#also the audiobook is amazing with all of the accents

[whimsicallywiddershins]

Something I really like about the Trickster series is that Aly could have been the "white person sweeping in and saving poor brown characters from imperialism" but she wasn't. It was a very thin line that Tamora Pierce somehow didn't cross. Aly is definitely the white person coming into a poc rebellion, but she isn't leading it, and she didn't cause it or encourage it to happen. The rebel's plans had been in place for a long time. Aly just nudged some things, and helped it succeed. She obeys the will of the rebels' leaders, and isn't the "driving force" behind the rebellion.

There are even moments where Aly does toe that line, starts to criticize the rebels, and go off on her own. But each time, she is brought back down and remembers that this is not her country, and in the end, it's their choice, their rebellion. She lends a helping hand, but they could have done it without her.

[violetclarity]

am now in the ‘post-amazing series’ phase where I want to read something new but my standards are temporarily incredibly high, so I need to read something really good but I have no idea what that will be

[magpizza]

Mag's Sapphic Book Recs

Hey! @fairymascot sent a few of you my way who are looking for some sapphic book recs! I have compiled a list of 50 or so books, both Adult and YA, across the genres I read. These are just my personal favorites, and I encourage you to look further into any book that piques your interest!

For where I go for books, I go to my local library a lot and can't sing the praises of the Libby app enough for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks. I also always encourage those who can to get their books from independent bookstores or sites like bookshop.org.

ADULT

I wanna feel sad or stressed out! -Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead by Emily R. Austin - Gilda is anxious, depressed, and jobless, so she accepts a receptionist job at a catholic church and becomes obsessed with what happened to the woman who had the job before her. A book I felt really deeply as an anxious person myself. -All The Little Moments by G. Benson - Anna's career-focused world is turned upside down when her brother and sister-in-law pass away and she is left to take care of their two young children. This one is a real tearjerker and the romance with the woman Anna meets is very very sweet. I've read almost all of G. Benson's books and found them all to be absolute winners (Purposefully Accidental is excellent, also deals with grief though is more lighthearted and has some of the best dialogue I've ever read). -Landing by Emma Donohue - This is such a lovely, meaty book that explores the complexities of people, as well as the challenges a burgeoning relationship can go through. The MCs face distance, age difference, culture differences, different life goals, etc. The characters around them were also surprisingly deep and interesting. It had me on the edge of my seat as to how it would resolve. -I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Marisa Crane - this one is a bit sci fi, but I felt the sad outweighed the sci fi classification. A future world where you are marked by your crimes by being given an extra shadow, a woman has to navigate single motherhood with her daughter having been given an extra shadow from birth. It was somber, it was lovely, I felt so much weight in my heart. -Whisper of Solace by Milena McKay - If you like terrible women doing terrible things to each other in the name of their careers but also obsession and love, this one is for you! One of the most unique Ice Queen POVs I have read!

Okay, I'm sad enough, now I want a happy romance! -Wherever Is Your Heart by Anita Kelly - Even as a lover of romance myself, few books have made me swoon like this one. Two older butch women finding love much later in life and being realistic about their issues and problems, I just absolutely adored the grounded conversations they had. Also a very quick read! -Breaking Character by Lee Winter - This is one of the most enjoyable, fun, heartfelt romances. It's Hollywood, it's fake dating, it's age gap. Both characters go on such a lovely journey together. This is one I would highly encourage you to listen to the audiobook as Angela Dawe is amazing at doing all the character voices and accents. Additionally, there is not a single Lee Winter book I haven't liked, so highly recommend any of hers (The Awkward Truth is my second fave of hers, with a unique and younger ice queen). -The Carlisle Series by Roslyn Sinclair - You honestly can't have a sapphic romance list without this series. It's adapted and updated from Roslyn's Devil Wears Prada fanfic, but this is a story all its own and had me tearing up at the ending. I did the exercise of reading both the books and the fanfic which was very fun to compare! -Something's Different by Quinn Ivins - This is one of the sweetest books, I smiled all the way reading it. A woman has to step in to cover for her twin sister at her job while her sister goes off with her boyfriend, and she ends up falling for her sister's boss. It was a lovely book that also touched on mental health. I also love an academic setting, and it made statistics fun to learn about! -Bright Falls Series by Ashley Herring Blake - This 3 book series is so fun, just true romcom goodness. The characters are fun and interesting, they have complex relationships with each other, and I love how the author sets up these little ways the characters think is truth or reality, only to find how differently they perceived things.

Give me some scary ones! -The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling - cave spelunking in a tricked up space suit, being chased by ghosts, and not sure if you can trust the woman on the radio who's guiding you through it. Has just such a satisfying ending too. -The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean - a vampire-adjacent book, it's a world where these beings eat books, but then sometimes one amongst them instead eats minds. A woman, book eater herself, runs away from her family to protect her son who is a mind eater. I felt this one was gutwrenching at times, with characters making tough and sometimes bad decisions, and it kept a grip on me the whole way. -Into the Drowning Deep by Mira Grant - this one is more of an ensemble cast as it jumps around to several POVs, but the sapphic romance pair in it is great. It follows a crew aboard a ship to figure out what happened to a previous ship where everyone just disappeared. Every character has a rich internal life of why they're there, what are their goals, etc. -Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield - a woman's wife went on a deep sea expedition and returns not quite the same. The book jumps between the two women, what happened on that expedition and what her wife is having to deal with after she returns. I also enjoyed Julia's book of short stories, Salt Slow.

Wow, that was pretty scary. What about some fun science-y adventures? -The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson - a sci fi, multiverse traveling book. In the future, society can send people to alternate verses, mostly to steal resources, but you can only be sent if the other version of you is already dead in that world. The writing is fast-paced, really fun, and had some great quotes I even wrote down. It had so many little and big twists along the way, I gasped a lot. -The Founders Trilogy by Robert Jackson Bennett - kinda fantasy, kinda sci fi, kinda steam-punky, but a whole lotta fun! Fast-paced, it has one of the most interesting magic systems I've ever read. It's low on romance but the sapphic relationship that develops had my heart clenching by the last book. I read this series this year and already want to re-read it. -This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone - this book is a short but challenging read. It may not be for everyone. Treat it less like a novel and more like a riddle. It's feeding you bits and pieces as it goes and all will be revealed by the end. One of the most romantic books I've read.

Sure sure, but how about some escapism into fantasy now? -The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir - this one could've also gone in the horror or sci fi lists, what with the lesbian necromancers in space tagline. You've probably heard of it, it's dense, complicated at times, and will throw you for a loop when it quotes Linkin Park lyrics at you. Each book has such a different flavor too. A fun series to not only read but also reread! It requires a lot of attention, and I'm not too proud to admit I had to look up several word meanings as I read. The only series I have multiple versions of because I couldn't resist the special editions. -The Burning Kingdoms series by Tasha Suri - love me some fantasy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, some morally gray characters, complicated motivations, some betrayal of the ones you love most. This series is so lovely and such a fun and heartwrenching ride and I can't wait for the next book. -Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree - It's cozy, it's sweet, it just made me smile all the way through. The sequel I found just as lovely as well.

Enough with the other worlds! Got anything historical? -The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave - this one could also go on the sad list. It's poetic, lovely. A town of only women since their men all were lost in a storm and how the women manage to move on, deal with their grief, and face a dude who comes in later to try to "set their society right" or whatever. Throw that dude into the sea too. -Fingersmith by Sarah Waters - an absolute rollercoaster of a book. It's a long, great read with deception upon deception upon twists. I also highly recommend the BBC miniseries it was adapted into! -The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite - this one really surprised me. It's honestly really sweet. Two women come together to translate a French astronomy text and fall in love in the process.

Got anything with pictures? -Luisa Now and Then by Carole Maurel - drama, a woman in her 30s encounters her much younger self and they have to come to terms with who they thought they were and what they thought their life would be like. -A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll - heavy on the horror, not really a romance, but it is gorgeous, atmospheric, and didn't go where I thought it was going. -How Do We Relationship by Tamifull - drama, slice of life, one of my favorite series, it goes through some really complex character relationships and interactions. The main couple starts dating pretty quickly, and it only gets more complicated from there. -She Loves to Cook, She Loves to Eat by Sakaomi Yuzaki - slice of life. This one starts out simply enough, with two women who connect over food. Their relationship blooms slowly from there, and the latest volume introduced some additional characters that expand the discussion on how different our relationship to food and eating can be.

YOUNG ADULT

That was a lot. I'm ready to be sad again. -We Are Okay by Nina LaCour - a girl leaves everyone behind to go to college, and won't talk to them about why or what happened that changed her in those few weeks before she left. Her best friend comes to visit her and what follows is a slow, anguishing tale of grief, regret, and love. Honestly, for a sad time, you can always depend on Nina LaCour. -Forget Me Not by Alyson Derrick - this one might not work for everyone if you don't like an amnesia story. It had so much longing, loss, confusion, and a romance strong enough to attempt to get through it. -6 Times We Almost Kissed (and One Time We Did) by Tess Sharpe - Don't let the meme-rific title fool you, this book wrung out my heart. The characters are rich, deep, conflicted, and complicated. Deals with grief, with lost opportunities, with complicated friendships and complicated love. -If Tomorrow Doesn't Come by Jen St. Jude - what happens if you were already suicidal, but then the world is going to end soon anyway? This book deals heavily with depression and the end of the world, in many different meanings. -Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo - this one broke my heart a few times. Two girls who don't know they are related lose their father in a plane crash, and it only gets sadder and more complicated from there as both their words begin to connect.

Wow, all this sadness has made me angry! -Harley Quinn: Reckoning by Rachael Allen - gotta love a female rage revenge book. This book is a really engrossing read, it weaves a lovely mystery, and has one of my all time favorite twists and love interest characters of any book.

I've angered myself out, can we have some happy romance? -She Gets the Girl by Rachael Lippincott and Alyson Derrick - a lovely lovely contemporary romance story. Nothing surprising, just all the good stuff. Also writen by a wife team! -How to Excavate a Heart by Jake Maia Arlow - a very sweet holiday romance that starts when one of the MCs almost runs over her love interest. -Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes - with the topics this one deals with, it could've very easily made the sad list as well. The overall uplifting ending is what kept it more in the happy list for me.

Okay, okay, I'm ready to be scared again! -These Fleeting Shadows by Kate Alice Marshall - this one has it all, creepy house, family trauma, falling for the weird girl in the woods. It all built up to a really great twist too. I recommend the audiobook, it had great production and acting, and even legit scared me and I couldn't listen to it at night.

I like horror, but got anything a little more sci fi? -The Meadows by Stephanie Oaks - along the same lines of A Handmaid's Tale, a dystopian future where the government has a lot to say about what your role is in society and what you are supposed to do/be. At times a little slow, but at all times really heartwrenching.

Anything related to history? -A Million to One by Adiba Jaigirdar - four girls band together to execute a jewel heist on the titanic! Which sounds very exciting and it is! I also bawled at the end. Honestly I will read any and all Adiba Jaigirda books too.

Okay let's get into that fantastical escapism! -Fractured Fables series by Alix E. Harrow - based on fairytales, these two novelas are very quick reads, very engaging and I especially loved the romance that developed in the second one! -We Set the Dark on Fire series by Tehlor Kay Mejia - Handmaids Tale adjacent as well and the backdrop is Latiné inspired. A really great read, both books had be gripped by the chest. Good twists too! -The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett - inspired by sleeping beauty, the prince set to inherit the throne falls asleep and his younger sister has to figure out how the hell she keeps it all together until he (hopefully) wakes up. -Cinderella Is Dead by Kalynn Bayron - a society built after the very real Cinderella story, where all ladies of age go to the ball to be selected as brides, and then the story of a girl trying to fight against all that. -Forgotten Gods series by Marie Rutkoski - A girl who lives on the poor side of town meets a rich girl who seems ready to take her on adventures. I really enjoyed the main character's journey and how she changed oh so very drastically throughout the story. -Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst - I've recced this to friends who did not like it as much as I did but I'm still putting it on this list. Maybe it's just this book has all the things I like and that's fine. A princess betrothed to a prince is hiding her magical abilities and ends up falling for her fiance's sister, oops. -Sofi and the Bone Song by Adrienne Tooley - what drew me to this story was the quiet mystery it weaves. Sofi wants to take her father's place as a Musik (the few musicians in the country allowed to compose music) but then an unexpected, untrained lute player shows up and just absolutely outplays her. Sofi is determined to prove this new girl cheated with magic. Adrienne Tooley overall is an author I always enjoy. -Nampeshiweisit series by Moniquill Blackgoose - only the first book is out so far (To Shape a Dragon's Breath) but boy am I invested! A young girl finds the first dragon egg to appear in her remote island in 15 years, but the colonists of her land have strong opinions of who is allowed to have a dragon, how they need to be trained, and what they should do with dragons.

Phew that was a lot of words. Got anything with pictures again? -Thieves by Lucie Bryon - a really sweet and surprisingly deep story about two girls who steal shit. -Belle of the Ball by Mari Costa - a high school love triangle that worked in all the right ways. I loved the art, and as someone with vision deterioration, one of the easiest reads I've had recently! -Twelfth Grade Night by Molly Horton Booth - the original Shakespeare play Twelfth Night was formative for my lesbian realization, and this cute adaptation was so well done and modernized the story in a really fun and fantastical way. -The Princess and the Grilled Cheese Sandwich by Deya Muniz - continues the running theme of girl pretending to be a boy falls for girl, oops. Has a historical and modern twist to it all, very fun and loved the expressions. Do Not skip the author's notes at the end where she talks about what inspired the story, it was a highlight as well! -Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall - Mean Girls meets werewolves -Cosmoknights series by Hannah Templer - princesses, space travel, giant robot fights, this has got it all and some very lovely art to boot! -Honor Girl: A Graphic Memoir by Maggie Thrash - one of those comics that perfectly captures what it feels like to be a young girl falling in love with another girl for the first time. It's a little bit emotionally devastating at times in how expertly it expresses and pinpoints those specific feelings.

[arlothia]

You had a CAREER CHANGE because of the bad batch? I am intrigued to know more (if you are comfortable sharing)!!

Haha, yup! And thank you for the question! I do indeed feel comfortable sharing!

Buckle, up, though, ‘cause I’m going to give you the WHOLE story!

So currently I work in a library and I honestly love it very much and would love to keep working there as long as I can. Right now it’s only part time and my initial plans were to try for full time jobs (though hiring in this library system is a nightmare). 

But once I watched TBB (I started on February 22, 2022 and finished it in two days, so the start of S3 is almost exactly my anniversary which is awesome!) I instantly fell in love it and one thing I just could not get out of my head was the amazingness that is Dee Bradley Baker, who IS the Bad Batch! His ability to voice all these different characters (not to mention aaaaaaaaaaaall the other characters and creatures he’s voiced over the years) was absolutely mind boggling!

Following this, I was NOT able to get the idea of voice acting out of my head and so many things around me kept pointing to it (#VoiceActing trending on twitter, reddit suggesting the VA subreddit, a freaking display at my library having a book on voice acting!!!), and the decision to become a voice actor just felt right. It felt like it was what I was supposed to do. And I was SO excited....and daunted!!!

Now, I’ve always loved doing accents, making funny voices, reading out loud (especially reading out loud - I’d had the fun little daydream of being an audiobook reader years and years ago but it wasn’t serious....then! Later that summer I started listening to Marc Thompson reading the canon ‘Thrawn’ books and ooooh baby yeah!!!), and acting was something fun to think about, but I knew I didn’t want to get into that field, at least not the physical part of it because it’s so very, very demanding. But voice acting....voice acting can be done with the right equipment and a properly set up closet, right at your own home! 

So because I’m me and I’m very indecisive and take FOREVER to actually start a project (especially a huge, daunting one like this), it wasn’t until last summer when I got a coach and have been doing a lesson every week since then. I’m now (finally) also getting started on actually getting the equipment and materials I will need to set up my recording studio in my closet (and by “getting started” I mean I’m pretty sure what I want but have yet to buy it, haha).

I fully intend to make voice acting (and audiobook reading) my career (while also hoping to keep my part time job at the library if at all possible) and it’s all because of ‘The Bad Batch’. 

So I can honestly say that it changed my life and I will forever be thankful for it and all the amazing people that work on it!

[paradoxcase]

@longroadstonowhere:

‘A little girl on girl’ but saying gall as in gallbladder or gallstones instead (that was my interpretation of the joke at least)

@racefortheironthrone:

@longroadstonowhere It works a bit better in the audiobook, because Moira Quirk can use accents to make "gall" and "girl" sound a bit more alike than they look on the page.

@andresindoril:

@racefortheironthrone I always just imagined it being read as gal on gal which is still synonymous with girl on girl.

@wellhappybirthdaytomeiguess:

Quirk does an amazing job with Ianthe in this chapter.

Ok, now I definitely have to listen to the audiobook, because I'm dying to know how this is read - for me the vowel in gall is /ɑ/ and gal is /æ/ and girl is /ɚ/ and they're all completely different sounds and that pun just doesn't work at all. But I have no idea what dialect it would work in, because Wiktionary says that gall is /ɔː/ for people without the caught-cot merger, and I'd imagine that girl is something along the lines of /ɜː/ with a non-rhotic dialect and those seem even more dissimilar, and also very different from /æ/

@korla-the-kenku:

I absolutely loved Ianthe and Gideon's reactions. I wish we had gotten more of them.

I'm just remembering back to the beginning of Gideon the Ninth when Ianthe was first introduced and I was like "I bet she's going to have fun making fun of Gideon" and finally like 1.5 books later I get to see that actually happen

@eye-lantern:

For the eyes, Gideon's have been compared to a cat's, and may be slightly reflective. I got the feel that they are not what you could consider "normal human eyes" with an irl equivalent, like Jod's

Ok, that makes more sense. I looked back and only found Cytherea comparing them to gold coins. You know, it's kind of funny that no one ever commented on this back on the Ninth, but I guess since Ianthe and Corona have purple eyes no one finds strange eye colors that odd, usually?

Also, unrelated to what I'm currently reading, but I've reached that point of fandom engagement where I'm naming sims after the characters, I now have a baby named Anastasia and a baby named Judith, and Camilla and Isaac and Jean Mary are on my list for the future. Unfortunately I already have a sim named Abigail who does not deserve to be named after Abigail Pent and I do try to follow the One Steve Rule mostly. And since I've realized after looking at my notes that that toddler that decided to look like Gideon in their portrait is eventually going to transition and become a boy, I might as well rename him Gideon when that happens. Amusingly enough, his dad is already named John, but that was a complete accident. I might add Magnus later, I'm still trying to decide if his name fits the aesthetic of my neighborhood

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Do you listen to any podcasts and care to recommend a few? Even the fun apolitical ones about things like books or scam artists that I've found have been infected with Progressive retardation.

I don't really. The last podcast I listened to was 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff, which is a pro wrestling podcast focused on a very specific time in wrestling history, so if you're not interested in that you won't be interested in the podcast. But Bischoff is a right leaning guy (I think a Trump guy too, but I can't remember) so on the rare occasions a political statement is made it's not a progressive one.

I can recommend a YouTuber and an audiobook series though if you just want things to listen to. The Lore Lodge is a great YouTube channel that dives into the lore and folk history behind things like cryptids, the Missing 411 phenomena, and other similar things. The guy who runs it is pretty anti-government and very anti federal law enforcement, and if you like hearing about how the FBI are awful you could definitely do worse, lol. The channel also looks into things like the MH370 plane disappearance, the Tuskegee Experiments, and the Gabby Petito murder. It's a good channel with a variety of videos that orbit similar themes of possible supernatural phenomena and government evil/incompetence.

The audio book series is the James Reese series by Jack Carr. The Amazon Prime show The Terminal List was (somewhat loosely) based on the first book in the series by the same name, but I would wholeheartedly recommend the book over the show. It's written by a former Navy SEAL so there's a lot of accurate technical and tactical details about what it's like being a SEAL, and the politics are firmly right wing and pro-soldier. So far I'm two books in and all the bad guys are either Islamic terrorists, power hungry Democrat politicians, fake war hero conservatives, Russian oligarchs, cowardly/corrupt military officers, drug cartel members, rogue CIA agents, DC lobbyists, and CEOs in bed with the government. The good guys are soldiers and special forces operatives, regular citizens, honest journalists (this is fiction, after all), gun enthusiasts, white Africans, hunters, legal immigrants, self-made rich people, and moderate, US friendly Muslims. I'd especially recommend the audiobook because the guy who reads them is amazing. He has a wide range of voices and he can do really specific accents spot on. The way he reads is full of emotion and he really make an effort to understand the characters he's portraying. Like I said I'm too books in and about to start the third and I can't recommend it enough.

[monstrousproductions]

I trust your taste

Can you recommend some fiction books? Fantasy is highly appreciated!

Oooh what a sign of trust!! OK so I don't actually read a huge ton of fantasy, so I'll do my best with a couple of non-fantasy that I just can't resist mentioning at the end.

Also, this got... a bit long... so I'm putting it under a Read More lol

A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K Le Guin - classic fantasy about a boy who becomes a great wizard. I realise this is likely one you've already read, as a fantasy fan, but it's a classic for a reason! Absolutely beautiful, and really powerful for me as a Quaker because of its rejection of the idea that fantasy must always be about The Goodie winning over The Baddie by doing killing better than them. If you've read it already, read it again lmao Also there's a new audiobook that came out a few years ago read by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith which is just brilliant.

The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin does come with a decent load of content warnings so do tread carefully if necessary, but it's also the best fantasy I've read in YEARS. The book is split over three different narratives in a world where magic users are an oppressed class, and again the audiobooks are amazing, read by Robin Miles.

Meanwhile I very much do NOT recommend the audiobook for Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb, though I did enjoy the book when I read it. The audiobook is, I believe, read by an American putting on what he thinks is an English accent, and um. Well. It sure is something. It's pretty classic fantasy too, and one of those books that you're like "what in God's name do you mean, this wasn't intended to be gay??"

The Heavens by Sandra Newman always makes my rec lists because it made me cry a lot and it's just very beautiful. Again the narrative is split, one taking place in an alternate, utopian present and one in Elizabethan England, with the narratives linked by the fact that the Elizabethan stuff is happening in the dreams of the woman in the present.

My favourite book ever is Fire & Hemlock by Diana Wynne Jones, it's about an unlikely friendship between a girl and a young man with lots of fae things and that brilliant blending of magic and reality that DWJ does so well. It's so much my favourite that when I recommend it to friends, I ask them to please not tell me if they didn't like it - just pretend you didn't read it haha Honestly I recommend any DWJ, but F&H is my baby <3

Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees was one of those books I read once that just stayed with me. It's about a Perfectly Ordinary English Town that sees an influx of fairy fruit and has to deal with that, and while I'm fuzzy on remembering the details, I know I loved it!

And then because I actually read more SF than fantasy as a general rule, here's a jumble of SF titles that I adore (though I'll spare you the waffle!):

the Imperial Radch triology by Ann Leckie about a troop carrier who becomes a person (she also has a fantasy book - The Raven's Tower - if that appeals more and all her audiobooks in the UK are read by Adjoa Andoh who I would simply die for)

the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, about a security bot who becomes a person (audiobooks are read by Kevin R Free, of Nightvale fame, and they're brilliant)

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, about two soldiers in warring time-travel factions sending letters to each other (also made me cry)

To Be Taught If Fortunate by Becky Chambers, about space researchers who change their bodies to adapt to the worlds they find and what ethical issues they come up against

The City We Became by NK Jemisin, about people who become living avatars of the different districts of New York to fight an alien presence (also a good audiobook - Robin Miles again)

All Our Wrong Todays by Elan Mastai, about a man from a utopian timeline suddenly stuck in our timeline instead (good audiobook too)

Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel, about a travelling theatre troup in a world where civilisation collapsed after a terrible pandemic (obviously tread carefully wrt how upsetting that might be for you!)

And then it isn't SFF in any strict sense but The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton (Simon Vance does the audiobook I like) is just very very fun and good and I like it a lot. Also the Lord Peter Wimsey novels, for the same reason!

[theimaginatrix27]

A blind person talks about Audiobooks for a minute

I grew up on story tapes.

Yes, that's where this essay is going to start. When I was a small child, story tapes were my jam. I loved getting new ones, but I listened to the ones I already had whenever I felt like it. There was a collection of fairy tale tapes my Grandma had, that eventually got given to my dad so I could access them more easily, that I never got tired of listening to.

And this was in part because they were well-produced, and the readers put their all into it, which made them enjoyable.

When I first joined Vision Australia's Library, I got a mixed bag of professionally made audiobooks the library had acquired for its collection, some very good volunteer narrators, and some less good ones.

Then they switched to DAISY, a fancy MP3 format with extra bits of code so you could, theoretically, page through the book and move by phrase as well as by chapter. They were not always formatted well, but that's not what I'm here to discuss.

It was about this time that I started getting books narrated by people who would either sound disinterested when reading (never good ever) or not do the story they were reading justice with their narration because their voices simply weren't that flexible.

One of these series was Sevenwaters. You probably have heard me natter on about how much I love Sevenwaters, and I absolutely do! But the narrator I first heard these books read to me by was ... she put more emotion into her reading than some others, but she was not well-suited to this series. She couldn't, and didn't, do an Irish accent for the Irish characters, she pronounced all the Gaelic names wrong except the ones that were blindingly obvious like Finbar or Conor, all her characters sounded so similar you really had to be paying attention to keep track. She did somewhat better with the fifth Obernewtyn book, but she didn't get the last two (maybe people complained, maybe nobody wanted to read Obernewtyn's last two books because of their length, I don't know). I'll tell you this much about those two books, the narration done by the people who read them was so dispassionate that I was bored. By Obernewtyn. I should not have been fucking bored by Obernewtyn.

Vision Australia also got some books added to the collection from a place in Tasmania who recorded their stuff on tapes which were then digitised, and again, they were hit and miss in quality, but the sound quality was so obviously taped on basic recorders like the ones I used to have that it kept distracting me.

And there were also a few instances in which the Brits, in all their wisdom, had several people, in one case maybe five, in the others (all part of a series) perhaps a dozen, narrate a single book, switching every fifteen-twenty minutes with no rhyme or reason, often in the middle of scenes, always mid-chapter, and the narrations varied wildly in quality! It pissed me off so much! I had a few I liked that I wished had taken the reins and read the whole book because they were genuinely amazing, but noooo, twenty minutes later, I'd get Substandard Narrator No. 4 again for an arduous quarter of an hour!

This lack of care stems, I suspect, from these particular productions being made for the exclusive use of blind people ("No unauthorised copying, broadcasting or public performance of this recording is permitted." was the warning typically given at the beginning of each in-house production), and the justification that blind people would be happy to be able to read the book at all.

Yeah, I'm calling fucking bullshit. If you wouldn't buy an audiobook whose narrator has less enthusiasm than a primary school teacher reading today's chapter of Charlotte's Web, then blind listeners shouldn't have to settle for it.

Besides, I listened to the RPH network growing up as well (Radio for the Print Handicapped, which means blind/visually impaired, though there are probably some other disabilities like dyslexia bundled in there), and they had book readings broken up into episodes, and most of them were done by volunteers for the network specifically, and they were nearly always good enough to stick around for (I can count on one hand the times a book read by someone there was genuinely unlistenable), so Vision Australia has no fucking excuse. The RNIB or whoever approved those haphazard multiple-narrator fiction books has no fucking excuse!

Why have I gone off like this about stuff that only affects a small population of listeners? Oh, honey, I am getting to that.

I have heard AI/synthetic voices read a handful of documents. All of them were fine to have been read by synthetic voices, specifically because they were:

Two separate user's manuals for two Daisy players I was sent by Vision Australia before they went totally digital.

A couple of lists of books added to the Vision Australia Library within the preceding six months (I don't think they make these any more because again, they went fully digital and people go to their website to download library books now).

Newsletters from the library/Vision Australia as a whole.

A very long recipe book.

These are acceptable uses of the technology. I preferred it when people read those, but I could accept the task being passed to a robot for reasons of it being more efficient.

Anything else read by an AI? Fuck no. It would be worse than the dispassionate human people reading books because they felt obligated to do something for the poor deprived blind people, but who didn't care enough to make it good.

As a screen-reader user, I know the limits of synthetic voices. Most of the TTS synths I can use with my screen-reader cannot have their inflection adjusted, and do not inflect to differentiate between sentences ending in periods, question marks or exclamation points. The synth I use, Espeak NG, has this capability, but many of its voices don't inflect as much as I'd like, so for eleven years I've stuck primarily with one voice variant, Linda. Some find her harsh on their ears, and she sounds worse with the English-US accent, but I use the default English Great Britain one (there are more region-specific English accents but I don't use those), so she's plenty tolerable for me. Most synthetic voices purporting to be more humanlike sound more robotic to me because they do not inflect, or if they do inflect, they always sound happy! This is not conducive to a good reading experience! Linda, at max inflection, is a far cry from a human person reading things to me, but she's still a lot better than those human narrators I mentioned above about injecting some level of emotion into what she's reading to me, and I've been using her to read fanfiction for almost as long as I've been using NVDA!

That being said, I wouldn't pay for her to read me a book. Unless I was buying the ebook, but we're talking about audiobooks here.

I am now a member of Audible. Yes, I know it's an Amazon company. I know more about how little it pays authors now than I did when I joined. But I am a member of Audible because it is the best place I currently know of to get good-quality audiobooks. Their collection is extensive, and although the public domain books are prone to the bad narrator problem (probably because they don't have to pay anyone for it because public domain), I've been able to read a lot more books that Vision Australia simply does not have. There are still books Audible doesn't have, like those whose authors kept them off that site for reasons of not wanting to sell their rights to Amazon, or books that simply were not deemed popular enough to get their own audiobooks (still sad about the second half of the Roddaverse being stuck in audiobookless purgatory), but even knowing this, I would never, and I mean never, buy versions of these audiobooks read to me by a fucking robot.

I joined archive.org a few days ago, because I heard they had some books I wanted to read. I couldn't read the borrowed books with my screen-reader because they were one-hour loans, and I couldn't listen to them being read by the TTS voice because it was awful.

I would never fucking pay a company to sell me that as an audiobook.

And yet some places are trying this out. I read in another Tumblr post that a bunch of professional audiobook narrators (angels, saints, precious gems that they are) were protesting because Apple was going to produce some audiobooks with AI so they didn't have to pay them to do it, and synthetic voices cannot intonate. This absolutely boils my blood.

I have ranted about bad narrators and bad productions for the majority of this post, but I have to tell you, when I have come across good narrators, it has in some cases been transcendant. Two of my favourites are sadly no longer with us, but they were both so good that even if they could not finish the series they read which introduced me to their talent, I could never fail to enjoy those books. Frank Muller, Katherine Kellgren, thank you for the work with which you blessed us while you were able.

I also know a lot of audiobook readers are voice-actors, and anyone paying attention would know they've gotten the short end of the stick for a long time, but I love and value them, because they are part of my childhood. They introduced me to characters I would never have known otherwise.

And I would not want their jobs stolen by mindless robots run by heartless companies whose greed and gluttony for wealth overwhelms any sense of morality or good will to their workers or customers.

I don't know what else I can do except write this post and hope someone sees it who can do something. I'm poor and blind and have no connections, and most people online don't know I exist. But I am here, and I value every human audiobook narrator who has ever taken the time to read a book aloud for the benefit of anyone who enjoys listening to a very long, complex, and perhaps soon to be beloved story tape. And I hope the robots lose this battle, and that the capitalists lose their power over this industry that is crushing so many artists right now.

[mblematic]

hi babe!! So random but was just doing a lil google search for some good audiobooks to listen to but then remembered that my bestie tumblr mutual molly posted about her love of audiobooks just this week !!! Do you have any recs for me ill take any genre any length whatever your faves are <3 xoxoxo

BABE I love you and this so much !!! thank you for thinking of me my little heart is So warm

(this got a little long so I put it under the cut!!)

okay WELL I would be remiss not to recommend The Locked Tomb (Gideon the Ninth etc) audiobooks right off the bat, they are INCREDIBLE, Moira Quirk does the BEST voices (esp. for Gideon and Harrow) and the ENERGY and HUMOR are unmatched imo. (usual caveats re: TLT which are that the series is initially quite confusing and you may have to read/listen twice. but they are the perfect books. i want gideon to smush me with her powerful thighs and harrow is my poor little meow meow who also cooks soup out of her own bone marrow)

I loved both of Madeline Miller's books on audiobook! something about her prose really worked for me read aloud. Song of Achilles is of COURSE amazing, Circe is also fab

do you like sally rooney? the audiobooks are great (i'm a sucker for a calm irish accent). Exciting Times by Naoise Dolan is a good follow up, Roony-esque but sexier (imo)

Oldie but goodie : His Dark Materials on audiobook has a FULL CAST and it's amazing. I love all the readers, I will never not love the Lord Asriel actor and Lyra will always sound Like That for me (no offense to the HBO adaptation ppl)

Daisy Jones & The Six: A Novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid — another full cast and TJR really benefits from being read aloud. (I tried to read several of her books and didn't like them until I listened!)

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is SO good and I really enjoyed the audio book. it's kind of about video games but it's actually about friendship & love & asking for help & play!

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong is read by him !! Ahhhhhhh it was so good I cried TT_TT

Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line by Deepa Anappara — I LOVED this book & thought the audiobook was fantastic

Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution by R. F. Kuang — SO MANY GOOD CHARACTERS, great book, anti-colonialist themes and a magic system based on translation. V SAD. The audiobook is very well done - they really incorporated the footnotes (lol) in a way that was so lovely

[ahjdaily]

INTERVIEW: Albert Hammond Jr on His New Opus: Melodies on Hiatus (MonsterChildren)

For archival purposes, full text is stored below.

JUN 25, 2023 | BY NAZ KAWAKAMI

Where Albert Hammond Jr’s solo records, 2007’s,Yours To Keep, made us fall in love and 2018’s, Francis Trouble, was a consummation, his brand new album, Melodies On Hiatus, feels like a happy marriage being lived.  

The nineteen-track double record is a long listen by today’s standards - standards which encourage one-minute-thirty-second, double-hook double-chorus, TikTok-able garbage - but an enjoyable, nuanced, and fragrant one that doesn’t try to be anything other than what it is, which is to say, a good time. Featuring collaborations with GoldLink, Matt Helders, and Rainsford, to name a few, Melodies is an expansive, and developed multi-genre collection by an artist willing to spruce up, cut down, and build out in whichever direction the song takes them.

As a whole, when compared to previous albums, Melodies On Hiatus is more spacious, and, strengthened by or perhaps even made even possible through a lyrical collaboration with Simon Wilcox, draws from a deeper emotional well, although I do believe that even if Albert had abandoned linguistic reasoning all together - if he had taken a note from Sigur Ros’ heartwarmingly nonsensical Hopelandic and had chosen to develop a dialect all his own, the album’s layering, patience, and strength of melody - particularly on stand out tracks like ‘Caught by Night’ and ‘One Chance’ - would be enough to hit, to feel, and for the song’s emotional fingertips to graze your own. 

On the note of emotional fingertips grazing one’s own, Melodies On Hiatus flirts. It knows what it is and what it has to offer, and can accommodate you at any given mood with a confidence that one can’t help but find simultaneously elusive and alluring, and as we claim in our next print issue, it is an album to make friends to, to have sex to, or maybe both. It is for listening, but also for living. The double album floats but doesn’t mope, with moments of excitement and complexity that accent and balance the minutes of moodiness and tranquility. 

We recommend hitting play on the album embedded below before proceeding. By my best guess, I don’t think we’ve spoken to Albert since last Splendour in the Grass, so about a year ago.

By my best guess, I interviewed you around this time last year for Splendour Weekender. 

Was that a whole year ago?

Yeah, Splendour in the Grass is next month, I think.

Geez, yeah, I remember that. I was in a very different place. 

You were telling me about how you were listening to The Body on audiobook. You’re a big audiobook guy?

I don’t know if I’m a big audiobook guy. It helped me read more, so I guess it’s a good crutch for reading. Damn, what was that…

It was all about anatomy, I think. I realize this is a weird start to an interview.

No, not weird at all. Let me see where it was… Audible or… oh god damn it, I gotta sign in? This is bologna. 

Are you reading/listening to anything currently?

I mean, clearly not if I gotta sign in. I was listening to this book called, When Things Fall Apart, which was pretty good. It was pretty fascinating, just about this person whose life starts to crumble. It’s the kind of book where you could start at any chapter and it kind of fits somehow with whatever moment you’re in. I try pretty hard, and I do pretty well sometimes, but it’s only the occasional book that cuts through. There was this Japanese author…

Murakami?

Yeah! I read one of his books, and I started another and was like, ‘great, this is another book that I’ll get like a hundred pages in, and then I won’t have read for like five days, and then I won’t remember anything.’ But I read the whole thing and it was amazing, then picked up another one and failed. Work in progress, man, work in progress.

Yeah, that kind of ties into my greater thematic question which is: what media or art have you taken in recently that may have affected, inspired, or influenced this new album? 

Oh, just microdosing life. 

I saw that on a shirt in Japan once!

Microdosing life?

Yeah! 

I thought I thought of that. Damn. I mean, look, I think that if I sat down with nothing and created something and then I got asked about it afterwards, maybe I’d be able to understand the process, but because it’s like a little bit every day, and throughout your life you build an encyclopedia of different works that all push in different directions, it’s difficult to say. This record is tough. I had made Francis Trouble with a band and an alter ego and a frontman, and accepting that that’s what this was and not wanting to lean into a band name, and I thought we achieved what we wanted to achieve. I mean, I don’t think I ever achieve what I want to, I’m just saying that so it’s not so depressing. With this album, I thought it’d be fun to make a deconstruction of that. I always make demos and build on them and try to create a vibe and it changes, so I thought, ‘why don’t I just keep the demos and the drum machines?’ And there are some songs on this album that don’t have that, but a majority are like, a drum machine app I had on my phone. Just fun, vibey things. 

Sometimes it is really that simple. 

Sometimes it is! I liked that and I didn’t want to have to go any deeper than that, and songs started coming out over time. I thought this was going to come out ages ago. I started working on these songs back in 2019, so I thought I’d release them in maybe 2021, but then Covid happened, and the process slowed. But because this has been such a long process, I don’t remember many of the details of inspirations and what not. 

Do you think that you thrive in parameters? Was it easier to work within the confines of the capabilities of a drum machine app? 

Well I only used the app because I just had it and as I was taping demos, it was just quicker on my phone, but then it felt sort of right. If it sounds cool, it doesn’t matter where it came from. To some degree, I do feel good in parameters. In my mind, if you told me to write a story about whatever I want, I probably wouldn’t do the homework, but if you said to write a story in this place, my mind might have an easier time. I do push structures of songs but I do like understanding that there is a structure. I try to keep things as simple as possible so that I can see where things are boring and where they are exciting. A lot of the time when you’re writing, you can do things to the drums or guitar and it’ll sound more fun, but really it’s just not a great part. When you’re listening and everything is dumbed down, you can hear and be like, ‘this is where it gets boring. Why?’ and then you fix it. ‘Caught By Night’ was a song that we sort of pieced together and built up at the last minute and added a different drum machine, and it just worked. That, ‘Never Stop’, and this other song were the three songs at the very end that came in a burst even though the album was kind of done at fifteen songs, we just added another three. 

Even fifteen songs by today’s standard is a very substantial album. 

Couldn’t stop, dude. Couldn’t stop.

It’s interesting to me that you were writing while recording, I don’t hear a lot of people doing that.

I think that there’s always one really good song that happens when you’re recording. I’m constantly writing little things and putting them in voice memos. They aren’t songs, they’re just like, ideas. If I played them for you, you wouldn’t get what it is. There are just all these things that come up while you’re recording and in that space that you’re like, ‘oh there’s something here’ and you push on them, and some lead to another thing and you throw away the bit where it started, like when a rocket takes off into space and throws off that booster piece. The idea leads you to a better one. 

What is your editing process like? If you come up with a song last minute, do you just bump out other ideas?

Something that Julian told me a lot is that when you create something, you love it because you made it, and you have to sweep away stuff that isn’t as good as others. Those things don’t have to be gone forever, but you need to be able to see what is exciting. I have songs that I keep coming back to because I know that there is something there - it’s like your own personal puzzle. 

Are there any songs on this album that you’re like, ‘no one else likes this but I think it’s great, so fuck you all, it’s going on the album,’?

That’s a funny question. Ah man. It’s not that no one understands- we’re not there to kill something, we have long discussions. The biggest thing when learning to create is understanding that ideas are very fragile. You have to slowly take what this idea is trying to say and pull it out. You can record an awesome demo and then you go to record it and you murder it because you lose what it was about in the first place. I have no idea why that is, I think that that’s why producers are so sought after. It’s easy for an artist to overthink because maybe it’s perfect in their head but by being perfect, all the charm is gone. 

Someone told me years ago that if you are the artist, you shouldn’t be the one who decides when your song is ‘done’. You know what I mean? Because it’ll never be done. Collaboration is really important in that way, and that’s very present in this album with collaborations between you and GoldLink or Matt Helders.

Totally! I always need to talk things out. It’s not like because it’s my album that I’m not going to read the room and see how people are feeling about it. There’s a song from my album, Momentary Masters, called, ‘Caught by My Shadow’, where I knew that I wanted this riff as the whole song. Everyone was like, ‘this is just a part, right? There’s this and then something else comes?’ and I was like, ‘nah nah nah, the whole song is that.’ I knew that when it got to the end, that people would understand, and they did, but at the same time, I’ve had a lot of times where something is not working and the feeling is there not just with you but with the other players. The point is that when you’re writing, you aren’t trying to be right, you’re trying to not be mediocre. There’s no winning. The fun, the point, is in creating. I love melody and giving rhythm to it and building it out, and then it goes deeper and hits you in a way that makes you feel something. That’s bigger than words for me. Like in classical music, you feel it in your guts. It’s not about doing it my way, it’s about trying to do something that you think is great. 

The singular genius/lonely artist is such a romanticized trope in stories and in media, but it undermines the potential and importance and ubiquity of collaboration. Nothing is done in a vacuum.

I think that the people who are telling those stories aren't the ones creating. If you’re creating something like music, it is meant to be heard, but so is the experience and the journey of making it. You’d want to share it, no? Share in the process. I never liked when people give too much credit or assign too much to one person, or especially give guff to someone. Like when people talk about Ringo that way. Really? Do you know how delicate it is to be in a band in a room? Put another drummer in there and see if that chemistry will still be there. I don’t think it would at all. You know when you throw a party and you’re trying to create a vibe, and one weird guy throws it all off? That’s the same thing as when you’re trying to find people to create stuff with. Maybe some people do have a moment and see it all, and that’s great, but it’s also very lonely. People want to share. 

Do you think that that’s a motivator for you to make things? Because you want to share?

I don’t know… I don’t know why I am doing this.

Yeah, what the hell are you doing, man?

I remember being a kid and falling in love with Buddy Holly and that you could do that as a profession. It just seemed so magical. It’s just something that I do little by little every day. Like if I have a day where I’m like, ‘I don’t want to write, I am done, I am spent.’ And then I start playing something and my immediate thought is that I can't wait to create this and share it. 

You’ve been working on this album since around 2019. You’ve put in a lot of time and thought. What are your hopes with this album?

I guess besides the hope of it connecting with people, I kind of have reached what I wanted in simply making it. Everything after that is out of my control. I can’t convince anyone to like it or to feel it. I really just sit innocently between each song and create a world that I’d want to hear, or create something new that I haven’t done before. I wasn’t trying to make a double record either, so maybe I’m stuck in that, still. I had twenty songs and was like, ‘there’s no way I’m writing twenty lyrical sets.’ I didn’t take the 20th off just to have one less; I like lyrics, I love lines. I’m just not great at putting those lines into a whole. Sometimes I really nail what I want to, but when I was staring down the barrel of twenty songs, I didn’t even know where to begin. It’s weird to have written these songs throughout all of this time, having been in so many places in my life, and now the album is out and everything still connects;  it’s been amazing. So you’re asking about what I consider success or what I want for this. That, to me, feels like more success than I thought I would get out of it.

[olivieblake]

OLIVIE OH MY GOD I LOVE THE ANSWER YOU ARE LOOKING FOR IS YES SO MUCH LIKE SO SO SO MUCH. I loved each individual story and this book is tabbed an insane amount and sometimes there are 4 tabs per page- hold on I’ll include a picture at the end so you can see-lol I feel like normally I don’t show you because honestly no one should see evidence of my brain’s insanity but idk I feel like sharing this time? (Also please note I am Aries so just depending on my chaotic energy that day I will tab anything that I want. Sometimes it’s stuff that makes me laugh, things that I’m like oh maybe this is important, quotes I’m obsessed with, things that make me think, etc, I really just tab anything I want plus it helps me focus. I also just have some good old OCD that makes my brain decide that if I skip over tabbing something I even thought for one second should have a tab then the world is going to punish me somehow so then I must go back and tab it so that the obsession stops and the world (or at least the world in my brain) is at peace (love brains woo). This collection had me swooning at times, screaming at times (in both a OH MY GOD kind of way and an angsty my heart hurts kind of way), sad at times (I did tear up), laughing at times, and it just made me so happy. Anway, this book was truly the perfect way to end what I’m calling my Olivie year aka 2022 in general (I finished it on NYE it was perfect). I have not stopped thinking about this book since I read it. Writing this is going to be so hard because I have to leave out so many things that I loved just for the sake of space and time and everything, but hopefully one day I’ll get to see you on one of your tours again and talk your head off about it. (P.S please come to Pittsburgh for your TAC tour and celebrate in Libby’s hometown please-I know,I know you go where your publishers send you but still please)

I will say I will always have a special connection to this book (and the audiobook of LPM which I also listened to in December which was amazing the narrator was so good with all the accents and everything-refueled my love of Elisabeth and I still want one of the romance books on her and Jack hahah) just because December was an awful month on the top of an awful year and this book was really here when I needed it most. 2022 for me was a year of grief (it’s true what they say it always comes in 3s), failure, and just Murphy's law. Not one of my favorite years (I survived though as always so we are good now haha),but reading your books/watching your success this year were some of my happiest parts. I know I haven’t been here since the beginning or anywhere close to it but still seeing all your success made me so proud and so happy for you, you deserve it <3. I think fate let me find your books in 2021 because it knew I would need them in 2022. Enough with the mush for now, also you told me not to apologize about my rambling and I am holding my tongue not to, but I think I might make this one two parts-well three because Saints and Liars is going to get its own so if you have only time to day to read one part I suggest that one-to make it not so overwhelming (because I am incapable of just liking something to a normal degree)-but I should have said it towards one of the first ones please never feel like you have to actually reply to these they have always just been to hopefully bring you some happiness and appreciation that I hope you can feel through the screen more than anything. Also spoilers of course for any other people in the universe that may read this.

Oh wait I didn’t share but one of my best friends and I have a tradition of sending each other one of our favorite books of the last year and this was actually the one I sent her! I needed someone to obsess over it with me. She loved it too btw she texted me how obsessed she is with margoalec and cecilyporter she loves them so much.

Stone’s Throw: I was automatically intrigued just based on “trips and falls into another realm”. This felt very atlas vibes with all the dimensions/portals/ley lines. I just loved Salim and Jenny together, their relationship felt very soulmates/invisible string/the universe just drawing them together and you know I love those. The theme of them being mirrors of each other in some ways and two threads through the eye of one needle ugh I just love stuff like that I ate it up. From the moment she got the fax from the other dimension I was trying to figure out who it was from. My first thought was “oh wouldn’t it be cool if it was from his brother” and then slowly in the story I convinced myself that was not  going to be it, so I was very proud of myself when it was finally revealed. This story just felt so unique and I love jumping portals and alternate universes and stuff so it was so fun! 

-Some moments I loved: Jenny putting an exclamation point in her email to prevent herself from sounding as irritated as she felt because I do that very frequently too haha. The way you wrote how it looked and felt going through the portal was so cool I could really see it in my head and was like “woah this is trippy”. HOW HE WAS HER ONLY TRACE OF FAMILIAR AND THAT SHE BELIEVED HIM WHEN NO ONE EVER DOES. And of course it was your signature horny characters hahah. The title of the book and the story appearing THE BEST. 

-Some quotes I enjoyed/reactions to them:

“Whatever it was, it was destructive and cruel even while it was handsome. It treated flattery like a noose and wielded poison like a blade.” I just really like that line. I don’t really know why but idk it resonated somehow with me. 

“Is he yours?” AHHH

“Sleep was not an option. Jenny let her restless feet carry her elsewhere, to the only place she felt even remotely recognizable as herself” AND IT'S TO HIS ROOM AWWW

“His kiss, when it met hers, was fragrant with gratitude, lush with it. He opened for her as she had for him, and suddenly she thought she understood it. Portals and passage. She pulled him closer the way she would have sprinted towards something unmissable, a train leaving the station. She pried open the doors of his reservations and in response he was alight, whisking her off the platform. She felt the edges of herself blur with his, his sadness becoming hers, his loneliness cloaking her shoulders. She bled her hope into his mouth, her art, her practiced hand at beauty. She poured the meditation of her entire being into his soul.” THEM THIS AHHH LOVE

“Jenny looked up, catching his eye as Salim drank what remained of his wine, and the corners of her lips flicked upwards, helpless to a smile. He could feel himself smiling broadly at her in return, everything suddenly dulling to singular, undeniable clarity. I understand, he wanted to say, I understand now what it means to search, and he reached out, taking her hand and observing the way surprise registered on her face.” he understands what it means to search and it’s to her I’m emo 

“Jenny felt Salim's chest hitch at her touch, his sharp inhale errantly mislaid. "I didn't expect it," he said hoarsely, apologetically, and she knew he meant I didn't think we would be like this, two threads through the eye of one needle. She knew he meant: I would have liked to have offered you less, to have asked for nothing in return.” SCREAMING I LOVE THIS

“It was hard to explain what happened when she met Salim. She took one look at his face, far younger than she'd expected, and felt something she could only call a sensation; another sign. Some intangible sense of purpose, of destiny and satisfaction, absolution and relief. She looked at Salim Amrani and knew, somehow, that the answer to her question was yes. “ DESTINY AND HE WAS THE ANSWER UGH OBSESSED

"We are always only a stone's throw from collapsing into another form of ourselves, in versions of lives we cannot relinquish. Luckily, the world has a way of showing us where we belong." LOVE THIS LINE SO MUCH

The Immortality Project:

One of my insta friends that I actually made through our love of your books, Katie (gingko.reads), put in one of her posts about this story that “Vigilante Shit” is the perfect song for this story and I AGREE. Actually, I think Taylor wrote the song after reading this story tbh. We love reading about two women finally getting revenge on a world/on men that took advantage of them. This story was also so funny I laughed out loud several times. The legal document format was so fun and unique. I feel like you always throw in some unique formats in your anthologies and it always makes it so fun! Loved Saffron and Nikita’s friendship in this too, felt like it showed the power of female friendship very well. 

-Some moments I loved: LOL she is such a ranter but so funny (she’s me ❤️). I just have “YES GIRL GET YOUR REVENGE” in my notes 100 times hahaha. Her name on false papers to get out of the country is Cinnamon (omg just realized two spices Saffron and Cinnamon I love it!). The whole VIP thing with Dick being the VIP and the “naughty boy” things from Saffron LOL LOVE HER. And the employee telling Saffron her friend might have murdered someone and her just saying I’m not worried I’ve seen death and it’s not as cute as her haha so good. “We are advised not to die” hahaha. She thinks saffron drugged her but Saffron insists she didn’t hahahah. “Aggressively writing things down” LOL. HER WISH AWWW I LOVE IT SO MUCH WHAT A GOOD ONE, THIS IS WHAT I WANT TOO. Saffron coming to visit her at the rehabilitation center awww. Tbh I can’t tell if the story was really just a mental break for her or if the wish she did with the witch came true because Saffron has money now and is successful while the dick and all his friends are either dead or going to jail. I like to think it is the latter. The ending being that quote reemphasized ugh perfection. 

-Some quotes I enjoyed/reactions to them:

“Am once again sober although not for long, ha ha. Have rung Idiot 1’s private security (once lent her a tampon & now we are of course Best Friends) asking where he’ll be and she has informed me he will be in a meeting, which means he will be in a disgusting “ ”gentlemen” “ (double quotes for Extreme Skepticism)’s club.” “It has occurred to me since awakening to a vicious sight (i.e. my face) that perhaps seduction is a method better outsourced. Will find accomplice and report back soon.”  SHE IS LITERALLY SO FUNNY I LOVE HER SO MUCH

“Thus fair it is unclear where the project is based, though I assume it is a tax-sheltered island because billionaire fuckbois unimaginatively love island and boats.” LOL they do  

“Things don’t always get better, she says, sometimes they just stay the same and sometimes they get worse, and she didn’t really expect to do anything or see anything and now she has.” sad but so true 

“Therefore I will travel to what is inevitably an island and infiltrate it to discover the source of The Immortality Project. Once there, I will destroy it. I will destroy it with my bare hands, and then I will return to give Dick the following message: You are a small man and worse than that you are a mortal one. You will die someday though no fault of mine-I will of course outlive you because I am a woman and this is what we do-but when you do, I want you to know that I could have saved you. Instead I sat in the sun with a beer in my hand and I laughed.” YES

“It has occurred to me since awakening to a vicious sight (i.e. my face) that perhaps seduction is a method better outsourced. Will find accomplice and report back soon.” HAHAHA I love her

“I am taking a moment to myself to reflect on the fact that Dick has stolen my life from me. Worse is that I let him do it. Why have I always cared for other people over myself? Why have I nurtured a bunch of meaningless stocks instead of my own desires? It occurs to me that at least if Dick lives forever he will do something with his life, even if that something is just being egregiously bad in bed with women who don't deserve him. If I could live forever, what would I do with the rest of my life? I've lived more in the last three days than in the entirety of my prior lifetime. If I died tomorrow nobody would even remember me. The most important thing in my life is to destroy Dick for what he stole from me, which for the record wasn't my job. Dick stole my whole life right out from under me. And I didn't even notice until after he'd already fit the whole thing into a cardboard box for me to find outside my office.” ugh relatable 

“It infuriates me that Dick has wealth enough to ensure that a hundred million Saffrons never see another bad day and yet he clings to it like he deserves it more than anyone.” THIS!!!

“So I say the first thing that comes to my tongue, which is: I wish that things were different. As in, I wish this were a different world, one less dominated by dicks and idiots and shitbags and more rewarding of Saffrons instead. I wish girls who didn’t quite know their own power yet would not get swept away by boys who did. I wish a man could not claim all my success for his own, just as I wish he could not simply point at me and diminish me to nothing. I wish I had allowed myself to be a little more difficult a little bit sooner in my life, because it seems like only once I got angry did my life actually start to begin.” SUCH A GREAT WISH I LOVE THIS VERY MUCH

Here is the picture of my insanity as promised:

-Amanda ❤️

well obviously I love the insanity (I always love seeing tabs, it’s such a wonderful compliment, like people who close their eyes when they eat your cooking, so validating) and I love that tradition with your friend. and I also know it was a hard year for you, and I’m so honored I was able to give you something that brought you joy. it’s nice to feel together in the ether etc etc

and thank you so much for your love for the immortality project! people don’t usually mention that one to me but I really love it. I mean, it was obviously super fun for me to write, I’m sure you can tell just by the style, but it’s really nice to see it called out in any way. I appreciate how attentive you are to every line of all my stories. thank you so much for the way you love my work!

[waugh-bao]

I love how Charlie’s voice is so distinctive you can hear it just by seeing a gif. I can totally hear him say ‘a Bo Diddley number’ in his accent. I can also imagine how he would say “Keith’s my bitch?! Blimey!” after seeing the tshirt you photoshopped for Keith. 😆😆

I really love both Charlie and Keith’s voices. Charlie had this very soft, sweet voice but overlaid with a thick old school cockney accent (all the dropped “h”s and the glottal stopped “t”s). Plus, as you said, the classic slang like “blimey” and “bloke.” It’s so him that it’s very easy to conjure up in your mind.

It’s nice that he didn’t try to change that about himself, too. There’s a lot of accent based classism in Britain and it says something that, even though he was the perfect gentleman, he wanted to be seen as self-made, not manor born, which isn’t nearly as celebrated there as it is in the US or some other Anglophone countries.

Bill can go play in traffic as far as I’m concerned, but he wasn’t wrong when he said that Mick’s cockney accent is a total affectation. Multiple people over the years have pointed out the same thing, and it’s really annoying, because I think a lot of people outside the UK don’t realize that accent doesn’t belong to a middle class boy from Dartford. He wants to play act being from the wrong side of the tracks when he isn’t and never was, for the sake of rock ‘n roll street cred.

Keith’s voice is, like everyone always says, very whiskey soaked and cigarette damage forward, but it’s also such a combination of accents. Cockney is in there, for sure, but there’s a surprising amount of RP, and some north eastern/mid-atlantic American, probably because of how long he’s been based out of the States. Personally I think he and Charlie should have narrated an audiobook together, it would have been amazing.

[starmoon-constellation]

Raven did the last one, I think I shall do this one :)

we're currently at 126 starlings, and have a tendency to grow at least once every week or so.

We use plural xe/xem (xe are), he/him and they/them pronouns as a collective

Starmoon Constellation. We chose "star" because our partner's nickname for us is little star, "moon" because of our deep connection and love for the moon/space, and "constellation" because of how we see ourselves as separate entities that work together to create a beautiful, complete persona. We left out "system" or similar words because we do not see ourselves in the way that those words make us imagine, such as a system/collection of gears working together to complete a process.

We collectively enjoy writing and playing Minecraft. We typically write using our own names, as it's safer that way (less possibility for an introject with more trauma xD) even if the character isn't true to us/our (exo)memories. Pertaining to Minecraft, we typically will get on Queercraft, a large LGBTA+ friendly community that has an amazing player base.

we greatly enjoy pop rock, alt rock, country, and instrumental (the last one is mainly because of me xP)

probably about 17-22

It's hard to explain this one. We collectively go by the name Minthe and use he/him pronouns. We call ourselves transgender (masculine presenting) and aroace/afamilial/aplatonic. Our singletsona enjoys writing, and Minecraft, as well as listening to audiobooks. He plays violin, and wants to learn piano some day. He aspires to become a published author one day, whether self-published or traditionally published. He loves collecting plushies.

Almost all of us have roles, some specialisd to our system, others easily found on Pluralpedia. We have a lot of protectors (of all types) and a fair few "holders" (of just about anything, from hyperfixations to emotions).

We've been a system all our life, but we only grew (more) aware of it about a year ago (we started using pluralkit on January 21st, so we consider this our syscovery day, as we only really, truly accepted our plurality when we began using pluralkit)

We had different names we would go by, those being Raven, Kendra, and Kia. Eventually, our (now) spouse pointed out that we acted completely different when going by a different name, and we eventually began to research and realised we must be plural :)

Switching is very gradual for us most of the time, and starts with passive influence before turning into actively being in the front. We mostly co-con/co-front, and so it's sometimes hard to tell when we switch because of this.

Switches are typically a mixture of voluntary and involuntary. We take shifts with being fronters, so anyone who wants to front can have the experience, but we can also be triggered to switch :)

Probably the companionship, the understanding of our collective life, the complete and utter empathy. We have all gone through the same things, and it's created an unbreakable bond between us, since we all can access information about our life, including the negative parts, in the Library of SMC.

Probably the fact that you're never truly alone, unless you take a rest (aka going dormant). You are never truly alone with your thoughts, and keeping secrets are hard.

we tend to differ greatly from the body. We typically are amab, and have extra appendages, such as tails or wings.

we have many fictives, with most of them being OC introjects. It'd take a whole new post to talk about them accurately, but they are all very much full of lore and interesting facts :)

we have an innerworld, yes. It's very expansive, and is continuously expanding without member interference. It will likely become its own galaxy soon. We have some "side" innerworlds as well, created by certain groups to give xem a personalised safe space.

Raven hates the sound of metal/ceramic on metal/ceramic, but it doesn't bother me that much. Raven also enjoys ramen noodles, which I find disgusting.

Pyre has a distinct British accent, while we have a more Southern US accent bodily. Merci also talks in a fictional language that has the same vibes as Italian, but she only really speaks in it when she begins to get frustrated or panicked.

amazing hard workers

almost all of us are LGBTA+ in some way :) most of us are a-spec, as well as most of us identifying as nonbinary/trans, though we do have some cis starlings that identify with xer innerworld forms.

yes! our Facebook has been alerted recently, while our husband and in-laws are also aware of the fact that we're plural, though the in-laws don't really touch on it any.

oh, there's probably many, but we can't remember any currently. We tend to write out innerworld happenings as if they were fictional stories; it helps us remember and cements it as an actual event.

be patient. don't worry about numbers. accept each person. don't try to restrain "problematic" starlings.

that we can be happy. that we aren't "evil" just because we're plural. That systems take up at least 1% of the population (this is based on recorded D.I.D./O.S.S.D. diagnoses), which is the same amount of people who have red hair or green eyes.

This was quite fun. I do hope we find another one of these someday :)

~ the Director

Plural Ask Game

We figured we’d try making an ask game! This is for anyone who’s a system–regardless of origin–to use. Remember that you’re not obligated to answer any of these if any are too personal!

How many members are in your system, and does this number change frequently?

What are your collective pronouns, if you have any?

What’s your system name if you have one, and how did you choose it?

Are there any activities your system members like to do together? Collective hobbies? Talk about those!

What sort of music do people in your system like?

What’s the average age of your systemmates?

If you have a singletsona, what is it? Explain a bit about them!

Does anyone in your system have roles? If so, what roles?

How long have you been a system and/or known of your system?

How did you discover your system? What was the process?

What does switching feel like to you, if you switch at all? 

Are your switches voluntary, involuntary or a mix? How often do you do it, if at all?

What’s your favourite part of being a system?

What’s your least favourite part of being a system, if you’re comfortable sharing?

Are your headmates generally different from the physical body? How do they differ from it?

Do you have any fictives/factives/etc? Tell us a little about them!

Does your system have a headspace? Are there multiple of them? What are they like?

Are there differences between systemmates surrounding sensory things? (For example, one person likes the taste of one food and another doesn’t.)

Does anyone have any different accents, or speak any different languages?

How would you describe your system in 3 words or less?

Do you have any LGBT+ headmates? What do they identify as?

Does anyone outside of the internet know you’re a system?

Do you have any cool/funny stories from inside the headspace that you’d like to share?

What’s some advice you’d give to yourself when you were first discovering your system?

What is something you wish singlets knew about plurality?

[innerdreamercollective]

🎧Listeners are loving 🎧

📚 ELECTRIFYING IN A KILT by Anna Durand

🎤Narrated by John Hartley, Marian Hussey &         Aaron Shedlock

Download this enemies-to-lovers romance now:

“Lona and Rafe’s chemistry was so hot! Enemies to lovers situation and I’m here for it! These narrators and author were all new to me and I loved every second! Give me all the accents and I’m in love! Aaron Shedlock I’ve listened to one other time and I’m for sure listening to more!! I'll definitely be reading more by this author! Lona and rafe get there happily ever after in the standalone series!” - Desiree, Goodreads

“I absolutely loved it!  The accents in the dual narration of this read / listen is amazing and the dialect and subsequent explanation of these new Gaelic works was also captivating.  Our main characters are Iona and Rafe who have the worst possible meet but the chemistry is electrifying (pun intended). I love the push and pull between these two characters and the subsequent secondary characters were wonderful.” - Jennifer, Bookbub

“This audiobook! I’m a sucker for audiobooks where the narrators have an accent, and this has not one, but TWO accents (Scottish and British, I believe). And their performances were so good! They definitely made the story even more interesting and engaging.” - Kimberly, Goodreads

@AnnaDurandFiction @AaronShedlockVoiceActor @mariannarratorandVO @homecookedbookspromos

#nowinaudio #AnnaDurand #HotScotsSeries

[david-d-levine]

Kuiper Belt Job audiobook countdown 5: Christa Lewis

Counting down to the June 18 release of the audiobook of my space opera heist novel THE KUIPER BELT JOB from PODIUM ENTERTAINMENT (@podiumentertainment) by giving you some information on the FIVE amazing voice artists they will be using for the different point-of-view characters! Starting with number 5: CHRISTA LEWIS!

Christa Lewis and her pseudonym Pippa Jayne have narrated approx. 300 audiobooks between them. Christa is a conservatory-trained actor with a smart and funny vibe who can also meet the moment in non-fiction thanks to a 17-year stint as newsreader, an appearance in Call of Duty Black Ops 3 as Sophia, the murderously lovelorn Robot and 5 years as the lead in the podcast The Hotel. Think Catherine O’Hara meets Jenna Ortega. Christa speaks accent-free German fluently and offers a variety of accents and dialects. Magically, there have been 8 Audio File Earphones Awards in Non-Fiction/Biography & Memoir, YA, and Fiction—as well as a SOVAS Voice Arts Award, a Sultry Listeners Award, a Listeners Choice Award and two Audie nominations. Both Christa and Pippa pull out all the stops to create an audiobook unique to their author's cadence, tone and style - with a lot of love, joy and delight thrown into the mix.

Christa reads the character ALICIA, THE THIEF. There’s no lock she can’t pick, no wall she can’t scale, no tiny opening she can’t shimmy through. She's warm and caring, everyone's friend, and hates it when people don't get along.

Christa Lewis: https://www.christalewis.com IG: @liquidbelles The Kuiper Belt Job: http://daviddlevine.com/kuiper Podium Entertainment: https://podiumentertainment.com Preorder the audiobook: https://podiumentertainment.com/titles/28122/the-kuiper-belt-job #spaceopera #scifi #heist #audiobook

[addierose444]

Initial Digital Minimalism Experiments 

As mentioned in recent blog posts, I don’t love how much I’ve been using digital technology in my day-to-day life. I’m required to be on a computer all day for work, so limiting my use of technology in my personal life just makes sense. In general, I’m looking to be more intentional about the way I spend my time. Not sure what I’d like to be doing with whatever time I get back, but the current priorities are rebuilding a reading habit, continuing to make time for rock climbing, and getting better about going to sleep on time.

I’m proud to say that I’ve never had a FaceBook, Instagram, or TikTok account. Obviously, I have this Tumblr account, but it’s not a problem for me as I don’t scroll through Tumblr. Even when I don’t have much to say, I benefit from writing blog posts as it allows me to be a creator not just a consumer of content. Content has become a bit of a cringy word, but that’s what it is. I will note, however, that procrastinating these blog posts does impact my sleep. While it would be cool to engage with readers, I’m so glad it’s a one-way interaction. Additionally, I do have a LinkedIn account, but I rarely check it and spend at most ten minutes scrolling through posts when I do.

For me, YouTube is a real-time suck. I genuinely enjoy most of the videos I watch and often just listen to the audio so it’s not always real screen time. Even so, it’s just too much. The changes I’ve implemented thus far are unsubscribing from several YouTube channels, disabling YouTube on my phone, and putting a 0-minute timer on the website itself from the web browser of my phone (via the Digital Wellbeing app). While they weren’t necessarily time sucks, there were several other apps I deleted to further declutter my phone. I’m still working on a full overhaul of my phone’s home screen and various settings but will be sure to keep you all updated. One thing I've done in the short term is add the screen time widget to my home screen for awareness. If you are curious, you can check out the what’s on my phone post I wrote during my sophomore year of college. 

Here’s a sneak peek into some digital technology that plays a positive role in supporting my hobbies and goals. First of all, I get my books through the Libby app to either read on my Kindle or listen to directly. (If you haven’t heard of Libby it’s an amazing app that allows you to borrow ebooks and audiobooks from your local library). I also use Goodreads to keep track of the books I’ve read as well as my want-to-read list. These climbing apps are less critical but fun to share. The KAYA app enables you to log climbs and watch beta videos. I also just downloaded the Kilter Board app which is used to control my gym’s new light-up climbing board and to log attempts/accents. While these climbing apps are cool to have, the most useful one is the simple habit tracker I created in Google Sheets. Speaking of Google Sheets, the other key digital tool is my expense tracking spreadsheet.

In thinking through where/how/when to use my various pieces of technology, the other big change I’ve made is moving my computer and its charger out of my bedroom. The plan is to only use my computer at my dining room table (the only table I have). While I may let myself use it on my couch from time to time, I’m hoping to have that space to be primarily dedicated to reading. Moving my computer is something I should have done a long time ago and I’m hoping sticks.