#I cry a lot what can I say

[hardly-an-escape]

Ten Books to Know Me – I was tagged by the lovely @landwriter and @valeriianz to share 10 (non-ancient) books for people to get to know me better, or that I just really like.

it was practically impossible for me to choose just ten (and in fact I didn't) and I definitely provide WAY more background info than probably anyone is interested in, so this got looong and I'm gonna put my commentary under a cut! but here is my list, in no particular order:

Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein

Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein

The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

Momo, Michael Ende

The Blue Castle, LM Montgomery

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers

The Great and Terrible Quest, Margaret Lovett

yes I know there are eleven shut up

(1) Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë if you physically forced me to choose one book that is my favorite of all time, it might be Jane Eyre. I can't swear to that, but it's a good contender. I couldn't even tell you when I first read it, but it was some time before my sophomore year of high school (we were assigned it in an English lit class and I was already intimately familiar with it). I just adore Jane so much. she's so smart and stubborn and weird and self-aware and strong in a way that young Nora identified with and envied in equal parts. I frequently re-read this book when my life was feeling overwhelmingly negative, because it comforted me to think that if everything could turn out okay for Jane in the end, it might turn out okay for me, too. would I love it as much if I read it for the first time now, as an adult? maybe not. the whole crazy-wife-in-the-attic is... not a good look. I get why people don't love it. but I do and I always will.

(2) East of Eden, John Steinbeck I can pick this book up, open it to any page, and there's a better-than-even chance it will immediately make me burst into tears. (actually, as I'm writing this I'm realizing that I'm really due for a re-read.) listen.. I come from a sprawling dysfunctional family and I love a good sprawling epic about a dysfunctional family. I love religious metaphors. I love detailed and loving descriptions of nature and beloved land. is it a bit heavy handed at times? yes. is it still one of the great American novels? yes. timshel.

(3) The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkein (insert Gimli gif "That still only counts as one!!") I associate these books very closely with my family, especially my dad. one of my earliest memories is of my dad reading The Hobbit out loud to me when I was very young – I remember crying so hard when Thorin died that I just about made myself sick. look, you know why I love these books. you love them for the same reason. everyone loves them. they're perfect. the movies all came out around my dad's birthday and we went to see them as a family every year. my sister and brother and I have literally gotten drunk and cried on the couch whilst holding hands during our millionth rewatch of Return of the King. I don't know who I would be if these books weren't on my list.

(4) Stranger in a Strange Land, Robert Heinlein this is one of those books I read under exactly the right circumstances, during my senior year of high school, in a literature of fantasy class filled with a bunch of other intense artsy nerds; we were all figuring ourselves out and finding our places in the world and learning how to be humans and to develop those deep, intense friendships that you can only form when you're 17 or 18 years old. we all wholeheartedly adopted the concepts of grokking and sharing water and we would go around telling each other thou art God. it's dated, as is a lot of sci fi from the early 60s; the casual sexism and homophobia are not pleasant to read and in retrospect some of the religious symbolism is a little heavy handed. but I still have a soft space in my heart for it (in fact I just loaned a friend my copy this winter). I also love the concept of a Fair Witness.

(5) The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett this has been one of my favorite books since I was about six years old. as a kid I was obsessed with the idea of secret worlds, and especially when kids had things going on that grownups didn't know about or couldn't access. (I loooved stories like Narnia.) it's just such a sweet book. let's all heal our trauma with the power of pale green points and singing the Doxology to a bunch of birds.

(6) A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith I was probably just a little bit too young to read this book the first time I picked it up. I didn't know novels could tell stories like this. I didn't know you could write a book that was so painful and beautiful at the same time, or that things that are true can be so ugly and so beautiful at the same time. it cracked open something inside me when I finished it. I think I actually woke my mom up so I could cry at her about it. I think Francie is another protagonist that I identified with to an almost uncomfortable degree, and I think a big part of the power of this book is how accurately it depicts the inner life of a weird little kid in an intense world she's only just beginning to understand.

(7) Momo oder Die seltsame Geschichte von den Zeit-Dieben und von dem Kind, das den Menschen die gestohlene Zeit zurückbrachte, Michael Ende (the older English translation is titled The Grey Gentlemen, but I think a newer translation uses the original title) definitely another children-save-the-day-with-their-secret-child-knowledge story; one that also makes incredibly insightful commentary about consumerism and technology and the speed of modern life – a message that's only gotten more and more relevant since it was first published in 1973. Momo herself is a one of my favorite members in the pantheon of weird little kid characters whom I adore. and the Grey Gentlemen are one of the creepiest, most inexorable antagonists I can think of from children's literature. I haven't read the English translation and I'm not sure how it compares to the original, or how difficult it is to find in the US. but it's absolutely worth tracking down a copy.

(8) The Blue Castle, LM Montgomery as much as I adore the Anne books, and really all of LMM's work, my absolute favorite of hers is this one. it might even be the book on this list that I've re-read most often, and as you might have gathered, I re-read books a lot. (there was a time during the peak of the pandemic when I was having trouble sleeping and I probably read this book, or parts of it, about every week or two. it was like eating my favorite food, it just made me feel better.) it's one of her few more adult works, and a straight-up romance, and it's CRIMINALLY unknown and underappreciated.

(9) The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell this book has it all. aliens. linguistics. space travel. Jesuits. philosophical questions about what it means to be a child of God. like... the main character is a space traveling polyglot linguist priest. that hits ALL my buttons. anyway this is an absolutely gorgeously written sci fi novel that's not really a sci fi novel, kind of the way Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel and another honorable mention on this list) is a post-apocalyptic novel that's not really about the apocalypse. it's one of those books that I'm just constantly recommending to other people because it's so so good. (it is also kind of heartbreakingly tragic and involves some fairly serious trauma of both the physical and psychological/religious varieties, so if you pick it up be aware of that.)

(10) Gaudy Night, Dorothy L Sayers I adore all of Lord Peter Wimsey (except maybe Whose Body? and even that has its merits) but Gaudy Night is my favorite, although Murder Must Advertise is a very close runner-up. I have such an enormous crush on Harriet Vane, you don't even KNOW. I want to be best friends with her and also steal her away from Lord Peter and marry her myself. she is such a perfectly imperfect heroine AND she is absolutely his intellectual equal and that's why he's madly in love with her. swoon. again, this is a book that has it all. mystery. romance. esoteric academic rituals. philosophical questions about what it means to be a woman in a world where your gender will always be the most important thing people perceive about you no matter what you do. life imitating art imitating life imitating art. WWI changing the fabric of society. consider my buttons pushed.

(11) The Great and Terrible Quest, Margaret Lovett yes, I'm adding an extra eleventh book. I can't help it. this is another criminally unknown and underappreciated book and since nobody's ever heard of it I am required to shout from the rooftops about how great it is. it's a classic fantasy story (I guess you could call it a fairy tale, but there isn't really anything magical about it, just knights and kings and stuff) about a young boy who lives with his cruel grandfather. he saves a mysterious man from a terrible head wound and gets swept along in the man's quest. it's simple and beautiful and has one of the best endings of any book I've ever read. Lovett only published a handful of books, but they're all marvelous. please find them if you can.

I really haven't been online this week so I have no idea who's already done this and who hasn't and I don't know who to tag, so I'm going to take the coward's way out and just say if you're seeing this and looking for an excuse to answer these questions, consider this your sign.

[actuallyitsstar]

grief is not a feeling, but a neighborhood. this is where i come from. everyone i love still lives here. // (insp.)

[ruporas]

studies from the finale

[ottern0t]

(Tiny cw- nonsexual nudity) Context: i headcanon all timelords are intersex and ten got human dysphoria from being on earth so long

[rynli]

doodle from a fanfic-length DE dream I had that I can’t stop thinking about (in which Harry has a panic attack trying to walk through the doors of his precinct, flees into Jamrock, investigates a booby-trapped corpse, fails to explode, has a low-morale depression episode, and makes a shitty ceramic bowl to cope) (it tells him positive affirmations)

[mewtwo24]

I just started reading the svsss volumes (and re-read them again because A LOT IS GOING ON) but like. This shit is so hysterically funny I don't even know where to begin.

Was no one????? Going to tell me that one of the cornerstone jokes in the damn series is that lbh's adoration for his one and only 'tism person who literally cannot express his emotions to save his life is basically genetic?????????

Was no one???? No one AT ALL going to tell me that Mobei-Jun straight up yeets Airplane at the problem in one of the scenes?????? And that in the most hilarious twist of fate Airplane then unyeets Mobei-Jun not twenty minutes later?????

It's one thing to see people joke about sqq and lbh being unable to communicate but it's on a league of its own when you have to read HUNDREDS OF PAGES of sqq's inner monologue be like 'that's my darling boy. my baby. my sugar plum pumpy umpkin you're my sweetie pie' but on the outside he says "get lost binghe" and somehow deems that an effective expression of his affection that lbh will surely understand. 'Why is lbh whining and crying and tugging at my sleeve like a plaintive wife, why is he so angry?' Sqq asks, the entire circus, as lbh is about to fling himself off a cliff for attention--

In short, MXTX is the queer comedian of our generation and nobody appreciates her enough

[fairyofshampgyu]

Do you even know how much I absolutely adore this boy

[kacievvbbbb]

Honestly despite my feelings about how the last arc of MHA went down I really love Deku and his story.

I just feel like a lot of the time we get these protagonists whose whole philosophy is it doesn’t matter what you were born as everyone can achieve greatness. But then the series goes on and it turns out that actually it DOES matter because the protagonist has this really great lineage and these really great powers you can only have through birth they were actually born born, predestined if you will, to do this.

But MHA actually sticks to its guns. Midoriya wasn’t revealed to have some great connection to all might that the universe had put in place. He wasn’t defended from some great lineage that makes him uniquely suited to this. Hell All for one didn’t even turn out to be his father, there was no hidden powerful quirk he was always meant to have. He was just Midoriya Izuku a boy who was in the right place at the right time and simply decided to act while the world did nothing. And that’s what really made him a hero.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I believe him a bit more when he goes anybody can be a hero if you just decide to act

[lifeless-discodancer]

I can't fix Kim but i what i can do is sit him down on his couch, wrap him in a blanket and make him watch an animated movie intended for kids, like Elysium's Winnie the Pooh or something, and let him experience something soft and sweet for once in his life. I feel like if he wasn't so repressed he would be the kind of person to get a teeny tiny bit teary-eyed when something sad happens to the characters, you know?? Like i feel he could the kind of person that cries a bit when a dog dies in a movie and i want to help him get there because his repressed ass won't be doing any of that on his own. He needs character development first

[maxthesillyy]

thinking about. i dont know how to phrase this really but. chloe and frank.

like. when Chloe killed Frank i (, personally,) feel like her guilt from it was less because she killed Frank, and More because she Killed Someone (and their dog).

but!!! thats not to say she didnt feel guilty for killing Frank. because she definitely did. because on some level. despite everything. despite all of his shitty behavior. a part of her still cared for him. that tiny 15-17ish year old part in her still cared for him.

because that 15-17ish year old with intense abandonment issues in her only had. a small handful of people in her life that actually cared for her, and when THOSE few people aren’t even doing the best job at it— it’s no shit that Chloe’s standards for Good Friends are going to be Immensely dropped.

and so. it’s kind of like what happened with Rachel, but WAY less intense. when she found someone who didn’t hate her, and was willing to hang around her—after so so long of people hating her and not wanting to be around her— it makes sense that part of her would kinda latch onto them a little bit.

and so, even after all of the shit she’s learned he did— even when Frank starts to hate her— even when he threatens Max and her’s lives— part of her keeps remembering him as one of the few guys who stuck around when no one else did.

it’s just that. no matter how bad the person— if you’ve known someone for years, and they were one of the only nice people to you in a town where theres like. four people that are nice to you— it’s gonna hurt if you kill them. even if it was self defense. even if it was entirely their own fault— even if you two aren’t on even remotely good terms anymore.

ESPECIALLY for such a sentimental person like Chloe. taking that in consideration it makes me wonder. maybe she didn’t feel bad for killing Frank. maybe she felt bad for killing the person Frank used to be to her. but maybe she realized that That Frank already died long ago.

but yeah. im mentally ill. take everything i said with a grain of salt considering it is 12:07 AM.

[beeduoo]

originnssssss who remembers origins i Loved origins

[potatobugz]

i feel as if im going mad so im going to just put this out here. real quick. movieunleashers starters ramble.

i cant stop thinking about how mudkip broke down in that one scene in "Typomaniac," when Chespin called him mean. for a second he lets his mask slip a little bit and to me he just... acts his age. he starts crying and calls chespin mean back. maybe im just hyperfocusing on this one detail but mudkip is about 12 years old.

and that just makes me wonder what happened in this guys life that brought him to where he is now. and it makes it all the more tragic how his whole world revolves around chespin, but he is the one bringing him the most pain. and how young he was when he died.

there is a large theme of growing up in "Rare Candy." the characters ages are emphasized in that particular episode, and one of the main conflicts is fennekin wanting to evolve faster.

the thing about characters in these stories is that they're not allowed to just be kids, to have a childhood. so many bad things happen to them. like. mudkips whole, Everything. fennekin when she was famous in typomaniac, or dealing with her own insecurities/pressure from society about her relationship w chespin. and chespin always having to shoulder his friends problems & always somehow managing to stay positive despite everything.

why cant they just. play video games. eat ice cream or something. go to the movies

at the end of the day, i think both mudkip and fennekin are characters who grew up too fast. by distancing himself from them, chespin refused to follow in their footsteps and just wanted to stay a kid.

good for him.

[cienie-isengardu]

[the-ghost-gardren]

JUST started a good Durge playthrough and I'm dying over my absolute little guy bard Tinfoil.

[angelsdean]

ruthlessly deleting old 2021/2022 posts (not by me) from my dean studies tag like *click* un-incorporating that from my beliefs system! also the way SO many posts have me like ok uh-huh good aaand then say one completely wrong thing that loses me. it's so many posts.

[tothepointofinsanity]

what are your thoughts on Madoka and Sayaka's relationship? I always thought it was underrated for how complex and tragic it is.

Madoka and Sayaka's relationship function similarly to that of a knight and a princess, so both their friendship or couple pairing are interesting to me. It seems to be intentional that Sayaka was crafted with a knight motif in mind to click with Madoka's vulnerability. The tragedy is that Sayaka was way too young and inexperienced to be shouldering such expectations in a friendship. Taking up the role of a protector at every turn because she wanted to protect everyone has always been a contributing factor to how fast Sayaka burned out.

Contrarily, Madoka's struggle with her own helplessness throughout the show was also part of the reason why Sayaka said a lot of terrible thing to her, but deeply regretted her actions to the point where she succumbed to Witching out away from Madoka. Madoka, at least in this "final" timeline, was not there to see her own childhood best friend change into something else. To, in a way, "die", and be reborn as the same monster that all magical girls were hunting after in a frenzy. Homura was right that Sayaka brings Madoka grief — it seems that in almost timeline, since Sayaka becomes a Witch as long as she becomes a magical girl unlike Mami or Kyoko, Sayaka is a consistent source of Madoka's grief. Whenever Madoka becomes a magical girl, then, her aspirations are based on Sayaka's sacrifice and ideals, except Madoka actually has the power to "save everyone". I believe Madoka loved Sayaka as Sayaka may not have been an "effective" magical girl, but she was the one who was willing to sacrifice her soul for her ideals, regardless of how naïve they were. To Madoka, who was so ensnared by her sense of uselessness, Sayaka was the closest thing to an idol or a star for the courage required to be a magical girl. Sayaka's desire to make the world a safer and justified place for people was so inspiring to Madoka that even when Madoka becomes Kriemhild Gretchen, the Witch's whole gimmick is "creating heaven on earth, a Witch content only if there is no more grief in existence". A prospect deeply held onto by Madoka that even Gretchen embodies it.

It's probably why Madoka's wish to save all magical girls would definitely sound equally impossible to he audience and the incubators, but Madoka herself says, "If someone says it's wrong to hope, I will tell them that they're wrong every time." Sayaka was often called foolish for her ideals and hopes, and Madoka was the only other person aside from Kyoko who understands Sayaka's struggles so much that she outright tells people that Sayaka was never wrong — this is how Madoka protects Sayaka. Madoka would never want anyone to say any of the magical girls' wishes were wrong or foolish. It was how Sayaka also found her peace at the end of the show: to be understood and not viewed as an object that would eventually be replaced in the cycle of magical girls and Witches.

Madoka and Sayaka eventually learned how to protect each other. Sayaka doesn't need to suffer from her own overbearing expectations anymore, and Madoka can finally be something even more to protect her angel: A God.