Listen. I don’t think every creative/publishing process on earth needs to be optimized for maximum efficiency. But the sheer amount of waste over at Team Beast, of avoidable mistakes, of content making so slapdash that a reality TV crew made their game show look markedly better — that’s HAUNTING.

I‘m pacing my room muttering “six hundred GoPros” under my breath like a madwoman

600 GoPros. SIX HUNDRED MOTHERFUCKING GOPROS!

There are probably details that more aptly strike at the core of Team Beast’s disaster of a production process, but that’s the one that stuck out to me. What‘s an editing team supposed to do with footage from that many cameras??

like I feel very Seen for like the fourth time since I’ve started getting back into her work. And I have yet to finish Fledgling 😂

Read Octavia Butler’s Unexpected Stories! And once again Butler is somehow on the sale wavelength as me, only more developed. In Childfinder specifically: psionic ability & how black telepaths would fare under white supremacy. Lady has my number again!!

Also I love love love Accidental Catfishing AU, and the scene where sz becomes xc’s gege? Gets me dewy eyed every time!

So I have quite a few fics from u that I love, but this omega!lqr/alpha!ljy one sticks out:

archiveofourown.org/works/53439556

it’s gorgeous, it’s age difference with an older omega and a younger alpha, it’s lqr getting some care ❤️

Ooh this gonna be a good one!!

And oh boy can you feel her pain! Sure, when HH first enters the picture she does seem to have a crush (if you believe him) (and btw is normal for a 12yo!) but by the time the road trip from hell is underway and he’s dragging her all over the US, she could not make it clearer how miserable she is!

Otoh I can’t help that this book is the way it is. HH as narrator employs all this complex prose & all these references to try to make what he’s done seem less despicable, and yet even in his own narration not only can you feel Lo’s pain but HH himself has guilt-fueled emotional breakdowns about it.

I do wanna say off the bat: I know Nabokov didn’t want readers to moralize his work, so I want to avoid discussing this book like it’s some kind of morality play when it’s not meant to be. It’s art, it’s not here to be an instruction manual, if bro wanted to make that he’d have written nonfiction 🤷🏾‍♀️

I have now finished Lolita! Go me! I deserve cookies after finishing a read that intense.

I’m def gonna have to reread it, and probably soon; I already know there was so much that I missed, especially puns and wordplay and literary references. Here’s to future rereads!

“I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.” 🔥 🔥 🔥

Ladies and gentlemen and honorable others, that’s a wrap! I am DONE!!

“Dolly Schiller will probably outlive me by many years.” Well, she certainly deserved to 😢

“What I heard was the melody of children at play […] and I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that concord.”

And there we may be agreed! 🤝 Beautiful line too, just beautiful!

… I’ll just say that I am *very* curious as to what that long drawn out theatrical production HH writes is papering over. What really happened on the day you killed Quilty, Mr. Humbert?

Also! Forgot to mention this earlier, but few things about HH feel more American than when he buys and keeps and plans to shoot a gun. Now you’re one of us for real, buddy! 🇺🇸🇺🇸

We have made it back to Ramsdale!

HH thinks his little bait-and-switch with old uncle Quilty was badass and cool, but I think it’s the most seventh grade behavior I’ve ever seen in my life lol

Chapter 32 (of Part 2): aka Are You Ready To Bawl Your Fucking Eyes Out

Now I love to see a fictional man made wretched by guilt or shame (or both), and I can feel some empathy for HH now that the veneer has cracked and he’s admitting to the guilt he feels and was feeling while committing the abuse.

But mostly I hate him and I weep for Lo. That’s just how I feel, gang.

“A look on her face […] an expression of helplessness so perfect that it seemed to grade into one of rather comfortable inanity just because this was the very limit of injustice and frustration[.]”

That line broke my soul, it really fucking did, I know exactly what that feels like.

All right. We have officially actually left Lo behind, crying and boohooing. What can we possibly have left that’s going to take SEVEN MORE CHAPTERS?

Agatha all along!

Also I knew the Clare Quilty reveal was coming but I didn’t know he was the OG creep in poor Lo’s life, I didn’t know he predated HH! My girl could not catch a BREAK

Dolly: Hi Dad, I’m in a bad way, please send money, and don’t try to find me

HH: gets in the car IMMEDIATELY

Bro is about to get married for a third time, and once again the woman in question exists to provide him domestic servanthood and care work! Some things don’t ever change.

A small thing — the absolute tiniest and pettiest of his sins — but HH has spent so long waxing eloquent in prose about how much he ‘loves’ Lo, is devoted to Lo, thinks of nothing but Lo.

And yet he can’t be arsed to mention her birthdays until she’s away from him. It’s just so on brand, you know.

And that’s a Goodbye Dolly!

(I want to think Nabokov would be proud of me for that one hehe)

“Wahhh Lo learned how to lie when I let her try acting”

Bro does she owe you loyalty?

Hot take: aside from the csa, the attitudes I see from HH wrt being owed truthfulness/compliance/sweet submissive affect? Bog standard parental entitlement! This is the stuff that “parent’s rights” are made of!

Fuckin asshole just reminded us that he’s a man who HITS when his wife/child victim isn’t obedient enough, I HATE HIM

I don’t know why the hitting is triggering me so hard; objectively he has done/is doing way worse

Whatever, I want the motherfucker’s balls removed with a spoon and no anesthesia

Imagine what a drag it is to have the same man as your “dad” and your “boyfriend,” like that’s part of what makes this an abusive setup fundamentally — the limitless power of a parent, and he expects the intimacy of a domestic partner: just zero boundaries. “Oh oughhh I see MAN talk to you wahhh” 😑