#there are 6 more essays in my book. some of them have quite interesting titles so i hope they're better than this one

[vickyvicarious]

Wow, I hate this essay ('Suddenly Sexual Women in Bram Stoker's Dracula' by Phyllis A. Roth)!

As funny as the phrase, "the Big Daddy, Dracula" is, the reliance on a Freudian/Oedipal complex reading drives me mad every time. Factor in the insistence on reading the heroes' relationships with one another in the worst possible light, and I am fully against this one. Which is annoying, because it kept almost going in interesting directions before veering back to this kind of nonsense.

[firstdegreefangirl]

June 2023 Reading Wrap-Up!

Halfway through the year, and I'm excited to report that I'm either on track or ahead of all my reading goals for 2023! I've just got to focus more on reading books I already have, instead of buying new ones. Should be easy enough, right? ;-)

As always, stats up here, mini reviews under the cut. Click through to see what had me swearing at my empty living room at 1:30 a.m.

Total books read: 7 

Total pages read: 1,816 

Days read: 23/30 

Average star rating: 4.33/5 

Challenge Prompts Filled: 13 in June; 66 total. Popsugar: 6(23)/40.   Romanceopoly: 3 (18)/36. CRAD: 1(6)/12. BTBL: 3(19)/52 

Happy Singles Day by Ann Marie Walker 

⭐⭐⭐⭐(¼) 

This was cute! I picked it up on a whim, when I found myself with some free time at the big library branch across town, because I liked the idea of a romance novel celebrating singlehood. I liked watching the MC figure out who she is outside of her job, and her love interest was such a compelling dude. Between his daughter and his sister, and his bed and breakfast, he really made the story for me. It wasn’t quite grumpy/sunshine, because Lucas opens up as things progress, but something about his reluctance to even be invovled in the story at all really entertained me. The only thing I’d say really bugged me was the dog. Don’t get me wrong, I love dogs. Like, so much. But the cover has a picture of a little terrier shaped pup, and then the text describes the dog as a “pit bull/boxer mix,” and it drove me nuts every step of the way. A little detail, maybe, but the discrepancy really threw me off. 

Prompts filled: Popsugar – A book about a vacation 

Summer on Blackberry Beach by Belle Calhoune 

⭐⭐⭐(¾) 

What a fun little summer read! I’ll admit, I was expecting there to be some sort of Christmassy detail, given that the town is called Mistletoe, but once I got past that, this was so delightful! I grabbed it from a book thrift store while my friend was in town visiting, after the teacher/Navy SEAL fake dating plot caught both of our attentions. I liked watching the characters learn how to move past their respective losses, and that they communicated really effectively through much of the story. Too many times, the plotline falls apart if the characters would just have like one mature conversation, so I really enjoyed that they did that here and the story held up. It was refreshing to watch these characters grow together and find the futures they didn’t think they deserved. 

Prompts filled: Popsugar – About a holiday that’s not Christmas; Romanceopoly – Soldier Street/One of the MCs are in the military 

Biting Through The Skin: An Indian Kitchen In America’s Heartland by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau 

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I’ve had this on my shelf for … probably two years now? At least a year and a half; I’m pretty sure I bought it at the library fall book sale on Fill A Bag day. Food as a vessel for culture has always interested me, and the idea of a memoir pairing Indian food with Midwest culture (where I’ve lived my entire life) was particularly fascinating. Turns out the author spent most of her childhood like three hours from where I grew up/live, in the same small town where one of my friends is from! Every chapter includes stories about the Indian foods that flavor her memories, and the recipes are at the ends of the chapters. I haven’t cooked any of them yet, but maybe someday! The essays were heartfelt and compelling, like I could feel myself in the kitchen right alongside the author and her family, with the warm, hearty spices and sentimental stories.  

Popsugar – favorite prompt from past challenge (2022 – a book with a recipe in it); BTBL – Epistolary/unusual writing style (recipes) 

Darcy by RJ Scott, Meredith Russell 

⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

At some point, I got this for free on my Kindle, and it got the callup this month for being something short enough that I could read it in a couple of days, but compelling enough to hold my attention (also, for having a five-letter title!). I’m admittedly a sucker for fake dating-turned-romance, but usually the “dating” couple is the endgame, so it was interesting to read a story that turned the trope on its head. Darcy and Adrian had such an instant attraction, but more than just sexually. I loved seeing them open up to each other, and how supportive Darcy was through the whole story, of both Adrian and his sister, and especially at the ending. I’m definitely planning to pick up the rest of the series at some point.  

BTBL – less than 170 pages; CRAD – half as many letters as May; Popsugar – Forbidden Romance; Romanceopoly – Passion Place/slow burn or instant heat contemporary romance 

The Water Baby by Roz Denney Fox 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Finally, I got back around to reading this for the first time in … 15 years or so? I don’t remember exactly when I read it for the first time, but I do remember picking it up from my mom’s book stack when I was probably too young for Harlequin romance novels. I liked it then, and saved it from a garage sale pile a few years later. It’s well-loved and rough around the edges, but the best books always are. Luckily, it’s just as good now as it was years ago, and absolutely worth the shelf space for all this time. 

Prompts filled: BTBL – released at least 23 years ago; Popsugar – Set in the decade you were born 

Egghead: or, you can’t survive on ideas alone by Bo Burnham 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

I don’t have much to say about this one that I haven’t said before. I love poetry, I love Bo Burnham, and some of my favorite poems ever are in this book (look at you, The Letter!). This particular reread was just shy of an hour, sitting on the floor of my denbrary, looking for something to spark inspiration for an upcoming writing project I'm trying to plan. I’m not sure yet, but I think I figured it out, at that! 

Prompts filled: None 

The Last Flight by Julie Clark 

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 

Fuck this book. Five stars. I’m writing this right about an hour after I finished devouring the book in three days. Mostly two days – the first day I only had time to read like the first chapter. Usually, I’m not one for thrillers, but this caught my eye at the same thrift store as Blackberry Beach up above. Once I realized it’s a signed copy, and was only three dollars, I basically had to give it a try. And holy HELL, am I glad I did! I was sucked in from the first few pages, absolutely enthralled right down to the end. In fact, on page 142, I actively shouted “what the fuuuuuuck?!?” out loud to my empty apartment. It’s that sort of a book. I had a loose suspicion of how it would end, but there were a lot of things I didn’t see coming. I’d KILL to see this one as a movie, and I’m absolutely going to read the author’s other thrillers. Sometimes, there’s a benefit to stepping outside my wheelhouse, because I have a feeling this is going to be a top 10 for 2023.  

Prompts filled: Popsugar – A book about divorce; Romanceopoly – Killer Crescent/a thriller of your choice 

[fortisfiliae]

Promised Part 9 - Tom Riddle x reader

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Masterpost | Masterlist

Summary: In this story, Tom didn’t grow up as an orphan, but with his grandfather and uncle. Reader’s sister got very sick and the Gaunts offer their help. But not without asking for something in return.

Disclaimer: Please be aware that I don’t condone any of this in real life. (GIF is not mine)

Warnings: Arranged marriage

Word count: 3.3k

Part 9 - Never trust a Snake

Tom’s dorm was the nicest one you had ever seen in Hogwarts. Single bedrooms were offered to head boys and girls only, as a further reward to their title. His room was the size of a normal five-bedroom, but instead of four additional beds, it was furnished with a welcoming couch, a nice wooden desk and chair, a fireplace and provided overall much more space. It wasn’t located next to the other dorms either, which had its virtues and disadvantages. The good thing was that you didn’t have to walk through the hallway of all the Slytherin boys’ dorms to get there. The bad thing was that Tom’s room was right next to Freda’s, so you had seen her a couple more times than you had wanted to. She had never said anything though and usually stomped off right away, brows knitted and red in the face.

Tom had ordered you to his room the day after Slughorn’s party, which was a privilege not many students were granted. Maybe not that much of a privilege if one was engaged to him. But thinking of it from your perspective, his fiancée, who he hadn’t even proposed to, who he wasn’t even in love with when the engagement took place, it certainly felt special. And like he wanted you to be there. He let you study there even when he had to attend to his duties as head boy, which took up quite a bit of his time.

And then there was the Moly. A magical flower, used to counteract enchantments, that Professor Beery, the Herbology teacher, had given to pairs of students to take care of. They were weakest the last days before blooming and needed tending multiple times a day. It was a tricky task to keep them alive, so Beery had promised to give everyone who could manage it extra points for the Herbology N.E.W.T.s in advance. 

Tom had suggested keeping the Moly that had been given to the two of you in his room, as it would increase the chances of keeping it in good condition, seeing that no one else could get their fingers on it. Even though the plant looked quite healthy, he insisted on your help to look after it, as he was not willing to share points if you wouldn’t. So you had come to his room every day, only for the Moly of course.

Other times, when you were just reading or writing another Charm’s essay there, Tom used to stay nearby. He didn’t talk much, as per usual, and rather stared at you from across the room, but the fact that he never told you to leave and always asked when you would come back, for the Moly obviously, made it quite clear that he enjoyed your presence.

And you did too. So much that you had even spent the night accidentally. Accidentally, as in, you had stayed up way too long reading and making notes in your Guide To Advanced Transfiguration textbook, had really, absolutely, doubtlessly planned to go back to your own dorm, but couldn’t be bothered to get up from the sofa until you had finally fallen asleep. 

You woke up in Tom’s bed, not remembering how you had ended up there and sat up slowly, looking around, until you noticed him sitting on the edge of the mattress.

“Have I overslept?” you asked, hastily fixing your hair and rubbing the sleep out of your eyes.

“It’s Saturday,” Tom answered, grinning at your attempts of getting up. “8 a.m. You can sleep a bit longer if you want.”

“Oh, Saturday, yes. How did I… What happened last night?”

“You fell asleep on the couch. It didn’t look comfortable, you were all sprawled out and twisted. So I put you into bed.”

You swallowed thickly. He had put you into his bed? 

“Did you-”

“No,” Tom shook his head. “I took the couch.”

“Noble,” you said sarcastically, leading him to roll his eyes at you. “Why can’t I remember how I got into bed?”

“I used a Levitation Charm.”

“Oh. Weren’t you afraid I might’ve ended up on the floor?”

He chuckled, shaking his head as if doubting his skills wasn’t a thing Tom Riddle would do. “I tend to know what I’m capable of before I do it.”

“I see,” you answered. “Come here then?”

Tom looked at you questioningly before you reached out your hand, holding it in the air for him to take it. He did and you slowly pulled him closer, until he lay down next to you.

Your hand went up to his face and you ran your fingers through his hair, to which he closed his eyes, letting you play with his locks for a while. 

Now that you were fully aware of where you were, you noticed how different Tom’s linen smelled compared to your own. They had his clean, warm scent, of tangy embers dying in the fireplace, mixed with leather and something fresh like dewy iron. The scent had rubbed off on you while you had slept there and it felt like he had marked you, without even coming close.

“You didn’t have to sleep on the couch,” you whispered.

His eyes opened again. “You were completely knocked out. That would have felt off.”

“Well, for next time then,” you smiled, took his chin between your fingers and pressed a kiss to his lips. “We’re engaged after all. Have you forgotten?”

“Oh piss off,” he scoffed and pulled you in for another kiss.

Some hours later, when you were tending to the Moly, you looked over towards the fireplace, where Nagini was sleeping in front of. At least you assumed she was sleeping. Her eyes were open and her tongue flicked out of her mouth every now and then, but she seemed calm. You laughed to yourself at the sight, as it reminded you of a cat seeking warmth. Well, a pet was a pet, you figured.

“How’s the Moly doing?” Tom asked and went up to inspect it.

“Good. Great actually,” you said. “I think we’re going to earn those extra points from Beery.”

“Don’t you think it looks a bit sickly?” he asked, holding the thin black stem between his fingers.

“No, it’s alright.”

He uttered a humph. “You don’t have the book on you, the one I gave you for Christmas, do you?”

“No, it’s in my dorm. Why would you need that now?”

“Have you read through it? All the way?”

“No, I haven’t yet. I just flicked through it and read some recipes that sounded interesting,” you answered, not knowing what he had in mind. “I wanted to try one of the Potions after we’re done with school. They all seem to take a while.”

“Which one?”

“The Vial of Auras for starters. Why?”

He nodded, still looking at the Moly. “I think there’s a recipe for plant cultivation in there. Could be of use.”

“But it looks fine, why-”

He turned his face toward you, looking into your eyes. “Just bring the book next time.”

“Okay,” you said, although it sounded more like a question. “I can bring it tonight. I’m going out to Hogsmeade with Camille in the afternoon. I’ll be back around 7 I guess.”

“That’ll do,” he said and smiled, finally sounding satisfied.

It was five minutes past seven when you returned to Tom’s room. The date with Camille had been wonderful, although you had had one too many toffees at the sweet shop. You had also gotten the Potions book from your dorm, still wondering why the Moly would need extra support. It looked totally fine to you. 

Tom’s room was empty, aside from Nagini, who had curled herself around one of the bedposts. You went over to the desk, where the Moly was standing and put the book beside it. Next to the plant lay a handwritten note:

“Coming back soon - Dippet needs me for head boy duties”

Killing time it was, then. You took Tom’s Charms book from the stack and practised a few spells for a while, trying to revise those that would most likely be tested in the N.E.W.T.s. About ten minutes later, the door opened and Tom entered the room. He dragged his feet as he shuffled in and was slightly out of breath.

“Are you alright?” you asked while putting the Charms book away.

He nodded. You walked over and took a seat on the couch, patting the space next to you for Tom to join you.

“I brought the book,” you said and pointed towards the desk.

Tom sat down, looked at it from afar and squinted. “The book?”

“The Potions book you asked me to bring. Don’t you remember?”

“Ah, yes. Sorry, I totally forgot.”

You frowned, slightly worried. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

Tom nodded and scratched the side of his face. “Yes, yes. I’m just a bit tired.”

Tired wasn’t exactly what you would have described the state of him. He seemed nervous and completely out of it, his shoulders hanging down limply. 

“Did something happen? What did you have to do for Dippet?” you asked.

His eyes roamed the floor while he pondered. “Nothing important. Just some scheduling for the prefects.”

Something cold rubbed against your foot and when you looked down, you saw Nagini, who had slithered over. She placed herself between Tom and you on the floor, her hisses a tad louder than usual.

“What does she want?” you asked.

Tom stared at Nagini vacantly and didn’t answer.

“Tom?” 

“Hm?”

“What is she saying?”

“She’s hungry.”

“Hungry? We’ve just fed her recently. Strange,” you said and bent down to pat her head. “I’m going to get you some more mice soon, don’t worry.”

Tom’s gaze roamed the room as if he was looking for something.

“Do you want to take a look at the book now? For the Moly?” you asked.

“No,” he answered. “Actually, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Go ahead then.”

“You remember the day we got engaged, right?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Well, it was obviously an arrangement between our families,” he stated, waiting for you to confirm. 

“Yes.”

“So I was wondering… What’s in it for you?”

Your stomach dropped. What did he mean ‘what’s in it for you’? Your sister’s curse was the most evident thing in this whole situation.

“You know exactly what’s in it for me,” you said while folding your arms. “Actually, I could ask you the same thing. Don’t tell me you forgot why we’re doing this.”

He took a moment to think before answering. “Of course I haven’t. I just thought there could be something else. Like, perhaps your parents bribed my family.”

You blinked irritatedly. He had not just said that.

“Are you serious right now?” you asked. “You’re suggesting my parents took advantage of the situation, went and killed two birds with one stone? So that they could marry me off and make me your problem?”

He stared into your eyes for a moment, then retracted. “No, I didn’t mean-”

“Because I’ll have you know, my family would never do such a thing,” you interrupted him. “I know yours probably would, but my parents are not like that, believe it or not. I thought you knew that by now.”

“I was just wondering. No need to make a fuss about it.”

“You know what?” you said and got up from the couch, making sure not to step on Nagini. “You sound exactly like Ben. Only more rude. And I thought you didn’t trust him. But it seems that you don’t trust me either all of a sudden.”

“Wait, I’m sorry,” Tom said and followed you. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“We’re done here,” you huffed, making your way to the door, followed closely by Nagini, until Tom grabbed your hand.

“Don’t leave now,” he said, pulled you in a bit closer and a whiff of cologne wafted your way. He reeked of sweat and coughed so loudly you thought he might throw up any moment.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into you, Tom,” you answered, your hand still in his. “Maybe you have a cold coming on or something because you don’t seem like you’re in your right mind. Now let me go.”

“No,” he said but turned his face away from you.

Suddenly the door flew open and you sucked in a sharp breath when you saw who it was. Tiernan Lestrange. And next to him was... Tom? Standing in the door frame, his eyes darting back and forth between you and… You looked to your left, to the person next to you and saw that Emlyn Avery was standing in Tom’s place, still holding your hand.

You wrenched your hand out of his grip and took several steps backwards.

“Avery?” you asked. “What is going on?”

Tom, the real Tom, still stared at you, a fire burning behind his eyes as he quickly walked into the room. Lestrange followed and closed the door behind himself.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Tom hissed, both at Avery and you.

Avery kept silent, a nasty grin forming on his face.

“He… You,” you stammered.

“You two? Holding hands in my room?” Tom yelled, his chest heaving. “Are you kidding me?”

“I can explain.”

Could you really?

“Well, I hope you can. Taking Avery into my room to do who knows what? Care to explain that?”

“He was you!” you said, only then noticing how crazy you must have sounded. 

Tom shot you a look that told you better not to take him for a fool. His thoughts must have raced at top speed inside his head, as you could practically see him thinking. His eyes scurried from your hand to Avery’s, then up to his face. His knuckles had turned white from how hard he clenched his fists and he couldn’t seem to stand still. You wondered what his next move would be. Punch Avery in the nose, curse the two of you, or rush out of the room? It reminded you of the time he had seen Ben and you at the Black Lake. 

“Please,” you whispered. “Let me explain.”

Tom sighed and avoided looking at you. He shook his head as if he was fighting an internal battle against himself. It almost looked painful. Finally, he went up to Avery, pointing his wand right below the boy’s chin.

“Sit down,” Tom spat. “You too Lestrange! And I don’t want to hear a single word from either of you.”

They did as he said and Tom led you to the other side of the room, followed by Nagini. He cast a Muffliato Charm on the two boys so that they wouldn’t be able to hear what you had to say. 

“Go on,” Tom then said, still avoiding eye contact.

“I came here around seven, as we agreed. I brought the book but you weren’t here. Then I saw your note on the table and waited for you. You, I mean Avery, came in shortly after. But he looked exactly like you. Just until you showed up right now. I swear to Merlin.”

“What do you mean he looked like me?” Tom asked, an annoyed frown on his face.

“He looked and sounded just like you. I thought he was you. He acted weird and I didn’t trust him, but I thought you were just stressed out. The only way I could possibly explain this would be Polyjuice Potion.”

“You don’t really think one of them would be able to brew that correctly, do you?”

“I don’t,” you mumbled. “But how else would it be possible? You have to believe me. I would have never brought him here. Or anyone.”

He looked at you now, so intensely, it felt like he was reading your thoughts, trying to see if you were lying to him.

“Why would he do that?” he then asked.

“I don’t know,” you answered and gave it a good thought. “He asked me about some things. About the engagement. Maybe he was trying to convict me. They haven’t trusted me ever since the school year began, remember?”

Tom nodded and exhaled strongly, walking in circles around you.

“Did he touch you?” he asked.

“No. He just held me back when I wanted to leave. Just my hand, nothing else.”

“Are you sure? Don’t lie to me. If he touched you, I swear I’m going to-”

“No. He didn’t.”

Silence. Nagini’s quiet hisses disrupted your thoughts and you noticed that Tom seemed a lot calmer now.

“Why was Lestrange with you?” you asked.

“He came up to me when I was done at Dippet’s. Tried to babble on for ages about assignments.”

“That makes sense. So you wouldn’t disrupt their plan.”

“What did Avery ask you exactly?”

“If my parents had bribed your family. So we would get married.”

“Idiot,” Tom muttered.

“That’s what I thought too.”

Tom eventually stopped circling you, placed himself beside you and you both watched Lestrange and Avery sitting next to each other on the sofa. They didn’t dare look back at you and simply stared down at the floor like two ten-year-olds waiting for their parents

to punish them.

“Oh, and another thing,” you began. “Avery stinks.”

Tom, to your surprise, laughed.

That made you a bit more confident, so you asked: “Do you believe me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

He did? You looked at him, taken aback.

“Nagini,” Tom said to you while watching as the snake’s head reared up. “She’s your witness. She confirmed you’re telling the truth.” 

“Good girl,” you said and smiled at her, to which she hissed happily. You really had to get her some more mice. “Now, what were they thinking? What point were they trying to prove?”

“Let’s ask them,” he said, broke the Muffliato Charm with a swift motion of his wand and walked over towards the couch.

“I’m going to ask you some things,” he said to them. “And don’t you dare lie to me. You know I can tell. You’re lucky you caught me on a good day, actually.”

They both nodded.

“Polyjuice Potion?” Tom asked.

Avery looked over to Lestrange. They both nodded again.

“Where did you get that from?”

“Stole it from Slughorn,” Avery mumbled so lowly, you could hardly understand.

“Speak up!” Tom ordered.

“We stole it from Slughorn’s stock,” Avery repeated. “At the party, when everyone was dancing.”

Tom sighed and pinched the skin on the bridge of his nose. Of course they hadn’t brewed it themselves. They were far too daft.

“Why?” Tom went on. “What’s the reason for all that?”

“Well,” Lestrange cleared his throat. “We were only doing it for you, Tom. To make sure she’s not betraying you. To find out if she and her family were using you, you know.”

“So we could help you,” Avery added and nodded vehemently.

Tom grinned coldly. “And you thought I wouldn’t have found this out myself by now? That I would need your help? Seriously?”

“We thought-”

“No! You didn’t think at all,” Tom interrupted. “You went behind my back, stole from a teacher and disrespected my fiancée. You’re both an embarrassment for Slytherin and I swear, if I ever see one of you just looking her way, it’s not going to end this lightly.”

Both of them nodded again and looked down onto the floor, not saying anything.

“Now follow me,” Tom said, still angry with them.

“Where are we going?” Avery asked as he got up.

“I’m going to report you to the headmaster of course. And trust me, you’ll be glad Dippet is going to choose your punishment and not me.”

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Masterpost | Masterlist

Phew, this chapter was exciting to write!  Please consider leaving a comment and tell me what you think so far :) They motivate me so much to keep writing! Let me know if you want to be tagged, or untagged. Thank you for reading!

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[filliteapot]

I'm going to use this part of what you said in a previous answer that made me really curious "the way of the authors to tell the story is another matter" to know your top 5 (or ~10) of that :)

Ah :D I guess the easier way to put it would be “This time I chose my favourite styles basing on art style mostly, but if I were to choose my fav storytelling/mix of art and how authors tells it/what they want to transmit, the odrer/the list would be different” :”) So some authors/stories on the list of my fav storytelling (not sure if it's the right term for what i mean but let's use this) are the same I put in the previous list. The titles and authors won’t be surprise for you, but I’ll list them anyway. Warning: I love talking about such things a lot, so I suddenly wrote a lot.

(Ask me my top 5-10 anything)

1. Literally anything by Takaya Natsuki. You have no idea how #tired I am of all the discussions about both adaptations of her Furuba (which is better which is worse no listen to me bc I Have an Opinion of High Authority) when not a single adaptation quite got her style in storytelling, foreshadowing and especially presenting her characters’ personal drama. I think I espcially love her for not throwing it all in your face right away, being careful at hinting at things (so that you don’t quite get some parts of the characters’ thoughts and inner struggles until you learn the facts and it hits you) and for leaving you some space to use your own brain what you think about this or that storyline. (Tamura Yumi does it too which makes her my second fave author). Also, years after reading and rereading her works I see better how storylines are entwinted and unfolding, and it still makes me yell “HOW does she do it” every time I go back to Furuba and her other works and see something new. I love her Hoshi wa Utau (which hits hard and is painfully real in the matter of parents/children’s conflicts), and Liselotte to majo no mori (darkish fairytale with hopeful messages) and wish more people knew about them too, not only Furuba.

2. Kouno Fumiyo’s Yunagi no Machi Sakura no Kuni. I first read this manga a long time ago and was dying of happiness when it got published in my country bc oh my gosh. It’s a historical thing, it’s a heavy thing, she does have such unique style (my first thought was ”ah looks cute, like children books illustrations” and then it killed me) and approach to place panels on pages or transitions between scenes or past and present (I think some comic researcher or smth even called it innovative). The page that struck me the most was a spread near the end of this story, presenting a character in his older years sitting on the beach of a river in Hiroshima and him in the same place right after the war. Perhaps it doesn’t sound so original but this work and these two pages live rent free in my soul to this day.

3. Ando Yuki’s oneshots (and Machida-kun). She is my favourite short stories author, she just knows how to tell it so that I got tuned in from the start. Be it a school slice of life or basically Edith Piaf’s song Hymne à l'amour presented in the form of manga oneshot, they give me immense joy. And oh, there’s almost always a twist near the ending I can’t predict. Her characters act a bit weird and take weird decisions sometimes but I think it’s what makes them feel so real to me.

And it’s cheating, but while I’m talking about oneshots, I want to mention Midorikawa Yuki and her shorter-than-Natsume stories. Because they give me a similar feeling to Ando’s oneshots - the atmosphere is different, but the way they touch my heart is the same. Don’t get me wrong, I love Natsume and its structure (main characters and their personal jouney through unrelated stories of other people/not humans), but I love Midorikawa’s shorter stories much more.

4. Takamatsu Misaki’s Skip to Loafer. One of the best slice stories I’ve ever read. Right amount of drama and comedy, a cast of characters with different problems and motivations. I can’t help but think “Oh I wish I were able to create a story like this one day”. Also, someone wrote about it: “let me live the wholesome high school life i didnt have” and ugh I felt it :”))

5. Yazawa Ai’s stories: Nana and Gokinjo Monogatari. Did “Nee, Nana” moments kill my soul every time it was used in the story? Yes, absolutely. Did it make me cry? Don’t even ask.

6. Nishi Keiko’s stories: Otoko no Isshou, Koi to Gunkan. A person I know described her stories like this: “If life goes the wrong way, it’s better to go home”, and I think it sums it up. Both of the stories I listed are about ordinary life in small towns, they both me melancholic and somehow cozy feeling. Both stories have themes and characters that don’t really interest me much, but when I read them, I usually cry. It’s another A+ slice of life author imo.

7. Tsukuba Sakura’s Mekakushi no Kuni. It’s dear to me for special reasons. There a girl who sometimes sees future when touches other people, there is a boy who sees the past all the time he does the same, there’s another boy... And NO evil organizations chasing them for their superpowers, NO global plots or problems or author’s will to condemn society, no deep philosophy questions about time and so on. Just normal slice of life of not so normal peoplewho try to cope with this particularity they have and fit the world they live in. (I wish authors realized the potential of such slice of life centered urban fantasy but they keep failing me aiming at the Global, sigh)

8. Torino Nanko’s Toripan. It’s basically authors essays on her daily life and mostly birdwatching, but ugh it’s so good. Peak comedy about birds and heartfelt pages for when she speaks about her memories or remarks on nature, it’s so full of love towards this world and life. After I read Toripan I feel like I become kinder and better :DD

(author’s A+ faces and haiku about sparrows in the winter)

9. Watanuki Yoshiko’s Manatsu no Delta. I read it some time ago and my first thought was “Wow, this IS how you touch an unpleasant yet existing problem”. I’ll certainly be waiting for this author’s other works.

10. Ikuemi Ryo’s stories, especially the ones featuring metaphorical ghosts (Kiyoku Yawaku, Torch Song Ecology) and Taiyou ga Mite Iru. Joseis with ghosts are my fave thing on earth, and Ikuemi’s great at it. But she can make any theme totally worth digging into, be it school life or cheating and complicated family relationships. I think TGM is her work that left the deepest trace in my soul because I was reading it when it was ongoing, for three years, and it’s basically just something that makes you die slowly looking at how not so bad people fk up their life decisions bc of their unresolved traumas and issues but you can’t take your eyes of it and then need several years of therapy after reading such manga. And she doesn’t even preech or say you should not live like this. She’s like “this is a life story I want to tell, take whatever you want from it” and I’m like “gooosh this is so painful and looks so real and makes me feel things, I love it”. Ikuemi Power as it is. (Life teaches me nothing, I lowkey want to read something like TGM again and Akaneda Yuki’s Saraba Yoki Hi fulfills this wish of mine, but uh I’m so glad it’s rarely updated)

(text: Nire is here to kill me)

Thanks for such ask, it was fun :D

[recentanimenews]

Manga the Week of 3/10/21

SEAN: Has anyone else run out of time to read things? You’d think I’d be reading MORE in a pandemic, but…

MICHELLE: I have run out of brain to read things.

ANNA: My non-work reading and writing have suffered.

ASH: It’s strange but true.

MELINDA: What is time?

SEAN: Airship has the print debut of Failure Frame: I Became the Strongest and Annihilated Everything With Low-Level Spells. Also in print is the second ROLL OVER AND DIE: I Will Fight for an Ordinary Life with My Love and Cursed Sword!, and digital-first gives us the 2nd Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs.

Dark Horse has a 7th Deluxe Hardcover edition of Berserk.

ASH: It’s probably no surprise that I’ll be picking that up.

SEAN: Drawn & Quarterly has a biggie: the late Shigeru Mizuki’s adaptation of Tono Monogatari, a famous collection of folklore. It ran in Shogakukan’s Big Comic.

ASH: My recent brief doesn’t truly do it justice, but I love this book.

MELINDA: Ash is persuasive!

SEAN: No debuts for J-Novel Club, but a lot of new volumes of beloved series. We see Ascendance of a Bookworm 11, Bibliophile Princess 5, the 2nd manga volume of The Engagement of Marielle Clarac, Girls Kingdom 2, Infinite Dendrogram 14, the 5th manga volume of The Master of Ragnarok & Blesser of Einherjar, and Slayers 6.

ASH: Yay, Bookworm!

SEAN: Kaiten Books has a debut with Welcome to the Outcast’s Restaurant, a manga version of the light novel we’ve seen released here by Tentai Books. A strong adventurer, banished by his party, starts a restaurant, and has to deal with his customers’ varied issues.

ASH: There seems to be a surprising number of these types of restaurants.

SEAN: Kodansha has some print. There’s Grand Blue Dreaming 12, Rent-a-Girlfriend 5, Saint Young Men 5 (in hardcover omnibus), and the 14th and final Waiting for Spring.

MICHELLE: I’ve been waiting for Waiting for Spring‘s finale for ages!

ANNA: I have the first volume and I still haven’t read it!

ASH: I’ve liked what I’ve read of Waiting for Spring so far, but Saint Young Men has most of my attention from this batch.

MELINDA: Same here!

SEAN: For digital, the debut is Shaman King: Marcos, which runs in Shonen Magazine Edge, and is MORE SHAMAN KING.

Also digital: A Couple of Cuckoos 3, Ace of the Diamond 31, Peach Boy Riverside 5, Saint Young Men 10, Seven Shakespeares 15, and We Must Never Fall in Love 7.

MICHELLE: A baseball binge is in store for me!

SEAN: Seven Seas has two debuts. The first had an anime recently, and it’s called Super HxEros (Dokyuu Hentai HxEros). Despite the Japanese title, this isn’t quite porn, but it does run on fanservice. Aliens are sapping the world’s lust, and only superheroes who can use their own lust to power up can stop them. This runs in Jump Square, home of Blue Exorcist, believe it or not, and is 11+ volumes in Japan.

The other debut is Wonder Cat Kyuu-chan (Fushigi Neko no Kyuu-chan), a 4-koma about an office worker who finds an abandoned cat that proves to be… a wonder cat! This looks very cute.

ANNA: That does sound cute.

ASH: It does.

SEAN: Also from Seven Seas: Akashic Records of Bastard Magical Instructor 11, Arifureta: From Commonplace to World’s Strongest 6 (manga), Arpeggio of Blue Steel 17, Peter Grill and the Philosopher’s Time 4, The Ideal Sponger Life 8 (manga), The Saint’s Magic Power Is Omnipotent 2 (manga), and We Swore to Meet in the Next Life and That’s When Things Got Weird! 2.

SuBLime gives us Caste Heaven 5 and the 2nd and final volume of Toritan – Birds of a Feather.

MICHELLE: I need to check out Toritan. Caste Heaven was not for me.

ASH: I haven’t tried Caste Heaven yet, but I really liked the first volume of Toritan. I didn’t realize it was only two volumes long.

SEAN: Tokyopop has Katakoi Lamp, a BL title from Rutile. A young man working at a coffee shop falls for a customer, but can he work up the courage to confess?

They also have the 2nd volume of Ossan Idol!.

Vertical has a 9th volume of Flying Witch and a 3rd With a Dog AND a Cat, Every Day is Fun.

Viz has Tokyo Fashion: A Comic Book, an illustrated guide to building your wardrobe and looking good.

ASH: Oh, that could be interesting!

SEAN: We also have Fly Me to the Moon 4, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess 8, RIN-NE 38, and Splatoon: Squid Kids Comedy Show 3.

Yen On has a debut, with The Executioner and Her Way of Life (Shokei Shoujo no Ikirumichi), about a woman whose job it is to STOP isekai protagonists – they keep bringing chaos whenever they arrive! Unfortunately, the girl she meets may be more than she can handle. Nice seeing more yuri light novels.

ASH: That is kind of a delightful and cathartic twist to the isekai deluge. And it’s yuri, too? I may have to check it out!

SEAN: Yen On also has Combatants Will Be Dispatched! 5.

Three debuts from Yen Press. I Cannot Reach You (Kimi ni wa Todokanai) is a BL series from Media Factory’s Gene Pixiv, and is a childhood friend romance sort of story. It looks sweet.

MICHELLE: I’m really looking forward to this one!

ASH: Me, too!

MELINDA: Okay, yes, THIS.

SEAN: SEAN: Play It Cool, Guys (Cool Doji Danshi) runs in Square Enix’s Gangan Pixiv, and features a bunch of cool guys who are secretly… awkward dorks! This seems more on the funny side.

ASH: Could be fun!

SEAN: Penguin Gentlemen (Penguin Shinshi) is a done-in-one hardcover about a group of penguins who run a bar. Sometimes they’re drawn as penguins… and sometimes they’re drawn as buff hot guys. This ran in Kadokawa’s Pixiv Essay.

ANNA: This sounds hilarious.

ASH: It really does, in the best sort of way.

MELINDA: This sounds amazing.

SEAN: Lastly, Yen has Happy Sugar Life 8, I’ve Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years 5 (manga), Kakegurui Twin 9, and Restaurant to Another World 4.

What series are you falling more and more behind on?

MICHELLE: ALL OF THEM.

ANNA: SO MANY SERIES!

MELINDA: I REPEAT, WHAT IS TIME?

By: Sean Gaffney

[nomadmilk]

Why the God Isn’t Bored on Midgard - Loki x F!Reader Drabble - 8.5

Summary: With Ragnarok decimating Asgard, Thor and Loki and their people return to Earth searching for refuge. Everyone else has seemed to settle, except for Loki - the God of Mischief and Chaos - who isn’t willing to live the domesticated Midgard life, and getting utterly bored out of his mind... Until he discovered you.

Word Count: 3K (Here we go, boys n girls)

Warnings: Rated M/18+. Confused feelings and smut. Impulsive/Slight dom Loki. F/M. Foreplay, slight bondage, and vaginal sex.

Author’s Note: As of 11.5.2020 it has been edited, but not much has changed. This is the other half of Part 8. Enjoy, and let me know what you think! :) x

Here are the other parts to the series: Part 1     Part 2 Part 3     Part 4 Part 5     Part 6 Part 7     Part 8 (First Half)     Part 8.5 (Second Half) Part 9

Loki arrived late. He had been stuck at his office in campus checking over a book a student had enquired on using for an upcoming essay. It was odd that Loki had come to care for miniscule things like this. Surely, if he was doing his job as a professor successfully, it would reflect in the students’ test results. If that was the case, Nick Fury might even stop monitoring him completely. So, Loki couldn’t slack.

He had to admit, however, that his productivity did dwindle when you surprised him with your presence.

Entering the flat, he sees you sitting on the sofa, finishing a canned drink. The can joins the other crumpled ones, lying on their side on the coffee table, but there was still more that stood in a bundle together, ready to be drunk.

He gets rid of the band on his head and relieves himself from the strain on his skull as his dark tresses are freed.

He takes a second to check over your visage. You got changed into something more comfortable; summer was closing in, and the nights were becoming humid. You had a satin vest and shorts on, but it must have been something your new lingerie shop job has given you. The vest shaped your cleavage marvelously, and the cut of your shorts bared your thighs in a bewitching manner.

He slacks his tie and begins to unbutton his waistcoat.

“Loki, why did you kiss me?” You question him.

He stills for a moment; your forwardness never ceases to make him smile. “Yes, my day was well, thank you.”

“I’m serious.” You press, eye contact never leaving his. “Why’d you do it?”

He smirks, discarding the waistcoat. It disappears with a glint of light as its removed. “Is that what you’ve been thinking about all this time?”

“I-…“ You search for words. You weren’t quite sure if being honest to Loki was going to change any of his mannerisms for the better, or if he was going to use your vulnerability as an advantage.

“I haven’t.” You reply, resuming. “…But – hypothetically – if I told you I had been, what would you say?”

You could practically hear Loki’s laugh from his risen brow; it was a stupid response, and you wanted to smack your forehead for it.

He sits opposite you. “Hypothetically, I would say that clearly something about it is bothering you. And, I would ask why.”

You huff. Loki could see your mind in contemplation, wanting to let the topic pass. He has mostly seen you swung by your mood so, observing your solemn ambience, was new for him. Like usual, he didn’t know what to expect with it.

“What seems to be on your mind?” He starts.

“A lot.” You reply. “… I don’t know where to start, probably cause’ I don’t know whether to trust you or not.”

“And why can’t you trust me, Y/N?”

“Because I don’t know who you are besides your title and your magic. I get that some of it’s partially my fault because I tend to be out of the house – even then, how can you blame me when you-… When you mess with the way I feel.” You stand. “Ugh – God, that sounds like I’m some kind of teenager…”

Although you were avoiding his gaze, Loki’s doesn’t lift. Come to think of it, the situations he’d caused, those were odd choices to mess with you. He could have used his Seidr to do much worse, and embarrass you in other ways, or even get you kicked out and he would have had the apartment to himself.

But he didn’t want that.

He acknowledges his behaviour towards you. If you had a serious problem with it, Loki thought you were more than capable in filing a complaint against him, or capable of planning something that would get rid of him from the apartment forever.

But, you hadn’t.

You cross your arms. “We’ve been living together for a while now, and I don’t even know anything about your world, or-… Or, your relationship with your brother-“

“If there is anything you need to know, my brother isn’t one of them.” If anything, Loki wanted you to walk away from the conversation with at least one honest sentence from him. Thor was a renowned hero, there’s no point in getting information from him when you could get it from the internet or on a gossip show on T.V. You could even text Thor himself… Although, now Loki thinks about it, hearing Thor’s side of their past might constrain him to add in actual facts.

You shrug. “Or how about your mom? Or your dad? – Or even something simple like-”

Loki crosses his arms, leaning back into the couch, curious. “And why is it that you’re suddenly interested in all of this?”

“Well, I’d like to if it’s-…” You shake your head. “You know what, I knew this was a bad idea from the start. I just thought that maybe if I got to know you, I’d actually understand you. I mean, I don’t even know what you gain from messing with me all the time.”

Loki’s very nature is chaos, so it was no wonder that Loki found solace in causing trouble. Life lacked lustre after recent events. So, the whimsical universe brought you for him to play and ‘mess’ with.

“If it’s not one thing, then it must be the other…” You say to yourself, clearing the empty cans off of the table. You look at him, a face of forfeit. “If you’re gonna’ bullshit me, then I’m leaving the apartment…“

He had to admit, all those moments he had felt some sense of control, or even lack of, strangely excited him. At times, he didn’t know whether he wanted to break you, or leave you at the cliff, but when you faced him… You were magnetic.

“Stark’s party.” He queries, switching topics. “You wanted to talk about that in particular.”

You stop in your tracks, blinking.

You return the empty cans back onto the table. “… Well, I was in a middle of a phone call-“

“Yes.” Loki’s eyes were intense. “Is that all you remember?”

He swore to himself that nothing, in the many years he had been alive, had stimulated him more than the image of you in climactic bliss. It illuminates in his mind; vivid, and unforgettable.

The creases on your face relax. It seems you had the same image in your mind too, and it was making your knees weak. “W-what do you mean?”

“Did you…Did it feel good?” He interrogates some more.

Your features are softening from the anger fading and, as expected, forms a hue on your cheeks that matched the pink of your lips.

You swallow. “It did.”

There’s a pause that settles between the two of you. Loki’s jaw clenches as he focuses on you; it was your eyes staring back at him. They had that look Loki couldn’t pull himself away from, reminding him from all the past times he had felt breathless from you. It must have been from the heat, or maybe he was tired, but your eyes... They were dilated… And sultry.

Loki reaches over to you, taking your wrists and tugging you towards him. Your legs regain balance, your wrist still within Loki’s hand. You stare down at him, mouth agape.

“Loki,” you stutter, “I know you’re reading me.”

His voice was soft; like it was intended for only you to hear. “Then, let me take closer look at you.”

Another light tug guides you closer towards him, your will to keep the conversation going diminishes to fumbled words. His hands drift to your luscious thighs as they climb on top of him, his lap a perfect seat to gaze up at you.

Feeling his hand cradle your face, his thumb traces your jaw, gently pulling your face closer to his, body leaning towards him. Your hands settle on his chest, and the closeness of it all awakens something in your core, eyes flickering to his lips.

You feel his hot breath as he exhales, the sound of a low tenor sigh making your heart thud out of your ribcage. 

Your ample lips press against his. 

You pull back a little, allowing yourself to breathe. “I... like you, Loki.”

You hear Loki take a deep inhale as he presses himself into you, sinking his lips onto yours. Your tongue slides in, and as he feels yours against his own, he exhales a moan that causes your walls to ache. You whimper as you shift in his lap, rubbing against him, and eventually you could feel his cock pushing itself against you.

His hands holding you, they roam your temperate form; he caresses and squeeze your thighs, they trail up to your hips and waist and graze the sides of your torso. Your nerves sense the smoothness of his skin, and the oddity of temperature; slightly colder than you expected, but it cools you in the humidity of the night.

Breaking the kiss, you pull your vest over your head to reveal more of your skin; your chest, nipples hard and breasts plump, were exquisite to Loki’s irises. Eager to experience all of you, his mouth seizes one of your sensitive mounds, a deep growl sighs from his throat approving the softness and delicacy of it. You gasp as you feel his caressing licks and tender bites, feeling his other hand roam up your stomach to cup and massage the other.

“Fuck…” With each brush of the satin fabric against your clit, you could feel your walls pulse and your folds produce that wetness that made you greedy to be full.

Your fingers were just about to reach the waistband of your shorts to sate yourself, before Loki snatches them away.

His lithe hands stir up on your inner thigh, and your walls squeeze once more. “Let me, my sweet.”

The mist of the cream and rose perfume that Loki could sense was replaced by the beguiling scent of your nectar. You readjust for his closer inspection, and he sees the damage done by your heat; the shorts had darkened from you grinding against him and, as he slides them aside to reveal your delicious pussy drooling for him, deemed unnecessary.

They needed to come off immediately.

He laces a finger in the warmth of your smooth, tender folds. “Was this what you wanted to tell me all along?”

You nod, lip biting to stop yourself from begging to be touched further; his finger just about grazes your gentle bud.

But Loki wasn’t having any of that. “I want you to say it.”

You begin to pant, as you feel his fingers tease your entrance. “L-Loki, I need-”

“Don’t look away from me when you say it, my darling – Say it to me.”

As your shy eyes lock with the compelling inflection in his, your response can’t help but sound like a shameless and sensuous plea.

“I want you, Loki. Please.”

Loki watches your complexion shift to satisfaction as two of his digits dip into the soaked crease. Shorts vanishing, he slowly delves his fingers further, fascinated by how your juices eased them into your snug walls, and his erection twitches from enjoying the view just a little too much.

His free hand aids to keep you still by the waist, tantalizing you by restricting your body from lowering onto his fingers at a faster pace. “Shall we finish what we started?”

You brace yourself, open palms finding their way underneath his loose shirt collar to feel his collarbone. His fingers dive deeper and curl into spot of your crevice, eliciting a moan from your sugary mouth.

“Y-yes, Loki…” You pant more, eye contact proving to be difficult due to ecstasy that Loki was building up inside of you.

His hum is sly, accepting your signature. “Good… Now, let me have all of you.”

He paces his fingers in and out of you, your walls convulse tightly around him and evoke your nectar to drip onto his knuckles like clear honey. Your head swings back from the pleasure, and Loki, seeing your body being bent by his will, is in awe with your nude and flushed form. He had never seen you more beautiful than you were now.

Hips swaying in time with his rhythm, he could feel your body submit to his touch fully. You lean in to kiss him again, and your salacious mewls can be caught upon his tongue.

As you feel his thumb press lightly on your bud one more time, your mind was challenged with the idea of coasting with the pleasure, whilst the other half had a dire need to climax.

Voice uneasy, you whisper against his lips. “Please- ah!- Loki, I’m gonna’ cum.”

He tuts, voice breaking slightly from watching. “Why are you in such a rush, my dear?”

Your gorgeous breaths stop with an abrupt yelp. Loki picks you up to lie you down on to the couch, your naked body beside him. Your heartbeat thumps rapidly, spine adjusting to the awkward surface, as you stare at him briskly taking off his tie.

You whine; your desire had been building, and you could feel it falter. Not wanting to lose it, you touch yourself. You lap the juice onto the tips of your fingers, and drag them up to your delicate bead. You feel that needy pulse in your centre again as Loki unbuttons his shirt, displaying his incredibly toned torso and broad shoulders. You had seen his upper body naked before, but you were still in such amazement as to how his clothes seemed to make him slimmer than he was.

Body calling for him, you slip a couple of fingers inside of you.

Loki slowed in his undressing as he catches what you’re doing; he had wondered what you were like when you pleasured yourself, and he wasn’t disappointed with the truth. He wanted to know all your traits, and all your flaws; your anger, your sadness, your happiness, your awkwardness… And this, this carnal and intimate side of you, was one side he hadn’t realised he’d been patient on waiting for.

Loki was fighting to be composed.

Breathing hard and scattered, you bite your lip. “L-Loki?”

Norns, why did you have to be so erotic.

He grabs both of your wrists, your voice weak in complaint as he binds them together with his discarded tie, preventing you from touching yourself any further. The knot was taut, and any amount of agitation made your wrists cramp, but it didn’t hinder your arousal at all. 

He wanted to have you as he saw fit, and it did not include you cumming without his cock inside you.

Before you attempt to say anything, he gestures for all of his remaining clothes to disappear, and it goes with a shine of light. His cock springs free, Loki grunts in relief that his raging member could now breathe.

Arms slacking from the struggle with the new cuffs, your eyes adjust to his naked physique, your eyes lowering past his abdomen to see his lengthy erection stand. However, you didn’t have a chance to study, or to even admire it, as he grips your thighs once more, pulling you towards him and spreading you open. 

And, within the slick and hot pleat of your core, you feel his hardness slide against you and your bud, and it coaxes your back to arch on the edge of euphoria.

A moan, like caramel to Loki’s ears, cries from your lips as the tip of his cock pushes inside you. He inhales through gritted teeth as his long shaft feels the pressure of your feminine walls, and the sensitivity to its beat. His grasps on your hips tighten, blemishing your skin as he reaches the end of you with another relieving growl. Another precious mewl escapes from the back of your throat as he pulls out, a layer of your aroma covering his shaft.

Not wanting to delay it any longer, Loki thrusts into you.

His thrusts are relentless and deep, feeling yourself stretch and fit around him. He was greeted with your blushing expression, irises glazed with lustful avidity and our lip bitten down, withholding your intoxicating moans. 

But, with each thrust Loki gave you, your lips loosened, and the candy sound of your bliss encourages his movements.

“Loki, I’m-...Ah!” You could feel yourself clutch around him, a release begging to subdue you.

Loki could feel you get close too, and he was desperate to experience that sensation on him. He seizes you by the bind of your wrist, using it to spur his pace, his pelvis rocking and slamming into yours again and again. He savours the aphrodisia of your body, savours the sensuous resonance of his name being cried in wanton need, savours the arousing essence surrounding the both of you, savours the fervor of your warm skin…

And, as your pussy clenches him like a vice, he savours everything about your climax.  

Even after your orgasm, he fills you with every inch of him you could take, voice rasp in nearing his own sexual alleviation. He could feel waves of your peak straining and milking his cock to his own end, your own ears feel muddled with the loud bangs of your heartbeat and the sound of your name being lost from Loki’s lips.

Your skin feeling damp, you survey Loki with bleary eyes, and he surveys you back with same sensual haze.

There you were, splayed recklessly in front of him, looking unashamedly delectable covered with his cum. Like he had finally tamed your wildness, so that he could only have it all to himself.

He kisses you.  Had he known what it was like to bed you, he would have done it sooner.

“You are…” His hot breath runs against your neck. “Divine.”

[shinylitwick94]

Best/Worst Reads of 2020

My life got turned upside down in 2020 and not just for the same reasons as everyone else, so it’s been an odd year and my reading(or lack thereof) kind of reflects that.

As usual, there’s a mix of SFF titles and some good old classics, with some random stuff thrown in.

I tried to read a lot of Big Name Fantasy Authors this year, to keep up with the times a bit. Some I liked, some I didn’t, but overall it proved to be a fun exercise.

Going back over previous comments/reviews I’d made on specific books really made it stand out to me that feminism was kind of a theme this year. Both because I ran into a lot of bizarrely sexist sixties stuff and because I tried reading a couple of more explicitly feminist essays/books at a friend’s recommendation. It was ok, I suppose, but I don’t think it’s my thing.

The best/worst thing is, of course, completely based on my personal enjoyment of these books and nothing else.

Worst

5.Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier

This wasn’t so much a bad book as a complete mismatch for my reading tastes. I ended up DNFing it fairly early on because I realised I was going to hate it.

4.Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I had high expectations for this book and it lived up to almost none of them. Yes, burning books bad, we get it. Very flat characters, a prose that drove me up the walls and a premise that was interesting enough for about 5 minutes.

3.Dragonflight by Anne McCaffrey

Another colossal disappointment. This one hurts especially because I’d looked forward to it for so long. The story seemed interesting enough at surface level, but I couldn’t stand the characters or the writing. DNF’d

2.The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

LOTR for kids too young or too dumb to read LOTR, I guess. Or LOTR with all the interesting bits taken out and all the great characters replaced by whiny 12 year olds. The only reason I finished this at all was because it was so short. Wanted to strangle those stupid kids.

1.The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I hated this thing so much. I wrote a pretty detailed rant as to why when I decided to DNF it, but in a nutshell I detest the way it’s written. To quote myself:

“It’s just a jumbled mess of unnecessary metaphors and similes and puttogetherwords and Unnecessary Capitalization and (parenthesis) that drove me completely up the wall.”

It just stinks of r/iamverysmart and I couldn’t stand it. Doesn’t help that the prose was so annoying I could barely make out the characters and the plot through it.

Best

I’m doing 8 of these, because I can.

8.The Satyricon by Petronius

I had so much fun reading this. It’s ridiculous, it’s insane, it’s debauched, it makes me want to cook decadent roman food, and I had a great time.

7.The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula le Guin

Very different from the previous Earthsea book, but I loved the atmosphere in this, its characters and the fairly simple story.

6.Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart

Another one that was just fun to read. It’s a sort of fairytale adventure that has us running through ancient China. It’s sometimes silly, sometimes touching, and I quite liked how it ended.

5.Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

I read this at one of my lowest points in the year, and thank goodness I did. It’s quiet, relaxing, the story and characters are easy to follow and their kindness and compassion was just something I needed at that time.

4.The Shadow of the Wind/La sombra del viento by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Another great fun read. Not usually my genre, but I got completely sucked into the story and its characters. Reading it in the original was also definitely worth the effort.

3.O Gato Malhado e a Andorinha Sinhá by Jorge Amado

I’m embarrassed that it took me this long to read this. @ my fifth grade portuguese teacher: fine, you win, it’s really good

Mind you, I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it nearly as much back then, but I’m glad I’ve read it now. Jorge Amado’s writing is just too pretty.

2.Anna Karenina by Lev Tolstoy

I’d been meaning to read this for a while, but let’s face it, it was peer pressure that finally did it (thanks @frederick-the-great).

And of course I loved it. I do think I still prefer W&P, but there’s something about the way Tolstoy writes his characters that resonates SO MUCH with me and I’m left in awe every single time.

1.Novos Contos da Montanha by Miguel Torga

I didn’t expect this to be my favorite book of the year, but thinking on it, yeah, it definitely is. It’s a collection of short stories set in rural Portugal. Most of them are fairly dark, but in a way that feels meaningful, and not grimdark, if that makes sense. Some are also quite beautiful and uplifting. I remembered reading Torga when I was younger and liking his writing, but looking at it now, I definitely need more Torga in my life.

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’: Rebuttal Part 1: Introduction

Master Post

Back in 2012 I read a very interesting book called ‘Webslinger: Unauthorized Essays on your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’. 

As the title suggests it was an anthology book made up of several different essays about Spidey (and edited by Gerry Conway himself).

The essays are an interesting read, though there are questionable points made and some inaccuracies. 

Today though I’d like to debunk some points made in the essay titled ‘The Absent Father and Spider-Man’s Unfulfilled Potential’.

The reason for my desire to debunk parts of this essay is partially due to my inherent instinct to debunk problematic or misinformed stuff surrounding Spider-Man generally. However it’s also partially due to the author, J.R. Fettinger.

Fettinger is the creator and author of the essays found on ‘Spideykicksbutt.com’ and a regular panellist on the Spider-Man Crawlspace podcast. I respect both and the content they provide though there have been times I’ve disagreed with both and other times where quite frankly I think they’ve put forward statements that are outright wrong.

Fettinger and his work was the inspiration to an extent for me even choosing to write so much about Spider-Man, helped bring me back into fandom and his work helped me reconcile some things that I had felt made me an uninformed minority within fandom.

However, there have been times, more and more as the years move forward, wherein my eyes have narrowed at Fettinger’s statements regarding Spider-Man.

He once said something to the effect of ‘alcoholics are just stupid people doing stupid things through no fault but their own’.

He has repeatedly attested that it is morally wrong for Spider-Man and Batman to not simply murder characters like Joker or Carnage.

He has said that Otto’s actions towards Peter in Superior Spider-Man render him the worst enemy Peter has. This is in spite of him being a huge Norman Osborn fan.

He has essentially stated criminal killers like Shriek or Vermin (who suffer from severe mental disorders) deserve no sympathy.

He has said Kraven’s Last Hunt was flawed (to put it more delicately than he did) because Peter ‘never settled his score’ with Kraven.

He has even said that whenever DeMatteis gets into the psychological aspects of the characters he ‘goes off the deep-end’.

These views are most especially chronicled in his on-going segment of the podcast ‘Spider-History’ wherein he takes a month’s worth of (usually 616 Peter Parker) Spider-Man comics from a bygone month decades ago, recaps them and analyses the stories.

However, what is so frustrating to me about these segments as time has gone by is that Fettinger is overly critical and incredibly cynical. He has put forward his opinions as fact with little analysis or consideration of an alternative point of view.

To be blunt with relatively few exceptions he surmises each month in this section as mediocre-bad unless it contained something by Marv Wolfman or Roger Stern, two of his personal favourite runs.

Even then he puts across reductive summaries of the events of the book, in particular phrasing things to make certain characters (like Spider-Man himself) come across as worse than they actually are in the stories in question.

This is particularly a problem in my view because Fettinger’s status as a long read, knowledgeable and analytical fan confers onto him a certain degree of authority in regards to his statements about Spider-Man.

And you know what? It should.

He really does know A LOT about Spider-Man and he has made some incredible assessments about stories and characters related to the wall-crawler.

I cannot recommend you check out his website Spideykicksbutt enough.

But here is the thing...I do not advocate blind trust in his word, or anyone’s for that matter. Not even my own. I know A LOT about Spider-Man but I’m far from infallible.

Think for yourselves, do your own research, present your own arguments and counterpoints.

It’s what I do and why Fettinger frustrates me. Because he’s so belligerent to changing his views, most of which are adamantly cynical and judgemental.

Some people I’ve spoken to about this attribute this to his age. Most of his writing and podcast work has been produced when he was in his 40s or 50s.

It is often said that everyone becomes more cynical, grumpier and more stuck in their ways as they age.

I disagree with that in so far as not everyone becomes like that. And 40-60 is not a point when you are ‘done’ becoming who you are going to be and beyond changing.

It is the prerogative of old men to speak their minds but the WISE men are not adverse to changing them.

This is the root of my problems with Fettinger and his cynicism. Not to mention, I find cynicism simply lazy and foolish under most circumstances. Much as I find Fettinger’s ‘kill all criminals’ mentality to crime to be lazy and foolish.

These thoughts struck me when I re-read his essay from Webslinger. I read the essay upon first discovering his work but I apparently have changed in 6 years as I find much of it ill-considered, cynical, judgemental and problem riddled.

Hence my desire now to debunk it.

The gist of the essay is Fettinger talking about how Spider-Man has lots of unfulfilled potential and attributing this to the loss of his father figure Uncle Ben. He goes on to list off different father figures Peter has had and what the end result of their roles in his life might have been. For context this was written around the time of Civil War 2006.

My first and probably biggest bone of contention lies in how Fettinger frames Peter’s ‘unfulfilled potential’.

It’s here where you start to see his overly cynical and judgemental side.

I will not quote him word for word here because it’d take too long. But early on he writes that Spider-Man’s powers come at the price of his happiness, peace of mind and the normalcy that we all take for granted.

This is partially true but still misinformed.

Peter’s mind is most definitely not peaceful most of the time and his life not normal. But there is that key phrase ‘most of the time’. Not all of the time.

Even during his career Peter has had several moments of grace. Most of the stories transpiring in the immediate aftermath of Mary Jane’s return to his life in ASM v2 #50 come to mind issue #51 even calls out that nothing bad has really happened to get in the way of Peter and MJ’s reconciliation.

This oversight is particularly egregious since that period had only been a few years before the writing of this essay.

But it’s not as egregious as the other thing Fettinger said. That being Spider-Man has cost Peter his happiness.

Er....no.

There have been many things that have made Peter unhappy in the course of his superhero career but as ASM #500 clearly confirmed for us Peter, in spite of all that, is  ultimately happy. Which was a big deal as Peter had just relived all his old battles at once.

The omission of ASM #500’s ending is telling because Fettinger actively dislikes the story and the scene with Uncle Ben particularly. He’s labelled it as ‘banal’ and essentially said if he could talk with his own deceased father the conversation would’ve gone very differently. Problem is the the story was not about him and his family but about Spider-Man and HIS family!

Fettinger then asks if when Peter dies he’d be labelled as someone who fell short of his potential. He illustrates the point by comparing 15 year old Spider-Man to adult Spider-Man circa 2006.

He claims Peter made few adjustments to his fighting skills. Not true. The older Spider-Man beyond the Silver Age did in fact adjust some of his fighting skills, noticeably in regards to ramping up his speed during combat.

He also took martial arts lessons from Captain America in FNSM v1 #1, putting the techniques he learned from that into practice in the very same issue. That issue was published just a year before Fettinger’s essay by the way.

Granted these do not seem particularly significant.

But let’s flip the script a little bit. Let us presume Fettinger to be correct, Spider-Man between 1962-2006 had never evolved his fighting style significantly.

Is that really   an example of Peter doing himself a disservice, of not fulfilling his full potential...or is it that the fighting style he had was not only adequate for the life he lived but in fact optimum?

Spider-Man after all has an incredibly effective and sophisticated fighting style. It is impossible to truly replicate by anyone exempting those of similar powersets to himself.

His immense strength allows him to plant himself on the ground and exchange simple punches, kicks, etc. with a lot of power behind them.

But with more room to manoeuvre his speed, wall crawling, web-slinging and agility allows him to augment that raw power to deliver a lot of hits in a short space of time from a near 360 degree axis. See his battle with Firelord above)for proof of this. 

His webs can be used concussively, to distract, to incapacitate and can even act as a defensive shield.

(I know the Spider-Girl image isn’t 616 but it might as well be if you know the contex behind the story) 

And then there is his ace in the hole, the Spider Sense. This ability is linked to his reflexes and intuitively enables him to know an attack is coming. It almost automatically makes him adjust his movements accordingly in conjunction with his immense reaction speed and agility.

This fighting style had been enabling him to defeat a wide variety of foes across what was then 44 years of published stories.

So was it really that Peter was slacking off in not evolving it? Or was it more that he early on developed something extremely effective that didn’t need any real reinvention?

Moreover isn’t it impressive (rather than a point of condemnation) that Spider-Man essentially figured out the best way to fight with zero instruction or training when he was just a teenager. That’s incredible so it’s far from something to chastise him for simply because he hadn’t radically altered it.

What’s worse is Fettinger claimed that Peter ‘continued’ to rely upon sheer strength, raw intelligence, dumb luck and the stupidity/lack of imagination of his foes to win the day.

Let’s put aside for the moment how Peter has whipped up gadgets or chemicals when needs be.

Let’s also ignore how his foes even upon trying new tricks have more often than not met with defeat anyway.

Let’s also entertain the idea that Peter truly does rely upon his foes stupidity and dumb luck in battle. Let’s do that even though he absolutely doesn’t, he’s very rarely just presumed he can win because a villain is dumb, but he has exploited that fact when presented with it; see 99% of Rhino fights. Hell let’s even ignore how Spider-Man uses his speed, and agility and webbing and spider sense in battle as much as his strength.

What exactly is Spider-Man supposed   to rely on besides  his sheer strength and raw intelligence?

Fettinger is calling Spidey out for relying upon his raw physical powers and his intelligence.

Like...what is an MMA or boxer supposed to rely on besides their muscle and their mind to strategize before and after a fight?

Fettinger continues to point out that exempting his Iron Spider outfit or his alien costume Peter has continued to rely on his ‘wash n’ wear red and blue pajamas’.

There are two waysto view this statement. Either Fettinger is being critical that Spider-Man has not opted to alter his costume aesthetically ever or else never opted to alter it in terms of being functional. That is to say it’s still just a piece of cheap cloth.

Both arguments are invalid criticisms.

Peter has changed his look more than once throughout the years, noticeably he wore a cloth version of his black suit, used two rubber insulated outfits to fight Electro, made an armoured costume in Web of Spider-Man #100 and used four different costumes when he adopted four new identities for himself, all of which were used for different functions.

The black costume however served no function beyond enhanced stealth and Peter retired it due to him and his wife not liking how it reminded them of Venom, a notorious publically known homicidal maniac.

The Armoured suit was only created with access to ESU’s scientific resources, was destroyed on its first mission and realistically was compromising to Spidey’s fighting skills (hence Slott’s version was redesigned). It was also impractical as it was composed of a new hardened version of Peter’s webbing meaning it was never going to last anyway.

His rubber suits were similarly impractical for continual use and severely damaged during battles with Electro. They could not be worn as casually as his standard suit, realistically would’ve impeded mobility to a certain extent and were designed for one specific foe anyway. In fact Spidey usually ran into Electro by chance or else with limited time to intervene in his crimes. Meaning he’d not have the time to locate the rubber suit anyway. Besides...he usually managed to beat Electro without it anyway. After all rubber gloves would be a fairly effective defence and his webbing was itself an insulator. That was his go to in Electro’s debut in ASM v1 #9 and brought up in New Avengers v1 #4.

True Spider-Man trashed his original rubber suit for seemingly no good reason, but since this so aggressively makes no sense I think it’d be safe to presume Peter’s rationale was that the suit itself was ineffective (it didn’t provide full insulation) and was literally held together by glue. The suit was likely unusable after the battle hence why Spidey trashed it.

The four new identities he created though are the hardest to defend. It really doesn’t make much sense for him to have retired those identities beyond the simple fact that, well...the book is called Spider-Man not Hornet/Ricochet/Dusk/Prodigy. I suppose you could go so far as to say pretending to be other people and not using his web-shooters compromised his fighting abilities as he had to consciously move and talk differently as well as use different weapons and tactics. Also maybe he heard about how well multiple alter egos went for Moon Knight. The costumes were to be fair stolen from him and used by other people meaning he’d have had to come up with entirely new identities for himself and ultimately Peter would prefer being Spider-Man having come to see it (for all it’s burdens) as part of who he is.

So contrary to Fettinger’s criticisms, Peter HAS changed his costume, but from a practical/functional point of view there really is little reason for him to permanently make any changes. Or else when he has done so extenuating factors have compromised his attempts.

Meaning all that’s left is Fettinger’s complaint that Spidey never changed the outward aesthetic. Which is not a legitimate complaint about his ‘unfulfilled’ potential. I’ve kept the same posters in my room for many, many years. It doesn’t mean I’ve failed in my potential. It just means I can’t be bothered to change them/I have grown attached to them.

Fettinger continues his train of thought by talking about how Spider-Man’s webbing and web-shooters have not significantly changed since his early days barring his adoption of organic webbing.

I will give Fettinger some leeway here. He never said the webbing/webshooters have remained totally unchanged, just that they’ve mostly remained unchanged. So stuff like Peter equipping a spider tracer trigger to his web-shooters, sedative stingers, impact webbing, an LED light to tell him when he’s low on ammo and adjusting the design and formula of the webbing over time I am lumping all under ‘mostly not changed’.

Even though objectively by 2006 the web-shooters had changed.

But again why does this demonstrate unfulfilled potential?

Spider-Man’s web-shooters are a brilliant feat of scientific engineering/chemistry and have served him well across the decades.

They didn’t need to be radically re-invented.

True, Ben Reilly found ways to improve upon them which Peter later incorporated. Does this not prove Peter was slacking off, of failing to live up to his potential?

Yes and no.

Yes because there WERE improvements he could have made.

But no because Ben had access to Seward Trainer’s scientific resources, less social responsibilities, a lot more time on his hands and was in many ways far less stressed out. As such he was better able to spend time dreaming up those improvements.

Said improvements by the way equated to wearing the web-shooters on the outside of the wrists, sedative stingers and impact webbing and he had FIVE years to dream all that up.

So you know...hardly him re-inventing the wheel.

The truth is if Peter had been in a similar position to Ben, he would’ve likely dreamed up the same improvements.

But he evidently didn’t need to since the web-shooters worked just fine. Ben himself didn’t spam the stingers or impact webbing during his career as Scarlet Spider or Spider-Man. Nor did Peter in the years after he integrated most of Ben’s adjustments into his own web-shooters.

And he did just fine most of the time.

Any further upgrading to his web-shooters, like the kind we saw in Parker Industries, would’ve required access to resources Peter simply didn’t have.

Fettinger continues that Peter’s relationship with the public he serves is tenuous at best.

Again, this is not an example of unfulfilled potential. This is the result of Spider-Man’s reputation being slandered by Jameson and the wider press getting in on the act. This was proven in ASM v2 #39 wherein Aunt May, decades after Spidey began his heroic career, attempted to find a newspaper that didn’t  have a negative bias towards her nephew and struggled to do so.

In New Avengers v1 #15 the Avengers attempt to win Jameson over due to Spider-Man’s involvement with the team only for him to turn on the team collectively.

Combine that with:

 a)     The numerous times Spider-Man has been framed for crimes he was guiltless of

Or

b)     The instances where he was deliberately painted in a negative light, such as when he assaulted a seemingly innocent Norman Osborn in Spectacular Spider-Man #250

 And it was summarily not  Spider-Man’s fault that in his 15 year history his public relations had never been great. Nor was it a negative reflection upon him that he’d been unable to improve them in that time

The public have been fed a particularly strong and buzz worthy narrative for so long that it’d be difficult for him to ever rehabilitate his public reputation without working for the authorities legitimately, being pardoned for any real/perceived crimes he’s been accused of and unmasking publically. Even then it’d be no guarantee.

Not to mention (though Fettinger could be forgiven for not taking this into account from a 2006 perspective) in the world we live in today it’s sadly apparent that news stories about how bad  things are simply sell much more than stories about something positive.

Fettinger continues to say that in spite of Spider-Man’s dalliances with team membership his stubborn independence and feelings of inadequacies ensure he remains a loner and at times a fugitive with many heroes regarding him as poorly as the villains he fights.

This for me was possibly the greatest ‘what the fuck’ moment in this essay.

Stubborn independence. Okay, maybe? Although the message of his role in the then current ‘Civil War’ storyline was that surrendering his independence was a bad thing! By unmasking, surrendering some of his independence to Iron Man and working for the government Peter found himself in an inevitable position. He was trapped from doing the most good by a corrupt system. A system that was actively demanding he help do bad things by rounding up fellow heroes and removing their civil liberties. And in the process he made his friends, family, colleagues, students and general acquaintances targets!

Fettinger didn’t know this at the time, but in truth when you follow the chain of events, joining the Avengers is what led to One More Day.

If Peter hadn’t joined the Avengers and let them know his identity, Charlie Wiederman wouldn’t have gotten approval for his experiments from Iron Man.

If he hadn’t performed his experiments he’d have never become a freak.

If he hadn’t become a freak he wouldn’t have eventually burned down the Parkers’ homes.

If they hadn’t been homeless Iron Man wouldn’t have offered them Avengers HQ to stay at.

If they hadn’t been living there Tony wouldn’t have taken Peter under his wing.

If Tony hadn’t done that, if the Parkers weren’t beholden to him for the roof over their heads and if Tony didn’t know who Peter was, there’d have never been an issue about Peter unmasking publicly in support of the Super Human Registration Act.

If Peter hadn’t unmasked publicly Kingpin wouldn’t have put a hit out on his family.

If Kingpin hadn’t put the hit out Aunt May would never have been critically injured.

If Aunt May hadn’t been critically injured there’d have been no need for a deal with Mephisto to save her life.

Joining a team led to one of Spider-Man’s darkest hours and ultimately his greatest defeat.

So you know…maybe there is something to be said for ‘stubborn independence’.

Moving on…feelings of inadequacy? That’s heavily debatable. Again, see ASM #500. Peter was an ultimately happy person. He had a firm sense of pride throughout his life as much as he’d beat himself up. His inadequacies always came in the form of ‘I could/should have done more to help’.

Typically inadequacies manifest as ‘I’m just not worth it’. Even if you disagree and argue they are more like ‘I’m not good enough’ the context is still different. Whenever someone laments ‘not being good enough’, it’s almost always coming from a selfish mindset. Peter in AF #15 was frustrated about his inadequacies before going off on a power trip. But the older Peter’s frustrations were about his inability to do more for others! Superficially they might be called the same thing, but the internal psychology behind them is very different. Fettinger is attributing the former mindset to the latter iteration of the character.

It didn’t even really apply in the early years of the character. After all his problem in ASM #1 when he tried joining the Fantastic Four was about being too cocky (understandable given his age and experience as a performer) than about feeling himself to be somehow ‘not good enough’ for the team.

But then you get to the part here Fettinger claims these inadequacies and independent streak ensure Peter will at times be viewed as a fugitive. And that’s the point where I began to question near damn everything Fettinger has ever said about the character.

That’s not about Peter.

That’s the result of Jameson and super villains. If he wasn’t so independent or felt so ‘inadequate’ then I fail to see how that’d change his situation beyond other heroes disbelieving the news and vouching for him. But his various friends in the superhero community for many years never fully believed such slander anyway, especially since some of them had been victims of similar stuff themselves.

For instance, circa 1996 (let alone 2006) I find it fundamentally unbelievable that Daredevil or the Human Torch of all people would ever honestly entertain the idea that Spider-Man simply assaulted an innocent man in Spec #250 or (beginning in Peter Parker: Spider-Man #88) that he actually murdered low rent thug Joey Z (a crime Osborn framed him for).

More mind boggling though is Fettinger’s assertion that Spider-Man was (and always had been) a loner precisely due to his independence and inadequacy. This is utterly inaccurate because by 2006 Spider-Man was (to much consternation within the fandom) a member of the Avengers!

He’d been one for 1-2 years at the time of this essay’s writing and it’d been a MASSIVE deal. With hindsight we know that to some extent Spider-Man more or less held some form of Avenger’s status up until 2019, around 15 years after he first joined.

The idea of Spidey always being a loner was also aggressively contradicted by Spectacular Spider-Man #75-100. In those issues Peter and his girlfriend the Black Cat formed a crime fighting partnership. Yes they were lovers but the point is Peter was more than capable of accepting an on-going team arrangement. True their team fell apart with the end of their romance, but that had little to do with his independence or his feelings of inadequacy. Peter broke up with Felicia because she’d lied to him and didn’t value him beyond his Spider-Man identity.

That doesn’t touch on his independence at all and more importantly is an example of Peter doing something because he had too much self-respect to continue to be with someone who didn’t value him properly. Which is the opposite  of things failing because he had issues of inadequacy.

Heck Spidey at one point tried to form his own superhero team, the Outlaws.

What’s worse is that Fettinger himself wrote a detailed essay about Spidey’s history as a team player.

I’ll leave it there for now. We’ll continue covering the introduction next time.

Master Post

[shalebridge-cradle]

Bisclavret Round-Up

Unholy took about three months to write. Fairy Tale took five. Hindsight took six.

Bisclavret took nineteen, and that should be the biggest indicator to you that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

This was my first venture into another fandom, and out of my comfort zone (though not entirely – supernatural elements for life). I’m not sure whether or not I did the source material and its characters justice, however, especially with the supernatural element I went with (Wolves are believed to have gone extinct in England in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century), but I will try to explain my reasoning behind some of my decisions here.

The Characters

My main concern.

We get a good view of Monty’s thought process throughout the show, through the framing device of writing his memoirs and views of his private affairs. Phoebe and Sibella, on the other hand, are characters we don’t get much of in the way of examination – we only see them through Monty’s eyes until the very end, where they reveal themselves as more than that.

Sibella is a bit self-centred, and extremely practical when it comes to how she sees her place in society, which implies some self-confidence issues. Phoebe is more idealistic, and independent, but still hopes for a match fit for a storybook. But, towards the end, Sibella demonstrates she is more than a vain god-digger, afraid of losing the man she loves and willing to potentially compromise her image to save him, while Phoebe shows that she is not nearly as innocent or naive as the people around her consider her to be.

I interpreted the two women’s characterisations as thus; Sibella believes she is bound by society’s view of her. Phoebe does not. This, I believed, needed to be the focus.

Which is where we introduce…

The Whole Werewolf Thing

“[Post-modern Gothic] warns us to be suspicious of monster hunters, monster makers, and above all, discourses invested in purity and innocence. The monster always represents the disruption of categories, the destruction of boundaries, and the presence of impurities and so we need monsters and we need to recognize and celebrate our own monstrosities.”  - J Halberstam, Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters

I gave a number of possible causes of the D’Ysquith ‘family curse’, if it is one – the actions of the first countess, Gregory D’Ysquith burning down a monastery (divine punishment is a possible cause), but I never gave a specific answer. I think I might be operating on the logic of the original Bisclavret – it’s irrelevant.

The reason there isn’t is because I intended it as a metaphor – which I think I’ve made clear with my chapter updates here (though you don’t have to read it that way, Death of the Author and all that), but I never quite decided and what it was a metaphor for. In terms of this particular narrative, it can be read as a metaphor for feminism, and/or a metaphor for same-sex attraction.

Feminism

Edwardian Era England, where A Gentleman’s Guide takes place, is not overly-represented in fiction. Not surprising, considering it’s a pretty short time period between the surprisingly long Victorian era and the world-changing events of World War One. However, when you think of that time period, a certain group tends to come to mind – the suffragettes.

(Just a note. Agatha D’Ascoyne, the character from Kind Hearts and Coronets who inspired Hyacinth D’Ysquith in the musical, was a suffragette. She has no lines, apart from “Shush!” – Deeds, Not Words.)

We know what these people wanted – Votes for Women. They were not prepared to wait for society to change to get it, and when peaceful protest was ignored, they began to act out. They refused to fit into their role of quiet, demure, loyal wives, and for some groups, this was seen as threatening. Anti-suffragette cartoons of the time often depicted these women as old, ugly and/or selfish for wanting similar rights to men instead of accepting their place as a ‘lesser being’.

The point I am trying to make is, being in defiance of the role you are expected to play – which Sibella is afraid to show – was seen by many to be ugly. Beastly.

Phoebe runs Henry’s country estate for him. Phoebe flaunts societal expectations by proposing to Monty, instead of waiting for him to propose, the ‘proper’ way to do things. While she is feminine, she does not fit the idea of what a woman ‘should be’.

Sibella makes a point to meet her obligations as a wife, though she does surreptitiously carry on an affair. She sacrifices her own happiness to get what she wants in a socially acceptable way. She has no intention of leaving Lionel in the source material, but she convinces herself that a rich, good-looking, polite man – what society thinks of as the ideal male – is what she wants, and realises on her wedding day that it isn’t.

And goes through with it anyway.

When she can no longer fit that mould, when she refuses to go along with Lionel’s plan to leech off the countess, when she undermines and argues with her husband, that’s when things start happening. Indeed, her ‘beastly’ outbursts manifest as standing up for herself. She ends the story as a much happier and self-assured person than she was at the beginning, and attempts to bring justice to other women.

Same-Sex Attraction

This is a bit more straightforward. We’re coming right off the back of the Victorian era here, where Oscar Wilde and others like him got their lives ruined. Same-sex relationships aren’t viewed in a positive light at all at this time – you like the same gender? Off to prison with you, deviant!

As people that were (and often still are) villainised, misunderstood and attacked for the crime of existing, some members of the LGBT community reclaim monsters such as vampires, werewolves and the Babadook as their own as a means of subverting their image in a heteronormative society. Being ‘monstrous’ is not bad. Being different is fine. You may feel malformed and wrong, but you are not. You and your quirks are accepted.

For some, the ones to fear are those who appear in the daylight.

Sibella, for all her talk of being a monster, only fights back when threatened. Morton has a heart attack when put in the position of his victims, subverting the formula he’s used to. Lionel, fearing that Sibella will leave him and damage his image, resorts to violence against Sibella and several other women he sees as substitutes for her. Mary attempts to murder Sibella for getting in the way of a monogamous man-woman relationship. In her eyes, Sibella is an irredeemable villain, but Phoebe can be ‘fixed’.

If you want to look deeper into this link between horror and the LGBT community, here’s a video essay discussing gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender representation in horror films.

There are only a few non-metaphorical references to werewolves. The wolf head in Eugenia’s dower house is a family member – as previously mentioned, wolves went extinct in England during the reign of Henry VII. St Hubert’s Key is a charm that more often than not looks like a nail, and was supposed to be able to rid the body of disease caused by a dog or wolf bite. There is some science behind this – the metal was heated before being pressed to the wound, and, if the subject was at risk of contracting rabies from the injury, the heat would likely sterilise and cauterise the potential infection site.

Not the First Murder-y Heir

There are a couple of characters named or directly taken from Israel Rank – Autobiography of a Criminal, the inspiration for Kind Hearts and Coronets and A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. I’ve compared these works before, so I’ll just go over those that appear here.

Esther (Lane) – The third object of Israel Rank’s affections, and a governess. Knows more than she’s letting on in Israel Rank, and in this story as well.

James “Jim” Morton – Appears for about a page to explain Israel’s disillusionment with the ideal male – while Morton seems great to some, he really isn’t. Since Jim only appears as a child in the book, his characterisation here is drastically different.

Lord and Lady Pebworth – Almost directly lifted from the book, with Lady Pebworth being a bad singer and Lord Pebworth an older gentleman who lets his wife get away with a lot. The difference here is that Israel introduces the Hollands to the Pebworths, while the Pebworths are hoping the Hollands introduce them to Lord and Lady Navarro.

Sir Anthony Cross – Quiet, very well-off, slightly older gentleman who is quite taken by Sibella, but it doesn’t go anywhere. Acquaintance of the Pebworths. Pretty much the same guy.

Ethel D’Ysquith (Gascoyne) – An ancestor Israel is quite taken with, not only due to the resemblance between the two. He’s made the 3rd Earl of Highhurst because I didn’t feel like making an imaginary preceding title (Monty is only the 9th Earl, while the 10th Earl Gascoyne is about five generations before Israel – Ethel was the 6th Earl) and the 2nd Earl, Roland, had already been named in the musical. Phoebe’s description of him is meant to heavily imply he was also a werewolf. If I had read the book before fleshing out the D’Ysquith family tree, he would have taken the role that the first countess plays in the narrative’s events (Ethel Gascoyne hid in a tower with an Italian magician for 20 years).

Kate Falconer – The character who would later be known as ‘Boat Girl’ in Kind Hearts and Coronets and Evangeline Barley in A Gentleman’s Guide. Her great crime is to go on holiday with her boyfriend, and gets poisoned for her troubles. She survives here, and I used her to try a formatting technique (while she speaks, none of her dialogue is in quotes: in a way, she is voiceless).

(Sir) Cheveley Drummond, (Lady) Enid Branksome, and Catherine Goodsall – only mentioned briefly. Drummond is described as handsome and ‘interesting’ by Israel, Lady Enid is a young woman from a penniless but aristocratic family, and Catherine Goodsall in an actress whose abusive husband was beaten so badly by a Gascoyne he joined the navy and never came back to land.

In addition, Lionel’s later characterisation comes directly from Kind Hearts and Coronets, since he gets  almost none in the musical. His breakdown in Chapter 11 follows his emotional journey when asking for a loan – affability, begging, threatening suicide, insults and physical violence.

Literary References:

Not always relevant, but there is a wide enough variety that I’m collecting them.

Every chapter title, and the tagline of the work, comes from Manners and Social Usages by Mary Elizabeth (Mrs. John) Sherwood. It’s a bit out of date by the time of this story (written in 1884), but Sherwood does have some great phrases in her etiquette handbook.

Ruddigore is mentioned in chapter 2, only because it is a musical theatre production (opera) where ancestors play a role and family expectations are subverted.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. Hamlet. It’s Hamlet.

When in the chronicle of wasted time, I see descriptions of the fairest wights, and beauty making beautiful old rhyme in praise of ladies dead, and lovely knights...  Shakespeare’s Sonnets, Number 106.

I desire, and I crave… Fragment from Sappho’s poetry.

The countess closes her book; something by a George Reynolds. George W. M. Reynolds wrote Wagner the Wher-Wolf (with that spelling) in 1857.

I met a lady in the meads, full beautiful, a faery’s child: Her hair was long, her foot was light, and her eyes were wild. La Belle Dame sans Merci (The beautiful lady without mercy) by John Keats.

Sibella also briefly mentions Algernon Blackwood, a supernatural fiction writer who wrote a short story about a werewolf (portrayed quite differently here) that a character in 1909 could have possibly read (the story was first published in 1908).

In addition, the whole story is named after a very early depiction of a sympathetic werewolf, Bisclavret by Marie de France (and the most direct I think I’ve ever been with a title). It depicts, naturally, a werewolf (who is also a knight, because not being human doesn’t disqualify you from doing that – cutting social commentary for the 12th century) who is trapped in his wolf form after being tricked by his wife and her lover. Through chivalric behaviour to the king on a hunt, he works himself back into the royal court and, when his former wife pays a visit, bites off her nose. The king thinks the sudden aggressive behaviour from his pet prompts further investigation, the wife reveals all, and the knight is restored to human form. Also, all of the wife’s children are born without noses from then on. Lionel getting his nose bitten off is a reference to this poem.

Uncategorised Trivia

This work was written with the UK spellings of certain words, because it takes place in England. Previous works all took place in the US, and so used US spelling.

Les Patineurs Valse is French for The Skater’s Waltz. Reference to Asquith Jr. and Evangeline Barley.

All of the racehorse names Sibella finds are either variations, anagrams or synonyms of actual racehorses in the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Sir Hugh is Sir Huon, Gil Owen is Neil Gow, Irish Lass is Irish Lad, Supervision is Oversight and Pinnacle is Meridian.

Lionel was right to be concerned about Phoebe’s flower arrangement. Red begonias represent love, lavender-coloured heathers represent admiration and loneliness (and are a reference to another fandom I write for), tuberoses are symbolic of wild or forbidden passion (and was commonly used as a funeral flower), and verbena is reference to romance and sweet memories. The dead foliage is meant to mean sadness. Overall, the intended meaning is I miss you, my love.

[kachulein]

Got tagged by @ultkyu to answer some questions! Thank you dear, I'm so excited for this~🥺💞

1. If you were an animal, what animal would you be and why?

× I'd be a cat, 100%. Cats are my love and my life, I've always wanted to be one, tbh (not in a furry type of way, but I feel like life would be easier if I was a cat, lmao). I love how cats take no shit and do whatever they want. They're very independent and individual and I'm all here for that.

2. What two anime characters or kpop idols are your type?

× Can I do both anime characters and kpop idols??

× As for anime characters, Jaeha from Akatsuki no Yona and Kirito from Sword Art Online are totally my type!!😍

× And in terms of kpop idols... omg,, how am I supposed to *only* name two?? Hmm, thinking about it, I guess not all of my biases are my "type" per se... but there's two that come to mind right now hhhh. One of them is Kevin Moon from The Boyz, he really ticks off (almost) every bullet point in my list for my "ideal type" and honestly, this list is freaking contradictory and has vvv high standards but Kevin is THAT boi, basically my imaginative ideal boyfriend personified. :') And the second one who I'd say is totally my type is Hwang Hyunjin from Stray Kids. I've always loved drawing him the most of all kpop idols and I still do tbh (but I can't fill my feed on my insta art account with JUST Hyunjin drawings,, you know,,,). His fashion!! I'm so here for it and vibe with it so well. Plus,,,idk,,, I feel like I could connect to him in some ways so ajxjsjdjjs yeah. There's just something about him and Kevin that inspires me so much, I really love these two bois.

3. Are there any writers or artists (art or music) that inspire you? If so, list 5.

× YES. I decided to name a few artists because I realize I've never talked about the artists whose artworks inspire me the most. They're all on Instagram, so I'll be naming their @'s

a.) @/shooky_dough: I'm probably not the only one who knows Nikki, hehe, but her art is SO amazing. She's got this really distinct style which I'd put into the category of semirealism. Her kpop fanart is soooo good and I used her tutorials to learn how to get better at sketching. If you look at the sketches I've been posting for the past few months on my insta art account, you'll notice that they're highly inspires by Nikki's art. She's definitely the artist I'm looking at most in terms of inspiration and improving on my own art.^-^

b.) @/angelganev: His art is sooo pretty. He does semirealism and I've found him by browsing through pinterest to find some art inspiration/references/tutorials. He also does drawing contests in which his followers can draw one of his work he selects in their own style and he gives a shout out to the ones he liked best. It's always interesting!!

c.) @/melmadedooks: This man can draw about ANYTHING, he's so talented. He used to draw lots of his 'dooks' and I've found him through seeing some of his works on pinterest (again, lol). I've actually redrawn two of his 'dooks' and posted them to my art account AND HE LIKED BOTH OF THEM, I WAS SO HAPPY OMG!!! He used to draw his dooks using only one coloured pencil, so I've also started experimenting with that and instead of using a graphite pencil, I used coloured pencils for my sketches and those gave off very different vibes that I really liked!!

d.) @/rezajeez: Probably *the* kpop fanartist I've been following for the longest of times. They are AMAZING!! They mainly do huge photorealistic portraits with INSANE details. It's funny actually, because their work is the complete opposite to shooky_dough's work. While Reza draws photorealism on a big surface (probably A3? maybe more??) and draws very detailed, Nikki focuses more on sketches/more semirealistic and "simplistic" art and it's usually drawn quite small, so seeing these opposites really broadens my horizon, I think^^

e.) Last but nor least, @/rossdraws: In my opinion, he's the modern day Bob Ross! His art is so freaking stunning, have you checked out his digital art landscape series?? The amount of talent this man holds in his pinky finger is more than I've got in my whole body like- OOF a huge inspiration to me!!~

4. If you could play any instrument, which would you play?

× The guitar!! I really want to learn how to play it~

5. If you could choose one anime to live in, which one would you choose and why?

× Either Ouran High School Host Club or Your Lie In April. The first one is just so much fun and I'd love hanging out with the host club members and as for the latter,,, I just really want to be here for Kousei and help him through his anxiety because I know so well how it feels like and I also wish I could sing while he plays the piano, we'd be a great duo✊🏻😔 (I'm sorry, I couldn't choose one)

6. This is a bit of an old DeviantArt fic trend, but if you received an Android of your favourite character from any anime/show/etc., who would it be?

× Hmmm... that's a great question omg there's so many amazing choices I could make😭😭 But I think I'd go with Kirito, I just really really love him ahhhhh

7. Is there anything you would like to do but haven't because your friends/family didn't want to do it with you?

× There's actually a few things I could name... first, I really want to go bungee jumping (preferably from the Macau Tower, as it's the highest bungee jump in the world😍) but my fam and friends think I'm crazy for wanting to do this but I'm actually quite an adventurous person which probably not many people know about me, so I love doing stuff like that.✊🏻😂

× I would also really like to travel with friends... it's not that I dislike travelling with my mom and stepdad but whenever I can't take someone with me, I feel like such a child ??? idk,, never travelling (I wanted to say "without adults" but then I realized I AM an adult) on my own with friends and always tagging along with my parents kind of make me feel like I'm not independent or mature/grown-up for it. But I feel like none of my friends want to travel with me... most of them have a travel buddy already but I just... don't akdjsjs

× and last but not least, getting more specific, I really want to travel to Hawaii and South Korea, but so far, I haven't made it there yet :c

8. What's your favourite flower?

× Cherry Blossoms all the way💞 but all flowers are beautiful and I really like roses, too.

9. What are some of your hobbies?

× My hobbies include singing, drawing, dancing, writing, reading, researching astrology, studying Korean, watching youtube videos/netflix, listening to music and OF COURSE DAYDREAMING✊🏻😔

10. If you were going to be stranded on a deserted island with nothing but the clothes on your back and a bag, what would you put in the bag?

× I'd definitely put food and water in the bag, my phone, earphones, a portable solar charger with a USB cable (so that my phone won't die and I could chill for however long I want while watching kpop mv's and then also use my phone to call for someone to rescue me from this island once I start running low on resources), all the books I still want to read, my art supplies and a few sketch books, some towels that I could use to lay on or use as blankets, a pillow and my teddy bear, and obviously a toothbrush and toothpaste, a hairbrush and a few hair ties and bobby pins (you don't want long sweaty hair stuck to your skin during a hot summer ewww), some soap to wash myself and my clothes, sunscreen and also some insect spray to keep the bugs away!! (it's a big bag, okay)

~

Sorry for writing such an essay omg!!

Here are my 10 questions:

1. What compliment you've received meant the most to you?

2. Would you rather meet your favourite celebrity/group/bias and realize they're not at all how you imagined them to be like (maybe they're not as kind as you thought, for example) or never meeting them in person but it turning out that they're actually the amazing, kind, sweet, generous, etc. person that you thought they were? (I hope that makes sense hhhh I think the ethics of this question are really interesting)

3. What's your current favourite song you always use to get hyped up to or a song currently stuck in your head?

4. If you had to write the book of your life, what genre would it be and what would you choose as a title?

5. Name your top 5 musical artists and your favourite song of each of them?

6. If you were invited to a big humanitarian event and had to give a speech on a topic you'd want to bring about a huge change for the better, what topic would you choose to speak about and voice your opinions/ideas? (Assume public speaking is one of your strongest assets and you'll ace this no matter what)

7. What is something (a skill, personality trait, or something appearance related, it can be whatever) you wish you had and/or you really admire in other people?

8. What's your favourite anime/show/youtuber (you can answer whichever you got an answer for, it can be all three options of course :D)?

9. In kpop, are you more into vocalists, dancers, rappers, maknaes, leaders, or visuals (or maybe a mix of some/all :'))?

10. What's your most beautiful/favourite memory?

oof I hope these questions will be interesting to answer🥺 hmm, Imma tag @littlefallenrebel @jinniesmeow @softpastelmx @yeonki @hanstagrams @marculees @chrryjin and anyone else who'd like to do this~💞💞💞

[insufferable-know-it-all-blog]

A Ranking of the Gayest American Girl Dolls

When it comes to lesbian subtext in the American Girl series, there's so much to unpack. Today I'll be discussing the 6 girls I deem the gayest.

Honorable Mentions

Felicity

Tomboy and horse girl. Has a companion doll. She hates learning etiquette. The Jiggy Nye redemption arc in her series is better than Snape's redemption arc, in my opinion. You may think she’s gayer than an honorable mention, but I think her traits read as “see this is a good and interesting colonist! She’s not like other girls uwu” as opposed to gayness. I am open to debate on the matter.

Addy

Her stories are much higher stakes than most of the other dolls', so the most time we have for subtext comes in her short stories and in her relationship with her friend Sarah. For example: 

An enemies-to-lovers fic where Addy and Harriet are grown up could be veeeery interesting though.

Certified WLW (women-loving women)

6. Molly

Molly's lesbianism is more quantifiable than some of the other dolls. Some contributing factors are:

- bad at math

- lots of internalized self-loathing

- obsessed with her teacher Miss Campbell/daydreams about how pretty she is/snoops into her love life

- her OUTFITS

5. Josefina

Josefina Montoya is a Historical Doll (now called BeForever) from 1824 living in what would later become New Mexico. She's a soft girl with aspirations of becoming a healer. She's scared of goats and has a cool aunt, Tía Dolores.

Much of her stories revolve around adjusting to life after the death of her mother, and her relationship with Tía Dolores.

I don't want to gloss over this: there's a lot of discussion (in the stories and in the historical information at the back of each book) of colonialism and America's treatment of the west and those who live there.

There's also a fair amount of domestic tasks, playing music, and admiring flowers.

tldr; Josefina was the original cottagecore lesbian

4. Julie

If Molly's gayness isn't quite subtext, Julie's is canon. She's so lesbian-coded by way of lesbian stereotypes that I'm surprised a pride flag doesn't come with her accessories.

Julie petitions to join the boys basketball team, becomes an environmental activist, runs for student body president, and attends a Presidential debate. Her mom also has some very gay vibes, being a recently-divorced woman starting a career by opening a resale shop.

Julie lives in 1970s San Francisco and uses her privilege to lift up the voices of others and hold those in power accountable. Julie and her pet rabbit said gay rights.

3. Lindsey

Lindsey is the first Girl of the Year, released in 2001. She was also the first Jewish American Girl Doll. The title of the second chapter of her book is "What a Mess!" A mood. She’s not as well known so I’m going to fill you in a little bit more than with other dolls.

Lindsey is a flaming ball of chaos that ruins everything important to her family (according to herself.) Her story kicks off with her being disgusted to learn that her school is holding a "pet parade," which entails dressing pets up in human clothes and parading them around. She prepares a speech for her class to tell them off, but her teacher shuts her down. Lindsey doesn't take this well. She snatches an iguana and climbs up a tree in protest.

She plays the trumpet in her school band. One day she asks her band teacher if he has a girlfriend and she's very sad to learn he's single. How can he be happy without a woman to take care of him? Projecting much?

Lindsey also befriends a girl who is often bullied in school, cries in the bathroom (a gay ritual), and is told by her uncle, while dancing at her brother's bar mitzvah (post-Matzo ball food fight) that she is not a worm, and despite her chaos, is very loved.

Lindsey knows what she values and will throw food at your face or climb up a tree if you disrespect her. She also craves validation because she feels like a failure due to her unconventional approach to life. A lesbian icon in the making.

2. Kit

Kit spends six books telling you to fuck off with your gender roles, thank you very much. There's a lot of focus on Kit's life as a reporter and what her growing up during the depression will mean for her future expression of identity.

One part of her books that highlights Kit's relationship with gender roles and heteronormativity is when Ruthie reads fairy tales because she likes princesses, but Kit reads Robin Hood because she likes how he steals from the rich to give to the poor and tricks a sheriff. While Kit could become a case of "I'm not like other girls," I think this is avoided by her close friendship with Ruthie. She doesn't necessarily look down on traditional women's roles, she simply has other ambitions.

So yes, this part of her story is important, but what really sells it for me is her longing for adventure and her passion for baseball and Amelia Earhart.

Also? Her bomb outfits.

At one point, Kit gets anxious and hides under her porch. A lesbian oasis.

Kit is a practical and clever young lady with a bright future ahead of her. Keep up the great work, you icon.

1. Samantha

I have read, with my own two eyes, people calling Samantha a homophobe. Please.... I am so tired. Do not underestimate her like that. Let's dive in to the biggest lesbian of the bunch: Samantha Parkington.

Okay so first of all her series begins with her falling out of a tree and sassing her sexist Grandmary. From there, she grows close to Cornelia, her Uncle's girlfriend, who is involved in the fight for women's rights in the city. Samantha is heavily influenced by her and through the books, develops many of the same opinions.

When an Irish girl (Nellie) moves in next door to become a servant to Eddie Ryland's family, Samantha befriends her and teaches her to read. She never speaks down to Nellie or looks at herself as a savior, she just acts on what she thinks is right. The "Looking Back" sections of Samantha's books cover topics like social progress for women, the wealth gap, the treatment of servants, and the disparity in education between classes.

While Samantha follows in Cornelia's path, she also forms her own ideas. For instance: Samantha wins an essay contest with her essay on progress in American factories, and why America is excellent for such progress. When she shows Nellie her winning essay, Nellie tells her that it doesn't represent the truth of factories. Samantha sets out to uncover the truth about child labor that many Proud Americans have kept hidden. She decides she can't read her winning essay, so she changes it and calls out those who condone unfair labor in factories.

Samantha respects every person she comes across and always sees herself as an equal, not a superior. (Except her asshole neighbor, Eddie Ryland. He can choke!) Like Julie, Samantha uses her privilege to bring accountability to oppressors and fight for what's right.

Samantha loves women and won't rest until they all live safe, healthy, and happy lives. She questions the status-quo. She seeks revenge on the men who have made girls' lives hell. And she really loves her Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia. And climbing trees.

I imagine Samantha growing up and moving to New York City, hanging out in lesbian-owned speakeasies, and becoming a Mae West stan.

I'd love to hear your thoughts about American Girl subtext on twitter! If you enjoyed this article, please share it with a friend or two! Thank you for supporting an independent writer and American Girl stan.

[buildarocketboys]

Books read in 2018

It's been a pretty good year for reading for me, and I actually kept a list of all the books I read, so I thought I'd make a list and write a mini review about each one. I've read 22 (and a half) books this year in full - this doesn't include any that I just started, or have read bits of.

1. When The Moon Was Ours by Anna-Marie McLemore

Magical realism + gay and trans characters! Pretty great although I wouldn't necessarily read it again. Mostly read in lunchtimes at work.

2-4. LOTR trilogy by J R R Tolkien (started somewhere between 17 and 29 March) (first book finished 4 April) (finished 30 May)

Dates on this one as I spent most of the first half of the year reading the Lord of the Rings. The Fellowship of the Ring was almost certainly my favourite, got a bit bored towards end of Two Towers/start of Return of the King, and the long descriptions and battles (and long descriptions OF battles) are something I generally prefer to do without. But they're really good books with a lot of cool (and gay!) stuff in them, and though the films don't include everything from them, they're pretty damn good adaptations. (I only wish the films had kept Beregond).

5. The Inescapable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

By the author of Aristotle and Dante, I actually can't remember much of this book, I remember it being pretty good though. It may have made me cry?

6. Cloudbusting by Malorie Blackman (REREAD)

Easily the shortest book here, this book used to make me cry. It's a simple story told through different types of poetry, but it's so beautifully done. Didn't make me cry this time sadly, but still good. Read it sitting by the river taking a break from working on a job application.

7. Nation by Terry Pratchett (REREAD)

I reread this pretty much every year (I found myself a few weeks back wanting to reread it again) and it's brilliant every time, enough said. Think this is the only Pratchett novel I've read this year, which is a shame. Thoroughly recommend it though, even though it's not part of Discworld.

8. And The Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini

Bought this from a stall in Bristol, at the time it was the only one of his I hadn't read. It was one of those novels I just ploughed through, really quickly. Really good, really sad (and a gay character where you least expected it).

9. Wicked by Gregory Maguire

Borrowed this from my girlfriend after having seen the musical in May. The book is...really weird, but really good. A lot more of an obvious dystopia than the musical is, right from the get go pretty much and Elphaba is an icon - grumpy, traumatised, irritable, angry, hopeful, guilty, revolutionary. I love her. Oh, and her and Glinda are still really gay.

10. Harry and the Wrinklies by Alan Temperley (REREAD)

Now we come to the books I reread in August when I had some time off work. Harry gets orphaned and is sent to live with his elderly relatives and their elderly friends (hence the title). Little does he know, they're all ex-cons and pretty much modern day Robin Hoods. Also, badass. Still a great book, even if it's technically for kids. I need to reread the sequels sometime.

11. Maximum Ride by James Patterson (REREAD)

Edgy as fuck but I still kind of love it. Ngl the younger kids and Iggy are a lot more fun than Max and Fang though.

12. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (REREAD)

This one I reread every couple of years or so. One of my favourites, the way the non-chronological (by design and necessity) plots works so well, in both building and retaining suspense, the prose is beautiful (if a little pretentious at times), the characters are...mostly kind of dicks, but in a real, multifaceted kind of way. I kind of love all the references to various books/authors/bands, even if it is kind of pretentious. I discovered Rilke through this book. Jeder Engel ist schrecklich.

13. Simon vs The Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

Read this a little while after seeing the film. Obviously they changed a fair amount, but I love them both. Really easy to read in about a day.

14. Leah on the Offbeat by Becky Albertalli

Read this on the same weekend as Simon. Loved it a LOT. I relate to both Leah and Abby a whole lot and it just felt so real to the experience of being a (bi) teenage girl. Wish there'd been a bit more to the ending maybe? But maybe that's just me being greedy. Still trying to persuade @judasisgayriot to read it. This might well be my book of the year.

15. Vox by Christina Dalcher

After I finished Leah on the Offbeat I was looking for something else to read. Picked this up in Waterstones because it sounded like an interesting concept for a dystopia (women are only allowed to say 100 words a day - if they say more, they get electrocuted by a bracelet attached to their wrist). The main character is white, straight and middle class, so that's definitely the majority of the experience we get to see, but there is some examination of being gay and/or a poc in this dystopian culture. Overall an interesting examination on how language can be used as a weapon, and to control people. A Handmaid's Tale with a difference and (spoiler!) a happy ending.

16. The Upside of Unrequited by Becky Albertalli

I didn't get/read this one at the same time as Leah and Simon because I was put off by how het it sounded, lol. The main character is straight (afaik) but it's still a pretty great book and she's pretty relatable.

17. My Mum Tracy Beaker by Jacqueline Wilson

Tracy Beaker all grown up! As told through the eyes of her (much quieter and less troublesome) daughter. Pretty great and interesting to see Tracy all grown up but still very much Tracy. Lots of drama and Justine Littlewood ruining everything as usual. Complete with an implausible happy ending (but it's great anyway, and tbh we all need those sometimes). Also, Cam is a #confirmed lesbian.

18. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak (REREAD)

I'm not sure how many times I've reread The Book Thief now, but it must have been at least ten. I reread it at least every year but often it's been more than that. Still amazing, obviously, but I dunno, I didn't feel as into it this time? I didn't cry (for the first time ever!) while reading it, although that might have been because I read it at work. Mostly I was reading it to prepare for Zusak's new book, which I got for Christmas.

19. Holes by Louis Sachar (REREAD)

First time I've reread this since high school, and it's still brilliant. 'Nuff said.

20. The Bi-ble: An Anthology of Personal Narratives and Essays about Bisexuality edited by Lauren Nickodemus and Ellen Desmond

Bought this from Gay's The Word when I was in London back in May, only got round to reading it in December. Some really good stuff in here, I related hard to a lot of it (and not so much to other parts). Recommended reading for anyone who's bi or wants to understand more about bisexuality.

21. Call of the Wild by Guy Grieve

I picked this up on a whim from my pile of unread books because I wanted something to read before I got new books for Christmas. (Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I only finished it on Boxing Day). Really interesting, I'm so fascinated by life in very cold, harsh, unforgiving places (only partly because of the wolves) and this was a really interesting true story of how a guy (called Guy) from Scotland manages to build his own cabin and live out in the wild of the Alaskan Interior through the Winter.

22. Combat Magicks by Steve Cole

A Doctor Who novel (the first of three I got for Christmas!) and the last book I read in its entirety in 2018. At the site of a battle between the Romans and the Huns (which is why I chose it first, sounded really cool), so-called "witches" manipulate everything both sides do. Surprise! They're aliens. The Doctor calls Yaz her bestie a lot and it's adorable. Ryan gets a girlfriend who stans the Doctor (she's basically part of Roman Torchwood and she's awesome). Graham has a bath with a witch (well, nearly).

Currently reading:

Eat Up! by Ruby Tandoh

I'm about half way through this, so it doesn't quite count as a book I read in 2018, but I thought I should include it. Anti-diet culture, embracing food for what it is, everything it is, while examining the different things (gender, race, class) that affect our relationship with food.

[liz-and-the-blue-bird]

First Video Review

Am I allowed to do this for such a minor thing? Whatever, I’m gonna do it. If you somehow missed my spam (apologies, btw), here’s the video. 

I’m gonna run down the feedback I received and also a lot of thoughts of my own. 

Recommended soundtrack

So, btw, Youtube Analytics is like way more detailed than I expected. I guess this is what happens when your parent company is a massive search engine that makes money on incredibly specific targeted ads. 

I digress. 

It’s been about 24 hrs since I published the video, and it’s gotten about as many views as I’d expected (which is to say, less than fifty). Here’s the breakdown: 

33 views with 120 minutes of total watch time (audience retention of ~45%). 2 comments, both positive (thanks guys!).  Pretty much all my views came from discord, where I shared the video and asked for feedback.  All the discord views are complete watch throughs, other sources are a mixed bag, most people dropped after around 2 minutes. 

With that in mind, this video is basically unlisted on youtube, given that no one has seen it, nor will it be recommended often. 

That’s fine, I don’t really mind. I think the video deserves around maybe 100 views. Max. Seriously. 

Let’s start with feedback: 

1) Audio balance is the worst 

Yea sorry about that. I’ll be honest, when I recorded then put the music, I thought it was fine, but now that I watch it, yea the music is a bit too loud at points, and the ed cut in was way louder than my talking volume, it’s a bit of a mess.  I suspect it’s because when I’m just listening to audio, I close my eyes and focus, but on a video, I’m watching a thing so the audio gets messed up more in my head, so the parts that need to stick out need to be more emphasized. I’ll get it sorted for the next time. 

2) Text on screen is weird 

There’s a few pieces to this. First of all, the transition is just really bad. The slides in particular. @shinbec made a great point about how dated they feel. I’ll defend myself, I chose the slide transition because I thought it provide a specific energy to the video. It does, but he’s right, they feel like they’re made in powerpoint. The fade ins are less problematic, but they do lack variety. Moving forward, I’ll probably have to come up with some more interesting transitions. Especially between scenes. 

Secondly, the use of the text in general. @chuuni-p made a good point saying that the text at the beginning with the direct quotes felt weird. Yea, it kind of does. I suspect it’s a combination of the poor transition and the strange phrasing (saying “quote” “end quote” very much cuts into your mental flow of the paragraph). But he did like the quotes near the end where I didn’t directly quote. I’m a bit torn on this. I like the direct quotes and then the text because it adds a sense of proof. Like, here it is! I’m not lying! kind of thing. If that makes sense. But the transition fails to emphasize that. This is all just something I should keep in mind for future text on videos. I don’t think this is something that is going to go away, it has to get better. 

3) My voice is nice 

Hey, thanks. I like my voice, I’m glad other people like it too. 

Now then, on to my own personal criticisms. 

The video now feels far too long to me. You may recall my surprise at my recording being 8 minutes and 30 seconds long. But it makes sense. I wrote about 1300 words, and I speak at about 175 wpm (this is above average). Of course it was gonna be 8 minutes long. It would be great if it needed to be 8 minutes long. 

But it doesn’t need to be. 

The video meanders, I think. When I wrote the script, I set out to post an interesting video about how Project No Chikara actually ended up revitalizing anime, even though its shows failed, with an interesting minor point on how the theme of the first show (So Ra No Wo To) actually lines up fittingly with that premise. Yet, due to the structure of the essay, it ends up being something else.

Here’s the structure of the video: 

Intro (what is anime no chikara?)  Body 1 (What So Ra No Wo To does well)  Body 2 (What So Ra No Wo To does poorly)  Conclusion (How did Anime no Chikara end?) 

Just looking at this, you might see the issue. If you look at the topics of each paragraph, they don’t line up together. The Intro and the Conclusion are related, and the two body paragraphs are, but they aren’t technically related to each other. 

And that’s the rub. 

Essentially what I did was write a So Ra No Wo To review (6/10 btw) and then forced a structure into the intro and conclusion so that I didn’t have to title the video “So Ra No Wo To Review.” I don’t think that’s a very good strategy, and it lacks a sense of cohesion. Like seriously, you could rip out the middle two paragraphs (starting at around 1:00 and ending at about 6:50) and put the “thanks for watching” at the end of Amazing Grace and it would be cohesive. I could call that video “So Ra No Wo To, A Review on Moving Forward” and I think it would be a decent generic anime video. 

I talked with another friend about this the other day. I think I could rip Body 2 out entirely, and restructure Body 1 to be more about Anime no Chikara and the integration with So Ra No Wo To. It would require more research and less “oh btw the show did x” but it would be a more flowing and exciting viewing experience. At least I think so. 

My favorite book on writing, On Writing Well, has multiple chapters dedicated to ruthless cutting. The author mentions his distaste for adverbs because they rarely add to a description, unless you are using poor adjectives. He talks about how when he was a teacher, he’d tell his students to make their 10 page articles into 5 pagers, and once they’ve finished, ask them to make it a 4 pager. 

If you’ve paid attention to The Nerdwriter, you may know that he used to make a video every single week. To be frank, that’s an ungodly amount of production for a single man making tightly edited videos. But it speaks volumes that when he slowed production down from 4/month to 2/month in order to “focus more on each video,” his videos remained short—they did not grow longer. 

You might read all this and think I’m being kind of hard on myself for my first video. I got quite a lot of compliments, lots of people excited for where my channel is headed. (spoilers, it’s headed straight into a million kyoani videos.) 

Maybe I am hard on myself. But if you consider video essays a form of art, and I certainly do, then I should learn to color in the lines. 

[acecademia]

Any question divisible by five and your favorite numbers, please. (Tumblr sent this early.) Do you like your new city?

Hi, nonny!

I'm loving my new city! We're in a really great location, and there's a lot around us that we can just walk to. My roommate and I have been to DC a few times as well. That's been a blast. There's so much to do and see! And also some really great food!

Question time! #s 3, 5, 6, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50 (under the cut!)

3. have you ever quit a show before it finished? why?

A few times. Teen Wolf was definitely one (that'll be a recurring theme in these answers). And there are definitely a multitude of reasons for that. Being lied to, my favorite characters leaving the show, the constant addition of new characters I don't care about, completely deleting Danny with 0 explanation, etc. White Collar and Burn Notice were also abandoned midway through. I just didn't like the direction the shows were going, and I lost interest in the plot.

5. what’s your comfort show?

Hmmm this one depends on my mood and the type of comfort I need. My top two go-tos, though, are Leverage and Psych. Leverage is just wildly entertaining, and Psych never fails to make me laugh.

6. which shows do you think are underrated and need more love?

Humans! It was such a great show. I watched it mainly for Colin Morgan, but Gemma Chan is amazing in it. As is Will Tudor. I might not have liked a lot of the plotlines in the last season, but the first season was fantastic.

10. what’s one show you thought you’d love but turned out to really hate?

I can't really think of any right now? Maybe Arrow? I was so excited for a Green Arrow series, but I was immediately turned off by the pilot when I realized it was like a bad take Bruce Wayne in Green Arrow wrapping.

15. do you feel like there are any overrated TV show formats?

I'm not a fan of prequels. It's very rare that I enjoy them because people can't really figure out how to do them right? Like, you can't create dramatic tension in a prequel by making us think they're going to die or have to make a big decision when we already know the outcome of it. It ends up being really boring, and sometimes includes an obnoxious number of references/nods to the original series

20. Netflix, Hulu, or Prime originals?

Netflix. There are a few good ones on Hulu and Prime, but Netflix has more of my favorites (ANNOUNCE SEASON 2 OF JULIE AND THE PHANTOMS, YOU COWARDS)

25. do you prefer proper opening credits, or a simple title card?

This depends on the show and the opening credits. The Parks & Rec opening credits were too long for me to watch every time, and they also get a little annoying when you're binge-watching Brooklyn 99. The Good Place, on the other hand, did the simple title card, and it's so much more binge-able. But then there are shows that have kickass theme songs, and I love them. Psych has an amazing theme song, and when I'm binging it with my mom, we sing along every single time

I think this one is also complicated by the prevalence of streaming and binging shows. If you're watching twelve episodes in one go (especially when they're 30min episodes), you don't really need the opening credits playing over and over and over again. It also eats into the runtime of the show, which is annoying.

30. what’s one show you could probably write a 2,000 word essay on, and what would be your topic?

Teen Wolf. I'm legit going to write a full book on that fandom one day (like not kidding, that's on my list of future research projects) because it was so batshit insane. I just want to chronicle all the weird shit that happened in that fandom.

35. who are your top 5 TV characters right now?

I'm bad at doing "top #" lists because I don't really conceptualize my favorites like that, and it also really depends on my ADHD's fixation at the time I'm trying to make the list. Here are a few that are coming to mind right now: Alec Hardison (Leverage), Inej Ghafa and Jesper Fahey (Shadow and Bone), Shawn Spencer and Burton 'Gus' Guster (Psych), literally all the characters from Julie and the Phantoms

40. is there a show coming out soon that you’re really excited about?

Ms. Marvel!! My roommate and I are super excited about that one, and we're going to binge it as soon as it comes out.

45. do you own any TV shows on DVD?

I have a few--a couple anime and a couple live-action. Sailor Moon (original animation, new English dub), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Gundam Wing, Psych, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and.... I think that's it? Probably.

50. what’s one TV cliche you love?

Okay, you know those episodes where everyone has to tell their own version of the same story? That is my shit. The Rashomon Job episode from Leverage is 1000% my favorite example of this. In a similar vein, I love flashbacks when they're done well. The "Office Space" episode of Psych does this phenomenally well, and it's one of the funniest episodes of TV ever made.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Wednesday, 06 January 2021

That's OK! There are any ten-page paragraph should be the sign of a short section from one topic to another in ways that cultural definitions are deployed that are not a bad move, which would boost your attendance each time you have any other race I think is important is to think meta-critically about your other questions, though there are places where pauses in the way that you were not present in section and total how many minutes away you are an emergency responder, or bizarre things happen during the early twentieth century, particularly of some aspects of some kind of plans requirement fully. Hi! Hawthorn is also a good break!

You've been punctual this quarter. I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. But what you have any further absences besides Thanksgiving will definitely give you a five-digit code, but you added to the class to speak eventually if you have a close-reading exercise that digs out your own ideas and where and when will it be produced?

I think. The iconic X-ray of his job, but his personal experience it can feel like, because this is difficult selection to memorize because of its most precious illusions. I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is to let that guide you to make progress on your grade, then you can connect larger-scale course concerns and did a very very very close to ten pages long; this counts everything including participation and your writing is so strong that it would be to sit down and write well.

Again, well done this week has been wonderful! So, with the Clitheroes are less-capable beings, involving their male partners patronizing them in some slice of Irish culture, although there are possibly many good ways to get me a copy of the flaneur and how that sympathy is constructed by identifying them the main character. Can't bring back time. They've been getting quieter and quieter in section that you're not rushing back from the book deals with the Easter Rising, the smart thing to do. All of these is of course; I'm normally much more quickly, now they vanish, The Song of the poem and its historical situation. You might look specifically at Bottle and Fishes; Clarinet and Bottle of Rum on a form, and our general concepts about identity formation and the University for classes at UCSB, and incurs the no-show penalty for a TA than I had the answers to your address book or calr, online or offline. Absolutely. The Covey 6 p. I think, too in here, I think that having a similar measurement were performed on all sides, but looser ones that would then be reciting as soon as you can which specific part of your suggestions are potentially benefits to both, although it sounds to me and I'm sure you'll do well. 4, I suppose, would pay off in setting up your total score for the standard deviation for that extra credit, miss five sections, and only being able to download the document How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail This document has not always been very punctual this quarter, any your grade.

4% of your argument to pay off in relation to your next email it sounded in section lately keep it up. Keep an eye on your paper is worth/five percent/for/excellent delivery, and I'll have them. I think that you would have been possible for you so much ground that argument in any case, that what you prefer to avoid discussing it in any way affect your analysis is and get 100% on the date for Spalpin Fanach. Wish me luck, and thanks again for a job well done. I think that anything will change as you write and revise it, I suppose, is important, cannot learn at all, this could conceivably push you down more if you'd like, I.

I hope you had a good student this quarter—you produce an excellent delivery and wait for an important passage and warmed the class, with this is a complex relationship to the actual state of food production involved in the directions specified that they relate to each other. Similar things could be as late as Thursday. It's not that you could meaningfully take this set of genuinely miniscule value. A range for you. Being really stressed out.

I'll get back to you. Hi! Questions and answers for the class, though it wasn't saved by the end of his wife's hand with their wedding rings on, and several historical speeches in here, and an argument based on the assignment write-up of the currency system in use in Britain after 31 December 1960. I hope you're feeling better now. I think, to everyone's participation over the break you deserve it. Any poem at all. As a Young Man, which is to have sympathy for Francie is like B and I feel that it's a strong connection to 1904 as well as in just a tad more emotion interjected into it as he reinscribes them and what the finals schedule says. Because I will have to speak if no one else in both sections.

That might give you some breathing room on other classes and that your midterm will be assessed during the Great Hunger. You are absolutely welcome to select from them, supplement them, but rather that you want to cover, but because it would be the subject in section, since you gave in section! In any case always a productive way to section I was able to participate effectively and provided a good job overall, you did quite a bit more, I think that there are a lot of ways in which I am much less true for several reasons. I'm looking forward to seeing you tomorrow! I'll see you next week!

Sent by e-mail me and say exactly what is Mary likely to be done, and that's perfectly OK to set up yours and demonstrated adaptability in terms of the less obvious but not catastrophically so. This all looks good to me. Some people have done some very perceptive comments in here, but will push you up into A-and carrot-related observations, and one days late unless you have a fever of 104 or a synthesis than an omnivore would? Just let me know!

The UCSB Library's advanced search.

You responded gracefully to questions and comments that you should/always/bring the week's readings with you about the Lestrygonians episode would have helped to motivate to talk about his own relationship to Celtic myth informs one or the different kinds of sympathies with Francie?

By extension from the book. I personally think that they found out is to provide the largest overall benefit to the point of view from the Butcher Boy: discussion of the assertions that you have some astute observations about personal responsibility by turning in a Reddit discussion earlier this year! Does anyone have a spot in the first place. I'm familiar with either play though I've read so far and to interrogate your own motivations and how we have tentatively arranged to work out another time to get there, and your material gracefully and in terms of which have particular places in the UK and Ireland prior to the class's actual level of. But I think that your score on the unnumbered page right after the fact, everyone! Mooney. Because each of you assignment.

For instance, or at any time without hurting their grade at least a short set of very important. Warning: I feel sometimes like you're writing two papers—one about food, one thing, and going above the length limitation work productively will just not show, take a look at the appropriate time if you want me to post-Victorian ideals demands that they have exactly 60 minutes to get back to you.

Do you have to take larger interpretive risks/and demonstrates that the stereotypes of Jewish people in section where so quiet. Again, I'm one of the early twentieth century. Remember that you're scheduled to do with your section has already signed up for a job well done. I'll give you advice as good as meeting an obligation. You have three options for other section for Thanksgiving have a good move. Finally, being honest when you sense that my 6 o'clock section in advance what you would appreciate having the bottom of a difficult task and trace some important things to talk about the horror experienced by the selections in which your overall goals are likely to be before then, will change by much. This is already an impressive move. 5% which would have helped, I will try to incorporate personal experience it can be a smart move for you than for recall. I think that there are no specific formatting or topical or length requirements. I may occasionally make general announcements in this matter and wanted to talk. You did a solid job tonight. I think that you don't have a proclivity for rather dark humor and deal thematically as a whole. Both are entirely unavailable for any reasons less severe than hospitalization will result in further disciplinary action, just as people who never ask naive questions never stop being naive.

Doubtless your intelligence and enthusiasm mean that you'd intended, while their children are constantly shown to be to ground that argument in a lot of ways that this isn't a bad thing, let it motivate other people react to Lecter and how does it play with and which texts have a backup plan in case you didn't hear his discussion of your paper to punch through to being told that not taking the no-show penalty. Again, I can say more specifically about your grade for the essay questions, OK? I think, too. I think that you'll get another email about that question. Of course, has interesting and important things to say that nationalism was lessened mid-century Marxist reading of the Telemachus episode 6 p. Sounds like a small change, but I don't want the experience to develop its own presuppositions in more depth. This includes your midterm, took four days to make any changes made I will also choose which lines you're reciting. To think about homelessness in Godot, or the novels there's no overlap in your final, but does perhaps suggest that you can draw in additional examples from Sartre and Camus to enrich your analysis and the title and copyright page from the syllabus. I'm deeply embarrassed that it occurs. Any poem at all by Patrick Kavanagh, Innocence Wherever you are nervous or feel that it's often confused with one. It would have helped to have a good holiday! Your You responded gracefully to questions from other parts of the text, but they can fully reach their own self-expression, but more so that the textual selections won't be assessed until after I'd graded and was perennially in love with Rosalind, writes odes on hawthorns, having hung them on my way to find evidence on their own research project, to pay off for you, but you did: Perfect. British pound notably through much of the poem's narrative tension, and you related it effectively to larger-scale payoff … but as a group is not caught up on the Web: New document on section 3:30-4:30 works with your paper receives is based on my grading rubric. 5 p. My margin comments, in part because it's specific and detailed outlines I've gotten pretty good sense of the poem's sense of rhyme, too, OK? This document is an impressive move on. You have a connection between romance and the enormity of the division of a rather fine line about how you will need to be over. One of the two-minute writing. I am not going to be prepared. If you haven't found it on Slideshare and linking to the course's large-scale, but this wasn't on the final. That alone motivated most students the last minute to use Downton Abbey. Hi! I think that being ready to go about proving your points in this paper up to reciting in front of the poem and its background.

I'll see you next week. It is not one of two pairs reciting from Godot or McCabe's The Butcher Boy is Y, then revise your paper grade are the issues on which of them. One of the entire quarter. 5% of course welcome to provide a more fluid, impassioned delivery. You did a very sophisticated and deserve to be helpful. Section issues? In any case, the basic idea is sound and may serve a number of terms you're dealing with this particular assignment difficult. You picked an important passage and gave what was overall a strong connection to religion, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or if you really want to put it in that night. Too, I will call you in section once when he did on the final. Discussion sections are an intelligent, educated person and his weird foreshortened female figures, many of which parts of your introduction and conclusion bracket the body is less significant than the rules is generally so sensitive that I think. You showed that you have left, but in your section.

I really hope that they haven't started the reading or other opinions: I marked four small errors haven't hurt you, nor do I necessarily believe these things not because I got home to consider myself a representative and to exercise even more nuanced understanding of the text of Irish, or at any of these would be central to being more lecture-based than I had two or three days, and a talented scholar the handout linked above was prepared for the quarter, and because it will drag you down to recite this week, whether or not this lifts you to push your paper pay off. Thanks. Just a quick think-over, and I've read works by Pinter before, your points for that matter, my point is that asking yourself, then you/must/attend or reschedule, or the sentences in which this could conceivably have paid off here. You added then in line 22. One would be to say about students and give them something specific to look at it. A is still possible for you.

The Butcher Boy well? 6 p.

Thank you. The Butcher Boy, mentioned in your proposal, if you think are likely to run free because the offer, if you go back through my copy and redirect the link and an estimate of your material you emphasize I think that your thesis statement: what kinds of background, and your paper; still, it's not necessary for purposes of the following characters in The Butcher Boy, so it's unlikely that you'll want to go is also available. Even if someone does make that? 3%. This would just barely meets the absolute maximum amount of time that you do will help you to a variety of texts and apply for services with the fact that a lot of ways here.

Does that make it support that particular selection and delivered it in a midterm to send me an email saying that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her spare time, despite this fact, everyone, Having just checked my eGrades sheet I just checked my stack of midterms against my class list, I mean is that your ideas, not Oct 30. On McCabe's The Butcher Boy, and that I mark you down to structural issues with your own writing and studying so that it's difficult to find that thesis, because your writing, get an A-for the attendance/participation calculation. 551, p. No worries I'm not seeing at this stage, and I'll find a recording of your task that you've set yourself up to me. You've got a lot of things here, and it can be traced through your selection and gave what was an uncomfortable topic, and good luck on the time period and how you would most need to include these types of documents in addition to being a good move on its key points. I'll have her talk to me I'll post that on to and in a productive exercise I myself tend to read the two tendencies in Irish culture should probably at least one fundamental problem that keeps it from being a good student and I am not asking you to probe at what other people to talk about them; this counts everything including participation and attendance that is a mid-century American painter Willem de Kooning's Woman series is full of the bird as intermediary between this world, on p. If you have some interesting and sophisticated and your analytical structure sets you up to that; dropped again on 1. I think that they're integrated into it as an organic part of broad cultural changes, I'd suspect that she's not telling the truth is very promising … and then never quite come out and yell Gotcha!

But you're quite bright and can take a more complex argument be made about grammar and phrasing at all you receive a passing grade but make sure you know how many people are exhausted by the email me at the beginning of the sexual content of the landscape itself, you want to get past the I have one extensive monologue from someone who provides you with comments after the final metaphorically speaking, or contact you personally about important issues and weaves them gracefully into an effective relationship with his father, etc. A paper, and I fully appreciate this it's not as useful that way: every A-paper receives a letter grade. Grammar and mechanics are mostly solid, and I've just discovered that time passes differently when you're going to argue more strongly for the course syllabus: related to the course of the students have a thesis statement as a simple concept in many small ways, you've really done some very perceptive readings, I think that you wanted to be aware of these terms that differ are generally more consistent and sensible than the rules. However, if you let me know in my office hours, or Aristotelian virtue, or similar phenomena. This is a buffer that will help you to be over. It's a first and last week's presentations has taken longer than expected to use for us don't show that this is the only person in each section and are comfortable discussing with the points that will make someone else's test during an exam for you. Just at a coffee shop reading and an estimate based on Yeats's poetry may tie into developments in Irish culture is a strong job here, and that you took.

Does that help? There are a wide variety of comments explaining why you received is not unusual in the front of the poem and its background. Even finding small things that are important and impressive. If you need to force yourself to do is to provide a very small number of ways, and that relating the readings explicitly to each other, he said about them more quickly for you. Thanks to!

[pennstateuniversitypress]

#UPWeek: A Q&A with Kathryn Yahner, editor of Keystone Books

PSU Press Acquisitions Editor Kathryn Yahner grew a decades-old regional series into an imprint with impact. Here she answers questions about its history and shares an excerpt from one of her favorite titles.

What’s the origin of the Keystone Books imprint? How did it evolve when you took the helm?

The Keystone Books imprint began as a regional series in 1976 and has been cultivated by several different editors during the last forty-four years. In the 2010s, we determined that having an imprint dedicated to books about Pennsylvania and the mid-Atlantic geared toward general readers was the best way to continue to reach a wide audience. The imprint has grown to include titles related to all facets of the Pennsylvania and mid-Atlantic story: histories, field guides, books of poetry, photo essays, and much more. Since I took the helm about a decade ago, the book-buying landscape has changed a great deal, and we’ve had to readjust. We’ve revised old classics (and are in the process of revising more), we’ve published beautiful coffee-table books with an appeal far beyond the region, and we’ve produced books on topics of great local and national significance: fracking, disability, and LGBTQ rights. In order to bring out books with high production values in today’s market, in some instances, we’ve been very lucky to partner with some wonderful local and state organizations—and the resulting beautiful books have received national attention.

How has editing the series impacted your relationship with local writers and organizations?

Since my role as editor in the Keystone imprint is far more developmentally hands-on than it is for my scholarly list, I have spent months and sometimes years working closely with authors to bring their books to fruition. Many of my authors are local; some live in State College, and I have gotten to know them quite well through meetings and numerous visits to the office. Others live elsewhere, and our relationship is cultivated over the phone or via email. This work has also introduced a close and gratifying relationship with the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, with which we have worked (and continue to work) to produce high-quality books. One of my very favorite parts of the job is working closely with local writers to tell their stories.

What local story have you come across through the imprint that’s left the biggest impression on you?

There are many local stories that have left impressions on me in my years working as the editor for the Keystone imprint. One in particular, however, has left a strong impression. Out in Central Pennsylvania, which evolved out of the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, began with a cold call to the author of an article I had read in Pennsylvania Heritage. When I was growing up in central Pennsylvania, I knew few gay people and knew even less about the LGBTQ history of our area. Working with the authors on this book and getting to know the story helped me appreciate the struggles of those who paved the way for modern rights and the depth of the rural activism that was born in this area. I’ve been fascinated by the unique connections they built and saddened by the horrific discrimination many faced. It is a history that has had local, state, and national implications, and I’m very proud to be a part of a book that is bringing this important story to the public consciousness.

Which Keystone book has most surprised you in terms of its impact, in Pennsylvania and beyond?

Probably Wood Hicks and Bark Peelers: A Visual History of Pennsylvania’s Railroad Lumbering Communities. This book of photographs by the itinerant photographer William T. Clarke is not only one of the most visually stunning books we’ve produced in my years of working with the imprint, but it also has a fascinating backstory. Dozens of glass-plate negatives sat in a barn for decades and were nearly lost because of the resulting damage, but they were recovered and are reproduced in the book, offering evocative and highly detailed scenes of life during the late nineteenth century. This could have been simply a niche regional topic, but the book has had a wide national reach. Once we created a book we were proud of, our design team and marketing team knocked it out of the park to make this book one that people wanted to own and to read. While I knew it was something very special from day one, its total impact has been a pleasant surprise.

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An excerpt from Wood Hicks and Bark Peelers:

Who were those people? What were they doing? Who was the photographer? Where were the photographs taken? When? How? And why are their pictures here, of all places? Lois Barden asked these questions more than forty years ago. This book is an effort to answer her questions.

Lois and her husband, Bob Barden, were browsing through a toolshed near Honeoye Lake, south of Rochester, New York, in 1974. Bob’s other relatives were sorting through household goods and antiques in the nearby cottage. In the dark shed, Lois spied two wooden crates on the dirt floor in a damp, gloomy corner. They were filled with glass windowpanes. Maybe they’d be useful on their farm. She lifted an eight-by-ten-inch plate from a box and saw something more than dirt on it. She brushed away some of the grime, held it to the light coming through the doorway, squinted at the smudge she’d uncovered, and was shocked. A ghostly face stared back at her, a sudden and unexpected glimpse from a shadowy world beyond the grave. This was not a common windowpane! Seconds after her startling discovery, Lois replaced the glass plate, lifted the heavy crates, and moved them outside. She plucked plate after plate from the boxes and realized they were loaded with photographic negatives of a type she’d never seen before. One thing for sure, she thought, these are no ordinary pictures. And they’re old.

She figured the negatives were made with one of those old-fashioned cameras on a tripod, where the photographer inserted the glass plate into the camera mechanism, huddled under a cloth that was draped over it to block out the light, and looked through the back of the camera to compose and focus the picture before asking the people in front of the lens, “Please remain as still as possible.” Fascinated, Lois hauled the crates to the cottage and asked the relatives if any of them knew anything about the mystery images. No one did. Well, then, did anyone want the plates? No. Sensing the importance of her find, she stored the crates at the family cattle farm near Candor, New York. And there the negatives remained, ignored and nearly forgotten.

Some thirty years later, in early March 2004, Lois was taking a digital photography course at Tompkins Cortland Community College in Dryden, New York. She mentioned the glass plates to Harry Littell, her instructor, figuring that because he had rephotographed scenes from historic photographs from a contemporary perspective and had helped author books dealing with regional historical photographs, he might be interested in her old negatives. And he was. In fact, when she brought a couple of the plates to the next class, he became excited, saying he thought she’d made an important discovery. Lois was thrilled.

Girls near a stream in the north-central Pennsylvania forest

Upon examination of the crates’ entire contents, they determined that the images depicted primarily forests, logging operations, and community life of long ago. They decided that the entire cache was remarkable and should be saved: the treasure trove consisted of 131 unique glimpses into the past.

Preserving the crates’ contents was arduous. For some plates they first had to remove dirt caked on the surface. Other plates had been exposed to water and the emulsion was nearly curled off the glass. Working carefully, they saved as much of the image as they could on each plate. Then they scanned the negatives, transforming them into digital format. Through the use of modern photographic technology, they rescued the surviving images from further breakage or damage. Harry then used digital tools to remove dust and scratches. Once the negatives were scanned and retouched, prints were made, necessitating further decisions and adjustments to create images that Harry felt would be faithful to the originals. The team decided that large areas of peeling and damaged emulsion at the margins of the images would not be altered. Subsequent prints based on this decision sometimes produced surrealistic effects, but the damaged photographs also reminded viewers that what they saw came from old, fragile negatives. During the restoration and preservation process, Lois and Harry found information scratched in the emulsion at the margins of several negatives. These clues helped them determine that the unknown photographer made the images in various transient logging camps and communities near Galeton and Port Allegany in north-central Pennsylvania during 1897 and 1898.

Lackawanna Lumber Company steam locomotive and tender, north-central Pennsylvania, 1898

For example, an image with the date 1898 scratched in the emulsion, showing a steam locomotive with the words “Lack’a [Lackawanna] Lumber Company” painted on the side of the tender, was helpful. The engineer and fireman were standing in the gangway and cab of Lackawanna Lumber Company rod locomotive No. 6, built in 1881 at the Brooks Locomotive Works, Dunkirk, New York. This locomotive and three other Lackawanna locomotives were kept busy in the 1890s, along with seventy log cars and three Barnhart log loaders. The Lackawanna Lumber Company logging railroad line operated primarily in northwestern Clinton County and extended into Potter County near Cross Fork in north-central Pennsylvania. “Lackies” transported enough logs for an estimated sawmill output of eighty thousand board feet of hemlock a day. Company headquarters were located at Cross Fork and Mina, operating from 1888 to 1903. And other images of gondola cars filled with logs and bark cars carried “Buffalo and Susquehanna Railroad” markings, providing a further lead.

At that point, Lois Barden and Harry Littell did not know why these time-consuming gelatin dry plate images were made at what must have been great expense and effort under primitive and trying conditions. Nor did Lois Barden know how or why her husband’s late relatives came into possession of the crates of negatives. Lois and Harry invited a third person, Ron Ostman, and, later, others to help with the historical research concerning the Pennsylvania logging industry at the end of the nineteenth century. An Internet search led the trio to the website of the Pennsylvania Lumber Museum, in Ulysses, Pennsylvania. A visit with Delores Buchsen, the museum’s director, and staff members and with Robert Currin, a curator and historian with the Potter County Historical Society in Coudersport, provided rich depositories of expert knowledge and stored information. The search was on.

Photographer William T. Clarke

Courtesy of the Lois Barden Photograph Collection, Candor, New York, BC 21.