I eat Lies

[trinarysuns]

Apparently Wells said in some interview that Murderbot is somewhere between twenty and thirty years old and I keep having to stare into the distance about that. No wonder it's Like That™️. It's been doing this shit for decades, the organic ghosts of memory wipes all that remains. ~30 has to be absolutely ancient for a SecUnit, unkillable cockroach motherfucker territory, a refurbished model the company probably hopes will just die on contract at this point so they can collect the fee and replace it with a new one.

Constructs probably have some hideous survival curve where the average lifespan is like a couple of years just because so many get ripped apart their first time out of the box. If you get lucky enough to get a boring first few deployments, you get the time to scrape together enough of a personality to survive the first time the shit really hits the fan.

[maxiemumdamage]

So, here’s the thing: I wouldn’t expect someone who never studied ancient Greek language or culture to understand the concept of xenia (ξενια). But it’s one of if not the biggest theme of the entire Odyssey. Fundamentally, it’s an epic about what happens when this Greek law and value was broken, when was that expected or justified or necessary versus when that was an atrocity.

And I think the film…oversimplified and understated the functions and importance of xenia. At best.

Please see below the cut for a very detailed explanation of what the film gets wrong about xenia, what the practice actually was, why it doesn’t work for Nolan’s ultimate thesis to the film, and the role xenia played in the original Odyssey.

“Zeus’s Law”

Firstly, xenia is called “Zeus’s law” throughout the movie, which is…perhaps not entirely wrong, but certainly an oversimplification. It’s true that hospitality and how you treated foreigners and the obligation to welcome them was technically under Zeus’s purview, since as King of the Gods everything was.

Propriety and courtesy and kindness is not what Zeus was known for, however — frankly, if Nolan wanted to credit xenia to an individual divinity in concept, either Hestia (as goddess of hearth and home) or Hermes (as god of travelers and journeys) would be more fitting.

And really, it wasn’t just about one god; just as hubris is about mortals overstepping or thinking themselves equal to anything divine, xenia is at least in part about mortals being courteous to any fellow man in the name of any god that might have put that person on their path. The only reason to call it Zeus’s law is when thinking about divine retribution, which the Odyssey movie intentionally muddies the waters on by erasing the gods’ consistent direct involvement.

Zeus’s role is in setting the standard kings and leaders must follow, yes. But his connection to xenia is more about punishing those who misunderstand it, and…Odysseus doesn’t actually suffer from that. Or rather, he never suffers undeservedly, and he does benefit from it in the end. He underwent his struggles in getting home due to other people violating xenia, but when he does get home? Odysseus benefits from the fact that those who break xenia are punished.

Xenia among Greeks

Now, let’s get into the actual meaning and consequences of xenia. Because it wasn’t actually about threat of divine retribution — it was about cultural mediation and exchange. Something that gets lost in the film’s treatment of Greek culture as a monolith (it very much wasn’t at the time), and oversimplification of wartime vs. peacetime negotiations.

ξενια was a social code relating to how hosts should welcome any visitors to their home, and how guests should act when welcomed. The expectation is that the host provides good food and drink (to the absolute best of their ability — you don’t just feed them, you give them delicious food and your purest wine and nicest clothes and linens and bed). The guest, after enjoying the host’s hospitality, will reveal their name and identity and life’s story and purpose for their journey. And that’s where it got political.

Crucial to xenia was mutual peacefulness — if someone comes to you as a peaceful traveler, it doesn’t matter that they’re foreign. You have to treat them courteously. The movie made it seem like the entire reason you had to welcome travelers was in case they were gods in disguise, but that’s just not true. Implicit threat of offending a god did mean it was considered smart to treat everyone who hadn’t outright wronged you courteously, but the real point was peace between peoples from different lands, especially different Greek city-states. Because once you or anyone in your family line offered or received xenia to/from anyone in that person’s family line? You could not hurt each other. It was forbidden.

There’s a whole scene in the Iliad where a Trojan and Greek soldier both exchange lineages before they fight, to make sure they’re not breaking xenia, and discover one of their dads played host to another. They then go “ok, we can’t fight, let’s trade armor as a friendly peaceful gesture, good luck going to war!” Because xenia established outside war had a different standard.

ξενος means foreigner or stranger. It also means friend and guest. Xenophobia is literally the Greek words for foreigner and fear mashed together, and it wasn’t a good term in their eyes. Because at least among those who would understand and respect your customs, you had to treat the foreigner/stranger as a guest/friend. That’s xenophilia, love of strangers, or the act of being a good host.

The point of xenia is that it forges a peace compact. Critically, it only did so among different Greek civilizations — one polis going to war against another was what xenia sought to combat. Enough people traveling would ensure two city-states didn’t and couldn’t raise arms against each other.

The Exception

I do think this is the part people don’t get, because the movie clearly didn’t understand it either — xenia does not apply between people at war.

Yes, the Iliad has a bit with Glaukos and the armor and the peaceful exchange between people who had ancestral xenia. But the reason they can’t fight is because their families had contact during a time of peace.

If your first time meeting someone is while you try to kill them and pillage their land — or rather, if you’re the “host” and they’re trying to kill you and pillage your land and rape your women — you do not owe them xenia, because there is no peaceful compact to be made. Preexisting relationships must be respected…

…but crucially, the entire Trojan War started because Paris, a Trojan Prince, broke xenia after Sparta welcomed him as a guest.

Nolan’s Odyssey makes it seem like perhaps the whole saga is punishing the Greek heroes and Odysseus especially for violating Zeus’s Law/xenia through the Trojan Horse trick. But like…they didn’t? The Greeks didn’t come to Troy in good faith as guests, they came as armed conquers determined to see Ilion burn. And the concept of soldiers disguising themselves as civilians (or hiding inside a horse) being like…a war crime or violation of ethics? Was not a thing by Greek standards.

Very notably, one of the (cut) scenes with Helen in the Telemachy sees her recount how she helped Odysseus when he snuck into Troy before the horse trick — she helped him disguise himself as a local/refugee and gather intel before sneaking back to the Greek ships. And that’s never treated as morally questionable — helping Odysseus sneak around and deceive the Trojans is unambiguously a good thing that Helen did, in fact.

TL:DR, the point is — people trying to burn your city do not count as guests, conquerers do not think of the people they plan to rob rape and kill as hosts. Xenia does not apply to people at war, and the idea Odysseus should feel guilt for his trick with the horse because it was a violation of “Zeus’s law” is laughable. The Greeks wouldn’t have cared! That’s not ever a source of angst or guilt in the source text, despite xenia being such a central theme.

Utility of xenia in the Odyssey

The biggest purpose of xenia was that observing it ensured peace. Neither guest nor host poisons or hurts anyone else, not directly or by proxy through hurting their family and friends. When the guest leaves, in exchange for their story, the host also should them off with valuables, ideally gold. Xenia was a way to encourage non-violent contact between different people, and stimulate exchange of information and valuables between different settlements.

Notably, where xenia is practiced, the standard for violating it is high. There are many myths about people who did things that were weird or unpleasant but not an outright violation, and therefore had to still be treated with courtesy and respect as guests.

The reason Penelope and Telemachus can’t kick the suitors out isn’t because she’s a helpless woman and he’s a helpless child — their political positions are shaky, yes, but that’s not the core issue. Rather, it’s because while the suitors have been rude, and wildly overstayed their welcome, they haven’t actually broken xenia. Eating and drinking their food and wine for years instead of days, being mean to the slaves, having the bard tell stories that hurt Penelope’s feelings, all of that is bad but not transgressions worthy of breaking xenia over. Legally, Telemachcus and Penelope have to let these assholes stay and treat them courteously, because the suitors are abusing the spirit of the law but not violating the letter of it.

The suitors don’t actually break xenia until their attempt to kill Telemachus, and then when they try to refuse to welcome a poor traveller who should be entitled to all the same luxuries they’ve taken.

That’s a huge part of the motive for Odysseus’s disguise. He shows up as a beggar dressed in disgusting rags because he knows these immature assholes will abuse him over it, and he knows that once they do he can legally kill them and get away with it in the eyes of the gods. That’s the point of the first feasts and the challenge and almost everything Odysseus does upon arrival to Ithaca.

Fully half of the Odyssey is Odysseus already having returned home, but acting like a guest, so he can see who respects xenia (and is therefore loyal to him) vs. who breaks xenia (and is therefore deserving of death). And Odysseus actively works to slot the suitors and many of his own slaves into the latter category, so he can kill them and know that he’s not breaking custom, that he isn’t incurring further divine wrath. And Athena helps him do it, so he can get his glorious revenge. That’s…pointed.

Conclusion

Odysseus’ attempts to exploit xenia for his own gain — implicitly in Books 5-12 and more explicitly and maliciously in Books 13-22 — are missing in the film adaptation. I think that’s in part because Christopher Nolan…isn’t interested in that side of Odysseus. He wanted the story of a tough tortured war hero finally returning home and repenting for his wrongs at war. He didn’t like or focus on Odysseus the witty schemer, the master of tricks and lies. And Nolan certainly didn’t want Odysseus’ return home to center on a blatantly bitter and violent, arguably unnecessary revenge ploy, as it did in the epic poem.

But the fact of the matter is that the last half of the original poem is Odysseus struggling to find an excuse to break xenia. He doesn’t want to send the suitors peacefully home — which he at least nominally could. There’s a threat that they physically overpower him, but that requires the suitors to openly break xenia. Which thus far those who did by conspiring to kill Telemachus have done only in discreet ways, and many have not done at all.

Like, crucially, the original epic poem does introduce suitors who were more decent in their conduct, even if they did still eat Odysseus’ food and try to court his wife. They’re not all evil people who have to be killed for his own safety. Some would just fucking leave if they knew the king was in fact alive. Some would accept that since Odysseus is back to be King again, the Ithacan suitors should return to their houses and the foreign suitors return to their city-states. Some of them would respect xenia and make up for their wrongdoing. There’s a dichotomy when the suitors die — some, like Antinous, go down fighting and cursing Odysseus and Telemachus, but others try to apologize. They promise to repay the guest-gifts and food and charity they abused and respect xenia and go in peace. Odysseus tells them “nope, too late, die.”

I get why instead of the brutal slaughter of many men who beg for mercy, Nolan frames the final battle against the suitors as a desperate, almost losing struggle for Odysseus. But in the epic poem…it’s just him taking advantage of the fact he finally tricked them all into really breaking xenia, and taking revenge.

The entire epic poem was about xenia — not in the context of war, either.

The Telemachy is the first four books of the Odyssey, focused on how Odysseus’s son sees xenia exploited in his own home, but benefits from it immensely when welcomed as a guest in someone else’s.

The Apologoi or Wanderings are books 5-12 (Calypso, the Phaeacians, Aeolus, Polyphemus, the Lotus-Eaters, the Lasteygones, Circe, and the Underworld) and see Odysseus arrive at foreign islands where he tries to exert xenia over and over again. He meets good foreigners who do exactly as they should, dangerous foreigners who instead respond with sinister temptation or outright violence, and people who aren’t foreigners at all but divinities, and therefore aren’t bound to mortal customs like xenia.

The Mnesterophonia or Murder of the Suitors is Books 13-24 — fully half of the Odyssey is Odysseus having already reached Ithaca, but now using xenia both to test people’s loyalty and morals, and to contrive an excuse to kill them if they fail to uphold the custom.

Given all that…I think Christopher Nolan owed it to the Odyssey to learn the true meaning of xenia, and to at least try to depict it with the nuance it deserves.

[romanceyourdemons]

gonna do a quick tutorial on early modern english conjugation bc it bugs me to no end when people just do anything:

1. i am

you are

thou art

he/she/it is

[thou is often considered more intimate/informal than “you,” but this isn’t hard and fast like the modern german du vs Sie]

2. i say

you say

thou sayest

he/she/it says OR sayeth

[in 1649 richard hodges recorded that the -eth conjugation is more typical in written text while the -s conjugation is used in spoken language, but that pattern seems to have been less pronounced in 1600 and before]

3. i do, i have

you do, you have

thou dost, thou hast

he/she/it doth, he/she/it hath

[in an additional corollary, doth and hath seem not to have been subject to the above pattern and existed in both print and speech as the preferred third person conjugation for those words]

[romanceyourdemons]

and a follow up for thou conjugation:

thou drinkest the juice

it is thy juice, it is thine apple juice

the juice spilleth on thee

thou seest thyself covered in juice

[somecunttookmyurl]

i can tell i’m sleep deprived bc i just made myself cry about tutankhamun and i have, like, negative interest in the kid

[somecunttookmyurl]

have now made the rest of the discord cry about this little boy who had multi-coloured ducks sewn onto a tunic that he loved so much he wore it to a Very Important Event because he was EIGHT and have you SEEN my DUCKS

[somecunttookmyurl]

sorry no i’m not done i’m gonna make you all cry some more i’m bringing you down with me

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

there was once a little boy.

[somecunttookmyurl]

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

but he had brightly coloured little ducks on his favourite shirt, and he kept it.

[somecunttookmyurl]

and he did not just keep the duckie shirt either

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

but he was a little boy who thought ducks were just the best

[somecunttookmyurl]

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

[beggars-opera]

[libriamore]

Ok but this is how to teach history. This is how you get people to pay attention, to care. Find something small and make it personal, then zoom out to the wider context. History is best taught as a story, with people who lived their lives in ways that came together to create something remarkable that we still talk about today, but who were still just human at the end of the day. They kissed, argued, cried, and dreamed just like we do. And sometimes they really liked ducks.

[kedreeva]

I want to point out that there are at least two obvious duck heads on the sandals (circled in red) but!

The patterns between them, to either side of what looks like lilypad/lotus flower petals, could very well be “ducks as seen from above.” There is a beak on the lower edge, a clear “head” shape above/behind it, darker ovals that look like folded wings, and a body/tail. I didn’t see the red circled ducks first, I saw the “swimming on a pond” ducks amongst the lotus flowers.

[whetstonefires]

the problem with knowing things about battle tactics is that an ever-increasing subset of popular media becomes impossible to enjoy properly because you have to sit there like 'wow Captain Protagonist good to know all those dead people on your own side are a direct result of your total lack of anything resembling brains'

[whetstonefires]

seriously i'm not talking about anything elaborate, just basic common sense, but common sense is so much harder to ignore once you've got systematized data to back it up, like

what do they even think a fortification is for???

what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????

make the other sonuvabitch have a hard time killing you without getting killed first! most basic goal of combat! why are movies so bad at writing characters who actually attempt this on even a very small 'army' scale?

[whetstonefires]

and like i said in the first post, it's not just that it's Dumb, the thing is that once you put the character in a command role, their ability to think their way through a combat situation with some degree of optimization becomes a reflection on their character on like. a moral level.

if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!

but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.

it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.

when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.

or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.

even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!

no! they fucked it up is what they did! this is some Light Brigade gaslighting shit! shut up. our boy just massacred people who trusted him.

[curlicuecal]

kind of a tangent but this is also how I feel when the good guys mow their way through dozens of faceless grunts and then suddenly the big bad in charge is the life they face a moral quandary over

the random foot soldiers and henchmen's lives matter too! tbh

[whetstonefires]

#tbh they should matter MORE #they are way less culpable than whoever's in charge #it's just plot convenient to dehumanize the work force

[contribute-a-verse]

I think it’s worth noting that history is littered with examples of wasteful tactics. A common element is that often times technology advances while tactics do not.

For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.

The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.

There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.

I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, it’s very clear that even if there are “good guys“ and “bad guys“ in war, there’s also just a lot of waste. That doesn’t make for a very sexy narrative, but it’s the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But that’s also excepted as the way things are done.

At the end of the day, I’m just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.

I think the more interesting question is, should there be?

[whetstonefires]

i mean maybe, but that's not what the post is about, it's about fiction that places warfare centrally, but then engages with it only on an aesthetic level.

thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.

this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.

i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.

the problem is a general failure to care enough about the battle as an event within a narrative to make the pieces go together according to an internal logic. people being dumb is fine as long as they're dumb on purpose. people not doing The Most Winning Thing is fine as long as the priorities they're supposed to have are the priorities they're actually displaying.

[mysteryteacup]

There's nothing more frustrating as an audience than being told "this person is a Good Person who Cares about their men and is also a Genius Tactician" and being shown a clown that never thinks before getting most of their people needlessly killed.

[beatrice-otter]

Also, regarding WWI specifically, their tactics were a hell of a lot better and more effective than pop culture gives them credit for. They were actually very sophisticated and doing the best they could with what technology they had. The problem is that once you have machine guns, there are only really two ways to break through that rate of fire:

Artillery barrage beforehand to try and kill as many people/machine gun nests as possible on the enemy side, followed by an infantry push that you know is going to take ruinous casualties if it works at all.

Tanks. Armored vehicles capable of driving over a battlefield with thick enough armor that the machine gun isn't a problem.

And they didn't have tanks! They were trying to develop them, but the technology level wasn't there yet. They couldn't move over broken terrain, and they kept breaking down even on smooth terrain. If you're going to have a war at that technology level where you have lots of machine guns but no tanks yet ... then WWI is about the best you're going to do.

Now, obviously, the solution to this is "but why have a war when the technology is at this stupid stalemate level?" but the people fighting the war (even the generals) rarely have control over that.

[itspileofgoodthings]

you know what gets me about lord of the rings? evil is defeated by people who choose to fight against it without possessing absolute, or even very much, conviction that they can actually win. all the converging story threads that lead to the happy ending are carried out by people who are far, far more convinced that they will fail than that they will succeed, who had only the frailest, most foolish hope, who had blind faith and frequently wavering hearts not peace or ease or certainty.

middle earth isn’t saved because no one faltered or came close to despairing or who sank to their knees in weary defeat. it’s not saved by pride or conviction or even strength. it’s saved because enough people do what they have to do even if they have to do it in the darkness. in the dust. with the ashes of hopelessness and bitterness in their mouths. because enough people took another step. Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Theoden, Boromir, Faramir, Merry, Pippin. And many don’t. For every hero there is someone who gives into the “reasonableness” of despair—Saruman, Denethor, Grima, even Gollum—but enough. Enough people said “it doesn’t matter if we lose, I will keep fighting” and then they do.

And that GETS me. It is the most hopeful thing about the lord of the rings to me. There is so much that sums up its spirit, so many beautiful quotes and moments, but to me it’s never been the most famous of the quotes about hope and love that hit me hardest but a line from the films. Before the battle for Minas Tirith, one of the soldiers says “we cannot defeat the armies of Mordor” and Theoden answers “no. but we will meet them in battle nonetheless.”

And I—That is the spirit that leads to the conquering of evil when it comes down to it, when we’re talking about the part played by humanity alone in the fight against evil. Not the conviction you’re going to win, not farsightedness into a perfect future, not perfect inner peace or certainty. But acceptance of the real possibility of defeat, of that defeat being more the reality, the future, of your life than the victory, and then doing the damn thing anyway because goodness is worth fighting for even if you lose.

[hayatheauthor]

Royal & Noble Titles You Should Know For Your Book

Nobility isn't just a vibe. Every title on this list used to mean something specific, land owned, duties owed, and exactly how much power a person had over the people beneath them. Here's the hierarchy, top to bottom, plus the special cases that trip people up.

The Sovereigns

Emperor/Empress — Sits above a king. Rules over multiple kingdoms or territories rather than just one, historically. Think the Holy Roman Emperor, or Queen Victoria's later title of Empress of India.

King/Queen Regnant — The sovereign ruler of a single kingdom in their own right. "Regnant" specifically means she rules, as opposed to a queen who's just married to one.

Tsar/Tsarina — The Russian equivalent, literally derived from "Caesar."

Kaiser — The German equivalent, same Caesar root, different flavor.

Archduke/Archduchess — An Austrian Habsburg-specific title, ranking above a regular duke but below an emperor. Useful if you want a tier between king and duke without inventing one.

Immediate Royal Family

Prince/Princess — A child or close relative of the monarch. In British tradition, it also extends to spouses of princes, which trips up a lot of writers who assume it's blood-only.

Crown Prince/Princess — Specifically the heir apparent, not just any prince.

Grand Duke/Duchess — Used for smaller sovereign states entirely (Luxembourg still has one) or for junior royals in places like Russia. Ranks below a king but above a regular duke.

Prince Consort — The husband of a reigning queen. Prince Albert is the textbook example, married to Victoria but never a king himself.

Queen Consort — The wife of a reigning king. Not a ruler in her own right, just married to one.

Country-Specific Heir Titles

Worth knowing if you want your world to feel less generically medieval-European and more specific:

Dauphin — the French heir apparent

Tsarevich — the Russian heir apparent

Infante/Infanta — Spanish and Portuguese term for a royal child who isn't the heir apparent

Regency & Special Circumstances

This is the section most lists skip, and it's exactly the kind of detail that makes a fictional court feel lived-in.

Regent — Anyone (a person, sometimes a council) who rules temporarily on behalf of a monarch who can't, usually because they're a minor, incapacitated, or absent.

Prince Regent — Specifically a prince acting as regent. The most famous real example is George, who ruled as Prince Regent for years while his father, George III, was unfit to rule, before becoming George IV himself.

Queen Mother — The mother of the current reigning monarch, once she's no longer queen consort or queen regnant herself. It's an honorary title, not a governing one.

Dowager [Title] — Applies to widows generally, not just queens. A Dowager Duchess or Dowager Countess is the widow of the previous title-holder, still using the title while her heir holds the actual position.

Heir Apparent vs. Heir Presumptive — An heir apparent can't be displaced by anyone born later. An heir presumptive can be, if someone with a stronger claim shows up (say, a son born after a daughter was next in line). This distinction alone can drive an entire succession plot.

The Peerage (hereditary, non-royal nobility)

Duke/Duchess — The highest rank below royalty. Historically ruled an actual duchy, meaning real territory and real armies, not just a fancy name.

Marquess/Marchioness — Ruled border territories, the "marches," that needed extra defense. That's genuinely where the name comes from.

Earl — The specifically British term for this tier. Comes from the Old English/Norse "jarl," and it's the oldest of the English titles, older than duke or marquess.

Count/Countess — The Continental European equivalent of an earl. Oddly, there's no male "earless" counterpart term, an earl's wife is still called a countess.

Viscount/Viscountess — Literally "vice-count," acting as a deputy to a count. A step down, still meaningful.

Baron/Baroness — The lowest formal rank of the peerage, but still a direct vassal to the crown rather than to another noble.

Titled but Not Peerage

Baronet — Hereditary, but not technically part of the peerage. A British-specific quirk that trips people up constantly.

Knight/Dame — Granted for life, not inherited. Earned through service rather than blood, which makes it a useful title for a character who rose up rather than was born into power.

Prince-Bishop — A real historical oddity, a bishop who also held temporal, political power over territory, common in the Holy Roman Empire. Genuinely useful if your world blends religious and political authority.

Lord/Lady — A general courtesy title that gets applied loosely across several of the ranks above. Not a rank on its own so much as a way of addressing one.

Untitled but Still Someone

Esquire/Gentry — Landowning, educated, socially significant, but no actual title. Your side character who's clearly well-off but not nobility probably belongs here.

Chatelaine — Not a rank, but a real functional role, the woman (often but not always the lady of the house) who ran an entire castle's household. Worth knowing if you want a character with real day-to-day power that has nothing to do with her title.

Quick note on forms of address, since getting this wrong is its own kind of tell: monarchs are "Your Majesty," dukes and duchesses are "Your Grace," most other peers are "My Lord/My Lady," and knights are addressed by first name with "Sir" or "Dame" in front of it, never the surname alone.

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[elizabitchtaylor-deactivated202]

I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the “bystander effect”, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.

I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didn’t do anything because they “assumed someone else would”. Nobody intervened until it was too late. 

What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar. 

Now… is it likely that people overheard Kitty’s cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didn’t care?

Maybe that’s not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didn’t know she was gay, or didn’t care.

But it’s a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And it’s a dishonour to her memory.

RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.

[chemicalheart-deactivated202009]

this was one of the first lessons I had in psych too and we were never told about this either nor was it in any of the reading materials

[thelingerieaddict-deactivated20]

I never knew this.

[dsudis]

I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most people’s windows were closed) tried to help in some way.

One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.

Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.

And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldn’t be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescue–so he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didn’t know whether the attacker was gone.

Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.

The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he “didn’t want to get involved” because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Ann’s. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.

So, no. I don’t think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genovese’s neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genovese’s neighbors tried to help.

See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)

A Call for Help (The New Yorker)

(Also, going by the content of the murderer’s confession, it was indeed a random attack.)

[talesofthestarshipregeneration]

how on EARTH was this “scientifically” studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!

[deadcatwithaflamethrower]

How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go!  That’s how it gets taught as this supposed “scientific study.”  Someone got fucking lazy.

Spread the real deal, kids.

[tehriz]

A book about this, “No One Helped”: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!

[racefortheironthrone]

I want to add one crucial but telling detail: the story about the 38 witnesses didn’t come out of nowhere, it was handed to the New York Times City Editor by the Police Commissioner in order to distract said editor from asking unwelcome questions about a different case, and the story that was eventually written and which made headlines was almost entirely composed from police sources. 

At the time, the NYPD was coming under quite a bit of criticism about rising crime rates and the seeming ineffectiveness of the police’s response to the problem. In the Kitty Genovese case, even though people did in fact call the police, it took about an hour for them to show up and the first detectives didn’t arrive until three hours later (at which point they mostly spent their time interrogating Kitty’s girlfriend about their relationship, because for “some reason” they considered her to be the most likely suspect for the murder. In fact, the police wouldn’t catch the actual killer until six days later when he was picked up for having a stolen TV in the trunk of his car, at which point he admitted to having committed a total of three murders). It’s not an accident that one of the things to come out of the Genovese case was the establishment of the 9-1-1 system, because at the time that the attack happened, you had to call the specific number of a particular police precinct and it was up to the duty sergeant on the desk to take action - which was usually to send someone out from the precinct to the address reported, because cops on foot patrol wouldn’t be outfitted with two-way radios for several years. It’s more than a little convenient that at a time when the NYPD is coming in for public scrutiny about its ability to do the basic job of responding to reports of crimes in a timely fashion, the Police Commissioner happens to hand the City Editor of the city’s most prominent newspaper a story which puts the blame for the slow response on the apathy and inaction of New Yorkers, neatly absolving the NYPD for its ridiculously poor performance in this case in particular and its response to the rise in crime in general. 

It’s also quite telling that the New York Times ran with the story the way they did. It’s not like there weren’t people on the scene who said they had called the police, or that the basic facts about how many witnesses there were and what they had seen didn’t match the account that the commissioner had given. The writer the Times sent out chose not to include this information because “it would have ruined the story.“ The Times wanted to frame the story as a narrative about how the root of NYC’s problems was urban apathy and anomie - and the news organizations that picked up on the Times’ reporting and made the Kitty Genovese case a national and global story wanted to frame the story as proof that NYC was a dangerous urban jungle that deserved its decline because of the bad character of its residents.  I think the takeaway from this case isn’t just about sloppy scientific research, it’s that you have to always consider how official narratives are used to assign blame to specific individuals and groups and absolve larger institutions of responsibility. 

[sighinastorm]

Shocking: people in the past had their own motives for lying too.

[ninakaina]

everybody leaving tags on my letterboxd roundup like "they didn't do the nobody scene??" we're so fucking past that i need you to catch up. i went into the movie knowing they wouldn't do the nobody scene and frankly i had made peace with it like okay if you don't want odysseus calling himself outis because you don't feel like the joke translates well enough WHATEVER you dont need to film every line of the poem. what i was NOT prepared for is that THEY DON'T SPEAK TO POLYPHEMUS AT ALL. they don't steal a giant wheel of cheese, they don't get him drunk, odysseus doesn't taunt him after their escape, AND he doesn't cry out to poseidon or the other cyclopes on the shore. it's "revealed" that he can speak in the cave before their escape as he prays to poseidon. someone asks odysseus "should we try to reason with him?" and ODYSSEUS says "we're past that." resulting in an adaptation where odysseus does not use wit or trickery to escape polyphemus at all-- which is the case with every single obstacle he meets. this guy does not lie and he does not play tricks. his intelligence is restricted to battlefield tactics, the administration and direction of his men as units. You have to poke polyphemus so he opens his eye before you can stab it! I am very smart. the only point at which he could be described as "tricking" polyphemus is when-- because the movie is allergic to making odysseus look stupid or silly in any way-- they tie straw to their backs to be mistaken for sheep instead of riding the undersides of the sheep, and we are presented with an action sequence of trousered and armored soldiers somersaulting and army crawling under polyphemus' gently dangling hand. which i hate because it is a less clever solution that only works if polyphemus is extremely stupid (shepherd who doesn't know how many sheep he has) -- and more importantly because it removes IMO the most emotionally efficient moment in the odyssey, which is polyphemus talking to the one sheep that's walking slow because it has odysseus on its belly like "oh no are you feeling okay today? you're moving so slow, maybe you're upset because i'm in pain? you're the best sheep in the world and i love all of you my sheeps" like that scene is supposed to instantly retroactively humanize polyphemus and make you realize odysseus has been torturing a person with feelings who basically just wants to be left alone with his pet sheep and it's extremely good at that in every translation i've ever read. but not one of odysseus' enemies are allowed an inch of humanity in this entire adaptation which seems to be a veiled metaphor for the vietnam war so what can you expect. and yes because odysseus never does anything wrong or stupid or silly, OF COURSE he would never reveal his name and allow polyphemus to curse him, and his crew only "believes" that he's been cursed by poseidon thereafter, which removes the ENTIRE MAIN ANTAGONIST of the story and changes the central conflict from man vs. god to man vs. ????

[carouselcometh]

Devastating! Art museum gift shop doesn’t sell prints of specific and unpopular painting that struck a cord with you!

[anintelligentoctopus]

I'm gonna be honest 'cowboys were a sort of itinerant warrior class common in meiji-era texas' always annoys me a bit because it's a funny post but also No They Weren't. They were an itinerant pastoralist class common in Meiji-era Texas. And indeed the wider western region of post-Risorgimento America

[theaudientvoid]

While primarily pastoralists, cowboys are often depicted in conflict with the native peoples of the region, as well as armed bandits, primarily made up of unemployed veterans of the defeated Confederate shogunate. A typical cowboy settlement was ruled by a lord called a sheriff*, assisted by his armed retainers, called deputies. Modern depictions of cowboy society often focus on the sheriff and his men, with minimal attention paid to the peasants they rule. Alternately, bounty hunters, or ronin deputies, may serve as the protagonists in these stories.

*Similar to Japan, the official title used by the lord and his retainers varied from settlement to settlement. Alternate titles included marshall, ranger, or just lawman.

[mxtxfanatic]

Too lazy to go dig it up rn, but remember when I made that post about how if Luo Binghe had a group of friends, they’d all hate Shen Qingqiu and think Luo Binghe was the victim in the same way that the Cang Qiong Mountain cultivators rally around Shen Qingqiu? Well I just remembered that this is actually exactly what the Holy Mausoleum arc is lmao. All the characters that Shen Qingqiu thinks are on Luo Binghe’s side explain that they’re the ones who set Shen Qingqiu up—not Luo Binghe—because they’re jealous of how Shen Qingqiu commands Luo Binghe’s complete loyalty, which they cannot comprehend because they know Shen Qingqiu used to abuse Luo Binghe grotesquely. They literally think that Luo Binghe is the one with Stockholm Syndrome!

[bedupolker]

God i want to be critical of how the avatar the last airbender movie was treated but.... it's such a frustratingly mid movie....

[bedupolker]

Long ass review of the Aang film, an animated sequel to Avatar the Last Airbender, dedicated to @yvenin (you don't have to read it all, but she does.)

PLOT OVERVIEW

Aang is looking for airbending artifacts. He's upset at being the last airbender and spends a lot of time solo. Katara's there sometimes. Ummmm there are some naughty nonbenders who cause Aang trouble. Aang stumbles upon a second last airbender named Tagah, who's, what would you know, also frozen in an iceberg. Tagah's a survivor of a war from a million billion years ago, and is horrified to learn that Aang's the only remaining airbender. Tagah tells Aang about a secret spirit island with a magic staff that can grant airbending to anyone. Aang invites his friends: Toph, Sokka, Zuko, and Katara. Aang platonically loves Tagah. Toph and Zuko are sexually attracted to Taga. Katara distrusts Tagah. Who's in the right here? They go through a dangerous storm to get to the spirit island to get the magic staff. They go into the spirit world at some point, they go to the beach that makes you old (from M. Night Shamalin's beach that makes you old), Taiki Waititi is there and he gives me a migraine. Tagah reveals that he hates all non-airbenders and wants to use the staff for evil, and he kills everyone. Katara brings them back from the dead. Aang and Tagah absorb positive and negative energy from the staff and turn into big glowing boys and fight. Aang starts to absorb too much negative energy. But he's okay! Tagah gets defeated. There's a short pre-credit scene where they find more wild Sky Bison. This is the best scene in the movie. Review below: 

FIRST THOUGHTS

The premise was an odd choice for a midquel. Textbook rule for midquels is they explore a story that either you don't know the conclusion of, or gives an alternate perspective/backstory for the sequel. Finding another airbender is a little shaky, we already know that Aang's descendants are the only remaining airbenders until Legend of Korra S2, we know whoever this is, they won't make it. This isn't reeeeeeally a deal breaker for me, though its odd they didn't pick one of the other mysteries of the show, still you could still make a good sequel to Aang's adventures without touching LoK. We'll try to meet this film where it's at.

I don't have much non-nitpicky critique of ATLA. Maybe it's nostalgia, but honestly it just feels like it says what it wants to say, has some lovable characters and a straightforward plot, neat influences, and doesn't overstay its welcome. Many try to replicate its tone, I haven't seen anyone succeed yet. Korra is imperfect, but I'd still give it like a 6 out of 10. It's alright. I prefer it to most of the other animated series inspired by ATLA, I think there are some legitimate innovations to the premise of ATLA here, but I could happily go my entire life without ever watching it again. 

Tonally, I might've expected the movie felt like something between ATLA and LoK, instead it feels like ATLA and LoK exist on a spectrum, and the Aang film is past LoK. It removes some of the things I liked about ATLA, removes some of the changes I appreciated about Korra, and emphasizes things I disliked about LoK. 

Tagah, Aang, and Airbending

First- Aang's central conflict works fine. ATLA didn't see a chance to give Aang space to process the loss his entire people and what that means for him, amidst the war and rushing to master the elements on a tight timeframe. Now, as we've had time to let the Fire Nation conflict settle, of course it will reopen old wounds. He sees the world slowly recover and come back together, changing into something closer to the world he remembers from his childhood. But it's not the world he remembers, it never will be, his culture and people are the one thing that will never return. He couldn't fix everything.

But Aang discovers spite of it all he's not the last Airbender, he's finally met another person who can share this special part of his life. He's overjoyed... but slowly, gradually, things feel off. The other Airbender has been twisted by war and hate, he's perverted the art and culture sacred to Aang. This story is almost... a rehashed version of Katara's arc in the S3 Bloodbender episode, the Puppetmaster.

I actually like that!

The Puppetmaster is one of the most memorable episodes. It's dark, it's compelling, it's interesting worldbuilding. Katara struggles with love and grief and identity in a heart-wrenching way. Aang and Katara's bond comes from their similarities: both victims of genocide, both have had their most important people violently taken from them, both are desperate to connect with someone who shares a piece of that lost culture, and ultimately both are forced to balance idealism with ugly reality. I really like how their arcs echo each other, and how in spite of similar experiences they come from different places. Aang helps Katara reconnect with hope for a better world, and she helps him through grief because she and Sokka have been through something similar and have had time to process it. [put a pin in that]

An arc for Aang that echoes Katara's Puppetmaster (& maybe the southern raiders) arc could work! There's a few simple satisfying conclusions we could reach: let go of the past, balance your duties, there are no incorruptible good or purely evil elements, old love reborn as new love, etc, etc, the original series touched on a lot of these, nothing wrong with exploring any of these concepts in a deeper way with another character. Yet, the odd writing and wonky worldbuilding just takes me out of it.

So, Tagah the Airbender villain.

None of the bending nations are a monolith, yet they're all interconnected. The nations' "flaws" aren't in opposition to their virtues, but extensions of them (fire as life/drive vs. anger/destruction, earth as perseverance vs. rigidity)

We've had one Airbender villain before, Zaheer, in S3 LoK, and he's great! Zaheer embodies Airbending philosophy taken to an extreme. He's a compelling character with a full arc and clear motivation. Anarchist beliefs compliment his newly-found abilities as he violently dethrones and murders corrupted leaders (not without reason). He grieves the loss of his loved one before realizing that love and earthly connection was the only thing holding him back. (Not to mention he didn't grow up an Airbending monk, it's justifiable he might have some not-so-monkley ideas)

Alternatively, look at the puppetmaster Hamma, Hamma chooses hatred of others over love for her people. Bloodbending is an extension of the healing aspects of waterbending, in the sense that you intimately connect with someone not to help them, but to control them. Katara's disgust with Hamma isn't just that she's hurt innocent people, but that Katara sees darkness in Hamma that's reflected in herself, both in the ability to bloodbend, and her own hunger to avenge what the war had taken from her. 

Tagah is also an airbending villain, he's also a "mentor" to Aang, but his philosophy is pretty much diametrically opposed to everything Aang, the other monks, (and even Zaheer), stood for. He's kind of racist/nationalist, even when he's "good" he comes off as quite cold, he's bloodthirsty, he's disloyal, needlessly mean and taking personal shots at Aang. Airbending seems to just be an arbitrary power he happens to have. Sure, Both Aang and Tagah grieve the loss of their Airbender brothers, but like... Aang was pushed into a role too young and ran away (narrowly avoiding certain death), meanwhile Tagah was a traitor who got put into an ice bubble because he was a nasty boy. Now, I don't WANT Tagah to be some carbon copy of Hamma or Zaheer, but I want him to have /some/ deeper connection to Aang other a barebones "we have the same superpower" thing. They're from the same bending nation, but it doesn't feel like they're from the same /culture/, not the way Katara and Hamma were. The only thing that really connects him to Aang is both having the power to control wind, being human popsicles, feeling a little lonely.

Moreover, Tagah doesn't have any charisma. He's somewhere between calm and cold when we meet him, and then he becomes a twist villain with unclear morals and just an unnecessarily mean and emotional guy. Not every villain has to be a complicated tortured soul. Ozai had zero redeeming qualities, but he didn't need to! He's a genocidal fascist monster, we are never asked to empathize with him. On the flip side, LoK had quite a few villains who, again, had interesting motifs and empathetic moments, and so we understand why Korra wanted to hear them out. Sure, we can't expect Aang to be objective given his longing for other Airbenders, but we the audience should feel cautiously optemistic about Tagah too, right? Wouldn't that make the twist all the more impactful? Isn't that the whole purpose of having a twist vilain?

The singular scene that worked for me was Tagah demonstrating the airbending move that can only be done with two benders. Okay, cool, but imagine how meaningful it would be if they actually had a believable relationship. Oh, his arrow looked cool, too. 

The Gaang

Well we could talk about the worldbuilding and lore of ATLA all day. But you know, I wouldn't really give a hoot about the lore without the characters and relationships. Good character writing can make a dogwater plot bearable. Character writing was one of the greatest strengths of ATLA, a flaw in LoK, and a major weakness of this film.

[ok take that pin out]

Aang and Katara... Unpopular opinion: in ATLA, I thought they were sweet, I was happy when they got a break from being child soldiers and had fun riding on animals or dancing in caves or doing ecoterrorism. Even if you didn't care for the romantic subplot, their deep friendship was still a core element of the story.

I think you COULD criticize the film for reducing a strong female character to a love interest, you wouldn't be wrong, but in a backhanded defense, pretty much every character got reduced to one trait. Katara has more agency than Sokka, Zuko, and Toph, but only in the sense that she isn't fully a background-prop, and, uh, expresses an opinion. Of course, none of her actions really affect the events that transpire in a meaningful way. Except necromancy in that one scene I guess? You know, it was really unclear.

Throughout the film, Aang and Katara talk AT each other, not TO each other. Aang monologues about what it's like to be the last Airbender. Katara's developed amnesia about, basically, her entire backstory, and can't provide a word of comfort. This is the same Katara who knew Aang for like three days and brought him out of supernatural destruction mode moments after he'd seen the corpse of his father-figure, pulled him through his grief when Appa was lost, etc. Like, she's the one person who probably really gets what you're going through, she's the last southern waterbender! Or when she has misgivings about Tagah, you know, she went through something similar with Pakku (sexist waterbending teacher) and Hamma. Nothing??? Neither even has to change the other's mind, just acknowledgement or something.

Backstory amnesia aside, this conversation is just so funny when like Aang is monologuing about being the last airbender right? And how he alone has to be the only airbender ever? And like buddy you're talking to the one person who would gladly help you out with that!!! I thought that was just wonky writing, but apparently Katara was supposed to be pregnant in a few drafts of the film. Which like, thematically that fits with letting go of the past (Tagah) and looking forward to the new (Tenzin & co), but it wouldn't really fit the film in a practical sense. Either Katara is far along and has to sit out on all the action/adventure scenes (which would weaken the movie, she's also the only non-Airbender with any kind of conflict), or if she wasn't showing/went along anyways, then we have to accept that Aang not only endangered the lives of his four best friends, one of whom wouldn't be in peak fighting condition, but also his unborn child, which would make an already "eeeeugh" decision even worse. In general, it's a bummer in other media when the moment a character becomes a mom she can't have adventures when the same doesn't go for dads, but in the context of this story, I see why that was cut. So, that awkward conversation was just kind of left in with no acknowledgement or conclusion. 

While Aang, Katara, and Tagah are one-note characters with goals and motivations, we also see Toph, Sokka, and Zuko tag along and become, just... one-note characters. Okay- an ensemble cast in a film is hard! You can't just dedicate 21 minutes to exploring them and then move on. I've seen complaints about excluding Iroh or Suki, and it would've been nice to see those characters, what would they have done? Rob Aang's three friends of the few lines they already have?

I don't love how Sokka and Toph are written. Toph gets off... okay. She's just a more a straightforward character, she's from day 1 confident and blunt. Here, she gets a few almost-funny lines and she gets to be horny about Tagah, nothing especially offensive. Sokka, on the other hand, is surprisingly nuanced and I rarely see him fully pinned down outside of the original, and never replicated. Like, paired beside Aang and Katara he's deeply cynical, but he's also comic relief. But he's also legitimately funny to his friends, but he's also a grouch. He's empathetic compared to Toph and sometimes even compared to Katara. He's very intelligent, but sometimes acts like a doofus. He wants to be a leader but he might be the most insecure of our protagonists.... You get what I'm saying!? Reducing Sokka to a background character, he can't be put in the "funny guy" box like Toph, nor the "straight man" (comedic role) like Zuko. Since Aang and Katara aren't allowed to be silly or in this film, that burden has been placed on Sokka. And God he just gets the worst, corniest lines.

Zuko, I think much like Katara there's wasted potential here in terms of his relationship with Aang, reflecting on his own past misjudgments and mistakes. Aaron Ehaz (former writer for ATLA) had conceptualized Zuko as continuing to follow in his Uncle's footsteps as a therapeutic presence for his friends, like we see shades of during the tail end of ATLA. Zuko wouldn't really /need/ a dramatic arc if this were the case in the same way Iroh didn't need an arc in ATLA: their epiphanies happened before the start of the show. Like Katara, Zuko's arc in ATLA is a mirror of Aang's, how cool would it be to see Aang at his lowest, and Zuko at his most peaceful, the one extending the helping hand like his uncle once did? As is, Zuko is.... fine. He doesn't do much, but I'll admit his lines got a chuckle out of me. I think the lines they shoved into Sokka and Toph's mouths kind of felt like being yapped at by a small dog, but Zuko can't really be that same zany comic relief guy(tm) so they're forced to write him with SOME restraint, so he ended up basically as that one quiet kid who's secretly hilarious. 

I want to wrap back around to Aang, who in spite of being the protagonists, suffers from just not really having much personality. Sure, it's natural Aang isn't a goofy kid anymore, but I wish we got to see him mature into a kind, considerate, if still imperfect and grieving adult. Obviously we wouldn't have much of a movie if he never made mistakes, but his actions past the first act just feel arbitrary. He trusts Tagah because the plot, he endangers his friends because plot, he gets angry because plot. Aang's got two core conflicts: one's basically "let go of the past," (yeah ok) and.... not to do things without his friends, I guess, which is given a few throwaway lines, like the writers were just checking off a box. Okay, Aang said hi to Zuko. Okay, Aang asked Sokka if this plan sounded good. Neither of these people are allowed to say anything of meaning to Aang, the plot must go on. And his flaws don't really feel like flaws the Aang we knew would have. You're really telling me that Aang, the same guy who almost gave up all the power in the universe for a girl he liked, or nearly destroyed innocent people's lives because he thought they might have stolen his fuzzy buddy Appa, is the same guy who's sending his most beloved allies into a hurricane just 'cause some weird guy told him to? I think they're trying to draw from Aang's "I need to defeat the fire lord alone," line in the finale, maybe when he briefly tries to go to Roku's palace without his friends. But I don't recall ATLA ever really portraying this as a major flaw of his. He just wasn't selfish in that way as a kid, we don't see why that would change as he became an adult. I want to care about this person I grew up with, I want to see how he's changed and how he's still the kid we know and love, I want to see how his bond with his friends deepened in the decade after the war. And he's the protagonist of the movie, by far has the most lines, why doesn't he get to be... Like, a person? 

How would we fix this? It's hard for a film to develop an entire ensemble. An entirely different plot where the central focus wasn't the relationship between Aang and a new baddie could've allotted more time for the people we already know, but I do want to try and meet the movie where it's at. A lot of things could be cut. Do we really need Taiki Watiti's improv? Every movie needs a slow moment to breathe, have a slower moment that advances character, atmosohere, something simple, outside the bare bones of the plot. There isn't a shortage of good, contemporary children/teen adventure films that succeed in pacing themselves with a big cast of memorable characters, even if not all of them play a major role. Into the spiderverse, Kpop demon hunters, encanto, how to train your dragon, so on, I don't even personally love/like every one of those examples, but I remember the characters... The credits art of the Gaang having fun made me more emotional than like... pretty much anything else. 

I think ultimately, I just wish the dialogue was... good? Like.... it's just not good! You can get away with a lot of OOC stuff and arbitrary motivations and plot holes if the characters talk like themselves. Like get better at writing I dunno???? Have more conversations? Read the lines out loud after you write them???? I'm not an english teacher.

Worldbuilding

In general I'm in favor of a liiiiiittle less worldbuilding, especially in fantasy, and letting the audience fill in the gaps. That's what fanfiction is for. I loathed the good/evil conflict of S2 LoK, it actively undermined a lot of the Eastern Philosophy that the original series espoused. I don't think this movie is QUITE as bad, more just... unnecessary. 

Tagah's backstory ate up a lot of time. Ok, Aang's not special for being in a bubble. There's a staff that can give or take bending. There was some other war ten thousand years ago. cool. Nothing interesting, nothing of consequence is added to Avatar's world. And there's powerscaling. (Lok issue too) Bending's being given and taken away willy-nilly like Dr. Suess's starbelly sneeches. I know ATLA had energybending, but still, that was kind of a freak thing. Writer Aaron Ehaz mentioned in a world where we got S4 of ATLA, Aang would have to deal with the effects of absolving Ozai's dark energy. It's not just something you can just pick up your wand and do to that guy you don't like on a Tuesday morning. Did I mention Katara brings people back from the dead? I guess they were on a spirit island, still I feel like that should've been a bigger deal than it was. Tagah uses energybending to turn into some kind of big bodybuilder hulk guy, so does Aang, it's so goofy not much else to say.

I don't hate the idea of Airbenders being "converted." If Airbending is analogous to Buddhism, it's an open religion and philosophy, from what I've read it doesn't necessarily require rejecting preexisting beliefs and spirituality. Obviously, any major world religion is going to have a lot of people helped by it, hurt by it, a million different sects, misinterpreting it, interpreting it to push a certain agenda, whatever, but in the context of Avatar I can see Airbending changing and evolving as it opens itself to members from all over the world.

Which if Airbending was an open culture, why's Tagah so racist towards Water/Firebenders?? I get Earthbenders bc war, but like are nonbenders the only ones who can be converted????

Anti-Bending Movement

I'm... confused at the decision to bring plot point up repeatedly. Not that it isn't an interesting concept, but the fact that neither the characters nor the writers really know what to do with it.

In ATLA, oppression reflects real world conflicts straightforwardly: misogyny, colonialism, classism, ableism, etc, with the exception of bending. Bending is combat, but it's so much more: it's a stand-in for its respective culture at large: a distillation of unique art, philosophy, spirituality, way of life, etc. I think this works really well! We can see how lost Katara is without having a master to help her connect to her culture, we see Aang struggle as a victim of genocide, the fire nations concentrated efforts to subjugate nations by targeting their benders. Even though not everyone is a bender, much of their philosophy and heritage draws from bending, in the same way not every person in real life fills the role of spiritual leader/knowledge keeper. On a surface level, kids can see why bending is special, on a deeper level, it's easy to read these other meanings, which makes it a great plot device.

At the same time, nonbenders in ATLA aren't portrayed as lesser. (Makes sense. Blasting fire is cool, sword fights are also cool.) Early we meet the Kyoshi warriors. Followed by the Yuyan archers, Jet's gang, the bounty hunter, Azula's lackeys, Sokka's master, etc, they're never treated as anything less than a serious threat. The only time we see lack of bending as a weakness is, 1. When a bender who doesn't have an alternative fighting style gets their bending disabled, 2. Toph ribbing on Sokka (she ribs on everyone), and 3. Sokka's insecurities, which are resolved in finding a master, not becoming something he's not. On the flip side, Toph's parents treat her like a delicate flower in spite of Earthbending, Zuko spends the much of the series as a mediocre Firebender but highly competent in other weaponry. Bending can be a great asset, but it's a skill that needs to be learned, nonbenders just pick up other skills. Us as viewers aren't given reason to believe they're systemically marginalized in the text of ATLA.

Season 1 of Korra changes bending as a narrative device. With more of a "mixed" culture, bending isn't quite a stand-in for that anymore. It starts to feel more like a superpower that a minority of people are born with that gives them advantage over the nonbending majority. This kind of removes clean analogy, there isn't a real-world equivalent to some people having superpowers. It doesn't really work as a disability metaphor, it doesn't really work as a class metaphor, it's not really a metaphor for savants, it's purely a "what if." That's not inherently bad. You can have a less-grounded fantasy conflict that's thoughtful and compelling, and you can have a conflict grounded in real-world issues that's awkward and in bad taste. The thing is, the moral answers to previously-explored issues like colonialism and misogyny are fairly straightforward: they're not good. The nuance arises when we ask why do characters who live in this world stand by these principles, and how do we change that? Nonbender oppression doesn't really have a clear moral answer. It's not a socially constructed caste system that needs to be dismantled, it's a tangible difference that gives some a real advantage. And how do we fix nonbender oppression? Me writing this, I dunno, according to Korra and Aang, just beat the crap out of them until they give up.

LoK is a messy series compared to ATLA but Amon was a memorable character. If you squint we can write anti-benders as one freak cult of personality with a charismatic leader who has to be taken down. Korra as a character isn't known for tact or diplomacy, she ultimately beats the shit out of him and reveals his lies in the process. Amon was a liar, who's to say he couldn't have planted some kind of paranoia in his followers?

Now, we take this conflict and learn it wasn't just one nefarious guy. It's been going on since Aang was Korra's age, literally the majority of his lifetime. And calm, pacifistic Aang's solution is... beat the shit out of them.

Aang beating the shit out of them didn't solve this issue. The nonbenders in the Aang movie seem fully separate from Amon's movement, it seems like both rose up organically from a systemic inequality. If nonbender oppression is real, and an abstracted stand-in for ableism or misogyny or whatever, fine, but we're falling into that unpleasant trope of "extremists that had a few good points.... but they were VIOLENT :(", and the only solution is to beat the shit out of them. Very Marvel. Plus this failure takes Aang, our beloved boy Aang, and makes him both apathetic to the nonbenders' plight, and ineffectual as a peacekeeper.

And like... do we want to keep this as a conflict?

I could spitball ways a bender/nonbender conflict could be handled better, but I cannot emphasize this enough how unrelated to the main plot it's crazy how much I've written about it. Amon's a fun one-off villain, but we're not still contemplating nonbender rights. These baddies are extremely generic and forgettable in an already generic and forgettable cast. I have the opposite complaint with them as I do with Tagah: having them represent a confused moral conflict doesn't add nuance, doesn't build on Tagah or Aang's arcs, and why does Tagah even need lackeys? I thought he was like a xenophobic lone wolf or something who turns into a huge hulk man. What do they even do. 

Visuals & Animation

A lot of time and technical skill went into it. I won't deny that. The beauty of ATLA, though, even as a kid who didn't know nothing about martial arts, each style felt unique. Fire doesn't move the same way as air. Ice doesn't move like earth. The martial arts themselves- you can tell the difference between bending styles reflected in how they portray real-world arts. This expectation is even played with in neat ways, like a minor earthbending character who mimics firebending for show, and Iroh borrowing from waterbending to redirect lightening- and you can tell! The martial arts come first and inform the way characters and elements move. Credit to ATLA's Martial Arts consultant, Sifu Kisu.

The film, there's a lot going on, I can only describe it as very... Promare (2019 animr film). I'll be honest, I didn't care for Promare. I don't have anything against it, if you like it that's cool. I think Studio Trigger's done great dynamic animation in past projects, always pushing it further, bigger. Promare gets a little big. Once the fight builds up, there's nothing grounding you. Who knows who's doing what. It doesn't feel visceral, there's not a lot of logic or cohesiveness as to how the powers work, dunno who's doing what, you stop being at the edge of your seat and kind of have to stop thinking and go along with the ride. This film feels very Promare- pretty, psychedelic visuals, lots of movement but just... not much impact.

Other visual notes: PERSONAL TASTE I'm eh on the more saturated color palette. Feels like it was introduced in the second season of Korra in the more "spirity" scenes of the series and it never went away. I miss earth tones. Written language in the original series was based on Chinese calligraphy, it has been changed to vaguely-Asian looking gibberish. New character designs: not much to say on costume design, everyone became hot in a clinical sanitized way, most disappointing the characters' facial features look much more generic. I suppose ATLA was a product of its time, looking back you can see a lot of design choices taken from contemporaries like Teen Titans, but it is sad to see a lot of the characters' features bluffed out into generic Animestyle ones.

Combining the departure from real world martial arts, set locations, language, and even physical traits, it is kind of sad to see a detachment from real world inspirations. I think it's a big part of why ATLA stands out so much compared to its spiritual successors (she-ra, the dragon prince, even Korra), is that it's not a cartoon based on a cartoon, it's a cartoon that draws inspiration from a respect and understanding of diverse sources.

Credit where credit is due, I like that they drew Toph with muscle mass.

Voice acting:

TBH I don't have strong opinions on the voice acting. Maybe as someone who grew up with 4kids dubs. I appreciate a great voice actor, I'm frustrated at how VAs aren't taken seriously in animated films in lieu of celebrities, it's just... Especially for a less prominent anime-esque movie like this, VA doesn't make or break it. And if it's distracting, there's always dubs (Bye bye Chris Pratt Mario, hello Italian Language Mario.) Not going to say much on casting changes other than the fact that I'm confused why Dante Basco wasn't reprised, Zuko's voice is so distinctive. (Surely it's not because Basco's Filipino? Like, the Fire Nation is inspired by Southeast Asia as much as it is on China/Japan, right??? Ah, maybe it was a logistics thing, or they wanted Zuko to sound more grown-up.)

I do want to shoutout Sokka's VA: Roman Zaragoza. His reads were by and far the best, even the actual dialogue he was speaking made me cringe. Tone & cadence was spot on. Toph is fine. Aang and Katara's deliveries were as flat as their characters. I can't blame the actors, the dialogue didn't really give much to work with, and it's hard for even the best actors to shine with bad direction. Bautista (VA'd the villain) IS an established actor. I've never had any issue with past performances, but he didn't capture my heart here, so i doubt it's the other VA's faults.

THE END

Ragging on this movie a little bit. It is hard not to be tough on this movie- Korra wasn't exempt from comparisons but at least it had a nearly-new cast of characters, with new personalities and conflicts and some legitimately cool additions. This film explicitly focuses on the protagonist of ATLA, and it's just such a major miss. I don't care for the plot, the writing's horrendous, the visuals are Fine. I wish there was something, anything I could cling to in this film. Hell, I liked the second It movie even though it was shit, just because I thought Bill Hader's character was charming. I LOVE Soul Eater for its characters and aesthetics but can't stand 75% of the worldbuilding and plot. This film just feels so... hollow, and it's sad to see characters that I know and love have the life sucked out of them. If you liked the film, that's cool, it's actually legal to enjoy things that I don't and I'll be the first person to admit I have a low tolerance for crappy self-serious fantasy films (but a high tolerance for crappy horror and crappy workplace sitcoms). And of course, it's abysmal how Paramount treated this film. To me, ATLA is where it starts and ends. Oh, and the Kyoshi novels. If you're hungering for a more mature look at Avatar that develops the world in a neat way, please check out the Kyoshi novels by F.C. Yee. I've heard the Yancheng novels are also pretty good. 

[mxtxfanatic]

I think it's actually a very important distinction that Mianmian isn’t called a "servant’s (家仆) daughter" by Jiang Cheng but a domestic slave’s (家奴) daughter, actually. I think words mean things, actually, and that Chinese isn't just a bunch of made-up ink splotches and sounds that we can "Interpret" any way we want to.

[mxtxfanatic]

1) Yes Mianmian truly is a slave's daughter, Jiang Cheng isn't just insulting her.

2) There are actually other characters described as "domestic slaves" or the daughters of one in the story, too: Mo Xuanyu's mother (daughter) and Wang Lingjiao. Wang Lingjiao also calls Madam Yu's two servants "slaves" when admonishing them, to which Madam Yu corrects that they are servants and Wei Wuxian muses snarkily that a domestic slave is using the term to insult others like she isn't one, herself.

3) There seems to be a mistranslation from both exr and 7seas about how Wang Lingjiao became Wen Chao's mistress. Exr says that Wen Chao's wife sanctioned Wang Lingjiao becoming a mistress after seeing how beautiful she was, while 7seas corrects this to Wang Lingjiao exchanging (flirtatious) glances with Wen Chao before falling into bed with him, but then 7seas decides to add this line of "with the inadvertent aid from her mistress," which exists nowhere in the raws. I also can't find where the sentence, "Hardly a noteworthy name, and yet, thanks to its masters, one that could not be ignored" appears in any of version of my raws.

[mxtxfanatic]

For another Chinese fan has started combing through the 7seas translation on weibo and cross-posted to twitter for English-speaking fans to see:

But for those with neither weibo nor twitter, here are the screenshots:

[mxtxfanatic]

[mxtxfanatic]

(34-39 are all related to drunken shenanigans #3, which we’ve already established 7seas tool from the unedited version of mdzs.)

[chai-chahiye-yr]

34-39 made my blood boil. It was multiple paragraphs of Wangxian being sweet and showing the steps of WWX’s thought process and being so fond of LWJ. And Suika just slaps all the actions together into 2 paragraphs, deletes entire lines and moves on.

The way she translated all the scenes of drunken 3 has me convinced that she actually doesn’t like Wangxian. And using ‘sinister’ and ‘evil’ to falsely describe some of WWX’s actions and smiles, constantly having characters call him annoying and making LWJ ‘chide’ WWX as if he doesn’t like him being playful, or making LWJ seem overly strict and even hypocritical in his words and actions makes me feel like she doesn’t like WWX or LWJ either.

Like this is so blatant

And frankly there should be a tally for how many times JC was described as ‘upset’, a mild word to invoke pity and sympathy then the actual negative word to describe him 🙄

[doppelgangerleaverite]

can anyone on this gay ass website give me an opinion on which translation of the epic of gilgamesh i should read? ive been wanting to read it for ages but theres a number of common translations and i know translations can make or break a story; i dont want to start with the wrong one

[gilgamesh-enjoyer]

I've read a few so I can offer recommendations! I started with the Sandars translation, which is a good starting point but a pretty early translation. Benjamin Foster's translation is one of my favourites, and the version I read (Second Norton Critical Edition) includes some really interesting discussion essays with it. Andrew George's translation received an update a couple of years ago so is up to date with Foster's translation, though I prefer how the language flows in Foster's.

I would also recommend Gilgamesh Retold by Jenny Lewis for a translation with a more modern poetic take.

[perrenlore]

GILGAMESH TRANSLATION MASTERPOST:

Benjamin Foster’s Gilgamesh condenses all the different tablets we’ve found together to make one cohesive narrative which is way less intimidating and therefore my go-to if you want something that feels cohesive while also sticking very close to the language of the original. 10/10

Andrew George is the most thorough and up-to-date, and sticks as close to the text as you can get. It does, however, separate out all the different tablets, and feels very unedited in its style. Definitely not a “pretty” version. 10/10 cuz he’s a legend and this is the most definitive scholarly edition but don’t start with it.

Maureen Kovacs has a lovely translation with some very interesting footnotes on word choices. Her Ninsun is absolutely incredible and if you want to cry your eyes out over Gilgamesh’s fate that’s the one for you. It’s one step up from Foster’s in terms of poetic-ness but still pretty close to the original. 8/10

Sophus Helle is more poetic than Kovacs but BRILLIANT, one of my favourite Enkidus and his Shamhat is wonderful. Top favourite of all time. This is a very good starting point. 9/10

I wouldn’t recommend Sandars simply because it’s prose, and also condenses the twelfth tablet into a nice tidy ending that doesn’t really work with the Standard Babylonian narrative. 6/10

Lewis’ Gilgamesh Retold is more of a poetic retelling than a translation; it’s beautiful but definitely not a starting point. Sweet and gentle Enkidu though, very charming. 7/10

Stephen Mitchell I’m not a fan of. He smooths the poem out into something tame and very expected. This is my personal bias but I really dislike his Shamhat. His Enkidu and Gilgamesh are also explicitly more like brothers, which is a valid interpretation but also again not one I lean towards. 5/10

Herbert Mason’s Gilgamesh has some stunning moments in it (Enkidu! They do not know you like I know you!) However it is nowhere near the real text BUT closer than Lewis’. Changes the ending of the poem so it’s about Gilgamesh mourning Enkidu rather than mourning his own mortality; a much sadder conclusion with less resolution than in the Standard Babylonian. 7/10

BONUS ROUND:

Derek Hines’ play GILGAMESH is fucking DERANGED guys. Ten Gilgillion out of ten.

[headspace-hotel]

Foster's is my favorite that I've read

[meganwhalenturner]

Seconding the Sophus Helle recommendations. I loved his introduction to the text and the essays included at the back.

[70sscifiart]

Happy new year! Here's the end of the 1953 EC Comics adaptation of Ray Bradbury's "There Will Come Soft Rains," first published in Weird Fantasy #17.

Via @cirnineball

[70sscifiart]

Today is August 5, 2026!

[heatherwitch]

Ray Bradbury’s short story “There Will Come Soft Rains” that was written in 1950 is set on the day of August 4th, 2026 (tomorrow)!! Now’s your chance to read it around the time it’s based in!

Audio: A recording of Leonard Nimoy reading it on Internet Archive.

Text: A PDF version.

Graphic Novel: On Internet Archive.