#the story of a girl and her monster
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A Year in (Book) Review: My 2024 Reading Journey 📚
#25 - Sweep: The Story of a Girl and Her Monster by Jonathan Auxier
Historical Fantasy / 378 pages / published 2018 / Finished Feb. 21
One Sentence Review: This is truly one of the most beautiful books I've ever read - funny, heart-wrenching, charming, and gorgeous, Sweep blends history and fantasy into a seamless tale of love, family, and growth and change, with a perfect bittersweet ending.
Favorite Quotes
"We save ourselves by saving others."
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"Say not in grief, 'He is no more,' but live in thankfulness that he was."
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"You can't have courage without fear, any more than you can have a ray of light without shadows... Some things are frightening, and only a fool wouldn't be afraid of them... Courage is feeling fear and facing it head-on."
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"It is a quiet marvel to watch another person grow up before your eyes."
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"The Sweep had never understood how a person could sleep through the sunrise. 'It's like Heaven itself is offering you a gift you're too lazy to open."
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"I've always admired a person who can admit to not knowing something. Most people smile and nod and pretend they know everything for fear of being caught out. But those people only ensure their ignorance."
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"But if you're always looking back, you might not see what's in front of you."
My rating: 5/5
A Few More Thoughts (Spoilers):
It was a masterpiece! This book is a perfect blend of charm, humor, beauty, sadness, history, and purpose. There were times when I couldn't stop smiling, and moments that shattered my heart. Nan was a lovely protagonist, and Charlie an absolute delight. The ending was bittersweet and beautiful.
I knew next to nothing going into this book, so imagine my surprise when my favorite poet was integral to the story and the theme! I was surprised and overjoyed to see how the book was in two parts, Innocence and Experience. It was truly so beautiful to see William Blake used in this context.
This book showed me so many beautiful things! How the people we love and lose are never truly gone, and how life can be so beautiful even in the midst of hardship, how real change can happen when people take a stand against injustice, how precious and beautiful life can be, how important it is to not judge by appearances, and how often those "monsters" who seem strange or scary are not the true monsters.
#book review#booklr#jonathan auxier#sweep#the story of a girl and her monster#historical fantasy#book rec#spoilers#books#a year in book review#book reviews#polls#quotes#william blake#chimney sweeps#golem#jewish mythology#february reads
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october means vampire posting. hello mrs marian
#teethdraws#i been working on her story a lot shes So Sad.#marian ahles (oc)#hotel california (story)#polar city (oc tag)#monster girl#vampire#vampire girl#oc#oc art#original character#original art
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Headless Headmistress Bloodgood redesign!
I've been wanting to redesign her for a while, in a way that would marry the aspects from each of her designs that I like. I'm pretty happy with how she turned out!
At some point I would like to design some more Monster High teachers and staff, because no matter what gen, that school is struggling.
#monster high#monster high fanart#headless headmistress bloodgood#nora bloodgood#monster high redesign#i feel like i should have drawn her with her head off but i quite frankly couldn't be bothered#no way in hell im drawing that damn horse either#anyway you guys know that fairytale about the girl who has to wear a ribbon around her neck otherwise her head falls off and she dies?#i think that's bloodgoods mother#ive seen that story called so many things im not sure what the official name is#the velevet ribbon? the green ribbon? the red ribbon? idk#my first exposure to that story was through the wolf among us <--great game#i wanna design a vice principal but figuring out a good monster type is hard so if yall have any suggestions im open to them#also...ive looked at this drawing on three different screens and the colors look different on each one#im on my macbook right now and i think it looks the best#id in alt#my art#sabz art
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Lilia x monster hunter
more based off of mhs if you couldn't tell
#she/her lilia#mh!lilia au#her armour design is kinda wack but it's okay I fw it#lilia vanrouge#twst#digital art#art#twisted wonderland#twst art#twst wonderland#twisted wonderland monster hunter au#monster hunter#monster hunter stories#nargacuga#lilia getting that ultra special bond with a monster without a kinship stone You GO girl!!
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The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins / Antigone, Sofocles
How do you mourn a brother you wanted dead?
#does this makes sense?#I hope it does#i was rereading the Antigone and for some reasons this quote made me think of Tigris#of her feelings after snow died#the Snow she despised and wanted dead#the same Snow that was Coryo once#does she mourn that boy or has she been doing that since she first saw his father in Snow’s eyes?#does she finally feel relieved because the monster is dead?#i just love her so much#her story breaks my heart#my girl Tigris you deserved so much better#tigris snow#coriolanus snow#hunger games#the ballad of songbirds and snakes
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"We want more morally grey/flawed female characters"
You bitches can't handle APPLE WHITE!
like people keep saying "you couldn't even handle rose quartz" but this is even more pathetic to me. How can y'all make this kid into a monster?
#ever after high#apple white#rose quarts steven universe#rose quartz#rose quarts su#steven universe#morally grey characters#Other female characters I think get too much hate are Kikikyo from Inuyasha and Mai from atla#Y'all can't handle characters that are flawed#You guys clamor for more diverse female characters yet freak out when your given these well written flawed girls that are diverse#Y'all don't want flawed- you want generically relatable- you don't want morally grey- you want morally dark white#Justice for my girl#royal or rebel#Stop villainizing apple white- shes selfish not a monster#And she's complex#I'll defend her forever#Ever after high really pointed at how both sides where selfish and that both made fair points#But y'all couldn't see that the royals had a point#And even when they were just straight up selfish it was understandable#Y'all really want to reduce the most compelling part of ever after high's story to nothing#morally gray#nuance#'oh but she's classist-'#She's also afraid of her and her friends fading out of existence and thinks raven is kind of selfish for even risking it#Not saying she was right but she has a point
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Forgot to share here.... old doodles of when I finally came around to finding a design I like for Qalaari's mom !!
#it's so fucking funny to me that i inadvertently gave her a variant of the “mom about to die” haircut because... well...#surprise... she did die when Qalaa was young (12) :'^)#Qalaa (now between 20 and 22) still hasn't gotten over it#her mom had really weak health and really shouldn't have had a child but she made her choice#it turned out to be not the best one for her health LMAO#who wouldve thunk#but hey she wanted it and i'm pretty sure she doesn't regret it#but well... Qalaa does feel like she was a participant in her mom's death#(the other participant being her biological father who ran away before she was born and shattered aamira's heart)#ANYWAYS#i love qalaa's messed up familly#it's like a regular messed up story where actually no one (and everyone) is to blame (except Qalaa lmao she asked for NOTHING)#Aaamira gave so so much love to her child ;;;;;; this built the unbreakable core of Qalaa's kindness#aamira#aamira croquelune#aamira molandine#croquelune#still thinking about making that potentiel small DnD 'lore addon' of Qalaa's village that you can take and plug in your very own campaign#as long as you have 'far from civilization' woods or mountains you can put them in there#a village that welcomes the 'monsters' and the cast out#(like aamira)#look at me rambling in the tags lmao i just love qalaari (& her background) so much#last thing tho : you have to understand that Aamira is small and very slight and Qalaari was a HUGE baby and is a really big girl overall
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That welcome home thing reminded me of my own character I made a few years ago named Hayley
She's a little 7yo scarecrow kid who would feature in books for little kids!! While a lot of her stories have that Halloween/fall vibes it's not a horror and very based on vibes similar to The Great Pumpkin, Casper, Scary Godmother, Ruby Gloom, and other cutesy Halloween media for kids!!!
#she was originally originally a dnd character#and them repurposed to monster high oc#but i like her current self the most#shes very shy and soft spoken but also kind and curious#a lot of stories would center around her learning things that have a fall/halloween theme#her best friend is the crow#i still dont know a name for him yet but i want it to be something cute a little girl would name her pet#like princess or sprinkles#oc stuff#my art
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I love Monster Next Door but they are not going to make me feel sorry for Jane. I mean it's obvious that those girls aren't actually her friends but they also aren't wrong. But she hasn't done any self reflection and she has been nothing but cruel to Diew. I'm glad he stood up for himself and he unintentionally really hit her where it hurt.
#monster next door#i don't think jane is necessarily above redemption#it's just gonna take a lot more work than i think the show is willing to put in for her#so i doubt i'll be happy with any redemption she might get#like we were supposed to feel sorry for her in that bathroom and i just didn't#the issue is that those girls backtracked#and listen. if you're gonna talk behind someone's back like that#you gotta own it when confronted and face to face with that person#you gotta be like yeah i said what i said and am i wrong? otherwise you just continue to enable the behavior#that you yourself find aggravating#if jane being attention seeking bothers you then you either got to tell her that and ask her to change#or acknowledge the friendship isn't for you and step back#but just encouraging the behavior you hate to turn around and bitch about it is not a good look either#honestly i understand jane's purpose in this story i just wish there was less of her
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michael: we can't use the elevator, it's guarded. there's no way we can make it past that many men.
beatrice : hold my cloak.
*ave maria plays while she plows through 20 guards by herself*
#the world should be more terrified of badass lesbians#you fuck with my girl i kill you#better not test me#i will destroy you where you stand#love it when love makes people ignore their morals#i may be a monster but i am one that she may love#god this ship keeps getting better and better#avatrice#warrior nun#ava silva#ava x beatrice#sister beatrice#warrior nun season 2#warrior nun netflix#renew warrior nun#moral of the story: don't stand between a lesbian and the love of her life
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It's time to rewrite this story.
#nimona#nimonaedit#nimona movie#ballister boldheart#ballister blackheart#ambrosius goldenloin#nimona netflix#mine#gif:nimona#netflixedit#nimona spoilers#you know how that little girl is there multiple times shes so important#bc thats the thing nimona really cant stand to see - someone so young turned against her already#bc that view on others can be changed and manipulated just like it happened with gloreth#and even after 1000 years nimona wanted to just burn and destroy things in the beginning with her plan#but she was hurt and betrayed again and sadly turned it all inwards at herself.. until ballister reached her#and then actually rewrote her story! the narrative that told everyone shes a monster she took it and changed it and ppl saw her as nimona!#the parallels are just insane in this movie i still have some thoughts#sorry rlly kinda like that i can post more than 10gifs now that i have to have the new editor#long post
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Finally glad the mouthwashing fandom-at least on here- is finally coming around to see the idea that neither curly or jimmy are completely innocent nor should be babied or completely villainized because to do that you'd need to *checks notes*
Completely ignore how mouthwashing is a story of how systems of abuse are kept in power. Particularly rape culture and the patriarchy that encourages these actions while also encouraging bystander effect from other men close to predators...which is all encouraged under a system like capitalism.
Idk read more of tha rant in tags I got carried away I fear.
#its all interchanging systems babe#if i see another post babying curly#or removing any amount of humanity from jimmy#im going to assume you simply dont want to interact with the meat of the game#you just looked at overall plot points and story beats with a glance and refused to give this wonderful game its flowers#stop turning these complex character into one dimensional things you can comodify like prepackaged food#this also heavily includes anya and the weird way you guys also baby her#shes a grown woman...a tramatized one yeah? but a grown woman who should be treated decently#not just spme one note preformative doll you wave around in order to comfort and baby curly or to shit on jimmy in the most ooc way possible#same with swansea#my goodness#mouthwashing#seriously ik fandom always does this but mouthwashing tumblr somehow impressed me?#with how much they could miss themes and intricacies for their preformative turn to the camera so they can say#“grrr this character bad and is monster lets throw a bunch of cluster b disorders at them and remove any character to prove a point ”#“wow this character is completely absolved from his actions and is too innocent to be deeply analyzed...#lets give him a playtoy supporting female character to dote on him and loft him up despite her own trauma!“#rant#im sorry its just soo annoying#usually im a “do everything you want forever” type girl#but its seeing the fandoms hypocrisy in jow they treat charscters like jimmy and curly and swansea that makes me realize#media literacy is soooo down hill.#quick give me a 500 word essay on why you think *shittiest take ever* is acceptable!
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hi! i've been reading some of your older fics and was wondering if there's any merit in watching buffy for the first time in the year 2024
This may not be obvious, but this is actually an extremely complicated and highly subjective question. I'll try to go on for too long.
As background: my mother loved Buffy and its spin-off Angel growing up. It was our Bible (besides the actual Bible). Not kidding, she was on the forums and fan groups and wrote fanfiction for it and everything (These days, she's really into kdramas and Asian dramas, and calls me about how the Thai seem like big fans of gay people). So I'm quite biased.
BTVS is both a product of its times and ahead of its times. It was a show about feminism and the struggle of living in this world as a woman, when very few shows were doing that. It was the first show to have a long-lasting lesbian couple, and the first show to depict a kiss between them. For better or for worse, it was one of the codifiers of broody vampire boyfriend. It was pretty unafraid to be experimental in a lot of what it did. It had incredibly complex and nuanced character work and growth that I still aspire to. Spike's arc is still matched in quality only by Avatar's Zuko. Angel's long term arc, from Buffy to his spin-off series, still makes him one of the most complex characters on TV. It had the most complex depiction of depression on TV at the time and I still think it's one of the best. I think the show had very high highs.
It also had very low lows. Some of the feminism is problematic in retrospect. The sapphic couple has a rather famous element that was severely problematic. There are, overall, some deeply atrocious arcs that I can appreciate objectively but not in practice. Xander: a whole-ass character aged awfully. On a meta level, the workplace conditions were bad (thanks, Whedon.) There are no people of color. The spoiler's sake I won't go into detail on this, but in general the good stuff was so influential and the bad stuff was just awful.
I think these days people tend to brush off the entire thing because it's Whedon. That is more than fair. But I'd also say that Whedon & Buffy is extremely similar to Brian Michael Bendis & Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis was fantastic at writing sassy, bouncy, permanently stressed-out teens - issue was, he wrote entirely different serious adult characters the way he wrote these sassy teens. Same with Whedon: the annoyingly constant quips are perfect for Buffy, because that's who the characters are. They're awful in Marvel, because Steve Rogers is not Xander. Kinda similarly, Buffy was genuinely feminist for 90s TV - issue is, Whedon has not grown or developed his views, and now his works feel so sexist (oh my fucking god why did you treat Natasha like that). After a certain point it's egotistical: you're writing like that because you're Joss Whedon and it's how you write, not because it's what's best for the characters and story. But it was really important to me to get the character voices right, and it's freaking difficult to endlessly write dialogue that distinct, full of voice, witty, and clever.
I think BTVS & Angel TV's greatest influence on my writing is how intensely character-driven both of those shows were, and how intricate the characters were. What every character did was something they would do, if that made sense. Even the stuff I hated to watch, that made me uncomfortable, was the culmination of so much (usually). I think I also picked up the constant wit and humor lol. On a personal level, the conversations I would have with my mother where she broke down the character motivations and composition of the story was my first exposure to looking at storytelling from an analytical perspective and a framework of critical analysis, which was an approach I carried into the rest of the media I consumed and that was the primary reason I was able to become a decent writer. Thanks, Mom. Have fun with your kdramas.
TL:DR: There is merit, especially if you care about good character work. There are things about it that may make you want to drop it, which is extremely valid. Season 1 is rough but interesting, Season 2 and 5 are the best, Season 3 is pretty good, Season 4 and 7 skippable, and Season 6 is........epic highs, epic lows......
#my asks#the basic premise of Buffy is “what if the monsters and demons that plagued the psyche of a teen girl were real”#which is a very simple thing but the focus on character ended up creating such a complex story#and it highly influenced how i try to have the physical conflict mirror the emotional conflict#externalization of emotional conflict is great#i dont talk about it much but i was genuinely very proud of that story#it mattered a lot to me that I hit the character voices EXACTLY#and that i was earnest and honest in exploring the themes of buffy and what made it important#i think you can tell that it was written by somebody who loves buffy at the bottom of her heart#it very much is a “how meg would write buffy” thing#I wrote Angel as an awkward younger version of his self from ATVS S5#when we as the audience has lost all respect for him lmfao#but what really stuck with me is a major theme and line from angel:#“if nothing we do matters then all that matters is what we do”#and colliding angel's nihlism with buffy's desperation to live a meaningful life was excellent#i did what i wanted to do very precisely and that is the joy of hitting a level of writing skill where you can do that#btvs#buffy the vampire slayer
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2024 reads / storygraph
The Sapling Cage
YA fantasy, start of a trilogy
a trans girl and her friend swap places so she can join the coven of witches who wander the land instead of becoming a knight
as they travel and she starts to learn from them, while hoping she’s not found out , they uncover a corrupt magical blight that threatens to become a civil war
bi demi MC
#The Sapling Cage#aroaessidhe 2024 reads#I enjoyed this! it’s a pretty classic fantasy setting out into the world#+ group of teens save the kingdom from power hungry adults from both factions kind of story.#There’s some very cool creatures and monsters and I hope we see a lot more of that as the series continues!#I like how it takes quite a classic fantasy setting/narrative but puts some weird and interesting details in there#I liked her journey of questioning whether she actually wants to change her body#or whether that’s just out of fear/pressure and she’s a girl either way.#I thought the prose was okay. sometimes it felt like things were glossed over and a lot of the character and relationship#(all kinds) development is a bit telling not showing - I didn’t get a really solid sense of the friendships or developing crush she has.#the bullying subplots especially felt a little underdeveloped? they’re just suddenly cool with each other.#also the adult saying she didn’t step in because that would escalate things is an odd choice#…..checking now this is not actually marketed as YA. I think if I read this thinking it was an adult book I would be a bit harsher.#I read it with a YA mindset and imo the teen characters; coming of age themes; the straightforward worldbuilding/narrative#and writing all feel very YA (not a bad thing!)#Overall though I liked a lot! I’ll continue the series#it’s sapphic (possible developing relationship though who knows where that will go) and also there’s an aroace side character#sapphic books#trans books#demisexual books#aroace books
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This is kind of a random thought but I think it’s interesting how skm is far more popular through its young adventurers edition than the adult format of the play. Like every post I see on this platform has both Tilly and Agnes as high schoolers. Even though Agnes is still the older sister they are closer in age. It’s interesting because with this small of an age gap it’s a different kind of sadness in Tilly’s death. A certain devastation in that they were so close yet so far from one another, like there is the real possibility that they could have been friends.
The version of the play I watched was a college production. With this Tilly was more the Kid Sister than a Younger Sister like in the young adventurers version. Agnes was a teacher at the school as opposed to being a cheerleader. I think this leads to a different perspective on grief in the story.
I feel the young adventurers version mourns a past, where you’re grasping at a relationship of what could have been. “Why didn’t you tell me” it’s about the wishing for a part of the relationship that was possible if only life was different.
The Adult version of the play mourns the future. It is not just who they are now but your hopes of the future with them. That what if.
#She kills monsters#idk i’m just thinking#the whole kid sister dynamic kinda hits me extra hard but I do really enjoy both versions of the story yknow#This is less of an analysis and more rambly thoughts but I think often on how the difference in age gaps alters the story#Not by much but it just Feels different yknow#Also with the production I saw agneses whole family dies not just Tilly#Like car accident makes my girl an orphan and the story centers around her grieving the sister
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so have had a couple conversations with people about dawn that have made me think that maybe my take on dawn is worth bringing to the table! it's best framed by my convo with my mom, who was expressing general dawn frustration -- not just with dawn's characterization, but more specifically with the retcon in. and dawn's characterization, as we all know, is very "baby teenage girl" + "was originally written as younger than fourteen," so that's a straightforward explanation, but the retcon to me has always felt emblematic of dawn's status in the narrative as buffy's childhood innocence.
dawn is buffy. she's a part of buffy. the show emphasizes this in season five: that to buffy, dawn feels like more than just a sister and therefore more vital to protect. i've seen this framed as dawn being sort of like buffy's spiritual daughter, but i think that's a little off base: dawn is buffy's innocence, her girlhood, personified. she shows up in season five because if we're charting buffy's emotional journey, season five is the season where buffy feels like she is calcifying and becoming unfeeling because of everything that she's been through -- so of course this is the season where dawn springs into being but simultaneously Has Always Been There! buffy has reached a point of emotional distress so severe that the little girl in her has sprung away and out of reach, becoming a literal other person who is somehow always getting into trouble and causing problems. dawn is this little girl. dawn is a part of buffy.
and this contextualizes EVERYTHING that buffy goes through this season re: dawn. everyone in the entire world is bearing down on her girlhood, and it is her responsibility as the slayer to kill it. like from a pragmatic standpoint, killing dawn would (as giles points out) solve the big-picture problem, because killing dawn means that glory no longer has access to this Exploitable Thing that will allow her to end the world. killing dawn is also what the knights of byzantium are trying to do, and they're presented as just as much of an obstacle as glory, despite having the fate of the world in mind as well. she is posed with this essential choice, and it is so horrifying to her that the penultimate episode shows her literally retreating into her mind, playing over and over all of these moments where she was told it's her responsibility to protect this vital part of her, and the one moment she entertained the notion of just Giving Up. just Letting That Part Die.
which in turn makes her choice at the VERY end of the season so heartbreaking -- she is posed with this question and she chooses, instead, to die. she does not want to let go of her innocence. she does not want to live in a world where she has been forced to kill that part of herself, and so she tries to kill herself instead.
#meta#btvs#buffy summers#dawn summers#summers sisters#if you remove the monster this is such a human person story!#it's about a girl who is scared of being different. and how much of a toll it takes.#ALSO HELLO the IMPLICATIONS of giles saying Kill Your Girlhood. Kill It#he loves her so much but he needs her to not be a girl.
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