#for what it's worth the book was terrible but I really enjoyed writing this post about it

[shroud-of-empire]

Review: So Speaks the Heart by Joyce Carlow

I had low expectations going in, and yet this was still somehow worse than I anticipated!

So Speaks the Heart—published in 1997, and currently available for free through the Internet Archive—was brought to my attention by @suburbanbeatnik last week, and the cover looked so absurd that I immediately knew I had to read it. And I tried. I really tried. But I ultimately ended up DNF'ing it around the halfway mark when the lead characters abruptly died, then reincarnated centuries later as different people in sixteenth-century France.

It technically makes more sense in context, but, like, barely.

The premise

So: The plot of this book revolves around "immortals"—vaguely supernatural beings who reincarnate every few centuries to steer historically important figures towards their destinies. Aside from possessing the ability to reincarnate, immortals are also beautiful, intelligent, infallible, and psychic, frequently receiving premonitions from the future, as well as insights into other people's minds. In some ways, they're like an unholy hybrid of stereotypical romance vampires and high-fantasy elves—their powers are as unclear as they are expansive, and their inherent beauty and goodness means that they can do no wrong. Our protagonists, a physician named Leandra and a charioteer named Alexander, are a pair of Immortals who were born in the sixth-century Byzantine Empire to steer Justinian and Theodora towards their fates as Emperor and Empress of Rome.

I'll admit at this point that I disliked this premise from the start. It's very Great Man History™, except the "great men" are random nobodies with vague, unattainable powers, pushing people around like chess pieces for reasons that are unclear to everyone involved. The magically-perfect, always-right nature of the Immortals also makes them dull characters to read, and blaming every historical event on Immortal meddling only serves to reduce the agency of the few humans in the story—the end result is a book where everyone is underdeveloped and boring. The Immortals don't need character development, because they were born perfect, and the humans don't get character development, because the Immortals do everything for them. I do think the concept of star-crossed lovers dying over and over again only to find each other in new lifetimes could have been done well, but it was wasted here, shackled to all of this weird baggage.

The characters

Leandra and Alexander obviously compose the "main" couple, but Justinian and Theodora also soak up a lot of page time, serving as the secondary, human protagonists to their perfect, Immortal friends. Leandra is the Immortal "assigned" to Theodora, like the most irritating kind of guardian angel, and Alexander is similarly "assigned" to Justinian, so all four of them come as a set. Every single one of these characters is terrible.

Leandra gets the most focus out of anyone, and consequentially, she is the absolute worst. She's the type of protagonist who can be generously described as an "escapist character"—again, because of her Immortal status, she's automatically right about everything, she receives special insights that nobody else understands, and she's beautiful beyond words (and way prettier than Theodora, obviously). She's also a virgin, which makes her even more special; while every other woman in the Hippodrome sells her body for fun, Leandra never gives into the temptation. (For what it's worth, the author doesn't harp on this as much as I expected, but it does come up more than once, and it's used as yet another metric by which to compare Leandra and Theodora—Leandra being superior, naturally.) Leandra also has medical training, by which I mean that she magically understands complex microbiological concepts that were not discovered until the Scientific Revolution. Not only does she believe in germ theory, she also understands what bacteria are, and how antibiotics work. How does she know these things? Because she's special. It's beyond aggravating—especially because the author has an incomplete understanding of what penicillin does, and as a result, Leandra does, too. Leandra spends half of the story spouting total nonsense, but the narrative treats it as correct, and any character who questions her is depicted as an idiot.

Outside of her interest in medicine, Leandra really has no personality. Her only goal in life is to get Theodora where she needs to be, so she spends most of the story just kind of orbiting Theodora like a satellite. This isn't even a conscious goal, though—Leandra has no idea what she's actually steering Theodora towards. Most of the time, her suggestions to Theodora are based on vague feelings and indecipherable prophecy dreams. It's the blind leading the blind—Leandra gives Theodora advice based on nothing, and Theodora follows that advice based on nothing, and they're both headed towards an end goal that neither of them understand. Everything they do is guided by feelings and instincts that they have zero control over. It's boring to read, and Leandra's sheer perfection, combined with her lack of agency, made me want to tear my hair out.

The male lead, Alexander, is not much better—his main character traits are “liking Leandra” and “being handsome,” and that’s about it. He actually begins the story as a nervous virgin, but then he buys a night with Theodora and, apparently, a personality transplant, and he’s a completely different person by the time he and Leandra actually get together. (Specifically, he transforms into a generic, stereotypical, pushy “bodice ripper” love interest, but the “bodice ripper” elements feel halfhearted, probably because he was nothing like that for the entire first half of the book). Theoretically, Alexander is meant to guide Justinian the way Leandra guides Theodora, but he doesn't seem to share Leandra's medical knowledge or psychic dreams, so it's unclear what Justinian is actually getting out of their friendship. Actually, it's unclear why any of these characters like each other at all, because, again, their friendships and romances are entirely determined by "fate." Why does Justinian hang out with Alexander? Fate. Why do Alexander and Leandra fall in love? You guessed it: because it's meant to be. Everything is insta-love or insta-friendship, with no relationship-building at all.

Aside from the two leads, Justinian and Theodora are the only other characters of note, and they're both... well, kind of stupid. Again, because their decisions are largely driven by Immortal meddling, they don’t get to make many choices of their own, and whatever choices they do make independently of the Immortals are shown to be incorrect. (For example, Theodora leaves with Hecebolus despite Leandra’s protests, which results in both Theodora and Leandra nearly dying.) Theodora at least gets a couple of cool scenes—she wins the Blues’ favor by somehow taming a snake (?!), and she does get (a truncated version of) her Nika speech. Justinian, though, barely does anything. Their romance, which serves as the B-plot to Leandra’s A-plot, is hardly even a romance—like every other relationship in this book, it’s underdeveloped insta-love driven by “fate.”

Oh, and finally, something else I felt the need to mention: Justinian and Theodora seem to have no friends or advisors outside of Alexander and Leandra. Belisarius, Antonina, Narses, Theodora’s Monophysite allies, Justinian’s sister and cousins and nephews, etc, are all totally absent from the story. Theodora’s sisters do appear once, but they vanish after their introductory chapter and are never seen again. I understand sidelining less important characters for the sake of keeping things concise, but it struck me as strange that so many people were casually cut from the narrative. I guess the author figured Justinian and Theodora would never talk to Alexander or Leandra if they had literally any other options.

The sex scenes

There are a lot of sex scenes in this book, which isn't necessarily problematic—I'm not a puritan. Unfortunately, the sex scenes are weird as hell. They're all cloaked in bizarre, convoluted metaphors, which is to be expected, but they're also odd in other ways:

The phrase "moist depths" is used more than once.

There's a lot of "moistness" and "dampness" at pretty much every turn, actually, and it gives off real un-sexy bog energy.

The word "pleasure" appears 8 times in rapid succession in the same sex scene. Other words that appear too often: "undulating," "pulsating," "throbbing," and "nipples." (Do I understand why these are used in sex scenes? Yes. Is it a lot of repetition that could have been worded differently? Also yes.)

Justinian and Theodora love each other so much that a "miracle" occurs when they have sex: Theodora is "incarnated anew," becoming "like a virgin again."

Leandra's guardian is a fellow Immortal who once had sex with Zenobia, and he fantasizes about having sex with her again as he lays dying, which makes for some weird tonal dissonance.

An evil Immortal named Cyril is depicted as an agent of the Empress Euphemia, and they are obviously having an affair with each other, and you can tell it's an evil affair because they do weird shit in bed.

Alexander calls Leandra "my little virgin" as a nickname.

Alexander verbally calls Leandra's breasts "pink-tipped mounds." Like, it's not a metaphor that the narrator uses; he says this out loud to her. It's not even part of a longer sentence. He's trying to seduce her, and the only thing that comes out of his mouth is fucking "pink tipped mounds" and that's it.

"He sucked strongly, like a hungry child" <- NOT A METAPHOR YOU SHOULD USE DURING A SEX SCENE.

"She excreted warm, wet moisteners to ease his passage" <- ALSO BAD, FOR DIFFERENT REASONS. "EXCRETED" IS THE WRONG WORD TO USE HERE.

The plague

About 90% of the plot of this story revolves around the plague, and plague is my specialty, so I'm about to go off here. (Feel free to skip this if you do not care about plague.)

So, Leandra is a physician. She receives medical training at some Byzantine school early on in the story—women, obviously, did not get to become physicians very often in the Byzantine Empire, but again, Leandra is special—and she is then appointed as Justinian and Theodora's Official Royal Court Doctor. Because Leandra is Immortal and Not Like The Other Scientists, she immediately figures out germ theory, basic immunology, antibiotics, and a host of other extremely complicated concepts. How does she figure this stuff out? Not from experimentation using the scientific method, or anything else that follows any kind of logic. Instead, she just gets flashes of insight, which she assumes are true, and then everybody operates as if her unproven theories are obviously correct. Why does she believe that disease is caused by microorganisms invading human tissue? Because She Just Does. Why does she know that inflammation is an immune response to injury or infection? Because She Just Does. Nobody questions her beliefs at all, even though they completely contradict the theories of seminal figures like Hippocrates and Galen, and they're based on such little evidence that nobody has any reason to trust her. She's not seeing microorganisms under microscopes—she doesn't know what a microscope is. She's just saying random shit that happens to be true for reasons nobody in the setting understands.

It's difficult to put into words why I find this so irritating, but I think a huge part of it is that it plays into an idea I really hate—namely, that the people of the past were stupid and unobservant, and that science is easy enough that they could've solved all of their problems with a few basic thought experiments. Leandra criticizes the people around her for having dumb, incorrect theories about medicine—but these people have no reason to think that their theories are wrong. Miasmic theory is a perfectly rational thing to believe in if you don't have microscopes, and you've never heard of a bacterium, but you have noticed that people who live in smelly, unsanitary conditions seem to get sick and die more often. Blaming "bad air" isn't stupid if that's all you have to go on! Germ theory isn't obvious if you can't see the germs! But Leandra knows better, because She Just Does, so everyone who disagrees with her is evil or stupid, and all of the good guys think she's the best doctor on Earth. It's infuriating, partially because it plays into the popular image of early medieval people being dumb and zealous (Leandra claims that Roman medicine was superior to Christian medicine, as if Roman medicine gels with modern germ theory at all?), partially because it makes Leandra all the more obnoxious, and partially because it misrepresents the history of microbiology and epidemiology in a way that I do not like.

Because Leandra discovering germ theory hundreds of years too early isn't special enough, she also goes on to discover penicillin (not named as such, but obviously penicillin), and I also hated this subplot. It plays out exactly like Alexander Fleming's 1928 experiments—Leandra leaves a bunch of cultures out on a lab bench, and finds them contaminated by mold when she returns, then she notices that the mold has seemingly prevented the growth of the infectious bacteria. She then puts this mold to use, and everyone acts like she invented a miracle cure. There are about eleven billion problems with this, but this review is long enough, so I'll just list a couple of them:

The most obvious issue here is that penicillin is fucking hard to isolate and use as a medication. Fleming did his first experiments with penicillium molds in the late 1920s, but pencillin wasn't deployed as a drug until the 1940s because it was so difficult to extract. Seriously, read the Wikipedia page on the isolation of penicillin. It took over a decade and cost a shitload of money, and that was with the technology of the early 20th century. You cannot take raw penicillium mold and cram it into people's wounds and expect it to cure them of plague. That is not how this works. (In fact, various ancient cultures were aware that certain fungi could prevent infections from worsening, but they couldn't identify or isolate the actual antibiotic compounds, which limited their use.)

Leandra somehow understands that she shouldn't feed her patients liquid penicillin, because their stomach acid might degrade the drug and prevent it from working, so she decides she needs to introduce penicillin into their bloodstreams. How does she accomplish this? By cutting people's buboes open and cramming them full of mold! And this is portrayed as the correct course of action, and a reliable way of getting medications into the blood.

Leandra's mold-shoved-into-buboes treatment has a 100% cure rate, and all of her patients survive. For reference, plague has a 13% fatality rate today if treated with IV antibiotics. It is an extremely dangerous disease. So either the author dramatically underestimated how lethal plague actually is, or we are meant to believe that Leandra's cure is more effective than modern medicine.

The author completely ignores pneumatic and septicemic plague—everyone who gets sick gets bubonic plague, period. I get that buboes and fleas are the first things that come to mind for most people when they think of plague, but if you're going to build your entire plot around your protagonist's inexplicable knowledge of Yersinia pestis, maybe consider its other presentations?

Relatedly, the author also ignores that plague can be spread from person-to-person, as well as through other means. Leandra seems to believe that flea bites are the only route of plague transmission, and this is presented as right. Leandra spends a lot of time handling infected tissues in her laboratory, getting up close and personal with infected patients, and having sex with her infected husband, and she never worries about getting sick herself, because plague is transmitted by fleas. She does die young, but only because an evil rival doctor stabs her out of envy—not because she's spent the past six months breathing nothing but aerosolized plague.

Other inaccuracies

Obviously, a lot of the science is wrong, but so is the history. The timeline is all muddled—plague hits Europe and becomes endemic before Justinian even rises to power, and then it spirals into a pandemic at some point before the Nika riots. Theodora is infected with plague (although she's cured by the mold), while Justinian remains healthy. The Hagia Sophia in its current form exists before the Nika riots even happen. Justinain doesn't start work on his law code until after Theodora gets the plague. You get the picture. Everything happens out of order, on a condensed timeline, so that Leandra and Alexander can experience the best Byzantium has to offer before they die young and reincarnate in sixteenth-century France. (I know less about France than I do about Byzantium, but for what it's worth, I suspect the French setting is also filled with research errors.)

The ending

I gave up on this book at some point after Leandra's first death, but I did skim the French part until I got to the ending, and I discovered that the scene on the cover—the picture of Leandra and Alexander riding a pegasus to the sky—does literally happen in the final paragraph. Nostradamus actually witnesses them flying into outer space as he's charting the movement of the stars.

For what it's worth, I think both Leandra and Alexander are anthropomorphic constellations at this point, if that makes it any better.

Final verdict

This book is insane. I've read a fair amount of wacky Byzantine romances, but this one is on another level. The premise alone is bonkers, the characters are all horrible, the sex scenes are absurd, and the science and the history are both so wrong that I don't even understand how we got to this point. I majored in microbiology, and I minored in medical humanities, so I know a fair amount about the history of infectious disease research, and this book feels like it was designed specifically to torment me. When I got to the penicillin subplot, I said "noooooo" to myself, out loud, like some kind of madwoman. This book has driven me to the brink of insanity. There weren't even any fucking birds in it.

10/10, would write a scathing review of again.

[aurorawest]

The Scottish Boy by Alex de Campi - 5/5 stars

This book managed to rip my heart out at least 3 times. I loved it. Medieval enemies-to-lovers slow burn; very romantic. Kinda read like fanfiction at times but in a good way. 10/10 would read a follow-up love story about Arundel and Captain Wekena. If you like Captive Prince, give this one a try.

Reforged by Seth Haddon - 4/5 stars

Pretty good bodyguard romantasy. Ironically CS Pacat blurbed this one (another am-I-in-the-matrix moment). The world was interesting and I enjoyed the politics, though they're definitely not as complicated as other SFF politics I've gone feral over (see: Captive Prince, Winter's Orbit, A Memory Called Empire). I ordered the sequel after I finished this.

The Doctor's Date by Heidi Cullinan - 4/5 stars

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske - 5/5 stars

Where do I start? I love, love, LOVE A Marvellous Light. It's one of my favorite books ever. None of the rest of the books in the trilogy could live up to it, really, because it's so good. You'll notice I rated this one 5 stars though, because quite honestly I fell prey to a bit of The Academy Paying The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Its Due syndrome. I did love this book and thought it was better than A Restless Truth (which I still loved!) but part of that is, quite frankly, just due to the fact that I prefer m/m romance to f/f romance.

Anyway. This was such a good finale to the trilogy. I loved that the romance was a giant middle finger to purity cultists. I loved that one of the mains was Italian. I loved finally getting the story of what happened to the Alston twins. One thing I thought was really cool was how, viewed from the outside, you totally get why Edwin is such a loner. I really admire from a writing perspective how Marske pulled that off.

I feel like there's a lot to be said about what Marske was trying to SAY with this book, but I definitely need to reread it first before I can articulate any of it. The purity culture stuff is obvious, but the magic system too. I feel like Jack when he's almost able to connect everything in his mind into a bigger idea, but he can't quite get there.

I've got a special edition from Illumicrate coming, so I'll be rereading it when I have that.

Oh also, this book was the embodiment of all that one tumblr post -

The Guncle by Steven Rowley - 5/5 stars

I saw this in bookstores for years before I finally gave in and bought it. The blurb makes it sound insufferable and twee. Ignore the blurb. This was such a good book about grief and learning how to live again after terrible loss.

I Like Me Better by Robby Weber - 4/5 stars

At last I can stop getting the Lauv song stuck in my head whenever I set eyes on this book (it's stuck in my head as I type this). Pretty standard-issue YA, but it was cute and had a good message.

The Stagsblood King by Gideon E Wood - 4/5 stars

Another book about moving on from grief! This is the second book in a trilogy. When I was trying to determine if I wanted to read on beyond book 1, I scoured the internet for information about what happens in books 2 and 3. Eventually I decided, hell, I enjoyed book 1 well enough, even if what I want to happen in the rest of the trilogy doesn't happen, they're worth reading. SO, to that end, I will tell anyone looking for info that Tel gets romantically involved with a new man in this one, which, eh. I still want him to somehow end up with Vared. It was still quite good though.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune - DNF at pg 82

So funnily, we were at the bookstore the day I was about to start reading this, and my wife pointed out Ravensong (also by Klune) to me and said, "Do you have this one?" I made a face and said, "That's an older one of his books and I'm wary of his early work after that horrible Verania series. I don't think I've ever read an author as hit or miss as TJ Klune."

I wrote the above when I was 60 pages in and now I have officially DNFed this. Listen. You know how in Thor: Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi was clearly given free rein to do whatever he wanted, so all of his worst impulses made it to the final cut unchecked? Yeah. That's what this book is like.

Here's my Storygraph review: I see Klune is officially Too Big To Edit now. This book has exactly the same problem that his awful Verania series had—a joke that's funny at first but quickly grows tiresome when it's repeated five times per page. The emphasis on Victor's asexuality was also weird and read like Klune was just super proud of himself for writing an ace character.

Lion's Legacy by LC Rosen - 4.25/5 stars

Queer, YA Indiana Jones, but less #problematic. This book had some eerie similarities to my own archaeology adventure novel(s), which made me wonder half-seriously if I somehow know Lev Rosen? Anyway, I feared this would be very heavy-handed and not nuanced on archaeology's ethical dilemmas, since it's YA and also the current culture is to view said dilemmas as completely black and white with no nuance, but I was pleasantly surprised. It manages to examine that, queerness, and daddy issues, plus has time to be a genuinely fun and exciting adventure story. Highly recommend.

Too White to be Coloured, Too Coloured to be Black by Ismail Lagardien - 4/5 stars

I picked up this memoir in a bookstore at OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg as research for Six Places to Fall in Love, since Percy is coloured. A pretty brutal read, but good, and definitely good research. The author was a photographer and journalist through the most violent years of apartheid.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson - 5/5 stars

Two nonfiction books in a row?? This is the second book by Erik Larson I've read, the first being the excellent The Devil in the White City. I'm not, in general, all that interested in WWII when it comes to military history, but this book is about the day to day lives of Churchill and the people surrounding him (with brief stops to visit FDR and high-ranking Nazis sprinkled throughout). This is a very, very good book, and I recommend reading it if only as a reminder of the resilience and bravery of ordinary people under terrifying circumstances.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - 5/5 stars

Holy shit. Holy shit is this book good. Imagine the love child of Lost, Person of Interest, and Battlestar Galactica, but queer and with multiverse shenanigans thrown in.

I need everyone to read this book. Now. Yesterday. Get to it.

[kaelidascope]

Dude, I love this fanfic so much! I just wanted to ask where you got the idea from. Did you have any inspiration from anyone? Also, what's your favorite fanfic? And want do you recommend ?

AWE bless!! Thank you so much I'm glad you're enjoying it <33

So actually a good 80% of this is written from personal experience LOL I used to dance and was into drift building/racing in my late teens/early twenties! Most of the references or scenes in Midnight Menagerie are references to things I've seen or done in real life, OR stories friends have told me within the same field. (Nora is literally just a rebranding of this one mutual friend we had who just. Absolutely fucking unhinged) Like for example, the anticipated Hangover Chapter is just a retelling of an insane Summer weekend I had in 2017 ☠️ it's a personal delight being able to translate things into the narrative, even more so knowing people find my stupid, terrible decisions as amusing as I do in current times lol

My general rule of thumb is to write from experience. Things I understand either on a technical point or emotional connection. So, if you've read it in my work, it's probably something I've done LOL

Another reason I find drive in writing this type of narrative is that MM!Blake's type of dissociative PTSD is something I haven't seen much in media in general. I've seen people depict her in various ways (some of them good!), but none of them ever really apply directly to me, so I wanted to make something that I could relate to and how to properly navigate life, given the environmental circumstances. Plus some us need better examples on how to juggle mental illness as adults and also be in healthy long term relationships because damn I have zero reference LOL

For the fic recs, oh boy I have so many LOL time to be a pathetic fangirl on main but okay here's the ones that immediately jump to mind (also heads up most of these are mature or explicit rating);

Certified Kaeli Fresh Fics

Let You See My Wilder Side (If I Can See Your Bones)

We all know this one but it is, hands down, my favorite piece of literature of all time. Masterfully crafted and a timeless classic worth several rereads (and I have. Embarrassingly so)

Written by @/lucytara on tumblr || @/explosive_sky on twitter

honestly all her works are immaculate and beyond compare. Also a major fan of I Have A Bullet With Your Mouth On It (That was first RWBY fanfic I ever read LMAO a friend recommended it to me before I even watched the show) I aspire to write like her some day. It's what got me writing fanfiction in the first place. So, credit goes to Erin for inspiring me to post my manuscripts at all. Words cannot express my gratitude and appreciation. I have two book series in the process of being published now and I wouldn't have had the nerve to do it had it not been for this specific fic.

2. One Day At A Time

Also one of the earlier fics I read before getting into the show LOL I love all of @/Frenchsoda 's work, the full list is also worth checking out. I'm a fan of disgruntled Blake who doesn't understand her attraction to Yang but it's so god damn sweet ugh

3. Fucking In Love

Written by @/Set_WingedWarrior and @/Softlight

This one circulates a lot in my social circles. Everyone I know LOVES this one and after reading it earlier this year, now I see why. As someone who worked in the sex industry for a brief period of time, this one's not only accurate but also A DELIGHT to read. The premise is fun, captivating, and worth the wait. I actually discovered a chapter update earlier this year and sent the gc into hysterics because we thought the fic was dead LMAO props to these authors!! They're doing an amazing job and deserve praise

4. You're A Mountain, Full Of Glory

written by champion author @/lescousinsdangereux

I should just preface already that every book Blake reads in MM is a fanfiction that exists because I love Easter eggs. Everyone knows I had Blake reference this in chapter 3 LOL but it's equally as immaculate as Erin's work. I LOVED especially the dynamic between Weiss, Yang, and Ruby in this one. Baby, we're complicated fucking murdered me 😭 also that fuckass Christmas scene, that's my favorite Christmas song LMAO

5. The Home Inside Your Head

Written by the ever skilled @/writeriguess . I found this fic by accident by seeing fanart for it floating around on this site. Got curious, picked at it, and. Oh, my god. It's not very often my brain gets scratched in the right way, but boy this one does it. This author does something specifically unique I haven't seen many do before, and I applaud them for it. There's great detail on the scenes that matter, and the fucking organic build up between Blake and Yang is just. God. Chef's kiss. Truly. It feels so god damn natural and healthy and it's already crossing off several of my agendas already. Give this one a read and give the author some love. SENSUAL FACE TOUCHING? CHAPTER 13????? BOOOOOOOYYYYYYY I'm normal about it

6. You'd Be Paranoid Too (If Everyone Was Out To Get You)

Written by @/WabaJaba_ on twitter

Okay so this one's completely different than what I've previously listed but HOLY FUCKING SHIT IS IT A THRILLER. It doesn't nearly have the amount of love and attention it truly deserves. A friend of mine recommended it to me because it shook them so fucking hard they were in total brainrot hell for a MONTH. NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY LMAO God I was obsessed with this for weeks myself. It obviously lives up to it's rating, horror fics aren't for everyone. But if you're able to read it, good lord you should. It's chilling, captivating, and had me on the edge of my fucking seat the entire time. Both endings are good, I still can't decide which one I prefer but RAH I will make sure this is seen god dammit

and last but certainly not least

7. You And Me and This Temptation

written by talented author @/ProfessorSpork

Okay this one was an accidental find as well. A friend sent it to me because THEY found it by accident, I clicked on it for later, went looking for a completely different fic that I mistook for this one, started skimming and realized 'wait a minute LMAO I don't recognize this'. But the thing you have to understand is I hate reading. I'm not a reader, I'm picky and it needs to be worth sitting down for long periods of time. This is one of the rare instances where I was so captivated by it I kept reading more and more from the middle where I landed, and eventually just said ykw let me just start from the beginning cus LMAO context.

This one is, by far, one the healthiest and loveliest depictions of first times I have ever seen. This shit was so inspiring to me that it literally kickstarted an essay in someone's DMs why depictions like this are so important. I didn't have this experience irl, and why MM is written the way it is is because its meant to serve as a lighthouse for those who, like me, haven't. This fic however I feel like should be a required read for anyone getting into relationships for the first time because if it's not like how these two interact, LEAVE IT. This is the standard. This is amazingly written, it's the closest I've ever seen canon Yang and Blake be written to date. The fucking souvenir bit 😭 NJKFGNFJKGNGJ killed me, I was kicking my feet laughing for a good minute. This is the kind of standard everyone should look at and go 'yeah, I want what they have' BECAUSE IT'S CORRECT. LOUD CORRECT BUZZER NOISES

Honestly everything in my bookmarks is certified Kaeli Fresh but these 7 are my top faves. They're probably also really commonly known I'm sure but LMAO like I said I don't read much 😭 which is heavily ironic considering I write myself. Anyway this ended up way longer than I intended but LOL <3 <3 go give these incredible authors love!!

[blueboyluca]

@konmari-dogs's post reminded me, I read a lot of dog books this year! My biggest tip for reading more is put a bunch of books on your phone and just dip into them when you can. I think I originally got this tip from Milly, but it really works. If you are getting sick of one or need a break, you can easily flit to another. You can get a page or two while waiting for appointments or at a cafe or something. Really easy to read a lot more.

Anyway, I read a lot of crap this year but also some gems.

Hit list: The Culture Clash by Jean Donaldson. I finally read this classic. I skimmed most of the training stuff because it is a bit outdated now, but I really liked the allegorical parts, the actual bits that are why it is titled the way it is. That stuff is still really relevant today.

Dog is Love by Clive D.L. Wynne. I enjoyed this. It followed the story of how Wynne convinced himself that dogs do love us, through various scientific disciplines. I also think this guy is a compelling speaker, if a little pompous.

Wonderdog by Jules Howard. Loved this one, excellent overview of dog science throughout history. Really worth the read.

The Secret History of Kindness by Melissa Holbrook Pierson. My favourite read this year, an incredibly moving overview of the history of training dogs.

In Defence of Dogs by John Bradshaw. I started this one more than a year ago and finished it this year. It was pretty good, but a little outdated on the science now. Still worth a read.

The Great Grisby by Mikita Brottman. I enjoyed this, it was about various dogs in literature or real dogs owned by famous people, mostly Victorians. It was a fun read. The focus won't be for everyone.

How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends by Mark Derr. I started reading this like 5 years ago. I really enjoyed the first half then dropped off it. I finished it this year and I am glad, but there wasn't as much good stuff in the second half. Still, I reference it a lot and I love the way he writes about early dogs.

Shit list: Living with Border Collies by Barbara Sykes. This one is a mess. Very few useful ideas, mostly just batty nonsense.

Fifteen Dogs by André Alexis. This was the only novel I read this year and it was garbage. Do not recommend.

How Stella Learned to Talk by Christina Hunger. You all know I hated it. I am stunned when people recommend it to others to get into dog buttons. I thought the narrative itself was a steaming pile of garbage and I thought the tips on how to get started with buttons were vague and unhelpful. Cannot understand this fad at all.

The First Domestication by Brandy R. Fogg and Raymond Pierotti. I started this a year or two ago and finished it this year. It was a mess. I appreciated the parts where they ripped into Coppinger, but there were tons of other really questionable bits so I basically think the whole thing is a wash.

Dogs: A Philosophical Guide to Our Best Friends by Mark Alizart. It wasn't terrible, but it was quite strange. I appreciated it sent me down a few rabbit holes though. I tried reading some more philosophical books about dogs but they fall apart as soon as the authors show they know nothing about modern dog science.

Dingoes Don’t Bark by Lionel Hudson. This one also wasn't terrible but it was also kind of nothing. Not a lot of information about dingoes. I think the documentary it pairs with would be more worhtwhile. I think it's from the 70s, maybe 80s.

Still reading: Level Up Your Dog Training by Natalie Bridger Watson. This is for beginners, but I am enjoying it as another resource for my club.

The Wolf Within by Professor Bryan Sykes. This is good but thick and science heavy, so I know it will take me a long time.

Treat Everyone Like a Dog by Karen London. I am not enjoying this at all. It will inevitably make it onto my shit list one year.

What Dogs Want by Mat Ward. Really loving this very cute and modern take on basic dog care for new owners.

What the Dog Knows: The Science and Wonder of Working Dogs by Cat Warren. I am really loving this so far. It's my kind of book, a mix of dog science and memoir.

Our Oldest Companions by Pat Shipman. I am not that taken in by Shipman. I've read one of her other books and I don't find her particularly compelling. I am finding Sykes more interesting than this one.

Aesop's Animals: The Science Behind the Fables by Jo Wimpenny. This one is pretty good, not sure if I will finish it though because I read the dog and wolf chapters already.

Positive Herding 101 by Barbara Buchmayer. I am enjoying this. I got through all the beginning stuff and have finally reached the chapters that will talk about herding training.

Enrichment Games for High Energy Dogs by Barbara Buchmayer. This is good enough that it made me buy her other book. I haven't finished it yet though.

[razrogue]

I was thinking about the first time post game that Gan writes Astarion a "love letter"

And how he's a super dick about it at first "why would I want something so trivial? It's beneath me." Turning his nose up at it, he's offended by something so low class being given to him.

Gan gives it to him anyway and tells him "do whatever you want. burn it, rip it up, keep it. I don't care." They go on about their business. They still write them. He still turns his nose up.

They test his ass and stop after the fourth one. He'd gotten one a month (before Gan started traveling when they switch to weekly if they'll be gone long).

He notices when he doesn't get the 5th one but is too arrogant to say anything.

When the 6th doesn't arrive, he's a dick about it.

"What happened to your little missives? Finally realized they were worthless drivel..."

Gan doesn't take the bait though.

Gan just tells him "well you said it was beneath you and I don't want to offend the Lord of the house."

And they leave it at that.

He sees them in the garden one day seven months later and he still hasn't gotten a letter from them. Gan still writes them but doesn't give them to him cause he's being an inconsiderate and hurtful brat.

They're outside writing Minthara one though. Minthara cherishes the fuck out of hers 😆😆😆

He joins them on the bench and looks over their shoulder and sees them writing one. He comments that they shouldn't bother wasting the parchment and ink and that he won't accept it.

Gan only remarks that's fine because it's not for you 🤷🏾‍♀️

He doesn't like their response and snatches it from them in a fit. And Gan just calmly puts the quill down and stares at him.

He pouts that no one should find these letters sweet or charming. How it's just fancy words that aren't worth anything. And Gan stands up and remarks "you seem really angry about something that is beneath you."

And they grab their quill and papers and head back inside. He reads what they were writing to Minthara and it pisses him off a lot. He rips it up, yells at one of the staff to clean up the mess, and goes inside to read his cause the asshole never opened his letters.

So he finally reads what they say. Gan usually just writes a very small poem or something they love about them or expresses gratitude for their presence...occasionally something erotic (the one they were writing for Minthara at that time was erotic LMAO)

But the first one they wrote was reassuring him that they were in this together for however long they could be (they were not a vampire at the time).

The second one was a reminder about the day they told him about his pet name and how that was a huge step for them to share that with him.

The third one was a poem they'd seen in a book that reminded them of him.

The fourth one that they gave him simply said "for all the things I've done in this life, committing to you was one of the best."

And he feels like such a dumbass but he doesn't want to admit it. Too proud, too arrogant, too much of a jerk.

So he takes all of them and carefully places them into a blank leather bound book (I'm imagining a photo album type book equivalent) and he puts a ward on it and stores it away.

Finally approaches Gan later that evening. He doesn't want to apologize but he does want to tell them that maybe getting the letters isn't so terrible (he also really liked what they were writing to Minthara and he's slightly jealous because of course he is that he hasn't gotten an erotic one 🙄)

So he decides to curl up with them on a couch/bench/whatever piece of furniture and they enjoy each other's company for a while. He hesitates for a good part of the evening to even address his rude fucking behavior earlier that day.

But then Gan is like "alright I need to go rewrite something because you were an asshole and ruined something of mine."

And he grabs their wrist as they're walking away from where he remained seated. And he actually apologizes. Like actually says the words and not his typical "address it but not appropriately or adequately" kind of way.

In a moment of honesty, he just apologizes for destroying the parchment. He doesn't say he was wrong though 🙄

But he apologizes for behaving like that. Gan just says okay and leaves the room. He's miffed he wasn't forgiven but doesn't complain.

When they are in bed later that night, he quietly mentions that he'd like to start getting them again (and actually apologizes for his behavior a second time!).

Gan doesn't acknowledge him right then, they just go into trance.

When he wakes up the next day, Gan is gone already doing their evil overlord shit.

But he notices two sealed letters on the nightstand from the 5th and 6th months and he smiles a little to himself.

Just "hmmm they still wrote them anyway" and he's relieved on the inside that they did.

The 5th month's letter was his erotic one 😂

[anonymousewrites]

Portal to My Heart (Book 3) Chapter One

Loki x Reader

Chapter One: To the TVA

Summary: (Y/N) and Loki arrive at the TVA, but their bodies keep distorting.

Mouse Note: Welcome back to Portal to My Heart! I know I've been looking forward to sharing this story for a long time, ever since the first episode of LOKI Season 2 came out. I know that for me this is going to be emotional since I love Loki and have been a fan of his character since I discovered Marvel. I am very happy with how this story turned out, and I'm so excited to show you all. So, please enjoy and comment your thoughts so I can interact and freak out with fellow fans (it also makes me want to keep posting haha). And thank you all for supporting me so far. You're the best and make writing worth it!

Previously…

            (Y/N) landed roughly next to where Loki was sitting, disheartened, in a TVA interrogation room. She cried out as her wound ached from hitting the ground.

            “(Y/N)!” Loki’s eyes widened in horror, and he rushed to her side, holding her tight against him. “Gods…did Sylvie do this to you?”

            “It was an accident,” coughed (Y/N). “But shit, it hurts.”

            “Someone!” cried Loki. “I need someone!” Cursing as no one came in, he lifted (Y/N) up and set out in search of help. “Keep your eyes open, everything’s going to be all right.” Loki brightened in relief as he saw Mobius, free of any bonds, speaking hurriedly to B-15.

            “Sixty-three new branches in this unit alone? Does he want us to just them all branch?” said Mobius to B-15.

            “Mobius!” shouted Loki, slowing to a stop. “We made a terrible mistake, and now everything’s gone wrong and (Y/N)’s hurt!”

            “What?” asked Mobius. His eyes widened as he saw the bleeding woman in Loki’s arms.

            “Freed the timeline, found the bastard, war…need to prepare…” murmured (Y/N), dizzy from blood loss.

            “I don’t know what happened to you analysts—” (Y/N) and Loki looked at him in confusion and alarm “—but we need to you to a medic, now!” Mobius flipped open his Tempad and called medics. “Now, who are you guys?”

            “What…?” breathed Loki.

            “We need boots on the ground, stat,” said B-15.

            Loki just sank to floor and held (Y/N) close as he realized they had really messed up. They could both see the statue looming over them on the elevator, not of the Time-Keepers, but of He-Who-Remains. Everything had gone wrong, and now they were in an even bigger mess. Loki took a deep, shuddering breath as he waited for the medics to arrive.

            “Please don’t leave me…” he whispered. “I need you here. You were right about everything. Please stay.” “It’s a pity she won’t live as long as you.” Loki’s heart clenched at the reminder of (Y/N)’s mortality. “You can’t die today, (Y/N). You can’t…because I love you.”

l

            “Hey, we’ve got a medic!” called Mobius, running back towards Loki with B-15 and a medic at his side.

            Loki stood and picked up (Y/N). No, no, he needed to protect them. This Mobius didn’t know them. If this was some other reality or something, he couldn’t trust them to heal her. He needed to escape, get somewhere where he could help (Y/N) and make sure they recovered.

            “Hey, where are you going?” asked Mobius.

            B-15’s eyes narrowed, and she glared at them. “They’re not analysts. They’re variants.”

            That settled it. Loki ran, holding (Y/N) tightly to him.

            “Wait!” shouted Mobius, running after him.

            Loki ignored him and ran. B-15 ran in front of him with Minutemen behind her.

            “Hold it right there, Variant!” shouted B-15.

            “Mobius, it’s me. I’m not a variant. Well, I am, a little, but we’re friends, we know each other,” pleaded Loki.

            “I don’t know you,” said Mobius. Around Loki, the Minutemen grabbed their pruning sticks.

            Loki did the only thing he could and threw himself out the window. He held (Y/N) tight as they fell and wished that he had his magic to make sure they were protected. They hit a truck hard, and Loki and (Y/N) groaned. His heart jumped in his chest. They were barely responsive, but they were still there.

            Maybe…Maybe their abilities will let them survive. Loki dearly wished that was true, but even if it was, in the TVA, there was no magic. There was no way for them to survive even if there was a chance.

            The driver screamed and panicked upon seeing them. The truck hit the side of a building, crashing through a window. Loki and (Y/N) were thrown from the back of the truck, and Loki tucked (Y/N) into his chest so he hit the ground harder than them.

            Loki grunted and stood up, holding (Y/N) up. They were struggling to keep their eyes open. It was clear that they had no idea what was happening as their blood loss got to their head. It was partly a relief since that meant his confession wouldn’t be remembered. Loki had spoken in the that of the moment, but now was not the time to be dealing with that, as much as he wanted to. (Also, Loki was awkward and a bit nervous).

            “We’re fine. We’re fine,” muttered Loki as TVA workers stared at them. Behind him, the truck tipped back out the window. Everyone watched in horror as it fell to the ground below and landed with an echoing crash. Loki coughed. “She’ll be fine.”

            The TVA timeline display landed on the ground and cracked it. The people gasped. Loki panted in exhaustion and looked down at (Y/N)’s nearly unconscious form.

            “Level five intruders,” announced the PA system. “They’ve hopped into a mail cart and descended to the lower level.”

            “Casey,” breathed Loki in relief as one man drew closer.

            “Have we met each other?” asked Casey in confusion.

            “Casey, help us. Please, tell me you know what’s going on,” said Loki. “Don’t you remember us?”

            “I got them! I got the intruders!” said Casey nervously into his communicator. “I got the intruders!”

            Loki’s eyes widened, and he backed up worriedly. And then his entire body distorted. (Y/N) groaned and winced as her already exhausted body glitched alongside him.

            They disappeared from the room with Casey and reappeared in another room of the TVA. Loki looked around himself in confused and checked on (Y/N), making sure nothing bad had happened to her when they distorted. To his dismay, it was clear the energy going to keeping her alive was getting exhausted by the glitching.

            “Loki. (Y/N).”

            Loki looked up in relief to find himself in the same room, just decorated differently, and Casey looking down at them.

            “What? Just a second ago, you didn’t know us,” said Loki in confusion. “Casey. Casey. Casey, something terrible is happening.” He pulled (Y/N) closer. “Please.” He trailed off when he noticed a crack on the floor from where he had just seen the TV display fall. Only now it was hanging up again. “Has…Has that always been there?”

            “The crack? It’s been there as long as I can remember,” said Casey.

            Was it possible that time had passed? When Loki and (Y/N) glitched? But that was impossible. And yet…

            “We were in the past,” breathed Loki in realization. He shook his head. “No, no, it doesn’t matter now. Please, Casey. (Y/N) needs help.”

            Casey nodded shakily and ran to call someone.

            Loki sank to his knees in relief and held them close. “Don’t worry, darling. You’ll be alright. I’ve got you.” Before he could rest, though, they distorted again.

            They landed in front of Casey, and Loki stumbled, holding (Y/N). He nearly cursed but just looked to Casey. “Casey, where is Mobius?”

            “He’s…in the War Room,” said Casey, staring at Loki and (Y/N), bloody and tired.

            Loki stumbled to the War Room and kicked the door open. No one was in there, and he groaned. In his arms, (Y/N)’s heads lolled and hit his chest. Her consciousness was completely gone. That meant her life was really in danger. He needed to find Mobius.

            Loki stared at the carvings of He Who Remains on the wall of the War Room and felt anger course through him. HWR was still haunting him.

            And then he and (Y/N) glitched, and he nearly collapsed as he appeared back in the War Room. This time, Mobius, B-15, and several other TVA members were staring at them. He grunted in pain.

            “Loki? (Y/N)?” said Mobius, eyes widening as he saw their states.

            “Mobius! You know us!” cried Loki.

            “Where the hell were you two?” asked Mobius worriedly.

            “Help us,” said Loki, pulling (Y/N)’s body closer to him. “Please. A moment ago, you didn’t know us. Tell me you know who we are.” Behind them, a Minuteman went to attack, and B-15 blocked him.

            “Yes, yes,” assured Mobius.

            “Everyone, stand down!” shouted the general of the TVA, Dox.

            “Please, Mobius, we found him, but (Y/N)’s hurt, and we keep disappearing, please, she’s dying, please help her—” Loki’s rambles continued.

            “Hey, hey, who did you find?” asked Mobius in confusion.

            “Him.” Loki looked at the wall where the carvings of HWR had been a moment before. He handed (Y/N) to Mobius, who was startled but held them, and grabbed the pruning stick from the Minuteman.

            “Loki?” asked Mobius, glancing down in horror at (Y/N)’s bleeding stab wound.

            “Get back!” said Loki when the hunter tried to attack. Then, he stabbed the stick into the wall, and the mosaic of the false Time-Keepers burned away to reveal HWR’s face carved into the wall. The truth of the TVA hidden just beneath the surface. “That’s who built this place!” shouted Loki. “That’s who stole your lives! That’s who’s coming back!” He stared at Mobius pleadingly. “Now, please, get (Y/N) help. Please.”

l

            “She’s going to be okay. The medics say the wound will scar, but otherwise, she’ll be alright,” said Mobius as Loki hovered at (Y/N)’s bedside.

            She still looked so still. Loki didn’t want to leave (Y/N) for a moment. He needed to watch over her, protect her, succeed where he’d failed.

            “Loki. We need to talk about what happened,” said Mobius.

            “I need to make sure she’s alright,” said Loki fiercely.

            “Okay, okay,” said Mobius. He sat down next to Loki. “We’ll talk here. That way you know how she’s doing.”

            Loki nodded shakily. “Right. Right.”

            “So what happened? The last thing I knew, you guys were going to face the cloud monster,” said Mobius in concern.

            “Alioth?” said Loki. He shook his head. “Alioth was a distraction. He was a guard dog. We found him. A Citadel at the End of Time.”

            “But where’s Sylvie?” asked Mobius.

            Loki’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t know. She’s still there. She…She stabbed (Y/N) trying to kill He Who Remains. She’s the reason she’s like this right now…We just wanted time to think, and Sylvie wouldn’t just stop, and now (Y/N)’s…” Loki was spiraling, and he slumped over. “It was an impossible choice, but she seemed so certain. How could she be given the circumstances?”

            “Okay, okay, slow down, Loki,” said Mobius calmingly. “You wanted time to think, so let’s think.”

            Loki took a deep breath and looked at Mobius. “Mobius, we got the man at the End of Time, and he made sense. We thought it was about freeing the Timeline, but that brings only more malevolence, more violence, more war. More of him. They’re coming. They’re all coming. ‘You came to kill the devil.’ ”

            “I don’t understand,” said Mobius.

            “Maybe he was,” murmured Loki. “But maybe he wasn’t. Sylvie was convinced he was. We fought, Mobius. She kicked me through a Time Door, and she and (Y/N) fought, and (Y/N) got hurt, and then Sylvie kicked her through, and…”

            “Well, I’d ask who won…” remarked Mobius.

            Loki huffed. “It was a draw.”

            “You all kicked each other through Time Doors simultaneously?” said Mobius.

            “No. (Y/N) and I were actively trying not to fight her,” said Loki. “That’s why (Y/N) was hurt…” He looked at her and reached out to her. He drew his hand back awkwardly. “She was trying to stop Sylvie. She was trying to kill him.”

            “Stop, relax,” said Mobius. “(Y/N) is going to be fine. She’s alright. Look, just calm down.”

            “I just wish I had tried harder,” said Loki ruefully. “I wish we’d had more time.”

            “Don’t do the coudlda-woulda-shoulda. Focus on what we know,” said Mobius.

            “War is on its way,” said Loki. “That’s what we know. I have no idea if he was right about everything because his variants are on their way! It was about preventing more of them! There was no simple choice, no other way.”

            “That’s who you showed us in the War Room?” asked Mobius.

            “He Who Remains,” said Loki, nodding. “This is his kingdom. And he says he keeps us safe, but how can you believe that? He built this place.”

            “No, how would I not remember that,” said Mobius. “How could he—”

            “He wiped your memories.”

            Loki’s head whipped to the cot where (Y/N)’s eyes were open and she was trying to sit up. Instantly, Loki was by her side and supported her. In relief, he saw that the wound was healing well due to the TVA’s technology.

            “You’re alright,” said Loki.

            (Y/N) smiled at him and covered his hand with her own as he helped her. “Of course. A stab isn’t going to keep me down.”

            “We’re glad you’re okay,” said Mobius, smiling.

            “Thanks,” she said, nodding. She frowned. “But what happened? Last thing I remember was falling through the Time door…”

            Loki stared at her. She didn’t remember. (Y/N) couldn’t recall his confession of love. The injury had been too much, and she had no idea what had happened. Part of Loki was disappointed since he couldn’t get her response, but the other part of him was thankful. He had no idea how to tell her again, how to deal with everything. (Y/N) was the person he loved, and he wasn’t sure how to tell her again, and with all the chaos going on, Loki was afraid of adding more to it.

            But he wanted to tell her. So, so badly.

            (Y/N) frowned and touched her chest. “And it felt like I was coming apart at the seams.”

            “We, uh, glitched?” said Loki. “I’m not entirely sure, either.”

            “Is that how you appeared in the War Room?” said Mobius in confusion.

            “Yes,” said Loki. “Well, partly. We were in the past.”

            “Don’t you mean the End of Time?” said Mobius.

            “No, we were in the War Room already,” said Loki.

            Mobius looked at (Y/N) in confusion, and she shrugged. “I believe Loki, but I was way too out of it to know what was happening.”

            Loki was once again torn from disappointment that he still didn’t know how she felt and relief that the chaos of feelings wasn’t involved in the difficult situation developing.

            “We were in the past,” reiterated Loki, shaking himself from his thoughts and looking at Mobius.

            “What do you mean in the past? Where?” said Mobius in confusion.

            “Here, in the TVA,” said Loki.

            “No, there is no past TVA,” said Mobius, shaking his head. “Time doesn’t work like that here.”

            “It does, it’s happening to us,” said Loki.

            “It’s impossible,” said Mobius.

            “It’s possible,” said Loki.

            “No, it’s not,” said Mobius.

            As if on cue, Loki and (Y/N)’s bodies distorted and came back together. They disappeared from the room, appeared in the same one but empty, and then popped out of existence again, reappearing in front of Mobius. (Y/N) groaned at the sensation. It was painful, but at least she wasn’t bleeding out.

            How skewed are my priorities that my cells rearranging is preferable to a stab wound? thought (Y/N). “See that? I think that confirms Loki’s story,” she muttered.

            “Uh, yeah, I saw it,” said Mobius.

            “Yeah? What does it…What does it look like?” asked Loki.

            “It looks…” Mobius grimaced. “I mean, how does it feel?”

            “It’s not that bad,” said Loki, lying.

            “I think my cells are getting spliced,” muttered (Y/N), brutally honest as ever.

            “I think (Y/N)’s assessment is better than yours,” said Mobius, looking between (Y/N) and Loki. “And we definitely need to get you help. Let me call Miss Minutes.”

            “No,” said (Y/N) and Loki sharply.

            “What?” asked Mobius.

            “You can’t trust her,” said (Y/N).

            “Are you sure?” said Mobius.

            “Pretty sure,” said (Y/N). “She was there with him at the End of Time.”

            “We still need to get your guys checked out,” said Mobius. “Yeah, let’s swing you by Repairs and Advancement. Come on.”

            “(Y/N) needs to rest,” said Loki instantly.

            “I’m fine,” said (Y/N), standing. “The tech did enough; it was just blood loss.”

            Loki hovered nervously. “Are you sure?”

            “Yes, Loki,” said (Y/N), glancing at him with a fond smile. She looked down at her torn shirt from the stab wound. “But, uh, I do want a new shirt.”

Taglist:

@alexpangender

@technikerin23

@kikster606

@neenieweenie

@h-l-vlovesvintage

@chronicallybubbly

[oldbutchdaniel]

this is such a fucking stupid question but. do you have any advice for developing a good understanding of characters? like i wish i could put those guys into situations but it's like there's a mental block and my mind goes blank as if they're Unfathomable Real People Who I Cannot Possibly Hope To Ever Understand.

no not a stupid question! actually a really good question. it's such a good question in fact that i don't have a simple answer so i'm going to. word vomit onto the page and hope something sticks. i ramble like crazy so have a read more :)

precursor: i have to note that i feel like armand and daniel are the two characters i've like. Understood. more than any other characters in my life. i think that's because i relate to them both in very distinct but separate ways (we'll discuss that later) but i think it's also because. part of anne rice's writing and the show's adaptation is so determined to break these characters down to their fundamental parts. that's kind of the thesis statement of the books, even, that when you live forever you're no longer a "product of your time" but rather just you, yourself, and you kind of have to spend the rest of your eternal life figuring out who that is. so that to me gives both a flexibility and a set of basic building blocks for each character that you can play with.

that being said, here are a couple of ways i maybe go about building understanding:

option 1: the projectorrrrr (this is me most of the time)

if you like looking at your character and going "ha ha i do that" then that's awesome. do that! figure out what parts you relate to and think, okay, if the vampire armand was me, how would he react to my coworker saying this. alternatively, if i was the vampire armand, would would i do if i'd just broken a 500 year vow to myself?

this is where, like, critical thinking comes into play of course, because you are not the vampire armand and the vampire armand is not you. but 1) you're allowed to play around in the sandbox and have fun without constantly going "He Would Not Fucking Say That" because uhhh. this is fandom and we are doing this for fun and 2) once you to get to the point where you're kindly going "He Would Not Fucking Say That" you can then be like oh! well what would he say? because the contrasts are often as fun to explore as the comparisons

option 2: that's my friend

i also think you genuinely can view characters as Real People — but you can hope to understand them!!! or at least you can understand Your view of them, which doesn't have to perfectly match mine or anyone else's view.

this is going to sound crazy and part of the reason why i feel like i don't have a good answer to your question, but genuinely my best writing happens when i uhhh. hear them speaking. in my mind. this is literally a developed skill because like 4-5 years ago i was terrible at writing dialogue and it frustrated me + i never had good ideas for fics because i just wanted to write meta posts. so i was like. i'm going to get good at writing dialogue if it kills me. imagine you're talking to them or they're talking to someone else. look up writing prompt sentences (like on roleplay blogs if nothing else) and think about how they'd respond. i'm at the point where i'll decide on a situation and will sit in silence for a minute, imagine them like dolls in my head, and go "SPEAK!" and wait to hear what they'll say.

my final tip is to please please remember if nothing else that this is supposed to be fun and that at the end of the day it is just playing with dolls online with your friends. you're allowed to be wrong. in fact you probably will be. but that's okay! you can start small and be wrong and as long as you're having fun and enjoying putting your characters in scenarios it's all worth it

[goodluckclove]

On Being Seen

I'll warn you in advance, friends and colleagues - I might not have quite an optimistic take on this one. In advance I'll say that I'm totally all right, there's no need to comfort or fawn or worry. It's just been a pretty crazy couple of days and it's sort of left me in a kind of perturbed state of mind.

I feel as if I've developed a reputation on Writeblr as someone strongly supportive of other writers through their struggles and successes, and I figure it might be useful to see that I speak as someone who has their fair share of doubts. Consider it a show of neurosis that supports me as your steadfast advocate in creative growth and potential.

I'll put it under a read more. It's nothing triggering I don't think, I'm just a little embarrassed to have it fully visible under what I still consider to be a relatively professional space. Or at least a space for me as a professional whose brand involves not being very professional.

Nevertheless.

I debated for a long time self-publishing Blind Trust. I went back and forth every so often for weeks, and my poor wife had to deal with the brunt of my strange excuses not to do it. It really came down to one big question, which was...why?

Why am I publishing this? And for money, no less? That's weird. Why would anybody support that? It wouldn't deter me from writing if I never published any of the Songbird Elegies. I'd still write them. I've been writing stories for almost 20 years that no one has ever read and no one will probably ever read.

Sure, I have the fantasies of relative cult notoriety. People making fanart of my characters and sharing weird memes about my plot points. Finding comfort in the words and stories I've created to comfort myself. When I was still considered schizoaffective my dad gave me a copy of Flow My Tears the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick and said that he was "like us". If that happened to someone else with one of my books it would mean the world to me.

Then again, would it? Because in my actual, real, physical life I am terrible at taking praise. It's like trying to catch a ball from the other side of a brick wall. If you ever pass me on the street I'm guaranteed to be wearing soundproof headphones and blasting music to keep anyone from talking to me. You might catch my eye and I'll smile and nod, maybe toss a compliment your way, but if you try to have a conversation and I do not know you I will absolutely just keep walking. I can't do it.

I love people and I'm terrified of people. It's always been this way.

It's easier online. I mean it when I say that I'm open to anyone here just starting a conversation with me about anything. There's already the unspoken assumption that we're all already weird, so I don't have to think too hard about your motivations. But still, large amounts of praise and positive reinforcement make me deeply uncomfortable. I've been trying to work on that for years, but I find most advice on building self-worth deeply unhelpful.

It's not like I'd prefer hate. I think I'm just not used to being noticed either way.

This is the first time I've made an honest effort to put my work, and by proxy myself (all writers are brands now, says the publishing industry as a whole) on display online. And for the most part it's been great! I enjoy the connections I've made here. The promise of making more. There are so many skilled storytellers here that it gives me a lot of hope and excitement for the future of literature.

But it's weird. It's really weird.

Most of the time I see it as another social media client. I stand by the posts I make and do them for fun, but I also do them to maintain a presence and draw in more attention. I studied to do things like this for work before. I picked like three social media management tactics that I thought I could remember when I was 18 and just stuck by them. And then occasionally I go oh wait. This isn't some nonprofit. This isn't a start-up for tech assholes. This is me.

And that's weird.

It's not a massive following I have, but it's more than I've ever had before under my own personal and creative writing. I published short stories and articles, but I never heard anything from them. There are short stories I have on online journals that I genuinely do not know if anyone has read. Here, I see people like things and I'm like huh. I feel like a mummy or a ghoul. I do not understand what people are doing.

One part of my brain takes this information and says that it's probably proof that when I publish Blind Trust, some people will buy it. People have expressed interest already. Which means they're probably interested, I think. I post excerpts of my writing and people seem to enjoy it enough to click a button or leave a comment. That's cool. I don't get why it happens, but it's very cool and it makes me happy.

At the same time there's this undercurrent of paranoia. I don't get it. And I don't think I ever will. That's essentially been my only coping mechanism for publishing at this point - I don't know if it'll work, but I might as well try and if I do something will probably happen.

I know I'm a writer. At this point it would be ridiculous to say I wasn't. I'm a professional, working writer, and experienced enough to know that saying all that doesn't say much in terms of quality.

Am I a good writer? I don't really know what that means. I like Blind Trust. I'm reading it for the fourth time as I edit it again and I genuinely enjoy it. So someone who thinks like me and has similar tastes to myself might feel the same way. I don't really know who that person might be. Statistically I imagine they have to exist somewhere. And that there's at least a handful of them.

Imposter Syndrome is real and I don't think it ever goes away. I'd like to think that it's one of those things where you think about it less and less, and this is just the first night in maybe five months that I'm really thinking about it.

I'm not expecting to make a ton of money off my first book. In fact, I probably will be sick from anxiety with any purchase I get for the first year, because it means that someone spent human money on writing I am happy to just give them for free.

But this is going to be my job. I want this to be my job so I can spend more time doing it. Because I've dedicated so much time to doing all of this, it means I get to spend a lot of my day getting other writers to write even a little bit of their own stories. And that's so important to me.

I don't know. I don't really have a neat end to this. I'm forcing myself to actually follow through with posting it, and then to continue keeping it up even though it feels incredibly vulnerable to be, in my opinion, this self-indulgent and whiny. It's insecure. I'm still insecure. I'm in therapy and on medication and there's more shit I got to do in life.

Still, I'm telling myself that my version of being a Professional Writer is to showcase emotional pitfalls like this. Newer writers might know that you can sometimes have a night where you might not be in despair, per say, but certainly deep confusion, and then come back the next day and keep on working. I stand by what I mean when I say that the craft should not be entirely miserable. It is still maybe 25% inconvenient to me, and I am currently in that less-desirable quarter.

So what am I doing? Wife got us Jersey Mike's, so I had a yummy sandwich. Kafka is sitting on my calves, just behind my laptop monitor. I'm listening to my soul/funk playlist while Wife plays Hell Divers for the first time. Later we're going to play a board game.

But for now, I'm going to keep editing my goddamned novel.

Blind Trust out in June. Get ready people, because I'm not.

[fixinglitg]

HOW TO FIX BISEXUAL WOMEN IN THE GAME

So you've read the title and probably just wanna get straight to this, so I will. If you cba to read my explanation as to why I dislike some of the women LI characters, scroll down and find some red text, that's when I get on with things.

DISCLAIMER: After a recent ask at the time of editing this, I just wanna add the fact that this is a friend's to lovers route, and just my opinion. There will be multiple of these, so keep that in mind when you read through.

Fusebox SUCK at writing Bisexual women, and couldn't do a proper wlw to save their life, in my own personal opinion of course. So far, we've had Talia, Marisol, Elisa, AJ, Yasmin, Lily, Najuma, Cora, Angie, Dana, Gabi, Lulu, Bella, Chloe, Flo and Bonnie.In MY opinion, only Talia, Najuma in a way and Angie are the only ones written well.

Talia still has a good relationship with Jake if you don't pursue her, Najuma has no issues with going after Youcef (though she is a little on me sometimes) and Angie has an absolutely amazing friends to lovers and is the only reason why I play S4 despite actually enjoying that season very much weirdly.

So now we'll move onto the bad, because that's what this post is for.

Marisol is such a pain in the ass to get, and I just think she comes across as a bit manipulative and shitty. I've NEVER done a route for her because firstly I don't find her attractive at all, but mostly I think it's just too much of a hassle to get her. And the fact that she continues to use Graham in an attempt to make us jealous is so goddamn stupid like babe, just say it flat out and take my answer.

Elisa is the better of the two, yet ofc I haven't done her route as you HAVE to be on a Marisol route for her. I think she's gorgeous, and I find her kinda amusing (I know, odd me) but I think she just needed to come earlier, or have her be an open route already. I can't comment much more on her as I barely see her much afterwards, but I think she was a waste of potential.

Then we have Aj. And I love my girl, I really do, but S3 is so forgettable to the point where I can't actually remember how pushy she could be? Same with Lily to be honest. BUT one thing I do remember about Lily is the fact that she can steal you at the end, and then Aj leaves which SUCKED because that's how mine ended up the first time round, so she's never been in my good book for that. And then there was also Yasmin, but I haven't done her route so I can't give an opinion unfortunately.

Next we have S4 with Cora as I've already touched upon Najuma and Angie. See, I don't think Cora's BAD but I kinda hate the fact that she's like a false LI. The fact that you can't stay coupled up with her is a little annoying since I would've enjoyed a route with her, but it is a nice change of pace having someone basically reject your MC after coupling up with them. So, not terrible, but not amazing.

Then S5. Oh dear. Lulu is honestly the only one really worth it in the end. She's sweet, and she isn't clingy. Neither is Gabi to be fair, so for wlw I would definitely go for them. I think Gabi is a better character than people allow. She has depth to her, and people always talk about "oh but her little tantrum with the ring" I'm sorry but if a guy was sleeping round my house and I find a ring, I'm gonna think it's for me and not the "other women" you've just found. So I understand why she did it. Besides, she also got a confession out of Suresh, so is it really that bad?

Dana on the other hand, oh dear. Not only can she not take no for an answer, she also cheats on you, and then acts really shitty all throughout casa amor. Honestly, it's really satisfying going after Gabi after being with her, because she brings my mental health further down than it already is. And not only that, she's ugly asf??? She looks ill, I'm more concerned than attracted. And- yeah, the shading is all off, and the hair colour isn't it.

Before I continue my rant about that, let's move onto S6. I think Bella, Chloe, and Flo are all really attractive. The only thing that frustrates me is A. The fact that you can only couple up with them at the final recoupling, and B. The fact that you basically have to pick and choose who stays and who goes. And I think that they're all kinda pushed onto you. Of course, that's a writing error, but it makes me like the characters a little less when they seem really clingy and on you like no-one else exists.

And finally, so far, S7 with Bonnie. To keep things nice and simple, Bonnie should've been an OG girl instead. Whether she stayed as Bonnie or her whole reasoning was pushed onto an OG girl instead doesn't matter. She just never should've been an LI. Having Joyo/Bryson (I think) take her back to the villa when they feel nothing is so stupid. And I know it was only because they wanted to keep her since she's an LI. Which is why she should've been at the villa in the first place, so that it didn't put them in an awkward spot. On top of that, her character doesn't serve much purpose if you're either not into her, or not into women.

SO NOW THAT WE'VE GOTTEN THAT OUT OF THE WAY, you can read on from here if you didn't care about that shit and just wanted to see how I'd do this.

So the female LI of the season (if they only added in one) should be an OG from the start. I think that you have to do specific things to unlock that route. For example, say you're into women, and have a high heart score with said character (that's based on the original app, idk how it'd work for the new one now that the emojis are mostly nonexistent). You should only be able to pursue said woman if it makes sense.It should start off with Woman LI saying how she's into both men and women, and can't wait to start her journey. None of this "oH iM eXciTEd To GeT tO kNoW yOU"

NO. The female LI shouldn't have the sole purpose of being an LI for the MC.Then we'd see her recouple with a guy at least once or twice. During that time, she can talk about how things aren't exactly feeling right for her, but she thinks it might just be the fact that they're in the villa. I don't want to be automatically pushed onto this character. I want her to either randomly come out and say it, or hint at it.

And then after a challenge or some really hefty drama that splits the villa in two (because we love some drama) I'd want this sort of scene to happen:

Note: All FEMALE LI'S dialogue is in YELLOW.

"Hey. MC? Can I talk to you quickly?"

MC would follow potential F!LI to the firepit because it's weirdly symbolic. Then it would either be one of two options depending on if the route has been unlocked.

LOCKED ROUTE: "I'm worried about my time here. I'm just not clicking with anyone right now. (Her partner's name) isn't quite who I thought he'd be. And after today, I'm not really sure if I can trust him or not. Or anyone but you really. I don't know what to do. Since I think of you as the closest girl I know in this villa, a best friend even, I was wondering if I could get your advice?"

This would be securing the fact that she is now locked, and won't be able to be an option later on. I think it's a good idea to lock her to keep things simple. And then you could even add in another woman later to be her partner. Whether the new woman is also an LI too is in the air.

BUT what if she was unlocked? How would that dialogue go? Well...

UNLOCKED ROUTE: "I'm sorry if this is a bad time. Is this a bad time? It feels like a bit of a bad time."

Option A: "No, of course not, what's wrong?"

Option B: "As long as it isn't another secret we don't know of."

Option C: "Yeah, it kinda is with all the drama going on right now."

I imagine this would be after a challenge that reveals things like movie night etc, so just go with me for this one. Of course, her answer and your answer would be different depending on the choice, but it would all lead to this set of dialogue no matter what:

"Listen, I just have something I need to get off my chest. It's been here for a while, and I guess I just didn't want to acknowledge it. At least, not until today. I like you, MC. As in I wanna couple up with you if we get the chance to."

"Are you serious? Why now? What's changed?"

"That challenge revealed a lot. At least, for me it did. You've always been there for me since day one. I've always found you attractive. I just didn't wanna seem pushy. I've tried hinting at my interest in you without seeming weird, but you never reacted. I couldn't tell if you'd even be interested in... Well, me? I wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. I..."

"Please, tell me, (F!LI name)."

"You just looked so infatuated. With him. The way you looked. How you smiled. It felt different to how you looked at everyone else. How you looked at me. Even when you two were bickering a little, I couldn't do that to you. I didn't want to look like I was taking advantage of the situation. I didn't want to get in your way. But, after today, after seeing how he treated you during casa amor? After his slimy hands touched those girls in there only to say how much he likes you, and only thought about you in those moments... It made me feel something else. The thought of you being dumped killed me. And I knew it was because I like you. But I didn't want to admit it until today. And if you need space, I fully understand. And if you don't feel the same, I get it. And I hope we can still be friends. But I need you to know before it's too late."

At this point, I feel like you'd have the option to accept, reject, or say you need some time. Accepting will fully unlock the route, rejecting will of course close it, but saying you need time will keep the option open until you only have the choice of saying yes or no during a later scene a few days later (about 9/12 episodes in the old format).

If you lock her route here, you'd notice a little change in dialogue until the end. How each word seems a little strained as if you can tell she's really holding back how she feels without it being pushy or obnoxious.And finally, I just wanted to add a little scene where she'd couple up with you. Before this, she'd ask if you'd wanna couple up. If you say yes, then she'll be the one who gets to couple up. If you say you're unsure, you'd get the choice. But if you don't, her route is locked again. And if you say no then ofc her route is locked and she'll be a little disappointed that you said you were interested, but she'll be a bit more understanding if your answer was "I need some time" during her confession scene. Because then it doesn't seem like you've led her on. ANYWAYS, coupling up scene.

COUPLING UP WITH HER: "I don't know how much of a surprise this will be. But I've been thinking about this a lot. And now that I know I can, there's no way I'm letting this opportunity go. I wanna couple up with this person because they make me feel as if I can be myself. All my insecurities and flaws feel like perfection with them. And I can't thank them enough for making me feel so... Happy. If I had known them longer, I'd even consider the word "loved." They've been with me from the start, and not only are they my best friend, but my ride or die. They've been there for me through thick and thin, and I wanna be there for them. So, that's why the person I wanna couple up with is MC."

And there we have it. Of course, I'd go more into detail but this post is SOOOOO long already. I hope you enjoyed and my fingers are really fucking stiff now, I've been typing for about 30 minutes, I'm freezing, and I'm tired. But overall, this was so worth it. Let me know your opinions too!

[comparativelysuperlative]

What was the book? With the Definitely Real Banishment

Spoilers (obviously) but it's the Lightbringer series. That villain was pretty good! The word-by-word writing is fine! The plot is, for several books' worth, aimed at being Very Generic Fantasy (for reasons that will make sense later). Incoming long post about its philosophy, with even more spoilers.

It's not often that I read a book and immediately go "I can tell you what kind of middle school this author went to." In this case, it was drawing on the author's experience of exactly the theology I grew up with, which was almost eerie.

(I read book one years and years ago, and didn't retain much other than "cool magic system." Probably everything in this post is true about book one as well, but I wouldn't know.)

Google will tell you that the series gets gradually very Christian, to the point where the climax of the last book contains a sermon. But it's more specific than that. These books scream "Protestant, American, classically educated, does not travel internationally very often, male, straight, probably white, the kind of person who would vote straight-ticket Republican until that meant Trump at which point all bets are off." I did not bother confirming most of those. They're just obvious.

The loudest part--to me at least--was the "classically educated." (If you're not familiar, it's this thing.) The series would mention quotes from fantasy medieval Catholics or fantasy ancient Greeks or whatever, and I'd recognize the quotes or the names because they'd be real people I ran across in school. Sure enough, author went to Hillsdale.

Lightbringer is interesting for having an actual vision of a conservative society, not just about hating the right/wrong people. Not being on that team anymore I don't actually like this vision very much, but compared to current conservatives, credit for having one at all.

Differences between people obviously don't affect your value as a person, they just might make it easier or harder or mean you have to specialize differently to accomplish as much For The Group.

(That opinion makes perfect sense for characters in an elite military unit/training for that unit. But that context is mostly specific to book two, and the philosophy really isn't.)

This applies to everything. Physical condition, including strength/weight/gender. Color-blindness. Superpowers. Being straight. (I'm genuinely not sure if that part was intentional. Characters kept getting distracted at terrible times, and the narration outside their head sounded exactly the same as when someone can't run a mile without Trying Very Hard.)

It does not matter whether your mental illness turns out to be literally demons in your head. Either way you've still got to either work through it or specialize around it.

Tradition matters, even when we don't understand the reason behind it.

If you happen to be in a fantasy book and have access to magic, consorting with demons is evil but fancy physics is fine. You can just BET this author got into fights with other Christians about whether Harry Potter was anti-Jesus.

"Irredeemably bad" isn't really a thing. "Not in fact going to be redeemed" is, but it's worth trying to show mercy if you have the chance. If you don't have the chance, kill 'em. Don't enjoy it, though.

Forgiving people for actually-bad things is hard, can't just go "idk, they're good guys now," but it's also important. (I do think this is underrepresented in secular fiction, where it's either depicted as "how could you work with THEM" or "come on, get over it already and team up against the whatever.")

One of the big reveals at the end is "the Christian God is real." The answer to the problem of evil is indeed the popular answer in the denominations I grew up with. Human choices something something mumble free will.

Very incrementalist. You do as much good as you can as fast as you can, but obviously without overthrowing the entire order or anything. Only evil opportunists would want to do that. Yes, even if the existing order is corrupt all the way through.

Speaking of which, you know that organization/political entity claiming to represent God? Corrupt all the way through. God is more personal than that. Protestantism!

Personal morality matters. Your leaders absolutely must be good people, or at least trying to be, or you're screwed.

Personal morality matters. It is safe to assume you'll end up as exactly what your peers expect of you, so pick good peers.

A man should be faithful to one (1) wife. Viewpoint characters speedrun figuring out the philosophy behind this.

(IMO monogamy was a legitimate human rights win by early Christianity, relative to what came before, and I think something similar applies in this setting. But since the real-life alternatives today are so much better than women being property, giving this a lot of screen time sounded like the book is fishing very hard for things historical Christianity did right.)

Also, once you are married you Are Married. It's not that changing that would be unthinkable, just that if you do treat it as an option you're obviously doing it wrong.

Gay people don't exist. Any variety of non-straight, really. Nobody says that it should be that way. It just doesn't come up. Characters are written in enough detail that I can tell you how they'd react if you asked them, and it's mostly the "not my business" + "prefer not to think about it" kind of low-grade homophobia. A few would be explicitly okay with it. But it does not come up. If there were a gay relationship depicted, I'd expect it to be "coincidentally" problematic in some other way.

(I guess there's that one slaver-antagonist whose sexuality is just "sadist." Yeah, one might call that problematic.)

Practically dripping with Great Man Theory of History. There's a scene where the protagonist has a self-affirming/emotional moment about not relying on his family name and meritoriously earning his first kingdom. This is played completely straight.

Don't worry, he uses it for good. At least as much good as he can without overthrowing the existing order etc.

If there are end times prophecies, they might well be true but you can't trust any specific interpretation so it's wiser to just do your best without reference to the prophecy. (This is an interesting take! And not heresy but also not common! I bet the author's reacting against some interesting strains of fundamentalism there.)

A cool idea where angels and demons can be anywhere in any world at any time in history, but are very reluctant to actually do that because they can't pick the same time twice. You can just tell it's the author's Christianity headcanon.

You win by doing your best and having faith in God. The villains are very much a sideshow.

(I think if everyone followed this book's philosophy more it would be a mostly bad thing. Let's not do that.)

(But wow, I wish modern conservatives were only this bad.)

It probably sounds like I didn't like this series. But I did read five doorstoppers' worth. This post is just about the opinions, and the opinions sucked.

Anyway. This has to be on purpose, right, and 10 or 15 years ago I was pretty much the target audience for this. Guess I'm old.

I used to explicitly think "I'm Christian, but atheist fiction is more interesting," and this book is the kind of thing that...tries...to counter that. Fails, because resolving major conflicts with divine intervention is tricky to make interesting. But you'll see why it's going for Every Other Book, But Christian. (Also, the amount of sex in these books is much higher than you might think, given everything. I wish I knew less about what body types the author is attracted to.)

Anyway, I can't really say I would recommend it. But if you're interested in what would happen if Card or Sanderson tried to be Evangelical Lewis for adults, Lightbringer isn't bad.

[literaticat]

This might be an agony aunt question but, my debut was acquired four years ago, and due to delays it still won’t come out for over a year. I’ve sold other books since then, but none are out yet. I’m trying to keep writing new stuff, but lately it’s felt like a lot of work with nothing to show for it (yet), and it’s hard to keep my spirits up. It started getting really hard lately when I realized that a beloved MS would likely die on sub.

I guess I’m asking if you have any words of encouragement, based on seeing your clients go through delays and wondering if it’s all worth it. I know this is how publishing goes and I know I can take a break whenever I want, etc etc. But knowing is different from FEELING, you know?

Ugh, that's a long time to wait, I'm sorry that's happening! But also -- it sounds like you have multiple books forthcoming. That's really exciting!

I totally understand feeling "doldrums-ish" at this point. For nearly every published author, I think there's some of this -- you have worked so hard and spent so much time just getting an agent (celebration!) -- but then you realize, oh shit, that SEEMED like the destination, but actually, that's literally just the first step on the journey. OK, daunting, but you've come this far -- and then there's some excitement, going on submission, SELLING A BOOK! WOOHOO!!!! (celebration!) -- and then there are some milestones, like getting the contract, doing edits, etc, all exciting in their ways...

... and then....

... there's nothing ...

... for what feels like (and in many cases actually is) A REALLY LONG TIME.

It's hard to keep up the excitement/enthusiasm when there's nothing to feed it, right? It starts to feel kind of endless and depressing.

The good news is, there's an end to that! Soon your excitement will ramp up again when RELEASE DAY comes near!!!!!

But, and I hate to be the one to tell ya, then there is often kind of a let-down "after Christmas" feeling when the world keeps turning, and nothing has particularly changed, and you don't get magic powers or anything. :-/

I tell you all this not to be Lady Downerton, but rather just to say, hey, this is a normal kind of feeling, and it's OK to feel it. Writing books for publication is a job -- and sometimes it can be a GREAT job full of perks and fun and thrills -- and sometimes it can be a thankless or dispiriting or lousy one, frankly, just like most jobs out there!

I think the key is that you realize you are more than your job. Should you do great work and find the joy in it and all that good stuff? Yeah, absolutely! Relish the wins, bask in the satisfying parts, celebrate your achievements. But realize that sometimes it's just gonna be a slog or there will be disappointing or maddening or boring parts, and that's just part of it.

The other thing is: it's happening to everyone, even if you can't see it. It's easy to think that OTHER authors are only having win after win, because people aren't exactly posting about the boring or annoying or upsetting things on social media, yanno? EVERYONE who has successes also has failures, everyone who gets opportunities also loses some, everyone who seems to be on living on Good Ship Lollipop has also spent time on Lousy Raft Marzipan.

The GOOD news is, you can clock out any time you want and go enjoy something else in your life for a while. I promise, nothing terribly important will happen in the publishing world if you step away from your computer and go on a vacation or take a hike or find a passion for pottery-throwing. The stories (and the fun parts, and the annoying parts!) will all be there when you get back!

[light-yaers]

so on a personal note, i applied to a creative writing masters over the past few months. i’ve been so excited for it, and worked on my own novel so hard for the portfolio i ended up submitting. it took a lot of strength but i shared my novel with so many close friends and family which i’ve never done before, but ultimately it was to get me used to that personal critique and feedback which was great.

i had my interview for said masters yesterday. it went terribly. like genuinely awful. the lecturers interviewing me were mean, and cruel, and i’ve honestly never felt worse about myself or my work from it. this isn’t just me saying “it went bad” as a blanket statement; it was honestly disastrous from the get-go, and it made me wonder why they’d even wanted to interview me in the first place from the portfolio they read, and why they’d even seen any semblance of potential within my words. even now i’m wondering why they went to such lengths to ridicule me, and make me feel stupid. surely it would have been easier to deny my application than berate me for 30 whole minutes, huh?

anyway. i knew after the interview that they didn’t like me, and that they were going to reject my application. i was right, and got the email earlier today that they’d decided not to accept me for the course. i am gutted. i am genuinely so upset.

i’ve been writing for 10 years now, just from loving it. i’m self taught, and don’t know shit about processes of publishing, nor the proper way to plan a story and world build. i said that in my personal statement. yet they still decided to go ahead with my work and interview me, so they must have seen some potential, right? i don’t fucking know, but from how those lecturers acted and what they said, it really didn’t fucking seem like it.

TLDR: i applied for a creative writing masters, the interview was awful, and i didn’t get in.

but in hindsight, after sitting on it for these few hours, i think i’m better off not going into an academic environment where those two lecturers didn’t like me or my work. my time and energy and money would not be worth trying to live up to their standards. so maybe this was a blessing in disguise and there are other avenues out there for me instead.

my best friend begged for me not to take this to heart and to keep writing, and i will. this was an awful experience and honestly has swayed me from ever pursuing an academic degree to do with my writing, but that won’t stop me from continuing with my novel, or my works, or anything that brings me joy.

this just fucking sucked, and maybe i’m not as good or passionate as i thought i was, but that won’t stop me. sorry for the long post. just wanted to get it out there. i’m still going to be published one day. i’m still going to write books and things i enjoy. fuck those guys, and fuck that masters degree.

lots of love x

[animentality]

I haven’t read your books yet, you know how it is, money~, but I bet they’re pretty good and I am planning to buy and read them, they’re on The List, and I hold you in high regards as a person I kinda vaguely barely know. I say this first to preface, because, from the kindest most adoring place of my heart okay, this reminded me of you, no offense: https://www.tumblr.com/pjackk/721300009283420160/whats-up-tunblr-basically-i-just-wrote-this-book

Ouch.

Glad you preceded this with a compliment...

But brutal.

For what it's worth, I also hate having to reduce my books to tropes...and I try not to, with any of my promotional posts...

But uh...good to know this is how I come across :S

But in my defense...and in defense of other authors... it's super easy for people to make fun of how we have to promote our books, but in this terrible digital economy...I mean.

It's hard to keep people's attention, and it's hard to sell books.

It's not like selling art, doing commissions, making animations, or well-edited videos. Books are inherently harder to sell and market and build an audience for, because they're an investment of time and focus.

They aren't as easy to dive into and enjoy. A webcomic chapter you could read in twenty minutes. A pretty picture you can reblog, and you can commission the artist if you love the style. A Youtube video can be ten minutes of investment. Maybe an hour, tops.

But a book?

Books will always struggle more than shows or animations, because it takes a certain kind of person to read books, and in this day and age, attention spans are shorter than ever.

You spend fucking years writing your books, and you edit, and you revise, and write some more, and edit some more, and revise some more, and then you have to promote.

All the time, in every way you can imagine. Using whatever tools you have... all the time, every way.

Otherwise, you don't see any sales at all, and then it's like you wasted three years of your life fiddling around, while everyone you know is making bank on crypto or whatever the fuck.

If I was good at fucking BookTok? I wouldn't be fucking here promoting at all.

I could leave my blog as the little meme machine it's always been.

But I'm bad at fucking TikTok.

And I mildly resent being compared to a TikTok author, because if I was any good at that, I WOULD NOT BE HERE promoting my books at all.

Tumblr is the worst place to promote anything, ever.

That's part of why I like it...but at the same time, that's why it's such a torturous practice, trying to promote my novels here.

No one here gives a fuck. And I'm fine with that.

I'm ok with that.

But I can't throw away hard work without at least trying.

I don't really get the criticisms of authors in those comments anyway.

What have those people tried to put out into the world?

You think self published authors are just jokes, or that they aren't marketing themselves well?

Maybe both are true, but someone who makes something, no matter how shit, has still MADE something.

It's easy to tear others down. It's not easy to make something that you care about, and put out into the world for others to see and judge.

And for those people in the comments too, I have to ask.

Is a book only good, if it's published by a company?

Because books that are self published are actually a LOT LESS likely to be made up of tropes and cliches.

People who self publish tend to write weirder and more out of the box things. They RESORT to tropes because they feel you won't pay attention to their books without them.

they feel you won't give their concept a try, unless they dumb it down for everyone.

They pretend the book is something it's not, out of sheer desperation.

I market 7 Deadly Habits like it's a fucking adventure action romance comedy...?

It's actually pretty fucking dark and grim and sad.

the main character is fucked up, and so are all his exes. So is the entire world they live in.

It's really not a funny book. It has dark humor, but it's hinged on an unhinged concept, one that I find darkly interesting.

But I lie and say it's a funny adventurous romp of sex and violence.

Because that's how I have to market it.

I try other things, of course, but I have found most people would rather read a romance than an anti-romance, which is more of what it is.

People don't want to try new things. They want more of the shit they already have.

to make something new, or different, or non-conventional, is to accept that you will have to water it down when you're trying to offer it to people.

So yeah.

I get it. Authors who blaze their book promotions are desperate losers and weirdo freaks with very bizarre interests and isn't it funny, how hard they're trying?

But you know.

What else can we be?

Leigh Bardugo?

Trust me. I wish I was a good writer. I wish I wrote straight YA fantasy books that kids and adults and everyone can enjoy. I wish I had a literary agent and five star publishing houses giving me 20 million dollars for my next book.

I wish I was a multi millionaire white woman, in an industry of rich white women, who write sexy murder mysteries and cozy thrillers and steamy vampire eroticas.

But I am what I am, and that's a queer self published POC author, who has no one in my corner, but me. Whose only means of promotion is my own efforts.

So no, I don't really look at other self published authors with disdain or wry detachment.

I know how they feel.

I know how much it sucks.

[misc-obeyme]

Hi! I'm terribly sorry for bothering you, but I would like your thoughts if you don't mind!

I'm having a hard time enjoying my own writing. I genuinely think it's terrible, and that anytime people say it's good, I think they are lying. I really try and like it, but most the time I end up not liking it. I would not say I'm a good writer, but I'm not a bad one; just somewhere in between? If that makes sense?

I want to get better at writing, which takes practice, and I was wondering if you had an advice possibly?

Thank you for your time 😊

Hello there!

No worries, you are not bothering me at all! In fact, I quite like talking about writing, so anyone should feel free to ask me such questions!

Now, I'm not sure if you're looking for advice on how to get better at writing or advice on how to not dislike your own writing. So I'll kinda talk about both since they tend to go hand in hand.

First and foremost, I totally understand the feeling you're describing and you should know that you are not alone! This is by far the type of thing people ask me about writing most frequently. Is it normal to not like your own writing? How do you overcome it? Do you ever get to a point where you feel like your writing is good?

It's really difficult to tell how good your own writing is. You're always going to see it differently because you wrote it.

How you should perceive your own work depends on your reason for writing. I tend to assume people here are writing fanfiction for fun. In that case, the best thing to do is to judge your writing based on how much fun you had writing it. If you enjoyed writing it, then it actually doesn't matter if it's good or bad. You wrote something, you had fun, and you gained experience about how to write while doing it.

It's like playing an instrument. You have to practice a song in order to play it. You aren't going to play it well the first several times you try. But you can still have fun playing, even if you play badly. The more you do it, the better you get, until you can play the song well. And you had fun the whole time.

Writing is the same. You write bad stuff continually, getting better and better each time, until eventually you're writing good stuff. The key is to have fun writing the bad stuff. (Or at least, what you perceive to be bad, which is never as bad as you think it is.)

How to get better at writing in general aside from practice? Read.

Read the kind of writing that you want to get better at. For instance, if you want to write mystery novels, read mystery novels. If you want to write novel length fic, read novel length fics.

But also read about how to write. Read books about how to create scenes, how to develop characters, etc etc. Find blogs of writers you admire and read through all the writing advice they've posted. Listen to podcasts about it, watch youtube videos, basically find any kind of writing advice out there and consume it. You don't have to actually do any of that stuff. But it will give you things to try and might also give you your own ideas for writing methods that might work for you.

The more knowledge you have about the craft of writing, the more you have to draw from when it comes to doing it yourself.

For what it's worth, I almost never re read my own fics. For me the fun is in the writing, not the reading. I trust the reactions of people on tumblr far more than I do my own thoughts on it. If someone here leaves me a single reblog with comments in the tags, I consider that fic a success, whether I like it when I read it or not.

It gets easier with time, but that feeling never really goes away. You just learn to challenge it and question it. Because it's never accurate.

I hope some of that helped! Please feel free to ask me anything you like, I'm happy to talk about writing all day every day lol!

Good luck with your writing! I believe in you!

[yvesdot]

Hi! I saw on your Drac Daily posts that you read Ooku last year- what did you think? I thought it was a really interesting look into what feudal Japan was/mightve been like under a woman Emporer

Halloa! I'm so glad I'm not the only reader of Ooku. (Ōoku? Oooku? I sound like a fool trying to pronounce it out loud.)

Strangely, it made me sympathize more with Lin Manuel Miranda in creating Hamilton. (<- Everyone in the world is welcome to stop reading right here.)

It's kind of a doomed endeavor, because it's trying to make empire feminist, and you just... cannot do that. When I come at the text more diagonally, poking through for evidences of how you cannot do that (e.g. the way the female shoguns treat their male concubines; much of interest suggested there re: gender, sexuality, power, etc.), I enjoy it a lot more...

...because it's not that much of a political text, perhaps? Every time I snarked or read it harshly I wondered whether I wasn't simply misinterpreting a historical drama. To be clear, I don't know what Hamilton is trying to do-- I've never watched it-- but there are points in Ooku where it seems clear to me that Yoshinaga is here for drama, dress, and all those lovely things implied by a historical manga like this one; perhaps I'm the rude one for expecting deep political thought just because she's won some feminist SFF awards. Frankly, maybe she's not even trying to make empire feminist; maybe she just wanted to write this premise.

And that premise binds her pretty tightly to a variety of ideas: e.g. that female shoguns could and would have acted exactly as the male ones did; that is, that there is no difference in perspective or experience which a female emperor might have which would necessarily lead her to an alternate conclusion. Obviously, that's the point of the series, as it tries to metatextually convince you that real life Japan really was run by women, and here's how that was possible... and I don't think that's a bad thing; it's a lot of fun to write something you know can't be 100% correct or perfect. That's why it made it to the top books of the year list! I think it was one of the best at doing what it wanted to do, and it was certainly a defining series of the year for me. 2022 Roundup still coming, um, whenever it comes.

Also! Under-Glass (the idea I explored in my plotting-a-short-story livestream) was inspired by the fact that I simply thought more could have been done with how terribly ashamed all those men feel to get dressed up as women and be concubines. What's so shameful about girlclothes, hmmm?

So you can tell I quite liked it. I tend to be very charitable with books I've enjoyed in any way (to everyone's chagrin), and I think Ooku has a lot to positively say for itself. I'd also like to have a more robust English-language manga criticism community (<- do these words mean anything?), so we could get more into the meat of it.

Admittedly none of this tells you anything about my awareness of feudal Japan, which is... nil. I'm sorry. I like learning about Japan, and I'm doing it bit by bit, but history and geopolitics have always been my weak suit. I think Dracula is a particular exception because it's so in-your-face about a lot of the things I point out; it's also worth noting I know nothing of Dracula and hardly anything of vampstudies as a whole. I'm just chatty.

(And, yes, it took me a really long time to get into the faux-Shakespeare dialect. But then, I'm no @butchhamlet.)

P. S. Thank you so much for reading the DracDaily commentary! It's so silly I've not been advertising it all too consistently; I'm very happy it's beneficial to people.

[1d1195]

I get scared that I’m in the portion of my life that is the part where everyone said it would get better, and if this is the best I’m going to get…. And I’m not even being ungrateful for some of the good I do have it’s just the bad is so debilitating. I’m at the point now where I’m very sure that there is someone who hears our prayers and wishes and they are just laughing at me. Cuz one time is a coincidence but after over twenty years worth you figure that it’s you. So now I’m at a point where I no longer pray and wish and that’s devastating in its own way. I’m not sure what I want out of messaging you about it, you don’t have to post or respond, I just needed to say it to someone. If I tell my boyfriend it’ll kill him. How do people keep hope and how can I be better at it?

Thank you for feeling safe enough to message me something like this. I know it's hard to say things like this out loud so I'm glad I could offer some help in just you getting it off your chest. Also, fair warning, with these types of messages I tend to ramble and go on and on, so I apologize for that in advance. I don't intend to sound preachy or like I know best, either. You can ignore everything I say, honestly, I won't be offended. The gist of it, is you're not alone and you can't lose hope.

(Upon finishing my answer, it's long-long. Like 1k words)

I'm not an extremely religious person but I totally get what you're saying. My mom always said going to church and saying a prayer would make things that I felt were bad feel better, but I've never really felt much better afterwards. I won't delve too deeply into the religious side of things, but I really understand what you're saying. There are some pretty terrible people in the world who get whatever they want and then there's me who said my prayers before bed for YEARS and asked for help and got nothing in return. It's really hard to feel faithful when it seems like every prayer goes unanswered. I know what you mean by feeling devastated by no longer wanting to pray or wish. But I also think that if you take a break, it's not like you can't go back. One thing I do still believe in is the higher powers that be will always take someone back even if their faith was shaken.

I don't think you're alone in how you're feeling. I've had to redefine my happiness a lot over the last few years. Sometimes it feels like I'm doing myself a disservice by doing so, but it also feels like if I don't then I'll spiral real bad. I feel the same way you do, I have a LOT of good in my life that I'm very grateful for, but it's hard to ignore the overwhelming parts that aren't so good. Even as a society there is so much bad and turmoil. It's hard to believe in good things and a bright future when, especially in the last few years, it seems like the world is on a mission to not have a future. I worry all the time that I will never be able to afford a house or have kids (something I've always, always wanted) and moreover that my parents will never meet my kids because they'll be gone before I can afford it. I worry I'll never be happy with how I look or feel about myself. I worry that my long-term boyfriend will never propose because we can't afford that either. I worry that people are constantly judging how I choose to live my life because of all these things. I always feel behind.

I'm not sure I have the answers on behalf of everyone, but for me, I've chosen to really focus on my own peace of mind. The parts of my life that are good, I spend more time focusing on those things. I have a job that supports the apartment I'm fortunate to have. I love my boyfriend. Because of where I teach I was able to get all my student loans forgiven. I enjoy reading books and writing on here. I am really focusing on being better to my body physically and emotionally. Every time I have pasta or a bake potato I think about how good life is.

I've definitely mentioned it before but I'm very anti-news and I tell everyone it really changed my life by turning it off. I still read headlines so I'm not totally in the dark and I'll look things up if necessary, but not watching all the horrible things that have happened in my state has made me infinitely happier.

Part of my own weird philosophy here is that I have to believe in hope. It's not something I let slip by. I hope all day long. You're not wrong though, it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done because it seems like there's every reason not to have hope these days. It's super frustrating. But I watch these videos of "humans being human" and it's all these heartwarming stories of people catching children out of burning buildings or saving a dog from a flood. They make me cry and make me hope. https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ is also a REALLY good website to make you believe in humanity and good when you're feeling down.

I think (and hope) your boyfriend would also be supportive if you told him. There's a chance that maybe he feels the same way? Or maybe he can help you feel better in a way that you haven't thought of yet. If you choose to not tell him, I hope you find someone to talk to instead because it's REALLY hard to do this alone. I'm in the same boat as you; I know it's easier said than done. I don't tell my boyfriend how I'm feeling a lot of the time either (that's why I'm always writing cathartic things about how I feel on here).

You're also always welcome to share how you're feeling here. Good or bad. I'm a great sounding board (in my personal opinion). I would love to cheer you on or support you when you're feeling down. Whatever you want. Obviously I'm not a professional, but I can feel how difficult things seem for you in what you wrote. I'm a firm believer in happy endings too, so if this doesn't feel like this is the best, then you haven't hit the best yet. So you can't lose hope. I know it's hard and I don't think enough people say that. Having hope is one of the most challenging parts of my life. I was REALLY negative for...gosh, I think it was something like 6-8 years. My friend pointed out I was really negative. Over a Facebook message. Just said she was worried about me. It was like a switch in me. I didn't realize how bad I got.

So it's not going to be easy, but I hope you don't lose hope. If you feel like you can't, let me know. I'll hope for you too.

Hopefully, (no pun intended) this helped just a little. Please let me know if you ever need to vent, I'm always going to be here 💕

xoxo