#catherynne m valente | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

asoftepiloguemylove · 5 months

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KNOW IT'S FOR THE BETTER // ON THE LONELINESS AFTER ABANDONMENT

S.A. Khanum "Rome Falls," Kingdoms in the Wild // boygenius Not Strong Enough // Fleurie Love and War // unknown // Sleeping At Last Mother // Catherynne M. Valente Deathless // @heavensghost // pinterest // Mitski I Don't Smoke

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malinaa · 8 months

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THE REFRIGERATOR MONOLOGUES by CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

#words #prose #the refrigerator monologues #catherynne m valente #n1 #vivian #photo #tais toi lys #*

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faunary · 2 years

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#i don't have your appetite and then the entirety of hannibal is an antithesis to that #web weaving #hannibal #will graham #on hunger #i am all mouth #phoebe bridgers #mitski #julia kristeva #louise gluck #ada limon #anne carson #li young lee #catherynne m valente #erica jong #sylvia plath

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ryttu3k · 1 year

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"The question has never been: Can you build cities?

Ants do that.

The question has never been: Are you capable of considering your own existence and getting kind of depressed about it?

Any animal in captivity does that.

The question has never been: Can you use tools?

Crows do that. Otters do that. Apes do that. Good Lord, everybody does that.

The question has never been: Can you perform complex problem solving?

Dogs do that.

The question has never been: Can you experience love?

Nobody doesn’t.

The question has never been: Can you use language?

Parrots and dolphins and cuttlefish do that.

The question has never even been: Do you understand object permanence, can you recognize yourself in the mirror, do you bury your dead, do you bond emotionally with your young?

Elephants do all those things, and some humans definitely don’t.

The only question is this:

Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other reason than that it rocks?

Everything in the universe has rhythm. Everything pulses to a beat laid down by the Big Bang. Everything feels the drumline of creation from star to sex to song. But can you make that rhythm? In order to create a pop band, the whole apparatus of civilization must be up and running and tapping its toe to the beat. Electricity, poetry, mathematics, sound amplification, textiles, arena architecture, efficient mimetic exchange, dramaturgy, industry, marketing, the bureaucratic classes, cultural critics, audiovisual transmission, special effects, music theory, symbology, metaphor, transportation, banking, enough leisure and excess calories to do anything beyond hunt, all of it, everything.

Can everyone else trust that, if you must declare war and wipe out half a quadrant, you’ll at least write a sad song about it?

Yes?

Well, even that is not quite enough.

Are you kind enough, on your little planet, not to shut that rhythm down? Not to crush underfoot the singers of songs and tellers of tales and wearers of silk? Because it’s monsters who do that. Who extinguish art. Who burn books. Who ban music. Who yell at anyone with ears to turn off that racket. Who cannot see outside themselves clearly enough to sing their truth to the heavens. Do you have enough goodness in your world to let the music play?

Do you have soul?"

- Space Opera, by Catherynne M Valente

#this part absolutely made me feel some sorta way #space opera #catherynne m valente #books #book quotes #eurovision #(it counts the book is literally eurovision in space)

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have-you-read-this-short-fiction · 2 months

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#novella #novellas #the past is red #catherynne m valente #catherynne m. valente #21st century literature #english language literature #american literature #have you read this short fiction?#book polls #completed polls

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aliteraryprincess · 7 months

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The rapt pupil will be forgiven for assuming the Tsar of Death to be wicked and the Tsar of Life to be virtuous. Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature--but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.

Catherynne M. Valente, Deathless

#booklr #book quotes #deathless #catherynne m valente #books

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travelingneuritis · 8 months

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For the write meme 17 - are there any writers and/or stories you consider an influence?

Oh definitely! There are too many to count, but here are some of the writers whose philosophy of storytelling has been most formative for me.

Ursula K. LeGuin for the way she wraps life-changing revelations about human tenderness and mercy into small, blink-and-you'll-miss-them moments. She never hits you over the head with The Message, but you'll read a passage like

It is not until an act occurs within the landscape of the past and the future that it is a human act. [...]The thing about working with time, instead of against it, he thought, is that it is not wasted. Even pain counts.

from The Dispossessed and just. Feel the bottom fall out of your world. And her stories are full of that kind of gentle, forgiving curiosity into what it means to be alive in this universe. Like all the best sci-fi, her work glows with a sense of sheer humanity.

Catherynne M. Valente for her prose, which is honestly some of the brightest and sparkliest I've ever read, and her Fairyland series in particular for the way it tells stories about telling stories, with a deep sense of devotion to that most human magic of all. I wish I could give you a block quote but honestly I think you should just pick up a copy of The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making. I am telling you, the prose just flies by and then suddenly you're at the end and you feel like you're a different person than you were in the beginning-- and also like you're closer to the person you were always meant to be.

Lucy Maud Montgomery's The Blue Castle was one of my favorite novels as a child and teenager, particularly for Valancy's rapturous delight in natural, worldly pleasures. For example:

In spite of Barney's doctrine of bondage, Valancy thought they were splendidly free. It was amazing to be able to sit up half the night and look at the moon if you wanted to. To be late for meals if you wanted to-- she who had always been rebuked so sharply by her mother and so reproachfully by Cousin Stickles if she were one minute late. Dawdle over meals as long as you wanted to. Leave your crusts if you wanted to. Sit on a sun-warm rock and paddle your bare feet in the hot sand if you wanted to. Just sit and do nothing in the beautiful silence if you wanted to. In short, do any fool thing you wanted whenever the notion took you. If that wasn't freedom, what was?

Additionally: Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, all of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett, and anything Neil Gaiman but particularly The Graveyard Book. This isn't just a list of my favorite authors, it's a list of the authors whose focus on human generosity and interconnection is so palpably central to their work that it formed the core what I believe storytelling to be, at its heart.

And that's why I now write nasty demon robot porn on the internet.

#i realize this ask might have been more about other fic writers but uhhhh. i got carried away. i can list those too if anyone's interested #ask meme #asks #writing #ursula k leguin #catherynne m valente #lucy maud montgomery #book recs

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neuronerdo · 6 months

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Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente is my all-time favorite book that no one has every heard of. It's about space, but it's also about grief, and it's about cinema, but it's also just a father and a daughter and everything that could possibly go wrong in that equation. It's a murder (?) mystery in that someone has died, but the characters make it so the concept of "murder" goes a little bit fuzzy around the edges.

It's also, for what it's worth, batshit insane. I love the worldbuilding because it reeks of someone having a baffling idea and devoting their entire novel to it. Valente commits to the bit at every turn, leaving no moment untouched by creative decisions that should logically fail and yet never do. I think it has to do with her tone-- the whole book is written in such a "duh" voice. Of course the moon is the modern Hollywood. Of course there are kangaroos on Mars and whales (?) on Venus. Of course Pluto and Charon are linked in a celestial dance by an organic bridge of tree limbs and flowers. Of course, of course, of course.

It's also the type of book where every character talks circles around what they actually mean. Every page is a treasure hunt, and trust me when I say that the hunt is entirely map-less for the first two thirds. But who likes their quests easy? It's only satisfying if you work for it.

I suppose my main point is that you should read it. It is a book that makes me happy and I would regret it forever if I didn't give you the chance to read it too.

#booklr #books #radiance #catherynne m. valente #catherynne m valente #scifi #fantasy #spacepunk #decopunk #book recommendations #book review #fav books

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thirdactkerfuffle · 3 months

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You can't stop people being assholes.

They do love it so.

The best you can hope for is that some people, sometimes, will turn out to be somewhat less than the absolute worst.

When they manage to trip and fall over that incredibly low bar, they'll make you want to end it all.

But when they leap over it, they'll make you believe this whole mess really was created for a reason - the bastards.

Except me, of course.

I'm superb.

Ask anyone.

And you're all right, I suppose.

-Goguenar Gorecannon's Eleventh Unkillable Fact

#space opera #catherynne m valente #book quotes #language

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asoftepiloguemylove · 2 months

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MY ONE AND ONLY // ON LOVE THAT ISN'T ENOUGH

Madeline Miller The Song of Achilles // 呪術廻戦 Jujutsu Kaisen (2018-) wr. 芥見下々Gege Akutami // Adam Silvera They Both Die at the End // Lorde Ribs // Chris Abani Dog Woman // System of a Down Lonely Day // 呪術廻戦 Jujutsu Kaisen (2018-) wr. 芥見下々Gege Akutami // Catherynne M. Valente Deathless // 呪術廻戦 Jujutsu Kaisen (2018-) wr. 芥見下々Gege Akutami // Olivia Gatwood "The Lover as a Cult," Life of the Party // Sufjan Stevens Mystery of Love // @/perennials on ao3 (link to fic) // 呪術廻戦 Jujutsu Kaisen (2018-) wr. 芥見下々Gege Akutami // Azra T. (quote via @wedarkacademia)

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malinaa · 8 months

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THE REFRIGERATOR MONOLOGUES by CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE

#words #prose #touch #the refrigerator monologues #catherynne m valente #photo #tais toi lys

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faunary · 2 years

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Catherynne M Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

[ID: I said: I could be a wolf for you. I could put my teeth on your throat. I could growl. I could eat you whole. I could wait for you in the dark. I could howl against your hair.]

#catherynne m valente #the bread we eat in dreams #on hunger #we love only the person we can eat #repeated image of the lover destroyed #hannigram

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isawiitch · 2 years

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RADIANCE by Catherynne M Valente

#weird ass decopunk noir sci fi my beloved…#catherynne m valente #radiance #severin unck #book art #it’s fanart #to be clear

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have-you-read-this-short-fiction · 5 months

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#novella #novellas #six-gun snow white #six gun snow white #catherynne m valente #catherynne m. valente #english language literature #american literature #21st century literature #book polls #completed polls #have you read this short fiction?

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vifetoile · 3 months

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“She liked anything orange: leaves; some moons; marigolds; chrysanthemums; cheese; pumpkin, both in pie and out; orange juice; marmalade. Orange is bright and demanding. You can't ignore orange things. She once saw an orange parrot in the pet store and had never wanted anything so much in her life. She would have named it Halloween and fed it butterscotch. Her mother said butterscotch would make a bird sick and, besides, the dog would certainly eat it up. September never spoke to the dog again — on principle.

...

“Such lonely, lost things you find on your way. It would be easier, if you were the only one lost. But lost children always find each other, in the dark, in the cold. It is as though they are magnetized and can only attract their like. How I would like to lead you to brave, stalwart friends who would protect you and play games with dice and teach you delightful songs that have no sad endings. If you would only leave cages locked and turn away from unloved Wyverns, you could stay Heartless.”

Two quotes from The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente

#the girl who circumnavigated fairyland in a ship of her own making #catherynne m valente #fairyland #orange #color #friendship #quotes #ya literature #fantasy

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mzannthropy · 5 months

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a touch of a gothic romance

(Note: there's a spelling mistake in the Wuthering Heights quote, which I didn't notice until the pictures were already taken, please just ignore it.)

#photography #mine #still life #gothic #gothic romance #my cousin rachel #quote #wuthering heights #deathless #catherynne m valente #emily bronte #sam claflin #rachel weisz #samblogging

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