grbookworm1818-writes

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Annelise Orleck, Professor of History, Chair of Jewish Studies, Dartmouth

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Not me gasping like a painted harlot upon seeing George in the official trailer for “The Beast”

The trailers been out for a month and I didn’t even realize 😭

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It’s too much power knowing it’s only like $20 to make a custom shirt.

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Something that's been knocking around in my head for a while: I think a lot of new writers get thrown off by their assumption that writing will be anything like reading. Reading is a dreamy, passive experience--scenes, dialogue, and description flow over you as you are taken under the writer's spell. Writing, on the other hand (with the exception, sometimes, of the first draft), is the laborious, almost mechanical-like task of putting narrative elements together so that the reader can lose themselves in your story. In short, reading and writing are very different experiences, and the assumption that they will be, or even should be, the same, is cause for much angst among new and experienced writers alike. It's a frustrating thing, because a love of reading is usually what gets people interested in writing in the first place. I've been writing for several decades and I still feel confounded by this clash--it's part of why I don't read much when I'm deep into my writing, and vice versa. And when I am writing, I constantly have to remind myself: Writing is not watching a magic show. Writing is figuring out how to smuggle the rabbit into the hat.

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Let him sleep

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the funniest thing to me abt pride (2014) is the difference in the speeches that Dai gives to the gay club vs the first one Mark gives at the canteen in Dulais

like. we know nothing abt Dai at that point and then suddenly we know EVERYTHING. this man has learned how to talk to all kinds of people, he knows how to play an audience, he's awkward and Welsh but he knows how to talk and he's open minded and legitimately touched that they would go to that much trouble for the mining communities

versus. Mark.

who up until this point we see as this charismatic leader, he knows how to rally his people, etc and then he just. totally blows the canteen speech. "one in five miners must be [gay] too, right?" like. Mark. Sweetie. you threw this poor man into a situation were he might come to bodily harm for NO REASON and then didn't? think? they have you? do that too? you didn't come up with anything ahead of time? you didn't think it was a possibility??? turns out Mark Ashton only knows how to talk to Gay People and People Who Like Him Specifically (bc his second speech in the canteen is much more well received). Mark "Can't Work A Tough Crowd" Ashton, folks

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because the only good reason to go to london on vacation is to visit the filming locations of the best movie ever made and be absolutely insufferable about it

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It's 1917 day! I made this a couple of months ago, but I hope it still holds up-

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Let him sleep

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Random, but a really handy way to make things seem creepy or wrong in horror is to make them incongruously neat or clean:

In the middle of a horrific battlefield, you find one corpse laid aside neatly, straightened and arranged, its arms crossed neatly across its chest

As you walk through the garden, you gradually realise that the oddness you’ve been noticing about the trees is that they are all perfectly symmetrical

As you move through the abandoned house, you realise that suddenly that there’s no dust in this room, no dirt or cobwebs

You hear hideous noises coming from behind a locked door, screams and pleas, and visceral sounds of violence. When you manage to break down the door, there is no one there, and the room is perfectly spotless

In the middle of a horrific battlefield, a hollow full of churned mud and blood, you find five corpses cleanly dismembered, each set of limbs or parts neatly laid out in their own little row

You witness a murder, a brutal, grisly killing that carpets the area in blood. When you return in a blind panic with the authorities, the scene is completely clean, and no amount of examination can find even a drop of blood

You run through the night and the woods with a comrade, pulling each other through leaves and twigs and mud as you scramble desperately towards freedom. When you finally emerge from the forest, in the grey light of dawn, you turn to your companion in relief, and notice that their clothes are somehow perfectly clean

You hand a glass of water to your suspect, talking casually the whole while, and watch with satisfaction as they take it in their bare hand and take a drink. There’ll be a decent set of prints to run from that later. Except there isn’t. There are no prints at all. As if nothing ever touched the glass

You browse idly through your host’s catalogue, and stop, and pay much more attention, when you realise that several items on a dry list of acquisitions are ones you’ve seen before, and it slowly dawns on you that each neat little object and number in this neat little book are things that belong (belonged?) to people you know

Neatness, particularly incongruous neatness, neatness where you expect violence or imperfection or abandonment, or neatness that you belatedly realise was hiding violence, or neatness that is imposed over violence, is incredibly scary. Because neatness is not a natural thing. Neatness requires some active force to have come through and made it so. Neatness implies that the world around you is being arranged, maybe to hide things, to disguise things, to make you doubt your senses, or else simply according to something else’s desires. Neatness is active and artificial. Neatness puts things, maybe even people, into neat little boxes according to something else’s ideals, and that’s terrifying as well. Being objectified. Being asked to fit categories that you’re not sure you can fit, and wondering what will happen to the bits of you that don’t.

Neatness, essentially, says that something else is here. Neatness where there should be chaos says that either something came and changed things, or that what you’re seeing now or what you saw then is not real. Neatness alongside violence says that something came through here for whom violence did not mean the same thing as it does to you.

Neatness, in the right context, in the right place, can be very, very scary

And fun

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I checked this movie out from the library and I’m crying. They Mike wazowski’d him afsbdksls

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For NaNoWriMo (I hope that’s how it’s spelled) I am going to do my UTMOST to finish the three (3) WIPs I have on AO3 (one 1917/Pride, one 1917/Harry Potter, and one Karate Kid). I’m manifesting it! Give them a read if you’d like, I appreciate feedback (including constructive criticism). Wish me luck!

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marrowbone is such a comfort movie!! big spooky farmhouse, period costuming, childhood whimsy, a bunch of uglyhot pale freaks running around barefoot, absolutely devastating plot turns ❤️ it's not a good movie per say but it's the one for me

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CHAPTER 16 LET’S GOOOO

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25600642/chapters/103491891

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the fact that i have genuinly cried over him multiple times today... embarrassing 😳🤚