Tumgik
#hauntings in the anthropocene
slettenkarina · 1 year
Text
The Haunted Landscape of the Anthropocene
“The winds of the Anthropocene carry ghosts– the vestiges and signs of past ways of life still charges in the present. [...] ‘Antrhopocene’ is the proposed name for a geologic epoch in which humans have become the major force determining the continuing liveability of the earth. The word tells a big story: living arrangements that took millions of years to put into place are being undone in the blink of an eye. The hubris of conquerors and corporations makes it uncertain what we can bequeath to our next generations, human and not human.” 
Gan, introduction. 
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/arts-of-living-on-a-damaged-planet
0 notes
Text
"It has taken me all my life up to now to fall in love with the world, but I’ve started to feel it the last couple of years. To fall in love with the world isn’t to ignore or overlook suffering, both human and otherwise. For me anyway, to fall in love with the world is to look up at the night sky and feel your mind swim before the beauty and the distance of the stars. It is to hold your children while they cry, to watch as the sycamore trees leaf out in June. When my breastbone starts to hurt, and my throat tightens, and tears well in my eyes, I want to look away from feeling. I want to deflect with irony, or anything else that will keep me from feeling directly. We all know how loving ends. But I want to fall in love with the world anyway, to let it crack me open. I want to feel what there is to feel while I am here."
John Green - The anthropocene reviewed
0 notes
paladinbaby · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
i feel like it’s potentially relevant i keep track of these all in a discord channel called nettle spiralling. family portrait of nettle nolastname
@july-19th-club / my nieces is probably the reincarnation of shirley jackson, cj hauser with notes / all about love, bell hooks / where angels fear to tread, e m forster / antichrist, the 1975 / elisabeth hewer / haunted epistemologies, laura westengard / letters to a young poet, rainer maria rilke / sam sifton / the anthropocene reviewed, john green
[Image Description: Ten pictures of text.
1: “simply cannot resist what i call the little mermaid or the tin man or the pinocchio plot, the one about a character who is either inhuman or human but outside in some way, constantly searching for whatever it is that they consider to be the quintessential proof of humanity, preoccupied by it so deeply that they fail to realise the proof is in the act and fact of the search itself”
2: “”What does it mean for the structure of your life to feel menacing? To be imprisoned within it? To feel like it might kill you?”
Haunting is an act of care, care is an act of haunting. Haunting is formed between the trauma, mothers inflict on their daughters.”
3: “We can never go back. I know that now. We can go for-ward. We can find the love our hearts long for, but not until we let go grief about the love we lost long ago, when we were little and had no voice to speak the heart’s longing.” The first three sentences are highlighted in red.”
4: “I seem fated to pass through the world without colliding with it or moving it - and I’m sure I can’t tell you whether the fate’s good or evil. I don’t die - I don’t fall in love. And if other people die or fall in love they always do it when I’m just not there.”
5: “And I swear there's a ghost on this island / And his hands, all covered in blood / And my wife inquired of understanding / But of course, my dear, you can't
She said, How can I relate to somebody who doesn't speak?/ I feel like I'm just treading water
Is it the same for you? / Is it the same for you?”
6: “I want to be eaten alive. I want / to feel wanted.”
7: “cultural anxieties and desires, allowing”for a whole range of specific monstrosities to coalesce in the same form.” The excesses of monstrosity and the hybridity of the living dead help visualize naturalized oppressive structures, making those structures uncanny and therefore intervening in the architecture of oppression. Both haunting and sadomasochism appear in queer thought as expressions of queer temporality that expose a particular type of traumatic temporality. Haunting manifests the swirl-ing, fractured, intersecting temporality of ongoing low-level trauma, not just a single event popping through into the present but a disorienting and overwhelming storm of traumatic intrusion.
The traumatic gothic shadow cast on queer theory is not always made explicit however.” The initial sentence fragment and queer temporality are highlighted in blue. The penultimate sentence is highlighted in purple.
8: “You must realise that something is happening to you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hands and will not let you fall.”
9: “Above all, cook for someone else. Take a moment to prepare food not simply because you’re hungry, but because cooking is an act that makes others feel better. And making the lives of others better is why we are here.”
10: A photo of a page of a book, some lines are highlighted in yellow throughout. “would like that, to show it your belly. There’s something deep within me, something intensely fragile, that is terrified of turning itself to the world.
I’m scared to even write this down, because I worry that having confessed this fragility, you now know where to punch. I know that if I’m hit where I am earnest, I will never recover.
It can sometimes feel like loving the beauty that surrounds us is somehow disrespectful to the many horrors that also surround us. But mostly, I think I’m just scared that if I show the world my belly it will devour me. And so I wear the armor of cynicism, and hide behind the great walls of irony, and only glimpse beauty with my back turned to it, through the Claude glass.
But I want to be earnest, even if it’s embarrassing.”
End ID.]
316 notes · View notes
fatehbaz · 2 years
Text
Ghosts remind us that we live in an impossible present -- a time of rupture, a world haunted with the threat of extinction. Deep histories tumble in unruly graves that are bulldozed into gardens of Progress. [...] Ghosts, too, are weeds that whisper tales of the many pasts and yet-to-comes that surround us. [...] Worlds have ended many times before. Endings come with the death of a leaf, [...] the death of a friendship, the death of small promises and small stories. [...] Whereas Progress trained us to keep moving forward, to look up to an apex at the end of a horizon, ghosts show us multiple unruly temporalities. [...]
Some kinds of lives stretch beyond our ken, and for us, they also offer a ghostly radiance.
The lichen that grows on tombstones is one example.
Every autumn, mycologist Anne Pringle goes to the Petersham Cemetery near Boston to trace the outline of individual lichens, watching their growth on the gravestones of local residents and dignitaries. They grow slowly, and sometimes some disappear. Some are probably the same individuals as those that first found a place to settle when those dignitaries died centuries ago.
For fleeting creatures such as ourselves, lichens are more-than-ghosts of the past and the yet-to-come.
Lichens are symbiotic assemblages of species: filamentous fungi and photosynthetic algae or cyanobacteria. Lichens are themselves a kind of landscape [...]. Many filamentous fungi are potentially immortal. This does not mean they cannot be killed [...]. Until cut off by injury, they spread in networks of continually renewed filaments. When we notice their tempo, rather than impose ours, they open us to the possibility of a different kind of livability.
Many kinds of time -- of bacteria, fungi, algae, humans, and Western colonialism -- meet on the gravestones of Petersham. The ghosts of multispecies landscapes disturb our conventional sense of time, where we measure and manage one thing leading to another. [...]
These temporal feats alert us that the time of modernity is not the only kind of time, and that our metronomic synchrony is not the only time that matters.
---
Text by: Elaine Gan, Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, and Nils Burbandt. “Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene.” Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. 2017.
482 notes · View notes
birdmenmanga · 3 days
Text
Tumblr media
@raventhekittycat
hi okay so I've been mulling this one over for the past day or two and I think I have the answer. not to be using hamburger to explain anything to an american but you're my detco mutual so I'm going to try and explain it in detco terms
There's a post going around recently about how if you've read detco and only detco, the first time hakuba shows up you're going to be totally flummoxed, because damn this guy is clearly important, he gets to be even cooler than Shinichi, he's got a half-page shot of him (in such a panel-dense series such as Detective Conan, no less!!) and he's got a fucking hawk. he's CLEARLY important. everything about the narrative is indicating that you need to PAY ATTENTION to hakuba and that he's the coolest guy and he's important!!!! and then he dies in the case lol (not for real. but still.)!! and you're like huh??? what was that. why did aoyama do that.
But with the context of magic kaito this totally makes sense. He's a beloved character that people have been waiting decades to see again. Of course Aoyama is going to hype him up!! It's his big moment after years of being locked in the backrooms!!!
Anyways reading birdmen for me was kind of like that. The author's previous series, Kekkaishi, was pretty one-dimensional at the beginning, and even after the main plot started picking up at around volume 6, it still felt quite understandable. I knew what she was trying to get at, and the spectacular job she did with the anthropocene and climate change metaphor towards the end of that series really made me interested in the rest of her works. That and the way she writes familial relationships is absolutely DEVASTATING. (I mean this with the highest of praise)
But when I read BIRDMEN for the first time, I was probably in... middle school, maybe? And I read it, sure, but I didn't get it. I could see what was literally happening on the page but the narrative choices were absolutely baffling at times. Why skip over the entire part of the plot where they figure out who the birdman that saved them was? She blatantly doesn't care about that. What does she care about then?? I knew I didn't get it, I knew there were parts of it that were important and I couldn't figure out why and THAT'S how it dug its pretty little claws into me. Even after I finished catching up it nagged at me a little bit, not often at all, but enough that every once in a while I go, huh, right, that was a thing, let me go read it again.
For the record this type of story haunting has happened to me twice. First time was the Heart of Thomas, second time was BIRDMEN. I think the thing is that these are both stories which are not what other people say they are and I think I came into both of these stories with a misconception, trying to look too hard for things that weren't important and therefore missing the things that were.
Because sure, BIRDMEN is about mental illness. Yeah, it's about an evil scientific organization growing mutants in a lab. Yeah, it's about what it means to leave your humanity behind. That's all technically correct, on a surface level, and the fandom at large likely agrees with these takes for the most part, but in my opinion none of that really delves into what the thematic messaging of the story is about.
There are cryptic conversations about authority and human extinction and peculiar outfit and ability choices. You can tell these choices weren't made to serve the purpose of "writing exciting shonen manga" because that was what she did for the most part in Kekkaishi and you can tell she wasn't putting her whole pussy into doing that here. So what was she doing? What's like. All of this. Waves my hands at this.
The short answer is that it's really about the interplay between capitalism (represented by humanity) and communism (represented by birdmen), and explores the role institutional white supremacy (EDEN) plays in enforcing capitalism. It is ALSO about queer liberation and the importance of community, but hey, that double-stacks conveniently with the communism metaphor.
But also take this opinion of mine with a grain of salt. As far as I know I'm the only one who really truly deeply believes that it is not only AN interpretation of the work, but one that was fully intended by the author.
So basically, I like it, because I think it says something true and beautiful that I also believe in, even if I didn't have the words for it the first time I read it. But I don't really think that's what people really look for in a media recommendation.
Do I like it? Yes, I love it. Will I recommend it to others? Yeah, sure. But do I think it's deeply flawed? Yeah, absolutely. It's flawed in the same ways as The Witch from Mercury— a rushed ending, too many threads that were opened and never tied together. The pacing and characterization is perfect in the beginning, and too rushed at the end. There are prerequisites you basically HAVE to read in order to understand the story (tempest for G-Witch and the communist manifesto for birdmen). I think a truly good story wouldn't have any of these things so if people don't like it I never blame them.
It's my personal experiences that make birdmen so profound to me. If you are not queer I just don't think Eishi coming out as a birdman to his mom will hit the same, just as an example. Sorry that I wasn't the kid you wanted me to be. I know you love me and you just want the best for me and that's why you're so controlling, because you think I can be saved by conforming to societal expectations. But I can't live like that. I can't be like that. And that's why I must go. etc.
Aesthetically I do love birdmen a lot. If I had to describe it in a few words it would probably be "chilling", "beautiful", and "powerful", which nicely coincides with the type of things I personally like to draw. It's also silly to a small degree but it's so serious and I know Tanabe can be way way way funnier (read kekkaishi for this. kekkaishi and hanazakari no kimitachi he were foundational to my sense of sequential art humor) so that's not really the standout trait of this series.
I can't let it go because I'm chewing this series like a bone. And it's taking me years but I am getting that sweet sweet marrow. By god. We are on year 3 of this shit and I am GOING to understand this series. and I'm going to make 3 video essays about it
#just thinking thoughts...#stray bird thoughts#so it's like... I don't like it because birdmen is good#I think I like it because I am a certain type of person and the author was trying to say something specifically to the type of person I am#OH#I'M THE TARGETED AUDIENCE THATS WHY I LIKE IT.#YEAH THATS REALLY IT!!!#A long time ago I said that birdmen wasn't written for the people who read it at the time it serialized.#it was written for the people they would become.#and I stand by that 100%#if it really stays with you there is going to be a reason even if you can't articulate it yet#and it may APPEAR sloppy to someone who doesn't see the queer or communist metaphor#like 'what is she doing what is she saying here she's not saying anything meaningful and emphasizing the wrong things'#but that sort of presumes she is gunning to make 'the best shonen manga ever'#which she clearly isn't.#I remember when I was reading fma with a bunch of my classmates and I'd lend them a volume or two every day#and a piece of feedback I received that has stuck with me was 'volume 15 was so boring'#(that was the volume recounting the ishval civil war. it was boring because we were middle schoolers and didn't REALLY get it.)#and like. I think to people who are looking for something like kks. the whole thing is going to feel like fma volume 15#like WHAT is she going on about? ? ?#like witch hat and dunmesh I think are similar types of stories but I think these two are just executed way better than bm#but because of that it is just not as compelling to me you know.#like yeah yeah it's well constructed. we all see it's well constructed.#the metaphor is so well constructed that I don't feel the need to point it out. everyone is saying it already you know#but bm is cryptic enough and just slightly missed that execution enough that I feel like I'm pulling the analysis out of a smoking wreckage#recently I've been watching mentourpilot videos about airplane accidents and like. that's exactly it.#there's nothing to say about a perfectly executed flight.#it's the ones that failed. and in particular the ones that just barely failed by a little bit. that compels people the most.#cue my de communism is failure post. bc that bm sure did fail.
10 notes · View notes
beaft · 5 months
Text
october 23rd
HALLOWEEN IN THE ANTHROPOCENE
Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume. The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let us praise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of  black
boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry bags of cacao under West African heat. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good
to eat,” sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess. Let us praise the souls of   brown girls who sew our clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into
smoke and ash. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good,” whisper kids disguised as ninjas. Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children
who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me,�� shout boys
camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls of  veterans who salute with their guns because only triggers will pull God into their ruined
temples. “Trick or treat, smell my feet,” chant kids masquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight, let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes
are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned rivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. “Trick or treat,” says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us
praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother, Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among dead fish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers
of  asthma, mothers of  cancer clusters, mothers of miscarriage — pray for us — because our costumes won’t hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our
mothers of  lost habitats, mothers of  fallout, mothers of extinction — pray for us — because even tomorrow will be haunted — leave them, leave us, leave — 
—Craig Santos Perez
19 notes · View notes
nazrigar · 2 years
Text
Smaugust 2022 - Monsters of Mythology, Science Fantasy Edition
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
So! For this Smaugust, I basically revisit my Pantheons setting, and decided to do some Science Fantasy interpretations of mythologies beasties. Pantheons is essentially a what-if scenario in the future, where gods and mortals walk alongside one another, and by extension, mythology’s monsters.
Batch 1: Chaoskampf-Level Giants
- Gonggong/Kanghui: An insane dragon representing the Devonian Mass Extinction, not satisfied being a giant water elemental, wants to learn the secrets of human-god magic.
- Behemoth: A Cosmic T.rex Guardian of a titanic planet where many of the major monsters of the Galaxy originates from. As a representation of the K-Pg extinction event, his fists are usually all that’s needed to obliterate anything, but a energy laser is always convenient!
- Niddhogg: A snarky, short tempered cosmic Spinosaurus that can tear through the fabric of space, entering in-and-out of Yggdrasil, snapping up planets in his maw. He less represents ONE extinction, and more how extinction can come in anytime.
- Orochi: Once a mighty Yokai that represented the Anthropocene Extinction Event, he’s now reduced to a ghost trapped in Amaterasu’s sword, Kusanagi.
Batch 2: “True” Dragons
- The Red Dragon of Wales: A guardian of the realm of the Arthurian realm called Avalon, beloved by all. (Avalon is a mix between The British Isles, France and Iberia, aka the areas where
- The Cuelebre: The Golden Dragon, who found out that you can get more treasure by selling booze rather trying to raid and hoard gold.
- Illuyaka: A Great Electric Eel, who USED to be a big shot, but his confidence was absolutely crushed after losing to Tarhunz, the Hittite Storm God (well... one of them. They have a lot).
- Zmeya Gorynishche: An evil slaving dragon who haunts mortals after having lost her pups, and now leads a band of monstrous pirates.
Batch 3: Great Shapeshifters
- Kukulcan/Quetzalcoatl: A Grand Beast that’s also the head of multiple pantheons, he’s actually pretty pleasant. Doesn’t like Tezcatlipoca much though.
- Fafnir: A mobster dwarf AND a dragon. Don’t make him mad, lest he feels peckish, so be sure to be on time to pay back those loans...
- Nammu/Tiamat: Both a queen and a literal monster, she revels in being both the highest authority in the Mesopotamian Pantheon AND a giant monster feared by all. She loves picking on Marduk.
- Rahab/Sandalphon: A Cherubim who was once a mighty dragon-looking angel, feared by many, until she interacted more and more with the galaxy, and decided, in her heart, she’d feel more comfortable having a more humanoid form. She can still shapeshift to the dragon form however, when it’s convenient.
150 notes · View notes
ofliterarynature · 8 months
Text
Tumblr media
2023 Reading Wrap Up: Favorites from the First Half
Not to sound like a broken record, but I can't believe we're already halfway through the year! (and even further, given how late I'm posting this lol). I've read an ungodly amount of books already, and while I try my best to shout out my favorites as I go or in my monthly wrap-ups, I don't always succeed. So Here I Am, to do a little more shouting about the 10 most memorable books or series I've read so far in 2023!
The God of Endings by Jaqueline Holland
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
Sword Stone Table ed by Jenn Northington & Swapna Krishna
Sea Hearts (The Brides of Rollrock Island) by Margo Lanagan
Spill Zone by Scott Westerfeld & Alex Puvilland
Will Darling/Lilywhite Boys by K.J. Charles
Lord Peter Wimsey by Dorothy L Sayers
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
More discussion below the cut!
The God of Endings by Jaqueline Holland had me entirely engrossed. It's slow and moving and dark, with it's own take on vampirism, with any number of the associated content warnings. All the content warnings actually (but harm to animals, harm to children, and domestic abuse are some of the big ones. Does the Nazi murder make up for it?). Best described as The Historian meets everything I wanted from The Invisible Life of Addie Larue but didn't get.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez I have, in fact, already yelled about a bit. It was so good! Think A:TLA meets The Raven Tower and The Hundred Thousand Kindgoms, and queer! The thing that really blew my mind was the second-person narration, which is always a swing, and I think this nailed it! I loved how it worked with the story and frame narrative, and let me tell you, on audiobook parts of the story felt positively haunted. I won't say it's the perfect novel (I'm a little eh about the last third), but that in no way dampens my enthusiasm. cw for ritual cannibalism.
Sword Stone Table ed by Jenn Northington & Swapna Krishna is an anthology of Arthurian re-imaginings with about a 1-in-3 success rate (for me anyways. is that good for an anthology?) that snuck onto this list purely on the strength of Mayday by Maria Dahvana Headley. I just yelled about my love for unusual narrative structures, so when I tell you that this is a retelling of the Arthurian family drama set in late 19th century America, told only through found objects, newspaper clippings, and manuscript exerpts? I had *such* a great time trying to puzzle things out with my half-remembered memories of the lore (heavily corrupted by the show Merlin, lol). Additional shout-out to Spear by Nicola Griffith, which didn't make it into the collection due to length but was also amazing!
Sea Hearts (aka The Brides of Rollrock Island) by Margo Lanagan was an absolute surprise, for several reasons. For one, I own both a physical and digital copy under different titles and didn't realize it until I was cleaning up my goodreads account! And second, the Brides cover is an absolute travesty and is entirely the wrong vibe - this may be YA (technically?) but it doesn't read like it! Sea Hearts is the story of a small island community with a history of summoning wives from the sea, a tradition only whispered about until an outcast young woman revives the practices to sow discord and revenge among the community members we follow. Incredibly moving and sorrowful, this is for fans of literary, historical, and speculative fiction.
Spill Zone by Scott Westerfeld & Alex Puvilland. This graphic novel is about a city hit by an unknown disaster that has killed or mutated everything and everyone who wasn't able to evacuate in time. Our main character sneaks back in to take pictures to support herself and her little sister, and while I have some reservations about the larger plot, the art of the Zone is GORGEOUS. Sketchy, eerie, hauntingly beautiful, I loved it, enough that I have no regrets. I could see this making a great comic series or animated show instead.
Major, heartfelt shout-out to K.J. Charles, who absolutely saved my sanity for a few months there. My brain was in a weird spot for a few months and I burned through a good chunk of her backlist, so it's absolutely necessary to name drop a few of my favorites. The Will Darling series, a 1920's spy adventure/gay romance, did not immediately win me over, but exposure makes the heart grow fonder? I don't think they say that, actually, but I love a competent dumbass, and when I finally picked up on the crossover with Charles' England duo, I absolutely cackled. I can't wait to reread these! Any Old Diamonds of the Lilywhite Boys series did catch me immediately, even if I managed to read it out of order with one of it's prequel series. Jewel thieves, a heist, revenge, family drama, what's not to love? I loved every single book and novella in this series.
Lord Peter Wimsey (series) by Dorothy L Sayers. This has been a work in progress since 2022 and has consistently made my favorites lists, but truly, she saved the best for last! Murder Must Advertise was stellar, but everyone who said the Harriet Vane novels were the best is absolutely correct. I don't know why I love them, other than that they're wonderfully complex mysteries, but I do. I definitely need to find another long mystery series for my mental health or else I'm going to start these from the beginning again (I still need to read the short stories after all).
The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green. I'll be honest, I didn't write a review for this at the time, and my memory for non-fiction is terrible. But I loved this book, I love John Green, and this was fantastic on audio. Thank you John for putting hope and goodness and beauty into the world.
84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff was a beautiful little book for the book lover. It's a collection of letters between the American author and a used-book seller (and family and associates) in London in the 50s and 60s. Its funny, it's friendly, it's lovely, but there's also an underlying tension that builds throughout from the repeated invitations to the author to come visit, and the book copy saying that THEY NEVER MEET. It about killed me, and did make me cry. For further reading you can also check out the author's related memoirs, The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q's Legacy.
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein. Frankly, I'm impressed by my nonfiction choices so far this year. This one is what it says and it HURT. SO. MUCH. I am absolutely a generalist and it's made life frustrating, so reading this was both extremely comforting but also enraging, because society doesn't need another reason to suck. Alas.
21 notes · View notes
sawasawako-archived · 10 months
Text
The uncanny has infiltrated the real, and in some sense that boundary is forever compromised. There may be only one way into Area X, but there are a thousand ways out. As Michel de Certeau explains in The Practice of Everyday Life, “Every place has its own . . . proliferation of stories and every spatial practice constitutes a form of re-narrating or re-writing a place . . . Walking [into a place] affirms, suspects, tries out, transgresses, respects . . . haunted places are the only ones people can live in.”
– Hauntings in the Anthropocene, Jeff VanderMeer
32 notes · View notes
bulletnotestudies · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
Welcome back to another autumn mini reading challenge! Like last year, this is a shorter one to bridge the gap between our longer summer and winter challenges 🍂
RULES:  → reblog this post if you're participating → the challenge officially starts on october 1st and ends with november 30th, but you’re welcome to finish it at your own pace → use the tag #studyblr w/knives reading challenge when you post your updates/pics → the challenge is ofc, as usual, also on storygraph (check the notes for the link)
once you’ve read a book that fits a prompt, cross it out on the above template and/or share your thoughts on it in a post here on tumblr; make sure to mark any spoilers (hide them under a cut etc.), so people can avoid them if needed :) you can also have just one post and update it as you go, or you can post good ol’ aesthetic book pics!
as always, if you have any questions, my asks are open 🍂
(our book recs for this challenge are below the cut)
Tumblr media
Since this is a mini reading challenge, there won't be separate book rec posts, but we still compiled a couple good reads for you, just in case you can't think of a book to read for any of the prompts :)
Tumblr media
The Atlas Six - Olivie Blake
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
The Eight - Katherine Neville
Tumblr media
Read any book released this year that you've been excited for!
Tumblr media
The Charm Offensive - Alison Cochrun
Radio Silence - Alice Oseman
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Tumblr media
A book that makes you nostalgic!
Tumblr media
The Inheritance Games - Jennifer Lynn Barnes
The Gilded Wolves - Roshani Chokshi
An Absolutely Remarkable Thing - Hank Green
Tumblr media
Six of Crows - Leigh Bardugo
All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr
A Little Life - Hanya Yanagihara
Tumblr media
Murder on the Orient Express - Agatha Christie
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife - Ashley Winstead
If We Were Villains - M.L. Rio
Maus - Art Spiegelman
Tumblr media
Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
The Dangers of Smoking in Bed - Mariana Enríquez
The Hollow Places - T. Kingfisher
In the Dream House - Carmen Maria Machado
The Anthropocene Reviewed - John Green
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Caitlin Doughty
Tumblr media
Cemetery Boys - Aiden Thomas
Pumpkinheads - Rainbow Rowell
Dracula - Bram Stoker
A Dowry of Blood - S.T. Gibson
The Haunting of Hill House - Shirley Jackson
Tumblr media
115 notes · View notes
blue-hi · 3 months
Text
i took a gap year after i graduated, and it's wild how many books you can read when you have no assignments to do. here's a list of the books i managed to finish, from june 2022 to today (both nonfiction and fiction):
One Coin Found (Emily Kegler)
The Starless Sea (Erin Morgenstern)
House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
Dracula (Bram Stoker)
The Large Catechism of Martin Luther (Martin Luther)
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)
Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
Sunless (Nick @sol1loqu1st)
The Anthropocene Reviewed (John Green)
Fevre Dream (George R.R. Martin)
Last on Grant (Philip H. Pfatteicher)
Carmilla (Sheridan Le Fanu)
Mere Christianity (C.S. Lewis)
The Haunting of Hill House (Shirley Jackson)
Episode Thirteen (Craig DiLouie)
EarthWorld (Jaqueline Rayner)
Unnatural History (Jonathan Blum & Kate Orman)
The Book of the Still (Paul Ebbs)
Vanishing Point (Stephen Cole)
Eater of Wasps (Trevor Baxendale)
The Year of Intelligent Tigers (Kate Orman)
The Slow Empire (Dave Stone)
that is so many
8 notes · View notes
luxudus · 1 year
Text
The Neo-Anthropocene: Lost in Paradise
Tumblr media
A continuation of Boom and Oddly bright star
    It was a hard choice, but Castel, MeiHui and Doumu have begun descent into the atmosphere of this new world. With an initial burst of fuel, they used the acceleration to safely descend, piercing the airglow. They skimmed the outer atmosphere of this world’s vast night side with an ever shrinking orbit as they timed their bursts in a rhythmic pattern, as if the heart of their determination was still beating. They all put on their MKIII Xenonaut suits in preparation for what’s to come
    While they sailed across the vast blackness of this world, Meihui went to sleep while Doumu shut down to save on power, but Castel was still holding out. They looked out into the stars, in awe at the night sky, overwhelmed that they have seen things very few might ever see.     They look down to the planet, the horizon slowly illuminating with an orange glow surrounded by a blue atmosphere. Yet they can barely make out any details of the surface, except for some barely visible lights. Eventually they give in and fall asleep, no longer being able to hold out.
    Hours pass and the ship finally enters the visible atmosphere, and Doumu wakes Castel and Meihui up in a panic, warning them that the ship has detected extreme turbulence, and they have found themselves in the middle of a severe rainstorm. Castel retakes control of the ship and tries to land safely. Then they hear a Boom, the high temperatures caused by updrafts and constant rainfall made a fuse in the ship midsection blow up, causing the entire vessel to go critical, they must land now. Blinded by the rainfall, they descend quickly before hovering meters above the landscape all the while getting pelted with so much stuff the window begins to crack. Eventually they land, skidding across the surface and finally stopping. They have finally landed on the mysterious planet     They all take a breather, but this time MeiHui begins to break down, they risked their lives already, why must it happen again? Doumu comes to care for their creator, and Castel joins in to return the favor after the Helios Voyager blew up. They all rest once more before they venture out into the unknown.
    An hour passes, the sun emerges and peeks through the ship, gently waking up everyone. The three of them get ready to open the cockpit and venture out into the unknown. Castel pushes the glass window open and walks out. Through all their fears of what this world holds, all the haunting possibilities and bleak plausibility, none could have prepared them for what would come next.     Castel, MeiHui, and Doumu are all greeted by a vast wetland, covered in golden flora and littered with seasonal ponds, they look behind and witness a grand Congestus cloud sweep away, the same one that drenched the land and broke the ship. Massive bronze wooded trees, reminiscent of Africa’s Baobabs, stand strong and unscathed by the strong winds. Herds, packs and flocks of strange animals go on with their day. MeiHui and Doumu look for materials to repair each other while Castel looks on at the vast alien landscape. The tripartite have found themselves lost in paradise, Who knows what they might find in this strange new world.
21 notes · View notes
doorsclosingslowly · 6 months
Text
Halloween in the Anthropocene by Craig Santos Perez
Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.
The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let us
praise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of  black
boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry
bags of cacao under West African heat. “Trick
or treat, smell my feet, give me something good
to eat,” sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess.
Let us praise the souls of   brown girls who sew
our clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into
smoke and ash. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me
something good,” whisper kids disguised as ninjas.
Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children
who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens
their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets.
“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me,” shout boys
camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls
of  veterans who salute with their guns because
only triggers will pull God into their ruined
temples. “Trick or treat, smell my feet,” chant kids
masquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight,
let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes
are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned
rivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. “Trick
or treat,” says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us
praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother,
Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among dead
fish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers
of  asthma, mothers of  cancer clusters, mothers of
miscarriage — pray for us — because our costumes
won’t hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our
mothers of  lost habitats, mothers of  fallout, mothers
of extinction — pray for us — because even tomorrow
will be haunted — leave them, leave us, leave — 
6 notes · View notes
zitasaurusrex · 2 months
Text
i am still laying here haunted by robert macfarlane drawing comparisons between containment measures for nuclear waste and dire warnings to future people to stay away, and a classic finnish myth about a man descending deep underground to claim a cool secret power treasure despite tons of warnings about how dangerous and bad it would be.
fucking chills.
I read the Kalevala for two hours in view of that photograph, and as I read I come to realize something so unsettling that the back of my neck prickles: despite its great age, the poem seems to possess foreknowledge of what is presently being undertaken on Olkiluoto Island. Partway through the poem, Väinämöinen is given the task of descending to the underland. Hidden in the Finnish forests, he is told, is the entrance to a tunnel that leads to a cavern far underground. In that cavern are stored materials of huge energy: spells and enchantments which, when spoken, will release great power. To approach this subterranean space safely Väinämöinen must protect himself with shoes of copper and a shirt of iron, lest he be damaged by what it contains. Ilmarinen forges them for him. Clad in these insulating metals Väinämöinen approaches the tunnel mouth, which is disguised by aspens, alders, willows and spruce. He cuts down the trees to reveal the entrance. He enters the tunnel and finds himself in a deep ‘grave’ a ‘demon . . . lair’. He has stepped, he realizes, into the throat of a buried giant called Vipunen whose body is the land itself. Vipunen warns Väinämöinen not to bring to the surface what is buried in his caverns. He speaks of the ‘grievous pain’ of excavation. 'Why have you entered ‘my guiltless heart, my blameless belly’, Vipunen asks, ‘to eat and to gnaw / to bite, to devour’? He warns Väinämöinen that he will end up visiting terrible violence upon humans if he continues on his course, that he will become ‘a windborne disease / wind-borne, water driven / shared out by the gale / carried by chill air’. He threatens to imprison Väinämöinen by means of a containment spell so powerful that it is unlikely ever to be broken. It will take nine ram lambs born of a single ewe, together with nine bull oxen born of a single cow, together with nine stallions born of a single mare, pulling together to free him. But Väinämöinen will not listen to Vipunen. He sings of his conviction that the power buried underground should be returned to the surface: Words shall not be hid nor spells be buried; might shall not sink underground though the mighty go. The Kalevala is fascinated by the underland; by the safe storage of dangerous materials and the safe retrieval of precious materials. At the poem’s heart is a magical object or substance known as ‘Sampo’ or the ‘Sammas’; constructed by the blacksmith Ilmarinen, another of the Kalevala’s supernatural heroes, and stored inside the ‘copper slope’ of a ‘rocky hill’, protected by a gate with ten locks. This enchanted artefact, most often figured as a mill or quern, brings power, wealth and fortune to whoever controls it. It is – in modern terms – a weapons system, a rich raw resource, a nation’s organized industry, or a nuclear power station. The Sampo grinds out flour, it grinds out money – and it grinds out time. One of its given tasks is to grind out the age of the world, causing epochs to yield to one another in an immense cycle of precessions. The world has changed too much . . . we are in the Anthropocene.
4 notes · View notes
breeanant · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Toyin Ojih Odutola "Satellite", 2022.
Designed by Yeju Choi.
The publication was produced on the occasion of Toyin Ojih Odutola's New Work Show, at SFMOMA (fourth floor), on view through January 22nd, 2023.
Best known for drawings that use distinctively layered mark-making to highlight topographies of skin and surface, Toyin Ojih Odutola is a storyteller who often presents her work in graphic narrative cycles. For this publication entitled "Satellite", Ojih Odutola is inspired by the speculative fiction of Octavia E. Butler and the poetry of Dionne Brand and explores a future haunted by human-driven environmental changes. Set in the year 2050 in geological age the artist calls Anthropocene, in Eko - the traditional Yoruba name for today's Lagos, Nigeria - "Satellite" invites us to reflect on the contours of African and other global futures.
#toyinojihodutola #yejuchoi #eungiejoo #jackshainmangallery #sfmomastore #sfmomalibrary
30 notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media
Tomorrow's Parties: Life in the Anthropocene, edited by Jonathan Strahan, is an excellent anthology examining what life might be like in the recent, climate-disaster-haunted near-future.
It starts off with an interview about utopia, hope, and future with Kim Stanley Robinson, and then dives into 10 stories by authors including Meg Elison, Tade Thompson, Sarah Gailey, and more. My favorite story of all of them was "Legion" by Malka Older, which I've nominated for the Hugo Awards—the execution is superb in this story about how surveillance could be turned to the use of the oppressed to create a community of safety and scare the violent into non-action. I also adored "Down and Out in Exile Park" by Tade Thompson, a story about the possibility of utopia on a floating island of plastics off Lagos; and "Do You Hear the Fungi Sing" by Chen Qiufan, translated by Emily Jin, a queer tale of fungal networks and change.
All around, these stories dive into the utopias and dystopias, the resistance and complicities, that might result from our man-made disasters. The collection has everything—from mermaids to drone delivery to a cannibal Tom Hanks.
Content warnings for violence, ableism
18 notes · View notes