Tag Directory
*note this is still under construction and i’m always a little behind
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Bonus
*note this is still under construction and i’m always a little behind
General
Bonus
Even in the midst of the new year’s excitement, I genuinely can’t stop being haunted by thoughts of Palestine. We have the privilege of celebrating the new year, making resolutions, looking forward to the blessings in the year ahead—but many Palestinian children didn’t get that privilege. Hundreds upon hundreds of children far younger than me have died in the past 3 months; won’t get the luxury of sharing in this flurry of excitement and joy. Many more are biding their time, not knowing when their last day is. Tonight will mark a new beginning, but I hope it also heralds a year of far more people advocating for Palestine, sharing the atrocities that have been committed in Palestine, boycotting brands supporting Palestinian genocide, and just all around finally coming to terms with the fact that Palestinian genocide SHOULD be their concern—even if they’re not being directly affected by it. More people need to be aware that educating themselves on this should not be a choice, but a responsibility and a must.
Diane Di Prima - Revolutionary Letter # 32
Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Véra
“People can’t anticipate how much they’ll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense “periscope liberty” - a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines - and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple of days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. “A baby!” he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran. Nothing tops space as a barren, unnatural environment. Astronauts who had no prior interest in gardening spend hours tending experimental greenhouses. “They are our love,” said cosmonaut Vladislav Volkov of the tiny flax plants - with which they shared the confines of Salyut 1, the first Soviet space station. At least in orbit, you can look out the window and see the natural world below. On a Mars mission, once astronauts lose sight of Earth, they’ll be nothing to see outside the window. “You’ll be bathed in permanent sunlight, so you won’t eve see any stars,” astronaut Andy Thomas explained to me. “All you’ll see is black.””
— Mary Roach. Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void. (via hummeline)
And then we lock prisoners in rooms with no windows and call it rehabilitation
So anyone who has even glanced at my blog knows that a lot of my work is built around an area of literary theory called ‘monster theory’, which is far from a major theoretical discipline. As such I thought I’d give a little run down on what it is and resources that are good in terms of getting started.
Monster Theory is loosely described as the study of monsters, fictional characters that we (humans) deem monstrous. This is usually rooted in the concept of norm/other, which becomes human/monster. The basis of modern monster theory is built on the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, who published a paper in 1996 titled Monster Culture (Seven Theses) which included seven different and overlapping views on what monsters are, why we create them, what they mean and how they fit into both literary canon and our society. These seven theses are (very quickly and loosely);
It is important to note that while this essay is considered fundamental in the concept of monster theory and it’s study, Cohen’s work is built upon work like Julia Kristeva’s Power of Horror: Essays on Abjection, and Barbara Creed’s Monstrous-Feminine. Additions to the field have been added since then; collected editions like the Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters, Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters, as well as essays in journals, collected editions on other wider topics (like horror, fantasy, sociology in literature). But the field is still relatively small at this point. I’ll be putting together a sort of reading list at some point in a post about where you can really get a good overview of the area, but the central starting point for monster theory is decidedly Cohen’s essay (which is the introductory chapter to an entire book on the subject).
Sasha Chapin
from "nov 4 2021" by silas denver melvin
paper + digital / click for quality (instagram)
Dotek motýla, 1972
cesare paciotti shoes with tiny swords on them!
If you don’t pick up the tempo, you’re gonna lose your head. Snap, snap.
Van Helsing (2004) Queen of the damned (2002) Dracula: dead and loving it (1995) Fright Night II (1988) The fearless vampire killers (1967) Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) Buffy the vampire slayer (1997 - 2003) Vamp (1986) The vampire diaries (2009 - 2017) From dusk till dawn (1996) Blade (1998)