#no dickens!!!!!

[britneyshakespeare]

btw when my brother and sister-in-law and niece were over tonight for dinner. i was sitting on the floor holding my dog so she could come over and pat him wo him jumpin all over her and knockin her over (he really has a hard time understanding that she's not just little but she's delicate, and he is a big dumb oaf)... but she really does love doggy, she gets more excited to see him than any of the rest of us probably lol. she has two dogs at home that are wonderful so she always gets excited to see other doggies, big and small, or even stupid graceless ones like dickens. but i'm straying from the point...

she was walkin round the kitchen while i was still holdin onto dickens and she turned back around to face me and just ran into my arms for a hug ;____; and later on before she left she did the same thing ;____; i got two UNSOLICITED baby hugs. twice my one-year-old niece saw me and was like "i am gonna go hug her" AAAHHH!!!!!! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH

[citizen-zero]

WIBTA for taking advantage of my boss’ possible manic episode?

I know this already sounds bad but hear me out.

So I (30M) am the sole employee of this guy (62M) who’s honestly just a miserable boss and an even more miserable person. It sucks so bad working for him—the pay is horrendous, he’s verbally abusive, and the working conditions are awful (in the winter I literally have to stay bundled up the whole work day because he refuses to put the heat on in the office). He wouldn’t even give me holidays off if it wasn’t for the fact that there’s basically nothing to do those days because everywhere else is closed. I’m almost positive he unironically thinks poor people should die if they can’t work. His nephew (aka his only living relative and just the nicest guy) came by yesterday to invite him to Christmas dinner and he told him he’d see him in hell.

I cannot stress this enough—it’s BAD. I’d quit, but it’s been hard finding a better job and I’ve got four kids at home, including one with special needs.

Anyway, so here’s where I’m wondering if I’d be the asshole. Today was Christmas Day and he showed up at my house out of nowhere (huge red flag, I know). At first I thought he’d forgotten I had the day off and he was here to chew me out, which was worrying enough, but then his whole demeanor changed and he was super happy and excited and talking about how he was going to raise my salary. He even mentioned possibly making me a partner in the firm.

Now if that was it, I’d feel a little weird about the suddenness of it but it’d be fine. I’m not going to complain about having more money to feed my family. But then he started talking about how he wanted to pay our mortgage off. He talked about wanting to pay for our son to get the very expensive medical care that’s probably going to save his life. He mentioned at one point that he was going to be donating a huge amount of money to charity too—I knew he was rich but it staggered me. All this from a guy who doesn’t (didn’t?) even want to turn on the heat or the lights because it costs too much money.

It was such a sudden and drastic change that happened very literally overnight and now I’m kind of concerned he’s having a manic episode or something. I really, really want to accept his sudden generosity (I probably will; my wife is all for it and thinks he owes it to us), and I would love to believe that he’s truly had a sudden change of heart (an actual Christmas miracle lol) but I’m just worried about the possible consequences of accepting huge financial gifts like this from someone who I believe might be experiencing some kind of break from reality. Even if there’s nothing legally wrong with it, I’m worried about the ethics of it.

TLDR, my asshole boss might be in the middle of a mental breakdown. WIBTA if I accepted his offer to pay off my mortgage and my son’s medical expenses?

[autie-j]

"Scrooge only changed because he saw how nobody mourned him after his death" NO NO NO NO. You don't get it! The last spirit only worked because of the spirits that came before softening him up! If the spirits had shown him dead and ungrieved only it would not work. As the night goes on amid the visits Scrooge is already visibly changing. He's different after the first spirit and even more so after the second. And it's because of how much he's already changed that the final spirit is able to succeed

[davidaugust]

Scares the Dickens out them. 😳

[pemberlaey]

nobody does chapter titles like charles dickens

[puppetdaily]

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come from A Christmas Carol at Chichester Festival Theatre

[yubriamakesart]

"Scrooge said that he would see him—yes, indeed he did. He went the whole length of the expression, and said that he would see him in that extremity first." - Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

[impostoradult]

you know what's funny about the all the supportive internet commentary re: the murdered health insurance exec? it's weirdly reminiscent of that scene in A Christmas Carol where the ghost of Christmas future shows Scrooge all those people who are bad-mouthing him after his death

like...bizarrely reminiscent

[peacefulandcozy]

Instagram credit: coffeeyre

[murderandcoffee]

I think lady mowbray and gertrude need to start something upsetting and homoerotic

[nyaatalie]

A holiday classic!

[mysharona1987]

Charles Dickens only wishes he could come up with a villain as audacious and selfish to use the term “youth apprenticeship.”

[lilartifex]

Saw a post by @khorazir and couldn't resist XD

I'd like to imagine the reason Crystal is wearing a Christmas hat is because Charles made her.

Crystal: I'm not wearing that thing, Charles. Charles: Aw, c'mon, one of us has to, and Edwin and I are ghosts, so most of the people we pass won't see it. But if you wear it, then everyone gets a little bit of Christmas cheer from the Dead Boy Detectives! Crystal: I'm NOT wearing - Crystal, three seconds later:

[homoqueerjewhobbit]

A lot of Christians read A Christmas Carol and gloss right over the "pay workers a living wage" message and take away "not being merry on Christmas is a cardinal sin" instead.

[scarecrow-carousel]

the boy

Instead of actually finishing the wips I have I instead drew over me showing off my oliver plushie 'fantastic'.

Extra thing I made like a month ago:

[ambxtxo]

donna tartt’s reading list

In an interview, Tartt lists her favorite authors and the names of a few works. I have listed the most popular works from each author and the specific ones she recommended as well.

Homer

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Greek Poets and Tragedians

Argonautica

Antigone

Prometheus Bound

The Oresteia

Medea

Oedipus Rex

The Bacchae

The Frogs

Dante

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

Shakespeare

“I went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic”

Macbeth

Hamlet

Dickens

“Dickens was a part of my familial landscape, the air I breathed.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Nabokov

Pale Fire

Lolita

Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment

The Brothers Karamazov

Yeats

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

Borges

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth

Ethan Frome

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

Helena

Salinger

Catcher in the Rye

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

Orlando

Edward St. Aubyn

The Patrick Melrose Novels

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

Norwegian Wood

Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Don DeLillo

White Noise

Underworld

W.G. Sebald

Austerlitz

The Rings of Saturn

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

The White Album

Other Specific Books

Memoirs d’Outre-Tome by Chateaubriand

Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski

A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq