you know what actually pisses me off? when I finally start to feel a smidge of confidence in my writing ability and then some JERK POSTS A SINGLE LINE FROM A TERRY PRATCHETT NOVEL AND IT’S BETTER THAN ANYTHING I WILL EVER WRITE NO MATTER HOW MANY MILLENNIA I SPEND TRYING!
Terry was a professional writer from the age of 17. He worked as a journalist which meant that he had to learn to research, write and edit his own work very quickly or else he’d lose his job.
He was 23 when his first novel was published. After six years of writing professionally every single day. The Carpet People was a lovely novel, from a lovely writer, but almost all of Terry’s iconic truth bomb lines come from Discworld.
The Colour of Magic, the first ever Discworld novel was published in 1983. Terry was 35 years old. He had been writing professionally for 18 years. His career was old enough to vote, get married and drink. We now know that at 35 he was, tragically, over half way through his life. And do you know what us devoted, adoring Discworld fans say about The Colour of Magic? “Don’t start with Colour of Magic.”
It is the only reading order rule we ever give people. Because it’s not that great. Don’t get me wrong, very good book, although I’ll be honest I’ve never been able to finish it, but it’s nowhere near his later stuff. Compare it to Guards Guards, The Fifth Elephant, the utterly iconic Nightwatch and it pales in comparison because even after nearly 20 years of writing, half a lifetime of loving books and storytelling Terry was still learning.
He was a man with a wonderful natural talent, yes. But more importantly he worked and worked and worked to be a better writer. He was writing up until days before he died. He spent 49 years learning and growing as a writer, taking so much joy in storytelling that not even Alzheimer’s could steal it from him. He wouldn’t want that joy stolen from you too.
Terry was a wonderful, kind, compassionate, genius of a writer. And all of this was in spite of many many people telling him he wasn’t good enough. At the age of five his headmaster told him that he would never amount to anything. He died a knight of the realm and one of the most beloved writers ever to have lived in a country with a vast and rich literary tradition. He wouldn’t let anyone tell him that he wasn’t good enough. And he wouldn’t want you to think you aren’t good enough. He especially wouldn’t want to be the reason why you think you aren’t good enough.
You’re not Terry Pratchett.
You are you.
And Terry would love that.
I only ever had a chance to talk to Terry Pratchett once, and that was in an autograph line. I’d bought a copy of The Carpet People, which was his very first book, and he looked at it with a faint air of concern. “You realise that I wrote that when I was very young,” he said, in warning.
“Yes,” I said. “But I like seeing how authors grow.”
He brightened and reached for his pen. “That’s all right then,” he said, and signed.
High heeled shoes don’t become flats if you break the heels off.
The posts of earrings aren’t sharp.
Nail polish takes a long time to dry and smudges when wet.
You can’t hold in a period like pee.
Inserting a tampon is not arousing or sexual in any way, ever.
Feel free to add your own.
– Bras leave red marks on the skin under and around boobs and it is a magical experience when taken off.
– Make up can take anywhere from 5 to 25 minutes depending on how skilled you are.
– Taking hair out of a ponytail after wearing it for hours does not make it perfectly straight when it comes down.
– Hair when wet sticks to the skin it no longer flows, idiot.
-When women with long hair kiss, turn around, do anything, their hair falls in the way.
– Stockings are itchy and tear like wet paper bags.
– Pantyhose, tights, leggings, and stockings are each different.
– Waxing hurts and leaves red skin for a while afterwards while shaving leaves stubble
– Most can’t run in heels unless they have been VERY worn
– Insecurity in appearance doesn’t mean “buy me a drink”
– EVERYONE HAS DIFFERENT TASTES IN EVERYTHING
-Having large breasts sucks. It sucks beyond belief. If a garment happens to fit your large chest, odds are it won’t fit the rest of you. Underboob sweat is real and terrible. Bending over for extended periods of time will tweak your back out. Running can be painful due to boob turbulence. Bras are hella expensive. Big breasts are not fun.
Putting a tampon in isnt a quick bend-poke-done kinda deal. It involves cubicle yoga, messy hands, numerous curse words as you realise it isnt in correctly and have to take it out and start again with a new one.
Yes to all of this. But also:
If her hair is in an updo, one does not simply remove a hairpin to send her hair cascading down her back. No. If her hair is an updo, it will take at least an hour and an extra set of hands to remove the 137 bobby pins that are holding her hair in place. Furthermore, there’s probably a can’s worth of hairspray in there, intended to withstand category 2 hurricane winds. There’s no cascading happening here – the best you can hope for is a misshapen nest of hair to clump and poof unattractively in the back while it still remains flat against her scalp.
This is one of the funniest posts I’ve seen in a while (especially if you read all the comments), but also really depressing because at 42 I still judge myself as having failed for not matching up to all these mythical stereotypes despite knowing they’re impossible
^^^This though
The odds of a woman having smoothly shaved legs and armpits are directly proportional to the amount of skin her clothing bares and/or the amount of fucks she gives at that particular moment.
GLASSES ARE NOT COSMETIC. If we whip them off, we do not become gorgeous fashion models. We become squinty.
-most women wear bras. Yes, even when they are trying to dress sexy. Because bras make boobs look perkier and rounder, which is something men apparently find sexy, so being a seductress or femme fatale is not an automatic reason for a female character to not be wearing a bra.
-a good bra will hide headlights, or at the very least drastically reduce their noticeability. A women with enough pointy nipple issues will opt for a padded or molded bra to hide them.
-women’s nipples do not automatically become hard pyramids visible through any and all layers of clothing the second they become even slightly aroused. They are not the female equivalent of boners. And even if their nipples do get hard, the bras they are almost certainly wearing (because even a goddamn succubus with big, honkin’ knockers for seducing men is gonna have those painful puppies in some kind of boob sling) should keep those pointy nipples from being visible to every other character in the scene, JIM BUTCHER. YES, EVEN LARA RAITH WOULD WEAR A BRA ONCE IN A GODDAMN WHILE.
if you’re being tied up and tortured in a freezing underground dungeon, then you probably have more important things to pay attention to than how hard somebody’s nipples are, jim butcher
– Wearing a bra that doesn’t fit HURTS. It’s not sexy to wear a bra that’s “two sizes too small”, it’d make your clothes hang oddly and you’d have a weird, uncomfortable “quad-boob” effect and your back would hurt, BEN AARONOVITCH.
Also, after removing a too small bra, there’s gonne be angry red lines on the boobs and ribs and the lady is not going to want them to be touched by anyone for a good long while
-Not all women wear heels. Those things hurt and are hard to balance in. They can also mess up your feet and back pretty bad.
-Lips aren’t just naturally red “as if she’d been drinking wine but they were just like that without makeup cause she’s so perfect,” my dear little Kvothe from ‘Name of the Wind’. Also, girls do not naturally smell like fruit or flowers, it’s either perfume or something she’d been eating recently.
I’ve been appreciating this post but now it’s back very specifically calling out my problematic faves and I don’t think those male authors realize how much it totally takes me out of the story for a moment when they commit these errors. It does nothing useful for the plot and is annoying for half of the audience
Is it weird that I’m female and wasn’t aware of a solid third of these?
I mean, all writes take note. I basically live in man land when it comes to protagonists so I don’t know half these things despite being a woman
(Most) Women do not look at themselves in the mirror and compare their breasts to fruit. Any sort of fruit. Especially melons. Please save us from the melons.
Also we are not aware of our breasts at all times. I do not walk down a flight of stairs and think “oh golly my breasts are bouncing so much right now”. They are as much as natural part of our bodies as arms. Do you constantly think about how your arms are moving? Sure you may be aware of them, but paying full attention? Doubtful.
Also: women working out are almost never sexy. They’re not glowing or glistening or (kill me) *sparkling*. They are red and sweaty and gross just like all the dudebros doing their time with the dumbbells. Stop ogling fictional women at the gym, TOM WOLFE.
Also worth noting: large-breasted women, if forced to run or descend a flight of stairs at speed, may cradle their bosom like a small child to stop it bouncing around and hurting like hell
not to be all “tw*light did nothing wrong” but misogyny honest to god killed the hunger games
it was no masterpiece sure but it also sure as hell wasnt the love triangle bullshit everyone made it out to be. seriously everyone blames this whole “YA fiction with the special One and teens overthrowing the oppressive government tropes” trend on the hunger games but the truth is that none of those books are anything like thg
god!!! im mad!! name one cliche YA novel where the government actually is BAD like not just “oh love is illegal” or “they barcode you!!uwu” instead of like. actual slavery and rampant poverty while the rich waste their money on dumb bullshit!! and name one main character who ACTUALLY suffers under the government’s regime!! who actually starves and works and suffers and has genuine REASON to rebel!! thg is the only YA book that had anything to say about wealth disparity and the dehumanization of the poor,, every other YA book uses it as a plot device to put some dumbass romance together or show how “badass” the MC is!! thg is genuinely emotional and the focus of the book isnt katniss’s archery and how cool she is and its NOT gale or fucking peeta bread. and then the marketing for the stupid fucking movies took the WHOLE POINT OF THE BOOK (which is to satirize and critique how women in entertainment have any serious things about them ignored in favor of whatever dress theyre wearing or who they’re dating) and turns that into……….. a fucking love triangle. and then the world forgets it because its just another dumb teen girl series. okay.
Me @ myself rn
oh also last thing. the fact that at the end katniss chose to kill Coin (the rebel leader/soon to be newest dictator) instead of just having a plain and simple boring happy ending shows just how different thg is from the YA fiction its compared to. no other book in this genre would have the guts (or even the idea) to put out such a blatant, obvious “the fight against oppression never ends, stay diligent” message and thg is iconic for it and it shows how much thought was actually put into its message. im sorry to susan collins for my 12 yo self for not understanding at the time and thinking it was just bad writing
thanks to everyone adding on about the representation! about finnick’s story and being trafficked! and about peeta and his disability!! and katniss and her indigenous coding and PTSD!! And about how it shows how war n dictatorships always prey on marginalized groups!! and a billion other things!!! that the movies just fucked off n forgot about!!!
Classic Bookshelf: This site has put classic novels online, from Charles Dickens to Charlotte Bronte.
The Online Books Page: The University of Pennsylvania hosts this book search and database.
Project Gutenberg: This famous site has over 27,000 free books online.
Page by Page Books: Find books by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H.G. Wells, as well as speeches from George W. Bush on this site.
Classic Book Library: Genres here include historical fiction, history, science fiction, mystery, romance and children’s literature, but they’re all classics.
Classic Reader: Here you can read Shakespeare, young adult fiction and more.
Read Print: From George Orwell to Alexandre Dumas to George Eliot to Charles Darwin, this online library is stocked with the best classics.
Planet eBook: Download free classic literature titles here, from Dostoevsky to D.H. Lawrence to Joseph Conrad.
The Spectator Project: Montclair State University’s project features full-text, online versions of The Spectator and The Tatler.
Bibliomania: This site has more than 2,000 classic texts, plus study guides and reference books.
Online Library of Literature: Find full and unabridged texts of classic literature, including the Bronte sisters, Mark Twain and more.
Bartleby: Bartleby has much more than just the classics, but its collection of anthologies and other important novels made it famous.
Fiction.us: Fiction.us has a huge selection of novels, including works by Lewis Carroll, Willa Cather, Sherwood Anderson, Flaubert, George Eliot, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.
Free Classic Literature: Find British authors like Shakespeare and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, plus other authors like Jules Verne, Mark Twain, and more.
TEXTBOOKS
Textbook Revolution: Find biology, business, engineering, mathematics and world history textbooks here.
Wikibooks: From cookbooks to the computing department, find instructional and educational materials here.
Italian Women Writers: This site provides information about Italian women authors and features full-text titles too.
Biblioteca Valenciana: Register to use this database of Catalan and Valencian books.
Ketab Farsi: Access literature and publications in Farsi from this site.
Afghanistan Digital Library: Powered by NYU, the Afghanistan Digital Library has works published between 1870 and 1930.
CELT: CELT stands for “the Corpus of Electronic Texts” features important historical literature and documents.
Projekt Gutenberg-DE: This easy-to-use database of German language texts lets you search by genres and author.
HISTORY AND CULTURE
LibriVox: LibriVox has a good selection of historical fiction.
The Perseus Project: Tufts’ Perseus Digital Library features titles from Ancient Rome and Greece, published in English and original languages.
Access Genealogy: Find literature about Native American history, the Scotch-Irish immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries, and more.
Free History Books: This collection features U.S. history books, including works by Paul Jennings, Sarah Morgan Dawson, Josiah Quincy and others.
Most Popular History Books: Free titles include Seven Days and Seven Nights by Alexander Szegedy and Autobiography of a Female Slave by Martha G. Browne.
RARE BOOKS
Questia: Questia has 5,000 books available for free, including rare books and classics.
ARTS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Books-On-Line: This large collection includes movie scripts, newer works, cookbooks and more.
Chest of Books: This site has a wide range of free books, including gardening and cooking books, home improvement books, craft and hobby books, art books and more.
Free e-Books: Find titles related to beauty and fashion, games, health, drama and more.
2020ok: Categories here include art, graphic design, performing arts, ethnic and national, careers, business and a lot more.
Free Art Books: Find artist books and art books in PDF format here.
Free Web design books: OnlineComputerBooks.com directs you to free web design books.
Free Music Books: Find sheet music, lyrics and books about music here.
Free Fashion Books: Costume and fashion books are linked to the Google Books page.
MYSTERY
MysteryNet: Read free short mystery stories on this site.
TopMystery.com: Read books by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, GK Chesterton and other mystery writers here.
Mystery Books: Read books by Sue Grafton and others.
POETRY
The Literature Network: This site features forums, a copy of The King James Bible, and over 3,000 short stories and poems.
Poetry: This list includes “The Raven,” “O Captain! My Captain!” and “The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde.”
Poem Hunter: Find free poems, lyrics and quotations on this site.
Famous Poetry Online: Read limericks, love poetry, and poems by Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson, John Donne, Lord Byron and others.
Google Poetry: Google Books has a large selection of poetry, fromThe Canterbury Tales to Beowulf to Walt Whitman.
QuotesandPoem.com: Read poems by Maya Angelou, William Blake, Sylvia Plath and more.
CompleteClassics.com: Rudyard Kipling, Allen Ginsberg and Alfred Lord Tennyson are all featured here.
PinkPoem.com: On this site, you can download free poetry ebooks.
MISC
Banned Books: Here you can follow links of banned books to their full text online.
World eBook Library: This monstrous collection includes classics, encyclopedias, children’s books and a lot more.
DailyLit: DailyLit has everything from Moby Dick to the recent phenomenon, Skinny Bitch.
Spite is a really motivating emotion. Sometime last summer I was telling my friend Laura about how I wanted to start a story-rec blog based on things other than genre or pairing. That was probably a year after I started thinking about doing so. But it took a full year after for me to do anything about it. And the key catalyst was how wrong another rec list on tumblr was.
See, in this post an asker was asking for recommendations similar to The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzie Lee. And the answerer had nothing similar to recommend. There were no other m/m, YA, Georgian historical books. That might technically be true. I don’t remember what they rec’d instead.
But I read The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian and The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue back-to-back. The reading order was a total coincidence. They are incredibly similar books. And so, YA readers, let me introduce you to romance novels.
My first similar recommendation is The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian. It’s got: Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Bi Character, Asshole gets Redeemed, Terrible Father, Awesome Sister. On top of that, things that are close but note quite are that one of the main characters has an illness he collapses from, and the awesome sister has a non-white husband. There is no traveling in this book, but both characters have traveled and lived outside of England in their past. It goes without saying that I liked this book.
Also, check out Brothers Sinister Series by Courtney Milan. These books are primarily M/F, Olde Time Historical England romance novels. The Countess Conspiracy has Best Friends to Lovers and Asshole gets Redeemed. And The Suffragette Scandal has an F/F B-plot. But the one I think will tick the most similar boxes TGGTVAV is The Heiress Effect. It’s got Kidnapping & Rescue, an Awesome Sister, an Epileptic Character, and a Character of Color love-interest. It’s my favorite of the series, because while the main couple are off dealing with marriage-plot and kidnapping shenanigans, the awesome little sister saves herself.
The hardest tag to match from TGGTVAV is “Adventure.” Most of the similar romance novels take place in London with some jaunts to country estates. They don’t tend span cities. But while I wouldn’t necessarily tag these books “Adventure,” there are plenty of romance novels with high-stakes, tension filled plots. And there’s one undisputed queen of historical M/M romance: K.J. Charles.
The Charm of Magpie Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Surprise, Magic Exists!, Terrible Father, The Question of Inheritance
TGGTVAV doesn’t really have magic, per se, but the cure-all that everyone’s on the hunt for veers towards it. And in the Magpie books adventure takes the form of Stephen, a sort of magic police, saving the world, or at least Lord Crane, from evil warlocks. It should go without saying that they fall in love, and it is delightful.
Society of Gentlemen Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Politics Specific books in the series also contain: BDSM, Awesome Sister (in Law)
Society of Gentleman goes the opposite direction of Charm of Magpies. The high-stakes here are shockingly real. These characters are falling in love and making lives for themselves in a world where they are all expected to get married and produce heirs, and being caught with each other could be a hanging offense. That is to say nothing of publishing seditious pamphlets and plotting murder. The stakes in two of the three books here are life-or-death and the machinations required to give everyone their happy ending are amazing.
Think of England by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England
A spy and injured war hero solve a mystery while guests at a country estate.
Sins of the Cities Series by K.J. Charles Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time England, Character of Color, Terrible Father
These books are ‘The Question of Inheritance’ brought to a several attempted murders extreme. There’s still one more book coming out in October before this trilogy is complete, so I don’t want to or know enough to say too much. But I loved the second on in the series.
And lastly for something slightly different:
The Whyborne and Griffin Series by Jordan L. Hawke Romance Novel, M/M, Historical, Olde Time America, Surprise! Magic Exists, Terrible Father, Low Fantasy, Detective, The Question of Inheritance, Kidnapping & Rescue Specific books in the series also contain Awesome Sister, F/F B-Plot, M/F B-plot, Character of Color, Monsters
These books take place in America, rather than England, in a later time (the very first electric lights come to town!). But they have the travel missing in all my other recs. Home for Whyborne and Griffin is a creepy Massachusetts town, but when they get wind of suspicious magical disasters around the world, they travel to them. These books are delightfully formulaic: Let’s split up to cover more ground! Oh no, my partner has been kidnapped! Time to mount a rescue mission! And my favorite is when they live this out around the world in Kansas and Alaska and Egypt.
ALSO My Girl Courtney Milan is starting a new series and i think It May Have Some Gay Soon. ( The Worth Saga – still WIP but 2 books out already, with a tiny reference to the prequel The Pursuit Of… ) it HAS already had a main bisexual character so that’s GR8!!! GO COURTNEY. YOU CAN DO IT I BELIEVE IN U!!!
anyway.
can you tell i have nothing else to read now and am DESPERATELY awaiting more books????
still MAD!!! that Think of England is a one off and there hasn’t been any more since Spectred Isleeven thought it says book one (*wail*)
and just in case anyone didn’t know, there IS a sequel to Gentleman’s Guide to Vice & Virtue coming out, starring Felicity!!! (October 2nd! that’s close!)
A VERY IMPORTANT ADDITION TO THIS TALK, thank you sweetie! I’ve only dipped my toe into Milan’s work so far, but she’s done a good job with background gays and neuroatypical peeps in what I’ve read, so I’m happy to hear she might be getting more diverse with her leads.
I suspect the second Green Man book has been delayed due to extensive re-writes, because the original teaser description from the back of Spectred Isle is QUITE DIFFERENT than the one KJ Charles sent out a few months ago to the mailing list:
I don’t have any more historical gay romance recs under my belt, but there’s Peter Darling by Austin Chant, if you’re interested in trans Peter Pan/Captain Hook? I don’t always rec it because I DID spend the first section of the book wanting to punch Peter for being a dumbass, but there’s a reason for that and the writing is excellent. I bought but haven’t read Caroline’s Heart, which looks intriguing.
One that was decent but not great: The Gentleman and the Rogue by Bonnie Dee and Summer Devon. Read like fanfic, basically, and I enjoyed myself. (TW for torture?) I tried some of the authors’ other work but was disappointed – too overwhelmingly sweet and not enough plot for my taste.
And if you’re just craving queer romance and don’t mind modern BDSM spy shenanigans, Joanna Chambers wrote Enemies Like You which was very much my jam. The first chapter is free as a separate ebook, if anyone wants to trial read.
Hi Friends! ( @cactusspatz and @chicago-bluebonnet , you’re my friends now, I don’t make the rules)
I don’t remember why I didn’t rec The Soldier’s Scoundrel and The Lawrence Browne Affair when I first wrote this post. Possibly I hadn’t read them yet. Possibly I just thought The Ruin of a Rake had a more similar feel to TGGTVAV to it, which I stand by, although the other two are great in their own right.
Funny story about The Enlightenment Series is that I read the three original books back to back on a 13 hour flight and by the end I had been awake for roughly 24 hours. I know I read them because I dutifully recorded them in GoodReads. But I have little to no recollection of what happened in them. I got an automated email when the fourth one came out and I didn’t recognize a single character name.
I also loved Caroline’s Heart, but I don’t know that is’t similar to TGGTVAV. To me that feels more like a rec for people who loved Maggie Stiefvater’s Raven Cycle.
(I am going to check out Enemies Like You because I am totally into modern BDSM spy shenanigans. I am all over modern BDSM recs.)
How about we talk about what might have happened if Narnia hadn’t deserted Susan?
What if, instead of sending a stag to lead them astray, the Pevensies had been given time to end their first rule– to have finished their reports, their negotiations and treaties, that letter in the bureau Lucy was half-done penning to Mrs. Beaver to thank her for the fruitcake and to ask about her grandchildren.
They had lived there more than a decade then, grown from children to kings and queens, to brave young adults with responsibility heavy on their shoulders. They had lived through storms and wars, peace and joy, lost friends to battle and old age and distance. They had made a home. What if they had been given time to say good-bye?
What if we didn’t tell Susan she had to go grow up in her own world and then shame and punish her for doing just that? She was told to walk away and she went. She did not try to stay a child all her life, wishing for something she had been told she couldn’t have again.
There is nothing wrong with Lucy loving Narnia all her life, refusing an adulthood she didn’t want for a braver, brighter one she built herself. But there is also nothing wrong with Susan trying to find something new to fall in love with, something that might love her back.
You can build things in lipsticks and nylons, if you don’t mind getting a few runs in them. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be pretty, especially when pretty is the only power left to you.
Let’s talk about being the last one left. No, really, think about it. You get a call in the middle of the night, in the little flat you can just barely afford, and you are told there has been an accident.
Think about it, that moment– you scramble over everyone you know, everyone you love, and try to figure out where they all are that night. There are things rushing in your gut, your fingertips, your lungs, your ears– there are words in your ears as the tinny, sympathetic voice starts to tell you: it is everyone.
They were on a train. Something went wrong. They probably died instantly. A rushing sound. A bright light. (You try to imagine it, for years. You try not to think about it. You imagine it, for years–a rushing sound, a bright light.)
Your little sister, who you always felt the most responsible for, who you never understood, really– Your big brother, who disapproved of your choices but loved you with a steadiness you could never regret leaning into– Your little brother, a smug and arrogant ass except for the days when he drowned in self doubt– Ed was going to go far and you knew it, were waiting for it, were shoring up your defenses and your eye rolls for the days when he’d think he ruled the world–
Your mother is gone. Your father, with his stuffy cigar smell and big hands and the way he got distracted telling stories– he is gone. Your cousin Eustace, who suddenly lost that stick in his ass one summer. That friend of his, Jill, who you’d never actually quite met. Gone. A rushing sound. A bright light.
Go on. Walk through this with me. You can’t sleep all night long, because you still can’t understand it, still can’t quite breathe in a world where you are the last Pevensie. You finally fade sometime between midnight and dawn and when you wake up you don’t remember for half a second. You think ugh and you think sunshine why and then you remember that you are an orphan, an only child. You remember there probably isn’t anyone else to handle the funeral arrangements.
Get up. Make tea. Forget to eat breakfast and feel nauseous and empty all day. Call the people who need to be called. Your work, to ask for the time off. The mortuary, to ask about closed caskets. Distant relations. Friends. Edmund’s girlfriend and Peter’s boss. You listen to Lucy’s friends weep hysterics into the phone while you stare out the kitchen window and drink your fourth cup of tea. You call Professor Diggory, out at the old house with the wardrobe that started it all, and it rings and rings. You don’t find out for three days that he died in the train crash too. When you do, you stare at the newspaper article. You think of course.
You are twenty one years old. You have ruled a kingdom, fought and won and prevented wars, survived exile and school and your first day as a working woman. Nothing has ever felt worse than this. You have a necklace in your dresser you meant to give your mother, because she loves rubies and this glass is painted a nice ruby red and it is all you can afford on your tiny wages.
Excuse me, a correction: she loved rubies. She is dead. You never wear the necklace. You cry yourself to sleep for weeks. The first night you don’t cry, the first morning you wake up rested, you feel guilty. You wonder if that will live in the pit of your stomach all your life and you don’t know. The years reach out in front of you, miles and eons of loss. You are on the very shore of this grief and you do not know how you will survive feeling like this for the rest of your life. But you will survive it.
Get up. Make tea. Make yourself eat breakfast. Make plans with a school friend to do lunch. Go to work and try to bury yourself in the busyness of it. Remember that you’d promised to lend Peter a hand with some task or other, but you don’t even remember what it was– Collapse. Hide in the bathroom until you’re breathing again. Redo your makeup and leave work the moment your shift is over. Drop your nylons and your sweater and your heels in the apartment hallway. Fall into bed and pull the covers over your head.
Get up. Make tea. Eat. Don’t think about them for weeks. Don’t feel guilty when you remember. Feel proud. Spend an indulgent weekend in your pajamas, reading Lucy’s favorite novel and making Ed’s favorite cookies and remembering the way your mother smelled and how it always made you feel safe. Love them and miss them and mourn them. Keep breathing. Cry, but wash your face after in cool water. Wake in the morning to birdsong and spend three hours making breakfast just the way you like it.
Imagine the next birthday, the next Christmas, the next time you hit one of those days that herald the passage of time, that tell you how much you’ve grown and how much they haven’t.
Lucy, Peter, and Edmund will be at the same height for the rest of your life. Lucy will always be seventeen for the second time. You see, you think you know, when you lose them, what the dagger in you feels like. But it grows with you, that ache. You grow with it, too, learn how to live with that at your side but it grows, that ache, finds new ways to twist–
At the first friend’s wedding you go to, you cry because it’s lovely, those two smiling and promising and holding hands– but you also cry because you wonder what Lucy would have looked like in white, joyous and smiling and promising the rest of her life to a boy who deserved her.
Go on. You tell me if Susan deserted a world or if a whole life deserted her. You tell me who was left behind.
So yes, let’s talk about it– what if Narnia hadn’t deserted Susan? What if lipstick and nylons were things worn and not markers of worth?
What if we had a story that told little girls they could grow up to be anything they wanted– all of Lucy’s glory and light, Susan’s pretty face and parties, the way Jill could move so quiet and quick through the trees?
Because you know, some of those little girls? They were the little mothers, too old for their age, who worried and wondered, who couldn’t believe like Lucy or charge like Jill. Susan was reasonable, was hesitant and beautiful and gentle, was pretty and silly and growing up, and for it she was lost. She was left. And when Susan was left, so were they.
The little girls who worried louder than they loved, who were nervous about climbing trees and who would never run after the mirage of a lion, who looked at the pretty women in the grocery store and wondered if they would grow up pretty too– some of them looked at their little clever doubting hands, after they read Peter and Eustace and Jill scoffing at Susan’s vanities, and they wondered what they were worth.
Imagine a Narnia that believed in all of them. Imagine a Narnia that believed in adult women, lipsticked or not. Imagine Susan teaching Jill how to string a bow, arms straining. Imagine her brushing blush on Lucy’s cheeks, the first time Lu went out walking with a boy she was considering falling in love with. Imagine that when the last door to Narnia was shut, there was not a sister left behind.
you over there! you want to read gay books? YA gay books? good, here’s the must must MUST read books, AND MOST IMPORTANT! when you pick one up and read it TELL ME!
I really think hospitals and doctors that work with pregnancy and pediatricians need to make more literature available for how to, ya know, work with kids? Because the more conversations we have about spanking (and how it’s ineffective and harmful and does more bad than good), the more I realize that a lot of people don’t know the alternatives. Or like, anything about child development or where misbehavior stems from.
So, as someone who went through childhood development classes in college, works with kids for a living, and knows multiple people who specialized in childhood education, here are some pointers when you are working with kids:
1. Model emotional response for kids. Children are learning how to recognize and respond to their own emotions. All the way up through high school, children’s brains are still developing, and the emotions they are learning to process become more complex. So with really young kids, the easiest way to help them with this is to model emotional self awareness and self care.
“Oh wow, mommy is feeling angry because the cat made a mess. I’m going to clean this mess and then go sit in my room in the quiet for a short break so I feel better.”
“You know, I am feeling very sad about not going to the park because it is raining. I bet some hot chocolate and a book would make me feel better.”
”Huh, I’m feeling kind of cranky and hungry, but daddy won’t be home for dinner for another hour. I bet I’ll feel better if I eat a little piece apple while we wait.”
2. Understand what causes child frustration and work to preempt it.
-Transitions (from one activity to another, getting in the car, etc) can be stressful, especially if the activity or location they are leaving is fun. Give kids a warning when this is going to happen. With young kids, give them about 5-15 minutes of warning (”10 minutes until we are going to leave the park and go home. Do your last thing.”), with older kids, just give them a time frame. (We are can play at McDonalds for 30 minutes, but then we have to go grocery shopping, ok?)
Not being able to communicate what they want to is frustrating. Babies can learn simplified baby sign language months before they are verbal. Kids may not know the words for what they are trying to say. Be patient and help them find the right words. On a similar note, don’t ignore kids. If you really can’t respond to their question right away because of something else, at least tell the “Yes, I heard your question. I’ll answer you as soon as I’m done talking on the phone.”
Not being able to make choices or having too much choice can be overwhelming. Give kids a limited, reasonable selection of choices. “Do you want apple slices or juicy pears on the side for lunch?” is much better than “What do you want with your sandwich?” or just giving them apple slices. “Do you want to give grandpa a hug or a high five?” is better than demanding they hug grandpa right away.
3. Understand that kids are people to. They will get hungry, tired, an annoyed just like adults do. Sometimes you have to be flexible and give them time to self care. Talk to them, explain things to them, let them be people and not just dolls. “Because I said so” is really unhelpful for a growing kid. “We can’t buy Fruit Loops today because we are already getting Frosted Flakes. We only need one cereal at a time.” is going to do you a lot more favors. “Don’t pick up the glass snow globe. It belongs to grandma and can break easy. She would be sad if we broke it on accident.” is better than “don’t touch that.”
And look, no parent is perfect. No baby sitter, no teacher, no care taker is going to be awesome all the time. And no kid is going to be perfect. They will cry and have tantrums, and not be able to tell you what they need, and be stubborn sometimes. Sometimes they need space, or quiet time. Sometimes they need attention and validation.
But kids learn from every interaction they have, so adults need to make the effort to show all the love, and patience, and empathy, and thoughtfulness we want them to learn.
artherra 