There's A Difference Between Father And Dad. One Is A Title, The Other Is A Bond.

the way people on tiktok talk about a little life is genuinely so infuriating like the book was obviously not meant for you and reducing it down to the sequence of events is so fucked up... it's very telling that everyone in the comments of any tiktok mentioning a little life is like "i just read the wikipedia summary and now i have full authority to talk about this book and its quality/morality" literally just say you've never read anything besides ya and fanfic just admit it

I just like what he says about making music here :)

When Fiona Apple sang, “How can I ask anyone to love me, when all I do is beg to be left alone,” and when Mitski sang, “you’re growing tired of me, and all the things I don’t talk about,” and when Julien Baker sang, “it’s not easy when what you think of me is important, and I know it shouldn’t be so damn important, but it is to me,” and when Elliott Smith sang, “I’m alone but that’s okay, I don’t mind most of the time; I don’t feel afraid to die,” and when the Front Bottoms sang, “sometimes you get sad when we’re together because you’re not sure if you’ll miss me when I’m gone,” and when

(suicide cw) (a little life spoilers) I habitually go back to the last portion of the book. As I read it the first time, I was only dimly aware this was the ending. I could see the number of pages, sure, and the repetitive title of Lispenard Street was ominous enough that I should’ve known - after all, why else would you bookend it like that?

I think it didn’t hit me initially, though, because for all the arduous buildup, all the scares, this is all we get of Jude’s death.

We get the aftermath, of course (and naturally I sobbed through it) - but this is the tragedy we’re led to anticipate the whole book through, and so, aware of its inevitability, I’d expected all the magnitude of Jude’s suicide attempt, of all the tragedies that followed. But Jude’s life gets 800 pages and his death gets two sentences.

The story doesn’t end on an ending. It ends on Lispenard Street.

This is what Harold leaves us with: kindness, and a father and his grinning son reminiscing; and of course that’s how he would tell Jude’s story, of course that’s how you would speak of someone you love, after: with all the kindness of eternity. People aren’t endings. Jude’s life wasn’t a stopgap, it was the story.

I can see how A Little Life might be read as a gruesome, cobweb veiled backstory to a suicide to many. That’s certainly how Jude would see it, at times, I think; but that’s why Harold is the narrator. (Harold, to whom Jude’s life was so precious, who treasured it so wholly and selfishly, as parents often do.)

And so, as we’re taken back to Lispenard Street, I can’t possibly read this story as anything other than a love letter — from a father, to his son’s life.

Elliott Smith invented coquette core 🎀✨

Gerard Way releasing new comic series, "Paranoid Gardens" part one (of six) in comic shops on July 17.

i hope the sun decides to come back one day im getting too weird again

forever floating in the space between “i don’t forgive you, but please don’t hold me to it” and “i feel no need to forgive, but i might as well”

how do people read a little life and come to the conclusion that yanagihara is saying that if you’ve experienced trauma, you should just give up? excuse me but there’s approximately 700 pages that say the complete opposite did we read the same book?