#also heather is the best protagonist

[blackchantilly]

Thinking about this today. 🙃

[beamorgan]

Favourite Reads of the Year

I will not be ranking these, because that would hurt my heart. Buckle up folks, there are a lot of amazing books out there

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells

I know, I KNOW, I'm late to the party but omg this whole series is just as good as people say!!! I know I said I wouldn't be ranking, but if I was these would be fighting for the top spot. I have already relistened to all the audiobooks. I anticipate rereading them literally every year from now on. I would die for Murderbot, which it would think is a stupid thing for a human to do when there is a SecUnit right there. [adult, scifi]

Emily Wilde's Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett

Sequel to last year's fav Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, this follows a bullheaded academic trying find the magical door that will let her faerie boyfriend back into his faerie kingdom. Chaos ensues in the Alps. It's fabulous, and the author's approach to using folklore is very similar to my own writing, which I love and also get imposter syndrome about. 10/10 recommend [adult, historical fantasy]

Model Home by Solomon Rivers

Would you like to be repeatedly punched in the gut? Look no further than this story of racism and child abuse in a Texas McMansion, with gorgeous prose and a genderqueer protagonist and the laundry list of content warnings you can expect with the genre. It hurt so good. [adult, contemporary gothic horror]

You Should Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian

This love affair between a baseball play and a sports reporter was recced to me by the lovely @colubrina and boy was it worth the two-day binge it inspired! Romance can be very hit-or-miss for me, but this knocked it out of the park (please enjoy my pun). I didn't even have to know anything about baseball to love it! [adult, historical (1960s) romance]

The Locked Tomb Series by Tamsyn Muir

Another tumblr fav, FOR A REASON. Gideon is hilarious. Harrow is an absolute mess. Nona is BABY, my beloved. (Camilla and Palamedes have my whole entire heart). Also, the audiobook narrator is fantastic. In the words of the author, the buns are also fried chicken. [adult, sci fantasy]

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

This one is @elodieunderglass's fault. Historical buffoonery on boats. The main characters are ridiculous. The sailing jargon is incomprehensible. It's great. [adult, historical fiction]

All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung

This is a gorgeous memoir of an interracial adoptee trying to make contact with her birth family while pregnant with her own child. It grapples thoughtfully with reconnecting to a lost culture, the complexities of family history, and the social and legal barriers adoptees face to learning about themselves. [adult, memoir]

Death in the Spires by KJ Charles

I devour everything Charles writes, so I was EXCITED for this mystery. She made it very clear on social media "It's not a kissing book!!" (it's kinda still a kissing book). She wrote a stonking book, as usual, with an underdog protagonist revisiting the murder that happened during his toxic time at Oxford university. [adult, historical mystery]

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar

My favourite literary fiction read of the year, this meditation on Iranian diaspora identity is written by a poet and you can tell. I would suck the prose up through a straw if I could. The protagonist is an addict and also quite suicidal. It was fun :) [adult, literary fiction]

She Who Became the Sun by Shelly Parker-Chan

and the sequel, He Who Drowned the World. I don't even know how to sell this, all I want to do is flail incoherently about how amazing it is. IT'S AMAZING. JUST READ IT. (wait I know: this satisfied the part of me that was obsessed with Mulan as a kid) [adult, historical fantasy]

A Little Trickery by Roseanna Pike

The voicey-est book I've ever read. I screenshot like every other page. It follows an orphaned girl trying to survive in Tudor England through various means, such as faking a miracle in the church where her gay best friend is priest. [adult, historical fiction]

At the End of the River Styx by Michelle Kulwiki

My friend wrote a book! It made me cry!!! They were delighted with this!!! Please give this to any teenager in your life who needs to see thoughtful representation of grief and depression and boys in love. [YA, contemporary fantasy]

[actual-goblinking]

I need to talk about the way NPMD broke a cardinal trope of musical theater and then subverted expectations and put the trope into play in another way.

For those not in the know, there’s a whole thing in musical theater about women with lower singing ranges (usually altos) being the characters that get shit on by the narrative/ end up being ‘bad’.

Examples include:

•eponine (Les Miserables)

•Mariah Reynolds (Hamilton)

•Anna of Cleeves in Six (I know she’s not shit on exactly, she got the best deal out of all the queens, but her entire ‘thing’ in history is being the ‘ugly’ one and she has the lowest range in the musical)

•Chris (Carrie the musical)

•I’m hesitant to include it, but Mrs. Lovett or Lucy from Sweeney Todd verses Johanna

I’m sure there’s more, but those are the ones I thought of at the moment. Also yes, this trope also extends to men in musical theater as well, if you were wondering.

Anyway, the musical flips the script by having the female alto character be the most holy, goody too shoes. In fact, in Nightmare time, they call her holier than thou. She’s the ‘good girl’, the innocent one. In a non contemporary musical, she would be our ingenue. But Grace has a beautiful alto voice that she lends to the soundtrack wonderfully.

But she ends up being one of the true villains of NPMD, killing Max, burying the body, stealing a cops gun and breaking several laws and eventually using the summoning book for evil. To defeat evil, she becomes evil, a path she seems to already have walked down by how ready she was to bury a goddamn body.

In fact, Steph also ends up being the inverse of this trope. She starts out the musical as the quintessential ‘bad girly’ in every sitcom. She smokes, she drinks, she curses. If she was in a 99’s sitcom she’d be a Full House very special episode. But she’s the mezzo soprano female lead, the one who we traditionally root for.

(Heather Macnamera, the Heather most audiences root for has the highest notes of the 3)

But then she comes back around and helps defeat Max, becomes our main protagonist and gets a happy ending.

[aq2003]

I find the decision to write the first Doctor as sort of cartoonishly bigoted in the episode with Twelve fascinating, because it shifts the blame for the racism, sexism etc present in early Doctor Who from the writers and producers to the *character*. It wasn’t the Doctor who wrote limited character arcs for female characters in comparison to male ones, and it wasn’t the Doctor who decided to use yellow-face for the characters in some episodes - that was the writers and production team. Y’know, real people. People whose legacy the current writers and producers of the show - who have also largely been white men, just like their predecessors - owe their jobs to.

And the persistent problem with continuing to sideline and tokenise the characters of some of the female companions and characters of colour in the service of centring the doctor as the (until recently) white male protagonist - that continued for most of the modern reboot in some form. Some of the elements of that were even new innovations under the modern writers (looking at you Moffat but you are not the only offender.) I mean, we’re talking about the portrayal of One as the past’s ambassador for sexism in iirc the exact same episode where Chris Chibnall reversed the previous episode’s ending of Bill surviving with Heather and re-buried the lesbians by sending Bill directly to the ‘your soul is canonically dead’ zone.

I absolutely can’t speak for the whole of the first Doctor’s tenure because I’ve only seen about 2/3 of his surviving episodes, but from the episodes I have seen, he didn’t even talk like that. There was a very big problem with that run of the show, but it was a different problem to the one the episode with One and Twelve is describing. One was weird as hell, but he was much less overtly hostile, wished much less bodily harm on minority groups and even dipped into less microaggressions and dogwhistles than most older white British people do now. That isn’t to say One’s behaviour in Old Who was something to aim for, it’s to say that a lot of the improvement in the attitude of white people in Britain over the last half-century has been performative at best, imaginary at worst, a lot of our dogwhistles are new and especially alarming for that reason - and it comforts white people to imagine that the racism and sexism of the past was overt and vulgar and unlike theirs, and that their bigotry by comparison is lesser and better and therefore doesn’t need further work; that now people affected by it just need to learn to live with it, because you’re lucky we’re not like our grandparents.

But that excuse doesn’t really work if (tw racism, anti-blackness, Islamophobia, death) some sects of British society talk more positively about drowning immigrants in the English Channel than they did 100 years ago, does it?

That excuse doesn’t work if your grandparents were actually quite a lot like you.

I live in the UK, about half the people I know watched the special with Twelve and One, and considering that vanishingly few modern viewers have seen or remember the first Doctor or any early Old Who, there was this odd awkward relief from most of the white people I watched the episode with, like they’d been absolved from Britain’s historical and current racism by the burning of an effigy. Like that bigotry coming from One’s mouth was a reassurance that this country’s bigotry had always been as cartoonish and ineffectual and easy to see as the lines Chris Chibnall and his colleagues wrote for One; that white people living in the UK now are fundamentally different than they were; and by watching Bill and One’s (still white) successor refuse his cartoonishly awful worldview, white Brits had somehow cleansed themselves and buried the past completely.

But the vast majority of the racism, bigotry, sexism in the original run of Doctor Who and still present in various forms in the show now did not actually take the form of nice clear, simple statements of bigoted beliefs from the characters’ mouths - it was in the writing. The way characters and especially cultures were portrayed. The yellow-face in one of Two’s story arcs really stuck in my mind, but the way Old Who handled nonwhite cultures in general was often horrific. The first Doctor was often perfectly polite, but women and characters of colour were sidelined and (even in instances when it was clearly accidental) dangerously misrepresented throughout the show in ways that persist well into the post-2000 reboot, because the sexism and racism wasn’t in the character.

The sexism and racism was in the writers’ room.

I don’t have any sentimental attachment to Old Who, I was born about a decade after it ended, but deflecting the cultural problems in the BBC that persist to this day onto one of the show’s characters, by having him express an easily-digestible form of bigotry much less dangerous and insidious than the one that was actually present in the early show, feels like a dangerous form of scapegoating.

Something I think would have meant much, much more would have been an apology *outside of the show* from the BBC and the show’s current writers for the wide variety of sincerely-held bigotries that were actually present in the first run of the show, and a public acknowledgement of the pervasive, insidious forms those bigotries actually often took in the show’s writing - and also an acknowledgement of the show’s continuing shortfalls in its handling of race and gender over the last twenty years - because that would have been much more productively challenging for viewers of the show (more or less the whole of the British public at some point in their lives) to have to consider. Which I have to assume is why they went down the reassuring ‘the first Doctor has died for our sins’ route instead.

This is just my two cents, I am also white and British so please take this perspective with a grain of salt.

Mm. I don’t know. This country loves letting ourselves off too easily, and the writing of One in that episode feels the like easiest and for that reason least effective way of reckoning with the way we were in the 1900s. Don’t worry everyone, at the turn of the millennium both the show and the country of Britain were reborn without sin!

this is such a good writeup anon. i don't have a lot to add - just that im asian-american and a lot of what you said aligns with rhetoric i've also seen in the states - that being this sense that racism is just something of the past rather than a fundamental, systemic issue that the country was built on. and yeah one thing that really struck me while watching twice upon a time was how one's bigotry was always framed as a joke. bill straight up says to twelve "i hope we laugh about it for 20 years" or whatever and it just reeks of "To Our White Audience: be not afraid. you're not racist like the 1st doctor who lived far into the past. see? the one black character knows we're not racist now. please give yourselves a pat on the back". and like, it's not funny to any people of color that might be watching. it's just prioritizing the comfort of white people. and it's pretty terrible that moffat (he wrote the episode, chibnall just wrote thirteen's first lines. but also i know chibnall took nuwho into its least progressive era so...) felt like he had a right to make light of this stuff when he has committed some pretty egregious crimes in his tenure himself

[wetcatspellcaster]

I saw you respond that you a very much not an SJM fan 😅 fair enough but I did want to ask what books/series you did like or would recommend that are of a fantasy/romantasy vibe!

lmfao, i am destined to become known for my parasocial enmity with the wingspan lady on this hellsite.

I don't read stuff with the same vibe as SJM all that often anymore. I used to read a lot of paranormal romance but the heteronormativity of SJM clones was upsetting me, so I've turned more towards the romance genre or just straight up fanfic these days.

So these recommendations might not be the perfect overlap but-!

Books with Fey Romances that are good

Holly Black, for all your fey needs. Tithe is the OG (and if you like sad men with white hair, have I got a blorbo for you!) but The Cruel Prince is her most popular series, that most people have read. The Darkest Part of the Forest is also an amazing standalone novel with a bit more creepiness than the other two. Not very explicit sex.

Olivia Atwater's Half A Soul and Ten Thousand Stitches are regency romance novels with fey associations, the first book is about a girl under a fairy curse and the second is about a fairy himbo trying his best at being a fairy godmother. No sex, that I can remember.

Heather Fawcett's Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairies. I've talked about this book a lot. If you like my fanfic, you will like this book, because this book was written for Me specifically. Not very explicit sex.

The Falconer series by Elizabeth May. This is the closest in this list to what SJM writes, only this is. um. better. Much sex, but also just... 'what if we started an apocalypse together, and the guilt meant I was scared to touch you, but we've got nothing else to live for now so why shouldn't I just do it?'

Fantasy Books with Good Romance

T Kingfisher's Swordheart and Nettle & Bone - both standalone novels. Swordheart is just Howl x Sophie dynamics, if Howl was a martial class, and also. A sword. Some sexiness.

Uprooted by Naomi Novik (if we count the love interests as both the hot sexy wizard man AND the protagonist's gal pal). Some sexiness.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. If you like your immortal/mortal romances, this is a pretty stellar read tbh. Some sexiness.

In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan. This is such a fun book just generally but the slowburn of a 7 year high school romance sent me a little feral actually. Some sexiness.

Daevabad trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty. Now, this one is a little bit evil bc its an epic fantasy trilogy that is quite dense, and the romance is amazing but it takes a WHILE. *I* can write an evil slowburn, but there is nothing more evil than what happened in these books bc everyone is so fucking repressed. Alternatively, The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by the same author, which cut to the chase a lot quicker, romance-wise.

Fantasy Books that are 😌😌 sexy 😌😌

The Dark Days Club by Alison Goodman. This is my favourite paranormal romance I've read in recent years, and they don't even have sex but I'm putting it here because um. they did. to me. That's what happens when you write a regency romance where if a woman takes of a man's coat they have 37 horny thoughts about it in real time. Imagine if Darcy and Elizabeth for P&P were also fighting demons at the same time as falling in love (not metaphorically. literal demons.)

Mating the Huntress by Talia Hibbert. Talia Hibbert's books in general fucking slap but I wish she'd written more paranormal romance than just this ONE story bc um. This was. um. Good.✌️

A Marvellous Light and A Restless Truth by Freya Marske. Freya Marske is also a popular fanfic author, and it shows with the way she writes sex.

That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon by Kimberly Lemming. This author is the one who went briefly viral bc she accidentally has a book cover with Astarion on it lmao. This book was the first in that series, and unfortunately it wasn't for me (dragon shifter porn, I did *not* know going in) but the sex was really, really well-written, if that's something you could be into.

[ninja-muse]

So yeah, that happened… (Not as bad as it looks, though. The top half is books I own and read this month, not books I've acquired.)

November has been a month of highs and lows for me. Mostly lows, if I'm being honest. The US election kicked my brain back to 2020 for a couple days and I don't think I've really reset yet. (It's taken me three years and counting to reset from 2020 itself so I'm not surprised.) For any American reading this, I'm still very saddened for you and I wish there was something I could do beyond listening and sympathizing. I wish the world was a better place to live in.

And speaking of 2020 mode, I haven't been writing. I was at a crossroads at the end of October with a difficult scene, and even though I've fixed it so it's better, I still haven't continued. It's hard for me to write cheery, upbeat things when I'm scared and angry, and work's getting busier for the holidays, and both Bake Offs I follow were airing and that just seemed more important. At least this time, it's definitely writer's block rather than a terror of traumatizing people by writing diversely. (2020 was fun, y'all.)

And I also didn't write for five days because my mom and sister and I went to Disneyland. This was, of course, the high of the month! It was good to spend that time together, and do the rides and the whole experience, and see Disneyland as an adult. I'm especially glad we went when we did because I don't think I'm ever going to visit the States again.

It was also a fairly lukewarm reading month for me, which I don't think it helping the mental stuff. The best book I read was intense and heavy, a few of the others also dealt with dark stuff, and pretty much everything was "fine". No new favourites, though I've added the rest of Claudia Gray's Austenian mysteries to my TBR and I'm still thoroughly enjoying the Lady Trent novels. A couple of the other books (the Clarke, the Stearns) were ones I was hyped for but which didn't live up to expectations.

That said, for all that it's my lowest ranked book, The Price of the Stars was surprisingly fun. It's completely mindless, cliched space opera that reads like an off-brand Star Wars novel and I'm sure I'll have just as much fun with the sequel (also on my physical TBR). But I also recognize that the writing's on par with mediocre fanfiction or cult 1980s B-movies.

Books and otherwise, here's hoping for a better December.

And now, as always, here’s my list of everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

Submerged - Hillel Levin

A journalist dives into a 1990s murder case—the disappearance, the first suspect, the second investigation, the innocent man in jail, the family secrets…

8.5/10

warning: grooming, molestation, rape, victim blaming, failures of the justice system

reading copy

The Murder of Mr. Wickham - Claudia Gray

The Darcys, the Tilneys, and sundry other friends and relations are attending the Knightleys’ house party when Mr. Wickham (uninvited) is killed. The murderer’s still in the house but everyone had motive.

7/10

major autistic character

warning: homophobia

off my TBR

The Empress Letters - Linda Rogers

A mother in the 1920s writes her life story in a series of letters to the daughter she’s searching for in China.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (bisexual), Jewish protagonist, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic, gay), Jewish secondary characters, Chinese secondary characters, 🇨🇦,

warning: death of parent, sexual exposure, adult-teen relationship, anti-Chinese racism, fetal remains, homophobia

off my TBR

The Voyage of the Basilisk - Marie Brennan

To create a taxonomy of dragons, Isabella Camherst takes a voyage around the world—but as always, she runs afoul of politics, social mores, and other perils.

7/10

Middle Eastern-coded secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (third gender), Polynesian secondary characters

library book

The Secret History of Audrey James - Heather Marshall

In 1938 Berlin, piano student Audrey steps into danger when her Jewish hosts are arrested and she must turn housekeeper to Nazis to protect her best friend. In 2010, Kate takes a job at a hotel to restart her life after tragedy—and must convince Audrey, the owner, to let her stay.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), major Jewish secondary characters, secondary character with partial leg paralysis and a cane, 🇨🇦

warning: antisemitism, murder, police brutality, misogyny and sexism

library book

The Wood at Midwinter - Susanna Clarke

A young woman enters a midwinter wood alone and encounters a fox, a crow, and a bargain.

6.5/10

library ebook

Under a New and Brilliant Sky - R.E. Stearns

Elys, on the run from Republic authorities, is brought to Alyansa to fix a failure in their city’s AI. But the Republic knows where to find her, and she can’t quite trust that the Alyansans will keep her safe.

6/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (sapphic), protagonist with auditory processing disorder, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (trans woman), brown-skinned secondary characters

warning: xenophobia, colonialism

digital reading copy/won

Paris Daillencourt Is About to Crumble - Alexis Hall

Paris isn’t really sure why he’s on Bake Expectations and he definitely isn’t sure how he feels about the contestant he keeps flirting with, if you can call it flirting, oh god, how do you relationship when anxiety?

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), protagonist with anxiety disorder, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (gay, sapphic), major Bangladeshi Muslim character, fat secondary character, Bangladeshi Muslim secondary characters, Chinese-British secondary character

warning: realistically depicts anxiety disorder and panic attacks

library ebook

Rivers of London Vol. 12: Stray Cat Blues - Ben Aaronovitch and Andrew Cartmel with José María Beroy (Illustrator)

Abigail and the foxes are “hired” by a cat-woman to break her fellow hybrids out of a brothel. Easy, right? Out in December.

7/10

wajor Black British characters, disabled secondary character

warning: sex trafficking

purchased/off my TBR

The Price of the Stars - Debra Doyle and James D. MacDonald

When Beka’s politician mother is assassinated, her father gives her his warship in exchange for her tracking the assassins down. Cue a pan-galactic adventure!

6/10

warning: sexual assault, gun violence

off my TBR

Currently reading

The Stardust Grail - Yume Kitasei

Maya’s put her thieving past aside to pursue academia, but when a chance to find the legendary stardust grail (and save her friend’s species) falls into her lap, she can’t help but be tempted—even if Earth wants to use it to save itself.

protagonist with Japanese heritage, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (achillean, nonbinary, alternate gender system)

library book

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 10 Yearly total: 116 Queer books: 4 Authors of colour: 0 Books by women: 6.5 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 2 Classics: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 4 Books hauled: 5 ARCs acquired: 2 ARCs unhauled: 2 DNFs: 0

January February March April May June July August September October

[redheadgleek]

March reads

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett. What a wonderful ending to the trilogy. I loved all of the books so much.

Making It So by Patrick Stewart (audiobook). His voice is fantastic, I definitely recommend . He certainly lived an interesting life and I especially liked the earlier parts about his life growing up in extreme poverty. The parts in the middle dragged a bit with too much name-dropping and it could have been shortened by at least 3 hours. It also became evident that he could benefit from some therapy.

The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schefer. The sequel to The Darkness Outside Us which blew me away when I read it a few years ago. I don't think it needed a sequel but I enjoyed this one.

Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k Up by Alexandra Potter. I think I saw some chatter about it here on tumblr when I decided to pick it up. It was enjoyable, Cricket was awesome, and I liked the focus on friendship (which was why I was a little disappointed by the ending, but I guess you can't have a chick lit romance without being paired by the end).

James by Percival Everett (friend recommendation). This is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of Jim, the escaped enslaved person. Truth: I've never read Huck Finn (I read Tom Sawyer which I enjoyed well enough but not enough to read more), so I was coming at the story pretty blind. There was much that I loved, but there were plots that were so frustrating in story crafting that it hampered my enjoyment.

More Confessions of a Forty-Something F##k Up by Alexandra Potter. The sequel obviously. So we've now moved in to the era where the pandemic is being used as settings for books; I'm not sure how I feel about that. Cricket was still awesome in every way. The reason for the second-act conflict was at least unique, even if I felt like it was an issue that should have been addressed years before.

Yellowface by R. F. Kuang. Book club book - my choice because I had heard great things, but um. The author doesn't trust her audience at all. Everything is heavy handed. Everything. The main protagonist is such a caricature of every stereotype imaginable. I guess it's supposed to be satire, but it didn't quite land there.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. An interesting reflection on being Muslim and queer, with reinterpretation of the Quran.

The Green Hills of Earth by Robert Heinlein (friend recommendation). A bunch of short stories written in the 1950s about future space colonization of the moon, Mars, and Venus. I'm sure some of it was really progressive thinking at that time, but falls flat now.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (friend recommendation). A gorgeously provocative fairy tale. I recommend the physical book, because the illustrations add to the story.

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker (friend recommendation). When I become supreme ruler of the universe, I'm going to forbid male writers from describing women by their breasts or hips. I loved the deep friendship between the main characters forged from trauma, but it employed some of my least favorite writing techniques: namely, ending every chapter on a cliff-hanger, and holding back information from the reader for big reveals.

Bottle of Lies: The Inside Story of the Generic Drug Boom by Katherine Eban (friend recommendation, audiobook). This may not have been the best book to be reading when you hear that the imbecilic government is defunding and dismantling the FDA, whose job in regulation of the world's supply of drugs was virtually impossible before. I'm just so fucking angry.

His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik. I was in the mood for some escape fantasy and it was a fun book. I'll probably read the original trilogy, not sure how I feel about tackling all 9 books.

Currently reading: The Hunger Games (reread, audiobook, read by Tatiana Maslany. God, her voice); The Doctors Blackwell (audiobook). Jesus and John Wayne (audiobook); Can You Keep A Secret?; If We Were Villains. It's National Poetry Month, so if you have a recommendation of some poetry I should be reading, I'd appreciate the recommendation.

[cloudyskiiees]

have you guys watched the good place? if you have oh boy do i have the total drama au for you.

more under the cut in case ppl haven’t seen the good place! (watch it with no spoilers it’s one of the best shows of all time, it’s on netflix!)

(the characters and relationships in the actual show do not line up with the placements of the tdi characters, sue me! they fit better this way :))

noah takes on eleanor’s role as the protagonist. he wakes up in “the good place” and realizes quickly “aw fuck i’m not supposed to be here” and goes a little mental about it for a while!!

heather is michael, because it makes sense in my head okay. she’s very excited to have to new way of torturing humans, and is angry as hell when she fails over and over again because noah keeps figuring out it’s actually the bad place. she’s even more mad when she eventually learns to care about the humans LOL

sierra is janet, making sense as the all knowing entity of the universe. the main sierra is a “good place” sierra, but there’s many different versions of her. she develops real feelings everytime she gets rebooted along with the neighborhood!

courtney is chidi, when she was alive she was a very good lawyer. she knows her stuff about morals and ethics and is the one to usually end up teaching and helping the others how to be good people (not to say she doenst have her own stuff wrong just like everyone else!)

alejandro is more of tahani, in which on earth he appeared to be a very good and generous person, but he’s also kinda a vain asshole. he has a lot of family problems and was raised in competition with his brother, but he’s also usually the first person noah goes to when he realizes he’s screwed since he knows he doesn’t belong.

gwen is jason! she’s definitely not nearly as stupid as he is, but i see her plot as needing to hide herself working well somehow. she wasn’t a terrible person but she wasn’t great either, and taking one look around she knows she definitely doesn’t belong there either. her and noah are both happy and horrified when they discover each other!

anyways this is definitely alenoah because i see them having the relationship that eleanor and chidi have because i want it. I WANT IT.

the first time noah figures out it’s the bad place, the first thing he can think of to write to give him any clue on what’s going on when his memory is rebooted, is “find alejandro”

and in parallel later in the show when alejandro gets his memory rebooted, because he spent his whole life trying to find some meaning in whatever his life was, where he seemed to have everything but nothing at all, and he writes to himself, “there is no meaning. but noah is the meaning.” like please i’m on the floor do you guys see my vision

anyways go watch the good place and then go watch total drama island i love tv shows so much

[oceanboy2106]

“Let the ocean take you home”

Heyy tumblr im Jackson, wait do i even need an intro post i mean the sites been dead for a while and im pretty sure its just me myself and i here but i guess having an intro wouldn’t be harmful.

I found out this app existed yesterday while I was using my dad’s computer to complete a totally not last minute school assignment. (it’s not my fault I have shit time management skills) and I guess I got curious about what tumblr even was which led to the creation of this blog to see if I could learn anything about social media and the more mundane side of life in the 2010s- 2020s. If im being honest I don’t really know what to do on this, I mean I think it’s like an online diary which would probably be something my best friend Toby would have more interest in then me but i might as well have fun in trying, right?

Well anyways, here’s a bit about myself (shit why does that sound awkward???)

-im almost 15 years old but 14 and 9 months and 15 are like practically the same thing.

-I like the ocean a lot, I know this is probably cliche but I have a connection to it a real connection. for as long as I can remember it’s felt as if it’s been calling out to me, for me to find it, to come home, to see her- I mean it. sorry don’t know what that was about (wait who am I apologising to)

-I’d like to be a marine biologist when I grow up and if that doesn’t work out then a musician maybe or maybe I could be a performer in musical theatre!!

-Sharks are my favourite animal but raccoons are a close second (I think I’d like them more if Joey stopped calling me a human one-) I love any kind of shark but If I ever had to pick a favourite then maybe the tiger shark or wait the great white shark- shit they’re both pretty good choices, two way tie? (Jack stop talking to yourself) by the way did you know that some species of shark can have up to 15 rows of teeth?? That’s honestly wicked.

-I have two good friends well one’s my family friend Joey who views me more as an annoying little cousin than anything but we still hang out so that counts as something,right? and Tobes who’s been my best friend since he moved to Salus almost four years ago :] if you guys are reading this than Joey you stink (derogatory) and Toby hi!!!

-my favourite music artists are Weezer (im not a loser i swear) the Cranewives, the cure who toby introduced me too, Alex G, Bo Burnham, Tears for fears, foo foo fighters and the clash (i think old music is real neat) and the sound tracks to various musicals especially 92sies!!!

-I like musicals as well I guess im what you’d call a theatre kid my favourite musicals would have to be Hamilton, Falsettos, Heathers and Newsies (both the film and broadway adaptation but I think prefer the 92 film more) honorary mention to Annie which was my comfort film growing up.

-in my spare time I like to play the guitar I’ve been taking lessons since I was like seven and I’d like to think that im relatively good at it, skateboarding well kind of im not the best at it but im not the worst either id skate more but the falling hurts like hell even with my knee and elbow guards, going on walks round my neighbourhood (kind of basic) and causing trouble with my best friend.

That’s all I really have to say.

—————————————————————————

ooc undercut

-hello im Arielle @4rielle and this is a tumblr blog for my oc Jackson.

-im a minor as well as the character so please no nsfw.

-Jack is the protagonist of a novel im writing and I thought setting up a blog for him would be a fun way to explore his character.

-For context Jack lives in an area encased by white walls known as a dome, they’re said to keep people safe from the outside world although Jack is sceptical of this.

-I have a side blog for Jack and the world he’s living in if you’d like to find out more about him @the-dome-of-salus , I’ve yet to post his character bio so keep an eye out for it you’d like. also feel free to send asks about him to my main as well.

-feel free to send in character asks to Jackson!!

tagging

#journal of j.hills

#oceanboy answers

Additional information on Jackson (more will be added)

-his date of birth is the 9th of August 2106 the blog is set between May-July of 2121 a few months before his 15th birthday.

-adopted when he was three it’s a touchy topic for him.

-he believes he has a special connection to the ocean.

-he’s a bit of a loner he isn’t sure why but he can’t click with the people around him which has led him to view the outside world and ocean as a sense of belonging and escapism.

[thetypedwriter]

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies

Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries Book Review by Heather Fawcett

This book was very, very cozy. 

Even though there were some objectively dark moments, like fairies getting skewered by tree branches like kabobs, most of the book was a feel-good easy read. 

The novel surrounds the life of the scholastic grump, one Emily Wilde. Instead of focusing on things not worth her time, like fashion, keeping her hair tidy, decorating, or even relationships—both platonic and romantic—Emily’s main obsession are fairies, so much so that she’s dedicated her life to researching them. 

If you think that Emily is sad and bereft with this kind of lifestyle, you are wrong. She is perfectly content, thank you very much, to be out doing field work, writing in her journal, or working on her encyclopaedia by her lonesome (which she prefers). 

She has one last kind of fae to research, the remote Fair Folk in Hrafnsvik, a tiny village in Norway where the landscape is icy and the people are even icier.

As Emily begins her investigations into the landscape around Hrafnsvik, she finds herself stymied by her lack of social skills and accidentally offending the rustic townspeople who don’t understand the mousy researcher that is hunkering down in their home.

Stubborn and deciding that she doesn’t need help, Emily perseveres until she is rudely interrupted by her academic rival from Cambrdige, the beautiful and insufferable Wendall Bambleby.

While scorning him left and right, Emily is secretly relieved to have her one and only friend join her in such an unwelcoming place, scholastic competitor or not. 

With Bambleby by her side, Emily starts to delve into the secrets of the Hidden Ones, finding along the way that opening up to people, making friendships, and relying on others is just as important and fulfilling as finishing her encyclopaedia, and is, in fact, necessary in order to achieve and succeed with reaching her dreams. 

While this book had plenty of action, humor, and heartwarming moments, I feel like I’ve summed it up quite well in just a few short paragraphs.

The relationship between Emily and Bambleby is endearing, one that leaves you either in laughter or with a smile every time they interact. 

All the characters in the novel were very charming. I found myself forgetting which townsperson was who, Thora versus Lilja versus Margaret, but I genuinely don’t think it made that much of a difference. 

One of the best parts about this book was how fun and easy it was to read while also having substance and moments of genuine intrigue and thoughtfulness.

Emily’s steadfastness when it comes to her research is a refreshing take on a female protagonist, especially when dealing with fairies. 

The scholastic lens in which you read through the novel offers good insight into folklore as a whole, but also lends a refreshing narrative of a female character that cares more about her academic pursuits than romance with a fairy prince. 

Speaking of, while the romance in this book is very light, that isn’t to say that it’s shallow. Instead the relationship between Bambleby and Emily is so light and fluffy that I couldn’t even tell if there was something stirring between them until the later half of the book, largely in part because Emily’s whole character doesn’t center around her feelings for Bambleby. 

Emily’s journey of learning to lean on and open up to people was also very enchanting. The progression aligned well with her character and also to the events around her.

This sounds simple in theory, but I feel like authors often struggle to give characters arcs and to have them also make sense in the context of the plot. 

While Heather Fawcett has already written the sequel, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands, and while I greatly enjoyed this book, I strongly feel no need to read the sequel. 

Emily and her journey came to a satisfying end that doesn’t leave me itching for more. She completed her self-discovery, finished her encyclopaedia, realized her faults, and became better as a person. 

The only cliffhanger that remained is the status of her relationship with Bambleby, but oddly I find myself okay with that because in my heart’s canon, I know they would end up together, squabbling over Emily’s choice of fashion (or lack thereof). 

Normally when I find a book I enjoy, I desire to devour everything and anything the world has to offer to me. In this strange case, I am content to close the book on Emily Wilde and her love of fairies forever, encasing it amber without adding in a potentially not-as-good sequel. 

Recommendation: A great summer read to bask in while suntanning by the pool. You will languish in the heat as you read about the frigid temperatures Emily has to go through while conducting research.

It's a light and easy read that will fill you up with contentment and satisfaction (while teaching you more about fairies than you even deigned to know). 

Score: 7/10

[doodle-do-wop]

Lowkey you aren’t a good person

I was gonna ignore this because I highkey don't give a fuck babes✌️🤪😂😂😂😂 Do you see any flying monkeys carrying my fucks to give because I sure don't. Elphaba do you see the monkeys?!🙊

like Okay???? whatever??? say this off of anon so I can ignore you better

I'm not for everyone babes and I don't promote myself to be but also like you're just some sleemo wearing sunglasses with zero guts to say it to my face like a real person. If you're gonna make a statement, stand on business don't crawl to my ask box you roach

I don't have to 'prove' that I'm a good person to pests. Cause unlike you who spends time on anon saying nonsense I've got friends I adore and can brainrot with while showing them this lame anon ask and laughing. I'm living my best life, you're gathering dust in an inbox, we are not the same

lmao like what were you even expecting? Omggggg!!! 🤩🤩🤩✨thx for noticing XD, 💖i like, would've never guessed ✌️🤪😘

get outta here dog

what gave it away?:

liking keeper of the lost cities (full of red flags right there, total bad person behavior🚩)

reading (ugh how scandalous, we should go back to illiteracy)

drawing (HARD PASS! who even needs art am i right guys?)

drawing hot guys to feed the fandoms im in (how dare I, one with a knack for creating scrumptious looking guys feed a fandom art!!! the audacity!!! (dont worry yall I swear I'm working on gethen))

being funny (comedy isnt even real)

supporting my friends (come on heather chandler get it together)

listening to music (RED FLAG!!)

liking Percy Jackson and the Olympians (ugh a MALE protagonist?!)

liking Gallagher Girls (ugh a FEMALE protagonist?!)

supporting Alina Lavanza (women aren't allowed hobbies such as being hot, sexy, power hungry, or singing)

dancing (tsk tsk tsk)

saying Sophie's birthday is August 16 (she's clearly a resses pieces rising moon star!)

wearing shoes (HARLOT!!)

not wearing shoes (WENCH)

burping (THE HORRORS!!!!)

I had my fun but for realsies now: LMAOOOO GIRL BE FFR WHO DO YOU EVEN THINK YOU ARE 🤣🤣😚 stay mad girly poo

[fandom-march-madness]

PROPAGANDA

"Lisa frankenstein is the best horror movie because it is a rejection of societal trends in movies. In romcom or teen girl movies, Girls must change their appearance, they must become "hot" they have to abandon their hobbies, desert their friends, and change their clothes and wear makeup in order to be desired by society. See Heather's which was released near the time when Lisa Frankenstein is set. In Lisa Frankenstein, Lisa rejects this. She doesn't change who she is and solely becomes more confident in her essence, similar to how a male protagonist will in a teen boy movie. She takes the hand of the man who sexually assaulted by using his hand to grope her breast and forcing her hand on his penis after she drank alcohol that was spiked. Her abusive step mother gets killed by her boyfriend. This is apparent by the way she constantly puts her down, below her own daughter, and how she constantly invalidates Lisa's trauma. Speaking of which, Lisa's sister, Taffy is also a stereotype breaker, as she is the popular girl, and her step sister, both of which are common roles for a mean girl stereotype to fill, but the relationship between the two are wholesome. Taffy lends Lisa her clothes and let's her use her (albeit sparky) tanning bed, and Lisa is there to comfort her after her moms death. Taffy also knows her sister is a freak, and still cares and loves her all the same. Lisas boyfriend on the other hand is another can of worms. Her boyfriend, also known as the Creature, is a bachelor who died in the 19th century and gets resurrected by a mystical lightning storm. He represents the good, and is given the place of a traditional female lead, where he gets a glow up by using other characters body parts to complete his own. He completely and wholly represents the trans community, as a big part of the movie is his getting a phalliosplasty. The love that he and Lisa have is so beautiful and purely teenage love, so much so, that is transcends death. Lisa Frankenstein is a great movie because it truly is an empowering movie, and will be seen in the same way we see Jennifers Body today."

[thisonesatellite]

9 TBRs for 2025

i was tagged by the fabulous and wonderful and well-read @booksandabeer (i mean - BOOKS ARE IN THE URL) - but then my January exploded and i totally forgot about this. Please forgive me!

Here, then, is my list. 💕💕💕

BORED GAY WEREWOLF - Tony Santorella

Full disclosure - this was on my reading list back in January, and i have meanwhile finished it. But i decided to include it anyway. i bought this literally simply for the title, and the blurb, which says, "There really aren't enough novels about aimless, gay werewolves named Brian...". 😂 It's a scathing, funny, brutal, thoughtful, and ridiculously spot-on dissection of American alpha-male dudebros and it rips corporate marketing management a new one in no uncertain terms. Is it the best book i ever read? Probably not. Did i THOROUGHLY enjoy it? OMG so much yes. And if you like the thought of a bored gay werewolf send-up of everything you've ever hated about over-confident white male mediocrity, this is the book for you.

NINTH HOUSE - Leigh Bardugo

"The novel follows Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a 20-year-old high school dropout and trauma survivor who can see ghosts, who is surprisingly offered a full ride to Yale. Recruited into Lethe, the ninth house, she must monitor the eight secret societies that practice dangerous occult magic." Apparently Bardugo (who also wrote Shadow and Bone) went to Yale, so there's lots of accurate detail. And i love a good fantasy horror. Plus it sounds like a great dissection of secret Ivy League societies, (which is what guys had to invent because they can't have sewing circles, imho 😂), as well as an epic reckoning.

THE LEFT-HANDED BOOKSELLERS OF LONDON - Garth Nix

...did they once again get me with the tag line? Yes. YES THEY DID. Look - you throw a line like "Authorised to kill... and sell books" my way, i'm going to read you, OK? OK. Also this: "This book follows Susan Arkshaw as she searches for her father. In 1983 London, she encounters a magical clan of booksellers. These fighting booksellers protect the modern world from mythical creatures. With her newfound friends, Susan uncovers secrets about her family’s past." Yes, please.

WIDOWLAND - C.J. Carey

Oh, i am a simple creature. Again i fell prey to a tag line. But seriously -- "To control the past, they edited history. To control the future, they edited literature." -- on the cover? That's like heroin to me, OK? And then i read the description. An alternate reality 1953, in which Britain lost the war and forged an alliance with the Nazis? Women in a caste system because they outnumber the men 2:1? Non-childbearing women relegated to the Widowland slums? A Ministry of Culture that rewrites the classics of English literature to ensure there are no subversive thoughts that will give women any ideas? Echoes of the Handmaid's Tale? Dystopian worldbuilding? Rebellious grafitti suddenly appearing everywhere and a threatening class war? OMG THIS TICKS ALL MY BOXES. THIS IS MY CRACK. i hope it's as good as it sounds.

BUNNY - Mona Awad

This honestly sounds like "Heathers, the novel". Dark, satirical, cynical comedy. (i love the movie Heathers, and if you've never seen it, you should consider watching it. You will never get a more accurate and subversive take on the American high school experience. Pure black comedy brilliance. Also, this movie is the reason people started worshiping Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. But i digress.) Apart from the fact that this looks like a Heathers-type take on life, they put a fake Margaret Atwood quote ("O Bunny, you are sooo genius!") at the top. So also yes, please.

DR. NO - Percival Everett

Because the description reads like a Bond novel on crack. "The protagonist of Percival Everett’s puckish new novel is a brilliant professor of mathematics who goes by Wala Kitu. (Wala, he explains, means “nothing” in Tagalog, and Kitu is Swahili for “nothing.”) He is an expert on nothing. That is to say, he is an expert, and his area of study is nothing, and he does nothing about it. This makes him the perfect partner for the aspiring villain John Sill, who wants to break into Fort Knox to steal, well, not gold bars but a shoebox containing nothing. Once he controls nothing he’ll proceed with a dastardly plan to turn a Massachusetts town into nothing. Or so he thinks." Apparently there are also brainwashed astrophysicist henchwomen, literal Bond villains, the King assassination, and nefarious plots and shenanigans galore. HOW COULD i NOT BUY IT. HOW.

GRIMMISH - Michael Winkler

When i'm on a book-buying spree in whatever bookstore i have landed in (mostly on vacations), i always buy one book simply because it sounds fascinating and is totally out of my comfort zone, and this is the most recent one. This is the account of Joe Grim, an Italian-American boxer who toured Australia in 1908-09, losing fights but amazing crowds with his showmanship and extraordinary physical resilience. On the east coast Grim played a supporting role in the Jack Johnson-Tommy Burns Fight of the Century; on the west coast he was committed to an insane asylum. In between he played with the concept and reality of pain in a shocking manner not witnessed before or since. It's a meditation on pain with thoughts on masculinity and vulnerability, plus questionable jokes, in a haymaker of highly creative non-fiction. i don't know if i'll like it, but it sounded fascinating enough to give it a try.

FEED - Mira Grant

This book has been languishing on my shelf for more than 3 years now and i really really want to read it. A home-grown virus leading to a zombie apocalypse? The dissection of the political system via a US presidential election? Evil social media elements? Horror and subversion and cyberpunk dystopia world building and ruminations on societal influences vs what it means to be human? Yes, people, i HAVE A TYPE, AND THIS IS IT.

THE WAY OF KINGS - Brandon Sanderson

i have a friend who gifts me epic high fantasy novels, because she knows that occasionally i need an epic high fantasy novel to dig my teeth into and unwind from all the cyberpunk dystopia, and this is next up on the list. i love her. She has very rarely missed the mark, and i cannot wait to dive into this one. No, i know nothing at all about it. Also no, i don't care.

PHEW. OK.

i hope you enjoyed this excursion. 💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

Zero pressure tags: @wistfulcynic @ohmightydevviepuu @bittersweet-in-boston @musette22 @sparkagrace @fsbc-librarian @humanshapedmonster @zenaidamacrouras1 @late-to-the-party-81

[gamerninja15]

Well, I always wanted to do this so here you go! A Drawn to Life x Deltarune crossover that I personally call, Creationrune! This au of Drawn to Life is a bit different from its predecessor and Deltarune. Instead of being an alternative Universe of DTL entirely, it is an alternative future AU that takes place 5 years after the events of Drawn to Life The Next Chapter, all of the characters are now young adults and must now team up with a creature that Mike has thought to have long been dead since his awakening from his coma. And now let's meet our protagonists! Mike: I decided to make him the main character for many reasons, the references he gives to Frisk and Kris (despite coming before them), and how he visited a world that is made out of artificial characters made or based on humans or objects. He returns to the Raposa realm after 5 years since it was seemingly destroyed and slowly learns of what happened after his awakening. The Shadows have returned and taken over, leaving the realm in pure darkness, it is now called The Shadow Realm, and can only be accessed via a drawn picture of the land of the Shadow Realm in the book of Imagination, allowing any human to enter it at any time. His outfit represents his memories of the Hero that the Creator would create to destroy the Shadows. Aly: Now let's introduce a character from the most recent game, Two Realms! She was already established to be Mike's closest and best friend in Two Realms so I wanted to implement that in Creationrune, she is an artist and really loves to draw, so her Shadow Realm outfit represents that desire fully.

Rehtaeh: Now here is what you have all been waiting for, the Ralsei of Creationrune! I decided to give Heather the Ralsei role due to the similarities that they both had, they both are copies of real people and seemingly know more than they let on, so it wasn't too hard to figure out which DTL character would receive the Ralsei role. Also fun fact, the name Rethaeh is actually Heather spelled backwards!

[samaeljigoku]

001: silent hill and 003: for Helen from clock tower?

Favorite character: Walter, Maria and Heather are probably my top 3.

Least Favorite character: Andrew from SH4 deserved to be a rotting ghost forever. Dr. Kaufmann in SH1 / 0, Alex's parents from Homecoming. I don't hate them as characters, but I find Dahlia and Leonard Wolf to be unforgivable.

Favourite ships (canon or non-canon): Harry x Cybil should've been more of a thing. Harry x Lisa, Henry x Walter, Henry x Eileen, Anne x Murphy from Downpour. Cynthia x Walter is a dark and troubled but interesting one, potentially.

Not a romantic ship, but I like the idea of Heather and Valtiel as a human-monster team. He should've gotten a magical girl outfit too.

Character I would be best friends with: I think Harry, Heather, Angela, and Lisa would all make amazing friends. Maybe Anne and Maria. Eddie also seems like he would be a fun person to hang out with in better circumstances, tbh.

A random thought: I've always thought there should be a Native American protagonist in SH. The series dips into Native American mythology, but it's never explored beyond vague historical pieces, which I think is a shame.

An unpopular opinion: I love the Western games. The concepts for Homecoming and DP were perfect fits, just executed in a mixed, flawed way. I also liked The Short Message, but it had some similar problems.

I also hate the way SH2 characters are discussed compared to other games? There is far more nuance to James than being a wife-hating monster. He's not a saint, but he's not a demon either. He has a lot of flaws and sympathetic qualities too. And the way the female cast is discussed by fans is sometimes so depressing and disappointing, especially for a fairly progressive series like SH. (Not that those fans have actually played the games, but still.)

Most badass character: Minmo the cat. :3 No, jk. I think the fact that Henry can wield an axe and fight through a serial killer's dreamscape while sleep-deprived is impressive. Heather and Cybil of course go here. Lisa's strength is under-rated too. She seemingly fought against that nurse parasite for a long time, and was able to take down Kaufmann even while possessed by it.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Any human being with Stanley Coleman. In-canon, Kaufmann and Lisa. She deserves better and I wish someone had gotten her away from him.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): The victims in SH4, and their relevance to Walter Sullivan. It's fairly vital info that gets left out. If you didn't read the extra material, the game would never tell you that Cynthia and Jasper actually DID have ties to Walter or the cult, even if small ones, before his killing spree. The game also poorly explains Jimmy Stone's relevance, who was Walter's first victim.

Favourite friendship: Well, not friendships per se, but I've always loved the banter with Heather and Douglas or Vincent. Or the bond between Alessa and Claudia, maybe the truest friendship of the series.

------------ Helen from Clock Tower:

How I feel about this character: Under-rated!

My non-romantic OTP for this character: I guess it would have to be Jennifer? Not sure of anyone else.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I know this is a result of localization, but she shares a name with the Maxwell family in Ghost Head, and I think it would be interesting if there were some connection there. It would tie the games together more closely!

[aro-with-bad-aim]

okay okay so I just started reading bunny by mona award (I’ve read 5 chapters) and I have thoughts and opinions, so I wanna ‘document’ them now to see if I hate myself later on for what I thought or if I haven’t jumped to conclusions

firstly it’s very very mean girls/ heathers. Not necessarily a bad thing, just an observation. The main difference is that with mean girls/ heathers, they give you a reason why you’re not meant to like/ trust that clique. They’re presented as bitchy and backstabbing, someone you don’t want to mess with, which kinda hooks you into it as you see part of their world. However I can’t find much of a reason to hate the bunnies. The main character complains about them, and it feels like there’s an attempt to present them in a similar way to the plastics or the heathers, but I just can’t hate/ root against them. They’re a bit weird, yeah, but they’re just a little silly and strange, but hardly harmful. (I can already feel the dramatic irony)

also im finding it kinda hard to like the main character. It’s like the underdog trope, the one who doesn’t quite fit in, but it just comes off more as “im not like other girls and I think im better than everyone else for it”. im all for books with unreliable and intentionally unlikeable protagonists, it’s one of my favourite tropes, but it feels like im supposed to like her, but I just can’t. Maybe im missing the point and the unreliable narrator stuff will be more prevalent later on, I am only five chapters in.

another thing I’ve felt while reading it is that it feels like it’s desperately trying to fit into the whole “unhinged, feminine rage, coquette dark academia aesthetic”. I know that’s a lot of buzzwords, but I think if you’ve been in certain parts of the internet, you’ll know exactly the type of person/ content I’m referring to. There’s been a lot of name dropping of books and people and it very much comes off as a way to shove the book in with those types of people. The phrase “like a first edition of the bell jar” was one that stuck out to me. I don’t think the bell jar is a bad book, it’s not perfect but I think it’s good, but there is a certain “aesthetic” of people/ readers who like the bell jar obsessively, and it just felt like a way to say to them “hey look!! this is exactly in your aesthetic!!”. The writing is best when it’s not relying on name dropping. However, I know there’s satirical elements to this book, so maybe that’s all satire and it’s poking fun at people who can be a bit pretentious about the stuff they read and act like they’re better than everyone for reading the bell jar (not saying all bell jar fans are like that, you know the kinda of people I mean). It would also explain the unlikeable protagonist, so I’ll see how it goes.

that being said, it’s not a bad book, I’m really intrigued about the whole thing with “the lion”, and also where the narrative could possibly go, especially since it seems too long to just go in the mean girls direction