Zana > Recent Status Updates

"...It is because of the child that they are so gentle with children. They know that if the wretched one were not there snivelling in the dark, the other one, the flute-player, could make no joyful music as the young riders line up in their beauty for the race in the sunlight of the first morning of summer."

"If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms...."

"The room is about three paces long and two wide: a mere broom closet or disused tool room. In the room a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six, but actually is nearly ten. It is feeble-minded. Perhaps it was born defective, or perhaps it has become imbecile through fear, malnutrition, and neglect...."

"It" 😬

'Dad stared at him in utter disgust. “You disobeyed,” he said. “You stole. You endangered the lives and the property of everyone here, including your mother, your sister, and your little brothers. If you were the man you think you are, I’d beat the hell out of you!”'

Damn dad 😬

"Curtis Talcott says the new Iturbe family will get half-a-garage to live in after they marry Jorge’s sister Celia Iturbe Cruz and her husband and baby have the other half."

Half a garage??

'“What’s the other option?” the second Nice House Experience said. “Look me in the eye and tell me there is a better solution than putting one single kid in the hole, and letting that one single kid have a miserable life, in return for the good lives of all of our children?”'

Throw all the kids in the hole duh

"And of course, it was true that the whole city literally ran on the load-bearing suffering child in a very real physical way that was not a metaphor. And everyone really liked having running power and no blackouts and good schools and low crime and community-oriented government and safe sidewalks and public transit that worked."

We're out here sacrificing kids and we still don't have all that 🇺🇸

"It went viral like a snuff film went viral or Kim Kardashian’s first sex tape went viral"

👁️👄👁️

"...even though we knew that there was a kid in the hole, now that’s three times as many kids in the hole, and it’s extra sad because we usually don’t kill the kid in the hole, they usually die of old age or malnutrition.

None of this mattered to the living third kid in the hole, who was not enjoying the hole experience."

👁️👄👁️

'They stormed the hole and broke the kid out and slit the kid’s throat on public television (as all television in Omelas was publicly funded), and they said, “Look at what sort of shit your beautiful city is built on!” and the kid bled out and it was extremely graphic to the point of being censored in later broadcasts....'

👁️👄👁️

'“Your circumstances are entirely different from my own,” Marta said coldly. “I shouldn’t have expected you to understand.”'

Sick and tired of this superficial bitch

'“We can’t make the climate change back, no matter why it changed in the first place. You and I can’t. The neighborhood can’t. We can’t do anything.”

I lost patience. “Then let’s kill ourselves now and be done with it!”'

Girl

"People toss us things sometimes—gifts of envy and hate: A maggoty, dead animal, a bag of shit, even an occasional severed human limb or a dead child. Dead adults have been left lying just beyond our wall."

😐

'Also, Donner has a plan for putting people back to work. He hopes to get laws changed, suspend “overly restrictive” minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws for those employers willing to take on homeless employees and provide them with training and adequate room and board.'

😬

'Different people frightened her in some deep, hard, ugly way. She didn’t like the Hsu family because they were Chinese and Hispanic, and the older Chinese generation is still Buddhist....

“Idolaters,” she would call them if none of them were around....'

Omg

There's so much infodumping for the worldbuilding but I don't hate it at all??

God I love a good post-apocalyptic story 😩

"Worse for me, they often have things wrong with them. They cut off each other’s ears, arms, legs.… They carry untreated diseases and festering wounds. They have no money to spend on water to wash with so even the unwounded have sores. They don’t get enough to eat so they’re malnourished—or they eat bad food and poison themselves...."

This is so intense

"...I saw at least three people who weren’t going to wake up again, ever. One of them was headless. I caught myself looking around for the head. After that, I tried not to look around at all."

Oh

“...I honestly thought you’d died months ago after abandoning my crew, given your tendency to make stupidly reckless choices.”

Damn 😬

"Because a captain determined to avenge the death of her ship is understandable, noble, even, but a crazy girl with amnesia obsessed with chasing after a whale is simply a crazy girl with amnesia obsessed with chasing after a whale."

It's gonna turn out she wasn't even on the ship when everyone got killed

"I would welcome death, if it wasn’t for my promise to Lenore Dove that I would somehow keep the sun from rising on the reaping. The impossibility of it adds to my despair...."

💔

So this book is literally about a rag-tag team hunting a flying data center in space?

👁️👄👁️

"She was 18 years old when my grandfather gave her to my mother as a gift, and when my family moved to the United States, we brought her with us."

Jesus

"...What do you say to the meanest girl in town who’s become your friend? No, more than a friend, really. A Newcomer. Being tributes and not killing each other . . . looking out for each other with no questions asked . . . that’s family, I guess."

Omg 😭

'“I guess the lava just burned up everything in its path?”

“No, it wasn’t even hot. It was some sort of gel that gave you chemical burns if it got under your clothes, then turned hard and slippery as ice on the ground.”'

Me on the outside: damn that's fucked up.

Me on the inside: damn that's cool

"Then I turn back to what I am meant to witness. A small white skeleton, stripped clean to the bone. No flesh or clothing remains, only an ax at its right side, my knife at its left. My lips move, but no sound comes out."

Aww 😭

“...Garish color, unflattering lines. And there are some fashion choices you people are going to regret. Why you’d want to resemble a barnyard animal is beyond me, but I hope those goat horns are removable. And to the woman with the diamonds implanted along her teeth? People age, there’s no shame in that, but I think those stones are going to make eating a trial when those gums recede.”

I love Maysilee lmao

Kieran Culkin as Caesar Flickerman is definitely a mood

'Across the room, a glassy-eyed Magno has backed into a corner but managed to clear some space by freeing a six-foot snake from the cage and waving it around....

People are shrieking, and the Peacekeepers form a huddle to confer over their plan to subdue him. Drusilla looks overjoyed, shouting, “Take him down! Take him down!”'

Had to see who was playing him in the movie and it's Billy Porter 💀

'“Listen, I’m going to be a real jerk in my interview. It’s something my team worked up, but I will never hurt you, okay? Or any of the Newcomers. That’s a promise.”

“We know that,” says Wellie, eyes full of trust.

Too much trust. I need to distance myself from them for the good of everybody.'

Babies 🥺