#sister novelists

[aliteraryprincess]

March 2024 Wrap Up

March was a pretty great month. I presented at a conference in Boston, which went well and was a fun romantic weekend for me and my husband. Not sure how I feel about the year going by this quickly though...

Books Read: 8

And the biggest reason March was great is all these 5 star reads!!! Sister Novelists was my favorite of the month and my new top book of the year. And I was pleasantly surprised by my reread of Middlemarch. I actually really liked it and can no longer call it my Nemesis. And there was no least favorite!

Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher - 5 stars

Middlemarch by George Eliot - 4 stars ®

We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry - 5 stars

Sister Novelists: The Trailblazing Porter Sisters, Who Paved the Way for Austen and the Brontës by Devoney Looser - 5 stars

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher - 4 stars

Here, The World Entire by Anwen Hayward - 3.5 stars

The Perpetual Curate by Margaret Oliphant - 4 stars

Mislaid In Parts Half-Known by Seanan McGuire - 5 stars

On Tumblr:

Look at all these photos! Let's see if I can keep it up for the rest of the year...

February 2024 Wrap Up

Book Photography: Before Midnight by Cameron Dokey

Book Photography: Golden by Cameron Dokey

Book Photography: Slipper by Hester Velmans

Book Photography: Beauty Sleep by Cameron Dokey

Victorian Novels Connections

On YouTube:

And there's plenty of fun stuff here, of course!

February Wrap Up | 6 books for #FebRegency, #WeLoveJenny, & more!

I'm So Annoyed BookTube Tag

Currently Reading 3/15/24

What I Read for My PhD in English Literature | Victorian Women Novelists Independent Study

Mammoths Read & To Read | the longest books I own!

April TBR/Pile of Possibilities | Picture This & TBR Clear Out Readathon!

[hussyknee]

Her final tweet on October 8 reads:

“Gaza’s night is dark apart from the glow of rockets, quiet apart from the sound of the bombs, terrifying apart from the comfort of prayer, black apart from the light of the martyrs. Good night, Gaza.”

[xxrrisxx]

Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive.

Charlotte Bronte

[thee-rat-king]

Brain: Derry Girls exists

Me: oh yeah

Brain: you like Derry Girls

Me: I don’t have time for a rewatch, I’ve got work to do

Brain: you want to write a book

Me: what?

Brain: you want to write a book about catholic lesbians

Me: I have so much homework for uni -

Brain: it’s pride month

Me: my homework literally involves queer original fiction

Brain: not good enough. It has a sad ending

Me: I’M NOT WRITING DERRY GIRLS FANFIC AND THEN FILING OFF THE SERIAL NUMBERS

Brain: but you want to. You want to soo baaaad.

[deross-cultist]

Laughing at my own jokes is my hobby.

Fun fact: Monokuma in DR collab was the reason why Bonbon was created from the first place, yet it become an irreplaceable character to the main lore + Alice's backstory.

So if Kaede Alice has a Monokuma cub accessory (turning little Orpheus into kuma gremlins), it kind of goes full circle, don't you think so?

[pengwenstudios]

Me: So, my friend-

Brother: false you have no friends!

Me: you're right.... I have servants and slaves.

[lorenfinch]

Coming up with more background for one of Ren's family members and realizing if his unmarried maternal uncle hadn't given up his title and holdings in favor of moving in with his sister and her new husband so he could have a bigger science lab, Ren would've eventually been heir to his own castle

[lilacnothlit]

I read an awful lot of xenofiction, of various degrees of obscurity, most of which don't have a lot of fanfic to their name. Thoughts:

- The Plague Dogs. Book's about two dogs who escape from a medical testing lab in Lake Country and join up with a Geordie fox to become wild animals and kill sheep to live. And the whole time, they're still arguing about belief in God and the goodness of Man and how much they wish their Masters were there. And the government is trying to kill them to cover their tracks, so it tells everyone they have the plague. Jara and Ket would have a field day with the world it paints. Some OC gets trapped in dog morph and has to communicate these realities while the yeerks pursue any reports of talking dogs. I don't know, man, it's so depressing, it's perfect!

- Guardians of Ga'Hoole. Canonically, the owl knights in a war with nazi owls led by a demon witch queen exist in a world after the extinction of humans - the "others" who built stone temples, made oil paintings, had no feathers, and whom the nazi owls force the owlets to sleep in crypts of human bones. There are fifty methods of brainwashing and molding the mind to your will. Ax would be astonished by their libraries. Four giant mythological beings end up in your world, accompanied by a great diurnal predator and an alien vegetarian who doesn't believe in magic? Actual warriors versus knights whose strategies are often affected by "I saw the future in a dream?" Digger and Cassie going for midnight flights and debating the meaning of existence. Twilight teaching Rachel how to rap. Tobias going native in a world designed for birds and getting a whole suit of armor, but always feeling out of place for his size and his diurnality. Sure, they've managed to basically farm rodents on a scale where one island can sustain an entire fortress of predators, and invent a whole cuisine! They're geniuses! And yet, he's constantly awake when his new friends are asleep and vice versa and he's just as lonely as ever. Meanwhile, the humans are starving for want of food that's big without being sentient and have a time clock towards getting home... Doesn't this just write itself?

- Animalish series I can't believe I haven't seen crossover fanfic with, given their size: Redwall, Narnia, Lonely Werewolf Girl, Shiver. Imagine Ax feeling depressed Reepicheep is a more honorable Andalite than him. Imagine Cassie debating the ethics of curing werewolves with meningitis. Imagine how Tobias feels in a world where all the good guys are delicious, tiny mice - and how Ax reacts to Redwall cuisine in mouse morph.

- Finally... a crossover I talked about writing, but never did, because I wasn't afraid of the Fandom, I was afraid of the antifandom. All the people who know the story only on a surface level:

Cassie debates the ethics of killing her new friend's stepdad: security liability Humbert Humbert.

Anyone who's ever read Lolita knows that its best feature is the comedy from being narrated by an internet libertarian: "I am on trial for murder. I am explaining how I am the good guy for killing the other guy. To do this, I must heretofore thusly tell the story of how I married someone to lust after her daughter and then took an orphaned twelve-year-old around the country on a sexual road trip - now now! I believe you're starting to think mayhap that I may be the bad guy, this sounds 'gross!' But have you considered this: I am very intelligent! Here, have some facts and logic, you're being hysterical."

On a cursory reading of the plot, it sounds like it's justifying him. But that's because it's being told by a comically unreliable narrator who quotes French poetry, parodies Catullus, stretches the truth whenever he gets bored - and the universe is constantly conspiring to make him blameless in comically convenient ways, he assures you! The car crash just happened! It saved me the trouble of murdering my wife, as you saw me plan out ways to do, because I'm the good guy currently on trial for murder, but I'm still totally blameless! You can't trust a word of this guy.

Imagine a megamorphs where he's the villain narrator. It'd be the funniest book in the series. Inverse Visser One where it's the yeerk yelling at the host how much he sucks? Maybe. Cassie morphed as Illim? Imagine her trying to process those memories as he experienced them and still trying to retain her faith in the goodness of Man at heart.

I didn't write it, but the idea is free.

Is there any Animorphs crossover you really think someone should write?

I'd vote for Animorphs and Star Wars. I'm not nearly expert enough on the lore (and far too afraid of the fandom) to tackle that one myself, but I think it could be super cool if someone was willing to take it on.

[haggishlyhagging]

[Note: Dworkin’s analysis of Wuthering Heights is astonishing. Below is her first paragraph. I suggest reading the novel as well as Dworkin’s analysis in its entirety.]

"Stronger than a man, simpler than a child, her nature stood alone," wrote Charlotte Brontë of her deceased sister, Emily. Wuthering Heights, her one novel, published under a male pseudonym before her death at thirty, also stands alone. There is nothing like it—no novel of such astonishing originality and power and passion written by anyone, let alone by a nineteenth-century woman who was essentially a recluse. Nothing can explain it: a worldly, obsessed novel of cruelty and love that surpasses, for instance, the best of D. H. Lawrence in both sensuality and range; an act of passion as well as a work of intellectually rigorous art; a romantic, emotionally haunting, physically graphic rendering of sadism as well as an analytical dissection of it; a lyric and at the same time tragic celebration of both love and violence. "It is moorish, and wild, and knotty as a root of heath," wrote Charlotte, who admitted to being somewhat repelled by the book. "Nor was it natural that it should be otherwise; the author being herself a native and nursling of the moors." So was Charlotte, but she wrote Jane Eyre, a novel of civilized pain and outspoken dignity. Both women had a deep understanding of male dominance, which does suggest that, for women, the family is Blake's famous grain of sand. Emily did take the family as a paradigm for society, especially for the creation of sadism in men. She showed how sadism is created in men through physical and psychological abuse and humiliation by other men; and she wrote about femininity as a betrayal of honor and human wholeness. She was indifferent to sex-roles per se, the surface behaviors of men and women. Instead, she exposed the underbelly of dominance: where power and powerlessness intersect; how social hierarchies emphasize difference, fetishizing it, and repudiate sameness; how men learn hate as an ethic; how women learn to vanquish personal integrity. She anticipated contemporary sexual politics by more than a century; and, frankly, I don't think there is a contemporary novelist, man or woman, who has dared to know and say so much. There is nothing to explain her prescience or her prophecy or, for that matter, her radical political acumen; except to say that Emily Brontë seemed to share with her monster creation, Heathcliff, a will that would neither bend nor break. He used his will to create pain for those he hated. She used hers, no less ruthlessly one suspects, to live in a self-determined solitude, to write, and, finally, to die. Shortly after her brother, Branwell, dissolute and self-obsessed, suddenly died, Emily got consumption, and wasted away with what seemed a premeditated fierceness and determination. On the day of her death, she got up and dressed and groomed herself and sat on a sofa and sewed. She said a doctor could be called and soon she died. Branwell had died in September 1848; Emily died in December. "She sank rapidly," wrote Charlotte. "She made haste to leave us. Yet, while physically she perished, mentally she grew stronger than we had yet known her. . . . I have seen nothing like it; but, indeed, I have never seen her parallel in anything."

-Andrea Dworkin, Letters From a War Zone

[beyondthisdarkhouse]

Lol, my 95-year-old grandmother recently watched Downton Abbey and decided that actually it was okay to tell us family secrets she had previously decided to take to her grave.

"Oh yeah, the great-aunt who moved to California in the 1920s and married a novelist did it because she had an abusive husband back in Medicine Hat. She never divorced her first husband, but you know, in those days we didn't travel so much."

"This china teacup is a memento from my mother's mother, who we think was the illegitimate daughter of a hero of the Crimean War. Apparently her mother was the housekeeper for his sister, who was married to somebody important, and when guests came up to the house for a shooting party... anyway, apparently she kept her place, because her daughter grew up in the coach driver's cottage, and that family gave her this cup as a present, and when this fellow's mother would come visiting her daughter at the house, she also wanted to see this little girl, who would have her granddaughter."

(Sad news: while the latter story appears to be highly plausible given family and public records, it would have happened around 1818, and absolutely nobody left a nice little title or pile of money a conniving Canadian could sneak in and steal. All the family estates are residential care homes now, which is definitely a better use for them anyway.)

[leyllethecreator]

Alright now for Riley and Leia inverted:

Leia: soft spoken, sweet, cuddly, cutesy, "Girly," thin, absentminded, self-centered, cold hearted, arrogant, honest, untrustworthy

Riley: confident, friendly, talkative, patient, honest, untrustworthy

I know it seems oxymoronic for them to be dishonest and trustworthy, but that's a big part of the story

Inverted Character Tag?

YAHAHA THIS WILL BE FUN!

Thanks @leahnardo-da-veggie

Rules: Invert your character's personality and post the result. IE Law abiding becomes chaotic, sincere becomes jaded.

1. Gum : A stubborn evil teacher who no one likes, her younger brother Minu has to work hard to take care of her.

2. Minu : Smart boyo, with love and care sorrounding him. He never had a gf.

3. Nicholas : A not-so-handsome man who is good at letting go, but not so smart as to be a scientist.

4. Kirana : A respondsible young girl that never wants to run away. Cold-headed, but unable to achieve her dreams.

(I won't do Ara because her character is still a secreeeeet nyehehehehehe)

Tags!! @shockingly-green-chicken @winglesswriter @rynswritingames @ramwritblr @wylloblr @leyllethecreator @lexywrite @rivenantiqnerd @cowboybrunch (again, 'cause why not?)

[just-1-scorpio]

The opera plays the One Moment of Aria garment are based on

Ms Moissan

Her garment is based on Suor Angelica, by Giacomo Puccini, which is the tragic tale of a woman who bears a child out of wedlock and is sent to a convent to repent for her sins.

In this garment Ms Moissan is dressed up as Sister Osmina, which is a soprano role.

2. Satsuki

Her garment is based on Der Rosenkavalier, by Richard Strauss, and is a loose adaptation of Franch novelist Louvet de Couvrai's novel Les amours du chevalier de Faublas and Franch play writer Molière's comedy Monsieur de Pourceaugnac.

I this garment Satsuki is dressed up as Sophie von Faninal, which is also a soprano role.

3. Melania

Her garment is based on The Marriage of Figaro, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and writen by Lorenzo Da Ponte, which is about how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.

Melania is dressed up as Susanna. Which is a soprano role agein.

4. 37

And last but not least 37. Her garment is based on The Magic Flute, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, which is about the adventures of Prince Tamino and his comical companion, Papageno, on their search to rescue the Queen of the Night's daughter, Pamina.

She is dressed up as Papageno (who is a male character), which is for a bassz role.

[gophergal]

Yet another AU that @cursed--alien and I talk about sometimes. Our mildly convoluted Red Oktoberfest Childhood Friends AU. Also, this is an excuse to talk about more of my HCs

The whole premise of this au is just that Misha's father and Ludwig's parents became friends at some point and, at some point, Misha's family visited the Humboldt's in Germany. Afterward, Ludwig and Misha keep in touch as penpals and only really lose touch when Misha is sent to the gulag.

Anyway, some HCs:

Mikhail's parents are named Ivan and Anna. Ivan was a novelist and a pacifist who loathed senseless violence. Anna's family were upper middle class and she fell in love with Ivan when they began writing eachother after she read one of his stories

Misha was a very shy child when he and Ludwig first met. On top of that, Ludwig was a "scary big kid" and he had "scary eyes," though he did warm up to his new friend pretty easily. Misha became a lot less skittish once he had a baby sister to watch out for.

Ludwig's parents, the Doctors Humboldt, are both scientists, of course. His mother specialized in pharmacology and his father in zoology. They met through Mr Humboldt's father, who had taken the future Mrs Humboldt under his wing working in his pharmacy. (having no names for them has made this the most confusing thing I swear)

Neither of them are particularly warm parents. In fact, Ludwig hardly had any bond to them. He was primarily raised by Johanna, the young maid/nanny his parents hired instead.

Given they were relatively old when he was born (especially his father), Ludwig lost his parents pretty early. His father passed before he went to University and his mother a few years after he fled Germany. Neither death affected him much

Hearing that Johanna survived the war and was still well even by the time he became RED's Medic, however, was a great relief for Ludwig

This AU has two branches based on what direction Ludwig goes when he flees Germany. In Path A, he goes westward and ends up in the US. He and Misha reconnect when they're hired by RED. Path B has him attempting to escape to Russia and managing to be found in Siberia by Mikhail before he freezes to death. The man does not think ahead lmao

[ultimateplaylistmaker]

i think about tokos role in the tragedy after hopes peak is something so funny and not explored enough, like one of the big heroes, symbols of hope, just also happens to be a serial killing romance novelists with less social skills then a rabid raccoon, that's so fucking funny actually? The fucking discourse must be so funny about that, you just know people are fighting to the death over whether they can just overlook that or if she needs to be like, tried and put to death or imprisoned over her crimes?

like its so funny, thats so funny, i also like to imagine she's just, still publishing books and thats also discourse because on one hand serial killer, on the other who the fuck else is publishing quality novels in the apocalypse? I can just imagine some twitter user gets cancelled because someone saw one of toko's new books on the shelf behind their selfie, someone calls them an ultimate despair over it, the fact that toko is obviously and objectively on the side of hope is somehow lost in this fact.

PR nightmare survivor, I feel like some members of future foundation just had their fingers crossed she wouldn't be a survivor so they wouldn't have to fucking deal with that fucking nonsense. They made her a fucking intern so they can just pretend she doesn't exist, but shes so fucking bad at interacting with people along with the fact she can track togami like a bloodhound. So the fact they don't just have Togami give her a job as an official member is objectively making everything worse and more complicated.

So many issues would have been solved if they had just made her a propaganda writer or something and have Togami vaguely praise her for it, it's so funny, karmic punishment for future foundation, getting the one ultimate student they begged on their hands and knees to not get. Then when they think it can't get worse she starts openly dating the ULTIMATE HOPE'S SISTER, godbless, i love her, what the fuck, her presence alone is driving the pr team to drink.

[aziraphales-library]

Hi!

Thanks for your hard work keeping your system organized! Really helps during my 3AM reading sessions lol.

I was wondering if there are any “and there was only one bed” fanfics for Aziracrow? Thanks!

We have #there was only one bed and #sharing a bed tags, so take a look at those! Here are some more to add...

Away by HopeCoppice (G)

They can command reservations at the Ritz at a moment's notice. They can perform miracles, or the demonic equivalent, for- well, for Somebody's sake. There is absolutely no way that they should ever be able to find themselves in a situation where there is only one bed. And yet.

Welcome to the Petty Party by Mimsynims (E)

Oh fuck. It was him. Crowley tried to make himself smaller where he was sitting in the back of the Greyhound bus. It had been almost a year - and another continent - since he last saw him, but there was no mistaking that blonde fluff of hair or those strong shoulders on the man entering the bus. It was Aziraphale. Fortunately there were very few other passengers, and Aziraphale chose a seat in the middle of the bus, sitting down without spotting Crowley further in the back.  Seeing him now catapulted him back in time, to that fateful night in Birmingham - the one and only time they’d met.   Aziraphale and Crowley find themselves stranded in a motel for the night - sharing a room. Last time they met, they spent the night together. Now they are both - wrongfully - convinced that the other never wanted more than a one night stand. (Basically, this is a "there was only one bed" PWP)

Warmth by HolyCatsAndRabbits (E)

The excitement of spending a day traveling with Crowley had turned to deep embarrassment. Rather than a flight followed by a late dinner somewhere and then a night apart, Aziraphale was cold, wet, hungry, and injured, in the wrong city, and facing a night sharing a room with his secret crush in which there was only one bed. And— Aziraphale looked down at what he was holding. Flannel pajamas, tartan ones. He was going to have to go back out there and face the ever-elegant Crowley in his night clothes.

No Such Thing As An Omen by FeralTuxedo (E)

On a snowy New Year’s Eve, rock star Anthony Crowley arrives at Tadfield Manor Hotel to check into his room. Under a fake name, naturally. But to his dismay, it has already been claimed, and the deceptively angelic impostor with the audacity to have stolen Crowley’s alias as well as his room doesn’t appear to want to vacate it any time soon.

Romancing The Tome by Anti_kate (E)

Romance novelist Aziraphale Wilder is pulled from his carefully ordered life when his sister is kidnapped and held to ransom. With the help of antiquities forger Anthony J Crowley, he braves the wilds of Scotland to rescue her and keep a priceless book from falling into the hands of dangerous book thieves.

Waking Up Slow by the_moonmoth (E)

“Then you’ll just have to come back with me," Aziraphale said. “You what?” “You’ll have to come and isolate with me, at my cottage.” The thing about messing with people, Crowley thought, was that sometimes, they genuinely surprised you. After both being exposed to coronavirus, total strangers Crowley and Aziraphale are forced to wait out their isolation together. A tale of soft winter romance by the sea.

- Mod D

[maripozasims]

🌙 The De la Cruz's 💀

(From left to right): Amparo De la Cruz, Isabella De la Cruz, & Violet De la Cruz.

Amparo, the grieving eldest sister, still mourning the loss of her fiancé, channels her overwhelming love into raising her niece Isabella as if she were her own, clinging to the life and future she lost. Violet, the darker, more distant younger sister, battles with resentment towards Amparo for crossing boundaries, feeling as though her overbearing affection for Isabella undermines her role as a mother. Isabella, a sweet and inquisitive toddler, is the unexpected joy in Violet’s life, a result of a decision made in her early twenties that changed everything. Though Violet struggles with the tensions in her family, she finds an outlet in her work as a Grimtern, assisting the Grim Reaper in his duties. It’s there that she draws inspiration for her true passion—becoming a horror novelist.