#i. do not like my collage but it was apparently a hit so

[gingergari]

now that everything’s calmed down some i can finally put together an art summary :^)

template found here!

bonus photo bc i technically took it may 31 but now i don’t even remember if that’s may 31 est or cet/cest so

[katabay]

SUBTEXT

so I've focused in on Perceval and Bors before, and I've done Perceval and Gender (for more on this specifically, see: Clothes Make The Man: Parzival Dressed and Undressed, Michael D. Amey) and did a whole comic that leaned into some subtext™ on temptation, but actually let's throw out the subtext! let's bring Augustine into this!!

Perceval, de Troyes (trans. Burton Raffel)

introduction to Confessions, Augustine (trans. Sarah Ruden)

so for perceval a knight is both the gender he wants to perform but also something that is expressly compared to god, and if god is a lover that seduces. well. does this not also apply to knights as well?

Homosexuality in the Renaissance: Behavior, Identity, and Artistic Expression, James M. Saslow

and while galahad might be the obvious choice, I think perceval's relationship with bors during the grail quest narrative is more interesting. it's not god that transforms perceval, it's the sight of knights for the first time. something in here specifically is incredibly intriguing to me, but there's a different text I need to finish reading to fully form some thoughts on it.

le Morte d’Arthur

and finally! tentatively. I think I might slowly start turning this idea I had a couple years back into a fully formed comic. we'll see! I had most of it blocked out, but halfway through reading augustine's confessions, I think was when perceval finally clicked for me as a character in a later narrative cycle setting. I think I might have to spend a lot of time doing some visual research first because my god I cannot consistently draw armor to save my life......back when I lived in new england, there was a museum with a wonderful medieval armor collection I could visit.....alas.........I will have to hit the books (literally, I have a collection of books on medieval armor but this is apparently the one thing I can't visualize properly in my imagination. save me, museum collections, you're my only hope)

⭐️ credits for the collage panels! (all open access or public domain, etc.)

-Saint George and the Dragon -Saint George and the Dragon (different one lmao) -Pages and Knights, Frontispiece for "The Man at Arms" -Cloisters

⭐ if you like my comics and have a couple bucks, I have a tip jar (ko-fi)!

⭐ and other places I'm at! bsky / pixiv / pillowfort /cohost / cara.app

[tabbedtabby]

good luck, babe! | chapter 2

regina george x reader

summary: After the Queen Bee of North Shore makes up rumors about you taking pictures of girls in the changing room, you decide to take matters into your own hands. You didn’t think that would mean coming to a reluctant agreement with Regina George.

a/n: i wasn’t gonna add cady but now i am because it’s convenient for me so just pretend she’s in the last chapter lol. also they get high way faster than what’s accurate but i wrote this in like 4 sittings it felt longer to me pls spare me. if the picture collage thing is ugly i’m sorry i’m not a tumblr native 😭 but anyways big thanks to everyone who interacted with the first chapter mwah!!!!! (photo creds from left to right: @/mediorcesav on insta, @/marvelsgirl616, casual mv by chappell roan)

——————————————————————

When the bell rings after 7th period, you’re already halfway out the door.

You’re already sober enough from earlier so you’re desperate to get outside, even if Regina will be there. You bite the inside of your mouth in annoyance. You like your after school alone time; you didn’t want the person who literally ruined your social life to be there. At least maybe she’ll leave right after you smoke. You realize she most likely won’t after you remember she drives. How could you forget that bedazzled orange Jeep?

You feel the dappled sunlight sink heat into your skin once you enter the woods behind the baseball field. It really was a nice day. You make your way to your usual spot and lift up the pile of sticks and leaves that hide your forest stash. The guy who sells to you charges a ridiculous amount for carts compared to just the plant so you try to use them sparingly. Even if this shit stinks up the whole forest.

You’re not sure if Regina will care or not if you start without her, so you pull out your phone to pass the time. Besides, you want to be sober anyway when she finally shows.

After about 20 minutes of standing there, you start to get impatient. You almost pull the bag out to start without her before you finally see a flash of blonde hair from behind the trees.

“Took you long enough.” you mutter, already opening the bag without paying Regina much attention. Your patience was windeled, and you don’t especially want to talk to her anyway.

“Sorry I have a social life. I guess you wouldn’t know,” she snaps back, her voice strained.

You feel the annoyance crawl down your back like a centipede, and you have to bite the inside of your mouth to stop yourself from saying something back to her. She holds basically your life in her hands since you’d be both fucked and poor if she decided to snitch on you. Probably not a good idea to start a fight on the first day of your little deal, but she made it difficult.

You grab one of the cans from under the pile of leaves as you see Regina cross her arms a couple feet away from you. Her eyes watching your every move makes you a bit wary on instinct. You feel like a mouse being stalked by a snake. You grab a decently sized piece out of the bag and put it on the crushed can. You couldn’t be bothered to roll your own blunts, so this was the next best thing.

“How much have you smoked before?” you ask, just wanting a general idea on how much she should have so that you wouldn’t have to drag her to the parking lot. Apparently, she takes great offense.

“What are you, my mom? Just hurry up so I can get out of here,” she says begrudgingly, like being out here was the biggest possible drag on her life. She was really grating on your last nerve right now.

“Trying my best.” you respond dryly, giving her a snide smile as you fiddle with the lighter.

“Well, obviously it’s not good enough. What are you even doing, anyway? This is the shadiest shit I’ve ever seen—”

You blow the first hit out of your mouth harshly. “Can you please just shut the fuck up? I don’t want to be out here with you either!”

“That’s shocking. I’m surprised this isn’t your ultimate wet dream, being alone in the forest with me,” Regina sneers, nothing but disgust on her face. Like you were some kind of animal instead of human.

“What’s that going off of? The photo collection that you made up?” you snap, putting the can down for a minute. “Believe me, I want nothing to do with you either. But since we’re gonna be out here every day, you could at least make it a little easier.”

You can tell she wants to rip your throat out just by the way she looks at you. Pursed lips, downturned eyebrows, piercing blue eyes surrounded by eyeliner almost as sharp as the look she’s giving you right now. She’s way too tense for someone about to get high.

“Whatever.” she finally says, although the edge to her voice makes you want to scoff. Better not to sour her mood more than necessary, though.

Pleased with the newfound silence, you light the piece on top of the can once more and take another hit. It’s strong enough to make you cough, and you sit down against the foot of a tree. Regina raises an eyebrow at you.

“I thought you were supposed to be some kind of professional,” she says, but her voice isn’t quite as taunting as before. It almost sounded like a joke. Maybe she was considering not making this hell for you after all.

“It’s not good if it doesn’t make you cough.” you respond with a shrug. She looks at you expectantly, but you pretend you don’t see. You don’t want to have to stand back up just to pass her the can.

Eventually, she sits next to you (albeit, begrudgingly) and you pass the can to her, lighting it again when she puts her lips up to it. She explodes into a coughing fit the minute the smoke hits her lungs.

You can’t help but snicker at the sight of Regina George coughing her lungs out with just one hit from the can. It was almost strange to see her not perfectly arranged the way she was at school. You were up close enough to see the strings that sew her together.

She glares at you from the corner of her eye, but it only makes you laugh harder. You’re acting stupid right now and you’re aware of it, but you can’t stop. It’s a nice sort of high. Not like when you smoke too much and everything starts to blur together, which happens more than you’d like to admit. But this is nice. You lean back until your back touches the grass.

Regina has a couple more hits until she’s smoked about everything that’ll come out of it, and you both just lay there on the forest floor. You’re surprised she isn’t whining about dirt getting on her outfit. Maybe she’s too stoned to care. She never did answer your question about her tolerance.

Your thoughts go elsewhere as you stare up at the sky. The tops of the trees cover most of it. The sun from behind the leaves make them look almost as if they are glowing. It’s so beautiful. You wish you could reach up and feel it between your own fingertips, the fabric of the sky.

“You don’t care about what I think about you.” You hear Regina say, her voice only a couple of feet away from you. It sounds more like a statement than a question.

You don’t why it’s funny to you, but it is. You feel the laugh escape your lips before you can stop it.

“I guess not.” you respond, even though you’re not certain if she wanted a response. It sounded like she was just thinking out loud. You feel that.

“Everyone else does. They grovel to me like lap dogs.” she says amusingly, although her voice drags and you can tell she’s starting to get tired.

“You don’t like it?” you ask with surprise.

“It’s the way it should be,” she declares, as if you’re stupid for even asking. “But everyone else is a less hot version of me. It gets annoying talking to the same clones that hang onto my every word. Like, just be normal for once in your life,” Regina complains, an annoyed edge in her tone near the end. Somehow you could tell she was talking about Gretchen. That poor girl really did hang onto every little thing Regina said or did. It was almost worshipful. But in an unfortunate, sad kind of way.

Her problems didn’t seem all that hard compared to others, but you don’t say anything. It’s intesting to you to hear her talk about this stuff, to see what goes on in her head. You’d never really considered what her life was like. You wonder if there’s a reason she’s the way that she is. There must be. Everyone’s a product of their environment in some shape or form. Of course, it doesn’t excuse everything she’s done, but that thought makes you want to get inside her head somehow.

You shake your head at the silly train of thought. Regina George was just plain mean. Nothing more to it. You turn your head to look at her as you realize you never responded.

Her eyes are closed, hair splayed out on the forest ground. She looks stoned as fuck, her chest rising and falling dangerously slow. You snort and roll your eyes. How low was her tolerance? You already felt mostly normal again.

Somehow she still manages to look perfect, even if you could mistake her as a corpse. You lay your head back down. Your parents wouldn’t mind if you were home a little late, right?

-

After that, you and Regina would meet to smoke behind the school almost every day, except when Regina had plans with her friends and you would just go alone. You still wish she wasn’t there, but sometimes she’s okay to talk to when she isn’t being a priss. She complains about her friends and boys and how sometimes in the morning her eyelash curler refuses to work. It’s entertaining to hear about how shallow her problems are. You still want to punch her most of the time, though.

This time around, however, she’s complaining about math. Something about her teacher failing her on purpose or something to make her have sex with him to get her grade up. You seriously doubt that’s true, but you listen anyway.

“Like, he’s totally obsessed with me. I know how to do the work, but he always marks it as wrong anyway. That Cady girl helps me with it, and she’s some kind of math freak.” Regina exclaims, taking a huge hit from the smoking can. She immediately sputters and you take the can back from her with a slight roll of your eyes. That’s probably enough for her.

“Is she, though?” you ask, taking a hit from the can yourself. “She’s in my Calc class and lately she’s been doing really shitty. I guess you guys are rubbing off on her,” you say with amusement.

Regina takes a deep breath, an agitated sigh coming out of her. “What’s the point of her tutoring me, then? They’re gonna take me off the soccer team if I don’t start passing like all of my classes. It’s like she wants me to fail.” she seethes, and she sounds genuinely upset. She could afford to pay attention in class instead of doing her makeup if better grades is what she wants, but alas.

You kind of want to offer to help her, but it’s her own fault so you bite your tongue. You put the can down with a sharp sigh. You’d rather not smoke too much around her in fear that you’ll start acting stupid and she’ll post it all over the internet. Just the slightly more giggly high is fine for now.

Regina stares bullets through you as your stash back under the pile of leaves. You pick up your backpack and get ready to leave. You feel fine enough to walk home.

“You’re not gonna offer to help me?” she asks indignantly, as if you owed it to her. You have to bite your lip to keep from groaning in annoyance. Could she be any more of a spoiled brat?

“Why would I do that?” you respond, feeling that your distaste seeps through your voice as well as your expression. You’re tired, both from school and from hanging out with Regina for too long. You just want to go home.

“Because I’m keeping your secret?” she says with that tone that reminds you of a viper. The one she uses to get whatever she wants from people by threatening to ruin them. Your chest bubbles with that same anger as that day in the cafeteria.

“Dude, I’m literally your plug. I’ve done enough for you to keep your mouth shut.” you snap, slinging your backpack over your shoulder. She was really starting to piss you off. That’s how it was with Regina; just when you think she’s all right, she starts doing this bullshit again.

“So what? I don’t need weed. I can break our deal whenever I want. Besides, you’ll only tutor me until the end of the month. It’s not that deep.” It’s only the beginning of October, so you’d be wasting more of your time with her for the next month, but of course she doesn’t include that. God, you’re so pissed off, but what can you do? Not be able to smoke anymore? Get suspended again? You hate that she can just hang this over your head until you comply. You bite your lip hard enough to draw blood as you stare at her, one of her hands on her hip and her eyebrows raised as if you’re a dog she just told to heel that won’t listen. Your hands bunch into tight fists until your knuckles turn white. You really wish you had seen her with that bruise right about now.

“Fine.” you spit, pushing your way out of the clearing and back towards the school. Great. Now it would take even longer to shake Regina off. You shoulder branches of leaves out of your way, your feet kicking at the dirt. You wished she could just be fucking normal and that she never started any of this in the first place.

“I better see you tomorrow, loser!” You hear Regina scream from somewhere behind you. God, you were gonna kill her. Or yourself. Whichever came first.

[decodedlvr]

the band-aid to my wounds

Older!Eddie Munson x naive!Fem reader - eventual twins Steve Harrington x reader x Kurt Kunckle series| pt 1 | pt 2 | pt 3 … TBC

Summary: After stumbling into an old barn after being stranded by your freshly new ex boyfriend, you wake up strangely in a room..that isn't yours..

warnings: talks of cheating, abuse, angst, slight stockholm syndrome at a glance, anxiety, childhood trauma, parent problems; daddy issues, eventual smut, cursing, drinking, smoking, perviness, slight dub-con, miscommunications, blood mention

word count: idk? 1k?

June 12th, 1988 the roads were closed off.

I have no idea why im still together with this asshole, why am i so stupid? oh because id do anything for people to love and not leave me. Looking at him now..hands beating the steering wheel, veins popping through his temples..not to mention his breath. Ashton my oh so loving, narcissist, no good boyfriend. We've been together for 6 years, basically high school sweethearts. Went from flirty glaces, to lab partners, to collage students with an alcohol addiction. Mainly his addiction...he got me started on it.

Ashton basically took me in with his fatherly like protectiveness when we first got together. He was walking me to my front door after a bowling date he asked me out to my sophomore year, of course i said yes.; until the front door opened. Uh oh, dads home; Bill. The moment the door opened i watched my father tackle Ashton to the ground without so much as a reason screaming words like "get off my property, boys like you should be dead in a gutter, ill kill you"...

Lets just say that date night was a bit too eventful for my liking.

My dad always had a problem with Ashton because he went to highschool with his father. Ashtons dad was a bully back in the day, made my dads life a living hell.. took everything away from him. the girl, the looks, the job..

Dave, Ashtons father, was caught making out with Shannon, my dads ex lover but also first love. Dave knew he had the upper hand when it came to getting the things he wanted. Hell, Shannon seduced him into it. Shannon was only with my dad for the money. Got knocked up but gave him the baby and ran away to be with his dad. As you can see I am that baby now today.

I made a promise to Ashton after sneaking him to my bedroom window that same night cleaning his wounds; that it was me and him against the world. He knew about me and my parents relationship. How my step-mother only has good things to say about me in a room full of people, but how she degrades me behind closed doors. How my dads drinking problem gave him alcohol poisoning, twice' and about his anger problems. You'd think being in a household that is always loud would help you shape up to loud sounds in the future. Boy was that theory proven wrong.

anytime someone yells or raises their tone, you're immediately in fight or flight response. tense..anxious. You hate going to basketball games just for that reason. Its uncomfortable.. and he knew that, but apparently in this moment, he didn't give a fuck-

"Did you hear me??" Ashton says impatiently. "No im sorry, i cant hear when you mumble.." you reply

you also hated when people uttered things under their breath.

dad does that shit.

"Don't be smart with me y/n, ill leave you right here,right now in the middle of the fucking road

"Yeah whatever Ashton, just stop talking to me and drive" feeling the breaks pull forward and in a flash he was out of the drivers seat, and already pulling you out of the passenger-

"WHAT THE FUCK" i yell- what the fuck are you doing Ashton?”

“Shut up!” he smacks me. Your eyes widen in more shock than fear over anything. “Did you j-just hit me?” i ask with a scratched voice--

“I told you more than once not to back talk me didnt i?”

“i didn’t.. it was once and i stopped ashton”-

-“You’ve done it all goddamn night, accusing me of cheating, clinging onto me when i ran into Tommy, i told you to give me some fucking space --i interrupt him.

“YOU did cheat on me you asshole!! That bitch was fucking bragging about it in the bathroom”—

“Do you really think after what 4 years-“6 actually“ i say pissing him off further. he looks at you angrily

He sighs. “Do you really think after years of being together, i would do that to you?” he say looking down at the ground sadly; making you instatly regret your words

“..no-no of course not i just thou”-

-“You thought wrong! he snaps-I would never do that to you baby..y/n?” he says letting go of the grip on my arms, caressing my cheek-“..I know you get a little confused sometimes, its okay come here” he says pulling you into a deep hug

“..im sorry ash”-

“shh” he coos.

“I really thought—what the fuck is that?” you shove him away

“Y-you piece of shit!!” you pull around back collar piece of his shirt up to his face; showing him the peach colored lipstick stain

“Are you fucking serious Ashton?” his eyes widen and stomach drops when he sees the prominent evidence of his past events—

“B-baby look-“

“No! fuck you were done!”

He grabs me closer, “No we fucking arent- ive gave you everything! he starts shouting making you flinch

P-please stop yelling at me! you plea tears rolling down your face

“Just—here” he opens the car door “just get back in and ill explain on the way”—

“No.” you shove past him running and crying

“Y/N come back here!. its too dark—

“ i dont care leave me alone!”

“Y/n theres crazy people out here..!”

you stop in your tracks, turning back to say- “You’re the crazy person!”

he laughs. “Oh im crazy? Ill show you fuckin crazy”—he says marching over to the drivers side of the car starting it back up—mumbling ill show you a fucking crazy person babe—and he spees off

you cant believe he actually just left you.. standing here.

“ASSHOLE!” you shout regulardess if hes still there or not, turning back around to walk down the cold empty road

are you fuckig kidding me?

wow he fooled me

how didnt i see this before

did he love me?

he says he does

then why did he leave me..

fucking jerk!!

The long 7 mile walk with a head full of shitty thoughts walk you to a sun burnt orange barn.

you're exhausted. your hearts broken. your feet hurt. its too dark to keep walking

"I mean i could crash here right?" you say already walking towards the musky building

hay bells, chickens, tools. looks already owned

you dont care you just need a place to rest you head for a bit.

stinks in here. muttering to yourself, opening and shutting the barn door behind you.

perfect you say spotting an old rocking chair..and yard sale signs?

does somebody live here?

you're too exhausted to think any more tonight

this'll do. taking your jacket off to use as a prop pillow, climbing into the chair almost immediately drifting off.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

whats that smell? smells like bacon?

bacon? your eyes are still shut but you can sense a different environment around you. Fluttering your eyes open.. a clock? pictures? what?-jumping up at the sound of a shoe

"WHO ARE YOU?" your already in flight or fight mode

"Whoa whoa its okay, im the owner of the barn i found you in”.

is he lying?

"YOU'RE LYING!" you look around in a panic

"Sweetheart if i was lying, how come i specifically found you in my rocking chair, you must of been tired, i got my buddy who also runs the farm to scoop you up and bring you to our guest bedroom, couldn't just leave a woman out in the open like that.. especially at night"

your stomach knots when he calls you sweetheart.

okay maybe he harmless, just very kindly harmless?

"Here" he throws his arm out, "I'm Eddie, Eddie Munson."

- - is this interesting so far? lmk- -

reblogs appreciated:>

[cleolinda]

Weekend links, May 12, 2024

My posts

Your head is hurting and your wifi is out because the biggest solar flare/geomagnetic storm in 20 years hit this weekend. I didn’t actually get to see the aurora borealis, but apparently it really did come down as far as Alabama. 

I admit that this was an extremely glib reply. But like, Athena specifically doesn’t like people claiming they’re better than her, so you can imagine the carnage when you throw in two more goddesses as well.  

(I feel like that post happened a month ago. This week has felt so ungodly long.)

Reblogs of interest

Hot Vintage Lady Bracket: Round 6. Eight polls. Poll Mod immediately chose violence and put Marilyn Monroe against Hedy Lamarr. Since Ava Gardner is out (actual shockers: Greta Garbo and Rita Hayworth are also gone), I was going to say “I’m just Chaos Elmo Flames Dot Gif about it all” but now I’m just scared. 

(Why would you ask us, a hot vintage poll blog, this)

Dracula Daily is in full swing again, and you can eat along!

The Met Gala was honestly decent this year! I reblogged only (some of) the ones I liked, including some of the construction details and a lot of Zendaya, although my favorite might have been Rebecca Ferguson with the crows. 

A while back and not what he wore to the Gala, but: Lil Nas X looking beautiful in a rose garden.

Hozier Watch 2024: I really thought there wasn’t going to be anything else and then he was like, “Oh I should probably put out a video for my accidental international #1.” I am entirely disgruntled that he was here last weekend and I couldn’t go. 

From the top of the week, Drake vs. Kendrick Lamar: An explainer. Also, Kendrick recs.

MrBeast is living in a joyless hell of his own making, and I at least understand now why he has always freaked me out. 

So anyway noted plagiarist James Somerton is alive and well on Twitter, where he’s... well, he sure is there. The words “hole posting” are involved. Another explainer for you. 

Lynda Carter proves she’s on Tumblr

We put our faith in BLAST HARDCHEESE

Peace and love on planet Earth and also in the Uber

“thinking about middle aged gay love is like. we have a future and we have time”

While there are merits to this concern, “Writers should all clown on Americans by making up places in THEIR country” doesn’t really sting when we’re all like “Yeah we love doing that!!!” I personally give you all permission to make up as many wackadoodle state names as you want. You can have West Mainolina for free. 

Meanwhile in Alabama: Bad, bad Leroy Brown, the baddest fish in the whole damn town

RIP Walnut the crane: “The Bride”

Dinosaurs are terrible lizards

Teaching consent is a many-faceted thing

Become ungovernable: grill edition

Video

Galadriel’s opening Fellowship of the Ring monologue, but it’s the Deep South (U.S.). “Across the county line in Mordor, the Dark Lord Sauron made his self another ring outta everything mean the devil put in him.” Absolutely pitch perfect. 

Also pitch perfect: Wellness influencers with terrible advice

“Mooom, the chocolate alchemist has an accomplice now!”

I will always reblog cheetah sounds

The Collage Atlas: a hand-drawn game on Steam

The sacred texts

South Canada. South South Canada. Canada A Bit to the Left

I think I’ve listed this compilation of parody lyrics (”I’m sorry Ms. Jackson/I am four eels”) before, but there’s more now

“Roses are red, that much is true, but violets are purple, not fucking blue”

Personal tags of the week

Scrungly and, as a related topic, Belphegor the Devon rex kitten.

[vivianbernadetteaurora]

 Maddie Perez style

Maddie S Styling in euphoria , starts out really liked with cherries 🍒 and matching outfits with cherries Chanel style outfits, butterflies and things like that, it changes during the first series through the trauma that she goes through in it when she’s happy at the beginning with Nate she’s in her light to colours pink purple but mainly like patterns Louis Vuitton which I don’t know how high school students can afford Louis Vuitton, but there you go,

So in the first season, we like I said we have a lot of floral co ord outfits, when she turns up to the carnival she is in a very revealing outfit in a purple which then comes out more and season two once her Nate broken up, it is the beginning of where it comes out the most and have fair kicks in when she’s at the carnival. She really dresses to impress and is really happy and it with her she gets and he tells her she looks like a prostitute which causes her to go off the right, fairly

The next day when she comes to school after he’s sorted her acting up around his family, he sees , as a friend to his family and friends and being embarrassed, specially as she spoke to his mother, and his family expect him to be with a woman he put up with his shit like his father does, Maddie isn’t that kind of,

Cassie would never of done Cassie, constantly, to previous years of past and this happened when I was unique for having a triangle like this, but it seems in your things like this up and all the time, meant to be meant to be like teenagers I mean America you guys staying in high school  forever at it it seems I mean look at GREASe jokes lol, even though Alexa Demi was 25 my day apparently she’s my age 33 or 32 at the time.

So after this is really bad I’m done with MDMA and she’s hit it up with us sunglasses on but from where he has sorted her around the neck and his bruised her parents when press charges she doesn’t and they make her, they are however still meeting up and seeing each other they put another abusive relationship is going back-and-forth back-and-forth and meeting up in weird places where no one can see them so I don’t have time for anything else.

Like I said with Cassie Howard have a colour palette does not change as always baby blue and baby pink M possibly , too dramatic , until she gets with Nate and he basically turns her into a version of Maddie but more jules embarrassed that he fancies someone he’s transgender as well but when you see Cassie, she looks just like her make up ,.

But this is Maddie season two her colour palette seems to be a lot more grown-up. She’s wearing black with light lace around it which compliments her dark features and our pair shape body and petite frame ..

Babysitting for a lady who has a lot of money she’s trying on nice clothes and realising that she could have this all one day and her friend who is the babysitter tells her that she did exactly what she did her colour in this season seem to be black green and purple , purple represents our personality , and it’s a real spiritual , light green and some of her other outfits are very inspired and early 2000s out of everyone else in the group , I’ve put these in a collage of outfits together but like I said, she progresses a lot more than Cassie and a few of the other Ocado , because she is wanting to grow up some of them are stuck in an age .

Maddie wants to get her grow up. She doesn’t wanna be her mum, but they said there was people who had their feet done and the people who did the , represented when buys her that coat .

The clothes make her feel a certain way and confident and like she says shit she pretends to be confident and teaches Lexi. That’s the way she does it. She just pretends that they often do the colours and euphoria of what’s going on for them at the time .

Nate buys her some lingerie it’s pink and it’s not something she feels comfortable when but she likes to impress men in a certain way. We’re watching porn and doing what they think would be desirable and she pretends to like underwear when she thinks it’s awful my phone that so funny, she makes herself look pretty, characters, RUE Bennett, her doesn’t change that much because she is stuck in her 10 years and the years of when her dad was dying and she feels the safety towards her but a lot of, and only 2000, Popstar.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Ccommd IV 2002 IDM / Abstract

Continuing this foray into the now-ancient, pre-social media days of online music community building with this highly ephemeral, half-decent IDM comp from 2002 that was made by the message board denizens of the website of Warp Records. Warp itself had long carried the torch of being the world's premier IDM label, and the folks who contributed to this album seem to have been highly inspired by a bunch of their own acts, like Aphex Twin, Squarepusher, Autechre, Boards of Canada, and a whole bunch of others.

And knowing that these musicians loved Warp to the point that they'd be regular contributors to its own message board kinda makes me feel that, while listening to this, I am myself someone at the label who's constantly seeking out fresh talent and wades through neverending, enormous piles of demos that they've received. And I've just happened to pop this Ccommd IV CD into my changer to see if anything might catch my ear 🤞.

Except, in reality, I didn't actually find this one on CD, because apparently, virtually no one can. It's not currently for sale on Discogs, it's never been sold there, and only 4 users on the site claim to own a copy right now. Super rare!

But thankfully, although it's been long out of print, the UK-based collective that was responsible for putting it out originally, TEFOSAV (The Electronic Foundation of Sound and Vision) records, has made it available on their own Bandcamp site for free, which is where I was able to come across it 👍.

So what we have here in the fourth installment of this Warp-inspired series, as is probably somewhat average for someone who gets tasked with listening to demos, is a comp with a good deal of half-baked clunk on it and a few nice gems too. The album hits back-to-back with Sktbx's "Wikal - Butcheredcetacea Mix" and Orange Dust's "Bitmap Sunset," both of which should have you feeling like you've come across a pretty sweet, nearly-lost-to-the-y2k-Internet-sands-of-time IDM goldmine. But most of what then follows that beginning turns out to be pretty underwhelming 😔.

That is until the grand finale, with Autofire's "Boots Akid (Nautilus Remix)," which is one of those songs that specializes in the art of splicing together multiple split-second samples of various bits of sound in order to construct melodies and rhythms out of them. I especially love when people do this type of stuff because I feel like it's such a meticulous process to make these collages in the first place, and it also happens to throw up a big middle finger and shit-eating-grin to the absurd copyright police, who can't sue you if the provenance of the minuscule bit that you've sampled is actually unknowable 😁. That said, though, I'm pretty sure I can hear the distinct voice of a very prominent TV character in this one. Not gonna give it away for fear that some big, evil, corporate web scraper comes across this post and files a cease-and-desist and/or lawsuit because of me—these posts show up in Google searches, folks!—but I'm pretty sure I'm hearing that voice. And Nautilis, by the way (yes, I know, I spelled it as Nautilus before, because that's how it was written on the tracklist!), had already made his first release on Mike Paradinas' (µ-Ziq) Planet Mu label the year before this album itself was released.

So, I had a feeling that I knew what I was getting myself into with this from jump, because most comps of this type aren't likely to consistently knock it out of the park, but given that fact, this album was still able to satisfy enough. So far, this little online y2k-era archaeology project of mine's been fun, even if a good portion of the music's ended up leaving a bit to be desired.

And for more posts like this one, check out Finnish label Luumu's Into the Core of Luumu and this double-disc that was made by folks from the ambient mailing list of pioneering online electronic music resource, Hyperreal, too ✌️.

Highlights:

Sktbx - "Wikal - Butcheredcetacea Mix" Orange Dust - "Bitmap Sunset" Pro(xy) - "D.C.K." Autofire - "Boots Akid (Nautilus Remix)"

[bettimbellis]

A Collage (of Yelling)

I saw someone do something like this to advertise their fic- they linked the fic, and then put in a little collage of various comment snippets. I can’t find the post to show off- someone please do let me know if you’ve seen that, I want to credit them. 

Either way, my Hollow Knight post-Black-Egg-Temple fic (linked here) has 209 comment threads on it. I’ve gone through and found some bits. These bits were mostly chosen for entertainment/intrigue value out of context- a lot of my favorite comments didn’t get in. 

Got some good reviews there, I think. Anyone wanna see the collection I have of Discord screenshots from folks yelling at me about this fic?  (Seriously though, thank all of y’all who comment, yell in the tags, whatever- I love it. Really helps keep the writing muse going, too.)

Image descriptions below the cut. 

[Image ID: a collection of bits of text placed on a light green background, in several groups. Text is as follows. 

Excuse me who gave you the right to hit me with this line at seven in the morning”, with an arrow pointing to the left. also it feels like there are many things to be concerned about lmao  God, Hollow is such a poor baby. A lanky wet cat left in the rain. Hollow, that feeling is love, dear, no need to feel so confused about it. Hornet, my sad dumb little spider baby, go to bed. in summary holy shit this is fucked sounds like stressTM can these characters stop being so relatable good Lird *smacks my face* Hornet. Hornet. the fuck HOLY FUCKING SHIT [all caps] It was so soft!!!! And then it became *so goddamn angsty-* *squints harder*  Wet rag is my new favorite character. *thunks my head on a wall* Gosh darn it Oro course you had to have integrity But also OW MY HEART?! SHATTERED?1 POOR BABY HOLLOW IM GONNA CRY Gosh dang. The last chapter was a little lighter, but apparently you were just holding back for this one.  (Chp. 3) I stg this whole chapter made my emotions whip back and forth between “awww :)” and “awwh :(” and “oh. Oh no baby do not think like that”.  Augh. just, augh. / ...except that bit at the end. ...except that last sentence, ‘cause, yeah. / *hides face in hands* this has been exhausting for everyone, apparently. Hollow knight or: when you are so touch starved that your standards for touch that you want are somewhere in the abyss that has spawned you.  Whatever the FUCK happened in the last section is Oh Lord Oh God What The Heeeeeellll Ohhhh My Goood No Waaayyyy... Will be waiting for the next chapter STARING at ao3...

i was so relieved to read this that i accidentally put my phone in airplane mode trying to respond “it is startled out of its pleasant memory-” pLEASANT???? PLEASANT!?! Hollow no. HOLLOW NO- / why does this for some reason almost feel like fluff.  My urge to keysmash at you is strong Just. God. Everything about this is so fucked in so many ways.

Something about this line just makes me want to. Maybe stab the king in the chest. Repeatedly. And then throw them off a bridge. Idk Actually many things about this chapter make me want to stab the king in the chest repeatedly and then throw them off a bridge. Because *holy shit* Hollow, honey, you have so much trauma. OMG ghost, what have you done [stressed emoji] Okay then. Well. Um. That’s a lot to happen.  God it’s such a mess Ah yes, the eldritch nonsense trying to approximate a living creature, my beloved PK you ass. PK you absolute ASS get over here I wanna hit you with something heavy-  oh / im immediately punched in the face okay thank you for that Right off the bat I am mildly excited about this chapter solely because you played with text formatting and that makes my serotonin levels rise. I don’t know why but thank you for that.  CONFUSION SOUP I’M FHDHDJFKFKGH I wanna join the cuddle pile :<<< let me in [holding Hollow gently in both hands] / I will get you all the fresh-dirt-scented soap Fucking superb you funky little vessels. Oh boy! Spiraling!

Oh this chapter hurts ‘specially bad. Because it wasn’t enough to be possessed and neglected and quite literally tortured and driven insane, now we gotta have more medical issues and amnesia-  I fuckign cried at this one, oh my god. Pain is always a tearjerker, but it’s nothing compared to someone who’s been in pain so long finally getting that first big moment of *realizing they’re wanted* and *heard* and *healing*  And I gotta say, (this is gonna sound bad) I really do love Hollow’s victim blaming. Or how it’s written. I love how you write characters in pain <333 “Oh, just a quick chapter to read before bed,” I thought to myself. “I will enjoy it and feel a normal and manageable level of emotions about it.” / ...Thanks for making me all teary in the wee hours, now I’ll never get to sleep! (...I mean this as praise.) Oh. Oh Hollow. So wrapped up in the need to be useful. So incapable still of seeing that their own gut-wrenching familial love might be returned in kind, whether they have some designated purpose for their existence or not.  Yeah. Relieved. / Oh, Hollow... You have already left kudos here :) [three times] / Have I ever been told the definition of insanity?  honestly the body horror was the /least/ disturbing thing in this chapter. not to say! that it was not disturbing - even then, less the horror and more the. context. i want to punch TPK. into a lake. that is on fire.

First comment of my first reread, and MAN. This opening hits just as hard the second time.  Keep in mind Hollow Knight was made by Australian people Hollow 100% deserves a nice date at the palace if they so wish. anyway, I feel very emo about Hollow, all the time.  HOLLOW IS LETTING THEMSELVES HAVE WILL, LET’S GOOOOOO Ghost is doing Fine:tm:, Hornet is doing Fine:tm:, Hollow is *actually* doing pretty well Good news! Hollow is an emotional wreck!  Hornet is doing sooo normal right now (lying).

TLDR; amazing story, glorious update, poor Grimm, I Am Desperate For Shield Lore, someone please tell Ghost it isn’t their fault, the entire gaggle of siblings needs a group hug, I Am Going To Put The Pale King’s Corpse Through A Shredder, and Hornet needs another good cry. 

anyways fuck you for writing this keep it up

[cartograffiti]

December '23 reading diary

I finished 4 books in December, which is always a month in which I read less. I'm also going to talk a bit about reading challenges!

All the Hidden Paths is the second Tithenai Chronicles book by Foz Meadows. Apparently this is now a finished duology, but I really thought it could have run for many books and I would have inhaled them all happily. Read A Strange and Stubborn Endurance first. They're not light books, but they're remarkably hopeful and uplifting, character arcs of healing from violence and homophobia set in a fantasy/romance/political drama plot. I wanted even more, but that's likely because they were written For Me. I love how Meadows writes culture, the emotional beats knock me flat, and they work in lots of tasty character depth.

I was not wildly impressed with the photography book Accidentally Wes Anderson compiled by Wally Koval. This features photos contributed by a large number of members of an internet group by the same name, and while the pictures are gorgeous, there's not quite enough variety in the subject types. The text is of highly variable quality, never stellar, and sometimes outright tedious.

I love Cat Sebastian's romance series The Cabots, and I thoroughly enjoyed the new novella Luke and Billy Finally Get a Clue, though since no characters from the previous books appear, I'm not sure whether the connection is really justified. Never mind, it's fun and sweet. Luke and Billy are pro baseball players in the 1950s, and when one of them gets hit in the head with a ball, he decides what he really needs for his recovery is to travel to another state, where his crush is house-sitting during a family birth, and they spend the whole time poking at each other until they admit their massive crushes. Cute, and cute in part because they are both a bit annoying and bitchy and find that attractive about each other!

Dubious Documents is a faux-ephemera puzzle book by Nick Bantock which I wanted to buy my mother for a Christmas present, but when I sounded out her interest level I accidentally inspired her to buy it herself. Oh, well! We both solved it very easily, sometimes checking with each other, and had a great time. Every puzzle is a highly illustrated envelope attached to the spine, with a sheet within printed on both sides with collage art. The book has a "clues" page, but many simply cannot be solved without using them (and I don't mean because they're hard, I mean because there's no guidance what you're after just visually), so we both recommend reading them before you get stuck. The hardest one for me had to do with interpreting a sailor's personnel record, and the hardest for Mom required unscrambling letters to make the names of Japanese cities. Unique, pretty, very giftable (if only I'd been allowed to, Mom ;)). We're working on a harder book of his now, which I'll talk about next time.

Reading challenges talk: In the last couple of years, I've really enjoyed using challenges to help me prioritize my tbr (and push me to get off it). Book Riot's annual prompt list is great, I like their variety and difficulty level. Popsugar's is fun, but I have not been as impressed with their prompts, which sometimes feel to me like they were trying to promote a specific book, or do something winky appropriate to the year. StoryGraph's staff-designed annual challenges are very thoughtful, and I'm going to do both their genre challenge and read the world challenge again this year. The last of these has been the hardest to complete each time, by which I mean I haven't completed it, twice, so I'm really hoping this will be the year. It's short (10 books) compared to these others, but it takes more research, as books in translation are less available.

Personal missions for '24: There are quite a few series I'm working my way through, but I'm particularly planning to wrap up The Witcher books, which I stalled out on because another library patron in my area was reading them just ahead of me and kept keeping them out overdue. I'm also intending to get into the Lymond series this year, because I would like to scream and die with certain of my friends. :)

[mcfiddlestan]

Y’all can ignore this post. I’m kind of just purging thoughts.

So I finally got my insurance/doctor situation managed. I saw a doctor in late February and, ofc, they ordered a bunch of other appts for me bc I haven’t been checked out by a doctor — aside from injuries — for more than a decade. So I have/had appts scheduled for a Pap smear (my first, so that was a yikes day), mammogram (not looking forward to this), an EKG to check where my heart murmur is at and if I still need to medicate before seeing the dentist. I had to do this when I was a kid. Six pills of whatever meds before and four more after. Bc apparently whatever they use at the dentist, even for a regular cleaning, can kill me bc of my heart murmur (I was born with a small hole in my heart.) And after the Pap smear, I now have a pelvic ultrasound scheduled bc I have super painful cramps on one side that the NP wants to check out.

Anyway, part of the first exam was a mental health check, and I guess some of my answers sent up a red flag. Right away that day, the doc prescribed me anxiety meds. A month’s worth. When I had a week’s amount left, I called for a refill but I have to have a follow up before I can get it. (After this I can get refills with no issues.) I also started weekly sessions with a therapist which have been AMAZING. Just getting out of the house for a couple hours (I’m a stay at home caregiver for my dad — and my mom before she passed) and talking to someone who’s putting my needs and mental health first is kind of awesome. Anyway, I ran out of my meds a week and a half ago and don’t have the follow up until the 19th. Last week I was fine. Didn’t feel any different. This week tho… hoo boy. 😮‍💨

On Monday my sister gifted me and my brother a gorgeous 5x7 frame of a collage of family pix. So I look at that whenever I miss my Mom. But it seemed to trigger something in me. Stressed and on edge the next couple days it hit me bad on Thursday. Tv shows with storylines featuring a lost parent kept setting me off. I sobbed like four times off and on all day. When I recalled my day to my sister that night, my dad was just sitting there and snickering here and there. I ignored him bc it’s something he’s done a lot. Today, he and I didn’t interact all day, until dinner time. And he copped an attitude right away — he did it again like ten minutes later with my brother and a yelling match ensued. Immediately I was on edge. Then a stupid thing set me off and I had to leave the dinner table. I’ve been in my bedroom for almost an hour sobbing.

All this word vomit to say, my anxiety meds have worked wonders and I need the 19th to hurry up and come.

[nottobehornyonthemain]

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

(Long history with this one, but let’s just say my personal copy of it is the item that family members have told me is the litmus tests if I should ever disappear. If it’s still here, I did not go willingly.)

2. Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein

(When I was 12 I was in a weird place, and my mother, who adores the movies, told me that she’d never actually read the books. It took me several weeks, and one night where my mom came to check on me because my light was still on after midnight, only to find that I had fallen asleep and was drooling on top of Return of the King.)

3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

(First Brontë I ever read, and I listened to it on audio first. Two years ago I gave my grandparents, who never actually pick gifts, they just want Amazon links sent to them, a choice between Jagged Little Pill on vinyl, and a nice copy of Jane Eyre. Apparently they decided Jane Eyre was less scandalous.)

4. Harry Potter series

(My mom read all seven of these out loud to me and my siblings over the course of seven years.)

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

(The summer before I started college, so when I was 15, I worked twice a week at my local library, and I would always go home with huge stacks of books because I was going through one every day, or two if it was particularly dense. I read this one that summer, mostly while spread out on a picnic blanket in my backyard, and I think that’s how it was always intended to be read.)

6. The Bible

(Yes. All of it. In case my blog hasn’t given it away by now, my religious upbringing was… intense.)

7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

(I read this book once for school when I was 14 and hated it. I read it again when I was 16 and bought a copy in Grand Central Station, still hated it. But when I read it again at 19, because I was extremely bored at work and saw it on audio? So yeah, I read a book I knew I hated twice, it shouldn’t have surprised me when I realized I actually liked it and it was important to me.)

8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

(I actually got into a discussion with my collage English professor at one point about what our favorite books where, and I mentioned Orwell, he had thought I ment this one, but I was talking about Animal Farm. This made me a little self conscious, because I hadn’t read the bigger hit, so I immediately wandered up to the school library and checked this one out, just so I could say I’d read it by Wednesday when class met again.)

9. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

(I had a hot Charles Dickens summer one year. This was the first one I read, and it was because of Into the Spiderverse. Miles Morales is a role model.)

10. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott

(I do not love this book. I have watched every adaptation that has ever been made, yes, even the anime. The Greta Gerwig one is pretty good because I’m a sucker for non-linear narratives and Florence Pugh and Timothée Chalamet are pretty good at it.) 

11. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller

(In December of 2021, I realized that I had never read this book, and had the opportunity to do something very funny. So yeah. I read what is considered to be one of the greatest novels of the 20th century as a joke to myself. Anyway, it’s very good, you should probably read it, especially if you like WWII stories and Kafka. Again, love a non-linear narrative.)

12. Complete Works of Shakespeare

(Yes. I got a complete edition at a library book sale, and drew stars on the cover in white gel pen so people would know it was mine, because I’m apparently that bitch. Although, I haven’t read the lost plays (obviously) so I don’t know if I can honestly say I’ve read the Complete works.)

13. Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

(I read this after watching Hannibal the series for the second time because I got into a very deep Gothic Romance mood. I also accidentally got my friend to read it because we were comparing our current reads at the time, and that is how I ended up reading We Always Lived in a Castle.)

14. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

(The far superior Tolkien work in my personal taste. I love it. One of my friends reads this book once a year, and I love that for them, I’m not quite that in love with it, but this is about where my limits on where I can enjoy fantasy lie. Like, I’ll read higher stuff if I make myself, but I’ll tell you right now, I’m going to finish and move the fuck on.)

15. Catcher in the Rye

(It’s by J. D. Salinger, by the way. The list didn’t have an author on there. Read this one the same summer as To Kill a Mockingbird. Anyway, I love that Holden Caulfield was just some fucking guy that Salinger made up and decided to put in a bunch of his works, without bothering to make it into a series by making timelines or middle names match. He really just put his OC in situations, and I love that.)

16. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

(My brother used to work a job where he would help a guy in town sort through old books that he got from somewhere, and pick out ones that were still readable from ones that had been completely ruined, and he made a few bucks an hour and got to take home any books he wanted, and the guy would sell the good ones for like fifty cents somewhere. But my brother would always bring home books he thought people would like. At the time I was obsessed with the costume designs Walter Plunkett had done for the 1939 mega-hit film. So, when my brother found one while sorting through books, I ended up being gifted the most beaten up copy of Gone With the Wind I’ve ever seen in my life.)

17. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald

(I am obnoxious about this book. I can, and have, talked for hours about this book. There is an audiobook for this book narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal, he is perfect for Nick Carraway. This book is the save me meme for me.)

18. Bleak House – Charles Dickens

(Again. Charles Dickens summer.)

19. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy

(Did I read this book after I listened to Great Comet? Yes. Did I read all of it? Also yes. Having done so, and legitimately liking quite a lot of it, I do recommend it if you liked Great Comet, because the detail you get to go into is great, and makes you feel like a huge nerd. Also, recommend for people who want a 55 hour long audiobook.)

20. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

(There’s an audiobook for this one narrated by Steven Fry. It’s also one of the funniest books I’ve ever read.)

21. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

(Have I ever mentioned that I hate “it was all a dream/no one remembers” endings? Because I hate “it was all a dream/no one remembers” endings. I do, however, really like “person goes to a fucked up new place” stories. So I guess it balances out. The Cheshire Cat is on the list of characters I would commit war crimes to play.)

22. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

(Me and my brother both read this book when we were younger and for years whenever we hear the name of this one, or literally anything with the word “wind” or “willows” in the title we’ll go “is that the one with the mole?”, because we think it’s funny.)

23. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

(I was once in a book club with two high school English teachers, and two housewives. We all made the mistake of letting one of the English teachers pick first, and this was the first and only book that club was assigned, as no one but me actually finished it. Anyway, the 2012 film version is a fucking masterpiece and I don’t know why it’s not talked about more.)

24. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

(Charles Dickens summer. I actually read Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver recently too, and that book is very very good, I would honestly say go read that one before this one.)

25. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

(My brother was very into these when he was like, 15, and I read them. They’re not my favorite, and honestly, many people who like them more have more interesting things to say about them than I do.)

26. Emma – Jane Austen

(I don’t know what magic Austen put into this book to constantly get the best film adaptations made of it, but my god she did. It’s a triple header too, because the Gwyneth Paltrow one is a perfectly good older style straight Austen period film. Clueless is probably my favorite of the “let’s do a high school AU of this piece of classical literature” genre, and Emma. (2020) is… just about perfect.)

27. Persuasion – Jane Austen

(This is probably Austen’s best book from a craft standpoint. It’s not my favorite of her works because of nostalgia I have for pride and prejudice, but… I mean, it’s the getting back together one, which is my favorite romance subgenre. Idk, I would recommend this one first to anyone who was asking me where to start with Jane Austen.)

28. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

(Again. People who like this book more than I do definitely have more interesting things to say about it. That being said, the film version of this one fucking slaps, and if you haven’t recently, you should rewatch it.)

29. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden

(This is a book that I think would have greatly benefited from being written by a woman. Or someone who grew up in Japan. Or someone who didn’t get sued for breach of contract and defamation of character by one of the geisha he interviewed to write this novel. Anyway, I recommend Mineko Iwasaki’s autobiography, Geisha of Gion.)

30. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

(I don’t have much to say about this one. I read, and then I read something else. This one wasn’t a cornerstone of my childhood like I know it was for a lot of people.)

31. Animal Farm – George Orwell

(One of my favorite books of all time. I read it for the first time at 14, and proceeded to read it 12 more times in two months. It’s a very fast read, and I had anti-totalitarianism sensibilities that were ripe for feeding.)

32. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

(I’m not going to lie. I like the movie version of this one just fine. Read the book anyway. But, fun fact, when this movie came out I lived in Mississippi, and there was a campaign against my local library to get the book taken out of their catalog on the basis of blasphemy. So that’s wild.)

33. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

(In contrast to my last point, this is one that is just so light, and airy, and just reading it makes you feel good. It’s like a scented candle in book form. And no film adaptation is ever going be able to capture that, because it’s not about seeing the world with Anne in it as something shining and beautiful, it’s about how Anne sees the world as something shining and beautiful, and she makes you see it that way too.)

34. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

(So, this book is great. We all know that. Now, onto storytime. Once upon a time in the 90’s, my dad got bored one day and decided to watch the 1990 movie version of this one, he didn’t know what it was about, but had heard that it was sci-fi, and had assumed it was some Star Wars for girls type thing. He was unprepared.)

35. Lord of the Flies – William Golding

(As a child, many elements of my life and behavior was compared to this book in a way that I, with my infinite understanding of social cues, picked up on the subtle fact that this was an insult. Thinking that I was somehow winning, I decided to read this book to prove… some point? And I ended up agreeing with the adults in my life, I absolutely was like that one kid who wanders off into the woods and is never seen again.)

36. Atonement – Ian McEwan

(I think one of my first posts on this blog was me reblogging gif sets from the film version of this.)

37. Life of Pi – Yann Martel

(Forever gate keeping Black Sails from people who think debating whether or not the tiger was real is important to understanding what the story is about.)

38. Dune – Frank Herbert

(I have been banned from talking about Dune around my family anymore after the time I got super wasted at a thanksgiving party my parents’s friends were hosting, and spent 35 minutes explaining Dune, with relevant facts about Frank Herbert’s life, to a woman who had mentioned that her husband has seen the newer one. She hadn’t even watched that one.)

39. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

(This is my least favorite Austen novel. There’s some modern AU version of this that I read at one point that I don’t remember the name of, but there was this scene where the mom was standing on the beach and looking at golden retriever wondering if she could ask the owner for a clipping of its fur so she could show it to her hair colorist.)

40. A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

(Charles Dickens Summer!!!!)

41. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

(If I had a nickel for every 20th century American novel about a deeply strange little man who had to deal with the devastating psychological affects of his best friend’s death, I would have I would have so many nickels.)

42. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

(I think there should be a rule about watching the Kubrick film where, in order to see it, you should have to write a five paragraph essay about the original novel.)

43. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

(This book fucking rocks. It is also my number one on list of novels that I think would most benefit from a podcast adaptation. Not like, a read-along, but like, a story based on the Count of Monte Cristo would kill it in podcast form.)

44. On The Road – Jack Kerouac

(I’ve read it. I can neither confirm nor deny whether or not it was before or after watching supernatural.)

45. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

(So there’s a The Wombats song called “Kill the Director” where the bridge is just “this is no Bridget Jones” several times, and I wasn’t familiar with the reference, so I looked it up, and somehow managed to miss the, extremely popular, film adaptation, and thought it was just a reference to the book. I didn’t realize my mistake until I mentioned it to someone who didn’t know there was a book, and had assumed I was talking about the film.)

46. Moby Dick – Herman Melville

(This is like War & Peace, in that it is a brick and there should be an adaptation that’s just the last 90 pages. But also, I read this book after reading a book of essays called “Why You Should Read Moby Dick” which, convinced me to read Moby Dick. But yeah, you could give this book to aliens and they would be able to recreate the 19th century whaling American industry from scratch.)

47. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

(Charles Dickens Summer! Also, this is one of those books that was very obviously serialized and would probably benefit greatly from being presented in that format as opposed to in a novel, because it does drag on when it’s just one chunk.)

48. Dracula – Bram Stoker

(I’m not the biggest fan of epistolary novels, but hey, it’s Dracula. I’ve done it all. Every film adaptation? Yes. The Edward Gorey illustrated edition? Own it. Dracula Daily? Two years. Re: Dracula? Got the jumpscare of my life when Dr. Seward started talking because I didn’t realize Jonny Sims was in this.)

49. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

(This book would have been greatly improved by less racism and more talking robins.)

50. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

(This book would be greatly improved by more people who read it understanding what an unreliable narrator is.)

51. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

(This is not a member of the Charles Dickens Summer club. I just read it one Christmas when I was like 8. Anyway, it’s hilarious and exactly what you expect. I also would have assumed that the coffin nail was the deadest nail of all.)

52. The Color Purple – Alice Walker

(Remember when I said that I don’t love epistolary novels? This is a major exception. Honestly, the number of list I’ve seen for contenders to the title of The Great American Novel, that don’t include this one is criminal. I also don’t know how so many people read it and don’t realize that it’s going to be dark as fuck.)

53. Charlotte’s Web – EB White

(Sometimes it’s very healing to read children’s novels as an adult. Just sit, and tear through a book in a couple hours. Any of Kate DiCarmello’s books, Flipped by Wendelin Van Draanen, Coroline, and Charlotte’s Web are all staples for me in that area. Because I read them all, over and over again growing up, and just, being able to go back to them and still find that magic is… really moving.)

54. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

(I have the two giant complete annotated edition volumes. The one with the essays. I have broken bookshelves with them. And I got them for $3 at a tag sale when I was so small that I couldn’t carry both of them at the same time.)

55. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

(This is the book that made me believe that I could write. This book broke my heart. This is a fundamental touchstone in my development as a storyteller.)

56. Watership Down – Richard Adams

(I liked this book. My brother Fucking Loved this book. My father was deeply scarred as a child by this book. I think that’s about the full range.)

57. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

(Shoutout to those “Great Illustrated Classics” books that were in every library in the late 90’s/early 00’s. Those things were kickass. I don’t know if I would have read the full version of this one if it wasn’t for the Great Illustrated version I read when I was little. But whoever came up with the idea to just, take classical English literature and tell it exactly the same but in a slightly simplified version for a younger audience was a genius, and they deserve kudos.)

58. Hamlet – William Shakespeare

(I once read a post that opened with “spoilers for Hamlet” and… I don’t know if it’s possible to spoil Hamlet. Like, in America and England at least, it’s kinda baked in. Being alive is a spoiler for Hamlet. Also, can you spoil Hamlet, or is knowing what’s going to happen before it does is kind of part of the modern experience? I don’t know.)

59. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

(I met up with my friends this summer and one of them didn’t realize this book had a sequel. Me and my friend who had also read it then spent the next five or so minutes verbally vague posting about plot points for the Great Glass Elevator to each other, and confusing everyone else, because that book is a fever dream. For that experience alone, I will recommend.)

60. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

(If I had a nickel for every giant ass brick of a book that I actually did enjoy that included uncomfortable sexualisation of children under the age of 15 and far too much information about a specific city’s sewer system, I would have two nickels, which isn’t a lot, but it’s weird that it happened twice.)

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

[alexglower]

The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011)

you see, back in my day...

Why do so many articles describe this album as "humorous?" Sure, authors typically use the words "dark comedy," but I'm having trouble hearing what's so funny about this.

I was introduced to The Caretaker a little before he went viral on TikTok for his "creepy" music, though that later virality was what made me pay closer attention to his work. Even if his six-part series Everywhere at the End of Time wasn't billed as the most disturbing thing ever by a bunch of teenagers online, it still would've creeped me out.

That series was released after An Empty Bliss Beyond This World, but it still has the same "theme" of representing dementia through music. Both works feature old ballroom recordings clouded by swarms of vinyl crackle and static. Both works sound ghostly, like their samples are rising from out of their graves. There was a period of time when I couldn't get past Everwhere's opening track because I felt like spectral hands were reaching out toward me, belonging to some long-dead soul trapped in a looping record. That's pretty embarrassing to admit, but I was young! I also was pretty depressed, so any "downer" work of art hit me with 100x effectiveness (another example was the video game Omori).

In a way, An Empty Bliss is sort of like Everywhere-lite---while it lacks the latter's overarching structure (slowly becoming less and less recognizable as "music" over the course of many hours), it endeavors to represent the same feeling in microcosm, as if representing a day in the life of someone with dementia, as opposed to several years. It's actually a pretty breezy listen! If you ignore the notions typically associated with old, slowed-down, reverbed music, it's pleasant and catchy. I could imagine this soundtracking a study session. Perhaps such a utilitarian use would seem sacrilegious, but I think it's pretty apt considering how this album is meant to simulate a wandering subconscious.

One may consider the minimally edited samples of An Empty Bliss to be a form of sound collage, but I hear more similarities to field recordings. Sound collage is the art of making something new out of many different sources, whereas field recordings usually try to invoke a singular thing as it "really is." Of course, the vinyl samples here aren't of "fields" (i.e. complete representations of spaces), but they're treated as if they are, as if the music holds some vital aspect of its original time and location. The staticy sounds that define these recordings are, apparently, not overdubbed---they're from the vinyls themselves, preserved as they are. Some tracks are barely legible beneath the crackling. If you strain your ear to hear, you might catch what sounds like the shuffling of people amidst the muffled sounds of music.

What's telling is what is edited. Most obvious are the time-based effects, like delay and reverb. Both of these effects serve to situate a sound in space (mimicking echoes, for instance), but in this case they also put the samples at a temporal distance. When a sound echoes, it feels like it's shucking off parts of itself, like the very act of being played is making it even murkier (a process that was done in a literal way on The Disintegration Loops).

Tracks also tend to stop and start at odd moments, so that you never know where you are relative to a song's beginning and end. Sometimes sections loop, sometimes they trail off in the middle of a phrase. The static and reverb make these samples feel like far-off memories; the structural shift-ups make the memories feel half-forgotten.

So with all that said, I can certainly see the "dark" in this album, but the "comedy" is harder to figure out. Maybe it has something to do with the catchiness of the recordings? How they are, ironically, relatively upbeat? Honestly, I can hardly hear these ballroom tracks as anything other than depressing, but maybe that's because of my pre-existing notions of "oldies" music. If you're someone who wasn't raised on tropey horror movies playing old songs for a scare, perhaps the irony is more apparent. For me, all I hear is darkness.

And it's great! An Empty Bliss taps into an unease that's relatively rare, one that's as comforting as it is disquieting. It feels like being smothered by a warm hug, like going to sleep for the last time.

Good album :D Listen if you want to feel cold wind blow over your grave, whilst beneath the soil your skeletal hand reaches out for a lover buried miles away.

[pr3ttyprinc3ssxd]

I love being crazy about things, I'd say I'm like most fans of things though. I mean like kinda at least..

First off I love anything involving my bbg Hannibal Lector okay like: all the movies on dvd, all the books, multiple Funko pops, posters, all 3 seasons of Hannibal on dvd, and the Hannibal cookbook. And to be honest that's just what I have rn 🙏😈 I plan to get more.

I had an odd phase where I really REALLY like IHNMAIS but in like a weird way. I painted a picture of AM and its on my wall still..

I have a collage of Panic! At the Disco on my wall...

I also love Resident Evil, I own a couple of the games and I'm working on getting more but I am broke asf and most of my money rn is going towards cute valentines day stuff for my kitchen. Now back to RE, I own 0, 1 remake, 2 remake, 3 remake, 4, 5 physically. I have revelations 2 and 8 on my xbox. But remember I do only have an Xbox One so I mostly can only play remakes and I have played Code Veronica at my friends house. But I also have and seen all of the shitty live action movies and I actually liked them.. AS A SEPARATE THING.. okay the movies suck but I love shitty 2000s action movies and they hit all the right marks for that, don't even get me started on the soundtrack.

Next Supernatural, I've been watching since I was like 4 apparently. Idk man I just rewatched it like a couple years ago cause I never finished the show before. Anyways in like 2021-2022 I rewatched it and this was when I was in like middle school so.. I was super weird, mind you I was also in the middle of a dsmp phase.. Anyways I have a wanted by the FBI poster of Sam and Dean, I have a Funko pop of Crowley, and and plushie of Dean and Cas (I have 100% made them kiss)

Dsmp.... I don't have anything but a Slimcicle pin I bought at Comic con left.. I used to be so deep in the hole omfg id closet cosplay as quackity at school... MIDDLE SCHOOL WAS A DARK TIME OKAY. I also painted a really bad painting of tommyinit, and if you saw me you would've definitely seen the classic gnf glasses...

Now I'm gonna talk about Hazbin Hotel.. But pre pandemic HH.. Okay I was there before these nerds now, I was there in 5th grade right before covid. All me and my friends had only the pilot but we were thriving.

Anyways no hate to anyone, in the end we're all kind of losers including me and I have just come clean about some of my cringiest moments so..

[scentedchildnacho]

A collage about the aggressive white ones....like betya saar on folk.....I looked at Mayfair online and it is kind of difficult British colonialism in the states is sponsored by other states then Wisconsin like Arkansas so I probably will enjoy trying one because it's like a job not creative and nothing to do with me at all

There is some German and French colonialism left in Wisconsin but old world was really demolished in the world wars

The aggressive ones are criminals they truly have royal blood that's why Mayfair

When i think about people willing to be aggressive I think of the true satanic poverty of having to be states as a european model

Weight loss dictators here to us are pretty shockingly cruel but Europe is worse

Its these humiliations like don't eat for three weeks to afford a sweater

The western private sector would finally sanction Putin to Russians all these prior Soviet protests and Putin wanting to nuke them for uprisings finally not profitable

Doomsday theory is more relevant then simm theory I think Putin to Russia is what's most disturbing

An English lady came to sing for us in natchez Mississippi so apparently the Italian hour glass figure has been very cruel and hard on them also to have Elon musk sponsor her dress was actually very uncomfortable

London......if expensive this horrible distaste in ones mouth

No the staff rules don't apply to the brown alien she can threaten a lot of people and still infect herself with Mal stored mall items

The staff lies and doesn't actually know what the psychologist managing wants from us......

You won't be jumped on or hit for stealing stuff people don't touch stuff because there was a hygiene terrorist and the stuff was put in a semi container and shocked with some type of electro magnetic energy

She is a creepy skinny alien and may make herself puke I guess from white light lead poisoning

I think the managing psychologist really doesn't like that product.......and tends to force bright bright color towards the aliens and old witchery so a different affordable company is sponsored by the school districts

The music courtesy saxophone performance showed me if black people they prefer black is beautiful and she played this kind of obscure Catholic tune that reminded me of some of the most haunted black artists I came across in Wisconsin

The school districts want their black students to reveal what they know about the new left underground and financial inclusion really isn't that cool ..

I think the black poverty was called people still acting like they have to be with white corporate and they don't they could be very only obscure or esoteric things from black power

Kamala wants the black women for correct reproductive care then....

It can appear like white corporatism or melanctha can help and there is something deeper there then white people can intelligence

Black is beautiful all these fair music performers in their blacks and gowns and there the saxophone player is in her correct white button down for work sparkly girl power belt and slacks letting her piano accompanist leave from so many tunes

Anyway the new trains don't have scary German symbols and tex on them now China Greek myth Hawaii and tex......so that's that documentary...China said they want to make their homes here so that scary dark sanction nothing may stop

China will save us from the hatred of depressive states

Americans eventually did really outnumber the Japanese resistance

If it's the bureau of indian affairs China allows reform the states hates

I was white and people kept making my mouth use American English a lot....the states hates Amish research Appalachians other indigenous categories

[astingliamberry]

University Talk

Looking at University has always been a bit of a struggle with me, I never knew what I wanted to do, and I found difficulty when it came to what exact course I would like to study. I wanted to do something similar to the course I am currently on and writing this for. I wanted to do something to do with model making even maybe prop making for movies and tv shows. I really love the idea of making realistic models for a living, this is something I have recently fell in love with but I fell in love hard. After making that really cool mountain model a year ago, the dry brushing the painting it was just so perfect. I couldn't believe I made something so cool, I was so shocked that I could create something so realistic so easily. I liked drawing but it didn't feel like me anymore, it felt like I was doing it for someone else. Making a model felt like something I was doing for me. Back on track to university talk.

A person came in to tell us about UAL a university of 6 collages of different category's of creative courses. There's buildings all based around fashion, graphic design and more! She went on about the kind of courses each building has by listing and talking about what courses are available for people to take and what they entail. Like if you were doing graphic design they had multiple courses focusing on specific graphic design like climate graphic design which specifically is graphic design for social issues like climate change, the healthcare system and anything like the trans healthcare system too. I really like this course and have been considering it a lot. It was only mentioned because I asked about the difference between graphic design and graphic communication. The difference between the two is that graphic communication is more worrying about the communication that the artwork brings across like the message its supposed to bring. Graphic design is about creating things for graphics like making a font or something similar like making a simple illustration of a person. I did graphic design in high school as well as art and I loved it. It was a load of effort and very hard but I loved it. I loved both courses that I went out my way to do at the same time because I was creative in both ways. The graphic design course had no women on it, only cis men and me a trans man. I was isolated but god it was worth it learning everything I did. The art class was a good mix even though I had a run in with my teacher being transphobic I had a good time and I learnt a lot. She may have gotten herself fired but I still learned an unbelievable amount. I love both things and I want to learn both but for university I have to choose between model making and graphic design. I wrote a few notes on it so I could look back at it later. I wrote down a course called graphic media design that seemed to have a bit of both when she explained it.

She talked about student finance, apparently the debt isn't as hard hitting as its described in media. People go on and on about how painful student debt is but they probably are basing this on American student debt which is criminal how much they expect you to pay. In comparison to the amount that you pay for british university. I want to do university because I want to experience something like this, a university sounds like such a fun and educational experience. I honestly don't care if they are skimming off the top of my wage a little bit if it means I get to experience university and all it has to offer.

I also like the idea of living in a big town, living in a small town as a trans man is hard. Not everyone understands you so they turn to hate, and due to Rishi Sunak it has become a safe space for transphobia because they can say: "The prime minister said it was ok and so did Elon Musk so it must be ok." But unrelated, I just want to move to a big town where I can blend in to the crowd of other people who are experimenting with their gender identity. I am a wear London is very expensive but the salary lines up with the cost of living so, I will happily move there when I get the chance. I keep thinking about my life in dorms and my life as a university student and I just love it, I love the idea of making art for a living and maybe I will discover what job I exactly want to do. I keep mixing between all different kinds of jobs and deciding what ones I want to do and the idea of freedom with a safety net is pretty cool.

[apocalypticavolition]

The USA Trilogy

So I've been reading John dos Passos's USA Trilogy and despite being only 500 pages away from finishing I'm thinking I might not be able to. It's a highly recommended trilogy - some peope say that it's the Great American Novel - but my god.

The novel has four different sorts of sections: biographies of various American figures, collages of newspaper headlines and articles, an apparently autobiographical section with a horrible postmodern aversion to capital letters and punctuation marks, and the actual story, which follows about a dozen people over the course of the early decades of the twentieth century.

First, the pros: the newspaper collages work quite well, giving a taste of events in the world at large as the narrative advances. The biographies are sometimes quite interesting when focusing on lesser known figures or, the absolute masterpiece of the trliogy, "The Body of an American Soldier", which is something of a multiple choice past for the man interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It's incredibly written and a genuinely touching critique of the senselessness of war.

Further, there's a few interesting main characters. Mac, the first one introduced, is about as sympathetic as a drifter can be with the values dissonance of a century between us and has a storyline that has a relatively traditional arc of rising action, climax, and falling action. Eveline getting re-examined by the transition from Eleanor's friend to POV character of her own works very well, to the point where I will miss not getting to see her from a third POV in the next novel since I'm cutting it short.

That said, the flaws are a lot. The "Camera Eye", the autobigraphical stuff, is completely unreadable because skipping half of the necessary steps of English writing leaves an incoherent, unpleasant mess. E. E. Cummings (yes, capitals included) and all who humor him are a blight on the English language.

The other biographies are hit or miss because so many of them barely seem to have anything to do with the narration. Eugene Debs works because every character is a socialist (more on that in a mo'). Thomas Edison has nothing to do with anything except in the sense that many scenes in the novel have lightbulbs present.

Then sadly there's the main narration. The work is very existentialist, stuff just happening for the sake of happening, and while that's not necessarily a problem, it turns out I can't really take the better part of 2,000 pages of it even spread out among 12 assholes.

And they're basically all assholes. Some only barely - Daughter seems to be capricious mostly in that "male writer feels women are incomprehensible" sort of way - some entirely so. Frankly, with all the talk of socialism and revolution and pacifism that comes out of their mouths while they drink, party, and look for ways to screw everyone over makes me long for THEM to be lined up against the wall. And of course they're all sellouts to boot, which again isn't exactly a problem it's just that it leaves me with even less reason to stick around. I know how this ends: the ones who get rich like Moorehouse abandon all pretense of caring for their fellow human beings and the ones who stay poor look for any excuse to avoid taking responsibility for their behavior.

If the books had some broader point than the upcoming failure of the socialist movement in the US, I might be able to stick it out. If I could get more than a chapter without seeing a racial slur, I could stick it out. If the dialogue wasn't written with every accent spelled out, I could stick it out. But honestly I think that getting to "Body of an American Soldier" is victory enough and I'm done. It's a shame, but I've spent the last two nights avoiding reading because I absolutely did not want to open "The Big Money", and since I'm just getting back into the habit again I need to move on.