{Over the past weeks, media outlets, international institutions and NGOs have shared a myriad of Data with us. Since then numbers have gained a new meaning for me. Take the number 6 for example.
Six is the number of wars a 16-year-old Gazan had to survive to be alive today. Let that sink in, six wars in 16 years. Can you even call that a childhood?
According to the World Food Programme, 4 out of 5 starving people in the world are in Gaza.
23 out of 36 Hospitals there have been bombed
53 health facilities destroyed
121 ambulances attacked
370 schools and universities reduced to dust
455,000 homes destroyed, displacing 85% of residents in Gaza
112 Journalists have been killed in the last 3 months, which makes this the deadliest conflict ever for journalists. More deadly even than the entire Second World War.
In 2023, 507 Palestinians were killed by the Israel army and settlers in the West Bank alone.}
I would like to add 24,000 Palestinians have been killed so far and Gaza is still getting bombed.
Losing my shit about this article in which a transphobic Tory was so busy panicking about existing in the vicinity of a Trans that she almost certainly misheard "jeans" as "penis" and decided that not only was this a problem with the other woman, but also that the world must be informed of this pressing danger.
"a trans woman! I had to stand directly behind her....I thought, 'this is going well', I'm handling The Situation fine'..."
translated: I saw a tall woman with broad shoulders. How would I get out of this alive? I thought. she has a PENIS. PENIS PENIS PENIS. through some force of PENIS I mean will I managed to PENIS behave normally towards her. My hands were PENIS PENIS PENIS shaking as I tried to dry them. summoning up all my PENIS courage I said 'dryer's crap innit'. she turned to me and said " yeah I'm just goiPENIS PENIS PENIS"
It's been a week and I'm still shaking. This proves trans women are the problem and I'm not weird. I'm fine. It's fine. If you think about it I'm the hero hePENIS!!!!!
being an adult means we can buy or make as much self-indulgent shit (as we can afford) and unironically have trinkets of our fave things cause our teen years was bullied for liking things and hiding/denying we were ever neurodivergent to the point of suicide. sucks for anyone that thinks its weird cringe but I'm going to try and allow myself to love myself in little ways now
Me: hey brain, can we think normal things tonight?
Brain: PALEONTOLOGIST!DEAN FINDS AN ANGEL THAT GOT BURIED DURING THE EXTINCTION OF THE DINOSAURS.
Me: *quietly* ...what the fuck
Brain: Dean is working on an excavation in a cave system when he uncovers this. fcking HUMAN BEING WITH *WINGS* AND *TOO MANY EYES*. PRESERVED IN ROCK IN THE SAME STRATA AS THE DINOSAURS. And ofc Dean is really freaked out and scared of this thing, but then he notices that the figure is curled forward over something, and as he looks closer he sees the skeletons of a nest of baby raptors that the "human" figure was holding tight to its chest, like it was trying to shield them from something. And he realizes that this... Thing... died protecting them.
Except the "human" figure isnt a skeleton, its preserved fully in the rock. Or perhaps...
So I've been thinking lately about how Mithrun is Kabru's dark mirror (more on that another time- it needs its own post), and I thought it interesting that one of their parallels is that they were both cared for by Milsiril, but in opposite directions. She took Kabru in as her foster after he was orphaned and tried to convince him not to become an adventurer. On the flip side, she helped rehabilitate Mithrun specifically so that he could rejoin the Canaries.
And I kept wondering: why?
For Kabru, obviously she loves him a whole lot- despite any other shortcomings in their relationship, I do believe that.
So I get why she tries to convince him not to go dungeoning, and, failing that, at least prepares him as thoroughly as she can.
But why help Mithrun? She used to hate Mithrun, but after realizing what a secretly twisted person he was, she actually thought of him more positively (oh, Milsiril). So it wasn't as if she held the kind of grudge that might motivate her to make his already-depleted life even more miserable by sending him back to the dungeons. And it wasn't that she felt bad for him either, since she didn't visit Mithrun for the first ~20 years of his recovery.
The Adventurer's Bible says that Utaya was the impetus for Mithrun returning to the Canaries, but Milsiril is the one who made the trip to see him and tell him about it.
Why would Milsiril work so hard to get her old coworker back into fighting fit? Why encourage him to return to such a dangerous lifestyle, when she was the one who chose not to mercy-kill him?
That last panel is such a crazy thing to hint at and then never elaborate on. Without it we could have just thought that Milsiril wanted the Canaries' work to continue without her, even if it seemed out of character. I think some people even assume she's just a natural caretaker as a foster mom and handwave it to include nursing Mithrun too. What could Milsiril's suspicious motives be? What does she gain from Mithrun joining the Canaries that isn't an altruistic desire to see dungeons safely sealed? Feeling a sense of responsibility for the work she left behind isn't an ulterior motive.
My theory is: Milsiril, knowing that Mithrun was empty save for the burning desire to face the demon again, wound him up like a clockwork doll and pointed him back at the dungeons.
Hoping that he'd eliminate the biggest threat to Kabru's life, before it was too late for him.
I didn't want to make a fuss about it, because it's mostly personal opinions, but!
Spy x Family i's a "free to read" manga. You can stop reading it and come back any time without suffering anything for doing it, while Endo is an old person, so he can't "just draw" and have a chapter every two weeks without sacrifice.
Also, this manga was a monthly manga. The only reason we are having it biweekly is because it went so popular that Endo was pushed to make it biweekly.
We could have a manga like Chainsawman (also a manga that I really appreciate) that is "weekly", but is coming out biweekly, and most of the chapters are just a few pages with one or two dialogs in the whole chapter (very good chapters 😅 but like a 1 minute reading), but Endo is giving us chapters of about 20 to 30 pages with a lot of dialogs and pictures, so what are you crying about? Why don't you "just draw" your own stories biweekly for five years? Try to do the same without paying a toll, then come back and cry. If you can do this, then I won't argue, but I know that the ones that are crying now don't do anything like this.
And I'm not going to say anything about if you are actually buying the volumes, because that's even worse. As I said, it's a free manga.
Don't push artists over their limits, cause when they'll break of exhaustion, you'll lose everything, not a month or a week, but everything.
Request idea if you get the time.... Hero sneaking into a fancy ball at the vampires lair to try and find info on them, but gets caught when they try and sneak away (:< thanks!! Love your writing
“Leaving us so soon?”
The hero spun around, air stuck in their throat. Admittedly, they had a thing for danger. At first they hadn’t realised it. Their job was demanding physical and emotional endurance like no other but after a while, they saw beauty in the thrilling.
They couldn’t say anything. Their larynx didn’t allow it.
“It’s not even midnight, yet.” It was their first time dealing with a vampire, they realised. They had studied them for weeks, and yet seeing them in person made them uneasy.
As if they couldn’t comprehend who was standing in front of them.
“I’m sorry…” they answered and they didn’t know why exactly that came to mind.
“Oh, don’t be sorry, little dove. I’ve been watching you for a while now. These people aren’t exactly your type of people, are they?” The villain cocked their head with warm gentleness. “You should be more careful.”
A sweet warning. The vampire closed the heavy door behind them, silencing the music.
And the hall was long. The hero was sure they couldn’t outrun a vampire here on this slippery floor. Not in those shoes.
“I’m sorry, I…I’m not really familiar with these etiquettes.” The vampire smiled softly and the hero was quite sure they could see the ends of their fangs peak through their lips.
“It’s all just hypocritical pretentiousness. Don’t mind this.” The vampire took a step forward and the hero considered taking one back. But they didn’t. “I think we both know we’re not talking about high society, though.”
“Well, I was.” Again, the vampire smiled at the hero’s answer. They were very calm, very patient. The hero hadn’t read about that in any of their books.
“Cute little thing…Who are you, dear?”
“I have an invitation, actually.” The hero took out the little card, waving it in front of the vampire cheerfully. “So, you should know who I am.”
“Hm.” The vampire’s hand was around the hero’s wrist before they even realised it. The waving stopped and the hero’s breathing too. “An excellent copy. You’re getting more interesting by the second.”
“It’s not—”
“Oh, it is…” The vampire leaned in, voice lovingly low. “You’re smarter than this. Don’t think you’re the first human in my home.”
The hero tried to resist, tried to get away but the vampire’s grip was like steel.
“And don’t think I’ll let you go that easily, dove.” The tip of their nose touched the hero’s neck and for a terrible second, the hero got anxious. They didn’t know what they were feeling. This was a little more than “loving the danger.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
“Liar,” the vampire whispered. They pulled away, hunger in their eyes and chuckled. “When you came here, you expected trouble. When you stayed here, you did too. But don’t worry. I can give you all the trouble you want.”
The hero wasn’t quite sure if they were excited or terrified.
Inspired by your last ask! What are the best French books you’ve read that have no English translation yet? I read Play Boy and Qui a tué mon père (really loved the latter) last year and it feels so fun to read something that other Americans can’t access yet
I'm too nervous to make any list of the Best XYZ Books because I don't want to raise your expectations too high! But okay, here's my No English Translation-themed list of books I've enjoyed in recent years. I tried to make it eclectic in terms of genre as I don't know what you prefer :)
Biographies
• Le dernier inventeur, Héloïse Guay de Bellissen: I just love prehistory and unusual narrators so I enjoyed this one; it's about the kids who discovered the cave of Lascaux, and some of the narration is written from the perspective of the cave <3 I posted a little excerpt here (in English).
• Ces femmes du Grand Siècle, Juliette Benzoni: Just a fun collection of portraits of notable noblewomen during the reign of Louis XIV, I really liked it. For people who like the 17th century. I think it was Emil Cioran who said his favourite historical periods were the Stone Age and the 17th century but tragically the age of salons led to the Reign of Terror and Prehistory led to History.
• La Comtesse Greffulhe, Laure Hillerin: I've mentioned this one before, it's about the fascinating Belle Époque French socialite who was (among other things) the inspiration for Proust's Duchess of Guermantes. I initially picked it up because I will read anything that's even vaguely about Proust but it was also a nice aperçu of the Belle Époque which I didn't know much about.
• Nous les filles, Marie Rouanet: I've also recommended this one before but it's such a sweet little viennoiserie of a book. The author talks about her 1950s childhood in a town in the South of France in the most detailed, colourful, earnest way—she mentions everything, describes all the daft little games children invent like she wants ageless aliens to grasp the concept of human childhood, it's great.
I'll add Trésors d'enfance by Christian SIgnol and La Maison by Madeleine Chapsal which are slightly less great but also sweet short nostalgic books about childhood that I enjoyed.
Fantasy
• Mers mortes, Aurélie Wellenstein: I read this one last year and I found the characters a bit underwhelming / underexplored but I always enjoy SFF books that do interesting things with oceans (like Solaris with its sentient ocean-planet), so I liked the atmosphere here, with the characters trying to navigate a ghost ship in ghost seas...
• Janua Vera, Jean-Philippe Jaworski: Not much to say about it other than they're short stories set in a mediaeval fantasy world and no part of this description is usually my cup of tea, but I really enjoyed this read!
Essays / literary criticism / philosophy
• Eloge du temps perdu, Frank Lanot: I thought this was going to be about idleness, as the title suggests, and I love books about idleness. But it's actually a collection of short essays about (French) literature and some of them made me appreciate new things about authors and books I thought I knew by heart, so I enjoyed it
• Le Pont flottant des rêves, Corinne Atlan: Poetic musings about translation <3 that's all
• Sisyphe est une femme, Geneviève Brisac: Reflections about the works of female writers (Natalia Ginzburg, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner, etc) that systematically made me want to go read the author in question, even when I'd already read & disliked said author. That's how you know it's good literary criticism
Let's add L'Esprit de solitude by Jacqueline Kelen which as the title suggests, ponders the notion of solitude, and Le Roman du monde by Henri Peña-Ruiz which was so lovely to read in terms of literary style I don't even care what it was about (it's philosophy of foundational myths & stories) (probably difficult to read if you're not fully fluent in French though)
Did not fit in the above categories:
• Entre deux mondes by Olivier Norek—it's been translated in half a dozen languages, I was surprised to find no English translation! It's a crime novel and a pretty bleak read on account of the setting (the Calais migrant camp) but I'd recommend it
• Saga, Tonino Benacquista: Also seems to have been translated in a whole bunch of languages but not English? :( I read it ages ago but I remember it as a really fun read. It's a group of loser screenwriters who get hired to write a TV series, their budget is 15 francs and a stale croissant and it's going to air at 4am so they can do whatever they want seeing as no one will watch it. So they start writing this intentionally ridiculous unhinged show, and of course it acquires Devoted Fans
Books that I didn't think existed in English translation but they do! but you can still read them in French if you want
• Scrabble: A Chadian Childhood, Michaël Ferrier: What it says on the tin! It's a short and well-written account of the author's childhood in Chad just before the civil war. I read it a few days ago and it was a good read, but then again I just love bittersweet stories of childhood
• On the Line, Joseph Ponthus: A short diary-like account of the author's assembly line work in a fish factory. I liked the contrast between the robotic aspect of the job and the poetic nature of the text; how the author used free verse / repetition / scansion to give a very immediate sense of the monotony and rhythm of his work (I don't know if it's good in English)
• The End of Eddy, Edouard Louis: The memoir of a gay man growing up in a poor industrial town in Northern France—pretty brutal but really good
• And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran: Yet another memoir sorry, I love people's lives! Jacques Lusseyran lost his sight as a child, and was in the Resistance during WWII despite being blind. It's a great story, both for the historical aspects and for the descriptions of how the author experiences his blindness
• The Adversary: A True Story of Monstrous Deception, Emmanuel Carrère: an account of the Jean-Claude Romand case—a French man who murdered his whole family to avoid being discovered as a fraud, after spending his entire adult life pretending to be a doctor working at the WHO and fooling everyone he knew. Just morbidly fascinating, if you like true crime stuff