“You remind me that I’m alive,” she said, voice thick. “You remind me that goodness can exist in the world.”

Day and Night,

Light and Dark,

Flame and Shadow.

A commissioned piece of Ruhn and Lidia by winterofherdiscontent

Link to post here

Ruhn & Lidia. Art by @castleintheskky

i’m just… so tired of reading posts complaining about problems that only exist because people won’t read romance novels… it is a huge genre there are books about werewolf dukes, there are books about black revolutionary war soldiers, there are books about south asian doms who care about enthusiastic consent, there are books about shape-shifting cowboys who turn into bears, there are books about lady scientists learning how to trust that their boundaries will be respected, there are books about alien barbarian warriors, there are books about genies, there are books about women of color in victorian london, there are books about polyamorous earls, there are fake marriages and marriages of convenience and basically every fanfic trope that people lose it for exists as a book with original characters but some of the same people who complain about how books no longer satisfy them turn a blind eye to a whole genre because it never occurs to them to read a ~bodice-ripper~ when they could read romantic fanfic of a more respectable genre instead

look, if you:

good news! this post is not about you. here are some posts i have seen with great regularity on this site:

all of which is blatantly and on the face of it absurd to anyone who reads a lot of romance and which is what this post is about. it downplays and devalues the good work being done, especially by marginalized authors, in the romance space. authors should get paid! authors should get rewarded for originality! if you read a shitty romance novel once, i don’t care! so have i! i’ve read a lot of shitty books in a lot of perfectly good genres. if you can spend three hours sifting through pairing tags on ao3 to find the one fic that doesn’t suck, you can look through ebook previews to find something that looks good.

‘books are expensive’ is almost a compelling argument, except that romances and mysteries are two genres where ebooks go on sale for $1-2 with startling regularity. my bookbub emails regularly get ebook boxed sets with tons of different books by different authors going on sale for a buck, which is a great way to find new authors. most authors have newsletters where they let you know about sales and send out freebies. and if your library has overdrive, you can request books. you don’t have to just… see they don’t have it and give up.

anyway, here’s books:

will i ever stop recommending courtney milan’s brothers sinister series? literally never. if you prefer contemporary and don’t mind first person there’s also the cyclone series. if your local library does not have at least one courtney milan book i will be shocked. don’t worry about it if they’re not the first in a series. you can read it out of order. that’s how romance novels work. lots of her books also go on sale for the low price of free on the regular, especially the novellas.

alisha rai’s forbidden hearts series also rules.it’s got starcrossed lovers, it’s got feuding families, it’s got hatefucking, what more could you want

alyssa cole has never written anything bad in her entire life, i’m pretty sure. you want historicals? you want contemporary? contemporary but there’s still sexy dukes? post-apocalyptic? pick your poison, enjoy.

i just read this one recently and now i need to read all the other cat sebastian books i’ve acquired over the years because whenever a book is a dollar and looks like this i buy it immediately (it’s literally a dollar right now). this graphic was very helpful and i wish more authors had ones like it. it’s 2019, bring back web banners for link pages.

i discovered six de los reyes when courtney milan recced beginner’s guide: love and other chemical reactions and i’m really interested to read more of her books. also it made me realize i’d never read a book that took place in the philippines before? no one fucks in this but it’s really cute and sweet and involves a hyper-logical lady scientist, an artist/barista/bad boy, a coffee shop, and Making Out For Entirely Scientific Reasons.

bound with honor is the only book i’ve read from the regency reimagined series. the reimagining seems to be that it’s very bisexual and polyamorous and everyone fucks a lot and also there’s bondage. i am cool with this. i actually bought the whole series at some point?? i… should read these.

i haven’t gotten around to reading tess bowery’s treading the boards series (i have bought so many books) (i was not kidding about the one dollar sales) but i’ve got high hopes because look at them

kj charles is… prolific. and another author whose books i haven’t gotten around to despite owning a lot of them. i actually just bought that one on the right, just now, because i saw that it was a dollar when taking this screenshot.

Padmé Amidala’s hairstyles (in order of appearance)

ArE yOu SuRe Mr PaRkEr??? aRe YoU ABSOLUTELY sUrE aBoUt ThAt????

Rose Williams as Charlotte Heywood in Sanditon

I want to try everything there is to try. Sanditon (2019—)

〝you are not nearly as unfeeling as you pretend.〞

alaska, utah, maine, iowa, south carolina: CALL YOUR SENATOR to prevent a 6-3 conservative SCOTUS majority. scripts below.

(posted 9/19) Hi y’all. I know most folks on this site are probably reeling from the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If we want to preserve rights for women that she fought for her whole life, we need to follow her lead and mobilize.

At this point, the only real hope for escaping a 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court, absent Biden winning in a landslide and packing the court, is if four Republican Senators stand up to Mitch McConnell’s double standards and maintain the precedent that the Republicans followed in 2016: not voting on a Presidential SCOTUS nominee in an election year.

Is McConnell’s “election year” rule a hundred percent fake? Yes. Do I hate that we have to play ball on this shitty, institution-shattering court that he’s set up? Yes. But McConnell & co. robbed Barack Obama of his SCOTUS appointment in 2016. There should be one more Dem judge seated than there is right now, and this is our only chance to keep the playing field even remotely equal.

If you live in one of the following states, please call these specific Senators right now and plead them to go against McConnell. I really can’t stress enough that this may be the only path to stop the Senate adding a THIRD Trump appointee in four years. I have included scripts and phone numbers to make this as quick and easy as possible. It will take you five minutes, less, and there are never as many callers as you think there are. Your voice could make an actual difference.

and if you don’t live in one of these states - please do reblog!!

I HAVE HAD ELIJAH MCCLAIN’S PETITION PINNED TO MY PROFILE FOR THE PAST ALMOST TWO MONTHS AND HAVE BEEN REBLOGGING IT ALMOST REGULARLY AND IT STILL HASN’T REACHED IT’S GOAL SO NOW I AM GOING TO BOMBARD EVERYONE WITH THE PETITION TEN TIMES A DAY YOU BETTER SIGN IT AND SHARE IT AND REBLOG IT EVERY TIME YOU SEE IT. HERE IS THE PETITION . 

Turns out we have a secret weapon! An immigrant you know and love who’s unafraid to step in! He’s constantly confusin’, confoundin’ the British henchmen – Everyone give it up for America’s favorite fighting Frenchman! LAFAYETTE!          Daveed Diggs as Marquis de Lafayette in HAMILTON

Okay, I'm posting this here because this blog has a much bigger following than my main. This is the first time I've ever begged for reblogs instead of likes.

The morning of August 10th a massive storm called a derecho plowed through the midwest, devastating Southern Wisconsin, Northern Illinois, and the entire state of Iowa, which is where I live. Iowa was hit the worst. A derecho is basically the equivalent of a hurricane. Our highest recorded wind speed was 112mph.

1/3 of the state lost power, and almost 3 days later, roughly 400,000 people still don't have power. We have approximately 23 million acres of farmland, and approximately 10 million were destroyed by the storm. That's not good at all. Our crops are one of the state's main sources of economic development, and we lost so much.

The light green area inside the circle is all of our damaged crops. We lost a lot of silos and grain bins as well

Outside of our local news stations, there's barely any national media coverage on this. Ive only seen a couple, and the only ones I have seen weren't even that in that depth.

The above screenshot was from today(Aug. 12th, 2020) at 9pm CST. 2 days had passed before either of them wrote anything about it.

We have some cities that are either partly out of power or entirely out of power. One of the worst hit cities was even still recovering somewhat from a F4 tornado that went through it 2 years ago.

There's people stranded in their homes without food, power, gas and/or cell service. Please spread the word and let people know that we need help!

#when period drama couples fall in love, they fall hard.

Despite everything, I do hope you don’t regret coming to Sanditon.