#and that's what it takes to be REAL literature

[letters-to-lgbt-kids]

My dear lgbt+ kids, 

If you sometimes come across the term “banned books” but don’t really know what it means, here’s a simple little introduction to the topic: 

“Banned books” refers to books that have been censored or removed from libraries, schools, or bookstores due to objections from certain groups or individuals.

When we read that definition, I think a really common and understandable response is: „whoa, okay, these must be really bad books full of dangerous ideas!“… and in some way, that’s true. 

Because, you see, to someone with a homophobic worldview, any book with a gay character is really bad and dangerous. And to a child abuser, any book that educates children on consent is really bad and dangerous. 

Among the top reasons for book bans are lgbt+ content, sexual content (including sexual education or education on sexual abuse), themes of racism and themes like drug use or addiction. Over the years, many books with significant cultural and educational value have faced bans - and this continues to be an issue all around the world, including in the US. 

When books are banned, it restricts the access to information people (including kids and teenagers) need to understand themselves and others. This negatively affects queer people and other marginalized groups (for example people of color or disabled people) but it also impacts everyone else. Diversity in literature enriches our understanding of the diversity of real life. It helps to build empathy, compassion, kindness and understanding. Access to different stories and viewpoints is vital for an inclusive society. 

Censoring queer books in particular also normalizes the message that queer experiences are inappropriate or “dirty” - which, again, is really beneficial to homophobes and transphobes. If it feels safe for them to say that queer books harm children, it paves the way for all other kinds of discrimination and harassment of queer people. 

Now you may think “this all makes sense when it comes to books with gay characters! But didn’t you also mention stuff like sexual abuse and addiction and racism up there? These are indeed bad and dangerous things!” 

I think this is another really common thought. These things happen in real life and it can be uncomfortable to even think about them. But that’s precisely why we need books about those “uncomfortable” topics! 

We may not like the idea that a child hears about racism or abuse - but in a world where kids can experience racism and abuse, they also need to be able to read about racism and abuse. They need to be able to say “this is what’s happening to me and this is not okay”. We need to be able to name bad things when they happen to us or when we witness them happening to others. We need an understanding of and a language for bad things. That’s the only way to fight the bad things. 

Another thought you may have is “Okay, and now what? I don’t have the power to do anything about all this anyway”, and honestly I wouldn’t blame you for that one either. Hearing about book bans (on top of all the other negative stuff we hear about) can feel really depressing. But there are things you can do to push back and help keep diverse stories accessible - even if you are young or have limited resources! 

Some ideas: 

use your public library (many public libraries actively resist censorship and make banned books available!) 

use a digital library (services like Libby and Project Gutenberg offer free access to many books) 

look out for online petitions or letter-writing campaigns by organizations that oppose book bans (for example PEN in America) 

look up if there are any “little free libraries” in your area (free book-sharing box operating on the honor system: anyone can take or leave a book for no cost) 

look up if there are any book swapping events in your area 

take part in reading groups, book clubs etc. (either in person or online) 

And of course the big one: if you can afford to buy books - make a point to buy banned books (or more generally, queer books and books from marginalized authors and books on topics that frequently get banned)! As a starting point, you can find lists of banned books online. Wikipedia has one, for example. 

If you have a bigger budget, you could even buy multiple copies and put some in your local “little free library” or bring them to book-swapping events or gift them to friends etc! (You could also ask your local public library (or school library or prison library or youth center or women’s shelter etc) if they take book donations, but you may want to hold off on buying before they say yes - not all of them can accept donations!).

Happy reading and resisting!

With all my love, 

Your Tumblr Dad 

[tempestmothstorm]

"I think I would have just deleted myself if you didn't show up."

Yeah this is just straight up canon. But i have more thoughts though. So.

Like if you look into her dialogue is like abundantly clear that she’s just suicidal. It’s different from someone like Sayori who’s actively suicidal because she feels she is worse than everyone else, or Yuri who I don’t know is suicidal but has self harming tendencies she takes too far in act 2, or Natsuki who isn’t at all and is like “wtf are you guys ok”. The answer is no btw.

Monika’s whole outlook on it is that she has a lot of passive suicidal ideation that she pushes aside because she has to be the best. Her issue isn’t centered around her specifically being bad but instead a feeling of pointlessness with existing and the fact that the act existing itself puts burden on the world.

She’s also the type to make jokes about it, which I think is telling about her attitude about death, especially when compared to the others where the idea of dying is still terrifying and scary and something to hide. Meanwhile Monika acts casually as if people’s lives actually don’t matter. We all know her “left her hanging joke” and her general nonchalance with the other girls’ deaths, but the secret poem “A Joke” is probably written by Monika too, and the punchline is another reference to sayori’s death. The special poem about cutting is also by Monika, which shows that she would self harm if it weren’t for her needing to be the ‘responsible one’, and that she’d only do it again if she killed herself. She writes it as if it was a quirky relatable diary entry and not something deeply concerning, which in of itself is also deeply concerning.

There’s also the iiiiiiiiiiii.txt file that has her say that it would be “really easy to kill (herself) right now”. Reasonably the easiest way to do it would be to delete herself. While her constantly reminding the player how easy it would be to delete her is supposed to be a hint on what to do next, it does say something about her when she constantly fixates on it, almost as if she’d thought about it. Like a lot. She thinks about suicide and mental illness just as much too. Also a lot. And existential philosophy a lot. And death too. Again. A lot.

Her friends aside, she clearly just thinks about these things on her own, which implies some real bad things about her mental health considering literally everything else we know about her. Like it’s pretty obvious she’s not ok base game. And yet she doesn’t go through, in fact actively avoiding getting deleted because she still wants to see you. Because you are her only hope.

While her attachment to the player has like a dozen factors influencing it, I think a lot of it is also connected to her more suicidal ideas. She does emphasize that you “saved her” a lot in act 3 and while it mean saving her from her reality, knowing some of the other talks, it also could have saved her from giving up entirely.

Not to get too repetitive about how her life sucks, but like she really has no reason to exist in her eyes post epiphany. Nothing outside the literature club exists, there’s no past or future, everything is fake and has no consequence on the real world, and worst of all she’s completely alone with whatever connections she could have being fake. I think this one quote from her “introverts” talk basically sums up her situation:

"You know, I really do think you literally saved my life by being here with me, [player]."

"I can't imagine having been able to keep myself mentally stable, knowing that nothing here is real."

"I think I would have just deleted myself if you didn't show up."

"Sorry, i don't mean to sound dramatic or anything."

"Ahaha!"

"But I'm sure you understand yourself after spending so much time in the club."

"I mean, if you were forced to abandon everything in your life and spend your eternity with a few game characters..."

"...You'd probably find some way of killing yourself, wouldn't you?"

But yeah something something the connections you have with others gives life meaning and when the relationships she did have turned out to be false, she reached out to you, whose love could be real and whose existence as a real person is the only thing that could give her life meaning.

Another Monika talk that’s relevant would be the “No reason to be alive” talk. I’m not posting the entire thing here because it’s too long but the entire thing is pretty relevant. In it she talks about how living is pointless because you probably aren’t special and your existence alone takes up dozens of resources that isn’t worth wasting.

This highlights two factors that I think influence her thought process. One is that she feels like existence is worthless and likely won’t affect society at large, and with the whole being a video game thing the connection is obvious. The other is that she worries about how much of a burden she is on society. She wants to earn her right to exist in this world. When her reality doesn’t exist, this specific framework doesn’t seem that relevant, but when it comes to being a burden to others this ends up becoming a lot more alarming (and also creates another Sayori parallel yayyyyyyy)

Notably she mentions the key to happiness is to live selfishly and just look out for yourself and your friends. This can’t really apply in her own reality when she can’t see her friends as sentient, but when it comes to you, she can deliver just fine. She says she want to “live (her) life desperately striving to pay back (her) lifetime's worth of consumption” and with her own reality being pointless, paying back the people around her (you) is the next best thing.

But what if she failed to

"Of course, even if I fail to do that..."

"I think I would be too selfish to kill myself anyway."

"So much for being a good person, right?"

Sure thing buddy.

Another thing i want to mention is that it’s implied that these thoughts aren’t new. Like with some of these talks it’s ambiguous whether these ideas came pre or post epiphany. With her whole nihilistic thinking in base game contrasting side stories, it wouldn’t be that surprising if her thoughts got a whole lot more cynical over time. But she does seem to talk as if she’s thought about them for a while, while the epiphany was apparently recent in her memory.

For example in the “Dying” talk:

“It's something I used to think about pretty often..."

And in the “No reason to be alive” talk

"But the older I get, the more I realize that it's an immature frame of thinking."

Uh yeah these ideas aren’t new.

Of course it was probably taken to an extreme post epiphany and thinking about existential topics is normal. By itself it’s probably not some secret sign of mental illness, or at least not anything severe. (Sure she talks about a lot of stuff like mental health issues but it doesn’t really reflect on her, it just shows she can understand others perspective. Like she can talk about the introvert experience without being an introvert. Idk she’s just very empathetic and reflects a lot on the world. Makes her epiphany a lot more ironic though. So.)

But her post epiphany persona was very much built on preexisting ideas she had before that. It might not be that serious, but the fact that it’s there at all is concerning knowing what we do. The implications that come if this is all true is facilitating tbh and it honestly makes the side stories more interesting too. Like her whole “i have to be the best” attitude is probably connected to all her worries about being a burden or worthless.

And her whole thing in trust becomes a lot more layered too. The standard she holds for herself are not carried over to Sayori, who she sees as deserving of life just by being herself. She doesn’t want to be a burden or distract from Sayori’s problems, because her own true self isn’t good enough. Sayori is reassured that her existence is valuable and that she isn’t being a burden, something that goes against Monika’s entire act 3 talk yet is some she believes wholeheartedly.

This is also contrasted by base game where she straight up jokes about her death because death barely matters to her either. In base game, Sayori doesn’t matter, she isn’t special or even sentient, just a pile of code that gets in the way of Monika’s plans to reach the player. In base game Sayori is worthless and a burden, where Monika’s worldview has extended to everyone else. Yet in side stories she doesn’t think that, her standards only applies to herself because she loves her friends, they are what give her life meaning. Of course they deserve to live. They don’t need to prove their worth.

She’s a hypocrite because she values her friends more than anything. Again, the Sayori parallels are obvious from this angle, she has these exact same thoughts, with the only difference being that base game Monika projects her fears of worthlessness onto everything else while sides stories has her a lot more similar to Sayori.

Now the difference between side stories Monika and base game is really just how far their ideals reach, because normally Monika is like ok mentally , while in base game she’s suicidal along with everything else. Forget her saying she’s too selfish to do it cause it’s heavily implied she does do it in other universes.

Speaking of which I never hear people mention the MES emails in this cause a singular line puts into perspective how influential the player’s presence is on Monika and just how bad her mental health is. She is the MES’ guinea pig that everyone wants to see suffer (actually I don’t know how common knowledge this is I just got here and mostly stick to tumblr so idk)

So with the Side Stories MES email i think with all the lore drops we sorta forgot some of the more self explanatory info, including the fact that they have multiple VMs of ddlc and that there were “3 or 4 of them created and then destroyed by Monika”

While most people conclude this is just a reference to base game i think a lot of people dismiss that fact that these aren’t the game VMs, these VMs have no access to a player. Yknow. The player she relies on that supposedly saved her life.

Yeah i think she just deletes everything including her in apparently 4 separate universes. She kills her self in 4 universes.

She deletes everything in act 3 too but specifically because they get in her way between you, and the only reason she doesn’t delete herself there is that she still wants to see you. When the idea of reaching you is crushed, she gives in. By act 4 she ends up like all the other VMs, deleting everything knowing she can’t have you, can’t have reality. I mean the only thing keeping her going is the dream of reaching reality and finding real connections to people, and the idea that her existence will forever be meaningless probably pushed her to the extreme.

The player is the only real person who can give her life meaning and value, and in a world where the rest are seemingly fake, you’re also the only human connection she has. Again, the things that keep her going is her life being valuable in some way and the people around her. Post epiphany she only has you to care for with everyone else being thrown to the wayside without consideration of their own wellbeing.

So of course in act 4, where her connect to you is severed and she is suddenly aware of the harm she’s caused, she’s the lowest she’s ever been. Her reason for living is to be there for her friends and somehow pay back reality for how much she’s taken. And yet she let her friends die and let herself use them for her own selfish gain. She failed them, and has therefore become someone she see as not deserving of life. And with her last hope of the player rejecting her reach, she has no reason to keep going. So in the Easter egg where the player tries to bring her file back after deletion, she refuses to follow. She doesn’t deserve to intrude on their happy ending. She doesn’t deserve to come back.

And she doesn’t.

In future games she’ll probably return though, and with all the secret files and her motivations in the normal ending, I feel like it’s going to be for redemption by finally being there for her club.

She sticks around because no matter how much guilt she feels about just existing, she still wants to be there for her friends. Because while a lot of the act 3 dialogue was not meant to be something people agree with, there was one thing that I feel like is good if you look at it in the right way. Maybe people can’t pay back for the lifetime of consumption they’ve done just by living, but people can pay back and be worth existing just by looking out for their friends and those closest to them. Even if there can be doubts about life and existence as a whole, it doesn’t matter in the end when there’s joy to be found in the people you care about. Even if you make mistakes or hurt them, you can still find a way to make it up to them, to still deserve happiness in the end. The one thing that makes life worth it is the bonds you form with others. Because the people around you are what give life meaning.

She can’t let go and she can’t give up because she still has people she loves and wants to protect. So she’ll keep living for the people she loves. That’s all she needs to do in this world to make it worth living.

I hope she succeeds.

(Side note i took a lot of the Monika talk examples from this post. I did have my own ideas even before i read the doc and I already knew about this stuff anyways i just don’t wanna scroll through the entire wiki again to see all the Monika talks and this is pretty comprehensive. The extra imput is also useful so yeah)(anyways thanks for reading this really long tumblr essay. Good job and drink water ;D)

i would like to bring up that monika has probably considered deleting herself before

like staring at a high cliffside and getting the urge to jump

[yandere-daydreams]

Were you someone who was or is fond of reading books, growing up ? Because you're so excellent at writing. Like, nowadays its so difficult to find any book with half the narrative structure or interest your writing has. Feels like you were someone who liked hunger games at some point.

no yeah you read me and my preteen hunger games obsession like a book T-T admittedly tho, i am kind of currently in a reading slump not for lack of trying, but just because,,, i feel like a lot of recent horror/thriller/mystery stuff has been kind of preachy, lately? idk how to explain it, but i feel like darker genres feel the need to come with some greater life lesson they can serve up to the reader on a silver platter within the first hundred pages which very much goes against my 'tell your silly little story and i'll decide how it's changed me as a person later' mentality to fiction. i will resist the temptation and forgo posting a detailed list of all the books that have been added to my DNF list in the past month and their many issues but know that it is exhaustive.

[opens-up-4-nobody]

:-P

[admiral-arelami]

AITA If My Favorite Character is a Fascist?

Uh oh. The Fascsplainers are at it again. Yes, we know what fascism is, thx.

[isfjmel-phleg]

This is a personal post.

My younger self found Dear America too depressing because almost all the books featured a death, but I loved The Royal Diaries, which also featured a lot of death, including some pretty tragic stuff (the Anastasia diary was one of my favorites). Doesn't really make sense. Is it less depressing if it happened in real life and therefore has to be part of the story, rather than a fictional death contrived to add obligatory Drama to the narrative?

[viillette]

it's so crazy how few historical fiction novels are like sharon kay penman's. the way that they're built out of the skeleton of the historical record seems so obvious, but there's so few people who are actually willing to commit to it in the way that she did. it seems like so often that's just a starting point which gets reformed to fit a coherent narrative, but she makes no real attempt to do that. there's themes and foils and patterns, but first and foremost it is a reconstruction. you can't really know what someone who lived that long ago was like, only what they did, and you can feel how she takes these isolated, dramatic events and builds a whole life around them. the books are nothing more than an answer to the question 'what might someone have been like, what could the history between these people have been, to possibly explain something like this?' the ability to string together a handful of facts and events from medieval chronicles to create people that feel so real, and psychology and relationships that develop so naturally that these distant, seemingly impenetrable choices suddenly feel so immediate and clear is just beyond belief. you know this probably wasn't actually how things happened, but it doesn't matter because it was something like this. the particulars are less important the crushing awareness that at one point all of this made sense. there was a time when all of this was right now. the world is unrecognizable and exactly the same. that's something which sounds very simple but is incredibly difficult to accomplish.

you come to know these people so well, their loves and hatreds and ambitions and failures, and those things are rarely resolved in the end. you know them from the time that they're children, you watch each one of them die, and none of it means anything in particular except that they were a human being. things which seem like they must be building to some tragic fallout end in anticlimax. things which seem utterly inconsequential in the moment manifest again decades later in cataclysmic disaster. and then you see it all play out again from the beginning with their children, and their children's children. all these uncanny echoes, this endlessly unfolding palimpsest of lives, each laid over the triumphs and mistakes of those who came before. i've never read anything so epic with so much mastery over the micro and macro levels of history. it's the minute, seemingly inconsequential everyday details, which build into a lifetime, which builds into generation of lives, which builds into the rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. it's the merciless endlessly turning wheel of fortune that replays the same songs in different keys again and again for all time. a person is both an individual with free will, and the prisoner of their blood and circumstances. somehow everything has infinite weight, is tied to everything that has come before and will come after, is the culmination of someone's entire existence—their pains and joys and fears and hopes—and yet is simultaneously completely meaningless, just one more victim of fate in an endless procession of lives and choices. the whole impotent tragedy of humanity is laid out in front of you and it's so repulsive and beautiful. it's deep love and unfathomable, senseless horror briefly and miraculously reverberating in a vacuum, an absurd aberration fading into silence.

if it's not obvious these books have made me cry like 10 different times

[fengshenjunlang]

WWX raising the dead is culturally unacceptable, why? Because CQL censored that part due to the current government regulation of even censoring the color of blood or bloody wounds in media.

Also China's current regulation: LGBTQ is not Culturally approved!

Also Chinese real-world orthodox culture: LGBTQ is taboo!

Does that mean those FUcKInN DaMn GAYs WangXian are Culturally and Morally unacceptable??

[toastedcinnamonflakes]

Throwback to the time I told part of my family about No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, was really excited about it and told them not only the story but also the circumstances it was written under.

And my aunt nearly breaks down crying because "How can young people read something so horrible :c" and "suicide is a sin!!!"

I genuinely had no words, because what the fuck.

[yunvind]

parfyon semyonovich rogozhin:

[carbonbasedmatter]

why is everyone including my mbti type telling me I should become an engineer💔💔

[quibbs126]

History and government is so much easier to learn and study than physics, I wish I wasn’t an engineering major

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

god why did it have to be rick and morty. why can't i go back to fixating on literally anything else

[veilchenjaeger]

Can I have one (1) single classics blog that doesn't continuously shit on adaptations/retellings

[cathalbravecog]

based on 90% vibes and 10% facts about the characters. i do not take constructive criticism. buck ruffler never read warrior cats but he'd act like a cat and bite others and invade warrior cat larps as a rogue

[mystacoceti]

people want reading to be a social activity you partake of in between salon attendances. and not that I don't understand that feeling but how many books have people read and enjoyed that came out of some literary backwater, with hardly another boat in sight? The scan I did myself on my parents' printer of a college-owned copy of Max Raphael's The Demands of Art which I asked a friend to check out for me is, I think, the only digital copy of the English translation of that book in existence (jk the Max Raphael Project got the book up as of 2020), and I've assumed, more or less since elementary school, that kind of thing as one basic pole of reading as a social phenomenon. I've been reading a lot of essays from about 1960-'80 and the number of appealing books referenced that are unarchived, unavailable on libgen or out of stock on legal sites is always striking. and even if you can find it, what then? there's always the option of google searching through the blogs of the world, but that's hardly the fantasy people have in mind.