Bluepencilshades

The Creature imitating expressions and movements

hello, dear! this is such a good question and one i do find myself having a little trouble in tackling  –  there is such a wide range here to play in! so my plan here is to give you a handful of my favourites within a scattering of genres, and if you’d like any particular one in general please let me know!

sword stone table: old legends, new voices  –  anthologies will always hold my entire heart for how easy they are to start w/ their collections of stories instead of just one big one, and this collection currently owns my whole heart! it spans retellings of the legends of camelot, w/ twists in time periods, genders, races, and sexualities. what’s wonderful is that these stories read like myth too, which is so lovely, how these grand stories can belong to so many more communities now; and it is a magic thing itself, the many brave and bold and beautiful things that will come of this.

giovanni’s room by james baldwin  –  it’s a beloved classic for a reason, it’s poetic, it’s gay, it takes romance and reality and creates a revelatory thing in its wake. there is so much beauty in this story, so much humanity in its pride and mistakes and complexity. baldwin has a way of writing that is so sincere it strikes to the heart of you and stays there, something i love to feel with each and every read.

foundryside by robert jackson bennett  –  this one is near and dear to my heart bc it brought me out of my own reading slump early last year and just absolutely sparked my whole heart aflame in its wake. it hits all my boxes: centered on a skilled thief, powerful ancient artifacts, themes of anti-capitalism, magical realism, language-based magic systems, talking objects, and has the lovely fact of being a completed trilogy!

the disordered cosmos: a journey into dark matter, spacetime, and dreams deferred by chanda prescod-weinstein  –  aka one of my favourite books by my favourite cosmologist! this book is engulfed in her vibrant love for physics and space and humanity; and getting people to understand and love it as well. the text goes over so many phenomenal topics  –  systemic issues in stem spaces, what it’s like making space for black and black feminist traditions within them, alongside histories and futures and cultures abound  –  and each time i read, i find more to love.

if on winter’s night a traveler by italo calvino (trans. william weaver)  –  this is a dream, folded and pressed into a book. there is something to the way it brings you into its story as not just a reader but a participant, and proceeds to take you by the hand and race itself down its own alleys and streets of storylines. these tales criss-cross, speak over one another, all in an attempt to find the exit of the story  –  but never quite getting close enough. it’s something just on the edge of reality, where every wonder within is so close you can nearly touch it  –  if you’re willing to lean in a little further.

the war works hard by dunya mikhail (trans. elizabeth winslow)  –  one of my favourite collections of her work and the one containing “the artist child”, one of my all time favourite poems. mikhail writes holding close and somehow lovingly these ideas of exile, myth, war, and so many other nearly ungraspable things. it’s a collection i want to give to everyone!

The three primary uses of masks in film are entertainment, disguise and protection. From ancient Greek plays through Japanese Noh theater, masks are deeply intertwined in the universal language of entertainment and ritual, and its power as a transformative tool is so ritualized and timeworn that it is the unofficial logo for an entire artform. Since theater was an influence on early motion pictures (consider the framing and gestural acting of silent film), it figures that masks would be smuggled into movies, and some of the most enduring images from film history are now associated with masks. —Alex Vlahov

Susan: You’re saying that humans need fantasies to make life bearable.

Death: No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape.

Susan: With tooth fairies? Hogfathers?

Death: Yes. As practice, you have to start out learning to believe the little lies.

Susan: So we can believe the big ones?

Death: Yes. Justice, mercy, duty. That sort of thing.

Susan: They’re not the same at all!

Death: You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and THEN show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet… you try to act as if there is some ideal order in the world. As if there is some… some rightness in the universe by which it may be judged.

Susan: But people have got to believe that, or what’s the point?

But knowing as we do that Pratchett wrote the Discworld fuelled by an internal anger at how wrong and fucked up the world was, we can reframe this as probably one of Pratchett’s angriest moments.

Death, in Discworld, speaks IN ALL CAPS. This is supposed to represent his voice sounding a bit like tombstones falling from a great height, but in any other context, SPEAKING IN ALL CAPS MAKES IT SEEM LIKE YOU ARE SHOUTING.

To me, there is a palpable, vicious anger behind those words. It’s the anger of someone who is grieving, because in reality death does not care and will strike without warning or mercy or justice. In reality, death is not fair. In its wake, mourners are left feeling bereft and, amongst other things, furiously angry. Angry at the universe for taking away a loved one.

I’m still processing my grief, probably will be for quite some time. Mostly, i settle on anger at the moment. I don’t express it, but at times I feel angry enough to march through the gates of Heaven and scream at God Himself.

That’s the anger that I see behind Death’s words here. That desperate, white-hot, tear-filled anger that screams at an indifferent universe “SHOW ME. SHOW ME THAT THERE IS JUSTICE. SHOW ME THE MERCY.”

And of course, as we are forewarned in Mort, there isn’t any. Not really. Justice, mercy, etc are human concepts. We created them. We have to believe in them, otherwise they cannot exist. And we can see what happens when they break down.

I think it’s one of the best facets of Pratchett’s Death that he is like this, that he is a physical manifestation of the most indifferent force in the universe and yet still cares about the job he does and the people whose souls he reaps. As he asks Azrael in Reaper Man, WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT FOR THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

When Ao Bing asks Ne Zha how he knew he'd come back, Ne Zha says something that I think might be the perfect ending line.

因为我们都太年轻，不知天高地厚

Yin wei wo men dou tai nian qing, bu zhi tian gao di hou

I think the theatre I watched translated this as "Because we're both too young. Too young to fear."

Honestly, this translation is pretty good! It's touching and impactful.

Bu zhi tian gao di hou, 不知天高地厚, is a saying that is used to refer to someone that is arrogant or foolish and doesn't understand the power or cruelty of the world.

It means: To know not how high the heavens stretch, nor how deep the earth goes.

Usually it is used to admonish someone, usually an elder scolding someone younger that they're overly confident or idealistic, and don't know anything about the realities of what's out there.

Ne Zha and Ao Bing have both technically lived thousands of years. They were originally the Chaos Pearl, so they've witnessed a lot. They do, in fact, know how unfair the world is, and have seen the heavens and the earth.

However, since their bodies and minds are still young, it's especially impactful for Ne Zha to say this to refer to himself and Ao Bing. Essentially, he is saying that despite them both understanding the cruelty and unfairness of the world, they still choose to be young and foolish.

It's not that they're arrogant and overconfident. It's that they understand they have little chance, but they must fight anyway. They are choosing to be young and wild, choosing their three year old naïveté over their thousands of years as the Chaos Pearl.

Sam: Stop! STOP! You leave Mr L- Elf alone, Mr Gimli!

Legolas: Why, thank you, Sam. You see, Gimli? Your dwarven rudeness has even upset Sam-

Sam, sobbing: He can’t take such a talking to, Mr Gimli! He’s such a sensitive soul. Much more of that and he’ll be dead by morn!

Legolas: 

Sam: but these are really sad times

Aragorn: excuse me

Sam: we’re all very upset all the time because of the quest. what if something small is what pushes him over the edge

Aragorn: it doesn’t work like that-

Legolas, genuinely panicked: what if it works like that??

Aragorn: I’m sure it doesn’t

Legolas: he had a point I AM very upset all the time

Gandalf: Legolas I assure you no elf has ever died like that

Legolas: NOT YET THEY HAVEN’T

UK residents SIGN HERE on the government petition

https://transrightsuk.carrd.co/

https://uktransrights.carrd.co/

please, if you’re a UK resident, trans or not, please speak out on behalf of your trans family, friends. we suffer enough without the right to self-identify in the UK

UK residents SIGN HERE on the government petition

https://transrightsuk.carrd.co/

https://uktransrights.carrd.co/

please, if you’re a UK resident, trans or not, please speak out on behalf of your trans family, friends. we suffer enough without the right to self-identify in the UK

Welcome to Whumptober 2021! May the Whump be with you :)

To all of you who participated last year - we have changed a few of the rules, but overall things have stayed the same. To everyone new: WELCOME!

Please make sure to read the Event Info carefully, most of your questions will be answered there already. For everything else you are welcome to come to our ask box or ask questions in our Discord server here.

This year’s AO3 Collection can be found here.

With that being said, we’re very excited to see the community come together once more and be a wild, chaotic bunch of creators and consumers of whump. We wish you all the fun!

(All 31 Themes + Prompts, Event Information, and FAQs are posted below the cut!)

Illumi: We’re not. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.

Illumi: Intimately close. Seduce your enemies.

Hisoka: Marry your enemies and poison the wedding cake.

Illumi: I’m not marrying you if you bring the wedding cake into it. That’s just unnecessary.

Hisoka: You’re right, I went too far.

Hisoka: I apologize.