“If two people love the same thing, she reasoned, then they must love each other, at least a little, even if they never say it.”

— Susan Vreeland, Girl in Hyacinth Blue

honestly instead of writing off monsters like vampires (or just monsters that look more human in general) as being unscary/unsexy why dont you consider the implications of being a thing that can theoretically pass amongst human society but is forever set apart by a deeply inhuman violence a hunger that both elevates you to a position above them (the predator to their prey) and simultaneously debases you (your feral animalism to their sapient complete personhood) why dont you think about the constant control necessary to inhabit this in-between and the vulnerability of shedding that disguise even if only to feed or to kill why dont you contemplate the fear and eroticism of it all. bitch.

Peter Vogt, “Honor to the Side": The Adoration of the Side Wound of Jesus in Eighteenth-Century Moravian Piety (2009)

Victorian gift book c. 1850s-1860s with inlaid mother of pearl.

Hermann Hendrich, Walpurgishalle, Goethe's Faust, Gretchen Appearing

She feels the lure of sitting with a good book, a big thick one of the kind that leave an impression stronger and realer than life itself.

Hanne Ørstavik, Love, tr. Martin Aitken

"It is, in fact, peculiarly difficult to take [entertainment films] seriously. The films themselves set up a deliberate resistance: they are so insistently not serious, so knowing about their own escapist fantasy/pure entertainment nature, and they consistently invite the audience’s complicity in this. To raise serious objections to them is to run the risk of looking a fool (they’re “just entertainment,” after all) or, worse, a spoilsport (they’re “such fun”). Pleasure is indeed an important issue."

poetry and musical theater get similar accusations leveled at them in terms of not being realistic, i.e. “no one fucking talks like that” or “people don’t randomly burst into song in real life” and sometimes i just want to take people by the shoulders and say. there are forms of art that are not aiming for perfect realism. are you capable of handling that

Hearts, Angela Strassheim

1. Shot in the Heart.

2. Cancer Heart.

3. Teen Drug Overdose Heart. 

4. Fatty Oversized Heart. 

ideal ways for me to die

1. old age, peacefully in my sleep

2. after a long and illustrious career i am at a rooftop gala hosted in my honor. i am wearing a beautiful gown, holding a glass of red wine, standing by the railing. a scorned lover approaches and, after a passionate spat, they push me over the edge of the building. the wine glass goes flying, splattering their outfit in red as a visual metaphor for the blood on their hands. as i descend my gown flies around me like two beautiful wings, a bird in flight. a photographer on the street manages to take a photo before i hit the ground and that photo wins the pulitzer. a new york times think piece is released regarding whether or not it's moral to profit off a photo of someone's death. the think piece also wins a pulitzer.

3. sex accident.

Jenny Hval, from Girls Against God

Joseph Fred Spalding

• The storm’s forewarning a Fernie skyscape, 1908
  
• The silver lining, Fernie, British Columbia, 1908