#forgetting that all close girlhood friendships are like first love

[fedorahead]

i know a lot of people who have this logic behind the scenes, and i get it tbh. we all have different life experiences and expectations. my old roommate was fucking her lifelong best friend and had been since they were kids, she didn't consider it cheating; the problem became when she decided to lie about it to her partner even though they were poly and lying was their boundary of what counted as cheating.

honestly we need a much healthier attitude toward sexuality as a society than we have. this kind of stuff isn't normal or acceptable for some people, but not everyone shares the same values and different people just grow into complex relational situations naturally. in my roommate's case, the two of them had gone through a deeply traumatic childhood together and considered themselves two sides of the same soul.... i don't think there's anything anyone who wasn't there can really criticize about that UNTIL they both decided not to be honest about it with their future partners. even then, our society doesn't provide room for the weirder bonds and that's a problem that contributed to the "cheating" situation.

this kind of stuff, the complex messy human interactions and strange formations of love, is why i'm a relationship anarchist. i love my husband more than anything; i genuinely believe he's my soulmate, but that doesn't mean that some weird shit we don't have a cultural perspective to account for ahead of time won't come up. so we've had many discussions about the difference between my unpredictable passions, his in-the-moment decisionmaking, and lasting bond we have. more specifically, how we know we're both complex people going in and those complexities are a part of our love and only contribute to our compatibility rather than being future risks of conflict.

[lauriemarch]

i push her to the back of my mind. if i touch the bruise, it hurts.

i can't tell you when it happened– if it was junior or senior year of high school– but i can tell you that i am different after sobbing in my bathtub for two hours when i found out that i am my own unreliable narrator. love has to be earned. keep everyone a breath away. don't let them in, but let them think they're a card carrying member to the club of you and all of your glittering personalities. i'm sorry i want to murmur so often under my breath but someone taught me when i was fourteen that sorry is the song of the weak so i bite my tongue and forget it.

they're all right; you don't forget your first heartbreak. but when everyone has the love songs and the hallmark movies to get over it, i am lost in a swirling hurricane of fury and lost girlhood to a person who i swore to love until the day i take my last breath. friendship is a sour taste in my throat so i pretend i'm in love with everyone and pray to forget the first best friend i've ever had. i miss you, if you're reading this. i'm mad at you too, if you're reading this. please let me follow you, if you're reading this. please tell me you're okay, if you're reading this.

and the final story goes like this: at the last concert i saw, i left swearing that i was going to trick the drummer into falling in love with me. my friend watched me with amusing eyes. why do you always have someone you're in love with? she asked. i frowned. aren't you always looking for your next romantic spiral? i asked.

what's an insecurity called if it was once a habit that you loved? what's a habit called when it's something i do to keep her close after she's walked away?

[jasmine604]

W7. Mid Sem SDL - Collected objects + written comments

some objects I have collected so far + why/my current thoughts

ceramic house – received this from a childhood friend. We are not as close anymore but I still value our friendship and how we grew up and experienced crucial parts of ‘girlhood’ together  - makes me think of how at that age we dreamt of idealistic worlds together, how naïve we are when young – a mundane experience everyone goes through. series of letters – links to sentimentality and the collection methodology – I hold onto people's words  - reading them again after a while takes me back to the day I first got them and how different I was/what stage of my life I was at. Design-wise – I love handwritten copywriting, it's unique and personal in a way messages never can.  heart pendant(s) – I collect variety of pendants  - they each hold sentimentality of the place I found it or the person who gave it. It makes me think of the idea of holding onto otherwise usless things – how we all do it for different reasons but beneath it all we do it so we don’t forget. pendant from dubai – like to document my traveling aswell as who I was when I bought it – when I look at this pendant I am automatically taken back to being 18 and being in the giftshop in dubai looking for gifts for my friends – amongst other people who were doing the same. It was sweet seeing how everyone at that gift shop was doing it last minute because they forgot during the actual trip.  orbit pendant – found this on the floor at school, ofc I could have returned it to the office  - my friend and I decied to keep it and split the neckalcne into sperate beads/pendants and kept them. Reminds me of doing relatively harmless things as a kid but then it was a big deal – how much we change as we grow and age.  twin peaks CD booklet – explores human experience – like the physical look of the shots aswell as design choices in the soundtrack booklet – the moody desolate photography  - blues, purples. Amy Winehouse Frank CD booklet – amy being a person, a girl, a woman – her everyday life  - her experience – how relatable yet unique her experiences are. Photography also captures the beauty of everyday life  - how we all are the same.  Enya Mag – about her girlhood, growing into a woman and struggling with death and human experiences – photofraphy showing snippets into her daily life – made me relate to her thoughts about growing up and relationships dissolving – how we all grow through it yet to us it seems like we are the only one going through that.  Y Tu Mama Tambein DVD – coming of age movie about a relationship fizzling out  - explores naïve and idealistic childhood and the often sad outcomes of everyday life once the roadtip is over and you are grown – makes me think of my journey of girlhood and my need to keep objects from them In the mood for love DVD eyeshadow palette – feel like for me and many girls our relationship with makeup also changes as we age – maybe starting as a way to look better, or something you refuse to associate as you ‘arent like other girls’ its something I came to love and use to express whatever I feel like in the morning  - makes me think of the many scenes of girls getting ready to face things in their lives, something that feels grounding.  brian eno CD cover – music plays a large part in my life as it does everyone else – I find it fasincating seeing songs I know played in the back of movies, maybe when the character is getting ready or theres a death scene. How the same songs I use to fall asleep may be something someone sings to their baby or something that hlds memories of grief for another. 

These are obviously not the final written explanations - they are more word vomits that link to the questions in the SDL - I plan to build on them as I go forward. I also think I may change some of the current objects.

I am having a harder time articulating why I have chosen something for something, especially in the matter of everyday life and girlhood - i think reading up and looking into similar projects/contexts could help me find the right terminology for what I am trying to express.

[shirbertshitposts]

10 Shirbert Moments from Anne of Green Gables series I think about a lot

In honor of Valentines Day I thought I would post a list of some of my favorite Anne and Gilbert moments. It was hard to narrow it to just ten as I have been going through all nine books and trying to queue posts about all their iconic moments through the series; However I decided to pick the ones that I remember even when I haven’t read the books in a while. I didn’t have the heart to rank them properly so they’re just listed in chronological order.

1. His future must be worthy of its goddess

In the twilight Anne sauntered down to the Dryad’s Bubble and saw Gilbert Blythe coming down through the dusky Haunted Wood. She had a sudden realization that Gilbert was a schoolboy no longer. And how manly he looked—the tall, frank-faced fellow, with the clear, straightforward eyes and the broad shoulders. Anne thought Gilbert was a very handsome lad, even though he didn’t look at all like her ideal man. She and Diana had long ago decided what kind of a man they admired and their tastes seemed exactly similar. He must be very tall and distinguished looking, with melancholy, inscrutable eyes, and a melting, sympathetic voice. There was nothing either melancholy or inscrutable in Gilbert’s physiognomy, but of course that didn’t matter in friendship!

Gilbert stretched himself out on the ferns beside the Bubble and looked approvingly at Anne. If Gilbert had been asked to describe his ideal woman the description would have answered point for point to Anne, even to those seven tiny freckles whose obnoxious presence still continued to vex her soul. Gilbert was as yet little more than a boy; but a boy has his dreams as have others, and in Gilbert’s future there was always a girl with big, limpid gray eyes, and a face as fine and delicate as a flower. He had made up his mind, also, that his future must be worthy of its goddess. Even in quiet Avonlea there were temptations to be met and faced. White Sands youth were a rather “fast” set, and Gilbert was popular wherever he went. But he meant to keep himself worthy of Anne’s friendship and perhaps some distant day her love; and he watched over word and thought and deed as jealously as if her clear eyes were to pass in judgment on it. She held over him the unconscious influence that every girl, whose ideals are high and pure, wields over her friends; an influence which would endure as long as she was faithful to those ideals and which she would as certainly lose if she were ever false to them. In Gilbert’s eyes Anne’s greatest charm was the fact that she never stooped to the petty practices of so many of the Avonlea girls—the small jealousies, the little deceits and rivalries, the palpable bids for favor. Anne held herself apart from all this, not consciously or of design, but simply because anything of the sort was utterly foreign to her transparent, impulsive nature, crystal clear in its motives and aspirations.

-- Chapter XIX, Anne of Avonlea

2. For the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert’s gaze

“What are you thinking of, Anne?” asked Gilbert, coming down the walk. He had left his horse and buggy out at the road.

“Of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving,” answered Anne dreamily. “Isn’t it beautiful to think how everything has turned out . . . how they have come together again after all the years of separation and misunderstanding?”

“Yes, it’s beautiful,” said Gilbert, looking steadily down into Anne’s uplifted face, “but wouldn’t it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been NO separation or misunderstanding . . . if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to each other?”

For a moment Anne’s heart fluttered queerly and for the first time her eyes faltered under Gilbert’s gaze and a rosy flush stained the paleness of her face. It was as if a veil that had hung before her inner consciousness had been lifted, giving to her view a revelation of unsuspected feelings and realities. Perhaps, after all, romance did not come into one’s life with pomp and blare, like a gay knight riding down; perhaps it crept to one’s side like an old friend through quiet ways; perhaps it revealed itself in seeming prose, until some sudden shaft of illumination flung athwart its pages betrayed the rhythm and the music, perhaps . . . perhaps . . . love unfolded naturally out of a beautiful friendship, as a golden-hearted rose slipping from its green sheath.

Then the veil dropped again; but the Anne who walked up the dark lane was not quite the same Anne who had driven gaily down it the evening before. The page of girlhood had been turned, as by an unseen finger, and the page of womanhood was before her with all its charm and mystery, its pain and gladness.

Gilbert wisely said nothing more; but in his silence he read the history of the next four years in the light of Anne’s remembered blush. Four years of earnest, happy work . . . and then the guerdon of a useful knowledge gained and a sweet heart won.

-- Chapter XXX, Anne of Avonlea

3. I just want YOU

“I have a dream,” he said slowly. “I persist in dreaming it, although it has often seemed to me that it could never come true. I dream of a home with a hearth-fire in it, a cat and dog, the footsteps of friends—and YOU!”

Anne wanted to speak but she could find no words. Happiness was breaking over her like a wave. It almost frightened her.

“I asked you a question over two years ago, Anne. If I ask it again today will you give me a different answer?”

Still Anne could not speak. But she lifted her eyes, shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations, and looked into his for a moment. He wanted no other answer.

They lingered in the old garden until twilight, sweet as dusk in Eden must have been, crept over it. There was so much to talk over and recall—things said and done and heard and thought and felt and misunderstood.

“I thought you loved Christine Stuart,” Anne told him, as reproachfully as if she had not given him every reason to suppose that she loved Roy Gardner.

Gilbert laughed boyishly.

“Christine was engaged to somebody in her home town. I knew it and she knew I knew it. When her brother graduated he told me his sister was coming to Kingsport the next winter to take music, and asked me if I would look after her a bit, as she knew no one and would be very lonely. So I did. And then I liked Christine for her own sake. She is one of the nicest girls I’ve ever known. I knew college gossip credited us with being in love with each other. I didn’t care. Nothing mattered much to me for a time there, after you told me you could never love me, Anne. There was nobody else—there never could be anybody else for me but you. I’ve loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school.”

“I don’t see how you could keep on loving me when I was such a little fool,” said Anne.

“Well, I tried to stop,” said Gilbert frankly, “not because I thought you what you call yourself, but because I felt sure there was no chance for me after Gardner came on the scene. But I couldn’t—and I can’t tell you, either, what it’s meant to me these two years to believe you were going to marry him, and be told every week by some busybody that your engagement was on the point of being announced. I believed it until one blessed day when I was sitting up after the fever. I got a letter from Phil Gordon—Phil Blake, rather—in which she told me there was really nothing between you and Roy, and advised me to ‘try again.’ Well, the doctor was amazed at my rapid recovery after that.”

Anne laughed—then shivered.

“I can never forget the night I thought you were dying, Gilbert. Oh, I knew—I KNEW then—and I thought it was too late.”

“But it wasn’t, sweetheart. Oh, Anne, this makes up for everything, doesn’t it? Let’s resolve to keep this day sacred to perfect beauty all our lives for the gift it has given us.”

“It’s the birthday of our happiness,” said Anne softly. “I’ve always loved this old garden of Hester Gray’s, and now it will be dearer than ever.”

“But I’ll have to ask you to wait a long time, Anne,” said Gilbert sadly. “It will be three years before I’ll finish my medical course. And even then there will be no diamond sunbursts and marble halls.”

Anne laughed.

“I don’t want sunbursts and marble halls. I just want YOU. You see I’m quite as shameless as Phil about it. Sunbursts and marble halls may be all very well, but there is more ‘scope for imagination’ without them. And as for the waiting, that doesn’t matter. We’ll just be happy, waiting and working for each other—and dreaming. Oh, dreams will be very sweet now.”

Gilbert drew her close to him and kissed her. Then they walked home together in the dusk, crowned king and queen in the bridal realm of love, along winding paths fringed with the sweetest flowers that ever bloomed, and over haunted meadows where winds of hope and memory blew.

-- Chapter XLI, Anne of the Island

4. Gilbert, I'm afraid I'm scandalously in love with you.

"Gilbert darling, don't let's ever be afraid of things. It's such dreadful slavery. Let's be daring and adventurous and expectant. Let's dance to meet life and all it can bring to us, even if it brings scads of trouble and typhoid and twins!"

Today has been a day dropped out of June into April. The snow is all gone and the fawn meadows and golden hills just sing of spring. I know I heard Pan piping in the little green hollow in my maple bush and my Storm King was bannered with the airiest of purple hazes. We've had a great deal of rain lately and I've loved sitting in my tower in the still, wet hours of the spring twilights. But tonight is a gusty, hurrying night . . . even the clouds racing over the sky are in a hurry and the moonlight that gushes out between them is in a hurry to flood the world.

"Suppose, Gilbert, we were walking hand in hand down one of the long roads in Avonlea tonight!"

Gilbert, I'm afraid I'm scandalously in love with you. You don't think it's irreverent, do you? But then, you're not a minister."

-- Chapter 9, Anne of Windy Poplars

5. Suitable Places

"(Are you sure you kiss me in suitable places, Gilbert? I'm afraid Mrs. Gibson would think the nape of the neck, for instance, most unsuitable.)”

-- Chapter 12, Anne of Windy Poplars

6. He narrowly escaped bursting with pride

"Anne, this is Captain Boyd. Captain Boyd, my wife."

It was the first time Gilbert had said "my wife" to anybody but Anne, and he narrowly escaped bursting with the pride of it. The old captain held out a sinewy hand to Anne; they smiled at each other and were friends from that moment. Kindred spirit flashed recognition to kindred spirit.

-- Chapter 6, Anne’s House of Dreams

7. Queen of my heart and life and home

"Gilbert, would you like my hair better if it were like Leslie's?" she asked wistfully.

"I wouldn't have your hair any color but just what it is for the world," said Gilbert, with one or two convincing accompaniments.

You wouldn't be ANNE if you had golden hair—or hair of any color but"—

"Red," said Anne, with gloomy satisfaction.

"Yes, red—to give warmth to that milk-white skin and those shining gray-green eyes of yours. Golden hair wouldn't suit you at all Queen Anne—MY Queen Anne—queen of my heart and life and home."

"Then you may admire Leslie's all you like," said Anne magnanimously.”

-Chapter 12, Anne’s House of Dreams

8.  Annest of Annes

But the best of all was when Gilbert came to her, as she stood at her window, watching a fog creeping in from the sea, over the moonlit dunes and the harbour, right into the long narrow valley upon which Ingleside looked down and in which nestled the village of Glen St. Mary.

"To come back at the end of a hard day and find you! Are you happy, Annest of Annes?"

"Happy!" Anne bent to sniff a vaseful of apple blossoms Jem had set on her dressing-table. She felt surrounded and encompassed by love. "Gilbert dear, it's been lovely to be Anne of Green Gables again for a week, but it's a hundred times lovelier to come back and be Anne of Ingleside."

-- Chapter 3, Anne of Ingleside

9. I couldn’t live without you

Anne felt like a released bird . . . she was flying again. Gilbert's arms were around her . . . his eyes were looking into hers in the moonlight.

"You do love me, Gilbert? I'm not just a habit with you? You haven't said you loved me for so long."

"My dear, dear love! I didn't think you needed words to know that. I couldn't live without you. Always you give me strength. There's a verse somewhere in the Bible that is meant for you . . . 'She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life.'"

Life which had seemed so grey and foolish a few moments before was golden and rose and splendidly rainbowed again. The diamond pendant slipped to the floor, unheeded for the moment. It was beautiful . . . but there were so many things lovelier . . . confidence and peace and delightful work . . . laughter and kindness . . . that old safe feeling of a sure love.

"Oh, if we could keep this moment for ever, Gilbert!"

"We're going to have some moments. It's time we had a second honeymoon. Anne, there's going to be a big medical congress in London next February. We're going to it . . . and after it we'll see a bit of the Old World. There's a holiday coming to us. We'll be nothing but lovers again . . . it will be just like being married over again. You haven't been like yourself for a long time. ("So he had noticed.") You're tired and overworked . . . you need a change. ("You too, dearest. I've been so horribly blind.") I'm not going to have it cast up to me that doctors' wives never get a pill. We'll come back rested and fresh, with our sense of humour completely restored. Well, try your pendant on and let's get to bed. I'm half dead for sleep . . . haven't had a decent night's sleep for weeks, what with twins and worry over Mrs. Garrow."

--Chapter 41, Anne of Ingleside

10. Old love light

DR. BLYTHE:- “The old, old love light that was kindled so many years ago in Avonlea ... and burns yet, Anne ... at least for me.” 

ANNE:- “And for me, too. And will burn forever, Gilbert.” 

-- Page 189, The Blythes Are Quoted

Feel free to respond to this post with any of your favorite shirbert moments that I missed!

[lgbt-ya]

Girlhood by Cat Clarke

Published by Quercus on 4th May 2017

Genres: YA, contemporary, boarding school, LGBT, friendships, grief

Goodreads | Amazon UK | Amazon US | Book Depository | Foyles | Waterstones

Blurb:  Real, compulsive and intense: Cat Clarke is the queen of emotional suspense. For fans of Paula Hawkins, Gillian Flynn, Megan Abbott and Jandy Nelson. Harper has tried to forget the past and fit in at expensive boarding school Duncraggan Academy. Her new group of friends are tight; the kind of girls who Harper knows have her back. But Harper can't escape the guilt of her twin sister's Jenna's death, and her own part in it - and she knows noone else will ever really understand. But new girl Kirsty seems to get Harper in ways she never expected. She has lost a sister too. Harper finally feels secure. She finally feels...loved. As if she can grow beyond the person she was when Jenna died. Then Kirsty's behaviour becomes more erratic. Why is her life a perfect mirror of Harper's? And why is she so obsessed with Harper's lost sister? Soon, Harper's closeness with Kirsty begins to threaten her other relationships, and her own sense of identity. How can Harper get back to the person she wants to be, and to the girls who mean the most to her? A darkly compulsive story about love, death, and growing up under the shadow of grief

Review: This was the first Cat Clarke I read, which is shocking as she's a mainstay of UKYA. I absolutely loved it. It's described as a queer boarding school book, which is the perfect description. It's about toxic friendships in a very enclosed, inter-dependant environment, where your peer relationships are quite literally a matter of life or death.

The characters are grieving in different ways, and that emotion muddies the water with every interaction. I particularly loved the friendship between Rowan (lesbian) and Harper (bisexual). Both queer roommates, this seemed the inevitable friendship-to-romance dynamic, but things were both more complex, realistic and enjoyable than that. I would love to read a sequel set in their first year at university, when they are at different schools and struggling to maintain a friendship long distance. 

The passionate-turned-mysterious Kirsty is an excellent character, who I have a lot of sympathy for. I didn't find her as interesting as Rowan, who I would have liked to see more of, but I guess that wouldn't have made the book as exciting! Kirsty's scenes were incredible dramatic - there's a moment with a shotgun which made my heart race, and all the priest hole hiding scenes were brilliant. 

The boarding school is an expensive, Hogwarts-style Scottish castle, and I really enjoyed that element of the book. Harper's family won the lottery (the day after her twin sister died, in the most bittersweet twist of fate imaginable) so she comes from a very average background, compared to her friends, who have grown up in wealth. The experiences she went through felt very realistic. There's also a student-teacher relationship handled with a very expert touch. Cat Clarke is a huge talent in YA, and I can't wait to make my way through her extensive backlist.

5 stars

[authorstalker]

The Author Stalker Interview with Julie Buntin

Marlena is a crazy compelling, beautifully written novel about addictive friendship and addiction problems. After her parents separate, 15-year-old Cat is forced to move to a remote Michigan town with her mother, leaving her elite private high school behind. She thinks her future is over, but when she meets the girl next door, her life feels exciting for the first time ever. Marlena is everything Cat is not: pretty, gifted, charming, experienced. While Cat is exhilarated by the ways her new friendship lets her play at adulthood, she ignores the real, serious burdens that are destroying Marlena. In this interview, author Julie Buntin talks about addiction and self-destruction, the writers who have influenced her career, and the backlash that accompanies books about female friendship. 

Marlena is getting a lot of positive attention, but my one tiny concern is that it will be marketed exclusively as a coming-of-age story about female friendship. While that’s accurate, your novel is also about addiction and is the first work of fiction I’ve read about America’s opioid problem. It’s a full-blown crisis, particularly in Ohio (where I’m from) and Michigan (where you’re from). 

Post-election, the opioid epidemic is getting more media coverage, in part because many of the people affected voted for Trump. If I was a publicist, I would tap into this news trend and promote Marlena as a portrait of working class America and how it reached this point — the teenage sections of the book are set in the early 2000s during the rise of Oxycontin. 

Do you share my concern that Marlena will be pigeonholed as “women’s fiction,” or am I totally off base? Was it difficult to write about an issue that hits so close to home, and did you worry about your family and friends’ reactions to the subject matter? 

Yes and no. I wrote a novel about female friendship that mostly takes place when the two main characters are teenage girls, and if talking about it in those terms pigeonholes it, I think that has something do with a marketplace that’s still sort of uneasy with stories about girlhood being classified as literary or important. Thanks to Ferrante, in part, it feels like there’s been a shift in that thinking lately, but at the same time, even as space is being made to take these stories seriously, there’s a corresponding backlash – I’ve heard people say that now we have too many books about female friendship. That makes me feel a little crazy. Too many? Because The Girls and Girls on Fire and The Mothers and The Girls from Corona del Mar and Friendship and Animals and Swing Time and The Neapolitan Trilogy all came out within the last few years? 

How many novels have been written about infidelity? About boyhood and manhood and sports and war? And besides, all the books I listed are about so much more than the friendship that drives the plot. In marketing and descriptive copy, they often get boiled down to female friendship story, and thereby shuffled into a less literary category. Very rarely are they looked at in their larger context. A few writers get that treatment, Elena Ferrante, Zadie Smith, but you’re lucky and probably famous if you do. I guess what I’m saying is that I wish Marlena could be called women’s literature, a female friendship story, and have that be synonymous with the understanding that there’s more to the book.

For me, that “more” is addiction. It’s the thing that defines the characters, that sets the tone for the friendship, that changes the course of Marlena and Cat’s lives. I’m grateful and glad you read it that way too, and I’ll admit that I did point that out to my publicist more than once. When I started the novel, I didn’t set out to tackle the opioid crisis in the Midwest, but I did want to write about self-destruction, the thrill and attraction of drugs as an adolescent, and what might happen to the girls who go a step too far. How do we reconcile the people we are as teenagers, the things we did, with the adults we become? I wanted, even needed, to ask that question for many personal reasons and because of a few people in my life, but it was also, for fear of sounding pretentious and for lack of a better word, a literary question. What does that story look like? What shape does it take? We hear stories of recovery, but so rarely do we hear the story of muddling through a problem, of wondering whether you have one, of getting stuck and maybe not ever getting out. The arc is less clear. But it’s still a story that’s important – or I think so, obviously.  Because of my connection to some of these themes – my sister is an addict, and I lost a friend in my early twenties – I was definitely a little nervous about people mistaking this fiction for my life. So far people from my hometown have been overwhelmingly supportive, but I think it was difficult for my mom, especially, to accept that I chose to write a book about these upsetting subjects. 

This is your debut novel, and it was published to wide acclaim (A starred review comparing you to Ferrante! Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick! A Lorrie Moore blurb smack dab on the cover!). Can you describe Marlena’s path to publication – how long did it take to write and then to sell? As a first-time author, which moments have been the most thrilling?

I started the book on the cusp of 2011. I was in grad school, and took a stab at a novella with these characters, though none of the pages I wrote back then made it into the version of Marlena on bookstore shelves. I was working on another novel at the time, it was very autobiographical and written as like, a collage of titled prose poems. It wasn’t good. I worked on it very earnestly and very hard for years, cheating on it with the characters in Marlena, but didn’t abandon it fully until 2013, when Lorrie Moore, my thesis advisor at the time, encouraged me to pursue Marlena instead. I sold it two years later. I guess the short answer is it took me about four years to write, but then I completely rewrote the book after it sold. I sat down with a blank word document and the novel printed out, and started rewriting it, using the old pages as reference. When that process was done, Marlena was 40k words or thereabouts shorter than the book Henry Holt bought, with way more detail in the narrative present and one character gone entirely. 

The rewriting process was the most thrilling part of this so far – I’ve never written like that before or since, and for some reason, I think I needed the security of knowing my book had a home, the presence of my editor cheering me on (not to mention her brilliant notes), in order to get to that place. Is that a boring most thrilling moment? My book launch at powerHouse Arena—where I used to work as the events coordinator, the job that got me started in publishing—was very very thrilling. It was this beautiful full circle moment, to come back to a place where I’d spent so much time when I was first sketching out the novel, but as an author. I will never forget that night – a top ten life moment for sure. Honestly, it’s all thrilling and overwhelming, even a little scary. Seeing the book in the world, hearing from readers, getting positive reviews, getting star reviews – it’s a dream I’ve had for a long time, and I never really believed it would it happen.  

I do think that Elena Ferrante fans will fall in love with Marlena, not just because you write with a similarly vivid, page-turner quality, but because in many ways, Cat and Marlena’s friendship echoes Lenu and Lila’s friendship in the Neapolitan series. Reading your book, I couldn’t stop thinking about fate and the families we’re born into, that the girl who was born with more potential wasn’t also born with the luck to fulfill it. In Marlena’s words, her life “felt like a sentence, that it had been barreling down on her since she could first speak, that it really wasn’t much of a life at all.” And then I read this part of a great interview in The Millions with Dan Chaon, which reminded me of your protagonist:

I threw away everyone I grew up with, gladly. I left for college and never went back, and I pretended to be my own creation, no nature or nurture either, just a self-invented person. My life is so different from some of my cousins’ lives that we may as well live in different universes, but I achieved that by chopping off big parts of myself. I think those severed limbs are the ghosts that haunt my writing.

In an essay in The Atlantic, you wrote about your high school years in northern Michigan, so it’s no secret that where you grew up closely mirrors Marlena’s setting. I’m wondering: 1) What roles privilege and guilt play in your novel, particularly as they relate to Cat’s character, and 2) Did you, like Dan Chaon, have to chop off parts of yourself to become a writer, and did you ever come close to taking a different, non-writerly path in life?

Thank you for this question – it’s wonderful to be read with so much attention. (Is this my most thrilling moment? It is up there.) I really identify with that Dan Chaon quote, the last sentence especially. It articulates something about my experience that I hadn’t found the words for.

To answer the first part of your question, I think that as an adult, Cat is more aware than ever of how much better off she was than Marlena and what a difference that made. She’s frustrated about not having had more clarity back then, not doing something to change what happened – even as she recognizes the futility of that kind of thinking. Or that’s an awareness she comes to as she sifts through this story and some of her feelings of displacement in the life she’s found herself in, which is so different from the one she knew as a kid. So I guess the roles guilt and privilege play have a bearing on the plot, in the sense that Cat’s kind of asking herself this very question, exploring it, via her memory of her fifteenth year.

Now for the second part, the chopping off pieces of yourself part. I guess my answer is, kind of? I was a pretty wild teenager. On the Marlena and Cat spectrum, I was probably closer to Marlena. A pretty generous scholarship to an arts boarding school my junior year rescued me. It was a miracle – my grades were terrible. They let me in on the basis of a creative writing portfolio—a portfolio I’d compiled almost as a joke, thinking if I could get in for writing and then prove myself in choir, I could switch to a vocal performance track. I had no formal training and no illusions about my chances of getting in as a singer – but I loved to sing and my voice was good enough for solos in my hometown choir, which made me think with practice I might be able to locate some special talent. But once I started there, even though it took me until my twenties to fully reform some of my bad behavior, I fell in love with writing. I’d always been a really voracious reader, but the more I wrote, the more friends I made who took writing seriously, the more I began to see literature as a path I could follow right out of Michigan and into a better life. 

So I think by age 17 or so, I knew writing was my thing, and thankfully, I was in an educational environment that encouraged it. By the time I graduated, it was either become a writer or, I don’t know, become a professional alcoholic. Is this too heavy? I think writing saved my life, and my life was maybe in need of saving pretty young. And moving to New York after high school helped solidify that – I had to make enough money to stay, I didn’t have time to fuck around. Every choice I made, I picked the thing that would bring me closer to books, to writing and writers. Despite my two years at private school, books were the only subject I was fluent in. I knew nothing about the world, let alone pop culture (that was particularly embarrassing as a twenty-something in New York), but I’d read a ton and could hold my own in those conversations.

I think I had to chop off the part of myself that trends toward self-destruction. That sounds and is healthy, but it makes for a weird dissonance in my life – a sense that the good things that happen to me are not quite real, are constantly at risk of sabotage by some dormant aspect of myself. In following this route with so much focus, I also lost a certain closeness with my family, with my home, with the girl I’d been up until I moved to the city. My life is very different from my siblings’ lives, for example. Sometimes I feel breathtakingly lucky – whether or not this is an accurate interpretation of the years leading up to this one, I see where I am now as a result of a few surprising turns in my life that almost didn’t happen.

In Marlena, every character is in the middle of a life-changing event. My favorite character was Cat’s mom – even when Cat is unable to recognize it, her mom is always trying to improve and never forgets that she’s a parent – and as much as I loved Sal, I was grateful the book wasn’t told from his perspective because I would have cried the entire time. Which character was the most fun for you to write? Which was the most difficult?

Marlena and Marlena. She was fun to write for the same reason that she was difficult to write – I could never quite pin her down, writing as I was, from Cat’s perspective. Marlena is this shifting figure. She’s herself, but she’s also whoever Cat makes her out to be – a fact Cat is ever aware of in the book, but that I had to constantly try and balance. How do you write a character who can only be captured in memory? Writing Marlena was like chasing someone who runs faster than you ever will. You know you’ll never catch up, but you really really want to—you want to see her face.

You are so good at describing the bullshit girls and women experience on a daily basis. As I was reading, I wrote ugh in my notes probably 20 times. Two of Cat’s observations jumped out at me: 1) That “in high school, girls did the liking; boys got to pick” and 2) Society’s high premium on women’s looks makes being “beautiful forever…the ultimate feminine achievement.” You’re also so good at writing about…masturbation! Can you talk about masturbation as a running thread throughout the book and as a source of Cat’s agency?

This is going to be a roundabout answer – forgive me. One thing that’s been interesting, in talking about the book, is that now and then someone will ask me about the tropes of female friendship stories. One girl is beautiful, one less so – one girl is wild, one is more careful. As if these are literary tropes only. When actually, these tropes – whether they come from books or movies or culture at large, are the categories many teenage girls feel that they have to slot themselves into. Try asking an adult woman if she was the pretty friend or the smart one in high school – most women will have an answer. This kind of goes back to what I was saying before about female friendship novels – it’s like American culture doesn’t want women, and women’s literature, to be more than one thing.

I wanted the book to push against those modes of thinking, to interact with, as you put it, the bullshit girls and women experience on a daily basis. Marlena is wild, Marlena is beautiful, Marlena is the leader – except she’s not, not really, or not always. Marlena’s the one with a problem; Marlena’s the one that needs help. Cat’s maybe just as pretty – only, she can’t see herself that way, because she’s given Marlena that role in their friendship. Cat’s bolder, braver, more powerful than she thinks, especially to Marlena. How do both girls step in and out of the definitions that they think fit them best, according to the world and each other? Who are they in these contexts, and what parts of them can’t be defined or categorized at all? How aware are they of the ways stereotypes about girls determine what they do or don’t do, the women they become? In the present and in retrospect?

It feels a little weird to analyze my own book, but I guess I’ll say that Cat’s sexuality, and masturbation as a motif in the story, has to do with her own awareness of her power. Cat’s growing ability to take ownership over her own pleasure, to claim what she wants or doesn’t want as preferences that are hers alone, always felt to me like a very central part of the coming-of-age aspects of this novel, and were there from the very beginning.  

In addition to being a writer, you’re the director of writing programs at Catapult. Talk a bit about your work there – how do you balance having a day job and writing novels?

Not very well, in case it’s not obvious from how long it took me to answer these questions. I love my job at Catapult – my colleagues are universally brilliant. There isn’t a day that goes by that I’m not stunned to have the good fortune of working with people so smart, so talented, so dedicated to books. Because everyone is so great, it’s an intense environment. You kind of always have to bring 100% of yourself to the table. That’s the most difficult part, especially lately with the pressures of putting a book out into the world – it’s hard to juggle both aspects of my life at once. Writing gets pushed to the fringes of my life – early mornings, late evenings before bed, weekends. Or Catapult does, and then I’m terribly behind and I get an anxious stomachache. 

Who are your favorite authors? What’s the best book you’ve read recently?

I love love loved Kayla Rae Whitaker’s The Animators. You could call it a female friendship story, and the jacket copy does, but more broadly, it’s an incredibly wise and warm-hearted investigation of what an artist’s responsibility is to her material, and what it means to tell someone else’s story. It follows Sharon Kisses and Mel Vaught, creative partners (animators) and longtime friends, through the success and failure and incomprehensible loss. It’s a remarkable book, and I just loved it – so immersive, so unforgettable, it blows my mind and makes me a little jealous that it’s Kayla’s first novel. 

An incomplete list of favorite writers: Rita Dove, Elena Ferrante, Tana French, Grace Paley, Toni Morrison, Jo Ann Beard, Chang-Rae Lee, Maile Meloy, Roberto Bolano, Marilynne Robinson, Claire Messud, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Morgan Parker, Saul Bellow, Ursula K. Le Guin, Ada Limon, Elizabeth Bishop, Banana Yoshimoto, Maggie Nelson, Jim Harrison, oh I don’t know, this is a list I could write for days.

I can’t help it, I love learning about how writers write. Do you write in a specific place or can you write wherever? Do you create a detailed outline or go with the flow? Music while you write: yes or no? Tell me everything.

No music, not ever, too distracting and music is for singing. I don’t really make outlines, but when I was rewriting Marlena I did a lot of weird sketching and list-making on index cards that I almost always lost immediately after writing on them. I mostly write at the dining table near the window, in a computer chair that looks really strange in the dining room. When I get cold there with the window open I put on this ugly robe printed with sheep that leaves fuzz all over the place. It’s really really hard for me to concentrate, to get to a place where I can focus enough to write. But once I do get there, it’s just as hard to stop writing. So writing for me is mostly a process of trying to shut out all distractions enough to work. That’s like 90% of it – getting started.  

Last question! What advice do you have for all the aspiring writers out there?

I still feel like an aspiring writer. I’m slowly working on another book, but it’s such a different process that it feels in many ways like starting from scratch. My advice, I guess, is that you can do it? You can do it. Oh, and maybe – write what you think is important. I would have saved myself a couple years if I had just accepted that this was the story that mattered to me, and thrown my shitty novel away sooner.

You can find Julie Buntin online at her website or on Twitter @juliebuntin​.  

[neuxue]

Wheel of Time liveblogging: The Gathering Storm ch 8

Siuan reminisces, Egwene Amyrlins, and ACTUAL COMMUNICATION.

Chapter 8: Clean Shirts

Haven’t seen that chapter icon in a while.

Siuan now – there’s been a lot of quick POV shifting in this book so far. I suppose it’s been mostly centred on Rand and Egwene – and their various affiliates – these past several chapters, but it definitely lends a feeling of a quicker pace. Which works, given where we are in the series.

No sailor would miss [those clouds]. Not dark enough to promise a storm, not light enough to imply smooth waters either.

A sky like that was ambiguous.

The whole world balanced on the edge of a knife, with little to tell right now which way it will eventually fall. Rand himself barely balanced between Light and something very like Shadow. A world uncertain, moving towards the ending.

What, you thought I was going to ignore Portentious Atmospheric Details?

HA. IT GETS BETTER.

On a day like this, however, when there were gloomy clouds but no proof of storms, the dockmasters would charge a full day’s rent. And so the fisher had to make a choice. Stay in the harbour and wait, or go fishing to recoup the dock fees.

A fisher. Or should I say a Fisher. This delights me.

She doubted many fishers had chosen to go out this day.

Well I can think of one probable capitalised exception…

Lelaine has no time for symbolically important discussions of the sky.

Siuan could still sense shock in some of the Aes Sedai she passed. Egwene was to have been carefully controlled. What had gone wrong?

Egwene. That’s what went wrong. You Aes Sedai all thought you had a prayer of controlling Egwene in the first place, failing to realise that this is the girl who took one look at someone else’s Call To Adventure and said ‘mine now’. And that was just her starting point.

Siuan would have taken more smug delight from those looks if she hadn’t herself worried about Egwene’s continued captivity in the White Tower. That was a lionfish’s veil indeed. Potential for great success, but also great disaster.

Yes, well, that describes approximately every single situation in the plot as things stand, so. I’m sure it’ll all be fine. What could possibly go wrong? Aside from everything?

Lelaine and Romanda are still doing their thing, though things seem to be shifting slightly in favour of Lelaine at the moment. Okay.

I’m a bit ambivalent about this particular conflict at this point. On the one hand, it’s probably more realistic for it to continue, especially given Egwene’s absence and the sense of uncertainty that brings. On the other hand, I find it hard to actually care about it, because Egwene’s arc has moved past this, and so this ends up feeling a bit stale. But then, just because her story is no longer just with the rebels, that doesn’t mean the rebels should magically have all their problems solved; that would make it too easy. So it works, I just don’t really care. Ah well.

When she’d first been Healed, her reduced power had been a disappointment. But that was changing. Yes, it was infuriating to be beneath so many, to lack respect from those around her. However, because she was weaker in power, many seemed to assume she was weaker in political skill as well! Could people really forget so quickly? She was finding her new status among the Aes Sedai to be liberating.

That’s an incredibly mature and sanguine way of looking at it. And the fact that this doesn’t even scan as self-deception is truly impressive. There are indeed advantages to her new situation, especially for one with her political acumen combined with a prominent past and a present need for discretion, but to truly understand and embrace that – especially without then giving up the advantage it conveys – takes a special kind of resilience.

So Siuan’s sent Lelaine off on some pointless political trail of distraction, mostly by mentioning Romanda. You would think that if your goal were to become the political leader of a group known for their politicking and manipulation, you’d at least try to hide what can be used to manipulate you. Romanda and Lelaine are so perfectly unsubtle and they fall for this shit every time. It would be fine as a front, maybe, but it isn’t even a front. They’re really that easily led.

The Amyrlin needed to hurry up and finish with her plotting in the White Tower. What good would it do to undermine Elaida if the Aes Sedai outside crumbled while Egwene wasn’t watching?

It’s a fair question, and does highlight the complexity and delicate balance of Egwene’s entire situation. She won the rebels and brought them this far, and she’s winning her strange not-quite-war in the Tower, but she can’t forget one while she deals with the other. That’s rather the point, isn’t it? The Aes Sedai need to be unified; the Tower needs to be whole. Otherwise something is always going to be falling apart.

Either Lelaine is teasing Siuan about having a crush on Gareth Bryne, or she is actually that oblivious.

And Siuan is definitely not going to let Lelaine pay off Siuan’s debt to Bryne. Because reasons.

That would just move her debt from Bryne to Lelaine. The Aes Sedai would collect it in far more subtle ways, but each coin would end up being paid one way or another, if only through demands of loyalty.

Okay that is definitely a valid reason.

Lelaine is indeed actually that oblivious. How has she risen this far?

Siuan gets a ride on the back of a turnip wagon, which makes this the second time in this series that Aes Sedai have ridden with vegetables. The cabbage merchant from Avatar is probably sweating nervously somewhere.

Secrets, those powerful, dominating secrets. They had become her life. No love save for youthful dalliances.

So Moiraine was just a ‘youthful dalliance’? I think not.

No time for entanglements, or much room for friendships.

I suppose she could be putting Moiraine in the ‘frienships’ category here, which…okay. In a general sense, I have no problems with that. Nor will I ever, under any circumstances, try to argue that friendship is in any way less meaningful or important than romantic love.

And very likely, Moiraine wasn’t intended to be specifically implied by ‘youthful dalliances’, or even by ‘friendships’; they were close friends and they loved each other, but they both chose the Blue Ajah and they both knew what dedicating themselves to this cause would mean: they would have to put it above everything, including their own personal wishes or relationships.

So, fine, it’s not a direct slight and I’m not trying to go out of my way to find things to be indignant about. But my issue here is more that…it’s as if the relationship Siuan and Moiraine shared in their younger years is forgotten by the narrative itself. Because either Moiraine was indeed a ‘youthful dalliance’ – thus implying that ‘girlhood things should be left behind with girlhood’ as Tarna put it – or Siuan’s relationship with Moiraine is so insignificant that it doesn’t warrant a mention at all. There’s a sense of oversight there, and it bothers me a bit.

On its own, it might not stand out as much of an issue. However, there’s a pattern here of including but then almost simultaneously dismissing love between women. This isn’t even a particularly egregious example, but it becomes frustrating when mixed in with the tendency to treat ‘pillow friendships’ as a kind of youthful phase that all but the evil ones grow out of.

No series is perfect, and you can’t have everything, and I’m sure Jordan and Sanderson had good intentions – or at least, did not have bad intentions – with regards to this sort of thing. But the execution falls short for me sometimes.

She’d focused only one one thing: finding the Dragon Reborn. Helping him, guiding him, hopefully controlling him.

Moiraine had died following that same quest, but at least she had been able to go out and see the world. Siuan had grown old – in spirit, if not in body – cooped up in the Tower, pulling her strings and nudging the world. She’d done some good. Time would tell if those efforts had been enough.

She didn’t regret her life. Yet, at this moment, passing army tents […] she envied Moiraine. How often had Siuan bothered to look out of her window toward the beautiful green landscape, before it all had started going sickly? She and Moiraine had fought so hard to save this world, but they had left themselves without anything to enjoy in it.

Having said all of that, I absolutely love this bit here. I do really love the way the friendship aspect of Moiraine and Siuan’s relationship is presented. They are bound so closely by love and a shared goal, but one of those has had to take precedence. They loved each other before prophecy took over their lives, but their shared secret and their determination and devotion forced them down different paths.

And yet, from both their perspectives there has always been a strong, if understated and often bittersweet, sense of the friendship that underlies this shared quest. They never came to resent or hate one another, and they both kept firmly to their aim, and accepted the rest as it came. It didn’t destroy their friendship because they both accepted that the quest would have to come first. And so when it did come first, and when it did separate them, and when it did – at least as far as each of them knows – kill the other one, they understood that, too. It’s a strange kind of mutual trust and understanding upon which to build a somewhat strange relationship, but there is something rather beautiful about that.

And Siuan’s musings here are really lovely, in that same kind of bittersweet and nostalgic way. Take what you want, and pay for it. She and Moiraine have both lived by that. Siuan has no regrets, because this life is the consequence of the task she accepted. And she may envy Moiraine, but even now she does not resent her.

The last line especially is beautiful. I really, really hope Siuan and Moiraine both survive what is to come, and reunite at least once to share in the completion of their decades-long task. Even if they then go their separate ways – because that is how it has always been for them, and somehow it works.

Or they could just decide fuck it, let’s retire early and go on a roadtrip full of pranks and mischief to see the world we’ve helped win for ourselves. That would also be acceptable.

Siuan the Amyrlin hadn’t had any time for entanglements, but what of Siuan the attendant? […] Was there, perhaps, room in her life for a few more changes? 

The wagon reached the far side of the army camp, and she shook her head at her own foolishness as she hopped down, then nodded her thanks to the wagon driver. Was she a girl, barely old enough for her first full-day blackfish trawl? There was no use in thinking of Bryne that way. At least not right now. There was too much to do.

So I’m quoting this mainly for the last part, because my usual line when complaining about characters getting caught up in romantic subplots is ‘stop cheating on your plotline!’

Which is to say, I appreciate Siuan’s priorities here. Even though I’m probably supposed to roll my eyes and tell her to just live a little, the world is ending after all.

Though I don’t particularly mind the thing between Siuan and Bryne; it’s relatively unobtrusive and doesn’t interfere too much with the plot or either character’s competence.

And by ‘thing’ I mean…utter failure at flirting and an ongoing low-level prank war.

“I have to say, Siuan, that I’m surprised. I had assumed that an Aes Sedai would know little of work such as this, but rarely have my uniforms known such a perfect combination of stiffness and comfort. You are to be commended.”

Siuan turned away from him, hiding her blush. Fool man! She had caused kings to kneel before her! She manipulated the Aes Sedai and planned for the deliverance of mankind itself! And he complimented her on her laundering skills?

The thing was, from Bryne, that was an honest and meaningful compliment. He didn’t look down on washwomen, or runner boys. He treated all with equity. A person didn’t gain stature in Gareth Bryne’s eyes by being a king or queen; one gained stature by keeping to one’s oaths and doing one’s duty. To him, a compliment on laundry well done was as meaningful as a medal awarded to a soldier who had stood his ground before the enemy.

It took rather a lot of explanation and narrative enforcement to make that work, but I think it does work in the end. It certainly fits with what has been established about Bryne’s character. He doesn’t give a single shit about where someone is supposed to rank; he cares about character and competence. He gave the army to Egwene when most Aes Sedai still thought she would be little more than a puppet, because he could see in her something worth serving.

So…yeah, it’s a bit of an insulting compliment, from a certain perspective. Siuan’s indignation is not entirely out of place, and I like that it’s acknowledged. But I also like that she understands Bryne enough to know that it is actually a meaningful compliment – and also that he clearly understands her well enough to know that she would be able to take it as such.

Ah, and now we’re back to the question of why Siuan broke – or truth-twisted her way out of – that oath in the first place.

“So you claim I’m a liar?” she demanded.

“No,” he said. “Just an oathbreaker.”

Ouch. Point to Bryne.

“That question drove me here, you know,” he said. “It’s why I hunted you all that way. It’s why I finally swore to these rebel Aes Sedai, though I had little wish to be pulled into yet another war at Tar Valon. I did it all because I needed to understand. I had to know. Why? Why did the woman with those eyes – those passionate, haunting eyes – break her oath?”

That’s…a surprising amount of openness and honesty, and I rather like it. Especially because Siuan has been wondering for so long why he did follow her, and why he stayed. And she toyed with the idea that it might be because of her, but then discarded it as a silly fancy, but now thanks to the wonders of this new invention called communication, she knows that really is a large part of the reason. So credit to Bryne for deciding to just…tell her.

“Another excuse,” he said softly. “Another answer from an Aes Sedai. Will I ever have the truth from you, Siuan Sanche? Has anyone ever had it?” He signed, and she heard papers rustle, the candle’s light flickering in the faint stir of his movements as he turned back to his reports.

“When I was still an Accepted in the White Tower,” Siuan said softly, “I was one of four people present when a Foretelling announced the imminent birth of the Dragon Reborn on the slopes of Dragonmount.”

His rustling froze.

Yes. Honesty begets honesty; it’s not the first time that has proven true in this series. Bryne finally gives her an unguarded truth…and so she finally gives him this. And it’s no small truth. This is the foundation of most of her adult life, and it’s been a secret and a burden for so long, because she has so long had to work within a system of secrets and shades of truth, all the while carrying something of this gravity.

Very, very few have ever had the truth from her. Moiraine. Rand, arguably, in TGH, though even then it was given somewhat as manipulation. And Bryne’s reaction here shows that he knows just how closely-kept a secret this has been. That he knows just how much of the truth she is actually surrendering to him, here.

I always love moments like this, when a character finally faces another and tells them everything. When done well, it grants a particular and very satisfying sense of catharsis – especially when the reader knows the secret, but has watched the character carry it so long in silence, never able to truly explain themselves, and often suffering for it.

It’s a great moment of honest, open communication, on both sides. That’s a rare thing in this series, but the payoff is almost always worth it; the moments where characters finally do communicate are often beautiful and fitting and genuinely effective.

I think this is a large part of what makes the whole Wheel Of Absolutely No Communication thing work, at least for me. It’s frustrating as hell sometimes, sure, and there are definitely moments where I want to just bash characters’ heads together and tell them to JUST FUCKING TALK TO EACH OTHER FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SACRED.

But, while characters frequently and spectacularly fail at doing exactly that, moments of genuine honesty don’t tend to result in further misunderstanding. When characters do finally open up to each other, it is almost always rewarded.

Where some authors lose me is when they bend over backwards to prevent those moments from ever happening at all, or else let them happen and then force the miscommunication or misunderstanding to persist anyway. Instead of feeling realistic, it almost always ends up feeling contrived. WoT toes that line sometimes, but the payoffs make it work for me.

So we get a quick recap of New Spring, because Bryne clearly hasn’t read it yet.

“There was only one other person I knew I could trust, and she is now dead.”

And neither Siuan nor Moiraine could really afford to grieve, when they thought the other to be dead. They knew it could come to this, but…it’s such a loss, for both of them. Please let them at least find out that the other is alive.

“You blame me for the loss of a barn and some cows. Well, then I suggest that you consider the cost to your people should the Dragon Reborn fail. Sometimes, prices must be paid so that a more important duty can be served. I would expect a soldier to understand that. […] Should I have spared even a moment when the entire world was wearing the hangman’s noose?”

She held those eyes, demanding an answer.

“No,” he finally admitted. “Burn me, Siuan, but no. You shouldn’t have waited.”

And he offers to hold her oath fulfilled. She refuses, of course, but this is what I mean by payoff. They have each been entirely truthful with each other at last, and instead of answering in the negative here, or refusing to understand, he accepts her explanation. And she doesn’t question his. There is a reward for honesty.

Now they’re back to incompetent flirting, but progress has been made. They trust each other now, and that’s no small thing. Oh, they trusted each other before, but more in the sense that they each believed the other to be a decent person. Now they both know something close to the full truth, and they each revealed it willingly, and the very act of doing so – each one knowing how much it means for the other to speak that openly – has forged a much stronger bond of genuine trust. They’re together in this, now. Even if they can’t sort out other definitions of ‘together’.

When other oaths no longer have a hold on me, she thought. When I’m certain the Dragon Reborn is doing what he is supposed to, perhaps there will be time. For once, I’m actually starting to look forward to being done with this quest. How remarkable.

…Okay, and with that line, I am now far more worried about her survival than I was a few minutes ago. I’ve gone back and forth on whether or not I think Siuan will make it; I could see it working both ways.

Bryne has worked out her Tel’aran’rhiod schedule, and possibly the general notion of Tel’aran’rhiod itself. Of course he has.

She’d have to do something to get back at him. Mice in the bedsheets.

Ha. Oh, Siuan, you are incorrigible. Nice throwback there, to a prank she and Moiraine planned back in their Accepted days, given how that time has been on Siuan’s mind this chapter.

“A sword, Siuan?” Egwene’s voice suddenly asked. “That’s novel.” Siuan looked down, shocked to find herself holding a bloody sword, likely intended for Elaida’s heart.

Things I didn’t know I needed: Siuan Sanche with a sword. Is there fanart? Please let there be fanart.

Egwene was getting very good at the calm serenity of an Aes Sedai. In fact, she seemed to have grown measurably better at that since her capture.

Well, she’s had a lot of practice. And more than that…it’s not a brittle mask of serenity on her. It’s true serenity, an outward reflection of inward calm purpose and understanding. She’s not trying to make herself harder in order to face pain, or make herself seem stronger in order to appear commanding. Instead, she has come to understand, and with that has come a strength that is unforced.

She showed more of herself around Siuan than she did the others. They both knew how heavily Egwene had relied on Siuan’s teaching to get where she was.

Though she’d probably have made it there anyway, Siuan admitted. Just not quite as quickly.

Siuan and Moiraine dedicated themselves to the task of finding and guiding the Dragon Reborn. But they – Siuan especially – have arguably been more successful at finding and guiding Egwene.

That’s not to say they failed in their task; Moiraine did find Rand and has been a lasting influence on him, especially once she realised that she needed to approach things differently. Meanwhile Siuan is no longer Amyrlin and has not seen the Dragon Reborn in over a year, but she has been instrumental in helping Egwene become a true Amyrlin. Which will, I have no doubt, end up being a critical step in ensuring the world’s survival. Without Egwene as Amyrlin, I struggle to see how Rand and the White Tower would reconcile to the point where they could approach the Last Battle as allies. With Egwene, it will undoubtedly be difficult, but their once-friendship might just be enough.

So Moiraine and Siuan have both ended up following the task they swore themselves to, but – like so many other things in this series – not quite in the way they planned. And I like that they both played a role in guiding Egwene, as well as Rand, given all the other parallels and inversions between the two. It’s nice symmetry, both of Moiraine and Siuan and of Egwene and Rand.

Egwene decides she doesn’t want to spend a moment longer than necessary in the study of the Mistress of Novices. Shocking.

“One of the Forsaken was in our camp,” Siuan said. She hadn’t wanted to think about that too frequently. The knowledge made her skin crawl.

“Is anyone dead?” Egwene asked, voice calm though her eyes looked to be steel.

It’s nice to get an outsider POV of Egwene during this part of her arc. So much of it has been told through her own eyes, and it’s all kinds of fantastic, and it’s definitely important to see it from her perspective because a lot of it is about her own understanding and growth. But I always love seeing what characters look like to others, and seeing Egwene through Siuan’s eyes here helps to emphasise what has changed outwardly, and how very like a true Amyrlin Egwene looks to those around her.

Even when Siuan says it was probably Halima, wielding saidin, Egwene barely reacts visibly. No doubt this is a shock to her, but she lets almost none of it show. Because what good would that do? She can’t go back and suspect Halima, she can’t save those who were killed, and letting herself be thrown by this won’t help anything. So she takes it calmly, and focuses on what she can do. And on what needs to be done.

“Mother, it appears some of the men who follow al’Thor have bonded Aes Sedai.”

Egwene blinked a single time. “Yes. I had heard rumours of this. I had hoped that they were exaggerated. Did this Asha’man say who gave Rand permission to commit such an atrocity?”

“He’s the Dragon Reborn,” Siuan said, grimacing. “I don’t think he feels he needs permission. But, in his defence, it appears he didn’t know it was happening. The women his men bonded were sent by Elaida to destroy the Black Tower.”

“Yes.” Egwene finally showed a sliver of emotion. “So the rumours are accurate. All too accurate. […] “We shall have to deal with the Dragon’s foolishness at a later date. Perhaps his men acted without his direct orders, but Rand must take responsibility. Men. Bonding women!”

I can’t entirely agree with Egwene here. I can see where she’s coming from, because she is Amyrlin and Aes Sedai, and while Siuan can give her some context for what has happened, neither of them knows all of it. But…while the forced bonding of Aes Sedai is hard to call a good thing, it really was probably the best of several bad options. And the notion that women should be able to bond men but not the other way around is kind of absurd – at least, if it is accepted that saidin has been cleansed.

As for Rand taking responsibility…that’s a difficult one. On the one hand, he had no idea any of this was happening, and it wasn’t on his orders, and he was far from happy about it when he found out. On the other hand, he himself thinks of the Asha’man as his creation, his responsibility. It’s a tricky one because he thinks of them that way when he needs or wants to, but he also has all but ignored the Black Tower since putting Taim in charge of it. He keeps trying to have it both ways, and it keeps coming back to bite him.

That said, the offer of recompense kind of is his way of taking responsibility. Or at least of trying to offer as close to a solution as possible. The whole situation is a mess, and there have been several points at which there really are no good options.

It’s also interesting to see how Egwene thinks of Rand versus how she thinks of the Dragon Reborn. Here, he takes the latter role in her mind, because it does come down to issues of command and responsibility. Rand has had similar thoughts about Egwene when thinking of her as Amyrlin and Aes Sedai. It’s not fair, perhaps, but their roles are larger than they are, and they have both had to accept and deal with that. Egwene is Amyrlin, thinking about the Dragon Reborn. As simply Egwene, she has been angry with Elaida for hurting Rand. It comes back to individuals versus roles, and how that can shape what they must do and think. How she can be angry with the Dragon Reborn but still care about the boy from Emond’s Field. It is, I think, similar for Rand. As Dragon Reborn he can be angry with or suspicious of the Amyrlin, but still care about Egwene. Though at the moment he’s not letting himself care about much of anything, so that complicates things a bit.

“They claim saidin is cleansed,” Siuan said.

Egwene raised an eyebrow, but did not object. “Yes,” she said, “I suppose that might be a reasonable possibility. We will need further confirmation, of course. But the taint arrived when all seemed won; why should it not leave when all seems to be approaching pure madness?”

That might be the best reaction I’ve seen to the cleansing yet, from anyone but a male channeller. She doesn’t reject the idea outright, or go on about how it’s impossible. She’s rather willing to accept it, and just asks for further confirmation. Which is not an unreasonable request; she hasn’t linked with an Asha’man, or even been told that anyone else has. But I think she would accept some of that as confirmation, where others reject all proof that is offered in favour of saying it’s impossible. Egwene isn’t doing that. And I rather love that last thought – it’s kind of a perfect way of looking at things, isn’t it? Parallels and inversions. A victory for the Shadow at what should have been the Light’s greatest triumph, and a true victory for the Light as all else darkens.

Siuan wants Egwene to come back and look after the Hall, Egwene says she has work to do here and Siuan can do fine on her own. Which, so far, has been the case. So credit where it’s due for delegating, but at some poing she is going to need to move to reunite them.

“Do your best,” Egwene said. “But don’t worry if Lelaine refuses to be diverted.”

Siuan frowned. “But she’s usurping your place!”

“By building upon it,” Egwene said, smiling. […] “Lelaine’s gambit will only succeed if I fail to return. She is using me as a source of authority. When I return, she’ll have no choice but to accept my leadership. She’ll have spent all of her effort building me up.”

“And if you don’t return, Mother?” Siuan asked softly.

“Then it will be better for the Aes Sedai to have a strong leader,” Egwene said. “If Lelaine has been the one to secure that strength, then so be it.”

Clever. And I like how Egwene points out the win-win nature of this situation. She’s not in this for herself – being Amyrlin isn’t some kind of power-trip. She doesn’t lack ambition, and she’s made use of it to get where she is, certainly. And she needed to. But her efforts now are wholly dedicated not to herself but to the White Tower. She is Amyrlin because Elaida is incompetent, and this is the best way Egwene sees to heal the Tower and see it to Tarmon Gai’don. But she will not put herself before the Tower; if she loses, or if for whatever reason she ends up unable to do what she needs to do, she can accept that another may need to take her place. She won’t destroy the Tower to keep her position. Which is a a large part of what sets her apart from Elaida.

“I’m actually learning to deal with my…new situation. It’s not so difficult to stomach, now that I see that it has some advantages.”

Egwene frowned, as if trying to figure out what advantages there could be in lessened power.

That’s very likely more than an abstract thought; Egwene is, after all, spending all her time dosed on forkroot and barely able to channel.

“Elayne once mentioned a room to me in the Tower, filled with objects of power. I assume it really exists?”

“Of course,” Siuan said. “The basement storeroom. It’s in the second level of the basement, on the northeast side. Little room with a plain wooden door, but you can’t miss it.”

OH HELL YES BRING OUT THE ANGREAL LET’S LEVEL THIS UP.

I mean. Um. Yes, good, thank you for that advice, Siuan, I’m sure it will come in handy.

“If there was a Forsaken in our camp, I’d bet half my father’s inn that there’s one spying on the White Tower too.”

Please let Egwene take out at least one of the Forsaken. She deserves it.

Next (TGS ch 9) Previous (TGS ch 7)

[vverloren]

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about love. Last week, on the phone to a close friend we started discussing the difficulty that came along with talking to others about our friendship. “I tell people you’re my girlfriend,” she told me. “nothing else conveys our closeness.” 

It made me laugh. Our love for one another is too intense to be expressed to others as friendship. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised how limiting societal understandings of relationships are. Platonic love is so deeply undervalued and misunderstood within our culture. Romantic love is placed above all other loves, and we’re taught to seek it out, to feel incomplete without it. We are taught that there is only one way to correctly participate in romantic love. We are since girlhood waiting our entire lives to be consumed by exclusive romance. We want to be destroyed by it. We want to drown in it. We let men into the center of our lives. We let men become the center of our lives.

Recently I’ve been reading this book called I Love Dick. It was about the author, Chris, and her husband, Sylvère, her infatuation with her husband’s work colleague Dick. And her husband entertains this infatuation, and the pair of them write Dick letters about how much Chris loves him, and Chris tells her husband about how she imagines herself and Dick having sex. In all the reviews I read about the novel, they discuss how perverted this all is, and how dysfunctional this husband-wife dynamic is. But the whole time I was reading it I was struck by how brilliant their relationship was, how secure and in love they must be. I was thinking maybe one day it would be nice if I could grow enough to have a relationship like that. If I could let go of jealousy and possession. I talk about free love and polyamory all the time, and I think it’s beautiful and I think it’s what right. But this was the first time I was really struck by how much I want to be able to have it. I think it’s easier to love girls that way than it is guys, maybe because I haven’t seen representations of how I’m “supposed” to love girls. I don’t have to let go of so many internalised ideas with girls (just all that internalised homophobia…) and so it is easier, free of urgency. But I am going to practice every day. I will practice non-attachment and remind myself that people will always love me, and that if the form of that love changes I am strong enough to teach myself to accept it. I know that what is for me will be for me effortlessly. I will learn to love in such a way that the person I love does not feel stifled by my love. I will learn to love in such a way that they feel free.

  Love is a pure emotion. I know that un-training my brain will opened up a whole new world of intense joy and happiness to me. I can kiss my friends on the mouths as an expression of my love for them. I can share all the love I have inside of me with as many or as few people as I want and I don’t have to feel confined or restrained by anything that society or Hollywood has taught me.  Realising the unnecessary nature of prescribed titles to different kinds of love and relationships is so incredibly freeing.  We don’t need labels or limitations to our loves. We can create our own unique love that manifest in whatever way it wants to.

I can’t claim that I came to this realisation entirely of my own volition. It wasn’t until I was in a space where there was trust and freedom and Real Love that I realised how dysfunctional my past relationships have been, and how confining and screwed up conventional love is. Particularly as women, an exclusive romantic relationship is viewed as some kind of a pinnacle of success. I’ve stayed in relationships that made me feel trapped. I’ve let men convince me that without them, I would crumble apart and dissolve. For a fear of being alone, I’ve let myself be unhappy. No – utterly miserable.

Now I am growing. I love deeply. I try never to forget that the sources of love are plentiful. That there is kinlove and womanlove and friendlove and sisterlove. That these loves are a source of sustenance.

May we keep our centers to ourselves, hold our own hearts in our hands, and cultivate and appreciate love in all of its glorious manifestations.

Relearning Love Lately I've been thinking a lot about love. Last week, on the phone to a close friend we started discussing the difficulty that came along with talking to others about our friendship.

[rainbow-demoness]

Taking this one out of the tags because it casually explained something about bff's that I've experienced but didn't understand: #adding here: there was an episode of mst3k that was a 50s educational film about girlhood friendships that was just steeped in lesbianism#the 50s mom was worried that the daughter was spending too much time with her best friend#forgetting that all close girlhood friendships are like first love#and that she had had a similar overwhelming crush on her childhood bff#it made me very sad that that view isn't perfectly natural now and that when girls are too close they are considered#playing with the fire of lesbianism#even people who consider being gay fine still don't like people doing things that are affectionate without labelling those people gay#it's not gay to kiss the homies good night#and honestly#lesbianism is such a complex topic so much debated#and the girls in the original story at least the older one clearly is not a lesbian she's bi#the younger one has some decisions to make for herself#people need to stop trying to label other people#if you wanna fuck your best friend even if they're the “wrong” gender#just do it you only live once#and love is more important than labels or society#just don't lie about it to your partner