Blake’s “The Tyger”, despite its conjuration of sublime terror, ultimately views nature through the lens of artifice. The tiger is a piece of craft, significant for what it tells us about its anthropomorphic creator. The tiger is not itself; it’s not a wild, uncreated thing.
In contrast, the only crafted thing in Nael’s “The Tiger” is the cage, existing only as an impediment to freedom and destroyed as soon as it is introduced. Nature, rather than creation, is taken as fundamental, and with the destruction of the cage the boundary between the human observer and the natural world is eliminated. We cheer for the tiger’s destructive freedom in a moment of Dionysian ecstasy. Predatory, terrifying, alive, the tiger is out.
Death Certificates – What you need, why you need them, and
how to get them
Prepare to spend a long and miserable time on the phone
What the Everloving Fuck is Probate
Some Simple Dos and Don’ts
Shitty Mad Libs – Templates for writing Obituaries and
Memorials
How to plan a non-religious death party
So you suddenly have to become some sort of hacker or some
shit
This is an eighteen page book that you can print out, download, share, and give away; it is meant to be used to collect information about funeral planning and account management after a death OR you can use it BEFORE you die and give people information so they’re not stuck playing Nancy Fucking Drew while trying to keep seventeen cousins who crawled out of the woodwork from gutting each other in front of the fucking casket as they argue about who’s inheriting grandma’s favorite dentures.
It’s not exactly cheerful and it’s full of things that are probably going to feel really fucking raw if you’re processing a fresh death.
I’m sorry! I love you! Death is shitty! I’m trying to laugh about it a little and I hope you can laugh a little too because otherwise we’re all just going to cry together.
Good luck!
(in memory of my weirdo mother and her weirdo siblings who all died too fucking young and left me holding this flaming bag of dogshit)
A THOUSAND blessings upon you! I really needed this exact thing- Right Now.
Shout out to all the childless whores that be fucking up them pretzel lines at disney world. Y’all are the worst and some random mom out there hates you.
Hamlet adaptation where Hamlet is a vlogger and all his soliloquies are breakdowns he uploads to YouTube
… I am unironically here for this
this is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen in my life
This is - legitimately - my favourite delivery of Shakespeare I have EVER seen (and I have seen some good-ass productions yo, in the Globe Theatre itself even). Like seriously, even though the words are unchanged, he’s stripped away ALL of the archaic pretense and assumed grandeur of ~presenting the bard~ that makes even the most wildly talented of actors and innovative of productions inherently inaccessible to a modern audience. Like, they’re still great, they can still communicate the message and (some) of the nuance, but they’re still always a step removed from being identifiable to any viewer’s lived experience. They’re still always reciting 15th century poetry. But this guy? This guy is like, screw iambic pentameter, to hell with being precious about the material, HOW WOULD AN ACTUAL PERSON SAY THIS SHIT?
Like this. And it’s beautiful. It’s beautiful to hear a soliloquy I loved so much already, and have it come to life in a way it never, ever, did before. I feel like I grasp his motivations, his twists and turns, no longer on an academic level but on a visceral, instinctive one. Because he’s presenting his mental and emotional journey in a way that speaks honestly, like a real person.
So yeah, this shit post? I love it. Deeply and sincerely.
i’m just… so tired of reading posts complaining about problems that only exist because people won’t read romance novels… it is a huge genre there are books about werewolf dukes, there are books about black revolutionary war soldiers, there are books about south asian doms who care about enthusiastic consent, there are books about shape-shifting cowboys who turn into bears, there are books about lady scientists learning how to trust that their boundaries will be respected, there are books about alien barbarian warriors, there are books about genies, there are books about women of color in victorian london, there are books about polyamorous earls, there are fake marriages and marriages of convenience and basically every fanfic trope that people lose it for exists as a book with original characters but some of the same people who complain about how books no longer satisfy them turn a blind eye to a whole genre because it never occurs to them to read a ~bodice-ripper~ when they could read romantic fanfic of a more respectable genre instead
look, if you:
don’t wanna read about two people falling in love and fuckin’
just wanna read more about some specific characters
good news! this post is not about you. here are some posts i have seen with great regularity on this site:
no one who writes original fiction is capable of writing good sex
no one who writes original fiction understands tropes
original fiction doesn’t understand kinks
too many books are about high-stakes things and not enough books focus on character development and interaction
all of which is blatantly and on the face of it absurd to anyone who reads a lot of romance and which is what this post is about. it downplays and devalues the good work being done, especially by marginalized authors, in the romance space. authors should get paid! authors should get rewarded for originality! if you read a shitty romance novel once, i don’t care! so have i! i’ve read a lot of shitty books in a lot of perfectly good genres. if you can spend three hours sifting through pairing tags on ao3 to find the one fic that doesn’t suck, you can look through ebook previews to find something that looks good.
‘books are expensive’ is almost a compelling argument, except that romances and mysteries are two genres where ebooks go on sale for $1-2 with startling regularity. my bookbub emails regularly get ebook boxed sets with tons of different books by different authors going on sale for a buck, which is a great way to find new authors. most authors have newsletters where they let you know about sales and send out freebies. and if your library has overdrive, you can request books. you don’t have to just… see they don’t have it and give up.
anyway, here’s books:
will i ever stop recommending courtney milan’s brothers sinister series? literally never. if you prefer contemporary and don’t mind first person there’s also the cyclone series. if your local library does not have at least one courtney milan book i will be shocked. don’t worry about it if they’re not the first in a series. you can read it out of order. that’s how romance novels work. lots of her books also go on sale for the low price of free on the regular, especially the novellas.
alisha rai’s forbidden hearts series also rules.it’s got starcrossed lovers, it’s got feuding families, it’s got hatefucking, what more could you want
alyssa cole has never written anything bad in her entire life, i’m pretty sure. you want historicals? you want contemporary? contemporary but there’s still sexy dukes? post-apocalyptic? pick your poison, enjoy.
i just read this one recently and now i need to read all the other cat sebastian books i’ve acquired over the years because whenever a book is a dollar and looks like this i buy it immediately (it’s literally a dollar right now). this graphic was very helpful and i wish more authors had ones like it. it’s 2019, bring back web banners for link pages.
i discovered six de los reyes when courtney milan recced beginner’s guide: love and other chemical reactions and i’m really interested to read more of her books. also it made me realize i’d never read a book that took place in the philippines before? no one fucks in this but it’s really cute and sweet and involves a hyper-logical lady scientist, an artist/barista/bad boy, a coffee shop, and Making Out For Entirely Scientific Reasons.
bound with honor is the only book i’ve read from the regency reimagined series. the reimagining seems to be that it’s very bisexual and polyamorous and everyone fucks a lot and also there’s bondage. i am cool with this. i actually bought the whole series at some point?? i… should read these.
i haven’t gotten around to reading tess bowery’s treading the boards series (i have bought so many books) (i was not kidding about the one dollar sales) but i’ve got high hopes because look at them
kj charles is… prolific. and another author whose books i haven’t gotten around to despite owning a lot of them. i actually just bought that one on the right, just now, because i saw that it was a dollar when taking this screenshot.
I’ve only read Tess Bowery’s books but I recommend them!!
Holy crap! Thank you so much. I’m amazed to be that kind of company - so many amazing romance authors and so many good books. <3
As a quick ref to my Treading the Boards series - the setting is 1811, the characters all work in or adjacent to the London performing arts scene.
Rite of Summer is about escaping the thing you thought was forever – what happens after the grand romantic gestures. (m/m, then m/m/m, back to m/m again.)
She Whom I Love’s main characters are an actress, a staymaker and a lady’s maid. Honestly, my favourite way to solve a love triangle is polyamoury. (f/f/m)
(Short-listed for two Bisexual Book Awards - best erotic romance and best romance.)
That Potent Alchemy stars a dancer and a backstage effects expert. A tagline I regret not using: ‘gender is also a kind of performance.’ (m/nb)
I’ve been on hiatus for a while as I finish up my Ph.D. But! I’ve turned in a draft, and I’m defending this summer, which means that I can get back to finishing the fourth book, Roberta’s Folly (f/f). I’m hoping to be able to release it next spring.
Just want to have this list handy for my own reference.
![unknought:
“ kaylapocalypse:
“ adulthoodisokay:
“[x]
”
The wild euphoria of “Yes YES” ”
Blake’s “The Tyger”, despite its conjuration of sublime terror, ultimately views nature through the lens of artifice. The tiger is a piece of craft, significant...](https://64.media.tumblr.com/a6e5c01b8bdf4a10456af8b370e85868/tumblr_prgm37ABGO1rqgazso1_500.png)
