shalini.

“After all, the truth behind one’s charm is kindness. So just be a good person. You got it?”

[shalikneez]

~ the fourth wing

- jujutsu kaisen

[thoodleoo]

another day working in the theban fields. people keep asking me if they can bury the corpses. buddy, they wont even let me bury them

[daredevil-vagabond]

...Forest walls and starry ceilings... - Harpy Hare, Yaelokre

[anona1-mous]

‼️cw: blood, horror art

"out of all the grimwalkers, you looked the most like him."

[achllsun]

if libby and nico used they/them pronouns, would they be non-binary stars?

[vielaesque]

when lana del rey said, "open me up; tell me you like it. fuck me to death. love me until i love myself," and when olivie blake wrote, "gideon felt unopened and raw, like he’d cracked his chest in two and presented the evidence for nico’s evaluation," and when micah nemerever wrote, "he wanted to break julian’s body open and move inside it alongside him, rib cages interlaced around a single heart."

[wizardpotions]

Every culture in all of human history was so right about carbs and fat together being a blessing upon earth. Eating bread with butter knowing I am partaking in one of humanities biggest shared joys

[inky-duchess]

Fantasy Guide to Building A Culture

Culture is defined by a collection of morals, ethics, traditions, customs and behaviours shared by a group of people.

Hierarchy and Social Structures

Within every culture, there is a hierarchy. Hierarchies are an important part of any culture, usually do ingrained that one within the culture wouldn't even question it. Hierarchy can be established either by age, gender or wealth and could even determine roles within their society. Sometimes hierarchy can may be oppressive and rigid whilst other times, ranks can intermingle without trouble. You should consider how these different ranks interact with one another and whether there are any special gestures or acts of deference one must pay to those higher than them. For example, the Khasi people of Meghalaya (Northern India), are strictly matrillineal. Women run the households, inheritance runs through the female line, and the men of the culture typically defer to their mothers and wives. Here are a few questions to consider:

How is a leader determined within the culture as a whole and the family unit?

Is the culture matriarchal? Patriarchal? Or does gender even matter?

How would one recognise the different ranks?

How would one act around somebody higher ranking? How would somebody he expected to act around somebody lower ranking?

Can one move socially? If not, why? If so, how?

Traditions and Customs

Traditions are a staple in any culture. These can be gestures or living life a certain way or to the way a certain person should look. Traditions are a personal detail to culture, they are what make it important. Tradition can dictate how one should keep their home, run their family, take care of their appearance, act in public and even determine relationship. Tradition can also be a double edged sword. Traditions can also be restrictive and allow a culture to push away a former member if they do not adhere to them, eg Traditional expectations of chastity led to thousands of Irish women being imprisoned at the Magdelene Laundries. Customs could be anything from how one treats another, to how they greet someone.

How important is tradition?

What are some rituals your culture undertakes?

What are some traditional values in your world? Does it effect daily life?

Are there any traditions that determine one's status?

Values and Opinions

Values and Opinions are the bread and butter of any culture. This is the way your culture sees the world and how they approach different life hurdles. These may differ with other cultures and be considered odd to outsiders, what one culture may value another may not and what opinion another holds, one may not. There will be historical and traditional reasons to why these values and opinions are held. Cultures usually have a paragon to which they hold their members to, a list of characteristics that they expect one to if not adhere to then aspire to. The Yoruba people value honesty, hard work, courage and integrity. Here are some questions to consider?

How important are these ethics and core values? Could somebody be ostracised for not living up to them?

What are some morals that clash with other cultures?

What does your culture precieved to be right? Or wrong?

What are some opinions that are considered to be taboo in your culture? Why?

Dress Code

For many cultures, the way somebody dresses can be important. History and ethics can effect how one is meant to be dressed such as an expectation of chastity, can impose strict modesty. While other cultures, put more importance on details, the different sorts of clothes worn and when or what colour one might wear. The Palestinian people (من النهر إلى البحر ، قد يكونون أحرارا) denoted different family ties, marriage status and wealth by the embroidery and detailing on their thoub.

Are there traditional clothes for your world? Are they something somebody wears on a daily basis or just on occasion?

Are there any rules around what people can wear?

What would be considered formal dress? Casual dress?

What would happen if somebody wore the wrong clothes to an event?

Language

Language can also be ingrained as part of a Culture. It can be a specific way one speaks or a an entirely different language. For example, in the Southern States of America, one can engage in a sort of double talk, saying something that sounds sweet whilst delivering something pointed. Bless their heart. I have a post on creating your own language here.

Arts, Music and Craft

Many cultures are known for different styles of dance, their artwork and crafts. Art is a great part of culture, a way for people to express themselves and their culture in art form. Dance can be an integral part of culture, such as céilí dance in Ireland or the Polka in the Czech Republic. Handicrafts could also be important in culture, such as knitting in Scottish culture and Hebron glass in Palestine. Music is also close to culture, from traditional kinds of singing such as the White Voice in Ukraine and the playing of certain instruments such as the mvet.

Food and Diet

The way a culture prepares or intakes or treats certain foods are important to a culture. In some cultures, there is a diet yo adhere to, certain foods are completely banned. With Jewish culture, pork is prohibited along with fish such as sturgeon, along with shellfish and certain fowl. Meat must also be prepared in a certain way and animal byproducts such as dairy, must never be created or even eaten around this meat. This is known as kosher. The way one consumes food is also important to culture. In some cultures, only certain people may eat together. Some cultures place important on how food is eaten. In Nigerian culture, the oldest guests are served first usually the men before the women. In Japanese culture, one must say 'itadakimasu' (I recieve) before eating. Culture may also include fasting, periods of time one doesn't intake food for a specific reason.

What are some traditional dishes in your world?

What would be a basic diet for the common man?

What's considered a delicacy?

Is there a societal difference in diet? What are the factors that effect diet between classes?

Is there any influence from other cuisines? If not, why not? If so, to what extent?

What would a typical breakfast contain?

What meals are served during the day?

What's considered a comfort food or drink?

Are there any restrictions on who can eat what or when?

Are there any banned foods?

What stance does your world take on alcohol? Is it legal? Can anybody consume it?

Are there any dining customs? Are traditions?

Is there a difference in formal meals or casual meals? If so, what's involved?

Are there any gestures or actions unacceptable at the dinner table?

How are guests treated at meals? If they are given deference, how so?

[olivieblake]

S.P.E.L.L. presents:

SALT HOUSES by Hala Alyan

I am as usual very pressed for time (truly I don’t understand how anyone with a baby accomplishes anything—“enchanted months,” really? you friggin liars) so I will have to do this in bullet form. THOUGHTS AHOY:

Structure: the book is NEAR standalone vignettes—sort of like another favorite of mine, GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER by Bernardine Evaristo, but not quite—where some characters have standalone POV chapters while others have longer storylines that appear more than once. The structural inconsistency isn’t the decision I would have made, but it works because the writing works, and I think the jumps from character to character and ultimately from generation to generation were very well done. I appreciated it as a work of character portraiture, and as a method of seeing characters through others’ eyes, which is an aspect of ensemble casts that I really love

On that note, some criticism I read when choosing this book suggested that the characters weren’t fully fleshed out because of the structure. I disagree. However, I did feel the pattern repetition between characters was sort of off-putting, with the eldest daughters always being chubby, religious, and dutiful while the sons were peaceable and adored and the younger daughters were mercurial and obstinate. I understand the narrative significance of the families repeating familiar patterns as they became increasingly displaced from their home, but it did occasionally feel like a time loop more than any individual characterization. Probably my fault, as an eldest daughter who felt like the other eldest daughters were a bit overshadowed and ultimately portrayed as quite small. Their decisions/motivations never received detailed explanations, nor were they portrayed with as much complexity or as sympathetically as the younger daughters (in my opinion)

Displacement was obviously a huge theme. I’ve said previously that being the daughter of an immigrant is proving especially difficult for me now that I’m a mother, because my mom’s efforts to Americanize me have made me so distant from her origins that I feel culturally uprooted. My brain is built on Filipino superstitions, I understand and give love in what I believe to be a very Filipino way (food, mostly) and I even hear words of affection in Tagalog in my head, despite being unable to speak a word of it. So how can I ever pass on to my son the elements of sweetness in the ways my mom mothered me if the parts of her that made up her home and origin and existence are functionally missing from mine? I have never felt Filipino enough to claim it as my identity, even if I am not myself without it.

This is of course a minor anecdotal example of the generational trauma that is magnified hugely throughout SALT HOUSES, because in addition to the migrant experience, we experience the nostalgia for a place and identity that this family can no longer claim without facing the very real probability of harm. They have been displaced over and over by war, and over time they have planted seeds of longing in the new generations that can now never be realized. There is a missing anchor that becomes more obvious, with each of the characters growing more existentially lost and distant from the previous generation as time goes on.

I am devastated to say that the review I saw calling the female characters sex-crazed was 100% baseless. Sex was had, but never crazedly. Boo!

I mentioned that I wanted to see Islamic faith treated fairly instead of as a shorthand for misogyny (as in some other books [note: this comment was perhaps too flippant; I meant to say that I have read books by Palestinian American authors, one book in particular, that seemed to criticize the faith in a way that struck me as 1) reinforcing stereotypes and 2) suggesting that it would be better not to be part of the culture, but it is of course not my place to judge the authenticity of that portrayal—I was just reflecting on the portrayal of religion as a narrative theme and I apologize for commenting on something I have no capacity to understand], and I did feel that was done very well here. Alyan is especially sensitive in portraying her Muslim men, and specifically the way fundamentalist radicalization weaponizes the well-intentioned desire for identity and goodness that is inevitably at war with the monolith of Westernization. It is not a religious book, but I felt it made a clear case for the larger concept of faith:

Prayer is as good as bread, as simple as the dirt she turns over for seedlings. It was what her grandmother used to say in her garden: Allah is in the stem, in my fingers, in the water, and in the drought. Meaning good and bad. Meaning it was too intricate to be whittled down to something one could point at.

“You listen to me. What those men are trying to do, what they’re trying to sell you, this idea that you’re lost and they’re saviors and the rest of the world is evil, that what you need is to bow and surrender and fight, they’ve been doing that for decades. You think you’re their first one? They’ll pick up anyone hungry enough to listen. So don’t sit there thinking you’re special. Don’t sit there thinking you have some great secret. We’re all a mess. Iraq’s a mess, Lebanon’s a mess, don’t even get me started on Palestine. But if you think those hypocrites are going to save anything, those liars wearing God like some gold to attract boys . . . well, then you’re an idiot.”

This book is about wealthy Palestinians who have the privilege and means to migrate safely when circumstances become violent, which it acknowledges in the narrative (they “know the gunfire of war but are protected by the armor of wealth”). The narrative focus is on the existential needs of the family members; the survivor’s guilt or spirit of displacement rather than the grit and poverty of the refugee camps. In that sense it avoids being torture porn, which I was relieved about, though I was sure it would feature a character at some point that it never did. That’s fair, I think, since in all likelihood it’s not an experience that this highly educated and probably quite privileged author could authentically portray. We certainly don’t ask books about rich white people to consider the homeless and they hit bestseller lists all the time. It was just something I was pondering as I was reading—essentially, whether we would see those storylines come back

Alyan is both a clinical psychologist and a poet. Both serve her well in this book, which is at once a gentle study of the resiliency of humanity, an exploration of intergenerational trauma, and a collection of truly beautiful lines. A few of my favorites:

All her children are prized; they are the glow of her.

She misses Mustafa. Like a city after a tsunami, the earth is altered without him, wrecked. They never found out how he had died, just that he had, somewhere in an Israeli prison. And yet she continues eating éclairs and gathering hairs from the shower drain.

Atef ends each trip feeling wistful, watching his daughter living the life she has foraged, like an island survivor in a palace of shells.

The years went on. Their marriage died a thousand deaths before Elie finally caught on and left.

This one is the titular reference, I believe:

That house. The ones that came after. He thinks of them, instinctively touching the soil again. All the houses they have lived in, the ibriks and rugs and curtains they have bought; how many windows should any person own? The houses float up to his mind’s eye like jinn, past lovers. The sloping roof of his mother’s hut, the marbled tiles in Salma’s kitchen, the small house he shared with Alia in Nablus. The Kuwait home. The Beirut apartments. This house, here in Amman. For Alia, some old, vanished house in Jaffa. They glitter whitely in his mind, like structures made of salt, before a tidal wave comes and sweeps them away.

All in all, I really enjoyed this book. What about you? How did you feel about the characters and structure? Does the sense of displacement resonate with you? Or the conflict between family members and generations? Are you, too, a youngest daughter who lives to terrorize your mother? Weigh in and I’ll see you next month for some sapphic horror!

Tags: @aurorarsinistra @arrowsglory @weusedtohavedumberinternettags @sfjall @mallysj @ellejb13 @papiliomachaon @rosesofthesouth @dracomalfxys @chaaaaaice @honeyedorange @peaceisalwaysbeautiful @angelagualtieri @iamascaryhuman @writingaloveaffair @thereluctanthufflepuff @laneway @incrackandwhite @ladybookworm @letsgrow. Not every book is of interest to everyone, but if you’d like to be tagged for future S.P.E.L.L. discussions, let me know!

[emballs69]

[hinamie]

I’ll rip in hands and teeth and take a bite

[yuujispinkhair]

@hxhhasmysoul

[juniperarts]

Apparently Miles is a JJK fan (in the comics)

If you put these two in a room together I think the result would be adorable 🥺

[degenerateshinji]

something about the latest chapters

[lunargirlthing]

"Hold up I'm cooking, Asa"

"No Denji, you're mentally unwell"

[azrakon]

A cats meow

[catilinas]

Franny Choi, Soft Science

[popcornhee]

Taking a break on insta atm but still doodling and sharing my art on here teehee. Finished tsc today ugh