#listening to the audio books at work

[casiavium]

rereading the hunger games as an adult, after all the movies are out, remembering reading the books and waiting with my friends for the next movie and wanting to be the girl on fire, dressing up as her for Halloween, having heard the techo hanging tree remix on the radio and bought it for $1.29 on iTunes.

knowing how the way the movies were advertised made us into the Capitol, the book into the love triangle when Katniss really didn't like either of them, people having new 'hot takes' about how Gale is danger and Peeta is safety and it should never have been a choice it was always Peeta, but that's still the love triangle. Katniss feeling safe enough to have kids at the end was important, yes, but like. It shouldn't matter so much to argue about with who.

but also how Katniss is the face of teenage revolution. She's cited as this girl boss fire is catching we burn with it figure, but she never wanted to revolt. In Catching Fire she's so against it, she's doing everything she can to avoid it. People telling me I reminded them of Hermione Granger has definitely had a negative lasting effect on me (I'm not like other girls no make up to can't leave the house without pipeline) but maybe people telling me I reminded them of Katniss, their Katniss who was purposely rebellious, was just as bad.

We joke about "they created the Torment Nexus from the book 'Don't Create the Torment Nexus'", but like. wow. they really did.

It hurts, man. I genuinely believe the Hunger Games is up there with books like Lord of the Flies and should be taught in English literature to (usamerican at least) high schoolers. But like, if you still think the curtains were just blue then nothing is going to teach you media literacy

[lylahammar]

desperately need more fat video essayists to cover topics about fatness, fatphobia, and diet culture. I'm watchin this skinny girl in this video essay replace the word "fat" with "F" in every quote she reads like it's a slur because she looked up what the least problematic term for fatness was and the article she found put "fat" at the same level as "obese"

[marblerose-rue]

click for better quality!

the perched king / tigerstar I

[civetcider]

gorilla gorilla gorilla

[bg-brainrot]

Based on Echo and Narcissus by John William Waterhouse, 1903.

Since Narcissus was such a close second on that poll and I want to keep contributing to Astarion in classical art! Echo is a GN!Tav loosely based on Rogue!Tav ✨

[gundam-jones]

You ever read something life changing and you just have to sit there with it and hold it in cause you can’t talk about it with anyone but it’s saved your life so you sit there with a swirling ball of light in your chest

[fourteenfifteen]

when i see people going around complaining about the media they consume 9 times out of 10 i’m thinking “please please get into more independently produced work” esp when it’s things like mass media trends or corporate interests or things that seem like they’re made for sanitized mainstream interests like yes those are all annoying but yk what has less of those… yk what has the marginalized focus and the earnestness and the experimentation that you say you want… that’s right. it’s art made by random nobodies

[aroaessidhe]

2023 reads

Ancillary Justice, Ancillary Sword, Ancillary Mercy

Imperial space opera trilogy

a soldier who was once a starship AI with thousands of bodies but was betrayed and is now a single human body, encounters one of her old lieutenants on an ice planet and helps her while on her mission of vengeance

in book 2&3 she becomes part of a new ship, protecting a remote system & becoming familiar with the different people & culture while discovering injustices, politics, and murder

interesting cultures, characters, and use of a singular pronoun (she)

[ungroomedcat]

Does anyone have recs for other series like ROTE? Anything with characters and relationships like Fitz and the fool, and maybe this is too much ask but goddamn I love Nighteyes and would love to find something else with that sort of bond. It doesn't have to be fantasy.

[pikkish]

What’s your favourite part about writing and are there any particular tropes or genres you prefer?

Favorite part about writing is being able to cause emotion. I absolutely LOVE it when I write something and people respond just to say how it made them feel. The more viscerally gut-wrenching, the better. I just wanna make people feel things, yknow?

for tropes and genres, I try not to be too biased. Tropes are just tools for making a story, and genres are just colors of paint, or particular flavors. A skilled writer can make any trope into a good story, and any genre appealing. Likewise, a bad writer can make any trope or genre boring. So I try to base whether or not I like a story more on how well it's constructed and written, rather than just what tropes and genres apply to it.

That said, of course, certain tools can be more fun to use, and certain flavors appeal more than others. I like anger being presented as a good thing, or at least an acceptable thing, rather than something that needs to be suppressed or gotten over. I like characters who are undeniably and unshakably good despite having every reason to turn evil. Some internal or emotional conflict is fine, of course, necessary even, but I like it when they know who they are and what they want, and their bigger problems are figuring out how to get it. No particular preference for setting, fantasy, scifi, historical, modern day, it's all fine, but I tend to shy away from romance for romance's sake stories, and/or normal guy's real life normal problems stories- I like a bit more action and adventure. I'm sure there are other things, but those are the major ones off the top of my head.

[i-am-become-a-name]

the more I listen to new audios with Braxiatel in them (and relisten to old ones) as part of the Year of Braxiatel, the more and more I am just genuinely unsure of what I think about him.

[bloodrock-lobster]

really enjoying going postal so far. its the perfect intro book to discworld, 4 me, id say

[labyrynth]

i know this sounds crazy but. get this.

sometimes…with visual media…you do have to actually LOOK at it. sometimes…they put Important things in the visuals (because it is visual media) that you will Miss if you’re only glancing up once a minute.

sometimes you just have to suck it up and actually WATCH the thing instead of listening to a visual medium.

[marnz]

any tips for getting into knitting? I tried knitting a scarf once and finished it, but dropped off after that. I find it very intimidating to try anything more interesting like a sweater

hi anon! i love this question! a scarf was my first project too, and it's a great first project, but tbh a scarf is kind of boring to do. I recommend doing a project like a hat or a blanket to dip your toe into knitting in the round.

i am working on my first ever sweater so I won't pretend to be an expert but i find knitting in the round, with needles connected by a cable, much more enjoyable than knitting flat (though you can knit everything flat), and you can also just turn the work over and over again while using a circular needle set to work a big project. after I made my scarf I made this blanket (here's the free pattern) using one long circular needle. It was interesting because it requires lots of different stitches, so you learn a lot and it looks fancy but it's still relatively easy, and it's the perfect time of year to make a blanket. it also knits up fast because it's super bulky so it doesn't take very long :) here's my blanket!

a hat is also fun and i promise it is pretty easy! all you need to know is how to cast on and how to join your stitches together without twisting the cast on (here's a good example). hats knit up pretty fast, i finished this hat in a few days. here's a free and popular basic pattern for a hat.

the good thing about knitting is that it has a ton of built in community. go to any yarn store and you will find knitters just hanging out, happy to help you with a project or trade techniques. Ravelry is a great resource for finding patterns or help. I love tincanknits for their designs and their tutorials. there is a lot of help online. I can post some of my favorite resource blogs for knitting help. knitting is also very social, you can knit while chatting with friends, you can knit on skype, you can go to knitting circles (my local pub has a knitting circle sunday nights).

at the end of the day, knitting means that you have to let go of perfectionism because it's so common to start a new project and have to learn new skills to finish that project. eventually as you learn how knitting works you learn that mistakes are a) part of it b) easily fixable c) won't hold you back from enjoying the end result. my blanket has a ton of mistakes because i am a beginner knitter but we still use it every day and i still like how it looks. it works out.

happy knitting <3

[rearranging-deck-chairs]

really only tangential to your post but an Incredible story which focuses on River not trusting the Doctor is World Enough and Time, not the TV one, an audio with the same title, where she meets Six and like… very much seems not to know whether he is going to have the morals of the Doctor she knows. She thinks he might be voluntarily cooperating with the bad guys (he’s not, he’s just an idiot) and she even believes he’s left her to die. & like given the points you were making about the Doctor/River relationship… this story makes me extra crazy

oh man that sounds fun!! ive listened to a number of rivers diaries but mostly just with doctors i know so i havent heard this one but Oof, i might just go put it on my phone now

[mirainawen]

in one of our modules a few weeks back, we learned about some common obstacles to active listening and it brought up an interesting statistic about why it is so easy for our minds to wander when people talk to us

the average person can understand approximately 300 words a minute, but the average person speaks approximately 100 words a minute. we listen faster than we talk.