i'm so tempted to give it a 5 even though it's the arc of missed opportunities and failed plotlines, just for how formative it was. would be so much better if the follow up arc concluded anything but the seat of your pants writing style is incredibly prominent with this one. meanders a lot.
still, judging it by later books isn't entirely fair. in my opinion it has the best main characters - yes, including lionblaze. his early appearances are just good. of course hollyleaf and jayfeather take two of the spots for my favorite characters in wc (of all time...?). i could write essays of character analysis on the three. eclipse and sunrise were so awesome for obvious reasons. weak plot beyond that but the characters make it hold up for me.
my 4/5 is definitely nostalgia talking but i can admit that. it was my favorite arc as a kid. sadly tbc doesn't have a wikipedia article but it takes the #1 spot now if you were curious. which checks out for sure.
I have an email job, which I know is a huge privilege, and I'm grateful. But it doesn't get much easier with practice. I'm always making typos and misjudging my tone and stuff. I'm sure I'm overthinking it but also it's like my freaking job you know. That said, I'm quite proud of my email skills, even if it takes me a good amount of effort to sustain them. There are some people I work with who answer every email within 5 minutes and I often think about how impressive that is to me and try to hold it up to myself as an ideal to which I aspire. I think what's nice about the 5-minute email reply isn't the "efficiency" of it or the impression it gives that you work hard, rather it's the impression it creates that the person replying genuinely care about conversing with you. The temporality of email is an underrated aspect of its colour -- together with length and content, the time you take to reply is often what marks the difference between engaging in an earnest and enthusiastic conversation, ticking tasks off your to-do list, and writing something akin to a polished and considered letter.
people are way too harsh on it because of its faults, especially the boring traveling sections. i agree with many criticisms but it brings a lot, especially with some of the characters. squilf especially is a perfect main character to follow after firestar. i find bramble to be interesting and grounded. leafpool is a great addition and her relationship with squilf is adorable. hawkwing is a lot of fun as an antagonist.
there's weird stuff with the age gaps for the romance which got distracting. not every pov needed to be there. the bramble/squilf fights were frustrating to read. was more engaging as a kid but there's still a lot to like. squirrelflight and leafpool alternate as my favorite characters in the whole series. shout out to mothwing as well. also leafpool is a lesbian to me i don't think she ever liked that man.
one night i was in 10th grade and suffering from acute task paralysis & executive dysfunction & had to write an essay that was due the following morning. i managed it by reading the entirety of prufrock whenever i started to panic because as 10th graders do i had convinced myself that it was about Me and My Struggles and it was very comforting to me. must have read it 10+ times in that one night but i ended up getting the essay done. i woke up the next morning having accidentally memorized most of it, figured it wouldn't take me that long to memorize the rest, & so i did. then in my freshman year of college i entranced an absolutely gorgeous person by reciting the entire thing to them, we got together, & we are still together to this day so the moral of the story is that ironically, the love song of j alfred prufrock will get you bitches. 5 stars.
when i worked at a summer camp i used the name Moray as my camp name. i was only a cook, not really one of those summer camp people, if you know what i mean, there for a paycheck not for the love of the sport. anyway i chose it because i had just read "Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl" and there was a poem in that book about Moray Eels that I liked. anyway a lot of people thought my name was "Mornay" like a cheesy bechamel sauce. which makes sense i worked in the kitchen i guess and they sound quite similar said aloud. AND my manager was someone who like worked on cruises and had apparently also gone diving and specifically didn't like those eels. she was a very bad manager as well. anyway these animals are pretty cool.
Any time I am in a living situation where I have open and exclusive access to a kitchen, I will cook pasta every day. I think pasta is one of those foods that I could never tire of eating. There are so many different ways one can enjoy pasta and so many different ingredients you can combine to create a wonderful dish.
Over the summer, I get chastised by my parents for only eating pasta every day for lunch. I often get comments about needing to diversify what I eat and needing to find more things to prepare for lunch that aren't pasta. I don't listen to them. They don't understand that for me pasta is something that is baked into my routine, and if I don't cook up pasta for lunch, I simply won't eat lunch. I can cook a few other things, like eggs, or fish, or hamburgers, but I simply like eating pasta for lunch.
I usually eat pasta either with butter or with tomato sauce and meatballs. I usually prioritize cooking up pasta with tomato sauce (as it is healthier) but I run into a few pitfalls. For one, my mother cooks the tomato sauce, so I rely on her saving some for me to use for my own meals. Second, I sometimes find chunks in the sauce that I abhor. These are usually herbs and tomato bits that have survived being pureed and are now in my pasta bowl to ruin my day. I usually take my spoon and surgically extract any solid sauce chunks from the bowl, putting them off to the side on a napkin.
My mother's tomato sauce tastes amazing though. The secret is that she lets the meatballs sit in the sauce for hours, so the sauce gets a very hearty taste. It is so good that it has ruined other tomato sauces for me. I hate store brand tomato sauce. I also hesitate to order pasta with tomato sauce when I go to an Italian restaurant, because I already know that they won't be as good as my mother's. This is a very common stereotype among Italian people, so I am told, and often people say that this isn't true. But this is true. My mother has the best cooking in the world. This is non-negotiable.
Pasta can come in many different forms. They can be long, like Spaghetti or Fettuccine. They can be a little bit less long, like ziti or rigatoni. My favorite type of noodle is called ditalini. In Italian, ditalini translates to "small thimbles", and I think that explains why it is my favorite. The small size leads to a very distinct mouthfeel that is very comforting for me. It feels satisfying to cram a bunch in your mouth.
I once laughed so hard that pasta came out of my nose. I was watching a video by IGN titled "Half-Life 2 Developers React to 50 Minute Speedrun", and I do not remember what was so funny that caused me to laugh, but it was something early on in the video. Something that they don't tell you is that when something solid goes through your nasal cavity it hurts a lot. Even worse was that I was eating pasta with tomato sauce, so the acidic tomato made it hurt even more. It hurt for about half an hour. My entire family was stunned. Only my brother saw the pasta actually fly out of my nose, so my parents were incredibly confused to what even happened in the first place. I still don't think they believe me when I told them pasta came out of my nose.
I was eating ditalini that day.
lewis was a real aggressive kitty. So aggressive that his owner, Cerise was given a restraining order. Lewis had to be put on house arrest, but no matter what she did she just couldn't seem to keep him inside. Cerise was then arrested and allowed to be put on probation, but ONLY if Lewis were euthanized. Cerise obviously refused and went to trial cuz who in the right mind would agree to that. Blablabla law stuff probation is changed, Lewis still has to stay inside, two years later the charges are expunged case dismissed Yay for Lewis
Apparently, Lewis could've just been defending himself. He'd been egged and sprayed by his residents. How could anyone do this to a kitty. Fun fact, he's also a polydactyl and has extra toes!
Edit omg im only realizing now autocorrect changed her name to cerise eveyrtime it's actually cisero LMAO
"There's nothing inside the man who sits there writing. Nothing of himself, I mean. How much better off the poor man would be if he devoted himself to reading. Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions. Writing, meanwhile, is almost always empty. There's nothing in the guts of the man who sits there writing. Nothing, I mean to say, that his wife, at a given moment, might recognize. He writes like someone taking dictation. His novel or book of poems, decent, adequate, arises not from exercise of style or will, as the poor unfortunate believes, but as the result of an exercise of concealment. There must be many books, many lovely pines, to shield from hungry eyes the book that really matters, the wretched cave of our misfortune, the magic flower of winter!"
Going back to her i think the guisarme represents an interesting intersection between livelihood, status and war. it's a peasant banger and while incredibly crude it does trace its roots to farming tools like the bill. Unlike the bill which would become gentrified and produce ornate examples, the guisarme doesn't share such a legacy and remains a tool of the lay. Perhaps most interestingly is that it's still a really effective weapon with the capacity to de-horse a knight and further incapacitate them. It may be the French/Continental origins of the weapon that limited its social mobility compared to the billhook which found its niche among wealthier English men-at-arms. See G.F. Laking (1920, vol 3) for more analysis.
...in engendering belief, we trace nausicaä's young-girl in the vignette of a crosshair, christ loosed from its kite, arms outstretched. her resurrection, her foretelling—it means something that she eclipses the masculinist presumption, that she struggles with, but steadily commits to, violence in order to survive. nausicaä embraces pacifism inasmuch as it is bearable, as it is effective, as it is pragmatic (and meaningfully so!).
her becomings-animal, too: whereas christ arrives already a man (so, too, a god), nausicaä fights for everything that she (inevitably) becomes. miyazaki thinks the wound, and she thinks it through. she observes, she draws nearer. she gets cut, she gets bitten: nausicaä's christ bleeds red, but turns blue—turns sky! but, none of these are met (in the eyes, in the face), as some 'essence', some 'already-known', even if <i>something</i> in the event already elides finite containment. experience is met by nausicaä (by the children, by the ohm), with truly-wide eyes (a silent flash, lastel-in-captivity: brief light, escaping the black hole of war, escaping a wound). and this eruptive process of recording, of encounter, pins motion to miyazaki's otherwise-massive, heaving work: precociously-sensitive articulations of its child-eyes, traversing technocultural geologies with the lightnesses of animate-thinking, with its own centuries of genius.
and hisaishi thinks the refrain, too, in bottled-recursions of synthesis (its modes, its affections). its spiral-passages, through motif and lyrical weft, through miyazaki's cel-walled antechambers; through acoustic fields (and cables), cut-out for bugs, windmills, chirps, whispers, hums, and milled-electricities (as many, many little-heralds, little-heraldings): hisaishi conducts air!
but miyazaki's voice actors think the break-down, or the rupture: principally, of shimamoto's nausicaä, and matsuda's asbel. each have their moments of performance; the mics catch their throats almost tearing apart from their respective inside-outsider pressures, met with their inalienable expressions of pathos—a kind of animism that becomes harder and harder to conserve, in the mass scalings-up of a 'professional studio technique.' not merely in terms of its technologies, but much more so in terms of an ethos. what does it mean to capture a performance, in animation? is it to elide all of its detectable edges, its hitchings? to 'disappear' all of its seams? for miyazaki, for nausicaä, here, the answer seems clear enough: a performance (and its capture, its recording) is to warble, to tumble-around—to weave! and she wouldn't have it any other way.
Stolen gardenia, makeshift lapel
It's bad behavior but I'll never tell if you don't
And you won't (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Your breath on my neck through my homecoming dress
I'm more patient now than I ever have been
Placated by a cold flask on your hip
And we're dancing (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Can I tell you a secret? (Ooh)
I'm desperate for you
My love is my love, it's big love for you
'Til it's your love, then it's your love
And it's your problem too
Here, just inches away from you
Four left feet in a room
Always all over you
You know and I know it's just how it goes
We both get too close 'til we fucking explode
And I hope they bury me right next to you
Ah, aah, aah
Ah, aah, aah
Brought a knife to the gunfight
But they shoot blanks and I'm feeling crazy tonight (Ah)
But I'm secretly still scared
That you'll see underneath and you'll leave me here
I'll cry till my hair all falls out (Nah-ah-ah-ah)
Is it just me or is this room way too loud?
Don't look now, but everyone's staring at us weird
And is it just me, or is there no air in here?
My love is my love and bleeds like a wound
You pretend not to notice something I like about you
Young and sweet, only seventeen
I'm the real pig blood soaked fucking homecoming queen
Fire in my eyes, I just stand here and bleed
Crying in your arms, baby, can't we just leave?
Everyone's watching us and I can't breathe
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh at me
They're all gonna laugh
underrated genre of music, i think it’s probably one of my most listened genres for this year. honestly it helped me with my pronunciation but it’s still too fast for me to learn properly (╥﹏╥)
my top 3 (as of now):
1: khiao lueang daeng (get high) - PUN. in general i really like PUN, and the first song of his i listened to was tee derm like a year ago which was really nostalgic because i associated it with my September 2025 bangkok trip where i was like. Really really happy. ilove khiao lueang daeng because i just find it a really cute song like yes i want to get high with you tonight i want to watch the stars with you i want to countdown with you i think you look the best when you can barely speak i think the sky is really beautiful but i only have eyes for you
2: tuidui - YENTED. well i’ve never gone for someone who just broke up with a rich person, but every other part of the song is pretty relatable. yes i am a loser for you yes i want to be the one you’re waiting for yes i will be loyal to you but you just want to be friends :/
3: 3am call - MIRR, BLVCKHEART. again i don’t really relate to this, because i’ve never had an ex to be hung up on. No i will not say shit like “come back to me if you’re still single” 😭😭😭 but i like the song when i’m not paying attention to the lyrics. i listened to it on a loop when i was overnighting at the hospital in september and i know it did irreversible damage to my spotify wrapped.
i’m probably a larper though because i only listen to the mainstream artists and songs. nonetheless i love tpop ❤️
the only kind of porphyrian tree that is drawn up by anyone, especially in learning what this is, is not even a porphyrian tree; it's what WOULD be a porphyrian tree--of animals, of geometric shapes--if not for the fact that the divisions made are according to accidental rather than essential determinations. that is to say, from the moment it is introduced, excuses are made for its inadequacy to represent its subject matter, and the people who understand what a porphyrian tree actually is meant for (the classification of living things in terms of the different qualities of their souls, e.g., christian theology) take this relative uselessness to be a sign of its power; other questions are trivial and this triviality is represented in the tree's indifference. it is an intensely & at times violently, domineeringly boring thing that reproduces its boredom everywhere it goes
chicken soup… chicken… soup… perhaps i was born to love this little bowl of warmth for the rest of my life :) there is something so tender about the way a homemade soup can make the world feel softer, how a spoonful of it carries the kind of love that words could never quite describe. thank you, Mom, for every bowl you’ve made for me, for every time you’ve warmed my heart when my body felt unwell, and for every little moment of comfort, especially when it’s time to break my fast. i think some of the most beautiful things in life are the simplest ones, like coming home to a bowl of chicken soup made by the hands that have loved you all your life. perhaps this is what happiness tastes like, perhaps this is what home feels like. i could eat it every single day and never grow tired of it, because how could i ever grow tired of something that feels so much like being loved?
I know for sure when my body succumb to death, it begin the natural process of decomposition. My flesh disintegrates, my blood dries up, and eventually reduced to mere bones. A reminder that my physical existence is fleeting. But what about the soul? Does it simply vanish, or does it continue to exist beyond the boundaries of my mortal shell? Some believe that the soul, the essence of who we are, embarks on a journey after death, but where does it go? Does it remain in familiar places, intertwined to the life it once knew, or does it ascend to a realm beyond human comprehension? And more intriguingly, does the soul have a say in where it will go? Can it choose to move towards the light, or is its fate already decided based on the life it lived? Such questions left me with a sense of wonder and uncertainty, it draws me closer to understanding the nature of existence itself, to such, makes me ponder what truly lies beyond the veil of life
"Thus the paradox in Spinoza is that he’s the most philosophical of philosophers, the purest in some sense, but also the one who more than any other addresses nonphilosophers and calls forth the most intense nonphilosophical understanding. This is why absolutely anyone can read Spinoza, and be very moved, or see things quite differently afterward, even if they can hardly understand Spinoza’s concepts. Conversely, a historian of philosophy who understands only Spinoza’s concepts doesn’t fully understand him. We need both wings, as Jaspers would say, just to carry us, philosophers and nonphilosophers, toward the same final point. And it takes all three wings, nothing less, to form a style, a bird of fire."
Deleuze, Gilles. “Letter to Reda Bensmaia, on Spinoza.” In Negotiations: 1972 - 1990, by Gilles Deleuze. Translated by Martin Joughin. European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism. Columbia University Press. Columbia University Press. Ebook. 220.
https://youtu.be/PQMRrJG_QC0?is=RpdGgJ5rzaVulFRP
watch the section starting around 5:53 regarding the guitar solo for peg. fifty bajillion takes on it, fagen and becker play some and then say “speaks for itself” and it does! the solos stink! then they drop in the final product, this sleazy “hawaiian, polynesian” riff that pulls off into a small little show, like a guy drunkenly stumbling out of his car to be lit up by the neon glow of a giant sign for a tiki-themed motel, little gnats flying through the bright night’s air, and it’s immediately clear that riff’s the one. how could that not be the one? that’s aja: it speaks for itself. you get it on the first listen and you get it even more on the 50th. why is that such a bad thing to aspire to? in a twitter rant about “the dan”, steve albini said there are “two types of perfectionist: one will prepare, revise and rehearse carefully, with intent, honing an idea to a keen edge, ready to cut the cloth of execution. the other makes other people responsible by saying, 'do it again, until by chance they are satisfied, then take all credit.” there’s something to be said about the plight of the studio player, but fagen and becker always struck me as the first type. to them, their work speaks for itself. who cares about the quibbles in the sessions or what your process looks like or some meaningless insider purity tests? they’re making something over here. if it’s so easy, why don’t you do it?
"Spinoza was the philosopher who knew full well that immanence was only immanent to itself and therefore that it was a plane traversed by movements of the infinite, filled with intensive ordinates. He is therefore the prince of philosophers. Perhaps he is the only philosopher never to have compromised with transcendence and to have hunted it down everywhere. In the last book of the Ethics he produced the movement of the infinite and gave infinite speeds to thought in the third kind of knowledge. There he attains incredible speeds, with such lightning compressions that one can only speak of music, of tornadoes, of wind and strings. He discovered that freedom exists only within immanence. He fulfilled philosophy because he satisfied its prephilosophical presupposition. Immanence does not refer back to the Spinozist substance and modes but, on the contrary, the Spinozist concepts of substance and modes refer back to the plane of immanence as their presupposition. This plane presents two sides to us, extension and thought, or rather its two powers, power of being and power of thinking. Spinoza is the vertigo of immanence from which so many philosophers try in vain to escape. Will we ever be mature enough for a Spinozist inspiration?"
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “The Plane of Immanence.” In What Is Philosophy?, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. European Perspectives. Columbia University Press, 1994. 48.
beautiful, glorious, elegant, intelligent, charming, kind, thoughtful, strong, courageous, creative, brilliant, gentle, humble, generous, passionate, wise, funny, loyal, dependable, graceful, radiant, calm, confident, warm, compassionate, witty, adventurous, respectful, sincere, magnetic, bold, articulate, empathetic, inspiring, honest, patient, powerful, attentive, uplifting, classy, friendly, reliable, ambitious, intuitive, talented, supportive, grounded, determined, charismatic, extraordinary, trustworthy, noble, dignified, perceptive, innovative, refinedconsiderate, balanced, open-minded, composed, imaginative, mindful, optimistic, virtuous, noble-hearted, well-spoken, quick-witted, deep, philosophical, fearless, affectionate, expressive, emotionally intelligent, resourceful and absolutely unforgettable king
"Perhaps this is the supreme act of philosophy: not so much to think THE plane of immanence as to show that it is there, unthought in every plane, and to think it in this way as the outside and inside of thought, as the not-external outside and the not-internal inside—that which cannot be thought and yet must be thought, which was thought once, as Christ was incarnated once, in order to show, that one time, the possibility of the impossible. Thus Spinoza is the Christ of philosophers, and the greatest philosophers are hardly more than apostles who distance themselves from or draw near to this mystery. Spinoza, the infinite becoming-philosopher: he showed, drew up, and thought the 'best' plane of immanence—that is, the purest, the one that does not hand itself over to the transcendent or restore any transcendent, the one that inspires the fewest illusions, bad feelings, and erroneous perceptions."
Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. “The Plane of Immanence.” In What Is Philosophy?, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Graham Burchell. European Perspectives. Columbia University Press, 1994. 59-60.
Loading more…
bug
garfield
inthechalkpit
naïve
wiff
iloveshoebill
Momo
Marilynator
wrrrk
lyramast
444
canaryswear
teainbloom
wrath
so true dude
magik