Catherynne M. Valente - Tumblr Posts
“When I fed the pigs and two of them got to scrapping over an old soft onion, I thought: that’s love. Love is eating. Love is a snarling pig snout and long tusks. Love is the colour of blood. Love is what grown folk do to each other because the law frowns on killing.”
— Catherynne M. Valente, from Six Gun Snow White (via lifeinpoetry)
“I love you but there are things older and murkier than love. Things that live not in the heart but the entrails. I don’t want you to see me with the wolf. I don’t want you to see what he does to me. I don’t want you to see what i do to him.”
— Catherynne M. Valente, “The Red Girl,” from The Bread We Eat in Dreams (via rotgospels)
friends! i’ve recently (re)discovered this particular short story by catherynne m. valente and good god. what a masterful little tale. i cannot say too much about it, or even mention the title of the anthology it was originally included it, because that would spoil half the fun of reading it for the first time, but oh. do read it. it truly is miss valente at her best.
I am a demanding creature. I am selfish and cruel and extremely unreasonable. But I am your servant. When you starve I will feed you; when you are sick I will tend you. I crawl at your feet; for before your love, your kisses, I am debased. For you alone I will be weak.
Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
I cannot help that readers will always insist on adventures, and though you can have grief without adventures, you cannot have adventures without grief.
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente (via the-poetic-mathematician)
Just listened to this episode and the story, Can You Hear Me Now? by Catherynne M Valente, read by Erika Ensign, is extremely good – both the story and the narration, though you can also read the story if you prefer. It's giving me cyberpunk capitalist ad-drenched dystopia, selling that shining perfect life while real life is nothing but toil and murk – and gives that vibe without any of the usual cyberpunk aesthetic, no neon reflected in puddles or plastic trenchcoats or cranial USB ports. Is it an 'AI gaining sentience' story? An 'NPC realises they're in a game' story? It's got shades of both but does something different with it. She is the Woman in every ad and she's screaming to be freed from the narrative, and of course, because the narrative is impossible fulfilment and liberation through consumption.
Moodboard: Tsarina of Life. Marya Morevna from “Deathless” by Catherynne M. Valente