Friends, I finally have book news! This is a story about loving the skin you’re in and advocating for yourself and I’m so grateful to
@UweStenderPhD
and Maria for believing in me and this story. And I can’t wait to work with Mercè! Still can’t believe this is real 😭
Apparently both men and women find a “sense of humour” attractive in romantic partners, but they define it very differently. Women think someone has a sense of humour when the person can make them laugh, men define a sense of humour as someone who laughs at their jokes
Not only did they handle the whole thing in the dodgiest way imaginable with the whole “Kate is bad at photoshop” thing, now they are making her sit there and make an announcement alone. William can’t sit and hold her hand?
Kate Middleton just revealed she has cancer and is undergoing chemo, which makes the palace blaming the photo editing on her even weirder. Hopefully she gets better and hopefully their PR learns from this
Everything about this is so funny. The way he has artfully arranged some books on the bed to make it look more like a table in an office, an illusion destroyed by the child bouncing back onto the mattress, the fact that he’s likely rooted to the chair cus he’s not wearing pants
I just saw a tweet that said we should normalise books being about adults in their twenties instead of teens, and I think what we should normalise is more people going to libraries and asking librarians for book recs
I don’t want to be a girl boss, I want to be a girl hobbit and live in a hobbit hole and have two leisurely breakfasts everyday and a garden full of potatoes
People are being so nice to Chris Evans after he accidentally shared an explicit photo, and that’s really lovely, but how come no one ever has this energy for when even worse things happen to female celebs (phones literally hacked, photos shared widely, slut shamed etc)
This is why the poster looked like an AI painting! They edited a whole new face onto Nicola. They edited away her elbow, her chin, her face. This is so horrible. All they needed to do was to tweak the brightness of the first photo a bit
@AngCooperman
This is a pro-choice story. You had choice and you chose what worked best for you and your life. If you are advocating for stripping other 17 year olds of their choice, you need to think long and hard about why you think you deserve to have the agency that you won’t allow them
One more time for the kids at the back not paying attention: just because a book is ABOUT something, it doesn’t mean the book is promoting it. Sometimes you can write about something horrible in order to criticise it.
This is part of a worrying trend in fiction where viewers/readers conflate flawed characters with their creators, and assume depicting something is to promote it. You can’t have a character arc without flaws and you can’t critique society without depicting flawed characters
I wish younger fans understood the history behind the fandom spaces they enjoy. AO3 was created because fansites mass-deleted fanfiction with queer content. That’s why it’s called an archive. It’s aim is to preserve fan works against that sort of censorship.
@JustinTarnation
This is so rude. I get being uncomfortable about trying new things but to film yourself acting so disgusted about another culture’s food is mean and unnecessary. Also, it’s just chicken and rice???
I would like a word with whoever is teaching fanfic writers to use all manner of exciting synonyms in place of perfectly ordinary words like “eyes”. You could use the word “eyes” ten times in one sentence and it would still be less weird than using the word “orb”
The whole concept of “unschooling” is so wild to me. Left to my own devices I wouldn’t know a lick of math. I’m grateful I was taught math despite my complete lack of interest. It’s a necessary life skill
Two things i should always try to remember:
1. I have never regretted a single instance of kindness
2. I have regretted, sometimes for years, every cruel impulse I have indulged
No one should have to disclose painful, private things about themselves in order to prove the fact that they have a “right” to explore dark topics in their fiction.
I honestly think the world would be a better place if parents didn’t think of life as a gift bestowed, but rather a curse inflicted. You bring someone into this godforsaken world, you’d better make it worth their while
One of the weird side effects of the
way Meyer describes every single one of Bella’s actions in Twilight is me noticing how little she eats. Two bites of ravioli, a granola bar, nothing but a soda for lunch. No wonder she’s constantly dizzy
I fully agree with this, but also a counterpoint: Barbie is a much more thematically incoherent movie than similar hit movies from the past like legally blonde, mean girls, clueless etc
20 years ago Barbie could’ve comfortably just been a fun summer comedy that people like to quote but our culture now demands everything be held up as our most important™ moment so we gotta run through months of discourse on how it’s basically 2001: A Space Odyssey or something
I am reading a romance novel right now and one of the characters was like “say my name…” and the other character whispered “Rufus”, and I just feel like you should not name your character Rufus if you’re going to be writing scenes like this
I never thought the robots would be replacing writers and artists, but I really should have expected it. Ppl have such contempt for creators. They watch the movies we write, and enjoy the pretty things we make and think the act of creating is as effortless as consumption
My fellow dark eyed beauties, please decolonize your minds. Watch movies starring actors who have lovely dark eyes. Read books with dark eyed love interests. Brown eyes are beautiful. No one should be risking their eyesight for this.
This is the adorable guy who’s the model on the cover of Love from A to Z and it’s low key racist the way people act like he’s worse looking than his girlfriend
This is the thing about modern art, the paintings that look simple or silly in pictures often take your breath away in real life because whatever ephemeral effect is created by the colours and the vastness of the canvas is impossible to capture on a tiny screen.
Yves Klein Blue Monochrome. Here’s a high school class on a field trip staring in complete awe at it. They made fun of every other painting on the floor but when they got to this one they just kept repeating “it’s so blue” “how is it so blue” “it’s so fucking blue” etc
Writers pitching picture books: a book about family and culture, and the courage to be different
Parents looking for picture books: please, does anyone have any books with pictures of buses? Not trains or trucks, I need buses. My child likes buses
The problem with enemies-to-lovers in real life is that it’s much harder to redeem a real life enemy. I could root for an elf with a penchant for cruelty towards other elves but wdym I have to root for the guy who owns the big chain bookstore putting indies out of business?
This worldview is so alien to me I can’t even compute. What do you mean “have no one to share breakfast with”. Do you not know the joy of a morning spent alone? The meditative bliss of that first cup of coffee sipped in complete silence?
There are two wolves inside me. One wants to read and the other wants to write but they’ve both been eaten by a secret third wolf that’s wasting time on Twitter
I’m glad this struck a chord with people because I’ve seen how abusers use the concept of “forgiveness” as a manipulative tool to control their victims. Anger is good for you! It helps you protect yourself from people who are bad for you
I think I might be the only person who liked Beyoncé’s take on the song. I like that she wrote her own version instead of simply doing a cover. The song she sang is authentic to her, because that’s how a woman like Beyoncé (confident, self-assured) would react to a Jolene
Here’s the thing: it’s one thing for kids to voluntarily read things actually written for adults, it’s another altogether to create a situation where a child might pick up a book they are not ready for cus it’s being touted as age-appropriate when it’s not
This is the photo in question—don’t want to tag anyone b/c I see where they’re coming from. But my hot take is that almost every book here is (or should be considered) YA. I’m sorry but this is what teens read. They have shit to figure out & books are a safe place to do that
In the case of Lolita, it’s a book written from the perspective of a paedophile. He is an unreliable narrator, and part of the point of the reading experience is to pick out the holes in the narrative he spins. To him it’s a love story, to us it’s a horrifying tale of abuse
Warms the cockles of my heart that Joe Jonas’s transparent attempt at smearing Sophie turner’s character is backfiring so badly. I don’t know or care about Joe or Sophie, but the world loves to vilify young mothers and it’s nice to see ppl not fall for it just this once
Adults literally have no clue what kids like to read.
Woman on a book page I follow: any books to recommend for a 15 year old?
Random adult: animal farm
@tennisbagz
He is defending the way the women behaved by saying that Jackie purposely sat in front of them to trigger a response, like as though they are physically incapable of not bullying people
I know white writers write poc main characters because they want poc readers to see themselves in books, but here’s what happens when you do that: publishers end up acquiring books written by white people instead of books by pocs because they find the former easier to relate to.
Being a Taylor fan is incredibly annoying because on one hand I enjoy her music, but on the other this woman is basically the head of a cult at this point. Her stans will defend the most indefensible things. A billionaire destroying the planet with both hands is indefensible
This cartoon makes modern humans seem so silly and frivolous, but the modern impulse to film and broadcast everything stems from a deeply human desire to share information with each other and to keep records. It’s why we’ve thrived as a species
I hate how fanfiction now occupies this weird nebulous space where it’s mainstream enough that there are grifters and newbies in fandom spaces who don’t know or care about fandom etiquette, and yet we still have to put up with the snobs who sneer at fanfic readers
And it's live! For
@WIRED
, I wrote about the illegal fanbindings have led to some writers to delete their works recently—and how that connects to the current pull-to-publish wave and the ever-broadening, increasingly contextless sphere of fic readers:
Anytime you read a book written from the perspective of an unreliable narrator who also happens to be a despicable person (and a literal criminal), you will need to use some critical thinking skills to pick out how and when the literal facts of the plot undermine the narrative
Can we please not reduce the latest booktok controversy to this? There’s nothing wrong with reading or recommending smutty books. What’s wrong is sexually harassing real people because you’ve fan cast them as characters in your favourite books
so are we finally ready to discuss that “booktok” are just thinly veiled porn addicts??? can’t read a book without sex in it, harassing real actual people over a man that only exists on paper
I know this is slightly off topic, but this is what I mean when I say the artists who paint covers need more credit because here is this book being discussed in a newspaper with the stunning cover front and centre and literally nowhere does it mention who created the artwork.
You know what I don’t get? Kids want shorter books. Librarians are begging for shorter books. Parents are desperately looking for shorter books. Writers want to write shorter books. Paper is apparently very expensive. And yet, for some reason, books continue to be very long
Hilary duff is the only child star I grew up with who managed to claw her way out relatively unscathed. It’s absolutely criminal what the entertainment industry did to an entire generation of talented young people
I love spoilering the ending of Peter Pan for people, because no one ever remembers the fact that the book actually ends with generation after generation of Wendy’s female descendants going to Neverland to clean for Peter Pan because he’s a boy who can’t look after himself
There’s a weird victim blamey thing I’ve seen people doing where they’re like “she’s a professional, she knew what she was signing up for”. She was 23. It was one of her first jobs. She was very grateful to get the job, and didn’t think she had the right to ask for accommodations
People are getting mad at Emilia for saying this even though she’s gone on record how she’d often have full blown crying nervous breakdowns because the GoT producers demanded she strip down nearly every day of filming. So yeah I’m not surprised she had more fun doing this show
What I find interesting about the ppl going “leave Kate alone”, is that no one is harassing Kate? People want to see evidence of life because people are worried something horrible has happened to her and that the royal family is covering it up
Any good horticulturalists out there who can answer the leaf🍃 question on the Kate photo.
What is the plant in question?
And should it be this leafy in March/early Spring??
Humbert humbert is a monster. That’s the point of the book. Your job as a reader is to pick up on that fact despite the fact that humbert humbert controls the narrative. This is an important skill to have in life
This excerpt from a Bridgerton novel is so bizarre to me as someone who actually reads novels written during this time period. A woman was much more likely to think herself unattractive back then if she was too thin. Plump women were considered comely
So let me get this straight. The “comps: good or bad” discourse evolved into “writers MUST read”, evolved into “people with adhd shouldn’t write” evolved into “glasses are not a disability aid”???
“I have too many books”
-judgemental
-boring
-implies impulse-control issues
“The books... they have me.”
- mysterious
- occult
- implies you are at the mercy of a library of books that have gained sentience and are holding you hostage
Look at the framing of Lolita. Humbert Humbert is in jail awaiting trial. He is trying to exonerate himself with this narrative. You should take everything he says with a pinch of salt. It’s immediately apparent he is not reliable
If the sentence “you buttered Jorts?? You buttered him like the marmalade toast?!! Jail! Jail for coworker!! Jail for one thousand years” makes sense to you, congratulations. We are the same level of online
Speaking of Greek retellings, I finally got around to reading Percy Jackson as an adult and pretty much the main thing I was thinking the whole time was how rude it was to Greek people for an entire series to exist where Greek Gods had abandoned Greece for the US
But for someone who mostly tweets about writing, I’ve had more ppl cussing me out and physically threatening me than you’d think. One thing I really like about Instagram is the way it allows you to delete annoying comments from your notifications. Wish Twitter allowed that
@jackieO_20
@tammieetc
After he took the dirty dish out of the sink and used it without washing nothing shocked me anymore. It was like I had turned to stone
Kate Winslet owns a darling little cottage in the Cotswold and has a dream job in publishing, and yet somehow we’re supposed to feel sorry for her because she’s single. The movie industry lies about women so much
The fact that Austen is absolutely hilarious is an extremely underrated Austen fact, and is the reason why I hated the 2005 P&P adaptation for so long. An Austen adaptation with no sense of humour is a bad adaptation in my books
@caroviino
@NaijaFlyingDr
... pregnancies are extremely expensive?!!And often they leave you with chronic health issues that you have to seek treatment for too.
I just find Jimmy Fallon so fascinating because he looks almost exactly the same but somehow he just isn’t cute any more. It’s like the picture of Dorian Gray, except the rotting painting is his soul
The ravioli didn’t even have meat in it. It was just mushroom. It’s a wonder Edward can even smell her blood. She must have severe iron-deficient anaemia