Classic Literature - Blog Posts

If you asked me about The Great Gatsby I would say Nick had a big fat homosexual crush on Gatsby. If you really asked me I would say

“it’s clear in the text that Nick is obsessed with Daisy in such a way that he leeches onto her. This could also be said of how he views Gatsby. One could say that Nick is just jealous of Gatsby but his inner monologue doesn’t reflect this sentiment. Just as Nick does Daisy he latches onto Gatsby’s social circle and life,attending his parties,following him to other sorts of activities and gatherings and some such things like that. Given all my conclusive evidence I think that Nick was just as infatuated (more so in a romantical/the way he romanticized jays life)with Gatsby as he was Daisy”

Which is basically the same thing but like with more yap. Anyway sorry if that was too much yap.

There is nothing worse in this world than the anatomical placement of elbows, it looks so wrong its unnerving

My two thoughts while reading The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

1: wow, this is a beautifully tragic story on what it means to become “useless” in the eyes of society despite so wanting to be a part of it and it is a critique on how we do not shame others for choosing not to work but once one is unable to, they loose all inherent value in our minds and are diminished to being simply, a pest.

2: I wanna scurry around like a little cockroach under furniture

— the secret history, donna tartt.

The Secret History

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

“I prefer to think of it, he had said, as redistribution of matter.”

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”

“In short: I felt my existence was tainted, in some subtle but essential way.”

“Anything is grand if it's done on a large enough scale.”

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly the ones i did not.”

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty - unless she is wed to something more meaningful - is always superficial.”

Totally didn't make this like a year ago but posting it just now what definitely nott

― Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights

//Whatever dies, was not mixed equally;

If our two loves be one, or, thou and I

Love so alike, that none do slacken, none can die.//

The Good Morrow, John Donne

Henrik Ibsen's Puphejmo-A Doll's House

jokes on you alex hirsch i love gatsby

More classic literature YouTubers because it's so funny to me

Bonus content:

People who write novellas must be absolutely going though it bc I've never read a novella that wasnt utterly devastating. These people really have Things to Say and whats more they do it in under 200 pages.

There is nothing like staying at home, for real comfort.

—Jane Austen, Emma

That feeling when you make the world's best joke but only people in the venn diagram of being in the Fandom and also enjoy classical literature will understand and everyone irl lies not in the middle.

"Maybe there is a Beast.... Maybe It's only US."

i made this for a literary magazine, do you like it ?

I love how when you first read Catch-22, it can be, well, kind of confusing near the beginning. However, at least in my case, since it was interesting and well written I personally didn't mind.

But slowly, everything sort of ties itself together. It also gets increasingly more and more serious. An obvious example of this would be chapter 39, 'The Eternal City.' But for me, one that really stuck out to me was chapter 32, 'Yo-Yo's Roomies.' It really did a good job of showing how much Yossarian truly missed Orr, no matter how many times Orr pissed off Yossarian.

At the same time, that chapter I also found notably funny in the way it's written. Especially the lines "They reminded him of Donald Duck's nephews," and "They had not brains enough to be introverted and repressed." and I just love how it's them being nice and friendly to Yossarian with overall good intentions xD.

Also rereading this makes things so much more understandable. All the random details mentioned, its even better when you know the context behind those little references, like "It was still more frustrating to try to appeal directly to Major Major, the long and bony sqaudron commander, who looked a little bit like Henry Fonda in distress and went jumping out the window of his office each time Yossarian bullied his way past Sergent Towser to speak to him about it." It's fun reading that actually knowing who Major Major Major Major is and why he does in fact, jump out the window.

I think that's kind of why some people dislike/give up on this book (well part of the reason) because it can seem kind of random the first time through, but for me personally, that was part of the beauty of it the first time I read it. Idk though, I just personally reveled in the beginning chaos.

Final essay in my fan fiction class for the Pride and Prejudice unit was about examining the Pride and Prejudice fan fiction we’ve interacted with and deciding what elements of the origin text and the subsequent fan fiction we would want to “love, marry, or kill” in relation to our own hypothetical fan fiction

(and of course how we would use our work and knowledge of other works to develop social commentary bc most fan fiction makes social commentary on some level)

So I thought a contemporary version of Pride and Prejudice that follows the plot of the origin text but Mr. Darcy is a woman (so we get lesbians) and Mr. Bingley is a really terrible wingman and part of the plot hinges on Mrs. Bennett constantly trying to set Elizabeth up with men bc it would make the family look better in some way but Mr. Bennett is like “have you seen our daughter??? She is so gay you can’t keep doing this”

(which is how we still get conflict related to Mr. Collins and Wickham, who I think I would also make a woman cause it’d be funny)

But anyways I think this would be fun bc a lot of Pride and Prejudice’s conflict comes from societal expectations and stupid unspoken social rules so in a contemporary setting making it really queer would be a good way to uphold this type of conflict without it feeling weirdly outdated

Also toxic yuri :)

Had to make a playlist about Pride and Prejudice instead of writing an essay (yay) and this is what I came up with:

Fair by The Amazing Devil

Mad Dog by The Crane Wives

No Children - Ska by Sad Snack (a ska cover of No Children by The Mountain Goats)

The Hand That Feeds by The Crane Wives

Rule #4 - Fish in a Birdcage by Fish in a Birdcage

Tongues & Teeth by The Crane Wives

When Somebody Needs You (Song) by Will Wood

WHAT LOVE? by I DON’T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME

What Do You Want from Me Tonight? By Sidney Gish

I Listened by Apes of the State

Love, Me Normally by Will Wood

Hold It In by Jukebox the Ghost

On one hand I am so excited about this assignment but on the other hand I feel bad bc my professor literally teaches at OXFORD and I’m forcing her to listen to Will Wood

…

(My top 5 on Spotify has been the same the past 3 years)

Second Anniversary Special

As many of the long-time followers of this blog know, I originally started out on the classic literature side of tumblr, which is what lead to my venturing into bsd. As an homage to my roots as a classic lit enthusiast, I’ll be going through all the works that I’ve read written by bsd authors:

The Spider’s Thread by Akutagawa

This short story is brought up in a lot of animes, which is unfortunately the most likely way western bsd fans. I could make an entire separate post of commentary on how the American school system doesn’t cover most foreign literature (outside of English [as in from England] and French works), and that is an absolute travesty. However, that’s not what we’re covering right now. 

Anyway. The Spider’s Thread is a very short story—like two pages at most. You can go read it now. For all the other entries I plan on rating the novels out of 5, but this one’s truly too short to rate. If you wanna read it you can find a hundred pdfs online. The same probably goes for most works of classic literature, so. Go wild enjoy the wonderful world of free online pdfs.

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

I was probably assigned other works by Poe, but this one is most likely his most famous short story. I was assigned it in middle school/high school/ and at least twice in college. Again, very short short story—you can read it in a few minutes tops. 

5/5 for the sole reason of it aligning with my personal sense of humor. I get that it’s not supposed to be funny, but unreliable narrators are and will always be hilarious to me. I love a guy insisting that he’s not crazy while he’s off murdering a guy. Cask of Amontillado-core protagonist. Funny because E.A. Poe also wrote Cask of Amantillado. I’m out here starting to suspect that E.A. Poe just really loved writing his unnamed unreliable narrator protagonists.

Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

I’ve never read Tom Sawyer, but in 11th grade my class read Huckleberry Finn. 3/5 because I don’t like the way it was taught in class, but I did enjoy analyzing it more than some other books we did. 

Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky

Currently reading it so I can’t give much feedback, but so far I’d like this guy (Raskolnikov not Dostoyevsky) to meet Meursault from The Stranger. If anyone’s made this crossover, please send it to me. And if not and you wanna go make it yourself—please I’ll love you forever.

Dracula by Bram Stoker 

I mean we’ve all done Dracula Daily. Or at least I’ll assume you’ve heard of it. 5/5, Mina’s best girl, Quincey’s best boy, I have very basic opinions but I’m standing by them.

--Bonus

The Stranger by Camus

Meursault the prison is clearly named after Meursault, the fictional character who famously goes to prison, right. We’re all on the same page about this, right? 

Anyway if you’ve never heard of or read the stranger, [spoilers] it’s about this guy who kills a guy for no reason (“it was just so hot outside, idk what happened but now there’s a dead guy, this is a good enough criminal defense right? You’re not gonna send me to jail for just this one little mistake---oh you’re giving me the death penalty? Ah. I see.”) Solid 4/5—points deducted for being a little slow by some parts (although I can’t vouch for how it is in the original French, this was only my impression from the English translation I read)

—————

After making this list, it’s clear that I haven’t read too many books my bsd authors, so next years my anniversary special will be more about the classic literature I have read. I do plan to keep posting until then. So please enjoy another year of the anti-dazai blog!!

Effect vs. Affect

I just came up with a fun way to remember when to use effect or affect.

Think about: Affect-ion

You give affection and are thus effected positively.

Affect is the intrusion or the causation and effect is the solution.

The rain affects the garden by watering it. The garden is effected by the rain.

Affect refers to an action that will/is/has interrupted the previous norm. Effect refers to the act of being influenced by something else

Affect is given onto something

Effect is received from something

Good Omens Hamlet

Do y’all ever think about what David must have had to deal with listening to that awful rendition of to be or not to be I mean hell, the actor had some of the words wrong and was terrible lol. I know it was purposeful but like as a Shakespeare geek seeing the supposed Richard Burbage be such a bad actor physically hurt me. I can’t imagine what David, a classically trained actor, who played Hamlet on the West End, must have felt.

So I was listening to the Jekyll and Hyde musical the other day and during Transformation I realized that some of the effects of HJ-7 sound oddly familiar to those of contrast.

For those who don’t know, contrast dye is used in MRI’s, CT scans, and other procedures to make certain parts of your body be more visible on the scan.

As for it’s side effects, there’s the normal ones and the dangerous ones, like there is in most medicine.

One of the normal side effects of contrast is a feeling of warmth through your body. (This would be the ‘warm in the gullet’ line).

Some of the negative side effects can include nausea, cramping, itching, and difficulty to breath. (Light headedness, breath taking pain)

I’m not going anywhere with this I just thought it was an interesting coincidence.

Part 2 of Russian edition of classic books (part 1)

To answer some questions: no, it’s not AI, the artist’s name is listed on the back. It’s hardback. One book costs about 4,5 dollars.

More of my favs:

Good Wives by Louisa May Alcott (art by чаки-чаки)

2. A Hero of our Time by Mikhail Lermontov (art by NIKEL)

3. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev (art by ulunii)

4. The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo (art by ALES)

5. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (art by ALES)

6. Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (art by pogogu)

7. Emma by Jane Austen (art by Cactusute)

8. The Brothers Karamazov Part 1 and 2 by Fyodor Dostoevsky (art by汚い12)

9. The Same Old Story by Ivan Goncharov (art by lewisite)

10. Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (art by Djuney9)

11. Ligeia by Edgar Allan Poe (art by ALES)

I really like this russian edition of classic books. Letting famous artists do the covers in YA style was such a simple but clever decision. According to the recent study the number of teenage readers increased, possibly thanks to these covers. I own traditional classics with blank covers but if I ever see one of these in the wild, it’ll probably make me go feral.

Here are some of my favs:

Dracula (art by Renibet)

2.Jane Eyre (art by Ulunii)

3. Little women (art by чаки чаки)

4. The Idiot (the hedgehog-omg-) (art by Xinshi)

5. Pride and Prejudice (art by Cactusute)

6. War and Peace (art by Xinshi)

7. Wuthering Heights (art by Renibet)

8. The Great Gatsby (art by NIKEL)

9. Frankenstein (art by Iren Horrors)

10. Crime and Punishment (art by REDwood)

11. Anna Karenina (art by Ulunii)

12. The Cherry Orchard (art by lewisite)

13. The Master and Margarita (art by Renibet)

What do you MEAN I have to write the rest of my thesis and refine it??? Is the shaky outline and 18 page ramble you approved not good enough? And all without supervision and schedule? It's like you think I'm a responsible adult or something...

Me talking to myself about books: “Frankenstein is the doctor, not the monster. Jeeves is a valet, not a butler. A league is a measurement of distance, not depth.”

Me talking to other people about books: “Frankenstein is the name of the butler, not the depth.”

holding a lightning rod while raving in a typhoon and swinging a harpoon burning with otherwordly fire at his crew: Just Little Ahab Things

Rodya Raskolnikov and Alyosha Karamazov. My beloveds (baby girls, if you will)

dostoy fandom not ready for the manga idea i had a year ago thats loosely raskolnikov and alyosha doing hot girl shit together

literally so funny in tbk the amount of times alyosha scurries and vaults himself over walls and hedges and gates while in his longass monk robes. the image of it described every time is the funniest thing ever i love him so dearly

The thing about me and Dostoevsky books is that everytime I read (or start rereading) one, I start wanting to read everything he has ever written... all at once.

If that's not a sign of severe mental instability what is?