transientwild

[joby4ever]

People talk about Catcher in the Rye like Holden Caulfield spends his time kicking orphans he finds on the street and then u read the book and he’s literally just some guy

[katistry]

[yayfeminism]

“How can we distinguish what is biologically determined from what people merely try to justify through biological myths? A good rule of thumb is ‘Biology enables, culture forbids.’ Biology is willing to tolerate a very wide spectrum of possibilities. It’s culture that obliges people to realise some possibilities while forbidding others. Biology enables women to have children – some cultures oblige women to realise this possibility. Biology enables men to enjoy sex with one another – some cultures forbid them to realise this possibility. Culture tends to argue that it forbids only that which is unnatural. But from a biological perspective, nothing is unnatural. Whatever is possible is by definition also natural. A truly unnatural behaviour, one that goes against the laws of nature, simply cannot exist, so it would need no prohibition. No culture has ever bothered to forbid men to photosynthesise, women to run faster than the speed of light, or negatively charged electrons to be attracted to each other. In truth, our concepts ‘natural’ and unnatural’ are taken not from biology, but from Christian theology. The theological meaning of ‘natural’ is ‘in accordance with the intentions of the God who created nature’. Christian theologians argued that God created the human body, intending each limb and organ to serve a particular purpose. If we use our limbs and organs for the purpose envisioned by God, then it is a natural activity. To use them differently than God intends is unnatural. But evolution has no purpose. Organs have not evolved with a purpose, and the way they are used is in constant flux. There is not a single organ in the human body that only does the job its prototype did when it first appeared hundreds of millions of years ago. Organs evolve to perform a particular function, but once they exist, they can be adapted for other usages as well. Mouths, for example, appeared because the earliest multicellular organisms needed a way to take nutrients into their bodies. We still use our mouths for that purpose, but we also use them to kiss, speak and, if we are Rambo, to pull the pins out of hand grenades. Are any of these uses unnatural simply because our worm-like ancestors 600 million years ago didn’t do those things with their mouths?”

— Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (Harari, Yuval Noah)

[jellytoast]

Headache Treatments in 1890s Known as Vibration Therapy

[aurora-vorealis-deactivated2022]

people just did shit back then huh

[musashi]

EVISCERATED

[edge-level-100]

[obfuscatingreality]

For those that don’t know, Brock’s mom and dad both bailed on their kids to go dreamchasing for a bit and he had to look after NINE siblings on his own

In other words,

SHOTS FIRED

[layserwulf]

Brock also just kind of left those same 9 siblings so he could travel the world with a 12 year old and his electric rat

[musashi]

Brock literally hung tight until his dad came home, gave said dad a stern shit-talking about how much of a worthless deadbeat he was to his face, refused to set one foot out of Pewter City until he was sure the dude would stay and take care of his damn kids, and then left to follow the dreams he was never allowed to follow because he was too busy cleaning up his parents goddamn mistakes.

But, like, go off, I guess.

[fairyofsomething]

If the one in the first pic is his mom, why does she look younger than him?

[i-fear-neither-death-nor-pain]

Because she’s not the one who had to raise 9 kids.

[prncssguya]

[sawasawako-archived]

people really just read books like “no thoughts head empty 🤪”

[sawasawako-archived]

between white women on tiktok saying they only read books for the romance and people on tumblr forcibly applying ao3 tropes to narratives i’m beginning to think maybe you all should’ve paid more attention in 10th grade english class

[bernard-black-books]

I was talking to this girl on hinge and we got onto the topic of books (i work in a bookshop), and she asked me if i had any favourite tropes to read? And for the life of me i couldn't figure out how to respond? Like Ms, i dont read fanfic, i dont understand what youre asking. I dont think 'tropes' can be used interchangeably with 'genre'. We dont have a section at work for shit like 'enemies to lovers' im sorry thats not how real literature works

[werewolfmack]

I thought this post was gonna go somewhere relevant and interesting for a full second, but I guess not. Tropes are older than dirt. The idea of a trope has existed as long as humans have been making things, and it’s not empty-brained to ask what tropes someone might enjoy reading. For example, someone could answer: haunted houses. rivalries that span decades. tales of revenge. generational family dramas. coming of age stories. stuck in a snowstorm with a killer. The word trope is just a way people currently talk and think about concepts in literature that we’ve been thinking and talking about for ever. It just adds a layer of specificity. If you can’t comprehend someone asking you what tropes you like to read, you might not totally understand what a trope is, and that doesn’t make the other person dumb.

What I was hoping this post might touch on is how people cling to book reading as a hobby that will make them automatically smarter or more superior than those who aren’t, no matter how little mental engagement they actually put into reading. There are people who shit on novels like Things Fall Apart, The Jungle, and Invisible Man for not being “entertaining enough.” There are people who base their entire personality on being an avid reader who chose to never think critically or challenge themselves. There are people who think reading makes you more empathetic by default, when in reality anyone, even terrible people, can project themselves onto the hero if they can’t think critically about their own life and choices.

People can just be into romances, that isn’t inherently stupid. Nor are knowing what tropes they enjoy. That’s just how some people engage with books, and we shouldn’t be looking down at people for that. I have way more issue with the white goodreads users who rate Things Fall Apart as two stars and start their review “I guess I’m racist for not liking this.” I too am annoyed at the failure of public education, and I too was flabbergasted when someone on reddit asked “what’s the point of comparing two very different books to each other” when I pointed out that American Psycho kinda has Lovecraftian themes. But you’re falling off the mark here, to go on about how you hate tropes because they can also be applied to fanfiction tags. 🙄 This attitude is how people start calling themselves sapiosexual.

[headspace-hotel]

“That’s not how real literature works”

If you think “real literature” doesn’t “work” that way, you’re not thinking substantially about literature, neither in individual instances nor in the broader scheme.

What do you think a tragic hero is? What do you think a quest narrative is? How do you think we can conceive of Seven Basic Plots? What do you think Comedy and Tragedy are? Do you think the Aeneid popped out of nowhere without referencing any of the patterns of Greek epics that made it compelling to its audience? Do you think Shakespeare was popular because his plays were “original” ideas with storylines that would have been surprising to his audience? Do you think fairy tales sprung out of the air as discrete individual units? Do you think no one has ever written anything that follows the patterns of Greek epics, Shakespeare, or fairy tales intentionally? Do you think “literature” contains no works that intentionally evoke an existing pattern in their plots and characters?

“Genre” as bookshops use it is not somehow superior to “tropes.” Fantasy, Westerns, Paranormal Romances, those categories are like, less than one or two centuries old and also damn near useless for anything except marketing. Genre is a hot fucking mess and pretty artificial. Tropes on the other hand? Those have always existed. They are, quite literally, inherent and natural parts of stories.

What “genre” is the Epic of Gilgamesh? What “genre” is the Odyssey? Fantasy? Do you think it is in any way appropriate to “genre” these stories using categories that would have been nonsense to their ancient audiences? What the fuck is fantasy?

Over and over again, we have told stories about heroes destroyed by their hubris, about mortals struggling against the inevitability of death, about the antics of trickster deities, about clever young boys outwitting giants and other malicious characters, about young girls swept into royalty, about brothers in conflict with one another, and the ability to identify these patterns and explore why they have persisted is…basically what literary and folklore studies is.

Just because you consider fanfic or romance to be “lesser” doesn’t mean they can’t be analyzed, or that the mechanical components of those things don’t exist in Real Literature. 10th grade English class clearly didn’t do any good for the people that did pay attention, if people are growing up thinking tropes were invented on fanfiction websites.

And it’s just a depressing point of view to be so preoccupied with how people “should” tell stories that how people do tell stories is not even interesting.

[xiaq]

All of the above is A+ but I'll add one more thing: do you know what I just finished filling out for my publisher? Of the book that will be in bookstores next year? Paperwork listing the genre and...the tropes. For marketing and sales purposes. This is standard procedure. It's how my book will be marketed online upon release. It's how my book will end up on suggested title lists. It's how Amazon's algorithm knows that such-and-such book is the bestseller in two niche categories and 20th in a broader category as well as 56th overall in YA titles. So aside from the fact that "tropes" have existed far longer than "genre" as folks have stated above, the people/companies who make "real literature" right now literally require authors to provide lists of tropes included in the novel at the front end of the publishing process.

So if you're working in a book store and don't think tropes exist outside of fic, that's a self-own so devastating I'm getting secondhand embarrassment right now.

[mrdarcysdadbod]

Jane "I can fix him" Eyre vs Cathy "I can make him worse" Earnshaw

[gansey--thats-all-there-is]

the ravens when they cycle idk I haven't read the books

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

no more girlboss cinderella. society has progressed past the need for girlboss cinderella

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

was asked for context so listen. istg every Cinderella story since like. the 90s? 80s? for fucking ever has been “noooo Cinderella is a #badass who don’t need no man we promise” because, I don’t know, someone made fun of the fact she “needs a man to save her” and that escalated to the point where we can’t have the original story anymore?

Am I saying “we need to stick to the original story every time” no of course not, but like. It’s the fact that people are reinterpreting something that isn’t there. Cinderella isn’t about “woman needs man to save her” it’s about “an abused girl who has no way to escape her horrible home life remains nice and hopeful and eventually her kindness pays its way back to her even if the fucking universe has to send her a fairy just to give her a night off and start a domino effect that ends with her being happy and safe.”

Every Cinderella remake or retelling nowadays is about how she doesn’t need a man and can rescue herself, or about how her falling in love with the prince too fast was a mistake and he’s actually a dick, and it’s just clearly missing the point. It just. I honestly feel like most, if not all of the people misinterpreting the story never had to grow up in a toxic home environment that you literally cannot escape because there is no system in place that can help you, and you dream that one day all your problems would get magically solved with a wave of a wand and a few singing mice. Cinderella didn’t dream of getting married she dreamed of being happy, marriage just happened to come with that. She dreamed of not being abused 24/7 in a situation she couldn’t escape from and despite being treated like garbage since she was a child she remained a good fucking person and that’s why she gets rewarded at the end.

Girlboss Cinderella remakes are fine in small doses but when it’s like, every fucking Cinderella I see I just get so pissed because clearly some people never got over their “fairytales bad” edgy phase and Cinderella’s gotta deal with it.

[toastpotent-deactivated20250619]

wait wait can you want a dick but not in a guy way but like just to have one???

you can do whatever you want forever

[mycroftrh]

One of the biggest influences on the way I currently see gender and sex and transgender identity was one tiny sentence

When I was talking to my top surgeon, he mentioned that he'd done top surgery on a butch lesbian. She identified fully as a woman, she just wanted a flat chest.

And that... blew my mind. My own desire for a dick and a flat chest is in a guy way, but the freedom of knowing that it doesn't HAVE to be a guy way, that you can just want a body and have it -

That not only is gender presentation in clothes and so forth mix and match, you can treat your body that way too, not only does your gender not have to 'match' your assigned body your chosen gender doesn't have to 'match' your chosen body because all that really matters, on any of it, is what feels right to you -

I was full up on "you can be trans without wanting to change x part of your body" but learning that that could also apply the other way around was what blew my mind and shifted my whole understanding of identity.

[logarto]

entranced recently not by “i can fix him” or “i can make him worse” but the “something deeply wrong with him and i want to be around as like a spectator when the car crash inevitably happens” dynamic

[impiousphyrne-deactivated202402]

[demonladytakkuri]

Hope people who know nothing about death note understand the human boy is the deeply unhinged one in this duo.

[aka-patsy]

rest assured i know absolutely nothing about death note (didn't even know this was death note) but i knew in my soul that was the case

[dailytomlinson]

“You have to be like, ‘I fucking deserve it now.’ You know what I mean?”

— Louis for the AFHF documentary

[defencelessinseoul]

Unpopular opinion but i think alina with nikolai would have been MUCH MUCH better than alina with mal. I will list the reasons some other day.

[transientwild]

they are a darklina shipper just so u all know !!

[transientwild]

are you the one who took a month to read crooked kingdom????

[jauntylittlefrillyboy]

a post containment breach is usually when a specific fandom post is vague enough that folks outside of the fandom start reblogging it bc it's relatable. the opposite of this is when a random post accidentally vibes too hard with a fandom and op has to respond with "who's [this person you keep tagging]" and I for one, love that genre of post.

[jauntylittlefrillyboy]

god, you're so fucking right.

[bellepochalypse]

Listening to an album is like: I am a scavenger. I am a pirate. I am boarding your ship and taking only the songs I like and then leaving without a second thought to the rest of the album. I take what I like and I take what I need and then I am gone.