Reblogged sharpmouth
lore no. 9— bri luvs bc bri lies
Reblogged theinfinitedivides
Precious Lee by Zee Nunes for Elle Brasil Magazine September 2023
Reblogged ellierenae
When I took my literary criticism theory class in undergrad the professor told us that in modern literary criticism “The author isn’t dead but they are a ghost breathing down your neck”
Basically, the old way of thinking was that the point of literary criticism was to find the true original intentions of the author. Then death of the author was introduced and literary criticism swung hard the other way, saying that what the author thinks and the context they were in doesn’t matter.
Nowadays, it’s somewhere in between. Yes the author had intentions and yes the work had context. But the work also has context right now and a history of people reading it and interpreting it and sometimes an author puts meaning in something that they didn’t realize they were.
I can’t sit down and interview Jane Austin about every little decision she made in Pride and Prejudice but I can look at what we know about her life and the era and place she lived in. I can also ignore all that and look at what the book means right now to modern people. I can compare Austin to writers in her own time as well as writers now. I can speculate on what I think was on purpose and what wasn’t.
A lot of people go on about death of the author like that’s the only correct way to interpret fiction when modern lit crit moved past it years ago. Reading critically is a conversation between the author, the reader, and the various contexts surrounding both of them. Nothing exists in a vacuum but at the same time nobody can anticipate every interpretation their work might present with.
The question of analysis and separating art from artist isn’t a simple cut and dry issue. It never has been and it never will be.
Reblogged
Source: instagram.com
HELP WANTED! THE SURVEY-TAKING KIND!
help is so needed i resorted to typing in uppercase. my senior capstone is about social reading and social media and therefore digital book clubs. there might be discussions of media literacy and critical thinking down the line, but for now the idea is just. book. and mobile apps and consumer behaviors. okay:
if y'know anything about fable (the digital book club app) PLEASE take this survey. i need you.
this is me debuting my self proclaimed status as a review hobbyist. i'm in a creative writing drought so i'll turn my efforts into analyzing other texts until my own literary merits and capabilities return. and also i forgot about this blog...
🕊️ starting my book blogging era with a review of common decency by susannah dickey.
i quite like the girlfailure archetype. an absolute loser of a character whose journey is a lot more tolerable and amusing when it’s fictional. i like to be in a position where i can consume their sad behavior from a distance, without studying my own habits, whether that be in television or literature. i started susannah dickey’s common decency with that very expectation. instead, i left the belfast apartment behind, closed the book, and realized that i wouldn’t be able to look at the clothing pile beside my bed in the same light ever again. common decency is gross. not in content—well, some of the descriptions are gross, yes—but by the pure sense of pathetic-ness from each of the main girls. dickey packs so much disappointment and disillusion into their person. the story follows two women who live in the same apartment complex as they navigate the sorrows that come with loving and losing. siobhán, who lives upstairs, doubles as a primary school teacher and a mistress. lily, directly downstairs, is strange and observant and obsessed with the siobhán she perceives in her head.
🕊️ reblogs+likes are appreciated
taglist (ask for +/-)
Reblogged
floriculture; except it has nothing to do with floral arrangements and everything to do with flowery language
i spent a good five minutes debating how i would structure my newly realized and niche content, and have come to the conclusion that i will simply exercise my most habitual approach of winging it. what does this mean for me? i’ll write first and think later - which will come after deleting my account once i post. let the mind work at its most unfiltered and all that. not to mention that any and all posts i have the courage to share on here will double as evidence of my illiteracy. what does that mean for you? well you have the agency to scroll past or scroll through the rambled study of my own thoughts and prose. while an audience is nice, i do not seek it, but while you’re here-
insomnia mind map starter pack
when the clock hits midnight my brain enters a stage of creative frenzy. i descend down a rabbit hole and i can either follow it immediately or bury it beneath my dreams. tonight chose the former so i’ll get right into the train of thought that initiated everything.
sometimes i pretend to be a youtuber. the girls that get it, get it, and the girls that don’t, don’t. but i mean speaking to the open air as if a camera is filming me list off the products for my skincare routine or steps for my day-in-the-life. it’s fun, that’s really all i can say about it. a good live, laugh, like and subscriber. as much as it gives me a good chuckle to joke and engage about it, i have enough self awareness to acknowledge that a youtube career is the least realistic route i can take. this has nothing to do with believing in myself or being camera shy or anything. i am simply not charismatic enough to be in front of a camera for an extended period of time. and talking at that??? goodbye. i pull off a one liner once a month and that’s it. even showing my face on tiktok would be cutting it close. plus, i forget to film enough content to slap a video together anyway. it would really be a loss for everyone involved.
i often cite these reasons for why i like twitter so much. my brainrot on there is quick and then i dip - or remain for hours on end because when i say twitter is a place i mean twitter is a place. i enjoy my quick updates and often out of context geeking because no one else is privy to the hold that my manuscript has on me, and i’d like to talk about it at length. twitter’s word count is not cutting it.
is my obsession with my work to blame? maybe,,, or we can blame the true culprit: my taste in youtube videos as of late. i’ve been introduced to new mediums of craft and inspiration recently, and i’m riding off my design professor’s observation that a lot of my process only exists in my head. yeah, he was so right about that, so i caved and decided to document my writing journey as executed through a blogging style. there’s no limit here - just unmeasurable freedom to express the wiring of my brain as i finish this damn novel. i think - i hope - this will make the task seem less lonely. i think it will be a nice little thing to look back on after a complete draft is finally on my screen.
what to expect from me, from this; a series
the game has a name, and it’s more refined than just rambling. what i am exploring is a justification of my thoughts. i like to write with intention, especially since introspection make up a large chunk of atlsr. instead of speaking to the void, i’ll just write it all here, where the small masses can share my brainrot, or at least side eye me while understanding why i write the way i do. any line edit/analysis i share will not hold major spoilers or material that goes in depth with the contents of my draft. as much as i love sharing, creative theft looms over my thoughts rather annoyingly.
snippets are what i’m used to, therefore snippets are what i’ll share. you guys haven’t seen anything atlsr related in ages so i’m going to cut up a paragraph i’ve written about sanaa’s mother. with this, i also intend to show you the style that all my floriculture posts will be organized in. if this series is something you’ll be interested in following (and if for some lovely reason you’re still here) i truly appreciate your presence and question your sanity :)
the mother; as seen through ch. 38
If the stars truly loved fairy tales, then Dasa Madaki would have been a princess.
from the moment the story begins, sanaa is characterized as cold and unforgiving. she gives not into temper, but into love, and perhaps the way she does so is twisted, but it is whole. the variations of selfishness that i explore with each character is seen through how they love, how they hate, how they live. dasa’s own arc is reflective of a gentler bloom from the same harshness i inflict.
She had all the elements of picturesque endings written into the features of her day. Eyes as soft as meteors landing, a voice that soothed violent winds, a disposition capable of taming birds that whistled songs of ice and fire. Even her behavior and movements took the beauty of swans and the elegance of grace winds. Her social status only amplified the potency of her loveliness.
dasa isn’t introduced until chapter six. up to that point, readers are only familiar with ouma, sanaa’s grandmother, who is credited with nurturing her very nature. whereas ouma and sanaa are of the variety that wear a bold red lip to intimidate, dasa comes to mind when i think of things pretty in pink and glowing in yellow. dasa is soft. that is all there is to it. it is a fact that ouma criticizes at some point for all the sugar and kindness that her daughter possesses. but look at how sanaa describes her mother. not with contempt or condescendence, but with the beauty that graces her.
Sanaa knows the story, and she knows it well. It tells itself in the way Dasa speaks with the most imaginative of phrases, crafting a happy ending into the air, as pretty as they are void. It is apparent in the way she brushes a thumb over the groves of a pendant looped three times over a thin wrist. Inside rests a miniature portrait, precious and pastel, and a love confession of the highest regards.
we don’t see a lot of dasa in the narrative. the facets of her character are broken down to two ideas: a whimsical patron and scorned lover. her arc and final destination of resolve has already plateaued by the time sanaa’s story is fated. there’s glimpses to her trials and triumphs through flashbacks and past callings. prior to this moment, much of dasa’s manner is surface level. what i love about this is weaving in my favorite method of characterization, which is seen through movement. it’s quiet, it’s revealing - and while i like to amount my details to subtle nature, this is anything but.
The story subsists in the way her mother latches onto care, latches onto flowers, latches onto the embellished and ornate, latches on the concept of love in separation with her own ordeals. Dasa’s movements were once timeless. She now engages with sensitivity—so fine tuned to inclinations of the heart, soft spoken in word, but not meaning. People love to attribute Dasa’s manner to bearings of whimsical coping. It has never been so, truly, if you take the time to appreciate fragility.
i’m going to continue the thought here because this next section highlights the rhythm of what make dasa differ from sanaa and ouma. i’ve always struggled with the idea of show not tell, but i think with this i have reached a tranquil middle that does the job best. when you think of movement, think about what that says about a character. the body’s ability to react is a tell itself, though how expressive are the moments that move with the intention to reveal yourself? sanaa takes note of how her mother’s origins impacted her behavior.
like i said before, dasa does not have the page time to be fleshed out through various chapters, nor does she have an active presence or role in the plot. i had to tell the story of her skin in a matter of literary seconds, and by that i mean a paragraph. can i express any complexity to her character through the eyes of our lead. i love looking back at this section in particular because of how sanaa describes her mother’s troubles in a pretty manner. ugly things happened to dasa, and now dasa latches on to pretty things in turn. the repetition alone stresses that point, but i wanted to deliver that in excess.
ah this is a point where i welcome straying off course because excess has so much depth in this narrative. this is a line from ch. 18 where sanaa reflects on her hedonistic tendencies: she does things in excess, just like them all. She isn’t an exception or rarity or outlier. She is the same. The roles of the main cast is rooted in nobility, in riches, in glamour. if there is one thing they know, it is the value of material.
any commentary on materialism happens naturally and is inevitable due to the setting. where my true interest lies is taking that theme of excess and applying it to the ideas i wanted to explore in depth. now we’re moving from a literal to more metaphorical iteration. that takes us back to love, to relationships, to selfishness. the excess that sanaa speaks about is feeling. she feels wholly about all things, defineity too much by ouma’s standards, but look at who is sanaa’s example when it comes to expressing such sentiments.
It is her mother who taught Sanaa how to be tender.
when sanaa loves, her heart burns for adoration. it is always with everything that she gives. with ouma’s influence, this isn’t an attribute she allows to presents itself physically. we go through patches in the story where the behavior she learned through her mother shines through, and i think those tiny reflections cements the way dasa’s influence fashions itself in sanaa’s behavior and philosophy when it comes to the fondness of care.
taglist (ask for +/–)
@herondalelucies @moariin @seomarshalls @tae-mv @namelessscribe @vaelinor @tsainami @sprigofbasil-archive @vellichor-virgo @aashna @yaqarah @ladywithalamp @crystallized-ink @pressedpapyrus @perditism @hiddenhistoria @chazzawrites @marewriteblr @astorsa @thethistlegirl @incandescent-eden @nangua @chishiio @gnymedes @xiyais @arkicts
Reblogged saltwaterbells
bern scrolling through the Lazarus Radioactive tag and the things your brain comes up with are incredible
oh thank you so much!! LR is my newest and thus currently dearest pet project, and ive actually just started properly writing it. here’s a tentative unedited first chapter as a gift in thanks🧍♀️❤️🧍♀️
Reblogged antigonick
As a fiction writer, I don’t speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. Terms such as message are appropriate to expository writing, didactic writing, and sermons — different languages from fiction.
[...]
I’m not saying fiction is meaningless or useless. Far from it. I believe storytelling is one of the most useful tools we have for achieving meaning: it serves to keep our communities together by asking and saying who we are, and it’s one of the best tools an individual has to find out who I am, what life may ask of me and how I can respond.
But that’s not the same as having a message. The complex meanings of a serious story or novel can be understood only by participation in the language of the story itself. To translate them into a message or reduce them to a sermon distorts, betrays, and destroys them.
— Ursula Le Guin, A Message About Messages