thereadingcellar - Tumblr blog

thereadingcellar · 5 months

Text

“Your eyes show the strength of your soul.”

— Paulo Coelho

61 notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 5 months

Text

25K notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 1 year

Photo

“A library is a hospital for the mind.”

9K notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 1 year

Text

it’s about this boy this adaptation that takes a predator and makes him back into a boy he’s just a boy and he wants to keep children safe from the horrors of the world before, keep them safe in the way he never was, create a shelter for them not in isolation but in family. he tells them a bed time story like some kind of pied piper, he leads them away into a fantasy so that the future–past they’re all hurtling towards can be staved off just a little longer. the last thing he downloaded before the satellite went dead was the wikipedia entry on capitalism— he asks if he should just delete it. he spends every waking moment after trying to keep it from happening again. “there is no before.”

it’s about this girl this girl who has never had the chance to say goodbye who holds people so close that sometimes they end up passing through her altogether and she knows the boy’s story, it’s his bedtime story— but it’s her guiding light. she remembers damage too, the damage and horror of the world before, but instead of falling into a fantasy she makes herself a horror, makes herself untouchable. because if she couldn’t pretend the world was something better then at least she could protect herself from the worst this new world has to offer. knives tucked into hair, boots, belts, sharpened lovingly and methodically. she picked up her first knife out of the pool of her brother’s blood, wiped it clean. spends hours throwing it end over end into the wall of the cabin— she never misses. “to the monsters, we’re the monsters.”

it’s about their parallel lives, their ever-narrowing orbit around one another their inevitable collision. it’s about a knife drawn like a breath and pressed tight under his jaw. it’s about his gasped words in response to the sudden blade. were they a threat? a promise? did it matter? because, really, it’s about the knife he didn’t see coming— fast, short, sharp as anything, and deep in his guts. “Kirsten, why are you helping me?” “stabbing you didn’t work.”

292 notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 1 year

Text

I want to understand how a novel which I enjoyed, but largely forgot, has become a show that made me weep openly, and that I haven’t been able to get off my mind. Somerville’s adaptation doesn’t just change the original; it has a radically different philosophy of art. Station Eleven was a novel about the persistence of art — about the “classics” that continue to illuminate the human condition, no matter what happens to our society — but the substance of Patrick Somerville’s vision turns out to be “adaptation” itself. The show is about how art must be transformed as the world changes, how it must grow and change if humanity is to survive. You might even say that it’s about how, in 2021, we need a different Station Eleven than we did in 2014.

Most of all, it’s about the hope that people are basically good, that trauma is survivable, and that any stranger — no matter how lost or wild — can be made into a friend.

This shift is refreshing, since most post-apocalyptic stories feel like fictionalized prepper manuals, filled with strangers trying to kill you and take your stuff. To survive, you must bug out, build a fortress, and defend it. Zombie stories particularly tend to be Hobbesian parables about the war of all against all that begins once society falls, with its walls, cops, and dads. In such a world, not dissimilar from the fantasy world of Fox News, strangers are the danger: outsiders must be kept out and the kids must be kept in, for their safety. If you see a zombie — even if it used to be someone you love — you must shoot it in the head.

In Somerville’s Station Eleven, the dangerous thing is being alone. What, after all, is a “stranger” in a world when everyone you knew and trusted is dead?

https://www.gawker.com/culture/hbos-station-eleven-surpasses-the-book

761 notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 2 years

Text

Get wet, Daddy Death.

89 notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 2 years

Text

me reading the percy jackson books in fifth grade: yeah that’s a normal age for them to go on all those insane quests

me age 21 seeing the percy casting and realizing that they were in fact babies: hey what the fuck

23K notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 2 years

Text

just a friendly reminder that june 6th, 1218 b.c. was identified as the day patroclus was killed by hector in the trojan war. patroclus died 3240 years ago today.

13K notes · View notes

thereadingcellar · 2 years

Text