Accidentally deleted my blog like an idiot, but I'm back now. Sigh. So, if we were mutuals before and I haven't followed you yet, let me know. There are a lot of URLs I can't remember how to spell. My name's Michelle. Some people call me Q since my fanfiction penname has been Qzil for years. Whichever one is fine. Here you'll mostly find Megstiel/SPN, with a smattering of other fandoms and general shit posting. Sometimes I write stuff. This can be found under either my 'michelle writes' tag, or at my AO3 account. My older stuff can be found on my FFN. AO3 | FFN
Seeing the discourse around Yesteryear on other apps has actually been fucking wild bc there are people out here slamming down your intelligence and giving the author way more credit than she's due if you didn't "get" the book.
Well, if you listen to the author's podcast--
NO!! I should not have to do supplemental reading/listening!! She should have WROTE IT INTO THE BOOK.
Natalie being an unreliable narrator does not excuse the fuckassery of this book.
The "Natalie doesn't really believe her religion so it isn't important to know exactly what denomination she's a part of" is BULLSHIT.
I don't care if the author claims on her podcast that she did loads of research for this book when it was very clear in the text SHE DID NOT. OR she just decided to disregard all of it.
AAAAHHHH
People not liking the book because they thought it was bad does not make them stupid. People not liking the book because they didn't want to be trapped in Natalie's hateful head is okay. Jesus. Some of y'all some pretentious ass fuckers.
Anyway, the quality of produce at my local grocery store lately has been WILD. Two of the onions I bought on Sunday were rotten and mushy on the inside when I cut them up yesterday. This was obviously no good for tomato sauce so I had to return to the store to procure more onions. This has happened multiple times and has cost me so much money because I now buy extra onions every trip.
Obviously this isn't anyone's fault, because you can't magically tell if an onion is rotten inside from the outside. However, this has led to me staring at my backyard and wondering if there's somewhere I can actually plant onions next year and how difficult could it be to cure and store them, really? As if I need to give myself even MORE work bc why not, at this point?
Anyway, I should prooooobably go pop all that pasta sauce out of the souper cubes and bag it up for the freezer eh.
Also as someone who batch cooks/meal preps a lot: the souper cubes and their knockoffs are worth every damn penny.
A large part of my current problem in life is the never ending drudgery of work and the fact that it seems to have no end and the absolute exhaustion that's seeped in because of it.
Like, yes, there will be better days ahead and there will be time to rest, eventually. But it is very hard to look forward to that when you're in the thick of things and your immediate future is just More Work and More Exhaustion and rest is "eventual" rather than a concrete date to look forward to or enough time to actually recover.
A smaller part of my current problem is that paid job would be much less exhausting mentally and physically if people could be a little less people-y and a little more read the menu-y or a little more use their brain-y. And maybe also a little more decide-y on what they want instead of rapid fire changing their orders three times in one minute.
And like yeah, I'm just kind of bitching. At least I don't have children to take care of bc at this point I'd be gibbering in a corner eating my own hair if I also had to do that. There are a lot of silver linings and things to be grateful for. But that doesn't stop the absolute dread or exhaustion in the moment. I can be grateful for the good things (at least I have a house to care for, at least I have a job, at least I have all this food) while also being fucking exhausted. And frankly kind of pissed off that this home that I'm never in can get so dirty so quickly when I'm at work for like 10 hours a day because how TF is it so dusty in here??
i block ppl all the time so my blocklist ranges from "actual fucking asshole fascist" n "post that mildly annoyed me because im petty" and if i went thru my blocklist rn i probably would have no idea why i blocked each of them but whatever
People who paid more attention than me also pointed out all the editing problems with Yesteryear but overall: Book was a hot fucking mess and is only so popular because Anne Hathaway endorsed it/has the rights to the movie, and because so many people want to see Tradwife influencers suffer and are gleeful about the idea.
And I say this as a hater. I was born a hater and I'll die a hater.
I still, absolutely, would never want to see another human being suffer the way Natalie did in this book, no matter how hateful their beliefs or behavior.
I also firmly believe that the fundies don't give a shit about us (the liberal, childfree by choice, non religious women) beyond the occasional thought. Not in the same way Tradwife influencers seem to live in so many people's heads rent free.
If you really hate Hannah Ballerina Farm and are in the frankly weird headspace where you fantasize about Tradwives "getting theirs" read this book, I guess.
I'm less than an hour away from finishing Yesteryear and my thoughts are:
Throw the whole man away. Not one review I've read has talked about the husband. It doesn't matter that Natalie was originally the one who came up with the whole idea to live a pioneer style life. He participated. He enabled. He drugged her. Raped her. He is just as responsible for the child abuse as she is. Moreso, because this woman is terribly mentally ill and losing *years* of her life in a drug induced haze.
Natalie is not blameless. She is a horrible, horrible person who is continuing a cycle of misery and continuously performing her life. The book has SOMETHING to say about the performance of motherhood, wifehood, and being a woman. And how not performing perfectly leads to "punishment". It just says it very very badly.
I am AMAZED at all these reviews saying this is such a smart book, that's it's a great satire of Tradwives. It isn't.
I need to read a book that doesn't make me mad this year. I've only read three new books since Christmas. They have all just made me mad.
Anyway, trying real hard not to complain about work all over the Internet, but I will say that I am, 100%, never going to understand the public at all. And I have to accept that.
#public libraries are good because they let people access books they might never otherwise read#private book ownership is good because it's Yours#physical books are good because they last a long time and again it's Yours#ebooks are good because you can fit a whole library into the physical space of a single book and they're cheaper to produce#audiobooks are good because they're accessible to people with eyesight or visual reading issues and leave your hands free#in conclusion: all books are good and people should enjoy them however and whenever they can#(lest it be misunderstood I agree with you completely OP I just also really like books in general and it got away from me)
Also: I heavily, heavily dislike audiobooks for myself because I have a harder time retaining audiobooks over physical books. I'd much rather sit down and read something over 2-3 days than listen to a 14 hour audiobook in snippets (which is what I have to do). It takes literally FOREVER and I can't go back and scan things bc I'm not paying attention to time stamps. Unfortunately, my only time to listen to an audiobook is while making dinner, doing dishes, or in the shower. I don't like to listen to them while driving bc my commute is short, anyway, and I have to pay attention to the road. So I can only listen to stuff in like 1/2 hr blocks.
I'm glad I didn't buy this book bc I do not like it enough to own it, but I really wish my library had more than the audiobook on Libby.
(Unfortunately, my local library has really weird, short hours in person, so I unfortunately can't make it in until the work season is over, so idk if they have physical copies there. But knowing our library system, probably not. Small town problems).
Man, I cannot stop thinking about that "fuck yeah, concrete" meme bc my garage floor is concrete and my cat loves to go in there and roll around on it, to the point we call it "fuck yeah concrete time"
So I'm "reading" Yesteryear (audiobook, which is not my preferred method, but it was what my library had) and I have...thoughts.
I'm 70% through the book, and it is both...good and not good. Spoilers ahead. The "twist" got spoiled for me so reading the book with the twist in mind makes it even worse, imo.
It is not a good representation of a tradwife NOR religious culture in general. It feels like the author took all her facts from Fundiesnark. Like what the "angry women" of the book think Tradwives think like.
There is nowhere near enough criticism of the patriarchal systems that build this type of life, and the marketing for it. There is nowhere near enough focus on the fact that Caleb is extremely fucked up for participating in this nonsense, abusing his wife physically, and raping her. Maybe he gets his comeuppance. Idk.
You're supposed to be...enjoying? Natalie's "comeuppance" and I, a person capable of empathy, am not. All I feel for this horrible, miserable woman is absolute pity. And she is a horrible person. I think we all know someone like Natalie: someone who is unhappy with their life, who has unearned arrogance, and yet is extremely awkward. Who's whole life is a performance, and who is participating in a competition that you did not sign up for, yet they think you are participating in. She is nothing but utterly pathetic. And I pity her. I do not enjoy her suffering.
The author has, so far, also given us zero confirmation on Natalie's actual religion. She's not Mormon, and that's all we know. Even though she's clearly based on Ballerina Farm.
Finally, knowing that this is all happening bc of post partum psychosis instead of an actual consequence of Natalie's beliefs (aka, practicing what she preaches/the lifestyle she sells other women) just kind of feels...icky. There are great ideas dropped in the book about how living a lifestyle you don't believe in or marrying the wrong person after a short courtship can make you miserable, or the radicalization of men due to the manosphere online effects families, the child abuse in using your kids for content, and shit like that. But the author just...drops all of it in favor of gleefully "punishing" a woman suffering from, again, fucking post partum psychosis and a history of post partum depression.
I wanted to like this book so bad, but it just feels so...needlessly, gleefully mean. It reminds me entirely of the old Fundiesnark before it went private.
Also, the entire marital rape scene was fucking disgusting to put to paper.
band camp, 2019. there was an infestation. i started eating them to get rid of them. i have since eaten cockroaches, crickets, grasshoppers, and those little green grass spiders.
