#how to read

[journalette]

I started a new blog called @ontakingnotes where I post everything related to, well, taking notes.

My premise has always been that a notebook is a tool of thought. However, the socioeconomic climate today promotes the commodification of self-improvement practices such as journaling, often reducing them to what's see-able, post-able, like-able, and purchasable.

Far from being grudgy and judgemental, I am the first person to post pictures of my notes, journals, etc. I am also trying to be more thoughtful in my consumption, and in my online presence. By that I mean I am trying to be more careful in what I take or give to the (on/off line) community. But I am not self-decieving and that’s why I recognize I will probably keep sharing this kind of content, because it makes me feel good and it is also a form of self-expression.

All that is to say that although the aesthetic part of taking notes is very valuable, it is also hyper-explored. And most importantly, it is not what note-taking is all about, contrary to what retailers want you to think.

If you want to expand your vision of the meaning and the different ways there exist of keeping a notebook, this is for you. In this new blog, you will find inspiring classifications, diagrams, metaphors, and reflections on note-taking and how it might actually change the way you think, and therefore, your life.

[espejomonastico]

How to Read

for Rosmarie Waldrop

A world of light and a world of openism A syntax of heat and dynamism A human wolrd mewling in the dark A giganto space of silence, time A mind on fire in the heat of the quest Rhythm percussion assonance Energetic silent magic A textual nimbus, air born

Peter Gizzi: Archeophonics (2016)

[nik-jr-lit]

dude, that's not literary analysis...that's just your opinion

Every time I finish a good book, I close the cover (or turn off my Kindle), sit back, and savor the moment. Joy, heartache, peace, excitement - whatever feeling I have, I let myself relish in it.

And then I promptly turn on my computer and look to see what others thought about it.

At some reflections I clap my hands in joy, exclaiming "yes! Exactly!" while others I cannot help but groan aloud and tut while reading it through; I can't help but read even those scathing ones in their entirety in case just a sliver of their theory strikes my fancy.

I must say that I don't dislike literary analyses or reviews that are different than mine; really, I don't think two people could have a perfectly identical stance - there is always a difference, even if by only a shade. If I avoided all claims that differed from my preferences then I should keep myself away entirely. No, I really do appreciate hearing from everyone: what did they think of the setting, our protagonist, the diction? Were they fooled by the villain? Who was good and who was evil? Was anyone truly righteous?

I expect the answers to these questions to be different among us all, but I do struggle with claims that resort primarily to feeling rather than reason (yes, I'm looking at you in the back, Brontë). Of course we are meant to feel - this is art, people! Literature is supposed to evoke emotion from us; if we had no empathy for the plot, the characters, the situation...there would be no point. We are meant to relate - perhaps a character is uncannily similar to that nosy librarian we know, and we can perfectly understand the narrator's feelings of exasperation and spite. Or maybe we remember our own bittersweet love story as we watch our young protagonist fall, feeling the clammy hands and hot cheeks as well as they do. Yes, we are certainly meant to feel, but we cannot trust those feelings to always lead us to truth.

It's only been in recent years that I've taken pains to think critically about the reliability of narration; we cannot assume what we're told is the God-given truth. Characters have biases, prejudices, history, and feelings. I think it equally important that we examine our own feelings and responses to ascertain just how reliable we ourselves are. We view situations, relationships, characters, or settings with a lens specific to us, and these undoubtedly impact our literary analyses as much as our emotional responses. We must take care to detach ourselves, as best as we're able, and test our theories and critiques by fire to see whether they stand true. Sometimes, we can sufficiently perform this test in our own minds during the drafting period, and other times it takes a peer to see the chink in our armor. Be gracious and forgiving to yourself and to others during these times; it's difficult to admit to blindness, especially when we experience blindness of self.

[just-french-me-up]

'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

[starbuck]

“…to me” is one of the most powerful disclaimers we have on here… is this character analysis accurate? debatable. but it’s real… to me.

[shadesofmauve]

I want to step away from the art-vs-artist side of the Gaiman issue for a bit, and talk about, well, the rest of it. Because those emotions you're feeling would be the same without the art; the art just adds another layer.

Source: I worked with a guy who turned out to be heavily involved in an international, multi-state sex-slavery/trafficking ring.

He was really nice.

Yeah.

It hits like a dumptruck of shit. You don't feel stable in your world anymore. How could someone you interacted with, liked, also be a truly horrible person? How could your judgement be that bad? How can real people, not stylized cartoon bogeymen, be actually doing this shit?

You have to sit with the fact that you couldn't, or probably couldn't, have known. You should have no guilt as part of this horror — but guilt is almost certainly part of that mess you're feeling, because our brains do this associative thing, and somehow "I liked [the version of] the guy [that I knew]", or his creations, becomes "I made a horrible mistake and should feel guilty."

You didn't, loves, you didn't.

We're human, and we can only go by the information we have. And the information we have is only the smallest glimpse into someone else's life.

I didn't work closely with the guy I knew at work, but we chatted. He wasn't just nice; he was one of the only people outside my tiny department who seemed genuinely nice in a workplace that was rapidly becoming incredibly toxic. He loaned me a bike trainer. Occasionally he'd see me at the bus stop and give me a lift home.

Yup. I was a young woman in my twenties and rode in this guy's car. More than once.

When I tell this story that part usually makes people gasp. "You must feel so scared about what could have happened to you!" "You're so lucky nothing happened!"

No, that's not how it worked. I was never in danger. This guy targeted Korean women with little-to-no English who were coerced and powerless. A white, fluent, US citizen coworker wasn't a potential victim. I got to be a person, not prey.

Y'know that little warning bell that goes off, when you're around someone who might be a danger to you? That animal sense that says "Something is off here, watch out"?

Yeah, that doesn't ping if the preferred prey isn't around.

That's what rattled me the most about this. I liked to think of myself as willing to stand up for people with less power than me. I worked with Japanese exchange students in college and put myself bodily between them and creeps, and I sure as hell got that little alarm when some asian-schoolgirl fetishist schmoozed on them. But we were all there.

I had to learn that the alarm won't go off when the hunter isn't hunting. That it's not the solid indicator I might've thought it was. That sometimes this is what the privilege of not being prey does; it completely masks your ability to detect the horrors that are going on.

A lot of people point out that 'people like that' have amazing charisma and ability to lie and manipulate, and that's true. Anyone who's gotten away with this shit for decades is going to be way smoother than the pathetic little hangers-on I dealt with in university. But it's not just that. I seriously, deeply believe that he saw me as a person, and he did not extend personhood to his victims. We didn't have a fake coworker relationship. We had a real one. And just like I don't know the ins-and-outs of most of my coworkers lives, I had no idea that what he did on his down time was perpetrate horrors.

I know this is getting off the topic, but it's so very important. Especially as a message to cis guys: please understand that you won't recognize a creep the way you might think you will. If you're not the preferred prey, the hind-brain alarm won't go off. You have to listen to victims, not your gut feeling that the person seems perfectly nice and normal. It doesn't mean there's never a false accusation, but face the fact that it's usually real, and you don't have enough information to say otherwise.

So, yeah. It fucking sucks. Writing about this twists my insides into tense knots, and it was almost a decade ago. I was never in danger. No one I knew was hurt!

Just countless, powerless women, horrifically abused by someone who was nice to me.

You don't trust your own judgement quite the same way, after. And as utterly shitty as it is, as twisted up and unstead-in-the-world as I felt the day I found out — I don't actually think that's a bad thing.

I think we all need to question our own judgement. It makes us better people.

I don't see villains around every corner just because I knew one, once. But I do own the fact that I can't know, really know, about anyone except those closest to me. They have their own full lives. They'll go from the pinnacles of kindness to the depths of depravity — and I won't know.

It's not a failing. It's just being human. Something to remember before you slap labels on people, before you condemn them or idolize them. Think about how much you can't know, and how flawed our judgement always is.

Grieve for victims, and the feeling of betrayal. But maybe let yourself off the hook, and be a bit slower to skewer others on it.

[unsung-idiot]

don't show him modern technology; it won't end well

bonus under the cut:

[mimimar]

(open pages for better image quality)

the moment I heard elphaba's delivery of "there's a girl i know..." in i'm not that girl i knew i had to draw this comic, i strongly recommend listening to it while you read for the full experience!

this comic is a companion to this piece (which was inspired by glinda's delivery of the same line in the i'm not that girl reprise).

pages 1-4 are from elphie's pov, pages 5-8 are from glinda's.

prints of individual pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

flower meanings in order of appearance:

[partlysmith]

leftist media discussion: "While this show said "trans rights" directly without any ambiguity, one plot element of this children's show could be considered morally questionable after 25 degrees of separation, so the author must be a heckin fascist"

right wing media discussion: "Well it happened. The reboot of Female Protagonist Fights Unsubtle Allegory for Capitalism That I Was Too Young to Notice as a Kid -our last bastion of apolitical entertainment- has gone woke because they made a supporting character black"

centrist media discussion: "did you see the latest episode of Sword Hero Cleanses the Undesirables on crunchyroll? best show of the year imo"

[batcavescolony]

Katniss is such an unreliable narrator. She says "Then something unexpected happens. At least, I don't expect it because I don't think of District 12 as a place that cares about me" girl you deliver strawberries to the Mayor, you hunt and trade for the district, when you fell at Prim being chosen someone caught you, when you went to Prim people parted for you, when you volunteered EVERYONE stopped. Idk how to tell you but I think you're a pillar of the community.

[morganbritton132]

No one tells you when you get a Big Serious Job™ how many fucking abbreviations you’ll be forced to learn.

[serendipitysparks]

Hiragana (ひらがな)

Hiragana is the foundational phonetic script of the Japanese writing system. It consists of 46 basic characters, each representing a single syllable or sound. Hiragana is primarily used for:

Grammatical elements such as particles (e.g., は [wa], が [ga], に [ni]).

Verb and adjective endings (e.g., 食べる [taberu] for "to eat").

Words without kanji or when the kanji is too difficult or rare.

Furigana, small Hiragana characters placed beside kanji to indicate pronunciation.

Examples:あ (a), い (i), う (u), え (e), お (o)か (ka), き (ki), く (ku), け (ke), こ (ko)

Katakana (カタカナ)

Katakana is also a phonetic script, similar to Hiragana, but it has a more angular and distinct appearance. Katakana is used for:

Foreign loanwords (e.g., コンピュータ [konpyūta] for "computer").

Foreign names, scientific terms, and technical jargon.

Onomatopoeia, which are sound-related words (e.g., ザーザー [zāzā] for the sound of heavy rain).

Emphasis, like italics in English.

Katakana also consists of 46 basic characters that represent the same syllables as Hiragana.

Examples: ア (a), イ (i), ウ (u), エ (e), オ (o)カ (ka), キ (ki), ク (ku), ケ (ke), コ (ko)

Kanji (漢字)

Kanji are logographic characters adopted from Chinese, each representing an idea, word, or concept. Unlike Hiragana and Katakana, which are phonetic, Kanji characters often carry specific meanings as well as sounds. Kanji are primarily used for:

Nouns (e.g., 学校 [gakkō] for "school").

The root of verbs (e.g., 食べる [taberu] for "to eat").

Adjectives (e.g., 高い [takai] for "high" or "expensive").

Names, both personal and geographical.

Each Kanji can have multiple readings depending on its usage and context. There are thousands of Kanji characters, but the Jōyō kanji list contains 2,136 characters that are essential for daily use.

Examples: 学 (gaku) meaning "study" or "learning".

校 (kō) meaning "school".

食 (shoku) meaning "eat" or "food".

Combined Usage

Japanese writing typically uses a combination of all three scripts:

Kanji is used for the core meaning of words.

Hiragana is used for grammatical functions and native Japanese words that do not have kanji representations.

Katakana is used for foreign words and emphasis.

An example of a sentence in modern Japanese might look like this:

私はコンピュータを使います (Watashi wa konpyūta o tsukaimasu) – "I use a computer."

私は (Watashi wa) – "I" in Hiragana.

コンピュータ (konpyūta) – "computer" in Katakana.

使います (tsukaimasu) – "use" in Kanji and Hiragana.

[mumblingsage]

I'm wondering if, as a society who cares about vulnerable people, we could stop saying "traumatize" when we truly mean "upset"?

I am sick of hearing sad books or movies "traumatize" their readers. I simply do not believe that happens. A traumatic experience might be adjacent to books (I have vivid memories of books I was reading around certain experiences and even how the contents of those books affected my processing of the experiences). But it's not caused by the book. And, y'know. The weather is Christofascist Censorship Attempts outside.

Meanwhile from the other side I continue to be surprised at just how badly people fail to understand trauma and traumatic experiences in general. Watering down the term isn't helping. Find other hyperbole to express that The Bridge to Terebithia gutted you, chewed on your heartstrings, and made you cry your first pair of contact lenses right out of your preteen eyes.

(ETA here although it's impossible to edit reblogs: over the months since this post really took off, there has been valuable discussion in the comments. I stand by the passion with which I wrote this post and with the general message, but not all the exact wording. I talk more about the way I'd re-write this post in a response here, replying to an addition that added a ton of useful context [other additions touched on similar themes, but that person had it all together in one reblog]. With that said, I am muting this post.)

[superfurrycollectorangel]

Article: How To Read Every Stephen King Book In Order

How To Read Every Stephen King Book In Order

[allgremlinart]

au where Aang gets told he's the Avatar (and subsequently frozen) at 16 like he was supposed to.... I think it would change a lot honestly