the funniest hp lovecraft story is the one where some guy’s family offended an evil wizard who then cursed his entire family saying that all the men would die before they hit like 30. the protagonist is going crazy trying to find a spell to break the curse and then the big reveal was that the wizard was literally just breaking into their house and killing them himself.
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This is missing my favorite detail, namely that the evil wizard is named ‘Charles Le Sorcerer’.
CHUCK WIZARDS CURSE OF SHOOT YOU IN THE FACE
Bibliophile Inspired Necklaces
UK-based designer “Rio” from Literary Emporium specializes in creating handmade jewelry, stationery and gifts inspired by classical literature. With a degree in English and a lover of literature and beautiful books, the artist was compel to create homages for her favorite novels and quotes.
Her first literary creation began as single postcard featuring a famous quote from Wuthering Heights. Now “Rio” offers her expertise and bookworm passion into designing exclusive gifts, which book lovers will not be able to resist. Adorned with a symbolic necklace designated to each book (i.e., the owl in Harry Potter, the cage in Jane Eyre, the dashing bow tie in The Great Gatsby and more), each piece is attached to a postcard with a relevant excerpt. You can find her entire collection of bibliophile gifts in her Etsy shop.
Presented by myself and @goodluckdetective without comment
That. That is the entire high literature summed up. You just broke all man-written novels
I was interested to know whether there had been any noticeable uptick in searches for “the cask of amontillado” since this meme began and while there has, it’s the exact same uptick which has occurred every fall in recent memory as high school teachers have geared up for their spooky october literature units
it looks very similar to a reading of a heartbeat…..a specific heart…..that won’t stop beating……..from under the floorboards………
you’ve got quite the eagle eye there, pal
Huck Finn is about a white Southern boy who was raised to believe that freeing slaves is a sin that would send you directly to hell who forges a familial bond with a runaway slave and chooses to free him and thereby in his mind lose his salvation because he refuses to believe that his best friend and surrogate father is less of a man just because he’s black. Yes it features what we now consider racial slurs but this is a book written only 20 years after people were literally fighting to be allowed to keep other human beings as property, we cannot expect people from the 1880s to exactly conform with the social mores of 2020, and more to the point if we ourselves had been raised during that time period there’s very little doubt that we would also hold most if not all of the prevalent views of the time because actual history isn’t like period novels written now where the heroes are perfect 21st century social justice crusaders and the villains are all as racist and sexist as humanly possible. Change happens slowly and ignoring the radical statement that we’re all human beings that Twain wrote at a time when segregation and racial tensions were still hugely prevalent just because he wrote using the language of his time period is short-sighted and foolhardy to the highest degree.
I’m really kind of alarmed at the rise in the past few years of the “and we do condemn! wholeheartedly!” discourse around historical figures. it seems like people have somehow boomeranged between “morals were different in the past, therefore nobody in the past can ever be held accountable for ANY wrongs” to “morals are universal and timeless, and anything done wrong by today’s standards in the past is ABSOLUTELY unforgiveable” so completely, because social media 2.0 is profoundly allergic to nuance
please try this on for size:
there have always been, in past times as today, a range of people in every society, some of whom were even then fighting for a more just and compassionate accord with their fellow man and some of whom let their greeds and hatreds rule them to the worst allowable excesses. the goal of classics and history education is to teach you enough context to discern between the two, not only in the past but in the present
My mind just boggles at the “There’s Racism In That Book” argument. Yes, there is racism in that book, because that book is ABOUT RACISM. The message is that it is BAD.
My high school English teacher, who was a viciously brilliant woman, used to say that when people banned Huck Finn they said it was about the language, but it was really the message they were trying to ban, the subversive deconstruction of (religious) authority and white supremacy.
Huckleberry Finn can actually be seen as a powerful case study in trying to do social justice when you have absolutely no tools for it, right down to vocabulary. And in that respect, it’s a heroic tale, because Huck—with absolutely no good examples besides Jim, who he has been taught to see as subhuman, with no guidance, with everyone telling him that doing the right thing will literally damn him, with a vocabulary that’s full of hate speech—he turns around and says, “I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to participate in this system. If that means I go to Hell, so be it. Going to Hell now.”
(I used to read a blogger who insisted that “All right, I’ll go to Hell,” from Huckleberry Finn is the most pure and perfect prayer in the canon of American literature. Meaning, as I understand it, that the decision to do the right thing in the face of eternal damnation is the most holy decision one can make, and if God Himself is not proud of the poor mixed-up kid, then God Himself is not worth much more than a “Get thee behind me,” and the rest of us should be lining up to go to Hell too. Worth noting that this person identified as an evangelical Christian, not because he was in line with what current American evangelicals believe, but because “they can change their name, I’m not changing mine.” Interesting guy. Sorry for the long parenthetical.)
Anyway, the point of Huck Finn, as far as I can tell, is that you can still choose to do good in utter darkness, with no guidance and no help and none of the right words.
And when you put it like that, it’s no wonder that a lot of people on Tumblr—people who prioritize words over every other form of social justice—find it threatening and hard to comprehend.
Also, there is not that much of racial slurs. Like those guys are making it sound like its just “n-word” bombs from start to finish while, yeah they are a bunch of racial slurs but not at that point.
These people would spontaneously combust if they watched Blazing Saddles
I bind fanfic and other underground writing into real books. I am a Guerilla publisher.
In a nutshell, the reasons why:
- A demonstrative statement on the validity of “fic” in general (and fanfic within that specifically) as a newborn genre of literature that has really only come into its own in the last 15-20 years.
- Disrupting preconceptions about what is valuable and worthy of being in print, much less published in a fine edition.
- An act of anti-capitalist resistance. Participation in the traditional gift economy of fandom. Most of my projects are volunteer and gifts.
- Preservation of fandom history and works for future generations. These books cannot blip out of existence by puritanical updates to a socmed terms of service. These books are acid-free, archive ready, made to survive for another century.
- Demonstration against censorship of fiction. Most of the books contain subject matter some people may find objectionable on various grounds.
- In summary, it’s a big Fuck You to power structures that silence people. Also it makes my friends so happy that they cry, so that’s nice too.
My book design is deliberately conservative because I am challenging ideas of what should be inside the book. The more a book looks like something a “real” publishing house would put out, the stronger and more subversive the statement it makes.
I am also doing a lot of research working on replicating the style of books from centuries past, and publishing historical fic set in whatever period, in an embodiment that matches. Colors, typography, even form factor as much as possible. I have done Victorian, Edwardian, Renaissance eras.
Here are some various process pics. Books pictured:
WAR, CHILDREN by Nonymos (Captain America: Stucky)
AND THEN THERE WERE TWO by NymeriaKing (Star Wars / Kylux)
BLUTRUNST by IncurableNecromantic (Over the Garden Wall)
CHOSEN MAN by Sineala (Eagle of the Ninth)

I am going to add some links here, too, for anyone whose introduction to gift economy and fannish preservation practices was this post and want to learn more. You can also search our bibliography at Zoter by keywords for any of these topics. Fandom and/as labor, guest edited by Mel Stanfill and Megan Condis, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign: https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/16 “Fan Works and Fan Communities in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” special history issue of TWC guest edited by Nancy Reagin, Pace University, and Anne Rubenstein, York University: https://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/issue/view/7 Zotero bibliography: https://www.zotero.org/groups/11806/fan_studies_bibliography/items
Found a book that summarizes literature and literary figures in text form, and the Byron one might be the best thing to ever happen.
Some things heard during D&D.
Oh god all of these are gold
please remind me to roll for erotic literature if we’re ever in a library
“At least I died stealthily”
DnD is like Who’s line with swords. You never know what anyone is gonna come up with
@megatraven Guess which one made me think of you!
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEES!!!!!!!!





















