#babelic

[lobotomizedhydra]

left to right, top down are my favorite rick owens looks in ascending order. the subtlety of adding billowing fabric that is obviously going to be constantly swept up by the air because of its design quality, the first two looks are from Babel: SS19; a season that also saw him debut certain exotic materials for the first time: most notably ‘apparition leather’ a leather that is actually affected by pressure changes due to natural temperature fluctuation, meaning that in colder climates they actually contract, and in the heat they expand; they breathe, literally. the following looks are indicative to me of what the universe of rick owens is about. the look on the left is relatively unassuming. But it represents a silhouette that is nigh unshakable for someone like me in his clothes, because i’m slender and skinny and the majority of my daily shots are some instance of layering. the look from the right is an all white ensemble, and quite possibly my favorite look in his entire catalog in terms of what i would call ‘wearability’.

the final look is a testament to what brings people into the darkness in the first place, the very striking usage of an exotic leather with-fur in such a way as to be adding to the beauty, rather than merely adding to the price tag or as a gaudy afterthought. the very concept of such a look is the genius manifold that is rick owens’ catalog, because quite possibly one could find an interpretation of almost any silhouette or design-reference-point conceivable. one feels completely free to both be a part of and also remake the idea every time you put on your clothes.

[egyptianguard]

OP is a coward and turned off reblogs but i'm NOT letting this shit die that easy

[dearreader]

the way that margot robbie’s smile and facial expressions were all very… plastic while in barbie land. like they were real but they didn’t look realistic. they were to perfect.

but then when she says “you’re beautiful” to the woman in the bench and she replies “i know it” and margo just smiles… it feels so real. like there’s more laugh lines, you can see more details of her face so she looks human… like she sees the beauty in aging and being human and starts to become human herself in that moment

[kindlespark]

my brother's keeper (poem from here)

[jayblanc]

Chinese Censorship of the 2023 Hugo Award Nominations

Back before the 2023 Hugo Nominations were conducted, I noted that the Chengdu Worldcon Hugo committee had inserted a worrying clause indicating that local government officials could invalidate nominations for breaching the norms and standards of China. I suspected this would result in arbitrarily applied censorship to control the ballot. I am sad and unsurprised to discover I was correct.

The 2023 Hugo Nomination vote data has been published (https://www.thehugoawards.org/2024/01/2023-nominating-and-final-ballot-statistics-published/), and includes notation where nominations were excluded from the ballot. Those with normal reasons, such as being in the wrong category or not being published in 2022 are identified with their reasons for exclusion. This time there are a number of nominations that are merely marked at "Not eligible".

Here is the list of those nominations, that would otherwise have been placed on the final 2023 Hugo Award Ballot.

Babel - R.F. Kuang - Best Novel: Very likely excluded for referencing student revolution, and the use of language and translation as coercive tools of oppression. Color the World - Congyun "Mu Ming" Hu - Best Novellette : A story about perception of, aid of, and discrimination against disability. Congyun Hu has left China and now lives in New York. Fogong Temple Padoga - Hai Ya - Best Story : Either there is something in the original Chinese that was not translated, there's a taboo subject that elides my reading, or this otherwise innocent looking near future tale of cultural building restoration was written by the wrong person. The Art of Ghost of Tsushima: Dark Horse and Sucker Punch Games - Best Related Work : The video game Ghost of Tsushima was subject to directed social exclusion for it's depiction of the Mongol invasion of Japan. Sandman, Amazon Studios: Best Dramatic Presentation (Long and Short) - A diverse and divergent cast, includes subject matter and social issues that are currently taboo in China. Paul Weimer - Fan Writer: Publicly Critical of holding a Worldcon in China. Xiran Jay Zhao - Astounding Award: Qualifying work "Iron Widow" is reimagined story of Chinese Empress Wu during a fantasy/mechanical alien invasion.

This raises a lot of questions as to if this basically taints the process, and what can be done about it.

[deboracabral]

new favourite mbmbam bit just dropped

[pinkwindowwithin]

Baaaaa

[belle-keys]

The Ultimate Dark Academia Book Recommendation Guide Ever

The title of this post is clickbait. I, unfortunately, have not read every book ever. Not all of these books are particularly “dark” either. However, these are my recommendations for your dark academia fix. The quality of each of these books varies. I have limited this list to books that are directly linked to the world of academia and/or which have a vaguely academic setting.

Dark Academia staples:

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Dead Poets Society by Nancy H. Kleinbaum

Vita Nostra by Maryna Dyachenko

Dark academia litfic or contemporary:

Bunny by Mona Awad

The Idiot by Elif Batuman

These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever

White Ivy by Susie Yang

The Cloisters by Katy Hays

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman

A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

Attribution by Linda Moore

Dark academia thrillers or horror:

In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead

The Maidens by Alex Michaelides

Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth

They Never Learn by Layne Fargo

The It Girl by Ruth Ware

Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian

Dark academia fantasy/sci-fi:

Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang

The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Vicious by V.E. Schwab

A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness

The Betrayals by Bridget Collins

Dark academia romance:

Gothikana by RuNyx

Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake

Dark academia YA or MG:

Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson

A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

Crave by Tracy Wolff

Wilder Girls by Rory Power

The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

Dark academia miscellaneous:

My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell

Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip

[iviaggisulcomo]

Babel 2001 is a large-scale sculptural installation that takes the form of a circular tower made from hundreds of second-hand analogue radios that the artist has stacked in layers. The radios are tuned to a multitude of different stations and are adjusted to the minimum volume at which they are audible. (...)

The installation manifests, quite literally, a Tower of Babel, relating it to the biblical story of a tower tall enough to reach the heavens, which, offending God, caused him to make the builders speak in different tongues. Their inability to communicate with one another caused them to become divided and scatter across the earth and, moreover, became the source of all of mankind’s conflicts.

[star-trek-dumb-comics]

Star Trek - Strange New Dumb Comics #75

Guess who's rewatching TOS for the gazillionth time ?????

[jareckiworld]

Jean-François Rauzier — The Library of Babel (c-type print, mounted on aluminium, 2013)

[dearreader]

tiktok swifties are failing to understand the album is literally an anthology of poetry but to music, so it’s meant to be long and slow processing. you’re supposed to sit and meditate on it. you need to think about the lines, think about the authors life, think about your own, then go back to the song with understanding. it’s not an easy breezy album, it’s taylor swifts poetry collection and we’re all supposed to sit on it

[meruz]

reposting this babel drawing w/o the ask and then remembering abruptly that I have a sketchbook pg of babel drawings just sitting around

[natjennie]

hey language loving people, have you heard of the game chants of sennaar?? it's an atmospheric puzzle game based on translating between the different symbol languages of groups of peoples in a tower. it's beautiful and touching, tender and melancholic. you can map different elements of the languages to each other and identify patterns in the parts of speech, it's incredible. play it right now. look at how gorgeous it is.