A Lack of Subtlety

M | 33 | USA

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

Did a brand new kind of bowling shot today

we called it the "trust the Force Luke" shot or the "through God all things are possible" shot

[briannyssey]

some people read an awful lot, but don't read very well. deep reading is itself a skill. being able to untangle the threads of theme, subtext, characterization, narrative style, and more are all things that it takes time and intentional engagement to learn.

if you've ever watched a movie with your film buff friend and chatted about it afterwards, that friend might have pulled hours more of conversation out of the same 90 minutes of screentime, and wondered how the fuck they did that - it's not raw intelligence, it's a skill that's been honed. And I learned a lot about film from talking to friends who knew about film, and reading critique by film scholars

literature works exactly the same. so if you want to get more out of your reading, there are things you can do to train that. Find a book or short story you think you've got a pretty good grasp on, preferably from a widely read & respected author like Ursula K Le Guin or Ray Bradbury (if you're new at this don't swing for the Toni Morrison or the Samuel Beckett yet unless you feel very comfortable with the complexity of the text - the point is to develop a complicated new skill on good foundations). Then go to JSTOR, create a free account, and look up criticism on the story you've chosen. Find something that looks readable to you and at least somewhat interesting. Read that article, and look at what that writer got out of the same story you've read that you didn't get. Do you see the critic's points? Did they teach you something about the text? Go reread that story and see if the criticism has changed how you read it. Are you seeing more? Are you thinking about the implications of a line that you hadn't noticed before? Does the story feel richer now?

there are other more involved ways of finding criticism. Learning to use academic databases, going to your local library to do interlibrary loans, finding critical voices you appreciate; these are all useful subskills. Literacy isn't just being able to read words, it's being able to read words in context and think about what they tell you about the text, the author, or the time and culture in which the text was produced. Literacy is the skill of being able to look at the world with open eyes and think clearly about how its parts are connected. It'll change your life

[briannyssey]

this keeps getting shared around and ive seen some different tags responding differently so i just want to make some important clarifications and distillations

you don't have to read more deeply if you don't want to (but i'd recommend it, i genuinely think it makes you a better person)

if you want to learn to read more deeply, the resources are out there. try to find critical literature (that is, academic writing that analyzes the text) on works your familiar with so you can get a sense for how to do that analysis too

learning to deep read literature can help you deep read many areas of your life

writers tend to put a lot of work into their stories. if you learn to read that work you'll (probably) appreciate the stories you love even more. And if not, then you'll have developed your taste. This too is worth doing

[fishing-princess]

For thousands of years humanity has selectively bred chickens to have larger breasts and to have to lay eggs constantly. We did it to get more meat and per chicken, but from the perspective of the domesticated chickens they’re sorta living in a very specific fetish scenario

[light-camera-bitch-smile]

Can I just say this is possibly one of THE cuntiest ways I’ve seen anyone described in literature ever

[sirjuggles]

[toadalled]

She is very lonely

[lesserknownwaifus]

scooter lady from blood orange soda packaging

[sirjuggles]

Mmmmmmmmm aranciata

[fairycosmos]

[bumblebeebats]

This was genuinely what it was like growing up in New Agey circles btw, my mum's friends would come round like "So I went out to the woods this weekend and fasted and meditated and I had a vision of the Sacred Stag and all my guardian angels and I asked them how to find love and they said that I need to focus on my own healing first and stop repeating cycles of the past" and then the very next week it'd be like "So I'm back with James again" girl..... the Sacred Stag could not have been more clear....

[fashion-runways]

ROBERT WUN Couture Fall/Winter 2027 pls help me get out of debt donating to: ko-fi.com/fashionrunways or dinahlance-shop.fourthwall.com

[epicsause-official]

was on the wikipedia page for charleston red rice and i noticed the photo they used was blurry. i went to the talk page to see if this was brought up and stumbled upon this banger of a conversation

[escuerzoresucitado]

Pedestrian traffic lights

[sjorsdottir]

Ooooh, we have a bunch of really fancy pedestrian traffic lights in Germany! I need to share:

Starting off with the difference between formerly Eastern German traffic lights (upper images) and formerly Western German traffic lights (lower images):

The city of Erfurt had some additions, like an umbrella or a heart:

Same sex love in Marburg (upper image) and Frankfurt (lower image):

Traffic light lady in Bremen:

Karl Marx light in Trier:

Face of Friedrich Engels in Wuppertal:

Elvis in Friedberg (Hessen):

A sparrow (for the Golden Sparrow film awards) in Gera:

Winemaker in Bad Dürkenheim:

Mainzelmännchen (mascot of the public broadcasting service ZDF) in Mainz:

Otto Waalkes (German Comedian) in Emden:

Town musicians of Bremen in Bremen:

A miner in Pirmasens, Rheinland-Pfalz:

Bishop in Fulda:

Source: Saarbrücker Zeitung

Enjoy!

[depsidase]

[bentheechidna]

@ominous-signs

[ominous-signs]

Official ominous sign

[goddessactuality]

[serenitynerd]

@ominous-signs Do T-shirts count?

[ominous-signs]

Official ominous t-shirt

[notahorseindisguise]

getting grapes from a duckgirl with a huge lemonade stand

[dragongirlsnout]

a girl at the club spiked my drink with jasmine and a wave of tranquility washed over me

[dragongirlsnout]

when it really started hitting she watched me gracefully compose myself and then pulled me off into a corner to touch on my thoughts and probe the depths of my insight

[local-dog]

woke up the next day with a pounding sense of clarity and and wisdom

[gothluv]

it's like damn are people like not born in the 90's anymore?

[tothewhirlwind]

this all goes back to how sometime around the late 90s/early 2000s they stopped making people born in the 90s and switched over to making people born in the 2000s. it's not a coincidence

[gailynovelry]

The fastest way to accomplish The Project is to cease being afraid of The Project. The Project cannot maim you. The Project cannot kill you. The Project is more afraid of you than you are of it. It is okay if The Project turns out differently from how it was in your head, and it is okay if it has flaws. You are capable of engaging with The Project.

[gondwana]

Ok but why would I want an empire of dirt ?