#I recently finished watching Good Omens so I might have some Gaiman in my writing style today

[bookenders]

I don't know how I just realized you were having this celebration, friend! but congratulations! being one of your followers has been such an incredible thing, I love seeing the things that you come up with, and adore your characters! could I get a url based drabble?

[Help me celebrate 800!]

@abalonetea! Friend! Thank you so, so much! 💜 Having you as a follower has been equally incredible!

For you, a lovely little drabble. 

Things I was thinking of while writing it: MBMBaM, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, going to grad students’ office hours in the basements of the humanities buildings, and Tolkien-style linguistics!

Sitting at his desk in the pipe-ridden basement office, Alistair carefully set his still steaming cup of tea next to a mug full of pens and adjusted his glasses. Before him, covering the entire length of the desk, was a very old map of a very secret place.

The lost land was not so much a missing jewel as a page torn from an old book. One that, once found, will complete the story, not be the story itself. One piece of information does not a mythos make.

Abalone, Land of the Lonely Tribes. Ab-, prefix, meaning “away from,” and root word alone, from the Old English “ana,” “unaccompanied, all by oneself.”  Or, more literally, “wholly oneself.” And that’s it, isn’t it? A land untouched by outside influence, hidden beyond the mists all these years. No interaction with anyone else, no outside influence - just a land, living on its own, wholly itself and no other. 

It’s discovery had been Alistair’s dream since he first learned to read a map’s key. Once he started reading about it, he was never seen without a book in his hands, even at the dinner table, no matter what his parents threatened him with to put it down. The habit turned into a virtue once he was accepted to university. And now, little 9 year old Alistair, the child who checked out Latin books from the library to teach himself the language, would be absolutely screaming with joy and excitement.

It took ten years of sifting through dusty library stacks, fighting tooth and nail for funding, traveling around the world with nothing but a change of socks and a toothbrush to talk to people whose languages he didn’t know, being sequestered in basement after basement with the excuse of ‘no offices available sorry,’ and defending his ‘unfounded’ research to men who thought they were better than everyone else because of a piece of paper, but today was the day.

He’d come across a stray note in the margins of an old poetry book from an author whose name he would have to write down as soon as he averted this elation-induced panic attack, and traced it’s origin to a woman who had written not one, but two whole books about the true origins of the Atlantis myth. Apparently, over time, the name’s etymology went through some confusing translation phases and ended up in the Old English borrow word soup. In the bibliography of the second book, he found a title that caught his eye. 

Unfortunately, it was only available in India. So he spent two days learning specific phrases in Hindi and Urdu before spending half his meager funding on a one way plane ticket to a city he’d never heard of. That source led him to a phone call with the head curator at The British Museum, who was not amused by his request to plunder their archives looking for a big unknown something. 

Nothing a few favors for the security guards and interns couldn’t fix, however. Which cost him the rest of that semester’s grant funds. But that didn’t matter. Because inside a sealed wooden crate beneath an enormous coffin full of tattered shoes, he found it.

Oh, gods.

It was exactly as the Atlantis woman had described it. Or, rather, exactly as the people who discovered the map in the 1600s described it. Old and worn yes, and yellow-brown at the edges and around some of the ink blots, but surprisingly well preserved. The ink hadn’t even run or bled at all. It was a true miracle find. If only it were labeled.

All that was left was to actually find the region on said map that held Abalone.Left hand gripping the compass, right hand holding his place in the weathered explorer’s logbook, Alistair knew he was close. Two more coordinates to try, one more triangulation to calculate, and-

There. Right there.

On the eastern edge of the Coaldim Mountain range, just south of the Infinite Lake, in the small patch of flat land he had thought was a grove. 

He found it.   

Abalone.

He had gotten so close, closer than anyone in history. This was his life’s work, his ultimate achievement, the very thing that would elevate him to the third floor windowed offices.

In his joyous haste to celebrate his monumental academic achievement in his teeny tiny basement office, his arm swung a smidge too wide and nudged the mug full of pens on his desk. Alistair watched, eyes bugging out in panic, as the mug wobbled around and around and around before tipping ever so slightly one way, then bobbing the other, until finally giving in to gravity’s cruel intentions and spilling pens all over the map. His heart was in his throat, beating loud enough to rattle the pipes behind and overhead.

The handle of the mug twisted, caught the edge of the tea saucer, and, like a circus man paid peanuts to launch his friend up up and away via see-saw, threw the full, steaming cup into the air. It turned over once, gravity continuing to play tricks on poor Alistair by keeping the liquid nestled inside the cup’s curve, before landing upside down with a flourish of tea in a calming, chamomile-scented wave settling on the parchment sand.

The map of a landlocked region was now an ocean. The very old, very rare, very fragile map on loan from The British Museum.

With the future of his career so close, yet now so, so far out of reach, Alistair only had one regretful thought fall out of his mind.

“Aw, beans…”

I guess Abalone will have to remain away from everyone and wholly itself for a little longer. 🤷🏻‍♀️

There’s a really dumb subtle pun in here, too. 

Spilling tea ➡ spill the tea ➡ reveal information, but I inverted it. Ohoho!

**********

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[neil-gaiman]

Hello Neil Gaiman,

First of all, thank you for your work. I enjoyed some of your books immensely (Good Omens, American Gods and Anansi boys) and others gave me nightmares and I'm not even talking about Coraline (it's Neverwhere).

I had a question for you concerning your opinion on masterclass, since a recent ask you answered made me aware you had participated as well.

As someone who finished their final two years of school and wrote their final exams (Abitur- Germany) during the current pandemic, I gathered a lot of personal experience with learning through online platforms. I, along with many of my peers, noticed that learning through videos does not replace the quality of in-person education. Furthermore, since I first heard of masterclass, I had my doubts. A project from Google that could help you achieve your dreams if you worked hard enough? “You can learn anything if you try hard enough”? It sounds too much like a remixed version of the American dream, and I think history has shown how misleading that notion can be.

However, I do respect you, not just for your work, but more as a person. This got me thinking I might have judged masterclass too soon, so I wanted to ask you specifically why you decided to teach one.

How effective do you think masterclass is? Do you think the service receives more money than it provides actual academic gain in exchange for? Do you morally stand behind your decision to teach a masterclass and if so, why?

I would be very grateful if you took the time to answer my question, seeing as, just like me, you also have a whole life apart from social media and answering stranger's questions.

Sincerely,

A reader

I'm not sure that I'd describe the Masterclasses I've seen as "you can do anything if you try hard enough". Watching Penn and Teller teaching people magic (for example) isn't about "trying", it's about technique and theory and what you're doing and why. (It also isn't from Google.)

I agreed to teach a Masterclass because I'd been teaching at Bard at that point for about 5 years, and had taught about 150 people, and had learned a lot about how to teach writing and storytelling. And I thought it would be good to take what I was teaching and get it out to a lot more people than that.

It's a tool. You've got about 6 hours of me talking, sometimes in generalities, sometimes specifics, and a PDF workbook you can download to accompany the lessons.

It does have the advantage of having been designed for and intended for video instruction in the first place.

[legobiwan]

Gotta to ask, do have any TV show, book o fanfiction reviews (especially Losing So Much and Undead Chosen One AU, love those fics) for these pressing times?

So for fanfics, I made a rec post a few days ago that might be instructive. Also, if you search my blog for #fic rec or #fic recs, anything not in that post will show up. As I’ve said, I’ve been a little out of the fanfiction consumption side of things the past few months, which is why I have reached out for suggestions. 

TV! Okay, so a rundown of shows I have enjoyed that are non-Star Wars. 

Psych (hilarious and at times poignant. The whole cast is fantastic, but James Roday especially is a damn good actor and shines in the few-and-far-between serious moments on the show. Plus, I am a complete sap for stories focusing on the relationship between parents and their adult children.) 

Russian Doll (captivating story and an easy binge. Think Groundhog day, but with more drugs and cats and based in New York.)

Santa Clarita Diet (season 3 lags a little, but it’s a great twist on the whole zombie thing and Sheila and Joe’s relationship is actually really fun to watch. Lotta gore, though.)

Slings and Arrows (Canadian show featuring Paul Gross as an eccentric theater director in a faux-Stratford Shakespeare Festival organization. Each season features a different play as the backdrop of the show, and if you’ve ever worked for an arts non-profit as a performer or admin or both, you will definitely appreciate how they portray the ever-present war between both sides and the eternal struggles of art vs. business. Plus, it’s just damn funny and you know, Shakespeare.)

Due South (speaking of Paul Gross. This is an oldie, but a goodie, 1990s-style buddy-cop/fish-out-of-water show that is both funny and heartfelt. I grew up on it and it holds a special place in my heart.)

Bojack Horseman (holy shit, this show. What started out as a zany portrayal of entertainment life in LA turned into one of the most piercing social commentaries on gender issues, death, addiction, mental health, sexuality, and inherited trauma. It gets dark in the later seasons, and the next-to-last episode of the whole series is one of the most haunting existential things I have ever watched on television. But it is fucking brilliant and funny and really holds no punches. Plus, if you are familiar with LA at all, the little references are especially hilarious.)

Umbrella Academy (I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but this is a great show if you haven’t checked it out yet.)

Agents of SHIELD (If you’re not in the Marvel fandom, I don’t know how much you’ll dig this, but I personally enjoyed a lot of it, especially Phil Coulson. The first few seasons are a little campy, but it gets darker later on with the digital reality arc and I really found myself enjoying it. Also, this was the first show I treadmill-binged, so it has a place in my heart for helping me to totally reimagine my gym routine.)

Dead Like Me (so someone recommended Dead to Me, and because I’m Very Smart, I ended up starting the wrong show. But this has been an intriguing watch, a very different take on life-after-death which is quite raw at times, but always interesting, especially as it kills off the 18-year-old protagonist at the start. Season 2 isn’t quite matching up to Season 1, but I’ll finish it off sometime in the next week or so.)

Farscape (this is quality Scifi television. Weird, amazing characters, amazing arcs, amazing aliens - definitely an underrated show of its genre)

Daria (ah, this one. There are a lot of reasons this show is personally hilarious to me, but let’s just say that it’s a full-on 90s disaffection cartoon that is smart with a highly relatable protagonist.)

Metalocalypse (this show is 100% over-the-top weird and I am here for it. Plus, Mark Hammill is a VA in it!)

Broadchurch (David Tennant in his glorious natural accent in a British detective series. Season 1 is amazing, emotionally raw and captivating television. I had a hard time trying to get through Season 2 and actually haven’t finished. But the first season is definitely worth it.)

Frasier (ah, a classic. The later seasons after “the event” aren’t as good but Seasons 1-5 are excellent and the humor is out of this world. Great show and one that stands up to multiple viewings.)

There are other shows I enjoy, like Brooklyn99 and 30Rock that I assume are more well-known on this site, and thus I haven’t included them on this list. I’m also not including the shows I watched that were fine, but I didn’t feel enthusiastic about (Witcher, Jessica Jones are the first two that come to mind). I’m also sure I’m forgetting something or somethings. 

Books! I read too many books. I have no idea how to rec books except in terms of things I’ve read recently (at least, books that aren’t specialized music-academic offerings). Olga Tokarczuk’s writing is fabulous, I highly recommend any of her works. Going older, I read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man a few months back and that was superb. Another book I read a while back that stuck with me was Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities. Olivia Laing’s The Lonely City also sticks out as a recent favorite. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is also great, and to be honest (here comes some heresy), it’s a better book than Good Omens. Since I move a lot, I tend to read books and then give them away, but beyond my Shakespeare, Tintin, and Harry Potter collection, one of the few books that I always carry with me is David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which is a singularly haunting and fascinating novel and I am transfixed every time.

In terms of Star Wars books? That’s pretty easy. Kenobi, Dark Rendezvous, Plagueis, Master and Apprentice, and - pending the conclusion - Thrawn. Shatterpoint was also excellent. There are other SW books I’ve enjoyed, but these have been the easy standouts of the lot.

[daybyjae]

The Need to Read

Why the need to read:

I made the concrete decision to read more this year. I know what you're thinking. Is this about to be another anti-resolution resolution just like her previous post on being less sedentary?

The simple answer is yes. I am again adding improvements to my life that happened to pick up in January, but these started before the new year.

In 2020, I was already reading more than I had been in 2019.

In middle school I was one of those kids who would pull all nighters just to read. Then I started to fall into what I called a "readers block". I stopped feeling drawn to reading. I was at the age where I started to grow tired of typical YA novels but I didn't want to read any adult nonfiction. I knew that I had options beyond what I was aware of but I still felt hesitant. In the recent years of my early twenties I had started to pick up books more often but the real turning point was, as most things in the 2020, the coronavirus pandemic. With an influx of lonely idle time I wanted something to educate me or escape through.

At the end of 2020 I slowly began to read less as securing jobs in the midsts of a pandemic is all consuming. However, once I began commuting to work more I realized that I didn't have enough podcasts to fill the time. So I thought to myself why not get into audiobooks, at this point I had never listened to an audiobook before. As shocking as that is it is telling of how picky I was for my mode of reading. I also wasn't sure where to start this journey as the most popular audiobook source is audible and I try my best to limit the money I give to Amazon. Since, I wanted to read more in general I was also looking into e-readers and was reminded that libraries loan out both ebooks and audiobooks!

This led to me trying out the Libby app with my local library. The first book I listened to was Becoming by Michelle Obama.

Listening to Audiobooks:

Becoming was the best way introduction to audiobooks. Having the author read their own story was super engaging. It was immediately a superior experience to simply reading a paperback. Sadly, this level of enjoyment wasn't my experience with all the audiobooks that I listened to in January.

I wouldn't have read the 2nd audiobook if it wasn't read to me. I didn't make any immediate connections with the writing, author or reader and was a tinge turned off. I would have put the book down if I was taking time out of my day to sit and read it. Instead I continued to listen to it on my commute to and from work. I ended up liking the book at the end and appreciated the ease of simply listening.

This disconnect was due to the difficulties of following complexities without actually reading the text. Maybe that is because I am a visual learner but when topics got intricate and detailed it was hard to follow and stay in line. I felt as though I didn't fully absorb some lessons and stories, rereading might be necessary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRL6KeYxAm8

Showcasing the Libby app and my Notion Reading List.

Reading ebooks:

The only ebook I read from the Libby app was Good Omens. This book was chosen as I knew and loved the Amazon Prime series adaptation.

I was wary of reading on my phone for multiple reasons. One of those being that I strongly dislike reading on LED screens, the bright blue light is too much for me. I even keep a blue light filter on all of my devices at all times. The second reason I was wary is the simple fact that a phone is not a book. I miss flipping pages, seeing my bookmark progress through the book and the excitement of seeing that I am halfway through the pages. Due to this wariness I chose a book that I knew I'd enjoy.

Even though I loved the book I struggled to feel motivated to read from the app. I will continue to read ebooks here and there but I will definitely be listening to more audiobooks.

I am considering rereading my favorite audiobooks as text so who knows I might begin to thoroughly enjoy it. It'll probably be easier if I chose to read on a tablet and then page sizes would seem more realistic.

The Need for Speed:

While I am typically a fast reader and listening to an audiobook for an hour seems easy I strongly dislike feeling rushed.

With Libby your hold last 2 weeks. This is usually more than enough time for me but I was overdoing it. I would have 2 to 3 books on hold at a time and the need to crunch down on finishing them in time for the next was intense. I've not renewed any loans but that's because most of the books I chose to read where popular and on hold for others. If renewal was more of an option I would have taken it.

Slow and steady is the best pace for winning the race and reading.

The Slow Down:

If I'm being honest, I over did it.

I was reading too much in January and the beginning of February. Racing for knowledge isn't the best for retaining nor is it good for the reflection that most of the books I was reading suggested. Because of this realization and the fear of burning out from reading I will be slowing my pace. I will try to stick to one book a week. This will allow more time for reflection and slow absorption of the material. I will start back up with an ebook as those are a slower process than audiobooks.

A healthy balance is key in every aspect of life, including reading and the accumulation of knowledge.

The Books that I Read in January:

Becoming, by Michelle Obama (love this for her)

How Google Works, by Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg (took me months to finally finish)

Good Omens, by Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett (the show was really well adapted)

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, by Mark Manson (the one that I almost put down)

Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (this book was a blur of complexities)

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo (not sure if I'd declutter it or not if purchased)

The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg (not personal, v informational)

Atomic Habit, by James Clear (referenced the previous book quite a bit)

[channieskzlove94]

i, once again, have to say i love fantasy, im also rather partial to romance but im so picky about the execution that i tend not finish books with that as the focus! im currently trying to finish Wayward Son by rainbow rowell and Good Omens by neil gaiman and terry pratchett (neil gaiman is probably my favorite author tbh)

i used to love mystery novels when i was a kid (i still enjoy reading them but not so much in the same numbers) i read so many classics like nancy drew and sherlock holmes and stuff by agatha christie, i also read a lot of stuff by edgar allan poe

what sorts of hobbies do you have? i love writing (stories and poems) and painting (watercolors are my favorite but acrylics are also really fun) i also do some journaling like in those overly aesthetic posts you might see sometimes? im also getting into photography a bit! and baking! well ive been into baking i just really love making food! but i never really share what i make (in terms of visuals, i live with too many people to not make enough muffins or whatever to share and i love giving cookies n stuff to my friends) -🌻

I love neil gaiman! i haven’t read good omens but it’s definitely on my list. i want to read it before i watch the amazon show. i’ve read a few books by rainbow rowell, eleanor and park made me cry.  hobbies hmmm.. haha. i love watching movies and trying new recipes! i like doing crafts but I am not a particularly talented artist sadly. i recently got back into writing but i used to write a lot of short stories when i was in middle and high school! i’ve gotten into baking during quarantine! i made a leek bread that was absolutely delicious. i live by myself but my best friend lives next door so i share a lot of fod with her and her boyfriend.