#2013 book

[dommnics]

Happy Halloween season! Here's another stab at my own take of Carrie White, based on her book description. I'm super happy with how these turned out! I'd love to tackle some of the other characters in the book eventually, especially Margaret!

EDIT:

Now available as an art print here!

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[wahlpaper]

Review of Two Boys Kissing

Two Boys Kissing by David Levithan

CW: Discussion of Death, Discussion of Suicide, Discussion of Homophobia, Discussion of Transphobia, Underage Drug Use, Drug Use, Violence, Racism, Homophobia, Unhelpful Cops, Serious Injury, Discussion of AIDS (both physically and socially), Swearing, Slurs, Described Hook-Up, Negative Body Image Thoughts, Fainting, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Mob Mentality

5/5

When I put Two Boys Kissing on my TBR list way back in 2020, I never expected the book to be as intense as it is. I think I put it off so long because I thought it would be kind of boring. I was way off! I have never read a David Levithan book before, which is surprising considering that he is Jewish and gay. I have seen some of the movie adaptions of his books, but I had no basis for what his writing would be like. I was blown away by this book. I am so glad that I finally read it.

Two Boys Kissing centers around two gay teen boys that are trying to set the record for longest kiss. They have to remain standing and their lips have to remain touching. These boys, their family and friends, and the town they're in go through a lot during the time it takes them to kiss. Told in Greek-chorus style by the ghosts of the queer people who died from AIDS, we get a glimpse of some pivotal days in the characters' lives. We experience some heartwarming and some devastating moments. As the ghosts are talking to us, we are a part of the story.

As I mentioned above, I didn't expect Two Boys Kissing to be so intense. This really is the fault of the blurb, so I hope I have provided a more transparent one here. This is the kind of book to make the audience cry while trying to uplift the readers. As the collective of ghosts telling the story have intentions, preferences, and a personality, the story is told in an order that makes sense. It's told with a steady pace and poetically. However, it does not shy away from the hard stuff. Pain and suffering are explored thoroughly. One character is dealing with a violent father and an enveloping depression. Another is throwing himself into helping his friends kiss after he was attacked. A third is dealing with his emotions towards his bullies. The book covers topics like suicide, AIDS, transphobia, homophobia, systematic oppression, and more. I had to take breaks while reading, and it's okay if you do too. Always read with self care in mind.

Although the record for longest kiss has since been broken by a man/woman couple, Levithan was inspired by real events. There were two college boys that broke the record at a longer time than the two in this novel. It had never been broken/set by a same-gender pair before. Levithan wanted to write a multigenerational story for a queer audience. Anyone can read the story, but it's a conversation between the queer people of the past and the queer people of the future about the queer people of the present (or 2012, when the book was being written). I'm writing this a decade later, but it's still so important to have gay and queer representation. Some things have changed for the better, but there are new bad things too. Unfortunately, it's clear that it's not completely safe yet for the queer community to just exist. We must continue the work to make it safer for future generations. As Two Boys Kissing shows, representation can go a long way.

The next time you have the emotional energy to read a heavy book, consider Levithan's Two Boys Kissing. It's well written and has aged beautifully in the 10 years since it was published. Read carefully, but please give it a go!

[thelaurenshippen]

a remake of "you've got mail" called "you've got kudos" about two fic writers who make flirty comments on each other's fics, only to realize that they already know each other because they used to be on opposite sides of a fandom war when they were teenagers under different usernames

[soulmvtes]

i love how people use literally anything as a bookmark

[arithmonym]

re-reading the locked tomb, and i'm thinking about how harrow identifies alecto as a "girl" rather than a "woman."

obviously, john had other sources of inspiration... but did you know that the original barbie doll was only supposed to be nineteen years old?

[repmet]

[insp] [Alex]

Prince Henry of Edinburgh is accurate to the movie don't @ me

[bagofbonesmp3]

people who say don't pirate books wouldn't make it a day in south america. you will go to the beach and some dude with a huge umbrella and a bucket hat will sell you a dan brown book he printed at an illegal factory with a slightly faded cover for $5. and you will buy it

[mistybunny]

"it is part of her beauty, this quality of being not quite there, dreamlike"

[hkthatgffan]

HOLD UP IS THAT?

THAT'S THE BILL CIPHER PIZZA THAT THE GRAVITY FALLS CREW ATE AT THE END OF MYSTERY TOUR IN 2013?!

This makes me so happy as someone who spent years researching that road trip!

Gonna shamelessly plug my video on it here!

Check it out if you haven't as I talk about how Alex and I worked together via the interview to complete the ARG element of the trip!

[finelythreadedsky]

JSTOR Wrapped: top ten JSTOR articles of 2023

Coo, Lyndsay. “A Tale of Two Sisters: Studies in Sophocles’ Tereus.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 143, no. 2 (2013): 349–84.

Finglass, P. J. “A New Fragment of Sophocles’ ‘Tereus.’” Zeitschrift Für Papyrologie Und Epigraphik 200 (2016): 61–85.

Foxhall, Lin. “Pandora Unbound: A Feminist Critique of Foucault’s History of Sexuality.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 167–82. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Garrison, Elise P. “Eurydice’s Final Exit to Suicide in the ‘Antigone.’” The Classical World 82, no. 6 (1989): 431–35.

Grethlein, Jonas. “Eine Anthropologie Des Essens: Der Essensstreit in Der ‘Ilias’ Und Die Erntemetapher in Il. 19, 221-224.” Hermes 133, no. 3 (2005): 257–79.

McClure, Laura. “Tokens of Identity: Gender and Recognition in Greek Tragedy.” Illinois Classical Studies 40, no. 2 (2015): 219–36.

Purves, Alex C.  “Wind and Time in Homeric Epic.” Transactions of the American Philological Association 140, no. 2 (2010): 323–50.

Richlin, Amy. “Gender and Rhetoric: Producing Manhood in the Schools.” In Sex and Difference in Ancient Greece and Rome, edited by Mark Golden and Peter Toohey, 202–20. Edinburgh University Press, 2003.

Rood, Naomi. “Four Silences in Sophocles’ ‘Trachiniae.’” Arethusa 43, no. 3 (2010): 345–64.

Zeitlin, Froma I. “The Dynamics of Misogyny: Myth and Mythmaking in the Oresteia.” Arethusa 11, no. 1/2 (1978): 149–84.

[dommnics]

Some fanart of Book Carrie.

As much as I love all three film adaptations in different ways, I still mourn for a closer adaptation to the novel (Points to 2002 though for trying and 2013 until studio interference)

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[seth-likes-pepsi]

hes miserable now

[rearviewghost]

one thing that really fascinates me about alex is his devotion to art – and more specifically, how he chooses to get some inspiration from scientific works of what he aims to implement in his art. every time one gets to examine some of his lyrics, or even how he explains these lyrics in an interview, they can be greeted by some bits of actual scientific information. an example is how he named his taquería on the moon with the term “information-action ratio”, coined by the critic neil postman, and referenced it in the song four out of five, something that might also indicate an interesting articulation with postman's concept. the line “cute new places keep on popping up”, for example, can express his well-known sardonic discontent regarding the flood of information being generated and transmitted over and over and, as much as it seems visually appealing and does give the idea of benefiting from advanced technologies, it doesn't really add anything substantial to the receiver's critical thinking – and worse, it distances the information receiver from the sender in a communication channel, according to postman.

what i'm saying with this interpretation is, it's known that alex is enamoured with the idea of gathering a bunch of references and condensing them into a mixture of metaphors in his writing, but it's so thrilling how, at times, we can find some bits of science inside of it – and it's even more exciting, just like playing a puzzle game, to find these references and analyse them by doing a similar research to what he did to create his works.

[angelita-nadine-white]

Saw this tweet on twitter or "X" with this bootiful art

And I AGREE

Stephen King should hire @dommnics

for A GRAPHIC NOVEL ADAPTATION On carrie

Like How Can You Not Tell Me THIS IS TALENT AND HAS POTENTIAL

Like his art is so chef's kiss like since im a carrie novel geek i would literally get my hands on this if it were to ever happen (if its available in my country 🥲and if not then make it a pdf)

[antigonenikk]

modern day liebgott is an uber driver who exclusively plays chief keef on his busted out speakers. his car is a 2004 toyota corrolla that smells like cigarette smoke and axe body spray. the rubber is peeling off of two of the doors. the left blinker does not work. a door handle has been mysteriously ripped off and the windows wont roll down. he has ten parking tickets he refuses to pay off and does not care about right of way. if hes delivering your food for uber eats you can count on the fact that he has eaten some of your fries. in spite of all of this he pulls more bitches than all of his friends combined.

[moonshynecybin]

what would you consider essential marc and rosquez watching? i don’t mean races but the stuff happening around it, there seems to be so much and idk where to start 😭

BIG ass question. i think it depends what you want outta this and how you best interact with content slash consume information. for me (not to brag but. winner of multiple historical essay writing competitions in high school. for context on the kind of freak i am bringing to the table here.) the research is kind of the fun part ! like i just started googling shit! i would go to inactive blogs and just search 'marquez' on them to see what would happen ! a lot of the times that works ! but it also takes a lotttt of time lol so i'll chuck some good resources your way, why not...

okay im not sure how basic we're talkin here but um. background. so the documentaries are, i think. the best place to start. theyre entertaining and offer a good amalgamation of clips to provide context for the actual racing. and like i know you de-emphasized racing (which is fine lol who cares) but it really is like the most important thing in the world to these fools and its a pretty visual sport so i think its at least helpful. like yes sepang IS about the press conference, but its also about the conversation they have ON the race track using their motorcycles. which is also somewhat a conversation that they HAVE been having all year long...

i'd start with hitting the apex (2013), its a GREAT introduction to the "characters" that does a lot of legwork to contextualize everything. lays the scene for where vale is at coming into his relationship with marc (both personally, wrt to marco simoncelli, and career-wise concerning his flop at ducati), and also how insane marc's whole deal is in general. the second half is. materially a study on what him entering the premiere class did to the sport as a whole. the introductory chapter in many respects

marc marquez: all in. MY introduction and blissfully free online. marc comma in his own words, with all the implications of that. a self-produced documentary where he is giving feedback about the edit of said documentary straight to camera and no less vulnerable because of it which is very marc imo. revealing both intentionally AND unintentionally about his whole deal with injury, vale, and his image.

motogp unlimited. im gonna be real kind of boring. like i would still watch it ! but do it kind of later, once you know the major players so youre automatically more invested. it doesnt really give you more than marc says himself in all in tbh, and i get the sense him and vale were NAWWWT interested in doing more than the bare minimum for it.

marc's rookie doc. free and subtitled on the youtubes. the first half of this is deadass just him wanting to fuck vale so bad while every comment from vale has me saying GIRL. out loud because the foreshadowing would be genuinely shocking if this was fiction. anyways the laguna seca of it all....

next i would hit up PODCASTS ! i think it makes sense after the documentaries, because these are all podcasts that arent strictly about rosquez (even if they are in many ways the main characters lmao) and personally it helps to put faces to lesser known names that might pop up before i listen to a purely audio product and get lost in the soup of sounds. the paddock pass podcast has two retrospective episodes about the 2015 season that are really good at context, oxley bom pod has a fun recent episode on valentino that i love, again just poke around a lil

videos. these guys have never filmed a lot of content together tragically. what i wouldnt give for someone to make them do an escape room. anyways ranch visit HERE (post explaining the ranch visit here). sepang presscon (sowwy) here. vale unhinged podcast interview the month after marc's documentary came out here. vale retirement interview where he gets asked about marc here. vale talking about asking marc to the ranch here. vale postrace at argentina 2018 here. UCCIO postrace at argentina 2018 here. theres a lot moreeeee just go on my blog archive and filter for rosquez and vids its easier lol

journalism. hello. okay so you should genuinely spend some time reading through mat oxley's stuff he can write (theres a paywall but you can run that shit through wayback machine). he also loves an insane comparison which i do enjoy.... again this is one that can be solved by googling his name and tacking on 'marquez' or 'rossi' or a specific time period or race it will probably reap some dividends. in terms of specific ass articles this one is kind of load bearing in terms of sepang and some of the interpersonal competitive tensions at play. that being said there are manyyyyyy crazy interviews and snippents of articles from other journos floating around motogp tumblr (like literally too many to link) adn its fun to dig around to find them, but mat oxley gets a shoutout because i was reading this article TODAY !

other content. honestly one of the best resources I'VE found for plotting out the arc of their relationship is @kingofthering's everyrosquezpodium series. you can REALLY see it play out lol. also her tagging system rules she very neatly lays out years and races... so if something jumps out at you, CLICK ITTTT ! also all of @ricciardoes fave presscon moments series. insane.

all this to say a small little rpf fandom like this rewards some digging! i would just recommend following narrative threads that interest you ! its also a small fanbase that is pretty research oriented, so if youre ever confused about somethin, just shoot an ask or run a search on someone's blog (@kwisatzworld has endless vale resources and @batsplat is one of the most thorough researchers ive ever seen, for example) like for real theres so much... i also have a primer that i made forever ago that has some links on it so you can peruse that if you so wish. but frankly a lot of it is just using those research muscles and being sufficiently deranged enough to be screenshotting reddit threads at one am so you can post them to tumblr because they mentioned marc and vale in the same sentence and that lit up some of the neurons in your brain

(and i know you said outside of races but i think theyre good benchmarks as turning points soooo you should do some diggin on laguna seca 2013, jerez 2015, argentina 2015, ASSEN 2015, sepang 2015 obvi, argentina 2018, and misano 2019. those are the big tentpoles of insane rosquez relationship drama imo. i mean theres many more but. im limiting myself.)