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@shortnessofbreathandtheinfinite

Have fun scrolling through my random rants, comments, and posts, maybe leave an ask or two? Or don't I don't own you

There's a comfort in silence in a way I haven't noticed before. A stark difference from making myself talk to letting myself be.

It feels like warmth in my chest in the way I used to think came from hugs. It feels like surges of power running through me, lighting my nerves, and leaving a heat that feels cold. It shines a light on the comfort of grief because for a moment, I'm not me. I'm just part of this universe. And she still is too. So maybe in a way, we're still here together, just out of reach, but energies close enough to mingle.

It reminds me of the way fireworks light up the dark sky and music soothes. The feeling of a nice warm broth and late night giggles at a sleepover.

It takes the gaping absence and fills out with movement no one can see, but you can't help but feel.

It sounds like the yell before a leap, full of joy, and yet to quiet to register. It sounds like a quiet acknowledgement of the complexities in this world, seeing the beauty and the pain and providing permission to exist within both.

It feels like the lost ramblings of a 19 year old who desperately wants to find their words, and the small chance that maybe it's okay if they don't make sense.

Yall

The way that I came here to write an angst lil 2 line post cause I be feeling grief, and tumbler asked me if I wanted to restore the post I was writing previously and all that reappeared was the word "Yall"

It's happened to Becky Albertalli, who wrote a book about how terrible it is to be outed.

It's happened to Keiynan Lonsdale, who starred in the adaptation of that book.

It's happened to Kit Connor, who starred in a show that makes it clear you don't owe people your sexuality.

This list will only ever get longer, because you are weaponising the concepts of authenticity and "own-voices" to creep into strangers lives to find out some of the most personal things you could find.

"Queer actors for queer roles" is a right idea until all you can focus on is harassing anyone who's not stated they're gay. Forcing them to tell their parents, their whole extended family, their neighbours, their old pre-school classmates, and thousands of people who will never ever even see them in person let alone interact with them.

no but why doesn’t this past decade have any “great” YA book series? where’s the harry potter, the percy jackson, the hunger games of the 2020s? it makes me a little sad that you just don’t see books being talked about online at that kind of near-universal level anymore. i seriously think we need to go back to the over-the-top fantasy dystopian type stuff of the early 2000s. we need pure indulgence again. we need those cliche personality-quiz type of stories where readers can say stuff like “if i was in this universe, i’d be in House Sparklypoop!” we need dragons and quests and gods and wizards and the power of friendship and hope… 

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“That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.”

I unironically love the character names in the Hunger Games series.

Haymitch, Peeta, Hazelle, Leevy, Maysilee, Finnick and Greasy Sae look bizarre when you first see them written down, but then if you think about how they look and/or sound it's pretty clear that they're meant to be modern names, only modern names that have changed spelling and pronounciation over time— as you would have expected them to have done so over how ever many hundreds of years it's been since our modern day.

(Remember, though The Hunger Games themselves have only been going on for 75 years, the universe they're in is canonically post-apocalyptic— the reason nobody ever mentions what's happening in the rest of the world is that everywhere except America was destroyed in a nuclear war. We're not given much of an indication how long it's been since then.)

Peeta is Peter, Haymitch is Hamish, and Hazelle is Hazel, Maysilee is Maisie— the changes in pronunciation are slight (Peeta and Peter are already virtually identical in my accent), and the spelling has changed to match.

Leevy is either a corruption of Lily, or more likely I suspect 'Livvy', a common nickname for Olivia; Finnick is probably from Finnegan (shorten in to 'Finneg' and then say it over and over very fast); Sae could be short for Sarah, or Sally or even Susan— it's not uncommon for nicknames to become real names in their own right (look at Harry or Molly as examples).

I also love the trend of having District 1 parents give their kids names relating to the luxury items their district produces— Glimmer, Marvel, Gloss, Cashmere, Velvereen (presumably a corruption of 'velveteen'), Facet— because those things are all a) objectively pretty/nice (like naming a kid 'Diamond' or 'Star' today) and presumably status symbols in their district.

Meanwhile District 3 does the same thing, but all the pronunciations are corrupted. You've got technical names to do with the manufacture of electronics— Wiress (wireless), Circ (circuit)— but you've also got what I'm pretty sure are meant to be corruptions of modern brand names— Beetee (BT), Teslee (Tesla).

To me this kind of suggests that District 3 is less conscious of this influence than District 1. Like, parents in 1 are more likely to deliberately think "I'll name my kid Glimmer, because things that glimmer are pretty" whereas 3 as a culture might have genuinely forgotten that those names used to mean something, in the same way that most of us don't think much about how the name 'Arthur' comes from the old word for 'Bear'.

And of course, then you've got the Capitol leaning hard into those ancient Roman vibes with names like Fulvia, Plutarch, Seneca, Tigris… but still using the European/American personal name+family name format, which the Romans didn't really do. Like it's very clear that this is a future society fetishising the classical era, rather than an actual resurgence of Roman culture.

It's just such a cool world-building detail. So many dystopian novels just go for modern names (and there's nothing wrong with that, especially if you're only looking a couple of hundred years into the future) but thinking about how names might have evolved over the centuries and the different naming traditions that might have developed in different areas really adds a whole new dimension to the culture of Panem.

Man, as someone who had a whole harry potter phase that lasted years, I got pretty obsessed with the peverells and the deathly hallows for a bit. I always loved the invisibility cloak the most especially being the youngest. But what I didn't expect was the way I've recently related to the resurrection stone? Grief is wack on so many levels but damn my dreams have been one of the weirdest things to deal with. Cause sure shes alive in my dreams but it's always 'off' and unsettling in ways I never expected. Like part of me knows she shouldn't be there. And like she kinda knows it too. And tonight it made me think of the way summoned ghosts don't want to be here cause they don't belong. Weirdest comparison I've made yet

ABSOLUTELY NO ONE is talking about joe locke’s incredible performance in heartstopper and it’s so upsetting to me!! he makes the show, there is something so inexplicably charlie about him that makes the two of them work together !! you can’t have nick without charlie and i think kit connor was just as wonderful and incredible but EVERYONE is ignoring the intricacies of charlie’s character that joe has so expertly weaved into little moments such as the anticipative fear and anxiety that hides within charlie!! playing a character like charlie is hard and he did a bloody brilliant job of it !! BASICALLY a joe locke appreciation post

p.s. i love kit connor’s performance just as much but i feel like the love needs to be more evenly spread

i love how heartstopper literally hits like almost every letter in the lgbtqia+ acronym but never feels like diversity for the sake of diversity. the characters are not tokenized, stereotyped, or flattened into a letter. they are an unapologetic, queer, vibrant friend group whose identities and personalities shine.

I just had the dumbest thought. What if Jane doesn't say pain every time she uses her power just because she's dramatic permanently 12-year-old, but because it's a safety thing for the other members of the volturi. Like you know how if you work in a kitchen you'll hear them say stuff like "hot- around the corner" or "behind you with a knife" maybe vampire osha Said she had to announce it so that none of the other members would just walk in front of her and get pain-ed