Paris Is Always Showing Its Teeth. When It Is Not Snarling, It Is Laughing.

hi imagine adam and ronan getting into a fight where adam storms out of monmouth and gansey calls him hours later like “can you please come do something with your boyfriend?” and in the background he can hear the clutter of noah and ronan making a makeshift band out of crap around monmouth and playing blink 182′s I Miss You

sometimes you just.. fuck a demon. have a one-night stand w/ an age-old malevolent entity. maybe even sometimes that blossoms into more. life's just like that, occasionally. like that's just how it is

PUT A HEX ON YOU | a mix for modern witches.

listen / download

“where the devil can’t succeed, he’ll send a woman.” -ukranian proverb

Button author Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib’s poem featured on the sign of a BBQ restaurant in Toronto. Get your copy of Hanif’s incredible book here.

Why The Raven Cycle isn’t getting any diver$ity cookie from me.

This contains mild spoilers, and text from The Raven King.

The way Henry was introduced in BLLB was unforgettable. We saw him making an offhand rape comment. This is pretty common. See All For the Game series by Nora Sakavic where their lone!good!moc could be seen making the same proclamation throughout the series. I am willing to let it slide, maybe, this is not about race.

Moving forward to The Raven King, we get to know Henry Cheng better. He’s half Chinese and half Korean. His mother Seondeok is a Korean dealer of illegal antiquities. White authors can’t seem to write East Asians without associating them with mob, yakuza, and mafia? Another example: All For the Game series by Nora Sakavic

This is the part where it gets nauseating. 

“Principles? Henry Cheng’s principles are all about getting larger font in the school newsletter,” Ronan said. He did a vaguely offensive version of Henry’s voice: “Serif? Sans serif? More bold, less italics.”

Blue saw Adam both smirk and turn his face away in a hurry so that Gansey wouldn’t see, but it was too late.

“Et tu, Brute?” Gansey asked Adam. “Disappointing.”

“I didn’t say anything,” Adam replied.

It was explicitly stated Henry’s second language is English. I’m going to assume Ronan is mocking the way Henry speaks, the intonation or accent of his voice. Whichever fucking way I look it is racist. Nobody even called Ronan out. The gross thing, the author made it into an “inside joke” for pynch.

This didn’t end right there. We have another pynch scene where they made a punchline out of Henry’s ethnicity.

“Adam made puerile jokes at Henry’s expense (He’s half Chinese? “Which half?”) and sniggered clannishly; Blue called them on it (“Jealous, much?”): Gansey told them to put aside their preconceptions and think about him.

Really? This made into the final publication? Minority’s ethnical identity isn’t a subject for crass puns.  Blue and Gansey’s meek intervention is not going to pacify me. I’m not here for this. Once again, this become a “cutesy” pynch scene.

These vile ~scenes~ about Henry’s otherization serves no purpose. It doesn’t contribute anything to the plot. You can reason out the narrative is implying Adam and Ronan are jealous (of Gansey’s new attachment to Henry,) but the author could’ve made a different approach of executing that. This is deliberate.

Another troubling scene with Henry and Blue

It was this: Blue, teetering on the edge of offence, saying, I don’t understand why you keep saying such awful things about Koreans. About yourself. And Henry saying. I will do it before anyone else can. It is the only way to not be angry all of the time.

Great another Korean character written by white author who might or might not be experiencing internalized racism. Sounds familiar? See Ellen Oh’s intake of Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell.

I see a lot of bloggers here are now clamoring for Henry, maybe it’s because he’s greatly sculpted, or because he’s Asian and his characterization speaks to you. If your reason is the latter, I have news for you. There are plenty of Asian authors specifically Chinese, and Korean, who are out there doing a spectacular job at it. Here are some of them; Jenny Han, Renee Ahdieh, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, Ellen Oh, Maureen Goo, Marie Lu, Lydia Kang, Amy Zhang, Celeste Ng, S. Jae-Jones, and more.

If you want to know exactly what hell feels like, fall in love with me.

Haiku on Destructive Habits (via whispersinnthedarkk)

(via nitesuke)

old woman josie out near the car lot says the angels revealed themselves to her she said they helped her with various household chores one of them changed a lightbulb for her, the porch light

gansey: *sighs dramatically, looking out the window*

ronan: what, is adam late for your nerd circle jerk?

gansey: *face pressed into the glass* yes

Don’t mind me, I’m just going to go lay face-down on the floor and think about Neil’s insistence on thoughtful navigation of Andrew’s post-abuse boundaries.

where is that quote that's like "i love the way men love"