tonight, squire, i'm all yours

When women in horror wield chainsaws. That’s strap imagery.

The thing about writing advice is that most people who are in a position to give it don't really know how they do what they do.

It's like playing Hamlet: an actor can talk about the personal processes that help them to interrogate the text and get into the character's head, and they can talk about the experiences they've had that prepared them for the role, and they can talk about what they want their performance to convey and maybe even reflect on why they make certain choices. But they can't give you a ten step guide to playing Hamlet. It fundamentally doesn't work like that.

It can be frustrating. Sometimes the advice you get from authors you admire, authors whose work you relate to in an unspeakable way, is just not a good fit. It can be discouraging (why can't I see the world like they do? why can't I be up and awake and produce 2000 words before breakfast?) or it can even set you back (I mustn't use adjectives. I have to plan every page. I can't get started until I know the protagonist's grandmother's maiden name). You have to learn to see it as the individual talking to themselves, rationalising a largely automatic process in terms that can only ever correlate, never fully explain.

Only one piece of ageless advice has consistently held true for generations of good, bad and happily mediocre writers, probably since the dawn of society: steal time from your day job.

“Author of 25+ best-selling Pride & Prejudice variations”

Yeah, no.

genuinely obsessed with the grimace milkshake meme I hope it's got the McDonald's marketing team locked in a board room biting their nails desperately trying to figure out if this is positive press or not

“Authors should not be ALLOWED to write about–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“This book should be taken off of shelves for featuring–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Schools shouldn’t teach this book in class because–” you are an anti-intellectual and functionally a conservative

“Nobody actually likes or wants to read classics because they’re–” you are an anti-intellectual and an idiot

“I only read YA fantasy books because every classic novel or work of literary fiction is problematic and features–” you are an anti-intellectual and you are robbing yourself of the full richness of the human experience.

"you are functionally a conservative" is such a good and clarifying insult

Literally right after I saw this post, I saw another post in a discord chat for BOOK EDITORS in which an outspokenly liberal editor talked about how Nabokov should have never been published because he wrote about p*dophiles and described women's bodies in ways that made her uncomfortable. She described his writing as "objectively terrible" and said she wanted to burn his books. And other editors were bringing up classics they didn't like and talking about how they wanted to throw them in the trash. This wasn't like a light "unpopular opinion!" conversation. This was actual book editors talking about how books should be destroyed and censored.

There is something so scary and toxic in global culture right now. The revival of fascism is influencing everyone's mindset and approach to art, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.

I see far more books being censored today than when I was a kid. Librarians handed me The Catcher in the Rye, The Sexual Politics of Meat, and Animal Farm when I was literally 8-11. My mom would never have taken a book away from me. I read everything from the Tao Te Ching to the Qur'an to atheist texts under my desk at school. Teachers thought nothing of it or encouraged it. Books seemed universally acknowledged as sacrosanct to me.

Now I can't find any adults who don't hesitate or want to make exceptions when it comes to censorship. Even the most liberal social activist librarians I know go, "well except for book X..."

Functionally conservative. It's so important to have the language to express that.

Thank you for this addition!

And, following up on the previous post …

“This makes me uncomfortable” is NOT a valid reason for censorship

These fucking book editors should remove themselves from the profession ASAP 😡

The only reason a book should be removed, the ONLY reason, is “we are keeping it in the restricted section for research because its only intended function is to cause harm.”

And to be clear, when I say this, I’m talking about shit like To Train Up A Child and The Protocols of Zion. One is a text responsible for the deaths of multiple children because it’s an abuse how-to, and the other is entirely fabricated “protocols” from a group that never actually existed but is claimed to represent all Jews, and it’s basically one long antisemitic screed.

And even these should be available. Just. Not where they’re gonna be used to start a white supremacist cult.

they were more insane than hannibal for this

hey netizens! i'm not sure how many people are aware, but youtube's been slowly rolling out a new anti-adblock policy that can't be bypassed with the usual software like uBlock Origin and Pi-Hole out of the gate

BUT, if you're a uBlock Origin user (or use an adblocker with a similar cosmetics modifier), you can add these commands in the uBlock dashboard to get rid of it!

reblog to help keep the internet less annoying and to tell corporations that try shit like this to go fuck themselves <3

Where do I copy-paste these to? "My filters"? "My Rules"?

'my filters'! if you look closely you'll notice the format is different between the two pages. the (website)(##)(additional text) format goes in filters

out of all the couples in greek mythology i UNDERSTAND why persephone and hades were the ones that were taken out of their original context to be made into a cute pair by popculture (and i dont really have an issue w this bc its sooo far removed from the actual canon) BUT.... some real untapped potential with hephaestus and aphrodite in different contexts. worlds hottest woman (barring helen) going to bat for her husband that everyone else thinks is butt ass ugly, but shes like im literally the ceo of hotness and i think hes sexy so either get over it or die idc

Looks like we can’t isolate, ignore, ibuprofen our way out of this one boys

The Silence of the Lambs + Objects

Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark (1988)

[ID: twice edited black text on a blue background that says, 'Imagine dating me because you think i'm pretty then BOOM 83 questions in a row of what are your thoughts on cannibalism? do you agree with the notion that love is devouring? what about cannibalism as the ultimate feminine hunger and the closest thing we'll ever get to divinity?" End ID]

schrödinger’s abigail

RAVENOUS (1999) dir. Antonia Bird

Ravenous, 1999, dir. Antonia Baird

THE BRIDE RISES FROM THE DEAD.