My Fandom and Writing Tumblr Ariel_Tempest on Ao3 | dilettantealchamist on Spoonflower/Etsy | Gale Woodworth on Adagio First Language: Sarcasm. If I snark, it's because I care | Pronouns: A group of words used as substitutes for a noun
I will never stop thinking itâs extremely fucked up that creators will get less credit and more shit, for trying to be progressive and inclusive but falling short in some way, than creators who donât try at all.
If your characters share a history (same family, same event, or same loss) give them the same wound running in completely different directions. One goes cold. One goes loud. One performs fine. One disappears into work. They were all broken by the same thing and you would never know it from the outside because people are not consistent about how they fall apart. Put all of them in a room. That room already contains your entire story.
In celebration of the upcoming season of HBOâs The Gilded Age, we extend to you an invitation to a small fan event, seven prompts over seven days - write, draw, gif, design, bake, sew, sing!
20 July: The Gardens of Newport
21 July: Secret Affair
22 July: Aboard the Yacht
23 July: âMy Mind is Made Upâ
24 July: A Night at the Metropolitan
25 July: I Didn't Expect To See You HereÂ
26 July: A Journey Out West
The Cotillion will run from 20 July to 26 July, so you have plenty of time to find inspiration - remember to tag #gildedagecreatorscotillion during the week of the Cotillion so that we can share your creation!
Any questions? Check out our FAQ post or drop us an ask here!
Ten days before the first prompt and I have.........two paragraphs. That I'm about to scrap and start over.
Start placing money on whether I get any of these done on time - let alone all of them - and no, I won't be offended when you bet against me. I'll be doing the same.
...Holy Guppies, Batman, I have actually finished three pieces in the last two days! And they aren't the shortest of my ideas either! Of course, I still have functionally zero ideas* for Aboard the Yacht, but still doing way better than I thought! I may not totally blow it this year! MIRACLES HAPPEN!
* I mean, I technically have a premise, but it has not plot and also it sucks.
In celebration of the upcoming season of HBOâs The Gilded Age, we extend to you an invitation to a small fan event, seven prompts over seven days - write, draw, gif, design, bake, sew, sing!
20 July: The Gardens of Newport
21 July: Secret Affair
22 July: Aboard the Yacht
23 July: âMy Mind is Made Upâ
24 July: A Night at the Metropolitan
25 July: I Didn't Expect To See You HereÂ
26 July: A Journey Out West
The Cotillion will run from 20 July to 26 July, so you have plenty of time to find inspiration - remember to tag #gildedagecreatorscotillion during the week of the Cotillion so that we can share your creation!
Any questions? Check out our FAQ post or drop us an ask here!
Ten days before the first prompt and I have.........two paragraphs. That I'm about to scrap and start over.
Start placing money on whether I get any of these done on time - let alone all of them - and no, I won't be offended when you bet against me. I'll be doing the same.
I am honestly not certain what to say about this book. The writing was good. The story line was nicely engaging. Mum and I listened to it on audio, then I gave it a reread. Thing is, despite all of that, I got to the ending â which was very logical and pretty much exactly what youâd expect, given the plot â and was far more curious as to what happened to unimportant plot points and side plots than I was the actual resolution of the book.
This would make sense if the book was not well written, but it was?
Anyway, I can definitely recommend it if you like this sort of thing.
I actually enjoyed reading it far more than listening to it for a number of reasons (although, as Mum has pointed out, itâs easier to sit and knit while listening, which is why we do it). Of course, part of that was probably that when we listened to it, Mum picked the book, so I didnât realize the genera. We normally arenât âthrillerâ people, even when sheâs on a mystery kick, so I thought it was simply an inheritance drama. This meant when we were four hours from the end and showed no signs for wrapping up, I was going âUm, hello? How long is this thing? Thereâs not that much plot!â Turns out there was a bit more plot than anticipated, but if it had been an inheritance dramaâŚ? Yeah. Not that much plot.
While Iâm keeping this one mostly spoiler free, there will be minor spoilers from here on out.
Your main character is a twenty one year old orphan named Hal Westaway who works as a tarot reader on Brightonâs resurrected west pier. (The audio alerted readers to the fact the pier had been resurrected. The book seemed to assume people would know that, or maybe they just wouldnât care.) She inherited the job from her mother, who was killed in a hit and run accident two weeks before Halâs eighteenth birthday. To say sheâs not doing well financially is an understatement and would be even if she didnât have a loan shark sending collectors after her. This is how things look when she receives a letter from a solicitor in Cornwall telling her that her grandmother, Hester Westaway, has died and she stands to inherit a significant amount.
It sounds like a dream come trueâŚexcept that according to her motherâs birth certificate, Hester Westaway was not her grandmother.
Still, sheâs desperate enough for a couple thousand pounds that she packs her bags and heads out, fully intending to defraud this family (who Facebook tells her are just a bunch of rich people) and get herself out with her inheritance ofâŚ
âŚwell, okay, she wasnât expecting on inheriting the entire estate, with a grand total of absolutely nothing going to Hesterâs three sons. She also wasnât expecting to be actually named in the will...which also included her address.
And she really, really wasnât planning on seeing her dead mother in a picture presented to her by one of her âunclesâ.
Needless to say the rest of the plot involves trying to figure out how sheâs connected to this house and these people.
All of this is dotted here and there with diary entries from about 1995, clearly written by Halâs mother.
Now, I said this was well written. I really wasnât lying. The plot is just un-obvious enough to keep you guessing, even when youâre pretty sure youâve figured things out. You donât see the final twist coming, even if you know what youâre going to find on the other side of it. And the characters are all very realistic and engaging, even the minor ones. Hal has one conversation with her twelve year old cousin, and it is such a âconversation with a twelve year old boyâ thereâs no room for improvement. The moment when her fourteen year old cousin Kitty finds her eavesdropping is just as good, from Kitty admitting thatâs how she learns things too to her suggesting a dating app that goes by location when Hal says âsheâs not been in the place for a relationshipâ. Which, actually, I think is part of my problem (Mumâs as well) when you get to the end.
You know Halâs story.
Youâve just read it.
Thereâs nothing really to chew on or think about or question.
It is a very solid, well laid out plot.
The other characters, though, are very thoroughly developed only insofar as the plot needs them to be, so there are a lot of questions, and you seriously want to know whatâs going to happen to them when the whole thing is over.
Is it important to the plot? No.
Do I think the book would have been improved by the author spelling it out? Honestly, no, I think it would have ruined the whole thing.
But itâs there and thereâs nothing to be done about it!
Yes, my brain has come up with fanfiction. Why do you ask?
Anyway, good book, if you like such things I recommend it. Would read again.
okay already i desperately need u.s. americans to practice the phrase, "not where i'm from, but maybe in other parts of the u.s."
because it's genuinely insane the things i've heard americans say 'america doesn't have' when it's just factually incorrect.
for some perspective: during my longest move i did by-car in the u.s., i drove ~3,000 miles. That's ~4,800 km. It took nearly 50 hours drive-times alone. Meaning, if I could have driven without stopping once, it would have taken nearly 50 hours. Of course I split that up over several days.
Driving that same distance here, If there's a ferry+road from Rabat (in Morocco) to Kyiv (Ukraine), I could take it and keep on going another several hours.
So you can understand how silly it is for someone from the u.s. to be asked to answer a question on behalf of the entirety of the u.s.âgeographically, culturally, etc.
So now that we've said all that, I need you to know that I listened to a guy from Idaho tell an Irish person today, "yeah, we just don't really get snails much in America."
"We don't really have that in my part of the country that I'm aware of."
This suggestion put forth from the person who learned that there are native sundews in my state when I was in my mid-forties.
Seriously, we are fifty near-independed countries that act like we're unified when honestly, if it weren't for the feds some of us would be at war. There are no universal statements to be made unless it's federal law or "we sure did join the union!" I mean my state doesn't even have Waffle House, c'mon.
Vacation 2024 - Mum came back from camp with Covid! Prepare to spend half of your vacation fetching food!
Vacation 2025 - Cat died the previous week! Relaxation? Try grieving instead!
Vacation 2026 - Hey, you know that allergy cough that's been plaguing you? Here's a half-way through vakay surprise for you! IT'S ACTUALLY BRONCHITIS!
...
I seriously just want two weeks to relax, recover from work stupid, celebrate my birthday, and not have to worry about working the 3rd or 4th. Is that so much to ask?
When your prompt is about the gardens of New Port, but the house you want to use doesn't seem to have had a garden to speak of...
Of course, the house hadn't been built yet either, but we're publishing books early courtesy of Nathan Lane, so I'm just fully ignoring the time line by this point.
AGREED! FULLY AGREED! And I would ask why more people don't acknowledge this, but I did that once and I fully regret reading the responses and by now I have little enough faith in humanity that I don't have to go through that again, but COME ON NOW!
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