Roma Montagov

ok book club <3 what are we reading that’s actually good and would maybe fill the trc shaped hole in my soul???? and don’t say reread. unless you say reread the dreamer trilogy because i’m so close to giving into the urge.

please. please. give me your suggestions.

as a frame of reference here are non-trc books i love & would recommend (different content, same soul):

watch over me by nina lacour

in memoriam by alice winn

under the whispering door by tj klune

these violent delights by micah nemerever

the anthropocene reviewed by john green

summer sons by lee mandelo

a tale for the time being by ruth ozeki

i need an actual book club but tumblr took away my group chats :(

anyway love you please give me suggestions!!!!!

'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.

I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.

About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'

-Casey Plett, Consciousness

books i would sell my soul to read again for the first time:

the way i used to be - amber smith

the seven husbands of evelyn hugo - taylor jenkins reid

house of salt and sorrows - erin a craig

if he had been with me - laura nowlin

these violent delights - chloe gong

dance of thieves - mary e. pearson

the silent patient - alex michaelides

caraval - stephanie garber

all the light we cannot see - anthony doerr

Roma 🤝 Orion

this scary woman is my wife

roma and alisa were the sibling duo we needed

just finished foul heart huntsman.....

I SOBBED LIKE 15 TIMES. IT WAS BRUTAL. WHY WAS THIS DONE TO ME. GUYSSSS ITS SO OVER

also orion is literally me guys i am him (and jacks) (i am just every dramatic fictional man)

ALSO ROMA AND JULIETTES BABY KATHERINA I THINK HER NAME WAS??? HELLO???? THATS THE CUTESR THING EVER

it is currently thursday, my dudes

die as many times as you want, but you’ll always come back again and again and again… lady fortune.

In what follows I address this kind of shock in particular relation to the figuring and staging of bodies in tragedy - especially dead ones, but also those living that are represented as approximate and / or proximate to corpses. Interacting with such bodies intensifies agony and transport for characters and audiences alike, both of which affects plunge towards sublimity. At the same time the strongly gendered familial dynamics of pivotal scenes inflect the emotional shudder that attends them with a psychic recoil, as mothers haunt sons and sisters seek to lie down with brothers or other 'wrong' objects of affection (e.g. a mother's husband, as I'll come back to).

Unsurprisingly, each of the three main dramatists pursues these effects by different means, in keeping with their distinctive stylistic registers. Aeschylus foregrounds corpses as precipitating ominous figurations that are forcefully manipulated by and/or have powerful effects on those who view them. The Oresteia offers an arresting collection of corpses, with both Clytemnestra and Orestes commanding tableaux on the ekkuklêma flanked by their victims, the effects of which drive the son (if not the mother) mad. Sophocles focuses instead on the moribund body of Electra, expanding upon a brief moment in the kommos of Aeschylus' play, when Electra draws attention to her outsider status. Sophocles is more concerned with the metaphors that indicate the eerie, elusive qualities of heroic bodies on the edge. The corpses in his version are barely present; in their place Electra emphasizes her mouldering and tattered state as well as her existential proximity to Orestes, whom she thinks is dead. Euripides, in a characteristic move that makes palpable the dread and fascination aroused by the outcast and the dead, combines these effects, so that unsettling figurative and staging tactics encourage a creeping awareness that the drive to violence may foster perverse attractions. His Electra expatiates in bitter detail on her coarse clothes and shorn hair, then later on in the action pursues to alarming affect engagement with the corpses of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Aeschylus' and Euripides' dead exert unnerving holds over the live viewers of their bodies, while Sophocles' undead Electra is also a presence that is difficult to assimilate or ignore, with her sullied appearance and harsh regard, as well as her eerie sense of both metaphor and the literal edge.

Exquisite Corpses and Other Bodies in the Electra Plays by Nancy Worman

“A sky full of stars and the sun that chased them for a lifetime.”

These Violent Delights (Have Violent Ends) by damagecontrol had me trying to stifle sobs in my office so my coworkers wouldn’t hear me cry during the first time I read it and I remember being so surprised that I was surprised about a MCD in a fucking marauders/titanic!AU… like obviously someone’s gonna die 🙄 and tbh tbh that made me love it even more so all hail @imdamagecontrol bc their writing ALWAYS HITS 🫡

I’m still trying to learn how to make my own typesets but THIS incredible typeset was made by @vellichorbindery 💕💕💕

Definitely made some improvements with my second bind, my stitching got a lot cleaner, but also made some more mistakes 🙃 it’s fine tho, I’m still learning and growing and whatever

Still at a standstill with my cover designs for various reasons so I’m making do with the materials that I have for now. This glittery fabric I used for the cover was giving me Night Sky Over A Freezing Shipwreck vibes 🥶

For personal use only, no commissions 🚢✨

chloe gong has the ability to make me cry over every book she writes, and that's the true talent she has

Just came home from closing night of Romeo and Juliet. Time in re-read Tvd

I just finished rereading Foul Lady Fortune as part of my full Secret Shanghai reread before Foul Heart Huntsman. I already liked Phoebe during my first read of the book, but reading it again after the reveal in the epilogue makes her character 10 times more fun to read about (FLF spoilers below).

1. Just Phoebe in general having a very bubbly personality but also being a highly skilled sharpshooter (we love a girl who can do both).

2. Orion spending a whole paragraph talking about how Phoebe wouldn’t be a good agent, only for her to be hiding that she’s communist assassin the entire time. Also, knowing that their mother was actually teaching Phoebe to shoot during their outings (from ‘the Priest and the Shepherd’ short story).

3. Her literally saying this.

4. Another thing I didn’t catch on until my second read is when Phoebe says this to try and suss out Alisa, knowing now that she’s actually talking about herself.

I’ve only read the first 8 chapters of Foul Heart Huntsman from Simon Teen’s website, but the Phoebe-Silas dynamic is so interesting from what I’ve read so far. I can’t wait to see how it plays out in the rest of the book (and also everyone else’s reactions when they find out she’s Priest lol).

“I will always find my way to you.”

Regulus inhales a shaky breath. “Not this time, James. I don’t think—Not in this lifetime.”

“In every lifetime, Regulus. I will find you in every single one.”

GOD.

hey remember how sometimes i publish chapters of a midnight sun rewrite? violent delights, it's called? butch edith cullen etc? if theres anyone still alive who wants to read it, heres a new chapter