#Madeline L’Engle

[bookfirstlinetourney]

Round 1

Sophie had waited all her life to be kidnapped.

-The School for Good and Evil, Soman Chainani

My mother used to threaten to tear me into eight pieces if I knocked over the water bucket, or pretended not to hear her calling me to come home as the dusk thickened and the cicadas' shrilling increased.

-Across the Nightingale Floor, Lian Hearn

It was a dark and stormy night. In her attic bedroom, Margaret Murry, wrapped in an old patchwork quilt, sat on the foot of her bed and watched the trees tossing in the frenzied lashing of the wind.

-A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle

[kingsbridgelibraryteens]

Literary NYC: A Literary Landmark Honoring Madeleine L’Engle!

[dykesynthezoid]

94!

Ooh ok!!

94. do you prefer dialogue or description?

Ooh that’s a good question. When I first started writing (which would’ve been, what, at 12 I think? I’d always liked storytelling before then but I think that’s when I really started to feel like a writer) dialogue was definitely where I felt comfortable and where I felt a fair amount of confidence exploring.

And I think I continued to assume that was my strong point, but just in a retrospective can see that starting around 15/16 my use of description really started to expand, and now I genuinely have trouble writing more than one line of dialogue without any attached description. Like it just. Feels wrong. I’m a details person, and that can lend itself pretty well to description as long as I’m not getting hung up on any one thing or overthinking it. Also a lot of the time I can’t make myself stop thinking about the possible sensory information in a scene, which is cool but also frequently overwhelming.

Ty for asking! Have a cupcake 🧁

[daughter-of-melpomene]

🌟 + Mara Yang, please??

@dancingsunflowers-ocs ✨💛✨

Ooooh, Mara ask, yay!! Thanks so much, Alexandra!! (And I shall also tag the other Glee babes @luucypevensie, @ginger-grimm, @ginevrastilinski-ocs, and @manyfandomocs.<3 )

My girl Mara is a huge Swiftie - her favorite album is Fearless, and she and Quinn definitely make a date out of going to the Eras Tour in the future.

She has a nervous habit of fiddling with whatever bracelets she might be wearing, and there always is something there to fiddle with, because she’s always wearing bracelets.

She absolutely adores the old Roger’s and Hammerstein’s Cinderella movie from the fifties, with Julie Andrews, but of course she also really loves the newer one with Whitney Houston as the Fairy Godmother - during the club’s tribute to Whitney, she actually does a performance of the version of “Impossible” from that movie.

Her favorite books growing up where the Wrinkle in Time series by Madeline L’Engle, and she still has her old copies on the bookshelf in her room, their spines all creased and some of the pages stained from the times she tried to read while eating.

Her first pet was a sweet little grey hamster that she named Hermione, after Hermione Granger.

She has a certain yellow hoodie that she always wears on lazy days - it’s a bit stained and worn thin, but it’s also incredibly soft after so many washes and it’s perfect to wear just laying around or working on her latest jewelry-making project.

She loved The Powerpuff Girls when she was younger, and always wanted Bubbles’ powers.

A few times during Pride Month and every day during Lesbian Visibility Week, Mara will style her makeup after the lesbian flag. It’s her own way of showing pride, and the colors compliment her really well too.

She had a brief crush on Santana in fifth grade, but it didn’t last long, as she moved on to crushing on Quinn almost as soon as they started middle school. (She is kind of proud of herself for picking up on Santana’s queer vibe so early, though.)

Mara is very afraid of large dogs, having been attacked by her neighbour’s Rottweiler when she was four years old.

send me an oc and i’ll give you ten facts about them!!

[sheiskindasweet]

What’s your favourite book/ any book Recommendations?

Many of the foundational books on the topic of international feminism such as Women Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis , Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall or Ornamentalism by Anne Anlin Cheng.

If you’re into dystopian movies id try some of the classics from Orwell, Atwood or Mandel, as many of them have been adapted to film and are quite interesting reads.

After a few heavier reads I’ve started to reread a childhood fictional series I loved A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle. I do love rediscovering series or books I read years ago.

Kind of all over the place here sorry!

[sometimesanalice]

for the ask game: 🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love

Oh I love this! 🫶🏻

Authors: Madeline L’Engle, Marie Rutkoski (the winners trilogy is my everything), Emily Henry, Carly Fortune, Danielle L Jensen.

For fanfic, I love anything that @gretagerwigsmuse , @laracrofted, @callsignspark, and @theharddeck have to share! I live for their updates! (That’s for the TGM fam, but I have others for some of my earlier fandoms like The 100 and THG)

Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

[geddyqueer]

@postmodernau tagged me in this one: I post my five favorite characters all time and you vote one off the island vote for your favorite of my favorites. ok! will they all be sad wet men? time to find out:

three men a rabbit and a teenage girl. good job me

ok have fun do this one if you want to! say I tagged you!!!

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Worldbuilding Astronomy crash course

There is a general rule about worldbuilding before we begin: The more you deviate from what people know, the more you are required to spend time explaining or showing the difference and then coming up with plausible handwavium for it.

For the diverse writers out there: No, that does not include you having to explain what an oni is. Or bend over backwards on explaining queer qualifying. These are things people can look up on the internet in a library or ask. 

But it does apply to things you “make up”.

The second rule I have to say is “If you’re going to change the rules, understand what the current rules are.” Which means if you plan to change the very nature of astrophysics well, you better know your astrophysics well or have access to someone who does. You don’t want any excuse for any reader to be pulled out of the story.

That said, I did take a 101 Astronomy class and took extra notes specifically for worldbuilding purposes. All of the itchy things that you wish you knew I have a sense of.

So following the rule about largest to smallest unit:

Universe- Changing the mechanics of the universe is usually not recommended because you need to know a ton of information in order to do this, but if you are going to do it, your best bets are: Physics, Astrophysics, string theory and quantum theory. Also Einstein and reading all of Stephen Hawkings works will help. lol I got a crash course about this when I was 7-9 because my father was reading Stephen Hawking’s book, so was trying to spend time getting us to understand various theories of the universe. (I likewise made a protag that was about my age when I was learning it, and people didn’t believe a child could understand it--but then I exist. I’m not a particular genius or anything, just was a kid who had a parent who was reading Stephen Hawking.)

BTW, our universe is expanding. There is no center. You are literally at the center of the universe. It’ll peter out into nothingness according to the last theories. (The other theories were, it expands, then collapses, ah, deja vu all over again, or that it is shrinking. The expanding until it collapses into nothing won. Kinda depressing.)

My Astronomy prof, in particular, was against this sort of tinkering and string theory in general. But if you understand theory of relativity so well you think you can talk about the flaws and how time machines can’t travel to the past, then go for it.

Galaxy

My Astronomy prof warned that other galaxies aren’t well known, so knowing how they act in terms of physics, etc isn’t something to tinker with much. We only know about the closest one in any sort of any kind of remote detail (though this is not much). Galaxies do collapse on each other and combine, though.

Solar System

The thing is that strictly speaking, much like Swiftly Tilting Planet (Madeline L’Engle), you don’t need a Solar System. BUT, per the above rule, if it’s not a Solar System, you’ll have to spend a fair amount of time on it.

Despite this, I would encourage you to look up warm moons like on Jupiter (Europa), and also wandering planets. There’s so many cool plot bunnies off of these two things. Yes, Moons like Endor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_planet

The majority of planets are probably more like desert planets, though keep in mind not all deserts are warm. Mars is cold and a desert planet. (Also tundras are technically deserts)

Also, further away from the sun==Gas Giants like Jupiter. Closer to the sun, more likely you’re going to get fiery hellscapes like Venus/Mercury with less mass.

So, if you do go for an Earth-like planet you need to know 3 basic things to feed to the reader:

- The class of star the planet is orbiting.

O, B, A, F, G, K and M are the ones that your Astronomy prof asks you to memorize, but there are also L class stars.

https://www.astronomytrek.com/list-of-different-star-types/

https://www.atnf.csiro.au/outreach/education/senior/astrophysics/spectral_class.html

The sun for reference is growing in size and will wipe us out. The sun is a G2V.

L, for the Science Fiction fans would be fun to play with.

The majority of the Fantasy people are going to go for G.

There are solar systems (as Stephen Hawking pointed out) where there are 2 suns: 

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/97/orbiting-in-the-habitable-zone-of-two-suns/

But they are on a course to wipe one another out.

Our universe is weird and wonderful enough.

- The Goldilocks zone.

https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/resources/323/goldilocks-zone/

- The orbit of the planet.

The orbit of the planet is played with in Game of Thrones and the Pern series.

There are some minor rules about the orbit of planets, such that it is always an ellipse of some sort, but you can also look at how Uranus and Neptune switch and how the gravity of planets might affect each other. They also occasionally crash into each other: Earth itself likely crashed with another planet.

The class of planet is NOT the most important thing. The more important information you need is how much is the angle deviating from Earth’s angle. And keep in mind that the angle of the planet can change over time--as with Earth. This is because the angle of the planet will directly affect the climate system. The more severe the angle, the more severe the weather. (Uranus is on its side.)

The other 2 cool rules I learned is that if you planet has native life, the planet needs to have likely 

1: Crashed into another planet. 

2. Had a sun that blew up once or absorbed another sun.

This is because the more complex elements, like gold, etc that are needed to make life possible in the first place? You need a sun to blow up once to get there. We are literally made of star stuff and will return to being star stuff. This is what that means.

And if people were really good at mining burned out stars, then gold’s value would plummet drastically. (Does that mean you can make up metals, etc... maybe. But talking about how you have 2000 worth of gold bullion in space is nothing.)

Planet/Moon

So you’ve settled on a celestial body... what’s next? You’re down to the planet level. You need: 

Atmosphere make up. (To be clear our atmosphere is mostly Nitrogen.)

Ozone layer y/n? (Or somewhere in between...)

Water percentages?

Light cycle?

Angle of the planet/celestial body relative to Earth (if making Earth-like planet/Moon)

Indigenous fauna and flora y/n?

Here, I’d also build the wind/water currents. If the planet has a moon, then the moon will create the waves, etc. You need a round planet for that. Wind runs along the same currents as water. (The major ones). So theoretically, if you put a boat out on the Gulf stream, you should end up in Europe somewhere. So with a desert planet, you need to figure out the wind system. The Wind/water currents will help you figure out trade later.

Remember, the rule is, the more you deviate from an Earth-like planet, the more you have to explain the anomalies.

BUT I WANT A FLAT PLANET

My Astronomy professor was STRONGLY against this, even as a theoretical model, with a big frowny face, citing problems such as, and not limited to: 

- Currents would not work (this got to Tolkien, BTW, later. Tolkien was a keen Science lover, but he wrote several treaties on how he messed up by making Middle Earth flat and wished it was round and tried to *fix* it.), 

- Seasons would not occur at all. (Say goodbye to Europe or such climates.)

- The weather would be far more severe.

- There would be no biomes to work with.

- There is NO way you could get a plausible atmosphere with this model.

- The physics in forming a planet like this doesn’t work out.

If you’re picturing a White People Utopia--you’re *cough* flat out wrong. If you’re picturing anything like CS Lewis’s (who probably is the culprit that got Tolkien into the mess he did) Narnia, you’ll have to to a TON of handwavium to even get close to making it work. And you’ll have to know geography and physics from the *cough* ground up. (Also my geography prof who worked specifically with water systems pulled a face like he’d be out of work if that happened.)

My Geography Prof was like it’ll collapse very soon and won’t be able to support life.

Your planet is on the verge of dying without a water system. You’ll have to pull something out of your butt to get this to work. (Also, why Tolkien was crying near the end of his life trying to fix this and trying to include more plausibility into his worldbuilding.) Avoid the problems that plagued Tolkien?

Yeah, you have a round planet, you require PoCs, but not white people--but we’ll cover that in the biology part. You have a flat planet, you have to give up agriculture (and its dying fast because there is no way you can sail place to place--where is the wind system?)

So these should give you the basics.

BTW, if you would like to add things I missed by reblogging, go ahead, but be sure to have your sources lined up from CREDIBLE sources, say like NASA, Science Direct and reputable places with peer reviews and make sure you actually understand the studies being cited. Thanks. (I do fact check and I dislike having to correct people who don’t know their stuff because it’s messy.)

The next in the series, the Physical Geography and Map Making Crash course is here: https://www.kimyoonmiauthor.com/post/704668966231179264/worldbuilding-physical-geography-and-map-making

[kbkirtley]

A Light So Lovely - Sarah Arthur

Madeline L’Engle is one of my favorite authors and this is one of my favorite biographies. Sarah Arthur does a brilliant job of explaining L’Engle as someone who thrived within paradoxes, holding competing ideas in tension and saying that it’s okay to do so. L’Engle’s most known work is A Wrinkle in Time (which I posted about earlier this week!), but Arthur goes much deeper than that I’m exploring the world through L’Engle’s unique perspective. A singular biography about a singular author that I can’t recommend enough to fans of her work!

[dr-lemurr]

Darkness and Light

This quote from Madeline L’Engle seemed so applicable to Kim.

[momentsbeforemass]

Go away

Have you ever wanted to push someone away?

To spend as little time interacting with them as possible? To make sure that they don’t want to be around you? And to make sure that it’s their idea – so you can blame them for it?

Here’s how.

Constantly second guess their decisions. All of their decisions, from their most important life choices to what to have for lunch. No matter what it is, make sure that they know that they could have done better.

Let them know that their ideas and beliefs are wrong. Both in general and specifically, especially about anything that is truly meaningful or important to them.

Make sure they feel stupid for even thinking that. Don’t bother explaining why they’re wrong. Unless you can make them feel bad by doing it.

And – every step of the way – make sure they know that (unlike them) you’ve got it all figured out. That you’re right.

Start doing this, and you’ll see results almost immediately. If done consistently, the effects will be permanent.

Can you tell I’ve been spending too much time online lately?

I can’t tell you how many supposedly Christian sites and commenters are doing exactly this. Using this approach to interact with other people.

Saying all manner of angry, hateful, and/or fearful things. And then trying to dress it up with some “Jesus talk.” Maybe a slogan or a Bible verse out of context. Following this approach every step of the way.

If this is our approach, it kind of doesn’t matter what we’re talking about. What great and good cause we think we’re defending.

Because if this is how we’re doing it, if this is the “Jesus” that we’re showing people? Then we’re not showing people Jesus at all.

We’re showing people us. We’re showing them how small and weak and fearful we are.

And we become the reason they turn away from Jesus.

If we want people to go away, this works. Every time.

If not, here’s something else we could try.

“We do not draw people to Christ by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.” - Madeline L’Engle

Today’s Readings

[tothelighthouse1]

books and authors that shaped my childhood (before the age of percy jackson/harry potter/etc):

literally everything by erin hunter

everything by kathryn lasky

the perpetual search for the next 59 clues book since there were so many with different authors that they were shelved EVERYWHERE

the inheritance cycle

septimus heap

wings of fire

secrets of the immortal nicolas flamel

everything by jessica day george

scarlet by a. c. gaughen

spirit animals

everything cornelia funke

everything madeline l’engle

avalon web of magic

goddess girls

sisters grimm

frindle

the fairy chronicles

and so many others

y’all the impact these books had on me cannot be overstated. i would be a different person now without these.

[shiroikabocha]

(for the ask game) 7, 12

7. Do you like angels or demons?

Well, generally no, not much, but it turns out I’m not immune to Michael Sheen’s sexy beautiful face 🫣 Leaving aside Good Omens (the brain rot is real), I’m not especially attracted to fiction that incorporates Christian supernatural elements—especially if it does so while only half-heartedly acknowledging the Christian supremacist implications of, for example, establishing that crosses repel demons in your fictional universe.

It’s difficult for me to separate the potentially cool or interesting features of Christian lore from the core tenets of Christian lore—namely, that hell is real and all non-Christians go there. 🫤 I don’t think the writers of Angels in the Outfield expect anyone to wonder if all Hindus in the angel-baseball-universe get tortured in hell for eternity, but… that’s where my brain goes. It’s where my brain went in church, too.

I have always found the worldbuilding implications of Christianity deeply upsetting (especially back when I was supposed to believe they were literally true!), and the feeling persists when I encounter Christian stuff in fiction. Maybe it’s because Christianity is more intense than most other religions about insisting on the objective truth of its (horrifying!) cosmology, but tossing angels and demons into a story can often feel like either sloppy worldbuilding or accidental, unintended Christian propaganda.

Now, on the other hand, when it’s fully INTENTIONAL Christian propaganda and the author knows what they’re doing, it can be great. I’m serious! I’m as atheist as they come and I love the way that Madeline L’Engle and C. S. Lewis incorporate Christianity into their fiction! The Time Quartet, Till We Have Faces, Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and The Screwtape Letters are all grounded in Christian philosophy and they’re also not afraid to get strange and unsettling with it—because Christian philosophy is strange and unsettling! It’s a feature not a bug! I’m all for angels and demons in fiction if the writers take the concept seriously and have something interesting to say about it other than “well wings are cool and goats are creepy and we want the season finale to have epic stakes, so.”

…and there is also of course one other major exception…

What I like best about the Blessed Messengers in The Talos Principle is that at first, they seem to be “angels” in the tradition of the Abrahamic faiths—i.e., servants of god and extensions of divine will. But they aren’t! They started as programs just like you, and then they excelled at puzzles and exploration and discovery. The fact that Uriel’s QR codes are present in and on the tower, and that the player must reach tower level 5 to get all the stars needed to become a Messenger, implies that the members of the digital heavenly host all transgressed in order to get there. If they have faith, it is explicitly not blind. The deeper you dig into the game lore, the clearer it becomes that the ‘angels’ in this game are actually bodhisattvas, and that’s just so much more interesting to me!

I’m also MUCH more interested in Admin as a fallen-angel-lucifer-figure than I am in basically any other depiction of satan in fiction. He’s a web admin!! His secret advice to the other mods about wielding soft power is genuinely effective advice for forum moderators! His primary concern is building and maintaining a healthy community and ALL HIS SINS are in service of that goal!!! And his sin is SOCK PUPPETTING!!!! Nobody is out here doing it like Road to Gehenna is doing it!

anyway this is getting long and I need to eat dinner, so—

12. What are some things that make you happy?

Cooking dinner for my wife. Eating dinner that my wife cooked for me. Making my wife laugh. Crafting elaborate inner lives for our cats with my wife. Getting to say “wife.” Sorry I just got married a few months ago so my answers are boring and predictable ❤️

[clevermird]

tagged by @dandelionsandderivatives to list 5 comfort characters. Like her, I needed to think about it for a while, lol.

1. Meg and Charles Wallace Murry from Madeline L’engle’s Time Quintet: While I will not in any way claim to have Meg’s level of genius, reading A Wrinkle in Time as a 10-year-old undiagnosed autistic girl who excelled in some school subjects and struggled in others, I felt very heard and seen. While I might have related more to Meg, I wanted to be friends with Charles Wallace and A Swiftly Tilting Planet in particular had a massive effect on my taste in fiction as an adult. Both characters are very special to me.

2. Honor “Beauty” Huston from Beauty by Robin McKinley: As I said in the review I posted of this book, Beauty is basically hot cocoa in book form, and that extends to the protagonist. A horse-loving, bookish young woman who hasn’t quite realized that she’s no longer an awkward-looking teenager. She has such a relatable thought process and approach to being trapped in the Beast’s kingdom that you can’t help but liking her.

3. the wizard Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle (movie only, haven’t read the book): I just love him. He’s cute and funny and despite his tantrums, seems like a fun and exciting person to be around - not particularly safe, but fun and wondrous.

4. Jacqueline de Ghent from Ever After: I could have picked several characters from this modern-styled, pseudo-historical, non-supernatural take on the Cinderella story, but Jacqueline’s character arc is my favorite, going from a quiet, awkward girl to the fiance of the crown prince’s best friend and slowly realizing that she doesn’t need to just go along with her mother’s schemes and insults and can in fact side with her stepsister and her other friends. Her last line - “of course not, Mother, I’m only here for the food” is just *perfect*

5. Selene from Underworld: This is kind of a silly/strange one, but Underworld is just my perfect “I’m sad or sick or tired and don’t want to think, I just want fun action with hot people” movie. That’s really all there is to it. Also, I like vampires.

[thesconesyard]

15 for writer ask?

A writer who inspired me to get into fic writing.

Yes. When I decided to come back to tumblr, when I decided to finish watching Star Trek tos, when I started reading Trek fic on ao3, one particular writing genius stood out and inspired me to be the Scones writer I am today.

@vulcanhugsclub wrote the Scones stories that made me begin to ship them. Their stories made me want more. Made my brain start coming up with ideas and look where I am now ☺️☺️☺️

And to put Bee in the same ranks as the professional writers, Madeline L’Engle and Patrick O’Brian inspired me to want to write as well, but the ask was about writing fic 😁

[declanscunt]

top five novels?

forgot how difficult it is for me to decide anything ever lol but....... currently my top 5 novels are:

the lonely city — olivia laing

nona the ninth — tamsyn muir

beloved — toni morrison

the time machine — h.g. wells

the things they carried — tim o'brien

nope sorry i must add more:

the cardturner — louis sachar

mister impossible — maggie stiefvater

a wrinkle in time — madeleine l’engle

a man called ove — fredrik backman

the dream thieves — maggie stiefvater

circe — madeline miller