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jasonsmirrorball · 9 months

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TAKE FLIGHT JASON TODD (college!au)

↳ headcanons about jason in the au that is currently taking up all my brain space. so incredibly self indulgent. extreme liberties taken with his characterisation i'm sorry this is fanfiction!!!!!

first and most importantly - nothing (too) bad happens in this au. i imagine him getting adopted by bruce, but he gets to live and be happy and he is so so loved and that doesn't change

if he's got issues with his dad it's normal human issues like not seeing eye to eye on things but at the end of the day he is cherished and bruce supports him in everything

so he goes to university. in this au i imagine him to be studying literature (of course, duh) but also something else. i feel like he'd be interested in philosophy, but in my mind it's definitely something in the humanities faculty.

moves out but doesn't do the dorm thing because he wants his own space, and i think bruce just takes care of everything and he doesn't have to worry about rent or groceries or anything of that sort

i think he'd still get a job though...like maybe in a secondhand bookstore or music store that nobody really goes to so it's quiet and he can work on his assignments and read most of the time

makes friends with the regular people that breeze in and out - likes to people watch because he gets so many interesting looking people that come through

i think he'd have to have a little old lady neighbour that doesn't trust him at first because look at him he's so tall and big and he's got his fair share of scars on his hands from high school

but he's an angel...probably helps her take in her groceries quietly and leaves it at that because that's simply the thing to do

like i don't imagine he'd be extremely chatty, but he's polite and says hello to everyone or nods at them in the elevator

she warms up to him and they have conversations in the morning when she’s going down for her daily morning walk and he’s got classes to head to

imagining him with still slightly messy curls in the morning as he walks onto campus

he's so.. boy. in this au. does that make sense??? just. happy and stress free, and he loves his courses and he calls home every few days and his younger brothers are ever suffering because he talks so much about the stuff he’s learning

sobs he’s such a nerd i love him but they’re just wondering how this is the guy that gets side-eyed everywhere he goes

but he’s not mild mannered…he just minds his business

like i said, has gotten into his fair share of fights at school and similarly isn’t afraid to tell someone when they’re being a dick

the girls in his class love him because he actually likes to have discussions with them instead of talking over them and is happy to speak for the group or let them do it if they want when they get called on for class discussions

he’s just that guy who at first glance seems a little intimidating because a) he’s gorgeous and b) is huge but you get put into a group with him and he’s so intelligent and polite, listens to what everyone has to say and has wicked smart opinions of his own to share

has a bike. in every iteration of jason he must have a motorbike i just cannot imagine him without a bike. nearly gives bruce a heart attack in this au because he immediately runs through the worst case scenarios and it takes AGES before he accepts it even if he does think the bike looks cool and it takes even longer before he lets jason take him for a spin on the back of it

bruce in this au is just. doting and a little anxious about things. and that's okay. he's coming to terms with his kids growing up, and the changes that come with that. at least he's still got his girls, who will never not come around to bother him. but dick has already left the nest, and jason is on his way. he just misses when they were little

he likes to say jason was so small he could hold him in the palm of his hands (a big lie, as he was small but not that small, but jason secretly likes the affection)

he scribbles in all his class assigned novels, notes filling up the margins and the blank pages at the end - annotations on annotations

has gone down a rabbit hole of literature papers analysing different texts at 3 am. several times

paperbacks on his bedside table, bookmarked with receipts and scraps of paper, literally anything that can be used - he'll use it

notebooks for each class that are equally as full, coordinating notes on books and poems and papers

sigh english student jason todd my beloved angel

this isn't meant to be taken seriously at all, but we're here to have a good time. sigh i wanna make a moodboard so u guys can see the vision i have of him

#he is so precious to me u guys have no idea #jasonsmirrorball #jason todd x reader #jason todd imagine #jason todd fanfiction #jay my heart #jason todd college!au #jersey boy au

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markantonys · 3 months

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The show hasn't really gotten into the Breaking as much as I think they should have at this point. Which does kinda go into the fact that Lews Therin doesn't seem to be feared by the general public at least as far as we know? Which does make me a bit concerned as that is important. It does seem like the AOL flashbacks are leading up to Dragonmount and therefore the Breaking so maybe that's why it hasn't been addressed as much yet? Rafe did say there's less knowledge of the prophecies or at least less belief that they're 100% accurate since they're over 3000 years old and translated a million times so that might play a role too? Idk I'm curious for them to get into the prophecies more so we know what the world thinks and believes about the Dragon.

i just wanna say that as someone who studied ancient history and ancient literature, it is completely accurate that the current people of randland know very little about what happened 3000 years ago, that the average population outside of scholars doesn't care about what happened 3000 years ago, and that nobody is willing to put full trust in the accuracy of the few ancient texts and prophecies that survived to the present.

and mind you, i ran into all these things in my studies of events that happened only 2000 years ago. 3000 years, we are talking the late bronze age collapse in the mediterranean region - an event that's infamously mysterious precisely because we have so little surviving evidence to say what caused it.

when it comes to human history, 3000 years is a MASSIVE amount of time, and to be honest i don't think RJ/the books really understood just how massive (for example, randland should have been able to advance more, technologically, in 3000 years than it did, even considering how destructive the breaking was and how destructive the taint & false dragons & shadowspawn continued to be). the general population outside of scholars does not spend a second thinking about things that happened 3000 years ago or specific people who lived 3000 years ago. they just don't. realistically, lews therin shouldn't be anything more than a vague fable to the average population of present-day randland. of course they're not afraid of him. why would they be? he's insanely far-removed from and irrelevant to their lives - for now. i daresay they'll start to get nervous once they start to see true signs that the dragon has been reborn and that the last battle will happen in their lifetime. but until then, i cannot emphasize enough how much any dragon- & breaking-related shit is not on the general population's radar. they don't care about the bronze age collapse. they don't care about any sort of war or destruction or apocalypse until it starts to affect them personally (see: nobody caring enough to help falme in s2, just as nobody cared enough to help manetheren).

i will also add that as someone fresh from reading the books for the very first time, i can comfortably say the show is NOT lagging behind on Breaking Info-Giving compared to where the books were at this point. we had zero clue about the bore or any of that stuff until rand's rhuidean trip (and even then, i didn't really understand what the hell was going on in his visions until quite a bit later, and in large part due to learning some extra-book information that explained it better). as a show-only during s1, i can assure you that the 3000 years later flashback showing us a futuristic society made me go OH SHIT and hit home the full impact of the breaking far more than anything in the books, where we don't even see any AOL scenes onscreen aside from the rhuidean visions (which are very confusing to a first-time reader) and the dragonmount prologue (which isn't very useful since it's the first scene in the whole series and a first-time reader has zero context for anything learned there).

honestly, i think longtime readers forget just how much of our AOL/forsaken/breaking knowledge comes from extra-book sources like the companion, Word Of Jordan, etc; the books alone are very vague about so much of that stuff and i remember being repeatedly bewildered as to how you guys knew so much about the AOL when the books either didn't have those details at all or had them so vaguely that they flew right over my first-time reader head. i'm not 100% sure, but i believe latra posae decume isn't even MENTIONED in the books and comes purely from "the strike at shayol ghul", as do many of the details about the strike and the bore and the breaking. and so i definitely think the show has already included more information, and more CLEAR information, about the breaking than the books alone had by the end of TDR and in fact for much of the series.

#anonymous #answered #wot book spoilers

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cvlutos · 1 year

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“To You”

| Repost: 03.06.2022 | 0.5K | PG |

Riddle Rosehearts X GN!Reader

My Dearest Rose,

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate:”

The beginning of a poem that we learned in my English studies class, by the poet Shakespeare. I am familiar with his genius, yet I do fully not understand the purpose of poems or any literature that forms from creativity. My mother believes that they’re useless, irrelevant, for those who have not the knowledge to form more important works. Who lacks the ability to write articles, journals, facts over feelings? And I, for the longest, agreed with her. What do fictional stories, poems, haikus, and what purpose do they serve? They’re not like math, nor science. They’re fake, turn those away from a better and more important career and future.

“Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:”

Yet, when you feel something so strong. Something that takes the air from your lungs, that leaves your mind jumbled and confused. That has you second guessing every thought and feeling. That feels you with something that rivals the sun. Something that articles, journals, and facts over feelings can’t explain. Until you read a poem--

“Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his golden complexion dimm’d;”

That explains everything. That understands the shaking of my limbs when I am around you. That explains the cause of my beating heart, that seems to squeeze and constrict upon seeing you. Every nerve feels a lit, as if I was within the burning fireplace, and not gazing upon it with a cup of tea. As if every book, every word, spells out every letter of your name, everything that I could possibly love.

“And every fair and fair sometime declines,

By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d;”

They are life. They explain the human mind, the feelings, emotions, wants and desires, the haves and have-nots. They make this burning love understandable. As if I am losing my mind, going mad from wanting you and not having you. (As ill-intentioned as that sounds, I mean that in not a harmful nor forceful way.)

“But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;”

As if stand lost within an ever-changing rose maze, as if my world seems to be within constant rotation, you make the world still, your hands even if nonexistent pull me—guide me towards the exit. You plant my feet to the solid ground, yet my mind seems alive with daydreams.

“Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,

When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:”

With hope. Words that explain my longing, my frustrations, my desire to be perfect within your eyes, my everything—it forms poems. Elegantly written stories that no matter how long I deny it, it shall not leave me. It cannot leave me. For as long as you exist, you bring life to me.

“So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.”

Sincerely,

RIDDLE ROSEHEARTS

#t.manor.writings #riddle rosehearts #riddle rosehearts fluff #riddle rosehearts x reader #riddle rosehearts x mc #riddle rosehearts x gn reader #riddle rosehearts x yuu #riddle x reader #twst riddle #twst wonderland #twst x reader #twst fluff #twisted wonderland fluff #twisted wonderland x gender neutral reader #twisted wonderland x reader

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alovelywaytospendanevening · 26 days

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It is not a coincidence that in the last two decades of the 19th century, as the invert case study put gay lives into print for the first time, we begin to see the first novels that, rather than including gay characters within Zola-style social narratives, are instead about homosexuality, or, more accurately, about the condition of being a homosexual. There weren’t very many of these books, and most are long forgotten. But already, as Graham Robb observed in Strangers, his study of homosexuality in the 19th century, the trope of the ‘gay tragic ending’ was in evidence: ‘In twelve European and American novels (1875-1901) in which the main character is depicted, often sympathetically, as an adult homosexual man, six die (disease, unrequited love and three suicides), two are murdered, one goes mad, one is cured by marriage and two end happily (one after six months in prison and emigration to the US).’ As Robb says, it cannot only be that authors felt they had to inflict punishment on their characters, as a way of redeeming their text in the eyes of the censor. The tragic death was a strategy: by showing a doom to which gay men were fated, they were arguing against the society that made it inevitable. The case study underlies the major tradition of gay writing that developed after 1945 and that persists to the present day, the often melancholic or tragic novels of individual struggle, of childhood and adolescent experience, of attempted repression, of searching, of sexual experiment and release: from Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar to James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, to Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story to Annie Proulx’s ‘Brokeback Mountain’ to Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You to Édouard Louis’s The End of Eddy to Alice Oseman’s Heartstopper. Those novels that largely or entirely concern themselves with gay male characters – such as Alan Hollinghurst’s The Swimming-Pool Library, which has no women in it – also have a relationship to the case study, which, especially once it concerns the subject’s adulthood, essentially limits itself to describing his interactions with men of his own kind. The requirement to lift our sights – to see gay lives as they interact with, to use Zola’s words, family, nation, humanity – is especially pressing if we are dealing with the past, when society was culturally and legally premised on heterosexuality to an extent no longer possible here (though still the case in many non-Western countries). To write about gay men in Britain in the 19th century, for example, should be to write about them as sons, brothers, friends, lovers, husbands, fathers, grandparents, members of a social class, employees, employers, thinkers, readers, politicians, imperialists and so on; as part of the world, not as apart from it. To return to Forster’s definitions, this would be to take gay men out of story and put them into plot; to turn them from ‘flat’ characters, with one dominating trait, into ‘round’ ones. This does not mean that we should minimise sexuality – rather, we would see its significance more clearly, as it disrupts, or perhaps doesn’t, in all areas of life; in so doing, we would see the society more clearly also. The same can be done in novels about the present: to live up to the full ambition of the idea of ‘queering’ – as disruption – we need to see a queer individual in the full spectrum of their relationships with people, places, institutions. To keep our exploration within the bounds of identity is to conspire in our own limitation. Full article: "Balzac didn't dare: Tom Crewe on the origins of the gay novel" [London Review of Books]

A rather thought-provoking article! The assertion about contemporary gay literature (the whole gay-related media, actually) still being centered on homosexuality itself is very true, and it's something I consider a crucial matter. And, of course, this also makes you raise questions over isolationist movements inside the LGBT+ community.

#tom crewe #literature #lit #gay literature #lgbt literature #history #gay history #lgbt history #gay books #gay fiction #gay #mlm #lgbt #booklr

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awellreadmannequin · 10 months

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On narrative, Romance, and The Witch from Mercury

I’ve seen a bunch of posts bemoaning people who don’t seem to feel that the relationship between Suletta and Miorine is either explicitly romantic or that it’s final, married state makes sense given the events of the narrative. I find it absolutely fascinating that anyone can watch that show and not see how their relationship blooms into something very obviously romantic. Like, from the narrative itself, to the way it is structured, to its themes, one of the show’s main preoccupations is Miorine and Suletta’s romantic feelings towards one another (another is Suletta’s mommy issues, a thing lesbians are famously immune to). So in order to rectify what appears to be a major crisis of media illiteracy, let’s talk about narrative, romance, and The Witch from Mercury.

Let’s start with narrative.

In studying literature at the high school level, students in the Anglo-sphere world are often shown some variation of this diagram:

(Graham, 2014)

This diagram can be roughly broken into three sections: beginning (exposition, inciting incident), middle (rising action, climax), and end (falling action, denouement). Those who haven’t seen this particular diagram are likely familiar with the beginning-middle-end narrative structure, perhaps having even been told that this is the structure of all narratives (it isn’t, but that’s not really relevant here). The origin of this way of thinking about narrative in the western tradition is Aristotle’s Poetics, a treatise on aesthetics and tragedy. However, when we learn about this narrative structure in school, there is often an important aspect of Aristotle’s argument that gets left out. What he’s actually describing is not a narrative but rather an action. Actions, he argues, have a beginning, a middle, and an end and good narratives are ones that imitate one complete action. This process of imitation is known as mimesis (Ricoeur 1984, 33-34).

Reframing our beginning-middle-end structure with this context leaves us with two important takeaways. The first takeaway is that this structure views a narrative as a singular action which can be analyzed as having a beginning-middle-end structure. The second takeaway is that this structure is critical. This means that it has a valence of aesthetic judgement such that we can judge the aesthetic value of a narrative by its coherence with the structure. Now, this is not the only critical lens through which to view narratives, nor am I suggesting it should be. Rather, it is a relatively easy to understand structure that provides a useful frame of reference for interpreting the particular narrative we’re interested. Further, a narrative can itself be broken up into actions which can in turn be analyzed using this structure. Thus, with a work as complex as a television show, you have actions within actions all of which can be broken up into the beginning-middle-end structure. To expand on this account Aristotle (and Ricoeur, whose exegesis and analysis of Aristotle I’ve cited) provides, we have to next ask what ‘action’ actually means in this context.

To answer that question, I want to turn another philosopher, Hannah Arendt. In her excellent book The Human Condition she describes three kinds of things that humans do which define the human condition. The first is labour, which she defines as those things which must be done continually because they have no real end. Eating, drinking, and sleeping can all be thought of as kinds of labour on this view because no matter how many times we do them, we will still need to do them again. Labour alone cannot define the human condition because all living things also preform repetitive tasks to survive. The second thing humans do is work. Unlike labour, work has a definite beginning and end. However, what distinguishes it from the last category of human thing is that the end of work is always known before hand. Making a table is work because you start off without table, you finish with a table, and all along you know that you will ultimately have a table when you’re finished. The third and final thing is the one that Arendt believes most defines the human condition: action. Action has a beginning - a point at which the action is set in motion - but its end is undefined. Taking an action is thus a sort of risk. It demands we set out to do something without any certainty about the outcome and that we do so precisely because we are not certain as to the outcome. Without getting too far into the weeds, Arendt maintains that action can only exist within contexts structured by social relationships. Basically, taking action requires the involvement to some degree of other people. Actions also live beyond us. Their relational existence means that they have a ripple effect upon those who exist in relation to the actor. One action will inevitably beget further actions in response (Arendt 1998).

For our purposes, we need to understand how work, action, and art intersect. Art is a product of action but is itself a sort of work. The artist sets out to make an artwork with an idea of what it will be like, but often finds that it changes along the way. Further, the artwork lives beyond the artist, inspiring actions on the part of audiences and critics. However, the work of art itself has both a definite beginning and a definite end. Paintings have canvas edges, films end, and you eventually leave a building. So while being the product of action art can only ever imitate it. Thus, we find ourselves right back at Aristotle and the beginning-middle-end structure. Would it shock you to learn that Arendt was an Aristotelian? No? Good.

Okay, bluh, now you’ve read through a bunch of aesthetic and social philosophy as well as literary theory. As a reward, let’s apply the structure to GWitch.

Now, let’s start by asking ourselves what the overarching action the narrative of the Witch from Mercury is emplotting? I would argue it is Elnora’s attempt to create a new world for Ericht. Why? Well, the prologue sets up Elnora’s motivations, which are revealed as the tension ratchets up, and then narrative concludes when she fails. We know this is an action (thus worth narrativizing) because Elnora sets it in motion with a desired end in mind but no certainty that she will achieve it. She is taking a risk. For anyone wondering, this is one reason why Suletta and Miorine don’t get dramatic confessions or a marriage scene. The show is, ultimately, not actually about their actions, it’s about Elnora’s. However, the show seems to focus on Suletta, Miorine, et al because the overarching action cannot move through its beginning-middle-end structure without conflict, which the students provide. Thus, it structures the show by providing a ground out of which the rest of the characters actions can grow. These actions too can be understood through the beginning-middle-end framework and are worth examining as well.

The one we’re obviously most concerned with is the relationship between Suletta and Miorine. Wait. Is a relationship an action, in the relevant sense?

Yes.

Relationships require other people, so check. They involve both risk and uncertainty, so check. And they have no definite end, so make that three checks. In colloquial language, it might seem strange to call something as complex as a relationship an action, but in the technical sense we’re concerned with, it is. Isn’t philosophy fun?

Here, it’s worth remembering that while artworks imitate action, they are nonetheless still works. From Suletta and Miorine’s perspectives (as well as Elnora’s in her case), they are taking actions because they have no way of knowing the outcome of the social risks they’re taking. However, from our context as the audience, these actions exist within the context of work so we know that they will have a definite end. And after finishing the narrative, we also know what that end is. This means that while in real life, actions do not have foreshadowing to tell us how they will end (they exist in the context of genuine uncertainty), in art they do. In fact, actions in art only have one possible end, the one that the artist already created. Nothing that happens in art cannot be accounted for beforehand by the action of the artist. This means that the action of Suletta and Miorine’s relationship is diagetically defined by the necessary risk for action while at the same time already always having a definite and knowable resolution from an outside perspective.

Bluh, I am so sorry if this is getting difficult to follow.

The important point I’m trying to make is that since we know how Suletta and Miorine’s relationship will go or at least that it is going to go somewhere, we can therefore analyze it through the beginning-middle-end structure (because narrative imitates action) in order to�� well… analyze it.

So what does this structure reveal to us? Let’s start with the beginning. The first defining moment of Suletta and Miorine’s relationship is when Suletta becomes the holder. This is the point at which they become entwined by the plot. Hence forth, they will exist within the rest of the narrative in relation to one another such that their actions going forward are all influenced by the relationship that here begins. By this I mean that their actions are always explicitly or implicitly framed relative to how they feel about one another. In turn, their actions have consequences which more often then not leave them thinking about one another. Time and again, they choose to return to the other’s side because they find it painful not to. This is borne out symbolically as well as literally, most notably when Miorine asks her father to fund the company and later when Suletta fences with Guel for the position of holder well after that position has become functionally obsolete. In both cases, each character makes a symbolic gesture that indicates their commitment to one another. In the latter case, this gesture has a pretty explicitly romantic overtone as Suletta implicitly indicates that she still wishes to marry Miorine even after she is no longer obligated to do so.

The mid point of the narrative both literally and structurally occurs when Suletta kills a person in the plant in order to save Miorine.

As an aside, this scene is just sublime. Excellent writing, excellent visuals, just some of the best goddamn story telling I’ve ever seen.

Narratively, this scene forces Miorine to confront Suletta’s biggest character flaws. It is clear from her body language and the way she initially distances herself from Suletta in the first part of the latter half of the narrative that Miorine is deeply uncomfortable with what happened. This leads her to make the first of two choices that help drive the second half of the narrative forward. The first is to make Guel the holder and thereby put a firm distance between her and Suletta. The second is to embrace Suletta in the wake of the traumatic events that occurred on Earth. What stood out most to me about her stated reasoning about the first choice was that it betrays the results of how she processed the events at the plant. Specifically, she frames what she’s doing as being for Suletta’s own good. Implicit in the reasoning she gives is the idea that she feels Suletta’s poor decision making skills vis a vis taking the life of another are in part the result of her self-destructive drive to do things for others. By trying to separate herself from Suletta, she is also trying to separate Suletta from the overarching action of the plot by ensuring she will not be put in positions where she’s forced to act relative to consequences of that plot. This of course fails because narrative very quickly comes crashing back into Suletta’s life as things begin to go very sideways at the school (again, I want to stress that Elnora’s action, the plot of the show, structures all of the other narrative threads, allowing them to intersect with SulaMio in ways that move the plot forward). Here, Miorine is acting. Uncertain of the best way forward, she choose a course of action that aims to separate herself from Suletta and Suletta from the narrative.

The direct result of this action sees her and Guel to Earth, where the overarching action of the plot (remember, Elnora’s plan) collides with her and with Suletta. This time, Suletta has an opportunity to act, to take a risk and to charge into the uncertain future. After seemingly being rejected by Miorine, she nonetheless decides to return to her side, going out of her way to reclaim the right to call her self the groom in the process. At this point, the ball is in Miorine’s court and it is her turn to act. And in the end, she chooses Suletta. Again and again. Over and over, Miorine returns to Suletta’s side. As they both grow and change - for better and worse - they find themselves choosing to seek each other out.

We don’t even need to cover the end, not really. The action of their relationship resolves with Miorine holding Suletta’s space suit after the Gundam has dissolved. She begs for Suletta to be returned to her and, after a beat, she is. In that moment, they once again choose each other. The epilogue just expands on what we already know: Miorine and Suletta are forever intertwined, the weight of their love forever moving each to towards the other. Three years on, they’ve grown and changed and healed and there they still are, choosing each other.

In case it isn’t obvious enough yet, this narrative - the action being imitated by the depiction of their relationship - is structurally a romantic one. Beat for beat, it follows the same structure as explicitly romantic narratives.

Not convinced? Let’s examine one.

In Akashi’s excellent yuri manga Still Sick, Office Lady Shimizu Makoto is a single, amateur yuri doujinshi creator whose hobby is discovered by a junior colleague named Maekawa Akane. (Spoilers for the plot ahead) Despite Akane’s hot and cold personality (which verges on possibly being a serious mental health issue), the pair grow close. After that inciting incident in which Akane discover’s that Makoto is a yuri otaku, the pair are faced by moments of conflict in which the choice to separate is ultimately undone by a desire to be together. Akane’s personality, um, flaws lead her to continually push Makoto away despite an intense desire to be with her. As the stresses of life mount, Makoto continually chooses to go back to Akane and Akane continually chooses to ultimately take her in (Akashi 2019-2020). Because, and say it with me, they’re in love!

Now, before you get all twisted in knots about how friendship narratives can be structurally similar, I will simply point you in the direction of this post I made about yuri in the context of Genshin Impact as well as the paper by Michiko Suzuki I cite in it. I have also co-authored an actual (potentially) forthcoming academic paper in which I discuss what yuri as a genre entails, so trust me on this one. Within the context of Japanese media depictions of young women, the line between friendship and romance has historically been and still remains an incredibly vague one. As the Suzuki paper discusses, this has intentionally been exploited by writers trying to tell stories about sapphic relationships without upsetting moral authorities for more than a hundred years.

So what is our ultimate conclusion? Well, it’s that The Witch from Mercury contains within it a narrative about a relationship between two young women that is structured like other, explicitly homoromantic narratives about the same and was created within a culture context in which certain audiences are primed to understand narratives about intense romance adjacent friendships between young women as actually being veiled stories about homoromantic relationships. If it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and somehow avoids being immolated by pseudo-dragon fire like a duck, IT’S PROBABLY A DUCK, NO?

Don’t worry about that dragon fire thing, only real yuri heads will get that one.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Bibliography:

Akashi. Still Sick. Translated by Katie Kimura, vol. 1-3, Los Angeles: TOKYOPOP, 2019-2020

Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.

Mrs. Graham. “Plot Structure,” on myriversideSD43.ca. Accessed July 16, 2023. Found here. Authors note: This diagram was made for a grade eight class in a school district about two hours from where I grew up in the year that I was in grade nine, which is both a bizarre coincidence and a nostalgic reminder of how simple I used to think literature was.

Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume I, translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984.

#gundam #g witch #the witch from mercury #suletta mercury #suletta x miorine #miorine rembran #g witch analysis #claire writes about yuri

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the-unconquered-queen · 6 months

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I’ve been thinking about a Blades modern college AU a lot lately and I kinda wanna share my HCs of what I’d see everyone doing

(they’d be aged down just a little bit for this one and we’re gonna do a bit of mental gymnastics to believe they’d be at the same place and everything and finally I don’t think the modern AU lives the writers suggested are in-character, so this does not follow that)

Aerin & Baldur: The easiest one for me. In a modern AU I still usually see them being princes so both of them are sent to uni to get political science degrees, but Aerin, who is a massive nerd and also looks forward to the peace and quiet once Baldur graduates, double majors in chemistry, too. As a bonus note, Aerin spends a lot of time in the library studying for his classes, but Baldur (who I cannot reason being an academic underperformer in a modern AU since he does have all eyes on him and a reputation to maintain) is more the kind of student who seemingly does no studying whatsoever but still manages to do reasonably well in his classes. It pisses Aerin off to no end. Also, in no universe is Aerin working at Starbucks if you try to keep the adaptation close to canon because either he's super rich with no reason to work for $14 an hour OR he's in prison for plotting an assassination, no in-between.

Imtura: Maybe she’s also a princess in a modern AU, or at least she’s the daughter of a diplomat or someone with a prominent government position, like a president or PM. She’s also expected to study something that helps her follow in her mother’s footsteps, but she says fuck that and does as she pleases. Goes for something like kinesthetics and also takes up a bunch of sports.

Tyril: Sure, he could be a noble, but I’m also fond of the HC that he’s the heir of a major company, so I could see him being a business major. Possibly takes on a minor that lets him study poetry, too. He also seems like someone who'd even go on to do a Master's, Naturally, he’s a star student even though he ends up deciding that taking over the family business isn’t quite the future he wants.

Mal: Most likely the one that does not actually go to college. Will tell anyone it’s a scam. Makes me wonder if in a modern AU he’d be a tech wiz, since in the 21st century stealing is less about physical theft and more about hacking and scams, which obviously he only pulls on rich people and assholes. Someone bothering you? Hit him up and your problem’s all taken care of. But I really like the idea that a little farther down the line he enrolls in college to study social work, because Mal is still Mal and he still wants to help kids in need.

Nia: Without a doubt she is a theology major. She was raised in a very religious community so she’s always been steered in that direction, even though her views evolve and she does a lot of personal growth as she meets a lot of different people while she’s at college, she still views her faith as a key aspect of her and wants to share it with others the right way. I could also see her taking some first aid classes on the side or in her free time, not because she ever means to practice medicine or anything, but just because she thinks it’s important knowledge. Also, sorry to everyone who thinks she'd be a super preppy influencer, but Nia is def more along the lines of a repressed Mormon kid so irl she can be kind of hard to stomach for some people even though she is incredibly sweet.

Kade: You KNOW this man is a humanities major, maybe without focusing on a specific one so he can study literature, poetry, music, and everything he likes under that umbrella, even though he does lean toward literature. Is currently the only person who can compete with Aerin on most hours spent in the library (they probably both know all the librarians by name and each has to get shooed out at closing time). If he has any of those professors who insist their own interpretation of a piece is the only valid one, then Kade’s about to become their least favorite student because he WILL debate them any day.

MC: MC’s a fun one because everyone can HC something that fits their MC’s personality, either based on the story or just what they would like to see MC doing in the modern world, but some potential majors I’m fond of for a modern MC are zoology (beastmaster), chemistry (alchemy), linguistics (MC can be fluent in at least two animal languages in the book, you can’t tell me they wouldn't be brilliant as a linguist), anything in the medical field (medicine/healing), social work if they want to work with Mal, or even something to become an international diplomat down the line (diplomacy).

#playchoices #blades of light and shadow #aerin valleros #imtura tal kaelen #tyril starfury #mal volari #nia ellarious #long post #funnily enough I got this post scheduled days ago & then started seeing some modern AU posts in the tag so truly a shared brain cell here

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corrosive-equilibrium · 11 months

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Ghost Speak (also known as the Spiritual Language) is an ancient language used during the prelude and early primary era within the Ghost Zone. It was the main form of communication until the introduction of limbo ghosts (souls of deceased humans and other living world creatures).

It is an automatic dialect that any ghost can understand where when a ghost speaks it or writes it to another ghost, the other ghost can understand what they are trying to say via images, emotions, and general comprehension of context being projected into their mind once they hear, see, and or feel the language. Pups (younger ghosts) learn the language by developing their skills of understanding context clues and through learning via studying and classes.

Ghost Speak can work as a way to break a language barrier by speaking, writing, or creating a physical form to either see or feel if two ghosts (especially limbo ghosts) are speaking different languages and they cannot understand each other. Nowadays, Ghost Speak is mostly used in literature alongside other languages as many ghosts in modern Ghost Zone already know multiple languages due to their extended existence.

(More AU worldbuilding information and references under the cut)

I've seen headcanons circle around via reblogs from mutuals where ghost speak is more of a projection of images into another ghost's mind rather than it working like a traditional language (if anyone can find those posts, please lmk in the comments so I can link them). I really liked the idea so I threw in my two cents of the idea, added a few things to it, and adopted it into the AU.

The audio is a mixture of a few stock sounds I found on youtube and complied them together into how I imagine ghost speak would sound like if a human heard it (References here: Haunting Eerie Sound Effect, Ghosts Whispering Sound Effect, 1 Hour Radio Static Noise, Free Horror Ambience).

As for what it looks like if it was written, embossed like braille, or drawn with ghost energy, the preview image shows ghost speak looking like zalgo text gibberish while having a faint green glow of the text floating over itself. (Note: ghost speak doesn't serve as a replacement of braille, sign language, and other languages. It's used as just another language or a language barrier breaker. Braille, sign language, and audio of other languages exist within the Ghost zone.)

This will be mentioned within the story I'm currently writing as a small worldbuilding piece.

#danny phantom #vitriol au #worldbuilding #ghost speak #audio

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immemorymag · 5 months

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Marie Le Moigne

My work is not limited to a single medium. Indeed, I exploit as much photography, typography, writing, video, painting. Sometimes the mediums intersect, challenge each other, mix. Between document and photographs, between literature and visual language,experiment with the photographic and filmic image to give matter to language.

“I WRITE THE IMAGE, I PRINT, I SUPERPOSE, ON PRINT. THE TEXT IS A MATERIAL.

I WORK ON THE TEXTURE OF THE IMAGE THROUGH THE GRAIN OF THE PHOTOGRAPHIC FILM AND VIDEOGRAPHY. MY WORK IS A KIND OF DIARY THAT TRAVELS TIME. IT IS A TIMELESS, UNCERTAIN, AND SUSPENDED SPACE, LIKE THE WHITE SPACE

BETWEEN WORDS, LIKE BREATHING, LIKE SILENCE. »

My universe feeds on contemplation a bit like Arthur Rimbaud, on modern and contemporary literature and the environment. My photographic, pictorial and literary creations testify to a sensitive look at uncertain temporal spaces, between dream and reality.

“THE QUESTION OF TRUTH WAS ERADICATED AT THE MOMENT

WHERE THE IMAGE FORMED ANOTHER REALITY. MY REALITY.

ANOTHER TRUTH THAT I REINVENT AS I GO. I WRITE MY PHOTOGRAPHY, I LIVE IT, I SEE IT.

IT IS NOT A MEMORY, IT IS AN IMPRINT, A WRITING MADE OF COLORED OR MONOCHROMIC GRAINS. SHE REPRESENTS WHAT I CANNOT WRITE. »

“Searching, exchanging, questioning, activating production and process modes and spaces lead me and motivate me to learn by doing.” So many verbs that were incentives during my studies and which today are therefore actualized in my artistic practice. I remember always wanting to photograph: to see through. Through the lens, as a kind of protection of my soul, of my privacy. And yet... And yet, I offer my body, fragments of me to sensitive film. I try to transfer my sensitivity to paper. I often photographed what I could not write. And vice versa. Societal issues revolving around women, the body, memory or the environment cross my fields of questioning. I like varied techniques and mediums, for example, I often work on the links that literature and writing can have with images.

[ IDENTITY, FEMININITY ] Through a search for identity mixed with the tumult of the world: images of the body written, naked, without pageantry. The body and the world are both separated and linked. I wonder about the poetic links uniting between the human being and nature. The means and materials accumulate, undergo the assaults of nature and the body, meanwhile, undergoes the scratches of time

and its writing.

[ MATERIAL ] I use raw, organic and bodily matter as writing. Write a moment, instants, poetry, prose, words, sounds on the same material. The gestures of the painter and the writer at the same time are transcribed in encrypted works with variable readings. Materiality is indeed omnipresent in my work. Through the texture of the image, she relates the natural state of the landscape and the body in transition.

[ LANGUAGE & WRITING ] Create a new language, one that questions its essence. What is the language shared between a body and its environment? What trace does it leave behind and in nature? Images of singular fragility emerge from this research, they bathe in a refined, silent atmosphere. We dive into a universe on the border between dream and reality, in a dialogue between the landscape and the body.

#photography #art collective #photomagazine #culture #bnwphotography #female photographers #support female artists #art #london

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clocks-divorcing-ticks · 10 months

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(TW: Mention of animal cruelty) Is it OK to ask about kangaroo shooting? Kangaroos do seem to be the Australian ecosystem's equivalent of deer (in the northern hemisphere), have always had nonhuman predators, and of course First Nations people traditionally hunt them, and have been doing so for ~65000 years. But what do you think of Ray Mjadwesch's work? He claims that roo shooting isn't sustainable, that kangaroos are threatened and that their populations cannot increase by more than 12% a year. But his work doesn't seem to be peer-reviewed, he's associated with the animal rights movement and claims that the roo shooting industry have bought the official science on kangaroo populations like with fossil fuels and tobacco (both *far* bigger and more powerful industries). The only peer-reviewed article I can find supporting his contention is in the Animal Studies Journal, which is seemingly animal rights-centric rather than focusing on zoology or ecology. I've seen reports on the ABC about genuine animal cruelty by roo shooters, such as leaving joeys to starve after killing their mothers, when they're supposed to kill the joeys and try not to hunt females with large joeys. This could be dealt with in a similar way to cruelty to farm animals (e.g. in abattoirs)? But there seems to be a growing taboo among some people against *ever* killing kangaroos, considering it to be inherently cruel and wrong, that could be broadly adopted by society in general/ imposed on people who don't share it, likely ultimately affecting Indigenous people. The US is considering banning kangaroo meat and leather, for instance. Could this turn out similar to the Canadian seal hunt situation?

I think you've largely answered your own question in terms of the credibility of non peer reviewed science. You can hold it against the enormous body of peer reviewed science that talks about kangaroos (specifically eastern greys and reds) being overabundant and the reasons why (clear-felling and the creation of permanent water bodies for agriculture, removal of predation, their ability to prolifically breed, harvesting rules biasing the sex ratio of populations, etc). You will also see in literature on other actually endangered native species, or in their associated Action Plans, overabundant kangaroos being listed as a key threat to their conservation. The Australian landscape pre-colonisation was never capable of producing such an abundance of kangaroos, and it certainly isn't capable of sustaining it now. The thing is, anti-culling activists will never be satisfied by it. It's a matter of ideological differences. I absolutely understand the emotional argument. I used to be a staunch advocate against culling when I was younger. I remember walking into a lecture during undergrad on the overabundance of native species absolutely adamant that nothing said in that room could make me pro-culling. The weight of scientific evidence that supports it being the most humane thing to do was overwhelming. I walked out of that room knowing two things: one that ecological culls are important in managing healthy ecosystems, and two that I was capable of changing deep-seated ideals when presented with evidence. Not everyone is capable of the latter.

I'd love to take some of the activists to our field sites and show them what an overabundant population looks like. Teach them to recognise the signs of lumpy jaw, intestinal parasites, and the many other signs of starvation and disease that runs rife through these overcrowded mobs. It's truly horrifying to witness a population of thousands of slowly dying kangaroos against the backdrop of a dying landscape.

For many people, they would rather believe that no animal has to die and will staunchly advocate against both ecological culls and hunting. Not just for kangaroos. Here in Australia we see similar very emotional arguments against culling koalas and (feral) brumbies. While they believe they are saving animal lives, the result is that many of them die slow, awful deaths. Meantime many other unseen native animals are driven to extinction from the resultant land degradation (erosion, biodiversity loss, extinction of native flora, etc).

If an export ban happens, it would not be the first time a ban has been placed on kangaroo products abroad. And probably not the last. We dance this dance constantly. All we can do is try to present the science and the evidence, try to get better at communicating with the public, and hope that the governmental bodies in charge of these decisions actually listen to the science.

The worst part of being an ecologist is that part of your job is deciding which animals get to die. Something that came as an absolute shock to this starry-eyed girl with dreams of saving every animal. The reality is that sometimes to save a species, another has to die. Maybe it's because there's not the budget or the habitat or the public willingness to save both, and other times it's because one species is causing ecological damage. In this case it's the ugly reality that removing a few million roos, joeys and all, is imperative in the fight to save the fragile ecosystems we have left.

#alexandra-again #asks #ecology #ecological culls #tw: animal death

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astrum99 · 3 months

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Human’s inherent desire for understanding, and why angels are a perfect lure. (Rambling)

Humans have studied the art of the mystic for centuries. Before science, literature, and math, there were stories. Because storytelling is what guides us to experience, to learn, to make sense of both experience and knowledge.

Even when we do science, we say: “First, extraction of the sample DNA from the flesh was conducted through the process of centrifuge. Then, PCR was run to amplify the amount of recovered DNA. Restriction endonuclease enzyme was added to the sample, fragmenting DNA into smaller strands. The product was evaluated through agarose gel electrophoresis. 80-150V of electric force pulling the pieces toward the bottom. The shorter the pieces are, the faster they go. So, the DNA separates more, and paints a ladder of bands. You cannot see them. As the last step, you must stain them with fluorescent dye, and only under UV lights can you observe the crude data.”

Temporal. Sequential. Meaningful. This is a story called “DNA fingerprinting”.

The story of magic and godly realms and religion is of the same. They carry teachings (and entertainment). They last through centuries because there is something in them that humanity sees.

Humans are driven by a maddening sense of curiosity and exploration. To make sense of it all. To separate organs from man, to separate cells from organs, to separate DNA from cells, and to do it again, at a smaller scale with enzymes. There is an inherent desire to learn until all is deprived. To become passionate is to be consumed wholeheartedly.

So we sent people to explore the Arctic, the ocean, the sky, the universe. And when they perish, we send more.

The study of death is the same. To see beyond the veil is something impossible, because the dead cannot return. (Well, they technically can, depending on how you define death. If death is the stopping of the heart, then I suppose we are dying, in microdoses, every second of our lives. If death is the cease of memory and autonomy, then I suppose we are dying, in microdoses, every night in our beds.)

(I digress.)

The study of death is attractive because it looks into what we are sure we cannot possibly touch. So we only hope to examine what we can. The maggots that gnaw at the meat, the stillness of limbs in silence, the invasive infestations of bacteria and mold and creatures of all kinds.

The corpse is an afterimage of an experience of both life and death. We can only hope to study the husk and the life that sustains on that husk, hoping it is close enough to touch death.

It is similar to the study of the supernatural in that way. Magic only exists because we do not understand it. That’s why it is so captivating. The creation of a potion in a cauldron is the same as biochemistry. The transformation of forms and elements is the same as fusion physics. The impossible feats of flight were achieved by aeroplanes and carefully measured aerodynamics. There are ghosts born from boring undetected monoxide poisoning.

When we understand, magic loses its… well, magic.

It is similar to the study of religion in that way. Because we are desperately lonely, and we must make meaning, and so magic shall suffice in place of what we do not know and to fill what we do not have. I do not study religion, but I know at least a part of this is true – at least in its origin. The stories of gods, angels, demons, palaces in the sky, monsters in the ocean, a form of thousand eyes and arms and all-knowing and all being and loves like nothing else because we are greedy organisms that crave validation and safety and love and love and love. And we can learn anything it wants us to learn, make it through anything if love and peace are waiting for us at the end of it all. (Though religion, in all its implications, forms, and renditions have changed since then, as well as the interpretations of survived passages.)

I am not a believer in a higher being, nor am I a student of religion, so I cannot speak of all of it. I cannot claim understanding.

I think this is also partially why angels compel me so. They are the beyond. Above reasoning, above logic, in the same realm as the untouchable pureness of undiscovered science, death, magic, and religion.

What stories flow within its (his?) veins? What stories lie dormant in its (his) throat? What stories are etched on the body, the wings, the blade? What stories speak of the beating of its (his) heart and the bleeding of its (his) light? What of the cells, the molecules, the very physics (magic) that binds it (him) together?

Do you speak of the stories of love and despair and violence and hope as we do?

Please, do not answer me.

Because to know is to kill. The utter destruction of the imagination and wonder and passion. To purposefully look away from knowledge is the complete comprehension that understanding makes something die. It brings dullness to love.

So, please, let me see you in my mind’s eye, and nothing more.

#az thoughts #angelcore #rambling again and has to get this out of my body #yea its bc gabriel got me thinking again #long post #writing #spilled ink #<- recently learned this tag exists #im a fan of a few really strong lines but this is honestly a bit tedious to read #if you're reading i really hope you enjoyed lol #az personal

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linkspooky · 2 years

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Hi....if you don't mind me asking, what are your top 10 favorite (fiction) books? And why? Sorry if you've answered this question before...

Hello, I don’t mind answering. Here’s my top ten books. Please don’t expect me to have good taste. A friendly reminder that I am a clown, and I have a clown’s taste in literature.

#10 A Game of Thrones

Not the whole series, but the first book specifically is one of what I consider the best fantasy books of all time. I know this is an incredibly mainstream thing to say, but sometimes things that are popular, are popular for a reason. The Cersei sections of Feast of Crows are my favorite in the whole series, but as for the book in its entirety I believe the original book is almost a perfect example of a first book in a series which sets up greater characters and plot threads while at the same time writing a perfect three act tragedy in Ned Stark’s arc throughout the entire book.

Genre fiction is my bread and butter, and I appreciate authors who are able to elevate Genre Fiction into serious art just by taking common characters and tropes of the genre seriously, and using those as tools to build upon the themes. Everyone knows the plotting and the world and politics and backstories are so impressively detailed that George RR Martin’s writing ability, and thoughtfulness towards his own work always shows in its dirty and gritty details. But ebyond that I’m reminded of a quote by Ursula K Le Guinn about genre fiction.

“For example: A writer sets out to write science fiction, but isn’t familiar with the genre, hasn’t read what’s been written. THis is a fairly common situation, because science fiction is knwon to sell weel, but as a subliterary genre, is not supposed to be worth study - what’s to learn? It doesn’t occur to the novice that a genre is a genre because it has a field and focus of it’s own; it’s own appropriate and particular tools, rules, and techniques for handling the material; its traditions; and its experienced, appreciative readers - that it is, in fact, a literature. Ignoring all of this, our novice is just about to reinvent the wheel...”

What I love about Game of Thrones is that it is a fairy tale story, that knows it is a fairy tale and instead of looking down on fairy tales, it critically examines them while at the same time adding humanity to all of its characters. The grittier elements of the story come not from George RR Martin thinking fantasy stories are stupid, but because he wants to write a legitimate challenge in his story for characters to ovecome, and a world where things are harder than they seem in stories, and yet it’s still worth the struggle to live life outside a story. You know. You know those themes? It’s one of those.

#9 The Idiot by Dotsoevsky

It’s hard to pick a favorite out of Dostoevsky’s five great novels, but i inthk his most tragic entry is the one that’s also the most tightly written and clear in its themes.

Prince Myshkin is one of Dostoevsky’s purest heartest characters, a character Dostoevsky wrote he wanted to create with an “entirely postivie... with an absolutely beautiful nature”, and yet despite being so loving and unselfish towards others he’s a rare example of a character who’s good points are matched evenly with his flaws. A fundamentally good person who is as complex as some of Dotsoevsky’s bad boys, like Raskolnivkov. Myshkin is so selfless a person he’s almost an ideal, but the point of the novel itself is that ideals cannot exist in reality.

According to Joseph Frank, the character of prince Myshkin approaches “ the extremest incarnation of the Christian ideal of love that humanity can reach in its present form, but he is torn apart by the conflict between the contradictory imperatives of his apocalyptic aspirations and his earthly limitations.”

Prince Myshkin is someone who similiarly can only see the world in ideals, which is what makes his romance with Nastaasya Filippovna so troubled, because she is a troubled person who exists in an area of grey that Myshkin cannot see. Myshkin can truly and unselfishly love her, and yet he cannot comprehend er at the same time which makes their romance one where desipte all good intentions neither of them are ever on the same page.

Anyway, the best love stories are ones where thy don’t end up together. It’s the story of how they met, they didn’t fall in love, and didn’t end up happy together, and yet the goodness Myshkin saw in Nastasya who is Dostoevsky’s most complicated, and most flawed woman, was there all the same.

#8 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Here’s the cliche answer for which work by a Bronte sister is your favorite. However, my hot take is one everyone in the world will disagree with me over. Wuthering Heights is still a love story, even if it’s a story that is primarily about Katherine and Heathcliff’s selfish, destructive love. The Bronte Sisters weren’t out to debunk Regency Era romantic stories like the kind Jane Austen wrote. They aren’t anti-romantics. Wuthering Heights is still very much a story full of romanticism, it’s just like George RR Martin, looking at that genre with a more serious lens.

In my essay I will go on to prove that Wuthering Heights is a romantic story.... It’s about big emotions and the consequneces about big emotions. Much is made about how destructive Katherine and Heathcliff’s love for one another is, and how selfish, but when reading it you have to pay attention to the circumstances surrounding it. Heathcliff is the victim of abuse and discrimmination, because he is poor, disadvantaged, and dark skinned. His childhood love is also with the only person who sort of treats him like a human being, and in that same light Katherine falls in love with the only person who knows her as she is in a complicated light rather than seeing her as a woman of manners and fine breeding. It’s only after everything goes wrong that the love itself becomes destructive towards both members.

Wuthering Heights isn’t really saying that the brooding Byronic prtagonist is a bad person, but rather illustrating the cirucmstances that would create such a person. One interpretation I like about the story is that Heathcliff and Katherine are just as selfish in their actions towards each other, it’s just Heathcliff’s are more destructive because that’s the power he has as the head of the household.

It’s a tragedy of two people coming together, and then coming apart by love, but to argue that love doesn’t exist is to like, say that the two leads of Romeo and Juliet weren’t in love, they were just horny teenagers. The story becomes leser if you ignore the romanticism of the story. If like, the descriptions of roaring green fields, and the weather reflecting the emotions of the characters, and the fainting spells and bouts of hiysteria are not enough to indicate it as a romantic work of fiction. Also, at the end of the story, the damage to two generations of the family that is done by abusive love, is slowly becoming undone by the union of two children who heavily parallel Katherine and Heathcliff and represent what they could have been under different ircumstances. It’s just such a good story at depicting the extremes that people are capable of while its characters are still human. You could compare Heathcliff to Frankenstein’s monster, except he’s not a monster at all, he’s just a dude, ableit a heavily abused one who goes on to repeat his abuse in a heavily realstic way.

#7 The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

I put this on the list just to be pretentious. There’s a lo of similar books of this genre I’ve read and enjoyed, but this is for me pretty much the only book that’s ever depicted a mental breakdown accruately. The whole first half of the book really is just about a normal person unfamiliar and uncomfortable with her brief stay in New York City, and when she gets home and falls apart that is when the book becomes brilliant.

A lot of mental illness in fiction is like, heavy hallucination, crazy behavior. Sylvia Plath writes a character just slowly falling apart, not being able to keep up with her normal life in the way she did before. One of the most striking passages to me was when she mentions that all she seemed to do all day was do nothing, and yet she couldn’t sleep either, and she went day, after day, after day without sleeping. When the main character attempts to slit her wrists too, it’s not a big dramatic deal, but something the character mentions almost offhandedly, and she does it because she is so tired of not sleeping.

It’s just a small and quiet portrayal of suffering that’s just as striking and poetic, because it draws humanity out of the mundanity of this character’s breakdown. She just stops being able to do what she could always do before, and she doesn’t know why, or what’s the cause of this slow decline, and she feels trapped in her head and observing as it’s happening to her. It’s a book I’ve reread several times, at the minimalist language it uses, that is equally effetive as striking and overdramatic prose. It just gets the suffering of the character across, in small ways, it’s so soaked with a quiet misery.

#6 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

This is my favorite love story, ever. I actually think war and peace is stronger in its themes, and has more liabkly characters in its cast, but Anna Karenina is the story of one woman’s misery and her desire for escape from her life. There is so much humanity to Anna in this story, that’s not given to other woman in the time period. While theplot of War and Peace is about the comparison of the smalll lives of the Russians in contrast to the Big Stakes of the war happening around them, Anna Karenina is written about one women’s misery and her trying to find happiness in love and it is treated with all the same importance and grand consequences.

The opening quote of the book has stayed with me forever.

All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

Tolstoy writes about one small person living their life like it’s the most important thing in the world. That there are no great people like Napoleon, just people living their little lives. Anna’s desire for happiness is so strong she leaves her husband, and has an affair with him. Something a man would be allowed to do at the time, and is even easily forgiven for in the start of the book, but Anna is reviled for within her own society.

It’s important to marriage Anna has a husband that for the time period she should have been satsifed with, he worked and paid for the house, he was a responsible man who didn’t cheat on her, he just didn’t love her. Yet not only is Anna not allowed to leave in the eyes of society, she should also be thankful for it. Anna then is swept away by a man who promises her the kind of love she’s searching for, and even if he does not love her, he is at least exciting. It sounds like every other romance story ever written which is why you really have to just read it, to understand the humanity that is on display in Anna’s character.

#5 DRACULA

Did somebody say female characters? One of my favorite things to watch on tumblr was to see Dracula become super popular as soon as someone came up with the idea of emailing people the story, letter by letter. Dracula isa story where the most interesting haracters are the human characters struggling against the monster, and that’s brought out by the epistolatory novel storytelling format. Jonathan’s diary, Mina and Lucy’s letters all go to such great lengths to flesh them out.

Mina and Lucy especially are too well developed female characters. The slow decline of Lucy’s health, and the great efforts everyone around her goes to save her, only to have her die at the end is one of the most harrowing things I’ve ever read in fictions. It’s more horrifying than most modern day horror, and this sequence of events happens when Dracula is mostly offscreen and only appears in what to Lucy are just drreams.

Stephen King once said, and I’m paraphrasing, that what makes horror fiction scary is when the audience is invested in the fate of the characters. Dracula is so lasting and impactful because the main cast is as developed as the monster themselves, even though they are ntohing more than pathetic and scrawny human beings. It’s the rare monster story where you actually want to see the good guys slaughter the monster.

#4 Frankenstein

Frankenstein, or as I call it, can you tell this was written by a woman?

Frankenstein is just about so many things. It references stories like Paradise Lost in its themes about the potential of good and evil of humanity. r. It’s about the human adventuring spirit and the desire to do something great, and also when that same desire to be something greater than human can make people forget their basic humanity. It’s about misogyny. It’s about masculine entitlement.

It’s about childbirth It’s about motherhood. It’s about the cycle of abuse. Frankenstein and his Monster are such perfect foils for one another, to the point where the Monster is almost a living Jungian shadow who like Peter Pan’s shadow has escaped from him and is running around on his own. The more that Frankenstein denies the monster and dehumanizes him, the more monstrous he becomes.

One of my favaorite passages in all of fiction and one I think about when writing characters to this day, is when the monster points out that he has done bad things and deserves to be punished, but what about the family who beat him and chased him away for looking ugly when he spent months on end gathering firewood and he only wanted to introduce himself. What of the man who shot him, when he tried to save his son driving for a river. Why aren’t they deserving of punishment? If he is guilty, then why are all the people who pushed him into this and were violent towards him without cause innocent?

#3 Zaregoto Vol. 2: The Kubishime Romanticist.

This is where I get rocks thrown at me for putting a light novel on here and above all of these classics. The story behind Zaregoto volume two is fascinating . While the first was months of work went into it’s creation, Nisioisin felt something was missing when he had finished it. For the sequel, he sat down, and wrote it in two days.

Zaregoto is one of my favorite novels of all time, but it does require reading the first to show how it contrasts the second. Basically, what I always say is that if you read the first volume you don’t really understand why everyone is so offput by the main character, or why everyone is constantly hinting that he’s a terrible person. However, by the second novel you understand exactly the kind of person IIchan is.

While the first volume of the series is a tribute to mystery stories that for the most part, centers around solving the mystery, the second the mystery solving is almost incidental to establishing just what kind of person the first person narrator is. It’s a very vivid image that Nisioiisin paints in detail, and it’s not exactly a flattering portrait.

II-chan is a terrible person. This is the novel about how II-chan is a terrible person. However, Iic-han is one of my favorite characters ever, and this novel is one of my favorite novels just because the prose is so, almost trippy, psychadelic? It’s very stremam of thought narration. It’s poetic. And that’s all in servic to show what the kind of person II-chan is. He’s an unreliable narrator, because he’s such a good storyteller he’s twisting details to make himself look like the victim of the story, and yet if you pay attention and read behind the lines he’s just not a victim nor a particularly good or innocent person. Unreliable narrators are some of the best tropes in fiction to show how not only can stories not be trusted, but people cannot be trusted as well, because they both have a tendency to tell lies.

# 2 +#1 No Longer Human by Osamu Dazai, and This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

These two are essentially tied for my favorite, because they are very similiar despite being written by authors from two different cultures. They are both semi-autobiographical novel length works that are essentially coming of age stories where the main character refuses to come of age or grow up in any specific way. They are love stories, where the main character doesn’t fall in love. They fact that they are semi-autobiographical novels which follow these characters from childhood to adulthood and paint not so flattering pictures of the main characters is part of what makes them raw and effective.

I won’t speak about Osamu Dazai but if you know anything about F. SCott FItzgerald, well let’s just say there are a lot of scandals about his treatment of his wife, his writing. There’s a lot of honesty though in his works that makes me not want to completely dismiss his talent as an author. This Side of Paradise and Osamu Dazai are just so honest in their portrayal of the main characters warts and all, that they are still readable despite having what are selfish and unsyampthetic main characters.

Osamu Dazai once wrote he tried to write novels for miserable people, and yep, that’s pretty much it. No Longer Human at times reads like a suicide note left by the author himself, and that’s even explciitly the framing of the novel, a journal that was left behind after everybody stopped hearing from the main character. They portray the struggles of the characters by giving them such rich internal worlds.

This Side of Paradise is different in that it at least has a slightly more optimistic ending. Both stories feature characters who are born into relative wealth in privilege, trying to go to school, trying to fall in love, trying to find work and live in the world and failing at all of those things. At the end of hist journey though, Armory ends with this quote.

“I know myself," he cried, "but that is all.

Armory at least from all of his struggles, gains an understanding of himself by the end of the story. Which is why I think, stories like this need to be told. EAs Dazai said, some stories need to be written for miserable people, because misery is just as much of the human experience as happiness is. There’s still something to be gained from these stories, because loss and failure is something you can learn from. Which is why F. Scott Fitzgerald writes some of the most beautiful prose for the time period, because those people were born, dreamed to be someone important, wanted to be loved, just like everyone else and their stories are just as beautiful despite ending in loss and failure.

#literature #literature analysis #askspookies #This side of Paradise #Anna Karenina #Dracula #Frankenstein #wuthering heights #the bell jar #The idiot #Game of thrones

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stygianpen · 1 year

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Literature’s 12 Archetypes

The concept of an archetype is far-reaching, appearing in behavioral and historical psychology as well as literary analysis. If you are to look up archetypes, you’ll likely come across the teachings of Jungian psychology where archetypes define a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern or thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.

However, it was not Carl Jung who first began work with archetypes, nor Jung who popularized them in the literary world. Sir James George Frazer predated Jung by 30+ years with his workThe Golden Boughwhich dealt with cultural mythologies. A Scottish anthropologist, Frazer worked out of Cambridge University, creating this influential text that would go on to carry weight not only in anthropological studies but literary ones as well.

Today, we can look to books such asThe Hero with a Thousand Facesby Joseph Campbell andThe Seven Basic Plotsby Christopher Booker to explore archetypes of both character and plot, and learn how they can create a strong foundation for our own writing.

Now, I’m not here to write a masterpiece spanning 34 years of my life as Christopher Booker has done — I’ve already got that on the go with the fantasy epic I’m working on! I can however give you a brief rundown of archetypes where characters are concerned.

THE INNOCENT

The archetypically innocent character has a youthful sense of wonder. They’re easily impressed and tend to remain positive in the midst of a negative situation. Their naivety and simplicity can have them come across as either ignorant or authentic. They have a strong sense of hope and generally have very high expectations of others backed by positive motives. They desire goodness and are ‘glass half full’ personalities.

It’s rare that an innocent can remain as such, giving them endless possibilities of character arcs that lead them into any of ten other archetypes.

THE ORPHAN

The orphan archetype does not actually need to be an orphan, though characters like Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker are perfect examples of the type. This archetype has a strong desire for fulfillment and safety due to these needs not previously being met in their life. The orphan is the other side of the coin to the innocent. Where the innocent looks at the world with wonder, the orphan looks at it through a darker lens, seeing impure intentions behind the smiling faces of everyone they meet. Rather than opening themselves easily to others as the innocent does, they are closed and suspicious. As displayed in the Harry Potter and Star Wars series’, the orphan can take a heroic or villainous path, but that is up to them.

THE HERO

In Jungian psychology the hero is a symbol of the unconscious self. As archetypes depict aspects of human nature or life, we can find heroic potential in our own personal goals and achievements. The hero is the most popular archetype we see in stories, vanquishing evil and representing a certain ideal many of us would strive towards. The hero faces danger, braves trials, and overcomes all (many times thanks to their own special abilities) to bring peace to their loved ones or a larger population; maybe even the whole world. As humans we cannot help but focus on our inner struggles and be driven at least in part by ego, and so the hero is in most cases our primary protagonist in literature.

THE CAREGIVER

If you’re looking for selfless, that’s the caregiver archetype. Like Sam Gamgee, understanding of Frodo’s burden from start to finish, these archetypes can come off soft due to their caring nature but are oftentimes the strongest characters in a story. After all, it takes strength and courage to separate from the ego to the point where you would sacrifice your own life for that of a friend or child. Caregivers are kind, trustworthy and forgiving, often living simple and humble lives. But they are the backbone of those around them. While the hero may need to make tough decisions that reflect on an entire population, they often would not be able to do so without the decisions made by their caregiver.

THE EXPLORER

Explorers are independent and ambitious. Their spirited nature can sometimes cause them to be restless or even flaky, but this is exactly what drives them to continue the adventure. Their prevailing goal is one of fulfilment through freedom and excitement. While the orphan looks for a home, the explorer doesn’t need one. In fact, they fear it. To be tied down, bored, or blocked from learning would be the death of their character. Often charismatic, they seek thrills, and when they do land on a goal it is often unattainable. Even though the explorer may not be good for us, we can’t help but love them.

THE REBEL

The rebel goes hand in hand with the explorer, but they are far more prone to destructive and nihilistic tendencies than their freedom-craving friend. Challenging the status quo, acting in an uncensored manner, and leading causes others may be too cowardly to take on can all be seen in a positive or negative light. Like the orphan, the rebel can be a great hero or a great villain depending on the choice they take and the influences they decide to listen to. When a rebel sets out on a mission, it will always be one where the ends justify the means.

THE LOVER

The lover is the sensuous, warm partner of the archetype group. Similar to the caregiver, they can be self-sacrificing but their goals are different. Rather than taking on a parental role, their focus is on partnering with the object of their affection and supporting that person with more emotional passion than their caring counterpart. These characters are dedicated, open with their feelings, and have a love for the poetic and the beautiful in life. They are likable characters who chase that commitment and partnership they crave whether it’s in the form of a romantic relationship, friendship, or even servitude to a God figure. They have a fear of being alone, and can harm themselves by getting too lost in the object of their affection or sacrificing too much, even their own lives, for this person or deity.

THE CREATOR

Practical yet imaginative. Ordered yet chaotic. The creator often finds themselves at odds with… well, themselves. While their imaginations can carry them away, when it comes down to it they are realistic and hands-on, which makes them quite accomplished and able to bring their creations into reality. They have a natural talent for melding practicality and artistry but this focus on the project at hand and leaning to non-conformity can be their downfall. It’s hard to maintain a stable family life when you’re being pulled at by an all-consuming creative dream. Creators also have a knack for gathering rivals due to their innovations and urge for provocation and impulse. To remain a positive influence, creators must maintain balance.

THE JESTER

The jester just wants to have a laugh. Joyful and carefree, they’re often an entertaining archetype who can bring up the mood of anyone around them. They fear boredom, live in the now, and can turn to more negative attributes of frivolity such as irresponsibility and unintended cruelty through difficulty in understanding a serious situation. Attention-seeking is not always appealing, but the jester’s sense of humour can be useful in diffusing negative situations. The jester can be very hard to break, as they are experts at finding joy in all things. This can make them a deceptively strong archetype as long as they manage their own impulses.

THE SAGE

Wise and learned, the sage archetype is in search of the truth above all else. A strong believer in the principle that ‘the truth will set you free’, they are reflective, independent and enlightened, often acting as guide and teacher to other archetypes. Detail-oriented, these archetypes can sometimes get lost in those details and forget to act, making a hero-type a very useful companion to them for actually getting things done. These intelligent archetypes have faith in humankind and do not think themselves better than anyone, even though they tend to be experts in their area of research. The sage aims to be a force of good, but battles with a leaning toward judgment that can result form much critical reflection.

THE MAGICIAN

As the orphan reflects the innocent, the magician is the other side of the coin to the sage. Highly intellectual, they have a stronger charisma and are secretive rather than open about their vast knowledge. While a sage imparts knowledge, a magician forms an idea of their ideal world or situation and manipulates their surroundings and those around them to fit that ideal. They are driven, and while their intentions can often be good, their means of reaching the end goal tend towards dishonesty. The magician cares little for The Truth and much for Their Truth.

THE RULER

The ruler may appear in your story fully-formed but many orphans and heroes play out a journey to reach this role. This archetype sits at the top of the food chain and has an air of polished confidence to them. Focused on stability and power, the ruler can be a great force of good or evil because, as we all know, with great power comes great responsibility. The ruler fears being dethroned, their world spinning into chaos, and will do everything they can to avoid this. A benevolent ruler will exercise their power for the good of those around them, while a ruler-turned-dictator exerts their power with only themselves in mind.

Arm yourself with archetypes!

Some may state negatively, that archetypes are formulaic. But they are based on a universal formula we all recognize and have little ability to avoid. By arming yourself with archetypes, you can create a winning cast of characters that inspire you and those who read about them.

Making your stories relatable is important if you want others to read and enjoy them.

If you haven’t tried writing with archetypes in mind, give it a shot today and let us know what you think. We’d also love to know what your favourite archetype to write is, so drop that in the comments down below. Personally I’m tied between rebel and magician!

#writing #writing community #creative writing #new author #writing help #writing tips #writing advice #writing resources #writing tips and tricks #editing #self publishing #archetypes

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hamliet · 1 year

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I know this is a very sensitive subject but I still need to know ; please tell me do you think that God is against homosexuality ?

No. I think being homophobic is a sin, actually.

I can't speak for all religions, but I do know that there are plenty of, say, Jewish and Muslim scholars who are pro-LGBT and would happily discuss. I can only speak for my religion, which is Christianity.

I'm gonna talk a bit more... upfront about my personal beliefs under the cut. Which are very Christian, so if you aren't comfortable with that, feel free not to read.

I was raised to think it was, to be sure. But I was never fully comfortable with this idea, and have studied theology a bit in college to examine what I believed and why.

I love the Bible, actually. I think it's inspired by God, but that doesn't mean a flat literal interpretation. I mean, it's actually a fundamental misunderstanding to think so--we must ask ourselves why God chose literature as a medium to speak to us. That doesn't mean everything that's in the Bible is a narrative allegory and never historical, btw. It just means that, like all works of literature, we gain understanding when we approach it through different lens: lens that take in the culture it was written in, biases of authors, our own bias, the culture we live in now, and the fact that as Christians, we believe the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and that flesh is Jesus Himself. Jesus is the fulfillment of God on earth, both human and divine.

Hence, however you interpret Scripture, if you're Christian, I would argue it should be through the lens of Jesus.

A lot of the "sins" outlined in the Christian Old Testament are no longer considered sins in the New Testament. I've seen people debate back and forth what is and what isn't, and I believe Jesus did leave us a way to tell.

Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

All the commandments, including sexual morality ones, can be summed up through loving God and loving our neighbor. Loving God is shown directly through loving our neighbor.

Romans 13:10 is pretty explicit about this:

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.

I don't see harm coming from love between people of any gender. I see a lot of harm coming from homophobia, though. I see raised suicide rates. I see so many "ex gay" ministries folding in on themselves. And this does matter; in fact, it's Biblical. Matthew 7:15-20:

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.

The fruit of this homophobia is apparent for everyone to see. It's rotten. It results in dead kids, in (straight) marriages that are based on lies that harm women who marry men who admit to not ever being attracted to them, in people dying from AIDS.

Besides, the Old Testament is itself a chronicle of God's revelation that ends in the ultimate form of the person of Christ. That doesn't mean it can be cast aside, but instead seen as a progressive revelation, as a compassionate God makes allowances for people in an ancient Near Eastern culture to maintain some ancient Near Eastern cultural practices, which may well have been not exactly positive towards any sexuality outside of men and their wives, who were also their property. I mean, it's complicated--for example, David and Jonathan saying the love they share is "better than that of women" might be two bros being bros but also very well might not be because that is... deeply intense--but also, Jesus directly counters some of the "Law" in his testimony and says precisely that God does make allowances for cultures.

Plus, let's look at history. There are more in-depth theological examinations of the phrasing used that is often translated "homosexuality" in the New Testament (which only began to be translated as such in 1946). The historical context of these words almost certainly refer to p*dophilia (which was frankly common back then; ancient Greek culture encouraged men to sleep with young boys to "mentor them) and to religious prostitution, which are very, very different things than how we understand LGBT relationships. There still might well be a bias in Paul's letters, but Paul is not Christ, and culturally it's not surprising. We are all limited by our cultures, even today.

Gay relationships have positively impacted Christianity. You know the King James Bible, the first English translation? It was authorized because King James himself was in a gay relationship with another man and wanted to get the church leaders off his back. In fact, King James then literally stated:

I, James, am neither a god nor an angel, but a man like any other. Therefore I act like a man and confess to loving those dear to me more than other men. You may be sure that I love the Earl of Buckingham more than anyone else, and more than you who are here, assembled. I wish to speak in my own behalf and not to have it thought to be a defect, for Jesus Christ did the same, and therefore I cannot be blamed. Christ had John, and I have George."

(I mean, I think you're wrong there King James--John was certainly a teenager, as were most of the disciples--no this wasn't weird this was normal for that day in age--but I do not think Jesus was sleeping with a teen.) But thanks to King James, despite his iffy thoughts on specific hermeneutics, lots more people had access to the Scriptures.

There's also science. We can't ever discover anything God doesn't already know, so. Statistics and science do tell us that intersex conditions are not nearly so rare and gender is not as clear-cut as we'd like to think (please research Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome). It is very possible there are conditions we don't know about, biological ones, that change how we label someone's gender. If gender is itself far more complex than male or female, if it's somewhat of a spectrum, then it follows that God is aware of this and whom we're attracted to itself cannot be so clearly labeled.

#ask hamliet #religion #christianity #lgbt

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