karlcifer

[karlcifer]

I'm a Buddhist Inverse Solipsist. I believe that I am the only guy still in samsara, and all of reality is a truman-show-like act by billions of bodhisattvas who are just humoring me.

[karlcifer]

the penguin logo on angela carter’s books (heroes and villains, saints and strangers, fireworks, the bloody chamber)

[karlcifer]

I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them

[karlcifer]

reading greek magical papyri for fun (as one does) and i am thrilled to know there are not one but two spells invoking the bear constellation that claim to "accomplish anything"

[karlcifer]

You know, you guys are gonna really like the body horror nightmare that is his life in the book

forget howl lets talk about the real Stealer of the Show, spicy mama Prince Justin. how about a little fire scarecrow indeed mmmm 

i mentally wrote this post in the shower because i remembered him being a lot cuter but now i realize he looks like anthropomorphic banana pudding. well the lesson here is that we tried. prince justin tried and i think that’s something we can all relate to. sometimes you come out on top and sometimes you’re delicious custard 

[karlcifer]

i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck

[karlcifer]

i feel like the message a lot of people took away from the language of "The Fae aren't cute little forest nymphs" is that the fae are ACTUALLY all blood-hungry monsters that'll trick you and devour your soul, as opposed to the actual boring answer which is that Fae are, for the most part, just some guy

[karlcifer]

permanently becoming a solitary fae in one simple step

[karlcifer]

Well, it’s finally finished.  It was a genuinely satisfying project. I present you Ankh Morpork in the guise of Google Maps.

[karlcifer]

when jorge luis borges wrote in a copy of beowulf that he was working on translating, “beyond my anxiety, beyond this writing, the universe waits, inexhaustible, inviting.”

[karlcifer]

"Goon" was also ruined, but that one was for free, only Lackey remains

they fucking ruined the word minion. the whole word, ruined, forever. they spent a billion dollars to change the meaning and ruin the word forever. there should be a class action lawsuit

[karlcifer]

The Last Unicorn Amalthea OOAK Artdoll

LEDs in hooves and horn+ additional glow-in-the-dark effect! I swear, one day I need to do the red bull as well!

[karlcifer]

So let’s talk about Terry Pratchett.  Let’s talk about his writing, and how he included repeated statements in his books to the effect that no person is gone so long as they’re remembered.  It’s a comforting thought, that he himself thought of a person’s actual lifespan as not exactly the limit of that person’s “life,” so to speak.

But instead of talking about Terry Pratchett’s sad passing (which I still believe in a perfect world would not have happened because in a perfect world he would not have had the illness that claimed him), let’s talk about what he’s left behind for us.

Terry Pratchett wrote fantasy novels, primarily, but although his books have trolls, dwarves, dragons, and wizards in them, mostly what they have in them is people.  People doing fantastical things, sometimes, but more often people doing normal kinds of things anyone here on Earth might do, just in fantastical circumstances.  Terry Pratchett’s characters have strengths and weaknesses, good intentions and bad, flaws and beauty about them all.  All of them.  Even that background character who might be briefly described and say a couple of lines in passing.  You just get the sense, reading about these characters, that you could meet them on the street where you live, or at your workplace, or at school, or anywhere else in your life.  They aren’t tropes, although they might incorporate tropes.  They certainly aren’t cookiecutters of stereotypes.  They feel real.  Even the witches and wizards and barbarian heroes, and yes, even the trolls and dwarves (not so much the elves though–the elves don’t belong on this plane of existence, trust me).

Terry Pratchett wrote us some wonderful women of all shapes and sizes and ages and backgrounds.  Women aren’t relegated to the background in his books, and they certainly aren’t fridged for the benefit of men’s tragic backstories.  The Discworld is populated with very strong witches, elderly and teenage alike; beautiful werewolf ladies and sort of awkward ones; fat women who save the day and skinny women who cause lots of trouble and vice versa; dwarf women trying to create a feminine identity for themselves amid a culture that wants them to keep their gender a secret; troll women with beautiful mossy hairdos;  at least one female wizard; canon lesbians and asexuals; activists and journalists and mothers and engineers and singers and seers and farmers and politicians and warriors.  Oh, and, you know, Monstrous Regiment is a book that exists.  Terry Pratchett wrote us some wonderful men, too–bad men and good men and every shade of grey in between.  Criminals and coppers, heroes and villains, rich and poor, educated and self-taught, old and young, from all over a diverse world.  All of them interesting, all of them people, going on with their lives.

Terry Pratchett wrote about race relations and religious fanaticism, about colonialism and war, about technological advances and all the complications that arise therefrom, about crime and injustice, and when traditions should be kept and when they should be broken.  We’ve got people all over the place learning lessons that most often aren’t preachy because they seem so natural.  Good usually wins, but sometimes “good” isn’t the good you thought it might be.  Terry Pratchett was always writing about the nature of good and evil and justice and love and all those other abstract concepts that make up human (and troll and dwarf and goblin and pixie and so on and so forth) existence. All of this within the envelope of some pretty involved and arresting stories, and with a generous stamping of comedy all over, to make the books fun to read while also really being  about things.

So let’s talk about what Terry Pratchett left for us here.  He may have gone on to his next adventure, and it is a grievous tragedy that it had to happen so soon.  But his books, his beautiful words and all the wonderful people he created with them, are still here with us, and as long as we keep reading, they can never die.

And as long as we remember Sir Terry Pratchett, he will never truly be gone.

[karlcifer]

No joke, is that @3liza ?

Ann Yvonne Gilbert, 'Lucy', ''Dracula'', Adapted by Nicky Raven, 2010 Source

[karlcifer]

Chrestomanci series Book1-7  by Diana Wynne Jones

Japanese book covers

Illustration by Miho Satake

[karlcifer]

They're talking about a Domovoy. They can get kinda nasty when they're angry. At least it's not a Dvorovoy, they can get really nasty

[karlcifer]

Fairy and the peasant girl (for Mythbook 3) by Yuliya Litvinova