#author essay

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

secrets of farming (1863) - john w. large

"yeowch augh taking damage ough eurgh"

[throesofincreasingwonder]

"A story doesn't need a theme in order to be good" I'm only saying this once but a theme isn't some secret coded message an author weaves into a piece so that your English teacher can talk about Death or Family. A theme is a summary of an idea in the work. If the story is "Susan went grocery shopping and saw a weird bird" then it might have themes like 'birds don't belong in grocery stores' or 'nature is interesting and worth paying attention to' or 'small things can be worth hearing about.' Those could be the themes of the work. It doesn't matter if the author intended them or not, because reading is collaborative and the text gets its meaning from the reader (this is what "death of the author" means).

Every work has themes in it, and not just the ones your teachers made you read in high school. Stories that are bad or clearly not intended to have deep messages still have themes. It is inherent in being a story. All stories have themes, even if those themes are shallow, because stories are sentences connected together for the purpose of expressing ideas, and ideas are all that themes are.

[doubledaybooks]

Praise for Katherine Rundell's new nonfiction bestiary of extraordinary animals, VANISHING TREASURES

“Whether she is writing about a jumping spider, a hedgehog, or the curious, pine-cone-like mammals known as a pangolin, Katherine Rundell stuns us with wonders. Each of her essays is a polished gem—and each will leave you newly smitten with love for life.” —Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus

[that-butch-archivist]

"Femmes, through a reshaped femininity, exhibit an assertive sexuality that does not conflate desire with political practice. This very assertiveness can be politically empowering for femmes who like to play with the idea of power but are not disempowered by this play. For example, femmes with a bottom identification can renegotiate the dynamics of passivity/activity such that their feminine position is one of receiving pleasure rather than of being receptive solely for someone else's pleasure. What seems to be passivity is actually activity: she allows the butch to control her pleasure, but this control and the pleasure are exactly what the femme has demanded. For the bottom femme as for other varieties of femme sexuality--top, s/m, bisexual, or others--her own female sexual agency is paramount. The femme who plays with power provides a model that negotiates rather than ignores power differentials in relationships. [...] In many ways, femmes' chosen pleasures rather than politically prescribed pleasures are radically feminist."

-- "An Introduction to Sustaining Femme Gender," written by Laura Harris & Liz Crocker. (Emphasis in bold mine.)

[cy-cyborg]

The Perfect Prosthetic: Video Version

The perfect prosthetic is a super common trope surrounding amputees and people with limb differences who use a prosthetic limb, so let's talk about it!

This is a kind of extended version of the written post from yesterday with mostly the same stuff, plus additional examples, "red flags" that this trope is showing up in your work to watch out for and some additional detail that got cut from the written version.

[drenched-in-sunlight]

saying this as respectfully as possible but. Do not put fandom content creators on a pedestal. We are also just fans contributing to a community just as you are. We have boundary on our own work and that’s it. What I say is not and should not be considered sth the whole fandom should listen to. I’m just a normal ass person ranting about things on my blog. If it does not have a fandom tag for others to engage in, do not make it out to be me trying to start fights or addressing the whole community. Because it’s not.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again, my art, my lore talk, is biased. I’ve never tried to hide that I view Marika a certain way and will always develop my theory following that base assumption.

Aside from translation stuffs and pointing out in-game items, everything else I say you can look at it, agree or disagree, and move on to form your own opinions. Just because I draw stuffs doesn’t mean you get to saddle me with responsibilities about managing fandom expectations. What the hell? I’m a fan artist, I’m the last person who you should look at for “leaderism” (?) WHAT?

I can and will be a hater in my own space, like I know sometimes other artists will just post their stuffs and not engage too heavily with fandom, and for a while I did try to do that here (because I’m already a dramatic ass on twitter), that’s just not me though.

You will get art and you will get my opinions as well.

[larkingame]

hello hello! this november bianca (@beeanca-writing ) and I our hosting our very own writing and productivity challenge!

this is an indie (and slightly more lax) alternative to NaNoWriMo, where the focus is routine, accountability and above all else progress!

the rules for this challenge are simple:

prior to friday, november 1st 2024 choose a writing goal. this can be a total word count, daily word count, a page count, a certain number of chapters or an amount of time spent writing. remember to choose something attainable for you in thirty days. make a post on tumblr, discord, substack, twitter...(somewhere) presenting yourself (basically who you are as a writer!) your goal and discussing your writing projects or plans using the tag #novemberwripro!

plan and establish a routine. productivity isn't so much about time management, a packed schedule or any sort of fancy tools. productivity is about consistency. by establishing a writing routine for yourself you'll put yourself into a familiar enough rhythm that not only will you be able to write when you don't necessarily want to--you're setting yourself up to produce the best work you can possible put forth.

use your routine to help you work on your writing goal daily throughout the month of november. the goal of any writing challenge is to show some sort of progress on your current projects after all.

document your progress in some way. whether this be through a month long journal, a vlog on youtube or tiktok or even just posts in the discord server or on tumblr--it's important to reflect on all the work you've done and help build a community of accountability!

all are welcome to join--whether that be novelists, non-fiction writers, interactive fiction developers, fic writers, essayists, poets, screen-writers, academics or those simply looking to do more writing!

helpful links you may need:

challenge discord | substack

[neproxrezi]

someone else could write it better than me but i love how the fucked up nasty shit you can make harry do/say/be in disco elysium isn't just like, random stuff caused simply by the player having free will and control over him but they're parts of who he is and who he has been

you're not a tabula rasa. you're a sudden shock of blank pages in a big, aged, damaged book and sometimes the paper you're trying to write a better man on is torn and you see something through the gaps nobody needed to see ever again. and it's just there now again, back to the surface

[the-hot-zone]

recommendations for @mail-me-a-snail & honestly everyone who follows me bc y'all know i give out recommendations like candy. i think especially you may like I think love is something that happens to other people and HOW TO BE A DOG (the latter is similar to Your Faithful Servant).

[sirghostheart]

Thinking about the post that says "Congratulations! You've fallen for that character's facade" but it's about how Ginger Fitzgerald and Jennifer Check's relationship to monsterhood is misinterpreted as a #FemaleRage and #GoodForHer girlboss power fantasy instead of tragedies about about kids way over their heads surviving a traumatic assault that robbed them of their humanity and now lash out in a desperately grip for some resemblence of power.

[cookie-nom-nom]

Reading Barrayar I felt trapped in Cordelia’s head. It’s incredibly effective for the dread of war as a civilian. Plans and machinations happening beyond you, with no input. Hearing of things happening that seem far off and like yeah that’s awful but then suddenly it dominoes in a way that destroy your life and it’s not your fault and you could've done nothing at all to prevent it. Especially the tension of being hunted in the Dendarii mountains with no idea how the war is going, if they’ve already lost, if it is already too late. Cordelia is doing actively important things in service of the war by sheltering Gregor, yet there's this pervasive feeling of helpless lack of control. She spends most of the book with this dread of not knowing when the next threat to their family will come, and I don’t think it could’ve been done so effectively if we had access to the information Aral had. I found it frustrating at times, since it felt like Cordelia was swept up in events with little agency (at first; obviously our dear captain didn’t remain there). I wanted so badly to be with Aral seeing and knowing and making the decisions.

But that’s the point! Most people have absolutely zero agency in those situations and little information and it’s terrifying. Barrayar captures the feeling of being a civilian in war where so many narratives narrow in upon the heroes and 'men of history' that control conflicts. That's what readers expect. I think that’s why I loved the ending so much. After so long trapped with Cordelia, just trying to survive the larger machinations of Barrayar’s bloody politics, it felt so, so good to finally be on the offensive, to have information the opponents don’t, to finally have power and the means to control what happens. It's a relief to the constant tension of having no agency in a giant conflict that frankly Cordelia had no business being affect by, yet was swept up in because of her love of Aral.

Which is the second thing I deeply enjoyed in Barrayar. I love how the war is made so human. A messy tangle of human relationships control it. I can’t stop thinking about the hostages. There are just so many children being used because the war holds the future hostage. Tiny precious Miles utterly incapable of comprehending how large a pawn he is. Young grieving Gregor vital to the plans of both sides whether dead or alive. Elena, who should be of no importance but she is because that's the kid of an unimportant soldier, just like every other hostage is another piece in the web of the war. I keep thinking about the relatives of Aral’s men caught in the capital. The hostages that Aral refuses to take. Everyone just trying to take care of those they love, and the points where they must put other priorities over their relationships are heart wrenching.

Barrayar looks dead on at how little people try to survive a civil war. From the mountains where the fighting seems so far, and information is slowed to a trickle of the singular mailman. The invasion of forces that disrupts people who may not even know there’s a war yet. The scientists and the genius lost in a single blast that goes unnoticed. The urban populations trying to sneak in food and people and keep their heads down. Random citizens debating who to sell out, weighing risks and bounties, if it will get them the favor with the occupiers that will help them survive. All so small in the grand scheme of things, and yet they are who Barrayar concerns itself with.

Cordelia’s uncertainty and fear would’ve been undermined if we were allowed to see in the heads of people driving the conflict, because Barrayar isn’t about those people. It is the desperation of two mothers, powerless and kept in the dark, that topples the regime.

Addendum: Cordelia’s relationship to Aral firmly places her in an upper class position that is important to note when discussing the role of civilians/‘little people’ within this analysis. But as a woman on Barrayar she is extremely limited in the power she is allocated, especially compared to someone like Aral, which would be the military leadership POV that novels more focused on the grander scope of war would utilize. Again not to say Cordelia has no agency or power, but it is not to the degree of the people in charge. Thus I place her alongside the average people swept up in a war outside their control. Still, her position as a Vor Lady gives her some access knowledge and connections that she turns into power, which while limited are far more than the average citizen. Her significance to Vordarrian is exclusively viewed as yet another hostage, an underestimation that Cordelia readily exploits, but still afforded only due to her status. Cordelia occupies a position of importance but not power beyond the scope of the people she’s formed direct relationships with, which only further ties into the essay's thesis.

[reallybadblackoutpoems]

protect your family from lead in your home (2020) - united states environmental protection agency

"im so full of lead paint yum"

[raspberryusagi]

Me, rambling to my wife about this crackpot theory I came up with in the shower about how Les Miserables may have been an answer to The Count of Monte Cristo, or at least could be read as such: ... But then Valjean didn't personally screw Javert over like Dantes' enemies did-

My wife: Are you sure Valjean didn't screw Javert? I thought I read that on AO3 once.

[doubledaybooks]

The animal kingdom is more surprising and magical than we know! VANISHING TREASURES by Katherine Rundell shares 23 essays on unique and endangered animals that we share the world with---plus! Each chapter begins with an illustration, making it the perfect gift for animal lovers.

The lemur lives in matriarchal troops led by an alpha female (it’s not unusual for female ring-tailed lemurs to slap males across the face when they become aggressive). Whenever they are cold or frightened, they group together in what’s known as a lemur ball, paws and tails intertwined, to form a furry mass as big as a bicycle wheel.

[that-butch-archivist]

"I am a femme. I pined for women for more than a decade following that visit to New Orleans, agonizing for months at a time until finally I would write in my journal, "I think I'm a L-E-S...," only to begin the cycle again, and again. Some of my fears were the usual what-does-it-mean-to-be-a-lesbian kind, generated by a homophobic society. I also had another kind of fear, which was that being a lesbian meant giving up my flamboyance and my love of changing myself through makeup and costume. I was afraid that I would have to wear army surplus pants for the rest of my life. And I knew fucking was important to me. If tribadism was controversial (as it was in the seventies), would I ever have wild, passionate sex again? That was quite a conflict. All my fantasies were about women, but it seemed as though being with women meant leaving my passions behind. It was made clear to me by the lesbian community that my conventionally pretty features and hourglass figure were not considered lesbian enough (being pretty wasn't politically correct). And society told me I was too pretty to be a lesbian. So was I judged, based on the same societal norms, by both groups. Being femme isn't about what I'm wearing, although it can be. I don't understand why being a lesbian who wears a three-piece suit is considered a social radical, while a lesbian who wears a dress, her sexuality up-front yet unavailable to the heterosexual norm, is not. Why is that only men get to be flamboyant in order to be considered socially radical? From my perspective that is letting men have all the fun again."

- An excerpt from "Femme: Very Queer Indeed," an essay written by Victoria Baker and found in The Femme Mystique. (Emphasis in bold my own.)

[justbrowsinv]