#at least two books a month

[sunrisenovaa]

“A divine place that is just as misunderstood as “balance” is. Where Blackness intersects on the realm of sexuality is simultaneously spiritual, political, social, and physical. We don’t have to perfectly understand Black asexuality to make way for it. Asexuality is already valid. We can know this about ourselves, and we can have trouble with understanding it, unpacking it, and feeling secure within it.”

Excerpt From Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

[deoidesign]

My comic is so pretty...

The hiatus is letting me take a little extra time on these episodes, and I'm definitely putting it to good use!!!

[ricky-mortis]

Howdy hello- guess who made a wings au :)

More to come with this eventually- I’m working on my designs for other characters at the moment, but for now we’ve got Red-Tailed Hawk for Curt and Eagle Owl for Owen.

For DMA I had Barn Owl wings because a) Barn Owls are beautiful and I wanted to draw the wings for them, and more importantly, b) Owen would probably want to disguise his wings, and it would make sense if it was as a different type of owl. I just assume he’d dye his feathers in some way or another. Look- just don’t think about it too much.

[deadrocks]

I’m excited to subvert the “good drow players are all just Drizzt superfans” thing by making a good drow that is herself a Drizzt superfan.

[wonder-worker]

I've been thinking about the tragedy of Elizabeth Woodville living to see the end of her family name.

I don't mean her family with her husband, which lived on through her daughter and grandson. I mean her own.

Her sisters died, one by one, many of them after 1485. When Elizabeth died, only Katherine was left, and she would die before the turn of the century as well.

All her brothers died, too. Lewis died in childhood. John was executed. Anthony was murdered. Lionel died suddenly in the peak of Richard's reign, unable to see his niece become queen. Edward perished at war. Richard died in grieving peace. For all the violence and judgement the family endured, it was "an accident of biology" that ended their line: none of the brothers left heirs, and the Woodville name was extinguished. We know the family was aware of this. We know they mourned it, too:

“Buy a bell to be a tenor at Grafton to the bells now there, for a remembrance of the last of my blood.”

Elizabeth lived through the deposition and death of her young sons, and lived to see the end of her own family name. It must have been such a haunting loss, on both sides.

[fictionadventurer]

Potential September Reading

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien (ideally in audio)

An English Squire by Christabel R. Coleridge

A Sherlock Holmes story (and/or a screen adaptation)

C.S. Lewis nonfiction

A sensation or mystery novel

A piece of one of the Psmith stories

Some kind of nonfiction book

[cassandrva]

let's talk about the fish/water/christ symbolism in the game of kings. with spoilers

fish (as ιχθυς) is an acronym for christ, and it's the first food jesus eats after being resurrected, right? it symbolizes rebirth, life, and christ himself. i personally think fish are slippery and cold-blooded too, but that's neither here nor there.

now look at how the game of kings starts: "lymond is back". we immediately know this book is about returning, it's about rebirth. in fact, the first thing we see is the man himself submerged in a body of water and coming out on the other side, after a baptism of sorts, as the character he will play for most of the book: lymond the outlaw, lymond the traitor.

the first words out of his mouth are "i am a narwhal": he identifies himself as a fish right away, and not just any fish but the unicorn fish; the unicorn of course being scotland's national animal. in perspective, he tells us everything we need to know about him: his status as a christ figure, his destiny to be reborn, his complicated relationship with his country.

the next time he's in a body of water, it's the second chapter and he's dying from a head injury in a bog. he's washed clean, this time, too: from his own identity. he's free to inhabit another character from the lymond constellation. it's also pretty funny that he's found by sym while he's going fishing ("you’ve hooked a twenty-pounder this time, my lad"), and he's nursed back to health by someone named Christian. not subtle.

lymond seems to be pretty into this whole fish and rebirth thing, does he not? he wouldn't lie to us. he wouldn't pretend to embrace life while actively seeking death, right? anyway, no relation at all, when the baby queen mary tries feeding him a fish he pretends to eat it and secretly throws it away. the fish is described as struggling and barely alive, which again i am sure is a coincidence.

then some stuff happens, and the next time lymond is offered fish he doesn't have it in him to keep pretending. he doesn't want the damn fish. newsflash, asshole (richard): he really, really wants to die. this is my favorite scene for many reasons, and one of them is the perfect juxtaposition of its literal and symbolic meanings: richard says he wants to see lymond hanged, but what he does is to drag him away from the tomb-like dovecote and towards running water, makes him eat the damn fish again and again until the miracle is complete. he's holding on to his brother with both hands and teeth before he even realizes he's doing it.

when it comes to an end the fish is off the hook, christ is off the cross and for once he's not sacrificed for the sins of others, and we close on him in his mother's arms in a beautiful literary pietà.

there's so much stuff i purposefully didn't mention and probably didn't notice, this is just a tiny example of the gorgeous figurative and thematic cohesion in this novel. i love it. thank you dorothy dunnett.

[mercifullymad]

Radical compassion is a will to care for, a commitment to feel with, a striving to learn from, and an openness to be vulnerable before a precarious other, though they may be drastically dissimilar to yourself. Radical compassion is not an appeal to an idyllic oneness where difference is blithely effaced. Nor is it a smug projection of oneself into the position of another, thereby displacing that other. Nor is it an invitation to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes and amble, like a tourist, through their lifeworld, leaving them existentially barefoot all the while. Rather, radical compassion is an exhortation to ethically walk and sit and fight and build alongside another whose condition may be utterly unlike your own. Radical compassion works to impart care, exchange feeling, transmit understanding, embolden vulnerability, and fortify solidarity across circumstantial, sociocultural, phenomenological, and ontological chasms in the interest of mutual liberation. It persists even and especially toward beings who are the objects of contempt and condemnation from dominant value systems.

Most urgently, mad methodology primes us to extend radical compassion to the madpersons, queer personae, ghosts, freaks, weirdos, imaginary friends, disembodied voices, unvoiced bodies, and unReasonable others, who trespass, like stowaways or fugitives, in Reasonable modernity.

How to Go Mad without Losing Your Mind by La Marr Jurelle Bruce

[picturebookshelf]

a collection of Pride-related picture books I read this June!

[seraphic-sibyl]

I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been born a frog. I should have been

[its-yashas-strong-arms]

has it really been only one week since my last therapy session. feels like it's been a month

[fandomchaosposts]

people on tiktok are so casual about oh I have 300 unread books in my house let's read them before I buy more like bro? I don't even have 300 books in total in my house maybe you should realize that's not normal???

[cauldron-burn-and-fire-bubble]

somewhat rough sketch of my halman concept

[oneidiotwithasword]

the absolute tragedy of hyping yourself up to see your ex-situationship after two months and they’ve gotten hotter 😭😭😭

[cicadaknight]

Finished binding volume 1 of Becoming Whole!

@pikapeppa thank you for being so lovely and sharing your writing with the world! (And for hyping me up and sending me pretty photomode screenshots)

[fictionadventurer]

Potential August Reads:

Helen by Maria Edgeworth

Marcel's Letters by Carolyn Porter

Heretics by G.K. Chesterton

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion by Beth Brower

Something by Rose Wilder Lane

Poetry by James Whitcomb Riley

Something Jane Austen related (movies/miniseries count)