You can always tell when an author is trying to "deconstruct" something that they think is stupid or boring or otherwise beneath them because they're unwilling or unable to develop the necessary understanding of the source material to properly rip into it and the end result invariably fucking sucks. You need to love a genre in order to truly do it violence.

Adaptations, retellings, deconstructions… you always have to love the story first. If you feel contempt it will show, and make you lazy. Nobody fights as passionately as a lover.

Photo ID: a screenshot of a tumblr user’s tags reading: #dracula daily #bram stoker: accidentally write a horror comedy with queer main characters #dracula End ID

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Now I’m not coming after this person or naming them cause it’s not their fault at all but I am begging y’all to understand the queer allegories are not a mistake. They are not a coincidence.

This isn’t a fuddy old timey white man accidentally walking into making an incredibly queer book.

Bram Stoker was most likely a closeted queer man. He started writing Dracula a month after Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment, who was someone he knew personally. He and Walt Whitman wrote very homoerotic letters to each other. It was rumoured he had a massive crush on his boss, Henry Irving, who he wrote a biography on and who he heavily based Dracula’s appearance on (sans the hairy palms and pointy ears lol)

That is the context Dracula was written in. So when Mina and Lucy are galpalling it up, when Lucy’s three weed smoking boyfriends seem very close, when Dracula is jealous and protective of Jonathan and wants to stay up all night talking, please don’t run away with the idea that those are coincidences, or that Stoker was somehow blindly stumbling his way through this.

He knew. It’s on purpose.

Need y’all to know that in the 1970’s a letter to the editor was published in Daily Telegraph where the author offhandedly used the phrase “Tolkien-like gloom” to describe an area with barren trees and JRRT himself wrote back an incensed rebuttal at the use of his name in a context that suggested anything negative about trees.

“I feel that it is unfair to use my name as an adjective qualifying ‘gloom’, especially in a context dealing with trees. In all my works I take the part of trees as against all their enemies”

He was like how dare you sir I am the biggest tree fan out there

Everyone always wants to talk about Hook or Pan. Everyone always wants to debate which one is good and which is evil - who we’re supposed to follow and who we aren’t. The Peter Pan mythos has pretty much shrunk down to nothing but Hook and Pan (Hook, SyFy’s Neverland, Pan, OUAT, etc). Occasionally Tinkerbell factors in (Hook, Disney’s Tinkerbell, OUAT, etc). There’s one character, however, that always gets sidelined - which is puzzling since they are the main character of both the play and the book. That character is, of course, Wendy Darling.

Peter Pan is Wendy’s coming of age story. Wendy who decides to run away from home. Wendy who realizes that she must grow up - and that there’s no shame in that. Wendy who sees Peter as deficient and sees Hook as empty and decides that, no, she doesn’t want to be a part of that. Wendy gets the adventure she’s always wanted and she turns away because she realizes that it’s lacking. She’s the only one who truly sees the hollowness of being young forever. Barrie even says “You need not be sorry for her. She was one of the kind that likes to grow up. In the end she grew up of her own free will a day quicker than other girls.”

People always debate on who the hero is. When they learn that Peter could be horrid they assume it has to be Hook. Of course, the answer is that neither of them are the hero. Wendy is the hero of the story. You’re not supposed to be like Peter, who kept every good and bad aspects of being a child and can’t tell right from wrong. You’re not supposed to be Hook, either. He let go of everything childish and loving about him and became bitter and evil. They’re both the extreme ends of the scale. You’re supposed to fall in the middle, to hold onto the things about childhood that make it beautiful - the wonder, the imagination, the innocence - while still growing up and learning morality and responsibility. You’re not supposed to be Hook. You’re not supposed to be Peter Pan.

You’re supposed to be Wendy Darling. 

I think about this literally every single day.

via Letters of Note who provided all text below:

In 2006, a group of students at Xavier High School in New York City were given an assignment by their English teacher, Ms. Lockwood, that was to test their persuasive writing skills: they were asked to write to their favourite author and ask him or her to visit the school. It’s a measure of his ongoing influence that five of those pupils chose Kurt Vonnegut, the novelist responsible for, amongst other highly-respected books, Slaughterhouse-Five; sadly, however, he never made that trip. Instead, he wrote this wonderful letter. He was the only author to reply.

November 5, 2006

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.

God bless you all!

Kurt Vonnegut

ok, i've gotta branch off the current ai disc horse a little bit because i saw this trash-fire of a comment in the reblogs of that one post that's going around

[reblog by user makiruz (i don't feel bad for putting this asshole on blast) that reads "So here's the thing: every Diane Duane book that I have is stolen, I downloaded it illegally from the Internet; and I am not sorry, I am a thief of books and I don't think I'm doing anything wrong, ideas are not property, they should be free to be used by anyone as they were before the invention of capitalism; for that reason I don't believe it's wrong to use books to train AI models"]

this is asshole behavior. if you do this and if you believe this, you are a Bad Person full stop.

"Capitalism" as an idea is more recent than commerce, and i am So Goddamn Tired of chuds using the language of leftism to justify their shitty behavior. and that's what this is.

like, we live in a society tm

if you like books but you don't have the means to pay for them, the library exists! libraries support authors! you know what doesn't support authors? stealing their books! because if those books don't sell, then you won't get more books from that author and/or the existing books will go out of print! because we live under capitalism.

and like, even leaving aside the capitalism thing, how much of a fucking piece of literal shit do you have to be to believe that you deserve art, that you deserve someone else's labor, but that they don't deserve to be able to live? to feed and clothe themselves? sure, ok, ideas aren't property, and you can't copyright an idea, but you absolutely can copyright the Specific Execution of an idea.

so makiruz, if you're reading this, or if you think like this user does, i hope you shit yourself during a job interview. like explosively. i hope you step on a lego when you get up to pee in the middle of the night. i hope you never get to read another book in your whole miserable goddamn life until you disabuse yourself of the idea that artists are "idea landlords" or whatever the fuck other cancerous ideas you've convinced yourself are true to justify your abhorrent behavior.

shit fuck I'm not done I'm still furious about this

that screenshot? was in reply to Diane Duane's post about the recent Twitter main character who scraped 27K books for his app. in reply to the author, saying I steal your books and I think it's right because nobody can own ideas

Atom wrote a song about this kind of jackass decades ago:

like that bro is literally the line

like ok bro maybe ideas are free, but turning that into a story is labor. what does your borrowed leftism have to say about workers, huh?

or do artists not count as workers? should they be doing it for the love of the craft? can they go buy food with the love of the craft? or do they live in this same capitalist society as everyone else and need money to get goods and services? do you think Homer had a side hustle, or perhaps was his work valued by society? because I fucking guarantee that you still had to have money to live in ancient Greece.

but no, art doesn't count as having value because you want it and you want to feel smart about how shitty you are. making art isn't labor, obviously, and all authors are millionaires because they're hoarding the ideas to themselves.

if writing a book isn't work, if publishing it for others to read isn't labor, then let's see you do it. right here, right now, in front of everybody.

motherfucker

do artists not count as workers? should they be doing it for the love of the craft? can they go buy food with the love of the craft? or do they live in this same capitalist society as everyone else and need money to get goods and services?

Guess what? If you make it impossible to make a living as a creative, pretty soon the only people able to spend significant time writing/making art/etc. will be the wealthy. Is that what you want?

(yes, you can have a day job, and a lot of writers do, but that’s not really an ideal we should aspire to. I’m sure most writers would prefer to be able to focus on their writing full time.)

people will put writing and art up on a pedestal like it’s this super special Calling and then at the same time be aghast that those creators want to actually be able to be paid well enough to survive

Kitchen Knightmares

Sir Gordon: Oh my god there's dogs everywhere. These figs are rancid. This pheasant is so raw its going to fly away. That's not right. Why the fuck are they serving me potatoes in medieval England.

And now there's a giant green guy in the dining room. What's the matter with this guy? Fucking hell his head's off, that'll put you off your meal. At least he doesn't have to taste the food.

I literally don’t get people who complain that other people are just projecting onto characters like “you’re just using that character to explore and actualise yourself” well done james that’s what stories have been for for centuries what the fuck is your point

[ID: Photo of a book excerpt reading “‘Everything,’ he said, is “beshit.’” /end ID]

Thank u 1830s whaler for the new phrase to work into my lexicon.

Irene Adler: yay I married the love of my life (who is not Sherlock Holmes) and ran away with him!

Readers: wow, such a passionate love affair between Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes ☺️

Holmes, sitting in Watson’s lap: I’m a sodomite

everybody knows the hardest parts of a story to write are the start and the end, so optimize your writing with an infinitely recursive story printed on a mobius strip

Languor, Story Jell

The weather folk say our heatwave will break up soon as onshore flow reasserts itself. I hope this is true; I haven’t been able to run since even early morning doesn’t cool down enough. Consequently I’m tetchy and heatsick, a truly marvelous combination. Not making any decisions or answering more than absolutely necessary emails, since the risk of feeling physically poor enough to snarl and claw…

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i am once again asking you to watch the 2019 shakespeare in the park production of much ado about nothing

#signor bene D I C K

Your monthly reminder that you can watch this version for free right here (the original link is now behind a paywall, this will link to an internet archive page)

Both Pride & Prejudice and Much Ado About Nothing work so well as enemies to lovers because despite surface animosity, it's clear that both end couples really respect each other and for good reasons. I think you could even argue that with Beatrice, she spars with Benedick because she considers him a worthy opponent.

When Hero and Ursuala plot to make Beatrice fall in love, Hero instructs her to speak of Benedick and "praise him more than ever man did merit" and yet when Beatrice finally speaks, she doesn't disagree with their high praise, she says of Benedick:

For others say thou dost deserve, and I Believe it better than reportingly.

LOVE IS REAL IN NEW YORK CITY. thank you @nkjemisin thank you the strand bookstore and thank you to sold out buckaroo crowd what a wonderful night

£50 is around £4200 now, so about £21,000 for 6 women to live on today for the Bennets.

The Dashwoods at £500/year are at about £42,000 for 4 women to live on today.

Mr bennet definitely messed up, and mrs b deserves way more respect for the immense amount of pressure she’s under

I wrote an entire essay about this my last year of school, and my teacher thought I had lost the plot. He was my most hated teacher for other reasons, and this did not help his case.

I am Here for the Mrs. Bennet Defense Squad. Yes, she can be unsubtle in a major way, but she is also terrified of the alternative outcome. However, for all her lack of tact, she is also hella strategic, as demonstrated by setting up an “oh no I’m stuck in your house” romance trope situation for Jane and Bingley. She’s a clever lady, and she sees exactly what kind of shitty situation they’re in, and she can’t get her husband to do anything.

It’s really easy to read Mrs. Bennet’s inability to be subtle about anything as a sign of stupidity or inability to understand “society” (and the Bingley sisters are inclined to do this and link it to her very middle-class family because of classism) but she is literally panicking at all times about a very real concern, and everyone is just rolling their eyes. No compassion for her poor nerves indeed!

Ok so I started to scroll by. But the problem with the Mrs. Bennet discourse is that it can too quickly swing too far in the wrong direction. Yes, everything about this is (mostly) true. The Bennet women are in a really delicate position. Their safety and continued financial security hangs on Mr. Bennet’s faintest breath. It is in fact a conversation point several times that the girls are not educated enough to serve as governesses, but are of too high a social status to expect marriage to a tradesman. 

The problem is that while Mrs. Bennet is certainly the only one in the Bennet household taking this issue seriously, she’s also gone too far in the opposite direction. The point of the Bennet marriage is that it’s bad for both of them. Mr. Bennet married a beautiful, foolish woman and then didn’t live according to the economy he would have had to in order to leave her a tidy sum once he died. Mrs. Bennet held herself safe under the happy expectation that she would produce a son, who would inherit the estate and provide for her in her own age.

Once it became clear that wouldn’t happen (and remember Lydia is only fifteen when the book opens, so Mrs. Bennet might only have given up the idea that she would have a son possibly a decade before, when Jane was about twelve) Mrs. Bennet had to focus on her daughters’ marriages in order to ensure the family’s well-being. The problem is that she overcompensated beyond what the society she lives in found good form. 

Mrs. Bennet is a foolish, vain, nervous woman who is often called out in the narrative as an older woman with Lydia’s naturally foolish and selfish character. Her husband long ago realized he’d someone for looks who he was incompatible with personality-wise. The readers (especially modern readers) see his neglect of family affairs readily, and his gentle (and at times less than gentle) mockery of his family (particularly his wife and his three youngest daughters). But importantly, Mrs. Bennet also is meant to come across as a lesson to the reader. A silly woman who married above her station (it’s mentioned several times she secured the better marriage compared to her own sister) Mrs. Bennet doesn’t have the social graces she should have been expected to, as her husband’s wife.

This is an important plot point. Raising Mrs. Bennet up as the only Bennet aware of their impending doom as Mr. Bennet ages is important and adds depth to her matrimonial scheming on her daughters’ behalves. But vitally the way she goes about her work causes Mr. Darcy to hold the greatest of disdain for her and her family. It’s that disdain that helps induce him to persuade Mr. Bingley to leave Netherfield Park. This isn’t truly questioned by Elizabeth, who understands that her mother’s over-eager grasping immediately raised Mr. Darcy’s concerns. Remember, at this time there was an abundance of women who were deliberately setting out to marry men of good fortune, and desperate to make themselves amiable enough to secure that marriage, regardless of their true feelings. Mr. Darcy (and honestly Mr. Bingley too should have known better) would have spent his entire later youth and then adulthood on the alert for women whose intentions were only for his wealth, and not for his happiness. That’s important, especially after we see the great care Mr. Darcy takes with Pemberly and his dependents. 

Mrs. Bennet’s desperation is understandable. Her character (grasping, foolish, too needy and nervous to understand the social graces she must display to appear acceptable to men of the station she wants her daughters to marry) isn’t virtuous. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are intended by the narrative to stand as examples for what happens when people who are not of similar or compatible characters marry. Mr. Bennet grew so disillusioned with his wife that his reaction to his family’s financial insecurity is to make jokes and wave his wife’s concerns away as foolishness. He’s not really concerned with the future of his female family members. Mrs. Bennet on the other hand, doted on for her beauty then ignored and trivialized after that beauty lost it’s attraction, is left to indulge her worst impulses as she tries to snap up eligible young men for her daughters. Importantly, Mr. Wickham easily fools her as to his true character, even after he runs off with her daughter. 

While we look at Mrs. Bennet’s desperation and find it both pitiable and understandable, that doesn’t mean that she’s the better person in the marriage.  These two people could have been better than who they became as they aged. The problem is that in their youth they found a spouse who wasn’t compatible with them, and their own character deficiencies were magnified in the marriage. Mr. and Mrs. Bennet are intended as a warning to the reader over marrying for shallow reasons (beauty for him, money for her). Character matters in a marriage, as does mutual compatibility. 

@thebibliosphere

(cackles in transgender) her profits went down 74%

whoops

#when you set out for revenge dig two graves#unless you’re hamlet#in which case you’re going to want to rent a backhoe (x) YOU’RE NOT LEAVING THAT IN THE TAGS BUDDY

there’s a bit in pratchett’s going postal where someone accuses the protagonist of indirectly causing 2.338 statistical deaths. recently it’s made me wonder, did pterry ever think about the lives he saved, himself? the people pulled out of the dark by his writing, in the same kind of fractions and possibilities? the people who survived by kindness that was only offered because he made each of us a little bit better?

he saved a piece of my life. without discworld, i would have been a little less likely to have made it this far. we talk about how he’s not really dead while his name’s still spoken, and a lot of the time we reference that same book when we do. but he’s alive in so much more than that. there’s a bit of his voice in every breath i take, because i don’t know for certain i’d be taking it if not for him.

and i think… don’t we all have that power? maybe the world would be a better place if we all understood that one well-placed kindness is all it takes to save a piece of a life.