“And You’ll Return To Real Life. You Need To Live It To The Fullest. No Matter How Shallow And Dull

Like I dunno, if you REALLY wanted to make a more "modern" interpretation of Persuasion it wouldn't even be hard if you gave it more than a 2 second thought. All you have to do is plop the characters in a different time period, say the late 60's jumping to the early 80's, make Frederick black and have Anne's godmother persuade her not to marry him because an interracial marriage in, what, 1968? or something would just be too difficult for the both of them. You want him to stay in the navy or whatever have him enlist in Vietnam boom jump cut to the early 80s he's a decorated war hero or something we can have a laugh at her father and sister because now they're the walking talking embodiment of Reagan era consumerism, they're stupid empty headed rich yuppies, like it's not hard :/

Part 91 of my bakery “enemies” au!

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Kofi

One of my greatest fears is a mundane life.

― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

[text ID: I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.]

diverse and good fantasy books to read + hype up that AREN’T harry potter

since the entire hp stan community is shitting its pants over the fb3 trailer and ignoring jkr’s continued transphobia and homophobia

the shades of magic trilogy by ve schwab

queer author (uses she/they pronouns, is openly gay)

queer characters

characters of color

disabled protagonist

gorgeous prose + worldbuilding

a film adaptation is in the works!

a sequel trilogy of books is currently in the works!! it’s going to be called threads of power and it sounds amazing so far

the grishaverse by leigh bardugo

queer characters (literally so many across so many identities)

characters of color

multiple disabled protagonists (and the author is disabled too!)

IMPECCABLE worldbuilding and writing

it has a netflix series called shadow & bone that’s an absolute banger! season 2 is on the way too :))

an ember in the ashes by sabaa tahir

inspired by ancient rome

strong female protagonists who don’t hate on other women

non-toxic male love interests

absolutely heartbreaking

extremely intense (look up content warnings if you’re worried!)

many characters of color (+author is a poc too)

these violent delights by chloe gong

characters of color (+author is a poc too)

queer characters (including trans rep!)

an absolutely incredible love story (enemies to friends to lovers to enemies to it’s complicated?)

romeo and juliet retelling set in 1920s shanghai and featuring rival gangs—need i say more?

look up content warnings, especially if you’re scared of bugs!!!

Ten core principles necessary for the remodeling of your brain to take place:

1. Change is mostly limited to those situations in which the brain is in the mood for it.

If you are alert, on the ball, engaged, motivated, ready for action, the brain releases the neurochemicals necessary to enable brain change. When disengaged, inattentive, distracted, or doing something without thinking that requires no real effort, your neuroplastic switches are “off.”

2. The harder you try, the more you’re motivated, the more alert you are, and the better (or worse) the potential outcome, the bigger the brain change.

If you’re intensely focused on the task and really trying to master something for an important reason, the change experienced will be greater.

3. What actually changes in the brain are the strengths of the connections of neurons that are engaged together, moment by moment, in time.

The more something is practiced, the more connections are changed and made to include all elements of the experience (sensory info, movement, cognitive patterns). You can think of it like a “master controller” being formed for that particular behavior which allows it to be performed with remarkable facility and reliability over time.

4. Learning-driven changes in connections increase cell-to-cell cooperation which is crucial for increasing reliability.

Merzenich explains this by asking you to imagine the sound of a football stadium full of fans all clapping at random versus the same people clapping in unison. He explains, “The more powerfully coordinated your [nerve cell] teams are, the more powerful and more reliable their behavioral productions.”

5. The brain also strengthens its connections between teams of neurons representing separate moments of successive things that reliably occur in serial time.

This allows your brain to predict what happens next and have a continuous “associative flow.” Without this ability, your stream of consciousness would be reduced to “a series of separate, stagnating puddles,” explains Merzenich.

6. Initial changes are temporary.

Your brain first records the change, then determines whether it should make the change permanent or not. It only becomes permanent if your brain judges the experience to be fascinating or novel enough or if the behavioral outcome is important, good or bad.

7. The brain is changed by internal mental rehearsal in the same ways and involving precisely the same processes that control changes achieved through interactions with the external world.

According to Merzenich, “You don’t have to move an inch to drive positive plastic change in your brain. Your internal representations of things recalled from memory work just fine for progressive brain plasticity-based learning.”

8. Memory guides and controls most learning.

As you learn a new skill, your brain takes note of and remembers the good attempts, while discarding the not-so-good trys. Then, it recalls the last good pass, makes incremental adjustments, and progressively improves.

9. Every movement of learning provides a moment of opportunity for the brain to stabilize – and reduce the disruptive power of – potentially interfering backgrounds or “noise.”

Each time your brain strengthens a connection to advance your mastery of a skill, it also weakens other connections of neurons that weren’t used at that precise moment. This negative plastic brain change erases some of the irrelevant or interfering activity in the brain.

10. Brain plasticity is a two-way street; it is just as easy to generate negative changes as it is positive ones.

You have a “use it or lose it” brain. It’s almost as easy to drive changes that impair memory and physical and mental abilities as it is to improve these things. Merzenich says that older people are absolute masters at encouraging plastic brain change in the wrong direction.

Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, August 18th 1921

[text ID: And so this August is wasted.]