What Books On The Fae Would You Recommend?

we need more books that are written like YA novels but have characters in their 20s… like I can’t keep reading books about teenagers but I’m also not ready for the weird adult romance section of the book store

We're f-f-flying in a CAR Ron, Owl, Harry and his SCAR Pass the mic right over to THE WHOMPING WILLOW

The sugar bowl page from Austere Academy brightened up to the best of my ability and transcribed below:

It is a truth universally acknowledged that volunteers prefer their tea as bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword, but few think to consider the true meaning behind that phrase. The [untrained or uninitiated] might assume that bitter tea means tea without sugar. But that assumes all sugar is sweet and all tea is bitter. In fact, there are many kinds of tea, that are not bitter at all, but sweet and fruity, usually identifiable by a whimsically [illegable] name and a box with a picture of an adorable animal wearing pajamas. So it stands to reason that, if not all tea is bitter, then not all sugar is sweet. The question we might ask is: why would sugar be bitter How would bitter sugar be created? And what greater purpose might bitter sugar serve? Lousy Lane, pg 678

THE SCHISM

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those hierarchies apart, and therefore instead of fixing one date for the schism, we may as well put a bracket around all of human history, and say: There! Are you happy? However, there is one thing that all sources seem to agree on: there is a vital connection between the VFD schism and the most import part of a tea set. No, not the teapot. (see “Sugar Bowl”, above)

Some people claim that the schism divided VFD cleanly in two, with one side devoted to starting fires, and the other devoted to putting them out. But of course, it is rare for anything to divide so neatly, with the exception of a particular sort of semi-soft cheese (see “Gorgonzola”, pg 401). No, it is far more likely

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remain shrouded in mystery, including the circumstances of its creation, we can only speculate at the connection between city’s official organization and its similarly-named counterpart. Some sources claim that the chief of the Offical Fire Department was a close blood relation of a prominent member of VFD, though this fire chief has stubbornly refused to answer to any of our questions, on account of being deceased.

Finally, there is much debate regarding the exact cause of the schism. While most experts agree that it stemmed from what one might politely call “philosophical differences” the truth is that these differences had been churning under the surface of VFD for some time, even going back to the organization’s very name. After all, while might assume that the phrase “fire department” would obviously refer to an organization that puts out fires, thus protecting highly flammable literary materials, the phrase could just as easily refer to an organization that prefers to start fires and burn books (see: Bradbury, Ray pg 451). Still, let’s take a moment to theorize about those philosophical differences. Volunteers claim to be acting for the greater good, but philosophers who speak to the concept of moral relativity would be quick to point out that words such as “good”, “evil”, “delicious” and “sandwich” can be ascribed different meanings, depending on the value system and dietary preferences of the

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I recently discovered laundry stripping and y’all, no matter how much of a crock of shit you think fast fashion is, you’re underestimating.

had a minor crisis when 12ft.io went down yesterday and thankfully it's back now but this seems like a good opportunity to compile a list of similar paywall-evading tools in case 12ft ever gets canned for real:

12ft.io: the legend himself. definitely my favorite of the bunch by virtue of being the easiest to use (and the easiest url to remember), but it's configured to disable paywall evasion for a handful of popular sites like the new york times, so you'll have to go elsewhere for those.

printfriendly: works great; never had any issues with removing paywalls, even on domains that don't work with 12ft.io. since this site is literally designed to make sites print-friendly, it might simplify the overall formatting of the page you're trying to access, which can be a good or bad thing. my only real issue is that the "element zapper" (which lets you remove content blocks from the print-friendly preview) is a little sensitive if you're browsing on a touchscreen device, which means you might accidentally delete a paragraph when you're just trying to scroll. but if that happens you can reload the page and it'll revert everything back to its original state.

fifteen feet: basically a 12ft clone, minus 12ft's restrictions. haven't used it much since I only discovered it yesterday in the wake of 12ft's 451 error but it seems to do the trick.

archive.today: an archival tool very similar to the wayback machine, but it also works as a de facto paywall removal tool. (the wayback machine seems to remove paywalls as well, but archive.today has better UX imo and is way faster to use.)

and an honorable mention for sci-hub: only works for scientific/academic journals, not random news articles, but the other sites listed above only work for random news articles and not academic publications so you gotta have this one in your toolbelt for full coverage. pubmed is your oyster.

Y’all saying “I don’t have a type,” as if my squad of three-piece-suit-wearing deadpan nontemporal storytellers with unparalleled voices hasn’t shaped you into a person, imagining being a character in a weird fiction story at least five times a day

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar, where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned by a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony

- Jill Thomas Doyle

i’ve said in vfdiscord earlier about how the conclusions in Sub-file B in file under: 13 suspicious incidents that don’t have matching counter parts from Sub-file One might possibly be Jacques’ or Kit’s mission / cases / incidents encountered misfiled because of someone maybe someone confused those with Lemony’s cases because of the same last name.

so after getting home today i reread some and i have. some more thoughts. like the misfilings could be of various reasons and not just last name Snicket, though some of them still might be.

take for example:

museum authorities??? well we all knew one person who was hanging around museum during the atwq times. there’s nothing saying it’s the same museum as the one kit was plotting to steal from (implying it’s in The City), but there’s also nothing directly saying that the mine voices was from the same mine Marguerite worked at (implying it’s at SBTS)

anyway more under cut because this got long

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so we've talked about southern gothic but what about northern gothic? is that a thing?

There wasn’t so we invented one!

Southern gothic is a conventional literary genre, but northern gothic fiction would just get encapsulated in the overall Gothic genre. BUT. Tumblr made a meme. Because of course we did. It’s here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/regional-gothic.

So far I’ve found Midwest Gothic: here here and here

Southern California Gothic, which is  popular (because of fucking course): here here here here and fuckin here

Northern England Gothic: here and here and here

not to mention chucklefucking Alaskan Gothic: really? i mean really?? fuck you. fuck you alaska.

And fuck me there’s even Gothic subgenres for cities that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Kansas City. Minneapolis. Small town Michigan Gothic?? Toronto? Yeah fucking Toronto.

In fact, there’s assorted Canada Gothic? There’s  so much hell-forsaken Canada Gothic, too fuckin much. 

International Gothic? Fuck this. There’s So Much Australian Gothic. There’s Finland Gothic. There is so much more and I want nothing to do with it.

But the worse, the absolute worse of the whole satan-forsaken toxic hellpile: Ohio Gothic. I hate Ohio. I am. from. Ohio. I was born there. One day I will die there. I fear Ohio. Because in Ohio: “Holes in the sidewalk. Holes on the street. Holes on the freeway. Holes in your mind.” And Ohioans know: HELL IS REAL.

in the latest cyber-news: the internet archive has lost their case against 4 major publishing houses (verge article). they’re going to appeal, but this is still a bad outcome. the fate of the internet is currently hanging in the balance because 4 multibillionare publishing groups missed out on like $15 of combined revenue during the pandemic because of the archive’s online library service. it’s so fucking stupid.

for those who don’t know what the internet archive is, it’s a virtual library full of media. books, magazines, recordings, visuals, flash games, websites - a lot of these things either don’t exist anymore or cannot be found & bought. heard of the wayback machine? that’s part of the internet archive. it is the most important website to exist, and i don’t say that lightly. if the internet archive goes down, the cultural loss will be immeasurable.

so how can you help?

boycott the publishing companies involved in this. they’re absolute ghouls, frankly, and don’t deserve a penny. the companies involved are harpercollins (imprints), wiley (imprints), penguin random house llc (imprints), and hachette book group (imprints). make sure the websites are set to your location as it may differ worldwide.

learn to torrent. download a torrent client (i recommend transmission), a vpn (i recommend protonvpn - sign up and choose the area that’s closest to your continent/country), and hit up /r/piracy on reddit for websites. with torrenting, you can get (almost) any media you want for free in high quality, with add-ons such as subtitles, and with no risks of loss. i would also recommend getting into the habit of watching stuff online for free. the less you can pay to a giant corporation, the better.

get into the habit of downloading and archiving materials. find a TB external hard drive, ideally the higher the better. it’ll probably cost around $60 for 1TB and continue to go up, but they’re so so useful. if you can’t afford a drive, look for any GB harddrives or memory sticks you have lying around and just fill them up. videos, pdfs, magazines, songs, movies, games - anything you can rip and download and fit on there, do it, because nothing is permanent.

donate to the internet archive. this is the most important option on the list. the IA relies entirely on funding, and it’s going to need more to fight this case. whatever you can donate, do it. i promise it’s helpful.

and finally…