#he reads the book! its explained in the book. author of the book won't be against reading

[sentientstump]

could you draw me Beef?

7. negotiation master

from this post

#he reads the book! its explained in the book. author of the book won't be against reading #artstump #answeringstump #vintagebeef #and implied iskall #hermitcraft fanart

[bitchimasnake-sss]

"my girlfriend's a nerd" ft. the monster trio!

self explanatory self-indulgent drabbles to soothe my book!loving ass

ft. luffy, zoro and sanji x fem! reader

set-up: you like books, he likes you that's it

warnings: none lmao this is very sfw. one might call it wholesome even.

luffy:

thats my baby ^^

— im not even sure if this mf can read 😭😭

— honestly 9/10 chance he can't but when has that ever stopped him from being our most supportive himbo king

— go king give us everything!!

— he doesn't get why you read books when instead you can be like sleeping or eating or looking at the sea but well, he doesn't question it

— he just thinks it's a weird hobby you have (i don't think he's aware of how freakishly illiterate he is)

— but just cause he thinks it's weird that doesn't mean he wouldn't hug you half-asleep when he hears you sobbing into the dead of the night or he wouldn't listen with keen interest when you explain the plot of your favourite book as he wraps his arms around you and hums into your hair

— will 100% offer to fight the author/ tear up the book everytime he sees you having a breakdown over a particular scene/character

"who should I kill?!" the deadpan seriousness in his voice is what terrifies you

"nobody! I'm okay–"

— after you explain to him that hurting somebody is not necessary and you're fine, he will try to coddle you with extended hugs and food (lots and lots and lots of food).

"yn you should eat something! should I get you something to eat??" you can hear the panic in this poor boys voice 😭😭

"no luffy, its okay. im fine!" you say through sniffs and snorts, eyes bloodshot from crying over ink on paper

"brb" and he gets you dinner enough for 5 people because that's how he knows to comfort you (willingly took sanjis kicks and namis punches to accomplish this mission)

— since he's a clingy little child, he will hold onto you some way or the other when you're reading

— you're reading in your room while he's fast asleep? his arm is draped across your waist lazily. you're on the other side of the deck, sunbathing and reading? his hand is stretched out from where he's sitting and on your thigh (ussop tripped thrice over his hand, rip god ussop 🙏) . you're reading during breakfast cause the book just got so good? his toe is rubbing your calf up and down periodically (he won't stop no matter how many weird looks you give him)

— conclusion: he doesn't at all get it what it is, but if it makes you happy he will spend all the berries in the world to buy you those books (plz know if you actually ask him to jokingly off an author for killing your favourite character, he will do it. please don't ask him that.)

— he's just so supportive and nice 😭😭

"my girlfriends a nerd, I love her" (ussop explained to him what a nerd was and now he's introducing you like this to everybody)

zoro:

the shades tho 😎

— I'm convinced this mf can't read either

— even he can there's like literally no evidence to prove it and the entire crew has come to the conclusion that he gets lost even with clear directions because he just can't read please 😌👌

— at the start, he actually thinks it's dead stupid to invest so much time reading books when you can do other stuff like getting stronger, sleeping, literally doing anything else (luffy backs up his opinion with full enthusiasm)

— i mean like he's seen you sob at 7 in the morning over breakfast cause your fav character died and now he's confused as to why are you spending money and buying books if they make you cry so hard (he doesn't understand the concept of angst im afraid)

— but over time he just accepts it as something you enjoy and well, if it makes you happy then who is he to question it?

— acts like he doesn't care/isn't listening when you're rambling about the plot and how thE MAIN CHARACTER IS IN LOVE WITH HIS ENEMY AND VICE VERSA SKEJFHSJKSN but is actually fully listening

— he's actually invested at one point

"but they are enemies? why does he wanna be with him?"

"you don't get it! thats the appeal!!"

"the appeal is forcing a knife on somebody's throat?" he's laughing, "as if you'd enjoy it if i threatened you with my swords"

"... i would actually enjoy that"

he is now asking nami for loan to send you to a therapist (nami has seen you nosebleed over fictional characters and is considering giving money away to zoro for free. you really do need help.)

— as I said, he's invested now (although he does question your taste every now and then) but he'd force you to either summarize the plot to him as he trains or read out loud so he can hear the story as it goes.

— so naturally you're now sitting on his back, reading out loud as he does push-ups

— this beloved himbo has now formed strong opinions about characters and will battle you with headcanons because "there's no fucking way the hero would ever go back to the villain after that! that's ridiculous! if he does I'll sell my swords off."

— will remember the stuff you told him, no matter how trivial, so if you get off an island and he spots a keychain from your fav book series he's spending whatever money he has left to buy you it

"oh excellent choice! who are you buying it for?" the shopkeeper lady questions aloud

"oh, my girlfriend." he's smiling, "my girlfriends a nerd."

— actually looks forward to you telling him all the plot details and jokes at this point (one might call him a part of the fandom now)

— when you're a crying, sobbing mess because a character died, he's genuinely comforting you (no matter how bad he is at it)

"yn it's okay, you want some sake?" he is hugging you, patting your head like you're a child

"no 😭😭" you sob harder into his chest

"well... that's the best i can offer"

he tried. it's not his fault you don't wanna drink your feelings away.

— conclusion: he started off thinking its stupid and now he's an honorary nerd. would never admit it though. stubborn asshole.

sanji:

he's actually so pretty tho ^^

— he actually liked reading books before you even joined the crew although his tbr consists of cookbooks and auto-biographies about the people he has some interest in

— he started reading so that he could impress zeff with his knowledge on cooking and other miscellaneous stuff (imagine kid!sanji reading a book till late night under a lamp cause he wants to impress his old man that's so cute 😭😭)

— respects your hobbies when he finds out you like reading

— and then he sees your book collection. whY ARE THERE LIKE 5000 BOOKS HERE?! NOW HES SCARED FOR YOUR SANITY CAUSE GIRL WTF

— he hears you recommend a book to robin/nami once and now he's running to the nearest bookstore on the next island you guys land on to buy it

— he obviously did it to impress you and win you over but goddamn that book was actually pretty nice. so, the next time he asks you for recommendations he's actually a bit sincere

— now you're both in a book club of your own (which makes luffy mad cause why are you leaving him out of conversations :/)

— like zoro, he often asks for updates on the book you're currently reading while he cooks everyone food. he loves hearing you talk about the things you like.

— when he sees you crying over books, he is making you sweet stuff to soothe you, holding you and rubbing your back supportingly, peppering kisses to make you feel better

— he's so fine 😫😫

— anyways, also def the kind of person to ask you to roleplay things in real life

"yn-saaaan" his voice is bubbly, "can i ask you something?"

"mhm?"

"the last book you read–" his face is going a little bit red, "you think we can maybe... do that irl?"

now it's your turn to go red

— but no fr, he's so so supportive of your little hobby like yes baby! read those books and have fun imagining people in your head

— 100% matches your vibe when you crush on fictional characters cause "you're right. he is actually very attractive" (a bi king we love)

— once zoro made fun of you for reading and this was his response: "you can't even read, mosshead. the next time you speak shit I'll kick your ass."

"who said I CANT READ? AND AS IF ILL LET YOU KICK MY ASS!"

"I TOTALLY WILL KICK YOUR ASS"

now they are fighting while ussop, luffy and chopper laugh in the background

— but yes he loves staying up late, reading with you before you both cuddle and fall asleep

— you once read about a specific sort of dish in a book and mentioned that it sounds delicious so now obviously he has to go make that dish. it doesn't matter if it's 1 am at night.

— when nami asks him what he's cooking, he just smiles and shrugs, "i dunno either, im just trying to make yn happy. she's such a nerd"

— conclusion: an enabler, an enthusiast. this man is ready to buy you books and then read them if it makes you happy. only the finest for his favourite lady <3

a/n: enjoy my wayward thoughts about these fine men!

#one piece #opla #roronoa zoro #one piece zoro #op #vinsmoke sanji #monkey d luffy #luffy one piece #one piece luffy #one piece sanji #luffy x reader #sanji x reader #zoro x reader #zoro roronoa x reader #roronoa zoro x reader #vinsmoke sanji x reader #monkey d luffy x reader #one piece men #one piece headcanons #luffy headcanons #zoro headcanons #sanji headcanons #one piece fluff

[wordstome]

how c.ai works and why it's unethical

Okay, since the AI discourse is happening again, I want to make this very clear, because a few weeks ago I had to explain to a (well meaning) person in the community how AI works. I'm going to be addressing people who are maybe younger or aren't familiar with the latest type of "AI", not people who purposely devalue the work of creatives and/or are shills.

The name "Artificial Intelligence" is a bit misleading when it comes to things like AI chatbots. When you think of AI, you think of a robot, and you might think that by making a chatbot you're simply programming a robot to talk about something you want them to talk about, and it's similar to an rp partner. But with current technology, that's not how AI works. For a breakdown on how AI is programmed, CGP grey made a great video about this several years ago (he updated the title and thumbnail recently)

I HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend you watch this because CGP Grey is good at explaining, but the tl;dr for this post is this: bots are made with a metric shit-ton of data. In C.AI's case, the data is writing. Stolen writing, usually scraped fanfiction.

How do we know chatbots are stealing from fanfiction writers? It knows what omegaverse is [SOURCE] (it's a Wired article, put it in incognito mode if it won't let you read it), and when a Reddit user asked a chatbot to write a story about "Steve", it automatically wrote about characters named "Bucky" and "Tony" [SOURCE].

I also said this in the tags of a previous reblog, but when you're talking to C.AI bots, it's also taking your writing and using it in its algorithm: which seems fine until you realize 1. They're using your work uncredited 2. It's not staying private, they're using your work to make their service better, a service they're trying to make money off of.

"But Bucca," you might say. "Human writers work like that too. We read books and other fanfictions and that's how we come up with material for roleplay or fanfiction."

Well, what's the difference between plagiarism and original writing? The answer is that plagiarism is taking what someone else has made and simply editing it or mixing it up to look original. You didn't do any thinking yourself. C.AI doesn't "think" because it's not a brain, it takes all the fanfiction it was taught on, mixes it up with whatever topic you've given it, and generates a response like in old-timey mysteries where somebody cuts a bunch of letters out of magazines and pastes them together to write a letter.

(And might I remind you, people can't monetize their fanfiction the way C.AI is trying to monetize itself. Authors are very lax about fanfiction nowadays: we've come a long way since the Anne Rice days of terror. But this issue is cropping back up again with BookTok complaining that they can't pay someone else for bound copies of fanfiction. Don't do that either.)

Bottom line, here are the problems with using things like C.AI:

It is using material it doesn't have permission to use and doesn't credit anybody. Not only is it ethically wrong, but AI is already beginning to contend with copyright issues.

C.AI sucks at its job anyway. It's not good at basic story structure like building tension, and can't even remember things you've told it. I've also seen many instances of bots saying triggering or disgusting things that deeply upset the user. You don't get that with properly trigger tagged fanworks.

Your work and your time put into the app can be taken away from you at any moment and used to make money for someone else. I can't tell you how many times I've seen people who use AI panic about accidentally deleting a bot that they spent hours conversing with. Your time and effort is so much more stable and well-preserved if you wrote a fanfiction or roleplayed with someone and saved the chatlogs. The company that owns and runs C.AI can not only use whatever you've written as they see fit, they can take your shit away on a whim, either on purpose or by accident due to the nature of the Internet.

DON'T USE C.AI, OR AT THE VERY BARE MINIMUM DO NOT DO THE AI'S WORK FOR IT BY STEALING OTHER PEOPLES' WORK TO PUT INTO IT. Writing fanfiction is a communal labor of love. We share it with each other for free for the love of the original work and ideas we share. Not only can AI not replicate this, but it shouldn't.

(also, this goes without saying, but this entire post also applies to ai art)

#anti ai #cod fanfiction #c.ai #character ai #c.ai bot #c.ai chats #fanfiction #fanfiction writing #writing #writing fanfiction #on writing #fuck ai #ai is theft #call of duty #cod #long post #I'm not putting any of this under a readmore #Youtube

[lovefromremus]

Why AFTG sucks but doesn't suck

Okay so I swear that will make more sense in a minute. The main point I'm trying to tackle here is why, despite its notable flaws, AFTG "sucks" to other readers but not to its fandom. Trigger warnings for basically every triggering topic in AFTG.

You may realise the majority of people who dislike AFTG have little to no understanding of the characters flaws - and that's because they cannot relate to the characters. They may criticise by saying Andrew is abusive or Nicky is too sexual. But the majority of fans disagree, and here's why. They can relate. Andrew is a victim of rape, child rape, and that is VERY recognised in the story and in his character and whilst many who are unfamiliar with this variation of trauma see his actions as abusive, fans of the series and in some cases victims of it themselves such as myself, see his behaviour as liberation. We see it as him taking back control.

Furthermore, with Nicky, people see his behaviour as creepy. I understand some fans POV is the same but to understand my point of view of the Nicky/Neil I did do an extensive explanation in the past but I want to delve deeper in the future, it's up on my Instagram around July 2022 if you want to read it. Moving on, I do not see it as creepy. His confidence in his sexuality and confidence in himself and his kindness I see as an act of freedom. Nicky is finally away from his abusive household where he was shunned and traumatized for who he was (remember the fact he went to conversion "therapy"??) and now he doesn't have to experience that. He's free. It's so beautiful to see and he is my favourite character. Keeping in mind, he gave up said freedom with Eric to come back and look after the twins, one of which he had never met or heard of.

There are a lot of other examples I could use, but the point is, the majority of people who claim AFTG is simply unrealistic thankfully haven't experienced the trauma many of the fans have who are able to relate to each character. And that's why AFTG will never suck. It can't suck - it's freeing and liberating.

Another thing I'd like to note is why I believe despite MANY flaws Nora is an incredibly intelligent author. So many under-represented groups were heard and targeted in AFTG and one of the reasons why AFTG is so "underground" or disliked away from the fact it's old and self-published is the fact it has such a minute target audience. And considering all things that happen in the book, some may question my phrasing of that so let me explain.

It's not the variations of trauma or events that are minute but the fact and extent of the trauma the characters experience and their reactions to it. All of the foxes are flawed - that's the point. And none of their responses to their trauma are healthy - that's the point.

The foxes can be seen as a representation of the minority of people who respond to their trauma in negative ways and the whole point of the book is to give these people second chances. And that's again why so many feel seen.

To summarize, I just personally believe that without a very self-aware or understanding mindset a lot of the people who cannot relate to either of the foxes simply just won't and did not like this book and even call it problematic. I'm not saying these people are narrow-minded (they are) but if we look at the large minority of readers who disliked the books that's the case and those who could relate but still label it as problematic probably could not understand why the foxes responded the way they did, and that's okay.

#all for the game #aftg #andrew minyard #psu foxes #andreil #palmetto state university #neil josten #the foxhole court #aaron minyard #kevin day #nicky hemmick #seth gordon #allison reynolds #renee walker #matt boyd #danielle wilds

[selfaware-bungou-stray-dogs]

Bro like we know the normal Genshin impostor sagau but what if it would like with BSD. Like there is an impostor 'Guiding Light' saying the real one is trying somhething and somehow everyone belives (maybe Fyodor, Dazai, and Rampo would be suspicious maybe) and then they realized who is the real one like they would be horrified. (I live for angst)

If somehow Imposter managed to convince BSD Characters that Guiding Light are fake, and they hurt GL, BSD Cast would be horrified, when they learn the truth. They will do everything, to undo their mistake.

They will destroy the Imposter.

Will shower Guiding Light in presents, will do whatever they want. Even return to BSD World and stay there forever, to pay for their crimes.

Will let Guiding Light hurt them, if it will make them feel better.

......

But, personally, I think, that BSD Imposter SAGAU will be a little bit hard, if not impossible.

And here are my reasons, why

1. Emotions are universal, but not the same.

If Imposter stole GL's phone/ BSD Mayoi account, and start talking to characters through it, they would see, that Little Light changed its color, shape and size.

From "Family love(less). Prologue", where Reader start reading BSD after their relatives read it. Reader are reading the same books.

"And then another Kitsunebi¹ appeared.

This one was purple."

BSD Cast will know, that Imposter are a different person.

____

If Imposter get transported into Yokohama and start telling others about Evil Fake, but, Guiding Light stays in real world and continue reading/watching/playing, that will lead to an interesting situation.

_____

Imposter: And they pretend to be me! They are evil! Please, help me get rid of them.

Suddenly, Little Light appeared and start circling around Fyodor, Dazai, Chuuya, Atsushi, Nikolai and Akutagawa.

GL: New official art are so pretty

Dazai: give Imposter a heavy look Can you explain, why your emotions and thoughts are still coming from the different world?

Imposter: I... Well...

Fyodor: I don't think, that progress has reached that much, that will let you be in two places at the same time.

______

And, if others believe Imposter, but Ranpo, Dazai, Fyodor, Jounou and Ayatsuji don't, BSD Cast will lose a hacker.

_____

Imposter: tell characters, how terrible Fake Guiding Light are

Katai, runs into the room, holding a note.

Note: "Call us, when you finally realize, that this thing is lying to you. Fyodor D., Dazai O., Ranpo E., S. Jounou, Y. Ayatsuji"

Katai: We have lost our leading hacker!

______

2. Characters, that was based in characters, not authors.

Kirako in this AU, before she really became self-aware, were in so sort of stasis.

"Sometimes Kirako heard words from different world. Without abilities, where you, a simple person named [Y/N] live. Where they talk about their interests. And Kirako herd them. She couldn't control what she hears, but, thankfully, she never heard something personal."

If she saw, that Ranpo, Dazai, Fyodor, Jouno and Ayatsuji aren't sure, if Imposter are Real! Guiding Light, she could start questioning The Imposter on trivia she learned about Guiding Light.

All characters, that were based on characters and not authors (minus Sigma, in this AU he is considered an author) have deeper connection with real world and GL.

Naomi knew, that Reader aren't bad, the moment she felt their presence.

Kirako saw visions from the real world.

___Spoilers for unreleased entries___

Gin saw chunks of GL's memories about the past day, when she sleeps.

Karma, after canon chains were broken, got an 'ability' to 'connect' to the real world by will. He would volunteer to observe GL, if Imposter will insist that they are evil.

__And fact from STORMBRINGER___

Adam Frankenstein has a lie detector.

If only Imposter aren't Dazai's level of genius, their lie won't work.

3. Imposter's character

BSD Cast have more or less good understanding of Guiding Light's character. So, as long as Guiding Light don't do this:

GL: What?! They are talking bad about me?! I will burn them! run to find matches

GL: What?! They are a bad person?! I will destroy them! run to find a hammer

GL: What?! Old lady had a bad sigh and accidentally gave me wrong candies, that are normal, have good flavor and I don't have allergy, but they are wrong flavor?! Come here, old witch! run to find an inquisition

They would really be confused, why their 'Guiding Light' insisted on hurting/if not killing/ this person.

____

In real world. GL's apartment

Imposter: pointing at GL They are evil, protect me! Threw them away.

BSD cast is waiting, while Francis and GL are talking. GL show Francis documents (about apartment, birth certificate, ID)

Francis: It's their apartment. We can't throw a person, who have all rights to live here.

Imposter: But... Then kill them! They will do something bad to me! To you!

BSD Cast still didn't do anything

Francis: We and you will move away anyway, they won't bother you. Just forget about them.

Imposter: But... But...

Francis: By the way, since when you became that thirsty for blood?

_____

Important!

BSD Cast may be grateful to Guiding Light, but, if GL start treating them as... accessories, money bags and servants, BSD Cast will leave them.

They won't stand for being treated poorly. They won't keep a toxic relationship.

#self-awarebsd #self-awareau #bungou stray dogs au

[anathemafiction]

Inflation prices

Hosted Games is going to raise the price of all of their games on January 19th — it's been years, but it seems inflation has caught up with them. This won't affect newer releases much, like the Rose, but it may have a pretty substantial price increase in some of the older titles. 

The Golden Rose will go up 15% percent — so if you want to buy it, now's the time to do it! Outside of Steam sales, it'll never be this low price again.

However, some old gems will have bigger price changes, and I wanted to take this opportunity to shine some light on a few of my old favorite HG games. If the summaries interest you, give the free demos a try!

(I'll be linking the COG page, where you can find the links to Steam, Google Play, the App Store, and Amazon at the bottom of the screen).

Tin Star (50% price increase) — Step into the shoes of a US marshal in the old, wild west. It's a very big game, full of hard decisions and a great cast of characters (Preston, you cocky bastard, I love you). You can be a terrible person, a saint, or anything in between. 

Zombie Exodus (60% increase) — Try to survive a zombie apocalypse. There are dangerous missions to navigate, complicated power dynamics between survivors, and, of course, friends and lovers to remind you what it is you're fighting for. This is an old game, but it was one of the first IFs I read, and to this day the story and characters hold a special place in my heart. 

Zombie Exodus: Safe Haven (40%) — This one isn't really an old game, but I want to include it since the price increase is still substantial and, if you enjoy the first ZE, you will LOVE this. The author took everything from the first game and made it better. You can see how much he has improved. From customization (it's mind-blowing), to relationships, to writing atmospheres - I was legitimately scared in some parts! Plus, the different prologues are so good and... just try it! I adore this game so much. 

Way Walkers: University (40%) — Play as a student in a prestigious magic school. The magic system is super interesting, as is the world at large. But, by far, the best thing about this game and its sequel are the characters. It has one of my favorite ROs in any IF games, Semryu, and the way your friendship develops into a tentative romance is so well done. There's also mystery and tension, and I cannot wait for Book 3! 

Double/Cross (60%) — Okay, I'll admit: I don't remember a lot about this game. It's been years since I read it, but I do remember, however, really liking it! You work as a bodyguard for the richest man in England, and not everything is as it seems. I like it because it subverts your expectations, and when I got my "happy ending" I... did not feel happy at all. It's really interesting and not very long, so I encourage everyone to give it a try!

So, You're Possessed! (50%) — Oh, how to explain this game? You start as a pizza delivery person, and then you meet a demon and your life is thrown upside down. It's been years since I've played it but it has always remained a special little gem. I don't want to spoil the story too much, so just give it a try!

Evertree Inn (40%) — Again, not exactly old, but I think the price increase warrants it on the list. I also think most of you are familiar with the game and its sequels, but I want to mention it anyway. Solve a mystery in a secluded tavern and watch out for the murderer! You can play as a number of fantasy races — dwarf, elf, etc— and interact with a cast of colorful characters. It's just such a fun game, and it leads to a great adventure in the sequel. 

Fallen Hero: Rebirth (40%) — Okay, okay, I know. You all have the game already plus, it isn't technically "old". Well, may this serve as an announcement that Fallen Hero is about to get 40% more expensive, and if by some chance some of you haven't played it yet, you should absolutely do so now. The sequel is coming, and it's held as one of the best IFs ever published. A reputation that, in my opinion, is more than deserved. 

Happy reading! I hope you find at least one game that'll bring you joy.♡

#recommendations #oof this took longer than I expected #I tried to pick games with significant price increases #there are more but they're newer #other people's games #hosted games

[lafemmemacabre]

I need normies to understand that a lot of subcultures don't derive their names in straightforward ways. Some do, like metalheads and rivetheads -- and even then most of you are... Extremely ignorant on it anyway. The amount of times I've had to explain to people that "emo" comes from "Emocore" which is a shortened version of "Emotional Hardcore Punk" is astounding -- but a lot of the time it's not like that.

Sure goths are labelled goths AND a lot of our subcultural sensitivities are derived from gothic literature and we think gothic architecture fucking rules but also? Neither the literature genre nor the architecture are where we got the name from.

We got the name through an internal joke between artists that are now considered goth, about how Andi Sex Gang from Sex Gang Children was a ridiculous gothy troll too obsessed with the macabre who lived in a building literally called the Visigoth Towers, so if he was a goth, then his fans were goths too.

Even then, the label "goth" was a pejorative when it first spread and most of our iconic bands hated being called that because they associated "goth" with the tackier, less serious contemporary bands that they considered basically low brow campy horror fanservice for losers obsessed with old and bad horror movies (Specimen, Alien Sex Fiend, and so on) while they were Serious Musicians just going through a Tormented Artist phase. There's a reason why Dinah Cancer from 45 Grave (a campy, "low brow", horror fanservice band) embraced the goth label immediately (and still does), while many of her contemporaries from more "serious" bands didn't and to this day won't.

Now, going back to the lolita subculture:

Do Americans realize that American literature classics aren't classics everywhere? Each cultural region and even country has its own literature classics. I wasn't made to read Mark Twain or Hemingway in school because I'm Chilean. I was forced to read Don Quixote, some people were also forced to read El Mio Cid, I had to suffer through fucking Subterra. I had to read María Luisa Bombal, García Márquez, Marcela Paz, and many, many others. AND I'M SOMEONE FROM A CULTURE THAT SHARES AN ALPHABET WITH THE ANGLOPHONE WORLD. Chilean culture is also undeniably more directly impacted by American culture than Japan is.

Lolita, the book, wasn't that old by the time the lolita subculture started, I'm going to assume it wasn't that widely known in Japan since it was relatively new in the US itself, and Japan has its own literature to occupy itself with. Not that there's no translations or that Japanese people don't read Western literature, of course they do, I can also easily find translated copies of The Great Gatsby if I go to any mainstream bookshop in Santiago, but what I'm saying is that books that are ubiquitous in the US cultural landscape aren't necessarily so everywhere else, much less in diametrically opposed geo-cultural areas that are highly culturally isolated, AND there's cultural influences in other countries that ARE ubiquitous in those countries that foreigners have no clue about. If any piece of Western literature has been greatly influential in the lolita fashion subculture it wasn't Nabokov's Lolita, but Alice in Wonderland, in part because lolita fashion's whole point was escaping sexualization.

I think we're all aware that Japanese pop culture, especially in anime, has a lot of issues with the sexualization of children (not like that's a problem unique to Japan but, whatever), BUT I think it's also pretty fucking racist or at least orientalist to perceive any embracing of childish cuteness as inherently sexual and pedophilic or otherwise perverse as soon as it comes from Japan (especially when the fashion itself literally has you covered from head to toe AND WAS DESIGNED PRECISELY TO ESCAPE BEING SEXUALIZED BY MEN, BY YOUNG GIRLS, NOT BY PEDOPHILIC MEN OR GROWN WOMEN WHO WANTED TO APPEAL TO THEM).

Stop talking about shit you don't know anything about with authority, for the love of fuck.

[nicosraf]

Hello!

I've got an interview coming up for a pretty top Uni and I put angels before man as a possible book that I would be open to discuss.

I was just wondering about your thoughts on the themes of your book, especially the implementing of homoeroticness and the sympathetic stance for a widely condemned character.

Hello!!! Good luck with the interview!!! I hope it goes well and u get into whatever school is the one of your dreams :') I'm honored u named ABM. It's hard to talk about themes without rambling forever so I'll try to ramble just about what you specifically asked about:

On implementing homoeroticism — I think it was important, for me, to inject queerness into the story itself.

It's not a "queer retelling" just because a boy-ish character likes another boy-ish character (Lucifer and Michael don't even identify as men! They're angels!). ABM had to be a queer retelling in the way it told its story (not keeping to a conventional act structure), queer in its world (the angels are all So Flamboyant and Gay), and queer in the coming of age portion (Lucifer grows up feeling Different, feeling embarrassed, having the moment of Sexual Awakening from Seeing Other Boys in the Locker Room and the moment of Falling In Love with the Handsome Macho at the Sports Game, and Lucifer loves singing and dancing and is emotional and feminine; he's queer in a way beyond his attraction to Michael).

Making the homoeroticism so normative meant gushing about how handsome the angels are, about sexualizing them. It also meant using flowery language to sexualize them, to be tender about it. The angels aren't men but they're almost men, and men are usually denied flowery, tender sexualization. I wanted to approach it that way.

And now about making a condemned character sympathetic — I think you can either turn a condemned character into a complete victim (usually by taking their agency away) or make them... complicated. I wanted my take on Lucifer to be the second option for one big reason: the Bible is so strict in being Good vs Evil with no gray, so I wanted to make it gray. If I made Satan just the good guy and God just the bad guy, then I would be falling into that same problematic moral dichotomy of the Bible.

So Lucifer is complicated. He's the victim, but he hurts innocent angels. Phanuel didn't deserve that. Dina didn't deserve that. Baal didn't deserve to be manipulated either. Lucifer was also never really perfect; he was always a bit self-absorbed, and he's always been too quick to get emotional.

But I think positioning the devil as an "imperfect victim" is important too. Victims who lash out in ways seen as "unacceptable" are so often demonized, especially SA victims (which Lucifer is). Lucifer's explosion at the end of ABM was about catharsis, not about revenge, and it's not meant to be pretty (God already made his suffering pretty, made Lucifer cry flowers) or forgivable.

You're not supposed to forgive Lucifer; he doesn't want your forgiveness!

Forgiveness. I think a lot of readers think providing a sympathetic stance for a widely condemned character is about asking the audience to forgive them. Maybe for some authors, that's true, but John Milton, for example, never intended for you to forgive Satan. Recently, the Hunger Games prequel came out, which served as President Snow's "villain origin story" — anyone who read the book or watched the movie knows that Snow isn't forgivable in that. Milton and Suzanne Collins were just... trying to explain them, trying to provide a little nuance.

I think the question of forgiveness is really important when it comes to the devil. The Bible is centered around forgiveness, a lot of Christians ask why God doesn't forgive Satan or why Satan won't accept God's forgiveness.

In ABM, Lucifer begs for forgiveness from God over and over throughout the book. The chapter he meets him, Lucifer crumbles to the ground and says, “Father, Father, be merciful, please have pity on me, please forgive me.” He doesn't even know what he did, but he's sorry, and he's sorry and sorry and sorry until the end. There's this line from the revision that puts it nicely, I think:

'Heaven will despise me. No one can ever love me again.’ “I’ve done the unforgivable.” Lucifer had become the unforgivable. But he was breathing easier, though he didn’t realize it yet; he had unshackled himself from the pity of angels. From the promise of salvation, he had been liberated.

It's always been important to me for Lucifer to become unforgivable in the end, not just for God but for majority of readers. He frees himself from pity (of the angels and of the readers) and from being a "good" victim, from being good. The first to free himself from the moral constraints of wanting to be good — that's really what makes him the devil.

I hope this ramble is helpful :') good luck!!!

#featuring my favorite new line from ABM i think #mine #ask #also i cut a ramble about the pressure of abuse victims to be Good; i wanted Lucifer to break free from that

[actualmermaid]

It's been three months since I made this post about Saints Sergius and Bacchus, John Boswell, classical Western homoeroticism, and Christian homophobia.

Since then I have read both of Boswell's books on the history of gay/queer people in premodern Christianity (Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality and Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe), familiarized myself more fully with the spectrum of charges against Boswell and his scholarship, and realized that he's been the subject of ideologically-motivated smear campaigns by just about every political/religious/academic faction you can imagine. My conclusion: Professor Boswell is a saint, martyr, and important queer elder who does not get the respect that he deserves, and I'm in awe of the sheer volume of the massive genius brain that was somehow crammed into his little blond head.

ANYWAY. This is an official followup to my original post, now that I've read Boswell's work.

I take back my hunch that Boswell's work was not intersectional. He was, in fact, a pioneer in the field of medieval social history, and utilized a wide range of critical lenses in his work. He was inhibited by the lack of documented evidence about some groups (for example, he was frequently criticized for not writing more about lesbians, but he was open about the difficulties of researching lesbians in history and explained what he was doing as a scholar and as a teacher to mitigate this) but he constantly called attention to issues of class, gender, and other social factors wherever they were relevant.

I was RIGHT in noticing that the slight difference in rank between Sergius and Bacchus seems to be an erastes/eromenos indicator! Boswell spoke at greater length and with greater sensitivity about erastes/eromenos dynamics in history, so if you want a deeper look into that, you should read his books.

I was also probably right in noticing that the legend of Sergius and Bacchus is seeded with various forms of Byzantine propaganda! I really wish that I could talk to him about it. :(

Both secular queer theorists and religious queer theologians seem to be most uncomfortable with the fact that Boswell was reporting on historical facts and observable social forces, not idealized concepts of queer people as somehow being more ethical or spiritual than the straight majority. He included evidence of things like abuse, prostitution, and exploitation not because he thought they were cool, but because they were part of the material reality of queer people's existence in the past, just like they were part of the material reality of his own 70s-80s gay subculture.

That was his bottom line: gay/queer people are a normal human variation, and as a historian, he could provide hard proof of their existence and what their lives might have been like. If his work seems "shallow" or "dated" to some more modern queer researchers, it's only because so many people were willing to dismiss his scholarship, reject his work, and abandon his research leads after he died. But, he was actually super smart and his scholarship was actually meticulous, so even his most dedicated critics have been unable to "debunk" him. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality most recently had a 35th-anniversary reprinting, and he is still being cited as an authority by more recent scholars.

Even though the full strength of the Church and the Academy were leveled against him, his work has proven its own worth. He still deserves to be read and discussed by both professional scholars and enthusiastic hobbyists. And, the Open and Affirming movement in Christianity wouldn't be as strong as it is without his confirmation that "gays and lesbians are normal," as he put it, and not simply a construct of modern society.

Rest in power, Professor Boswell. We won't forget you.

Since I made that post, I have also opened a sticker shop with a bunch of queer Christian saint icons, including Boswell and some of the queer saints he discovered/wrote about. They're pretty cool. You should buy one.

#christianity #history #lgbtq #queer #lgbtq history #gay

[cerberusmahou]

We get just as much from Katara’s POV about Aang than we also do with her about Jet, if not more. In both ATLA and NATLA, Jet straight up manipulates Katara, and in NATLA it’s worse because he tells her that she only has the power that she does because of him. Whereas in ATLA and NATLA Aang is Katara’s number one supporter when it comes to almost everything (Kiawentiio herself said that he played a huge part in her bending growth and that they are both physically and spiritually bonded). So I’m confused as to why you think Jetara gives Katara agency, but Kataang doesn’t.

Let me start by clarifying that english isn't my language and I'm aware I can come out as aggressive. I apologize beforehand if my reply reads that way. However, I prefer being clear and assertive over being too polite and confusing.

I don't want to be part of ship wars either, so I won't reply to other questions like this if asked again, but I think it may be worth explaining once to avoid future confusion.

With this said, let me reply to your question.

I have never stated anything like that, so don't put words in my mouth I never said.

I am a Kataang. They're one of my favourite ATLA ships. If they weren't I wouldn't have drawn them because I value my time.

What I said is that while I love them I also wish the writers put more emphasis in Katara's perspective precisely because they're the canon choice. You can love something and, at the same time, be critical of it. I'm also critical of Jet's writing.

I don't think Jet gives Katara more agency than Aang does and I don't think Jetara is a healthier ship than Kataang either. You don't know why I like them. Ask me if you're curious, but stop assuming.

Aang is one of my favourite characters. He is kind, sweet, empathetic, funny and loves Katara genuinely. He is an incredibly good friend to Katara and one of the people who supports her goals and dreams the most. He wants good things for her and that's why I think they're cute together and good for each other.

However, as romance, their canon writing is objectively flawed. Both in the series and the comics, as their romance is writen from Aang's perspective. Katara is Aang's dream girl and the series frames her love as a reward. In fact, all the guys get a girl as a reward for their actions.

That's not a problem in fanfiction or idealized romance books, I enjoy that as well, but I have my beef with this happening in a series for children. Especially one where there is so much emphasis on growth and morals. It sets unrealistic and harmful expectations for all genders.

So, yes, I wish we had more scenes of Katara talking about her problems to him, I wish Katara had more agency with Aang, and I wish there were more scenes like the Fire Nation dance where you can see her crush develop - because we get all of this from Aang's side, but not so much from Katara's. That's not criticism against Aang, and that's not hating on Kataang, it's criticism against the author's writing choice. My complaints are level-entry feminism and I think we, as Kataang fans, should acknowledge its flaws along its strenghts.

That said, I also think ATLA is a product of its time. And one that aged very well. Back then, that's how most couples were written, as a male dream. This is a flaw, but a strength is that Katara's writing was more than revolutionary, especially considering she's the love interest.

All these facts can coexist and be true.

I get your frustration because I love Aang as well and I know about the anti-Kataang thing, but I'm afraid you're aiming at the wrong target.

I like Jet as a character and I like Jetara for other reasons, I don't ship them because i think he's a better suitor for Katara. I don't ship with that mindset. I have said this before, but I tend to focus on drawing what I can't find and wish to see - and there is a lot of Kataang for me to enjoy passively.

Aang, Katara, and Jet are fictional characters. Anyone can write them with anyone and enjoy exploring different scenarios.

Hope I explained myself properly. If you have any other questions I'll be happy to have a friendly chat.

[lunainfortuna]

Sjm would have never introduced gwyn and gave her that backstory for her not to be important. She could have just made nesta and emerie friends and thats it. But no she found it important to introduce gwyn, give her a backstory with azriel. She did the same thing with feyre/tamlin and rhys. We all thought she would end up with tamlin and then surprise she changed it, and let’s be honest feyre and tamlin have more of a story together then az and elain ever had. Feyre and tam had build up but that didn’t stop sjm to couple feyre with someone else. So yes there is a high possibility that the introduction of gwyn means the end of elriel.

They maybe claim there is 4 books of build up but there is barely anything there? They don’t talk with each other, he even avoids her now, she gave him the necklace back, he hasn’t thought about a future with her. Where is the build up?? At this point it’s just wishful thinking that elriel will happen.

And i really can’t read about that song anymore, everyone who thinks that is about elriel really should start taking classes again because your reading skills aren’t there. Its about a grieving mother? Its not a love story 😒

And azriel wasn’t saying her name in context of hybern not to protect her, but because he never acknowledged that she killed him. Only rhys and lucien acknowledged it, but never az so elriels should really stop trying to explain why he never said her name in front of bryce it wasn’t for protection, he just doesn’t acknowledges that it was her.

I agree with you. Gwyn could have been just a side character that was not too important to the story, but the author decided to put her in the spotlight. And you can see it clearly through SF. More than that, there are questions abt her that haven't been answered {the same with Azriel}.

Gwyn has a beautiful journey in Nesta's book. I talk about this here:

By the way, what they call `build up`, I call `text evidence that Elain and Azriel won't be together.` In four books, there are many hints in this direction.

Now, regarding the song and the extras... please lmao. I don't have it in me to not laugh. They are reaching. They are searching desperately for something, anything. The song is not about their ship. And Azriel did not talk about Elain because she was not in his mind - to say that he was `protecting` her is a lie. They talk about Feyre being a mom. They talk about them being the good guys. 🤷🏻

And Nesta being responsible for the King's death is exactly how he sees it.

#hofas spoilers #anti ewriel

[centrally-unplanned]

Here is my Comiket haul, for those who may care!

Arranged on the apartment chabudai for maximum weeb vibes. I won't go through all of them, just note a few to showcase the diversity of things that were on offer. If there is one someone wants a deep dive on, let me know, happy to take photos!

First up, the centerfold star - A Bocchi/Shimo-Kitazawa Fan Celebration doujin in the shape of a vinyl record:

Its extremely adorable, these guys went all in. It comes in an album case with "tracks", the vinyl-shaped doujin has an A side and a B side with totally different content when flipped, and when you are reading it the text slowly rotates page by page as if you are "playing" the disc.

Some of it is the circle's thoughts on Bocchi, but more is about their love for the part of Tokyo that Bocchi takes place in, Shimo-Kitazawa, with sections on show-accurate locations and favourite cafes and stores. They even included a map with all of the spots they recommend you visit in the area!

This one is to me the most "magic of doujin": we all have favourite parts of our cities, and if we sat down could maybe make a map like this. But why would we do that? Who would care? The joint power of a locally-set anime & Comiket, however, makes that personal map into a piece of art people want to own. This piece is pure creativity & passion, and its very special for that - a symbol of doujinshi.

Also one of their members spoke fluent English and aggressively upsold foreigners at the event ^_^ Successfully so! Good job.

For something a little less high concept, this tiny artbook of Rin from Laid-Back Camp as Ghibli characters is adorable:

A smol kiki, too cute. And look at her as Nausicaa! Full blue and ready to kick ass.

Its like 5 pages and each page is a gem, great buy.

This next one is a genre of book I really love - the photography/anime composite book focusing on scene locations, starring our girl Haruhi Suzumiya:

I appreciate how much fun this one has with its concept, lots of cute drawings on the margins; and the photographs are not all Haruhi related, instead it is just the author's own journey put through a Haruhi lens. This book is another great example of how "transformative" these works are, breaking the bounds of their source material.

"Hey, its me!"

Okay, now for some extreme Ash-brand doujin - Flowers for Yamada-san, a history doujin about Hiroyoshi Yamada, also known by the name Koji Kawamoto, a manga & magazine editor who played an instrumental part of the lolicon boom of the 1980's:

He passed away this year, and so this doujin is a memorial to him, an accounting of his influence and role in early manga, a wider discussion of the lolicon boom in general, and its own creative work; sandwiched between essays are comic depictions of moments of his career done in a mimicry the classic loli/bishoujo early 80's style:

This will of course take some time to read - I am excited to dig into it. As I have mentioned before, I am toying with the idea of a deeper research project on the "lolicon boom"; its, for understandable reasons, extremely neglected in western discourse of the history of anime & manga. But that moral aversion doesn't change how instrumental this period was, so I think a lot of good work could be done documenting and explaining its place. This book was an amazing find to stumble upon, and the creators are extremely well-researched on this period.

Anyway this is probably long enough lol. I did find some ero-doujin as well of course, though very few - as I mentioned, Comiket was a warzone, and I did not 'prep' for that side of things. I laughed at the idea of people doing days of research to prep of their porn buying adventure - I was the fool, they the wise, you absolutely need to do that if that is your goal. It wasn't really mine but I respect it now for sure - and I actually found the Comiket experience sort of liberating on that front, I "get it" now in a way I didn't before.

This is of course a tiny sliver of the book buys from Japan - hopefully I can make a few posts about the rest soon.

#Ash Japan Adventures #Comiket

[raiquen]

Book Review: The Invisible Man, H. G. Wells

My review in a Tweet:

"Would men turn evil if they were free from society?" is a frequent question in fiction and phylosophy in general, and while it's present in this book, it has been exaggerated on literary analysis that followed it. Overall, an interesting read with a very dull middle part.

Complete Review:

I decided to pause my other readings to dive into special thematic books for Halloween, while also complementing the nights I watch movie classics. So, for the first special review, I chose "The Invisible Man", by Herbert George Wells.

Years ago, I read "The Time Machine" by the same author, and it left a good impression of his writing skills. This time, while it wasn't bad, I'd say it left me a little unimpressed. The prose and descriptions, like the dialogues, were precise and well written but a bit dense. Wells would go over too many details, and although it's probably a common product of its time, it lacks a more deep or meaningful story.

The book it's divided in chapters, but I think the plot it's separated in four parts:

The arrival of the Invisible Man to a small town, his secret protected by the costume he wears.

The reveal of the secret and the following chaos.

The origin of the Invisible Man, told by himself to an old friend he runs into.

The manhunt of the Invisible Man.

The first part it's quite interesting as a reader, because we know what his secret is, so it's fun to read the guesses of the townspeople and the "mysterious events" that surround the stranger.

The second part is also fun, because of the paranoia and desbelief that the reveal of the Invisible Man provokes.

This third part, his backstory, the one I was most eager to read about (driven by the curiosity of getting to know how would the author explain or justify Griffins' invisibility) turned out to be so dull and slow. The proccess is a bit uninteresting (applying the refracting properties of an object to another thanks to a machine barely described), but the tedious first days of Griffin as an invisible man and his laments for all the unfortunate stuff that happens to him because no one can notice him is so... unsufferable. Specially because H.G. Wells decides to describe a lot the most boring stuff. We barely get to see a truly evil Invisible Man.

He does tell to his old friend that he needs an accomplice to declare his Reign of Terror, but by the time we reach this point, we have 10% or 15% of the book left, so the last part is mostly his friends saying No to him and helping the local police capture him (because the narration of his first days invisible gave him the information he needed). Griffin kills a man and injuries badly a few more men, but besides that and stealing money and food, he's no more evil than any person left behind by society.

So maybe, another possible interpretation to this story is not "Do men turn evil when free from society's watchful eye?" but rather "Men will do what they must to survive in a society that won't notice (help) them". Then, maybe, after a life like that, they will grow resentful and bitter like Griffin.

Score: 6.5/10.

My other 2023 readings.

#book reviews #book review #invisible man #h g wells #science fiction #literature #book #2023 readings #my 2023 readings #me

[often-obsessed]

Yandere!Cyrusxgn!reader

Chapter 10

The grunt didn't come back until the next morning. Probably to fulfill whatever grunt duties he was on. Still he kept his promise which you were grateful for. Here you were holding two books on alolan pokemon ready to be read. You were specifically looking for fairy pokemon. You wouldn't have an all fairy team but you wanted at least two. Any help against dialga and palkia who were clearly the biggest threats on Cyrus' team. You were assuming the two legendaries were some kind of dragon type. They looked dragon enough. This was the future, maybe they had updated books on dialga and palkia. You'd have to ask about that later.

Maybe you should get an ice type as well.

You didn't realized how much you missed being normal. Your thoughts went back to when you were a kid, fantasizing over all the pokemon you'd catch. You chuckled, no real mirth in it. If only your younger self could see you now. Probably would have booked it for Hoenn like you wanted.

Shaking your head you got back to the book. There wasn't much detail for each pokemon in this one. Surely the region had a pokemon professor. You could ask them.

"The island kapus?"

The next page showed a strange set of pokemon. Apparently the island's mythical or legendary pokemon of the region. Each one was in charge of its own island. Guardians protecting the people from harm.

You cringed, of course there would be super strong pokemon here. Were they watching you now? Surely they could feel the presence of dialga and palkia here. They wouldn't attack the building would they? You hoped not, at least while you were in it. Maybe they could free the two. Everything could go back to the way it was. Watch Cyrus get thrown in jail. See your family and friends.

Or maybe they would do nothing.

Who knew the minds of legendaries.

You switched to the next book, this one was more about the people who lived on the islands. Explaining the harmony between the people and pokemon. Good tourist spots. Best foods to try yada yada yada. What's this, Alola had no champion? It seems each island had trials for trainers.

Island Kahunas were basically gym leaders with some kind of authority on each island. Keep a mental page for that.

*knock knock*

Huh? Was it time to eat already?

"Open the door."

$#!@!

You slid your books under your bed before scrambling to answer the door.

What the heck did he want now?

You opened the door just a sliver. Ice blue eyes stared back. Damn your warden was already back from...whatever he was doing? Cyrus pushed the door open making you step back.

"So what's the reason for stopping by?"

Walking inside Cyrus surveyed the room once more. Oh arceus don't look toward the books.

"I came by earlier but you did not answer. May I know why?"

He...didn't know right? Nah he was probably to busy studying pokemon, just like you were with the books under your bed.

Focus.

He turned to you. Eyes drilling in your own. Hedoesn'tknowhedoesn'tknowhe

doesn'tknow.

"I went to the cafeteria to eat, I don't like eating alone you know. Is there a problem with that?"

Cyrus seemed to relax. As relaxed as he could be.

"No, but I warn you not to get attached to anyone here. The useless sentiment won't help you when we return to my world. Furthermore I want you to be aware of my colleagues."

You rose your eyebrow.

"I have discovered some are in possession of legendaries. Like Giovanni and I, they have succeeded in their plans of shaping their world."

You furrowed you brows this time. A burning feeling pushed at the back of your head.

"How come I've never seen them around the dimension then? I mean I would have at at least run into one of them on a floating island."

Cyrus sighed, gracing you with one of the few emotions he still liked to show.

"Still living in your delusion? Open your eyes, this is not the same dimension we left. They all came from their own."

"Why should I have any reason to believe you? You lied to your own team, to the world. What would make me any different?"

Cyrus cocked his head.

"What benefit would it make to lie to you? I don't need you compromised any further. From now on if you want to leave the room you can accompany me to my office."

"Are you serious? What is with you wanting to control every aspect of my life!"

"As long as you're associated with me you are my responsibility. Be grateful I am allowing you to leave this room."

Grateful?! Your blood boiled, of all the things this bastard could have said. To have this cretin act like he was doing you a favor... Your fists shook, heck you were pretty sure your whole body was shaking.

"Me? Be grateful? The audacity for you to say that! Maybe if you had been grateful our world would still be here you selfish prick! Get the hell out!"

Your sudden outburst caused the pale man to shuffle back, if you had bothered to notice you would have cackled with glee.

The man steeled himself, oh ho you could tell this fight had just begun. With the energy burning through your veins you welcomed it.

"There was nothing to be grateful for then, your useless wish for that incomplete world is futile! For a world where suffering is guaranteed, you call me selfish?"

"Nothing is perfect! I'm fully aware of the suffering of others, but that doesn't mean you try to kill everyone! You do what you can to help instead of trying to end everyone's existence!"

"It was a mercy to end them, they didn't feel a thing! If I will it, I will bring them back, better than before!"

"They're not dead idiot! Stop talking like they are! You're a failure in that aspect thank arceus! Maybe you should try to grow some empathy, oh so powerful Cyrus!"

The air grew cold, feeling like a million tiny knives stabbing at your skin. Cyrus seemed to loom over you once again, his fists balled. Doubt began to pool in your stomach, fighting the rage for dominance.

Cyrus, with the little emotions that he showed. His emotionless facade was still there. But his eyes wore silent, barely held back rage. You caved in on yourself, what button did you press?

"I am only going to say this one more time, listen. You are only allowed to leave this room with me by your side. If you disobey this simple order, you will lose the right to walk. Do I make myself clear?"

His voice despite being so quiet was the loudest sound in the room. His words now began to register in your head.

He, he wouldn't.

Would he?

You became hyper aware of your legs, as if he would rip them off that vert moment.

"I asked you a question. I expect a verbal answer."

"Y-yes"

Cyrus pulled back, closing his eyes and gaining control of himself again.

You didn't dare move a muscle for fear of whatever that was would come back. You really had done it this time. Why couldn't you just hold your temper in for once?

Cyrus opened his eyes again, ire completely gone. Hands behind his back a his usual manner.

"Do you wish to accompany me to my office?"

His voice just a whisper.

"N-no thank you."

Yours barely just.

He turned making his way to the exit. He paused at the door staring ahead.

"I can't allow this delusion to fester any longer, I will be back at dinner time to have you call your 'parents' then you will see."

You perked up, he was going to let you call your parents? You longed to hear their voices again. Even if Cyrus was most likely going to listen in.

But did you want to? What if Cyrus would trace the call and threaten their lives or something. You knew the number, was this a trick? You could not give him more leverage over you.

No you needed to leave.

Now.

Even if he was going to possibly paralyze you. The thought still made you nauseous. But the thought of him harming your parents...

It was still before noon you had time to leave.

Oh arceus this would be a longshot.

#yandere cyrus pokemon #Omg its been lo long #Im sooorrryyy #tw: yandere #yandere pokemon

[thosearentcrimes]

Read The Sympathizer, a novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, upon recommendation by an IRL friend. It's pretty good. The best non-spoiling summary I can give of it is that it is the story of a man who spends a very long time trying to understand dialectics and eventually succeeds. That is, he ends up understanding nothing.

In interviews the author says that the framing device of the book makes the book a conversation between two Vietnamese people, and he's proud of that. Well, yes, that's ostensibly what the framing device suggests, but it's also not remotely consistent with the actual content of the book. The problem is that the book is written for Americans (non-Vietnamese) and there's no escaping that. Writing a book for Americans as communication between two non-Americans requires a degree of trust for the audience that is not on display in this novel.

It's possible there was an earlier draft that was more consistent with the framing device. It feels like you can sometimes discern its ghost, trapped behind a wall of notes in red pen reading "unfamiliar context" "Americans won't get this joke" "needs more exposition" "explain the joke or people won't know it's funny" "readers are drooling imbeciles" "needs to be more didactic". Though perhaps the didacticism is down to the fact that the author is an academic?

In any case, all of this sadly detracts from what is at the bones quite a good spy story! I like the characterization of the main character, I like the portrayal of spycraft. I like the premise, despite my objections to the execution, and I like imagining the better book trapped under consideration for the expected audience. It also made my think about my grandfather, a man who died long before I was born. I can absolutely recommend this to anyone interested in a spy novel set during and after the Vietnam War.

There's a sequel. I'll read it, I'd love to know where it's going, but I have to admit I'm a bit concerned. The end of this novel was pretty rushed, it seemed unnecessary and unmotivated. The impression I got was that the author had run out of ideas. Hopefully the existence of a sequel indicates the he has come up with some new ones.

#book report #the sympathizer #viet thanh nguyen

[baeddel]

do you have a goodreads account? i would like to be able to study and be as well-read as you... if you don't, but you do have free time and the motivation to help out your less educated followers, could you just recommend me some books? history and linguistics are the most interesting things to me and you seem to have a really solid base in those things.

long reply, sometimes a little silly

yes! this is my goodreads. i don't really maintain it that well, and a lot of my reviews are from when i was 22 or 23, so look at it with that in mind. most of goodreads features are based on a theory of reading that doesn't correspond very much with how i read. they think you make lists of books you want to read, read them cover to cover, and evaluate that book as a book. i don't do that; i make lists of books that are relevant to a certain topic, i read pages that are relevant to the topic i'm worried about, and i evaluate the claims made within the field as i encounter it. for example, the handful of comments Orlando Patterson made about slavery in Germanic textual sources in his 800-page long Slavery & Social Death have had a lot of influence on how i engage with Germanic textual sources, something that book isn't about. Deleuze & Guattari talk about the "immediate, indefinite multiplicity of secondary roots" that a book has. Slavery & Social Death is a book about Germanic philology insofar as books are rhizomes, while insofar as books are taproots it's a comparative study of slavery in 66 slave societies. by the way, Sara-Maria Sorentino believes that no one reads past the first few pages of the introduction to Slavery & Social Death (2016, 1). and Youri Cormier believes that most academics who've published books on Clausewitz have never read past the first chapter of On War (War as Paradox, 2016, Introduction). you can avoid that kind of scrutiny by reading a page somewhere in the middle or close to the end, but before the conclusion. you'll be doing something no one else might have ever done, and everyone will be impressed you know something about a page with three numbers in its name. they'll immediately tell you about the first four pages that they did read, so there's no real reason to read them yourself.

anyway, i don't have a solid base at all. you read one post where i use a word you had to google and you think i know something. i don't know anything really. most of my posts are supposed to be experiments with stream of consciousness writing or else they're actually just jokes. you just don't notice because you don't know what i'm talking about. the truth is i'm a forum crank you will quickly outgrow. anyway, i won't recommend you any books because you should be reading books as little as possible. you want to read papers. you should read papers because they're concise and recent and peer-reviewed. autodidacts always try to slog through one long book, and when they're done with it they start another, often by the same author. as a result they learn most of one professor's pet theories and very little about the field. you don't want to do that. in the same number of pages you could read 30 papers all written by people who disagree with each other. you'll watch them reply to each other and when they do they'll summarize the other guy's argument for you, and then they'll tell you what pages the important bits are on, so you can go and read those if you want. and then they'll say why that guy’s wrong, and they'll probably say "that guy is wrong because he's making this mistake about how this discipline works", which they'll try to correct, and now they're explaining how the discipline works to you and you immediately know quite a lot just from this one paper. to read a paywalled paper, just put the DOI (a link with a string of numbers in it) into sci-hub.

here's how i get oriented in something i want to get into:

i type [subject] + reading list into google. what you're looking for are university websites that are preparing reading lists for students. for example, when i was first reading about literary theory i found this remarkable list hosted on the University of Kentucky's site. you don't actually want to read everything or even anything on this list; the main thing is how it’s organized. this list is organized into sections like pre-theory, formalism, structuralism, reader-response, etc. as soon as you look at it you know quite a bit about the discipline. now you can try to figure out what those things mean and find a corner of the discipline to start on.

type [subject] best textbooks or similar into google. the university page might have already suggested a textbook, but here i want to hear from students who had to use a particular book for class and what they thought of it. usually you're looking for reddit or stackexchange threads (the stackexchange threads will all be locked for being open-ended questions lol). if someone makes a good case for a particular book they used, put the title into google scholar. find the book and see where it says "cited by n", however many citations it has. if you click that it'll display all the other stuff that cites that textbook. some of them will be reviews. alternatively search [title] review. academic journals publish more reviews than they do articles; almost everything will have a review by someone who is in that field for a living, both contributing as a researcher and teaching students about it. they're going to 1. summarize the contents of the textbook, as well as its relationship to the overall pedagogical field in that area (this can shade into an interesting kind of inquiry called 'reception studies'), 2. say if they think it's useful, sometimes based on their experience teaching with it, and 3. say all the stuff it gets wrong, which is really good to know. if you still want the book (ie. the book sounds better than a summary of the book—which not all of them are), try and find it on z-lib/libgen, archive.org or soulseek. for literary theory i used Peter Barry's Beginning Theory which is great. i read most chapters, and the annotated Further Reading section at the back is tremendously helpful.

download one of the software mentioned in this thread. it will search your keyword on google scholar and then return a list of results ordered by number of citations (for some reason google scholar doesn't have that feature natively). this will basically give you a list of papers that other academics feel obliged to respond to the most often, which means they're probably worth reading yourself. hopefully by now you have an idea of what you want to read about, because you have to give it something specific. you can't just search "history" this way.

in addition or alternatively, just type [subject] into google scholar, find a recent paper and scroll to the 'bibliography' section, and you can use this as a list of relevant papers and books.

if you haven't found one already, type in [subject] subject encyclopedia. these things are indispensible! i talk about how to use them in this goodreads review.

by now you should feel comfortably oriented with respect to the major schools and arguments within the field. **NOTE: for more technical areas of linguistics, biology, or anything involving statistics, i lean a lot on girls i'm sleeping with who are qualified to explain things to me and give their informed opinion. i try and have a sexual relationship with someone in every field i might want to know things about.** while you're doing all that stuff you should keep a list of texts you encounter that seem worthwhile, along with some contextualizing comments. mine look like this (from a text file called as_list21.txt, as = anglo-saxon, 21 = 2021, the year i started the list):

there are other sections headed 'language & philology', 'history & archeology', etc. and from marx_secondary22.txt:

which mixes headers for approaches and geographic distinctions rather than using subfields. how you group things doesn't matter, it's just to organize it for easy reference.

while you read you should learn to take notes. try and keep your notes brief and include page numbers. notes are useful if they let you forget things and still find them when you need them. if, instead, you want to remember something, you should think about using anki. i talk about those things more in this answer.

while you're on this road you should be mindful of the blinders you might be putting on yourself. academic books and papers are a small part of academia in general. a lot of academia doesn't happen in those little journals. i once read this academic librarian's criticism of sci-hub (see) and i think a lot of what they have to say is pretty silly (a mix of bootlicking and capitalist realism which is not even worth thinking about), but they made one point that i think about a lot which was that

Enabling access to [published journal] papers only serves to reinforce the association that these final, peer-reviewed manuscripts are the de facto currency of science. This perversely enhances the status of prestige publication [...] It is also completely at odds with DORA (the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment) which calls for a reappraisal of how the outputs of research are evaluated, and for “the need to eliminate the use of journal-based metrics, such as Journal Impact Factors, in funding, appointment, and promotion considerations”

ie. before sci-hub made access to journal articles easy for everybody, the conversation was around whether or not journal articles even mattered. most scientific work—maybe this is less true in letters fields, i'm not sure—is not really done in papers. conferences and presentations are a big way academic ideas are circulated and those are things we just don't have access to. and maybe there are other things i don't even know about. for myself, i try to prioritize conversations, and i am never sorry to fall behind on my reading if i get to have mutually beneficial conversations with someone who is doing or making something i care about.

but what do i care about? is it historical linguistics, medievalism, and so forth, anything that i study and write about? the answer is not really. i do that stuff because i'm insane. what i'm doing—it isn't normal. it isn't something anybody wants to do. you want to learn about history and linguistics, but what can you do with those things? only two things: 1. advance the field of history or linguistics, 2. impress cute girls with the stuff you know. you end up feeling like Jean des Esseintes, cramming a couple more gems on the turtle's shell. what i really care about is anarchy. does knowing about the disappearance of i-stem words from Old English really help me spread anarchy? it's difficult to imagine any situation where that kind of knowledge is necessary or even disposable. i recently read this essay by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò (here) where he talks about how activists from Flint, Michigan, in response to the political corruption that led to their water being contaminated and undrinkable for so long, were able to raise the attention of others outside of their city, gather a team of sympathetic scientists to conduct tests on the water and prove that it was contaminated, and use that to unravel the whole thing and force a solution to the problem. not one single person from Flint, Michigan had to know a thing about chemistry or public health prior to the contamination. after the contamination happened, one person, LeeAnne Walters, "systematically educated herself about water lead issues and diagnosed the cause for elevated blood lead in her children" (Roy & Edwards, 2019), after which she was able to connect with an Enviormental Protection guy called Miguel Del Toral, and both local amateur scientific interest and interest within the scientific community snowballed from there.

so the conditions for a successful movement didn't rely on anyone having any particular kind of pre-existing intellectual training. you might think this sounds like an argument against ivory tower book learning, and therefore a defense of an argument that anarchists occasionally make, that anarchists shouldn't learn abstruse theory but should focus on local, practical knowledge like the locations of nearby water supply networks and how to repair vehicles and so forth (Sergey Nechayev advanced a version of this, saying that "[t]he revolutionary despises all doctrines and refuses to accept the mundane sciences" except "the science of destruction [...] mechanics, physics, chemistry, and perhaps medicine", see). however there was a clever reply to this made by someone on here, who's name i unfortunately don't remember, which was that for any revolution to be successful it will need to involve making connections with people like municipal workers who already know the locations of water supplies, labourers who already know how to repair vehicles and so forth. so anarchists who devote themselves to such 'practical' activities are wasting their time; if they actually need to use it they must be at such a disadvantage that this knowledge will not save them. the truth is that "one can prepare the cradle, but not bring to life the long-awaited being" (Blanqui). your time is best served making an organization that anyone actually wants to belong to, which includes helping lumpen/proletarians realize their aspirations, which may well invovle discussing diachronic linguistics or other esoteric subjects (i have found this to be true). the Comando Vermelho spend most of their time organizing dance parties.

as for myself, i promote whatever anyone is interested in, because i believe that it is better to have a hobby than to get sucked into any of these horrific political cults i've watched my friends get sucked into out of desperation, that abuse their members, cover up scandals, and appropriate funds. these organizations are not just wrong, and they do not just mistreat individuals; they also decimate the movement by attracting all the young, politically engaged people only to isolate them from their loved ones and let them burn out, get them arrested with reckless actions or alienate them from the movement with whisper campaigns, or in the worst cases torture and kill them (like the United Red Army did), and all the while perpetuate themselves forever to do it all again. if i can make sure that everyone would rather be at home reading the Eddas than going out and 'organizing' that way then they'll only lend their energy to organizations and activities that are really efficacious, and the movement, when and where it happens, will be in a stronger position. Baudrillard's quip: "For a healthy distribution of energies, the best thing is to commit one’s cowardice in the service of a good cause and one’s courage to the service of the bad ones."

what did you ask? well anyway, good luck!