the blue poet

• https://nerdshelflife.com/ • She/her/hers • 30-something • book lover • my passion = writing • I also knit! (Mainly blankets & scarves, working on diving into an Intermediate level 🤞) • *a few* fandoms: - Sherlockian - Whovian - Potterhead - loving the literal/figurative hell-raising in "Hazbin Hotel" (Angel Dust is one of my favorite characters) & "Helluva Boss" (craving more seasons already) - the Witcher (make me wanna really read the books & play Wild Hunt) - Supernatural • *obsessed* with Hanya Yangihara's novel A Little Life • Blue October: (Texas, USA) the rock band that changed my life. "Jump Rope" is one of my top favorites. (no, seriously, my own *family* lovingly tease me about how I'm "a super-fan")

[snoopyoftheday]

snoopy of the day

[bluegi3l95]

So cute!

[mysharona1987]

[ghost-mantis]

There’s actually a few things here that majorly dropped childhood mortality. In no particular order these include…

Vaccines (yay!)

Pasteurization

Implementing and enforcing food quality and sanitation standards. Did you know White Castle was called as such because their gimmic was that they continually cleaned and bleached their stores inside and out to prevent food poisoning.

The invention of antibiotics! The first sulfa drugs dropped in the 1930s-40s

Widespread access and distribution of enriched food products! Enriched flour did a lot to prevent malnutrition, and it’s how Wonderbread got its name!

We got a hell of a lot better with medical care for sick and premature infants. The first incubators for premature babies were actually used as something of a sideshow attraction at Coney Island! It was the only way the doctor who invented them could get funding to keep them running because no one thought it would work. It showed a lot of people that really premature babies could survive with the right treatment and eventually was adopted by hospitals.

The green revolution in agriculture that prevented around a billion people from starving to death

More recently it’s been widespread access to mosquito nets and medication to poorer and rural areas

[gr4cefully-ins4ne]

Someone commented on one of my posts that Will Byers will "go back to being straight" in tales of 85.

...so uh, that's not how that works. Will was never straight. You're not straight until all of a sudden you're gay. Will is not and has never been straight even though he may not have realized it until season 3 or 4. Just like how I am not and have never been straight even though I didn't realize it until I was 16.

It's people like this that are allowing queer characters to be erased because they don't actually care. They just want a show that will fit their bigotry.

[kidovna]

bylerlumax picnic double date (summer of ‘94)

happy valentines day!

[hawkinsschoolcounselor]

Thank you for having the courage and vision that the Duffers sorely lack.

[mysweetheartjude]

“Jude,” Harold had said, “it will get better. I swear. I swear. It won’t seem like it now, but it will.”

[lyxchen]

Truely missed oppurtunity, not having them kiss in these outfits. Would have saved the world without anyone ever having to enter the Upside Down... smh

(Edit to add a link to the finished version here)

[elierlick]

No way

[bluegi3l95]

Wut?!

[immortals-malec]

copy and paste part 20.

[bluegi3l95]

Awww! Can't wait for the last book.

[allthingslinguistic]

Language is mobile and liable to change … a very large number of words have two or more pronunciations current … giving life and variety to language … it is a free country, and a man may call a vase a vawse, a vahse, a vaze, or a vase, as he pleases. And why should he not? We do not all think alike, walk alike, dress alike, write alike, or dine alike; why should we not use our liberty in speech also, so long as the purpose of speech, to be intelligible, and its grace, are not interfered with?

James Murray, aka the original guy behind the oxford english dictionary, being pretty damn tolerant for 1895

[bluegi3l95]

Good quote.

[supercollide]

i recently discovered your blog after i relapsed into my 'a little life' obsession approximately one year after i first read it (i'm sure you understand how that happens), and i just wanted to tell you it feels so nice knowing that you and certain other people on tumblr understand EXACTLY what impact that book leaves on you and why the people that love it do so SO FERVENTLY.

i had started wondering, earlier, if i'm delusional because i can see so much love and beauty and profoundness and strength in this book where everyone else just sees 'trauma porn', so i appreciate you a lot. (plus, the thesis you wrote on it was incredible :))

also, slightly unrelated but WHY AREN'T THERE MORE PEOPLE WHO REALISE HOW FUNNY AND COMFORTING AND AMAZING JUDE IS??? (okay i'm gonna stop screaming in your inbox now)

don't know if it was kinda random to send you this, but. yeah. <3

this is so sweet what the helly!!

genuinely i started posting about a little life on here because i felt the same way like SOMEONE out there has got to feel the same way about this book and me and turns out now i get to be a part of a wonderful little community that really gets it which is such a gift

jude the comedian 4ever he really puts everyone else through it and and by it i mean his Sass

[sendmepicturesofthemoon]

today’s update henry nelson appreciation post

why is he so shaped

[bluegi3l95]

Puppy!!

[andthemoonsingswisely]

a little life has completely seeped into my every thought. everything is about that one book now. applying to colleges and I’m thinking of Jude having the police come to MIT to tell him that the man who tortured and raped him died in jail, and then tell him they’re proud of him for getting into the college that they did. thinking about Harold losing Jacob as a kid, slowly watching him wither, lose senses, before dying, and his and Liesl’s divorce, and then their meeting and talking for the first time in years, and starting to exchange messages of their sightings of kids who could’ve grown up to be Jacob—and it reminds me of the love my mom has for me, how undeniable and beautiful the connection between a parent and a child is, whether it be Harold and Liesl and Jacob or Harold and Julia and Jude.

[oceanboundwords]

“They all—Malcolm with his houses, Willem with his girlfriends, JB with his paints, he with his razors—sought comfort, something that was theirs alone, something to hold off the terrifying largeness, the impossibility, of the world, of the relentlessness of its minutes, its hours, its days.” ― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

[oceanboundwords]

“It was precisely these scenes he missed the most from his own life with Willem, the forgettable, in-between moments in which nothing seemed to be happening but whose absence was singularly unfillable.” ― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

[snoopyoftheday]

snoopy of the day

[cicadawrites-old]

I read A Little Life two days ago and as much as I dislike the author’s views on therapy and mental illness, there was something really heart wrenching and real about the way she wrote the characters. Even if the events were nearing unrealistic, she wrote them in such a human way that I couldn’t help but feel deeply for Jude, Willem and Harold.

And yet I hated the ending because all of Jude’s trauma and his little moments of happiness amounted to nothing but despair for himself and others. I wanted to see him get better. Obviously people’s journeys are not linear and that’s one of the messages of the book, but I can’t believe that someone like Jude cannot be helped especially when he desires to get better so much.

Yanagihara wrote the story in a way so it was impossible for Jude to heal, beating him down at every opportunity, but that’s not real life. People do get better. People like Jude heal and grow from their trauma, even if it’s a struggle throughout their entire life. They have moments of happiness and those moments don’t mean nothing just because they’re unhappy later.

I can’t fault the book for its writing, but I can fault Yanagihara for molding the events of the book in such a way not to show a realistic portrayal of trauma and mental illness, but purely to prove a point. Some people will take her message to heart and I can’t imagine writing something like that without careful consideration of how it might affect people who are struggling like Jude was.

[bluegi3l95]

Agreed. As someone who has depression & anxiety, medication & therapy has helped me more than just bottling up my thoughts and feelings. Talking about my mental health has been vital in my life.

I also disagree with Hanya Yangihara's views on therapy and mental illness. Jude should've been able to talk about his buried trauma. Jude should have been able to work through *why* he cut himself, *why* he was so keen on self-harming.

This is why fanfiction is important. I can reimagine scenarios where Jude finds the peace & happiness he so greatly deserves. Where his partner & friends don't disappear (or die) when he needs them the most. Maybe he gets better leg prosthetics, ones that let him walk and run again. I'd take a happy ending over the true ending, because the characters deserve so much better than the rotten cards they are dealing with.

[herius-is-drawing]

Happy pride month with finally become your true self 🫂🏳️‍⚧️💕