#tal reads

[thatgirlonstage]

I’m a book and a half into The Murderbot Diaries and the whole thing is just

Murderbot: I don’t understand humans I don’t think like them at all

Murderbot: *goes to a job interview and has to watch seven episodes of its favorite show to calm down afterward*

Me: actually this is the most relatable character that has ever existed

#tal reads #murderbot

[cadavertrial]

things have gotten worse since we last spoke (review)

What I knew about Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke before reading was this: it became a Tik Tok phenomenon after release, and because I live under a rock, I missed it entirely. Instead, I discovered Eric LaRocca’s formidable use of the written word later, through their contributions to anthologies and then later his novellas You’ve Lost A Lot Of Blood and We Can Never Leave This Place. There is no right or wrong way to approach an author’s bibliography, but I’m pleased to have been able to discover this viral event on my own time. I make no claim to snobbery, or immunity to popular media. Rather, it’s an abject joy to open a book such as this and understand in its opening paragraphs the most crucial thing:

Oh, this is what the fuss was all about. I get it now.

Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke is a series of emails and instant messages between two women in the early 2000s, prefaced by a fictionalised author’s note that makes it clear this is a story that ends tragically. We don’t yet know the shape of that tragedy, only shades of it. This note implores us to find out, and the very first exchanges between Zoe and Agnes draw us in. We follow along as they circle around a very particular kind of drain. The outcome is both surprising and comes full circle, bleak and startling. It's easy to start the book and assume these characters are strange but that one is clearly worse or more suspicious than the other, and LaRocca neatly turns those expectations on their head. Part of the joy, part of the horror, is in the realisation of that.

The epistolary novel is a fantastic format, with centuries of incredible works across multiple genres. Horror is particularly well-suited to it, I believe. It takes deadly, knife-like precision to understand what in your story is necessary and what in your story is not, and LaRocca knows exactly where to sink the knife in. There’s no fat to trim from Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke. There are, in fact, portions that describe themselves as deliberately omitted, something that keeps the story concise. It also peculiarly builds tension by saying there are some parts of this story not meant for us, whether it’s obscured email addresses or entire portions of a sadomasochistic contract.

There’s something in LaRocca’s use of language that I find connects many of my favourite works. It’s a particular mood, an approach where characters say things that I could never imagine a real person saying, and yet the characters become full-bodied and real anyway. It lends things a surreal, dreamlike energy whilst placing you in the room. It is astonishing for them to leap off the page so capably, as riveting as any true crime drama and without the exploitation of real victims.

Horror is a marvellous outlet for the morbid and grotesque that way - and this novella is in turns remarkable, shocking, beautiful, disturbing, disgusting. These words are all deeply complimentary. There is recognisable human meat at the centre of this, wet and sticky and horrific and awesome. LaRocca's talent and technique is impeccable.

I leave you with my favourite line, a lingering thread through the whole tale: When I was little, I thought if people hurt you, it meant that they loved you.

#tal reads #things have gotten worse since we last spoke

[zhoras-bitch]

Tyril and Imtura in our world.

#fitting seeing how this chapter is nia and mal centric #though tbh i didn't have the chance to read it yet #but i did finish the edits! #imtura was such a challenge to make #like the edit looked absolutely awful until some magic happened and everything came together?? #playchoices #choices edits #my edits #blades of light and shadow #tyril starfury #imtura tal kaelen

[meltingangels]

There are 4 types of friend:

#made this while re reading blades 1 #blades of light and shadow #choices blades #bolas #personal #random #tyril starfury #mal volari #nia ellarious #imtura tal kaelen

[danielnelsen]

*For apostates part of any origin that doesn't already exist, just choose that origin!

If you want to expand on any ideas you have for any of these, I'm very interested in reading about them in tags, comments, or reblogs!

#dragon age #dragon age origins #dragon age: origins #da #dao #dragon age poll #poll #wanna make more polls because i havent for a while.. it's fun and i do genuinely love reading the tags/etc #i apologise in advance to anyone who votes qunari before reading tal-vashoth but you SHOULD read all the options first pleeeease

[joyfulmile]

#leon draisaitl #matthew tkachuk #mattdrai #edmonton oilers #florida panthers #tal bauer #you and me by tal bauer #go read that book it’s honestly so good

[fowlaroundtown]

Mhm yeah. Here’s part two of this. More of it + some context under the cut!

PART ONE

PART TWO

So we don’t see Shelldon in the movie. I mean. We see his head but it’s not operational and I’m 90% sure that it gets destroyed again.

And honestly??? After everything with Shredder, I don’t think Donnie is in the right mental space to try to rebuild his kinda-son-it’s-complicated. He just lost his home, all of his equipment, was massively traumatized, is in the middle of a dynamic shift with his brothers, and on top of that There’s no guarantee that Shelldon will retain ANYTHING from his previous life. It might just be a scenario of bringing back a blank slate with none of the memories or experiences of the Shelldon that previously existed.

He just starts to get to the point where he’s in the right groove to take the risk and then Krang happens. Which. Yeah. I think he keeps at the project over the years, but only really gets up the nerve to FINALLY boot Shelldon up again when he’s about 19-21ish.

Of course everything works out and it’s like Shelly just took a long ass nap. Of course, this does cause some issues between them moving forward because. Sheldon’s 13, he doesn’t get why Donnie took nearly SIX YEAERS MINIMUM to bring him back. He feels really displaced and it’s just. Not a good feeling to have missed so much (Casey helps him through that and it’s great) but for the meantime it’s A happy reunion!

Thanks for reading, sorry for diving so far into headcannons I just think about them a lot.

#for maximum hurt #listen to Final Duet from the Omori soundtrack while reading #I did and ended up bawling my eyes out so yeah #anyway #thanks for reading this for oboixuously out of hand #I need to go ice my hands I finished this entire thing in two days which is. not a good look #rottmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #donnie rottmnt #rottmnt shelldon #good future donnie #head cannons #TAL #my art #my comics #papatello tag

[pinacoladamatata]

You are a competent paladin. A Nightwarden. Capable of leading soldiers in battle. A formidable woman. Tricked into being mind controlled via your insatiable curiosity. and your baby sister the theater kid saves your ass from some cultists. Everyday Minthara Baenre wakes up.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #minthara #baenre girlies have me insane #minthara is just like ''my FOOL of a sister...whom i will protect with my life'' #tal calls her minthy when she wants to start a fight #they have a younger brother. who i headcanoned went to baldurs gate LOOOKING FOR THEM #and he got snatched up by Petras #and is chilling in cazador's dungeon. #this causes conflict. #as Tal had pinky promised Astarion he could ascend #everything falls apart the moment they realize that will mean killing their baby brother #if you read all the tags what are you doing here? its time to wake up #pina art

[watatsumi-island]

I'M CRYING SULPHURIC ACID???

#blades of light and shadow #playchoices #choices #There's no WAY we're not getting a book 3 #This chapter only took me like half an hour to read but I feel like I've been here for weeks like what just happened #blades of light and shadow 2 #imtura tal kaelen #Also I totally called Ventra dying at some point in the story #lauren moments 😛

[galwednesday]

This week's deep dive rec is TAL: The Giant Pool of Money, a collaboration between This American Life and NPR News, that was the first long-form reporting that really made me understand how the hell subprime mortgage defaults led to a global financial crisis:

This American Life producer Alex Blumberg teams up with NPR's Adam Davidson for the entire hour to tell the story—the surprisingly entertaining story—of how the U.S. got itself into a housing crisis. They talk to people who were actually working in the housing, banking, finance and mortgage industries, about what they thought during the boom times, and why the bust happened. And they explain that a lot of it has to do with the giant global pool of money.

And since one hour isn't as much of a deep dive as usual (an hour and a half if you listen to the new reporting in the second half of their follow-up episode from a year after the financial collapse), I'll double-rec Michael Lewis's The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine which goes even more in-depth on the financial and regulatory mechanisms at work.

#wednesday deep dives #I read The Big Short after consuming a bunch of other related reporting so I can't speak to it as a beginner's guide #but it was written with a general audience in mind and I think the TAL episode would be enough of a primer to make it understandable

[clogginbloggingoggin]

i am so insane, i could tell you how walton landed playing the ghoul in fallout.

WELL

it all started on the set of predators. he asked the director, nimród atal, to shoot a text to quentin tarantino that just said 'walton goggins'. to which tarantino said 'he's been on my radar for a long time.'

THEN BOOM

he's in new orleans for django unchained playing billy crash and meets danny mcbride!! not only does a beautiful friendship blossom, he gets the opportunity to work with danny!!

FLASH FORWARD

they're filming vice principals in 2016. little did walton know, graham wagner was watching! wagner said he loved walt's commitment to playing russell. :]

AND THERE YOU HAVE IT. now go to sleep, story time is over.

me typing this shit up from memory

#walton lore i found while watching a bunch of unrelated interviews and reading a bunch of unrelated articles #i strung it all together bc i’m insane and autistic 👍 #walton goggins #the ghoul #cooper howard #fallout prime #tal

[thatgirlonstage]

Oh that’s fine I’ll just start crying

#murderbot #system collapse spoilers #tal reads

[cadavertrial]

pornography for the end of the world (review)

Pornography For The End Of The World is a joy to read, in the usual fucked up way that horror tends to be. It is a harrowing, grotesque joy, full of sex as often as it’s full of worms, resplendent in gore and catastrophe. There is an absolute delight in the variety of work on display here, in both content and length. Every story is a complete snapshot of a world, of someone’s world: fully realised in distinct brushstrokes, visceral and wet and sharp. This is an anthology with impasto.

It’s an immersive experience to dip into stories that each have such different voices - it creates a sense of separation, but not without connecting tissues. Sinew and nerves and body fluids create sticky links, a powerful sense of theme. This is a book full of tragedies: literal ends of the world as much as personal apocalypses. Mental illness, chronic illness, disability, excess, nuclear bombs, sex and body horror and loneliness and monsters and worms and gore.

Vidito wields words with precision that swings between thought provoking and nauseating, sometimes in the same sentence and never in a way that contradicts. Between every other descriptive word I’ve already piled on this book, it is also beautiful and funny between heartbreak and tension. Every feeling comes in lashes. You will experience this book.

#tal reads #pornography for the end of the world #brendan vidito

[the-kaedageist]

In light of what we’ve now seen of Kingsley, I keep wondering what Mollymauk would have been like had they managed to resurrect him after episode 26. Would we have had new purple tiefling after new purple tiefling with every in-game death, each one insisting that they don’t know the others and are nothing like them, all the while remaining startlingly in character??

The whole idea is fascinating and brilliant. I loved Mollymauk, I love Kingsley, I’ve even grown a sort of exasperated fondness for Lucien. I love the concept that at his core, he’s the same person, but that same personality expresses in such varied ways.

Regardless, his friends always recognize him. There’s something so heartwarming about that.

#critical role #the mighty nein reunited #kingsley tealeaf #mollymauk tealeaf #meta #mighty nein reunited #cr spoilers #campaign 2 #the mighty nein #my meta #I haven't written meta in a million years and I'm not sure why THIS is the one that popped out #but there's something I really really love about kingsley's story #tal is just so conceptually brilliant at dnd #I'm also currently reading the nine eyes of lucien which is probably also why I'm thinking about this #early lucien is SO SIMILAR to the other two #I love this show

[flamingthespian]

Transcription under cut:

RUPAUL (Voiceover): And finally, her EBT card.

JESSICA WILD (with a deadly serious tone): They found her ETB card. And, on a Taco Tuesday, she never left the card, because she loved to celebrate Taco Tuesday. She liked the- the soft shell, with carne asada. That’s her favorite. With guacamole. And…guacamole’s expensive, so…she’s not gonna leave, without her card. That was weird, for me.

RUPAUL (voiceover): Investigators- (video ends)

#rpdr #jessica wild #RuPaul Charles #tal talks #what ha’ happen to li’l poundcake #this made me laugh so hard I’ve been thinking about it nonstop since watching #the way she’s just so deadly serious about it. it really reads like a true crime interview djdjdjsjsjsjdjdj #she did such a good job

[rotisseries]

tsp is taking lives. if I'm dead soon you know who to blame

#WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON⁉️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 #we have. I think one more section I think this 1978 bit is probably the last section of this chapter #reading with hella and tals btw. obvs. anyway I feel sick