#the story of a girl and her monster

[emachinescat]

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."

*

"Say not in grief, 'He is no more,' but live in thankfulness that he was."

*

"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."

*

"It is a quiet marvel to watch another person grow up before your eyes."

*

"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."

*

"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."

*

"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.

[freaky-flawless]

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.

[yippieitsarvensart]

Lilia x monster hunter

more based off of mhs if you couldn't tell

[godofstupidsentences]

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Suzanne Collins / Antigone, Sofocles

How do you mourn a brother you wanted dead?

[thousandyearphantombunker]

"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?

[zellk]

Forgot to share here.... old doodles of when I finally came around to finding a design I like for Qalaari's mom !!

[madame-mongoose]

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!!!

[iguessitsjustme]

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.

[infinityinakiss]

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*

[beaulesbian]

It's time to rewrite this story.

[yellowocaballero]

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......

[theajaheira]

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.

[camelspit]

hey guys have u heard of this shit called solinh its really good

(bonus below the cut)

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[brokehorrorfan]

The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster will be released on Blu-ray and DVD on August 8 via RLJE Films. The 2023 retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is on VOD today.

Writer-director Bomani J. Story makes his feature debut. Laya DeLeon Hayes, Denzel Whitaker, Chad L. Coleman, Reilly Brooke Stith, Keith Sean Holliday, Amani Summer, and Edem Atsu-Swanzy star. Crypt TV produces.

No special features are included. Watch the trailer below.

Vicaria is a brilliant teenager who believes death is a disease that can be cured. After the brutal and sudden murder of her brother, she embarks on a dangerous journey to bring him back to life

Pre-order The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster.

[forcedhesitation]

why should it just be steve who has all the torturous purgatory realm fun?

[feminurge]

the thing about ishtar is that she is overpowered in every universe.

she stems from a warhammer character i've had for eleven years who has been getting experience points ever since her creation.

like. among the things she has done:

my girl has met & defeated divine plans that were created centuries ago

she was the pupil of one of the most powerful elve mages the old world has ever known

she has been in other gods' realms and stolen from them without their knowing

she has been chosen by an elven goddess (even though she's human), she has also been recognized by the whole human pantheon as the saviour

she is the first human to birth and ride a dragon by herself

she is the first human to be able to use pure magic, and is deemed the most powerful mage of the old world

she is also the one who influenced the current king and queen to accept the use of magic and to create a school for magic-users, ending centuries of witch burning

she has made deals with every race, successfully rallying humans, elves and dwarves to her cause, something that was deemed impossible

she literally crowned multiple chosen ones (for other gods). like. went, found the artefact and made them wear it. weird that it happened more than once

she has more than twelve destiny points (the normal amount is two, three if you're really lucky)