#Laura Miller

[woundthatswallows]

introduction to the haunting of hill of house by shirley jackson, by laura miller

[papayadays]

also esteban has the FEMALE RACE ENGINEER!! i feel like this is going under the radar, but she might be the first

[goldieo-gilt]

This will never not send me lmao

[wmiqaqueen]

[bestmothertournament]

[finalgirlfall]

Although Eleanor’s experiences at Hill House will be both bizarre and fantastic, and she will eventually become deranged enough to deliberately drive her car into a tree, what she is headed toward is not delusion but a collision with this "absolute reality." Hill House will force her to acknowledge that she will never be free, that her dreams of leaving her corrosive past and her family behind are illusions, that wherever she goes she will only find the same hell she was running away from. Escape is a mirage. This is the real horror of Hill House.

— Laura Miller's introduction to The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

[grandhotelabyss]

People are upset about Laura Miller's above review of The Late Americans by Brandon Taylor. She claims claims Taylor's novel is stiffly mannered and lacks the sprezzatura and joie de vivre of his internet presence on both Twitter and Substack. Professional writers and MFAs, on the other hand, argue that she should evaluate the novel in its artistic pureness, separate from the writer's online persona.

I can't weigh in on this particular case. I've never read Taylor's fiction (I mostly won't read corporate literary novels unless, like aforementioned works by Moshfegh or Lin, they escape that tiny world and get themselves read by somebody, anybody other than MFAs and NPR tote-baggers); I've only looked at his Subtack once or twice. In general, however, Miller obviously has a point. Writers can't continue on with standard MFA technique and subject matter—little lives described with suggestive precision à la Chekhov—in a world of online discourse carried out by feverishly enlarged virtual personae. It's like writing blank-verse epics in 1900; the world has changed too much to be rendered in the old style, even in support of Chekhovian values. I'm still reading London Fields, and there the narrator writes:

Writers always lag behind the contemporary formlessness. They write about an old reality, in a language that’s even older. It’s not the words: it’s the rhythm of thought. In this sense all novels are historical novels.

"Touch grass," you will say. I say the man cutting the grass believes five impossible things that originated on the internet even if he doesn't go online himself. He cannot, therefore, be adequately described in a style attentive only to his sensuous experience of phenomenal surfaces or his fleeting awareness of unconscious desires.

To write a novel as if it were a Twitter feed won't work more than once—the media are too different to really make it work except as a gimmick—but to write a novel as if it were a Substack has potential. The Substack essay qua genre has arisen more or less to observe, answer, and in some measure to wrangle Twitter; the new blogging is a meta-discourse of social media. Since social media has replaced social drama as the matrix of social life in general, an essayistic form canvassing this media and its effects can and should form the basis of new narratives. If writers will venture the online-essayistic as a formal innovation in fiction, the realist novel can regain some of its squandered authority by itself becoming the holistic meta-discourse of social media.

[kgdrendel]

Narnia, and the Danger of Becoming an Accidental Christian

"I don't think I ever really feel in danger of accidentally believing... or stumbling into it." Laura Miller

I’m listening to the Unbelievable? podcast replay of the discussion with Holly Ordway & Laura Miller: A convert and skeptic in Narnia. As always, I find the conversation on the Unbelievable! podcast intriguing and thought provoking, as the podcast usually engages people on opposite ends of the thought spectrum. Holly Ordway and Laura Miller had similar experiences in reading the Chronicles of…

[iishtar]

Confession trumps imagination.

Laura Miller, Two Paths for the Novelist

[cordycepspog]

Laura Bailey, the voice of Abby in TLoU2, posing over the dead doctor is peak comedy everybody else go home

[obiwan]

THE LAST OF US - #They’ve stopped looking for a cure. 

[maxbegone]

OG CAST IN THE LAST OF US (HBO)

bonus laura bailey cameo:

[bestmothertournament]

Propaganda Under Cut:

Laura Miller (Mother of Charlie Calvin + Lucy Miller): Laura tries to ensure that her son maintains a good relationship with her ex-husband. Laura tries to ensure that her son has a good grasp of reality. And finally accepts the truth of what he is saying.

Sarah Connor (Mother of John): Recommended by Elmaxlys. Upon finding out about her son's fate she chose to train and learn so she could be a suitable mentor for her future son. Upon the birth of her son Sarah Connon taught her son to fight and prepare for the coming War.

[finalgirlfall]

The literary effect we call horror turns on the dissolution of boundaries, between the living and the dead, of course, but also, at the crudest level, between the outside of the body and everything that ought to stay inside. In the psychological ghost story, the dissolving boundary is the one between the mind and the exterior world. During the third major manifestation at Hill House, as Eleanor's resistance begins to buckle, she thinks, "how can these others hear the noise when it is coming from inside my head?"

— Laura Miller's introduction to The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson

[chappellroansdreamgirl]

abby taking care of her gf's hair 4 her <3333333 .

author's note - just took my fuckin' braids out after almost a month and i am daydreaming about abby anderson. (what's new i know...)

content warnings - just fluff, explicit black reader.

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

- on days you're going to get your hair braided, abby sends you off with a lil basket full of your favorite snacks and some essentials that you'll need for the day cause you both know that you're not coming home soon.

- sends u messages throughout the day asking for updates: "Can I see now???" , "babe we're still parting😭" . you don't let her see until you get home and she gets so happy. "you look so pretty, sweet girl." she won't stop telling you that until you fall asleep.

- if you have a sensitive scalp (like me...) , this white girl got that scalp oil STACKED, SHE'S NOT PLAYING. she gave that hair store worker hell, probably was in there for about an hour overanalyzing the ingredients and trying to remember if you were allergic to any of the substances that were in the jar. if you're tapping at your braids, she's so quick to get that shit out, massaging it carefully into your scalp, making sure not to mess anything up that didn't need to be touched. she knows how much effort is put in to having nice hair, and she treats yours with ten times the love she puts into her own.

- definitely learned how to take them out for you so you didn't have to do them all by yourself. by the time they're all out, you both are so tired but she's already getting up to start your shower and laying out your hair products you'll need afterwards. (ABBY BABY I LOVE YOU, MY PRECIOUS GIRL.) if you don't want to do it yourself, she's more than happy to comb out your hair, handling your texture with care as she gets knot after knot out with her skilled fingers.

- scalp massages are a must, she never feels like she's done enough until she's able to bring her hands into your hair and rub the lightest of circles onto your scalp.

- when you're braiding your own hair for maintenance, she'll just sit there and admire you with hearts in her eyes. if you let her, she'll lay in your lap and hand you whatever you need, always happy to be of help.

- abby anderson worships you and the sacredness that comes with your hair. she'll always be honored to be trusted with it, and with you<3 .

[squilfmybeloved]

grumpy men and the feral child they found on the streets are so special to me