#but that's also just..... true of how things were at that time. historical romance doesn't shy away from the fact that women have

[hawnks]

Dreading the "Yakuza Princess is disgusting and misogynistic 😌" think pieces that are coming.........

[darklinaforever]

"If you love the character for their personality their assigned sex or gender doesn't matter."

Except that a character's personality and story can be tied to their gender. Let's take an example of GOT. With some modifications, you could have a story where Bran was a girl, because his path doesn't tie in with his gender much (except at the very beginning). However, you can't have Dany or Sansa or Cersei being men since their arcs and personalities are very much dependent on them being women. This goes the other way round too, it wouldn't make sense for Robb Stark to be a woman (since his role is the Heir of Winterfell).

People like to behave as if gender/sex of a character doesn't matter, and that's true only in certain conditions- mostly modern stories (for instance if Bridgerton was a modern story), or stories set in some world where men and women have a similar upbringing and freedoms (something like the Grisha side of the Grishaverse, for instance- Alina is raised the same as Mal, and Zoya is raised similarly to the men). This idea falls apart in historical scenarios where men and women have different roles in the society and their roles affect their personality. Bridgerton is no exception, since we have already seen how different the expectations were from Anthony and Daphne in S1.

Plus, as I said before, part of me is happy to have a central romance coming between two women.

Like I already said, representation is always nice when you're part of the LGBTQ+ community.

But I'm still mainly disappointed not to have Michael Stirling and Franchael as I had more or less imagined.

If there is one book from which I expected the adaptation with the most fidelity / nod to the original book, it was for When he was Wicked.

And I don't think Bridgerton is the show made for central lgbtq+ romances since there are the central couples of each book to adapt who are all, well, a man and a woman.

They can create excellent subplots for queer couples (like with Reynold & Brimsley in Queen Chaotte who were great for me, but for Bridgerton. Or they can even invent spin-offs if they absolutely want central LGBTQ+ romances for this universe.

Frankly, since the Bridgerton books aren't crazy, I agree with Netflix's free adaptation.

But the adaptation still has problems in itself with too much boring subplot sometimes instead of spending more time on the central couple and... well just the Bridgerton family dynamic ?

But there were still things that were good in the books. (for example, if we could have kept the intelligent Edwina of the books instead of going too far into the delirium of the engagement and marriage with Anthony in season 2...)

And if there is one Bridgerton book that is really objectively good it was When he was Wicked. So I still find it a shame.

And then, yes, even if the books are not crazy they have a community of fans and these books are the reason why the Netflix show exists.

So the least we could do would perhaps be not to touch the central couples ?

The heart of Bridgerton is the Bridgerton family and their romances.

So for me the show should not touch on the genders of the original couples and also have more moments within the Bridgerton family.

[o-wild-west-wind]

so after the s2 teaser drop the pirates have been ping-ponging inside my brain for the past few days rapidly enough to reach a boiling point and I think it’s just cooked a theory: the Kiss™ was, for all intents and purposes, a marriage proposal—and Ed’s not raiding weddings just because he feels like the possibility of a future marriage is off the cards, but because he sees himself as, quite literally, having been jilted by a man who just said yes to his proposal.

Prefacing that a) I know the historical context is not (and absolutely should not) be given much weight in this show, and b) I am not a historian (so please correct me if I say anything patently ~falshe~) but that said and with my only qualification as being a Certified Slut for period dramas, I think a case could be made that this show—and Ed specifically—could be assuming an era-specific formula for romance.

While the majority of society was kind of a free-for-all when it came to sex/marriage/etc. in the 18th century, the upper echelons were still bound to a relatively strict level of propriety, as well as transactional views of a relationship; and at the same time, this was a period when the notion of marrying for love was rising in popularity (Stede, of course, is the poster child of someone forced into this contradiction). For the upper classes, you'd be lucky to get a period of courtship before the actual marriage, because if you did, it meant you got a shot at getting to know the person you were going to end up with (and had the potential for love). And—as such—courtship was kind of a thrilling, romantic thing with a few common qualities: it tended to be very public, very loaded & grandiose, and very brief, and even though it didn't have to end in marriage, marriage was always the end goal. You can probably see where I'm going here.

I think it's easy to read the "you wear fine things well" scene as a possible soft-launch of their courtship, and Lucius's nudges solidify it. Courtship was traditionally full of big, romantic gestures—maybe planning treasure hunts and setting ships on fire weren't typical ones, but they sure do count—and as much "getting to know you" as possible. Like dating, it was the time when you'd learn the other person's values, hobbies, preferences, etc., except perhaps to a shallower degree given the typical lack of privacy. If anything, Ed and Stede have a leg up in this respect.

Now, I do think it's a misconception that the majority of marriage proposals in this time happened after, like...3 weeks of knowing each other, but the trope is there for a reason. It was a lot more common for the engagement period to be the time you really got to know each other, and it wasn't abnormal for the engagement to last longer than the actual courtship; a marriage proposal kind of WAS the first truly official step in someone's relationship socially, emotionally, and physically. And while this might not have been true of the rungs of society Ed has been a part of, it definitely would've been true of Stede's.

Now, I don't think Stede is really thinking consciously of all of this during the timeline he's with Ed; he's intent on breaking all the rules he's felt strangled by his whole life. But Ed—he wants all that. He loves the idea of an aristocratic life, but he's also a romantic who wants an aristocratic love. Like how so many of us romanticize Jane Austen novels because it's a world we're so far removed from, Ed probably romanticizes love in Stede's world. He doesn't want the free-for-all he's been living; he loves the thrill of a courtship, of gentlemanly sensibilities, of the metaphorical dance of it all. And when an upper-crust gentleman appears to have initiated this courtship—and when he's being encouraged by everyone (except Izzy, but there's even more romance in rebellion) to reciprocate—he's going to indulge in it with all his heart. He's literally living a romantic novel dream world, and once he's sure of Stede's feelings, he has absolutely no reason not to expect that their trajectory is marriage. Sure, Stede is a pirate now—but he's still a gentleman, and isn't that what being wooed by a gentleman means?

So when they're in a desperate situation and the bar for grand gestures can't go higher, and they experience true privacy for the first time ever, and Stede kisses back, and he says yes to running away together—and Ed even asks for confirmation to make sure it’s all for real—"yes?" "I think so?" "yes!"—that's as good as a vow. That's a promise on par with a proposal. And this is probably when it clicks for Stede, too—he hears Mary's words, "we never would've chosen each other," and suddenly he realizes that he can finally choose love! And so there they are: relationship made official, 1700s style.

Cut to Ed, crashing weddings and stealing little cake toppers in dramatically tragic, anachronistic fashion—because, well...they were supposed to get married, weren't they? Because that's what gentlemen are supposed to do, or so he thought. But in reality, gentlemen aren't romantic; they're just fickle.

And let the divorce arc commence.

[bleachbleachbleach]

Verisimilitude (long thoughts about writing)

Sometimes I get mailed random books to consider for course adoption. The first one I looked at the other day was so incredibly bad I could not make it past page 12--"oh my god I hate books" bad; "trees were wasted on this!!" bad. And then there's this one. I've made it to page 30-something and I could have told you 20 pages ago that Oliver Twist it would remain, but I am still reading it to read it, and maybe keep it to recommend extracurricularly. (The protagonist Alva is a weeb for American culture, whatever the word is for that, which I think could make for interesting study!) But that's all context to say,

AH YES THE INTERNET RABBIT HOLE OF NARUTO FAN FICTION, HENTAILORD. WE'VE ALL BEEN THERE.

SO...

BLEACH MENTION WHEN????

Based on the style of her screen name, the Naruto porn, and her listening to My Chemical Romance and Linkin Park, this girl is definitely living her teenage life in the mid-00s, in ways that are searingly obvious. Which feels like it should be a massive success in terms of using verisimilitude to pinpoint a particular time and place and, by extension, person. But I don't think it does?

In thinking about why this doesn't work for me as a reader:

1. As a general rule, I tend not to enjoy "fandom" subculture references like this in fiction, because they have never felt true to my experience of fandom, or even my experience of others' experiences of fandom. The specificity is there but not the verisimilitude. Whether this is because of an inability to articulate the breath of life that animates fandom spaces, or a feeling of needing to at least kind of translate it for the uninitiated general audience, I don't know. Not that Alva's narrative goes far enough to merit this discussion; she's just reading Naruto porn for one sentence, but it just doesn't land right for me. (Sidebar, this is probably also why I don't enjoy acafandom or fandom essays that aspire to acafandom; there's usually this attempted, manufactured critical/"objective" distance from the text that often feels performative, or at least the wrong [or less interesting] tool for the job. And even where 'in-group' positionality is addressed, the translation required to make these things legible to the out-group is just--well, not what I want in life, I guess!)

2. I am a great believer in drawing greatly from what you know and feel and all those random thoughts and behaviors and emotions and tics that make life interesting, and giving them to fiction. In fanfic especially, I am a great believer in seeing the author's hands in a text, making the story (and the original canon) unmistakably theirs. But I kind of always want them to be hands that are in the act of giving. By which I mean, I think there's a difference between all these things existing in a story and having been given to a character or a world or a story, and integrated genuinely into them.

Like, all I can think about while reading this book is how the author definitely lived through the mid-00s in a particular and very familiar way. Rather than create a richly immersive world, the details jump out of the page and leave the story behind. They don't feel like they belong to Alva (or perhaps Alva does not feel like a character with the depth to hold them and make them hers). They belong do the author, and to me, and to history, but Alva falls out of the equation. And if this is going to work, I feel like Alva can't fall out of the equation.

3. I was talking to a friend about something similar a few months ago. She was complaining about a historical fiction book she was reading with a book club she leads at the library she works at--how it was clearly very well-researched, but dry as hell. The information was not animated by the story itself. And I compared it to a fanfic I'd (not) read, where the author was very proud of all the research they'd done and how accurate-to-life its setting was. (To be clear, I'm not subtweeting Bleach fandom. Completely different fandom! Also this fanfic was published like 16 years ago.) The fic did bring in lots of specific details about trees and highways and city names--things I knew well, too, because it was set where my sister lives--but rather than be as exciting and, again, rich, as I feel like that familiarity could have been, it all felt dead. Because all these things were described specifically, but not true to how the narrating characters would describe them, or mentally catalogue them, or experience them.

And you might think, well, how would we possibly know how a character thinks about highways? It's not like he's explained this in canon. And I'd say, well, you definitely can. There are probably a lot of different ways a character could plausibly think about highways, depending on the specific shade and flavor of your characterization of them, all equally believable; but it's got to be part of the equation. There are a lot of ways to be right, and you know it when it's wrong. The wrong-est way it can be is for the way they think about highways to not factor into the way those dang highways are being described by them, in their POV.

4. I think about this both as a reader and as a writer--certainly more often as a writer, because I find that level of imagining a character's headspace the VERY best part of the process, and also because I am often concerned I am not doing it, or at least not well, lol. I'm positive I've done all the things I've just talked about not enjoying.

These concerns exist at the level of characterization work in general, but also at that level of, is the wizard behind the green curtain? Are his hands giving? Because while I do write fanfic because "it is fun" and because "this idea interests me," I am also usually writing it to work through deeply personal emotions/experiences. Which again, perhaps selfishly, I support that. But from a craft perspective I don't want it to feel, transparently, like "oh lol this author is going through it."

Moreover, from a relational perspective, I don't want that to be the relationship between me as author and the characters. Because one thing I am ALWAYS writing fanfic to do is to indulge my feelings about how much I am in complete, rapturous love with the characters and worlds in question. I don't want to just place things upon them, like a film or shroud; I want them to be given, integrated, arriving in the text wholly in their bodies and in their minds and entirely theirs. And I mean this for both the emotional arcs and conflicts and the random tics and details. I want them to have been given, and to belong, and to feel completely and inextricably theirs.

So, those are my thoughts about mid-00s Naruto porn!!!

I'd love to hear others' perspectives, as readers or writers or both. Have you had similar reactions, or quite different? Why do you write, and what do you want? What's your template for how you think about characterization, or your writerly relationship to canon/characters?

[girderednerve]

i want to talk about FANFICTION for the VAMPIRE SHOW, beloved mutuals please avert yr eyes unless you are also into that

actually sidebar i have a coworker at the library who writes paranormal romance novels & got excited when i mentioned the vampire show. apparently she completely missed that anne rice had died? even though it happened, uh, three years ago? which is normal actually but i had a moment of deep confusion where i was like, 'but how could anyone miss the "fanfiction is finally legal" jokes? they were everywhere,' but fortunately most people do not have the same relationship to online that i do. ANYWAY!

one of the things that i really like about reading fanfiction is that all of the fandoms have their little trends & takes, in-jokes & weird arguments & stylistic trends. i can't be sure but i believe that the earlier fan writing culture for the books (& the '94 movie) is very different from the new wave focused on the show, but i am a neophyte. a poser. & because queen goth held a grudge against fanfiction for a time, it's very difficult to figure out whether i'm right about this or not. the book fic on ao3 that i've read is fascinating, though! it's a very sexy kind of sexless, which i have chosen to read as accommodating of one's physical dysphoria because it pleases me to do so; & like every other piece of period romantic fiction it fascinates me with which historical details fic writers seem to care about (very few, lol). if you have thoughts or recommendations please share!! i should just read the books but alas it has not happened for me yet, i might just try jumping to the vampire lestat & seeing if that gets me anywhere

one of the things i have been thinking about a lot is the kind of relationship that fans who are reading & writing about louis & lestat want to find between the two of them, because they are the founding couple for the rice vampires, right? their marital problems are kind of universe-defining, so it's interesting to me to think about what the boundaries are. fanfiction tends to go one of two ways: lestat & louis have always loved one another & their problems stem from louis' failure to understand lestat, or lestat has always taken advantage of louis (&, usually, that's sexy). i don't think either of these capture what i find so bewitching about the show, but then i have not done an exhaustive survey & may be a very bad reporter. the thing i like about the two of them is that it's always both, it's always neither, their relationship is always a living project, subject to redefinition by both sides, which feels very true to me. but especially after s1, there was some interest in bracketing one's desire to think about the gay vampires with clear acknowledgment that the relationship under consideration follows a familiar cultural model of domestic violence. which, like, it does! the fact that we go back over some of these key events in s2 & reframe them doesn't (or, in my view at least, shouldn't require us to) unmake the earlier narrative. they're just in tension with each other. all this to say i found it immensely clarifying to read fanfiction which was interested in defending lestat after s1, especially in comparison to the apologies that he explicitly makes in s2.

there's the vampire question, right, or i guess the fiction problem in general; if these people are made up & we are making them up again, how seriously do we have to take the harm that they do to each other? lestat murders louis, pressures him into doing more murders, brutally assaults him, and tries to have him killed; louis tries to kill lestat. also both of them say some very mean things to each other. however, they are vampires! so we don't have to treat it literally, right? we can just sort of go 'ah, but it's different for vampires,' and then return to our romance novel plot structure. this kind of fanfiction approach is really invested in whether these two people love each other & know that they are loved; there's a big focus on who says it to whom & when, which is interesting to me because it so obviously runs on fantasy logic. the question is never 'does lestat really love louis' or vice versa, but what does it mean that they love each other & act this way? is there some bright line beyond which love becomes impossible? and if not, what does it look like to return to one another? and that is a romance novel structure, too: the whole subgenre of second-chance romance, which i don't often read because i mostly don't like hearing about heterosexual marriages. but they're gay vampires, so surely it is different,

the contrast is why it is so fun to read armand & daniel's whole fucked up deal next to louis & lestat's whole fucked up deal, because it makes the latter pair seem almost vanilla by comparison. but it isn't! what armand is doing is just more literal. we reshape the people around us, right? we write narratives together, we remember differently together than apart; i think about this a lot because every time i talk to my mom we talk about my dad & we remember him differently every single time, & we talk about that too; anger, regret, embarrassment, fondness by turns, in tension. it is true of relationships which are less painful, too. but why am i reading about vampires if i am interested in the small-scale cyclical human drama of annoyance & forgiveness, self-recriminations & external blame? i don't want a series of carefully phrased i statements which read as a manual for how someone else thinks i should try to run my relationships! i want to read about something less literal & more visceral, because i can hardly fit my own feelings in my body most of the time & i would like an excuse for someone else to be roiling in drama. anyway i have found it hard to find fan writing which wants to be there with me, because i think it troubles the romantic mode. probably i am just not doing a very good job searching. anyway i think it is very romantic to be remade by people who love us & also the most terrifying thing i can imagine, and i can't resolve that so i don't want the story to resolve it either. and for whatever reason it's easier to read hundreds of fanfictions than it is to just read, the book, i don't know

the other thing that i have been thinking about reading fanfiction is women. revolutionary, i realize. i love antoinette, who i feel was very hard done by in the story & for whom i expected to see sympathy in fanfiction (don't laugh at me!). anyway there isn't really much for her, which makes me sad; lestat ate her life & wasn't even interested in her, which is classic lestat (derogatory). also i wanted to read about claudia, not as an angel but as a person who calls madeleine her 'one thing,' who cut off another woman's breast & kept it in her armoire, whose instinct for viciousness lestat admires & louis seems neutral on. i want to watch her do stuff, but both of these characters usually fade into the background; claudia's a barrier or a catalyst or a painting on the wall, antoinette is an annoyance, madeleine's a wholesome consolation prize. also i am always thinking about vampire money(.mp3)

maybe i should just read academic scholarship instead. maybe that would make me less annoying, or more productively annoying. i should walk to the college library & see if i can get my hands on their copy of 'our vampires, ourselves'

[bookaddict24-7]

REVIEWS OF THE WEEK!

Every week I will post various reviews I've written so far in 2024. You can check out my Goodreads for more up-to-date reviews HERE.

Have you read any of these? What were your thoughts?

___

258. Collide by Bal Khabra--⭐️⭐️

"She was literal sunshine." A sentence that made me guffaw because no, she was very much not literal sunshine. Summer was a bitch and the way everyone bent to her will and still lusted after her made me wonder if I should be reading books like WHY MEN LOVE BITCHES.

This was disappointing, to say the least. That cover is everything and I love the rep on said cover. Even though it was like reading ICEBREAKER again (a book that I actually love and have read twice), this was not at all what I was expecting. Why is it such a trend for these mean FMC to just belittle and completely undermine others' emotions for the sake of their "stubborn" personalities? Ugh.

I was going to add more to this pre-review notes I had made for this when I first finished this book, but I don't even want to LOL. This book made me so mad. Sigh.

___

259. Wed to the Barbarian by Keira Andrews--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Did I pull an all-nighter with this book? Yes.

I have decided, Keira Andrews is a favourite author. Her covers may be...not the best, but man, can she tell me a compelling story. WED TO THE BARBARIAN follows two characters who couldn't be any more different from each other. But something about the way the viewed each other and under-estimated each other made my heart melt for them and made me so excited for the moment their connection clicked into place.

Andrews, in her true writing style, has created a story full of heart with a strong message of never judging a book by its cover. Everyone knows what happens when you assume and these two characters (especially the bigger of the two) really fall into that trap of thinking they know what the other is like and how their internal and external strengths can be measured.

I loved watching them slowly fall for each other and enjoyed seeing their bond strengthen over time, until we reach that cliffhanger full of despair.

There was so much on offer in this book and I never thought I'd be devouring a historical fantasy romance (?) so voraciously. I couldn't put this down once I fell into that perfect moment in the book that demanded it be read.

I loved the family dynamics and how dedicated both characters were to them, even if sometimes they were a little misguided. But I also liked how logical Andrews's writing was when it came to certain situations, climaxes, and communication.

Also, not going to lie, those last few chapters were intense. I wish we had more books like this duology from Andrews. I'm excited for all of the books I've yet to read by her.

___

260. The Barbarian's Vow by Keira Andrews--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Devoured because book one left me on a cliffhanger and these two deserve their happy ending!

I can't say too much because it will spoil the hell out of this book. Just know that the angst, the yearning, and the dedication one character has for the other was palpable.

Also, loved, loved how certain things weren't dramatized for the sake of adding drama to the story. So many times authors add unnecessary miscommunications and other jealousy-inducing plot lines to make the story longer, but our queen, Keira Andrews doesn't do this.

And finally, please, I LOVED the adventure-style of this book. It was like one of those "how much can we physically challenge your relationship?" games that a couple might play to truly see how much they care about each other. The juxtaposition of the events in this one and the ones in the first book was *chef's kiss*.

Need more stories like this one!

___

261. The Wrong Bride by Catharina Maura--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Listen, this was like those funny and horribly acted romance stories we see in ads, BUT it was addicting and I couldn't stop reading it. Brought back memories of the over-the-top romances from the early 2010s, but like in the best and cheesiest way possible.

If you're going to sit down to read this one, make sure you have some popcorn on hand. I was so thoroughly entertained while reading this. It made me think of afternoons spent with my mom when I was a kid, having to be quiet because her telenovela was on. The over-the-top situations, the circumstances, and the denial of feelings that the characters showcased throughout the book made for some real entertainment.

And then we had the "villain". Man, she was like the perfect gaslighting telenovela villain. When she was in the middle of her assholery in trying to win back the MMC, this was me:

I'm also a bit of a sucker for an arranged marriage between two reluctant people. I love watching them fall in love and essentially prove everyone else wrong. Plus, for the love of all that is romantically glorious, this FMC needed a freaking win. She was so self-less, to the point of self-destruction, that I really wanted her to show up her horrible sister and mother. The father was the only one who was worth anything in her family.

Anyway, I have book two now and I shall read it soon. I hope it's as dramatic LOL.

___

262. All That's Left in the World by Erik J. Brown--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Re-read July 2024

So, funny story: I actually craved a re-read of this one AFTER reading the sequel (which was incredible as well) and I'm so happy I gave into the craving. I had halfway forgotten how much I enjoyed this book the first time around. I DEFINITELY see myself re-reading this one again in the future.

ALL THAT'S LEFT IN THE WORLD is one of those books that is so honest in its grief and journey to finding yourself that it will leave you feeling just a bit raw by the end. The side characters are great and the way these two characters grow and show the darker aspects of what it means to survive was so well done.

Will forever be one of my favourite Post-Apocalyptic YA reads!

Also, their love is just so sweet and pure, even if it slowly builds as the story progresses.

___

263. Faker by Gordon Korman--⭐️⭐️⭐️

The MC's younger sister is something else.

I jumped into FAKER with no idea what I was getting myself into (like I usually do) and in some (positive) ways, this was a good choice because I know that if I had read the synopsis for this, I would have felt more hesitant to pick it up. I've read a few of Korman's newer books and while I've enjoyed them for the most part, there are definitely some I've liked more than others.

I think with FAKER, it was definitely one of those stories that straddled the line for me. On one hand, I enjoyed reading about this kid who grew to understand the morality question of what his father was doing, and finding his own identity where before he was just a shadow idolizing a criminal father. But on the other hand, it was all just...a bit too on the nose? Like, what are the chances that this one new town has a teacher who teaches students about morals and the question of what is wrong and what is right? AND to have the MC have such a sudden shift? Was he not taught these lessons earlier in private schools?

In Korman's defence, we DO see the cracks starting to form near the beginning, but it definitely does start to make me think about how quickly kids change, especially because they're such impressionable little sponges (the MC's kid sister being the biggest example. She was downright terrifying.)

FAKER felt both incredibly younger than the age group it's geared towards, and older than the age group because of just how much of a criminal the dad is. I know this book might be one of those cautionary tales of trust, perspective, and the bonds of family, but the dad's crime and how he went about them were a little too genius LOL.

Anyway, I'm sure kids will gobble this up. And I really enjoyed that side-plot about saving the earth, even if the one character could have used a slight dose of empathy herself.

___

264. The Threat by K.A. Applegate--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Excuse me, that cliffhanger?

This instalment in the series was WILD and dark. So dark. I actually really enjoyed this one because we get to see the other side of what could have happened to the Animorphs if they had had a different start to their story, or if they didn't have the same morals that they live by.

I've already read the next book, so the cliffhanger pain has been dealt with, but I must say it was so well-done. This whole plot line of David is so refreshing for this series and exactly what it needed. It further brings the characters togethers and challenges them in way they never thought they would encounter.

Great, great instalment.

___

265. Summer Romance by Annabel Monaghan--⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Surprised by how much I enjoyed this one!

I'm not going to lie, I totally put a hold for this audiobook at the library by accident. I had initially never intended to read this book and...I think that would have been such a mistake.

I love stories like this one where the love interest is someone the MC would have NEVER thought would be her HEA. The love interest is underestimated and misjudged by literally everyone in his life. Even though I knew immediately who he was from the moment we meet him, I couldn't help but still love the reaction and the communication that happened after the truth was revealed. I also LOVED how she helps prove his family wrong in their perception of him. But it's still bittersweet to watch the adoration that a family has for their son, even if that adoration is a little misguided.

The MC finding herself again after FINALLY starting the divorce from her absent husband (there in body, missing in spirit and fucks to give) was so empowering. I think other single moms in similar situations would benefit from reading this one. Not so much because of the romance, but because some people love to underestimate women, especially moms, and what they will do when they finally find their voices again. I loved the scenes where she was a total badass towards her ex, but also her moments of vulnerability because being human is experiencing the duality of strength, but also weakness.

The grief in this book was like an extra character riding in the passenger seat of the MC's car, that's how powerful it was. But in that grief, the MC finds the truths she ran from about how her life changed and the things that happened that led her there. It's proof that even in death, our mistakes can't be erased but CAN be learned from.

SUMMER ROMANCE is definitely one of those books that some could read as just a heartfelt small town romance novel, but I know this will hit some readers way harder than others. Monaghan's novel has heart and I felt it in every page of the book.

Now, excuse me while I put the rest of her books on hold at my libraries.

___

266. Red Rabbit by Alex Grecian--⭐️⭐️⭐️

RED RABBIT was something else. I'll admit that it took me a WHILE to get into this one. I almost DNF'ed it a few times, and extended my library loan of the audiobook a few times before finally giving in. It had its fun moments, but it also had a lot of confusing moments.

There were SO MANY CHARACTERS. And the timelines are weaved together to make a very confusing spider-web. I think I know why it was done and in retrospect, it makes sense, but while I was reading, I had a lot of "OHHH OKAY" moments when something clicked or finally made sense.

At certain points I thought I knew where the story was going, but then something would happen and it would throw me off all over again.

I don't know how scary RED RABBIT was supposed to be. Sure, there were some gross moments and others that had that taste of fear in each word, but scary scary?

One thing I didn't expect and was pleasantly surprised was the audiobook having the voice actor actually sing some of the songs featured in the book. They were beautifully sung and so incredibly unexpected--totally pulled me into the story even more and made me excited to see what would come next in the story.

I did want to shed a tear near the end and when everything was being resolved, including the reveal of some of the secrets that haunted the book. So, while the beginning took me a while, I was hooked by the end.

I think this would be great for a reader who loves a little western adventure in their stories, with a side of ghosts, witches, and ghouls.

___

Happy reading!

[mermaidsirennikita]

ok thank you good to know! because i'm seeing people act in genuine disbelief why other people are upset show francesca isn't that into john on top of just general confusion why they're upset about any changes to francesca's story because the bridgerton books aren't good. i've only real tdai so i can't speak for the quality of the whole series but i keep hearing whww is the best one. also the idea the show has elevated the books is silly to me, even if they aren't good books the show also isn't good?

As someone who has critiqued the Bton books a lot (I would only recommend two out of eight, personally) from what I've seen a lot of the people who say the books are bad haven't actually READ them lol. They've read out of context screenshots. I fucking KNOW they haven't read When He Was Wicked when they're out there calling Michael a sexual predator, lmao.

When He Was Wicked is the best book in the series, and anyone who's read multiple books in series (this isn't a dig at you by the way, I have zero issues with people going "I don't wanna read 'em, doesn't sound like they're for me", nobody HAS to read these books, I just think it looks very... unintellectual to critique things you haven't consumed--and part of that comes with maturity, I used to do things like that and still have to catch myself doing it at times, but damn some of these people are big ages and acting like they can talk about books they haven't read in an informed capacity) would know that it's also VERY different from the others.

The average Bridgerton book, imo, is very romcom-ish. Several of them rely heavily on the Ton or how a character relates to high society. They are chatty, fast-paced, often pull in other members of the family, and tend more towards those romcom vibes than historical accuracy. (None of these things are why I don't love most of the books; I think that a lot of them have structural and character development issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the tone of the books.) WHWW is a book that begins with a character being in big turmoil because he loves not only his cousin's wife, but his best friend's wife, and knows he will NEVER do anything about it. John dies. Then we have a massive grief tailspin for both Michael and Francesca, a SIZABLE time jump (4 or 6 years) and a return that begins as them rebuilding a friendship before he realizes she wants to remarry, she realizes she wants to fuck him, they do in fact have sex on the floor, and this sort of situationship begins. It's more sexual than a lot of the other Bton books (still not that sexual but more sexual lol) and it's a lot more... emotionally conflicted. It also in large part takes place away from the Ton and the family, though Colin (who is much better in the books, it's true) does have a "You go find my sister and get her" moment which I personally found hilarious. Show!Colin wouldn't dream of being like "GOT GET HER MAN!!!" to some guy who is very clearly just gonna like. Bang Colin's sister. A lot.

Like, I'm not saying WHWW is in my top romance novels. It definitely isn't. But it is imo a solid romance novel and the best one I've read by JQ. However, that's just my opinion. What isn't my opinion is that Fran and John were in love, for example. That's a fact. People who read the book know that, but we've got a lot of people who haven't read the book saying otherwise.

But yeah lol, to me regardless of what you think of the books... This idea that the show empirically elevated them is ridiculous to me. The books have many flaws. The show also chose to keep things like Daphne raping Simon; the show added in things like a Black unwed mother having her secret outed and being vilified by the "heroine" of the series, with zero consequences for said heroine; the show adds in things like "one of them loved one of US" and doesn't truly colorblind cast, but also doesn't want to deal with the implications of that (where is the British Empire in the Bridgerton show, then? How does India relate to that? Is Anthony Bridgerton going on an Indian babymoon just like... okay....? I wouldn't ask about any of this if the show just colorblind cast everyone, but it didn't, so); despite all of that, the show also chose to write a homophobic world.

And you can love that show! You really can. But acting as if the books are All Problems and the show All Perfect is kind of just... completely off balance and binary, to me. They're very separate entities at this point with (often) very separate problems. And as is the case with most adaptations, there are things the show did better and there are things the books did better.

I really wish that people could learn how to say "I love this thing, and I love that this thing did That Thing. I think That Thing is important. But that doesn't mean it's perfect, and this thing can still be critiqued".

Half my favorite books are old as balls and have problematic content. WHWW has problematic content. I can say that I appreciate what is good about those books without casting aside the things that aren't good.

I will say this as one last point about WHWW--anecdotally speaking, most of the romance readers I talk to actually don't like the Bton books that much. That's not to dog out the books, that's me reporting their tastes to say--the books they do like are either TVWLM, WHWW, or both. So I do think that people often say "WHWW is the best" because it is the "If you don't like Bridgerton, this is the Bridgerton book you will like" for romance readers, and has been since before the show began. That book's audience is often non Bridgerton-liking romance readers.

[sweetlikehoneystingslikeabee]

Hey There,

Pleasd may I request the Penguins (particularly 2022 Oz 😊) being one-half of a "power couple."

Sharing a relationship with someone who is an equal partner in their work and romance?

Thank you :)

"Power Couple" Penguin Party

Fuck yes we love a power couple!

TW: Jealousy, mentions of power play

Gotham

Oh-ho, this one took a while. Historically speaking, Gotham Penguin hasn't always played well with others for long. He's always been the go-getter. Looking for more, grasping for the higher rung on the ladder. So when he did finally meet his love, and they were also in the business... Well. There was friction at first.

But all of that is in the past now! As far as he's concerned the two of them are the Royalty of Gotham's underground. Every King needs his match after all- Sometimes he can be a bit... overpowering in how he runs things. Yet a gentle hand and a kiss to the temple and he's asking for their approval before he releases the sword (Victor).

Romantically speaking, it's hard for him to not want to take care of everything and be vulnerable, even if secretly he's desperate for affection. There's a validation he gets from being that provider and protector role. Yet when he truly gives in to being taken care of, and perhaps being spoiled as well... It's kind of addicting. He learns he's okay to be vulnerable and accept true vulnerability. It makes the bond stronger, the foundation harder to crack.

One thing is for sure: The Cobblepots make an entrance. The both of them impeccably dressed, they'll enter a room and all conversation goes to a hush. They whisper and plot with a smile, needing no one else but each other. And if there ever came a time one was threatened, the other would act with fierce swiftness until the threat was reduced to cinders. These two would actively lay traps for their enemies to dance on their graves afterwards.

BTAS

This also took time to develop, but for reasons different than Gotham. Unless his partner was already in The Business of crime, he'd want to keep them away from it? In his mind, he's the one who commits crimes and they live a somewhat normal life that he fully supports. Why should they have to get their hands dirty? No, no, let him do that for you, darling. If they truly want a job, he's certain there's a host of careers they could try out that will keep them out of trouble.

If truly, they are in the field and won't be convinced otherwise, he won't fight them on it, but he's worried it'll effect their romance. When it shockingly (to him) only furthers their bond, well- Perhaps they are the perfect match in more ways than one. Truly, they're the rarest breed of a person, more valuable than any of his birds.

He will absolutely get caught by Batman or another villain if his partner is in trouble. Doesn't even think about it, he's creating a smokescreen and putting himself in active danger for them. This will be used against him if his partner falls into Situations, easily. Really, it's just another show of his devotion.

Another is how he plots... Each heist he's coordinating with them as if he's planning a wedding. What colors, what birds? What method of execution style for the Batman will you try this time? Their opinion is the only one that matters to him. And then he's getting them flowers just because! And tickets to the newest ornithology department unveiling at the local museum. All that plotting, you deserve a reward, dearest. He's sure this one will work between the two of your brilliant minds working together!

Burton

Let's be honest. This Penguin probably needs a power couple situation. At minimum, he needs a work partner to keep him on track and in line due to him getting carried away by his anger. Someone who is his romantic partner as well- it adds an element of loyalty from the man that he'd never break. In short: he'd be enamored with a partner who was his equal in business and romance. They understand him, his want for revenge and to hold the world in his hands after it was so cruelly denied to him.

His partner would likely be the "face" of many of their business relationships. Someone to use a light voice and a silver tongue to ease tough buyers into that ease of wanting to conduct a deal. Professional, somewhat trustworthy- Definitely not someone to try and bamboozle. For some strange reason people still think they can try and pull the wool over Oswald's eyes. Any tries that with his partner? Banned. Banned from business and perhaps even living if they really pushed it.

He's probably the only Penguin of the bunch who would not be okay with his partner pretending to not like him for manipulation purposes. Everything is 100% devotion, biting out the throat of anyone who suggests otherwise. Hanging on him, kissing his face and reveling with his arm on their waist.

The hottest thing for him power-couple wise would be them not shirking away from his specific brand of feral violence. Teeth and flesh and blood and digging your hands in the viscera of everyone who tried to double cross the two of them- and they just get that look in their eye as they put on gloves to help with the clean up. Beauty and the killer he knows they can be <3

Arkham games

He'd want to be strategic in this kind of dynamic with his partner. Publicly? Just a romantic deal, they have things in their name but that's about financial security over everything. Ideally if anything, they'd be a shadow partner who takes care of things if he's sent to jail/Arkham to ensure no one is encroaching on their territory while he's gone. In his mind this keeps their assets as well as leave him more of the target than them for criminal enterprise purposes. All while they're absolutely able to defend themselves and the Cobblepot empire.

Of course, they know everything and they're advising with him on major moves and decisions. Batman knows the truth, but Oswald keeps his partner so legally sound, he can't do shit. It gives him a thrill to hear the bastard tried sniffing about and was sent off disappointed. Everyone knows you protect the most important piece on your board.

Kind of gets off on the power play between them? Says something or makes a move to put them in a slightly more submissive position than him. Either they push back with his foot on their chest or they stay down and he gets to pick them back up again. He's the only one allowed to do this, of course. He would never kick them while they're down or in a way that would genuinely hurt them.

He considers them the most "rare and unique" piece of his "collection." Smart, attractive and able to keep up with him- There's no one else like them. He doesn't really worry about them potentially betraying him because of how well he keeps them. Anyone else tries even touching them and he's breaking their fingers. They're together until the bitter, bitter end.

Batman 2022

It's hard finding someone you can really trust in this grime-filled town of pulsing beats and changing hands. Trust is earned through blood and shared acts of giving. Oz Cobb has a partner whose more than earned their share. One day they just started appearing next to him in the clubs, there and gone like smoke whenever it was needed. A soft touch of a hand that always lingered somewhere on his body, like it was part of him.

It's all perfectly equal until it's not. Something about them makes him hang on their words. They get the final say. They give a thumbs down like an emperor and Oz knows it's time to end the play and the life of whoever decided to fuck with them. They whisper in his ear as they sit in his lap, his large hand cradling their back, and it's the order that'll shake up the whole city. The thrum of music in the Iceberg Lounge envelops the two of them into their own little world.

He allows himself to be vulnerable to them in a way he'd never allow anyone else, not even his mother. That's where all that trust truly goes. Knowing they wouldn't betray him and that they could keep themselves in a position that they'd never be his weakness. Some people always end up on top and they clawed their way up here just as he did. It goes both ways. Over time they can allow him in, hand on their neck, knowing he's not going to squeeze just for a step up like with someone else.

It leads to a lot of private in the middle moments. Between the clubs and the drug businesses where they watch old movies like "Gilda" cuddled up. Where they get to laugh at his corny fake fireplace and cheesy music while being completely enamored by it all. They get slushies and the good hotdogs from the place by his house. When they laugh together, it's that deep bellied laugh that rumbles in your chest and makes you cackle. It's a bond no one else understands, but they know they can't touch it.

BTAA

There's a special kind of person who works with this Penguin for both business and romance. They have to have the same cruel and nasty sense of humor he does, even if most of the laughing is on the inside. He's very theatrical, he needs someone who understands the need to be a bit of a peacock wherever you go. They either go 100% the same level of cartoon-y he is, or they're the straight man who knows when to give him The Look that they need to reel it in. They make a conscious move to never fight in public, although the signs are likely there depending on how sadistic he's being to his goons.

Wildly jealous. Never at his partner though, strangely enough? They can do no wrong, it's everyone else that's the problem. They're either trying to steal his love, or they're trying to trick them into a bad business deal/steal shit. He's very insufferable about it. It's totally not due to his self-esteem issues. Careful, boys, or he might sic one of his birds of prey upon your eyes so you cannot look at them ever again!

oh his birds. His other love. He gets his partner full on raptor gloves and shows them the birds favorite treats and how they like to be kissed and preened so the birds will follow their orders as well as his. Does his heart well to see them feeding Ossipity some kidney and the bird melting under their touch. Then they can do him the favor of making HIM melt under their touch.

He spoils them. Whatever evil little plot they can think of, he's going to support it however he can. Trinkets, gala tickets, the heads of their enemies- the two of them live a fairly hedonistic lifestyle and he wouldn't have it any other way for his perfect little parakeet.

[thornfield13713]

6, 7, 8, 29 and 30 for Ned

How would the player go about meeting them in Act 1? What is their introduction?

At the owlbear cave, after the owlbear herself is dead. I could see Ned being found mourning over the creature, but also returning the body to nature by allowing mushrooms to grow from it, helping it decompose more quickly and feed the soil, highlighting their powers as a Circle of Spores druid and their deep reverence for the natural world. Maybe even include them assuming that the party are the ones responsible, and it taking a quick perception/persuasion check to convince them the goblins are responsible. And if you can't, they use their abilities to puppeteer the owlbear's corpse to get revenge.

Describe their arc. How would a player help resolve it? What choices can be made? Can your Tav be turned down a dark path, or pulled to a lighter one?

Ned's arc is mostly related to the fear of Lolth, and their feelings that...actually, letting the tadpole do its work and thus destroying their soul entirely...might be preferable to letting Lolth get her hands on them. The player can either encourage their fear of Lolth and the idea that fighting or defying the gods is impossible, and the best one can hope for is escaping them, or encourage them not to give up on themselves, to try and find a way to free themself from Lolth's lingering influence on them that doesn't involve sacrificing their very self to do it. Alternatively, it might be possible to encourage two very different ways of dealing with the problem - seeking out a form of true immortality, which...historically, has not ended well and is particularly dubious for a druid (there are spells for druids that can extend their lifespan immensely, but that's not quite the same thing), or else embracing a power other than Lolth's, most likely Eilistraee, as a potential means of escape from Lolth's lingering claim upon their soul. Or they could just take the sacrifice and become a mind flayer in the endgame. They'd probably offer, same as Karlach, if for subtly different reasons.

The other part of it has to do with their ability to interact with the world. Ned at the start of the game is a hermit, who has been living in the depths of the Underdark avoiding all contact for...quite some time, certainly since the death of Derendil, whom they loved even if, as it turned out, 'Derendil' never even existed. Getting Ned to open up to the possibilities of connection with other people, to trust for the first time in their life, despite the hedgehoggish mixture of profound loneliness and terror of other people and their intentions that their upbringing in Menzoberranzan has left them with, is probably an ongoing thread throughout the game.

After Act 3, what does their life look like? What are they talking about at the reunion party?

Assuming their best ending, Ned is going to be talking about exploring the surface world as a wandering druid and part-time adventurer. They're more interested in seeing and preserving great sites of natural beauty than anything else, and learning more about the sort of druidry practiced on the surface, but they'll help people in need if it comes up, and if people are willing to accept the help of a deeply socially uncomfortable drow druid. Assuming neither were romanced, they're probably travelling with Astarion, and both seem happy with the arrangement, even if they both miss the sun and are hoping to find a solution to their newfound difficulties with daylight.

What fears keep them up at night?

That they will never be entirely free of the Spider Queen's power and influence - they were her cleric once, or training to be, after all, and even if Lolth wanted them dead or driderified, she hasn't renounced Ned so entirely that they don't feel her influence until such time as they pledge themself to a new goddess for the sake of protection, and then the concern shifts to whether that really counts as faith strong enough to give Eilistraee a claim on their soul after death.

That their mother is still alive, somewhere in the depths of the Underdark, transformed into a drider or some other monstrosity of Lolth's in their place, or else suffering one of the long, slow, torturous deaths that the drow are so good at.

That their relationship with Astarion, like their relationship with Derendil, will end with the rug being ripped out from under them, and it turning out that none of this was real after all, just some horrific trick or trap, that nobody is capable of truly loving them without some sort of mind-altering magic being involved, and that they bear the guilt and responsibility of that despite having had no input in that magic being cast and no influence over any such things.

What does your Tav want more than anything?

Oooh, I think Ned would spend a long time sitting and staring at the wall, contemplating that one. They've spent a long time living like an animal - often literally in wildshape - and that means living in the moment, not thinking beyond immediate needs and wants, so trying to figure out what they want most is going to be tricky. To know their mother's fate, might be their first thought, except that there are so many answers to that that might irreversibly break them. To be free of Lolth, is another, except that- that wasn't actually an immediate concern until they were dying, and were going to have to face the horrors of the Demonweb Pits a lot sooner than they thought.

I think, though, that they want more than anything is to be able to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are loved. They never knew their mother loved them until she sacrificed herself to save their life. They believed Derendil might love them for a little while, and then it turned out that 'Derendil' himself was just a quaggoth's hallucination, and that has pretty much wrecked their ability to trust in anyone or anything really loving her, whether that love is friendly, familial or romantic. They've been in the sort of situation they're with with the party before, starting to open up to new friends- and then the Derendil thing happened, and between that and all the other dysfunctions that led to that group falling apart, it...did not go well for Ned. So, that's it. Not just to be loved, but to be able to believe in people's love for them before it is too late.

[shynmighty]

#12 - Be honest, how many outfit tabs do they have? And #13 - Let’s see those outfits! Which of the outfits is their main outfit and why?

Oooh we're diving into Aeony's wardrobe for this one!

(From these asks)

Pic of Aeony because I love her!! 🥰

Sooo...this is gonna be long so I'm just gonna go ahead and...

12. Be honest, how many outfit tabs do they have?

The short answer is 10. But we're being honest here, so...honestly... some of those slots have been replaced over time. Going by the number of outfits she's had historically, she probably had closer to 15 or 16 outfits. Some of them were pretty awful and I feel bad for disrespecting my baby like that. I've had Aeony the longest of my current characters, so I've done the most tinkering on her.

13. Let's see those outfits!

So... A bit of a disclaimer about Aeony's wardrobe. It's very much a work in progress. I first designed Aeony during the DARK TIMES (ie...before Arcann was an available love interest) and my concept for her was "Make a character so I can pretend to romance Arcann." I won't get into detail about her characterization because this post isn't about that, but my concept for her aesthetic was "Matchy Matchy with Arcann." So I decided early on that her colors would be either white, or white and gray (and this kinda spilled over to the rest of my legacy). And I wanted to avoid going totally matchy matchy by using Thexan's robes. Thus...the great adventure to find Aeony the perfect outfit began!

So without further ado, here are the outfits I have collected for her over the years!

This one was an attempt to give Aeony a Zakuul aesthetic, but...eh. I wasn't jazzed about it. I hardly ever use it, and to be honest...I kinda forget it's even there.

This is an EARLY outfit, and Aeony did wear this for a hot minute back during her first run of KotFE/ET. She hasn't returned to it since the time before stamping your weapon was a thing, so her gear lightsaber is showing! I actually kind of like this look, but for some reason it doesn't click as her MAIN outfit.

Aeony actually wore this for a looooong time, but didn't accomplish anything in the story. It's a nice outfit, but for some reason it's also just not clicking for me.

I actually thought this would be her main outfit, but I think it's a bit too rugged and doesn't QUITE mesh with her personality.

This is the closest I've come to finding THE ONE TRUE OUTFIT. I love love love this set, and it looks amazing dyed white, BUT....

See, here's the back. The black is un-dye-able. Booooo. It looks kinda cool, but doesn't match Aeony's carefully crafted aesthetic. So I thought to myself, maaaaybe I can make it work if I fuck around with it?

Here's my attempt to fuck around and find out... it looks okay, but it probably would look better with a black & white dye...and that's not Aeony. It's a bummer, because from the front I think it's actually decent. But I'll be seeing it mostly from the back. And I can't handle the un-dye-able black. I CANNOT. *stamps foot*

This is Aeony's OLDEST outfit, which she completed most of her class story with. You can tell it's old because Aeony was in her pointy headdress era. I like this outfit. But it belongs to a bygone era...Aeony has moved on!

Another oldie but a goodie....Satele's set! I think I ditched this look because at the time EVERYONE else was wearing it. Including Satele. One of them had to change, so I decided it would be Aeony...and then Satele changed her outfit 😂

Getting near the end now! I love this outfit. It's probably the closest I've come to finding Aeony's signature "look"...but I dunno. Something is keeping me on the fence about it.

I using this armor currently...and so is everyone else...but it's a good placeholder, I think. The search for Aeony's perfect outfit is eternal and ongoing. But the outfit of my dreams is out there, I just know it!!!

And those are her outfits! This was such a fun ask, thank you so much!!! 🥰

[spider-xan]

Also someone, who is not part of DD fandom, recently did a great breakdown of how often Mina and Dracula are mutually into each other romantically in films and TV, it turned out there were only 3 (!!!) times when Mina was romantically into Dracula and he was romantically into her – 1979 and 1992 films, 2013 TV series. Out of gazillions of screen adaptations! Yet those parts of DD fandom act like it’s always the case with every single adaptation ever and try to act like victims! Idk why they lie

Yeah, like, I don't like the Mina/Dracula romance that gets added to adaptations either, and I understand the frustration with how it has taken over pop culture to the point where people who have not read the novel, which is most people, think it's a core part of the story, if not the entire story, but you're right that it's not as prevalent as the fandom makes it out to be - and tbh I like what one person said about how at this point, Dracula is its own cinematic phenomenon separate from the novel and has its own tropes and traditions where adaptations are in conversation with each other, in which case, I think it's less frustrating to embrace that idea instead of acting like these adaptations are persecuting the book fandom lol - which isn't to say you can't dislike or criticize them, but I think it's good to have some emotional distance and not take things personally, as well as being able to analyze and critique things in a greater historical and cultural context.

Also, I have noticed that it's not uncommon among Victorian lit fandoms to not actually watch or even at least research adaptations before criticizing them, but to go off second hand accounts that are often not correct and then it turns into everyone in the fandom mindlessly parroting each other - like, this happened with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen comics where there is indeed much to criticize and I have done so many times myself, but most of the Dracula fandom just repeats the same complaints that are largely not true or barely an issue compared to the actual problems (not sorry, but Muslim Arab men being portrayed as violent rapists terrorizing white women is a much bigger problem than the comic saying a mean thing about a white boy who doesn't even appear in the comic), just bc some popular fans who didn't even do basic research said so; and then you have the Jekyll and Hyde fandom complaining that every film adaptation ever has Hyde as the Hulk when it's a grand total of two silly camp crossover movies in the early 2000s that no one takes seriously and are on the obscure side; I think a lot of book readers just have a weird persecution complex at this point tbh lol

[triviareads]

Hi! I hope you’re doing fine :)

I was planning on reading the Bridgerton Chronicles, but I heard there are many books, so here’s my question: in what order should I read them?

Also, are they really that good? How’s the vibe of the books? Is it light and funny or heavy and angsty?

Thank you!

Hi! I do think each book in the Bridgerton series can be read individually and out of order, but it's nice to read them in order I think. The series is overall very light and set among London's high society (with a few exceptions— all mostly in aristocratic country estates and castles). Julia Quinn does good humor and banter (and she does rely on slapstick humor and physical comedy at times... The Viscount Who Loved Me in particular had a lot of this). The romances themselves range from solid to tepid, as do the plots, so here's how I'd rank them:

When He Was Wicked: The sexiest book of the eight, and very emotional because Francesca's husband dies at the beginning and the hero Michael is her husband's cousin and Michael and Francesca were close as well (there was definitely some flirting that occurred before John Stirling's death), so cue all the angst and guilt. Flashforward to when Francesca decides to remarry but freaks out over her feelings for Michael and flees to Scotland where the best seduction scene in the series (that also uses the title of the book) occurs. My favorite thing about this book is when they're basically playing a high-stakes game of "if I get you pregnant we'll have to marry" roulette until they finally get their shit together.

The Viscount Who Loved Me: Look, as much as Anthony is billed as a rake, I really don't think he is. Book!Anthony is a messy, somewhat neurotic man who decides to court Kate's seventeen year-old sister because she's the diamond of the season, but ends up falling for spinster Kate instead. The banter in this one is excellent, as are all these moments of physical comedy ranging from straight-up hilarious (Anthony falling into the river thanks to Newton the dog) to hot (Anthony panic-sucking the bee venom out of Kate's tit and Portia Featherington uttering the greatest line in the series, "Lud, girl, he had his mouth on your bubbies"), to questionable but still hot (Kate biting Anthony's leg from under his desk, and then Anthony basically forcing a first kiss on her). There is an accidental compromise followed by a forced marriage, only after which they fall in love.

It's In His Kiss: Gareth is another rake hero (illegitimate, has daddy issues, which is classic Julia), but the true standout in this book is Hyacinth, who's a spinster but a fun spinster with few qualms about B&E, gives good banter, and has relatively lesser inhibitions compared to the other 6 virgin heroines. The plot, from what I remember is just them repeatedly breaking and entering in order to find treasure hidden by Gareth's grandma(?), with a side of Gareth's daddy issues (that... may have influenced him to compromise and marry Hyacinth). Lady Danbury has a pretty big role in this book.

The Duke And I: This was one of the first historical romances I ever read, and my first impression was that it was really cute with a simple plot: Daphne is in his third season but is worried about her marital prospects because she's seen as One Of The Guys, so she agrees to fake-court her brother's best friend Simon, Duke of Hastings, except they're caught in a compromising position, Simon nearly fights a duel over her, but they marry. The big issue however, is that Simon doesn't inform Daphne that he doesn't want children (as opposed to being unable to have them, and Daphne doesn't know how sex works :/). Ultimately, Daphne sexually assaults Simon (he says no and he's drunk, but she continues anyway) and it's never treated as such nor does she ever repent so.... bear that in mind.

Romancing Mr. Bridgerton: Here's my thing— book!Penelope is a pretty solid heroine and I did enjoy the low-stakes, less-spiteful version of Lady Whistledown, her scandal sheet she secretly publishes. Basically, if you like an underdog heroine, she's not a bad one. What I disliked was how she tragically pined over Colin for over a DECADE, as well as how her weight loss was treated as a condition to her being seen as attractive and finding love (regardless of how many years prior it took place to her getting with Colin, narratively it's gross). Colin, on the other hand, is a relatively childish hero who actually gets jealous of Penelope for having purpose when he doesn't, at one point even grabbing her arm so tightly he knows it's going to bruise.

On The Way To The Wedding: Gregory Bridgerton never quite overcomes his baby-of-the-family status, even in his own romance. He spends a lot of it waffling between two women and Lucy the heroine was just... meh. You'd think a story where the hero kidnaps the heroine (for her safety ostensibly lol) would be more interesting... but it isn't.

An Offer From a Gentleman: Cinderella adaptation but a super dull one, tbh. The way the narrative virtue-signaled with how Sophie repeatedly refused to be Benedict's mistress always irritated me. And on Benedict's end, the man has zero game, keeps hounding Sophie while she's working for his mom, and it has literally the cringiest virginity-loss scene ever.

To Sir Phillip With Love: Genuinely the most horrific of the books which is saying something, considering #4. I despise Phillip for his brand of absentee fatherhood which literally involves turning a blind eye to abuse, he victim-blames his first wife Marina for her depression (and he basically sexually assaults a depressed woman who is unable to consent to having sex and is laying catatonic under him) and subsequent suicide and CONSTANTLY compares Marina to how "happy" and "cheerful" the heroine Eloise is, and he basically sees Eloise as a live-in sex doll and mother figure. Eloise herself is.... fine, as far a heroines go. But Phillips kids? They were horrible. Eloise deserved better.

I used to say this series is a good introduction-to-historical-romance series, but I think you can probably do better. Try Adriana Herrera's Las Leonas series (stunning, gorgeous), or Vivienne Lorret's Mating Habits of Scoundrels series (for that humor and banter), or KJ Charles' Doomsday series (which were marketed as Bridgerton-meets-Poldark).

[elliepassmore]

Ruthless Vows review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: historical fantasy, love stories, magical amnesia

Divine Rivals review

I've been dying to get my hands on this book since I finished Divine Rivals! The ending of DR definitely packed a sucker punch, so I was interested to see what was in store for Roman and Iris in this one. For anyone wondering, there is an HEA!

This book opens shortly after where DR left off. Iris is back in Oath with her brother, Forest, and is still (obviously) upset about losing Kitt. But Iris isn't down for the count and is determined to continue reporting on the war effort and determined to find Kitt again. Iris again shows her mettle, both when trying to find and help Kitt and when she decides to go back to the front with Attie.

Kitt is, as expected, not quite himself. He's still a writer, but his words are no longer entirely his own, and his memories are just as wiped as Forest's were in book 1. It was good to see that he was still himself though. Kitt may have been Dacre's minion to start, but he very quickly begins questioning things around him and his true self shows through, even if he still doesn't remember. I think book 1 really highlighted Iris while this one highlights Kitt and his journey. I liked getting more of Kitt's POV in this book, and I think there are some scenes that really go to show his growth in DR and in this book.

Attie is also back in this one and we get to see more of her life. Not only do we get to meet her family, but she also plays a pretty important role in this one. I enjoyed getting to see more of Attie and more of her and Iris' friendship. She even got a bit of her own romance in this book. I'd definitely be interested in a novella or companion book about Attie.

Tobias is a new character in this book, and is Attie's burgeoning love interest. He's an auto driver who helps the Inkridden Tribune get stories, and correspondents, to and from the front.

We also get to know more about Enva and Dacre in this one. Kitt is, obviously, with Dacre and we actually get to a good number of scenes between him and the god. Dacre is just as insidious as he's painted in the first book and it's clear just how much thought he's put into how he's going to destroy Enva, regardless of who gets in his way. Enva is...less of a presence in this book, but we do see her and get to know more of her story and why she hasn't personally stepped in to help those fighting on her side.

This book is split between Oath and Dacre's realm. Oath begins as the familiar city we were introduced to in Divine Rivals, but after Iris and Attie return from the front the second time, it's a changed city. There's a power struggle between those, like the mayor and Kitt's family, who support Dacre; the newly-founded, anti-god/dess Graveyard group; people like Helena at the Inkridden Tribune, who support Enva; and then the regular citizens are caught in the middle. The Graveyard group seems to have come out of nowhere, but there are hints that it's been around for a while and is only just now popping up. I would've liked to see more development of things in Oath, especially since I think the Graveyard group has a lot of interesting implications, particularly considering how they very quickly have everyone cowed. I also think the implications of war reaching Oath were interesting, and while I understand why this was a relatively short portion of the book, I think it would've been interesting to explore that more.

Dacre's realm is underground, relying on ley lines and special doors for travel. As grim as it could be, I liked seeing the various aspects of the underworld. There are parts of it made completely of stone, then there are halls/tunnels with unusual creatures and large gemstones, and then there are areas with seemingly unnatural features, such as sulfur vents and hot springs and mountainous regions. I definitely liked that Kitt got to see so much of it since it really was an interesting place, and it showed a lot of the past and present magic of the world.

Overall I found this to be a satisfying sequel and finale to the duology. It's not without its tragedies but it does have happy moments and a happy ending. I do wish that Iris and Kitt were together for more of the book, but it's pretty fast paced, so it doesn't feel like too long. I did enjoy seeing them together though and this time they're fully on each other's side!

[aeide-thea]

watched witcher 3x03 and it really is just like. this show continues to lurch wildly from scene to unconnected scene. which could work if they were written and costumed and acted well enough that each vignette was compelling in its own right, so that you wanted to keep watching even though nothing quite hangs together or makes sense yet? but they really. aren't.

and they keep introducing all these bit characters, i guess in an attempt to convey that geralt has History and Connections, but it's just feeling to me like, why are we foregrounding all these interactions that should have been background. did i really need to learn all these names.

also i continue to feel like ciri is just. too old. like fundamentally you can't take the naïveté and petulance of a child, or teenager at most, and paste them unaltered onto a twenty-something and expect to garner the same level of sympathy for her! also like. minor point but if they're on the run would she really be religiously applying her clumpy little maybelline every morning. she looks more overtly made up than most of the adult characters on the show, and like, i know we're in fantasyland and not any actual specific historical time period but it does feel distractingly anachronistic to me nonetheless.

also like. you're really asking me to believe that surly taciturn traumatized geralt would open up to this random 'friend of his mother's' about his childhood. like. i get that, again, we're attempting to establish that Geralt Has History, but like. you can't just have him infodump without any consideration of what he's like or who he's talking to??? like—i understand that we basically gave up on any notion of consistent characterization for him, or even a clear throughline to an evolving characterization, after s1, but. why is he opening up to this random druidess as if she were yennefer. what is happening.

like do i want to see jaskier's big gay romance (which based on radovid's beleaguered-weasel characterization so far i cannot imagine doing anything but going up in flames in the back half of the season??? like, clearly radovid is going to fuck them over the second he's caught in a political bind, the only question imo is whether jaskier also fucks them over)? yes. but is the rest of this worth sitting through? extremely debatable.

did love vespula's dress, ditto jaskier's costuming. also yennefer's struggle to balance who she knows how to be in an aretuzan context vs who she wants to be for ciri (and for herself?) was compelling (although, again, i'm really struggling to buy the idea of her as mother to ciri when the two actresses have, like, a seven-year age difference. like i get that it's found family and not literal but. it just doesn't ring true, i'm sorry). but on the whole this really was just. a jumble.

also emhyr is just not icily intimidating enough. like he's supposed to be this always-five-steps-ahead omnipotent manipulator or whatever, as i understand it, but even setting other versions of canon aside, this version of the story needs him to be that! and instead he's like. a potatoface in a molded plastic breastplate. action figure villain.

also okay this really is the last thing but. what is up with all this 'the evil mages all have their faces grotesquely burnt off' shit. can we not do better by real live people with facial differences than that.

[rivvyelf]

On Poetry in Prose Fiction

I remember when I was 12 reading the Lord of the Rings. Or more accurately, starting in the middle of the Two Towers since the movie was my first introduction to Tolkien.

Eventually, I started at the beginning, reading Fellowship of the Ring. It went faster than I thought because I skipped the Tom Bombadil sections and...

I skipped the poetry. There was a lot of it, and I skipped it. When I was a kid I thought poetry was poetry, prose was prose. That's right, didn't read the Lay of Leithian that was in the middle of FOTR, a key piece that provides so many themes of the legendarium in general. Skipped all the songs. Saved me time in that first read-through.

... Needless to say, I don't skip poetry in prose fiction anymore. Tolkien's poems in there largely had a fun rhyming scheme I liked, and their content and structure differed depending on who was reciting or singing the song or poem (goblin, elf, hobbit, human, or ent).

This helped me when I read Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This normally would be the time I plug threekingdoms.com for having an online English-translated copy of the book that any online user can annotate, but they're not showing that novel right now on their website (you could use the Wayback Machine though!).

Anyways, Romance of the Three Kingdoms has so much poetry, a lot of them excellent, ranging from the historical poems and songs from Cao Cao and Cao Zhi to poetry that summed up pretty epic battles and emotional scenes. There are also fun nursery rhymes from street children that foreshadowed a lot of terrible stuff and were quite ominous! There also were epitaph poems that summed up characters in the book, detailing their high points and their low points. Especially prominent characters were even given multiple epitaph poems from different sources/writers.

It became especially noticeable when certain characters DID NOT receive an epitaph poem. And this is where users in the annotation section were pointing out that the bias the author had for one particular kingdom showed, and this negatively impacted a reader's reading experience of the work.

Huh... who knew that the lack of poetry in parts of an epic work had such a profound effect on the reader?

What I'm trying to say is that poetry doesn't have to be its own thing for it to be great. It can and has worked great in prose fiction. When I ask people about great poets, people say Edgar Allen Poe, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Du Fu, Li Bai, etc. But I don't hear people immediately say prose poets like Homer or playwrights like Shakespeare (takes some of them a while to mention those names). I don't hear mentions of JRR Tolkien.

It's sorta like great Classical music composers that a lot of people can immediately think of. Chopin, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky. But what of Verdi and Donizetti? What of Pucchini? Those latter three were primarily known for opera. And while it's true that Mozart, Beethoven, and Tchaikovsky had their operas, a lot of people immediately think of Little Night's Music and Beethoven/Tchaikovsky's symphonies and concertos rather than the themes from Fidelio, Eugene Onegin, or Don Giovanni.

Just like how non-vocal orchestral music in an opera can enhance a story, so can poetry in prose fiction. I've seen it done well in recent works I read, like @aeide's Exile, where the structure of the epitaph poems alone (usually in the shape of a heart) makes the work memorable and damn it takes talent to have each line of the epitaph poem to fit the respective lines that coalesce into a heart. It provides a nice bookend to a character and allows both the characters in the story and the reader a time for reflection on those who passed. They're not treated like toilet paper.

As a writer, I wish to emulate those writers/authors by including poetry in my prose, as it topically fits and enhances the themes and characters. Also provides some foreshadowing, like the street children's song in the latest chapter I wrote in my Outlaws of the Inland Sea fic:

"A pillar connecting all three: heaven, earth, humanity. Whenever it shall leave all will fall to misery!"

For those who know a bit of written Chinese, they'll probably get it. But a lot of people don't know written Chinese. Despite that, it sounds pretty ominous and I think it does its job in foreshadowing that bad stuff is probably going to happen.

But yeah, in case you skipped this wall of text, just know that poetry has its place in prose fiction and doesn't need to be its own thing. Sounds obvious but still needs to be said. And don't skip the poems in prose literature like I did when I was a kid (unless the literature flat-out sucks, then request a refund).

[televinita]

2023 Goodreads Choice Award Winners - Reactions

Opinion time! Long, loud opinion time.

FICTION - Yellowface: wow! I figured this was a strong contender but I did not expect it to stomp 2nd-place finisher (Hello Beautiful) by a margin of nearly 4 to 1. I guess it had more time to gain traction? Happy my pick (aka the only one I might actually read) The Wishing Game got 3rd at least.

HISTORICAL FICTION - Weyward: doesn't look like my cup of tea but not bad. At least it's a cool cover. I wasn't super invested in the outcome of this race. My pick (the one actually on my TBR before the first round, The Echo of Old Books) only got 6th but oh well.

MYSTERY/THRILLER - The Housemaid's Secret: honestly that surprises me, I knew she was popular but I thought it would go to Lisa Jewell or Riley Sager. (who did take 2nd, by not a huge loss, and 3rd, respectively)

(I loooove Kate Morton but I only voted for her book in round 1 to get it contending; I still think she was misplaced in this category. My 2nd round vote went to Sager on a hunch...but I'm fine with the winner. It seems a bit generic for my tastes but not bad at all.)

ROMANCE - Happy Place: SWEET BABY JESUS THANK ALL THE ANGELS ABOVE that Emily Henry's massive fanbase is in fact strong enough to crush Ali Hazelwood, 'cause nobody else is. I ultimately picked the Jimenez book for my vote because between her and Henry's book that one sounds sliiightly more my taste, and I'm relieved that wasn't wasted.

I don't like how how up my sworn nemesis Curtis Sittenfeld's book still landed, nor some of the trashier titles (they have shirtless-man covers in their true form I just know it); I was hoping The Seven Year Slip would do better because it was both well received and seems more in line with the women's-fiction kind of romance I like, though this particular title didn't thrill me. Still: the evil has been defeated! (she said, forgetting there were two categories to clear)

ROMANTASY - Fourth Wing: lmaooooooooooo we all knew this was going to win but TEN TWELVE TIMES more votes than the 2nd place finisher?? Twelve?? Almost 400k in total; I don't think any book has ever had that many votes put toward it in the history of the awards. And since 2nd place was not-particularly-romantasy-like Assistant to the Villain, I have to assume everyone was desperately trying to conscientiously object to either that book's inevitable win or the category in general.

FANTASY - Hell Bent: gdi I specifically did not want that to happen. By a comfortable margin, too, ugh. What little I've heard about Ninth House sounds gross and this cover is also gross. I don't wanna look at it. Emily Wilde 4 lyfe. (4th place)

SCIENCE FICTION - In The Lives of Puppets: *shrug* not surprised, TJ Klune feels a bit inescapable. But ultimately I did not have a horse in this race.

HORROR - Holly, by Stephen King: oh, good for him. He has not actually won every time he's been up for it, and this one sounded decent. (I abstained from voting in this category too, because for all that I love scary books I've not read any of these and don't feel particularly called to)

YA FANTASY - Divine Rivals: oh, okay, so that one is the heavy-hitter, nearly double the 2nd place pick (whatever stephanie garber book is up this year) I picked A Study in Drowning, just because I can't in good conscience choose enemies to lovers, but the important thing is we kept Cassandra effing Clare away from the crown.

*holding my breath as I wait for the next category, the one I'm most invested in after romance, to load...*

YOUNG ADULT - Check & Mate:

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My scream shattered the rafters. When I first saw Ali Hazelwood's name in there I thought, okay, YA, perhaps she has toned down her garbage enough to be readable? but then I looked at the reviews and I am very much not confident that this actually reads like YA. If it does, I suspect it might be the kind of YA that Teen Me hated and Adult Me still doesn't love.

Anyway. The point is I specifically voted for The Brothers Hawthorne to avoid this, but while that did take 2nd place, even that powerhouse series failed to dominate (though only by 3k! closest race so far i think) over this woman who is now officially my sworn enemy. Colleen who? I have never held half the animosity toward that woman like what has been growing in my heart for Hazelwood.

DEBUT NOVEL - Weyward: well I guess that makes sense. (I didn't vote in this one either...although I could have sworn that The Wishing Game was in this one too? because I thought I voted for it at least in round 1...oh n/m, I see. "Why are there only 19 books in this category? Following new information from an author that they had previously published under a pen name, one book was no longer eligible for this category and was removed."

NONFICTION - Poverty, By America: look, I'm just glad it's not the "I'm voting for this because it's funny" Butts book. But I voted for the Pacific Crest Trail one about missing hikers because a Goodreads friend gave it 5 stars and also it's the only one that interests me.

All right, time to see how much Britney Spears won the next category by...

MEMOIR & AUTOBIOGRAPHY - The Woman in Me: but not quite by double! I honestly did not think Prince Harold had that many fans. (I love calling him Prince Harold (The Ridiculous) don't take this from me) Really surprised that Pageboy got 3rd; pure diversity rep vote? Thought those who actually read it agreed it was disjointed and poorly structured. Anyway. I can't really talk because I voted for Paris (Minka Kelly first, hoping to get her to round 2, but then Paris Hilton because I genuinely did enjoy that one more than i expected)

Up next is history/biography. Did the dad book win?

HISTORY & BIOGRAPHY - The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder: the dad book wins! (I did vote for it. I'm sorry. I thought the Astor book actually sounded cooler but I just dislike Anderson Cooper so much)

And finally...god I hope it's Henry Winkler. I'm sure it's gonna be Leslie F*** Jones because people think swearing is funny, but I specifically refused her a vote because of it (and no other reasons) so I really hope I'm wrong.

HUMOR - Being Henry: The Fonz...and Beyond: HENRY WINKLER WINS!!!!!!! That's all I wanted, because this category looked baaaaad. I still think he should have been in the regular memoir section but I'll take it.