#literary blog post

[joncronshawauthor]

Last Chance: Pre-Order The Fall of Wolfsbane for Just 99c/99p - Goes Live Tomorrow!

The countdown is nearly over! We’re just one day away from the official release of The Fall of Wolfsbane, the first book in the Ravenglass Legends series. The excitement is palpable, and I can hardly wait to share this epic adventure with you. But, before this fantastic journey begins, I have an incredible offer for you. For those who haven’t yet seized this opportunity, today is your last…

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🍉 Books for Read Palestine Week 2024 [ Nov 29 - Dec 5 ]

✨ This guide will no doubt get hidden, given the topic, so please help me by sharing this!

❓What are you reading this week?

🍉 Educate and empathize! Here are 82 books you can read for Read Palestine Week! I've included 26 queer books for those of you who #readqueerallyear as well. Please read these books to learn more about the Palestinian experience. Shukran (thank you)!

✨ Poetry 🍉 Enemy of the Sun - (ed) Edmund Ghareeb and Naseer Aruri 🍉 A Mountainous Journey - Fadwa Tuqan 🍉 So What - Taha Muhammad Ali 🍉 Affiliation - Mira Mattar 🍉 The Butterfly's Burden - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Born Palestinian, Born Black & The Gaza Suite - Suheir Hammad 🍉 Breaking Poems - Suheir Hammad 🍉 In the Presence of Absence - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Rifqa - Mohammed el-Kurd 🍉 My Voice Sought the Wind - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 Blood Orange - Yaffa 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 To All the Yellow Flowers - Raya Tuffaha 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Before the Next Bomb Drops - Remi Kanazi 🍉 Birthright - George Abraham 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Tent Generations - Various 🍉 Who is Owed Springtime - Rasha Abdulhadi 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Twenty-Ninth Year - Hala Alyan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Some Things Never Leave You - Zeina Azzam 🍉 I Saw Ramallah - Mourid Barghouti 🍉 Nothing More To Lose - Najwan Darwish 🍉 The Specimen's Apology - George Abraham & Leila Abdelrazaq 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Shell Houses - Rasha Abdulhadi 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Moon That Turns You Back - Hala Alyan 🍉 Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear - Mosab Abu Toha 🍉 Halal If You Hear Me - (ed) Fatimah Asghar & Safia Elhillo 🍉 Water & Salt -Lena Khalaf Tuffaha 🍉 Dear God. Dear Bones. Dear Yellow. - Noor Hindi 🏳️‍🌈

✨ Non-Fiction/Memoirs 🍉 Are You This? Or Are You This? - Madian Al Jazerah 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 This Arab is Queer - (ed) Elias Jahshan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Love is an Ex-Country - Randa Jarrar 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Decolonial Queering in Palestine - Walaa Alqaisiya 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Namesake: Reflections on A Warrior Woman - N.S. Nuseibeh 🍉 The Trinity of Fundamentals - Wisam Rafeedie 🍉 Between Banat - Mejdulene Bernard Shomali 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique - Sa'ed Atshan 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom - Ahed Tamimi & Dena Takruri 🍉 Fashioning the Modern Middle East: Gender, Body, and Nation - Reina Lewis and Yasmine Nachabe Taan 🍉 Balcony on the Moon: Coming of Age in Palestine - Ibtisam Barakat 🍉 We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance - Linda Sarsour 🍉 Palestine: A Socialist Introduction - Sumaya Awad & Brian Bean 🍉 Voices of the Nakba - Diana Allan 🍉 Tracing Homelands - Linda Dittmar 🍉 Black Power & Palestine - Michael R. Fischbach 🍉 The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine - Ilan Pappé 🍉 A Day in the Life of Abed Salama - Nathan Thrall 🍉 A Land with a People - Esther Farmer, Rosalind Petchesky, & Sarah Sills 🍉 Inara by Mx. Yaffa AS 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Mural - Mahmoud Darwish 🍉 Light in Gaza - Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing, & Michael Merryman lotze 🍉 The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein 🍉 Gaza - Norman Finkelstein

✨ Fiction 🍉 A Map of Home - Randa Jarrar 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 You Exist Too Much - Zaina Arafat 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Skin and Its Girl - Sarah Cypher 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Minor Detail - Adania Shibli 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Philistine - Leila Marshy 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Muneera and the Moon - Sonia Sulaiman 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Belladonna - Anbara Salam 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Behind You Is The Sea - Susan Muaddi Darraj 🍉 The Coin - Yasmin Zaher 🍉 Guapa - Saleem Haddad 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Parisian - Isabella Hammad 🍉 Salt Houses - Hala Alyan 🍉 The Ordeal of Being Known - Malia Rose 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 From Whole Cloth - Sonia Sulaiman 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 Against the Loveless World - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 The Beauty of Your Face - Sahar Mustafah 🍉 Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa 🍉 My First and Only Love - Sahar Khalifeh 🍉 They Fell Like Stars From the Sky & Other Stories - Sheikha Helawy 🍉 Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad 🍉 Wild Thorns - Sahar Khalifeh 🍉 A Woman is No Man - Etaf Rum 🍉 Mother of Strangers - Suad Amiry 🍉 Hazardous Spirits - Anbara Salam 🏳️‍🌈 🍉 The Book of Ramallah - Maya Abu Al-Hayat

🏳️‍🌈 Graphic Novels 🍉 Mis(h)adra - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Confetti Realms - Nadia Shammas 🍉 Where Black Stars Rise - Nadia Shammas & Marie Enger 🍉 Nayra and the Djinn - Iasmin Omar Ata 🍉 Squire - Nadia Shammas & Sara Alfageeh 🍉 My Mama's Magic - Amina Awad

[wildsaltair]

This will be my single controversial rant about Gladiator and its sequel (specifically my thoughts on Maximus being retconned as Lucius' father), and then I will be silent on the matter because this blog is meant to be A Good Time and I just enjoy sharing my love for Gladiator with everyone on here :)

KIND OF SPOILERS FOR GLADIATOR AND THE SEQUEL (BUT NOT REALLY) BELOW

As everyone knows, Ridley Scott made the choice to reveal in Gladiator 2 that Lucius is actually the son of Maximus from a secret affair with Lucilla. In G2, it's apparently implied that Lucilla was trapped in a bad marriage, fell in love with Maximus, and kept the truth about Lucius' father a secret. Lots of viewers have been split about this, with some thinking that plot point was implied in Gladiator and others feeling that it contradicts what was established in Gladiator.

I am strongly of the opinion that this choice was a bad one, that it does interfere with the integrity of the original film, and that Gladiator 2 would have been much better without that change. I'll give my reasons below.

1. Yes, rewriting Maximus as a cheater does destroy his entire character arc in Gladiator.

We've all seen Gladiator, right? The one where the hero has everything life can offer but longs only to return home to be with his beloved wife and son? Carries their figurines with him into battle, cares only for them when his own life is threatened, lays down to die by their graves after he finds them dead? Spends the whole movie only wanting to meet them again in the afterlife and only gets peace once he's there.

Yeah. Apparently that guy cheated on his wife with a princess. His son and Lucilla's sons are the same age, which means Maximus would have to have been married to his wife while also sleeping with Lucilla.

Maximus' entire character arc relies on his pure, unconditional, self-sacrificial love for his family. Take that away, and you have a generic action movie about a guy who wants revenge because the Emperor tried to kill him once. Even when Maximus has lost everything inside himself and cares about nothing else, he still honors the memory of his family and fights to avenge them as well as join them. He is shown still talking to his wife in the afterlife through prayer and believing she can hear him. As @streets-in-paradise pointed out, it's the equivalent of having Aragon or Hector of Troy cheat on their wives — it's just painfully out of character for them.

There's also an element of Maximus' love and respect for his Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, another driving force in his characterization. I think Maximus has too much respect for Marcus to have had an affair with Marcus' married daughter, even if he knew Marcus maybe would have wished Maximus had married Lucilla. We never get much insight into that part of the past, but if we go by the virtues Maximus upholds throughout the movie, I just don't think Maximus would have considered sneaking behind Marcus' back to sleep with his daughter.

Either way, the emotional heart of Maximus' character is his love for his family, and retconning that so your sequel has a "bigger emotional impact" is nothing short of undignified and sloppy.

2. All the conversations between Maximus and Lucilla in Gladiator imply that they did have a romantic relationship — but that it was public (not clandestine) and took place before either of them were married.

Yes, Maximus and Lucilla definitely were in love at some point. Russell Crowe and Connie Nielsen have great chemistry, and their conversations (both of them) hold so much weight with "what could have been." Lucilla talks about how she wounded Maximus deeply as he did her, and their conversations are full of things like, "Is it so terrible seeing me again?" The weight of their previous emotional attachment pervades the movie in a way that is inextricable from the plot.

BUT. Maximus and Lucilla had their relationship A LONG TIME AGO. This is very clearly established by the way they talk to each other. Maximus has been in Germania for twelve years (taking breaks only to go home, but NEVER to visit Rome). He and Lucilla presumably met sometime before that, probably while the royal family was visiting some city where Maximus was serving in / commanding the army. The details are never established.

However, Maximus and Lucilla clearly had a public enough relationship that Marcus and Commodus knew about it, but there is never the slightest mention in Gladiator that Lucius might be Maximus' son — something Commodus surely would have exploited had he known it was a possibility.

Maximus and Lucilla were in love, but it was before they married other people. They were probably teenagers or young adults who fell madly in love, wanted to marry, but were stopped for whatever reason (probably Maximus not wanting to play politician's games, as he implies). Maximus met the woman he eventually married, Lucilla married Lucius Verus, and they carried on with their lives until they met again at the beginning of Gladiator.

Also, Maximus talks about the respect he had for Lucilla's husband (a far cry from what Gladiator 2 implies about Lucius Verus), and she talks about how she mourned Maximus' family. Sure, you can read into the script and find stuff about how Maximus could have been Lucius' father, but it explicitly goes against the values and implications of the overall acript.

Connie Nielsen stated that she played her scenes thinking that Maximus was Lucius' father. She's an actress, and she plays Lucilla brilliantly. But she's not the scriptwriter, and no matter what her intentions were, the script implies that their relationship took place much longer ago, before either of them were married. @becomelions made a great post about how Lucilla, too, can wish as much as she wants that Maximus was Lucius' father, but he couldn't have been. Not unless you retcon all of Gladiator as fanfiction.

3. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are not meant to replace those he had with his wife and son — they are meant to be reflections of some of the bigger themes of the film.

With all that said, this is not a hate post about how Gladiator should have been about Maximus and his wife and son, and how I hate Lucilla and Lucius' story and think it contradicts that blah blah blah. NO. The storyline with Lucilla, Lucius, and Maximus is one of the strong points of the whole movie — but not as a replacement for the family he has lost.

In a lot of ways, Lucilla represents Rome as the ideal Maximus always believed in: beautiful, noble, and proud. When he becomes disillusioned with Rome, he becomes disillusioned with Lucilla; when he starts to believe in the hope of Rome again, he starts to believe in Lucilla again. They're always linked. Lucilla is not the woman he wants to start over with and marry now that his wife is gone. She is an old friend and ally whom he eventually learns to trust again.

Lucius, on the other hand, represents what Rome can be again. Lucius is the grandson of Marcus Aurelius, and I think Maximus longs to honor his mentor by preserving the life of his last living heir. Lucius reminds Maximus of his son, yes, and he brings out the protectiveness and the desire to do for Lucius what he couldn't do for his own son. But that doesn't mean Lucius has to be his son for that relationship to have emotional impact, as I will explain further in point 5.

4. Maximus' relationships with Lucilla and Lucius are genuinely integral to the film, but as they are — not as what they could be.

Again, I absolutely love the dynamics between Maximus, Lucilla, and Lucius throughout Gladiator. Russell and Connie play off each other so well with those "I remember how you used to be but that was a long time ago" vibes. Russell and Spencer Treat Clark only share one scene, but it's one of the film's most memorable scenes.

However, we are not meant to question those relationships as "oooooh but what if Lucius is actually Maximus' son????" Maybe Ridley left that door open for the audience to consider, but again, I feel like the film contradicts that by implying that Lucilla and Maximus loved each other much longer ago.

When you make Lucius Maximus' son, Lucilla's seeking out of Maximus as his savior becomes less interesting. It becomes "I'm calling on you to save your son even though you don't know he's your son" instead of "I'm asking you to act out of the goodness inside you to save a boy who doesn't deserve to die any more than your own son did." The version we see in Gladiator is so much more impactful.

It also cheapens what Lucius' journey could have been in Gladiator 2! Again, @streets-in-paradise pointed out how much better the sequel could have been if Lucius had been acting in the shadow of a brilliant man who captivated the city of Rome but also was his friend for a little while. As I'll discuss in point 6, having the reveal of Lucius as Maximus' son is just the laziest possible route for a sequel, and it certainly drags down the dignity of the relationships we see in Gladiator.

5. One of the strengths of Maximus' choice to fight for Lucius' survival in Gladiator lies in the fact that he doesn't have any familial obligation to him.

This is one of my favorite points, because I do love the dynamics between Maximus and little Lucius! Maximus has a bone-deep obligation to save his family — he rides for days and nights to get home and save them, but he misses them by a matter of hours. He wrestles with guilt and misery because he feels like he failed them. He was supposed to be their protector, and he couldn't save them.

BUT. Maximus has no such blood ties to Lucius. This kid is the son of Maximus' ex, the grandson of Maximus' dead mentor, and the nephew of his most hated enemy. Maximus doesn't have an obligation to Lucius as his father: he doesn't even know him until Lucius approaches him in the arena.

And that's what makes his decision to fight for Lucius so powerful. Maximus sees Lucius as the hope of Rome, and he decides that's still worth fighting for — something he had given up on before. Even though he has no obligation to save Lucius as his son, he wants to save him as an innocent young boy caught in political matters over his head.

Again, making Lucius Maximus' son cheapens the impact of that decision. Ridley Scott built up so many amazing plot points and relationships, and it really disappoints me that he just cast them aside to make some easy money by relying on the success of the original.

6. Relying on such a trite, overused plot point to make up the emotional foundation of your sequel can only weaken your sequel and ruin the dignity of your original film.

My final point is simply that Gladiator 2 could have been really well done. They could have done something original with it (or something totally off-the-wall like Russell Crowe's vision LOL). But I think Ridley Scott was banking on that nostalgia factor, and he chose a plot point that he knew would be easily marketable — the hero of the second film is the hero of the first film.

We've seen it done literally hundreds of times, from Star Wars to Superman to Toy Story, and having that be the big reveal of Gladiator 2 is just lazy writing. To have Lucius trying to live up to the legacy of Maximus the hero would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of literally anyone else would have been interesting. To have Lucius discover that he's the son of Maximus is an eye-roll-inducing move that should have been trailer bait and nothing more.

Primarily! Because it can't be the emotional foundation of the movie! Lucius has to have his own journey if it's his movie; he can't just walk in Maximus' footsteps and be like, "Father, speak to me," if he's not going on his own individual emotional journey. We as the audience have to relate to our hero because he's our hero, not because he's the son of our hero.

I'll be honest — I probably wouldn't go see a sequel to Gladiator no matter what it was about because I think Gladiator is a perfect standalone movie and should have stayed that way. I just don't think you can recreate the scale and impact and simplicity of Gladiator in today's film industry.

However, I could at least have had respect for a sequel to Gladiator if Ridley Scott had shown some respect for his own movie. I just hate the fact that Maximus' noble, honorable character is reduced to a cheating husband whose only character trait of note is that he served Rome. Maximus is one of the best characters of the 21st century, and I love him too much to support a movie that trashes that legacy (as well as tries to replicate the beauty of my favorite film of all time).

Final thoughts:

Gladiator is a movie. You can read into it whatever you want, and it doesn't hurt anyone.

I love Gladiator more than I can say, and it's really important to me not just as a cultural icon but on a personal level as well.

Anyone who knows this blog knows how much I love Maximus Decimus Meridius, and Ridley's choice to change Maximus' character so drastically is one that really just ticks me off.

To me personally, Gladiator 2 is not canon, and I will never consider it so on this blog.

[the-broken-pen]

Honestly the pipeline of “reading the-modern-typewriter snippets at midnight on the floor of my bathroom at age eleven so I wouldn’t get caught” to “being a tumblr writer myself” is a wild one.

[twilight-good-yall-dumb]

Can I just say that I was, and still am, a little heartbroken over the POV shift in The Prisoner's Throne? Like, don't get me wrong, I love hoof boy as much as the next guy, but I was SO in love with Wren's POV. Still, months after finishing the duology, I feel unsatisfied. There was something about Oak's POV that lacked for me. For some, it was golden because they got more Jurdan content (based on the overwhelming amount of discourse surrounding Jurdan in TPT rather than Oak and Wren, the protagonists, but I digress). For me though, it was a bit disappointing. It also just felt impersonal compared to Wren's (the shift to 3rd person didn't help with this). I fell in love with The Stolen Heir as soon as I began it, and Wren quickly became my favorite protagonist I'd read from the Holly Black faerie world. I loved her backstory, I loved her perspective, I loved her reserved yet determined personality. I LOVED WREN. I wanted more of HER story, and in TPT, I was left feeling robbed of it. She felt so absent in her own sequel, which I understand helped contribute to the plot in a way, but still. I missed Wren. The way she was written in TSH was so elevated; it was such a fascinating read for me.

Idk. I just still feel a little bit let down by it, which I'm so heartbroken about because I was fully expecting it to be a five star read for me. I wonder if I had a different perspective than most having read tfota AND modern faerie tales before the duology? Because for me, Wren's character, the worldbuilding, and the quest elements of TSH were so much fun and provided so much interesting context for Holly's universe! And I think I was also not so desperate for Jurdan content as other readers may have been. I wonder if TPT took the direction it did because of pressure Holly felt not to disappoint loyal Jurdan fans? And don't get me wrong, I am a loyal Jurdan fan, but I'm also a loyal Holly Black faerie fan in general, and I was excited to get to know this new, interesting character. And then she was taken away from me. Or at least it felt that way :/

Does literally anybody else understand this? Or was everybody else too distracted by Cardan and Jude for all of TPT lmao

[candlelightkiss]

She's never gonna be like the one before. She read it in her stars that there's something more. No matter what it takes, no matter how she breaks, She'll be the queen of Hollywood.

ᥫ᭡. jackieshauna aspiring fashion designer and makeup artist jackie x aspiring actress and film writer shauna au

[trainofthoughtornot]

Self Love.

In the quiet hours, when the world turns still, Listen closely to your heart’s own will. Not the echoes of others, loud and unkind, But the gentle whispers your soul can find.

You are the sun that warms your day, The steady anchor when storms sway. A universe dwells in your very skin— A miracle crafted, a world within.

Love the scars, the laughter, the tears, The moments of courage, the silent fears. For every shadow, there is light to see, And in that balance, you are free.

So hold yourself as you would a friend, With arms that comfort, with time to mend. For self-love is not a fleeting art— It is the home of a grateful heart. - Train of Thought or Not

[suddencolds]

✍️ (non-snz character study)

[diaryofruchita]

ruchita, excerpt from when you left

[anghraine]

One of the more peculiar things about my current academic existence is that it's like—

me (to my best friend): It feels kind of strange that I've always had so many ties to people who are much more literary than me. There are all these people I know who keep ending up at "I discovered True Art and now I'm too good for Star Wars" and I'm just thinking, "damn, couldn't be me."

best friend: ...you have a PhD in literature.

me: True, but not their kind of literature!

best friend: It's still a PhD in literature. Do these people have that?

me: Well, hmm, maybe not, technically. But I've never been all that interested in major experiments with form and style—doing that stuff myself or reading the kind of literature that focuses on pushing those boundaries. I've always cared more about popular literature that prioritizes immersion and world building and just getting people to care a lot about characters and plot and such, not the really prestigious stuff.

best friend: You literally teach Shakespeare.

me: Well, I decided not to study the things I love most so they didn't get tainted by academia. And anyway, I still focused on popular literature from my eras. The seventeenth-century stuff I was writing about made a lot of the late Victorians very angry because they thought it was crude and cravenly appealing to unrefined common tastes instead of True Art. The novel in Austen's lifetime was even more of a low-prestige popular form at the time, especially the female-dominated genres, which were most of them, and she took care to identify herself as a woman.

best friend: I know you did get into academia through Tolkien and then didn't study anything close to that.

me: I couldn't let them ruin him for me! And besides, I know that Shakespeare and Austen are about as prestigious as it gets now, but for me they've still got that pop culture media energy, you know? Though sometimes when people make sweeping pronouncements about artistry and literature that don't make sense for anything in English published before 1700, I have to fight the temptation to be ... that person.

best friend, laughing: You mean pulling a well akshually? At least you have the credentials. You could even do it like "well actually, *obnoxious cough* as someone with a PhD in this subject..." now. You spent years earning this! Tell a few people Well Actually as a treat and then go watch Star Wars.

[aew-kun-age-regression]

Moodboard!!! Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven!!! (⁠ﾉ⁠◕⁠ヮ⁠◕⁠)⁠ﾉ⁠*⁠.⁠✧

I gonna do a Tell Tale Heart version cause it's my favourite of Poe's!!! (This 1 is my 2nd favourite)

My mum read it to me!!!

[ogwriter22]

I wish...

I wish I was my mother's son

Provide her without a fear

Give a warm shoulder for her tears

Make her proud and wear

Her proudest smile

[mercylikestowrite]

There’s so many things that make you different from everybody else. You know me, you genuinely know me and took the time to learn all of my stories, all of my secrets, my annoying habits. You know me, and see me, and, really love me. I thought i knew love by name before you but i didn’t even know what she looked like. You are love. There’s a reason why before you nothing ever seemed to work, never satisfied. Always something missing.. my darling that something was you. My heart has always been yours, i fully believe that the moment i was thought up, you were mixed up with me. created with the same materials, made to love one another. everything i have done has lead me to love you and i believe that even if i wasn’t where i am today even off in another state, i would find you. somehow somewhere we would cross paths and my heart would know. i am undeniably all yours, and so deeply in love with you.

love always,

merc

[maihonhassan]

“Had mai rehna” is such a beautiful thing, like forget about things you can’t afford, forget about people you can’t keep, why is this so hard for so many of you? the most beautiful intimacy is to stay relevant to people and things that matches you and your existence, why to beg?

[clit-a-cola]

Over the Garden Wall is one of those shows where it's like "yeah the main demographic is kids but no you the adult with a job who pays taxes reading this should still check it out"

It's short, wonderful music, simple but good story, gorgeous art.

[hotgirlyshit]