#hopeful reads

[elliepassmore]

All the Water in the World review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: cli-fi, disaster fiction, community, survival

Big thanks to St. Martin's Press, Netgalley, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

This book examines survival in a climate ravaged world, and the positive and negative ways people rebuild after the end. It's told through a mix of 'present' day events, when a superstorm destroys their home and they have to find a new one, and past events that detail how there came to be a community on the roof of the American Natural History Museum and the kinds of things they did to survive. Technically the whole book is in past tense, with Nonie narrating, but there is a delineation between Nonie's childhood and the travels from the AMNH to a farm in upper-NY.

I really liked that the original group of survivors we follows is a set of anthropologists, scientists, and museum employees (plus their kids). It's such an interesting setup and it allows for the adults to have skills and knowledge that the average person probably doesn't possess. I also really liked the American Museum of Natural History in NY being the backdrop of the main character's childhood. It's such a unique location and I really liked seeing how they used things from the museum and knowledge from the past to survive in the 'modern' world.

It's hard at times to remember Nonie is only 13 when all this is going down. She has a pretty mature voice and even when she doesn't understand certain things, she still has a strong understanding of the world. Nonie is very empathetic and caring, and it comes through in how she handles her sister and Keller (and others) at various points in the book. Despite how the world is around them, Nonie is also a fairly hopeful character, both about the small things and the big things. She dreams of one day going on one of the research boats to study the changing waters of the world (big hope) and she also wants to believe the best of people, though she's also realistic, especially if something seems off. I definitely read Nonie as being autistic even though no one ever says it outright.

Biz was someone I had a harder time connecting with, though I also understand her. She's 16 during the course of this book and is not only old enough to remember when times were less apocalyptic, but she's also lived through some pretty grim stuff herself. Part of Biz is angry and a little reckless because of it, but part of her is also afraid and full of the knowledge of just what might go wrong. That being said, like Nonie she's very caring and determined to see their small group survive.

I liked seeing the different ways different groups of people survived, and how that compares and contrasts to the AMNH group. Some of the ways are remarkably similar, like the people at the Cloisters, while others only seem that way on the surface and others yet take a more violent dog-eats-dog approach to survival. This book really does a good job looking at how we behave when the end has come and the things we are, and aren't, willing to close our eyes to if it means survival. That being said, this book isn't all dark and I think it really pushes the narrative of community = survival, which I would say is both realistic and hopeful.

One thing that bugged me at the start of the book, as someone who knows a lot about tornadoes, is that they're trying to find shelter and keep running into rooms with windows! It's really a minor thing but it bugged me so badly, lol.

Overall this is a really good book and does a good job of examining survival and hope after the end. I liked the museum aspect of it a lot and also liked the community-oriented take on survival Caffall depicted.

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[kiryuing]

[mlm-blues]

dear gods please take my pain, double it triple it quadruple it and give it all to neil gaiman and then do that 10 more times

[botanyshitposts]

the lichen knowledge iceberg i have constructed on request

[thundersbugs]

rich boy get your ass up and FIGHT!!!

[1st year au]

[berrysquared]

I just think LDShadowLady’s husband joel sHOULD PUT HER ON THAT BILLBOARD IN HIS BASE I KNOW UR LURKING JOEL I KNOW UR SEEING THIS, PUT QUEEN ON THE BILLBOARD

[novelconcepts]

I Saw the TV Glow is such a uniquely, devastatingly queer story. Two queer kids trapped in suburbia. Both of them sensing something isn’t quite right with their lives. Both of them knowing that wrongness could kill them. One of them getting out, trying on new names, new places, new ways of being. Trying to claw her way to fully understanding herself, trying to grasp the true reality of her existence. Succeeding. Going back to help the other, to try so desperately to rescue an old friend, to show the path forward. Being called crazy. Because, to someone who hasn’t gotten out, even trying seems crazy. Feels crazy. Looks, on the surface, like dying.

And to have that other queer kid be so terrified of the internal revolution that is accepting himself that he inadvertently stays buried. Stays in a situation that will suffocate him. Choke the life out of him. Choke the joy out of him. Have him so terrified of possibly being crazy that he, instead, lives with a repression so extreme, it quite literally is killing him. And still, still, he apologizes for it. Apologizes over and over and over, to people who don’t see him. Who never have. Who never will. Because it’s better than being crazy. Because it’s safer than digging his way out. Killing the image everyone sees to rise again as something free and true and authentic. My god. My god, this movie. It shattered me.

[twisting-in-wonderland]

'Yuu!'

[sunlitsoil]

there is always tomorrow

[ruporas]

dragon meat, you, and me

[asterronomical]

dance battle<33

[doubledudeski]

dumb sequel to this post bc their ear thingies are my fav

[waywardstation]

Look for anything (or anyone) that could be familiar

For part two:

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🔼 for Ingo to find Emmet

🔽 for Emmet to find Ingo

[rhinestonesox]

When Senshi was young in the dungeon the majority of the adults he were with ostracized him. All except Gillin, who died to make sure Senshi had something to eat: unseasoned boiled meat that may or may not have been one of their comrades.

It really puts into perspective why he was so nurturing towards Chilchuck. When Chil reveals he’s 28 to the party, Senshi responds by telling him that he thought he was older. Senshi was in his 30s when he and his comrades got trapped in the dungeon, so it’s safe to assume that he thought Chil was at a similar age.

He met a young boy who was, from his perspective, forced to do dangerous work in the dungeon just like he was, and so, Senshi made an effort to look after Chilchuck in the same way Gillin looked after him.

Mind you, when Senshi was young in the dungeon he had to starve for weeks, eat the horse he loved, and finish it off spending the next i don’t know how many years wondering if he committed cannibalism.

Senshi understands first hand the value of nutrition and proper eating, so when he’s with the party he makes an effort to make sure they’re all eating a full and balanced diet. Not only that, but Senshi INVOLVES them in the process of getting food to eat, always preparing it in front of them and narrating every ingredient in the process so that there’s no doubt about what they’re eating.

[stageturn]

(slides u a jon) got time for a draw this in your style?

use #stageturnDTIYS to participate :D

HAVE FUN!!!!! (closeups under the cut :3)

and here's the actual doodle of s1 Jon