#rather than books

[lies]

[stuckinapril]

I could get over anything as long as I have something new to be obsessed with

[inkskinned]

the thing is there's like, a point of oversaturation for everything, and it's why so many things get dropped after a few minutes. and we act like millennials or gen z kids "have short attention spans" but... that's not quite it. it's more like - we did like it. you just ruined it.

capitalism sees product A having moderate success, and then everything has to come out with their "own version" of product A (which is often exactly the same). and they dump extreme amounts of money and environmental waste into each horrible simulacrum they trot out each season.

now it's not just tiktokkers making videos; it's that instagram and even fucking tumblr both think you want live feeds and video-first programming. and it helps them, because videos are easier to sneak native ads into. the books coming out all have to have 78 buzzwords in them for SEO, or otherwise they don't get published. they are making a live-action remake of moana. i haven't googled it, but there's probably another marvel or starwars something coming out, no matter when you're reading this post.

and we are like "hi, this clone of project A completely misses the point of the original. it is soulless and colorless and miserable." and the company nods and says "yes totally. here is a different clone, but special." and we look at clone 2 and we say "nope, this one is still flat and bad, y'all" and they're like "no, totally, we hear you," and then they make another clone but this time it's, like, a joyless prequel. and by the time they've successfully rolled out "clone 89", the market is incredibly oversaturated, and the consumer is blamed because the company isn't turning a profit.

and like - take even something digital like the tumblr "live streaming" function i just mentioned. that has to take up server space and some amount of carbon footprint; just so this brokenass blue hellsite can roll out a feature that literally none of its userbase actually wants. the thing that's the kicker here: even something that doesn't have a physical production plant still impacts the environment.

and it all just feels like it's rolling out of control because like, you watch companies pour hundreds of thousands of dollars into a remake of a remake of something nobody wants anymore and you're like, not able to afford eggs anymore. and you tell the company that really what you want is a good story about survival and they say "okay so you mean a YA white protagonist has some kind of 'spicy' love triangle" and you're like - hey man i think you're misunderstanding the point of storytelling but they've already printed 76 versions of "city of blood and magic" and "queen of diamond rule" and spent literally millions of dollars on the movie "Candy Crush Killer: Coming to Eat You".

it's like being stuck in a room with a clown that keeps telling the same joke over and over but it's worse every time. and that would be fine but he keeps fucking charging you 6.99. and you keep being like "no, i know it made me laugh the first time, but that's because it was different and new" and the clown is just aggressively sitting there saying "well! plenty of people like my jokes! the reason you're bored of this is because maybe there's something wrong with you!"

[myhyperfixationisiforgot]

Look it is very important to me that everyone knows that Sophie is also fucking nuts in the book. Everybody always talks about how absurd Howl in the book but Sophie is right there with him.

She's so determined to be the normal sister that she's just actually convinced herself that the magic she is clearly, visibly, blatantly performing happens to everyone. Just. You know. Not anyone around her. The curse wore off weeks ago and she's just totally sure she's happier as an old woman. Her sisters have initiated some complex long-game tomfoolery to switch lives and Sophie also thinks that this is the most logical choice.

Sophie does not move in with a romantic mythic man who treats her right, she moves in with a runaway doctoral candidate who immediately dates her sister and drags her into his family drama. She and Howl are both so afraid of romantic commitment they accidentally trick themselves into becoming life partners. They kill the witch of the waste mostly on a whim, and they argue about which one of them is more impulsive for doing so the whole time.

[finelythreadedsky]

it always makes me smile when scholars in academic writing refer to the hypothetical reader with she/her. "let the reader experience the battle as if it was unfolding right before her eyes". "a reader accepting her own historicity". "gives the reader the impression that she is following the events". "when a student is asked to write an essay on the aeneid she will normally be encouraged to read some modern criticism". like yeah i see you. i know you did that for me.

[cantsayidont]

In an undated letter written in the late 1950s, reproduced in THE LETTERS OF JRR TOLKIEN, Tolkien alludes to the legal difficulties Sam faced after returning from the Grey Havens at the end of LORD OF THE RINGS:

When Master Samwise reported the ‘departure over Sea’ of Bilbo (and Frodo) in 1421, it was still held impossible to presume death; and when Master Samwise became Mayor in 1427, a rule was made that: ‘if any inhabitant of the Shire shall pass over Sea in the presence of a reliable witness, with the expressed intention not to return, or in circumstances plainly implying such an intention, he or she shall be deemed to have relinquished all titles rights or properties previously held or occupied, and the heir or heirs thereof shall forthwith enter into possession of these titles, rights, or properties, as is directed by established custom, or by the will and disposition of the departed, as the case may require.’

You can see how the residents of Hobbiton might have seen Sam's return as the premise of a kind of Agatha Christie mystery plot: favorite servant of eccentric middle-aged local resident departs on an unexpected journey with his master; returns home alone two weeks later; and then conveniently produces a copy of said eccentric local resident's new will, naming the servant the heir to all his property — and the only account the servant can offer of his master's whereabouts is a preposterous story about Elves. Suspicious! Very suspicious indeed!

[mechieonu]

i know that disney is too big to boycott effectively but that shouldn't translate to "and so we should keep buying their products like normal" but rather "at the very least we should try"

[fdelopera]

LMAOOO Xiran Jay Zhao is now complaining on Tumblr that they have a "smear campaign" against them.

Give me a fucking break.

Xiran. My dude. There is no "smear campaign." You have been harassing Jews online, encouraging your HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of followers to harass Jews online, blaming everything on (((Zionists))) (aka Jews), and using the "blood libel" canard against Jewish people. (See the above screenshot.)

You posted that screenshot to your Tumblr, Xiran. That's where I found it. You were PROUD of accusing a Jew of "blood money," which is the same accusation that Christian Church Fathers used against Judas, and is the accusation used against us Jews when Christians blame us for "killing Jesus."

Christians used to yell "Christ-killer" at me when I was younger. You are doing the same thing.

JEWS HAVE BEEN MURDERED BY THE MILLIONS FOR THAT ACCUSATION OF "BLOOD MONEY," XIRAN.

And now you are being called out for antisemitism.

That is not a "smear campaign." That is Jewish people calling you out for your BLATANT Jew-hate.

FUCK YOU.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Why would you—That's not—I just wanted to ask for help, why did you have to go and make it awkward???

[First] Prev <–-> Next

[canon-gabriel-quotes]

Transcript:

Girl help!

I got my dick and balls stuck in V1's hinges!

I shouldn't have fucked the machine! AHG-

Audio source

[cogentranting]

The thing that almost never gets brought up in "banned books" conversations but that I think is essential to address, is the distinction between "students shouldn't be allowed to read this" and "students shouldn't be required to read this".

There is a wide gulf between removing a book from a curriculum list and removing a book from a library but I almost never hear that acknowledged.

[verdantmeadows]

To me the joy and beauty of vocal synthesizers has always been that they don't sound real and exploring that to create artistic expression that can't be achieved by human voices, so seeing them become more and more realistic is disheartening, almost? Especially since a lot of artists make the same voice banks sound so different and have their own personal charm. I'm glad that people will be able to make things that sound realistic, but I'm worried that songs that intentionally play out of sounding as realistic as possible will be sidelined, discouraged, no longer created, impossible to find, or unsupported by fans of vocal synthesizers. I don't want things to just push towards being as realistic as possible. There is beauty in how everyone's usage of the same voice banks sound different. There is beauty in the lack of realistic sounding vocals in vocal synthesizers.

[quincywillows]

like i remember the vitriol that came out when the mere PREMISE for ballad of songbirds and snakes came out bc it was “about the villain” and wasn’t instead a novella of one of the many cute likeable faves of the masses. i remember how fast people were to tear down the book before it even came out (and still do now). and it’s like look, i get it, suzanne created so many interesting characters that it would be incredible to learn more about and get more content for. but her choosing to write about snow for a prequel isn’t like Romanticizing The Villain or whatever bullshit y’all are claiming as hot takes on twitter -- ballad fits right into the common themes and tone of the series in that its not a romanticization but a reflection on how snow became what we know him as in the original series. both in how he already had some less than charming or healthy traits (just like katniss does -- suzanne is always clear that people are not inherently good nor evil and parallels were drawn between how snow and katniss view the world and think strategically, etc, from the second book), but also in how society and the choices of the greater community in panem created snow. like ballad is a really interesting piece of lore and history and worldbuilding for an already rich and elaborate setting that suzanne created, allowing us to see how that world even came to be and the kind of toxic impact it had on the people surviving in it while still pointing out that those people are human and that everyone has humanity and yet can still cause unfathomable harm to one another based on circumstance and need to survive and pressures of all kinds and like i have lost the plot here now but suzanne is one of the best authors of our time who actually gives a shit about creating layered, nuanced characters and worlds rather than black and white good and evil and unfortunately the hyperpolarization of our hot takes social media culture nowadays just can’t handle her anymore. suzanne im so sorry we don’t deserve your storytelling. anyway i’ll be seated for this movie y’all can skip and keep giving lukewarm takes on twitter to make urself seem so smart for hating a book you probably didnt even actually read

[chainmail-butch]

Was Elagabalus a transwoman? Maybe. Has Suetonius given us tons of examples of things that people who could be identified as transwomen did during his period? Absolutely. Which, honestly, is far more important.

Edit: Cassius Dio not Suetonius

[vaguely-concerned]

In light of the info about the properties of souls in The Unwanted Guest, I want to shout out that Gideon — with no grounding in the theoretical underpinnings of the subject whatsoever — actually makes basically the same observation about the permeability of the soul at the end of Harrow the Ninth, when she's in Harrow's body and (with some justification) is pretty sure she's about to die in the River:

Harrowhark, did you know that if you die by drowning, apparently your whole life flashes in front of your eyes? I didn't know, as I died and took you along with me—having kept you alive for what, a whole two hours?—whether it was going to show me both. Like, at the end of everything, if it was going to be you and me, layered over each other as we always were. A final blurring of the edges between us, like water spilt over ink outlines. Melted steel. Mingled blood. Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last.

‘As we always were’! ‘Melted steel, mingled blood’! (Also interesting that despite saying earlier in the book that all she ever wanted was for Harrow to eat her (oh Gideon), the metaphors Gideon reaches for here are not about consumption ala what Ianthe’s deal and thus traditional lyctorhood is presented as in TUG, it’s about similar and equal substances joining together to a new whole, more like what we see with Paul. I personally feel like a Paul-style merging for Harrow and Gideon is not in the cards and would not be a satisfying ending — it worked as a bittersweet conclusion specifically for Pal and Cam because those two are utterly nuts in all their sanity lol, but I don’t think the series means to present it as The definitive answer to the central question of individuation vs. connection. There is something so moving to me, though, in the fact that right at the end this is what Gideon wants for her and Harrow. Not for Harrow to eat her, not simply to be of use to her, but to be made together from the same stuff. It’s a longing for connection and union that’s finally at least in imagery free from the imbalance within the ultimately hierarchical roles of necromancer and cavalier that Gideon internalizes through her corruption arc in Gideon the Ninth, understandably so as it’s the only model she’s presented with in their society to understand intimacy and attachment and devotion through. But Gideon says Harrowhark-and-Gideon, Gideon-and-Harrowhark at last, mutually and equally. And I’ve written about this before, but at what must be almost exactly the same time, the same process is happening in Harrow’s mind through the evolution in the symbolism of her dream bubbles. Help I am emotions now) 

Palamedes is so right, Gideon is a lot smarter than most people -- including Gideon herself -- ever give her credit for.

[wanderingmongoose]

Lawrence caves immediately