As I Was Reading The 1818 Annotated Text Of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, I Noticed That One Of My Favorite

What if they had matching outfits? 😳

Why do people talk about how harrowing Watership Down was but never mention Cowslip's warren... There are a group of anthropomorphic rabbits in this children's fantasy novel that have accepted their role as living meat. They've convinced themselves that to kick and struggle is to defy the will of a god confined to the tortured ramblings of their poet caste, who beg for their throats to snap under shining wire as their kin look on in polite fascination. They speak with lobotomised tongues and shun their culture for that of their devourers, pushing stones into walls, digging agoraphobic atriums under which to sit in silence, awaiting a fate they are forbidden to name. Why don't we talk about this

Tedesco babygurl

“The Patriarch of Venice”

Prints

"You're too big for that now, sweetling."

Dany and Viserion portrait because I miss my girls

*cool youth pastor voice* now you kids may want to NAIL and even SCREW each other, but you know who got SCREWED over and NAILED to a cross? yeah. and it was agony. just a little something to think about 🧐

"While it's well known that Pattinson plays multiple versions of Mickey due to the cloning process, what many don't realize is that director Bong Joon-ho insisted on filming certain key scenes without Pattinson knowing which version of Mickey he was playing until just before shooting. This method was meant to capture the confusion and existential dread of a clone struggling with his own identity, leading to some of the film's most unsettling and raw performances." Mickey 17 (2025) dir. Bong Joon Ho

I love that the Prince that was Promised prophecy involves a mistranslation. Of course it could also be a princess--gender is only of the most inconsistent grammatical rules across language boundaries.

It seems all gruff and barbaric likewise that the Dothraki language has no word for 'thank you,' but why would it? The major plot point involving Dothraki culture is that gifts are given and repaid in their own time. If you pass someone horsemeat around the campfire, the action is not complete until they hand you fermented mare's milk a week later. Perhaps then you then say some polite phrase which we do not see and which does not translate into English, indicating the debt has been resolved. Language both forms and is formed by the society in which it lives.

Here's a question: when the characters in Westeros see 'lion lizards' and 'spicy peppers stuffed with cheese,' what are they describing? Unsurprisingly lion-lizards, the predatory, reptilian, swamp-dwelling sigil of house Reed, seem to be alligators, which get their English name from the Spanish for 'the lizard.' Peppers stuffed with cheese are just what they sound like, though in English we call them chiles rellenos, a name borrowed from Spanish. As the Spanish language has no presence and no analogue in ASoIaF, Westeros has to describe these concept using its own words and its own concepts.

Now imagine we have a character whose name is a common noun, being discussed with someone who does not speak the language that noun exists in. The name might be shared phonetically, or it might be translated to the new language--especially if, say, the communication happens more on the level of concepts than on the level of words. For a name like Bloodraven this is easy enough. All languages have a word for blood, and all have a word for shiny black corvids, although they may or may not distinguish them from crows. But what about a name that's a little more specific? A culture that's extremely tree-focused have a word for every part of a tree, for example, and they may have a name for every part of every type of tree. But when translating a name meaning 'two month old bud on the upper branch of a weirwood' into the Common Tongue, for example, perhaps the best translation they could come up with would just be Leaf.

Bran is another example. Someone from the North would know it's a nickname of Brandon. Someone without that context might assume it refers to the edible husk removed from grain. And finally, someone whose culture eats a grain without a husk that needs removing might understand Bran's name as simply "Corn! Corn! Corn!"

Bless you

this was too violent for tiktok lol

the boys x my chemical romance

if you read and enjoyed dr jekyll & mr hyde (or the glass scientists), frankenstein, dorian gray, etc—odds are you’ll enjoy a much lesser-known but just as good gothic novel called the private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner.

you can look up a much better summary than i can provide, but it’s an amazing early exploration of religious extremism and the indoctrination of young people, the nature of free will, mental psychoses, and human identity. not to mention the author’s commentary on scotland’s national identity.

it utilizes the gothic doppelgänger trope and explores dual identities in a way that is completely different from jekyll & hyde or dorian gray. our irredeemable main character is a wet dying baby bird found in a mouldy cardboard box at the side of the road with delusions of grandeur and religious trauma. he makes victor frankenstein look downright self-aware in comparison. oh yeah and the devil is there too btw

i’m literally just begging someone to read it it actually changed my brain chemistry

(me gil-martining people into reading this book)