No longer is this about the rights of students to access books. It’s now about the rights of private businesses to sell books. Anderson suggests this is a new avenue for parents to fight.
“We are in a major fight. Suits like this can be filed all over Virginia. There are dozens of books. Hundreds of schools,” he said.
Holy shit this is a BIG FUCKING WARNING SIGN. Challenges to school and public libraries aren’t cool obviously, but they’re not unusual and we have a framework for handling them. This is something new and alarming in a whole new way
Republican “free speech” y'all and don’t you forget it.
This is a direct challenge to the freedom of the press and if it isn’t struck down at the first hurdle we need to make sure it never sees the second one.
On the miniscule off-chance that anyone who sees my reblog might be thinking “oh, it’s just queer books that they’re trying to ban” - A Court of Mist and Fury is a het romance. It is a het romance containing het sex scenes, written by a straight white woman.
People have been warning all along that the right-wing thought police were never going to stop with queer lit or ‘woke’ lit, and that every time they got an inch they were going to take a mile until they’d banned absolutely everything that didn’t conform to their strict right wing fundamentalist Christian views. If you were waiting for proof of that, here it is.
adding this which I saw yesterday, which appears to indicate this judge is not just deciding whether to allow this bookstore to sell certain books to minors.
“regarding whether the books may be sold OR POSSESSED in Virginia by EITHER MINORS OR ADULTS”
I don’t even like Sarah Maas (not trying to start anything, I just didn’t get into the first one) but this makes me want to go get this book and maybe a couple of others, just for spite.
Screen shots of the WaPo article below and in the next reblog due to image limits.
Concerning highlights: both books are sexually explicit and there is every reason to think the judge will find them obscene by the standard in the old statue. A request to completelystop the sale of these books in the state while the case works its way through court has been filed and if the books are found obscene will likely be granted.
Technically this case is an attempt to prohibit the sale of the books to children but they’re likely to get a lot more than that both short and long term. If you were a publisher and had to select a book to publish that’s likely to incur court costs and be blacklisted or one that’s not which one are you going to buy?
No spoilers, here’s everything that was talked about at the event last night!
When she had edited it completely, KoA was originally 1008 pages but the glue they use for binding couldn’t hold together a book more than 1000 pages long
Bloomsbury reformatted it all to less than 1000 pages because Sarah didn’t feel like she could delete any of it
She knew what the end would be five years ago while on a trip in Costa Rica at the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. Saw the landscape and the final sentence of the series came to her
She ended up crying in front of all of her in-laws
Lysandra’s return in Queen of Shadows was inspired by the song “Smack My Bitch Up” by The Prodigy. Not the title or the lyrics but the background music made Sarah think of Lysandra shifting into a snow leopard and she knew that she would be a shapeshifter
She wanted to make Aelin see other girls as allies and friends and to surround herself with strong women and she realized Lysandra would be the perfect best friend
The scene when Lysandra saved Rowan and Aedion in Queen of Shadows is one of Sarah’s favorites and was inspired by the song in E.T. when the kids are riding their bikes
As soon as Lysandra was there, she couldn’t imagine the series without her and she’s one of Sarah’s favorite characters
Every scene and character is inspired by music
Aelin has a theme song: “Remember Us” from the 300 soundtrack
Sarah listened to it when Chaol found out Celaena was Aelin, when the army arrives at the end of EoS, and throughout writing KoA
As she’s writing books, she makes playlists with songs for scenes and characters
Helps when she’s editing so she can re-listen to songs that inspired that scene/chapter to re-enter the headspace
When writing scenes without music, she worries that they will be ‘emotionally dead’ and it can be a really weird experience
Rowan and Aedion are one of her favorite relationships—especially when they first meet and Aedion is geeking out. Then when Rowan gives Aedion the dagger at the end of QoS and it becomes his most prized possession
Manon and Abraxos are also one of her favorite relationships because he brings out her ‘humanity’ and begins the change that leads to her character arc
Abraxos was inspired by Ferdinand the bull and her aunt’s dog, Buddy, who was rescued from a fighting ring where he was used as a bait dog. He was abused, his teeth were all gone, and they abandoned him on the side of the highway before someone found him. Nevertheless, he was the kindest, sweetest, most trusting dog
She replicated his story in Abraxos
Aelin and Rowan is her favorite pairing
Their journey in Heir of Fire is really special for her
In Queen of Glass, Aelin and Rowan weren’t together because she was in a relationship with someone else but when Sarah wasn’t writing that, she would write fanfic smut where Aelin and Rowan were hooking up on the side
When rewriting the series for publication, she realized that Rowaelin should be together, although Rowan should come in later in the series because she wanted Aelin to have the journey of going through first love [triangle] with Dorian and Chaol
When writing Heir of Fire, she planted the seeds of their romance so when readers reread it, they could understand why he… bit her and stuff lol
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS GIFT! I’m in Columbus, Ohio, and there is no way I could get to any of these. You are an angel! I hope you all had an amazing time!!
Here we have as promised the final illustration of the three girls! It was fun to do in my free time, to relax from all the University work. Hope that all of you Sarah J Maas fans enjoy this illustration that I’ve been working these past months ❤️❤️❤️.
So, here we have the last piece, Feyre Archeron from the ACOTAR series by Sarah J Maas. It took me some time to finish it by I’m really happy with the finale result. Now I’m trying to figure out how to do the fínale illustration with the three girls. Well… hope you like the solo illustration ⠀⠀
So finally I found time to continue my 3 piece illustration!! My life is an absolute mess right now haha. So this time we have Aelin Galathynius from the throne of glass series by @therealsjmaas. What can I say? Pretty much every person in bookstagram knows her and almost every artist I know has an illustration of her. So I hope you like my version of her❤️. Next one will be Feyre!
Here we have my latest illustration! Bryce Quinlan from Crescent City by @therealsjmaas. I had so much fun doing this one, it was my relaxing moment of the day. I really would like to do a 3 piece illustration of Bryce, Aelin and Feyre. What do you think? ♥️ Well! Hope you like this piece as much as me
Manon Blackbeak from the Throne of Glass series by @therealsjmaas. This is a personal project I did to see how much I improved since 2018. If you go to my DeviantArt, there is an illustration of her and is the sixth one I did when I bought my graphic tablet back then. I’m really happy with the improvement and creativity I’ve developed these past years so thank you so much for sharing this journey with me, specially this last year
these a court of blahblahblah books are hilarious, bless.
maas basically did this to the main romantic interest from the first book:
and it was SO heavy handed that i went from having zero emotional investment in what was going on to becoming team Tamlin Snaps And Kills Every Single Character In This Series, Then Himself - Then His Spirit Breaks The 4th Wall And Takes A Dump On The Author’s Bed.
“To the stars who listen and the dreams that are answered”
Although it wasn’t a full ACOTAR novel, A Court Of Frost And Starlight was still a really fun short read that brought back all your favourite characters. It was a good break in the waiting period between ACOWAR and the next book which im highly anticipating! It was more based in characterization and how all the characters were recovering which was really important to touch on, but it also set up some plot points to be delved into more in future novels.
Overall, it was a really cute in between read, but still important to the series. If you haven’t read A Court Of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J Maas, and you’re a YA or fantasy fan, I would highly recommend it.
