#fandom books

[howlsmovinglibrary]

Mini-Reviews: Plus-Size Rep in Romance

Mini-Reviews: Plus-Size Rep in Romance

I review two romances featuring plus-size heroines

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[vodzine]

Everybody loves a good space pirate AU, like we have in today’s artist feature by @borossir!

Pre-orders for Victory or Death are open through September 20th, 2019! You can pick up your copy through our shop over at vodzine.bigcartel.com! (A clickable link is in the blog description.)

Net proceeds will benefit the Feline Community Network of Hobart, Indiana!

[ikiracake]

Need some book recs

Just finished Ship It by Britta Lundin, and it left such a bad taste in my mouth. I was hoping for another fun fandom book like Geekerella and The Princess and the Fangirl, but honestly it was just awful and awkward, especially following after those books. I need to find something else to read so that's not the last fandom book I remember for a while.

Worst case, I'll just reread Princess and the Fangirl, but I'd love to read something new if anyone has suggestions. I can't believe I didn't know that this genre of books existed!

[writemoment]

| An Absolutely Remarkable Thing | Feat. Pumpkin

[howlsmovinglibrary]

Eliza and her Monsters by Francesca Zappia

I’ve been wanting to read Eliza and Her Monsters for a super long time, and I was worried it wouldn’t live up to the hype that I’d built up in my own mind. However, it ended up being one of the best books I’ve read this year, and the first book in a good few months that kept me awake until I could finish it.

 I started reading while knowing the following things:

The book was about fandom, and most of my favourite books this year have had a similar focus on geekery.

It was also a book about writing and creating art, and I love books (such as Afterworlds) that discuss people’s creative processes and the highs and lows involved.

 It’s main plot line is a romance between a fanfic writer and an original creator – I mean, come on, that is just guaranteed “good content.”

The book delivered on all three of these, which alone probably would’ve earned it a 5 star rating. But then it also offered me: 

Soft boy characters doing soft things

A completely real, relatable, and tangible sense of both Eliza’s anxiety, and her frustration at older generations for not understanding what fandom and the internet can mean to people

Lovely multimedia sections within the story, including adorable internet forum flirting and actual webcomic *artwork* - the drawings are literally beautiful

 While I have read and enjoyed a lot of internet fandom books this year – Geekerella, Unconventional, Queens of Geek – Eliza and her Monsters is to me the most accurate and realistic portrayal of that, at times both heartwarming and heartwrenching.

 Full review on WordPress! (because WordPress is a thing now)

[tastaturean]

Un bonus de engancharme a Haikyû ha sido conocer a Kenma, inspiración de Nacho, un personaje de El Perdedor de Myriam M. Lejardi, libro que no dejo de recomendar.  

Lo descubrí por casualidad cuando se publicó en 2022 porque seguía a Fandom Books. Entonces no conocía a la autora. La portada y las ilustraciones eran monas, pero me pareció una obra juvenil hetero más y pasé.  

Hasta que compartieron frases de Andrés hablando de sus pelotas, y fue ese tono desenfadado de humor “mamarracho” (ver fragmentos en este otro post anterior) lo que me hizo darle una oportunidad. Y me encantó.  

Entiendo que si preferís romance adulto no os apetezca un libro juvenil. A mí es que me gustan tanto o más las historias de amistad que de amor. Esas amistades del insti que perduran “hasta el asilo”.  

Me gustó saber cómo se conocieron los amigos, de qué forma y cuántas veces la cagó Bosco con Camila, y cómo lo resuelven. Pero los que me atraparon fueron Andrés y Nacho.  

Andrés es mi personaje favorito. Este desvergonzado grandullón, adoptado y con dos padres, sirve de incitador y pegamento en una  pandilla entrañable de inadaptados formados por un bisexual patoso, una hetero gamer influencer y Nacho alias Pistacho, un estudiante de ingeniería  delgaducho y tiradísimo del que sólo se sabe que le gusta fumar, dormir y  las matemáticas, que llama “hermano” a todos y que siempre graba con el  móvil todas las locuras que se les ocurren a sus amigos.    

En Haikyû, Nacho sería una mezcla de Kenma y Suna, del Inarizaki (en fanarts graba todo con el móvil para chantajear a los hermanos Miya). Aquí, que Nacho grabe las gamberradas de la pandilla sirve para algo positivo.  

El otro día me alegró mucho ver todos los libros de Myriam en la biblioteca de mi barrio. Es una pena que los autopublicados no se puedan incluir en las bibliotecas para que los descubra más gente. Pero a cambio están baratos online, que pagar 10+ euros por un epub de editorial es un atraco.  

Os animo a redescubrir las bibliotecas, porque últimamente hay mucho más de lo que os imagináis (si vivís en un pueblo, buscad en la ciudad más cercana).

[mugglenet]

Evanna Lynch's "The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting" Made My Heart Flutter

New Post has been published on https://bit.ly/3MmJwPS

Evanna Lynch's "The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting" Made My Heart Flutter

In 2021, Evanna Lynch published her first book, The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting. Why I waited two years to read it, I’ll never know. Probably Wrackspurts. I bought the book to indulge my fandom curiosity, and although she doesn’t disappoint in that regard, I wasn’t wholly prepared for how vividly and painfully her words would reflect my own melancholy past. Thus, a word of warning: This article, just like Lynch’s book, traverses sensitive topics including disordered eating, self-harm, and sexual assault. 

              View this post on Instagram

                        A post shared by Evanna Lynch (@evannalynch)

    Did watching Luna on-screen ever give you a sense of something far more complicated drifting beneath the surface? Well, there was. I had no idea that The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting would center around illness and recovery from anorexia. I struggled with disordered eating for years, so I was both surprised and grateful for this caring disclaimer in the opening pages: 

[…] before reading any further, I need to highlight that this book explores a variety of sensitive topics, including eating disorders, self-harm, suicide, fat-phobia and self hate […] I would advise any reader to use their personal discretion when reading […] and to step away [if triggered].

My own disordered eating has long passed, so I chose to proceed. And while I can confirm that certain portions could trigger some readers, the same portions will help others. So, continue with caution. Lynch wades fully into the headspace of self-hate with vivid, cutting descriptions of those feelings. All the same, she wrote her book as carefully and responsibly as she could:

I was determined […] that this book would not become a ‘how-to’ manual for eating disorders [so I] decided to omit any specific details of weight, calorie counting, and health statistics.  […] any urge to include these details […] is actually the voice of the eating disorder.

If you’re in a place that feels safe enough and you decide to venture ahead, some powerful prose will greet you. 

              View this post on Instagram

                        A post shared by Evanna Lynch (@evannalynch)

    Lynch’s narrative begins with a description of herself at 10 years old. It’s the ’90s. The news is always blaring in her working-class home and on this day, it mentions something called rape. She asks her parents to explain. Her mother replies: “It’s when a man forces a woman to have sex with him […] because I suppose… he wants the woman so much that he decides to just… take her.”

You could almost miss the poisonous subtext. However unintended, the explanation is harmful. Think about it. Men don’t rape women because they want them. No, they despise women and find it acceptable to harm and even kill them. Thus, the 10-year-old Lynch’s response is as predictable as it is distressing: “How flattering! Imagine being so beautiful, so attractive, so irresistibly desirable that someone can’t help themselves from having you!”

This shattering excerpt is what I admire most about the book. Lynch pinpoints these moments. She spotlights the deceptively small aggressions of a sexist culture—and shows how they set the stage for huge damage. Page after page, she artfully sketches little moments of great harm, blending them together into the heavy shadow of sexism that stalks every little girl.

              View this post on Instagram

                        A post shared by Evanna Lynch (@evannalynch)

    It’s not long into the book before the young Lynch develops anorexia. I’ve always heard that Lynch was a super fan who showed up to an audition and scored the part. I always imagined a typical, enthusiastic kid. So I was taken aback to read about a very small child struggling with anorexia and discovering Luna Lovegood for the first time—from a lonely hospital bed:

Every time [Luna] shows up [in the book], something deep within me seems to sigh. She makes my mind still.  […] In her presence, anxiety, fear, and shame seem to dissolve. […] She makes everything seem less important, less serious. The teenage drama whirling around Hogwarts, Voldemort’s return […] and my nonstop obsessive thoughts of food, and calories, and fat. Here is somebody who will not judge me […] who will not judge herself. She is deep and wise, inalterable. She possesses this rare, wonderful, and yet simple quality of total self acceptance.

With her deeply perceptive understanding of Luna Lovegood, it’s no wonder we were all so bewitched by Lynch’s on-screen performance.

              View this post on Instagram

                        A post shared by Evanna Lynch (@evannalynch)

    It’s a heavy journey. A less-artful pen might lose its reader along the way. But as I followed Lynch’s childhood path through anorexia, self-doubt, and self-denigration, her poetic prose, witty humor, and deep empathy managed to warm my heart. Lynch’s pen is just magical. Here’s one of my favorite excerpts, which describes what women seemed like through her 10-year-old gaze:

Everywhere they went, women left traces. Blurry little lip prints on wine glasses, stained faintly in rosy hues of red or pink. Citrus-scented silk neck scarves, hanging over the backs of chairs. Delicious, brown-paper packages of food they’d made with their hands. Mysterious yellow wrappers discreetly tucked into the corners of the bathroom bins.

              View this post on Instagram

                        A post shared by Evanna Lynch (@evannalynch)

    With each page turn, I know that some readers will feel the loom of a familiar pattern. In one chapter, Lynch wrote, “Where my art, my friends, my dreams have faded and fallen out of my life, somehow Harry Potter remains. I read them over and over.” Throughout the years, many fans I’ve met have shared that—like me—they grew to love Harry Potter because it reflected their lonely experiences of trauma, neglect, alienation, abuse, and loss. I was therefore very moved to learn that Lynch is one of those very people. And I’m grateful that her vulnerable, complicated, beautiful book helped me process parts of my own past.

If you pick up The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting, leave a comment and tell us what you think.