#And I don't know if tumblr is the right place for philosophizing but its not like anybody's going to give me a PhD for this stuff

[secondjulia]

My brain, working on a dark!Dream/Hob fic that's getting pretty bloody: So... does everybody know that Hob killed people over white bread?

Like, this is not him bragging to friends or making a joke. Dream has already walked away with Shaxberd, and Hob's just like recollecting by himself.

My ideas about why Hob and Dream/Hob are so captivating are twofold:

Because even at the best of times, Hob is never a hero. Like I know the "regular guy" trope is... well, a trope. Especially in Fantasy, I feel like there's this emphasis on how the hero is really, actually, totally just a normal person with a normal life and just wants normal stuff who just happens to have whatever world-saving powers/tools/information the story needs. I mean, Peter fucking Parker's whole thing is him being a totally regular teenager — with world-saving spider powers! (I love Spiderman, don't hate me.) Even if you're a sidekick, you still have to have like genius-level brains or skills. But Hob really, really is just some random drunk braggart in a pub and even though he gains some wisdom, he is never actually more than a guy in a pub. I'm not saying it's laudable — that's the whole point — it's just that he's so... us. He's just a mirror of the world. When the world gets excited about chimneys and handkerchiefs, Hob's right there with them. And when the world goes dark, Hob gets mired in that, too.

Because change. You have Dream who is capable of change at an absolutely glacial pace. And then you have Hob who rushes into life again and again and again, seemingly endlessly capable of change — regardless of whether it's for better or worse. There's something compelling about the two extremes colliding and transforming each other. Even at the worst of times, I think change contains hope — because if things can turn one way, then they can turn another. And the idea that over time, people can grow and learn and become better and maybe become better at change itself is a beautiful and powerful and deeply human idea. We're adaptable, that's our thing.

#Hob Gadling #Dark!Hob #Canon Hob Gadling was pretty much Dark!Hob from the beginning #Like he's still a great character and a mirror for humanity but wow #Sandman #Neil Gaiman #Dreamling #I have a lot of really dense thoughts about Hob and Hob in the context of humanity and Hob specifically in the context of Dream #And I don't know if tumblr is the right place for philosophizing but its not like anybody's going to give me a PhD for this stuff #I just wanted to put my thoughts somewhere #Dream of the Endless #We do not choose to be created nor do we choose how we are made. That is true. But we can change.

[max1461]

Here's my other problem with tumblr discourse: even when I make the context/intended interpretation of a post really explicit, people ignore this context and respond to it in like... for lack of a more charitable term, a discoursebrained way.

So a while ago I made a post about some ethical intuition I had, and at the top I put a huge disclaimer which said something to the effect of "this is just an expression of my feelings, it's not meant to be a philosophically airtight position, please don't take it as such", followed by a readmore and then the actual post. Why did I do that? Because I figured that if I didn't, people would nitpick it in various technical ways that missed the basic point. Lo and behold several people still did that, and when I replied basically restating the disclaimer, one of them said "oh I didn't even see that. Well I think if you post a half-baked thought online I retain the right to nitpick it".

I guess that's true. My blog is public. But the point is that I want to use my blog for certain things and not others, right, that's what I'm attempting to do. And people seem actively resistant to my attempts to guide the discussion on my blog in certain directions, which makes blogging less enjoyable. Of course some people will always do that, that fact doesn't bother me, but it feels like the irrelevant/point-missing discourse so often overshadows the meaningful discourse that I start to feel less of a desire to put in the effort.

Like, the point of issuing that disclaimer was to say, as explicitly as I could manage, "I am trying to have a discussion about feelings and intuitions here, I am aware there might be ways these intuitions are not fully consistent, but that is not the discussion I'm trying to have". But even so explicit an attempt to specify a conversation topic does not work; the discourse machine demands a certain kind of engagement and that is the engagement every post will get no matter what.

I don't want to put the person who missed my disclaimer on blast: it's honestly an error that anyone could make and on its own it's no big deal. If said person is reading this: you didn't do anything wrong and I am not mad at you, to be 100% clear.

It's not a one-off mistake that bothers me, it's the fact that this is how discussions on here so often go that putting in the effort to discuss things productively often feels wasted.

Another example of this that... if you go through my #society tag, you will see a lot of uncertainly in my phrasing. You will see me say a lot of "it seems like we should..." and "we should find some mechanism to..." and so on and so forth. Why? Because, as I've mentioned before, I've gotten a lot out of political discourse on here. When it's good, I actually find it quite good. But it's good when it has a constructive or collaborative tone, when I am bouncing ideas or thoughts back and forth with someone. Generally I am trying to invite this kind of discourse.

Sometimes, again, I say it really explicitly. I don't have them off the top of my head, but I know there are quite a lot of #society posts where I've said something quite straightforwardly to the effect of "here are some niche social/political issues I've been contemplating, does anyone have any ideas for how to respond to them". Obviously there's a spectrum in how explicit I am about this, but even when I'm really clear, most of the responses I get are still "discoursebrained", in the sense that they seem antagonistic and generally more interested in saying "X guys are cool and Y guys are lame" than in productively engaging with a set of ideas.

Even if you disagree with my claims or my premises, there is a way to state that which adds to a conversation instead of shutting down a line of inquiry. I am always trying to invite this type of mutually-productive discussion, and I so rarely achieve it.

Over the years my methods have changed. I come from a background of like, forums for specific nerd interests. Those places are plenty contentious, full of plenty of drama and disagreement. But ultimately, I always still felt that productive discussion was valued above destructive discussion; that because we were all united in a common goal of [doing our nerdy hobby], a comment where you build on someone's idea to say something useful to others or to introduce a new insight was generally valued above one where you just said "you're wrong for such and such reasons, hah!" or even "you're right for such and such reasons".

Coming from this background, I assumed this would also be the case on tumblr, and that I would not have to put in any extra effort to invite this sort of discourse. Alas, this was not true; even long and thought-out replies from respected discoursers often just amount to "here are the guys I agree with and here are the guys I disagree with, for such and such reasons". This is lame and boring and not appealing to me.

So over the years I've tried to be more and more explicit about what types of discussion I am trying to have, I've tried to tee up the sort of interactions I want as much as possible, but it hasn't really worked.

The problem is not strictly the quality or measuredness of the responses or their tone or anything like that. These are the things most people focus on when they critique the discourse, but I think they miss the point. The problem is that most responses don't seem to be intended to advance a mutually-productive discussion, they don't build on the base of what they are responding to, they just make various assertions and statements of allegiance in the vicinity of the material they are responding to and call it a day.

Maybe this is too harsh. I'm sure I do this too. And it's not always bad. Sometimes I use someone else's post openly as a jumping off point to elaborate my own ideas (although I try to be careful about this, and also make it somewhat clear that I am doing it), and this can be productive. I do actually want to hear people's ideas. It's not any single instance of these things I'm complaining about, it's just that discoursey responses seem to drown out all other types of discussion, even when you are really clear about what type of discussion you are trying to have.

So that's my complaint.

#navel gazing

[yellowocaballero]

What are your tips on writing things that are both comedic and hard-hitting? Your style reminds me of Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams in that sense, and I was wondering if you had any specific ways of hitting that balance of wit and feeling

No pressure to answer btw :)

Hello! My good friend @lazuliquetzal made an excellent post on this, so check it out! I can't phrase it better than she did.

To say something additional: a part of it is not an actual tip and it is the fact that I am just like this. It is just the way I talk. I'm an extremely obnoxious person IRL whose dialogue is half jokes.

This is something I've talked about several times before but I can't find the posts on my Tumblr. But there is a difference between a comedy and jokes. A comedy is in the structure of a story - how it's paced, the sequence and type of action, the character dynamics, and the internal logic of the story. In a comedy you either have a more straightforward style or you figure out how to make the narration itself funny and phrase things in a funny way. A joke is a joke. I use jokes in dramatic stories to cut melodrama and give a palate cleanser, to provide rapport between two characters, to humanize and personalize the setting, and because life is inherently just a little funny. We laugh every day. Things don't feel realistic to me if people never do little funny things or crack dumb little jokes. But similarly, comedies don't feel real either if there's no pathos or genuine depth to the characters - if the characters don't feel like people we know, or if we can't identify them in real life.

The best tips are the one LazuliQuetzal gave tbh. There is a time and a place for humor, and if it's badly placed then it can be super awkward. Balancing wit and feeling is just a matter of figuring out the right pacing, story beats, and uhhh that 'up/down' feeling in a story outline? A comedy is a specific type of story, and learning how to write a comedy is just as much of a skill as learning how to write a drama. Pterry used comedy as social commentary and Adams followed an artistic style of absurdism that has its own social commentary in an extremely British and 1980s way. I think, if your characters in comedies are designed as actual people with coherent internal logic and depth and not just joke machines, then the pathos comes. The jokes come too.

Not a great answer :(. I get this Q a lot and it's always so hard to give a good answer. It's partly just your own natural sense. It's partly skill-building and learning how to write a comedy. It's partly having your finger on the pulse of pacing and story beats, which is an intuitive understanding which is only gained with experience. The drama is in the natural character pathos, not justifying the comedy. Also, I'm biased, but I don't think comedy needs to be in a story for a reason and you don't have to wax philosophical on Tumblr.edu about why comedy in fiction saves the universe. Fiction is entertainment and jokes entertain effectively. That's really it.

#by the up/down thing I mean #when i outline what i wrote looks like this: #1. X (up) 2. X (down) 3. X (up) 4. X (down) 5. X (up) 6. X (up) 7. X (lowest point) 8. Penultimate climax (up) 9. Climax (up) 10. End (down #it. makes sense to me.

[whenlifegivesyousparklingwater]

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Dear Public Diary,

I feel an increasing sense of dread as April approaches. As a student in the humanities and social sciences, not only do I have research of my own to do, but I have so many papers to write for courses. Just in the next week, I have two papers due, neither of which I have started. I have been staring at the same page and reading the same sentences over and over. I cannot concentrate or comprehend what I am reading. However, in my defense, Locke writes in paragraph-length sentences that could have easily been broken up into at least three separate statements. This inability to be productive, combined with the inability to relax, puts me in stasis, where I just freeze up. It's not that I don't like the Enlightenment thinkers... or maybe it is.

I have to remind myself that just because power is shared among several White men (as opposed to power concentrated in one White man) does not make it democratic. It's so easy to read ideological philosophical texts and convince myself that I am one of the humans they speak of, though I know that these thinkers would not have considered me as one. Even still--centuries after Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau--I am not truly considered as a full, free [hu]man by the government. It is not really that oppressed people are becoming a part of this "human" category; we are just changing the boundary between who is in the human and subhuman categories. We are just given an illusion of progress by introducing new moral justifications.

For example, in the US, we are taught to believe that racism ended with MLK--we no longer treat Black people as lesser just because of skin color! Hooray! However, what the government did was refocus our morality--we believe criminals deserve to be punished and treated as lesser. Solution: make Americans believe crime is out of control and that Black people are criminals. Now we draw the line slightly differently from where it was before, but not really. It just gives us new moral justifications to put a certain group of people in the trash to be forgotten. This is a weird analogy, but it reminds me of the barber poles that captivated me as a child; the spinning motion combined with the diagonal lines give the illusion that the lines are continually going upward when, in reality, the stripes are not changing.

I am taking a graduate-level course in philosophy of law; this semester, it is focused on feminism and cornography laws. [I don't know what words Tumblr flags these days, but just to be safe, I will just use 'corn' to refer to--you know.] We are reading In Harm's Way: The [C]ornography Civil Rights Hearings by Catharine MacKinnon. The hearings took place in the 80s when there were no real laws limiting corn or allowing people to seek justice for wrongs they faced because of corn. I'm happy to discuss the philosophical, sociological, and psychological dimensions of harm caused by corn, but that would be an entire dissertation on its own, so I will hold myself back for the time being.

In the past seven days, I have read ten books. These were mindless fantasy romances, so I breezed through them, no critical thinking skills activated. However, it made me stop and analyze the parallels between mainstream romance books and visual cornography. Corn had previously been limited to the men who had access to art (so basically the upper class) or brothels. Until the internet age, it was not as democratically accessible. Nowadays, even young children are able to access corn without any barriers. Corn tends to refer to visual mediums (rather than literary), and we as a society now recognize the existence and harms of sex trafficking and its role in creating corn. People tend to believe that the harm of cornography lies in the women who are forced to perform and that this is what makes the ethics of corn questionable. [Of course, some may argue upon which ones or what situations can be evaluated as "forced," but that's a topic to tackle on another day.]

However, this is my controversial opinion: I think corn and the pimps of this multi-billion dollar industry have strategically adapted to the new social constraints of the time. Behold, spicy books: a newly-mainstream medium of corn that still maintains abuse/violence as something sexually arousing, maintains toxic gender dynamics (i.e., male dom/female sub), brings in a new demographic of customers (i.e., women), and seems ethical (i.e., no women are harmed in the process). Seems like female sexual liberation, but is it really? I recently went to a local bookstore, and they had a whole section of the store dedicated to BookTok romance books with an emphasis on those with "spice." Alarmingly, it was right next to the Young Adult (YA) section (ages 12-18). The displayed spicy books have such deceiving, innocent, cute covers that make children pick them up and prevent parents from knowing the true nature of the story. Pimps would often show children corn as educational material of sorts so that they know how to behave and what to reenact. Especially since sex education is not very thorough (if there is any at all), these toxic dynamics displayed in these books become young girls' sex education.

Even for us adults, it's important to analyze whether the maledom/femsub dynamic is truly a personal preference that many people also happen to hold or whether it is an internalization of misogyny. Although these YouTube shorts were satirical, I saw a few that were something like "POV: you're dating a book girlfriend" and the girlfriend would do toxic things, like objectify their partners, have unrealistic expectations, expect/demand violent actions in sex that the men are not comfortable doing, etc. Seems like an ironic reversal of the previous situation with visual cornography. [It is important to remember we are still in a male-dominated society, and as long as we are in a male-dominated society, men will not truly understand the harm corn has caused women.] However, men are being called "too sensitive" by talking about the harm these books are causing in relationships. Wouldn't this be another form of silencing a group, this time on the basis of toxic masculinity ideals? Then, we are not necessarily giving more people voices but shifting who gets the voice based on a shallow understanding of the deeper issue at hand.

One of the reasons why violent corn should not be protected by the First Amendment is because of the real-life harms that they cause. For example, corn may just say these are "sexual fantasies," but they cause real-life harm as real-life men seek to reenact them with women in coerced/forced situations. Just because one has a camera recording should not mean that the violent act is protected under free speech. If real-life harm is being caused because of smut, smut should not be fully defended by the First Amendment as free speech. More importantly, we need to realize that these books are not "just fiction" or "just sexual fantasies" and understand the real-life implications. I guess smut books can also be seen as a form of sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act in that they create content based on gender/sex where one group (i.e., women) is degraded, and these books facilitate gender-based discrimination in real life. Anyways, these are my thoughts.

I have a breakfast meeting to get ready for, so I will call it a day here.

Yours Truly,

RCH

#dear diary #personal blog #public diary #journal #journaling #feminism #books

[mariacallous]

I don't know if I agree with everything in this article, but it definitely is making me think:

Of All the threats posed by Twitter since it fell under sketchy new management in October, one of them doubles as a promise. Twitter will devolve into pornography.

Porn’s not my cup of tea, but you have to admire its ferocity and cunning. It’s a mega-genre, something the poet-philosopher Timothy Morton might call a hyperobject, ungraspable in its ubiquity and scale. In effect, porn online behaves like a predator plant, saturating the pixels with flesh colors, choking off biodiverse memes, and sowing vast digital acreage with salt.

Tumblr, which started as an artsy microblogging service in 2007, lost its allure when it was overrun by porn five years later. Chatroulette, which was founded in 2009 as a whimsical way to meet strangers, traded its lightheartedness for dick pics and leering goons almost immediately. OnlyFans, which began in 2016 as a platform for performers to post videos, now consists mostly of porn created by sex workers.

But most companies aim to marginalize porn. While OnlyFans has surrendered, Chatroulette and Tumblr appear to take a firmer stand than ever against it. Facebook and YouTube conscript armies of algorithms and humans to banish porn in deference to advertisers who don’t want brands debased by unwholesome adjacencies. Alone among the big social media services, Twitter allows users to post what it calls “intimate media.” But the platform also permanently suspends users who post upskirts, creepshots, revenge porn, nonconsensual erotica, images shot with hidden cameras, or media accompanied by incitements to violence. Pornographic images, which make up about 13 percent of all tweets, cannot yet be directly sold.

Porn in its place may be bankable, in other words, but too much of it in a venue styled as PG can scare off much bigger revenue streams.

Or so popular wisdom has it. Twitter’s new management, as usual, dissents. The volatile Chief Twit, Elon Musk, has torn down guardrails, eliminated moderators, and alienated advertisers all on his own with tiresome shitposting and hospitality to hate speech. Musk, whose personal fortune fell by $100 billion in 2022, pretends to insouciance about money in a way that’s unconvincing and hard to watch. When General Mills, General Motors, Pfizer, Ford, and Mondeléz International (the august maker of Oreos) stopped advertising on Twitter last fall, Musk lashed out at corporate America for its failure to respect the wishes of the founding fathers, who presciently mandated advertising on Twitter in 1789. Unchastened, half of the platform’s top 100 advertisers were gone in Musk’s first month.

Without moderators or advertisers, swaths of Twitter are now mangy empty lots crawling with vandals, lechers, con men, and swastikas. The time is perhaps right for porn, then. Porn abhors a vacuum. Especially where it can be ennobled as constitutional duty.

How in the world is this good news? I’ll tell you why it’s good news to me. Not only will it make Twitter2 easily quittable, but it’s pleasing to see things become what they deep down are. Twitter has slouched toward porn for years. “Slipping into DMs” is only one salacious meme in what long ago became an orgy of hyperstimulation, with people baring their souls, posting thirst traps, coyly subtweeting, and of course negging and prodding and simultaneously secreting dopamine and cortisol and God knows what other precious bodily fluids.

“I am mad for it to be in contact with me,” Walt Whitman wrote, of what he called “life’s atmosphere.” No doubt he also meant contact with the bodies of the many people he cruised and desired. Likewise, Twitter seems to offer contact with everyone, and the interface exists to make users mad for contact as it conjures life’s atmosphere of abrasiveness streaked with sweetness. The real Twitter was the friends we made along the way, as someone has surely tweeted.

That’s gone now. When the chief rolls in with tryhard trolling that misses the mark of humor, squealing in annoying feedback loops from his Wall of Sound, the warm chatter among the regulars goes silent. A pall falls. When Musk tweeted some horror fiction alleging that the spouse of a prominent elected official might have been perversely complicit in cracking his own skull with a hammer, something at the heart of Twitter seemed to die. Later, when he bellowed that Twitter in 2020 had abridged the constitutional right of trolls to post a Hunter Biden dick pic, another influx of refugees poured into Mastodon, which presents itself as a more normal haven for people fleeing Twitter.

“The Internet Is for Porn” was the catchiest song from Avenue Q, which debuted 20 years ago. That was before broadband, before social media, before the hijack of information space by influence operations and strongman solo acts like GOP trinity Kanye, Elon, and Trump. It was axiomatic back then. Porn was the internet’s reason for being, its prime directive. And it would have stayed that way had web information not been domesticated by corporations that wanted to hack our worldviews and pick our pockets for data, attention, and mobile payments.

But through all this, Twitter has retained the spirit of porn. Like porn, Twitter is not a family affair; for many, it’s also a shameful habit that they’re forever trying to quit. Since 2007, I’ve turned to Twitter to—the only word I can think of is learn. But I know its traps well. Users of Twitter, like consumers of porn, find themselves amused and stimulated, and then scroll compulsively, chasing the dragon of human connection, only to find themselves scrolling through doom, and finally scrolling for doom.

Information may or may not want to be free, but it often wants to be porn. What Musk has considered doing, according to various reports, is introduce paywalled video that would allow performers to get paid while Twitter takes a cut. Sound at all familiar? It’s the OnlyFans model, complete with a rip-off of the OnlyFans interface. The performers it’s tailor-made for are not, as it happens, cellists or mimes. They’re sex workers. And for discerning high rollers who prefer the backroom to the club, Musk has floated the idea of offering paid DMs—to be slipped into as usual, but for a fee. The online-porn business demands extreme discipline to keep it from turning criminal and leaves room for little else, but edgelord Musk is likely to fare better in the demimonde than he is on the main stage.

At the very end of 2022, NSFW content was the fastest-growing sector of English-language Twitter. It’s the way of the world, especially without diligent moderation. At the same time, the new louche Twitter comes with a harum-scarum idea of “free speech” as singularly applicable to obscene provocateurs like Jordan Peterson and Marjorie Taylor Greene, formerly banned figures who were warmly welcomed back to the site in November. “This is a battle for the future of civilization,” the Chief Twit tweeted. “If free speech is lost even in America, tyranny is all that lies ahead.”

If Twitter is going to prey on users with hyper-arousing material and the illusion of intimacy, why not go all the way? Twitter should admit what it’s up to, tell risk-averse advertisers to go blow if they’re prudes, and turn full red-light district. It might scare away the squares, but Twitter can charge a mint for spank-bank material, and a premium for the kind that somehow prevents tyranny.

[how-doth-the-little-crocodile]

References to Other Media in Team 6×111's "Reckless Battery Burns" (Part 3)

Hello! If you're here, you probably already know what this is about. If not, check out the first part here for some more context.

WARNING! A few of these references contain sensitive imagery, such as depictions of blood.

I'm using the video GHOST made as a blueprint for this project, along with some help from a few friends and my own research to provide more info about each reference. With the intro out of the way, let's pick up where we left off!

1:42-1:44 - Perfect Blue

Perfect Blue is a 1997 psychological thriller film about a young actress who begins to suffer psychologically as she becomes a victim of stalking. This scene takes place near the end of the film, when an imposter of the protagonist is chasing her in order to kill her (I hope that's vague enough to prevent spoilers, but I haven't seen the film myself). The pose and expression Tamari holds in this frame of "Reckless Battery Burns" is a clear reference to the film, despite a few small differences.

1:45-1:46 - Alien 9

Alien 9 is a science fiction manga later adapted into a short OVA series. It's notable for its use of heavy gore contrasting its simple art style and monster designs. The scene pictured is from the fourth and final episode of the anime. Though Tamari lacks wings on their head, the resemblance is still undeniable.

1:47-1:48 - Kid Pix

Kid Pix is a bitmap drawing program for kids first released in 1989. The version shown in "Reckless Battery Burns" appears to be Kid Pix Deluxe 3X. A small Tamari is drawn on the computer screen using the program, which I think is cute!

1:48-1:49 - Tumblr (among others)

Kid Pix is closed on the computer to reveal this screen, which I think we all are very familiar with. This is obviously the Tumblr dashboard. However, the content of the post is a reference to the Mishapocalypse, a well-known event on Tumblr that took place on April 1, 2013, in which users would change their blog icons to the same photo of Supernatural actor Misha Collins.

I also noticed that the post count on the sidebar is 6,111, a reference to Team 6×111 themselves! The follower count is 69,420,999 as well which I thought was funny. (I'm unsure if any of the other numbers are significant, so please tell me if you know anything about that!)

After displaying the Tumblr dash for a second, the screen becomes corrupted with popups. This is where we can catch a few more references. In the top right, we can see Tamari doing the same dance as earlier from Serial Experiments Lain BOOTLEG. The text in the popup, "Let's all love Tamari", seems to reference a common phrase related to the anime, "Let's all love Lain".

The popup below that took a bit of figuring out. It's titled, "Dr. Tamari's 18-in-1 Hemp Peppermint Pure-Castile Soap". This seems to reference Dr. Bronner's soap of the same name, which is real and can be bought at Target for close to $15. The text below that is taken word-for-word from the label on the bottle, which advocated for his religious and philosophical beliefs.

A character from Yume Nikki can be seen on the third popup. This is Uboa, an iconic but hard-to-find character in the game, who can be seen in a chance event in Poniko's house.

The text beside Uboa on the popup may be referencing how the background music of the game changes to an "alarming filtered 'aah' noise" as soon as the Uboa event is triggered (via).

It's been a while! Sorry about that. I got caught up in stuff and then they changed the image limit to 30 as this was sitting in my drafts. I decided not to extend this particular part more, since it had already been so long since I last posted a part, and because this one was a little longer in general. However! I think the next part will be significantly longer. Don't worry, I'm not giving up on this series!

Part 1 - Part 2

#posts by me #team 6x111 #ghost and pals #vane lily #reckless battery burns #tamari #vocaloid #blood tw #here's hoping the next one doesn't take me as long oops

[bereft-of-frogs]

shower thoughts/tales from tiktok time:

so there's this tiktok going around where this girl essentially says all forms of printing and binding fanfiction is illegal. (Renegade Publishing has already weighed in on this.) Which like, I think she's half right. I think there's a cohort of fanfiction readers that really need the fear of God put in them because they're acting really flippantly about the fact that fanfiction survives by existing in a legal grey area, and so yeah those people who are using commercial presses or printing and binding to distribute, or adding fanfiction works to Goodreads need to be told 'hey, this is illegal and you're putting all of this work in danger.'

but I think where she goes wrong is she takes it one step farther and whenever someone asks about personally printing, like from your own printer in your house, instead of being like 'yeah that's not what I'm referring to' she doubles down and keeps just saying, "yes, that is as illegal as the commercial press people, but I guess if you're just doing it in your house no one would know about it so whatever."

and I just...can't figure out her logic behind that. Where somehow the act of printing is somehow more illegal than the existence of fanfiction in general, in the digital space. Because the correct answer, as far as I (non-lawyer) can figure, if you're printing from a personal printer and binding it for personal reading, not distributing it, it is at most equally illegal? Like the creation of the fanfiction in the first place would be the thing that's in violation of the IP, there's nothing inherent in the act of printing that could be more illegal than its existence?

It kind of made me laugh a little at the philosophical question of it all. Because like...the only difference between a piece of fanfiction on the browser of your computer and as a printed piece is the physical existence of ink on paper. And what does this lead to? Are my notebooks where I write first drafts of scenes more illegal than the snippets I sometimes post to tumblr? What about people who print out their WIPs to do physical edits? What is it about the physicality of printed fanfiction that somehow transforms it into something more illegal in this tiktokker's eyes than when it exists as pixels and code?

anyway, some of that last paragraph is me sort of taking her words to an unfair extreme, it's just kind of funny. I think she's both saying something that a lot of people on the TikTok fan community needs to hear - stop using commercial binding services, full stop - but she's also fearmongering a bit and making people think that they're putting fanfiction in an equal amount of danger from IP crackdowns just because they've printed out the latest chapter of their favorite WIP from their HP Deskjet on A4 to read for themselves.

I also think this is a kind of funny generational divide because everyone I know that's my age who's been in fandom for a while has printed fanfiction out before for personal use and thought nothing of it. Because back when I first got into fandom, there were no smartphones, and oh my god what if your family was dragging you to your grandparents' house for the weekend and they don't have a desktop computer but alas, the fic you've been following just updated! what else are you going to do but send it to your home printer and sit there for half an hour watching it print one line of ink at a time with an ungodly screeching sound (and then weeks later you get yelled at because WHY ARE WE OUT OF BLACK INK AGAIN? DO YOU KNOW HOW EXPENSIVE PRINTER INK IS? WHAT HAPPENED TO ALL THE PAPER???).

anyway. I really do want to get into bookbinding someday, but my problem is most of the online tutorials are for hardcovers and I really prefer paperbacks. I've found a couple tutorials for paperbacks though, so maybe someday! If anyone has any others feel free to send them along. ;-)

#tales from tiktok

[mortimermcmirestinks]

I love Twitter.

I love how it's full to bursting with so, so many artists, poets, essayists, and philosophers, all regularly checking, so if you shout out to the guy who wrote your favourite episode or the lady who drew your favourite picture, they might respond. if I draw a fanart of Ezri Dax right now and post it to twitter, there's a very good chance that Nicole DeBoer will see it and maybe even like or comment.

I hate Twitter.

I hate how the very structure, the bones of it, the muscles and sinew and code, all drive the conversation toward hatred and vitriol, because that's what sells. I hate how it rips apart anyone who goes there for parts, and I hate how it only shows you things that will make you angry because when you're angry, you're engaged.

I love TikTok.

I love the low barrier of entry for art. I could make a TikTok just for silly funsies and make a silly little joke and then immediately meet five hundred people who all laughed at my silly little joke. I love how easy it is to find and explore different ideas and stories and works of art, and I love how the rigid restrictions of form promote creativity in creation.

I hate TikTok.

I hate how it erodes attention and I hate how it promotes unhealthy lifestyles. I hate how it encourages every kind of opinion for content, with the good opinions and the bad opinions at the same volume, and I hate the lack of transparency about how anything works makes it insanely unreliable -- using TikTok for anything beyond brief, momentary giggles feels like trying to tightrope walk over quicksand during an earthquake.

I love Facebook.

I don't use Facebook anymore, but I love how my parents can reconnect to people they haven't spoken to for fifty years. I love how they talk excitedly about "remember Jerry? he's on Facebook!" and how they talked to him for hours about his new wicker business. I love that the structure makes it so easy for them to communicate with others from their lives.

I hate Facebook.

I hate how it's slowly pulling apart my dad's ability to concentrate. I hate the structure of the site putting ideas and images and thoughts into the minds of millions of people to dangerous result. I hate how they have a vested interest in dismantling democracy and harming people, and I hate how it's so ingrained in our world that there's nothing we can do.

I love Instagram.

I love all the art, and the comics, and the videos, and the comedy, and the memes, and the screenshots, and the designs, and the photography, and so, so, so much more. I love how easy it is to scroll through and see all the creation going on from the people I follow.

I hate Instagram.

I hate how it makes people envious and needy. I hate how the structure of it makes you addicted and weakens your self-reliance and confidence. I hate how obsessed it is with visual appearance and superficial things, and I hate how all the things I love about it are such a small part of the platform.

I love Reddit.

I love how it's full of a thousand little gardens of fandom, with each garden full of its own flowers and fruits and succulents. I love how easy it is to find and connect to other people with your interests. I love so much of the long, winding, rambling, silly, memey conversations in the comments. I love the AskReddit threads on ridiculous topics and I love the stories I read on WritingPrompts.

I hate Reddit.

I hate the culture of dickish egocentrism. I hate the Musk fandom. I hate the smug self-righteousness. I hate the fact that the people who run Reddit keep trying over and over again to reinvent and intrude on the users on the site, and I hate the anti-progressivism that seeps into every corner of it.

I love [tumblr].

You know why I love [tumblr]. I love the art, I love the fandom, I love the culture, I love how the shitty design of the site makes it so much healthier of a place than other social media, I love the customisation of posts, I love the energetic nature of people here and how willing they are to support newer people. I love the memes. I love Out Of Touch Thursday and I love Neil banging out the tunes. I love writing my Shakespearification posts and I love when people reblog them with excited tags. I love how so many of the people here have their eyes wide open to the injustices of the world and, weirdly enough, I love how the absolute lack of mutual respect here makes it so that nobody's afraid to voice their weird-ass opinions about how Spider-Man would make a great My Little Pony, and I love how immediately twelve people will not only jump to their defence but will make fanart. I love the sheer, unrestrained, and genuine creative energy.

I hate [tumblr].

I hate how it's so small and weak now that so few people see the art and the fandom. I hate how the culture is slowly seeping out into the wider world and weakening. I hate how the shitty design of the site is slowly making it unsustainable (for the love of Jesus, please give [tumblr] your money). and I hate, I hate, how the fact that so many people on this site have their eyes wide fuckin' open means that the injustices of the world are laid completely bare to see, and if you spend enough time here, you'll learn all about all of the genocides and gentrifications and political collapses and destruction and bigotry that so many people experience every day, being posted on this little hellsite because that's all they can do in the face of existential horrors.

oh, and I hate the antivaxxers and terfs. fuck terfs and fuck antivaxxers.

and more than anything else here,

I hate how capitalism did this.

There's nothing to love about capitalism here. Capitalism is why artists on Twitter can only do art in their spare time because they're struggling to survive and capitalism is why Twitter spends so much time making people miserable to drive engagement. Capitalism is why professional TikTok creators are so scared about the unreliability of the platform and capitalism is why TikTok sucks "content" from everything you create on it. Capitalism is why my parents are so tired that they wind up spending time on Facebook and capitalism is why Facebook has so much power to fuck up democracy. Capitalism is why art is such a small part of Instagram. Capitalism is why Reddit is trying so hard to reinvent itself. Capitalism is why Tumblr has to pathetically beg for money. Capitalism is fucking vile.

#long post #fuck capitalism

[astriiformes]

feel free to ignore this if you don't have time or energy, but I'm a younger trans masc(ish) person who's realizing I've absorbed so much of the "men are inherently terrible and creepy" stuff that's around that it makes me feel shitty about wanting to be more masculine, even if I'm trying to embody the not gross parts of masculinity. IDK if you have any experience with this or any advice or thoughts, and it's totally fine if not, but I'm feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed

My apologies, I had been hoping to get to this sooner, but I had spotty internet out in the woods and then this morning tumblr ate the better part of my first attempt at a reply!

First off, I hope you know that you’re not alone in feeling like this. It’s definitely something a lot of transmasc folks struggle with, myself included. I know that for me, it was really hard that the same spaces that introduced me to the idea of queerness existing and being okay were also really hostile towards men and masculinity, which definitely complicated my journey towards figuring out my gender identity beyond just “trans.” It felt like first I had to unlearn the bigotry I’d been fed when I was younger to be okay with calling myself trans at all, and then unlearn the ideas I’d been exposed to through some of my friends and places like tumblr to be okay with admitting what kind of trans I was. Jumping from calling myself just trans to transmasc took a while, and I’m still sort of figuring it out.

That said -- while it’s sad so many of us struggle with this, it also means there are people out there who can empathize with what you’re going through, whether it’s to serve as listening ears who understand some of what you’re going through or to offer advice. I’ll gladly give you what I’ve got of the latter. Most of it’s probably more practical than philosophical, but I will tell you this: try your hardest to internalize the fact that you don’t need to apologize for anyone’s masculinity except your own. It’s true that trans men and transmasc individuals can make mistakes related to toxic masculinity too, and doing the introspection necessary to avoid that can be an important part of defining your own, healthier relationship with masculinity. But too often I think, we transmasc folks fall into the trap of feeling like we have to take responsibility for everything terrible that other men have done to be “allowed” to transition at all and exist as men or male-adjacent people ourselves. That’s not the right way for anyone to tackle toxic masculinity though, much less trans men, who don’t have male privilege in the same way cis men do to begin with (in as much as we have “male privilege” at all, but that’s another conversation). Absolutely take ownership for your own behavior when you make missteps (which is just good practice as a human being), but do your best to shed the idea that the behavior of other men -- especially cis men -- is something you have to apologize for as well. Being a good person with a good relationship with masculinity yourself is enough, partially because from there, other things will follow. And trying to ground your identity as a transmasc person in the things you do well as opposed to the things others mess up is so, so much healthier.

Of course, that mindset is important, but figuring out how to cultivate it so you actually believe it and find joy in your identity is definitely a challenge. To some degree, I think the method is a little different for everyone, especially when you consider that one of the big problems with toxic masculinity is its one-size-fits-all approach to being a man (which would be an issue even if the definition of  “man” being presented as standard wasn’t so terrible). You want to figure out how to find joy in masculinity, which means that your own concept of it is going to involve some self-definition of what brings you joy in the first place. That said, some of the things that have been helpful for me are both relatively broadly applicable and also decidedly customizable. So here’s what I’ve got.

Cultivating positive relationships -- friendships, mentorships, etc -- with male or male-aligned people in your life is one of the best things you can do for yourself. It’s also one of the harder ones, since trans people already struggle a lot with being very isolated, and if it’s not an option for you right now that’s okay. But it probably will be someday, and it’s something worth being intentional about if you at all can. Because what it does for you is help with reframing masculinity as a positive thing. The culture we live in promotes toxic masculinity to the extreme, so if you don’t have other examples in your life, it can be really easy to fall prey to the idea that men are categorically terrible and be overwhelmed by guilt over your identity as a result. If you have positive counterexamples though, your picture of masculinity shifts. The reality of toxic masculinity as a concept doesn’t go away, but the idea that all men are unerringly toxic does, because hey, you know guys that aren’t like that. And it gets a little easier to imagine that you, at least, might be more like them, and to associate your own masculinity with positive examples of it.

The rest of the advice I have on this topic is about that same kind of reframing, but there are other ways to integrate it into your life even if you don’t have specific people to model it for you. In truth, even if you do, it’s still good to rely on multiple sources. I personally haven’t had too many close “guy friends” over the years. That’s changing, slowly, as more good cis men, trans men, and other transmasc people become a part of my life, but it’s not something that happens overnight. As I’ve waited for it, though, I have found other ways to reframe my concept of masculinity as something I want to be a part of. 

This is where that “customization” I was talking about comes in. Part of it is connecting positive images masculinity to things you actually care about, because then it will stick better in your brain, and part of it is realizing that the things you already care about can be the roots of your own positive masculinity, making it feel closer and achievable. For example, I like following male content creators who not only are involved with things I like, but who use their platforms to advocate for others. If they ever changed their behavior I would hold them accountable for it, and maybe change my own stance on them being presences I care about, but seeing men who make things I love using that to advocate for others is something that makes me happy, and that I aspire to do myself. I also care a lot about my younger sisters, and have found a certain joy in seeing myself as an older brother -- and additionally, in thinking about the fact that I can have that kind of a presence in the lives of young people I’m not related to by blood, too. I have also found I like playing male TTRPG characters who are fun, funny, anxious, have trauma, curious, or other traits that can make them feel like me, but who are heroes, trying to have a positive presence in their game worlds. All those things have helped me recognize ways I can embrace masculinity while still being a good person.

And I say this utterly genuinely, but get self-indulgent! When I was in high school and first realizing I was trans, I was really into Doctor Who. I bought a thrift-store coat that looked like my favorite Doctor’s that I wore all winter. The next year, my special interest was Pacific Rim, and I bought a leather jacket at the same thrift store after latching onto Newt Geiszler, as well as a skinny tie inspired by his outfit that I wore to all my Speech and Debate tournaments that year (where I did a speech on the importance of science fiction, no less). After that, my first year in college, my thing was Gravity Falls, and I started dressing like a young Ford Pines and reading tons about cryptozoology. Throughout all those years -- and frankly, I still do it today -- I filled my life with bits and pieces of things that made me feel like my favorite fictional guys (clothes, music, interests, mannerisms, etc) and it was absolutely silly, yeah. But I also know that by associating myself with my favorite male characters, I was slowly figuring out things about being masculine that I actually liked -- after all, it was another way I was similar to these characters I loved so much! You may or may not be that into fandoms, so for you it might be something else you indulge in, but whatever it is, allow yourself to have fun with exploring male or male-adjacent identity via the things you love all the same. I’m sure there’s something you can really lean into. It might feel embarrassing, but I give you my full blessing to be as ridiculous as you need to be in the process -- try out a really out-there name, wear weird clothes, write cheesy songs, do whatever your heart needs to start connecting your exploration of masculine identity to things that make you happy, however silly it feels. I once went to school in a bedsheet for a school spirit day because I wanted to dress up as the Eighth Doctor from the 1996 Doctor Who TV movie and I promise, I turned out fine. I would love to hear what you get up to.

This got pretty long, but I hope it’s at least a little helpful for you. You’re definitely not alone, but not just in struggling with this. You’re also not alone as a masculine person who wants to be a force for good in the world, whatever people may say about men as a blanket statement. Men do bad things, in part due to structures of power that allow men specifically to do bad things, but they do good things too. They include my filk mentor, who helped me and my friend record our first album and who has been our biggest cheerleader throughout the whole process of becoming musicians; or my trans costumer friend who once spent an entire evening teaching me how to resize men’s patterns to fit me, a very tiny guy, via Tumblr messenger; or my local friend who has talked a bunch with me about how fun it would be to do matching BttF cosplays sometime because he says I make a great Marty. Masculinity has been warped by society, but it still has room for fun and fierce protectiveness and kindness, too, along with so many other positive traits. Be conscious of the complicated, but also understand that focusing on the ways guys can be great isn’t ignoring it. In fact, by becoming a kind, socially-conscious guy or guy-adjacent person yourself, you can serve as a great example for the next young person -- trans or not -- who looks to the field of masculine folks out there for positive examples instead of toxicity, and makes the choice to be a good person too. 

#transblogging #Anonymous

[asmallbirdinmayy]

I'm not sure why I haven't posted anything here yet since this world craziness started... Normally I would have bombarded it with posts everyday and such.

This social distancing is my life style, so I've been doing pretty okay better than most unfortunatly. Thank you Tumblr, and hours of scrolling for preparing me for this moment in time!

I've been filling my days with video games, reading and trying to force myself out for runs. I've helped my mum clean the house. (She has a bad back and would end up killing myself if I didn't go over every once in a while to help out)

I've also recently shaved my head! Finally, I've wanted to do it for years to see what I'd look like and to get rid of the years of dying it and hairstyle frustrations. I like it, but some days I get self conscious and don't end up going for runs. But maybe I'm just using that as an excuse and I'm just hella laazy!

It's a learning curve for sure, I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately and listening to the philosophize this podcast for the past year now so I've been trying to work on myself, thinking more and trying to meditate and gain self confidence and just be able to help myself help others. If that makes sense? Anyway, cutting off all your hair really helps practice Stoicism. There's no instant regrowth, and my hair takes longer to grow out than normal people.

I do love myself, a hella a lot more than I used to. There's nothing I wouldn't change, and I think that mind set alone has been what gets me out the door more often for runs and wanting to take care of my body and mind!!

I've also been cooking more, to save on money and because I'm not a huge advocate for waste being delivered to my door. I have had breakdowns however, I did it twice, I've ordered breakfast for myself to help me get up earlier and to get better coffee. Because the Maxwell can is not working out for me, and it's so gross, its taking me forever to get through it! I'll still drink it though, because, caffeine! Hello.

Back to cooking more! I've been mostly making mashed potatoes and what nots, but I'll occasionally make a vegan grilled cheese or have vegan hot dogs! I've made some pasta, quinoa and lately before bed I'll get a chia bowl ready to set while I sleep. That's pretty healthy and delicious. I've made terrible pancakes, I accidently got the whole wheat flour rather than the other stuff, soo that wasn't a fun mistake. Alas, no waste, so I have to make it into things!

I also signed up for a sustainable cities online course, lots of reading, but it was on sale. If anything it'll help me plan imaginary cities better in my head and I'll be able to put it on resumes. So level up?

I've re arranged my living room so I can easily switch between laptop and PlayStation without having to get up for any reason! +40 laziness. Aha. Fun.

Cats bombard with with attention and cuddles All. The. Damn. Time. I thought cats were supposed to not care and be independent and stuffs. Not my cats, noo. I wake up pinned, cat by my head, in the curve of my back and on my feet! If I'm laying on my back xews will be on my chest. Like hello! Let me breathe. They follow me to the bathroom, and to the couch! My couch is tiny, and all three of them find a little spot and take up all the space. It's hard to take notes! Anyway. I love them, I love their cuddles I'll never take them for granted and I'll always be like okai in the lap you go! It's nice playing a videogame with your cats stretching their paw onto your paw!. #catmum

Works been telling me the new opening day is July 3rd.. July 3rd two more months of this madness. I'm okay with it though, I'll hopefully finish the online course and get out for more runs! I've signed up the the social distancing run thing, I'm hoping to do a 10k for it!

Our government is all over the place about everything, and its making people crazy! There's lies, uncertainty questions unanswered. There's conspiracies left and right and I don't know which ones to believe. I mean some seem drastic and obviously crazier than others. I'm just not politically educated enough for this. But what if they're true to? I dunno, I've been watching a lot of things and reading stuff of history and stuffs and theirs some people that end up being corrected and proven right when people thought they were insane ? And yea people are just crazy and have their crazy thoughts. I dunno. I just want to have a back seat, and I mean my first and foremost fight is with nature, so my bias towards anything will be on how it affects the future of how we live with nature. If that makes sense? I could go on and on about this part, but this part makes me the most unwary and depressed honestly. I've been crying for days about this and where I stand, I've always been one to stand with the people. But which people? My brain hurts. I'm a sheep guys. I'm a sheep. I'm just a very lost sheeple.

People that I know from South Africa sent me a message saying that they were starving and asked for help, I wasn't sure what to do. I sent them some money, but I don't have much to give. I hope it'll be enough to get them by for a couple of days! I haven't heard from her since? So I don't know?

Anyways.

I haven't heard from my possibly future school yet about the upcoming semester and what to do, am I still able to go? Are they going to be opened by end of August? Will I be allowed to travel to another province? I'll wait till the end of May to send an email and find out! I am not doing that course online, I have a hard enough time motivating myself to do this current baby course. And I really want to do well in this course if I get there! It was a whole thing guys.

Before all this started I had started therapy, volunteering for the theater and taekwando. I'm really sad that i haven't been able to take part in these new hobbies. I had the chance to volunteer for the opening of the wizard of oz production before all the other shows at the theater got cancelled. It was amazing. Maybe I'll be able to do something similar while I'm in Vancouver. I only had one beginning trial class for taekwando, I'm slightly sad because by the time it reopens I'll probably be heading to Vancouver and won't be able to attend.

Cancelling therapy was the hardest, I had just started after years and years of being afraid to go for many reasons. I only got two sessions in before having to stop due to being laid off. But it's okay, because I still have my writing as my therapy. I end up asking the questions to myself while writing. I've read a lot of psychology, well not a lot, but a good amount. But the extra help and guidance was nice. I learned new terminology that applied to myself and my childhood and a couple other things that I'm able to sit back and acknowledge during meditations.

It was like I was finally getting out more, trying to fix myself, trying to go meet new friends and say hello to the world. And then the world was like nah. Back to social distancing! Kay, thaanks.

The last three or so days I've felt a little pull back into myself and I couldn't motivate myself lately. I think a large part of it was due to an argument I had with my mother, and the political drama that's been going on lately.

Wanting to go on runs or outside to enjoy the chilly sunny day has been a struggle, when it hasn't been I'm a while. I was playing ESO with a couple friends when all of a sudden all I wanted to do was just lay on the couch, curl up with my eyes closed and just bleh. I listening to the ESO music for a while and remembered that I haven't wrote anything in a long while on Tumblr or anywhere. So here I am, returning to my old therapy just writing my garbage thoughts to replace them with happier more motivated ones. It's sort of working, we'll see how the day goes.

All in all, I'm okay, my family is okay. And only time will tell what craziness is next for this year!

If anyone read this far down, first of all thank you. You're probably someone that I love! Love you <3 and I hope you're also doing well, and staying safe!!!

#xews #sleep #thoughts #personal #me #writings #writing #therapy

[gingerbreadbooks2020]

Hi there! And welcome to my new blog!

In January of 2019, I made a resolution to myself that I would read 12 books that year, in an effort to find again my love for books. I failed that resolution. Looking back, I could have easily flown through 1 book per month, still a speedy reader like I was when I was a child.

I read a whopping 5 books last year. I don't doubt that that number may have been lower if I hadn't set out to read any books at all. But that isn't an excuse. So now, here we are. 2020. Round 2.

I thought to myself in about November time that I wouldn't finish the resolution by the end of the year, but that I could retry next year. How was I supposed to guarantee success? Perhaps if I had a small following online who followed me in my journey, then I would be more motivated to finish.

I know that 12 months may pass and I actually get 0 followers. But I know there's nothing worse than social accounts who haven't posted in months. Where do they go?!

That means that I will be posting as often as I can about my current reads. Plural. I'm currently in the middle of reading eight (see end) books. No wonder I haven't finished any! That's why there may be no evidence of me starting a few, seeing as I started them last year. I'll still definitely be counting them as read this year, because I'm lazy and I need small victories to motivate me.

I'll be keeping this blog anonymous, for the most part. I might link my main blog where I'm just a big gay twink who plays far too many videos, but I won't be linking my other social media's and you guys won't know my name. This is just how I am. I do have another side blog, which also won't be linked. I get over cautious, and I don't need my friends finding my tumblrs.

So, where's a better place to start than the beginning?

The date is January 4th. I've just picked up my copy of The Reader by Bernhard Schlink.

It's set in Germany, about a generation post World War 2. We follow the life of Michael Berg, from when he has a chance meeting with an older woman at the age of 15.

[Image on the left: An image of the cover of the book The Reader by Bernhard Schlink. This image is not my own. See end of post for sources.

Image on the right: A picture of the book's pages, currently open at the beginning of chapter seven. This is my own image.]

I was first introduced to this book in September of 2019, when I had to read it for my German A Level course. We [the class] read it in parts throughout our lessons, then discussed parts with our teacher. There are certainly some NSFW parts in that book which we we all uncomfortable with talking about.

This book is one of the 5 I read last year. It was the 2nd one I had picked up all year. Some people may say that a reread will just mean that I can skim the book and finish it quickly, however that is not the case. When I first read the book, I wasn't reading to enjoy, I was reading to analyse. This time I want to take my time and absorb the story.

So, thoughts on the story so far?

I think one of the problems of rereading is that you already know the plot of the story, unless you leave it long enough so that you forget the entire thing. This is not the case.

In addition, The Reader has some extreme plot twists very vital to its importance in German society [or so I am told by my teacher] that rereading it won't have that same kick.

However, being able to take my time is allowing me to soak up the wonderful story-telling of Schlink's work, and I look forward to the rest of the book.

- Gingerbread ♤

[The eight books I'm currently halfway through reading?

The Reader - Bernhard Schlink

Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991 - Orlando Figes

The Picture Of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen (Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, German edition) - J.K Rowling

Macbeth - William Shakespeare

The Shortest History of Germany - James Hawes

The Shining - Stephen King

Call Me By Your Name (a reread) - André Aciman]

Sources:

Image of the cover of The Reader by Bernhard Schlink

#books #reading #Bookblr #new blog #resolutions #new year #new year resolutions #book #the reader #der vorleser #bernhard schlink #german books #book reviews #kind of #college #a level