Nine years ago I created this account for the explicit purpose of offering encouragement to, and praise for, an exceptional young writer and the opening chapters of exceptionally good novel. The writer is lovelyandsad and the novel is Mindgames. It's a story set in a dystopian future, in the decaying city of Riviera, and is driven by her experiences of two free men, Gabriel and Animal, and two enslaved women, Mariah and Rose. The work is exceptional for a couple reasons. First, while slavery, humiliation
I'm Not Gonna Stop, one of the poems of "Raibeart Bruis." The pseudonym translates as "Robert the Bruce," the 14th century Scottish king who earned Scotland's independence from England. (A gift that his son could not preserve.)
Because you ask
Because you beg
bargain
plead
or cry
I’m not gonna stop
because you sweat
Because you scream
groan
grovel
obey
or resist
When a book is turned into a movie, we often hear the same lament: “Damn, they ruined it!” The novel’s beautiful prose and careful plot development are reduced to clichés and excuses for explosions. Beloved characters get written out or transformed into caricatures. (Don’t get me started on the butchery of J.R.R. Tolkien’s work.)
Thankfully, that didn’t happen with America’s most widely read and widely viewed BDSM franchise: the Fifty Shades oeuvre. How did they avoid the problem?
Yes, I know: you've been wounded, and wounded again. The urge to hide is so strong that the simple act of stepping out the door, greeting another day, taking another risk, reflects heroic effort.
Welcome, wounded friend, to the company of the shattered.
The internet is rife with recitation of a line from the 13th century Sufi poet and lawyer, commonly called Rumi. "The wound is the place with the light enters." Translation is treacherous, translation from
I was at the grocery today, picking up a few things to help finish off dinner with friends tonight. (My 14-year-old is cooking. Breaths everywhere are bated.) My cashier was a woman in her 30s, of average build, dark burgundy hair and effusive manner. She was wearing two things that stood out: a man's shirt (old, soft, oxford) and a collar. A Turian-style collar: a finely woven brown leather cord formed into a choker. It rode just above her collarbone, close upon her throat. From the front descending