Spaghetti For Your Stressetti

What if the children go to schools unafraid of tear gas and bullets?

What if the birds come back, and the bees are healed, and every species moves from endangered, to threatened, to thriving?

What if the rainforest ADVANCES?

What if every parking lot had solar panels? What if every structure had solar panels? What if we built climbing gyms and terraced gardens in the skeletons of old coal power plants?

What if you baked your neighbor bread, and they shared their home-grown blackberries?

What if every person who needed a home, had one? What if every person who needed healing was healed?

What if every body was treasured for what it was, not what it should be?

What if every trans child's parents attended their graduation, their wedding, their new-name-day?

What if every warehouse became a closed-circle repair station? Goods flowing out, and back, and out again? What if landfills started to SHRINK?

What if the water and air were clean? What if there was enough public transit that the cars dwindled, leaving the streets safe for kids on bikes, evening deer, midnight cats and foxes?

What if we win?

The condors are back. The whales are saved. The sea turtles are no longer endangered. The cranes are back. The bees are recovering. The air in LA and Tokyo and London is clean again. The aquifers in the LA Basin are refilling.

Children are kinder than previous generations. Parents are stopping the abuse cycle. Being trans and queer is more acceptable than ever on a ground level.

It's hard to see if you're young, if you don't know how to step back from social media and the news. But remember--bad news sells, and the algorithm knows despair keeps you scrolling. It's a skewed lens.

We are fighting and we are winning against this adminstration's bullying. We are coming together against the bullies and they are running away scared because they don't understand that we will do that.

People are working hard every day to find ways to make sure fewer animals get hit by cars and planes and rockets.

Maker spaces are more common than ever. Solar and wind are more common than ever. Coal plants are shutting down every day.

Unprecedented numbers of acres are being bought back or given back to their rightful stewards, and the world heals because of it. People are working hard every day to learn how to help a forest recover faster.

We are not at zero. We are at decades of effort to heal the world. We've come SO far.

In 1982 there were only 22 California Condors left in the world. In 1992, when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), with its public and private partners, began reintroducing captive-bred condors to the wild. In 2001 the first wild nesting occurred in Grand Canyon National Park since re-introduction. In 2002 there were only 8 pairs of wild nesting birds population-wide. In 2008, for the first time since the program began, more California condors were flying free in the wild than in captivity. Today there are nearly 500 – more than half of them flying free in Arizona, Utah, California, and Baja Mexico.

When I was born, there were no condors in the wild. I'm 37 now, and there are over 250 condors flying free.

When my mom was born in 1955, there were days when she wasn't allowed to go outside to play, because of the air pollution. When I was born, that never happened anymore.

When I was born, humpback whales were critically endangered, and people thought they were going to go extinct. Today, they've recovered to exceed their recorded numbers. Other whales too!

We fixed it.

Since 1990 extreme poverty has decreased worldwide by over HALF.

She's alright

You hate her

Anime

Any friend of Papyrus's is a friend of yours

Bigoted fuck

You inexplicably (platonically) like her and aren't just tolerating her for Papyrus.

(Apologies if this isn't actually a Sans ask blog lol, it looks like one)

★ for personal favorites ✂︎ for short stories

i'm not including Faustus or the works of William Shakespeare because I am of the belief they were made for the play medium, and therefore should be watched not read.

Epic of Gilgamesh by Unknown (2100 B.C.) [X] First story written down. Wrestling with the hunt for immortality and doomed yaoi it's got everything you've ever wanted.

Iliad and the Odyssey by Homer (750–700 B.C.) [X] If someone tells you to skip the Iliad make sure their heart stops beating. Straight up worth the hype and I'm not kidding.

Beowulf by Unknown (500–521) [X] There's a lot of filler but that's the fun part. Gives you a higher understanding of LOTR and Skyrim which you can whip out for the clout.

The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (1000-1021) [X]

Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (1194) [X] Actually more interesting than it first seems, stick with it. Surprisingly woke (Jewish woman main character who does that time period's equivalent of a mic drop).

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (1320) Again a fucking trek, but also fucking fascinating

The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1387-1400) [X]

The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1513)

Water Margin by Shuihu Zhuan (~1524)

Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser (1596) [X] It's a FUCKIN READ so prep yourself but to be fair if you made it through Beowulf you can do anything.

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (1605-1615) [X] Has a chapter where a woman breaks apart incel ideology in front of a crowd and it's not even part of the main plot. Long asf but worth it (for the clout).

Paradise Lost by John Milton (1667) Best if read as a character study on the author himself.

Cadenus and Vanessa by Jonathan Swift (1713) [X]

A Modest Proposal by Jonathan Swift (1729) [X]

★Songs of Innocence and of Experience & Other Poems by William Blake (1724) [X] The version linked works well as the images ARE important, he drew, carved, and then printed the art with wood prints at home on his own to sell.

Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin, Gao E & Cheng Weiyuan (1791)

1800s & 1900s

★Undine by Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué (1811) "Were I asked, what is a fairytale? I should reply, Read Undine: that is a fairytale… and of all fairytales I know, I think Undine the most beautiful." - George MacDonald INCREDIBLY unknown for how influential it was, my theory is it's a tragedy instead of a romance, in every sense of the words. Directly inspired and is practically the mother of Hans Christian Anderson's Little Mermaid. Created the term Undine which some may be familliar with. Don't let Toby Fox fool you, THIS spelling is pronounced un-deen.

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (1813)

✂︎The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving (1820) [X]

The various works of Edgar Allen Poe (1827-1849) ✂︎ Horror: The Tell-Tale Heart, The Masque of the Red Death, The Cask of Amontillado, The Fall of the House of Usher Detective: The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, The Purloined Letter by the way he invented modern detective fiction but they don't tell you that.

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818) [X] The birth of Sci-Fi

Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1839) [X]

A Christmas Carol in Prose; Being a Ghost Story of Christmas by Charles Dickens (1843) [X]

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë (1847) [X]

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë (1847) [X]

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë (1848) [X]

The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1850) [X]

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851) [X]

Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup (1853)

Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for men and women by George MacDonald (1857) [X] If you were wondering who he is and why he's so important earlier he directly inspired the Inklings (Tolken & Lewis)

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll (1865) [X] [X]

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (1868) [X]

The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald (1872) [X] For younger audiences, but who gives a shit.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (1876) [X]

The Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain (1881)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (1883) [X]

✂︎The strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (1886) [X]

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891) [X] If you didn't know, Oscar Wilde was convicted in 1895 for gross indecency and for practicing homosexual acts.

✂︎The Yellow Wallpaper Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892) [X]

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle (1892) [X]

✂︎Désirée's Baby by Kate Chopin (1892) [X]

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898) [X]

★Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897) [X] It's actually a collection of letters, diary entries, and newspaper clippings, etc. So the 1800s equivalent of found-footage. if anyone tried to convince you of a mina x dracula romance make sure they never again breathe

Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen Lili'uokalani (1898)

I Am a Cat, Kokoro, Botchan, Sanshirō, & Light and Darkness by Natsume Sōseki (1905-1916)

Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery (1908) [X]

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (1908)

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett (1911) [X]

Peter Pan : [Peter and Wendy] by J. M. Barrie [X] (1911)

Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (1915) [X]

And Then There Were None, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, and Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie (1919-1970)

The Home and the World by Rabindranath Tagore (1919)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1925) Gatsby's black

The Flowers of Buffoonery by Osamu Dazai (1935)

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (1937)

★Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (1938) Don't let shitty movie remake trailers make you think it's a romance. It's, in all technicality, a ghost story.

✂︎Are Women Human? by Dorothy L. Sayers (1938)

Native Son by Richard Wright (1940)

The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1943)

Animal Farm by George Orwell (1945)

No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai (1948)

The Makioka Sisters by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki (1948)

1984 by George Orwell (1949)

Confessions of a Mask by Yukio Mishima (1949) Many people say this is a better version of Confessions of a Mask. Probably because it's instead about him "masking" being gay.

✂︎There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury (1950) [X] [Illustrated]

The Bad Seed by William March (1954) Was so popular it was immediately made into a play and then a Hitchcock film released 2 years later. When people read the book or saw the play, they'd stress not to tell those you'd recommend to read/see it the twist, so the first story I can at least find with spoiler culture. If you're wondering why, it's the origin of a genre trope.

Lord of the Flies by William Golding (1954)

Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955) If anyone tells you it's glorifying anything shoot them on the spot for me thank you.

Pedro Paramo by Juan Rulfo (1955)

★The Once and Future King by T. H. White (1958) You ever watch Disney's A Sword in the Stone as a child and wonder why it was all Arthur as a kid? that was not an original idea it was based solely on this book. Written very cleverly and whimsically.

The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare (1958)

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell (1960)

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson (1962) Book that makes it very clear Shirley Jackson was developing very bad agoraphobia. Not a horror novel if you're avoiding them.

The First Promise by Ashapurna Devi (1964)

✂︎An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1963) by Ambrose Bierce [X] Got an adaptation via an episode of The Twilight Zone [X]

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin (1967)

★The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton (1967)

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez (1967)

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (1969)

The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972)