Laika Speaks

the book is a sapphic vampire romance called she's my eternity (sequel to the girl who bit me)by valerie hunter. i'm including the synopsis here bc it does a better job of conveying basic plot than i can:

"Yasmine Sokolov has built a life most people would kill for. She’s the richest vampire on Earth, a professor with nearly unlimited research funding, and owner of a mansion across from Central Park. The only thing she hasn’t managed in a thousand years? A long-term girlfriend. After moving to New York City to help Sylvia and Aster adjust to unexpected parenthood, Yasmine is pushed back onto VampireMatch—where a dozen disappointing dates convince her that another thousand years alone might be her fate. That is, until she meets someone she absolutely cannot fall in love with: the devastatingly beautiful, and devastatingly human barista, Bella Dragomir. But as a string of vampiric killings begins spreading across New York City—killings that seem to draw closer and closer to Bella herself—Yasmine finds herself wondering if the truth is more complicated than she wants to believe. Especially when it comes to Bella."

completely aside from the amazing experience i had as a beta reader (which was incredible, just incidentally), i think the author has crafted a touching and impactful narrative that succeeds as a more straightforward romantic suspense novel, but that really, at its core is a story about trauma recovery and the healing power of queer love.

also, the leads are both researchers, so that allows for some really delightful and incredibly romantic fantasy science. i will never think about mitochondria the same way again. (oh! and also there are sea urchins!)

one of the things i appreciate about valerie's writing is that she is able to deliver a devastating gut punches, but they are always couched in humor or tenderness or absurdity or something to soften the blow.

i don't know how many of you (if any) are followers from way back when i actually wrote things and shared them on the internet, but if you liked my writing i think you will enjoy this book. valerie deals with heavy topics with kindness, compassion, and understanding, which comes through in the writing.

YES i love it when adrian is way bigger than rocky uh here's my take on rocky and adrian

Things I think about for no apparent reason: 1. Kagome has back muscles (she does all that badass archery ffs)

“Long Train Journeys” by Jordan Bolton

You guys have got to start reblogging stuff you enjoy, especially, specifically gifs and fan art but also fics and fan theories or even hot takes if you're not afraid of a lil discourse. I'm tired of being the first or third reblog for a person's post and then seeing my blog's followers do nothing but hit like, while blogs sit there with no new posts in months or years!

Reblog more stuff please. Thank you, have a good day.

i don't know what possessed me and suddenly made me able to make multiple drawings in one day, but i'm not complaining.

original pic (i have been informed that this is not the original and this is a meme but whatever):

Wilson’s translation does entirely lack the homeric feel we associate with the epic poetry.

she talks about the act of translation itself, and its complexity. How there will always be cultural context that's missing even if your translation is accurate word-for-word, and one of the hardest parts of a translator's job is deciding how to approach that meta-textual layer of meaning.

(it's really very fascinating to read in and of itself! but I also already think about translation a lot)

She explains the reason for her more casual tone. It's not to "dumb down" the text in any way. It's not even really to make it "accessible" to modern readers – I mean, it was sort of her goal, but not the way people think when they hear an "accessible" text, exactly.

Emily Wilson makes the case for translating the Odyssey in straightforward English because the original Greek audience was everyday people listening to the language of their time.

She chose to make a translation that matched the original tone of the original language, instead of putting it into an older English vernacular so everyone would think of it as lofty and old and archaic. She wanted to create a version like the story we would hear if we were there in its era (approximately speaking, obviously).