[nanso]

I don't like wading into fandom discourse but this is nagging at my brain a bit.  A lot of IWTV fans seem to think Daniel pointing out that readers will likely exploit or fetishize Claudia's story somehow absolves him of this when it actually happens. In fact, it's the opposite and more damning for him.

Journalism is often exploitative but one of the things a *good* journalist is supposed to do is to 1) make sure they aren't doing that in their reporting and how they view the story and 2) minimize the chances of readers doing so. More than that, it's become consistent practice in the journalism industry to employ ongoing consent with interviewees, particularly those relaying stories and experiences surrounding trauma. Ie, after an interview, you check in with the interviewee and make sure they still consent to the interview being published.

Daniel is not a sensitive journalist, which is a window into who he is as a character; he's predatory and self-centered. I think a lot of IWTV fans dwell on the idea of Daniel being some hero of modern journalism because we're told he won two Pulitzers, reports on seemingly progressive issues and therefore is almost like some RBG-style girlboss or something for liberals (side-eye). One of the takeaways for me from the opening in the pilot is to show that Daniel was actually in a pretty low place and was selling himself, in fact, to keep going.  More than that, Daniel's treatment of both fake!Rashid and real!Rashid is another window into who he is as a person and journalist and how he views the people around him - *they're there to give him information, their own vulnerabilities be damned. * (Do people really not understand how wildly unprofessional and gross it was for Daniel to ask a -seemingly young- brown man in Dubai if he's all but a prostitute for his employer on their second meeting??) Other people's stories and information are lifeblood to him because he views their lives as something he can and should have, which is practically a hallmark of mainstream white journalists.

Obviously Louis bears responsibility not only for what happened to Claudia but what letting anyone, let alone someone like Daniel, have access to her personal diaries would mean. But that doesn't absolve Daniel of blame. Louis also still had a say in his story being told - and it's pretty clear that Daniel didn't care about Louis's consent.  Because selling stories is what he does, and definitely without a care for those involved.  It's in his nature, you could say. 

Anyways, Daniel saying in S1 that Claudia's story would be exploited no matter what doesn't absolve him; he could have either not published the book or taken very conscious steps in his own writing to minimize the chances of that. But he didn't - because he's someone who exploits the stories of others (and often his own).  He can't even make the argument many journalists will make about needing to publish for the greater public good. That is not what Daniel publishing the book was about and it wasn't about justice for Claudia or helping Louis heal; for Daniel, it was about himself. 

Daniel as human journalist was exploitative and mercenary (and clearly fell quite short of ethical journalism practices!). As a vampire, I dread to imagine.

[munecabrava]

On IWTV, unreliable narration, and that train scene

Okay, I never want to be the person who's like 'I have a degree in literature so I am better at watching television than you' but I literally wrote my thesis on unreliable narration, so I want to talk about it for once.

A lot of people seem to have too narrow an idea of what unreliable narration is, to the extent that even the people involved in making the show are hesitant to call the characters, specifically Louis, an unreliable narrator. Because people see that term and read it as 'this character is blatantly lying all the time'. But that is not what unreliable narration is! And it's precisely because this show is so good at playing with actual unreliable narration in a way that is rare, especially on television, that I fell in love with it.

The thing about unreliable narration is that it happens on a spectrum, both in terms of the intentionality of the narrator and in terms of the way in which the narration is presenting information.

Which is why I always thought they might revisit the train scene, and why I think some people who are upset at the idea are not engaging properly with the way the narration in this show functions.

A great paper on unreliable narration is 'Lessons of Weymouth' (by James Phelan and Mary Patricia Martin) - it does a great job at going into all the aspects of unreliability (it defines six different kinds), and it's interesting to think of it in relation to this show. 'Weymouth' refers to a chapter in the novel The Remains of the Day in which the narrator reveals that throughout the story he has been telling, he obfuscated the fact that he was in love with one of the people in the story. Everything he told us was true, in a literal sense, but the meaning of the story changes entirely when we find out that there was a whole aspect of his experience that he left out. It's actually quite similar to how Louis/Lestat is presented in the novel of IWTV, where Louis (our narrator) only talks about Lestat in a negative, hateful way, until near the end of the book when suddenly we get a paragraph where he says

I allowed myself to forget how totally I had fallen in love with Lestat's iridescent eyes, that I'd sold my soul for a many-colored and luminescent thing, thinking that a highly reflective surface conveyed the power to walk on water.

Which is when we realize that he has left some of his true feelings out of the narration so far.

The show doesn't quite use unreliable narration in the same way, which is smart, because television functions differently from a novel. They actually lampshade this change by making the '73 interview the one from the novel, where Louis is much more dishonest about Lestat from what we hear (he played without one iota of feeling). In 2022, Louis' narration still focuses on Lestat's wrongdoings and glosses over his love for him. But while he refuses to focus on it, now it bleeds into his narration - 'Lestat was my coal fire', 'the earth always felt liquid', etc etc. And because it's television and they are working with a voice-over, they can play around with the contrast between what we hear and what we see. We hear Louis say 'I was being hunted' on top of images of him and Lestat going on dates to the opera and falling in love.

His unreliability is more subtle because of these changes. Like I said, there is a spectrum of unreliable narration, both in terms of how aware the narrator is that he is unreliable (or lying) and in terms of what type of unreliability is used. Example: A narrator describes a room where a murder happened. We later find out that the murderer entered the room through a window that was left open. If the narrator describes the scene without saying the windows are open, he is unreliable. But there are a variety of reasons for why he might not have mentioned it! The narrator can be aware of the omission because he wants to hide this vital information (because he is or wants to help the murderer), but he can also skip it because he is not aware that the detail is important. That's intent. Secondly, in describing the scene, he can say the window was closed (misreporting) or he can not mention the window at all (underreporting). (and so on - there are a lot of different nuances here).

So a narrator who both knowingly lies and does it by describing things that did not happen can exist, but is only a very small fraction of all unreliable narrators.

In IWTV, Louis mostly either unintentionally misreports (it was Armand who saved him, it wasn't raining) or intentionally underreports (not burning Lestat, not talking about their happy times together). Even in the parts where he is the most wrong in what he tells us, he still isn't all the way to 'blatant liar' on the spectrum. Claudia's turning is the biggest 'lie', but by the time of the trial, he clearly has made himself believe the version he told her and doesn't realize it's wrong until he tells Daniel about Lestat's version. That's the arc of these two seasons! Louis is using this second interview to confront the lies he told to himself.

He also, to an extent, underevaluates or even misevaluates in his narration. Which means he doesn't always consider other people's perspective or isn't aware of certain circumstances that might change the meaning of an event. That is what I think The Vampire Lestat will play with. This already happens for people who have read TVL and beyond: we know that Lestat has been abandoned over and over before meeting Louis, so we understand why he reacts so extremely to the thought of Louis leaving him. But Louis doesn't realize that context, so Lestat is villanous in his narration to an extent that Lestat himself would feel is unfair or even false.

What is so important in this show (to me) is that there is not a single scene in it that is revealed to not have happened at all. That would be a cheap way of using unreliable narration, and they're not cheap. It's why I think it's ridiculous that some people say the reunion in 2x08 might not have happened - in the books that's possible, in the show I don't think it is. There are only scenes that have been underreported. Everything with Jonah in the woods happened, but it was raining. Louis slit Lestat's throat, burned a body, and left with Claudia, but in-between, actually, he screamed over his corpse and attacked his daughter. Armand and Lestat were both sitting in the room when 'banishment' happened, but Louis didn't see who was whispering. Claudia was dragged to the house, and Louis begged Lestat to turn her until he gave in. It just...lasted longer, and was more horrifying.

And so the train scene. I have thought for a long time that it would be a scene we revisit from Lestat's pov, and it surprises me that some people are so against the idea. But they seem to think revisiting it means it will be revealed that it did not happen, something that, again, has no precedent in the show. Instead, I have always thought it was underevaluated, if anything, and possibly unintentionally misrepresented. Lestat is at his most cartoonishly evil in it, which is much more in line with his character in the first book than with how the show generally portrays him. The only other time we see him that evil, at least to Louis or Claudia, is in 1x05 in the lead up to the fight - and we already got the more nuanced version of that! It's another scene that was underreported (they literally go to another room which we don't see) and underevaluated (Lestat's trauma influencing his behavior as well as Akasha's blood possibly making him more volatile).

So my guess would be that when we see the train again (or hear about it), he will be much more desperate and scared, which he overcompensates with the theatricality that scared Claudia. And that we will see what came before: him finding Louis close to selfharm, panicking in part because it triggers a memory of Nicki, and going to get Claudia back so Louis doesn't die. And that takes nothing away from Claudia or Louis' narrative! It just enriches the story and shows that there is no objective truth, and narration is almost always somewhere on the sliding scale of unreliability.

(and just so it's clear - having more context and backstory and a fuller sense of the narrative from all sides does not excuse his actions and doesn't mean his abuse is okay etc etc but the morality-in-the-gothic-vampire-show discussion is another post)

[squarerice]

piranesi reread thoughts (spoilers for the whole book):

(ch. 1, when the moon rose) piranesi says the joining of three tides flood happens only once every eight years but he's been in the House for six. evidence that the House really does speak / impart knowledge onto him

(ch. 1, my journals) 2012 was the Year of Weeping and Wailing!!!! baby boy!!!

(ch. 1, my journals) the first journal entry in the book equates to may 1 2018 and the second is may 7 2018. but piranesi says he started the 10th journal on may 5th. is the first entry of the book from journal 9? did he write about the flood 4 days after it happened? is this an example of his time being out of sync? (or is this an editing error?)

i would love to reread this book: a) on the calendar days the entries are written (like dracula daily), b) to see whether the days of the week (tues/fri) in 2018 match the days piranesi meets with the Other (did he still factor in leap day? did he get # days/month right?), c) to catalogue all the halls/vestibules/statues like piranesi himself, d) to figure out who the dead bodies are (some of arne-sayles' students like ketterley, bannerman, hughes were still alive in the real world. two of the bodies are almost certainly ovenden and guissani. d'agostino probably still alive elsewhere despite new MRS thinking otherwise. it's not a coincidence that she could travel freely and chose to leave on her own)

(ch. 2, batter-sea) what stimuli did piranesi see/hear/taste after hearing "battersea"? just a sense of danger, the general british world, or something specific?

(ch. 2, a white cross) it's heartbreaking to see piranesi talk about cold winters knowing what ketterley did to him, especially with how readily he shares his seaweed with the albatross! he's so generous!!! this entire entry is so pure, probably the one i will return to most often (and a later addition to the book - susanna clarke said in interviews that early readers noticed she never explained why the current year is the year of the albatross so she added it in!)

(ch. 2, a conversation) (jun 11 2018) is there a specific meaning to the birds' "warning"? is it just to show piranesi's personality and attunement with the House? he groups them as "an angel with a trumpet and a ship", "a book and clouds", "a child and mice". but i keep thinking of grouping them as "an angel with a trumpet, a book, a child" and "a ship, clouds, mice". my grouping feels like a guide on how to access the House without a candle ritual, which foreshadows what arne-sayles would later tell raphael how to do (~regress to a childlike state and enter a house with oceans and clouds) (it's implied in piranesi's convo w the prophet that arne-sayles had not yet given raphael these instructions. so this really would be a warning of the future and not an exact mapping of something happening in the other world at the same time)

(ch. 2, shoes) "my feet felt beautifully cushioned and bouncible" is so sweet puppy dog eyes emoji!!!!!

(ch. 2, a list of things the Other has given me) KETTERLEY DIDN'T GIVE PIRANESI SUPPLIES UNTIL 2014?!?!? JESUS CHRIST WHAT A COWARD (see: poor james ritter)

(ch. 2, the eighty-eighth western hall) "After some minutes of peering at it I thought I could make out the word ‘minotaur’. A line or two above I thought I saw the word ‘slave’ and a line or two below the phrase ‘kill him’." this passage seems to connect with the text found in (ch. 4, I retrieve the scraps of paper from the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall) - "I rely on him to bring me food and water – which only underlines my status as a prisoner, a slave. He leaves the food in the room with the minotaur statues. I indulge myself in long fantasies of killing him." it's implied MRS's handwriting was so bad that piranesi had trouble deciphering it fully, but i find it interesting that the first passage says "kill him" and the real entry says "killing him." i wonder if that was intentional for the reader's convenience in ch. 2 or again, an editing error.

(ch. 2, the Other explains that he has said this all before) piranesi named the constellations the Rose, the Good Mother, and the Lamp-post. idk where Good Mother comes from, but Rose is part of his name (and also is just... a flower lol) and I find it very interesting that in (ch. 4, I retrieve scraps of paper from the Eighty-Eighth Western Hall), he had written "Yesterday I could not think of the word for lamp-post." that diary entry was presumably written nov-dec 2012 and piranesi named the constellations in 2014. he forgot the word but remembered again in a different context. more evidence to my timeline idea (see: poor james ritter)

(ch. 2, the Other explains that he has said this all before) "‘Out of sync with what?’ / ‘With me. With everyone else.’" piranesi is so focused on being told about his memory loss that he doesn't pick up on the phrase "everyone else"

(ch. 2, the Other warns me about 16) it is only just now, after reading this book 4 times and writing this post, that i realize the "small metallic objects" ketterley absentmindedly turns over in his pocket are coins. money.

(ch. 2, the Other warns me about 16) ketterley uses neutral pronouns for 16/raphael. piranesi is the one who assumes he pronouns

(ch. 2, the Other warns me about 16) ketterley met raphael on june 24 2018

(ch. 2, the first vestibule) + (ch. 4, i find writing made by 16) knowing the labyrinth has multiple doors on each wall makes navigating it even more confusing. it isn't just 4 doors per room, one per wall. many rooms seem to have at least 3 doors per wall

(ch. 3, the prophet) "We all paid a terrible price in the end. Mine was prison." again, took me multiple read-throughs to see the parallel between arne-sayles in prison and MRS in prison. my first read-through, i was shocked at that statement for being so upfront. but arne-sayles liked the people he met there despite physical restriction, piranesi is lonely with no people even though he's free to walk around

(ch. 3, poor james ritter) james ritter was in the House for about eighteen months despite estimated captivity of about two years. piranesi has his Revelation about the Knowledge about once every eighteen months (ch. 2, the Other explains that he has said this all before). maybe arne-sayles pulled ritter out of the house when he noticed that kind of mental shift and ketterley learned about the eighteen months pattern which is why he stayed away from the House between november 2012 and (estimated) may 2014. piranesi says that the Other got caught in a wave in june 2014 which has made him wary of floods (ch. 2, batter-sea). the timeline makes sense that ~may/june 2014 would be when ketterley started visiting. BUT MRS also says he couldn't feed himself at first. so maybe it's not that ketterley stayed away but that piranesi doesn't remember the negative association w him from the early days / that's the timeframe the piranesi identity fully crystalized and he forgot MRS (is 18mo a biblical reference? also, how old is piranesi? he estimates 30-35... what if he's 33?)

(ch. 4, more people to kill) "‘I do not think that I could kill someone however wicked they are,’ I said. ‘Even the wicked deserve Life. Or if they do not, then let the House take it from them. Not me.’ OHHHH the foreshadowingggg

(ch. 4, i erase a message from 16) "As soon as the Sun rose I fetched my Index and my Journals. I opened the Index at R, but there was no entry for ‘Raphael’." i like how raphael's absence in the index does multiple things for the audience. it tells us raphael and MRS haven't met before but more importantly, it primes us to think of raphael as a last name which itself primes us to question their first name / gender

(ch. 4, i erase a message from 16) i only have the ebook so the spacing in my version might be off (i don't know what might be a line break or an erased word) and i'm sure i'm missing bits but this is my best guess at 16's message: "(dear piranesi/rose sorensen, is my writing) comprehensible? my name (is sarah raphael. i am a po)lice offi(cer. i) read the files on your dis(appearance.) is valentine ketter(ley your captor? he almost ce)rtainly groomed other potential victims and i(s) a disciple of the occultist (professor) laurence arne-say(les. i thi)nk he knows that i have penetrated th(e labyrinth. you've be)en here for almost six years, did yo(u know about the exit? the) way out is locate(d in the) room with the statues of minotaurs. (arne-sayles war)ned me that you may be suffering from (amnesia.)"

(ch. 4, laurence arne-sayles) "I came across one entitled: Laurence Arne-Sayles: pros and cons of writing a book, and, since the idea of writing a book appeals to me strongly, I read this with interest." he's so cute!!!! he does eventually decide to write a book about A-S in (ch. 7, matthew rose sorensen has reappeared). / (speaking of "interesting," in (ch. 4, i am...), piranesi says "I skim-read a few entries. I read how the Other had performed various Rituals at which I had assisted. I read how clever the Other was, how scientific, how insightful, how handsome. I read detailed descriptions of his clothes. This was mildly interesting, but in no way helped me with my present problem." again, i just think the way he thinks is sweet n cute. his own praise about the Other was mildly interesting)

(ch. 4, laurence arne-sayles) i was confused bc i thought "Antoine Rivoire" and "Coquette des Blanches" were rivers at first. they're flowers in A-S's childhood garden. facepalm emoji. listen, i took german in hs, not french

(ch. 4, there will be a great flood) i just like the detail that piranesi says Fuck! 9x to Himself. and then looks toward the future

(ch. 4, there will be a great flood) the size and location of the flood bc i was confused until writing it down. first piranesi says between forty and 100 rooms will be flooded and that it will be centered 0.8 kilometers NW of the first vestibule. then in (ch. 4, are you matthew rose sorensen?) he writes to 16 in the sixth NW hall: 6 halls west, 4 halls north, 5 halls east, 6 halls south. then in (ch. 6, the wave) ketterley says he can't remember if 10 rooms will be flooded or 100.

(ch. 4, i am...) obligatory doctor who blink episode mention. but also ramanujan!

(ch. 6, raphael) "He is dead. My only friend. My only enemy." the way piranesi gathers ketterley's body and calls him handsome and wraps him up for the birds and fish!!!!!!

(ch. 6, as the shadows fell in the first vestibule) angharad scott called MRS's college "in may of this year" to ask about the progress on his book - same timeframe as when this book / journal 10 starts

(ch. 6, other people) raphael says "Arne-Sayles probably murdered at least one of them. Perhaps he murdered all of them." i think this is at least indirectly true. he told his students how to access this world. BUT in (ch. 3, the prophet), A-S says, "Thirteen dead? How fascinating! No one ever told me there were human remains here. Who are they, I wonder?" which seems to imply that he didn't know where his dead students were. i don't think he killed them on purpose. i think some of them entered this world with their ritual and then got stuck and died. like i said before, ovenden and guissani fit that description. d'agostino does not. some dead bodies also could be unrelated, like the folded-up child is probably an unlucky kid who happened to wander in

(ch. 6, other people) "A wave of sadness and helplessness washed over me." nice reference to this chapter title "Wave"

(ch. 6, i leave) "When Raphael arrived, she seemed rather astonished at my pleasant appearance." has become an earworm phrase for me. so wholesome!!!!

(ch. 7, valentine ketterley has disappeared) my first readthrough of the first couple paragraphs, i thought this was a newspaper clipping. clarke does a really good job at distinguishing new MRS's voice from piranesi's and keeping it closer to old MRS

(ch. 7, matthew rose sorensen has reappeared) MRS was an undergrad in 2000. assuming he was ~18-22 in 2000, his birthday is ~1978-1982, making him 36-40 in 2018. he estimated himself (30-35) to be slightly younger than he is! which means he's likely closer in age to raphael than an unobservant reader may think (and he's also not 33 like jesus @ crucifixion). ketterley was born 1955 (ch. 4, i am...), making him 63, slightly older than his estimated age if 50-60.

-----

this book is SOOOO british. "torch" for flashlight. please. sgkjfhdfjdkjfhg i thought that meant fire stick the first time around

james ritter and jamie askill have the same first name (not a guess that they're the same person or anything - but afaik these are the two ppl besides raphael that new MRS speaks to on page after leaving the House. just an interesting detail. matthew/sarah/james)

MRS was insecure about money and appearance (clothes) but third ID is not. also has a strong sense of perfumes

symmetry: chapters bookend piranesi/MRS. almost bookend other/ketterley. prophet/16 juxtaposed as well. wave bookend. "Beauty of House immeasurable" quote bookend first & last entries. main story takes place over 5 months (may 1 - oct 1) with an epilogue that ends dec 1.

general plotting: you know from the beginning (from the title lol) that the book is going to be about imprisonment and the Other has something to do with it. but clarke is really good at plotting the little details along the way. at first i thought 16 was the prophet before that was ruled out. then, after learning 16 was a woman (which i caught onto with her voice being unexpected!), i thought it would be sylvia d'agostino. i never would have guessed from just the beginning that piranesi would be saved by the angel raphael yet it fits so well with all the religious imagery

piranesi thinks he's going to collide with the albatross at the beginning to create an angel. he "collides with" angel raphael during flood at end

i like the subtle setup of piranesi ultimately choosing to leave his world because he wants to be around more people. his interest in others (even the dead) remains true the entire story. (ch. 4, I decide to look up Laurence Arne-Sayles in the Index) - "It is not the fact 16 is a woman that fascinates and excites me – or at least, not entirely; it is the fact that she is another human being"

waves. drowning. baptism. (ch. 2, the Other explains that he has said this all before) - ketterley says piranesi occasionally forgets things and piranesi foreshadows "suppose I forget something important, like the Times and Patterns of the Tides? I might drown."

from multiple rereads i get the impression that the staircases are in the vestibules and not the halls. aka, vestibules are where it rains and where the floods originate. that would also mean that when piranesi says "door" he must mean "doorway." the surrounding halls would not be flooded (at least not how it's described) if the doors were closed. there are too many citations to list to fully make this point but look at these 3 parts from (ch. 6, wave): "I returned to the First Vestibule. It was now half-past eleven. Two Halls West and North of here, in the Ninth Vestibule, the first Tide was already ascending the Easternmost Staircase." + "I glanced at my watch. Five Halls South and West of here, in the Twenty-Second Vestibule, another Tide was already rising, tumbling up the Staircase." + "It was noon. In the Tenth and Twenty-Fourth Vestibules the last two Tides were rising, filling the surrounding Area with tempestuous, raging Waters." (the "conjunction of four tides" are from the 9th, 10th, 22nd, 24th vestibules)

i wonder if there's symbolism behind the east halls being flooded/inaccessible. sun rises in east and sun symbolizes knowledge of how earth functions? needed for the subtle three motif going on?

(ch. 6, as the shadows fell in the first vestibule raphael returned) raphael says, "It was the first time that we – I mean the police – knew that there was any connection between you and Arne-Sayles." (ch. 7, valentine ketterley has disappeared) jamie askill says, "When we – I mean the police – got there, it was evening..." interesting verbal tick the two different officers have, almost as if they're not actually police and have to remind themselves to pretend to be (I don't personally believe the mental health facility interpretation, but that could work as evidence). SEE ALSO (ch. 4, poor james ritter) "All that they (the police) were able to establish was that Ritter had been seen in and around Manchester..."

it's very cute how piranesi yells "goodbye! goodbye!" he's so sweet. (ch. 2, the other warns me about 16), (ch. 4, there will be a great flood), (ch. 6, strange emotions). also reminds me of when he tries to wave to the Other through the window (ch. 1, a description of the world) (what was the Other doing? a ritual? was this scene a red herring to make the reader believe the Other truly inhabits this world? that scene happens on a monday... hmm...)

piranesi uses this exact wording twice: ..."pretty things that I have found or made: seashells, coral beads, pearls, tiny pebbles and interesting fishbones" (ch. 3, i change my appearance in anticipation of the coming of 16), (ch. 6, i leave). it's cute!!! why reinvent the wheel!!!!!

more repetition: being "saved" (very christian lol). 1) [imagining revenge against ketterley] "And sometimes I raved at him and accused him; and sometimes I was cold and silent, and he begged me to tell him why I had turned against him, but I did not. And always I could have saved him, but I never did" (ch. 6, i was mistaken!). 2) "We were drenched, we were numbed, we were blinded, we were deafened; but always we were saved" (ch. 6, raphael). 3) "I was in a house with many rooms. The sea sweeps through the house. Sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved" (ch. 7, valentine ketterley has disappeared). 4) "I tell them what I told Jamie Askill: that I was in a house with many rooms; that the sea sweeps through the house; and that sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved" (ch. 7, matthew rose sorensen has reappeared). there are other mentions of the word (james ritter was saved working at town hall and the boat didn't save ketterley) but i highlighted the ones to do with piranesi.

[vamptits]

I can't keep having the same conversations about love languages, mbti, iq, bmi, "brain fully formed at 25" and shit over and over again...

[vamptits]

these things exist on a spectrum from untrue to straightforwardly racist btw. so if we could retire them forever that'd be nice.

[hareofhrair]

“Love Languages” are just common couples therapy techniques mangled and repackaged by an unqualified homophobe. Relationships generally need all 5 love languages to be fulfilled, which is to say, everybody needs to communicate with, spend time with, and do things for their partners, and that’s got nothing to do with any special way you communicate affection.

MBTI has been proven completely ineffective at predicting anyone’s success at a particular job, and half the people who take it twice will get different results. Reputable psychologists do not recognize it, and the company that owns the rights to it uses it to scam people. People don’t adhere to strict binaries in basically anything. Very few people are going to be exclusively introverted or extroverted. It’s just astrology repackaged as pseudoscience. Shockingly enough, you can’t boil the complexity of the human experience down to a dozen Types of Guy.

The concept of IQ is flawed from the start— “intelligence” is an abstract concept that encompasses many different skills, from social intelligence to emotional intelligence to the very narrow kind of problem solving intelligence IQ tests generally measure for. It cannot predict how fast you learn, how much you know, or how logical and well read you are. It mostly measures how good you are at solving puzzles. Coincidentally, it’s also a pretty good predictor of income and education level, take a guess why. Most people’s IQ will change throughout their lives, because it’s inconsistent bullshit we’ve only held onto this long because we’re still kinda hoping we can breed the ubermensch. IQ tests and the way they attempt to categorize people are explicitly eugenicist and racist.

BMI was developed by a man known as the grandfather of eugenics, who first of all was a mathematician, not a doctor, and second never intended the formula to be used to categorize individuals. It’s intended to give a rough estimate of obesity in populations, and it’s not even good at that. It hangs around because of fatphobia and insurance companies who want it as an excuse to charge fat people more.

The study which determined people’s prefrontal cortex was still developing at 25… stopped measuring at 25. Evidence suggests your brain probably never stops developing. Stop infantilizing grown adults. This is a branch off from the larger mess of misinformation surrounding fMRIs.

If you haven’t put together what all these things have in common yet, here’s the moral of the story: STOP TRYING TO CATEGORIZE PEOPLE. STOP TRYING TO PUT PEOPLE IN A GODDAMN BIOLOGICAL HIERARCHY. EUGENICS IS BAD, AND WILL ALWAYS BE BAD, NO MATTER WHO’S DOING IT.

[kaphkas]

Turn my haters to consumers / I make vets feel like they juniors 📿⛪️🕯️

[mollflounders]

belinda "do you say that to all the girls" chandra and rory "you have no idea how dangerous you make people to themselves when you're around" williams and donna "your friend? did she trust you?" noble and martha "this is me, getting out" jones

[mushroominawaterbottle]

they call me the guy whos afraid of everything because. what was that. whos there

[sapphicides]

her: she must be thinking about other women

what i’m thinking about: louis! what? WHAT? it’s morning. i lost time. things got a little heated- with a boy! things got heated with a boy. i was at home picking lint off the sofa- i said to join us! the night’s gone, the room’s soiled, and once again i’m sat here with mop and mindlessness to clean it up. so the room got dirty, so what? i’ll clean it up. no, i clean it up! you make the mess, and i clean it up! mark it on the calendar, align it with ursa major, louis’ tri-annual FUCK OFF AND FIND ME with apologies to follow. i’m sorry. to seek comfort in the arms of lowlifes, and unfortunates, and broken children? fine. oh fine? fine. it doesn’t sound like fine. BUT REVEALING OUR NATURE TO A REPORTER YOU MET IN A BAR TEN HOURS AGO? what if it was published? I WAS HAVING SOME FUN! like we don’t have enough to fear after paris- i was in the middle of ending things when YOU- no, you nearly passed out on the floor next to him, louis! out on your feet from the drugs you stuffed him with- oh this is boring! you’re boring! YOU ARE SO BORING! and here come the drugs. COLORLESS. up the fangs. FLAVORLESS. down the throat. DULL. into the heart and off the fingers, feet, and wallowing brain. DULL NIGHTS, DULL WEEKS, DULL MONTHS, DULL AS FUCK! suffocation by the world’s softest, beige-est pillow. the ten hours i spent with that boy were more exciting, more fascinating than DECADES with you. oh there it is, the half-blank, half-apocalyptic look. but what does it mean tonight, huh? does he wanna lick my boots, or chop my hands off? is it the gremlin or the good nurse tonight, huh? okay, okay, perhaps. but am i as boring as the blather committed onto the ferric tapes of your FASCINATING boy? oh, oh it’s so hard to be me! picking lint off the sofa? it’s so hard to kill humans! i can feel their feelings as i drain them! louis de pointe du lac, it’s so hard to be me! everyone i know wronged me! okay, okay, let’s wake the boy up and let’s try you. i’m the vampire armand and my daddy vampire groomed me into a little BITCH! my brother, he tossed himself off a roof- but the vampires have heard of my daddy- my sister, she buried me alive! so he made me pretend i didn’t have a dick for 240 years. my daughter was my sister was my throw pillow. well he wouldn’t look at me kindly, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat, lestat- I TALKED SHIT ABOUT HIM THE WHOLE TIME-THE NAME! THE NAME, UNUTTERED IN OUR HOME FOR 23 YEARS SAID OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL IT WAS POUNDING IN MY BRAIN LIKE A HAMMER! our problems aren’t about HIM! and you threw HER name around just for cover, but it always circled back to him. i loved her. BUT SHE DIDN’T LOVE YOU! not like he did, not like i have. i know. I KNOW!

[theodysseyofhomer]

Do you have any article related to the odyssey you'd reccommend as complementary to the source?

sorry i've been sitting on your ask for so long! i am not and never have been a classics student; i came across most of these articles incidentally or here on tumblr:

"the odysseys within the odyssey" by italo calvino

"a note on memory and reciprocity in homer's odyssey" by anita nikkanen

"penelope and the poetics of remembering" by melissa mueller

"a glossary of haunting" by eve tuck and c. ree (this is mostly about horror fiction and settler-colonialism but it has a gloss on the cyclops that i think everyone, certainly everyone american, should read)

silence in the land of logos by silvia montiglio chapter 8: "silence, ruse, and endurance: odysseus and beyond"

"the name of odysseus" by g.e. dimock, jr.

also ok it's very much not "good" but there's an article by w.b. stanford called "personal relationships" that just lists all his hot takes about the relationships in the odyssey for 25 pages. it reads just like scrolling the blog of a mutual twice removed. they let men publish ANYTHING in the 60s. i love this essay. i would read this essay out loud over discord right now if someone asked me.

[lilaccccc]

santa put me on the Nuanced list this year

[suchawfulthings-deactivated2025]

the longer and lesser and more perpetual murder

interview with the vampire (2022), giovanni’s room by james baldwin (1956), the lovers ii by rene magritte (1928)

[kiryuing]

[irisensata]

[charl0ttan]

can we please for the love of god waste our short and meaningless lives together

[charl0ttan]

can we while away the years living in each others memories. can we see ourselves just as clearly and beautifully from decades in the past as we do in our present. can the moments we each live in for the rest of our lives include each other

[charl0ttan]

is there a place for me in your forever

[dionsysus]

if i think about them too long i’ll go insane (text from @/veniennes on tiktok)

[androidboy]

literally my favorite type of tweet

[forgissimus]

oh my god i have some of these saved 1 sec

[valtsv]

[dagny-hashtaggart-deactivated20]

Today in phrases I expect to retain: “rotten architecture but wonderful gargoyles” (George Orwell criticizing Dickens’ overarching plots while praising his scene-by-scene writing and eye for detail).

[reallyreallyreallytrying]

(confidently) no, that's a self-tolling bell. it tolls automatically, signifying nothing for the hearer. why