If we wanted to engage in nuance (lol, lmao) on the “are audiobooks reading” debate, we really do need to bring literacy, and especially blind literacy, into the conversation.
Because, yes, listening to a story and reading a story use mostly the same parts of the brain. Yes, listening to the audiobook counts as “having read” a book. Yes, oral storytelling has a long, glorious tradition and many cultures maintained their histories through oral history or oral + art history, having never developed a true written language, and their oral stories and histories are just as valid and rich as written literature.
We still can’t call listening in the absence of reading “literacy.”
The term literacy needs to stay restricted to the written word, to the ability to access and engage with written texts, because we need to be able to talk about illiteracy. We need to be able to identify when a society is failing to teach children to read, and if we start saying that listening to stories is literacy, we lose the ability to describe those systemic failures.
Blind folks have been knee-deep in this debate for a long time. Schools struggle to provide resources to teach students Braille and enforcing the teaching of Braille to low-vision and blind children is a constant uphill battle. A school tried to argue that one girl didn’t need to learn Braille because she could read 96-point font. Go check what that is. The new prevalence of audiobooks and TTS is a huge threat to Braille literacy because it provides institutions with another excuse to not provide Braille education or Braille texts.
That matters. Braille-literate blind and low-vision people have a 90% employment rate. For those who don’t know Braille, it’s 30%. Braille literacy is linked to higher academic success in all fields.
Moving outside the world of Braille, literacy of any kind matters. Being able to read text has a massive impact on a person’s ability to access information, education, and employment. Being able to talk about the inability to read text matters, because that’s how we’re able to hold systems accountable.
So, yes, audiobooks should count as reading. But, no, they should not count as literacy.
Fortune Teller: *pulls a tarot card for a reading for Stephen* Stephen: Uh oh… Fortune Teller: You know what that means? Stephen: That guy has a sword… better watch out for that… Fortune Teller: Never mind.
The core appeal of Willy Wonka is that he’s a nigh-omnipotent maniac who uses his near limitless powers over reality to trick shitty people into killing themselves. You can’t make him the protagonist of a whimsical coming of age tale - you have to treat him like Jason Voorhees, or Dracula, or any other horror icon. Give him some new victims and new interesting kills and set him loose, that’s all audiences want.
I feel like I watched a somewhat different movie…
Gene lobbied hard for Wonka to be introduced as a feeble limping old man who suddenly falls into a forward somersault and leaps to his feet, because “from that moment on the audience won’t know if he can be trusted.” On a related note: the director told Gene what would happen during the boat scene, but none of the other actors were prepared; to this day, none of them are sure what he ad libbed and what was scripted.
My favorite detail, though, is his performance of Pure Imagination. On the surface, the song is charming and inviting, but if you look closely at him throughout the scene, you’ll notice that Gene never blinks. He looks around, down at his feet, up at the trees; his eyes never fully close. He moves erratically, stuttering up and down the steps of the chocolate room. The lyrics are warm and friendly, but his face is blank. He bows to permit his visitors to run amok, but his posture is stiff. He helps Violet and Mike reach a couple of treats, but there is no joy in the gesture. The final post-chorus feels like a dirge, a threat, and a warning, all at once; Wonka sits in repose under a tree, but his eyes are glassy and dispassionate. “There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination; / living there / you’ll be free / if you truly / wish / to be………. ”
Fantasy in excess, like anything else, will destroy you; that’s the real message of Gene Wilder’s Wonka. He taunts his guests with unrepentant disdain, and doesn’t care if they live or die. He toys with their emotions, their safety, and their grip on reality, feeling no regret or remorse, no pity, no compassion. Fantasy is colorful and compelling, but it’s false, and ultimately empty. Wonka is a walking maladaptive daydream, and as far as I’m concerned, that’s the real reason the 1971 film has endured in the culture for so long.
Wait, I’m expanding my “Mary Poppins vs. Bugs Bunny” trickster spectrum here.
Also he might be one of the most accurate depictions of a psychopath. Like, medically
people (my friends) are always like do you want updates on my fanfic? is sending pics of my dog annoying? am i sending too many videos? you could send me an eight minute voice message of complete silence and i would listen to the whole thing without complaint and with joy and love in my heart. don’t fuck with me. ily
my parents visited today and their latest item of ‘what people you knew in school are up to lately’ gossip was about the absolutely BONKERS thing they’re trying to talk their friend out of doing to her daughter. I’m still in shock tbh
Their friend is helping her daughter’s boyfriend’s mom to throw a 200-guest surprise engagement party for her daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. The daughter and the bf are not engaged. Neither of them have even discussed planning to get engaged with their respective mothers. The moms are going to surprise the bf with his late grandmother’s ring at the party and tell him it’s time to propose to his gf. In front of 200 friends and family members. Just an absolute nightmare scenario.
Oh the kicker is that the pretense they’re inviting people under is that it’s a surprise “congrats on passing the bar” party for the bf. A thing he is currently stressing about having to take for the second time and may not pass. So it may turn into a 200-person surprise “sorry you failed to pass the bar for the second time, here’s your grandma’s ring, go propose anyway” party, which is a near-incomprehensible level of public humiliation.
Bf’s mom, whose brainchild this whole thing was, has already rented out an entire waterfront restaurant for the party. In Newport. This is what “more money than sense” looks like in practice.
Since this blew up overnight and people are asking, I managed to track the daughter down on linkedin today (the only social media I could find that we both have, lol) and message her. So she has been warned, and hopefully doesn’t take the message poorly.
I was traveling and forgot to update this last week when my mother called me, but here is the update you’ve all been waiting for:
Daughter did eventually get my message, everyone is now mad at everyone else. Daughter at me (because she wanted a surprise proposal and the surprise was ruined) and also at her mother and bf’s mom (obvious reasons), her mom at my mom (because I told her daughter), and my mother at me (for getting involved and making her friend mad at her). No idea what the bf’s feelings are on all this, or if the party is going ahead as planned, and I am unlikely to find out at this point. Sorry for the anticlimactic update, but real life unfortunately does not follow a satisfying narrative structure. :(
I adore the many fics exploring how suspicious Rumi might have been throughout the years as she covered more and more of her arms, and delving into the angst potential of that, but canon Rumi actually covered her arms in makeup and just went sleeveless sometimes.
We have two canonical pictures of a sleeveless Rumi in the movie. There are likely a number of instances where Rumi had to carefully cover her patterns with makeup rather than cloth. (The bathhouse was a non-negotiable because water and makeup are not a safe bet.)
The more her patterns grew the less likely she was able to do that safely, but Mira and Zoey have seen all of Rumi’s arms and shoulders at various points.
the jonas brothers parallel the bee gees in that there’s three brothers in a band and then another one. this is evidence of the cyclical nature of time
SOMETIME IN THE LAST WEEK MY SCHOOL PUT UP A LARGE BANNER DEDICATED TO THE :-) EMOTICON
[id: a banner with a huge image of the :-) (smiley face with nose) emoticon captioned “smiley / first emoted here / 19 september 1982 / computer science department / www.cs.cmu.edu/smiley / carnegie mellon.” end id]
happy birthday :-) face
it’s that time of the year again everyone say happy 40th birthday :-)
This is apparently what was contained in the original message that invented the :-) and I’m obsessed with Fahlman’s diction here
a perfect world where people go to play minigolf and say to each other “so. if this is minigolf, then whats golf?” and no one knows because golf hasnt existed for hundreds of years by that point
Wrong. In a perfect world, there would still be golf video games. People would assume that minigolf is an attempt to recreate the fantasy sport in a way that’s feasable in real life.
I’ve never played Hollow Knight nor do I know anything about Silksong but do you know how much joy I get, especially in these times, logging on and seeing everyone collectively lose their minds and crash several major gaming platforms out of excitement
We’ve had Eldritch Horror Jolene and “The singer is in love with Jolene” but I just saw this youtube comment suggesting Jolene is a personification of death and I’m absolutely floored by it.
Like holy shit. “Flaming locks of auburn hair” just being literally flames, “Emerald eyes” being an unearthly green glow. The “ivory skin” line referring to the paleness of bloodless skin or even bleached bone, and yet Jolene is still spoken of as having haunting, enticing beauty, like a sort of angelic figure. The husband “talking about her in his sleep” meaning he’s delirious with fever and keeps talking like he knows he’s going to die. Of course the narrator can’t compete with, or do anything about, a literal force of nature.
actually YKW in honor of this, I’m going one further: what if the husband isn’t sick, he’s a soldier who just got sent off to war, and Jolene is not only a personification of death but a Valkyrie-like figure. The singer is not only begging Jolene, as a personification of the fortunes of war, not to take her husband but praying for her husband to remember that he has loved ones at home waiting for him and not succumb to the temptation of glory and “heroism” and self-sacrifice represented by Jolene’s beauty.
[ID: a YouTube comment that reads, “I can’t help but imagine that Jolene is actually the personification of death (maybe like a death goddess or something) and the singer is begging her not to take her sick husband to the other side, I know it isn’t but I still think it would make for a cool concept :)”. /end ID]
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blairdiggory_feed) wrote2025-09-04 05:53 pm
