Appreciation post for one of the great books of my childhood. It's about a disabled boy finding his place in society, essentially, and it's full of human warmth and care and connection, rather than the gratuitous brutality that's too often associated with the Middle Ages. There's plague, and woodworking, medieval physical therapy, scary Welshmen, music used to measure the passage of time, the phrase she'll bake thee a bannock which was part of my family dialect for years, and it's so, so quietly and gently told. I'm shooing you in its general direction.

The Door in the Wall (H.G. Wells) "This short story is about Lionel Wallace, who at the age of 5 encountered and entered a weird door. Behind it he found a beautiful and peaceful garden and felt such happiness and bliss, that when he was transported back on the street and escorted back to his home, he was very upset. He would see the door again many times later in life, but every time he will refuse to enter it due to his responsibilities (for example, to not be late to class, to catch a train, to be on time for an appointment). He grew up and became a successful politician, but the perfect world behind the door haunted him, and his success felt dull and boring. The book ends with people finding his lifeless body at the bottom of a pit, and that he had in poor light walked through a small doorway that led onto it. The narrator then speculates that maybe Lionel saw the perfect garden behind the doorway and was finally able to find happiness."

The Yellow Wallpaper (Charlotte Perkins Gilman) "The story is written as a collection of journal entries narrated in the first person. The journal was written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the husband forbids the journal writer from working or writing, and encourages her to eat well and get plenty of air so that she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency", a common diagnosis in women at the time. As the reader continues through the journal entries, they experience the writer's gradual descent into madness with nothing better to do than observe the peeling yellow wallpaper in her room." Link to Project Gutenberg

The tone of this piece is exquisitely handled, and it remains one of the most affecting portraits of that palpable but indefinable sense of loss entailed by growing up...the way the petty business of living repeatedly get[s] in the way of recovering that childhood numinosity. And although it is a sad story (it is, indeed, one of the saddest I know) it is not a depressing story, because Wells understands that life is the myriad gettings-in-the-way that define our days, and the desire to get past that is actually the desire to stop living.[10]

Title: The Door in the Wall (1906) Author: Herbert George Wells Vote: 6/10

The door seemed to me to be a gigantic metaphor for the childhood of the protagonist who would like to enter it and return to that happy and carefree world but the daily events of life keep him away.

Who knows if in death he managed to cross the door and return to that world of tamed fairies and leopards.

"most allegedly haunted houses turn out to have gas leaks!"

no they don't. you are merely skimming the surface of mundane shit that can be wrong with old houses with your one puny little explanation that only fits a very small number of cases. try harder

Title: The Door in the Wall

Author: Marguerite de Angeli

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Review: I was talking to my mother about books that I had read as a child and about re-reading A Wrinkle in Time when we got into a discussion about what she had read for her children's literature class. This was where a lot of the books she'd read me as a child had come from and she began questioning if I had read The Door in the Wall. Randomly I stumbled upon this at a used bookstore and picked it up because of that conversation. It's a pleasant historical fiction with a disabled main character which I was quite surprised to find out. A very quick read there's not too much that occurs with each chapter containing bits of an over-arching plot but acting as small stories nonetheless. It was fine but certainly something I could see myself having enjoyed much more if I was reading it as a child.

"We see our world fair and common, the hoarding and the pit. By our daylight standard he walked out of security into darkness, danger and death. But did he see it like that?"

- H. G. Wells, The Door In The Wall

so who's gonna feed me until i can't get up out of bed on my own 🥺

stop everything. what if those trucks were full of water. what if everyone was going to be iced. remember how when the second batch of english/spanish speakers came in they all had been arrested for some reason? but we never figured out why?

and we know walter bob was a worker who was sent to prison because they don’t know how else to house people they can’t find a place for. and they sent the residents to the prison just because the island was getting dangerous for them.

what if inmate crucifixion was going to be them getting iced like tubbo rivers niki mouse pol- all of that batch? until they could find another place to put them? and the others are previous residents that had their island get corrupted/ruined and had to be imprisoned and iced?

Publishing has always been a fucking nightmare, but now it’s a layer of hell. It’s not enough that writers be good at what they do. Writers have to maintain an active social media presence and cultivate a following. Be available.

They have to be conventionally attractive enough to look good enough to see on a screen, aesthetically pleasing, kind, funny, up-to-date on trends, socially aware but not so controversial that they turn off a brand from California from slapping their discount code on a video promoting a book.

They have to do all of this with no media training, with little help from the companies that are supposed to be doing this for them.

Of course, a lot of this isn't possible for say, the 40-something mother of two who teaches English at a school and writes on the side. She’s boxed out of an already complex industry that already has enough walls.

On some level, I think authors have always marketed themselves a little, but we’ve reached such a crazy point where we’re demanding the author become the influencer. Accessibility in publishing has narrowed from an inch to a sliver. And that inch was hard enough to get in as is.

You know which scene I am basing this on. Also (kisses all the fanfic writers on the mouth) thank you for your service

Bonus:

Edit: DISCLAIMER: Before you decide to watch Re-Animator, make sure to check for content warnings, there is a scene that a lot of people choose to skip!

I want to rant about tubbos rp style. I often get annoyed by people giggling about -100 rp points because LISTEN!! This style is UNIQUE and SO COOL!! Everyone loves phils 4th wall breaks why cant tubbo have that?

Theres rules to the universe like "federatoin buildings are protected" and "the mob cap is this number" and "this entity is omnipresent and much too powerful". But tubbo finds a way to challenge all of that and it works!! He breaks the federation protection, he manipulates mob caps, he tells you the stats of essentially god and the exact steps to take it down.

He sees through and into everything. You are just a number of totems and armour durability to him. Creative mode is just another problem to solve. Leveling millions of blocks is a matter of minutes to him and hell still complain about efficiency.

The way he speaks is like he's tearing apart the threads of your reality. He asks you what the guts of god look like and two minutes later hes holding them and gods dead body is at his feet.

Of course admins have to blind him a little and pomme has to tell him off in brackets. Hes insane (synonymous to cool, epic, awesome, outstanding, one-of-a-kind, never before seen, admirable, showstopping).

'he's eventually faced with an impossible task and begins to slowley realize what he must do, but not before slipping back to talk to mobius one last time. he wants to say goodbye'

This is not for you.

Lamborghini Countach 25th Anniversary Coupé, 1989. Chassis no. ZA9CA05A6KLA12692 appeared in and was wreaked for Martin Scorsese's film The Wolf of Wall Street. The 25th Anniversary model finished in Bianco Polo over Bianco interior is one of 12 built for the US market. It is the exact car that Leonardo DiCaprio crashed in the film, apparently Scorsese was dissatisfied with the damage done during the stunts and had a flatbed truck collide with the Bertone-designed Lamborghini multiple times to inflict more damage. It is to be offered at auction by Bonhams and has an estimate of US$1,500,000- $2,000,000.

auction listing

new chapter soon