#I will link to my book reviews of the books I've read when I post them!!!
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Global Reading Challenge: 109/200
A personal reading project, where I endeavour to read a book from each of the 193 United Nations member states plus 7 extra* ones. My main goal is to have fun and to learn, but I do have rules for myself:
The book should be fiction, and preferably a novel. I allow plays and poetry, but non-fiction only as the very last resort
The author should have the nationality of their country. If they have lived a good portion of their life there and genuinely represent the local culture, then it's ok if they've been born somewhere else
I want to read books that represent the local literary tradition. Preferably a "classic", a book that illustrates the local culture, or a book that is famous within the country. I avoid popular and contemporary fiction, and books that play outside of the country.
*Extra states have been determined based on UNESCO membership and personal interest where I want to read more books from. This is not a political statement.
The List
Afghanistan: Atiq Rahimi - Earth and Ashes
Albania:
Algeria: Albert Camus - The Stranger (FR)
Andorra: Teresa Colom - Mlle Keaton et autres creatures (FR)
Angola: José Eduardo Agualusa - The Book of Chameleons
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina: JL Borges - Fictions
Armenia: Raffi - The Fool
Australia: Doris Pilkington/Nugi Garimara - Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas: Telcine Turner - Woman Take Two
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus: Uladzimir Karatkievich - King Stakh's Wild Hunt
Belgium
Belize: Zee Edgell - Beka Lamb
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana: Bessie Head - Maru
Brazil: Paulo Coehlo - The Alchimist
Brunei Darussalam: K.H. Lim - Written in Black
Bulgaria: Elias Canetti - Komödie der Eitelkeit (GER)
Burkina Faso: Norbert Zongo - Le parachutage (FR)
Burundi: Samoya Kirura - La femme au regard triste (FR)
Cabo Verde: Germano Almeida - The Last Will & Testament of Senhor da Silva Araújo
Cambodia
Cameroon: Francis Bebey - King Albert
Canada: S. Alice Callahan - Wynema: A Child of the Forest
Central African Republic: Étienne Goyémidé - Le dernier Survivant de la caravane
Chad: Told by Starlight in Chad - Joseph Brahmin Seid
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros: Ali Zamir - A Girl Called Eel
Congo
Cook Islands*: Kauraka Kauraka- Oral tradition in Manihiki
Costa Rica: Carlos Luis Fallas - Mamita Yunai (Die Grüne Hölle, GER)
Côte D’Ivoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus: Kyriakos Charalambides - Selected Poems
Czech Republic: Jan Neruda - Prague Tales
DPRK (North Korea)
DRC
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominica: Jean Rhys - Wide Sargasso Sea
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador: Horacio Castellanos Moyà - Le bal des vipères (FR)
Equatorial Guinea: Trifonia Melibea Obono - La Bâtarde (FR)
Eritrea: Helen Berhane - Song of the Nightingale
Estonia
Eswatini: Malla Nunn - A Beautiful Place to Die
Ethiopia
Fiji: Rajni Mala Khelawan - Kalyana
Finland
France: Pierre Louys - Aphrodite: Ancient Manners
Gabon: Daniel M Mengara - Mema
Gambia
Georgia
Germany: Thomas Mann - Buddenbrooks
Ghana: Ayi Kwei Armah - The beautiful ones are not yet born
Greece
Greenland*: Knud Rasmussen - Eskimo Folktales
Grenada: Merle Collins - The Colour of Forgetting
Guatemala: Miguel Angel Asturias - Strong Wind
Guinea: Camara Laye - The Radiance of the King
Guinea Bissau: Abdulai Sila - The ultimate tragedy
Guyana Haiti
Honduras: Froylan Turcios - El Vampiro (SPA)
Hungary: Arthur Koestler - Darkness at Noon
Iceland
India: Rabindranath Tangore - The Home and the World
Indonesia
Iran: Sadegh Hedayat - The Blind Owl
Iraq: Andrew George - The epic of Gilgamesh
Ireland: James Joyce - Dubliners
Israel
Italy: Italo Calvino - If on a Winter's Night a Traveller
Jamaica: Andrew Salkey - Hurricane
Japan
Jordan: Amjad Nasser - L'ascension de l'amant (FR)
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati: Teresia Teaiwa & Vilsoni Hereniko - Last Virgin in paradise
Kosovo*
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan: Chingiz Aitmatov - Jamila
Laos: Outhine Bounyavong - Mother's Beloved
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia: Bai T. Moore - Murder in the Cassava Patch
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania: Vingas Kreve - The Herdsman and the Linden Tree
Luxembourg: Norbert Jacques - Dr Mabuse der Spieler (GER)
Madagascar: Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo - Traduit de La nuit (FR)
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives: Abdullah Sadiq - Dhon Hiyala and Ali Fulhu
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands: Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner - Iep Jaltok: Poems from a Marshallese Daughter
Mauritania: Moussa Ould Ebnou - L'Amour Impossible (FR)
Mauritius
Mexico: Mario Bellatín - Beauty Salon
Micronesia: Emelihter Klieng - My Urohs
Monaco: Louis Notari - La légende de Sainte Dévote (FR)
Mongolia: Galsan Tschinag - Die Karawane (GER)
Montenegro: Petar II Petrovic Njegos - The Mountain Wreath
Morocco: Abdellatif Laâbi - Le bâpteme chacaliste (FR)
Mozambique
Myanmar
Namibia
Nauru: Nancy Viviani - Nauru, phosphate and political progress
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand: Witi Ihimaera - The Whale Rider
Nicaragua: Rubén Dario - Azul… (SPA/ENG)
Niger
Nigeria: Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart
Niue*: John Puhiatau Pule - The Bond of Time: An Epic Love Poem
North Macedonia
Norway: Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House
Oman
Pakistan: Jamil Ahmad - The Wandering Falcon
Palau: Hermana Ramarui - The Palauan Perspective: a poetry book
Panama: Ricardo Miró - Las Noches de Babel (SPA)
Palestine*: Ibrahim Nasrallah - Prairies of Fever
Papua New Guinea: Vincent Eri - The Crocodile
Paraguay
Peru: Mario Vargas Llosa - In Praise of the Stepmother
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Republic of Korea
Republic of Moldova
Romania
Russian Federation: Leo Tolstoi - The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis: Caryl Philips - Cambridge
Saint Lucia: Derek Walcott - Omeros
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa: Albert Wendt - Leaves of the Banyan Tree
San Marino: J. Theodore Bent - A freak of Freedom: or, the Republic of San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe:
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Seychelles: Antoine Abel - Coco Sec (FR)
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia: Milan Rúfus - Strenges Brot
Slovenia: France Prešeren - Poems
Solomon Islands: John Saunana - Cruising Through the Reverie
Somalia: Hadraawi - The Poet and the Man
South Africa: JM Coetzee - Disgrace
South Sudan: Nyuol Lueth Tong - There is a country
Spain: Miguel de Unamuno - Abel Sanchez and Other Stories
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Suriname
Sweden: August Strindberg - The Red Room
Switzerland
Syrian Arab Republic: Ibn al-Nafis - Theologus Autodidactus
Taiwan*
Tajikistan: Shavkat Niyazi - At the Foot of Blue Mountains: Stories by Tajik Authors
Thailand
Timor-Leste: Xanana Gusmão - Mar Meu
Togo
Tonga: Epeli Hau'ofa - Tales of the Tikongs
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia: Albert Memmi - The Pillar of Salt
Turkey
Turkmenistan: Magtymguly - Poems from Turkmenistan
Tuvalu: Neil Lifuka - Logs in the current of the sea
Uganda: Okot p'Bitek - Song of Lawino & Song of Ocol
Ukraine: Andrey Kurkov - Death and the Penguin
United Arab Emirates
UK: Virginia Woolf - Mrs Dalloway
United Republic of Tanzania
USA: John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
Uruguay
Uzbekistan: Abdullah Qoqiriy - Bygone Days
Vanuatu: Grace Molisa - Black Stone
Vatican City*: Andrew Graham-Dixon - Michelangelo and the Sistine Chapel
Venezuela
Viet Nam
Yemen: Abdul-wali - They die strangers
Zambia
Zimbabwe
#booklr#currently reading#reading challenge#classic literature#literature#books#book recommendations#global reading#Sam reads#PLEASE let me know if the Read More breaks since this is a very longue post#I will link to my book reviews of the books I've read when I post them!!!
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middle-earth dashboard simulator
🏵 hobbitc0re Follow
pippin was 29 years old???
🏵 hobbitc0re Follow
he should've been at the green dragon
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📸 daily-middle-earth-photos Follow
#gates of argonath #argonath #amon hen #middle earth landscapes #photographers of middle earth #travel #dark academia #lmao pls reblog this i almost fell out of my boat taking this photo
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my hungry ass could never travel with lembas
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🐟 sojuicysweet Follow
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#the entitlement i see on this site sometimes is disgusting #y'all will just post about having easy access to lembas when we can't eats hobbit food??? #we must starve??? #vent #do not rb
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CALLOUT FOR GRIMA WORMTONGUE
I've talked a lot about this already on this blog, but I want to have everything collected in one post so next time some dipshit with a white hand icon slides into my inbox to call me a liar I can just link to this post. tl;dr grima wormtongue has been poisoning my uncle and the land of rohan for the past few years, and here are the receipts:
Keep reading
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🧙♂️ bignaturals Follow
i stg if one more of you tells me I should've sent frodo on the eagles I'm asking iluvatar to take me back
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recent read: there and back again: a hobbit's tale by bilbo baggins
I thought this was SOOO fun and cute! I'm usually not into rpf but did anyone else think there was something between bilbo and thorin? 👀 I can't be the only one who saw it. but the ending made me cry my eyes out.
4.5/5 stars
#booklr #there and back again #bilbo baggins #recent read #dark academia #light academia #book review
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🌲 elvenking69 Follow
who up mirking they wood
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🐛 manofsirith Follow
wtf the new king of gondor just bowed to these four random short guys?? everyone else bowed too and I just went along with it lmao 😅 am I missing something????
#this is right after he sang a song and made out with some hot elf chick #truly the wildest coronation i've ever been to
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ULTIMATE HOTTEST FIRST AGE BADDIE TOURNAMENT FINALS!!!!
🔘 haldir-deactivated30190303
here y'all go again pitting two bad bitches against each other
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🌊 helcaraxebaby Follow
everyone who voted galadriel is a kinslayer apologist #luthiensweep
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fuck my job so much. everyone manifest an attack on gondor so I can finally warm my fingers on this beacon fire.
🔥 beaconboi Follow
by eru this can't be happening
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Hello! This is a blog primarily focused on making animal books (mainly Xenofiction) more accessible to those who can't get them legally (or don't want to support the creators)
I've made two separate drives that contain A LOT of pdfs of said books, such as Warrior Cats, Wings of Fire, Ratha's Creature, Watership Down, Survivors and many more you can see on this list
You can ask for the links through messages or comments!
More details about this under the cut!
Why not share the drives here?
Well, the last time I saw someone do that, the links got taken down, so instead I'll be sharing them through DMs!
Also, don't be shy to ask any questions.
There are two drives, the Main Books drive, and the Mature Books drive (which is mostly still a work in progress)
Please, specify if you want access to the mature books drive, and only ask for it if you're 18 years old or older, I will be checking if you have your age/age range in bio, if you don't have it, you can also say you're an adult when asking for it. (It's not a foolproof system, I know, but It's not like I want to ask for personal details)
The main drive has books that range from Family friendly to other series with an age rating of +13 or +15.
The mature books drive has animal books that have a lot of content not appropriate for minors, such as animal mating scenes, uncensored slurs and a lot of other dark topics. (Just because there's animal heat scenes doesn't mean that I condone the enjoyment of said scenes, if I see someone claiming to be zoophile wanting access to the drive, they will be blocked on sight) (This is not a safe space for anyone attracted to animals in such ways)
(I usually censor slurs before uploading the PDFs, but this time around, because of my own triggers, I haven't checked the contents of them and left the books the same as they were upon release, including slurs) (just because I left them intact, does not mean I agree with the usage of said words in the context of the books, which is why I added warnings for each slur in a document inside the drive) (I've personally censored every slur I've found in the books of the main drive, however)
For reference, this drive has books like Ratha's Creature and One for Sorrow, Two for Joy.
ALL BOOKS IN BOTH DRIVES HAVE A DOCUMENT LISTING ALL TRIGGER AND CONTENT WARNINGS FOR EACH SERIES.
The trigger warnings were sourced from book reviews and pages focused on giving content warnings.
Here are other questions you may have:
Can I share the link once I have it?
Yes! As long as you don't share it in public internet spaces (comments, public posts, open discord servers with huge amounts of people) it should be fine. I would love to make it public, however I also don't want it to get taken down minutes after sharing, which is why I'm limiting it to private links.
Can I take the PDFs from the drive and use them on my own drive?
Of course! The entire point of this is to make these books more accessible! Take whatever you need from here!
Have a nice reading! I will keep giving out the links for as long as this post is still up (or gets taken down or something happens to me lol)
#warrior cats#foxcraft#tailchaser's song#wings of fire#watership down#the lost rainforest#silverwing#ratha's creature#Bamboo Kingdom#survivors#survivor dogs#bears of the ice#guardians of ga'hoole#wolves of the beyond#Fire bringer#stuff i posted
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The Elephant in the Room - Queer Erasure and Westernization in Lore Olympus (and all its horrid stepchildren)
This is one people have been asking me for a while now, and I've been waiting for the right inspiration to hit, as is required for my ADHD hyperfixation-fueled rants. After recently watching a video that did an objective review of Cait Corrain's Crown of Starlight, I felt now was the time, because Crown of Starlight effectively proves exactly what Lore Olympus - and other Greek myth interpretations like it - has issues with.
And I want to preface this post with one question - why do we keep getting these Greek myth adaptations written by queer women that still wind up perpetuating toxic heteronormative culture?
Buckle up, because this one's HEFTY.
In that aforementioned review of A Crown of Starlight, there were a lot of points that came up about how Cait wrote the female protagonist - Ariadne, wife of Dionysus - where I immediately stopped and went, "Wait, this sounds awfully familiar."
It should be mentioned briefly for anyone who's unaware - Cait Corrain is an author who was recently (and still) under fire for using sock puppet accounts on GoodReads to intentionally sabotage the ratings of other debut authors, many of whom were her own peers or from the same publishing imprint as her (Del Rey), and most of whom were POC. I mentioned in that previous essay that I just linked that Cait Corrain is a fan of Lore Olympus and decided to give it 5 star ratings from these alt accounts, not just de-legitimizing the reputation of the books she bombed, but also the ones that she praised (including her own book, because of course she had to leave an obvious calling card LMAO). I felt it necessary to tie Cait into my discussion of white feminism in LO and its fanbase because people like Cait are exactly who we're talking about when we dissect the intent and consequences of LO's writing - much of its brand of "feminism" seems to only be catered to a specific kind of woman (i.e. white women who fetishize queer people/relationships) and seem to encourage/embrace violence towards women if those women aren't "behaving correctly" or just aren't fortunate enough to be white and rich - and so Cait choosing to give Lore Olympus 5 stars in her hate-raiding and even have it visibly in the background of her headshot photos was... not exactly disproving my argument that these are the types of people LO caters to and encourages, to say the least.
But then I watched Read with Rachel's "Did It Deserve 1 Star" review of Crown of Starlight and it cemented my assumptions and concerns regarding Cait's intentions and influences even more.
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As a brief tangent, I've read A Touch of Darkness by Scarlett St. Claire. It very obviously is using Lore Olympus as its blueprints, but it's not super obvious that if you didn't read Lore Olympus or weren't aware of it, you probably wouldn't notice. It's still not a great book on its own, it's riddled with writing problems, but at least it can call itself its own thing to some degree.
Crown of Starlight is just blatant Lore Olympus fanfiction pretending to be original, even down to its marketing (which I'll get to shortly) but swapping out Hades and Persephone with Dionysus and Ariadne, and setting the entire story in space. Why is it in space? There doesn't seem to be any actual necessary reason for this, it just is, go with it. I'd be willing to accept this because changing up the setting of pre-existing stories can be fun (god knows I loved the premise enough of Lore Olympus being a modern day Greek myth retelling that I had to go and make my own version of it that's still in that modern setting) but as RWR says in her review:
"... we're told that it's the 'island' of Crete, but then we talk about commbands, airlocks, [holo-shields] and it wasn't really written in a way that I felt meshed 'Greek retelling' and 'sci-fi' in a cohesive way."
Needless to say, Crown of Starlight unsurprisingly suffers from the same problems Lore Olympus does, where it will try to "subvert" the original myths by changing their setting and characters and then doing absolutely nothing interesting with them to justify those changes.
To really drive my point home that Crown of Starlight is undoubtedly Lore Olympus fanfiction, Lore Olympus was literally used as a comparison point in Crown of Starlight's marketing which is a fair tactic to use to advertise to a specific niche or demographic, and while some have argued that Cait isn't technically the one to come up with that marketing jargon, it's made much more clear that she used that comparison herself when writing and pitching the book because it is quite literally just Lore Olympus with a different couple in space, right down to the main female protagonist being part of a purity cult. And of course it wouldn't be a bad Wattpad romance if it didn't have our main female protagonist Ariadne talking about how inconvenient her MASSIVE BREASTS are and of COURSE Ariadne is a poor innocent uwu babygirl who needs a man to come in and rescue her from the evil purity cult and of COURSE it hints at them eventually having raunchy sex just for it to wind up being milquetoast bondage and of COURSE it all just winds up taking traditionally queer characters and stories and turning them into this sanitized Disney-esque plotline where the boy and girl were always meant to be together and nothing else matters except their love-
And that, at its core, really just screams "this is bad LO fanfiction". From the stylization of the book's writing which never outgrew its "adorkable fanfiction writing" phase-
"Realizing that I'm being gaslit by my entire world doesn't make it easier to deal with, but hey, at least I still have some part of my soul!" - an excerpt from Crown of Starlight quoted from RWR's review timestamp 13:03
-to the "creative" choices made to turn Ariadne into a chastity cult girl whose resolution is obviously going to be to have what's implied to be dirty raunchy sex just for it to be like... the most tame level one bondage stuff;
-to the classic "she breasted boobily down the stairs" focus on Ariadne's body and breasts and sex appeal that's being kept in check by that pesky purity club.
And that's really disappointing because I had seen people say, "Yeah, Cait did an awful thing and deserves to be removed from her publishing schedule, but it's a shame that that book was written by Cait because it's actually a really good book!" because now it's just making me even more sus of people's Greek myth adaption recommendations (I'm still mad at BookTok for convincing me that A Touch of Darkness was worth reading). All I could think while listening to some of the excerpts quoted by RWR was that if I didn't know about Cait Corrain and read Crown of Starlight blind, I'd undoubtedly assume it was being written by a heterocis guy... but it's in fact being written by a queer woman.
And this is where I segue into talking about the root of this problem, where the calls are really coming from - Lore Olympus and its erasure of queer identities and relationships, despite also being written by a queer woman who should know better.
I could think of no better character to help carry this essay than Eros.
Unlike many of the characters in LO that Rachel has managed to straightwash by changing their motives entirely or straight up changing their identity from the source material (ex. Zeus, Apollo, Crocus who was turned into a flower nymph, Dionysus and Achilles because they're both literally babies, the list goes on), Eros has largely remained the same on paper who had zero reason to not be queer within the story.
Eros is still the god of love in this, he's still a guy and presumed to be an adult, but we NEVER see or explore him having relationships with anyone other than Psyche, aside from a brief mention of organizing orgies in the beginning that's used as a quick joke and then promptly never mentioned again.
Just like with Crown of Starlight and A Touch of Darkness and all these other "dark romance" stories, it's that brand of "pretends to be sexually liberating but isn't actually" writing, where they'll briefly mention orgies or sex-related things and then beat around the bush or avoid involving them entirely like a kid at Sunday school who doesn't want to say the word "penis".
(fr out of all the corny and awful slang for genitals I've seen used in stories like this, "a certain part of my anatomy" is definitely one of the most boring and stupid, like for god's sakes Hades you're both adults and at the beginning of this comic you thought she wanted to bang in the kitchen, why are you suddenly talking like a 7 year old boy LOL)
All that aside, while Eros might still be hinted at being queer and sex-positive, it's only as vaguely as possible so that the story can quickly move on to focus on him and Psyche or, better yet, Hades and Persephone. When Eros isn't deadset on finding Psyche, he's being the gay best friend for Persephone, who he has NO right having a friendship with when he introduced himself by intentionally getting her as drunk as possible with the intent of dumping her in Hades' car as per his mom's command. It's brushed off later as "well Aphrodite maaade him do it, for Psycheee!" but Eros still agreed to potentially put Persephone in danger over a relationship that had NOTHING to do with her and was also mostly his fault in its fallout (which Artemis calls him out for, but of course, like all the other times characters have called out the actual issues in the story they're inhabiting, they get brushed aside so that Persephone can talk about Hades):
Now, the Eros and Psyche plotline is one I've talked about before here and not the focus of this essay so I'll keep this tangent brief, but it's absolutely wild to me that Rachel took a story about a woman going to the ends of the earth to prove her love for someone whose trust she broke (a common theme in a lot of Greek myth stories, such as the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice) and turned it into... woman of color gets turned into a nymph slave for Aphrodite to 'test' Eros, a test that isn't clear at all in what it's trying to achieve, and wait hold up, didn't Eros actually fail that test by kissing Ampelus while completely unaware that it was Psyche-
This is just that episode of Family Guy where Peter justifies emotionally cheating and eventually physically cheating on Lois because "well you were the phone sex lady the whole time so no harm done!", isn't it? (×﹏×)
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Anyways. It's all very convenient that the comic will hint at queer rep just to either have it be a constant question of whether or not they're actually queer (ex. Morpheus) OR to have it be promptly swept under the rug to make way for other characters/plot points. It's like when mongie tried to be "inclusive" by writing a stereotypical vaguely Asian character with no specific ethnicity just to get angry at her fanbase for calling her out on this that you can't just call a vaguely Asian character "representation" of anything (because Asia is MASSIVE and covers so many different ethnicities and languages and cultures).
Eros is only as gay as he needs to be to fill the role of "gay best friend" for Persephone.
Krokos is no longer a male lover of Hermes but a flower nymph created by Persephone because... apparently we can't dare imply that Hermes would be into anyone besides his unrequited childhood love, Persephone.
Achilles is introduced as a baby even though it makes no sense in the comic's own timeline where Odysseus is presumably already a well-known hero in Olympus, so much so that he was invited to the Panathenea.
Apollo is turned into a flat-out rapist who's only concerned with getting Persephone at all costs and when that doesn't work, he tries to get ANOTHER flower nymph (Daphne) who's actually genuinely interested in him (contrary to the original myth, there's that "swap it subversion" Rachel is known for) to cut her hair so she'll resemble Persephone more because we can't have a single plot point not resolve around Persephone.
Despite there being loads of genderbent characters already, Morpheus is supposedly the only one we're supposed to assume is specifically trans and not just a gender-flipped version of a Greek myth character. Why? Not because Rachel stated so explicitly, not because the comic has actually explored her identity as a trans woman, but because the readers just assumed it in good faith and Rachel was clearly fine with taking credit for trans representation that's only there via assumption (and only confirmed via her mods in Discord, which is... not how you establish canon information in your comic, Rachel.)
Hestia and Athena are part of a chastity club, until uh oh how convenient that they're secretly in a relationship with each other even though it further vilifies them and their morals, particularly Hestia who was promptly called out for being a hypocrite for taking Persephone's coat gifted to her from Hades while secretly being in a relationship the whole time. Not only does the Hestia and Athena relationship manage to commit queer erasure - of two gods who are considered icons in the aroace communities - but it also makes the only two lesbians in the story come across as assholes AND ON TOP OF THAT ALSO manages to somehow invalidate queer sex and relationships as being legitimate due to the even deeper implication that breaking their chastity vows "doesn't count" because it's not a male x female relationship. It's the 'ole poophole loophole all over again.
And then there's Artemis, who has MORE REASON THAN EVER TO BE IN THE PLOT but keeps being conveniently ignored. Her finding out about Hestia and Athena doesn't get any more screentime than her going "oh you're in a relationship, okay" , we never see her question the true intentions of TGOEM or what it means to her, we never see her have any opportunity to carve out her identity beyond just being Apollo's twin sister (it tries to at times, but then immediately goes nowhere with it, amounting to just poetic word salad), and she really just comes across as what a lot of people assume aroace people to be - alone and standoffish, because obviously someone who's nice and a good person would be in a relationship, there has to be a reason they don't want to have sex or fall in love, and that reason obviously has to be that they just hate everyone and want to be alone forever (￢_￢;) Then again, like many of the queer characters in LO, I don't know if I can definitively call her aroace because it's kept as vague as possible, and - going by Rachel's answers to these questions way back in her Tumblr era - apparently people can't be gay and ace at the same time-
There are undoubtedly loads more examples that I could cover here but that goes for practically any essay I write about LO - the more you peel it apart, the more you start unearthing some really questionable and frankly mean-spirited stuff. Queer people feel largely ignored in LO, alongside many of its derivative offspring such as A Touch of Darkness and Crown of Starlight, and it really speaks to how so many people - queer women, no less - have somehow managed to bastardize and sanitize what were traditionally very queer stories with queer characters. It's like these people think "olden times" and can only get as far as "women were slaves and men were rich assholes". Like, yeah, okay, that was the case for many cultures, but not all of them, and for some of them it wasn't as clear cut as that, many had misogynist power struggles in them while also still celebrating women and queer people in their own way. Greek myth is full of stories of women being forced into marriage or being made the victims of assault, but many of them are supportive of women and their struggles, unlike works like LO that somehow manage to be less feminist and sympathetic to women and queer people than these works from thousands of years ago.
This is another topic that's surely meant for another post, but it really speaks not only to the straightwashing and whitewashing of Greek myth, but also the Westernizing of it. That's not to say Rachel Smythe and Cait Corrain and Scarlett St. Claire are intentionally trying to whitewash another culture's works here, but if you're raised predominantly on Western media, you're undoubtedly going to absentmindedly adopt ideas about society that are primarily molded around Western beliefs .
And this is apparent in LO, while Rachel is from New Zealand, you can tell she grew up on a lot of Western media and its influences are sorely showing through LO's worldbuilding, character designs, and narrative choices. That "modern setting" that I mentioned before is much less Greek and a lot more adjacent to The Kardashians which lends to the theories that most of the media that Rachel consumes is American. Rather than actually going to the effort of doing her research on Greek culture, she seems to just prefer defaulting to the easiest assumption of how modern society is across the board - a generic Los Angeles clone with big glass skyscrapers and pavement walkways. She rarely ever draws food or clothing from those time periods; despite this story being about gods she's spent so little time on the people who passed on the stories about those gods, the mortals, and the gods themselves rarely feel like gods, rather just like Hollywood celebrities covered in body paint. The clothing feels very generic and uninspired with often very little Greek influence, even though Greek clothing is designed around Mediterranean living which you could do a lot with, to such an egregiously Western degree that Hades and Persephone's wedding was Christian-coded. The food... well, there ISN'T any because as we've seen, like the stereotypical American child, Persephone apparently only wants chicken nuggies and Skittles for dinner, so we never see her eat; and not only do we not see Persephone eat, but Rachel weirdly tries to use Persephone's vegetarianism as some kind of anti-capitalist characterization when much of the Greek diet is predominantly vegetarian. It's NOT HARD or uncommon to be a vegetarian in Greece!
(it looks like they're literally all eating the same thing so IDK what Hera is referring to here, it looks like they're all eating toast and lettuce LMAO)
All that's to say, much of LO - and the books like it that I've gone over here - are written with this idea that every culture - including the one that it's trying to adapt - was subject to the same ideas that Western culture lives by in the modern day - that being a vegetarian is "counterculture" in every culture, that the notion of sexual purity is enforced in the same way it's enforced in the Western education system (cough Christianity cough), that queer or otherwise "unconventional" relationships should stay inside the bedroom and not be seen. As much as Rachel claims she wants to "fight the patriarchy" and "deconstruct purity culture", all she winds up doing is reinforcing it through a Westernized lens, which is, as I've talked about before, very indicative of right-leaning white feminism and what it embraces and promotes - being a "good woman" who follows the rules and willingly becomes part of the system that's oppressing them because that's what "good women" do. Women who are confidant in their sexuality are evil and should be shunned for being "sluts". Women who are in relationships with other women "don't count" as real relationships the same way heteronormative relationships do, and cannot be trusted because they're likely trying to spread an agenda that's designed to brainwash heterocis women. Women should only aim to achieve marriage and their entire personality has to be built around their true love. Women are allowed to be kinky, but only as kinky as roleplaying the exact same gender structures that puts the man in a position to dominate a woman, and it should always and only ever be with her first love who she marries immediately, no one else.
This is exactly what the critics are getting at when they hold LO - and its creator - accountable for the messages it's been sending for five years to its audience of middle aged women and young girls. Having a demographic is fine, if this were just a comic for girls it would be fine, but it becomes a lot more problematic when that demographic is being fed toxic power fantasy stories based on a culture that's being gentrified and sanitized of all its original messaging and characterization right before our eyes. It feels blatantly misinformed from the very beginning in its intention to be a "feminist retelling" of Greek myth, because somehow Lore Olympus manages to be less feminist than these stories drafted and written by men from 2000+ years ago.
I opened this essay with a question: why do we keep getting these Greek myth adaptations written by queer women that still wind up perpetuating toxic heteronormative culture?
I think cases like these really highlight how deep the heteronormative brainwashing from childhood onward goes. That, despite these writers being queer or women, still manage to reinforce the same ideas and tropes and harmful predisposed notions that were designed to be used explicitly against queer people and women. These are things that we can't ever stop challenging, and asking, and truly deconstructing, because it runs deep in many of us who grew up on popular media even as innocent as Disney. Learning about more complex social concepts like sexism and misogyny and queerphobia doesn't automatically absolve us of those very same biases that have been both blatantly and subtly ingrained into us since childhood. All that said, Rachel being bisexual does not mean she's not capable of straightwashing; Cait Corrain being a queer debut author with a POC main character didn't stop them from targeting other POC debut authors at their own imprint; being part of any minority group or identifier does not automatically protect you from perpetuating the cycle that you, too, likely had enforced upon you at some point or another in your life. The fact that these creators and writers are still perpetuating that cycle to begin with is indicative of why it's a cycle at all - it takes work to break on a subconscious level because those cycles are specifically designed to target and hijack the subconscious.
At its worst, do you really think Lore Olympus can claim to be a feminist retelling that's "deconstructing purity culture" when the creator herself admittedly never fully identified or understood sexism until her mid-30's and has the audacity to say her audience is "harsh" on the female characters that she constantly vilifies through her own narrative?
"I feel like female characters in general, people will be a little harsher on them and sometimes way harsher on them, and I used to be like.. before I started writing the story and like making a story I was like yeah, sexism is not that bad, and [now] I was like oh it's bad. It's quite bad [laughs], so like, I don't know, I feel like the female characters in the story don't get so much of a pass. But this isn't consistent across the board, it's not all the time" - Rachel Smythe, in an interview with Girl Wonder Webtoon Podcast
If Lore Olympus truly was just a series meant to be for fun "no thoughts head empty" drama and spice, that would be fine. I've said it time and time before on this blog and I'll say it again: I wouldn't have an issue if Rachel was just writing a story exclusively revolving around heterocis men and women. I'm just frustrated and tired and annoyed that she keeps lying about it, and doubly so that this comic and its creator who claim to be "feminist" have inspired other people in the same headspace to continue to perpetuate that cycle through works that are clearly inspired by LO and never challenged the things LO promoted - violence towards "unconventional" women, violence towards POC, and erasure of queer people. And worst of all, for writers like Cait Corrain, it's more than just writing a really bad book with really bad messaging, it's going so far as intentionally targeting those same groups of people that are regularly vilified in works like LO - people who are just existing, who don't pose a threat to anyone, but had the misfortune of becoming the target of a white woman's insecurity.
I don't know what the answer to this problem is. I don't know what form the solution will come in, if any, to address the ongoing issues with Greek myth adaptions that are being sorely written through an "America as the default" point of view and praised for "rewriting the script of Greek mythology", quite literally cultural appropriation happening live right before our eyes all for the sake of cheap entertainment. Maybe it'll take the failings of works like Crown of Starlight to really get people talking about it. But so long as the roots of these works - such as Lore Olympus - are still being protected and marketed en masse by the same kinds of people who don't see the issue in Americanizing other cultures and their stories, then Lore Olympus and Crown of Starlight will not be the last ones to cause harm to the source material - and the cultures that source material is born from and a part of - they're taking from.
I opened this post with a question, and I'm going to close it with another to really leave it as food for thought. That question comes from another video that I'll link here for you to watch at your convenience that spends even more time diving into and discussing the nature of works like this that have seemingly attempted to "deconstruct" the very dogmas that they still wind up reinforcing all the same.
Does the romance genre have a white supremacy problem?
youtube
(yes. yes, it does.)
#lo critical#anti lore olympus#lore olympus critical#cait corrain#a touch of darkness#crown of starlight#scarlett st claire#Youtube
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im an undergrad student who was thinking about specializing in studying fascist movements in North America for my masters and ive really enjoyed reading your book commentary - you connect things that I'm not always aware of in ways that are really comprehensive and appreciate
Do you know of any researchers who are moving things on the topic right now (most of the books ive read are around 20+ years old, unfortunately)?
(sorry if any of this is unclear/grammatically incorrect/weirdly worded - I'm super sick rn)
thank you! I'm really glad to hear that :)
For contemporary writing, I'm currently working through some of Alberto Toscano's work - he has a really interesting article from 2021 on fascism from a Black radical/Marxist perspective where he summarizes various historical analyses of fascism from Black (particularly US) thinkers and activists. One thing I especially appreciate is that he complicates Aime Cesaire's formulation of fascism (i.e., "european colonialism come home") as incomplete when applied to settler colonial contexts, especially the United States - one of Cesaire's articulations of fascism is that (to paraphrase) "one fine day, the prisons begin to fill up, the Gestapo gets busy" and so on, and Toscano, working through Angela Davis and George Jackson, responds with (again I'm paraphrasing) "the prisons are already full! The Gestapo is already here!" etc. Toscano also has a new book that just came out in 2023 called Late Fascism, which explicitly addresses the current moment. I only have a physical copy of that so I can't share a pdf unfortunately, and I still need to get around to reading it lol.
These are also a couple random articles I found insightful:
Carnut (2022). Marxist Critical Systematic Review on Neo-Fascism and International Capital: Diffuse Networks, Capitalist Decadence and Culture War - does what it says on the tin
Daggett (2018). Petro-masculinity: Fossil Fuels and Authoritarian Desire - talks about car culture as a site of modern reactionary political movements, links climate denialism with (proto-)fascist movements
Parmigiani (2021). Magic and politics: Conspirituality and COVID-19 - this one does not mention fascism explicitly, but imo the intersection between new age spirituality, anti-vaccine sentiment, and qanon/q-adjacent conspiracies are pretty important to understanding contemporary fascist social movements, so I'd still recommend reading this
Finally, this isn't an article but I found this recorded lecture about the history of Qanon pretty interesting. I don't think the author gives particularly insightful answers on how to solve the problem of far right conspiracies in the Q&A portion but I found it to be a helpful summary
Otherwise I've been focusing a lot on decolonial scholarship more so than fascist scholarship - this is again guided by Cesaire's argument that Europe/The West broadly is inherently fascist. These works aren't contemporary, but you can look at this post for some of the readings I linked on decolonial scholarship if you want to go that route. Those are serving me more for theoretical frameworks to guide contemporary analysis, not analysis of contemporary events directly
also idk if I need to put this disclaimer, but just in case this leaves my blog: this isn't a full throated defense of/apology for everything in these articles, I'm not claiming they're sufficient to understanding the present moment, these are just some of the things I've been reading recently and have found helpful in some way or another. a lot of contemporary work I have read (much of which isn't linked here because I don't think its very good/do not have it on hand) focuses on populism and authoritarianism as central analytical terminology, which i think does a lot of work to exceptionalize and mystify fascism as a historical and political process/project originating from European colonialism & Western imperialism, but these terms are endemic to the field so you have to contend with them no matter what
good luck with your studies!
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Okay, let's do this. February Pinned post GO!
Hiya, I'm Dee.
I'm a forty-something queer lesbian poly trans woman. I'm an artist, writer, leatherworker, and tattooist. I'm a shitposter, a mom, and a few other things I've spaced on for the moment. I'm also Not Your Responsible Adult, and will hand you kids pamphlets on sex and kink education, a couple double espressos, and a bag of fireworks or a puppy. I fully believe in sex, kink, and body positivity and reblog as such- if you need censor your own experience for whatever reason, don't follow me, because I will not censor myself for you.
I also post a lot of my work here, but you'll also find a lot of it available for purchase right here: http://tormentedartifacts.com Here's a few highlights:
As I said before, I'm also a tattooist- self-taught and primarily working on myself (yes, about 90% of all that ink in my selfies is my own handiwork, no I'm not taking professional clients yet, more just the occasional test subject)- here's some of the flashwork I've been doing for my own portfolio:
I'm a writer and occultist as I said before as well, and my first book and companion tarot deck are available through my site, or you can catch me doing weekly card readings and media reviews over here.
The absolute biggest thing right now, though, is my surgery fund- My Gender Confirmation and Facial Feminization operations both happen this November over a two week span, and I'm trying to get enough in to cover my stay and the downtime I'm going to have to take off from everything up there.
So here's the link for my GoFundMe for that.
if you can kick in on that, or just spread word around of it elsewhere, I'd REALLY appreciate it.
And to answer a few specifics:
If you're contacting me about an order the best way is using the email on my site, not messaging me- I will answer when I can, but I'm also backed up and almost constantly low on spoons. Tumblr's where I come to dopamine-mine among other things.
No, I don't sell content to use the current parlance. I do absolutely support those who do, and so should you.
Yes there's a discord. Yes you have to actually ask me for an invite.
No, I really am only 5'6".
Half the rumors are true, but so are some of the outright lies.
Yes, I'll still record voice requests, even scripted bits.
No, you may not call me mommy.
Terfs, swerfs, bigots, conservaties, and other fash can fuck directly off. Tipping should be mandatory. Plastics suck. Landlords and borders should be immediately expunged. Give the fucking Land Back. Do make it weird, don't make it creepy. Do make it terrifying, otherworldly, and possibly even wondrous. Buy more leather.
Otherwise, that's it. My inbox or messages are open if you've got questions
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Farming content James Somerton style
Edited: I cleaned up sentences, removed typos and added some links
You've probably seen the latest hbomberguy video that highlights plagiarism problem on youtube. He gives several examples many I never heard about but I've been recommended iilluminaughtii before and watched some of her stuff before getting tired of seemingly endless volume (now I know why). But then he gets to the real subject of the video and I did watch a lot of James Somerton videos. And I liked many of them. I liked them a lot.
I didn't give him any money and, as much as it came as relief, I kept thinking how this must feel so much worse for people who did. I thought about supporting him for a moment when he posted (in April this year!) how his videos are getting less views because youtube algorithm and demonetisation of gay creators (it's a real thing so it was easy to believe) and he will be forced to stop creating if people don't sign up to his patreon. But I was casual viewer and he seemed big enough so I didn't. It must feel like such a betrayal to those who created a real community around him. Just like his film production company it's clear now it was another of his scams. It's infuriating how well it worked.
Somerton deleted his patreon now (along with his twitter and discord server) so there is probably no recourse for those affected. The only good thing is that someone big enough highlighted what he did (and brought receipts) so he had to stop. When smaller creators called him out it either went unnoticed or he managed to make himself a victim (and send his fans after them). He actually did what Anita Sarkeesian was accused of and gaslighted his followers about it. His misogyny just adds an extra bitter taste to this.
youtube
At the end hbomberguy talks about how if Somerton was open about what he was doing this could've been his niche. He said it just as I was thinking basically the same thing. I'm sure there is a market for field review type of videos. Not review like movie or book review but in academic sense when you take other people articles on the subject and compare to show the state of research on the subject on at the moment.
youtube
This kind of reviews doesn't need any original research. The value is in giving people overview of where the field is at and pointing them to the actual research so they can read more in depth about the results. If you already did the search for all the sources this is a perfect format to use them. Most people don't have time or resources to comb through all the resources themselves but they like to learn about it and this is why videos like that are popular. That's why iilluminaughtii, Somerton and al. were able to cash in on it.
But of course this kind of things have to properly cited. And they cannot be just all quotes. You have to make coherent points not just make stuff up for the transitions (lies that actually made Todd in the Shadows make a video not about music). I suppose that's too much work. Too much effort when you need to crank out content to satisfy all the sponsors.
youtube
I was glad to find out I already watch most of the queer creators recommended in the hbomberguy's video (and put on this watch list) as an alternative (I would add Caelan Conrad to it - funnily enough I found them through their video about antivax movement). I trained my youtube recommendations well in which way it skews but it's easier to kick out all the obviously awful when you know what talking points to avoid. It's much harder to spot grift when it pretends to care about the same things you care about. Somerton was saying all the right things. It just wasn't his words.
Did he even believe any of it? I bet he'll insist on yes but the laziness says otherwise. It seems like it was all just for the money and fans this angle gave him. That he enjoyed being cool to the audience he built and the stuff it bought him. Be gay do crime for real. Only he didn't write that one either.
#hbomberguy#james somerton#youtube drama#youtube plagiarism#todd in the shadows#archeology tube#james somerton conman#james somerton scam#youtube#plagiarism
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Would you be interested in sharing some of your fav books/scholars/academics/papers on The Iliad?
Hello! And thank you for this ask!! Basically, my research on Homer focuses a lot on Achilles and his relationship with Patroclus; I sometimes read works that are about the Iliad in general, but most of it is with Patroclus and Achilles in mind. But I do often come across interesting works on the Iliad as a whole, so I'll list some of them here. I have a lot of stuff to share, I'll keep it as brief as I can because I don't want to overwhelm anyone lol.
Books
As far as books go, I have several different translations of the Iliad, and most of the time each translation has its own introduction, sometimes by another classicist. Those are a great place to start. My favourites are Caroline Alexander's Iliad translation, and the introduction she wrote herself. I like Caroline Alexander's work in general, including her book on the Iliad The War That Killed Achilles (which my pal Baejax sent me bc I couldn't find it anywhere here <3 <3), because her writing is clear, straightforward and informative. Her translation is my go to translation at the moment because I like how faithful it is to the original Greek, it's the one I keep next to my bedside and which is full of bookmarks and notes LOL.
Another favourite is Robert Fagles' translation, with an introduction by Bernard Knox (who also wrote an excellent introduction to Robert Fagles' translation of the Aeneid). Even though Robert Fagles' translation isn't as close to the original as others, I love it because it is just so beautiful. It is definitely the one with the most staying power if you ask me, some passages are just chef's kiss. Bernard Knox's intro is also super informative (although he doesn't really go into Patroclus' and Achilles' relationship), and when he supplements his analysis with Fagles' gorgeous text it's just a wonderful experience.
Another translation that I recommend to anyone who can read modern Greek is the one by N. Kazantzakis & G. Kakridis, I think it's THE iconic Greek translation if you ask me. It has a lot of idiomatic language and expressions and it might not be as easy to get into as other Greek translations are, but it's truly beautiful and lyrical and it is entirely written in 17-syllable lines in iambic metre, adapting Homer's dactylic hexameter to modern Greek. Verse translations aren't really a thing for most English translations, which is a shame if you ask me. I think it's pretty much the only translation I've read so far that really invites you to read it out loud, as the original work was intended.
I do have Emily Wilson's translation as well but I haven't read it yet (I KNOW, SHAME ON ME), I really want to give it my full attention and I just haven't had the time yet. But I've read bits of the introduction and also parts of the translation and so far I love them. I hope to be back with a more informed opinion once I've actually read it LOL
Scholars
I have to admit that I don't follow any specific scholar religiously. I tend to read whatever catches my interest. That being said, I do love Emily Wilson's work and I've read several of her articles and papers, I think they're really informative and well-written. When she was doing the promotion for her Iliad translation on Twitter I read a lot of the stuff she posted and they were all great. My favourite was her interview with Madeline Miller which you can read here. I also liked this review of her Iliad translation that I read recently, written by Stephanie Mc Carter. Basically, I follow her on Twitter and read the articles she posts, and some are very interesting. I also went to see her in person when she gave a lecture in Athens in October, it was really good but unfortunately it isn't online anymore so I can't link it :(
I also really like watching Madeline Miller interviews on Youtube, I think I've watched every single one that's out there and even though some of them are brief or repetitive because interviewers usually ask her the same questions, I do think she always has something interesting to says both related to her books/writing but also the Iliad and the Odyssey that have inspired her. There are two interviews in particular that I like, this one which is more about TSOA and the Iliad, and this one which is more about Circe and the Odyssey. I genuinely enjoy listening to her a lot, I find it very calming.
My friend @darlingpoppet recently introduced me to the work of Celsiana Warwick, and I've really enjoyed reading her stuff!! Particularly this one which is about conjugal bonds and the homoerotic subtext of the Iliad, and this one which is about gender and kleos in the Iliad. Good stuff, and I look forward to reading more!
Papers
There are a few papers about Achilles and Patroclus that I really like and that I go back to from time to time. I have far too many in my jstor account and can't go through all of them right now, but these spring to mind:
Achilles and Patroclus in Love by W.M. Clarke, it's a very informative analysis of the homoerotic subtext of the Iliad and tries to "prove" in a way that Achilles and Patroclus are in a romantic/erotic relationship. Super interesting!
The Relationship between Achilles and Patroclus according to Chariton of Aphrodisias and Was the Relationship between Achilles and Patroclus Homoerotic? The View of Apollonius Rhodius by Gabriel Laguna-Mariscal and Manuel Sanz-Morales are two very interesting analyses of Achilles and Patroclus' relationship in relation to other ancient works, they're not too long and I found them very fun to read.
Euphorbus and the Death of Achilles by Roberto Nickel is super interesting and has some really cool takes on the deaths of Hector, Achilles and Patroclus and how they are all related.
Some more stuff
Some more videos I've watched and find rather interesting are The Contemporary Relevance of the Iliad by Erwin Cook, Why Homer Matters which is a talk between Adam Nicholson and Paul Cartledge (whose work and lectures on ancient greek history are always super informative!! I love watching his stuff even if they're not directly Iliad-related) I don't vibe with everything that's said in this video honestly nor do I agree with a lot of Nicholson's takes but they did make some interesting points about Homer's relevance and the emphasis on honour/glory in a world without justice and in a war without good leadership, so it might be worth a watch. Lastly, another series of video lectures that I really like is Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, it's five lectures in total and a great introduction to the Homeric works which also goes into the historical context a little bit, very informative even for someone who is well versed in Homer.
I hope this helped! I can't think of any more off the top of my head now, and I really should get ready to leave for work lmao, but if I do think of anything else, I'll add it here :D Also, if you're reading this and have something to add feel free to do so!
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thismorning i've been reading some articles, posts, student guidelines, etc. about "plagarism vs. allusion" or "plagiarism vs. intertextuality", partially out of some anxiety about my own writing that contains allusions. doing so i found this article (click), which talks about plagiarism in relation to philosophy. he says that plagiarism in philosophy was common 'as late as Hume' and describes it like this: "philosophers would rehearse the arguments of those before them, often in direct, but unsourced, quotes."
i know that people do see it that way (there was controversy a while ago about Kripke stealing arguments from somebody else), but it still surprises me. in that post, a couple of parts down, about fighting, i rehearsed arguments made by Clausewitz in On War. Clausewitz talks about the difference between existential conflicts concerning the fate of nations and conflicts which are merely about capturing one or two provinces, etc. he also distinguished between a tendency towards 'total war', a full exertion of force, which is limited by the concrete factors of reality concerning the political situation, financial commitments, the geography, and so forth. then he says that the interaction between the tendency towards total war and the limitations imposed by reality produce the specific character of the actual war. i'm using these ideas in the post, and i try to flag it by using the same language; when i talk about fights which are and are not 'existential', and how specific fights are produced by the restrictions placed on them. i'm obviously thinking about one-on-one combat using the arguments i read in Clausewitz.
but i don't mention Clausewitz in the post. am i plagiarizing Clausewitz, so doing? i'm not going quite as far as the quote describes by copying whole sections, but things like the Kripke controvery were over something much closer. probably nobody would accuse me of plagiarism for it; but if, for example, i wrote a book where i went into the argument in more detail, and a reviewer noticed the dialectic from Clausewitz, even using some of the same terms, they might say: 'this hack writer is trying to pass off Clausewitz' arguments as their own!' and accuse me of plagiarism. at that point, they would probably have a good argument, pointing to those sections which i mentioned and showing the similarity in the same way, perhaps also illustrating it with quotes from On War's opening chapter. at this point, many people might be convinced that i was trying to pass off Clausewitz's arguments as my own. similarly, if i was a student and i handed it to a professor, and they had just the night before been reading about Clausewitz, they might recognize a few key terms and become suspicious that i'm cheating; after their suspicion has been roused they could find plenty of confirmation in a similar way.
in most of the articles, posts and student guidelines i read (including the linked one), the difference between plagiarism and intertextuality or allusion is handled by some version of this: authors include allusions because they want you to recognize the allusion, while authors who plagiarize don't want you to notice. however, in the case of philosophy or non-fiction, doesn't this kind of break down? i don't necessarily hope you notice that i'm borrowing the ideas from Clausewitz. instead, i'm writing the post to work out my own thoughts about it. and because i've read Clausewitz, my thoughts are influenced by the arguments that Clausewitz made. this is where the idea of plagiarizing arguments is problematic to me—isn't the entire point of reading a philosophical book that i hope i will actually start thinking that way? why learn the arguments if not to make them?
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Studies and Research Into Endogenic and Non-Disordered Plurality
I've been neglecting my Studies and Research page for a while, so I decided it was about time to bring it back. This time completely reorganized and mobile friendly. (Sort of. A lot of these are still PDFs, so clicking the links isn't mobile friendly. But you can actually reach it on mobile now unlike my old page.)
Blue links are free. Orange are paywalled but Sci-Hub compatible. Red is paywalled and not sci-hub compatible.
Latest Update: 10/19/23 (This post will be continuously updated with more research. If you see this in a reblog, you may not have the newest version)
Papers on The Tulpamancy Community
Varieties of Tulpa Experiences
Book: Hypnosis and meditation: Towards an integrative science of conscious planes
Learning to Discern the Voices of Gods, Spirits, Tulpas, and the Dead
DOI: 10.1093/schbul/sbac005
Tulpas and Mental Health: A Study of Non-Traumagenic Plural Experiences
DOI: 10.12691/rpbs-5-2-1
Unusual experiences and their association with metacognition: investigating ASMR and Tulpamancy
DOI: 10.1080/13546805.2021.1999798
Personality Characteristics of Tulpamancers and Their Tulpas
DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/5t3xk (This is a pre-print and may lack peer review.)
Papers on Other Endogenic/Non-Disordered Plurals
Multiplicity: An Explorative Interview Study on Personal Experiences of People with Multiple Selves
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00938
Exploring the experiences of young people with multiplicity
ISSN: 2057-4266
Exploring the Utility and Personal Relevance of Co-Produced Multiplicity Resources with Young People
DOI: 10.1007/s40653-021-00377-7
Conceptualizing multiplicity spectrum experiences: A systematic review and thematic synthesis
DOI: 10.1002/cpp.2910
It's just a body: A community-based participatory exploration of the experiences and health care needs for transgender plural people
(Note: While most of the paper is paywalled, the introduction is still interesting and worth reading IMO.)
DOI: 10.1016/j.ejtd.2023.100354
Transgender Mental Health (Includes a chapter on Plurality)
Screenshots
ISBN: 978-1-61537-113-6
Papers on Spiritual Plurality and Plural-like Experiences
Can the DSM-5 differentiate between nonpathological possession and dissociative identity disorder? A case study from an Afro- Brazilian religion
DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2015.1103351
The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity
DOI: 10.1111/j.1548-1433.2009.01197.x
Multiple Personality and Channeling
DOI: 10.29046/JJP.009.1.001
Commentary on "Multiple Personality and Channeling"
DOI: 10.29046/JJP.009.2.011
Papers on the Agency of Imaginary Friends
Explaining the Illusion of Independent Agency in Imagined Persons with a Theory of Practice
DOI: 10.1080/09515089.2022.2043265
Investigating Valence and Autonomy in Children's Relationships with Imaginary Companions (Paywalled)
DOI: 10.3233/DEV-130123
The bully in my mind: Investigating children's negative relationships with imaginary companions (Thesis)
https://ir.ua.edu/handle/123456789/1468
‘When my mummy and daddy aren't looking at me when I do my maths she helps me’; Children can be taught to create imaginary companions: An exploratory study
DOI: 10.1002/icd.2390
Imaginary Companions, Inner Speech, and Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: What Are the Relations?
DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01665
Maladaptive daydreaming is a dissociative disorder: Supporting evidence and theory.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003057314
Papers on the Agency of Fictional Characters
The Illusion of Independent Agency: Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience Their Characters as Having Minds of Their Own?
DOI: 10.2190/FTG3-Q9T0-7U26-5Q5X
‘I’ve learned I need to treat my characters like people’: Varieties of agency and interaction in Writers’ experiences of their Characters’ Voices
DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2020.102901
Papers on the Agency of Hallucinations in Psychotic Disorders
A psychotherapy approach to treating hostile voices
DOI: 10.1080/17522439.2016.1247190
Auditory Hallucinations in Dissociative Identity Disorder and Schizophrenia With and Without a Childhood Trauma History (Paywalled)
DOI: 10.1097/NMD.0b013e3181c299ea
The Representation of Agents in Auditory Verbal Hallucinations
DOI: 10.1111/mila.12096
Rethinking Social Cognition in Light of Psychosis: Reciprocal Implications for Cognition and Psychopathology
DOI: 10.1177/216770261667707
Relevant Quotes From Irrelevant Papers
These are papers that largely have nothing to do with endogenic or non-disorder plurality, but include important quotes. These relevant quotes are screenshotted so you don't need to read entire papers for one paragraph.
Non-disordered plurality is mentioned in the International Classification of Diseases. (ICD-11)
Authors of the The Haunted Self and creators of the Theory of Structural Dissociation reference that hypnosis or spiritual practices may result in self-conscious dissociative parts of the personality.
DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2011.570592
#psychology#psychiatry#syscourse#sysblr#plural#plurality#multiplicity#systems#endogenic#science#pluralgang#plural system#endogenic system#pro endo#actually plural#imaginary friends#system stuff#pro endogenic#tulpa#tulpamancy#actually a system
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Feeling Weird About Promoting Stories
Anonymous asked: How do I get over being ashamed to promote my story more? While I definitely write for myself, I like a bit of validation as well but I'm too shy and feel a bit...cheap?
There's a person in my writing community who goes around begging people to read their stuff. They keep track up to where you've left comments, and then asks why haven't you commented on their other chapters. They also passive aggressively say nobody likes their stuff enough to leave comments and other things to guilt people into guilt reading their stuff.
I've been encouraged by friends to market my stories more, but I just can't bring myself to do it because I feel like I'm in the same boat as this person.
(Ask was edited for length...)
First, I want to be clear that what this person (in your writing community) is doing isn't promoting themselves. It's nagging and badgering, and if they ever try that as a fiction writer, they'll have a very short career.
What they're doing is like hitting someone over the head repeatedly with a pillow. Promoting your story is like standing there holding a sign that shows information about your story. You're not asking anyone to read your story. You're not badgering them by appealing to their sympathy or sense of guilt. You're literally just saying, "Here's my story..." It's up to them whether or not they want to check it out.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with or shameful about promoting your work/product. If there was, we wouldn't have TV commercials, print ads, movie trailers, billboards, etc. The key is to do it in a way that doesn't annoy or badger your potential "customer." When promoting books and stories, that means doing it in a way that's quick, interesting to the reader, and not doing it so frequently that they get sick of hearing from you.
Many fan-fiction writers have a social media account associated with their writing which they can use to help drive traffic to their stories. So, for example, an Instagram, Tumblr or Facebook page. The link to this social media would also be shared at the bottom of each story to give fans a place to stay updated on your writing.
A promotional post would look like...
1 - A text post with a little teaser or hook:
Hi, everyone! I just updated Two Balls of Yarn over at AO3. Let's just say this is the chapter where everything goes sideways. You can check it out here: [link to story on AO3, username, or whatever]
2 - A graphic: for example, a book cover for your story, a mood board or aesthetic, a gif set, or story art, along with a caption that says something along the lines of what's up above in #1. Alternatively, it could say something like: Two Balls of Yarn, updated 9/3/23, available here...
If you're have a story in progress that you're posting every week or so, you would do such a promo post every time you update. However, once every few days or so, you might also choose to promo an older story. Depending on the social media platform, you may also want to do other types of posts occasionally, such as episode reviews (if for a TV show), reblogs of fan-art or gif sets related to the fandom, etc. You might even share links to other writers' stories that you really enjoyed.
Also, and this is SO important... 90% of success when promoting on social media is reciprocal engagement. In other words, if you want people to read, like, and comment on your stories, you need to read, like, and comment on other people's stories.
I hope that helps!
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Invader Zim + ZaDr Fan Merch Review
I bought some zadr and iz directly from @banana-zim and the gist of it is that it was very good 5/5 stars would recommend
But here are the details:
Nana was very very accommodating for my horrible financial situation and was able to indefinitely hold items for me and make arrangements with shipping to make sure I had a stable income while making the purchase, and also was very patient and kind throughout the whole process even when things were not stable on my end. I was able to plan this for months! Very trustworthy I'd say
These are the items I bought
[ID 1: A zim pillow in a plastic wrapper, and a notebook with stickers and stickiness wrapped in bubble wrap. /End ID 1]
The packaging had kept everything clean, dry and undamaged.
There was a Zim on both sides of the pillow, the colours were vibrant (though they look a little more saturated on my phone camera, no idea why) and the fabric was very soft. It has a zipper that is almost not visible, and you can open it. Inside is fluff, which you could theoretically remove to wash the pillow case though it didn't come with wash instructions. I will let Nana comment on that if there are questions!
[ID 2, 3: The zim pillow from other angles showing the backside and zipper, unzipped. /End ID 2, 3]
The post-its are cute and easy to write on, they have enough white space to get a few sentences down depending on how small you write. Here is a little thank you note ♡
[ID 4: The notebook laid out on the bubble wrap with the post-it notes and stickers on top. /End ID 4]
[ID 5: A close-up picture of the post-it notes. On the first page there is a heart drawn with a ballpoint pen and the words "Thank you Bananazim!" /End ID 5]
I got the zadr stickers for free. They have a paper-like texture and the colours seem slightly more muted than the pillow but they still look colourful in real life. I stuck one of them to the inside of my notebook and they seem to stick nicely!
[ID 6: Three stickers. The first is the swollen eyeball symbol on top of the irken symbol. The second is a heart with a space background. Inside of the heart Zim and Dib are kissing. The third is square, with Dib laying on a pillow with a blanket over his waist and an open book under his hand. Zim clings to his back. /End ID 6]
The notebook looks like this! It has saturated colours on the front and back, and a protective plastic page on either side. The front and back pages are shinier than the inside, and all pages on the inside are lined. Size A5.
[ID 7, 8: The front page of the notebook, a drawing of the black silhouettes of Zim and Dib in front of the control brains and swollen eyeball screens. The screens and Dib's eyes are coloured turquoise while Zim's eye and the control brains are coloured pink. Zim appears to sit in Dib's lap, and Dib's fingers have turquoise threads wrapped around them that go into Zim's back where his PAK is supposed to be. There is pink text reading "MY LittLE ALiEN". The lines are white. The pictures as with and without the slightly opaque plastic cover page. /End ID 7, 8]
[ID 9: A page of the notebook. It is lined from top to bottom. /End ID 9]
[ID 10: The backside of the notebook. It's black with the turquoise swollen eyeball symbol over the irken symbol. /End ID 10]
Overall I really enjoyed this, and I've already started using the notebook to keep track of my creative projects and everything I need to mend or fix in my room :)
In the reblogs I will link the Etsy shop and kofi because I don't know if tumblr hides posts with links or if that was an old bug?
☆☆☆☆☆
#zadr#invader zim#invader zim merch#zadr merch#merch review#fan merch#banana zim#bananazim#banana-zim#image described
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Alright, here we go. My review for The Dabbler's Guide to Witchcraft by Fire Lyte
Final rating: ??/10 - it broke my numbers system.
TL;DR - I like the book. I'm angry at the author. It's great for new practitioners. If you're going to get it, please get it from the Spiral House Shop, get Alex Wrekk's two witchcraft zines to go with it, and go look at/reblog/contribute to the original Dabbler's Week project.
(Also I think this is the longest review I've written yet. I'm sorry.)
This book is very good. I'm mad about that. The author is an excellent writer. I'm mad about that. I want to dislike this book but I can't, and I'm mad about that.
So let's get into the breakdown of why.
First up, a housekeeping thing: "Fire Lyte" is a pen name that I don't believe the author uses anymore, so I will be referring to him as Don Martin, the name he is using on his current projects. I know he's on TikTok, formerly of Inciting a Riot podcast, now of Head on Fire podcast.
Second, some links relevant to the review-which-is-actually-just-a-rant:
The breakdown of things I found that were taken uncredited from Tumblr
I COULD be making this up and reading it in bad faith, but this bit about 'heteronormative marriage' has my alarm bells ringing
Why I hate the title of this book
The original Dabbler's Week project links
Anyway.
I picked this book up specifically because of the title. It's been 3 years since it was published, so it took me a while, but I remember looking at that title when it was first out and thinking "Hey... the timing of this... did this person just wholesale lift the 'Dabbler' idea from Tumblr?"
The answer is: Yes, probably!
(He also summarized the Malachite Dick post from February 2020, but he actually credited Tumblr along with relevant usernames, so that's good and also made me laugh.)
But... yeah. The fact that he's crediting Tumblr from something that specifically happened in February 2020, when the original Dabbler's Week was from late January 2020 and seems to have inspired his whole book? Don, would it have killed you to mention ANYTHING about that project and the people involved?
He's very big on talking about following trails of information, listening to podcasts, listening to the podcasts of people talked about on those podcasts, reading books talked about on those podcast, and so on. But if he doesn't start off by saying "Dabbler's Week was a project issued by asksecularwitch on Tumblr", then how is anyone supposed to follow THAT chain of information, hmm? If his whole advice on finding good witchcraft resources is to follow the chain of people who are sharing information from each other, but he makes no mention of where he got the whole idea for his book, then what?
Side rant: I'm real tired of how Tumblr information is simultaneously treated as too shitty to ever bother reading or mentioning, but good enough to screenshot, repost on other sites, recite word-for-word on tiktok, and apparently write a book about.
ANYWAY. I'm angry about it. I'm gonna be angry about it. Here, please look at these links to the shenanigans that began the original Dabbler's Week, because Don certainly won't tell you about this part.
Anyway.
Some bad things:
I mean, the plagiarism. I keep hesitating to use the word 'plagiarism', because to me that seems like wholesale lifting entire works and slapping your name on them, when all Don did was fail to credit a few Tumblr users he quoted. But then again, if I did that on a research paper in college, it would be called plagiarism, so.
This book is in fact not a great guide for 'dabblers'. The point of Dabbler's Week was that if someone didn't know if they wanted to commit to witchcraft but wanted to fuck around with casting some spells for a week to try it out, there were week-long guides on things someone could do to try that. This book is not for fucking around with magic, it's for people who are already sure that they want to make this a thing in their lives. It handles some heavier topics (e.g. vetting mentors and not getting sucked into a cult) that are very very important for someone who is BEGINNING, but may be too much for someone who just says one day "lol I think I'll cast a spell for fun". A far more accurate title would have been "The Beginner's Guide to Witchcraft", but then he'd lose that punchy and marketable and googleable term 'dabbler'. (Yes, I'm going to be petty about this.)
"Wow Jes, it sounds like you really hated this book."
NO I DIDN'T, AND I'M SO MAD ABOUT THAT!
Some good things:
The author has a writing style that I enjoyed very much. This is a personal preference, but I like when books are either written so that the author is fully invisible (Bree Landwalker's books do this wonderfully), or the author is fully visible, like they're sitting at the table having a conversation with you (Kelly-Ann Maddox's 'Rebel Witch' comes to mind, as does Alex Wrekk's 'Brainscan 33: DIY Witchery'). Don Martin is the table conversation kind. That makes this book very easy to read, while also getting information across in an easily-understood sort of way.
This book fills a very necessary gap in modern witching books. It talks about the online community of witches, and a lot of the pitfalls that have come along with the bonuses of having so much witchcraft available at our social-media connected fingertips.
He gets very in depth with things like cultural appropriation. That's something that you can find in a lot of modern witch books, but Don actually spends the time breaking the concept down and explaining WHY it's harmful, HOW it affects people, and quotes people from the affected minority groups. I have seen the appropriation topic come up in a lot of the witch books I've read, but Don is the one who has covered the topic the best, imo.
He spends time on topics that I myself would have been dismissive of. The example that comes to mind is the chapter 'Can I Make Sh*t Up?' My knee jerk reaction was "Yes, you can make your own spells, you don't need to get someone else's permission. Next question." But Don goes through the full breakdown of yes you can make up your own spells, yes you can make your own correspondences, but no that doesn't mean you can just throw a water soluble crystal in your water bottle because you think it's good for cleansing.
Actually on that topic, he covers a lot of the why not just the what. It's not just 'appropriation is bad', it's 'and here's why'. It's not just 'research your herbs', it's 'here's some examples of things that can and have gone wrong.'
SPELL CANVASES! There are 11 'spell canvases' in this book, and they're pretty much all just kids/teens science experiments (e.g. dissolving an egg shell in vinegar, lighting a tea bag on fire so it flies, and using food dye to color a white flower). He does not give intentions for these spells, but gives a spell technique and then some examples of how you could apply your own purpose/intention to it as needed. It's actually pretty smart, and now I wish there was more stuff like this.
He actually explains what UPG means. Man, 'UPG' is one of those things that I keep seeing as a 'I don't know what that means and I'm to afraid to ask' blog post. When someone pops into the witchy social media circles, we can throw the term 'UPG' around as if everyone knows what it means, and forget to actually explain that it's Unverified Personal Gnosis and what that means. Don's got us covered. Good on you, Don.
The one throwaway line about why you don't have to buy fancy witch things. Tucked away in chapter 12 is this almost nothing-sentence mentioning why you shouldn't be "going broke hoping to buy your way into 'effective' magic" (pg. 161). I have seen, reblogged, probably written posts about 'No you don't need the fancy tools! You can just use whatever! But you CAN buy them if you want, you just don't NEED them.' And we've all seen those around, right? But damn, if Don didn't just get to the heart of it. You can't buy your way into skill. YES, Don, THAT!! THANK YOU.
Alright. I'm running out of words. This isn't a review, it's a rant. Holy shit. Let me shut up with a TL;DR
Almost without doubt, Don liked Tumblr's idea enough to write a book about it, but failed to give credit. But he's an excellent writer and covers a lot of topics that are not often written about in printed books, and to get those blogosphere-ideas onto bookshelves is invaluable. This is a good book for beginners starting out in witchcraft, but not for dabblers who just want to screw around with some spells. Do the pros outweigh the cons? Is it ethical to buy a book when the author gets royalties but the bloggers he got the idea from do not? I don't know. I can't tell you that. You'll have to weigh all this against your own moral compass and decide for yourself. My recommendation is that if you're going to buy it, please buy it from the Spiral House Shop, because if Don Martin's going to get paid for this book, Alex Wrekk should too. Buy Alex's zines. Reblog Sec's posts. Links are up at the top.
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The Phantom of the Opera | Seoul, South Korea | October 8-14th, 2023 [REVIEWS]
Wow it's about time I posted these reviews that I kept lying about (this week! tomorrow! in 10 years!) Better late than never?
In this post I'll drop a few general things about the production, but the performances are analyzed in my reviews linked here. I recommend reading those all in order since I revisit points about actors I've made previously along the way to avoid repeating myself. Also leaving a disclaimer that these performances are from October so there are some changes in what the actors are doing now (with the exception of Jeon Dong-seok since he left in November)
Apologies in advance for my wordiness, but this is more of a "release my feelings for my sake and if anyone else likes it that's cool too" kind of thing? Listen - I wrote a lot of notes on my performances there. So just go in knowing this is the more coherent version of my insane looking notes app!
Before I start I want to thank a few lovely friends who helped me out with this trip because it wouldn't have gone as well as it did without them!
Thank you to @lucygold95 for helping me so much with planning over the past months and for giving me the best time in Busan. Thank you @capitanogiorgio for all the shenanigans we went through and the most special time going to the 1500th and meeting Yoon Young-seok. Thank you to @fadinglandtragedy for the fun talks and the good advice before my trip! The best part of things like this is making friends of course! : )
PERFORMANCE REVIEWS:
| October 8, 2023 | October 11, 2023 | October 12, 2023 |
| October 13, 2023 (M) | October 13, 2023 (E) | October 14, 2023 |
STAGE & THEATER
This was as close to the original staging as possible. So I was able to take it in one more (or I guess 6 more?) times post-Broadway closing. The Charlotte Theater is a lot smaller than the Majestic so every view was pretty solid in my opinion, even the second to last row.
I took a video of my view from 4th row under the chandelier during the exit music on October 11th so you can see! The angel and chandelier are shown halfway through. I'd say 5th row was almost the cut off for the chandelier drop (that was my spot next day) Broadway seats in this area were always too expensive for me so I'm glad I was able to grab these spots for this production
There were photo zones you can take pics at which you've probably seen. One was a large rose wall, the other was the cute statue of their mascot 오유령. People also take forever lining up for the cast boards for photos and yes I was one of those people.
Here's a comparison of the cast boards from the second season (pictures I found when reading old reviews on Naver) and the cast boards now (I forgot to take a photo of one on the top floor though)
I found this review where someone took more detailed clean photos than I did if you're curious about the layout and decorations!
MERCH AND GIFTS
The tickets had these designs! If you booked on Yes24, you received a special envelope and a ticket holder with the face of the Phantom performing for that show
I only didn't receive a second Ju-taek because that was booked on another site - Interpark (bottom middle ticket). I also received paper masks with printed autographs every day I went to commemorate the 200th performance of the run/100th for Seoul and the 1500th overall Korean performance. We used them for the curtain call photos on those two dates (with Jeon Dong-seok then Kim Ju-taek).
There are multiple versions of the program book and at the time of writing this I have all except the Daegu one. The first Busan program book was pretty bare and only had the teaser pictures - the same was the case for my Les Mis program book in Busan. -There are different photos in each one, so to me it was worth grabbing them all. My third version signed by Kim Ju-taek is currently on display as you can see below! (The writing says "내 노래를 날게 해 주오 - Make my song take flight") Once again thank you to Lucy for this! 🥹❤️
Here's some of my POTO merch (including a spare cupsleeve from the coffee shop next door, I also had a keyring, but I forgot to show it)
RIP to the second program book I sacrificed for scans I still have the pages stored/displayed though! I'm not wasteful! I'll have more to post soon after sharing these reviews
TRANSLATION
Let me emphasize this: my Korean abilities are limited, so don't look to me as the expert on this at all. But I'll still share my notes and perspective as an outsider who's studying
The lyrics have changed quite a bit since 2001-2. There are still lines kept or songs that are mostly similar. MOTN had a lot of similarity to 2009-11 even with its changes, STYDI was identical to 2009-11, but Angel of Music was pretty different from even the last season, etc etc.
The Phantoms all have unique lines sprinkled here and there, mainly in MOTN (this happens sometimes in Korean musicals). You get some things like random single line changes in some parts depending on the actor or different order/wording of the same lines as well. Just tiny diversions from the script. This is the case for the Christines and Raoul to a lesser extent.
Additionally, actors are often permitted to do some occasional improvisation/ad libs. Some unique lines are pretty normal parts of their interpretations now, some appear depending on the feeling of the performance, some are one time only events. I'll mention some of the actor-specific ones and such in their actual reviews, but I have been trying to mark down all of the differences like these for example
Of course, some things obviously have to be adjusted to make sense because of cultural / linguistic reasons. So one example would be the "Wrote...written" line in Notes I. Firmin speaks rudely and informally, but quickly tries adding a more respectful ending particle 요 after Raoul and André give him a shocked 'what did you just say?' kind of look. So "대체 뭘 썼다고 하는 건데...요!" is pretty much like "What the hell are you saying I wrote?" André would look so embarrassed by this each time 🫣
퇴근길 / STAGE DOOR
Stage door doesn't really work the same as it does in places like New York, London, etc. Most of the time if an actor comes out it's more like a quick greeting or chat with the fans. Some actors (not in this case) might sign or take photos in designated spots, but it really depends and it's not so common. It's gotten more restricted ever since COVID as well. 퇴근길 -> "way home from work" is literally what this is called. Dong-seok did wave at us a few times happily after the 200th performance, Gun-ha briefly came out to thank fans after the 1500th while Ceci and I waited to meet Young-seok who had agreed to meet us. I did not have the time (or strength) for the Seung-woo mob, but he usually greets fans after shows.
I literally asked Yoon Young-seok directly on Instagram if Ceci and I could meet him and give him gifts because I figured it didn't hurt to try! When he agreed, my anxiety was not necessarily about meeting an actor, but more about my ability to express my thoughts in another language. But he was truly the sweetest guy and incredibly patient. I think he got that I understood everything he said, but that replying was a whole other challenge. I'm glad I was making enough sense that he was able to get my points and helped me finish sentences if I looked stressed about it 😂
I basically told him I had been planning this trip since the cast announcement because it was too perfect to miss and that I came for 6 shows. I really like to listen to his Phantom on the cast recordings and I thought he made the shows I had seen so far so much fun.
We both said where we were from (the US and France) and he was amazed. He was also shocked when I pulled out my original Korean cast recording (I still laugh thinking about the way he said "와, 세상에!" like "Wow, oh my god!" and enthusiastically took it agreeing to sign when I was mid-way asking him haha) I also thought it was funny when he asked Ceci if she saw his Phantom last season. We wish! But she mentioned she had gone to Busan a few times and he looked very touched and appreciative that we went to multiple performances 🥹
This poor man was tired he signed our things with November (11.13) though and he also spelled Ceci's name wrong first time, but it was the 1500th show though okay. And if he says it's November...who are we to question him? Ceci should also legally change names so he isn't wrong. Anyway, ramble over you can find the art we made for him in this post
OTHER
Here's just bonus fun I had that I will manage to connect to POTO despite it not being POTO because I love doing that. I mean I went because I like these musicals as well (otherwise I would've been foolish enough to go see Ben-Hur but I have, uh, standards for my plots sorry to Park Eun-tae 😭), but it's fun to point out these things. I'm happy to share my show experiences in a different post if anyone's interested in my thoughts on those
Rebecca
I went to see Rebecca, mainly focused on seeing a scheduled date for 이지혜 Lee Ji-hye (Ich) and 장은아 Jang Eun-ah (Mrs Danvers). The whole cast was fantastic. Some Korean musicals have special encore bits they do where the leads sing a part of a song from the show during bows so that was really fun. Unfortunately, we don't get to have fun at POTO like that haha
Lee Ji-hye was in Y&K Phantom as Christine in the same cast as Jeon Dong-seok (Erik), Yoon Young-seok (Gérard Carrière), and Lee Sang-jun (Cholet).
Two other cast members in Rebecca were in Y&K as well - 에녹 Enoch (Maxim) who was Philippe and 신영숙 Shin Young-sook (Mrs Danvers) who was Carlotta. Sadly, they had such few shows this season due to a busy schedule, so I couldn't see them (when will trot give Enoch back to musicals). Original Korean ALW Raoul and Y&K Erik 류정한 Ryu Jeong-han was also on rotation as Maxim, but I picked another day for my show so I didn't see him either
Les Misérables
I went to opening night of Les Mis in Busan! It was the Dream Theater, same place POTO played at before. As many of you already know, Choi Jae-rim is playing Jean Valjean at the same time as the Phantom.
I could recognize him easily as the Phantom, but honestly when he appeared at the very start of Les Mis it took me a minute to process that it was him! While I did enjoy his Phantom a lot, I think I enjoyed his Valjean performance a little more. It was only opening night, so curious to see how things develop!
The actor who played Javert that night, 카이 Kai (stage name), was a former Y&K Erik for two seasons too. So many Phantoms!
Frankenstein
On the last day I got to see Dong-seok and Ji-hye once more in a concert for the musical Frankenstein which they have been in together. So have some pics I took without a mask blocking his face!
Ending Note
Thinking back to December 2022 when I said: "Maybe I'll go to Seoul and see Dong-seok once or twice and that's it" That was funny. That was really very very funny and silly of me to say. 9 performances and 6 of those were POTO!
But I'm so grateful and I have zero regrets about it. This is one of the best experiences I've had even if it might look ridiculous to some people to do something like this...I don't care!
I hope my crazy essays can help paint a good picture for you!
#the phantom of the opera#poto korea#오페라의 유령#전동석#조승우#최재림#김주택#송은혜#손지수#황건하#송원근#jeon dong seok#jo seung woo#cho seung woo#choi jae rim#kim ju taek#julian kim#sohn ji soo#song eun hye#hwang gun ha#song won geun#poto#phantom of the opera
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PDF Readers: What Do You Want? What Do You Need?
Hey all! I promised a series of posts on resources that have helped me during undergrad, and I'm going to start with the basics: how to read your coursework. I'm going to tag a few people who mentioned being interested in this series, but please let me know if you'd like to be untagged!
@anyto @wocinstem @youneedtostudyives @studyblr-perhaps
Now, I'm an English major, so I can't speak on behalf of the sciences, but almost all of my course materials have been given to me in the form of PDFs. I also download almost all my research in PDF format, and when I find books for free online, they're usually PDFs. Clearly, this means I need some easy way to read and edit PDFs. Below the cut, you'll find information on how to choose a PDF reader that's right for you, as well as information on Xodo, my personal favorite reader.
What should you consider when choosing a PDF reader?
Well, first, there's cost. There are all kinds of PDF readers at all kinds of price points. Xodo, my favorite, is free. I've never used the paid version, because for my purposes, the free version is more than enough. Now, let's talk about those purposes.
As an English student, I'm mostly concerned with annotation. I want to be able to mark my documents up, highlight them, write on them, leave comments, all that good stuff. However, what I need might not be what you need. Do you need to sign a lot of documents? Do you need to build PDFs from scratch? Are you more concerned with appearance, or with functionality?
Once you've answered these questions, you'll be able to search online for reviews dealing with the specific kinds of functionality you need.
Why should you use Xodo?
Well, for starters, the free version has more than I will ever need. I can edit, I can annotate, I can sign, I can highlight. I can do pretty much anything my English major heart desires, and I can use my Apple pencil to do it (I'll make another post about ipads and Apple pencils and link it here once it's finished).
This screenshot shows a lot of my favorite parts of Xodo. I can highlight in different colors (I use green to make information on further reading stand out) and I can write (also in different colors) with my Apple pencil, all while scrolling and navigating with my hand. I don't have to constantly click back and forth between marking and scrolling like I do with some apps, and I can lay my hand on the screen without disturbing anything. This, the ability to confine the text marking to the pencil, is really important to me. I don't like to be constantly clicking around and making accidental marks.
I've also been able to read almost every PDF I've put on here without much trouble. Between the size of my ipad screen (which will be the subject of another post), the high resolution, and the ability to zoom and scroll at the same time, I can read even pretty low-quality PDFs with very little trouble.
You might also notice the little box with the "4" in it in the upper right corner. This indicates the number of tabs I have open because yes, you can have multiple tabs open in Xodo. I've had over ten tabs open at a time, some containing 300+ page documents, and I've never had lagging or glitching problems.
Here's a selection of other actions Xodo allows. I've never scanned anything to PDF using it, but if the rest of the app is anything to go by, it probably works just fine.
I've had the occasional problem with glitching (maybe once per every five hours of reading I do, if that) which usually just involves a section of the text going black and can be solved by closing and reopening the app. Closing and reopening is no problem, either, because Xodo saves your place.
All this to say, I've used Xodo for a little over a year now, and I have no complaints. I cannot recommend it highly enough, and I'm sure the paid version is even better. That's all for now. Happy reading!
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Hi, sorry if it's late, but can I ask for your persoal top favorite queer books and (maybe) your top fav fanfiction (from any fandom but your all time fav)? Thanks so much.....
Also why do you think mlm or wlw romance is more interesting than mlw (het) romance?
Feel free if you want to ignore the last ask, thanks for your blog....
Why do I personally enjoy gay romances to het ones? Preference and taste probably. I also tend to enjoy the angst, longing, tropes, passion, etc in the way its written more than I do in the ways those things are written between a straight couple. And that's not to say I don't enjoy straight romances either! I have plently of het ships I love too, and a few good romances that aren't gay 😂 I just have a preference, and that's okay! As for recommendations!! I have a LOTS! If you want to tell me about what YOU like to read, I can give even better recs. But for in general, some of my favorites...
I have posts about QUITE A FEW here already that you can check out (please do)!:
^ you'll find queer characters in most of the lists of recs honestly at least somewhere. BUT I do have posts specific for Sapphic, Achillian and Ace recs there. So start there!
I'll also throw in that I'm recently quite obsessed with fantasy Sapphics with swords in my books lately! So books like "The Jasmine Throne." "This is How You Lose The Time War." "Priory of the Orange Tree." "Gideon the Ninth." "Girls of Paper and Fire" and "Legends and Lattes."
Come back for me if you want more!
And some of my favorite fics (of various fandoms! Exciting!) In no particular order, I'll link a few for you!
That Isn't Nothing by Taekookschanbaek
(I KNOW OKAY, in my defense I didn't realize the authors name until AFTER I read and loved the fic lmfao but it IS SO good, I promise lol)
Fandom: All For The Game
Ship: Andrew x Neil
Summary: "A look into the lives of pro exy players Andrew Minyard and Neil Josten. The world says they hate each other, but when Andrew gets transferred to Neil's team, their teammates begin seeing something else between them."
In Which Neil is a PR Nightmare by CoverYourEyes
Fandom: All For The Game
Ship: Andrew x Neil
Summary: "Eve was not the best person in the world. Sometimes she didn’t hold the elevator open when she saw people rushing to catch it from the other side of the lobby. Cutting the line at Starbucks was a semi-regular action. But Eve did not deserve to be Neil fucking Josten's publicist.
**********
Or, the one where Neil does what he wants, picks fights with reporters, discovers Twitter, breaks the internet, and really shouldn't be allowed out of his house. Andrew does nothing to discourage him."
The Men In Apartment 22B by jjmash
Fandom: All For The Game
Ship: Andrew x Neil
Summary: "Andrew and Neil's new neighbors are extremely confused about the two mysterious men in 22B. Are they dating? Are they in the mafia? Are they rival assassins who've fallen in love? As always, the truth is stranger than fiction."
Blame It On My Youth by youreyestheyglow
(Locked fic, you need an account. This fic is THICK but it's by far one of the best Andriel fics I've ever read or just in general. SO GOOD and so emotional and so sweet and so cute)
Fandom: All For The Game
Ship: Andrew x Neil
Summary: "10 years after the end of The King's Men, Andrew and Neil have decided to foster a kid. They have low expectations for themselves--they're not exactly ideal parenting material--but at the very least, the kid will be safe with them. But neither Andrew nor Neil do temporary very well.
Full disclosure: highly character-driven, minimally plot-driven."
(Wangxian and MDZS IS my newest hyperfixation and I love the juniors dynamics fics so much lol)
The One-Body Problem by metisket
Fandom: MDZS
Ship: Wei Ying x Lan Zhan
Summary: "The good news is that Lan Jingyi has found a mentor, friend, and constant companion through the difficulties in life.
The bad news is that that’s because he’s been accidentally possessed by the Yiling Patriarch."
Operation Old Men by Chiharu
Fandom: MDZS
Ship: Wei Ying x Lan Zhan
Summary: "An ill-fated parent teacher conference reunites Jin Ling's wayward uncle with Sizhui's father. AKA: A matchmaking disaster as told by Jin Ling, Sizhui, and Jingyi."
And Time Is But A Paper Moon by Sami
Fandom: MDZS
Ship: Wei Ying x Lan Zhan
Summary: ""Zewu-Jun. You once told me about a house surrounded by gentians, where you visited once a month, and how Lan Zhan still waited there, even when the door no longer opened."
Xichen feels light-headed. He feels shocked, and angry. He has never told anyone such a thing, but Lan Zhan is giving Xichen a look of utter betrayal.
"You told him?" Lan Zhan whispers. "When?"
Wei Wuxian takes Lan Zhan's hand. "About twenty years from now."
*******
Wei Wuxian starts again from the beginning."
(the first time) he kissed a boy by buzzcut__season
Fandom: Sk8 The Infinity
Ship: Langa x Reki
Summary: "Reki is insecure about his lack of kissing experience. Langa just wants to help him feel like he's good enough, even if teaching Reki to kiss means breaking his own heart."
The Gambler by MooeyDooey
Fandom: Sk8 The Infinity
Ship: Joe x Cherry
Summary: "Joe and Cherry run into a problem. Conspiracy theories have started to surface in some fan forums of "S" that the two of them are secretly dating one another.
Both of them agree that the idea is absurd, but can't agree on which one of them would be the better boyfriend if they actually were dating. So they decide to have a competition, to see who can be the better romantic partner when pitted up against one another."
The One Where Nico Has 30 Boyfriends by a_million_stars
Fandom: PJO
Ship: Will x Nico
Summary: "“Seriously? Me and Lester?” Nico looked ready to kill him. “If you keep speaking to me I think I’m going to throw up.”
Or, a new friend from college desperately tries to figure out who Nico's secret boyfriend is. He messes up. A lot. If only Nico didn't have so many weirdly close friends from high school."
Burgundy (not Maroon) by Eggplant_Crusader
Fandom: Wednesday
Ship: Wednesday x Enid
Summary: "They're driving each other insane. It can't last. One of these days, one of them will surely kill the other. Enid wants to avoid that. Wednesday can't wait."
Like Everything Glows by Annie_Vi
(One of the only people I'll read RPS fics from. Everything this woman writes is gold, this is my favorite though, and the first i read of hers)
Fandom: BTS
Ship: Jimin x Jungkook
Summary: "Jeon Jeongguk watches the sun rise and set on the water every day without wondering what may lie far beneath the surface. One nighttime walk along the beach upheaves his entire life, sending his human morals into a tailspin as he questions what his beliefs really are."
(I need more shows with good wlw ships that have good fics too!! If anyone has any good recs, send them my way!! Also there are so many good fics I've read that i realized i never bookmarked and now i cant remember what they are. Lesson learned. Bookmark everything! Thanks for the ask!!)
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