#author nation

[krealmccoy]

20BooksVegas Recap (Part One)

Now that everything has come to an end, I felt the need to review my last 20BooksVegas experience with everyone. With there being so much to unpack mentally, I thought why not break it up into several blogs? I mean, why else have a blog, if not to reflect the cool things that have gone down in my life? This was my third year at 20Books, but my first year participating in RAVE. And besides my…

[bixels]

I watched Starship Troopers tonight.

[wordscount]

This was in my head and I had to make it.

[kazbiter]

very interested in how the storyline of ronan's sexuality is developed in the dream thieves as a battle between kavinsky and gansey while adam is almost never present in these scenes, which makes it even more interesting that we found out in CDTH that ronan was set on adam the moment he saw him. i think that ronan is attracted on some level to both gansey and kavinsky (you can draw the lines of how much romantic intention you think he hold towards either of the yourself, that's a rabbit hole I would need a whole other post to go down) but more so I think he was attracted to the IDEA of both of them and certain qualities that each possessed, and that the real question wasn't does ronan want gansey or kavinsky because we know he wants adam but rather who's qualities resonate more with who ronan is, or who he is choosing to be at this critical moment in his character development. kavinsky is a dangerous thrill and often comes wrapped in ronan's other favorite self destructive attempts to outrun himself, while gansey is ronan's history and proof of his deep capacities for loyalty and love. he tells kavinsky it was never going to be me and you and that it's not going to be ronan and gansey because that was never the question- maggie was obviously always planning on bluesy and pynch. the answer to who ronan WANTS in adam. the question of who ronan IS- that's what he's trying to decide here. his self hatred is such a heavy weight on him and theme in tdt, and the kavinsky/gansey dichotomy represents the the path he will choose to take to deal with it- keep try to drive faster than his demons or accept that he can still be loved even if he isn't the person he once was. the dream thieves my beloved ronan lynch my beloved

[cupcakeinat0r]

Why do I feel like there’s like 8 of us collectively carrying this fandom???

[lylahammar]

this fat liberation month I'm wishing for every british author to be visited by the ghosts of fatphobic characters they've written past present and future

[bucephaly]

It's kinda shocking to me how few people seem to know how prevalent the 'my great grandmother was cherokee' myth is and how it's almost never actually true, especially when it comes with things like 'never signed up' or 'fell off the trail' or 'courthouse burned down destorying the documentation' etc etc.

People just don't even seem to know the history like.. when the Trail happened. My great great great grandfather was 2 years old during Removal in 1838, so peoples 'my great grandmother hid in the mountains!' is so clearly wrong. And we have rolls. From before and after removal, rolls done by cherokee nation and others by the government, rolls that were not stored in one random flammable courthouse. It's not difficult to find the actual evidence of ancestry.

And just.. there are lots of ways those family stories get started. It was a practice during the confederacy to claim cherokee ancestry to show one's family had 'deep roots in the south' that they were there before the cherokee were removed. Many people pretended to be cherokee and applied for the Guion-Miller payout just to try to steal money meant for cherokees - 2/3rds of the applicants were denied for having 0 proof of actual cherokee ancestry. [We even see lawyers advertising signing up for the Miller roll just to try to get free money.] And the myth even started in some families in the cherokee land lotteries, where the land stolen from us was raffled off, including the house and everything that was left behind when the cherokees were removed. We have seen people whose families just take these things stolen from the cherokee family and adopt them into their own family story, saying that they were cherokee themselves.

If you had some family story about being cherokee and you wanna have proof one way or the other, check out this Facebook group run by expert cherokee genealogists that do research for free. Just please read the rules fully and respect the researchers. They run thousands of people's ancestries a year and their average is only around 0.7% of lines they run actually end up having true cherokee ancestry.

[loopyarts]

My whole digital sketch/doddle spread of Holm. Aka me figuring out how to draw him while I am also having fun with it. He’s also my favourite minor character from dungeon Meshi. :3c He is just so adorable to me and I love this goofy 28-30 year old gnome.

[kataraslove]

as someone who has recently read the reckoning of roku, it’s really not the anti fire nation propaganda that a certain subsection of fandom is making it out to be. yes, gyatso says those words to roku, but he’s angry - at both the world and at himself for the death of his sister. he later apologizes to roku. the book does not paint gyatso out to be in the right, and neither does it paint all fire nation citizens to be in the wrong. the narrative even makes a distinction between the good fire nation citizens (ta min and roku) and prejudicial fire nation citizens (sozin, primarily), and some morally ambiguous ones like dalisay, but they’re more or less abolished from any accountability for partnering with sozin.

avatar the last airbender does not do a good job at displaying much of the context associated with the crimes of the fire nation, aka the climate and perspectives that justified sozin eradicating the air nomads and many of the benders in the southern water tribe. we know from avatar that sozin wanted to conquer the rest of the world for fire nation domination and expansion, but we’re not given much insight into the causal factors that allowed him to conduct genocide and colonialism, beyond “he was able to do it all in one day with the power of the comet,” and “he was a very bad man.”

the reckoning of roku provides the context for all of that, the factors that contributed to sozin’s blood-thirst. which means seeing sentiment from sozin that view the air nomads - and their pacifist ways of life - as inferior and below human. the novel doesn’t particularly attempt to humanize sozin, not in the way that other medias do when exploring the backstory of their villain. at the end, the takeaway from the novel is that sozin is on the road to becoming the ultimate fascist we all know him for, but this time we’re provided more context into how he became that fascist, and why roku hesitated to kill him.

is it more critical of the fire nation than most of the franchise? yes, i would say so, and having a filipino author be the one to offer that commentary is an excellent decision by avatar studios. but the extent of the critique is still more or less along the lines of “this one guy was truly the operations behind it,” which is still consistent with what we’ve seen in atla. there’s nothing too radical introduced in terms of colonial theory, unlike what parts of the fandom are saying.

which leads me to my final point: if this is how badly a subsection of fandom (aka fire nation worshippers and zutara shippers [not mutually exclusive]) are reacting to the simple notion exploring how sozin committed genocide, then they’ve hit further rock bottom than i can imagine. not only that, but this type of reactionary behaviour risks alienating other parts of the fandom; for instance, fans of the avatar novels who otherwise would have given the ship and the shippers grace.

in other words, many of these hardcore shippers “criticizing” the roku novel have no one to blame but themselves if their behaviour leads to the alienation of regular fans. this loud subsection of fandom is so caught up in their one-sided, imaginary fantasy where everything in the franchise somehow revolves around aang/kataang vs zuko/zutara, that the Evil Bryke are always targeting them, to the point that they’ll fail to realize that the fire nation and fire nation characters are often absolved from accountability across the IP, and the fire nation is explored much more than the other nations are.

[rs-hawk]

Kinda gross you're sexualizing your culture. Literally playing into colonist fantasies about the "sexy savage Indian"

I have been trying to find a way to respond to this because I think this brings up the debate of cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation. This is my personal take, and if any other Indigenous people disagree with me, that is their opinion, and they are right to have it.

Here's the thing, you're talking about my culture. My heritage. My ancestorial beliefs. I have talked a few times about how growing up I didn't have much positive representation for that part of myself, and how hard it was for me. That is a large part of why I write about Indigenous coded characters or about Indigenous creatures. Before I began writing my own stories, I had never read a single romance novel with any Indigenous main character (if you know any, definitely let me know!), aside from Cowboys and Indians novels, which for me is not included in "positive representation" (but if other Indigenous people want to, that is up to them).

If you were to bring this up about say the Straggele, I would understand more because just because I have studied folklore and culture from around the world, doesn't make it mine. If someone who was Swiss reached out to me and said something, I could understand where that came from. However, allowing parts of my history to influence my writing, getting to create characters that I see myself in, reading more into the history of my nations and our cousin and sister nations, amongst so many other things, is not sexualizing my culture. I am not appropriating myself or playing into stereotypes by writing what makes me happy.

I also want to add that the colonist fantasy includes a lot of racist stereotypes, which I don't put in my writing. There are no Indigenous women who use their body to get what they want or trick European men into helping them. There are no damsels in distress Indigenous women who just blink their big brown eyes and sling their braids over their shoulders as they ask for help. They're not naked and flaunting themselves or anything like that. Also, how are any of my characters "savages"? All of my stories are written in roughly this day and age aside from an ongoing commission.

It is not playing into colonist fantasies to write about Indigenous people. It is not playing into colonist fantasies for me to want to write about creatures from my own culture. Just like it would not be playing into colonist fantasies to sexualize a Kelpie as I'm also mixed with Celtic, or a Babau as I'm also mixed with Italian.

I am allowed to celebrate and use aspects of my culture and history, any and all of it from any part of my culture from any part of my family.

[fateunwritten-if]

Hurricane Milton

Hello Everyone!

I wanted to take a moment to update you all on my situation as Hurricane Milton approaches. I am currently in the path of the storm, and there’s a chance I may lose power. Unfortunately, I was hoping to complete the update before the hurricane hits my city, but I wasn’t able to finish it in time.

As the storm gets stronger, please keep in mind that my ability to work on the project and communicate with you may be affected. While my city has not issued an evacuation order yet, that could change in the next 24 hours.

I appreciate your understanding and support during this time. I would be grateful if you could keep me in your thoughts and wish for safety for everyone affected by the storm.

Thank you, and I’ll do my best to keep you updated as time goes on.

Stay safe, Amelia <3

[novlr]

“You'll probably take a lot of wrong turns and then one day just end up writing something you have to write.” — Alice Munro

[eliotquillon]

have recently realised that the reason why i struggle to seriously ship kevin with anyone in aftg is because i find the idea of him perpetually third-wheeling to be too funny. sorry kevin

[thegentleintellectual]

Excerpt From: Terese Marie Mailhot. “Heart Berries.”