#i have to do a creative nonfiction essay ugh i should do it on this i have a lot to say..

[st5lker]

and i think that was the biggest thing i was struggling to understand about myself for so long was that like. i liked being seen as a girl! i liked calling myself a girl i liked looking like a girl. but i didnt Hate the idea of being seen as a guy either, and in fact in certain contexts (the context of me being specifically a gay man) it gives me the same euphoria that being seen as a girl does. but for so long i think i was letting the truscum talking points get to me so i was like. well i cant be a transfem i cant call myself a trans woman unless i go Fully In. and like that honestly made me feel more dysphoric than anything. there was a time when i thought that i was cis because doing 'girl' stuff made me feel bad but i realized it wasnt because it was girl stuff, it was because i was doing it wrong. all of my dysphoria came from thoughts like 'you have a deep voice, girls dont have deep voices!' 'girls dont have big foreheads!' 'youre not doing it right everyone's going to think you're a freak because you dont look and sound like a cis girl!' and like i was fully recognizing of the fact that it wasnt those things which made me a girl, but i was so averse to the idea of other people seeing me as a 'man in a dress' that it made me feel bad. it wasnt that i didnt want to be a girl, it was that what i wanted less than not being able to be a girl was to be seen as a man in a dress. and you can definitely make the argument that i have some internalized stuff to work through there, i think i do. im very influenced by my own self image and im very aware of that, but the truth is that we live in a very transmisogynistic world so i have to choose one or the other unless im willing to just say 'fuck what everyone thinks about me' and thats just personally not something im ready to do yet as much as i wish i could. but anyway. i think it was going through that journey and realizing how much i didnt like the idea of being forced into these little boxes of what a 'girl' should be in order to not be seen as a freak that i realized that im more than just that. i am a woman and i am a man. and some ppl arent gonna understand that, whatever. i dont have to tell everyone. but i know what i am and admitting to myself 'you dont have to go all the way in to call yourself a woman, you dont have to present femininely, you dont even have to reject being a man, none of that makes you Wrong' that was so freeing and i havent had bad dysphoria ever since i recognized that.

[unitedstatesoflyssa]

ALL OF THE BOOKS I'VE LOVED BEFORE

2024 has been a shitty year for me, reading-wise. I started reading for leisure again in 2022, shortly after I graduated from my English department, because I wanted to try to find the childlike joy books had once given me in a time before pandemics and heartbreaks and boy hands. I read 43 books in 2023. I felt like all I could do was read in 2023. Now, in 2024, I went – like – illiterate there for a minute? But either way. Here it is. In all of its golden glory; a master list of the books I've read this year.

A Court of Silver Flames // Sarah J. Maas

7/10

First read of the year, to cap off the ACOTAR series, which I’d started at the insistence of my little sister in May of 2023. I’ve always hated Nesta. As an older sister, I couldn’t imagine putting my little sisters through what Nesta allowed Feyre to endure; although this book gave me a better perspective of why Nesta came off as detached and downright evil throughout the first half of the series. I relate to her in many aspects. I felt as though this was a solid fantasy, and loved the female friendship aspects of it. However, points off for gratuitous sex scenes and the fact that I still wasn’t wholly sold on Nesta as a character despite feeling like Nesta every day of my life. 

Betty // Tiffany McDaniel

9/10

Practically no notes. Ugh! What a beautiful story of childhood innocence, resilience, and overcoming generational trauma and poverty – all against the backdrop of the Appalachian Mountains. It took me a while to get into this one; I started and stopped it thrice throughout the course of 2023, but once I picked it back up and got through the first two chapters, I physically could not set the book down. It was like reading something on a collision course. Highly recommend. 

The Grace Year // Kim Liggett

10/10

My first perfect rating of the year. The religious trauma leapt out. Think The Hunger Games meets the Salem Witch Trials meets The Handmaid’s Tale. Such a quick read, too – I think I read the entire thing in one day, on two separate flights to Minneapolis and Boston, respectively. My favorite “fantasy” of the year thus far. If there’s one book on this list that I recommend you pick up, it’s probably this one. I think you’ll love it too. 

The Cruel Prince // Holly Black

8/10

This year has been all about catching up on the novels that my friends always said I’d love, but I was to pretentious to read. As the neurons in my frontal lobe snap together, I feel myself getting less proud by the day – something you should probably all be grateful to hear. This was one such read. I loved Jude. A piece of me is Jude, powerhungry and ruthless, but without the penchant for swordplay. However, I got a bit lost in the sauce throughout the middle? Maybe I can blame that one for exclusively reading it on a treadmill. 

House of Flame And Shadow // Sarah J. Maas

Did Not Finish (DNF)

Ah, the book that started the months-long reading slump. Sarah, I’m owed personal compensation for the time you made me waste on reading this. I didn’t even love Crescent City 1, but the character assassination of Bryce, Hunt, and hell, even Ruhn was PAINFUL. Would not recommend. Crescent City 1 is a fun standalone. It’s giving Scooby Doo. Hot people solving crimes with a fun pet sidekick. Read that one and be done. We don’t need the Sarah J. Maas multiverse of madness. (Sorry bestie - still love ya.)

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup // John Kerryrou

8.5/10

I have a feeling if I’d read this before Elizabeth Holmes’s penultimate trial, it would’ve ranked lower, as a lot of the loose ends were inevitably tied up by Kerryrou’s coverage of aforementioned trial. However, one of my goals for 2024 was to read more nonfiction – stuff like this, creative nonfiction, personal essays, all of it. I want to learn things, and I’ve always had a bit of a morbid fascination with the downfall of Theranos. Kerryrou is a journalist, so this was written in approachable, relatable language; great starter nonfiction if you, too, want to brush up on your niche hyperfixation conversation topics. 

Before We Were Innocent // Ella Berman

8/10

This one ranks highly for two reasons, and not necessarily because of the work itself: 

I was laid up in bed for several weeks with two fractured metatarsals, and confined to the four millennial grey walls of my apartment, I felt like I was losing it a bit. I read this one in an afternoon outside on my back patio, broken foot elevated on a tower of pillows, as my husband practically spoon-fed me fruit salad. This, of course, made for a delicious reading experience. 

Because of the broken foot, I was on a bit of pain medication through this time, and I think it made this book glitter a bit more than it actually did. I think I was just glad to have my mind off of the things I was missing out on – like going to the gym, and going on walks, and dancing in the sun, and running laps in the rain. 

Altogether it’s a fun true crime novel reminiscent of Amanda Knox. Real ones know I went through a total Amanda Knox phase my freshman year of college, and all I could talk about was the miscarriage of justice by Italian police on that one. So sub out my motherland for Greece, and put two strange-acting girls in there instead of one, and boom, you have this novel. Reese Witherspoon never disappoints with her selections. 

8. Bright Young Women // Jessica Knoll

6/10

Ugh, such conflicting feelings on this one. You can tell I was in a bit of a true crime phase here. This one’s a fictionalized version of the Chi Omega murders, which famously brought down Ted Bundy. I don’t love that the author chose replace the real narratives of women who were actually impacted by these horrific acts and commodified this story. However, based off of the acknowledgements – it seems she had their blessing? I usually love the types of commercial fiction that feel real enough to touch. Taylor Jenkins Reid does this masterfully. However, this one felt… insensitive at its best. But the writing style was propulsive, and it quickly became another book I devoured on a travel day. 

9. Five Survive // Holly Jackson

5/10

Another travel day book. One thing about me – I really try to avoid screentime while flying, because it may be one of the only times I feel like I can really detach from whatever’s going on below. You will catch me in my Delta economy seat, legs folded beneath me, thumbing through whatever book I’m reading at record speed. I read this one on a flight to DC and remember thinking that I wished it was longer. Again, the true crime phase. I was deep in it. But yeah. Not much to say here. It’s a thriller novel. 

10. The Nightingale // Kristin Hannah

10/10

Oh, Lord. What do I even say about this masterpiece? 

Some might call it a beach read. Fine, whatever. Sue me. Lock me up and throw away the key – this formerly pretentious English major, who used to impress boys based on her knowledge of Nabokov and Murakami, LOVES a good beach read every now and then. I’ve gotten to a point in my life where, if I’m picking up a book, I want to actually escape into its pages. I’m a bit past laboring over purple prose or analyzing the quality of the text itself. This isn’t to say I won’t give what I read a halfway decent literary critique – I still can’t bring myself to finish books with terrible writing, and I’ll admit that I do still see myself as “above” most BookTok-type books – but at this point, I’m just too beat to care. Like, I can barely afford to keep a roof over my head and purchase healthy groceries, why would I spend the same mental energy that I do at the checkout line whining over prose on the Internet? 

Anyways. This one. Oh my gosh. I really, genuinely have no words. Books don’t often make me emotional. I’ve read everything I could get my hands on since I was, like, three. But this one made me full-body sob. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE. Kristin Hannah, I could kiss you.

Side note: I read this one in a night, too, not because I was traveling, but because I actually wanted to. 

11. The Women // Kristin Hannah

9/10

It’s hard to follow up a masterpiece like The Nightingale, although I do think this one held its own. I’m mostly just freaked out that the main character hailed from my father’s San Diego, her love interest from my mother’s San Antonio, and she ended up (spoilers!) in my beloved Garden City of Missoula, Montana. Kristin, if you are in my walls, please get out expeditiously. I’m going to have to ask you to start paying rent. 

And, as an aside, here’s all of the books I’m currently reading: 

Magnolia Parks // Jessa Hastings (which I’m loving. It feeds my Love Island UK proclivities. I never said I wasn’t a whore for reality TV. I said I was pretentious. Those are two different things.)

Everything I Know About Love // Dolly Alderton (sort of what inspired me to resurrect my Tumblr. I found myself relating to her need to do things for the anecdote a bit too much. I thought that maybe, I, too, could immortalize these things to laugh on when I am not twenty-something.)

Demon Copperhead // Barbara Kingsolver (which I think will be a bit like Betty, and I’ll have to power through the first several chapters in order to actually blitz through the rest. Fun writing style, though. Just getting bored of it fast.) 

Adult Drama // Natalie Beach (Okay, okay, I haven’t actually started this one yet, but it’s been on my list. Like I said! It’s the year of the personal nonfiction novel! And admittedly, I worshiped Caroline Calloway when I was sixteen and thought I was deep, so I’m invested in Natalie’s side of the narrative.)

And, I know what you’re thinking: here’s this privileged white girl, reading her privileged white girl books. I know, I know. I desperately need to diversify my reading list, and believe it or not, it is something I’ve been intentional about this year. I really hope to spend the latter half of the year reading books from diverse perspectives. Fiction and nonfiction alike bear such an incredible opportunity to educate and broaden the perspectives of those who read. 

So there’s that. The books from a girl who loves books. Hit my “ask” box for recommendations. I love giving the oddly specific ones. 

Xoxo

Lys

[army-of-mai-lovers]

1, 5, 8, 12, 18, 20, 22 for the ask thing; you dont have to do all of them lol

lmao try me

1. Tell us about your current project(s)  – what’s it about, how’s progress, what do you love most about it?

answered here!

5. What character that you’re writing do you most identify with?

Okay this is my third attempt at answering this but I’m going to say Mako. Like me, Mako is mixed, like me, Mako is an oldest sibling, with all the mess that comes with that, and like me, Mako spends so much time people pleasing that he has no idea who he actually is. I’ve written a lot of characters who have traits similar to me in some way, but Mako is so similar to me that the first time I tried to watch lok I could not stand him because he reminded me of all the parts of myself I couldn’t stand (although I didn’t realize it at the time). He’s weird and awkward and stubborn and shouldering way too much, but I love him nonetheless. 

8. Is what you like to write the same as what you like to read?

literally not at all lmao. I don’t read nearly as much fic as I used to, but the fic that I do read most often is fluffy shippy stuff, which is largely not the kind of stuff I write. fanfic for me is definitely comfort reading, and so I try to maximize the comfort as much as possible. outside of fic....yeah honestly I read way more romance than you would expect looking at my listed works on ao3. other than that, I read a lot of nonfiction and poetry, and sometimes I like to read “literary” books. I’m really trying to expand my horizons reading-wise (and I think in a lot of ways I’m succeeding) but honestly I think people get a little too up in arms about trying to make other people expand their horizons reading-wise. I’m in college, and I have to read a bunch for school, so if in my free time I just want to read fluffy oneshots on ao3 that’s what I’m going to do. When I gather up the time and energy I really enjoy reading more “literary” stuff on my own time, and that stuff tends to have a huge impact on me (and my work), but I believe that, at least to an extent, you should let people turn off their brains every once in a while. it’s a shit world out there and the least you can do is read about your favorite characters getting together in the stupidest most cliche way possible. so yeah, I practice turning my brain off every once in a while as a form of self-care, and I’m not ashamed of that in the slightest. 

12. Do you want your writing to be famous?

that is an excellent question. I’d really like to be a writer someday, and I’d like to be able to live off of income from my writing, so in that sense yes I’d like my writing to be famous. as far as fanfic is concerned? eh. it seems like a lot of pressure and a lot of nonsense to have a fic that Everyone Knows About And Is Waiting For You To Update. but also, there are certain fics of mine where I would like it if they got popular throughout the fandom, if only so that people would start emulating choices that I made in their own writing (e.g. not setting their modern aus in the US/UK/Europe). I don’t know though, I think even if that happened, it wouldn’t happen in the way I wanted it to. every time I’ve seen this fandom shift in what I think will be a more equitable less racist direction, all that’s actually happened is that people come up with new racist tropes to fit whatever “unproblematic” new trope the fandom’s come up with. at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what I want though, because my fics are either going to get popular or they’re not, and from what I’ve seen, my writing and the larger atla/lok fandom aren’t that compatible, so that’s the end of that. 

18. Do any of your stories have alternative versions? (plotlines that you abandoned, AUs of your own work, different characterisations?) Tell us about them.

in an early outline of ktwab, Zuko was going to be a bender, which if you’ve read that fic would have changed the storyline drastically, since so much of his character in the published fic revolves around him not being a bender. I wasn’t super comfortable with the nonbender Zuko hc at the time I was outlining ktwab for the first time, so I was really hesitant to put it in the fic, but after a while I realized that it was the right thing for the story. honestly, I’ve really come to love it. there’s always something interesting about imagining a bending character without bending, but I think it’s most interesting when looking at Zuko because it’s both so close to canon (in that he’s a late bloomer wrt Firebending and he’s not that great at it for most of the show) and so far away from it (in that Firebending is an integral part of the way canon Zuko views the world). and it gets doubly interesting when he’s the primary antagonist to Avatar Sokka. 

20.Tell us the meta about your writing that you really want to ramble to people about (symbolism you’ve included, character or relationship development that you love, hidden references, callbacks or clues for future scenes?

ugh ok I’m going to copy/paste part of a mini essay I wrote about character foils in ktwab but redact all the parts that would indicate who it’s about because it’s all spoilers: 

[REDACTED] has been cheated out of power, and his every action is motivated out of anger that he was cheated out of that power. Even his love for [REDACTED] is colored by the fact that he knows that one day, [REDACTED] might repay him by allowing him to survive and thrive when he’s [REDACTED]. [REDACTED], on the other hand, has never had access to imperial power and thus has never had the opportunity to be cheated out of it. His anger is at the fact that imperial power exists. Thus, while both of them are angry and fight against the Fire Nation with violence, [REDACTED]’s is the anger that’s misguided. It is based in a selfish desire to regain imperial power rather than a solidarity with people who have never had imperial power. Thus, his death in Ba Sing Se foreshadows the death of imperial power itself, a la [REDACTED], rather than power simply changing hands. Not only does [REDACTED] die, he dies for [REDACTED], the one best suited to end the imperial project of the Fire Nation. [REDACTED]’s role to him changes from “person who can help me survive” to “person who benefits from me losing my imperial power” to “person whom I can help end the imperial project” Meanwhile, [REDACTED]’s survival signifies the survival of an organized anti-imperialist resistance, one with an incredible amount of teeth, and its alliance with people who have the power to enact it on a grand scale. 

22. Do you reread your old works? How do you feel about them?

I think the only one I reread somewhat often is the greatest of them all, and even that I haven’t looked at in a long time. my feelings toward that fic in particular are mixed, mostly because that was the first thing I’d written creatively in a long while and it’s pretty apparent from the writing style of it (at least to me). but I think that with every new fic (or every new chapter of fics I’ve been working on for an obscene amount of time) I improve as a writer, and the whole reason I got into writing fanfiction is because I want to be a better writer. so I’m grateful towards any piece of work that helped me get there. 

writer meta ask game!

[xspaceprincess]

Ugh. I finished and submitted my creative nonfiction essay for class a couple of hours ago and like... man idk if I’m feeling it. Originally I was gonna write about living with bipolar, but like the words weren’t flowing. So I changed to my other best topic, which is death and like... idk. Individual pieces are good, but the in between stuff is kinda meh. And we had to “do research” for this paper, so I put in some stuff about children and dealing with grief and the effects of witnessing someone dying, but idk if they work well with the piece. It felt like a relevant topic for me to write about since my great grandmother probably isn’t going to live for much longer (despite her wishes to “have the lord take her,” it seems her body has been refusing. But she’s really getting pretty bad). But idk. I feel like maybe I should have done more focus of the psychological effects of witnessing a death or something? But I also wanted to write a different scene involving my grandmother and not just my step-grandmother. I think it’s a jumbled mess. I’m probably going to need to do a hell of a lot revision for the final draft.