: Nonfiction > Category: Cookbook > Genre: French > Subgenre: Classic Technique

And so it goes with Fiction as well; the sections are divided by Category. So all the Middle Grade Novels are probably together. All the Picture Books are probably together. Etc. But for very large categories (like Fiction > Novel), there are enough books that it becomes easier to browse if they give the biggest genres their own shelving. Hence there are probably sections for Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Romance, etc.

MIND YOU: There are PLENTY of books that fall under "Fiction" and DON'T get separated out into one of those other genres. They are just categorized as fiction. The fiction section is probably the largest section in most bookstores -- it's not weird to write a book that gets filed in the "fiction" section! Those books still have a genre. That genre just might be "realistic" or "historical" or "western" or magical realism" or "postmodern/experimental" or something that doesn't neatly fall into the Mystery or Science Fiction (or whatever) genre categories.

For example: At my bookstore, we ONLY separate out Mystery, Science Fiction/Fantasy/Horror, Romance, Classics. So within the regular Fiction section you'll find a huge variety of books -- they all DO have a "genre" -- it just isn't one of those genres that gets shelved separately!

So, no, I believe there are books that just *don't have* a category or genre. ALL books have them. We might disagree a little about what they should be -- we might use slightly different words -- new species might pop up here and there -- we might be able to categorize some of them into even more minute niches -- but all books CAN be categorized in some fashion.

[insidepicnic]

Had a dream I read a book where the main character needed a book to unlock something (I assume her powers) and after the first half of her getting the book, the rest of the book was having other varieties characters telling her TO READ THE BOOK.

Then the books ended. Five hundred pages of a book telling the main character to read a book.

I was gobsmacked. And angry. So I went to see reviews and learned sinistered coded and sister coded book review lexicon.

So I learned more from the reviews than the book. And that was my dream.

I guess I need to finish reading a book, but idk which one.

[benevolenterrancy]

Scholarly peak is catching up on recent literature

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: August Wrap-Up.

Hey, would you look at that, it's suddenly September! Rude and uncalled for. This month, I did a lot of knitting (two sets of gloves and two hats! gearing up for holiday season), and a LOT of writing (finished the first 16k draft of a scene, who???), and read uh. Some. I didn't finish a ton of books, but I did make it through what felt like a ton of pages.

Two-thirds of this month's reading were post-apocalyptic-community-oriented, on purpose, to feed into my current writing project, and that worked really well--either I'm very good at choosing books that match the vibe I need, or my ADHD brain is good at making connections, OR a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. Photos and/or reviews linked below:

GHOST STATION (pages-out stand-in book pictured above, because I checked it out from the library after canceling my paperback pre-order, which was a good call) - ★★ This was very bad. Bad science, stupid incompetent characters, JUST enough neat worldbuilding to make it FRUSTRATING that this missed so hard. I'm bummed because I wanted to read DEAD SILENCE by this author, too, but I don't trust her now :(

ALWAYS COMING HOME - ★★★★½ Loved this!! Dense and chewy, and it required a lot of patience, but it was very rewarding and I'm really glad I read it. My absolute favorite passage was about scrub oaks, but I posted a few other highlights and tagged them as "le guin posting," if you're interested! If you like Le Guin and/or utopias and better futures and/or huge books that push what it means to Be A Novel, check this out for sure.

ARCHANGELS OF FUNK - ★★★½ So. I didn't realize that this was attached to a few other novels she's already written. And I read it cold (oops). Goodreads informed me that it was Book #2 of Cinnamon Jones, and review-diving indicated that REDWOOD AND WILDFIRE is also implicated in its worldbuilding, but that didn't stop me because I can't read. I would like to revisit this one after I've read those other two, I think, but!: The community and vibes and Making Art At The End Of The World were all immaculate, and the character names made me feel vindicated in some of my own naming conventions (seriously: there's an Indigo in this, and a Game-Boy, and Hawk, I can't make this shit up).

Under the Cut: A Note About ~*★Stars★*~

Historically, I have been Very Bad™ about assigning things Star Ratings, because it's so Vibes Heavy for me and therefore Contingent Upon my Whims. I am refining this as I figure out my wrap up posts (epiphany of this month: I don't like that stars are Odd, because that makes three the midpoint and things are rarely so truly mid for me)(I have hacked my way around this with a ½). Here is, generally, how I conceptualize stars:

★ - This was Bad. I would actively recommend that you do NOT read this one, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not worth the slog. Save Yourself, It's Too Late For Me. Book goes in the garbage (donate bin).

★★ - This was Not Good. I would not recommend it, but it wasn't a total waste or wash--something in here held my interest/kept my attention/sparked some joy. I will not be rereading this ever. Save Yourself (Or Join Me In Suffering, That Seems Like A Cool Bonding Activity).

★★★ - This was Good/Fine/Okay/Meh. I don't care about this enough to recommend it one way or another. Perfectly serviceable book, held my interest, I probably enjoyed myself (or at least didn't actively loathe the reading). I don't have especially strong feelings. You probably don't need to save yourself from this one--if it sounds like your jam, give it a shot! Just didn't resonate with me particularly powerfully. I probably won't reread this unless I'm after something in particular.

★★★½ - I liked this! I'll probably recommend it if I know it matches someone's vibes or specific requests, but I didn't commit to a star rating on Goodreads. More likely to reread, but not guaranteed.

★★★★ - I really enjoyed this!! I would recommend it (sometimes with caveats about content warnings or such--I tend to like weird fucked up funny shit, and I don't have many hard readerly NO's). Not a perfect book for me by any means, but Very Good. This is something I would reread! Join me!!

★★★★★ - I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS, IT REWIRED MY BRAIN, WILL RECOMMEND TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION (content warning caveats still apply--see 4-star disclaimer). Excellent book, I'll reread it regularly, I'll buy copies for all my friends, I'll try to convince all of Booklr to read it, PLEASE join me!!

[corvidcall]

i very rarely get a sense of satisfaction from completing tasks. ive heard people say this is an ADHD thing, but idk. personally i think i might just be bad at being alive

[dancedance-resolution]

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

---

Prologue. Bonnelles, France. 1786.

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

At that moment, Kara saw the painting.

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

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

Every student dutifully turned to look at the work.

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

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

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

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

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

“What’s the title?”

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

---

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

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

At least she wasn’t prone to seasickness.

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kara watched her every step.

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

---

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

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

---

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

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

---

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

[khufiya-khaufnak-antariksh]

So earlier today I introduced some of my WIPs to some new people, and I realised that many people might not be familiar with those two WIPs.

Kriya Petri: fantasy (with body horror & dystopian elements). Setting: A country called Fillor on a planet called Thuluke. In Fillor, to bind yourself to the one you love, you require a trinamate potion to seal the bond. 'Trinamate' is marriage (though that is a rather crude translation of the word). But to get a trinamate potion legally, the couple needs to be… acceptable. A man and a woman who plan to have at least one child. Yes, it's been 1000 years since the global apocalypse, but 'sufficient reproduction' is still a concern among the Filore people (plus it's a moral virtue for the Divine Monarchy, who reside on the cloudlands, with an iron grip on the institutes of Fillor). A potioneer wants to elope with their lover, but the pair is, let's just say, not acceptable. So what are they to do? The potioneer brews a trinamate potion on their own, finding the closely guarded methods & ingredients for the potion through who-knows-who, bunch of shady people. The potion explodes. The potioneer knows the punishment for something like this. They'll be condemned to Kaewoe (so will their lover, if anyone finds out), a realm so deep below the ground that it's close to the core of the planet. Kaewoe, where the mind & body are destroyed by the horribly high concentration of magic. Kaewoe, the names & lives & loves of all who enter it, all slowly turned to unknowledge. Good thing stealing identities is absurdly easy in Fillor! The potioneer wipes all memory of their crimes & love (or else the Thought magicians would know), flees to the city of Naebo. Their name is now Kriya Petri,

.

Welcome To The Real World: scifi, fantasy, surrealism, horror, tragedy

This one's in very early stages Inspired by Frankenstein Setting: The Great South Asian Rip in Reality, where physics (time & space both) is just completely twisted. The year is sometime in the 2070s. Sometimes it's the 2040s outside the Rip. Depends when/where you step out. Moh-maya, reality's very fabric & everything that keeps up the illusions that comprise reality, are very malleable in here. Main character: Kabir aka Moksh. A closeted Indian trans man who lives a double life, perhaps even a triple life. One in which he's a cis woman & a regular bright STEM student (STEM studies also include study of moh-maya). Another in which he's just some guy with good friends (the most authentic of his lives), where he goes by the name Kabir & uses moh-maya to present as his true self. If only temporarily. (it's painful, mentally & physically, whenever he has to revert to the female form). The third is some mad scientist bullshit, he's going by the name of Moksh among his fellow mad scientists & his main project is a moh-maya Frankenstein's monster that others can share their consciousness with, such that they can experience shape-shifting more easily & go where they physically aren't, do things they physically can't. Let's simply call it the 'entity'. Due to many reasons, creating this entity is pretty illegal. Hence the new name & collaboration with fellow shady people. the plot, put shortly: he starts doing vigilante justice w/the entity & then goes far & gets more & more consumed w/work & things go verrrrrrryyyyyy wrong despite starting with (dubious but) good intentions.

in this second one i neglected to mention the fact that you, as the reader, get front row tickets to the main character's spiral into madness & justifying murders thru the entity + the entity is a whole person & has opinions + a whole lot of other stuff, I DID mention that this WIP is in very early stages but holy fuck i could go on & on about it (just not in a way that can be packaged in a structured & sensible introduction)

[phagodyke]

aouuugh my uterus......

[gatheryepens]

…

[bucklikethedollar]

i think one of the things that annoys me the most about booktok is how the majority of them absolutely refuse to read anything other than boring mafia smut or thinly veiled reylo fanfiction. obviously everyone is gonna have their genre preferences, but to never venture outside of them?? this obviously includes their unilateral dismissal of classics, but they completely ignore the overwhelming majority of all books that exist on this fucking planet.

it’s one thing for me to say that i prefer horror and thriller books while also deeply loving antiwar novels and realistic sci-fi, these people say they like “spicy seggsy enemies to lovers only one bed” or whatever the fuck and just don’t even try to find out if they like anything else.

[13eyond13]

have you thought of watching the tv adaptation of iwtv?

I keep seeing posts about it on my "for you" page, and for some reason it just doesn't look like something I'd actually get into, but maybe I should give it a shot sometime before judging too much. What do you think, have you seen it?

[llycaons]

I had to go back to audiobooks...they're just so much faster. I'm already 2 hours into this 17-hour novel (it's spinning silver). I will read physical books too but I'm just no longer able to sit or lay down for long periods of time to get reading done, I have to move around

[pierrotwrites-hc]

🎭 Can you envision your OC in an alternate universe? What au would you choose and what role would they be in that world?

For Luca!

I love this question, because whenever you're writing a deeply traumatized character you start to wonder who they'd be if they hadn't gone through all this awful formative shit.

I've sketched a conversation that takes place much, much later in the series between people who knew Luca before he was taken by the Commissioner and those who only met him after. This was a useful exercise for me because I was able to identify three attributes of Luca as a child that were lost, submerged, or perverted due to his conditioning: chattiness, bossiness, and a desire to please. Luca was one of those endlessly curious kids who never shuts up, the kind who's always asking "why?" and only conks out once they've run out of steam. He could also be a bossy little shit, always making "helpful" suggestions about how a process or activity might be improved. And he was motivated by a deep, driving need to make other people happy. Especially adults, and especially those in positions of power.

The Luca we meet in TGB is about as far from chatty as it is possible for someone to be, but I've enjoyed giving him opportunities to revive his curiosity. His relationships with Asher and particularly Doran have revived some of his bossiness, too. And while he still wants so much to please, he has become more critical about the worthiness of those who have power over him.

The alternative universe I imagine for Luca is one in which he was never taken by the Commissioner. While I expect he still would have suffered at the hands of the occupiers, he would've had his brothers for protection. He would not have undergone the additional trauma of losing his language and cultural identity, or been forcibly transplanted into a culture where he was treated as a hated enemy. And he wouldn't have suffered years of brainwashing that sought to strip him of his personhood.

I've always seen Luca as a Bard, and in this AU his Bard characteristics would be much stronger and clearer, and uncomplicated by the silencing and disempowerment he endured in his TGB backstory. He would be much closer to the chatty, bossy kid he was in Kel. He wouldn't have to find his voice, because it would never have been taken away from him. As a result, he would've become the leader he's meant to be much sooner, and with a lot less mental anguish.

I do think that Luca in any universe would need to overcome his people-pleasing. This is just an innate part of him, and learning to value his own happiness would probably still be a crucial aspect of his growth and development.

Having written this, and looking back on the prompt, I'm now wondering whether I could take Luca even further afield from the TGBverse and drop him in, say, a coffeeshop AU. I can see him as a sweet but anxiety-prone barista whose therapist recommended he get a job where he had to interact with people in order to coax him out of his shell. I imagine him as a burnt-out former dance prodigy now taking classes at the local college and trying to figure out what he wants to do with the rest of his life.

Enter a tall, red-headed customer with a crush...

[dyketennant]

i think next semester is finally going to be the one that gives me a heart attack and kills me 💞

[sureuncertainty]

hopefully it's just tonight but i haven't written at all in the last couple of days and i tried again tonight and it didn't work AGAIN i just can't get myself to write idk sometimes i really feel like the sequel to silence agenda is literally never ever going to actually get written and there's no point in even trying