don't mind me I'm just overthinking

African elephant sketch

Ballpoint scribbles, random blobs of Ecoline blended together with a water wash, with black ink outlines and detailing on top

(plus my the last dinner party poster…)

liberty leading the people, lafayette, and le brun (i don’t like lafayette but he was in the newspaper so i cut him out anyway)

jj rousseau, napoleon’s coronation, my shitty art, the constitution of 1793, the pantheon national convention monument, the republic’s symbol, and louise michel who i cut out of an encyclopaedia from my old art classroom…

Bubble Daydream

He was wrongfully raided by police in 2022

He used footage and names of the specific cops in posts, videos and songs making fun of them

The cops sued for defamation and cried in court about the songs ruining their lives

Say you're in possession of your most hated book and you aren't allowed to sell, donate, give away to friends/family, or throw it out. If you had to repurpose it, how would you do it?

Bring back illustrations in books.

I want full page art that makes me pause mid-sentence and go “oh.”

Bring back little drawings at the start of chapters. Bring back weird decorative headers. Bring back maps that are slightly confusing but I will stare at them like I’m planning a military campaign anyway.

Where is my glossary. Where is my pronunciation guide. I am tired of guessing. I want to know if I’ve been saying a name wrong for 300 pages so I can feel betrayed properly.

Give me marginalia. Give me fake documents. Letters. Diagrams that look important but are emotionally suspicious. Let the book look like it’s been handled.

Why did we decide everything had to be Just Text. Who voted for this. Show yourself-

I want footnotes that feel like the author is whispering additional lore directly into my ear. I want diagrams that explain nothing and somehow make everything worse.

Give me endpapers with art. Give me symbols that repeat until I start connecting dots like a conspiracy theorist. Give me one illustration halfway through that alters my brain chemistry permanently.

Books used to come with bonus content like they were slightly haunted objects and now we’re just… behaving? No.

If I am committing to 300 pages, I deserve enrichment.

Let the text do things. Let it shift. Let it breathe. Give me a page that’s just one line in the center so I can sit there like I’ve been personally attacked.

We have the technology. We have the printing capabilities. Why are we acting like books have to behave.

Also imagine the DRAMA. A character dies and suddenly the chapter header symbol changes. A map detail you ignored becomes relevant. A little drawing you thought was decorative is actually foreshadowing. Hello???

Anyway this is my formal petition to make books a little more unhinged again. Add the art. Add the maps. Add the weird glossary entries.

Vs

Voltaire publishing and critiquing Fredrick's suicide note

[Frederick the Great: The Memoirs of his Reader Henri de Catt vol 1]

Vs

* I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

*The King in Yellow

* The Lottery

* The Masque of the Red Death

* The Monkey’s Paw

* The Most Dangerous Game

* The Nameless City

* The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

* There Will Come Soft Rains

*The Yellow Wallpaper

* The Veldt

* “you think those were fucked up? What about [X]!”

I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream by Harlan Ellison

The King in Yellow by Robert W Chambers*

The Lottery by Shirley Jackson**

The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe

The Monkey's Paw by W.W. Jacobs

The Most Dangerous Game by Richard O'Connell

The Nameless City by HP Lovecraft

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin

There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

The Veldt by Ray Bradbury

Honorable Mention from the comments/reblogs:

All Summer in a Day by Ray Bradbury

*note: this is actually a collection of short stories and clocks in at about 72k words