The Equilibrium

[nervebynerve]

“The daily routine of most adults is so heavy and artificial that we are closed off to much of the world. We have to do this in order to get our work done. I think one purpose of art is to get us out of those routines. When we hear music or poetry or stories, the world opens up again. We’re drawn in — or out — and the windows of our perception are cleansed, as William Blake said. The same thing can happen when we’re around young children or adults who have unlearned those habits of shutting the world out.”

— Ursula K. Le Guin 

[space-queen]

i don't know what it is about the whole "divine feminine" thing that really just rubs me the wrong way

like i don't think the concept always ventures into tradwife terf territory but oftentimes it does and that gives me the ick

[tater-tot-pot-dish]

there's an ursula k leguine quote about it that i can't remember fully. but to paraphrase- the idea that women's knowledge is an underground primal thing while men's knowledge is a lofty rational thing does disservice to women by implying they must always act on instinct and irrationality.

she said it much more eloquently and in more detail of course, but that's the jist i think.

[tater-tot-pot-dish]

i found it!

“But I didn’t and still don’t like making a cult of women’s knowledge, preening ourselves on knowing things men don’t know, women’s deep irrational wisdom, women’s instinctive knowledge of Nature, and so on. All that all too often merely reinforces the masculinist idea of women as primitive and inferior – women’s knowledge as elementary, primitive, always down below at the dark roots, while men get to cultivate and own the flowers and crops that come up into the light. But why should women keep talking baby talk while men get to grow up? Why should women feel blindly while men get to think?”

― Ursula K. Le Guin

[ffuscous]

Goha/Tenar

[ffuscous]

Tenar gets to grow up to have short hair. as a little personal treat for me

[psdrawsthings]

ha! random tombs of atuan illustration by me for me

[abrillustrates]

gearing up to work on senior thesis!! It’s earthsea related but i’ll be disappeared for a second and i’ll be back with so much earthsea art……

[earthsea-equilibrium]

Re-reading Tombs of Atuan and I just love it so much.

A Wizard Of Earthsea is nice and all but every sentence of Tombs just resonates with me.

[jelloapocalypse]

Thinking about that moment in Tales From Earthsea where the main girl sings a long song for like five minutes and then the main guy sits down next to her and says "I killed my dad" completely unprompted and she looks at him like this

[microsff]

"My husband complains about the cold," the man said. "Can you teach me a spell to keep him warm?"

"I can teach you to bind hair into a net to catch heat," the wizard said, "using arcane counting and a pair of fine wands."

After a while, the man said "Isn't this knitting?"

"This, too, is magic."

[earthsea-equilibrium]

Earthea vibes

[saltshroud]

“stop doing dark magic you’re like 14” then literally how is he supposed to impress the other kids??

[rennybu]

a piece i excavated from my 2022? files... it was either redo it from scratch, or post it as is, so here we are... i profoundly love a wizard of earthsea and am due for a re-read

[memehex]

Favorite fantasy series?

Middle-Earth Universe

Discworld

The Wheel of Time

Mistborn

The Stormlight Archive

A Song of Ice and Fire

First Law World

Realm of the Elderlings

Piranesi

Dune

Earthsea Cycle

Other/in tags

Voting ended onDec 19, 2025

[ileolai]

Remember when Ursula K. Le Guin called JK Rowling a nasty basic bitch back in like, 2004? We should have listened

[legok9]

“This last is the situation, as I see it, between my A Wizard of Earthsea and J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter. I didn’t originate the idea of a school for wizards — if anybody did it was T.H.White, though he did it in single throwaway line and didn’t develop it. I was the first to do that. Years later, Rowling took the idea and developed it along other lines. She didn’t plagiarize. She didn’t copy anything. Her book, in fact, could hardly be more different from mine, in style, spirit, everything. The only thing that rankles me is her apparent reluctance to admit that she ever learned anything from other writers. When ignorant critics praised her wonderful originality in inventing the idea of a wizards’ school, and some of them even seemed to believe that she had invented fantasy, she let them do so. This, I think, was ungenerous, and in the long run unwise.“

[ileolai]

i found the specific quote i was thinking of x

Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style

UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.

damn gurl :’]

[whereserpentswalk]

“Ethically rather mean-spirited”

She knew what she was talking about long before anyone else did.

[the-haiku-bot]

She knew what she was

talking about long before

anyone else did.

Beep boop! I look for accidental haiku posts. Sometimes I mess up.

[ffuscous]

Currently rereading Wizard of Earthsea

[queerasfact]

NEW EPISODE TOMORROW

We hope you're excited for tomorrow's episode on Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction novel The Left Hand of Darkness - I mean we hope you're excited for every episode we put out but this one is over TWO HOURS (2nd in length only to Robespierre!) so brace yourself.

Some relevant emojis: 👽🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈❄️😭

[earthsea-equilibrium]

What Ever Happened to Earthsea?

[broomofwind]

I need a live action psychological horror art movie Tombs of Atuan with Dev Patel as Ged and some strangegirl björk-esque actress as Tenar now literally right neowwwww