Fiona > Recent Status Updates

“There are no live rounds in the house, Marcus. Well, that’s not exactly true.” Barry pulls his Glock from his shoulder holster. “My gun is full of them.”

Cheesy monologue now.
"I don’t want to look back anymore. I’m ready to accept that my existence will sometimes contain pain. No more trying to escape, either through nostalgia or a memory chair. They’re both the same fucking thing. Life with a cheat code isn’t life. Our existence isn’t something to be engineered or optimized for the avoidance of pain. That’s what it is to be human—the beauty and the pain [.]"

So they know they can't make it but rather than just wait to reset the day of, they're out snowshoeing/hiking? Make it make sense.

The dialogue is so cheesy.
“You don’t need me.” “That is not what I’m saying. Of course I need you. I need your love, I need your mind, your support, all of it. But I need you to know—” “Helena, don’t.” “Let me say this! It’s enough that I have to see the chair destroying the entire world. People throwing themselves off of buildings because of something I made. It’s another to see it ruin the life of the man I love.”

"She is forty-nine, and she wonders if this is what feeling old really means—not just a physical deterioration, but an interpersonal. A growing silence caused by the people you most love, who have shaped you and defined your world, going on ahead into whatever comes after."

But won't the possible victims just remember dying like the guy's daughter did? I'm confused.

All the monologuing here is really perfect for a TV series or movie.

This writing is so same-samey. "When I pulled my forehead off the glass, there was a huge greasy smudge where I’d touched it. I tried to wipe it away but it just made the window cloudy. I remember looking through this cloudy window, trying to rub it to make it better and nothing would help. I just kept rubbing and rubbing and rubbing. Until Rod found me somehow."

"Actually, no. I don’t like putting it that way—you’re never not yourself. You’re always you. It’s just, sometimes, who you are…who you are is a shitty person."

"I was sick to my stomach without him. I was…kicking myself. Every day. Waking up in tears. My mom kept telling me to track him down. To take it back. But it felt like it was too late. He’d gone on without me. To make his dreams come true. As he should have." This is the kind of stuff that works in writing but not when spoken, which takes me out of the illusion a little that this is all from "interviews."

"'No,' I said. “She was nervous even before I mentioned seeing her in the car. Sorry if I bungled getting information out of her.'
'I didn’t have high expectations,' Gin said. 'Don’t worry about it.'"

"'So that I could be happy right where I am, I decided to do things ‘in moderation.’ So that I can look after myself and those I care about, I work at a moderately busy workplace, earn a moderate wage, have fun in moderation.… People look at me and say I lack ambition. But isn’t ‘moderation’ the greatest ambition we can have? I’m being really ambitious in trying to stay happy and within the lines of moderation.'"

"It was her decision how long she would rest for and when she would get back up on her feet again. Perhaps it was only when a person became able to choose to take time off and set their own pace that they’d truly grown up."

"She realized that there was no miracle cure for inertia better than responsibility. Her body, once heavy and waterlogged, grew light like a towel dried crisp in the sun. That feeble voice that’d echoed round her ears, questioning her right to take responsibility for another life, gradually faded away."

pg. 515
"Avoid condoms with spermicide, as they are impregnated with nonoxynol-9, which does not improve their effectiveness, shortens their shelf life, and paradoxically increases the risk of sexually transmitted disease if exposed, as it damages the vaginal microbiome."

"People say the poor love to dream, but that isn't quite right. Dreaming is the privilege of the moneyed, and the world has all kinds of ways to protect their dreams."

"If literature truly possesses a mysterious power, I think perhaps it is precisely this: that one can read a book by a writer of a different time, a different country, a different race, a different language, and a different culture and there encounter a sensation that is one's very own."

"Connor realized that going through a tough time wasn’t the issue, it was letting it change you permanently. He’d lost sight of how Enduring Hardships Connor was a sharper-edged, less tolerant character. That Connor went in expecting the worst of everyone, wearing it as his armor. […] A doom spiral, where whatever lever you pulled, you were going down into the sea."

“Some people—and I don’t mean bad people, all sorts of people—have no interest in changing their behavior in order to seek better outcomes, and the condition is lifelong. Once you realize you’re dealing with one of those people you can make an informed decision about how much energy to give them.”

"If you’d been sent a dick pic tonight, intended for another woman, and I said you’re ultimately in the wrong for not loving me enough, how would that go down?"

"But he wasn’t angry. He was shocked and bereft, bewildered and queasy, in that particular way you were when you complacently thought you were going to choose the moment, and it was chosen for you."

"Bel wondered at a world where you needed men to protect you against other men, patriarchy as Mafia racket."

"Knowing something was ending, and that it was better off ending, didn’t stop it hurting. Nor, apparently, stop the mad urge to last-minute repair it."

Too much detail with names, positions, etc. I've never read this genre and thought I'd try but it's not for me.

"To have a uterus and ovaries is to walk the line between the potential for reproduction and trauma, and that can only go on for so long."

"The [Environmental Working Group], an activist group that reports on toxic chemicals and pollutants, often overstates risks associated with everyday products (in one survey, 79% of toxicologist felt the EWG overstated risks from chemicals). You may be familiar with their 'dirty dozen list' for fruits and vegetables, but a peer-reviewed study [says it doesn't follow established scientific procedures]."

"They are not “feminine hygiene” products because: • Needing them is not a sign of being feminine; it’s a sign that you need something to catch blood. • They’re not hygiene products because menstruating is not unhygienic. They are menstrual products. And they’re essential."

"In Ali's mind, anxiety is a rubberized running track you visit at predictable times, looping around and around. Grief, however, is a dark, endlessly meandering tunnel you can fall into anytime you're not looking."

"As such, the soldier-police were predictably increasing their presence around all Chain-Gang All-Stars events and many politicians had already appeared before holostreams to implore nonviolence. An absurd thing for the murderous state to plead for, but, as always, the massive violence of the state was “justice,” was “law and order,” and resistance to perpetual violence was an act of terror."