#virginia woolf was right

[toastspirit]

doodled a little comic because i feel v bad in multiple ways. woohoo i love being diseased

my drawing tablet was dying and i do not currently have my sketchbook (which i deeply regret now) so it looks almost as shitty as i feel rn <3

ignore this it's bad and sad

life is a prison and existence is a cell!! whenever i start to enjoy it i am reminded that i am trapped i am trapped i am trapped and i cannot get out until i am dead and gone! :) and no one will understand or care about my problems, so i will draw them for myself and no one else. that's fine. i will love myself enough. (that is a lie).

i just want to be left ALONE i want to be able to choose when i am bothered i want to be so selfish and make my own choices and not be guilt tripped for prioritizing my health over someone else's happiness i dont CARE ANYMORE. I WISH I HAD BEEN REALLY REALLY SICK, THEN MAYBE YOU WOULD HAVE FUCKING CARED. I WISH I HAD DIED THAT NIGHT OR EVEN THAT NIGHT IF IT WOULD MEAN I COULD HAVE SOME FUCKING PEACE.

i know that no one will read all that. im ok. i am not going to hurt myself. i am already hurt. i am too much of a wisher and not a doer. which is probably a good thing tbh i dont think id still be alive if i was

i wish i had drowned that time i got caught in a rip current

i wish i had spun into a tree that time my car skidded on ice

i wish i hadn't been too afraid to put the knife i was holding any lower

i wish i hadn't turned away from the garage door, keys in hand and a plan in mind

i wish i had really tested if i could clear those suicide nets.

i wish i had picked a nice pretty spot and really just leapt off.

i wish that that all those illnesses and new growths i had hidden turned out to be lethal.

i wish i had measured out the dosage correctly.

i wish i fell into a deep, deep sleep after puking my guts out instead of just WAKING UP to VOMIT MORE.

[without-ado]

“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”

— Virginia Woolf

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Replenishing the Nonfiction Stack; or, We're Calling the Book Buying Ban a Wash, Officially.

I am not, apparently, immune to coupons for niche nonfiction that's directly up my alley (octopus minds and RUSSIAN OWLS, hello??? Thanks, bookshop!).

I thought perhaps the BURGLAR'S GUIDE would also be covered under said coupon, since it was publisher-specific (alas: it was Not, but we might as well bundle for shipping purposes). And then while I was shopping IRL for gifties I found a copy of ROOM, which has been on my list for...ever? So! Hopefully these will hold me over on the nonfiction front for a minute!

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

OK so trying to articulate pt. 2 what's been sitting with me re: You're Losing Me especially in light of the track list dropping:

When You're Losing Me came out, I got the feeling that "I wouldn't marry me either, a pathological people pleaser who only wanted you to see her," came from a place not of desperation/resignation, but spite, at least the portion I bolded. In that, to me it sounded like the words once lobbed at her being spat back at the person who first uttered them -- even if only in her mind. There's an anger an intensity when she sings that part (in contrast to the "see her" part), especially as it comes to the peak of the bridge.

With the information that's slowly trickling out, from the way puzzle pieces are starting to fit together with the background, the references to works of art like The Little Mermaid, Clara Bow, even perhaps Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, etc., I'm feeling more and more confident that that's likely the case. If we're taking into consideration context clues from these like the idea of having to give up what makes you sing (metaphorically and literally) to attain the life you think you want, to keep the love you think you've earned, to let bitterness fester and eat the relationship from within, there's an undercurrent of resentment in those lines about the things that make one person soar and the other recoil.

If I were to make an educated guess about these circumstances, I would think the line isn't about marriage writ large, it's about someone who is fuelled by desires -- in this case, to live out in the open, to embrace her world, to drop the shroud from her shoulders ---- and having those desires shunned by a partner who sees that external validation as debasing. A mirrorball to the whims of the public, as it were. But she is saying, this is who I am and this is what I want, and want you to love me not in spite of these but because of these. It's like she's saying, I wouldn't marry the version of me you think I am (that you disdain). She's trying to say, all these things you don't like about me and my life are what make me me.

In other words, it sounds like the realization that the person who is supposed to be your greatest champion thinks of you completely differently (and unkindly) from the person you are. And perhaps the crux of it is, what am I willing to give up to be the version of me this person wants? How many inches must I give before the miles they take become a runway?

In retrospect, the "Me" she wants him to choose at the end of the song may not just be an imploring to make a commitment full stop, but choosing the person she is vs. the person he thinks he wants, because she's sick of twisting herself into knots trying to cater to him when the goalposts keep moving. Their love comes at a cost to both, and it's one that may erase everything she holds dear.

We're in for a wild ride in April.

[i-want-to-be-a-poet]

[catastrxblues]

i keep forgetting that i am in fact not a thirteen year old anymore because what do you mean

[absenceisaformofwinter]

"There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind".

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

[prettyameliasblog]

[myowndoriangray]

don’t offer me

the bed,

the child,

the home,

if what you’re asking in return

is the marrow of my bone.

[girlgrey]

gentlest reminder that this was published 95 years ago.

[queeringclassiclit]

please send me submissions of queer-coded characters from classic literature

[without-ado]

You. You know that women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.

l Barbara Kruger l Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

[human-error-lost-in-spring]

Per tutti questi secoli le donne hano avuto la funzione di specchi, dal potere magico e delizioso di riflettere raddoppiata la figura dell'uomo. […] Perciò Napoleone e Mussolini insistono tanto enfaticamente sull'inferiorità delle donne, perché se esse non fossero inferiori cesserebbero di ingrandire loro. Questo serve in parte a spiegare la necessità che gli uomini spesso sentono delle donne. E serve a spiegare come li fa sentire inquieti la critica femminile; come a lei sia impossibile dir loro che il libro è brutto o il quadro difettoso, o cose del genere, senza provocare assai più dolore e suscitare assai più rabbia di quanta potrebbe suscitarne un uomo con la stessa critica. Perché se la donna comincia a dire la verità, la figura nello specchio rimpicciolisce; l'uomo diventa meno adatto alla vita.

- Virginia Woolf

[bornagain-horsegirl]

Reading Orlando: A Biography

[aibidil]

Oh!, to be a battleaxe side character in classic lit—

Betsy Trotwood (David Copperfield)

To this hour I don’t know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green; but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The one great outrage of her life, demanding to be constantly avenged, was the passage of a donkey over that immaculate spot. In whatever occupation she was engaged, however interesting to her the conversation in which she was taking part, a donkey turned the current of her ideas in a moment, and she was upon him straight. Jugs of water, and watering-pots, were kept in secret places ready to be discharged on the offending boys; sticks were laid in ambush behind the door; sallies were made at all hours; and incessant war prevailed. Perhaps this was an agreeable excitement to the donkey-boys; or perhaps the more sagacious of the donkeys, understanding how the case stood, delighted with constitutional obstinacy in coming that way. I only know that there were three alarms before the bath was ready; and that on the occasion of the last and most desperate of all, I saw my aunt engage, single-handed, with a sandy-headed lad of fifteen, and bump his sandy head against her own gate, before he seemed to comprehend what was the matter. These interruptions were of the more ridiculous to me, because she was giving me broth out of a table-spoon at the time (having firmly persuaded herself that I was actually starving, and must receive nourishment at first in very small quantities), and, while my mouth was yet open to receive the spoon, she would put it back into the basin, cry ‘Janet! Donkeys!’ and go out to the assault.

Mrs. Cadwallader (Middlemarch)

The parishes of Freshitt and Tipton would have felt a sad lack of conversation but for the stories about what Mrs. Cadwallader said and did: a lady of immeasurably high birth, descended, as it were, from unknown earls, dim as the crowd of heroic shades—who pleaded poverty, pared down prices, and cut jokes in the most companionable manner, though with a turn of tongue that let you know who she was. Such a lady gave a neighborliness to both rank and religion, and mitigated the bitterness of uncommuted tithe. A much more exemplary character with an infusion of sour dignity would not have furthered their comprehension of the Thirty-nine Articles, and would have been less socially uniting.... She would never have disowned anyone on the ground of poverty: a De Bracy reduced to take his dinner in a basin would have seemed to her an example of pathos worth exaggerating, and I fear his aristocratic vices would not have horrified her. But her feeling towards the vulgar rich was a sort of religious hatred: they had probably made all their money out of high retail prices, and Mrs. Cadwallader detested high prices for everything that was not paid in kind at the Rectory: such people were no part of God’s design in making the world; and their accent was an affliction to the ears. A town where such monsters abounded was hardly more than a sort of low comedy, which could not be taken account of in a well-bred scheme of the universe. Let any lady who is inclined to be hard on Mrs. Cadwallader inquire into the comprehensiveness of her own beautiful views, and be quite sure that they afford accommodation for all the lives which have the honor to coexist with hers.

"Excuse me, it is you two who are on the wrong tack,” said Mrs. Cadwallader. “You should have proved to him that he loses money by bad management, and then we should all have pulled together. If you put him a-horseback on politics, I warn you of the consequences. It was all very well to ride on sticks at home and call them ideas.

Mrs Rachel Lynde (Anne of Green Gables)

Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a red-hot politician and couldn’t have believed that the political rally could be carried through without her, although she was on the opposite side of politics.

“Well, since you’ve asked my advice, Marilla,” said Mrs. Lynde amiably—Mrs. Lynde dearly loved to be asked for advice—“I’d just humor her a little at first, that’s what I’d do .... That is I wouldn’t say school to her again until she said it herself. Depend upon it, Marilla, she’ll cool off in a week or so and be ready enough to go back of her own accord, that’s what, while, if you were to make her go back right off, dear knows what freak or tantrum she’d take next and make more trouble than ever. The less fuss made the better, in my opinion. She won’t miss much by not going to school, as far as that goes. Mr. Phillips isn’t any good at all as a teacher.... I declare, I don’t know what education in this Island is coming to.” Mrs. Rachel shook her head, as much as to say if she were only at the head of the educational system of the Province things would be much better managed.

Granny Weatherwax (Discworld)

She hadn't ever needed to. Granny Weatherwax was like the prow of a ship. Seas parted when she turned up.

Unlike wizards, who like nothing better than a complicated hierarchy, witches don’t go in much for the structured approach to career progression. It’s up to each individual witch to take on a girl to hand the area over to when she dies. Witches are not by nature gregarious, at least with other witches, and they certainly don’t have leaders. Granny Weatherwax was the most highly-regarded of the leaders they didn’t have.

It was one of the few sorrows of Granny Weatherwax’s life that, despite all her efforts, she’d arrived at the peak of her career with a complexion like a rosy apple and all her teeth. No amount of charms could persuade a wart to take root on her handsome if slightly equine features, and vast intakes of sugar only served to give her boundless energy.

Lady Bruton (Mrs Dalloway)

Lady Bruton had the reputation of being more interested in politics than people; of talking like a man; of having had a finger in some notorious intrigue of the eighties, which was now beginning to be mentioned in memoirs.

She was getting impatient; the whole of her being was setting positively, undeniably, domineeringly brushing aside all this unnecessary trifling (Peter Walsh and his affairs) upon that subject which engaged her attention, and not merely her attention, but that fibre which was the ramrod of her soul, that essential part of her without which Millicent Bruton would not have been Millicent Bruton; that project for emigrating young people of both sexes born of respectable parents and setting them up with a fair prospect of doing well in Canada. She exaggerated. She had perhaps lost her sense of proportion. Emigration was not to others the obvious remedy, the sublime conception. It was not to them (not to Hugh, or Richard, or even to devoted Miss Brush) the liberator of the pent egotism, which a strong martial woman, well nourished, well descended, of direct impulses, downright feelings, and little introspective power (broad and simple — why could not every one be broad and simple? she asked) feels rise within her, once youth is past, and must eject upon some object — it may be Emigration, it may be Emancipation; but whatever it be, this object round which the essence of her soul is daily secreted, becomes inevitably prismatic, lustrous, half looking-glass, half precious stone; now carefully hidden in case people should sneer at it; now proudly displayed. Emigration had become, in short, largely Lady Bruton.

[hadeswearsprada]

“Subtle queer symbolism ” and it’s literally a sex scene