#THIS FUCKING BOOK

[boywithskull]

Francis Abernathy is such a fantastic character to me, because he’s not outwardly violent like Charles, nor increasingly cold and self-serving like Henry, yet he is just as shallow. I often see the sentiment that his ending is so tragic and how he was forced into that unhappy, het marriage. As he expresses in his suicide letter, Francis ultimately succumbs to his own lack of moral strength and failure to act (“Forgive me for the things I did but mostly the ones I did not.”) Obviously I will acknowledge that the marriage situation was unfair — no one deserves to be ousted from their family for their sexuality. However, it really was not his only choice. Just as Richard comes to realise (and is quite disgusted by), Francis would rather remain trapped than have to get a job, provide for himself, and make his own life. It reminds me a lot of Julian’s ending, and how Richard says he could at least respect it if Julian had turned them in, since it would show some strength of character, but his running away only exposed how weak-willed he was all along. Perhaps Francis has a better moral compass than Henry, but his failure to use it renders him just as at fault for everything that happened. As always, Francis values his comfort over his happiness. That’s his fatal flaw.

[brokendoor16]

Hey so I’m rereading the raven cycle and the parallels in the ways Adam and Ronan look out for each other?? Fucking INSANE. Like the ACUTE similarities between how Ronan responds to Adam’s grief over Persephone (sitting down next to him on the porch; ‘I don’t want to talk’ ‘the fuck would I talk about?’) and how Adam responds to Ronan’s grief over Aurora’s death (getting into the car with him; ‘are you coming in?’ ‘no’ ‘wake me if you need to’)?? The way they comfort each other just through their presence and comfortable silence?? I am UNWELL about these books.

(I’m sure there’s more examples but this is what we’re getting today)

[chickren]

i’m still in that was what men wanted wasn’t it purgatory and will forever be slow roasting over a spit of soft helpless women they needed to protect

the nerve of this old man

why give me another part that wondered if jaime would comfort her should she weep upon his shoulder when you could just cut my heart out with a spoon which would hurt less

[charliethinks]

the grip this book has on me is unexplainable

[d-e-w-p]

So I made a poll for what my next disc world book to read would be-

Except I saw I had the Hogfather on my shelf and went through that and.

I want to shout about Parallels and themes and deuc ex machinas by GOD what was pratchett doing with these books to make them so good?

[squash1]

ok i’m still having sweetmetal brainrot because there’s just so much to unpack.

i’ve been thinking a lot about the implications of sweetmetals through the lens of how we value art. in many ways art is the background noise to our lives, but we have a tendency to only really appreciate classic “masterpieces,” not the art that exists in everyday life, or art that is made on a smaller scale for a smaller audience. sweetmetals take this idea that only art that is determined to be a masterpiece is valuable and flips it on its head. boudicca’s most powerful, and in turn valuable, sweetmetal is “jordan in white,” a painting that hennessy herself made a sweetmetal through her too big childhood emotions. it is not a sweetmetal — something capable of literally waking dreams — because it is technically impeccable or because hennessy is famous, it is a sweetmetal because hennessy was feeling when she made it. or think about the index card hennessy draws on to express how devastated she is to not have jordan in her life. an index card that reads “of fucking course” is able to wake a dreamt mouse because it has power and value. it’s not a masterpiece but it means something to hennessy. sweetmetals are about emotions, about the value of channeling emotions into art (both the value that has to the artist and to the viewers).

i keep coming back to the moment where declan looks at these abstract paintings — mostly just a grey canvas — and says “It makes me want to goddamn cry.” we have no idea if these paintings were sweetmetals, but it doesn’t really matter. because in that moment those paintings offer declan what sweetmetals offer dreams. they wake him up. declan, who has tried for so long to feel nothing, to never let his feelings show, feels outwardly because of this art. it doesn’t matter how monetarily valuable to work is, it has value to him in that moment. and i feel like this is what we should take away from sweetmetals: art has the power to keep us awake, and make life real. whether you create it or consume it or both, you are keeping yourself awake and real in the moment you’re in.

[adri-atics]

Was anybody going to tell me last 200 pages of The Great Hunt were absolutely life-changing incredible or was I supposed to find that out by losing my shit on a plane myself?

[themoonyandthestars]

The history book on the shelf is always repeating itself

[razorsadness]

She pulled out an album styled in black and white. On the cover stood a person dressed in a rumpled white button-down shirt, black suit jacket tossed over the shoulder, and what looked like a skinny black necktie. I couldn't tell if this person was a man or a woman. Square jaw, direct gaze, dark mess of unbrushed hair. I thought, for a second, it might be Sylvia, but this was Patti Smith. I felt something inside me flicker and throb, a sudden hunger to hear everything she had to say. On the turntable, Horses crackled to life. Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine. Sylvia lit a joint and handed it to me. I took a hit, looking up at dying Jesus and thinking about my sins. Did it count as a sin when I humped the floor with Jules' leg on mine? Did it count right then as I thought of kissing Sylvia, enticed by the softness of her plush lower lip? We sat on the rug and listened while Patti sang about doing it with another woman, a sweet young thing in a pretty red dress, leaning on a parking meter. Her name is G-L-O-R-I-A. I knew that girl. She'd been around. She took Van Morrison first. Went into his room around midnight to make him feel alright. Then she visited Jim Morrison. Wrapped her body around his and did it hard and fast. In both versions, the man was seduced, passively following. Not so with Patti. More man than the men, she's bored and proud, moving in her own atmosphere. She sees Gloria and puts a spell on her. "I make her mine," she screams, the words pushed through the wood-chipper of her throat, outstripping any boy who sang this song before or would dare to sing it since. "Play it again," I said, and Sylvia did. And again. The song killed me, in the best way. It wasn't the weed. It wasn't the magic brain chemicals of youth. It was that song. When I listen to it today, it still kills me. At the time, however, it was more than a killer song. It was a blast of dynamite, cracking open stone. Listening to that song and being with Sylvia, I felt like Alice tumbled through the rabbit hole into a new dimension, one in which another life was possible. This is why the leaders of small places are afraid of music and books. And queers. They offer another way. But they don't convert. They awaken. Sending a signal to dormant cells, they rouse what's already there. "It's time," they say. "Wake up."

—Griffin Hansbury, from Some Strange Music Draws Me In (W.W. Norton & Company, 2024)

[quill-is-brainstorming]

Soooooo, guys. Odysseus and Diomedes finally reached Limbo, and...

Ok so uh.

On one hand, I get it. We can't have these two stay in Limbo for half of the book.

Now, on the other WHY I WAS LITERALLY HOPING TO SEE THIS SO BAD WHY DO YOU DO THIS TO ME-

Are you seriously telling me that out of all the Trojans in Limbo (aka: literally every Trojan ever minus Paris, if we follow Dante's Inferno) absolutely not a single one of them wanted to beat Diomedes and ESPECIALLY Odysseus' ass??

Deiphobus? Sarpedon? Andromache??? Fuck, I would literally PAY to have a scene where Andromache just throws a chair at them or something.

But alas, the narrative had to move on.

Honestly I am this close to writing something about that myself because what the hell it's such a fun premise and you do not get to foreshadow it TWICE (earlier in the book Diomedes mentions how Hector hit him with a rock once with Aeneas, yes I do consider it foreshadowing even though it isn't) AND THEN NOT USE IT.

But also the reunion between Penelope and Odysseus was absolutely top tier so I'll let this slide. Don't worry Eighth Arrow, you're still my favorite book.

[womaninwinter]

Okay okay but the skull is working so hard to keep Lucy safe on this case because he’s in love with her. And unlike Lockwood he actually gets that the best way to ensure her safety is to tell her to do the dangerous thing, because she’s too damn stubborn to take orders. But tbf to Lockwood, of course the skull actually gets Lucy – because she’s honest with him in a way that she’s never honest with Lockwood.

Does this series ever just make you want to go

[myriad--starlings]

Someone like me, more imagination than can fit into one body, you can die inside a fantasy of yourself.

— Model Home, Rivers Solomon

[lanterne]

"With their contemptible lie, the Thermidorians annihilated, if possible, the conscience and the revolutionary will, but they also curtailed part of their legacy. First falsifying it, then hiding it and, finally, trying to bury it. History, like a dirty and lost child, continued to wander complacently along the path of injustice and falsehood. It was for this reason that that same History, much later, like a decrepit and insane old woman, would refuse with sick obstinacy to discern the truth of those events of 1793 and 1794, Years I and II of the Revolution, and, above all, to face the figures of those who managed to transform the world. The day that happened, Sebastien hoped, if it really happened, History would be so ashamed of itself that perhaps then, only then, would it be possible to think that the foundations of a New Era, the one that those men forged with the price of their lives, were beginning to be consistent"

Robespierre, Javier García Sanchez

[hercorrupterofwords]

"the twisted sequence of words seems to reproduce the snakes' tangling around the children"

[ask-the-crimson-king]

Guilliman is finally here. And the Scouring begins.

Wow.

Not quite the scene and note I'd expected to be left off on, but. Wow.

It's over.

That's it. The Horus Heresy is finished. I've completed it.

Thank you to those who have been in my notes occasionally liking my excerpt posts, I see you and thank you for joining me on this journey.

What a fucking novel. Wow.

Saw someone posting about staring at a wall for a few hours. That sounds very nice. I am going to do this too.

Wow. Just. Wow.

I'm kinda left speechless. There's so much I want to discuss and yet so little that's coming to mind.

Maybe I'll make a post for it. We'll see.

[imu-chan]

by far the three weirdest things that happened in Dream of The Red Chamber were, in order:

3. the ending

2. Zhen Lian's insane ch2 backstory leading nowhere because she doesn't show up in the rest of the book

3. Jiao Da’s claims that someone in the house was sleeping with their daughter-in-law, with Qin Keqing avoiding this topic, followed by Qin Keqing discreetly hinting to someone that she had a bad feeling that something bad would happen to her, followed by the early-on deaths of Qin Keqing and her brother, followed by HER FATHER-IN-LAW proceeding to loudly and dramatically mourn her and claim he loved her more than his son — which to me implied a scandal/assault covered up by a series of murders — but actually meant nothing at all so don’t worry about it