#how am I supposed to open things?

[dragonpyre]

Most of Europe: oh, you’re not allowed to carry a knife on you

My country ass: wha

[lucabyte]

i feel like people are sleeping on the occam's razor situation of how buckwild it is to outright accuse a guy of being a clone of your friend even if you DO have a lot of circumstantial evidence. there's other options is what im saying. they could just be like. a guy. that's a sensible deduction. you should explore that deduction. ignore my shirt that reads I <3 RED HERRINGS.

i still think odile has the correct theory on lock but she's smart enough to know it needs like... a real smoking gun to be able to bring it up without sounding insane.

anyway. (mirabelle voice) i know its rude to speculate but has anyone else noticed the grieving? they seem to be grieving. does anyone have any thoughts on the grieving? i have some thoughts on the grieving.

[i-like-forcefem]

what's your favorite forcefem premise? (like, circumstance in which the forcefem occurs, if that makes sense)

Incredibly hard question!

Tonally my preference always goes to Humiliating yet Loving- but premise wise there's nothing but amazing things to choose from-

But if I had too pick right now...

Losing a Bet! Which gets escalated as "he" seems to like it~

I love it when there's plausible deniability at the start, "it's not like I want this! They're making me do it!" And the bet is a very simple, grounded, and silly way of it!

Then I love it when it slowly escalates!

Not due to anyone putting on a lot of force- but because the girls boundaries slowly get pushed and pushed and she's not pushing back

She's enjoying this- a lot- she'll never admit it- but she doesn't need to

The look on her face when she first put on a skirt is all the forcefemmer needs as a go ahead to plan what makeup she'll need to buy for her~

The bet, is in my eyes, the most elegant trans wishfufillment scenario out there, I don't think I've ever since an execution of it that I didn't love

And gently pushing someone's boundaries as escalation is just good manners~

[sluckythewizard]

'I wont cry for you, I wont crucify the things you do. I wont cry for you, see, when you're gone, I'll still be BLOODY MARY'

[ssimay]

SPENCER REID WAS SUPPOSED TO BE BISEXUAL!?!! AND THEY GAVE UP ON THE BEST IDEA EVER!?!!! IM GONNA LOSE MY FUCKING MINDDDDD

[vaguely-concerned]

there's a self-help/mental health adjacent post that's going around and it seems to be really helpful for a lot of people which is very good. I also personally hate it with all my fucking heart

[dennisboobs]

one day i'll post my fic and you can finally witness this monster of a playlist that fuels my insanity

[kirkwallguy]

ok i do have complaints and hate the gameplay (<- bad at it) but i am enjoying mass effect MUCH more now im out of the citadel.

[deelovesbooks]

so i watched episodes 1-4 of Murderbot yesterday and I'm enjoying it so far. It's taking a minute to get used to how murderbot sounds bc I listened to the audiobooks and keep expecting to hear Kevin R Free instead of Skarsgard 😂 also Gurathin is very different from how I pictured him but I am enjoying this interpretation so far

I did have to pull up my copy of all systems red while watching the 1st ep bc I was like wait a minute Arada & Pin-Lee are together since when??? Looks like they merged Pin-Lee and Overse (and no Volescu) which is interesting. I understand wanting to condense the main cast down (and Volescu is only in the first book anyways) but it'll be interesting to see if that will really impact any future seasons bc Overse has a bigger role in later books that's different from Pin-Lee (who appears to have retained book personality & job just seems to have taken Overse's wife lmao)

[basketobread]

hello i forgot this was among my lunara sketches enjoy

OH MY GODBDJSJSJSJDJSJSNANNSN

[eff-exor]

guys, news just in. being in love with me feels like your blood is in fact acid and is eating you from the inside out. who want me

[seaofreverie]

The biggest problem with trying to come up with a dream Sparks setlist is that I truly want them to play just about every song. Or at least 80% of them, would that really be too much to ask..

[through-the-rabbit-hole]

I'm reading Babel, and, in regards to the research projects that the Hermes Society has been undertaking, there's a footnote attached that essentially complains about how white European translators add too many footnotes with explanatory context in non-European texts, thus leading the reader to read the text the way they want it to be read.

And I just find this funny, because this is the exact criticism I have of R. F. Kuang's use of footnotes. I wonder if she added it in some bout of self-awareness, or if it was just another fun fact. ( Long ramble under the cut. )

Don't get me wrong, the added context is appreciated; there are a lot of people ( myself included ) reading Babel not because they have an extensive knowledge of the 19th century and Victorian England, but because they heard the book is good and popular. The historical context helps the reader understand the circumstances of a situation or the character motives much better.

But it also has a flaw I always notice in a book, which is when the author's voice intrudes upon the narrator's voice. You can clearly hear the author's own grievances and opinions in the tone and the language, even in the choice of highlighted facts. On one hand, I get it: a Chinese-American author is writing a story set in colonial England, told through the third-person lens of a Chinese boy. The story is steeped in commentary about colonialism and racism, and when the protagonist you're following is directly affected by the issues raised in the book, you would expect to see a lot of criticism of said issues. It would he decidedly weird if it wasn't this way.

However, Kuang specifically wrote Robin as someone who is not entirely immune to lies and propaganda. Robin is not as educated, nor did he suffer humiliation at the hands of the white European bourgeoise as, say, Ramy did. Robin is not, at all times, as critical of Victorian England as the real author is, and as the real author likes to emphasize. So in this case, the author is speaking over the narrator when she adds footnotes providing further context that carries her subjective tone. It pulls the reader out of the text, reminds them that this is the real author's opinions and observations; not Robin's.

The funny thing is that I'm not saying an author isn't allowed to show their feelings on a subject unless the author is also the narrator of the book. In fact, R. F. Kuang achieves this in Babel consistently and within full reason: the characters have all the right to point out and discuss the prejudice and injustice they're facing, as well as many other topics that Kuang is clearly passionate about ( this even applies to the discussion of different topics in the field of linguistics in the book ). Like, yeah, of course they would! And this is the ideal place for the real author to do so, where they won't interject themselves into the book.

But by doing so in the footnotes (which, I have never seen so many and such wordy footnotes in a book before), and at times throughout the book, the real author does what, to me, she is exactly complaining about. ( I also have to complain, briefly, about how awkward these sometimes feel, almost like the author wanted to say something more but didn't know where to put it, so it was all thrown into the footnotes. ) I don't think this is a matter of whether these footnotes are objectively correct or not. Her criticism was that non-European texts were burdened with context from white European translators, which implies that this context was subjective, incorrect, misleading, or at the very least, trying to lead the reader to think about the text one way or another. And I agree; context should be objective, it should help fill the gaps where the majority of the reading audience might not be as knowledgeable about a topic, event or person, might not understand a quip or comment because of the missing context.

But Kuang doesn't incorporate these seamlessly enough. In fact, these would be much less jarring, if not at all, if the book was written from Ramy's or Victoria's point of view. Because they're much more aware of the world they live in, are more resistant to and firmly critical of colonial England just like Kuang, because this kind of context, even if it slightly carried the author's voice, would match Ramy's or Victoria's better than Robin's. The point isn't whether Kuang is right to point out the many injustices of the white European man, and whether the white European man is right to add his own context to a non-European text.

The point is how they do it, how prominent their voices are, how much they affect the way the reader will consume and experience and view the book. When you blur the lines between fictional and real communication, when the author is not covert enough in a heterodiegetic narrative, you form a direct, unobstructed line between author and reader that, in this instance, feels out of place. The reader will have to wonder, while reading the text, whether it's the author or the narrator speaking to them, and how this might affect their perception of the events of the book.

Feel free to disagree with me on this, and also I fully admit I am not that well versed in narratology (which is why the terminology is a bit all over the place). In fact, I would appreciate insight from someone who is more knowledge about it than me. These are just my personal feelings on how the author unnecessarily interjects herself into the book, when I feel like it's something that could have been changed during the editing process. I can tell she struggled a lot with the footnotes, because she had a lot more to say without knowing how to add it seamlessly into the book.

(I might revise this, too, at some point in the future; halfway through writing this I stumbled upon Manfred Jahn's Narratology 2.3: A Guide to the Theory of Narrative, and now I'm super curious about it.)

[microwavetoaster-selfships]

Does my secret problem with object-head characters explain why I like Dr.Strangeglove so much

[kaiserkisser]

can someone nice (!!) please please please adopt me im begging you im requesting you (huge word vomit and vent in tags, pls dont read if u dont want to!! and if you don't want this stuff on this blog PLS lmk!! i dont wanna make anyone uncomfy! )

[aceredshirt13]

gang i have to share this P. G. Wodehouse quote with you all because ever since I found it I can't stop thinking about it. it's from a letter he wrote when he was 78 years old to his friend Guy Bolton (many thanks to P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters)

I have been on the sick list myself, but am better now. Inflamed bladder or chill on the bladder or something, the symptoms being agony when I passed water, as the expression is. It brought back the brave old days when I used to get clap.

he really said "yeah the pain from my bladder issue reminds of the days when I used to have so much sex I repeatedly got venereal disease"