#in the margins

[stavroginas]

Elena Ferrante, In the Margins

[whilereadingandwalking]

“Telling the real, Jacques emphasized, is constitutionally difficult; you have to deal with the fact that the teller is always a distorting mirror.”―Elena Ferrante, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing

[theroseadage]

a literary wrap-up for '22 🫶🏼

[stormingjales]

probably will finish in the margins by ferrante today.

i need to choose another but it's hard when you have many clarice books in your shelf and not think about picking one up.

i'm not doing ok since my birthday (feb 16th). it's raining a bit these days, so it makes my days better. thank god nature. 🌧🤍

also, it's time for restart studying: manifesting.

[godnausea]

I fantasized that the first woman, lacking her own language, would out of necessity learn the language of the serpent.

Elena Ferrante, “Dante’s Rib”

[soulplumber1337]

"Protect bad drag" is like every other "protect bad art" to me. Because if you only ever see the most polished and editorial final product, you'll never think that you can begin making that same art. You'll think you've been priced out of expressing yourself. You'll think beauty is behind a paywall. And that is poison, 100% of the time.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

the fact that shakespeare was a playwright is sometimes so funny to me. just the concept of the "greatest writer of the English language" being a random 450-year-old entertainer, a 16th cent pop cultural sensation (thanks in large part to puns & dirty jokes & verbiage & a long-running appeal to commoners). and his work was made to be watched not read, but in the classroom teachers just hand us his scripts and say "that's literature"

just...imagine it's 2450 A.D. and English Lit students are regularly going into 100k debt writing postdoc theses on The Simpsons screenplays. the original animation hasn't even been preserved, it's literally just scripts and the occasional SDH subtitles.txt. they've been republished more times than the Bible

[written-in-the-margin]

I came outta my cage

When we were doing just fine

Couldn’t settle for one

‘Cause I wanted it all

It started out with a kiss

It should have ended with it

I wanted more than a kiss

So we did more than just kiss

I couldn’t fall asleep

So I called up a cab

While I’m having a smoke

It’s my love taking a drag

Now we’re going to bed

And I’m not thinking of him

Thinks it’s all in his head

But I’m touching her chest now

She takes off my dress now

I can’t let her go

And I just know

It’s killing him

‘Cause I lost control

Ecstasy

Turning me into a thief

Couldn’t have just said goodbye

Choking on each little lie

That’s a price he shouldn’t pay

I gave all his love away

See the pain inside his eyes

I am the bad guy

[edyntide]

I could contact my brother like this, I think. Or maybe Jay, she seems better at keeping secrets.

The risk makes me nauseous. But I could. I really need to think about this

[perfumednotes]

in the margins

the last time I thought

of you: on a winter morning. I was wrapped in soft

wool sweaters and felt something at

the cool press of a glass against my wrist–

sore from writing for you;

a love letter of sorts, to the expensive french perfume 

you had shared with me easily, but I saw the price tag. the one

you wore like all your shades of flushed and embarrassed 

I’ve seen. was it the day my lips were

against a porcelain rim? gripping the neck

of gold champagne bottles and silver 

moonlight. you dived into 

the water and I painted that picture

into my head through the streaks of washed off

dye, brass against my hair– it fell over your shoulder,

remember how you laughed?

the sidewalk was rain-slick when

you pried me from the taxi.

I ended up waking when you

fell pliant into my chest instead of the silk pillowcase

we’d locked the door with a flick

of your wrist against mine. the old 

hotel key was tossed in an arc and clattered

on a solid table, slid next to ink splattered pages 

and the new fountain pen you pressed into my

hand. I always ended up

taking what you gave

you pulled your waves into a bow

I could picture the one

baby blue lace and shiny mary janes

I will never see you again,

will I, my love?

[androdragynous]

as my own direct immediate list of game grievances i hate that stardew valley expects you to side against a wheelchair user who is upset that he was moved without his consent. i hate that the mass effect trilogy gives you visible scarring as a direct result of choosing mean dialogue and heals it if you're nice. i hate that the vampire the masquerade ttrpg has a monstrous player class that can appear as horrible vampiric monsters or as visibly disabled people and both of these appearances are mechanically the same. i hate that dark souls games have a difficulty level implemented in a way that cannot be adjusted for disability. i hate that i can play as a mermaid or a werewolf or a horse in the sims games but can't use a wheelchair. i hate that the ace attorney games have so much flashing and not all of the games can disable it. i hate that disability is constantly something that happens to teach a lesson, i hate that disability is something that happens as a punishment, i hate that disability is either compensated perfectly with no drawbacks or something that is endlessly sought to be cured. i hate that no character customization will ever include the mobility aids i use, that the player avatars that represent me will never look like me. i am so goddamn annoyed and so goddamn tired.

[whilereadingandwalking]

It's honestly infuriating how well Elena Ferrante writes. She writes unlike anyone else I've read. In this book, In the Margins: On the Pleasures of Reading and Writing, translated by Ann Goldstein, she describes in four lectures her inspirations and how they've shaped the way she thinks about the act of writing. It isn't always easy to break apart her often philosophical arguments, but it's worth it. At the center of her argument is a division: between 'true writing,' that spark that flows naturally from our pen and that we have little control over, and the writing we learn how to do, from practice, from reading, from influences, from craft. The best we can do, most of the time, is try and capture the fleeting thoughts in our brain and transfer them (always too slowly) to the page, and hope that 'true writing' leaks out with your craft, and that your craft is good enough to translate it for your reader. These intersections and tangles were a huge part of the inspiration behind Lila and Elena in the Neapolitan Novels, and their strange dynamic, and she breaks down much of what helped her form their fraught relationship, and how writing ties into it closely. She argues that one of the best ways to get to truth is to take the standard forms and tropes of genre, and then subvert or "deform" them. The truth is can't be expressed properly through what we think of as realism, because what is real is too different for each "I", each viewpoint—the best way to get at the truth is to embrace that, and learn to "use with freedom the cage we're shut up in"—use what we have, the genres, the limitations of language, all of it, and burst through it, be creative with it. In other words, use conventions to destroy them. As you can see just from my review, her viewpoints aren't simple, but they're fascinating and thought-provoking, and like everything Ferrante writes, they had my full attention. I will definitely be thinking about this one for a long time, and I'm glad to add it to my shelf on craft.

[tellthatbrokebitch]

gonna start a new photo series called “things brooke writes in the margins” first up is

(talk with mike “did jon put you up to this?”

“what - YOUR BROTHER KNOWS WE HAVE SEX?!”)

[hinata-boke]

sanji-kun!!

[makingqueerhistory]

I’m actually serious about this, if at all possible, right now is a very good time to request queer books from your local library. Whether they get them or not is not in your control, but it is so important to show that there is a desire for queer books. I will also say getting more queer books in libraries and supporting queer authors are pretty fantastic byproducts of any action.

This isn’t something everyone can do, but please do see if you are one of the people who has the privilege to engage in this form of activism, and if you are, leverage that privilege for all you’re worth.

For anyone who can’t think of a queer book to request, here is a little list of some queer books that I think are underrated and might not be in circulation even at larger libraries:

Refusing Compulsory Sexuality: A Black Asexual Lens on Our Sex-Obsessed Culture by Sherronda J. Brown

Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco     

Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals by William Wright    

The Perks of Loving a Wallflower by Erica Ridley   

God Themselves by Jae Nichelle

IRL by Tommy Pico        

The Pink Line: Journeys Across the World's Queer Frontiers by Mark Gevisser

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages             

The New Queer Conscience by Adam Eli

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir by Kai Cheng Thom          

Queering the Tarot by Cassandra Snow              

Wash Day Diaries by Jamila Rowser

Queer Magic: Lgbt+ Spirituality and Culture from Around the World by Tomás Prower            

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam   

Beyond the Pale by Elana Dykewomon 

Hi Honey, I'm Homo! by Matt Baume      

The Deep by Rivers Solomon

Homie: Poems by Danez Smith

The Secret Life of Church Ladies by Deesha Philyaw  

The Companion by E.E. Ottoman 

Kapaemahu by Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson, Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu

Sacrament of Bodies by Romeo Oriogun     

Witching Moon by Poppy Woods 

Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt    

Dead Collections by Isaac Fellman    

Disintegrate/Dissociate by Arielle Twist           

Dear Senthuran: A Black Spirit Memoir by Akwaeke Emezi             

Peaches and Honey by Imogen Markwell-Tweed      

Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color by Christopher Soto

[cephalog0d]

Dick's Evaluation of Innocence Checklist:

Jason wouldn't kill them

Jason would have covered his tracks/gone to ground more effectively

Jason would have recorded the whole thing on video himself, set it to music, and emailed it to the entire Batfamily with no less than three middle finger emojis (if not an actual picture of him flipping them all off) and since that didn't happen he must not have done it

(Source: Nightwing 2016)