ShortPoppy
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Apr 15, 2016
I couldn't help but notice that as soon as Mallory left the room, they started talking about children hating their parents, then as soon as she came back the topic was abruptly changed.
Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
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I couldn't help but notice that as soon as Mallory left the room, they started talking about children hating their parents, then as soon as she came back the topic was abruptly changed.
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2023
There’s clearly more tact in the throuple than we thought.
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2016
Yeah looks like the sofa just got a very good deep cleaning. That's good, honestly. It really looked dingy.
Autistic Nonetheless
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 26, 2024
IDK what hormones they are feeding him at the farm but my man is having a growth spurt
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2023
Hilarious that he posted that publicly. He could deliver his attention-begging message with a pic of Rocco or even of Mal's nitwit dogs, but no, it's "Am I fugly or what, Planet Earth? Look at meeeeeeeeeeeee. Stand by to look at meeeeeeee some more!"
He's def dying his hair. Mal must really bustle around cleaning up after those sessions. Has the throuple converted to black-towel chic or have their towels converted on their own?
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2023
OK, place your bets:
- promotion to full professor as reward for jerking Berkeley around
- a new job away from the transphobes of Berkeley
- he can reveal the full story of his faculty battles
- publication date for his demonology book
- he’s knocked someone up again
- he’s expanding his harem
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2016
Second baby 100%
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2018
If so, was Mallory consulted? or duly informed?
did they even discuss this with her?
Ordinarily I'd say #1 - but pretty risky to give a crazy tranny tenure in this political climate.
Then again, this IS Berkley and they might do it as a "rebellious" (pro wokester) act, just for that reason.
Wonderland foster child
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2022
Sample (opening pages) of Mal's novella has dropped. While I get it into a readable text format, here's the dedication to chew over:
For Lily and Grace: And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. —1 JOHN 1:4
Wait, you can also have the author's note:
In the real world, Dick Button’s Ice-Travaganza exhibit at the New York World’s Fair closed in July 1964. In the world of the Biedermeier, it limped along until November 1965. To the best of my knowledge, I have taken no other intentional liberties with the historical record. Any other anachronisms or inconsistencies are the result of careless research habits and a general inattention to detail.
For Lily and Grace: And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. —1 JOHN 1:4
Wait, you can also have the author's note:
In the real world, Dick Button’s Ice-Travaganza exhibit at the New York World’s Fair closed in July 1964. In the world of the Biedermeier, it limped along until November 1965. To the best of my knowledge, I have taken no other intentional liberties with the historical record. Any other anachronisms or inconsistencies are the result of careless research habits and a general inattention to detail.
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
I know this is just a part of her never-ending "silly old me, aren't you charmed at what an embarrassing rumpled dumbass I am?" act, but this is an odd thing to admit to in the foreword of an historical novella you're asking people to pay money for.
Wonderland foster child
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2022
The Social Register Set
Chapter One
For the inhabitants of New York’s Biedermeier Hotel for Women, Christmas meant work, and work meant money. During ordinary times, employment came to them fitfully, reluctantly, and often only after tremendous exertion (when it came at all), but between the feasts of All Saints in November and Epiphany in January, nearly any girl who wished for something profitable to occupy her afternoons could make her choice almost at her leisure. The city was lousy with opportunity in winter, and for several months every department store, boutique, and commercial concern in Midtown was absolutely desperate for girls. They needed girls to dress the windows at Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Gimbels, Bonwit Teller, and Henri Bendel, to say nothing of the sub-carriage trade shops; girls to manage the Christmas markets in the various remaining Scandinavian pocket neighborhoods; girls to assist sales clerks at the greeting card stores on Forty-Second Street; girls to usher, distribute programs, and sell candy and cigarettes at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and the Broadway shows; and girls to press and fold for the wardrobe head of The Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center. Girls who would be considered unemployable at any other time of year (and it was largely this type who inhabited the Biedermeier)—those without experience, training, education, or a pair of gloves not obviously mended—were nevertheless in some indefinite sense commercially essential to the Christmas season.
Yet, even taking this employment boom into account, the Biedermeier’s longtime manager, Mrs. Mossler, was startled by this year’s prosperity. Mrs. Mossler had awoken in darkness. She usually overtook the morning sun sometime in early September, and it would not match her pace again until late April. After her usual thirteen minutes of Swedish floor exercises, a double-time march up and down the lobby stairs, repeated until just before perspiration threatened, and a highball glass of tomato juice, she was seated at the writing desk in her office, reviewing her accounts with suspicion.
The annual surge of the hotel’s residents into the black was not to her an unfamiliar phenomenon, but she had expected only a modest increase. Instead she saw opulence, brass opulence, and that at a shocking scale. Carol Lipscomb and Patricia De Boer had both exited arrears in perfect synchronization for the first time in eight months; J.D. Boatwright for the first time in ten. Even Lucianne Caruso—whom she had long known to contribute punctually but rarely comprehensively on the first of each month, who frequently economized on rent whenever work was slack or one of her articles stalled with a new editor—had handed over, in an air of queenly condescension, a check that cleared all outstanding balances.
Mrs. Mossler found herself writing “Paid in full” next to almost every name on the Biedermeier’s books in slow, deliberate amazement. And only this morning Kitty Milham, without hint or threat of force, had voluntarily given her three dollars to cover the breaking of a lamp.
But it was not a pleased amazement. Mrs. Mossler had seen too many hotel Christmases to trust this kind of sudden corporate good fortune. Even taking luck into account, it simply was not possible for so many to be doing so well at once without resorting to criminal enterprise. Mrs. Mossler’s ideas about crime were rather hazy, having had very little firsthand experience herself, but she was certain that anything that might be called an enterprise was certain to harbor crime lurking at no great distance.
She was certain that something was amiss with Carol and Patricia. The two lived together in a suite on the eleventh floor. Carol was a student of the classics at Hunter College, while Patricia worked for the Transit Authority, and rare was the day that could produce a nickel between them. In Carol’s case this was because she made no money, and in Patricia’s because she spent hers as fast as she could make it on art supplies—although Patricia’s art was of the upsetting and ultramodern variety, so “supplies” for her might one week have been a dozen broken bathroom mirrors and, the next, material for stringing animal teeth into an old parure case. Lately both girls had grown secretive and close, often staying behind their locked door for days at a time, when ordinarily they held it open for visitors every afternoon. Mrs. Mossler, though concerned, would never use her own keys to set her fears to rest. She respected the privacy of her tenants enormously and would not force her way in anywhere she had not been invited.
Of course, there were other ready sources of cash at this time of year besides holiday employment. There were real Christmas bonuses—new bills bound together inside neat brown envelopes—or sometimes bottles of good dark liquor for the girls with year-round jobs. Even for the most hopelessly idle among them, there were almost always presents from home. Stephen Wright, who operated the Biedermeier’s elevators during the day (after sunset he was officially restricted, like all men, to the ground floor, although this rule had grown increasingly flexible over the years and, in Stephen’s case, was capable of prodigious contortion), could usually count on a moderate number of Christmas tips, being moderately popular himself. He was roundly loathed for a few days every spring around Moving Day, when he charged eye-wateringly exorbitant rates for residents to borrow hand trolleys and use the service elevator for their trunks, but this antipathy was usually exhausted, together with his remaining profits, by August.
If in a particular year Stephen felt that he could stand something a little in excess of moderation, he might make himself available after his official Biedermeier shift ended to deliver packages, pick up dry cleaning, or run downtown to buy cheap cigarettes. When this strategy failed, as it often did, he usually found an excuse to visit the third-floor room of his closest ally, Lucianne. She could scarcely ever be counted on to come through in affairs of the wallet, but her ungenerosity was so predictable as to be steadying—and still better, she was willing to lavish attention on him whenever he complained, which to Stephen was almost as necessary as money. True, Lucianne was no great consoler of persons, but while this prevented most from turning to her in a period of crisis, it posed no problem at all for Stephen. He did not need sympathy, for he always maintained great reserves of that quality for himself. So long as Lucianne was willing to provide him with the appearance of attention, he could supply the appropriate furnishing of pity, concern, indignation, or approval, as the situation required, and she could criticize or laugh at him as much as she liked, so long as she did so as an accompanist, and her counterpoint did not interfere with the pace, nor exceed the volume, of his own part.
“Lucianne,” he said in a studiously casual tone, appearing without preamble in her open doorway, “I’m sick of all this nickel-and-dime stuff. I want paper money. You can’t do anything without it, but nobody in this blessed building wants a taxi, or tickets anyplace, or their hats blocked. This place has got the most incredible group of unsociable, standoffish shut-ins under heaven. What this hotel needs, if you’ll forgive my saying so, is housewives.”
“Te absolvo,” Lucianne said without looking up from her writing table. All the rooms at the Biedermeier came appointed with ordinary pale resinated chipboard desks, as well as camp beds, washstands, and dressers of similarly dispiriting and characterless origin, but Lucianne had a taste for the light, mobile, and highly worked. She had also demonstrated an early knack for cultivating the affection of her paternal grandmother, a house-proud and cunning old woman whose taste ran along similar lines, and who liked to reward initiative among her offspring and their children. Maria Cecilia often dispensed living bequests to her special pets at whimsical moments, as a reward for their successful court and as a spur to those currently out of favor. She took the Cain-and-Abel approach to family, respecting some offerings and not others, seemingly at random and without ever justifying herself.
She had been a Taliaferro before her marriage into the Caruso family and quite naturally considered the alliance an act of condescension on her people’s part. She considered Virginia superior to Delaware and before that, the serene Republic of Venice to the Waldensian valleys of the Piedmont, Protestant Italians being indistinguishable from the Swiss by her reckoning. And she had praised Lucianne at her younger sister Giuliana’s expense often enough, calling the former La Veneziana when she was in looks and the latter La Svizzera whenever she was cross or disheveled or disagreeable, which she was quite often during visits to Maria Cecilia’s house.
This all amounted to the present effect that—Maria Cecilia still living, and still with her own home in splendid rig—Lucianne was the sole possessor of several pieces of excellent, scrupulously maintained ladies’ furnishings of the Louis XV period, in the Second Style. The two sisters were nevertheless cheerfully inseparable, and as there were plenty of other relatives who liked them both equally, or even preferred the younger, Lucianne’s advantage in furniture was outweighed by Giuliana’s in china service. Lucianne’s writing table belonged to that amiable and convenient little class known as meuble volant, or traveling furniture, graceful and slender cabinets, desks, and bonheurs du jour, which were never stood against a wall and left stationary, but which could be picked up and carried about the room in pursuit of the best light throughout the day. She kept hers in the middle of the room, where its elaborate nest of open shelves outlined in chased bronze could be admired from all angles. At present most of it was covered in refill paper, heavily marked in her densely spaced longhand and seemingly arranged at random.
“Why housewives? Aren’t there enough of them generally?”
“Plenty,” Stephen agreed readily. “But they always need something doing. They have lots to do and they can’t get it all done themselves. They require a fleet of newspaper boys, milkmen, and odd-jobbers in order to stay in business. Housewives always need another quart of milk or laundry detergent, or someone to look at an appliance or mess about with the doorbell or the pipes or something. I’m sure I could be essential to a building full of housewives. . . .”
“Of course you could, darling,” Lucianne said. “If anyone had a doorbell that needed watching, they’d send for you right away. I’m only sorry my household is too small for proper service. But once my bed is made and my bureau straightened, I want for nothing.”
"I could get you a pack of cigarettes,” Stephen said, although he knew there was no point in the suggestion. Lucianne was never whimsical when she needed something.
“The Lord provides, laddie,” she said. “God will see to it that there is a lamb for the burnt offering. When I want a cigarette, I find a man who will give me one. And if I can’t find a man to do it, I don’t deserve one, that’s all. If I ever start carrying my own cigarettes, you’ll know things have gotten dangerous for me. You might give me one now, you know.”
Stephen, who was more than willing to procure a pack for anyone with a quarter and a preferred brand, did not care to break up his private collection for love or money. But he did so now, as a gesture of respect.
“Everybody’s got to have a code,” he said, lighting two and handing one over to Lucianne, who took it without acknowledgment and went back to her work. “You stick to yours. The most I could get out of anyone this morning was Pauline saying she’d take an issue of Forverts if I could pick one up this evening. But then she found a copy someone left behind on the subway on her way home, so I might as well just have worked all day for all the good it did me.”
“That’s not a bad idea, you know,” Lucianne said. “You could start a resale business. Every evening after rush hour you could comb the trains for cast-off newspapers, and every morning you could peddle them here for a nickel. News probably improves with age, like cheese.”
“It should, shouldn’t it?” said Stephen. “I wonder why nobody’s tried something of the sort before. Yesterday’s news is pretty recent for all that, when you think about it. The weather and the stocks might not be worth much a day late, but just about everything else is still useful. You always see bakeries selling yesterday’s bread for half price. Why not the paper?”
Lucianne did not answer, but continued writing in her black appointment book, which rested atop the stack of pages on her desk. Stephen waited a minute longer, nettled at being ignored over an idea he considered rather inventive, having already forgotten it was not his to begin with, before sitting cross-legged at Lucianne’s feet, looking up at her in fond irritation through the scrollwork.
Chapter One
For the inhabitants of New York’s Biedermeier Hotel for Women, Christmas meant work, and work meant money. During ordinary times, employment came to them fitfully, reluctantly, and often only after tremendous exertion (when it came at all), but between the feasts of All Saints in November and Epiphany in January, nearly any girl who wished for something profitable to occupy her afternoons could make her choice almost at her leisure. The city was lousy with opportunity in winter, and for several months every department store, boutique, and commercial concern in Midtown was absolutely desperate for girls. They needed girls to dress the windows at Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Gimbels, Bonwit Teller, and Henri Bendel, to say nothing of the sub-carriage trade shops; girls to manage the Christmas markets in the various remaining Scandinavian pocket neighborhoods; girls to assist sales clerks at the greeting card stores on Forty-Second Street; girls to usher, distribute programs, and sell candy and cigarettes at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and the Broadway shows; and girls to press and fold for the wardrobe head of The Nutcracker at the Lincoln Center. Girls who would be considered unemployable at any other time of year (and it was largely this type who inhabited the Biedermeier)—those without experience, training, education, or a pair of gloves not obviously mended—were nevertheless in some indefinite sense commercially essential to the Christmas season.
Yet, even taking this employment boom into account, the Biedermeier’s longtime manager, Mrs. Mossler, was startled by this year’s prosperity. Mrs. Mossler had awoken in darkness. She usually overtook the morning sun sometime in early September, and it would not match her pace again until late April. After her usual thirteen minutes of Swedish floor exercises, a double-time march up and down the lobby stairs, repeated until just before perspiration threatened, and a highball glass of tomato juice, she was seated at the writing desk in her office, reviewing her accounts with suspicion.
The annual surge of the hotel’s residents into the black was not to her an unfamiliar phenomenon, but she had expected only a modest increase. Instead she saw opulence, brass opulence, and that at a shocking scale. Carol Lipscomb and Patricia De Boer had both exited arrears in perfect synchronization for the first time in eight months; J.D. Boatwright for the first time in ten. Even Lucianne Caruso—whom she had long known to contribute punctually but rarely comprehensively on the first of each month, who frequently economized on rent whenever work was slack or one of her articles stalled with a new editor—had handed over, in an air of queenly condescension, a check that cleared all outstanding balances.
Mrs. Mossler found herself writing “Paid in full” next to almost every name on the Biedermeier’s books in slow, deliberate amazement. And only this morning Kitty Milham, without hint or threat of force, had voluntarily given her three dollars to cover the breaking of a lamp.
But it was not a pleased amazement. Mrs. Mossler had seen too many hotel Christmases to trust this kind of sudden corporate good fortune. Even taking luck into account, it simply was not possible for so many to be doing so well at once without resorting to criminal enterprise. Mrs. Mossler’s ideas about crime were rather hazy, having had very little firsthand experience herself, but she was certain that anything that might be called an enterprise was certain to harbor crime lurking at no great distance.
She was certain that something was amiss with Carol and Patricia. The two lived together in a suite on the eleventh floor. Carol was a student of the classics at Hunter College, while Patricia worked for the Transit Authority, and rare was the day that could produce a nickel between them. In Carol’s case this was because she made no money, and in Patricia’s because she spent hers as fast as she could make it on art supplies—although Patricia’s art was of the upsetting and ultramodern variety, so “supplies” for her might one week have been a dozen broken bathroom mirrors and, the next, material for stringing animal teeth into an old parure case. Lately both girls had grown secretive and close, often staying behind their locked door for days at a time, when ordinarily they held it open for visitors every afternoon. Mrs. Mossler, though concerned, would never use her own keys to set her fears to rest. She respected the privacy of her tenants enormously and would not force her way in anywhere she had not been invited.
Of course, there were other ready sources of cash at this time of year besides holiday employment. There were real Christmas bonuses—new bills bound together inside neat brown envelopes—or sometimes bottles of good dark liquor for the girls with year-round jobs. Even for the most hopelessly idle among them, there were almost always presents from home. Stephen Wright, who operated the Biedermeier’s elevators during the day (after sunset he was officially restricted, like all men, to the ground floor, although this rule had grown increasingly flexible over the years and, in Stephen’s case, was capable of prodigious contortion), could usually count on a moderate number of Christmas tips, being moderately popular himself. He was roundly loathed for a few days every spring around Moving Day, when he charged eye-wateringly exorbitant rates for residents to borrow hand trolleys and use the service elevator for their trunks, but this antipathy was usually exhausted, together with his remaining profits, by August.
If in a particular year Stephen felt that he could stand something a little in excess of moderation, he might make himself available after his official Biedermeier shift ended to deliver packages, pick up dry cleaning, or run downtown to buy cheap cigarettes. When this strategy failed, as it often did, he usually found an excuse to visit the third-floor room of his closest ally, Lucianne. She could scarcely ever be counted on to come through in affairs of the wallet, but her ungenerosity was so predictable as to be steadying—and still better, she was willing to lavish attention on him whenever he complained, which to Stephen was almost as necessary as money. True, Lucianne was no great consoler of persons, but while this prevented most from turning to her in a period of crisis, it posed no problem at all for Stephen. He did not need sympathy, for he always maintained great reserves of that quality for himself. So long as Lucianne was willing to provide him with the appearance of attention, he could supply the appropriate furnishing of pity, concern, indignation, or approval, as the situation required, and she could criticize or laugh at him as much as she liked, so long as she did so as an accompanist, and her counterpoint did not interfere with the pace, nor exceed the volume, of his own part.
“Lucianne,” he said in a studiously casual tone, appearing without preamble in her open doorway, “I’m sick of all this nickel-and-dime stuff. I want paper money. You can’t do anything without it, but nobody in this blessed building wants a taxi, or tickets anyplace, or their hats blocked. This place has got the most incredible group of unsociable, standoffish shut-ins under heaven. What this hotel needs, if you’ll forgive my saying so, is housewives.”
“Te absolvo,” Lucianne said without looking up from her writing table. All the rooms at the Biedermeier came appointed with ordinary pale resinated chipboard desks, as well as camp beds, washstands, and dressers of similarly dispiriting and characterless origin, but Lucianne had a taste for the light, mobile, and highly worked. She had also demonstrated an early knack for cultivating the affection of her paternal grandmother, a house-proud and cunning old woman whose taste ran along similar lines, and who liked to reward initiative among her offspring and their children. Maria Cecilia often dispensed living bequests to her special pets at whimsical moments, as a reward for their successful court and as a spur to those currently out of favor. She took the Cain-and-Abel approach to family, respecting some offerings and not others, seemingly at random and without ever justifying herself.
She had been a Taliaferro before her marriage into the Caruso family and quite naturally considered the alliance an act of condescension on her people’s part. She considered Virginia superior to Delaware and before that, the serene Republic of Venice to the Waldensian valleys of the Piedmont, Protestant Italians being indistinguishable from the Swiss by her reckoning. And she had praised Lucianne at her younger sister Giuliana’s expense often enough, calling the former La Veneziana when she was in looks and the latter La Svizzera whenever she was cross or disheveled or disagreeable, which she was quite often during visits to Maria Cecilia’s house.
This all amounted to the present effect that—Maria Cecilia still living, and still with her own home in splendid rig—Lucianne was the sole possessor of several pieces of excellent, scrupulously maintained ladies’ furnishings of the Louis XV period, in the Second Style. The two sisters were nevertheless cheerfully inseparable, and as there were plenty of other relatives who liked them both equally, or even preferred the younger, Lucianne’s advantage in furniture was outweighed by Giuliana’s in china service. Lucianne’s writing table belonged to that amiable and convenient little class known as meuble volant, or traveling furniture, graceful and slender cabinets, desks, and bonheurs du jour, which were never stood against a wall and left stationary, but which could be picked up and carried about the room in pursuit of the best light throughout the day. She kept hers in the middle of the room, where its elaborate nest of open shelves outlined in chased bronze could be admired from all angles. At present most of it was covered in refill paper, heavily marked in her densely spaced longhand and seemingly arranged at random.
“Why housewives? Aren’t there enough of them generally?”
“Plenty,” Stephen agreed readily. “But they always need something doing. They have lots to do and they can’t get it all done themselves. They require a fleet of newspaper boys, milkmen, and odd-jobbers in order to stay in business. Housewives always need another quart of milk or laundry detergent, or someone to look at an appliance or mess about with the doorbell or the pipes or something. I’m sure I could be essential to a building full of housewives. . . .”
“Of course you could, darling,” Lucianne said. “If anyone had a doorbell that needed watching, they’d send for you right away. I’m only sorry my household is too small for proper service. But once my bed is made and my bureau straightened, I want for nothing.”
"I could get you a pack of cigarettes,” Stephen said, although he knew there was no point in the suggestion. Lucianne was never whimsical when she needed something.
“The Lord provides, laddie,” she said. “God will see to it that there is a lamb for the burnt offering. When I want a cigarette, I find a man who will give me one. And if I can’t find a man to do it, I don’t deserve one, that’s all. If I ever start carrying my own cigarettes, you’ll know things have gotten dangerous for me. You might give me one now, you know.”
Stephen, who was more than willing to procure a pack for anyone with a quarter and a preferred brand, did not care to break up his private collection for love or money. But he did so now, as a gesture of respect.
“Everybody’s got to have a code,” he said, lighting two and handing one over to Lucianne, who took it without acknowledgment and went back to her work. “You stick to yours. The most I could get out of anyone this morning was Pauline saying she’d take an issue of Forverts if I could pick one up this evening. But then she found a copy someone left behind on the subway on her way home, so I might as well just have worked all day for all the good it did me.”
“That’s not a bad idea, you know,” Lucianne said. “You could start a resale business. Every evening after rush hour you could comb the trains for cast-off newspapers, and every morning you could peddle them here for a nickel. News probably improves with age, like cheese.”
“It should, shouldn’t it?” said Stephen. “I wonder why nobody’s tried something of the sort before. Yesterday’s news is pretty recent for all that, when you think about it. The weather and the stocks might not be worth much a day late, but just about everything else is still useful. You always see bakeries selling yesterday’s bread for half price. Why not the paper?”
Lucianne did not answer, but continued writing in her black appointment book, which rested atop the stack of pages on her desk. Stephen waited a minute longer, nettled at being ignored over an idea he considered rather inventive, having already forgotten it was not his to begin with, before sitting cross-legged at Lucianne’s feet, looking up at her in fond irritation through the scrollwork.
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2021
I'm struggling to imagine how someone could speak like this in a "casual" tone.
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2021
I don't think I'm the target audience for this book, by a long shot, so I may not be the best judge.
But god that was a slog. Must everything be so insufferably twee,
But god that was a slog. Must everything be so insufferably twee,
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2023
Some preliminary thoughts
Tard Baby’s grasp of syntax is as shaky as ever. Consider this:
The adverbs „fitfully, reluctantly” modify „came”, and the phrase „often only after tremendous exertion (when it came at all)” likewise relates to the subject, „employment”. „Employment” is the subject expending the tremendous exertion, no? A better (and slightly shorter) phrasing avoids this.
A nod to Patricia Highsmith and her lesbian heroine Carol
The lack of an editor is revealed a second time on the first page.
Two paragraphs starting with the same idea, differently expressed. Pick one, Tard Baby, and kill your darlings. Also, why did Mrs Mossler expect a modest increase? Was this not the time for residents to make bank? Two paragraphs later we’re told Christmas bonuses and cash presents from family were also a regular feature. Wouldn’t residents try to clear arrears at some point to avoid eviction? Did arrears normally stagger into the New Year? How does this enterprise avoid insolvency? The throuple’s finances are a mess, but Tard Baby has managed her own finances pre-Joe and is capable of thinking this through. She’s just too lazy to do it for her poor readers.
And finally, three paragraphs about Lucianne’s fucking family and furniture inserted to show… what, exactly? She better have made the grandmother or sister a plot point. The Taliaferro (properly spelt Tagliaferro) and Caruso crime family can seize control of the Hotel after Mrs Mossler goes to a loan shark.
You know, instead of writing these twee novellas about pseudo-families, Tard Baby should just write a meanspirited comic novel about a preacher man and his family of writers. All the tedious wittering about Giuliana and the grandmother would have real weight in that context. Here, it’s pure trivia.
Tard Baby’s grasp of syntax is as shaky as ever. Consider this:
The adverbs „fitfully, reluctantly” modify „came”, and the phrase „often only after tremendous exertion (when it came at all)” likewise relates to the subject, „employment”. „Employment” is the subject expending the tremendous exertion, no? A better (and slightly shorter) phrasing avoids this.
A nod to Patricia Highsmith and her lesbian heroine Carol
The lack of an editor is revealed a second time on the first page.
Two paragraphs starting with the same idea, differently expressed. Pick one, Tard Baby, and kill your darlings. Also, why did Mrs Mossler expect a modest increase? Was this not the time for residents to make bank? Two paragraphs later we’re told Christmas bonuses and cash presents from family were also a regular feature. Wouldn’t residents try to clear arrears at some point to avoid eviction? Did arrears normally stagger into the New Year? How does this enterprise avoid insolvency? The throuple’s finances are a mess, but Tard Baby has managed her own finances pre-Joe and is capable of thinking this through. She’s just too lazy to do it for her poor readers.
And finally, three paragraphs about Lucianne’s fucking family and furniture inserted to show… what, exactly? She better have made the grandmother or sister a plot point. The Taliaferro (properly spelt Tagliaferro) and Caruso crime family can seize control of the Hotel after Mrs Mossler goes to a loan shark.
You know, instead of writing these twee novellas about pseudo-families, Tard Baby should just write a meanspirited comic novel about a preacher man and his family of writers. All the tedious wittering about Giuliana and the grandmother would have real weight in that context. Here, it’s pure trivia.
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
She wants to be PG Wodehouse without the part where you admit you're whatever the American version of "FILTH data entry failson" is. Anachronistic twee larp is only possible if you're self-aware wrt the autisticity of the style. Otherwise it's absolutely insufferable, just like the 2009 handlebar mustache non-prescription glasses sort of hipster she's been trying, for some reason, to imitate since 2014.
Wonderland foster child
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2022
Oooh, good catch!
I applaud your optimism, sweet summer child.
Apart from this useless digression, Mal was quite on point in this excerpt. Maybe her editor finally found a red pen.
Autistic Nonetheless
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- May 26, 2024
Etc etc … you get the point.
I liked it. Certainly read worse.
Maybe the short form suits her better.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2021
Agreed. She could have kept the cutsey but ended with saying any other anachronisms were due to "accidental oversight" and left it at that.
If they put her in charge of the nursing home newsletter, it'll be great. Mallory with images of Jimmy Olson, Cub Reporter in her mind, keeping the notes about crafts and bingo and upcoming holidays down to three pages, front and back.
- Joined
- Feb 15, 2019
Joe Instagram. The text in the pic (penned by Joe, not a repost from someone else) says:
Ah yes, "playbook." That inscrutable metaphor from the arcane annals of American football. It's much too trivial to be juxtaposed with scary fascism, and besides, whatever could it mean?????????? Joe knows nothing of your sportsball. He only enjoys the male asses, he is definitely genuinely sexually interested in male asses because he is NOT heterosexual, OK?
Ah yes, "playbook." That inscrutable metaphor from the arcane annals of American football. It's much too trivial to be juxtaposed with scary fascism, and besides, whatever could it mean?????????? Joe knows nothing of your sportsball. He only enjoys the male asses, he is definitely genuinely sexually interested in male asses because he is NOT heterosexual, OK?