real quick note that if you wish to buy my book about sad cyborg soldiers and robot nuns it is On Sale Today for Ninety Nine Cents

https://rebellionpublishing.com/product/the_iron_children/ here is the sale version!

yes thank you I did absolutely forget to add the link to the actual sale 😅

The Iron Children by Rebecca Fraimow. It's great and still on sale for 99c USD. Reposting my review:

It's a fantasy novella about a group of young, magic-cyborg soldiers, part of a religious military order and under the command of a well intentioned but inexperienced not-yet-cyborged commander-nun who is in vastly over her head and having complicated feelings about the fact that she can mind-control any of the soldiers under her command whenever she sees fit. The soldiers have complicated feelings about it too... especially the one who's secretly a spy for the other side.

This is a very character driven story, and the characters are great. The narrative sympathises with everyone, even when they don't sympathise with each other. And there's some great 'what even is the self, am I even a person' etc cyborg feels. The commander is an assimilated member of a quasi-Jewish diasporic ethno-religious group which works really well with the themes and layered cultural conflicts.

The characters all use she or they pronouns, but as I recall only the spy actually expresses any personal sense of gender. Everyone's else's pronouns are defined by their social role: 'they' for cyborg soldiers and 'she' for commanders and the nuns they are recruited from. I saw the author talk in an interview about these roles having a complicated relationship with gender roles in the broader society but this isn't really explored in the story itself. This sort of thing always leaves me wanting a deep dive into whether there's any trans-by-their-society's-standards characters around but I realise not every story can be that.

I never found it overpoweringly scary/gory/sad etc but there is some violence and death. There's no sex or romance.

My one complaint is that the story is too short! I wanted more and I hope she writes some! But by the end, the central conflicts have been resolved, and I can sort of imagine what will happen next.

Jonathan Gleason was my friend who committed suicide just over a month ago… and I just found out that he wrote this 800+ page analysis textbook. By himself. Because he was teaching analysis and he was dissatisfied with the textbook he was assigned so he just…. wrote his own.

Even if you haven’t done any math… please just take a look at this. Scroll through it as fast as you like. It’s incredible that he put so much work and so much free time into this… I’m still in awe and I really want everyone to see it. In particular, if you want a good laugh, look at chapter 5 of the analysis textbook. The opening paragraph is SO Johnny.

He also wrote a linear algebra textbook, here. 

I really want to thank everyone who has reblogged/liked this, and even anyone who just clicked on the link to check it out. I wasn’t expecting more than a handful of notes on this, so knowing that his hard work gets shared and even appreciated by a few strangers really means a lot.

I’ve taken some of the best/easiest to follow snippets and provide them here, I hope you enjoy them as much as I have:

“Da fuq”.

Oh thank god.

At least he admits when he’s being sloppy.

God, I wish more math textbooks read like this.

And last but not least, my absolute favorite part, the opening to the chapter on integration.

There are so many more tidbits like this and I wish literally all of my textbooks could be written like this.

Jonothan Gleason died Jan 16th, 2018 and it means so much to me that so many people got a kick out of the little pieces of him that are in this book. Thanks for all of the rb’s and likes, I’m so happy that even just a few hundred people got to enjoy his writing and hard work.

Couldn't get back to the original post and I don't have the energy to describe all these images, but here's the start of the "Integrals" chapter, as above

Anyway! I just started reading this and it's interesting, but wanted to note that the Preface is mostly aimed at other maths lecturers and contains a lot of technical terms that I didn't recognise as someone who has a Phd in (a slightly different area of) abstract mathematics. The book itself is much easier to understand, and afaict is aimed at people with only an early undergraduate?(*) level of maths knowledge. So if you're interested in reading but don't already have a strong understanding of this area, I reccomend skipping everything in the Preface except the bit at the end labelled "A Note to the Reader", which contains useful information about the structure of the book.

(*)I'm having real trouble judging how difficult this text is since I did a Phd in maths but it was nearly 20 years ago. But the first chapter of the appendices of 'basic concepts' you need to understand the main text involves concepts I am pretty sure I have never seen before. They're not complex concepts but there sure is a lot of jargon to learn to get to page 1 chapter 1, "what is a number".

This is only available to people in the US and Canada and it would obviously be VERY BAD to lie and say I was from Canada so I definitely didn’t do that and neither should you.

These are available one a day starting from 20th April 2020 and ending 23rd April 2020.

Blackwood by Pia Foxhall - Release Day!

About Blackwood:

In a world that is still getting used to shifters, where everyone thinks omegas are second class citizens, nature photographer and omega Braden Payne lets everyone think he’s a beta. That way no one gives him a hard time and he doesn’t have to live a repeat of his failed relationship. But when his car breaks down in the remote Blackwood forest in Western Australia, without the medication that lets him hide who he is, he’s faced with what he fears most: an unmated alpha.

Government forest guardian and alpha Coll MacDubhar is tired of illegal loggers, foolish tourists and people who underestimate the wilds of Western Australia. He discovers Braden lost and in need of medical assistance in the forest he protects and knows something’s not right.

But there’s hidden depths to Braden that capture his interest, and no decent alpha would walk away when Braden’s unwelcome past comes to visit.

BUY NOW AT AMAZON // KOBO // NOOK // APPLE

Release: November 23rd

Deets:

Blackwood by Pia Foxhall (Perth Shifters #1) - Can be read as standalone! - Each book in the series focuses on different characters Queer (gay/bisexual character) m/m romance 93,000 words // 267 pages (Kindle) Cover by TiferetDesign Subscribe to the Foxhall Newsletter!

Curious about the world?

Introduction to Braden Payne and Coll MacDubhar (with excerpt)

Introduction to some of the unique aspects of alpha/beta/omega worldbuilding in the Perth Shifters world. 

HAPPY WOLFENOOT EVERYONE!

I read a pre-release version of this and really enjoyed it! GO BUY PIA’S BOOK.

Luo Binghe and Shen Qingqiu from 人渣反派自救系统 (Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System). It has an ongoing English translation which you can find here.

Basic summary: A modern guy finishes reading a novel and curses the author for the numerous plot holes and for writing everything just to let the Gary Stu protagonist, Luo Binghe, look cool. Unfortunately for him, he ends up getting transported into this novel, taking the place of the canon fodder villain, Shen Qingqiu, who is the protagonist’s bastard of a teacher. Now he has to play by the rules of the system while trying to avoid the terrible fate of the original Shen Qingqiu who got his limbs dismembered by dark!Luo Binghe as revenge for past mistreatment. But unbeknownst to him, because of the changes he’s made, Luo Binghe has fallen in love with him.

It’s mostly hilarious crack as our main character commentates and roasts the plot and characters he encounters, with some angst and suffering mixed in.

I’m just here to recommend you guys some good BL. 

Because I need ANOTHER ongoing novel to read by this author (who afaict also wrote The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation)

It’s fun though. I was a little squicked by the age difference since Luo Binghe is 14 at the start but then realised that while original!Shen Qingqiu is Old I don’t think we ever find out how old the dude who becomes him is. So now I am imagining him as a like 15 year old pretending to be an Ancient And Revered Teacher (I think he’s supposed to be more like 18-25 but shh) It certainly fits with his “skip the sex scenes but memorise the stats of every monster” approach to reading.

It’s a bit like a m/m version of Destruction Flag Otome (which has a female “villain” protag with a mixed gender harem and no final love interest) though not quite as silly.

THIS BOOK IS ON SALE FOR 99 CENTS RIGHT NOW AND IT IS SO GOOD YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY BUY IT.

IT WAS SO FLUFFY AND AHHHHHH MY SONS. I would elaborate but I stayed up to 2 am to finish it despite it being terribly unwise. 10/10 would do again. READ IT, PEOPLE.

I KNOW RIGHT! IT IS SO GOOD!

Okay I have now read the whole trilogy and I can’t even tell which one’s my favorite. WHY ARE THERE ONLY THREE BOOKS. I need one about Lady Montbray and her companion LIKE BREATHING. Also a Christmas special and a next gen and a tv series about Jack and Oliver, protoPIs. ALSO SOMEONE GET SARAH A GREAT ADVENTURE. She could be a spy-modiste.

“This book is available in Australia, log in to purchase!”

Price suddenly jumps to $7.99 >:/

(The first book was only $4.99 though so I bought that, since I am sure the author has no control over these things)

Ice in Sunlight is free for the next five days. It’s currently at 4/5 stars on Amazon with 46 reviews, so I guess that means it’s pretty good. It’s also available in a German-language edition and in paperback. 

I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling pretty downbeat and crummy lately. This is a story about learning to be soft after tyranny has made you hard, about struggling to find the courage to believe in kindness when you’re all too familiar with cruelty. It’s a book I still care about very much, more than a year after writing it, so I want to share it with as many people as possible.

(I’m considering making it permanently free, but since that’s a little logistically difficult it might not happen for a little while, so if you want a freebie novel, grab it now.)

It would mean a lot to me if people would reblog this! 

Still free as of the first of August 2017, GMT+8. Haven’t read it yet but free is free :)

bangawang:

EEEEE! Okay so you may know that book #3 of my small-town Regency series, Lively St. Lemeston, is coming out in January? That book is Listen to the Moon and it’s about a valet and a maid who marry to get a plum job.

Now books 1 and 2 are BOTH deep-discounted so you can catch up on the entire series for just $2.98!!!

Sweet Disorder is the first book (it’s about a wounded officer who is trying to marry off a prickly widow to help his brother win a hotly contested local election) and it’s 99 cents! Amazon * Nook 

(Cecilia Grant says: “I loved everything about Sweet Disorder:…the clear-eyed affection with which Lerner sketches a vibrant small-town Regency community, and most of all, the steamy, deeply-felt romance between two wary people who have everything to lose by falling in love.”)

True Pretenses (book 2) is about a marriage of convenience between a Jewish con artist and an heiress who needs her dowry STAT, and it’s $1.99! Amazon * Nook 

(Courtney Milan says: “I loved everything about this book, from the heartbreaking relationship between the brothers, to Ash’s loneliness, to Lydia’s vulnerability.”)

that being said please tell me all the content you have ever watched or read or heard of that uses this trope i want to consume all media, heres what i know so far off the top of my head:

uhh question mark so people can answer this?

I just remembered idk what it was called but there was a book I read as a kid about like the young actors for Shakespeare and one of the characters was a girl pretending to be a boy so she could act (as a girl tho lmao)

oh was it The Shakespeare Stealer?  By someone-or-other Blackwood?  I think Julia shows up in the second or third book…

Anyway I assume from your examples that you are talking about the Sweet Polly Oliver trope so here are some other ones:

Song of the Lioness (series) by Tamora Pierce

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

actually here’s a whole list of them, knock yourself out~!

EDIT: Also, Shakespeare did this a lot.  Check out Twelfth Night and As You Like It.

ANOTHER EDIT: Shakespeare in Love (a movie)

YET ANOTHER EDIT: The Lord of the Rings!  And I just read a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin set in her Earthsea universe…  I think it might have been called Irian?  Oh and there’s a duology by Patricia C. Wrede about magicians that I think uses this trope.

OH GOD I LOVE THIS TROPE. Some recs where it’s central and I loved it:

Twelfth Night is the Shakespeare play “She’s the Man” is based on, there’s lots of adaptations. The 90s graphic novel was a fave of mine in my teens.

Seconding Shakespeare in Love, Song of the Lioness, Monstrous Regiment. I wouldn’t rec Lord of the Rings for this myself since it’s a subplot, albeit a cool one.

The Korean drama Coffee Prince is a thing of beauty, funny and sweet and charming. The male LI does the “wait I’m attracted to this ‘dude’ does that make me gay?” thing then decides he doesn’t care. I’ve heard good things about Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and there’s lots of others of varying quality.

Victor Victoria has the woman (JULIE ANDREWS) pretending to be a male drag queen, it’s got some unfortunate 80s aspects but is still fun, with background gay characters and poking at gender roles.

The Privilege of the Sword is fantasy with sword fighting and bisexual leanings, the previous books are m/m but this is m/f and stands alone.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is cross dressing with no pretense and is also WEIRD but has some delicious playing around with gender roles and canon f/f if that’s your thing (it is my thing).

Rose of Versailles is the classic crossdressing shoujo manga, set in 18th century France, but I heard it was tragic so never tried it.

haha i’ve watched/read too many of these

Sweeeeet more recs :D

YOU WANT CROSSDRESSING RECS? I can do crossdressing recs. The Aforementioned Sungkyunkwan Scandal is really really good. Girl crossdresses to attend university! Gets in with a delightful group of friends, including: Dark Horse Grumpy Sweet Dude who posts pamphlets by night and hiccoughs at cute girls by day, Fashionista guy who moves around by twirling, Serious Guy Love Interest who reminds the teacher when he forgot to leave homework, etc etc. Everyone is really nice! I’m also personally really fond of Kaze Hikaru, a manga about the Bakumatsu period of Japanese history (~c.1860s), where a girl crossdresses in order to join an armed group to AVENGE HER BROTHER’S DEATH, and ends up staying because she likes them and their code of honour. Super researched, very nice. You may also want to check out W-Juliet, which features DOUBLE CROSSDRESSING. The male love interest and the main female character BOTH crossdress at several times. This one is about theatre kids and growing up and while it falls into a lot of pretty standard shoujo eh tropes I really really enjoyed it. Another possibility is HANA-KIMI, a manga where the main protagonist crossdresses as a boy to transfer to an all-boys High School where she runs track. A shojo, totally contains romance. SIMILAR TO THE ABOVE is GIRL GOT GAME (also known as POWER), where a girl crossdresses in order to join the basketball team of an all-boys school. Shojo, humorous, romance, etc. Maybe see also SAVER, a manwha about a modern day Korean girl who ends up magically and irreversibly transported to a FANTASYLAND and proceeds to crossdress and put her martial arts skills to very good use. Lots of fantasy politicking, drama, etc. As I recall, quite violent at times but overall very enjoyable. Princess Jellyfish also might qualify, in that the main male protagonist routinely dresses as a woman. I’ve definitely seen trans readings of it though so there’s that. The manga itself is about a group of super nerdy girls, their friendship, and their jellyfish inspired fashion line. There’s also Georgette Heyer’s The Masqueraders, in which a brother and sister both crossdress in order to help hide their Jacobite identities in ~1740s Britain. Romes for both, super fun. Eloisa James’s Duchess By Night (3rd in a series), features a protagonist who crossdresses in order to escape her boring life as a widow. A romance novel which I quite enjoyed! I am also seconding/endorsing the following above recs: COFFEE PRINCE (KDrama), LEVIATHAN (Scott Westerfeld book), BASARA (Yumi Tamura manga), OURAN HIGH SCHOOL HOST CLUB (manga!), SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Anyway crossdressing is, evidently, one of my favourite tropes to read about so I AM SURE I HAVE FORGOTTEN SOMETHING, but that’s it for now.

I have the BEST followers :D

that being said please tell me all the content you have ever watched or read or heard of that uses this trope i want to consume all media, heres what i know so far off the top of my head:

uhh question mark so people can answer this?

I just remembered idk what it was called but there was a book I read as a kid about like the young actors for Shakespeare and one of the characters was a girl pretending to be a boy so she could act (as a girl tho lmao)

oh was it The Shakespeare Stealer?  By someone-or-other Blackwood?  I think Julia shows up in the second or third book…

Anyway I assume from your examples that you are talking about the Sweet Polly Oliver trope so here are some other ones:

Song of the Lioness (series) by Tamora Pierce

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

actually here’s a whole list of them, knock yourself out~!

EDIT: Also, Shakespeare did this a lot.  Check out Twelfth Night and As You Like It.

ANOTHER EDIT: Shakespeare in Love (a movie)

YET ANOTHER EDIT: The Lord of the Rings!  And I just read a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin set in her Earthsea universe…  I think it might have been called Irian?  Oh and there’s a duology by Patricia C. Wrede about magicians that I think uses this trope.

OH GOD I LOVE THIS TROPE. Some recs where it’s central and I loved it:

Twelfth Night is the Shakespeare play “She’s the Man” is based on, there’s lots of adaptations. The 90s graphic novel was a fave of mine in my teens.

Seconding Shakespeare in Love, Song of the Lioness, Monstrous Regiment. I wouldn’t rec Lord of the Rings for this myself since it’s a subplot, albeit a cool one.

The Korean drama Coffee Prince is a thing of beauty, funny and sweet and charming. The male LI does the “wait I’m attracted to this ‘dude’ does that make me gay?” thing then decides he doesn’t care. I’ve heard good things about Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and there’s lots of others of varying quality.

Victor Victoria has the woman (JULIE ANDREWS) pretending to be a male drag queen, it’s got some unfortunate 80s aspects but is still fun, with background gay characters and poking at gender roles.

The Privilege of the Sword is fantasy with sword fighting and bisexual leanings, the previous books are m/m but this is m/f and stands alone.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is cross dressing with no pretense and is also WEIRD but has some delicious playing around with gender roles and canon f/f if that’s your thing (it is my thing).

Rose of Versailles is the classic crossdressing shoujo manga, set in 18th century France, but I heard it was tragic so never tried it.

haha i’ve watched/read too many of these

Sweeeeet more recs :D

that being said please tell me all the content you have ever watched or read or heard of that uses this trope i want to consume all media, heres what i know so far off the top of my head:

uhh question mark so people can answer this?

I just remembered idk what it was called but there was a book I read as a kid about like the young actors for Shakespeare and one of the characters was a girl pretending to be a boy so she could act (as a girl tho lmao)

oh was it The Shakespeare Stealer?  By someone-or-other Blackwood?  I think Julia shows up in the second or third book…

Anyway I assume from your examples that you are talking about the Sweet Polly Oliver trope so here are some other ones:

Song of the Lioness (series) by Tamora Pierce

Monstrous Regiment by Terry Pratchett

actually here’s a whole list of them, knock yourself out~!

EDIT: Also, Shakespeare did this a lot.  Check out Twelfth Night and As You Like It.

ANOTHER EDIT: Shakespeare in Love (a movie)

YET ANOTHER EDIT: The Lord of the Rings!  And I just read a short story by Ursula K. LeGuin set in her Earthsea universe…  I think it might have been called Irian?  Oh and there’s a duology by Patricia C. Wrede about magicians that I think uses this trope.

OH GOD I LOVE THIS TROPE. Some recs where it’s central and I loved it:

Twelfth Night is the Shakespeare play “She’s the Man” is based on, there’s lots of adaptations. The 90s graphic novel was a fave of mine in my teens.

Seconding Shakespeare in Love, Song of the Lioness, Monstrous Regiment. I wouldn’t rec Lord of the Rings for this myself since it’s a subplot, albeit a cool one.

The Korean drama Coffee Prince is a thing of beauty, funny and sweet and charming. The male LI does the “wait I’m attracted to this ‘dude’ does that make me gay?” thing then decides he doesn’t care. I’ve heard good things about Sungkyunkwan Scandal, and there’s lots of others of varying quality.

Victor Victoria has the woman (JULIE ANDREWS) pretending to be a male drag queen, it’s got some unfortunate 80s aspects but is still fun, with background gay characters and poking at gender roles.

The Privilege of the Sword is fantasy with sword fighting and bisexual leanings, the previous books are m/m but this is m/f and stands alone.

Revolutionary Girl Utena is cross dressing with no pretense and is also WEIRD but has some delicious playing around with gender roles and canon f/f if that’s your thing (it is my thing).

Rose of Versailles is the classic crossdressing shoujo manga, set in 18th century France, but I heard it was tragic so never tried it.

sanguinarysanguinity

replied to your photo: at laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaast my love has come…

EMMA DONOGHUE! You need to read Emma Donoghue.

#also graham robb although his focus is more on the developing psychosexual field of study #not lillian faderman though #fuck her

WOULD THAT I HAD KNOWN YOU WHEN I WAS RESEARCHING MY ACD FEMSLASH LAST WINTER.

I’ve read Robb’s Strangers (and it was helpful! but the index is terrible, and it’s mostly about men), but I haven’t read these others you mention, neither the good ones nor the bad ones. My strongest sources last winter were Rebecca Jennings, Alison Oram, and Marie Turnbull, augmented with a fuckton of stuff about governessing and girls’ boarding schools. (Because I was getting the sense from my reading that the economic / independence issues more-or-less defined the getting-it-on issues, at least for middle-class women.)