commonplace book

yasaman's tumblr

[modernmusess]

katniss: everyone’s so focused on protecting peeta because they too know how pure hearted he is and believe that he—a boy they’ve never even met before—deserves to survive over them and their friends of literal decades

finnick, to literally everyone else: okay if peeta dies she’s gonna kill all of us and then herself, so hands in, protect bread boy on three-

[luna-azzurra]

Unpopular opinion but reading a lot does not automatically make you a better writer and i'm tired of pretending it does. Reading makes you a better reader. Writing makes you a better writer. They're related but they're not the same thing. You can read every book ever written and still not know how to be honest on the page. That part you have to earn separately and it costs more.

[wearwind-ao3]

I mean, I see what you're saying, but it doesn't meaningfully change anything in what that advice is getting across. If a person is already a writer, you'd have to willfully ignore the point to understand "be a better reader and you'll be a better writer" as "you don't need to practice." It's more if a "as you read, you will come across approaches, perspectives, and techniques that will inspire you to test your craft in new and exciting ways, so fill your cup if it ever feels stale or stuck."

Writing's an act of love. If it ever gets choked out by fear (of failure, inadequacy, clichè, etc), and clarity and honesty feel out of reach, the easiest way to dig it back is not to beat yourself up over inadequate skill, but to find that love in other stuff. Reading is writing in the same way firewood is flame. The spark happens in your mind.

[wearwind-ao3]

also because I just saw someone being like "I don't wanna read and imitate other people, I wanna write like myself!" and had feelings about it:

girl. I am holding you so gently right now. this is abject loneliness that you're subjecting yourself to. reading other people's thoughts doesn't take away from your own perspective, but what it gives you is the words to express yourself so that you will understand you. It gives you the literary vocabulary (images! symbols! metaphors! comparisons! pacing!) of your culture/s of choice, and shows you how use them to make sense of what you feel and what want to say, and then express it in a way that other people will understand you too. Literature isn't a rally where there's one voice blaring out for others to listen, it's a conversation. You're writing to be read. You and your readers will need a common language. You acquire that language by reading widely. And then not only do you get better at expressing your feelings to others, you find others who feel the same, and suddenly the world's a greater and more beautiful place where you can go, "you too?! I thought it was just me!"

I promise this is not taking one whit of your individuality away. You might be exposing yourself to all of those outside influences but the I in the centre, the mind that decides and interacts and feels, that's the voice that will always be unique. You just gotta channel it in a way that can be understood.

If you wanna write: read. Please.

[depsidase]

[disgustinggf]

sorry can't talk rn i'm looking up the menu of a restaurant i'm going to in a week

[thechekhov]

if you think about it, every time we tranquilize animals to transport them safely to another place, we are the sleep paralysis demon

[regardo1975]

...hohooo

[philcollinsenjoyer]

Thank you divorce for all you've done for music

[meadow-dusk]

[marithlizard]

(via bsky)

In case anyone hasn't heard, the cyclospora outbreak affecting tons of people in the US right now is coming from Taylor Farms produce. Best to stay away from bagged lettuce and prepared salads completely right now, but especially the ones mentioned in the screenshot:

Taylor Farms Earthbound Farms Little Salad Bar (Aldi) Marketside (Walmart) Kroger House Brand Target private label greens Costco salads and greens etc Trader Joe's chopped salad kits and fresh produce Fast food: McDonalds, Taco Bell, (Yum! Brands), Chipotle, Subway, Pizza Hut, KFC, Olive Garden, Top Golf, Red Lobster, Burger King, etc.

This is not the first time I've heard about a Taylor Farms foodborne illness outbreak. I stopped eating their salads after reading a description of the conditions in their facilities. Doesn't sound like they've improved anything.

We need a fully funded and staffed FDA, and regulations with teeth - and that's exactly what we don't have under Trump. To make things worse, the CDC is no longer tracking these outbreaks. We're on our own.

[vintage-ukraine]

Autumn in Kyiv by Samuel Kaplan, 1973

[owlet]

thank you scherz et al. for bringing us the frogs Mini ature, Mini mum and of course, the Mini scule

[owlet]

[11thfempachi]

Girls just wanna have fun

[thenightling]

The complaints I’m seeing for The Odyssey are ridiculous.

The complaints I’m seeing for The Odyssey are ridiculous.

The race of actors. Some of you are complaining because of black people in Ancient Greece. Did NONE of you watch Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Xena: Warrior Princess gowing up? Tony Todd was captain of what was essentially the flying dutchman. And Helen of Troy was black. No one complained in the 90s. Most of the actors in Xena and Hercules were from New Zealand. Also saying “Homer wouldn’t approve of how she looks.” It’s widely believed that Homer was BLIND!

Another complaint is the use of casual, modern, American-style English. Again, did none of you grow up with Xena or Hercules? Those shows were improbably anachronistic.

There are people complaining about the film being based on the Emily Wilson translation because they call it “Woke.” Do explain why and how it’s woke. Scholars have said that her translation is the most accurate to the Greek to date, for surpassing the nineteenth century translations we grew up with and pretended slavery didn’t exist in Greece.

Then there’s the complaint about Elliot Page being in the movie. Yet again, did none of you grow up with Xena and Hercules? There were trans and gender non-conforming characters and actors. It was as blatant as you could get in the 90s and it was popular by people of all political backgrounds so why is this an issue for you now?

[most-sane-classicist]

The Complaints about the complaints people make for the Odyssey YOU make are ridiculous.

I don't care if an actor is black in an original movie not based on anything with a character description, or based on something where the character is described as black. Helen is not described as such. She is commonly attributed the epithet λευκώλενος which means WHITE ARMED and her hair is ξᾰνθός which is blonde, or light or fair.

Casual American English wasn't really present in the odyssey believe it or not! Not that Nolan would know considering he only read Wilson's translation... Stuff like the "dad" thing- yes the Greeks had words for dad. They were not used in the Odyssey. And it makes no sense anyway considering Telemachus has basically no memory of his father- he does NOT have the connection to call him "dad"!

"Scholars have said that her translation is the most accurate to the Greek to date" which scholars? Most of the ones I have read point out that Wilson's translation has some quite concerning inaccuracies! For specific problems, see my Wilson masterpost (here I have linked a reblog chain with some added details from others too), which I will sum up here: - Drops words and phrases from the original so she can fit her metrical constraints - It is praised and marketed as verse oftentimes but really it's just prose with lines - Blatant mistranslations of ecogical terminology - She just changed lots of stock phrases to say whatever she wants because she wants variation - Plenty of epithets translated incorrectly. - Mischaracterises Odysseus, Polyphemus, and the Suitors through choice of words which the greek didn't really mean. - Staggering use of anachronistic colloquialisms. - With her colloquial language she jarringly keeps a lot of archaisms too. Pick a side, Emily! - The way she makes people recognise slavery is translating basically every possibly-enslaved profession into just "slave" and doesn't even do it consistently. A good translator would use the correct specific job terms and tell their reader about slavery in the introduction. Plenty more present but that's off the top of my head.

My problem with page is the same as every character. He doesn't look greek. Also if he is indeed Achilles, he died basically in his prime. He was literally the strongest of all the Greeks, he needs to be built when we see him in the underworld. If they cast a trans greek man who was jacked asf? No problem there.

[uritur-infelix]

Truly, why do so many people care about these inaccuracies? It's like, in this modern age, we have this profound obsession with fidelity to the author/source text. And this simply does not reflect how artists have engaged with Homer throughout history in the European literary tradition.

Historically, when poets, playwright and painters engaged with the Homeric epics they *always* reworked them, and yes, this meant introducing all kinds of changes that would be considered inaccuracies by modern "fidelity-to-the-text" standards. The classical Attic tragedians presented the characters of the Homeric epics in ways quite different to their characterisation in the epics themselves. Here, too, they sometimes changed the plotlines of the Epic Cycle (e.g. In Euripides' Helen, she never reaches Troy but instead stays in Egypt, where a remarkaby un-Homeric Menelaus eventually reunites with her.)

Then, there's a visual retelling of the Circe episode painted on a drinking cup (c. 400BCE) that shows us a very unflattering Odysseus, pot-bellied with a puffy face and dangling dong. Certainly not the slick Odysseus i remember from Homer's work, where he coolly defies Circe's spells and beds her like he's bloody James Bond.

Then, of course, Vergil's Aeneid which insists on retelling the Trojan Horse episode by inventing a whole new character, Sinon. Shocking disloyalty to the text... I'd boycott Vergil if I were alive then. Definitely not going to see him perform 😠

Oh, then the Ilias Latina, which compresses 15,693 lines of Homer's Iliad into 1070 lines of Latin poetry. Oh boy, imagine how much of the Iliad this retelling ignores. I'm def not reading that.

And then, in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, you have gorgeous (but, oh, utterly inaccurate!) illustrations of the Trojan War that show knights in shining armour and the city of Troy looking like a full-blown Frankish castle. Hmm, seemingly changing the Homeric characters' culture and armoury, and, dare i say, maybe their race... Where have I seen that before? 🤔🤔🤔

Folks, the Homeric tradition is beautiful precisely because it reworks, reinterprets and, yes!, reinvents the epics instead of obsessing about some fidelity that was never part of this tradition historically. I don't know if this Hollywood film is gonna be any good, but criticising Nolan for being unfaithful is such a historically illiterate take, because he is literally doing what the Homeric tradition has been doing 2500+ years.

And, honestly, may we reinvent Homer a thousand times more.

[dragon-in-a-fez]

big fan of the four-year-old on this flight who yelled "THEY ARE BRINGING COMPLEMENTARY BEVERAGES" when the flight attendants came down with the drinks cart

[uss-emberprise]

[newsandstuffisee]

[harboretum]

It's Make A Terrible Comic Day again

[harboretum]

Thanks to everyone's encouragement alien boyfriend gave it a try and found love

[zendadya]

ZENDAYA out and about in New York City (July 1, 2026)

[yorgen-sh]

[sayhelloanimalfriends]

this is the first time in my life i thought oh i hope there’s music