geeblie geeblie

she/her & fae/faer, 30s, goth. about | ask | home

[charnel-grounds]

Murray Smoker, “She Waits”

dip pen & ink & ink wash, 2024

[pangur-and-grim]

alright, I’m annoyed with the class that I’m taking. it’s about writing novels, and I thought it would have cool stuff about balancing your narrative and developing themes etc, but instead she spent the first class talking about how every book fits into the Hero’s Journey (the monomyth template). and I was somewhat of a contrarian, and said “can you give us examples of books that don’t fit into this template?” and she said “no. because all books fit.”

but I dunno man, I just finished reading this Korean book where the plot is just the character having a string of hookups and reflecting on them without changing in any way. I don’t know if it’s possible to contort that into the Hero’s Journey.

[pangur-and-grim]

[caughtthedarkness93]

Even inside the western canon, it doesn't fit very well way more often than people like to admit. Even inside the very stories that Campbell built it off of.

For example: Beowulf does not follow the hero's journey. I have a pet theory that Beowulf is three or four stories that kind of got mashed together since it's a collection of a couple vignettes about this warrior's life and the dragon episode is rather disconnected from Grendel (unless you're John Gardner, who ties it all together in his novel Grendel). Beowulf emerges as a full-blown hero when he enters the narrative, does not have a mentor, does not refuse the call (and rather wholeheartedly embraces it in fact - "Not only am I gonna slay your monster, I'm gonna slay your monster with my ass hanging out to show off"), does not live in the normal world at any point. One could argue he returns with the elixir to his home, given that the later story has him as a king, but the story's not interested in explaining much about how that happened and keeps going after the hero's journey would claim it should end, instead jumping to Beowulf's noble sacrificial death. You really have to squeeze to fit Beowulf into that framework, and by the point where it does, you've lost all semblance of a common structure the monomyth claims to represent. Arguably, the Iliad doesn't it either, given the scope of the story is a lot smaller than some people seem to believe.

Like I get the point that the original post was making about the western canon being so heavy with authors from the US and western Europe and not caring much about works from cultures beyond that, but I feel it's worth noting that even if you grade Campbell's ideas on the most generous possible curve, they don't hold up.

And even if we pretend they did, he never intended them as a writing guide. They were only popularized as one when George Lucas took that structure and adapted it to Star Wars.

And it's always worth mentioning that Maggie Mae Fish did a really good breakdown of Campbell and the Hero's Journey and why it's flawed. It's well worth watching. It's what got me questioning it in the first place.

[cryingdancer]

[ammnontet]

oyster

[theveryworstthing]

a basket star divingbelle getting ready to go for a dip.

while some hold onto their human skins while swimming, the sturdier types hide them in burrows or caves when they hang out in the water doing their water business (a very cool and not nightmare level spooky thing for divers to stumble onto).

[kosmogrl]

[catilinas]

friendly reminder that [the most cherrypicked interpretation of the text possible] <3

[kuttithevangu]

All fantasy authors wish they had a bigger bathtub in their house. You can tell by every bathing scene ever written into a fantasy novel

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

anti abortion propaganda that tries to like scare you into feeling guilty by reminding you that the fetus has body parts are so funny. "uwu please don't abort me I have eyes at 4 weeks old 🥺" nice try sucker I don't care if you see it coming

[fairycosmos]

let it go my friend... i say this as a fat "ugly" dyke. your body is the vehicle w which you move in the world, give love, receive love, make things, SEE things, KNOW things. that's all that matters. beauty and ugliness are marketing scams esp for women. LIVE and FUCK THE WORLD it's not easy to get there but it's so sweet. ppl will love you fat and "ugly" i swear on god.

this is like a religious text to me and i'm not joking even a little

[theveryworstthing]

divingbelles are mermaids in the selkie family who use humanoid skins to house aquatic forms instead of the other way around.

as this lovely lady demonstrates, some of the more delicate divingbelles that take after jellyfish or molluscs hold onto their skins kind of like snail shells. they dislocate the pieces to unfurl from the spaces between when under water, and pull the bits back together when they want to hide or walk around.

[validblogname]

one fight at a time

[lizardlicks]

Black Hills drilling project canceled after backlash from tribes

A South Dakota mining company has canceled a drilling project in the Black Hills after opposition from Native American tribes and local grou

[wizxrdpendrxgon]

The backlash was a major lawsuit from 9 tribes alongside other lawsuits from advocacy groups like NDN Collective. You can support NDN Collective by donating to them here.

[tlbodine]

For the last goddamn time...

"Kill your darlings" means "if something is holding you back, get rid of it, even if it sounds pretty."

That's it! That's all it means! It means if you're stuck and stalled out on your story and you could fix the whole block by removing something but you're avoiding removing that thing because it's good, you remove that thing. That's the darling.

It does NOT mean

That you have to get rid of your self-indulgent writing

That you should delete something just because you like it (?wtf?)

That you need to kill off characters (??? what)

That you have to pare your story down to the absolute bare bones

That you have to delete anything whatsoever if you don't want to

The POINT is that you STOP FEELING GUILTY for throwing out good writing that isn't SERVING THE STORY.

The POINT is that you don't get so HUNG UP on the details that you lose sight of the BIG PICTURE.

Good grief....

[prof-grace-aspen]

Also, you don't have to like, delete it from existence. Keep a second document full of the Darlings. You never know when you'll need it later.

[earhartsease]

yes, your killed darlings are ripe for rebirth

[eldritchsandwich]

compost your darlings

recycle your darlings

Darlings who don't fit this narrative go into the use later folder

[ashenmind]

god if there was a book of forbidden spells I wouldn’t even hesitate

[teaboot]

I hate you Ozempic craze I hate you 'heroin chic' I hate you weight loss ads on public radio I hate Burn Fat Fast ads every thirty seconds I hate you I hate you I hate you

[treasures-and-beauty]

Delft Blue Porcelain Skull Mask with Crown of Thorns by CandyMakeUpArtist on Etsy

[iwannabeaswampwitch]

Lots of drama in our household