#read this recently it’s a good book!

[letswonderspirit]

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

HOT, SINGLE, UNSTUDIED SPONGES. 3000 NAUTICAL MILES AWAY. Come sail the distance and read Tiger Tiger!

[theshadowrealmitself]

I think the first story I read about time traveling that takes the earth’s movements into account, I read back when I was a kid, and who knows how long before that it was published

But it was an anthology of short horror stories, and if I remember correctly, it was these 2 kids who befriend this scientist (or the boy was the scientist?) and the scientist is like “I’m pretty sure my machine works but idk why nothing I send to the future shows up”

And then the girl is like “I’m going to go into the way future, where I belong” (cause she was like the “I was born in the wrong generation” kind of person) and she does it as the boy realizes what’s going on, that the machine does work, but it really does transport whatever/whoever goes into it in the exact same spot in space, instead of moving with the earth

And the last scene was the girl floating in space, having gone so far into the future that everything had moved away, and the sun and planets were long gone

[chalkrub]

reminiscing about childhood books after that ask - all due respect to cool sleek movie toothless....but to me, he will always be a mean little gremlin

[abzania]

List of Book!Crowley things I think you should know:

Owns a collection of soul music (that he's very proud of)

Has snake skin boots that may or may not be his feet

Has a tendency to hiss when he forgets himself

Whispers commentary to Aziraphale while the Metatron and Beelzebub discuss if Armageddon should happen

Is an optimist who believes the Universe will take care of him

Reads novels

Loves naps, particularly after a large meal

Bought petrol just for the bullet hole decals

Doesn't make reservations because that's something that only happens to "other people"

Believes every car has a cassette player, so every car he drives does, even if it's not supposed to

Breathes life back into a dove Aziraphale accidentally smothered in his jacket

Likes classical music, but can't listen to it because the cassettes keep turning into "Best of Queen" albums

Thinks about putting his message box cassette into his car to turn Hastur into a "Best of Queen" album but decides he's not that evil

Thinks satanists are weird/disturbing

Can do weird things with his tongue

Also, highlight from the book you should see, because Crowley is fucking adorable:

[communistkenobi]

I’m watching FD Signifier’s new video about edgelord white guy movies. He spends a decent amount of time talking about how creators have responded to their edgelord fanbases, using The Joker and The Boys as two examples, where these creators feel uncomfortable with how their art has been received and taken up by “angry white men,” and that in response to this, they have followed up these artistic products with sequels or new seasons of television that are incredibly blunt and obvious about how you shouldn’t think of Homelander as a based chad or Arthur Fleck as a motivational figure in your life. And like he ends the video saying this is insufficient because these audiences won’t care about the messages in these follow-ups (largely bc these are downstream of larger social issues), but his framing of it in terms of “the death of media literacy” is still really frustrating and annoying because it’s buying into the idea that the main problem with people “not getting” art is literacy/education. And its not just his video, this framing is a popular memetic phrase across social media, and he does a better job than most people in talking about it

But like I just straight up do not accept that the audience of these edgelord movies “didn’t get” that they are portraying bad people, that audiences of mass media are “taking the wrong message” of “very obvious” pieces of art. Not because I think they do secretly get what these films are ‘actually saying,’ I don’t care about what’s in their hearts, but because this concern with people ‘not getting it’ feels wildly off-topic. I think it has been demonstrated over and over again that mass media is not an educational tool where people go to “learn lessons” or “take away a particular message.” I think the very fact that we have a consumptive marketised relationship to these artistic products structures and produces a specific set of responses, which is, above all else, “getting my money’s worth.” Who gives a shit what the movie is ‘really’ trying to say! That’s unimportant when faced with the question of did I get what I paid for? And I don’t mean this in an annoying lib “consumerism is making us all stupider” way I mean the economic structure of artistic production is the primary determinant of how commodities on a market are received. The idea that, under these conditions, we can purchase a piece of art that will “teach us” something about the world is laughable, that art-by-itself contains the authority to impart political knowledge. The idea that we can purchase our way into good values, good politics, that we can buy a movie ticket and see the error of our ways is buying into this same exact consumptive framing.

“The death of media literacy” implies a point in recent history where this economic relationship to art was unimportant, that we used to be able to participate in mass standardised artistic production and be unaffected by this arrangement. I think about Adorno & Horkheimer’s argument in The Culture Industry, that the profit motive is itself an object of consumption under capitalism, that advertisements are themselves products & as a result, all mass standardised artistic products are advertisements for their own capitalist production processes and logics. 

I think when people “don’t get” that Starship Troopers is depicting a fascist society, when people “don’t get” that Travis Bickle is a bad, un-admirable person, they aren’t stricken by a sudden deficit of education or literacy, they are responding to the conditions under which these things get made. Being able to get art’s “true message,” no matter how supposedly clear or compellingly-articulated, is to argue that ‘message’ and ‘meaning’ can be made independent of the conditions under which those things are created and presented to people. The industrial capitalist machinery outputting standardised artistic products is itself an authority telling you how to interpret its own products, much the same way a cathedral is presented as evidence of god. There is a material & physical authority in their presence and social arrangement that are themselves arguments. Adorno talks about this with the radio - that this vast industrial infrastructure of radio towers, broadcast stations, systems of wires and cables, and the production of standardised radio receivers (available for purchase, of course) is utterly incomprehensible to most people and amounts to hearing the voice of god when you turn on the radio. The arrangement of artistic production & presentation is itself the structure through which you experience art, and that structure is an authority you can neither comprehend nor alter. And again as A&H say in The Culture Industry, the techniques, narratives, and genres of the culture industry become standardised themselves, cookie-cutters on a production line, and therefore dictate meaning above and beyond any particular semantic meaning injected into an individual film or story. “Romcoms” are a cultural authority above and beyond the sum total of every romcom film ever made, and it is these genres and techniques that transmit the justification for their own continued reproduction. Under this arrangement, the meaning of this film or that television show are rendered marginal - not unnoticeable or irrelevant, certainly, but secondary to the cookie-cutters they were produced from 

Now does this lead to a widespread ignorant, impoverished, reactionary view of art? Of course, but that is not because the guy who likes wearing V for Vendetta masks is illiterate. To place the blame on individual education, discipline, or literacy is to take Hollywood for granted as a natural eternal entity, to take it as just another church. It’s a goofy fucking argument! 

[voluptuarian]

Sometimes I just want to enjoy some new Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass-inspired media, but somehow every single adaptation seems to be a version of one of these

straightforward adaptation of the book(s)

mental illness metaphor (clever)

mental illness metaphor (tacky)

Oz and Wonderland exist together somehow

YA #dark #fantasy #royalcore series

claims to be inspired by the book(s), actually based on the Disney movie, no one involved has ever actually finished either

porn

manga/anime with little resemblance to the original plot and every major character is a hunky man for some reason

Disney-branded cash grab ahoy!

Dark and Edgy (and probably perverse) "subversive" or horror retelling

Hot Topic Aesthetic™️

Combination of two or more

pretty sure you could do just a drinking game of Alice adaptation tropes, pick literally anything, and be drunk out of your mind in no time. Drink when there's:

asylum

harem situation

"killing game" (for some reason??)

red queen/queen of hearts conflation

"the real story"

grouped with traditional fairy tales???

"it's not 'Wonderland,' it's [insert similar-sounding but darker alternative term]"

something victorian patriarchy something something corsets hysteria something something

scheming royal families

drug metaphor

Not saying none of these ideas has been done well, but they've all been done, many times! I just think there are far more interesting possibilities out there that aren't being pursued. Jabberwock as Arthurian questing beast! Card kingdom courtroom drama! Genuinely deep fantasy world building exploring the reversed time-space dynamic in Looking Glass Land! DO SOMETHING INTERESTING WITH IT BY GOD

[airoarts]

Leader and deputy

[Image description: a digital painting of Squirrelstar and Ivypool from Warriors. Squirrelstar is a small dark red cat with green eyes, standing in front of the much taller Ivypool, a gray tabby-and-white cat with blue eyes and many battle scars. The background is dark blue. end ID]

[menelaus-blue]

i feel like i am absolutely blindsided every few months when i emerge from my lan xichen loving bubble and go online and find out that he is not a universally adored character that people understand is burdened by conflicting responsibilities to those he cares about as well as his job. i genuinely didn't know people perceived him as anything other than a perfect prince until i went onto twitter.

sincerely, an eldest daughter

[boarloved-art]

htsav book 1 doodles as my 'finally did uni work' reward !

[cowboy-robooty]

im not going to lie i have an illuminati type theory that fanfiction has gotten so fucking bad recently as yet another consequence of the pandemic

[buboplague]

I've been on a small reading binge the last month, anyone have book recommendations? Any genre is fine, but preferably something a bit lighthearted, or easy/fun reads!

edit: oooo thank you guys!! I'll be checking out the ones I have library access to!

[howlsmovinglibrary]

I'm currently reading The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door by HG Parry - dark academia fantasy that seems to fully understand the beats/pacing of dark academia, scholarship student who wants to cure the faerie curse on her brother attends magical, elitist oxbridge x

[clearancecreedwatersurvival]

Fuck it I’m adding some belated propaganda for both of my favorite ginger jesuses

Rand

-he’s a shepherd!!!!!!!!

-both the christ allegory AND the antichrist allegory because he’s god/the universe’s specialest guy (unfortunately for him)

-has multiple sets of stigmata and symbolic unhealing wounds

-arguably the text indicates that he is the reincarnation of actual factual Jesus of Nazareth

-knows for basically the entire series that he will have to sacrifice himself to save the world

-as his arc nears its zenith he goes around constantly causing miracles, reshaping reality around him

Gideon

-daughter of god (important: god sucks)

-the pool scene baptism where she metaphorically cleanses her closest companion of her sins

-sacrifices herself and is later resurrected by god

-her early life has the equivalent of the massacre of the innocents wherein she is the only survivor in a mass murder of children

-she’s also got some christ wounds of the kind that would get a medieval illuminated manuscript writer particularly horny

Feel free to add more propaganda for either!!!

[endeavorsuckss]

Dabi as Frankenstein quotes

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear!

I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel…

It is true, we shall be monsters, cut off from all the world; but on that account we shall be more attached to one another.

The fallen angle becomes a malignant devil. 

[thevegetablewhichnoonedaresname]

no one FREAKING understands jo march and friedrich bhaer the way i do