Okay, we got a new one, boys.
Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.
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@nikkiwriteswords
Okay, we got a new one, boys.
Close enough welcome back Chekov's gun.
Prev you canât bury this in your own tags
"Does the author respect women" is a third distinct question from either of the other two.
A story where someone is brought back from the dead, and at first it seems like it's all Came Back Wrong: This is no longer the person that the people around her knew - she has the same memories as she did in life, knows the same people and has the same skills and habits, but she says things that she never would have in her life. Harsh, cruel, and frightening things. There is no more peace in the house because of the things she tells people, picking at wounds in the household with surgical presicion.
When asked why she must be like this, and why she cannot just be the kind and gentle person she was before - the one they loved and wanted back so badly that they broke the laws of nature to return her to life - she tells them that they should not have done that. This household will never know peace again until either she dies again or someone else in the family does.
She is still the same person, with the same thoughts and feelings. Only one thing has changed: The dead cannot lie.
Something is missing from the debate over educationally suitable literature
J. R. R. Tolkien: no, my books aren't about the war I experienced. It's just a story
J. R. R. Tolkien's works: you cannot go home, war ends entire bloodlines, you are mourning the death of your brother alone, you dug into the earth and permanently scored the land, you cannot explain what you have been through, you cannot go home, "that wound will never fully heal. He will carry it the rest of his life", leaving the women behind does not save them, the young die first, you cannot go home, the parent will bury their child, you have lost the wives and you will never connect with them again, "how shall any tower withstand such numbers and such reckless hate?", you are not the same, you cannot go home, you can never go home, your father will only side with those he sees as worthy bloodlines and you cannot change his mind, it is more meaningful Not to kill, sometimes your sacrifice accomplishes nothing, you cannot go home
tolkien was extremely (and justifiably) snippy with people who thought that the books were a WWII allegory, but he was more open to the idea that his experiences in the First World War informed his writing
a good analysis of this can be found here, in the section headed "the Somme of Gondor"
(Note: Thanks to the effort of a kind reader, this post is now available in audio format! The playlist for the entire series may be found he
Return of the King, specifically, among the Lord of the Rings, deserves a place in the pantheon of First World War literature â not only for this scene, of course (Frodoâs efforts to live with trauma after the scourging of the shire rate, to me at least, as one of the greatest and saddest passages in all of English literature) â alongside works like All Quiet and A Farewell to Arms, yet it seems it is rarely appreciated as such. I actually suspect Peter Jackson understood this.... Nevertheless, where Jacksonâs Siege of Gondor is about might, Tolkienâs Siege is about courage and despair â the question is not âcan the men of Gondor resistâ but will they?
âIn the war film, a soldier can hold his buddyâas long as his buddy is dying on the battlefield. In the western, Butch Cassidy can wash the Sundance Kidâs naked fleshâas long as it is wounded. In the boxing film, a trainer can rub the well-developed torso and sinewy back of his protegeâas long as it is bruised. In the crime film, a mob lieutenant can embrace his boss like a loverâas long as he is riddled with bullets.Â
Violence makes the homo-eroticism of many âmaleâ genres invisible; it is a structural mechanism of plausible deniability.â
âTarantinoâs Incarnational Theology: Reservoir Dogs, Crucifixions, and Spectacular Violence. Kent L. Brintnall.
I don't know what paddington is doing on that list, but it made me think of the time someone drew a picture of the queen with paddington after she died, and we had scores of people losing their minds at the idea that paddington bear wasn't the same kind of communist as them
I love the sorrow in which you wrote this
The tragedy of growing up british & left wing is realising all your beloved childhood animals in waistcoats were monarchists to the core
I feel like in many ways "How'd he manage to grow up a middle-aged middle-class British man in Peru, anyways?" is the wrong question but it's still the one I am hung up on, years later.
Hold on letâs do this properly:
Paddington - regrettably a monarchist but in that specific immigrant way. The only actual immigrant on the list. May possibly just be a monarchist as part of the processing stage and is also canonically a child.
Winnie the Pooh - is canonically a stuffed animal, I genuinely donât think he has this level of thought/agency and is not written as such. The real living breathing animals (owl, rabbit) are not just monarchists, but actively and cruelly bourgeois.
The Velveteen Rabbit - doesnât wear a waistcoat but not a monarchist either.
Angelina Ballerina - a monarchist and a bit of a little bitch tbqh
The Brambly Hedge mice - really unclear. But like worryingly unclear. Clearly some kind of caste system in operation (lords and ladies) but not capitalist or explicitly feudalist either, it seems a thin overlay over their real political intentions: incredibly intense cheesemaking forming the backbone of a post-scarcity economy.
Beatrix Potter / Peter Rabbit - monarchists.
Richard Scarry - actually I canât make a call on this one whoops no worries heâs American
Animals of Farthing Wood - I ⊠donât know.
Wind in the Willows - Toadâs a fucking Tory, but I feel like the Water Rat is kind of a comrade
Watership Down - unfortunately many of these rabbits are fashy, even the ones you like. Ursula le Guin said it, not me. They wouldnât walk away from omelas. However, they touch a lot of grass - enough grass to not be interested in the house of Windsor - which is a point in their favour.
Redwall - monarchists, though not for the British monarchy. and also, somehow, Mouse Anglican verging on Mouse Catholic. Worrying, fascinating.
Oakapple Wood - monarchists
Hobbit - not a woodland creature but wears a waistcoat and is sympathetic to Thorin, Aragorn. Provisionally extremely monarchist and the very earliest interpretations of hobbits appeared to think they are somehow bipedal rabbits, which pissed Tolkien off.
Rupert Bear - British bear in clothes attributed partially for the decline in the usage of the name Rupert - but I donât know a thing about him
The Highway Rat - all Julia Donaldson creatures lick the boot that crushes them, even the highway rat. Possibly not the Gruffalo. The Gruffalo however is the most naked that anyone has ever been, thus not an animal that would wear clothes.
The Narnia creatures - donât all wear clothes, but THE definitive monarchists
Fantastic Mr Fox - not a monarchist. and in the wes Anderson film is not even British although the farmers and setting are (brilliant artistic choices, especially including an excellent but fucking random possum that calls the entire ecosystem into question: ultimately these are North American animals subverting and undermining the British landowners in a strange political statement whose intentions and direction are unclear.) Not monarchists, but what?
I also asked my own small British child to name more notable creatures in waistcoats, and after suggesting the obvious (brambly hedge, Angelina) they said, devastatingly, âviruses,â and when I delicately questioned what they meant by this, pointed out that viruses have a protein coat. Thus:
Viruses - possibly monarchists, wear coats, and present in childrenâs literature as exemplified by the Usborne âSee Inside Germs.â Ultimately more data is needed.
I had completely forgotten about my kid saying âvirusesâ omg
I think a surprising amount of writers donât realize that tragedies are supposed to be cathartic. Theyâre intended to result in a purging of emotion, a luxurious cry; the sorrow caused by a great tragedy is akin to fear caused by a good horror movie â itâs a âsafeâ sorrow, one that is actually satisfying to the audience. It can still be beautiful! Itâs isnât supposed to just be salting the earth so nothing can grow.
But thatâs how you get grimdark: writers who donât realize that theyâre supposed to be doing something with the audience instead of to the audience.
#i once heard a lecture where someone said that the great appeal of tragedy is to see terrible things happen to people youâre supposed to#empathize with and see yourself in#and that the catharsis comes from seeing someoneâs life go horribly wrong and still have the author hold your hand and tell you#âthis story mattered. even though it had a sad ending it still mattered. even if you donât succeed your attempts matterâ#grimdark tells you that the world sucks and nothing you do matters#well-written tragedy tells you that sometimes the world sucks but everything you do matters so so much#your story is still worth telling even if you never achieve that happy ending#or if you lose it along the way#people have inherent value and their stories deserve to be told no matter if they turn out okay or not#and in a reality that has no concept of âfairâ that shit just hits good man!!! feels good!!!!! itâs COMFORTING
This has really helped me realize something about myself.
So often I find myself saying âI donât like tragedy.â When thatâs not really true.
It would be truer to say âI love tragedy when itâs done well, but I donât like what tragedy has become, but it is so tiring and unpleasant to sift through the graceless grimdark that it simply becomes easier and more productive to say I would not like any.â
thinking about this bit from an article by Ann Druyan in 2003:
âWhen my husband died, because he was so famous and known for not being a believer, many people would come up to me â it still sometimes happens â and ask me if Carl changed at the end and converted to a belief in an afterlife. They also frequently ask me if I think I will see him again. Carl faced his death with unflagging courage and never sought refuge in illusions. The tragedy was that we knew we would never see each other again. I donât ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is. We never trivialized the meaning of death by pretending it was anything other than a final parting. Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous â not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance⊠That pure chance could be so generous and so kind⊠That we could find each other, as Carl wrote so beautifully in Cosmos, you know, in the vastness of space and the immensity of time⊠That we could be together for twenty years. That is something which sustains me and itâs much more meaningful⊠The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived.
That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday.
I donât think Iâll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful.â
a list of 100+ buildings to put in your fantasy town
academy
adventurer's guild
alchemist
apiary
apothecary
aquarium
armory
art gallery
bakery
bank
barber
barracks
bathhouse
blacksmith
boathouse
book store
bookbinder
botanical garden
brothel
butcher
carpenter
cartographer
casino
castle
cobbler
coffee shop
council chamber
court house
crypt for the noble family
You want to know why Inigo Montoya remains such an iconic and beloved character even 35 years after the Princess Bride came out?
Itâs because heâs one of the few characters in fiction who has a story where he has dedicated his life to revenge, his whole motivation is about getting revengeâŠ.and he gets it! and then he isnât empty or despairing! he doesnât regret it! heâs totally satisfied!
because so many stories about revenge or rage are about characters âseeing the futility of their actionsâ or learning âtheir desire for revenge has only made them the monsters they hatedâ FUCK THAT.
Inigo Montoya kills the man who kills his father, is allowed to live in the narrative after and be happy about it and it is so satisfying. itâs fantastic. itâs iconic.
let more characters rage against the world, bring it down with bloodied hands, and let them be FUCKING RIGHT about it. Let them celebrate their success with sharp grins, and let them live happy, full lives where they always remain proud/fulfilled for what theyâve done
Another thing that set Inigo Montoya apart from other characters with vengeance arcs is that Inigoâs vengeance drove him but it didnât consume him. He was wronged and wanted - needed that injustice to be corrected - but his vengeance was focused. Rather than taking his pain out on the whole world, Inigo was a charming, pleasant, good-humored person that treated everyone respectfully, even folks he was fighting. He even asks politely to people he meets about any extra digits they may have.
Would a bitter, angry, vengeance-consumed man swear on the life of his father and help a guy he was planning to duel, then give him time to catch his breath? Would he hand his sword over to his future opponent to lovingly show off his late-fatherâs skill as a swordmaker?
âYou seem a decent fellow. I hate to kill you.â
I think part of what makes Inigo so iconic and beloved is because while vengeance was his story, it wasnât who he was, so when he achieved his vengeance it was less an emptiness and more of a satisfaction, a story completed, a wrong made right, and a man suddenly baffled at the possibilities before him, not sure what his next story would be.
@ryebreadgf / The Truth About Grief, Fortesa Latifi / bone deep, m.v.e / Sidewalk, Richard Silken / unknown / 60 hours, m.v.e / @itsblackleader / Salt, Nayyirah Waheed / @heavensghost
when whitman said âi contradict myself. i am large⊠i contain multitudesâ and wilde said âwhat are you? to define is to limitâ and sumney said âi insist upon my right to be multipleâ
and ashbery said âaccept yourself as numerousâ
and when mahmoud darwish said âI am besieged by contradictionâ and when lewis carroll said âI knew who I was this morning, but Iâve changed a few times since thenâ
Youâre a daycare worker, watching over toddlers, when the imminent end of the world is announced. It becomes increasingly clear none of the kidsâ parents are going to show up as the end inches nearer.
[Audio starts]
âMom has been texting me for the last twenty minutes. She wants me to come home. Itâs a four hour drive, when the roads are clear, and from what I hear everybody is trying to get somewhere right now. Thereâs no telling if Iâd even-â
âEverybody else has left. All the other kids were picked up, the other staff left. They gave me all the keys. I promised to stay and wait for as long as- well. Even if some of the parents show up, I guess some of them wonât, so Iâm just waiting. Until.â
[Clears throat.]
âA couple of people came after everybody left. Peter, one of Aidanâs fathers, gave me three hundred dollars for staying. What am I going to do with money? Itâs- anyway. I kind of get it. He wanted to give me something.â
[Audio ends]
[Audio starts]
âTheyâre all between 2 and 4.â Sniff. âTheyâre so little. Too little to really- maybe if they were older, Iâd have to tell them something. But um. Iâm just- trying to stay calm and keep them happy and occupied. I think thatâs the best thing, right now.â
[Heaving breaths.]
âI normally use this recorder to help me remember stuff. Itâs just, uh, habit to talk to it. I donât know. Theyâre napping, right now. Iâve got the baby monitor, they know that if they talk into it, Iâll come, so-â
[Sobbing.]
[Audio ends]
[Audio starts]
âMom keeps texting, so I blocked her. I sent her a text telling her goodbye, first, but. I do. But these kids need me.â
[Sniff.]
âI tried calling their parents again, but I canât get anybody. Itâs just busy signals. I called the firefighter station, 911. I canât get through to anybody.â
[Shaky breath.]
âI went out into the yard. Um, I think they can play. Itâs nice out, and you canât really see it yet. Little bit of a glimmer, if they ask Iâll just tell them itâs a plane, but itâs nice out and weâve got hours before-â
[Murmuring childâs voice, indistinguishable.]
[Audio ends]
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Acknowledging that âcritical thinkingâ means âthinking about things in a thorough way from different perspectivesâ and not âfinding every flaw in a thing and fixating on it until all the joy is goneâ is so liberating.
Itâs supposed to be about intellectual curiosity, not about finding ways to devalue things that arenât perfect or that we personally dislike.
it's not a true pet peeve but when certain phrases are divorced from their contexts it does give me a weird little butterfly in my stomach.
like, okay. "hell is other people" is an excellent line from Sartre's play "no exit". it's very short, you could probably read it in an afternoon or two. but the line isn't making a commentary about all people - it's actually specifically about the 3 characters in the play. they're all very bad people who are legitimately being punished in-actual-hell. they are forced into a room together for eternity & have been hand-picked to be as annoying as possible to each other as punishment for the sins they committed while alive.
and that concept is crazy! i don't write fanfiction but imagine what characters would be actual torture for each other! "hell is other people" isn't condemning humanity - it is saying we create hell from other people.
or like - shakespeare's "brevity is the soul of wit"! that is a joke line said by a joke character. polonius constantly talks too much and says fucking nothing of use. while hamlet is having like, the worst year of anyone's life - polonius gives really fucking vague and useless advice, including such popular sayings as: "to thine own self be true" and "neither a borrower or a lender be." when he says brevity is the soul of wit, it is meant ironically for the audience - this is a man who never shuts the fuck up. he himself is not brief, and therefore witless.
stuff like this just makes me wonder like - how many idioms or sayings come from completely different contexts and we just. fogrgot :(
Dear video essay creators. A video analysis is when you analyze a piece of media. No no look at me. A summary, no matter how thorough, is not an analysis. An analysis requires you to draw conclusions about the media such as authorial intent, real-world parallels, discussion about themes/worldbuilding/character motivation, and so much more. You have to stop summarizing something and saying thatâs analysis. The Gaylors are doing more critical analysis than you. Is that who you want to lose to? The gaylors?