cryptidspaghetti

[cryptidspaghetti]

Kind of want to start a community...or maybe just like...a discord server lol...For academics.

Like yes "dark" academics but all the dark academia communities on here are all aesthetic based or extra niche. It would be nice for people to share book recs, research papers and interesting articles, and yeah, some "aesthetic" stuff - but in generally taking advantage of the intellectual subculture of dark academia not the visual one.

[cryptidspaghetti]

i'd really like to believe that canonically the earlier drafts of tgg are nick's earlier drafts and he changed this line because he wanted to sound more nonchalant

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nick starting one paragraph with "I believe that on the first night I went to Gatsby's house I was one of the few guests who had actually been invited." and then beginning the very next paragraph with "I had actually been invited." ok nick WE GET IT you were fucking invited. we get it, your pretty neighbor invited you to come to his home and you were the only one who he personally wanted there which makes you feel special because you're gay. we fucking get it

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just finished harpman's I who have never known men and I will say it did not exactly do wonders for my mood but it's also really unlike anything I've ever read before. I think I'm just genuinely impressed by fiction that asks you to imagine a crazy unexplainable scenario and then proceeds to give you absolutely zero answers without apologizing for it. what if forty women were kept alive fed and warm in a cage for no reason on an empty planet that looks a lot like earth but maybe isn't but maybe is. like yeah what if

[cryptidspaghetti]

Review of I who have never known man: ★★★★⯪

This book was near perfect, I believe. Really, truly, it was a numbing, heartwrenching tale. The opening was a little tiring, but as I got past the first few pages, I realized I was completely enamored. I finished it last night, after planning on only reading a few pages and focusing on some of my university work. I often dislike books without chapters, but in this novel it created an atmosphere that made me need to continue it. the novel is correctly compared to The Handmaid's tale, and Harpman's style does remind me of Atwood's.

I think the discussion around I who have never known man, is what made the book imperfect to me. I believe I was recommended it on tiktok in a "weird girl/feminist lit" list. that, in line with the title, it gave me the impression that this was a book about women.

yes, textually - this is about 40 women, about our main character who has never known a man, because she has been held captive since childhood and cannot remember ever meeting a man. Moreover, I believe this novel is an exploration into personhood and yes, womanhood. it is not about how women are affected by men, because of course, the other women in our main character's group had lives with men surrounding them (husbands, brothers, coworkers, etc). she explores sexuality through her imagination and 'contact' with male guards. she thinks about men a fair deal in this brief novel.

The narrator herself never went through puberty, she does not have periods, and her breasts did not develop - this too seems to separate her from the traditional woman. She relates to the men and the women in her head - and inversely, she sees herself as an outsider from both.

This is not a story about what it is to be a woman outside of the patriarchy; it is a story about what it is to be a human without knowledge of humanity.

if anyone has read this and would like to discuss theories around it - considering the nature of mystery surrounding much of the book, I would be overjoyed!

[cryptidspaghetti]

wait did something happen to Jesus

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[cryptidspaghetti]

Alternative Sophie Foster arrived in my dreams one time and I had to draw it. Thought that posting such an au on april fools day was a fun idea, so here y’go. Couldn’t decide on one strict style, so I just did whatever. Sorry i havent been posting that much, life has been eating me alive. And like, canonically, before the elvin world, she was basically emo. She only wore grey and black and listened to screamo. This is just an au of…she kept going with the dark aesthetic.

[cryptidspaghetti]

Kind of want to start a community...or maybe just like...a discord server lol...For academics.

Like yes "dark" academics but all the dark academia communities on here are all aesthetic based or extra niche. It would be nice for people to share book recs, research papers and interesting articles, and yeah, some "aesthetic" stuff - but in generally taking advantage of the intellectual subculture of dark academia not the visual one.

[cryptidspaghetti]

Review of The Idiot & Either/Or by Elif Batuman:

The Idiot: ★★★★

either/or: ★★★

*sigh*, yes, I liked the first one better. the idiot, which I read at the end of august, right before I started my first year of university (as a history/writing major), felt personal, topical and enlightening. the story followed Selin, a Turkish American student at Harvard University in her freshman year. (I liked Selin a lot - enough that some of her more annoying internal monologue was swept under the rug, as the child of European immigrants and a prospective author, much of her plight was something I'd experienced.)

Elif Batuman's work is characterized by beautiful description and dialogue that wraps you up in the colourful world of early 2000s Harvard. The romantized vision of college and intellectual companion ship is exactly how school looks in my dreams, "how brief and magical it was that we all lived so close to each other and went in and out of each other's rooms, and our most important job was to solve mysteries" (Either/or). If anyone loves the Yale era of Gilmore Girls, or wished Jess and Paris had more screen time together, you should check out this series.

As a novel without much plot outside of the passage of time, the story is carried by the characters we meet. most notably, there is Svetlana, Selin's blunt and sensible friend, and there is Ivan, a mysterious, unavailable, Hungarian senior who Selin is enamored with. this strange push-and-pull relationship is what stole the show for me in the first book.

Ivan is strange -- and he represents more of an idea and a body of growth for Selin than an actual character -- as he is experiencing his own novel-worthy drama in the background. he changes Selin's behaviours in ways that are dangerous and intoxicating, it keeps you on the edge of your seat.

we follow Selin's internal turmoil, academic obsession and more through the three season, until the summer term. this is without a doubt the best portion of the book - even if it had me groaning and checking the remaining pages at particularly long winded places. By the time the ending rolled around, I am absolutely destroyed - especially when nothing was tied up by the last page! I felt dispair, betrayal and texted friends melodramatically: "yes, perhaps this is realistic, but I cannot bare to go on!"

I had been under the assumption that this was a stand-alone novel, and was thrilled when I discovered the second book, even if I waited until the end of my year to read it.

(largely spolier free review, still, read at your own risk)

Unfortunately, all the intrigue I was excited by in the first novel is missing in this one.

Ivan is gone - quite literally, at graduate school in Cali - but narratively, he is also missing. This appears to be a bid to bring Selin into her own, to allow her to develop outside of this obsession - but none of the other characters can hold a peg to the on-page chemistry between Selin and Ivan (non-romantically and romantically). This novel as well, outside of every few pages of entire classic novel summaries, spends much of its 350-page count focusing on Selin's determination to lose her virginity.

as a reader, I am not entirely against this - I'm not a prude, and I think as a coming-of-age novel, it is exciting to see a young woman be put into the role that is commonly and casually filled by young men. if anyone's read Joe College by Tom Perrota, you have experienced the tiring monologue of a sex obsessed author and character. Selin is not this. sex is not the problem.

the problem, in my opinion, is that what made the dynamics between characters interesting in the first book was the intellectual debates, the carefully spun and realistic depiction of humanity. The most realistic thing in book 2 is that losing your virginity hurts. but the people? the men? they are so clearly on a page. Beyond that, Selin's quirky monologue occasionally veered into judgmental and righteous in ways that had me rolling my eyes. a lot of insecurity she expressed in this novel about her abilities felt mildly shoehorned, but I also experience able opposite problems, so it is possible I just personally disliked them.

Svetlana and Selin's new roommates are still fantastic, and the technical writing is stupendous, but in terms of closure from the first book and maintaining what made it special, Either/or drops the ball.

[cryptidspaghetti]

i'm glad someone else brought it up as a city vs country thing, I lived in NYC and DC (and loved it - really was the place I was supposed to be) but people are so goddamn rude up there. but the thing is, it's not them being rude, it's just the culture - for them it's bloody weird for someone to try and stop you on the street, because everyone is in a hurry with their own life. In contrast, up state New York (and I mean real upstate, not central that everyone calls upstate) you can stop and get coffee with just about every folk you pass on the side walk - it's just how it is.

i love it when you accidentally meet eyes with a stranger in public and you flash a quick polite smile and they look at you like they wish you were dead in a ditch

[cryptidspaghetti]

Spring ⋆˚✿˖°

rainstorms and sitting inside drinking iced tea

reading in the grass, in cotton blouses, sprawled out on knit blankets.

complex love stories (a room with a view)

Virginia Woolf

plays and poems. oh, dear, Shelley.

this is also a time for lighter, modern books (the raven cycles)

wearing short dresses and sweaters

using thick colorful clips to pull up your hair

fall asleep in the mud, wake up with leaves in your hair

tuck flowers behind your ears as you walk to class, tie them to your glasses, and make them into rings.

eat fresh seasonal fruit

apricot

cherry

crab-apples

mulberry

dip your feet in the lake, think about drifting out into the mist

go on long walks with your friends, discuss matters of the heart

read and watch Shakespeare, perform it on the grounds

studying modern art

going out at night to the beach, passing a cigarette between friends, trying to name all the stars in the sky.

Folk music always playing on your headphones as you walk to class, mary janes floating across the pavement

[cryptidspaghetti]

I ended up having a really long and important talk with my mum about boundaries because she wouldn't leave me alone while I was trying to change. Of course, the only reason I wanted her to leave was because I had a cig hidden in my bra but like, it needed to happen

[cryptidspaghetti]

A lot of my art and writing focuses around women and the female experience. While I am technically a "girl" I don't really connect with this concept - especially because online it continues to grow more and more divided between the masculine and the feminine. I am fascinated by what is considered to be a "girl thing".

I think my likes are feminine, and I present myself as such, I experience the feline life style and suffer such consequences regularly, but when I write (and exist) I often feel like I am looking like my own portrayal of femininity as a voyeur. My obsession with women is not as obsession with self, but more correctly defined as an exploration into a separate and performative.

[cryptidspaghetti]

nothing hurts when you’re by my side

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Tumblr isn't giving us back the boops for ides of march so I will do it myself.

Get your boops everyone!!!

I just put these together real quick feel free to use them.

[cryptidspaghetti]

Rest in peace ❌ Rest in pieces ✅