bedwyrssong

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one time i walked into God’s room when He wasn’t expecting me and He was kneeling by the foot of His bed praying. tf. who was He praying to ..?

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And suddenly fear possessed her—fear of herself, and of the terrible force of the temptation. All her past weaknesses were like so many eager accomplices drawing her toward the path their feet had already smoothed.

edith wharton, the house of mirth

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book cover redesign collection!

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Gaius in bbcmerlin approaches every question by asking, how can I gaslight the person im talking to

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"i asked chatgpt -" well i asked misha collins and he said he was bisexual & then took it back 3 days later so maybe you shouldn't trust unreliable sources

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death of the author yeah whatever but death of the fandom is so integral to enjoying legitimately anything like that is just a necessary step to take in ur head always. do not let them affect the text in any way exterminate them all with ur death ray. they r not real and cannot hurt u

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If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the "are audiobooks reading" debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.

Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as "having read" a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.

We still can't call listening in the absence of reading "literacy."

The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.

Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn't need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.

That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don't know Braille, it's 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.

Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person's ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that's how we're able to hold systems accountable.

So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.

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rule number one don't tell anyone anything ever

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4.05 — His Father's Son

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we are all sinners

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BATMAN BEYOND - 1x08: "Dead Man's Hand" "Hey, I put my life on the line all the time. One night's not gonna make any difference!" "One night always makes the difference!"

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Caramel S'mores Bars

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Alien (1979) dir. Ridley Scott

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Nicholas Hoult for Tommy Hilfiger for the new The Hilfiger Racing Club campaign

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"But I do wish I could do things. You know, important things, like cook a souffle, or pick a necktie, or choose the wallpaper for the bedroom. You know." Horror Character Appreciation - Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark (1967) dir. Terence Young

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Félix Vallotton : "Paysage, près de Semur", 1923. (Coll. part.)

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