#Sorry I'm not a philosopher

[hedgehog-moss]

Inspired by your last ask! What are the best French books you’ve read that have no English translation yet? I read Play Boy and Qui a tué mon père (really loved the latter) last year and it feels so fun to read something that other Americans can’t access yet

I'm too nervous to make any list of the Best XYZ Books because I don't want to raise your expectations too high! But okay, here's my No English Translation-themed list of books I've enjoyed in recent years. I tried to make it eclectic in terms of genre as I don't know what you prefer :)

Biographies

• Le dernier inventeur, Héloïse Guay de Bellissen: I just love prehistory and unusual narrators so I enjoyed this one; it's about the kids who discovered the cave of Lascaux, and some of the narration is written from the perspective of the cave <3 I posted a little excerpt here (in English).

• Ces femmes du Grand Siècle, Juliette Benzoni: Just a fun collection of portraits of notable noblewomen during the reign of Louis XIV, I really liked it. For people who like the 17th century. I think it was Emil Cioran who said his favourite historical periods were the Stone Age and the 17th century but tragically the age of salons led to the Reign of Terror and Prehistory led to History.

• La Comtesse Greffulhe, Laure Hillerin: I've mentioned this one before, it's about the fascinating Belle Époque French socialite who was (among other things) the inspiration for Proust's Duchess of Guermantes. I initially picked it up because I will read anything that's even vaguely about Proust but it was also a nice aperçu of the Belle Époque which I didn't know much about.

• Nous les filles, Marie Rouanet: I've also recommended this one before but it's such a sweet little viennoiserie of a book. The author talks about her 1950s childhood in a town in the South of France in the most detailed, colourful, earnest way—she mentions everything, describes all the daft little games children invent like she wants ageless aliens to grasp the concept of human childhood, it's great.

I'll add Trésors d'enfance by Christian SIgnol and La Maison by Madeleine Chapsal which are slightly less great but also sweet short nostalgic books about childhood that I enjoyed.

Fantasy

• Mers mortes, Aurélie Wellenstein: I read this one last year and I found the characters a bit underwhelming / underexplored but I always enjoy SFF books that do interesting things with oceans (like Solaris with its sentient ocean-planet), so I liked the atmosphere here, with the characters trying to navigate a ghost ship in ghost seas...

• Janua Vera, Jean-Philippe Jaworski: Not much to say about it other than they're short stories set in a mediaeval fantasy world and no part of this description is usually my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this read!

Essays / literary criticism / philosophy

• Eloge du temps perdu, Frank Lanot: I thought this was going to be about idleness, as the title suggests, and I love books about idleness. But it's actually a collection of short essays about (French) literature and some of them made me appreciate new things about authors and books I thought I knew by heart, so I enjoyed it

• Le Pont flottant des rêves, Corinne Atlan: Poetic musings about translation <3 that's all

• Sisyphe est une femme, Geneviève Brisac: Reflections about the works of female writers (Natalia Ginzburg, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, etc) that systematically made me want to go read the author in question, even when I'd already read & disliked said author. That's how you know it's good literary criticism

Let's add L'Esprit de solitude by Jacqueline Kelen which as the title suggests, ponders the notion of solitude, and Le Roman du monde by Henri Peña-Ruiz which was so lovely to read in terms of literary style I don't even care what it was about (it's philosophy of foundational myths & stories) (probably difficult to read if you're not fully fluent in French though)

Did not fit in the above categories:

• Entre deux mondes by Olivier Norek—it's been translated in half a dozen languages, I was surprised to find no English translation! It's a crime novel and a pretty bleak read on account of the setting (the Calais migrant camp) but I'd recommend it

• Saga, Tonino Benacquista: Also seems to have been translated in a whole bunch of languages but not English? :( I read it ages ago but I remember it as a really fun read. It's a group of loser screenwriters who get hired to write a TV series, their budget is 15 francs and a stale croissant and it's going to air at 4am so they can do whatever they want seeing as no one will watch it. So they start writing this intentionally ridiculous unhinged show, and of course it acquires Devoted Fans

Books that I didn't think existed in English translation but they do! but you can still read them in French if you want

• Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood, Michaël Ferrier: What it says on the tin! It's a short and well-written account of the author's childhood in Chad just before the civil war. I read it a few days ago and it was a good read, but then again I just love bittersweet stories of childhood

• On the Line, Joseph Ponthus: A short diary-like account of the author's assembly line work in a fish factory. I liked the contrast between the robotic aspect of the job and the poetic nature of the text; how the author used free verse / repetition / scansion to give a very immediate sense of the monotony and rhythm of his work (I don't know if it's good in English)

• The End of Eddy, Edouard Louis: The memoir of a gay man growing up in a poor industrial town in Northern France—pretty brutal but really good

• And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran: Yet another memoir sorry, I love people's lives! Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight as a child, and was in the Resistance during WWII despite being blind. It's a great story, both for the historical aspects and for the descriptions of how the author experiences his blindness

• The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception, Emmanuel Carrère: an account of the Jean-Claude Romand case—a French man who murdered his whole family to avoid being discovered as a fraud, after spending his entire adult life pretending to be a doctor working at the WHO and fooling everyone he knew. Just morbidly fascinating, if you like true crime stuff

[the-anime-man]

I dont really go here, but great looks from brennan and ally tonight

[superfallingstars]

Snapetober Days 13 + 14: Ephemeral + Perpetual

I liked that these two time-related prompts were one after the other. They're seemingly opposite, but really, they're two sides of the same coin. Through the act of memory, the ephemeral becomes the perpetual...!

[lloydfrontera]

Lloyd felt strange all of a sudden. He couldn't believe that a man like Javier was following him. How? Why? This moment, following his instruction, sharing jokes, and sitting around the bonfire with him, suddenly seemed bizarre to Lloyd. The Knight of Blood and Iron. When I read it, he was this fictional character I found cool and could only hope to hang out. Lloyd stared hard at Javier, sitting across from him. Javier, feeling the gaze, looked back strangely. "Master Lloyd? Why are you staring at me like that?" "Oh, your brows are slightly asymmetrical." "My brows?" "Yeah." "So...?" "What do you mean, so? That shows you're human too." "It makes me human that my eyebrows are not proportionate?" "Yeah. I means that you're not perfect."

i wish this energy had been carried through the entire novel in a more overt way you don't understand-

the idea of javier starting as this flawless, unreachable character who is just too perfect to be real and then as the plot goes on, as lloyd gets to know him, as they start sharing the role of protagonist, he starts turning into more of a real person, with his own quirks and flaws and imperfections. he starts making mistakes and maybe struggling at things that he would've easily accomplished in the original novel. he gets in a fight and by the end of it his face is covered in dirt and scrapes. he wakes up and his hair is messy leaning less towards perfectly tousled and more towards rat's nest. he's still infuriatingly handsome but he's also a little awkward and dorky.

and all of it making him even more endearing to lloyd than the character he read about all those years ago. because this is real, this is javier as lloyd knows him, this is the person he befriended, the person he wants to spend the rest of his life with, the person he's willing to die for.

basically i wanted javier to be lloyd's velveteen rabbit. loving him so long and so much he becomes Real.

[luimagines]

IT IS I! THE WIZARD!

I wanna write a story, but it would be weird to write so here it is:

(Warning: swearing)

A reader who can speak to the dead, can see spirits. They chat often with the villains because they hang around them often, and often ask the reader to tell the Links messages.

The reader collects cursed items, having the strange ability to quell the corrupting powers (for example, they can use Majora's Mask with no negative effect). So they have like cursed knives, Majora, a few shards of the mirror of twilight glued together (I know it's impossible but let me dreeeeaaam-), that kind of stuff.

So like, something like this would happen:

»»————-　★　————-««

Reader walks up to Four, listening to thr whispers of their spirit friend, Vaati. He had asked to give a message to Link, 'The short one that looks like a f*cked up kinstone', and Reader was too kind to say no. They always knew that spirits that lingered often suffered in pain. Maybe it would help Vaati pass on?

"Hey, Four." Reader said, and Four turned.

"Oh, hello, Reader. Do you need something?"

"I have a message for you." They said, eyes glowing a dim blue, like a luminous stone. "Vaati said 'You're a loser, no maidens?'"

Four passed, a mix of confusion and horror on his face. "I'm sorry, WHO told me WHAT?!"

»»————-　★　————-««

Reader held Majora in their hands, staring into the great yellow eyes, invested in its whispers. A cough pulled them out of their trance, and Time sat next to it, giving a caughtous glance at the mask. "You seem enamored with that thing."

"I do. . . don't i?" Reader said wistfully. They sighed. "Do you know what it's like. . . seeing the dead? Hearing their woes and being able to do. . . anything? It's painful, watching them suffer."

"Why do you keep it, of you know it's story?" Time asked, frowning. Reader sighed, running a hand on their head.

"You probably wouldn't understand." They explained. "Spirits are more complex than a dungeon clever could be. . . this one has taken a liking to me. . . or. . at least is trying to control me."

Time stiffened. "I've worn it, Majora. He always throws a fit when I do because he cannot invade my mind." Reader explained, turning back to Time and pointing at the marks under their eyes. "These marks are like the ones you have. Proof of my power over it."

Time huffed and Reader suddenly snapped their head back to the mask, eyes glowing blue. Time watched them nod to it, and slowly turn back to Time, eyes still glowing creepily as they slowly asked "He wants to know if you've become a mask salesman too. . ."

»»————-　★　————-««

"You've lost someone important to you. . . haven't you?" Reader asked Legend on night. He was on watch duty, and the others were asleep. He glared at Reader.

"What?" Legend asked, sounding offended.

"I don't mean to insult!" Reader said quickly. "It's just. . ." Their eyes turned blue, as they looked next to him. The familiar humming of a tune oh so forgien yet familiar to their ears clwas heard only by them, sung by the spirit next to Legend in the pretty blue dress and red hair. "I can see her. . . Was she close to you?"

Legend froze. "What the hell are you talking about? Is this some kind of sick joke?!"

Sensing and watching him grow angry, Reader gave a sympathetic smile. "She likes to hum a pretty tune, you know. as if she is trying tell you it's okay. She can't speak, sadly."

He continued to glare, about combust until they began to him the tune. That tune which he missed of so dearly. The tune he'd trade EVERYTHING he own To be around again.

Reader continued to hum the tune, closing their eyes and doing their best to match the woman's tune when she felt Legend shaking next to them. They stopped and opened their eyes to see him shaking, head in his hands.

"D-dont stop" He said, his voice breaking and shaking. Reader nodded and continued, and his shaking voice started to sing the lyrics softly, leaning into Reader. They wrapped their arms around them, providing some warmth, to comfort the tired, broken, hero, that the lady in blue could not anymore. . .

»»————-　★　————-««

Either blunt as a dull butter knife or extremely creepy, or comforting. No inbetween. They've got three looks. And That's IT.

Thats all. Thanks for comeing to my Ted talk

I mean.... this could be a pretty decent story if you chose to write it out.

Thank you for sending this in.

This would be like... every Link's worst nightmare. The idea that the people who taunted them and nearly destroyed everything they held dear is still dissing them from the beyond? Horrendous.

They will never be free.

[jfleamont]

Honestly James could never be a Seeker. Harry spent most of the matches hovering a few feet above everyone else waiting to get a glimpse of the Snitch and it definitely got boring at times so imagine James having to stay still and possibly wait for hours? My boy doesn't have the patience, he needs to move

[the-big-nope]

HERE'S a thought that CR Cooldown has introduced, yet ANOTHER potential wrinkle in the "kill the gods" plan that Ludinus is maybe not accounting for: he seems quite sure that Predathos only wants to hunt the pantheon, that creatures of their specific divine essence are its prey and nothing else. Say that's true and Predathos eats the gods and fucks off, guess who gets left behind? THE CHAINED O-FUCKING-BLIVION!!! Matt said, it's not of Tengar, it's not of the same stuff as the rest of the pantheon. If Ludinus's plans goes off perfectly, just as he currently expects, guess who gets left at the top of the food chain???

[sunset-synthetica]

I NEED to know why the transformers fandom is relevant

okay so, assuming you don't know anything beyond like. 4 characters: Megatron is depicted as a revolutionary in several of the continuities which bleeds over to the fandom perception, and he of course falls into that "bad guy makes good points so we need to have him commit genocide so people don't agree with him" camp. The comics published by IDW up to a few years ago had Megatron be essentially at the very bottom of the working class, while Optimus Prime was a fucking cop. Megatron rightfully pointed out the injustices on their planet, but was Too Radial™ about it, so of course he became the evil warmonger and Optimus Prime (canon police brutality enjoyer) went about it the Right Way™.

The comics series has had a MASSIVE impact on both the fandom and franchise itself, with current cartoons continuing to pull from it. It wasn't all bad, there are some interesting characters and in-universe concepts that IDW introduced, but what I've described above has left a really bad taste in my mouth.

So, with the main Transformers fandom on tumblr being a bunch of white 30 year old ao3 addicts whose peak theory moment was reading a Twitter thread, these cunts LOVE to act like they have everything figured out by reading that fucking god awful comics series and having their main takeaway be "yeah Megatron was right to build literal extermination camps, also cops are cool". It's soooooo annoying

[thecasualfkfan]

From Fong the Philosopher to Longtae the Cutie to Ayan the Broken Badass to Gaipa the heartbroken to now Ray the Slut Homewreker Sensual, Khaotung can do it all.

[chaos0pikachu]

is it still rpf is they historically wanted or did fuck each other? asking for a friend

[stellamancer]

every now and again i think about my evil ex from hell like a bit ago i thought about how he'd said (via text message) that my texts always seemed to have an attitude about them lmao

[ceruleaneclipse]

OPINION ON FORD BEING A SILLY GOOBER?!??!!! ! LIKE A FULL ON GOOFSTER WHO IS VERY VERY SILLY ? !!!!! !?!?!? ???!

I don't have much of an opinion, but I would like to say I find his instances of silliness funny because of how seriously he takes himself.

Like him naming the shapeshifter Shifty like, if anyone other than Ford did that, you'd think it's amusing, you'd chuckle, yeah, but Ford? Absolutely hilarious.

I think it's also how he's built up in the show; the mysterious author of the journals, one of the biggest mysteries of Gravity Falls is also the same guy who stopped doing research so he could play Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons (something I think about all the time!)

I love the dimension he has, it's another dimension to a character that has been to many dimensions.

'Cause we're all kinda silly. We've gotta be really.

(but I also project onto Ford really heavily, keep that in mind)

I know I have more thoughts on Ford (as I always seem to) but I can't quite put it into words.

[the-anime-man]

Boy do i love vinesauce corruptions

[rinbylin]

possibly my favourite lhl meta now is that extremely galaxy-brained half hour video essay on b站 exploring essentially one thing:

llh can be read as a "mother" and a symbol of femininity/maternity in its purest form

what if feminine and maternal qualities can be uncoupled from biology and patriarchy. what would it look like. it would look like lxy's rebirth as llh. it would look like llh's nurturing and guidance of fdb. it is essentially the spirit of freedom and life llh held. it transcends any notions of gender.

feeling more validated than ever. and this is also far more than i've ever asked for. my brain has been rewired. i'm kissing you on the mouth op

[ransomnote]

i think if i was literally 1% more transmasculine in my indentity t would be something i would want with no question. but alas i am lacking that 1%. i just have 0 desire to be a Man including being a trans Man or gnc Man. i'm not a man just like i'm not a woman (though i do connect more with femininity and androgyny than i do masculinity). and i think i sit in a comfortable place of androgyny (both masculinized and feminized depending on what's most degrading in every situation by others due to being fat) presentation wise already i just want to reduce or get rid of my boobs altogether cause they. hm. how to say this. they detract from me. i carry them around like im already carrying around an amputated body part. when they're gone i will have gained so much more than i've lost.

[letoscrawls]

I know you're tired of me talking nonstop and i know i've stated before that Coldplay isn't my cup of tea (which is true) BUT that obviously doesn't include Viva la Vida aka humanity's anthem the only song ever emotions in the form of a song

anyways

Viva la Vida is literally Paul's song... i never paid much attention to the lyrics but the way it fits stupid Paul's life.... oh my god. I could make a playlist with all the (often questionable) songs i've associated with Paul and Alia just this year. i don't know why but as time passes i'm more and more obsessed with these characters, i've been into Dune for three years now and i feel like the fixation is getting stronger each day instead of fading away