plantdad-dante

[plantdad-dante]

Dead Boy Detectives has everything:

Co Dependent queer platonic tough to define Best Freinds who would and have gone to hell for each other. they have an office with a cupboard full of board games, and a long history of Noodle Incident cases of '04, and also a bunch of maneuvers with code names. They are also ghosts who solve mysteries for other ghosts.

One is a sassy well read diva in a stupid little bowtie. he keeps meticulous notes, and went to hell on a technicality. he has no rizz and has a sexual awakening at the hands (paws?) of a supernatural Cat King

the other is a cheerful happy bruiser, the brawn with a pocket demension only he can navigate in his backpack, a magic cricket bat, and wells of anger deep down

they team up with a cool psychic (whos also a pretty tree) dealing with her asshole abusive boyfriend who was literally a demon while also trying to restore her memories (she also has a hilarious hate off off with the nerdy one)

then they add a sweet shut in who isn't very brave but is very inquisitive and has excellent reading comprehension and is actually the most brave

and their landlady is a hot goth Sapphic butcher who is done with their shit (but not really)

and the main antagonist is a cunt serving witch with an iron cane chewing up the scenery, just camp queen obsessed with Beauty and Revenge as she should be

she turns her crow familiar into an astrology loving twink to honeypot the nerdy one but the crow catches feelings whoops

the cat king who deserves his own mention again. he's here to seduce a stuffy British detective/tease, cause problems on purpose, reluctantly help solve those problems and mostly slut it up.

a bureaucrat learns to VERY reluctantly embrace the beautiful power of friendship after being swallowed by a fish

its set in a gorgeous seaside town with a light house! and a malt shop!

because this is all A Scooby Doo homage!

It's an episodic Case Of The Episode format! with strong serialized elements!

and as if that wasn't enough there's even Death of The Endless.

what more could any person possibly want in a show.

oh and there's a lot of really interesting themes around internalized homophpbia, abusive relationships and trauma and toxic anger and learning to love and trust and help other people again in spite of and because of the bad parts.

[plantdad-dante]

This is going to be a knotty one...

Attempting the "slicing a die in half" scene from The Last Hero. This has definitely given me an idea for a future video!

As always, please support on Patreon if you like this stuff: new pole and archery tutorials went up this week!

#finally!! i can finally reblog this!! #this has been sitting in my likes since FOREVER #and now i've finally reached the last hero #and i can reblog the absolute coolest thing i've ever seen #my nerd heart exploded the first time i saw this

[plantdad-dante]

Book #154 - The Last Hero by Terry Pratchett

(only fourteen left to go... that feels so weird.)

I'm getting to the end of series! Of characters! To the end of background stories that have been here since literally book 2!! It... Idk, it feels... feels weird. Feels like I'm walking inevitably towards finishing this marathon, and I don't want to! I wanna stay!

Like, don't get me wrong. I'm not gonna miss Cohen, I don't like Cohen, or his friends. But also, I am gonna miss them, because this is Discworld, of course this ending is strange and thought-provoking and emotional. And to leave me with the nameless bard, and the Horde's proof to immortality... This is a goodbye, and I'm not ready yet!

I mean, granted, a goodbye in which Carrot is along for a travel to the moon, and interacts with Rincewind (a combination that was gold, but should, gods willing, never be repeated, for fear of killing me personally), and stares down the Silver Horde with the sheer power of paragon-ness. But, still, a goodbye, and I guess I have to be okay with that.

A goodbye that is really, really quite pretty. I might not super enjoy how Kidby paints people, but the landscapes? The disc?? Chef's fucking kiss.

#the last hero #terry pratchett #discworld #dante reads discworld

[plantdad-dante]

hi. adding one (1) voice to the "The Dead Boy Detectives was really good and needs future seasons" chorus. I mean, the show already had me completely, ever since the trailer had Welcome To The Black Parade playing over it (come on, how could I not watch it, I know when I am being advertised to), but the show itself is also!! so good!! and warm and nice and wonderful, and above all, it has the potential to be a really breathtakingly amazing series. so, while I know that like, due to bullshit, we can't have nice things anymore, I would really like this one to slip through the cracks and get a second season regardless. please.

#the dead boy detectives #how do we do this. with or without the article. #dead boy detectives #it's also a really good companion piece to the sandman show #i just don't like abandoned potential

[plantdad-dante]

Book #153 - Thief Of Time by Terry Pratchett

(I... hm. I don't know, really.)

I like how this wraps up the Auditors. It feels very natural, for this to be their end-point. Like, it makes sense, for this to have been their trajectory the whole time. Of course they would eventually effectively end themselves by becoming human. Of course they would.

I mean, this may also go down as the only apocalypse in literary history to have been stopped by means of expensive chocolate, but I feel like that's less important... somewhat.

Lobsang is a nice lad, not particularly interesting to me, but nice. I'm glad he and Susan are friends now, that Susan has found someone she can actually be friends with - someone just enough like her to not be freaked, and just enough unlike her that they make a good fit. I'm assuming this is her last book, so... yeah. Good note to go out on. Good luck, Susan. Friends are good for you.

I mean, I do miss Jeremy and Lady LeJean. I liked them, each in their own way, and... well, Lady LeJean got to go out via molten chocolate bath, and that's gotta be a dream and a half. But I'm still sad they went out...

On the other hand, Lu-Tze is hysterical. The con-artistry of a trickster god, the shit-eating grin humour of old men everywhere, and a fitting mentor to a kid who got morals taught by the Thieves' Guild (as respectable a place to learn them as any other, of course). Also the character who just casually threw out "When in doubt, choose to live!" during a somewhat-chase scene and expected me to just carry on reading and not have five minutes of Emotions about it.

(also, just... what a title drop. like, the book is called Thief Of Time and you're kinda like "yeah, okay, what the hell's that even mean, like, eh." and then it comes back in the end and suddenly it sings, like poetry. and there are cherries on the trees.)

#thief of time #terry pratchett #discworld #dante reads discworld #also excellent execution of a plot twist with kaos #did not see the milkman boomerang-ing back to knock me out #truly fantastic

[plantdad-dante]

Book #152 - Under The Whispering Door by TJ Klune

(so uhhhhh)

It is possible that this book has actually permanently affected and changed my life? Maybe? Whoops.

Since I have learnt not to trust myself with these things (my brain tends to bury epiphanies that lead to actual changes in behavior under mountains of depression and low-battery life), I cannot say if this change is actually permanent, or if I will be back to my bullshit in a week or a month and this feeling will crash and burn when it comes in contact with everyday college life, but... well, I hope not.

Like. Today felt. Good. And I don't trust it, because I can never trust it, these feelings never survive contact with reality, my actual day-to-day life. But I want this one to. It needs to. I feel like I finally found the key to escape the legacy of a decade of sustained bullying and I am scared to death that this, too, will pass, and that I will be back to being a ghost tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after, or...

How did I ever get to a point where being kind felt like interfering. Where being forthcoming felt like a violation of... something. Where taking up space felt like borderline harassment. A place where I needed, even if just implicitly, permission to exist at all.

Don't bully(,) kids. There's more than one way for people to turn into ghosts. And oh, let me tell you, life as a ghost suuuuucks.

#under the whispering door #tj klune #posted hastily and without much overthinking or rewriting bc I want this to be my take-away #not some version of it that my stupid brain has corroded down to defeatism #even if this isn't true tomorrow. or in a week. or a month. I felt it and it is true and I want that to fucking count. #oh almost forgot too #dante's top shelf

[plantdad-dante]

yes yes characters doomed by the narrative always slap BUT what about characters saved by the narrative? characters who have already given up hope and don't know they have a happy ending? characters who believe they are a lost cause, characters who feel irredeemable, characters who think there's nothing left for them, but the narrative does provide a way out? what about the characters who don't expect anything good, who don't even remember how to wish for it anymore, who get the things they need anyway? what about the characters who actively run from being saved getting saved in a way they can't stop or control. what about being saved by the narrative!!!

#yes what the fuck about that huh #(said lovingly) #(adoringly even) #(i fuckin love when that happens) #also amazing url to have for this post op

[plantdad-dante]

Your fifth most recent emoji is what your soulmate thinks about you

#i went to check just for funsies #and now i need to reblog it because uhh #🏳️‍🌈 yeah that tracks xD

[plantdad-dante]

Sometimes I hate how books that have nothing to do with each other can still end up in conversation with each other just because I am reading them back-to-back.

Currently reading Under The Whispering Door and Hugo keeps asking Wallace "All right?" and Wallace keeps answering "I'm fine", and like the fifth time it happened my brain suddenly thought it a good idea to supply me with the "I know you're fine, but are you alright?" line from In Memoriam and now I am actively d y i n g

#under the whispering door #in memoriam #gods my brain sucks

[plantdad-dante]

Book #151 - In Memoriam by Alice Winn

(I think the only way I could really express my emotions about this book is to just openly weep for a good thirty minutes, but I suppose that's not really transferable to written text.)

... the thing is, I've only just purchased a copy of All Quiet On The Western Front a few weeks back. Halfway through, I was itching to read it right afterwards. At the end I was thoroughly cured of that. We had watched the 1930 movie in history class. I only remember single images from it. I had spent the lesson writing down the text of a German version of Green Fields Of France from memory, because I couldn't look at the screen.

The last page made me revisit the English version of it.

Did they really believe that this war would end wars? Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain The killing and dying were all done in vain For young Willie McBride, it all happened again And again, and again, and again, and again...

"Let us [...] have our century of peace and prosperity, for we have payed for it in blood." This last line is just a very tight incapsulation of why the First World War is such a compelling, miserable subject. Because this did not happen. Because in the end, this is what Europe decided to take away from it. 'We have suffered and survived, so now we are owed mercy, we are owed a reward, and we are again free to do as we please. Let us drink deeply from our cups and forget tomorrow.'

Which is, emotionally, an understandable conclusion to reach. Doesn't change that it was the wrong one.

Because peace requires effort. Peace requires commitment, courage, compromise, a spine. And constant, vigilant, active attention. Most importantly, peace requires willingness, it requires wanting peace. And I think it is the last thing that can most often be found lacking in those that actually make the decision, those that start a war. And I am put in mind of the chorus of that German version ("Es ist an der Zeit")...

Ja auch dich haben sie schon genauso belogen, So wie sie es mit uns heute immer noch tun Und du hast ihnen alles gegeben Deine Kraft, deine Jugend, dein Leben

... I've been to a peace protest over Easter. What struck me was how all, every last one, of the speeches were given by such old, angry, exhausted looking people. And their speeches all flowed together, because their demand is so simple. It is one of the simplest demands to make, because yes, all that I said about how it is hard and requires effort - yes, fine, but Jesus fucking Christ: Peace is not hard. It literally just requires to not do the thing. And because it is such a simple demand, so universal and quickly brought across, most of the speeches were just... lists. Lists of headlines, politicians, officials that had ignored the cry for peace, just in the last month. In a staggering array of contexts. And it all flowed together, until we were standing in an ocean of frustration and incomprehension at being ignored, with not a single sign of land, or even a dove with an olive branch. I don't know if I'm ashamed for getting bored three minutes into the first speech. Because the depressing thing is, I knew all of this already. I wasn't there to be told something new. I was there because I am twenty-three years old - older than most of the characters in this novel ever had a chance to be - but just like those old people at the podium, I am angry, and exhausted.

Henry and Sidney are safe, and Sidney quoted King Lear. I will hold on to that. I will need to, cause fuck, did this book make me sad.

#in memoriam #alice winn #TAG UPDATE: I have taken it off my favourite-books list #because honestly the more I think about it the angrier and bitchier I get #like I stand by the points I made here #but please imagine all the melancholy replaced by the anger I mentioned in the end #I won't type out an angry version myself bc I can really do without the stomachache but know that... yeah. anger. #I just wish this was a different book than it is

[plantdad-dante]

Book #150 - The Last Days Of Judas Iscariot by Stephen Adly Guirgis

(yeah, sorry, this is just a bunch of rambling.)

The author emphasises very heavily that this play is him contemplating faith and religion, and it kinda provoked me to do the same. So, uh, here goes (don't come at me).

I don't really have a need for Faith, personally. I never really understood the feeling, or found it in myself. That's just how it is. But I get that other people do. And I get that it's a valid way to engage with the world, no matter my personal relationship to it. Like, getting all up in someone's case about it seems weird and invasive and mean? Which is why I don't really like the "atheist" label, either. Calling myself an "atheist" feels like proclaiming that I have an interest in the question, that I have skin in the game, a point to argue for. And like. No, I do not.

I just listened to my "Religions" teacher in elementary school and silently asked myself why we were talking about Christianity, when apparently there are other religions, too? That apparently believe in different things, and have different holidays, and even - gasp - different gods? Sometimes multiple??? Wow. Mind blown, why are you still on about Jesus, I wanna learn about Islam and Buddhism and what holidays they have!

Like. Maybe I was just beaten with the Cultural Ubiquity sledgehammer that is Christianity around these parts (Europe) one too many times, but it never seemed plausible to me that there is, like, one religion that is completely right about the world and all the others are wrong and will somehow draw the shorter straw in some indeterminate future scenario. Somehow.

Idk, never made sense to me.

Any god is as true as any other, to me. And please take that as you will and leave it at that, because most days, I just find the question of "but how true" exhausting and immaterial to my situation. I don't care! But you better apply it equally.

Do I make sense? Doesn't really matter, I suppose. I liked this play. Scratched the itch next to the JCS itch I get every five months or so (Is it my favourite musical? No, not by a long shot. Do I chew on it like a rabid dog every time it makes its way through my brain? Absolutely, yes.)

#the last days of judas iscariot #stephen adly guirgis #if there is one thing that especially never made sense to me it is arguing about religion #like in an invested way. in an “I'm right and my objective is to get you to agree with me” way. #makes zero sense to me #can't we all just chill #when I found out that this is from 2006 I briefly panicked #because it's a play and putting it with the contemporary novels would be weird bc that shelf is for novels #but I also can't put it with the classics because it's from this century ffs #so now it stands among poetry and non-fiction #aka the leftover-shelf

[plantdad-dante]

Book #149 - I'm A Gay Wizard by V. S. Santoni

(in my defence, I bought this at a time when the promise of positive trans rep could get me to buy any book no further questions asked. also I hadn't realized that this is a wattpad book until it arrived in the mail. Do not be concerned, I have vowed betterment.)

The writing is so bizzare...

Like. Words mean things. Right? But this book continuosly uses... the wrong words? Like, the words on the page are just plainly the wrong words to convey what the book actually wants to convey.

For examples: At one point, someone was "mortified" when there was no reason within a country mile to be even slightly embarassed, and I think the book was going for "alarmed"? But I can't be sure. Also "[...] its shiny glass surface swallowing light, reflecting nothing." - then how the fuck can it be shiny, things are shiny when they reflect light. And so on. I swear, the entire book is like this.

And then at other points, the words are technically fine, but it's still just a bizarre way of phrasing things? Like the, uh.... Moment's Silence (Hozier girlies know what I mean) being described as finding a five dollar note in your couch when you were looking for a quarter, which... huh?? Or the first drops of oncoming rain as leaks in the sky's plumbing?? Or a rotting wooden plank unraveling like a ball of yarn.... Or a kiss being described as feeling like honey or chocolate, but then the taste is described as mint, "boy spit" (is... is there a difference? in taste? asking the bisexuals) and cola? Why would you use words invoking taste for the feeling, too, all this does is- anyway.

The world-building is so abyssmal that it made Starcrossed look less agrivating, and I am not saying that lightly. I know what I went through. Like, basic question: How many wizards are there? How much control do the Lineage parents have over normal-human affairs, if it is worth it to kill every non-Lineage wizard for fear of rebels? Why does the blurb on the back pretend that this is a wizard-school kind of story, when actually it is about a weird Institute that does fucked-up fascist eugenics shit that somehow, people just... take? How does the magic work, because it appears to be possible to cast spells without tinkering with the fabric of the universe? What's the difference between those spells, why are there magic symbols and circles and words if it seems to just work by "imagening" something happens? How do you justify portraying the making at the heart of our ineffablly complex, beautiful and contradictory world as fucking clockwork?

Tbh, now that I think about it, comparing this to Starcrossed  in general isn't that off-base? They are about equally bad (same bad pacing, same weird character building where they all come out as incredibly petulant and unfocused, same non-chemistry in the romance, same unexplained gaps in the plot and world).... it's just that Starcrossed knew what words meant, and I'm A Gay Wizard isn't full of problematic bullshit.

All in all, I guess I have, here, reinforced a prevelant pop cultural bias for myself. The internet warned me about wattpad, and now I've seen some of its published output for myself, and I can warn others. How nice. I guess.

#I'm a gay wizard #v. s. santoni #dante's discard pile #i am fully prepared for the fact that no one on here has ever heard of this before #to which I say: good. carry on with your life. #i do feel kinda bad ragging on a queer book by a queer author like this but in my defence #it isn't good and I did not enjoy it

[plantdad-dante]

Book #148 - The Truth by Terry Pratchett

(I feel like we as a society fandom don't talk enough about the Mothman reference.)

The guy with the printing press  is called... he's called.... the dwarf is called......... he... he's called..... he's called Goodmountain.

....

What's that joke, about screaming Terry's name to the heavens? Anyway.

Love is stored in the conversation about dwarven weddings. (Listen, I love the dwarfs?? Every aspect of them? How their culture is portrayed as so distinct and nuanced and how it is having its very own March of Progress, but in a still distinctly dwarven way. How, in the midst of it, the dwarfs still keep in touch with their traditions and keep both spirit and practice of them alive, while also finding evernew ways of following them?? Has any dwarf before turned lead into gold via printing press? Probably not, but Goodmountain did it anyway! He did something new, so he could do something old. I love the dwarfs.)

Pin and Tulip are fucking terrifying and fucking hilarious. In general, this might be the funniest Discworld book (yet, to me, this is not a final judgement). They also contain so many references that half my notes are made up of yelling movie names at myself (I am particularly fond of the Les Misérables references, but I hope that goes without saying). And Pin's spiral towards the end is so damn satisfying, omg (make the rat squirm).

Otto is a dear, Sacharissa is a treasure, and William is their douchebag boyfriend who sucks but at least he's aware of it so it's fine.

Lastly, not to get analytical, but this is the first time that the thematic driving force, the uncanny thing that has changed the lives of Ankh-Morpork... didn't go back into its box in the end. Unlike Holy Wood, unlike the shopping mall in Reaper Man, unlike the gonne, the printing press and the newspaper are here to stay. This ever-growing thing that will constantly need to be fed for the forseeable and unforseeable future, has warped the city, and this time, it sticks around.

Like, it's the first time that that has happened, Idk. Just... interesting.

#the truth #terry pratchett #discworld #dante reads discworld #I don't even have to type these anymore tumblr just goes “talking about this again eh?” #also adore that this book about the introduction of the printing press acknowledges that europe was really late to the party with it #like it is very much treated as “you want to use this here??” instead of “oh what is this witchcraft”

[plantdad-dante]

[plantdad-dante]

Book #147 - Looking For Alaska by John Green

(first time read; almost. I almost liked this one.)

I want to sit down and have tea with this book. I want to talk about grief, and mental health, and youth, and chance, and memory, and fucking up. I want to argue with this book, want to take it to task and have it defend its ideas when met with opposition that doesn't quite agree.

It's a nice essay Miles writes there, in the end. It is not an even remotely helpful sentiment to me, and it doesn't make a good conclusion to the theme, but I guess it is nice. If you really need to imagine an unchangable forever to deal with loss, but don't want to get overtly religious about it, I guess this is as good a way to go as any.

Maybe I'm being arrogant about grief because I've never really experienced it. No one I love has died yet. I suppose that makes me one lucky bastard. Still, I may not be able to relate, but I sympathize. Would be kind of a bastard if I didn't.

At the same time, my sympathy for Miles and his loss and his guilt and his grief do not outweigh the fact that I still think he's a shithead who only ever "loved" an idea, and who let that love be a detriment to his other relationships. I do not like him, nor the way he neglects half his social circle.

Did this book make me sad and depressed, for a bit? Yes. Do I, past the opressiveness of the heavy subject matter and the admittedly well-expressed grief on page, care? No, not really. I still got annoyed. I watched Miles experience profound emotions as he still failed to learn the lesson, pull his head out of his ass and stop being a dipshit - and I got annoyed.

In a better world, someone would have recognized Alaska's rapid mood swings as a bad sign and gotten her help before it ever came even close to the accident. In a better world, I would like this book, or this book would be the kind of book I like. In a better world, I wouldn't have guessed the last twist fifty pages before Alaska's friends did (right as it was mentioned that that street also goes towards/past her hometown, and that she had white lillies (aka funeral flowers) in the car).

In a better world, I would have a good way to end this post.

... The key to surviving the labyrinth is spite, btw. Spite and friends and everyday holyness. But mostly spite.

#looking for alaska #john green #dante's discard pile #i just dislike Miles too much

[plantdad-dante]

btw i am a spider defender but spiders are kind of fucked up if you look at things from their scale. imagine if those people who try to murder motorcyclists by stringing wire across the road were an actual recognised community and you had to just live with the fact that you might be on your way to work one day when you crash into their trap and get eaten. that's what it's like to live in bug world.

[plantdad-dante]

Book #146 - The Fifth Elephant by Terry Pratchett

(second time read; although, again, things make a lot more sense now than they did at thirteen)

Chewing bricks over Carrot. He knows what he's doing he knows what he's doing he knows what he's doing he knows what he's doing are you listening to me  h e k n o w s "Wolves never look back" I'm on the fucking ceiling.

Anyway, Vimes discovers the concept of a holiday. That's nice. That's nice. Him and Sybil are so sweet and so married in this one, like, this is by far the most attention Discworld has given to a romantic relationship yet, maybe only rivaled by Carrot and Angua, and then again mostly in this same book (chewing. bricks.)

Furthermore, I continue to be absolutely enamored with Cheery and dwarf culture and I think if I tried to quantify my thoughts on that we'd be here til christmas.

I feel like one could teach an entire philosophy class just discussing this book and all the ideas it contains. Example?

This book is so deeply in conversation with Theseus' Ship that their afternoon tea has gone cold and stale, the sun has gone down and their families have gone to bed without them. Someone has turned on the light on the table and drawn the blinds, but it was neither of them, for neither even realize it has happened. It is 2.14 in the morning, and they are still talking, in that dim, old, dark wood office, on that half-ancient country estate, tangled in an idea contained in both of them, yet bigger than either. The Fifth Elephant hasnt even brought up the Igors, yet.

I am and continue to be in awe of the City Watch series. And I think I need more bricks.

#the fifth elephant #terry pratchett #discworld #dante reads discworld