#liteature

[adaptationsdaily]

Mary Poppins (1964) Directed By: Robert Stevenson

[prokopetz]

While it’s important to recognise where early cyberpunk literature is coming from with respect to its skepticism of body modification, it feels like a lot of folks are basically using that to excuse the ableism of modern cyberpunk.

Yes, it’s true that much of the chrome angst in first-wave cyberpunk literature is explicitly tied to the corporate state’s efforts to abolish personal bodily autonomy, and to the extent that having a robot arm is construed as dehumanising, it’s dehumanising because a corporation owns your arm, not because prosthetics are evil.

However, it’s equally true that the “prosthetics eat your soul” horseshit of later cyberpunk lit is something that popular cyberpunk authors were very much complicit in. They wanted to retain the chrome angst as an aesthetic trapping while dialing back its political dimension in order to better appeal to mainstream audiences; to this end, the idea that having cyborg parts is intrinsically dehumanising was enthusiastically embraced. This isn’t a pop-cultural misunderstanding at work – it’s a shift in attitude that’s present in the literature itself.

Furthermore, that transition happened relatively early in the genre’s history, and was probably the norm rather than the exception no later than the mid 1990s. For those keeping count, that was 25 years ago, which is considerably longer than first-wave cyberpunk managed to remain culturally relevant. Basically, cyberpunk sold out, and it sold out early!

The fact that literary cyberpunk had some interesting things to say about bodily autonomy in 1984 – and that the chrome angst is a core component of that commentary – doesn’t give the genre a free pass for all the subsequent “prosthetics eat your soul“ stuff, and it certainly doesn’t mean that the two thirds of the genre’s entire history can be excused as “not real cyberpunk” on that basis. If you want to constructively address that shit, first you’ve got to own it!

[howifeltabouthim]

That was when his body was still enchanted; it had a power that I battled and raged against for months. Later that enchantment fell away, and he passed into a banality I never would have thought possible.

Siri Hustvedt, from The Blindfold

[feelingpaleblue]

Night View of the City at 3am

in a distance, pitch black darkness and they’re towering below the hill cold fence under my finger, stands against me and those unyieldingly pretty little blobs of light welcome my embrace faintly twinkle, tremblingly fragile barely audible, quietly cordial like gems in my hand pretty and undying like stars in my dream burn itself up dry fuel the death of us all funny like a distant memory

[be-kind-and-rewind-again]

Chapter 2: An Empty World by novarose122001 on DeviantArt

Chapter 2: An Empty World by novarose122001

(Art by @pxmun)

[sunsetquotes]

I don't want you to look at me and feel nothing.

Unknown

[aroaceconfessions]

Sometimes... sometimes i wish i was alloromantic

Theres just so much poetry in love! Theres so much emotion and experience and passion and just plain poetry to it, and so much of human literature is dedicated to this magical experience, this experience that i will never have! The most beautiful words are always the ones describing the form of your paramore, the depths of your devotion, the pain and thrill of your heart’s whims, and i. I want to have that. Just once.

Ive spent so much of my life drowning myself in this media focused on this one experience above all else, pages upon pages of fics dedicated to the sting and joy and devastation and elation of it all. Something so beautiful yet so painful. Sometimes i wish i could feel that sting for myself, willfully push myself to the edge of longing. Ive always been self destructive, have always romanticized the idea of giving someone my all, my everything, and i would give myself away in a heartbeat if i could have that.

So much literature is focused on romance, and ill never have that.

That idea puts somewhat of a divide between me and the stories upon stories ive read jn my life. Makes me feel like i wont really have a place writing, if i dont make forays into the subjects of unrestrained adoration, of love and romance and relationships. How can i call myself a storyteller if i cant even accurately portray this one thing, the only thing anyone ever cares about?

Its days like today that i feel the sting of my disconnect with my humanity and my art the most, and. It. Hurts.

[macrolit]

Recently purchased from an IG bookseller.