#i. conford

[hlfmoonshine]

RED AS...

anna james | angel silva | asmodeus moll | drew muller | halen price | icarus conford | ivy reyes | koa aroha | nellie dawson | otto james | poppy burton | royal woods | sasha antonova | sasha james

"red does not always signal danger and aggression. perhaps not surprisingly, red also symbolizes passion, love, and desire. red symbolizes energy, passion, strength, courage, physical activity, creativity, warmth, and security. it is also associated with aggression. In healing, use red to bring warmth and burn out disease."

[hlfmoonshine]

"i know it might sound like—" was there a polite way of saying 'fuck boy flirting'? "it's not a line, i promise." not that his promises carried much weight, at least not to beautiful women he met in bars. he followed her eyes and his smile grew, his ego taking in a little more air, though he tried not to let it show. "is that you're way of saying you think the universe approves of me? i don't know if i've ever gotten approval from the universe itself before." icarus should look for his friends, he should be doing something but he can't even bring himself to look away from her. "at least enough for you to let me buy you your next drink?" he asks, ever charming smile still on his lips. as someone who got just about whatever he asked for, from practically anyone he knew, getting five minutes of an angel's time seemed a task he'd have to pull off with on his own merit. "i'll even endure any teasing you want. you can tear apart all my worst lines."

her face felt hot and mylene softened a bit, her inner bird fluttering. as strangers to one another, there was no real way for her to know just yet if he was being totally genuine or not, but it felt oddly grounding to her to hear. " wow... an angel?? " she hummed and held her drink close to her again, her gaze flickering over to said friends, knowing they were watching and smirking to herself with the confirmation that they were when their gazes met and she heard them snickering amongst themselves through the hum of noise around them. " it's better to be in the moment with friends, i think, " her gaze found his again. " and i don't feel the need to search when i'm out... i prefer to let the universe bring me what i might like, "

[maddie-grove]

Best/Worst Books by Category So Far This Year

YA

Best: Call Me Ruth by Marilyn Sachs (1982)

Runner-Up: Out of Control by Norma Fox Mazer (1993)

Worst: The Girlfriend by R.L. Stine (1991)

Romance

Best: The Marquis Who Mustn't by Courtney Milan (2023)

Runner-Up: The Art of Catching Feelings by Alicia Thompson (2024)

Worst: Kilmeny of the Orchard by L.M. Montgomery (1910)

Other Fiction

Best: The Power of the Dog by Thomas Savage (1967)

Runner-Up: The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)

Worst: The House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune (2020)

Nonfiction

Best: Toxic by Sarah Ditum (2023)

Runner-Up: Meet Me by the Fountain by Alexandra Lange (2022)

Worst: Pathogenesis by Jonathan Kennedy (2023)

Rereads

Best: Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh (1964)

Runner-Up: How to Be Good by Nick Hornby (2001)

Worst: If This Is Love, I'll Take Spaghetti by Ellen Conford (1983)

[isfjmel-phleg]

September 2024 Books

I decided that I need to try to knock out as many books from my To ILL list as possible. So this month's selections are rather random.

Once a Queen by Sarah Arthur

I enjoyed this one a lot! Got a bit impatient with the pacing (characters' refusals to provide information got dragged out a little too long), but on the whole it was quite good. I'll be interested to read the forthcoming sequel.

Ozma of Oz by L. Frank Baum (reread)

Reread on a whim. Fantastic as always.

Carrie's War by Nina Bawden

A lot going on in this one emotionally. It didn't end up where I expected. I did like it but it's going to require a reread at some point to fully process.

The Best of Enemies by Nancy Bond

I loved the Concord setting after having visited there recently, and the family relationships were interesting, but the plot did nothing for me.

The Wild Robot by Peter Brown

What a touching book! I liked it more than I expected to and would like to see the movie if an opportunity comes up.

In Spite of All Terror by Hester Burton

Another WWII coming-of-age story, but this one didn't hit as hard for me.

Shadow Grave by Marina Cohen

Riveting, just the right amount of creepy for my tastes. (It's not a ghost story, but there's a plot-important eldritch creature that's vaguely supernatural but never fully explained? Just FYI)

Felicia the Critic by Ellen Conford

Lightly amusing tale of a girl whose urge to correct all the wrongs around her creates Problems.

Finn's Island by Eileen Dunlop

Dunlop writes family relationships with surprising depth for a middle-grade audience. This one is about a boy's having to come to terms with the fact that his late grandfather's stories of the island where he was raised were heavily idealized, and how that affects his relationship with his father.

A Likely Place by Paula Fox

I put this on the list because (I think) it was among several books discussed in some book on children's literature I came across. No idea what was going on in this one. No idea what the point was.

The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street by Karina Yan Glaser

A recent example of the Slice-of-Life with a Unique Family subgenre. More cotton-candy than I was hoping for.

Hobkin by Peni R. Griffin

Two sisters escaping an abusive stepfather move to a West Texas town and move into a house occupied by a brownie. The mixture of realism (what the sisters are escaping is gradually revealed to have been pretty horrific) and fantasy worked better than I expected.

The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban

Another one mentioned in that book on children's literature. I don't think much of that book's taste. This is perhaps the bleakest children's book that I've ever had the misfortune to slog through. Even though it had a technically happy ending, the getting there was so exhaustingly dismal that the payoff didn't really seem to matter.

The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key

Portal fantasy but make it sci-fi? The young protagonist arrives in an unfamiliar world, only for it to be revealed that this is Earth and he's a strange vistor from another planet (with powers, no less). A lot of social commentary (protagonist's utopian home world vs. the worse aspects of humanity), but an intriguing story.

Peachblossom by Eleanor Frances Lattimore

I don't think I realized when I added it to the list that it was for a younger age range. It deals with some surprisingly heavy topics--the protagonist is a little girl in China during what I think is the Second Sino-Japanese War, which was still ongoing when the book was published in 1943--but ends on an almost fairy-tale note suitable for the intended audience.

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen by Camille Laurens

I saw (a cast of) Degas's "Little Dancer" when I went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last month, and I would have loved to have gotten a figurine from the gift shop, but even the smaller ones were way out of my budget, so I got this book instead. A bit rambly, but it provided historical perspective on the kind of life the girl who modeled for this sculpture would have had (so little is known about her)--and it was pretty horrific and exploitative.

Stand in the Wind by Jean Little

Some of the 1970s attitudes in this book haven't aged well, but on the whole it turned out to be quite a charming story about four girls (two sets of two sisters each) who stay in a house together during the summer and have to adjust to each other, deal with the responsibilities of caring for themselves on their own, and work through various personal struggles. The title comes from a line one girl tells another ("Stand in the wind and eat peanut brittle!") which is both meaningful and hilarious in context.

The Children of Wilton Chase by L. T. Meade

I bought this from an antique store because the old cover was lovely and I figured it could be decorative if the story didn't turn out well. It is definitely going to be decorative only. This isn't the first book I've read by this author, and I'm finding that I don't care for her approach to characterization.

Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux

Interesting background information, but a lot of takes on Little Women that I didn't love. (All of the sisters are valid and that's the point! Not every reader idolizes only Jo! Not every subsequent strong heroine in literature is necessarily a descendant of Jo's! Maybe there's an argument for Elizabeth Alcott's having had an eating disorder which contributed to her death, but it's rather a stretch to suggest that Beth March necessarily does too! etc.)

Fathomless by Samantha San Miguel

Pseudo-Gilded-Age adventure story with pretty good characterization. A fun read.

The Secret Garden Rewilded by Anthea Simmons

I liked this one, but I have some adaptation thought too, and that's going to be a separate post.

Orphan Island by Laurel Snyder

I did not care for this one. It sets up a lot of mystery, which was what kept me going, but ultimately provides no answers because apparently it's meant to be one of those metaphorical problem stories that the reader is supposed to fill in the blanks for. While cognitively I get what Snyder was trying to go for, I think the execution was not particularly successful.

Lucy and Lucy Runs Away by Catherine Storr

This poor girl and her internalized misogyny, which the narrative doesn't challenge.

February Yowler by Catherine Storr

Short but intriguing. The young protagonist is having to keep a lot of secrets about himself, but making a friend at school changes things.

The Boy and the Swan by Catherine Storr

A boy (no name ever mentioned) who has been raised by a emotionally distant old woman whose relation to him is unclear raises a young swan, which becomes emotionally tied to the secrets of his heritage that unfold. Sad, but poignant rather than depressing.

Watcher at the Window by Catherine Storr

It's like what if Mark from Marianne Dreams by the same author was a bit older and angstier and instead of having dream-world adventures with Marianne after losing his mobility, he takes a role kind of like Jimmy Stewart's character in Rear Window. Kind of.

The Spy Before Yesterday by Catherine Storr

Light-hearted story about a boy whose fabricated tales of how his ostensibly boring father had a past as a spy get out of hand. Not a lot there, but the ambiguous note it ends on is fun.

Winter's End by Catherine Storr

When I added a lot of Storr's other works to my list, I failed to check on this one and didn't realize that it wasn't for young readers. It very much was not for young readers, and not in a good way. Yikes. Content issues. Also incredibly boring and pointless as a narrative. Not recommend at all.

Finn's Animal by Catherine Storr

Storr likes themes of dealing with fear--this one is about how the young protagonist's animal (a fantastical creature specifically belonging to him that shape-shifts into animal forms according to whatever he's thinking about) helps him be less afraid. And causes havoc, of course.

Comics

Justice Society of America (2007) Vol. 1-2

I've skimmed these before for Grant content, but this time I read the story straight through. Interesting ideas being set up here, but one of this series' greatest weaknessnes is that the cast is too darn huge for anyone to get much of a substantial arc.

Various appearances of the Golden Age Atom

An adventure. Comics from the 1940s sure were something else. Al's a fairly minor character in the DC'verse and usually just exists as another face among the JSA, but on the few occasions in more recently-written comics in which he gets to take the spotlight, there's some interesting characterization and concepts that I'd like to see more explored.

[retrogirlsbooks]

Dear Lovey Hart, I Am Desperate by Ellen Conford

ISBN 0-590-43820-4

[erikiara80]

We swap plates (Kali)

I think you were swapped in the hospital, to tell you the truth (Karen in S3)

RUTH: I'd make a deal with God, and I'd get Him to swap our places

And there's a mix-up at birth in one of the books here (one of the many interesting things in this photo). A Royal Pain, by Ellen Conford

Plot:

Being a princess is tough, but someone's got to do it! Abby Adams of Kansas was born in a tiny European country, where she and another baby got accidentally switched. Now that the mix-up has been discovered, she's on her way back to Saxony Coburn to begin life as the real Princess Florinda XIV.

ELlen Conford. Kansas. El- Dorothy

[annlarimer]

I was reading YA in the 70s, and it went super hard though it was almost never explicit. I learned how to finance a clandestine abortion by using your parents' department store cards to buy clothes, then returning them for cash. (This was much easier in the 70s - being expected to take store credit for a return was borderline insulting.) Anyway, I direct you to the works of Paul Zindel, ME Kerr, Betsy Byars, Ellen Conford, Sylvia Engdahl, RR Knudson, John Neufeld, and a ton of others, usually published by Dell or Pocket. Ask your used bookseller about 70s YA and they'll bring you a pile.

As long as we're here, I had a very weird experience in B&N's YA section recently where two full-grown women were chatting and one asked the other brightly, "So! What's your favorite dystopia?" and I died a little inside.

So, like, the thing you have to understand is that prior to the mid-2000s, the "Young Adult" genre as we now know it didn't exist. The expectation was that you would graduate to the adult aisle of the book store at, like, 13-14. This worked because the only people still reading long form novels into their teens were precocious bookworms who were better read than their parents.

Harry Potter changed all this. The success of the Harry Potter books convinced the publishing industry that selling full length novels to normie children was a business model. The thing about the Harry Potter books, though, is that at least for the early books, the target audience was a bit younger than what we think of as the YA demographic; tweens, rather than teens. Now, the publishing very much wanted to keep all these normie kids buying books into their teens and beyond, but the previous model of treating teens as functionally adults for marketing purposes would not work; there was simply no way that normie parents were going to let their normie kids read fully adult novels where the characters, like, do drugs or have unprotected sex and stuff. So, in order to be allowed to market to the teen demographic, the YA genre was created.

However, teens have an inherent interest in reading about sex and violence and drugs, and so authors who are able to incorporate these kinds of themes into their YA novels in a discrete way such that it flies under the radar of the moral guardians are met with success. But this is a precarious tightrope to walk. Not enough "mature" themes and the teens will loose interest, to much or to blatant and the teens won't be allowed to read it. And so, it should come as no surprise, that the first person to successfully navigate this tight rope was a Mormon housewife with a vampire fetish.

[ozkar-krapo]

Georgina STARR

"I am the Medium"

(ss.LP. Le Conford Moderne. 2010) [GB]

[ibeatrizlorena]

I want to start again

Hice todo por salir de mi zona de conford , no se si se diga asi la cosa es que hice lo imposible para olvidarme de aquel recuerdo y memorias que me mataban cada dia a cada isntante . Me aleje para no sufrir y ahora sufro mas que nunca yo no pedi estar asi ni nadie pero como puedo hacer para sacarme estos recuerdos de mi cabeza aveces duele tanto el pasado que te pierdes en el presente y hasta entonces ya no llegas al futuro.

He estado haciendo cosas por hacer por no pensar y llegare hasta el final y despues me pondre a pensar en que fue con mi vida despues de lo pasado se que nunca podre olvidarlo pero podre alejarlo de mi mente por un tiempo. La vida es dificil lo se pero que de diverto seria si fuera facil llegaria a ser un poco aburrido no creen?

En fin creo que llevo como 3 años y medios encontrandome a mi misma y todavia sigo haciendolo espero algun dia encontrarme y podre saber como se siente de una p***** vez pero bueno espero que tenga una linda noche porque aqui son las 2:55 am y deberia dormir pero no puedo asi que fuck it jeje I love u quien sea que me lea 👽

[hlfmoonshine]

open to all! muse: icarus conford. thirty one. he/him. bisexual. unemployed. trust fund baby.

"the other options were ozymandias or midas. frankly, i think i fucking lucked out." he grinned, draped across the couch as if were a throne. "though the idea of being named after a king is still enticing." he tapped his chin lightly and finished his drink, devilish grin graced his lips.

[heamanit]

Week 1

shortcuts I have learned-

Z= zoom       Space= hand      P= pen tool       V= selection tool 

A= Direct selection    Command + clicking    Command Z  to undo 

Command then click screen to let go of curve 

Command U for curve tool 

- for this course I want to learn more on how to use adobe apps properly especially illustrator since I have never used it before. For photoshop, I definitely know how to use it but if I had to rate myself out of 10 of how experienced I am on using it , it would be 7.

I would really like to be more confordable on using illustrator and photoshop and make more fun projects I really want to do. 

Vector- the graphics are designed for digital art work that is rendered by a computer.

Raster- its made up of tiny pixels making them resolution dependant and is the best way creating photo/ pictures

Straight line shapes

Straight line shapes 

Single arc curves 

I really enjoyed learning how to create the straight line shapes and single arc curves and getting more confident on how to use illustartor. really enjoying learning new things 

[hlfmoonshine]

cobie's smile fell away, playful teasing and light flirting washed away with the shock of daisy's words. "you—" she cut herself off, patience was never a virture of the confords, not a single one of them. she refused to run daisy down, even if every word that left her mouth pricked a fresh new hole in cobie's heart. "daisy, are you always so unkind to yourself?" she was harsher on herself than cobie had been on the other girls in high school, which was saying something.

open to: anyone relationship: strangers, friends, neighbors, all kinds of fun stuff idk have fun !! ✨ daisy's in her mid 20s, eldest of three, works at her aunt and uncle's store and lives above it. her bios not up so if you want to know anything more about her just hmu ✨

" no, n-no, i'm... " they were flirting, and she was flattered, but bewildered all the same. what did they possibly see?? " you don't want me, i'm not... i'm-i'm weird, and i almost never leave me house, and my... i mean, i still sleep with my stuffed duck from when i was a kid and i... y-you don't... trust me. i'm boring, i suck, you don't want me... "

[100daysofbandnames]

41/100 - “Bandanas for Raccoons”

“What started as four 13-year-old boys on YouTube has, well, stayed on YouTube. But Bandanas for Raccoons hit music video for ‘I Like, Kinda Like You’ has been viewed over 2.3 million times just in the last year, which is an unqualified success. Now the band has released their first album, a digital-only download on their website. It contains another hit, ‘You’re the One, But She’s the Two’ that is an admittedly clever twist on love triangles. I asked Owen Armstrong, the band’s frontboy, how they got the catchy band name. ‘It was a dream,’ he tells me. ‘I’d just stayed up real late playing the Guardians of the Galaxy video game and I dreamed about a raccoon with a yellow bandana, just like on our cover. I had my cousin Caeden who’s good with Photoshop do it.’ A charming story, but unless you’re a 12 to 14-year-old girl, I suggest you give this album a miss. I am a 35-year-old woman, and I am definitely not  their target audience. I didn’t even, like, kinda like it.” 

— Ellen Conford, Music Today Online

[jinnibrooks]

I want my friends or anyone really to be feature on a new thing I want to do it's called video casting. All you will new is a skpe/facebook live and you want even have to leave the Conford of your home to do this. I want to start out with 5 episodes so who's gonna be number 1??? Msg me for more info. https://www.instagram.com/p/B8hcNxGHc1v/?igshid=1ie99ywbhsifa

[nyctarian]

Get to know me

I was tagged by @justdrinkyourdiets0da​

Birthday: august 11

Zodiac sign: leo

Height: 5'2" 

Last song listened to: it was either endless love by thao and the get down stay down or call ticketron by run the jewels

Hobbies: cross stitch, reading, bein’ salty

Last movie I watched: either a documentary about the irish rebellion or captain america the winter soldier, i dont watch a lot of movies and dont remember when i watched those

Favorite color: blue

Favorite book: this is a very hard question, i have like 60 books on my favorites shelf on goodreads and that probably is missing a lot of faves. Just looking through that shelf here are some books. from my childhood some faves are Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine, The Tattooed Potato and Other Clues by Ellen Raskin, The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, Dreams of Victory by Ellen Conford, Mirror, Mirror by Jane Yolen and Heidi E.Y. Stemple, The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, The Murder of Bindy Mackenzie by Jaclyn Moriarty, and Heir Apparent by Vivian Vande Velde. Some favorites I’ve read as an adult are Half a Life by Darin Strauss, Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter, Keturah and Lord Death by Martine Leavitt, One Summer: america, 1927 by bill bryson

Dream job: honestly an ideal world it would be like no work, but in practicality it would just be my current librarian position but with more hours and for better pay w actual benefits

Meaning behind my url: the definition and post where I first heard it is in my bio-- a nyctarian is “A person or creature that is most active during the night.”

if you want to do this feel free to tag me :)

[its-katme]

Things I’d like to see for Stranger Things 3

The pile of books given to Jane/Eleven by Mike, Nancy, and Joyce to read in the next year which I imagine to be filled with a mix of classics: Annie of Green Gables - the entire series, The Wizard of Oz, The Hobbit, Daddy-Long Legs; a lot of contemporary YA: Judy Blume, Ellen Conford, maybe even Richard Peck; Sci-Fi and Fantasy from the time (would the guys have given her any of Robert Heinlein’s juveniles?) and maybe some Sweet Dreams romance (passed along by Joyce or Nancy), but probably not to many horror books (no Stephen King or Lois Duncan) or special children being pursued or under study (a la Witch Mountain and The Girl with Silver Eyes).  Max might pass along her Wonder Woman comics (with strict instructions that she needs those back some time) and sports novels. 

A single Nancy who realized sometime after Easter that although she and Jonathan very good sex, shared trauma and a shared desire to get out of Hawkins, that they don’t really have much else in common. 

Jane reaching out to Kali in the in the Void, trying to communicate. Kali realizes that those moments at night where she feels she’s being watched is not old trauma and not paranoia, but little sister who wants to talk.

Joyce and Jim trying to quit smoking. Badly.