Tell a Braver Story

I like and follow from @thewatercolours

[olgatysko]

a moment from episode “The Adventure of the Empty House” The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1984)

[triflesandtea]

“I am glad to stretch myself, Watson. It is no joke when a tall man has to take a foot off his stature for several hours on end.”

[sadsongsandwaltzes]

I’ve noticed an overwhelming trend of 20 something/early 30s not adapting well to parenthood, and motherhood specifically (woman to woman, here)

This is the first generation of now adults that have been raised with a default state of rest. The concept of working and doing what needs to be done from sunrise to sunset is foreign, so something as demanding and difficult as motherhood seems overwhelmingly impossible.

If you view life as your default being watching TV and checking off a few things from a list during the day, you surely aren’t going to adapt well to that which forces you to actively live. It’s a complete lifestyle switch — to a life where you must do everything intentionally, even rest. Which is by far a better way of living, but it has been robbed from these younger generations.

And adding to the problem is lack of community. Folks are herded through life like cattle with little interaction with those outside their own age. They don’t have an older, wiser guide to follow through life, neither do they know how to make sense of the little ones. Enter all the atrocious baby and parenting books that do no good but cause stress and confusion for these young parents, but they eat them up because they have no other point of direction through parenthood. They’ve never really cared for the little ones outside of a four hour Saturday night babysitting gig a couple times in high school. They’ve never had to manage a household. They can hardly manage themselves.

And while this post is about a concerning trend of parents not being able to raise their own kids, it’s really just one symptom of the larger problem that I’ve already pointed out: we no longer actively live as much as we passively exist.

There are more and more people who are amazed at the concept of Actively Doing all day.

And I speak with such authority here because it’s a mindset shift I’ve lived through. I can get done in one morning what used to take me a week. And I have hobbies. And I have been learning new skills. And I have more responsibilities. And I have had no trouble taking these things in stride as life has marched on since having this mindset shift.

A lot in life really does come down to mindset. And that is the problem plaguing folks my age and younger.

[craftingcreatures]

Do you have any tips on how exactly to go about this mindset change? Because I've really been struggling lately with my work ethic lately, and the concept of being active in the way you describe just feels utterly out of reach most of the time. I want to eventually become a husband and father, but I feel like this is something I need to nail down before that happens so I'm not inflicting the consequences of my current state of doesn't-do-things on my future wife and kids.

[sadsongsandwaltzes]

Honestly, as simple as it sounds, most of it comes down to having a strong mind and simply *doing it*. Every time you notice yourself sitting on the couch scrolling through your phone, procrastinating, bored, mentally slap yourself and force yourself to get up and do something. Truly believe and know in your heart and mind that your problem is, in fact, your own problem and that you need to simply act better. Self discipline is the root and such a thing really can’t be taught.

There’s not much else I can give in the way of practical advice as most of it really is mental and not tangible, but there are a couple key things I’ve noticed have helped me.

For starters, I’m more likely to stay true to what I need to do and be motivated if I’m beholden to someone or something else that’s outside of myself. I’ll clean the house and clean it quick if I know I’ll have company, but if it’s just me day in and day out, it’s likely the house will never truly be clean and I’ll be on an endless cycle of doing one thing here or there and never feeling free from knowing I need to clean. Or take my horse for example. I’m much more likely to stay consistent with training and do it without complaint if I’ve committed to taking my horse to my friends house for roping, vs if I have to force myself to do it alone in my yard. And with that horse comes many other responsibilities. I didn’t want to go out in the cold and give him a shot last night, but I did cuz I knew I simply had to. No one else was gonna do it, I signed up for the responsibility, and I have zero right to complain (especially since it’s really not that hard and took almost no time) so responsibility to that which is outside of myself drives me to want to do what is right and do it well and do it quick.

The other thing is figuring out your vices and cutting them off at the root. Just like an alcoholic can’t even allow himself a sip of wine on a holiday, you might need to go strict cold turkey on whatever you use to satiate your boredom and keep yourself from growing as a human (cell phone, social media, tv, video games, whatever). You can decide what extent you need to take it, but you might have to set strict boundaries for yourself (like I don’t keep my phone by my bedside, and I also keep it plugged in when I’m at home so I can’t wander off to the couch with it for example)

So really I think the cure is just diving into responsibility head first, but — and this is extremely important — with the understanding that you have to be the one to make better choices and let this responsibility drive you forward. You can’t jump in with assumed safety nets or a willingness to drown. In that case, it’ll just make it worse.

Because most people are content to drown.

[schmergo]

I was talking to my husband the other day and, as a random example of a boring topic that nobody at a party would want to hear about, I happened to come up with, “The history of wheelbarrows.”

But then my husband and I got curious and decided to look up the history of wheelbarrows, and we both thought it was surprisingly interesting.

The very next day, we were visiting a thrift store with family and my sister spotted a toy wheelbarrow for her son, and my husband said, “Did you know that Jesus was older than wheelbarrows? They weren’t invented until around 100 CE.”

This is why curious people are my favorite type of people. No topic is really that boring when you look into it. And everything is more interesting when you talk about it with someone you love.

[linecoveredinjellyfish]

i am some sort of fey creature and my cat is the human who i have arbitrarily decided is my favorite human.

[linecoveredinjellyfish]

i live, to him, an unfathomably long life

i have access to powers and locations that he cannot access independently; he needs my help to navigate the world i've brought him to

i simply found him outside and abducted him one day

there are many cats in the world, but this one is the best and my most favorite. why? because he was available to abduct that morning and for very little other reason.

i have a much greater understanding of this world than him, but he has unshakable confidence in his ability to figure it out and i find that really cute

the power dynamic is fundamentally unbalanced, but i let him have a little audacity. a little combativeness and sass. as a treat.

some humans are needlessly cruel to cats or take them in for a short time before neglecting or abandoning them. but i have chosen to love and guard this one with my life. because i think he's neat.

he is very well-treated and has pretty much everything he could possibly want or need, but he is my prisoner.

[kedreeva]

You feed him food found nowhere in nature, but that tastes reminiscent of things he could eat- birds and mammals.

You could give him divine treats at any time that taste so much better than food it might drive him a little mad wanting more. You do not give them to him on any schedule he can discern.

You can lay a dry powder on the ground which causes him to lose his mind a little and behave differently for a short time should he inhale any of it. Sometimes this is inside of his entertainment for the day, and he becomes your entertainment.

You create illusions on flat surfaces that look like prey or other things, illusions that move and sound like they are real and yet when he touches them he finds only cold, flat walls.

You give him prey he cannot eat, prey that are bright colors and make strange sounds and may look nothing like real prey and yet he is enticed to chase and kill, especially the small, uncatchable red dot.

You sleep in a nest of impossibly soft material, and allow him to share this space to sleep beside you, and even to sleep there when you are gone.

Sometimes you disappear and he can find no way to follow or escape in your absence. You create and destroy openings in solid walls at your convenience.

You speak a language he cannot understand, and sometimes you say garbled words in the language of his children, and so he speaks back to you like a mother does a child in the hopes you will understand him and sometimes you seem to.

[decadent-trans-girl]

'why is so much politically-focused genre fiction centred on monarchies' many reasons, but one which I think deserves attention: monarchy is an obvious way of tying together the dysfunctions of the domestic to those of the state

[gracewight]

💯💯💯

“Trauma decontextualized in a person looks like personality. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma decontextualized in people looks like culture.”

—Resmaa Menakem

[siena-sevenwits]

As I always like to say, it’s our common humanity writ terrifyingly large - every choice has enormous stakes, yet the fascination is the intimate smallness of the human heart.

[valend]

Yahhh I have to build Rome. Yup it’s due tomorrow.. noo I haven’t started yet haha is that bad?

[salty-inc]

Just something I really want to share on here because it’s important.

[salty-inc]

[adhdandcomics]

this is really important to remember, even if you said something stupid and don’t feel like repeating it- it can still feel isolating to folks with hearing and auditory processing problems!

[therainbowgorilla]

I’ve got APD and this is the absolute worst thing! I promise I’m trying to hear you, my brain just isn’t working with me! Just try rewording it, say it but in different words and my brain might get it then!

[siena-sevenwits]

Maybe I just had a really bad week, and wasn’t actually sick of Antarctic exploration.

[peatbogpirate]

Not sure if I ever posted this here! Huss Expressions inspired by quotes from his diary (exclamation marks verbatim!!!!!!)

[peatbogpirate]

The crazy thing about this comic is that I drew it long before I’d read Hussey’s expedition diary where he routinely says “Hip hip hooray!” /“Superb!!!” / “Wow-wow!!!” / “Why worry?” and the like. He just gave that Vibe in later interviews

[peatbogpirate]

Endurance crew + dogs in South (1919) (check alt text for specific crew members!)

[bedes-silliest-soldier]

Every BBC Historical Farm Series:

Alex, cuddling a lamb: “this is what farming is all about, you need to be connected to the land, it can be hard work but it’s worth it, it was how we lived for thousands of years…

Peter, knee deep in coal: “this is the orphan mangling machine — I need to be very careful as I shovel coal into it for the next 15 hours, but orphan mangling was such an important part of the British economy back then”

Ruth, vibrating with excitement: “women’s labor went unacknowledged but it was absolutely essential to running every household and business and nothing would have been able to run without it. Today we’re going to make strawberry jam, it’s going to be quite nice :) and it made up 2/3s of the actual monetary income of households in this period, while farming was for subsistence”

Professor Ronald Hutton, materializing out of thin air: “it’s spring, which means in this part of England — East Middle Shirelandiawalhamton — we have to tie sausages to our fingers and dance through the streets singing ‘tra-lee-la-lee-lay!’ Historically, this practice was accompanied by heavy drinking, and though it was banned by the Puritans, it never really went away.”

[vintage-ukraine]

Taras Shevchenko and Ira Aldridge by Heorhiy Melikhov, 1963

Famous Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko befriended the African-American Shakespearean actor Ira Aldridge, while the latter was on tour to the Russian Empire in 1858. Shevchenko did his portrait in pastel. It is recounted that the two men got along very well. While posing for the portrait, Aldridge sang African-American songs to Shevchenko and in return, the artist taught him Ukrainian songs. 

[nastywizard]

The portrait in question: 

Portrait of Ira Aldridge by Taras Shevchenko, 1858. Pastel on paper.

[siena-sevenwits]

Whoops. I don’t like calling Cherry “my boy” etc, because he gets infantilized enough in the niche polar spaces online, but sometimes I wish to express that he’s my favourite and I regard him with warmth. So I started calling him “my good friend” in conversation occasionally.

Jonathan Harker 🤝 Apsley Cherry-Garrard

[peatbogpirate]

Old comic from ‘23, when I was still working my way through the various heroic age expedition books and noticing some… similarities

[fictionadventurer]

Hey do you know any books like the Emma M. Lion series, or just books that combine emotional intelligence with humor, low stakes, and general charm/whimsy? Thanks in advance <3 (but no pressure to answer)

There are a few ways to answer that question.

You can read Beth Brower's other books. The Q is technically set in the Emma M. Lion world, and if you haven't read it yet, read it immediately. It maintains that meandering living with the characters day-by-day pace, so it takes a while to really get invested in the story, but if you give it a chance, it's very compelling. I'm obsessed with the romance in this one and it makes me overlook a lot of other flaws. The Books of Imirillia series is also worth a read. Book 1 in particular feels like a high fantasy version of Pierce coming to St. Crispian's, and if you want reassurance that Brower can end a series in an emotionally satisfying way, you can find it here.

You can read the books and authors that she's drawing from--Austen, Alcott, Wodehouse, Wilde, L.M. Montgomery, Jean Webster--all of which have different combinations of whimsy, wit, and charm. In this classics category, I also highly recommend reading Amy Levy. Her books written in the actual 1880s--specifically, The Romance of a Shop--prove that the New Women of the time actually aren't that much different from Emma M. Lion. Levy's got a breezy, readable style with such warmth and wit that she'd be a perfect fit for anyone who likes Emma.

When it comes to more modern books, I've seen a lot of people recommend Christina Baehr's Secrets of Ormdale series as a readalike. I can see why--it involves an intelligent upper-crust late Victorian heroine dealing with a cozy fantasy world--but I've read the first book, and it doesn't fill the same Emma M. Lion niche for me. The books that I tend to slot in the same niche tend to be fairy tale retellings or other underrated indie books, so some options there are:

Entwined by Heather Dixon: Warm sisterly relationships, emotional depth involving grief, Wodehouse type characters and a lot of wit and warmth

The Electrical Menagerie by Mollie E. Reeder: Indie-published fantasy set in a fantastical Edwardian era. Focuses on friendship between two male characters

What Comes of Attending the Commoners Ball and Lady Agatha Speaks Her Mind by Elizabeth Aimee Brown: Very humorous, very cozy indie fairy tale retellings set in Victorian-ish worlds

Kate Stradling's books all have a similar (though more sarcastic) blend of not-too-magical fantasy, humor, and common sense

The Galleries of Stone trilogy by C.J. Milbrandt isn't really a readalike, but it seems just similar enough that I feel like I should mention it. It's a very cozy fantasy series about getting to know a wide cast of likeable characters, and it's an underrated indie series.

The Star That Always Stays by Anna Rose Johnson is more of a "if you like L.M. Montgomery" readalike, but I feel like I should mention it because of the Montgomery influences in Emma M. Lion

Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther is showing up on my reading list, and it seems like a stretch, but I think it might be a surprising fit. It's a collection of fictionalized accounts written during the very early days of WWII, originally published as newspaper columns, so they have that day-by-day life feel of Emma's journals, and Mrs. Miniver has a certain cozy charm. WWII isn't exactly a cozy time, but this also takes place before the war really kicked off, so it's not super-high stakes.

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. A series of real-life letters between a witty, bookish writer and the staff of an English bookstore she befriends in the years after WWII. Maybe the most Emma M. Lion read? It's about books, friendship, and recovering from a terrible time, it's epistolary, and Hanff has a great voice.

Yours From the Tower by Sally Nichols is an epistolary novel about the friendship between three girls in Edwardian America. I don't remember a ton, but it would fit in that low-stakes Emma-ish niche.

The Shoes books by Noel Streatfeild are children's books, but they fit in that same genre that Brower is drawing from, and always have lots of vivid characters.

The Betsy-Tacy series by Maud Hart Lovelace is also for children, and not as humorous, but is very much in that cozy, low-stakes, old-fashioned vibe of Emma.

Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon is an 1860 classic, but I'm mentioning it here because I just started rereading it, and I love it, and I think more people should read it, and I think Emma should read it too because she'd love it.

[pipshinwhatever]

logging onto tumblr like heyyy i'm thinking about the same character i've spent the past few weeks thinking about. no change here. just wanted to let yall know