Remember This Girl? This Is Her Now, Feel Old Yet?

Film Noir Movies

People think that Film Noir is a reaction to World War II. Not true. Most of the great hard-boiled and noir pulp fiction came out during the 30’s, as a reaction to the great depression. Film noir didn’t become a big thing until after the war (post 1945), because the powers that be didn’t want to release pessimistic, down-ending films that would lower the country’s morale.

This could be a very loooong list. Hundreds of films in fact. So I am just going to list the films that I heard mentioned specifically in various film noir documentaries and books, as examples of great noir.

Film Noir Era 1945-1958

The Letter (1940)

The Stranger on The Third Floor (1940)

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Glass Key (1942)

This Gun For Hire (1942)

Shadow of A Doubt (1943)

Double Indemnity (1944)

To Have and Have Not (1944)

Laura (1944)

Murder My Sweet (1944)

Phantom Lady (1944)

Detour (1945)

Fallen Angel (1945)

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)

The Lost Weekend (1945)

Mildred Pierce (1945)

Scarlet Street (1945)

The Big Sleep (1946)

Black Angel (1946)

The Blue Dahlia (1946)

The Dark Corner (1946)

The Dark Mirror (1946)

Decoy (1946)

Gilda (1946)

The Killers (1946)

Notorious (1946)

The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946)

The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946)

The Stranger (1946)

Body and Soul (1947)

Born To Kill (1947)

Brute Force (1947)

Crossfire (1947)

Dark Passage (1947)

Dead Reckoning (1947)

Desperate (1947)

Kiss of Death (1947)

Lady In The Lake (1947)

Nightmare Alley (1947)

Out of The Past (1947)

Ride The Pink Horse (1947)

T-Men (1947)

The Big Clock (1948)

Call Northside 777 (1948)

Cry of The City (1948)

Force of Evil (1948)

He Walked By Night (1948)

Hollow Triumph (1948)

Key Largo (1948)

The Lady From Shanghai (1948)

The Naked City (1948)

Pitfall (1948)

Raw Deal (1948)

The Street With No Name (1948)

They Live By Night (1948)

Act of Violence (1949)

Border Incident (1949)

Criss-Cross (1949)

Impact (1949)

The Reckless Moment (1949)

The Set-Up (1949)

Thieves’ Highway (1949)

The Third Man (1949)

White Heat (1949)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

D.O.A. (1950)

The File on Thelma Jordan (1950)

Gun Crazy (1950)

In A Lonely Place (1950)

Night and The City (1950)

Panic In The Streets (1950)

Side Street (1950)

Sunset Boulevard (1950)

Where Danger Lives (1950)

Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950)

Ace In The Hole (1951)

His Kind of Woman (1951)

On Dangerous Ground (1951)

The Prowler (1951)

Strangers On A Train (1951)

The Bad and The Beautiful (1952)

Clash By Night (1952)

Kansas City Confidential (1952)

The Narrow Margin (1952)

Sudden Fear (1952)

Angel Face (1953)

The Big Heat (1953)

The Blue Gardenia (1953)

The Hitch-Hiker (1953)

Niagra (1953)

Pickup on South Street (1953)

Crime Wave (1954)

Human Desire (1954)

Rear Window (1954)

The Big Combo (1955)

The Desperate Hours (1955)

Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

The Night of The Hunter (1955)

The Killing (1956)

While The City Sleeps (1956)

The Wrong Man (1956)

Sweet Smell Of Success (1957)

Touch of Evil (1958)

Vertigo (1958)

Neo-Noir Era 60’s-90’s

À bout de soufflé/ Breathless (1960)

Shoot The Piano Player (1960)

Underworld, U.S.A. (1961)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

Harper (1966)

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Dirty Harry (1971)

The French Connection (1971)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

Chinatown (1974)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Body Heat (1981)

Blade Runner (1982)

Blood Simple (1984)

To Live and Die In L.A. (1985)

Blue Velvet (1986)

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988)

The Grifters (1990)

King of New York (1990)

Miller’s Crossing (1990)

New Jack City (1991)

The Silence of The Lambs (1991)

Basic Instinct (1992)

Reservoir Dogs (1992)

True Romance (1993)

Natural Born Killers (1994)

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Devil In A New Dress (1995)

Heat (1995)

Se7en (1995)

The Usual Suspects (1995)

Fargo (1996)

L.A. Confidential (1997)

The Big Lebowski (1998)

Payback (1999)

---

---

Essays

Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of essays I like/find interesting/are food for thought; I’ve tried to sort them as much as possible. The starred (*) ones are those I especially love

also quick note: some of these links, especially the ones that are from books/anthologies redirect you to libgen or scihub, and if that doesn’t work for you, do message me; I’d be happy to send them across!

Literature + Writing

Godot Comes to Sarajevo - Susan Sontag

The Strangeness of Grief - V. S. Naipaul*

Memories of V. S. Naipaul - Paul Theroux*

A Rainy Day with Ruskin Bond - Mayank Austen Soofi

How Albert Camus Faced History - Adam Gopnik

Listen, Bro - Jo Livingstone

Rachel Cusk Gut-Renovates the Novel - Judith Thurman

Lost in Translation: What the First Line of “The Stranger” Should Be - Ryan Bloom

The Duke in His Domain - Truman Capote*

The Cult of Donna Tartt: Themes and Strategies in The Secret History - Ana Rita Catalão Guedes

Never Do That to a Book - Anne Fadiman*

Affecting Anger: Ideologies of Community Mobilisation in Early Hindi Novel - Rohan Chauhan*

Why I Write - George Orwell*

Rimbaud and Patti Smith: Style as Social Deviance - Carrie Jaurès Noland*

Art + Photography (+ Aesthetics)

Looking at War - Susan Sontag*

Love, sex, art, and death - Nan Goldin, David Wojnarowicz

Lyons, Szarkowski, and the Perception of Photography - Anne Wilkes Tucker

The Feminist Critique of Art History - Thalia Gouma-Peterson, Patricia Mathews

In Plato’s Cave - Susan Sontag*

On reproduction of art (Chapter 1, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

On nudity and women in art (Chapter 3, Ways of Seeing) - John Berger*

Kalighat Paintings  - Sharmishtha Chaudhuri

Daydreams and Fragments: On How We Retrieve Images From the Past -  Maël Renouard

Arthur Rimbaud: the Aesthetics of Intoxication - Enid Rhodes Peschel

Cities

Tragic Fable of Mumbai Mills - Gyan Prakash

Whose Bandra is it? - Dustin Silgardo*

Timur’s Registan: noblest public square in the world? - Srinath Perur

The first Starbucks coffee shop, Seattle - Colin Marshall*

Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai’s iconic railway station - Srinath Perur

From London to Mumbai and Back Again: Gentrification and Public Policy in Comparative Perspective -  Andrew Harris

The Limits of “White Town” in Colonial Calcutta - Swati Chattopadhyay

The Metropolis and Mental Life - Georg Simmel

Colonial Policy and the Culture of Immigration: Citing the Social History of Varanasi - Vinod Kumar, Shiv Narayan

A Caribbean Creole Capital: Kingston, Jamaica - Coln G. Clarke (from Colonial Cities by Robert Ross, Gerard J. Telkamp

The Colonial City and the Post-Colonial World - G. A. de Bruijne

The Nowhere City - Amos Elon*

The Vertical Flâneur: Narratorial Tradecraft in the Colonial Metropolis - Paul K. Saint-Amour

Philosophy

The trolley problem problem - James Wilson

A Brief History of Death - Nir Baram

Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical - John Rawls*

Should Marxists be Interested in Exploitation? - John E. Roemer

The Discomfort You’re Feeling is Grief - Scott Berinato*

The Pandemic and the Crisis of Faith - Makarand Paranjape

If God Is Dead, Your Time is Everything - James Wood

Giving Up on God - Ronald Inglehart

The Limits of Consensual Decision - Douglas Rae*

The Science of “Muddling Through” - Charles Lindblom*

History

The Gruesome History of Eating Corpses as Medicine - Maria Dolan

The History of Loneliness - Jill Lepore*

From Tuskegee to Togo: the Problem of Freedom in the Empire of Cotton - Sven Beckert*

Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism - E. P. Thompson*

All By Myself - Martha Bailey*

The Geographical Pivot of History - H. J. Mackinder

The sea/ocean

Rim of Life - Manu Pillai

Exploring the Indian Ocean as a rich archive of history – above and below the water line - Isabel Hofmeyr, Charne Lavery

‘Piracy’, connectivity and seaborne power in the Middle Ages - Nikolas Jaspert (from The Sea in History)*

The Vikings and their age - Nils Blomkvist (from The Sea in History)*

Mercantile Networks, Port Cities, and “Pirate” States - Roxani Eleni Margariti

Phantom Peril in the Arctic - Robert David English, Morgan Grant Gardner*

Assorted ones on India

A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001 - Alexander Evans *

Writing Post-Orientalist Histories of the Third World - Gyan Prakash

Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain - Aditya Mukherjee

Feminism and Nationalism in India, 1917-1947 - Aparna Basu

The Epic Riddle of Dating Ramayana, Mahabharata - Sunaina Kumar*

Caste and Politics: Identity Over System - Dipankar Gupta

Our worldview is Delhi based*

Sports (you’ll have to excuse the fact that it’s only cricket but what can i say, i’m indian)

‘Massa Day Done:’ Cricket as a Catalyst for West Indian Independence: 1950-1962 - John Newman*

Playing for power? rugby, Afrikaner nationalism and masculinity in South Africa, c.1900–70 - Albert Grundlingh

When Cricket Was a Symbol, Not Just a Sport - Baz Dreisinger

Cricket, caste, community, colonialism: the politics of a great game - Ramachandra Guha*

Cricket and Politics in Colonial India - Ramchandra Guha

MS Dhoni: A quiet radical who did it his way*

Music

Brega: Music and Conflict in Urban Brazil - Samuel M. Araújo

Color, Music and Conflict: A Study of Aggression in Trinidad with Reference to the Role of Traditional Music - J. D. Elder

The 1975 - ‘Notes On a Conditional Form’ review - Dan Stubbs*

Life Without Live - Rob Sheffield*

How Britney Spears Changed Pop - Rob Sheffield

Concert for Bangladesh

From “Help!” to “Helping out a Friend”: Imagining South Asia through the Beatles and the Concert for Bangladesh - Samantha Christiansen 

Gender

Clothing Behaviour as Non-verbal Resistance - Diana Crane

The Normalisation of Queer Theory - David M. Halperin

Menstruation and the Holocaust - Jo-Ann Owusu*

Women’s Suffrage the Democratic Peace - Allan Dafoe

Pink and Blue: Coloring Inside the Lines of Gender - Catherine Zuckerman*

Women’s health concerns are dismissed more, studied less - Zoanne Clack

Food

How Food-Obsessed Millennials Shape the Future of Food - Rachel A. Becker (as a non-food obsessed somewhat-millennial, this was interesting)

Colonialism’s effect on how and what we eat - Coral Lee

Tracing Europe’s influence on India’s culinary heritage - Ruth Dsouza Prabhu

Chicken Kiev: the world’s most contested ready-meal*

From Russia with mayo: the story of a Soviet super-salad*

The Politics of Pancakes - Taylor Aucoin*

How Doughnuts Fuelled the American Dream*

Pav from the Nau

A Short History of the Vada Pav - Saira Menezes

Fantasy (mostly just harry potter and lord of the rings)

Purebloods and Mudbloods: Race, Species, and Power (from The Politics of Harry Potter)

Azkaban: Discipline, Punishment, and Human Rights (from The Politics of Harry Potter)*

Good and Evil in J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lengendarium - Jyrki Korpua

The Fairy Story: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis - Colin Duriez (from Tree of Tales)*

Tolkien’s Augustinian Understanding of Good and Evil: Why The Lord of the Rings Is Not Manichean - Ralph Wood (from Tree of Tales)*

Travel

The Hidden Cost of Wildlife Tourism

Chronicles of a Writer’s 1950s Road Trip Across France - Kathleen Phelan

On the Early Women Pioneers of Trail Hiking - Gwenyth Loose

On the Mythologies of the Himalaya Mountains - Ed Douglas*

More random assorted ones

The cosmos from the wheelchair (The Economist obituaries)*

In El Salvador - Joan Didion

Scientists are unravelling the mystery of pain - Yudhijit Banerjee

Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell*

What Do the Humanities Do in a Crisis? - Agnes Callard*

The Politics of Joker - Kyle Smith

Sushant Singh Rajput: The outsider - Uday Bhatia*

Credibility and Mystery - John Berger

happy reading :)

---

Resources For Writing Deaf, Mute, or Blind Characters

 Despite the fact that I am not deaf, mute, or blind myself, one of the most common questions I receive is how to portray characters with these disabilities in fiction.

As such, I’ve compiled the resources I’ve accumulated (from real life Deaf, mute, or blind people) into a handy masterlist.

Deaf Characters:

Deaf characters masterpost

Deaf dialogue thread

Dialogue with signing characters (also applies to mute characters.)

A Deaf author’s advice on deaf characters

Dialogue between Deaf characters

“The Month I Suddenly Went Deaf”

What It’s Like Going Deaf In Your Thirties

9 Women Share What It Feels Like To Lose Your Hearing

What It’s Like Being a Deaf Teenager (video)

Parenting With Sign Language (video)

Deaf Teen Talks About Losing His Hearing To Meningitis (video)

Things Not To Say To A Deaf Person (video)

Deaf Kids Shining in High School (video)

I recently discovered the youtube channel of the amazing Jessica Kellgren-Fozard, a vintage-loving, lesbian, happily married queen, who talks about her deafness in many of her videos.  I can’t recommend her enough.

Black Deaf Culture Through the Lens of Black Deaf History

Black Deaf History

Video: How to Sign in BASL (Black American Sign Language)

Mute Characters

Life as a Mute

My Silent Summer:  Life as a Mute

What It’s Like Being Mute

21 People Reveal What It’s Really Like To Be Mute

I am a 20 year old Mute, ask me anything at all!

Blind Characters:

Things Not To Say To A Blind Person (video)

What It’s Like to Go Blind (video)

The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About Blind Characters.

@referenceforwriters masterpost of resources for writing/playing blind characters.

The youtube channel of the wonderful Tommy Edison, a man blind from birth with great insight into the depiction of blind people and their lives.

As does Molly Burke, “a typical sushi and makeup loving millennial girl who just so happens to be blind.”

And Alyssa Irene, who talks about her experience going blind and life as a blind person.

An Absolute Write thread on the depiction of blind characters, with lots of different viewpoints and some great tips.

And finally, this short, handy masterpost of resources for writing blind characters.

Characters Who Are Blind in One Eye

4 Ways Life Looks Shockingly Different With One Eye

Learning to Live With One Eye

Adapting to the Loss of an Eye

Adapting to Eye Loss and Monocular Vision

Monocular Depth Perception

Deaf-Blind Characters

What Is It Like To Be Deafblind?

Going Deaf and Blind in a City of Noise and Lights

Deaf and Blind by 30

Sarita is Blind, Deaf, and Employed (video)

Deaf and Blind:  Being Me (video)

Born Deaf and Blind, This Eritrean American Graduated Harvard Law School (video)

A Day of a Deaf Blind Person

Lesser Known Things About Being Deafblind

How the Deaf-Blind Communicate

Early Interactions With Children Who Are Deaf-Blind

Raising a DeafBlind Baby

If you have any more resources to add, let me know!  I’ll be adding to this post as I find more resources.

I hope this helps, and happy writing!  <3

---

Glaze is out!

Tired of having your artwork used for AI training but find watermarks dismaying and ineffective?

Well check this out! Software that makes your Art look messed up to training AIs and unusable in a data set but nearly unchanged to human eyes.

I just learned about this. It's in Beta. Please read all the information before using.

---

a collection of motivational insights regarding content creation and creative hobbies

and of course the classic

---

asoue netflix au where everything’s the same but beatrice and bertrand are played by melissa fumero and andy samberg and they act exactly like amy santiago and jake peralta

A photographer’s portrait in a mirror, a hundred years ago, Japan, ca. 1920. Text and image via Old Japanese Photos on Facebook

Index of Frightful Friday Posts 101–200

Young Goodman Brown | Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Devil and Daniel Webster | Washington Irving

The Cigarette Case | Oliver Onions

The Readjustment | Mary Austin

No. 5 Branch Line: The Engineer | Amelia Edwards

The Easter Egg | Saki

The Lottery | Shirley Jackson

The Secret of Kralitz | Henry Knutter

Mother of Toads | Clark Ashton Smith

Old Garfield’s Heart | Robert E. Howard

The Outsider | H.P. Lovecraft

The Ghosts | Lord Dunsany

The Man-Eating Tree | Phil Robinson

The Reckoning | Lafcadio Hearn

Wild Swimming | Elodie Harper

Neighbourhood Watch | Greg Egan

The Bus-Conductor | E.F. Benson

The Nightmare Room | Arthur Conan Doyle

The Devil of the Marsh | H.B. Marriott-Watson

Weeds | Stephen King

Djinn and Bitters | Harold Lawlor

A Night of Horror | Dick Donovan (aka James Edward Preston Muddock)

Leiningen Versus the Ants | Carl Stephenson

The Vampire of Croglin Grange | Augustus Hare

Lost Hearts | M.R. James

Round the Fire | Catherine Crowe

The Music of Erich Zann | H.P. Lovecraft

Sir Dominick’s Bargain | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

Pigeons from Hell | Robert E. Howard

The Medici Boots | Pearl Norton Swet

The Toll-House | W.W. Jacobs

Pride & Prometheus | John Kessel

The Shadowy Third | Ellen Glasgow

Was It a Dream? | Guy de Maupassant

The Open Door | Margaret Oliphant

Three Skeleton Key | George G. Toudouze

Man-Size in Marble | Edith Nesbit

Silent Snow, Secret Snow | Conrad Aiken

A Sound of Thunder | Ray Bradbury

The Gateway of the Monster | William Hope Hodgson

Ofodile | Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Repossession | Lionel Shriver

Light and Space | Ned Beauman

Stairs | Penelope Lively

Dark Christmas | Jeanette Winterson

How Fear Departed the Long Gallery | E.F. Benson

Thurnley Abbey | Perceval Landon

To Be Read at Dusk | Charles Dickens

The Tractate Middoth | M.R. James

The Truth, The Whole Truth, And Nothing But The Truth | Rhoda Broughton

Lost in a Pyramid, or the Mummy’s Curse | Louisa May Alcott

The Sumach | Ulrich Dabney

The Pavilion | Edith Nesbit

The Flowering of the Strange Orchid | H.G. Wells

At the Dip of the Road | Mary Louisa Molesworth

At Chrighton Abbey | Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Banshees and Warnings | Lady Gregory

At the End of the Corridor | Evangeline Walton

The Tree’s Wife | Mary Elizabeth Counselman

Pickman’s Model | H.P. Lovecraft

The Dead Man | Fritz Leiber

The Canal | Everil Worrell

The Return of the Sorcerer | Clark Ashton Smith

The Child That Went with the Fairies | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Piano Next Door | Elia W. Peattie

The Miniature | J.Y. Akerman

The American’s Tale | Arthur Conan Doyle

The Death’s Head | Friedrich Laun

The Spectre-Barber | Johann Karl August Musäus

The Family Portraits | Johann August Apel

The Storm | Sarah Elizabeth Utterson

The Invisible Girl | Mary Shelley

The Botathen Ghost | R.S. Hawker

The Whisperers | Algernon Blackwood

The Curse of Vasartas | Eva Henry

The Lost Door | Dorothy Quick

Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook | M.R. James

The Mysterious Mummy | Sax Rohmer

Dagon | H.P. Lovecraft

Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter | J. Sheridan Le Fanu

The Poor Ghost | Christina Rossetti

The Night Wire | H.F. Arnold

Old Aeson | Arthur Quiller-Couch

The Feather Pillow | Horacio Quiroga

Fingers of a Hand | H.D. Everett

The Tale of Satampra Zeiros | Clark Ashton Smith

The Story of Baelbrow | Kate & Hesketh Prichard

The Jelly-Fish | David H. Keller

The Ebony Frame | Edith Nesbit

The Man of Science | Jerome K. Jerome

The Open Window | Saki

The Hall Bedroom | Mary Wilkins Freeman

No. 252 Rue M. le Prince | Ralph Adams Cram

The Weird Violin | Anonymous

The Ghost’s Summons | Ada Buisson

The Doll’s Ghost | F. Marion Crawford

The Canterville Ghost | Oscar Wilde

The Tapestried Chamber | Sir Walter Scott

The Gorgon’s Head | Edith Bacon

The Empty House | Algernon Blackwood

For the first one hundred stories, please visit: Index of Frightful Friday Posts 1–100

Salamander’s Eyes compliment can only work once in a lifetime. It just did

cause of death: newtina

*spoilers for crimes of grindelwald

newt looking for tina when jacob and queenie arrived

narrow feet

jacob being a wingman

salamander’s eyes

“tall, dark-” “-beautiful”

tina’s jealousy

newt trying to tell tina the truth

newt and tina’s reunion

mr. scamander

newt’s expression when tina called him her fiance

newt + his appreciation for tina’s eyes

newt showing tina her photo

when newt finally told tina he wasn’t engaged

legit thought he was going to turn and snog her after the ‘I’ll think of something’

newt tracking tina

rescue attempt

they’re in love

and I’m dead