opinions on the prelude with the storm and the sinister doctor? also have you read hugo's other works, and do you know about his Thing about drowning
Honestly, my biggest problem with Hugo is the amount of irrelevant information and tangents he puts in the way of the narrative! The editor in me just wants to red-pen him to hell and back. I actually haven’t read any other Hugo, because generally his writing style doesn’t do it for me even though I love the stories he tells. What’s his thing about drowning?
because tumblr is a functional website, the bold tag in your pinned post makes the rest of your blog bold (when viewing in the Chrome mobile browser). this doesn't really impede anything, but i suspect you could fix it if you wanted, by editing the post and adding an html closing tag.
the logical extension of the Fourteen being a wrong categorization is making up your own entities. so anyway the fear of being forced to harm others is the Burden. themes of weight, multitudes of small objects, hands, bargains, treasure, stone and statues. example tropes: the magic grinder that won't stop grinding out more and more salt, whenever you take a breath a child dies, coins that duplicate themselves and crush you
the Burden is the opposite of the Web in that the Web is fear of being controlled and the Burden is fear of controlling something else; it's also related to the Buried with the weight, stone, crushing, to the Vast with the infinite growth and scale differences, to the Lonely with the solitary secret plight, and to the Eye with the dreadful knowledge
fjsdkflsd i am legally obligated to enjoy any new categorization bcos Fuck Smirke (even tho no categorization is right, but hell yeah u go for it u make up more fears!)
i do enjoy how ur ‘burden’ is related to so many fears, but have u considered that it is not opposite the web but in fact tangled up in it, for do we not fear losing control over our actions as we hurt our friends against our will, and to some extent do we not fear that little manipulative voice in our heads that tells us yeah, go ahead, give in to that, manipulate them instead of communicating, it’ll be easier
On translations: Wilbour takes more liberties than Hapgood; Hapgood has the best grasp of Hugo's style and the worst grasp of the vocab; Wraxall leaves some things out including the PUNS; Denny intentionally breaks the rhythm and blunts the emotional impact of important passages, not to mention putting the digressions at the end instead of where Hugo put them
Thank for the info! Especially for the Wraxall one. If he leaves out puns, then what the hell is the point?
Like I said, my video was mostly my opinion. I found Denny’s translation more accessible myself, but everyone is going to be different. I had a friend who read Rose’s translation and loved it so much more than Wilbour’s because of the “slangy tone”, as you put it. They found it easier to get a grasp on.
So again--if you’re thinking of reading the brick, it’s completely up to you to decide! If you find the one you picked too dense and difficult to understand, try for a more modernized text! No shame! Have fun!
injygo replied to your post “It really feels like everything about me is either (a) pretty much the...”
"it seems like everything about me is either related to my past or to the people i hang out with" is a depressing sentiment but not evidence that you're not a person
also incredibly characteristic of BPD
... True. :’) For all I complain about being almost stereotypically BPD in a lot of ways, someone can point out something like that and I’ll still be [surprised pikachu face].
Probably doesn’t help that, yeah, I guess the major Activity™ right now is the Magnus Archives, which... I have a hard time saying isn’t that “actually just related to my past” category. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You’ve heard about it a lot, but I think the first time I remember hearing about it was when R. A. Rich wrote about it in 2012. Rich goes on to say that it is roughly in the state of:
Ortstraland
N. Boletigr
Barducampra
Hermesland
Ape Canyon
(Oh, and be aware that this was all drawn (and still is, apparently) from lore and isn’t purely accurate. Somewhere, someone has written a history of some of the places)
Interviewer: You're saying that your body continues to function without a consciousness. SCP-1523: No, brother, without a soul. Ever seen an anthill? That ant doesn't have room for a soul in there. If a man has no soul, he can keep building his anthill just fine. Right now the man I was is occupied with [REDACTED] and you couldn't tell the difference if you met it, unless you were giving it a throat exam. [laughs] He's quiet in there, but he wriggles around like he can't get comfortable.
Interviewer: You're saying that your body continues to function without a consciousness.SCP-1523: No, brother, without a soul. Ever seen an anthill? That ant doesn't have room for a soul in there. If a man has no soul, he can keep building his anthill just fine. Right now the man I was is occupied with [REDACTED] and you couldn't tell the difference if you met it, unless you were giving it a throat exam. [laughs] He's quiet in there, but he wriggles around like he can't get comfortable.SCP-1523: You're telling me that your bodies have been thinking to themselves ever since manhood began. Is there no explanation for the fact that your body is unable to retain a soul?SCP-1523: Well you might as well have known that.SCP-1523: Do you see that? The patient thinks that he's been resurrected? I mean the soul is in his body, but his body is in its shell.SCP-1523: The soul is in his body. The brain is in his brain - that's why he's in his brain. [laughs]SCP-1523: Put another way, when you've had a very clear consciousness, you're not thinking of the person who's gone. You're up there confused, depressed and feeling like you've broken down. And you've got no idea it.SCP-1523: That's not all of why you're here in the first place.SCP-1523: And I'm not saying you shouldn't look down upon those things, but when you do, they'll be at least as damn unfair as the actual thing on your body.SCP-1523: What do you mean?SCP-1523: When you do that, it will be at least as unfair as the actual thing on your body.SCP-1523: If you look down upon those things, it will always be where you were before, inside, before that.SCP-1523: The real thing on your body is exactly where you were while you were being reborn. The refractory balance you lost was exactly where you were when you were the red meadows.SCP-1523: I can't imagine the real thing, but the real thing is that you're probably going to look down upon that and feel that you're dead.SCP-1523: There are some things that are unfair to you that life will offer you. Maybe you will regret that it didn't work out. Maybe you'll be able to look at those things, even if that's a thousand years from now.SCP-1523: Well then, I can only pray that you'll be able to see the difference.SCP-1523: As long as your soul exists, even if that's parallel to life.SCP-1523: Let me walk to the next round of graves.SCP-1523: Welcome to SCP-1522.
Update on my meatspace existence! CW for parents...
the disordered eating things sound extremely concerning and definitely something to see a therapist about
very much agreed!
[CW for the above, also CW for me complaining about health insurance]
Getting a therapist is my… second priority right now, after figuring out why the health insurance company has not given me the information I need to actually use my insurance, I kind of need my member ID, why is bureaucracy like this
The food problems are a lot better than they were a few months ago, the overall trend is pretty great -- the level of impairment has gone from “I can’t actually function because I don’t eat and also I have no idea how to fix this because my brain doesn’t work without food” to “I am spending a lot more time than I want to on getting myself to eat, but I’m consistently eating a reasonable amount” -- but it’s still the largest potential source of catastrophic failure. I think it’s likely that the DIY approach will turn out okay, given that it’s had pretty good results over the course of three months, but that’s not a thing I’m willing to leave up to chance any more than necessary.
So -- I have health insurance as of 1 May. The insurance card supposedly should’ve arrived by mail by the 7th at the latest; it has not. I am, as a person, not good at waiting for things to happen, especially when said things may happen tomorrow or two weeks from now. This is supremely aggravating! I am paying for insurance just let me see a doctor, come on.
(Not even just Food Issues therapy. Addressing the general GI stuff might help with the food issues, ADHD evaluation and meds would too. Apparently there is not a normal amount of audible wheezing w/ moderate exercise, so possibly I should get my apparently-not-normal-amount-of-wheezing checked out. Maybe even Gender-adjacent things now that I actually have an insurer that’d cover that. I have newly acquired the adult ability to Get Things Done and it would take me like five minutes to schedule a primary care appointment if I had health insurance.)
(I would just pay out of pocket to see a therapist if this was actually urgent, or go with a more accessible but very likely worse free or low-cost person; as it is I don’t think seeing a therapist at most a few weeks earlier is worth hundreds of dollars. I’m stably cranky about eating, still managing okay. That’s a lot of lost Soylent-potential to get an appointment earlier!)
